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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:18:49
Guardians Who?
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi, everybody.
Great to be with you.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Why don't you guys zoom in on a Prager license plate from Arizona?
Nice.
Hi, everybody.
Good to be with you.
This is completely insignificant.
No, not completely.
Largely insignificant, but I will announce it anyway.
I do not recall the last time I wore a yellow shirt on my show.
This is a moment, my gentlemen.
This is a moment.
I like it, actually.
It's bright and cheerful.
You can see me, by the way, at the Salem News Channel.
Correct, gentlemen?
How many...
Look, let's get this straight.
There's Salem News Channel.
There's Salem...
What else is there?
Salem Podcast Network.
And there's Salem Now.
Okay, so you have to understand, for a mind like mine...
It's challenging.
Okay, fine.
So are you a Guardians fan?
Does anybody root for the Guardians?
Does anybody in Cleveland actually say, hey, do you see the Guardians game?
How are the Guardians doing this year?
They're doing well.
They're really good.
Oh, no.
He answered my question, how the Guardians are doing this year.
Thank you.
It should embarrass everyone in America, but certainly in Cleveland, that they considered the name Indians to be wrong, morally wrong.
You know, I have told you this, and it just bears repeating, they changed the Washington Redskins name to...
What is the Washington Redskins team now?
The commanders.
Now we have commanders and guardians.
Oh, it's so innocuous, so meaningless.
The commanders?
Does anybody in Washington say, hey, how are the commanders doing?
Do you know that Washington Post, as woke a newspaper as exists, therefore profoundly...
Irrational and emotion-driven.
Oh, the sports writers of the Washington Post, they went crazy about the racism inherent in the name Redskins.
And so they commissioned their own very sophisticated poll of Native Americans and found that the overwhelming majority did not find the name Redskins offensive.
You ever hear the phrase, he's more Catholic than the Pope?
The left in America is more Native American than Native Americans.
American Indians had no problem with Indians, with Redskins.
If they had no problem with Redskins, they certainly had no problem with Indians.
How could there be a problem?
You're honoring that group.
A guy who called me years ago when I spoke about this said, well, what would you think if a team were named the Jews?
And in one of my more proud moments, or moments I am proud of, I said to the man, sir, Jews have been looking for fans for 3,000 years.
It would be a great moment.
The Cleveland Jews.
That's what they should have thought.
That's what...
It beats guardians.
Jews.
That's an ancient pedigree.
The Cleveland Jews.
Let's go, Jews!
This has not been the chant of non-Jews in Jewish history as a general rule.
It was more like, Jews get out of here, given the amount of anti-Semitism in Jewish history.
Do you know what the removal of the Indian's name...
I'm thinking about it because I was on Cleveland Radio today on Bob Francis' great show.
He sits in for me and he's one of the best in the talk business.
So I was on Cleveland Radio right before this show on my station there, WHK. Got a lot of listeners in Cleveland.
So it made me think about this.
But when you're talking about Deuteronomy, the next volume in my rational Bible is coming out in ten days.
I really urge you to get it.
If you really read it, I promise it will deeply affect your life in the most positive way.
So I was thinking about the change of the name.
Do you realize what it...
Do you realize what it represents?
It represents how little racism there is in America.
That people go after trivia.
It is trivial in terms of the well-being of the Native American, the American Indian.
It is beyond trivial.
It is less than trivial.
It is unworthy of attention, except in a positive sense, that Cleveland's baseball team had been named for over a hundred years, I believe it is, the Cleveland Indians.
It is very, very sad that it was dropped.
Now they're working on the Atlanta Braves.
Now, who could find Braves offensive?
I could see cowards, but then that would be the name of a team consisting of college presidents, the cowards.
The number of teams that would have people qualifying as cowards is so large that you wonder whom we're referring to when we say we're the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The Atlanta Braves.
What's wrong with that?
You realize how much, look, the mistreatment of the American Indian is known and should be known.
It's part of our history.
At the same time, it should be known that there is a massive respect In American history, for the American Indian, specifically for his courage, his fortitude.
That's why teams are named after that.
Why is there a Minnesota Vikings?
Because the Vikings are considered to have been great fighters.
You name yourself after fighters.
No team named the Worms.
Even when they take animals, they're fighting animals.
Tigers, lions, right?
Detroit Tigers, Detroit Lions.
I guess Detroit had a monopoly on fighting animals.
It's funny, there is a team, I don't remember which West African country, but when I was in West Africa last, somebody in, it might have been Togo or Benin, was telling me that the name of their national football team, of course it's soccer around the world, I think it was something to do with squirrels, and they had a big problem with that.
My point is, when you don't have serious ills to fight, you make them up.
That's why there are so many race hoaxes, because there's so little racism.
So you have to make it up.
That's the case with the battle against the Indians and the Redskins.
I'd love to know what pressure ultimately came upon the owners.
Because the Washington Redskins owner swore that he would never change the name.
Sports writers are the sheep of the country.
They should have a name, sheep.
Yeah.
The left has decimated every profession.
We may well prevail, however.
And they fear that.
The nothings hate the somethings.
A rule of life.
1-8 Prager 776. We continue.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Hi, everybody.
Hey, guess what?
I was right.
The Benin.
Benin is a team in South Africa.
The Benin team.
The Benin country men's football team is named the Squirrels.
And I just got this from the Living Martyr.
August 22, 2022. Just now.
Three months ago.
Eight from nine.
What am I talking?
Two months ago.
