Some Future Day

Marc Beckman: [00:01:00] Good morning, Dinesh D'Souza. It's such a pleasure to have you join me on some future day. How are you today?
Dinesh D'Souza: I'm doing well and looking forward to our conversation.
Marc Beckman: Dinesh, your [00:02:00] personal story, um, is told from time to time, but never in great detail. Would you mind taking a minute to, um, share your personal story, your immigration story really as to how you came to America with our, with Some Future Days audience?
Dinesh D'Souza: I was born in the outskirts of Mumbai, India. My dad was a chemical engineer. My mom, a housewife, and I, at the age of 17, a man came to my school from the Rotary Club of Bombay, of Mumbai, And, um, uh, suggested that we students consider applying for an exchange program scholarship to the United States. And some, something convinced me to do that.
That was a selection process. In any event, I came to the country here, at the age of 17, uh, as a high school exchange student, I lived in Arizona for a [00:03:00] year, went to public school in a small town called Patagonia. I lived with four families over the course of the year, kind of a. cross section, if you will, of American life.
And then my high school counselor came to me one fine day and said, Hey, have you ever thought of applying to college? And I said, well, my parents ambition was to send me for graduate school to London, kind of the old Indian thing to do in perhaps the days of colonialism. And he goes, well, he goes, you know, we have a very small school here, and I don't have a whole lot to do.
So. I'm going to sort of make you my project for the year. And so this man, Mr. Hackett, shepherded me through the college application process. Uh, I went, ended up going to Dartmouth um, and this was the very early years of Reagan, 1980 to 83. And, um, and while I was there, you know, a liberal arts student studying economics, I also kind of caught the Reagan bug and started getting [00:04:00] interested in Reaganism, this remarkable phenomenon.
And, uh, it really changed my career plans and ultimately changed my life and steered me in a political direction that I might not otherwise have gone into.
Marc Beckman: Dinesh, I'm curious, just to go back to, uh, your living experience in Arizona, um, what was that like, uh, like, what, like, what kind of, right now, immigration is just such a hot topic, obviously, like, the country is, like, ripped apart because of it, and I'm curious, like, if you could go back to the emotion, the fear, The uncertainty, um, and maybe there were some great things too.
The hope, um, maybe you, you, you were just 17, you didn't understand why you were in that situation or, um, the dream, like what was it like from an emotional perspective living with these other people and all?
Dinesh D'Souza: It was, it was strange on many levels. I was coming from a big city, Bombay, one of the biggest cities in the world. I was in a town of a thousand people, and my high school senior class had 32. So, it was a [00:05:00] transformation in that sense. I lived with a pastor, then I lived with a, the postmaster of the town, then a rancher, and finally a couple, both of whom were schoolteachers.
So, a very, um, interesting mix of people. I think in retrospect, very good for me. Um, I've, uh, been very much assimilated over the years, and it happened very quickly. And I credit a lot of it to having lived with American families. And also lived in an environment somewhat separated from a larger Indian community.
For example, if I had been sent to, let's just say, Jackson Heights, New York, it's like little India, you know, Indian
Marc Beckman: I do know.
Dinesh D'Souza: Indian families. I probably would still have an Indian accent right now, if that had been the case. I didn't come as an immigrant per se. In theory, I'd come for one year as an exchange student.
In fact,
Marc Beckman: Right.
Dinesh D'Souza: came with me. And to this day, no family members have followed in my path. They're still back in India. So,
Marc Beckman: Wow.
Dinesh D'Souza: is unusual. Most [00:06:00] Indians who are here have come as families. Parents have relocated, brought the kids, and so on. But in my case, I came for a year. I then extended it for four years to get under a student visa, and only after I graduated from Dartmouth I was like, you know, I'm very interested in this country and what it represents.
I want to be part of its politics, so I then applied for a green card, which took me some years to get, and then I was naturalized. So think about it, I came in 1978, in 1991 I took the fabled oath of citizenship and became a U. S. citizen.
Marc Beckman: Taking that off, um, was that important to you? And do you think it's an important part of, uh, being an American?
Dinesh D'Souza: It's important in a ritualistic sense. It cements something that has to happen above and beyond the oath. In other words, interestingly, the oath is like any important ritual enactment. The oath by itself doesn't do anything. Ideally, you have made a sort of [00:07:00] emotional and maybe even spiritual transformation into, quote, becoming an American.
And the oath is a kind of affirmation of that. A little bit like, you know, when you get married and say, I do, hopefully you already love the person, you're committed to a life with them. And the I do is simply the sort of final affirmation of a commitment that's already made.
Marc Beckman: just talking about the evolution of your career, so you come out of Dartmouth and it takes a while until you hit that 1991 Mark, and you take that, um, uh, naturalization oath. So where were you career wise? I'm curious, like, where you started and then how you ended up with this vertical that you're building specifically as it relates to being a creator, a media maker.
Dinesh D'Souza: I graduated in 1983, I did a program in political philosophy that, that summer, and then I took a job, uh, with an alumni group at Princeton University, educating a mag, uh, editing a magazine, uh, called Prospect Magazine. [00:08:00] Interestingly, Samuel Alito, now on the Supreme Court, was Oh, wow. the subscribers to that magazine and involved with that.
organization, uh, to a degree. in 1985, I came to Washington, D. C. to work as the managing editor of a conservative political, quarterly, scholarly magazine called Policy Review. I did that for two years. Some articles, uh, I wrote, I was very prolific in those days, I was writing in the Washington Post, New York Times, lots of other places, and, uh, it came to the attention of the Reagan White House, and I was invited to come in and, uh, and talk to them in the White House mess, and on the, on, right there on the spot, they offered me a job, and I said, guys, I said, you know, I can't really work here, I'm not a U.
S. citizen, and I remember the men all looked at each other, and one of them kind of jokingly said, well, Are you a Reaganite? And I was like, well, yeah. And they were like, all right, we'll figure it out. Sure enough, they did. And so amazingly, even though I was a policy [00:09:00] analyst in the Reagan White House, at that time, I was on the pathway to citizenship, but I wasn't yet a US citizen.
Marc Beckman: That's so interesting. So did you have the chance to meet President Reagan? Did you, did you spend some time with
him?
Dinesh D'Souza: only in the most cursory way. I mean, I was in my mid twenties and, uh, so I got to stand in the back of the room and watch Reagan, uh, on the big table with the senior staff. Uh, but I was basically observing and taking notes, so I wasn't participating in the meeting, but it was for me a wonderful window into government at the highest level.
