Dinesh D'Souza - WHO KILLED JESUS? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1174

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Sept. 23, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza

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WHO KILLED JESUS? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1174

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	Coming up, I'll discuss the issue of did the Jews kill Jesus in the larger context of a debate on the right over Israel, the Jews, and anti-Semitism.
	I'll explain the meaning of the title of my new film, The Dragon's Prophecy, which you can get theater tickets for now.
	Uh, and Rainmaker CEO Augustus DeRico joins me, he's gonna talk about a congressional hearing on weather manipulation.
	Hey, if you're watching on YouTube, X or Rumble, listening on Apple or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
	Uh hit the subscribe the follow the notifications button, I'd really appreciate it.
	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 de Susa podcast.
	One of the I would say beautiful effects of the funeral service, the memorable, very powerful, very emotional service that was a good part of the day on Sunday, is I think it has if it hasn't created it's accelerated, it has uh paved the way for a spirit of renewal in this country.
	Now, not just political renewal, but also cultural renewal, also moral renewal, also spiritual renewal.
	And I think that my new film, The Dragon's Prophecy, is going to be a part of that.
	It is in that spirit.
	In fact, what it brings to an otherwise uh a debate that is is full of kind of allegations and accusations and even bitterness with cries of colonialism and genocide and Israel controls America and the Mossad is paying you, and all of this kind of ascitic uh commentary.
	There's really a need to bring the spirit of the Bible, the spirit of Christianity, a kind of enlarged perspective that draws on biblical prophecy, but also biblical archaeology to ground the Bible in historic facts, showing that the events and truths of it are real.
	These were real people, real events, things that actually uh happened.
	And uh so this film could not be coming at a a better time.
	If you really want a deep understanding of our place in unfolding events in biblical prophecy, are we living in the end days?
	Is it as the end and by the end here we just mean a phase of history, a phase of biblical history that and this is part of what the film argues, it resembles the beginning.
	The battles between Israel and and Hamas are not all that different from the battles of the ancient Israelites versus the Moabites and the Hittites and the Philistines and others.
	So this is a fresh perspective.
	This is something that Jonathan Kahn through his book The Dragon's Prophecy brings to all this.
	And I think it this is a mind blowing film.
	At some level, these things are a film is hard to describe.
	If I were to tell you that Hillary's America is just a history of the Democratic Party, it doesn't do justice to what that film actually shows you, the experience of watching it.
	If I were to tell you the Shawshank Redemption is about prisons and it's about friendship, that doesn't even begin to describe the experience of watching that film.
	And the same is true here.
	From the people who have watched this film who've previewed it, they're like, Dinesh, this I'm I'm like a little bit of a different person at the end of watching this film than I was before.
	Now, movie tickets are available.
	You can buy them now, get them now.
	The movie's in about 400 theaters, so I hope it's playing in a theater near you.
	There's a good chance it is.
	You got to go to the website, The Dragons Prophecyfilm.com.
	The Dragons plural, the dragons prophecyfilm.com.
	Sign up for your tickets, round up family and friends, round up your reading group or your men's Bible study group, or put the word out in your church and get people to go.
	Go in a group.
	It's really fun to watch these films in the theater.
	It's really fun to watch it with people who are like-minded.
	So the film is in the theater only two days.
	Easy to remember because it is not October 7th itself, but it's the day before, October 6th, and the day after, October 8th.
	So Monday, October 6th, or Wednesday, October 8th.
	And if you can go to the theater, no problem, October 9th, the very next day, it's available for streaming and DVD.
	And you can pre-order your streaming and DVD now.
	Again, go to the website, the dragonsprophecyfilm.com.
	By the way, I don't know if I've explained the title.
	The title actually refers to a passage in the book of Revelation where the dragon, representing the devil, Satan, declares war on a woman, seeking to destroy her.
	The woman is Israel, and the woman is pregnant.
	So obviously for us as Christians, what does that mean?
	Well, the pregnancy is, of course, the Messiah.
	And the devil's war is not just against the people of God, but it's also against the Messiah, who is the fruit of the womb, you might say, obviously, of Mary, but also of symbolically here of Israel.
	So great stuff.
	I'm very proud of this film.
	Debbie says it's far and away.
	I don't like to judge my own films, it's the best one.
	But Debbie thinks it really is the it is reaches a level of the sublime that's very hard to reach in a film.
	This film does it.
	Also, wonderful music, by the way.
	So check it out.
	I'm excited to have you watch it and hear what you think about it.
	Now, I want to talk about something that is kind of related to all this, related to Israel, related to the Jews.
	And my springboard is something that Tucker Carlson said at the funeral service for Charlie Kirk.
	Tucker Carlson was talking about the fact that just as Jesus was targeted by the people who didn't like him and who got him, who killed him.
	In the same way Charlie was targeted for what he believed.
	Now, I think if Tucker had said just that, it would have been legitimate.
	It would have been a basis for discussion and a basis for examination.
	But Tucker went a little further, and in my view, this was this is something you should not have said.
	He said, Well, I can just imagine these sort of guys, he didn't say Jews, but of course he he was referring to Jews, sort of eating hummus and thinking, oh yo, we got this guy.
	And then the point, Tucker's point, I guess, was that they didn't really get Jesus because even though they got him, his influence became larger than ever.
