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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:20:47
Uber Star
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi, everybody, and welcome to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Went from the east coast of, or the eastern border, I should say, of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, to the western.
On this continuing tour with my colleagues, called the Battleground Tour, brings us to Pittsburgh.
If you're listening in Pittsburgh, the event, I don't know if there are still seats, but contact the station and be happy to see you.
Got a great story for you, my friends.
Another Dennis Prager Uber story.
I make friends with Uber drivers, apparently.
I had a great one in Washington, the Uber driver, a Muslim from Afghanistan, who ended up coming to my talk at the Museum of the Bible.
And I noted his presence, and everybody cheered.
And he even bought a copy of my commentary on Deuteronomy.
Then last night, my Uber driver, I generally rent cars, but sometimes it's not feasible.
So I had an Uber driver yesterday in Philadelphia going to the venue where I and my colleague spoke.
Properly, my colleagues and I spoke.
So the man says to me, what do you do?
No logical question.
What do you do?
I said, I give lectures.
Oh, did I mention he was a black man?
He was a black driver.
He goes, what do you do?
And I give lectures.
And usually, even though it's odd to me, because you'd think there would be a follow-up, Like, on what?
He did that.
He goes, on what subjects?
Though I said pretty much everything about life, about men and women, about politics, about religion, about psychology.
And he said, well, he didn't let it go.
Well, what's your basic message?
And I was thinking, Listen, is this the time to alienate my companion here, the driver?
On the other hand, I have to tell the truth.
So, I said, I speak, the basic theme of my speaking is the collapse of Western civilization.
And I was certain it would end the conversation.
And the guy goes, I could not agree more.
This woke stuff is ruining the world.
We can't even speak freely anymore.
There's no freedom of speech.
Cancel culture.
And I'm thinking, holy crow, did I hit the jackpot?
My Uber driver.
And to me, obviously, the elephant in the room is he's a black guy you don't normally associate with conservative views.
And the guy is basically delivering my speech.
So I said, I just told him, you're my man-man, and I'll tell you what.
It's sold out, but I'll get you in.
And not only that, if you come to the speech, I promise you a standing ovation.
Well, the guy showed up.
And sure enough, when it was my turn to speak, I introduced him.
I told the story.
I did not have to prompt the crowd at all.
1,200 people rose in unison.
And gave my Uber driver a standing ovation.
The spotlight was on him.
He was in the front row.
That was a great moment for both of us.
I would love to know how he recounted the story.
By the way, I asked him in the car, and I told him I ask every black conservative, callers to my show, guests that I have.
How does your family view you?
And he said, basically, what is it?
They think I'm nuts or whatever.
But the very, very good news was he has four kids and they all share his values.
And that's more important than whether his siblings or his parents do.
Anyway, those are...
Among those wonderful memories that one has.
You never know if you end up my Uber driver whether you'll be the hero for the night or not.
I am about to read to you a headline from Fox News that vindicates my very sad Realization and announcement that for the first time,
literally the first time in American history, 250 or whatever years, almost 250, we are exporting bad ideas.
For the first time in American history, American influence is dark.
Because everything the left touches, it ruins.
This is another example.
State Department funding drag theater performances in Ecuador to promote diversity and inclusion.
State Department awards $20,600 grant for Cultural Center in Ecuador.
To host 12 drag theater performances.
So every South American country is relatively conservative, traditional in its personal life, in their personal life.
They're socialist-oriented in the government life, but they're not left-wing oriented in their personal life.
What do you think they think?
The U.S. Department of State is awarded more than $20,000 for a cultural center in Ecuador to host drag theater performances in the name of diversity and inclusion.
It was done on September 23rd through the Centro Equatoriano Norte Americano, a non-profit organization supported by the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Ecuador.
Quote, And inclusion in the region.
Beautiful.
The project at CEN, that's the name of the acronym, runs until August 31, 2023, and will include three workshops, 12 drag theater performances, and a two-minute documentary, according to the State Department's grant listed on the usaspending.gov, Yeah.
So you can see there's a picture here.
For all intents and purposes, it looks like a woman.
It's a man posing as a woman.
It's sexually provocative.
The grant to CEN is part of the State Department's Public Policy Diplomacy Program.
Which seeks to, quote, support the achievement of U.S. foreign policy, goals and objectives, advance national interest, and enhance national security by informing and influencing foreign publics and by expanding and strengthening the relationship between the people and government of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world.
Then there's another picture of a non-provocative man in drag.
He looks awful.
To be honest.
The State Department has awarded hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to the CEN over the years, but the September grant appears to be the first of its kind funding drag performances.
So what do you think, folks?
Do you think you're proud of America for doing this?
Do you think this will enhance American-Ecuadorian relations?
Do you think this will enhance Ecuadorian life?
Are you proud of the fact that only the United States of America and all of the world is doing this?
We used to export liberty.
We used to export Our trinity, e pluribus unum, in God we trust.
And liberty.
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Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
I'm honored to have former Prime Minister Well, good to be with you.
Wonderful talking to you, Dennis.
Thank you.
Thank you kindly.
Everybody, or most people will ask you political questions.
I might venture there, but I'm interested in you.
It's your autobiography.
So why don't you give us a little background about when your parents went to Israel, how you were raised, etc.
Well, I was born in 1949, a year after the founding of the state, and I devoted my life to Trinity.
Security and prosperity.
In fact, the permanence, basically, I can contribute to it, of the Jewish state, because my generation came into being right after the Holocaust.
