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June 29, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:23:35
End of Affirmative Action
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Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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All right, are we good?
And...
Hello, everybody.
I'm in San Antonio, Texas.
Zach, you've got to give me the cue when to go on.
Sean is on vacation, so if you hear me talk to Zach, you'll understand why.
Hello, everybody.
It was a wonderful night with listeners in San Antonio.
There's a good example of it's not worth worrying.
I've done that subject on a couple of occasions on the Happiness Hour.
And one of my theories on why it's not worth worrying is that what you worry about at least half the time doesn't actually materialize.
So I'll give you my example.
All last week I've been reading about extreme heat.
In central Texas, and I think of Texas as humid as well, which is not correct.
It's humid in Houston, it's humid in Galveston, and alternates in Dallas, but it's not true for the whole state.
There's a lot of dryness.
Be that as it may, it reached well over 100 last week, and my event being a cigar event was outdoors.
Although some cigar events that I do for stations, it's a popular way of having me.
It's fine with me.
I get to smoke a cigar while I talk.
But it was outdoors, and I was worried because I can't stand heat and humidity.
Heat I can take with humidity.
It's very unpleasant.
To make a long story short, it was quite comfortable.
There was nothing wrong.
There was a breeze.
We were in the shade.
The sun set.
And it was a great example of it's not worth worrying because if it happens, your worrying didn't stop it.
And if it doesn't happen, you worried for no good reason.
Well, there's a rather sad story.
There are many, obviously, that I'll bring to your attention.
It's from Gallup, the big polling company.
Extreme pride in being American remains near record low.
At 39%, the share of U.S. adults who are extremely proud to be American is essentially unchanged from last year's 38% record low.
The combined 67% of America who are now extremely or very proud 28% also aligns with the historically subdued 65% reading one year ago.
Another 22% of adults currently say they are moderately proud, while 7% are only a little and 4% not at all.
And if you look at the graph, it does keep getting low.
When Gallup first asked the question in January 2001, 55% of U.S. adults were extremely proud to be American.
However, pride soon intensified after 9-11, with extreme pride ranging from 65% to 70% between 2002 and 2004. High school kids selling American flags, waving them and selling American flags.
And to think that it was only 22 years ago is almost unbelievable.
Just 22 years ago, high school kids were waving American flags on the streets.
And I live in the LA area, which is...
Not known for its patriotic fervor, shall we say.
The decline is dramatic.
And, of course, I believe it is overwhelmingly due to the fact that the left has taken over the rhetoric of the country.
You live in a systemically racist society.
Every white is a white supremacist.
To be black is to be a victim.
To be a woman is to be a victim.
To be Hispanic is to be a victim.
Your past stinks and your future is death.
That's the message.
So it's no wonder that this is so low.
In terms of the combined percentages, saying they were extremely or very proud, roughly 9 in 10 Americans expressed high levels of pride in the earliest years of the trend through 2004. In 2005, that figure began falling into the 80% range before dropping to 75%.
In 2017, and staying below 70% since 2020. Demographic differences in Americans' national pride driven by partisanship.
This is interesting.
Party identification remains the greatest demographic differentiator in expression of national pride.
Republicans have consistently...
More likely, have been consistently more likely than Democrats and Independents to express pride in being American throughout the trend.
That gap has been particularly pronounced since 2018 with more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats saying they are extremely proud.
How could a Democrat be proud?
In his inaugural address, spent much of the inaugural address speaking about how a great chunk of this country is evil.
A first, I have to believe, a first in American inaugural speech history.
It's amazing any Democrats feel pride in being American.
Nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats saying they are extremely proud.
Republicans are also nearly twice as likely as independents to express the highest degree of pride.
And that is clear.
It would be interesting.
I wonder if they do it via sex.
That would be an interesting thing to look at.
Listen to this.
This is very significant.
We have a graph here.
Age group, 18 to 34, 36 to 54, 55 and older, and they do it based on Republican, Independent, and Democratic identification.
Republicans, Independents, Democrats.
So 55 and older Democrats, 38% say they're extremely proud.
Guess what the percentage of...
18 to 34-year-olds who are Democrats who say they are extremely proud.
12. So, give or take the margin of error, it's basically 1 in 10 Democrats under 35 feels extremely proud to be an American.
By the way, it's worth noting that among Republicans of that age group, it's 42, as compared to 68% in that group, or even 35 to 54 among Republicans is 64%.
Having said that, I want you to know that my pride has diminished.
This country has become the greatest exporter of horrible ideas on Earth.
I love this country, but I don't lie to myself.
of.
When bad people take over a country, it's difficult to have pride in it.
On the other hand, you want to be a patriot.
What I still love is first the America prior to the last couple of decades.
And I love the American founders.
And I love the American value system.
All of that has been unique.
So it's actually a subject that I... I think is worth covering.
If you are a conservative, what is your feeling toward the country right now?
We have to be honest with each other.
I mean, there is a point where the toxicity of the left is such that it has an effect.
How could it not?
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The Supreme Court found it unconstitutional to consider race, Wall Street Journal, in university admissions, eliminating the principal tool the nation's most selective schools have used to diversify their campuses.
Thursday's 6-3 decision will force a reworking of admissions criteria Throughout American higher education, where for decades the pursuit of diversity has been an article of faith.
The ruling's ramifications will likely extend beyond universities to recast the role of racial preferences in America.
Leaders of American business and public institutions warned Oh, I want to see that.
There's a link to that.
I have a lot to say about that.
The need for people to look like you in leadership positions.
Wow.
