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April 25, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:15:24
Elder and Vivek
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
*music* Google is known for its progressive politics, so much so that it has engaged in the suppression of free speech in an unprecedented way in American history in the name of their progressive values, better known as left-wing values.
Equity is a big one.
Equality is a big one.
So, I just found this interesting.
Alphabet, that's the, is Alphabet the owner of Google?
What is Alphabet?
Yes, that's the corporate name.
That's the corporate name, right?
Yeah.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichal, from the Daily Mail, made nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in total compensation in 2022. More than 800 times the median employee's salary.
By the way, as they write, the news of Pichal's big payday has since sparked a conversation after Google employees held walkouts in April and March, over 12,000 layoffs within the company.
A new securities report filed by Google's parent company Alphabet indicates Pichal 50 brought in a whopping $226 million last year.
The notion that the Democrats are the party of the little guy is as obscenely false as men give birth.
And that's the way it is.
$226 million in various forms of compensation from Google.
So what would you do with $226 million?
It's an interesting question.
I think that people in that stratosphere of income don't know what to do with their money.
And I'm not mocking the dilemma.
I actually believe that it is a dilemma for them.
You can't spend it, obviously.
There's no way.
What are you going to do by the U.S. Air Force?
What are you going to do with your money?
And unfortunately, very many, many rich people use it to hurt the country.
Did you hear about the guy who gave tens of millions of dollars to Harvard and they're dropping his name?
Did you see that?
I don't know why, but a very large amount of money.
He's a Republican.
Yeah, Ken Griffin.
Is that Ken Griffin?
And there's a school named after him, or an institute.
They're supposed to.
That's part of the...
Yeah, and they're not doing it.
Did you see that?
I didn't see it.
Yeah, well, that's how I got the story.
Anyway, why would a conservative give any university other than perhaps Hillsdale or some Christian or Jewish university any money?
And it's because a vast number of conservatives don't know what they stand for.
They think conservatism is...
I don't know what they think conservatism is, actually.
Harvard teaches the opposite of everything you stand for, and you give it tens of millions of dollars.
It's because they rather have their name up on a building at Harvard than do good.
That is why.
I'm not saying this is a bad man.
I'm just explaining what he's doing.
The yearning to have one's name is fine.
I don't have a problem with it.
It depends what it's named for.
After all, it is PragerU.
I'm the last one who could say it is wrong to have your name somewhere.
But I presume that PragerU is doing...
Thousands of times more good for human beings than Harvard.
and tens of thousands of times more good than Yale.
It's actually a very fascinating thing when people give to woke institutions like universities when they give them money.
Thank you.
New York Post.
What happens if a stranger attacks you on a Manhattan bus?
Did you see this piece?
You ready for their answer?
This is from the New York Post.
Apparently nothing.
New Yorkers worry about the surge in major violence since the pandemic, but small quote-unquote violence has also exploded, creating an environment of fear.
Isadora Acosta, an architect, was between business meetings March 8th around noon.
After one near Columbus Circle, she stopped at Whole Foods to get groceries and hopped on an M7 bus to drop them off at her Upper West Side home.
If it's doable, I would always choose the bus over the subway, she says, because, quote, there's been so many subway crimes in the middle of the day.
Acosta took a seat behind a man.
Without any prior interaction, the man, who she estimates was in his 50s, started hitting me.
I was completely shocked.
He slapped her several times with both hands.
He was mumbling words.
Acosta didn't understand.
I said to him, I'm sorry, I don't know what I did.
A woman helped her leave the bus at the next stop.
Acosta filed a police report.
The police asked her if she wanted to press charges, and she said yes.
It seemed to me that everything was leading toward some follow-up, she says.
Yet when she called to inquire on progress, the NYPD told her the case was inactive.
With no explanation.
The New York Police Department does not dispute this account.
Acosta's 16-year-old son, Emilio, fears the police aren't investigating because the district attorney has stopped prosecuting such cases, something a family friend detective told them, since there was no blood.
Most of us think hitting someone is assault, but unless a person sustains an injury, under New York law, hitting someone is just harassment.
And hitting someone for no reason, as opposed to because of the victim's gender, race, and so forth, isn't even a misdemeanor.
It's just a violation, meaning police must witness it to write a summons.
What do you think of that?
A man starts beating a woman for no reason on a bus and nothing is done by the authorities.
Nothing.
It's not even a misdemeanor.
It's like a violation.
I guess it's in the realm of jaywalking.
Well, this is the dissolution of a society.
It's no longer broken windows that are tolerated.
It's now battery.
Man should have gone to jail.
I'm quiet because I'm meditating, as it were, on the seriousness of our acceptance of evil. .
It's very important to know what is evil and what is not.
Well, I can't get over that story.
It resonates in my mind.
The woman is...
Just smacked around by another person on a bus.
People see it, she reports it, and nothing is done.
Had the woman said to a transgender person, what is your original name?
And started calling that person by that name, which is called, what is it called?
Dead Named.
Dead named.
Then she might have been prosecuted.
I wonder if that's now a hate crime.
Certainly had she done that on a campus.
I'm not saying that one should do it.
And have you heard about the swimmer, Leah Thomas?
Have you read that?
The one at the University of Pennsylvania?
He's returning to being a male.
Yeah.
I'll report that when we get back.
He said, I've tried this for a long enough time.
Back in the moment.
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Well, I got caught.
Thank God I got caught fast.
I was wrong about the Leah Thomas retransition.
That is, I read it on a website.
And I didn't do my usual diligence.
I am completely at fault for that.
Thank God I caught it immediately.
But while I was looking at it, there was an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer a few days ago.
No, actually yesterday.
Actually today.
Former Penn swimmer Leah Thomas spoke about her experience as a lightning rod.
In the topic of trans athletes on a podcast hosted by another trans athlete, Skylar Baylor, a former swimmer at Harvard.