And my father, who was a great historian, as well as my mother who helped him, they devoted their adult lives to ensuring that the Jewish people recovered an independent state of their own after the horrors of history that were leavened against us.
And my generation's task has been to ensure that that miracle lives on.
So I served as a soldier in an elite unit and a commander there in our Special Forces.
I was shot while rescuing officers from a hijacked plane.
I nearly drowned in a firefight in the Suez Canal when we didn't have peace with Egypt.
I was bitten by a scorpion.
I nearly ran with my jeep into a...
Phantom Jack can't get off on one of our air bases.
It's like what you see in the movies.
And I led many clandestine operations.
That was my military service.
I described it in some detail.
And I think people who want to see how Israel's special forces work will get some kind of insight there.
And then I faced a terrible tragedy when my older brother led the same unit that I served in.
As Lieutenant Colonel, he noted to the most daring rescue of a lot of times in the rescue of 103 hijacked hostages in Antelio, Uganda.
He died there.
He died while leading his men in the Storming Party.
He was my extraordinary older brother.
He was like the North Star that guided me through life's labyrinth and paths.
And when he died, I thought I'd die.
I didn't know if I could live, how I would live, but somehow through inconsolable grief, Yoni, that was his name, Jonathan, Yoni, Yoni's example and sacrifice led me to wage a public campaign in the Western world to change the attitude towards international terrorism, and especially to fight the states that sponsor and organize it, and from there into political life and to serve as Israel's longest servant.
So I've devoted my life to the task of making sure that the one and only Jewish state is secure and prosperous.
But I also think that in so doing, we defended the larger goal of freedom that is shared by Americans and shared by free people everywhere.
And I described my journey as a soldier, a diplomat, and a statesman.
I have no doubt about that.
The book, by the way, is up at DennisPrager.com for my listeners' interest.
Easily ordered, or you can go straight to anywhere that you order your book from.
It is titled BB.
Were you planning on a political career before your brother tragically died?
No, not at all.
I was actually studying at MIT.
I planned to be an architect, but also at the advice of my mother, who was unbelievably practical, she said, well, if you want to be an architect, you know how to run your business, so you should go to business school.
So I went to the business school at MIT, and from there also went into a consulting firm.
I basically was pursuing a private sector business career, And when my brother died shortly afterwards, it just steered my life into its present course.
And, no, I didn't plan at all on being Prime Minister.
I didn't plan on being in politics.
That's the last thing that I was thinking about.
Are there times where you had thought that, well, I would have been a happier man had I stayed in architecture?
Probably.
But, you know, Israeli politics is not for the faint-hearted.
It's not a gentleman's court.
You have to be committed to your mission, as I am.
But I think living a life of purpose overcomes a sense of comfort.
You know, I've lost, I've served my first term.
I've since been elected four times.
But I served in my first term.
I was the youngest Israeli Prime Minister at 46. And I was out of office at 49. And I began going back into the private sector, made a lot more money than I would make as a Prime Minister, right?
And I was living a life of leisure.
And I thought to myself, is that it?
I'm going to enjoy a leisurely life at the age of 50?
And I thought, no, especially because I had a vision.
And the vision was how to put Israel, that is a small country, it's a tiny country, and come through the centuries, through the millennia, and overcame the darkest forces in history, including the Holocaust.
But that was a great triumph that didn't guarantee permanence, because we had countries around us, especially Iran.
I said, well, how can I help contribute to Israel's strength?
Because I believe that you need the real solution to the question of how do you ensure a country's survival is to make it very, very strong.
In our part of the world, and it seems in many parts of the world, the weak don't survive.
They get devoured.
The strong survive.
So how do you make it real strong?
Well, obviously, you need a strong military.
You need F-35s and submarines and drones and cyber and intel and all that.
But, you know, these things have one common characteristic.
They cost money.
A lot of money.
So where are you going to get the money?
In Southern Socialist Israel, the view, the prevalent view was that you get the money by taxing the rich.
Well, that didn't work out so well.
A, you didn't have that many rich people in the socialist economy.
And B, when you did that, you basically made sure that people wouldn't work, wouldn't invest, wouldn't risk enterprises and so on.
So I came to the conclusion that the way to make Israel militarily strong was to make it economically strong.
And the only way to do that was to give it a free market economy, not a socialist economy.
And I proceeded to lead a free market revolution in Israel, which made a dazzling difference.
That is, Israel's GDP per capita, its income per capita per person, right now has exceeded that of Britain, France, Japan, and most recently, believe they're not, Germany.
Because once we liberated the genius of what it is...
Forgive me, Prime Minister.
We're going to take a quick break.
His book is up at my website.
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I'm speaking to the longest-serving Prime Minister of Israel.
In its history, Benjamin Netanyahu, his autobiography has just been published, titled BB. So, I'm curious, if you ever thought about, I'm sure you thought about, you were raised in such an intellectually alive home, obviously, but you speak about how deeply the Holocaust affected your family's thinking.
And you actually were born just a few years after the Holocaust.
So, would you at some point, and let's say your 20s, have predicted that in the Western world, it would be the left rather than the right that would be Israel's greatest enemy?
Actually, I grew up in a conservative home.
I had a very clear idea of the dangers of communism, and I never bent toward that direction.
And I thought that Israel, you know, was built on socialist lines, and it had to be firmly aligned with the United States, and that it also had to shift from a state-controlled economy to a free economy.
