0:00
Hi friends, Gene Valentino, and welcome to another episode of Gene Valentino’s Grassroots TruthCast. You know, we get a chance from time to time to say, “Boy, I wish I could talk to him about a few different things.” Well, this gentleman… this is really quite the story. Professor Alan Dershowitz is with us, and he’s defended some of the most controversial defendants in modern American history. He fought presidents and prosecutors, taught at Harvard, and now he’s written a book saying he has finally had enough with the Democratic Party. I want to hear a little bit more about that. Welcome, Mr. Dershowitz. Glad to have you with us.

0:44
Well, thank you so much. The book is now available on Amazon. It’s *Why I Quit the Dems and So Should You: Confessions of a Reluctant Republican*. So, I’m looking forward to people not only reading it, but as a result switching parties and becoming Republicans instead of Democrats, because I’ve had it up to here with the Democratic Party.

1:07
Now, that’s an interesting topic. So much to cover; I hope we get to everything in my notes in the time we have. Right back at you after this.

1:15
Thank you.

1:25
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2:04
Welcome back. I’m with jurist and legal scholar Professor Alan Dershowitz, from my home state of Connecticut where he started his early years at Yale University and then became one of the youngest and longest-standing tenured professors at Harvard University. When I was a snot-nosed little kid, Professor, I was a block away from you, and it took 60 years for our paths to connect. Welcome aboard!

2:40
Well, thanks. I do remember the Way Theater in New Haven, Connecticut. I used to walk to the law school every day down Whalley Avenue. Those were memories—good memories.

2:52
Yes, it was. We have so much to cover in limited time. I’m so interested. Why don’t you open with your book again? Let’s talk about it, because that’ll be the springboard for some of our questions.

2:59
Look, I was a Democrat since I was 14 years old. I walked the streets of Brooklyn campaigning for an assemblyman when I was 14. I voted for John F. Kennedy, for Lyndon Johnson—you name it, every single Democrat, including most recently Joe Biden. And then the Democrats left me the way they left Ronald Reagan. They became the party of extremists, the party of antisemites, the party of anti-Americans.

And I can’t be part of that party. So, I left that party. First, I became an independent, and then I realized, “No, that’s not good enough.” That’s a cop-out for me, because I want to see the Democrats defeated in the House and the Senate. I don’t want to see people like Elizabeth Warren chair committees, people like the Squad members chair committees, or people like El-Sayed, if he wins for the Senate in Michigan, who’s a friend of Hasan Piker, chair committees. No.

So, I’ve become a full-fledged Republican, and the book has been endorsed by President Trump. He wrote an endorsement: “The highly respected Alan Dershowitz has written a powerful book,” etc., etc. And so, I’m very pleased that President Trump has endorsed the book.

4:14
You’ve come from such a diverse background, and you’ve represented some national figures: O.J. Simpson, you were representing Epstein at one point to some degree, and most recently Donald Trump. This controversy that you’ve been involved in all along seems to be overshadowed by the character and quality of your legal acumen, which is why I really wanted to have you on the show. The book is a great springboard for that. We’ll pitch it again in a minute.

Alan, my concern is this: instead of no-name elected people coming into office each and every year trying to legislate through Congress to get something properly passed, my heartburn has been, sir—since the early days that I first came to know you—is that we find ourselves repeating things over and over. My solution is a constitutional amendment that buries the issue once and for all and gives some of these reckless, spineless people drive—which feeds into the justification you just made for leaving the Democratic Party—getting these people to understand that the rights and entitlements in the Constitution are not so broad as to allow you to take the very Constitution down that you think you have freedoms to express yourself within. What say you?

5:48
Well, I think we want to have freedom of expression to the max limit, as long as both sides can speak. But what I’m afraid of is that we have a double standard. For example, on American universities today, whether it be Yale or Harvard, you can’t say anything negative about anybody who’s gay, Black, or transgender, but you can say anything you want about Jews. You can say anything you want about Asians. There are favored minorities and disfavored minorities, and that’s what the First Amendment is designed to protect against. We have to have a single standard of free speech for everybody.

6:23
But the problem keeps repeating itself. If you were my professor and I was listening to you in law class explain that, I would want to raise my hand and ask you: okay, you presented the issue, but what do we do to permanently remedy it?

6:40
Well, we have to have judicial decisions that say it’s not enough for a university to allow free speech for some groups—it can’t selectively pick which groups to have it for. For example, the former president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, was fired—and appropriately—because she said, “Oh, calling for genocide against the Jews is a matter of context.” But if you say anything negative against any other group, it’s not a matter of context. You have to have the same rules for every single group.

