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Sept. 5, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:21:38
Believe Anything
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Dennis Prager here.
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Well, everybody, welcome to the Monday show.
As usual, I hope you have a good weekend.
A rare thing happened in the elevator coming up to my broadcast floor.
Oh, it's Tuesday, yes.
You see that?
The mind works logically, but not accurately, in this case, anyway.
The logic was, it's my first day back at work, so therefore the brain says it's a Monday.
That's what happened.
I still hope you had a good weekend.
I hope you have a good extended weekend.
Usually I initiate speaking with strangers.
But, to this woman's credit, middle-aged woman, she looked at me and she said, perfect.
A tall purple shirt.
How's that?
Had I been given eternity to anticipate or to predict what this woman would have come out with, eternity would not be long enough.
Hi, everybody.
I am going to open your eyes.
With one fascinating insight that I picked up reading over the course of this weekend.
This will help you understand a great deal.
A woman aged 107 just died.
She was a lifelong communist.
And she married a lifelong communist.
And they lived in China and were one of the few Westerners allowed access to the higher echelons of the Chinese Communist Party.
So, let's be clear.
To have been in China...
During the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, when approximately 60 million Chinese were starved to death and otherwise murdered.
In the Cultural Revolution, where people were denounced and humiliated en masse and sent away to rural areas if they were an intellectual at a time when intellectuals fought for liberty.
And still remain a communist means you're a real sick, morally sick person.
So I want you to hear how sick this woman was, morally sick, named Isabel Crook.
This is from the New York Times obituary.
The Crooks became true believers in Chinese communism.
Their faith remained unshaken, even after David, the husband, David Crook, was charged with espionage and imprisoned between 1967 and 1973 at the height of the Cultural Revolution.
Mrs. Crook insisted he was innocent, but her defense backfired and she was kept under house arrest for several years.
Now, please understand, their communist beliefs were so deep, their support for evil was so religious in its implementation,
in its genesis, in its etiology, that even when her husband was imprisoned for six years, more than six years, But six is enough.
And imprisoned in China in the late 1960s was a very, very bad thing.
They remained true believers.
I have often said the truth is not a left-wing value.
More than often, I say it every day.
It isn't.
It's a liberal value and it's a conservative value.
It's not a left-wing value.
But that's not its biggest problem.
Its biggest problem is that, well, it's related, but it's not the same.
They believe what they say.
They believe that kids under 10 can decide that they are the opposite sex.
They believe it.
It's very hard for those of us who live in both moral and factual reality to appreciate that.
But many of them, many of them don't.
Many of them are just destroyers.
Because they have nothing better to do with their bored, secular, affluent lives.
But for many, this is as communism, which is indistinguishable morally from leftism.
Again, it's distinguishable from liberalism, but not from leftism.
That is a religious belief.
The people who gave secrets to the atom bomb to Joseph Stalin, the second greatest mass murderer in history, Mao, one, Stalin, two, in terms of numbers, then followed by Hitler, who would have caught up, but didn't have the time, that Stalin and Mao had.
They believe.
These are true believers.
The people who believe America is systemically racist, they may not have in the beginning, but they have convinced themselves of it.
That a woman can become a man.
They believe this.
Not all, but many.
The woman's husband was arrested.
For no reason.
And put away for six years in China.
And she continued to support the Chinese Communist Party.
It's like the Communists, the early Bolsheviks, who were thrown into prison under Stalin's regime, and then said to the people torturing them, if Comrade Stalin only knew what you were doing to me.
They thought Comrade Stalin would object.
Comrade Stalin was the reason these people were being tortured.
There is not much you can do.
Clearly, logic is irrelevant.
Reason is irrelevant.
Morality is irrelevant.
When you have engaged what Eric Hofer, the great philosopher of the mid-20th century, Who was a longshoreman, by the way.
I'm not sure he went to college.
Called the true believer.
When you encounter the true believer, you have to be very afraid.
If a woman is okay with her husband being sent away for six years to some awful Chinese prison, then...
You know you have encountered true believers.
As many of you know, every year, this will be, I think, the 17th year, I conduct the most High Holy Day services, I conduct the most High Holy Day services, known as the High Holy Day services in Judaism, for 300 to 400 people.
If you're interested in attending, people fly in from all over to do so.
I explain everything, and it's a beautiful, beautiful service of music as well.
Go to pragerhighholidays.net for information.
You can also watch it through the Salem Network.
Go to pragerhighholidays.net.
So I was thinking, what would I speak on this year, aside from my constant explaining of the prayers?
I'm thinking about something I said many years ago.
The most heretical thing I can come out with is that God most wants us to be good.
Goodness doesn't have a good name.
People have other preoccupations.
And then they wonder why the world is filled with non-goodness, a.k.a.
evil.
Because many religious and many secular people are not preoccupied with it.
1-8 Prager 776. I'm Dennis Prager.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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AmericanFederal.com AmericanFederal.com And Coulter has a piece of Why have Americans lost faith in higher education?
So she gives some examples of some of the course offerings at Harvard, the nation's most prestigious university.
WAMJEN 1210.
I don't know what WAMJEN is.
Do you?
Does anybody know what that means?
Is that a new spelling for women?
And I'm not being cute.
I don't know what it is.
Oh, it's an image.
I don't know.
WOMGEN. Alright, anyway.
WOMGEN 1210. Black Feminist Theory.
Wamjen1217, Psychology of the Gendered Body.
Let's see.
Can we figure out all this?
No.
I try to click on these things, but nothing happens.
I wanted to see who the professor was.
