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Sept. 27, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
01:38:21
Dennis Prager’s First Public Appearance!
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Dennis, it's uh so good to be with you today.
This is your first public appearance, and I just want to start by saying that for those who haven't seen you since your injury, you really look great.
It's a miracle.
It's a miracle to me that you're able to get back into things and to speaking, and that you completed your book, and for those who haven't seen you in many months, you know, you might look a little more slim, uh, you might look a little different, uh, but for those of us who have been following your recovery closely, this is amazing news.
It's amazing news to have you back on and speaking.
And so I'd love I'd love just your reaction because we haven't heard from you.
Now that it's your first public speaking moment, what do you have to share with us?
Well, there's uh there's a long version, there's a longer version, and there's the longest version.
There are very few short versions.
It is a remarkable thing that I am on video and speaking.
When you first saw me, I was not even speaking.
I think the first three months when I was on full ventilator, meaning that it did all the breathing for me.
You can't what no one can speak while on full vent.
So I would sh I would point a laser beam at letters.
I mean, it was uh I'm amazed I didn't go crazy.
Let me tell you a story.
I don't know if you know this.
I hope you don't.
It'll keep your interest more.
You know, I talk about everything with callers to my radio show.
I don't remember how the subject came up, but about 15 or 20 years ago, some guy calls in and says he rather be dead than a quadriplegic.
And I I a rare moment for me.
I sort of yelled at a caller.
And I said, you gotta be kidding.
You have your mind and you can speak, and you rather be dead because you can't move your limbs.
And irony of ironies, my theory was tested.
That's exactly my condition.
And I'm thrilled to be alive.
I am we are all our mind and our ability to communicate.
Would I wish I could move my limbs?
I dream about moving my limbs almost every night.
Of course I would love it.
But I'm alive and I have my loved ones, and I have the public.
And I think I could still make a difference.
Would I rather be dead?
It's it's inconceivable.
Just uh I I love life.
And I and I love so many people.
Of course, I love my wife and my kids and my grandkids.
I mean uh, you know.
Now I'll tell you one other interesting thing.
I have a book on happiness.
It's 26 years ago it was published by HarperCollins.
Happiness is a serious problem.
I would not change a word.
That is how philosophically prepared I was for this terrible thing that I that I have encountered.
Uh I mean, what I wrote in there, like about expectations, and you know, my motto, if nothing's horrific, life is terrific, and I I lived by that.
I never thought that nothing horrific would happen to me.
I I always believed I might well be the other guy.
Cause people think it's always the other guy who gets into a terrible car accident or skiing accident or a fall, which is what I had.
I never thought that.
So every day I said what I thought, how lucky I was, and uh that I was unlucky, and as I write in my Bible commentary in the book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Bible and of the Torah.
There is a uh uh commandment of God or of Moses, and it is that by lottery,
the tribes will be apportioned parts of the holy land by lottery, so it's just the luck of the draw, and a lot of traditional Jewish commentators said God would decide what where the lottery would fall.
But uh these are great men, but I don't understand that view.
God commands a lottery, and he'll decide what the lottery does, then why don't he just tell them?
You know, Asher, you go here, Gad, you go here, Ruben, you go here.
There is luck in life.
And I had bad luck on November twelfth twenty twenty-four.
But I've had great luck virtually every day before that and every day since that.
Yeah.
And I don't expect God to intervene in everyone's life.
It would render life meaningless.
Then what was God supposed to do?
Suspend the laws of gravity.
I was philosophically prepared for a catastrophe.
Anyway, people should read my happiness book.
So that's the answer to the question.
Have I changed my mind in any way?
I haven't.
I have physical pain, not right this minute.
It's sporadic, but it's constant.
And it is uh primarily the top of my spine.
And I don't I it's from the spinal cord injury.
That's all I know.
But with pain medicine and with a special ointment, which you can get over the counter.
I I keep it's manageable.
How do you think your mind is functioning given that you've been on medication and closed up in a room?
I don't know the answer to that.
I never had a great memory.
And I would say this publicly, and people would laugh.
You don't have a great memory.
What are you talking about?
Well, I had a great memory for concepts that I did.
But not for names or dates.
As a general rule.
So I don't know if it's any worse.
I monitor it constantly.
It's probably been a somewhat affected.
But listening to me now, you would have no sense of it.
Have you kept up with the news?
Oh my God.
I have probably kept up with the news more than I did before the uh the accident because I listened to so many podcasts.
And I will tell you, there are many wonderful podcasts.
You can really learn a lot by watching them.
The problem is they're all long.
And given my schedule in my normal life, as I call it.
I really wasn't able to listen nearly as much as I do now.
Oh, so I'm totally up on the news.
What do you listen to?
Mean the specific podcasts?
Yeah.
Not in order of importance.
So Douglas Murray.
Ben Shapiro.
Trigonometry.
That's Constantine Kissing.
Constantine Kissin.
Yeah, they interviewed me.
I'm on they have a lot of views on that one.
Calf a million.
Just on YouTube.
Uh they're very intelligent.
The two of them is his sidekick, Francis.
Oh, I watched a lot of Charlie Kirk.
I I was so impressed with how he dealt at length with students and universities at which he spoke, who differed with him.
And how respectful he was of them.
The charge that he promoted hate is among the most vile of the many lies of the left.
He promoted respect.
