Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten

Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) is an investigative reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation where he broke arguably one of the biggest scandals in the history of the federal government -- one the media refused to cover and the prosecutors refused to prosecute.

This is the story of Awangate, which proved no match for Russiagate -- but should have on its merits.

It is the subject of Rosiak's Obstruction of Justice: How the Deep State Risked National Security to Protect the Democrats, a book that has taken on new significance as the treasonous Russian collusion narrative collapses.

I had Luke Rosiak on the podcast to reflect on the story of the Awans, and its far broader significance for our nation.

• How the Awans amassed so much power on Capitol Hill
• The breathtaking litany of criminality of the Awan conspiracy
• Why and how House Democrats and the Department of Justice covered up Awangate – and House Republicans enabled it
• Why Rosiak is confident members of Congress were blackmailed and are still susceptible to blackmail by the Awans, how deep the blackmail threat runs and why Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s behavior proves it
• How politicians and bureaucrats put self-interest above national security
• The inextricably intertwined relationship between Russiagate and Awangate, and what both “investigations” say about the Deep State
• The Democrat-Media-Deep State collusion over Awangate
• Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her underlings’ role in rigging the Awan case for the Democrats’ benefit
• The government’s failure to do anything to prevent future Awans from infiltrating Congress

Thanks for Listening!

Check out other episodes, show notes and transcripts at benweingarten.com/bigideas.

Subscribe, rate and review: iTunes | Stitcher | Google | YouTube

Follow Ben: Web | Newsletter | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Advertising & Sponsorship Inquiries: E-mail us.

___________

Backed Vibes (clean) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Robert Spencer (@jihadwatchRS) is the director of the invaluable counterjihadist website, Jihad Watch, and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is the author of eighteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.

Mr. Spencer's work sits at the nexus of a number of seminal issues, from national security and foreign policy, to identity politics and free speech, and theology and political philosophy. The battle being waged by Islamic supremacism against the West implicates all of these matters, and Mr. Spencer's insights make him uniquely qualified to discuss them.

I had him on the Big Ideas podcast to touch on everything from Islamic supremacist ideology and the goals, tactics and strategies its adherents use to impose it, to free speech and the deplatforming of counterjihadists like Spencer himself to the Sunni v. Shia battle in the Middle East and how we can actually triumph in the global jihad being waged against the West.

• Why the story of Muhammad is so integral to understanding Islamic supremacism, jihad and the Middle East today
• Mecca vs. Medina in Islamic history, and its practical consequences
• How Islam defines peace
• Spencer's view on the prospects of Islamic reformation, and separating political Islam from individual practice
• Why former CIA Director John Brennan was wrong in his definition of "jihad"
• Enforcement of Sharia speech codes in the West
• Jihad Watch's experience getting deplatformed from PayPal
• The state of the Middle East and what U.S. national interest in the region requires from a policy perspective
• What Spencer would advocate if he were named counterjihad czar
• How to vet for Sharia supremacy
• Defeating jihad, and much more

Thanks for Listening!

Check out other episodes, show notes and transcripts at benweingarten.com/bigideas.

Subscribe, rate and review: iTunes | Stitcher | Google | YouTube

Follow Ben: Web | Newsletter | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Advertising & Sponsorship Inquiries: E-mail us.

___________

Backed Vibes (clean) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Richard Grenell is the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, and the longest serving UN spokesman and political appointee in American history, where he served from 2001 to 2008.

Amb. Grenell occupies one of the most critical positions in American diplomacy in Berlin, not only because Germany represents the EU's largest economy and has disproportionate influence on the continent, but because of its pivotal role with respect to both Iran's efforts to evade U.S. snapback sanctions, and Russia's efforts to provide energy to and thus leverage over European nations.

During our discussion we touched on the ambassador’s efforts to persuade the Germans to cease trade with Iran and comply with the U.S. sanctions regime – and how those who resist can justify their stated intolerance of Jew-haters while seeking to do business with a regime dedicated to Israel’s destruction -- Germany’s place in an America First foreign policy, energy, Nord Stream 2 and America’s efforts to counter Russia through selling liquefied natural gas to Germany, Chancellor Merkel and German politics and Amb. Grenell’s dogged efforts to deport a Nazi officer who had been living in the United States for decades.

Thanks for Listening!

Check out other episodes, show notes and transcripts at benweingarten.com/bigideas.

Subscribe, rate and review: iTunes | Stitcher | Google | YouTube

Follow Ben: Web | Newsletter | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Advertising & Sponsorship Inquiries: E-mail us.

