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July 16, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza
01:01:28
FIRE AWAY Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1126
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Coming up, I'm going to say a few words about Jeffrey Epstein and the ongoing Epstein controversy.
I'll examine the recent Supreme Court decision giving Trump the authority to downsize the Department of Education.
I'll explore what truth there is behind Trump's insistence that Senator Adam Schiff got a corrupt mortgage deal and deserves to be prosecuted.
And Brandon Strzok, the founder of the Walkaway Movement, joins me.
We're going to talk about political activism on the left and on the right.
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I'm going to talk in this opening segment about the Minnesota shooter.
This is Vance Belter.
I'm going to talk about the Biden Auto Pen pardons.
I'm going to talk about Epstein and Trump's latest post.
And I'm also going to talk about a good vindication from the Supreme Court, which is going to allow Trump to fire thousands, over a thousand, employees of the Department of Education, really downsizing that department.
I'll start with Vance Belter.
So his letter that was found on him has been released.
And the letter is, I mean, as you might expect, it's got crazy stuff in it.
But I just want to highlight a few of his lines.
He says that Tim Waltz, quote, wanted me to kill Amy Klobuchar.
Tim wants to be a senator.
I told Tim I want nothing to do with it.
And if he didn't call off the plan, I would go public.
So here you have the astounding suggestion that the shooter was asked by Tim Waltz to do this.
Now, do I believe that?
No.
But let's continue with a couple more things that he says.
He says that Tim wanted me to kill Klobuchar and Tina Keith to force a planned retirement.
Tim wants to be a senator and didn't trust them to retire as planned.
Now, you might dismiss this as the ramblings of a complete certified lunatic.
And I think to a large degree, you'd be right.
But let's also remember this guy's a political appointee.
He's a political appointee by Tim Waltz.
Here is another line.
I told Tim I wasn't willing to do it.
I said if he didn't call off the plan, I would go ballistic.
And then he goes on to say that Tim said he would call it off, but didn't actually do that.
Now, I noticed that the left has gone completely silent on all this.
They had spent several days after the shootings insisting that this guy is MAGA, he's a Christian nationalist, he's a Republican, he's motivated by Trump.
No, this guy is, he's a loon, but he's their loon.
He's a loon of the left.
And so it's interesting that the left, once they are proven wrong about this guy, they just kind of go into a huddle.
They don't say anything about it.
All right, let's talk about the Biden Auto Pen.
NBC News evidently thinks that they have a way to protect Biden about this, and they show that there is an auto pen signature from Representative James Comer on letters of subpoena.
Now, this is so dumb that NBC evidently thinks that the argument against auto pen pardons is an argument against digital signatures.
No.
No one is saying that you can't use digital signatures for all kinds of purposes.
I sign contracts, you know, using DocuSign.
I'm using a digital signature.
Comer is sending out these subpoena requests.
He's using a digital, or even an auto pen signature.
The point is that when an autopen is used for pardons, the rules Are very clear.
The date and location of the pardon is on the pardon itself.
The president needs to sign himself.
At the very least, he needs to give specific approval, not to pardoning, quote, let's just say, gangbangers, or not to pardoning, let's say, the mafia.
He has to pardon specific people.
He didn't do that.
That's what calls these pardons into question.
So this is a very lousy and ineffective apologia by NBC for the Biden pardons.
Now let me say, comment on Trump's latest post.
Trump is doubling down here and going so far as to say that some of the people who are screaming at him about Epstein are, quote, my past supporters.
So he's like disavowing them.
He's like, listen, you might have supported me at one point, but you're not my supporter now.
And not only that, but he goes on to say, he calls them weaklings, and he says, I don't want their support anymore.
So this is a very harsh tone that is taken by Trump.
And some of his supporters, or past supporters, are not assuaged at all.
And they say, look, this is a legitimate issue.
We're talking about powerful people taking advantage of underage girls.
And this cannot be somehow just wished away.
Now, there are so many questions around this whole Epstein business.
Is there in fact a list?
And by that, I mean an actual list that Gill and Maxwell had or Epstein had that is now in the possession of the government.
Alan Dorshowitz, who talked about this, seemed to suggest that there were names of powerful people, but there wasn't a kind of official list per se.
And not to mention the fact that he was evidently on this list falsely.
By that he means falsely accused by Virginia Geoffrey, who is one of the victims in the Epstein case, who pointed the finger at him.
Now, I don't know what to make of all this at this point.
I mean, all I know is that these cases are often enmeshed in legalism.
By that, I mean confidentiality agreements, attorney-client privilege, non-disclosure, non-disparagement agreements, maybe in some cases, even classified information.
And on top of that, the issue that was raised by Alan Dorshowitz is, I would call it, Me Tooism.
In other words, could it be that in some cases people are named who didn't actually do that?
