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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:21:20
Political Prisoner
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello everybody, Dennis Prager here, and a good Monday.
Hope you have a good weekend.
I do hope you have a good weekend.
If you don't have a good weekend, it's probably some domestic issue.
Could be a health issue.
Whatever it is, I wish you well.
And to the rest of you, I'd like to reinforce, restate...
A motto I came up with years ago, which one of you made into a jingle, and that is, if nothing's horrific, life is terrific.
If nothing's horrific, then life is terrific.
That's right.
That's the way you have to look at it.
Because once it becomes horrific, you look back and you go, why didn't I realize how good it was?
Before this crisis, a big issue.
According to University of Penn Wharton School, the Biden school plan could exceed $1 trillion.
Did you know, I did not know until I read this article, but there's a provision that they...
There's a cap of loan repayment at 5% of the borrower's income?
This was the last paragraph of this article.
That's why they say it could reach a trillion dollars.
One possible problem researchers found with the income-driven repayment plan is that students may be incentivized to borrow more money.
Yes.
The college government complex.
I noted last week that one of the reasons the Democrats push for saying screw you to the people who live responsibly and repay loans is that the more people who attend college, the more Democrats they get.
Do you know that college education may now be more reliable than illegal immigrants for the Democratic Party?
A lot of people have thought that the agenda of allowing millions upon millions of people to illegally enter the country is a political one, and it is.
They do believe that these people are more reliably Democrat than...
The indigenous population of Americans.
However, the really reliable group are the college educated.
The completely reliable group are those who went to graduate school.
And the most reliable group, I suspect, I'm not certain, has generally been black America.
It's been the most reliable group for Democrats.
What are they voting?
It's over 90%, correct?
Is that right?
Over 90% of the black vote is Democrat?
If you would take a look, I'll be very curious.
We now have a competitor.
Competitor!
Competitor!
Who do you think I'm thinking of?
Think of a group that is virtually as reliable as a 90% figure.
Can you think of one?
What do you think I'm thinking of?
That's fine.
No, but there's a specific group of graduates.
Correct.
Female graduates.
If you know a female who went to graduate school in the non-sciences, and probably even in the sciences, but especially the non-sciences, who is conservative, You know a very special human being.
Oh, God.
It's really something.
The Biden administration's student loan debt cancellation plan may cost more than $1 trillion, according to an analysis from the University of Pennsylvania's...
The largest potential cost driver, Penn Wharton, identified as the Biden administration's new income-driven repayment plan, which includes capping monthly student loan payments at 5% of a borrower's discretionary income and reforming the repayment guidelines to guarantee that no borrower who makes, quote, about the annual equivalent of a $15 minimum wage will have to make monthly loan payments.
Debt cancellation alone will cost the United States up to $519 billion, Wharton found in an analysis published Friday.
Loan forbearance, which allows borrowers to temporarily stop paying, will cost an estimated $16 billion.
The income-driven repayment plan will initially cost $70 billion.
But specific details have yet to be released.
The report comes as the United States national debt is already more than $30.8 trillion, according to the Treasury.
This is very disturbing.
My view, based on facts, based on the data, solely on the data.
My view is that if a group that wished to bring down America were to put out an agenda of things to do, it would match exactly what the Democrats are doing.
Just the News, I think, yes, Just the News had an interview with me.
And happily, it saw the light of day on the Internet.
And they reiterated my point that every Republican should run against the Democratic Party, not just against his or her opponent.
Most Democrats are interchangeable, by the way, to a large extent.
I wish most Republicans would be interchangeable.
That's the way it is.
You vote for an idea.
The democratic idea is to bring down this country.
I don't think they wake up, all of them, some do, like AOC and Ilhan Omar, George Soros, obviously not a politician.
They do wake up and say, how can I destroy America as we know it?
It's a piece of crap country.
How can I ruin it?
How can I not ruin it?
How can I improve it by destroying it?
But most Democrats don't think that way.
They have, in fact, convinced themselves that they are doing good.
You are running against the left.
That is what people need to understand who are running for office as a Republican.
This passed the bill, and now this stuff about the cars.
The governor of Virginia announced that he is not following California's lead.
Washington state already did.
No new gas-powered cars can be sold in California, by far the largest state which drives the automobile industry.
After 2035. So that's in 13 years.
In 13 years, you won't be able to buy a new gas-powered car.
Only electric cars.
So Bjorn Lomborg has analyzed the effect of the first of the...
Shoveling of hundreds of billions of dollars to the green industry.
Did we ever have anything comparable of the government supporting private industry like this?
I mean, there was a bailout in 2008 of the car industry, of GM. But that was a bailout.
I don't recall anything like this, certainly not in the numbers that we have.
This is all ideological, but it's not clear what the ideology is since it isn't about the planet, because then they would build nuclear plants.
What is it about?
It's about disruption.
When you think about who will be affected as a result of the moving over to electric cars...
Which I find it impossible to believe that we will be able to sustain if technology is comparable to what it is today.
With lithium, with batteries, the amount of earth that needs to be dug up in order to make one 1,000-pound battery for a typical electric car.
But I will tell you how little the impact of all of this is when we return.
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Hi, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
So I want you to know, with all these draconian things happening, The hundreds of billions of dollars being corruptly spent by the government, meaning taking my money and your money, to fund green energy, when we could be self-sustaining, that is the root of our inflation.
