Government Octopus

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. Hello everybody and welcome to the Dennis Prager Show. As many of you know, I have been devoting the better part of 10 years to writing an explanation and commentary on the most important books ever written, the first 5 books of the Bible. They're the basis of everything that we cherish, that is, we being the Judeo-Christian world, the Western world. I've done 3 volumes. I'm on the 4th, which is the Book of Numbers. It's a very boring name for an extremely interesting book. In Hebrew, the name of the book is In the Wilderness, which is exactly where we find ourselves today in America. I can't think of a more appropriate title for the times in which we live— in the wilderness. So I was working on chapter 27 I expect very few of you to know what that is about, but it's a very interesting little, shall I say, anecdote, a little point that is a huge point and completely relevant to our time. You all heard, even if you went to college, you probably heard of Moses. Moses had two sons, but they didn't succeed him. A man named Joshua, from a completely different Israelite tribe, succeeded Moses. Now, interestingly, Moses had a brother named Aaron. His son did succeed him as the high priest. Now, priesthood did go by blood, so that explains one reason. Nevertheless, why didn't Moses' sons, or one of his two, succeed him, whereas Aaron's son did succeed him? And this was the Bible's way of saying you choose leaders by merit not by blood. A radical, radical, radical change in human history. Fast forward to the modern era. A man named Lawrence E. Harrison wrote a book that I brought to your attention, oh, about 20 years ago, Who Prospers. This man ultimately ended up at Tufts University. He was a major writer, and he was a, a mission head of USAID, the agency of the United States that brought aid all over the world. And he was the head in Latin America for decades, different countries of Latin America. So he wrote a book, Why Did North America Succeed So Much More Than Latin America? In, in every way that one measures success, whether it was prosperity, which is somewhat significant, or democracy, which is somewhat significant. So politically, socially, you name it, North America way, way pulled ahead of Latin America, of South and Central America. So he asked why, and one of his major answers was that in North America, people were rewarded because of merit. They earned rewards. They were hired, they were paid more, they were honored. Whereas in Latin America, that is not the way people advanced by merit generally. It was usually by family. He called it familism, in fact. I remember the term well. And by other methods. You paid your way, you bribed your way, but you didn't advance by merit. And in North America, you advanced by merit. Fast forward to the very present moment, and you have the undermining of the single greatest reason for success, the success of North America. Canada and the United States specifically. A war on merit. It's a war on the bases, the biblical basis of the West, and it is a war on the meritocracy that is now called white supremacy. I was listening to Julie Hartman, the extraordinary young woman with whom I do a weekly podcast called Dennis and Julie. If you watch one, I know you will be hooked. It is extraordinary, if I may say. I've never co-hosted anything. She made an interesting point, Alan. You'll find this fascinating, I think. We think that the war on merit, we primarily think of it as hurting the people who work hard, which it does. There's an Asian student who got virtually perfect SAT scores and 6 colleges rejected him. So it's a war on the people who work hard. That's what we think, which is accurate. But she made a very— one of these points you think, why didn't I think of that? It also says to the minority, there's no reason to work hard. Merit won't get you anywhere. It's very— it's actually a trauma for the society. The left is, as I explained yesterday, the only way to understand the left is it just destroys what is good. It destroys everything. They only destroy. They build nothing. Liberals build, conservatives build. Leftists destroy. The war on merit is a war on civilizational progress, which is fine with them. They, they don't care. The issue is to destroy. Those of you who are not interested in destroying but in conserving, that's called a conservative, don't understand the impulse in the human condition to destroy what is good? I don't. I admit it. But that is it. That is the answer to a question asked me 2 days ago in Romania, where I spoke in the Parliament building. And one of the questions was, can you explain leftism? And as I've often said, I think best under pressure. And here I was. Brought around halfway around the world. Well, actually almost around the world from California. Better come up with a good answer, Dennis, because it's very difficult. None of you can actually answer the question, what is leftism for? Because there is no answer. The answer is, what is it against? Tell me, when it, when it advocates that children be given drugs that can do terrible harm to them if they say that they are the other sex, what are they for? You don't know what they're for. Are they for kids becoming the other sex? That's it. They are just for destroying their— in this case, the binary fact of human existence, that we are only male or female, and that in fact You can't become the other. You cannot. You can look it, but you don't become it. But this is of no consequence. The war on merit is the war on civilization. And when I came across this in a 3,000-year-old book where God himself is the one who, to whom it is ascribed that he chooses the successor to Moses and it isn't one of his two sons, you begin the long, long battle to create a society based on merit. And how do you achieve merit? Through hard work. There is a war on hard work. Let us have a 4-day work week. Let us give people a universal basic income. Why should they have to work when we can give them the money to write poetry and to observe the glorious sunsets that may be in in the area in which they live. The onslaught is so severe that it is, it is almost, it seems almost impossible to resist it. It is so manifold, it is so across the board. The EPA has just given $10 million to the University of Arizona to study climate change. You know how much more money there is for a scientist? You know how corrupting it is in the whole world of climate science, the staggering amounts of money if you fight climate change? Nefarious, the number one movie on Salem Now, is available to rent today. My wife and I strongly recommend this film. Nefarious comes from the filmmakers behind God's Not Dead and unplanned. So when I turned it on, I thought I'd watch it for 20 minutes just to know what it was about. The movie was so riveting, I finished it, and I actually had lunch with one of the stars. I'm crazy about this film. Sean Patrick Flannery and Jordan Belfi give Oscar-level performances in this movie based on the book by Steve Deese. The woke critics hated it, but audiences have given it a 96% approval. And here are what others are saying. Matt Walsh, the filmmaker behind What Is a Woman?, calls it excellent. Inés de Souza calls it captivating, suspenseful, and profound. Charlie Kirk says the psychological This psychological and spiritual thriller may be a movie, but it contains far more truth about the reality of our world than most would like to admit. Visit Salem Now or your favorite video platform to rent Nefarious today, even though it's still in theaters. If you want to rent for your church or large group, visit movienight.com to rent it today. I am reading this $10 million grant for an environmental justice center at the University of Arizona, and it's just so frightening. This country is in such horrible debt, but to the left that is irrelevant. It is just a chance to destroy what exists and then destroy further. The environmentalism cause is a cause to destroy civilization as we know it, like getting you out of your car. And why do they hate your car? Think of it. Why does that— because you are then independent. You go where you want and when you want. That bothers the left. They want you to go by the train schedule that they provide. That's what they do. Plus, they imagine a world in which people will just bicycle and walk wherever conceivable and not take the loathsome car. They really do. They, they have always hated the car, and the left has— liberals don't hate the car, but liberals vote left, so they do as much damage as the left. As I've said almost every day, liberals do not vote their values. The left votes its values, the right votes its values, the liberals do not. That is the crisis of the society in a nutshell. Liberals do not vote for liberal values. Liberals