And, um, and, um, since I haven't been back in government since those days, it was, um, it was wonderful. It was an important little segment of my life. Now, my career really began after I left the Reagan White House. I was offered a fellowship, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and I began my first book, which was Illiberal Education.
It's actually the book that didn't coin, but made famous the term political correctness. And the book was a huge bestseller in [00:10:00] 1991. It came right on the heels of another important book by Alan Bloom called The Closing of the American Mind. And Alan Bloom's book and my book sort of defined the public critique of political correctness in that era.
Marc Beckman: So it's interesting. Um, you know, when, when you talk about Reagan, a lot goes through my head, but for most people, people think about his economy. I mean, I lived through it and it was just booming. It was a real celebration here in the United States on the ground. We saw all different marketplaces and sectors within the economy, um, really growing, the spirit of entrepreneurship was flourishing, but for me, I think The godfather of capitalism is Alexander Hamilton.
Um, we need to go all the way back, right, to the beginning. I think he really triggered, his philosophy really triggered in many ways the spirit of American ingenuity and, and entrepreneurship. And I think, honestly, like, if he didn't have that position, um, early on during the founding of our nation, We might [00:11:00] not be as capitalistic as we are today.
Um, it looks like from an outsider's perspective, you, Dinesh, embody that spirit. I look at like your breadth of work, like you used, you used the word earlier, prolific to describe what you were writing back in the day for Washington Post, New York Times, but if you look at your broader body of work today, it's prolific.
I mean, an entrepreneur at, at, at the, at the heart. Um, how many films and books have you created so far to date?
Dinesh D'Souza: I've lost a little bit of count on the books. I'm at about 15 on the books and I've done almost all my books are in one way or another a meditation or interpretation of the meaning of America. Between 2008 and 2012 I wrote books on Christian apologetics, which represents a sort of diversion for me.
But apart from that, most of my books are focused in one way or [00:12:00] another as interpretations of the founding, of the Civil War, the more recent history of America, but also threats to America from the inside and from the outside. So that's been my unifying topic, if you will. I was, even though you described me as an entrepreneur, I never saw myself that way.
My parents were, you know, salaried career guys. dad, as I say, was an engineer all his life. In fact, he worked for the same company pretty much his entire life. And I was for about 12 years in so called think tanks, which are non profit research foundations. First, the American Enterprise Institute, then the Hoover Institution, which is part of Stanford University.
is when I lived in California. In the early two thousands, I began, I wrote, I wrote, uh, did my first film, which was called Obama's America in 2012. And so I've been a little over a decade in the [00:13:00] filmmaking business, documentary filmmaking, and I've now made eight documentary films. Uh, I'm happy to say that's been a very successful pursuit of the top 10 political documentaries, uh, I believe I have three in that list about the same as Michael Moore.
Marc Beckman: Congratulations. That's really truly, uh, remarkable. I know how difficult it is to create a film. There are so many moving parts, starting not just with the creative idea, but the financing. So how do you put together the financing? If you don't mind me asking, how do you, how do you structure the financing for these films?
Dinesh D'Souza: much easier for me now than it was in the beginning, but I'll Yeah, the beginning what happened was I had written a book on Obama called The Roots of Obama's Rage. I published an excerpt of it as the cover story in Forbes magazine. And it came to the attention of a fellow, Joe Ricketts, who is the founder of Ameritrade, uh, you know, TD Ameritrade, now Ameritrade Bank.
Ricketts, Joe said to me, he [00:14:00] goes, Hey Dinesh, you know, he goes, I'm going to buy an ad in the Wall Street Journal to urge people to write, And I said, Joe, don't do that. It's like a hundred grand to do that and I'll sell 200 books. You know, it's not going to be worth it. But he ignored me and he did that.
Uh, and afterwards he said, how did, how'd I do? And I go, well, you sold, you helped me sell 200 books and he laughed and he said, well, how do we, how do we take your message? It's so important and help it to reach a million people. I go, well, a million people don't buy hardcover political books. I said, but the only way to do that that I know of is to make a documentary film.
Because I had remembered that Michael Moore had made Fahrenheit 9 11 and dropped that film right in the middle of the 2004 campaign.
Marc Beckman: I remember.
Dinesh D'Souza: well, what would it cost to do a film? So I said, let me talk to a few friends of mine and come up with an idea. So I came to Joe Ricketts and said, it'll cost two and a half million dollars for me to make a film.
So what he does is he whips out his checkbook, he says, Here's a hundred thousand dollars. Go and find 24 other people that give you the [00:15:00] same, and then you can make a film. So, it seemed incredible at the time, but that is what I did. I was able to convince, uh, 24 other people, and I don't think any of those people thought they were going to get their money back.
I think they all thought, well, we want to support Dimash, encourage him, he's a well meaning and smart fellow. And, uh, but my first film was immensely successful. All these people got their money back and then, and then a lot, and, and that created a, a kind of a financing base for my films. Now, I'll say, in all honesty, my pitch to investors is this.
I, I say, guys, I, I, I'm pitching you on what I call recycled philanthropy. I'm not promising to make you any money, but I'll work really hard to get you your money back so you can give it back to me. my next film so this way i'm not going to be asking you for a new dollar time after time it's the same dollar but i'm going to run it around the block multiple times and and you'll get a lot of bang for your buck so to speak
Marc Beckman: And has that
worked
Have they, have you had the same [00:16:00] investors come back?
Dinesh D'Souza: pretty much uh now in the early films i had a pretty large pool of investors i'd rely on you know 25 investors or Yeah, that's complicated. fortunately for later films i'm now down to i'll typically try to get three or four investors you Much easier for me to manage because it's a full time job to manage 30 investors.
You have to remember these are people who put up money but they also all have their own ideas about how the film should be made and who I should interview and so I'm constantly fielding calls with ideas and you got to send them all the rough cut so it's easier just as a practical matter to work with a smaller pool of investors than a larger pool.
Marc Beckman: So, you know, the financing is challenging, but you know, distribution is challenging too, especially I would imagine with where you sit politically. Um, you know, when, when you talk about the Reagan era, that the country was really behind him. It was a remarkable time period for, um, people that sit on the Republican side.
of the fence. But you have personally watched, um, you know, [00:17:00] that, that sentiment move through corporations too. So how do you handle distribution? Is it, are these movies that you're creating released in the traditional theatrical way? Are you able to get distribution across the country or are you creating a direct to consumer type of model?