Let's see.
What else?
Oh, yes.
You don't want to miss this, so on if your kid gets into Harvard.
Wamjen 1280, Queer Lives in the Global South.
Hmm.
I wonder if the students taking queer lives in the Global South have any general knowledge of things of substance.
These are Harvard students, after all.
Can they name the four Gospels?
Can they cite five of the Ten Commandments?
How many Shakespeare plays have they read?
For that matter, how many can they name?
Do they know what the Gulag Archipelago was?
I don't know.
I tend to be pessimistic on these matters.
Especially the students taking queer lives in the Global South.
Not done.
Wamjen1315.
Transgenres.
Sean, you majored in transgenres, if I'm not mistaken.
That was impressive.
And finally, Wamjen1400.
Queer...
Ethnographies.
Okay, so wait.
That's just in that arena.
Introduction to African American Studies.
That's a legit course.
Black Humor.
Performance Art and Literature.
Black art and the re-founding of American art, race, and U.S. law.
African American theater, a black history of electronic dance music.
Contemporary African American theater, black classicisms, adaptations of ancient Greek and Roman classics in Africa, the Caribbean, and the U.S. freedom writers race and literary and the U.S. freedom writers race and literary form Jim Crow, Histories and Revivals, African American Lives in the Law.
Well, certainly got black studies covered there.
Generally speaking, when I hear the word studies at universities, I think that it is more indoctrination than education.
Women's studies, queer studies, black studies, just in general the word studies does conjure that up for me.
You know what I'm curious about in terms of the future?
Really curious.
If you say you went to Yale 10 years from now, will it carry the cachet that it has for hundreds of years?
See, my assumption now, if you went to an Ivy League college, is you're probably quite foolish.
You might have a fine brain, but you're probably very, very foolish.
Yale has become a wasteland.
The president who made it such has just retired.
He started as a psychology major, became head of the psych department, then dean of the college, then president of the university, Salivar.
Solovar or Solovar.
I think Solovar.
And he's really overseen its deterioration.
People are still trying to get into Yale.
Or Princeton.
Or UFP. Columbia voted the least free college in the country, by the way.
Hmm.
It really...
What is left that now...
What is remaining, not what is left, is in terms of left-right.
What is remaining that has moral and intellectual prestige?
I can't think of what.
The left has destroyed everything.
I would say that when I was a child, a third grade teacher was regarded with greater respect than a college professor is today.
Half of America, including me, thinks if you're a college professor, you're a dummy.
Thank you.
Or worse, like at Arizona State.
I've offered to debate 37 professors.
Back in a moment.
You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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I don't talk to you much about Ukraine.
I have been completely supportive of aiding Ukraine.
I am now completely supportive of pursuing peace while aiding Ukraine.
And if there has to be some territorial compromise, I don't want to live in a make-believe world.
China is a greater threat than Russia, in my opinion, number one.
Number two, because the Democrats have so weakened our defense spending, We are not quite exhausting, but certainly reducing the amount of armaments that we have in case we need it, for example, to protect Taiwan.
It's a bad world out there.
Liberals as well as leftists are naive about the world.
And I know why people are naive about the world, because it's much easier to live in the make-believe world.
People are basically good.
And if we just, you know, just work with them.
The real enemy is climate change, not evil human beings.
Climate change.
That's the real issue.
I'll have a lot to say.
I've had a lot to say about climate change and what they are doing to disrupt your life.
But first, the great Victor Davis Hanson.
Has a piece up at American Greatness, which, in the best sense of the word, I mean, he's unique, so I'm not taking anything away.
I'm just saying I could have written because I am so sympathetic to what he is saying.
What the left did to our country.
Will their upheaval succeed?
And he, it's very interesting.
He starts the viciousness with Barack Obama.
Between 2009 and 2017, Barack Obama was empowered to transform the Democratic Party from its middle-class roots and class concerns into the party of the bi-coastal That's right.
That's good.
The party of the bi-coastal rich and the subsidized poor.
That's right.
Obsessions with big money, race, a new intolerant green religion, and dividing the country into a binary of oppressors and oppressed.
He writes really well, Victor Davis Hanson.
He will be at the next PragerU gala.
Spending some time with him.
He has a sober view of the human race.
A professor of ancient history, Greek and Roman.
I don't know if it's history or literature.
Maybe both.
The Obamas entered the presidency.
Notice the Obamas?
That was good.
Entered the presidency spouting the usual left-wing boilerplate, spread the wealth, just downright mean country.
Get in the face.
First time I've been proud of my country.
Remember her line?
I would say that the Reverend Wright and her line, the first time I've been proud of my country, summarize the Obamas really well.
See, it's very wrong to take a line out of context.
Everybody misspeaks.
So the question is, do you believe they misspoke?
Or do you believe that this reflected...
How they feel.
When a man attends 10 years a church, his best friend is an America-hating black racist.
I know the leftists taught me, even when I was at Columbia in the 70s, that a black cannot be a racist.
That was one of the indications to me that I was not a leftist.
The biggest was that they didn't hate communism.
My favorite line in the Bible, the book I take seriously.
Those of you who love God must hate evil.
Must.
It's a command.
We don't have a command form in English, so we say must.
You don't hate evil, you don't love God.
And if you don't hate communism, you don't hate evil.
That's about as morally clear as it gets on this planet.
So that was an indication to me.
Very early on in my life that I could not be a leftist.
I thought of myself as liberal.
And in some ways I still am.
Though liberal, I don't identify with liberals as much as classic liberalism.
We'll be back.
Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
And it is a great piece in American Greatness by Victor Davis Hanson.
He connects the left-wing destruction of everything beautiful in this country with the Obamas.
After getting elected through temporarily pivoting to racial ecumenicalism and pseudo-calls for unity, They, that is the Obamas, reverted to form and governed by dividing the country.
That's right, that's what they did.
I was actually ambivalent in the sense that I didn't vote for Barack Obama, but there was a joy in me that a black had been elected president.
But he's not a good man, and he hurt the country.
Eight years of damage, enabling the woke left to take its place in the Democratic Party.
Then the two left the White House as soon-to-be-mansion-living, mega-rich elites, cashing in on the fears they had inculcated over the prior eight years.
God, he writes well.
Cashing in on the fears they had inculcated.
To push through the accompanying unpopular agendas of an open border, mandatory wind and solar energy, racial essentialism, and the weaponization of the state, Obama had begun demonizing his opponents and the country in general.
America was an unexceptional place.
Cops were racist.
Clingers of the Midwest, remember, they cling to their guns and Bibles.
We're hopelessly ignorant and prejudiced.
Only fundamental socialist transformation could salvage a historically oppressive, immoral, and racist nation.
The smearing of America has been very effective.
Look at the women's soccer team.
First time in my life I rooted against an American team.
I was thrilled when Sweden defeated them.
It really tells you almost all you need to know about the left.
watching the women of the Dutch soccer team sing their national anthem, and the women of the American soccer team either silent or mumbling.
Who's done more good for the world, Holland or the United States?
It's not an anti-Dutch statement.
It's merely a question that's legitimate.
If they can sing their national anthem, why can't our team?
I was thrilled they lost.
Megan Rapinoe is one of the more...
awful human beings in public life.
The people finally rebelled at such preposterousness Obama lost his party, some 1,400 local and state offices during his tenure.
That's a lot.
Along with both houses of Congress.
His presidency was characterized by his own polarizing mediocrity.
What a term.
Excuse me, let me bask in its beauty.
I feel warm waves of a jacuzzi washing over my body.
Polarizing mediocrity.
A new definition of PM. Yes.
I have to remember that term.
Nothing describes Obama better than polarizing mediocrity.
His one legacy was Obamacare, the veritable destruction of the entire system of a once workable health insurance.
That's right.
squeezed it through, through some gimmick.
Have you tried to buy insurance since Obamacare came in?
Thank you.
Of the hallowed doctor-patient relationship and of former easy access to competent specialists?
Yet Obama's unfulfilled ambitions set the stage for the Biden administration staffed heavily with Obama veterans to complete the revolutionary transformation of the Democratic Party and the country.
It was ironic that while Obama was acknowledged as young and charismatic, nonetheless, a cognitively challenged, past plagiarist, fabulous, and utterly corrupt Joe Biden was far more effective in ramming through a socialist woke agenda and altering the very way Americans vote and conduct their legal system.
Another gem of a sentence.
Stranger still, Biden accomplished this subversion of traditional America while debilitated and often mentally inert, along with being mired in a bribery and influence-peddling scandal that may ultimately confirm, and now he's going to say what I have been saying for a while, that he...
Easily was the most corrupt president to hold office in U.S. history.
That's right.
The current president.
The preoccupation of the left with Trump is in part to deflect from the vile nature of this man who is this president, Joe Biden.
How is this all possible?
COVID had allowed the unwell Biden to run a surrogate campaign from his basement as he outsourced his politicking to a corrupt media.
That's right.
I'm telling you, the gems of these sentences.
He outsourced his politicking to a corrupt media.
We'll put this piece up at DennisPrager.com and we'll return.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
Nobody has done better work than Julie Kelly in analyzing what is happening to our country by using the government to persecute Americans.
I can't believe I'm actually saying these words.
I'm old enough to remember Andrei Sakharov, the great, great, great human being.
Who was a dissident in the Soviet Union.
And it never occurred to me that we would have political prisoners in the United States.
But I was naive because the left is the left.
It's irrelevant if the left speaks Russian or English.
Julie Kelly has her own Substack page.
It's called Declassified.
How do people get to you?
Hi, Dennis.
So, yes, my sub stack is called Declassified with Julie Kelly.
So if people just put that in their computer, they should be able to find me.
I'm also at Twitter quite a bit, Julie underscore Kelly 2, where I post breaking news.
There was some interesting news today about the January 6th investigation, but I post court motions and breaking news a lot on Twitter and Truth Social.
Am I right in saying that this...
To the best of your knowledge, is the first time America has political prisoners?
I believe so.
And you know what, Dennis?
It was two and a half years ago.
I think you were the first major influencer on the right to have me on.
And we talked about the case of Coy Griffin, the Cowboys for Trump leader, who had been denied release.
Based on his participation, nonviolent, didn't even go into building participation for January 6th.
And that article was entitled, America's Political Prisoners.
I published it in February of 2021. And you were the first person to have me on to discuss that.
And never did I think we would be here more than two and a half years later talking about the continued roundup, arrest, armed raids, prosecution, and detention, incarceration.
Let me talk to you.
By the way, if you're right that I was the first, I must say I'm very proud of that.
You should be.
I was very grateful.
Yes, good.
All right.
I'm happy to hear that.
Okay.
Tell me about the Proud Boys.
Whatever one's views of the Proud Boys.
And I'm not even inclined to lump them in with, let alone terrorists, or even with necessarily racists.
I don't know that much about them.
I know what I read on both sides, but I don't understand how they could be declared terrorists and given 17 years in prison.
