Valuetainment - Dinesh D’Souza on Trump Card Documentary & Democratic Socialism

00:00:00.000 The biggest threat to America today, in my opinion, is the domestic loss of confidence

00:00:06.000 in the idea of America. How did we get here? I mean, think about why the Soviet Union collapsed.

00:00:11.780 It was not blown up. It collapsed because it lost its morale. It lost its reason for being.

00:00:16.940 What is the true motive to want to lead America into socialistic ideology?

00:00:20.940 They have inculcated in them that capitalism is unjust. Typically us watching other countries

00:00:27.300 being divided, but today it's other countries watching America saying, what the hell is going on?

00:00:31.920 The same people who say things like, Trump is a dictator, Trump is an authoritarian,

00:00:36.820 are the kind of people who love Trump. The false message is believed to be true

00:00:41.240 because of the enormous power of the media. Who do you really trust on media?

00:00:45.280 When I did the Obama documentary, I was, you know, taking on the most powerful man in the world.

00:00:50.340 A socialist society is a society of misery and tyranny. We're going to have drones monitoring

00:00:55.960 your movements. If you don't wear a mask, we want your neighbors to kind of call in on you.

00:01:00.660 I mean, think about it. These are the staple moves of a socialist country.

00:01:04.540 The only question is, when something has been tried 25 times across two-thirds of the world

00:01:09.780 and failed every single time, what makes you think it's going to succeed now?

00:01:13.440 If America becomes socialistic, who wins, who loses?

00:01:15.940 Everybody loses in the end.

00:01:17.440 So my guest today is Dinesh D'Souza. He's a New York Times bestseller.

00:01:24.700 He's written many books. At the same time, he's produced some extremely controversial documentaries

00:01:30.560 that have done well. One in 2012 called Obama's America, which the budget was $2.5 million.

00:01:37.480 It did $33 plus million. Another one was 2014 called America, Imagine the World Without Her.

00:01:43.680 Then 2016 was Hillary's America. Then 2018 was Death of a Nation. And the latest documentary

00:01:49.320 that's coming out called Trump Card, which I had a chance to watch myself. It's not come out yet

00:01:53.640 by the time this video comes out. Hopefully, it'll be playing at a theater near you. With that being

00:01:58.000 said, Dinesh, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.

00:02:00.680 My pleasure. Looking forward to it.

00:02:02.940 So Dinesh, how did we get here? You know, you're an immigrant. I'm an immigrant. You came from Bombay.

00:02:10.080 I came from Iran. It was a dream for us to come to America. I came here with this idea

00:02:15.620 that my life's going to change the day I come here. I remember the day I landed in America was

00:02:20.120 November 28, 1990. But it seems like a lot of people who are from here see a different America

00:02:27.220 that you and I see. How did America get here? I'd begin by saying that the immigrant has a

00:02:32.600 different perspective by virtue of being an immigrant. So we've grown up in other cultures.

00:02:38.060 And what that means is that when we come to America, we use a kind of comparative standard.

00:02:44.180 We compare America to the country we came from. And we realize that America is very different,

00:02:50.740 in some ways quite unique. It offers possibilities to the ordinary guy that other countries,

00:02:57.040 even countries of Europe, simply don't offer and not to the same degree. And so we are excited by this.

00:03:03.180 It makes our journey and the hardships that are involved in making that journey worthwhile,

00:03:08.620 even though we have to sort of start again, start from scratch. But what we don't realize is that we

00:03:15.800 have come into an America that is divided and that native-born Americans have big arguments about

00:03:23.500 America itself. Now, their arguments are more insular because most of these Americans have never lived

00:03:28.780 elsewhere. They have no basis of comparison. They have no other country to measure America against.

00:03:36.840 And so what do they do? They come up with what I call the utopian standard. So the utopian standard

00:03:42.580 is a world, for example, in which no one has any prejudice. No one judges anybody for any reason.

00:03:49.720 Everybody has not only equal rights under the law, but the same opportunities to succeed in life.

00:03:56.160 Now, most people in the world would laugh if you said these things because they know that life is not like that.

00:04:02.500 We are all dealt a deck of cards in terms of intelligence and strength and speed and looks and all kinds of things.

00:04:10.140 And we accept that as the given of life. But one of the peculiarities of America is that Americans don't.

00:04:16.060 They pretend that the world can be sort of made anew.

00:04:18.940 And the argument inside of America is something that immigrants are a little startled by because

00:04:25.000 we find Americans arguing about questions that aren't even questions in our mind, at least not initially.

00:04:31.160 And my own work has been caught up in all this.

00:04:33.960 I think that my political views and my perspective are very much shaped by the fact that I am an immigrant.

00:04:40.100 I started out as an outsider. I've now, of course, lived most of my life in America,

00:04:44.640 but I've viewed with great interest and excitement this internal debate in America about America.

00:04:52.260 So what caused you to want to write, to want to produce the documentary Trump Card?

00:04:58.940 I mean, there seems to be a, you seem like, I know you're an April baby.

00:05:02.800 My dad's an April baby. You seem very systematic in your approach, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020.

00:05:11.080 And it's typically election year where you come out with a documentary that's been going on every two years.

00:05:15.720 And then your big ones come out during the election year of presidency.

00:05:19.360 But why go from the title of Death of a Nation or Hillary's America in 2016 to now Trump Card,

00:05:27.440 to call the documentary a Trump Card and have it be around Trump?

00:05:31.020 Yeah, it was a decision I had to think about because I have an accompanying book that is out now called United States of Socialism.

00:05:38.480 And that was the initial kind of working title for the movie.

00:05:42.260 I think if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic candidate, it would be a natural title for the film.

00:05:48.460 When Biden got the nomination, I began to rethink a little bit.

00:05:51.940 Now, I consider Biden to be a creeping socialist, whereas Bernie is kind of an explicit socialist.

00:05:58.260 So Biden is moving in the socialist direction.

00:06:00.900 It's no secret that he's embraced many of the positions of Bernie.

00:06:04.540 But there are some Americans who don't see him that way.

00:06:06.860 So I didn't want to make a film where I say, United States of Socialism, people go, what the heck?

00:06:10.940 You know, Biden's not a socialist.

00:06:13.260 I also realized that the guy who defines the political debate, by the way, not just in America, but in the world, is Trump.

00:06:19.720 There's something about Trump that animates people one way or the other.

00:06:24.400 You know, in the play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare writes that Caesar was a kind of colossus who almost stands astride the entire world.

00:06:33.080 It's all about him.

00:06:34.740 It's all about Caesar.

00:06:35.980 And I think right now it's all about Trump.

00:06:38.580 And so Trump card, in that sense, I think jumps right kind of with both feet into the middle of the debate.

00:06:44.320 And that's why we call the documentary Trump card.

00:06:46.400 I love the cover, by the way, your picture on the cover is great.

00:06:49.900 But when I was watching it, I'm like, you know, I think this was produced with the thoughts of Sanders was going to be the nominee, not Biden.

00:06:58.600 Because I love the way this, the flow of stories on how you went about it, from the original stories to Bernie Sanders' honeymoon in Moscow and explaining the gentleman who was Latino with conservatives.

00:07:16.240 The angles you took, it was very, very interesting.

00:07:18.580 And, you know, some of the characters you brought, obviously very, very controversial character, the gentleman that told his story with Barack Obama's experience back in the days that got a few people killed.

00:07:30.620 And some say that's the biggest conspiracy theory where they don't even give it any credence.

00:07:34.260 Some say it is.

00:07:35.060 But, again, I like the way you were going about the storytelling.

00:07:37.840 But would you say today, because the one question I always want to ask people who are in your world, and this is what they do for a living, they have to, you know, they study the topic of politics, economy, news, what's taking place.

00:07:50.480 What is our number one enemy today?

00:07:52.620 Meaning, if I am an immigrant, I came to America based on an idea that I saw in movies and what I read in books, that you come to America, you can have any religion you want, you can't be controlled.

00:08:07.640 I can start a business.

00:08:08.840 I can be a millionaire, a billionaire, or just a guy that just had a regular job and runs a small liquor shop, make an 80 grand a year, and I get to do whatever I want to do.

00:08:16.680 But I control them.

00:08:17.440 I can have opinions.

00:08:18.420 I don't like the president.

00:08:19.340 I like the president.

00:08:20.200 And you got a bunch of these amendments that we signed up for that brought us to America.

00:08:24.760 What is the biggest threat to America today?

00:08:27.100 The biggest threat to America today, in my opinion, is the domestic loss of confidence in the idea of America and in the American dream.

00:08:39.120 Because to me, the American dream and what that reflects, what it represents, is the core of America.

00:08:47.980 So a dream is really about the future.

00:08:50.160 A dream is about a better life for me later than I have now, a better life for my children than I had.

00:08:56.940 And that is this American sense of things getting better.

00:09:01.140 And the second part of that is it includes a dream of responsibility, because who's going to make it better?

00:09:06.400 You are.

00:09:07.200 You're going to be the architect of your own future.

00:09:09.840 And that is an exciting idea.

00:09:11.280 But for some people, it's a little bit of a scary idea, the notion that you're in the driver's seat of your own life.

00:09:17.800 Now, when America was founded, slavery had been going on on this continent for 150 years.

00:09:26.600 We forget this because it all seems like it's all in the past.

00:09:30.240 But the founding was in 1776.

00:09:33.100 And the British had introduced slavery in the Americas more than 100 years earlier.

00:09:37.440 So this is what the American founders were confronted with, that slavery was embedded in the society.

00:09:43.660 It had been supported by the British crown.

00:09:45.960 What do you do about it?

00:09:47.260 How do you create a union when you have states that are meeting in Philadelphia and slavery is legal in all of them?

00:09:54.780 So the American founders realized if we decide in advance, no slavery, well, no one's going to join.

00:09:59.900 No state will join the union.

00:10:01.560 So the American founders decided, look, let's create a union that is anti-slavery in principle, but that tolerates slavery for a time until we can build the political support to overthrow it.

00:10:14.340 That's the American founding.

00:10:16.680 That was the architecture of the American founding.

00:10:18.940 But the view I'm giving you now is not the mainstream view.

00:10:22.220 The mainstream view in the universities that's taught in the schools that comes from the left is that slavery was the poison that has destroyed the American dream.

00:10:32.960 Why?

00:10:33.600 Because we've never gotten over it, that slavery and the idea of racism that is kind of the cousin of slavery continues to be invisibly present inside of every aspect of American life.

00:10:46.360 So this is kind of why the George Floyd killing was so created such an uproar.

00:10:53.700 Why?

00:10:54.300 Because nobody, you know, people didn't look at it and they could have looked at it and said, listen, the lesson of the George Floyd killing is that we have a bad cop.

00:11:02.160 Now, maybe there are other bad cops and we got to go find them and get rid of them.

00:11:05.980 But of course, the solution to bad cops is naturally good cops.

00:11:10.200 But you notice that the left didn't go there.

00:11:12.020 They went in a completely different direction, namely, defund the cops, you know.

00:11:17.500 So the assumption of that is that all cops are bad.

00:11:20.020 Now, how can all cops be bad?

00:11:21.800 The answer is because American society has this built in racism that somehow almost like a virus infects all cops.

00:11:30.640 And so this larger narrative, I think, if it is widely believed by the American people, creates an internal demoralization, loss of confidence, if you will.

00:11:40.920 I mean, think about why the Soviet Union collapsed.

00:11:43.540 It didn't actually collapse because it was attacked.

00:11:46.360 It was not blown up.

00:11:47.940 It was it collapsed because it lost its morale.

00:11:50.440 It lost its reason for being.

00:11:52.160 Same with South Africa, by the way.

00:11:53.900 South Africa had this apartheid structure in the 1980s.

00:11:57.420 It collapsed because the South Africans themselves, the white South Africans, couldn't believe in it anymore.

00:12:02.740 And I fear that that is a fate that may one day await America.

00:12:07.680 But not if not if I have a say about it.

00:12:10.560 So so let's talk about that.

00:12:12.040 So socialism.

00:12:12.760 Here's here's a question I got for you.

00:12:14.440 I don't know what angle you'll take with this one.

00:12:15.940 Here is, you know, one has to believe that even the people today that are running, who are campaigning based on some socialistic ideology or philosophies.

00:12:28.140 These are not dumb people.

00:12:30.280 They know socialism doesn't work.

00:12:31.920 I mean, it's not like even the people that are supporting socialistic ideology know it doesn't work, which means if you're sitting there and saying, I'm running to become a president.

00:12:41.680 My name is Joe Biden.

00:12:42.440 I think Bernie Sanders wants socialism.

00:12:45.580 I think he thinks it's what it works.

00:12:47.300 But I'm not talking about Sanders.

00:12:49.100 I'm talking about a Biden.

00:12:51.080 I'm talking about when Hillary ran.

00:12:52.700 I'm talking about, you know, Elizabeth Warren.

00:12:55.700 Some of these folks know this thing doesn't work.

00:12:58.640 AOC, she's team Sanders.

00:13:00.260 Fine, let's set her aside with Sanders.

00:13:02.740 If they know it doesn't work and they know that could be one of the biggest threats to America long term, what is the motive to get behind it?

00:13:11.500 Is it just to get their names in the history books to say, check, I became a president?

00:13:17.200 Is it because somebody behind closed doors has threatened them that if you don't go behind this campaign or else, is it because a Soros is trying to lead to an agenda to turn this into a communistic or socialistic nation?

