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May 1, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:22
WHERE’S CONGRESS? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1074
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Coming up, I'll contrast the feverish energy of the Trump administration with the inaction of the GOP House and Senate.
I'm going to ask the question, where's Congress?
I'm going to explore what can be done to stop judges from interfering in the routine apprehension and deportation of criminal illegals.
And I'll reveal the big issue that defined Reagan's career and unified his domestic and his foreign policy.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
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I'm going to talk today about the topic, where is Congress?
But before I get to that, I want to cover a few juicy items in the news right now.
Kuwait has freed 10 more.
Detained Americans.
These are Americans who are in captivity, not hostages.
These are people who were convicted of crimes in Kuwait, but they include military contractors, include some veterans.
Some of these people were held on drug charges or alcohol charges.
Kuwait has very strict laws against alcohol and drugs.
But it's interesting how Trump is bringing these Americans home.
He's not saying that they didn't do anything wrong, but what he is saying is that we don't really approve of Americans being put in foreign jails under conditions that we don't know a whole lot about.
And so the Trump envoy, a guy named Adam Bowler, was down in Kuwait, negotiated the release of these guys.
And interestingly, Kuwait let him go.
For nothing.
In other words, there's no swap.
I mean, think about when Israel exchanges, you know, hostages, you know, it's like, we'll give you one, you give us 150.
None of that is going on here.
It's just good news to get these Americans home.
And Debbie was actually watching a video of this black family thanking Trump for having brought this about.
Trump says he's bringing Columbus Day back.
He says the Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus's reputation and the Italians that love him so much.
And they took down the statues.
And Trump says that Columbus is going to make a major comeback.
I'm actually a big fan of Christopher Columbus.
And so is Debbie, by the way.
Debbie even claims some...
Relationship with Columbus through her family.
Now, I don't know if this is like family exaggerations and so on, but because a lot of times when you see these family histories, it's like, well, I had a relative and his name somewhat resembled Columbus.
And so, hey, we're related to Columbus.
And perhaps at one time being related to Columbus would be like an unambiguous blessing, but of course the left has been blasting Columbus as this genocidal maniac, which he absolutely was not.
Here's my reason for liking Columbus.
I think without Christopher Columbus, we wouldn't have America.
And what I mean is that I, not to mention countless immigrants, we have left our countries and come here.
Why?
Because we want to be part of the America that Christopher Columbus, I won't say made, but inaugurated.
He got it started.
And we certainly didn't come here to be part of the primitive, barren America that was here before Columbus.
And quite honestly, if I were to make a point bluntly, if we were right now to fully repudiate Columbus, I mean, not virtue signaling, but like, let's give back America to the Indians, you know what would happen?
Exactly the same thing.
Would happen as would happen if Israel turned around and said, we're going to give all this land back to the Palestinians.
What would happen in a reasonable amount of time, let's just say 50 years, maybe even 20 years, America would return to the primitive, barren landscape that it was before.
Our modern civilization here would essentially vanish.
And exactly the same would be true in the Middle East.
In other words, the point I'm trying to make...
This is the America that Columbus helped to build, just like what we see in modern Israel is what the Jews have built over there.
The Palestinians could not, did not, and will not, if it's given back to them, be able to build anything like it.
Here's something on social media.
I've seen it on Instagram.
I've seen it on X. I'm just going to transmit it because it's accompanied with a photo.
And I haven't seen any confirmation of this, so I want to italicize this.
Here's the comment.
As if the Obama family didn't have enough weirdness, Malia, the daughter, has announced that she will transition to Malik, a quote, non-binary person, and she plans to marry longtime friend Joey Barron,
who is now a woman named Jan.
Now, again, leaving aside whether this is confirmed, and here you can see a picture of what appears to be Obama's daughter, Malia, looking rather masculine and Malik-ish.
And the other individual does in fact look like a man who's become a woman, so it appears like there may be something to this.
You know, this is the kind of thing that, you know, 25 years ago would be like on the Jerry Springer show.
You remember how Jerry Springer, he loved the freak show.
And his idea was always, take something that is so outrageous that even some ordinary American who's not doing so well would go, you know, I thought my life was horrible, but these guys are total freaks.
And you'd then have a scene like this.
Except now...
This kind of stuff has become increasingly normalized.
And I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Obama and Michelle were like, yes, we're very proud of our daughter.
We're very proud of the girl who's now non-binary and is planning to marry the boy who's now become a girl.
