Courage and Critical Thinking w/ Brandon Tatum - Sunday Fireside Chat

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Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager, and as you probably know by now, unless it's your first time, this is my fireside chat. My fire, my side, my dog, and Very rarely I have a guest. So when I do, it's a rather special person, as you will find out in a moment.

And Brandon Tatum is extremely well known, which, by the way, in and of itself doesn't mean anything.

As I've always said, the famous are rarely significant and the significant are rarely famous.

But he is famous and significant. That's the point.

Thank you.

I like that.

I'm going to start using that.

Yeah, okay, just quote me.

I will.

No, no, no, it's quite all right.

I give you credit for that, I promise.

So this is a former police officer in Tucson, Arizona, correct?

That's right.

That's where you were in the Tucson police force. And you now produce your own video channel, your own videocasts, podcasts.

You're creating a channel.

Otto is very excited, by the way, 'cause he is not used to guests. It's usually just Otto and myself. He took a liking to you very quickly.

Yeah, I like him too.

You do?

I'll tell him.

I'll tell him. When he wakes up, I'll tell him. Anyway, you're doing really magnificent work, which is why I want more and more people to know about you. So I'm curious, whenever I meet a Black conservative, I have a series of immediate questions. One is, how does your family react to you?

Hmm.

It's very interesting. You know, my mom, she loves what I do. My mom is a— she would consider herself a Trump supporter now, listening to me rant on my videos. My dad is— I'm working on him. I'm working on him a little bit. He seems to be going down the path of conservatism. He cannot stand President Trump at this point. So hopefully, you know, he come around. My immediate family, they're not really engaged in explaining to me whether they like what I do or not. So it's mostly just my mom.

Oh, so you're not getting flak?

They don't say it to my face.

No, I, I could only imagine that they might be getting flack, but not to your face.

I could only imagine they don't like what I'm saying, really, just based on growing up, um, being told to be a Democrat.

And I'm sure they're all Democrat by default, and the things that I say kind of push against the narrative and push against some of the things that they still do, some of the victimhood things that some people in my family still abide by. So I could imagine that they don't like what I, what I say sometimes, but they've never said it to my face.

Dennis Prager, given how much good— let's talk pre-COVID— given how much good has been achieved for Blacks in America under President Trump, even if you hate his guts, why doesn't— we'll take the Black community— why doesn't a Black ask, gee, have I done better under Trump or under Democrats, or, or that, for that matter, Republicans before Donald Trump? What stops a Black from asking this most basic question?

I think it's emotionalism, right? I think a lot of people are driven by emotions. So if they can't connect with these accomplishments that Trump has done emotionally, then they're not gonna accept them as being factual or applicable to their lives. So when you have celebrities come out and they say, "Well, no, he's a racist," that drives a person emotionally to feel some type of way about President Trump, and therefore they can't accept nothing that he does. It doesn't even matter what he does, they can't accept it. And Barack Obama, um, in the community, based on things that happened in the media, things from celebrities like I mentioned before, I think Barack Obama captured a lot of Black people's hearts. And so no matter what he did, even if it was bad, you— they still felt some type of way about, uh, liking President Barack Obama and therefore accepting the things that he did.

So people will go with emotions before their own job.

I believe that they will.

Yeah, I believe so too.

The power of emotion is, is, uh, is very, very disconcerting part of the human condition. Just, I always go into some philosophical thought for a moment.

Okay, so you grew up where?

Fort Worth, Texas. And you moved to Tucson when I was 18.

I was an All-American football player in high school. I got a scholarship to play football and all over the country.

I had a scholarship everywhere, but I decided to play at the University of Arizona.

Coach Mark Stoops was a coach that I liked.

Coach Mike Stoops was his brother.

They were great football coaches.

I decided to go to Arizona and I left my family and became a man.

Did you ever think of trying to be an NFL player?

Yeah, that was my dream. I knew I was going to the NFL 100%.

I knew I was going.

But then it fell apart at some point.

So why?

Well, some of it had to do with the fact that I wasn't mature. I don't think I was mature going to college.

I had a terrible attitude and other things. I think that God had a plan for me different than what, what I thought my life should be. So football didn't, didn't work out the way I planned it.

Well, I will tell you that right now I have such revulsion at the NFL that I have, I have actually asked my listeners not to watch NFL games and not to attend NFL games.

So I want to bounce my, my reasoning off you. I don't understand why one would cheer for people who have utter contempt for them. To be called a racist is about as bad a thing as you could be called. I don't— I mean, maybe child molester is on a lower level, but you'd have to go to child molester to get worse than racist. I'm a Jew. 6 million Jews were killed in the name of anti-Jewish racism. So I loathe racism on a personal level, let alone for Blacks or anyone else. So if you call someone a racist who isn't, you're a scumbag. That's my view.

Just as if you're called a rapist and you're not, or you're called a murderer and you're not.

So why would people— we now have NFL player after NFL player and the NFL commissioner saying all whites are racist, which is one of the most absurd, aside from evil ideas I have ever heard. Why would I root for people who have such contempt for me?

Yeah, I think it's I will never watch the NFL again.

Nobody that I love, I would never direct them to the NFL.

I think these players should be ashamed of themselves and the commissioner because the America—

and this is an American sport, the NFL football, everybody watch it on Sunday and they watch college football as well.