That's what I ended up doing when I decided to re-enter politics, was elected again and again and again.
By the way, first I served as finance minister and effected this revolution.
And, you know, you could see the enormous change.
Israel was dragging behind all the European countries in our income to Canada.
And we shot through.
Israel has been ranked after these changes of bringing a strong market economy and a strong military and strong military intelligence that has served anti-terror purposes and saved the lives of many Americans and people from many nations.
That shift has been reflected in the fact that the University of Pennsylvania and the New Yorker, And they have ranked Israel consistently from 2015 as the eighth most powerful country in the world.
Fully what this means, because Israel is one-tenth of one percent, one-tenth of one percent of the world's population.
So the power of freedom, the power of liberating the genius of innovation, the enterprise, produced a powerful economy, produced a powerful army, and that produced a third thing, Dennis, and that produced peace.
Because the rise of Israeli power, alongside, I'm afraid to say, the rise of Iran's power, the subversive regime.
Theological, Islamist, radical regime that threatened us, but also our Arab neighbors, they look now at Israel, most recently, not as an enemy, but as an indispensable ally, both for civilian progress, but also to block Iran.
And that enabled me to pursue what I call the Abraham Accord, the four historic peace agreements with four Arab states.
Which we achieved after many clandestine meetings that I had, and with the aid of President Trump, we changed history.
So now we're shifting the course where people now see that if we band together against this evil regime whose horrible, horrors, are now seen by everybody in the world, if we band together, then we can stave off this threat while assuring a brilliant future for our citizens.
I describe all of these things in my book.
I know you do, and it's well worth reading, and this is important, but we don't have a lot of time, so I know this is a diplomatically difficult question for you to answer, but I'll say for me, as one who is a great supporter of Israel's right to survive, exist, and thrive, That your great ally, the United States of America, is changing.
Does that worry you?
Well, the radical or ultra-progressive left should worry all of you, because I think it's not merely anti-Israel.
I think it's in many ways inimical to the very values that I hold dear that Israel and America share.
You know, the radical Islamists, they don't have a problem identifying what's good and what's bad.
Because they say that Israel is a small statement, and you're the great statement of the United States.
They chant in Tehran, death to Israel, death to America.
So, you know, they have no qualms about it.
They know that in many ways our free civilization, our society that is based on individual freedom, is the exact opposite of what they want.
It's a pity that some Americans...
And some of Israel, too, but not many, don't get it.
They think that the enemy is America or the enemy is Israel.
That's absurd.
We're democratic societies.
We're free societies.
We protect freedom in the world.
We protect it in the Middle East.
The United States protects it throughout the world.
And I think that's the guarantee for the future of humanity.
If the forces of freedom are weak, then we will collapse.
The fact that some don't see it, I'm not sure they're not going to see it in the future, because I think, you know, what happens is that people get mugged by reality, and they change their conception.
You can defund the police, and you see what happens.
You get cried, and you say, enough, let's bring it back.
You can try to withdraw from the world stage, and the Islamists and the totalitarians take center stage, so you come back.
I am a great believer in the force of freedom, of free men and women recognizing that they have to stand up for civilization.
Otherwise, otherwise we'll go under it.
Right.
Well, from your mouth to God's ears, it's an honor to speak with you, Prime Minister.
The book, his autobiography, BB, is up at DennisPrager.com.
Thank you, Dennis.
God bless you.
God bless America.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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Hello everybody and welcome to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania.
The west of Pennsylvania.
It was in the east of Pennsylvania yesterday.
It is a very big state, Pennsylvania.
It's a big country, the United States of America.
It's quite cold.
Tonight is a big event, and if you're in the Pittsburgh area, you are more than welcome to attend.
Just contact the station here, and they will tell you if there are tickets available that I don't know, so I can't assure, but I assume that there are.
It's a wonderful thing.
I tell audiences, this is the fourth night in the fourth city for me and my colleagues, and I tell them at the end, and I mean it, that as much as I hope, I'm speaking for myself, but I know I'm speaking for my colleagues as well, but speaking for myself, as much as you may feel, and I certainly hope you do, that I inspire you, Please understand that the inspiration goes in both directions.
And certainly when there is a nice turnout, it is a very good feeling.
There are a lot of kindred spirits.
For those of you who wish to conserve, that's what a conservative does.
A conservative conserves the best of the past.
See my column this week.
In fact, I beg you to see my column this week.
It's free and it's strong.
Conservatives conserve.
Can you think of a more noble idea than to pass on the most beautiful, the most true, the most wise, the most profound, the most deep to the next generation?
Can you think of a better thing to do in life than to pass on the best that has been done?
But this bores a lot of people.
A lot of professors are bored teaching Shakespeare again.
The fact that it is the greatest gift of English to young people, to any people, but I say young because they're the next generation, is irrelevant to them.
They want the new.
There used to be a very common thing said on commercials for products.
New and improved.
And I loved it.
I thought new and improved, and I still do, by the way.
With anything in the technological sphere, the inanimate sphere, if it's new and improved, if it's really a new and improved toothpaste, I want it.
Absolutely.
A new and improved car.
But remember, they always added improved.
The left does not.
The left does the new.
But it's not improved.
With products, they say new and improved.
But in the arts, they just go new.
Oh, here's a new symphony.
Here's a new artwork.
A banana peel.
Or is it a banana stapled to a wall?
Remember that one?
Did you know that there was a sculpture and it went for, I think, $18,000?