Can you explain that?
I will to the best of my ability.
The Proud Boys were started in like 2016. And what happened is over the years, and especially during the BLM Antifa riots of 2020, the Proud Boys kind of assembled as really sort of a way to help law enforcement, or in some cases, Dennis, as you know, replace law enforcement, who is busy bending the knee to BLM rioters.
So they were protecting businesses.
They were confronting BLM in places like Portland, and they had in Seattle the year before, and in Washington, D.C. They were there to protect Trump supporters who were demonstrating, protesting the election at separate rallies in November and December of 2020. Now, you will recall, Dennis, and I know your listeners know this, too, Trump supporters, Republican lawmakers, Donald Trump and his family themselves.
We're under constant assault by BLM and FIFA rioters throughout the second half of 2020. Police basically were doing nothing, and they were being attacked by these people as well.
So a lot of Proud Boys assembled planned to march and be in Washington, D.C. on January 5th and 6th to protect Trump supporters, to protect officials, because they felt that they were not receiving adequate protection from law enforcement, which, of course, they weren't.
Fast forward to January 6th.
The Proud Boys basically just made plans to travel to Washington, D.C. We're in a lot of group chats that were embedded, by the way, with FBI informants and other law enforcement officials.
Using a lot of inflammatory language that you and I wouldn't necessarily approve of, but nonetheless, protected speech.
They met at the Washington Monument at 10 o'clock.
Some of them marched, a big group of them marched.
To the Capitol, some were involved in the first exterior breach on the west side of the Capitol.
There was, you know, not physical confrontations with police, but they were on the west side near the building.
And one of them, Dominic Pazola, infamously used a riot shield to smash one of the windows.
The other four men who were charged in this particular case.
The seditious conspiracy case were not involved in any violence.
They were not accused of assaulting police or directly vandalizing property.
Nonetheless, the government first charged them with conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding, and then DOJ added the seditious conspiracy counts.
After a four-month trial in Washington, D.C., four of the five were convicted of seditious conspiracy, and that's where these harsh prison sentences stem from.
I'm quiet because I'm so angry.
Seditious conspiracy.
Wait, let me understand that.
To the best of your knowledge, can you give an example of any American prior to the Proud Boys convicted of that?
There is none.
So it's a new charge.
It's a Civil War charge, but Dennis, only recently...
Wait, wait, wait.
Explain that.
A Civil War charge.
Right.
It was a statute stemming from the Civil War for those who were loyal to the Confederacy who wanted to continue to overthrow the American government.
It hasn't been used since the Civil War?
Oh, it has been used, but it's been used against legitimate foreign terrorists like the Blind Sheik.
Has it been used against Americans since the Civil War?
Since the Civil War?
Correct.
Civil War was, let's see, 170 years ago.
Right.
Yes.
Seditious conspiracy.
I don't know if you can answer this.
This is a curiosity question because I want to know whom I should despise the most.
Is this...
And I mean that sincerely.
I know.
It's hard to take.
Trust me.
Yeah.
Well, I am...
I'm a religious man, and my favorite biblical verse is those who love God must hate evil.
So I am bound by the Bible to hate evil.
So I want to understand, do you think that Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, somebody else is behind this?
Well, the person most responsible for bringing those charges is a man named Matthew Graves.
He is the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
And he is the one who, after he was confirmed a Biden appointee, a Biden campaign advisor, hardened Democrat, so it's his wife, he was the one who then started bringing seditious conspiracy charges against members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
So this investigation had gone on for about a year until he took over whether he was taking his marching orders from Joe Biden or Merrick Garland or just doing it on his own because he's a very vengeful man.
That's when he started bringing this very unique, rare, ancient charge accusing these men.
And basically the only crime it's tantamount to is treason.
And an attempt, the specific language is to use force to prevent, hinder, or delay a government proceeding.
That's how vague this language is.
And so it's been exploited like a lot of language in other statutes has been.
Turn these otherwise nonviolent protesters into today's version of domestic terrorists.
Who came up with the term terrorist for the Proud Boys leaders?
I believe...
It dates back to Christopher Wray's testimony in March of 2021 when he designated January 6th an act of domestic terror.
And when he was asked specifically about the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, he said, well, I can't designate a whole group as a group of terrorists.
But yes, there are certainly terrorists in those groups.
Would he say that there were terrorists in Antifa?
Remember, he said Antifa was just an idea.
He said that?
He did.
Christopher Wray?
Yes, he did.
You can find Julie Kelly now at Substack.
It's called Declassified.
It's a good name you chose.
Thank you.
We'll be back in a moment.
Hello, everybody.
Dennis Prager here discussing the Dissent of America.
Certainly moving toward police state with Julie Kelly.
The inimitable Julie Kelly is on with me.
You can get her on Substack.
She has a page, and her page is called Declassified.
I can't let this go.
17 years given to, what is it, two of the leaders of Proud Boys?
Is that correct?
Yes, so 17 years for Joseph Biggs, 18 years for Ethan Nordean.
Were they both, forgive me, don't forget what you were about to say.
I just want to understand this and want everybody to understand.
Were both of them at the Capitol that day?
Yes.
And one of them smashed a window?
One of them, but not Joe Biggs nor Ethan Nordean.
Another man did.
Who is tied to the group.
But they did not.
Wait, so the two that were given 17 years did not even smash a window?
They did not.
So they engaged in no violence, even in the charges against them?
None.
No violence?
No.
So they were given 17 years in prison, which is about...
What the average murderer in America gets.
Certainly no carjacker gets that.
And few rapists get that.
