The Michael Knowles Show - Daily Wire Backstage： Watch and Wait Edition

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Michael Knowles here. So you got stuck watching the seven hour CNN Democratic

00:00:06.180 Climate Change special and you missed Daily Wire backstage. No big deal. I mean, sure,

00:00:11.620 we only have 11 years left and you just wasted seven hours watching Democrats talk about all

00:00:17.000 the things that they want to ban in the name of climate panic. But hey, look, nobody is perfect.

00:00:22.360 Make up for lost time by listening to Daily Wire backstage with me, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan,

00:00:28.160 and Jeremy Boring. We promise not to take away your cars, your air conditioning, or your

00:00:34.500 cheeseburgers. Enjoy. You guys want to do a fake laugh or just kind of like a sigh? Just read the

00:00:40.980 intro, man. Just do it. Welcome to the Daily Wire backstage, the Watch and Wait edition. I'm Jeremy

00:00:47.880 Boring, known around these... This is getting... It's old. I really feel like it's old. People know I'm

00:00:53.560 the God King now, don't they? They do. I'm the God King. Spell it with lowercase letters, you

00:00:57.220 know? Heathens. We're glad you've tuned in. Will Dorian make landfall? Which dem will be the next

00:01:05.000 to retreat from hurricane radical leftist primary? Will Trump light up an aerial nuke to keep the

00:01:09.880 Popeyes versus Chick-fil-A cyclone from getting even bigger? Let's find out by rolling graphic.

00:01:15.340 We're back. Hey. Oh. Thank you to everybody for tuning in. Joining me tonight to speculate on all of

00:01:35.960 that and more is Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and Michael Knowles. Also, we are supremely happy to

00:01:40.740 have the lovely Elisha Kraus back with us via satellite. Elisha! Yes. Yowza! Back in the broom

00:01:46.520 closet. I mean, that wonderful backstage live appearance where I got to share the stage was

00:01:50.860 very brief. You shared the stage, but you're like off slightly to the right, which I felt like was

00:01:57.480 inappropriate. But she finally got to breathe fresh air, and then we shoved her back down

00:02:00.560 into the basement with a baby. This is the Michael Knowles studio, also known as the broom

00:02:06.500 closet here at the Daily Wire. But it is great to be back. And if you hear the baby,

00:02:11.340 she's in the green room. So hopefully she'll nap the whole time. But what's really exciting is

00:02:16.240 hopefully you aren't napping at home. I know that the show can sometimes get boring, but hopefully

00:02:20.400 it's not that bad. Hey, hey, hey. Well, nice. But what's going to make it really exciting tonight

00:02:24.420 is that usually only subscribers get to ask the questions here on Backstage. But for tonight,

00:02:30.900 everyone watching at home is going to be able to ask the questions. How do you ask the questions?

00:02:35.640 Well, head on over to the Daily Wire's Facebook page and the Daily Wire YouTube channel,

00:02:39.740 where you're probably streaming and watching right now. Just comment. We have a couple of amazing

00:02:44.100 producers here and I that are going through, and we're going to be taking your questions for the

00:02:48.180 guys tonight. Again, everyone has the chance to watch. Usually I'm sitting here saying only subscribers

00:02:53.540 get to ask the questions. But tonight, everyone watching gets to ask. So get those questions in

00:02:58.860 right now, and we'll be tossing them to the guys real soon.

00:03:02.520 Thank you, Alicia. You know, the hardest part of doing the show tonight

00:03:05.060 is not having 3,000 adoring fans.

00:03:08.580 I always have 3,000 adoring fans in my mind.

00:03:13.180 That's how I get by.

00:03:15.980 Well, it's another slow news cycle.

00:03:18.540 Great, let's do two hours of broadcasting.

00:03:20.440 That's a hell of a pitch, dude.

00:03:21.780 I mean, never stopped us before.

00:03:25.300 Never stopped us before.

00:03:26.100 Yeah, that's right.

00:03:26.640 I actually think it's good, because one of the things that we should do better about on

00:03:30.500 this show is taking more questions from the audience. And as Alicia said, for the duration

00:03:34.780 tonight, we're going to have this thing open not only to our subscribers, but to everyone

00:03:37.860 who's watching to be able to write in and ask us questions. And we're going to be pretty

00:03:41.700 diligent about taking a ton of them as we go through the show tonight. You may be wondering

00:03:46.840 what's going on with the Daily Wire website, what's going on over at dailywire.com, why

00:03:50.520 isn't it subscriber only? What's with these YouTube video embeds where once there were

00:03:55.600 not YouTube video embeds? And the answer is, at long last, and I know this is going to

00:04:01.840 be hard to believe, the Shapiro store is... No, I'm kidding.

00:04:04.700 We do over-promise and under-deliver sometimes. But not this time. We are launching a brand

00:04:11.780 new dailywire.com and a Daily Wire mobile app.

00:04:16.380 Yay, about time, about time.

00:04:17.900 They're fantastic. I've been able to spend a little time in the new technology over the

00:04:22.720 last week or two. The official launch date, not on the calendar yet, but it is weeks.

00:04:27.940 It is not months. It is not a month. It will be sometime probably in the next 14 days, and

00:04:33.160 probably in the next six or seven days, we'll announce the launch date so that people can

00:04:36.320 mark the calendars and start getting ready. But we're really proud of this new piece of

00:04:40.080 technology. It's going to make the user experience much better. New features, and one of them

00:04:44.080 is more access to... Well, that shouldn't probably be a sales point. More access to Ben.

00:04:51.000 Access to our writers. Access to all of our podcast hosts.

00:04:53.920 And if you want to see Noel's shirtless, just basically walk down the street at any point

00:04:58.080 in Los Angeles at any time of the day.

00:04:59.660 Is that why you installed that new webcam in my bedroom? It's just for the access on

00:05:04.000 the app? You weren't supposed to notice that.

00:05:05.080 Yeah, I don't know. Come on.

00:05:06.300 Let's be real. You installed that webcam in my bedroom.

00:05:08.780 Jeremy, here's the link. Here it is. Plug it in.

00:05:11.640 So, we will have the new dailywire.com coming soon. It's going to be pretty rad. I think

00:05:15.300 it's a big improvement for... mostly for our subscribers. It's a great improvement for our

00:05:19.080 subscribers, so we'll be looking forward to that. Before we get to questions, though, it's

00:05:22.740 not like nothing has happened. I think the most important story that's happened in the last

00:05:27.540 several weeks actually happened last night, and that is Walmart saying that they're no

00:05:31.200 longer going to sell certain kinds of ammunition, mostly because, as far as I can tell, this

00:05:35.960 is because of, like, six people on Twitter.

00:05:38.840 This is right.

00:05:39.520 Six people on Twitter.

00:05:40.040 Yeah, MSNBC hosts.

00:05:41.500 If Sam Walton were still alive, he would be the richest man in the history of the world

00:05:46.260 because he died and he divided his fortune among five different people. Each one of them

00:05:52.160 is one of the richest people in the world. I mean, what he created in terms of economic

00:05:56.100 activity, what he created in terms of efficiency in the marketplace is one of the great achievements

00:06:01.560 of the 20th century. What a shame to now see them kowtowing to the radical left on Twitter.

00:06:09.340 It is pretty pathetic. I mean, the fact is that all these corporations are risk-averse,

00:06:14.540 or at least a huge number of them are risk-averse. And what this leads to is this bizarre divide

00:06:19.140 where the left sees corporations as evil and terrible and horrible in every possible way.

00:06:24.260 Corporations are not people. They shouldn't be making corporate donations. But also,

00:06:27.440 corporations should be the most moral people who do all the things that we want them to do,

00:06:31.360 and they should be paternalistically deciding what products you should be able to consume.

00:06:35.760 And if they don't do that, well, then they're bad again. And the corporations,

00:06:38.740 because they're seeking to avoid the PR limelight for five minutes, they decide,

00:06:42.540 okay, well, you know what? Is it really worth the hassle? Sure, we'll just go along. I mean,

00:06:45.620 maybe we make a couple million bucks a year off the ammo, but we just won't sell the ammo.

00:06:49.140 And we don't take the temporary hit. And then we can pretend that we're on the side of truth and

00:06:52.560 justice and the angels, and people will stop bothering us. But they don't understand a couple

00:06:56.320 things. One, there will be blowback from the right. Eventually, there'll be people on the

00:07:00.040 right who say, listen, you guys keep kowtowing like this, and we're just going to build our own

00:07:03.420 businesses, and we're going to shop at those businesses, because we're not going to be subjected

00:07:06.520 to the whims of MSNBC and woke, scold Twitter. That's not going to be who decides what we can consume

00:07:12.400 and what we cannot. There will be market opportunities for people to move into this space.

00:07:15.880 The other thing is that if you think that if Walmart's leadership is so delusional that they

00:07:21.360 believe that once the left has its foot wedged in that doorway, that they're not going to shove it

00:07:26.340 open wide, they're out of their damn minds. Because the fact is that Bernie Sanders is ripping on

00:07:30.880 Walmart daily about their salaries and their healthcare benefits, that Elizabeth Warren,

00:07:34.440 if she could do it, would break up Walmart in a heartbeat. These are the same people who've been

00:07:37.900 ripping on Walmart for years, even though Walmart is by far the largest employer in the United States.

00:07:41.620 They employ something like 2.1 million people in the United States, and they are the great

00:07:45.380 villain to the left. And so naturally, the CEO of Walmart thought what? That he was going to cater

00:07:49.100 to the left and the left is going to lay off of him? Now they think, okay, well, now that we've got

00:07:52.540 you on the run, now you better become a lobbying group for all of our cherished causes. And here's

00:07:57.500 the thing, the left is constantly moving. So there's never a point at which Walmart-

00:08:01.220 They're not satiated.

00:08:02.040 It's blood in the water.

00:08:02.780 This is exactly right.