And remember, these people have not been independently tried or convicted.
So is this the reason that all of this is mired, is locked down, is not being publicly disclosed?
I am not sure.
But what is clear is that Trump is annoyed.
And I think he's annoyed in part because he has the view that whatever his reason for not doing this, his supporters or some of his supporters are taking the position that they, not he, are the sort of, you could say, court of last resort for MAGA.
They represent MAGA.
Trump is accountable to them.
They made him.
And I think Trump's view is, actually, you didn't really make me.
I made you.
I was facing 93 charges.
You didn't get me off the hook.
I got myself off the hook.
I fought this through.
I pursued this vindication.
And so I've earned a certain measure of respect.
Now, this is not to say that his supporters or past supporters are wrong when they say, hey, listen, this is a campaign promise.
Why is it that, why did Pam Bondi say I have a list on my desk?
Was Pam Bondi just engaging in some sort of performance artistry?
Was she trying to be a kind of photogenic Christy Noam II?
Who knows?
I don't know.
There are some people who think that Trump is covering for Pam Bondi.
Other people who think Pam Bondi is covering for Trump.
My concern here is just that we are in such a big fight against the left.
And this also is the thrust, by the way, of Trump's comments, that the left is salivating about this.
The left is, this is like a drowning man being given a branch.
And the left is like, this is wonderful.
They're just so, they've been so desperate to get something on Trump and basically to get themselves out of the river and onto the riverbank.
And it's almost like there are guys in MAGA who are saying, okay, no problem.
We will pull you to the riverbank.
We will give more fuel to this issue and thus give you something to ride on in your declared crusade against Trump.
So I think Trump now sees this kind of MAGA faction as helping the other side and undermining his chances of getting more things done.
I think this is part of the Trump's point of view is an issue of respect.
Like, haven't I earned enough trust from you guys where you can say, all right, look, I don't know the facts, but I'll defer to Trump on this one.
And number two, we have important things to get done.
And are you really willing over this issue to subvert the MAGA agenda, which is trying to save the country within a narrow band of time and give fortification or political ammunition to the other side?
When we come back, I'll take up the other issue that I haven't gotten to yet, which is the Supreme Court clearing the way for Trump to say you're fired.
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The article in the New York Times is headlined, Supreme Court Clears Way for Trump's Cuts to the Education Department.
And it talks about dismantling the department.
Now, Trump wants to fire 1,300 workers, which is a lot.
That's about one-fourth, more than one-fourth, of the entire agency.
And certain parts of the agency, like the Office of Civil Rights, are going to be decimated.
Now, none of us should be worried about this or feel bad about it.
The Education Department contributes nothing to education.
They do certain tasks, like they oversee the free lunch program.
They have some programs for the disadvantaged and handicapped and things like that.
And by the way, Trump is an executive order that he just signed transferring some of that responsibility over to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump is making a point that I think makes total sense.
He goes, listen, these kids are eating horrible school lunches.
Why?
Because the Department of Education doesn't really care about it.
Whereas the Department of Health and Human Services can do a much better job under RFK Jr. to look at what's actually on those trays, look at what the actual food is, and don't just serve junk food to kids.
So I think this is a case where on a function where the Department of Education is doing something, that function is just transferred to another agency that Trump thinks, and I think, could do a better job of it.
But the Supreme Court decision, I think, is pretty far-reaching because in the end, it's not just about the Education Department.
It is about Trump's ability to downsize the federal government.
Now, the Supreme Court decision is six to three.
The decision itself is not signed, and it doesn't offer any reasoning either.
Three of the justices do dissent from it, and we know that they voted on the other side, and it's the three you would expect.
It's Kagan and Sotomayor and Katanji Jackson.
But as you know, the district court judges, and there was more than one in this case, who said in effect, Congress has created these departments, like the Department of Education.
Congress has appropriated funds, and therefore the executive branch cannot change what Congress has allocated.
But Trump's answer to that is very simple.
I am operating within the congressional allocation.
I am operating within the law.
I have the executive.
Remember, what the executive branch does is it carries out these functions and it has a lot of discretion in how they are carried out.
And Trump's view is we don't need such a big department.
We don't need quite so many people.
We can perform these functions with fewer people.
Nowhere did Congress specify that the Department of Education needs to have 4,000 or 3,700 or 3,200 employees.
That is left to executive discretion as long as it functions within the law.
And so what the Supreme Court said is we're not adjudicating the case.
We are setting aside the temporary restraining order on the part of the district court judge.
Basically, we're telling Trump, while the case is pending, the case can go on, but fire away.
You have the power, you have the discretion to get rid of bureaucrats and send them home.
And so this represents, I think, a victory for Trump.
And obviously, it doesn't just apply to one department.
It applies to all departments.
It applies to all agencies.
So this is really a big win.
And I made this point in the last couple of days.
