Don’t Tread on Me

Dennis Prager here. Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast. To hear the entire 3 hours of my radio show commercial-free every single day, become a member of PragerTopia. You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives as well as the daily show prep. Subscribe at prageropia.com.

If I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song. I will try not to sing out of key.

Hello everyone, and welcome to The Dennis Prager Show. It is Wednesday, August 30th, 2023. My name is Julie Hartman. I am the host. Of the Dennis and Julie Show, or I should say the co-host of Dennis and Julie alongside Dennis Prager. That premieres every Monday on the Salem News Channel. And I am also the host of my own 3 times weekly show, Timeless with Julie Hartman, which is on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays on the Salem News Channel. You can also catch those 2 shows, Dennis and Julie and Timeless, on the Julie Hartman YouTube page. And of course, You can download them on Apple and Spotify. It is great to be with you. To begin this morning, we're going to talk about a 12-year-old Colorado student who on Monday was kicked out of class for having a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack. For those who don't know what that is, the Gadsden flag patch, it is the Don't Tread on Me flag that sometimes you see flying around the United States. According to the school district which kicked this child out of class, that Gadsden flag is only flown in Trump 2020 flag-flying white supremacist neighborhoods, which is obviously a lie and not to mention insulting. So this story I think provides a pretty apt synopsis of the state of American education for two reasons. First, the teacher who kicked this boy out of class falsely said that the Gadsden patch had, quote, origins with slavery. That is not true. This patch was actually made in the 1770s during the American Revolution, and the slogan, don't tread on me, was intended to be a message to the British that the American American colonists who were rebelling against their rule were no longer going to put up with the British treading on them. So that is the first thing that reveals the state of American education, because it is very common nowadays for the content in schools to be taught incorrectly. And then the second reason why it says kind of everything you need to know about the state of our country's school system is that in addition to teaching the wrong content, students are being politically persecuted. There was another story in Massachusetts just about 3 or 4 months ago where a young 12-year-old boy, Liam Morrison, was also sent home from school because he dared to wear a t-shirt that said, "There are only 2 genders." So this is in ever-growing phenomenon in our country. But let's go here to this article I'm reading from American Greatness. On Monday, so 2 days ago, very recent, a Colorado Springs charter school removed a middle school student from class for having a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack, alleging falsely that the patch had origins with slavery. A video circulating on X features a Vanguard School administrator explaining to 12-year-old Jaden and his mother why the boy was pulled from class. The confrontation has gone viral and due to negative publicity, this is great news, the boy was allowed to have the patch in place when he returned to school on Tuesday. That is totally the right strategy. What happened is that Jaden and his mother were so outraged by Jaden being sent home from school that they went public with this clip. They were on Sean Hannity on Fox News. I believe that they also spoke with Tucker Carlson, or at the very least, Tucker Carlson covered this story. That is the right approach. When something insane happens, whether it's in your child's school or in your workplace, you have to go public with it. That is the only way that we are going to expose the rot of wokeism and try to get it unraveled. You know, this past Monday, in addition to being the day that 12-year-old Jaden was sent home from school, also marked the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the famous "I Have a Dream" speech. In addition to Martin Luther King's great activism, nonviolent activism, the thing that ended the racist Jim Crow laws in the South was the fact that Americans were seeing the discrimination against Black people on their televisions. The start of cable TV, or at least the popularity of cable TV in the '50s and '60s, in contributing to the civil rights movement cannot be underestimated. It is because people started taking video of Black people in the South being hosed down by police officers, having dogs unleashed on them, and in the court of public opinion, the Jim Crow laws and other racist measures that were present in the South no longer became acceptable because people were seeing with their own eyes how disgusting it was. That is what we need to do now in this arguably new civil rights era in our country. We need to go public, show video, send audio of a teacher berating a student. So I just thought that was interesting that on the same day that this child was sent home was the same day that Martin Luther King delivered that speech. Similar lessons can be gleaned from both of those experiences. Continuing from American Greatness, this is a quote from the school administrator. The reason that we do not want the flag, the reason that we do not want the flag displayed is due to its origins with slavery and the slave trade. The Gadsden flag, the surprised mother responded, to which the administrator replied, the Don't Tread on Me flag. The mother asked what would happen if Jayden removed the patch, and the staffer answered flatly, the bag can't go back if it's got the patch on it because we can't have that in and around other kids. They're talking about this patch like it has cooties, like if you get within 5 feet of it, you are going to get a highly contagious deadly flu. We can't have this around other children lest they get infected with the imaginary bigotry of the Gadsden flag patch. Excuse me. The mother shot back, yeah, it has nothing to do with slavery. I love this. The mother is teaching the teacher. That's like the Revolutionary War patch that was displayed when we were fighting the British, huh? Thank you, Jayden's mother. For teaching basic elementary history to an elementary school teacher. The administrator responded, I am here to enforce the policy that was provided by the district. This is such cowardice. It's not me who's doing this, even though I'm the one who sent the child home. It's a policy. I'm just hiding behind the policy. The mother and son pointed out that other Vanguard kids— Vanguard is the the school in Colorado, are allowed to have other various patches on their backpacks. That's exactly right. I bet that there are students at that school who have come in with Black Lives Matter patches or pride patches or even t-shirts with those symbols. Why is that okay? You know, arguably, Black Lives Matter Not just arguably, I mean, it's pretty evident Black Lives Matter is far more offensive of a flag than the Gadsden flag. Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization which advocated for uprooting the Western prescribed notions of the nuclear family. The Black Lives Matter organization has accumulated billions and billions and billions of dollars that has gone absolutely nowhere to places that would actually help Black people. They purported to raise this money for bail funds and for scholarships and for public school funding, and what we have found out is that it has actually gone into the pockets of the founders so that they could buy $6 million mansions here in Los Angeles. Those billions of dollars were also used to— actually, they were used for bail funds, but they were used to bail out violent rioters who set buildings aflame. Those riots in 2020 killed 25 people, many of whom were Black. But the Black Lives Matter flag is okay. I bet you there would be no issue. But the Gadsden flag, oh yes, that is bigotry. How about the pride flag? You know, pride no longer represents tolerance of those with different sexual identification. It represents a movement that seeks to condone the genital mutilation of young children in the name of so-called gender-affirming care. Is that offensive? Would that flag be allowed in schools? I bet you it would. 1-800-776-1877, 243-7776. Back in a moment.

