The Eric Metaxas Show - Ben Stein (Continued)

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

Ben Stein Shares His New Book "The Peacemaker: Nixon: The Man, President, and My Friend".

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy pm investments.com. That's legacy pm investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxe show. Have you heard that some people have a nose for news? Well, Eric has a nose for everything. That's why this is called The Show About Everything. Now welcome your host who definitely passes the smell test. Eric Mott, Texas. Folks, welcome to hour two.

It is my privilege to continue talking to Ben Stein, who has been reminding me of many things that I'd forgotten. First of all, we're talking about his brand new book about Richard Nixon. It's called The Peacemaker. I cannot wait to read it. I'm going to read it and just have you back on the program, Ben Stein, because I would love to do that. Once I have read it.

But I want to tell you, when you just mentioned, your role in the film expelled, I cannot believe I forgot about that because that is a film that a lot of the people that I'm friends with have been in that film. And it makes the case clear as a bell that there's no way that we got where we are without a creator. You know, you don't have to believe it's the same creator that I do. But the idea of atheism is dead. I wrote a book called This Atheism Dead.

I'm going to send you a copy. But I love all that. And I forgot that you were in the film expanse. A lot of people listening to this audience saw the film expelled. And so I want to talk to you about everything. Let's go back to the malfeasance of the New York Times and other former journalists. They said. Sir, sir, they've always been creeps.

And as you so aptly said, they were defending Stalin's mass, mass, mass murders. Their columns, who I think it was later revealed was an action. either an actual member of the Communist Party or was in some way paid by the Communist Party, Mr. Durante. He was, this is like you're making it up. I'm not making this. No, we're not making this up, no. No, no, but what I'm going to say, because we've talked about it on this program,

there's a, there's a fantastic film about this, about Durante and the Ukraine famine. It's called Mr. Jones, directed by Anyeska Holland. Tremendous film came out about four years ago, and it talks about this. I want to get this. Walter Durante. Not only was he, you know, how do you put it? I mean, he was working for the New York Times, living in Moscow. He was openly a Satanist.

That sounds like something you'd make up, right? There were orgies. It's obvious that Stalin was paying him off and so on and so forth. But the point is that he was reporting for the New York Times, won a Pulitzer Prize for this propaganda. They never rescinded the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times, of course, was behind the 1619 project. So it's painful to think of...

It's very painful. It's very painful to think that the New York Times, the newspaper of record, I remember my niece, she was so proud, she lives, now she lives in D.C., but she was so proud that her uncle, Benji, wrote a column for the New York Times. I used to say to her, honey, I am happy to do it, delighted to do it.

But these guys are the biggest liars in America. It's hard, as my wife would say, heart rendering. And it's just, it's just incredible. The lies we've been fed by the New York Times, just heart rendering, not heart rending, heart rendering. Okay, so your book, which we've been discussing is the peacemaker. It's about Richard Nixon. you were friends with Nixon. Had that honor.

And that to me is a considerable honor. Tell us about your friendship with Richard Nixon. Well, when I worked in the executive office building, which was basically filled with offices of people who worked at the White House, although now part of it has been closed off because they're afraid of bombers blowing it up with trucks filled with explosive parking, 17th Street. When I worked for him, I would often go for walks around the hall with his incredibly

brilliant, beautiful daughter, Julie. And I would take the dog, her dogs for walks. People say, oh gosh, what a menial job? No, I love dogs. I would have done it for anybody's dogs. But Mr. Nixon's dogs is a great pleasure. Anyway, Mr. Nixon would say to me, things like, do you know how lucky you are to have a father that works in the same building as you,

and you can talk to him anytime you want. Do you know how blessed you are to have a father who's not attached to you and not attached to your job? And what a life I had that I will just tell you is one little teeny tiny anecdotes. I was walking down the hall with Julie, and we ran into Mr. Nixon,

and I said to my father, as we were walking by him, I need some statistic about something or other, somebody having to do with inflation. And I said, I'd be very happy and grateful if you could get that statistic for me. I know you're incredibly busy or probably too busy to do that. And he said to me, Benji, what do you think I have to do that's more important than helping my one and only son with his work? And sir, even now, and this has been a lot of years later, this has been 50 years later,

even now, I cry when I think about that. And it obviously meant a lot to Mr. Nixon. to. Well, that's just, it's so beautiful. I know because I was friends with Chuck Colson, he talked to me about introducing his own father to Richard Nixon. And, you know, these are, these are very meaningful things. And as I tell you, my father loved Nixon and appreciated Nixon. And so when we think of the downfall of Nixon, we think of Watergate, it seems like a joke. There was nothing happened. It was a complete fraud. Eric, I was a completely effing fraud.

