Episode 189 – Interview With A Political Strategist, Author & Film Maker, Dinesh D'Souza

This week I did an interesting interview with Dinesh D'Souza, a political commentator, author and documentary film maker. He recently authored a book and made a documentary called "Hilary's America".

Listen as he shares his personal story, the American dream and how he achieved a lot as an immigrant American. He also talks about the 2016 Presidential Election and the role of media. Towards the end he shares his valuable advice for attorneys. Listen to the interview below and make sure you subscribe to the podcast and post a review.

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Richard: Hi, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I am very, very excited. I have Dinesh D'Souza, very famous political commentator, political strategist, author of many books on the Clintons, on Obama, on our government. His most recent movie and book is called Hillary's America came out July of this year 2016 and the book came out as well. I went to see it personally, it was a very, very interesting movie. It talks about what may happen if Hillary Clinton becomes president and also the history of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Welcome Dinesh, how are you doing?

Dinesh D'Souza: ey, it's good to be on the show.

Richard: Yes, thanks very, very much for coming. I appreciate it. First of all, can you give folks just a brief overview of what you do, where your business is? I know generically, it's a commentator and an advisor but tell me a little bit more about what you do.

Dinesh D'Souza: Yes. I am an immigrant to the United States. I went to Dartmouth College, I served the Reagan in Whitehouse a couple of years. For most of my career, I have been a writer and a speaker based at various think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution at Stamford. I am currently also a filmmaker. I started making documentary films 4 years ago. I made one about Obama and the most recent one is about Hillary and the Democratic Party. So that, in the nutshell, is my maximum.

Richard: Have you turned to political advising or is it more of just being in the political world and putting out documentaries and books and all that stuff?

Dinesh D'Souza: Yes. I haven't done any political consulting or advising and in fact it's probably not a good idea for me to do that while I am making independent films because the credibility of the film is that I am not an extension of the Trump campaign or the Republican National Committee. I am not working on behalf of any candidate and that gives my opinions of certain independent force. They obviously can be judged more easily on their own merits.

Richard: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And what drives you to do all this work to make these movies, to write all these books? What's behind it, what's inside of you that makes you do this?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well, I think the core of it, I grew up in a country, India, which is very corrupt. It's run by gangs in effect. And if you saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire, you get a glimpse of that. When I came to America, I was entranced by this whole idea of a county where you could write the script of your own life, where you could be in the driver seat of your own destiny. This, for me, is the American dream. It isn't just about success; it's about being able to choreograph your own future and your own destiny and I have been able to do that in America. So I have seen the fruits of the American dream. I came with 500 bucks in my pocket and I have been able to, you may say, make it in America. And so my politics is based on that. It's a defense of the ladders of opportunity that enable people who start at the bottom to be able to improve their life here in America.

Richard: And what do you see is happening especially in the past couple of years with American political system and our rights and our freedoms?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well, what I see happening is that there is kind of a contest for power. Typically in America, the greatest rewards go to entrepreneurs and to people who create wealth. And I think that's deservedly so because they make lives better for so many of us. And the greatest of the entrepreneurs don't even respond, consume a demand, they anticipate demand before it even exists. Think of something like the iPhone. Steve Job, people didn't write to him and said, "Hey Steve, let's have a phone that does this and have that and can download and can access the internet", no. He thought of it, he made it and before we knew we couldn't live without it. So this is why we're living in an entrepreneurial society. But I think a very envious group of political organizers and a kind of a knowledge class of people, very powerful, very cunning are trying to rest power and control from the wealth creators and this is the political class represented by Hillary and by Obama.

Richard: It seems like a big percent of the people that would vote for the Democratic Party and it seems like that people they're ruling are immigrants, illegal or legal. If immigrants come from these countries where they have been — they've been exposed to a lot of corruption, bad government. Why would they vote for more of the same policies if they came here? How are they being diluted and what do you think is happening?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well, two things. One is immigrants by enlarge tend to come from the outside, they don't know the inner workings of America and the democrats appear under surface to be a little more hospitable to the outsiders. Certainly their rhetoric does. In reality, they have no intention of helping these immigrants get self efficiency because if an immigrant becomes self efficient, he or she doesn't need the Democratic Party. What the Democratic Party likes is they like, for example, to have the sort of urban plantations for black. They like barrios for the Latinos, they like reservations for the Native Americans. If they could, they build slums for the Asian-Americans. So their idea is to have each of the immigrant kind of dependant on food stamps, depending on federal subsidies, depending on loans, you're always at the behest of the democratic party. It's like they have let down a rope promising to pull you up but they've only pulled you up half way and there are you dandling in the air but you dare not let go because if you let go, you'll plum into the ground. You are dependant now on these guys.

Richard: Okay. What about the Republican Party? Do you see evidence of similar behavior or are they totally different from the Democratic Party?