And Leah Thomas was saying that people didn't have her back.
I'll use her preferred pronoun here.
And they're like, oh, we respect Leah as a woman, as a trans woman or whatever.
We respect her identity.
We just don't think it's fair.
I think you can't really have that sort of half support.
Really.
I wrote a year ago a piece about Leah Thomas being a narcissistic, selfish human being beyond belief.
Leah Thomas proves how weak the human conscience is.
That you can be a male body and defeat women in women's swimming and sleep well at night proves that we shape our conscience.
Not all of us, but most human beings shape their conscience.
Their conscience does not shape them.
It is amazing, it is a phenomenon that Leah Thomas sleeps well at night after depriving women of their fair chance at swimming.
Why are there women's sports?
I would just like to ask this of Leah Thomas.
Hey, you know what?
I'll tell you.
I now have a new answer to a question that many of you have over the years asked me.
So Dennis, if you could have dinner or lunch with anyone in the world, who would it be?
I may now, I usually, you know my answer, right?
My friends.
That's been my answer, and it's been an honest answer.
But the new answer I might consider is Leah Thomas.
It would be a phenomenon for me.
It would be an experience.
And I would ask questions.
Just ask questions.
I wouldn't even argue.
If you can swim against female swimmers, and you think that's fair, why should we have female sports?
I don't know what his, her answer would be.
Do you?
I usually know people whom I differ with what they would answer, but I wouldn't in this case.
How would he, she answer that?
16 Penn teammates sent a letter to the school written by Nancy Hogshead Makar that opposed her participation in championship meets.
Huh.
I didn't know that.
Did you know that?
That 16 Penn teammates sent a letter?
That's good to hear, because we always ask, why don't they fight back?
Thomas said it was hard to feel opposition coming from some teammates who she thought had her back.
Oh, that's it.
So she was disappointed in her teammates.
They're all wrong.
He, she is right.
Anyway, that is the story.
But again, I will say that I will never go to the website that reported this story.
I don't know.
Look, it's a puzzle how people make up things, whatever they are, whether they're on the right or the left.
Yeah, yesterday I told you, I think in the third hour, how much fraud is going on in academia in terms of research.
Over 62% of academic papers on psychology and 39% on economics are not replicable.
Do you understand that?
If it were 5%, it would be a big problem.
62%, that means the great majority of academic papers on psychology are not replicable.
Meaning there's absolutely no way to falsify or verify the thing.
That is why I said to you so long ago, either studies confirm common sense or they're wrong.
That has been my attitude.
So whenever I see studies show, studies show in the New York Times, it's the use of studies to vindicate their position.
That's all it is.
And they have no idea if the study was legit.
And there is reason to believe it was not legit.
Truth is everything.
It is everything.
Okay.
That is the state of our world in which we live.
Okay.
Let's see.
Daniel in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Hello.
Yeah.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
Talking about the Fox News situation.
And if Fox News knew what they were doing, which it appears they don't, they should call Dennis Prager and ask him to fill the Tucker Carlson slot.
I think you would be the perfect fit, and maybe the only fit.
You share the same values, you're entertaining, you are a good interviewer.
I think it would be perfect.
What do you think?
That's very kind of you.
What do you think, Alan?
You think it would be great?
Okay, I was just curious.
I had no idea what he would say.
Well, they're not going to ask me, but it would be actually a very good fit.
That is correct.
So, it would be another way to touch people's lives, which is all I've wanted to do my whole life.
I haven't called them up, and they're not going to be calling me up.
We will take, let's see, do we have somebody scheduled for when we return?
And it's definite, can I say it?
Larry Elder will be on when we come back.
Stay tuned, you're listening to The Dennis Prager Show.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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It is a joy.
You have no idea, by the way, how much of a joy it is.
I think he knows, because...
Let me say this about Larry Elder.
You know the old saying, familiarity breeds contempt?
Well, I am familiar with Larry Elder for decades, and it just breeds more respect.
And he has announced his candidacy for President of the United States.
I look forward to seeing him.
In the public, on the stage of potential nominees for the Republican Party, because he will blow minds.
So Larry Elder, I've got to say, I think that if you're the nominee, I think you've got a great chance of winning.
When you open your mouth, people hear things they have never heard before, in part because of your knowledge and because you make sense.
And with that introduction, welcome.
Well, Dennis, as always, thank you very much for having me.
And by the way, your fingerprints are all over this announcement, as your fingerprints were all over my announcement for governor in the recall election.
By the way, my website is elderforpresident.com, and I'm asking people to throw something in the tip jar.
Before we get started, though, Dennis, if you don't mind, as always, when I listen to your show and say so many things that are provocative, you were talking about Leah Thomas and saying, how can this man sleep at night?
And I could not agree with you more.
Aside from being able to just obliterate women when he was a mediocre swimmer, it seems to me when you decide you're going to compete against women and suddenly you begin destroying them, it seems to me there should be some sort of pang of consciousness that something about this is not right.
The fact that that doesn't seem to be the case with him or her is amazing.
It would be almost as if Joe Louis competed against lightweights or middleweights or welterweights.
In men's boxing, they have categories because they want the competition to be fair.
And somebody really, really heavy can destroy somebody really, really light, irrespective of how good the lightweight fighter is.
The other thing that came up was you're saying that many of the academic studies, when people tried to replicate the results, they couldn't do it.
Probably one of the most famous academic studies in the area of economics, and as you know, I'm a huge fan of economics, is something called the Kruger Card Study.
They're purported to stand conventional wisdom on its head and show that when we jack up the minimum wage, it in fact improves things.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania are adjacent states.
One state raised the minimum wage, the other one didn't.
And the Card-Kruger study purported to show that the state that raised the minimum wage, contrary to conventional wisdom, actually saw an increase in employment.
But when researchers tried to replicate the results, they called employers and asked them for payroll cards.
