Dennis Prager, host of the conservative radio show "The Prager Show" joins Jemele to discuss his life as a radio host and how he got started in his career. He also talks about why he thinks he's a little taller than most people and why he doesn't have a shrunken head.
00:02:36.000That the more I spoke real, that's my favorite word, by the way, real.
00:02:41.000The more I spoke real, the more people listened.
00:02:46.000And when I hear talk show hosts often, who are just starting out or even just mid-career, And they have a different way of speaking on the radio than in real life.
00:04:06.000Yeah. Well, you don't have to worry about it because you do a lot of radio, but still, you know, you got your hair and it's going well for you.
00:04:56.000Not all. That's a very interesting subject you raised in general.
00:05:00.000Because I have this odd life of having done the same thing at 21 that I'm doing today, which is publicly speaking, I can tell you a fascinating thing that I never would have predicted.
00:05:11.000When I go to colleges, which I do regularly to speak...
00:05:16.000I obviously know my audience, as you know your audience.
00:05:23.000Young people take me more seriously the older I get.
00:05:28.000With all of the stuff about society's youth mania and youth worship, the fascinating truth is, Bernie Sanders was an example, the fascinating truth is that A lot of people get more credibility with young people as they get older.
00:05:50.000I think some of that is because I think we're finding ourselves more and more amidst generations who don't have those father-son, father-daughter talks.
00:05:59.000I think there's a draw to you because there's a hunger in a market for people who like...
00:06:04.000There's a Dennis Prager-shaped hole in their hearts.
00:06:06.000Yeah, exactly. Speak some wisdom into people's lives.
00:06:09.000You know, seriously, I get a lot of attacks and I get a lot of compliments.
00:06:15.000And one of the compliments that really does mean a lot to me is especially when a guy calls up and says, you're like a father figure to me.
00:06:25.000And I always say, I'm happy for you and I'm happy for me.
00:06:30.000Because every guy needs a father figure, either in his own father or in addition to his own father.
00:06:38.000Yeah, it's true. And every woman needs a father figure unless you want to install a stripper pole in the trailer park.
00:06:57.000It's about relevancy. And I don't necessarily even think it's because you're older.
00:07:00.000I think it's that you maintain relevancy, and I think you've become more and more relevant in this age of identity politics and populism, some form of consistency that people can use as a reference point.
00:07:11.000When I was on Fox News and I was the youngest contributor, I made sure I said, don't ever use my age, because I never wanted to be the young guy who came out, just either my ideas are good or they're not.
00:07:55.000The people who present these videos are some of the finest minds in the world, whether MIT, Stanford, Harvard, the usual gang, four Pulitzer Prize winners.
00:09:51.000I've talked about this on the Joe Rogan Show.
00:09:53.000And your people and the Forward Publishing, Daily Wire people, were the only other people in that room who stood up.
00:09:59.000Everyone was sitting there quietly, kind of nodding, and they gave us a nice lunch and the cheese spread and talked about the new guidelines.
00:10:05.000Fantastic hummus. It was fantastic hummus.
00:10:07.000It was world-class. World-class. Google spared no expense.
00:10:10.000But then I remember I stood up and said, hold on a second.
00:10:11.000We're all here because we're losing our ability to make a living on a platform that you actually advertised to us.
00:10:17.000You advertised to us your platform for us to use your platform exclusively to make our living.
00:12:32.000I understand Israel. Because of these sort of, I guess you would say, Jewish secularists in Silicon Valley who have some sort of fascination with Palestine.
00:12:43.000I don't know what it is. Palestinian feminists.
00:12:44.000It's a big movement. Palestinian feminists.
00:12:46.000They're very anti-Israel. I've known that for a long time.
00:12:49.000But pro-America videos, you notice, get dinged?
00:13:12.000And so wherever people should look at the list, they go to PragerU.com, they could read the whole lawsuit, they could see what's on the list of the 40 that are restricted.
00:13:22.000And again, if it shows America in a favorable light, the chances are it will be restricted.