Let's talk about that. You can't say fraud on this program. It's a family program. But in all seriousness, when we think of the corruption that we have had in the White House, just in this White House, which is as corrupt as it has ever been, but the idea that the Watergate quote-unquote scandal

amounted to what it did at the time. You talk about a more innocent time, the idea that Republicans were going to go to the White House, Mr. Nixon, you know, you've got to resign. It is an amazing thing when you look on the facts of it of what made up Watergate, how it was a nothing compared to what we've seen ever since. Nothing at all. Watergate, I remember the break in arrests very well.

I was then with my very close friend Pat Kane, an incredibly brilliant, beautiful young woman who was a statistician at the White House. and we saw it and I said, well, this doesn't seem like a big deal. And I still cannot tell you what happened that was so terrible that it merited a national scandal that went on for years and got the greatest statesman of all time in American history out of office. And he was replaced by a great guy, no doubt about it. Mr. Ford was a great guy. But Mr. Ford did not stop the communist from rolling down Highway 1 and seizing Zygon. Mr. Ford did not stop the Cambodian genocide.

On a percentage basis, the worst genocide in history. Nixon would have done that and would have saved the Cambodian people from genocide. Mr. Ford didn't do it. Great God, didn't do it. All because I was trumped up, you don't mean to use that words the way I did, it just trumped up charges of terrible misconduct by the president, which never ever happened. It didn't happen.

Tell me now. What was the Russian collusion? No one knows. What was the Russia sex scandal in Moscow with supposedly a Mr. Trump and beautiful Russian call girls? No one knows. There's no evidence of it. No, no, no. It's not that there's no evidence of it. We know that it didn't happen. We know that the Steele dossier was made up, made up, was paid for and made up by political operatives, paid for by Hillary Clinton. I mean, this is absolute wickedness. Wickedness. That's not enough. Great word. Wicked.

Yes. And if that's not enough, the real subject here is the journalistic class whose job it is to tell the truth. It's one thing for political operatives to do bad stuff. It's another thing when they have the complicity of so-called journalists. And of course, that happened because they hated Nixon, wanted to get Nixon, but it's been happening on steroids with Trump. And it's ugly, but fortunately- It's horrifying. It's horrible. I have sitting in the the room with me right here. My very best friend, a guy of incredible genius, incredible, incredible, incredible, incredible genius. He and I are on the phone together all day long, Friedman, and he keeps me up to date on this way more than any newspaper or television show or radio show. And we work our little heads till they're frazzled to nothing, trying to figure out, what did Trump do wrong? What did he do wrong? What's going on here? They're not interested in threatening the status quo.

Trump was a threat to that status quo, to that entrenched power, and they decided they must do anything to get him. We're out of time. We'll be right back. For 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. And when I say only, trust me, they're the only one. Glenn and the team have been great supporters of this show, which is why I'm proud to partner with them. Patriot Mobile offers dependable nationwide coverage, giving you the ability to access all three major networks, which means you get the same coverage you've been accustomed to without funding the left. When you switch to Patriot Mobile, you're sending the message that you support free speech, religious freedom, the sanctity of life, Second Amendment, and our military veterans and first responder heroes.

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Legacy pm. Investments.com. Check it out. I'm talking to Ben Stein and Ben, you just asked about, you know, what did Trump do that they should be attacking him like this? It's like asking what Nixon did. It's the same thing. There are people who just decide that we don't, we're not going to follow the rules. We're going to do anything we can to get you and to bring you down.