A sculpture was just sold.
Which doesn't have a physical existence.
It only has a note of authenticity that you bought air.
Now, of course, it's a gimmick.
You'll see the phenomenal, phenomenal video of Robert Florzak, who has one of the most popular of the PragerU videos.
Many millions of views.
I wish the whole world saw it.
About modern art.
And his new one will be on what makes classical art.
In other words, great art.
And he notes there, he said, something to the effect that so much of contemporary art takes you for a sucker.
I don't think those are his words.
He has very sophisticated vocabulary.
But that's basically what it is.
You don't feel you're a sucker if you like Michelangelo.
You're not a sucker if you like any of the great artists of the past, if you like Beethoven.
But with the modern stuff, you're probably being fooled.
And many people want to be fooled.
The new.
The new.
So we conservatives, we conserve.
We're not against the new.
We're against the new for the sake of the new.
Big difference.
If the new is excellent, by golly, that's great.
There's been some great music in the 20th century.
There's been some wonderful ideas, etc.
But basically, it's like when people say to me, well...
If God spoke to humanity today, what would he say?
And my answer has been exactly what he said 3,000 years ago.
Nothing's changed.
Nothing's changed.
That's why I'm writing my Bible commentary.
The latest volume came out last week.
The Rational Bible is the title of my commentary, An Explanation of the Bible.
You should really read it.
It's meant to change your life because it's the greatest work ever written.
The Bible's the greatest, and the first five books are the greatest books of the Bible.
Everything is predicated on the first five books, called the Torah.
Understand these, and you will understand why God doesn't have to appear again and make another announcement.
It's all there.
It includes a ban on men wearing women's clothing and women wearing men's clothing.
Yeah, that's in Deuteronomy, and I talk about it.
Talk about relevance?
That's relevant.
And it strikes the progressive as despicable.
So one of them is wrong.
There you go.
They can't both be right.
Either the left is right, or Deuteronomy is right.
It's a great thing for society when we publicly wear women's clothing, or it isn't a great thing for society.
Right?
Can't have both.
It's one or the other.
Either the left is right or the Bible is right.
They have nothing in common.
By left, I don't mean liberal.
Liberals are weak, but they're not leftists.
A new study shows that marijuana use has reached record levels for young adults.
Wow!
How's that?
How's that, folks?
I've been warning about marijuana for the 40 years I've been broadcasting.
Even conservatives have called my radio show to say, Dennis, with all respect, I agree with you almost all the time, but not on this one.
My least popular, I think my least popular position is that I infinitely rather my kids smoke cigarettes than smoke weed.
I said this for the last 40 years.
There was no doubt in my mind which was worse for them.
Cigarettes could affect their health, no question about it, but marijuana could affect their brain.
And much sooner than tobacco, or specifically cigarettes.
Cigars are not nearly as dangerous.
And any doctor who tells you they are, you should visit another doctor.
Maybe the sweetest doctor in the world has your interest in mind, but they're not telling you the truth.
Cigars are not as dangerous as cigarettes.
Not even close.
Because they're not inhaled.
Marijuana.
Listen to how this article ends.
This is really...
I couldn't believe this, actually.
Listen to this.
Then I'll go back to the beginning.
Currently, roughly 3 in 10 people in the United States have been diagnosed with marijuana addiction, according to statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC. Likewise, the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction found a 76% increase in treatment for marijuana addiction over the past decade.
Yeah, but everybody's voting to legalize it, which just makes it more popular.
And it's really something, isn't it?
I knew the war on tobacco had a lot of sickness attached to it, had a lot of moral confusion from the beginning.
I asked from the beginning, why wasn't there a war on alcohol?
Why was the war on tobacco?
Anybody smoke a cigarette and molest a child compared to a person getting drunk and molesting a child?
If people thought clearly, we'd be living in heaven.
This is a true pleasure, my friends.
Last night, to 1,200 people in Philadelphia, I repeated a point that I have made on the radio on a number of occasions.
All good has been achieved by outliers.
There's evil achieved by outliers, too, acknowledged.
But all the good is done by outliers, and a lot of bad is done by the herd.
We saw this in the last two years, where a lot of nice people joined the herd that damaged this country horribly.
Anyway, I have a heroic outlier on the line, and you can also see him if you watch the Prager show.
You can watch it on the Salem News Channel.
Kevin Cochran.
He's the former fire chief of the city of Atlanta.
It's a big city, big position.
He's the author of Facing the Fire.
He was terminated for writing a book for a Christian men's Bible study.
The Alliance Defending Freedom successfully represented him in a lawsuit in which a federal court ruled the city, discriminated against Chief Cochran's religious views, and violated his First Amendment rights.
But other than that, those who terminated him were perfectly within the law.
Well, Chief Cochran, Cochran, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Dennis, it's a pleasure to be on your show, sir.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Tell everybody, in a nutshell, we can amplify it through questions to you.
In a nutshell, what did you do, and who did you tick off for doing it?
Well, after 34 years of faithful service in the fire service industry, around 2000, 13, I wrote a book in my own private time for a Christian men's Bible study, really encouraging men to be the men that God called us to be, walk in the freedom of salvation and not condemnation, and a few paragraphs that talked about biblical marriage and sexuality.
Ended up in the hands of an openly gay Atlanta City Council member who complained to the mayor, Kasim Reed, at the time of what I wrote about.
What the Bible says about marriage and sexuality.