I wouldn't say this is the America we live in now because I don't live in that America and probably neither do you.
The Jerry Springer show has come to life in ordinary American culture and to some degree even in certain elite precincts of American culture.
Let me turn to the issue of Congress.
And here I just want to make a single point, which is that what are the Republicans as a group really doing?
I mean, I see a handful of Republicans trying to get things done, obviously Brandon Gill included.
But as a group, the Republicans have accomplished so far close to nothing.
In fact, there is a stark contrast between the incredible energy of the executive branch.
The leave no stone unturned, the let's move on all fronts, even though stymied by judges and delayed by rulings and so on, at least the Trump people are pushing it.
They're trying.
Is Mike Johnson trying?
Is John Thune trying?
Yeah, they got the Trump cabinet through, and the Senate did.
And yeah, they're talking about this one big beautiful bill that will come up in May.
But it's been five months.
They talked about, you know, let's impose some restrictions on the judges, whether it's to impeach them or narrow their jurisdiction.
Why haven't there actually been bills to this effect?
Why aren't there votes on this kind of thing?
They've talked about taking the Trump executive orders and consolidating them into law.
Why hasn't this been done?
I don't understand how these people are.
I mean, they supposedly have nine to five jobs, right?
They're supposed to show up in the Capitol, get things done.
What is being done every day?
Like, what was done yesterday?
What's being done today?
And what will be done tomorrow?
There seems to be a kind of Republican lethargy that contrasts with the Democrats.
Here's Sean Davis, I think, with an insightful post.
With very few exceptions, he says.
And I think he would concede Brandon is one of them.
Republicans in Congress don't seem interested in doing anything other than being in Congress.
Important point.
It's not exactly like the country's doing well.
If the country's doing well, you know, it's okay to take an easy attitude.
I remember Calvin Coolidge, the president in the 1920s, would say things like, I'm going to take a long nap, and when I wake up in the afternoon, you can tell me if the country is still here.
And he would give a little twinkle in his eye.
The country was actually doing well in the 1920s.
But as our country teeters on collapse, the most powerful branch in our government is run by do-nothings who are terrified of using their power to save the country while their opponents are champing at the bit to get power back so they can finish us off once and for all.
I like the fact that Sean Davis here is highlighting the urgency of the situation.
So that's my message to the US Congress, both the Republicans in the House and in the Senate.
Get off your butts and get some things done.
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There's a good deal of MAGA gnashing of teeth over these judicial rulings that are blocking various Trump initiatives.
And a lot of these judges, I have to say, are these middle-aged white women who are seemingly becoming the backbone of the Democratic Party.
And a bunch of them are judges.
I mean, at one point, you'd have to say that blacks were the backbone of the Democratic Party, and it's still to a degree true, but it is true to a diminishing degree.
Blacks are becoming a little bit less and less, particularly black males.
But white women and college-educated white women, so the type of women who go into the judiciary, and these are the people who are throwing the lasso around Trump's policies.
Well, the latest is...
Supposed to be a Biden appointee in California.
Her name is Jennifer Thurston.
And she has blocked or placed a restriction on the Border Patrol in California.
So her restriction is not nationwide.
This is not a nationwide injunction.
But it is an injunction in California.
And at first glance, I thought it was an injunction that said that the Border Patrol could not arrest and deport people without a warrant.
If this were true, it would be really bad.
Because when people are in the country illegally, you don't need a warrant.
In order to apprehend them and return them.
In fact, if you want to apprehend a criminal illegal, you just need probable cause.
And then the fact that they are an illegal gives the Border Patrol the right to deport them.
And not only this, but this is clearly stated in the law.
Here is 8 U.S.C.
Section 1357, it expressly authorizes the Border Patrol to make arrests without a warrant for immigration violations as long as the person has entered the country illegally.
So nothing could be more clear.
And yet it looked like the judge was saying to the Border Patrol, you cannot do this.
Mike Lee, Senator Mike Lee, says it appears we have a judge problem.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston has issued an order banning Border Patrol from arresting illegal aliens, quote, unless they have a warrant.
And Mike Lee says we need a law to rein in these judges.
And he's quite right about the law.
But I did read the ruling from Judge Thurston.
And it's actually not as bad as I thought because, number one, as I said, the ruling applies to California.
Number two, the judge is actually aware that the Border Patrol has the right under law to deport people without a warrant.
So if you read the ruling in a nuanced way...