have accepted the left-wing idea. They've accepted really only two left-wing ideas: bigger government is good and the right is always bad. So therefore they don't vote right. I don't mean don't vote correctly. They won't vote right no matter how much damage the left does. The merit idea that I raised to you is a good example, the war on merit. Oregon Education Department has decided that one correct answer in math is racist, and so has the Education Department of the province of Ontario, the largest of Canada's provinces. Yes, if you think it's hard to believe, then you don't take the news seriously. If you think it's hard to believe, then you read the New York Times and you don't know about this. The, the lying by omission is greater than the lying by commission on the part of mainstream media like the Washington Post, LA Times, and New York Times. It's what these people do not know. Again, a point I so frequently make Conservatives know much more than liberals and leftists about what is going on because they only read what they agree with. And we, whether we like it or not, we read, study under, listen to, hear the opposite views all the time. And they don't hear what we hear. There are a lot of bad stories today. University of Arizona getting $10 million from the EPA for an environmental justice center is perhaps the worst piece of news, although I will say that there is competition. National Review reports sexually abused by her father, teen sought help but was steered into medical transition. Whoa. This is the fourth installment in a series of individuals who have detransitioned in the wake of gender-related medical interventions. Raised by a father who was a raging alcoholic and a mother struggling with health issues, Evelyn had a chaotic childhood in San Diego. I remember the first time I told my mom I was suicidal. Evelyn, 19. Who goes by Evie, or Evie, told National Review, I was 9 years old and it was after I tried to hang myself with a scarf in my room. After that, it was all downhill. You know, I, I feel like crying for this girl. Evie's spiral, she said, can be traced to the heinous abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. Of all the evils on Earth, that's one of the two or three I least understand— molesting your own child. It's very common in the planet of Earth. That's why I have such contempt for people who think people are basically good. They're so unaware, they're so— they so live with their heads in the sand of how much vile behavior goes on on this planet. It's a disgrace to believe people are basically good. It is a disgrace. You do no good for the world if you actually believe that. It is like saying cancer is good. You can't fight cancer if you think cancer is good. You can't fight evil if you think people are basically good. By the time she was 4 years old, he was drinking 2 bottles of vodka every day. It was very violent, she said. It would get worse and worse and worse. He started with under the covers, over the clothes touching when she was a toddler. By the time she was 5, the abuse had escalated to penetrative rape. 5. With each year, he became more aggressive. The molestation was daily by the time she was 7. Evie's mother, unaware of the abuse, was frequently in the hospital for illness, so Evie was left alone with her father for weeks on end. At one point, he would take me to the bar with him and just have me sit outside while he was inside drinking. If he got the urges to do whatever, he'd bring me inside and molest me in the bathroom at the bar. Her father later committed suicide. It's too bad he didn't commit suicide earlier. But it gets worse because then the left comes in to ruin her life, pretty much as a chapter 2, with their father being chapter 1. Between her father and the left It is amazing this girl can function. We'll be back. The Dennis Prager Show. Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, Mike Lindell with MyPillow is launching the MyPillow 2.0. When Mike invented MyPillow, it had everything you could ever want in a pillow. Now, nearly 20 years later, he discovered a new technology that makes it even better. The MyPillow 2.0 has the patented adjustable fill of the original MyPillow, and now with a brand new fabric that is made with a temperature-regulating thread. The MyPillow 2.0 is the softest, smoothest, and coolest pillow you'll ever own. For my listeners, the MyPillow 2.0 is buy one, get one free offer with promo code Prager. MyPillow 2.0 temperature-regulating technology is 100% made in the USA and comes with a 10-year warranty and a 60-day money-back guarantee. Just go to mypillow.com and click on the radio listeners square to the buy one, get one free offer. Enter promo code Prager or call 800-761-6302 to get your MyPillow 2.0 now. Well, come on, pretty baby, won't you walk with me? Come on, I'm reading to you from an article in National Review, the fourth installment of young people who have been molested by the left, who have had their lives ruined by this sick push for young kids to come out as the opposite sex. The psychopathology of the left is nowhere more evident than in this arena, and that is the reason that there is finally some pushback, like with the Bud Light catastrophe for Budweiser, where another fool young woman Dennis Prager decided that it would be a good thing for Bud Light to honor on a beer can a guy who says he's a girl. Honor. That's a beautiful thing. You've done a great thing by having millions watch you, quote, transition to a girl. I'm curious, when people transition to the other sex, do they also get the brain? They might get the breasts. They might get the vagina, they might get the penis or something analogous. Do they get the brain of the other sex? Do you know our brains differ? Do you know that we think differently? I'm always curious about that. Or does that not matter? Anyway, this, uh, the story about this girl who was repeatedly raped by her father when she was a young girl, I mean really young. Between 5 and 11. Then he finally committed suicide, much too late unfortunately. And when she was 11, she was admitted to a residential treatment facility for extremely emotionally disturbed children, where she met a transgender person for the first time, an inpatient psychiatrist. You hear that? A psychiatrist. In popular terminology, that is a psychologist with an MD. Psychiatrists have MDs and psychologists do not. They have PhDs often, but not MDs. An inpatient psychiatrist told Evie that many girls who suffered trauma when they were young developed gender dysphoria. And that it was normal. This despicable human being, monster who has a psychiatric degree, a monster, got a hold of this poor girl. This is a monster no less than her father who raped her. The psychiatrist is a monster, a non-raping monster. There are a lot of them. Imagine that. That's what you tell her. Hey, just want you to know that that trauma— you, you might be a boy. They definitely put the idea in my head, she said. It had never occurred to me. I wasn't one of those kids saying I want to be a boy when I was like 4. The monster. Known as a psychiatrist, is the one who put the idea in her head. Yeah, it's hard to believe, is it, that medical schools produce monsters? Not all, by any means, but many. They certainly produce a lot of sheep, as we saw during COVID A couple of months after she was discharged, Evie came out as transgender at age 12. So this is what the psychiatrist told her. She told her mom that she wanted to go by Evan and started using he/him pronouns at home, but she didn't tell her friends or her school. Evie intentionally neglected her waist— excuse me— Evie intentionally neglected her waist length hair, keeping it matted and knotted to convince her mom to let her cut it. Evie's story is not unique. A host of scientific studies confirm that children who experience sexual abuse are more likely to begin identifying as transgender. Throughout early adolescence, Evie was in and out of mental hospitals for self-harming. She started cutting with scissors when she was 11. 'I upgraded to pencil sharpener blades when I was 12,' she said. She was put on Prozac for depression. After trying on a masculine identity for a few months, Evie decided she probably wasn't trans, although she wondered whether she was a lesbian. 'I was extremely confused,' she said. I will continue. The Dennis Prager Show. Hi everybody, welcome Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show. I have one of the leading economic thinkers in the United States in studio with me. He's visiting Los Angeles because he has envy of police states. There is— people don't know about it. It's a psychological phenomenon. It's a tropism where if you're not in a police state, you gotta visit one. I had that in my 20s. I went to communist countries regularly. And so, Steve—