But on Sunday is routine, especially growing up in Texas.

We always watch football.

But for them to show so much contempt and hatred towards the American flag, to disrespect the national anthem is appalling to me.

And I think that people should stop supporting them, withdraw their support.

If you have season tickets— one of my good friends has season tickets to the Arizona Cardinals game for 26 years. He said enough is enough.

So what is he doing with his tickets?

I'm very curious.

Well, he just didn't renew them. He didn't renew them.

Uh-huh.

And, um, I heard a lot of other people quit renewing their tickets as well. But these, these people are shameful. I mean, they are not representing our country well. They're lying to people on a day-to-day basis. They're making millions upon millions of dollars. Even league minimum, you're making almost $500,000 a year, and you don't even have to play on a football field. And they are claiming to be oppressed.

They are claiming that this country is doing them wrong, and I think it's shameful. And I can't watch them. I won't support them. And I'm disgusted by football.

Well, the NBA is not far behind. They're going to have Black Lives Matter painted on the courts.

Wherever Disney owns a stadium, for example, with the Orlando Magic, for example. Can one imagine if some owner decided, you know, well, since we're gonna start painting messages on the court, I would like to say abortion kills. Would the NBA stand for that? I mean, would the country? I mean, can you imagine that?

Yeah, no, they wouldn't.

Well, so why is— why isn't the purpose of sports, the biggest purpose aside from the joy of playing, to unite people in a non-political arena?

Right. I mean, I don't know what's going on. I don't know if it's derangement.

I don't know if it's because of Trump.

I don't know if it's because— I can't put my finger on the reason why they're going down this path.

The NFL lost a tremendous amount of money last year doing the same thing with players kneeling.

Then they tried to, I guess, fix the cause by saying, if you kneel during the national anthem, you're gonna be fined.

And now they're just going full crazy, and the NFL is having players that are promising to kneel. The NBA is doing a similar thing by putting Black Lives Matter on the courtside, and they're gonna lose a tremendous amount of money. And I don't understand why they care more about social justice than they do about revenue and keeping the sport going.

Well, okay, so here is my theory, and tell me, I have no idea if I'm right. So it's Drew Brees, right?

He's the quarterback of the Saints, the New Orleans Saints.

So one, literally in a day, he went from, I just think we should honor our flag. It's a, it's a, it's a symbol of our country. I adore it. To the next day, boy, was I wrong.

I now heard my fellow players' agony.

And boy, was I wrong. It is the best thing to kneel for that flag. And then so on. So here. So what? It's obvious he doesn't believe a word he said, by the way. And if he does, then, then it's, it's even stronger, my theory. What happened?

So I assume fellow players on the team, many of whom are Black, said, hey Drew, you know, I'm sorry, but, uh, you don't, you don't realize how terrible it is for Blacks.

You're, you're tone deaf to what's happening. We love you, man, but you can't say this sort of thing. So do you think that's what happened?

Well, I think some of it, I think Drew had to weigh his options. Do you want to be a Hall of Famer or not?

Do you want your family legacy to be this way or not? Because they're going to destroy you if you stand on that principle. I listened to what he said, and what he said was brilliant.

He not only brought up the fact that he had his grandfather and father or something, or father, grandfather and great-grandfather served in the military.

He also mentioned that we as a country have come together and we have improved the civil rights movement. All of the things that we've done together, we've done it And all of that is represented in the flag and the national anthem. And he didn't say that people shouldn't.

He said, this is the reason why I will not.

And I definitely believe that some players probably came to him, players that he loved, players that he played with, won some games with, say, hey man, you can't say that, it's offensive to me, on top of the mob at the top.

Right. So, so in effect, okay, I didn't think of the Hall of Fame issue.

So What if he had said the next day, you know, a lot of my players don't— or my fellow players don't agree.

Uh, I, I stand by my conviction that that flag represents nobility.

I had relatives who fought for it. They had friends who died for it. I stand by what I said, but it's obvious that it's untenable situation to have a quarterback intention with his fellow players. So I will just be leaving the sport. God bless you all.

What would have happened, man, for conservatives?

I mean, for me, I would have called him a hero.

For you to hold your convictions and say, you know what, I'm not disrespecting the flag no matter what. My respect for this country is bigger than the game of football.

Right. I mean, I think, I think people would have loved him.

I think people would have loved him more.

That's right.

Him doing that. That's right.

And the hate he got.

Um, from standing up for the flag?

Well, it, it's painful. It is painful.

You know, there's no reason you would know this, but for, for decades I have been saying on my radio show and elsewhere that the, the rarest of the good traits is courage. But, and most people don't have courage. But you have to have a certain percentage of your population that has courage, or your civilization dies.

And he had a chance to do something great and blew it.

Yeah, I think there's not just him, there's a tremendous amount of individuals. Barack Obama was one of them, had a chance to do something great. Um, he was the first Black president I think everybody on planet Earth, I mean, I don't know, I wasn't a conservative my whole life, but I would think that everybody was like, you know what, you know, this country has proven to the world that a black man can be a president in less than half a century after Jim Crow, and he could have brought people together. I mean, I see this happen so many times.

Police chiefs around the country have an opportunity to do something great.

