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Nov. 7, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:20:49
Deception
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello, everybody.
Dennis Prager here, and I'm going to go straight to my guest.
He has a vote on the U.S. Senate floor, and he's a courageous man.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky just come out with this book, Deception, The Great COVID Cover-Up.
And it takes courage to write about cover-ups that are initiated by any governmental institution.
And which are bought and sold by the American media.
Senator Paul, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Thanks for having me, Dennis.
It is a true pleasure, sir.
So, take it away.
What's the cover-up?
Well, you know, for the last three years, they've been telling us nothing to see here.
This just came naturally from animals, and it had nothing to do with the lab in Wuhan.
In fact, for over a year, Facebook was suppressing any stories of this.
The government was actively meeting with Facebook, helping to suppress stories like this.
But what we've discovered, largely through Freedom of Information Act, is that in private, they were saying exactly the opposite thing.
We know from early in February 2020, really even in January 2020, that Fauci and his colleagues, or as I call them, his henchmen or his yes-men, were all meeting.
And in private, they were concluding that the sequence of the RNA for COVID virus looked to have been manipulated.
This wasn't something they typically found in nature.
In fact, they used words strong enough to say that it was inconsistent with viruses in nature.
They also said privately that they were very concerned because they knew that the lab in Wuhan was doing gain-of-function research.
Gain-of-function is where you take two naturally occurring viruses, mix them together, and make a brand new virus that may well have gained in lethality or infectiousness.
But in private, they were saying, yes, it looks like this, we're worried.
But then fast forward a year, he comes before my committee, Anthony Fauci raises his hand, swears to tell the truth, and then absolutely denies that the NIH did any funding of gain-of-function research there.
We've probably never before had such a large, expansive cover-up that's actually been proven by the words of the people involved in the cover-up through their private email.
Wow.
So what do you believe animated him?
You know, you could say that he believed that we could develop a vaccine that would cure all coronaviruses, and that's why he was supporting this research.
You can go back to 2012 when there'd been a controversy over the avian flu, which has a 50% lethality, and scientists were creating it and making it aerosolized and easier to spread among mammals.
Dr. Fauci said this.
He said that even if a pandemic were to occur, even if a scientist were bitten or somehow infected by this gain-of-function research, that the knowledge would be worthwhile.
I consider that judgment to be one of the worst judgments in modern medical history.
You know, if you were to ask the people who had lost loved ones to COVID whether or not they think the knowledge was worth the death of their loved one and millions of people, I think most people would disagree with him on this.
But it's been amazing to watch the Democrat Party and the media basically become shills for this and just to completely whitewash this and to not take any consideration into what a terrible judgment error this was by Anthony Fauci.
Right.
So it raises that question then.
We understand what's in it for Anthony Fauci.
He would look like a guilty party.
Why does the New York Times defend him?
I think because the mainstream media is basically the organ of the Democrat Party, and the Democrat Party is essentially the party of the government.
They are the party that defends all things government, but they also defend a philosophy that where...
Everything should be centralized and that you bring together experts who know more than the common man.
It's a philosophy of elitism that basically government can do no wrong.
And if you criticize government, you're criticizing the prevailing party of government, which is Democrat.
So they've been largely unified in this.
It is to me shocking, though.
I've been to at least a dozen hearings led by Democrats where they're investigating whether the plastic in your water bottle causes cancer, which I think is...
A ludicrous notion and not true, and yet dozens of hearings.
They haven't had one hearing on COVID. We know millions of people died, and at least half of the scientific community or more now believes it came from the lab, and yet they don't want to have any hearings on this.
So it does boggle the mind how much they lack curiosity in wanting to come in to the origins of this.
And to me, it's not just about culpability.
It's not just about punishing Anthony Fauci.
It's about trying to prevent this from happening again.
Well, there's a much greater danger to the country than Anthony Fauci.
It is that one of the two major parties of the country, and virtually every medium in the country, is prepared to cover up the reason, if that's fair to say, the reason, for millions of deaths.
Yeah, and this is very worrisome.
And I've said to people over and over again that this not only applies to the origins, but applies to the lockdown as well.
And Anthony Fauci, if he were simply a family doctor in Peoria, you could...
Accept or reject his opinions.
But once he was elevated to this titular spot where he is making all of these decisions, his decisions cascade down to governors and down to individuals.
And think about it.
If you own a hotel and Anthony Fauci has said that everybody should wear a mask till the end of time, you're worried that you'll be sued because now this authoritative figure in government is saying we have to wear a mask.
So Anthony Fauci says, oh, I didn't pass any mandates.
I don't pass any laws.
And yet the edicts from his position trickled down and became edicts that prevented people in my state from going to church.
That's right.
Does your book, and which there's no question I'm about to read it, does your book cover up, excuse me, cover up, does your book cover, drop up, does your book cover cover ups?
Beyond the gain of function Wuhan lab, does it cover the issue of the lockdowns and masks?
Yes, lockdowns, masks, as well as the vaccine.
I would say the main thrust is the cover-up of the origins of it that continue to this day as I continue to seek records.
But we also do talk about the vaccine.
And one of the things with the vaccine that a lot of people don't know is when it came about that they were recommending a vaccine booster, a third booster, you know, the left and the mainstream media says, oh, conservatives and these flat-earth people don't want to follow the science.
Well, the FDA committee that was approving the booster approved it but said it should only be given to those at risk, 65 and older.
The CDC committee said the same thing.
But then a Biden appointee, Rochelle Walensky, overruled all of them and said it should be kids all the way down to six months.
So when Fauci came before my committee, I said, does it prevent transmission for children?
He said no.
And I said, does it prevent hospitalization or death for children?
He says, we don't know.
