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June 5, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:14:56
I’m Pro Winning
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hey, everybody.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Great to have you here.
It is Monday.
It is the 5th of June, and it is the Dennis Prager Show.
Dennis, back tomorrow, I think.
I don't know.
All I know is that I'm here, and I'm your fill-in Texas talk show buddy, Mark Davis, here at 660 AM. The answer in happening, thriving Dallas-Fort Worth.
I have, in fact, just come off vacation in central Texas, just had some wonderful time surveying the scene here in the Lone Star State, talking to people about various things going on here, some of which you may be hip to, some of which you may know about, the impeachment of our Attorney General, some of which you may know about, the impeachment of our Attorney General, Ken Paxton, the most famous, I think the most famous state attorney general in these
It's interesting how this plays into sort of a template of battles that you can find across the national landscape.
Of battles you can find between sort of hardcore grassroots conservatives and squishy moderates and rhinos.
It's all being played out right here in the Lone Star State.
I'm not going to burden you with all of that because we're doing a national show.
We've got 50 states and the District of Columbia and who knows what kind of worldwide audience.
On the Salem Radio Network and, of course, on the Salem News Channel.
Thanks for watching the spectacle there at SNC.tv.
Again, I'm Mark Davis.
Glad to fill in for Dennis any time they ask.
I'm enormously pleased to be here.
And here's how we can sort of set up shop for how we do business when I am here.
Follow me on Twitter, at Mark Davis.
At M.A.R.K. Davis.
1-8 Prager-776.
You know about that.
1-8 Prager-776.
And we'll be ready to do business.
We'll talk about various things going on in the presidential race, the Republican field.
No one, apparently nobody got a hold of Mike Pence to tell him that virtually no one is interested in him running for president.
Are you?
I mean, I'm really deadly serious here.
And I know sort of why a bunch of, you know, Chris Christie is getting in.
Vivek, listen, Vivek ain't going to be the nominee either.
But here's where I set the bar.
Tell me where you set the bar.
1-8 Prager 776. Follow me on Twitter at Mark Davis.
Shoot me a question in there.
Anything you want to do.
Because we have a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff to talk about.
I want to, in fact, plumb the depths of the battle against wokeness.
Today with you.
Because there are a lot of people who say that this battle against wokeness is a losing battle.
That this is a...
It's just not productive.
But I find that there aren't that many people who care about it.
There aren't even that many Republicans who care about it.
I would differ.
I would differ.
Broadly about that.
Nikki Haley, last night, had a CNN town hall.
And she, interestingly, she went after DeSantis.
And it's intriguing that not everybody is coming after Trump.
Almost nobody's coming after Trump.
They figure they don't have to climb that mountain.
It's like the old joke when you have five guys running and a bear is chasing all of them.
And they say, you know, we're never going to outrun this bear.
And the guy says, I don't have to outrun the bear.
I just need to outrun you.
Because it's going to be Trump, somebody named Trump, and somebody not named Trump.
That's how it's going to go.
And so I guess if the presumption is that Trump will obviously be there, when there are two people standing.
I remember 2016. What did we have?
That was crazy.
We had the kids' table.
Remember the kids' table debates?
Positions 9 through 16 of guys that didn't quite have enough poll numbers, enough juice, enough whatever to be on the grown-up stage with the top eight people who were running as the campaign got underway in 2015. And then we finally had the ability to cram everybody onto one stage.
And then there were eight, and then there were five, and then there were four, and then there were two.
And then there were two.
It was Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
And after the Indiana primary, the very beginning of May, Trump beats Cruz, Cruz bows out, and then boom, boom, there we are.
It's Trump moving forward.
We're going to reach that point at some point, probably in May, if not April.
Depends, I don't know.
It seems we'll reach that point in 2024. It'll be Trump and somebody.
Right now, it certainly looks like it's going to be Trump and DeSantis.
And it is the riskiest thing, not risky, maybe dumb, to presume that you know, like you know your own name, what's going to be happening 10 months from now, 11 months from now.
Real people are still the better part of a half a year away.
Real people are still the better part of a half year away from voting.
And then we're really going to know.
And I guess there'll be meaningful poll numbers.
I mean, what has DeSantis been running for a few days?
And a lot of people are saying, hey, DeSantis is running now, and Trump still has like a 20, 30 point lead.
Well, of course he does.
If DeSantis is going to catch Trump, and I have no idea whether he will.
If DeSantis is going to catch Trump, it is going to be a slow...
It will have to slowly occur to a lot of people who love presidents.
Listen, if you haven't heard me during this last stretch of all of this drama, I'm not pro or anti-Trump.
I'm not pro or anti-DeSantis.
In fact, I'm pro-Trump and pro-DeSantis.
But what breaks the tie there?
I'm pro-winning.
Whether it's Joe Biden or whoever else the Democrat Party coughs up, we must...
When, and I know, every election is the most important of our lifetime.
Every single time, all the pundits come out and say, hey, it's the most important election of our lifetime.
Well, I'm here to tell you, next year, it's the most important election of our lifetime.
And you know that it is.
And the stakes just keep getting higher and higher and higher.
They were hugely high in 2016 because we had to fend off Hillary.
thank God we dodged that cannonball now after one term of Trump things were better I think maybe a lot of people got too complacent got lazy, got whatever and Biden won I know, or did he that's another talk show or this one if you want, we got time anyway though, so here we are again now we've seen, America has it on a plate here's how bad it can be and it's bad
It's absolutely steadfastly.
Horrible.
And so along come various Republican candidates to say, I can make it better.
And by the way, every single one of them can.
I mean, if we get some, we'll get, I mean, if Chris Sununu, moderate squish in New Hampshire, winds up being our nominee, he's better than Biden.
I mean, anybody is better than Biden in the Republican Party.
But my bar is set a little higher.
I'd like it for it to be an unapologetic, bold conservative.
Silly, silly me.
I think I have a lot of company on that in the Republican Party.
Trump is that proven commodity.
DeSantis is that a proven commodity in the state of Florida.
In the state of Florida.
So I'm going to do both these guys a little bit of a favor here.
For free.
Campaign consultation from talk show host Mark Davis.
They're going after each other for crazy stuff.
They occupy so much of the same ideological territory.
The entire debate probably ought to be over style, electability, priorities, because every conservative should have huge appreciation for Donald Trump and huge appreciation for Ron DeSantis.
But who do you think can win?
Whom do you want to be president?
Trump's best approach.
And they're sitting there sniping at each other over COVID. COVID? They were both great on COVID. Nobody was perfect on COVID. You know, as governors go, DeSantis was way ahead of the curve compared to a lot of Democrat governors and some Republican governors.
