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Jan. 30, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
08:53
Peter Schweizer on Democratic Corruption
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So, I need you to know, I've written 10 books, so I have a sense of what it takes to write a serious book.
I don't understand.
Are you a research center?
Is Peter Schweizer the name of a group of people?
I don't understand how you do so much research.
Well, I'm the president of the Government Accountability Institute.
We were formed shortly after I wrote a book called Throw Them All Out that you and Dennis and I talked about.
I am Dennis.
Wait, wait.
So wait, who was the third person?
I am Dennis, as you know.
So you said you, Dennis, and I. Oh, sorry, sorry.
It's quite all right.
That I meant you, Dennis, and I. Oh, I see.
Okay, okay.
I got you.
All right.
That's all right.
Yeah, that we decided coming out of that research where we exposed insider trading on the stock market that we needed to research this regularly.
It warranted it.
So the government accountability...
Our website is cronyism.com.
You can see the reports and the work that we do in addition to the books I do.
But we have a research team, and we engage in heavy forensic research.
So this book took 18 months of research.
We had close to a dozen researchers working on it.
Okay, so I was right.
Yes, there really is an institution doing this research along with you.
Yes, that's exactly right.
As you know, Dennis, from looking at the book, we don't use anonymous sources.
No, no, no.
It's all forensic paper.
No, and if anything is wrong, you would truly be called out on it.
Yes, that's exactly right.
I mean, as I say, I want my listeners to understand, it's astounding the amount of corruption.
I've read the first half in each of those people's lives.
It's depressing.
And the obvious question that most people would have is, why didn't you write about Republicans?
Yes.
And I've written books.
My previous book, Secret Empires, was about Republicans and Democrats.
It was a lot in there on Mitch McConnell.
I had a chapter on the Trumps.
I explain in the first chapter of the book, Dennis, that I think we're living in a time right now when it comes to investigative work.
That I call the Trump vortex.
Donald Trump is the most powerful man in the world.
He needs scrutiny.
We've scrutinized him.
Other people have scrutinized him.
But it's kind of like the eclipse of the sun.
That's become the only thing that has been the work of investigative journalists.
Some of the reporting's been good.
Some of it's been awful.
I felt the need to look at people that are either aspiring to his position Or are in senior positions of responsibility to make sure that people know what they have in terms of connections, cronyism, corruption that they've engaged in.
So at least the information is out there.
And I also believe that, as I point out in the first chapter of the book, these progressives are unique on the political landscape.
Because unlike moderates, classical liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, Progressives are the one group in America that are saying the size and scope of government is still way too small.
We need a lot more power to fix your problems.
Now, obviously, there's a real question about whether they could fix our problems, but the question I wanted to answer in the book is these people that want so much more power, what have they actually done with the power they've had up until this point?
And I think the case that I make is...
They've done some things to enrich their families and to benefit themselves, that they've served themselves rather than serve the public.
That's the chief conservative argument, dear listeners, against big government.
Unless you have angels in government, the more access they have to power, influence, and money...
The more abuse there will be.
You have to be a child to believe that bigger government doesn't mean more corruption.
Your book should be the required reading, forgetting if you're a Republican or a Democrat, just to understand what happens when people have access to so much power.
They make their families rich.
It's an astonishing thing what they get away with.
What are...
Places like the New York Times doing, do they just say, we won't tell everybody about Kamala Harris's background?
What do they think?
Yeah, it's a good question.
You know, I've done a lot of work in the past.
You know, when I even did the book Clinton Cash a couple of years ago, the New York Times did follow-on reporting, confirming my reporting.
There really has been no interest from those publications.
In this material.
And again, everything in this book, you can go through the footnotes.
There's 1128 footnotes in this book.
And you can replicate everything.
You can look at the court documents, the corporate records, the financial records, all the material we use.
You can replicate and confirm the facts that we are reporting.
So it's not difficult to do, but there seems to be.
And I think part of it is this sort of singular obsession And look, I get it.
Part of it is he's the most powerful man in the world.
But the other part of it is there is this fixation, I think, within the media to say, I want to be the guy that finally does this guy in.
That's fine.
I mean, you can do that.
But you cannot and should not do that at the expense of reporting on other people.
You need to know who Elizabeth Warren's family does commercial business with and how she made her money.
You need to know Bernie Sanders' financial secrets.
You need to know the fact that five members of Joe Biden's family did very, very well while he was vice president for things they really weren't qualified to be paid for.
You need to know those things, and that's why we felt the need to do this.
It is, I have to say, on some level, a little depressing.
It's just one thing on top of the other.
You don't have to answer this and it's only out of interest and curiosity that I ask it.
Of the list of major Democrats that I just enumerated for the listeners, are some more egregious than others or are they all pretty much egregious?
I think some are more egregious than others.
You know, it's interesting, Dennis.
I've had a lot of friends and people who have read the book, and different chapters stand out to them in different ways.
Some people are shocked by Joe Biden.
Others read the Bernie Sanders chapter, and they're like, my God, I never heard any of this before, and I'm shocked.
The Kamala Harris one resonates with people because you're dealing in some cases with...
As I argue in the book, basically covering up some very, very serious crimes.
So it's a hard question to answer.
I think it's going to be in the eye of the beholder, as it were, for people to decide, because the methodologies and the approaches...
That these individuals use are often very different, too.
Some of them are merely trying to enrich their families.
Others are trying to concentrate power for their political benefit.
So the methods and the styles are very different.
When I read the Kamala Harris chapter, what came to my mind, and we're going to take a break and then I'd like you to answer it.
What came to my mind was the fixation on Infidelity on the part of Donald Trump.
But, I mean, if what you wrote is true, and even I had a sense of this prior to reading your book, she was with a married man for years just to get into positions of power.
You don't have to be married, folks, to commit adultery.
I am not fixated on it, but people are fixated on Donald Trump's sexual past.
I want Peter Schweizer to tell me why they wouldn't be if Kamala Harris, let's say, is chosen as a vice presidential candidate.
The book is Profiles in Corruption.
Peter Schweizer is the author, and it's up at DennisPrager.com.
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