By the way, that is not true, Dennis. The real reason I came to Southern California was because I heard about all this nice warm weather and sunshine. And folks, I've been here in Southern California the last 3 years and 3 days, and I have not seen the sun here. That's right.

Cold.

I'm freezing.

By the way, I love that. I can't tell you how much I cherish this weather.

I remember the old song, It Never Rains in Southern California.

Never. Yeah, there was a song, It Never Rains in Southern California. Well, this year it would not have been. Would not have been— he turned off Steven's mic. Yeah. Okay, there we go. No, I didn't know that. Did you know that there's a song that never rains?

Yeah, it's a famous top hit.

I can't believe that Sean did not play it the second you said it. He is so slow these days.

Yeah, I'm sure he's got it. And I know your listeners will recognize the tune as soon as he puts it on.

Well, I'll just say this. It did rain a lot this year.

And you're not going to collect any of the water, so next year when you have a drought, they're going to—

So let me ask you, do you live in a— oh, here it goes. What year is this from?

Mid-'70s?

'72. Never heard the song? Sorry?

Never heard the song before?

Listen, don't talk to me about musical literacy. I know, Alan wants his literacy. Wait, are those words coming up? I guess it's not. All right, anyway, I trust you that it's there. No, I don't know it. I was busy studying Haydn and Bach.

That's a little before my time.

Okay, yeah, well, even before mine. All right, it's okay. Thank you, Sean. Anyway, Steve Moore is also— let me get the title correct— The Daily News Report Unleash Prosperity Hotline.

Yeah, do you get that, by the way?

Yes, and we are avid readers here of your stuff.

And it's free, by the way.

Where do you live?

I live in the swamp.

Oh, so you didn't trade free state for police state.

I actually live in Maryland, which is the People's Republic, and so, you know, we pay taxes through the wazoo, and we get, you know, we're the— We get— we pay a lot of taxes and we get lousy government services.

Before we get into economics, there's a lot I really want to ask you to clarify for me and my listeners. I'm just curious, do you have in your— this is a serious question— in your extended family or among friends from a long time, you have Democrat-voting friends, friends or family? Oh yeah, you're right. Family.

Family. Yes. And it has divided our family. I mean, you know, politics has become such a blood sport that I have nieces who won't talk to me.

Wow. I just— the— I mean, I said wow was I want my listeners to understand how ubiquitous this is. I have been warning about this, about, uh, adult children not speaking to parents for years, and now it's— if there is a pandemic in America, that is the pandemic. Yeah, I agree. Of these rifts These nieces went to college, I have no doubt.

Yeah, I'll remember the year after the, you know, months after Trump got elected in 2016. We were going over, I was going over to my brother's house as we always do for Thanksgiving. You know, it's an annual ritual. And he said, do not bring up the name Donald Trump.

So this is your brother's daughters.

Well, he was speaking on therapy.

No, I understand.

By the way, I love my nieces. They're great girls. But this is that generation.

But they're not talking to you.

No, they do. They just will not even, you know, they will not listen to anything I have to say about politics or policy. It's almost like, you know, I'm on Venus and they're on Mars. And that's our country right now, frankly.

No, no kidding. Yeah. But the tragedy, as I often say, is The problem, or the problem, not just tragedy, is that we know what they don't know. They don't know what we know. They don't know when, when I say to a relative who votes Democrat, when I, what I will give, just an example of, let's say, Leah Thomas, you know, I would say, you know that there is a guy who says he's a girl and he keeps winning swim competitions in girls' sports. Always they'd say, I've never heard of that. I'll bet you your nieces don't know who Leah Thomas is. See, that, that's a very important point. They don't know what we know, so they're not reacting to the same phenomena of fact that we do.

