The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Dinesh D'Souza - The Dragon's Prophecy - Film on the Israel vs Hamas War (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_896)

00:00:00.000 I'm delighted to report that I have joined, as a scholar, the Declaration of Independence Center

00:00:06.120 for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi.

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00:01:02.300 E-D-U slash independence slash.

00:01:05.680 Hey everybody, this is Scott Saad. Today I've got a rare guest in that he is part of the elite

00:01:11.900 group of Three Peets. He has been on my show not once, not twice, but three times, so he

00:01:18.500 must be sufficiently interesting to come back for a third time. Dinesh D'Souza, how are you

00:01:22.260 doing, sir? Very good. I thought you were going to commend me for going to Dartmouth or working

00:01:27.740 in the Reagan White House or making all these award-winning films, but no, I'm being commended

00:01:33.140 here for meeting the standard of coming back on the show three times. I'll take it.

00:01:38.160 Those other things that you mentioned, while impressive, are not nearly as impressive as

00:01:42.920 retaining my interest for three times. We did talk the first time that you came here that we

00:01:48.600 actually shared Dartmouth link. You may not remember this. I was a visiting professor at

00:01:53.360 Tuck School of Business in 2002, and we did discuss both your Reagan associations the first

00:02:00.080 time you were on, and I don't think the second time. The second time, I think it was Vindicating

00:02:04.140 Trump that we were talking about.

00:02:06.160 Yeah.

00:02:06.520 But today we're here to discuss your most recent documentary, which just recently dropped,

00:02:12.140 which is called The Dragon's Prophecy. For those of you who want to go check it out,

00:02:16.660 it's, I'm going to spell it out for you, The Dragons, with an S without an apostrophe,

00:02:22.280 prophecyfilm.com. TheDragonsProphecyFilm.com. Go check it out. Why don't we start there and

00:02:29.220 then we'll expand to wherever we need to go. Take it away, Dinesh.

00:02:32.640 Well, the film is unusual for me because my earlier films, in one way or another, have always

00:02:39.780 been about the meaning of America. And typically, my approach is to combine a political and

00:02:46.460 historical analysis and try to pull the two together. In this film, I cover October 7th,

00:02:53.340 Israel, Hamas, radical Islam, but I also cover biblical archaeology and biblical prophecy.

00:03:00.640 So this is a film that integrates the political and the biblical in a kind of, at least for me,

00:03:09.160 new way. And it is a film that tries to understand the events occurring around us through a very wide

00:03:18.580 angled lens that touches on the ancient past, but also projects into the future. The name,

00:03:26.620 The Dragon's Prophecy, refers to an image in the book of Revelation where a dragon, representing the

00:03:32.500 devil, attacks a woman, representing Israel, and the woman is pregnant, representing, at least in

00:03:39.420 Christian terms, the Messiah. So that is the kind of broad landscape that the film explores.

00:03:48.320 Well, it's interesting that you use the imagery sort of of the male, you know, devil, the female,

00:03:54.360 because in my conversations with Muslims, Arabic is my mother tongue, I've said before that they've

00:04:02.720 often told me that the West is so feminized that it is akin to a woman to be mounted. And so it is 0.90

00:04:11.040 interesting that we sort of see this same kind of imagery from biblical times to today. Now, there is

00:04:17.420 someone, at least for the biblical part, as you explained to me offline, that your work is based on

00:04:24.180 a book by Jonathan Cahn. Maybe we could briefly discuss that and then drill down in the book,

00:04:29.360 in the documentary. Sure. Let me get at it in a slightly different way. The way I developed an

00:04:37.940 interest in all of this, I went to Israel for the first time in 2022, and I was exposed to some of

00:04:44.580 these remarkable findings in biblical archaeology in the last 20 or 30 years. Now, you have all these

00:04:51.360 figures in the Bible. Some of them are in the New Testament, people like Pontius Pilate or the high

00:04:55.880 priest named Caiaphas. But if you go further back, 6th or 7th century BC, the prophet Jeremiah, a little

00:05:02.900 earlier the prophet Isaiah, around 1000 BC, King David. Now, these are figures that, let's say 50 years

00:05:09.860 ago, if somebody were to say, prove to me not using the Bible that these are real historical figures,

00:05:16.580 you couldn't do it. But what's happened in the last few decades, coming out of the ground, artifacts,

00:05:22.800 inscriptions, pieces of monuments, clay seals, and what they're doing is they are authenticating some

00:05:29.500 of these remarkable figures in the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures who are jumping, you can say,

00:05:35.200 out of the Bible and into the pages of history via the pathway of archaeology. So I became intrigued by

00:05:41.100 all this. And then comes October 7th. And I see October 7th, you know, when I realized that this is

00:05:47.540 something that Hamas filmed for itself, and they broadcast it, they were proud of it. I realize you're 0.99

00:05:53.700 dealing with a dimension here of human evil, very difficult for us to grasp the full psychology of it. It defies,

00:06:02.060 you could say, natural explanation. And so I was thinking about that. Then along comes this fellow, Jonathan

00:06:07.460 Khan, and he makes to me some very sort of startling and interesting observations. He says, look, this battle

00:06:13.980 that you're seeing right here in front of you between Israel and Hamas, he goes, this is a replay of ancient 0.73

00:06:20.440 battles described in the Old Testament between the Israelites and a group called the Philistines. So the

00:06:26.960 ancient Israelites fought a lot of different people, the Amalekites and the Canaanites, but their most determined

00:06:33.300 enemy, the Philistines. And the name Philistine and Palestine is, I don't have to tell you, God, 1.00

00:06:40.000 it's the same name, it's the same word, transported through time. Now, where Khan really excels is he

00:06:46.580 says it's not a matter of the name. He says it's a matter of the tactics. They are, in fact, remarkably

00:06:53.160 the same. And he gives the example of the biblical character called Samson. So Samson represents the

00:06:59.940 strength of Israel. He's captured by the Philistines. He is blinded in somewhat of the same way that

00:07:07.480 Israel was, quote, blinded on October 7th. He is dragged, according to the Bible, to Gaza. So the