Spending so much on energy, and it's not because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
That may be true in Europe, but in the United States, we were self-sufficient under Donald Trump.
Fracking is one of the major reasons, and fracking is much less carbon-intensive.
It's one of the great inventions of the contemporary era.
The U.S. has substantially reduced its carbon emissions over the past 15 years, unlike most other nations on this planet.
This is largely owing, this is Bjorn Lomborg in the Wall Street Journal.
This is largely owing to the fracking revolution that replaced a lot of America's coal with natural gas, which is cheaper and cleaner.
Even without the new law, the U.S. was on track to cut emissions substantially by 2030. Averaging their high and low emission predictions, the U.S. would drop emissions by almost 30% absent, absent the new law.
With the new law, emissions will decline instead by a little over 37%.
The, quote, most significant legislation in history, unquote, will actually cut emissions by less than 8 percentage points.
Complete disruption of the economy.
The increase in the national debt.
For cutting emissions less than 8 percentage points.
If you plug the predicted emissions decline into the global model, the climate model, used for all major UN climate reports, it turns out the global temperature will be cut by, I'm going to have you guess, what degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century?
Okay, all the emissions declines will affect the temperature by the end of 2020, no, excuse me, by the end of the century, by 2099, by 2100, 78 years from now.
Okay, you know by how much?
Would you say 5 degrees?
Would you say four?
Do I hear three, two, one?
Would you think it was worth it to cut the temperature by one degree?
All of this is disruption economically, politically, personally?
Here's the answer.
Not one degree.
Point zero.
Zero.
Zero.
9 degrees.
I'm leaving silence so that you can get off the floor and resume listening.
um This is assuming the law's emissions reductions end when its funding does after 2030. But even if you charitably assume they'll somehow be sustained through 2100, let's say it's all sustained till 2100, the impact on global temperature will still be almost unnoticeable at 0.028 degree Fahrenheit.
If all of these emissions continue, we're not continuing all these emissions laws.
They're not continuing in Europe.
They're bankrupting their people.
80% increase in energy costs for the average Britain.
For no good reason.
Because fanatics, crackpot bad fanatics called environmentalists are screwing their lives and laughing their way to the bank as the governments subsidize them.
And send them on international trips, sometimes in their own planes.
They have a great life, these big-time environmentalists.
They think they're saving the planet.
Well, they're ruining it.
All for.0...
What is that?
.28.
You have to remember that.
.028 Fahrenheit.
The law will similarly have little effect on the sea level.
A model that calculates changes in ocean levels predicts waters will be somewhere between.006 and.08 inch lower in 2100 than they would have been without the Inflation Reduction Act.
So it has no effect.
Didn't they say it goes higher?
And he says it goes lower, the sea levels?
Hmm.
Predicts waters will be somewhere between.006 and.08 inch lower in 2100. Wow.
Three-fourths of all emissions in the rest of this century will come from what are today developing countries, especially China, India, and nations in Africa.
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You gotta hear this one, my friend.
This story typifies what has happened to America because of the left as well as any.
It's a report.
When did this come out?
Let's see.
Is this yesterday's report?
August 25th.
What is today?
August 28th.
29th?
Yes, the 29th.
So this came out last week, the end of last week.
A local Dallas station, WFAA. Is that correct?
ABC affiliate?
Okay, that's what I needed.
It's odd that it doesn't say it anywhere on the page.
Yeah, it does on the top left.
Yeah, all right, doesn't matter.
So this is from what we call a mainstream news source.
Dallas Podcast Conference apologizes, quote, for the presence, unquote, of conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro.
The world's largest podcast conference, holding an event in Dallas, apologized Thursday, so, as I said at the end of the week, last week, for the presence of a conservative podcaster who showed up at his company's booth.
The Podcast Movement Conference brings together some of the top and most popular podcast companies and voices every year.
In 2022, the conference is being held at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel in downtown Dallas.
Thursday morning, the conference tweeted an apology before the session started for the day.
Movement apologized for Daily Wire co-founder and conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro being at the conference, saying, quote, We take full responsibility for the harm done by his presence.
One of the most popular podcasters in America and one of the most popular American podcasters in the world.
They apologized for the harm.
Do they specify what harm?
I read it and I don't recall.
What harm did he create?
I'm looking at the source you sent me last night.
But I don't have the tweets.
I have the article.
That doesn't matter.
This is what the podcast movement sent.
That's the name of this podcast company.
Hi, folks.
We owe you an apology before sessions kick off for the day.
Yesterday afternoon, Ben Shapiro briefly visited the PM, that's the podcast movement, 22 Expo area near the Daily Wire booth.
Though he was not registered or expected, we take full responsibility for the harm done by his presence.
The Daily Wire, which is a conservative news website and media company, did have a booth near the PM22 Expo area, according to Podcast Movement.
It's most known for its podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show.
Yep.
Let's see.
They had a follow-up tweet.
There's no way around it.
We agreed to sell The Daily Wire, a first-time booth based on the company's large presence in podcasting.
The weight of that decision is now painfully clear.
Shapiro was a co-founder.
A drop-in, however unlikely, should have been considered a possibility.
In other words, they regret inviting, no, not inviting, allowing the Daily Wire to have a booth at the podcast movement conference.
Young people should know that never in American history did we have anything analogous since Let's put it that way.