As opposed to just getting their thoughts about whether or not they hired or didn't hire people.
And it turned out, when they got actual hard evidence, it turned out, just as people would have thought, the state that raised them in a way, relative to the one adjacent to it that did not, suffered in terms of less increased employment.
So it confirmed conventional wisdom.
And that card-cougar study was cited by Democrats.
Up to including Bill Clinton to show that, well, contrary to popular belief, we can raise the minimum wage and it won't do any harm.
And by the way, Milton Friedman once said the minimum wage is the most anti-black law on the statute books because the people most hurt by that are low-skilled black people who can compete based upon willing to charge less for their wages compared to whites.
At one time in 1940, a black teenager was more likely to be employed than a white teenager, something that seems almost impossible today.
Final thing, and I'll shut up, Dennis.
The caller who recommended that you sit in or take over for a Tucker Carlson spot, I couldn't agree more.
You have all the qualities without any of the downsides of some of the talks that host who are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being incendiary.
There's a reason that Don Lemon is gone.
There's a reason some of these other people have gone.
You would be the antidote to all of that.
So hopefully Fox News is listening, and they will give you a call.
Well, I must say, I'm very touched, number one.
Number two, that you could explicate on just three points made in two minutes.
You're like...
You like the biblical exegetes that I use when I write my Bible commentary.
You know, on one verse.
There should be a Larry Elder biblical commentary on current events.
And I mean it.
And you know what?
This reminds me of the great days when you and I were together on radio.
And the joy that both of us had.
So, Larry...
Yeah, okay.
So, obviously we're going to continue.
Larry Elder...
Again, it's elder for president, and I can't think of a more worthy political cause for you to help out in what I know Larry would say this, in whatever amount that you can.
It is a vote for an extraordinary voice in the national debate in our society.
We need this man greatly.
We'll be back with Larry Elder in a moment.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here with Larry Elder, who is running for President of the United States.
And everyone who knows anything about him, which is a vast number of Americans now, know how serious that is.
Alright, so let's get into the nitty-gritty Larry.
What distinguishes your campaign from the other?
And so there are some fine people, thank God.
What distinguishes your campaign?
Well, you're right.
There are fine people, thank God.
We have a very deep bench.
We're lucky to have somebody like Ron DeSantis who might run.
And Donald Trump, of course, has a record he could probably run on.
There are very good people in this race.
What I think I bring to the table that is somewhat different is a couple of things, Dennis.
The Democrats love to take the knife and put it in the mustard of racism and stare it on virtually every issue they can think of.
Making the argument that America remains systemically racist.
They do that because they want black people to be angry, to feel aggrieved, to feel like victims, so that they can say, we wear the white hat in this fight, and these SOBs, Republicans over there, they wear the black hat.
Without getting that nearly 90%, 95% vote from blacks, the Democrats cannot win at the presidential level, so they have to tell black people how oppressed they are.
I can refute that, I think, in ways that perhaps others can't more convincingly and with greater passion.
And this is not just a lie that the police are systemically racist against black people.
A lot of people believe silly lies.
They don't really have any real-world consequence.
This does.
The police are pulling back.
It's called the Ferguson effect or the George Floyd effect.
They're not engaging in proactive policing.
And as a result, one Thompson Royer study found that...
There are literally thousands of people who are dead, who otherwise would be alive, if the police were doing their normal proactive policing job.
It is causing people to get killed.
Climb up in New York, climb up in Chicago, climb up here where we are in Los Angeles, and those who are most hurt by that are the very black people that people on the left support to care about.
You know about my dad's story.
My dad left home at the age of 13. I never met his biological father, so it's not necessarily a death sentence.
Dirt poor.
I mean, literally dirt poor.
Dirt roads in Athens, Georgia, Jim Crow south where he was born.
My dad became a Pullman porter on the trains, which is why he came out to California.
Made a mental note that California seemed less racist because, after all, you could walk through the front door of a restaurant and get served.
My dad made a mental note, maybe someday I relocate to California.
Pearl Harbor, he joins the Marines, gets out, can't get a job.
He ends up cleaning toilets full-time.
And then in his late 40s, Save up enough nickels and dimes to start a small cafe in the Pico Union area.
You met my father, Dennis.
When my dad retired at the age of around 82, he lived to be 95. And my dad died based on the property that he owned where the restaurant was, a little property next to it, plus the houses they have in the family.
My dad's net worth was a little bit under a million dollars.
This is what you can do in America if you work hard, believe in God, believe in family, and believe in patriotism, even as America was not living up to its values.
My dad was a lifelong Republican.
My mom, as you know, Dennis, lifelong Democrat.
And they would have verbal battles over the kitchen table, but nobody accused the other one of being a fascist or only caring about the rich.
They were able to debate issues civilly.
I can do that.
I think I can make some people who are moderate, sane, rational Democrats and independents at least recognize that maybe you don't accept what I'm saying, but you know that I'm coming to the debate in good faith.
The other thing, Dennis, is the absolute thing that all of us, that our side is not talking enough about, and that there's a large number of kids who come into the world in America without a father in the home married to the mother.
40% of all American kids, 70% of black kids, half of Hispanic kids, 25% of white kids, which was the same percentage of blacks back in 1965.
What we've done with our welfare state is we've incentivized women to marry the government and incentivized men to abandon their financial and moral responsibility.
We don't talk enough about that.
So I want everybody who just heard that to imagine a national forum on the debate stage for somebody like Larry Elder or specifically Larry Elder to say that.
I think that this is just groundbreaking stuff for people to hear from you.
For you to make that claim, we're not victims.
Please understand how you're hurt.
I mean, the Ferguson effect and the Floyd effect on policing, why isn't that more persuasive to black America?
Because, Dennis, they haven't heard the argument, which is one of the reasons why I'm running.
Listen to this, Dennis.
A young black man aged 10 to 34 is 13 times more likely to be murdered.