It doesn't say you can't do that.
It admits that you can do that.
But what the judge is doing is something that is admittedly kind of problematic, and that is the judge is basically saying...
That the Border Patrol, if they do deport someone, need to, quote, document in writing the facts and circumstances surrounding the warrantless arrest, and, quote, the specific particularized facts supporting the conclusion that the individual was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained.
So this is a judge that is doing something that is annoying.
Not quite the same as what Mike Lee was concerned about, but is kind of trying to micromanage the Border Patrol.
In other words, it's kind of like saying, okay, listen, I understand that you can deport people without a warrant, but guess what?
You need to keep a journal in which you explain who this immigrant or who this illegal is, what exactly are the circumstances.
Look, the Trump administration has said, we are actually doing that.
We do make that kind of a record.
This is just part of Border Patrol policy.
This is how you can review what the Border Patrol is doing and make sure that it's okay.
So the Trump administration is not freaked out by these requirements.
The problem comes with who is making the requirements.
It's kind of like a judge saying to a company, You need to keep proper records of all your financial transactions.
Yeah, companies do do that.
They are required to do that internally.
They're also required to do that by the IRS and so on.
But if some judge says, you know, every week I want you to submit to me your accounts about why you decided to buy certain stocks and why did you decide to build a plant in Milwaukee and why did you decide to hire 50 people instead of 80 people?
The point is, who the heck are you to be making those kinds of calls?
Since when did judges get this kind of second-guessing authority to be able to lecture the Border Patrol about how exactly it can do its work?
If the Border Patrol is functioning within the...
The judge is simply supposed to match what the Border Patrol is doing against the law and the Constitution and say if the Border Patrol is acting illegally or unconstitutionally, and if the Border Patrol is acting legally, the judge should butt out.
So, my objection to what Judge Thurston is doing is different than Mike Lee's.
I don't think that this is a case where the judge is insisting that you can't send somebody back without a warrant, but I do think the judge is engaging in a certain kind of nitpicking with the Border Patrol, the imposition of administrative requirements which go beyond the purview of a judge.
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It's D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
Guys, I'm very pleased to have back on the podcast Martha Byrne.
She is a three-time Emmy award-winning actress, writer, producer.
30 years in the entertainment industry.
Many of you know her as the character Lily, and later her twin sister Rose on the daytime drama As the World Turns.
Martha's here to actually talk about her husband, retired NYPD detective Michael McMahon, and a case that we're going to touch upon because Debbie and I...
Delved into it.
It is a complete outrage.
And we want Martha to come on to talk about this injustice and what can be done to rectify it.
By the way, a website, pipehitterfoundation.org.
And then it's forward slash who we support, Michael-McMahon.
Martha, thank you for coming on.
Debbie and I had the immense pleasure.
We were in New Jersey doing some filming a few weeks ago.
And it came about that we were staying in a hotel not very far from you guys.
So we had a delightful meal at an Italian restaurant.
In fact, your husband brought a bottle of wine that I still remember because it was so good.
And it was just a warm and wonderful dinner, but there was somewhat of a somber tone because your husband was awaiting sentencing, and that sentencing has now happened.
So can you begin by talking about the sentencing?
What is the sentence, and what is it supposedly for?
Thank you for having me on.
So my husband's a retired sergeant, NYPD hero.
He did some legal PI work in 2016.
Didn't break any law.
Didn't do anything wrong.
Never thought about it again.
In 2020, he was arrested for violating FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and interstate stalking.
He's a private investigator.
Nothing he did was illegal.
And we fought.
We fought because we knew he was innocent.
And what I watched over the last four years...
By the FBI and DOJ, how they suppressed so much evidence that was proof that he was innocent.
I'm still in shock by that.
And he was found guilty, and I couldn't believe it.
And we fought back, and last week he was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for doing absolutely nothing wrong, nothing illegal.
And this is something that the American public need to understand.
And learn from that.
You cannot...
First of all, my husband is 78 medals in the NYPD.
A thousand arrests.
Combat cross winner.
He is a hero.
An NYPD hero.
And how he was treated, Dinesh.
How they talked about him.
Like he would ever go against this country for a few thousand dollars.
It's absurd.
He would never put my family in danger.
He would never put us in danger.
It is ridiculous.
He was with two other NYPD PIs, retired with him on this case in 2016, notified the local police.
He was doing surveillance.
He saved everything.
