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July 31, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza
57:45
TIT FOR TAT Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1137
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Well, the administration is trying to dig us out of a deep hole.
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Coming up, gerrymandering, redistricting.
The Democrats have been doing it in a pretty vicious way for a while.
Republicans are finally doing it too.
And I say about time.
Entrepreneur and financial expert James Fishback joins me.
We're going to talk about how Trump's economic policies are outwitting the experts.
We're also going to talk about reform at the Federal Reserve.
Hey, if you're watching on YouTube, X or Rumble, listening on Apple or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
Hit the subscribe, the follow, the notifications button.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
America needs this voice.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
I want to talk about gerrymandering and redistricting because these two concepts have a very dramatic impact on the number of not senators because every state has two senators, but the number of congressmen that emerge as Republicans or as Democrats in the red and the blue states.
Now, these terms, gerrymandering and redistricting, create districts that are, let's just say, weird or peculiar.
And if you look at a state, the state, let's just think of a generic state that is a rectangle, and you will have a strange line running right through the middle, but then curving north and then ducking south.
And it looks like a little bit of a snake.
And hey, that's a congressional district.
And you'll be like, why is it drawn in that way?
And the answer is to influence the outcome of how many congressmen, how many, if it's a blue state, how many blue congressmen, if it's a red state, how many red congressmen or women are going to emerge in the next midterm or presidential election.
Now, gerrymandering, if described this way, looks like a kind of offense against democracy.
Because if there's one thing it does is it makes sure that districts or that states are not representative of the people who live in those states.
And here's what I mean by that.
If you take a state that is 60-40 red or 60-40 blue, what the redistricters, the dominant political force in a given state, is make sure that the number of congressmen in the red state is not 60-40, but something more like 80-20 or 90-10.
There's hardly one or two Democrats in the red state, or there are hardly one or two Republicans in the blue state.
Now, this is going on right now as the legislature in Texas is in the process of redistricting Texas, a red state, to create more red districts.
And this can be done through a very careful kind of mathematical calculation of where the voters are.
And what is likely to happen is that this gerrymander is going to knock out a couple of, at least a couple, if not more, of prominent Democrats who are currently in the House.
Henry Queyar might have his district redistricted.
Vicente Gonzalez, these are both guys in the southern part of Texas, the Rio Grande Valley.
But there's also redistricting that's being aimed at Dallas, at Houston, and at Austin, San Antonio.
Now, there's a predictable shriek going on from the Democrats that say, in effect, oh my gosh, this is an attack on democracy.
Democrats are, let's just say, roughly 30 to 35 percent of the voters in Texas.
How come they aren't 30 percent of the congressional representation of Texas?
And the simple answer to that question is this, and that is that the Democrats have been redistricting heavily all along, and Republicans are finally catching up and playing the same game as the Democrats.
So if the Democrats have been redistricting as they have in the blue states, why shouldn't Republicans retaliate and redistrict in the red states?
Now, admittedly, that's going to create some distortions in the red states, but those distortions will match The distortions in the blue states.
And really, what ends up happening is you end up getting a balance of Republican and Democratic congressmen that more accurately reflects the balance in the country.
So let me start by showing the Democratic lopsidedness that we are already living with.
Let's look at the 2024 election.
The Republicans won the popular vote in the House by 3%, but they got essentially a tie among congressmen.
They got a five-seat majority.
In 2016, by contrast, Republicans won the House popular vote by 1%, and they had a 47-seat majority.
Now, how is this possible?
How is it that our majority, the GOP majority, has narrowed so much?
Short answer: Democratic gerrymandering, Democratic redistricting.
So let me talk about some of these Democratic states.
In California, Republicans are 40% of the statewide vote.
Do Republicans are 40% of congressional seats?
No.
They have 9 out of 52.
In Massachusetts, they're 35% of the statewide vote.
Do they have 35% of congressmen?
No.
Zero out of nine.
In Connecticut, they're 38, almost 40% of the statewide vote.
The number of Republican congressmen in Connecticut, zero.
New York, 42% of the statewide vote.
7 out of 26 congressmen.
And down it goes.
New Jersey, Maryland, New Mexico, Hawaii.
I can give you all the numbers, but the pattern persists.
So this is not democracy.
Now, we would like to say, hey, Democrats, stop doing it.
But Republicans have learned, I think, through bitter experience, that telling these people to do this doesn't work.
The only way to bring about any kind of balance is to do exactly what they are doing.
And there is a certain Republican tendency to resist this.
It is the old Republican habit of saying things like, well, we can't be just like the Democrats.
If they are crooked, we don't want to be crooked.
If they politicize the FBI, we don't want to politicize the FBI.
