PragerU Live: Larry Elder (6/27/17)

hey everyone this is Alicia Krauss live from the Prageru HQ And if you're like me you're counting down the days to the 4th of July But there's a lot happening in Washington DC And we're going to be talking about that with our next Prageru Live guest one of our favorite presenters ever But first I have to ask you please take a moment and click the link right now and donate as little as $5 makes a big difference to help make sure that Prageru videos and Prageru lives stay free They are impacting millions of Americans including the majority of our viewers that are millennials That means under the age of 35 So you can make a difference in educating a 35-year-old today a 25year-old today a 15year-old today If you're a parent a grandparent a single person whatever please go right now to prageru.com and donate or click the link in this Prageru live Now without further ado I want to welcome one of my favorite people in the whole world He's an all-around decent dude Larry Elder is I guess are you a thrice presenter to PragerU now i think so Wow So welcome to the We need to have a sweater like SNL gives out to people I was going to say I feel like Alec Baldwin in SNL He's a five-timer club I don't remember I know that The Rock got the five-timer robe and hey The Rock can pull off anything but so can you dear sir His Larry Elder is also a syndicated radio host and columnist best-selling author and a friend of Prageru and of Dennis And Larry I loved your video this week And so tell me what was it what what kind of triggered the thought process of I'm going to talk about how JFK would he be a Democrat or Republican in 2017 well it's a couple of things I've always been fascinated by JFK ever since I was a kid He was uh I think I was 11 years old when he was killed And my mother was a big fan of his My father voted for Richard Nixon So there was always this kind of tension in the house around Democrat versus Republican Uh that always fascinated me But more importantly uh I feel that the Democratic party has gotten way left from its roots uh that that encouraged people like my mother to become a a Democrat People like uh Ronald Reagan to become a Democrat people like Charlton H all left the party Uh and Reagan famously said "I didn't leave the Democratic party The Democratic Party left me." I interviewed Hedon a number of times uh when he was president of the NRA He said the same thing And despite the fact Alicia that my mother never changed her registration She voted twice for Reagan and twice for George W Bush And I asked her why she wouldn't change her registration And it was emotional And that brings me back to Kennedy This u this vision that we have of Kennedy uh is is often an emotional one one because he's such an attractive guy and because his wife was such an attractive woman Uh we forget that when you analyze his policies uh today he'd probably be called a Republican Uh and I would imagine that uh people who supported Bernie Sanders and Hillary uh assuming Kennedy would not have evolved would not have voted for somebody like this on guns for example especially as you point out in the video the Democratic party uses the Kennedy name all the time and there have been other Kennedy politicians that are way further to the left than JFK ever was That's right He's an icon of the party If that's your icon then why don't you look at your icon's policies and and and tell me why you strayed so far from your icon's policies on guns He was a hunter a staunch second amendment guy understood that the second amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms and spoke eloquently about that Uh on abortion abortion was not an issue in the 1960 campaign Uh however his sister was a staunch proer and activist ununice uh and uh Kennedy spoke negatively about the Japanese policy of abortion so that they could control their population I even have a letter that Ted Kennedy wrote to a constituent in 1971 where he abhored the idea of abortion on demand So Kennedy was a Catholic and and a believing Catholic and and opposed abortion and did not feel that it was something that government should be involved in foreign policy If you watch his debates in 1960 with Richard Nixon uh uh they were both staunch cold war warriors both World War II vets and with virtually no difference in their in their point of view If anything Kennedy was more hawkish than than Nixon and talked about there being a missile gap Most people now believe that there wasn't such a gap But Kennedy used that to argue that Nixon was not strong enough and hawkish enough on on foreign policy uh and on taxes Of course Nick uh Kennedy proposed a tax cut that went into effect after he died Uh and by percentage it was a much deeper tax cut than anything George W Bush ever proposed And when you look at the ideology that Kennedy used in um in explaining why he wanted a tax cut he sounded like Ronald Reagan He said a rising tide lifts all boats and for every dollar that a job creator saves in taxes he can put into uh his work investment to save and create a new job Uh it sounded like a supply side guy even though that term was not in vogue at the time So for all those reasons in my view unless Kennedy dramatically changed his his point of view he would have been a Republican So you also point out that in another way he's similar to Ronald Reagan because he had kind of like the trust but verify and strength you know showing military strength specifically He historically had to deal with the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis Well that's right And and uh by the way