And in the case of Trump, you know, it's like trying to bring down, you know, some prehistoric beast. They've just thrown away all the rules and they're, they're stopping at nothing to bring him down. But let's be honest. it's because he's a threat to the powers that be. He's a threat to their whole existence. I used to live in Georgetown, and I live very near Mrs. Graham, Kay Graham's house on R Street, beautiful, beautiful mansion, all with money from her father,

a very, very successful speculator. And to be invited to a party at her house, and that was what everybody wanted. I used to get invited to them. They made me want to throw up. People that were so smug, but they did not want Trump challenging their lives. Trump was a challenge to, as you say, an existential threat to their lives. To their what?

Their lives, their lives. And just to be clear, Jay Graham, we're talking about the publisher of the Washington Post, but that class, and look, I'm a New Yorker, and I know that the, you know, the cultural elites have always despised Trump because he's a man of the people. He might be a billionaire, but he loves working class people. He gets along with them. He knows how to speak to him. He's not of their tribe. And they hate him mainly for that more than anything else. But the lengths that they have gone to attack him, it definitely reminds me of the way they went after Nixon. There's just no doubt. And same kind of people. Nixon was not a rich man.

they never was a rich man. I mean, he was well-paid. Lawyers, they're at the top of their game, are well-paid, but they're not rich. And the beautiful people who, like K. Graham, had inherited money on a large scale, they could not take being challenged by, as you said, a working man. Basically, Nixon was a working man.

Basically, Mr. Trump was and is a working man. They hate that like poison. Yeah, he's not part of their tribe, not part of their class. I want to make sure that we get back to your book here. The brand new book about Nixon called The Peacemaker, Nixon, the man, president, and my friend. What else is there in the book that we might not know about? What you just shared about Israel and the Yom Kippur War, I've never heard that.

I'm excited to read about it and to talk about it again on the program. But what else in the book might we talk about now? He was not afraid to do unorthodox things. We had a serious inflation, nothing like what we've had under Mr. Biden, but a very bad inflation for what we were used to. And people said, well, the last thing we can do is have wage price controls. And Nixon said, you know what, nothing else is working. Let's try it.

And I knew it quite well because my father was in charge of that particular program. It worked incredibly well for about roughly a year, and then it didn't work anymore. But Nixon was willing to try anything. My great anecdote about that, at a certain point later in Nixon's presidency. Someone suggested them they have wage price controls again, wage price freeze, and someone in the cabinet room said, Mr. President, you can't walk on water twice. And Mr. Nixon said you can if it's frozen. And that was pretty darn clever of him. He had a very, very good sense of humor. And his wife, Mrs. Nixon, whom you never hear about, she was beautiful,

but she also had a great sense of humor. And I remember very well the first time I met her at his birthday party for Julie in July of 74, I think it was. She, Mrs. Nixon said, oh, Ben, Julie has been talking about you so much, it makes me want to throw up. And I thought, well, that's pretty good language. It's a pretty good language for the First Lady. I like that a lot. That's the last thing I would expect Pat Nixon ever to have said. She is, was honest.

She was funny. They were good. The Nixons were a great family. They really, really were. I was recently in California where I spoke in the Nixon Library at an event. And I'm doing that tomorrow. Are you serious? Yes, I'm serious.

So I just, I spoke there. This is about maybe a month or so ago. I was there. And I had a few minutes before the event started. And I got to tour his birthplace home. I was amazed. Very modest home. Right next to his grave is the home where he's.

He was born, literally the bed in which he was born. I was amazed to see the piano upon which he learned to play piano, extremely modest, but just beautiful, humble, and extraordinary that this man from rather humble began. Very humble, very humble. And he was a humble man in terms of peace too. He didn't care if he was invited to parties at Kay Graham's house. He didn't care if he was rich.

What he cared about was peace. And blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. And that's sort of the bottom line about Richard Milhouse Nixon. I'd like to see any president who can have that kind of record. I'd love to see that man again because I think, just between you and me and the millions who are listening to us, I think we're getting a little too close to nuclear war, a lot. close to it and that it's because i think of the weakness of mr biden and his aminions uh i'd like us to back away from that as fast as we can and uh i'd like to see some peace and i'd like to see us

instead of kicking our best ally in the whole world the state of israel in the balls let's follow their lead and get tough on the murderers it's incredible to me eric that israel a few weeks you have suffered roughly a month ago suffered the most brutal viciously attack on civilians, civilian Jews that there has been since the Holocaust. And our response, give the Arabs, give the terrorists a humanitarian pause. What are you talking about? They're murderers. They're still killing as fast as they can. And we're supposed to give them humanitarian pause? I don't think so. Well, this is meaningless, of course. Humanitarian pause. What does that even mean? When people use terms like that, you know, you want to be suspicious immediately

because it sounds like baloney. What is a human being? There's no doubt that it's baloney. And I mean, the thing is that we know that there's blood on Biden's hands. There's no way around it. That what his giving money, unfreezing money to Iran, all of this stuff led to this. This is projecting weakness and so on and so forth. And it is horrible.