If they move the universities to the left, we don't want to move the universities to the right.
We are too principled to do any of that.
Well, the latest version of this comes from a guy on social media.
Quote: So, your defense of gerrymandering is that two wrongs make a right.
If the Democrats rig the maps, the solution isn't to corrupt the system further, it's to fix it.
This is what I called Paul Ryan nonsensicology, because there is no way for us Republicans or conservatives to quote fix this process inside of a Democratic state where they have the full authority, the full constitutional authority to do what they're doing.
This gerrymandering is legal and therefore they're going to do it.
Nothing we say is going to prevent them from doing it.
But I want to make a little bit more of a radical point here.
We often hear, well, two wrongs don't make a right.
And I want to say that two wrongs quite frequently do make a right.
And I'm going to give you a couple of examples in this area to show.
Well, one is a general example from principle, and the second is a specific application.
So let's consider an example where a thief steals $100 from me.
Now, I would like to call the cops, but the cops are nowhere in sight.
So let's say I chase the thief down and I steal $100 from him, or I steal my money back.
That's wrong.
But two wrongs do make a right.
I get my money back.
The outcome is just.
Two wrongs do make a right.
If Democrats gerrymander blue states and the Republicans retaliate, creating their own gerrymandering, what is the effect?
A more representative distribution of power, more in line with the actual distribution and votes of people in the country.
So how is that wrong?
How is that unjust?
Here again, two wrongs do make a right.
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Guys, we don't talk perhaps enough on this podcast about economics.
And I'm delighted to have a new guest, James Fishback.
He's the founder and CEO of Azoria.
This is a free thinking investment firm that manages the Azorea 500 meritocracy ETF.
And I like the description, an index fund that only invests in companies that hire based on merit.
Great stuff.
You can follow James on X at J underscore fishback and the website investazoria.com or just fishback, but it's abbreviated FSHBCK.com.
James, welcome.
Thank you for joining me.
I've been following you on social media, enjoying your commentary and your posts.
I want to talk about a subject that you've been posting a lot about.
And I think I saw something from you this morning, the Fed, and the sort of obstinacy of Jerome Powell, who seems to be hanging in there, kind of refusing to make any move on interest rates.
Now, can you explain to people who I think are a little baffled about the Fed?
Because you've got this rather bizarre, quasi-independent government entity.
It doesn't appear to be accountable exactly to anyone.
And yet, in our supposedly free market system, you've got a panel of people who sit around and decide, well, the interest rate should be 4%, or I think we'll bring it down to 3.5%.
How did we get into this kind of madness where it's not the market that's setting rates, but some kind of a Soviet-style committee?
Yes, it's exactly well put.
Dinesh, it's great to be with you and honor truly.
It is a Soviet-style committee in the truest sense of the word because they're also meeting behind closed doors and they're denying the public's statutory legal right to know what those deliberations are all about.
Dinesh, yesterday, for the first time in 32 years, two members of Jerome Powell's board of governors openly dissented against the Fed share, voting to immediately cut rates in line with what President Trump is thinking and mainstream economists on the left and right.
The economy is doing fine.
It's doing great.
And inflation is now at a four-year low, which is to say, the Federal Reserve does not need to be keeping interest rates near 20-year highs.
And the pain that that has on the housing market, on our debt servicing costs, and on the ability of small businesses and large businesses to access capital to invest in this golden age.
And so the Fed is run by a very stubborn mule known as Jerome Powell.
He is not independent in any sense of the word.
He is only independent from accountability and transparency.
I agree with Jerome Powell and with these mainstream economists who say they want an independent Fed.
The problem is Jerome Powell is not independent when he is making purely political decisions, Dinesh.
Right before the 24 election, he cut rates by a whopping 50 points.
That was the largest rate cut in more than four years.
And today, even though inflation is lower, he refuses to cut rates because a guy named Donald J. Trump lives in the White House.
And so there's a lot to it, but the best thing we can do is shine a light on it because, of course, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
I think part of what you're saying, James, and tell me if I'm right, that the Federal Reserve is supposed to watch the pace of economic growth and the rate of inflation.
And in general, that the way that they operate is if inflation is heating up, then what they do is they tame inflation by raising interest rates, making capital more expensive.
And conversely, when inflation is under control, they have every ability to cut interest rates, in a sense, stoke up the economy a little bit more, which results in more entrepreneurship, more corporate ventures, more jobs.
And I think that's what Trump is really pushing for.
I think what you're saying is that even though the external indices all point to a Fed that should be able to do that and probably would do it had it been a Democratic administration in charge now, they're not doing it.
I won't say out of spite, but they're not doing it because they don't want Trump to get the credit for the economic benefits that follow.