	So, but the reference to the kind of huddle cackling, hummus eating, this is really agitated, not just Jewish, but sort of pro-Israel and pro-Jewish people on the right, pro-Jewish, pro-Israel Republicans and conservatives.
	And so there is a battle Kind of raging on social media, raising issues of like anti-Semitism, the whole kind of what many Jews take to be a kind of ancient canard.
	Well, the idea that the Jews killed Jesus.
	Now, this again goes beyond Tucker because Tucker didn't specifically refer to the Jews, but he did bring it up.
	And he brought it up in the context of, in a sense, creating a mental image of the kind of people who did this.
	And obviously he meant to say those are the bad guys.
	Now, this question then, of course, gets takes on a life of its own.
	And I want to zoom in to it a little bit.
	Now, first of all, I can kind of understand why the Jews get nervous over a question like this, because of course, historically, it is justified to like go after the Jews.
	Oh, you are the people who killed Christ, so we have to go after you.
	And so pogroms and there was all kinds of segregation of Jews, and you've got to wear a Jewish star.
	And this stuff did have bad historical consequences.
	Now, admittedly, this was a long time ago, but of course, within a tribe, within the memory that is passed down from generation to generation, this kind of wound does live on.
	But let's just take the matter head on.
	And I think the reason for taking it head on is because there are some people who rush to the defense of the Jews who defend the Jews in the wrong way.
	So they'll say things like, well, that's not really true.
	The Jews didn't really kill Christ because the Romans killed Christ.
	Not true.
	If you read the Bible, you realize that Pilate, who represents Rome, he was the prefect, the procurator, if you will, of Rome.
	He had no intention of sending Jesus to his death.
	He wanted to sort of get, he didn't want to deal with the issue.
	Pilate's sin or Pilate's failure was a failure of quote, washing his hands, moral indifference.
	But it was the Jewish priestly class.
	By the way, mostly Sadducees, not Pharisees, but nevertheless, it was this gang in the establishment, in the temple establishment that wanted Jesus to be killed.
	So the idea that it was the Romans, I think doesn't really work.
	So then there's a second idea, which is more accurate and I think more on target, but doesn't fully address the question.
	And that is the idea that no the Jews didn't kill Jesus.
	All of us did.
	Jesus died for our sins.
	He died for everybody's sin.
	He didn't just die for the Jews, he died for mankind as an atonement for sin.
	Now, this is, of course, baseline Christian orthodoxy.
	If you don't believe this, you're really not a Christian.
	And so this does become a slam dunk counter-argument, which is that guess what?
	Would you rather that Jesus didn't die?
	Would you, if you think the Jews killed him, would you rather that he escaped?
	He outwitted them, he made it.
	God sent his son to die.
	That was actually Jesus' mission.
	And it was a mission, as I mentioned, carried out for the salvation, not merely of Jews, but really for all of mankind.
	At least the offering of salvation.
	We do have to accept it, we do have to receive it.
	Now, there's a very uh poignant moment in uh the Passion of the Christ, and I don't know if you know this, but it's it's um Mel Gibson has talked about it when Jesus is being nailed to the cross, you don't actually see the soldier who is doing it.
	All you see is the hand, the back, the back of the hand hammering in the nail.
	Whose hand is that?
	Well, Mel Gibson's hand.
	Mel Gibson actually insisted, you need to use my hand.
	Why?
	Because I did it.
	Uh, in other words, my sin is responsible for nailing Christ to the cross.
	All of us, sinners bear that responsibility.
	So I want to emphasize that this is a much stronger and thoroughly legitimate way of answering the question, did the Jews kill Christ?
	But even so, there are going to be some people who come back to that and say, well, yeah, Dinesh, but historically someone had to do it, leaving aside the broader spiritual point.
	Uh, who was the actual group of people that killed Jesus?
	Weren't they the leadership of the Jews?
	Weren't they the Jewish establishment?
	Uh they certainly weren't killed by a bunch of people from some other country or from some other tribe.
	Uh It wasn't the Babylonians who did it.
	It wasn't the Hittites who did it.
	It was, in fact, the Jews.
	Isn't that right?
	And here is my answer to that formulation.
	Yes, that is right.
	But it is no more accurate to say the Jews.
	And because remember, when people say the Jews, they don't even just mean the Jews alive then.
	They somehow mean the Jews as a group, which is all Jews, which is Jews who came subsequently, which is Jews who had nothing to do with any of this, which is Jews who didn't call for Jesus' death.
	They weren't present.
	They didn't vote on it.
	They didn't, they weren't there shouting, give us Barabbas.
	They weren't there demanding, you know, they were not in the position of Caiaphas the high priest who said essentially that Jesus had to be sacrificed so that the nation might live, so that the people might live.
	By the way, an unintentional prophecy by Caiaphas, because Caiaphas didn't know what he was saying.
	What he was really saying is that Jesus' blood would atone for the nation and for the people, and indeed for the sins of the world.
	But here's the here's the point I'm driving at.
	The Jews no more killed Christ than let's say the Romans killed Caesar.
	Let's think about this for a minute.
	How did Julius Caesar die?
	Well, there was a powerful conspiracy to assassinate him, to execute him.
	Same with Jesus.
	Who led the Roman conspiracy?
	Well, it was a powerful group of Roman aristocrats led by Brutus and Cassius, and they had a lot of allies.
	But they didn't represent all of Rome.