You have to have meritocracy. You have to have admission standards that don’t focus on race or identity politics. Harvard University, for example, used to be about 20% Jewish. Now it’s down to 7% Jewish. Clearly, they are discriminating; whether they’re doing it overtly or discreetly, they’re doing it. For years, they were discriminating against Asian American students and in favor only of African American students, and that is not acceptable.

Our Constitution has to be colorblind and it has to impose a single standard. The Democrats don’t believe that. The Democrats believe that people should be judged by their identity, not by their accomplishments, whereas the Republicans are much more meritocratic. I am very much in favor of meritocracy.

8:03
Well, you, like my father, were a Democrat for decades and transitioned during the Reagan administration or thereabouts to becoming a Republican. I bet if he were still alive today, he would reiterate the same points you just made.

Why… can you distinguish what’s going on in society today, specifically with the Gen Z crowd that is so far off base and agnostic to the history that preceded them? Jews know better than anybody that if you don’t remind people of history, it’s bound to repeat itself. What is it we’re going to do as a nation to remind people about protecting those liberties that are imbued not only in the body—the corpus—of the Constitution, but in the 27 amendments?

9:02
Well, first of all, young people today are incredibly ignorant of history and philosophy. Let’s remember too: who brought Hitler to power? Students at the University of Munich—in the university. Who brought Stalin to power? Young people. Who brought Pol Pot? Who brought Mao Zedong? Who brought Castro to power? All these Gen Z young people who are ignorant of the past and blind to the future. That’s why it’s so important to remember.

Look, in 1932 Germany, 7,000 Jews voted for Hitler. Can you imagine that? 7,000 Jews. They thought he’d be good for the economy, good for the environment, good for this, that, and the other thing. What do you think happened to those 7,000 Jews who voted for Hitler? Probably most of them ended up in the gas chambers.

We see a lot of self-hating Jews who voted for Mamdani, who are going to vote for El-Sayed, who vote for Elizabeth Warren, who vote for others who are viciously anti-American, anti-Israel, and often antisemitic. So, self-hating Jews are part of the problem. You don’t find that among other groups; you don’t find that among Italian Americans, Irish Americans, or Greek Americans. It’s a unique problem for Jewish Americans: they tend to vote against their own interests.

10:24
Well then, I’ve got to jump on this because I’ve been waiting to ask you this question. You’ve got five boroughs in Greater New York. You’ve got, I’m guessing, over four million registered Democrats, and most of them are Jews. And they voted in a guy named Mamdani. What’s with the Jews in New York that voted for Zohran Mamdani?

10:50
Well, there’s a lot of self-hate. The same Jews, as I say, who voted for Hitler in 1932 or voted for Mussolini in ’22. So we’re seeing a lot of that. Mamdani made no secret of his bigotry and his bias, and it’s amazing that people voted for him.

Not only for him—rabbis for El-Sayed campaign with Hasan Piker, who thinks that America deserved 9/11, that Israel deserved October 7th, and that if there were rapes in Israel, it was well-deserved as part of a liberation movement. That’s what Jews and others are voting for. Some good people vote for some very, very bad people. I’m not doing that; that’s why I left the Democratic Party. That’s why I hope everybody else will leave the Democratic Party. That’s why I wrote this book, which was painful for me.

You know, I don’t love everything the Republicans are doing. I tend to support the Democratic platform in many areas—gay rights and separation of church and state over the Republican platform—but the Republicans today are much better on free speech, much better on civil liberties, much better on equal protection. So I am a reluctant Republican, with an asterisk.

12:10
Well, I go back to the days of John F. Kennedy, where many of them would be rolling in their graves right now if they saw just how egregious some of the far-left Democrats have become, which I think is your motivation. I don’t even want to use the word “Democrat”—it’s kind of a misnomer. It’s a Democratic Socialist party, a.k.a. socialism, a.k.a. communism.

That drives to my real question: is there not a deep state effort underway to take down America from within? And isn’t it being revealed through the weaknesses of the Democratic Party?

12:52
Well, I think the Democratic Party is taking down America. I think if they were to gain control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, we’d be in for a terrible, terrible time in America. We’d be weak, we would be bigoted, and we would abolish meritocracy.

Look at what’s happened to universities today. Harvard University—I taught there for 50 years. I was the youngest professor in the history of Harvard Law School. It’s now become a place of utter mediocrity. There are some great faculty members to be sure, but a typical faculty member at Harvard Law School today is a study in mediocrity, and they also are testicularly challenged—they have no balls. They won’t stand up for the right thing. They’re so terrified that students will turn against them that Harvard has turned, instead of *Veritas* (truth), into *Mediocritash* (mediocrity). That’s true of many, many American universities today.