That's what he promoted.
So I would watch a lot of his interactions.
Talk about a memory.
He has a phenomenal memory.
Actually, I can't say he had...
I guess I I haven't accepted that it's all a bad dream what happened to Charlie.
We could talk about that later.
I'm just trying to think about what else.
Oh, Megan Kelly.
I watch her a lot.
And I watch TBN.
TBN has two uh uh IDF soldiers Reporting on the news from the Middle East.
To the best of my knowledge.
They're Christians who were serving in the Israel Defense Forces.
They don't make reference to that.
But that's my suspicion.
Since TBN stands for Trinity Broadcast Network.
Okay.
I was gonna ask you that.
Did you know that?
No.
Yeah, but they never make reference to that either.
But that they're they're terrific reporting.
And then they were just individual ones.
I watched my son Aaron, who's gonna be doing Yeah, his show is almost ready with Prager.
I was really excited.
And for the record, I had nothing.
Nothing to do with your decision.
Prager U's decision to to have him as a regular feature.
I never mentioned him to you.
And I was just thrilled, obviously, but I played no role.
Well, you played a role in raising him, which is partially why he has such discernment and abilities.
So I I I think you get some credit for some role you play.
No, no, that's true.
Yeah, but on the operation side, that was us.
Right.
But I anyway, uh I will take credit for that.
I raised him and his spectacular brother David, his older brother by ten years.
I raised them both in a very simple with a very simple doctrine.
I care more about your character than about your grades, or about what college, or if any college.
Your character is everything.
And it worked out, thank God.
In Aaron's case, it was a challenge.
He he was uh his late mother and I adopted him at the day he was born, but we did not know that his mother, his birth mother, was a meth addict.
Everybody should watch the fire side chat that I did with Aaron.
They will be stunned at how open it was.
I mean, I asked him questions that I I remember thinking, whoa, you really want to go there?
But as one caller once said, Dennis, I have one word to describe you, and I was worried what is he gonna come out with, and he said transparent.
And that's that's true.
One of the most common things people would say to me, you know, at an airport, let's say, somewhere in America, Denis.
I feel like I know you.
And my response always was you.
It's true.
Yeah.
Let's let's go into I'd like to talk about Charlie Kirk, because you and Charlie were obviously very close.
But there's something amazing about Charlie.
Everybody feels like they were very close to Charlie, including people who've never met him.
There are a lot of people who are really impacted by the murder of Charlie Kirk, and you're you're very good always at giving perspective on a macro scale.
What do you think the murder of Charlie Kirk will mean to America, possibly the world?
Charlie made it a thing To come visit me on a fairly regular basis.
He would just show up.
You love this story.
I told it to Charlie on camera.
One of the nurses, a male nurse, uh, was a big fan of mine.
But I think he was an even bigger fan of Charlie's.
And so I said to him, well, Charlie's coming on, I don't know, Monday at one.
If you'd like to get a picture with him.
You know, just no.
I'm perfectly okay with it.
I think it would be wonderful.
Well, sure enough, he showed up and got a picture with Charlie.
Can you imagine how valuable he thinks that picture is tragically now?
Anyway, I did think Charlie and I had something special.
He dedicated his forthcoming book, which will tragically end up his last book, making the case for Shabbat observance for Gentiles, and especially for Christians.
And he dedicated the book to me because he got the whole idea of Shabbat from me, which he acknowledges.
We both spoke at Arizona State University, and his whole speech was on why people should observe Shabbat.
And I mean Friday night to Saturday night.
He was not talking about Sunday.
He was talking about the Torah Shabbat.
And I figure, wow.
I've influenced millions.
So that that was a wonderful feeling.
Anyway, he would go out of his way to visit me.
But then I I heard all these other people say how close they were to Charlie.
And I don't negate that at all.
But I'm s what I said for a uh an audio that I made for Erica.
I told the story about Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, my friend since high school, most prolific author of Jewish books living today.
He told me that he was moved at a funeral once.
He would interview children and the wife of the deceased.
Anyone who would speak so that he would know what to say with knowledge.
And he discovered, because he talked to each of them individually, privately.
He discovered that each one thought that while the dad loved all of them, they loved them the most.
I love it.
That's right.
Isn't that great?
What a great ability to make people feel like you're their favorite.
That's right.
I think Charlie had that ability.
And so that that was a very touching revelation to me.
But this'll sound almost silly.
I have proof that he uh Was particularly close to me.
I don't know if I I was the closest.
That would be silly.
But particularly close in in that he dedicated his last book to me.
I thought the world of him.
Do you know that Charlie listened to all two hundred and sixty hours of my Torah commentary?
He claimed that no one has listened to me more than Charlie Kirk himself.
That meant a lot to me.
And he would then call me and ask me to clarify a point.
And I spoke for his group very often.
It's a beautiful thing to see thousands of college students who share our values.
It's invigorating.
What he did.
He didn't do it despite not going to college.
He did it in part because he didn't go to college.
He was allowed to gain wisdom on his own.
And God did he ever.
The loss.
It's very rare.
It happens that you can say of almost anyone.
They're irreplaceable.
But I think it's true for Charlie.
Do you, by the way, do you have the dedication?
I do.
Would you like me to read it?
I never actually read it.
I just know he did dedicate the book to me.
Yeah, the book is not out yet, but I can read you the dedication.