Well, there's something else going on that's really even more insidious than that. And this was the column I wrote last week. I write a weekly column, and it was called Why Are We Scaring Our Children to Death? And I don't know if you saw this poll that came out that well over a third, almost half of teenagers today think the world is going to come to an end in their lifetime.

That's right.

They believe that. Well, and here, I mean, here's why this is having a psychotic effect on these. If you actually believe that, that would certainly change your behavior. If you and I believe that the world is coming to an end. So what are you seeing in young people today? What are they? More depression. Depression's becoming more widespread among young people. Suicide rates are higher. And then people in their early 20s and mid-20s, the birth rate is way down. They're not having children. This is a problem.

If the world is coming to an end, why have a child?

Exactly. If you think the world's gonna be uninhabitable in 40 years, why would you do it? So this is having extraordinarily negative effects. And this gets to your point about young people don't know what they don't know. Do you remember the population bomb and, oh, the world's gonna come to an end and we're gonna be overpopulated? And the nuclear winter.

The guy at Stanford, what was his name again?

Paul Ehrlich.

Yeah. Paul Ehrlich.

Yeah. So we've lived through the world come to an end many times in our life.

Well, you asked, why do they scare us? And the answer is to control us.

Yes.

And I didn't know that. I didn't know that well until the pandemic.

Right.

And I realized that's it. They can control you if they scare you. So, yes, you will shove a mask on your 2-year-old child or you won't get on an airplane. And parents did. Now, of course, they couldn't fly if they didn't. I'm not blaming them. I'm just saying that's it. And half the country at least thought it was wise to mask 2-year-olds.

Some of them still think that, actually. I mean, it's one thing to believe that 3 years ago. It's another to believe it today. And what's really scary about this, Dennis, because what you're saying is exactly right. It's all about control. So I said this from the start of COVID This is a test case for climate change. In other words, if you can—

Exactly.

And so I guarantee you they're going to start saying you can't drive your car today, you can't turn on your air conditioner today. That's right. And because it's to save the planet, you see, if you turn on the air conditioner, you're jeopardizing the future of the planet.

That's right. And people believe it.

Yes.

So let's talk economics in your field. By the way, just in a nutshell, tell people about FreedomWorks.

FreedomWorks is a, I'm a senior fellow at FreedomWorks. I wear many hats, but I love FreedomWorks because it's our gang of activists, conservative activists around the country. And the good news is there are a lot of young conservative activists out there who are really promoting freedom and free enterprise.

I spoke two nights ago, this'll blow your mind. Two nights ago I spoke in Romania at the Romanian Parliament, not to the Parliament, but at the Parliament. And I only mention this to you in light of what you just said. One thing I always tell conservatives around the world, America is the leading exporter of toxic ideas. It just is. This is a tragedy.

It used to not be that way, but now it is.

Yes. However, there is another side. There is no conservative movement on earth analogous to conservatism in America. We are the strongest conservative movement on the planet. We're the strongest toxic leftist movement and the strongest conservative movement.

Look, my, my feeling about America today, and I don't say this with any joy, we are two countries right now.

We totally—

we're two countries.

We have nothing in common.

Yes, that's true. And it's not a good thing.

Let's— so here's the irony. They scare us about what shouldn't be scary. And they tell us not to be scared about what is scary. I find the economy scary. Is that fair?

So I'm going to use— so funny you said that, because have you seen this movie that came out about a year ago called Don't Look Up?

No.

Okay. This is a movie about a meteor. They discover that a meteor is coming to the Earth. And the whole idea, it's a metaphor for climate change, right? And so everybody's, oh, the meteor's not really coming. And of course, at the end— I don't want to spoil the movie for people, but you get the Just the thing.

Right.

So it's, it's, it's a— and so anyway, I'm watching this, I'm saying, yeah, the meteor is coming, but it's not climate change. It is the meteor that's coming is a, is the $35 trillion national debt.

Talk about in a moment.

Yeah.

Steve Moore, one of the leading economic thinkers in the country. We'll be back in a moment. The Dennis Prager Show. Hey, everybody in studio, in case you're watching. Or in case you're not watching and want to see Steve Moore, Steve Moore is senior economist at FreedomWorks, publishes the invaluable free, free folks, daily news report, Unleash Prosperity Hotline. He's also made PragerU videos. One of them is on the debt, the bankrupting of America, with millions of views. How do people get your newsletter?

Uh, thank you for asking. It's, uh, just go to Committee to Unleash Prosperity. .com, and, uh, we— there's no inflation because it costs nothing. It's free. I mean, people should just get it. Newt Gingrich emailed me the other day, said, Steve, this is the first thing I read every morning, and you can read it in 5 minutes. But we kind of lampoon—

we're big believers in 5 minutes at PragerU, just for the record.

Exactly. That's where we learned it, you know. I mean, so, uh, and by the way, I also did— you may recall, I know Alan remembers— I did a, uh, a PragerU video about 3 years ago on red states versus blue states. And boy, has that been prophetic. I mean, you see now the blue states are just melting right now. They're melting down. California, New York combined have lost 4 million people just the last—

they don't care.

They're losing their taxpayers.

San Francisco is their business. It's the most undesirable place to live. And yet people in San Francisco would vote Democrat tomorrow.

Well, there's not going to be a lot of them left. I mean, it's just— and by the way, you keep chasing out rich people. Who's going to pay the bills?

They don't care about that either. It's all right. Anyway, I talk about the left all the time because it's the cancer of the Western world. So now let's talk economics, which is the meteor that is coming. Yes, that we should be scared about. Okay. So I just read this is perfect little anecdote. The EPA, it's just reported today, gave $10 million to the University of Arizona for an environmental justice center. Okay. Where did they get the $10 million from, given how much debt we have?