00:07:13.860 Philistines occupy an area that was then called Philistia, made up of five cities, the chief one,

00:07:20.020 Gaza. So here's Samson in Gaza. And the Bible says the people of Gaza demanded, strip him down and bring

00:07:26.460 him out so he can entertain us. And sure enough, after October 7th, you had captives stripped to

00:07:32.140 the waist, brought out in an exhibitionistic fashion. And you have people cheering and yelling,

00:07:38.200 Allahu Akbar. And so Jonathan Khan says in a very sort of bland, but I think powerful way in the film,

00:07:44.260 he goes, you know, Samson can be seen as the first hostage of Gaza. So what I found interesting about all

00:07:51.900 this is simply its evocative nature, the ability of this guy, and I'm only giving you the glimpse of

00:07:57.960 it, of drawing these parallels. Even though he seems to be speaking, quote, prophetically, it's not like

00:08:05.540 he's conjecturing about the future. He's actually looking at the remote past, and he's drawing out

00:08:11.080 threads of similarity. And I thought, you know, this is something I haven't heard before. It gives me a more

00:08:17.040 wide-angle lens to think about all this. Let me import, at least for purposes of thought,

00:08:23.360 thoughtful consideration, some of this into the film, and then I'll buttress it by the archaeology.

00:08:29.020 Why? Because I want to address skeptics who go, well, yeah, Dinesh, this is all very interesting,

00:08:33.380 but how do we know that these biblical figures were even real?

00:08:36.980 Right, beautiful. So now, you talk about the sort of similarity in the template that was used

00:08:43.860 back in those biblical times versus now. But one thing that wasn't around in the biblical time,

00:08:49.340 I mean, at least in an official sense, was what is the current sort of ideology driving the hate

00:08:55.900 towards the Jews, which would be Islam. Is there a link that you could identify between the ideology

00:09:02.060 that was animating the biblical era hatred and the current hatred that is very much rooted in

00:09:09.620 Islamic doctrines? So the argument here is going to go in a somewhat unexpected direction. It's not

00:09:18.720 going to try to show that the Philistines and Islam, which of course comes out of the Arabian desert in 1.00

00:09:25.300 the 7th century, sort of share the same principles. It goes more like this, that there is a primordial war

00:09:34.040 between good and evil, between God and the devil, that has been raging since the beginning of time.

00:09:39.480 Now, the underlying sort of theology of this goes like this, that the devil is not strong enough

00:09:44.260 to overthrow God. And so the devil adopts a different strategy. It is to find the things that

00:09:51.620 God cares about and try to ruin them. So, for example, in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, why does the serpent

00:09:58.320 choose Adam and Eve, right? Adam and Eve have done nothing to the serpent in the story. But the idea is that

00:10:03.500 the serpent wants revenge on God. And if Adam and Eve are the cherished creation of God, let me go ruin

00:10:09.180 them. And in that, I get the last laugh on God. This is, by the way, very much the way Milton reads it in

00:10:16.160 Paradise Lost. Now, the same logic can be applied to the Jews. If the Jews are the chosen people of God, the 0.75

00:10:25.300 devil says, you know what? Let me run them out of their ancestral land from the river to the sea. Not only that, let me 0.95

00:10:32.100 take their holiest site, which is the Solomonic Temple, and let me put an Islamic victory arch on top 0.89

00:10:38.940 of that called the Dome of the Rock with the Al-Aqsa Mosque next to it. And not only that, let me now go to

00:10:44.780 the other group that came out of the Jews, the so-called spiritual Israelites. This is what Jonathan

00:10:50.660 Khan calls us Christians. And the devil goes, let me go after them too. And so, according to Khan, the 0.89

00:10:59.620 Bible is forecasting that there's going to be a rising vehement attack, both physical, by the way,

00:11:06.920 as well as cultural and moral, on the Jews and on the Christians. And this is, in fact, God, what we see 0.73

00:11:13.060 in the world today. So we're not just talking about idle speculation. We're saying that empirically,

00:11:17.680 it is true that we see more military attacks on Israel, more beheading of Christians, but not only

00:11:24.600 that, an attack on Jews and Christians inside of the West that is coming from the cultural left, and

00:11:30.720 in some cases from the cultural right, which has reached a vehemence that I don't think you or I

00:11:36.000 would have predicted even five years ago. Well, this bifurcation of hate towards the Christians and the

00:11:42.280 Jews is, as you probably know, captured or encapsulated within a saying in the Middle East.

00:11:50.540 First, we come for the Saturday people, then we come for the Sunday people. That exactly speaks to

00:11:56.160 what you're talking about. But let me ask you this. So if we're, I mean, we can discuss this without

00:12:01.980 invoking any spiritual theological elements, right? There is an objectively a society that

00:12:09.560 corresponds to Western values more so than the others. But since we're talking sort of from a

00:12:15.440 spiritual theological perspective, how do you explain, Dinesh, the fact that, you know, you have

00:12:20.960 Christians that are fully committed in their support for Israel, as you might be, right? Well, let's call 0.80

00:12:27.560 them Christian Zionists. But then you've got other Christians, regrettably, many of whom send me 1.00

00:12:32.540 hate mail that are fully vested in their hatred of Jews and of Israel in a manner that makes it almost 0.97

00:12:40.600 indistinguishable for me to know whether it's the most rabid Muslims that are attacking me or 0.98

00:12:46.200 Christians. So how do we square the circle where you have two sets of people, both Christians, that

00:12:53.140 arrive at perfectly inconsistent conclusions regarding their position vis-a-vis Israel?