Is that an accurate reading of how you think Powell is thinking?
It's a very accurate reading.
And it's one too, Dinesh, where if you think about the Federal Reserve's policy framework, they don't just cut rates because they want to stimulate.
They actually cut rates because rates are restrictive.
That's exactly what Powell said in the press conference yesterday.
He described the current setting, the current level of interest rates that the Federal Reserve controls as, quote, modestly restrictive.
Now ask yourself, do we need modestly restrictive interest rates when headline CPI inflation since President Trump took office has been annualizing 1.8%?
That's below the Fed's target of 2%.
Now, look, we needed moderately restrictive interest rates when Joe Biden drove inflation up to 9%.
We needed to restrict the flow of money, restrict new spending so as to not fuel a second and third order inflationary cycle.
But right here, right now, we don't necessarily need stimulative monetary policy.
We need monetary policy from the Fed that is not restrictive.
And in Powell's own words, he described the policy setting, the level of interest rates as restrictive.
There's no conceivable economic data point that points to the need for restrictive policy other than the fact that Donald J. Trump won the election by 80 million points and Jerome Powell still hasn't gotten over that.
Trump has quite clearly communicated he would like Powell to head for the exits.
And Trump in his Trumpian fashion has made some, you know, almost like, I don't know what to call it, but sort of arm twisting type of remarks at Powell.
Trump, I think, has the ability to fire Powell, But he appears prudentially not to be doing that.
And Powell's term, I understand, goes into next year, but I don't know how far into next year.
So how many months does Powell have left?
And do you think that Trump is better to wait him out?
Or do you think that Trump should continue to apply the pressure for Powell to resign?
It's a great question.
Right here, right now, Powell is set to leave office in May of 2026.
I understand the urge to want to fire Powell.
There's no question the president of the United States has a right to relieve any executive officer at any federal agency.
Our Constitution makes that very, very clear.
And so Powell is no different.
In fact, legislation says that president can remove Powell for something called for cause.
And there's no question that there is plenty of cause.
In fact, yesterday's press conference, as confusing, bizarre, and blatantly political as it was, was enough for cause for the president to move on that alone.
But the president is right to not take the bait from the left who want him to fire Powell because it would end up in a protracted legal battle.
Let's look at the legal landscape, Dinesh, and you've covered this brilliantly on your podcast.
The fact that any illegal immigrant can walk into a federal court and get an immediate temporary injunction against the president of the United States because they're a criminal and they want to stay here and steal some more for us.
The problem is our judicial system is not set up for Jerome Powell to actually be fired.
It would likely be immediately stopped by a federal court here in Washington, D.C., the same court that I am bringing a case against Jerome Powell right now for breaking federal transparency law by keeping those meetings at the Fed closed to the public.
But President Trump would be likely stopped by that.
The Supreme Court would get involved.
They would likely issue some sort of temporary injunction saying that it would be a protracted distraction that the president does not need when he is delivering on the foreign policy front, on the economic front, etc.
And so my advice to the president, I've shared this with him, is very simply, Dinesh, to announce Powell's replacement almost immediately.
And here's why.
When President Trump won this historic victory in November, the second they called it, what happened?
Joe Biden, even though he was the president of the United States, no foreign leader wanted to talk to him.
No diplomat wanted to meet with him.
No business leader or CEO wanted anything to do with technically the president of the United States.
They were all rushing down to Mar-a-Lago.
You were down there.
I was down there.
We were seeing whether it was the Brazilian president or the Argentinian president.
They were meeting with President Trump.
So imagine the same framework, the same theory applied to the Fed.
If President Trump were to announce tomorrow morning that Scott Besson, who I think should be the next Fed chair, is going to be Powell's replacement.
The bond market, which is really doing the work for the Fed in effectuating their policy beyond the overnight rate to the two-year, five-year part of the curve that influences every mortgage, credit card, and business loan in America, they would ignore Powell's recalcitrance and would focus on Scott Besson.
So Scott Besson could effectively become the shadow Fed chair.
He could give speeches all over the country.
He could tell the bond market that the second I take office in May, I'm going to cut rates by a full percentage point.
And the bond market, I say this as someone who traded interest rate derivatives for 10 years, the bond market would have no choice but to price in to reflect the market probability of those rate cuts and then distribute that pricing out the curve.
It's a fascinating thing, the bond market.
And so what the president can do right now is in 24 hours, he could say, I'm not going to fire Powell.
I'm just going to completely strip him of his influence voice on the bond market and on business, appoint Scott Besson or whomever the president decides in his judgment who should be the Fed chair.
And then all of a sudden, the bond market says, Jay, Powell, who are you?
