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Jan. 26, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
01:23:07
The Dennis Prager Show LIVE
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99% of you have not studied the left.
That's been my field of study since graduate school.
That is what the left has always done.
They label their opponents.
They do not debate them.
They sometimes kill them.
They always censor them.
And they label them.
So Stalin labeled...
The founder of the Communist Red Army, a fascist, because he opposed Stalin.
So Stalin, one of the two, three leading communists in the history of the world, excuse me, Trotsky, one of the two, three leading, was labeled a fascist.
That's how it works.
There's no difference today, none whatsoever.
In America today, there is no difference.
You label your enemy.
So, knowing that...
You are going to be called a hater.
Let me just offer the following question.
Is it good for the armed services to have the transgender in a unit?
That is the primary question to be asked.
There are other questions, and they are legit.
It is a legitimate question.
Is it fair to the transgendered person?
That is a legitimate question, and mine is a legitimate question.
I don't dismiss that question as ipso facto immoral or wrong.
And you have to weigh the two.
So that if in a women's barracks, you have one of your fellow female soldiers...
And he has male genitalia, or she has male genitalia, forgive me.
Does that do anything to the...
What would be the right word?
Spirit?
No, that's not perfectly right.
To the unity of the group, to the sense of community.
So this is...
This is Sandra, and this is Madison, and this is another female, and this female has male genitalia.
Now, you may say, if anybody, any of the women objected that she would be a hater, but what renders that person a hater?
The person doesn't hate men, presumably, doesn't hate the 99.9% of those who have male genitalia who identify as males.
So it's only when there is this mixing of the sexes in one human and imposed upon the unit that it becomes an issue.
So, we don't ask any longer, is it good for the nation?
Is it good for fighting?
That's what they're supposed to be ready to do.
but is it good for the tiny, tiny, minuscule percentage of people who identify as such?
It's like the track issue where, again, this was done in the first week of the Biden administration in the name of unity.
That's...
The thing about the left is that they fool themselves, and that's the reason they're able to fool others.
He really believes he's striving for unity when he announces that male bodies can compete against females.
In college and high school sports.
Back in a moment.
Also take your calls.
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Trending now on the Mike Deliger Show.
Senator Lindsey Graham last night with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
I had a great meeting with Senator McConnell today.
I think every Republican sees the House process as an affront to the presidency and due process.
So what's going to happen?
If she delivers the articles to us, they'll have to be disposed of under the process of the Senate.
If we could get 51 senators to dismiss, it's all over.
There's more than a handful of Democrats praying that Joe Biden will get on the phone and call Schumer and say it's over, because they understand this is going to blow up in their face politically.
I've never felt better about the Republican Senate conference being united behind the idea that what the House did was wrong in terms of process, and I think we're going to have an overwhelming Republican vote that this second impeachment of Donald Trump is unconstitutional.
Well, that was last night.
Today, Chuck Schumer announced that Pelosi has informed him that the article of impeachment against President Trump will be delivered to the Senate on Monday, which paves the way for a trial.
It's obviously a developing story.
We're going to see what happens next.
We're going to see what Republicans are made of.
And honestly, I don't know that Rand Paul is incorrect.
I think Rand Paul is absolutely right.
There's been all this talk about a patriot party, a third party.
If Republicans are stupid enough to vote to convict a guy who's already out of office of impeachment, of inciting an insurrection, there won't be a Republican Party left.
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Trending now on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton, good morning, Senator.
Welcome.
Good to talk to you.
I know you believe a trial of former President Trump is unconstitutional.
Is that the majority view of the Republican caucus?
Hugh, I think Senate Republicans are coming around to that view as they think more about it.
I mean, I think for most Americans, it's just a very common sense position, though.
I mean, the Democrats want to have a trial to convict and remove from office a man who left office yesterday.
And by the time we get around to that trial in a few more days, that's going to be an even stranger proposition.
Why are the Democrats spending the Senate's time in an obsessive inquest against a private citizen when we could be focused on what really matters, like getting more vaccines out to Americans or helping Americans get back to work or defending this country from the threats we face abroad?
That's just the common-sense view of things, Hugh.
Now, I think the Constitution really couldn't be much plainer.
It says that...
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Vitamin D is another example.
Zinc is another example.
Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine these days are other examples.
The NIH has now...
Stopped its opposition to the use of iverbectin.
It hasn't gone so far as to endorse it.
So were they wrong until now?
Yes, they were wrong until now.
Has the NIH killed a lot of Americans because they were wrong until now?
Yes, the NIH has killed a lot of Americans because they were wrong until now.
I say this with no joy.
Did they mean to kill tens of thousands of Americans?
Of course not.
Are they wimps?
Yes.
Cowardice kills.
How's that?
That's a good one.
That's like make hay while the sun shines.
Mark Liberty, South Carolina.
Hello.
Yes, how you doing, Dennis?
Quite an honor to speak with you, sir.
You're my...
I remember one time they said Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America.
You are that to me, sir.
Thank you.
It's very kind.
My comment is what you spoke of earlier about people who quote the Bible and look down upon in the leftist media.
Yes.
I wonder what they think of 54 years ago, Apollo 8 orbited the moon, and I remember watching it as a kid.
And they quoted from Genesis, and that was one of my most profound memories of growing up, to see that on the TV, them actually quoting Genesis.
I just wonder what you think about that.
It's one of the most stirring things I ever watch.
I've seen it a number of times.
Of course, it wouldn't happen today.
People wouldn't even know what he was quoting, or she were quoting, if an astronaut did that.
The sea change in American life.
In many ways, America is more different from when I grew up than America was when I grew up from the 19th century.
Technologically, America was very different.
No question.
My grandfather saw the country go from horse and buggy to astronauts on the moon.
And it blew his mind.
I'm not sure he fully believed that they got onto the moon.
So technologically, that was the era of the greatest change.
But in terms of the values animating the country, with a handful of exceptions, A country was much less a racist over time and became the least racist multiracial country on earth, which is ironic because now it's called racist and systemically racist and so on.
It's in the DNA, according to Barack Obama.
Amazing to charge a country.
Is anti-Semitism in the DNA of the Germans?
It's an interesting question, isn't it?
I'm sure there would be Jews who would say yes.
But is there anti-Semitism in the DNA of the French?