And Trump, of course, you know, was ahead of the curve compared to a whole lot of national leaders.
So for them to be against each other on COVID is just stupid.
Here's Trump's best path forward.
Everything sucks now.
I can make it better, and you know I can because I did it before.
You want the things?
Do you wish I were still president?
You can have that.
I'm the guy.
You know I've done it.
DeSantis is a great governor, but he hadn't done it before.
I have.
I'm a better known quantity.
Vote for me.
DeSantis' best argument is things were way better under Trump, but he can't win anymore.
You can nominate him, and a Democrat will win.
You want a better shot at winning?
You want the Trump policies?
And oh, by the way, with a little more discipline and no more self-inflicted wounds or strangeness or drama, I'm your guy.
And now he then is making a point that is, you don't know it like, you know, two plus two make four, the electability issue, but it's something I think resonates with more than a few people.
So how's that race going?
How's various things going as we begin a new week?
1-8 Prager 776. Mark Davison for Dennis.
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That's Dennis.
I'm Mark Davis.
And duh, Dennis isn't back tomorrow.
He's on a listener cruise for a good while moving forward.
So they're having a great time.
Dennis is having a great time.
And we're going to have a great time today, as you will have with all the good army of folks often brought in to host various Dennis Prager shows.
We are all enormously, enormously pleased and proud to be in for Dennis.
A quick word about that as we hop onto instant calls and more thoughts from me about the scramble of news from over the weekend.
1-8 Prager 776. 1-8 Prager 776. All things Dennis at DennisPrager.com.
And follow me on Twitter at Mark Davis.
M-A-R-K Davis.
There are a lot of shows out there, right?
And I can't speak monolithically for everybody in the office, but everybody in the office, much less the office, if not the entire audience.
I miss...
Rush, so very, very much.
I had the great pleasure and privilege of filling in for him from 2008 to 2012 when I worked at another radio station that carried him in the DFW market.
And they were always so kind to me.
With his passing, there's so many people doing this for a living and they do great.
And here on the Salem Radio Network, please, with my personal friend Mike Gallagher and my lead-in show Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Gorka and Officer Tatum and just all the talented, talented people who are doing so much good stuff.
Dennis, he always was, but now Dennis stands even more singularly as not just a voice of conservatism.
There are a lot of voices of conservatism out there.
Some of them have broadcast skills.
But the cerebral value and the common sense value, a lot of people say they have common sense too, and many do.
There is something, like when Dennis writes the Rational Bible, it's not just preaching to the converted, pardon that term, but it's like, I'm going to use basic reason.
A lot of what conservatives do.
And we should, is selling conservatism.
To try to take people who are kind of on the fence, in the mushy middle, whatever, whatever, and try to say, hey, conservatism is better, voting Republican is better, so go do that.
We may even snare an occasional liberal who wearies of the craziness of the Democrat Party these days.
Dennis' approach is to say, look, I'm just going to hit you with some facts.
I'm just going to hit you with some things that truly are basic.
Common sense.
And if you believe these things, it's not like whether there should be more or less taxes, stronger or weaker borders, abortion rights or no abortion rights.
Those are things that happen along the ideological spectrum.
These are things like how many genders are there?
Has higher education been shot to hell?
Various things that are simple yes or no answers that people of a wide variety Of political proclivities will answer in the same way.
And that's why, by the way, why I believe things do skew very well for Republicans in 24. I'm old enough to have the following memory.
Get ready.
1968, I guess, and 1972. Nixon, and of course, there's a loaded topic, Richard Nixon, who I think was one of our most brilliant presidents.
And a deeply flawed man, in a number of ways, as history has told.
The secret of his huge victory, in 1968, all the Vietnam protests were at their peak.
Democrats were beating each other over the head at their convention in Chicago, and we get to see a Democrat Chicago convention next year.
60-second timeout.
It's not a meme.
It was a picture of somebody.
There were Michelle, Barack and Michelle Obama, standing at like a mile away from downtown Chicago.
Beautiful shot across Lake Michigan.
And it was like, we're proud.
We're very pleased and proud to welcome the Democrats back to Chicago 2024. And somebody posted in a response, yeah, that ought to be a safe distance.
Because they were clearly about three, four miles from downtown.
But in 1968, American, you know, Vietnam and everything else turmoil was at its peak.
And Nixon won.
How?
How'd that happen?
In 1972, it's not like we were done in Vietnam.
1972, he wins in a landslide.
How did that happen?
It was with a type of appeal that Republicans can offer today.
That the world is crazy, the country is crazy, the Democrats are crazy, and we're not.
Get it?
The world's crazy.
We can fix that.
The country's going crazy.
The Democrats are way crazy.
And we're not.
It's an approach that essentially says, you may not agree with us about everything, but those people are insane.
And I think that is something that any Republican nominee is going to be able to use.
Is it a guarantee of victory?
Nope.
Because you've got to run a good campaign.
Your positives have to outweigh your negatives, which gets us to the Trump quandary, I guess you could call it.
If I knew, I mean, you know, none of us has a crystal ball.
Let's say I knew.
This will intrigue many of you because I get hit a lot for being kind of a stealth DeSantis.
Like, I've made my choice, I'm just not telling you.
Believe you me, when I do, I will.
If I have, I would say.
I've made clear that I believe that the DeSantis appeal, the prospect of having Trump-style policies with a kind of an internal discipline with fewer unforced errors and not as much drama and some of the stuff we had to get through in the era of Trump, albeit with great results, that's pretty appealing.
But let's set this up.
If I knew Trump would win, say you can have either Trump or DeSantis, and either one of them will win.
Either one of them will win.
You know what?
I've got to think about this one.
I think I have.
I would take Trump.
Because he is a proven quantity.
And as I did during his first term, oh, there would be the occasional days of ridiculousness.
The occasional days where people would call me and go, yeah, Mark, how can you support him now?
It's like, uh, policies?
Hello?
Because that's what's always mattered.
Yeah, but he said something crazy about the size of his inauguration crowd.
Or he said something mean to somebody.
The other day, he was flat out mean to Kayleigh McEnany.
That's just a dumb thing to do.
But is he singularly a guy who can step in and make the country better?
Yep.
Do I know it?
Yep.
Would I take it again?
Yep.
Well, Mark, then why aren't you all full MAGA ink right now?
Because I don't know that he can win.
There are some people who are saying he cannot.
That's not me.
Absolutely not me.
I wouldn't say that at all.
We may get a barometer.
By the time we're in February, we will have had a few...