Football players, LeBron James, celebrities, all these people have an opportunity to do something great, if they can stand on something, I don't understand why they cower. You know, I've learned that if you stand on principle and you have courage and you have integrity, at the end of the day, you will be on top.

That's correct.

And I've seen it with my own platform.

That is exactly right.

The reason why I have—

I've had so many subscribers and followers and people meet me at the airport saying, you know, I love what you do.

Hey, can I pray for you? I mean, people that that I'm flying to different states that I don't live in is because I stood on principle.

That's right.

That's correct.

In the long run, that, that is what is remembered. Drew Brees won't be remembered now. No, that's, that's exactly right.

By the way, talking about you're walking through airports, do you ever get angry reactions in public?

I've never had an angry reaction in public.

Sometimes I wear my MAGA hat. Never had anybody say anything negative.

I had one threat that was a third-party type of threat.

I was on an airplane, I just left, I think, a Turning Point USA event, and a young lady recognized me.

And I guess the gentleman that was sitting next to her in the back of the plane had made mention that he was gonna have words with me or assault me when he get off the plane. So she walks up to the middle of the plane where I was sitting, and she told me, hey, just so you know, this guy that's sitting next to me, you know, he said he's gonna have words with you when you get off the plane.

I just want you to be safe. And I'm like, Well, good luck to him. You know, I hope you know how to fight. But I get off the plane and I wait.

Maybe he didn't see you standing there. He didn't.

Yeah, I guess he thought I was a 5'5" or something like that.

I don't know what he was thinking. I get off the plane and I wait because I don't want the guy to punch me in the back of the head or nothing.

So I wait for everybody to get off.

You know who the guy was?

She told me because she was sitting next to him, so she was the last one to get off. She ended up telling me, but I waited.

Not one person even looked at me, right?

And, and it was one Black guy that got off the back of the plane. I was like, I wonder Is it that guy? Because I know a lot of Black people hate me for what I stand for.

And sure enough, it was him.

And she go, it was that guy.

And that dude didn't even look at me.

Right, exactly.

For multiple reasons.

But I'm glad he didn't. I didn't want to have to do that.

The reason I asked, it's interesting because I get that question a lot. I get a lot of people come over to me. And never has somebody come over to me— well, once, ironically, in the locker room of my gym.

Oh, no.

Guy started screaming curses at me. And it's a great story because I actually— the second time he did it, I took his photo. Oh, and I told the management, either this guy is kicked out of the gym or I leave. And they kicked him out of the gym that day.

Good.

Yes.

But it's very rare, interestingly, that we get it in person.

Yeah.

On the internet, I am sure you're just inundated with people. So what is it? Uncle Tom? Is that the usual?

Uncle Tom, bootlicker, sellout. They say all kinds of stuff. I mean, I've lost track of all the names that they call me. I hate my race.

I'm a race traitor. I mean, they say some of the craziest stuff.

They say stuff to my wife.

Is—

do you know the last time race traitor was used? That I— and I know my history— was the Nazis used it. If you were anti-Nazi, you were called a race traitor.

Well, you were a traitor to the Aryan race.

So the pedigree of race traitor is evil. It is genocidal evil. So just know that if you're ever called race traitor, ask them, are you a Nazi?

Right.

Because they're the people who coined that term.

Well, even coon.

They called me a coon.

You know, back in the day, Black people were, I guess, the food that they had to eat, which was things that nobody else wanted to eat. The slaves, they had to eat raccoon meat. And so a derogatory term against Black people back in the day was that you were coon because you were, you were so low that you eat raccoon meat. And now Black people call each other that all the time, even the N-word.

I didn't know the origins of it. And Blacks will call Blacks coons now.

They call them coons.

Yeah, you're a raccoon, right?

Okay, well, that— be that as it may.

All right, so I want to remind everybody, this is Brandon Tatum, who's, uh— how long were you a police officer?

6 and a half years. Sorry, 6 and a half.

6 and a half years. And why did you leave?

I think it was a calling on my life. I think God called me to do something different.

Um, it started with a video that went viral about Colin Kaepernick.

And I ripped him. I was in my car in the garage, no AC in my car, I'm sweating, I got my SWAT hat on, and I'm just ripping him a new one for his disrespect of the national anthem and our American flag. And never thought in a million years that video would go viral.

It ended up having 70 million views. A couple online stations reached out to me and the rest is history.

That's right, the rest is history. When you refer a lot to God calling in your life, so I take it you're a Christian?

Yeah.

And were you raised a Christian?

Yes.

Oh, so you, you didn't come to Christ, as it were, later in life?

Well, let me say it like this. Um, we were in the church, but the church wasn't in us. So we would show up, we'll go on Sundays, we'll do the whole religious routine.

You were born again, as it were?

Born again when I was in 2008, when I was in college.

And, and who influenced you, or is it just something you came to on your own?

It was, it was kind of like seeds that were planted when I was younger, you know. Always, God was always in my consciousness, right? And when football didn't work out for me, I mean, it's typically how people find God, is that when things aren't going right in your life, you can— you kind of look to a higher power. So I said, you know what, let me rule God out. I mean, my thought process is I was going to rule God out.

Let me see if he's real, because I'm at a crossroads. And, um, I started to go to church.

That's the first thing I knew.

I'm just gonna go to church and see what's going on.