So, what did they do?
You said incendiary speech.
Give me an example.
Just, you know, big talking, braggadocious talking about what they wanted to do.
A lot of inflammatory language about the 2020 election, which prosecutors...
I think is evidence of a crime of attempting to overthrow your government because they doubted the outcome of the 2020 election.
They also, Dennis, more importantly in this case, tied the Proud Boys to Donald Trump.
What this government did, this Department of Justice did, is say that Trump's offhanded remark in the September 2020 debate with Joe Biden, when he was forced by Joe Biden, by the way, to denounce the Proud Boys, said, Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.
This Department of Justice claims that that was a call to arms, call to action for the Proud Boys to bolster their forces to defend whatever happened after the 2020 election.
They also cited Trump's tweet about going to January 6th, his tweet on December 19th, 2020, when he said, we'll be wild, come to January 6th.
That, they said, was the start of the Proud Boys' alleged seditious conspiracy to try to overthrow the government without weapons, without assaulting anyone.
And at one point, Ethan Nordean walking through an open Capitol door with several Capitol Police officers standing right there.
Because, of course, when you're going to overthrow the government, you make sure to go through an open door with POP standing right there.
And no weapons.
Right.
Not one.
But what the government did, Dennis, and this is very important, and it's my latest article on my Substack, is what these judges are doing.
Ahmet Maeda, an Obama appointee, and Timothy Kelly, a Trump-appointed judge, an alleged conservative, who oversaw, mishandled, egregiously mishandled this Proud Boys trial from beginning to end, allowed, consented to DOJ's request to add a terrorism enhancement in the Proud Boys case.
And you know what the terrorism enhancement was based on?
Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean allegedly shaking parts of a temporary metal fence on Capitol grounds that day.
That was the act of terror.
That is the sort of thing that these D.C. judges, who when you say evil, who the bad guys are, it's actually the judges.
DOJ can't get away with any of this without consent.
Who are the judges?
Timothy Kelly and who?
Amit Mehta.
Nick Mehta?
Amit.
A-M-I-T. Mehta.
M-E-T-A? Yes, sir.
M-E-H-T-A. Mehta.
Oh, as in Zubin Mehta.
Okay.
So they are turning low-level petty offenses like shaking a fence, petty vandalism charges, or things like seditious conspiracy.
So let me understand this, too.
Was this trial in front of a jury?
It was a D.C. jury.
I am curious how Democrats would react if a trial of a leftist took place in front of an all-conservative, all-Republican, all-white jury.
Yes.
There would be outrage.
Instead of the silence that we're getting.
Were the lawyers effective?
They had excellent lawyers, most of these.
They had excellent, devoted lawyers who worked on their defense for two plus years.
Is somebody going to write a book about how these trials manifested themselves?
What happened?
Well, I should write a follow-up to my January 6th book.
It'll probably be twice as long as the first book.
I think literally just those trials.
Yes.
See, I don't know if you know, and there would be no reason you should, but my field of study was the Soviet Union and communism.
And when I read about Soviet judges doing what the regime wanted, With no even facade of justice.
It never occurred to me that this would take place in my beloved America.
And it is.
And it is.
It absolutely is.
I've sat in the courtrooms.
I've seen it.
I saw Judge Ahmet made a designate a 61-year-old grandmother of three from Florida last week as a domestic terrorist.
Added terrorism enhancement to her sentence.
Because she was convicted by a D.C. jury of obstruction of an official proceeding, a post-Enron law, by the way, that has nothing to do with political protest.
Okay, we'll move on now.
I guess the only hope for these Proud Boy leaders is a Republican administration, is that right?
I believe so.
And I mean, I do think there's only one man who would be elected who would be courageous enough to pardon that.
I have a feeling his first name is Donald.
Yes.
Yes.
We'll be back in a moment.
Julie Kelly can be found at Substack.
the column is declassified.
I tell you, Julie Kelly, one of your next books...
Should be how not to shoot yourself.
Because you are involved in the most depressing aspect of modern American life on a daily basis.
I have to assume you have a happy private life.
I do.
Thank God.
I've got a great husband, awesome daughter, a lot of friends, and yes, activities outside of this.
But I'll tell you, Dennis, last week was rough.
That was personally extremely difficult to see what this DOJ and Judge Maida did to Connie Maggs, the 61-year-old grandmother, to see what they did to the Proud Boys, who are absolutely broken, and have already been in prison, by the way, for two and a half years, awaiting trial, awaiting the sentence.
Their lives are destroyed, their families are destroyed, their future destroyed.
It's very difficult to see people, whether you agree with their conduct or language, but to see them targeted so viciously and hear these line prosecutors accuse them of being terrorists and have judges such as Tim Kelly, an alleged conservative Trump-appointed judge, go along with that.
It's pretty gut-wrenching to see on many levels.
Yes.
But especially long-term consequences.
Right.
Well, so it's like I have asked for much of my life, do bad people go to the left or does the left make bad people?
The answer is both.
Certainly in the case of Timothy Kelly.
Can you explain him at all?
You know, I wish I could.
I'll tell you two things.
He's a former prosecutor for the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, which is the same office prosecuting every January 6th case.
So these are his former colleagues, his buddies, you know, like-minded, allegedly tough on crime, but that's not what this is at all.
And in fact, Dennis, outrageously, Tim Kelly, aside from...
Acting as a rubber stamp for DOJ for two and a half years, holding nonviolent offenders, these men denying their release for more than two years, refusing to change this trial outside of D.C. Even, Dennis, as the January 6th committee was holding televised hearings, specifically naming these defendants, Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, showing videos of them.