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Triple G has notified me that we actually have a clip of this recording of the administrator telling 12-year-old Jayden, the Colorado student, that he could not wear the Gadsden flag patch on his backpack. I just want to play a minute of the video for you so that you can hear this. And for those of you who are watching the show on the Salem News Channel, you will see that this boy is so polite. He's clean-cut, he has a nice shirt on, and he's sitting there, you know, with his hands clasped together, and he's just nodding and taking it in. Incredibly dignified and polite. He didn't say anything like, come on, this is ridiculous, what the heck is going on here? He handled that with such class. His mother should be proud. Let's hear a minute of this clip. Oh, thank you. Do they know what the Gadsden flag is, that it's a historical flag? So they're— the reason that they do not want the flag, the reason we do not want the flag— that's the administrator speaking— is due to its origins. With slavery and slave trade. That is what was, um, that's the reasoning behind that. The Gadsden Block, the Don't Tread on Me, which is the Gadsden Block. Um, okay, so he, he, um, he's— what's gonna happen if he doesn't take it off? He, I mean, he is able to go. I was actually just telling him, like, I was upset that he was missing so much school. I'm like, ah, so I asked if can he just take his stuff out of his bag and go back to class? Like, I just wanted to go back to class. The bag can't go back. It's got patch on it because we can't have that in and around other kids. So that's what I was trying. And then he said you were close. So I was like, oh yeah, it has nothing. It's amazing that this administrator is saying, you know, I hate that he's missing school. He's missing school because of you, my friend. Or not my friend, my enemy. All right, reading, continuing from American Greatness. The head of the school told Jaden's mother that the patch was, quote, disruptive to the classroom environment and that the boy was welcome to return to class on Tuesday, but only if he removed the patch. Okay. Because of its creator's history and because it is commonly flown alongside Trump 2020 flags, The Confederate battle flag and other white supremacist flags, some may now see the Don't Tread on Me flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate or even racism. Oh gosh, we could spend the entire 3 hours on that quote. Okay, so many lies in that one sentence, but they're saying that Trump 2020 flags are white supremacist flags. How is that not political persecution? So half this country are white supremacists, really? And then I love this, this line here. Some may see it as a symbol of intolerance, hate, or even racism. Welcome to the tyranny of the minority. If one person is made to feel uncomfortable by that flag, the entire school has to go along with that person's preferences. This child has to be sent home, as the administrator said, He loses out on learning because this one person may, in a hypothetical world, be uncomfortable. So this, this is interesting because let's look at these four adjectives that were used to describe this patch: disruptive, intolerant, hateful, and racist. We live in a world where there is such a profound assault on truth. And what comes alongside that assault on truth is an assault on the objective meaning of words, because that's basically another way of saying the truth, that words hold an objective, truthful meaning. You know, when people say, well, what's the harm of calling a man a woman or a woman a man? What's the harm of saying words are violent? This is the harm, because when words lose their objective meaning, the rules and the standards that are associated with those words also lose their objective meaning, and then all havoc breaks loose. There is this standard in American public education. It was established in a Supreme Court case in 1969. The case is called Tinker v. Des Moines, Iowa School District. and it dealt with the fact that students came to class wearing Vietnam War or anti-Vietnam War wristbands, and they were asked to remove those wristbands. And this case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and the court established what's called the Tinker standard of regulating speech in schools, because they had to balance the fact that sometimes it is necessary and even good to regulate speech in schools for disciplinary reasons, but also respecting the fact that students have First Amendment rights. So they established this standard, which essentially says that students have a right to express political speech, wear shirts, wear backpack stickers, wear wristbands, as long as that speech is not disruptive to the classroom, and does not infringe on the rights of other students to learn. So here we see that this school district in Colorado is saying that Jaden's backpack patch is disruptive. And so if we are now calling a backpack patch disruptive, then it means that they can lawfully tell Jaden to go home and get rid of it because the Tinker standard says that they have a right to censor speech that is disruptive. Disruptive. Once the objective meaning of words change, then that paves the way for the objective meaning of rules and standards associated with those rules to change. Another story that we will cover in this hour is this Spanish soccer league craziness where this, um, the head, I believe it was, of the Spanish soccer league went up and kissed one of the female players after the Spanish female soccer team won the World Cup. This kiss, which by the way, I do not condone. You shouldn't kiss someone if it is unwanted or without their consent. But this kiss is now being called sexual assault. And this man who planted the unwanted kiss on the female soccer player is under criminal investigation for sexual assault, which in Spain, as in the United States, carries prison time as a potential punishment. Another perfect example of the way that if we change words, then we change the laws associated with those words. Because now if a kiss is called sexual assault, then you can be prosecuted or brought to trial for alleged sexual assault if you kiss someone. This is very scary. That is why conservatives make such a fuss when words are used improperly, because it leads to a slippery slope. And by the way, this is going to affect all of us. There are going to be many people, we're already seeing it happen, who are going to be fired from their jobs or sent home from school for supposedly being disruptive or racist when they're not. We have calls, we'll take them in the next segment. 1-800-PRAGER-776, 1-877-243-7777. 6. I'm eager to hear your reactions. Back in a moment.

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Welcome Welcome back to the Dennis Prager Show. I'm Julie Hartman, your guest host for today. We are discussing the fact that this 12-year-old boy in Colorado was sent home from school on Monday for wearing a Don't Tread on Me patch on his backpack. The school said that he had to remove it in order to return to school. He and his mother went public with a recording of the administrator admonishing him. And the public outrage over this incident led to the school allowing Jaden to come back with the patch on his backpack. I should also note that the school announced that they would be canceling parents' night due to, quote, unforeseen circumstances. Clearly, they do not want to face some questions about this incident. Let's go to Steve in Chicago, Illinois. Hi, Steve. Thanks for calling in.

Yeah, Julie, thanks a lot. So here's where I'm going to part company with you. Okay. Whatever happened at school in Colorado sounds ridiculous. Okay. But you beat it like a dead horse 1,000 times to make it sound as if this is commonplace. You talk about transgender issues and Dennis Prager does it nonstop. And what you do and the way to deceive people Okay. Which is what I think you and Dennis do, is to omit from your discussions and your narrative other information that would make what you're saying completely false. Okay.

What is that information that we are omitting?

I'll tell you. I'll tell you guys, you guys beat this transgender drum like they are going to take over the world and destroy civilization.

The fact is, when have we ever said those words? They're going to take over the world and destroy civilization.

I listen to Dennis all the time. It's incessant. And the fact is, is there are very few transgender people relative to the population. Okay, that's true. Most people— most of us will never meet a transgender person. The few people who are transgender are afflicted with a horrible psychiatric illness. Okay, they deserve empathy. No one is forcing them to undergo any transgender hormonal treatment.

I'm going to pause you there, Steve. I don't mean to cut you off, but just for the sake of time, I'm going to pause you. And I'd like to continue a discussion, but I have to cut in. You are right, Steve, that there is a relatively low number of transgender individuals relative to the population, which is why I asked the question, why is teaching that gender is non-binary and fluid becoming so mainstream if this is so rare? And I encourage you, Steve, and anyone listening who may agree with his, um, his, uh, disagreement of Dennis Prager's position and my position, I encourage you to read the California Department of Education codes, the Arizona Department of Education codes, New Jersey, Michigan, Many states, blue states around the country, in these codes have things that say that you should teach kids that gender is non-binary. In New Jersey, they say that you should not refer to children using gendered pronouns. Here in Los Angeles, the LAUSD, which has about 450 schools under its jurisdiction, has monthly Rainbow Club meetings where students as young as 4 years old are subjected to drag queen story hour. This is not a fringe thing. This is very mainstream, and they are also taught these radical gender codes. I agree that people who are experiencing gender dysphoria deserve empathy. That is why I— and I feel comfortable speaking for Dennis— that is why Dennis and I are so disgusted, and that is the word, disgusted, by this movement, which is saying and legitimizing the fact that it is normal to not feel your gender. These individuals deserve empathy. They deserve therapy. But what they do not deserve is being subjected to doctors and students who are saying, yeah, you know, you're 13 years old or you're 15 years old and you don't feel like your gender. Here are some puberty blockers. And by the way, you should have your breasts cut off. This is happening at the Duke University Medical School— medical hospital, excuse me, Boston Children's Hospital. This is happening all over the country. I'd like to give Steve an opportunity to respond. We may have to go into the next segment, Steve. We don't have much time.