13:46
And you were up close to the faculty; you rubbed elbows with many. What was the impetus? What was the triggering event that causes this mediocrity and wimpishness that we see—the lack of conviction, the lack of willingness to protect our constitutional republic? Where is that coming from, and why is it so prevalent with university faculties?

14:17
Because they’re terrified of student evaluations. The students have been given too much power; the inmates are running the asylum. If you alienate any small group of students, even 10%, 15%, or 20%, what you do is risk having low student evaluations, which affects your salary, affects your career, affects everything else.

So the faculty is now beholden to the students, who are then beholden to the most radical members of the faculty. What we’re seeing is a destruction of education. Meritocracy is gone. Look, Harvard the other day was rated by FIRE—this organization that promotes free speech—it got a D in free speech. Harvard got a D in free speech, and that’s with grade inflation! It deserves an F, not a D. The same thing was true of Yale and a number of other universities. They are failing in their mission. The faculty is a part of the problem, and the administration is a part of the problem. There are not enough people on faculties to stand up to the radical students.

15:25
To the radical students, or some other part of the administration in concert with those faculty members?

15:34
Both! It’s a circular thing. The faculty becomes radical because the students don’t want to evaluate them properly, and then the students are radicalized by the faculty. The end result is that you have no Republicans on the Harvard faculty to speak of.

I’ll give you another phenomenon: New England. New England has so many states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. If the Republicans lose Maine in the Senate election—which they may—there will not be a single member of Congress from the Republican Party in all of New England. Talk about a lack of representation! Talk about taxation without representation! To have an entire region of the United States completely Democratic, and radical, anti-American Democratic—many of them.

The worst aspects of the Democratic Party today are in New England, which was the home of the Kennedy family, which was always centrist. Whoever is in the Kennedy family still remains, for the most part, centrist. But that’s not what’s happened in New England. New England has become Cuba.

16:50
Yeah, I couldn’t have said it better, sir. You segued perfectly into where I wanted to go on the Electoral College and the voting of this nation in general. But before I do: having come from Connecticut myself, I know for certain that the registration rolls don’t say 99% of the folks are Democrats—it’s a 60/40 split these days. Yet there is no Republican representation in Congress or the Senate in those New England states you just mentioned.

My concern is, what is the problem with maybe an Electoral College revisit? Thank God for the Electoral College in this case, because it brings into balance such discrepancies in what I would call the rules of co-terminus, the rules of one man, one vote, and making sure that everyone is fairly represented. How about a constitutional amendment that talks about some sort of balancing out on this issue?

17:56
Well, it’s very hard to balance out; one person’s balance is another person’s imbalance. The problem with New England is it’s become so hard-left. Look at Joe Lieberman, probably the greatest senator from New England in a long, long time. He gets defeated in the Democratic primary and has to run as an independent.

I think the same thing is going to happen now in Pennsylvania, where you have John Fetterman, who speaks truth to power and actually gets along with his Republican colleagues. He’s going to be primaried, and he very likely may lose the Democratic primary and will have to run either as an independent or as a Republican. We’re seeing the death of the old traditional Democratic Party, and I’m not going along with that.

That’s why I wrote the book, *Why I Quit the Dems and So Should You*. I want everybody to read this book. You can get it on Amazon now, even though it’s not being published for another week or so, and I think you can get it at a discount. I not only want people to read my book, I want them to switch parties. I want them to become Republicans. I want them to make sure the Democrats don’t control the House, the Senate, and the presidency. That would be a disaster for America.

19:08
And I love your subtitle: *Confessions of a Reluctant Republican*. See, the Democrats are talking about this “big tent.” I call it a circus. The tent is filled with what? “If you don’t go my way, hit the road. Listen to our mantra or there’s the highway. Get on that boat and take off, go play elsewhere.” At least the Republican Party is trying to bring other interests in and there is a place to be heard.

Up in Connecticut, I participated years ago at Boys State, where we learned the benefits of a two-party system. It doesn’t have to go my way 100% of the time—I wish the Democrats would understand that. It’s called collaboration. In your backyard, you had a great Speaker of the House going back a generation: Tip O’Neill, a Democrat who and Ronald Reagan would have scotch together and kick up and have friendly conversation. I love it! That’s what it’s supposed to be.

20:16
Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think what’s happened is that the Democrats are very different than the Republicans. The Republicans obviously have people like Tucker Carlson and other bigots, but they have marginalized them. Look at what the President has said about Ronald Reagan. On the other hand, the Democrats have embraced their bigots. You have Chuck Schumer—a man who was born without any testicles, has no guts, has no ability to stand up—and he endorses El-Sayed, who would like to see the end of Israel, and probably like to see the end of Jews. Talk about self-hating humor!

