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Aug. 22, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show

01:15:59

Super Anxiety

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	Dennis Prager here.
	Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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	subscribe at prager topia.com Good morning everyone and welcome to the Dennis Prager show
	It is Tuesday, August 22, 2023. My name is Julie Hartman, and I am your guest host for today because Dennis is traveling somewhere in the United States.
	I'm not even trying to be cryptic right now by not revealing the location.
	I don't know.
	This man travels so much and he hops from city to city that sometimes it is dizzying.
	I am hearing from Shaunzi that he has a speech in Arizona.
	And then I believe he's going to Chicago.
	The man, as I often remark on this show, has more energy than a toddler who has been given a Red Bull.
	That's our host, Dennis.
	But as I said, I am the host today and I'm very happy to be with you.
	I am the co-host of the Dennis and Julie podcast.
	For those who are unaware, it is a once-weekly show with Dennis Prager that airs every Monday at 1 p.m.
	Pacific, 4 o'clock Eastern on the Julie Hartman YouTube channel.
	You can also download it on Apple and Spotify.
	And in addition to that, I am the host of my own three times weekly show called Timeless with Julie Hartman, where you can also catch that on the Julie Hartman YouTube channel.
	I segment it into a news portion, which is called Julie Noted.
	And then I do a timeless portion where I talk about what I like to call timeless eternal subjects.
	One of the things that I lament is...
	About modern America is how political we've gotten.
	I think that it makes us into diminished people intellectually, morally, and spiritually.
	So my show, Timeless, endeavors to talk about non-political interesting subjects to get us back to what matters.
	Speaking of which, speaking of the over-politicization of the United States.
	There is an article this morning on the front page of the Wall Street Journal that I'd like to read portions of to you.
	It's called the booming business of American anxiety.
	This, I think, is one of the more important issues of our time, especially among people my age.
	I am 23 years old.
	I recently graduated from college.
	And I can tell you from an anecdotal perspective, and I'll also support this with evidence that I will convey to you.
	But from an anecdotal perspective, so many people my age suffer from depression or anxiety.
	Almost everyone I know, and I know that seems kind of like a...
	Almost everyone I know is on some type of anxiety or depression medication.
	And this article talks about that.
	Again, the title is called The Booming Business of American Anxiety.
	There appears to be something like an anxiety industrial complex.
	In the United States in contemporary times.
	You know, Dennis, yesterday, I was on the third hour with him of this radio show, as I periodically am, and Dennis was interviewing Carol Swain.
	I think, what is it, Sean?
	Her new book is The Adversity of Diversity.
	Is that the right title?
	Okay, good.
	I'm glad I remembered it.
	Carol Swain is his new book, Adversity of Diversity, and Dennis was interviewing her and I was lucky to be sitting there for it.
	Carol Swain talked about, although she didn't use this term, the diversity industrial complex, the DEI industrial complex that has come to corrupt American corporations as well as American universities.
	There are more administrators at Harvard and Princeton than there are students.
	Which is amazing.
	There are all of these DEI officers who make hundreds of thousands of dollars to basically contrive grievances about the supposedly rampant systemic racism that exists in the United States.
	So there's the diversity industrial complex.
	But similarly, there appears to be this anxiety industrial complex where people are hired at universities and also at corporations to help Support students or staff members.
	There are mental health professionals, directors of mental health at schools, and they also get a hefty salary.
	Psychiatrists are making a ton of money by prescribing anti-anxiety medications such as Benzos, Lexapro, Klonopin, Xanax.
	So really, it pays to have the populace be anxious.
	The reason why I transitioned into this segment by saying speaking of the over-politicization of society is because I think a lot of the reason for this anxiety is the fact that we have gotten so political.
	I think that wokeism has a lot to do with people's issues and the reasons why people struggle, and especially for young people, because wokeism is very disorienting.
	There is a war right now in the United States on merit.
	I'm going to talk about this in more detail later in the show.
	California public schools have released a new memo which seeks to uproot racism in mathematics of all subjects, and it prescribes teachers to teach DEI in the classroom, and it also recommends that algebra not be taught any sooner than ninth grade because the...
	Thinking there is that it is not equitable for some students to advance at higher levels in math than other students.
	So if everyone starts in Algebra 1 in 9th grade, then it will be much easier to keep people on the same equitable pace instead of having some advance up to calculus.
	Anyway, the point is...
	Wokeism has come to infiltrate and corrupt nearly every American institution.
	And this is hugely disorienting for young people.
	Let's say you're 12 or 13 years old and you're going into your high school years.
	And your high school years are very important for getting into college.
	Getting into college is very important for the job market.
	Let's say you're a 12 or 13 year old right now in 2023 and you're seeing all of this woke stuff.
	You're seeing the war on merit.
	What is the incentive for you to work hard?
	What is the incentive for you to be a competent, honest student and individual?
	If you just think that you will not get chosen for a certain class or a certain college because of your skin color or because you are a straight individual as opposed to bisexual or gay, why would you even try?
	You can work so hard, get the best grades, have a sterling reputation, and you know that in modern America in 2023, it is very likely that you will not be rewarded for how competent you are for your merits.
	So it's very upsetting to people, and I sort of get why young people throw in the towel and go, why would I even try?
	Also, this woke assault on education.
	Makes it such that education doesn't have any respect.
	If you go into your math class and your math teacher is trying to accord with the new guidelines of California public schools and your math teacher is teaching you about anti-racism in mathematics, let us not forget that the Oregon Department of Education released a memo saying that finding one right answer in math is white supremacy.
	This is what students are learning.
	You're not going to have any respect for your teacher.
	Or for the subject of math.
	You're just going to goof off for the entire class because, again, you're not learning anything useful.
	Clearly, this is a joke.
	So why would you even try?
	That is my hypothesis.
	I think this is causing so much of the anxiety that we see today.
	People need order.
	They need structure.
	They need to know that their efforts and their merits are going to be rewarded and not anymore, sadly, in the United States.
	So I'd like to read to you, I believe this is the third paragraph here, of this front-page Wall Street Journal article this morning called The Booming Business of American Anxiety.
	It's very interesting the way that the Wall Street Journal explains this uptick.
	Uptick is an understatement in anxiety.