This book.
This book is dedicated to Dennis Prager.
Your life's work brought me to honoring the Shabbat.
As a result, I wrote this book.
Thank you, Dennis, for all you have done for humanity.
God bless you.
Wow.
I don't cry, but I could cry.
Oh my God.
He wrote that.
It's hard not to cry.
Yeah.
Hmm.
That's right.
Yeah.
Well, I said everything I said before I knew what he wrote, so people will understand.
If he never dedicated the book to me, I would have said the same thing.
Anyway, I was saying that Erica is a great choice.
For many reasons, not least of which having said that I think he's irreplaceable, I still do.
This is as close as you can get to continuing Charlie.
Having Erica as the CEO.
Anyway, uh I'm still in the denial state with regard to Charlie.
If he showed up in my room tomorrow, I wouldn't be shocked.
Wouldn't that be great if we just woke up from this bad dream?
I know.
Talking about dreams.
I have had such vivid dreams about moving my limbs that when I woke up, and I never had this ever prior to my accident, on many occasions, I would wake up not knowing whether or not I was dreaming.
I was holding a cup.
I think at a bowling alley where you really move your limbs.
And I was awakened, and I said to the nurse, take the cup out of my hands.
And she looked at my hands and said, Mr. Prager, there's no cup in your hand.
And I said, no, no, no, no, no, there's a cup in my hand.
Take it out or it'll spill all over me.
Mr. Prager, there's no cup in your hands.
And until she had me look to confirm I didn't believe her.
I did not know the difference between dream and reality on many occasions.
It's hard to accept reality sometimes.
I'd imagine that it's some survival mechanism of our brain, or I I mean, the reality, even for me after you fell, I I just it took a long time before I could even believe that I can't just call you up and bribe you with peanut MMs to give to give another talk, or frankly text Charlie and and and even and show up and comfort him in in times where both of us were dealing with.
It's just hard to accept reality, I'm sure.
I agree with you.
Do you do you believe in the afterlife?
You mentioned divine intervention earlier, but do you believe that in some ways he's listening to us and he's here?
I have said probably a hundred times over the course of twenty-five years that belief in the afterlife keeps me sane because there's so little justice in this world,
if God is just, which is what is affirmed by the first monotheist Abraham, that God is just then there has to be justice in an afterlife.
If God is good, there's an afterlife.
If there is no God or God is bad, then there's no afterlife.
So by definition, there has to be an afterlife.
If God is just, there's an afterlife.
And I don't believe God would create the ability of human beings to cherish justice, but he doesn't.
He made us.
Now, anyway...
I do believe in that.
Whether or not in the afterlife, they are conscious of what happens on this in this small realm.
I have no idea.
I don't know what happens in the afterlife.
That is as difficult to understand as what happened before we were born.
Hmm.
So that's that's my uh that's my statement on that.
Do you remember conversations with Charlie about the Sabbath?
Do you remember inspiring him?
And do you remember what you talked about?
Well, as I mentioned, he listened to every minute of my original teachings of the Torah over the course of I don't know how many years.
that affected him.
So he would call me up not just about Shabbat, but about you know, anything he heard from my teachings to have me clarify or defend a point.
And he knew he had a direct line to me.
So I'd hear from him frequently.
But yeah, we talked about Shabbat, but I did not know till relatively recently how that well, I did not know till he decided he would observe it.
You could not call Charlie from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown.
He was not tuned into the world.
He was only tuned into his wife and family and friends, which is exactly what I do.
From the time that I spent with you and Charlie, it seems like you barely spoke about politics.
It was always about morality.
We never I don't recall us talking politics almost ever.
That's right.
He would call you the moral giant, and he would call you because he would want clarity on how to do the moral thing.
He was kind of obsessed with doing the moral thing.
Yeah, well, he was preoccupied with his great credit with what you call the moral thing.
What's crazy is that people are have accused Charlie Kirk and even the folks at Turning Point USA for being fascist and Nazis.
It it is so crazy.
How how do you describe a 31-year-old who is so focused, obsessed with doing the moral thing, he would fly out here to spend time with you to really gauge on on how to make the moral decision, yet the left accuses this young man the most ridiculous charges.
What kind of impact does that have on our society?
The left cheapens words, the libels of the of Jews and non-Jews who defend Israel and of Israel they equal the medieval libel where we got the the term from the term libel from when Jews
were accused of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood to bake matzas for Passover.
Whole Jewish communities were killed and expelled on that evil and absurd charge.
The charge that Israel is committing genocide is it is equivalent in how big a lie it is.
All that charge does is cheapen the word genocide.
Anyway, I could go into that in detail.
What the left does, they they they use language and then they cheapen it and it causes real damage, real death.
Like racist by ch you know they charge every conservative with being racist.
Right, so therefore I'm a racist, which is absurd.
Dennis, I'd love I'd love to get your feedback On how to think through this clearly, because there is a lot of confusion right now around the term anti-Semitism and Jew hatred.
And so you have on one side of the equation Jews who may be overreacting, calling anybody, or there is an alleged claim that Jews are calling anybody an anti-Semite simply for not agreeing with them on policies regarding regarding Bibi Netanyahu and Israel.
And so, for example, Megan Kelly and even Charlie Kirk felt that because they were asking questions about Israel, they were accused uh accused of being anti-Jew, even though they were as they are as pro-Israel and pro-Jewish as it gets.