According to polls, the French were more anti-Semitic than the Germans.
Anyway, this is what we're facing today, this change.
So, when I grew up, to cite the Bible, It was just normal.
When my grandparents grew up, it was normal.
When their grandparents did, but now it's not.
That's what I mean.
The difference is so dramatic.
Okay, that was a valid call.
All right.
Chicago, Ronald.
Hello, Ronald.
Dennis Prager.
Oh, my gosh.
You're not fully clear, Ronald.
I'm sorry.
Okay, okay.
Can you hear me now, sir?
It's better.
Can you hear me now, sir?
Yes, sir.
Okay, yeah.
It's a total honor, sir, to speak to you.
Thank you.
I'll speak a little louder.
Thank you.
I would like to start off and interject a little humor.
This is one of my favorite slogans.
I believe liberalism is comprised of two components, schizophrenia and demonic perception.
I've been doing this for 10 years now.
All right, you know what?
It's a really bad connection.
I feel terrible, especially after the compliment.
But I'm so sorry.
Next time you call, figure out.
I ask all of you, please don't use a speakerphone.
Speak right into your phone.
Anyway, I'm sorry there, Ronald.
All right, and Jeff in San Diego, hello.
Hey, Dennis.
Hi.
Can you hear me okay?
Yep.
Okay, Dennis.
You know, people try to portray Biden as, I don't know, a nice old man, a Christian, whatever.
This is just a sham.
Already, how long has he been president?
Like five days?
Already, he's trying to have to be a tyrant.
That's correct.
I call him tyrant, Joseph Biden's nationalist leftist.
He has been.
But when we come back, I'm going to read to you from Kimberly Strassel to give one example of that.
Trending now on The Charlie Kirk Show.
The thing I'm super curious about, Fight Day.
What does your day look like?
That day must be the longest day of the year.
It feels like, honestly, a minute is like two days.
Forever.
You're like, come on, let's get this over with, right?
Literally.
Do you sleep well the night before?
Nah.
Yeah, usually I'm not sleeping.
You're in your hotel room going through.
Yeah.
And you just got done doing like the weight cut.
So, you know, you just lost 20 pounds and you're completely depleted.
You took all the salts out of your body.
You're dehydrated because you're pretty much water loading.
And then you take all the water and the weight off you and you're just completely dehydrated.
And you weigh in the day before the fight.
You weigh in the day before the fight.
So you got 24 hours to rehydrate and then you fight.
So like that whole process is like you're rehydrating.
You're trying to put the right nutrients in, but you can't put them in too quick because if you put them in too quick, your stomach and your system is not going to take it.
So do you have a nutritionist that comes with you that helps monitor all that?
Yeah, I'm a nutritionist.
That's fascinating.
So it's not just being able to psychologically prepare.
You have to, because you're just cutting, you're cutting, you're cutting, you got to make the weight.
And if you don't, that's just, you know, you're done.
There's no fight.
Well, there's a fight, but then you have to give up 30% of your purse.
So if you're fighting for a million dollars, you got to give up $300,000.
Have you ever not made the weight?
Never.
I'm a true professional.
I'm a businessman.
When I sign a contract, I'm a man of my word.
I'm going to show up and I'm going to make weight and I'm going to handle my business like a businessman.
Wow.
And so then the day of the fight, what time do you wake up?
What does that look like?
What do you do?
Do you watch TV? Do you just say like, let's get this day over with as quickly as possible?
Usually when I wake up, I'll have a bunch of carbs, like some pancakes, because I've been depleting myself low carbs for a couple weeks.
So I'll have some pancakes, I'll have some eggs, some turkey sausage, some healthy stuff.
And then it's just visualizing, watching a little bit of tapes to see what areas a guy's good in and to see what his strengths are and to see what his weaknesses are.
And then it's just really just being by myself.
Making sure it's just my thoughts and my feelings and my emotions.
I don't want to hear what anybody else has to say.
I want to be selfish in that moment.
And that's probably a mean thing to say.
No, it's great.
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Trending now on the Mike Deliger Show.
Hey, Mike, this is Tom in Chicago.
It costs $20 million a day for the Senate to convene.
They're wasting more money when they have the people's work to do.
Just what is wrong with these people?
Great question.
I wish I had the answer.
Well, I've got a couple of answers.
Senator Rand Paul this week on Fox News suggested what will happen to the Republican Party if Republicans go along.
With this cockamamie plan to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection.
My fear is that if Republicans, particularly Republican leadership, goes along with this impeachment, they'll destroy the party.
And so I think it's a huge mistake.
I think it's a hugely...
Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal.
The unity lasted all of a couple of minutes.
Then, hours after President Biden pledged in his inaugural address to show tolerance and humility, the brass knuckles came out.
One duster was aimed at Peter Robb, General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.
Within minutes of Mr. Biden's swearing in, and as the new president told the nation it needed to be better, the new White House delivered Mr. Robb an ultimatum, resign by 5 p.m.
or be fired.
The general counsel position is a Senate-confirmed four-year appointment at an independent agency.
Mr. Robb had ten months left in his term.
No NLRB, National Labor Relations Board, general counsel had ever been fired.
And the Biden White House provided no cause for the action.
Mr. Robb pointed all this out in a return letter and respectfully declined to step down.
So Mr. Biden, quote, we must end this uncivil war, unquote, canned him.
For all Mr. Trump's bad manners, his administration's actions were largely by the book.
Mr. Trump never fired Richard Griffin, Barack Obama's NLRB general counsel, who served nine months to the end of his term in 2017. For all the talk of Mr. Biden is the embodiment of gentlemanly politics, Democrats have no intention of playing by the rules.
They intend to impose an agenda and won't let a little thing like a 70-year-old precedent or embarrassment over double standards get in their way.
The new president is under massive pressure from the progressive left, including many service unions, to act aggressively on climate.
Yet his first-day executive action cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline Prompted a furious rebuke from blue-collar unions that are set to lose jobs.
Mark McManus, General President of the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipe Fitters, scored Mr. Biden for listening to, quote, the voice of fringe activists instead of union members.
And it won't matter.
They'll still vote Democrat.
So how do you like that?
The NLRB General Counsel.
First time in 70 years one is fired.
Is the mainstream media reporting this, that Donald Trump let the Obama appointee stay through his term?