Dinesh D'Souza: No, we have used a pretty traditional model. One of the early discoveries I made, which was very exhilarating for me, is that the distribution of movies is not the same as the production of them. So the Hollywood studios do not control distribution at all. Distribution is controlled by the theater chains, of which there are three big ones.
Um, AMC, Cinemark, and Regal. Now, uh, interestingly, the theater chains are not left wing. And over time I came to realize that they are not even really in the movie business, they're in the real estate business. In other words, their job is to fill seats. And that is really what they care about. Now, my [00:18:00] first film was very successful.
Thirty three million dollars in the box office. That's, that's a lot of seats. That's 3. 3 million people paying ten bucks to go watch that film. And it created a very good reputation for me. It opened the doors to distributors like Lionsgate, which distributed a couple of my films, Universal. Which distributed a couple more.
So these places looked at me as kind of the conservative answer to Michael Moore. And I had very good relations with them, although the relations frayed a little bit. Not because of me, but because of Trump. Trump was so radioactive starting in 2016, that some of the previous companies that worked with me began to run scared and back off.
And, uh, but nevertheless, it didn't stop my films from going into the theaters. Um, I had to change my model during COVID, but that's not, uh, that was just because theaters were in a bad way. Uh, but I'm back to my traditional model now. So, no, I have no trouble getting my films in theaters. Ultimately, it's just a challenge.
[00:19:00] Documentary films are very, I would say they're the hardest genre of any film to make. economically viable. If you go to a mall and look at a hundred people, let's say eating in the food court over there, you know, there's probably thirty of them that will go see an animated family film, thirty of them that will go see a superhero film, thirty of them that may go see a romantic comedy.
But maybe three that would go to the theater to see a documentary film. So it's a, you know, You're, you're rolling the stone up the hill for sure, and, um, and it's a, it's probably the most challenging genre of films to make successful.
Marc Beckman: So Dinesh, do you think that, um, Let's put it together. Like the Hollywood film industry and the publishing industry are ripe for disruption. It seems like you have like a hybrid model then. Um, you have the publishing arm to your business and the filmmaking arm to your business. Distribution seems to be traditional.
I would imagine it's direct to consumer and streamers too. Um, but the [00:20:00] publishing side, are you self publishing your books now or do you have a, um, one of the big five publishers behind you?
Dinesh D'Souza: I've, I've done it two different ways. I've never self published a book, and, um, I've, I've thought about it more recently only because, uh, the economics of books are very interesting and we can go into that. But, um, I have published both with mainstream publishing houses, Doubleday, uh, Macmillan. Um, my first book was published by the Free Press, which is a division of Macmillan.
I've also published with HarperCollins. But the majority of my books have been published by a conservative publishing house called Regnery, which has had a remarkably large number of bestsellers over many, many years. I've Had three books that have gone to number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
I
Marc Beckman: Wow.
Dinesh D'Souza: ten books that have hit the bestseller list,
Marc Beckman: Wow.
Dinesh D'Souza: went to number one.
Marc Beckman: What a feat.
Dinesh D'Souza: all three were Regnery books, interestingly enough.
Marc Beckman: That's amazing. So do you think the industries though, it sounds to you like you, you're [00:21:00] happy to be in this traditional lane then, but do you think that these legacy, um, sectors, Hollywood, filmmaking, and publishing are ripe for disruption? Do you feel like, uh, they're, they have a, an old type of, uh, staid mentality as it relates to business today?
Dinesh D'Souza: For sure. I think there's, uh, change coming, um, in both areas. Now, the difference between publishing and movies that there is no reduced appetite for movies at all. The reduced appetite may be for whether I consume a movie this way or that way, whether I go to the theater or watch at home. People obviously are now creating big screen TVs, movie rooms.
So it's much easier for people to watch at home. And also the kind of, uh, you know, it used to be, uh, going, going to the movies was kind of a stayed experience. You'd, you, there'd be, uh, people dressed up. You'd go out on a date, you'd go to the movies. Uh, now you have a lot of sort of young, rowdy kids in the theater.
So a lot of older people are like, I'm, not gonna go to the theater. So this is [00:22:00] all changing consumer habits with books. I think the crisis is more serious. Which is, um, that fewer people are reading. the book is now becoming increasingly, I think, a, a little bit of a status symbol. Uh, I like Dinesh's podcast.
I like his movies, but I saw, I'm gonna get his book, not necessarily gonna read it, cover to cover. Um, I read a, a book recently that was a very smart book, but I noticed it was written like no book I've ever seen. It had. Like two subheads on every page. Uh, it used all the typographical arts. You know, multiple sections were in bold.
There were things in caps. I mean, it was written like a Trump social media post, the whole book. And, and I remember looking at this and I was like, you know, this, old Dinesh would have said, this is a disgrace. Uh, because we're all taught, you know, in, in, when we learn how to write, we That you should write in such a way that the emotion, that the tempo of a sentence is carried by the way you structure [00:23:00] the sentence, not by the fact that you have three exclamation points at the end of the sentence.
So I'm a believer in that sense in the old school, but I peered at this book with almost the fascination of like ancient man looking at a wheel for the first time, and saying, you know, this may be the way that books are written in the future.
Marc Beckman: Well, Dinesh, you know, I think the reality is, like, maybe we're thinking about our demographic, right, and older, and the reality is that we're living in a time period now where consumers have less of an attention span. They are trained at this point to, um, consume content off of social media. And a lot of what you're talking about with regards to this book, it sounds like it almost aligns with how one might take content off of social media.
Tick tock, or off of, um, Instagram, um, some of the, the, you know, swipe social media platforms. So I wonder if, if, um, they're transforming. It's interesting because the younger generation [00:24:00] is also developing now this creator's economy, and a lot of people in the legacy business sectors are looking at the creator's economy from a distance, and really not, I don't think they're giving it enough, uh, recognition.
I don't think they realize that, uh, The creator's economy is going to drive, it's already driving right through legacy business sectors. And maybe the creator economy and the creator sentiment is going to be one way of delivering books or the reading experience in a different way. Staying on the creator economy Concept for a second.
young people are now, um, looking at the development of storytelling in a very different way than our generation, right? It's not necessarily chronological. It's not necessarily It's linear and in some cases it's not always truthful but now they have more tools to create and tell stories for example artificial intelligence.