I grew up as an Orthodox Jew.
I'm still a religious Jew, it's just not denominationally identifiable.
And I remember as a kid that all the figures that were in the school books, you know, like C, Spot, Run, what was it, Jill, Jack and Jill, was it?
Were those the two characters?
And their dog, Spot.
And I remember thinking, you know, not one of them wears a yarmulke.
And so they didn't look like any Orthodox Jew, and that's the world in which I grew up.
And you know what?
I didn't give a damn.
What difference did it make?
Why is it important to have someone in a position of power or fame?
Look like you.
No, I'm serious.
Why is that important?
Does it affirm your importance?
Is your self-image that weak?
And I'm not saying this as a criticism.
I'm saying it really as a form of sympathy.
That you gain this vicarious thrill?
How exactly did it benefit any black?
Man or woman in America that for eight years the President of the United States looked like them.
What difference did it make?
What if the President of the United States doesn't look like you but helps you?
As opposed to the President of the United States who might look like you but doesn't do much for you.
In other words, on a scale of descending significance, where would you place looks like me?
Companies brace for Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action.
This came out last week in the Wall Street Journal.
A decision on race-conscious college admissions could have implications for corporate diversity programs.
You mean like United Airlines, which said that it's reserving half of its flight school places for women and racial minorities?
Do you really want your pilots to be chosen on that basis?
Well, it's fascinating that three justices actually thought that it was Constitution.
What those justices did is confuse what they would like to see with what is constitutional.
They're not the same things.
U.S. companies are preparing for a Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action to present new tests to their hiring and other personnel decisions.
The outcome of two parallel cases, which involve admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, won't directly affect employers' practices and policies which are generated by a different statute than admissions.
Lawyers and business leaders say they expect that any decision restricting or prohibiting race-conscious admissions could lead to more legal challenges to company hiring and promotion decisions.
So is America a happier place?
Are racial relations better?
Are the average black persons or Hispanic?
I would say Asian, but Asians actually have been hurt by admissions based on racial criteria because they're what is called the new Jews at Harvard.
In the 1930s, Harvard decided to restrict the number of Jews because so many were getting in based on grades.
That's what's happening now with Asians.
That there are any Asian Americans who vote Democrat is proof of the fact that a vast number of people do not think clearly.
Pharmaceutical maker Merck and telecom company AT&T are among companies that have held internal meetings about a coming affirmative action ruling and its potential fallout.
People familiar with the discussion said some companies are discussing whether to make changes to existing diversity programs including renaming them.
That's a great one.
I'll tell you what, folks.
We should have a lottery here.
What will the new name be for existing diversity programs?
I know the left like I know my family, but I can't figure out what will the new term be if diversity is rendered Liable for legal action against it.
What is a synonym for diversity?
But I'll tell you this, they will come up with one.
These people are geniuses.
It's like gender affirming is the opposite of what gender affirming care does.
Gender affirming care is gender denying care.
Hello everybody from San Antonio, Texas, where I was really told to be concerned for my event last night, which was outdoor.
It was a cigar event with listeners at my wonderful station here in San Antonio, and it turned out to be actually pretty pleasant.
It was not humid.
It was in the shade.
And as I said at the beginning of the last hour, it vindicates my theory, and I have lived by this much of my life, maybe nearly all of my life, certainly, since teenage years.
It's not worth worrying, because if what you worry about happens, your worrying didn't stop it.
And if it doesn't happen, you made yourself miserable for no good reason.
So it's just a little example of that.
I figured, alright, worst comes to worst, I'll sweat.
Or, more sophisticatedly, I will perspire.
Supreme Court today has struck down use of race in college admissions.
The most interesting part to me of all of these is to read how the left reacts to any given issue.
And I had that.
I was reading to you from the Los Angeles Times.
It's a remarkable piece.
It does encapsulate exactly what the left thinks of black people.
It's a very, very telling piece.
It's titled, We're Really Worried.
What Do Colleges Do Now After Affirmative Action Ruling?
And the language is, if you heard me the first hour, you heard this, I'm sorry.
It is a rule of life that people don't remember something until they hear it at least twice.
That's why you hear phone numbers in ads three times.
They have done a lot of testing.
People need to hear it three times before they actually even pay attention, let alone remember it.
But when they say, this is what blew my mind, that young blacks will feel that they don't matter.
Many also fear that applications from black, Latino, and other students of color will drop, okay?
I don't know why.
I don't know why.
If they want to go to college, then maybe they'll drop in terms of prestigious colleges where it's very hard to get in and rigorous to stay in.
But why will it drop generally?
So is a black student going to say, if I don't go to Princeton, Then I'm not going to go to college.
Why will they drop?
By the way, that's not a criticism of the LA Times piece.
I don't get it.
Why will they drop?
You're less likely to get into a rigorous college, quote-unquote prestigious college, so your theory is if I don't go to a prestigious college, I won't go to college?
Listen, as far as I'm concerned, I wish college students declined in number by half.
But that's a separate issue entirely.
But here's the key.
A key priority will be to assure those students that they matter.
So here was my point.
Reading that.
They're told now that they don't matter.
They're told that only their skin color matters.
We will accept you based on your skin color means you don't matter.
You are irrelevant.
You are a way of us white lefties feeling good about ourselves taking in more black kids.
That's all you are to these leftists.
You don't matter now.
Your race matters now.
That's really important.
Young people, particularly young people of color, are going to receive this as a message that they don't belong, said another left-wing fool named Christopher Nellum, executive director of Ed...
Trust West, a non-profit organization focused on education equity.