Okay. Yeah. What you're saying about people having their breasts— women having their breasts cut off and hormonal blockers— again, it's a misleading narrative you're giving. Okay. No, no, no female is going to have her breasts cut off without her consent, without substantial psychiatric involvement. Okay.

And not substantial psychiatric involvement. That is not true.

There are—

you know what? You know what? I've studied this issue. It is true.

As of— as of— it is very common for these kids. Okay, I'm sorry, we're going to have to continue into the next segment. Steve, stay on. We'll pick it up back in a moment.

The Dennis Prager Show.

Welcome back, everyone, to The Dennis Prager Show. I'm going to pick it up with Steve briefly, and then we do have to move on to other callers. Steve, in the previous segment, you were saying that children are not having their breasts cut off with— it is not common, you said, to have children have their breasts cut off or given puberty blockers. I would like to make you aware of Chloe Cole. She had a double mastectomy when she was 15. She was given puberty blockers starting when she was 11 years old, and she has talked about how easy it was for her to go and get this surgery. She was perhaps giving her consent But her parents were not providing this consent, and I think she was too young to give her consent. I'd also like to point to you the fact that, um, in California, if a parent does not use the preferred pronouns of a child who wants to, uh, transition, then they will be deemed abusive in custody battles. In Washington State, if a child runs away from his or her parents because his or her parents don't affirm their pronouns or don't allow them to get, uh, altering surgery, then The group homes to which those children go to do not have to notify the parent that the child has run away. And finally, the state of Tennessee has passed some laws saying that children should not be allowed to be given puberty blockers or altering surgery until they are 18. And our Department of Justice is taking their time and energy and resources to sue the state of Tennessee to overturn those laws. So my question for you, and we do have to keep it brief, I thank you for your call. Is that with those examples, do you still think that Dennis and I are exaggerating about the threat that this poses to our children?

Totally. If a 15-year-old had her breasts removed, it's outrageous. Okay? That would be outrageous. I wanna know how many times that's happened. Once? Twice? Three times? Okay?

Don't we wish? Don't we wish? Steve, I'm sorry. I really am sorry. I'm going to have to end it there.

I appreciate you giving me your audience.

Thank you. Thank you for calling in. And as Dennis says, clarity over agreement. I think we are clear where Steve is coming from and we are clear where I am coming from. 1-800-PRAGER-776, please do call in. This— the origin of this discussion was that this Colorado student was sent home for wearing the "Don't Tread on Me" patch on his backpack. And one of my overarching points is that we cannot live in a society that abides by the tyranny of the minority. If one person is offended by it, that does not mean that this kid should have to be sent home and not continue with his schooling. If a small amount of people are identifying as gender dysphoric, which Steve acknowledged when he called in, it is not right for the entire school codes to be changed to abide by some of those students who have gender dysphoria. Let's go to Brent. Here in Los Angeles. Hi, Brent, thanks for calling in.

Hello, Lady of Valor Julie.

Hello, thank you. Well, you are 100% accurate and righteous, and Steve is a danger to everything good and holy. And the wicked woke Democrats must stomp out the Gadsden flag because it was America's original banner of freedom and liberty as we died for our independence from the evil British. And the goal and purpose of every totalitarian Democrat is to tread, stomp, crush, terrorize, and enslave us all. And today's Democrats not only want to enslave blacks, but all humanity around the globe. Well said. Thank you so much for your call. You know, to corroborate your point, I talked about Liam Morrison, who is this 12-year-old boy in the state of Massachusetts who was sent home because he dared to wear a t-shirt that said there are only two genders. Another example that I think is relevant here is Joe Kennedy. Joe Kennedy was that Washington football coach who was fired for praying on the field with football players after the district told him to stop. And so, Brent, what you just said about how the woke left likes to tread, These 3 examples, the Colorado boy, the Massachusetts boy, and the Washington football coach, prove your point exactly. What if they— why do they go on such a crusade? I mean, is having a probably 2-inch by 4-inch flag on a backpack really that big of a deal? Is a t-shirt really that big of a deal? Is praying for 3 minutes on a football field that big of a deal? Why do they hate us so much? Why are they so determined to use their time and their energy and their resources to make statements like these? It is precisely because they have disdain for our values. They fundamentally hate American Judeo-Christian values. And when I say they, I'm referring to leftists, as Dennis always makes that distinction. It is a very important one. Liberals are weak. Leftists are fools. They may be well-intentioned fools, but they are fools. And they have a disdain for the principles which have allowed them to get to such a privileged place in life. But, you know, if something bothers you, why don't you just ignore it? Sometimes I'll be walking down the street and I'll see, you know, someone with a a communist flag on their shirt or something. You see people all the time wearing stuff that you don't agree with. You just let them keep walking. Why would you even give them your energy? The way that you actually combat whatever they're doing is just to act like they're fools and not give it a moment of your attention. But there is a crusade here. It really is a crusade. Neil in Venice. Venus, California. Yes, maybe not Venice, Italy, but Venice, California. Hi, Neil.

Venice, California. Uh, thank you so much for taking my call, Julie. It's a pleasure. Um, I, uh, wanted to insert that the Girls Club Entertainment Incorporated and Representation Project are two organizations. One is a profit company, one is a nonprofit company. The nonprofit company raises money to produce the movies in the profit company. And they are owned none other than by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who is the partner and wife of our wonderful Governor Gavin Newsom. And that is a profit enterprise. And then out of the $128 billion budget, over $5.5 to $6 million was given to those organizations. And she wife is paid $150,000 a year salary. And those—

not surprising. The rot goes so deep. Yes, our wonderful Governor Gavin Newsom, he has done so much for our state. Back in a moment. I wish I could take your calls. We have several of them. I'm just going to summarize. Jim from Portland, Oregon: The administrator seems like she was just following orders. Well, yes, it would appear that way. The administrator kept saying, you know, this is the policy, this is the policy, you know, I got to uphold the policy. I would disagree with you there, Jim, because she could just ignore the Gadsden patch on the backpack. If there are stupid policies that you have to implement, you actually don't have to implement them. You can just let it slide. David from Washington, D.C. sympathizes with the child. Peggy from Atlanta, Georgia is disagreeing with Steve, agreeing with me that there is an increasing number of people identifying as transgender. Well, that's absolutely right. Since 2017, the number of people who are identifying as transgender has tripled. And anecdotally, in my own life, I have met many, many people and gone to school with many, many people who started off feeling very much in accordance with their gender and then a few years into schooling decided to transition or change. That is because there is this proselytizing movement. You know, they're going into schools and they're telling kids that it is natural to not identify in accordance with how they were born. That is not trying to spread tolerance. That is trying to make converts. That would be my response to Steve. An interesting hour. Thank you all very much for your contributions. We're going to start off the next hour by talking with Howie Carr. He is a New England radio and TV legend, and his new memoir coming out is called Paperboy: Back in a moment. I'm Julie Hartman.

The Dennis Prager Show, live from the Relief Factor Pain-Free Studio.

She can ruin your faith with her casual lies, and she only reveals what she wants you to see. She hides like a child, but she's always a woman to me.