Just like every world leader after Trump once said, Joe Biden, who are you?
We're meeting with Trump.
We're going to listen to Scott Besson.
And what you would see, Dinesh, is mortgage rates, short-term treasury rates immediately move lower because Scott Besson is seen both as credible, is seen as highly likely to be confirmed in the Senate, and third, is seen as someone who would actually deliver the rate cuts that aren't necessarily stimulative, but are simply removing the unnecessary artificial restriction that Powell and his Fed board is foisting on our economy.
I got to say, James, that is a breathtakingly brilliant idea.
And I say that because, in fact, my wife and I were talking about it this morning, the issue that the Fed doesn't set interest rates for the whole country.
The Fed sets a key rate, and then all the other interest rates, in a way, piggyback off of that.
And I think what you're saying is that there is a clever way to drive a wedge between those two.
The Fed can continue to do what it does, and it will have some impact.
But the moment that Trump announces the replacement, in effect, the new guy and his comments begin to be a defining mark at CNBC or Fox Business, or the business channels are going to have to take into account what the putative new Fed is going to say.
So I think that's actually a fantastic idea.
Let me pivot to a different topic, which is a very maybe minor but interesting skirmish you've been having with Elon Musk, where at one point he was threatening to run off and start a third party.
A downright idiotic idea, I think we both know.
And you were like, hey, if he starts a pact to start going after some of these MAGA Republicans, you are going to start a pact to counter his pack.
I recently saw that you made the comment that Elon Musk is, in a way, doing much better if he's in the lane that he understands best, which is robotics and artificial intelligence and building out his magnificently successful companies.
Can you say a word about what Elon Musk has most to offer America at this time?
Elon Musk's best work, Dinesh, is going to be in the private sector.
I have a Tesla.
This thing is magical.
I have FSD, which is full self-driving technology.
I drive about 200, 300 miles a week.
I live In rural Florida, so I got to move around to get places.
I have not touched my steering wheel since Christmas.
I go into the audio on the steering wheel and say, navigate to Publix, navigate to Texas Roadhouse.
And I'm literally there, and the car is just driving.
It's doing U-turns.
It's unbelievable.
That is Elon Musk's brainchild.
Grok 4.
We've all seen it.
I use it in my research analysis here at Mysteria.
And so his best work, whether it's SpaceX setting up rockets and bringing them down 12 minutes later, Neuralink, which is giving life to people who have been horribly affected by medical conditions like paralysis.
At the end of the day, he's got to really do his best work with his companies.
President Trump was right when he called the America Party a ridiculous stunt.
I think Elon has taken that to heart.
Truthfully, I say that.
It's been 19 days since Elon Musk has even mentioned this new third party.
And as someone who worked closely with him on Doge, I can tell you when Elon Musk says he's going to do something, if there is not an immediate, call it within 48 hours of him taking a material step toward doing that thing, it ain't happening.
When he says that Grok is coming to Tesla, and then wouldn't you know, four days later, it's in my Tesla, that's Elon Musk delivering.
When Elon Musk says we're going to double the size of the geographic area in which the robo-taxis are picking up people as we speak right now, Dinesh, people in Austin, Texas can order a robo-taxi with no one in the driver's seat in a Model Y Tesla, take him to church, take him to the grocery store, take him to work for just a couple dollars.
It's unbelievable.
And so when I think about Elon, I think about if he really wanted to do this, there would be a filing, there hasn't been.
There would be at least one candidate, there hasn't been.
There would be at least one staff member.
There hasn't been.
What I've done is I've said we're going to create a pack called FSD.
As you maybe heard me say earlier, FSD stands for full self-driving.
It also stands for full support for Donald.
Not just the man, but the movement that he has pioneered, a movement that has rejected the country club Republican open border globalist H-1B Koch brothers scam establishment of our party that tells the Maria Salazars with Republicans like you who needs Democrats.
And so I started this pack originally to counter the threat of a third party that Elon might have proposed.
But I got to tell you right now, my focus is on Republicans who are acting like Democrats, Republicans who are pushing the mass amnesty scam, which nearly 80 million of us said we did not want any part of by voting for President Trump in November.
Wow.
Let's close out, James, by me asking you about something you founded.
It's called Incubate Debate, and it's a fast-growing debate league in America.
Now, I got to say, you know, in my earlier career, debate was pretty common.
I did a bunch of debates on the American campus.
The CNN's Crossfire, if you remember, was set up in a kind of debate format.
All of that appears to have evaporated from American public life.
And looks like you're trying part of what it seems the James Fishback Make America Great Again is like make debate great again.
Talk a little bit about this incubate America, incubate debate, I'm sorry, and what you have in mind.
