Ep 7: Billionaire Elon Musk vs. Fired CNN Host Don Lemon

I'm Larry Oden. Welcome to We've Got a Country to Save, brought to you by my friends at InvestWhyRefi.com. Invest in America like I do. And Freedom Chat. But more on both in a minute. Also subscribe to TheEpicTimes.com, get a subscription, and get their free newsletter. What a week! Ronna McDaniel hired by MSNB-Heehaw, then fired by MSNB-Heehaw because she's an, an, an election denier. But doesn't MSNB-Heehaw have its own election denier? Stick around and I'll tell you who. Fired CNN host Don Lemon tells Elon Musk standards are not being lowered for affirmative action slash DEI, and Lemon says that Musk is wrong to insist that lowering standards puts people at risk. And the head of the United Nations calls for worldwide reparations to make amends for slavery. All of that and more. MSNB-Heehaw, the news outfit on which the Reverend Al Sharpton has a show, briefly hired former RNC committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel at $300,000 per year to serve as an on-air pundit. Why did the rabidly anti-Trump, anti-Republican network even make her the offer? In my humble opinion, MSNB-Heehaw likely did so because 2024 is an election year, kind of a big deal. McDaniel was available, having been pushed out of her job by former President Donald Trump, the inside story of which MSNB-Heehaw viewers would likely salivate over. Her ouster from the RNC suggests bad blood between her and Trump, and therefore, from MSNB-Heehaw's point of view, a welcome willingness for a high-profile Republican to dish some anti-Trump dirt. Or because McDaniel could maybe bring a different perspective to MSNB-Heehaw's lineup of hosts and guests who unanimously parrot the narrative that Trump is a racist and an election denier who on January 6, 2021, committed insurrection. Why, likely, went MSNB-Heehaw's thinking? We are, after all, a news organization, and maybe McDaniel could increase ratings by attracting some non-Trump-hating viewers. The better question is why McDaniel accepted the offer? I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. What, you ask, makes WhyRefi so different from other investments? Let's quickly break it down. WhyRefi offers a secure collateralized portfolio with a strong fixed rate of return, up to 10.25%. There's no attack on your principal. If you ever need your money back, you can get it back. You are in control. You can let your investment compound daily or take income. Whatever you choose. There are absolutely no fees, and an investment in WhyRefi is an investment in America's future. Simply call 888-WhyRefi24. That's 888-WhyRefi24. And when you call, you will not get a sales pitch. Just the info you need to see if WhyRefi is a better investment option for you. Or log on to InvestWhyRefi.com. That's invest, the letter Y, then R-E-F-Y.com. And make sure you tell them Larry Elder sent you. Now, while Trump wanted Ronald McDaniel out, she dared cheer him on during his presidency, supported his claim of 2020 election fraud, and characterized what happened on January 6th as, quote, legitimate political discourse, end of quote. How will that sit with an MSNB hee-haw lineup that routinely compares Trump to Hitler and deems Trump an existential threat to the republic? Let me deal with the elephant in the room. Yeah. I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation, because I don't know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract. When NBC made the decision to give her NBC News's credibility, you've got to ask yourself, what does she bring NBC News? And when we make deals like this, and I've been at this company a long time, you're doing it for access, access to audience. Sometimes it's access to an individual. And we can have a journalistic ethics debate about that. I'm willing to have that debate. Immediately after McDaniel's hiring, former NBC Meet the Press moderator and current NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd said, quote, there's a reason a lot of journalists at NBC News are uncomfortable with this, close quote. News bulletin, they've got journalists at NBC News? Todd proceeded to accuse McDaniel of gaslighting journalists and engaging in anti-media character assassination. In what turned out to be McDaniel's first and only on-air interview as a pundit, MSNBC host Kirsten Welker asked McDaniel. Why should viewers, why should people trust you believe what you're saying? I don't think I'm changing my tone at all. Why should people trust what you're saying right now? Welker also asked. Did you not have a responsibility as the RNC chair to say before January 6th, the election is not rigged? Days later, the ax came down. MSNBC terminated McDaniel. To the MSNBC host who rioted, the McDaniel hiring crossed the line. Many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination. We weren't asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it. NBC News, either wittingly or unwittingly, is teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches well beyond appearing on our air in interviews to peddle lies about the sanctity and integrity of our elections. But that they can do that as one of us, as badge-carrying employees of NBC News. There is an easy way to avoid the controversy NBC News has stumbled into. Don't hire anyone close to the crimes. She literally backed an illegal scheme to steal an election in the state of Michigan. That is the type of experience that Ronna McDaniel brings to the table. And that experience does not get us to a deeper understanding of anything in the public debate. I want to associate myself with all my colleagues, both at MSNBC and at NBC News, who have voiced loud and principled objections to our company putting on the payroll someone who hasn't just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government. But isn't this the same MSNB hee-haw that hired Al Sharpton, America's preeminent race card hustler, to host a show? He's the same guy who had no problem with Al Sharpton. Al Sharpton is the nation's leading anti-Semite race card hustler. He became famous by falsely accusing a white man of raping Tawana Brawley. He has not apologized for it. In the thick of the Crown Heights riots that one Jewish leader in New York called the most serious pogrom in the history of America, in the middle of Freddie Fashion Mart fire and homicide, there resulted in eight people dying because of Al Sharpton's rhetoric. Four officers were hurt. They were hit with rocks and glass. News van windows smashed out, the mob yelling their anger with the mayor. Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton led a protest in the Crown Heights neighborhood and marched next to a protester with a sign that read, The white man is the devil. Did you march next to a sign that said that? I have no recollection of that. And he is on a videotape agreeing to sell cocaine to an undercover FBI narc. Tonight we also have gotten our hands on an HBO sports video of an undercover FBI agent acting as a drug trafficker negotiating a cocaine deal with none other than Al Sharpton himself. Take a look at this. We're going to do this thing. No, you're talking about the real deal. The real deal. I mean, ten kilograms is like $350,000. Let's drop a bucket. We can go bigger. Every kilogram we bring is $3,500. Oh, that's enough. You can get ten and you make $35,000. But that's the thing. That's the chicken pocket. He can, he can, he can. He's going to do it. He doesn't know what he wants to do. He can do it, you know, a hundred times over. He might be able to supply it a hundred times over. Now that video is reportedly from 1983, and after it aired, Al Sharpton threatened to sue HBO for millions of dollars. He was $5 million light in taxes according to the New York Times. The Reverend Al Sharpton has emerged over the past decade as perhaps the nation's most prominent civil rights leader, but he still carries baggage from his early days as a fire-breathing agitator. Government records obtained by the Associated Press indicate that Sharpton and his business entities owe nearly $1.5 million in overdue taxes and penalties. Speaking of trouble, now this. Big tax troubles for MSNBC host Al Sharpton. He reportedly owes more than $3 million in federal taxes, and Liz McDonald tells us that other people, from Chuck Berry to Leona Helmsley, have gone to jail for owing less to Uncle Sam. According to a New York Times report, the Reverend Al Sharpton owes $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens against him and the National Action Network. And fast forward, he is what I think MSNBC hates the most, an election denier. He said after Donald Trump won in 2016, quote, there's no question that Donald Trump is illegitimate, end of quote. That's verbatim quote. That's not a problem. Al Sharpton, of course, he's also the host of Politics Nation with Al Sharpton. That airs Sundays at 8 a.m. right here on MSNBC. Rev, thanks for being with us. Just right out of the gates, I want your sense. Do you agree with John Lewis? Do you agree that Donald Trump is, in effect, not a legitimate president? I think that there's no question that the process that elected him was not legitimate. Here's what the Reverend Al Sharpton said after the death of former senator and former VP candidate Joe Lieberman. In 2004, we both were in the Democratic primaries. And I remember when I entered the race, I was on the opposite side of the Democratic Party from Joe Lieberman. And Joe Lieberman was considered part of the Democratic Leadership Council, the DLC, the sort of what we considered right wing of the Democratic Party. I was on the left. And I was surprised the first day I came for the first debate I was in, he welcomed me. He walked over and said, glad you're here, glad you're going to express yourself. Anybody pick on you, you come to me. And we kind of got along. We didn't agree on many of the issues. I was anti the Iraq war. He was very much pro. But after every debate, he would come and talk and meet my daughters. And he was a gentleman and one that really believed in what he believed. Though I didn't agree with it, he believed it. He was not demagogic. He was not the kind of performative politicians we see now. And he was a genuine, decent guy. So when I heard of his passing yesterday, I immediately told people, no, you can't judge him by what we may agree with politically. You have to judge people by what they believe. He believed it, but he was not a human being that dealt with acrimony and dealt with the kind of demagoguery that has polluted politics now. So let me get this straight. Al Sharpton praises Joe Lieberman for not being a demagogue. You know, like Al Sharpton. And don't get me started on Joy Reed. Okay, you got me started. Two things. Mourning Joe Scarborough said that after Ronald McDaniel got hired, he would not have her on his show. Mourning Joe was in Congress as a Republican. He introduced a resolution condemning his colleague Al Sharpton, mentioning that Al Sharpton said if Jews want to pin their yarmulkes on their heads and come over to my house and get it on, talked about how Al Sharpton referred to whites moving into Harlem as interlopers, Orthodox Jews as diamond merchants, and now he's licking Al Sharpton all over the place when he has him on his show. Regarding Joy Reed, Joy Reed in 2006, circa 2006, had a blog in which she condemned homosexuality. She trashed the movie Brokeback Mountain and said she hated the idea of watching two gays kiss. When she became a host on MSNBC, all these things surfaced, and she lied