So you're quite right that Nixon was somebody who understood this. I believe Trump is somebody who understood this. understands this kind of thing and is the kind of a leader who gets it. But what we're, what we're dealing with right now is a, is a nightmare. I mean, I want to talk to you more about that, but I don't want to forget to go back to Nixon's 1960, his loss to Kennedy. So before we get to that, before we get to that, let's finish up on Israel, if we can. You are a Jew. I believe you've been a Jew most of your life, correct? Every second.

Okay. And what is it like? I mean, because, you know, you mentioned you went to Yale law school and you think that it would have been fun, oh, to be there as an undergraduate. Yeah, maybe in the 60s or in the 50s. But when I got there in the 80s, it had already turned Marxist left. And you had very similar protests, similar madness to what was today, where they're basically openly anti-Semitic, openly Marxist, openly anti-American. They're crazy.

They're like... You're my new best friend. You're my new best friend. They're crazy. We're dealing with crazy people. And Mr. Nixon had a great idea about that. He said the only place in the world that he couldn't figure out a solution

to the crisis was the so-called Palestinians, although there really is those places in Palestine. And he said, I don't know what the solution to that is, except to hang them all. Now, of course, he obviously didn't mean that. What he meant was he was just disgusted at the fact that the Palestinians simply would not make peace.

The Israelis have helped them. They gave them incredibly good agricultural equipment when they gave them back the Gaza Strip. No, they didn't want that. They smashed the equipment the Israelis had given them. Why? Why? Why? Because it's in their hearts to hate and to kill, whereas it's in the Jews' hearts to build and create.

but I feel like I'm taking too much of your time and I feel bad. Excuse me. I have talked far too much. As anybody listening to this program knows, you are my guest. And I just get excited when I'm talking to somebody like you and I talk way too much. You're my guest and I want you to be talking more. So let's go back. The title of the book is The Peacemaker about Richard Nixon.

I cannot wait to read it because I want to have you back on after I've had the chance to I want to do that. I'm here in Beverly Hills or else in the house in Malibu or in Washington, D.C., anytime you like. All right. Well, we'll plan on that. We've just got about a minute left in this segment, but we've got another segment after that. So what else is there in the book other than the story of the Yom Kippur War that we might not know? I'd say the fact that Nixon was the best father I have ever heard of in my life. and a man this fine, who is just that fine of a father, cannot be bad. He cannot be all bad or even largely bad. This was a man who loved his family, loved his children, loved his wife.

I've never heard of a president is devoted to his wife as Mr. Nixon was to Pat Nixon. Okay, we're going to be got more with Ben Stein. The Brand New Book is The Peacemaker about Richard Nixon. Don't go away. Tell me why Relief Factor is so. successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question. Well, the owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal. That's right, designed to heal. And I agree with them. And the doctors who formulated

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I promise you. Folks, I continue my conversation with Ben Stein. Ben Stein is in one of his homes. And Ben, what are you going to do at the end of this interview in 15 minutes? I am going to put on my swimsuit and I am going to go down to my swimming pool, which we call the Carrie Grant pool, because it's a very, very big pool for a private residence. And I'm going to go swimming. And then I'm going to get dressed. Then I'm going to the Beverly Hills Hotel for lunch with a woman who helps me do refinancings of my many properties. And then I'm going to see what I do.