He suspended me for 30 days, and after the 30-day suspension, I was terminated for writing what the Bible spoke about, biblical marriage and sexuality.
O-M-G. You familiar with that?
Yes, sir.
So I assume, because I share your views, I happen to be, as you probably know, a Jew, and we happen to share this Bible.
So I want to understand, the offense was taken that you cited the Bible or the biblical ideal that a man and a woman marry?
Was that specifically it?
Yes, that was a part of it.
And I also share that sexual relationships outside of the context of holy matrimony.
Well, that's pretty naughty.
Wow.
So, this council member brought this up to the city council, and the city council majority voted to suspend you?
No, sir.
He took it directly to the Honorable Mayor, the head of the city, and the mayor of the city of Atlanta.
The immediate action he took was to suspend me for 30 days.
The reason for the 30-day suspension, Dennis, was to investigate if I had ever used my views to discriminate against anyone who had different views.
And even though the investigation concluded that I did not and completely exonerated me of that, I was terminated anyway.
So I want to make something clear to my listeners, and even you might find this of interest, even though, obviously, you're the most intimately involved in this case.
This is why I have always said all leftism is totalitarian.
Authoritarians judge your behavior.
Totalitarians judge your thought.
The left punishes people for thinking wrong.
Not just for acting wrong.
So the fact that you were exonerated with regard to the charge of discrimination, that you in no way discriminated against non-Christians or non-heterosexuals, didn't matter a whit.
It's the fact that you believed in the biblical view of sexuality that got you fired.
I want to get back to that.
And by the way, I'd like to promote your book, author of Facing the Fire, and I'd like you all to contribute during the break to the people who defended him successfully, the Alliance Defending Freedom.
The banner is at my website, dennisprager.com.
Here's a living case of what they do.
Hey, everybody, I'm with a...
Good man.
Credit to America.
Kevin Cochran.
He was terminated after...
How many years were you in the fire department of Atlanta and eventually becoming its chief?
How many years was that?
I'm not hearing him, Sean.
I'm sorry.
Say it again.
We didn't hear you.
I'm sorry.
I was the fire chief for a total of seven years in Atlanta.
Gotcha.
And you were with the department for how many years before that?
I was in the fire service for a total of 34 years.
Right.
So 34 years, including seven as the chief of the department.
And they terminated you because you had...
What is it?
You published some work on...
On the biblical view of sexuality, is that correct?
I self-published a book for a Christian-mean Bible study about how we overcome condemnation, and just a few paragraphs spoke about biblical marriage and sexuality.
Right.
Now, was this specifically for members of the fire department, or this is something you did outside the fire department?
It was separate and apart from my role in the fire department.
It's something that I did in my personal, private time, just as a Christian man who has really a passion for men's ministry.
The whole story is mind-blowing.
And it was the mayor who terminated you as a result, is that correct?
That's correct, sir.
Do you know if you had any support on the city council?
No, sir.
Everyone was silent.
If I did, they didn't speak up and say anything about it.
Yes.
We're no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave.
We're less free, and about half of America are sheep.
Maybe more than half.
It's very depressing for me to acknowledge this, I'm committed to saying what I believe is true, end of issue.
So you took this case and ABF, the Alliance Defending Freedom, took your case, is that correct?
Yes, sir, that's correct.
I never knew there was such a thing as a Christian law firm until Alliance Defending Freedom came alongside me to defend me in this case.
And how far did your case go in the courts?
It was a federal case, and it was settled at the district court level.
So after four years of a legal journey, by the grace of God, I won in favor.
A decision was rendered in my favor that my free speech, my first remnant rights were violated by the city of Atlanta.
I mean, it's so obvious that it's painful that it ever happened or went to court.
Have you resumed your work in the fire department?
No, sir.
When I was terminated, I immediately went to work for Elizabeth Baptist Church in Atlanta as their chief operating officer.
A little over a year ago, Dennis, I was hired by Alliance Defending Freedom, and now I'm serving as the Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Faith Initiatives for Alliance Defending Freedom.
I'm actually on the team now.
Wow, I didn't know that.
I'm a huge fan of yours and, of course, Alliance Defending Freedom.
Again, my friends, I have a banner up at...
If this case doesn't inspire you to donate, then no case will.
This is so obviously wrong.
Were you given any awards?
I mean, were you awarded any money?
I think you should have been given, frankly, millions of dollars.
But were you?
Yes, sir.
The city of Atlanta settled for a $1.2 million settlement.
Good.
I wish there were more.
Did anybody after that among Atlanta officials say you were wronged?
No, sir.
The interesting thing about our climate and culture right now is that any public official that would have spoken up severably on my behalf was silent or afraid for fear that what happened to me, It could happen to them.
Elected officials who feared speaking up on my behalf fear that if they were to speak up, they would run the risk of not being re-elected.
It's actually an occupational hazard now, Dennis, to be openly vocal about standing up for biblical marriage, biblical sexuality, biblical family.
Many believers just choose to stay silent because they don't want to take the risk.
Yeah, that's why I say most religious people are not religious.
It's not even an attack.
It's just a statement of fact, like the sun is bright.
They fear man more than they fear God.
End of issue.
They should read the Exodus story about the midwives.
Who were ordered by Pharaoh to kill the Hebrew male babies, and they didn't, and it says why, because the midwives feared God.
I make the point over and over in my commentary about the importance of fear of God.
You actually take God seriously, and it is to your credit.