And a young white male, same demographic.
And almost always the murderer is another young black male.
Again, this is because of the lack of fathers in the home.
The media will jump all over it when a white cop kills an unarmed black person.
Never mind the police kill more unarmed whites every year than they kill unarmed blacks.
It is a lie, and therefore the people who believe that lie are completely, totally wrongheaded about it.
It's a magazine called Policemag.com.
And those who are self-described as very liberal were asked, how many unarmed black men did the police kill in 2019?
Then half of the self-described very liberal people thought the police killed 1,000, and 8% thought they killed 10,000.
As to the regular liberal people, 39% thought the police killed 1,000, 5% thought they killed 10,000.
The answer, according to the Washington Post database, was 12.
One, two, 12.
This is how misled people are.
And that's why so many people are angry when they see a news story about a white cop filming an unarmed black person because they have no blooming idea how rare it is.
In a nutshell, I'd love to ask you on every single burning issue, so I'll take one more right now.
Inflation.
Well, inflation, the classical definition is too much money chasing too few goods.
And that's because of all the printing of money over the last several years, paying people not to work, and the war on oil and gas, which has caused our gas prices at one point to double.
Now they're about 50% more than they were at the beginning of Joe Biden's term.
One of the things we can do is increase productivity.
You do that by lowering taxes and lowering regulations.
One of the things that Donald Trump did that made the economy perform so well was to cut regulations.
That's not sexy.
People can't see it.
People don't really see how burdened businesses are by useless, unnecessary burdensome regulations.
So cut regulations, cut taxes, cut the burdens off people who produce things or produce goods and services, stop printing money, and we need to have an amendment to restrain spending.
Yes, all right, hold on there, Larry.
You know well what radio is.
ElderForPresident.com.
We continue.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
We have an embarrassment of riches on the Republican side.
When you compare Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or any of the other people who might run on the Democratic side, Joe Biden has just announced he'll run, and you compare it...
And them to any of the people who have said that they're going to run on the Republican side.
The intellectual, moral, thought gap is so wide that it's almost painful.
One of our terrific people, whom I happen to know, is Vivek Ramaswamy.
And he also has a brand new book out, Capitalist Punishment.
Great title.
How Wall Street is using your money to create a country you didn't vote for.
Yes, Wall Street is using your money to create a country you didn't vote for.
Vivek, how is it going on the campaign trail?
It's going well.
You know, I think I've been traveling on bus tours in New Hampshire and Iowa this week, and that same bus will be in South Carolina this weekend.
And I'm energized, Dennis.
I'll tell you.
I have been through my version of doubt.
In the last few years, doubt about our country.
But I am on the other side of that doubt.
I'm at a place of conviction.
I think we can do this.
And I'm not even just talking about me winning this election.
That's the least of it.
I think we can do this in terms of reviving our missing national soul.
Because people are lost in the desert.
They're lost in the wilderness.
But they're now hungry for something other than the woke orthodoxies that they've been fed over the last few years.
And I think if we in the conservative movement can rise to the occasion.
And paint our vision of the promised land, the individual, the family, the nation, God, the things that the country was actually founded on.
I think the Dennis people are hungry for this.
They're starving for us.
What we actually need is leaders who can step up and deliver it, especially to the next generation of Americans.
I've been surprised, Dennis, about how excited people are about the fact that I'm the first millennial candidate ever to run for president as a Republican.
And we're doing this for the next generation.
And so I'm taking that responsibility seriously.
And, you know, I think that we're at a turning point here if we can actually muster the fortitude to actually lead through it.
Where will you be in South Carolina?
I have a lot of listeners in South Carolina.
Oh, really?
Do you?
We're going to be all over the state, actually.
So we're going to be at a buster.
I'll tell you when we're in each place.
You know, on Thursday, your listeners will probably know.
We're going to be at this county called...
Richland County, they have a GOP convention, so there's something in Columbia.
And then we're heading to Lexington County the following day on Friday, a Moms for Liberty event there.
Then we're going to Spartanburg in Lexington, and we're doing Greenville on Saturday, taking the bus around.
And then we'll go to Baptist Church in Greenville, morning Baptist Church in Greenville on Sunday morning before flying out.
So we'll be over to the state.
Excellent.
So I want to talk to you for a moment about the book.
How Wall Street is using your money to create a country you didn't vote for?
Make that case in a minute or two.
Obviously, that's hard, but you could do it.
Well, here's how it works.
Three financial institutions are BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard.
Just those three manage $20 trillion, more than the U.S. GDP, of your money, of the people listening to this program included.
What they're doing with that money is they're not just buying shares of American companies with your 401k account.
They're also telling those companies to adopt woke policies, environmental and social agendas that A, most of us don't agree with, and B, which cause those companies to actually make less money.
That's a form of a fiduciary breach.
It's like a financial fraud.
And so the point of this book is to allow people to learn what's actually happening with their own money, without their knowledge, with their retirement accounts.
Forcing these companies to adopt these racial and gender and environmental ideologies.
And I think once you see it, Dennis, you can't unsee it.
Knowledge is the key to empowerment.
And so that's why I wrote the book, Not to Make Money.
I'm donating my personal proceeds of this to this nonprofit that's actually pursuing and helping someone pursue litigation against a woke company, American Express.
So that's why I'm in this is for the impact.
But I want to educate people on how their own money is being used to create.
A country literally they didn't vote for, and that's why I named it Capitalist Punishment.
And I wrote this before I knew I was running for president, by the way.
But given that I wrote the book, I still wanted to get it out and educate people and advance the agenda.
It's called Capitalist Punishment, folks, and it's brief and powerful, and it's up at DennisPrager.com.
So I am curious, if BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, American Express, and obviously corporations like Disney, if they're all...
Ruining the country.
I mean, literally ruining it.
Are there any good guys that are big?
Well, I think part of what I see is an ideological cartel where it's not like a monopoly on products.