Benin's nickname change, Squirrels to Cheetahs, awaits approval.
I had a feeling squirrels, they told me it was an odd name for a team.
You don't think of squirrels as fighters.
Cheetahs, oh, now that's a big cat.
They like the big cats.
Tigers, lions, etc.
Do you know I played for you yesterday the new Italian Prime Minister speech from a couple of years ago?
And where she said brilliantly, it was just, she got it exactly right.
Why is the family an enemy?
Why is the family so frightening?
There's a single answer to all these questions.
Because it defines us.
Because it is our identity.
Because everything that defines us now is an enemy for those who would like us to no longer have an identity.
That's right.
That's exactly right.
I wrote about 20 years ago, if not longer, I wrote about that.
This defines the left.
People with no religious or national identity hate people with a religious or national identity.
George Soros is the perfect example.
George Soros has no identity.
None.
They don't even want people to any longer have male or female identity.
It's called a signed at birth, one of the most absurd lies in the history of the world.
She, by the way, noted that.
She quoted Chesterton in her speech, that people will use swords to defend the fact that two and two is four.
That's what we have reached now.
We have to fight to defend the fact that only women give birth.
In hospitals around this country, it's now birthing parent one and birthing parent two, or parent one and parent two.
She notes that in her speech.
These people are hateful.
They're hate-filled.
They're hateful.
To take away everything.
You're not a man or a woman.
You're not an American.
You're a human.
Like Superman.
Stop being an American.
He's now a world citizen.
Stood in front of the UN and renounced his citizenship.
And of course, you don't have a religious identity.
What do kids have?
Do you know what a life is like with no identities?
I was asked at least 25 years ago.
I was interviewed before Israelis living in the Los Angeles area.
They have a large group.
And they interviewed me in Hebrew, which gave them a lot of joy, totally understandably, that somebody...
An American-born person could speak their language.
And one of the first questions was, are you first a Jew or are you first an American?
And I answered, I have two fathers, Abraham and George Washington.
It's been my answer ever since, because it's exactly how I feel.
I have two fathers, Abraham and George Washington.
And I'm very lucky to have such two strong identities, the religious one and the national one.
It's a big deal.
The kids today have been robbed of identity, including now sexual identity.
You're non-binary, so you don't even have a gender-slash-sex identity.
Sick folks teach your kids how to be sick.
And you still send them to school.
Big mistake, my friends.
You've chosen convenience over the fate of your child.
I understand it.
I sympathize.
But it's wrong.
Ask anybody whose kid was turned against them and everything they stand for.
If you could do it all over again, would you have homeschooled your child?
And they will ruefully respond, of course.
But people don't think bad things will happen to them.
I never thought that.
It's an odd way to go through life in some people's views.
I never thought I was immune to bad things happening to me.
That's why I ask on a daily basis, why me?
Why am I so lucky?
Because I didn't expect it.
I didn't expect the bad and I didn't expect the good.
I just don't think I'm immune from the bad things happening.
If the chances are my kid will be poisoned at school, morally, psychologically, intellectually, why would I send my child to such a school?
This would fix the country more rapidly than any other single thing.
A massive withdrawal from our schools by children.
That would fix more than anything else.
Teachers unions have one interest.
Two, actually.
Money and radical leftist nihilism.
Those are their only interests.
The welfare of your child is not on their list.
As we saw for the two years when teachers would not even show up, truly embracing both cowardice and scientific ignorance.
Sweden kept its schools open, my friends.
Not a day closed and not a kid killed.
Or a teacher, to the best of my knowledge.
When Sweden becomes America's model, the world is topsy-turvy.
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Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
As I have been explaining all of my life, there is no example of the left in power.
Since 1917, when the left first took power in a country called Russia, which became the Soviet Union.
There's no example of the left not suppressing dissent, because the left knows that it cannot win by the morality or intellectuality of its arguments.
It must suppress dissent.
And it begins with the suppression of religion.
Because people who have a God that is not the state are a threat to the state.
So, we have more and more attacks by the left taking over the American government.
A thug named Merrick Garland is in charge of the Department of Justice.
He will go down in history as a thug.
I have no doubt about that.
I am shocked that he turned out that way.
I had no sense of his being such a bad human being.
Sending FBI agents to a man's home who had no charges against him, but he was a pro-life activist.
25 agents with guns drawn in front of his children.
There's a group that defends religious liberty.
And other liberties, for that matter, more than any other, the Alliance Defending Freedom.
They have a case with regard to the fire department in Austin.
I'm going to talk to them about that now.
the Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel is Ryan Bangert, and with him is Dr. Andrew Fox, who created the chaplaincy program at the Austin Fire Department and was lead chaplain in a volunteer capacity who created the chaplaincy program at the Austin Fire Department and was lead Gentlemen, thank you so much, and thank you, Ryan, for the great work ADF does.
So, And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
I'm a very big fan and personal supporter of ADF. So what happened in Austin at the fire department?
Well, I was, as you said, serving as the lead chaplain for eight, nine years.
And I also started a blog at the same time, eight, nine years ago, in which I commented on social commentary, life theology, issues that people were facing, and there's a good subscribership to it.
Nothing to do with chaplaincy in the Austin Fire Department.
And in one particular blog, I questioned a biological man identifying as a woman, then competing against women in athletics was another attack on the beauty of what it is to be a woman.
And I was called out on that, and eventually, even though I tried to meet them on middle ground in conversation, was abruptly, unceremoniously and unprofessionally cancelled.