00:08:03.980 The thing that gets me about this is the fact that all we've heard since Donald Trump has been

00:08:07.440 elected is we're living in a post-fact universe. But Donald Trump is an amateur when it comes

00:08:11.780 to post-fact world. I mean, it's really which post-fact world we're going to live in. There's

00:08:15.760 absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any of the things that they propose about guns anywhere

00:08:21.060 would do anything to stop what is, you know, in fact, a horrible scene that we're watching

00:08:26.360 of these young men exploding. If they went in and reinstated the kind of policing that they

00:08:32.560 were doing in New York until the New York Times and the left got on them, the kind of stop

00:08:36.440 and frisk the ComSat-based policing, the low tolerance policing, that would cut down on

00:08:44.920 gun violence. But the only problem is it would be young black kids in Chicago and the left

00:08:49.940 doesn't care about them because they know they're dying from leftist policy. And they

00:08:54.360 talk about we get hit by a hurricane, a terrible hurricane, and we hear about, oh my God, when

00:08:58.160 is Donald Trump going to do something about global warming? It's a complete fantasy. It's

00:09:01.980 all a fantasy world. And then they blame Donald Trump for the fact that he plays fast and loose

00:09:07.300 with the truth. But nowhere near as fast and loose as the left has been playing forever.

00:09:12.500 And it also shows you just the effectiveness of the left at getting into every single institution.

00:09:19.640 You know, a few years ago, I did a fellowship with a big conservative donor, you know, billionaire

00:09:24.900 type guy. And he was funding all these think tanks and all these great academic programs.

00:09:29.900 And he said, my strategy on philanthropy is to spend all my money before I die. I said,

00:09:34.880 oh, that's so interesting. Most philanthropists set up a foundation. It goes on for generation

00:09:38.620 and generation. He said, I'm not going to do that because what the left does is within one

00:09:43.360 generation, they get in there and they completely invert your mission. If Sam Walton were alive

00:09:48.480 today, this sort of nonsense would not be going on. But so quickly, how quickly after he's gone,

00:09:54.940 does the left come in and totally change his institution?

00:09:57.520 It's the Osovin rule, right?

00:09:58.500 Kevin Williamson has a new book out. It's called The Smallest Minority. And Kevin, of course,

00:10:02.200 is the columnist who was hired by The Atlantic and then was immediately fired by The Atlantic upon

00:10:07.320 them finding out that he was Kevin Williamson.

00:10:09.480 And he-

00:10:10.460 None columns later.

00:10:11.580 Exactly. And his book is basically an explanation, not only about the left trying to use the methods

00:10:18.320 of government to shut down free speech, but also about the subversion of the institutions,

00:10:23.000 about corporate capitalism and how corporate capitalism has actually created this new avenue

00:10:26.960 for the left to pursue its aims. See, in the realm of politics, I was pointing this out on my show

00:10:30.820 today. In the realm of politics, The Washington Post has a big editorial today where they list off

00:10:34.720 all the people killed and mass shootings over the last couple of years. And they say,

00:10:38.000 this is Mitch McConnell's fault. And you know what Mitch McConnell does? He takes that,

00:10:40.900 he wass it up and he throws it in the garbage. None of those people vote for him,

00:10:43.300 right? He's worried about what Kentucky voters are doing. But you know who does care about what the

00:10:47.820 editors of The Washington Post has to say? The CEO of Walmart, right? Meaning that his

00:10:51.820 constituents are not even his own customers now. The constituents for a lot of these major

00:10:56.620 corporations is, who are the people who follow me on Twitter and who can make my life miserable

00:11:00.080 for 48 hours or for a week by yelling at me? And it's of course the same exact thing we've been

00:11:04.400 talking about for years when the left decides to do secondary boycotts of advertisers on conservative

00:11:08.940 programs. They understand that all they have to do is simply pretend that there is a groundswell of

00:11:14.300 anger at CEOs and CEOs seeking to avoid wrath from their board, seeking to avoid the angry phone

00:11:19.480 calls. They figure, okay, well if I just surrender here, then everything will be fine. But they don't

00:11:23.000 understand again, is that the only way that all of this is going to stop is if all of these

00:11:27.580 corporations act, stop acting paternalistically. It's so funny. The left keeps saying that corporations

00:11:32.440 are affecting our culture. I want the corporations to stop being paternalistic. I don't think that it's

00:11:36.880 the job of social media to better me. I don't think that it's the job of Walmart to decide

00:11:41.300 what products that are legal I can and cannot have. I do not think that it's the job of Visa

00:11:45.700 to determine what kind of things I can spend my hard-earned money on via my credit card.

00:11:50.980 There was an article in the New York Times today by Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of the co-creators of

00:11:54.240 Billions and CNBC contributor. And he explicitly says, we need more corporations doing what Walmart

00:12:00.040 does. And he calls out Visa. He says, Visa keeps saying that they want to facilitate legal transactions

00:12:04.680 because that's their job, which is literally their job. And he's like, no, what we need is them to

00:12:09.080 stop allowing the purchase of guns using Visa cards. Does he have any idea how dangerous it is

00:12:14.100 when you have a country where they're a separate group of credit cards just for people on the right

00:12:18.360 and a separate group of credit cards for people on the left?

00:12:19.400 But this is actually the angle that we haven't hit on yet that I want to talk about. And Drew,

00:12:22.260 you've mentioned this in the past. Liberty in this country, yes, the Bill of Rights only constrains

00:12:28.620 the government. Yes, the Constitution, in theory, only enumerates certain authorities to the

00:12:33.120 government, although we're way past acting, so that were true. Nevertheless, liberty is

00:12:38.440 a way of life. It's a philosophy in America. And while it is true that Walmart is not bound by the

00:12:45.820 Second Amendment, we've only maintained our Second Amendment privileges in this country over time

00:12:51.900 because everyone agreed to them, including businesses. You've been able to go to a hardware

00:12:56.420 store in this country since the very founding and buy ammunition and buy firearms. If you cannot

00:13:05.100 purchase a firearm, if you cannot purchase ammunition, if you can't readily purchase them,

00:13:09.800 you don't have a right. The right doesn't exist. If you can't express yourself on the largest social

00:13:15.540 media platform on the planet or the second largest social media platform on the planet

00:13:19.620 or the third largest social media platform on the planet or the largest search engine on the planet

00:13:24.060 or the second largest search engine on the planet or the largest video platform on the planet

00:13:28.100 or the second largest video platform on the planet, you don't have a First Amendment.

00:13:32.380 It's not fair to say, yes, but the government doesn't.

00:13:35.900 Walmart taking away your right to buy ammunition at their store, aren't they just a private corporation?

00:13:40.720 Of course, yes.

00:13:41.480 I'm not suggesting that there should be a law that says Walmart has to sell ammunition.

00:13:45.460 All I am saying is that if Walmart won't sell ammunition, you will not long have the right to have ammunition.

00:13:51.140 And if you don't have the Second Amendment, as it's been said many times, you don't have any of them.

00:13:56.040 That's why I want to talk about our pals over at Bravo Company Manufacturing.

00:13:59.140 I'm wearing my weep with the arch, the arch, the arch.

00:14:03.200 That was magnificent.

00:14:05.060 You're getting so much better at this.

00:14:07.020 That was just terrific.

00:14:09.040 You know, when the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was to make sacred the right of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by their government.

00:14:15.900 That would be the First Amendment.

00:14:16.800 The second right they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech and their own persons with force.

00:14:22.520 That would be the Second Amendment.

00:14:23.400 And that's why we are so grateful for Bravo Company Manufacturing, who will not be withdrawing from the sale of weaponry, as it turns out.

00:14:29.900 Owning a rifle is an awesome responsibility.

00:14:32.080 Building rifles is no different.

00:14:33.940 It was started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago.

00:14:37.240 Bravo Company Manufacturing, BCM, builds a professional-grade product which is built to combat standards.

00:14:42.300 Bravo Company Manufacturing is not a sporting arms company.

00:14:45.040 They design, engineer, and manufacture life-saving equipment.

00:14:47.380 And believe it or not, folks, you might actually need a gun to save your life.

00:14:50.140 Despite what the left has to say, you don't only own a gun for-

00:14:52.380 That never happens, Ben.

00:14:52.960 That never happens.

00:14:54.220 No one uses guns to actually protect themselves or their families.

00:14:57.240 You know who disagrees with this.

00:14:58.440 Bravo Company Manufacturing.

00:15:00.160 And you should, too, because it's the-

00:15:01.460 Slash science.

00:15:02.000 Slash everything in the universe, because always.

00:15:05.300 To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to bravocompanymfg.com.

00:15:10.440 You can discover more about their products, special offers, upcoming news.

00:15:13.540 That is bravocompanymfg.com.

00:15:15.600 If you need more convincing, check out all their stuff on YouTube at youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa.

00:15:21.580 Again, youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa.

00:15:24.480 Again, we love people who love the Second Amendment, and nobody loves the Second Amendment more than BCM.

00:15:27.960 That's right.

00:15:28.340 And Bravo Company Manufacturing and others like them are as much a reason-

00:15:33.460 So it's not just that the Second Amendment protects all of our rights.

00:15:36.640 It's that companies like Bravo Company Manufacturing protect our Second Amendment.

00:15:39.960 Because only by providing us with the good that we can actually engage in the commerce and purchase,

00:15:45.220 only by having high-quality rifles like the ones that they make of our Bravo Company available to us on the market

00:15:51.380 at prices that we can afford that are determined by the invisible hand, not by bureaucrats.

00:15:56.700 If we don't have that, then it really is this sort of vestigial right,

00:16:01.080 where maybe the gun that your great-great-grandfather left to your great-great-grandfather left to your great-grandfather left to your great-grandfather left to your grand...

00:16:06.780 Well, they want to take that away, too.

00:16:07.840 They want to take that away, too, right? Because universal background checks would prevent you from inheriting a gun.

00:16:11.420 So they actually want to take that away.

00:16:13.580 AOC made that reference to Dan Crenshaw today, our friend Dan Crenshaw.

00:16:16.860 So Dan tweeted out-

00:16:18.080 That's terrific.

00:16:18.500 Dan tweeted out that universal background checks would prevent him from giving a gun to one of his friends to defend herself

00:16:24.520 if she were going into a dangerous area and knew there was a higher risk of crime.

00:16:28.200 And AOC was like, so you want to give guns to your criminal friends?

00:16:31.140 And Dan Crenshaw's like, wait, hold up a second.

00:16:32.800 She said his friends beat their wives.

00:16:34.700 Yeah, she did.

00:16:35.520 And Dan Crenshaw's like, what?

00:16:36.620 What? And because she doesn't speak English.

00:16:38.680 That's my only explanation for how she could possibly misunderstand this.

00:16:41.800 Because either one of two things.

00:16:43.260 Either she doesn't speak English or she's incredibly stupid.

00:16:45.600 So I'm trying to be more laterally.

00:16:46.580 You know what it is.