Some caucuses, some primaries.
The DeSantis thing, it better be on fire by then, because if it's not, it ain't going to take flight in March.
He's either going to be out of the box as a direct, plausible rival to Trump, or he's not.
If he is, then game on, and maybe there's a third person up there who'll, you know, maybe it'll be Chris Christie.
I don't know.
We'll take a look at some other people in the race as well.
And your calls, coming up.
Next, Mark Davison for Dennis.
Who could pass that up?
Mark Davison for Dennis today on this Monday, June 5. Glad you are here.
1-8 Prager 776 is the phone number.
Let's put it to use, shall we?
News from the weekend.
That bizarre, tragic thing with a plane where the pilot passes out.
Hypoxia, I don't know what that was.
Freaked everybody out.
Sonic booms as they scramble the jets out of Andrews, because you have to do that because you just never know.
Various other things in the political developments of the weekend gone by and other sort of conceptual things.
Glad to take a look at things broadly or narrowly.
1-8 Prager 776.
Follow me on Twitter at Mark Davis.
Let's see what folks are thinking about as we enjoy this first full week of June.
We are in Chicago.
Hey, Ken, Mark Davis.
And for Dennis, how are you, sir?
Mark, I am fine.
Happy Monday.
You're doing a great job so far, Mark.
Appreciate it.
Just to your tribute to Rush, ditto to what you said.
My sense regarding the race, the nomination race between President Trump and Governor DeSantis is that if President Trump is the nominee, we might win.
If Governor DeSantis is the nominee, we could win the popular vote and possibly up to 40 states.
My caveat is that the nominee should pick either Senator Tim Scott or a woman as his running mate.
Let me dwell for a moment.
First of all, I think that's totally plausible.
I'd love to think Trump could win, but I don't know.
I don't know that DeSantis can.
I don't know if his candidacy will continue to be as fairly sharp as it has.
But does DeSantis have a slightly better chance of winning a general than Trump does?
I think so.
You've touched on something that I actually wanted to get to later today, so let's do it right now.
The wisdom of taking a Tim Scott, did you say Nikki Haley?
Both of whom are fine.
And neither of whom am I taking as some kind of identity politics affirmative action pick.
But do you think that just for optics, those pesky optics, presuming our nominee is going to be a white man, do you think that it's probably all other things being equal, a good idea to have a running mate who is not white, not male, or both?
Absolutely, Mark.
I think that if you think about Tim Scott or Governor Haley on the stump, and you think of either one of them poking fun at Harris and Biden at every opportunity, I think that's fantastic.
I think Tim Scott could just light up the media when they attempt to make him the black face of white supremacy, which they are absolutely...
I know they will, and thanks.
Hey, real quick, anybody's name occurring to you as that black face of white supremacy quote comes back into our lives?
Hmm.
Anybody deploy that in recent memory and recent history?
Huh.
Anybody who we might know in this neighborhood walking the halls of this radio network?
Hmm.
Listen, if we need, and just pardon the way this sounds, if we're looking for a black guy, how about Larry Elder?
And it's funny because I don't want to be looking for a black guy, and I don't want to be looking for a woman.
I want to be looking for the best people, irrespective of what I call the pigment and the plumbing, right?
Thing is, and I mentioned the pesky optics, as I said.
What I mean by that is that anything that makes it easier for us to win is a good thing.
Anything that makes it harder for us to win is a challenging thing.
So far, so good.
An election where tens of millions of people are going to be voting.
If there's 100,000 people, if there's 10,000 people in one state who are kind of on the mushy middle, you know, in a Wisconsin, in a Pennsylvania, in a, you know, whatever, any other purple state.
And they take a look, and I don't know how any human being can look at Republicans and Democrats and go, eh, seems like about the same to me.
Are you kidding me?
But let's say somebody has some conservatism in them, some liberalism in them, and let's say there's some wonderfully diverse ticket on the other side, and we're running a couple of white guys, and if anybody holds that against us, that's a problem.
And so for that reason, does it make it advisable for us to see if...
You know, there's a woman or person of color and there's Nikki Haley to say, hey, hi, bingo, I'm both.
I'm not against it.
I'm not going to go.
When they went for Kamala Harris, that was a total identity politics pick.
She is the running mate only because she was a woman of some accomplishment, senator, you know, legal jobs.
And it's not like she was, you know, doing nothing for a living.
But she vaulted to the top because of pigment and plumbing.
We have a deep bench and we wouldn't have to do that.
Your thoughts, please.
Mark Davis, 1-8 Prager 776. In for Dennis, back in a moment.
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It is the Monday Dennis Prager Show.
Glad you are here.
Mark Davis in for Dennis from big, thriving Dallas-Fort Worth, where I'm the always happy morning show host at 660 AM. The answer.
Glad you're here.
So we got calls loaded of people want to talk a little bit about the growing 2024 GOP field.
Does anybody really need to be running other than Trump and DeSantis?
They may.
Let me tell you the test that I apply.
And maybe yours is different.
First of all, free country.
Anybody can run.
Do you know?
And I had my little bit...
Well, this is not tongue-in-cheek.
I'm kind of serious.
Nobody got a...
Mike Pence apparently announces this week.
And that's the reaction I expected.
I mean, God bless him.
He's an incredible man.
A wonderful husband and father.
A great public servant.
And you can drag him for January 6th a little bit if you want to.
There's nothing he was going to be able to do.
I got nothing but good things to say about Mike Pence.
Not a fighter.
And you gotta have a fighter.
We have got to have a fighter.
I love Tim Scott.
Not a fighter.
Nikki Haley might have some fighter in her.
Her CNN town hall last night?
Not bad.
The going after DeSantis thing.
All these people.
All these rivals.
Going after DeSantis for Disney.
Are you all just crazy?
Don't you all know that the vast majority of conservatives absolutely love going after DeSantis, going after Disney?
Oh, here you go.
Here's something we can do this hour.
Because one thing I mentioned at the close of the last hour is, is Biden really going to be the nominee?
We're sitting here all...
Caught up in the notion of, will it be Trump?
Will it be DeSantis?
Could somebody like a Larry Elder, a Tim Scott, a Chris Christie, a Vivek, who's just pretty brilliant every time he does anything?
Big fan of Vivek.
Is he going to be the nominee?
I don't think so.
Might he be a running mate material?
You don't get two white guys then, if that's important, and it might be.
But part of the equation is who are we running against?
Would you think that Biden would be easy to beat?
That's probably a mistake we could make.
But I just have a two-word answer to that.
That's John Fetterman.