	There were lots of people on the other side.
	They were on Caesar's side.
	They took up Caesar's cause after his death.
	They in fact ultimately avenged Caesar's death, and Cassius and Brutus were defeated by the forces of Mark Anthony and Octavian.
	So Anthony and Octavian, they were Romans too, but they were Romans on the other side of this.
	And similarly, when you're dealing with Jesus, yeah, the temple establishment opposed him, but lots of people were on Jesus' side.
	And many of those people, some of them had to run away, go into hiding, the apostles, the disciples, the followers, but guess what?
	After Jesus died, these people turned it up with a vengeance.
	They essentially started creating the first churches.
	And you know what's interesting is that the first churches, some people actually wrongly think that the first churches was started like in the fourth century after Constantine converted to Christianity.
	No.
	There were churches, in fact, in Jerusalem in the years right after Jesus' death, but those churches were synagogues.
	The people in them saw themselves as Jewish, but they were, and they were Jewish, but they were Jewish followers of Jesus.
	In fact, they were the first, and this term is sometimes derided, but it's historically completely accurate.
	They were the first Judeo-Christian.
	Some people think, oh, Judeo-Christian, don't they?
	Stop saying Judeo-Christian.
	There's no, there's no such thing as Judeo-Christian.
	Actually, there is.
	The term Judeo-Christian accurately describes the first believers who were all Jewish, including, by the way, all the apostles, every single one.
	Let's remember Paul was not an apostle.
	He wasn't one of the twelve.
	Paul ultimately opened up the preaching to the Gentiles.
	But even with Paul, when Paul goes to churches in Ephesus and Corinth and churches in Greece and in Asia Minor, where does he preach?
	In one or two cases, he preaches in public.
	He might preach, he might go in in Athens, he may go to the uh to the agora, but no, mostly he preaches in synagogues.
	And what does that mean?
	He is preaching in Jewish churches to largely Jewish audience.
	Maybe there was a few Gentiles who also came to hear him, or some Gentiles and Jews, but these were Jewish venues for Jesus to preach.
	Jesus, of course, was himself Jewish.
	So the point being that if you're going to say the Jews killed Jesus, well, a whole bunch of other Jews not only followed Jesus, some of them went to their deaths over Jesus, and then they took Jesus' message abroad, initially to the other parts of Europe, then later to the far-flung parts of Europe and ultimately to the world.
	So the statement that the Jews killed Jesus, I think is wrong.
	It is it is a scandal, it is a heresy.
	Uh, it is a heresy because it it and it's not just a heresy in the spiritual sense, it's historically uninformed.
	And so I think all of this stuff, by the way, I'll just kind of close on this note, and I'll probably be saying more about it in the days to come.
	I think all of this mindless blame the Jews, blame Israel, and and blame Israel for Charlie Kirk.
	This stuff I think is is very bad.
	It's very poisonous, but it's also very stupid.
	It's not only stupid as a matter of fact, there's no basis for it.
	Um, but it's also stupid politically.
	Why?
	Because our side politically, we're on a roll.
	We are in a spirit of not only uh revival and a spirit of confidence, we are actually taking the battle to the left.
	And in this particular case, Charlie Kirk, we've got a kind of trans ring, a ring of trans leftists.
	Um, and these are the perpetrators.
	This is the latest in the kind of series of you could almost call it sexually twisted or trans related murders.
	Uh, and there's a chance to put Antifa out of business, a chance to bust up these trans rings that have a violent dimension to them, and then along come people on our side, MAGA people, people right of center.
	They go, well, actually, we we don't really want to focus on the shooter.
	We want to focus on the Mossad.
	Netanyahu's behind all this.
	Nedanya who wanted to kill Charlie Kirk because some of his donors were upset that he had Tucker Carlson.
	This is just idiocy.
	And not only is it idiocy, it is divisive.
	It breaks up our side, it pushes people away from us that we we need on our side.
	I mean, do we want to actually throw out, say, Mark Levin, a strong proponent of Israel, and by the way, a strong patriot, you want to push him away to what?
	Let in Nick Fuentes?
	Is that how we how we build a winning coalition?
	Is that what we're trying to do?
	Um, I think it's bad.
	It's bad news.
	And so don't fall for it.
	I know sometimes it's tempting.
	We've become so distrustful, we don't believe institutions, and so we're tempted to say, well, if it's it sounds crazy, but it must be true.
	I'm gonna dig into it.
	Uh even when Debbie and I were on our way to the Charlie's funeral service on the plane, we had to set a couple people straight about.
	They're like, oh, well, what do you think of the Israel dimension?
	And we're like, why would you think Israel is behind us?
	What motive does Israel really have to murder Charlie Kirk?
	Uh and the answer is they don't have a motive, and there is not a shred uh of evidence that they had anything to do with any of this.
	So uh I'll leave it there for now.
	Uh but I do want to say that I'm want to come out pretty much four square against what I think is a wrongheaded and in some cases quite malevolent force on the right.
	It's a regret that it's on our own side, but I do think it has to be resisted, and I do think it has to be defeated.
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	Guys, I'm uh happy to bring back to the podcast Augustus DeRico.
	You might remember Had Hideam on the podcast uh, gosh, now several weeks ago, we're talking about this whole idea of kind of uh shaping the weather or influencing the weather or manipulating the weather.