Dinesh D'Souza: No. Certainly the republicans recognize that there is a big federal trough and it fills up with three trillion dollars of tax revenues every year. And so there is a good deal of looting of the public that goes on from both parties. Now, the difference between the republicans and the democrats is that the democrats' official ideology is one of looting whereas the republicans at least are officially against it even though some of them do it. Now, the republican party is chaotic, it's dumb, it's a mess, there is a lot of infighting and inbreeding and in fact the chaos in the republican party and its ineffectiveness has produced a candidate like Trump. So I think the republicans have a lot of problems in some ways, I don't think we needed a third party but we need to remake the Republican Party from the ground up.

Richard: Okay. Let's talk a little bit about Hillary's America, the movie that you put out. I saw it, again, very, very interesting and informative. You went into a lot of history of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Why did you do that versus talking more about contemporary issues especially issues in this very election?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well, I think it's important when we think about politics to step back for a moment and have the full picture. And the full picture that most people have in their heads is completely wrong. I think if you ask most people, educated people and you ask them, "Listen, which is the party that has been the enemy of women and minorities and Latinos and blacks, which is the party that threw the American-Indians off their land and promoted slavery, which is the party that enacted all of the segregation laws in the south, which is the party that started and revived the Ku Klux Klan, which is the party that opposed the civil rights active 64 and the voting rights active 1965 and the fair housing bill of 1968", most people would say, "Wow, that's obviously the republican party", no. This is the actual history of the Democratic Party. So an unbelievable camouflage the democrats have managed to conceal all the crimes that they did and part of their ingenuity is that they have been able to blame these crimes on the white man or on the south or on America, you know, America did it. Well no, America didn't do it because if America did it, it probably would be going on. Some Americans did it namely you, and other Americans stopped them namely the Republicans. So part of what I wanted to do is not only tell the story about Hillary's sort of gangsterism but put it in a context of a party that's done a lot of bad stuff for 150 years although then very ingeniously, kind of like Hillary covered it up.

Richard: In present day, I mean it seems that the media is extremely biased, it seems like I mean almost — I guess I would say a conspiracy to uplift Hillary and put down Trump but what's your thoughts on it? Do you see that or what do you believe that is?

Dinesh D'Souza: You know it's amazing to me. I mean I have seen political bias on the media for 30 years but I have never seen anything like this, the sort of fanaticism with which these guys are huffing and puffing to drag Hillary across the finishing line is just the sickening sight that we hold and it's very bad for our democracy because slum people can cast in a foreign vote, you've got to give them information and most people, just apart from the presidential debates, never get the candidates unfiltered. The get the candidates filtered through the lens of the media. And the media of course is producing smoke in mirrors. They are in fact covering up for Hillary. If the New York Times or CBS News were the only ones to see Hillary collapse, I can assure you there would be no article, no feature in the newspaper or on the network the next day. So whoever wins on November 8th, one party has certainly lost already and that is the credibility of the mainstream media.

Richard: What do you think is going to happen, whether Hillary wins or not, what do you think is going to happen to the media itself and what do you think is going to happen to the justice department, the FBI, I mean what do you think the fallout is going to be or will there be any fallout from what's happened with Hillary and what happened with Trump?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well, I think — I don't think the election is over yet by any means, I think Hillary is probably ahead so Trump has to come from behind. If Hillary wins, then it's very important that there would be the right checks and balances in place. I certainly hope the Republicans pull the house and the senate, that's not a done deal either. If the Republicans lose the senate that means Hillary can transform the Supreme Court. And there goes another part about checks and balances. So in other words, the way to keep Hillary in line, I mean we know she's going to basically be after all the appropriate schemes, the way to keep her in balance would be to have a check from the Republican Party and a check from the court. If those checks don't exist, then I am afraid we're in for something resembling Hugo Chavez's Venezuela or things that we have seen in third world countries. I mean we already see it now because with WikiLeaks, you realize the way that Hillary has been happily deal with third world governments pocketing $12 million in her back pocket from Morocco, selling Uranium and access to Russian Oligarchs who are pumping money into her foundation, so all this corruption she has been doing openly. She is going to continue to do it and the only question is that is there one to stop her?

Richard: Do you think the FBI, the Department of Justice and those organizations have been compromised in the public side or do you think it won't matter?

Dinesh D'Souza: I think that they've been compromised because of Obama. And essentially what was happening is while the FBI investigation is going on, I mean forget about Bill Clinton meeting under tarmac with Loretta Lynch, the head of the justice department for their little tat a tat I mean even more repulsive was Obama signaling both the Lynch and the James Comey, "Hey listen, Hillary is my gal and I'm going to hand the baton to Hillary, watch me do it", so then a guy like Comey is going to have to think, "Look, if I propose that they indict Hillary, first of all, they are not going to do it", Loretta Lynch choose — she is not going to do it, Obama is not going to do it. I am just going to make a deadly enemy of the President of the United States who happens to be my boss. So, Comey is an ambitious guy, he knows which side the bread is buttered on and so I think he chose ambition over doing the right thing.

Richard: Okay. In your personal life, you disclosed this in a movie Hillary's America but you are convicted of some election fraud, you went to an overnight I guess prison state for about 8 months. Are you in fear of being prosecuted further or were you in fear at that time? What's your step with your commentary, why do you continue to make commentary? Are you in fear or do you feel like you'll be okay?