	Allow me to read here.
	Quote, In the next segment, I'm going to analyze each of those three reasons.
	They externalize the problem.
	It's the pandemic, it's this awareness, and it's more screening in schools.
	Huh.
	It's very interesting.
	I continue.
	In a recent federal survey, 27% of respondents reported that they had symptoms of an anxiety disorder.
	That is up from 8% in 2019. Again, in the next segment, we're going to talk about, well, what has happened between 2019 and 2023 to cause this?
	Clearly, the pandemic, or more accurately, the lockdowns, had something to do with it.
	Back in a moment.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	The Dennis Prager Show.
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	American Federal...
	Hey, everyone.
	Welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show.
	I'm Julie Hartman, your guest host this morning.
	I am the co-host of the Dennis and Julie podcast, and I am the host of Timeless with Julie Hartman.
	Starting out this hour, we are talking about the front page Wall Street Journal article that was published this morning, The Booming Business of American Anxiety.
	They cite this federal survey.
	Which shows that anxiety disorders have increased threefold since 2019. It says 27% of respondents reported in 2023 that they had symptoms of an anxiety disorder.
	That is up from 8% in 2019, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
	So the Wall Street Journal cited their own three reasons for why this proliferation in anxiety has occurred.
	I would like to consider for a moment, and I welcome your thoughts, 1-8 Prager 776, 1-877-243-7776.
	Please call in and tell me your reactions to this.
	I'd like to consider right now, okay, so if it was 8% in 2019, those who reported having symptoms of an anxiety disorder, and now it is 27% in 2023, what happened in those four years?
	What changed?
	Now, the obvious thing is COVID. As I said, and I love, Dennis is really spot on in clarifying this.
	He says when one is talking about the havoc wreaked in 2020, 2021, 2022, don't say the pandemic.
	Say the lockdowns.
	That is a more accurate description of what happened here.
	It wasn't so much...
	COVID that caused anxiety or caused unemployment, a lot of the unfortunate events that occurred, it was the response to COVID, the lockdowns, people having to stay home.
	So it makes sense that anxiety disorders have proliferated because literally for months on end, and I was one of these people, we all were, but I was, I'm telling you as a young person, I was sent home from college.
	In the middle of my sophomore year and I lost the rest of that year and the entirety of my junior year of college.
	It's very difficult for young people to have those 18 months of their lives literally segregated, sequestered from other people and other social interaction.
	Really, I mean, it is harrowing to imagine the impact that this had on young children who are at the developmental stages where they really, really especially need social interaction to grow their brains.
	And they were just kept home from preschool and kindergarten.
	So that is, of course, one of the things that happened between 2019 and 2023. And the Wall Street Journal cites that.
	They don't say lockdowns.
	They say the pandemic.
	I'm reading here anxiety has come into focus across the country in part due to the stress of the pandemic.
	So different names or different labels that we attach, but it seems that we agree that what happened in 2020 has caused a lot of this.
	But the Wall Street Journal does not cite another huge development that happened between 2019 and 2023. Wokeism!
	Now, of course, some of you may be listening and thinking, Julie, wokeism predated 2019. Wokeism has been on the rise for at least 10 to 20 years.
	Some even argue, such as Paul Johnson in his book Modern Times, that the seeds of wokeism...
	We're planted as early as at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.
	So I totally understand that wokeism has predated this.
	But I think, and again, please do call in if you, especially if you disagree with me, I'll take your call first.
	Wokeism really became mainstream and became a fixture of American institutions in 2020. It was during...
	the Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Riot Summer, that at least I saw a lot of these already existing lines of thought become, as I said, mainstream.
	I'll give you an example.
	I told you in the last segment that the Oregon Department of Education has released this memo saying that finding one right answer in math is white supremacy.
	That happened in 2021 because of this quote-unquote racial reckoning that happened in the aftermath of George Floyd's death in 2020.
	Yeah, things were woke before 2019, but they weren't so woke that the Oregon Department of Education would even consider putting out a memo like that.
	Only something of that woke high degree came after 2020.
	A particularly prescient one is this transgender issue.
	That!
	has proliferated a lot since 2019. And that is causing, I think, no shortage of anxiety disorders among young people who are literally being instructed, being proselytized to think that they are not the gender that they were born into.
	You want to know the best proof that this transgender craze has gotten popular only in the last three years?
	Dennis Prager's interview on Bill Maher.
	Dennis went on Bill Maher's show in 2019, and he said that the idea that men menstruate is a lie concocted by the left.
	And he was laughed at.
	Let's listen to the clip.
	To say America is anti-Semitic is a lie.
	To say it is racist is a lie.
	These are giant left-wing lies.
	We're talking about degrees.
	To say that men can menstruate is a lie.
	And that is now, that is what it said.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Hey, where did that go?
	You never heard it.
	Check it out, folks.
	Check it out.
	Anyone who says a man cannot menstruate is considered transphobic.
	I missed this whole story.
	I did.
	Tell me where you're getting this.
	Just Google it.
	Can men menstruate?
	Who is saying this?
	You're talking about a very small percentage.
	This is truly amazing.
	I told Dennis the other day, out of all of the things he's ever said and done in his career, this may be the most useful to him to show that he is a prophet.
	He is someone who really, before other people, sees reality and sees the truth and life for what it really is.
	He was laughed at for saying that it is now an opinion that men menstruate.
	That was just in 2019. That was about three and a half years ago.
	Bill Maher, to his credit, actually recently admitted that he was wrong to laugh at Dennis.
	That Dennis was actually right that this was becoming more of an accepted line of thought.
	But it just shows you that in 2019, Bill Maher and people in that audience were laughing at the idea that men menstruate.
	In 2023, if you deny that men menstruate, you are called a bigot, unenlightened.
	This is very confusing for all of us, especially for young people.
	Back in a moment.
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	Welcome back to The Dennis Frager Show.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	I think it was last week or sometime this month, Dennis did an hour on this program about the high suicide rate in the United States.
	According to the New York Post, last year, nearly 50,000 Americans took their own lives, which is just staggering.
	And like anxiety disorders, it has only increased over the past few years and decades.
	And Dennis read the CDC's explanations for why the suicide rate has increased.
	And here were the three that he read.