Of course not.
That is why I keep reminding you that they are fed lies, not we.
They are fed lies about us.
They are fed lies by omission.
How many of your left-wing relatives even know about the truth?
About how much truth there was to the Hunter Biden laptop story.
All right, Mike, Mark, Robert, Josh, Nick, Jeff, Ronald, Paul, I am sorry.
That, I didn't get a chance to take your calls.
We now move to the ultimate issues hour and leave politics.
Praise the Lord.
Trending now on the Hugh Hewitt Show.
The question is on immigration.
I asked Peter Baker yesterday if the president's new proposal of an eight-year path to citizenship and stopping the wall was an opening bid or a bottom line.
And he agreed with me that if it's a bottom line, it's dead on arrival.
Do you agree with that?
Well, I certainly hope so, and I'll do everything I can to make it so.
But let's remember, Hugh, even if it's just an opening bid, there's an element of kabuki theater here.
Joe Biden may be expecting some willing Republican accomplices to swoop in at the last minute with a big leap of enforcement, like money for drones or something at the southern border.
We should be anticipating that highly stylized gambit right now, and we should reject it out of hand right now.
Republicans should not pass an amnesty-first bill that puts an amnesty in place for 15 million illegal immigrants while also increasing guest workers' visas at a time when we still have 10 million people out of work.
The focus should be on getting Americans back to work and getting our border secure and enforcing immigration laws at the place of employment.
This bill, by the way, is not just lacking in enforcement, Hugh.
It actually guts enforcement.
It guts the E-Verify program that we already have in place.
Some states use on a mandatory basis that we should use nationwide.
Let me ask you...
Senator, very quickly, is it an absolute must-have, the completion of at least 700, and I would prefer 900 miles, of wall of the sort that President Trump has built?
No, Hugh, I don't think the wall in itself is a critical point that would get Senate Republicans to vote for an amnesty.
No, we shouldn't proceed to a discussion of a bill that's going to be focused on giving American jobs to foreign workers.
Keep up with what's trending.
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Trending now on The Eric Metaxas Show.
We'll be right back.
Can you imagine the President of the United States feeling an obligation, I guess, to his people to bring up these two things which I consider Essentially fake.
I mean the idea that anybody that you know or I know would agree with white nationalism or domestic terrorism, much less be a part of it, is just outstanding.
It is breathtaking to me that he said this in an inaugural speech where he's calling For unity, I just...
No, you're not by yourself.
And there's a lot of people that are pointing to the same realities, that it's one thing to have rhetoric that talks about being unified.
And here's something else I think we all need to just get over.
Unity may on some level be virtuous, but it is not the highest of virtues.
And there are virtues that are actually much more valuable from a moral and even civil scale.
And one of those is freedom.
Take out all of the references to unity in yesterday's speech and replace it with conformity.
You have a better understanding of what The left actually means.
But I think that there are some things that are far more important than unity.
Clarity is one of them.
To be clear and to clearly understand what truth is, is a far higher, greater virtue than unity.
I also believe that at the end of the day, conformity is what they're really talking about.
I believe that the defense of freedom is a greater virtue than what they're dealing with.
So that's kind of where we're at.
Keep up with what's trending.
subscribe on YouTube today trending now on America first with Sebastian Burke When you have AOC say that she is literally on camera, I am afraid of being shot by my fellow congressmen who are Republicans.
Think how crazy this is.
So look, AOC goes on and on, and she'll call Ted Cruz a white supremacist.
Ted Cruz isn't even white.
And a whole bunch of other stuff, right?
It's one thing you're just calling the white people white supremacists.
You're also calling the Latino people white supremacists.
If Candace Owens can be a white supremacist, then, you know, right?
I know.
Yeah, exactly.
But this concept where they've used emotions to supersede everything, she knows that she's not afraid that one of her fellow congressmen is going to shoot her.
But think how dangerous that language is.
And it's very tempting then for us to go in with Equally as emotionally charged and over-the-top language.
But that's just all of us going on the road to hell together.
So the question really is like, well, what do you do?
So what do we do in the face of a group of people who now have power, whose goal is to have power, who are telling us what they're going to do with that power?
What do we do as people that don't want to use governmental power?
This is the great challenge, I think, of our time.
For liberty-minded people.
It's like, all right, we're live and let live, but if the other guys are trying to come onto our property and do stuff or indoctrinate our children or whatever it might be, then our live and let live has to have some limit.
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Trending now on The Charlie Kirk Show.
You've been unafraid to wear the Make America Great Again hat, Keep America Great hat?
I guess when you win, you can do whatever you want.
That's true.
I don't have these owners or people telling me what I've got to do or the woke mob trying to cancel me.
We're independent contractors in the UFC, so my beliefs, my freedoms don't stop there.
I get to do whatever I want, say what I want, and I'm not going to be muzzled.
Yeah, what I love is seeing on ESPN, and they have to air your post-fight interview.
You're wearing that beautiful Keep America hat hat.
It's terrific.
What's been the response from other fighters from that?
Do some not like it?
Some ask you to stop?
You know, some people, they get jealous.
They want to follow that trend.
They see the numbers that it's doing.
You know, that call with the president on fight night, I had 10 million viewers on the ESPN page, so they can't deny me.
I'm undeniable.
You know, that's the highest rated and numbers the show's ever done with that call.
So, you know, I think a lot of people, they want to fall on those steps, but they also, they don't want to receive the backlash.
There's a lot of negative that comes with being a Trump supporter or a Republican, you know.
It's not the cool thing.
I don't think Antifa is going to mess with you anytime soon, though.
I hope so, man.
I was telling president, send me out there, man.
Put me in the middle of Antifa, man.
Let me go.
Keep up with what's trending.
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Trending now on The Larry Elder Show.
Speaking of being out.
The Larry Elder Show.
The Larry Elder Show.
Well, this is it, everybody.
The Ultimate Issues Hour, the third hour of the Dennis Prager Show every Tuesday about some great issue of life.
And if the recent past has not made you keenly aware of how important it is to work out some of the great issues of life, I guess nothing will.
So, on a number of occasions, Mostly not, but on a number of occasions I have a guest for the Ultimate Issues Hour.
And I have a risky topic.
Yes, indeed.
Riskier than sex.
The topic is death.