And so the claim is that Jews are overreacting and oversensitive.
And then with that said, there is on the other side of the equation, people who have realized that by accusing the Jew of virtually everything, including Charlie Kirk's murder at one point, uh there's that very much so growing uh on social media in particular, but frankly, even on podcasts.
And so there's quite a bit of confusion and messiness around for some reason the chosen people continue to be in the eye of the storm every single time.
And and how do we how do we not react as overreact as Jews?
How do you how do we think about this in a calm, cool and and rational, rational way?
How do we make sure that people like Meghan Kelly are not accused for something she's not guilty of?
How do we make sure that somebody like Charlie Kirk is not accused for something he's not guilty of?
But with that said, how do we hold accountable people who actually do increase fear and propagate anti-Semitism?
How can we think about this clearly?
Okay.
Let me begin by making clear there's no such thing as we.
Jews are as divided on the political, philosophical, and moral spectrum as the general population is.
I have no control over what any other Jew thinks.
The Jews who accused Charlie Kirk or Megyn Kelly of being anti-Semitic were false.
fools.
And let me add, we have no idea who they are.
I still don't know who these Jews are.
Who are who are these Jews?
Certainly not us.
Well, if you don't know, no one knows.
And I mean that quite seriously.
I knew I didn't know.
But I also knew I may not be as up on these details, but they've never mentioned who it was.
I'm not saying they they don't know.
But I I I've never heard who it is.
And you haven't heard who it is, correct?
I I I don't know who they are, and I can certainly tell you, even if we found out their names, they don't represent me or you or many other people who share our great admiration of the.
Yes, that's right.
It doesn't exist.
You can't.
It's like saying somebody represents all Americans.
Or all Christians.
Right, exactly.
So why do you think people tend to group the Jews as in the Jews?
Right.
Well, as soon as Someone says the Jews.
It usually means that they're no friend of the Jews.
It's like people real racists, not not figurative races, who say the blacks.
But nobody says the blacks.
As they should be.
Say the any group.
The Americans, is anybody say that?
To group, I mean, the irony behind all of this is to group the Jews into one group.
It is impossible to get Jews to agree on anything.
On anything.
There is that joke, two Jews, three opinions.
Well, there's a better joke.
A Jewish stranded.
Where his uh his ship goes down.
He's the only survivor.
He's on an island alone.
He's finally rescued.
And there are two buildings.
Two synagogues he's built.
So they say to him, you're one Jew.
Why did you build two synagogues?
He said, This is the one I attend.
And this is the one I would never set foot in.
Yep.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, this goes so way back.
I I even within American history, you had Haim Solomon, who was one of the main funders of the revolutionary war, right?
He he funded the Continental Army, and and you had Jews who fought on on both sides of every single war, yet people love to just say the Jews.
The moment there is one Jew who or two Jews or even five Jews who do bad things, suddenly it's attributed to all Jews.
And clearly, it's a pattern that ultimately leads to Jew hatred.
My book with Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews...
The third edition was just published.
It was first published in nineteen seventy-four.
And again, everything we wrote has come true.
It's been validated.
So Dennis, but what's your comment about people who are accusing Meghan Kelly, let's say, or have accused Charlie Kirk of turning on Israel or being anti-Semitic or maybe even not anti-Semitic, but but turning against the Jews.
If you think Megan Kelly and Charlie Kirk have been anti-Semitic.
You're out of your mind.
You are charitably you're paranoid.
And Jews have a right to some degree of paranoia, given what's happened to us.
But I don't excuse it.
These have been two of the most outspoken pro-Israel voices.
They are allowed to differ with the Israeli government.
Half of Israel disagrees with the Israeli government, including the vast majority whose children go into the uh Israel defense forces.
I have watched both of them in their outspoken defenses of Israel, which unfortunately takes some courage today on the right.
There are a lot of voices that are anti-Israel.
There were voices on the right that were anti-Semitic.
In William Buckley's time.
And he, to his great courageous credit, publicly rebuked them.
It was a very powerful moment.
It took a lot of courage.
Courage is the rarest of the good human traits, as I always point out.
There are a lot of good people, but there are very few courageous good people.
I would only say to Megan and Charlie.
In fact, I had every desire to call Charlie to talk to him about this.
You can't say the Jews anything.
George Soros is a Jew.
And Benjamin Netanyahu is a Jew.
Do they have anything in common?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
One is on the right and one is on the left.
And therefore they have nothing in common.
The Hitler and the Nazis would say Jews were the inventors of communism.
And Stalin would say that the Jews were the inventors of capitalism.
So you can't both be right.
This is what you can't say the Jews anything.
You can't say the any group.
The Americans, the whites, the blacks.
It doesn't work.
I know you said you wished you called Charlie to say what you said.
I texted with him and I spoke with him this summer, but you could say something to Megan Kelly, would you like to?
Before my accident, you would have me on.
And you were very generous in what you would say about me and even say about me when I wasn't on.
And I would likewise speak highly of you and mention you were one of the few regular podcasts I'd be watching today.
Since my accident, that's a major way I've kept up with the news, is...
superb podcasts.
There's no such thing, Megan, as the Jews.
As I made the capitalist communist point.
Anything you say is true.
right are are are jews Defenders of Judeo-Christian values.