Yeah. You know, Lord knows. I mean, it's coming out of these massive appropriations bills. Incidentally, this term environmental justice is one of these terms of art by the left. And the truth is, all of these environmental policies that make gasoline more expensive, that make it more expensive to heat your home, that say you can't have a gas stove, and all of these policies actually hurt the poor the most. So environmentalism is unfair to the people who can't pay the higher bills. If you're a millionaire or a billionaire, you know, if your utility bill goes up by 30%, it doesn't affect you at all. And that's why it's so ironic that they keep talking about environmental justice. The whole climate change agenda is a massive tax, regressive tax on poor people. I mean, look what we're doing in other countries where they're literally, You have American taxpayers' dollars going into these little villages in Africa where they don't even have electricity, and they're saying close down your coal plant. I mean, that's immoral.

While China keeps building coal plants.

Exactly. It's just, it is so outrageous. And anyone who actually thinks that President Xi cares about climate change, I think there's only two people on the planet who believe that, John Kerry and President Biden. Because right now, as we're sitting here, China is building like 300 new coal plants.

There's a third, Greta Thunberg.

Yeah, right.

3 people. So, okay. What do you believe is the true inflation rate?

That's funny you should ask that, because every time I go on Fox News or something and I report the stated, you know, inflation rate, I can't tell you how many people get angry at me and they say, Steve Moore, why do you keep saying inflation is only 6% or 8% or whatever the number? Because the inflation rate includes things like, you know, the price of computers and things like that that are not things you buy every day. But when you look at food, you look at things like airline tickets or the price of buying a new car, the gasoline price until recently, which has come down, those are up since Biden came into office by 30%. So people are not buying into this argument that the inflation right now is only 4 to 5%. If when you took it, look at the absolute necessities you have to buy, people are looking at inflation much higher than that. I'm not saying, by the way, I'm not saying they're lying about the statistics. I'm just saying they're misleading because they're not really.

Exactly. Yes. You may not have to buy a new computer, but you do have to buy food every day.

Yes, you're right.

You know, it's interesting. There's another way. Which people don't think about much. My wife was telling me that a lot of packages of food are the same price, but you get less.

That's true. There's a term for that. I forget what you call that. But instead of getting, you know, it's like buying a dozen eggs, but you only get 10 eggs.

That's right.

Right.

That's correct. Or a dozen small eggs. Right. Right. So here's an interesting, uh, this— almost nobody listening would relate to, but once you hear it, it makes sense. So given my height, 6'4", I have to get tall man shirts or they'll be sticking out of my pants. I mean, there's— I need tall man shirts. So interestingly, the latest batch are shorter. They're the same price, but they're actually shorter.

Are you sure you're not just getting bigger?

I'm not. Yes. Yes. Isn't that— isn't that— is that perfect? Everything is like that. And that's not included in inflation. That you get less for the same dollar is not included.

Yeah.

So that's only what you pay more for.

And I want to make sure that people can connect the dots here. So where did the inflation come from? Because we didn't have any inflation under Trump. There was no inflation. I mean, the top inflation rate averaged less than 2% when he was president. Biden came in. I want to make sure people understand this. We didn't need any more massive government spending when Biden came in. COVID was over. We had the vaccine, the economy had been reopened up. We were on a glide path to him. And when he keeps saying, oh, I took over, the economy was a disaster. No, it wasn't. We were flying high. Biden came in and remember Rahm Emanuel used to say a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

That's right.

What the left did, and they're very good at this, they capitalized on COVID in two ways. They changed all the voting rules, right? So that they could get get rid of Trump. And then the second thing they did is they used the COVID crisis to massively spend money on things that had nothing to do with COVID They were just the left wing's dingbat crazy ideas that they'd had for 40 years, and now they had the opportunity to do it. And so they spent $4 to $5 trillion and borrowed every penny of it. And if you borrow that much money, it's almost like printing money. Obviously it's going to cause inflation.

Right.

It's certainly another thing. Did you know that there are 18 Nobel Prize economists who signed a letter in the New York Times when Biden passed his big spending bill saying, don't worry, this won't cause inflation?

I'm quiet because I'm digesting.

Can you believe that? I mean, don't you think they give their PhDs back or their Nobel Prizes to say, did we know that? I'm going to get that for you.

Yes, absolutely. I want to— I want to mention every name. Yeah.

Now, it might not have been 18. It might have been 14. I don't remember the exact number. But it was certainly over 12.

It was a teen.

Yeah. And it was a lot. And they said, don't worry, no inflation. And then inflation goes up.

I'm sure Paul Krugman signed it.

He may. I don't remember if he did or not. I probably—

I'm going to look it up during the break. But, well, his columns are all, don't worry about inflation.

So the spending caused the inflation. And then, and then what did the Fed have to do? They've raised interest rates, you know, 10 times over the last year and a half. It's affecting mortgages and People always ask me, how is this going to end? And I'll tell you, it's not going to— it's not going to happen.

All right, answer that one.

It's not going to happen.

All right, my friends, Steve Moore is my guest. We'll be back. Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager and I'm with one of the leading economists of our day, Steve Moore. You can get his newsletter for free. Committee to Unleash Prosperity, right? I got it right. Here we go. So I found the, the 17. I, as everyone listening knows, truth is more important to me than any other single value. And in fact, Paul Krugman did not sign it.

I— but he did write a column.

Oh yeah, he's written many columns that we shouldn't worry about it, but I just want to make it clear he didn't. George Akerlof. These are all Nobel laureates. Georgetown University, Angus Deaton. Princeton University, Peter Diamond. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Robert Engel. New York University, Oliver Hart. Harvard University, Daniel Kahneman. He was considered like one of the geniuses of our day. Princeton University, Eric Maskin. Harvard University, Daniel McFadden. Berkeley, Paul Milgram. Stanford, Roger Myerson. University of Chicago, Edmund— oh God, that's making what's-his-name roll in his grave. Yeah, Milton Friedman, University of Chicago economist. Edmund Phelps, Columbia University. Paul Romer, New York University. William Sharpe, Stanford University. Robert Shiller, Yale University. Christopher Sims, Princeton University. Robert Solow, MIT. And Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University.