We don't have enough data.
And I challenged him because they do have the data.
Without the vaccine.
Deaths among healthy children is essentially zero.
With the vaccine, it's zero.
They can't prove an improvement because already kids don't die from this disease.
Healthy kids don't die from this disease.
And I said, you approved this not based on efficacy of lessening hospitalization, transmission, or death.
You approved it because you said, oh, if we give kids a vaccine, they make antibodies.
And it's like...
I could give kids a hundred vaccines.
I can give your kid a thousand vaccines.
They make antibodies every time.
That is the basic immunology, which basically replicates infection, that your body will respond to something foreign we inject in it.
That doesn't mean you need a thousand vaccines.
It should have to either prevent the transmission of the disease or prevent you from getting sick.
If it doesn't either one of those or neither one of those, what in the world, you know?
The interesting thing is, though, is they think they're so smart and they're elitist and they're smarter than all of us.
But look at the statistics.
Very few people are getting it now.
And so the vaccine manufacturers are all whining and the government's buying their vaccine from them because most people are not inoculating their kids because they're actually smarter than government.
And then they opine and say, oh, you've caused all these deaths because of vaccine hesitancy.
Actually, it's not true.
Over age 65, 97 percent of people got vaccinated.
Most of them voluntarily because it wasn't required.
It wasn't required for work because most of these people were retired.
Most people chose to get it because they saw the news report that older people were most prone to die from this disease.
And so really, I think actually people are pretty smart.
Most people retired, got the vaccine, and most younger people didn't.
But the government's never content with allowing you choice, medical choice.
They want to insist that you buy this thing, which in the end makes them look like salesmen for Pfizer and Moderna and less like objective scientists.
I keep asking the what animates question, because, you know, qui bono, who benefits?
The famous question.
Why did Rochelle Walensky make this mandate?
You know, it's hard to tell exactly.
You want to believe that these people have some sort of well-intentioned goal, and it isn't mercantile.
But I've also asked them to reveal...
Who in government is getting royalties?
Which of the scientists are getting royalties from the vaccine companies and they've resisted this?
Which makes me think, my goodness, maybe there's tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars changing hands.
We do know through Freedom of Information that 1,500 NIH scientists received like...
200 and some odd billion dollars.
There's a lot of money changing hands here.
And one of my proposals is simply transparency.
If you serve on a committee approving drugs or approving vaccine mandates, for goodness sakes, you ought to reveal whether you get loyalties from the same companies.
We need to take a break.
Can you stay on or do you have to go to a vote?
I think we can do one more segment if you'd like.
I'm delighted.
Senator Rand Paul, the book Deception, The Great COVID Cover-Up.
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My friends, welcome back.
I'm Dennis Prager.
A truly significant book has just been published, Deception, The Great COVID Cover-Up.
And it's by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
I have him on the line.
I presume he's in Washington because he has a vote, an imminent vote.
What you just heard, if you have been listening or watching, Should give you the shivers about the medical profession in this country and the media of this country.
It doesn't seem to be a matter of opinion, Senator.
I mean, these are facts that you are revealing, and there is a cover-up.
When President Nixon covered up Watergate, everybody said the real...
I'm hearing some sound in the background.
Is there any reason?
Okay.
Sorry, Senator.
The reason for his downfall was the cover-up, not the actual Watergate burglary.
So, will there be any fallout from this cover-up?
I've referred Anthony Fauci for prosecution.
I believe he committed a felony when he testified to my committee under oath.
That he had never funded gain-of-function research, and we now have proof that he did fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
So for that alone, I think he would and should deserve prosecution.
The cover-up, we believe, goes maybe even above Anthony Fauci.
There are now reports coming from whistleblowers at the CIA that someone was influencing analysis over there, that the initial response of analysts at the CIA was that they believed that this came from the lab.
Now, some of them have testified that because Trump also said that it came from Wuhan and referred to it as the Wuhan flu, that they thought it was anti-China, so they suppressed this information.
But there's now information that they actually voted to say it came from the lab.
This is something we're exploring.
There are also rumors abounding that Fauci was meeting at the CIA and that he is not recorded on the travel logs.
We are subpoenaing those travel logs as well.
There is evidence that at least one of his assistants was using their non-governmental email and responded to someone that they were communicating with saying, don't send anything to my government email.
Getting all of that through Freedom of Information, if it's anything sensitive, send it to my private email.
Well, that's illegal because the executive branch is required to use governmental email to have oversight.
So there's a lot of stuff going on.
Brad Wenstrup is a congressman from Cincinnati area that is overseeing the COVID committee in the House.
They have subpoena power.
We're working daily with them to try to get information on this.
They've subpoenaed the records of the assistant to Fauci.
That has private emails to look at his private emails.
We're hoping that that will come out in the near future.
But HHS has already said they will resist all subpoenas.
So the subpoena will have to be either enforced by a judge or they'll have to enforce this email against an email provider or private company to get this.
But there's a lot here to be said.
Become over time more suspicious that it's not ending with Anthony Fauci, but there may be someone above Anthony Fauci that's involved in this as well, either in the CIA or someone who is perhaps a financier, a private financier that finances a lot of this research of the WHO and around the world.
What's the WHO's position?
Say again?
What is the WHO's position?
The WHO is interesting.
One of the heads of the WHO has actually indicated that there wasn't a thorough investigation, that the Chinese were not cooperative, and that it well could have come from the lab.
Initially, though, the WHO came out in the first month or so and said nothing to see here.
When the Trump administration recommended three scientists to go on the commission to investigate in China, they were all rejected by China.
And guess who China picked?
They picked a guy by the name of Peter Dezak, who's the head of EcoHealth, who was collecting all the money from the NIH and taking it to Wuhan.