So I'm wondering what [00:25:00] strengths do you think the impact of artificial intelligence can bring to your these two sectors that you're that you're sharing. I realize that You use filmmaking, the podcast, your show, and, and, um, writing as a way to express your philosophy and your vision and things that you're concerned about.
But, you know, certainly you're, you're an expert in these areas. I'm wondering, will artificial intelligence allow for the younger generation to deliver a solid product, a new product? And then what happens to this massive tidal wave of content that we're seeing? How does the messaging break through?
Dinesh D'Souza: I confess I have not fully thought through the implications of artificial intelligence. In general, my understanding of technology can be summed up in this way. Uh, and that is that what technology does traditionally is create better and better sort of pipes. But [00:26:00] Always the, um, the strong, um, advantage is not necessarily for the person who masters technology.
There's always going to be a few entrepreneurs who become sort of the tech gurus or the tech creators of our time. But in the end, it's not the computer that makes the difference, but what you actually put into the computer. The content that you deliver through these pipes. Uh, and so the same thing would be true with movies, with books, that there are all these new pipes being created.
There's always going to be a huge demand for content. However, The content has to adapt to the mode of delivery. So let's take, for example, in the 19th century, when people had a lot of leisure time, they were, they were earning money and they had free time. And so novels in the 19th century were like 800 pages long because people had a lot of time and they enjoyed.
That kind of, I'm going to read a novel over the summer, but we're now not doing that, right? So, the same thing [00:27:00] might be true with films. There might be a move towards shorter films, more punchy films, as you say. The traditional format of storytelling is changing in some ways. Now, you know, I continue to believe that human nature remains the same, and so the appetite for story, for character, for plot, for suspense, for climax, in other words, some of the basic ingredients of telling a story have not changed since the days of Homer's Iliad, um, and, and perhaps won't change unless Somehow technology can change human nature itself, which, by the way, is not entirely out of the question, but I don't think anywhere on the near horizon.
I'm talking about things like extending human life to 300 years or somehow being able to change the wiring of our brains. We're, you know, we're not close to being there yet, but, um, but I see AI as a very radical and disruptive possibility precisely because it might be able, for [00:28:00] example, to deliver Dinesh's next book even before I write it, drawing upon the themes I've written in earlier books.
And that's, that's a little bit of a terrifying idea.
Marc Beckman: And to create Dinesh's new film from that new book, right? Because now the artificial intelligence technology allows for filmmakers like you. I think it gives you an advantage, actually. Um, I think it will give you and Spielberg and all these other filmmakers a big advantage because you'll be able to prompt the artificial intelligence in a way that, and that only an experienced filmmaker can do so.
And it will allow for you to create photorealistic content in real time. Today, for example, versus, you know, these legacy studios that take, you know, years and hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of people to produce one film. It will give you, I think, an immense advantage in years to come. But let's face it, Dinesh, to your point, some people just don't want to embrace [00:29:00] technology.
Maybe, you know, they, they just don't love it, or maybe they just love the Analog experience, like the concept of a dinner hasn't really evolved in thousands of years. We still use fire to cook our food. We're still using, you know, that, that fork and knife to cut our food so that we're not burning our hands.
And, you know, a glass goblet, like these are all concepts that have been around for thousands of years. It's just human nature. Like, you and I prefer to do that. We don't want to meet and, and have dinner together in the metaverse. I want to press the flesh with my friends and engage in stimulating discussion and, and, um, consume my meal that way.
Um, one area where I think we could use technology to our advantage is in the voting process. I think, for example, blockchain technology will be an incredible Advantage for the United States and other regions throughout the world because I think it could limit fraud, right? On blockchain, if every single vote is embedded on the [00:30:00] blockchain, it's permanent, it's immutable, and it can happen in real time.
It can allow for us to avoid delays. Um, I know that election integrity is a big topic that you're, uh, that you've covered. through the years. I'm curious for us just to start again, just to go slow with the audience, is there a difference between election fraud and voter fraud?
Dinesh D'Souza: Yes, there's a critical difference. So if, if a single voter, let's just say a guy who lives in Georgia, to Arizona, doesn't And because our systems are antiquated, his name will remain on the voter rolls in Georgia. But now he moves to Arizona and he registers there. He's now registered two places.
And he decides, guess what? Both are swing states. I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris in both Arizona and Georgia. That's voter fraud. He's not allowed to do that. Could be, in theory, prosecuted, although it's very rare for that to happen. [00:31:00] Uh, but that's not going to tip the election either in Arizona or in Georgia.
However, so voter fraud is episodic. It's the individual voter somehow gaming the system. Election fraud is coordinated, and election fraud is the concern, because election fraud is aimed at delivering, in general, large numbers of votes, sometimes in a single state, but otherwise across a bunch of states, in order to tip the election.
That is its objective, and it's organized to that purpose. Election fraud has been occurring in our country at various levels For a long time. In the 19th century, the Democrats, uh, had election fraud with new immigrants. They'd come off the boat, they'd basically hand you a bottle of vodka and say, Listen, go see my cousin Gus, he'll, he'll find you a place to stay.
And by the way, here's a ballot, if you sign here, don't worry, we'll fill the rest of it out. This kind of stuff, uh, is not new in American history. Um, I ramped up under COVID. And, um, and our [00:32:00] system remains very vulnerable to fraud in many different ways. Just to give a simple example, um, right now, if you were to request an absentee ballot.
And remember, absentee ballots are, by definition, much more vulnerable than a normal ballot. Because in a normal ballot, you have to go in there, you go behind a curtain, they give you a ballot, there are people watching, it's not easy to cheat. Uh, and if you were to say to the guy, uh, in the counter, and said, hey listen, I got something really urgent, I gotta go run an errand for three hours, let me take my ballot with me, I'll bring it back all filled out and give it to you, they'd be like, you can't do that.
But that's basically what absentee ballots are. They mail you a ballot. Now, here's the point. When you get a ballot in the mail, and you open it up, and you look at it, you'll notice that it doesn't have a watermark, and it doesn't have any identification number. It is just printing on a piece of paper, a certain type of bonded paper.
And, and that's your ballot. [00:33:00] So, right away you can see that a ballot inherently has much less security than, let's say, a 20 bill. Because that ballot can be manipulated, counterfeited quite easily. And there's no built in checking mechanism. For example, the only checking mechanism is a kind of signature verification, which in practice is meaningless.