Welcome to The Dennis Prager Show. I'm Julie Hartman, your guest host for today. I am the co-host of The Dennis and Julie Show, which premieres Premieres every Monday on the Salem News Channel, and I'm also the host of my own 3 times weekly show, Timeless with Julie Hartman, which is Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays on the Salem News Channel. You can also catch both of those shows at the Julie Hartman YouTube page and download them on Apple and Spotify. It is great to be with you, and it is also great to be joined by Howie Carr, who is in New England. Newspaper, radio, and TV legend. For decades, Howie has had a 3-times-weekly column for the Boston Herald and has hosted the Howie Carr Show, a 4-hour daily talk radio show syndicated throughout New England. He began his career as a reporter and went on to write New York Times bestselling books about Boston organized crime. One of those crime bosses, Whitey Bulger, was so incensed by Howie's reporting about him that he put out a murder contract on Howie. Howie's new memoir is Paperboy, about his career in journalism. And Howie, you know you are a good reporter when this crime boss wants to have you axed. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, Julie. Tucker Carlson wrote a blurb for the COVID of the book, and that's what he said. He said, you know, you're getting your job done when The, uh, the crime boss, uh, wants to, uh, kill you. And, uh, they did, but I, I survived. So I'm, I'm happy to be here. Happy to be, uh, still working.

Yes, we are all glad too. And I should also note, not to make the discussion more dreary, but to add to what a good reporter you are, um, Whitey Bulger also said shortly before he died that one of the greatest regrets of his life was not having you, Axe. So again, supports Tucker's point that You, uh, must have been very effective to so many people, right?

When he was in, when he was in Tucson, he, uh, according to a podcast, he told one of his fellow inmates that he, uh, wanted to eat my fingers. You know, I didn't, they didn't seem all that tasty to me, but you know, who knows? He was a weird guy in so many ways.

You know, we could talk about Whitey Bulger for the, the whole, uh, um, interview, but I'll just tell you and the audience quickly that he was living in Santa Monica, California for decades. That's where he hid. Um, and he was number one on the FBI's most wanted list for years. Right. And he actually lived about a mile or less from where I went to elementary school. So I love telling people that I went to elementary school within blocks of the number one guy on the FBI's most wanted list. But you know, what's fascinating to consider about you, Howie, is that you lived and worked through the golden age. Of local print journalism, an age that I never lived through where every—

TV journalism too, I would say.

Yes.

You know, where they had, you had big budget TV stations that everybody watched and yeah, and everybody, everybody read the newspapers in the morning, even if, you know, in Boston, of course, there were two newspapers and most people read both of them. And it's, yeah, it's totally changed now. I mean, I mean, how many people that are listening to us now could name any of the anchors on their their local TV stations? How many people still subscribe to their daily newspapers? And some people say, well, I subscribe because I want to get the obits, or I want to get the local high school sports, but they don't even, they don't even do a good job on those things anymore, local newspapers. It's really, it's unfortunate what's happened to the so-called mass media. There's the masses have deserted the mass media for so many reasons.

Exactly. Do you think that a career like the one that you have had is even possible for someone today?

That's a good question. And I, you know, I've asked myself that question. I think the answer is no, I couldn't. I, you know, how would someone like me? I mean, it's not just my political views, but, you know, I don't check any of the boxes, you know, that you need to move up in corporate journalism. I get into it in the book that, You know, it used to be— I came out of the Winston-Salem Journal. That was the first paper I worked at out of college. You remember, you've probably never heard of Tom Wicker. He was a big New York Times columnist, but he started out at the Winston-Salem Journal and moved, you know, worked his way up. But, you know, nowadays, you— nowadays that farm system no longer exists. It's— the farm system is becoming a rabid Democrat partisan code holder, you know, like Like for instance, Jake Tapper worked for Chelsea Clinton's mother-in-law, you know, who was married, she was a congresswoman married to a corrupt congressman who actually went to prison for bank fraud. You have, what's his name? Stephanopoulos, Chuck Todd is the one I was thinking of. How soon we forget, right? He worked for Tom Harkin, the stolen valor senator from Iowa. His wife worked and made millions, I think, In the Bernie Sanders campaign, you had Stephanopoulos. You have Stephanopoulos, who now makes $15, $20 million a year. He ran the Bimbo Eruptions unit. None of these guys were ever like street reporters. You know, they never covered a fire. They never covered a county commissioner's meeting. And, you know, I mean, I know I sound like, you know, I'm just, you know, an over-the-hill, you know, guy talking about the glory days. But, you know, you learn stuff by by going out and covering stories for print. You know, I think that's, that's one thing about Tucker. You know, I met Tucker when he was writing for the Weekly Standard, you know, and he had to, he had to go out and, you know, just, you know, chew the fat and, you know, knock on doors and talk to legislative leaders. I mean, I daresay most of these national reporters have, they have no idea what it's like to cover a city hall or a, or a legislative body. And it's just, They just, they take handouts. I mean, as far back as the Obama administration, they, they had, they had these a, some of the, some of Obama's aides were just saying, you know, we can tell these people anything they want 'cause they're, they, they've never been outside of Washington and they, and they, they've never covered anything.

Right. If I look at the best reporters are the ones who I admire the most, they all started out local. You know, they went to, as you said, They knocked on doors, they went to zoning meetings, they went to school board meetings.

Meetings.

It counts.

Right.

Yeah.

Just, just a lost art today. So I'm reading here from the blurb on Amazon about your book. I just want to, to tell the audience, gangster Whitey Bulger wanted him dead. I'm talking about you, of course. Sen— Senator Ted Kennedy tried to put Howie's newspaper out of business. Governor Mike Dukakis called him a sociopath. And 60 Minutes called him a radio hitman. The Boston Globe devoted a series to him, Poisoned Politics. What did you do to tick all of these people off, Howie?

I just tried to, tried to be the voice of the people. And, you know, as I, as I developed, you know, in my career, the, the newspapers like the Boston Globe were were stopping hiring people who, like, actually did come off the street. And I'm not, I'm not like a, you know, a street Southie guy or anything like that. But, you know, I have, I have somewhat of a background in, you know, in covering normal people who go to church and join the military and, you know, buy RVs. And, and nobody else wanted to touch that stuff. And they— and so I had this whole lane to myself and the Herald to a lesser degree. And, you know, I used to just get all these tips from people, including people at the Boston Globe, because they couldn't get the stories into their own paper. And, you know, when the Globe didn't want to touch somebody because it would, you know, it would embarrass politicians, as I say in the book Paperboy, which I've got a copy of right here if you want to see it. I don't know, but it's available at howiecarshow.com. Click on store. I say that The, the, the, in the old days, the motto in newsrooms, or at least theoretically, and in journalism schools too, was that newspapers were designed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. And now if you look at all these papers, like any of the major newspapers and also in MSNBC, CNN, the motto might as well be we afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable. That's, that's all it is. You know, they're— everybody's from the upper crust. They don't, they don't know anybody. I, you know, I remember there's a story, another— again, it's before your time, but one of the famous stories in the '60s was, was the New York Times. A woman named Kitty Genovese, she was a barmaid. She was coming home late one night in Queens and someone jumped her in her— in the courtyard of her apartment. 34 people heard her screaming and nobody ever said it, said a damn thing. Just let her be killed. No one even called the equivalent of 911. And the story was broken by the managing editor, the city editor of the New York Times. And do you know how he did it? He was, he was just a regular guy from New York City who'd gone to public school in New York City. And he, he was having lunch with one of his school old schoolmates who was now a captain in the New York City Police Department. And he gave him the tip. It was like one of the huge stories of the '60s. Now, Julie, let me ask you this.