That's the riskiest topic you can address.
People don't want to think about it.
Ever since Ernest Becker's book, The Denial of Death, many years ago.
Where he made the case that that's what people work hardest at.
Denying death.
But it's a fact of life.
And it is best to address it.
And the book is The Beauty of What Remains.
And it is a rabbi, rabbi, Steve Leder.
I know you as Steve, so forgive me.
Is it leader or letter?
He works just fine.
Thank you.
Leader or letter?
He works just fine.
I know.
I know you as Dennis.
That's correct.
Leader.
Leader.
Okay, good.
Yeah.
Well, I've had you on before.
You were a very popular guest.
The book, again, is The Beauty of What Remains.
I was actually pleasantly surprised to see at how well it is doing on Amazon.
People, they do, everybody knows either, they know, everybody knows they'll die.
Everybody knows that loved ones will die.
I mean, that is the, what is it, only death and taxes are inevitable.
So, you would think that more would be done.
I was reading your book, and it was fascinating to me that you wrote the most popular High Holy Day sermon you ever gave was the one on death.
Yeah, that's correct.
You know, it was three years ago, and in a way, the book is, to some degree, an apology for that sermon.
So let me explain.
I gave that sermon about three years ago.
Many of your listeners would not know this, but the holiest night of the year for Jews is constructed, and as is the following day, is constructed in many ways to force us to think about our deaths.
It's almost like a Jewish day for the dead.
For example, We wear white to mimic the burial shroud that traditional Jews are buried in.
We fast because the dead neither eat nor drink.
We begin the service by taking three of our sacred scrolls out and holding them in front of the congregation.
Those three scrolls represent the heavenly tribunal that legend has it we will stand before after we die.
And they're standing in front of the empty ark.
That holds those sacred scrolls, and the Hebrew word for ark is the same as the word for coffin.
So imagine the imagery for people who realize what they're looking at.
You're standing before these three symbolic judges in front of your open casket, dressed in a burial shroud-like garment, and it is all meant to force us to think about our death so that we will change our lives for the better.
Death, in my opinion, and this is after 33 plus years of being up close with it, with a thousand or more families, to me, death is really the ultimate teacher of how and why we should lead more meaningful, more beautiful lives.
Now, what happened with that sermon is I wrote it and delivered it that evening, and then, one year later to the day, Dennis, The morning before Kol Nidre, one year after that sermon, I buried my father in Minnesota.
And that was after a 10-year journey with him through Alzheimer's.
And then I was really encountering my own very personal loss and grief.
In essence, the book also explores this tension between Steve Leder the rabbi and Steve Leder the son.
Which was a dichotomous tension that was sometimes very difficult for me.
And so I wrote the book in a sense, as I say in the prologue, to bring...
I realized after my dad died that that sermon was just one degree shy of the deepest truths that death comes to teach us about life.
And so I wrote this book to carry us all down to that one percent deeper level of understanding.
Of what death comes to teach us.
Because my father's death caused me to rethink 30 years of experience and teaching for others.
Are you personally, are you frightened of dying?
I am now, but only because that means I'm not dying.
This is a very helpful counterintuitive point to people who are anxious about death.
And this is one of the points that every interviewer, without exception, has hit on after reading the book.
In the book, I talk about the fact that I've been, and this is not rabbinic hyperbole, I've been next to the bedside of at least a thousand dying people.
And I ask, and by dying, I mean actively dying, you know, hours or a day away from death.
And I ask, are you afraid?
And every time, the answer is no.
Now, the dying has some fear for the living.
Are the kids going to be okay?
Are they going to take care of mom?
Are they going to stay together?
But for themselves, the dying, when they are actually dying, are entirely fearless.
Because at a certain point, more is not better.
At a certain point, you have been weaned and prepared by a disease.
And at a certain point, death feels like the most natural thing in the world to embrace.
The closest thing I can come to explaining it, having seen it so often, is to me, it's a little bit like having the worst jet lag you have ever had in your life, where you are just zombie-like.
And all you want to do is crawl into bed, Pull the covers up, snuggle in, and go to sleep.
You're not afraid to go to sleep.
You're not anxious.
You're not depressed.
It's what you want to do.
And that's the closest helpful example I can give.
And as I said earlier, the counterintuitive beauty of this is when people come to me and say, Rabbi, I'm so afraid of death.
I say, well, the fact that you're afraid is proof today is not your day.
Anxiety is for the living.
You're fine.
You know, it's not your day.
Of course, there are outliers.
People do get hit by buses and in car accidents and have massive strokes or sudden heart attacks.
But generally speaking, when death comes, it comes as a friend.
Now, I take it...
I feel funny asking this because you're a rabbi, but in the world in which we live, not all rabbis believe in God.
Do you believe in God?
Absolutely.
Does that help you confront death?
It helps me confront everything.
Because I'm able to ask myself, have I done the godly thing?
Have I done what I believe God would require of me?
And it does help.
And I do believe in a sort of afterlife.
You know, the problem with anyone's afterlife belief is there's only one way to find out if you're right, and you can't really come back to talk about it.
So we can only guess at these things.
In my case, after seeing so many dead bodies, it's abundantly clear, I think to any of us who've seen a dead body, that that is not the person we knew and loved.
That is an empty vessel.
There is so much more to us than our corporeal beings.
We all have that other component that made us who we are.
You can call it a soul.
You can call it a spirit.
You can call it an essence.
You can call it energy.
I don't really care, you know, what your psycholinguistic preference is.
But we all, when we see a dead body, recognize that that's not really the person we knew and loved.
And I don't believe that soul.
I call it a soul.
Dies with the body.
I just don't believe it.
Where it goes, I don't know.
Where was it before we were born?
I don't know.
But there is a realm where I believe it exists.
The book is The Beauty of What Remains, Rabbi Steve Leder, 1-8 Prager 776. I had a great meeting
with Senator McConnell today.
I think every Republican sees the House process as an affront to the presidency and due process.
So what's going to happen?
If she delivers the articles to us, they'll have to be disposed of under the process of the Senate.
If we could get 51 senators to dismiss, it's all over.
There's more than a handful of Democrats praying that Joe Biden will get on the phone and call Schumer and say it's over, because they understand this is going to blow up in their face politically.
