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Jan. 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
18:08
What the Media is Missing About Trump | Larry Elder Show
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You remember when Donald Trump, now President Trump, made his infamous dissent on the escalator?
I thought it was going to be the world's shortest political campaign, especially when he made his comments that he made about Mexicans.
When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.
They're not sending you.
They're not sending you.
They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us.
They're bringing drugs.
They're bringing crime.
They're rapists.
And some, I assume, are good people.
Wow.
I thought it was going to be the world's shortest political campaign.
In fact, out of the 17-some-odd people who were running, I put Donald Trump as my number 20 choice.
But then a funny thing happened.
The next day I was in an area of L.A. called Sunland, which is a largely working class area.
I was there on business, and I went to a restaurant called Coco's, which is very similar to a Denny's.
Got me a nice, good American breakfast, hash browns, eggs, bacon, sitting at the bar.
And a guy comes up to me and he says, are you Larry Elder?
What are you doing here?
I said, I'm here on business.
He said, did you see Trump last night?
I said, yeah, I did.
He said, what did you think?
I said, what did you think?
And for the next five minutes proceeded to tell me that he thought Trump spoke for him.
And he walked away.
And I said, that's interesting.
I kept eating.
A few minutes later, another guy came up, said the same thing.
Over the course of the next 45 minutes or so, I would say at least 15 people, some white, a couple of them were Hispanic, one even looked Asian, all said the same thing to me.
Donald Trump speaks for me.
I said, wow.
So that night I went on the air on my radio show and I said, I've not seen anybody touch regular people like this since Ronald Reagan.
This guy's going to win the nomination.
He's going to become president of the United States.
And people thought I had lost my mind.
The president, in talking about illegal immigration, often uses the term illegal alien, as do other members of his administration.
Illegal alien, a term that now is almost synonymous with calling somebody the N-word.
Here is what the head of a Hispanic journalism organization said about the term illegal alien.
Cindy Rodriguez of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists said the term illegal is a pejorative.
Quote, if you can control the words people use, you can frame the issue.
That's how propaganda works.
Repeat the words continually until it reshapes the way people think.
End of quote.
Holy George Orwell, are you accusing Chuck Schumer, of being pejorative?
When we use phrases like undocumented workers, we convey a message to the American people that their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration.
Now, in the not-too-distant past, Democrats spoke about illegal immigration exactly the same way Trump is.
There is an honest, self-described liberal named Peter Beinhart.
He writes for The Atlantic.
He wrote a piece about how Democrats have lost their way on immigration.
Here's what he said.
In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants and that the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.
His conclusion?
We'll need to reduce the flow of low-skilled immigrants.
That same year, a Democrat senator wrote, When I see Mexican flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment.
When I'm forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.
Well, the senator to whom he referred was Barack Obama.
The columnist to whom he referred was Paul Krugman, the left-wing columnist for the New York Times.
So what happened?
Beinhart writes, a larger explanation is political.
Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats became more and more confident that the country's growing Latino population gave the party an electoral edge.
To win the presidency, Democrats convinced themselves they didn't need to reassure white people skeptical of immigration so long as they turned out their Latino base.
End of quote.
I mean, really, is there any doubt in your mind that if illegals turned citizens turned voters would likely vote Republican, we wouldn't be having this conversation because the borders would be shut tighter than the clams behind?
Check out what this executive with the major unions said shortly after Barack Obama got elected.
We reform the immigration laws.
It puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters.
Can you imagine if we have even the same ratio?
Two out of three.
If we have 8 million new voters that care about our issue and will be voting, we will create a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election.
Now this brings us to the continual trashing of Donald Trump.
I interviewed a woman named Liz Kroiken.
Liz Kroiken is an entertainment lawyer.
She said, Larry, it is my job to dig up dirt on people.
I covered this guy for 10 years.
Believe me, if all the things people said about him were true, I would have written about it.
I would have published it.
But none of the things came forward until after he announced the presidency.
Here is what Liz Kroiken wrote.
Donald Trump is a racist.
Bigot, sexist, xenophobe, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobe.
Did I miss anything?
The left and the media launch these hideous kinds of attacks at Trump every day, yet nothing could be further from the truth about the real estate mogul.
As an entertainment journalist, I've had the opportunity to cover Trump for over a decade.