Just out of curiosity, if Ed Trust West went out of business tomorrow, would the country be a better, a worse, or make no difference place?
The sweeping decision...
Eliminated the use of race in admissions decisions nationwide for the first time since the High Court allowed the practice in 1978 to promote diversity.
Is there a constitutional requirement for diversity that I missed?
Aren't judges supposed to rule on the constitutionality of an issue, not on the desirability of an issue?
Students for Fair Admissions, a non-profit opposed to racial preferences, alleged that Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection by considering race in admissions decisions, and that the Ivy League campus specifically discriminates against Asian Americans.
Of course it does!
That's the whole plot.
The High Court agreed in a majority opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. The ruling noted that the appellate court found Harvard's affirmative action program resulted in fewer admissions of Asian American students and the Ivy League campus' assertion that race was never used as a negative factor in selections cannot withstand scrutiny.
What a nice way of saying Harvard lied.
I've got to use that from now on.
This article is really in depth.
All these phrases that I need to incorporate.
Whether you matter or not.
That was the key.
But this is a good one.
It's not that Harvard lied.
It's that its assertions cannot...
What was the word?
Withstand scrutiny.
I love that.
You know, the earth is flat.
Well, sir, just need to tell you that assertion cannot withstand scrutiny.
I love it.
That was the Supreme Court's own words about Harvard.
But Roberts also wrote that, quote, nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected the applicant's life, unquote.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
But once they do that, won't they just shift to that?
Or won't every non-white student know that they have to write in their college application?
How their race affected their life.
And that is a dog whistle to the left.
Hey, you want diversity?
I'm your man.
Or woman.
Or neither.
Gotta remember that.
A non-binary black.
I don't understand why you can't be non-binary in race.
I'm not kidding.
If you could change sexes, why can't you change race?
Which will continue to allow students to write about their backgrounds in college essays.
Well, the word will get out.
You write about how race affected you, and ideally, of course, it affected you adversely.
You have suffered for being black at the hands of all the white supremacists you have dealt with.
I don't understand why the universities will say, oh, we didn't accept him because of his race.
We accepted him because of the way he handled adversity.
Institutions must consider that...
Roberts added, yes, see.
However, that institutions must consider that background in the context of applicants' quality of character or unique ability that the particular can...
Applicant can contribute to the university and treat them based on experiences as individuals, not on the basis of race.
Well, this will be fascinating.
Truly, truly fascinating to see how colleges get around this.
There's no doubt that they'll get around it.
That's all they'll have to say.
Of course we didn't accept him because he's black.
Why would you think that?
And then what's your answer?
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Hi everybody, I want you to know...
Of a project at Prager University, PragerU, as it's popularly known, that we have videos coming out gradually, obviously.
All our videos are five minutes.
There are now almost 600 of them.
They are better than almost any college education because they give you wisdom as well as insight and facts.
They're about everything.
You cannot study biology or botany.
Or math, make that clear.
We do not teach STEM, science, technology, engineering, math.
Okay.
But otherwise, as one young man said to me years ago, when we only had a third of the number up, he said, I learned more at PragerU than I did at Princeton, which I believe.
I'm not happy about it.
Well, I'm happy about it in one sense.
I'm not happy about what it says about Princeton.
So our project is actually to give you a brief bio of every president and to make it as objective as possible.
There is zero political end.
We're not trying to convince people of anything.
We just want you to know that a great way to learn history, this is me speaking now, this is not a PragerU position, although it might be, but it has been my belief.
Much of my life that the best way to learn history is through biography.
You learn about one person, but you learn about the person's times, habits, culture.
So we have a five-minute video on every president, and the latest is Franklin Pierce.
And I would venture to say that 99% of Americans can't say a word about him.
And that I suspect 80% of Americans never heard the name.
Ask your waiter or waitress next time.
Do you know who Franklin Pierce was?
By the way, I have done that.
I get a big kick out of it.
And the guesses are really adorable.
Some think it's a band.
Which, for all I know, it is.
Well, believe it or not, there are experts on...
Presidents that most Americans don't know.
One of them, whom I've now had on again, I'm now having on again, is, I'm a big fan of, Joseph Fornieri.
And he is Professor of Political Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
He heads a center there, which I'm going to ask him about.
And he presents the new PragerU video.
It's the latest installment in our President's series.
Franklin Pierce, a torn president in a torn country.
Watch the, or listen, you can watch at the Salem News Channel.
But here's how it sounds, the first minute of the Franklin Pierce video.
By all accounts, Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, was a fine person.
Charming, caring, deeply empathetic.
These are all characteristics you want in a friend, and Pierce had many, but they don't necessarily make for a strong leader.
Unfortunately, Pierce's appointment with history came when such a leader was sorely needed.
Try as he might to fill the role, Pierce couldn't do it.
Franklin Pierce was born November 23, 1804, in Hillsborough, New Hampshire.
Raised in the shadow of his prominent father, Benjamin, a revolutionary war hero, Franklin began his political career shortly after graduating from Bowdoin College in 1824. He was a political natural.
In addition to his good looks, he was an eloquent speaker.
Gifted with a photographic memory, he almost always spoke without notes, connecting directly to his audience.
He won his first election in 1829 to the New Hampshire State Legislature.
In 1832, he was elected to Congress, and by 1837, he was a U.S. Senator.
The youngest member at the time.
The overriding political issue of the day was slavery.
To understand Pierce, we need to understand his position on this issue.
While not a slave owner himself, Pierce believed that the Constitution committed the federal government to protecting slavery.