20:52
Yeah.

20:52
He describes himself… you know, the word *Shomer* in Hebrew means “guardian.” He always described himself as the guardian of Israel and the guardian of the Jews. With guardians like that, we don’t need enemies! No testicular fortitude—he won’t stand up for even his own people. He is so timid and so afraid of losing his majority status, which I hope he does lose.

21:23
Well, I agree with you, and I submit he already has. I would add to your comment: it was only yesterday he was threatening, in effect, the life of Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh, with this threat of terror coming down upon them. Next thing you know, you’ve got whack-jobs showing up in the front yards of certain Supreme Court justices’ homes.

21:44
Look at Hasan Piker, who said, “Soon Jews will have to be afraid.” He basically threatened Jews physically, saying, “If you continue to support Israel, we’re coming after you and we’re going to get you physically.”

That happened to me recently on Martha’s Vineyard. I was assaulted and attacked by somebody because of my views, and I was essentially knocked over. I fell over responding to him and hurt myself pretty badly. So, you know, we’re not immune from physical pressures and verbal assaults, and that comes from people like Hasan, and it’s tolerated by people like Chuck Schumer.

22:29
Where is it coming from, and why has Israel had this challenge for so long? What is it now—about 10 million people in Israel, with over a million Arabs?

22:43
Remember too that the Arab population is growing more quickly than the Jewish population. There’s been no genocide—it’s been the opposite of genocide. Israel fed the Palestinians in Gaza, inoculated their children against diseases, and made it possible for them to live. And that’s after the horrible attack on October 7th. There’s never been a more generous country following an attack like that.

Compare what America did to Germany in the Second World War: devastated it. Compare it to what America did to Japan: nuclear bombs. Israel has been relatively mild in its response to October 7th. The reason there have been civilian casualties is that Hamas hides its terrorists among civilians in the tunnels underneath mosques, underneath schools, and underneath civilian structures. That’s why there are civilian deaths.

Israel tries everything in its power to avoid civilian deaths for a very obvious reason: they don’t benefit from it. They lose enormously when a civilian dies. They want to kill terrorists. But in order to kill terrorists who are hiding among civilians, you obviously have to endanger the life of the civilians that are serving as protectors and shields.

24:04
*Why I Quit the Dems and So Should You*, written by Alan Dershowitz. He admits this is one of the more difficult books he’s had to write. Pick it up on Amazon. We need to get this message out, folks. This is a constitutional republic. I don’t know if I agree 100% of the time with Alan Dershowitz or him with me, but guess what? We have the privilege and honor of having a constructive, frank, and open conversation—a deliberation of sorts—because I want to learn, too. You know, is it possible that I’m not 100% right? I can tell you, you can ask my wife, she’ll set you straight!

But the fact is, you have had a history with different people, and because I only have a half hour or less, please allow me to pivot on some other points real quickly—more of a rapid-fire. Your relationship with Donald Trump: what’s it like?

25:04
Well, good. I mean, he has called me on occasion. He’s asked my advice. I’ve represented him on the floor of the Senate. He’s not a close personal friend, but we have a good professional relationship, and so I’m happy with that.

25:22
And what do you tell a guy like that when you watch your industry—I say tongue-in-cheek, the judiciary—pull a 180, with desperate judges coming out of nowhere to go against the most obvious: Letitia James, Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, and the rest of the clan that was out there with the intention of taking him down? How is that justice, and what can you do in your division of government to fix that? That’s what I was referring to earlier by amendments. The bad behavior is so significant. Where do you go for justice when the people adjudicating you are criminal?

26:12
Look, all I can do is write books. I’m 88 years old; I can’t go out on the street and fight. I wrote a book called *Get Trump*. Even before I quit the Democrats, I wrote a book about Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, and others who have been trying to get Trump. I don’t care if it’s “Get Trump,” “Get Clinton,” or “Get a Democrat”—you can’t use the criminal justice system to get people. That’s what Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria did.

26:42
That’s right.

26:42
And we don’t ever want to see our legal system turned into a weaponized attack based on politics. Unfortunately, I have to go now, but what a great interview! You asked some terrific questions and made me think nostalgically about my days in New Haven. So, thank you for having me.

27:00
Thank you, Mr. Dershowitz. Folks, this has been a real honor. Mr. Dershowitz, the invitation’s open—we look forward to having you back again soon. This has been very provocative.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on another episode of Gene Valentino’s Grassroots TruthCast with our special guest, Alan Dershowitz. See you again soon. Thank you.

27:23
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