	Uh Augustus is the CEO of Rainmaker Technology Corporation.
	It's a cloud seeding geoengineering startup.
	Its goal is to create really water abundance in the United States.
	The website is Rainmaker.com, and you can follow Augustus on X at A Dorico, D-O-R-I-C-K-O.
	Augustus, thanks for joining me.
	I appreciate it.
	Uh of course, the focus in the news these days has been very much on Charlie Kirk, the funeral uh and memorial service, the aftermath of all that.
	But other important things are happening, and one of them is uh a recent hearing on the issue of weather modification.
	You are the point man on this topic, so I want you to fill in my audience about what this hearing was all about and what's going on.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, thank you for having me back.
	I I think before even I brief you on that, I will say too um, I was uh part of Turning Point USA at Berkeley, and one time Charlie did uh come to the campus despite how hostile an environment it was there and and paid me uh the he gave me the time of day, um, which I'll I'll always remember and I won't pretend that I got to know him well, but um he he was a great man and an inspiration from very early on in my life.
	So um we're all thinking about him and praying for his family as well.
	I'm excited to fulfill the work that he has.
	Um started.
	So that aside, um the the brief is last week, uh representative Marjorie Taylor Green had a hearing on weather modification in the Doge subcommittee, wherein she talked about cloud seeding and geoengineering.
	And geoengineering is altogether different from cloud seeding.
	It's this attempt to cool the entire planet down by uh releasing reflective air souls into the stratosphere to dim the sun, cool the planet.
	Nominally to reverse anthropogenic climate change, or at least that's that's how it's framed.
	The difference between that and cloud seeding is is great.
	Cloud seeding is this American technology invented in the 40s to enhance precipitation and otherwise non-precipitating clouds to alleviate drought for farms, ecosystems, places like Lake Powell or like Mead or the Great Salt Lake, which is a ridifying.
	Um what happened was uh perhaps our our invitation was lost in the mail.
	I would Happily talk to the representative at any point, should she be inclined to, but we we weren't invited to this hearing despite being the biggest cloud seeding operator in the United States.
	And there were two points that were brought up.
	The first was whether cloud seeding is effective or not.
	And on the one hand, some of the witnesses, some of the witnesses said, well, it could be this tool that's weaponized to cause flooding, and we don't know the unintended consequences.
	On the other hand, some of the witnesses said, well, it actually doesn't even work at all, so we should just ban it because who cares?
	Not perfectly consistent framing there.
	The reality is that despite some of what Chris Marts said, who's a very, very capable meteorologist, it wasn't until 2017 that we had the radar to prove that cloud seeding was working.
	And what we know after all the studies from the National Center of Atmospheric Research and otherwise that didn't get brought up in the hearing was that it's a it's a modest way to increase snowpack or precipitation for these places that are in drought.
	Um and we know that we can measure it now for the first time in decades.
	And if you look at places like uh Mathis, Texas, it's this town of 5,000 people near Corpus Christi, they're going to run out of water by Christmas.
	Like that is the current trajectory of that town because there's not enough fresh water.
	If you look at the Great Salt Lake, we have about two decades until everybody starts developing respiratory problems because there's not enough water in the lake.
	Either that or you force all the farmers to start farming.
	Both bad outcomes.
	And so if we can modestly but meaningfully increase precipitation and measure our increases uh with cloud seeding in these Western states that already permit it, I think that'd be a great thing.
	And then the other thing that was brought up was whether silver iodide, the material that we use in cloud seeding is safe.
	Um I think that uh especially with this administration's focus on, say, not consuming Tylenol uh during pregnancies or um high fructose corn syrup or red dye 40, I am very much in favor of making America healthy again and think that people have concerns worth sympathizing with uh over whether silver iodide is safe.
	And what the committee brought up is well, too much silver iodide can be a bad thing, but too much of anything can be a bad thing.
	And the concentrations of silver iodide that we're using are in the parts per trillion in the soil and in the water.
	Uh, and it's not actually until you reach about 101 parts per billion that you see the lowest toxological threshold for bacteria or anything set by the EPA being hit.
	And so we're we're well below that threshold.
	And so what didn't get brought up in the committee was how cloud seeding can be measured and how it can work and how it can benefit all these Western communities that don't have enough water and all of the data that we do have to show that it's safe, data from the last 80 years proving its safety.
	So, Augustus, I take you to be saying really uh two things, and uh let me sort of highlight them a little bit.
	The first one is you're saying let's not muddle up uh the issue of geoengineering, which is something that kind of is connected with fixing climate change, and of course, if you agree with Trump that this thing whole thing is kind of bogus, uh then geoengineering is one thing.
	It's separate.
	Uh you are in a more sort of narrow and focused and specialized business, uh, and that is figuring out ways to get additional precipitation, which is additional rain, additional moisture, to parts of the country that don't have enough.
	And you're saying that that can be examined on its own merits.
	Uh, but it seems like the committee, or maybe it was Marjorie Taylor Green, who's, you know, somebody we know, but nevertheless, sometimes given to kind of these fears, and look, you know, as you know, a lot of institutions have let us down.
	So a little bit of the conspiratorial mindset, I think is is necessary sometimes, but it's also possible to kind of you know let your imagination run wild with you, where you go, well, guess what?
	You know, the the shooter who killed Charlie Kirk was deployed by the Mossad, uh, or you know, in other words, you tend to go with the latest theory, whether or not there's really support for it.