So the very guy that was funding the research in Wuhan was picked to investigate it.
I mean, you can't investigate yourself.
And this is a real problem that we have found, that any oversight Of any of this research is being done by the people who receive the money.
One of the scientists, Christian Anderson, we reveal in this, had a $9 million grant sitting on Anthony Fauci's desk.
And then when he wrote the paper claiming that there's nothing to see here, that it's a conspiracy theory, and that absolutely this came from nature.
A month later, he got a $9 million grant signed into being by Anthony Fauci.
So there's a lot of corruption here.
There's a lot of money changing hands.
And when Anthony Fauci said, if you criticize him, you're criticizing science, what he really meant is you're criticizing the business of science, the multi-billion dollar business of this.
And there were some exchanges that we reveal in the book between Francis Collins...
And Anthony Fauci, where they're having frank discussions about how this just won't be good for relations with China and that really we should push out the accepted truth that it came from animals simply because it will not damage our relations with China.
Relations with China were more important than the truth.
But this also fits with who they are.
They are people who believe in the noble lie that the common people can't handle the truth.
And so we should tell them the best truth that we can create to keep the best peace and relations that we can imagine.
But it's all still a lie.
It's ironic.
I was going to ask you about Francis Collins.
And so now I have a partial answer, I guess, to my constant question to you.
What animated the person?
So for him, you think the primary issue was good relations with China?
I think that may be the secondary issue.
I think the primary issue for all of them, if we had Anthony Fauci here and Francis Collins here and they'd tell the truth, which is a questionable nature, but if they were to tell the truth, they would probably say, yes, we've been trying to create a pan-coronavirus.
A vaccine that covers all the different varieties, and as coronavirus mutates, would be a virus, would be protection.
In fact, this is in all likelihood how this started.
We think that the Chinese created COVID-19, the virus, and then they were going to create a vaccine to it, and that in the midst of this creation of a vaccine, in all likelihood, this leaked out.
One of the reasons we know this, and this is the cover-up that began in China, is that there was a general by the name of Zhou Yusin, and he reveals that they have a vaccine in February 2020. So it's only been two weeks since they've admitted that this even existed, that it was transmitting from human to human, and all of a sudden they've got a vaccine.
Most scientists look at this and say it takes at least four or five months, even for an mRNA vaccine, the first go around to develop this.
And so that for them to have a vaccine, they'd had to have known about this in November, which also fits with the fact that we now know that three scientists at the Wuhan Institute were sick in November with a pneumonia of unknown origin.
With X-ray findings consistent with COVID. And so they get this vaccine really early.
And that's probably how the thing escaped as they were trying to develop this vaccine.
But one intriguing fact is about two months later, General Zoe Houston has a fall from a tall building and he doesn't survive.
And he either fell or jumped from a building or was pushed.
Nobody will ever know.
This is China, of course.
But you can imagine a scenario where he develops a vaccine that's not very good.
Become aware that the vaccine, in developing the vaccine, that the virus leaked is now killing millions of Chinese, something they also have never admitted to, but likely happened.
And so you can see how there might be a desire by the government no longer to have him alive.
Senator, I would love, for your sake, the country's sake, and the world's sake, to have another part, if you ever have the time.
My friends, I think it's a moral obligation to read this book, Deception, the Great COVID Cover-Up.
Senator Paul?
You're a courageous man, and that is the greatest accolade I could offer anyone.
Thank you, Dennis. Dennis.
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I hope you heard my interview of Senator Rand Paul.
The damage that Anthony Fauci has done to the United States and Francis Collins.
And what's Walensky's first name?
Rachel.
Rachel Walensky.
It's very hard for one individual to do as much damage as they have.
Yeah.
And then, I mean, the amount of lying that came from the government and the media, you must always add, and the media, and the media, and the media.
The media are the liars for the state that lies.
It's a conspiracy.
Everything, conspiracy theory, conspiracy.
They don't ask at the New York Times, is it true?
Truth is not a left-wing value.
They ask, how do we smear what we don't like?
That's what they do.
That's why two years, they had the lie of the Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in 2016. Yeah.
Columbia Journalism Review, which I must admit, I didn't expect Columbia University to put out anything that was contrary to the left, but to its great credit, it did.
Columbia Journalism Review had an enormous piece.
On the lying of the Washington Post and the New York Times on the Russian collusion campaign.
Collusion.
And the...
It's like it didn't happen.
Everything with regard to the left is a tree that falls in the forest, but nobody hears it.
But it's not a tree.
An entire forest of trees fall down.
And what?
What tree?
What forest?
Conspiracy theory!
I found it mildly amusing personally that he said that 97% of Americans age 65 and over got the vaccine.
Well, I'm in the rarefied 3%.
Never got it.
I was right on the vaccine.
I was right on the lockdowns.
And what was it the old saying in New York when I grew up?
That and 15 cents will get you a cup of coffee.
Right?
I was right on these issues.
And whatever you trust was lying to you.
How did the teachers get away unscathed, teachers' unions, for their pro-lockdowns of schools and the damage that it did?
They got away with it.
Teachers' unions don't have the contempt from the American people that they have earned.
Because the American people are told by NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN. MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and all the papers in between.
What to have contempt for.
The power of media is virtually unlimited.
People in North Korea believe that the leader, the third Kim, Was it Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim what's this Kim?
Went from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il to Kim...
whatever his first name is.
Kim is the last name, but it goes first in many countries.
that he is a god.
People believe what they are told.
Thank you.
That's true in any society.
That is the reason that free speech is the most important of the freedoms.
That is the reason that the first thing that left-wing regimes, left-wing universities, left-wing institutions anywhere do is suppress dissent.
then you know you can govern.
Well.