He still has everything from that case.
And we were betrayed by our justice system in a way that I still can't even process, Dinesh.
I teach our children to be honest, to tell the truth, to always be a good person, to do better for others, give of yourself.
And their father, who sacrificed everything, his health, he's a 9-11 first responder.
He has suffered everything and given everything to other people in his life.
And he was treated like he was the most evil.
Betrayer of this country and a traitor for absolutely no reason.
And as we've talked about a bit, the why and the how and the who they protected in this case is unbelievable.
And not the American people.
So now we have to go to a pardon.
You know, we are going to be presenting something to the President of the United States.
I know President Trump loves the NYPD.
I know he's a supporter of Back the Blue.
When he hears the lawfare against one of the people that he would have loved to sit across the table from and tell stories about New York City and heard about his stories, I mean, Rudy Giuliani gave my husband the combat cross at one police plaza for a shooting, a gang-related shooting in the Bronx,
okay?
This is a man who was, This is outrageous.
And the lawfare, President Trump totally understands because that's what they did to him.
So I know when President Trump hears the details of this story, he will be as outraged about my husband, probably more so than himself, because we're not political people.
We just want to do better in the country and give.
And he has been, my husband, my poor husband, is just, this is devastating to our family.
To our country.
This is not how we're supposed to treat the men and women who went into the burning buildings, who took on the gunfire, who gave everything to others.
He is the most unselfish, kind man on the planet.
And this has devastated our family.
So we're going to keep fighting.
I mean, I have my cup.
It's my Trump cup.
Never surrender.
I drink my coffee every morning because I'm like, if Donald Trump can fight back against all the people that have Come at him.
And I have to kind of channel that and keep going.
Like we're in the battle for the country and the freedoms of our country and our rights.
I mean, his rights that were violated are never ending.
Martha, let me give in my own words what I think is going on here.
And you tell me if I'm on the right track, because I think for a lot of people, they have difficulty grasping.
Like, why would the DOJ, why would the US government...
Go after somebody like your husband, right?
In other words, it's easier for people to understand, well, this was what happened on January 6th because the narratives are very clear in people's mind.
This is what happened with the pro-lifers who were apprehended under the FACE Act.
But this is a case that involves a little bit more complexity.
But let me state it kind of in my own way, and that is that your husband was hired on a case, a routine case.
And he was asked to do some private detective work, which he dutifully did, breaking no laws under a deal that would have netted him, what, $5,000 or something in that vicinity.
So the very idea that he would be some sort of a Chinese agent or a Chinese spy or betray his country is on the face of it preposterous.
But what you have here is a prosecutorial apparatus.
That wanted to let the really bad guys off the hook.
The people who really were in league and in bed with China, but they at the same time wanted to come across as very tough.
Very anti-China, and so they needed a scapegoat.
I mean, this is, I think, what's the core of the matter.
Like, why did they pick on your husband so that they could make an example of him and come across like, look how we're taking on the CCP, whereas in reality, the CCP or the Communist Chinese culprits who are behind all this, nothing happened to them.
I mean, isn't that a pretty good overview of what we're talking about here?
Yes, yes.
The FBI was actually having communications with the bigger players in this for years.
The FBI spoke to them.
They were having meetings with them.
They were taking...
And then, not to my husband, they never spoke to the NYPD, retired guys.
They never spoke to them in four-year investigation.
And the FBI let these players leave the country.
They let them flee on their watch.
They allowed crimes to occur in this country.
If they let...
If my husband be involved in 2016-17 and the two other NYPD detectives, a lot of things wouldn't have happened.
But that wasn't the plan, Dinesh.
That wasn't the plan.
They couldn't bring them in.
So what do they do?
They sacrifice my husband because it looks good.
It's ex-NYPD, check.
Private investigator, sole proprietor, check.
It was all for optics.
The country isn't any safer from this case.
The tens of millions of dollars that were spent.
You're absolutely right, Dinesh.
It was an optics case to make it look like they were doing something about these operations.
But to sacrifice my family and put my family in danger because they want to have an optics case, that is unacceptable to me.
And when President Trump hears that our family was put in danger for years because the FBI and the DOJ were not willing to warn, protect.
And let us know.
We're American citizens.
The victims in this case were not American citizens.
They are here.
Who are they protecting here?
This is wrong on so many levels, and it has to be investigated.
And I'm sorry, if you're letting these people flee the country who are part of these operations, and you've been communicating with them, the FBI, for years, then who's really at fault here?
