In a live AMA style update, Sean, Carl, and Dennis Prager’s son David discuss the status of Dennis Prager’s recovery following a November 12 fall that caused an incomplete C3‑C4 spinal cord injury. David outlines the medical facts: the injury is high‑level but incomplete, allowing potential neural recovery. Over the past month Dennis has regained the ability to speak, eat, drink, and breathe independently, though he remains paralyzed below the neck. He is mentally engaged, consuming news, reading letters, and expressing optimism about returning to his radio show and writing in the spring. Sean shares personal observations from recent visits, confirming the functional gains and Dennis’s high spirits. The conversation highlights the role of fan letters, social‑media updates, and regular visitors in boosting morale. Carl interjects with a contrasting, more skeptical tone about Dennis’s return to the limelight. The family emphasizes Dennis’s personal philosophy of choosing life over death or depression, and they encourage continued fan correspondence to support his recovery.
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Everybody out there in PragerTopia land and across the world that is a fan of Dennis and his work has been clamoring for information that frankly is not moving fast enough for anyone's liking, right? We want a quick recovery that isn't happening, even though he is recovering, and we see these slow incremental positive steps that we know behind the scenes is great. But to not have information about Dennis is driving people mad, and they— everybody wants Dennis back, including myself, and I'm sure you as well, except for Carl. Carl does not want Dennis back. He wants to stay in the limelight. He's a selfish man.
This is so not true.
We've been, uh, treated to— sorry, Carl, did you want to respond?
No, no, no, you're fine, you're fine.
Your Instagram post from PragerU with Marissa, and those have been keeping people informed, and those have been invaluable. And so today I just want to give you the floor, David, to open up and let us know the latest on your father. And we have some questions and comments from people in Prager Utopia land. But please go ahead, David.
And I appreciate that, you know, everyone wants as much information as, uh, as they can get. We'll provide as much as we can. I mean, my dad is fairly transparent, as everyone knows, so we'll give as much information as we can give. Um, but, you know, he suffered— I'll just go start from the beginning to make things simple. Um, November 12th, he suffered a fall that resulted in a spinal cord injury. Pretty high up, an incomplete injury it's called, at the C3-C4 vertebrae. It's an incomplete injury meaning that he has the ability to regain neural functioning. He's now, I'll cut really to the end of the page and then kind of fill in any questions Sean that you have or any of the listeners have. Sure. Right now he's recuperating very well. The last month has been a really, really great movement in the right direction. Unfortunately, he's still paralyzed below the neck. But he's speaking beautifully. He's eating now, drinking now. That was stuff that wasn't happening only about a month ago. So it's really great to see him get to the point where he is now, knowing that, of course, there's room for a lot of improvement. I told him that I was going to be on AMA today and asked him if he had anything that he'd like to share to the listeners. Obviously, his love for everybody and that As much as you are clamoring him for him to be back on the radio, he's clamoring too, and he gives assurances without giving a specific date that he'll be back on at some point in the spring. And based on all that I've seen and all that anybody who's visited him has seen, he's really the same old Dennis. I mean, he's there and dying to get back on. He is following everything that's happening in the news now. He said he's actually following more than everything, more than he used to, because he has so much more time. He has visitors coming all the time, reading to him stories, every article that Alan sends and then some. So he's really devouring information right now. I know some people ask the question, how does he feel about, about Trump thus far? I don't have to tell you that answer. He's thrilled, obviously. Yeah.
I had the pleasure of seeing Dennis two Sundays ago. And obviously for reasons I haven't been able to visit as much as I want to. My life has been turned upside down in a whole different way because of the fires out here. And, and thank you to those of you that have donated. And it's just been a blessing, the outpouring of donations and prayers that I've received from the Prager family. And I am still living out of a suitcase. So, but I was able to see Dennis 2 weeks ago. He was doing much better than I anticipated. He, like David said, he's eating on his own and drinking on his own, breathing on his own, talking the whole time. And Alan was there, and I hadn't seen them in, felt like, 2 months. It was so good to see them, and it was so good to talk with Dennis. And he, like David said, I can't relay enough the optimism that Dennis has, and he is clamoring to get back just as much as you want him back, not only for his sake, but because you want his opinion on the news of the day and what's been going on in the world since Trump was elected. Alan had to cut my meeting with Dennis short because we just kept talking, and Alan said, okay, let's leave it on a high note.