Not surprisingly, Pierce's position endeared him to his Southern colleagues.
This support was key to his political career.
All right, we'll stop it there.
Frankly, I would like to hear the whole thing again.
I'm riveted by it.
And it is the latest installment of our President's series.
And I'm going to talk to the professor who made it when we come back.
It truly is.
an area we don't know about Franklin Pierce, and yet the time in America was so crucial.
Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
It's beeping again Give me one moment here because I am in...
There we go.
Okay, we're good.
I am in San Antonio, checking out all the connections.
It's amazing that we can do it at all.
It's a miracle.
Joseph Fornieri is a professor of political science, Rochester Institute of Technology.
The latest video for PragerU, we come out with a video every week, and have for almost 10 years, or about 10 years, is on the 14th President of the United States, about whom...
Most of you, including me, knew nothing.
And now I am somewhat riveted.
So, Professor, I want to ask you about the slavery issue, because you mentioned in the video that was the riveting issue of the day.
Yes.
I don't think that Americans today are aware...
of how much of American life the issue of slavery dominated before the Civil War.
Everybody knows about the Civil War, but is that fair to say it was the issue and few are aware of that today?
I think that's a fair assessment.
I think we trend, you know, in general because there's so much to cover when you teach history classes.
So you compartmentalize things.
You'll start with, you know, the American Revolution.
And then, you know, the slavery issue will seem to be dropped until you get right up until the Civil War or prior to it.
So I don't think there's necessarily a malicious intent.
I don't think so either.
I just think people don't realize it.
Yeah, I think it's important to, and there's been a lot of great scholarly work by James Oaks, for example.
To really chronicle and document the tenacity of the anti-slavery forces that will form the nucleus of the Republican Party.
And how hard they fought, black and white.
You know, it was a multi...
What is the name of that book?
Forgive me.
What is the name of the book?
I love this book.
It's called Freedom National by James Oaks.
Freedom National?
Yes, I'm going to give him a big plug here.
He's down in New York, and he's an outstanding scholar, as I see it, and just a person of goodwill, a fair-minded person.
And the book chronicles in a very accessible manner.
It's one of many.
The struggle from the time of the Constitution right up until the Civil War to contain slavery, to restrict it, and to put it on a path of ultimate extinction.
And he looks at the different scenarios that the anti-slavery movement sought to combat slavery.
And there's a lot of important distinctions.
For example, if we look at Franklin Pierce, he was very sympathetic to the South.
He was what was known as a doe-face, a Northern man of Southern sympathies.
And he believed that there was a property, a national property right in a slave contained in the Constitution.
And I know that sounds like a complicated distinction, but other anti-slavery forces, while they recognized, they acknowledged slavery, saw it as a state institution, right?
That the model was freedom, national, and slavery, local or sectional.
And that meant the federal government was authorized to deal with this cancer and to restrict it and contain it.
I was, I guess, I think it's humorous, and I really enjoyed the opportunity that Prager gave me to look at the trio of failed presidents, Pierce and Buchanan.
I did Taylor, who died early, but Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan are the failed trio of presidents before Lincoln up to the Civil War era.
Their example is important when we look at political greatness.
It's also important to consider its opposite, political failures and what went wrong and what their vices were.
So I find these characters interesting.
I tried to keep this five-minute video in terms of the big...
Big issue of slavery, all of them, whether it's Taylor, Buchanan, or Pierce.
You know what you just said prompted me to ask, and I've never asked this before, I've never even wondered about it, but now I am wondering about it.
Was there any active anti-slavery sentiment or movement in the South?
That's a great question.
I think the South was extremely effective.
Historians have written about this.
I'm a political scientist.
But really, beginning in the 1830s, there's a change in Southern sentiment and a censorship regime goes into effect.
And not only that, not only the censorship regime, but the South becomes much more militaristic.
And tenacious in protecting slavery.
There's fear of slave revolts.
Nat Turner's revolt occurs around this time.
There's concern about Santo Domingo, which occurred about 30 years later.
So I don't think there's a meaningful anti-slavery movement.
Even manumission.
There were Southern manumission societies.
That sought to free and expatriate blacks, colonize them to Liberia.
That starts falling by the wayside.
Of course, Henry Clay is the great example.
He's from Kentucky.
Kentucky was a border state.
But Lincoln and the leadership of the Republican Party make note of this, and they make note of this change in Southern public opinion.
A few more questions for you.
His video is up at PragerU.
You'll learn a lot and it's enjoyably presented.
Professor Fornieri and I continue.
Hello, everybody.
Hello.
Slavery in America and the presidents.
The subjects of my dialogue here with Professor Joseph Fornieri, Rochester Institute of Technology, and he has done the latest video for Prager University on President Franklin Pierce, the 14th president.
To put that into perspective, Lincoln is the 16th president.
By the way, given your knowledge of that era, I don't know if you can answer this, but I've always been curious.
Buchanan is the next president right before Lincoln, and he was a bachelor, and he was the only bachelor to ever be in the White House.
Did people whisper about him at all, or it didn't matter to people?
There was some whispering and...
Letters to one of his friends, one of his male companions that he lived with, were destroyed by both nieces, both men's nieces, I believe.
So, you know, we don't have a smoking gun, and scholars have speculated about it, and there was some speculation back then, but I can't say for sure.
I did the Buchanan video.
It's coming up next.
Yeah, I assumed your answer.
Obviously, you didn't say it, but the assumption was he might be gay, which doesn't matter to me.
It's just an interesting anecdote in our history.
But it is interesting that Americans did elect a bachelor, gay or not gay.