See, I've had what has now been attached to me, the disembodied head observation.
Because I have famously said, I've said it locally, I may have said it nationally.
And if not, I'll say it nationally now.
I would vote for a disembodied Republican head over any Democrat.
And here's why.
Because it's a Democrat.
Every idea they have is going to be terrible.
With your disembodied Republican head, at least somebody can roll the head in.
Have it supposedly voted in some seemingly conservative way.
It's going to be better than a Democrat.
So, yes, I'm being facetious in part with a hyperbolic, exaggerated example.
But the point being, so Biden's 112 years old.
So what?
He's the Democrat.
And there will be people who will crawl on broken glass and walk through fire.
To prevent Trump or DeSantis from becoming president.
It's about the policies.
Much more than the guy.
Now, to some extent, it's about the guy.
That's why character matters.
That's why likability can matter.
That's why a style of campaigning can be helpful.
It helps to be under 90, you know, these days.
That's a good thing.
You'll hear a lot about a new generation of leadership.
A new generation of leadership.
Yeah, people actually born since the Korean War.
So these things do matter.
And for that reason, maybe the Democrats are looking at this and saying, while Biden is what he is, and virtually every Democrat would loyally come in and back him and vote for him, that maybe if we do have somebody who is not cognitively impaired, somebody who is not 80-something, That maybe we could do better.
Maybe we could do better.
Well, like who?
Gavin Newsom?
Tied around the anchor that is the disaster that is California?
Really?
Does Kamala then jump in?
Even Democrats don't want her, is the intel we supposedly get.
The very curious case of RFK Jr. What is this guy up to?
I confess to being fascinated with Bobby Kennedy's son.
Are we at the anniversary?
Is tomorrow?
Wow.
Today or tomorrow?
Was he shot today and died tomorrow in 1968?
Talked a little about 1968 last hour.
I remember that.
I was 10. Dr. King had just been killed a few weeks earlier.
And I remember going to my mom and dad.
I was growing up in the suburbs of D.C. My dad was working at the Pentagon and the Air Force.
And mom was...
Home taking care of me.
Thank you, Mom.
I just kind of said, what the heck is going on?
What is going on in the world?
And on this date at the Ambassador Hotel, Bobby Kennedy had just won the California primary.
He was going to be the nominee.
You talk about some chaos theory.
Would Nixon have even won in 1968 if he was running against Bobby Kennedy?
Maybe, but I don't know.
And then...
All kinds of things.
Then there's no Watergate.
Then there's no Ford.
With Ford, is there Carter?
With Carter, is there Reagan?
You'll get a headache.
But bottom line being, in RFK Jr., here's a guy with a really interesting legacy.
Like JFK, a Democrat, but not a bug-eyed, crazed leftist.
RFK Jr. is actually right about a couple of things.
He knows how many genders there are.
Some conservatives are fond of RFK Jr. on vaccines.
Not a big fan of COVID authoritarianism.
That's because RFK Jr. is a stone-cold-across-the-board anti-vaxxer.
So you can like or not like that.
I find that there are more Republicans and more conservative TV shows interested in RFK Jr. than there are actual Democrats interested in RFK Jr. So I don't know.
So who might we actually be running against?
I don't know.
That's what we're talking about.
All this on a busy, multi-topic Monday.
Let's go to some folks.
1-8 Prager-776.
1-8 Prager-776.
We are in Westminster, California.
And George, that is you.
Mark Davison for Dennis.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well, thank you.
The question is, how do we get all the people that are Republicans to train their guns on the Democrats?
I know.
We need to ruin this.
And that time will come.
Well, the time is now.
Your point is solid.
And I think one of the smartest things DeSantis can do is say, look, I'm not going to spend my time trashing other Republicans.
I'm going to talk about how my presidency will be better than Biden.
But let me ask you this.
This is kind of what the primary season is for.
Here comes Mike Pence for some reason.
Here comes Chris Christie for some reason.
Vivek is out there.
Trump and DeSantis are out there.
This is when the Republicans all...
Yes.
But I'm talking about the down ticket as well, because I work part-time for a Republican House member for a while, and nobody's down ticket ends up taking the Democrats to the cleaners.
I hear this a lot, and you're right, and everybody who says it is right, and thank you.
Here in Texas, just the example I've been talking about all morning before this, our Attorney General, Ken Paxton, is about to be impeached, has been impeached, about to go on trial in the Senate here sometime this summer, and it appears to be a political witch hunt.
It appears to be just a vendetta.
And it appears to be the battle lines of squish establishmentarianism in the Republican Party up against the bold grassroots whom they resent and hate.
In this Republican primary, I have no problem in any Republican primary at any level for people saying, you know what?
That person is less conservative than I am, and here's why.
And then in return, that other person might say, that person is too extreme, and here's why.
I think there's a way to do that.
If you get somebody like Chris Sununu, governor of New Hampshire, into this race, there'll be plenty of room to do that with him, because he's just not on board for battling the woke poisons at all.
I think there's a way to do that and do it constructively.
But ultimately, the gentleman's instincts are on point.
That for whatever amount of time any Republican spends talking about his rivals, his or her rivals, the most amount of time should be, here's why I'm the best, to go up against the Democrats.
Be right back.
Anything from the good people of Regnery will serve you well.
Anything they have out now is a good idea.
I might send you to a couple of things that I've done for them over the years in 2016. Every word's still a classic.
A little thing called Upside Down, How the Left Turns Right into Wrong, Truth into Lies, Good into Bad.
That's a lot of subtitle.
Just do Mark Davis Upside Down there at Regnery.com.
That was from 2016, right as Trump was in his ascendancy.
It's kind of a handy conversational guide for, you know, if you have liberal friends, liberal family members, how to...
Argue constructively with good humor and goodwill, which we don't have nearly enough of today.
So that's upside down.
That's my Regnery offering in 2016. And if you want a little taste of Texas, I did a little thing in 2014 called Lone Star America, how Texas can save our country.
People have been noticing for a long time that Texas is conservatively run, so everybody's tripping over themselves to move here.
Thank you.
We'd like to check those voting patterns as you arrive.
DeSantis said something about Florida the other day that I rather enjoyed.
He said, you know, I kind of like the people we have.
I mean, growth is lovely.
Every governor likes to crow about, oh, we just poached some other business from failing California, which is wonderful, economically promising.
But yeah, as all these waves of people come in, especially here to Texas, we always wonder, huh, everybody's trying to turn Texas purple.
Is this an infiltration of some type?
Anyway, Lone Star America and Upside Down from your humble...
Substitute host Mark Davis at Regnery.com.