In terms of suppression of free speech, we've never had it like this.
Ben Shapiro showed up and these cowards at the podcast movement leadership apologized for his coming there, just being present.
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Hello everybody and welcome to or welcome back to the Dennis Prager Show.
I'm immediately going to go to my guest by phone.
He's in prison.
He was, January 6th, he was present at the Capitol.
And he's been arrested and he's been in prison.
We will find out how long in a moment.
I spoke to him about a half year ago.
He is still there.
His name is John Mellis.
M-E-L-L-I-S. And we have three subjects to talk about, beginning with him.
So, John, I don't normally say, how are you?
Because it's just the American way, which is fine, of saying hello.
But in your case, I really want to know, how are you?
Well, in general, I'm not doing well.
I'm extremely depressed and heartbroken with everything that's going on in my situation and so many of our situations, several dozen of us.
But I'm full of hope, and I've been drawn closer to God and to my walk with Him throughout this journey.
First of all, I just want to thank you so much, Mr. Prager, for having me on the show and for really caring about the treatment of us January Sixers, especially the dozens of us here in the D.C. jail.
It has been horribly inhumane, and I hope we can shed light on this issue so this never happens to American citizens again.
I can go through a list of some pretty serious violations of human rights.
I want you to, actually.
I just want people to know that It is painful to me, and I'm not easily in pain, but it is painful to me to think that my beloved America has political prisoners.
But it does, and it's the first time in my life that I have ever used the term with regard to America, just like the Soviet Union did.
But we have Soviet types.
They're called leftists.
They are indistinguishable from the Soviet left.
I'm not talking about liberals.
They're just weak.
But I'm talking about the left.
So, first, before the conditions in the prison, please tell me how long you've been there and how long do they expect to keep you there?
So I've been locked up about 19 months so far with no bond.
Do I still have you?
No.
We lost the line?
That's odd.
I wonder if the prison authorities are not happy with the speaking.
Any idea, Sean, what might have happened?
Interesting.
thing.
19 months.
Without bond.
People with armed robbery.
People who beat people up in the street.
People who wreck entire businesses.
They're out.
I don't understand.
I would help raise the money for the bond.
But they don't...
I don't understand.
There's no bond.
Does he threaten this country like the leftists who ruined so many cities in 2020?
How many of them are in prison for 19 months?
Well, I don't know what happened, my friends.
Are we trying to reestablish a connection, Sean?
Yeah, so, well, look, there is another line he could get in.
I mean, there's no...
This is disturbing to me that this happened.
It's hard for me to believe they're not monitoring the call at the D.C. prison.
I'm sure they are.
Wow.
John Mellis saw a woman beaten and trampled to death, tried to save her by getting officers off her, and for that he was put in prison with no bond.
I assume the man doesn't have any rap sheet like all these people, these violent criminals, who ironically also have no bond.
They don't have to pay anything and they're just out.
He can't pay something and get out.
Well, the woman that was killed that day was less well-known than Ashley Babbitt.
She's named Roseanne Boyland.
John, do you have any idea what happened?
We have you back.
Yes, sir.
Well, the phone's got cut off for just a second.
I'm not sure exactly what happened, but sometimes this happens when there's an incident, and to be honest with you, it was just an incident.
There was earlier about...
15 minutes ago, there was a lady came in with, it's called ERT, Emergency Response Team, which is like basically the internal SWAT team, the guards that are geared up and they have masks on and they hid their name tags and they didn't acknowledge their names.
And they came in and they took two Jamfixers Discovery out of their cell, their memory cards and their flash drives.
So that they, which is all their evidence for their trials and their cases.
I'm just getting the details of what happened specifically, but I do know they went into two men's cells.
All right.
Okay, look, you're the issue right now.
So, again, you were there 19 months.
Is there a trial date set?
I have no trial date set yet.
I have still yet to have a bond hearing, so I'm going to be going up for that hopefully in the next few weeks, but it keeps getting continued for various reasons.
For nearly the last 19 months, about a year of it has been spent on solitary confinement.
No visitations or video visitations for any of us.
We have witnessed occasional beatings by racist correctional officers.
One time, guards went into a man's cell in the middle of the night, zip-tied his hands and feet, and beat him within an inch of his life.
He still can't see totally out of one of his eyes.
Another one just a month ago was Garrett Miller.
They opened his door and yelled at him to put his mask on while he was inside his cell.
They put him in handcuffs, and then they yanked those handcuffs way up above his head, his wrists.
Nearly ripping his arms out of his sockets, carried him down the stairs and out of the pod.
This is the kind of thing we've had a man, Jake Lang, punched in the gut and his head slammed on the wall for singing the national anthem.
There's threats of violence regularly.
We've had our food poisoning, cleaning chemicals before.
And the poisoning of the food happens at certain times when this jail gets into trouble with the courts.
One man had cancer, and they were refusing him medical treatment, so the jail got held in contempt.
And they were falsifying his medical documents and things like that, so they got held in contempt.
The next day, our food was spiked with bleach or some kind of cleaning chemicals.
There's black mold everywhere.
The brown, stinky water out of our sinks, when we push the button to get water, can be brown, yellow, it smells putrid.
The grievance process here is completely broken.
There is no due process.
You can't complain about anything.
We know the administration clearly hates us because we are Trump supporters, as evident by Deputy Warden Kathleen Landerkin's own tweets and social media posts that she's now deleted.