Untrained people operating within a space of a second or two look at the signature on the envelope. Then they look at a signature on a computer, which is very often your, your application for that ballot. they just look to see if there's a rough match, and then they go to the next ballot. So, this is the extent of the integrity of our system.
Uh, and, and, and absentee ballots are now a big part of it. So, it's a very vulnerable system, and a lot needs to be done to fix it.
Marc Beckman: Is that a serious concern of yours for the 2024 election?
Dinesh D'Souza: The type of election fraud depicted in one of my earlier films called [00:34:00] 2000 Mules, which came out in 2022 and was an examination of the 2020 election. It used, um, both cell phone geotracking and surveillance data to monitor fraud in 2020. By the way, two very reliable technologies that both have the ability to kind of take you back to what happened on the ground, uh, in the, um, in the days leading up to the 2020 election.
I think that particular type of election fraud depicted in that film will be, would be difficult to replicate now. It involved sort of mules or vote traffickers going to ballot boxes, uh, mail and drop boxes, in the middle of the night. Uh, typically with backpacks full of ballots, sometimes wearing latex gloves, habitually taking photos of the ballots going into the box.
Now, if you tried that this year Because of the exposure of 2, 000 mules, millions of people know about it. There will be patriots and citizens looking for it. Uh, and so, I don't think you could pull it off. I'm worried about new [00:35:00] forms of Gaming the system and precisely this is like Fort Knox that is vulnerable in six different ways.
There's a back door left open and there's also a way to get in through the roof. So, uh, most likely the bad guys if they're trying to cheat in 2024. And I think it's going to be harder for them than in 2020, but they will try new ways to cheat.
Marc Beckman: I see. So, what, like, what if, like, when you talk about new ways, like, what are the new ways? Like, what, like, what are you most concerned about? And, um, you know, what's the viability of it, really?
Dinesh D'Souza: So there's one new way that is depicted in my latest film, which is called Vindicating Trump. And the section in the film and, and in accompanying book of the same title is called the Ballot Makers. So let me describe that in a, in a minute or very briefly.
Marc Beckman: Please.
Dinesh D'Souza: it goes like this. I hired a couple of investigators to look into this, and they came to me and they said, Dinesh, we know a way to make.
ballots. And I said, what are you talking about? [00:36:00] I'm, I'm, I'm kind of a, not an expert, but at least I know a lot about this issue of election fraud. I've never heard of this. How do you make ballots? they go, I said, I thought that you get ballots from the state, right? You're voting in the state of Texas or the state of Maine.
You request an absentee ballot. That's the only way to get a ballot. And they were like, well, where the state of Maine gets ballots from? They order ballots to a particular specifications from printing companies that make ballot stock. And as it turns out, those printing companies sell ballots. sell that ballot stock on the open market.
You can request ballot paper for 10, you can order 100, 000 copies of ballot paper. And I go, well, that's just the paper. They go, yeah, now just go to your state and request an absentee ballot. the absentee ballot will have all the information of a real ballot. It doesn't even say sample ballot. It's not a sample ballot.
It's your actual absentee ballot. Then go down to your local printing store, your or whatever, Take your ballot stock, [00:37:00] and then take this absentee ballot, and just copy the ballot onto that paper, and you will have, in your possession, 10, 000 valid ballots. All those ballots are in proper stock, they will be counted by tabulators if you put them in the printer.
All they're missing is a name and a signature. And so we go on from there. by step in the film, I show you, essentially, how you can make ballots, fill them out, And in fact, until you drop those ballots into an absentee, into a mail in dropbox, you're not even breaking the law. You're allowed to do it, and it's only when you quote, cast your fraudulent vote.
That you have done something illegal. So all of this is very disturbing because it shows, as I say, the vulnerability of our system. Now, in the latest film, I'm not showing you a system that has been, to my knowledge, widely used, but I'm showing you what I would do if, if I was going to try to cheat in the 2024 election.
This is a, a very easy way to do it. And my reason, of course, for exposing it is not to [00:38:00] educate cheaters, but rather to bust the scheme before it's tried.
Marc Beckman: So it's feasible because anybody, you and me, can print the ballots, but then the issue becomes whether or not we can penetrate into the, uh, tally process, into the counting process, right? So I need to get those ballots. Into the Dropbox. And you're saying at that point in time, most people aren't, they're not very secure.
Most people aren't going to see, they, they won't recognize the fraud.
Dinesh D'Souza: Correct. saying is that you can go to the Secretary of State's office in your state And for about 50 bucks, you can buy the voter rolls. You can buy the entire list of people in your state or county that have voted or not voted. You can go down those voter rolls and see who's on the rolls who hasn't voted, let's say, in the last three elections, right?
That guy's unlikely to vote in this election either, but he's on the rolls. Now, he could've moved, he might even be dead, they haven't taken his name off the list, or he's a live voter, he just hasn't voted. He's lost interest in voting. What you [00:39:00] can do is now take that guy, fill out his name onto this ballot that you've made, scrawl his signature, just do a scrawl, and then take that ballot and, and if you cast it, there's a 99 percent chance that that will be counted as a valid vote.
There is no built in system for saying, wait a minute, this guy's on the voter rolls, but this is not that guy. We have no system in place to detect that as a fraudulent vote as it surely would be.
Marc Beckman: Dinesh, I have a legal degree. I was admitted to the bar in New York, New Jersey and waved into DC and I have to tell you, I do not remember ever learning anything about the fact that any average person, any citizen, can have access to an entire state's voting role. where did that come from? I never, this is the first time I'm
hearing it admittedly.
Dinesh D'Souza: go into Google and, and ask, how do I get the voter rolls from my county type in the name of your county. I do not know of a single place in the country where you cannot do that, and I know That's crazy. places where you can, it's just, it's part of what is made [00:40:00] available to citizens. You can go and get the list of the voter rolls of people who have voted and not voted.
That's made available as on basically on public request for a nominal fee.
Marc Beckman: So this, um, underscores my point with regards to the need for emerging technology. I mean, blockchain technology would be a great way to defeat that issue. There's no doubt about it. Um, Dinesh, in, in, you know, in practicality though, I just heard a mayor from Arizona talking about the fact that he believes the Arizona ballots won't be counted and Arizona will not be ready to, uh, provide their results until two days After election day.