As jury selection is going underway in D.C. for their trial.
Insisting that he would be able to pick a fair jury, which he didn't because at least eight admitted leftist Democrat activists were seated on that jury.
And, of course, they came back with nearly all convictions on every count except for a few.
He allowed the cover-up of FBI evidence, the involvement of FBI informants.
He told the defense team, you have to pre-clear questions with prosecutors related to FBI informants and the FBI's involvement in this case.
You have to pre-clear your cross-examination questions with the government.
Like, you talk about Soviet-style trials.
I mean, one defense attorney said it's like having another prosecutor on the government's team.
That's how Judge Tim Pelley acted.
And he did it straight through.
Sentencing.
And last week, actually publicly denounced any comparison between January 6th, how January 6th defendants were being treated, and BLM Antifa rioters saying it's different because January 6th was a fraught constitutional crisis or moment.
Some gobbledygook like that.
That's who he is.
And he's just not very bright.
Amit Mead is a very smart judge.
Tim Kelly is not.
So he's easy to manipulate.
I wonder who suggested, because no president knows all the people they appoint.
They can't.
I wonder who suggested Timothy Kelly to President Trump.
My guess is Charles Grassley, because before he became a judge, Tim Kelly was one of the general counsels for Charles Grassley's first Senate Judiciary Committee.
Now, I doubt Charles Grassley knew that Tim Kelly would become...
Would morph into an activist leftist judge after January 6th.
I'm sure he never saw that coming.
But Judge Tim Kelly also happens to be married to one of the top deputies for D.C. Mayor Muriel Fouser.
So that's another little wrinkle.
No kidding.
Somebody a few years ago made a list.
Of all the marital links between the left-wing media and the government and judges like you're mentioning now, it's a very incestuous place, Washington.
Yes, and Matthew Graves, the D.C. U.S. attorney, is married to a woman who runs one of the most radical left-wing pro-abortion nonprofits called the National Women's Law Center.
She is part of, and she runs this, it's a $100 million nonprofit, All right, all right.
More coming up with Julie Kelly back in a moment.
Looking at Julie Kelly's Substack page titled Declassified.
I'm telling you folks, the moral rot and the perversion of justice is so analogous to the Soviet Union.
Here is an example that I just saw on your page.
Judge Tanya Chutkan compared January 6th to 9-11 and to the Boston Marathon bombing.
You want to expound on that for a moment?
Yes, so she did this in a hearing last Monday.
She is the Judge Obama-appointed judge overseeing Jack Smith's indictment of Donald Trump for January 6th.
So this was her hearing to set the trial date and in the process commended herself for or tried to compare her fast-track trial date, seven months between indictment and trial, to other terror cases.
And it said, well, you know, it took two years for the Boston Marathon bomber to go to trial, and it took four years for Zacharias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker from 9-11, to go to trial.
So, you know, here I am fast-tracking this, and that's what she said.
So she's basically comparing Donald Trump to Zacharias Moussaoui and the Tsarnaev brothers, of course, responsible for murdering.
Both of them thousands of people.
And in the Boston Marathon, murdering three people, including an eight-year-old boy, injuring hundreds of others.
This is the sort of sick mentality that is exhibited by nearly every judge in the D.C. District Court.
So, yeah, people should check.
I posted the entire transcript, Dennis, so people can read for themselves.
That was just one of many insane things that Tanya Chudkin said in the hearing last week.
What sort of prison are the Proud Boys going to spend, theoretically, 17 years in?
I mean, it will be a federal prison.
They've already been in jail, as I said, for more than two years.
Two and a half years, yeah.
Yeah, at this point now, 30 months.
So they've been in the D.C. Gulag during trial, so they've been in the D.C. jail since December.
And then now they'll be transferred to permanent federal prisons, probably, I'm assuming, in their home states.
So Florida, Pennsylvania, and Washington State, where they're from.
I hate to even ask this, but my heart breaks for them.
You say it's destroyed their families.
What did you mean?
I mean, their families are broken.
I sat with one father last week.
He was in his late 60s and started sobbing in front of me, saying he didn't want to die with his son in jail.
So, you know, they're bankrupted, destroyed.
Their names now are associated with an act of terror.
Outcasts, you know, some of these men have been abandoned by their own family members.
What shocked me, Dennis, is how little support these men had.
These are family members, friends.
How can we support them?
I don't know.
I mean, I know some of them have Give, Send, Go accounts.
That's basically it.
They could not have a GoFundMe page.
GoFundMe is quite political.
Yes.
As soon as J6R started posting GoFundMe accounts, GoFundMe deplatformed all of them.
People should know that.
I mean, I give frequently to GoFundMe, but I never check off the box, add this to contribute to GoFundMe.
I put on zero.
I send it to the poor people, like the funeral of a murdered boy, let's say.
But it's another place that the left has destroyed, the GoFundMe page.
So what page do they have for people to contribute?
Well, most of the J6 defense accounts.
Funds are on Give, Send, Go.
It's a Christian platform, and that's the only place that will host these funds.
Give, Send, Go?
Give, Send, Go.
G-I-V-E. Give, Send, Go.
Oh, Give, Send, Go.
Yeah, it sounded like Give, Send, Go.
Give, Send, Go.
That's why I always have people.
Yes, three different words.
I'm sorry, three different words.
Give, Send, Go.
But, Dennis, can I offer one more thing?
People need to pressure their Republican members of Congress.
They are silent on the selective abuse of political prosecution and imprisonment of their own supporters.