Or the antagonists.
The answer is some are one and some are the other.
I have nothing in common with left-wing Jews.
you Nothing.
And they have nothing in common with me.
So please.
For the sake of Western civilization.
For the sake of America.
For the sake of truth.
Don't take these comments from these Jewish fools, whoever they are, as indicative of the Jewish people.
They're not.
Many of us still adore you.
Yep.
That's what I would say.
Dennis, you just completed another book while here in the hospital, which is amazing, which goes to show for those who are asking, how is it that you're still enjoying life, which for those of us who are here in the room with you, I I you know, you're giggling and fun, and it does seem like you're still enjoying life.
What what is your book about?
I'll tell you in a moment.
I first want to comment on my mood that you made reference to my happiness level.
So I always called it that is the same basically as it was before the uh the catastrophic fall that rendered me paralyzed, and it's actually baffled me.
And I asked my uh friend of 40 years, who's been on the happiness hour on my Salem syndicated radio show, the only regular guest about a couple of times a year,
and he happens to be a psychiatrist, a former professor of psychiatry at UCLA Medical School.
And I said to him, Steve, I'm concerned.
Is there something wrong with me that I'm not depressed?
And it sounds hilarious the question, but I was dead serious.
Is it's an abnormal response, it seems to me.
So I would wonder, am I in denial?
That's what I thought.
Am I in denial, but I'm not in denial.
I know exactly my condition.
I know how it stinks compared to the fantastic life I had before in certain ways.
On the other hand, as you noted, I finished the book while in the hospital paralyzed.
And by the way, let me note all thanks to to Joel Alperson, who has made my rational Bible possible and certainly made he so made this c forthcoming book possible that he submitted a five-page resume of the book to Harper Collins,
one of the leading publishers in the world today without my even knowing it.
I didn't even know I had a book and he got me the largest advance I ever got for any book.
And Joel would transcribe all my i editings and added words anyway, he made it possible.
Can I just say something about Joel too?
Yeah, please.
I have never ever met a good friend, as good of a friend as Joel Alperson.
Uh, Dennis, I know that you are very unlucky in the chair that you're sitting and this injury, and I know you feel super lucky for having Sue Prager as a wife and your sons and Alan and there's I mean you're lucky because you have the most amazing people around you, which is it's also because it's you and you drew in the most amazing people.
But Joel Alperson is a friend that very few people have.
He's just an amazing, amazing human being.
He sat by you for months, and he continues to do so, flying in and out.
I'm just if people have a friend like Joel Alperson, they're incredibly lucky.
And it's hard for me to say as you're sitting in this chair, Dennis Prigger, you are lucky.
But what I have witnessed over the last year with the people that have surrounded you and the type of friendships that you have and the type of love that you have, you're lucky.
You're lucky.
I agree with you, you are so lucky.
I'm glad you mentioned this.
He comes here from Omaha.
He leaves his family, his wife and his four kids, all of whom are age seven, which is a hilarious story unto itself.
For a week each month.
It's and and has made all of this possible.
He is more excited about the book than even I am.
I know.
I get a lot of calls and text messages from him.
He finds that hilarious.
Well, I'm glad that he is.
It's certainly better than if I were more excited than he is.
I'm the author, for God's sake.
The book is titled, If there is no God, dot dot dot.
and the subtitle is The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil.
And it's composed of 55-0 years of
challenges to my assertion that only if there is a God from whom emanates standards of good and evil evil is there such a thing as good and evil.
No God, it's all opinion.
That's why the giant authors of the Declaration of Independence said we are endowed by our creator of unalienable rights.
because if the Creator didn't give us our rights...
Human beings did.
And if human beings did, then human beings can take them away.
But if the creator did, human beings can't take them away.
Dennis, do you think we're living through a spiritual revival in America, maybe around the world, with Charlie's murder?
With your book that's coming out, do you think it's enduring, or is it something people are just emotional about right now?
And and and also, do you think this spiritual revival is a coincidence?
If it is a if it is a revival, is it a coincidence that you're here that Charlie was murdered, that he wrote a book about the Sabbath, that he dedicated to you, that you wrote a book titled, If there is no God.
Is there is God's hand in this?
Or is it a God-sized hole in our heart that we are understanding that we have to fill in, and that's why all of this is happening?
I am very, very loathed to ever say God's hand.
I think in the overall picture, yes, that the Jews have returned to Israel after two thousand years is a divine the divine will at the very least.
I do believe that.
I believe that the founders of the United States were endowed by their creator with certain, a certain degree of wisdom.
All together at one time in one place.
I think there was a divine element there.
But generally speaking, God allows the world to do what it will do without his direct intervention.
That's why I don't believe God had a hand in my fall.
To put it on a micro basis.
Gravity had a hand in my fall.
Lack of friction under my feet.
Being on a wooden smooth floor dripping wet when I stepped out of the shower for a moment to get a shaver.
Yeah, to get a razor.
That's what did it.
Anyway, you could also say that God had a hand in saving my life.
The first surgeon I was brought to at a prestigious hospital in the LA area.
Told my wife that uh your husband and father should be given palliative care.
Meaning allowed to die without pain.
My wife didn't accept that.
Got in touch with you, Marissa, who knows everybody on planet Earth.
And you were friendly, I guess, with this doctor.
Jared Ament, yeah.