Some of these things are being a little sidelined by what seems to be, at least on social media, an almost exclusive focus on Epstein.
So, to reiterate my view on all that, it's not a matter of like not thinking about Epstein or not legitimately asking for an explanation, a full explanation of what happened.
It's a matter of recognizing there's other really important stuff going on.
And here's another example of that.
Here's Trump.
I've always suspected Shifty Adam Schiff was a scam artist.
And when I first read that in the post, I thought, well, this is going to be Trump on one of his classic, highly amusing ad hominem rants.
But then he says, now I learned that Fannie Mae's financial crimes division has concluded Schiff is engaged in a pattern of possible mortgage fraud.
Now, here we have a replay, it seems, of what happened with Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York.
Let's continue.
Schiff said his primary residence was in Maryland to get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America, when in fact he lives, and in fact he must live in California because, well, now he's a senator, but of course, for many years, he was a congressman.
Trump goes on to say, I always knew Schiff was a crook.
And he points out that the fraud began with the refinance of his Maryland property in 2009.
Later, it was correctly designated in 2020 as a second home.
So I am looking in front of me at something that I found that was posted by a woman who's running for office in California.
Her name is Christine Bish.
She's actually the one who brought a lot of these facts to light in conjunction with some other, well, the podcast host, John Stubbins, and a guy named Darren Ellis.
And what are we talking about?
We're talking about a decade-long, more than a decade-long pattern of deception in which what Schiff is really doing here is he's living in one place with a home, and he's pretending that he lives somewhere else.
Not only is he pretending, because you're allowed to pretend, but what you're not allowed to do is make false affidavits or false claims in an affidavit.
And I'm looking at an affidavit.
This particular one was signed fourth day of November 2011.
It's signed by Adam B. Schiff and Eve M. Schiff.
I take it that's his wife.
We are talking about a refinancing on a deed of trust.
It's for $500 or so thousand dollars.
And it says in item two that the mortgage property is our principal residence.
So this is here making a false claim on a mortgage application.
This may well be where the problem is.
Now, Adam Schiff has an angry response to Trump.
And he lashes out at Trump.
He says, quote, since I led his first impeachment, Trump has repeatedly called for me to be arrested for treason.
He goes, so in a way, I guess this is a bit of a letdown.
He's being a little sarcastic here.
And this baseless attempt at political retribution won't stop me from holding him accountable.
Now, first of all, Schiff does not in any way deny that he's engaged in mortgage fraud.
He doesn't say, I didn't do it.
He doesn't say, oh, I, yeah, I had every right to do it.
I did do it, but there's nothing illegal about it.
He doesn't address it at all.
That's telling.
I think the second thing that's telling is that he seems to think that the word political retribution is a bad word.
And I don't see why it is.
In fact, I would go further.
I saw somebody talking this morning about revenge, political revenge.
And I don't see why revenge is a bad word either.
We think of it as a bad word.
We kind of shrink from it.
It creates a little bit of moral distaste.
But these words, the things that they signify, are not only not bad, but I would argue the very essence of justice.
Think, for example, about movies.
And I'm thinking here about Western movies.
I'm thinking about war movies.
I'm thinking about horror movies.
I'm thinking about political thrillers.
So four different genres of movie.
And one of the common themes of all of them is retribution, is in fact revenge.
So you can say, for example, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki are part of the revenge that we took on Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor.
They were part of our retribution.
But I think we would say that was a just retribution, just in the sense that it was warranted by the savagery of the original offense.
And similarly here, if Schiff has been relentlessly going after Trump, if Schiff and the Democrats more generally have had an organized campaign, how do we get Trump?
Why is it unjust to have for Trump to say, all right, well, I'm going to see if I can organize a campaign to go after these guys.
I'm going to go after the very same guys who went after me.
And that's retribution, or you can call it revenge.
And what I'm saying is that you might have heard the proverb, revenge is a form of wild justice.
And I think the only reason for the word wild is because in the proverb, what is being contemplated is a private revenge.
Someone does me wrong.
And so kind of Charles Bronson style, you know, I go and get my shotgun and go in search of that guy.
Now that, in fact, is a problematic type of revenge because it circumvents the law.
There is a lawful way of dealing with all this.
And Charles Bronson is basically going around the New York subway, identifying people, bad guys as he sees them, And just basically getting rid of them.
But that's not what's happening here with Adam Schiff.
What's happening with Adam Schiff is Trump is using the exact same mechanisms of investigation, criminal referral, indictment, prosecution that were used against him.
In other words, just as the Democrats tried to use the law, the existing law, find a hospitable jurisdiction, try to find a jury that's going to be sympathetic to your point of view, a jury of anti-Trump people.
Trump is basically saying, well, Tup can play at that game.
And so to the degree that Schiff is saying, I'm a victim of political retribution, there are a lot of people who might say, well, no, you're not a retribution.