From the fire department for expressing my Christian beliefs in a private blog.
So let me understand.
If you were an atheist and you had said it's not fair to women to have biological men compete in women's sports, that is the whole reason for women's sports, because it is unfair to have biological men competing against them.
And I personally am an atheist, and my argument is purely on logical and moral grounds.
What would have happened to you?
Well, if you read my blog, if anyone reads my blog, my blogs are also on logical and rational evidence.
And so the fact that I am a Christian, a Christian chaplain, my beliefs obviously bleed through into my writing.
One of the sources that I would cite would be the book of Genesis, that being theological.
But I also quote very highly regarded medical journals and Caitlyn Jenner, many others that were former athletes that also object to the biological male competing against females.
So I'm in agreement with you logically and rationally.
But I think I was called out because of my Christian beliefs.
Alright, we're going to cover that in a moment.
In the meantime, please go to my website, dear listeners.
Contribute to ABF, okay?
You have to help the fighters.
Or you have to answer to God.
How's that for a challenge?
Hey, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
Oh, my God.
I will admit...
Well, there's nothing to admit.
It's not like it's a guilty plea.
I retract that.
I want you to know what a fan I am of the Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard series of books, Killing the, or Killing whatever the next name is.
They are incredibly informative and incredibly entertaining at the same time, even when their topic is not a happy one.
So, I have...
The primary, well, the bigger name.
I don't know if he's the primary author.
Bill O'Reilly is on with me.
Killing the Legends is the latest in his killing series, The Lethal Danger of Celebrity.
So this is not literally like killing the Indians or killing Patton and so on, or killing the SS. This is, or killing Kennedy.
This is the...
How they killed themselves in some way.
Well, that's not true about John Lennon.
Anyway, we'll find out.
It is about three of the most famous figures of the 20th century.
John Lennon, the Beatle, who was assassinated.
Muhammad Ali, the boxer.
And Elvis Presley, the incredible star.
What possessed you, Bill, to write this?
This is right up your alley, Dennis.
Each one of these titans changed American culture.
And as a historian, my job is to analyze how we all live today and how history shaped that.
So real quick, Elvis Presley, mid-50s, post-World War II, Dwight Eisenhower president, conformity nation.
Okay?
Everybody looked the same, talked the same, TV just came in, watched the same shows, whatever it may be.
In the space of six minutes on the Ed Sullivan Show, a teenager from Tupelo, Mississippi, goes on and blows up the entire American culture.
The next day, pastors are screaming that Elvis Presley is an agent of Satan.
Parents are telling their young boys, you cannot slick your hair back.
You can't wear a leather jacket and sneer.
Who wins?
Elvis wins.
The culture changes dramatically in the late 1950s.
And I can give you the same profile for John Lennon and the Beatles and Muhammad Ali as well.
That's fascinating.
So let's go with each.
Why did Ed Sullivan have Elvis Presley on?
Ratings, even back then, television ratings were the god in the industry.
And he was a hot recording artist.
But Sullivan was nervous and told his crew, do not photograph, do not shoot with the television camera below Presley's waist because he's writhing around and girls are screaming.
So it was for the waist up.
When Elvis sang Hound Dog, it didn't matter.
He was so different, so compelling, so charismatic.
And the country was...
Ready for a different point of view.
And then the age of mini-rebellion came in.
James Dean, the Gracers, you know, the whole 60s thing that we all know.
1964, Lennon and the Beatles did the same thing over a longer period of time.
Also on the Ed Sullivan show.
Yep, and the same reason.
But, see, Sullivan saw them as clean-cut where he...
I was a little dubious about Elvis.
But anyway, between 64 and 69, sex, drugs, rock and roll.
Comes in big time to USA, still here.
And at the same time that happened, Muhammad Ali was changing the world of civil rights and protests.
So these are the three individual icons that shape our society even today.
And I don't know why historians haven't written more about him.
That's why I wrote Killing the Legends.
It's a very good point.
They really did reshape things.
What year did Presley die?
78, I think it was 42 years old.
Was he a star till the end?
Oh yeah, he was selling out concerts.
But here's the dramatic thing.
If you Google...
Elvis comeback special, 1967. You can see him at the top of this game.
Ten years later, unrecognizable.
Is this the same human being?
He had to know that he was going down.
Now, all three of these men had other things in common, like they were all betrayed by people close to them.
And they all got crushed by their celebrity status.
They could.
Not handle it.
It destroyed them.
That's fascinating.
Obviously, it's why the book is so interesting.
Killing the Legends, up at DennisPrager.com, folks.
Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard.
So, I want to go in order here, though you're certainly free to conjoin them, which you do in the book, obviously.
But with Elvis Presley, What specifically killed him?
Was it drugs?
Was it alcohol?
Was it both?
He didn't drink.
Oh, interesting.
It was drugs.
It was narcotics.
That's fascinating.
Elvis Presley couldn't sleep.
So he started to take drugs to make him sleep.
And then he couldn't go to the bathroom.
So he started to take diuretics.
And then he was depressed.
So he took uppers, and then to get on stage, he had to take all his stuff.
He took an enormous amount of hard narcotics prescribed for him by his personal physician, and his management knew he was doing it.
He was stoned most of the time.
Is that why you say he was betrayed?
Well, he was betrayed before that.
So he signed a contract with a guy named Colonel Tom Parker, who Tom Hanks plays in the new Elvis movie.