I've never felt better about the Republican Senate conference being united behind the idea that what the House did was wrong in terms of process, and I think we're going to have an overwhelming Republican vote that this second impeachment of Donald Trump is unconstitutional.
Well, that was last night.
Today, Chuck Schumer announced that Pelosi has informed him that the article of impeachment against President Trump will be delivered to the Senate on Monday, which paves the way for a trial.
It's obviously a developing story.
We're going to see what happens next.
We're going to see what Republicans are made of.
And honestly, I don't know that Rand Paul is incorrect.
I think Rand Paul is absolutely right.
There's been all this talk about a patriot party, a third party.
If Republicans are stupid enough to vote to convict a guy who's already out of office of impeachment, of inciting an insurrection, there won't be a Republican Party left.
Keep up with what's trending.
Subscribe on YouTube today.
Trending now on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton, good morning, Senator.
Welcome.
Good to talk to you.
I know you believe a trial of former President Trump is unconstitutional.
Is that the majority view of the Republican caucus?
Hugh, I think Senate Republicans are coming around to that view as they think more about it.
I mean, I think for most Americans, it's just a very common sense position though.
The Democrats want to have a trial to convict and remove from office a man who left office yesterday.
And by the time we get around to that trial in a few more days, that's going to be an even stranger proposition.
Why are the Democrats spending the Senate's time in an obsessive inquest against a private citizen when we could be focused on what really matters, like getting more vaccines out to Americans or helping Americans get back to work or defending this country from threats we face abroad?
That's just the common-sense view of things, Hugh.
Now, I think the Constitution really couldn't be much plainer.
It says that the president, the vice president, and civil officers of the United States shall be subject to impeachment, conviction, and removal from office.
Donald Trump is none of those things now.
And to put a punctuation mark on that, Hugh, the reports I'm hearing in the Senate is that the Democrats proposed not to have John Roberts preside over this trial because The Chief Justice only presides of a trial against the President.
And if that's, in fact, their position, they are admitting that Donald Trump is no longer the President and therefore is not susceptible to impeachment proceedings.
The whole thing, again, to me just shows how obsessive the Democrats and the media have become about Donald Trump over these last five years.
Donald Trump may no longer live in the White House, but he is living rent-free in the heads of Democrats in the media. - Keep up with what's trending.
Subscribe on YouTube today.
Trending now on the Eric Matias show. - What do we make of Joe Biden occupying the White House?
Because I have a lot of thoughts on it.
Well, my main question is, what are your thoughts of where?
Unfortunately, the film No Safe Spaces was the film No Safe Spaces was prophetic for
Phil and Adam McCarolla and I starred in the number one documentary, I believe, in the country this past year.
It is, by the way, now available at SalemNow.com with the suppression of free speech in this country continuing like a train.
That has just gone off the tracks and continues to wreak havoc.
The film is powerful.
I beg you to see it, in particular to show it to your kids, whatever their age.
No Safe Spaces is the name of the film.
It's funny, and it'll make you cry as well.
You'll laugh and cry.
Portions of today's program...
Are brought to you by the film No Safe Spaces at SalemNow.com My guest is Dr. Doctor, that's funny.
You know, I'll tell the rabbi what that reminds me of.
His rabbi, Steve Leder.
Do you know what it reminds me?
And I was going to say doctor.
I don't know if you heard.
I'm sure you did, but in case you didn't, there's a great line of Milton Himmelfar.
A great Jewish thinker of the last generation.
When rabbis became doctors, Jews got sick.
Yes, yes, yes.
The famous line.
That's right.
It's really great.
Yeah, or Judaism got sick.
Yeah, one of the two.
That's right.
I don't remember.
Good point.
Rabbi Leder, Rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles.
Is the author of The Beauty of What Remains, and it's his reflections on death, and having been with, by his estimate, a thousand dying people, not to mention how many funerals, etc.
Why, this is a bit, it's completely related, but it is obviously not the subject of your book, but related.
Why do so many Jews not believe in the afterlife?
Well, Judaism, particularly the first wave of Jews to America, were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and pragmatism and rationalism.
And the whole imagination of the Talmud when it comes to the afterlife, Is pretty non- or even anti-rational.
You know, people being resurrected, bones coming up, taking on flesh, rolling in tunnels under the earth to Israel to live in a utopian afterlife that's kind of like studying in a great, you know, academy.
It just rubbed up too hard against the ideals and values of the Enlightenment that swept across Europe after Napoleon liberated the Jews.
I think that it just was too non-rational or anti-rational, and so it got tucked in a drawer for all but the Orthodox community, and we started to embrace other ideas, which are less specific and therefore easier to embrace if you're a rationalist.
I really think it's that simple.
But I'll tell you, ask any rabbi who has dealt with any significant number of families, Who are grieving?
And that rabbi will have heard far too many stories about things like, you know, butterflies showing up on his birthday every year, or a certain song playing the moment you were thinking about her, or, you know, a memory from a smell or a breeze or a dream.
And we've all heard these stories, and I can tell you I've heard far too many to dismiss them as sheer coincidence or nonsense.
I just don't see it that way.
And in another way, you know, the book is a dual narrative.
It's a field guide for grief and loss and mourning.
But it's also my story of my journey with my father through Alzheimer's and his death and his afterlife.
I feel and encounter my father every single day.
He still makes me laugh.
He still warns me about a potential mistake.
He still humbles me when I, you know, get too haughty.
And he still comforts me.
And he still annoys me.
So, you know, now maybe this is just, people would say, an afterlife of memory.
I say, so what?
It works.
And I appreciate it.
This is part of the reason I called the book The Beauty of What Remains because my relationship with my father is in many ways more beautiful now than it was when he was alive.
And that's a gift.
Do you ever tell parents who've lost a child that they will see them again?
I don't.
I don't because I can't say that with certainty and people who've lost a child are in such a searingly Vulnerable emotional state that I would never want to present something to them that I wasn't absolutely certain of.
And I would say that you're going to experience him and feel him for the rest of your lives.
You know, I've dealt, unfortunately, with many, many families who have had to bury a child.
And, you know, it's sort of like a phantom limb.
It's an amputation, but you still feel the limb there, always, you know, for the rest of your life.
And this leads to a nuanced point I make in the book about memory.
This is one of the things from the sermon, Dennis, that I had to change as a result of losing my father.