But she had dozens of them where she was saying that...
She can't wait for white men to go extinct and that F all Trump supporters and things of this nature.
She's the deputy warden?
The deputy warden, yes, sir.
Wow.
Is she still in that position?
Oh, of course.
I'm surprised they haven't given her a...
Who was the chief warden?
Oh, I'm not.
There's so many names.
There's deputy wardens, wardens, there's directors.
I see.
Do you have a public defender?
I had a public defender.
I fired him late last year.
He hated all of us.
He hated me.
He hated Trump.
He was very clear about that all the time.
He was putting me down in our meetings whenever he would meet me.
He really, really, really neglected me.
And he, I, along with a dozen, the real big issue that I want to talk with you today about is Roseanne Boyland.
People on our side need to know that Roseanne Boyland was murdered on January 6th in the tunnel.
And there's at least a dozen men in here that witnessed that and tried to help, me included, and were being threatened with 5, 10, 15 years in prison.
And we watched this happen.
Everyone was screaming for help.
The evidence is clear.
The footage is clear.
It's already been released.
We are very...
Okay, we're going to continue.
John, we've got to take a break.
And I need to know how more I can help you.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Hi, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
I'm speaking with an American political prisoner, John Mellis, who's a D.C. prison, 19 months, for being in the nation's capital on January 6th, being accused of hitting a guard while trying to save the life of a woman, a demonstrator in there who was beaten and trampled to death.
There's a video of it.
it, you can judge it for yourself.
I consider him a political prisoner.
I asked you if you had a lawyer, specifically public defender.
Apparently you did.
And just to recap what you said, it was someone who hated Trump and therefore hated you.
Is that correct?
Yes, sir.
I fired him late last year because...
He finally admitted to me.
He bounced around the issue for quite a while.
All year, really.
He never addressed it.
But he finally told me that in his belief, Roseanne Boylan got what she deserved.
So I fired him that day.
And I was luckily helped by the readers at the Gateway Pundit.
Really, really, really helped me.
The great American people helped me raise the money to afford.
Before the time is up because the prison allows you a limited time, how can people help you?
Well, if you would like to know, if you would like to help me or any of these other men or get to know us better in our own words and to get to know the story of Roseanne Boyland...
The reporting, the great reporting that's been done by Kara Castronova and other people, go to wearegoodmen.com.
That's very easy to remember, wearegoodmen.com, and it'll also have information on that website, not only testimonials by us at Jan Sixers and reporting on Roseanne Boylan.
But also information on the nightly vigil that Ashley Babbitt's mother we affectionately call Mama Mickey.
She has been holding nightly vigils all through August and September now, she's decided, every night from 7 to 9.30.
Where does she hold the vigil?
She holds it in front of the D.C. jail over by the Congressional Cemetery.
And there's also several live streamers that are there every night.
So if you're across the country and you want to follow on the live stream, if you go to wearegoodmen.com, there's a list of some of the live streamers.
And by the way, let me just tell my listeners, there's a link to that at dennisprager.com.
So you don't even have to remember the name.
Either way, go directly or through dennisprager.com.
Continue, John.
Yes, sir.
And one other website I'd like to plug for Mama Mickey because she is so near and dear to all of our hearts.
She is absolutely amazing.
It's 4Ashley.com.
It's the number 4Ashley with an I.com.
4Ashley.com.
She is with us.
Her spirit is with us every day.
And Mama Mickey, I have got to tell you, she has been organizing these vigils outside the D.C. jail for us for August and September.
She is clearly the spiritual leader of the Jan Sixers.
We all love her.
And it has been one of the great joys of my life to get to know her personally over the last decade.
You're a good man.
I mean, you keep deflecting the attention onto others.
I want to go back to you now.
I'm very happy you mentioned Ashley Babbitt's mother and that you mentioned the woman whom you saw killed in front of you, Roseanne Boyland.
Back to you.
How long were you in solitary confinement?
I think it's like 270 days or something like that, so it's almost a year.
I mean, it's close to a year of 23 hours in your cell, and the max we got was two hours out.
So it was 23 or 22 hours in our cell straight every day.
With no contact with another prisoner or anyone else?
No visitors?
No, sir.
Yeah, no visitors.
Oh, visits.
See, this is one of the craziest things in my experience is that through all of this, all year, the abuses, the beatings, the solitary confinements, the poisoned foods, no video visitation and no physical visitation.
We have no visit.
We watch the other parts of the jail get visitation.
Contact visits and video visits.
We are not allowed.
I have not seen my loved ones' faces in over a year and a half.
My girlfriend, my son, I have a 14-year-old son.
His voice is changing.
He's taller than me now, from what people say.
I miss my family dearly.
One of the things I wanted to touch on is with the Roseanne Boylan situation, there's a dozen of us that witnessed.
Her being beaten unconscious on the ground.
And we're sitting here, and without visitation, without being able to contact, we have no bond.
We have mental health issues, and I'm going to say specifically, look, the screams for help, the screams of bloody murder that her friend and many other people were screaming there in that hallway while the cops were beating her unconscious body haunt me at night.
I need to speak to my family.
I need to speak to even a therapist.
I need some help coping with this is insane.
They've locked me in a black mold infested brown watered sink box for a year and a half and with occasional beatings from racist correctional officers.
I have no ability to get over the trauma that we all experienced that day.