The book is Deception, the Great COVID Cover-Up.
I'm repeating it even though Rand Paul is not on the line with me.
Just published last month.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com.
we continue.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here. - I'm here.
You may remember the murder of six people at the Covenant School, Presbyterian Church, Nashville Christian School.
When did that occur?
You have the date, which is a flaw in the New York Times piece.
Anyway, under the picture they have it.
March 27th, the Covenant School.
The deadliest school shooting this year in the United States.
Three nine-year-old children and three adults were murdered.
The murderer was a trans...
Was it trans man or trans woman?
Was it a female saying she was a man or a man saying...
I don't remember.
I think it was female to man, but I'll double check.
Yeah, that's right.
Trans man.
It was a female to man.
Yeah, right.
And left behind a lot of writings, and for reasons that completely elude me, Nashville police are not releasing those writings.
Stephen Crowder somehow got a hold of some of them and released them, and they're filled with anti-white hate.
And glorying in the idea that white kids would be murdered.
So, it was a white, so it doesn't even create the idea of a black racist.
This was a white racist against whites.
Why would they block publication of the writings?
You want a bigger mystery?
Alright.
I heard you say yes.
You want a bigger mystery.
Why do so many parents in that school, including parents of the murdered, want to block release of those writings?
Do you have any idea?
My dear, beloved producer.
Strange.
Strange is an understatement.
So listen to the way the New York Times reports this.
A conservative political commentator published three photographs on Monday, that's yesterday, that appeared to show excerpts from writings by the shooter who killed six people at a Nashville Christian school, enraging parents of the surviving students and prompting an investigation into the leak.
Why would it enrage the parents of the surviving students?
You don't want to know what animated a murderer of children?
You don't want to know?
There are times when I read about my fellow Americans and I think, did we really grow up in the same country?
Did we really grow up in the same country?
If kids were murdered at a school my child or children attended, and people were blocking access to knowing the reasons why the person murdered children at the school my child attended, I would be livid.
You don't want the world to know?
I'm reading directly from the New York Times.
For months, there has been a court battle over whether any of the assailants' writings should be released, with the families of about 100 students who survived the shooting having sought to prevent their publication.
I would pay, out of my own pocket, the airfare from Nashville to Los Angeles and return.
To have any of those parents come onto this show.
I would happily do it by video for free.
I'm not dying to pay, but that is how much I want to know this.
Why do you not want to know?
I have a hunch, but it's so dark that I hesitate to say it.
So just let me say it's purely hunch, and I may be 100% wrong, but it strikes me.
So you have a list of possible reasons, but the list really narrows down to one.
It's ideology.
They don't want a white hater.
To be the one who did it.
Can you think of any other reason?
Can any of you listening?
I'm open to hearing it.
It is very rare, it happens, that something takes place, say in America in particular, that I don't understand.
Usually they say something like they don't want to...
Force the kids to relive the trauma.
They don't want to force the kids to relive the trauma.
I see.
So releasing it will force the kids in the school to relive the trauma.
Okay, that's...
I don't fully subscribe to that, but at least that's a non-ideological reason.
It's not one that I understand.
Isn't there a moral obligation to let society know?
Aren't you curious?
I mean, isn't there an element of curiosity?
someone murders three students and three adults at a school and you don't want to know why if God forbid someone you loved all of a sudden died you wouldn't want to know why You would not want an autopsy?
The larger trove of documents which one city official quantified in court as voluminous.
Did you know that?
There was a voluminous trove of documents?
Has remained with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department as the legal battle winds its way through the courts.
Well, have they given a reason why they're not releasing it?
Is this a first?
Don't we know in virtually every other case, like immediately, if they've left writings?
But on Monday, Stephen Crowder, the political commentator, published three photos of handwritten notebook pages that appeared to have been left behind by the shooter and reflected a hateful, calculated plan to target the private school and its students.
So this is worthy of noting about the New York Times coverage.
A hateful, calculated plan to target the private school and its students.
It was anti-white.
It was hatred of white kids, the children of white privilege.
The New York Times doesn't report that.
Are you aware of that?
Is this the first time you're hearing the Times piece?
It doesn't mention that.
Is that dishonest of the New York Times?
Do you think had it been someone who...
You know, was a right-winger for whatever reason?
They wouldn't tell you that?
The police department later confirmed that it was involved in the investigation into the, quote, dissemination of three photographs of writings.
Huh.
That's what they were involved in?
Not releasing the writings.
Finding out how it was disseminated.
The release of the images was hailed by high-profile conservative lawmakers in Tennessee and on Capitol Hill who have said that keeping the writings from public view was akin to a cover-up.
Akin?
Akin to!
Oh, the wording is precious.
Hmm.
I think akin to are unnecessary words.
It was.
It is.
A cover-up.
What else is it?
In a video discussing the images, Mr. Crowder said his staff had reviewed the photographs from an undisclosed source and had worked to verify their authenticity, framing their release in part as an effort to force transparency.
But his move stunned city officials.
Leading Mayor Freddie O'Connell, who was sworn in to his role in late September, To order investigation into how the images had been released.
Though the mayor also doesn't want this released.
Kids are killed and we don't want anybody to know why.
That's the mayor of Nashville's position.
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Music.
I am reading to you a truly amazing piece from the New York Times.
Stephen Crowder has released some of the writings of the trans murderer of children and adults at a school in Nashville in March.
And the whole Nashville...
You know, we should have our dear friend who lives there, you know, Carol Swain.
She lives in Nashville.
She ran for mayor.
I went and spoke for her there.
I'd like to ask her if she has a thought on why there's a cover-up.
The Nashville police have been corrupted in this case.
The mayor is corrupted in this case.
