From Prager’s radio show in July 2015:
Comment: “Poor Dennis Prager…he’s a smart guy but still spouts neo-con drivel that nobody is buying anymore…flush the show and don’t forget to jiggle the handle!”
Dennis: “We have terrific people [running for the Republican nomination] and all this attention is being given to a man who has no Republican background, no conservative principles, and somehow has sucked out all the wind out of the Republican process. It’s mind-boggling and very depressing. A very powerful piece on this by John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, one of the leading Conservative magazines.”
Trump: The Case for Despairing About America by John Podhoretz
No sense pretending: Donald Trump is the only news of the 2016 race, and this fact says something very troubling about the Republican party, the conservative electorate, the mass media culture, and the United States in general. Sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s not. Really it’s not.
Ted Cruz goes to war with the GOP Senate leadership; Hillary Clinton proposes the highest tax rates in 70 years; Marco Rubio goes after John Kerry on the Iran deal in a Senate hearing. Well, big deal. Phffft. They’ve all been crowded out by the Trump noise. There will be the first Republican debate in ten days. It’s the most important political event of the year thus far. And it will be all about Trump. He will see to that; the reporters will see to that, and the minor candidates looking to move up will see to it by trying to pick fights with him and best him.
It’s not enough to say that there are matters of deathly serious to be discussed, from Iran to ISIS to the possible collapse of the Euro and the Chinese economy to the harvesting of fetal organs, because there are always serious matters to be discussed as elections approach. The issue with Trump is that his approach can only be called “the politics of unseriousness.” He engages with no issue, merely offers a hostile and pithy soundbite bromide about it. He yammers. He describes how wonderful things will be when he acts against something or other without explaining how he will act, what he will do, or how it will work.
The Trump view, boiled down: They’re all idiots and I’m very rich and I know how to do things and if you say Word One against me I will say something incredibly nasty about you and who cares about how the Senate works or the House works or international alliances work or how treaties work or how anything works. That stuff is for sissies and losers and disasters. I know how to do it I me me me I me me I I me. And me. And I.
Politics and megalomania go hand in hand — otherwise, why would the ancient emperors have had someone whispering “Caesar, thou art mortal” in their ears as they paraded triumphantly through Rome to remind them they were not gods? To take one random example, Ed Koch, a very good politician indeed and one who did very good things, spent the last 20 years of his life literally incapable of speaking a sentence that was not in the first person. When I made a close study of the presidency of George H. W. Bush for my first book, Hell of a Ride, I discovered to my amazement that his speeches too were remarkably self-referential and his policies often came down to a kind of “what should a person like me in this situation do” rather than representing a serious grappling with the issues at play. In that book, I called Bush’s time in the White House a “solipsistic presidency,” and the charge still stands.
Trump is something different. He is not a politician whose success has turned him into a megalomaniac, but a megalomaniac who has decided to play politician for a while the way he played being a reality television star for a while. He’s free to do this, of course.
The problem is not with him. The problem has to do with his reception. He is garnering support that may actually be real, and may actually change the course of the 2016 election — and, therefore, American history — through nothing more than blowhardism.
Efforts to figure out how to coopt him and his issues on the part of other Republicans are doomed to failure because it’s not the message that people are attracted to; it’s the messenger. Or, if it is the message, it is a message that cannot be coopted because it is little more than a vile expression of open hatred toward Mexicans in a country where people of Mexican descent make up 11 percent of the electorate. For those who want Trump because of it, anything less than his defamation will strike them as the castrated bleating of what they have started to call a “cuckservative.”
Dennis: “Yeah. That’s all correct.”
On another show in July of 2015, Dennis says: “Let’s talk about Donald Trump here. I think I understand what is happening here. I have listened to and read his comments on John McCain. Some of the people I most respect in the world support Donald Trump’s alarm-sounding about illegal immigration.”
“Does [Trump] know anything about John McCain’s story? If John McCain is not a hero, the word should be removed from the English language. He could have left. He was tortured. He revealed nothing and wouldn’t allow himself to be released until all his fellow prisoners were and then Donald Trump has the moronic audacity to say that this man is not a hero because he was captured. Is he out of his mind? It’s disgusting what he said.”
“He is unworthy of being president. If you are not angry by what he said about John McCain, I’m disgusted.”
“If you defend Donald Trump, it’s Republican-first over morality, over decency. Some things have to elicit anger or it’s over. Oh, it doesn’t matter that he have this disgusting dismissal of a man who was tortured for years and this buffoon has the audacity not to apologize for it. And people laugh? McCain is entirely right that he owes an apology to the family of every POW. Is this the bushido ethic? Is that the Donald Trump ethic?”
On August 6, 2015, Dennis Prager tweeted: “Donald Trump’s unwillingness to pledge not to run as an independent should immediately disqualify him in every Republican’s eyes.”
In August, after the first Republican debate, Dennis said: “I wonder if Trump has ever been booed by a room full of people before?”
“It’s clear that support for Trump is emotional. Virtually every call has taken issue with me on Donald Trump.”
“The left is enamored of Donald Trump because the more Donald Trump is in the headlines, the more people who might vote Republican are turned off. The New York Times story is a lie. Donald Trump did not steal the show, but the New York Times wants to promote him.”
“Supporting Trump feels good. It doesn’t do good. The New York Times is on your side if you support Trump.”
“If you want to be intellectually honest, Cruz is your man if you are a Trump supporter.”
“I love Rick Perry. He’d be a great president. Of that crew, I thought Carly Fiorina and Bobby Jindahl did best. Santorum did fine.”
“Ronald Reagan didn’t speak the way Donald Trump does.”
“What is [Trump] saying that Ted Cruz is not saying? Where are his novel insights? I don’t know that he is a conservative. He has taken a position on almost every issue that is the opposite of what he now has.”
“There isn’t Donald Trump thinking. There is Donald Trump emoting.”
Caller: “Who would you rather have for president? A loony left-winger or Donald Trump?”
Dennis: “Donald Trump.”
Caller: “If he gets the nod, will you contact him and offer him your help?”
Dennis: “Yes.”
“Democrats are so damaging to this country that even Donald Trump would be better.”
Dec. 15, 2015, Dennis tweeted: “Thus far, if I were a Democrat, I would most fear Marco Rubio.”
On January 21, 2016, Dennis Prager shared a link without comment on his Facebook page to the National Review editorial against Donald Trump.
