Dennis Prager Show - Hugh Hewitt's Visit with Dennis Prager!
Aired: 2025-01-06
Duration: 07:57


=== Spinal Cord Injuries Revealed (02:59) ===

[00:00:00]  I arrived on Saturday back to California with the fetching Mrs. Hewitt.
[00:00:04]  Yesterday on Sunday I was able to visit Sue and Dennis Prager.
[00:00:07]  I want to bring you a full update on that.
[00:00:09]  But I want to begin actually with Dennis's brother, Dr. Kenneth Prager, did a conversation with Marissa Street, who's the CEO of Prager University.
[00:00:19]  If you haven't been to PragerU, visit Prager, P-R-A-G-E-R-U.com.
[00:00:23]  PragerU.
[00:00:24]  You can watch the whole conversation.
[00:00:26]  But rather than have a layman and a dummy when it comes to medicine like me trying to explain Dennis' injury, I thought we would grab some from the Kenneth Prager interview with Marissa over at PragerU, let you hear from him, and then I'll tell you how it went yesterday.
[00:00:42]  Here is Dr. Kenneth Prager and Marissa Street.
[00:00:44]  Cut number.
[00:00:44]  Obviously, I was shocked, as was the entire family, when I heard about his accident.
[00:00:51]  So in terms of a spinal cord injury of this nature, I am unfortunately all too familiar with this because my son Joshua had the exact same spinal cord injury, C3, C4, the third and fourth cervical spinal segments.
[00:01:09]  So I know a lot about spinal cord injury and ironically, Dennis and my father, Max, the last two years of his life had a spinal cord injury.
[00:01:21]  That was as a result of a medical procedure when he was 94 years old when he had to have an aortic knob replaced and it resulted in a stroke in the spinal cord.
[00:01:31]  So three close members of my family, immediate family, spinal cord injuries.
[00:01:37]  When somebody has a spinal cord injury in the area that Dennis has, it affects the nerves.
[00:01:45]  That go to the diaphragm.
[00:01:47]  The diaphragm is the major muscle of respiration.
[00:01:51]  It does most of the work of breathing.
[00:01:52]  If the diaphragm is weakened as a result of the nerves that go to it being impaired as they would be in a spinal cord injury, your breathing is impaired.
[00:02:03]  And the fact though that Dennis is making significant progress in getting off the ventilator is a very good sign and very hopeful.
[00:02:14]  That he will ultimately be entirely liberated from the ventilator and be able to talk and even resume his radio shows at some point.
[00:02:24]  That is obviously our hope.
[00:02:25]  His mind is fine.
[00:02:27]  Having said that, there's also, of course, the problem of movement and the paralysis.
[00:02:33]  And so right now, Dennis does not move his arms or legs.
[00:02:38]  That is the whole of it.
[00:02:40]  Dennis suffered a C3, C4 spinal injury.