It is to ADF's credit.
It's too bad I was just in Atlanta.
Atlanta.
I wish we had met, but I will be back, and I would love to have the privilege of meeting you.
You're an American hero, my friend, and from this Jew to you, the Christian, God bless you.
Thank you, Dennis.
It's an honor to be on your show, and I look forward to visiting with you the next time you come to Atlanta.
Thank you.
Folks, please go to the ADF banner now and contribute.
I don't have to say any more.
Hi everybody and welcome to or welcome back to the Dennis Prager Show.
Courageous man encourages the rarest of the good qualities of life.
There are many kind people, loyal people, honest people, but very few courageous people.
Robert Epstein, data scientist, former editor of Psychology Today.
Robert Epstein is one of those people.
We have spoken in the past.
He is a lifelong liberal, if I am not mistaken.
We'll get that clear.
And he works in big tech, or knows a lot about big tech, a tremendous amount.
And I want you to be aware of what is happening in that world.
So, Robert Epstein, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
My pleasure, Dennis.
Nice to be back.
Thank you very much.
So, was I right in calling you a lifelong liberal?
I would say I'm more center-left, but I think we can definitely agree that I'm not a conservative.
As I said when I testified before Congress, as I said to Senator Cruz, I don't have a conservative bone in my body.
I do have a lot of conservative friends, but that's a different story.
Right.
I would argue to you it isn't a different story.
There's a reason you have a lot of conservative friends, but we'll have that on another occasion.
In the meantime, I salute you, but I think it is important that people understand a man who says he doesn't have a conservative bone in his body...
And in my opinion, he has at least two conservative bones in his body, but it's irrelevant.
I just want you to know his own understanding of himself, which I respect, and that he's not coming from a political place in what he is writing now about and talking about.
What would you like to alert the public with regard to big tech?
Well, a couple of things.
One is that I've been studying new forms of manipulation that the Internet has made possible.
I've been studying those for 10 years and conducting very rigorous scientific research on these new forms of influence or manipulation and, And I've uncovered some of the largest, most powerful forms of manipulation ever discovered in the behavioral sciences.
Exclusively in the hands of a couple of big tech companies, mainly Google, to a lesser extent, Facebook and Twitter and some others.
It's mainly Google.
And the evidence that these techniques exist is overwhelming, and we know now from whistleblowers and leaked videos and emails and documents of all sorts.
That some of these companies, again, Google being the most dangerous of them, actually deliberately use these techniques on a large scale and in so doing they can easily shift the outcomes of any close election with no one knowing that they're doing it and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace.
So that's That's in a nutshell what the danger is.
Since 2016, I've been developing systems to do to them what they do to us and our kids, that is to track them and actually to track and preserve and analyze the content that they're sending to voters and therefore proving beyond any doubt that they're actually using these techniques.
I calculated in 2020 that they shifted more than 6 million votes to my people, to Joe Biden and Democrats.
Again, except for the massive amount of data that we collected, normally there will be no record of this whatsoever.
So now, 2022, we're monitoring again on an even larger scale, and we're planning by the end of 2023 to have in place a large-scale permanent monitoring system that will force the tech companies to stay away from our elections permanently and we're planning by the end of 2023 to have in place a large-scale permanent monitoring system Okay, this is of surpassing importance.
I don't know what you'll answer this, so I'm obviously very curious.
Do you believe, or are you agnostic?
Or do you dissent from the idea, given what you said about 6 million votes or 6 million people, do you believe that without big tech manipulating search results that Joe Biden would have been elected?
No.
I would say it's impossible.
Without that sun on the scale by the tech companies, No, he couldn't possibly have won.
The popular vote would have probably been roughly tied, and Trump, I imagine, would have had victory in the Electoral College.
For the record, if you were willing to disclose, whom did you vote for?
Well, I never disclosed such things.
I will tell you, because I've said publicly over and over again, I'm not and was never a Trump supporter, although I'm a good friend with some members of his family.
But I just, I mean, I found him to be just a highly objectionable president.
So, you know, I'm not a Trump supporter.
And I'm not trying to help Trump or Republicans or conservatives.
That's not my goal.
What I'm doing is I'm trying to help democracy.
I'm trying to preserve the free and fair election because at the moment it's gone.
People just don't know it, but it's gone because these...
You see, let's say I'm running against you for Congress and you put up a billboard.
Well, I can put up another billboard across the street.
You buy a TV commercial.
I can buy two TV commercials.
Let's say you use some dirty tricks to get...
I can do some dirty tricks, too.
What normally happens in elections is competitive.
But if the tech platforms themselves, if Google, if Facebook, if they want to support one candidate or one cause or one party, guess what?
There's nothing you can do.
There's no way to counteract what they're doing.
For example, the RNC right now is considering suing Google because they have evidence that Google has been suppressing tens of millions of emails that the RNC is sending to voters.
Well, how would you prove that?
Well, again, I've developed monitoring systems that would capture that kind of phenomenon, but that's an example of a kind of manipulation that you can't fight.
How would you fight that?
If Google itself wants to suppress emails, Google itself wants to send out go-vote reminders just to members of one party, you wouldn't even know it's happening.
And how could you counteract it?
Well, again, the way you counteract it is to detect it as it is occurring through aggressive monitoring.
My team and I have developed.
We're the only group in the world, by the way, that's done this.
And we've been doing this since 2016. You detect it.
You announce it.
You expose it.