And Parker took 50% of everything that Elvis earned.
50% plus expenses.
It was unbelievable.
And after Presley died, his estate had to take Parker in to court to pry all the money out of him.
So Parker was stealing from Presley.
And then, of course, the Nation of Islam did the same thing to Muhammad Ali.
Amazing.
So, how many times was Presley married?
One time.
Priscilla Presley.
Interesting.
But she, yeah, she was of no use because she was a teenager when they got married and totally out of her element.
Elvis was pretty much a loner.
And he didn't have a good education.
He graduated from high school.
But he was a smart man.
He wasn't stupid.
And neither was Lennon and neither was Ali.
They weren't stupid.
But they were not well educated.
They didn't have a support system.
And then when they got this incredible wealth and fame, they couldn't put it into perspective.
They just couldn't.
Because everybody was kissing their butt.
And if somebody did say something to Elvis, Elvis fired him.
He didn't want to hear, hey, maybe you should be taking 85 pills a day.
He didn't want to hear it.
I think the majority of people who achieve great fame when they're young are destroyed by it.
You're right.
It's a curse.
Everybody wants to be famous.
They don't understand that in most cases...
They don't understand.
Look, Dennis, I'm famous.
I had no blanking clue when I was rising up in my career.
All I wanted was recognition.
I didn't want a big mansion or a Ferrari.
I didn't care about that.
But when I became world famous doing the O'Reilly factor, I was ill-prepared for the target on my back.
And now it's worse because famous people can't even come out of their homes because they'll be recorded everything they do.
Their cell phone will be on them.
And the weight of that, not being able to live a normal life, is enormous.
So you're not a regular human being anymore.
You're a thing.
Yep.
It comes with big prices, yet so many people want to be that.
So, who was at Presley's funeral?
Did he have any close friends?
Yeah, he had friends.
I mean, it was a big number, his funeral.
His daughter adored him.
His former wife came, and, you know, it was a big thing.
He wasn't an isolated man.
John Lennon was isolated.
Yeah, we'll talk about him next.
All right, let me just remind people.
Elvis wasn't.
Killing the Legends is the book, the latest in the Killing series.
They're all fascinating reading.
This is about Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon.
I'm Dennis Prager.
We'll be back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Hi, everybody.
Back with Bill O'Reilly, his book, Killing the Legends.
John Lennon, Elvis Presley, and Muhammad Ali.
Would you say that they were...
I can't imagine you would say that they were the most significant, but is there anybody who you would say was more significant than them in the second half of the 20th century?
Not in our culture, popular culture.
Wow.
Nobody.
Well, I chose them.
There's nobody even close, by the way.
And remember, Lennon came to America.
So, I mean, he established headquarters here, whereas McCartney did not.
Because that was a triad that drove the Beatles and the culture into the counterculture of the late 1960s.
So John Lennon was assassinated.
Do we...
What do you know, and I know you know a lot, so I'm asking, what do you know about the assassin's motives?
Well, it's just like a number of people who have encountered irrational violence.
We hear about the politicians, but Sal Mineo is an actor that some guy approached them and killed them.
There is...
If you are famous, a threat, it's a minority threat, but it's there that somebody will harm you, not for rational reasons.
Lennon was nice to this Chapman guy, signed his album, but this guy was a loon, is a loon, he's still alive, all right?
And he just killed Lennon for no reason.
I mean, it happens every day in America, but if you're famous, people become fixated on you.
And the fixation...
Remember the Jodie Foster thing?
He said, you know, he's talking to Jodie Foster.
This was the Reagan assassination.
I mean, it's a spooky world out there.
Every celebrity knows it.
Why were none of the Beatles, I read this in your book, why were none of the Beatles at his memorial service?
Excellent question from Dennis Prager, everyone.
There was very bad feeling among the four.
Because it was so successful that they really didn't want to break it up.
But Lennon became addicted to heroin.
So when Lennon partnered up with Yoko Ono, everything changed.
And Lennon gave Yoko Ono 100% power over his life.
Whatever Yoko wanted, that was what happened.
Lenin got addicted to heroin.
And the Beatles knew it.
And nobody, that was not reported.
It was like, oh, it was a business thing.
There were business things involved that engendered hard feelings, but it was the massive personality change on the part of Lenin that broke up the Beatles.
and so when you cede your life to somebody else it doesn't make any difference whether it's Yoko or anybody when you just say look it's too much I don't want to run my own life anymore you run it and that's what Ali did but Lennon did it and then became totally isolated in the beginning Lennon was a gregarious uh he was the life of the party and the Beatles so did heroin kill him
no it didn't he kicked it but The fact that he would take that and come into that circumstance astounded his bandmates.
They couldn't believe it.
With all of that on the line for them, and that he was doing this kind of stuff.
Well, when I say did heroin kill him, I don't mean it literally.
Did heroin change him and therefore end everything?
You know, I can't answer that with any authority.
He kicked drugs.
He got off it.
But while he was on it, as anybody who knows anything about opioids, the person taking them is a completely different person.
Elvis was completely different.
That's right.
He was stoned.
Two for two.
Okay, let's go to Muhammad Ali in the time we have left.
So what killed Ali?
Since that's your book, Killing the Legends.
You bet.
So the best writing I've done in all 12 books is the first seven pages of the Ali section in Killing the Legends, where I describe that he almost was killed in the ring in Manila fighting Joe Frazier.
And Frazier was almost killed, too.
That's how brutal that fight was.