We are merely upholding the law.
But there's a little part of me that wants to say, well, what would you expect?
You tried to extract a kind of penalty from Trump, and you weren't particularly concerned about the, you wanted to get him by any means necessary.
And now in some ways, that same strategy is being turned on you.
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Guys, I'm really happy to welcome back to the podcast my friend Brandon Strzok.
You know, Brandon, he is the founder and leader of the Walkaway Campaign, which is a national movement inspiring Americans to think for themselves, walk away from all the bad stuff that has been cooked up by the left.
And since launching in 2018, Walkaway has just reached millions, maybe tens of millions of people through its testimonial videos.
Brandon has been featured on Fox, Newsmax, Real America's Voice, Tucker, and many other places.
You can follow him on X at BrandonStrok, S-T-R-A-K-A.
And the website is walkawaycampaign.com.
Hey, Brandon, it's been a little while.
Good to see you.
I think the last time you were on, you were talking, if I remember, you were talking to me about the aftermath of January 6th and about your case.
I hope all of that is behind you.
Have you been able to put it in the rear view mirror and kind of, are you back in the groove with Walkaway or give us an update on how you're doing?
Yeah, I would say that certainly in a much, much better place today than probably the last time that we spoke.
The truth is, I would say that throughout 2025, this will probably be the last year, I'm very hopeful, that we're still sort of in recovery mode.
I mean, you know, an enormous amount of damage was done.
But I will say, so, you know, after January 6th, I got mass deplatformed in a way that I think most people can't even understand, even other conservatives who have gone through some deplatforming.
I mean, we were banned by banks, PayPal, Venmo, Stripe, everything.
Now, what's interesting is that all of a sudden, you know, perhaps because Trump was re-elected, a lot of these companies are now taking us back.
So yes, I'm in a way better place today than I was, but we're still getting re-platformed after getting de-platformed.
And I'm very happy to announce that, you know, walkaway campaign was actually de-platformed from Facebook, which is where we began.
And over half a million people joined the movement and shared their stories.
And through the help of the Attorney General of Nebraska, who's been an amazing ally to me over the last year, we're going to get our group back and Facebook will be reinstating the walkaway campaign.
So, yeah.
So it's an ongoing process, but I think by 2026, we'll be fully back in the game.
Good to hear.
That's really good to hear, Brandon.
And let's talk about where we are in the country.
On the one hand, you have a complete change of direction with the 2024 election.
Trump is back in the saddle.
And not only that, but he appears to be a more energized, maybe a more ferocious, maybe a more not really caring type of Trump.
He's just going to forge full steam ahead.
Do you like the new Trump of the second term?
And let's talk about that first, and then I want to turn to what's happening on the Democratic side and on the left.
Sure.
Well, first of all, I had to chuckle a little bit when you said maybe this Trump is a little less caring.
Do we think of Trump as somebody who cared a lot about what people thought of him before?
I'm not so sure.
Well, you know what I mean by that, Brandon, is this, and that is that I think the first time around, Trump came in and he's like, okay, I'm the new CEO, but I'm going to expect people to follow my directives.
I'll bring in this general Kelly.
Generals are used to doing what they're told.
And he didn't realize that his own administration is full of like backstabbers and people leaking to the New York Times.
So you get a sense that he's learned a lot, not just from the first term, but also from that kind of, you could almost call it the winter of 2020 to 2024 when they were really trying to destroy his life.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, I'll tell you something.
One thing that I'm really enjoying about his second term is that he seems incredibly focused And incredibly determined.
And, you know, okay, if you look around right now at some of the, whether it's Pam Bondi or, you know, people in the FBI, I think that the MAGA base is getting pretty frustrated with a lot of people who are spending a lot of time going on Fox News and doing the whole publicity tour.
I think that's really getting under people's skin.
I'm appreciating that, like, I actually thought to myself yesterday, I was like, I don't feel like I really hear from him as much as I did in the first term, not in a bad way.
But, you know, it seems like there's a lot less focus on just being in front of the cameras and the PR and actually being behind the scenes, driving the work forward.
I have a huge appreciation for that.
And I think a lot of other people do too.
I'd like to see more of that from, I think, other people in his cabinet who seem more preoccupied with going on television than keeping things moving forward.
But from Trump himself, I have a huge appreciation for the focus on getting the work done.
What do you think the impact of this kind of, there's a big Jeffrey Epstein brouhaha, as you know.
And I don't want to necessarily, I'll be talking elsewhere in the podcast about it.
So I don't necessarily want to dive into it full on.
But I wanted to ask you, what do you think the effect of it is going to be?
Because I think there are some people who are concerned it will somehow split Trump's base.
It does seem that Trump has a pretty iron grip on the Congress, which is, of course, the most important base for him to have in getting legislation passed.