Jared Ament, who of all things was at that moment in Bolivia.
That's why I say, how could there not be God?
Oh, this is amazing.
You called him in Bolivia to tell him about my situation.
You got him in between surgeries in Bolivia.
And then we figured out how to get internet for him, where he was.
He did not know.
I'm gonna spare everybody from the details, but it was a very, very long convoluted day.
God.
But thank God.
Thank God, you know.
And then he contacted the actual surgeon who wanted to give me palliative care.
Contacted as a how did you use that term?
A nice word?
An understatement.
Yes.
That was a that's a nice word.
And basically yelled at him.
So is it possible that maybe God does send us anything?
Well, that's right.
I mean, for all I know, God intervened in that way.
That's right.
That you would know the the right doctor.
Who is willing to cause some trouble.
You know, many doctors, as we've seen during the lockdowns, are not willing to stick their neck out, even when they know what's the right thing to do.
And believe me, there were doctors that I called who basically said, oh, yes, that's bad news, but were not willing to sec their neck out.
Well, I did not know that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, he finally did it, the surgeon.
And here we are.
That that enabled me to live.
Then I was transferred to another LA prestigious hospital, and they performed another surgery the next day.
By the way, I was not aware of any of this.
I was sedated the whole time.
I don't remember anything from at least the first two weeks.
Well, I think your comment that it is a miracle that you're alive, right?
And so maybe it was gravity and bad luck that you fell.
But Dennis, you fell and hit your head, and and your brain was never swollen.
Look at you.
You're able to speak, you're able to dictate a book.
And so some could say that your fall was a a a tragic, and it is a tragic uh mystery why it happened, and some could say that it's an absolute miracle, that God spared your brain, and that your brain inspired Charlie Kirk, and that your brain uh is inspiring this religious vi revival, maybe in America, maybe in a maybe around the world.
It's hard for me sometimes to look at everything on the macro, and I'd love to get some macro feedback from you because you're I'm usually that trees person and you're the forest person.
Uh I just love to get just some some some thoughts from you on the macro.
What are what are we living through right now?
Well, those who see the glass half full are entirely right, and those who see it as half empty are entirely right.
And I don't know yet.
We haven't seen the the end of the story.
I mean, we have a tremendous pushback, which would not have been possible two years ago, let alone ten or twenty or thirty that Jimmy Kimmel, that situation.
Do you think it's a form of Republican censorship?
People are very critical.
So yeah, let me read you what Pam Bondy said.
There is free speech and there is hate speech.
And there's no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society.
We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.
So what do you how do we think through what Pam Bondi said, given that we are pro freedom of speech?
So let me say something really macro.
Really forests rather than trees.
I know that I only care about what's true.
Thank you.
But I also know that it makes life a lot easier, a lot simpler.
Because that's all I have to ask.
In any situation, is it true?
I don't have to think of strategies to make my team's views the victors.
That's that's not what I I think.
So I have no problem saying this was a terrible statement by Pam Bondi.
At the same time, everybody's allowed a few terrible statements.
On the micro, what do you think our reaction or or even the government's reaction should be when teachers tweet that Charlie had it coming, that Charlie deserved to be murdered?
Teachers are tweeting it.
Okay.
Folks in the military that are tweeting it.
You have influencers.
All right.
There's a big difference between any given citizen and government employees.
Yes.
If you want to take money from the public, then you also have to take the reactions of the public.
That's why we want people to take as little money from the public as possible.
It's it it's better for the society, it's better for freedom, and it's better for the individual.
They are they are claiming we can say the most horrific things, and you still have to pay for us.
And I'm being very precise.
I don't know if it's true.
Maybe it is, but it sounds odd.
If it is, he had it coming for him.
The only there are only two ways of saying that.
One is you're just lying, which I don't think most are doing.
And the other is they don't have a clue as to what he actually did say.
I don't think they watched him once.
If you watched him once, you would see how much time he gave students on the left to keep challenging him and challenging him and challenging him at a microphone at a university.
Dennis, I want to talk about the two most important things that we worked with Charlie Kirk on.
One was freedom of speech, which he was shot and murdered in the neck while speaking.
And the other was what Charlie was speaking about the day he was shot in the neck.
And that is the transgender cult that has been targeting young Americans, uh, the West in general.
Since Charlie's murder, there hasn't been enough conversations, in my opinion, about what he actually died for.
And the possibility that more parents will now wake up and realize that what is being done through our youth through this transgender chemical and surgical castrations is horrific.
It's actually frankly surprising to me that less people are speaking about the dangers of transgenderism, and there's been a focus on all kinds of other of other things vis-a-vis Charlie.
But let's bring back the nation to converse about what is incredibly significant to our future.
And ja and that is transgenderism.
This transgender, if I may say, death cult that we are seeing.
The very notion that a male can become a female or a female can become a male is a lie.
There is no truth to it.
You can think that you are.
I guess I just came up with an analogy that I have never used before.
Very many mornings I wake up certain I can move my fingers.
Certain.
I feel that I am moving them just as I did on the days preceding November 12th, 2024.
Then I look at my fingers and they haven't moved a millimeter.
So the fact that I think or I feel certain that I moved my fingers is contradicted by reality.
What I think may be significant to me, but it isn't significant.
The same thing with you may think you've become a male if you're a female or vice versa.
But you haven't.
You're living in a dream.