Went to a few churches, didn't like it. And I went to the church that I got saved in, Emmanuel Grace Apostolic Church.

They hugged me.

I felt like I was at home.

And, uh, was it a mixed race church?

No, it was all black.

Now, do you, do you attend church now?

We just started going to a church in Phoenix, right?

And, and is it mixed race, Black, white?

Mostly white.

Mostly.

It's, it's not all white.

I'm going to tell you something, and I'd love you to react to it. And I always tell people, whenever I've interviewed 1,000 people, 2,000 people, if you differ with me, don't, don't hesitate to say so.

Seriously, it's very important.

Uh, I'm a Jew, but I not but, and I speak a great deal to Christian groups in many churches and elsewhere. And I observe people very keenly. And I would have to say that nowhere do I see Blacks and whites as easy, as in ease with one another and even loving one another as I do with with Christian pastors, that's usually I speak to more than laymen, because they're all Christian, race doesn't matter.

Yeah.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah.

In the Christian faith, there's no white and black, right? Green and brown heaven.

So.

Right. As there isn't. When I studied Judaism all my life in Hebrew and I was taught in third grade in yeshiva, Jewish religious school, is a very famous Hebrew phrase. Why did God create only one person to begin with? And then typical Jewish way of learning, you ask a question and then answer it. To teach us that no one can say my roots are more important than your roots. And Adam had no race. Is Adam black? Is Adam white? Is Adam swarthy? Is Adam Indian? No one gives a damn.

Right.

So now we're told that the ideal of colorblind is racist, right?

Yeah.

It's, it's Orwellian. It's an upside-down world. So when you tell me your church is largely white and the ease and the comfort that you have, or with Black Christians, the comfort that you would have, it's irrelevant, right? Because you share God.

Well, in the kingdom of God, man, there's no race.

That's right.

We're all, we're all children of God.

Yes. End of the day. You're gonna go to judgment and God is not gonna sit up there and say, "Well, you're Black, so you get a special privilege." You're gonna have affirmative action to get into heaven. Affirmative action into heaven. It's not gonna happen up there, so you might wanna practice, you know, while you're here to look at people.

And that's what changed me, was that when I got saved, I was baptized, I was filled with God's Spirit, and all of that race stuff went out the window.

I just let it go.

I felt like God healed my heart from even evaluating people based on race, and it was more like, you know, we all God's children, and I'm gonna evaluate you on the fruits, evaluate you on your character.

And, and I've been like that ever since, and I think that's made me successful in life.

What do you, what do you do with the charge that America is a racist country, systemically racist, all whites are racist?

How do you process that?

I think it's BS, man.

It makes me angry because I know a lot of white people that have been tremendously kind to me, and I don't have that same viewpoint.

And I think it's cheap, and people don't want to have real conversations, so they blanket things as systemic.

Like, they can't point out a racist person or racist institution.

They can't point out the individuals so we can remove them. So what they say is systemic. It's something that we cannot find out, and it can, you know, happen in perpetuity. I think it's a cheap way of not having a real conversation about differences or about things that can be improved. You know, as a Black man in this country for 33 years, and, you know, I've never dealt with racism. I never dealt with any oppression.

You know, everything that I've got in my life came from hard work. And I've had— I never had anybody hold me back unless I was holding myself back.

The main person that can— or the main oppression in this country, in my personal opinion, is in the mind. Into your own behaviors. If you want to live an oppressed life, you want to, you know, project that on other individuals, then go ahead. But if you want to be successful, you got to lead.

All right.

So I just got to ask, because this is a pressing issue now. You're living in a house, not an apartment, right?

Correct.

Okay, here it goes. Does your house have a master bedroom?

Yeah, a master suite is what we got.

It does. It has a master suite.

And I have never— and not one minute—

you don't find that invoking slavery images?

Not one minute have I cared. And, you know, actually, when we buy a house and God bless us to have a bigger house, I want an even bigger master bedroom. That's what I want to tell these individuals.

I can't—

I heard people talking about it.

And is that unbelievable?

It's crazy to me.

No, no, I know.

Like, so my key, the key to my house, the one that's the main key, which is the master key.

Yeah.

I mean, is that—

now, is that going to be a problem?

I mean, people are— they're becoming so ignorant.

Well, you know, I want to just bounce this off you. I think you'll enjoy this. This is— I am working on arguments slash proofs that America is not a racist. I've heard there are racists in it, but it's not a racist society. And one of them is, if it were really racist, you wouldn't have to make up nonsense.

Right?

Right, right.

The nooses will be real.

And two MAGA supporters beating up a Black man in Chicago.

Yes.

Will be a real happening. Or even, even these people, mayors and governors who are getting pulled over by police and claiming things that are not true at all. I mean, you shouldn't have to make it up. It should just be hitting you in the face every day, but it's not true.

What's the— what's the, uh, what is the, um, uh, Driving While Black? What's the story on that? Have you been stopped, uh, disproportionately?

No, I haven't.

And when I was a cop, I never stopped anybody just because of the color of their skin. I mean, if you want to be honest, you can't even see the color of somebody's skin when you're in a patrol car.

Thank you. I I, I'm shaking because I, I argued this though. I have tested myself. Can I really have while driving? Can I see the— certainly behind officers come from behind, right? How could you possibly know unless you maybe— so I even check and I see the person's race in the side view mirror. Well, first of all, 12 hours a day when it's dark, you can't. There's not even a chance. But even then, like I can't even make out most of the people as I pass them.