Um, so I would imagine that the additional time could create, uh, confusing situations of the nature that you're talking about, more fraud. Um, what do you predict will happen in the days and weeks following election day?
Dinesh D'Souza: I'm not sure. I will say that the reason that this is disturbing, this whole, it's going to [00:41:00] take five days or it's going to take six days, is because by the end of election day You know exactly how many votes you need to tip the election. So, what that means is that you can now discover that, hey listen, cause if you had to guess at the beginning, you have no idea, right?
If you want to, let's just say, do fraud and win the state of Georgia, You have no idea what the margin is going to be. You don't, you have no idea. It turns out in 2020, the margin was 12, 000 votes. So let's say you say, okay, well, I'm going to, I'm going to cheat 20, 000 votes. That may not be enough. That's actually a very small margin.
And if Georgia goes by 100, 000 votes, let's say for Trump, well, your cheating is to no avail. The 20, 000 votes didn't make a difference. So you don't know. But if for some reason a state goes, we're going to, we're going to take absentee ballots and overseas ballots three days after the election. Then you know exactly what's needed.
And so this is very troubling, because there's no need for it. There should be no reason you can't count these votes beforehand. [00:42:00] Every other country, or at least lots of countries, are able to do it. Large countries like India, which just had an election, a lot more voters. Nevertheless, election results are delivered by the end of the night.
So, it's, it's a troubling sign that an advanced democracy like ours cannot deliver those results. Now, I, I think Republicans and Democrats differ psychologically in this election, in this, in this, in this way. Republicans, if you tell Republicans, you lost an election fair and square, Republicans begrudgingly, well, okay, uh, we don't like Kamala Harris, but you know what, she made it over the finish line, we're just gonna have to dust off and do better next time.
Democrats will freak out even if they think Trump won legitimately. Um, they're not freaking out because Trump stole the election. They're freaking out because it's Trump. Uh, and they don't want to accept that result. So, I'm worried about a little bit of civic unrest following the election, but as I say, The civic unrest will not come from [00:43:00] Republicans.
Republicans will not say Kamala Harris won fair and square and therefore we're gonna riot. But it's quite possible the Democrats will say Trump won fair and square and that's all the more reason why we're gonna riot.
Marc Beckman: So, Dinesh, you, you mentioned, um, your new film, your new book, Vindicating Trump, since we're talking about Trump. I'm curious, like, what was the motivation behind creating this film specifically? Why did you want to create the film?
Dinesh D'Souza: My dealings with Trump are not what many people think. I, I, uh, had a campaign finance violation in the Obama years and I was heavily prosecuted for it, in which something that many people, me included, think was a selective or a political, uh, prosecution. But I was pardoned by President Trump in 2018. Now some people say, and you'll see this on social media, Well, Dinesh, he must've owed you, like, big time, you know, to, to, to pardon you.
But the truth of it is, I'd never met Trump. He didn't know me, and he didn't owe me anything, not to mention the fact that when he first ran, I was not a supporter of Trump. [00:44:00] Uh, I'm more of a Reagan Republican, and Trump was just a very mercurial outsider with a very dubious political past. And so, uh, I came on board when Trump became the nominee, but I wasn't really a Trumpster, as they say, uh, from the get go.
But what happened is, subsequent to the pardon, Trump invited me and my family to the White House to meet him in the Oval Office. We had some time with him. I've gotten to know him subsequently, not well, but at least a little bit up close, and I find with Trump, very different than Reagan, the private Trump is quite different than the public Trump.
With Reagan public man and the private man were identical. If Reagan gave a speech, cracked some jokes, told some stories. If you had dinner with Reagan, he'd tell you the same jokes. He'd tell you the same stories. He'd cock his head in the same way. Well, this, this was Reagan. Uh, with Trump, on the other hand, I noticed that he's massively narcissistic and egotistical in public.[00:45:00]
He's not that way in private. He's actually quite self deprecating, he's whimsical, he shows a lot of individual interest in you. If you, if he sees a doorman in his hotel, he's like, hey, your son just took an exam, like, how'd that come out? You know, in other words, he, he's not all about himself, on the contrary.
And so, part of what I wanted to do is to, uh, do an examination in this book and film, not just of Trump's policies, but of Trump the man. I think Trump is, uh, highly interesting because I've never seen anyone in my, in public life, who inspires such intensely, uh, opposite reactions, both of, of affection and of loathing.
I mean, there's one group of Americans that would, I think, honestly, take a bullet for this guy, and there's another group of Americans that will cheer, maybe silently cheer, but cheer nevertheless. If someone tried to put a bullet in him. And I think historically, you'd have to go back to Lincoln to find a figure that inspired such radically opposed reactions.
And even with [00:46:00] Lincoln, and I make this point in the book, with Lincoln, the division was not over the man. It was over the issues. Slavery, the extension of slavery. Um, but with Trump, it is over the man. And so Trump the man is the central figure that I explore in this book.
Marc Beckman: But, but in the book, like, in the book and in the film, it comes across, I, I, I watched the film last night in its entirety, and, um, I'm gonna get to Lincoln in a second, but it comes across in the book as if defending the thing. Donald Trump. Donald Trump is arguably the best marketer of our generation.
Donald Trump has created a real estate empire, several product and brand extensions, uh, number one hit television show, national television show for years and years and years. I think he's the, by far, the best marketer that our generation has ever seen. Why does he need Dinesh D'Souza to support him, to defend him?
Dinesh D'Souza: The reason is that it's really [00:47:00] twofold. One is that Trump, oddly enough, has a manly aversion to showing his private side. He has a manly aversion to showing his, um, his feelings. And also to showing his inner mind. You might've seen Dr. Phil's interview with him, which is a classic case of a psychologist trying to put Trump on the couch.
You know, the assassination, how did it make you feel? And you can just see the visible discomfort on Trump's face. He does not want to go there. He will, in fact, he runs away from those types of questions. Uh, the challenge for me was to bring out that side of Trump. The other thing is there are Republicans who are absolutely And, and, and moderates who are immunized against Trump.
They will say things like, you know, I don't like the guy, but I like his policies. Or, he has a horrible character, but he did a good job the last time around. Or, he needs to learn to shut his mouth. Dinesh, tell him to stop tweeting. Things like this. Now, these are people who Who Trump cannot sway. [00:48:00] The moment they see Trump, they start twitching and they respond with hostility.