If you enjoy them, if you don't enjoy them, tell me.
And if you enjoy them, tell everybody else.
Alright, 1-8 Prager-776.
1-8 Prager-776.
Let's do some phone calls.
I've laid out a bunch of topics.
Let's see what's on everybody's mind.
We are in, let's go to City of Brotherly Love.
We're in Philly.
Stephen, Mark Davis in for Dennis.
How are you doing?
Mark, how are you?
Good, thanks.
Bobby Kennedy Jr., who I particularly didn't like very much, I think he's seen the light.
I think he's probably aware that his father was most likely also killed by the CIA, that Sirhan was a CIA plant.
They used him.
They put him away.
Or they took a guy and gave him the opportunity to do it.
But he knows for sure that our own country...
Our own leaders killed his uncle.
There's literally...
Okay, careful, careful.
No, he doesn't know for sure.
He has a healthy suspicion.
Everybody knows for sure now.
Well, no, they don't.
The words have meaning.
Is there a healthy suspicion about CIA involvement?
Sure.
Is it plausible?
Sure.
So, ride with that.
And RFK Jr. is thoroughly convinced of that, but words have meaning, and this is not something that we know.
The vaccine situation, myself, our family, our kids, will never be vaccinated again for anything.
Why?
We'll never be vaccinated.
Has this been your position for a long time, or did the COVID oddities...
Just like everything else, I believe that the left corrupted, I guess, our medical profession.
It corrupted our legal profession.
I mean, look at the flu vaccine.
Look at the flu vaccine.
How convenient is it that they get to come out with a new vaccine every year?
I know.
Who pays for it?
Who pays for it?
But does that mean it doesn't work?
Does that mean it's bad?
It's garbage.
They've been just as thoroughly corrupted as everyone else in this country is.
If you went to your doctor, do you have an actual doctor?
Yes.
If you went to your doctor and said, you know, I am so repelled by the ridiculousness of what happened with COVID, and I'll actually finish the question.
If you went to your doctor and said, I am so repelled by what happened of all the COVID ridiculousness and the authoritarianism and the bad science and vaccine suspicions that I and my family will never be vaccinated for anything ever again, what would your doctor say?
Well, I pretty much already said that because when I brought our kids...
And what did he say?
Oh, it was a female doctor who was telling me with a mask on, convincing me that our children needed to be vaccinated for COVID. And I told her, you know, are you insane?
I said, are you insane?
Why would you do that?
Might be time to shop for a new doctor.
Well, I had to ask.
The reason I... Okay, let's get into a little bit of basic logic, okay?
It is proper and principled to be, as I phrased to the gentleman, sufficiently repelled by the weaponization of bad science in the furtherance of a vaccine that simply was not what it was originally pitched to be.
If we got the vaccine, we just weren't going to get COVID. Well, how long did that last?
Right now, sitting here in June of 2023, and I got Moderna and the booster, I absolutely believe that there is plenty of basis to assert that...
Have I had COVID twice?
I've had it twice.
That I may well have not...
And it was a walk in the park.
It was like a bad cold.
Could it have been worse if I'd been unvaccinated?
Maybe.
I think that's a plausible belief that I have.
You may differ.
Boy, did they jam this down our throats.
And boy, were the mandates wrong.
And boy, did they say things about it at the front end that were disproven later on.
So there's a huge jumble of dishonesty there that should properly repel you.
Should it make you so jaded?
And so cynical that you now don't want to hear anything about any vaccination for anything for you or your children for the rest of all of your natural lives.
That seems harsh.
That seems...
So here's my...
And this will differ from person to person.
How about taking things case by case?
Let's say, because shocking though it may be, something may arise for which there is a vaccine in the future.
Nobody may be hosing us about it.
There may not seem to be quite the pernicious profit motive for it, because that's the one thing that I just can't get past.
The government mandating something.
On board for private companies mandating something, and it hardly cost anybody anything.
Massive government power, government spending, government overreach.
But let's say in the future there's some malady that comes down the pike, and God bless everybody that's in R&D, in the world of big pharma, big pharma gets slapped around a lot, and sometimes they deserve it.
You know what else Big Pharma deserves?
Our gratitude every day for saving countless lives.
That's what I mean by case by case.
Next time we're involved, and please don't let it be another pandemic, although there'll probably be one of those too.
But I would hope that people wouldn't take their righteous indignation, their revulsion at what happened to us during COVID, and make them stone-cold anti-vax for everything for the rest of your life.
Mark Davison for Dennis.
Do stick around.
Good advice from Dennis.
Of course, actually, anything Dennis says is good advice for anybody about anything.
That's the value of this show.
Just trying to keep that standard alive here on a one-day basis.
Mark Davison for Dennis.
Happy morning, host.
At 660 AM, the answer here in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Follow me on Twitter at Mark Davis, M-A-R-K Davis.
Shoot me any comment you like along there, and I'll take a look at those during the breaks.
Or better yet, call and we can actually talk about things.
They're at 1-8 Prager-776, 1-8 Prager-776.
And of course, for all things Dennis, go to DennisPrager.com.
All right, let's see here.
Let's see what's going on on the telephone line, see what people want to do.
And we are in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Gary, Mark Davis in for Dennis.
How are you doing?
Hi, Mark.
I'm wondering about a local radio program that I heard this morning, of course, discussing all things primary, Republican, Democrat, who's running, who's not.
The comment was...
If Joe Biden ran as president with Barack Obama as the vice president, commenting that there seems to be no exclusion for a former president to fulfill that role.
Let me hop into a little pesky Constitution stuff, and I may need to do it at the next break.
There's a reason why Obama cannot run again himself, because he's been elected twice.
I believe there is a subplot in there that is that no one ineligible to the presidency can be vice president.
So that would either mean no, he can't either.
I mean, if he were to be vice president and then Biden, forgive me, dies, he would not be...
He would not be elected a third time, so there'd be no violation there.
But if indeed, and I will do my homework in the very next commercial break, if indeed it is true that no one ineligible to the presidency, and maybe they mean not being 35 years old or not being a natural-born citizen.
Oh, here we go with that again.
But if indeed your time limit is up in terms of your number of elections you've run, it would seem that that would be...
It would seem that that would be a disqualifier.
But I'll check.
Yeah, well, they were trying to reflect upon the 22nd Amendment, which is what negates that.
I have good news.
I have good news.
You want to know what the good news is?
It's a fun thing.
Barack Obama's interest in being Vice President of the United States is precisely zero.
Precisely.
It's less than zero.
It's a negative number.
What you've got to worry about is whether his wife wants to be president, because that is scary.