Before you ask me, you'll have to ask me in the next segment. Forgive me, Howie. We'll be back in a moment. And I'm eager to hear your question.

How likely is it that anyone at the New York Times, an editor, would be having lunch with a cop, let alone having gone to school with a cop?

Julie Hartman here, sitting in for Dennis Prager. I am joined by Howie Carr, New England radio, newspaper, and TV legend. His new memoir is Paperboy, about his storied career in reporting. Howie, we had to end the last segment with, uh, uh, me cutting you off. My apologies, as you were posing a very important question about the nature of reporting today. I'd like you to please repeat it.

Right. Uh, so sorry, we, I have a floating break on my show at the, uh, 15. I, I apologize. I just assumed it was that way elsewhere. But yeah, I, this, uh, this was, this terrible atrocity occurred. This woman, this barkeep, was stabbed to death late one night in Queens, early one morning, and 34 people heard her screaming and nobody said anything. And no one had reported on it. And the story was broken by the city editor, very high-up guy in the New York Times, Abe Rosenthal. And the reason he broke the story was because he was having lunch with a captain in the New York city police department that he had gone to grade school with. I guess they had always been buddies, and he always hung out with the people from the, the old neighborhood. And my question is, would that story ever be broken today by a New York Times editor? I don't think so, because I don't think they— I don't think they would even deign to speak to a, uh, to a New York City cop. I mean, it's just— there's— there is no more, uh, working-class blue-collar element in, in any of these newsrooms. I mean, they're, they're all just legacies of one form or another. And, and I think that's one reason why the media, not just newspapers, but network television, local TV, have, have kind of like lost touch with the, uh, community. It's not just the internet that's killed, killed mass media.

What is the most interesting story you ever reported on?

I think it was probably Whitey Bulger. And, you know, his brother was the— he was the leading gangster in Boston. He was working for the FBI, paying off the FBI, at least 6 agents, 2 of whom were convicted of organized crime hits. They tried to kill me with explosives, C4 explosives that they got from the FBI. It was given to him. And his brother, the most interesting part was his brother was the president of the Massachusetts State Senate. He was the most powerful politician in Massachusetts. It's unbelievable. And it's, it's, it's, it is, it's in retrospect, it's, it's quite an unbelievable story that you have these two guys that, uh, were both, uh, preeminent in their own rackets is what, what it was, you know. They were both, uh, they, and they, uh, they lasted for a long time with the connivance of the Boston Globe. The Boston Globe protected them.

Right.

And that's another, that's another part of the book that I get into. Just, just how bought and paid for the Globe, not just the local law enforcement, but the Boston Globe as well.

As they say, truth is stranger than fiction. You could, you know, if you saw some of these storylines in a Hollywood movie, you'd go, that would never happen in real life. And, and as you very well know, it has. You have obviously met many politicians and celebrities, and you, you talk about many of them in your book. And we hear often that especially if a politician is unpopular, you'll hear them say something like, well, people have the wrong impression of me. Is there anyone who you have met that is a public figure that you think that is really true of, that we just have the wrong impression of?

I don't know. I think generally speaking, over time, your real personality comes out. I don't think, I don't think we're deluded about, I mean, we may be deluded because they're on our team or, you know, they're keeping the school shut down and we're teachers and we don't want to teach classes anymore. But I, you know, a guy like Donald Trump, you know, Laura Ingraham had a good description of him, called him the blue-collar billionaire. And that's the thing. I mean, I don't know, I've never really quite grasped how much, why they hate him so much because he gets along with with normal people, you know. And he— I remember when, when he was president one time, he was going up the stairs of Air Force One and someone saw a $20 bill hanging out of his pocket. Remember that? And they were like, why is he carrying $20 bills? Are they paying off the president with these double sawbucks and all this stuff? And so somebody finally asked him, they said, why, why are you carrying $20 bills? And he said, said, if my whole life, if someone gives me good service, I want to give them a tip. I mean, that's, that's the way you reward somebody who gives you good service, who's not making a lot of dough. And I thought to myself, when was the last time you ever heard of a Democrat who carried around cash to pay, let alone tip people? It's just not, not happening. John Kerry, Obama, Biden, forget about it.

Speaking of Donald Trump, I interviewed Alan Dershowitz on this program, uh, a week ago yesterday when I guest hosted, and we were talking about the 4 indictments that Donald Trump is facing. Where do you see all of this legal trouble going for Donald Trump in the next 1 to 2 years? And where do you see it going for our country in the future, but perhaps not immediate future?

Well, you know, I think the Republicans or a large number of Republicans and conservatives have always said You know, you, you know, we can't stoop to their level. And, you know, we have to maintain the, the, the elements of traditional Anglo-American law, you know, due process and, you know, right to confront an accuser, all this, all that great stuff in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But I think it's all off the table now. I mean, why, why can't— if the Republicans take over, why can't they go after Merrick Garland, David Weiss, and Leslie Wolf? The assistant U.S. attorney who was tipping off Hunter Biden. Why can't they go after them? I mean, they've done— to me, they've done a lot more, a lot more activity that gets near the criminal line than, say, Mark Meadows, you know, who was just, you know, making calls to a congressman in Pennsylvania to get the phone number of the secretary of state. Now he's indicted in Georgia. I mean, this is, this is real banana republic. Type stuff. And, you know, the thing is, too, they, you know, they're saying, well, we have to have a swift trial in D.C. That, that judge who was born in Jamaica, Chutkan, I think is her name. I mean, does it— doesn't she understand that the right to a— the right to the timing of a trial is more about a defendant's rights? A defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. They've just turned all of this on its head.

Yes.

You know, yes, this is sick. I, you know, this is the— I never thought I would live to see this day. You know, I know every society, you know, has a, you know, an experience, a life cycle. But I never thought I'd be watching this happen in my lifetime. Just sort of a— just the total abrogation of civil rights and that the Democrats are doing it. They're the ones that are behind it, not the Republicans.

Right.

Where's the ACLU here? Well, where are the mothers against drunk driving, for that matter, when it comes to all the illegal aliens driving drunk? They're not there.

