Dennis Prager Show - Is Donald Trump A Threat To Democracy Or To The Establishment?
Aired: 2024-01-18
Duration: 09:55


=== Brett Stephens' Trump Dilemma (09:11) ===

[00:00:00]  You owe it to yourself and you owe it to everyone in your life to send this article, to read it, read it carefully, read it twice.
[00:00:08]  Almost every line is brilliant.
[00:00:15]  It is written by Brett Stephens of the New York Times, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, formerly of the Jerusalem Post.
[00:00:27]  He is the one remaining conservative, but he is a Trump-hating conservative.
[00:00:34]  But he has done the impossible, almost.
[00:00:38]  He has explained Trump's appeal and said calling him a racist and all these other things and lying about him isn't going to help.
[00:00:54]  Trump and his supporters called all this out talking about how much our institutions have betrayed us.
[00:01:04]  And he is...
[00:01:06]  Bret Stephens is in agreement with virtually everything that Donald Trump stands for.
[00:01:11]  That's the irony.
[00:01:12]  But he hates the man.
[00:01:14]  Like I care if I like the person.
[00:01:18]  Bret Stephens is an honorable good man.
[00:01:23]  And I'm happy he's writing.
[00:01:27]  So, this is not meant as a personal attack.
[00:01:30]  It's not at all meant as such.
[00:01:33]  But there is a narcissism to the idea, Trump is right, but I hate the man.
[00:01:41]  Who gives a damn what you think about the man?
[00:01:45]  Do you know how little in my whole life I have concerned myself with do I like?
[00:01:51]  The politician or the leader?
[00:01:53]  This is such a 60s thing.
[00:01:57]  Are you likable?
[00:01:59]  Yes.
[00:02:00]  It's important in certain arenas of life, like to your friends.
[00:02:05]  You should be likable to your friends.
[00:02:10]  Do you ask if your surgeon is likable?
[00:02:15]  Then why do you ask it about your president?
[00:02:18]  A few readers might nod their heads in partial agreement.
[00:02:30]  Then they'll ask, what about the election denialism?
[00:02:33]  What about January 6th?
[00:02:34]  What about the threat Trump poses to the very foundations of our democracy?
[00:02:39]  All disqualifying, in my view.
[00:02:42]  That is my Bret Stephens' view.
[00:02:44]  But it's also important to stretch one's mind a little.
[00:02:48]  By the way, I just want to say, I don't fully believe Bret on this.
[00:02:52]  Not that he's lying, but...
[00:02:54]  I think he's fooling himself.
[00:02:56]  He hated Trump before January 6th.
[00:02:59]  January 6th has nothing to do with it.
[00:03:04]  But it's also important to stretch one's mind a little and try to understand why so many voters are unimpressed about the, quote, end of democracy argument.
[00:03:12]  For one thing, haven't they heard it before?
[00:03:14]  And with the same apocalyptic intensity?
[00:03:17]  In 2016, Trump was frequently compared to Benito Mussolini and other dictators, including by me.
[00:03:25]  And he even has a link.
[00:03:30]  That's one of the great lines of this piece.
[00:03:34]  The comparison might have proved more persuasive if Trump's presidency had been replete with jailed and assassinated political opponents, rigged or canceled elections, a muzzled or captured press, and Trump's still holding office today rather than running to get his old job back.
[00:03:53]  The election denialism is surely ugly, but it isn't quite unique.
[00:04:02]  Prominent Democrats also denied the legitimacy of George W. Bush's two elections, the second one no less than the first.
[00:04:12]  Yeah, right, that doesn't count.
[00:04:14]  Election denialism!
[00:04:19]  Anyway, he points out something I say almost every day or every time I talk about Trump.
[00:04:26]  And the New York Times' lies about his being a threat to democracy and a dictator.
[00:04:32]  He was president four years.
[00:04:35]  Where were his dictatorial trends, policies then?
[00:04:40]  Many rank-and-file Republicans regard the January 6th assault on the Capitol as a disgrace and the lowest point of Trump's presidency.
[00:04:55]  But they also believe that it wasn't so much an insurrection as it was an ugly temper tantrum by Trump and his most rabid supporters, which never had a chance of succeeding.