And in all my years covering him, I've never heard anything negative about the man until he announced he was running for president.
Keep in mind, I get paid a lot of money to dig up dirt on celebrities like Trump for a living.
So a scandalous story on the famous billionaire could have potentially sold a lot of magazines and would have been a huge feather in my cap.
Instead, I found that he doesn't drink alcohol or do drugs.
He's a hardworking businessman and totally devoted to his beloved wife and children.
On top of that, he's one of the most generous celebrities in the world with a heart filled with more gold than his $100 million New York penthouse.
Was it racist when he was working with so-called black leaders like Jesse Jackson?
And so aside from all of his style and his pizzazz, he's a serious person.
Who is an effective builder of building for the build of people.
Last year he was a part of our workshop, of our panel workshop, on what are the challenges and opportunities.
And so this, a year later, Donald Trump, for a few minutes, challenges and opportunities to embrace the underserved communities.
Donald Trump.
Holy, make America great again.
And during the 26th campaign, even Louis Farrakhan.
Louis Farrakhan said, Obama failed black people, particularly in the inner city.
And hey, why don't you give Donald Trump a chance?
Farrakhan?
But I just want to tell you, Mr.
President, you from Chicago and so am I. I go out in the street with the people.
I visited the worst neighborhoods.
I talked to the gangs.
And while I was out there talking to them, they said, you know, Farrakhan, the President ain't never come.
Could you get him to come and look after us?
There's your legacy, Mr.
President.
It's in the street with your suffering people, Mr.
President.
And if you can't go and see about them, then don't worry about your legacy.
Because the white people that you've served so well, they'll preserve your legacy.
The hell they will.
But you didn't earn your legacy with us.
We put you there.
You fought for the rights of gay people.
You fought for the rights of this people and that people.
You fight for Israel.
Your people are suffering and dying in the streets.
That's where your legacy is.
And about the economy, even hard left Tavis Smiley of PBS said the same thing.
We found that over the last ten years, black people have lost ground in every major economic category.
In every major category, black people have lost ground.
Now, clearly, one cannot lay that exclusively at the feet of Mr.
Obama.
There was a headwind of obstructionism.
That's true.
But his most loyal constituency didn't gain any ground over the last ten years, and that saddens me in a way that I can't even describe.
Now, about the economy, according to the Pew Research, who did exit polls following the 2008 election, the number one reason that white people gave who voted for Obama?
The economy.
The number one reason that black people gave who voted for Obama?
The economy.
What happened?
Between 2010 and 2013, during the Obama administration, black net worth fell almost a full third.
Here's what the Financial Times said in October 2014.
The median non-white family today has a net worth of just $18,100, almost a fifth lower than it was when Mr.
Obama took office." And according to the Federal Reserve, black net worth fell from $16,600 to $11,000 over a three-year period of time from 2010 to 2013.
That's about a 34% drop in net worth.
Here's what the Investor's Business Daily said.
That's a steeper decline than occurred from 2007 to 2010 when blacks' net worth fell 13.5%.
Wow.
How bad was it?
Well, Trump-hating Congresswoman Maxine Waters held a Jobs Town Hall in Detroit in 2011.
It didn't go well.
The Congressional Black Caucus loves the president too.
We're supportive of the president when we get it tired of.
And so what we want to do is we want to give the president every opportunity to show what He can do and what he's prepared to lead on.
We want to give him every opportunity.
But our people are hurting.
The unemployment is unconscionable.
Want more?
And in 2012, here's what the Associated Press said.
Since World War II, ten U.S. recessions have been followed by a recovery that lasted at least three years.
An Associated Press analysis shows that by just about any measure, the one that began in June 2009 is the weakest.
Economic growth has never been weaker in a post-war recovery.
Consumer spending has never been so slack.
Only once has job growth been slower.
More than in any other post-World War II recovery, people who have jobs are hurting.
Their paychecks have fallen behind inflation." It is for this reason that when Donald Trump invited blacks who often vote Democratic to the White House, they came and they were receptive.
Take Jim Brown.
What I felt today was There was a happy president that is willing to do what he thinks is right for this country, willing to take chances, willing to stand up, willing to fight back.
I want to come back with my plans and help him do the things that should be done, not criticize him.
Now let's fast forward to 2019, shall we?