and said she didn't write them. She had been hacked. NBC hired an expert to look into that allegation, found out the expert said that she was not hacked. Joy Reed actually wrote those things. Joy Reed cried, apologized. Some more things surfaced. She again said she had been hacked. Many of you have seen these blog posts circulating online and in social media. Many of them are homophobic, discriminatory, and outright weird and hateful. When a friend found them in December and sent them to me, I was stunned. Frankly, I couldn't imagine where they'd come from or whose voice that was. In the months since, I've spent a lot of time trying to make sense of these posts. I hired cybersecurity experts to see if somebody had manipulated my words or my former blog. And the reality is they have not been able to prove it. But here's what I know. I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me. But I can definitely understand, based on things I have tweeted and have written in the past, why some people don't believe me. I've not been exempt from being dumb or cruel or hurtful to the very people I want to advocate for. I own that. I get it. And for that, I am truly, truly sorry. Honestly, but Ronna McDaniel, who's going to bring a different perspective regarding the 2020 election, regarding Donald Trump, she's crossed a red line. We can't have her. But Al Sharpton, not a problem. Joy Reid, not a problem. It is absolutely insane. Tawana Brawley is a 16-year-old girl whose story is the talk of New York these days. A New York State teenager who claims that she was abducted and raped by six white men. In the late 1980s, Tawana Brawley became a household name as her horrific story spread across the nation. She had KKK written across her chest and black black across her stomach. Leading to widespread outrage. We want to expose the facts in these crimes that you do against black people. We are not going to let this girl be the scapegoat of a corrupt system. We want to show the world how low-down, doggish, and callous the state of New York is. Her lawyers charged that Dutchess County Assistant District Attorney Stephen Pagonas was among the girl's attackers and demanded his arrest. We have the facts and the evidence that an assistant district attorney and a state trooper did this. There were scores of false leads. An acquaintance said he was with Brawley. He wasn't. A man claimed to have secret tapes that cast doubt on the veracity of Brawley's advisors. He didn't. We started a rumor about a nine-fingered man just to see how long it would take for a press report to call us and start to ask about the nine-fingered man. I think it took two days. But such moments of levity were brief. A trooper starts up the steps of the armory and these demonstrators decided they weren't going to let him in. He grabbed the demonstrator that was fighting him. The next thing we knew, Reverend Sharpton was accusing me of kicking a blind man. That bothered me. Sharpton called Cuomo a racist, compared Abrams to Hitler, and said Brawley would go to jail rather than cooperate with the investigators. Maddox would actually say that the Attorney General of the state of New York was masturbating over pictures of 15-year-old Tawana Brawley. They looked up and they saw Maddox, Mason, and Sharpton. Sharpton is a Tawana Brawley line, Crown Heights riot, Freddy's Fashion Mart incendiary, tax deadbeat, and would-be cocaine dealer who has made anti-white and anti-Semitic slurs. After McDaniel's hiring, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said he and his Morning Joe co-hosts would not allow McDaniel to appear as a guest. But Sharpton, Scarborough's colleague, regularly appears on his show. Back in 2000, when Scarborough served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he proposed a resolution called Condemning the Racist and Anti-Semitic Views of the Reverend Al Sharpton. It read, in part, Whereas the Congress strongly rejects the racist and incendiary actions of Reverend Al Sharpton. Whereas the Congress strongly rejects the racist and incendiary actions of Reverend Al Sharpton. Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as blood-sucking Jews and Jew bastards. Hey, Reverend Sharpton. Hi. How you doing? In the spirit of Donald Sterling, you think you should be banned from TV for all the racist stuff you've said over the years? What racist stuff? You know, when you referred to Jews as white interlopers. I never referred to Jews as white interlopers. When you dropped the N-word on David Dinkins. No, no, no. If you're going to say something, you've got to be correct. We had exactly what Donald Sterling said. When did I call Jews not white interlopers? Friday's Mark. Yep, that's right. You called them a white interloper. But doesn't it take some serious balls on your end to accuse somebody of racism? No, no. It's serious on your end. You went from one guy who paid people off to... You called a Jew a white interloper and you dropped the N-word. You see how you lie? Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton was found guilty of defamation by a jury in a New York court arising from the false accusation that former assistant district attorney Stephen Magonis, who is white, raped and assaulted a 15-year-old black girl. We're going to expose the facts in these crimes that you do against black people. We are not going to let this girl be the scapegoat of a corrupt system. We want to show the world how low-down, doggish, and callous the state of New York is. Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton's vicious, verbal, anti-Semitic attacks directed at members of the Jewish faith, and in particular, a Jewish landlord arising from a simple landlord-tenant dispute with a black tenant incited widespread violence, riots, and the murder of five innocent people. Have you ever said, if the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house? No, there was a man named Mordecai Levy who had been charged with some terrorist acts who threatened to march on me and several other activists in New Jersey. And he said he was going to come deal with my hairstyle. And I'm referring to his hairstyle. I said, for him to pin it and come on. Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton led a protest in the Crown Heights neighborhood and marched next to a protester with a sign that read, the white man is the devil. Have you ever referred to African Americans who disagree with you as yellow and then the N-word? I don't know that I've... I've referred to people as names. I don't know if it's because they disagree with me. But I have said things about blacks and whites. I'm glad you made it clear that I don't only attack whites. Thank you. And do you know that Sharpton is on an FBI surveillance tape agreeing to purchase cocaine from an undercover FBI narc? What's up, big worm? How much you got left? Man, I got a lot. You still ain't sold that smoke? And I'm trying to, worm. Smokers are broke these days. I don't think you're applying yourself, Smokey. Huh? You smoking my... Hell no, with your... Hell no. You smoking my... Now why would I do some... like that? I don't want to have to... you up, Smokey. Playing with my money is like playing with my emotions. And according to a piece in the New York Times, the Reverend was behind $5 million in state, federal, local, and payroll taxes. But apparently all is forgiven over at Morning Joe. So, in conclusion, McDaniel out for being an, an, an election denier. Sharpton in. Apparently one man's election denier is another man's MSNBC TV host. A word about Freedom Chat. Let me ask you a question. How many of you are concerned about the invasion of privacy that is currently going on by this administration? Biden's DOJ is invading individuals' private messages and targeting them based on their political affiliation. And that's why I partnered with Freedom Chat, a private social messaging app that, like me, believes privacy is your fundamental human right. Freedom Chat has variable end-to-end encryption, built-in screenshot protection, no storage of messages on their service, and no commercial use of their data. I am such a fan of Freedom Chat, in fact, I've created my own private channel that you can subscribe to for exclusive content including never-seen images, videos, and posts. Simply download the app, or if you're on Android, join their waitlist, search for my channel, and subscribe. No one can see the channels that you are subscribed to or the posts that you react to. It's your own perfectly curated private news feed. Speak freely and message privately with Freedom Chat. Again, download the app today and subscribe to my channel at Larry Elder for exclusive posts and never-before-seen content. Now about affirmative action and whether standards are being lowered. Two things. First, Don Lamond doesn't believe standards have been lowered for DEI purposes. Two, Don Lamond doesn't believe lowering standards have real-world consequences, including incompetence that could even be deadly. Now, MSNB hee-haw's Joy Reed knows exactly why Republicans slash conservatives slash Trump supporters oppose DEI. And it's not because we believe the goal is, as Martin Luther King put it, to evaluate people based upon content of character, not color of skin. Oh, no. Joy Reed explains the real motive. And at this point, it's evident what they mean by DEI, right? Okay, it means black people. It's the reason the right complained about critical race theory. It's not fashionable to be openly racist anymore in America, unlike what they call the good old days. So referring to a black mayor as a DEI mayor gets the point across, right? So, fellas, why don't you just say what you mean? You can't stand black people. We get it. You've been heard. Let's begin with Lamont's denial that standards have been lowered to assist the so-called underrepresented, i.e., blacks and Hispanics. By the way, how long are Hispanics going to be considered underrepresented in California? I mean, the population breakdown in California is as follows. 40% of Californians are Latino, 35% white, 15% Asian American or Pacific Islander, 5% black, 4% multiracial, and fewer than 1% are Native American or Alaskan. So Hispanics, who are underrepresented, account for a greater percentage of Californians than any other racial or ethnic group. What evidence do you have, though, that they're lowering the standards? There is no evidence of that. I believe there is. There's no evidence of that, Elon. What is the evidence? I believe they've literally lowered the standards at Duke University, and that is what the article is referring to. Are you saying they have not lowered the standards? There's no evidence about lowering standards, and I think that there is... I believe that is a false statement you're making. Okay, well, we'll figure it out. The interesting thing is, when this is posted on the X platform, there will be a whole bunch of things that rebut what you said and what I said, and so people can then make their own decision based on the replies, the rebuttals, and the community notes. Now, in 1996, Californians passed a proposition called 209, which eliminated the use of race in government contracting, government jobs, and admissions to public colleges and universities. On one side, there are people like these college students who oppose Proposition 209, the measure that would end affirmative action in California. Professor Gabrielle Foreman was among the protesters. It's clear that I wouldn't be a professor at this school without affirmative action in this specific