It's a monopoly on ideas where they punish the defector.
How do they punish the defector?
The big guys like CalPERS, California State Pension Fund, will say they won't give you their big money.
Unless you make a firm-wide commitment to their environmental and social agendas.
So that is why I founded Strive.
I started Strive last year to compete against BlackRock and Vanguard and State Street.
I don't believe in just complaining about the problem.
I believe in solving it.
And not all solutions come through politics.
So that's why I started Strive right smack dab in the middle of Ohio.
And Strive got off the ground quickly.
Raised over $500 million in just the first three months after its first fund.
So I'm incredibly proud of that.
But, Dennis, I'm trying to drive change in every way I can.
Write the books, start the companies, donating the book proceeds to a non-profit, Colorist United, that's working on fighting against the racial equity agenda in these companies.
And they're now running for U.S. president.
I think that's the maximal impact I can have in reviving our culture bottom-up for the next generation.
So there's no silver bullets in reviving this country.
It's going to take an all-of-the-above approach.
Now I'm focused on the presidential campaign, but that's why...
Before, I've been starting the companies I have, like Strive, to compete against BlackRock, but also writing these books to educate the public.
Well, this is terrific.
That's really something, 500 million in the first three months.
Do you think that these people at American Express, for example, do you think they believe in these woke things, or they're cowards?
I think they're cowards.
That's the short answer.
And what they do is they blow woke smoke.
to deflect accountability away from the issues that they would rather not be talking about.
It's not a coincidence that American Express went hard woke after it was under federal investigation for a number of its business practices relating to foisting its cars on small businesses.
It's not an accident that the ESG movement and woke corporate America took off after the 2008 financial crisis when a bunch of big banks got bailouts from the federal government.
So it's a way of deflecting accountability for what they'd rather not be talking about.
That's a big part of what I expose in this latest book, too, is how that infected the financial sector.
And the thing about the financial sector, Dennis, the banks and the asset managers, is that they're upstream of all of the other sectors.
There's a trickle-down effect to the rest of the culture.
And so that's why the financial sector, if you want to go to ground zero where it begins, go to the root cause.
One of the things they teach you in medicine about a cancer is you have to understand the root cause, where the first tumor began.
Well, here it's in the financial sector as it relates to the rest of corporate America.
And that's why I not only wrote the book about that, but started a company to take on that root cause as well.
As I have said to others, we are blessed with remarkable people like you on the Republican side.
How would you say your campaign is distinguished from others?
So, look, on one hand, I'm taking the America First agenda further than Donald Trump did because I'm doing it based on first principles and moral authority, not just vengeance and grievance.
And I think that allows us to go further with the agenda.
I respect what Trump did.
I supported him.
But I think that we now need to go further.
I've got fresh legs.
I'm the outsider in this race.
Eight years from now, I'll be jaded, cynical, tired, maybe have a few extra pounds on me.
But, you know, Donald Trump is a different person than he was eight years ago, too.
That's just how it works.
And so I'm looking to take that torch and take it further.
But I do think, Dennis, versus everybody else in this race, we need an outsider in the White House.
I think that there's a great room for career politicians who understand how the system works in Senate or in Congress or even in governor's seats.
But if you want to dismantle that managerial bureaucracy, if you want to gut the administrative state, if you want to shut down bureaucracies like...
For example, the Department of Education, which I said, I just won't put Betsy DeVos on top of it.
No, I'm going to shut it down because it should have never existed.
That's going to take an outsider.
And I'll tell you this, I know this from my role as a CEO, lived the full arc of the American dream.
I've built multi-billion dollar companies.
If somebody works for you and you can't fire them, they don't work for you.
It means you work for them, and I refuse to govern that way.
And so, Dennis, I combine my understanding of the Constitution, which you can see in my scholarship and my books, but not just being a commentator, but by actually having been an executive who's built things, who's lived the arc of the American dream, and, yes, is a millennial, first-ever millennial, run for president as a Republican.
I can reach that next generation, and we're doing it for them to create a country for that, my kids' generation, not mine or yours, Dennis.
You know, you and I know this about you, too.
I wish you got to speak at every college in this country.
We'll be back in a moment.
Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for President of the United States, and his very important book, Capitalist Punishment, how Wall Street is using your money to create a country you didn't vote for.
Vivek Ramaswamy is a magnificent asset to this country.
And he is a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, as well as the author of the just-published Capitalist Punishment, How Wall Street is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote For.
I'm telling you, it is a phenomenon.
Most people in this country think that you are either a man or a woman.
Everybody in this country thought that 15 years ago.
So how has it happened that Anheuser-Busch thinks that they will get more beer drinkers for Bud Light putting the picture of a man as a woman on the beer can?
Well, I think the reality, Dennis, is that transgenderism is a mental health disorder.
It's a mental health condition that if you think your biological sex does not match your actual gender...
That means you need help, but not endorsement deals.
And it turns out that hasn't been good for Anheuser-Busch or Budweiser.
They've lost a lot of sales, and it would appear if the reports in the last day are to be believed, they're now holding some of those executives accountable for what was a disastrous decision that has cost the company a lot.
But I think the part of what's going on is that, on one hand, you have companies that think they can actually placate the mob and actually insulate themselves from criticism from the left by bending the knee to the most Egregious and puzzling of woke orthodoxies.
But part of the problem, if we're to admit it, is we do have a generation of people in this country that are so hungry for a cause, hungry for purpose and meaning at a point in our lives and in our national history when the things that used to fill that void, like faith and patriotism and hard work and family, these things have disappeared.
And so, as they say, if you don't bend the knee to God, you're going to bend the knee to something.
If there's a God-sized hole in your heart and God doesn't fill it, something else will instead.
And the same can be said of the nation as well, and national identity and patriotism too.
And so that's what's happening, is that we're just bending the knee to new false idols one after another.