Well, it's funny, you revealed the plot twist there as we are recording it, creating an initiative we'll announce soon called Incubate America.
I don't want to spill the beans yet.
High school debate changed my life.
It was a formative experience.
I got to tell you, Dinesh, I've been reading your work since I was a freshman in high school in 2009, shortly after a man by the name of Barack Hussein Obama entered the White House.
And I appreciated your lucidity then, and I especially appreciate it now.
High school debate is a place where young conservatives, young progressives, and even young men and women who don't know where they fall politically yet can have their ideas tested and refuted and challenged and walk away saying, you know what, maybe I don't agree with my fellow progressive or my fellow conservative, my fellow libertarian, but we're all Americans.
We were all created in God's image.
We all pledge allegiance to that same flag.
And that's what high school debate has meant to me.
Sadly, high school debate around the time of one Donald J. Trump coming down the golden escalator became insufferably woke to the point where I wrote in the free press in 2023 that high school debate judges were telling students in writing, Dinesh, that if they merely mentioned the word illegal immigrant, they would be cut off, lose the round, and we'd be lectured because, quote, they wouldn't have them making the debate space unsafe.
One judge went as far as to tell students in writing that she is, quote, a Marxist, Leninist Maoist, and that anybody who defended capitalism or the police would also automatically lose.
Whether you're a conservative or a progressive, the mere idea that a debate could be lost before the debate itself happened is wrong.
It is un-American, and it stands antithetical to everything that high school debate and this idea of debate in America represents.
And so I started Incubate Debate in 2019.
It's become the fastest growing debate league in the country.
At the 2024 national championship, we had on the right, Vivek Ramaswamy.
On the left, Bill de Blasio actually come out, Dinesh, and train our students and help them become better communicators, better debaters to think on their feet.
We're now in 12 states, and we're going to be announcing something very special soon where students all over the country can learn the power of debate, have that platform right in their classroom.
We want teachers to be able to use our free incubate in the classroom toolkit to turn that lesson on World War II or on the Civil War into a powerful in-class debate where their students can be engaged and challenged right where they are.
It sounds downright awesome.
And I appreciate all the great work you're doing.
Guys, I've been talking to James Fishback.
He is the founder and CEO of Azoria and also the founder of Incubate Debate.
James, thank you very much for joining me.
It is my pleasure.
Thank you, Dinesh.
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The Trump administration has their sleeves rolled up in streamlining some pretty monumental moves right now, but it's difficult for them to take your personal finances or mine into account when trying to do what's right for the country.
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Guys, I don't talk enough about health and nutrition on the podcast, and that has come into the political forefront with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again agenda.
I'm delighted to welcome a new guest, Carrie Pyle Lawrence.
She's a certified holistic nutritionist and a wellness advocate.
She's known for her workout programs and blends exercise and good nutrition to inspire balanced, sustainable health practices.
Carrie, welcome.
Thank you for joining me.
I appreciate it.
I saw this weird article.
Well, weird to me because I don't know the subject very well.
Apparently, one of the priorities of RFK Jr. is to remove the marosol from vaccines.
And I'm like thinking to myself, well, what exactly is the marisol and why is it bad?
Well, I would love to answer those questions for you.
I mean, this ingredient has been really controversial for a long time in terms of its safety.
And preservatives such as the Mirasol are compounds that kill or prevent the growth of microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, according to the FDA.
So I hope that answers your question.
Now, when we think of microorganisms, bacteria, I mean, I guess, you know, for a long time, I would say, well, those sound bad.
I mean, those sound like some things that you would want to get rid of.
But I guess as I've gotten older, and my wife also is kind of my health expert, there's apparently good microorganisms and bad ones, and there's good bacteria and bad bacteria, right?
So your body needs good bacteria.
Is that right?
Yes, we actually need both good and bad bacteria.
Have you ever taken antibiotics before?
Sure.
Yeah, most people have, right?
So just like with antibiotics, these kill the good bacteria as well as the bad bacteria.
And kind of, let's bring it back to our immune system, right?
So our immune system exists in our gut.
That's kind of like the nucleus of our immune system.
And a healthy gut depends on a healthy balance of gut flora, which we call gut microbiome.
And having a healthy gut can really affect a lot of areas of health influence.
It influences a lot of areas of your health.
And some of those areas are your immune system, your digestion, your heart health, your brain health, your skin, and your hair.
And everybody wants to have those to be healthy, right?
This seems like a no-brainer.
Yeah, well, I mean, that's not just the inside, but the outside as well, right?
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
But so let's talk about the gut.
And if I wanted to do one thing to improve my gut, improve the, you know, the microbiome, as you call it, what should I be thinking about?