Because, generally speaking, to this day, people trust men who are married, or who were married, more than they do bachelors.
Is that fair to say?
Maybe that's changing.
I don't know.
It's an interesting question.
I don't know if it's changing.
That's why I say it's a...
We just trust married.
One more question, not related to...
He was experienced, though, Dennis.
He was very...
Buchanan had an illustrious public service record that did not serve him well once he became president.
Right.
Yes, exactly.
Which is worthy of its own book, What Serves Well.
We've got 30 seconds left.
I don't know if you saw the piece in the Wall Street Journal about the objections to my speech at Arizona State University.
No, I didn't.
Yeah, last week it was a big, it was a leading opinion.
It doesn't matter.
Would there be protests if someone like me came to your university?
In other words, by professors?
There might be, but RIT, I'm proud to say, has robustly sided with free speech.
That's what I was asking.
Alright, we gotta go.
You are your joy.
And watch the video, folks, at PragerU.com.
We continue.
You know, folks, Dennis Prager here.
There are many truly significant issues, obviously, in the world.
And very few, if any, are more important than the following subject.
China.
And specifically, trade with China, the Chinese economy, but it's all related to power, because economic power is power.
That is just the way things are in the world, and it makes sense.
We had, under President Trump, a remarkable person as the United States Trade Representative, the 17th in our history, if I have a number correct.
And the amazing thing is that the book which just came out two days ago, with a great title, No Trade is Free, Taking on China, Changing Course, Taking on China and Helping America's Workers, is the subtitle.
The book is praised by the President of the United Steelworkers and Marco Rubio.
I can't think of another book written.
That would get praised, maybe one on, I don't know, your daily horoscope.
I have no idea.
It is a remarkable achievement.
And nobody knows China and its economy, no American, better than this man.
And it's a delight to have him on, Robert Lighthizer.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com.
No trade is free.
Congratulations on all your life's work, sir.
Well, thank you very much.
Dennis, it's a great pleasure to be here.
I'm a fan.
And I'm looking forward to this discussion.
And I do appreciate the fact that somebody said, how long did it take to write the book?
I said about 45 years.
Yeah.
That's probably true for almost every good book.
And this obviously is in that world.
Let me start at the very present moment.
How much has the Biden...
I don't know the answer to this question.
A lot of times I feel I do when I ask the guy because I want to get his view.
But I don't know how I would answer this.
So I'm going to learn from you.
How much has the Biden administration changed the Trump administration's view of trade with China?
So that's a really good...
Fundamental question.
So let me take a second to answer it, if we have a second.
So first of all, an administration is composed of a variety of people, some of whom agree with me and some of whom don't.
Unfortunately, I think in this case, the president is in the group that doesn't.
So the fundamental thing we have is the tariffs.
President Trump put tariffs on $370 billion worth of Chinese products, and then export controls and a whole plan.
They have kept that in place.
What they haven't done is added additional tariffs.
So that's the state of the situation.
When you ask the next question, what do I predict?
It worries me that the president does not seem to understand the fundamental point that China is an adversary and an existential threat to our country and our way of life.
He doesn't seem to get that.
He diminishes the thing.
So it worries me to tell you the truth that while they really haven't done much to counter China, that they'll go the other way.
If he's re-elected.
Right now, politically, it'd be impossible to go the other way, but it worries me.
He appears not to understand the fundamental problem.
It is mind-blowing what you just said.
A president of the United States at this time does not perceive the threat that China poses to the United States and to the Western world?
How do you explain that?
Well, so there are a lot of possible explanations.
I'll get to one last.
But I think, first of all, he was a foreign policy guy all his whole life.
And foreign policy guys tend not to get this kind of thing.
Particularly, they don't get the economic threat.
It's just not in their DNA. Second, he has been sort of charmed as vice president.
By the Chinese, they heavily invested in his post-vice presidency, presumably because they thought it was in their interest.
They didn't do it out of kindness.
So the first thing is his general orientation is not good.
Second, I think he has been charmed by them in a way that is troubling.
Thirdly, he has a lot of big business people and his party is very much the party of big business and bankers.
He has a lot of those people who are leaning on him not to do anything on China to, quote, stabilize.
We can come back to that.
The stabilize idea is nuts.
And then the fourth possibility, and this could be a combination of all, is that he had a business relationship with him.
Or his son did, or his brother did, or his family did, some kind of a business relationship.
Now, we don't know the details of that, and I'm not going to speculate because I try to stay in stuff that I'm really an expert on.
I would only say this, Dennis, that if there is or was some relationship, if that's the case, then the Chinese have the tapes, they have all the emails and messages, they have all the bank records and all the information.
So if there was some business relationship there, then China has got a dossier that thick, and it's got all of it in it.
So that gives them a fair amount of leverage.
Wow.
Every one of the four reasons is scary.
Is that a factor, you think, in his reaction to Russia?
I mean, he certainly perceives Russia as an existential threat, but not China.
Is that part of the reasoning, those four reasons?
Well, clearly, he just doesn't get China.
Now, look it, I was, you know, I don't like Russia at all, but the notion that Russia is an existential threat is ridiculous, right?
It's got an economy smothering.
I agree with you.
So it has no, I know you do, it has no...
Impact at all.
Now, a lot of the old foreign policy types are kind of hooked into that 1980s, 1970s, 1980s mentality.
But I don't know if his attitude towards Russia is affected by his inability to recognize the Chinese threat or not.
I mean, I honestly don't know.
My guess is in his mind, they're independent.
And they really shouldn't be because Russia is now a junior partner.