How concerned are you about the fallout from this apparent schism over Epstein?
I'm concerned.
I'm definitely concerned.
But the biggest, I think what frustrates me more than anything is that this divide doesn't have to exist.
I think the biggest problem right now is the messaging, because I think if the people who really want to see some transparency with the flight logs, the list, whatever it is that we have, which we don't really have, I think that a lot of their concerns could even be assuaged if there was some messaging that was a little more clear about, look, there are reasons why we're doing this the way that we're doing this.
But I think there was almost sort of a shaming that happened where it was like, why are you still thinking about this?
Why are you still talking about this?
Move on.
And I don't think it's a good look.
I don't think it's a good message.
And I think, look, because I'm one of the people who wants to know what's going on.
I want to know who did this, who's behind it.
But I've looked at this and I've talked with a lot of people who I respect, people who are very intelligent.
And some of them have explained to me one of the best explanations I got was from a friend of mine who's kind of an insider and said to me, look, there's probably going to be a lot of people either named or adjacent to people who are named who are totally innocent.
But it's going to cast enough doubt and aspersions upon these people.
Some of them are our own probably elected Republican congresspeople that would cause us to possibly lose a majority.
And when you think about it, a lot of these people, again, not guilty of crimes, but there's going to be enough doubt cast upon them that it's simply not worth it to do it.
Now, I can actually respect that position.
What I don't like is that the messaging that's happening right now is move on, move on.
You know, there's something wrong with you if you're still talking about this.
I don't think that that's going to fly well with the people who are on the other side of that split that you're describing.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, even Alan Dorshowitz, who had made the comment just a couple of days ago that, you know, I've seen the list, he says, and I don't think he necessarily means that there is an actual somebody hand wrote out a list or kept a journal, but he goes, I know the names, but he goes, I'm prevented by court order for speaking about it.
And not only that, but I mean, I think Dershowitz has maintained for years that he himself was wrongly named or falsely accused of having a connection.
So there's a possibility here, isn't there, that there is a, that there's some me tooism going on or there are false accusations being made or there are maybe people who were associated with Epstein or with Epstein, but not necessarily part of any trafficking or prostitution ring of any kind.
So I guess all of that is, but what you're saying is, hey, whatever it is, why don't you come out and kind of give us the basic scoop?
And if we don't know, tell us why we don't have a right to know.
Isn't that what you're saying?
Well, it's what I'm saying.
And I even can appreciate that, you know, if there's some strategy going on here, political strategy, you can't always put all of your cards on the table.
I can understand that too.
I guess the bigger point that I'm making here is what I, you know, this was a campaign promise.
And this is something that's important to people.
It's not just because people are, you know, obsessed with gossip or scandal or something.
But if there is in fact a network of people, world leaders or, you know, powerful people around the globe who are compromised, blackmailed, this has an enormous impact on everything that happens in the political spectrum, in our world.
And to just simply tell people, you know, essentially that, you know, there's something wrong with you if you're still thinking about this, it's just not a good message.
I think that there is a way to address the concerns that people have, even if you can't lay all your cards on the table and give people at least a basic understanding of how this might unfold over years, perhaps.
I just think that it's not being handled well at all.
Let me talk about the left and about what's happening in New York.
I think there are some people who would think that what's happening in New York is just an extension of the squad of, you know, we've had Rashida Talaib and AOC, Ilhan Omar, so socialism is really nothing new.
And this Mamdani character is simply one of that ilk.
But I think that he is more to the left than even they are, because Even they, to my knowledge, have not talked about the government taking over private apartments, the government running the grocery sector, the government, quote, seizing the means of production.
I mean, this is hardcore socialism/slash communism.
So, Mamdani, to my way of thinking, is in a league of his own.
Do you agree?
And what do you think his potential success portends for New York and for the left?
Yep, I 100% agree.
I think he's probably even more far left, more radical than the ladies in the squad.
But in addition to that, I think he's a much bigger threat because at least the ladies in the squad are to a certain degree limited by the fact that they're part of a governing body.
They're a part of a group.
This guy's talking about actually being the leader of New York City, the top brass, which by the way, we're financial capital of the world.
And this guy is basically coming in there and saying that he wants to, in every conceivable way, alienate wealthy people, alienate corporations, alienate financial success in New York City.
But what he's doing is honestly very clever because he's addressing the very real pain points of the city, of the people of New York City.
As somebody, I'm a more than 20-year New Yorker.
I agree with him about rent is too high.
Groceries are too expensive.
Cost of living is too high.
Our public transportation is terrible in New York City.
These are the pain points are very real.
His solutions are not.
And so I have come back to New York City because I am dedicating myself between now and the end of this year to fighting this guy as hard as I possibly can through doing a series of events all over the city, through gathering volunteers to canvass boroughs.