	And needless to say, he did a brilliant analysis of it.
	He also made it the subject of one of his most recent columns.
	So I encourage you to check it out if you are interested.
	He analyzes these three reasons that the CDC cites.
	For the high suicide rate.
	The first one was higher rates of depression.
	Wow!
	What a revelation that one is!
	I mean, okay, higher rates of depression, of course that leads to more suicides.
	That's just more kind of an explanation or...
	Different way of phrasing the phenomena than providing a reason.
	Higher rates of depression doesn't seem so much like a reason.
	Okay, so that's the first one.
	Higher rates of depression.
	Very obvious.
	The second one is limited availability of mental health services.
	And then the third is the growing availability of guns.
	So again, Dennis analyzed all this, but the point I'm trying to make here, the reason why I'm bringing this up, is because the Wall Street Journal, in citing why anxiety has proliferated in recent years, cites similar reasons.
	They talk about, as I said in the last segment, the stress of the pandemic.
	They say increased awareness about mental health and more screening in schools.
	And, oh, sorry, excuse me.
	Increased awareness is one of them and more screening in schools is the third one.
	What's interesting is although these three reasons are sort of similar, one of them, or one that the Wall Street Journal cites and one that the CDC cites are actually in opposition to one another.
	The CDC says that there is a limited availability.
	Of mental health services.
	Whereas the Wall Street Journal says that there is more screening in schools than at doctors' offices.
	So which one is it?
	Are people not having access to the medical professionals who may diagnose them with these problems?
	Or is the anxiety and suicide rate proliferating precisely because more people are going to doctors and getting diagnosed?
	It appears that the CDC and the Wall Street Journal, if they are in fact citing these reasons because they have looked at data, it appears that they're looking at different data.
	And that kind of shows...
	How you really can't trust studies.
	I mean, Dennis talks about this a lot.
	I also talk about this a fair amount.
	That you can find a study nowadays that confirms whatever you want the study to confirm.
	There are academic research papers which say that there's not enough mental health services, and then there are academic research papers which say that there are.
	But when people nowadays, when I'm in a debate with someone and they bring up, oh, well, studies show, I'm really not inclined to believe them.
	Because studies, like so many others, So despite this contradiction where the CDC is saying that suicide is going up because there's not enough mental health services and the Wall Street Journal saying that anxiety is going up...
	Precisely because there is more screening in mental health services.
	Despite this contradiction, it's very interesting that both the CDC and the Wall Street Journal ignore the It is very disorienting for a young person to be told that they may not be the gender that they were born into.
	It's very disorienting for a young person to think that no matter how hard they work in school, they may not get into college because of their skin color and of their sexual orientation.
	It's a bit of a rhetorical question, but I wonder why both the Wall Street Journal and the CDC are not acknowledging this phenomena.
	Back in a moment, we'll be discussing the space race between India and Russia.
	Hello everyone.
	Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
	I'm Julie Hartman, your guest host for today.
	I am the co-host of the Dennis and Julie podcast, which airs every Monday at 1 p.m.
	Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern on the Julie Hartman YouTube channel.
	You can also download that on Apple and Spotify.
	I am, in addition to that, the host of my own show, Timeless with Julie Hartman, which is three times weekly.
	You can also see that on the Julie Hartman YouTube channel.
	I segment that into a news portion, which is called Julie Noted, and then a non-political, non-newsy portion, which is called Timeless with Julie Hartman.
	And those of you who listened to the last hour of the show know that I lament how overly political American society has gotten.
	We need to elevate our intellect.
	We need to be able to talk about things with one another that don't have to do with Democrat or Republican.
	So that is what my show endeavors to bring to you, even though.
	I say that we shouldn't talk so much about Democrat and Republican.
	There are times when it is warranted, and that is certainly the case with the Trump indictments, which we will be covering right now.
	There has been a slew of these indictments, four total, two state and two federal.
	Donald Trump has been charged with these crimes over the past few months, and it is surely going to impact his candidacy for the presidency, his second term that he is seeking.
	And also it is going to really impact people's, of course, perception of whether or not he is a viable candidate for 2024. We know that the presidential debate for the Republican Party is happening tomorrow.
	Wednesday, August 23rd.
	But Donald Trump will not be present for his own reasons that he says he would not like to be there.
	And I think a large thing is that he wants to have his own platform to really talk directly to the American people without distractions about the political persecution that he is facing.
	I'd like to go through these indictments with you.
	All a one-sentence summary of each of them.
	As I said, there are four.
	Two state, two federal.
	And then we are going to talk about what the legal viability, if you will, is for each of these indictments.
	I was reading a study yesterday online.
	I really feel awful about this.
	I can't remember what study it was, but I was reading it on Breitbart, I believe.
	Breitbart was chronicling how little the American people actually know.
	About the indictments, what Donald Trump is being charged with.
	And if you think about that, it shows how jaded we are.
	It should be big news to us that an American president is being indicted.
	But what has happened over the past four to five years is that Donald Trump especially has been accused of so many crimes, so much wrongdoing.
	He was the subject of two impeachments, countless investigations, that now when we're hearing another indictment, The first indictment
	against Donald Trump.
	was in Manhattan.
	This was a state indictment.
	The district attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, indicted Donald Trump on 34 counts of violating New York State's business record-keeping law as a consequence of payments that Donald Trump's then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, had made to Stormy Daniels.
	The adult film star with whom Donald Trump had an affair of $130,000.
	The Trump Organization reimbursed Michael Cohen for this expense, but DA Alvin Bragg of Manhattan is alleging that this record keeping was untruthful and a violation of the business records law.
	So that's indictment number one.
	Indictment number two.
	Is a federal indictment in the Southern District of Florida.
	Donald Trump was indicted by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith.
	And he was indicted on 40 federal counts relating to retaining, concealing, and refusing to give back classified documents that President Trump took with him when he left the White House.
	Indictment number three.
	Again, there are four.
	It's really amazing that a president has been indicted four times in the past year.
	Indictment number three is another federal indictment.