position. She said she would not be there in this specific position, end of quote. And why would that be a bad thing? Discrimination, to fight discrimination, remains discrimination. On the other side, people like San Diego contractor Michael Cornelius, who says affirmative action is unfair. He counts the damage from lost jobs. Over the past five years, I've probably lost 15 to 20 contracts. Contracts he said went to minority firms instead, Before 209 passed, critics said Proposition 209 means that fewer Blacks and Hispanics would be admitted to the competitive campuses like UCLA and UC Berkeley. And indeed, this is exactly what happened. However, the numbers of Blacks and Hispanics admitted to the entire UC system, which includes less competitive schools, the number of Blacks and Hispanics admitted to the entire UC system was exactly the same. More important, those so-called underrepresented students were far more likely to graduate on time because on these less competitive schools, they were better able to keep up with the workload and the pace and therefore were more likely to graduate on time. Now, after 209 passed, turns out more Asians were admitted to UCLA and UC Berkeley, which confirmed that better qualified Asian applicants were being passed over in favor of lesser qualified Blacks and Hispanics. Tell me, why is that fair? The number of Whites admitted to UCLA and UC Berkeley turned out to be the same. So the group that suffered the most because of race-based preferences were Asian Americans, who at least at one time were considered minorities. Post 209, according to the left-wing Slate magazine, quote, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are 14% of California's high school graduates 2011-2012, but 42% of UCLA freshmen and 49% of UC Berkeley freshmen in 2012. End of quote. But because Asian Americans do well on high school grades and standardized tests, suddenly they're no longer minorities and they need to take a backseat in the name of DEI or so-called underrepresented, especially in a state like California, where Hispanics are, as I said earlier, the largest percentage of any racial or ethnic group. How does this make any sense? Don Lamond does not believe standards were lowered. UCLA law professor Richard Sander is a liberal. He was, however, concerned about the number of minority students who were failing in his classes. Here's what he wrote, and I'm quoting. At most law schools, the undergraduate grades and median LSAT scores of enrolled black students were two standard deviations below those of white students at the same school. Outside of a handful of historically black institutions where racial preferences were minimal, blacks in law school were not faring well. They were failing out of school at more than twice the white rate. Half of those who did graduate had grades in the bottom tenth of their class, and blacks were six times as likely as whites to take the bar exam multiple times but never pass. Now we stand poised to hear from our nominee, one of the most tested and proven candidates in our party's history, Hillary Clinton. Oh, come on, I can't hear you. The former two-term mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, who attended UCLA, called himself, quote, a proud recipient of affirmative action, end of quote. In a 2020 interview, he was asked, what's a class that stood out to you as an undergraduate student at UCLA? He said, I think it was an English II class. I got into UCLA because of affirmative action. I started that class unsure if I belonged at UCLA, and I left it with an A, end of quote. Now after graduating from UCLA, Villaraigosa decided to become a lawyer. Here's what the Los Angeles Times said in 2006, quote, the LA mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, who graduated from an unaccredited law school, finally called it quits after taking the bar exam four times, end of quote. The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you, unlike any schooling you've ever been through before. How well, you ask, do students admitted with lower standards do on state bar exams, which must be passed in order to practice law? Here's what Reuters wrote in 2022, quote, the first time pass rate for white test takers last year was 83%, while 57% of black examinees passed on their first attempt, a difference of 26 percentage points, the ABA said Tuesday. In 2021, the gap was 24 percentage points, end of quote. Now Harvard has been sued for rejecting Asian American applicants in favor of lesser qualified blacks. Because of the lawsuit, Harvard was forced to release the scores of admitted students, Ann Coulter wrote, applicants in the top academic decile, that would be 10% GPA plus standardized test scores, were accepted in the following percentages, Asians, 13%, whites, 15%, blacks, 56%. Perhaps more jaw dropping, she writes, in the fifth academic decile, the bottom 10%, not quite Harvard material, the percentages were Asians, 2%, whites, 3%, blacks, 22%, end of quote. In a Supreme Court case called Grutter versus Bollinger, 2003, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote the majority opinion, claimed the court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interests approved today, end of quote. Now that would bring us to 2028, just five years from now. So the clock was ticking on affirmative action. Yet in California, there was a proposition to bring back racial preferences, even though the state, as I mentioned, eliminated them back in 1996, even though Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, as mentioned, that they would no longer be needed by 2028. It was called Proposition 16, and it was endorsed by the Los Angeles Times. Proposition 16 brings back affirmative action. The state legislature put the measure on the ballot to mitigate inequality and systemic racism. A yes vote repeals Prop 209, which voters approved in 1996. 