Racial wokeism, transgenderism, climatism, covidism.
Why is it globalism that we bend the knee to these new gods one at a time?
It's because we lack purpose and meaning as Americans today.
And I think that this is just another symptom of that.
And then corporations think they're exploiting it cynically to make another buck.
Budweiser and Anheuser-Busch happen to be one that did it very unskillfully.
Not only did they bend the knee, they did it in a way that lost them bucks.
But that's the deeper problem of what's going on, Dennis.
And I think that that's why leaders like you, frankly.
Leaders, not just politicians.
In fact, probably not politicians.
People and thought leaders across this country, cultural leaders across this country, teachers, parents, need to step up and fill that void in the heart of a generation that right now is being filled with poison.
We need to fill it with something more meaningful, and that's what I'm trying to do my part in, in leading this presidential campaign as well.
What's your take?
Let's try to do sort of staccato here, since you're running for president, and the president is in charge of a lot of things.
So, in foreign affairs, what's your take on, for example, Ukraine-Russia?
Well, look, here's my take.
Number one lesson is that we should have never allowed, seen Vladimir Putin to actually cross into Ukraine, and the reason he did it was because we shot our own energy capabilities in the foot.
So if the U.S. was drilling for fossil fuels and exporting energy as we had been as recently as a few years ago, Putin would not have gone for Ukraine.
That's the number one lesson in this.
But personally, as U.S. president, I would not give another dollar of support to Ukraine.
I'm all in favor of Ukraine pursuing a Ukraine-first agenda and Poland pursuing a Poland-first agenda.
But I think America has higher foreign policy priorities, like declaring independence from communist China, like defending our own southern border, use the military to defend our own border rather than to use it to defend somebody else's.
That's what I say.
So that's where I'm at on that.
Okay.
And what's your take on the Middle East?
So look, I think that the United States needs to lead more through diplomacy rather than through the use of military resources, but I think that the steadfast North Star in the Middle East is our top ally, the nation that actually shares the values that we do here, that is Israel.
And we cannot waver on our support there.
And I think you see under Biden, you see it under certain presidents, even over the course of Obama, you'll see wavering of that level of support.
It causes us to lose our moral authority there.
And I think that, look, I think the Abraham Accords were a great development.
I think I give President Trump great credit for moving the embassy back to Jerusalem.
But I think that we need to stand with fortitude and stand with the spine.
And that's actually how we secure peace, is not by compromising on our principles, but by standing on them.
That's what avoids the need to eventually actually have to go to war when others otherwise fill that vacuum.
So that's where I'm at there, Dennis.
Student debt.
No forgiveness.
I think that at the end of the day, you have to abide by the rules of the game or else you create really bad incentives for a gender studies major in California to be subsidized at the public fisc, while actually a person who wanted to go to a one-year vocational program to be a carpenter or a welder or a plumber or a mechanic didn't get that same aid.
That is regressive redistribution.
And I stand against Bob Biden's student loan forgiveness.
What we need to do is reform the Department of Education.
And actually shut the thing down.
So that's actually what we need to do, because they're the ones responsible for the problem in the first place.
The COVID vaccine.
Look, I think that we have learned so much that how we were duped.
And I think that we need to stand firmly against vaccine mandates, the government using top-down power to mandate something.
That, by the way, I'm also against this special wrapper of immunity that uniquely applies to vaccine manufacturers.
That's not capitalism.
That's crony capitalism.
School choice.
Staunchly in favor of it.
Shut down that Department of Education.
You want to know what you can do with that $83 billion a year?
That's $1.6 billion per state.
You can actually fund any underfunded school choice program in this country.
Parents control their education of children, not teachers' unions.
So I think that school choice combined with getting rid of public teachers' unions...
That actually allows public schools to then compete because they shouldn't have the handcuffs of teachers' unions on them either.
So yes, I'm all in favor of school choice, but we also have to unshackle the public schools by actually shutting down teachers' unions through the employment contract.
Vivek Ramaswamy, you are a great and important voice.
And folks, the book is important, Capitalist Punishment.
It's up at DennisPrager.com.
What's your website?
It is vivek2024.com.
That's V-I-V-E-K 2024.com.
And we don't ask for big donations, Dennis.
We ask for $1 donations because of the grassroots movement.
And you deserve it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
And I can't think of a more different topic, although theoretically it's not completely different.
I just had two Republican candidates.
Terrific people on Larry Elder and Vivek Rabaswamy.
So I guess this is related in the sense that it's about a president, but not a president of the recent past.
So you should know a vast number of the videos at PragerU are not about politics.
And they are just to educate people in five minutes, and the amount of information you can learn in five minutes is extraordinary.
And one of our series is on every single person who served as president of the United States of America.
And so the latest one is up this week.
It is about a president about whom very few Americans know anything, including his name, Zachary Taylor.
Zachary has not remained a particularly popular name for boys, although it's still there.
There are more Zachary's than Dennis's, I'll tell you that.
And the professor who has done the Zachary Taylor video for PragerU is Joseph Forneri.
He's a professor of political science at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Part of the reason he has been there for a quarter century is that he loves cold weather.
I'm sorry.
Oh, was that not accurate?
Was that an inaccurate statement on my part?
Oh, I'll tell you.
Yeah, we get about six months of winter here.
The falls are wonderful.
The falls are wonderful.
No, no, I hear every November 3rd is really a beautiful day in Rochester.
It's challenging.
It's challenging.
It is challenging.
So I want people to hear, Professor, I know you want me to call you Joe, I'll alternate.
I want people to hear the first minute here of your video up this week at PragerU.
Thank you.
Zachary Taylor.
The 12th President of the United States was so indifferent to politics that he never voted until his own election in 1848. A career military man, old, rough, and ready as he was affectionately known, was weathered, stocky, and bow-legged in appearance.
He was obstinate, easily insulted, and quick-tempered in character.