And I want to be knocking on doors, talking to the citizens of New York City, wherever they are, handing out literature about the dangers of socialism and democratic socialism and really educating people about this.
But Dinesh, what I want to do and how I want to do it differently than what I'm seeing and hearing a lot of other conservatives say is I'm not interested in demonizing this guy based off of his background or his faith.
I hear a lot of conservatives screaming, oh, he's, you know, he's a Muslim, he's an Islamist, he's whatever.
This is not going to resonate with the voters of New York City.
It's certainly not going to resonate with the Gen Z voters who came out to vote for the very first time in this primary because they're so excited about this guy.
He's charming.
He's charismatic.
He's likable.
Hell, I would like to go out and have a drink with him.
He seems like a cool guy and a lot of fun.
That's not the problem.
The problems aren't the issues.
The problem aren't him.
The problem are the solutions that he's proposing.
You know, and if we're talking about things like rent freezes or, you know, all, so you give somebody a rent freeze and that's going to bring them a temporary amount of relief.
And it might sound like a good idea, but the next thing that's going to happen is it's going to de-incentivize landlords in New York City to upkeep apartments, take care of people are going to be living in squalor.
You know, and if we think that apartments are not in great shape now, let's implement a policy like that.
And you're going to find that your apartment is not going to be maintained.
Things are going to be falling apart.
And eventually it is going to lead to rent hikes down the road, but ultimately it's going to lead to, let's talk about grocery stores.
Great.
Government-run grocery stores sounds like a good idea.
We can kind of try to manage the prices.
Think about the last time you went to the DMV or any other government-run agency.
How well run was it?
How well run is anything that the government ever does?
You think that we're not going to have massive food shortages, poorly maintained government grocery stores?
They sound like good ideas that they're not.
Let me give you one more.
Free buses.
Well, right now we're paying to use the subway, which is also government subsidized, of course.
But even for something that we're paying for, it's terrible.
The New York City subway system is terrible.
It's riddled with homeless people.
Crime has skyrocketed and it's completely unreliable.
You get on the subway system, it stops.
It starts.
It stops and starts.
You can't get anywhere on time.
You think if you let the government run your busing system and pay for everything that they're going to give a damn if you get to work on time or if the bus shows up or what condition the bus is in?
So I want to explain to people very clearly the problems of allowing the government to run every aspect of your life in New York City, not to mention the fact that we're going to alienate the corporations in New York City.
We're going to alienate wealthy people in New York City.
The people who are supposed to be paying for all of this are going to leave.
Now, you mentioned that you think the strategy with Mamdani is not to focus on his background necessarily, but to focus on the issues.
It strikes me that this guy has a lot of parallels with Obama.
And I say that because look at his father.
His father is a kind of third world radical.
And if you've listened to some of his rhetoric, the same kind of anti-colonialism that I recognized so vividly in Barack Obama Sr. comes out of Mamdani's dad.
Mamdani seems like Obama to be something of a kind of a pamper guy who doesn't really function in the real world.
I think I just saw a clip where he was saying something like, well, if I have a run out of money, I'm just going to turn to my family.
Now, isn't there a way to make a kind of, I don't mean a character attack on Mamdani so much as the idea that he is insulated from the problems that ordinary people have?
He went to Bowdoin College, so he's kind of a prep school slash elite college brat to kind of attack him that way and see if that resonates with people.
Because sometimes if you just make a policy argument, well, I mean, it didn't work against Obama in 2008 or 12, did it?
It did.
No, I don't think that it did, but I also don't think that Obama was pushing policies back then that were so radically progressive and radically leftist and radically socialist, which, you know, we do know for a fact that socialism always fails.
It never works.
But yes, you're absolutely right.
And I think what I hear you describing is more than a character attack, perhaps pointing out the hypocrisy of what this guy is Espousing for other people, but he doesn't actually live himself.
I had heard that he lives in a $4 million apartment in New York City while he wants government housing for everyone else.
Well, he would never live in the government housing that he wants other people to live in.
And I doubt that he's going to be riding on the free buses or the free subways in New York City coming from the wealth that he comes from.
So yeah, I think there's absolutely an opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of how he lives and who he is compared to what he wants other people to live like and to deal with.
But in addition to that, I think it's important to remember, and it's, you know, it's sad to say, but I know you know this as well as I do, there's a lot of self-loathing among white liberals, among liberals in general.
And so when you start talking about things like colonialism and the things that I've heard his father say, and I would say even tacitly, things that I think that he's repeated sort of some of those beliefs that he probably inherited from his father and his education, sadly, a lot of white liberals don't care.
I mean, if you start talking about, you know, wanting to provide reparations or that there's an imbalance that white people are privileged and that we need to take from Caucasians and give to people of color, a lot of white New Yorkers are going to be like, yes, please, here's my purse.
You know, I hate myself.