on those two issues I once uh had a a pretty rockous interview with Chris um Chris Matthews who wrote a book about JFK and talked about the two major events in JFK's life or at least the two events that most of us uh think about and that is the uh PT 109 incident and the Cuban missile crisis And in both those cases uh you need to put a real ascaris next to next to his name The PT 109 was uh rammed by a Japanese u uh boat and it was a much larger boat Uh it's the only PT boat in the whole World War II fleet that was rammed and it was because Kennedy and his crew was negligent They apparently were uh were were sleeping or not paying attention It should not have happened Now he acted courageously after it got got rammed and he did rescue uh some crewmen but it would not have had to happen if Kennedy had been properly operating his uh his boat regarding the Cuban missile crisis His Secretary of State Dean Rusk urged him not to sit down with Cruchef the then uh premier of the Soviet Union without any preconditions Kennedy was so reckless and so confident in his abilities he did it anyway Uh Cruchef ran all over him debated him about the merits of communism over capitalism and Kennedy did not handle himself very well Uh Kruef sized him up as a rookie decided to put missiles in Cuba Uh but for his assessment that Kennedy was weak he would not have done that And I agree that Kennedy handled the Cuban missile crisis with expert diplomacy uh and and tactically got uh the the missiles out without there being a thermonuclear war But he basically caused the crisis in the first place not unlike the way he caused the PT9 uh daring rescue in the first place Interesting So speaking of international crisis right now we it seems as if Iran is kind of ramping up obviously Bashar al-Assad and Syria doesn't seem to give a rip about you know committing genocide against his own people Of course under the Obama administration he crossed that red line and nothing was done The Trump administration did drop those bombs in April And President Trump recently and Nikki Haley of course at the UN have said that they will do something So it's like you have Iran Syria Russia and then North Korea of course with Otto Warbeer an American being released but unconscious and then dying a week later at home Um there's lots of international stuff happening right now What would your advice be to President Trump to make sure that we don't ramp up and have a Cuban missile crisis type scenario well so far I've been impressed I've been impressed with the team that he has I've been impressed with uh with Mad Dog Mattis I've been impressed with HR McMaster Uh and I think today for example when or yesterday when the White House issued some sort of release uh uh saying that their intelligence suggests that Syria is about ready to release another nuclear attack That was a shot across the bow I was telling them uh you do that again uh and whatever happened last time uh is going to look like uh look like a uh uh a dream a piece of cake Um and and if nothing happens to me it means that uh that the Syrians got the message and decided not to do it lest they uh be uh be hit again the way Trump hit him a little while ago Uh look we've had eight years of appeasement eight years of leading from behind eight years of a president who went into office uh saying that the Iraq war was a dumb war and pulled every single troop out of Iraq over the objection of his secretary of state Hillary over the objection of a CIA head over the objection of the Secretary of Defense the Joint Chiefs the ambassador uh to uh the US ambassador to Iraq Uh and um uh uh so Obama did it anyway And Ray Odiernell the former army member of the joint chief said that had they left the staybehind force of between five and 10,000 uh people which is roughly roughly what we have right now as as they creep back ISIS could have been dealt could have been dealt with and ISIS would not have metastasized the way it did So uh my point is Trump has inherited a mess It's going to take a long time to undo all this There's no area of the world that after eight years of Obama is better than it was before he took office So one of those messes that Trump has inherited and Republicans are trying to deal with right now on the Hill is repeal and replacement of Obamacare Trump infamously now said a couple of weeks ago that he thought that the House side was too mean in their approach and is very involved As a matter of fact I think 50 senators are currently meeting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the president to negotiate and discuss what the Senate bill is going to look like Of course senators like Cruz Lee and Paul um along with a couple of others are allegedly in the no column What are your thoughts on the Senate version of this bill well I think uh as a practical matter as a matter of trying to retain control of the House uh the Republicans have to do something Uh that something will in the minds of people like Ran Paul uh be uh Obamacare light and uh and there's good reason to call it Obamacare light You still have a heavy footprint of government involved in it Uh and if you're a truth free marketer you're somebody who believes that the federal government ought not be involved in healthcare whatsoever And that the problem with our health care system is that half our healthcare dollar is paid for by government via Medicare and Medicaid Uh and you have heavy government interference in the other half that is not totally controlled by government So we have a quai uh um uh quai free market system that in my opinion uh is not nearly as efficient