And I will point people to Representative Ken Buck.
And I just posted his letter defending this Department of Justice, claiming the J6ers are getting fair trials, are being treated fairly by this Department of Justice.
That they are not subjected to selective execution.
When you have Republicans like that...
Where is he from?
Colorado.
And I just posted his letter on my Twitter, Julie underscore Kelly, too.
He said they got a fair trial?
He is defending this process, yes.
Saying that judges are very careful.
It is truly sickening.
Are there any good Republicans out there?
There are.
So name them.
Name them.
Well, I mean, people have been out front on this from the beginning.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz has been very vocal about this.
Louie Gohmert was, unfortunately.
He is not in Congress anymore.
So there's, I know I'm leaving off a few, but...
What about senators?
No.
So what do you think it is?
I'm sure that there are senators who know that this has been a Soviet-like trial.
Are they afraid?
I believe they are afraid.
Of whom?
Of this Department of Justice or FBI, you know, turning the tables on them.
But I also think that they don't want to be associated with these people, Dennis, right?
When I report on them, how can you defend these lowlifes?
How can you defend...
They're gross people.
They're not smart.
They're not educated.
We're defending justice.
It has nothing to do with whether we like these people.
Why is that a complex idea?
Apparently it is in the minds of most of the public.
Well, courage is the rarest of the human values, of the human traits.
And it's very sad.
Well, you're doing...
Major work for this embattled democracy.
To read Julie Kelly, and you should every day, just go to Substack and her, what would you call it?
Column?
What do you call it?
Her page?
What's the official word?
I think page is the right word.
Her page, which is called declassified.
Thank you, Julie.
Sleep well when you go to bed.
I will, Donison.
Thank you, as I said, for helping.
Cover this, help me cover it from the very beginning.
It's an honor.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here, the Ultimate Issues Hour, the third hour every Tuesday.
This is a tough subject that I am going to address today.
Tough for religious people, I am one of them.
But if we don't confront it, then we're not honest.
And we certainly don't do God or religion a service.
It is certainly confronted by the anti-religious.
How do you explain religious people who are demonstrably not good people?
Now, I know we get into the debate, well, are there any good people?
I never understood why that is a debate.
Of course there are good people.
Are there bad people?
Well, if there are bad people, and everybody would acknowledge that, then there are good people.
And how do you know who's good?
Very simple, by how they behave.
I've dealt with this on a few occasions.
I will deal again with the issue of sinful thoughts versus sinful behavior.
I believe that we judge people by their behavior and not their thoughts.
The number of people with good thoughts and horrible behavior has been in the hundreds of millions.
Supporters of communism often thought that they were doing good, and they were supporting the most vicious, bloodthirsty, enslaving doctrine in modern history.
Yep.
So, I don't give much credence to what you think.
There are people with bad thoughts who do a great deal of good, and there are people with good thoughts who do a great deal of bad.
But that's another subject, one that I think is extremely important, but for another time, and we have done it, we'll do it again.
So, I am asking you a question.
How do you explain, especially if you're religious, but you don't have to be religious to answer this, to call in on this, how do you explain bad religious people?
So the standard answer of religious people has been, they're not really religious.
So it's an interesting answer, and...
It's a tough...
There's truth to it, but it's not the whole truth.
So I'm going to tell you something from within Judaism that'll blow your mind.
Absolutely blow your mind.
One of the leading Orthodox Jewish commentators, I mentioned he's Orthodox, because you might think, well, this is some modern liberal.
Actually, he was...
An early middle-aged.
I'll get you the dates in a moment.
His name is Nachmanides or Ramban in Hebrew.
Nachmanides, let's see, when did he live?
I should have it here.
He died in 1270. Born in Spain in 1194. Died in Aker, Israel in 1270. So, he was a 13th century major Jewish thinker, major.
And he had a very fascinating comment on a verse in the Bible, a very famous verse, Leviticus 19, 19.2, God said, you shall be holy to the Israelite people.
You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
So, in classic Jewish fashion, he asks a question and then provides an answer.
And as I said, this will blow your mind.
If you're irreligious, it'll blow your mind, and if you are religious, it will.
He asks the question, why is there a law to be holy?
Isn't someone who fulfills?
The laws of the Torah, where all the laws are, the first five books, 613 of them.
Isn't that person going to be holy?
Or good?
Why is there a law to be holy?
Just keep the laws.
And then he came up with a statement, which I learned in Yeshiva, Jewish Religious School.
Shai 10 until 19. That is extremely well known to anyone who has studied Judaism.
It's three words in Hebrew.
You can be disgusting with the permission of the Torah.
Wow.
For a religious Jew to say that?
In the 12th century, no less.
I commend him and I commend Judaism for honoring the statement.
In fact, I will go so far as to say you can be disgusting with the full permission of any religion.
There's no guarantee.
E.
That following your religion will lead you to do good.
There's no guarantee.
There is a greater likelihood, in some cases, not in all, that following your religion will make you a better person.
That's why I judge religions by what they produce, not by their theologies, just as an aside.
So how is it possible that you could observe all the laws?
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Love God.
Do not place an obstacle before the blind.
Do not curse the deaf.
If the donkey of your enemy is overladen with goods, take off his burden.
I mean, it doesn't make sense.
How could you follow that?
And still be disgusting.
That's what minuval is.
That Hebrew word.
So I'll give you an example from driving.
Is it possible to observe all driving rules and be a disgusting driver?
Yes.
It is possible.
I see it all the time.
I don't know if you are violating the law.
