Oct. 30, 2024 - Dennis Prager Show
15:32
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| I am truly delighted to have Lee Zeldin on the phone now. | |
| Lee Zeldin was a U.S. congressman until last year, I believe. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| Until 2023. A Republican representing parts of Long Island. | |
| And he ran for governor of New York and did not win because it's New York State. | |
| New York State contains New York City. | |
| But he got the most votes of any Republican since 1970. Highest percentage since 2002. Highest raw vote total since 1970. He actually is a Republican who almost won running for governor of New York. | |
| So there are a few things I want to talk to Lee Zeldin about. | |
| And Congressman, thanks for coming on. | |
| So great to be with you. | |
| Good. | |
| Glad you feel that way. | |
| So what are you going to run for next? | |
| I didn't even think I'd ask that, but having introduced you as so successful, I'm curious. | |
| Well, all of my focus, 100% of it, is on November 5th. | |
| And there may be post-November 5th things to think about for all of us in life, but there's nothing more important than... | |
| Entirely being focused on getting out the vote over these final few days. | |
| I was with President Trump yesterday leading a roundtable with Governor Huckabee just outside of Philadelphia. | |
| And over the next couple days, I'll be traveling with Speaker Johnson across the state of New York because there's a lot of battleground seats. | |
| The silver lining to the point that you just referenced about the 22 gubernatorial race is that we elected six Republican freshmen in districts that Joe Biden had won in 2020. But now there's a lot of seats to defend. | |
| There are a couple of pickup opportunities still. | |
| And we need to fight hard for those votes to make sure that we have a Republican House come January. | |
| Okay, so I have a question. | |
| I want to talk to you about Proposition 1 in New York State and some other matters. | |
| But I'm very curious to get your answer to this. | |
| Given the horrible state... | |
| Of the world and the country that the Biden-Harris administration has created. | |
| And I use that word very carefully because creation implies ex nihilo, out of nothing. | |
| They inherited a much better country and a much better world. | |
| How do you explain the large number of Americans that will vote for Kamala Harris? | |
| As an American, as a politician, how do you explain it? | |
| There are a lot of people in our country who have taken a lifelong pledge to vote Democrat no matter what, and they will put blind partisan loyalty as the dynamic that transcends any type of issue that I would argue would improve their lives. | |
| And there are a lot of voters out there. | |
| Who will vote on which candidate, regardless of party, will best improve the economy and strengthen the border and have a better foreign policy and make streets safer. | |
| But there's a population out there that will vote Democrat no matter what. | |
| I will say that there's also a lot of people who have just been brainwashed and indoctrinated. | |
| I mean, as far as news sources go, they will only go to a particular outlet or a medium. | |
| Some are on a particular social media platform where they're only being fed one particular narrative. | |
| Some come out of a particular upbringing in schooling where they're being told that something is a universal truth that, in fact, if they were using independent judgment and thought for themselves, they might have reached a different conclusion. | |
| And then, lastly, this is a diverse country where people do prioritize different issues. | |
| While the economy and the border are up there as the number one and number two issue for most, some people out there have a particular issue. | |
| They want to have abortion legalized until the end of the ninth month, and that is their top ten issues. | |
| And they're going to vote based off of wanting to have abortion legalized until the end of the ninth month, no exceptions. | |
| You know, so be it. | |
| The one other point that I would say is that I think there's also voters... | |
| Who are allowing themselves to get fooled by the politician promising them free everything. | |
| I mean, I could have gone out and gotten more votes if I was promising voters free education, free healthcare, free housing, and money on top of it. | |
| If I was using that out of the AOC Bernie Sanders Dem playbook. | |
| But I don't. | |
| And I think that might cost us some votes too. | |
| Yeah, I tell people all the time... | |
| The left around the world have a big advantage. | |
| They promise people goodies. | |
| We'll be back in a moment. | |
| I'm speaking to former Congressman Lee Zeldin, former candidate for governor of New York, in a moment we return. | |
| He's a very well-respected man who was a congressman until last year. | |
| Congressman, a Republican, obviously, from parts of Long Island. | |
| So, there's so much I want to talk to you about. | |
| Because I'd like to get your views like I did then. | |
| By the way, I'm just curious because I mentioned this earlier prior to your coming on. | |
| I said I don't think that there's a single person listening to my show, and there are many people listening, who has no relatives who are voting a Democrat. | |
| So we're voting for... | |
| I assume that that is true for you as well and your extended family, or are they all Republican? | |
| No, it's absolutely true. | |
| And my generation of first cousins includes the Bernie Sanders supporters way on the other extreme, raised in another state in a different way with a different view. | |
| I think that what's been somewhat fascinating is the number of Bernie Sanders supporters from when he ran in 2016 who've actually moved to President Trump since then. | |
| But yet, no, my family, just like everyone else, were made up of people. | |
| Yes, exactly. | |
| So, Lee Zeldin, the reason I mentioned this was, are you aware that yesterday... | |
| Joe Biden said that all the supporters of Donald Trump are garbage. | |
| I am not surprised by it at this point. | |
| When you hear Hillary Clinton, not just with her deplorables comment from when she was running, but talking about President Trump's rally being a Nazi rally this past weekend, you hear Tim Walz echoing that Kamala Harris with the Hitler-Nazi January 6, dark, closing message. | |
| I'm not surprised at this point. | |
| And I feel like that's one of the reasons why Harris isn't strongly condemning it and distancing herself from it, is that she might agree with it. | |
| I think that there's a certain level of contempt that is out there right now for President Trump and President Trump's supporters. | |
| And I really just hope that the supporters of President Trump out there... | |
| Who are being called all these terrible names from the other side. | |