Well, yes, I agree.
But still, many seem to agree or think that Barack is running the presidency right now.
Oh, I don't know.
You know what?
He's too busy windsurfing with Richard Branson.
Barack Obama ain't doing nothing but hanging out, living.
Living his best life.
Barack Obama's interest.
And listen, did Barack Obama enjoy power?
He sure did.
If he could run for a third time when he'd think about it, I think he would.
I don't think he has much interest in being in the bubble with his wife.
I just don't think so.
Barack Obama's interests in having some levers of power right now, whatever those would be, he ain't messing with it.
And this is probably part of human nature.
If there was some Republican figure, some Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, if you're really running things, you want people to know it.
Especially if you have an ego the size of Obama's.
And I don't even say that as great criticism because Lord knows Trump has an ego.
Everybody running for office, to paraphrase George Carlin about being a stand-up comedian, part of the job is, hey, dig me.
Obama ain't doing nothing again except just living his best life and windsurfing with Richard Branson.
60 seconds on Michelle, though.
There is no evidence that she has interest in running, and I really believe that in a married couple that nobody should run for president if the spouse objects vociferously.
I just think that's bad chemistry.
It's bad karma.
It's bad being a bad spouse.
I don't think Barack Obama's interest has any interest in coming back into the bubble and not being president so that he can be first gentleman.
No!
Please, Lord, let that be true.
Because as silly and stupid as this country is, and with Michelle Obama's crazy star quality, deserved or not, that would be a huge, huge problem.
Trust me on this, and let's join together in prayer that it does not happen.
Who else do they got?
Mark Davis in for Dennis.
As he will often do, Elvis sets the perfect tone.
Suspicious minds.
Does that work in today's environment?
Goodness gracious me.
Alright, a couple of things to set up the following and final hour of the Dennis Prager Show.
Mark Davis filling in from Big Thriving DFW. We have a Big Thriving Happy Talk Show in the morning each day on 660 AM. The Answer, the Salem Media Group.
And of course, the best way...
To connect here with the program, no matter who's hosting it, is 1-8-Prager-776.
1-8-Prager-776.
And, of course, all things Prager are found at DennisPrager.com.
Dennis is off gallivanting around the world with that listener cruise, and they're having a great time, and he's having a great time.
And I, for one, am having a great time slinging hot topics with you.
Let me tell you what we've done so far, and then I want to add one thing.
Well, maybe more than one, but there's one particular front of mind thing that I want to offer up to you.
So, so far, we have trod the turf of the 2024 political battles because there was Nikki Haley last night on CNN. There's so much to recommend her as a person, as an official, as a woman of great accomplishment and consequence.
Served the country well, served Trump well as UN ambassador during his tenure.
Interestingly, on the town hall stage last night, didn't so much come after Trump, because where does that get you?
Instead chose to come after DeSantis.
And you're going to see a lot more about this.
You've seen Vivek.
Vivek Ramaswamy was on...
He's on Fox News right now.
I'm looking at him.
I think Vivek is on the shopping channel later on today.
He will show up wherever there are microphones.
And by the way, that's what a hard-working candidate does.
I love the guy.
Might he be running mate material?
Maybe.
We'll see how this all goes.
But Vivek's coming after DeSantis.
And Nikki Haley was coming after DeSantis.
Because your best bet.
I mean, DeSantis himself may not be able to topple Trump.
So what everybody, the best anybody else can hope for is to topple DeSantis.
In other words, to be the one person left on the debate stage.
If we have one-on-one debates when there are two folks left, they probably won't.
To be left standing in the battleground.
Once we are at April, May, you know, let's call it May.
Once we're at May.
We will probably have only two people left.
And it may not take that long.
But let's say it's May of 2024. There'll be two people left in the Republican race.
One of them will be named Donald Trump.
The other will be named something else.
Right now, odds are it's DeSantis.
Odds change.
Things change.
DeSantis may stumble.
Somebody else may be so stellar and brilliant.
And I gotta tell you, I... About a week and a half ago, I had a chat with Larry Elder.
And I highly recommend having a chat with Larry Elder, as many of you did during his years of service here on this very radio network.
And prior to that, across all kinds of talk shows, both in Los Angeles and around the country.
I love Larry.
Larry's been a friend of mine for a long time.
And in analyzing a race, there's something...
It's a challenge.
Locally here in Texas, there are all kinds of people running all the time who are actual friends of mine, and I have a job to kind of put a pin in that and set it aside and not have that color the objectivity of my analysis.
So as I began to fathom the notion of a Larry Elder presidential run, I thought, okay, I love Larry.
I think Larry is brilliant.
Larry's just a hero to me, both in this industry and his run for California governor was fantastic.
He did better than anybody he thought he was going to do.
So, okay, okay, okay, okay.
And so, going into my actual conversation with Larry, I said, all right, let me treat him.
We're friends, but let me treat him like I would any other presidential candidate.
That's the best thing I can do.
In order to assess him as I would any other candidate, let's ask him questions like any other candidate.
So I did.
And 12 minutes later, to the surprise of no one, Larry's answers had been so good, so inspiring, so energetic, so on point, so brilliant.
I'm like, dude, why not?
Why not?
And by the way, is it elderforpresident.com?
Do it.
Listen, I'm not sitting here telling you to go vote for Larry for president months from now.
Do whatever you want to do.
But here's the criterion I was talking about in looking at Chris Christie and...
Various other people who are getting into the race, Mike Pence, the governor of North Dakota.
Really?
Really?
And God bless Doug Burgum.
Wonderful man, I'm sure.
Lovely state, I'm sure.
But what?
I mean, the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, is a rock star.
And it don't make no point for her to get in there either.
So, which there's little word that she is, but there might be running mate potential there, but God bless Governor Burgum.
Who got with him?
What's that even about?
But my point about getting into the race is if you literally have no chance of getting the nomination, there's a reason I'm willing to not just tolerate you, but perhaps welcome you.
And that is, you ready?
Do you make the race more interesting?
Do you make...
The debate stage, more interesting.
And in Vivek Ramaswamy's case, that's a definite yes.
In Tim Scott's case, no.
In Chris Christie's case, I think it's a yes, because he's an interesting guy.
In Mike Pence's case, shoot, no.
No, no, no, no.
In Larry's case, and this is where I'm...
Sending you to elderforpresident.com.
Throw them five bucks.
Isn't it worth the entertainment value?
Just have Larry on the debate stage.
And I don't mean that dismissively.
Entertainment value.
I'm entertained by all of this.
So it's good that I do this for a living.