After the fight, Bernie Pacheco, Ali's doctor, said, you can't, to the Nation of Islam, Herbert Mohammed, You've got to get him out of the ring for a while.
You can't put him back in the ring.
Four months later, guess who's back in the ring?
So, Ali knew it.
He knew it.
Because for two weeks, he couldn't even stand up after that fight.
And the Nation of Islam was so powerful, again, they controlled everything he did, that when they said, you're going to fight...
Ali fought.
And that's what killed him, because the ensuing deterioration of the brain robbed him of his life.
He'd even die young, but if you saw him in the last part of his life, it was terrible.
It was very sad to see.
What were his racial views?
I met him.
I didn't see...
The militancy of Louis Farrakhan, for example, who now runs the Nation of Islam.
Elijah Muhammad brought Ali in, and he was a hater.
Elijah Muhammad was a hater, no doubt about it.
I never got that from Ali.
I think that Ali was easily led and latched on to this group.
But I didn't see...
In his relationship with Howard Cosell, for example, and other sporting people, you didn't get that I hate you whitey stuff from him.
But certainly he associated himself with people who did hate whitey.
Wow.
Well, it's quite a story.
I love the fact that you tell what happened to their children.
He had eight children from four wives.
Yep.
And the children are always the collateral damage.
Yeah, exactly.
Always.
Well, what's your next book?
Is anybody left to be killed?
I can't tell until Christmas, you guys.
I'm writing it now.
It'll be, it's totally different again.
So this time next year, I hope we'll be taught.
Why?
We can do it anytime you want, because I enjoy talking to you.
But this time next year, it'll be out, the 13th killing book.
But these are arduous to write.
Oh, yes.
It's really remarkable.
One learns a lot of history and in a very, very entertaining way, in the best sense of entertaining.
Congratulations on killing the legends, Bill.
Thank you for having me, Dennis.
Always a pleasure to talk with you.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, really, it's a remarkable series, I have to tell you.
Those three individuals...
Well, look, I majored in history, folks.
I think everybody living should major in history.
It is one of the major causes of our problems today.
People don't know what happened.
So how do you know where you are now if you don't know what happened yesterday?
Hi everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
My guest is Paul Manafort, one of the best-known people in America.
I wonder if he ever expected that that would happen in his life.
I'll ask him in a moment.
I just want to reflect on the title of his important book, Political Prisoner.
It is difficult for me to acknowledge that the United States of America has political prisoners.
This is something new in American history.
It's not surprising because there is no example of the left taking power in any country and not having political prisoners.
It is in the nature of leftism to do that.
But I didn't think that this would happen here.
I am old enough to remember when I would go to the Soviet Union, which was my field of study, and I would come back and I would...
Argue on behalf of Andrei Sakharov, the most famous political prisoner after Solzhenitsyn, who was finally expelled.
And I used to think, wow, in the Soviet Union, they have political prisoners.
People are arrested for their views.
Always, by the way, never admitted for their views.
They were always prosecuted for some legal offense.
But it was only because of their views.
And now we have that in the United States.
Most recently, the example of the pro-life activist outside of Philadelphia, 25 FBI agents, a SWAT team comes.
The man didn't even have an accusation made against him in court.
The whole issue was thrown out by the Philadelphia courts.
And Merrick Garland, who turns out to be a thug, didn't expect that either.
A true thug in the tradition of Stalin's henchmen sends the FBI to this man.
So Paul Manafort's book is about what happened to him.
He became a political prisoner.
Paul Manafort's book is up at DennisPrager.com and now I have the chance to speak to him.
You can watch this at the Salem News channel, by the way.
The show is on video as well as audio.
Paul Manafort, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Dennis, good to be with you today.
Thank you for having me on.
Is that the longest introduction you ever heard?
Well, it's probably one of the better ones.
I wasn't asking for a comment.
I was actually sort of mocking myself.
Unfortunately, my name is now associated with those kinds of introductions, and it shouldn't be that way in our country.
That's right, it shouldn't be.
When I said you might be the most surprised person in America at how well-known you are, was I? Was I accurate?
Well, not today.
I mean, I do appreciate it now, but I never thought I'd have this.
That's what I meant.
Yeah.
I mean, I've always been the one behind the scenes, you know, running campaigns and advising clients.
In the Trump campaign, he had to take on a more visible role because he was a one-man band and he needed somebody other than himself out there dealing with a number of the issues.
But even then, I didn't think it would get to the point where I got to it with such a concoction of lies and having the whole federal government of the United States focusing on me in ways that were unimaginable.
This, by the way, for those watching or listening who are not on the right, this is what we mean by the swamp.
So I never thought there was a swamp.
I never used the word.
I now know there is.
The left has ruined virtually every form of government, like it has ruined so much else, like education.
When do you think the swamp began to be a swamp?
Well, I think when Ronald Reagan was elected president, it started to galvanize.
And by that, what I mean is, before Reagan was president, the system Whether Republican or Democrat in Washington was being run within a corridor of issues, with it being more center-left than center-right.
And Ronald Reagan challenged that, especially in the area of foreign policy and individual freedoms.
And when he said, we need to bring down the Soviet Union, we need to unleash the strength of the American economy to help.
Raise all ships, meaning all American people's welfare.
And I think the system started to react negatively to that in a more organized way.
But I think even before Reagan was involved in Washington, there were the tentacles of the left.
William Buckley used to talk about that were seeping into education and into the welfare state that LBJ put together.