Also, these, these indictments are not about what they claim to be about because the Democrats would have brought them much sooner if they really cared about, for instance, Trump's possessions of classified documents. Why are these happening now? Well, it's because it's more about 2024 than about 2020. We'll be continuing in the next segment with Howie Carr. As a reminder, his memoir is Paper Boy about his storied career in reporting. In journalism. He's the host of The Howie Carr Show. Back in a moment. I'm Julie Hartman. Welcome to The Dennis Prager Show, everyone. I'm Julie Hartman, your guest host for today because Dennis is in Denver. He travels a lot, as you and I very well know. It's great to be with you. I am the co-host of Dennis and Julie and the host host of my own 3-times-weekly show, Timeless with Julie Hartman, here on the Salem News Channel. I encourage you to check both of those out, and especially Dennis and Julie if you are a big Dennis Prager fan, as I imagine many of you listening are. Because of the long-form format, we really get to discuss topics in more detail and at more length than Dennis is able to in this shorter format. Of the radio, and he will reveal truly fascinating things about his life and upbringing and experiences. So do check out Dennis and Julie as well as Timeless. There is a hurricane that has officially made landfall in Florida. It is Hurricane Idalia, spelled I-D-A-L-I-A. It made landfall at Category 3 strength in Florida's Big Bend at 7:45 this morning. Now, we don't know how bad this hurricane is going to be. This is called an unprecedented event by the National Weather Service in Tallahassee. They say it is going to be the most powerful storm to hit Florida's Big Bend in over 125 years, and that may very well be true. Of course, we will see as it unfolds, but There is reason to doubt the labeling of some of the weather services because here in Los Angeles, about maybe it was a week or two ago, fairly recently, there was a hurricane, Hurricane Hilary, that was expected to be a huge deal here. And I think in Baja California it did some damage, but in Los Angeles it was really just rain. But LAUSD canceled schools because of this hurricane. So we will see. Let's hope that Hurricane Idalia is not too bad and that people in Florida remain safe. Now, an event that was really bad, specifically because of its response, were these Maui wildfires. We all know that about a month ago, these fires erupted in Maui. 115 are dead, 850 are missing. There are 7,500 refugees that are in 6 temporary shelters run by the Red Cross. This fire has damaged or destroyed over 2,000 buildings, 90% of which were residential, and it burned over 2,000 acres. The really sad thing as I just said about this event is that A, it could have been avoided, and B, if people had responded competently, it could have been mitigated fairly quickly. That is the difference between a fire and a hurricane. A fire, with the right response, you can put out. A hurricane, you can't control Mother Nature, obviously. I want to detail here for you some examples of this staggering incompetence in Maui. A reporter, if you are interested in exploring these events further, a reporter that you should check out is Nick Sortor. I interviewed him a week ago yesterday when I was hosting this show, and he has very good on-the-ground reporting. You can check him out @NickSortor on X, formerly known as Twitter. Twitter. I said that a little oddly. And, um, he, he really exposes a lot of this incompetence, but there have been a cast of characters in Hawaii, the governor of Hawaii, the mayor of Lahaina, the head of the Maui Emergency Management Agency, the head of the Department of Land and Natural Resources who have really been asleep at the switch here. Let's go to the first example of this incompetence. Let's talk about the head of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the DLNR. This man is named M. Kaleo Manuel. So on August 8th, there was a request, a demand, an emergency demand to Mr. Manuel to release water to put out the fires. But this man remarkably refused to send the water that was requested by the West Maui Land Corporation to help prevent the spread of a fire. Why? Why would you delay or refuse? It ended up being sent after a lot of people were outraged and the situation got so bad. But why would you refuse to send water for a fire? The answer is that climate change activists did not want water to be used to fight fires. This is according to the governor of Hawaii, Josh Green. I'm quote, one thing that people need to understand is that then is there has been a great deal of water conflict on Maui for many years. It's important that we are honest about this. People have been fighting against the release of water to fight fires. I'll leave that to you to explore. This is a genuine question. Why? They think it's a waste of water to put out a fire. What other thing would be more important to allocate that water to? I know drinking water is important, obviously, but it appears that Maui residents had enough drinking water. I truly, truly don't understand why it is in accordance with climate change activism to not send water to put out a fire. Green added, quote, we have a difficult time on Maui and other rural areas getting enough water for our land. Oh, well, that seems perhaps to explain it. So they want the water going to land, but what's the point of sending the water to irrigate land if a fire is going to spread and burn that land? It makes absolutely no sense. There are currently people, this is the governor saying, still fighting in our state to give water access and prepare for fires even as more fires arise. So this man, Mr. Manuel, the head of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, who initially refused and then later agreed to give that water to fight the fires, he resigned about a week after this incident on August 17th. That would be egregious enough, but it doesn't end there. Shall I continue? Reportedly, this is according to the Associated Press, there were people in Maui who were trying to drive away from the fire. Fires, and local police were putting up blockades to prevent those residents from going down paved roads. This is according to an eyewitness who goes by Fish. Fish lives on the island of Maui. He talked about this incident. He said, quote, all of the cars were lined up, but none of them were moving. I was wondering what was stopping traffic. It was a policeman. Car after car was turned back and going towards the rapidly spreading wildfire because there was a barricade blocking access to Highway 30. Apparently, the police and authorities were worried about downed power lines that people would drive into and maybe those would catch on fire if cars were driving into them. Again, I am speculating here. This is dizzying and incredibly mysterious. But what happened was that the people who did obey the orders to not go down that road and turned around ended up getting killed. They were incinerated in the wildfires or they died from smoke inhalation. And it was only the people who disobeyed the authorities' rules that survived. And guess what? That's not even the end. So we have the, the water that was not sent. We have roads to get away from the fire that were blocked off. There were sirens that didn't go off. The head of MEMA, again, the Maui Emergency Management Agency, did not sound the sirens for a few hours, even when the fire was coming down the mountain and rapidly approaching some residential areas. Why? Because apparently those sirens were only sounded in the past when a tsunami was coming. Call me crazy, I think the people of Maui are intelligent enough to know when the sirens were going off that it was signaling that there was a fire. Because again, call me crazy, but they can open up their windows, they can see the ash, they can see the smoke, they can smell the fire. They can probably see the fire in many cases. And so that is a reason to not sound a siren because in the past it was used to signal another danger. The point is to signal danger. Sirens are not exclusively for tsunamis. They are for any kind of danger. And then to add to this list of incompetence, and believe it or not, you are hearing the, uh, short version, the fire started in the first place because there were downed activated electrical wires that Hawaii authorities did not clean up because instead they were putting money into green energy initiatives instead of making the existing electrical wires safe. We've been discussing the staggering display of incompetence during the recent Maui wildfires. Sirens did not go off because sirens were historically used to signal the coming of a tsunami and not wildfires. Roads that would allow residents to flee the fires were blocked off because authorities did not want drivers to run into downed power lines. Water was not sent in time to put out a large portion of the fire because climate change activists do not want water to go to fight fires. And the whole fire started in the first place in large part because there were these activated electrical wires that were downed and not properly cleaned up because Hawaiian Electric companies are putting their monies into green energy as opposed to making those existing electrical wires safe. This story above all else proves how destructive wokeism is. And, you know, when conservatives talk about wokeism, sometimes, you know, we'll laugh and go, oh my gosh, Dylan Mulvaney is on Bud Light and this ridiculous thing happened and this politician said this absurd thing. This is going on. This is going far beyond ridiculousness and absurdity. This is truly a civilizational issue. When people are being incinerated to death because water was not sent to put out a fire because of climate change, that tells you everything that you need to know. And this is not just with regard to the Maui wildfire issue. You look at many different examples of how wokeism is, at the very least, incredibly destructive to a human life and often can be deadly. The transgender issue. There are record numbers of people who, and kids, kids who are getting puberty blockers and life-altering surgeries. I encourage you all to check out Chloe Cole. She's done some great videos for PragerU, among other sites. She underwent a double mastectomy when she was 15 years old and started taking puberty blockers a few years earlier. She is one of many kids who had this forced upon them, who really, without being informed, without having a fully formed brain to make a decision about their life, were thrust into this. And she is among a growing population of people who are looking back and they are detransitioning because they realized that this was a huge mistake. How about the crime issue? Every major police department in the United States defunded their police departments. Democrats love to deny that now, including our own president. Oh, the defund the police movement really never really happened. It did. And by the way, it continues to happen. Brandon Vallis is the new mayor of Chicago, and he has cut the police budget of the Chicago Police Department by tens of millions of dollars. He's also slashed the number of Chicago police officers on the street. And my goodness, out of all the police departments that need support, the Chicago PD is probably at the top of the list. But another example of how wokeism is deadly in addition to ridiculous and absurd and irrational. The fentanyl issue that I discussed while I was discussing the border earlier when we were talking about Americans for Prosperity, a record number of illegal immigrants have come into our southern border since President Biden took office, as high as 7 million, and the number is ever growing. And under President Biden's tenure in office, fentanyl has become the number one cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45. 106,000 Americans in 2022 died of a drug overdose. Now, look, in part, there is the people who are taking the drugs and who are creating the demand for the drugs are to blame. I recognize that. But the border policies are also hugely to blame because a lot of this can be prevented. Operation Lone Star, which was started by Governor of Texas Greg Abbott seized 342 million pounds of fentanyl alone in the past year. That is just the efforts of this one governor. That is enough fentanyl to kill every living American citizen. Montana, which is a border state, but not a southern border state, a northern border state, the attorney general of Montana said the number one threat to the livelihood of the citizens of Montana is this fentanyl issue. Wokeism doesn't account for all of the problems with that particular issue, but it does account for a lot of it because it's not right to have border enforcement. We should allow anyone to just come across the border. It's not right to send police after people to catch and punish them for certain crimes. Wokeism is in many cases life-ending. And as we see with this Spanish soccer scandal, it can also be career-ending. If it doesn't kill you or if it doesn't lead you to cut off your breasts, it can really end your professional career. The president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, after the Spanish female soccer team won the World Cup, went up and kissed one of the female players on the lips. Dennis has covered this story, I believe, a few days ago. And apparently this soccer player who was kissed did not want to be kissed. I am not condoning this action. You should not go up and kiss someone if that person does not want that. But this man who kissed this woman in a jubilant display of celebration for the World Cup win, is now under criminal investigation for sexual assault. This is unbelievable. This guy could go to jail because he made the stupid decision of kissing someone. Is that criminal? According to the woke left, it is. In the next segment, I am joined by Xavier Durrusso to talk about the threat of wokeism and what PragerU is doing to try to combat these horrible tides. I am the beneficiary of PragerU's wisdom. So is Xavier. I look forward to speaking with him in the next segment. Stay with us. I'm Julie Hartman. This is The Dennis Prager Show.