But I think what you have to have is 40,000.
And it's weird.
In a country of 330 million, you might think, 40,000?
I could get that walking around the neighborhood.
Oh, yeah?
Try.
Try.
It's hard.
And I think you have to have 1% in the polls.
Hey, 1% in the polls ain't easy in a country of 330 million, where more and more people are running every day.
So let's get Larry to 1% in the polls.
Tell a pollster you like him, whatever you want to do there.
But throw him a couple of bucks at elderforpresident.com.
Larry on the debate stage, even if Larry's chances of getting the nomination are only slightly higher than my own, it's a better debate stage with Larry on it.
It's a better debate stage with Vivek on it.
So why not, man?
Let's see how this all goes.
And we get lectured a lot that they say never say never.
Okay, I'll say a never right now.
Doug Burgum will never be President of the United States.
That's terrible.
He's probably still a young man.
He will never achieve the nomination this year, or this coming season in 2024. Governor of North Dakota.
What the heck is going on there?
Anyway, they say never, say never, and we get lectured sometimes by folks who say that the only thing certain is change.
And that's true.
And that all kinds of things could change.
And that's true.
But right now, it is a hard argument to say that somebody other than Trump and DeSantis will be the last two standing.
Trump ain't going anywhere.
I think we've determined that.
And as for DeSantis?
He's kind of a golden boy right now.
Deserves to be.
He's an awesome governor of Florida.
He's great.
He seems to present with exactly the right kind of skill set to give us the Trump-style policies all conservatives miss in a package that might have a better chance of winning.
That's his best argument.
DeSantis' best argument is, you miss Trump policies?
Guess what?
I do, too.
But guess what?
He can't win, and I can.
And Trump's best argument is, instead of bagging on DeSantis like an angry 10-year-old, say, look, he's a great governor of Florida.
I love him.
You love him.
I love him.
He's great in Florida.
But he's an unknown entity.
Can he handle Kim Jong-un?
I did.
Can he run the United States in terms of wise America first foreign policy?
He could say that he would try.
But guess what?
I did it.
You saw me do it, and I can do it again.
There, no charge.
The Mark Davis campaign consultancy.
And that's what these guys ought to be doing.
And I think there are strong points that they can both make.
Meaning Trump will not fall.
I don't believe that DeSantis will stumble.
I don't know that he will gain on Trump, but I don't think he'll stumble.
So all these other folks, I just don't know.
I don't know.
But you tell me what you think.
1-8-Prager-776.
Got a lot to say about a lot of other things, too.
and we're going to your calls next on the Dennis Prager Show.
It's the Dennis Prager Show.
Don't teach us Here on a Monday, 5th of June, 2023, Mark Davis filling in for Dennis.
I'm going to have to call here and intersperse some calls in with other things that I still wanted to get to today.
Have you heard about our friends at Chick-fil-A? Love me some Chick-fil-A, both in terms of chicken and beliefs.
Good chicken, good Christian, solid foundation behind their corporate ethos.
So love me some Chick-fil-A. So somebody thought they were breaking news a few days ago when they said, oh my gosh, look what we found at Chick-fil-A. A vice president for DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion.
Cha-cha-cha-cha.
You know, and all of a sudden, you know, everybody's hair's on fire.
I got a thought or two about that.
I'll share it here in a moment.
1-8-Prager-776.
We are in, just down the road, Fort Worth.
Rhett, Mark Davis in Fort Dennis.
Happy Monday.
How are you?
Hey, Mark.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
Mark, I'm out and about all day during the week, and I notice a lot of people not working.
And I don't know if they realize, but what they are actually doing is they are selling their freedom.
They are selling their freedom.
I think somebody needs to come up with a bumper sticker that says either don't sell your freedom or yours and my freedom.
Get a job.
Because what they need to realize is, first of all, again, they're selling their freedom, but whatever the government's giving, the government can take it away.
And all they're doing is they're allowing themselves to be controlled by the government.
And it's hurting.
They think, oh, this is cool.
But it's really hurting them, and it's hurting all of them.
Of course it is.
Since I'm sufficiently intrigued, and I think I kind of know, but let me have you assemble it for me.
When you say that when someone is inert, when somebody is just willfully unemployed, just lollygagging around, that they are quote-unquote selling their freedom.
Tell me exactly what you mean.
Well, they're getting paid by the government.
To sit home and do nothing.
I mean, so what they're doing is they're changing our freedom for money.
That's exactly what they're doing.
Listen, there are a ton of people sitting on the couch right now.
Are you sort of talking specifically about people who are on welfare, people who are on some type of government sustenance?
Well, here's the thing.
I mean, look at all the jobs in the job market.
I mean, all of these people could find a job if they wanted to, but they're choosing to stay home and watch television.
They are selling their freedom.
That's exactly what they're doing.
And they may not realize it.
They may think, hey, this is cool.
This is really cool.
But the Democrats, all they want to do is create dependence.
So they're allowing themselves to be dependent upon the government.
Correct.
And willfully so.
Yep.
And willfully, willfully so.
Well put, and thank you.
There are...
A few snapshots of America that you think about taking back 50 years or 100 years.
You know, take back 100 years and show people landing on the moon.
Their heads would explode.
Oh, what kind of deviltry is that?
But other portraits, other snapshots.
Go back to, and I know this is a very boomer thing to do.
Maybe it's a Gen X thing to do, too.
My parents have both been gone since 1998. My dad was 20 years Air Force and then was in the private sector, an office manager for an educational consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia.
Too much information.
And then for the last, about the last 10 years of his work and life, you know what he did?
He sold chain-link fence for Montgomery Ward and he was never happier.
Traveling all over the place, meeting people, filling their chain-link fence needs.
In the suburban Maryland of the early 1970s, he was happy as a clam.
And he worked hard every day.
And he instilled in me the value of doing that.
And my wife and I are instilling into our kids the value of doing that too.
Are we uncommon in that regard?
I know you're trying.
Well, listen, people listen.
Maybe the Dennis Prager Show audience is the bad place to deliver a scolding, so I'm not.
I'm sort of talking about these people over there who are allowing this, who are permitting an entire generation of young people to rot in the glow of gaming screens.
Have you seen?
Oh, I actually took a screenshot of something.
I took a screenshot.
I did not intend to necessarily be able to use this so quickly, but here we are.
It was, this is the Pew Research Center, 21-year-olds.
Do I get time for this?
21-year-olds and major milestones.
So think of, and I have a 20-year-old right now, and God bless him, he's great.
Thanks for asking.
I have a 31-year-old daughter, too, so she's fantastic.