	Donald Trump has been indicted by federal special counsel Jack Smith on four federal counts relating to his efforts to dispute the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
	And then indictment number four is a state indictment, and this is when he was indicted by Fulton County DA Fonnie Willis on 13 Georgia state counts relating to violations of Georgia's racketeer-influenced and corrupt organizations law.
	law, this is called RICO, for Donald Trump's efforts to get Georgia state officials to investigate and reconsider the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
	So two of these indictments concern President Trump's dealings or his conduct during the time that he was president from December to January when he was disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
	One of the indictments concerns behavior that Donald Trump allegedly engaged in before he was president.
	That's the record keeping, the business record keeping law in the state of New York that he allegedly violated.
	And then one of the indictments concerns his conduct after he left office.
	That is his hoarding of classified documents and apparently destroying evidence that he was possessing and moving around those classified documents.
	Out of all four of these indictments, it appears that the classified documents one has the most legal jeopardy.
	For Donald Trump.
	And this is because of a criminal provision that's called mens rea.
	Mens rea means guilty mind.
	When you are being charged with a criminal act as Donald Trump is being charged in all four of these indictments, these are criminal indictments, what the prosecution has to prove is that The defendant, in this case Donald Trump, had a guilty mind, a mens rea, that he knew that he was committing a crime and nevertheless committed it.
	This provision is put in because there are people almost every day who commit crimes and they don't even know or realize that they are committing one.
	For instance, let's say you're at an airport and your flight is delayed three hours and you decide to go get a drink at the Delta Lounge and you go to pick up your briefcase and you accidentally pick up the briefcase of someone next to you.
	You take it on the plane, you're halfway to Dallas, and you realize, oh gosh, that was not my briefcase.
	Does that mean that you committed a crime that you stole?
	No.
	According to this criminal provision of mens rea, you did not have a guilty mind.
	You really thought that you were carrying your bag.
	If you are picking up a child from school and you're playing the radio and you're a little distracted and some kid gets in the backseat of your car and you're driving home and then halfway to home you realize that's not the kid in the backseat of your car, you wouldn't be charged with kidnapping because you really thought that it was your kid that got into the backseat of the car.
	So here in each of these four indictments...
	The prosecution has to prove that Donald Trump knew that he was committing a crime and nevertheless did so.
	Now this presents some challenges because certainly with regard to the indictments that deal with his conduct in December and January of 2020 and 2021 respectively, Donald Trump really did believe that the election was stolen and that Now,
	when it comes to the indictment about his classified documents, there is evidence that Donald Trump did know that he was committing a crime because he...
	Try to destroy surveillance video of him moving around the classified documents.
	In the next segment, I am honored to interview Professor Alan Dershowitz, who is a professor of law emeritus at Harvard Law School, to talk about these various indictments.
	His most recent book is Get Trump, The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law.
	Back in a moment.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	The Dennis Prager Show.
	Welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	We are talking about the slew of Trump indictments, and I am pleased to welcome Professor Alan Dershowitz to the program.
	He is a Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School who has had a 60-year career in constitutional law and criminal defense.
	Many of you listeners may know him best from the impassioned argument that he made on the floor of the U.S. Senate during Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, urging the Senate not to convict President Trump.
	And Professor Dershowitz's latest book is Get Trump!
	The Threat to Civil Liberties' Due Process in Our Constitutional Rule of Law.
	Professor Dershowitz, welcome, and thank you so much for being here.
	Well, thank you, and thank you for promoting my book.
	I appreciate it.
	In my book, I go through all of the indictments against him.
	I predicted all of them just as I predicted that the judge would reject the Hunter Biden plea bargain.
	So if you want a really neutral analysis of these four cases, get Trump is probably the place to get it.
	You're not going to get it on CNN.
	You're not going to get it on MSNBC.
	They're going to just give you their bias reporting on these cases.
	But I'll give you the straight poop right here.
	Well, that's for sure you are certainly not going to get an objective analysis from the news outlets that you mentioned.
	So, Professor Dershowitz, in the previous segment, I gave a one-sentence synopsis for each of the four indictments that Donald Trump is facing.
	Two of them are state.
	Two of them are federal.
	They pertain, as you know, to mishandling of business record-keeping, his possession of classified documents.
	And then his conduct with regard to disputing the outcome of the presidential election.
	In your opinion, of these four...
	Where does the greatest legal jeopardy for Donald Trump lie?
	Well, it depends what you mean by legal jeopardy.
	In the case of New York, there's no case at all.
	It's outrageous.
	they just um for the first time in american history they indicted somebody for not making public the contents of a hush money payment um since alexander hamilton paid hush money back in the 1790s nobody has ever said it's a crime not to disclose it on a corporate form that you paid to keep people quiet it's it's an absurd absurd case But it's in Manhattan, so he may get convicted.
	In Manhattan, it's in front of a judge who doesn't want to be looked at by his fellow neighbors in Manhattan.
	Oh, that's the judge.
	That free Donald Trump.
	Oh, my God, we'll never talk to him.
	We'll never have any contact with him.
	That's what America has turned into.
	So he has jeopardy in New York.
	No legal jeopardy, but factual jeopardy in New York.
	On Florida, he has the most factual and legal jeopardy because there they have not a smoking gun, but a smoking cigarette butt.
	And that is who's waving material in front of a reporter and a publisher saying, I could have declassified this, but I didn't.
	It's still secret.
	That seems like almost an admission of a crime, but the crime is not a serious one.
	It's a crime that's committed by virtually every former officeholder.
	They all take stuff with them.
	Sometimes they show it off.
	Sometimes they don't.
	Even if he's convicted, people don't get jail time for that kind of thing.
	So it's a smoking cigarette butt, but it's not serious.
	The cases that are most serious are the ones that involve January 6th, but they're the weakest cases, the most vulnerable cases.
	The DC case, where you have a bunch of lawyers now, even Republican Federalist lawyers who filed an amicus brief saying, bring this case to trial on January 2nd.
	There's never been a case in the history of the United States as complicated.
	And difficult as this one is, that has been brought to trial in four months and three weeks after the indictment.
	And that's what these lawyers and judges, all of whom are result-oriented, all they want is to get Trump.
	They're willing to compromise the Constitution and say, let's try him within four months and three weeks.
	No decent lawyer would ever accept that.
	It would be like asking a doctor to come in off the street and perform heart surgery with no preparation.
	His lawyer, I would refuse to participate in a trial without adequate preparation.