The Dennis Prager Show.

Welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show. I'm Julie Hartman, co-host of Dennis and Julie and host of my own 3 times weekly show, Timeless With Julie Hartman. August is Dennis's birthday month, which means that it is also PragerU fundraising month. And donations from now until the end of August, which is what, in the next 2 days? Is tomorrow September 1st, or is there a 31st? Tomorrow's the 31st. Okay, good. So you have the rest of the day and, uh, till tomorrow too. For the next day and a half, any donation that you make to PragerU will be triple matched. You give $100, it's $300. So please, please go to prageru.com and give whatever you can. I know how much they appreciate any and all donations. Some of you who have seen me on this program and the other shows that I do know that I am conservative because of PragerU. PragerU changed my life. It has made me a healthier, happier person. It has brought me to this career. And I know how many other people have been influenced by PragerU. One of them is my guest today, Xavier Durrusso. He works for PragerU. He was originally influenced like me by PragerU and then went on to work there. He is the host of PragerU's kids game show Guess Our Mass, and he does a lot of other general content for PragerU. He has appeared on Fox News, Newsmax, and other media outlets. And Xavier, weren't you on Piers Morgan last night?

I was on Piers Morgan last night.

It's amazing. You are certainly making the rounds. It's, it's incredible to see. So Xavier, can you tell the audience about your transformation story? I know it, it's really incredible. I think people would like to hear it.

Yes, of course. I'm so glad that you're on the better side of history now too. Uh, all thanks to PragerU.

Yes.

So I grew up in a very liberal, very left-wing household. Um, everything in my, upbringing was essentially centered around race. Where I left the South Side of Chicago, I moved over to the middle of nowhere cornfields of Illinois because my parents wanted to get away from some of the dangers of Chicago. But that being said, I felt like I was out of place and I was always being told to root my identity in my blackness. So then I went to college, became even more woke, and it got all the way until 2020 where I was this Avid BLM activist. I was advocating for BLM online all the time. I was going to all the marches. I was never looting or rioting, just to be clear, but I was very, very woke, way too woke for my own well-being. And I ended up getting cast for a reality show in that process. And the premise of the show was I was supposed to be a BLM activist teaching people how to join the movement essentially and be allies of BLM. And in the process of that, I decided I was going to start studying the counterarguments because I saw a Candace Owens video that enraged me because she was right. So I was going to make this entire series debunking PragerU videos, and one by one I accidentally debunked myself. So now I always say I accidentally redpilled myself because I realized that this narrative that I believed in about systemic oppression and about police brutality, and even my beliefs that I used to have about socialism and all these other woke causes, I realized how fraudulent and dangerous and destructive those were. So I backed out of the reality show 3 days before. I was supposed to fly out to London to film it, and I took a few more months to just do more research. And by February of 2021, I was like, you know what, I have to speak out on what I've learned. And my very first video went viral, and the rest has been history. So now I'm connected with PragerU, and it feels so full circle to be a part of the same organization that has led me to this better side of history, as I always call it.

You know what I really admire about your story, Xavier, is that You didn't know that you were going to go on to have this career in conservative media. You didn't know that you were going to take a job at PragerU, but you still, as you just said, 3 days before you were going to start filming, backed out of that reality show because you just knew it was not in accordance with your principles. That was gutsy, but clearly you made the right choice and I commend you.

You know, thank you. I really feel like it was God's plan because I didn't know what was next for me because I had put everything on hold. I was basically going to quit my job, all these different things I was working on at the time, I put on hold for this show. I was going to cater my entire life on how I was going to become a political activist after the show, doing all these woke things with all these woke partnerships that I already had in the making. And it was scary and it was a humbling experience too. It was just one by one, these different videos, these 5-minute videos in particular, over a course of months, just humbling me, making me realize that I just had no idea what I was talking about so loudly online. And I took the leap of faith. I was like, you know what, if I don't stand for something, I will fall for everything. And I always tell people, you don't always have to be outspoken about everything that you believe in, but you at least have to be outspoken about what you don't believe in. Otherwise, that misinformation and that evil will continue to infiltrate the world, and we have to stand up and stand against it. So I took that leap of faith, and again, God's plan, it's worked out for me, and now I get to do what I love more than anything, and spread truth and wisdom.