00:13:32.120 What I'm trying to find out is they know this doesn't work.

00:13:35.380 What is the true motive to want to lead America into socialistic ideology?

00:13:39.660 The true motive is that they are a kind of person that, well, let me put it slightly differently.

00:13:53.000 America is divided into two kinds of talented people.

00:13:58.200 The entrepreneurial type is the type that makes things.

00:14:03.240 Entrepreneurs, by and large, create things.

00:14:05.560 They build things.

00:14:06.660 They make something new.

00:14:08.400 But there's a second type of person.

00:14:11.760 This person is best represented by the university professor, but it's a broader type.

00:14:16.600 Lawyers are a lot like this.

00:14:18.020 Clergymen are like this.

00:14:19.220 Journalists are like this.

00:14:20.560 These are kind of people of words.

00:14:22.780 You and I are people of words.

00:14:24.900 Now, we don't actually.

00:14:26.200 Now, we do create products.

00:14:27.380 I create books.

00:14:28.160 I create movies, which is a celluloid product.

00:14:30.680 But by and large, I live in the world of words.

00:14:32.980 Okay.

00:14:34.860 Academics and people who live in the world of words, academics and journalists often think

00:14:39.180 that they are the truly smart people.

00:14:42.760 They are the most important people in the society.

00:14:45.860 And if they look at a guy, for example, who owns a franchise of, let's say, 10 McDonald's

00:14:50.560 or runs a pest control business, they consider that guy their social and cultural inferior.

00:14:56.700 And yet, in a capitalist society, in a free market society, it may well be the case that

00:15:03.000 a professor of romance languages at, say, Princeton earns $150,000 a year, whereas a

00:15:10.100 guy who never finished college and is running a pest control business is pulling in $500,000.

00:15:15.480 So the professor thinks, this is outrageous.

00:15:18.220 This is, in fact, an assault on merit.

00:15:20.540 People like me are smarter, and we should be actually running the society.

00:15:25.040 So this is the kind of person who is attracted to socialism, not because they're attracted

00:15:30.480 to the full ideology.

00:15:31.940 It's not that they embrace the full Marxist doctrine of it.

00:15:35.100 They just realize that in a planned society, which has five-year plans, which has the government

00:15:40.840 running things, people like them will be in charge.

00:15:45.120 So Elizabeth Warren, for example, thinks that she could run the banks better than the banks

00:15:49.700 can run the banks.

00:15:50.660 It's simply not true.

00:15:51.600 Bernie Sanders honestly thinks that he can run the energy industry better than all the

00:15:57.220 guys in Texas who dig holes in the ground.

00:15:59.760 Those are guys who get their fingers dirty.

00:16:02.420 They are familiar with technology.

00:16:04.440 They know how to get oil out of the ground.

00:16:05.960 Bernie Sanders has absolutely no idea.

00:16:07.860 I don't even think he knows what fracking is.

00:16:10.300 But somehow he thinks that I'm a smart guy.

00:16:12.800 It can't be that hard.

00:16:14.100 And wouldn't it be better, instead of having all these wildcatters running around, digging

00:16:18.560 out oil in the ground and hurting the environment, doing whatever they want, wouldn't it be good

00:16:22.940 to have a rational planning process that governs all of that?

00:16:27.160 So these guys, in that sense, it is the combination of the attraction of power and the honest belief

00:16:33.340 that people like them are better at running this society than the people who are running it now.

00:16:38.780 Yeah, but that still doesn't answer my question.

00:16:42.160 What I'm trying to find out is, let's focus on Biden and let's focus on Obama, okay?

00:16:49.760 When Obama first got elected, the threat was, oh, this guy may be a communist.

00:16:53.060 You guys got to be careful because, you know, his father, when he wrote the book about his

00:16:57.040 father and, you know, mother and the influence that he had in his life growing up and Van

00:17:00.860 Jones, when he was first, Van Jones used to be linked to a communist.

00:17:03.160 Oh my gosh, this guy may be a communist.

00:17:04.800 I don't want to go.

00:17:05.700 And then the guy got elected.

00:17:06.660 Okay, I mean, he did some stuff, but Obama wasn't as scary as people thought he was going

00:17:12.680 to be, right?

00:17:13.680 I would say, even as somebody that's fiscally conservative, registered, independent, people

00:17:20.340 thought he was going to be, a lot of people were worried about what he was going to do,

00:17:25.020 fundamentally changing things.

00:17:26.680 Now you got a Sanders.

00:17:27.880 He is fully fundamentally on the complete opposite side.

00:17:32.040 AOC, fully on a whole different side.

00:17:34.100 Like Bernie Sanders probably doesn't think that Obama did enough.

00:17:37.560 Like he should have done this and he should have done that.

00:17:39.480 And secretly, he probably feels disappointed with the amount of social programs that Obama

00:17:45.160 came up with or didn't come up with, right?

00:17:47.740 What I'm trying, what I'm asking here is the following.

00:17:50.280 I'm trying to find out for myself.

00:17:52.240 And maybe this is a selfish question I'm asking.

00:17:55.640 The world knows socialism doesn't work.

00:17:58.100 The world knows communism doesn't work.

00:18:01.540 The world knows you can't show a product that was developed from that system.

00:18:06.980 Even all these countries like Russia and China eventually said, dude, we got to get to this

00:18:10.900 capitalism system to give people to own businesses and have identity and all this other stuff.

00:18:16.300 What is the motive to get the only country left in the world that's the leading country in

00:18:21.940 the philosophy of capitalism?

00:18:24.080 If this thing goes, a lot are going to follow.

00:18:27.200 Why would you drive the initiative of socialism knowing that doesn't work?

00:18:32.160 What is the motive behind that?

00:18:33.560 It's got to be more than the professors thinking the fact that the plumber's making $500,000

00:18:38.500 without a degree.

00:18:39.380 It's got to be bigger than that.

00:18:40.680 What's the motive?

00:18:41.980 It operates on many levels.

00:18:44.020 That's just one level.

00:18:45.480 Here's another level.

00:18:46.420 You've got all these young people, and they are actually living in the middle of technological

00:18:52.420 capitalism, but they're a little bit like the fish that is not really conscious of the

00:18:57.500 water because the water is all around them.

00:18:59.620 Their world includes Uber and iPhones and Airbnb and GPS.

00:19:07.260 Now, none of this would have come without technological capitalism, right?

00:19:10.700 If you had left it up to the post office, for example, they probably wouldn't even have

00:19:14.360 thought of overnight mail.

00:19:15.440 It took outside-age private companies like UPS and FedEx, and then the post office goes,

00:19:21.000 oh, wow, even though the airplane's been around for 100 years, we can still do that.

00:19:25.840 We can do it now.

00:19:27.580 But no innovation comes out of government, per se, or very little.

00:19:32.880 But for a lot of young people, they take all this for granted.

00:19:35.980 They never think about how did all these things come to be?

00:19:39.600 They didn't magically fall out of the sky.

00:19:41.500 What is the system that produced them?

00:19:43.200 They don't think about that.

00:19:44.040 Rather, what they think about is simply this.

00:19:47.520 They have, and I think their professors are very complicit in this, have inculcated in

00:19:52.660 them the honest belief that capitalism is unjust.

00:19:57.940 And in fairness, I have to say that the defenders of capitalism don't do a good job in explaining

00:20:04.680 why it is just, not just why it is efficient, but why it is just.

00:20:09.240 So, for example, if a guy makes something, let's just take me as an author, for example.

00:20:15.540 Now, if I write a book, and I publish it, and it happens to be during the Great Depression,

00:20:20.740 and nobody buys the book.

00:20:22.920 The book is, let's say, a failure.

00:20:24.780 And then 10 years later, the economy recovers and is doing better.

00:20:28.200 And I issue the same book, and it's a massive success.

00:20:32.080 Think about it.

00:20:32.620 It's the same book.

00:20:33.680 In terms of the merit of it, I've released the same product.

00:20:36.760 But in one environment, it's unsuccessful.

00:20:38.920 In another environment, I'm a millionaire.

00:20:40.620 So, the ordinary guy looking at that goes, well, how can a system be just when the same

00:20:46.460 product in two different environments produces a completely different outcome?

00:20:50.500 So, what happens is young people are raised to believe that there's something completely

00:20:55.720 arbitrary about the rewards of capitalism, and therefore, they become vulnerable to the

00:21:01.240 argument, hey, why don't we have a different organization?

00:21:04.340 Maybe socialism, in the old sense, doesn't work.

00:21:06.660 But it is partly the American optimism that says, we can find a way that's going to make

00:21:11.860 it work.

00:21:12.480 We're going to find a way that will leave all the problems of the past behind.

00:21:16.880 And so, for example, one common thing you hear politicians say is, we don't want authoritarian

00:21:21.660 socialism.

00:21:22.700 We don't want the socialism of Mao and Lenin and Stalin.

00:21:26.400 We're not going there.

00:21:27.360 We want democratic socialism.

00:21:29.740 And so, if you listen to AOC or Bernie Sanders, they almost never use the word socialism

00:21:35.000 without the adjective democratic.

00:21:37.460 Yes.

00:21:37.820 Why?

00:21:38.420 Because they believe that democracy, this idea of popular consent, gives more legitimacy

00:21:44.660 to the idea of socialism.

00:21:46.260 So, they're trying to create, in fairness, they're trying to create something of a new

00:21:49.880 type of socialism that hasn't existed before.

00:21:52.480 The only question is, when something has been tried, not once or twice, but 25 times across

00:21:58.160 virtually two-thirds of the world and failed every single time, what makes you think it's

00:22:03.300 going to succeed now?

00:22:04.100 Well, okay.

00:22:06.080 So, socialism, capitalism.

00:22:07.840 If America becomes socialistic, who wins?

00:22:09.680 Who loses?

00:22:11.720 Well, everybody loses in the end because a socialist society is a society of misery and tyranny.

00:22:20.220 This seems a little hard for Americans to believe.

00:22:22.760 My wife is from Venezuela.

00:22:24.580 And so, she talks about how in Venezuela today, if you walk into grocery stores, and this has

00:22:29.020 been true now for almost 20 years, the grocery store is completely empty.

00:22:32.620 All it has is like 100 bottles of ketchup, empty shelves.

00:22:37.200 So, even if you have money, you can't buy anything.

00:22:39.580 Now, if I were to say this to Americans, they give me a funny look like, this is ridiculous.

00:22:44.080 This is hard to believe.

00:22:45.340 But interestingly, under coronavirus, we just got a little small preview on a temporary

00:22:50.940 basis of what socialism would look like on a permanent basis.

00:22:54.400 And the other thing we saw in the coronavirus was a kind of, this is the beginning of an

00:22:59.400 attack on civil liberties.

00:23:00.460 And by that, I mean things like, we're going to have drones monitoring your movements.

00:23:05.020 If you don't wear a mask, we want your neighbors to kind of call in on you.

00:23:09.180 I mean, think about it.

00:23:09.920 These are the staple moves of a socialist country.

00:23:13.220 You know, report on your parents.

00:23:15.460 And you never think you'd see this in America, but we've seen little glimmers of it in America

00:23:19.940 in the last several months.

00:23:22.760 Yeah.

00:23:23.160 And you're seeing the exit is taking place right now with Elon Musk saying, listen, I'm

00:23:27.100 going to move my Tesla corporation and build the trucks and all these other things out of

00:23:31.300 Austin.

00:23:31.700 And even a podcaster like Rogan said, I'm just leaving Austin myself as well.

00:23:35.860 I'm not going to stay here.

00:23:36.620 I'm going to go out there and, you know, whatever part of Texas that Rogan is going to be moving

00:23:39.760 to, but he's leaving California because they're both extremely frustrated what's going on with

00:23:43.880 California.

00:23:44.980 You know, the concept of capitalism is two things becomes the enemy.

00:23:51.700 The few protected by the majority, the majority protected by the few.

00:23:56.280 So if you're part of the few that's creating the jobs and you're very wealthy and you've done

00:24:00.720 very well, you can be bullied by the majority.

00:24:05.580 How are the few protected by the majority?

00:24:08.760 I guess the question I'm trying to ask is the following.

00:24:10.520 So in a sales organization and a company that expands, sometimes companies that are in sales,

00:24:18.180 they flatten out because they want to recognize everybody because they're afraid of losing sales

00:24:22.620 people.

00:24:23.480 So for example, imagine I'm running a real estate company.

00:24:25.800 I got a hundred realtors.

00:24:27.920 I have to say, well, you know, Johnny's also doing good.

00:24:31.080 Bobby's also doing good.

00:24:32.160 Great job, Larry.

00:24:33.000 Great job, Jackie.

00:24:33.860 Great job, Mary.

00:24:34.840 And competition goes away.

00:24:36.300 So then the guy that's killing it, he's doing 20, 50% of the production.

00:24:40.580 He said, I'm going somewhere else because I need the proper recognition.

00:24:43.980 But sometimes the 82 agents who are not the top producers complaining about the one guy can drive

00:24:50.800 the one guy away to say, I can't be here.

00:24:53.700 You guys are not realizing.

00:24:55.020 I'm here at 6 a.m.

00:24:56.000 I'm leaving 9.

00:24:56.860 I'm working on the weekends.

00:24:57.940 You guys are not.

00:24:58.940 You're bringing in two deals a month.

00:25:00.260 I'm bringing in 10 deals a month.