So it's my job to come in, uh, and to essentially say, all right, you're really making a critique of Trump's character. You wish that Trump had, let's say your character, and you think he would be a much better man and a much better leader. So I go, all right, well, let's look at that. Uh, let's look at your case against Trump.
You say that Trump is a bully. And he is. But whom does he bully? Who is he a bully of? By and large, as far as I can see, he bullies other bullies. He bullies other powerful people who, who are in their own way trying to impose their will on the American people. I've never seen Trump bully someone who's beneath him.
Have you seen him ever bully like a cab driver or a waiter? Never. So, so what I do is I bring a sort of apologetic, if you will, uh, to make the case for Trump. And then I'll talk about virtues and I'll say, we never talk about Trump's virtues. We always talk about his vices. He's a, [00:49:00] he used to be a playboy and you know, he lies all the time.
Well, let's look at his virtues. What is the supreme virtue required in American politics today? I would say, it's the virtue of courage, which Aristotle lists as the topmost of all the virtues. In fact, Aristotle says it is the only virtue that, that matters because without courage, you can't even do all the other virtues.
Courage gives you the strength to do those. So, then I ask you, who has the most courage of anybody in American public life today? without a doubt Trump. Um, any other Republican facing two criminal charges, leave aside 91, would have exited the field, quit the race. So, this is the kind of argument I bring to the table.
Uh, and it's not an attempt to supplant or displace Trump in any way. It's an attempt really for someone who comes from a different world and a different background, a different angle, someone who's used to inhabiting both the scholarly world and the world of public debate, um, [00:50:00] uh, to make the case for Trump in kind of my own distinctive way.
Marc Beckman: Dinesh, it's interesting, you mentioned, Uh, Republicans who don't like Trump's personality and therefore won't vote for him, or moderates that um, also have problems perhaps with the way he speaks or his, his style and won't vote for him.
But I have two very close friends, who I consider even family, Both live in Georgia, a swing state, and both are, uh, Democrats. Historically, they voted Democrat. And they're saying to me that they would like to vote for Trump because they're Jewish. And they believe that the Republican party and that Trump's philosophy, his policy, is better for Jewish people, better for Israel.
However, in this instance, they're still going to vote Democrat for Kamala or they're not going to vote at all because they don't like his rhetoric. They don't like, um, uh, the way he [00:51:00] speaks. And the issue that I have is I feel like they're, we're, we're living in a world right now where people aren't looking at everything in a holistic way.
Um, you know, just this week President Trump again has been criticized for his words, but yet the left compares him to Hitler. I'm sure you saw what, um, Jobs and, and the Atlantic put together, um, the Atlantic basically put Trump, his image next to Hitler and accused him of being a Nazi again. And then shortly thereafter, Kamala Harris came out of the vice president's residence and referenced back that article and gave a three minute speech about Trump being similar to Hitler, positioning him as if he's a Nazi, and then didn't even, even take questions.
Why don't the people on the left, my friends in Georgia, for example, consider that bad, a bad way to speak or a bad way to behave?
Dinesh D'Souza: I think the answer is that they have been subjected [00:52:00] through the mainstream media to a diet. eight years of propaganda on this topic. The, the, I say propaganda because it's one thing to come out and say of somebody, this person will do this or he will do that. with Trump, first of all, you have a figure who has been in American public life for decades.
of all, who's been in the presidency itself. Uh, and so, if Trump had, let's say, a Hitler streak, uh, a fascist streak, a streak to shut down the media, impose widespread censorship, go after his political opponents, have them locked up, He would have done it, but he didn't. Even though people in rallies would chant, Lock her up, in reference to Hillary.
And even though there seemed to be basis for investigating Hillary, once Trump came into office, there was like no question of doing that. In fact, the tyrannical [00:53:00] measures, I mean, we have censorship in this country, right? Where's it coming from? The left. We have, uh, criminalization of political differences.
We have a party that's trying to lock up the leader of the opposition party. They're trying to lock Trump up. Um, if Trump was a dictator, I mean, every dictator in history has controlled the police agencies of the government. Trump didn't do that. Every dictator, I don't know a single dictator who has lost an election and stepped aside.
Dictators make sure they win. And if they don't win, they don't leave. Um, Trump tried to contest the election, but once the courts ruled against him, he vacated office. So, in some level, it is just downright surreal, uh, that this charge is even being made, let alone that anyone with a rational mind would believe it.
But I think what happens is it could be that people like your friends do not get alternative media at all. They don't see Breitbart, or they don't see, they don't see my films or my books, [00:54:00] They are getting the New York Times, they're getting CNN, and, and a singular message is being drummed in, almost in a coordinated way.
So they are very receptive to this notion that Trump has a fascist streak. It's because that's what they've been hearing non stop for eight years.
Marc Beckman: Yeah. And then they, they tend to pick up on that language, take it out of context and repeat it over and over again. And I saw this, you know, it's interesting, you're, you're a film, you start the film with president Lincoln's Lyceum address. It happened in January of 1838, where he addresses specifically the concept of quote, a destructive Force from within the United States and now Trump, uh, I guess recently used language to that effect.
And he's being, um, accused now of perhaps using the military or the police as you're, as you're describing against United States citizens if he's elected. And so it's a very similar thing that's happening. It's interesting that you opened your film, I'm sure it was very deliberate and well thought out, but opened [00:55:00] up with Lincoln, I didn't realize there were so many parallels.
With regards to Trump and Lincoln, with regards to the hatred of both, and um, you know, the assassination and the assassination attempts.
Dinesh D'Souza: when, when John Wilkes Booth, uh, assassinated Lincoln, what did he do? He jumped from the, um, upper level of the Ford Theater onto the stage. And he shouted a slogan. The slogan was in Latin, Sic Semper Tyrannis. But what it means is this is what happens to tyrants. So think of what John Wilkes Booth was saying.
He was saying, Lincoln is a Caesar. Lincoln is a tyrant. And. He is rightfully assassinated. I am a hero for having assassinated him. And I'm pretty sure that the two guys who wanted to get rid of Trump sort of thought the same thing. They thought, I'll be a hero if I can take this guy out. Now, why did they think that?
Because of years of the poisoning of the atmosphere. Because, think about it this way, if Trump is [00:56:00] indeed Hitler circa 1933, is it not a good thing for someone to assassinate such a person? Wouldn't it have been a great thing if Hitler had been taken out in 1933? Wouldn't the world have been spared a whole lot of pain?