=== Dennis's Optimism (04:31) ===

[00:02:45]  Unknown duration.
[00:02:47]  Don't know how long it's going to go on for.
[00:02:49]  He's off the ventilator.
[00:02:51]  I went and spent an hour with him yesterday.
[00:02:54]  Dennis could have 20 people visiting him at any time, so you've got to kind of work through Sue when you go.
[00:02:59]  And I spent an hour with him yesterday.
[00:03:01]  He is as funny as ever, only a different kind of funny because he can't talk yet.
[00:03:07]  He has talked a little bit and hopes to be back.
[00:03:11]  He doesn't want any false optimism about when, but he hopes to be back in Q1 sometime on the air.
[00:03:16]  Dennis, if Dennis can talk, Dennis will be fine.
[00:03:18]  I've said that from the day I heard about his injury.
[00:03:21]  And he looked so much better than I expected because I've been getting secondhand reports from Sue, from Alan Estrin, from everyone in the immediate aftermath of his accident six weeks ago.
[00:03:33]  I didn't know what to expect.
[00:03:36]  And all it was is Dennis without talking.
[00:03:39]  And so Dennis in a bed.
[00:03:41]  And he can't move.
[00:03:41]  It'll be a while until we figure out the extent of how much movement he has, except his head and his very, very lively face.
[00:03:49]  Dennis can, as any of those of you who have ever done an event with Dennis.
[00:03:52]  And I've done hundreds of events with Dennis.
[00:03:54]  We did our first Ask a Jew event probably a decade ago at Mariner's Church down in Orange County, California.
[00:04:03]  And I was amazed at how many people liked those events.
[00:04:08]  And now they've kind of expanded out.
[00:04:10]  Dennis and I did a half dozen of them.
[00:04:11]  Now he does them with many people.
[00:04:13]  Turns out lots of Protestants, Catholics, and every kind of sect you want, Muslims, agnostic, atheists, along with you, come to hear Dennis in the Ask a Jew program.
[00:04:24]  and I look forward to doing with him again.
[00:04:26]  I was so pleased.
[00:04:28]  And a few things, I made notes.
[00:04:30]  Dennis wanted everyone to know that for years people would ask him, how are you doing?
[00:04:36]  He'd say, better than my country.
[00:04:37]  Now he says, well, my country isn't doing better than me because Donald Trump is back and I am on my back.
[00:04:44]  But he is very, very upbeat about the country.
[00:04:48]  Of course, he's consuming news 24-7.
[00:04:51]  He doesn't have a priority for the president-elect.
[00:04:55]  He thinks a lot of things will have to be done.
[00:04:57]  He does think Hegseth is going to be confirmed, by the way, rather easily.
[00:05:00]  He watches a lot of CNN. So that's one of the handful of viewers that they've got last is Dennis Prager.
[00:05:06]  He doesn't want to convey false optimism.
[00:05:10]  He does not want certitude about movement to be out there.
[00:05:14]  He doesn't know.
[00:05:15]  Nobody knows.
[00:05:16]  He is, of course, encouraged by the fact that his nephew...
[00:05:19]  Ken, Dr. Prager's son, had the same injury to the C3, C4 area of his spine and is back walking and is a great journalist now.
[00:05:31]  But it is a long recovery time.
[00:05:33]  If Dennis can talk in three months, he'll be doing his broadcasting.
[00:05:38]  He has been a radio artist for as long as I've been doing it, 30 years.
[00:05:44]  I told him yesterday we were doing some reminiscing.
[00:05:47]  I first heard Dennis in 1989. So I moved to California after the Reagan administration, and Dennis Prager was the invited guest of the Lincoln Club in Orange County.
[00:05:58]  There are many different kinds of Lincoln Club.
[00:06:00]  The Lincoln Club of Orange County is a powerhouse in California, Buck Johns, Doy Henley.
[00:06:05]  They invited Dennis Prager, and I had gotten to know Tom Fuentes and Buck Johns and Doy Henley and a bunch of players in Orange County in the 90s, 89, and they had invited me to a Lincoln Club lunch.
[00:06:17]  And a guy named Dennis Prager shows up and blows me away with erudation, humor, presence, energy.
[00:06:26]  He's not unlike Trump when it comes to energy.
[00:06:29]  Dennis just is a huge life force.
[00:06:31]  And I walked out of there not knowing that my life would be inextricably intertwined with Dennis for many years, but it has been.
[00:06:37]  He's just a dear friend.
[00:06:39]  And Dennis likes to always hug me because he knows I just hate being hugged.
[00:06:44]  I'm not a hugger.
[00:06:46]  But I walked in yesterday, and I planted a kiss on his head, and he smiled broadly, and we had a chat about that.
[00:06:52]  Only Dennis would get that from me, and Sue, of course.
[00:06:56]  And so he could have friends, the most interesting friends in the world, day in and day out there, but he does need his time.

=== Learn to Breathe Again (00:56) ===

[00:07:03]  I left after an hour.
[00:07:04]  The fetching Mrs. Hewitt's rule is 30 minutes to anyone who's sick.
[00:07:08]  Don't go longer.
[00:07:09]  They get exhausted.
[00:07:10]  They don't want to be rude.
[00:07:11]  And he likes people.
[00:07:13]  That's all he wants.
[00:07:15]  When are you coming back?
[00:07:16]  I said, you tell me, I'll be back.
[00:07:17]  And I'm just so happy that I can say on the new year, he is every bit the dentist that we all knew.
[00:07:26]  No listlessness, no, that sometimes recoveries lead people to losing energy.
[00:07:32]  He has not lost any energy.
[00:07:34]  His face is so mobile and expressive and he mouths words.
[00:07:37]  I'm not so good at reading lips.
[00:07:40]  It takes a while, but he does have a laser, and he can point.
[00:07:44]  It's just that it's going to take a while, and it was explained to me as a sort of, imagine getting into shape.
[00:07:49]  You've got to get your diaphragm back into shape.
[00:07:51]  When you've been on a ventilator, you've got to learn how to breathe again, and you'll learn how to talk again.
[00:07:55]  You'll be able to do that.
[00:07:56]  That's going to be great.