And so it sort of began to converge during the Reagan presidency.
But after he left and things sort of resettled in Washington, the tentacles that were in the system began to deepen and get done.
Get more rooted, if you will.
When Donald Trump announced his candidacy, it saw exactly those tentacles and how they were strangling the delivery of the government working for the people.
And the system sort of saw that.
At first they tried to ridicule him, figuring he wouldn't have any credibility if they just ridiculed him.
And thought he was sort of a cartoonish character.
But when he emerged among these 16 candidates, many of whom were establishment candidates and were better known in the political world, all of a sudden, from almost the beginning of Trump announcing his candidacy in August of 2015, he was the leader in the polls.
So it's only a plurality at first, but of all the Republicans, he was leading in the polls because he tapped into something that was very important.
And I sort of saw that in my own personal way.
I had gotten out of Washington politics in the 2000s and during the Obama years because, frankly, I was feeling at the time that I was helping get people elected who were coming to Washington and forgetting their promises.
And that didn't interest me.
I was interested in people coming in and making a difference.
And so when Trump announced the basis for his candidacy...
To get a government that responds to the people, it touched me.
But more important, what got my attention up is my cousins who run a family business back in Connecticut.
It's been around for three generations.
Now it's a fourth generation.
It's a working class kind of company.
They all started calling me.
I wanted to know about Donald Trump.
My cousins never in my political career would call me about anybody.
But they were actually excited and motivated.
They wanted to go to these rallies.
They wanted to get as much information as they could.
And that's when I realized that what touched me and what I saw Trump touching in the country really was moving.
And Roger Stone, who was a partner of mine right after the Reagan campaign, when we started Black Manafort Stone, had been telling me since the 1980s.
Trump had the wherewithal to be a presidential president someday.
And Roger had always kept me apprised of Trump over the course of the 25 years between our firms being sold and the Trump campaign.
And so he called and said, watch this guy because he's going to take off.
And he did.
So that's when I started tracking it.
That's when I started realizing the deep state was in trouble.
And when Trump started to win the primaries, I saw what's called now the rhino Republicans or the never-Trumpers start to coalesce around anybody to try and deny Trump.
And that's when I knew that he was going to be nominated.
Because at that point in time, it was clear to me that the grassroots...
So who was the most directly responsible for your arrest?
Who?
Yeah.
Well, it goes back to Obama.
I mean, in my book, I lay it all out, and I didn't know this at the time, but I finished the book the end of last year, so the first year of the Biden administration, but into the Durham investigation trial cases.
And what I learned as I was writing the book was I was very active in Ukraine.
I had elected a government that was committed to bringing Ukraine into Europe.
Even though you would never know that by the way they characterized it in my trial.
But I knew Hunter Biden was involved in Ukraine.
Biden was the vice president at the time.
He was the link between the Ukraine government and Obama.
I knew Biden was dealing with some people that were unsavory characters in business in Ukraine.
But it wasn't affecting anything of mine.
I didn't pay any attention to it.
But what I didn't know until I was writing my book was that the Obama administration was getting nervous about Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine and Biden's representation of his administration.
Okay.
All right.
We're going to continue in a moment.
Political Prisoner by Paul Manafort.
Another segment here with Paul Manafort.
His book is Political Prisoner.
Political Prisoner.
We have political prisoners in the United States for the first time, to the best of my knowledge.
And the use of the FBI now to persecute, to send SWAT teams to people with conservative views is a first in American history.
Has any liberal or left-wing medium invited you for an interview?
No.
No, in fact, we even made some inquiries to several of the mainstream media that let them know I'd be available.
But they're trying to treat my book as if it doesn't exist.
Well, The Atlantic did write a scathing review of your book.
And one would think that they might want you to...
Debate the guy who wrote the critique or at least allow a response.
The problem is they'd be confronted with the truth and then they just have to regurgitate all the lies.
I have the facts on my side.
There's been no interest.
The Atlantic has been one of the dumpsters that has been promoting all the false rumors about me going back to 2016. Let me ask you about Ukraine.
I learned in your Tucker Carlson interview, you were there 10 years, is that correct?
Correct.
That's a long time to spend there.
Did you miss the United States?
Well, I was actually working in things that I thought were important.
I mean, I felt Ukraine was an important country to become part of Europe.
And there was, in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution, there was a lot of confusion as to who was what there.
And when I analyzed it for a corporate client of mine who had a business interest in Ukraine, I discovered that this pro-Russia, pro-Europe divide that everybody was talking about was more a fiction than a fact.
And that the Ukrainian people, who are the ones who should decide how their country is governed, even the Russian ethnic Ukrainian people, They had no interest in being part of Russia.
They wanted to protect the Russian language, the Russian religion.
Yeah, this is a very interesting point you make.
I know Russian, and that was my field of study, that area of the world.
And I bought the idea, which is central to the whole explanation of Ukraine, or much of it, that the Russian, the ethnic Russians in Ukraine...
Wanted that part of Ukraine to be annexed by Russia.
You're saying that's not correct?
I probably did over 100 polls over the 10 years I was there.
And I probed very carefully Ukrainians or Russian ethnicity and their views.
And there was never a poll where more than 5% of that group wanted to be a part of Russia versus part of Ukraine.
With their Russian heritage protected.
And so that divide was a false divide.
And you saw it in the invasion that when Putin invaded Ukraine this year and was shocked at his inability to blitzkrieg the country.