In reality you haven't.
Can you really love yourself more by changing yourself or telling a child...
Well to ch change themselves.
That's There is no angrier group in America than a certain percentage, maybe a large percentage of people who have transitioned, so to speak.
The very notion developed by the left of gender affirming care is a lie.
It's Orwellian.
Gender affirming would mean you affirm what you were at birth.
That is gender affirming.
Gender affirming care is in fact gender denying care.
You're really not a girl.
You're a boy.
You have ovaries.
You have breasts.
You have uh two X chromosomes.
You have a female brain.
But you're really a boy.
To speak of this as gender-affirming care, it's gender denying care.
Okay, you can't become the other sex.
You can't, it's just the way it is.
You can't become another species.
You can't become an the other sex.
You can think you are like I think my fingers are moving, but they're not moving.
Nor have you moved.
The trick is to make peace with the sex into which you were conceived and came into this world.
That's it.
That's what responsible therapy would involve.
Not let me help you accept your delusion.
Would a doctor help me?
Help me right now.
Dennis, if you think you're moving your fingers, you really are.
We're gonna affirm that you're moving your figures that would not help me.
Well, what's really on my mind is that Charlie Kirk and his family and our entire movement are obviously victims of this transgender violence.
Charlie Kirk went to college campus to speak about the fact that a f uh a week or so prior, there was a a grade school shooting done by transgender violence.
And I think that on a macro, we are seeing more and more violence coming from these young kids whose impact is really the responsibility of teachers, parents, the entire medical community.
We are allowing these children to grow up in a culture thinking that they can change their gender or their sex.
They're incredibly angry.
And that was exactly what Charlie was trying to speak against.
And so my hope, Dennis, is that maybe in this chaos in this horror that we are seeing, maybe parents are gonna wake up, maybe teachers are gonna wake up, and they're gonna just stop, they're gonna stop with this gender-affirming care, and they're gonna just bring common sense back into our society because Dennis, what happens if we don't?
What happens if we continue to raise children to think that they should be angry about their own bodies?
Is it a surprise to you that if they're so angry about their own bodies, they're gonna be angry about everything else around them, not to mention the chemicals and the the medication that they're ingesting and what that does.
And probably most importantly is the Mental poison that we've been putting into young minds in America is that anybody that says what I just said or what Charlie said, when Charlie said, love your body the way it is, accept your body, don't don't go to the pills, don't go to the surgery.
Love yourself as you're made by God.
When you say that, they call us haters.
That kind of poison had let has led to real violence.
As a general rule, any negation of any left wing point is called hate.
If you deny that affirmative action has actually done good for society, or specifically for black members of the society, it's called hate.
You may be black yourself, and it's called hate.
And it's called hate because you differed with the left.
If uh if you call out the the horrible libel that Israel has committed quote unquote genocide in Gaza, then you that means you hate Palestinians.
One has nothing to do with the other.
There were Israeli Jews who volunteered to drive Gaza children to Israeli hospitals to be treated for cancer, for example.
And they would be called haters.
So that's the general principle on the left.
You differ with us, you're a hater.
Yeah, they call us Nazis so they themselves can behave violently.
Well, so they could support today's Nazis.
Hamas.
The only difference between Nazi aims and Hamas aims was that the Nazis aimed to hide what they did from Germans, whereas Hamas aimed to publicize what they did to fellow Palestinians.
That's not an insignificant difference.
Why do you think people are identifying with evil?
I can only tell you this.
It ain't new.
The prophet Hosea, what is it twenty-five hundred years ago about, said, Woe unto those who call evil good and good evil.
If you invert those categories, you can get away with evil.
Then you're really doing good.
So that's the reason for the inversion for most.
For others, they're just morally confused individuals.
In the history of war, of modern war, all modern wars.
I said this at Oxford, at the Oxford Union.
It's on it's on uh YouTube.
Gotten millions of views, happily.
In the history of modern warfare, every war has between been a free society and a dictatorship.
Some have been two dictatorships, but no two free societies have ever gone to war with each other.
And when it's a free society, And it's a dictatorship.
We always know who to sign with, the free society.
The one exception is Israel and the Palestinians.
There's a free society versus a virtual totalitarian state.
And the West increasingly sides with the totalitarians against the free society.
That's a very bad yellow flag for Western society.
Do you think the parents are going to wake up after the murder of Charlie Kirk?
If you don't base your position on truth, then you're not going to change your position.
When you have evidence.
Evidence doesn't matter.
No, exactly.
So I I don't think it will have that effect.
What might have an effect is those who call Charlie a hate monger when it is so obvious he's not.
If you're somewhat pessimistic about people changing their minds, why are you so dedicated to changing people's minds?
Because I'm not dedicated to changing the majority's minds.
I'm dedicated to changing a relative handful of minds.
And one of those minds was named Charlie Kirk, which is why he wrote a book on Shabbat the Sabbath, Friday night to Saturday night and dedicated it to me.
Because I opened his mind to it.
Also there are three hundred fifty million Americans.
If you just change ten percent, one out of ten, that's thirty-five million people.
It's not a bad work for one life.
What is your comment about those who accuse President Donald Trump as being a fascist?
Well, I'll tell you who started that, Stalin.
When uh Lenin died in nineteen twenty four, there were five people who fought for being the head of the Communist Party,
which meant the head of the Soviet Union, Trotsky, Stalin, Bucharin, Kamenev and Zenoviev.