Who's really the problem?
It's not my husband.
I think, Martha, this is the key point.
There were some bad actors here, but the point is they let the bad actors go.
And they went after the guy who was given a routine job, was carrying it out professionally.
And I think part of what you've been through, and we talked a little bit about this at dinner, is just that horrifying experience where we've all been raised with a civics book idea of the judicial system.
You know, facts are laid out.
Both sides get to present the arguments.
The judges listen to this.
The jury is going to be attentive.
And then you realize that The prosecutors come in, they hide information, they conceal data, they allow you to hear a part of a video, but you cannot hear the whole video because, no, you know, it's confidential.
And then the juries come in, they don't actually really know what's going on, but they're like, well, gee, they got this guy over here, he probably did what they're saying, why else would he be here?
So the system ultimately creates far more gross injustice than we would think.
I also was really struck by the fact that you recently posted about the fact that, and this is a very normal thing, right?
Your husband was a private detective.
There was a very prominent private detective in New York.
You went to see this guy, kind of like, listen, you're the big dog in this field.
Maybe you can help us.
You can clarify.
You can emphasize that my husband didn't do anything, but you got no help at all.
None.
None.
And I sat across from him and I will, you know, In 2021, right after my husband was arrested, and I was trying to warn him, I was trying to ask for some support, some help, and he did nothing.
And then I find out during our trial, during our trial in 2023, two years later, that that person had actually followed Fox on Target in 2017, had four private investigators of his team follow that person for a month.
I mean, if he had just come out and said when I sat in his office, hold on a second.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
I've got to help this man because he didn't do anything illegal.
I didn't do anything illegal.
If he went public about it and said, wait a minute, then my husband wouldn't have gone.
That would have been over.
Over.
Done.
Finished.
Okay?
So for me, the betrayal of someone to self-protect, to not help an innocent man who is a hero, I find to be, I can't,
there's no words for that.
And I will just, I will talk about that further at some point because of who it is and why I believe that he did that.
I just find it to be, why would you, I'm sitting there across from you, I've got tears in my eyes going, my husband did nothing wrong.
You're a PI.
You know this is routine.
Surveillance is routine.
You know, it's public streets.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Tell your husband I'm thinking of him as I walked out.
And I thought, okay, nothing.
Nothing.
I can't even...
I don't understand, Dinesh.
I don't understand how people are so selfish.
And so I don't...
It's not how I...
We're wired.
You know, we want to help.
Yeah, I got to say, you know...
From my own side, something that was very eye-opening to me and in some ways resembles what we're talking about is when I had my campaign finance case with the Obama administration.
I was in Washington, D.C., and I knew a lot of the prominent liberals who would write in the Washington Post.
And these are people I would see in restaurants, and I'd see them in the Trover bookstore.
And they were friends of mine, at least so I thought.
And they'd come up to me in the bookstore, Tinesh, man, you seem to be really getting the shaft.
And I'd say, well, you know, there are a lot of conservatives who are speaking up for me, but you write for the Washington Post.
I'm not asking you to say something you don't think.
I'm asking you to say exactly what You just told me one minute ago.
And they're like, no, I don't think so.
And so not one of them.
So it ultimately changes you a little bit because it makes you realize not only how human nature is, but that many of these people that you thought were your allies, that you're counting on to do the right thing, even though it would cost them very little to do it.
It's a price that they think is too high to pay.
So I totally understand what you're saying.
Well, Martha, where we are right now is really, I think, at the point where...
You need some intervention here from the Trump people, right?
Absolutely.
You need someone in the Trump administration, somebody with influence, hopefully someone listening to this podcast who goes, guess what?
We need to take a look at this case and do it like fast.
Yes, please.
We need to grasp that this is exactly the same.
It doesn't have the built-in narrative of January 6th or the FACE Act, but you don't need to spend a lot of time looking at this case to see that your husband is...
He's a fall guy, as they say.
He's a guy who was sort of framed to carry the weight of bad things that he didn't do, but other people did.
So I wanna join you in making a public plea.
Hey guys, listen, it's time to take a look at this.
This is a real injustice that's being done to a really good family.
Thank you.
And Trump is in the,
And I got my part and Trump simply said, you know, I knew you got the shaft, right?
And here's a case where he needs to know that you guys got the shaft.
And he's in a position to fix it, and I certainly hope it does.