So again, I don't even know that addressing the threat of the rhetoric about colonialism or whatever is going to resonate with a lot of these people.
I think what we need to really make clear to them is, look, even if you don't care about yourself, if you claim to care about disenfranchised and marginalized black people and Hispanic people and people all over the city who are really struggling, this is not the way because it is these disenfranchised or low-income black people or Hispanic people who are going to ultimately suffer first and suffer hardest if we start implementing socialist policies in New York City.
The people who are already living not well are going to be living much, much worse in just a short matter of years if we start implementing these policies.
Well, I'm glad to hear, Brandon, that you're taking the socialism education message to people who really need to hear it.
And Walkaway has proven really effective.
And if you could make some headway in New York, that would be awesome.
Guys, I've been talking to Brandon Strzok, founder of the Walkaway Movement.
Follow him on X at Brandon Strzok.
The website is walkawaycampaign.com.
Brandon, all the best as always.
And thanks for joining me.
Hey, Dinesh, if I could really quickly, before I jump, I just want to let your audience know we are doing our first rally in New York City on July 27th, Sunday, July 27th.
I'd love to see every, whether you're a moderate Democrat, independent, libertarian, Republican, anywhere across the spectrum, let's come together and unite to fight socialism in New York City.
This is the rally against democratic socialism.
Sunday, July 27th in Union Square at one o'clock.
You can go to walkawaycampaign.com slash events to get information.
Please come out and support this event.
Walkawaycampaign.com slash events.
Thank you, Dinesh.
Good stuff, Brandon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm continuing my discussion of Reagan, How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader.
And when we left off, we were talking about Jimmy Carter and his human rights policy.
This is what created the mess that Reagan had to deal with.
But it's not all that clear why.
Jimmy Carter comes in.
He professes to be an evangelical Christian.
He says, my main concern in foreign policy is going to be human rights.
And we're going to explore a paradox of politics, which is that sometimes in directly pursuing a goal, you achieve the opposite of the goal that you're pursuing.
So that seems odd, right?
Why would you intend to be going in one direction and you end up someplace else?
How can it be that you are so, your arrow, if you will, lands so far afield of where you seem to aim it?
So we're going to look at a couple of examples to see how Jimmy Carter got things so upside down.
Now, first of all, Carter came in and he was faced with the issue, if you're going to talk about human rights, well, who are the worst violators of human rights in the world?
Answer, the communist countries.
The Soviet Union, most of all, China, but also Cuba, Vietnam.
So if you are concerned about human rights, the most egregious violators are, in fact, these communist regimes.
In fact, they are your adversaries, and you need to use human rights as a kind of cudgel or weapon with which to blast them.
But Jimmy Carter didn't want to do that because he thought that that would subvert arms control.
And moreover, he thought it would bring the world closer to nuclear holocaust.
And so he was forced into the odd position, I care most about human rights, but the people who are the greatest violators of human rights are not people that I can raise the issue with.
I've got to raise the issue with other people.
Well, who are those people?
Well, as it turns out, it's U.S. allies.
Now, U.S. allies had a record on human rights that went from imperfect to bad to pretty good.
But none of them were in the same category as, say, Cuba or North Korea.
And yet Carter's view was, well, listen, you know, we can always influence our friends more than our enemies.
So let's put pressure not on the worst violators, but on the less worse violators who happen to be our allies.
In practice, Carter was bludgeoning not China or Cuba or North Korea, but rather places like Iran and Nicaragua and others.
These are countries that were friendly to the United States, although they were run by people who were, to one degree or another, autocrats or despots or dictators.
Let's start with Iran, where the Shah, the Shah of Iran, was a dictator, but of a relatively mild variety.
He did have a secret police called the Savak, and Jimmy Carter put pressure on him.
And there was already a rebellion in Iran, mainly driven by the mullahs, but also supported by some of the other groups.
And the net effect of Carter's betrayal of a U.S. ally on human rights grounds, well, the Shah fled.
He took off.
He's like, enough.
I'm done.
Ironically, one of the reasons the Shah was done, one of the reasons that he gave up, was he wasn't a true autocrat.
If he was a true autocrat, he completely had the power to crush the mullahs.
All he would have to do is bring out the military and shoot the mullahs.
But the Shah, and let's remember here, we're talking, by the way, about the son of the Shah.
The previous Shah was Reza Shah.
The son was Reza Shah Pahlavi.
By the way, a little bit of a beta male, a guy who was educated in Switzerland, not a very tough guy.
As I say, not a savage autocrat of the old type.
And it was really his weakness that emboldened the mullahs.
And then when Carter kind of pulled out the Persian rug, the guy is like, all right, well, I've got a sweet life waiting for me somewhere else.
And the Shah abdicated.
He abdicated because, as he himself said about the protesters, he says, well, I can't shoot them.