00:12:58.500 Right. So there is a, you could call it a mainstream or Orthodox Christian position that has been held

00:13:09.740 by Catholics and Protestants for the larger part of 2,000 years. In fact, it goes back to an early

00:13:16.680 meeting described in the book of Acts, where the Apostle Paul, now Paul is a Jew, as are all Jesus's 0.77

00:13:24.000 apostles. But Paul is the, is the missionary to the Gentiles, to the non-Jews. And so the apostles are 0.98

00:13:31.120 getting a little annoyed at Paul because these Gentiles are not following Jewish customs. And the 1.00

00:13:38.080 apostles' view is, wait a minute, Jesus was one of us. You need to become Jewish first, and then you can 0.99

00:13:42.880 sort of accept Jesus as your Messiah. So there's a showdown between Paul and the apostles, and they come

00:13:51.160 to an agreement. And the agreement is that the Gentiles do not have to be circumcised. They do 0.64

00:13:56.360 not have to keep the Sabbath. They don't have to follow some of the rites and rituals and dietary

00:14:00.780 rules, but they have to do all the rest. So in other words, they, they, they have to otherwise adopt

00:14:09.040 the Hebrew scriptures from Genesis, through the fallenness of human nature, to the Ten Commandments,

00:14:16.120 to the Exodus, to the teachings of the Psalms and the prophets, all of that stays. And this has been

00:14:22.120 the Christian position consistently. So what's happening now, which I think is being promoted by,

00:14:27.640 by certain people, including Tucker, is a very sly reinterpretation. And the sly reinterpretation is

00:14:34.200 this, that when Jesus came, the Old Testament became obsolete. There's now a new covenant, which,

00:14:40.840 quote, replaces the old. This is the meaning of the term replacement theology. And therefore,

00:14:46.960 essentially, we don't need the Old Testament. The Jews rejected Christ, and therefore, they are now, 1.00

00:14:53.780 in turn, rejected by God. So this is, I want to emphasize that the people who say all this,

00:14:59.540 they pretend like they are fighting against a Protestant idea called dispensationalism. But in

00:15:06.940 reality, they are fighting with what C.S. Lewis called mere Christianity. They're fighting with

00:15:12.600 the mainstream of Christianity going back 2,000 years. So, so this is just giving you, I don't know

00:15:19.820 how interested you are in any of this, but this is a window into the internecine theological debate

00:15:24.740 around all this. The bottom line of it, though, is that the Christian position has always been,

00:15:29.360 and by the way, it's in contrast to, I'm told that in Islam, you have a doctrine called abrogation,

00:15:34.880 in which later verses can cancel out earlier verses. There's no such thing in Christianity.

00:15:40.620 There's no abrogation. The New Testament does not abrogate the old. Jesus does not abrogate the old.

00:15:48.260 He fulfills it. So, I'm giving you, you know, you know God, I've been a sort of a Christian

00:15:52.500 apologist. I wrote a book called What's So Great About Christianity. I've debated Hitchens and Dawkins

00:15:58.080 and Dennett and Shermer and so on. I'm very familiar with the mainstream Christian position,

00:16:04.480 which I'm defending now. So, so yes, it has been very disturbing to me that in the name of

00:16:11.000 Christianity, we are seeing these bizarre twistings of Christian teaching used to justify really the

00:16:20.120 very ugly anti-Semitism of the right.

00:16:23.520 Samuel Huntington, as you know, talked about sort of the civilizational conflicts, you know, 0.51

00:16:30.520 Islam has bloody borders. Now, there are several, again, I want to couch it in the context of a 1.00

00:16:37.040 theological battle, precisely because that is part of the element of your documentary. So, for example,

00:16:43.460 if you take Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who left Islam, became an atheist, and then became a Christian,

00:16:52.820 one of the arguments that she has made, and that's what I was going to ask you about, is that,

00:16:57.420 well, look, it's very difficult when you're having this big struggle with Islam that seems to be 1.00

00:17:03.000 incongruent with a lot of the values that we hold as deontological principles in the West.

00:17:07.440 It's very difficult for people to come at it from a place of non-belief. And so, having, in a sense,

00:17:14.720 Christianity, it was harder for her or try to convince others to fight against Islam from a 1.00

00:17:22.920 non-belief position. It makes it easier and more palpable if you are yourself anchored and rooted in a

00:17:30.800 competing religious, you know, set of doctrines. Do you believe that that's true? Or do you, I mean,

00:17:37.880 on the one hand, I fully understand that. But on the other hand, there might be other people who are

00:17:41.980 fully understanding of the dangers of Islam, who may not be willing to, you know, accept Jesus in their 1.00

00:17:49.200 hearts prior to fighting Islam. What are your views on that debate?

00:17:52.880 So, to me, I would put it this way, that there is, as we know, this very peculiar alliance

00:18:00.340 between the sort of LGBTQ cultural left on the one side and the radical jihadis on the other.

00:18:07.420 These are two groups that cannot coexist in each other's worlds, as you know all too well. 0.83

00:18:12.460 But nevertheless, they are united, I would say, by a common hatred. So, what is that hatred toward?

00:18:18.380 Well, it's toward the Jews and Israel on the one side and Christians on the West on the other. 0.95

00:18:23.900 And so, it makes strategic sense for the Jews and the Christians, or to put it more generally in

00:18:30.720 nationalistic terms, for Israel and the United States and the West to come closer together to

00:18:35.900 meet and resist this threat. What the film says is that just as the Jews are putting on the armor, 0.95

00:18:43.120 in some cases the physical armor, the IDF, as in ancient times, when you went out to battle with

00:18:48.240 the Philistines, so too Christians today need to put on some spiritual armor. Why? Because if you 0.96

00:18:55.240 think about it, these radical jihadis, for them, Islam has not lost the force of its original revelation.

00:19:02.160 But for a lot of Christians, it has. And so, the Christians need to sort of armor up, if you will, 0.98

00:19:08.400 but in a moral and a theological sense. By the way, when I was at Charlie Kirk's, you know, funeral,

00:19:12.980 this was the talk of that event, namely the need for spiritual restoration and strengthening of our

00:19:22.360 society. Now, I would pull back from all of that and say, look, a lot of my brain is secular. A lot of my

00:19:30.900 work operates in the secular realm. So, my ultimate arguments for all this don't rest upon some

00:19:38.200 interpretation of the book of Revelation. They rest on somewhat more prosaic grounds. I would say,

00:19:44.080 for example, hey, look, Israel is really good at fighting radical Islam. We are not. Let's look at 0.99

00:19:51.520 our record. You know, America, Jimmy Carter pulled out the Persian rug from under the Shah. We got Khomeini. 1.00

00:19:57.420 We helped radical Islam get a hold of a major state. Fast forward to 9-11, we expelled the Taliban.