00:16:47.080 I'm going B on that one.

00:16:48.120 You know what it is.

00:16:49.180 She said, look, we don't know because your friends ostensibly haven't taken this background check

00:16:54.360 or you haven't checked and all these people are checking.

00:16:56.660 So therefore, we have to assume that Dan Crenshaw's friends all beat their wives.

00:17:02.380 But here's my question.

00:17:04.740 I don't know that AOC has ever taken a background check.

00:17:07.440 I don't know.

00:17:08.520 Are we willing to take this risk that we have a member of Congress who may very well beat her boyfriend?

00:17:15.580 I don't know.

00:17:16.400 I'm not saying she does.

00:17:17.520 I'm not leveling that.

00:17:18.900 How would we know?

00:17:19.520 It really is guilt before innocence.

00:17:22.020 Like the presumption of guilt is the new standard of the left.

00:17:25.140 One of the reasons I both love the right and I'm incredibly frustrated with it

00:17:29.660 is I would rather, as a person, as a human being, I would rather sit with other gentlemen or you guys

00:17:35.100 and discuss morality, truth, the complexities of history.

00:17:41.580 But the left understands that narrative is like a freight train.

00:17:44.780 It's simple.

00:17:45.820 It's straightforward.

00:17:46.560 And it runs you over.

00:17:48.120 And so while we sit around and we discuss this, and I get this all the time when I read

00:17:52.000 some of the magazines I love best, some of the people I love best,

00:17:55.360 is they're discussing the details of who did this and this guy did this.

00:17:59.580 They are constructing these simplistic narratives that simply sweep away the idea of the right,

00:18:05.200 sweep away the principles that we live by because they spread so fast.

00:18:08.740 It's the lie that goes around the world before the truth gets its pants on.

00:18:11.920 But really what it is is storytelling because stories are simple.

00:18:15.220 Stories have basic ideas and they just take people over.

00:18:17.960 And this idea that the gun, you can see the gun, it's ugly, it shoots, it kills people.

00:18:22.280 That's to blame for what's going on.

00:18:24.500 That's not really even the story they're telling because the real element of story,

00:18:27.180 as you know better than anybody else in the room, the real element of story is that you

00:18:30.700 have to have a villain and a hero.

00:18:32.580 And so for the left, it's not about the gun.

00:18:34.280 It's about the person who is not stopping the gun is the villain.

00:18:37.920 And the person who is calling for all the guns to be removed is the hero.

00:18:40.280 And that's that Washington Post editorial today, which is, look at all these dead people.

00:18:43.680 Why isn't Mitch McConnell doing anything?

00:18:45.480 And it's like, and they said, why isn't there a moral imperative to act?

00:18:48.640 And it's like, well, act to do what would be the actual question, right?

00:18:51.760 In a political context, you would be saying, well, to, to like, what are you talking about

00:18:55.820 doing here?

00:18:56.640 Like act to throw yourself off the highest turret?

00:18:58.660 And we would rather sit around and talk.

00:19:00.320 You would like someone more who sits around and says, what do we do here?

00:19:03.480 Here's the situation.

00:19:04.720 Let's sit down and figure out a solution.

00:19:06.780 They understand that the good guy and the bad guy, the simple solution, the simple answer

00:19:11.280 is just much more powerful.

00:19:12.680 This is the line that they use, the cowardly line, the ugliest line that they use in politics

00:19:17.040 is we must do something, you, and it's never even we, it's you, Mitch McConnell, you must

00:19:23.300 do something.

00:19:24.520 Do what?

00:19:25.620 Articulate one policy that you proposed that would have prevented any of these shootings,

00:19:30.360 that would have prevented any of these deaths.

00:19:31.880 They never articulate the policy.

00:19:33.520 Even PolitiFact admitted that none of the major gun control proposals of the last 10

00:19:37.840 years would have prevented these shootings.

00:19:39.560 Right.

00:19:39.720 There's a, there's a dude I'm friends with named Adam Grant over at Wharton Business School.

00:19:43.340 And he said to me one time, and I thought it was a great line.

00:19:45.940 He said that anytime you want to stop a conversation, start with the problem.

00:19:51.380 If you want to start a conversation, start with the solution, because then you can actually

00:19:54.560 discuss whether the solution applies or not.

00:19:56.360 But what the left understands is that politically speaking, it never helps to start with the

00:19:59.880 solution.

00:20:00.280 It always helps to start with the problem.

00:20:01.780 Because if you diagnose the problem, everybody goes, ah, you're right, that is a problem.

00:20:05.880 And then you never have to get to the solution.

00:20:07.280 In fact, Donald Trump actually has an inherent gift at this.

00:20:09.680 He was very good at this in 2016.

00:20:11.060 He'd be like, you're, you're being screwed by the man.

00:20:13.340 And that's why you lost your job.

00:20:14.640 Okay.

00:20:14.780 You've identified a problem.

00:20:16.000 Now, none of the solutions you're talking about necessarily make any sense, right?

00:20:19.420 But that is how you draw narrative.

00:20:21.380 The difference between narrative and solution finding is that solution finding requires a focus

00:20:26.200 on specificity.

00:20:26.980 The more specific you are, the more you can find consensus with somebody else.

00:20:29.940 And it can be tested against reality.

00:20:32.000 Yeah.

00:20:32.220 Right.

00:20:32.600 And you're defining terms.

00:20:34.240 This is the reason Congress can't pass anything other than sweeping omnibus legislation anymore.

00:20:38.740 Because you don't do anything.

00:20:39.700 You don't do anything.

00:20:40.660 Because you can tell people, Kamala Harris had a tweet today where she said, when elected

00:20:47.100 president, I will combat climate change by, green check mark, making sure that our most

00:20:52.920 affected minority and poor communities receive the help that they need has nothing to do

00:20:57.660 with climate change.

00:20:58.720 Check number two, making sure that big corporations and big polluters pay their fair share also

00:21:04.400 has nothing to do with climate change.

00:21:05.960 And number three, like, you know, make people turn off their air conditioners.

00:21:08.920 Whatever it is.

00:21:09.840 I thought it was a glorious tweet for every reason.

00:21:11.900 One, because she ain't going to be president.

00:21:13.740 So I love it when they use this, when I'm president language, right?

00:21:16.920 That's never going to happen.

00:21:18.100 Two, two out of your three solutions don't address climate change at all.

00:21:21.760 They're just about basic liberal redistribution or leftist redistribution schemes.

00:21:26.400 But three, because when you present the problem and not the solution, you're able to posture

00:21:32.840 as though if you had power, the change would be so revolutionary and so sweeping that there

00:21:40.200 won't be hurricanes anymore and there won't be poor people anymore.

00:21:43.280 And there won't be big corporations anymore.

00:21:45.620 And everything will change when you're president.

00:21:48.200 The reality is if she's president, Wall Street's going to do a little bit worse.

00:21:51.640 Our freedoms are going to get eroded.

00:21:52.880 And then she won't be president anymore.

00:21:55.600 And Donald Trump is the president.

00:21:57.320 The economy does a little better.

00:21:58.440 Wall Street does a little better.

00:21:59.780 No wall gets built.

00:22:01.440 That's just it.

00:22:02.380 They have limited power, limited windows of opportunity.

00:22:06.040 But in the old days, they would pass incremental bills that would then, you could test the result.

00:22:13.180 We built a bridge in Alaska.

00:22:14.420 Cool.

00:22:14.680 Where does it go?

00:22:17.260 And then we'd be able to look at that.

00:22:19.280 And they would have budget appropriation committees and they would talk about where they were going

00:22:23.700 to spin instead of the bureaucrats coming in and just whipping through.

00:22:25.820 But now, they don't want to pass anything that undercuts the narrative.

00:22:30.540 That's right.

00:22:30.820 That undercuts their narrative.

00:22:31.840 Well, this is why you said, did you see that they're having this climate change debate on CNN

00:22:34.960 tonight?

00:22:35.340 Which, I mean, we have nothing to talk about and our counter-programming is wildly superior to that.

00:22:40.260 I mean, that is going to be just a death slog.

00:22:44.240 And what was fascinating is that there's this talking point that obviously went around to

00:22:48.460 the Democratic Party about what exactly this should be.

00:22:50.280 So Amy Klobuchar said it and then Jay Inslee said it and basically all of them said it.

00:22:53.800 They all said the same thing.

00:22:54.820 We need to get the climate change denier out of the White House.

00:22:59.100 That's not a solution.

00:23:00.780 That's not a policy.

00:23:02.120 Because here's the thing.

00:23:02.960 The reason that the left wants to boil down the climate change debate into denier versus

00:23:07.180 non-denier is because the people who are not denying climate change, right?

00:23:10.940 I'm a luke warmer, meaning that I agree that human activity is causing climate change and

00:23:16.660 that the majority of climate change is in fact being, we have disagreement in this room on

00:23:19.540 this, and that the majority of climate change is being caused by human activity and that

00:23:23.360 probably over the next century, the climate will warm somewhere between two degrees Celsius

00:23:26.800 and six degrees Celsius, right?

00:23:28.020 That's the IPCC consensus.

00:23:29.800 I'm not denying any of their underlying facts.

00:23:31.860 I just think all of their solutions are crap.

00:23:33.600 That's right.

00:23:33.880 And aren't actually going to solve anything and are specifically designed not to solve anything.

00:23:37.180 Actually, they don't want to talk about that.

00:23:39.120 Instead, they would prefer to go, got to get the climate change denier out of the White

00:23:42.300 House, as though that solves a thing.

00:23:43.980 But they have no solutions.

00:23:45.180 Their solution is, let's have a bidding war to show how much we care.

00:23:48.540 So you get Kamala Harris going, $10 trillion for climate change fighting.

00:23:52.060 And then Bernie Sanders comes along, he's like, infinity, infinity dollars.

00:23:55.640 And everyone's like, oh, he must care the most.

00:23:57.580 He's offering infinity dollars.

00:23:59.300 Infinity is so many more than 10.

00:24:00.400 Did you see Prince Harry gave this speech about this on climate change today?

00:24:04.240 Because his big issue for the month was climate change.

00:24:07.680 And then he got caught flying on a private jet four times in 11 days.

00:24:11.300 And so they said, oh, you know, Prince Harry doesn't look like you really care about what

00:24:14.720 you're talking about.

00:24:15.460 For safety.

00:24:15.580 Just for safety.

00:24:16.600 So he gives this speech today.