Right, I mean, because, and you gotta think as a police officer, you're not looking at the person as much as you're looking at the violation, looking at other signs and symptoms on a vehicle, or you're looking at the license plate. I mean, the first thing you gotta do is you gotta run the license plate.

Your first, your eye is not going to the person, it's going to the plate. Okay, everything is good. Driving behaviors, are they good or are they bad?

I mean, it doesn't benefit you to pull somebody over just because the color of their skin. Because anybody that have done any work or service knows that you cannot paint everybody with a broad brush.

If you only pulled over Black people, you are missing a tremendous amount of drugs, you're missing tremendous amount of DUIs, right?

And you're not going to be a successful—

by the way, for the record, for those on the left monitoring all of my utterances, I do not deny that on occasion there are indeed racist cops.

Of course there are. There are racist doctors, racist lawyers, racist plumbers, racist ballplayers.

There are bad people in every group, but that this is quote-unquote systemic is just difficult to believe ipso facto in the logic of itself because it's not easy to know the race of the driver. I just wanted to bounce that off you. So imagine you could speak to every young Black in America. For a half a minute or a minute, what would you say?

I would say stop believing the lie.

These people are gonna get you killed. You know, treat the police officer the way you want to be treated. If you don't want people painting you with a broad brush, you don't want individuals looking at you and projecting something on you because of what another black man did, then don't do that with the police officer. Give them a fair shake. Because a person killed somebody in Minneapolis, that does not mean that the police officer that's dealing with you today is here to kill you. Also, hold yourself accountable first. I don't want to hear any excuses. If you're going over the speed limit, you get pulled over.

I don't want to hear any excuses about you getting pulled over, harassed because you're Black. If you're following the law, I can—

I'll stick with you.

But if you're breaking the law, I don't want to hear any excuses.

Well, you were an officer for, for 6 years, you said?

6 and a half.

Yeah.

So, uh, a lot of your fellow officers were white, obviously.

I just assume most of them were white.

How did you find them as people?

Great people.

I feel like police officers are exceptional. They're not just average people.

You have to be exceptional. You have to be dedicated.

You have to have integrity.

All of those things.

You have to make it through the academy and also field training, which I train new officers on the department.

So you can't just be a regular person, just, you know, run-of-the-mill individual. So most of the people that I knew were exceptional. They're willing to put their lives on the line for other people that they did not know.

And many of the police officers that I worked with, they had families.

I knew their families. I knew their little kids, some of them, you know, freshly born and go to work every day and willing to risk it all for people that don't— could care less. And there were some great people that cared about our service, but there's a lot of people who could care less about us or even their own lives. And to see somebody be able to put that uniform on and do that on a day-to-day basis, I mean, that's an exceptional individual.

Do you get a chance to talk to young people live?

I mean, obviously with the virus it's not possible. What is it, Otto? Is everything okay? Well, he's really, uh, I think, uh, he's worked up by the subject. Yeah, it's, it's intense.

His, uh, his brown body is getting— I don't know if he's triggered by the police officer. If he had black in him, I'll say black and brown body, but No, no, no, I understand.

Yes. See, dogs are colorblind, right? Which is really— we got to teach them, right? It's not to be. It's exactly right.

So do you get a chance to speak to young people?

I do a lot on my live stream. The last live stream I did had 10,000 people watching at one time for almost 2 hours. Um, I do speak at universities all around the country.

I think you should get to universities. I, I think it would be a really healthy thing Yeah, if, of course, they would even allow it. Well, you are the worst for them. I mean, we who are not Black and a conservative— and I say not Black, not even white, because Dinesh D'Souza is Indian American, not Native American, Indian, India— and they hate his guts. So, but so he doesn't— but he doesn't pose a threat even though he's not white like, like, like you would.

That the—

there is no hatred like the hatred of a black conservative.

Yeah.

I mean, the thing is that I check a lot of boxes to tear down the infrastructure or the brainwashing that they push through mainstream media. You know, I grew up in, you know, a variety of— variety of areas, but I grew up in the hood in Fort Worth, Texas. But I became a police officer. I obviously played college football. I mean, I've done a lot of things. I was a Democrat before.

Now I'm a conservative.

I've been to the White House 5 times.

Like, if I were to go out and tell my story, I think that it would resonate with a lot of young people and they will begin to connect and they'll connect the dots and see that, you know what, maybe I'm being lied to.

But you have to overcome what apparently is a very powerful drive which the, the left creates, like, like coal miners create coal or bring out coal.

They bring this out, and that is two things which are very destructive: anger and victimhood. And the irony is everyone who is angry and everyone who thinks he's a victim is an unhappy human being. So just on the happiness issue, why would one want to be angry and consider him or herself a victim? Do you have a theory on that? It's a very hard question. I'm not even sure I have an answer. I know I have the question.

I think a lot of people are insecure, right? I mean, they're, they're afraid of being great. They're afraid of taking accountability for their own actions, especially when they've made poor actions. And so if you were able to look at all of your failures in life and you feel the pain of your failures, but you can divert that attention to somebody else, and then you can, you can change that into righteous anger against the other person, then you alleviate that stress on yourself.