00:25:01.800 How can I be protected here?

00:25:03.300 My question for you is this.

00:25:05.280 The few who are willing to work their tails off and create jobs and constantly innovate

00:25:10.000 and take this to the next level, how are they protected by the majority in America?

00:25:15.540 So they aren't.

00:25:16.980 And I think you've now touched on maybe the heart of the problem.

00:25:20.240 And it applies, by the way, way beyond the economy.

00:25:23.240 It applies in politics.

00:25:24.180 It applies in every high school.

00:25:26.520 When I was in school, we had, this was in India.

00:25:30.300 I was in high school in India.

00:25:31.300 I went to college in the United States.

00:25:32.920 We had a system of ranking, which literally meant that in my class, which had 50 students

00:25:37.740 in it, they would give you grades and they would tell you who's first in class and who's

00:25:41.420 second and third, all the way to 50.

00:25:43.300 So the dumbest guy in class knew that he was the dumbest because he was number 50, right?

00:25:48.040 Till today it's like that?

00:25:49.700 I think till today it's like that.

00:25:51.280 Now, the point I want to make is this.

00:25:54.420 Naturally, a system like this produces discontent among all the people who are at the bottom.

00:26:00.540 And if a teacher were to come along and say, listen, I want to abolish this ranking system.

00:26:05.740 In fact, I don't want to have any grades at all.

00:26:08.100 Everybody's going to get the same grade.

00:26:09.660 All the people who are in the middle and the bottom are in support of that system because

00:26:14.460 it benefits them.

00:26:16.100 It does not benefit the people who work hard and get better ranks and grades because their

00:26:20.480 achievement is devalued.

00:26:23.000 And so here's the question to ask, which group is bigger, the people at the top who are doing

00:26:28.620 well or the larger number who would much rather pull the standard down?

00:26:33.420 And the answer is the larger number.

00:26:34.760 It's always bigger.

00:26:35.400 Now, in a school which is run by, let's just say, an enlightened group of educators, they're

00:26:42.480 going to say, listen, we need to keep some form of a ranking system.

00:26:46.380 We may not have necessarily exact ranks, but we need grades.

00:26:49.860 We need certain forms of distinction so people are motivated to work hard.

00:26:54.140 Same with a corporation.

00:26:55.600 In a profit-making company, the CEO is going to say, I don't care if Jill and Tom and Dick

00:27:01.420 and Harry feel demoralized, I need to encourage salesmen who are going to actually make the

00:27:06.520 sale.

00:27:07.180 I need to create an environment where everyone has a chance, but the people who succeed are

00:27:11.940 recognized.

00:27:12.800 Now, here's the point.

00:27:13.600 In politics, however, it's the opposite.

00:27:16.520 You were asking earlier about people like Biden.

00:27:18.580 So it's dawned upon people like Biden and people like Elizabeth Warren that the people who truly

00:27:23.620 create wealth is a small group in society, whereas the people who actually want more

00:27:29.760 of that wealth or would rather see the wealth spread around is a larger group in society.

00:27:34.440 So to put it differently, the writer, Bernard Shaw, once said, any government that robs Peter

00:27:40.100 to pay Paul can always count on Paul's vote.

00:27:43.940 And so interestingly, our politicians have figured out, you take an Elon Musk, what if I were to

00:27:49.880 say, let's just take away half of his money and give it to 10,000 people who will then

00:27:55.500 be the beneficiaries of that?

00:27:57.620 Obviously, there's one guy who's going to be opposed, Elon Musk, and there are going to

00:28:01.320 be 10,000 people who go, yeah, give it, give it, that's a more just system.

00:28:05.140 I vote for that.

00:28:06.480 So although this is a very crude example, in some ways it captures the heart of what democratic

00:28:12.460 socialism is all about.

00:28:13.560 It's all about confiscating from the wealth creators and giving to people who are not as

00:28:19.460 well off, not because they're needy, not because of social justice, but because that's how you

00:28:24.460 get their political support.

00:28:26.020 So what can the few do to be protected by the majority?

00:28:30.800 The few, incredibly, have only one defense in a democratic society.

00:28:36.080 I mean, from the founder's point of view, there's a constitutional defense.

00:28:39.800 So the constitution was set up so that the majority cannot raid the few.

00:28:44.680 But the problem is that even our constitution is open to interpretation.

00:28:48.860 And so our constitution has not proved as strong a barrier to people confiscating wealth in

00:28:55.180 this way.

00:28:55.780 So the bottom line is the few can only do one thing.

00:28:57.840 They have to convince the many that this is not a good thing.

00:29:02.400 So in other words, the few have got to convince the American people that a mass ripoff of the

00:29:07.940 few, it will ultimately hurt the many also.

00:29:12.880 Yeah.

00:29:13.480 It's not easy to do.

00:29:14.720 Yeah.

00:29:15.200 It's not easy to do because the many have an immediate gain by raiding the few.

00:29:20.840 And the few have to make an argument that's kind of a long-term argument that, listen,

00:29:24.940 if you come and rob my house, I'm not going to want to make new stuff.

00:29:28.360 And there aren't going to be new innovations and new products.

00:29:31.120 And ultimately, you will suffer.

00:29:32.680 But the many, if you're short-sighted, are not going to look at that and go, wait a minute,

00:29:37.620 I'd like to get the free stuff in the beginning.

00:29:39.400 I'll worry about the other problem later.

00:29:41.580 That's a tough argument to win for the few, though.

00:29:44.800 Because the few have to, you have to realize the majority are not turned on by the words

00:29:50.400 of responsibility, accountability.

00:29:53.100 You know, you have the choice to change your life and make it better.

00:29:57.580 That's unattractive to a big community.

00:29:59.680 You know, the, you know, I have, I was having a conversation with one of our guys yesterday

00:30:04.340 and we're having lunch and this guy's in real estate.

00:30:08.700 And he tells me about one of the guys who he worked with, whom I've known for 20 years.

00:30:15.060 And I've watched this guy, one of the most talented guys I've ever seen in my life.

00:30:19.740 And he was a talented bunch of the friends, maybe even more talented than everybody.

00:30:23.360 But he always used the challenges he faced in his life with his mom, with his dad, with

00:30:30.620 his family, with his girlfriend, with his wife, with everybody on why he's not winning.

00:30:34.640 It was always an element of blaming somebody else.

00:30:37.720 And what was a very proven tactic was constantly crying and getting people to feel guilty for

00:30:42.640 him, feel bad for him.

00:30:44.300 And it was a mechanism to say, man, that's why I feel so bad for him.

00:30:47.540 I feel so bad for him.

00:30:48.720 I feel so bad for him.

00:30:50.140 And most people don't have a rebuttal to that.

00:30:52.840 I don't know what to say.

00:30:53.620 I don't know.

00:30:54.380 And then I just sat down with this guy and I said, listen, man, you fooled people your

00:30:57.640 entire life, how difficult your life's been.

00:30:59.400 I just have to tell you, man, your life has not been as difficult as that guy, as this

00:31:03.680 guy's, as that guy.

00:31:04.200 How come they're winning?

00:31:05.120 And we're all friends.

00:31:06.360 How can you say that?

00:31:07.800 What can I say?

00:31:08.380 No, I say, I just think you finding an out to validate why you're not willing to be held

00:31:13.200 accountable, work hard and be responsible.

00:31:14.760 That's a lot of pressure on you.

00:31:15.700 You want to be able to have an out and you don't like that kind of stuff.

00:31:18.300 And that friction of just dealing direct, he doesn't like that kind of a conversation.

00:31:24.400 I think there's a community that doesn't want somebody to say, it's your fault.

00:31:29.940 I don't think there's a community that wants to say, why don't you do something about it?

00:31:33.440 Why don't you pick up a book and read about it?

00:31:35.380 So again, I'm thinking long term.

00:31:37.000 I'm thinking if you're creating an environment of wanting to develop disciplined people, what

00:31:42.640 are you going to do?

00:31:43.140 You're always going to have a community that's going to say, it's not fair.

00:31:45.340 You're making too much money.

00:31:46.220 You're doing this.

00:31:46.720 You're doing that.

00:31:47.100 How does the few get protected by these guys?

00:31:49.100 By the way, going back to the Indian system, India system of one to 50, how did it work

00:31:55.440 out?

00:31:55.700 Are they still doing it?

00:31:56.800 And if it is, what was the energy?

00:31:59.040 Was everybody like, oh my gosh, I'm ranked 29th.

00:32:01.600 I'm going to try to beat this guy and be 27th.

00:32:03.820 What was it like?

00:32:04.700 Did they work better together?

00:32:06.460 Did they not work together?

00:32:07.700 Was it more individualistic?

00:32:09.760 Did people team up to get it to do homework, to get it to be in the top five?

00:32:12.520 How did that dynamic work?

00:32:14.360 Well, when I was in school, you know, like any system, it had mixed effects.

00:32:19.320 It's true that there were some people at the very bottom and they're like, I don't care.

00:32:23.160 You know, in other words, many of them would say, I don't care about school.

00:32:26.300 I just come to school to play marbles in recess or I come to school to play cricket.

00:32:31.060 I don't care about academics, et cetera.

00:32:34.100 When I was young, I was typically in the group that was fifth or sixth in class.

00:32:40.420 So I was a smart kid, but I wasn't that smart.

00:32:42.860 I wasn't at the top of my class.

00:32:44.800 And I remember I once went to my dad and I said, you know, look at these guys who are

00:32:48.860 one, two, and three.

00:32:50.500 I said, are they a lot smarter than me?

00:32:52.220 Because I don't seem, I'm not even close to being able to catch them.

00:32:56.180 And my dad goes, well, you know, son, they actually work a lot harder than you do.

00:33:00.360 And I go, well, you know, I study for an hour or two a day after school.

00:33:03.840 He goes, that's it.

00:33:04.860 He goes, they study for four to five hours a day after school, after school, in addition

00:33:09.960 to school.

00:33:10.660 And I initially, I thought my dad was joking.

00:33:13.280 And so I talked to these guys who were my friends and I kind of asked them these questions

00:33:18.340 and I realized my dad was right.

00:33:20.600 They worked twice as hard as I did.

00:33:23.340 So this motivated me and I go, okay, that's it.

00:33:26.680 You know, I'm going to improve my study habits.

00:33:28.580 This is ridiculous.

00:33:29.960 So I began to compete.

00:33:31.980 So I know in my own case, my psychology was such that having a system that was competitive,

00:33:37.640 not competitive in a mean-spirited way, just competitive in the sense that they take all

00:33:41.640 your grades and all your school marks, as they call them, and they add them up.

00:33:45.300 So there's no subjectivity in it, either your first or your second or your third.

00:33:50.340 This is simply a math, kind of a math phenomenon.

00:33:53.300 And I realized I had to work harder and immediately I began to see my scores improve.

00:33:58.240 And being able to come to America was the result of that effort.

00:34:01.700 I would not have been chosen as an exchange student to come to America if I didn't, if I

00:34:05.680 wasn't motivated to pull myself up into the top ranks of my class.

00:34:10.020 That helped me get the scholarship to get to America, which helped me to go to an Ivy

00:34:14.380 League college and help build my career.

00:34:16.800 So my point is the motivation to succeed, I think, is very important.

00:34:21.540 And we don't want to lose that in America in the name of sort of coddling the self-esteem

00:34:25.680 of everybody.

00:34:27.180 Is that how the system's always been in India?

00:34:29.540 Or is that a recent thing?

00:34:31.040 No, I think it's been that way for a long time.

00:34:33.480 Now, under the British, when India was a colony of the British, the British had a meritocratic

00:34:38.760 system for the Indians, but it had a sort of a, you could call it the colonial ceiling.

00:34:42.820 You know, we talk about the glass ceiling.

00:34:44.600 So an Indian could rise, but only so far.

00:34:47.000 You could be a civil servant, but you can't rise above a certain level.

00:34:50.320 And this is actually what created a lot of discontent.

00:34:52.680 A lot of the Indian independence leaders came out of that.

00:34:55.920 They hit that ceiling and they were like, ouch.

00:34:58.340 And then they realized, listen, we have to create a different society.

00:35:01.320 So the British, in a way, were really stupid because had they created a system where the Indians

00:35:05.880 could keep rising, this would have allowed the Indian independence leaders themselves

00:35:09.820 to rise within the British system.

00:35:11.860 One of those leaders wrote a book years and years ago called The Un-Britishness of British

00:35:16.280 Rule in India.

00:35:17.580 And his argument was that the British are not applying their own principles of merit and

00:35:22.360 freedom and openness and opportunity.

00:35:24.580 They're not letting the Indians, if you will, have a piece of the pie.

00:35:27.940 And he was saying that that's all we're asking the British to do.

00:35:31.160 Be more British.

00:35:32.040 Allow us to have some of the same opportunities you make available to your own countrymen.

00:35:37.240 But the British wouldn't do it.

00:35:38.980 And I think this is part of the reason they got kicked out.

00:35:41.420 By the way, that's just fascinating, period.

00:35:43.420 I know it has nothing to do with your documentary or what the work you do is no wonder India is

00:35:49.120 producing some of the best engineers around the world at IIT and 40,000 kids apply and barely

00:35:55.460 any of them get into the school.

00:35:56.760 It's such a competitive environment.

00:35:58.320 And I was there a couple of years ago, I spoke at IIT with Arundhati Bacharya and Divyank

00:36:03.080 Turaki and a bunch of these other billionaires.