00:20:03.140 Pretty spectacular. But a couple of decades later, they're back. Obviously, the Iraq war was handled 1.00

00:20:10.760 very poorly. So, the American record of dealing with these jihadis, I would say, checkered at best.

00:20:18.000 Israel is on the front line. They operate in a survival mode. And I think as a result, 0.98

00:20:23.740 there's a leanness about them. Kind of like a guy who lives in a bad neighborhood who learns to look

00:20:27.880 over his shoulder. He's a little bit more prepared for danger than some guy who lives like in a gated

00:20:32.240 community. So, what I'm getting at is there are good strategic reasons for us to ally with Israel.

00:20:38.340 They're actually on the front line of this fight, and they know what they're doing. That's point

00:20:42.260 number one. Point number two, which I think will resonate with you, is this. The philosopher Leo

00:20:48.240 Strauss says that Western civilization is built on the two pillars of Athens and Jerusalem. And you can 0.92

00:20:53.660 see that these pillars have given Western civilization very different things. So, from Athens, we get

00:20:59.340 classical reason. We get Socrates, the idea of the gadfly, of free speech, the Greek theater,

00:21:07.060 Pericles, and the idea of self-government and democracy. But from Jerusalem, we also get a lot.

00:21:13.320 We get the idea of rights, of divine creation as the basis for rights. All men are created equal.

00:21:20.220 We get the idea of a moral law that in the universe that exists independently of us, that makes claims

00:21:27.520 on us. The Ten Commandments being a sort of reflection of that. We get the wisdom of the book of Ecclesiastes.

00:21:34.420 We get problems explored in Job and suffering. We get the teachings of the Hebrew prophets. So, I don't 0.90

00:21:41.960 think our civilization would have become as strong as it has without being, you could say, supported by

00:21:48.740 both pillars. It cannot survive on only one of those two pillars. And so, for this reason,

00:21:54.100 I think that Jerusalem needs to be defended, even by secular people, because it is a foundation of the

00:22:01.060 values that we hold most dear. Beautiful. I actually had recently one of the two co-authors

00:22:08.120 of a two-volume set that's coming out. First volume came out already called The Golden Thread.

00:22:14.480 It's by two historians, one from Harvard, the other from Princeton. I interviewed on my show the

00:22:21.540 Harvard historian. His name is James Hankins. And so, he talks about the golden thread that links all of

00:22:27.900 these different periods, whether it be Jerusalem and the Hellenic world and subsequent periods after

00:22:32.340 that. So, when I look at Israel, and I actually recently had the former director of Mossad on my

00:22:39.980 show, and I know that you recently spoke as part of the documentary, The Dragon's Prophecy. Go check it out,

00:22:46.960 people. You spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu. I raised this question with the director of the

00:22:53.300 Mossad, but I wonder if you raised a similar point, namely that there seems to be a lagging ability

00:22:59.740 between Israel's capacity to fight in kinetic wars, where they are formidable, and in my view,

00:23:08.160 a less than as good ability to fight in the propaganda wars. In that, you know, you sort of look at these

00:23:15.580 guys say, you know, you have some of the brightest people that one could ever imagine, and as manifested

00:23:22.260 in a million different ways. And yet, when I wake up every day, and I see, so who's winning here the

00:23:28.320 propaganda war? And it's more than just the fact that it's 125 Muslims to one Jews in the world. It's 0.50

00:23:34.240 more than just sheer numbers. Did you discuss that? If yes, maybe you could tell us what was discussed.

00:23:40.640 And if not, whether yes or no, what are your thoughts on this? Do you agree that Israel is 0.91

00:23:45.500 not as good with its IDF soldiers as it is with its propaganda soldiers?

00:23:51.100 Yes, I would call this, and this is my view, not Netanyahu's view. What I focused on with Netanyahu,

00:23:57.440 by the way, was Tucker Carlson's question, which was, Tucker says that essentially the Jews of today

00:24:06.160 are sort of imposters, that they're not really the descendants of the, and so Netanyahu, I think,

00:24:11.100 gives a very elegant dunking on Tucker in the film. But I want to answer your question, which is,

00:24:17.880 I would call it the conundrum of the well-meaning decent guy. And by the way, this could be also,

00:24:25.400 you can also use this framework to understand why Republicans, until very recently, have been in a bad

00:24:30.320 situation. Because precisely, they have not taken the measure of who they are up against.

00:24:37.680 They think that the people that they're up against are sort of dumb, or that they don't get it, 0.96

00:24:44.340 and they set themselves the educational task of raising their consciousness. Whereas the people 0.97

00:24:49.620 who they're up against may be like downright evil, and are, you know, so it's like trying to convince

00:24:56.880 the guy robbing the bank that this is not a good idea, because if everybody robbed banks,

00:25:02.020 the banks wouldn't really have any money. People would not trust banks. The bank robber doesn't

00:25:06.100 care about any of that. He just cares. Is there money in the safe? Is there gold in the safe deposit

00:25:10.860 box? Can I get a hold of it? So you have to know what you're dealing with. Now, here's what I mean.

00:25:15.820 If Israel had, if Israel understood the propaganda stakes, they would have released the footage of

00:25:22.380 October 7th on October 8th. They chose not to do that. A very significant decision. I understand

00:25:28.780 why they made it, but they made it because they said out of respect to the families. So that was

00:25:35.000 their justification. But look, two years later, I've been on a Telegram channel collecting this

00:25:39.760 footage for two years. It's the first 10 minutes of my film. I mean, I put you right on the scene.