I mean, the video is clear.
Officer Lila Morris beat Roseanne Boyland with a stick while she was unconscious on the ground.
There's other witnesses that were unconscious on the ground.
Tommy Tatum, Phillip Anderson.
They were unconscious.
They were on the bottom of this, underneath the cop's feet and the pile of people that were being pushed over.
They are out there speaking out, but people on our own side of the aisle are not even aware.
of the name Roseanne Boylan, and we need to do everything we can.
Please go to wearegoodmen.com.
There's a lot of reporting at the bottom of that page on the Roseanne Boylan situation, and spread that information.
Make it go viral.
We need everyone to know what happened to Roseanne Boylan and what they're doing to at least a dozen detainees because we witnessed what happened to her.
It is...
5, 10, 15 years in prison?
We tried to help.
Mama Mickey has come out and she is speaking out for us.
She is here 7 to 9.30 every night in front of this jail.
The live streams on that website.
Please, please, please show your support.
Come out.
Watch the live streams.
We need Steve Bannon to be covering this more than he is.
We need Julie Kelly to be covering this more than she is.
We love them both, but they're not covering it the way that they should be right now.
We need them.
Mama Mickey needs you.
We need you.
We need you.
Do you have a lawyer now?
Yes, sir.
I have an amazing lawyer right now.
I'm happy with him.
Would you do me a favor?
Please email me his contact.
I want to talk to him.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Absolutely.
We should have him on, Alan.
When I was much younger, I was active on behalf of Soviet dissidents, I went to the Soviet Union.
I smuggled out letters from Soviet dissidents and the thought never occurred to me that I would be speaking to an American dissident.
John Mellis is in prison now 19 months for January 6th.
He's not the only one.
He has spent almost a year in solitary confinement, which is, I do not consider waterboarding torture.
I consider it terror, but not torture.
I consider solitary confinement torture.
For the record, I have spoken out against solitary confinement in general well, well before January 6th.
In the rarest of cases of mass murderers who threaten other prisoners with death, It may be necessary, but in general, it is just torture.
Do you have reading material?
Yes, sir.
At this point, we've been down a long road of getting all the things that we, you know, some of the things that we need and things like reading material and all the things.
But it's been a year and a half, so now we have books.
I'm actually rereading Jordan Peterson's Twelve...
12 Rules for Life.
He's one of my heroes.
Yes, he's worthy of being one of your heroes.
I adore that man.
I'm with him a lot.
And to know him intimately is to know that everything that people who don't know him personally think is accurate.
He's a special human being.
As indeed you are, do you get to speak to your son?
I speak to him with phone calls.
I feel, yes, I get to speak to him.
I feel terrible when I do, but yes, I speak to him.
If it would help for me to speak to him and tell him what a special man his father is, I would be happy to do that for you, John.
Well, that would be the world to me.
I respect you so much.
I said about Jordan Peterson being one of my heroes, but you are as well.
I'm actually very, very honored.
Thank you so much.
Well, that's fine, and I'm very moved.
But I mean it about your son.
I think it's important that he know that, unfortunately, his country has hurt his father inexplicably terribly.
I am going to speak to your lawyer as well.
I'm going to have your lawyer on my show, by the way.
I will do whatever I can for you.
I will be in Washington in the very beginning of October for the release of the next volume of my Bible commentary.
Now that I know about this vigil, I'm going to try to see if I can get there during my short stay in Washington.
So, right now...
Is everything in limbo?
I mean, is nothing happening with you?
Yes, sir.
Everything's in limbo.
I have no trial date set.
My new lawyer, we filed our bond motion in late December, and that was in late December.
And it's just been postponed and continued for various reasons.
It is now, you know, almost September.
We have a bond hearing set for September, late September, but we'll see because it's kind of a running joke, a very sad running joke with my friends and family that it's going to get postponed again.
Would you like to hear from listeners, just to write you via email, would that be of help to you?
Yes, sir.
The address here is...
1901 East...
Southeast...
Oh, man.
I'm spacing.
E Street.
Southeast...
Oh, you know what?
Maybe we'll put it up on DennisPrager.com.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
1901 Southwest E Street.
E Street.
Washington, D.C. 200. Right, so there's no email.
There's only snail mail.
Yes, sir.
There is text messages if you get the Getting Out app, and there is text messages on a tablet.
All right, well, please know you have a big supporter in me, and we will be in touch, and I will do whatever I can.
John Mellis, believe it or not, you are a hero, too.
You need to know that.
So, God bless you.
Okay, everybody.
It was very tough.
Hello, my friends.
Dennis Prager here.
Hope you had a good weekend.
I'm still recovering from my talk last hour with the January 6th prisoner.
We have political prisoners.
We beat them.
The left is turning this country into what it turned Russia into in 1917. If they continue to dominate, we will become like the Soviet Union in terms of suppression of speech, suppression of rights, jailing of dissidents, you name it.
I don't foresee mass murder like in the Gulag, but everything else I foresee.
That took place in the Soviet Union, should the left be allowed to continue?
And the battle is with the liberal.
The liberal has no values that the left has, but was so taught to fear the right that they vote for the Democrats, who are no longer liberal, but leftist.
On a lighter note, just want to share with you a piece of news from the weekend.
The rookie Mickey Mantle card of 1952 was sold for a record of all sports memorabilia of over $12 million, because it was in fine shape, 91 out of 100. They rate the condition of these things, like coins and baseball cards.