Yes, we'll be talking about how PragerU is spreading truth and wisdom in the next segment. Go to prageru.com. Any donation you make in the next day and a half will be triple matched. We continue with Xavier. Continuing here with Xavier D'Orso. He is a PragerU personality, the host of PragerU's kids game show Guess Our Mess, and he does a lot of general content as well for both adults and kids at PragerU. I follow Xavier on social media. I've watched a lot of his videos. He is excellent and a testament to the fact that PragerU hires and has really good people. You know, before we move on, Xavier, to, um, some of the new projects and initiatives that, that PragerU is taking part in, I'd like to comment on something. You know, in the last segment, you were talking about your transformation story when you saw the light if you will, went to the right side of history, as you say. I love that. And you said that the wake-up moment happened for you in 2020. That was the same for me. I was a liberal until 2020 when I was sent home from Harvard due to the COVID lockdowns and I saw all that was happening with Black Lives Matter. That was the same thing for Omala Epanobi, who is a PragerU star as well, guest host for this show. And also, I was listening to Dennis, I think it was yesterday. He was interviewing a Prager Force member named Nicole, and she also said that her red pill moment was in 2020. So with all of the destruction that happened in that year, the one and perhaps only good thing that came out of it was that people like you and me woke up.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. It's really interesting. I think about that all the time. I don't think anybody is the same person today who they were in 2020, whether it's because now you're much more wise or you have drank a lot of the Kool-Aid. There were so many events in 2020 that just shook the landscape of America and our society as a whole. We saw media misinformation like never before. We saw people lying like never before. I personally feel like I've never seen our country more divided than it was in 2020. And that was the beginning, at least for me and my vision, of of realizing how hard it was to find truth because we live in this age of information. You would think it would be so much easier to just get on Google and find the reality of any situation. But no, it's like you have to go through so much filth, so many paid-for, sponsored, fraudulent narratives in order to get into some real concrete truth, facts, and information. And it's frightening. And that's why I love organizations like PragerU, where we are going so out of our way to to get the truth out there. We are fighting relentlessly to get more people to see like, these are the actual facts. This, these are the facts about climate change. These are the facts about race relations and critical race theory and Israel and all these different things that we're constantly being lied to about in the media. So yes, 2020 was a year of transformation for a lot of people. And as hard as it was, sometimes that's just a part of the growing pains.

That is a really astute comment. That people are different from who they were in 2020, whether they turned wise or woke. You know, I look at something like the Oregon Department of Education that came out and said that finding one right answer in math is white supremacy. That something even as absurd as that would not have happened prior to 2020. So you're, you're so right there that people have gone so far in one direction or another. Let's move on to talk about what PragerU is doing in school. Speaking of education, a lot of these state department of education codes have gotten so radical in their racial dictates, in their gender theories. What is PragerU doing to combat that?

Yes, PragerU is now an approved vendor in the state of Florida, and we are working on a list of other states that we're hoping to get into soon. We're now— teachers have the resources that they can go to Essentially, they can use PragerU materials, they can order PragerU materials and be not only reimbursed by the state, but they're also not going to be punished or reprimanded in any way for using PragerU materials. And then we also on our website, we already have like all kinds of resources for teachers, for parents, for homeschooling parents, or for the students themselves if they want to seek it out. We are trying to do everything that we can to get into the education system, not to force anyone to look at our curriculum, but just to give the option, just to give an option that is not catering to this left-wing radical indoctrination that we're seeing in the education system. It's so desperately needed in the curriculum. So I couldn't be any more proud that we're in the education system because my— one of my favorite quotes from Marissa Streit, our CEO here at PragerU, she said, education is how we got into this mess, so education needs to be how we get out of this mess.

Yes, absolutely. And you know, I just want to tell you in the audience that I watch PragerU educational videos for kids, and I learn so much. For instance, financial literacy— that was not something I ever learned in high school or college, and it is arguably one of the most important skills to have, especially in this economy. So I watch the Cash Course and I learn so much, and it's really palatable. It's not indoctrination, it's not political. And I— and also I want to note, because when I was having my transformation moment thanks to PragerU, this was one of the things that really, uh, made an impression on me. PragerU has a part of every video that is called facts and sources, and for every assertion they make, they cite a source. So Xavier, what's your favorite PragerU video? It's a hard question. So many good ones.

That is a good question. My very favorite video.

Wow.

I would say just off the top of my head, I have to go all the way back to the first PragerU video I ever saw. Mind you, this was when I was still woke and I was still trying to hold on to my wokeness. But the very first PragerU video I remember ever seeing was actually Will Witt's video where he wore the sombrero or the mustache and he was doing man on the street going around asking everyone, are you offended by my costume? And of course, all the non-Hispanic and non-Latino people were saying that him wearing a sombrero and a poncho was so offensive and that it was cultural appropriation and all these different crazy woke terms. And then he went to actually speak to some real Mexican people, some people from Mexico, and all of them loved it. They felt that he was embracing the culture. They thought it was humorous. They thought it was an homage. Like, they loved it. They really did enjoy him just— and they enjoyed seeing him enjoy their culture. So that was the first time I sat and thought back like, wow, how dare we speak on behalf of other people? And I do see that theme a lot now. Like, I've never once heard a single, even a woke Black person, make a comment saying that math is racist. But you do have often white liberals who are trying to speak on behalf of Black people and say that, oh, coming up with the correct answer in math is racist. That is so insulting to Black people and our intelligence to think that math is racist, to think that we are oppressed because we have more melanin in our skin, that we can't use a calculator without being triggered. It just goes to show that a lot of the time these activists and these people who are so outspoken are actually harming the groups that they're so desperately trying to protect.

Well said, Xavier. Thank you for all of the work that you do for America. Thanks for coming on the show. Everyone go to prageru.com. Your donation will be triple matched. See you soon, Xavier.

Thanks for having me.

Listen to the fear. It's gone.

We have a A hilarious call from Tom in Glendora. I'm going to summarize it. You should call this segment Jesus Our Savior Rescued Xavier. That's funny. I— Xavier, if you were still on, would love that. He talked about how seeing the light, if you will, by being exposed to PragerU, he believes was God's plan for him. You know, to wrap up this portion about PragerU, I just want to quickly tell you, I work with Dennis Prager and Allen Estrin every day. They have never asked me or put me up to talking favorably about PragerU. Never. I do it because PragerU has changed my life. PragerU helped me see the light, brought me to this career, and I so deeply believe in their mission. And now that I know the people who work at and run PragerU personally, I can tell you how good this organization is. They are good people with good values doing good work. So I encourage you all in the next day and a half to donate to PragerU. Go to prageru.com. Your donations will be triple matched. You give $100, it's $300. You give $1,000, it's $3,000. That's amazing. And it will do great work towards helping combating the woke sludge. And decline here in the United States of America. So please again, go to prageru.com. To summarize the 3 hours of the show, we talked about this California school, or excuse me, Colorado schoolboy being sent home because he had a "Don't Tread on Me" sticker on his backpack. We talked about the fact that our president has 5,000 emails in which he is using a fake name or an alias to email his son and his son's business partners about corrupt family business dealings where they are getting paid off by Chinese, Romanian, Ukrainian nationals. And then we talked about the Maui wildfire incompetence, how water was not sent to put out the fires because apparently climate change activists don't want water to be allocated for that reason. And the Maui wildfire began in the first place in large part because people were more concerned with green energy initiatives than cleaning up or improving existing electrical wires. The through line of those three stories, the Colorado story, the Biden story, and the Maui story, is that so many issues that we are facing right now in the United States are contrived. They are avoidable. There is so much evil that exists in the world. It is hard enough to build and maintain a civilization. But because we are sliding down this mountain of wokeism, and because we are turning a blind eye to the corruption of our own president, we are contriving and fueling our own decline. Why? Why would we do that to the best country that has ever existed on earth? Why would we do that after centuries of work and principle that people built this incredible civilization for us? Thank you for joining me. It's a pleasure to be with you. I'm Julie Hartman.

Dennis Prager here. Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast. To hear the entire 3 hours of my radio show commercial-free every single day, become a member of Prager Utopia. You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives as well as the daily show prep. Subscribe at pragertopia.com.