00:25:45.360 And people have told me, they're like, this is the most powerful opening of a movie since like

00:25:49.480 Saving Private Rhyme. Because, and with the difference, of course, that didn't stage it. It's

00:25:54.000 real. Now, the other thing is that had Israel carpet bombed Gaza on October 8th, nobody could 0.53

00:26:02.060 have said anything. Right on the heels of October 7th, Israel could have gotten away with it. So then 0.91

00:26:06.920 the question becomes, why do they do it? Well, the answer is, Israel decided, we're not that type

00:26:12.280 of people. We're not just going to go carpet bomb them. We now have to make a plan. And we have to

00:26:18.080 target Hamas. And this is going to make some additional risks to our soldiers because, of

00:26:23.620 course, Hamas is embedded in the society. So Israel then sort of goes to the blueprints. They 0.85

00:26:29.440 create a battle strategy. They create a political, supportive political structure for that. But what

00:26:35.460 happens, of course, is that the bad guys, and this is, by the way, the nature of evil. The nature of evil

00:26:41.520 is not just that the bad guys do bad things. It's that the bad guys figure out a way to make the

00:26:48.860 good guys have to do bad things so the bad guy can then point that out and discredit the good guy by

00:26:54.920 his own standard. Right? Isn't that exactly what's going on here? So Hamas, I think, anticipated 0.99

00:27:00.680 Israel will strike back. And Hamas said, all right, we'll be ready for them when they do. We'll be holding 0.98

00:27:06.860 our wives and children in front of us. We're going to dare them to shoot. The moment they do shoot, 0.99

00:27:12.780 we will call on our massive propaganda apparatus around the world to amplify these war crimes. 0.64

00:27:20.820 And we're going to ultimately take the aggressor, us, and make us the victim. We're going to take

00:27:27.380 the victim, Israel, and make it the aggressor. And we're going to sort of turn the world upside down. 0.97

00:27:33.080 We're going to turn the narrative on its head. And wow, they have let's, if they haven't fully

00:27:38.480 succeeded, they've certainly made tremendous headway, as you and I both know. It's funny that

00:27:43.200 you say this, because yesterday, my wife and I were chatting, and she goes, what was the point of all

00:27:48.860 this? They got, they got nothing out of this, Hamas. I said, what do you mean they got nothing? 0.65

00:27:53.020 There has been an orgiastic increase in global Jew hatred. It is the biggest win that one could ever 1.00

00:28:00.960 have hoped for. Even by their lofty, diabolical standards, they couldn't have hoped for anything

00:28:06.260 like this. So I think... Well, one more thing about that, adding to your point, look, they almost got

00:28:12.500 the leaders of the Western world unanimously to declare the imperative of a Palestinian state,

00:28:20.080 right? They succeeded with Albanese in Australia. They succeeded with Keir Starmer. They succeeded

00:28:25.000 with Macron. They succeeded in Canada. So it was only Trump who sort of took it away from them,

00:28:32.100 right? If we had a normal, conventional politician in America, even Republican,

00:28:36.580 they would be tempted to be carried by this tide. But I think what happened with Trump was that

00:28:42.080 he outwitted them at the last minute in the very kind of peculiar way that Trump comes to these

00:28:49.400 things. You know, I almost, there's an element of, I mean, comedy is the wrong word here, but it's

00:28:54.320 almost like Trump is coming to Gaza like a real estate guy. And he's like, I don't like all this

00:28:58.820 rubble. I don't see why there can't be some buildings and some nice apartments, maybe a Trump

00:29:03.780 tower, you know, people going to work, you know, prosperity, high tech companies. But I think the

00:29:10.260 underlying idea is to offer another way. And I think the genius of it is to bring in the Muslim 1.00

00:29:17.100 countries to support that. That is Trump's, you know, you wouldn't think he would be capable of

00:29:22.360 that kind of a diplomatic accomplishment. But I think you do have to give him some credit for

00:29:26.660 pulling that off. That's not, I've seen and you've seen going back, you know, Nixon had a plan and

00:29:31.220 Carter had a plan. It was a Clinton plan. This guy, this implausible guy, Trump has gotten further

00:29:37.900 down the road than any of those guys did. Do you feel, so you're obviously a historian of certainly

00:29:45.180 U.S. presidents, you know, you're an expert on certainly on Reagan and so on. Do you, not

00:29:51.280 withstanding the Trump derangement syndrome that, of course, so many of the existing historians who are

00:29:58.120 all leftist would say that, you know, he remains worse than Himmler and Hitler combined. Do you think

00:30:04.160 that, you know, in 10, 15, 20, 40 years, people will look back at Trump and place him, maybe it's

00:30:13.040 hyperbolic to say Mount Rushmore, but is he this kind of historical figure from your perspective?

00:30:20.100 Well, as I look at the landscape of American history, it looks to me like, by and large,

00:30:25.300 in each century, you have two, maybe three guys who really stand out above the rest.

00:30:31.680 You can obviously find that in the 18th century with, say, Washington, for example,

00:30:36.280 and Jefferson. In the 19th century, again, Lincoln, go a little further back, maybe Madison,

00:30:44.660 perhaps Andrew Jackson, all that, that's a little more debatable. 20th century, you'd say the two

00:30:49.320 leading figures, probably without a doubt, FDR and Reagan. And again, you might dispute,

00:30:56.420 but you can't dispute their significance, that they shaped a whole era. The Reagan era,

00:31:01.940 in my view, basically went from 1980 to 2008, when Obama was elected. Obama started to inaugurate

00:31:09.760 kind of a new era. But I think even though Obama's effect, I think mainly for the worse,

00:31:15.860 has been a lot. So Obama is a consequential figure. Obama sort of met his match in Trump.

00:31:22.520 And I think this is part of why the guy has been scowling ever since, you know, he had a very grudging

00:31:28.300 post just recently about, you know, he couldn't even bring himself to say the name Trump.