It's just like Justice Brandeis said, you know, 100 years ago.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
And we proved in 2020 that we could get Google to back off.
And that's what we're now working on to make sure that these companies...
Permanently stay away from our elections and our kids.
Can you prove that the RNC's charge is valid, that they are suppressing RNC emails?
We're not currently monitoring that.
We're monitoring a lot of different things.
But if we added that to our list, yes, we would be able to detect that and we would preserve data on a massive scale that would be admissible in court.
The RNC, you know, they're not doing monitoring, you know, and again, no one is except our group.
And we do this with people we call field agents, and we recruit in different states.
So we have several thousand of them right now.
So you know the Nielsen company, right, for many, many years has recruited families, and they've monitored their television watching, and that's where the Nielsen ratings come from.
Well, we've also been recruiting people to serve as our field agents.
They allow us to install special software on their computer, which allows us to look over their shoulder, just like the Nielsen Company does when people are watching TV. We look over the shoulder of real voters, real people, not bots, and we see what the tech companies are sending them.
So could we, if we chose to, monitor email suppression?
Positively.
And it would stop.
If we were monitoring it continuously in time, 24 hours a day, and we announced that, it would stop.
And the moment it stopped, we would detect that.
Wow.
What is the name of your group?
The organization is the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.
It's a 501c3.
Okay, we'll be back in a moment.
Back in a moment, Robert Epstein.
Our very remarkable man on Robert Epstein, data scientist, former editor of Psychology Today, founder of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.
Robert Epstein is not a Republican, doesn't have a conservative bone in his body, he says.
I think he has many conservative bones in his body, but it's not a debate I find important to get into now.
What he's doing is of surpassing importance.
I just want one more question on the Republican charge that the RNC, Republican National Committee, emails are being interfered with by Google.
Do you believe that?
Oh, of course.
No question about it.
In fact, just recently, I found out that my own emails, which I was sending to one of our major donors, were being suppressed and that they were being throttled, it's called throttling, so that he wasn't receiving any of my emails.
Anyone who's foolish enough to be using Gmail in any form...
You're completely under the thumb of Google, and they can delay emails, they can send them to your spam box, or just not send them at all.
So they're very, very aggressive in the way they deal with me, and of course because I'm very aggressive in the way I deal with them.
And by the way, if people want more information or they want to help us build this large-scale system to make these terms, Have you yourself been affected?
Have big tech companies or others done anything against you?
Well, not that I can prove, but Yes, it's possible.
I've been very severely impacted, warned by these tech companies.
I did have a reporter from Washington tell me that he had called someone at Google who he believed was head of their PR department at the time, and he asked questions about my research, and he said she screamed at me.
He said he's never seen that before.
He said...
I want to tell you two things.
Number one, you have their attention.
And number two, if I were you, I would take precautions.
Summer of 2019, after I gave a private briefing to a bunch of state attorneys general, after the briefing, one of them came out of the room and came over to me in the hallway and said, Dr. Epstein, I don't mean to upset you, but he said, I think you're going to be killed in some sort of accident.
Within the next few months, and then he walked away.
And I was not killed, but my wife was.
Just a couple of months ago, our managing director...
Well, wait, wait, wait.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
I was quiet because I wanted that to sink into people.
What you said is, A, incredibly sad.
And being incredibly frightening, are you prepared?
Do you feel comfortable emotionally, personally, about addressing that a little more, about what happened to your wife?
Well, she was severely injured in a kind of freakish way.
Car accident in which, at least according to one witness, it appears that her brakes suddenly failed.
And the little pickup truck she was driving, which I had bought for her, it was never examined forensically, and it disappeared.
It disappeared from the lot where the...
California Highway Patrol had stored it.
It disappeared very strangely.
I was told it had gone to Mexico somehow or other.
And I will never really know what happened.
But I did look at my wife's phone afterwards.
And I was shocked at all the things I found on it, all of which have to do with Google.
It's an Android phone.
And one of the things I found was that there's an absolutely continuous path showing the location of that phone 24 hours a day, going back many, many months, and showing where she stopped and how many minutes she spent at each place.
And all the details are there.
That's all tracked by Google.
And the fact is, they knew where her pickup truck was the night before that horrible accident.
They knew exactly where she was.
Truck was outside, and that could easily have been tampered with, and I will never really know.
And I stayed by her side in the hospital 24 hours a day for four days.
I had my head to her chest.
I listened to her last breath.
I heard her last heartbeat.
And she helped me in my work, and I will never know.
You were going to tell us about something that happened to a member of your staff?
Our managing director, a couple of months ago, walking in broad daylight downtown San Diego, which is a very safe place, and her husband is a very, very handsome fellow, and someone runs up just from nowhere, pulls out a knife, slashes her husband from ear to mouth.
And then looks at her and stares her right in the eye and laughs and then runs away.
Now, not long after that, she quit, and I don't blame her.
I mean, she immediately thought Google.
Google's not going to send an employee, of course.
If they're going to do something like that, they would call a so-called security firm and there would be some outsider.
You could never trace a connection back to a big corporation.
They wouldn't do things that way.
But the point is, we'll just never know.
Am I a threat?
Is my team a threat to some of these big companies?
Oh, yes.
Positively.
Is there a lot on the line for them?
Sure.
Sure.
Tens of billions, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars are on the line.
And their values.
Of course, they want to change the world.