If, God forbid, it happened at a school your children attended, Wouldn't you want to know what animated the murder of children and adults?
Wouldn't you?
Isn't it abnormal not to let people know?
God, the amount of bad thinking.
Sometimes just rotten, sometimes just bad.
A hundred parents at the school?
Are against it?
It'll further traumatize?
That's your theory.
That it's not ideological.
That it'll further traumatize.
Let us say the writings were, let's go MAGA. I did this to honor Donald Trump.
You think that the Nashville...
Mayer would be against the release of any of those writings?
I don't.
I don't think further trauma to the children would have prevailed.
Wally Dietz, the law director for the Nashville Metro government, who was responsible for overseeing the investigation, said on Monday that he had limited information about this possible leak of documents, and it enraged and horrified the parents of the surviving students who said they feared what other information might be divulged.
The damage done today is already significant and I'm worried it's only going to grow, said Brent Leatherwood, a parent of three Covenant students.
He at times held back tears as he spoke inside Woodmont Baptist Church where he and other parents had reunited with their children in the hours after the violence.
But nobody says why.
Or maybe they do.
I read it once, perused it.
Now I'm reading to you word for word.
He called whoever had leaked the photos a viper who had allowed someone who terrorized our family with bullets to be able to now terrorize us with words from the grave.
Hmm.
My heart goes out to any parent in that school, let alone the parents of the murdered.
But I don't understand that.
Why would this terrorize you with words from the grave?
Do you understand it?
I keep challenging myself because it doesn't make sense.
The March 27th shooting at the Covenant School was the deadliest school shooting this year in the U.S., leaving three nine-year-old children, three adults dead, and shattering the sanctity of a quiet Christian community.
Tucked in the city's Green Hills neighborhood, the police killed the assailant who was armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun about 14 minutes after the first 9-11 call.
The authorities said that the assailant, a 28-year-old former student of the school, had bought weapons legally while under treatment for an emotional disorder.
Hmm.
Is that the way it works?
How does that work?
If your treatment for an emotional disorder, does it disqualify you from buying a gun?
I don't know.
I'm not taking a position.
I just want to understand that, too.
And that considered the actions of other mass murderers.
But seven months after the violence, a motive remains unclear.
But that's not true.
A motive does not remain unclear.
Why is the New York Times writing that?
If these writings are authentic, the motive is as clear as my voice is right now.
It is as clear as the color of prune juice.
I think an investigation of my mind is warranted.
That's what we call...
Not exactly a non sequitur.
Okay.
We return to Earth.
Alright.
That was really for my friend Mike who's listening.
A motive remains unclear.
That has led journalists, lawmakers, and gun rights activists to push for details from the writings left behind in the shooter's car and home, particularly as the Tennessee legislature remains deadlocked on how to address gun violence.
Right-wing activists have long focused on the assailant's gender identity as a possible factor in the violence.
Nowhere does the article note...
That it was anti-white hate and that the shooter was a trans man.
We continue.
So, Ami Horowitz, who is the man on the spot whenever there's a big event, went to Columbia University and attended a very large...
Pro-Hamas rally.
I will be speaking at Columbia, apparently, by the way, in the beginning of December.
I'll give you details on that as soon as that's all confirmed.
I attended Columbia.
This is not exactly shocking, to be honest.
So, Ami, did you also go to Israel?
Is Ami on the phone?
Ami, are you there?
Well, I hear nothing.
Can you hear me now?
I can hear you now.
Oh, right.
We got it.
Okay.
Were you in Israel as well now?
I just got back yesterday from Jordan.
But yes, prior to Jordan, I was in Israel for about 10 days.
Why did you go to Jordan?
A little bit of this, a little bit of that.
That answers the question.
You sound like the Nashville Police Department.
That's a whole different discussion I'd like to have at some point, but I guess right now is not the...
Right.
All right, so you went to Jordan and Israel, and after that you went to Columbia?
Or was the Columbia before?
No, Columbia was prior to that.
So, this is important to me.
It's not critical, but it is somewhat important.
When did you go to Colombia?
How long after October 7th?
About a week.
Okay.
The reason I say it's important is because Israel had not yet begun its retaliation.
Yeah, the retaliation, not the ground war.
Yeah, fair enough.
That's a correct distinction.
Okay, so I watched your video and you assumed, and you may be right, that there were thousands at Columbia?
Yeah, I would say there was probably a couple thousand, sure.
Right.
Now, I want to understand a few things.
Number one, do you believe that, or what percentage of those at this demonstration do you believe were Columbia students?
Almost all of them, because Columbia was, well, all of them.
The answer is all of them, because Columbia was a closed campus that day.
Normally, anybody can walk on campus.
During the rally, security closed off every single entrance to the university.
The only people allowed in were people who were press or students themselves.
So you got in as press?
Sure.
Okay.
I'll leave it at that.
So that is almost, even for me, It is difficult to morally and intellectually digest.
Thousands of Columbia University students demonstrated on behalf of Hamas?
So, okay, let's make a couple things clear.
First of all, okay, so there's a debate.
Were they there to support Hamas?
Were they there to support the Palestinians?
What's the difference?
I mean, forgive me.
There is a difference.
Okay.
Now, in this case, I will say this, that of all the protests I have come across, and this is not a new thing, students protesting against Israel and for the Palestinians, I always tend to ask the same question.
Do you support Hamas?
I asked that question to probably 100 people in this particular protest.
I've asked to hundreds prior.
I want to make things very, very clear.
I have yet.
Of all the people I have asked, in the hundreds, I have yet to receive one person, a single person, a person who would condemn Hamas.
Not one, and the same was true for this particular rally.
So why did you correct me when I said it was a pro-Hamas demonstration?