Guys, I've been talking to Martha Byrne, Emmy Award-winning actress, talking about the case of her husband, Michael McMahon.
Martha, as always, it was a real pleasure to meet you and to get to know you.
And we hope we can get some justice on this one.
Thank you.
I mean, he's supposed to turn himself in on June 16th.
That is not far away, and we need help.
Like, we need someone to step in because, again, like I know, when Donald Trump hears the details of this case, he's going to say, that's what happened to me.
And I'm a victim like Michael McMahon.
Michael McMahon's a hero who would put everything on the line for New York City, this country, and would...
We take a bullet for any stranger.
Even today, he would.
That's who he is.
We need to help him.
So please, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity.
And I am one phone call away to answer any questions of anybody who wants to talk to me further.
So thank you.
And it was Debbie and my pleasure not only to meet you, but to meet him.
We had a wonderful time.
Thank you very much.
Us too.
God bless.
I'm continuing my discussion of Reagan.
The chapter is Mr. Reagan Goes to Washington.
And in this upcoming section, I sum up what Reagan was running against.
What was the big issue that defined the entire Reagan project?
And guess what?
It turns out to be the very same issue that we are dealing with, perhaps in a slightly different form, today.
Reagan, I write, was running against the 20th century.
And my point is, this is the real reason why Reagan was controversial.
It wasn't because he was an actor.
It wasn't because he didn't have adequate preparation for the presidency.
He actually did.
It wasn't because he was a jokester.
It wasn't because he told anecdotes that weren't 100% true or they were somewhat padded.
This was his real offense, his real sin.
He was running against an entrenched way of thinking, but not just a way of thinking, a way of thinking that had expressed itself, consolidated itself into institutions.
The political history of the 20th century, as far as Reagan was concerned, was defined by the growth of the power of the central government.
Now, for Reagan, there was a kind of deep connection between the growth of the central government here at home, domestically, and socialist and communist regimes abroad, like the Soviet Union, which represent nothing more than a kind of exaggerated form of this centralization of power.
So, in other words, Reagan was opposed to collectivism at home.
And collectivism abroad.
This gave his thought a fundamental unity or a singularity.
And Reagan's view of government was not merely that government is inefficient.
This is the kind of libertarian critique of government, which is that government doesn't do things well.
And that's certainly true.
They don't have a bottom line.
But Reagan's point is that the more the government does for us, The less we do for ourselves.
So government corrodes character.
Government undermines responsibility.
Government makes it more difficult for you to become a self-reliant citizen.
And when government becomes centralized, it starts extinguishing your liberties one by one.
Not just your economic liberty, but also your civil liberties, your religious liberties.
So in his Goldwater address, Reagan says, you can't control the economy without controlling people.
And he says, so we come to a time for choosing.
I suggest to you that there is no left or right, only an up or down, up to the maximum of individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant-heap of totalitarianism.
So, here's Reagan doing a little bit of political redefining.
He's moving away from left and right.
Not because he doesn't agree with the ideas of left and right, but he's trying to recast it in a manner that's more understandable to people.
I mean, if you think about it, left and right are a little confusing to a lot of people, particularly people who are somewhat distant or unplugged from politics, right?
Because think about the origins of left and right.
I mean, they go back to the French Revolution, where the people who sat on the left were considered the left, in other words, the party that was the Jacobin party, and then the revolution were on the right.
So this...
is the historical root of left and right.
So Reagan is like, let me Americanize all this.
Let me make it make sense for people.
Let's go with up or down, because everybody believes up is good and down is bad.
You're plummeting down.
Your checkbook is going down.
We're going to take this down.
So this is Reagan using, with his kind of normal sound instinct, this kind of easily comprehensible vocabulary.
When Reagan gave his Goldwater speech in 1964, it's important to realize that's the year that Goldwater got clobbered.
That's the year Lyndon Johnson came in and inaugurated the Great Society.
This would continue through the 60s and 70s.
And let's remember that all the major Republicans of the time, I mentioned Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, They all criticize the excesses of the government.
They'll talk about making government more efficient.
They'll talk about taxes being too high.
They need to be lowered.
But they're not challenging, in principle, the ability of the government to remedy the ills of society.
In fact, they concede that government can and should do that.
And the disagreement is about the details.
So when Reagan says government is not the solution, government is the problem, Nixon and beyond Ford and beyond Eisenhower, he is doing, you could call it, an intellectual program of rollback.