And most people would like to dodge stress and dodge their own failures than to face them head on.

And I think that that's the difference between people who are successful and people who are not. If the people who are successful, they say, you know what? The pain of what I've done or the things that my parents have done that put me in this position. I'm going to face them head on.

I'm going to work hard and I'm going to work myself out of this because I'm in a country that gives me that ability. And I think that a lot of people are gullible. A lot of people are sheep.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of leaders in this country, in the world in general, and people who have a leader like a, I guess, a an ability to lead, if they are leading without integrity or they're leading without a godly mentality, they are leading and taking advantage of people. So you see these far-left liberals who are very articulate, who are up in the food chain, they are using their opportunity to brainwash other individuals to keep them at a lower position. It takes real strong leaders like yourself and I and to actually speak to people and to get them on a separate idea, an idea of prospering and being successful.

So you'll— I think you'll enjoy— I have a, uh, concise theory. There are unhappy conservatives and unhappy liberals, or unhappy leftists. And the difference is the unhappy conservative says life is hard for everybody, so some harder than others, obviously.

But life is built in difficult. I, and I have made mistakes. So I look at life, I blame life, and I blame myself. The leftist who is unhappy says, I blame America. And that's really what it amounts to. And for some reason, that's appealing.

Yeah, it's a theory. It's a theory that I learned in my master's degree class for business leadership is internal locus of control and external locus of control.

And so internal locus of control is obviously people can look within themselves to find out how, how can I prosper, or how is my life being projected. It starts with me.

The external is that no, it starts with somebody else. It's because my mom didn't get an education, that's why, or because systemic racism, that's why, versus saying no, at the end of the day it comes down to me.

You know, if I just would have applied myself in high school like I know I should have, instead of running around with the kids that my mom told me not to run with, I would have had a better education, or I would have had better grades. I could have gone to college if I would have just applied myself. Even on a job that I had, if I would have just gone on time every day and worked hard, I've been successful.

And yeah, some people are afraid to admit that that's the issue.

Before I go to some questions from, from some of the Prager Force young people for either or both of us, you said that your, your dad, your mom is on board with you.

Your dad is, is not fully on the other side and not fully with you. And the reason is largely Donald Trump, whom you said he considers a racist. On what, if you would say to your dad, or maybe I as a stranger just said, so Mr. Tatum, uh, why do you say Donald Trump is, is a racist? What would he answer?

Well, so I don't know if my dad specifically is caught up in the racist element.

Oh, I thought you had mentioned that earlier, that, that your dad thought he was a racist, but okay.

I don't think my dad thinks he's a racist.

I think my dad is struggling with his leadership and character.

My dad brought up a point of at some of these press conferences of COVID-19, how it seems to be disgruntled, you know.

I mean, this person talking, this person talking, and they contradicting each other.

And my dad was a retired fire chief in Waco, Texas, and he's, you know, he's a squared away guy, and he don't like Donald Trump's leadership style. Now, my dad is also not being fair, in my personal opinion, evaluating his accomplishments.

So outside of the character that you don't like, he's not given his accomplishments a fair shake, in my personal opinion. So I've talked to him plenty of times about Trump.

And so he would not say he's a racist?

I don't know.

I don't think he'd say Trump is.

So do you know the answer that I have never gotten a clear answer? I read all the attacks. I read more on the left than I read on the right. I've never gotten the evidence for his being a racist. Do you know what is generally raised as proof? I don't know.

I know what's raised as proof. I mean, it's ignorant and it's baseless.

It's the good people on both sides, Charlottesville argument.

Right. Which, by the way, we have a video at PragerU showing that's a lie. He never said that. He doesn't believe there were good Nazis.

Right.

By the way, it just is such an obvious proof. His children and grandchildren, his daughter and son-in-law and his grandchildren are Jews.

Right.

The man would have to be beyond— he would have to be a lunatic. I like people who want to kill my grandchildren.

Right.

That's what he would be. That's what we are accusing him of actually saying.

Yeah. I mean, they bring up other stuff like when he said, you know, asshole countries, which is still to this day not verified.

Well, the left says America is an asshole country.

Exactly.

And I guess that's the irony, right?

And so, I mean, I've never—

I have never seen any, any unequivocal proof or any good argument to say that President Trump is a racist. Because before he's the president, nobody ever alluded to the fact— nobody on a large scale alluded to the fact that he was a racist. I mean, he's seen in pictures with everybody.

He loves everybody, and everybody loved him before he's running for office and became the president.

Yeah, I, I— it's, it's, it's just a lie.

Okay, let's see.

So we're going to go to a video question, which I always do with the fireside chats. And the magic press never works on the first shot. Sometimes doesn't work on the second.

Ah, third time's a charm.

Third time is a charm. I know that for many reasons. Okey doke, here we go.

So I'm Spencer Shriner from Indianapolis, Indiana, and Obviously beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana, 75 and sunny year round. And I have really one pressing question I think everyone's thinking about during this time of trouble, and it's, would you rather spend a night in Chazz or spend a night at a feminist film festival?

Thank you.

Did you catch that?

Yeah.

Well, I'd say if I want to live, I'll probably at the female Festival, Feminist Film Festival, right? Um, because Chaz seemed to have the highest murder per capita of Black men in, in the entire country.