You know, we have all these platitudes about memory.
May his memory be a blessing.
She'll live on in memory.
Thank God we have memories.
And that's all true.
But there's a duality to memory that we don't fully embrace.
And that duality is that, yes, memory is beautiful.
And it really, really hurts.
You know, in the book I say it's like being caressed and spat on at the same time.
That's memory.
And that's what we somehow have to find a way to make peace with.
Just like we have to find a way to make peace with the cognitive dissonance we feel toward our parents in life and in death, right?
We all have this tension in us between things that we're grateful for and that sting us.
And that's so intensely true for the death of a child.
And I'll tell you another thing that I learned because of my father's death and my grief.
I used to say to parents, sitting in the chapel before the service began, To bury their child, I would look them in the eye and I would say, Dennis, the most honest and helpful thing I can say to you right now is it won't always hurt so much.
Then my father died, and I don't say that anymore.
What I say now is, Dennis, the most honest and helpful thing I can say to you right now is it won't always hurt so often.
Alright, we'll continue.
I have my own set of questions.
Rabbi Steve Leder, the book is up at DennisPrager.com Trending now on the Hugh Hewitt Show.
The question is on immigration.
I asked Peter Baker yesterday if the president's new proposal of an eight-year path to citizenship and stopping the wall was an opening bid or a bottom line.
And he agreed with me that if it's a bottom line, it's dead on arrival.
Do you agree with that?
Well, I certainly hope so, and I'll do everything I can to make it so.
But let's remember, Q, even if it's just an opening bid, there's an element of kabuki theater here.
Joe Biden may be expecting some willing Republican accomplices to swoop in at the last minute with a big leap of enforcement, like money for drones or something at the southern border.
We should be anticipating that highly stylized gambit right now, and we should reject it out of hand right now.
Republicans should not pass an amnesty-first bill that puts an amnesty in place for 15 million illegal immigrants while also increasing guest workers' visas at a time when we still have 10 million people out of work.
The focus should be on getting Americans back to work and getting our borders secure and enforcing immigration laws at the place of employment.
This bill, by the way, is not just lacking in enforcement, Hugh.
It actually guts enforcement.
It guts the E-Verify program that we already have in place that some states use on a mandatory basis that we should use nationwide.
Let me ask you, Senator, very quickly.
Is it an absolute must-have, the completion of at least 700, and I would prefer 900 miles of wall of the sort that President Trump has built?
No, Hugh, I don't think the wall in itself is the only, or is a critical point that would get Senate Republicans to vote for an amnesty.
No, we shouldn't proceed to a discussion of a bill that's going to be focused on giving American jobs to foreign workers.
To bring up these two things, which I consider essentially fake.
I mean the idea that anybody that you know or I know would agree with white nationalism or domestic terrorism much less be a part of it is just outstanding.
It is breathtaking to me that he said this in an inaugural speech where he's calling For unity, I just...
No, you're not by yourself.
And there's a lot of people that are pointing to the same realities, that it's one thing to have rhetoric that talks about being unified.
And here's something else I think we all need to just get over.
Unity may on some level be virtuous, but it is not the highest of virtues.
And there are virtues that are actually much more valuable from a moral and even civil scale.
And one of those is freedom.
Take out all of the references to unity in yesterday's speech and replace it with conformity.
You have a better understanding of what The left actually means.
But I think that there are some things that are far more important than unity.
Clarity is one of them.
To be clear and to clearly understand what truth is, is a far higher, greater virtue than unity.
I also believe that at the end of the day, conformity is what they're really talking about.
I believe that the defense of freedom is a greater virtue than what they're dealing with.
So that's kind of where we're at.
Keep up with what's trending.
Subscribe on YouTube today.
Trending now on America First. .
Ultimate Issues Hour, the third hour every Tuesday on the Dennis Prager Show.
I am Dennis Prager, and you can't get more ultimate than death, and that is the subject with Rabbi Steve Leder of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles.
And his latest book is The Beauty of What Remains.
So I have two challenges for you.
Okay.
And one...
When I asked you why so many Jews don't believe in an afterlife, I think your answer was entirely apt.
Jews bought into the, at least many non-Orthodox Jews, bought into the Renaissance, not Renaissance, how funny, in the Enlightenment and embraced reason.
I don't expect you to Be familiar with my thinking, but we live in an age of irrationality that makes the Orthodox village in Poland look like a secular university.
And I'll give you an example.
I have talked about this, I don't know if I have on the air, but many, many years ago, in fact, shortly after I arrived in L.A., A rabbi whose name I won't mention, he was a legend in Los Angeles, and I attended a funeral at which he spoke, a non-Orthodox rabbi, and he said, of course, there is, we Jews don't believe in an afterlife.
We live on through our good deeds and through the memory of our children.
And I said to myself at the time, That is far more irrational than anyone who believes in the resurrection of the dead.
In fact, it's not just irrational, it's stupid.
First of all, what if you have no children?
So you don't live on?
Secondly, if you do have children, how many of us can name our great-grandparents?
Just name them.
Forget, know anything about them.
Are they living on through us?
Of course not.
As for the good deeds, I'm sorry to say that bad deeds do a lot more immortal work than good deeds.
So the nonsense of the deniers of the afterlife dwarfs the nonsense of believers in the afterlife.
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
And look, as I said before, just really look at a single dead body.
And you will see, in a very real and visceral way, that that is not the sum total of who we are.
It's a vessel.
You know, when I'm talking to children about this, I like to use the metaphor of a cocoon and a butterfly.
The body is a cocoon.
When we die, it releases the butterfly.
And this makes perfect sense to children, by the way.
And it's a good way to think about it for young people.
And it's a beautiful image as well.
But you're right.
I mean, it's a ridiculous notion that we live on a memory because at some point, unless you were incredibly famous, memory's gone.
Yes, exactly.
Okay, so that brings me to my challenge to you when I said to you, do you say to parents who lost their child, you will see your child, and you say you don't because you can't be certain?
So, of course, well, we can't be certain that there is a soul either.
I mean, we rationally believe there is a soul, but we're not certain.
So what prevents you from giving that comfort, which would not defy what...
I'm not asking you to say things you don't believe.
You do believe in an afterlife, so why wouldn't you say that to that parent?