	You have to obviously gather witnesses, you have to gather material across examination, you have to get discovery.
	It's inconceivable that a fair trial could be given in four weeks and three months.
	The case itself lies on getting into the mental state of Donald Trump.
	If Donald Trump believed he was correct in saying that...
	The election was stolen.
	I don't believe he's correct.
	But if he believed he was correct, I don't think there'd be any crime.
	I think that everything he would have done would be what we did in Bush versus Gore.
	I was the lawyer for the voters in Palm Beach County.
	You're too young to remember the butterfly ballot and the hanging chads.
	But we did exactly what was accused of the lawyers and others.
	In this case, we have to find 570 votes.
	We have to make sure every ballot is counted.
	We have to make sure that we litigate the issue of the chads and the issue of the butterfly ballot.
	So that's because we honestly believe that Al Gore had won the election.
	We are right.
	We were right.
	And the people who say that the 2020 election was stolen are wrong.
	But right and wrong doesn't make something a crime if in your own mind you believe It was right.
	So I think it's going to be a hard case.
	But again, it's District of Columbia.
	95% of the jury pool will be jurors, presumably, who not only voted against Donald Trump, but just hate his guts.
	These are people who, I mean, I know.
	I live on Martha's Vineyard and I defended President Trump.
	People think I'm Himmler or Goebbels and I defended Adolf Hitler.
	And they, you know, literally spit at me and won't talk to me and insult my wife and my children.
	No jury wants that to happen to them.
	No judge wants that to happen to him.
	And so he's not going to be able to get a fair trial in the District of Columbia.
	And the last trial is really absurd, the one in Georgia.
	19 defendants, 95-page indictment, and she wants to bring it to trial within six months.
	Again, the essential point that they would have to prove is that He knew he had lost the election and he was just trying to steal it.
	The major piece of evidence against him is very weak.
	It's a phone call, it's taped, in which he said, I need to find, I don't remember, 7,000 votes or whatever the number was.
	That's the most exculpatory piece of evidence there is.
	He didn't say I need to manufacture, make up, concoct.
	He said, I need to find.
	Find has a dictionary meaning.
	It means it's there to be found.
	Just look hard and you'll find it.
	That's what we said in the Gore case.
	We said, we're sure there are at least 600, 700 votes for Al Gore that haven't been counted.
	Please find them.
	Gore's lawyers lobbied state officials, brought lawsuit after lawsuit, and they were praised for doing it.
	And ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled against them.
	I wrote a book about it called Supreme Injustice.
	I criticize the Supreme Court, but that was all done in the spirit of political discourse.
	Nobody tried to weaponize the criminal justice system for partisan purposes the way they're doing now.
	Yes.
	We're going to be picking up in the next segment with more of a conversation about specifically the RICO indictment in the state of Florida.
	Professor Alan Dershowitz will continue in just a few moments.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	This is The Dennis Prager Show.
	Welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	I have been discussing the slew of Trump indictments with Professor Alan Dershowitz.
	He is a professor of law emeritus at Harvard Law School.
	He was also one of Al Gore's leading attorneys in the 2000 presidential election when Al Gore disputed the results of that election in Florida.
	And his latest book is Get Trump!
	The Threat to Civil Liberties.
	So, Professor Dershowitz, I'd like to ask you some questions specifically about this Fulton County, Georgia indictment that was brought against Donald Trump by District Attorney Fannie Willis.
	And she has alleged that Donald Trump, among others, have violated Georgia's racketeer-influenced and corrupt organizations, i.e. RICO law.
	Now, the RICO federal law was passed in 1970 to go after the mafia, to go after organized crime.
	And now at a state level, it is being levied against Donald Trump.
	So my question for you...
	With the obvious assertion that I am not a lawyer, that's why I have you on.
	But my understanding is that the RICO federal statute holds that the predicate acts of criminality had to have occurred over six months to a year.
	So if the Georgia state RICO statute has a similar requirement, isn't that an issue?
	Because allegedly these acts of Donald Trump only happened over a five-week period.
	Well, first of all, I have to correct one small point you made.
	I was not actually the lawyer for Al Gore.
	I was the lawyer for the voters of Palm Beach County.
	I worked closely with the lawyers for Gore.
	But my job was to try to get a recount or a revote because the butterfly ballot was unlawful and illegal.
	But I was not actually the lawyer for Al Gore.
	As to the RICO issue, every state RICO statute is a bit different.
	And if it does parallel the federal statute, there would be some issues.
	But there are even bigger, bigger issues.
	The RICO statutes were designed to go after organized crime.
	In fact, I had a funny story.
	I had a client, an Italian-American client who was indicted under RICO. And he said to me, you know, it's a discriminatory statute.
	It only goes after Italian Americans.
	And I said, what do you mean by that?
	He said, well, it's named Rico.
	It's not named Morris or Jim.
	It's named Rico.
	That's an Italian name.
	I said, no, no, no.
	But it was designed to go after organized crime.
	It was never designed to go after political activity of the kind that's alleged.
	In Georgia, what's alleged in Georgia is fairly typical activity done by lawyers and political consultants and experts and candidates when they challenge elections.
	When you challenge a presidential election, the appropriate way to do it is to come up with an alternate slate of electors.
	That's what the Constitution...
	Where do I know that?
	Because Professor Tribe, who was the major lawyer for Al Gore, wrote memorandum after memorandum.
	Outlining activities which he thought should be taken to win the election back from President Bush.
	And so I think, in fact, the lawyer who's been indicted for making these arguments in Georgia...
	was Professor Tribe's research assistant and helped with the preparation of these memos.
	You know, the Bible has a clear instruction to the justice system.
	It says don't recognize faces.
	Do not recognize faces.
	And what's happening here...
	Is that because this guy's name is Donald Trump and he seemed to be a great danger and I'm not voting for him.
	I agree that he would not be the best president, but they're going after him specifically and they're using rules that they've never used against any other people.
	They're making up constitutional arguments.
	I hope we'll have enough time in this interview to also get to what I think is the most serious challenge.
	To Donald Trump running for president, which is not the criminal cases, but this effort to misuse the 14th Amendment to say he's disqualified because he probably fought in the Civil War.