	And what I like about what you did is you just kind of in a very calm way kind of went through these critiques that surfaced at the hearing, and you're like, hey, if they had only invited me, I would have given these informed answers.
	Did they actually contend with the answers that you gave with now and seek to refute them, or did they not even bring them up?
	Um we we haven't received any engagement uh from our response uh from the members of the committee.
	And that that said, though, um per your point on us having lost trust in our institutions.
	We've especially lost trust in tech and in big tech.
	And for good reason, right?
	If you look at the the first Trump administration, the decade that ensued, we saw censorship, we saw lies from academia about different medicines, right?
	Um, about the efficacy of vaccines, say, and uh I do not come from like a strong position as a technologist myself, as a as a tech guy in California.
	And so I I totally understand why people are especially scrutinous about any and everything that I say.
	And and they should be.
	And what my hope is is that if we do have the opportunity to engage in open discourse and open debate about the merits of this technology, about whatever risks people feel that there are, that will be able to not just find common ground and find the truth about how it can be deployed safely and how it can be regulated safely, but also um reinstitute trust in technology, right?
	Like what my hope for America is as a as a Gen Z guy that wants our country to be great and for our country to be abundant and our ecosystems to be green and lush, is for there to be aspirational technology projects underway in my sector, in space uh and elsewhere that actually make everybody's quality of life better that we can actually trust.
	Um, and so I I think one of the ways to get there is through open discourse, open debate, criticism that's well received and responded to.
	And so for having me on, I'm very grateful.
	And for anybody that ever does want to talk about cloud seeding, ask questions about cloud seeding, provide scrutinous critiques.
	I am always open and will always be 100% transparent about it.
	I mean, I think what you're saying, Augustus, is that here's something that potentially could deliver a lot of real good to a lot of people, right?
	And and just because it seems a little far-fetched, or you know, me sitting here in my armchair, I can't really figure out how this might work.
	I mean, Debbie and I were recently in Phoenix.
	We were also where we were in Phoenix for the funeral, we were also in LA.
	And both these places have these Waymo's running around, right?
	These are self-driving cars.
	You you call a Waymo, it shows up at your hotel.
	You use your app to open the door.
	When Debbie and I get in the car, it goes, hello, Debbie, and it then you just hit a start button and off it goes, and it stops at stop lights, it makes signals, it gives right turns.
	So what I'm getting at is this would have seemed crazy if you describe it to someone who never saw one.
	But once you see it on the road and you see that it's actually you feel quite safe in it, maybe safer than having some sort of, you know, driver who in a bad mood uh driving the car for you, you realize that hey, don't be too hasty to dismiss these things, take a good look at them, uh examine what might be some of the qu the questions and legitimate criticisms.
	But I like the spirit in which you have supplied, I think, very logical and defensible answers.
	Guys, I've been talking to Augustus DeRico, CEO of Rainmaker Technology Corporation.
	The website is just Rainmaker.com.
	Uh follow him on X at A Dorico.
	And hey, Marjorie Taylor Green, if you're listening to my podcast, you might want to sit down with this dude because he knows a lot.
	Uh not especially about this issue of cloud seeding, and he might be able to allay some of your concerns.
	Thank you, Augustus.
	I appreciate you joining us.
	Thanks, Dinesh.
	I appreciate it.
	So here's a big one.
	MyPillow is excited to announce they're having their biggest three-in-one sale ever with a limited edition product, a back in stock special, and a closeout deal, you won't find anywhere else.
	My pillow bedsheets, only 29.88, any color, any style, any size, even kings, regularly priced at 119.98 and now only 29.88.
	Once they're gone, they're gone.
	So grab them now.
	My towels, finally back in stock, but not for long.
	Get a six-piece my towel set, the whole set, regular price, 69.98 now, only 39.98.
	And for the first and only time, get the limited edition premium my pillows made with Giza Cotton and a designer gossip.
	It's queen size 1798 Kings only 1998.
	Also for a limited time, when you order over $100, you're going to get free shipping plus $100 and free digital gifts.
	So go to mypillow.com or you can call 800 876-0227.
	That's 800 876-0227.
	Use promo code Dinesh for the best offers ever.
	Quantities are limited, so order now.
	Go to mypillow.com and don't forget the promo code.
	It's D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
	It's the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
	The revival of an ancient conflict recorded in the Bible.
	The nation of Israel is a resurrected nation.
	What if there was going to be a resurrection of another people, an enemy people of Israel?
	Dinesh Disouza went into a war zone to make his new film.
	It offers a new way to understand October 7th.
	Israel, radical Islam, anti-Semitism and Biblical prophecy.
	Could the fate of the world of humanity itself be tied to this place?
	We came back to a land that was largely barren and empty, and we brought it back to life, and we're good to keep it.
	The dragon's prophecy isn't just about the Middle East.
	It's about you.
	Because without that Jewish foundation, there is no Christianity.
	Based on Jonathan Kahn's international bestseller in theaters October 6th and 8th.
	Streaming and DVDs available October 9th.
	Get the film at the Dragons Prophecyfilm.com.
	This film contains graphic violets of October 7th.
	Guys, um, there's a new messaging app along with a private channel I want to talk to you about.
	I'm excited about it.
	I'm actually part of it.
	And it's called Freedom Chat.