I just want you to know that I think...
My brother had that card.
Just for the record, my brother would have been nine years old when the card came out.
He was a big collector of baseball cards, and he had a mother, same one as I have, or had, and I suspect she threw it out.
You have to laugh.
These are the forks in life.
And as Yogi Berra said in a great Yogi Berra-ism, when you come to a fork, take it.
I get a kick out of that.
Do you know when I saw the picture of that baseball card, I can't tell you how nostalgic I felt.
Now, I was too young to remember that year, but there were similar cards in future years.
I love baseball cards.
Not only do kids not collect baseball cards as a general rule today, as opposed to my generation and even the one after me, probably, but they're...
I wonder, you may know this, are kids decreasingly interested in baseball?
Do you think that's been true for a long time?
Well, if it's been true for a long time, it doesn't bode well for the future of baseball.
You know, it needs fans.
One generation of baseball fans leaves this world, and a new generation would take it over.
I am now going to...
The card is now on my TV screen?
Oh, look at that.
Can the viewer see it?
Yeah.
If you watch this on...
What is it?
Salem Podcast...
Salem News Channel.
Okay.
Salem News Channel.
There's the card.
Mickey Mantle.
If the most famous player was Babe Ruth, is he the second most famous player?
In other words, even non-baseball people would know those two names.
And they were both New York Yankees.
Although the Red Sox got rid of him.
Babe Ruth.
Yeah, Babe Ruth.
That's what I meant.
9.5.
Wow.
Tops, yeah.
Is Tops still in business?
We'll find out.
Well, anyway, oh yes, I was about to tell you a baseball piece.
My producer knows everything about me.
So I wonder if you know this.
Do you know that my dad took me to one Brooklyn Dodger game?
Because I was very young when they went to L.A. But did you know he took me to one?
Do you know what happened at that game?
Yeah, not only somebody hit a home run.
So I mentioned this to somebody, Joe Adcock.
The then-Milwaukee Braves hit a ball at that game over the roof of Ebbets Field, the Dodger Stadium in Brooklyn.
It was the only time I think it ever happened.
I was there the only time I was ever in Ebbets Field.
Do you have any image of the home run?
Yes, I do.
Do I have an image of the home run?
Yes.
I think it was over the left field roof.
Somebody looked it up, and sure enough, I was eight, which makes perfect sense.
In other words, my memory was accurate.
I don't know.
Oh, yeah, he didn't take me to more games, I guess, because they moved to L.A. Although it was not part of his...
To say that my father was not a helicopter parent...
Or my mother.
Is to understate the case considerably.
And they went too far in one direction, but let me tell you something.
Far, far better to be under-helicoptered than over-helicoptered.
I think part of the strength that I have in my nature is part of my nature.
I don't take credit for it.
I don't take credit in either case.
But I do believe as well my upbringing.
I was so not pampered.
Very important lessons in that.
Alright, well indeed.
Oh yeah, so the affidavit has been out.
It's redacted.
Was it most of it is redacted?
Like the whole middle section is blacked out?
It blackened out.
So I spoke to an American prisoner, political prisoner, John Mellis, last hour from his Washington, D.C. cell for being in the January 6th events.
Insurrection is a gigantic lie, but the left always lies.
And I mean always, because truth is not a left-wing value.
One of the ways of proving it is not a left-wing value is when you say something, for example, I am writing a column today that will come out tomorrow, my Tuesday column, and it is about the disproportionate damage done by women in society today.
So many of them are ruining children in elementary school.
So many of them are the woke pushers at medical schools and hospitals.
So many of them are the woke pushers at universities.
Women are doing a lot of damage.
And what will the left say about my column?
That it's misogynist.
It's women hating.
What does this have to do with truth?
They don't ask, is what this man wrote true?
They ask, is it sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, or bigoted?
They don't ask, is something true?
They dismiss it as immoral.
They don't care if it's true, because truth is not a left-wing value.
So, what we're having with the Department of Justice The ex-president, he took documents with him from the White House, and they're thinking of preparing an indictment after impeaching him twice.
If any of this had been done by Republicans against a Democratic president, this country would be convulsed in riots.
Convulsed.
When the Democrats yell like the Secretary of State in Colorado is running for re-election, Republicans threaten this democracy.
It is identical to what the Communists would do, charge their opponents with what they did.
Identical.
You have to understand that the last few years have had a deep impact on me, none of which has been positive.
I remain a happy guy, joy-filled in life, but I am not the same exactly as I was a few years ago.
And one of my big realizations is I no longer blame Russians alone for communism.
Americans would do the same thing.
So I already wrote a column a few months ago that Canada is the new Cuba.
I'll see you next time.
That's how left-wing Canada is.
It's funded.
It is headed by Justin Trudeau.
His father would be very proud of his son, Pierre.
And Justin is a big Castro admirer.
And is making Canada into Cuba.
The latest incredible stuff.
I mean, you almost need a translator to read this piece in the CBC, which is a spokesperson for the left government that exists in Canada.
The federal government unveiled what it described as a historic first on Sunday.
What is it?
A five-year, $100 million plan to support 2SLGBT communities across the country.
Actually, that's not accurate.
It's 2SLGBTQI+. You're wondering what 2S means, aren't you?
It's hard to keep up, I will admit.