It's actually funny because we have that happen a lot where Alan does come every Sunday to visit him, and he'll tell me, uh, understandably, David, you got to tell the rest of the, of the visitors during the week to actually try to get your dad to not talk as much, which getting him to try to not talk as much, it just doesn't work. So this is who he is by nature. And like you said, Sean, it's been echoed by everybody who's seen him recently that they're just blown away by how well he's doing and how it's just Dennis there. That's totally the reality. As it stands, he's back to his Starbucks. I think the one thing missing really is the cigars. Uh, so we'll do that at some point.
I know what I've been saying from the beginning, for his sake, I want him to be able to just enjoy a cigar.
Yeah, David, if, if I may ask, I'm, I'm curious. I, I understand the talks, uh, or talking to Dennis needs to be limited, but I, I would suspect that that keeps him motivated, full of energy, um, uh, you know, just motivated to, to, to get back, uh, to radio. And I would suspect, obviously I don't know, that in some facet that has to help in the healing process mentally. But I mean, I suspect even, even more so.
Yeah.
I mean, the truth is a lot of the doctors are saying, let him do his thing. Everyone heals differently. The doctors who have seen him over the past month and he's been at a new facility for the past month, are sort of blown away by the progress he's made and said that we can't necessarily tell him exactly what to do. A, because, you know, if you know him at all, there's no point in telling him what you think he should do. And B, he's— he just— this is how he recuperates. And so much of that I'm learning, so much of recuperating is based on your, uh, where you are mentally. And since he's now sort of seen A, a goal of getting back on the radio, and B, a pathway to get there, his spirits are pretty much every day high. Doesn't mean he's feeling 100% every day. I don't want to sugarcoat anything, but he's definitely feeling great by virtue of the fact that he knows there's a pathway back to a large section of where his life is. After that, in terms of regaining function, we don't know where that's going to go. I'm pretty optimistic because all everything that the doctors have recently said is they're again blown away by all that he's done. And I try to remind him, speaking of optimism, I know he said this to everybody a lot, that I said, Dad, try not to be optimistic or pessimistic. And you've said that to everybody for the last several years when fighting for America. So you now got to do that with your own recovery.
Yeah. Your father told me a couple of things. One, he, he said he wants to live as normal a life as possible. And I believe he will achieve that. The first step, it will be getting out of the hospital. The second step will be getting back to doing what he loves, writing and speaking.
Yeah.
And the other thing he told me— yeah, oh, totally, totally. As much as you need Dennis, he— Dennis needs you. That's, it's who he is. Um, and we've often, for years, we've always said, let Dennis be Dennis, let Dennis be Dennis, because that's the way His parents had to be with him when he was growing up because he was just gonna do his own thing at all times. And look how far it got him. He said to me, and that's the other thing, aside from getting Dennis' take on the news and what is happening in the world, we wanna know what his thoughts have been since this happened and what has gone through his mind in recovering. He said to me, when this happened to me, I had 3 options. Life, death, and depression. And I'm not going to die, and I hate depression.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he said a lot, especially in the Happiness Hours, that people, people's— when, when their lives get turned upside down, the pessimistic eventually become the pessimistic, the optimistic eventually become the optimistic again. And, and he's sort of reverting back to who he was after this initial, you know, few-month period, for sure. There's no question. But he loves— I mean, I can't tell you how much he loves the letters that he gets from fans and from different people. So I'm just reading them to my sort of joke that I've become like an expert in New Testament literature because of how many times the New Testament is quoted in the letters to him. So Been, uh, it's been so heartwarming to see, uh, people, uh, write him. And, um, yeah, it's been— I mean, the letters just keep on coming in. And that is when people say, what can you do for him? Um, one of the things that you can do is continue, continue writing, uh, to him to let him know, to let, let him know how impacted you've been by him.