Well, I wanted to make clear that there are many people who have this narrative that they say this is just a pro-Palestinian rally.
This is their argument.
This is not pro-Hamas.
This is not anti-Israel even, they will say.
So I'm sorry.
What I meant to say was I want to make a clear distinction because there are those who say that these are not Hamas rallies.
These are not even anti-Israel rallies.
They're simply people standing for the freedom of people who have forgotten.
Oh, okay.
You will find two things.
If you did a Venn diagram, and the Venn diagram was the people that rally and the people who support Hamas, there would be concentric circles.
It would be the same circles.
Well, exactly.
Okay.
Forgive me.
I've got to take a break, Ami.
Don't forget your second point.
We'll be back in a moment.
Ami Horowitz's video is up at DennisPrager.com.
Howdy, everybody.
This is the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show every Tuesday.
Some great issue of life.
In fact, it has been the absence of discussion about the great issues of life.
That is a big part of the American crisis.
That is why I wrote a piece.
My columns come out Tuesdays.
There were over 1,000 of my columns on the Internet, incidentally.
I wrote a column about this subject.
How I believe, this is going to sound nutty, but I wrote this up.
I believe that I had, and most of my classmates, had more wisdom when we were 12 than almost any professor at an American university does today.
They know more facts than we did, but we had more wisdom, as did kids who went to a traditional Christian school, Catholic, Protestant.
We learned biblical principles, religious principles, filled with wisdom.
There's no wisdom, none, taught in regular secular schools.
None.
It's actually, our colleges are anti-wisdom.
You come out, most likely, a bigger fool than you went in.
So, that's the case for the Ultimate Issues Hour, if you will.
I dealt with this subject a few months ago, said that I would continue it.
At the end of the book of Numbers, The fourth book of the Bible, and I just completed all 36 chapters.
I have one more book left, Leviticus, in the toughest project of my life.
My commentary, by the way, if you take what I say as important, The most important things I've ever written are in my Bible commentary, the Rational Bible.
And if you've got Genesis and Exodus, you need to get Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy is not as famous, the name is not as famous as Genesis and Exodus, but the insights are as important.
The Rational Bible, Deuteronomy is out, Numbers is coming out next year, and then the following year, Leviticus.
At the end of the book of Numbers, there is a statement wherein Moses instructs the tribes of Israel to use a lottery to determine what parcels of land they get in the promised land.
So clearly, it will be random.
The lottery will decide.
But there are people, Jews and Christians, who don't believe that.
They believe God will decide.
And so what I dealt with a few months ago is the subject of God versus luck.
And I have friends and people I admire who believe God determines everything.
It is as irrational a belief as a human being can hold.
I am...
A big believer in God and reason.
Reason without God leads to chaos.
God without reason leads to chaos.
Or certainly the invitation to it.
Just to take events that have occurred since I raised this issue with you a few months ago.
If God is in control of everything, Did God will the slaughter of every one of those families that was slaughtered on October 7th in Israel?
Is that your position?
God wanted parents and their children burned alive?
That was His plan?
And if it was His plan, how do you blame Hamas?
How can you blame anybody if God is in control of everything?
There are a lot of religious people who think that it somehow compromises God's power, omnipotence, omniscience, to say that he allows the world to function without constant intervention.
But he does.
That's...
That's the only rational position one can hold if one is religious or non-religious.
God governs the universe in His way, but it's somewhat inscrutable and sometimes does intervene.
I don't deny God's intervention, but everything that happens is God's will.
Maybe it's comforting, but I personally don't find it comforting.
God wanted my daughter raped on October 7th?
Hmm.
One of the great achievements of the Torah, the first five books which changed everything in history, one of the great achievements was that it rejected Capricious gods.
That was a great achievement.
Every pagan god was capricious.
That's why people sacrificed people.
Because they didn't have any clue how God functions, how their gods functioned.
So they figured, oh, if we sacrifice a human being, we'll get you on our side.
That was the rationale.
And then comes along Abraham, the first monotheist, the first Jew, and says, wait a minute, God is the judge of all the earth, and he judges justly.
There is a way to understand God's ways, even though, of course, God's ways are not our ways.
I understand all of that.
Nevertheless...
Yeah, I wanted your daughter raped and then stabbed to death.
Yep, that was my plan.
It's not that I allowed it to happen, it's that I willed it to happen.
That ain't my God.
Now let me say for the record, there are people who believe that who are wonderful human beings.
I have long understood that there is somewhat of a disconnect between theology and practice.
There are people who believe things that I just can't believe and are wonderful human beings.
So, I'm not knocking the humans who believe this, but I don't understand, rationally or biblically, On what grounds you would believe that God wills everything that happens?
If He does, why bother fighting evil?
You can't fight God, and He, after all, wanted that evil.
There are people who believe everything is God's will and believe in the devil.
Well, I don't understand.
The devil doesn't do what God wants, and the devil sometimes wins.
How do you explain that?
So, the number is 1-8 Prager 7-7-6.
I have come to truly not understand what it is that people mean when they say God is in control of everything.
And there is no randomness in the universe.
Of course there is.
That's why we have to fight evil.
1-8 Prager 7-7-6-8-7-7-2-4-3-triple-7-6.
If you would, either way, if you believe that God controls everything you're, Your family is wiped out by a drunk driver.
Not only did God will your family to be killed, but He also willed that driver to do it.
So that's why I have a big problem with that notion.
God is with us when we suffer, but He didn't necessarily cause it.
Take your calls when we return.
Okay, it's the Ultimate Issues Hour.
And I take issue with a lot of the dearest people in my life who say God controls everything.
thing.
I never understood that from a biblical standpoint or from a rational standpoint, and I don't believe that the Bible and reason conflict, so that's why I call my commentary The Rational Bible.