Because I don't envision, and obviously, again, there's no way to be certain, for me.
I don't envision a decomposed body returning back to its former state as the body of that child and being reunited with that child's soul.
Wait, you mean reunited with that child's body or reunited with that child's soul?
When you say you're going to see your child again...
Okay, so fine.
So you're taking the word see literally.
Okay, that's fair.
Correct, as would those parents in that vulnerable state.
So would you say you will experience your child again?
I would say something like, your souls will be together.
Something like that.
Do you say it?
You know I'm not trying to get you.
I just want to know.
Yeah, I have said it.
Do I say it every time?
No, because, you know, Dennis, all deaths are the same, and they're all very different.
And you have to assess the emotional state of the grieving parents.
You have to assess it.
You have to know how much to say and how quickly to say it.
People are open to things a month or two later that they simply cannot hear the day of.
So, you know, you have to really...
Understand that this is more art than science.
Okay, hold it there.
We're going to be back in a moment, Rabbi Steve Leder.
The beauty of what remains is his book about death, dying, etc.
While you are alive, you should reduce your amount of physical pain.
And that is where relief factor comes in.
Relief factor is so effective and so honest, I might add.
That the people, in fact, I know the Talbots, the father and son, who make this amazing product, have an honest thing to say to you.
You will know within three weeks if it works, so they give you a special three-week price of $19.95 plus shipping to try it out.
And then you'll know.
Why wouldn't you try it out to get rid of back pain, etc.?
That's at relieffactor.com, 800-500-8384.
Trending now on the Eric Mettaxas Show.
What do we make of Joe Biden occupying the White House?
because I have a lot of thoughts on it.
Well, my main question is what are your thoughts of where we are now?
We are in the midst of a new administration that is going to radically change every single piece of government that they touch.
We have seen in the first 24 hours the signing of some 17 executive orders that have stopped the border wall construction.
They have renewed visa permits coming from countries where people cannot be vetted like Syria and Iran and Yemen.
They have engaged our enemies in a completely different way.
I mean by that China and Iran and Russia.
They have already spent tax dollars that you and I have paid to Help fund abortions that have already happened in other countries outside of our borders now.
These are all things that they came in on day one, signed 17 different pieces of paper, and are already transforming American policy in all of these different areas into a very different direction.
But this is obviously what America wanted, is it not?
That's what we're told.
That's what we have evidently walked through the process to approve of.
And the question now becomes, What do Americans think about what they've gotten?
Are they going to have buyer's remorse?
If people thought that the unity that we heard so much about yesterday was going to be anything that resembled actual unity, they were mistaken.
Keep up with what's trending.
Subscribe on YouTube today.
Trending now on America First with Sebastian Berka.
Yeah.
You know, I love the free market.
Let Rumble do what it's doing.
Let Parler find a bloody server.
Don't go back to somebody who can just flick a switch.
You're creating locals.
But I don't want us to end up in conservative ghettos.
That's why I love being on Twitter, because ridicule and humour is a massive tool that we can use against crazy people who think you're a racist because of your skin colour.
What are you expecting in the weeks and months to come when AOC talks about blacklists, when you see Katie Couric talk about the need to deprogram or re-educate people?
How concerned are you that sooner or later we're just going to be in our little ghettos, Dave?
Well, look, it's legit.
CNN did a piece this weekend, or was it just two or three days ago, sorry, with this Facebook representative saying that they should basically take Fox News and the rest of them off the air.
This is a real problem.
And again, a bunch of us, it's like, I accept that CNN exists.
I believe it's a propaganda network that is part of the Democratic Party at this point.
But you don't want to shut it down.
I'm not sure.
Hi, everybody. everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Ultimate Issues Hour, third hour every Tuesday.
I have a guest this week, distinguished rabbi, Steve Leder, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Los Angeles, California.
His book, The Beauty of What Remains, Reflections, it's not the subtitle, I'm telling you what it's about.
And that is about death.
You know, it's funny, at a very, very early age, I thought about this stuff when I was a kid.
It was not normal in that way.
And it wasn't at all dark.
I just thought about it.
And I realized at a very young age that there's a terrible, I don't know if terrible is the word, but terrible irony that death is, look, I think death is awful.
We lose people we love.
We die.
I mean, there's no way around it.
On the other hand, it is exactly what gives meaning to life.
That's right.
That's right.
What would a deathless life really mean?
What would that mean to be a deathless human being?
Right.
I always say it means, you know, I'll read that book four years from now.
Well, I think it's more than that.
I think it would mean to be something other than human.
You know, Kafka said the meaning of life is that it ends.
It's very simple and absolutely true.
And it is only death that impels us to think deeply and seriously about how we live our lives, right?
So I'll give you a good example during the pandemic.
Do you think if this virus did not have the lethality that it does, do you think for a minute There would have been this global pause and people would have changed their lives so dramatically as a result.
Not a chance.
If it was a bad flu, we'd all still be living our crazy, crazy former lives.
And I'm not here to dismiss the misery of this pandemic and its suffering, but it has taught us, because of its lethality, it has taught us some very, very important lessons.
It has taught us...
Something we know but don't always live, which is that it's who we have, not what we have that matters.
It has taught us about loss, the loss of freedom, the loss of invulnerability, the loss of, you know, I think the worst loss of a pandemic, other than death, of course, is the simple opportunity to hug people, to hold people, to be held by other people, you know?
To know that no matter how many times we say I love you and no matter how many times we embrace, it's never enough.
It's never enough.
Without death, those are very easy things to forget.
Right.
That is entirely accurate.
Tell me what you think of my argument.
On behalf of the afterlife that I have offered all of my life and on this radio show, if there is a God, there are two ifs.
If there is a God, and God is good, or better, if God is just, there must be an afterlife.
It's axiomatic.
You can't have a good God and no afterlife.
What do you think of that argument?
I think it's true.
True, but of course the issue is in the detail.
You know, exactly what is the nature of that afterlife?
You know, do we simply return to some pool of energy from which we were born?
Well, if it's a pool of energy with no consciousness, then it's as if there isn't an afterlife, it would seem to me.
To some, that would be an afterlife.
Honestly.
I know that.
I know a dear man in my life who does believe that.
But I am not comforted by an afterlife of no consciousness.
Right.
I understand.
Some people are.