They're fellow Iranians.
Now, any dictator who says that is, in a sense, advertising that he's not, if you will, a dictator willing to use the necessary force to stay in power.
Out goes the Shah and in comes Khomeini.
And of course, human rights have been in worse shape in Iran ever since.
So this is called from the frying pan into the fire.
Another word for it is losing the, forgetting about the principle of the lesser evil.
If you want to get rid of the bad guy, you need to make sure you don't get the worse guy.
Let's turn to Nicaragua, where there was a regnant or reigning dictator.
His name was Somoza.
Now, this guy was a real thug.
And there was a counter movement, a revolution brewing against Somoza.
And once again, Jimmy Carter supported the revolution on human rights grounds, just like in Iran.
What happens?
Somoza falls, the regime falls, and who comes to power?
This time it's not the radical mullahs, it's not a Khomeini type, but it's a bunch of communists, the Sandinistas.
And these are people who are vehemently anti-American.
So once again, not only does the United States lose an ally, but the point to make here is that the communists who come in are also violators of human rights, arguably worse than Somoza.
Now, worse in what sense?
Somoza was not hesitant to use the military to arrest dissidents.
And traditional dictators do do that.
They don't like dissidents.
They don't like people protesting the regime.
If you protest the regime, they will round you up.
If you try to overthrow the regime, they will kill you.
Somoza was quite willing to do those things.
But Somoza, by and large, did not try to control the entire economy as the Sandinistas did.
Somoza, even though he restricted free speech, did not restrict it as much as communist regimes, which have systematic policies of censorship.
There was a kind of a key difference between not just Somoza and the Sandinistas, but between two types of regimes.
And these regimes can be divided into authoritarian regimes and totalitarian regimes.
This distinction needs to be examined a little more closely because, first of all, it's a distinction that's valid today, namely that not all dictatorial regimes are the same.
Some are worse than others, but worse in what way?
Now, the intellectual framework for distinguishing between regimes or between, let's call it bad guys and worse guys, this was developed by a political scientist at Georgetown University named Jean Kirkpatrick.
She later became the UN ambassador under Reagan, and she developed a framework for Reagan's understanding of how to tell the difference, how not to avoid the mistakes of Carter, how to make sure that in trying to get rid of the bad guy, you don't get the worse guy.
And here's what Kirkpatrick said.
She said that an authoritarian regime is a normal type of tyranny in which the dictator wants to do nothing more than two things, enrich himself and stay in power.
So if you are a threat to his power, the dictator will lash out.
But, says Gene Kirkpatrick, number one, there's always hope for a change.
Dictators can die.
They can get assassinated.
They are sometimes overthrown.
Sometimes there's a military coup.
Another guy comes in.
But so dictatorships are not, in a sense, eternal.
They survive as long as the dictator is able to hold on to power.
Think of a guy like Pinochet in Chile or Marcos in the Philippines.
These are the kinds of people that Kirkpatrick is talking about.
But there's a second point to make about these dictators, and that is that there are large areas of your life that they don't care about.
They're not going to try to molest you because they don't care where you live, they don't care what you eat, they don't care what religion you practice, they don't care what you do for a living.
They're not looking to manage or control or run your entire life.
They're just looking to stay in power.
What they don't want or have shown little interest in, says Kirkpatrick, is, quote, jurisdiction over the whole life of a society.
And here's the key difference between an authoritarian and a totalitarian.
In fact, even the word totalitarian gives it away.
It comes from the word total.
The totalitarian wants total control.
The totalitarian wants to take you as you are and make you into a new person, a new man.
The totalitarian cares what you eat and cares how your family is organized and cares about what religion you practice.
So totalitarians are known to shut down the churches, imprison monks and priests.
They're known to establish comprehensive regimes of censorship.
And they will engage in the minute regulation of the details of society because they are driven by ideology.
They're not just driven by the fact that, hey, I'm Pinochet and I want to stay in power.
These are people who are driven by the worldview that they have, which requires creating a new type of society.
In fact, this is all the basis of Marxist and communist ideology.
And so what Kirkpatrick was saying was kind of the opposite of the Jimmy Carter approach.
She was saying, it is permissible to ally with authoritarian regimes in order to fight the greater threat posed by totalitarian regimes.
Or to put it differently, it is okay to ally with the lesser evil to block the greater evil.
Obviously, ideally, you wouldn't have evil at all, but since the world is not like that, there's a kind of Machiavellian dimension here to Kirkpatrick's reasoning that sometimes in the real world, you have to make choices not based upon the way you want things to be or the way things ought to be.
You have to make choices based upon the way things are.
And so, in some cases, making friends with the imperfect or even the bad guy is a necessity if you would thwart the greater threat, the greater threat to your safety, the greater threat to your prosperity, but also the greater threat to human rights posed by the worst guy.
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