00:36:05.720 And I had a great time.

00:36:06.820 I just, I got tours.

00:36:07.840 I went to the slums.

00:36:08.480 I went all over the place.

00:36:09.840 And the one spirit I did feel was a lot of competition.

00:36:14.680 And anytime I feel a spirit of competition, you just know the future looks bright if there's

00:36:18.700 a lot of competition because innovation is going to be taking place.

00:36:22.020 Thank you for sharing that with us.

00:36:23.420 You know, the one thing you mentioned, your wife being Venezuelan, and, you know, in the

00:36:29.040 documentary, I believe you and her were speaking to one of the best marksmen that we have.

00:36:34.920 And she was incredible at the way, at what she was doing.

00:36:39.040 They were telling a story about how Hugo Chavez in Venezuela had a TV show.

00:36:44.160 I still can't believe that TV show.

00:36:46.000 Did he really have a TV show where he would go around in the city, cameras following him,

00:36:51.420 he would take apartments away and homes away and give it to poor people?

00:36:55.480 Is that really a TV show that he had?

00:36:58.280 Yes.

00:36:58.860 The theme that we develop in the movie is we show the parallels between Venezuelan socialism

00:37:03.660 and some of the approaches to socialism that the left is pursuing in America.

00:37:08.440 And one of those, of course, is to demonize the rich and to expropriate.

00:37:14.760 Expropriate simply means to confiscate, to take away the possessions of the rich.

00:37:19.520 Now, in America, we propose to do this.

00:37:22.400 Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, they propose to do this through confiscatory taxation.

00:37:26.860 So very high tax rates.

00:37:28.700 And unbelievably, you have people in America talking about tax rates of 70, 75 percent, which

00:37:33.820 think about it means you make a dollar, you keep 25 cents and you give them the rest.

00:37:37.480 And that's only federal taxation.

00:37:39.800 Now, in Venezuela, it's a little bit more blunt or blatant.

00:37:44.080 And so Hugo Chavez, who is now dead, but Hugo Chavez, the former dictator, he's now succeeded

00:37:48.780 by his vice president, Maduro.

00:37:51.000 Hugo Chavez had a television show called Allo Presidente.

00:37:54.740 Hello, Mr. President.

00:37:56.420 And you'd see him walking down the street and he'd have a bunch of aides with him.

00:38:00.700 And he'd say, listen, you know, take a look at that store.

00:38:02.960 Who owns that one?

00:38:04.260 And the aides would go, oh, you know, that's that's some Jews.

00:38:06.500 They own it.

00:38:07.240 He goes, OK, expropriate it.

00:38:08.820 And literally, his guys would go in the store and throw the people out right then, right

00:38:13.140 there.

00:38:13.860 And then he'd say, what about that store?

00:38:15.580 Who owns that?

00:38:16.320 Who owns that business?

00:38:17.180 And they'd say, well, that's one of your political opponents.

00:38:20.280 Expropriate it.

00:38:21.260 So then they go in there, throw the people out.

00:38:22.880 So this kind of thing is, in a way, you could almost call it the true face of socialism.

00:38:29.520 Now, no one in America will want to do it this way.

00:38:32.120 Why?

00:38:32.420 Because it looks bad.

00:38:33.380 If you have democratic socialism, you've got to convince the people that you are on

00:38:37.720 the side and on the side of truth and justice and the American way.

00:38:41.320 So if you do any bad stuff, you've got to do it behind closed doors.

00:38:45.240 But it's the same thing.

00:38:46.760 It's expropriating the hard earned money and wealth of other people.

00:38:50.360 It represents their blood, sweat, and tears.

00:38:53.480 Abraham Lincoln, by the way, put it beautifully 150 years ago.

00:38:56.700 He summarized it this way.

00:38:58.300 You work and I eat.

00:39:00.260 And he was actually talking about slavery.

00:39:02.240 And Lincoln said that the essence of slavery is it's theft.

00:39:05.920 One guy does the work and another guy steals the product of his labor.

00:39:10.160 But what Lincoln might have been very disheartened to realize is it's still going on.

00:39:14.440 You know, I have a big community of Venezuelans in the company.

00:39:20.780 I was trying to reach out to Maduro to do an interview with him.

00:39:23.740 And, you know, it was very technical.

00:39:25.920 I believe his opponent, the president, I always have a hard time pronouncing this name,

00:39:30.120 Gaido.

00:39:31.460 Gaido, did I say it right?

00:39:32.660 Yeah, he agreed.

00:39:33.500 And we were trying to orchestrate a meeting together.

00:39:35.340 But the part that, you know, concerns me is here's a bunch of Venezuelans who left Venezuela

00:39:44.180 who don't believe in what Maduro and Hugo Chavez did.

00:39:49.980 These are regular people that wanted to have a better career.

00:39:52.320 They love their country.

00:39:53.180 They love their land.

00:39:54.240 But they come here and they're supporting many of the same candidates who have similar belief

00:40:01.880 system as they did there.

00:40:04.200 Now, I'm not saying everybody.

00:40:05.860 You and I both know it's not everybody.

00:40:07.640 Yes, for every 100 story, I got 20 stories of people that say, I just want business.

00:40:12.100 I'm a this.

00:40:13.000 I know all those stories.

00:40:14.460 But the majority of them, even though they escaped socialism, even though they escaped

00:40:19.440 the model that they had, they still somehow are loyal to it.

00:40:23.600 Why do you think that is?

00:40:25.980 I think that the majority of Venezuelans probably see the light.

00:40:30.160 In other words, they recognize they recognize the signs of socialism here.

00:40:35.640 They it looks all too familiar to them and they immediately rebel against it.

00:40:40.460 But you are quite right that there are some, including some powerful Venezuelans who don't

00:40:47.700 see it at all.

00:40:49.120 Now, part of the reason they don't see it is they are making the wrong type of comparison

00:40:53.480 to let.

00:40:54.020 So give you an idea.

00:40:54.940 There have been riots that have been going on in several American cities right now, people

00:41:01.000 setting fire to the federal building in Portland.

00:41:05.220 And so what does the government do?

00:41:06.600 Well, first of all, the U.S. government is, in its usual fashion, extremely tolerant of

00:41:10.920 all this.

00:41:11.940 If you tried to do this in India, you would get shot.

00:41:15.360 I mean, there's no question that by this time they would have called out the military and

00:41:18.600 people would be getting shot.

00:41:20.560 So very few countries will put up with this.

00:41:22.580 But in America, you do.

00:41:23.760 So the police are basically shooting pepper and putting in, you know, a tear gas spray,

00:41:29.900 but they're not harming the rioters.

00:41:32.800 They're letting the rioters do what they do.

00:41:35.420 But from the optical point of view, what do you see?

00:41:38.840 And let's say you're a Venezuelan in America.

00:41:41.060 You see a country in which the regime, the government, is unleashing the cops on these protesters.

00:41:49.160 Now, the protesters are left-wingers.

00:41:50.660 Many of them are socialists.

00:41:51.800 But if you are to ask yourself, which is, you know, which is the government and which

00:41:56.740 is the protesters?

00:41:57.640 They identify with the protesters because they think, oh, wow, in Venezuela, the people

00:42:02.720 who are protesting the regime are the anti-socialists.

00:42:06.600 They don't realize that in America, you know, the situation is flipped.

00:42:10.860 That what's really going on is that the socialists are the ones doing rioting.

00:42:14.200 They're breaking the law.

00:42:15.400 And they're not breaking the law because anybody's oppressing them.

00:42:17.860 No one's done anything to them.

00:42:19.760 It's not like in Venezuela where the regime is taking their wealth, taking their homes,

00:42:24.740 confiscating their property.

00:42:26.460 You know, none of that's going on.

00:42:28.180 These are people who want to create some sort of revolutionary overthrow of the system.

00:42:33.320 We're trying to impose law and order.

00:42:35.800 But for a Venezuelan, they could basically say, well, look, that's the Maduro regime.

00:42:39.840 That's the Chavez regime unleashing the cops and the protesters.

00:42:43.260 So this is, I think, a complete misunderstanding of what's going on.

00:42:47.340 And that's the downside of being an immigrant.

00:42:49.260 Sometimes when you're an immigrant and you haven't been here long enough and you haven't

00:42:52.460 paid close attention, you're going to make a quick analogy between what happened over

00:42:56.640 there and what happened over here.

00:42:58.280 And suddenly you're going to say things like, oh, you know, the Trump administration are

00:43:02.000 the mullahs, you know.

00:43:03.280 And so you haven't thought through the ways in which America is a different kind of society

00:43:08.840 and protest has a different meaning here.

00:43:11.280 Yeah, it's going to be very interesting because most of them that I know, they're hard workers.

00:43:16.940 They're good people, family oriented, conservative beliefs.

00:43:20.280 You know, they want the right values and principles.

00:43:22.640 They just kind of want to be left alone to go to work.

00:43:25.100 But I can't comprehend how they don't see some of the philosophies that some of these

00:43:30.320 politicians are having.

00:43:31.500 By the way, you'll hear the saying, you know, we want Scandinavian model of socialism, not

00:43:37.200 necessarily what happened with Venezuela.

00:43:38.780 Venezuela, what are some things that we don't know about the Scandinavian socialistic philosophy

00:43:45.660 that I think will shock people once they find out how the model really works?

00:43:51.060 I think there are a couple of points that need to be made here because the Scandinavian

00:43:57.020 model is the only socialism that you'd have to say to some degree, it does work.

00:44:01.420 I don't claim that the Scandinavian model is a failure.

00:44:06.400 It works if you are willing to accept its strength and its weakness.

00:44:11.200 Now, its strength is that the Scandinavians are capitalist in creating wealth, although

00:44:16.960 they are socialist in distributing it.

00:44:18.920 So this is an important distinction because in creating wealth, the Scandinavians are not

00:44:23.260 socialist.

00:44:23.880 They don't.

00:44:24.620 Like in Venezuela, one of the first things that Maduro did was he appointed socialist bureaucrats

00:44:30.660 to run the Venezuelan oil company.

00:44:32.560 Now, Venezuela is the largest oil reserves in the world, more than Saudi Arabia.

00:44:37.160 But it takes technical expertise to get that oil out.

00:44:40.120 Why?

00:44:40.580 Because it's in the Orinoco oil belt.

00:44:42.480 It's a certain type of thick oil that has to be liquefied before you can sell it on the

00:44:47.100 world.

00:44:47.300 It takes a lot of technical expertise, is my point.

00:44:49.460 Chavez fired all the technical experts and brings in like Bernie Sanders types to run

00:44:55.400 the oil company.

00:44:56.240 Well, needless to say, he runs the oil company into the ground.

00:44:59.360 It hardly produces any oil anymore.

00:45:02.040 Now, the Scandinavians don't do that.

00:45:04.260 The Scandinavians are a very entrepreneurial society.

00:45:07.200 Look at all the Scandinavian companies that are doing well in the world.

00:45:10.940 So they have low corporate taxes.

00:45:13.000 They have no minimum wage.

00:45:14.860 You can hire and fire people for any reason.

00:45:16.820 They have less regulation than in Europe and in America.

00:45:20.700 They don't have any of these, no inheritance tax.

00:45:25.660 I think Norway is the only Scandinavian country that has a wealth tax.

00:45:29.520 So overall, the Scandinavians do not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

00:45:34.740 Now, they do have a big welfare state, but they make everybody pay for it.

00:45:39.800 They have what's called the VAT tax.

00:45:41.540 The VAT is the value-added tax, 25% on consumption.

00:45:45.300 And remember that a VAT tax, any economist will tell you, falls heavier on the middle

00:45:49.560 class and on the poor than it does on the rich because middle class and poor people spend

00:45:53.980 more of their money, a higher percent.

00:45:55.660 Can you explain that?

00:45:57.420 So if I'm making $4,000 a month versus I'm making $50,000 a month, why does the VAT tax,

00:46:03.960 the consumption tax hurt the $4,000 a month versus a $50,000 a month person?

00:46:08.600 Because if you're making $4,000 a month, you're going to spend probably $2,000 to $3,000 a month

00:46:14.680 on consumption items.

00:46:15.760 You need it to live.

00:46:17.140 And so as a result, you're paying 25% of a tax on that.

00:46:21.800 Now, the rich guy is probably spending more than you, but he's probably spending $5,000

00:46:25.860 to $6,000 a month on consumption.

00:46:28.240 So he's paying more in dollar terms, but proportionately, he's paying a lot less because he spends a

00:46:33.520 smaller fraction of his money on consumption.

00:46:36.260 That's why the tax falls heavier on their lower classes.

00:46:40.020 I think it's very important for people to realize it because even the Scandinavian economists

00:46:43.200 explained that in your documentary to say that if you decide to come here, yes, it may

00:46:49.420 be socialism, but it hurts the lower income people more than it does the higher income

00:46:53.460 people because you're paying a consumption tax much higher than the others.

00:46:56.740 And that was very good visual that was given there for people to know the math on how it

00:47:01.120 works.

00:47:01.340 Now, the socialism that Sanders and AOC are pitching and presenting, are they presenting

00:47:07.960 a socialism of that model?

00:47:10.720 And can it work in U.S.?

00:47:12.480 If not, why not?

00:47:14.940 Well, it would work in the U.S., I think, to a degree if you were honest about it.