[00:05:07]  One reason for that is the judges Trump appointed to the federal bench and the Supreme Court rebuffed his legal efforts.
[00:05:15]  And he had no choice but to accept the rulings.
[00:05:19]  An American version of Vladimir Putin?
[00:05:22]  He simply is not.
[00:05:25]  That's why warnings from Biden and others about the risk Trump poses to democracy are likely to fall flat even with many moderate voters.
[00:05:34]  If there's any serious threat to democracy, doesn't it also come from Democratic judges and state officials?
[00:05:42]  Listen to this.
[00:05:44]  This is gutsy stuff.
[00:05:46]  If there's any serious threat to democracy, doesn't it also come from Democratic judges and state officials who are using never-before-used legal theories which even liberal law professors like Harvard's Lawrence Lessig regard as dangerous and absurd to try to kick Trump's name off ballots in Maine and Colorado?
[00:06:11]  Yes.
[00:06:13]  That might be the Democrats.
[00:06:16]  Brett Stephens in the New York Times are writing, the Democrats, including all his colleagues at the New York Times, maybe they are the greater threat to democracy.
[00:06:28]  When liberal Protestants try to suppress democracy in the name of saving democracy, they aren't helping their cause politically or legally.
[00:06:35]  They are merely confirming the worst stereotypes about their own hypocrisy.
[00:06:41]  As it is, the 2024 election will not hinge on questions of democracy, but of delivery.
[00:06:47]  Which candidate will do more for voters?
[00:06:49]  That will turn on perceptions of which candidate did more for voters when they were president.
[00:06:56]  How's that?
[00:06:58]  Yeah, who did more for you, Biden?
[00:07:01]  Or Trump?
[00:07:04]  Who did more for you, fellow Americans?
[00:07:06]  I know who did more for the elites.
[00:07:11]  For the fanatics of the feminist movement, of the LGBT movement, of the environmentalist movement.
[00:07:19]  But who did more for you?
[00:07:24]  Biden supporters are convinced that the president has a good story to tell, but they also think that Trump has no story at all.
[00:07:32]  Only a pack of self-aggrandizing lies.
[00:07:34]  That's liberal self-delusion.
[00:07:39]  The only problem with this article is if you highlight some sentences for your kid who thinks you're a racist for supporting Donald Trump, you'll be highlighting the whole article.
[00:07:50]  No, I'm serious.
[00:07:51]  It's a problem.
[00:07:53]  Excluding the pandemic, a once-in-a-century event that would have knocked almost any sitting president sideways, Americans have reasons to remember the Trump years as good ones.
[00:08:04]  For that line alone.
[00:08:08]  OMG. Whoa.
[00:08:14]  Americans have good reasons, have reasons to remember the Trump years as good ones.
[00:08:22]  That was printed in the New York Times.
[00:08:27]  Wow.
[00:08:29]  And good in a way that completely defied expert predictions of doom.
[00:08:35]  Wages outpaced inflation, something they have just begun to do under Biden.
[00:08:40]  That's only because of the phony inflation numbers.
[00:08:46]  Stocks boomed.
[00:08:49]  Unemployment fell to 50 years lows.
[00:08:53]  Inflation and interest rates were low.

=== Semi-Anarchy After Floyd (00:59) ===

[00:08:56]  He appealed to Americans who operated in the economy of things, builders, manufacturers, energy producers, food services, and the like, rather than in the economy of words.
[00:09:06]  Another brilliant line.
[00:09:08]  Lawyers, academics, journalists, civil servants.
[00:09:12]  And he shared the law and order instincts of normal Americans, including respect for the police, something the left seemed to care about on January 6th.
[00:09:22]  But was notably less concerned about during the months of rioting, violence, and semi-anarchy that followed George Floyd's murder.
[00:09:31]  George Floyd was not murdered, and I expect one day Brett Stephens will write about that.
[00:09:38]  He might have been killed, but he wasn't murdered.
[00:09:41]  If you don't know the difference, read my commentary on the Ten Commandments in my Rational Bible.
[00:09:52]  As for foreign policy, it's worth asking.