Dinesh D'Souza: No, I have absolutely no fear. I mean there was no fraud involved in my case by the way. I did exceed the campaign finance limit but look, no American has ever gone to prison for doing what I did. I gave $20,000 of my own money to a college friend of mine who was running for the senate. There was no issue of corruption, no issue of a quid pro quo, so on campaign finance case is in almost every case, they don't even prosecute if there is no corruption. In my case, I think it was that I made a movie about Obama 4 years ago, I upset the narcissist. I know this because he was railing against me on his website barackobama.com and a few weeks later, the FBI came banging on my door. So I think this was a selective prosecution, they tried to make some sort of a political example of me and by the way, part of my sentence, unbelievably, was psychiatric counseling, as if I was Jeffrey Dahmer who put bodies in the refrigerator. But nevertheless, I did something dumb which is, I did exceed the campaign finance law and so I have been very careful this time not to give the Clintons any pretext or try anything along the same lines.

Richard: Do you think if Hillary wins the election that there'll be political fallout that shall go after Trump or go after other people that tried to stop her from becoming president?

Dinesh D'Souza: I think the Clintons are totally unscrupulous and they will try to, if they can, eliminate the obstacles to running all of America kind of like a gang. In some ways, I think if I were to honestly try to spell out what Hillary wants for America, it's the same thing that Al Capone wanted from Chicago. So what did Al Capone want? He wanted to loot the treasury, he wanted to be able to give city contracts at whim to his friends and cronies, he wanted to take his critics and push them out or get rid of them or throw them off a roof or send them out of town and finally he wanted to walk into the big Chicago stadium and have the goal crows shout with devotion, "Big Al, Big Al, Big Al". And that's basically what Hillary wants for America.

Richard: Okay. Do you think there is anyway that she will pay for what she has been accused of or you think she'll get free yet again?

Dinesh D'Souza: I think that if she wins the elections, she is basically scot-free because then it appears like the American people themselves become the jury, they had an opportunity to "Indict her by defeating her", and they chose nevertheless to have her represent them. So she will claim to be in essence absolved by the political process. And of course the judicial process is unlikely to go after her because think of the justice department, who will they be under? Hillary. Who will appoint the new attorney general? Hillary.

Richard: Yes. Do you think it's possible that any information could come up that could literally, completely derail her becoming the president or her continuing at least until November 8th and being voted on?

Dinesh D'Souza: I think that is possible. I mean right now, what I make of all these WikiLeaks revelation is that they are like little pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. And if someone is paying attention, you can see this kind of grand portrait of collusion and larceny and corruption. I mean you get all this evidence that she's openly colluding with the media. I mean they are supplying her with stories in advance to be able to approve. They feed her debate questions in advance. She rigs the democratic primaries against Bernie and the media basically is wink-wink, yes, we kind of knew you were doing it, we are not really going to hold you account for it. And so and on and on it goes. But these are more in the nature of the pieces of evidence that an attorney might put together to get a conviction in a murder case. They are not individual bombshells, rather they are just telling pieces of evidence with those who have eyes to see.

Richard: What would it take to prosecute her and who would do it at this point? Is anyone powerful enough?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well, one way for it to happen would have been for the Republican Congress to appoint and independent prosecutor and have them look into these violations rather than let the completely tarnished and untrustworthy Obama justice department do it. I think if the republicans had half a brain they'd realize that that is a hopeless enterprise. They have to do it. So they have shown a certain kind of timidity and namby-pambiness that I think is beyond explanation and is part of what has generated a phenomenon like Trump.

Richard: So I have a list of approximately 35,000 attorneys that subscribe to the podcast and get my emails and everything. Specifically for them, they'll be listening to this, any advice you have for them, anything that's going to affect their ability to navigating the function and their jobs and anything they can do to help create or perpetuate or fix the America that they want to see?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well, I don't know how Hillary's America will affect, you may say, the prospects for the attorney business but I will say that I think attorneys are the symbols of the law. And one of the greatest tragedies that's happened to America in the last several years is the abridgement at the highest level of the rule of law. Even Obama, I mean I don't — Obama is not a sort of Bonnie & Clyde in the way that the Clintons are but on the other hand, even his willingness to bend the law to his purposes. He doesn't like the immigration law, he ignores the provisions that he doesn't want to enforce. If he can't put all of ObamaCare into affect, he selectively enforces that. If he doesn't like the work provisions of welfare reforms, he ignores that. If he opposes the defense of the marriage act, he pretends like it doesn't exist. Now, this is not really what it means to live in a democracy. Obama doesn't make laws, he is the executive branch. He is hired to carry them out. And so I think we have seen a kind of carelessness about the rule of law that's about to get worse if Hillary is elected. And so my appeal to attorneys would be try as far as you can within your profession and as citizens to be custodians of this great blindfold justice system that we've inherited through the centuries and which represents one of the primes of America and the western civilization.

Richard: Okay, that's a great conclusion. I appreciate you very much taking the time and for everyone listening, I encourage you to check out the movie and the book "Hillary's America", it's very, very eye opening regardless of who you support. And thanks Dinesh, I appreciate you coming.

Dinesh D'Souza: My pleasure.

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