So I wouldn't want to be in the Chaz zone for sure.

I'm with you, but I'm not—

you don't have to be Black to answer that.

I'd rather be at a Feminist Film Festival because, uh, in Chaz I would be worried about survival. And at the Feminist Film Festival, if it's a comfortable theater, I could, you know, have popcorn and take a nap and it's not a problem.

You may have some people screaming at you about the patriarchy and all that stuff, but—

Yeah, the patriarchy.

Well, that's like systemic racism, right? What does it mean, patriarchy?

Yeah, yeah.

60—

what is it, 60%? We're approaching a 60-40 ratio of females to males in college, and it's still called a misogynist patriarchal society, right?

You wouldn't even talk about the teachers who are teaching kids especially in grade school, are primarily female.

Overwhelmingly.

Overwhelmingly.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

Well, if evidence determined people's outlooks, almost everyone would be conservative, right?

Or at least no one would be left. Some people would still be liberal.

Chloe, 17, North Carolina. Mr. Tatum.

Oh yes. What was your real awakening from the leftist propaganda pushing the false narrative of oppression of African Americans?

What was my awakening? I think the biggest—

my awakening came from Barack Obama pushing a false narrative against police officers, which I saw manifest.

Very interesting.

Yeah, I saw it manifest because you got to think, I was a cop.

Everybody's conservative.

I'm a Democrat. And all of my friends on SWAT team were like, dude, you're not a Democrat. You're not a Democrat. Look at your Christian values. Look at all these things. And I'm like, no, no, I'm a Democrat. I may not agree with this, but I agree with that. But then after a while they go, look at your boy, look at Obama, look at what he said about these police officers, look at what he's doing out there, and our job is becoming increasingly more dangerous.

And I said, you know what, I can never support anybody that won't stand up for the men and women that wear the uniform. And I said, I could never, I could never support him again, or anybody else that's associated with that mentality. And for the first time in my life, I said, well, let me see what the Republicans have, because The Democrats are far gone. And so that was pretty much my—

that's where it started, right? That, that makes a— makes a great deal of sense.

So, uh, what's your take on defunding police forces?

Yeah, I think it's the dumbest thing ever in mankind history.

I mean, they don't really— the thing is that it's not just to defund. They want to eliminate the police, but it sounds so radical and stupid that they have to then say, no, we just want to defund, but they can't explain what are they going to defund. Are you going to cut pensions? Are you going to cut the child sex unit?

Are you going to cut domestic violence?

What exactly are you going to cut from the police department that's going to keep your community safe?

So answer this one. Did you— were you ever called in in a domestic dispute?

I lost count.

I mean, okay, fine, good.

So they say, why do we need police to go for a domestic dispute? We could send a social worker. What's your answer to that? Because I don't— I have an answer, but it's not based on any experience. You have an experiential answer.

Right.

If you, if you want to be vicariously responsible for the death of a social worker in a domestic violence situation, then go ahead and send them in there. Domestic violence calls are the most dangerous calls that police officers go on because people turn. When you go to the house, the woman could be beat up and her husband could be sitting there. When you go to arrest him, she— her feelings change, and then it becomes a violent situation, or he leaves and comes back.

That's the most dangerous call to go to.

But people who have never policed in a day in their life, never done a ride-along, they have no idea what they're talking about. And so they're gonna get these people hurt or killed.

You have to not only be trained to deal with an individual, but you need to have the tools on your toolkit just in case it goes south because talking doesn't work for everybody. And so I hope people realize that.

That's right. It seems to me to be very naive.

Raghav, 22 years old, Gorakhpur, India. How can we win this cultural war by canceling the cancel culture?

Will America be a meritocracy system with second chances as it used to be? Well, Ragav, first, I'm glad you're there. Been to India 4 times, by the way. I love visiting, love visiting India.

America is, to people like you, is the beacon of freedom on Earth.

It's why the French gave America the Statue of Liberty and no other country. And the left, which has never supported liberty ever— liberals do and conservatives do— the left has always destroyed liberty. There is no exception to that. If you love liberty, you're not on the left. So, uh, our battle, Raghav, is your battle. You are entirely right. If America fails, if the left brings this country down, and it is very possible it will If it does, the amount of cruelty on Earth that will ensue will mean a new dark ages in human history. If you want to comment on that, that's fine.

If not, we'll go to—

Perfect what you said.

Perfect.

I couldn't have said it any better.

So fair enough.

Okay.

Noel, 21, Eastman, Georgia.

How do we educate people about issues like BLM, abortion, etc., even though our social media posts will most likely be reported and taken down.

What would you say to that?

I think sharing— see, this is the thing, and I have to say this, and this could be a level of Black privilege that I have, but when, when African-American or Black conservatives speak on certain topics, I haven't had any of my videos taken down.

Not, not one of them. And people have a hard time calling me a racist.

It's very difficult.

Or white supremacist. You know, believe it or not, they have a hard time doing that.

So I think what young people can do, if you happen to not be Black, is share some of the information from Black conservatives. Therefore, it'll open up an opportunity to have a conversation. It will not be taken down, and it's very hard for somebody to deem that conversation as being racist. So I think that we all have to work together in ways that we can and pushing,, you know, some of the messaging forward because it is very hard as a white man or a white young man, woman in America to give your statements.