00:47:20.120 So, for example, in Scandinavia, if you make $60,000 in Norway or Sweden, you pay a 50% tax

00:47:28.360 rate.

00:47:28.960 So it's really simple.

00:47:29.860 You make $60,000 or $70,000, write a check for $35,000 and send it in.

00:47:35.540 Now, no Democratic politician in the United States will stand up and say this to the American

00:47:40.940 people because they know that the American people would have a heart attack if you were

00:47:45.480 to tell them that they have to send half their income straight off the top into federal

00:47:49.380 taxes.

00:47:49.820 So what they do is they have a different model.

00:47:52.740 I call it the millionaires and billionaires model.

00:47:55.820 They tell the American people, we're going to give you all these welfare state benefits,

00:47:59.520 but here's the good news.

00:48:00.680 You don't have to pay.

00:48:02.160 Why?

00:48:02.620 Because we're going to catch these other guys, these millionaires and billionaires.

00:48:06.380 And what's kind of funny about this, too, by the way, if you look at the early Bernie

00:48:09.600 Sanders, he always railed against millionaires and billionaires.

00:48:13.080 But then when he became a millionaire, he stopped.

00:48:16.900 Suddenly, he only talks about billionaires.

00:48:18.660 So if you listen to him now, he rarely says millionaires.

00:48:21.140 Why?

00:48:21.540 Because he has three homes.

00:48:23.040 So any millionaire program would apply to him.

00:48:26.180 So what he's done is he's ratcheted it up.

00:48:28.160 And so now he's giving the people the illusion that, look, I'll catch people like Elon Musk.

00:48:32.600 I'll catch people like Jeff Bezos.

00:48:34.360 I'll make them pay for your house.

00:48:36.360 I'll make them pay for your college education.

00:48:39.120 So ultimately, this is not the Scandinavian model.

00:48:42.000 The Scandinavian model is don't demonize the rich.

00:48:44.900 Don't demonize the successful.

00:48:46.860 We are all in the same boat.

00:48:48.600 If we want to have welfare state benefits, the cost of that has got to be distributed

00:48:52.940 over the whole society.

00:48:55.500 Yeah, it would be very interesting.

00:48:58.560 Now, here's a question for you, Dinesh.

00:49:01.620 You got a family.

00:49:02.700 I saw your daughter in there.

00:49:04.520 I think you have three kids, one of your own and two-step.

00:49:07.720 But you have three kids of your own.

00:49:09.140 Um, the question I like to ask when we're having lunch with our guys is, you know, my

00:49:15.360 family left Iran.

00:49:16.300 We went to Germany.

00:49:17.160 If Germany was so amazing, we wouldn't have come to America.

00:49:19.440 We would have just stayed in Germany because Germany's opportunity was great.

00:49:22.140 But my family decided to bring us to America.

00:49:24.920 What needs to happen in America for you to say, you know what?

00:49:30.240 I'm out.

00:49:31.280 What needs to happen in America for you to say, I'm out?

00:49:33.700 And if it does get to that point, where would you go to?

00:49:37.880 That would be a second option to America.

00:49:41.160 Well, um, I don't know where I would go to.

00:49:45.140 And I've probably come along enough in life that I wouldn't make the move.

00:49:50.100 Um, I would stay in America in part because I think that America would, is still kind of

00:49:55.920 worth fighting for.

00:49:56.740 So even if America, in my view, kind of went down, I would probably still stay on the ship

00:50:01.720 now.

00:50:02.860 Um, um, and I would do it in pure gratitude for what the country has just done for my

00:50:08.280 life, uh, over most of my life.

00:50:11.020 Um, I do see an attack on the very principles that I came to America to be part of.

00:50:17.480 So in some sense, there's an attack on that America.

00:50:20.340 And, um, and I'm worried about America because, um, the American dream is fragile.

00:50:26.400 It's fragile in the sense that it, it relies upon people who believe in it.

00:50:30.820 The founders said something very interesting.

00:50:33.000 I think it might've been, uh, Ben Franklin, uh, or Madison.

00:50:36.860 I don't remember now, but they said something to the effect that, uh, that the American Republican

00:50:41.660 form of government relies upon the moral character of the people.

00:50:47.140 And if that moral character is eroded or lost, then the system doesn't really work.

00:50:54.480 Now by moral character here, they're not talking about religious views and they're not talking

00:50:58.760 about theological beliefs.

00:51:00.240 They're talking about things like the work ethic.

00:51:02.980 They're talking about things like the, the centrality of family and, and the family as an incubator

00:51:08.880 of those human values.

00:51:10.160 We learn more in the, in the educational institution called the family than we learn even in school.

00:51:15.560 So the founders thought that this infrastructure is really important for the country to continue

00:51:21.620 to be successful.

00:51:22.900 That's what made America successful, but we have to keep those institutions to be successful

00:51:27.500 in the future.

00:51:28.600 I think that the verdict is kind of up in the air, uh, which is to say, I, I wouldn't bet

00:51:33.240 sort of one way or the other, uh, but I continue to have confidence in that America will pull

00:51:38.720 through.

00:51:39.220 Well, so, so just to push back a little bit, then what you, my interpretation of what you're

00:51:44.960 saying is that all these documentaries that make someone be afraid of what's going on with

00:51:50.220 America, they shouldn't really be that concerned because even the executive producer, a person

00:51:54.720 that's making all these documentaries doesn't think it's going to get that bad where you would

00:51:58.900 want to move your family elsewhere.

00:52:00.300 Is that a fair assessment?

00:52:01.200 Well, the problem for moving is, is twofold.

00:52:05.120 One is I feel like a patriotic obligation not to do that.

00:52:08.380 But the second is I also don't know where to go because, uh, when you, when you say that

00:52:14.120 when you, the term American exceptionalism refers to what's unique about America.

00:52:18.320 So let's talk about what that is for a minute.

00:52:20.320 You know, um, when my mom, um, now dad, but when my mom was in her seventies, she came to

00:52:25.780 visit America.

00:52:26.460 We were driving, um, on the highway and she saw a sign on the side of the road, adopt a

00:52:32.380 highway.

00:52:33.400 And my mom looked at it and she's like, what is that?

00:52:36.260 Adopt a highway.

00:52:37.060 What are they talking about?

00:52:38.100 And I go, well, you know, it's this program in America where a private group, um, the Rotary

00:52:43.160 Club or some group can adopt the highway and they agree to clean the highway and kind of

00:52:47.460 maintain the highway.

00:52:48.720 And my mom was like, well, why would anyone do that?

00:52:51.640 She couldn't understand why anybody would think of adopting a highway.

00:52:55.060 Nothing could be more ridiculous to her than the concept of adopting.

00:52:58.680 So there's something in the American character that takes on this public obligation of cleaning

00:53:03.660 a street, a road, um, and private individuals are willing to devote time to do that.

00:53:08.620 That's a very American thing, you know, or if you take a typical American family with three

00:53:14.780 kids, it's not surprising that one guy is, um, you know, working as a engineer in Google,

00:53:20.420 uh, and another guy is selling real estate and a third guy is pumping gas at a gas station.

00:53:26.220 Now think about that in India.

00:53:28.080 If you said that people would give you a funny look, like how strange in the same family,

00:53:32.080 are you telling me one guy is in the upper mobile class and the other guy's pumping gas?

00:53:37.340 Well, but in America, that's normal.

00:53:39.960 In America, it's normal for people's faith to be completely different, even though they

00:53:44.460 come from the same family, they're in the same, they've had the same upbringing and the

00:53:47.940 same socialization.

00:53:49.540 Um, so in America, you have mobility.

00:53:53.280 People move up the ladder, but people also move down the ladder.

00:53:56.680 And, uh, so all of these are the distinctive characteristics of America.

00:54:00.420 Now you don't find them even in Europe.

00:54:02.040 I'm very familiar with Europe.

00:54:03.320 I'm very familiar with Indians in Europe.

00:54:06.120 So an Asian Indian who's in London will tell me things like, you know, I'm very successful,

00:54:10.820 but I can even, but I'll always be a Pakistani.

00:54:13.820 I'll always be an Indian in London.

00:54:16.380 In other words, I can't actually become an Englishman.

00:54:18.960 I mean, I can say I am, but I'm not going to be, I'm not going to feel a hundred percent

00:54:24.060 British, but I feel a hundred percent American.

00:54:27.240 And that tells me that America allows the outsider a full membership, which other countries

00:54:32.660 don't offer.

00:54:33.260 In other words, it's difficult for a Turk to become a German, for an Algerian to become

00:54:37.740 a Frenchman, for a Pakistani to become an Englishman.

00:54:41.800 Uh, and again, that's, that's something unique about America.

00:54:44.260 So if we lose that, where am I going to go and become a full member of that club?

00:54:48.820 I can't do that in New Zealand.

00:54:50.340 I've attempted to go some, to some faraway place, but I don't know what faraway place

00:54:54.740 would, would recreate, if you will, what I came to America to experience.

00:54:59.440 Is there any possibility that America can lose all of those things that you just talked

00:55:05.220 about?

00:55:06.900 I think that that possibility is low, but it is not, um, it is not zero.

00:55:13.400 Um, and what that means is that, uh, that's, you know, you were mentioning the documentaries.

00:55:18.500 I make the films in order to, to fight the trend.

00:55:21.540 I make the films in order to educate people.

00:55:23.740 Uh, for most of my career, I was a writer and a speaker, and then I realized I'm reaching

00:55:29.060 a fairly large circle.

00:55:30.400 My books are selling well, they're bestsellers and so on, but I'm only reaching a certain

00:55:35.260 type of person.

00:55:36.860 Uh, when I make a movie, I stand in the back of the theater and I see all kinds of guys

00:55:40.840 in there whom I would never see, like waiting to buy a book in Barnes and Noble.

00:55:45.020 So the, the beauty of movies is that they, uh, reach a wider audience, but also the, a movie

00:55:50.840 appeals to the head and the heart, uh, when you said earlier that, you know, that I tell

00:55:54.820 these stories, that's what a movie is.

00:55:56.860 A movie is a narrative, which tells stories that help people not only to understand, but

00:56:02.280 also to see for themselves, uh, what the world is like and what the world can be like.

00:56:07.000 Yeah.

00:56:07.580 But, but what I'm saying is if, if a Hillary Clinton would have been elected in 2016, instead

00:56:13.420 of a Trump, it's fair to say you wouldn't been pardoned.

00:56:17.520 And for that $20,000 thing that you were arrested for and you got a felony for, and they have

00:56:22.400 it on your Wikipedia, which many others have done and no, no one's ever gotten arrested

00:56:27.060 and gotten a felony for, you probably would still be doing time, which means the next time

00:56:30.800 around that a person who is against Trump's camp is elected, you're probably going back

00:56:35.340 to prison.

00:56:36.020 So, so the, the, and again, I'm, I'm, I'm just saying, I'm only saying this to say, then

00:56:41.580 that makes other people who are wanting to be vocal about making content and documentaries

00:56:45.980 to say, I don't want to go to prison.

00:56:48.020 I'm okay.

00:56:48.740 Let somebody else like the next take the responsibility.

00:56:51.780 And if he's willing to go do time forward, more power to him.

00:56:54.480 I don't want to do it.

00:56:55.140 I'm going to be okay.

00:56:56.380 Uh, live in my regular life.

00:56:57.580 So it's a form of shutting people up.

00:56:59.720 So, you know, maybe the question will be a different kind of a question to ask you.

00:57:05.280 Say Dinesh is not the millionaire today.

00:57:07.020 Say Dinesh hasn't produced many different documentaries, three of them, which have done 10 million plus

00:57:12.640 dollars, which if I'm a business guy looking at your stuff, the only one that broke even

00:57:17.540 is death of a nation.

00:57:18.660 Everything outside of that, you're bringing back a minimum of 150% to, uh, 1200% return

00:57:26.080 on money.

00:57:26.500 So somebody gives you a hundred thousand dollars for the documentary.

00:57:29.020 I'm making somewhere between $250,000 to $1.5 million.

00:57:35.000 If you come to me as an investor to invest into your documentary, you kind of know what

00:57:38.380 you're doing.

00:57:38.880 Only one of them broke even, right?

00:57:40.200 That's your history.

00:57:41.320 Three out of four have been profitable.

00:57:44.440 So if you're not today's Dinesh, if you're the 32 year old Dinesh with $28,000 in your

00:57:51.300 checking account, I don't know what you had at 32.

00:57:52.920 I'm just kind of put things into, uh, numbers out there.

00:57:55.440 If you're the 32, you're trying to find your way.

00:57:57.880 You haven't yet broken the mold.

00:57:59.760 People don't yet know you.

00:58:00.980 You're working very hard.

00:58:02.360 You got some money here and there, but less than a hundred thousand dollars.

00:58:05.320 And if, if cramp were to hit the fan, would you consider if all the basic values that

00:58:12.700 brought me and you here, would you consider leaving and looking at other options?

00:58:16.220 Well, I would, I would think twice about, um, going into, um, making these kinds of documentaries

00:58:24.560 because they strike directly at very powerful people.

00:58:28.340 And, um, and I probably didn't realize when I did the Obama documentary that I was, you

00:58:35.780 know, taking on the most powerful man in the world.

00:58:38.280 I mean, I knew it in the abstract, but I didn't know what the ramifications of it are.

00:58:43.480 And by that, I mean, uh, I'm not even just talking about Obama, but somebody, for example,

00:58:47.980 could be sitting in the justice department.