	No, they're not actually saying that he fought in the Civil War, but they're applying a Civil War amendment, which was designed to prevent people who fought in the Civil War.
	They're applying it 150 years later to somebody who protested an election and did things that I think were wrong, but not Not necessarily criminal.
	Right.
	We'll continue in the next segment with Professor Alan Dershowitz.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	Welcome back to The Dennis Frager Show.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	Professor Dershowitz in the last segment was talking about the 14th Amendment challenge to Donald Trump, and we will certainly get to that.
	But first, quickly, Professor Dershowitz, I'd like to ask you about perhaps a more immediate challenge to Donald Trump.
	With these four indictments, if these charges are pending but not yet proven, Is it possible for states to keep Donald Trump off of the ballot in the 2024 presidential election?
	I don't believe so.
	Look, any Secretary of State who is a political hack can do anything they want.
	As we get to the 14th Amendment, you'll see that Professor Tribe and Judge Ludic say that...
	The disqualification of Trump is self-enforcing that anybody can do it, any operatronic, any low-level state official can keep him off the ballot.
	I don't believe that's the case.
	And if they could, people on the other side, say the Secretary of State of Texas, could keep Joe Biden off the ballot, saying he's guilty of opening the gates to immigration or he's guilty.
	of having engaged in extortion in Ukraine.
	It would be wrong, but that doesn't mean they can't do it.
	You don't want elections to be interfered with by secretaries of state or by state governors.
	You know, we are the only democratic country in the world that doesn't have something like an election commission.
	You know, in England and Israel and most other countries, there is a nonpartisan group of very distinguished people who serve as election commissioners.
	If you have a complaint, if you want to take somebody off the ballot, if you want to put somebody on the ballot, for example...
	We're going to soon be having the Republican debate and there are some people who want to be on the stage, etc., etc.
	You bring the matter to an election commission and they render a decision usually within 24 hours because often this is a real-time issue.
	When I did the butterfly ballot litigation during the Al Gore case in 2000, we needed to get relief immediately because the butterfly ballot was causing Jewish voters in Palm Beach.
	Who thought they were voting for Joe Lieberman to be voting for their arch enemy and a man who was accused of anti-Semitism.
	And so there was confusion and it couldn't be cleared up quickly by the courts.
	But if we had an election commission, perhaps we could do it.
	What does the 14th Amendment say and why do you argue that it may be used against Donald Trump?
	Well, I'm not arguing that.
	It's Professor Tribe, Judge Ludic, other people who have said, let's use it.
	They've been all over the place, Trump and Ludic, saying it's self-enforcing.
	Any Secretary of State, any lower-level person can take Donald Trump off the ballot if he thinks or believes that Trump engaged in resurrection or rebellion.
	The idea that the framers of the 14th Amendment...
	Would permit circumventing all the clear procedures we have for impeaching the president.
	You know, to impeach the president, even if they're guilty of treason, treason, you have to get two-thirds of the Senate.
	But according to Tribe and Ludic, because the guy's name is Donald Trump, no, all you have to do is get one Secretary of State to say, whoops, no, we think what he did is under the 14th Amendment rebellion or insurrection or whatever.
	We're going to take him off the ballot.
	It's absurd.
	And let me give you one more fact that nobody has stated so far.
	The 14th Amendment applies not only to a presidential candidate, but also to a sitting president.
	And so if you take their ludicrous argument, their strict constitutional view seriously, you can use that procedure in lieu of impeachment or in lieu of the 25th Amendment.
	If you don't like a sitting president, just remove them.
	Without any process, without it going before the Senate, without it going before the House, and don't allow him to sit any further, and then he can challenge it in the courts.
	That's not what the framers of the 14th Amendment intended.
	They didn't intend to circumvent the very carefully written provisions of impeachment or the 25th Amendment.
	For a moment, I want to ask you to gaze into your crystal ball.
	How is this going to end for Donald Trump, legally and politically?
	Okay, like I've made a lot of predictions.
	In my book, Get Trump, I made predictions that have all come true, that all of these indictments would come forward.
	I predicted that the judge would not accept the plea bargain in the Hunter Biden case.
	I was the only one who predicted that.
	Almost everybody else said I was wrong.
	And I'm going to make predictions now.
	I predict he will be convicted of some and hung juries and others and that the courts of appeals generally will reverse these convictions.
	But the convictions will come before the election and the reversals will come after the election.
	So it will have an impact on the election.
	And that's just unfortunate, just as the Hillary Clinton attack by James Comey.
	Probably had an impact on that election.
	We don't want this kind of election interference, whether it's deliberate or inadvertent.
	We want the voters of America to decide who the next president will be.
	I have a constitutional right to vote against Donald Trump for the third time, and I intend to vindicate that constitutional right, and I don't want anybody to take that right away from me, and I don't want anybody to take the right away from you to vote against or for any candidate.
	This is not something that should be done by secretaries of state, governors, or anyone else.
	It should be done by the voters of the United States.
	Very powerful point.
	Now, many conservatives are saying, wait a minute, the prosecution has taken two and a half years to bring these charges against Donald Trump.
	That doesn't allow the defense enough time between now and 2024 to defend their case.
	What is your reaction to that?
	Well, they're absolutely right.
	It's worse than that.
	In some cases, they've been longer than even two years.
	And in some cases, they want to bring the trial not just before the election, but on January 2nd, this group of law professors, lawyers, and judges from the Federalist Society actually filed an amicus brief saying that the trial should be conducted within four months and three weeks of the indictment.
	There's never been a case in history which a complicated case like this has ever been tried on that schedule.
	Normally cases like this require more than a year of preparation.
	And if I were a trial lawyer, I simply would refuse to participate in a case where I didn't have the time to adequately defend my client under the Sixth Amendment.
	So I think this is a major constitutional issue.
	It seems that this is more about 2024 than 2020. Professor Alan Dershowitz, thank you so much for coming on to the program.
	My pleasure.
	Thank you.
	Back in a moment.
	Let's go to line two, Jack from Los Angeles.
	Hi, Jack.
	Thanks for calling in.
	Oh, hi.
	Yeah, world history teaches us that whenever the government's approval rating goes below what percentage, there's always a revolution.
	I'm not sure.
	I don't believe I said that in this segment.