00:24:17.880 And the premise of the speech was, Britons should not go on vacation.

00:24:23.060 People who are in the United Kingdom should never go on vacation anymore because they fly

00:24:27.520 on the planes and that's really bad for the world.

00:24:29.680 Let them eat cake, but not very much cake.

00:24:31.660 But not a lot of cake.

00:24:32.680 Not too much cake.

00:24:33.740 If he were actually going to give a serious talk on climate change, you would talk about

00:24:37.960 the biggest carbon emitters in the world, right?

00:24:40.460 Which is not the UK.

00:24:41.860 It's not the US.

00:24:42.920 It is China by multiples, right?

00:24:45.580 China emits twice as much carbon as the United States does.

00:24:48.280 And we're certainly number two.

00:24:50.500 It emits 25 times as much carbon as the United Kingdom.

00:24:54.620 When you look at plastics in the ocean, we're not on the list.

00:24:58.260 We're nowhere near the list.

00:24:59.420 It's all China, it's Vietnam, it's Indonesia, it's all of these East Asian countries.

00:25:03.260 If you wanted to come up with a solution to climate change, you would invade China, you

00:25:07.820 would shut down their government.

00:25:09.300 But that's not really what this is about.

00:25:11.300 This is about flogging oneself on the back and making everybody feel really bad and most

00:25:15.960 importantly, villainizing and vilifying your opponents to kick them out of the ball.

00:25:19.820 But also collecting all power in one place.

00:25:22.520 Right.

00:25:22.600 To me, the big story of the week is Brexit.

00:25:25.520 And the reason it is, there's a wonderful article about this by Christopher Caldwell in Claremont

00:25:29.920 Review.

00:25:30.540 I have to say, I shouldn't say it's by Christopher Caldwell.

00:25:32.560 I should say it's edited by Spencer Clavin.

00:25:34.520 But it's a brilliant piece about the difference between EU governance and parliamentary governance,

00:25:41.240 which is parliamentary governance is delegated governance that people give power to their

00:25:44.780 representatives.

00:25:45.520 EU governance is governance by the elite through the courts.

00:25:48.020 It's you have rights.

00:25:49.400 The court will decide whether that law that this guy passed is going to stand.

00:25:53.700 And that's what we're really dealing with.

00:25:56.140 Everything, every story, every story that the left tells is really a story meant to funnel

00:26:01.080 power to a small number of urban elites.

00:26:04.140 Everything.

00:26:04.920 The climate is meant, you say the solutions don't work, but the solutions all gather power

00:26:09.400 in a central place.

00:26:11.480 Guns, they take away the power of the individual to stand and say, I am a complete thing.

00:26:18.020 It needs to be defended and can be defended even against the government.

00:26:21.580 Every story they tell is about collecting power.

00:26:23.960 And that's why I think the right needs to start selling that narrative that, you know,

00:26:28.720 you have power.

00:26:29.820 You have power as an individual.

00:26:31.380 You have a complete right as an individual to self-defense, to self-government, to self,

00:26:35.540 you know, decisions that you make yourself.

00:26:37.840 And everything they do takes that away.

00:26:40.120 And we constantly talk about the money.

00:26:41.900 We constantly say, who's going to pay for that?

00:26:43.820 I want to know how much freedom it's going to take.

00:26:45.900 I want to say, you know, yeah, you want to solve the gun problem?

00:26:48.700 Solve it without taking my freedom away.

00:26:50.240 You want to solve climate change?

00:26:51.360 Hey, you know, I love the environment.

00:26:52.560 I want the air to be fresh, the water to be clean.

00:26:54.900 Solve it without taking my power away.

00:26:56.640 But everything they do is built on this.

00:26:58.640 And if, you know, I know how dearly you love Steve Bannon.

00:27:02.260 But Steve Bannon had this one quote where he said, if you think they're going to give

00:27:07.000 your government back without a fight, you're kidding yourself.

00:27:09.560 And that's what we're seeing in Brexit.

00:27:11.000 They are doing everything they can to stymie the will of the people.

00:27:15.740 More people voted for Brexit in Britain than have ever voted for anything in Britain.

00:27:20.060 More people voted for Brexit than have ever voted for anything.

00:27:22.680 And they can't get it done.

00:27:24.660 And they don't even think they're supposed to get it done.

00:27:26.640 They think they're supposed to stop it.

00:27:28.380 And the reason they think they're supposed to stop it is if you don't have to govern.

00:27:31.940 It's just what you said.

00:27:32.900 If you don't have to govern, you don't have to take responsibility.

00:27:35.300 You can just shove it off on the administrative state, on the courts.

00:27:38.240 It's all their fault, and you never have to stand up for anything.

00:27:41.440 So I think you're right.

00:27:43.320 The Brexit thing is an enormous story.

00:27:44.700 I wouldn't mind talking a little bit about it.

00:27:46.160 But I think before we do that, we should talk about our friends over at Policy Genius,

00:27:49.120 who make it possible for us to talk about all the other things.

00:27:51.120 That's one of the worst segues I've ever seen.

00:27:52.340 It wasn't great.

00:27:53.280 Honestly.

00:27:53.820 It's just a plummet in the quality segues.

00:27:56.200 At best, I've got one in.

00:27:59.060 If that segway made you want to die, perhaps you're thinking about life insurance right now.

00:28:02.940 September is National Life Insurance Awareness Month.

00:28:05.320 I'm not sure that you knew that, because who knew that before I just said it?

00:28:08.120 September is, in fact, National Life Insurance Awareness Month.

00:28:11.140 Getting life insurance is an important thing for you to do as an adult human.

00:28:14.840 If you're a child and you don't think about death, then you become an adult and you realize

00:28:18.040 one day you will plot, and there will be lots of people who are here after you plot.

00:28:21.180 And perhaps you should leave them some money.

00:28:22.680 The best way to do this would be for you to go get some life insurance, but don't think

00:28:25.640 about it too much, because you don't want to spend the next five years thinking about

00:28:28.840 your impending doom.

00:28:30.080 I mean, hell, we only have 10 years until we're all dead anyway, so now would be a great time

00:28:33.860 to get life insurance.

00:28:34.920 And PolicyGenius is the easy way to shop for life insurance online.

00:28:37.980 In minutes, you can compare quotes from top insurers and find your best price.

00:28:42.000 Once you apply, the PolicyGenius team will handle all the paperwork as well as the red

00:28:45.500 tape.

00:28:45.960 And PolicyGenius doesn't just make life insurance easy.

00:28:48.280 They can also help you find the right home insurance, auto insurance, disability insurance.

00:28:52.460 They can make sure that you're not buried in a pauper's grave like Mozart, because frankly,

00:28:56.180 you're not going to have his legacy and you'll be just as dead.

00:28:58.020 If you need life insurance, but you haven't gotten around to it, National Life Insurance

00:29:01.840 Awareness Month is a great time for you to check out PolicyGenius.com.

00:29:05.380 Get quotes, apply in minutes.

00:29:06.580 You can do the whole thing on your phone right now.

00:29:08.280 In fact, pause us.

00:29:09.300 If you're listening to this on your phone, go to PolicyGenius, get your life insurance,

00:29:12.300 and then come back and listen to us ramble for another hour and a half.

00:29:15.080 PolicyGenius, the easy way to compare and buy life insurance.

00:29:17.540 My family is in the tombstone business.

00:29:19.380 I don't know if you guys know this, in the headstone business.

00:29:21.900 Now, that was a good transition.

00:29:23.280 That was a really good transition.

00:29:24.600 Thank you.

00:29:24.880 I grew up kind of in cemeteries with my grandpa, which I realize is a little weird to people

00:29:29.220 who didn't grow up.

00:29:29.340 But not chocking.

00:29:30.100 But not chocking.

00:29:31.540 It's not that macabre, really.

00:29:34.900 The one thing that I know is that death is expensive, and nobody really thinks about this.

00:29:40.360 People think, well, I don't need life insurance because I don't need to leave money to my family.

00:29:45.540 It's not my job to make sure that my family is rich.

00:29:47.700 I had to work.

00:29:48.300 They need to work.

00:29:49.060 That's not the purpose of life insurance fundamentally.

00:29:51.240 It isn't that.

00:29:52.320 It's that when you die, you're leaving liabilities to your family.

00:29:55.680 You're leaving a mortgage that they can't pay.

00:29:57.540 You're leaving a funeral that they can't pay.

00:29:59.400 You're leaving a tombstone, a casket that they can't pay.

00:30:02.800 All of that is covered by having good life insurance.

00:30:05.380 That's why I think companies like PolicyGenius, I've said before, I think they're the future

00:30:08.500 of the internet.

00:30:09.060 These are terrific companies that make it so easy to find the best deals possible for you.

00:30:14.620 But it is absolutely true.

00:30:16.140 You don't want to leave your loved ones.

00:30:18.180 It's hard enough when someone goes through a death of a loved one, just the emotional

00:30:23.380 loss, to also leave people with a huge financial loss.

00:30:26.640 That old jackass didn't leave you anything to take care of the funeral.

00:30:29.860 This is why I'm not only having myself stuffed, but I've already had myself stuffed.

00:30:35.740 You just haven't noticed.

00:30:37.060 When those people on Twitter said, get stuffed, I don't think that it meant what you think

00:30:40.560 that meant.

00:30:41.120 So let's talk just briefly about Brexit, because I don't know that everybody understands everything

00:30:44.260 that's going on there.

00:30:45.600 And really, the machinations, even just over the last 48 hours, have been pretty unbelievable.

00:30:50.180 Unbelievable.

00:30:50.420 So, Drew, explain.

00:30:51.100 Why do they have funny accents?

00:30:52.300 They have funny, because they just have never...

00:30:54.200 You know why?

00:30:54.760 I once asked somebody in England, you know, how come you guys are so eloquent?

00:30:58.040 And he said, well, it's our language, dear boy.

00:31:00.600 So they have those...

00:31:01.780 Also, why are they the villains in every movie?

00:31:03.900 Every movie.

00:31:04.540 It doesn't matter.

00:31:05.100 They all have that accent.

00:31:06.120 I actually have a good theory about that.

00:31:08.720 Vestiges of the revolution.

00:31:09.800 Yeah, it is.

00:31:10.480 It's the same reason that priests are villains in Gothic fiction.

00:31:13.520 It's because they're afraid they'll come back and take the world back again.