I wasn't shocked because I knew that the Ukrainian people would fight hard, including those living in the East, because they knew what freedom was in a free Ukraine.
And they also had a sense of what freedom was in Russia, and they didn't want any part of that freedom.
So I was not shocked at all when the resistance was as strong as it was.
And this bogus referendum that Putin has just run in eastern Ukraine as a pretext to basically usurping control over the eastern part of Ukraine.
Has no credibility at all.
I mean, they're probably not even Ukrainians voting.
They're basically Russians.
Right.
No, that's clear.
Yes.
So why do you think the Western media have overwhelmingly portrayed the ethnic Russians of Ukraine as pro-Putin?
Because it fits their narrative.
I mean, I think I'm a key part of their narrative on Russia.
There were Putin helping elect Trump because they had no real facts.
There were zero facts.
Even after all the investigations by the Senate and House Intel committees by Mueller, there's never been one fact that shows any connection between the Trump campaign.
Correct.
That's a given.
And I knew that.
And so they needed to blur that line.
So, again, I don't know if you even have an answer.
I don't have an answer.
Why does that have to do with portraying the Russians in Ukraine as pro-Putin?
Why would they do that?
Well, my personal view is because that was also a means by which they could then use me as a link to Moscow to try and put credibility behind this totally fake Russian narrative.
And it also fits into Ukrainian politics as well, which to get into a more localized structure.
I mean, there are two divides in Ukraine.
There's Western Ukraine, there's Eastern Ukraine.
There's the European side and the Russian side.
But interestingly, those Eastern Ukrainians are the ones who really wanted to be part, especially the businessmen, part of Europe.
Because to them, being part of Europe allowed their companies to grow.
And as opposed to being, you know, treated as the little brother at best by the Russian oligarchs.
Who do you think blew up the Nord Stream pipeline?
I obviously don't know who did it.
I mean, people are trying to say that Russia did it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Ukrainians did it.
Yeah, that's what I said last hour, that when you ask Qui Bono who benefits, it would seem...
The most obvious is the Ukrainians would benefit, because then Russia can't have all that money from its natural gas exports.
Correct.
So, as we draw to an end here, and again the book Political Prisoner, which is riveting, what's the solution other than another Trump-type character.
And why didn't Trump get rid of more people in the swamp when he had four years in power?
Well, there's actually an answer to that.
And that is, Trump was not a person of Washington.
Literally didn't know anybody in Washington, very few people, unless they had come to New York to ask him for money.
And so when he was elected, and he wouldn't let me put a transition team together, which gets set up automatically after the two conventions so that whoever gets elected president...
It's had a running start in building a government.
Trump didn't want to have a transition.
And he said, if we're going to have a transition, the people who are going to be filling those offices, setting up for the next administration, are the people I don't want in those offices.
And so there was no transition in consequence.
When Trump was then elected, the next day, he was charged with building a transition and building a government, and he had no bench.
And that's the reason why...
How fascinating.
Well, we need somebody in the office to clean this swamp.
Paul Manafort, thank you.
I hope we have a part two.
The book, unfortunately, properly named, Political Prisoner.
It's up at DennisPrager.com.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Hello, my friends.
My last question to Paul Manafort, who spent 10 years in Ukraine.
Who does he think blew up?
The Nord Stream pipeline.
And he said, maybe the Ukrainians.
He doesn't know.
Nobody knows.
He said, maybe the Ukrainians.
And that's a...
Folks, I'm being driven crazy by my technical advisor.
Technical director.
I asked that last hour, Qui Bono, who benefits?
And the Ukrainians are the ones who most benefit.
Maybe they did it.
Did they have the technical prowess to do that, though?
I don't know.
Maybe it doesn't take a lot of technical prowess to blow up a pipeline.
I hope it was not the United States.
I'm totally in support of our giving all this aid to Ukraine.
But I am not for having a war with Russia.
And I am for avoiding it.
This is a wild man leader in Russia right now.
By the way, I did ask Neil Ferguson, one of the greatest living historians, on this program months ago, and I had no idea what he would answer.
He was formerly of Harvard.
Now he's at...
The Hoover Institution at Stanford.
Do you think that Putin would have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump were president?
If I had to bet, I would have bet that he would have said, it's tough to know, can't give you a definitive answer, something to that effect.
He immediately said no.
I was taken aback.
That's what I believe, but I didn't think that Neil Ferguson did.
That Putin would not have invaded if Trump were president.
Part of Trump's power was his unpredictability on the part of his enemies.
They wanted a regular guy in the White House.
One they could frighten.
Leaders knew they couldn't frighten the American president when he was president.
A president who kisses his wife through a mask is easily frightened by anything.
I regard him as pathetic and has nothing to do with any incipient dementia.
So he answered, Manafort did, that it might have been the Ukrainians who blew up the pipeline.
May well have been.
Interesting questions here.
I'm going to take this call for that reason.
Robert in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
So, given that you said that if you elect a Democrat, Right.
So there are two separate issues.
You do believe that Lori Lightfoot was elected in Chicago, correct?
Possibly.
Oh, well, all right.
Okay, so then since I can't...
But I'll accept that.
I'll accept that.
All right.
It's almost irrelevant whether you accept it or not.
I'm surprised you don't, but it doesn't matter.
If someone is elected, then the whole population is responsible for their behavior.
I'm sorry to tell you that.
That would include me.
I am partially responsible for the state in which I live being the moral cesspool that the Democrats have made it.
I stay here.
I could move.
I have obviously had no great effect on many of my fellow citizens.