00:31:34.740 Because, you know, so, so I think that Trump is emerging as the, the sort of larger than life

00:31:41.320 figure of our time. I think even the critics, if you, if you, you would have, they would have to

00:31:47.160 admit that even if they think that he's a villainous figure, I think they would have to agree that he is

00:31:52.960 a kind of a consequential figure. So I think history will take note of him. I don't think you

00:31:59.480 can judge the effects of a president until after their presidency. So the full measure of it would

00:32:05.620 have to be taken after the second term. But I think we can already see that this guy is, is creating

00:32:11.600 some, some very important legacies, both domestic and on the foreign policy front. He doesn't need

00:32:19.300 the Nobel Prize. But you know, the funny thing about Trump, Trump reminds me a little bit of

00:32:23.640 the ancient Greeks, because in the world of the ancient Greeks, everything was measured by external

00:32:30.420 recognition. You know, for Achilles, he wanted people to talk about him. And that's what immortality

00:32:37.620 meant in the ancient world. You would never hear Achilles say something like, I know that I am the

00:32:43.180 greatest Greek warrior of all time. I don't care what other people say. Trump is Achilles in that

00:32:49.220 sense. For Trump, if he does a peace accomplishment, it's like, where's my Nobel Prize? You know,

00:32:54.120 he needs the scorecard. He needs the, you know, he's all about ratings and audiences and winning and

00:33:01.780 winning for him involves acknowledgement and physical trophies. So there's a, there's a kind of

00:33:06.620 very intriguing element about Trump. There's a part about him, I think, that comes right out of the

00:33:10.860 ancient world. I agree. And I think Victor Davis Hanson, who is a classicist, has made similar

00:33:18.300 comparisons between specific ancient Greek historical figures and exactly what you just

00:33:23.860 said. So spot on. Do you feel that, I mean, Trump is a one-off in that the unique combination that

00:33:32.680 constitutes the eventual personhood called Donald Trump is truly unique. But of course, there could

00:33:38.420 be certain principles, you know, within MAGA and so on that could be, the baton can be passed down.

00:33:43.840 Do you feel confident that, you know, whether it be J.D. Vance or whether it be Mark Rubio or anybody

00:33:49.780 else who may, you know, come forward for the next election, are you feeling confident or are you

00:33:58.300 worried, boy, we've got three more years to get this once-in-a-lifetime set of changes done and no

00:34:04.900 one ever is going to match the ability of Trump to be an agent of change?

00:34:09.760 No, I think that Trump has, Trump is, I would compare Trump a little bit to Moses in the sense

00:34:17.360 that he is a larger-than-life but nevertheless somewhat transitional figure. And by that I mean

00:34:23.480 he represents the transition away from the old Republican Party to the new. He also represents a

00:34:30.860 redefinition of the scope of American politics which is now calculated sort of within the terms

00:34:36.200 of America first, within the terms of MAGA. Even my defense of Israel is within the scope of America 0.60

00:34:41.560 first. It's good for America to have friends and allies and we need to be able to distinguish the

00:34:46.680 good guys from the bad guys and we should be asking what Israel can do for us just as Israel should

00:34:51.540 ask what can America do for us. So, but Trump is not all that ideological about it. So right now

00:34:59.680 Trump's view is MAGA is spelled T-R-U-M-P and Trump also has this view which I think is fairly unique

00:35:07.520 at least in my lifetime that America is like a big corporation. It's like America LLC. He's the CEO

00:35:14.120 and so he doesn't hesitate to say things like, you know, I want a percentage of intel. He doesn't mean

00:35:19.080 for him. He means for the taxpayer. So he's, his constituents become kind of shareholders in,

00:35:25.800 it's really a fascinating sort of, but it's very Trumpian. I don't see either Rubio or say J.D.

00:35:31.500 Mance going in that direction in the, because that direction is too, too sweet genre-y with Trump.

00:35:40.440 However, these are the figures that are going to have to work out the next phase of MAGA which is

00:35:45.760 going to be less hooked on personality and more driven by a coherent set of ideas. The reason I think

00:35:51.920 people like Tucker and so on are fighting so hard, they want to take over the ideological trajectory

00:35:57.480 of MAGA post-Trump. That's really what it's all about. They're, they're trying to browbeat a J.D.

00:36:04.520 Vance. I don't think they can browbeat Marco Rubio, but they're trying with Vance and Tucker,

00:36:09.620 his son works, I think, I believe for Vance. They're trying to basically create a post-Trump MAGA

00:36:14.500 that veers in their direction and people like me are trying to stop them.

00:36:20.140 Have you had any conversations that, you know, you can share or give a synopsis with Tucker

00:36:27.920 post the new Tucker? I mean, like, I knew Tucker well. I don't know how well you knew him, but,

00:36:33.860 you know, I've been on his show many times. I've been to his studio in Florida. We met,

00:36:39.020 he met my family and then something happened. Have you had a chance to sit down with him and say,

00:36:44.600 hey, what's, what's going on, buddy? Let's chat. You know, when I, when I posed, as I mentioned,

00:36:49.380 when I was in Australia with him last year, this topic never came up. It was cordial dealings with

00:36:54.080 Tucker, but we were both speaking about things like COVID and we were talking about the police state and

00:36:59.140 political targeting and the, the, these sorts of issues. But when I did my, when I posed the question

00:37:09.900 that Tucker raised with, with Ted Cruz to Netanyahu, and I was about to post the answer on, on, on X,

00:37:17.260 a clip, I thought, you know, out of courtesy, I better send it to Tucker. I don't want him to feel

00:37:20.940 like I'm ambushing him. So I'll send it to him like, hey, you know, I, I did what a good journalist

00:37:26.020 would do. I took your question to Netanyahu. And then Tucker sent me this very irritable text,

00:37:30.780 basically saying, you know, genetic studies, Dinesh, show that the, the Jews of today are only 0.92

00:37:36.560 like 68% related to the ancient Israelites. And I, I sort of was like, I'm thinking to myself,

00:37:45.340 first of all, you know, with any other group, nobody would think of doing this. Like, you know,

00:37:51.700 I could do studies on blacks in America and say that they're not really from Africa because look

00:37:56.980 at Whitney Houston, she's basically, you know, cream coffee colored. And so she's obviously got 0.99

00:38:02.060 a considerable admixture of white. And so do many other blacks. In fact, the majority blacks in America

00:38:07.720 don't look like blacks in Africa. So they're not quote descended from, so I'm like, but Tucker, 0.99

00:38:12.380 you'd never do that because in 30 seconds, you'd be run out of town for starters. So why are you,

00:38:18.800 why is it okay for you to single out the Jews in this way? I mean, the French today don't exactly

00:38:25.240 resemble the French, let's just say of the Crusades, let alone the French going much further back.