| They use it as motivation as opposed to letting it become a sense of complacency or being downtrodden or apathetic. | |
| It hopefully will just embolden President Trump supporters to be more likely to come out. | |
| Tell us about Proposition 1 because people outside of New York State are generally not aware of this proposition on the ballot next week in New York State. | |
| Kathy Hochul and the Democrats in Albany are proposing to amend the state constitution with Proposal 1. They say that it is to enshrine abortion rights in the state of New York. | |
| However, when everyone reads this very easy-to-read proposal, the word that you will not find in it is abortion. | |
| But you will find a whole bunch of other proposed changes to the state constitution. | |
| It will give rights to boys to compete in girls' sports, for males to access female bathrooms and locker rooms. | |
| It will be used by Dems who are pushing for non-citizen voting and sanctuary state policies. | |
| It has all sorts of other new rights being created that have absolutely nothing at all to do with abortion. | |
| I'm voting no, and I'm encouraging all other New Yorkers to do the same. | |
| My sense is, and I hope I'm wrong, so if I'm wrong, you have to say this. | |
| That most New Yorkers don't know what they're voting for. | |
| Amen. | |
| That has been my experience in my travels. | |
| When I mention Proposal 1, I often can tell in the crowd that there are people who have no idea what I was talking about. | |
| You can also tell from other people that I'm reminding them of something that they knew but had forgotten, and that there are a lot of people who are going to roll into... | |
| The voting day or early voting and casting a vote for candidates on one side of the ballot without a clue what's on the other side. | |
| They might read it, and they were told that they have to vote yes because that codifies abortion rights, enshrines it throughout the state of New York and the state constitution, even though it doesn't. | |
| So that's why we're trying to educate and advocate. | |
| Listen, it's something that five, six days to go. | |
| There's an opportunity for New Yorkers to very easily get informed on what this is. | |
| Don't have to take my word for it. | |
| You form your own independent judgment and decision, and I hope that New Yorkers decide to vote no as well. | |
| So most New Yorkers, in your view, think that they're voting on abortion rights when they're really voting on trans rights? | |
| That is all that Kathy Hochul and the Democrats are telling these voters. | |
| So before they head to the polls and get to read Proposal 1 for themselves, they're being told that Proposal 1 is about enshrining abortion rights, even though it doesn't even mention the word abortion. | |
| Kathy Hochul wrote an op-ed in the New York Daily News that published about a week or two ago. | |
| Long op-ed, and it was entirely focused on abortion, making no reference to The language about gender identity, expression, age, national origin, and more. | |
| And creating all of these as protected rights. | |
| And what happens when that right of that boy who's identifying as a girl comes in conflict with the right of the girl who wants to be able to use a bathroom or a locker room and change without having a male changing right next to them? | |
| When these rights are coming in conflict, the advocates, the left-wing advocates up in Albany, seem to be pushing for the rights of that person identifying as trans. | |
| Has one feminist group come out against Proposition 1? - Mm-hmm. | |
| No, the left wing is all mobilizing with a yes vote. | |
| In this blue state of New York, it is wild to witness how, as you pointed out, these feminist groups will either stay silent or they will play the Democratic line of encouraging the yes vote because the Democrats up in Albany are saying so. | |
| I'll tell you who has been really outpoken against it. | |
| The Catholics. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Tell me that in a moment. | |
| I don't want to interrupt you on that. | |
| I'm waiting to hear it. | |
| We'll be back in a moment with Lee Zeldin. | |
| Your final segment with Lee Zeldin, congressman from New York to last year, Republican, ran against Kathy Hochul, got the most votes of a Republican in raw numbers since 1970, over 50 years, and is very popular for good reasons, by the way. | |
| So, I had asked you about Proposition 1, which would enshrine in the New York State Constitution, which I don't think is enshrined in any other state's constitution, transgender rights. | |
| Meaning, if you identify, for example, as a female, you're a male, you must be allowed by the Constitution of the State of New York to play against women in women's sports and to change in their locker rooms and so on. | |
| So I asked you, was any feminist group against this? | |
| And you were about to tell me something when we had to take a break. | |
| The clergy, the Catholic leadership speaking out passionately against Proposal 1, and kudos to them for doing so. | |
| I think it's important for evangelicals and others all across this entire country to get loud, to speak out, to participate, to use the power of your... | |
| Voice and vote in a moment like this with so much that is at stake all across this entire country. | |
| So kudos to the Catholic leadership, Cardinal Dolan and the others for being outspoken against Proposal 1 and I would encourage other leaders all across this entire country to do the same to make sure we have the right people representing our values in government. | |
| I had one of the leading pastors in the country, Jack Hibbs, yesterday on the show, who has announced, and I've heard this from others as well, millions and millions of evangelicals don't vote. | |
| Do you have any knowledge of that fact, and do you have a theory as to why? | |
| That's absolutely true, and it doesn't make any sense. | |
| There are so many evangelicals who don't vote. | |
| Gun owners who don't vote, veterans. | |
| And they're in these battleground states where they will make the difference between whether we win or lose. | |
| And there's a lot of people, they feel like their vote doesn't matter. | |
| They feel like their vote won't get counted. | |
| And that's why we've been focusing so hard on the early vote. | |
| Get people to bank their vote. | |
| And to get low-propensity voters, people who vote sometimes, not always. | |
| And no propensity voters, people who are eligible to vote but don't ever vote. | |
| And what we are finding so far in the battleground states, the seven get spoken about the most, there are tens of thousands of people on average who are expected to vote for President Trump, who have come out and have already voted and had not voted in 2020. So a very good sign. | |
| Lee Zeldin, God bless you for your work. |
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