Oh, yeah. Then I go to see the doctor about why my throat is old sore. And then I'm going out to our house in Malibu. And that's my life. But I won't be able to do it much longer because I'm old. And my knees are pretty much screwed up from a botched operation by a botched human being who called himself a surgeon. Anyway, that's my schedule for this afternoon, sir. A swim, lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

It sounds pretty nice. It's damn nice, but I worked very, very hard for it, sir. I don't have any doubt about that. I'm not a communist. Right. I think, I know our mutual friend, Pat Boone's home is right near the Beverly Hills Hotel. He's very close to me. I've never been inside his home, but he's very close to me,

and I love him a lot. Oh, he's, he's the best. I, okay, so I want to go back because we're talking about your book about Richard Nixon, whom you knew well. It's called the peacemaker. You mentioned earlier that, how Nixon appealed to you. And in the 1960 election, of course, he ran against JFK. And when you talk about Nixon as a good man, this is an important thing,

because I think it's amazing when you think of the hagiography around JFK. People criticize Donald Trump for his sexual excopades from years ago. If that's true, that's true. And I think to myself that here you have JFK known to bring prostitutes into the White House while he was president routinely. And there's the kind of thing that is unthinkable. It's unthinkable. If you had a friend who behaved like that, you'd throw up, you'd smack them in the head. Who are you? What do you think? What gave you the idea that this was okay? I mean, just a level of degeneracy that you don't hear about because K. Graham and Ben Bradley and the whole gang and the New York Times, they love JFK, they love Camelot. They don't want to talk about him, but they dig up dirt

about people like, you know, whether it's Richard Nixon or the new house speaker. It's really What a ridiculous lot of garbage that is that they're dumping all over the Newhouse Speaker who seems to me to be a man of extreme excellence in terms of his character. Oh, there's absolutely no doubt about it. But I kind of think it's a badge of courage. It's a mark of honor when, you know, the cognoscenti go after you. They go after Donald Trump. They went after Nixon, whom you've written about.

But it's something that you see it over and over again. And so if you want to know who the good guys are, whom are they attacking the most? Right now, it's Speaker Johnson, it's Trump. So it tells us something. You bet. You bet. And it's kind of fascinating to me that if you are rich, good-looking, don't even be that good-looking and you are stud, you can get away with bloody murder. But if you're just a hardworking guy like Richard M. Nixon, no, you can't get away

with anything. And Nixon didn't want to get away with anything. Nixon wanted to be a peacemaker. He didn't care if he was regarded as a beautiful person. He wanted to be a peacemaker. And his mother, I think this is in my book, I'm pretty sure it is. His mother had told him when he was a child. You are some, she was a great fan of the Jews. You will someday be in a position to do great things with Jewish people. And that will be an incredible opportunity for you to walk in God's footsteps. And Nixon remembered that during the Yom Kippur War and did incredible, incredibly great things for Israel. And still, people call him an anti-Semite. That just breaks my heart. It just makes me when I see Jews describe him in that way. I mean, he couldn't have been a better friend to the Jewish

people than he was. And nobody else has ever been like that. before. But they said the same thing about Donald Trump. When Donald Trump was, oh my God, that's right. When I came out publicly for Trump, just as a conservative, I thought he's the nominee. And I was attacked. I was attacked for having anti-Semitic leanings. Incredible. And the funny thing is, you don't know this about me, but I wrote a 600-page book, a German pastor who was murdered by the Nazis, that the whole book is about the evil of the Nazis. So even having written a book about that, they will accuse. In other words, people will just use these terms to demonize whom they dislike. But the idea is called Donald Trump somehow. I know.

Incredible. Incredible. And Trump was a huge, huge fan of the Jewish people. It was a huge huge fan of Israel. What the heck more do they want from him? I mean, what more could they ask of him? Well, they're obviously not interested. in the truth. I mean, I think that's the bottom.

That boy, but sir, you have said a mouthful. The left is not interested in the truth. That is, the truth is the last thing they want. Well, and that's why we have to stand firm and put our faith in God and keep marching because this happens over and over and over again. But I do think that we're going to go to a break here. We've just got one final segment, but I'm just saying closing that I think that what's called the legacy media, the New York Times, the Washington Post, all of these

Ivy League schools, their brand has been so tarnished. I think it gives me hope, honestly, that people are seeing what they're actually made of. It's been bad for decades, but it's gotten infinitely worse. We'll be right back talking to Ben Stein. The new book is The Peacemaker. I finally made a tricky French connection. You winked and gave me your okay. I'll take you on a trip beside the ocean and drop the top of Chastipay.