You are not.
Are you?
I think, well, first of all, I would obviously, being a spiritually oriented person, I would accept whatever God's plan.
Is for my soul in the afterlife, whether that's consciousness or lack thereof.
And you know, you made a point about God being just.
I think it's important to remember, and you know as well as I do that William Sapphire made this point in his book, Job the First Dissident, that earthly justice and cosmic justice are not necessarily the same thing.
And so you have to really think about what you mean by just.
Because God could be just in a cosmic sense, but not in an earthly sense.
I use Abraham.
Abraham argued with God.
If you're just, you'll save 50 decent people in Sodom.
So the implication of that argument between Abraham and God is that we do share a similar view of justice.
Except it doesn't always happen, does it?
No, well, not on this planet.
Not in this.
Anyway, that's not here or there.
I was just curious how you deal with it.
Does it give you peace that there is a soul?
Very much so.
Very much so.
It gives me peace for my own soul, and it gives me peace for the souls of the people I deeply love who have died.
Very much so.
And, you know, again, this is part of what I mean when I say the beauty of what remains.
That there is a soul, and it does remain, and it is beautiful.
And it's beautiful to think of the soul that remains for those of us who are left behind by the death of a loved one.
And, you know, I think that mourning is such an important dance with that memory and that soul.
That's the thing about mourning.
You know, We were talking about that sermon earlier and what I had to change from that sermon, and the biggest thing I changed was my understanding of grief.
Your generation, we're not quite the same age, but we're in the same generation, Dennis, and the ones below us, I think, were done a terrible disservice by the idea that there are stages to grief.
Because if there are stages to grief, that means that grief is a linear process.
And first you will feel A, then you will feel B, then C, then D, and then it's over.
And that's not true.
Stealing the line from Tom Friedman about the Middle East.
In the book, I say anyone who thinks the shortest distance between two points is a straight line does not understand grief.
Cool.
I don't know if cool is the right adjective.
We'll be back in a moment.
We'll be back in a moment.
Senator Lindsey Graham last night with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
I had a great meeting with Senator McConnell today.
I think every Republican sees the House process as an affront to the presidency and due process.
So what's going to happen?
If she delivers the articles to us, they'll have to be disposed of under the process of the Senate.
If we could get 51 senators to dismiss, it's all over.
There's more than a handful of Democrats praying that Joe Biden will get on the phone and call Schumer and say it's over, because they understand this is going to blow up in their face politically.
I've never felt better about the Republican Senate conference being united behind the idea that what the House did was wrong in terms of process, and I think we're going to have an overwhelming Republican vote that this second impeachment of Donald Trump is unconstitutional.
Well, that was last night.
Today, Chuck Schumer announced that Pelosi has informed him that the article of impeachment against President Trump will be delivered to the Senate on Monday, which paves the way for a trial.
It's obviously a developing story.
We're going to see what happens next.
We're going to see what Republicans are made of.
And honestly, I don't know that Rand Paul is incorrect.
I think Rand Paul is absolutely right.
There's been all this talk about a patriot party, a third party.
If Republicans are stupid enough to vote to convict a guy who's already out of office of impeachment, of inciting an insurrection, there won't be a Republican Party left.
Keep up with what's trending.
Subscribe on YouTube today.
Trending now on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton, good morning, Senator.
Welcome.
Good to talk to you.
I know you believe a trial of former President Trump is unconstitutional.
Is that the majority view of the Republican caucus?
Hugh, I think Senate Republicans are coming around to that view as they think more about it.
I mean, I think for most Americans, it's just a very common sense position, though.
I mean, the Democrats want to have a trial to convict and remove from office a man who left office yesterday.
And by the time we get around to that trial and a few more days, that's going to be an even stranger proposition.
Why are the Democrats spending the Senate's time in an obsessive inquest against a private citizen when we could be focused on what really matters, like getting more vaccines out to Americans or helping Americans get back to work or defending this country from the threats we face abroad?
That's just the common-sense view of things, Hugh.
Now, I think the Constitution really couldn't be much plainer.
It says that the president, the vice president, and civil officers of the United States shall be subject to impeachment, conviction, and removal from office.
Donald Trump is none of those things now.
And to put a punctuation mark on that to you, the reports I'm hearing in the Senate is that the Democrats proposed not to have John Roberts.
All right, everybody.
It's sort of like death.
To be a bit light for a moment, the final segment of an hour is...
What was the Necessary Losses, the book by Judith Vioris?
It's sort of like...
There are a lot of little deaths in life.
This is a very little one.
But it's been a great hour with you, Rabbi Leder.
The book, of course, is The Beauty of What Remains.
I just want to review some calls here.
And they're all great.
All of you, forgive me for taking it.
Noah in Dallas, I'd like to talk to you about your call on Friday.
So try to call in the third hour.
Why is believing in a soul a rational belief?
Since my Bible commentary is titled The Rational Bible, I'm a big believer in using reason in these faith matters, so I would love to talk to you about that.
And Conrad, Carol, Ben, Steve, Zipporah, Raphael, Robert, I wish I could have gotten your calls, and I know that, Rab, I would have loved to have talked to you.
I'll end with this question in doing my...
Bible commentary on the first five books.
I think I'm right in saying that only one figure, I think in the whole Bible, but certainly in the first five books, dies and is described as having a good end of life, and that's Abraham.
How many people do have a good end of life?
I think almost everyone.
By the way, you forgot about Moses, who, you know, the Midrash says died with a kiss from God.
Yeah, well, that's Midrash.
I'm a big believer.
Well, but it says at the mouth of God.
Yeah, that's fair.
You're right.
That's true.
Okay.
So, I'm not sure it's just Abraham, but I think, listen, I think Jacob dies a beautiful life because he's surrounded by his children, and they have that final conversation.
To me, it's the first ethical will in human history.
I think there are more.
And all I can tell you is, every single person I have been with at the end of his or her life, and by end I mean hours or a day or two, is at peace.
And death, you know, the rabbis in the prayer called the El Malay Rahamin prayer called death, perfect sleep, perfect rest.
This is also why I think the 23rd Psalm is so compelling and often read at funerals.
Thou makest me to lie down in green pastures beside still waters.
These are all poetic ways of helping people understand what I have seen over a thousand times.
Well, you've described it beautifully.
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