Stalin either got rid of them or had them flee.
Trotsky fled to Mexico.
Years later, Stalin sent his hand-picked assassins to uh murder Trotsky with an ice pick.
For years he had been calling Trotsky a fascist.
Trotsky had been the head of the Red Army, the communist army, the single greatest creator of communism in the Soviet Union, other than Lenin.
And Stalin called him a fascist.
That's where it began.
If you oppose a leftist, you're a fascist.
The question is not, are you really a fascist?
It's do you oppose a leftist.
And if you do, you're a fascist.
I know that you've been keeping up with the news.
Do you what is your assessment of Donald Trump's accomplishments and actions over the last few months?
It's I marvel at how much he has accomplished.
At how innovative his thinking.
How courageous his decision.
His decision to a bomb the bunkered Iranian nuclear facilities was a staggeringly courageous decision.
It could so have gone wrong.
And engendered tremendous anti-American sentiments.
But it I mean, the more you know about the mission, the more incredible it is that it was successful.
The number of hours in the air with just two pilots, one sleeping and the other flying, then changing roles, refueling in midair, not knowing if the Iranians had any surface to air missiles.
I mean, every everything about it.
It was courage.
And he has an inordinate ability to withstand attacks on him.
It's from the farcical New York state charges against him to all the Western leaders who attacked him.
It bounces off like Superman.
So, Dennis, I'm sitting here and I'm thinking to myself, wow, this man, Dennis Sprager, lives his values.
Everything you've preached, everything I've read and listened to, you're living through right now.
Serving others, completing your books, even sitting here today, and your willingness to get a little uncomfortable and be so visible to the public.
Dennis Spreger is living his values.
Do you think America is living up to her values?
Well, what is it?
Was it Franklin who said it's a republic if you can keep it?
And it is only sustainable by a religious and moral population.
That's correct.
A moral and religious people, right?
We think we can have secular wisdom.
There are secular individuals with wisdom.
But there are no secular institutions with wisdom.
Wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, it says in Psalms.
And that's correct.
There is religious wisdom, but there isn't secular wisdom.
And wisdom is the route to goodness.
Good intentions are not the route to goodness.
Wisdom is we're in trouble.
We send our kids to universities.
And especially prestigious universities.
Where they are taught by teachers with no wisdom.
Hence moral confusion.
And you can have any number of students and professors marching on behalf of what is literally today's Nazis.
The organization called Hamas.
That's really something.
Do you think a return to religion?
What is that?
What is that?
What does it what is a return to religion in America look like?
That's a very good question.
I don't care what how it manifests itself.
As long as it's God based.
Islam?
I wasn't finished.
God based, specifically the God of the Bible.
That is not the same God.
As in Islam.
This is not an attack.
It's just a fact.
Thank you.
That's why we speak of Judeo-Christian values.
We don't speak about Judeo-Islamic values.
Can you talk about Islam in the West?
Charlie talked a lot about Islam in the West this past summer.
Look, there are many wonderful individual Muslims.
But that's not the point.
Nobody denies that.
The conflict between certainly Middle East Islam.
And the West is very, very clear.
And I wrote about it.
Years ago, it's on the internet.
When Angela Merkel decided to open Germany to a million Muslims from the Middle East.
And I said on the radio, why would we bring in people who hate our values?
To live in our societies.
I was unfortunately a hundred percent right.
What did I just hear on one podcast?
A third of British Muslims.
I think this is what I heard.
A third of British Muslims want Britain run ruled by Sharia law.
That's scary.
Those are the ones who admit it.
It might be a completely destructive problem.
This is the biggest challenge to Western values since the Enlightenment.
Any final words before we tune in to the memorial of Charlie Kirk as we sit here today.
I have a lot of final words.
Well, thank you.
Without courage, we have no chance of having the West survive.
Number two, the West is built on Judeo-Christian values.
I'm the creator being the source of unalienable rights.
When that is negated, it is the end of the West.
Thank you.
Margaret Thatcher said that.
We are based on Judeo-Christian values, she said.
When that basis is removed.
The edifice comes crumbling down.
And it might it might come crumbling down.
Like the Tower of Babel.
When they all spoke one language.
They all speak English.
They all speak Brussels.
We may.
We may come crumbling down.
Fourth.
The uh one of the leading editors at Harper Collins.
One of the most prestigious publishing houses still remaining.
Said that this book is the best book about God of this century.
He was referring to my forthcoming book, If There Is No God...
Dot, dot, dot.
The battle over who defines good and evil.
It's all the challenges against those of us who believe in Judeo-Christian ethics.
I hope that people will order it.
If there is no God, it's eminently readable.
And I finished it while in this condition.
That's how that's how committed I was to getting it out.
We have to fight.
Goodness without courage leads to nothing.
I'm sorry to say.
Anyway.
Um, um...
Almost close to saying God intervened, sending you into my life.
But you know I don't know when God intervenes.
But it would seem that way.
God bless you, Marissa.
I don't know where we'd be without you.
And God bless all of you who've written to me.
I've tried to hear as many of the cards and letters and emails as possible, but it's not yet been possible.
Cause the number is so large.
It means a lot to me.
Thank you all.
If it's up to me, these are not your final words.
We're gonna do it again.
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