Now, Reagan is going to try, and we'll see, with some success but limited success, to roll back the government domestically.
What he will be more successful in doing is rolling back the Soviet Union.
Rolling back collectivism abroad.
So Reagan, as we look at his record as a whole, will prove to be more successful on the international front than on the domestic front, although his domestic achievements, as we will see, are also very notable and, in fact, very impressive in their own context.
Reagan was also running against the intellectual class, and the intellectual class had come to the view Through the progressive movement, and the progressive movement, by the way, goes all the way back to the early 1900s.
The progressivism really came to power in 1912, when Woodrow Wilson embodied, in a way, progressivism.
But interestingly, if you looked at the alternatives to Woodrow Wilson, including...
Teddy Roosevelt was also running as a progressive.
So think about how comprehensive the victory of progressivism has to be when you've got, in a sense, both sides.
And it was a three-party race.
So two out of three are touting the progressive banner.
And the intellectual class grew out of that.
And their view was that the free market doesn't really work.
The free market is laissez-faire, let them do.
And their view is that society has become too complex for that.
We need to have the government replace the invisible hand of the market.
And later on, when you had the Great Depression, the progressives appeared to be proven right, because they could then say, hey, look, this is what you get.
When you allow capitalism to run the roost, you get a Great Depression.
And now we need a series of government remedies to protect us against the unregulated capitalism.
So these wise men, as I call them somewhat sarcastically, they love the idea of centralized planning because, after all, who is going to be the centralized planners?
Them.
So they're like, yeah, we're ready.
Put us at the helm.
Put us in the driver's seat.
We will manipulate the dials of the government.
And, you know, along comes Reagan.
And you can see their disdain for him because here's this former movie star with kind of boyish good looks.
And Reagan is basically taking them on.
Here's a classic Reagan line replying to the intellectuals who go, well, there are no easy answers.
Everything's really complex.
And Reagan goes, well, yeah, there are no easy answers, but there are simple answers.
So what is Reagan saying?
He's going, well, things don't have to be easy, but there is a clear dividing line between freedom and collectivism, between responsibility on the one side and tyranny on the other.
And for the intellectual class, Reagan's ideas were a little...
Beyond the pale.
A little ridiculous.
A little outrageous.
And now I want to open up a section which I'll touch upon now and pick up again on Monday.
And that is how Reagan viewed the Democratic Party.
I'm going to outline Reagan's views and make the case for them, but I'm also going to disagree with Reagan because Reagan takes the view.
That the Democratic Party was doing pretty well.
And in fact, he was a Democrat, and his father was a Democrat.
And the Democratic Party, in Reagan's view, like, went off the rails.
As he put it, the Democrats left me, I didn't leave the Democrats.
And lots of people since Reagan have essentially echoed this same Reagan line.
It's based on what I think is a fallacy, which is the Democratic Party used to be like a good party, really cared about people, really cared about the working class.
In fact, if you're familiar with my work and my earlier films, including Hillary's America, Death of a Nation, I make the case that this is not so.
The Democratic Party has been a pack of gangsters going back to Andrew Jackson in 1828.
So the Democratic Party has been a rogues party.
Now it is, you can almost call it a mafia party interrupted by short periods of honesty.
So I'm not saying that every single Democrat is a bad guy.
I can identify some isolated exceptions.
But having said all this, it is important for us to understand why Reagan thought differently.
Reagan didn't do a study of the Democratic Party.
He wasn't really referring to the Democrats of the Andrew Jackson period or the pro-slavery period under people like Buchanan.
He wasn't even referring to the Democrats under Woodrow Wilson.
Reagan came up as a young man under the backdrop of the New Deal and of the Great Depression and FDR.
So when Reagan says the Democrats were doing okay and later departed and the good guys became the bad guys, we've got to understand why he thought, wrongly I insist, that FDR was a good guy.
But FDR was in some ways a good guy.
To him and to his family.
And that's where Reagan got this idea that things were okay in the FDR era.
And in some ways, the horrible things that happened later with the Democratic Party were there in FDR, but they were only there in miniature.
It's almost like saying that there was a cancer, but the cancer hadn't really spread.
So Reagan looks and he goes, well, I don't see much cancer.
Well, true, but the cancer, the cells, the germs are there.
They're going to spread later and become much worse.
And so you have basically my view of this matter and Reagan's view that are running alongside each other but are not on the same track.
We'll get into all this on Monday.
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