2S is two-spirit.
It's a reference to Canada's indigenous people.
So they're unveiling this program to support indigenous lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered, queer, and intersex people.
Plus.
Plus, that's correct.
By the way, just as a...
A favor to the left.
I think that you should now adopt just A to Z. You will soon run out of letters.
2SLGBTQIA+. That's a mouthful.
Just say A to Z. And I think you've covered your bases.
Yep.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled the strategy dubbed Canada's first federal 2SLGBTQI plus action plan at a news conference on Sunday ahead of the Pride Parade in Ottawa.
If somebody applied in Canada or the US, but especially Canada, to have a Nuclear Family Pride Day, do you think they'd get a permit?
No, I'm not kidding.
I'm being totally serious.
If somebody wanted to celebrate a nuclear family, which means a mom, dad, and children, a married mom, dad, and children, how would that go over at the CBC? Would it be considered a bigoted, hate-filled, non-inclusive?
However, I suspect that that's more inclusive than LGBTQIA+, or excuse me, 2SLGBTQIA+.
Hmm.
These...
These pride things.
This is all manufactured causes.
That's all this all is.
Secularism plus affluence equals boredom equals leftism.
That is the most important equation you could know after E equals MC squared.
This is what this is all a product of.
Poor countries don't have this stuff.
Poor countries are not battling climate change.
They're battling poverty.
That's why poor countries are using fossil fuels.
It's a very bad thing to have affluence and boredom.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This is what it produces when you have a secular, remember it's secularism plus affluence equals boredom leads to leftism.
It is as true as E equals MC squared and much more important in terms of The way humans function.
Right.
Trudeau said 75% of the funding will go toward community organizations focused on diversity and inclusion.
Yes, that's what counts.
Diversity and inclusion.
Then there's another thing they're doing.
Listen to this from the CBC. Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity.
Sexual diversity.
It's not even gender diversity anymore.
It's now sexual diversity.
It's a Canadian centre.
That they are now banning conversion therapy as America has.
That's right.
If you're gay and you would like...
Whether you're a lesbian or a gay man, and you would like to see a therapist, because you would like to work through that, and perhaps, if you can, lead a straight life, the therapist will be imprisoned.
Be back in a moment.
Hello, my friends!
In August...
Which is fundraising month for PragerU, Prager University.
The highlight is when I get to speak to members of PragerForce from around the world.
Young people from high school age through mid-twenties, or even late-twenties perhaps, 20,000 around the world, and they're very impressive.
So, I'm delighted to introduce you to Xavier Duruso.
He's a Prager Force member living in the Bay Area of California, which is San Francisco Bay Area.
Xavier, welcome to my show, and good to meet you.
Hello, thank you for having me, and likewise.
Wonderful.
So, off the air, just saying hello to you, I asked you...
Why someone with your values is in the Bay Area.
I asked you if you're a masochist.
So my first question is, you're a black conservative in the Bay Area.
The only thing missing, and I'm not sure it's missing, is we'd be a black gay conservative.
Then you really have covered all bases.
Do you have kindred spirits or are you a loner?
To clarify, I'm not gay, but I am a loner out here.
I grew up in a conservative area in Illinois, ironically, and then I moved out to San Francisco Bay Area and became a conservative.
That's great.
That's worthy of a book.
By the way, I didn't imply you were gay.
I only was saying, which would be a non-issue in any event, but I just want to say that then you've really, then I thought you'd really be alone.
Tell me though, are you?
The alone question is still applicable.
You know, I wouldn't say I'm alone.
There's a lot of people in this area who do feel the same way that I do, but they just don't feel like they can voice their opinion.
They don't feel like they can speak up because it's become normalized in this area to censor and to be quiet whenever it is that you stand on values and truth.
But I've been helping more people stand firm in what it is that they believe and realizing that...
Not everybody out here is a liberal.
Not everybody out here believes the narrative that there are a thousand genders.
Yes, that's well said.
So why did you move out from Illinois?
I moved here just for work reasons and because I thought the culture and the Bay Area would be much more woke, which was what I was at the time that I came here.
Whoa, that's interesting.
Until what age were you woke?
It was until I was 23. It was ironically in the height of the George Floyd fiasco that I accidentally red-pilled myself.
Oh, well, I gotta hear that story.
How did that happen?
So I was a BLM activist for many, many years.
I built a platform as a BLM activist and I ended up getting casted for a reality show where I was going to teach people how to be an ally of BLM and such.
And I decided I wanted to study the counter arguments.
It all started when I saw a Candace Owens video that made me so mad.
I just couldn't get it out of my head.
So I tried to become a pro debater and I actually went up against the PragerU videos.
I listed out all the different just details and...
You know, I'm speechless.
This is about as dramatic a story as I have heard, and I've heard many wonderful stories.
You're 25. Did you hear that, folks?
We've got to send you around for fundraising.
I'm not kidding.
Your story, that you set out to debunk PragerU videos and ended up conservative.
Am I not putting words in your mouth, correct?
That is fully correct.
It's interesting because I found PragerU because I'm Gen Z, so I'm all about finding what is brief but also extremely comprehensive.
So it was very...
Easy for me to find different videos on PragerU's website and just try to prove all of them wrong.
But PragerU was so thorough with the information that literally the truth was exposed in 4K. There was nothing that I could do to debunk when fact after fact was there, source after source was there.