By the way, that letter basically said, summarizing it, said you don't have to worry about inflation from Biden spending and debt.

Yeah.

And they were wrong.

Open letter from Nobel laureates in support of economic recovery agenda, which is an Orwellian— that's for sure.

It's like the inflation reduction.

Well, yeah, that's what I was thinking of. That's exactly right. So you ended the last segment with the end is coming, or what is the end?

Look, I'm not, I'm not, I know, I know, I know. But what I'm saying is that the story, this story doesn't have a happy ending. You cannot continue to borrow and borrow and borrow and borrow every year and thinks, and, and by the way, it's, I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever you are, everyone knows you can't do that. You can't do that. The Prager household can't do that. The Moore household can't do that. No, you, you have to pay your bills at some point. And so this is now, Incidentally, when I came to Washington in 1985, when Reagan was president and the debt then was about $2.5 trillion. And think about this, now we're at $32.5 trillion.

So they say, I'm so happy you're here. They say, yes, it's terrible, but Republicans spend as much as they do.

They do.

I'm not— I mean, both politicians love to—

Is it truly, is it 50-50 guilt?

Look, I worked for Donald Trump. I think he, as I'm saying, I think he was a great president. He did great things for our country. But Trump loved to spend money, you know.

So, so why is voting Republican, forgetting other issues like poisoning children with hormone hormones or hormone blockers, why is it beneficial to vote Republican in terms of the economy?

Well, I mean, I think, right, well, for example, right now you have a Republican Congress and that is the one restraint on Biden's run.

Well, if it is a restraint, so it's not 50-50. Look, no, no, I want to know whom to blame the most.

The most Democrats. But don't— I don't want to fool people and say Republicans are fiscal angels because they're not.

Right. You know, why did Trump spend so much? Is it because you can't get elected in this country anymore if you don't give people goodies?

Well, I think a lot of politicians believe that to be the case.

Yeah, and a lot of Republicans believe it. Yes.

And you know, we have another big problem. Big business is for big government. Did you know that? Big business loves all these big spending bills. You know, it's, it's just, it's unbelievable how much money we've been spending, and it has the support of everybody. You know, everybody loves Santa Claus.

Tell me specifically why big business likes all the spending.

Because they're the recipients of it. Look at— we gave $300 billion to the semiconductor industry. The other thing people don't realize, this climate change thing isn't about climate change. This is about money. The green is about the money.

How much has been spent on—

about $500 billion. And by the way, last year we had a record worldwide. We had a record amount of CO2 emissions in the planet. So we've spent a half a trillion dollars and we've accomplished nothing.

Yes, that's correct. Bjorn Lomborg writes about that regularly and so intelligently.

I mean, he even says, look, even if you did everything the left wants—

That's right, it would affect 1 degree maybe.

Less, oh, way less.

By the end of the century.

Right.

Just want to make that clear, not by 2050. All right, I'm speaking to Steve Moore and it's Committee to Unleash Prosperity, his newsletter, it's free, and you should see his Pregame you videos as well, clarifying what's going on economically. Hello everybody, Dennis Prager here. So I have an interesting question for you by way of introducing my guest. Who is the most destructive president of the last 100 years? Or perhaps in American history, putting Andrew Johnson aside, who really did a lot of damage to the country. But so that's why I would say in over 100 years, in the last 100, let's say 50 years. So there's no question that Joe Biden, in my mind, no question is not proper because I'm about to offer an opinion. Joe Biden, I believe, is the worst human being to be president. I consider him a pathological liar as opposed to an occasional liar, and I consider him to work against the interests of the United States on a daily basis. But there are those who believe that he is the inheritor of the Obama legacy. And people don't talk about that very often, but there is a new book out, Barack Obama's True Legacy: How He Transformed America. The editor of the book, because it's, it's a, it's very, it's an easy read, not emotionally, but it's an easy read because it's a series of little essays, as it were. Obama, the Marxist origins and goals of Obamacare, Muslim Brotherhood's penetration of the U.S. under Obama, how Obama enabled the persecution of Christians, Obama's betrayal of Israel, how— let's see— Benghazi betrayal and the Brotherhood link, Obama's Russia collusion, and so on. And it's a very very serious indictment by a lot of very serious thinkers. The editor of the book is Jamie Glazov. Jamie Glazov is editor at Front Page Mag, one of the most important of the conservative websites in the country. The book is up at DennisPrager.com, Barack Obama's True Legacy. So Jamie, welcome to the show. Of course, you can watch this, by the way, folks, if you want. At the Salem News Channel. So, Jamie, what prompted you to edit this book?

What a privilege and honor it is to be here, Dennis. Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, there's a lot of things. I think one of the things I would say is that my dad and mom were dissidents in the Soviet Union, and they stood up against the Soviet Empire, and That takes about 2 hours to talk about, but the short version is we were able to escape. We ended up in America, a country that I love very much. And we left the Soviet Union. We escaped the Soviet Union. And slowly but surely, the Soviet Union came to us. And I remember just watching Barack Obama and what the Bolsheviks had done in my country, the way the Bolshevik Revolution had occurred, the way that Bolsheviks come to power, their ideas, their rhetoric. This is everything that Obama engaged in, continues to engage in, and it's very frightening. And I wanted to make sure that this is not forgotten. And I think that today, Dennis Prager, it's more relevant than ever. I mean, Where do we even begin? What we see happening with the indictment of Trump today, did this just appear out of thin air? Let's look back to Obama's war on General Flynn, which Joseph Klein documents in our book. Barack Obama planted the seed, the seeds. He fertilized the soil to all of the destruction that we see today. And it's very important to talk about that, to see it clearly. Everything we see today and very, very scary time. You know, I often think about Fyodor Karamazov in Brothers Karamazov and what Dostoevsky, that incredible novel he wrote. But when Fyodor Karamazov was killed, there was a certain individual that had killed him. But there was another individual that had come up with the idea and had put it into the murderer's mind. And he had built the infrastructure for that murder. And, uh, I think it's important to think about those things because there's people who carry things out, and then there are people who fertilize the soil and put the ideas into people's heads.