I don't think you are by going slowly in the diamond lane or the high occupancy vehicle lane, whatever your state calls it, or going slowly in the left lane.
I don't believe it is a violation of a law.
I don't think you can get ticketed for doing so.
But it's disgusting.
Taking your time to turn.
When the signal turns green for a left turn and everybody's been sitting there and you're taking your sweet time.
I don't think that that is illegal, but it's disgusting.
It is not enough to follow laws.
It's an essential, but it's not enough.
It is necessary but not sufficient to making a good person.
So, for example, since I've acknowledged that, I gave the Jewish example of an observant Jew could be an awful human being.
I'll give an example.
Can you be Christian and be an awful human being?
Of course you can.
The argument, well, that the person really isn't Christian, then the Jew ought to make the argument that the person really isn't following Judaism.
And that happens to be true.
But it doesn't deny the fact that there were people who deeply believe in Christ who are bad people.
people, and there are people who deeply believed in Judaism, who were bad people.
Religion is the, or at least the Judeo-Christian religions, I think are the best vehicle to being a good person.
But they're not guarantees.
Do you agree?
1-8 Prager 776-877-243-7776.
The Dennis Prager Show.
I'm Dennis Prager.
This is the Ultimate Issues Hour.
How do you explain religious people who do bad?
I gave you a quote which is just awesome.
It's one of the many reasons I have a great reverence for Judaism, is that one of its greatest thinkers from the 12th century, in a commentary on Leviticus 19, 2, you shall be holy, he says, why is there a law to be holy?
Isn't following all the laws of the Torah enough to make you holy?
And then he said, no, actually.
You can be disgusting with the permission of the Torah.
And this is with the Torah observant Jew.
You can be disgusting with belief in Christ.
Every religion needs to say this.
Otherwise, it's not ethically serious.
You have to want to be good.
There's no automatic goodness maker in religion.
It doesn't come automatically.
That's what he's saying.
I'll give you another one.
One of the greatest Jewish Orthodox thinkers.
What century would he have been in?
Let's see.
Let me look this one up because I have to get everything accurately.
Let's see here.
Well, I'll get it for you during the break.
I don't want to take your time, but I'll tell you what the statement was.
I think it was the great rabbi that went to Vilna, but I'm not certain.
It would be about the 18th century or 19th century.
And he said, the Torah, also a deeply orthodox man, the Torah is like rain.
When it pours, it brings up beautiful flowers and poisonous weeds.
That is true for all religions.
If you can't say that about your religion, if you think that your religion automatically produces good people, You are fooling yourself.
And that's my message on this Ultimate Issues Hour.
Okay, so let's see how you folks deal with this.
Okay, let's see.
Hmm.
Fascinating.
George, Columbus, Ohio.
Hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
You asked before the break if I did agree or disagree on Judeo-Christian values, being the only ones to teach.
Oh, no, I didn't ask that, actually.
I asked do you agree or disagree that it is possible in any religion to be religious and be awful.
I don't only believe that Judeo-Christian religions can produce good people.
There are good Hindus.
There are good everybody.
Oh, absolutely.
But yeah, you are correct.
And I don't disagree with you then.
Yes, there could be horrible Christians.
There could be horrible Muslims.
There could be horrible any religion.
I think it just has to do with the person themselves.
I don't think it has to do with religion at all.
Okay, there I differ with you.
I know that the...
The preaching that I got in all of my years at religious school had an effect on me.
I don't think I would be a bad person had I not had this, but there's no doubt in my mind I'm better.
I'll give you an example.
All of you will find this fascinating.
I've written about it, actually.
It's called the Storekeeper Law.
So there's a law in...
There's a Jewish law.
There are many Jewish laws, thousands probably.
That if you enter a store, you are not allowed to ask the storekeeper the price of an item if you know you won't buy it.
Because you're not allowed to raise the hopes of the storekeeper for no reason.
And I wrote about this, and there were stores that told me they put the article up for people to read.
Because so many people did it.
I remember going to a camera store at least 30 years ago.
I was at a camera store in Los Angeles and a woman took about 20 minutes of the storekeeper's time to see what camera she wanted.
And then she said, can you tell me where I can get it cheaper on the internet?
So not only did she rob the guy of 20 minutes, But she had the chutzpah, the audacity, to say, hey, can you tell me where I can get it cheaper?
So I had been taught as a kid, if you know you won't buy an item, you don't have to know you will buy an item, but if you know you won't, you cannot ask its price.
I got that from my religion.
I would not have come up with that on my own, I don't think.
People do it all the time.
They go to a store, they check out all the giant screen TVs, and then they get it on the internet.
They know they won't buy it there, but they have taken up the time of somebody at the store to do it.
There's no question that there are people who are better because of their religion.
I wish it were all people.
That's the point, though, of my talk.
So I thank you for that call.
Appreciate it.
Okay.
Let's see here.
Thomas in Dallas, Texas.
Hi.
Hey, Dennis.
How are you?
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for talking with me.
You know, I've listened to you for years, but never bothered to call until now.
Glad you did.
Yeah, me too.
So the reason that evil people can be religious is because religion in and of itself is not good.
Only the religion that proceeds from God is good.
Unless you follow that, you're going to be doing evil.
Well, how do you know what to follow if there's no religion?
Do you mean Bible alone without religion, or you mean no Bible either?
Well, you have to believe that God exists.
If you believe He exists, He can speak right to your heart.
I don't agree with you, and I'll tell you why.
I don't agree.
There are the number of awful people who thought they believed in God.
It's very large.
Back in a moment.
Dennis Prager here.
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