These are not traits that usually make for a successful politician.
But then again, he never wanted to be a politician until he did.
The son of a Revolutionary War veteran, Zachary Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia on November 24, 1784. Inspired by his father's military exploits, Taylor joined the Army in 1808. He spent the bulk of the next 40 years protecting the frontier against hostile Indians.
Steadily rising from the rank of lieutenant to brigadier general, He fought in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War of 1832, and the Second Seminole War in 1837. The Mexican-American War in 1846 was a turning point in Taylor's life.
In a matter of months, he went from a respected but obscure soldier to a national hero.
Here's how it happened.
All right, we'll stop there because it's actually riveting.
I love these presidential ones.
How the hell do you know so much about Zachary Taylor?
You know, it was my interest in the Civil War era.
I have written quite a bit about Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln's political thought and statesmanship.
And so to really handle Lincoln adequately, one has to deal with the sectional conflict.
In the antebellum era.
And that, of course, really ratchets up with Taylor.
And it's after the Mexican War.
One can speak of several turning points, you know, that put us on the path to Civil War.
But certainly 1850 and the aftermath of the Mexican War is a very important turning point.
Taylor plays a role in this, most particularly in regard to the Compromise of 1850. So it really was through my study of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era that led me to Old Rough and Ready and his rival Old Foss and Feathers.
All right, we're going to come back to that, and I want you to talk about Zachary Taylor and slavery.
It is also riveting.
See the video up this week at PragerU.com.
Professor Joseph Forneri gives it on a president you will now find fascinating, Zachary Taylor.
Hello everybody, it's the Ultimate Issues Hour.
I'm Dennis Prager.
And I don't want to overstate this, but this...
May blow your mind.
This particular subject blew my mind when I came to this realization very recently.
So it has to do with the very famous statement in the New Testament in Matthew, Matthew 5, 27 and 28. So I take from the English Standard Version, which is typical of anyone you wanted.
You have heard that it was said, this is Jesus speaking.
You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you, that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Okay, so that, when that has been raised, and it is raised frequently, I have said, All of my life.
This is one of the rare instances where I could think of a Jewish-Christian difference.
I'm not talking theology.
Obviously there are differences theologically.
But in, if you will, the moral realm.
I'm a big proponent of Judeo-Christian values.
People who deny it have an agenda other than truth or morality.
There are.
If you share a Bible...
You obviously share a lot of values.
The only two religions that share a Bible are Judaism and Christianity sharing the Old Testament, okay?
So that alone should make it clear that there's such a thing as Judeo-Christian values.
But I'm a big boy, and I can entertain contradictions or challenges, and that, I have always said, is one of them, because in Judaism...
And this was the origin of comments that I made at the Daily Wire to Jordan Peterson.
Judaism would not say that, that if you look at a woman with lust, it is as if you have committed adultery with your heart.
And I said, okay, so I live with it.
It's a difference that Jews and Christians might have on one given issue, and we move on.
But I've always believed that the most important thing is to tell the truth, and I felt that it was my duty to say the truth, that this would be a Jewish-Christian difference.
However, it turns out that it's translated incorrectly.
So we don't have actually a Jewish-Christian difference.
We have a translation error.
And this will come as news to virtually every Christian listening.
Right before I came on the air, I checked it with a Christian who knows New Testament Greek.
And to validate my point, I was virtually certain that this was accurate, but I don't know Greek.
I know Hebrew.
And he didn't say that.
He said, whoever covets a woman...
Has committed adultery with his heart.
And I agree with that.
That is correct.
Coveting is not lusting.
There might be a lustful element in coveting, but that's not what coveting means.
The Tenth Commandment uses the word covet.
It's used rarely in Hebrew.
And there is a word for lust, and there is a word for covet, and it uses the word for covet.
The proof that it's not the same as lust is, it says, do not covet your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's house, your neighbor's animal, whatever, I think it's, I'll look it up in the Hebrew and tell you.
I think donkey is one of them.
And all that he owns.
In other words, anything that he owns, animate or inanimate, you cannot covet it.
And what does covet mean?
I explain this in my Bible commentary in both Deuteronomy and Exodus, the two places the Ten Commandments appear.
It means that you want to take what belongs to another.
And I give the example.
Let's say, I'll give the woman example in a moment, but I'll give a house example.
If you say, I envy my neighbor's house, my friend's house, I wish I had a house like that, you are not violating the Tenth Commandment.
You are violating the Tenth Commandment if you covet his house.
Wanting a house like that house is not a violation of the Tenth Commandment.
But if you want his house, you are because it is very possible to lead to stealing his house or killing him to take his house.
Do not covet your neighbor's house.
Do not covet your neighbor's wife.
So if you covet your neighbor's wife, that is not the same as, boy, I'm single, and if I get married, I wish I had a wife like my neighbor does.
Okay.
That doesn't violate any biblical injunction.
But I want my neighbor's wife?
That's bad.
It's the only thought prohibited in the Ten Commandments.
It's one of the only thoughts prohibited in the 613 laws of the Torah, the five books of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament.
It is very rare to have a thought sin in the Old Testament.
But you can have one wanting to take what belongs to another.
So I want you to know that the word in Greek that Jesus uses in Matthew 5, 28, is the same as the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible, of the Old Testament, uses, and it would have been what he would be, if he, it would have been what he was familiar with, probably he was familiar with the Hebrew, I'm sure he was.
It is do not covet.
So if one says whoever covets a woman, it's as if he has committed adultery with his heart, that's correct.
You're wanting another man's wife.
That is not at all, at all the same.
As whoever looks lustfully on any woman.
In a dialogue with one of my favorite Christian theologians, in fact one of the great thinkers of our time, Wayne Grudem, at the Phoenix Seminary, he had a great dialogue, and I asked him, based on this read of Matthew 5.28, Is it a sin for a single Christian man to look lustfully upon a single woman?