That's a really good question.
And I really want you and everybody else to pay special attention to this because if you've been vaccinated or if you've ever taken antibiotics or if you struggle with any health issues, any at all, this is important for everyone, but especially if you fall into this group, because really it's super simple.
It's all about what you eat.
Because if you think about it, what you put inside your body is going to affect how your body functions.
And probiotic-rich foods will provide beneficial bacteria your body needs to thrive.
Like what we were talking about before, needing the good bacteria and the bad bacteria, right?
So having that healthy balance is super, super important.
So I'm sure your next question is probably going to be: okay, well, if it's all about what we eat, what is something good that we can eat and put on our bodies that's going to help balance us out, right?
So one of my favorite things, well, I can't say favorite, but one of the most beneficial food sources for having a healthy gut and giving yourself that balance is kimchi.
Have you ever eaten kimchi before?
Well, I mean, I've probably been to a Korean restaurant twice in my life.
You know, I can't say I'm a regular.
I do like Chinese food and I do, but I mean, I guess the Koreans are the world's expert at kimchi, right?
Yes.
And quite frankly, Korean restaurants aren't all that abundant.
They're not everywhere that people live.
And so, no, I mean, I can't say that it's either my favorite cuisine or that I'm like a regular on kimchi.
I mean, I've heard of it, but I'm not entirely sure what it is.
What is it?
You know what?
I think that a lot of people feel exactly like you do, Dinesh, which is like either they haven't tried it or they don't like it.
So let's back it up and talk about what, why kimchi is so important and why you should consume it.
So kimchi is really the best probiotic-rich food you can consume, hands down.
And that's due to its higher diversity of probiotic strains that aren't found in any other source.
So I think that that's really shocking to a lot of people and probably shocking to you as well.
And the reason why we want to consume foods like kimchi, or really specifically kimchi, is because it gives us a stronger immune system.
You get smoother and more regular digestion, which I know that a lot of people suffer from that, especially as they get older, clearer thinking.
I don't know about you, but as I get older, I am always like suffering from brain fog, improved cardiovascular health because nobody wants to sit in a treadmill for 8,000 years, better skin and hair.
I mean, yes, please.
And it's also shown to lower your risk for obesity.
I mean, this is to me, you know, good news.
And I've been advertising now for a while.
You're also a spokesman for Bright Core Nutrition.
Now, what I like about the Brightcore solution, if you will, is they kind of make it easy for you.
So you have, you know, kimchi in a capsule.
You don't have to go hunting for, you know, Korean restaurants.
You can, it's accessible.
It's easy.
You basically pop these in your mouth.
You take them and you're getting all these benefits.
So let's talk a little bit about how Brightcore makes kimchi available to people in a very easy to consume fashion.
I'm going to tell you a little bit about me first and then I'll tell you, I'll answer your question.
So I'm like you, Dinesh.
I don't like kimchi.
I don't like it at all.
It's too sour for me.
Like I have a hard time getting it down.
In fact, I like throw up a little bit in my mouth every time I even smell it or try to consume it.
So I recognize the fact that kimchi is super beneficial and I want to eat it and I want to experience those health benefits, but storing it, making it, finding it, all of those things seem like giant obstacles for me when it comes to consuming kimchi.
And that is why Brightcore's product is so amazing.
Not only are you able to consume and get those amazing benefits of kimchi, but we make it easy and accessible to everybody.
So even if you're somebody who likes the taste of kimchi and it's just really hard to eat it every single day, you know, you're not always having a craving for kimchi, you know?
So we have used a special cold process drying method that retains the fiber and probiotics of fresh kimchi, but all of the nutrition is retained.
So you can actually consume kimchi every single day without kind of throwing up in your mouth a little bit.
Uh-oh.
Well, what an image.
Well, let me ask you this, though.
Is it something you take once a day or is it something that you take a couple times a day?
What is the, what is like the optimum dose?
That's a great question.
For me, I take three capsules a day.
But, you know, if you call our 800 line, then, you know, we can talk to you and tell you exactly what we think would be most beneficial for you.
But that's what I take.
I take three capsules a day.
All right.
Let's, you know, I always like to round out these things by making sure that we give a good deal to my listeners and viewers.
I want to mention, by the way, that the website is mybrightcore.com forward slash Dinesh.
But tell people what is the offer that you're presenting to them today.
Well, of course, not only do we want to make this product easy to consume, obviously we want to give the amazing health benefits of kimchi to every single person so they can live a happier, healthier life.
But we also want to make it easy for you to get and make it affordable, which is really, really, really important.
So we are going to give a 25% code.
That code is Dinesh because of you.