00:13:29.000When you say you understand the Israel part, not the American part, they're very related.
00:13:34.000One of my books is called Why the Jews?
00:13:36.000It's in third edition with Simon& Schuster, and it's an explanation of anti-Semitism.
00:13:42.000But the interesting thing is, That in the third edition, I showed that anti-Americanism is a variant of anti-Semitism.
00:13:51.000For the exact same reason Jews have been hated, America is hated.
00:14:26.000And just as surely, if I see someone who's patriotic, I go, oh, he's probably at the very least moderate or slightly right of center.
00:14:33.000Yeah. That's right. Well, the giveaway was when Donald Trump gave his speech in Warsaw last year, And said we need to protect Western civilization.
00:14:45.000The New York Times said it was a white supremacist dog whistle.
00:14:55.000Right. Don't tell that to the black and Asian-Americans who've pulled themselves out of poverty in record numbers in comparison to any other civilization in the history of humanity.
00:15:16.000Both critically acclaimed. Both critically acclaimed for different reasons.
00:15:18.000You know, it's funny that you mention that. The Winter Olympics are underway.
00:15:22.000And I've noticed this. Certainly a lot of the American athletes and a lot of these competitors worldwide, when they're interviewed, when they win their medals, they talk about their experience or, you know, my journey.
00:15:32.000And not so much their country, and obviously competing this pride of country,
00:15:38.000or certainly not as it used to be, that America is the greatest force for good.
00:15:42.000I mean, if you look back in the 40s and 50s and 60s, there was a lot of pride.
00:17:16.000Also, the fact that you, as you mentioned, like, listen, okay, here, all the stuff you wanted, we have gay marriage now, the trans people can, you know, they can hop on up to any urinal they want.
00:17:28.000Isn't that a national identity you're proud of compared to people who have enforced abortions in North Korean internment camps?
00:17:33.000You're saying that Kim Jong's sister stole the show at the ceremony.
00:17:36.000How about just relating to the national identity that you've helped create here, modern progressives?
00:18:54.000Franklin D. Roosevelt, the liberal's hero.
00:18:57.000Franklin D. Roosevelt regularly spoke about the need to defend not only Western civilization, but Christian civilization.
00:19:05.000If a president said that today, there would be impeachment, a movement for impeachment.
00:19:11.000Yeah. No, that's an important point to make.
00:19:13.000By the way, also the guy who did the internment camp.
00:19:15.000We were just talking about that. Leftist folk hero, FDR. I'm like, do you guys remember this?
00:19:19.000This wasn't a guy who was necessarily soft on foreign policy.
00:19:22.000Kind of went a little too far, some people argue, in that direction.
00:19:26.000Yeah. But, you know, this is one difference I see from the right and the left.
00:19:29.000They talk about how closed-minded the right is.
00:19:31.000And I talked about this, I think, with Rubin and Rogan, who's like, they say, man, it's political tribalism.
00:19:35.000I go, hold on a second. The right, you can have someone like Dennis Prager.
00:19:39.000You can have Stephen Crowder. You can have Ben Shapiro.
00:19:41.000You can have Milo Yiannopoulos. You can have Andrew Klavan.
00:19:43.000You can have libertarians who want to smoke pot and talk about Bitcoin, but they also want a limited government.
00:19:47.000There are so many different kinds of people who just aren't on the far left.
00:19:52.000Mm-hmm. Including people who hold office, by the way.
00:19:54.000But if you look at the DNC, there is no one on the left who strays from it.
00:20:00.000For example, if Donald Trump comes out and says something that's embarrassing, we have no problem saying, ah, listen, okay, I like his reversal of Mexico City policy, but this was kind of embarrassing.
00:20:08.000I don't see, you know, for example, Mr.
00:20:12.000You don't see them come out and say, well, this is the only option we have.
00:20:15.000But it really is embarrassing that we are down to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, people who don't support freedom of speech, people who don't support the basic right to self-preservation with the Second Amendment.