Robert Johnson, founder of BET, is America's first black billionaire.
He supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Here's what he's saying now.
Well, I think the economy is doing absolutely great, and it's particularly reaching into populations that heretofore have had very bad problems in terms of jobs, unemployment, and the opportunities that come with full employment.
So African-American unemployment is at its lowest level, Hispanic unemployment, women.
So I give President Trump, and I've said this before on Squawk Box, I give President a lot of credit.
This brings us to how Donald Trump allegedly has coarsened race relations in America.
Here are some typical headlines.
AP, Polls show sour views of race relations in Trump's America.
Market Watch, Polls show the majority of Americans think race relations under Trump are generally bad.
Now, Gallup has been measuring how people feel about race relations since 2001.
The peak year for whites, 2007, when 75% of whites thought race relations were either very good or somewhat good.
For blacks, the peak was in 2001, when blacks thought, 70%, that race relations were somewhat good or very good.
Let's see, 2001, 2007, who was president?
George W. Bush.
But then, As you can see, both white and blacks still thought race relations were generally pretty good in 2013.
But by 2016, they had fallen dramatically for both blacks and for whites under President Barack Obama.
Not Donald Trump, Barack Obama.
So relations peaked during the Bush years, dropped dramatically during the Obama years.
So, water is wet, sky is blue, grass is green, and race relations have gotten worse under President Trump.
But have they?
There is a working paper by two researchers who concluded just the opposite.
They admit they were surprised by their findings.
They've been tracking views of whites for some time, and they assume that because of Donald Trump, whites would be far more willing to express negative views about blacks and far more willing to express negative views about Hispanics.
The researchers found the opposite.
Here's what they said.
Our findings contradict both hypotheses, as we primarily found declining prejudice and racial resentment, and certainly no increases.
Measuring prejudice is notoriously difficult, but we were able to draw on a panel survey which has posed questions about political issues to the same group of people 13 times since late 2007.
Our panel asked the respondents a representative sample of about 500 white Americans to rate different racial groups' work ethic On average, anti-black prejudice dropped sharply among whites from just before the 2016 election to two years later.
That marked the lowest level of anti-black prejudice since we first conducted this study in late 2008.
Prejudice against Hispanics also dropped.
In both instances, declines were larger among Democrats, but they also appeared among Republicans, too.
I mean, honestly.
Nirvana is not realistic.
This is a country of 330 million people.
You're going to have some morons.
Hell, about 8% of Americans believe Elvis is still alive, and some 6% believe if you send him a letter, he will get it.
So, Nirvana is not an option.
But we are getting along better than we ever have in the history of this country.
The idea that Donald Trump has course in race relations is just not borne out by the data.
And of all these white liberals hand-wringing about how much racism there is in America, remember after Dylann Roof killed all those people at that church in Charleston, South Carolina?
On the Morning Joe show, Martin O'Malley, then a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, talked about how bad this is, how awful this is, and it was bad and awful.
And then he was asked this question, what do we do about the racism that you speak about?
What should be done?
Here's his answer.
From the reports I read, and that's To be honest with one another, the facts are still evolving here.
It would appear that the racial motivation was certainly a big part of what happened here.
How do we address things like that?
We do it by acknowledging the racial legacy that we share as Americans.
I don't know exactly how we How we address this, Walter.
I mean, look, we as Americans all share a very painful racial legacy and we need to acknowledge it and we need to take actions to heal it.
But I don't think anybody's figured out the magic solution to that.
Ah, another white liberal hand-wringing over racism and then when asked what to do about it, had no clue.
Let me tell you what Malcolm X said about white liberals like Martin O'Malley.
The worst enemy that the Negro has Is this white man that runs around here, drooling at the mouth, professing to love Negroes and calling himself a liberal.
And it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negroes have.
If the Negro wasn't taken, tricked or deceived by the white liberal, the Negroes would get together and solve our own problems.
I only cite these things to show you that in America, the history of the white liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negroes think that the white liberal was going to solve our problems.
Our problems will never be solved by the white man." Here's the part where I'm going to be called Uncle Tom or self-loathing.
In fact, a troll once sent this letter to me.
Elder, you think you're white.
You want to be white.
You've always thought of yourself as white.
To which I said, really?
I'm Larry Elder, and this has been The Larry Elder Show for Epic Times.
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