	I have the CEO of Freedom Chat on with me.
	His name is Tanner Haas.
	In fact, you can go to FreedomChat.com.
	You can follow him on X at Freedom Chat app.
	Uh Tanner is a an author.
	He is a serial entrepreneur, which means he started a bunch of businesses, and he's the CEO of Freedom Chat.
	Now, Freedom Chat is a next generation messaging app.
	It's built for people who want privacy, who want control over their digital lives, who don't want to be victims of surveillance from big tech and data exploitation.
	Tanner, welcome.
	Thanks for joining me.
	Let's assume that my audience, not always true, but let's assume that they are digitally, they are digital peasants.
	They don't know a whole lot about apps and how to work all this stuff, but they certainly share these concerns.
	They don't want to be spied on, they don't want to be manipulated, they want to be able to send people messages without other people having a look at them.
	And of course, they like following me, which is why they're listening to or wh or watching this podcast.
	Talk a little bit about uh the Freedom Chat app generally.
	Uh, and then let's talk specifically about the Dinesh channel that is up there on that app.
	Perfect.
	Well, first, thank you so much for having me on, Dinesh.
	Uh, it's a pleasure.
	So, Freedom Chat, just as you said, is designed for those that want complete privacy to be able to message friends, family, and associates without big tech snooping in on their conversations.
	So, we offer true end-to-end encryption.
	And what does that mean?
	That means nobody other than the intended recipient can read your message.
	And WhatsApp, some of these others say true end encryption, but that's not always the case.
	So, Freedom Chat has true end-to-end encryption.
	No one under any circumstance can see your message, image, or video other than the intended recipient.
	We don't store any messages on our servers.
	So, as soon as a message is successfully delivered, it's removed from our servers and only managed on each user's device, and we have absolutely no commercial use of user data.
	Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram, and some of these other apps where you are the product.
	Freedom Chat, we guarantee that we protect your privacy with the utmost security standards.
	We prevent screenshots, screen recording.
	So it really gives users control over their private conversations.
	Let me sort of set what I think is the appropriate backdrop for all this, which is that as a lot of us got exposed to social media, we were offered these kind of amazing things that didn't seem to exist before, right?
	So I have relatives in India.
	Guess what?
	You can make a phone call to them for free.
	Just get on WhatsApp.
	You guys can talk for as long as you want.
	And so you're like, wow, how do I sign up for that?
	But as with everything, there is a catch, there is a fine print.
	Uh you end up uh exposing yourself to all kinds of scrutiny, uh, and there are all kinds of vulnerabilities built into that.
	So I think what you're saying is now we have the same services, the same ability to communicate, but it doesn't have the uh let's call it the side effects uh that sometimes go with you know uh medical drugs, right?
	The side effects, when you listen to these commercials, uh they're like, oh wow, I wanted the this is this might cure my headache, but on the other hand, you know, it might uh it's uh you know, it might cause all kinds of problems, far worse than the benefits I'm getting.
	Yes, correct.
	So Freedom Chat, we right now we have private chats, so you can message anyone you want, friends, family, associates, you can send images, videos, gifts, you can edit, unsend, self-destruct anything.
	So it's super, super user-friendly, fun to use.
	And then on the other side, you have channels, which channels meaning like you users can go subscribe to their favorite content creators channel.
	So users can go subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza channel.
	And when they do that, no one can see the channels they're subscribed to or the posts that they react to.
	So it's their own private, perfectly curated news feed.
	These other apps, like let's say Telegram, they don't have end-to-end encryption by default.
	So every single message on a server have an immense amount of user data, those are huge side effects.
	But then also on the channel side, they treat they're more akin to a social media app than a private messaging app.
	So when you use Freedom Chat, your privacy matters, your data is in your hands, and we protect you and your conversations.
	So I mean, you you said it perfectly.
	It's privacy without the side effects.
	Hey, let's talk about this, these channels, because quite honestly, you know, I'm learning myself about these channels.
	I've had a Telegram channel.
	I do treat that very much in the way you described.
	It's kind of like a social media app.
	So if I post something on X or I post something on Getter or on Truth Social, I go stick it into Telegram.
	But in a sense, that is just an extension of my public posting.
	Now, I've just set up a channel on Freedom Chat, but I'm using it a little bit more like my way of chatting with a kind of inner circle of people.
	And if you respond in the channel, I mean, I see it.
	It doesn't go to anyone else.
	I take a look and I'm commenting, like, hey, guess what?
	Debbie and I are boarding a plane, we're heading to Phoenix, we're going to the Charlie Kirk memorial service.
	So it becomes a little bit more of a way to cultivate a group of people that really want to know about me above and beyond my uh public postulations through movies and videos and and social media.
	Am I actually understanding the channel correctly?
	And that's what that's what it does, and that's what it's for.
	Yes, exactly.
	So the goal is people come and they subscribe to your channel.
	One that's good for you as the content creator.
	Nobody can screenshot your channel.
	They can't save your images or videos without your permission.
	You can edit, unsend, self-destruct anything.
	So it puts you in control.
	And then from a user perspective, 79% of consumers are concerned about their data on social media.
	So by subscribing to your channel within Freedom Chat, I can see the content I want without the extracurricular, extracurricular meaning, all these other people that appear on Telegram or X or anywhere else, but I just want to see you.