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That's inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Advisory services are offered through Inspire Advisors LLC. Registered Investment Advisor with the SEC. Folks, I'm talking to Ben Stein. Yes. Ben Stein, you are hard to sum up. I often find that I'm hard to sum up because I've done so many different kinds of things. You really have done so many different kinds of things from being in the film Ferris Bueller's day off to being the host of the film expelled about intelligent design and now writing a book.

about Richard Nixon, being a speechwriter for Nixon, and on and on and on and on. Let me ask you, since we just have this final segment today, what led you to your interest in making the film expelled, which is about intelligent design, and it's just something that's really up my alley. And so I'm just curious what led you into that subject. I was approached by the people who were making it. They were very, very conservative, God-fearing people

really really did believe in God. And they said, well, what do you think about intelligent design versus just say, well, just say, something else we don't know what. And I talked to the smartest man I have ever known in my life, a man named Eric, Al Burton or Eric, a man named Al Burton. And I said, what do you think about this? And he said, look, there had to have been intelligent design because we have. The laws of thermodynamics, thermodynamics, the laws of gravity, the laws of motion.

We have all those laws, physical laws. They couldn't have been, they couldn't have evolved. They had to have happened because somebody made them happen. We have a world, a universe, that is based upon somebody making something happen. It simply could not have happened that the laws of physics were added on to, the loss of gravitation were added onto. Somebody had to add on to the, and that somebody has to have been an intelligent designer

who might choose to call God. Al Burton, comedy, television comedy produced on a very high level, but a genius. What shows that Al Burton put it? Now you got me wondering. Almost all this, the best one was a very short,

live one, but a wonderful one, called Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. It's a hilarious comedy. Are you kidding? No, he invented that. Genius. With Doty Goodman. No, no, it wasn't Doty Goodman.

I forgot her name now. No, no, no. Louise Lasser. Starris Lassar was a star, right, right, right, right. Doty Goodman played her mother. Oh, my God. Wow, you have a hell of a memory, my friend. Anyway, actually, it was Norman Lear's show,

but he had, well, I can't remember them all at once, He had six or seven of them going simultaneously, but he was probably the smartest man I ever met. And among the other things he invented was win Ben Stein's money, which was a quiz show, very, very difficult. Ben Stein had to play against three contestants coming in, what I'd say from the outside world, and I had to beat all of them in order to win any money,

and it was very competitive and difficult. But I did it. I won something like 85, roughly, not exactly. percent of the games, and that's the most percentage, the highest percentage of game shows in a series. Anyone has ever won. I was very proud of myself for that. You should be proud of yourself for that. I'm proud of myself that on a program where I was expecting mostly to talk about Richard Nixon, we managed to work in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. That's...

Well, Mary Hart was a work of genius. And you know that Norman could not sell it to the networks. and I wrote, I was then writing about television to the Wall Street Journal, and I wrote about it. And that very same day, some network people saw it, bought it, picked it up, and it became a huge hit for like, only for like three years or four years, but a work of unique genius. Just a fabulous, fabulous. Some people remember Martin Mull. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He was hilariously funny, hilariously funny.

was a fantastically brilliant guy. Painfully funny. I mean, it was just unbelievable. I just still can't believe that we're talking about Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. We're going to have to get together in person. I'm here, my friend. My audience is kind of like to think, Eric, I'm not sure where you're going with this.

But it was just a comedy classic. It was like a cult classic in the 70s, mid-70s. And it was just absolutely brilliant. And there was a spinoff show. from it too. Lots of them. Lots of them. So it was your friend Al Burton who produced, was one of the producers on that show

who led you to do the film expelled because many people in my audience will be familiar with that film. I hope that's right. I think I think I can get it on DVD. I'm not positive. I think I can. And if I can, I will because it is a great super show. Well, there's so much to talk about. I will be in touch with you about getting you back on the program.

Let's just close with Richard Nixon here. What led you at this point in your life, you say you're going to be 79 in a few weeks, to write a book about Richard Nixon? I mean, why didn't you write it 10 years ago? What led you to write this book now? I'd say because he was the most important person I've ever met. I think winning, at least for a time,

the Cold War, explaining how the communists were ruining America. explaining how the government had been taken over in large part by the deep state of leftists who hated freedom and hated America. That was a very important thing to do. I'm not going to live forever. I've had a very tragic year. My son died in July. Worst thing that by far has ever happened to my wife and me. And I did not know how much longer I would live.