Right.
So let me ask you, even though I know your masterful expertise in the economic issue, and if you don't want to answer this, it's fine.
Do you believe that China is watching our response to the Russian invasion, and that is part...
A big part of their calculus on whether to invade Taiwan.
So I think for sure that is true, right?
They would be, anyone who doesn't believe that just, you know, is incapable of processing thoughts.
Everything in the world affects their decision on what they want to do on Taiwan.
There's no doubt in my mind that Xi Jinping expects Well before he passes on to have Taiwan integrated fully into China.
And it's just a question of time, right?
And he's going to pick the time that he thinks is best for him, best for China.
So there's no doubt in my mind that he wants to do that.
And the fact that Russia has had trouble, I'm sure he discounts it because a lot of it is just incompetence and overestimate.
Overestimating on behalf of the Russians.
But I'm sure he's calculating that in, and he's calculating that in that the United States has come to their aid.
So the other way to think about this, too, is another way there's a calculation is that he's also probably aware that we've used up an awful lot of our capacity, our ammunition and our military capacity.
Yeah, that's a frightening fact.
And that's got to encourage.
Right, right.
So they're getting two messages.
America is getting weaker, but on the other hand, America will intervene if we invade Taiwan.
So my guess, well, clearly they have seen us not intervene, but at least give weapons on behalf of the Ukraine.
But my guess is they still think that we would react militarily.
In an invasion of Taiwan, I believe that's quite part of their calculation.
And they're probably right.
And they also are seeing, they're being able to calculate a little more easily the economic effect on them, because it would be a generational economic effect on them and on us, by the way.
Because of the stupidity of our past trade policy, if they did take Taiwan, our technology would instantly be back in the 70s somewhere because we don't have semiconductors and other things that we need.
Yeah.
We're going to continue.
The China issue is paramount.
Robert Lighthizer.
No trade is free.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com.
My friends, if I could talk to one person in the United States about China, if I could talk to one person in the United States about China, it would be Robert Lighthizer, U.S. trade representative
And he's just written a book, No Trade is Free, which is exactly right.
Thank you.
No health care is free.
No lunches are free.
That's...
That's the great lesson of life.
Everything comes with a price.
It's the nature of the world in which we live.
No trade is free.
Changing course, taking on China and helping America's workers.
You don't need America's workers, just helping America and the world again.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com.
So explain to me this.
I'm so glad I have you on because these things...
Have troubled me for years, and I didn't have a clue how to answer them.
How did we get into the position of having China, or any country, but China, a communist regime that adores the greatest mass murderer in human history, Mao Zedong.
How did that happen, that they became America's manufacturing base?
So, you know, first place, you know, taking advantage of us and our stupid policy was what any sensible dictatorship would do, taking advantage of us and our stupid policy was what any sensible dictatorship
But if you think back, basically our relationship with them Probably changed at the time that Nixon reached out to them.
And I really view that as them more reaching out to us than us reaching out to them.
So you had the Soviet Union.
Now I'm going back to the 60s and 70s.
The Soviet Union and China were both communists, but they were kind of at outs with each other.
And China has a million soldiers on the Russian border or Soviet border, and they have 10 divisions on that.
We reach out, we develop kind of the start of this relationship.
They realize after Mao, they get Deng Xiaoping, and they realize they need our technology, they need money from us in the form of trade surpluses, and that we're the easiest place to get it.
We're a great big market and we'll go for it.
And they start charming people.
So that happens, Dennis, at the same time the wall comes down, there's this hubris in America that it's the end of history and that we've kind of won the Cold War but actually kind of won history and that the American way is the way of the future.
And those things kind of come together in the Clinton administration and they pass this law.
With a lot of Republican support, they pass a law which says we're going to give most favored nation treatment to China.
All right, till then, if you were a US company business guy that wanted to manufacture in a cheap place, you didn't do it in China because you thought if you did, they had low tariffs, but they weren't permanent.
So the next year you could lose them.
So who's going to put a $100 million plan in a place in China if the next year the whole economics change?
Once we passed that in 2000, by the way, as Bill Clinton went out the door and was collecting furniture to put in the van, he gets this thing passed with Republican support.
And my own view is, if I could get One Christmas wish it would be to find out how much Chinese money is in the Clinton Foundation.
I would like to know that.
Oh, that's fascinating.
That is fascinating.
I'll tell you, on that, Dennis, I wrote an article in 19, this is how long I've been on this, in 1997 for the New York Times.
And you'll remember in the 96 campaign, there was this big thing about Indonesian money going into the Clinton campaign.
And this article said that wasn't Indonesian money.
That was Chinese money.
And I said, and what does China want?
I said, they want MFN with the United States permanently, and they want to join the WTO. And then I said, if they do, no manufacturing job in America will be safe.
That's all on the record, 1997. I asked you or anyone else to Google it and read it, and you'll say, wow.
People who said you couldn't predict it, well, he predicted it.
So, for whatever reason, once again, it's like the other one.
We don't know all the facts and probably never will.
People can draw their own conclusions.
For whatever reason, on the way out, he passes this thing, which makes it permanent.
Now a US company can move over there and know they can ship back to the United States at our regular, very low tariffs, forever.
And you see the trade deficit go From $20 billion to $120 billion in a couple of years.
Now it's officially at $380 billion, but there's a couple of mistakes about the way it's calculated.
It's probably more like $500 billion that we're shipping them every year.
So Deng Xiaoping and these people came in here and said to the Americans, We're going to reform, right?
We're going to be like you guys.
Really what they were saying was, we want to get your technology.
