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Glenn's Show Prep

Dinesh D'souza: Obama is most animated when attacking Republicans, conservatives, Christians

November 19, 2015
Ted Tuttle

Editor

Glenn sat down with Dinesh D'souza today to get his take on Obama's emotionless response to the terror attacks in Paris. Why is it that Obama gets passionate and riled up about the police, Syrian refugees and gun control, but not people losing their lives at the hands of Islamic extremists?

D'souza also had some interesting thoughts to share while talking about his new book, Stealing America: What My Experience With Criminal Gangs Taught Me About Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party. Listen to the audio or read the transcript below.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

GLENN: Dinesh D'souza. Number one best-selling author. New book. Stealing America: What my Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me About Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party. Dinesh, welcome to the program. How are you, sir?

DINESH: Glenn, always a pleasure.

GLENN: Can you explain to me -- when I watched Barack Obama, and I assume you saw him in Turkey this week.

DINESH: Yes.

GLENN: When America and everybody's heart was breaking -- and this is our ally. This is France. This is one of our strongest allies.

And everybody -- the emotion was -- was pouring out and I've never seen Barack Obama more Ben Carson like. You know, he spoke and it was -- and it was like and, you know, this was -- this was a really bad setback. There wasn't any emotion there. It was -- there was no outrage. There was no -- there was no passion.

DINESH: He was reading from his tax return, in effect.

GLENN: Yes, did you see that, and can you explain it?

DINESH: I saw that. And I actually noted the astonishing contrast with Hollande. In fact, Hollande started out a lot like Obama. He's been actually very receptive. He's been condemning earlier Islamophobia and so on. But the moment there's blood on the street, Hollande sounds like Winston Churchill. He starts using the language of civilization against barbarism. He says things like "we will be merciless." Obama, on the other hand, sounds like Obama. And I think this is actually an indication of modern progressivism. Because I think we saw it similarly with Hillary in Benghazi.

And here's what I mean. These guys appear to be annoyed when there is a foreign policy crisis. A little bit -- they feel like that's a distraction. Why are you bothering me with that? I've got more important things to do. So one reason I wrote this book, Stealing America, is my argument is the progressives are busy domestically stealing the wealth of America. That's what animates them. That's what motivates them. They do get animated when they are blocked from doing that by Republicans. But, on the other hand, all this other stuff happening abroad is no more interesting to them than thieves who are robbing a bank would be interested in news reports that the overall security -- external security of the bank is threatened or that there are bad macro economic effects from stealing from a bank. They're looting the bank, and that's what they care about.

GLENN: So when he's bringing in the Syrians, he's not passionate about the security of the United States. But, boy, is he passionate about bringing the Syrians in?

DINESH: Yeah. And he's passionate about making the point that there should not be a distinction between Islam and Christianity. Notice that his voice gets a certain emotionalism in condemning those who say that, for example, Syrian Christians are less likely to become Islamic radicals than Syrian Muslims. I mean, you'd think that it would be obvious that a Syrian Christian would be less vulnerable to the siren call of Islamic radicalism. But for Obama, that is an offensive, annoying, irritating thing to say. And he'll attack it. That's what gets him charged up.

GLENN: Pat, do you have the speech where he said Christians have a responsibility, and Muslims have to do this and, you know, ask why their kids are being indoctrinated. Do you know that? From the speech on --

PAT: Is it the one where he was talking about there shouldn't a religious test.

GLENN: Do you have that one? Yeah.

GLENN: Listen to this. I want to get your opinion on this. If this is the right cut. Do you have it?

PAT: Or do I have it? Let me see.

GLENN: Okay. You look for it.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: Is there a -- a stealing of America happening with the Syrian refugees?

DINESH: Well, just if I could make a point on this religious business, imagine if there were a group of Christians somewhere in the world who are very pious and very serious about their faith and in the name of their faith were committing massacres, were committing bombings, were engaging in mass violence, do you think Obama would show one minute of reluctance to call those Christian extremists --

GLENN: No. Not at all.

DINESH: Of course not. So there's a double standard here. And behind every double standard, there's usually a single standard. And so it seems to me that Obama's single standard is he's got this systematic preference for Islam over Christianity. And it exposes itself in the very differential way in which he treats the two faiths.

GLENN: Well, he also says that we shouldn't jump to any conclusions. Yet, I don't have all the facts and the police acted stupidly. I don't have all the facts, but we -- we know what happened in Ferguson. I don't have all the facts, but we have to act now because there was another shooting today.

I mean, he is quick to assign the blame everywhere. But he always comes out after one of these events and says, "Now, wait a minute. Let's slow down. Let's not be crazy and let's not do anything rash because you always make mistakes."

DINESH: Yeah, I think that's right. Obama is the most animated when he is attacking Republicans, conservatives, and Christians. Those are the three groups that really get his goat.

Foreign policy threats to him, he always takes a statesman-like, above-the-fray stance. Now, the stealing America that you asked me about, I think, is an escalation from what liberalism was about before. By an escalation, what I mean is we're now seeing an effort on the part of the progressives to put their hands, not just on the wealth of the government, the $3 trillion in the federal budget, for example, but to extend the control over all the wealth of the private economy. We've seen under Obama, for example, major industries. Banking insurance, automobiles, health care. Now increasingly energy. They're trying to establish federal control over the private sector.

GLENN: When I saw the -- you know, the president was out to talk about global warming and yet another scheme. And it was -- what is it? $14 trillion a year this scheme for global warming. All I could think of was, "You're just stealing the wealth. That's all you're doing."

DINESH: Yeah. I mean, Obama doesn't know or care whether the earth is getting hotter or colder. He has no idea. But he sees it as a wonderful opportunity in order to make headway in the stealing America project. Part of what I learned in the confinement center, Glenn, was we tend to look at these as arguments, as debates.

GLENN: Hold on just a second. I want to explain. When he says I was in the confinement center. You want to talk about taking lemons and making it into lemonade. Correct me if I'm wrong, you got the premise of this book by being incarcerated, and you were in jail with hardened criminals and thieves and murderers and rapists and everything else. And you're like, I recognize this as the Democratic Party.

(laughter)

DINESH: Well, I began to learn the way they operate.

GLENN: Right.

DINESH: They would give me a sales pitch, and then they would say, "Well, that's our pitch. If we're trying to rob a house, we need to get the homeowner to lift the latch off the door. So we've got to sweet talk him into doing that. Now, the moment he lifts the latch off the door, we can kick in the door and go in." But the pitch creates the element of momentary trust that allows the scam to go forward.

So I now begin to see that what happens in American politics -- Obamacare, this whole business about Obama giving you rebates on your college loans, these are all wonderful scams.

I mean, let's look for a moment at this college thing. Obama says to young people, "I'm going to forgive your college loans or I'm going to make it not required for you to pay them back. I'm going to give you free college." Now, think about that. How is he going to do that?

Well, the federal government has to pay for it because nothing is free. You have to pay professors and pay for buildings and so on. So Obama and the government doesn't have the money, so they're going to borrow from the national debt. The national debt is going to go up. Who is going to pay that national debt? Who is going to inherit it? The same young people who were the beneficiaries of Obama's munificence. So what Obama is really doing is he's taking money from young people, from their own future earnings or from their own back pocket and giving it to them.

But he's making himself into the philanthropist. Obviously it's not his money. It's their money. So it's not even robbing Peter to pay Paul; it's robbing Paul to pay Paul.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.