00:31:17.100 You know that the British at the time of the founding probably didn't have British accents?

00:31:21.280 The British at the time of the founding...

00:31:23.040 Well, they would have talked more like Virginians, probably.

00:31:24.980 And that when we watch kind of long time ago-y movies, everyone has a British accent.

00:31:29.480 Like even George Washington has a...

00:31:31.760 But I mean, like founding era, like George Washington has a British accent.

00:31:34.900 But the truth is that actually the people in Britain didn't even have British accents at

00:31:37.900 that time.

00:31:38.200 They probably sounded like Virginians now.

00:31:40.640 I'll take your...

00:31:41.200 But the thing about Brexit that is fascinating...

00:31:43.820 I mean, what they do, what they have now is they have this new guy, Boris Johnson, and

00:31:47.740 everybody compares him to Donald Trump because he's a little wild and he has that hair.

00:31:51.220 He has the same hair.

00:31:51.880 You have to be able to compare Boris Johnson to Trump.

00:31:53.180 But he is also...

00:31:54.160 He was a classics professor.

00:31:55.180 He's a classics professor.

00:31:56.140 Yeah, he's a very, very intelligent guy.

00:31:57.680 Donald Trump's only classic was like the 1972 Playboy.

00:31:59.780 That's not a thing.

00:32:00.760 I thought you meant Trump was the classics.

00:32:03.100 What did Boris Johnson mean?

00:32:04.340 No, exactly.

00:32:04.760 It was one of them went to Eaton.

00:32:05.640 One of them.

00:32:06.220 I can't remember which one went.

00:32:07.080 Hey, the other one went to Wharton.

00:32:09.980 But they voted for Brexit and then they put Theresa May in there who was anti-Brexit.

00:32:16.040 And she made the sound.

00:32:18.240 She said Brexit means Brexit.

00:32:19.380 But she didn't mean it.

00:32:20.180 She really thought it was something that had to be handled.

00:32:22.420 And if you go to the EU who does not want Britain to leave because once Britain leaves,

00:32:27.020 all the other countries are out.

00:32:28.400 Oh, yeah.

00:32:28.720 It's over.

00:32:29.000 And so, and Britain, you know...

00:32:31.900 And they're blackmailing Britain.

00:32:32.920 It's important to remember that.

00:32:34.300 It's important to remember that things have happened on the continent that Britain has

00:32:37.880 not partaken of.

00:32:39.120 Nazism, the Napoleonic Revolution, the Inquisition.

00:32:44.520 All of these things Britain said, I don't think so.

00:32:46.620 I don't think so.

00:32:47.040 I don't think so.

00:32:47.500 And they are, that's why they are what Winston Churchill said, part of the English-speaking

00:32:50.920 peoples.

00:32:51.680 Britain and us.

00:32:53.040 Britain would be far better being the 51st state than they would be in the EU.

00:32:57.660 They have much more in common with us than they do with the rest of the continent.

00:33:01.440 And they don't want them to leave.

00:33:02.900 And so they've done everything to foil them.

00:33:04.480 And what they've done is they've basically said, oh, you know, how are you going to land

00:33:07.380 your planes in Paris if you don't have a trade deal with us?

00:33:10.840 So you have to make a deal with us if you want to leave.

00:33:13.560 And what Boris Johnson has said is, let me tell them, just like Donald Trump, he says,

00:33:17.580 let me negotiate and tell them we will crash out on October 31st, as we're supposed

00:33:21.900 to, if they don't make a deal.

00:33:23.860 And they will make a deal.

00:33:25.080 And they have mobilized both the conservatives and the left.

00:33:28.860 Although I think that everybody who's saying that Johnson misplayed this, I think Johnson

00:33:31.760 knew exactly what was going to happen here.

00:33:33.180 I think that-

00:33:33.720 He's not done yet either.

00:33:34.600 No, I mean, well, he's already suggested snap elections.

00:33:37.600 Yeah, but he's got to get a vote for that so far.

00:33:40.040 He's been stymied in that too.

00:33:40.440 Right, but the deal is that basically, if the conservatives sign along with the left,

00:33:45.320 that there will be no no-deal Brexit, then there will be also snap elections.

00:33:49.180 That's the deal they're trying to cut right now.

00:33:50.320 That's right.

00:33:50.640 And I think Johnson can live with that.

00:33:51.680 He's figuring, okay, fine, so let's do this thing, and then I'm going to come in with

00:33:54.400 my own majority, and the Brexit party will join the conservatives, and we'll have purified

00:33:58.740 the rump, and it'll all be good.

00:33:59.920 Interestingly, Theresa May took the same chance and lost, but I think Johnson will win.

00:34:03.280 Nobody wants Jeremy Corbyn.

00:34:04.380 Jeremy Corbyn is a madman.

00:34:06.020 He's a communist.

00:34:07.240 He's an anti-Semite.

00:34:08.040 He's a bad guy.

00:34:09.020 Nobody wants him running.

00:34:09.940 But the day for a no-deal Brexit, like, they are out of the EU on October 31st, compile

00:34:14.760 our high water, right?

00:34:15.360 Well, not anymore.

00:34:16.180 So they just voted that Parliament has the capacity to stop a no-deal Brexit.

00:34:21.380 That was the vote that happened today.

00:34:22.760 Right.

00:34:23.000 So people were saying, well, that's the Trump card against Johnson.

00:34:25.780 Now he's basically sort of a vestigial organ of government because he can't get the Brexit.

00:34:29.900 He can't do a no-deal Brexit, and he's not going to be able to make a deal with the

00:34:32.120 people who are in the government.

00:34:32.860 That was Theresa May's problem.

00:34:34.140 So he said, okay, fine.

00:34:35.140 Well, then let's just do a snap election, and let's find out what the British people think of

00:34:38.580 all of this, and the Conservatives will probably go along with that much of it, right?

00:34:43.860 The Conservatives will probably go along with Labour and Liberal Democrats and say, okay,

00:34:48.560 well, we'll sign on to the no-no-deal Brexit, but in return, you have to do a snap election.

00:34:53.000 And the results are not going to be pretty for Labour.

00:34:55.140 I think Labour is wildly overestimating the level of support.

00:34:57.320 I agree, and I also think there is a reason why we love the British.

00:35:00.220 Down deep, they are stubborn, nasty people, and they will stand up for their rights.

00:35:05.960 Now, all my friends in England are kind of moderate Liberals.

00:35:09.200 You know, they're all kind of in this Liberal, not all of them, but a lot of them are Liberals.

00:35:11.940 But when you say to them, isn't the fact that the EU won't let you leave a reason to leave?

00:35:17.320 There's always this long silence to go, yeah.

00:35:20.100 And I think they may have had it.

00:35:21.560 Weird, unrelated question.

00:35:23.640 So have you guys ever seen these kind of counter, these history counterfactuals?

00:35:28.460 So for just a second, what do you think would have happened?

00:35:30.460 This is so weird and out of the blue, but what the hell?

00:35:32.580 There's nothing to talk about.

00:35:33.300 So what do you think would have happened if the Americans had lost the American Revolution?

00:35:38.380 Because there is a school of thought that basically the Western world would have been better off

00:35:42.300 if the British retain both Canada and the United States.

00:35:45.480 Because eventually America becomes bigger than Britain anyway.

00:35:48.560 We become the capital.

00:35:49.200 We become the capital of Great Britain.

00:35:51.240 Yeah.

00:35:51.640 And World War II never happens because the Germans are like,

00:35:54.940 why would we possibly want to take on this enormous empire that is never going to be broken up, basically?

00:36:00.700 Although Hitler really didn't want to fight with the English anyway.

00:36:04.120 He put it off as long as he possibly could.

00:36:05.720 Right, but he at least had a calculated decision that he might be able to take on Britain,

00:36:09.020 but he couldn't take on both Britain and America, at least not without the Japanese attacking the American player.

00:36:12.620 I mean, the thing about these counterfactuals is things always work out better in them.

00:36:16.300 Which makes me suspicious.

00:36:17.380 And I do, you know, Edmund Burke, the great philosopher of kind of modern conservative thought,

00:36:22.620 did draw this distinction between the American Revolution, which is good,

00:36:25.800 and the French Revolution, which is bad.

00:36:27.620 And so much of the logic of the American Revolution is we were just Englishmen,

00:36:31.720 and as a result, we were stubborn and nasty and demanded our freedom and demanded our rights.

00:36:36.120 So something tells me if we lost the American Revolution, we probably would have fought it again,

00:36:40.780 that there was something.

00:36:41.940 I don't think anything in history is inevitable, but as near as you can get to inevitable,

00:36:45.500 something tells me American independence was going that way.

00:36:48.140 Britain had the greatest military probably in the world at the time of the American Revolution.

00:36:51.760 They did not have a great enough military to hold this continent.

00:36:55.080 I mean, they tried in 1812, right?

00:36:56.420 They tried to fight it again.

00:36:57.260 The counterfactual, I think, is what if they hadn't been a civil war?

00:37:00.040 Because I think that slavery would have disappeared almost in the same amount of time,

00:37:03.900 and with a lot less debt.

00:37:05.700 That's the one counterfactual I've always kind of believed in,

00:37:08.300 that the civil war didn't have to happen, and slavery was a doom.

00:37:12.520 Although the South's pushed for extension of slavery across the continent.

00:37:15.320 No question, no question.

00:37:16.120 Was very successful in the 1850s.

00:37:18.280 And so there is the argument that at the very least,

00:37:20.760 like I think the idea that slavery would have lasted until the 1960s or something,

00:37:23.900 that's an absurd argument.

00:37:25.020 But I think there's a fairly good argument that slavery would have lasted into the 1880s.

00:37:28.780 It probably would have lasted another 15 or 20 years post-Civil War,

00:37:31.620 simply because the slave states had such an interest in maintaining it,

00:37:35.380 and they were expending westward.

00:37:37.120 That was what the entire 1850s were basically about.

00:37:39.940 And the other one, of course, is if John Wilkes Booth had missed or hadn't killed Lincoln.

00:37:45.420 Well, that would have been, I mean, that really is the greatest tragedy,

00:37:48.500 is the failure of the Republican reconstruction in the aftermath of the Senate.

00:37:51.520 That really is the great tragedy of American history,

00:37:53.660 because right after the Civil War, the radical Republicans were ready to basically,

00:37:57.260 they were talking about ending segregation.

00:37:59.260 They were talking about really using the power of the federal government to quash the Jim Crow laws.