God allows bad things to happen to people.
He doesn't ordain them.
God is just.
You would have to say that everything that happened was just.
If God is just, nobody argues God acts unjustly, then there's no injustice in the world.
A just God has willed everything that happens.
So don't call anything unjust.
Okie dokie.
Let's see.
Germany.
Bob, hello.
Hello there, Dennis Prager.
I cherish you, sir.
Thank you.
Scripture said that God does not will that anyone should perish.
And just like you said last week in one of your lectures, I offer you life and death, therefore choose life.
And God does not will for evil to happen in an unjust way.
That's right.
So if God is just, God wills that everybody be saved from eternal destruction.
So he doesn't will that anybody should perish.
And these people that choose their ways, well, Jesus said, the many there be that go when they're at, and not in the straight and narrow, but in the other way, to hell.
So it's their own choice.
Well, so there is a choice.
What city are you in in Germany?
I'm in Gießen, sir, about 78 kilometers north of Frankfurt.
Oh, very nice.
And I love you, sir.
Thank you.
That means a lot to me.
I appreciate it.
I learned last week in London at the ARC conference that Jordan Peterson convened people from all over the world, the amazing power of...
The internet.
I mean, I really was blown away, and I'm not easily blown away.
A woman from the Austrian parliament told me how many members of parliament have been affected by my work as me and through PragerU.
And I think, wow, a lot of members of the Austrian parliament.
By the way, I want to say something about that, and then we'll take more of your calls.
This is a show done by an American in America, but 99% of what I say, if not 100%, is as relevant to an Austrian or a Korean as it is to an American.
Reason is universal.
Morality is universal.
God is universal.
The Bible is universal.
Okay.
So, let's see here.
Colorado Springs.
Jeremy, hello.
Oh, hi Dennis.
Thanks for taking my call.
Thank you.
So, I'm a Christian and I agree with you because when you look at the Old and the New Testament both, You get this picture that God is sovereign, that he is very much in control of all things, but he has limited himself, like he has limited his own sovereignty because God is sovereign over himself.
And so he can do that, in other words.
And so otherwise we would not even have free choice as people.
We wouldn't even have free will if it wasn't for that fact.
With a very important Jewish concept called tzimtzum, which means contraction.
God contracts so as to enable things to happen freely.
Right.
Exactly what you said.
Thank you very much.
See, if someone says to me, you're right, Dennis.
It is irrational to believe God wills everything that happened.
God chose every single Chinese that Mao murdered, every one of the 60 million, exactly this one will die, this one will not.
It's too depressing for me.
I'm citing what some people will think or say.
It's too depressing to think luck.
It had any role in my suffering.
But what's depressing is if there is no God to lean on, then there is no afterlife where justice works itself out in some way.
That's depressing.
Why is it not depressing to think God...
Brought on all this suffering.
I guess you could say, because, well, then there's a higher reason that God knows.
And I think for many people it does bring comfort.
So here is a very interesting question in life.
Do you choose what you believe, and belief is a choice, do you choose it based on reason or on comfort?
People who don't believe should do the same thing.
A vast number of secular people don't want to be bothered by judging God and religion and so on.
And so for them, the secular is comfortable.
A purely rational human being, to the extent that that is possible, believes in God and maintains His or her commitment to reason.
No God is as irrational as any religious belief might be.
It all came about by itself.
Amazing how many people believe that that is a rational view of the universe.
Everything happened by chance.
The interaction of every element of your eye just worked out that way.
We'll be back.
It's the ultimate issues hour.
People who say God is in control of everything, what do they mean is the subject because if it's literally true, then there's no free will and What we think is injustice is not injustice.
After all, God would never do something unjust.
So you have to then believe the world has no injustice.
We just think it.
But God knows better, it's not unjust.
So if your daughter is raped, God willed it.
Okay, I don't buy it, obviously, because I think God gave us reason to use it.
But if you do believe that, and you're a good person, that's what matters most to me.
Okay, everybody, let's see.
Don in Dallas, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
I've been really chewing on this subject for quite a while since you brought it up not too long ago.
So I just want to kind of get your perspective on Psalm 139.16.
Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb.
All the days ordained for me were recorded in your scroll before one of them came into existence.
I believe there's a big difference between foreknowledge and predestination when it comes to God.
But I've really kind of been struggling with this passage.
And, you know, it's like, okay, I was in a car accident five years ago or something like that.
I mean, was that a foreknowledge of God?
Did he predestine it?
I mean, he took a big risk making us, you know, free will imagers.
So, you know, it's just I've really struggled with this, and I want to thank you for that.
Well, I want to salute you, and you know I don't patronize listeners.
Most people don't struggle with ideas, because it's actually painful.
But you have, and I really salute you for it.
It doesn't diminish my belief in God one iota that I... It makes no sense to me that God has willed everything that happens.
If so, then we're sort of playing a game here.
We think things happen because of X or Y or Z, but they didn't.
They happened because God willed it.
So this robotic element of life, why would God have punishments for sins in the Bible?
If you take a man's life, your life shall be taken.
I made you take that person's life.
So, why would there be any punishment for what I made you do?
It renders God unjust.
Yeah.
Okay.
You're a good man.
Thank you.
I just want people to understand who are religious.
It doesn't diminish God's anything.
He is still the governor of the universe.
He intervenes when he wants to intervene, but he doesn't always intervene.
That's the point.
I don't deny that God intervenes.
I don't deny miracles.
I deny that everything is controlled.
It renders life pointless.
We're just acting out roles in a play that we don't even know we read from a script.
It's worse than actors.
Actors know they're acting.
We're acting, but we don't even know we're acting.
Okay.