You know, for those who, who wonder whether this is a valid thesis or not, I would ask them a question. It just occurred to me as you were speaking. I like to ask people Can you name one thing that Joe Biden has done with which Barack Obama would differ? Is that a fair question? Because if you can't name one, it's obvious that he is sort of the protégé of Barack Obama. So while your book is on Obama, just a Biden question. Do you believe that Biden is the child or the product of Barack Obama or is an independent nihilist?

Well, I think it's the first one for sure. Sometimes there's a combination of both, but it is such a surreal dark comedy that we're observing right now. I mean, just even to look at Biden and to think that this guy who talks about, oh, I'm going to get in trouble. I don't think I'm allowed to say this. Like, those are symbols of what's going on. And definitely there's somebody pulling a lot of the strings. And if you look at every single policy, let's even off the top of my head, let's begin even with Israel. Who is it that put so much money into the hands of Palestinian terrorists? Who is it that betrayed Israel? Who is it that unleashed the Muslim Brotherhood? And then the Muslim Brotherhood, of course, strengthens and enables Hamas. And who does Hamas kill? All of the, you know, this is just one realm here, but a very sacred realm because the enemies of Israel are the enemies of America. And who made this Iran deal possible? Who enabled the mullahs in Iran? Look at everything that Biden is doing. It's exactly the same thing. And Dennis, you're absolutely right. Can we even think of one thing where Biden says, oh, that was a mistake that Obama did, I'm going to turn course on that? So in many respects, this is Obama's third term. They were panicking when Obama— excuse me, when Trump came in. Obama and the left were panicking that Trump was going to overturn all of the Bolshevik things that that Obama had succeeded in perpetrating. And now Biden is back, the third term is back, and they're continuing what I see as this Bolshevik revolution in America.

Do you—

do—

is one of the chapters, or do you personally have an analysis? Because I always ask the question, why? What prompted a man raised by a white woman. The Black father abandoned him. The white mother raised him. He is biracial. What prompts his distaste for this country?

What a question, Dennis. You know, what is this? What gives life to the Marxist idea? What gives life to the leftist idea? To this hatred that's masked by humanitarianism. There's a lot in our book that talks about Obama's youth and his background. We've got, you know, a great essay by Jeffrey Nyquist, for instance, on Obama's Russian collusion that talks about, you know, some of the past of Obama. We've got another great essay that talks about his Marxist youth. We can psychoanalyze a lot of things, but there was definitely a Marxist background. And what I find very interesting, you know, Robert Spencer mentions this in the book, that in 2008 during the campaign, Obama very ostentatiously comes off the airplane. He's walking and he's got this book in his hand by Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World, and he's got his finger in the book just not to lose his place. Now, these individuals, everything is calculated. Everything is done for show, just like the Illuminati. It's very important for them to give their signals to each other. And that was the culmination of Obama's youth, of his training, of how he was raised.

That does answer it. You're right. Yep, that's right.

But I will say also very quickly, Dr. Daniel Pipes has documented his Muslim childhood and youth. I'm not even saying anything's wrong with that. Just saying that's documented. Then all of a sudden he's some kind of a Christian at Jeremiah Wright's church. We have to ask, forget that. When was the conversion moment? Why has that never been asked?

All right, Jamie, let me, let me tell everybody because they should get your book, folks. This is an important book. I'm proud to have given one of the blurbs, Barack Obama's True Legacy. How He Transformed America. It's up at DennisPrager.com. Jamie Glazov and Front Page Magazine, God bless you both.

Thank you so much.