00:58:49.480 This would be the holder justice department and go, you know, that guy just made a film

00:58:54.200 that bashes the boss.

00:58:55.700 Why don't we start looking at his tax returns?

00:58:58.840 Why don't we see if we can get his bank statements and see if we can find something in there that

00:59:02.500 he did that we can go after him for.

00:59:04.560 Let's teach him a lesson.

00:59:05.960 And the lesson is exactly not even for him because he probably will get a good lawyer.

00:59:09.660 He'll probably be able to figure out a way.

00:59:11.780 The lesson is for all the young Dineshes out there to send them the message.

00:59:16.700 So the important thing here is this, by the way, I know I've always known that if you

00:59:22.540 make this kind of a film in India, you will get your legs broken.

00:59:26.500 Okay.

00:59:26.800 So if I were to make a film about the most powerful man in India, uh, I would have to be

00:59:31.520 very careful to make sure that goons wouldn't come to my house and break my legs, if not

00:59:37.080 kill me.

00:59:37.640 Um, but, um, many people have the belief and I did too, that that won't happen in America,

00:59:44.060 that in America, you can take on the most powerful guy and you can say whatever you

00:59:48.620 want and you can say it in the public square and there's free speech in this country.

00:59:53.380 And sure, if you did something wrong, the government will go after you, but you're going to get

00:59:57.100 the same penalty as anyone else who did the same thing.

00:59:59.620 So let's just say, for example, you're speeding on the highway.

01:00:02.560 Yes, you're going to get a fine, but it's not fair if they try to put you in jail for

01:00:06.380 two years because you've exceeded the speed limit.

01:00:09.540 That's not equal justice under the law.

01:00:11.500 And that's kind of my complaint about my case is not that I did exceed the campaign finance

01:00:15.800 law, but I didn't get a penalty that is commensurate with what I did, with what other people have

01:00:20.600 gotten for doing that.

01:00:22.360 So that's the point is it's been disheartening to see that in, at least in the political sphere,

01:00:28.260 equal justice under the law, sometimes it gets pushed aside and fighting to restore

01:00:33.880 that is to me, one of the greatest priorities that we have now.

01:00:37.980 So you don't have another country, like you wouldn't say Singapore or Panama or anything

01:00:41.740 else.

01:00:42.000 You've not done the investigation to know if there was a second or third option for

01:00:46.140 America.

01:00:46.840 Like, you know how a time magazine does a article in 2012 and it's a United States of Texas.

01:00:54.980 I think it's the title of the article.

01:00:56.440 I don't remember the exact title.

01:00:57.280 It may be United States of Texas.

01:00:58.840 And it shows the fact that for every two people that go to Texas from California, one comes

01:01:04.900 from Texas to California, you know, to go from California, Texas, one come from Texas

01:01:09.780 to California.

01:01:10.500 They're showing all this data and why people are leaving California.

01:01:14.200 OK, so then that led to a lot of other lists.

01:01:17.420 Here's the top states to be in.

01:01:18.560 USA Today does an article.

01:01:19.700 The worst state in America in Texas is California.

01:01:21.880 California, 50, 50th place.

01:01:23.660 42nd is New York.

01:01:24.580 Best is Tennessee.

01:01:26.100 Florida ranks here.

01:01:27.040 Texas is eight.

01:01:27.820 And you're seeing all these lists.

01:01:28.840 Well, a business owner is going to sit there and say, why am I going to stay in California

01:01:31.880 and pay the 13.3% or the 15% I'm paying over here?

01:01:34.140 I'm going to go to Texas.

01:01:34.900 I'm going to go to Florida.

01:01:35.900 I'm going to go to a different place.

01:01:36.960 I think the part where we're getting close to is competition creates opportunity.

01:01:45.300 And if competition creates opportunity, I do think the days of students coming to America

01:01:50.600 and taking classes and getting a degree and the days of wanting to stay and not leave have

01:01:56.520 gone to, let me take what I learned here back to my country.

01:01:59.600 It's no longer, oh my gosh, let me stay here.

01:02:02.480 A lot of people around the world are concerned about if America is going to stay the same or

01:02:05.480 not, because they're just watching a level of division.

01:02:07.980 It's typically us watching other countries being divided.

01:02:11.660 But today, it's other countries watching America saying, what the hell is going on over

01:02:15.960 there with the level of division?

01:02:17.280 That's why I ask you the question, what would be some of the other alternatives if America,

01:02:21.200 if the idea of America didn't work, where would someone go to?

01:02:24.760 Well, it's a completely different question to ask me.

01:02:29.580 You know, when I have, I'm now in my 50s.

01:02:32.180 I've got family here.

01:02:33.060 As to put the same question to sort of 17-year-old Dinesh.

01:02:37.180 You know, so if I was, if I go back to when I first came to America, and there are a lot

01:02:41.980 of Indians who are in that position now, and as you say, a much larger percentage of them

01:02:46.540 go back.

01:02:47.260 Why?

01:02:47.960 Well, partly because India got rid of socialism.

01:02:51.140 India moved away from socialism.

01:02:53.300 India today is one of the most pro-American countries in the world.

01:02:57.900 You talk to an ordinary Indian on the street, what do they like about the world?

01:03:02.980 They like America.

01:03:03.800 They like what America stands for.

01:03:05.100 They're trying to bring that to India.

01:03:07.040 India is trying to have the American dream.

01:03:08.920 Not the Indian dream.

01:03:09.780 There's no Indian dream, but the American dream.

01:03:12.200 So a lot of Indians feel that in this atmosphere, where I have my own culture, my own cuisine,

01:03:17.340 chicken tikka masala, my family, my neighbors, why would I make that journey and go someplace

01:03:23.300 else?

01:03:23.700 I'd rather get educated there if I have to, but I'll, I'll come back home.

01:03:27.900 So I understand and respect that choice.

01:03:30.320 My brother works for a shipping company that's based in Singapore.

01:03:33.540 It's a nice life in Singapore.

01:03:35.420 If you want to be, you know, follow the law and be anonymous and have a prosperous life

01:03:41.720 and have nobody interfere with you.

01:03:43.640 Now, political dissent is a little problematic, but if you stay out of politics and do your

01:03:47.340 own thing, you can have a nice life in Singapore.

01:03:49.740 No doubt about it.

01:03:50.900 Um, but, uh, it's not a choice for me, but the very fact that we're having this kind of

01:03:57.060 discussion is kind of telling.

01:03:58.420 I don't think we would have had this discussion 25 years ago because there would be no such

01:04:02.980 debate.

01:04:03.440 We would, we would recognize that America is, is unique and does certain things.

01:04:07.640 And we'd recognize that if we want those things, there's no better place to be than

01:04:11.420 America.

01:04:11.900 But the very fact that we're questioning it now suggests to me that we have seen some erosion

01:04:17.300 of that American dream.

01:04:18.480 It'd be interesting for a state in America to say, look, you guys are going in a direction

01:04:23.360 we don't want to go to.

01:04:24.260 We're just going to distance ourselves and, you know, be our own country.

01:04:27.860 And, uh, you know, for example, a state like Texas to say, we're just kind of going to do

01:04:33.020 our thing.

01:04:33.500 We don't know what the hell you guys are thinking about.

01:04:35.200 Let us separate before things get a little bit weirder here.

01:04:39.100 But, uh, yeah, I think, I think people are starting to ask options about alternatives today.

01:04:42.700 And I think it's a very important thing for everybody on the left and the right to realize

01:04:46.720 that some people are going to consider leaving and some of them are going to be the job creators

01:04:50.480 and a country around the world, just like America, because I think the idea of capitalism

01:04:54.440 only lasts about a hundred years.

01:04:55.820 Here's what I mean by when, when a person becomes rich, you create wealth.

01:05:00.760 I'm your kid.

01:05:02.500 Say I learned all your hard work, hypothetically.

01:05:05.800 So I watched that and my dad worked his tail off.

01:05:07.840 He was, oh my gosh, he was constantly working.

01:05:10.300 Fine.

01:05:10.800 I pick up some of it.

01:05:11.940 One of your kids is going to resent you.

01:05:13.920 Maybe you weren't around.

01:05:15.060 He was never on my practice.

01:05:16.240 He was never.

01:05:16.540 So you're going to have one of your kids that's going to resent you and one of your kids

01:05:18.840 is going to go and work as hard as you.

01:05:21.360 But the grandkids or the great grandkids, one of them is going to say, I don't want to work

01:05:26.520 like you.

01:05:27.300 I don't care about being a millionaire.

01:05:28.840 I don't care about all that other stuff.

01:05:30.160 And they're going to be, have everything handed to them.

01:05:33.820 Then eventually the concept of hard work and, you know, industrious and all this other stuff

01:05:38.900 goes away because somebody eventually got the handouts and the family, the grandkid or

01:05:43.200 the great grandkid that gets the handout screws up the entire legacy, the family, right?

01:05:47.860 I look at that.

01:05:48.580 If America was a family, you know, the original founders created this great country and all

01:05:53.200 this other stuff.

01:05:53.800 And that money capitalism worked a hundred years, 150 years from 1903, 1910,

01:06:00.020 and now we're like, well, let us use the money and let's introduce taxes, all this other

01:06:03.840 stuff.

01:06:04.140 So I don't know.

01:06:04.980 I don't know what direction this is going to go.

01:06:06.400 You know, the one thing I do want to ask you about is I had John Perkins on yesterday.

01:06:11.620 I don't know if you know who John Perkins is.

01:06:13.280 He's the author of The Economic Hitman.

01:06:15.440 Maybe you remember the first book that he wrote, Economic Hitman, sold a few million copies

01:06:18.760 in 39 different languages.

01:06:20.680 And he wrote the new one and I had him on.

01:06:23.560 I asked him a lot of different questions.

01:06:24.780 I said, what's the business model of what you did as an economic hitman when you worked

01:06:28.280 for a company that worked directly with the NSA?

01:06:30.380 Here's what he said.

01:06:31.640 He said, I would go to a country that had natural resources and here's what I would do.

01:06:36.460 Number one, we'd set up a meeting with the PM or the Ministry of Finance.

01:06:40.680 He says, we'd have the meeting.

01:06:41.900 Number two, I tell them, look, I represent XYZ.

01:06:45.960 How about if I go to World Bank and I raise $5 billion, it's a loan to you.

01:06:52.620 With that loan, we get GMG, whoever, whatever big company to come and build a plant here and

01:06:58.420 create jobs for you.

01:06:59.980 You pay that $5 billion loan.

01:07:02.420 And on top of that, any of your kids, if they want to go to Harvard, Yale, Brown, we'll

01:07:07.220 receive them.

01:07:07.900 We'll give them full-ride scholarship.

01:07:09.260 Don't worry about it.

01:07:10.100 And we'll give this much money to your brother, to your cousin, to your sister.

01:07:13.300 We'll take care of them.

01:07:14.180 Then they say, very interesting.

01:07:17.060 Then they say, by the way, if you say no to this, I just want to remind you what happened

01:07:22.040 to John Doe, the leader of Indonesia and to such and such, the leader of Colombia.

01:07:26.880 Look what happened to these guys.

01:07:27.720 I'm just not saying we're going to do that to you.

01:07:30.040 But look what happened to them because they said no.

01:07:32.700 So what would you like to do?

01:07:34.400 Then the person's coordinator saying, okay, I'll do it.

01:07:37.100 The two people that said no to him, they were killed.

01:07:39.620 Everybody else said yes to him.

01:07:40.920 Then eventually they come in, they build the infrastructure.

01:07:43.260 The country's paying the loan.

01:07:45.340 They default on the loan.

01:07:46.860 Then the country comes in and says, we're going to take away your oil.

01:07:49.620 We're going to take away this and we get the resources, right?

01:07:52.060 That's what he calls the economic hitman.

01:07:54.680 Okay.

01:07:54.900 The question I asked is, how much of that business model is being used from a China to people

01:08:04.820 like McConnell and Biden?

01:08:06.700 How much of a model like that is being used of economic hitmen that are coming and saying,

01:08:12.500 we'll give you $1.5 billion to this venture capital fund and pay $50,000 a month on XYZ?

01:08:17.940 Or we understand your wife's father owns a big construction company.

01:08:22.160 You know, wink, wink, just don't bash us a lot.

01:08:24.340 Leave us alone.

01:08:24.900 Let us do what we're doing.

01:08:26.260 How much of that is being used today against American politicians, not the other way around?

01:08:31.060 Well, the answer is a lot.

01:08:34.920 And we see this.

01:08:36.120 This is what the Ukraine scandal was all about involving the Biden family.

01:08:40.660 Think about it.

01:08:41.340 We're not even dealing with Russia or China.

01:08:43.780 We're dealing with a small country, Ukraine.

01:08:45.880 And what does Ukraine do?

01:08:47.840 The moment that Joe Biden is made the point man for Ukraine, the Ukrainian energy company

01:08:53.720 called Burisma, immediately puts Hunter Biden, his son, on the board and starts paying Hunter

01:09:01.480 Biden and his partner $100,000, $83,000 a month, $83,000.

01:09:07.840 And this is a guy with no background in energy, no background in the Ukraine.

01:09:12.380 So what's going on here is that in other countries where corruption, by the way, is normal, they

01:09:18.960 realize that when you are dealing with America, you cannot give money to Joe Biden.

01:09:23.080 Because if you give money to Joe Biden, he has to declare it.