24 years ago, Prop 209 added a constitutional amendment prohibiting preferential treatment for race, ethnicity, and gender for admission to the state's colleges and universities and in government contracts. A yes vote allows race, ethnicity, and gender to be considered for admission to the state's higher education in public jobs and in contracts. Now remember, according to Don Lamond, there are no instances in which beneficiaries of lower standards have caused harm. You claim that DEI is killing people. Specifically, you point to medicine. You claim that DEI programs are putting people at risk. Do you really believe this to be true, and what evidence do you have to support it? Hold up. What I was referring to there was that if we lower the standards for doctors, so that they, you know, if the test for a doctor is lowered, then the probability of them making a mistake and killing someone is obviously going to be higher. Wait, say that again. I'm not sure I understand what you said. I want to make sure I understand what you're saying, actually. Yes, if the standards for passing medical exams and becoming a doctor, or especially something like a surgeon, if the standards are lowered, then the probability that the surgeon will make the mistake is higher. They're making mistakes in their exam. They may make mistakes with people, and that may result in people dying. A 1994 article in the L.A. Times looked at how well minority students do on medical exams. It found, quote, It went on to say, Now, the exam is given two years before graduation to determine placement in residencies and whether the student should remain in medical school. End of quote. Think about this quote. Many of those who do poorly on the test do not graduate from medical school or become practicing physicians. End of quote. In other words, these students would have been better off not having gone to medical school in the first place or entering some other profession or field More recently, there was a Forbes article, 2022, called It consists of three steps. The test, often taken between the second and third years of medical school, aims to confer minimal competency for licensure by testing fundamentals of the basic clinical sciences that are taught in preclinical years of medical school. According to the data from an article in the Academic Medicine, Black and Latino medical students are more likely to score lower and or fail all three exams when compared to white students. End of quote. Now, Don Lamond, ever heard of Dr. Patrick Chavis? He was admitted to California's UC Davis Medical School under Program for Minorities. A white applicant named Alan Bakke, who was not admitted, despite having better credentials than Chavis, sued. The case went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and the court ruled that while racial preferences can be a factor, it cannot be the whole factor and Bakke was admitted to UC Davis Medical School. Senator Ted Kennedy held up Dr. Chavis as an example of the benefit of racial preferences because, after all, argued Kennedy, Dr. Chavis was practicing in the inner city. Therefore, it was of value to admit minority students with lower grades and test scores because, presumably, they're more likely to work in their own community. Unfortunately, Dr. Chavis was later murdered. In an article about Dr. Chavis, here's what the LA Times wrote about his career. To proponents of affirmative action, Patrick Chavis was viewed six years ago as a hero. Senator Ted Kennedy called the perfect example of how the controversial college admissions program could help minorities and disadvantaged communities. To opponents of the program, Chavis was seen four years ago as one of its failures. The Medical Board of California revoked his license, calling him grossly negligent in his care of seven liposuction patients, one of whom bled to death after he abandoned her bedside. Now that is just one example. But how much danger does the patient population face by doctors admitted with lower scores and doctors who have trouble passing their medical exams? Consider this 2023 article from U.S. News & World Report. About 795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled every year due to misdiagnosed medical conditions. The researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Risk Management Foundation of Harvard looked at 15 diseases and concluded that 371,000 Americans died and 424,000 were permanently disabled as a result of misdiagnoses. End of quote. Simple question. By lowering standards for admissions in medical schools and making it easier to pass medical exams for students who otherwise can't pass them, will that number of people who die or become disabled because of medical misdiagnoses go up or go down? They're lowering the standards. There's no evidence of that. That is a most illogical attitude. Now for a word about epic times. Go to TheEpic, E-P-O-C-H, TheEpicTimes.com and subscribe or sign up for their free newsletter. In case you need another reason to leave the United Nations, check out this headline. The United Nations Security General issued the following statement. For 400 years, enslaved Africans fought for their freedom while colonial powers and others committed horrific crimes against them. On the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, we remember and honor the millions of Africans who were trafficked and enslaved. Their lives were ruled by terror as they endured rape, floggings, lynchings, and other atrocities and humiliations. Many of those who organized and ran the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade amassed huge fortunes. Meanwhile, the enslaved were deprived of