___________

Backed Vibes (clean) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Rich Higgins is an expert on the nexus between theological doctrines and information age unconventional warfare, and has spent 20 years combating terrorism in a variety of senior positions within the Department of Defenses.

Higgins, an early supporter of President Trump, served as director for strategic planning in President Trump's National Security Council (NSC).

That all changed when a memo that he had produced for President Trump on the political warfare that he was to face internally from the Deep State, and externally from the media and like-minded interest groups in collusion with the administrative state, leaked out to the public.

Higgins' memo was dismissed as conspiratorial, and he was fired from the NSC.

What he foretold has risen to the forefront again in the wake of the unsigned New York Times op-ed detailing measures taken by Trump administration officials to "Resist" the president, and seek to sabotage his agenda.

I had Higgins on the podcast to discuss the "Deep State's" efforts to subvert the president's agenda, whether there was an effort to purge like-minded individuals from Trump's national security and foreign policy team -- and why, what can be done to reform the administrative state, the ramifications of the politicization and weaponization of our national security and intelligence apparatus and much more.

• Higgins' reaction to the anonymous New York Times op-ed about the brazen Resistance within the Trump White House which seemed to confirm precisely what he warned of in his memo
• How the litany of allegations being raised against Judge Brett Kavanaugh in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings plays into Higgins' thesis
• Whether there was a concerted effort to purge national security and foreign policy officials in the Trump administration who sought to advance Trump's agenda, and what Higgins believes the establishment felt so threatened by that it would require such a purging
• Why Higgins believes it isn't the Deep State or Obama holdovers that are to blame for the sabotage of President Trump's policies, but rather the Republican Party itself
• Higgins' believe that Resistance to Trump was largely driven by vested financial interests -- specifically centered on China -- and the belief Trump would upend the major investments of the last 30 years in restructuring the global financial architecture and economy, hurting said vested interests
• How to reform the "Deep State"
• The "whiff of tyranny" in the air over the ability for the intelligence community to use its surveillance powers against American citizens, up to and including spying on and seeking to undermine and bring down the president
• Higgins' view on protecting liberty in the face of powerful surveillance tools and the need to counter our adversaries
• The imperative to bring back civics and reunite the country on the basis of shared values, principles and knowledge of and reverence for our Founding
• What Higgins would add to his memo to the president if he had the chance today

Thanks for Listening!

Check out other episodes, show notes and transcripts at benweingarten.com/bigideas.

Subscribe, rate and review: iTunes | Stitcher | Google | YouTube

Follow Ben: Web | Newsletter | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Advertising & Sponsorship Inquiries: E-mail us.

___________

Backed Vibes (clean) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Jonathan Neumann has written perhaps the seminal book on how modern Jewry has supplanted its traditional values and principles with Leftism, based on a perverse, sophistic reading of the concept of tikkun olam , "healing the world," that demands devotion to social justice as the highest good and organizing principle of the Jewish religion.

By way of background, Neumann is a graduate of Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. He has written for various American, British, and Israeli publications, was the Tikvah Fellow at Commentary magazine, and has served as assistant editor at Jewish Ideas Daily

I had Neumann on the podcast to discuss the triumph of tikkun olam-based Leftism as central to modern non-Orthodox Judaism, why Jewish social justice renders Jews qua Jews meaningless, the systematic debunking of this ideology, the ramifications for Israel and U.S. politics and much more.

• Defining tikkun olam, and its link to social justice, leftism and Kantian ethics
• How tikkun olam became the predominant ethos of non-Orthodox Jewry in the U.S. in a mere 40 year period -- and its radical roots
• The inextricable link between tikkun olam theology and the evolution of the Reform Jewish movement and its relation to the Social Gospel
• The perversion of Jewish values and principles by those who have supplanted the religion with Leftism -- based in a textually unsupported, fabricated concept of tikkun olam that Neumann systematically debunks
• Why Neumann argues that "Jewish social justice effectively has no need for Jews qua Jews"
• The correlation between tikkun olam ideology and anti-Zionism, in contrast to American Jewish leftism's historical affinity towards Israel
• Why and how Israel in U.S. politics has become effectively a one-party, Republican, issue -- and the conflicting trends of the growing Orthodox Jewish community and the declining non-Orthodox Jewish community
• Why Jews have historically gravitated toward the political Left

Further Reading

• Show Notes & Transcript

Thanks for Listening!

Check out other episodes, show notes and transcripts at benweingarten.com/bigideas.

Subscribe, rate and review: iTunes | Stitcher | Google | YouTube

Follow Ben: Web | Newsletter | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Advertising & Sponsorship Inquiries: E-mail us.

___________

Backed Vibes (clean) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/