01:09:25.760 He's under all kinds of requirements to declare.

01:09:28.580 But his brother, James Biden, is not.

01:09:31.500 His other brother, Frank Biden, is not.

01:09:33.600 And his son, Hunter Biden, is not.

01:09:35.720 So other countries are smart enough to figure out, listen, don't do deals with Joe Biden.

01:09:39.740 It's going to be corrupt.

01:09:40.860 And we're going to be involved in a major corruption scandal.

01:09:43.640 Do deals with family members of American politicians.

01:09:48.040 Obviously, we can then expect favorable treatment from those politicians.

01:09:52.380 So this is a very dirty business.

01:09:55.760 And part of the reason they get away with it is that the American politicians are willing

01:10:00.140 to play along.

01:10:00.940 And so we've seen in America, politicians grow enormously rich from politics.

01:10:06.940 This never used to be the case, by the way.

01:10:08.980 I mean, FDR was a rich man.

01:10:11.240 So were the Kennedys.

01:10:12.180 But nobody would claim that, you know, that Jimmy Carter got rich from politics.

01:10:17.860 Nobody would claim that Ronald Reagan got rich from politics or even Truman.

01:10:24.120 But we have seen the net worth of the Clintons basically went from zero to $200 million.

01:10:30.340 Of the Bidens, zero to $100 million.

01:10:33.460 Al Gore has $100 million.

01:10:35.760 And again, the point to make is that, you know, it's one thing if these guys started

01:10:39.420 a business, they made a product that no one thought of.

01:10:42.180 They were very successful with some new innovation.

01:10:44.560 But no, they've done none of this.

01:10:46.300 They've produced nothing.

01:10:48.120 What they've done is they have sold access to their political connections.

01:10:52.200 And they're doing it for a big wad of cash.

01:10:54.820 So this is an example of how America is now becoming more like the rest of the world, which

01:11:01.260 is to say corruption is a normal way of doing business, the business of politics.

01:11:06.220 Let me ask you this other question, which is kind of along the lines of that.

01:11:11.960 There are assassinations, which is a Kennedy, a Lincoln, an attempt on Reagan, and one many,

01:11:21.620 many years ago that most people don't know about.

01:11:23.200 There's been four of them, three of them successful, one of them wasn't, right?

01:11:26.020 There is the, you know, very traditional, when I say traditional, it's what's happened.

01:11:32.800 It's assassination.

01:11:33.700 You come, you take someone's life, and boom.

01:11:35.720 This person's too controversial.

01:11:37.020 Lincoln, you're not allowing us to make money.

01:11:39.300 You're hurting us because these slaves are allowing us to do a lot of other things.

01:11:44.300 Listen, we don't like you.

01:11:45.300 You're the first Republican president.

01:11:46.480 We got to take this guy out.

01:11:48.220 Hey, John F. Kennedy, we kind of don't like what you're doing.

01:11:51.080 Hey, you guys want to go from oil standard to gold standard and feds and all this other

01:11:55.680 stuff.

01:11:55.960 Look, you're going to hurt a lot of us.

01:11:57.220 We're not cool with that.

01:11:58.580 We got to do something over here.

01:11:59.960 Hey, you know, Ronald Reagan, what are you doing with all this other stuff you're dealing

01:12:03.600 with?

01:12:03.820 Hey, you can't be doing this.

01:12:04.920 Okay.

01:12:05.620 Let's just say those assassination attempts were made.

01:12:08.920 What are some other methods of assassination that doesn't have to do with killing a president?

01:12:15.840 And the reason why I'm asking this question is because sometimes, and I know this is going

01:12:21.040 to sound like a strange comment to make, sometimes a direct assassination is a lot less painful

01:12:27.620 on the legacy than another method of assassination.

01:12:30.640 From you being somebody that studied history of what the games that are being played politically,

01:12:36.440 what are some methods of assassination that could take place with our existing president?

01:12:39.820 Well, you've actually said something very profound, which is that assassination, weirdly,

01:12:45.720 tends to improve your historical reputation.

01:12:49.240 Kennedy, for example, was in for not even two years, I don't believe.

01:12:53.940 And we, the whole myth of Camelot, you know, assassination created the myth of the Kennedys,

01:13:00.340 the legend of the Kennedys, if you will.

01:13:02.440 To some degree, that's also true of Lincoln.

01:13:04.280 Lincoln was very controversial when he was president.

01:13:06.320 He barely got elected.

01:13:09.660 And then his re-election was also a big open question until, you know, until he won some

01:13:14.720 military victories right before election day.

01:13:18.040 And it was assassination that turned Lincoln into sort of the legend that he became.

01:13:24.060 Now, I think today, the more common technique of going after someone is ultimately to blacken

01:13:32.220 their name, to use what can be called the deep state.

01:13:36.780 And I want to be precise about this because I'm not talking about any kind of conspiracy

01:13:40.500 theory.

01:13:41.420 So we have in America these police agencies of the government.

01:13:44.700 Let's name some of them.

01:13:45.800 The FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, the Department of Justice, the IRS.

01:13:51.580 So these agencies are set up to do something which is to neutrally and fairly enforce the

01:14:00.020 law.

01:14:00.840 So, for example, you think of the FBI as tracking down criminals.

01:14:05.060 But what if you could get some criminals into the FBI at the top level so that instead of

01:14:10.720 being thugs on the street, you have thugs with badges, thugs running the very agency that

01:14:16.600 is supposed to go after the thugs?

01:14:18.200 Now, this is a very dangerous situation because now they have the power of the badge and the

01:14:24.720 power of arrest and the power of the authority to indict, and they can go after their political

01:14:30.900 opponents.

01:14:31.960 So this would be a form of, I would call it, political assassination because it's not intended

01:14:36.800 to kill you, but it's intended to destroy your career, destroy your credibility, maybe

01:14:42.660 put you into handcuffs, but put you out of commission.

01:14:46.360 I think, to be honest, my own case was intended somewhat like that.

01:14:50.520 It was not ultimately intended to, you know, they don't necessarily want to lock me up.

01:14:55.600 They want to discredit me.

01:14:56.840 They want me not to be a public figure speaking out.

01:14:59.820 They want to isolate me from my own supporters and fans.

01:15:04.560 And that is the purpose of this political hit.

01:15:07.880 So we've seen more of that in recent years, a very disturbing trend, the corruption of the

01:15:12.860 police agencies of government at the high level.

01:15:15.360 Now, the ordinary FBI agent is mine.

01:15:17.540 He's just doing his job, just like the ordinary cop is doing his job for the most part.

01:15:21.900 But when it's corrupt at the high level, it's very important to root that out.

01:15:26.440 Okay.

01:15:26.920 So you've got political assassination, character assassination.

01:15:29.360 What other models are there?

01:15:31.340 Financial assassination.

01:15:33.120 And that can be done by and large through the mechanism of the lawsuit.

01:15:38.420 So for example, let's just say you're a business guy.

01:15:40.820 A company will come to your, a left-wing organization will come to you and say, listen, you've got

01:15:45.960 to give a million dollars to Black Lives Matter.

01:15:48.360 And you go, why?

01:15:49.700 They go, because if you don't, we'll accuse you of being a racist, or we will file a civil

01:15:53.860 rights lawsuit against you.

01:15:55.560 So what happens is companies live in the terror of not only the actual financial cost of the

01:16:01.360 lawsuit, but also the reputational cost that will make you stigmatized, will put a scarlet

01:16:07.960 letter on you, if you will.

01:16:09.520 And so it turns you into a coward.

01:16:11.260 You basically go, okay, well, here's the check.

01:16:13.940 You know, you fill in the amount.

01:16:15.680 Or what do you want me to say?

01:16:17.140 I'll take a knee.

01:16:17.920 I'll do this.

01:16:18.380 So all of this is a sign of people.

01:16:21.360 And when fear governs a society, people are turned into worms.

01:16:25.960 I mean, you've seen this in Iran, and it occurs in many other countries in the world.

01:16:31.380 Intimidation is used as a regular tactic to keep the citizenry cowed.

01:16:36.400 Cowed means you're up against the wall, and you won't dare to do something that will cause

01:16:42.360 trouble for the people in power.

01:16:44.740 So we've got political character and financial.

01:16:47.420 And by the way, part of the financial could also be taxes and IRS, which we've seen that

01:16:51.100 as well.

01:16:51.520 But, you know, the reason why I'm asking this is, you know, you're seeing a lot of

01:16:57.740 that, but you're probably seeing it more today than ever before.

01:17:00.800 And one has to know, if you get into politics, this is, you know, for the risk that you could

01:17:05.680 see.

01:17:06.340 So if they can't, there seems to me, there seems to be this desire that we have to do

01:17:13.900 whatever we can to get this man out of the White House, whatever we can to get this man

01:17:18.840 out of the White House.

01:17:19.480 When I see that, I didn't see that with George W.

01:17:23.380 Bush.

01:17:24.220 I didn't see that with Bill Clinton on a second term.

01:17:27.100 I didn't see that with Obama on a second term.

01:17:29.460 It just kind of, yeah, well, you know, we got to make sure Romney wins.

01:17:32.160 No, he lost.

01:17:32.940 OK, Bill, you know, Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller went on a tour talking about what happened

01:17:37.380 or Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly were debating.

01:17:39.640 Oh, no, we got to get, you know, Bush out because you guys got to be careful about what happens.

01:17:43.680 Yeah.

01:17:43.900 OK, Al Gore, fine, no problem.

01:17:45.720 But it wasn't like this.

01:17:48.100 What is it about Trump that has gotten people that passionate to get them out?

01:17:55.200 Is it because Trump's going to do something on second term with this QAnon that you're

01:17:59.620 hearing about a, you know, secret organization ran by two military former generals that are

01:18:05.280 going to bring out the deep state?

01:18:06.960 Is it because of what you're hearing about with Epstein that maybe some things are going

01:18:11.740 to be revealed that two politicians video with Jelaine Maxwell that if it comes out?

01:18:16.580 Is it because Roe versus Wade?

01:18:19.660 Is it because of, you know, Obamacare?

01:18:22.300 What is what is the biggest thing where you're seeing this level of passion to say we got is

01:18:29.000 is it fear?

01:18:30.020 Is it something we don't know?

01:18:30.980 What do you think it is?

01:18:31.840 You know, I think it's it's a very the reason it's so strange with the phenomenon you're

01:18:37.960 describing, we call it Trump derangement syndrome.

01:18:41.100 You know, this kind of virus of of losing your mind when the name Trump comes up.

01:18:48.300 What makes it even doubly strange is many of the people who suffer the most acute cases

01:18:53.280 of Trump derangement syndrome were massive Donald Trump fans in the old days.

01:18:58.740 In other words, the same people who say things like Trump is a dictator, Trump is an authoritarian

01:19:04.840 are the kind of people who love Trump when Trump would show up on Larry King and Trump

01:19:10.240 was on The Apprentice and rappers were writing songs about Trump and Trump was, you know,

01:19:14.360 there with Al Sharpton marching down, you know, Fifth Avenue.

01:19:17.800 So the irony about Trump is it's not that he's an unknown guy who's like come out of nowhere

01:19:23.580 and and people are really scared.

01:19:25.360 This is a guy who's been a staple of American popular culture for 30 years.

01:19:30.440 He's been a figure that most of us, I mean, people in America have grown up with Trump.

01:19:34.220 Right.

01:19:34.820 And and there's something very all-American about Trump.

01:19:37.560 I mean, even his weaknesses are very all-American.

01:19:40.140 He's got a he's like that kid who grew up in Queens where, you know, even if you are some

01:19:44.880 unimportant guy, if you attack him, he has to attack you back.

01:19:47.640 You know, he's he's just got that scrappy New York personality, which is so recognizable

01:19:52.640 to anyone who lives in the city.

01:19:54.980 So this is Trump.

01:19:56.260 He is who he is.

01:19:58.400 And I think that Americans didn't expect a guy like him.

01:20:03.960 And he does threaten a lot of the conventional ways of doing business in America and doing

01:20:09.300 politics in America, even in the Republican Party.

01:20:12.940 This is the source of the so-called never Trump movement.

01:20:16.760 It's Republicans who thought that they had figured out a kind of a comfortable way of doing

01:20:20.680 business. And it's almost like bringing in a new CEO into a company who comes in and goes,

01:20:26.140 the reason we've been losing money is a lot of you aren't doing your job and I'm going

01:20:31.040 to be shaking things up from the inside.

01:20:33.620 And immediately there's an effort to get rid of the guy because he poses such a lethal threat

01:20:38.240 to all the comfortable, you know, nuclei of power that have established themselves.

01:20:43.440 All the competing fiefdoms go, oh, wow.

01:20:46.180 You know, here's a new guy in charge.

01:20:47.640 We got to push him out before he does any more damage.

01:20:50.580 I wonder if it's just that.

01:20:52.700 That's what I wonder.

01:20:53.700 I wonder if it's just that, because to me, that happens all the time.

01:20:57.460 So the new CEO comes, he fires a bunch of people.

01:20:59.960 He brings his own team.

01:21:01.660 The old guys work and still stay in contact with the employees that are working at the

01:21:05.540 home office and they bicker and bitch.

01:21:07.440 And some people still have some kind of a control.

01:21:09.440 And then eventually they're over it because they have new problems.

01:21:11.880 And a year later, two years later, everybody moves on.

01:21:13.680 Right.