00:38:03.980 I mean, it really would have been a sea change in the history of the United States.

00:38:08.200 Jim Crow certainly would have been what Jim Crow later became.

00:38:10.580 That's why the election of 1876 is such a tragedy, right?

00:38:13.100 And it does suggest that giving up principle for temporary power is never a very good solution.

00:38:19.640 No.

00:38:20.040 Right?

00:38:20.220 Because in that election, for those who aren't familiar with presidential history,

00:38:24.320 basically the Republicans, in order to maintain the presidency,

00:38:27.120 decided that they would give up on reconstruction, and reconstruction would be over,

00:38:30.180 and in return they would get the presidency, because their boy had lost the electoral college vote while winning the popular vote.

00:38:35.240 Also, of course, the lesson is you just don't get that many Lincolns, you know?

00:38:38.260 You get a few, and they're important.

00:38:40.760 But this is actually one of the things about the American system of government that people seem to neglect,

00:38:44.940 and that is the American government was built for bad presidents.

00:38:48.760 It was built for people who were going to suck at their jobs.

00:38:51.080 This is why when people are like, oh, the government's so frustrating, we can't get anything done.

00:38:54.360 It was like, right.

00:38:55.500 Because the founders knew they were all the war.

00:38:57.340 I agree with that.

00:38:57.620 It drives me up a wall when people are like, who are the great American presidents?

00:39:02.100 There have been like seven of them.

00:39:03.120 No, there have been a few.

00:39:03.640 Like really, the number of experts.

00:39:04.840 I mean, name 20 presidents.

00:39:06.900 Maybe you can.

00:39:07.680 I can name all of them.

00:39:08.220 No, I can name 20.

00:39:09.580 I mean, I wrote a book on them.

00:39:10.620 But the number of good presidents, when people say, name the best presidents,

00:39:15.580 you get to like six, and you're like, I got nothing.

00:39:18.200 Right?

00:39:18.500 You go like Washington and Lincoln, and you got Reagan, maybe Coolidge.

00:39:22.520 I don't put TR in that list.

00:39:23.880 I don't like TR as a president.

00:39:24.760 Chester Arthur, obviously.

00:39:25.880 You know, Chester Arthur is a fascinating story.

00:39:30.420 He was only put on the ticket as a sop to the New York insiders.

00:39:34.480 And then he ends up as president and didn't want to be president.

00:39:37.020 And then he ends up shutting the door on the New York insiders.

00:39:38.800 He's really an interesting story.

00:39:39.680 I actually love Chester Arthur.

00:39:40.780 I also have a secret reason to love Chester Arthur, which is that in 1880, on the presidential

00:39:45.320 ticket of James Garfield and Chester Arthur, it was the first blank book in American history.

00:39:49.780 Which was called the statesmanship and achievements and political achievements of General Hancock, regular Democratic nominee for president.

00:39:59.060 He said, one day, this genre will make Michael Mulder.

00:40:02.100 So thank you, President Garfield.

00:40:04.320 But it is true that between basically Martin Van Buren, maybe Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, there's nobody.

00:40:12.440 Right?

00:40:12.560 Like the number of good presidents between maybe Polk, maybe.

00:40:15.600 And that's if you like the Texas War, which is very questionable.

00:40:19.980 I mean, Lincoln opposed it because he thought it was an expansion of slave states.

00:40:22.180 Yeah, no, that's right.

00:40:23.060 And then between the Civil War and basically Calvin Coolidge and Warren G. Harding, it is a pantheon of nobodies and or progressives who suck.

00:40:32.540 And the country did great.

00:40:33.440 And the country did great.

00:40:34.280 Like the whole system was designed for people to be terrible at their jobs.

00:40:37.260 And that's why now it is super irritating when you see, like, this drove me nuts.

00:40:40.760 Did you see that video of Trump at the FEMA headquarters?

00:40:45.440 It's not about, this isn't about Trump.

00:40:46.880 I had the same exact reaction to Bush and the same exact reaction to Obama.

00:40:50.080 And it's like, there's Trump and he's out there with his FEMA hat on.

00:40:54.060 And it's like, what's he going to do?

00:40:56.380 Like, really, what's he going to do?

00:40:57.200 We have an entire department of government that is specifically designed for disaster response.

00:41:00.300 You think that Trump is sitting there with like his little Stratego board, figuring out exactly where all of the resources are deployed, or that Obama was doing that during Hurricane Sandy?

00:41:08.620 That's why it drove me nuts when you had Chris Christie hugging Obama like, wow, you've come here, Mr. President.

00:41:13.600 He's not the dictator of Earth.

00:41:14.680 He's not the king of Earth.

00:41:15.420 He's not the emperor of Earth.

00:41:16.500 He's a schlub with a job, with delegated powers.

00:41:18.900 And the picture of the president as the problem solver in chief who's going to fix all of our problems.

00:41:24.120 It's the reason you get these idiocies like Kamala Harris saying, in our first hundred days, if they don't do what I want to do, I'm going to ban all the guns.

00:41:30.660 And it's like, no, you know what?

00:41:31.340 You're not going to do any of that.

00:41:33.220 Because Kamala Harris is not going to be the president.

00:41:35.720 I want to check in and hear from some of our DailyWire.com subscribers.

00:41:39.200 We've got Elisha beaming in live from the Ben Shapiro show Broom Closet.

00:41:44.840 Elisha, are you with us?

00:41:45.680 I sure am.

00:41:46.760 And don't forget, I know you're so used to saying that, that only subscribers get to ask the questions.

00:41:51.100 But tonight, everyone gets to ask the questions.

00:41:53.960 So head on over to the DailyWire YouTube channel, which you should be subscribing to, by the way.

00:41:58.920 Or be sure to head over to the DailyWire Facebook page, where we are pulling these questions from.

00:42:03.680 By the way, if I don't say somebody's name, it's because their name is, I love Ben Shapiro for President 2020-something-something.

00:42:11.120 There's even some people with that.

00:42:12.200 So it's Ben, right?

00:42:12.500 What are the odds?

00:42:13.380 Yeah.

00:42:14.340 So it's just really difficult.

00:42:16.240 But if you want your name included, be sure to include it in your comment, in your question to the guys.

00:42:19.880 Jessica did such, and she says that she is a closet conservative living in the New York area, so all of her friends are liberal, obviously, because she's in a liberal mecca, and she doesn't want to lose her friends.

00:42:31.260 Do you think it's common to be a closet conservative today?

00:42:35.100 Oh.

00:42:35.660 Yes.

00:42:35.960 Oh, yes.

00:42:36.640 Not only is it common to be a closet conservative, you know, in the most liberal areas.

00:42:41.620 Okay, we all work in Hollywood.

00:42:42.980 How many prominent people in Hollywood have been through this office?

00:42:45.440 Oh, my gosh.

00:42:46.260 A lot.

00:42:47.420 Like, a lot.

00:42:48.800 Okay, and I have said on my show, I will never, ever say the names of the people who have been here because it would ruin their careers, and they would get excoriated by the left.

00:42:56.480 I've met with a lot of prominent people in positions of power who are conservative and who will never, ever say so.

00:43:01.460 Now, Jessica, I do have an issue.

00:43:03.960 You're wrong.

00:43:04.620 You need to get new friends.

00:43:05.320 If your friends can't tolerate the fact that you differ from them on tax rates or on traditional marriage or on the value of an unborn human life, they're not your friends.

00:43:12.680 They're jerks.

00:43:13.420 I mean, the fact is that I have friends who disagree with me on all of those things, and you know what?

00:43:17.240 Fine.

00:43:17.680 That's called America.

00:43:19.040 If your friends can't tolerate the fact that you have a difference of opinion, they're not your friends.

00:43:22.320 They're acquaintances who hang out with you because you have nothing better to do at night.

00:43:25.440 It's so true.

00:43:26.220 And by the way, a lot of people say things on Facebook that they wouldn't say to your face.

00:43:30.560 Yep.

00:43:30.700 And sometimes if you look them in the eye and say, this is what I believe and this is why I believe it, you can get further than you can on Facebook where they wish you dead.

00:43:37.680 But to Jessica's point, I do have a little bit of sympathy because it's not only that many, many prominent conservatives come through our office.

00:43:43.620 I'm sorry, Hollywood actors or filmmakers come through and are conservative.

00:43:49.280 Many come through who are not conservative.

00:43:51.160 Yeah.

00:43:51.640 And they're just open-minded.

00:43:53.060 They want to have an actual discussion.

00:43:54.100 Did you guys see our friend Glenn Beck was in town this week and he took a picture with Jason Blum, the CEO of Blumhouse, the horror film studio?

00:44:03.060 The guy's getting his face melted off.

00:44:05.320 He's being excoriated on social media right now.

00:44:07.720 I don't even think he agrees.

00:44:08.760 I don't think he's conservative at all of Jason Blum.

00:44:10.740 He's just a guy.

00:44:11.640 Did you see what happened to Andy Lassner?

00:44:13.400 Andy Lassner is a producer for Ellen.

00:44:15.220 Really nice dude.

00:44:16.260 And I can say really nice dude because he's given me permission to say really nice dude.

00:44:19.580 And Andy Lassner corresponds with a lot of people online.

00:44:22.300 He had this conversation about gun control and Dana Lash replied to him with a bunch of ideas on what could be done to stop gun violence.

00:44:29.080 And he was like, those are good ideas.

00:44:30.940 And Aaron Rupar, the quote-unquote journalist, right?

00:44:33.740 So much journalism over at Vox.

00:44:35.680 Vox, the repository of all things stupid.

00:44:38.180 And Aaron Rupar tweeted out, you should never have a conversation with a paid show like Dana.

00:44:42.900 Dana Lash.

00:44:43.980 And it's like, he literally just had a human conversation with a human.

00:44:47.420 That's how it works.

00:44:48.120 You saw the Debra Messing and Eric McCormick attack.

00:44:51.440 They're having a fundraiser for Trump in Beverly Hills.

00:44:54.480 And Eric McCormick says, publish to the Hollywood Reporter, publish the names of the people going, so I know who I don't want to work with.

00:45:01.240 And then he said, well, I didn't mean a blacklist.

00:45:03.180 That is a blacklist.

00:45:04.280 I just want you to publish the names so that they don't work anymore.

00:45:06.580 So I developed a project with Eric McCormick once.

00:45:09.240 The one thing I just want to add to this is Debra Messing said, well, I would be proud to say who I support.