We want to get billions and billions of dollars to rebuild our military and to build up our technology.
That's what they were thinking.
But all these intellects of the 90s said, oh, this is a great thing.
So then you see 2000, 2001, they joined the WTO and the trade deficit zooms up.
Manufacturing jobs in the United States go exactly in the opposite direction, and we're shipping our wealth, and we probably shipped five or six trillion dollars worth of our wealth to them since those days.
This is riveting, and I'm glad there are no sharp objects on my desk, because I might use one on me.
Not on you, on me.
If one perceives what you're saying, it is truly depressing.
So, I was going to ask you, what animated Americans?
And you threw out this bombshell that the Clinton Foundation might have gotten a lot of money from China.
But obviously, the Republicans who supported him were not getting money from China, to the best of our knowledge.
Why were they on board?
So that's why I say it was coming together of a lot of factors.
There was this, it's this, Dennis, it's this theology of free trade, this praying to this false god that...
We are just about consumption.
And then you had the combination of that with a lot of big business who would make political contributions and lobby the Congress.
So it was a combination of two or three things like that.
And the Republicans, I'm sure, were influenced by businesses, which said, oh, this is going to be great.
We have one billion people we can sell stuff to.
Yeah, well, that may be fine, except that they're not buying it because they don't really have a market.
And it's all rigged, right?
I call it the big con.
They all have a rigged market, so they're not going to buy anything that they don't decide they need.
And then they're only going to buy it as long as they need it.
So it was basically a lot of mistakes and combined with hubris.
It is a joy to speak to you.
Stay on with me.
His book is up at DennisPrager.com.
No Trade is Free.
This is my nomination for one of the greatest interviews I've ever had.
I am riveted by this man, Robert Lighthizer, who is the U.S. trade representative under Donald Trump.
The common sense issuing forth and the phraseology, I'm telling you, sir, I am just reveling in this.
When you said the theology of free trade, I could levitate.
I would have begun to levitate.
That is the perfect phraseology.
It's a theology.
Free trade.
So I really need to understand.
The United States, of its own volition, sold its manufacturing abilities and base to a country that hates us.
And Americans, I guess including me for a time, Didn't think about it.
I didn't think it was good, and I didn't think it was bad.
I didn't think about it.
And I sinned, because that's my job to think about all these issues.
But I didn't.
Everything seemed less expensive.
I didn't buy the theology, but as I said, I didn't oppose it either.
But it's exactly what it was.
So I want to understand...
If we were going to enable another country to do our manufacturing for us, because then we could get things cheap, why did we choose China and not, let's say, South Korea or Taiwan?
I assume it's because we thought we could sell then to the largest market in the world.
Is that the reasoning?
Dennis, you're suggesting...
Yeah.
Go ahead.
I didn't hear the sound from the answer.
Go ahead.
All right.
So, I'm sorry.
In the first place, you're assuming there was reason involved in the process instead of hubris and greed.
The other thing I challenge is you say we sold our manufacturing.
I think we actually gave it away.
So, we opened up to a lot of people, but the Chinese were the best at taking advantage of it.
I mean, that's more or less the way I see it.
They went in there.
They induced these companies, US companies, to shift their manufacturing to the United States.
They facilitated it.
We allowed it to happen.
And the other thing is, when we talk about manufacturing, we shouldn't be outsourcing our manufacturing to anyone.
Because most Americans do not have a college degree and in that group, which is basically the group that makes this country great, in that group are people in the middle class because of manufacturing or because of jobs spun off from manufacturing.
And R&D is basically about manufacturing and innovation and technology and all of these things.
I don't think anybody sat back.
I shouldn't say that.
There were people who sat back and said we're post-industrial.
You heard that, remember, when we were younger?
And that was a part of this free trade kind of nonsense.
And we would just invent things and the Chinese would make them.
There were a group who thought that and I can remember telling one of them, you know, I've met a lot of Chinese and they're capable of thinking up stuff too.
They're not allowed.
They're about the same smart as we are.
So this whole notion didn't make any sense.
But what happened is we opened the door because of this false religion and because of greed on behalf of some companies.
And then the Chinese rushed in and then that multiplies, right?
The more they did it, the more money they had, the more influence with people to allow it to happen.
And so now what we need is a strategic decoupling.
We need to phase in a period where we have balanced trade, no real connection on technology, and real restrictions on outgoing and ingoing investment.
Because right now, I like to say, we are feeding the crocodile that is going to eat us and has told us it wants to eat us.
He doesn't masquerade as a friendly puppy.
No.
I am a crocodile.
I want to devour you.
Thank you for enabling me to do so.
The book is No Trade is Free, about taking on China and about helping us and changing course.
I have so many more questions.
You might as well.
Again, it's Robert Lighthizer.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com.
And I thank God that we have this man as our trade representative.
We need him again.
We return in a moment.
One of the many indications of the wisdom of this man...
It's hard to believe he was in the U.S. government.
He has so much wisdom.
Robert Lighthizer, who was U.S. trade representative under Donald Trump, is that he spoke about greed and hubris as animating factors in enabling China to do our manufacturing for us.
So let's talk about...
The subtitle, Changing Course, Taking on China and Helping America's Workers.
Out of curiosity, did you happen to see Nikki Haley's piece on China?
I did not.
So take a look for your own edification, because here is someone running for president.
She obviously is not an odds-on favorite, but she's a serious woman.
And I thought the piece was magnificent, and it echoes, at least in principle, your theories about what has happened to us vis-a-vis China.