And one of the leaks from Google not long ago was an eight-minute video, never, never meant to be seen outside that company, in which they're talking about Google's ability to re-engineer humanity according to, and I quote, Company values.
That's what we're up to.
We'll be back in a moment.
Robert Epstein, American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, former editor of Psychology Today.
Okay, everybody.
Robert Epstein is the founder of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, former editor of Psychology Today, a data scientist.
And we're talking about the research he has done.
He is a lifelong center-left person, doesn't have a conservative bone in his body, not a fan, to say the least, of Donald Trump.
This is not politically motivated.
He's motivated by decency, which is enough today to mean that you need courage just to be motivated by decency.
I want to repeat again, because I repeated it just to ensure that I had it clear that in his research he believes that there was so much manipulation done by Google in favor of the Democratic nominee for president in 2020 that millions of votes were affected and,
in his view actually changed the result of the election in favor of the man he probably voted for he doesn't want to tell us whom he voted for but my inference is that he is speaking about the election fraud if or manipulation better that resulted in the win for the man he probably voted for he certainly didn't vote for his opponent Let's put it that way.
So what is the next step?
Are you going to go to court?
What is your next step?
Well, right now, we have a lot of field agents in place, and we're monitoring content being sent to voters.
We're mainly in the swing states, because that's where the manipulations are most likely.
So we're in Arizona, for example, in Wisconsin, Florida.
North Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, and a couple other places.
And starting next week, we are going to announce publicly our preliminary findings.
And where we find evidence of bias or manipulation or suppression of content, we are going to start announcing it publicly.
We're going to release the information to journalists.
Members of the Federal Election Commission, members of Congress, and AGs that I've been working with, attorneys general.
So when we did this at the end of 2020, something remarkable happened.
Three U.S. senators, led by Ted Cruz, sent a very threatening letter to the CEO of Google, two pages long, summarizing our preliminary data.
They sent that letter on November 5, 2020. And as a result, Google immediately stopped their manipulations in the Georgia Senate races.
We had more than a thousand field agents in Georgia, which means we're monitoring content through more than a thousand computers.
And Google literally turned off all of their manipulations.
No more go-vote reminders going mainly to Democrats.
No more bias in search results.
Nothing.
And that's what we're going to do now.
But on a larger scale, we are going to get Google and other companies to stop their manipulations.
And this time, we're going farther than we've ever gone before because our system now is going to continue to run after the election 24 hours a day.
And it's by the end of 2023, with the help of...
Of people like you, we're going to have a permanent system running in all 50 states, and we're going to be monitoring content, not just going to voters, but going to children.
So we are going to be announcing irregularities, bias, manipulations on an ongoing basis, and these companies are going to back off because sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this is going to be permanent.
You said you don't use Gmail.
Would you like to mention what you do use?
Yes.
In fact, if people go to myprivacytips.com, they can read an article of mine which begins with the sentence, I haven't received a targeted ad on my cell phone or my laptop computer since 2014. Yes, I teach people how to use technology, how to use the Internet in a way that preserves privacy for themselves and their children.
So I use, for email, I use ProtonMail.
All right.
ProtonMail, and this is all at MyPrivacyTips.com?
It's on MyPrivacyTips.com for texting and even voice messages.
Voice calls, I use Signal.
But if my privacy tips are on the ongoing basis, I let people know.
Bless you, and I mean it, bless you.
Robert Epstein, you're an American hero, and one day I'll prove to you you have a lot of conservative bones in your body.
Thank you so much.
God bless you, sir.
Very important man.
Important interview.
I'll keep holding on.
I'll keep holding on.
The station, and if there are tickets, we'd love to see you tonight.
Joshua in Greenwood, South Carolina.
Hi.
Hi, how are you, Dennis?
Long time listening.
I love the show.
Thank you very much.
My turn to go, or how are we doing this?
Yeah, that's right.
That's how it works.
You call, you speak.
Okay, yeah.
I just heard your previous caller talking about the difference between alcohol and marijuana, and, you know, I'm a longtime smoker over half of my life, and I've never really had any issues with it.
I've actually had more issues with alcohol.
And to be able to judge that alcohol, you're saying alcohol is better than marijuana, well...
Have you ever smoked marijuana to make that judgment?
Well, I had marijuana once in my life.
It was baked into a brownie, and I don't know why that specifically would give me credibility or non-credibility.
I have observed...
I mean, I never...
You know, I never took a hard drug, and yet I have an assessment about drugs.
I'm not sure you had to do something in order to judge it.
Well, I mean, you said the same thing about alcohol, and especially when it comes to marijuana, the absorption rate is different from someone that smokes it to someone that eats it, and also just the...
Time that it takes to kick in as well as how long it lasts.
It's a totally different ballgame.
Right.
Okay, all the research...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
You totally agree with me on what?
I totally agree with you on terms of children and stuff like that, and it should totally be regulated like alcohol.
Okay, so I'm curious.
Do you have children?
I do.
Okay, so...
How old are your children?
They're extremely young.
Okay, so theoretically imagine that they're 17. Would you rather that they had a glass of wine a day or a joint a day?
Me personally, seeing how alcoholism has destroyed my family and then seeing plenty of people in my family smoke marijuana, I would much prefer them to smoke marijuana.
Okay, I understand that, given your experience.
But the vast majority of people who have a glass of wine don't become alcoholic.
Clearly, for the alcoholic, I would agree with you.
Be that as it may, everybody, I'll see you tomorrow, and thank you for listening.
Dennis Prager here.
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