00:38:30.480 All groups have some elements of conversion of, of admixture over many, many centuries. The Jews,

00:38:37.220 by and large, have been more cohesive as a tribe than just about any other group. So I went back and

00:38:43.820 forth with Tucker eight or nine times on, on this topic. Uh, I've never released those texts because

00:38:49.400 I thought this is private correspondence, but it gave me an insight into the fact that I'm like,

00:38:55.080 this guy is like gone, you know, what's driving his gone-ness. If I can put it this way, some have said,

00:39:02.960 oh, it's, you know, the usual sort of conspiratorial, it's Qatari money. Is that, I mean, or is it,

00:39:09.120 has he been parasitized to use my own framework? What, what is driving him falling into that abyss?

00:39:16.180 Tucker is very well off. He obviously has tremendous earning capacity given his celebrity.

00:39:21.940 He doesn't really need, uh, the Qatari money to, to, you know, to be, to be rich. Um, I have difficulty

00:39:30.300 believing that that is the sole factor. Uh, and I've never, uh, even gone down that direction because I

00:39:36.300 don't know it to be even true. Tucker at one point said something very interesting, which is,

00:39:41.440 and this again is pulling us into the realm of the theological. And he was not kidding.

00:39:45.680 He said that he was attacked by a demon. Uh, and, and he said that the demon got the better of him

00:39:51.820 and scratched his body and face. So he was actually wounded by this demon. So I was on Roseanne Barr's

00:39:58.320 show. We were talking about this and I'm like, Roseanne, you know, we were talking about motives.

00:40:02.660 And I said, you know, I can look at the effects of what Tucker is doing, but I, I, I can't probe

00:40:06.940 his motives. And Roseanne goes, he was attacked by a demon. The demon got him. And I go, and

00:40:12.680 Roseanne goes, I know the name of the demon. I'm like, what's his name? And she said, I forget.

00:40:17.520 And I was like, it's Balak or something like that. And evidently there is, there is a named

00:40:22.120 demon, uh, that is in the Hebrew, uh, scriptures. Uh, I wasn't familiar with it, but in any event,

00:40:28.780 I do think it defies to me when it first started, I thought, look, Tucker is being a habitual

00:40:34.300 iconoclast, but he's being an iconoclast in a juvenile way, right? I try to be an iconoclast,

00:40:39.800 but I try to be an iconoclast with, with ideas, with facts, with history. And I'm like, this is a

00:40:45.600 parody of what it means to be an iconoclast in the same way that say Candace's quote, investigations

00:40:50.520 are a parody of like Columbo, right? They're there. She's conducting a quote, personal investigation.

00:40:56.440 She recruits her, her minions to be kind of a delegated, deputized investigators. The whole

00:41:03.980 thing has an element of sort of surreal comedy to black comedy, so to speak. I don't mean black in 0.98

00:41:08.500 the racial sense, of course. Um, with Tucker, I, I end up saying, look, I, I have to bow out of the

00:41:14.960 attempt to psychologize this guy. I just don't know. What I do know, it's dividing MAGA.

00:41:21.640 It's bad for Trump. Uh, ultimately it's playing into the hands of not only the radical jihadis

00:41:28.820 abroad, but also the cultural left in this country. Um, so, uh, this is something that I

00:41:35.360 think we in the mainstream of the conservative movement have to politely say, but firmly say

00:41:41.880 no to. Yeah. I mean, uh, I'll just say one thing, one more thing about Tucker and then we can move on.

00:41:47.120 When I first started hearing his positions, my sort of charitable take was that this was stemming

00:41:54.220 from his bent for isolationism, right? So in the way that, Hey, I don't think I'm speaking as him

00:42:02.020 now. And I don't think we should be bothering with the Ukraine. That's not our borders. Let's 0.99

00:42:07.460 worry about our borders. He was applying the exact same logic for Israel. And I may agree or disagree 0.93

00:42:13.320 with him, but he is being consistent using a set of principles. But then that charitable

00:42:18.780 interpretation of his positions suddenly did no longer, you know, no longer made sense to me. So

00:42:24.320 I'll leave it at that. Uh, what, what are some things in, in, in, you know, uh, making the dragon's

00:42:31.800 prophecy surprised you either positively or negatively? So example, you thought you knew what

00:42:38.560 unimaginable depravity was until you saw the footage and boy, did that surprise you or vice

00:42:45.020 versa, you know, give us some sense of things that someone who was as seasoned as you was left

00:42:50.060 speechless and in awe. So we go down to Israel to film. Um, it was kind of interesting because we

00:42:59.420 picked nine days to do it. And it was not easy to go there because for much of this time, there's a war

00:43:03.880 going on, the airport's closed. We got a nine day window. We slipped in, we slipped out and we picked

00:43:09.960 the right time to go. So our friends all say to us, Dinesh, you know, there's a war going on over

00:43:14.920 there. Are you sure you want to go? I'm like, well, yeah, we're, we're going to go. And then they

00:43:19.020 go, don't go down to Gaza. And we're like, Oh, of course not. We're not crazy. We're not going to go

00:43:22.460 down to Gaza. Sure enough, we go down to Gaza. And, and so I'm right now at the kibbutzes on the

00:43:28.780 Gaza border, which is really where the terrorists came. Uh, this is a kibbutz called Nahal Oz. I'm 0.77

00:43:33.860 talking to, um, a woman, uh, Lishai Miran. Uh, her husband is Omri Miran, a young guy, you know,

00:43:41.060 two small kids and he was kidnapped and dragged, you know, away to Gaza. Hopefully he's coming back. 1.00

00:43:47.780 He is coming back to his family, reunited with us. So this is a personal element for me, but

00:43:51.740 here's the point. I'm talking to Lishai. We're standing outside in her front yard and we can actually

00:43:56.460 hear these bombs going off. We can hear the machine gun fire because Gaza is like a football 0.98

00:44:01.380 field away. So there's fighting going on right behind us. You can hear it in the film. Uh, now

00:44:07.640 she starts talking about the fact that they heard these rockets. And so her family rushed

00:44:12.440 into there. They have a safe room and they locked themselves in, but then the terrorists

00:44:16.260 came in through the window and then they tried to bang on the door, but they couldn't get in.