And that's why we all need to come together and put out the positive information.

That's right. Also, you just gotta keep doing it. We have to inundate the internet with goodness, kindness, and all, all the good things that we stand for.

They stand for bad stuff.

The left is bad. And when people understand that, you, you have a choice in life. Do you cower to the bad, like Nike and Amazon? In fact, virtually every major corporation who, uh, there's a contest in America. Who are the biggest cowards? College presidents or heads of big business. It's a very tough competition, but they're almost all competing. So you know, you, you have a choice, and it's a tough one, I admit it. It really is a tough one. Do you fight or not?

I took a vow.

You'll find this touching because I went to Normandy Dennis Prager many years ago, and I was very moved. Thousands of crosses, virtually all of them, you know, late teens, early 20s, horrible death on Normandy Beach fighting the Nazis.

And I looked at them and I took a vow, and I did, and I don't often take vows. And I said to myself, if these guys could die to preserve America and preserve liberty, the least I could do was live I'm not, I'm not asked to die, to live to preserve America and liberty.

And that's, that's what you have to do. They take it down, you put another one up.

And, and that, that's just the way it is. And, and you confront them. You take it down because you can't answer me.

That's why you're the villain, not me.

Want to debate? I'd love to debate you. Why don't you debate? Why do you only smear? That's all the left does is smear.

I'm sure you get a lot of smears.

Yeah, yeah.

But I look at it like this.

You're planting seeds.

That's right.

You got to remember, you're not going to convert everybody overnight.

And just like the gospel or whatever, you're not going to convert people overnight.

You just keep putting that information out there. Just keep putting it out there. Even if, even if you change one person, you may change the next president, you know. So keep putting it out there and over time other people will water it, you know. You know, maybe they'll hear me or they hear somebody else or they'll have their own experiences with the left. That make—

that turns them off.

And then eventually all of those seeds will begin to sprout in a person, and, and they may change. 20 years, 30 years, they may never come back and tell you, but you've made an impact, and you know you have if you're actually planting the seeds.

That's correct. We have to plant seeds.

All right, final question here. Sadie, 16 years old, Mason, Michigan.

What do you think of the people who painted over the BLM mural getting charged with a hate crime.

You have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I thought it was horrible. I mean, why would, why would you charge them with a hate crime? I don't understand.

I don't understand that. It's such hypocrisy, because if you are going to say that BLM, that painting on the ground that, that means nothing, you know, it's just paint on the ground, you're going to say that that is worthy of a hate crime But what about when they spray paint and they destroy all the monuments? I feel like that that is hateful as well. I feel like that's disrespectful to the founding fathers.

I'm sure I just was on the record.

I think that tearing down a statue of George Washington or Lincoln who liberated slaves is a bit more hateful even than a movement which is a very hateful movement.

Right.

The concept that Black Lives Matter is not hateful, but the movement with that name is. Also, what if somebody erased a, you know, abortion is murder?

Some—

there was somewhere painted abortion. If somebody erased that, would they be charged with a hate crime?

They wouldn't. Let me—

I'll tell you this. I'll tell you this.

Two things. If somebody put White Lives Matter on that same street, right underneath or next to Black Lives Matter, people will destroy it and do all kinds of things to it and nothing will happen.

Yeah.

And they should be equally set.—

or more even pertinent, Blue Lives Matter.

Right.

Even in Arizona, in Tucson, the mayor of Tucson will not allow there to be a Blue Lives Matter painting. It's just, I think, a blue line painted in the front of the police station, but they will allow Black Lives Matter to be painted everywhere.

And they have an intersection—

Really?

They have an intersection, an LGBTQ intersection that they painted rainbow colors and they won't let you put a blue line in front of the police station. It's shameful.

And I'll say this about the statues, because I think people are not rationalizing this.

They taking down, tearing down all these statues. Police aren't doing anything. Nobody's really standing up for anything.

I think the president, obviously, he's trying to do his best.

But if they were to go and tear down Martin Luther King's statue, do you think that the police would not intervene? Do you think that people wouldn't say anything? Do you think that people wouldn't be swiftly arrested, taken to jail, and probably bludgeoned?

By a crowd of individuals.

And so what is going on with the hypocrisy? You shouldn't take down any monument because I'm just as upset you taking down Lincoln as I am if you took down Martin Luther King. You shouldn't do it.

It's against the law, for starters, and it's burning books.

You would say they trying to erase history, and I think it's shameful.

You're a good man.

You're a good man. I'm learning for good men like you.

So it's very sweet of you to say, but you are.

And you, you give people hope. I am asked now more often than any time in my life, Dennis, is there reason for hope for America? And there are thousands and millions of reasons. The good people who don't buy the lies and the evil that surrounds us. But a handful are called, apparently, and you're one of them. And I have no reason to say this other than to encourage you and to let you know of this special man. So God bless you.

Thanks. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

It was a joy. So see you next week.

Dennis Prager here with Brandon Tatum, the fireside chat tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

I love your show and I really respect your opinion, so I want I wanted to ask you, maybe I just haven't heard you talk about this much, but I'm needing to know more information about how you can let your husband know that you understand his male sexual nature without giving him permission to act on it.

Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. We want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. Go to LifeAudio.com to find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network, including shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.