Yes, it's an honor indeed. Hello, my friends, I'm Dennis Prager. We continue the show, and again, a thank you to this wonderful man, Jamie Glazov, and the book Barack Obama's true legacy. I opened up the show with one of the most chilling— I would say I actually had to hold back tears to think about what this girl has gone through. This, uh, what is her full name here? Let's see if it's in the beginning or not. It's about a teen. Let's see, I don't know if they give her last name. They just— yeah, they just say Evelyn. So starting at 5, her father, who was a constant drunk, molested her and then started actually raping her. About 6 years later, when she was about 11, he committed suicide. So of course, can you imagine your father does this daily to you for all of your childhood? And that's why— that's when I want to cry. However, what doctors have done to her is morally comparable to what her father did to her. It's not the same, obviously, in terms of damaging her. These psychiatrists, psychologists, surgeons, uh, the, the youth uh, program that she was put into damaged her, morally speaking, as her father did. We have monsters known as psychiatrists, psychologists, and surgeons. Monsters known as pediatricians. Of course, there are wonderful psychiatrists, psychologists, and pediatricians, but there are a hell of a lot of monsters. So of course she had terrible problems. It's amazing she's alive after what her father did to her. Her mother was sick and in the hospital a lot, so she couldn't help her daughter. She resisted when they kept saying to her daughter, these, these therapists and others, You know, you, uh, you, you really might be a boy. You should consider that as a, uh, as a possible source of your problems. Not that the father raped her on a daily basis. No, the big problem is she might be a boy. Twice she thought she was a boy. Her mother kept saying, no, you're a girl. So she stayed a girl. Then she was put into a, a home for Kids Health Crest Youth Center in San Diego, an LGBT club for teens aged 12 to 18. And there was a 19-year-old who shouldn't have been there at all, but the 19-year-old boy who said he was a girl, and he started then hitting on her sexually. She reported him and they hated her for doing that because you can't report trans women. You can't say, you know, this was really a guy who started molesting me, a female. No, no, that's a woman, wouldn't do that. That was the Hillcrest Youth Center. They've not commented to National Review when contacted, needless to say. He'd bring me gifts. We exchanged numbers. He went off the rails, made creepy sexual comments, communicating, wrote, wrote a poem about masturbation and sent it to her. He would walk around all the time, talk all the time about wanting to meet up when my mom wasn't around. He would try to kiss me whenever I went to the youth center. This is the trans woman. He would be very touchy, playing with my hair, rubbing my shoulders. When Evie brought her concerns to the youth leader, she— oh, it's a shock, it's a she— deflected her by saying she'd never had bad experiences with this trans woman. She refused to kick him out anyway. She left Hillcrest Youth Center and she felt that she was lonely now. So for the first year and a half, Evie was readmitted to an inpatient ward, and she came out as a transgender for the third time. Her mom wasn't having it though, claiming she was crying wolf. And then after a few casual sessions with the therapist The therapist, Christy Morellas— let's see, the therapist Christy Morellas referred Evie to a pediatrician, Dr. Rachel Jen Fortoun in San Diego, who is known for encouraging these kids, apparently, uh, to get hormones. She gave her the highest dose of testosterone. She was 15 years old. Yeah, that's the, that's the go-to thing for these pediatricians like Dr. J.M. Fortoun, who believe that you don't try to help kids stay the sex they are, you try to help them transition. Gender affirming is a complete Orwellianism. It's gender-denying therapy, not gender-affirming therapy, just for the record. So she got testosterone. She got them once a month. By the time she was 17, twice a month. Her voice changed. At 16, she brought up the idea of top surgery, meaning having her breasts, her healthy breasts, cut off. Her mom recommended a breast reduction instead. But the therapists egged Evie on and promised to help her get a referral for a double mastectomy. They were almost pushing it on me. Wow. Monsters, my friends. Monsters in the form of psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and pediatricians. Monsters. Pushing it on her. Hey, you're a boy, have your breasts removed. She was 16. Well, in May 2021, she had the procedure. At the orientation, a doctor poorly explained what he was going to do, she said. A nurse mentioned that if for whatever reason she didn't like the results, she could have implants put in. It's like a money-back guarantee, you know. No problem, you don't like this tire, we give you a Michelin. You don't like Michelin, get Pirelli. I found out years later that was completely false. The flat-out— they flat-out lied to me. What leftist, uh, therapist would lie to you? Oh, it's a shock. There's not enough skin on my chest to have implants. Like, I'm telling you, I'm holding back tears. They were explaining that it's very low risk, they never have any complications. A few weeks after the operation, Evie developed a bad infection in the areas of her removed breast where Jackson-Pratt drains, devices that collect bodily fluids from surgical sites, had been installed. There was pus going into my lungs. I had to be admitted into the ER because I was in the most excruciating pain I ever felt. Both locations were super inflamed. They were leaking pus. My chest was swollen. I could barely breathe. This is all in National Review. We'll put the— we're putting the article up at DennisPrager.com. My friends, I'm reading to you one of the saddest things I've read in my 40 years of broadcasting. This girl Evelyn, I, I, uh, I don't know the end of the story because it just came out and I'm reading it to you as I'm reading it to myself. Raped repeatedly by her alcoholic father who finally committed suicide. Mother was in the hospital much of the time. That alone is hell, to have that done to you as a little girl. I, I shudder. The unfairness of life. And then to think that she was abused by pediatricians and psychiatrists in as destructive a way, in many ways, as the father had been to her. They're all women. Every, every name that I have seen is a woman. Yep. The role of women in ruining young children in this society is disproportionate. I have— I wrote an article on it. I have stated it. Men disproportionately rape and murder, and women disproportionately ruin. But in this society of wimps where you can only say bad things about men, the left has already done it. Just as I said they would, they would say this is misogyny. See, criticize men, you're a realist. You criticize women, you're a misogynist. They're all children on the left. Their incapacity to deal with reality. Their, their weakness of character is so, so blatant. This is— this story is, is incredible. So finally, the girl in 2021— I don't know what— it's not clear from the article what age she was. She was probably late teens, maybe 20, I don't know. On the recommendation of the psychiatrist and the pediatrician, had both her breasts cut off. She was told, oh, if you change your mind later, you can have, you can have them restored. But she says there was not enough skin on my chest to have implants. They lied to her. Then she had the greatest pain in her life from the pus oozing out of sores in her cut-off breast region. While in intensive care for 2 weeks, the doctors told Evie that the infections could have been life-threatening if she hadn't caught it when she did. I could have drowned in my own pus, she said. While healing, Evie wore a compression binder because doctors told her there was a risk her nipples could fall off if she didn't. I know personally people to whom that has happened, she said. Oh God, I'm, I'm telling you, I'm kind of— I'm holding back tears. National Review has obtained medical documents confirming that Evie received testosterone and a double mastectomy. Though Evie declined to provide the name of the surgeon who performed the mastectomy. That's interesting. At 18, Evie and her mom— so I guess it was, she was still a teenager when this happened. First life gave her that father, and then life gave her these pediatricians and the LGBT community. Which doesn't give a damn about trans women who really are men and hurt women. What a sick, sick half of society we have produced. At 18, she— when they moved to Brooklyn, she was hit with an avalanche of physical side effects from the transition Her hair started falling out in chunks. My hairline was moving back really far. I had bald spots all over my head, which you can imagine is very humiliating as an 18-year-old. So she had a mastectomy at 18, maybe 17, double. I wonder why she won't give the name of the despicable surgeon. My body hair started coming in way thicker. My voice didn't go back to normal like they said it would. The binding, which she'd routinely do for hours longer than recommended, ruined her ribs. Now the top 2 ribs flare out. I really got bad chest tightness, she said. I'll continue. You need to know this. Well, the National Review article is up at DennisPrager.com. Is that correct, Mr. Allen?

Yes.

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 pragertopia.com.