	I think my postgraduate history class says about 18%.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	Okay, there you go.
	What more do you need to know?
	So your argument is that President Biden's approval rating is before 18%.
	I'm assuming this is your argument.
	Correct me if I'm wrong.
	I'm not saying that.
	I'm just saying it's good to know what world history teaches in that regard, don't you think?
	Well, respectfully, my teaching of world history, at least in high school, was very warped.
	I'm talking about postgraduate history classes.
	Well, again, respectfully, I'm not really so faithful in American education these days, whether it's high school, college, or postgraduate.
	The Department of Education here in California has set new guidelines for both California high schools and California community colleges, which seek to uproot racism in DEI and mathematics.
	So I hear the argument that you're trying to make, but frankly, it's not...
	Particularly encouraging to me to hear what the asserted percentage is by these experts or intellectuals, because clearly, and you may disagree with me, they're wrong on so much.
	What's your response?
	I was talking about the 1970s when you had better education, not today.
	So the 18% is from the 1970s, you'll say?
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, even more than a poor approval rating, I just think that revolutions or unrest happens when people don't have faith in their government institutions and in their laws.
	Back in the third hour, we will be talking about the Maui wildfires and the lack of response from the government.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	This is the Dennis Prager Show.
	Moving on to a story about the Maui wildfires, you
	You know, here in Los Angeles, we had this alleged hurricane, which, as Dennis talked about yesterday, really only brought some heavy rain and literally nothing else besides that.
	But it does appear that there is a disaster.
	Occurring off the shore of Maui with these devastating wildfires.
	I am pleased to welcome Nick Sorter to the program.
	I could read you Nick's extensive background in journalism, but instead I'm just going to give you the one sentence bio that he gives of himself on his Twitter, excuse me, X account.
	He says, I cover the stories that mainstream media won't.
	Hi Nick, thanks for coming.
	Thank you for having me, Julie.
	So please give us a synopsis or an illustration of what has been going on in Maui since about two, three weeks ago.
	I don't even know where to start at this point because it seems like everything here is changing day by day by day and honestly people are just getting increasingly frustrated.
	Obviously, we had the fire that started two weeks ago.
	And, you know, you had a little bit of mainstream media coverage in the beginning.
	And then it started going downhill.
	The mainstream media just kind of, you know, left the island and started to leave the people to their own, you know, in their suffering here.
	And luckily, recently, you know, we started more independent journalists started coming to the ground and and hosts such as yourself started bringing more light to the story again because they've been promised all this.
	All this stuff from the federal government and the state government.
	And they aren't getting it.
	You know, FEMA has been making empty promises that they know that they have no intention of keeping the tourism industry here.
	It's what props up this island.
	And everybody's been told to go home and and that Maui is closed.
	Now, that is just that is a ridiculous thing to say, because now just you're having economic issues here, too.
	You're having a lot of people that are losing jobs, people that weren't necessarily directed by the fire, but now have nowhere to work.
	And they're not getting any sort of disaster relief from FEMA.
	The people here being lied to.
	They don't even know how the fire started.
	They don't know officially.
	They've heard so many different things.
	We don't know why they didn't sound emergency sirens.
	We don't know why people were blocked and funneled right in front of the fire.
	Which resulted in the deaths of so many extra people.
	And so we're just here, we're trying to get answers.
	But it's really tough when the government keeps lying to you and simply is, they're in hiding.
	It's very hard to get a hold of the mayor, the governor, or even the police chief around here.
	Yes, I'm reading here that the head of Maui's Emergency Management Agency, you said there's FEMA, but there's also state emergency relief programs in Hawaii.
	It's called HEMA. The head of Maui's Emergency Management Agency resigned because he defended the silence of the island's siren system during these wildfires.
	So between this emergency management head, the guy who's in charge of sounding the sirens, We're going to continue in the next segment with Nick Sorter.
	We're talking, of course, about the Maui wildfires.
	And in the next segment, I want to uncover what caused this.
	People are saying climate change.
	Others are saying electrical wires.
	We're going to get down to the answer with Nick Sorter.
	Back in a moment.
	I'm Julie Hartman.
	Welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show.
	I am joined by Nick Sorter, and we are talking about the Maui wildfires.
	So before, Nick, we go to these cast of characters, as I like to call them, the governor of Hawaii, the mayor of Lahaina, the head of the HEMA, the Hawaiian Emergency Management Agency, and all of their supposed incompetence in their response to this event.
	What caused this?
	You know, we've heard lots of different theories.
	You keep hearing climate change.
	I know there's a lot of people, there are a lot of activists on the left that are pushing that.
	There's the gross incompetence of the government and the power company as well.
	I know they built a brand new substation right where it looks like the fire started, although they won't say officially where the fire started or what started the fire.
	There's just a bunch of speculation.
	Although I have a pretty good idea of where it started.
	But the fire didn't immediately erupt once some power lines went down.
	If that's what happened, you know, those power lines went down.
	They were down for 10 hours.
	And they were still alive for all of those 10 hours.
	And then the fire started, but the lines were still down and they were still alive.
	And so, I mean, it seems like a...
	Pretty solid theory to say that probably the power lines did have something to do with it.
	However, the question is, why did they continue to be live while they were laying on the ground and laying across streets?
	I mean, that seems absurd to me.
	I don't understand that.
	I mean, it almost seems criminal to me to allow that to happen.
	And those power lines being laid down across the road are the reason that the roads were closed as well, so nobody could actually get out of a high net.
	Right.
	Well, what I've been reading is that these electrical wires have been faulty or have been downed for some time, but the Hawaiian Electric Company has put a lot of money into green energy initiatives instead of making these electrical wires that are existing safe.
	Is that a fair assessment?
	That's absolutely a fair assessment.
	And that reflects the sentiment of the people here in Lahaina as well.
	And you can see, you know, some of the old poles that were up are still laying on the ground.
	And my gosh, they look like twigs.
	You know, they finally have to invest some money in actual infrastructure rather than pushing these green energy initiatives that, you know, even they're having the same problem with water as well.
	When it came to trying to put out the fire, the firefighters couldn't even have water.
	They didn't have water to use.
	So I don't know how you fight a fire without water, but clearly that didn't work in this situation.
