CLAY: Joined now by — a good title, I think — filmmaker, author, and host of the Dinesh D’Souza Podcast. He is Dinesh D’Souza. What do you like more, the title filmmaker or author?

DINESH: (laughing) Well, you know, to be honest, I’ve been an author for almost 30 years. My first book came out in 1991. It actually popularized the phrase “political correctness.” It was called Illiberal Education. I’ve written, I don’t know, 17/18 books, but I only got into movies in 2012 when I made my first film on Obama called Obama’s America, 2016: Obama’s America, and I’ve done five films since then. So, I really like both. But I think author has been my defining kind of title for most of my career.

CLAY: We appreciate you joining us. I want to start off with this question: Does covid madness ever end? You’ve seen a lot of different storylines in your career, as you said, since you wrote that first book back in 1991. Trends come and go. It doesn’t seem like we can escape covid. Will we?

DINESH: Well, I think what you have is the real story of covid is not the epidemic. There is a real virus and there is an epidemic. But how we got the virus, what is the precise nature of this virus, what is the best way to deal with it, is it really necessary to lock down whole economy?

What I’m talking about is the way in which the epidemic has been politically massaged and manipulated. I mean, even the 2020 election, the way it was handled is inconceivable without covid. They rigged the rules of the whole election system to build it around covid and to take advantage of covid. So that, I think, is the real political story of the virus.

BUCK: Now, Dinesh, we are seeing some efforts right now… It’s, Buck, by the way. Good to talk to you, my friend. It’s been a couple weeks. I gotta say, this latest eviction moratorium that we were talking about right before you came on, in the face of the fact that there was already a Supreme Court ruling that said, “The CDC really can’t do this.”

And the Biden administration is just saying, “Ah, we’re gonna do it anyway,” and given that they floated out things recently like a national vaccine mandate, they’re talking about vaccinating every single active-duty member of the United States military. No ifs, ands, or buts. It feels like these are just trial balloons they’re putting out there for even more tyrannical overreach. And I’ve gotta say, I’ve been surprised at how little there has been mass pushback and mass noncompliance from Americans in a lot of the parts of the country that you’d expect something else.

DINESH: Yes. I think it’s also striking that we’re seeing lawlessness creep into our society in many different ways. I mean, this is not an isolated case. Look at the way in which the Antifa, BLM rioters or catch-and-release or $50 fine for burning a church. You know, look at the way in which they let in covid-infected illegals across the border.

So they’re trying to tell American citizens, “You gotta do this; you gotta do that.” They’re showing a blatant disregard by keeping the back door open and letting in, by the way, not just Mexicans. They’re letting in people from Haiti, from India; people who are coming from Asia to come across the Rio Grande and through the Mexican border.

Look at the way they’re trying to pack the court. So in case after case, you see that they’re quite willing to step aside from established laws and practices just to push their ideological agenda — as if daring the American people to push back.

CLAY: How does the pushback come? What, in your mind…? I know we’ve got the 2022 election. The House can swing; the Senate can swing. But when you’ve got a power dynamic such as this. We’re doing the show right now, Dinesh, in New York City and the mayor of New York City came out and said, “Hey, I’m gonna require vaccine passports.” It may happen in L.A. now. The creep of freedom being stolen away is continuing 18 months after this all began. What has to happen in order to win and fight back on these battles?

DINESH: Well, first of all, never in the history of the world have people — the ordinary citizen on their own — come marching out and organized a revolution. That’s never occurred. Even the American Revolution when you think about it, was organized by a group of elites who basically called the people to action. What we’re seeing now, I think, is a massive failure of leadership. There’s a huge vacuum.

Obviously, Trump had filled that vacuum before. But now — apart from issuing a periodic statement — Trump is largely silent. Now, there are Republican leaders in individual states like DeSantis and here in Texas, for example. But on the national level, there is a screaming need for leaders who say, “This is what we need to do. This is what we’re demanding and calling the people to do,” and then the people will respond. But they won’t respond without the call.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Dinesh D’Souza, filmmaker, podcaster and author. Check out the Dinesh D’Souza Podcast. He does excellent analysis there. You should go check it and subscribe. Dinesh, we had a Tea Party when I first got into doing this instead of doing stuff for the CIA 10 years ago. The Tea Party came about because of the concerns over massive government spending.

And we did have a mass movement. Do you think that there’s room for something like that now? It feels to me like conservatism is standing by and ready to assert itself, and I would have thought the spark would have already happened. Is it incumbent upon all of us and those who are listening? We’ve got people listening in all 50 states right now across the country. Do we need a grassroots movement to get this stuff to stop, and how do we get there?