And so all you have to do is visit our website, mybrightcore.com forward slash Dinesh.
That's mybrightcore.com/slash Dinesh.
And you get the 25% off with the code Dinesh.
But ask me if it gets better.
Well, you know, I've been also saying this on the podcast.
It's really kind of cool because you want people to call, right?
And I think it's better that they call anyway, because when you're talking about your health, it's good to, you're going to have questions and you're going to want to be able to pose them to somebody who can answer them.
And then you guys are offering an even better incentive to call.
So what's that incentive and what's the number to call?
So of course you can save 25% off if you go to mybrightcore.com/slash Dinesh, right?
But you can save 50% off if you call 888-927-5980.
And that's 50% off and free shipping.
So you save twice as much and get free shipping.
And the reason why we want you to call is so that we can talk to you and we can make sure that this product is right for you.
This isn't just about, you know, selling a product.
It's making sure that we can improve the health of every single person who purchases kimchi.
And that's why we want to make sure it's the right thing.
And we have one more added bonus.
So if you do call the first 100 callers, get a free bottle of vitamin D3, which is also essential for healthy lifestyle.
So that number again is 888-927-5980.
Save 50%.
Get a free bottle of vitamin D3.
If you call now, which is one of the first 100 callers, and I don't know Of something better that you can do for your health that is just super easy.
I mean, you do make it easy, and that is awesome stuff.
Hey, thanks for sharing your knowledge, guys.
I've been talking to Kerry Pyle Lawrence, wellness advocate and spokesperson for Kimchi One.
Kerry, thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you so much.
It was a pleasure.
And you better buy that kimchi.
For sure.
I'm continuing my discussion of strategic defense excerpted from my book, Ronald Reagan, How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader.
And I mentioned last time that Reagan was considering a fairly exotic menu of strategic defense approaches, including the so-called smart bullet, the electromagnetic railgun, neutral particle beams, the X-ray laser, and so on.
Now, all of this was a scandal, not just to the Democrats and the left, but also to the Republican establishment.
And why?
Well, because there was a kind of consensus among these groups that the United States is best off to have no missile defense at all.
In other words, to be essentially vulnerable or exposed to a nuclear attack.
And not only was this the shared belief of these groups, there was a treaty called the ABM Treaty, ABM standing for anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972, in which the U.S. and the Russians, the Soviet Union, agreed and signed, we are not going to build missile defenses.
Wow.
So Reagan in 1983 was basically saying if we do this, and admittedly at the beginning, it's just in the research stage, so nothing needs to be done.
But if this missile defense is deployed, it would be in violation of the ABM treaty, and therefore the United States would have to basically give notice that the ABM treaty is obsolete.
We're out.
We're no longer part of that treaty.
And so both sides don't need to follow it anymore.
Not to the left and to the Democrats and some Republicans.
This was a terrifying idea because they thought, oh, wow, if we get rid of the ABM treaty, we're now going to have a whole new phase of the arms race.
In fact, it's going to be an arms race in space.
And so you had these influential organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Say a word about this group with which I was quite familiar.
Thousands of scientists around America and some also in Europe, very prominent Nobel laureates like Hans Bethe of Cornell University.
Hans Bethe was one of the leading figures in the Los Alamos project and had worked closely with people like Edward Teller, but of course was politically on the absolute opposite end of the spectrum.
And these guys were railing against Reagan's missile defense treaty.
Now, Reagan did not have the confidence that all these people did in mutually assured destruction.
And Reagan would, in a very simple way, ask questions like, well, listen, are you telling me that if the Russians are threatening to kill tens or hundreds of millions of Americans, our only recourse is to threaten to kill in retaliation tens or hundreds of millions of their citizens?
Are you telling me that that is in fact the defense policy of the United States?
To which all these bright-eyed people said, well, yes, that is our defense policy.
And Reagan was like, well, that's insufficient.
That's inadequate.
That is actually immoral.
First of all, it is immoral to target civilians in large numbers under any circumstances.
And to make this the cornerstone of your defense policy is even more scandalous.
Reagan came up with his idea of not only letting the Russians do their own space defenses, he's like, let them build a missile defense.
We're not afraid of it.
So we build it, they build it, no problem.
And then not only that, but we might even consider giving our technology to them so we can both have defenses.
The idea here being that it's good to protect their citizens and it's good to protect our citizens.
And this notion from Reagan was very startling to Hawks on the right.
But I want to highlight its political benefit.
Its political benefit was that it neutralized the strongest Soviet objection to SDI.
The strongest Soviet objection was: listen, if you have a bulletproof vest and we don't, we're going to be living in terror that you can shoot us and we won't be able to shoot you back.