Thanks for asking.
21-year-olds and major milestones.
And this isn't going back 60 years.
This isn't going, hey, in my day, you know, back when Eisenhower was president.
And I was born when Eisenhower was president.
No, this is just 1980. It's 1980. It's when Reagan was elected.
Uh-huh.
You ready?
How many 21-year-olds have a full-time job?
Now, that's 21. Hey, maybe you're a senior in college.
Understand.
Good excuse.
How many 20-year-olds?
21-year-olds have a full-time job.
In 1980, it was 64%.
Okay.
Alright.
Did I have a full-time job when I was 21?
Well, yeah.
I mean, I graduated from college at that age.
So, yes.
By the time I was 22, I did.
The year 2021?
Percentage of 21-year-olds with a full-time job?
39%.
We are so screwed.
Financially independent.
Number of 21-year-olds who are financially independent.
Now, that's asking a lot.
Financially independent at 21?
I was.
And I wasn't special.
I was 21 in 1978. Anyway, financially independent, 1980, 42%.
Okay, financially independent.
That's a long bridge to cross.
What do you think it is roughly today, 2021?
25%.
I may actually be surprised that it's 25%.
Of 21-year-olds who are financially independent.
Home away from your parents.
Get ready.
Home away from your parents.
Now, here's where the college asterisk, or as they say in Maryland, asterisk, might kick in.
In 1980, it was 62%, and in 2021, it was 51%.
That is only...
You know what they should have asked?
Ask that of young folks who are 27. Do you know how many flipping 27-year-olds I know still live with mom and dad or know or know of?
Still, whatever you want to call it, failure to launch?
We are so screwed if this doesn't turn around.
Which is why, on the talk shows that I host, be they local or national, I'll always spend plenty of time talking about, you know, good, hardcore, nuts and bolts politics.
I love it, love it, love it, love it.
Policies, borders, the law.
This, that, you know, campaigns.
Love it, love it, love it.
But if you go through life and you're not concerned about the culture, and I don't mean, you know, I mean the culture.
The way we're raising our kids.
The kind of values we're instilling in them.
And I don't even mean political values.
The values that say, find somebody of the opposite sex.
Go to college or get a job and make something of yourself.
Make some money.
Get a house and go live life and start having some kids.
Being fruitful and multiplying.
All of those have just been dashed against the rocks.
Mark Davis, in for Dennis.
Dennis, be right back.
Dennis Prager Show.
Monday, June 5. Welcome.
Mark Davis filling in.
Let me give you my Chick-fil-A story here.
And I'll actually be writing about this.
Oh, I've told you all these radio things that I do, but here's where to find me in print.
I do a lot of columns for Newsweek.
Look at newsweek.com and search the columnist for Mark Davis.
Also, Star-Telegram.
Right west of me here in Fort Worth, but also across the McClatchy chain of newspapers.
Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee, Kansas City Star, other places like that.
So I write for them as well.
And I'm cobbling together some things for a column that will be out here this week that's about our friends at Chick-fil-A. So, against the following backdrop, everybody's political lenses are focused sharply on corporate America these days, and everybody's eyes are peeled for the spread of DEI initiatives, diversity, equity, inclusion, cha-cha-cha, right?
Liberals stand ready to scold companies who fail to add such a department, and conservatives were all ready to pounce against those who do.
So the reasons are simple, because we on the right prefer a focus on merit without regard to race or other, you know, While the left clings to identity politics.
So from Disney to Bud Light, headlines are filled with stories of companies that are properly paying a price as we conservatives seek marketplace punishment for woke activism.
But what happens, haha, here's a curveball, what happens when the storyline involves the discovery of a DEI officer at one of America's hallmark conservative brands?
Reactions are expectedly conflicted.
And the story rolled out kind of sloppily, too, which didn't help anybody.
Go back to May 29th.
There's a political strategist named Joey Manorino, and he tweets, Chick-fil-A just hired a DEI vice president.
Just hired.
Eh, not really.
The gentleman in question, Eric McReynolds, Has actually had that title for Chick-fil-A since November of 2021, and he was actually executive director of that department since July of 2020. That is nearly three years, at the very least, that Chick-fil-A, one of America's trademark family values brands, has had a DEI office.
So it's not a new story, but it is different.
The various companies, the other companies that have been recently outed for over-the-top woke posturing, they've been uniformly aligned with liberalism.
You can always find video posts of some stupid manager somewhere.
We're just so pleased to offer you Dylan Mulvaney to help us sell Bud Lighthouse.
How'd that work out?
Or Disney telling you there's going to be, you know, new, you know, trans Ariel or whatever's going to happen in their next film.
So what is Chick-fil-A doing swimming in the DEI pool?
So I went to their, the Chick-fil-A DEI webpage.
So there's a smiling picture of Mr. McReynolds, and the company proudly touts its commitment to being better at together and fostering, more air quotes, a culture of belonging.
Okay.
They describe recruitment partnerships with the Women's Food Service Forum, the National Black MBA Association, and the Association of Latino Professionals of America.
They also have things that are called community groups, things that employees at Chick-fil-A can join.
Some of them are called women in business.
Another one is the Black Employee Resource Group.
Good for them.
This openness extends to the supply chain necessary to operate the most popular fast food chain in America, which Chick-fil-A remains for eight straight years, even under all this woke pressure.
Quote from their website again, we are developing mentorship and partnership opportunities for minority-owned businesses and are working to provide additional support through the launch of several supplier diversity efforts.
does it suggest that male Chick-fil-A employees can become women or vice versa?
Nowhere on the page does it suggest that America is a racist hellhole in dire need of modern atonement in the form of racial revenge policies.
Chick-fil-A's brand of DEI is a testament to the company's efforts to operate in a manner that displays genuine fairness and openness toward customers and employees without thwarting the Christian values set forth by their founder Truett Caffey back in 1947.
welcoming all employees who fit that value structure at Chick-fil-A, while welcoming customers without regard to really anything except you have money to buy chicken.
It should not mean scrapping merit as a hiring criterion in order to meet some arbitrary racial standard.
Equity should mean equality of opportunity, not rigging the landscape to yield equality Inclusion should mean welcoming employees who meet the qualifications for each job without flouting the company's principles.
And this is a two-way street.
There was a liberal Texas baker who punted a really vocally conservative employee who didn't exactly fit in a shop festooned with rainbow flags and Beto O'Rourke campaign signs.
Sometimes the chemistry just doesn't work.
So let me, I'll finish this up in a minute because Chick-fil-A may be doing DEI right.
Mark Davison for Dennis.
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