00:20:25.000I really am ashamed that there is no one in the Democratic Party.
00:21:27.000And I guess, you know, we're using this terminology like liberal, left, right, but put it this way, with the Republican Party, the right wing, listen, I get it.
00:21:33.000The Republican Party, no one in the Republican Party fully represents me, right?
00:21:36.000People always, but the two-party system, man, here's the deal.
00:21:39.000I come from Canada where it's a parliamentary system.
00:21:41.000That really sucks because you can have someone who gets 30-something percent of the vote, doesn't represent even close to a plurality of the nation, and all of a sudden they're running the country.
00:21:50.000So the two-party system, it's like the 10-point must system in mixed martial arts.
00:21:54.000It It's about as close to something that works as we've had.
00:21:58.000That's why you have the primaries. Yeah, that's why you have the primaries.
00:22:00.000But that's a big difference between the right and the left, right?
00:22:02.000I would not be able to, let's say we just got down to a candidate who was a Republican or conservative and say, yeah, I endorse this person wholeheartedly if they were against the Second Amendment, if they were against freedom of speech, if they were pro-funding abortions overseas.
00:22:17.000So when you have these people who are classical liberals who disagree with everything the DNC stands for but they get in line, I just can't relate to it because I wouldn't Right.
00:22:27.000I agree with you. I don't have great respect for liberals, but they're not my ideological enemy.
00:23:52.000Liberals don't want to be a middle ground either because they're the first to eviscerate any black guy who steps out of line of their thinking.
00:23:58.000Look at the Democratic Party, people running through the primaries.
00:24:01.000It's like they all were right in step with each other.
00:24:34.000I wonder if there's another... Well, I talk about this all the time.
00:24:35.000There are other issues. For example, amnesty.
00:24:38.000I can understand the idea of dreamers, right?
00:24:40.000People who are anchor babies. Think about this.
00:24:42.000It's a horrible act for parents to come here and just have a baby so they can stay here and skirt the law.
00:24:47.000But I also understand, of course I'm empathetic to that kid or that young adult who didn't do anything wrong and now they might be facing some form of deportation, something along those lines.
00:24:57.000But then you go, okay, so maybe here we could find some kind of common ground.
00:25:02.000But then you realize the left is against deporting felons from San Francisco and sanctuary cities where we're just saying they're overcrowding our prisons.
00:25:08.000Let's send them back to be tried in their homeland.
00:25:53.000I talk to Republican congressmen often, privately, dinners, etc., And I say, please, if you don't make the case that the Left is destroying the West and America, we have no future, we Republicans. They should teach, if you're running for dog catcher in Missouri, you should be telling people how the Left is destroying everything.
00:26:21.000The Left is telling teachers not to call kids boys and girls.
00:26:26.000Because they can't impose a gender identity.
00:28:03.000We might have bought it if you weren't the person who said in a national address, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, pansexual, and two-spirited.
00:28:10.000If you didn't say that with a straight face, maybe we would have believed that this was a joke.
00:28:17.000You could find the most angry, blue-haired feminist in the United States of America and say, you know, LGBTQAIP. And if you were to go to them and say, what about the number two?
00:28:26.000And the feminist would say, what are you talking about?
00:28:27.000You'd say, two-spirited. The angry, blue-haired feminist would say, don't be a dick.
00:28:31.000Like, it's that silly, and that prime minister used it with a straight face and a national address and tears.
00:28:36.000You know, his popularity, according to polls, is well under that of Donald Trump in America.
00:28:49.000Interesting. When people talk about government-run media, in Quebec, that's basically all we had.
00:28:54.000We had CBC and Radio Canada, which was, you know, it'd be like having PBS, but only PBS. There was no privately funded news.
00:29:00.000When people say, the corporate news, man, I go, hold on a second.
00:29:03.000I understand there are problems, but I understand news is soundbite city and selling self-subricating pocket catheters, and it's obnoxious, but what's the alternative?