Why don't you, by the way, before we talk about changing course, why don't you address the issue, which, again, most Americans don't know about.
I did in this case.
How much land China has bought in the United States?
Oh, yeah.
No, I mean, they bought hundreds of thousands of acres and they shouldn't buy any anywhere.
But a lot of it is right next to either military operations or in some cases near facilities where you can track the movement of the military.
It's absolute madness.
And I'll tell you how much land you can go over and buy in China.
And, you know, you could put all of it in your pocket and sell room for your handkerchief.
So it is absolutely insane that we let them buy a foot of America.
That's right.
It's as if we've been governed by people who want America to fail.
I mean, I do believe, by the way, that...
That that exists, certainly now, but I don't have to get into that.
So what would you like feasibly?
I know what we would all like to see happen.
I would like every company to leave China.
But what feasibly is possible to do to now at least minimize the damage?
So first place, if you're in a competition and it is vital to your existence and you're losing it, You want to change direction rather dramatically and that unfortunately is where we find ourselves.
And I have, after I am just on China alone in here, I have seven chapters and a fair amount, a number of pages about the indictment, the nature of the problem, how we got here, how they think.
And then I have something called the prescription.
And to me, You phase into decoupling, you put substantial tariffs on all of their products and you get back to balanced trade.
Now, if you have trade of $150 billion a year going each way and it's balanced, I'm not against that.
As long as it doesn't involve technology.
And the second thing you do is you put on more export restraints and you force American companies not to integrate their technology through China.
And you give them some period of time to change.
And if you have a clear direction, they'll do it.
And then the final thing is we can right now take clear steps to regulate inbound investment.
Farmland, for example, but it ought to be a lot of other things.
Why would we let them invest anything in here?
Once you realize the nature of the threat, unless you think for some peculiar reason, it's of unique importance to the United States to do it.
And then you stop funding them and you're going to have a lot of opposition because you've got a lot of guys on Wall Street who are getting very rich.
Putting American money there.
I'll give you a thought, just a small thought that people don't even think about.
We've got a lot of working class people who have their money and pensions, and those pensions, some of them are at least partially invested in China.
The workers don't know that.
And the investors don't even have the basic information and can't audit the Chinese companies.
It's a half-witted sort of an investment, but we are funding our own demise.
That is what is so frustrating about this, between the trade deaths and technology deaths and all these things.
We literally are making it easy on them.
By the way, for the record, tell me if this is silly.
Is it tilting at windmills?
When I have a choice, I don't buy items made in China.
Yeah.
Now, I mean, for sure, that's a smart policy.
But, you know, I used to have this argument with these free traders.
They would say, well, Americans choose these products.
Well, you know, forever, if you went into Walmart in the 70s, all right, or let's just say even the 80s, and you bought Christmas lights, they would probably be made in the United States.
And then Walmart went out and gave a contract to Chinese companies, you know, in the early 2000s for their supplies for the next three or four years.
So you walked into that Walmart, you didn't say, okay, here's the American one and it's $1 more than the Chinese one.
No, Walmart made that decision for you and you didn't have a choice to buy American.
So much what is going on is you don't, you don't have that choice.
That choice is being taken away from you.
But for sure, you shouldn't buy stuff on Amazon that's made there, and they're trying to keep...
Most countries require, or at least I don't know about many countries, require Amazon to say where things are made.
They don't do it in the United States.
They don't tell you that everything...
I look at product after product now, and it doesn't say where.
On occasion, it will say designed in the United States.
Yeah.
To fool the consumer.
That's a tip-off.
That's exactly right.
Final segment coming up.
This is so important.
Robert Lighthizer.
Properly named because he sheds light.
He was the U.S. Trade Representative under Donald Trump.
For those of you who don't think that Trump made a difference, this man alone was reason to celebrate Donald Trump in the White House.
No Trade is Free is the book.
We will continue.
Final segment coming up.
All right, everyone.
This is extraordinarily important.
As the book and the man are as well.
Robert Lighthizer.
No Trade is Free is the book.
So-called free trade with China and the devastating impact that this is having on us, our economy, and the free world.
He was the U.S. trade representative under Donald Trump, and the book came out two days ago, No Trade is Free.
You mentioned greed and hubris.
Was part of the hubris the belief, which this I do recall, Absolutely.
And it was just utter nonsense.
It showed a complete misunderstanding, not only...
The idea was if we shifted enough of our wealth to them, they'll become like Switzerland or Canada or something.
They didn't understand communism.
They don't understand Marx.
They don't understand Mao.
But it was part of this.
You know, end of history craziness that went on in the 90s.
It was part of that.
That's right.
And we're here forever, you know, Hosanna.
And it was just, it was people who didn't know anything about history and I would say didn't have a clue about human nature.
But they were all taken in and that was precisely what they said.
That's precisely what they said.
For those who don't see, I'm just smiling.
Because every word is a gem and so right about human nature, about communism.
The idea that as you get wealthier, you will become more open to having what you believe in disappear.
You know what it is in a nutshell?
They believe in something.
Increasingly, Americans don't believe in anything.
And those who believe in something always defeat those who don't believe in anything.
My friends, this man is a gem.
Robert Lighthizer, the book is No Trade is Free.
I'm not going to only read it, sir.
I'm going to try to memorize it.
I appreciate that.
I used to say there has to be one book.
People would ask me for one book that tells everything that people like you and me believe in this area.
And I said, I can't find it, so I'm going to write it.
And there I did.
You certainly did.
Thank you, sir.
It's an honor to be with you.
Thank you for having me on.
Dennis Prager here.
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