DINESH: Well, I think that someone has to strike the match in all these cases. Now, a classic example is, look at these January 6 defendants. The way in which the Biden administration is literally brutalizing these families, and the GOP is basically silent. So yesterday my wife Debbie and I decided to write a $100,000 check to support the family fund of the January 6 defendants. Why? Well, partly we want to help.

But the only reason I’m mentioning it publicly is I want to encourage other people to step in. This is a case where you’ve got all these people that are being left on the field, their own party has kind of abandoned them, even the good guys on our side are largely silent, and the abuse of law and the way they’re being treated… I mean, if you just contrast the January 6 families with, say, the Antifa and BLM families, you’d have to conclude that there’s really no equal justice under the law in this country.

CLAY: It is kind of wild to think about the way that — and, frankly, many of these defendants are starting to make those arguments of prosecutorial misconduct in the way that they are dismissing charges against let’s say the Portland courthouse, all of the different arrests that went on even involving federal related buildings and comparing them to what happened on January 6th. There’s no rhyme or reason other than politics to justify the dichotomy of treatment there, and I imagine that’s one reason you gave the money to help in the defense.

DINESH: Yeah, and I think it goes to more than that because I think what’s happening is the Biden administration wants to create a larger narrative. They want January 6th to go down in history as the next 9/11. Now, how can you do that when the only person deliberately killed was a Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt? It’s very hard to do.

So they’re relying on a massive coordinated network of propaganda to put out this narrative. But they’ve got to brutalize the families by acting as if they’re going after Bin Laden types when you’re actually going after some plumber who took time off work to go to Washington because he was very concerned about his country.

The doors of the Capitol were open. There were police walking around. They didn’t tell anyone to leave. These guys are taking photos and the cops are posing in the photos and then the FBI hunts this guy down with helicopters– people outside his door, guns drawn — and now the guy’s facing the destruction of his life.

BUCK: Dinesh, it’s stunning to see the disparity in what I call the treatment of the so-called insurrection and the other insurrection that happened for not just days, but weeks and even months of 2020 with an entire police station burned down to the ground in Minneapolis. Multiple attempts to burn down a federal courthouse in Portland. Officers attacked with bricks, with batons, with bats.

Feces and urine were thrown at them, lasers deliberately shined in their eyes to intentionally try to blind them permanently. I haven’t seen anybody held for six months in solitary on any of those charges, and I think the American people have to start to ask, “At what point do we recognize that what we had called the deep state within the apparatus of the federal government under the Trump administration is now essentially running the federal government”? The deep state is the state!

DINESH: Absolutely. I think another question that we will not expect to be answered by Pelosi’s task force is this: To what degree did the FBI instigate the storming of the Capitol? I’m not just talking about the FBI infiltrating groups like the Oath Keepers and the 3%ers and then watching to see what they did. But to what degree the FBI actually light the fuel that said, “Let’s do this!

“We’ll provide the logistics. We’ll show you which doors are open.” These questions need to be asked. Why? Because this is exactly what the FBI did not very long previously in the Whitmer kidnapping plot. They were actually very involved in bringing that plot to fruition, and there’s some question whether that plot would even have occurred without the FBI basically saying, “Let’s do it!”

BUCK: The one part of this we know, Dinesh, is that there will not be an honest review of security on January 6th. It’s just gonna be a lot of theatrics and waving the so-called bloody shirt in a sense to try to make it seem like all Trump supporters share in the guilt. We just got about a minute, Dinesh, but I want to know: Do you feel like this Biden administration is increasingly weakened and that we’re setting up for a conservative reversal here? Or do you feel like it’s cornered, lashing out and therefore even more dangerous when it comes to authoritarian and tyrannical actions?

DINESH: I think that the Biden administration has essentially started ripping out the guardrails of society. It’s almost as if they’re daring the American people to do what they can. It’s almost as if they’re saying, “Listen, you can fight back, but we’ve already thought of that. We’ll get you kicked off social media. We’ll get you fired from your job.

“So we’ve got the system fully under control — fully locked down, you might say –politically.” But, I think yes. If you’re asking me, is there a massive anxiety about what they’re doing and increasing awareness than that is deeply wrong in this country, a lot of buyer’s remorse for independents who might have voted for Biden. I absolutely think so — and, yes, I do think it will manifest itself next year.

CLAY: Dinesh, we appreciate you coming on, my man. Filmmaker, author, and host of the Dinesh D’Souza Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.

DINESH: My pleasure.