Months of me getting ready to go on that reality show, I just continued to be mind-blown by the fact that the police brutality narrative was completely fraudulent.
I was just blown beyond belief that the fact that BLM was hoarding all of this money and doing nothing for the black community.
And it led me to just totally transforming my perspective of myself as an individual, as a young American, but especially as a black American.
All right, we're going to continue.
Xavier DeRusso.
Please, folks, if this doesn't compel you to donate, prageru.com, 833-PRAGER-U. Hey, everybody, Dennis Prager here.
I'm speaking to Xavier Duruso in the San Francisco area.
He's 25 years old.
Until two years ago, he was quite the leftist.
He was going to go on a TV reality show as a pro-BLM black supporter.
And then decided to debunk PragerU videos.
And the rest is history as they were.
Now he's on my show.
And a member of PragerForce.
I want you to know, Xavier...
That when I meet people like you, it's very important that they understand that while obviously something like PragerU, in this case, gets a lot of credit, so you get at least as much credit.
See, it is to your credit that you were open to facts.
I mean, it's not easy to undergo a sea change.
There's a book you might want to read.
It's called, what was it, The God That Failed, right?
The God That Failed, it was written in the 1940s or 50s by people who believed in communism, like Christians believe in Christianity.
These people believed in communism.
And then they saw the truth about what communism did.
And they wrote this book, The God That Failed.
It's a very tough thing what you did.
Thank God you did it at 23 and not at 53, because then you would have felt how much of your life you wasted on the left.
So I just want you to know how much respect you have for me for having an open enough mind to actually change it.
Well, thank you so much.
I appreciate that.
And people ask if it was easy for me to just accept that something I was so passionate about.
I was wrong about.
And it wasn't.
I punched a lot of air.
I was definitely humbled.
It was a big blow to my ego.
But I knew that if I wanted to truly stand on values and truth the way that I said that I did, that I had to just accept that maybe I was wrong.
And the more I accepted that, the more hungry I became to wake other people up and educate other people.
And now I've seen so many people have similar journeys to me.
How have your family and friends reacted to your change?
It's everywhere in between that you can imagine.
I have some people who I've been able to enlighten them as well, and they now have similar values and beliefs as me, and I have some that are totally on the other side of the spectrum.
I have family members that have excommunicated me, essentially, because I don't support things like BLM, and I don't just support the left-wing blindly anymore, and you know, that's okay.
I continue to be gracious to them, and I hope that...
As they listen to me and they hear the information that I have to say, maybe I can plant seeds that are enough for them to one day look into it for themselves.
These relatives who remain on the left, I just want to say don't say yes to be nice to me.
This is a curiosity question.
Would you characterize them on the whole as generally angry?
Yes, I would say that.
A lot of bitterness.
And I've actually even asked siblings of mine that still feel the way that they feel.
I'm like, why is it that you are so angry and bitter towards whether it's white people or whether it's the police?
I'm like, what has been done to you?
And I ask them, I'm like, if you feel like you are oppressed as a black man or a black woman, what is it that you can't do that a white person can do?
And they never have answers for me, and that's usually where the conversation will end.
And, you know, the more that that conversation starts and stops, eventually, one day, I do pray that it's going to continue flowing and that maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle.
I've been broadcasting, Xavier, for 40 years.
This month is my anniversary.
And periodically, a black caller would call, and...
I mean, many black callers who call agree with me, but black callers who don't agree with me would periodically call and would say something like this.
Dennis, you haven't walked in my shoes.
You don't know how much racism I encounter on a daily basis.
Something exactly like I just said.
And I would then, respectfully, it was not to be cute or trick them, I'd say, do you mean daily, literally?
And they would say yes.
So I would say, this happened on many occasions, I would say, so give me an example of the racist incident that you encountered today.
And just like you said, there was no answer.
And then when they said, well, you know, either today's not over or, well, not today exactly, I'd say, okay, yesterday, last week.
There wasn't any.
It's like a girl who got up at a speech that I gave to high school students a couple of months ago, and she said, I'm a white girl, and my uncle is Hispanic from Cuba.
You don't know how much racism there is against Hispanics.
I said, okay, give me an example.
She said, my uncle was taken out of line by TSA to be inspected again going on a plane.
Isn't that unbelievable?
That's what you're...
This is all to just give you more illustrations of what you just said about those relatives.
Listen...
Yeah, go on.
Yeah.
Oh, sorry.
No, no, no.
What's interesting about that is I would add with the person saying to you that you've never walked in their shoes, but they've also never walked in yours.
I've always found it interesting that there's never a discussion about the racism that sometimes white people endure or being of Jewish community, what you may endure.
And I try to never invalidate people's life experiences, but a lot of times what people mistake as systemic racism might just be someone that is doing their job, or it might just be someone who...
Or there are racist individuals out there, but I encourage people to realize that there's a huge difference between systemic racism and systemic oppression versus just an individual who is ignorant.
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
One final question.
Now that you're meeting conservatives, would you say that as a general rule, we're not particularly racist?
I can definitely say I have been welcomed with very warm, loving arms.
People are so excited just to see someone see a different perspective that they are so encouraging to me.
Everyone has been so encouraging with every organization I'm partnered with here on the conservative side of things.
So it's definitely a change of pace.
All right.
And then I have one more when we come back.
Xavier DeRusso, PragerU, changed his life.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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