00:30:46.000So now we're getting to the realm of philosophy.
00:30:48.000Why do you think it's such a stark contrast that if a dad isn't in a household, it affects everything?
00:30:54.000Everything from graduation rate, likelihood to end up in prison, in a way that is not really comparable to if a mom isn't necessarily around.
00:31:02.000Right. My theory on that, and it's my theory, I don't have data to prove this, but I've lived a long time and talked to a lot of people.
00:31:12.000My theory is that boys are lost without a same-sex model.
00:32:21.000But more dramatically, the male figure And that's why, by the way, that is why, and this is so politically incorrect, that is why God is painted as a he and not a she in the Bible.
00:32:39.000Because if God is compassionate and kind and cares about the orphan and the widow, then a male says, oh, it's masculine to take care of orphans and widows.
00:32:51.000But if it's a goddess who's doing it, That it's not masculine.
00:34:14.000But this is something that I talk about a lot with atheists in the show.
00:34:17.000We have atheists sort of liberals in the show.
00:34:19.000And this argument is often used, well, if I need a God to tell me not to kill or not to steal, then I'm just a horrible person.
00:34:26.000I say, well, hold on a second. First off, there are some societies where that's okay, but here's the deal.
00:34:32.000You may need a God to tell you to be loyal.
00:34:36.000You may need a God to tell you to be nurturing.
00:34:38.000You know, we don't necessarily need a God to tell us what we know are the worst parts of us in humanity, but you do need a God to actually bridle some of these instincts because it's not consistent across societies.
00:34:48.000Right. Well, let me tell you, on April 2nd, the biggest work of my life is coming out.
00:34:57.000Yes. 500 pages, and it's very easily readable because it's many, many, many, many, many, many essays and chapters and thoughts on life based on the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible.
00:35:10.000And it's meant for atheists and believers.
00:35:13.000Because it doesn't ask for any leap of faith.
00:35:16.000But I open up my introduction with exactly your point.
00:35:22.000When I was in my early 20s, I had problems with my parents, which is not exactly novel.
00:35:28.000And nevertheless, though I moved from their house when I was 21, there wasn't a week in my life that I did not call my parents wherever I was.
00:35:40.000The reason I did so was not out of love.
00:35:43.000I did it because I believed God commanded me to honor my father and my mother in the Ten Commandments.
00:35:51.000That is the only reason I called them every week when I had problems with them.
00:35:57.000So the people who say you don't need God or a Bible to tell you not to murder, maybe that's true, although it wasn't true 3,000 years ago.
00:37:15.000It's the great secular-religious divide.
00:37:17.000That issue, that was the first thing I realized doing radio.
00:37:22.000One night on my earliest years of doing radio, I was on at night in the beginning, I had a caller and we were debating about what's the cause of violent crime in America.
00:38:29.000There we go. Did you ever see the article by Ford.com that went viral this weekend, titled, The First Case in the Bible Was the First Case of Hashtag Me Too?
00:38:38.000Oh yeah, I'm reading that to my audience tomorrow.
00:38:43.000It is insane. It is clearly the dumbest piece of writing.
00:43:08.000They're against that. When it comes to stopping their balls from beginning to function, however, all of a sudden we're a little bit fuzzy on the rulebook.
00:43:17.000And I think that's why people are leaving the left.
00:43:19.000We were in Vermont. I don't know if you saw that video.
00:43:21.000We were undercover. And it was What the Health Care?
00:43:23.000Transgender Town Hall. And they were just saying, you know, it's just don't believe the propaganda, the hate speech out there.
00:43:28.000If the child then decides they want to go the other way by meaning the other way, meaning they just want to be their actual biological sex, you stop the puberty blockers and there's no evidence of ill effects.
00:43:39.000So the propaganda from Johns Hopkins, the propaganda from liberal surgeons out there, there is nothing but evidence that puberty blockers are harmful in the developmental stage.