	I want to subscribe to you.
	And it's a place for them to receive more intimate content because you're in control.
	You can unsend anything you want.
	They can't screenshot you.
	Let's say that.
	Um, and then no one can see the channels that they are subscribed to or the posts that they react to.
	So it really is the own private, perfectly curated news feed.
	So we didn't just create the the most private messaging app in the world designed for independents and conservatives, built by people you can trust that share the same values as you.
	We also created a private new form of social media, which research shows consumers are looking for.
	So I really think what we have is the one-two punch, and I'm super excited to share it with you and the rest of the world.
	All right.
	So let's talk about the mechanics of it here.
	Uh, let's say someone's hearing of this, they go, wait, that sounds a really good idea.
	In fact, I've been wanting to tell Dinesh some stuff.
	I've been listening to his podcast, but guess what?
	I don't have a mechanism here to like talk back to him.
	You're saying, hey, we've created one.
	You can actually do this, and and that's Freedom Chat.
	So what do people have to, how do they go about getting this app, uh, and then how do they go about kind of like walk them through the ABCs of kind of working it.
	So, step one, you can go download Freedom Chat on the App Store or the Google Play Store.
	Signing up takes less than one minute.
	You go, you enter your phone number, you get a verification code, and then once you get the verification code, you can see your encryption keys being generated in real time.
	And what that means is each device gets their own unique encryption keys.
	That ensures that what you have, your encryption keys, somebody else has their encryption keys that no one else other than the intended recipients with those specific encryption keys can see your message.
	So if somebody tried to, and this has happened, the New York Post, Washington Examiner have reported this.
	If somebody tries to log in on another device with your same phone number, Dinesh, they couldn't even decrypt the messages because you are the original device with that phone number.
	So your encryption keys are on that device.
	No one, no matter what, like we don't support linked devices, which has been shown to be a security vulnerability, Russian and Chinese fishing attempts on on Signal.
	That was a big issue.
	We prevent that entirely by not supporting linked devices.
	So when people go, you see your encryption keys being generated, you can enable a pin, you can it have six digits, or you skip it and then you're in the app.
	It literally takes one minute, and you'll see you have your chats and you can toggle to your channels.
	And when you go on your channels, you'll see Dinesh subscribe to his channel, and you can see all of our other creators that we have on there.
	You can subscribe to my channel, Freedom Chat's channel.
	And when you're in this app, I mean, it feels different.
	You know that every message you send is actually private.
	You subscribe to somebody's channel, and you're in your data is not mined, harvested.
	I mean, no, your privacy is respected, not sold.
	And it really is a unique experience when you get in.
	And people should go go subscribe to your channel.
	Go subscribe to the Dinesh channel.
	You'll see the content you want without all the the extracurricular nonsense that you don't want to see on other social media sites.
	Guys, I think this is really good stuff.
	I've created my channel.
	I'm kind of out of the gate already posting on it.
	And if you join it and you post, I'll see your post for sure.
	Um remember also that as a channel gets bigger, you gotta have more kind of more water kind of pumping into the barrel.
	But right now it's it's you're gonna you're gonna be heard loud and clear.
	So go to freedomchat.com.
	That's the that's the website.
	Guys, I've been talking to Tanner Hass, he's the CEO of Freedom Chat, giving us the scoop on the Freedom Chat app.
	So go get it and sign up for some good stuff from me.
	Uh Tanner, I really appreciate it.
	Thank you for coming on.
	Thank you so much for having me, Dinesh.
	After a uh bit of a hiatus, our trip last week to Israel and then later to the funeral.
	And yesterday, of course, Debbie and I did our roundup covering a bunch of issues.
	So I haven't been covering the issue of life after death.
	I'm gonna pick it up now.
	And um, in some ways, I think it's appropriate to sort of dedicate this book study to to Charlie, right?
	Because he becomes our case in point in thinking about what comes after death at the funeral.
	A number of people said Charlie Is hearing all this.
	He's getting really excited.
	This is his biggest rally.
	Look at the size of it.
	Look at the number of people here.
	He always dreamed of this kind of a rally, and he's going to be really grinning and calling all the others and heaven, hey, come take a look.
	Look, look, look at what look at what's going on down there.
	So all of this, of course, is based upon the idea that Charlie's body might have perished, but his soul lives on.
	Charlie lives on in not just some form, but in some conscious form, some intelligent or intelligible form.
	And yet this idea is seen as a bit of a scandal in secular culture.
	And we live in secular culture, right?
	We don't live today in an America where you can take the Bible for granted, where you can take Christian assumptions for granted.
	In a secular culture, the arguments that are put forward need to be, to a large degree, secular arguments.
	And if we reject that, if we go, no, I'm not going to bother with secular arguments, then we're risking losing our own children to the culture.
	Why?
	Because they learn the language of reason in science in school and then in college.
	It becomes, in a sense, their go-to vocabulary.
	Remember, that's the vocabulary they use in business, in the laboratory.
	They use it on the job at a construction site or an engineering site.
	That's the language they use in arguing with their friends and when they disagree about historical or political issues.
	So it's not wise as Christians to say, well, suspend that whole mode of discussion and reasoning.
	We're now simply going to be using the language of faith.
	So point I want to make here is that we should embrace the language of reason and science.
	And the good news is when we do, we see that it supports us, it confirms our beliefs.