If it's two single people, adultery is not possible.
And to his great credit, he said he'd actually never been asked that question.
So it can't be whoever looks lustfully at another woman as if he committed adultery, because you can't commit adultery if you're both single.
And I've always known this.
As I said, I asked this years ago in my dialogue with Wayne Grudem.
Because I believe Jesus makes sense.
And I never believed that that verse made sense.
But I didn't know what to do with it because I don't know Greek.
So I finally decided to check the Greek.
And I was right.
That's not what Jesus said.
There's another common mistranslation.
This one's just straight from the Hebrew.
From King James on, do not kill.
It's not true.
Do not kill and do not murder are as different as lust and covet are.
You may kill, you cannot murder.
1-8 Prager 776. How do you react to this?
A mistranslation has misled a lot of people for a lot of time.
In my opinion.
Alright.
We will take your calls.
I'm very curious.
This is the first time I've ever spoken about this publicly.
Curious to get your reaction.
Hi everybody, it's the Ultimate Issues Hour.
Sometimes I talk about religion, sometimes I talk about many other subjects.
So I'd like to offer you a thought on one of the most famous verses in the New Testament, Matthew 5, 28, about looking with lust at another woman that you're not married to.
It is as if you've committed adultery with your heart.
Except it doesn't say lust, it says covet.
If you covet a woman, that is the same word used in the Tenth Commandment.
And as I explain, I know Biblical Hebrew, I don't know New Testament Greek, but I do know this word, epithemeo.
And it's the exact same word as for covet.
And that's why coveting is not restricted to a person.
In fact, let me get the Do.Covet commandment up here.
And then you will see what I mean.
Exodus 2017. Thank you.
So, let's see here.
Okay, so this is from...
You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or maidservant, or his ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Okay?
So obviously it can't mean lust, because nobody lusts, unless you use the term very loosely.
It obviously doesn't mean anything erotic or sexual.
Which is what people think of when they think if you're lusting after a woman, it's a sexual thought.
You don't have sexual thoughts about a house, and presumably not an ox or a donkey, and just in case you did, anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Covet means wanting that which belongs to your neighbor.
So a lifelong dilemma that I have had, because I... I didn't understand.
I never did.
Because I have so much respect for the New Testament and for Jesus.
And it didn't make sense to me that he would say, because he was, after all, a religious Jew, that if you lust after a woman, it's as if you've committed adultery with your heart.
No, if you covet a woman, then he's right.
Then it makes sense.
You have committed adultery with your heart.
You have violated the 10th Commandment.
That's exactly right.
All right, I'm very curious how you folks will react.
Dave in Seattle, thank you for calling.
Do I have the lines on?
Yes.
Now I can, Dave.
Sorry about that.
Okay.
Well, I think the problem is not so much what Jesus said.
It's the way...
We define the word covet today and the way people typically define lust today.
Because most people don't.
I think you would agree.
Most people never receive the word covet.
And probably some have never even heard of it.
That's true.
You're right.
People don't use the term.
Today they would probably say jealous or envious.
But it means...
Wanting what belongs to your neighbor.
Right.
Well, another person, not necessarily your neighbor.
Naturally, yeah.
But the definition, I mean, going by from Marion Wester, is to feel a strong or immoderate desire for what is another person's.
Okay.
And one of the definitions of lust has nothing to do with sex.
It's merely an overwhelming desire or craving.
And I think you will easily recall that some people use that, they say he has a lust for power.
And that has nothing to do with sex, you would agree.
Correct.
And so, but people typically...
But if you say lust after a woman, which is the verse in Matthew, then it is purely a sexual statement.
To the modern reader, it would seem so, but it might not at that time.
I think it would be at any time.
That I have to say.
My point is that he didn't use lust.
He used covet.
And that makes the statement much more understandable.
Because...
This has been a difference, and I have never, in my love of Christians, I have not allowed it to force me to say something that I just didn't understand.
I didn't understand how you, lusting after a woman, is committing adultery with her.
As I said, what if it's a single man and a single woman and he lusts?
Just as an example.
What if it's a woman you don't even know?
You've committed adultery with someone you never met?
It's a picture, let's say.
And I know people say that, but I now want you to understand that's not biblical.
If you believe that, I'm not going to argue with you.
But it makes much more sense.
To use the term that Jesus actually used, which is covet, which means wanting that which belongs to another.
I want his house.
I want his wife.
I want his animals.
And anything else that he has.
Okay, Mary, also in Seattle.
Nice.
Hello.
Hi, Mr. Prager.
Hi.
I think...
That Jesus was saying that we need to control or police, if you will, our bad thoughts before they become bad actions.
And also, he often called out the hypocrisy of people who loved getting public acclaim in the streets for their supposed virtue, when maybe in private life they weren't quite as virtuous as they wanted everyone to think they were.
Right, but private life is not the same as private thoughts.
True, and I think that's why he's saying that, and this is at least something I got out of it, that he's saying to control your thoughts because they're the foundation of bad actions.
Yeah, it's a tough one, because covet is a thought, and that obviously predates Jesus.
It's the Tenth Commandment.
But it's not the same as lustful reaction.
Males have lustful reactions almost every day.
Yes.
So, I don't know what, I don't think that he thought that was like adultery.
No, I don't, I agree with you.
I think maybe what he was saying is that we better be paying close attention to what we are thinking so that it doesn't lead to a bad action.
Right, so it is a very interesting question.
Yeah.
And I don't have a great answer for that.
I don't know the answer.
Obviously, all bad deeds began with a bad thought.
But the number of bad thoughts that don't lead to bad deeds is probably much larger than the number of bad thoughts that lead to bad deeds.
I'm torn on that issue because there's a case to be made in both directions.
So I don't have an answer for that.
All I can say with any certitude is, I don't believe he said lust.
I believe he said covet.
And I have the biblical text to prove it.
Dennis Prager here.
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