00:44:00.000Johns Hopkins pioneered transsexual surgery, and the guy who pioneered it no longer does it.
00:44:07.000Right. No, see, that's an important point, because when I've talked about it, they say, well, they're notable anti-trans, if you look at Johns Hopkins, and you look at what they support.
00:44:14.000I go, hold on a second. No, actually, there was pioneering going on.
00:44:17.000They were early on it. There were early adopters, and a lot of these early adopters have abandoned it.
00:45:19.000The difference between man and animal, the difference between man and woman, the difference between good and evil, the difference between holy and profane.
00:45:28.000Those are the five, and the left has sought and successfully demolished all five of those distinctions.
00:45:38.000There's no difference between man and animal.
00:45:40.000There's no difference between man and God.
00:45:42.000We are all, as you said it, we are all gods.
00:45:45.000Now there is no difference between man and woman.
00:45:57.000Yeah, that's important to, that's the same reason a lot of people don't like the term intelligent design, because it means that there's a designer.
00:46:05.000An architect. You know, you were early on this.
00:46:07.000I know we've talked about this, but I think it's more important probably now than ever to revisit when there was, I think, was it Cary Prejean?
00:46:14.000It was after the Miss USA or Miss America pageant.
00:46:21.000Anyway, you talked about back then how the reason same-sex marriage is an issue that at least is worthy of discussion and it's not simply hate speech is because—and you differentiated it.
00:46:31.000You said, I don't believe it's comparable to an interracial relationship because I believe a black mother can provide everything that a white mother can to a child.
00:46:40.000Same thing for a black father or white father or Asian father.
00:46:43.000You said, I do not believe that two fathers can provide everything to a child that two mothers can.
00:46:48.000You said the danger here is declaring that women are fundamentally interchangeable.
00:48:05.000I think you answered it. I was going to ask if when you said, I just, I don't believe that men and women are fundamentally interchangeable, that was always your reasoning and your opposition to same-sex marriage.
00:48:13.000I was going to ask if you saw it coming down the pike that the transgenderism was going to become as catastrophic.
00:48:19.000Yes, I wrote it. I... I mean, I'm not bragging, but you asked me, yes.
00:49:28.000I have my notes in front of me because I'm still in my radio studio.
00:49:32.000There was an article in the Daily Mail about how British youth think that big business and right-wing pundits are more dangerous to the world than communists.
00:49:44.000It's mind-blowing. Yeah, the people who murdered 100 million non-combatants in the 20th century.
00:49:51.000Okay? But Tootsie Roll is more dangerous.
00:50:14.000For young people today, we live in a time in which we basically have no future.
00:50:20.000Why would a young person, privileged enough to be at a prestigious graduate school in London, say, I have no future?
00:50:29.000The left has deprived them of so much of the joys of life Including meaning, because secularism doesn't provide meaning.
00:50:39.000I mean, it provides a great, great government.
00:50:42.000I'm for secular government, but it provides no meaning.
00:50:45.000If there is no God, and there is no religion, and there is no Bible, and there is no transcendent, and there is no design, and there is no purpose, then there is no meaning.
00:52:19.000This is an illusion. You're in basically a computer program because they feel as though it sounds intelligent, but it's them trying to give themselves meaning.
00:52:25.000And of course, that leaves you open and vulnerable to charlatans, to intellectual charlatans.
00:52:30.000And I think that's what we've seen full circle.
00:52:32.000Oh! Well, that was another thing I covered in the last month, that there is more belief in voodoo and Africans and astrology among young people today than ever in American history.
00:53:08.000Whether it's what you're talking about in college, intellectually, whether it's dietary, whether it's fitness, whatever it comes down to, there is more bull crap out there today that people buy.
00:53:20.000And smart people. You don't have to be dumb to be vulnerable to this.
00:53:37.000I do believe... I now, by the way, I tell parents, and I swear before God that I mean this seriously, unless your child needs to study mathematics or physics, chemistry, etc., they would do better to go to Prager University for free than to go to Princeton.