education, health care, opportunity, and prosperity. This laid the foundation for a violent discrimination system based on white supremacy that still echoes today. Descendants of enslaved Africans and people of African descent are still fighting for equal rights and freedoms around the world. Today and every day, we reject the legacy of this horrific crime against humanity. We call for repertory justice frameworks to help overcome generations of exclusion and discrimination. We appeal for the space and necessary conditions for healing, repair, and justice. Here is the UN Civil Rights Chief. Behind today's racial violence, systemic racism, and discriminatory policing lies the failure to acknowledge and confront the legacy of the slave trade and colonialism. Thomas Sowell, who has devoted much of his life studying the institution of slavery, said this. Slavery has been an institution for thousands of years, as far back as you can trace human history. We look at it as if it's something that happened to one race or people in one country, when in fact, the spread of it was around the world. So if you're going to have reparations for slavery, it's going to be the greatest transfer of wealth back and forth, cross-hauling as they say in the railroads." He added, The number of whites, for example, who were enslaved in North Africa by the Barbary pirates, which we're going to get to in a minute, exceeded the number of Africans enslaved in the U.S. and in the American colonies before that put together. But nobody, he said, is going to North Africa to ask for reparations because nobody is going to be fool enough to give it to them." End of quote. Reparations is a specific conversation about a specific time in America, and that is black people were slaves. Here's an article that got a lot of attention in the Atlantic a couple years ago called The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Quote, White supremacy is a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it. Reparations is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. Close quote. And Tom Sowell, who actually saw Jim Crow with his own eyes and experienced it, responds somehow. It would be nice to know his evidence for what he said, just to be old-fashioned about it. No, it was a rotten system. But I don't know how we get from that to reparations. I mean, what we see in the United States in terms of the bad things, you see all around the world. If you were to give reparations to everyone whose ancestors had been slaves, I suspect that you would have to give reparations to more than half the entire population of the globe. Slavery was not confined to one set of races. I suspect that most of the people who were either slaves or slave owners around the world were neither white nor black. I mean, this was a universal curse of the human species. Africa, the Middle East, Asia, slavery took place everywhere. And it continued elsewhere long after it was abolished in the Western countries. Back to Mr. Noah. I've even heard people say, like, oh, but there were some of the Irish who were indentured. Like, yeah, let's... Slavery. Look at the numbers. Look at the time. Look at the level of work. You could not work toward your freedom. For most black people in America, this was a time when you were... You lived and died as a slave. And so that's what reparations is about. So the Irish were only indentured servants? Really, historian Noah? Let's talk about what happened to the Irish in Ireland at the hands of the Muslim Barbary pirates who operated off the north coast of Africa. The most infamous of the Barbary raids took place more than a thousand miles away on the coast of Ireland. In 1631, the Barbary corsairs landed on the coast of Western Ireland and, during the night, raided the village of Baltimore, taking dozens of slaves. The village remained empty for decades. In 2004, Ohio State University history professor Robert C. Davis published Christian Slaves, Muslim Master, which drew notice for its story of how European slaves made their way into the slave pens of the Barbary coast and the Ottoman Empire. Davis' method of calculating the number of white slaves taken is mathematically sound, though many have said that his formula only takes an average number for every year for more than two centuries. By Davis' calculations, at least 1.5 million European slaves were taken from the coastal villages and ships in the Mediterranean basin and as far afield as Ireland, as you heard in the case of Baltimore. Again, when it comes to reparations, who should pay whom? The history of slavery. Slavery existed all over the world for thousands of years among all sorts of people as far back as the history of the human species goes. It's one of many evils that the left tries to localize when, in fact, it is a universal evil. But more than that, as much as slavery is repudiated around the world today, prior to the 18th century, I know of no serious effort to abolish the institution anywhere. Anywhere. Anywhere. Not in Africa. Not in the Arabian Gulf. Not in Africa in the 21st century. Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that the only place in the world where slavery had been abolished completely was Western Europe. And what you ask about the complicity of African chiefs who sold slaves captured in war or in raids and who sold them to European and Arab slavers. This is often ignored by those demanding reparations. For example, this is the trailer from the movie starring Viola Davis. An evil is coming that threatens our kingdom, our freedom. But we have a weapon prepared for. Get it? White slavers are an outside enemy, right? Wrong. This is an excerpt from a video I made for Epoch Times. Here's a movie called The Woman King starring Viola Davis supposedly, quote, based on true powerful events, close quote. The plot is described in IMDb a historical epic inspired by true events that took place in the kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries. How historical? Critic Robert Daniels, who mostly praised the film, said, you might wonder how the director can shape a tale centering the warriors and all women group of soldiers sworn to honor and sisterhood hailing from the West African kingdom of Dahomey when one considers their hand in perpetuating the transatlantic slave trade. End of quote. Other reviews were a little more blunt about the historical inaccuracies. There was in fact a band of warrior women in Africa called the Dahomey and they were fierce, feared, and frequently brought thirsty fighters. But they used that ferocity to kill and conquer other Africans for sale to slave traders. Indeed, the transatlantic and the Arab African slave trade could not have occurred without the complicity of African chiefs who sold conquered Africans to European and Arab slavers. A review of the movie called The Woman King Historical Embarrassment puts it this way. The movie has been set up as having a historical basis telling the story of the real life kingdom of Dahomey in the 18th and 19th centuries. In reality, Dahomey was a notorious slave kingdom and not the pan-African freedom fighters as the movie presents them. They enslaved and murdered hundreds of thousands from other tribes and sold them into the slave trade. Dahomey was renowned as the Black Sparta and was a fiercely militaristic society bent on domination and conquest. Their soldiers struck fear into other tribes all along what is still known as the slave coast as they captured tribes people from enemy tribes and sold them as slaves. In the film, white slavers are the enemy when in reality they were business partners with the women kings. The review continues, even worse for those who struggle with reality the Amazons were formed from the king's third class wives. These were considered insufficiently beautiful to share his bed and who had not born children. Awkward. Another review called History vs. Hollywood writes this, in real life the Dahomey were much more villains than heroes. The kingdom of Dahomey was a bloodthirsty society bent on conquest. They conquered neighboring African states and took their citizens as slaves selling many in the Atlantic slave trade in exchange for items like rifles, tobacco, and alcohol. Many of the slaves they sold ended up in America. There are accounts of Dahomey warriors conducting slave raids on villages where they cut the heads off the elderly and ripped the bottom jawbones off others. During the raids they burned the villages to the ground those who they let live, including children, were taken captive and sold as slaves. The truth is, as I wrote in my testimony before a congressional committee considering reparations, is as follows. Slavery sadly has been part of human history since the very beginning. Muslim slave traders took whites out of the Mediterranean area and enslaved them in Northern Africa. Europeans enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved Asians. Africans enslaved Africans. Even Native Americans enslaved other Native Americans. The Arab slave trade took more blacks out of Africa for a time and for a longer period of time than did the European slavers. In a book called Prisons and Slavery, John Dewar Glassner writes, quote, The Arabs' treatment of black Africans can aptly be termed an African Holocaust. Arabs killed more Africans in transit, especially when crossing the Sahara Desert, than Europeans and Americans in over more centuries, both before and after the years the Atlantic slave trade ended. African slaves transported by Arabs across the Sahara Desert died more often than slaves, making it through the Middle Passage to the New World by ship. In 2018, the Washington Post wrote an article about Benin, a country in West Africa, that was erecting museums to, in part, acknowledge their slave trading history. Here's what the Washington Post said. For over 200 years, powerful kings in what is now the country of Benin captured and sold slaves to Portuguese, French, and British merchants. The slaves were usually men, women, and children from rival tribes, gagged and jammed into boats bound for Brazil, Haiti, and to the United States. The trade largely stopped by the end of the 19th century, but Benin never fully confronted what happened. The kingdoms that captured and sold slaves still exist today as tribal networks, and so do the groups that were raided. End of quote. Where's that movie? Meanwhile, stateside, before the Civil War, of course, most slaves were owned by whites. But famed historian Carter G. Woodson found that in 1830, 3,776 free Negroes owned 12,907 slaves. Historian Roger McGrath notes, quote, every one of the 13 states and most of the major cities that would become part of the Confederacy had substantial numbers of black slave owners. New Orleans, by both numbers and by proportion, had the most. A staggering 28% of free blacks in the Crescent City owned slaves. End of quote. Now what? Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man. Finally, a mother tries to teach her young son not to be lured into a stranger's van. I feel like this is a trick question. It should be easy. You get... You don't. This is hard. Just say what you think it is. You get in the van. No, Derek. Really? Yes, really. And we're talking about peanut M&M's. I'm Larry Elder. Hope you enjoyed our show, brought to you by our friends at InvestWhyRefi.com. Invest in America like I do. Also, for exclusive content, including never-before-seen images, videos, and posts, subscribe to my private FreedomChat channel at Larry Elder. And remember, we've got a country to save.