Philadelphia.
Let's see.
Ted.
Hi, Ted.
Hey, Dennis.
Boy, I gotta tell you, I love the Ultimate Issues Hour.
It really gets people.
That's right.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
I think this is a much more nuanced, difficult question to answer, especially from a biblical perspective.
You know, you had brought up the idea that the tribes had cast lots to determine where they were going to, you know, what land each tribe was going to get.
But, you know, Proverbs 16.33 says, the lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord.
You know, it's a much more nuanced question of whether or not we have free will.
From our perspective, we certainly do.
But, you know, God is outside of time.
He sees the end from the beginning, and the beginning from the end.
So it's all done from his perspective, because he's outside of time.
He doesn't inhabit time.
He inhabits eternity.
Well, that's the reason I believe that God can know what will happen, but not direct it.
Because he does live outside of time, and Einstein showed that time is relative.
So I agree with that.
That verse I'm well aware of, and I've struggled with it, it might not mean that God determines the lot.
Because to believe that, that means the author would have thought you're an idiot if you go gambling.
Because no matter what you did with the roulette wheel...
God will have already determined the winner.
Back in a moment.
All right, so yes, so I'm talking about God versus luck, and of course, rationally, there is luck in life.
There's no question.
No question in terms of reason.
In terms of theology, you're free to believe what you want.
I know wonderful people who believe God directs everything, but I don't think they've thought through the issue because it renders life meaningless.
If God directs everything that is done, then life is meaningless.
And I don't think God would have created such a world.
And God can't do what is unjust.
So if God does everything, you would have to...
Believe he has done unjust things, but then that's not God.
That's the devil.
There's a phrase in the Talmud, Judaism consists, the most important is the Torah, second most important is the rest of the Bible, or the Old Testament, and third is the Talmud.
Massive encyclopedia-length work.
Many, many volumes.
Dense, Aramaic, very tough stuff.
But it's chock full of wisdom and some silliness because human beings, everything was recorded.
But it's quite something.
And in it is one of the most famous phrases in Hebrew.
So I'm debating, do I say it in Hebrew?
I generally don't.
But Sean is aching to hear it in Hebrew.
All right, here you go.
Now he's happy.
Everything is in the hands of heaven except for fear of heaven.
That's right.
In other words, heaven, that's God.
Yes, everything is in his hands except whether you listen to him or not.
That's a big deal.
Now, by the way, that does leave the question of things that are not humanly done, like disease.
So does God will every earthquake, every cancer cell that metastasizes?
I don't think so, but I have to be intellectually honest that that phrase only deals with human-caused suffering, not nature-caused suffering.
Okie dokie.
Oh yeah, so the man called earlier about a verse from Proverbs that we cast a lot but God determines.
I think it doesn't mean what it sounds like, I don't think.
And I'm, again, a big believer in reading what is written and not reading into it.
But sometimes to make sense of a verse, you have to read into it.
What does it really mean?
Does it really mean that if you go to Vegas and you...
Bet on a certain number on a roulette wheel.
God has already determined what the roulette wheel comes up with.
You get a lottery ticket, it's really stupid of you to get the lottery ticket, because if God wants you to win, you'll be forced to get a lottery ticket, and otherwise it's stupid because God determined the winner anyway.
It's hard for me to believe...
That the author of Proverbs believed that every time you gamble, God has already determined the outcome.
What I think it means is, what happens with what happens is, the ultimate meaning of what has happened is in God's hands.
Not the actual event.
But I don't know, frankly.
That is one of the verses in the Bible.
That does puzzle me.
I acknowledge that.
Okay, let's see here.
Let's go to Los Angeles and Doug.
Hello.
Thanks, Dennis.
Yeah, I don't believe in luck.
I don't believe in randomness.
And I don't believe in coincidence.
And I do believe in the God of Israel.
And profoundly, my life's been transformed by His words and His promises and His spirit.
And I do believe that the things that I don't understand, that people call coincidence and luck, are just that.
It may be very well God's fortune, God's favor, God's kindness, but we tend to want to minimize the experiences into...
Something that is tangible to our own feeling.
Luck, to me, is something that is random.
But God isn't random.
It's specific.
He's specific.
So, if God forbid your daughter were raped and stabbed, you would say God willed it?
No, I would say God allowed it, and I would be very happy.
Well, I would too.
Wait.
So, if God allowed it and didn't will it, No, you're using luck.
See, I like words.
I know you do.
I've listened to you.
You use language.
You love words.
And that's one of the reasons I love listening to you.
That and also because you're reasonable.
And it's not yelling.
It's much more, hey, let's reason here.
Let's find a commonality or understanding.
And that's my point, is that luck.
My father would say, you're very lucky, Doug.
And I'd say, no, even from the youngest of ages.
I broke my neck when I was two and a half years old and broke my back and crushed my windpipes and was dead for eight minutes, according to the Canoga Park News.
I don't remember the event, but all my life I believed it.
Israel exists.
I didn't know anything about him.
I didn't care about him.
But when I would hear someone say that you're lucky, I would immediately say, I don't believe that.
But I didn't understand it.
I didn't understand that.
And I know that God is not—that there's not a randomness with him, but you're kind of bringing that down.
You're bringing the understanding into a language that fits a contemporary mindset, not a Middle Eastern one.
When you say luck and coincidence, I don't believe that it's luck and coincidence.
God has an understanding of things, but he allows the fallen world, unfortunately.
Difference, then, is about the word luck?
It's not about whether God intervenes all the time.
No, it is.
I do believe that God is there when we have an understanding.
I accept that we live in a fallen world.
Yeah, I do, too.
The fallen world allows things to happen that God doesn't want.
Back in a moment.
Dennis Prager here.
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