And I wanted to get it done that we had a president in this country who was a genuinely great man. I'd like there is some, there to be some recognition of him. I'm just, I'm thrilled you've written the book. Time measure, sir. I really, I cannot wait to read it. You've wedded my appetite on this program, and I hope we together have wedded the appetite of many of our listeners to get a copy of the book, The Peacemaker.

But I will, I have a copy on my desk in the studio. When I get back to New York, I will get that book and read it. and we will continue the conversation. It's been a joy, Ben Stein, to talk with you. Are you going to be in California for the next number of weeks? Are you going to be flitting someplace else? I'm going to be here most of the time, although I think I told you, maybe I didn't tell you.

We have a couple of homes actually in Northern Idaho on a big, big, big lake. And we have, well, we have a lot of homes, but I'm going to be selling most of them because I hurt my knee really badly and I can't go up and down the stairs very well. Anyway, but I'll be here most of the time, and I will be very, very honored to take you to lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel where I hang out. Okay, you've got a deal there, sir. Thank you, sir. God bless you, Ben Stein.

Thank you so much. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless America. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Robert Netsley right now, who is with Inspire Investing. Robert, I can't help but get excited about what you've created an opportunity for people to find out if,

their money is funding wicked things. If they have money in a 401k or retirement fund, whatever it is, that is invested in companies that are doing evil things, that is promoting pornography, promoting abortion, promoting any number of things or ideologies with your money, folks. So Robert Nestle has created something where you can get a free report that tells you where your money is and they will help you get your money into companies that are doing good things. So you have to go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. You get a free report. But this is something I, you know, Robert, I guess it just gives me hope that it's possible to turn things around in America. Because when I think of how much money people have invested out there, if they would understand

what's going on and shift that money to good stuff, it's just huge. It's just, absolutely monstrous. It's enormous. It's enormous. And we are seeing fruit from that labor. It's remarkable. It doesn't have to even be trillions of dollars to change things. I've been on the phone, you know, in recent weeks, you know, with investor relations and CFOs and whatnot. We regularly engage with companies that we invest in or are like to invest in or kind of just speaking biblical truth, the corporate power. And, you know, one of the things we hear is often that Number one, these people have never heard. They tell us they've never heard from a faith-based investor before.

They've been doing their job for 20, 30 years. You know, executive major organizations never heard from a faith-based investor. So number one, they need to hear our voice. Number two, they're thankful to hear it. Even in some of these sort of, you know, woke businesses you think that this don't care, there are people in those businesses of influence that actually do care about what we have to say and oftentimes have enough influence to change things. So, for instance, Costco stopped giving money to get pride,

parades. Chevron stop giving money to Planned Parenthood. There's a laundry list of other organizations that have changed things. That is unbelievable. Robert Nelson, that is unbelievable. It is so wonderful. I want to tell people, folks, what you do and don't do, you can change the world if you take an interest in this. When I hear that a company like Costco would stop giving money to something like that or Chevron, these are huge, huge companies. And you shop there, uh, Your money may be invested there. When we get involved in these things, we can change the world. So I want to say the action point is go to invest.

I'm sorry, inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. You'll get a free report that will help you figure this out. And I know, Robert, that you guys will help people if they want to transition to invest in companies that believe in their values. But this is a gigantic thing that we have, I mean, it's to me scandalous when we have power and we don't use that power. It's like when I say, I'm not going to vote. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. When you don't do those things, people who don't share your values, who share opposite, who have opposite values,

they're going to prevail. So I just want to say to you, Robert, thank you for taking this on. because it is game-changing. Like you said, it's a movement. The more people that do this, it's an amazing thing when we think of the money that is out there that many people of faith with traditional values have invested in woke companies. Ladies and gentlemen, you've got to do something about it. You've just got to do something about it. This is like a mandate that we've got to live our faith out in every sphere and where your money

is, that's a big deal. So please go to InspireAdvisors.com slash Eric. This is a free report, inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Robert Natsley, thank you. Pleasure. Thank you, Eric.