| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
White House Social Media Conference
00:07:27
|
|
| Jesse Smollett represents the New York Times. | |
| Let us find racism because it is so hard. | |
| Let us look for it and even invent it. | |
| That is Jesse Smollett. | |
| He should be the symbol for Nike. | |
| Nike should hire Jesse Smollett. | |
| I think that I should tweet that. | |
| That would truly be in keeping with the left's theory of how racist America is. | |
| Yesterday, there was a conference at the White House social media conference, and among those invited to attend was Prager University and Alan Estrin, producer of this radio show. | |
| As well as co-founder of PragerU with me was there. | |
| And let's get a first-hand report. | |
| You were never in the White House, Alan, were you? | |
| Well, that's not quite true. | |
| I was there when I was 12 years old. | |
| That was the last time I was there. | |
| It hasn't changed that much. | |
| It all looked very familiar to me. | |
| Exactly. | |
| In fact, there's... | |
| In effect, it was the first time I was here. | |
| Yeah, no, I get it. | |
| But isn't there a little place Alan Estrin was here? | |
| You know, I asked and then kind of shrugged. | |
| Uh-huh. | |
| That's sad. | |
| All right, so what is it like, just emotionally? | |
| You know, emotionally it's very... | |
| I'm not going to say I was overwhelmed, but I was—you're full of a real, I would say, very healthy patriotism. | |
| This is the most famous house in the world. | |
| So many things happen here. | |
| There's so much history here. | |
| And you walk through the hallways, and there are these beautiful—I mean, you've been there, so you know. | |
| There are these beautiful portraits of every president and first lady and historical figures. | |
| It's an inspiring place. | |
| So it's always, I can't say it's always fun to be there because I've only been there twice now, but it was special just to be there, yes. | |
| Do you feel the presence of armed guards? | |
| No, I didn't feel the presence of armed guards, but I was, first, well, I'll say this, to get into the White House, I went through four different security checks and they all did the same thing. | |
| I went through one checkpoint and then I went to another checkpoint and had to do the exact same thing, went to a third checkpoint and did the exact same thing, and then had to go through a metal detector. | |
| So they're very careful, obviously. | |
| But once you're in, you don't have a sense of armed guards. | |
| No. | |
| I didn't have that sense. | |
| There are military people all over the place in uniform, which adds to the majesty of the White House, I think. | |
| Where did this social media meeting take place? | |
| There were two meetings. | |
| There was one smaller gathering of about 30 or 40 people in the Roosevelt Room on the... | |
| I believe it was the west side that could have been the east side of the White House. | |
| There was another much larger meeting of 200 people in the east room. | |
| How many of these people, how many in either meeting did you happen to know? | |
| In the smaller meeting, I would say, if there were 30 people there, I knew. | |
| Five and in the bigger meeting, I knew a lot of people. | |
| One observation that I will make about the larger meeting, I looked around and I thought, gee, we did a PragerU video with this person, that person, this person, that person. | |
| There were a lot of PragerU videos represented in that meeting. | |
| Right. | |
| I mean, James O'Keefe was there and... | |
| A video that we haven't released yet. | |
| Another presenter was there. | |
| You remember Joy Villa? | |
| She was there. | |
| Charlie Kirk was there. | |
| He's done several videos for us. | |
| So what did you take away? | |
| You had never met the president in person, correct? | |
| No. | |
| And I didn't meet him in person this time either. | |
| But you were with him. | |
| No, no, you didn't shake his hand, but you met him. | |
| I mean, in the sense that he wasn't on TV. He was in front of you. | |
| Yes. | |
| Right. | |
| So, is he different in person than you had a sense of... | |
| I mean, you've been observing him closely for years. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, and I actually thought to myself, well, just the same. | |
| There's no difference. | |
| And his presentation... | |
| It was the first time, as you point out, that I saw him in person. | |
| And I know this, obviously, from watching you give many speeches. | |
| In person, there's a real atmosphere to the room when somebody's presenting something in person. | |
| No matter how you do a close-up on TV, it's different. | |
| It's a live event. | |
| He's a very impressive person in the way he presents his ideas. | |
| I mean, he understands how to present an idea. | |
| And to see him work the crowd is something to behold. | |
| Because? | |
| Because he's so incredibly aware. | |
| I mean, it's another thing that I've learned from you. | |
| He's so aware of who the audience is and what kind of reaction he's getting from the audience and how to build on that reaction. | |
| It's a skill. | |
| I'm not sure it's a skill. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I'm sure you can get better at it, but he obviously has a natural instinct. | |
| He is a showman. | |
| His events are in some ways... | |
| When he's speaking in public like this and mostly off the cuff, it's like a stand-up routine. | |
| Just very, very entertaining. | |
| All right. | |
| Hold on. | |
| Alan Estrin, my producer, was at the White House yesterday. | |
| 1-8 Prager 776. What did they say? | |
| I will, of course, be testifying in the U.S. Senate next Tuesday. | |