00:45:14.520 Yeah, because you would get more awards and more parts, you know.

00:45:17.480 Yeah, there's no consequences for supporting what you're for.

00:45:20.240 I did a project with Eric McCormick once, and he's a generous, likable, intelligent guy.

00:45:26.840 It's just proof politics makes you insane.

00:45:30.200 Yeah.

00:45:30.540 It makes you insane.

00:45:32.280 I guarantee you if we knew Eric McCormick and Debra Messing and all these guys, and we had an honest, heart-to-heart conversation with them, they actually want most of the things that we want.

00:45:42.460 That's right.

00:45:42.940 You know, they want people to be better off tomorrow than they were yesterday.

00:45:46.720 They want to be free broadly.

00:45:48.920 They may not agree with gun freedoms, but they largely want to be left alone.

00:45:51.820 They largely want to do their own thing.

00:45:53.280 They want to be free to raise their children.

00:45:54.700 They want to be free to make their way and make their living.

00:45:58.420 They think they're on the side of the angels.

00:46:00.300 I know.

00:46:00.540 They think that they're on the side of being tolerant.

00:46:02.600 They don't understand that they are the thing that they fear.

00:46:05.600 They are the actual inquisition.

00:46:07.140 I so agree with this.

00:46:07.960 They do not know.

00:46:08.840 They don't see themselves.

00:46:09.520 They don't see themselves truly.

00:46:11.300 They really—

00:46:11.800 They need to make another movie about 1950s McCarthyism, in which McCarthyism is the worst thing that ever happened to humanity, and the communists were never a threat to Hollywood.

00:46:18.100 Well, communism wasn't as bad as lower taxes and deregulation, though.

00:46:21.080 That's right.

00:46:21.300 Exactly.

00:46:21.560 That's scary.

00:46:22.440 There is a portion to this, too, though, where you've got to, at a certain point, have some dignity, which is—I—look, many of my friends are liberal.

00:46:31.180 I don't know if it's most of my friends, but it's a lot of my friends who are liberals.

00:46:34.040 I am perfectly willing to make a lot of jokes about my political views and be perfectly self-effacing and take a bunch of punches, and I'm totally willing to do that, to a point.

00:46:45.220 But I am not going to hide my opinions.

00:46:48.120 Yeah.

00:46:48.320 To my friends.

00:46:49.640 I mean, you know, maybe if you're working in some corporate environment—

00:46:52.140 Yeah, exactly.

00:46:52.320 This is right.

00:46:52.640 Maybe to keep your job.

00:46:53.940 I don't know.

00:46:54.320 There's some argument.

00:46:55.160 To your friends.

00:46:56.120 You're not going to say who you are.

00:46:57.680 There are no friends at all, and they obviously don't respect you, or maybe they don't even know what you really believe.

00:47:03.500 You've got to have a little bit of dignity.

00:47:05.920 And look, we all know, all the secret conservatives all around Hollywood, there's a lot of them.

00:47:10.720 I know a lot of them in New York, too.

00:47:12.900 There are many people who have come up to me in New York.

00:47:15.480 They'll say, Michael, I really love the show, but I can't be seen talking to you.

00:47:19.040 That actually happened to me once in an event.

00:47:20.440 There are more registered Republicans in L.A. County than in any other county in America.

00:47:24.080 Is that true?

00:47:24.960 When Michael Knowles is telling you to have more dignity, I think you need to have more dignity.

00:47:29.260 That's the end of the discussion.

00:47:30.620 And it's 100% true.

00:47:32.420 Anytime someone comes up to me and says, I lost a friend when they found out about my politics, I always say, no, you didn't.

00:47:37.420 Yeah, that's right.

00:47:38.340 Alicia, what else do you have for us?

00:47:39.720 Somebody wants to know, is it actually possible that we could lose the Electoral College?

00:47:45.400 Yeah, of course.

00:47:46.420 Well, in which way?

00:47:47.920 You do mean, is it possible that Donald Trump could not carry the Electoral College?

00:47:51.440 No, I think they mean, like, will Democrats win by abolishing the Electoral College?

00:47:55.200 Yeah, 100%.

00:47:56.100 Do we know the running tally on states that have passed these anti-Electoral College bills?

00:48:02.720 It ain't that high.

00:48:03.900 I think it's harder to get rid of the Electoral College than it would be to stack the Supreme Court.

00:48:07.240 I think they can stack the Supreme Court a lot easier than they can get rid of the Electoral College.

00:48:09.860 I think that at least 10 states have passed these bills where they say, our electoral votes will go to the popular vote winner in the national election.

00:48:18.940 But they're no swing states.

00:48:19.700 None of them are swing states.

00:48:21.520 They're all, like, heavy blue states.

00:48:23.080 It's like Massachusetts.

00:48:23.920 It is a question whether that becomes, you know, that can be, is that constitutional?

00:48:27.740 Can they get away with that?

00:48:28.620 Yeah, you can do that, sure.

00:48:29.620 The states get to select their electors.

00:48:31.300 So, yes, they can.

00:48:32.300 But none of that makes, I mean, you require a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College.

00:48:36.520 That's why it's harder, so much harder than that.

00:48:38.140 And honestly, it's always amusing to me when the left's like, well, that's not representative, the Electoral College.

00:48:42.360 Like, why don't you take a look at this thing we have?

00:48:43.800 It's called the United States Senate, where a place called Montana with three people, like, they have fewer people in Montana than they have in this room.

00:48:51.440 Right, this is right.

00:48:52.320 Montana has more senators than they have congresspeople because the population of Montana is so low.

00:48:58.120 It is harder to be a congressperson in Montana than it is to be a senator in Montana.

00:49:01.500 You know, which is hysterical.

00:49:03.180 And they have the same number of votes in the Senate, which is a pretty powerful body, that the state of California does, which has 50 million people.

00:49:09.860 And you never hear the left being like, you know, the U.S. Senate, we should abolish the U.S. Senate.

00:49:13.560 Because they realize how ridiculous that would be.

00:49:15.760 I don't want to get rid of the Electoral College.

00:49:17.960 I actually want to get rid of the popular vote for president.

00:49:20.700 I don't think that we should have popular votes in the states to elect our senators.

00:49:23.820 Wait, wait, wait.

00:49:24.500 What's the replacement for that?

00:49:25.580 It's an abomination that the states, the states, state governments should choose the electors that go to the Electoral College.

00:49:33.100 I don't think that it should be a popular vote for president.

00:49:34.360 People shouldn't vote for president?

00:49:35.440 No, I don't think so.

00:49:36.180 He's saying that people should vote for their state legislatures and the state legislatures vote for the electors.

00:49:39.800 See, I think we should have, I think we should go back to when senators were appointed.

00:49:43.760 I like that.

00:49:44.400 Certainly, yeah.

00:49:45.000 We should abolish the 17th Amendment.

00:49:46.400 Abolish the 17th Amendment.

00:49:47.340 That is a disaster.

00:49:48.100 But what the 17th Amendment does and what the popular vote for president does is it erodes the concept of the state as a sovereign entity.

00:49:56.080 Right.

00:49:56.300 Which really destroys federalism.

00:49:57.760 And once you get there, the entire American experiment is basically over.

00:50:01.460 What's so funny about the Electoral College is it's actually mediating between giving the states power in the Senate, as it was originally constructed,

00:50:08.700 and giving the people power through the House of Representatives.

00:50:11.020 Because, as it was initially apportioned, you have the representatives in the House, plus the two senators.

00:50:16.460 There you have your electors.

00:50:18.560 Of course, that is all lost on the left.

00:50:21.480 My greater fear is the Chris Hayes fear, which is the line he said the other day.

00:50:25.620 Yeah, that was great.

00:50:25.920 If the Electoral College weren't explicitly articulated in the Constitution, it would be unconstitutional.

00:50:31.820 You'd say, well, of course, that's true.

00:50:33.040 I fear these ridiculous arguments and leftist jurisprudence doing more harm to the Electoral College.

00:50:37.560 The leftist jurisprudence is really dangerous because the judiciary made it.

00:50:42.760 The Supreme Court ruled back in the 70s, I believe, the one-man-one-vote rule.

00:50:46.740 And it abolished all sorts of state regulations about how exactly people would be elected and gerrymandering and all the rest of this.

00:50:53.260 And the dissent pointed out, you know, we have some problems with the one-man-one-vote rule in the United States Senate, right,

00:50:59.920 where certain votes count more than other votes, obviously.

00:51:02.500 And it's so funny.

00:51:04.560 Suddenly the left, which has now become purely majoritarian, right, suddenly the left is purely majoritarian after years of arguing correctly

00:51:10.340 that minority rights were actually in danger because of pure majoritarianism.

00:51:14.400 The pure majoritarianism is explicitly directed at a minority, right, the minority of voters.

00:51:19.260 And the people who have largely been damaged throughout the course of American history were minorities in states where they did not hold the majority, right,

00:51:25.460 namely black people in the Jim Crow South.

00:51:27.320 Suddenly the left is like, well, I want a pure majoritarian system right now.

00:51:31.040 Well, they're only going to want that until they lose, right?

00:51:34.020 I mean, this is obviously a moment of convenience.

00:51:36.720 By the way, they only want it around issues of Democrat and Republican.

00:51:40.580 If you get into other demographic considerations, they will panic at the idea of majoritarian rule.

00:51:45.120 By the way, it's 15 states.

00:51:46.640 15 states have already passed laws.

00:51:48.180 You know, this is what makes the Federalist Papers kind of tragic reading at this point because they are always arguing in the Federalist Papers

00:51:56.080 that the central government will not take over, will not take away the powers of the states.

00:52:01.240 And they explain why very carefully, but they just didn't imagine television.

00:52:05.320 They didn't imagine a communication network that would make us all feel that we and Arkansas are somehow one country.

00:52:12.400 But I don't think that's right.

00:52:13.200 I mean, I think, obviously, the erosion of state authority and the growth of the federal government,

00:52:18.640 some people attribute it to the Civil War, but it really isn't even about that.

00:52:20.860 It really grew in the aftermath of the Progressive Union and then through FDR.

00:52:24.840 Wickard v. Philburn happens in 1942, right?

00:52:27.040 It did, but communication and travel actually changed the concept of where you are.

00:52:31.720 And I think this happened when nationalism was created, got so powerful after the railroads came in

00:52:37.500 and the telegraph and all this that made you feel like you were a nation.