	Reason stands in a sense alongside and behind faith and in a way gives faith a rational foundation or rational justification.
	And so reason and science themselves become tools for showing evidence for the afterlife.
	By the way, using evidence that was not available before.
	And so the supreme irony then becomes is that the atheist strategy to destroy the religious point of view ends up confirming the religious point of view.
	It's sort of like the atheist is kind of getting ready to sort of kiss kick the Christian in the butt, and he kind of ends up kicking his own buttons.
	So this book, and I'm still really just in the introductory section, giving the uh underpinning and rationale for it.
	I'm writing it as a Christian, but I do want to let you know, and some of you know this already about me, but others don't.
	Uh I was not always a committed Christian.
	I was born Catholic in Mumbai, India.
	My family comes from the southern part of India, a small town, small part of India called Goa, which at one time was a Portuguese colony.
	This was until 1961.
	And my ancestors were converted to Catholicism by Portuguese missionaries.
	Now, my grandparents used to tell me, well, our family is descended from the Brahmins, the so-called high caste Hindus, and um, and uh they are the ones who interacted with the Portuguese, so the Portuguese told them about Catholicism, and they, this is kind of the D'Souza family lore, but I'm not even sure it's true.
	I'm not sure it's correct because uh history shows, or at least I've learned through digging into this a little bit, that it was the low-class Hindus who were the most eager to convert to Christianity.
	And if that is true, then what distinguished my family, at least going back many, many generations, what distinguished my family was actually its lack of distinction.
	Ha ha ha.
	Now the Portuguese when they came to India, they brought with them the Portuguese Inquisition.
	And I mention this because I don't want to imply that the conversion of the Indians was sort of entirely a matter of like uh preaching and sweet uh reason and sweet uh persuasion.
	In fact, the Inquisition has a reputation for rounding people up and like hitting them over the head, and the days converts then kind of promptly take the Christian names of their assailants.
	If you look at my last name, like D'Souza, where does it come from?
	Well, it's Portuguese.
	It's probably the name of the missionary or the maybe government official, I don't even know, who was responsible for my family converting to Christianity and to Catholicism.
	So that being said, I do want to give you the other side of the story, which is that not all of these conversions were like forced or imposed upon the natives.
	Why?
	Because think about it.
	A lot of Indians rushed into the arms of the missionaries.
	They wanted to be baptized, they wanted to convert.
	Why?
	Well, the answer, you may have thought of it already, but if you haven't, it's the Indian caste system.
	And in the in the Indian caste system, the problem is that the caste system is fixed.
	So if you're in a particular position in the caste system, you can't change that position.
	You can't move up.
	You actually can't even move down.
	It's a given.
	And so think of it.
	If you are a low caste Hindu, let's even say you're at the very bottom.
	So the Hindu caste system has the sort of the priests or the Brahmins at the top, the warrior class, the aristocratic class, the Kshatrias, so called, they're number two.
	Then you have the traders, the merchants, uh, these are the Vaishyas, number three.
	Then you have the Shudras or the kind of the working class, the menia labor, that's class number four.
	And below them, the sort of hated untouchables.
	And so if you're, let's just say, in one of the lower two rungs of the latter, you are in a position of imposed inequality.
	You're at the bottom of a social hierarchy.
	And so along come the Christians.
	And even if they don't always live up to it, they have this idea of universal brotherhood.
	Everybody is equal in the eyes of God.
	So this becomes for you an extremely appealing and extremely attractive doctrine.
	And so that's one reason why a lot of Indians welcomed it.
	They ran not away from it, but they ran toward it.
	And in this sense, I am grateful to those heavy-handed Portuguese missionaries because I do think that this movement into the wider orbit of Christianity, specifically in its Catholic dimension, was in fact for me a kind of gain.
	Now, I have to admit that the Christianity, the Catholicism that I imbibed, particularly when I was growing up, was not serious, not devout, not passionate.
	It was very much of a social Christianity.
	And that is in fact the Christianity that I brought to America in 1978 as an exchange student.
	That's in fact the Christianity I took to Dartmouth where I studied and then on to Princeton where I also studied and worked.
	I was exposed a little bit to evangelical Christianity in the Reagan White House, but I was still somewhat lukewarm in my own religious beliefs.
	And I would have to say that I have been a secular writer for at least a couple of decades of my early career.
	It's only when I moved to California, I began to be exposed to Calvary Chapel, uh non-denominational churches, but these churches came out of the Jesus movement of the 1960s.
	They're very evangelical, they're very passionate, they're very devoted, not just to knowing about Christianity, but living it out, the idea of the personal relationship with Jesus.
	And so I found this to be very powerful, very enriching.
	In fact, I'm steeped in the Catholic intellectual tradition, but I now have engrafted into that the um insights and wisdom, and I think a lot of the real power of evangelical Christianity.
	So if you ask me now, I'm a little hard-pressed to say what type of a Christian I am.
	I guess I am a non-denominational Christian.
	I like to think of myself as a mere Christian.
	I'm using the term mere Christianity very much in the mode uh of C.S. Lewis.
	So that's my way of uh of a short uh background.
	Uh I'll talk a little bit more when I pick this up tomorrow about my kind of jumping into the arena of Christian apologetics, my debates with leading atheists, uh, and then I'll set up the uh kind of intellectual approach that I'm going to be using uh in the book going forward.

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