	So let's go to these cast of characters.
	The governor of Hawaii, the mayor of Lahaina, the chief of police, the head of the Hawaiian Emergency Management Agency, and the guy, for lack of a better description, who didn't sound the sirens when the fire was happening.
	I mean, it's kind of a broad question, but what is the reason for this?
	Appearing staggering incompetence with a lack of appropriate response to this fire.
	I mean, just anecdotally, I'd like to tell the viewers that the mayor of Lahaina is on video and he's at this press conference in like a parking lot somewhere in Maui and he's getting these softball questions from reporters and then finally a reporter stood up and said, how many children have died?
	And the mayor of Lahaina said, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
	And the reporter said, you do know, but you're not telling us why.
	So, Nick, please try to answer that question for us.
	What's going on?
	Actually, I was one of the reporters in that parking lot yelling at him.
	You know what's funny?
	You might have been that reporter.
	As I was telling the story, I thought maybe that's Nick.
	Yeah, the other guy that was yelling was a resident.
	It was me and a resident that were yelling at the mayor about this.
	But the mayor is grossly incompetent.
	He's not good at his job whatsoever.
	Any other...
	He doesn't ever...
	Honestly, he's not been on the ground there much at all.
	He did that parking lot press conference, but he's not...
	He is there, but he's hiding.
	You know, it's really hard to be able to find him.
	That's why everybody has a blast with questions at him at one time, and he doesn't like to answer them.
	He's very arrogant.
	The worst of the bunch was the head of Maui Emergency Management.
	Because when people were asking him, how are you even qualified to do this job?
	And he said, well, I watched some FEMA training videos online.
	That was his answer.
	I mean, I couldn't even believe what I was hearing.
	And this is apparently the guy, unless he's just the fall guy, that didn't activate the sirens that day.
	And his reason being is he said, "Oh well, if we sounded those sirens, people would think that they had to run uphill." And apparently he just assumes that the people behind are so stupid that they're gonna run directly into a fire.
	They're not gonna do that.
	I don't know about you, but I'm gonna run away from the fire.
	Of course.
	And we saw that these Maui residents, I mean, these images are unbelievable.
	They ran into the ocean with their families and people are holding their babies above the water to try to get some safety and relief from the fire.
	So clearly Maui residents are not that stupid to go running into the fire.
	It's unbelievable.
	Absolutely unbelievable.
	So, you know, people may...
	Who are listening may think, well, you know, the electrical wire situation in Maui was particularly bad.
	But this wouldn't happen in a major American city.
	I don't know whether they would be right or wrong with that assessment.
	But my question to you is, are they right or wrong with that assessment?
	In other words, is this just a Maui, a unique Maui problem with the incompetence?
	Or could other American cities see fires like this for similar reasons?
	Oh my gosh.
	I mean, there's so...
	Look, I cover a lot of disasters.
	This is what I do.
	I covered East Palestine, Ohio, very closely, right?
	And there was a ton of incompetence there.
	Gross incompetence.
	And, you know, there definitely was a cover-up as well.
	But here, I think that we're almost talking criminal incompetence.
	I mean, if there wasn't anything nefarious that went on here, it just...
	It would be the biggest catastrophic failure of government that I've ever seen and could ever even have.
	I don't think there's a single thing that didn't go wrong here.
	Yes.
	I'm really hoping that this is a one-off, but, you know, as we've learned in the past, government does not learn.
	That's right.
	Don't we all hope that this is just a one-off?
	And you're right.
	Government does not seem to learn.
	We saw that here with the supposed hurricane.
	They're shutting down schools on Monday because of the hurricane.
	They didn't learn from all the destruction of the lockdowns, all of the hysteria.
	Nick Sorter, thank you so much for coming on.
	I'll be back in a moment.
	We have a lot of calls on the subject of the Maui fires.
	Let's quickly go to Donald in Honolulu.
	Hi, Donald.
	Hey, good morning, Julie.
	This is Donald.
	I enjoy your show.
	Thank you.
	I just wanted to share on the ground, okay, our government is Democrat, blue, take care of politics.
	That's why we weren't ready.
	Secondly, the water that they're claiming the Hawaiians didn't want to give up.
	They have other private reservoirs in that valley.
	But because that takes care of the elites and the hotels, they don't want to touch that water.
	And what they're talking about is when the helicopters come, they pick up water out of the reservoir and put it on the fire.
	They didn't even have helicopters up because it was too windy.
	And I'm a native Hawaiian descent.
	But I'm a pure American.
	And what is going on is politics, not the people.
	That's why it went the way it did.
	Thank you so much for your call.
	You're right.
	I mean, even with this siren issue, you know, Nick in the previous segment was saying that the person in charge of issuing sirens to mourn Maori residents of their impending danger decided not to do so.
	And the reason is that usually, and historically, those sirens have been used to alert Maori residents to a tsunami.
	But Nick's entire point was, okay, even if the sirens have been used in the past to alert people to a tsunami, Maui residents aren't that stupid.
	They're going to see the smoke.
	They're going to, you know, see the ash.
	They're going to know that it's a fire.
	And so when the sirens are going, it's pretty likely that they're not going to think that it's a tsunami.
	They're going to look out their window and be intelligent enough to realize that it's a fire coming down the mountain and they better flee.
	So all of this incompetence and bizarre, like, over sense of safety, but to the point of it actually being unsafe, like, we can't issue these sirens because people are going to think it's a tsunami, but that actually backfires and prevents people from fleeing to safety.
	All of this indicates, as you say, Donald, a staggering level of incompetence.
	If you look at the past three hours of this show, in the first hour I talked about this anxiety proliferation, in the second hour I talked about Donald Trump's indictments, and in the third hour I talked about the Maui wildfires.
	All three of these, to an extent, are contrived.
	They could be avoided.
	There's no reason for young people to have such anxiety but they're being pushed that way because of wokeism.
	Donald Trump indictments.
	Some of them may be legit but a lot of them are political persecution.
	The Maui wildfires, it's because people didn't handle the downed electrical lines because they were too consumed with green energy.
	A lot of the issues of the United States are concocted and made up and can be avoided.
	Thank you all so much for joining me.
	See you soon.
	Dennis Prager here.
	Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
	To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
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