So, the Democrats are quite consciously engaging and promulgating this sort of rhetoric. And as you notice, right up to the point of the election, And this is the, um, the intellectual fuel from which you get assassination attempts, civic unrest, those kinds of
Marc Beckman: I agree, I agree.
Dinesh D'Souza: fire.
Marc Beckman: You know, I, I don't disagree with you, Dinesh, and I have to be honest, like, I was shocked as a Jewish person to see Kamala come out of the Vice President's residence and give this speech and, and basically invoke Hitler, the spirit of Nazism, against her, her, um, opp you know, the, the opposition.
Like, it, it, it was really remarkable to me. It's almost like the Democrats are Okay with marginalizing the, the, like, the impact of Hitler as [00:57:00] it related to the Holocaust. Like, they're, they're using it for market, almost marketing purposes. It's incredible, it's incredible to me.
Dinesh D'Souza: The, as you notice, and it's a very subtle point you're making, the, the effect of comparing, let's just say, Hitler to Trump, one way of looking at it is Trump is as bad as Hitler, right? But think of it another way. Hitler was no worse than Trump, right? Because an equation has to cut on both sides of the equation.
Marc Beckman: right,
Dinesh D'Souza: an effort here where someone goes, Well, Trump was pretty good. I like the Trump economy. The guy's hilarious. He's a comedian. Might think, well, maybe Hitler wasn't that bad. So there's something very Um, too edged about making this kind of extravagant and I would say irresponsible analogy. The Democrats who make it, though, don't care about that part of it.
They're like, anything we can do to smear this guy is going to be a good thing for the country.
Marc Beckman: Dinesh, I have one more question for you. I know that, um, your time is limited and I appreciate it. I have one more question for you and then we'll wrap it up. Um, my question to you [00:58:00] is this. People hate you. You've been accused, you've been arrested, like, people go after you because of your very, um, vocal about your support to Republican ideas and philosophy.
And I'm wondering, in your opinion, what happened to this idea of an American marketplace of free ideas, an exchange of intellectual concepts, respect?
Dinesh D'Souza: You know, it, it went out the window, I think, in the Obama years. And I'll give a small anecdote to illustrate the point. For most of my career, although I was right of center, the media tends to be left of center, they'd be like, Dinesh, you know, why is an immigrant like you a person of color, being a defender of Reagan?
So I would get some of this kind of stuff. But a lot of it was in good spirits. I lived in Washington, D. C. I knew many reporters at the Washington Post. I was friends with E. J. Dionne at Spottum and the Trover bookstore. We'd chat. Okay, then I get my case [00:59:00] with the Obama administration in which they're trying to lock me up.
I mean, quite honestly, they would have locked me up for 10 years if they could for a 20, 000 campaign donation I made. to a long time college friend of mine who was running for office. I got nothing out of it, no quid pro quo, no American in our country's history has even been prosecuted for doing what I did.
But anyway, this is going on, and here I am, I'd be walking around Washington, D. C., and I'd see someone that I knew from the Washington Post or the New York Times. I'd go, hey, Uh, and they go, man, Dinesh, they're really shafting you, man, they're really screwing you over. And I'd say, well, you know, EJ, that's true, but Megyn Kelly's come to my defense at Fox News and some other people, but they're on the conservative side.
It would be really helpful if you were to write something to this effect in the Washington Post. And then they would give me that kind of bashful smile, like, well, I can't do that, you know. And, and that's really what forced a bit of a self examination on my part, because I realized People I had known for a decade, uh, [01:00:00] people who I, were not good friends of mine, but I thought of them as people who knew I was basically a good guy.
I could not count on them in a situation in which I really needed them. Um, and I realized, you know, I really need to re evaluate who I am and who my friends are. And I also have to re evaluate American politics, which I've previously seen as a healthy debating society. Two camps putting out rival ideas.
The American people get to choose. Sometimes they go this way, sometimes they go that way. And our politics is becoming gangsterized. And my own case is a little bit of a window into that. Now remember, at this point I knew nothing about what would come later with Carter Page, Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, now Trump.
My case was almost a sort of canary. It was a A preview of a lot of worse things that were to come later. But I would say that was a bit of a turning point, not just for me, but for the country.
Marc Beckman: Do you think that the idea of people having intellectual, um, [01:01:00] debates, um, a free exchange of ideas with respect at the, at the middle of that conversation is ever going to happen again?
Dinesh D'Souza: I'm hopeful that it can be restored, but I also think that the way for it to be restored Uh, is for the left to realize that the same things that they do can happen to them. So in other words, right now they think that the only people who are gonna get censored in social media are conservatives. And that's why they love this idea.
Let's just Pick all the ideas we don't like, label them misinformation or disinformation, and then get all the people who promulgate those ideas thrown off of YouTube, thrown off of Google, thrown off of Facebook. They love this because it's like, it's like they get to win without having to play. Um, if Mark Zuckerberg were to even handedly start banning people on the left and the right, suddenly the left would become major champions of free speech, they'd be quoting John Stuart Mill, they'd be invoking the First Amendment.
So [01:02:00] I'm hoping that when the pain is felt on both sides, there is a recognition, let me make a point here and maybe we can close on this, I think a lot of our basic rights came to us. Not through the magical discovery that these are wonderful things to have, but through a period of tension in which people realized that if you try to persecute others, they can persecute you.
So we got religious freedom, not as an article of faith. But as an article of peace. The Puritans were persecuting people in Massachusetts, and the Episcopalians were persecuting other people in, you know, in Rhode Island, and then in Maryland, the Catholics were dominant. So after a while, people said, well, listen, I'm not going to get my way.
It's going to be kind of nice if we all agree to get along and leave alone people who have rival theologies. So I think many times we get rights through this difficult process of negotiation and not through just some epiphany that goes, this is a wonderful right that we should defend in [01:03:00] principle for everybody.
Marc Beckman: Dinesh, every one of my guests works with me at the end of the show to end the same way The show's name, Some Future Day, was or is inspired by James Joyce, and what we do is I start a sentence and my guest finishes it, and that's it. Are you game?
Dinesh D'Souza: I'm game
Marc Beckman: All right, great. In Some Future Day, voting integrity in America will be.
Dinesh D'Souza: Fully secure or not at all.
Marc Beckman: Dinesh, thank you so much for all of your time, your sage wisdom, your insight. It's such a pleasure getting to know you today. I really appreciate
it. been my pleasure.
[01:04:00]