00:44:20.540 So they go next door and they have a teenage kid. So they bring the teenage kid, put a gun to

00:44:24.780 his head and he talks to them in Hebrew. He says, please open the door. They're going to shoot me 0.87

00:44:28.900 if you don't open the door and then they're going to kill you. So of course the distraught 1.00

00:44:33.140 family opens the door. Um, now as I'm talking to her, I realize that, uh, I have the actual footage

00:44:42.500 of what happened. Um, in other words, this is a rare case, right? As a filmmaker, I normally

00:44:48.320 I'm interviewing someone, they'll say something, and then I make a decision. Do I want to recreate

00:44:52.480 that event so that the audience has a more vivid perception of what happened? But in

00:44:56.660 this case, I don't have to recreate it. Hamas filmed it and I have the film. So in the film 0.61

00:45:01.820 itself, in this documentary, you see her talking and I'm showing you exactly what happened while

00:45:07.320 she's telling you. Uh, she says, you know, these four monsters came in through the window.

00:45:11.620 There are the four monsters. You can see them going in through the window. She says, they

00:45:14.920 kept banging on the door. You see them back. So this to me was really from my, you know,

00:45:19.780 I'm a, just as someone who has been, I mean, I didn't go to film school. This is, I think

00:45:24.500 my eighth or ninth documentary, but it, we have gotten better at it. And in this case,

00:45:30.740 I mean, we had just this riveting footage that, um, brings the whole thing to life.

00:45:36.980 And that's what a good film does, right? I've tried even in my earlier films, like 2000 Mules.

00:45:41.000 I don't want to just lecture you about election fraud. I want to show you what happened at a

00:45:44.960 Dropbox in Atlanta, you know, on, on so-and-so night at 1 13 AM in the morning. Uh, I'll put you

00:45:51.860 there on the scene and the same here. So this film has that gritty quality. And so when it's woven

00:45:58.200 through with these larger sort of historical and biblical themes, it nevertheless remains firmly

00:46:04.820 grounded in actual events. Beautiful. Uh, you modestly started your response to my last question

00:46:11.860 by saying, uh, I didn't go to a film school. You know, who else didn't go to film school?

00:46:17.220 Steven Spielberg. So I think you should wear that as a, but as a badge of honor. Hey, Dinesh,

00:46:22.380 I know we're today talking, we're about to wrap up here. Uh, I know that, uh, today we're talking

00:46:27.420 about the, uh, the dragon's prophecy, by the way, let me repeat again, the, the URL, the dragons

00:46:33.000 prophecy film.com. Correct. Did I get that right? That's it. The dragons plural, the dragons

00:46:39.300 prophecy film.com. That's it. So go check that out. Are there, do you already have the next

00:46:45.020 project? If you can share it with us locked and loaded in that beautiful mind of yours?

00:46:51.660 God, no. What I do is I, I allow myself a little period of ferment. You know, I throw myself into

00:46:59.680 these projects and then I ask myself like, what, what is the next place to go here? Because, uh,

00:47:06.820 certain thoughts come out of this film itself, right? There are a lot of young people, people,

00:47:10.900 for example, who have become sort of deracinated or uprooted, uh, from the principles of Western

00:47:16.360 civilization. And so I've been talking to some of my friends at Prager university. I'm like,

00:47:20.760 I wonder if you'd like me to make like a series of videos on like the core. I did a series for them,

00:47:26.760 by the way, uh, a couple of years ago on the five key figures of the American founding,

00:47:31.520 like picking out the main idea of Madison, the main idea of Franklin, the main idea of Hamilton.

00:47:37.540 So I'm like, maybe I should do this for some of the, for two dozen of the key figures of the West.

00:47:42.080 So this is kind of how my mind works. Like, like, what is the next place to go from here?

00:47:47.900 Uh, and then I try to think of a project for me that makes sense. Uh, I would say, and then,

00:47:52.380 then we'll, we'll say goodbye online and then offline. Uh, what strikes me about you. And I think

00:47:58.780 that came across in some of our previous discussions is that you really do, uh, embody

00:48:05.400 one of the principles that I talk about in my previous book and the happiness book, when I'm

00:48:10.120 talking about occupational happiness, I basically say that any occupation that allows you to immerse

00:48:17.240 yourself within the creative impulse is one that's going to lead to purpose and meaning right now. You

00:48:22.780 could be a chef and create new dishes. You could be an architect, create new structures. You could be a

00:48:27.580 standup comic and create new, uh, you know, funny routines. But all of these people, while coming

00:48:32.800 from completely different backgrounds and different industries share one thing in calming, they're

00:48:37.720 creating something from nothing. And you certainly embody that. Would you say that one of the reasons

00:48:43.980 now you might be just someone who has a sunny disposition, but do you feel that you wake up in

00:48:48.600 the morning and rub your hands in anticipation for the day because much of what you do all day is

00:48:54.900 create? I would say that I've, I have, um, tried to maintain some of that childhood sense of wonder

00:49:05.980 that I felt as, as a boy. Um, that was very much reinforced when I first set foot at Dartmouth. Um,

00:49:15.340 I just looked at the place and I felt like this is a place where my mind is going to be sort of

00:49:22.200 expanded. It's going to open up and, and it, and it is. And then I said to myself, I have to find a

00:49:27.260 way to take this sort of sense of wonder and figure out how to make a, uh, a productive and

00:49:34.480 hopefully not too poverty stricken career based upon, uh, doing this kind of work. And, and I've

00:49:41.820 actually been able to do that. I'm actually one of the few people who have taken my liberal arts

00:49:45.860 education and built a career directly on top of it. And I'm doing it still to this day.

00:49:51.840 Bless you, buddy. Stay on the line. So we could say offline at second by offline. Thank you so much.

00:49:57.600 The dragon's prophecy. Go check it out. People. Thank you for coming on for the third time,

00:50:02.040 Dinesh. Cheers, buddy. It's my pleasure.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - October 15, 2025

Dinesh D'Souza - The Dragon's Prophecy - Film on the Israel vs Hamas War (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_896)

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