And that creates ultimately, that's going to tempt us to actually shoot first because we're put in this peculiar situation.
And so when Reagan goes, well, listen, not only do we have a bulletproof vest, we're going to give you one.
The Russians can't, that complaint kind of falls to the side.
Now, the Soviets had walked out of the arms control negotiations when the United States deployed Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe.
I've talked about this earlier.
And so Reagan makes a remarkable prediction.
Reagan says, listen, don't worry.
Once we start developing our SDI program, our missile defense program, the Soviets will be right back.
They'll be right back at the bargaining table.
They're going to want to talk.
And people went, that's ridiculous and so on.
You've created the conditions for them to leave.
They're never coming back.
Another point to be stressed about missile defenses is that even though the left kept saying you can only build a partial missile defense, one of the points that Reagan made, and the Reaganites around him, me included, Was if you have a partial defense, that is the exact equivalent of an arms control treaty to not merely freeze the number of nuclear weapons, but to reduce them to a certain degree.
So, for example, if I have a bulletproof vest that is, let's just say, 25% effective, and let's say the Russians have the same.
That is exactly the same as if we sat down, the two of us, me and the Russians, let's say, and we signed a treaty saying we will both reduce the number of our nuclear weapons by 25%.
And the logic holds that really any number.
If the defense is 50% effective, that's like having an arms control treaty in which either side, both sides, cut their nuclear arsenals by half.
Now, no democratic proposal came even close to any of this.
Didn't come close to major reductions of 10, 20, 30, 50%.
And so, Reagan, in a way, here was outdoing the left in his proposal for a reduction of nuclear lethality.
What this did politically was to destroy the political base of the nuclear freeze movement.
Reagan had showed that even though he wasn't going down their arms control road, he had come up with an imaginative way, a creative way, actually a brilliant way, to achieve a result that was even better.
Let's call it disarmament through technology rather than disarmament through diplomacy.
And then, just as the left was sulking and feeling really bad about this, guess what?
The Soviet Union returned to the negotiating table on its own.
And the left was like, whoa, this is what Reagan predicted, and this is in fact what happened.
Now, for many years afterward, people would say, well, Reagan never knew if SDI would really work.
Reagan was bluffing.
Reagan was putting out a wishful thinking idea that never was developed for many years later.
And all of this is true.
But what mattered here, this is the point I want to stress, is not what Reagan thought or what the left thought or what the Democrats thought.
What really mattered is what the Soviet Union thought.
And so it's the perception of the Soviet military planners and the Soviet leadership that was critical.
And here's the point: even if SDI was just spy in the sky, even if it was a video game, even if it was complete nonsense, Moscow didn't think so.
Moscow thought, hey, listen, these Americans are really smart.
Guess what?
We got into a race with them in the 1960s to see who could get to the moon first.
We had a big head start with Sputnik, but guess who got to the moon first?
They did.
So there is the United States has demonstrated the ability, call it Yankee ingenuity or whatever you want, to get these kinds of things done.
And the Soviets also understood what Reagan was up to.
Reagan was inviting the Soviets into an arms race in an area where they were likely to lose.
And the Soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko, I don't know if you remember this name from times past.
Gromyko was the leading diplomat for Brezhnev.
And he might have retired right after Brezhnev, but he was, for much of my young life, he was the kind of face of the Soviet Union.
When there was an arms control meeting, it was Gromyko who was the guy at the table.
But Gromyko said, behind all this lies the clear calculation that the USSR will exhaust its material resources and will be forced to surrender.
And right there, you have in a single line the policy of the Reagan administration to draw the Soviets into a competition in which they were, you may say, destined or certainly likely to lose.
And many years later, looking back, this is when the Cold War was over, the Soviet Union had collapsed.
Strobe Talbot, who wrote in those days for Time magazine and had been a persistent, relentless critic of Reagan, he's wrong about this, he's wrong about that.
And Strobe Talbot was particularly apoplectic about SDI.
But even Strobe Talbot was forced to admit many years later that he was wrong and Reagan was right.
I quote him now.
SDI was a factor in luring the Soviets back to the bargaining table.
And for that, Reagan deserves the credit.
I cannot imagine how, well, these days we never even get people who make these kinds of admissions, right?
They're proven wrong again and again, and they just continue blabbing their usual nonsense.
You got to give Strobe Talbot a little bit of credit here for however belatedly and however reluctantly and however grudgingly admitting that Reagan's approach worked.
Whatever you think of it, it produced the result, the needed result.
And so Reagan's vision for SDI, for all its perhaps limitations and flaws, proved to be more effective, proved to be superior than all the strategic machinations of the arms control establishment.
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