as it would be if it were totally free market Now the real world though however is that if you dare to touch Medicare or Medicaid uh you're going to get crucified which is why Donald Trump and Hillary did not mention it virtually any time during the campaign Even Obama said the three major entitlements programs uh including Social Security are unsustainable Uh so um whatever the Republicans do will ultimately cost more money Ran Paul is right Premiums are not going to go down Uh and uh eventually uh when uh costs go out of control uh Congress is going to have to go back to the taxpayers and ask for more money Uh and uh there'll be more pressure if Republican if Democrats take over for there to be singlepayer That's been the the goal of Democrats all along Howard Dean publicly said so Harry Reid publicly said so That's what they want Even Obama said when he before he became president if he were starting from scratch he'd have singlepayer So that is their goal And all they're going to do when Republicans pass this is find flaws in it uh they're going to find somebody named Susie who lives in West Cupcake whose premiums are a little higher than they were before and they're going to argue that ultimately we should we ought to have singlepayer and it's going to be up the Republicans to push back So my long answer short term we've got to do something longterm I'm hoping that people like uh Ran Paul and like Ted Cruz will prevail on Donald Trump uh to get more free market oriented and we get towards a free market system which is the best way of maximizing accessibility improving quality and affordability So I want to tap into your legal mind I'm sorry I was remissed to mention that of course you are a brilliant lawyer as well in addition to all of your other jobs I'm a lawyer Yeah I know I know people watching that don't like lawyers are like there's no such thing as a brilliant lawyer Um so I want to talk to you about we learned this week some of the dec you know go back to work in October And I wanted to get your humble opinion on which of those cases do you think is going to be the most instrumental in the 2018 midterm elections like used as talking points on the left and the right and which one you think kind of intrigues you the most well I I think the uh excuse me the the the cases having to do with the travel ban uh will probably be cases that will have something to do with the campaign because uh those people who are concerned about our borders who are concerned about the uh six countries uh that are problematic where we cannot uh vet refugees are the people that generally speaking want secure borders uh do not want a pathway to to citizenship uh and uh want to deal with the violent criminal illegal aliens who are here So you have that that divide On the other side are people who feel that uh putting up a wall and deal and dealing with immigration is harsh and unfair and we ought to have a so-called comprehensive way of dealing with this So a whole bunch of people uh are given citizenship who don't have it right now So that travel ban issue is a kind of an avatar for that uh for that deeper issue Uh the other one that's interesting I think is going to be the a man who did not want to bake a cake for a gay wedding Uh the Supreme Court apparently is going to take that case up Uh and then this of course is a very important religious freedom case Uh so I think those two cases are going to be cases that people are going to be looking at and I believe that ultimately that the travel ban is going to be upheld Uh I said that at the very beginning and in this case this was a nine to nothing uh decision to uh to reverse the temporary restraining order Uh three of the judges felt that the initial uh travel ban without any restrictions should go back to into effect So there's no question in my mind that there is a majority of Supreme Court justices if not all of them who will ultimately say that what Donald Trump did however unwise some people think it is was perfectly legal So final question because I know we're running out of time and you have a radio show to do What are your thoughts on the rumor Mill that we've heard this week that Justice Kennedy might be retiring well usually on the last day of the term they announce any kinds of retirements Uh and he did not And so what I've heard is that the whatever rumors did not come from his office They came from somebody else's office Frankly I thought Ruth Bader Ginsburg Ruth Ber Ginsburg health her health was more problematic than his health I've heard lots of rumors about her health Uh but it doesn't appear that she's retiring anytime soon She certainly does not want to retire while Donald Trump is president And if she can hang on until the next election assuming he does not win that's the day she's going to retire if she's still if she's still around I'm sure everyone wishes both of those justice as well But I'm sure also a lot of conservatives kind of hope they retire to give Donald Chance Trump the chance to nominate We don't wish anybody ill will but Ruth Ginsburg if you are listening I understand that the that the weather in the Bahamas is wonderful Retire so we can get another couple of Gorsuches in there Larry thank you so much for your time today and we love having you as a member of the Prageru presenter family Be sure to tune in tomorrow because we are going to be talking with Alan Dersuitz and later this week Dennis has a very special guest on Facebook Live So be sure to like and share this and donate folks so we can help keep our videos free Thanks so much for tuning in today I'll see you tomorrow