01:21:14.420 But this is different.

01:21:15.460 I mean, you have to agree that this isn't just a guy coming in to, I don't know.

01:21:20.840 I don't know.

01:21:22.000 I don't know what it is.

01:21:23.440 And, you know, I'm a business guy.

01:21:25.980 I'm not a guy that's in the world to know everything, to really dig deep and investigate,

01:21:29.360 to know what really is the reason why people are so afraid of him.

01:21:33.920 What is it?

01:21:35.200 You know, are we going to find out on the second term?

01:21:37.520 I don't know.

01:21:38.140 I don't know what's going on over there, but I'm just curious.

01:21:42.280 Curious to know what it is.

01:21:43.160 Well, the surface explanations don't make sense because you listen to people who say

01:21:47.540 on MSNBC, you know, Trump is an authoritarian.

01:21:50.280 I'm thinking, wait a minute.

01:21:51.340 Trump is bashed on every platform every second of every day.

01:21:56.240 Right.

01:21:56.660 If you try to do that to say Mussolini, what would happen to you?

01:22:00.260 First of all, goons would show up at CNN.

01:22:02.460 They would beat everybody up and shut the place down.

01:22:04.600 That would be the end of it.

01:22:05.860 One time you do it and then that's the last time.

01:22:08.320 But with Trump, it's not the case.

01:22:09.840 I mean, with Trump, people are speaking out with no fear.

01:22:13.220 People are rioting with no fear.

01:22:14.820 People are pulling down public monuments with no fear.

01:22:17.360 So whatever Trump is, he's not an authoritarian.

01:22:21.300 And so I think you're right.

01:22:23.940 There is something deeper going on, something that is a combination of, I mean, I think you

01:22:29.160 mentioned some of the factors, Roe versus Wade.

01:22:31.300 That's part of it because there is a worry that the court, the balance of the court will

01:22:36.060 shift.

01:22:36.420 I don't think it's going to shift that much, at least not anytime soon.

01:22:40.260 Look at the way that Roberts, for example, has now taken on the Kennedy role of being

01:22:44.780 the swing vote.

01:22:46.320 So it's not obvious that the court is going to dramatically swing one way or the other.

01:22:51.020 It's kind of precariously in the middle, which it has been for 25 years.

01:22:55.040 But Trump gets them in a way nobody does.

01:22:57.560 He has an effect on people that almost has to be seen to be believed.

01:23:02.200 Yeah, we were invited.

01:23:06.520 We went to the Mar-a-Lago event that he had a few months ago and where, you know, the president

01:23:10.760 was the prime minister of Brazil that got the coronavirus, that same event.

01:23:14.060 We were there ourselves.

01:23:15.120 And when you see him, you see the energy off camera, slightly different than on camera,

01:23:19.780 the way he tells the story.

01:23:21.340 You know, he knows how to win the crowd.

01:23:22.740 And when I went there, I took people that were against him.

01:23:25.480 We took seven guests.

01:23:26.480 And we went there, you know, just to kind of see how people would view it.

01:23:30.320 And, you know, very interesting personality, who he is.

01:23:33.860 Very, I mean, I read Art of the Deal 20 years ago, 19 years ago.

01:23:37.000 And I said, what a great book.

01:23:38.560 And I got a bunch of copies that I've had for years prior to him being president.

01:23:41.660 I would always give it away to my guys.

01:23:42.940 Hey, learn how to negotiate.

01:23:44.440 Read this book.

01:23:45.080 But I don't know.

01:23:47.080 You know, to me, I just think he needs way more secret service than other presidents

01:23:52.700 have needed in the past.

01:23:54.340 I don't know.

01:23:54.860 And I think, you know, my family had a meeting with him last November, and it turned out

01:24:01.680 to be a 45-minute meeting.

01:24:03.900 And it was very illuminating because my wife said to him something like, she said, you

01:24:08.980 know, Mr. President, she goes, you're attacked so viciously in the media.

01:24:13.460 An ordinary person would be completely demoralized, would go under his desk.

01:24:17.820 You know, how do you take it?

01:24:19.100 You know, and we kind of expected Trump to laugh it off and go, well, you know, I enjoy

01:24:23.180 it.

01:24:23.420 It's hilarious.

01:24:24.000 I love bashing these people and so on.

01:24:26.120 But no, he was, he actually said the unexpected thing.

01:24:28.860 He goes, well, guys, you know, he goes, I got to tell you, just between us, it gets to

01:24:33.220 me.

01:24:33.440 He goes, you know, because I'm working, he goes, I'm working really hard for the American

01:24:37.400 people.

01:24:37.860 He goes, we just did this operation against Qasem Soleimani.

01:24:41.660 He goes, it's a very difficult operation.

01:24:43.440 It was carried out to perfection.

01:24:45.260 He goes, but these guys won't give me any credit for anything.

01:24:48.860 Whatever I do must be bad.

01:24:51.060 If I recommend a drug, it's got to be the drug that doesn't work.

01:24:54.140 If I do an operation, it's got to be the worst operation ever.

01:24:57.360 And so I think he said, at the end of the day, it's a little, you know, it does get to

01:25:01.300 me.

01:25:01.460 And I, I, for us, it was, uh, it was seeing a vulnerable side of Trump that we didn't

01:25:07.680 quite expect.

01:25:08.660 And I know my wife was a little startled by it, uh, and a little moved by it.

01:25:13.360 Yeah.

01:25:13.980 You know, but, but, but I understand that.

01:25:16.380 And I, I can fully see that.

01:25:18.380 But at the same time, if you bring in that New York, uh, uh, attitude and you cannot be

01:25:24.180 surprised if that's what's happening.

01:25:25.600 You just cannot be surprised if you're just going after people as quickly, as fast as you

01:25:29.960 are with Twitter and nonstop.

01:25:31.900 You just have to, if you're bullying the bully, you're, you're still hurting the other bully

01:25:36.360 that you're bullying.

01:25:37.320 His ego is going to get hurt.

01:25:38.520 Then it's just going to be constant back and forth.

01:25:40.840 You know, you punch somebody, they're going to punch you back.

01:25:42.540 So it's nonstop going to happen.

01:25:44.620 But, uh, you know, Dinesh, uh, the last thing I was going to ask you is you told a story

01:25:49.360 in the, in your documentary about Saul Linsky back in 1970, I think George, um, senior

01:25:55.760 where senior was given the talk and, you know, protesters were coming in saying, Hey, what's

01:26:00.980 the best way for us to protest?

01:26:02.440 And I'll let you tell the story.

01:26:04.520 But, uh, that is a pretty riveting story if that's an accurate story.

01:26:08.600 So what happened when these protesters went and had a meeting with Saul Linsky?

01:26:11.860 And by the way, for some people that don't know who he is, maybe you can elaborate on

01:26:14.640 who he is that gave that advice.

01:26:17.560 Saul Linsky was a political organizer.

01:26:20.040 You can almost call him the original community organizer.

01:26:22.620 He was a, an inspiration to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

01:26:27.300 Obama, when he graduated from Harvard Law School, uh, went to work for the Alinsky organization.

01:26:33.260 Hillary Clinton wrote her thesis on Alinsky.

01:26:35.620 So this is a, a figure that has had a huge impact through his influence on other powerful

01:26:42.020 people.

01:26:42.980 And the story is described in the biography of Alinsky by an Alinsky supporter.

01:26:47.580 Uh, it was about how clever Alinsky was in doing political sort of dirty tricks.

01:26:53.300 And in this case, what happened is that George W. H.W. Bush, the father was giving a speech

01:26:58.200 at the United Nations, uh, and a group of leftists from the sixties came to Alinsky and they were

01:27:03.440 like, why don't we hold up signs that basically equate George W. Bush with like the Ku Klux Klan?

01:27:08.900 Um, and Alinsky was like, well, that's, that's a very crude and stupid thing to do.

01:27:14.380 Um, and of course you can do it, but it's unimaginative.

01:27:17.380 Here's something more clever.

01:27:18.780 What about if you guys go out to a, to the local store and buy some white sheets?

01:27:23.720 Uh, why don't you come dressed up as Ku Klux Klansmen yourselves?

01:27:28.360 And then when George H.W. Bush starts speaking, you have all these signs and you jump up and

01:27:33.580 down and you go, we're with Bush, KKK supports Bush.

01:27:37.040 This is much more effective because when it, when it's seen in the media, where people will

01:27:41.540 see images, horrific images of people in white hoods supporting Bush, this will do far more

01:27:47.800 damage to Bush's credibility than a group of hippies carrying signs equating Bush.

01:27:54.000 So, so basically Alinsky was proposing, uh, creating, if you will, a theater, a political

01:27:59.340 theater in which you, you, you manipulate the imagery, uh, to, to send a false message.

01:28:05.560 But the false message is believed to be true because of the enormous power of the media.

01:28:11.500 How, how accurate is that statement and how has it been verified that that actually was

01:28:16.300 stated?

01:28:17.920 Well, it is in, uh, I believe the source of it is Sanford Horwitz book called Let Them

01:28:22.660 Call Me Rebel, which is a, this is a progressive leftist writing a full length, the only full

01:28:28.280 length biography, uh, of Alinsky.

01:28:31.200 And I believe that is the source I've documented and footnoted in my own work, but I believe

01:28:36.200 from memory that that is the source of that particular anecdote.

01:28:40.200 If you could send that to me, I'd like to put the link below because to me that is just,

01:28:44.020 uh, uh, uh, I mean divisive, but at the same time, uh, a model that we're seeing a lot of

01:28:50.580 today as well, which, uh, it kind of gets the average person to sit there and say, who do

01:28:55.180 you really trust on media?

01:28:56.420 Like, who do you really believe in media when you see different things?

01:28:58.940 Like, who should I trust?

01:29:00.640 Do I trust people on the right?

01:29:01.820 Do I trust left?

01:29:02.480 Do I trust Tucker?

01:29:03.200 Do I trust Anderson?

01:29:04.020 Do I trust Maddow?

01:29:05.340 Do I trust Hannity?

01:29:06.400 Who do I trust?

01:29:06.980 It's very tough right now for the average person.

01:29:09.240 I'm not talking about for the person that already has a political affiliation and they've

01:29:12.460 done a lot of reading and due diligence.

01:29:14.340 I'm talking for the 60, 70% voter that doesn't follow politics says, I don't know who I trusted.

01:29:20.120 It's a very, very weird time.

01:29:21.380 Well, Dinesh, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.

01:29:25.600 Folks, I'm going to put the link below to, uh, uh, his book, uh, United States of Socialism

01:29:31.320 and Dinesh, do we have a set date on when the documentary will be coming out?

01:29:36.100 It's been announced for August 7th, but as you know, things are in a little flux with

01:29:40.220 the theater.

01:29:40.600 So we're in close consultation with the, with our distributor to figure out the best timing

01:29:46.260 and the best way to release this movie, but it's going to be coming out soon.

01:29:49.580 It's going to be coming out this summer.

01:29:50.900 We're going to put the link to the documentary as well at the bottom for you to know exactly

01:29:55.380 what they did to be released.

01:29:56.620 I just watched it and, uh, I highly recommend people watching and make your own opinion about

01:30:01.320 what's, uh, being said in there in the documentary.

01:30:03.800 It'll definitely make you think, uh, on what is taking place today.

01:30:08.220 Dinesh, I'll give you final thoughts before we ramp up.

01:30:10.480 We are a divided country.

01:30:13.920 Uh, we're divided over very fundamental issues.

01:30:16.960 Uh, I think it's a time for the ordinary citizen to be more involved and more informed than normal,

01:30:23.360 just for the reason you just said, which is to say that these days we can't automatically

01:30:28.060 take for granted the information that's put out there.

01:30:30.980 A lot of it is manipulated.

01:30:32.660 Some of it is flatly untrue.

01:30:34.220 And so documentaries like mine are aimed at helping you to think in a new way about what's

01:30:40.080 really going on.

01:30:41.740 Very cool.

01:30:42.580 Dinesh, once again, thank you for being a guest on Vite, Tim.

01:30:45.280 I appreciate your time.

01:30:46.520 My pleasure.

01:30:47.600 So what was your biggest takeaway from this interview?

01:30:50.160 Knowing which way he leans politically, what was your biggest takeaway?

01:30:53.500 Specifically when we talk about socialism against capitalism or the Indian educational

01:30:57.620 system, the ranking of where you're ranked or, you know, different methods of assassination,

01:31:02.120 political, financial, and, uh, uh, character.

01:31:05.700 What was your biggest takeaway?

01:31:06.800 I want to hear your thoughts.

01:31:07.540 And if you watch today's interview and the concept of socialism, you're saying, I want

01:31:11.060 to know more about socialism.

01:31:12.260 I sat down with a professor who is a very, very well-known professor, the top Marxist

01:31:17.620 socialistic professor we have in America, Richard Wolff.

01:31:20.000 And we had a friendly debate.

01:31:21.320 If you've never watched it, I highly recommend you watch this debate he and I had.

01:31:24.580 And if you've not watched my sit down with Roger Stone, because he talks about the manipulation

01:31:29.400 of politics and how it works out, if you've not watched this, click over here.

01:31:33.200 And if you've not subscribed to the channel, please do so.

01:31:35.780 Thanks for watching, everybody.

01:31:36.780 Take care.

01:31:37.300 Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - October 02, 2020

Dinesh D’Souza on Trump Card Documentary & Democratic Socialism

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