I am partially responsible.
That is correct.
That is why it is a moral imperative upon people to fight the bad guys.
I hate cliches, but everybody, most people know, the only thing it takes for bad people to prevail is for good people to do nothing.
Most good people do nothing.
Now, perhaps it is clearer how I regard that fact.
It's an interesting question about the culpability of people for the bad done in their society.
My belief is that if every good person in America fought the left, we would win.
But a lot of people don't fight.
A lot of people don't help the fighters.
I mean, I'm doing fundraising this month, as many of my Salem co-hosts are, for the Alliance Defending Freedom.
And I know I'm putting this in a very aggressive way, but I mean it, so I'll let the chips fall where they may.
So every one of you should be giving them something.
It's as simple as that.
The percentage of listeners...
Who agree with ADF, or with me, or PragerU, or Daily Wire, or American Greatness, or, I mean, just...
There's so many wonderful groups doing work for our values, but who don't give them any money.
Nor any Republican running for office.
So how are you not partially responsible for the decimation of American society that the left is engaged in?
You know my motto.
There are three types of good people.
Those who fight, those who help the fighters, and those who do nothing.
Most people do nothing.
It's much easier to do nothing.
Now we're going on a tour.
or My co-hosts and I are going to different cities around the country in Battleground States.
Battleground Tour, it's called.
Battleground Talkers Tour.
Let me get up to the cities so you'll know.
I can give that to you in a moment here.
Because I will be on it.
So, let's see.
It's next month, and let's see.
I will be in Orlando, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.
And my co-host will also be in Cleveland.
So, here's an example.
By the way, I don't get a nickel for this whole thing.
It's very difficult traveling and doing the show, and flying.
But I'm deeply committed to it.
But those of you in these battleground cities should go to the event.
That's a good example of is inertia or what you have to do going to dominate your decision.
It's easier to stay home.
I know it because I feel the same thing.
I have normal human nature, and I spend most of my life fighting it.
So, it's a very important question, how much are decent people who don't fight responsible for the damage that the bad people do to their society?
And the answer is, they have culpability.
You vote Democrat in Chicago, now I'm not talking about...
The people on our side, you vote Democrat in Chicago, in Portland, in LA, in New York, you vote Democrat?
The people are destroying your cities and you vote for them?
In the history of free societies, it's got to be up there among the most inexplicable acts that a person can engage in.
To vote Democrat if you are not a leftist, if you are a liberal, and to vote Democrat means that you have been brainwashed so deeply into believing conservatives are a greater enemy to you.
Never Trumpers believe that.
They believe that Trump was a greater enemy than the left.
That is sick.
That is sick.
Let me say that again.
That is sick.
I don't care if you hate Trump's guts.
All you need to do is love America.
I don't care if you hate Trump.
You're perfectly entitled to hate Trump.
You're not perfectly entitled if you're a Republican to damage America.
And that is what the obsession with Trump on the part of these never-Trumpers has done.
To the extent that some...
It's so painful to me because some of these people...
I've known for decades.
They voted for Biden.
Biden is a bad human being for those of you who are preoccupied with character.
He's a much worse human being on every level of which I am aware than Donald Trump.
Donald Trump did not use America to enrich himself.
He enriched himself in the private sphere.
And now that he is president, If you're a conservative so-called or Republican and voted for him, are you proud of that fact?
The damage he did just in Afghanistan and leaving Afghanistan alone?
You don't believe that you have to face your creator, your maker, with your decision to vote for him?
Yep, everybody, Dennis Prager here.
Let me take a call from Chicago.
Scott, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
I just want to say that you are one of my biggest heroes.
Thank you.
I do appreciate everything you do for us.
Good.
The problem with Chicago is that we unfortunately only have Democrats that run for the city.
Me being a person who worked for the city, had to live in the city, my choices are slim to not.
The unfortunate part is that Tony Preckwinkle and Lori Lightfoot were the top two contenders for that seat of mayor in the city.
Right Lori Lightfoot becomes the lesser of two evils at the time in 2019 So the unfortunate part may I do agree with you that we should be held accountable for what we do but But...
Yeah, no, I hear you and it's important.
I understand that.
The people of Chicago voted for Democrats.
Lightfoot or anybody else, it's irrelevant.
Biden is not the issue.
Lightfoot is not the issue.
Gavin Newsom is not the issue.
If it's a Democrat today, it means a person who is hurting this country.
That's what it means.
It means it is a person who has contempt for the country and for liberty.
It is true for 90% of Democrats in office.
They are interchangeable.
If every single Democratic senator and representative were shipped off...
To a vacation on Mars.
All expenses paid and had a great time.
And I wish them no harm.
It would make no difference whatsoever.
That is why I have begged to absolutely no avail.
I've had no impact whatsoever in the longest-running message politically that I have to every Republican candidate.
You are not running against the individual against whom you are running.
You are running against the left.
Make that clear to everyone.
If you vote for this Democrat, who may be a sweet, beautiful human being, a loving mother or father, it is irrelevant.
You are voting to damage our city, our state, and our country.
That is what a vote for a Democrat is, because the Democratic Party is a left-wing, not a liberal party.
How many Republicans running say that?
I believe the answer is 2%.
They're all running against their particular opponent.
You are running against the left.
You are running against Soros.
You are running against the Democratic Party.
You are running against Pelosi.
you are running against the New York Times the Washington Post and CNN and you have to make that clear Dennis Prager here Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
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