00:52:40.300 Russell Kirk, the great conservative writer, he called the automobile the mobile Jacobin.

00:52:45.480 He said it was the most radical thing in the world.

00:52:47.660 Yeah, and I think television has had this major, major effect.

00:52:50.920 Communications, let's call it electronic communications, where now suddenly we're sitting around talking

00:52:56.000 about the crisis of shootings in America.

00:52:59.000 But are there that many shootings in Ohio?

00:53:01.840 Are there that many shootings in Arkansas?

00:53:03.800 Are we conceiving of ourselves too much as this gigantic country and not enough in the states?

00:53:09.300 I think we are.

00:53:09.860 And I don't think the Federalists saw that coming.

00:53:12.360 Well, I mean, I think that the Federalists does talk about the capacity.

00:53:17.140 They think that over time people will start to identify more as Americans and less as state citizens.

00:53:20.920 I mean, that is something they talk about in the Federalist papers.

00:53:24.600 But with that said, what's really happened, and this is the great divide between rural and urban,

00:53:29.100 is that urban people, and that is certainly not meant to mean black people.

00:53:33.800 I mean, literally, people who live in urban areas.

00:53:36.020 Right.

00:53:36.360 Right.

00:53:36.600 People who live in urban areas see each other as citizens of the Republic,

00:53:41.420 and people who are living in rural areas see themselves as citizens of their local communities.

00:53:46.260 Right.

00:53:46.620 Which makes perfect sense, because if you're living in an urban area,

00:53:50.120 life in Austin is much more like life in L.A.

00:53:52.080 than life in Austin is like life in Slayton.

00:53:54.420 And you know more people in Slayton.

00:53:56.360 Also covered in communications.

00:53:57.520 And you know more people if you're in Slayton.

00:53:59.400 You know your neighbors a lot better than I do in my own apartment building in Los Angeles.

00:54:03.660 No question.

00:54:04.140 Elisha.

00:54:05.340 I'm just glad that you guys didn't want to abolish the 19th Amendment,

00:54:08.180 because I've heard that's all Republican men want to do.

00:54:10.400 Well, we haven't gotten to that question yet, Elisha, so we'll see if it comes up.

00:54:13.400 Just the 17th.

00:54:14.100 I'm okay with that.

00:54:14.900 Republican men passed the 19th Amendment.

00:54:17.540 What are you talking about?

00:54:18.620 Those idiots.

00:54:19.480 Those fools.

00:54:21.780 Not according to Deborah Messing.

00:54:23.640 Gosh, Jeremy.

00:54:24.840 That's a joke by Andrew Klavan, by the way.

00:54:26.220 For Media Matters.

00:54:26.860 He doesn't actually want to abolish the female vote.

00:54:29.340 That's Media Matters explainer from this evening.

00:54:31.480 All right.

00:54:32.300 Zach is a Daily Wire subscriber.

00:54:34.340 I hope you love your leftist-tears tumbler, Zach.

00:54:36.540 And he wants to let y'all know that he's a conservative living in Boston, Massachusetts.

00:54:40.480 What are your opinions on the straight pride parade, the Antifa protests,

00:54:44.580 and the media demonization of all those involved?

00:54:47.640 I think it's great.

00:54:48.460 I think the pride parade is hilarious.

00:54:50.460 I think it's so good.

00:54:51.480 One, it's not a straight pride parade.

00:54:52.980 It was a pro-Trump, pro-America parade.

00:54:55.740 One of the main photos from the parade is of a transgender woman,

00:54:59.500 that is a man who identifies as a woman wearing a dress,

00:55:02.460 holding a big trans flag that had Trump 2020 on it.

00:55:05.200 It was obviously just trolling the left and trolling the whole idea of pride parades,

00:55:10.900 which is a terrible idea because pride is the deadliest of the seven deadly sins,

00:55:15.820 and we shouldn't celebrate pride.

00:55:17.560 I think it was great.

00:55:18.320 There were 200 marchers.

00:55:19.820 They were, by all accounts, very well behaved.

00:55:21.700 There were thousands of protesters, some of whom were Antifa protesters who were attacking police officers.

00:55:28.260 I think what it really comes down to is using humor to mock a very corrupt, corrosive ideology,

00:55:35.560 which is this leftist embrace of pride.

00:55:38.140 And I think it's great to use humor to do it.

00:55:39.240 I actually think that's fair because, really, when you look at what the left is selling is they're selling racism.

00:55:44.600 They're selling racism, and they think, but ours is good racism because we're the racists for the people who had racism used against them.

00:55:50.880 But, of course, it's all racism.

00:55:52.560 Racism is racism.

00:55:53.320 And I hate it.

00:55:55.040 When I watch the New York Times selling this 1619 project where everything in America comes out of slavery,

00:56:01.220 that's the kind of logic, seriously, that some toothless Klansman in the back room of a pool hall would come up with.

00:56:07.600 It's that level of stupidity, that level of simplicity.

00:56:11.060 And the only way to get it back is to mock them, is to point out the contradiction in terms.

00:56:16.680 I don't believe in straight pride.

00:56:18.100 I don't believe in gay pride.

00:56:18.920 I believe in people having rights and being individuals.

00:56:21.240 I don't really like pride.

00:56:22.160 Yeah, exactly.

00:56:22.920 I believe in people having rights and being free individuals and doing basically what they want to do if they don't destroy the polity.

00:56:28.960 And I think that you're absolutely right as long as we keep our sense of humor about it

00:56:33.460 and as long as we don't actually subscribe to this nonsense.

00:56:36.820 Which is ridiculous.

00:56:37.260 Because it is nonsense.

00:56:38.000 I mean, frankly, I didn't completely under...

00:56:40.220 I feel like I'm missing something.

00:56:41.680 The massive amount of blowback to the straight pride parade, I find confusing

00:56:45.480 because I don't feel like the straight pride parade was really fighting anything.

00:56:49.580 Like, what exactly is it fighting other than the media attention to the gay pride movement?

00:56:54.700 Yep.

00:56:55.160 And that's just kind of trollery.

00:56:56.660 So why is, like, was anybody afraid that the straight pride marchers were going to march down to City Hall

00:57:00.380 and just start ripping up marital documents?

00:57:02.680 Like, what exactly were they so pissed about?

00:57:05.840 I mean, they're not Klansmen.

00:57:06.880 They are not...

00:57:07.380 No, Noles is right, though.

00:57:08.400 It's a joke.

00:57:08.720 Of course it's a joke.

00:57:10.120 And it worked, obviously.

00:57:11.220 I also disagree with the question suggested that the media is making everyone involved look foolish.

00:57:18.380 I don't think that's true.

00:57:19.560 The media is making everybody involved on one side look foolish.

00:57:23.000 They deny the existence of Antifa, essentially.

00:57:26.200 Antifa is a bunch of disparate groups.

00:57:28.180 That's just a label that was created by the right...

00:57:30.320 And they're anti-fascists.

00:57:31.020 By the way, 36 of them were arrested for attacking people and attacking cops.

00:57:34.760 And as perfect trolls do, immediately this got the future of the Democratic Party, according to the DNC chairman.

00:57:42.780 AOC and Diana Presley raising money to spring these thugs, these criminals, out of jail.

00:57:49.820 These people who attack innocent civilians and who attack cops.

00:57:53.180 Within one day, they were begging to raise money.

00:57:55.800 That shows you a big divide in the country.

00:57:57.380 Although the judge was great.

00:57:58.400 The judge said, I told you not to come and, you know, we're going to send you away for 90 days.

00:58:02.160 You shouldn't have been here.

00:58:02.860 I thought he was on top of it.

00:58:04.700 That's terrific.

00:58:05.240 Alicia?

00:58:05.960 How dare Michael Knowles use that descriptive and racist word to describe Antifa?

00:58:10.640 Did you know they are not allowed to use that word thug?

00:58:13.780 Right, right.

00:58:14.540 It's wrong.

00:58:15.380 Gosh, Michael.

00:58:16.380 I know.

00:58:16.960 Get the memo.

00:58:17.500 I know.

00:58:18.000 I'm terrible.

00:58:18.660 Here comes a question from somebody watching on Facebook.

00:58:20.840 They want to know, what do you think young conservatives should or could do in order to help fix the huge divide between the right and the left in America today?

00:58:27.900 See, here's where I think that speaking out in a polite way to your friends is important and something everyone can do.

00:58:36.320 I think that the problem with hiding is the time for hiding has actually passed.

00:58:40.440 And I agree that we all have to protect our jobs and I don't want people to get arrested.

00:58:44.640 I don't want people to lose their work and their way of making a living.

00:58:47.840 But if you keep your mouth shut and if you don't say, you know, this is why I think what I think, you never move anybody.

00:58:55.700 You never move anybody.

00:58:57.140 And if you're constantly hiding away and if you're constantly afraid, that's what they're trying to do.

00:59:01.220 They're trying to make you afraid.

00:59:03.000 They're trying to make you silent.

00:59:04.680 And I think that the individual, you know, people ask this all the time because they don't have your microphone.

00:59:09.880 They don't have our platform that we use to speak out.

00:59:13.360 But if you don't say, speak for yourself as an individual, then how are individual rights going to survive?

00:59:19.280 If you don't say to your professor, you know, it's not fair what you're doing because this is why I believe what I believe.

00:59:24.560 If you don't stand up in class, if you don't stand up for what you believe, I don't understand how we win.

00:59:29.240 We lose in silence.

00:59:30.840 You know, when the Washington Post says democracy dies in darkness, which I think should be democracy, dies in sanctimonious self-congratulation.

00:59:37.600 But I think that there is a point to that.

00:59:41.340 It dies in silence.

00:59:42.440 It dies in the silence of individuals too afraid to speak up.

00:59:45.920 And I know they make it tough and I know they put a price on it.

00:59:48.520 I'm not saying it's easy.

00:59:49.880 But I think you have to speak at least politely and say, I'm on the other side.

00:59:54.040 I think there are a couple of other tips.

00:59:55.620 I mean, obviously, I agree with all of that.

00:59:58.020 But I think there are a couple of other things.

00:59:59.660 One is that trollery is fun, but it's not actually the way to convince people.

01:00:05.760 Meaning that, sorry, Knowles.

01:00:08.880 He just ruined his whole career.

01:00:10.120 Yeah, exactly.

01:00:11.060 But the fact is, trollery is important because it gives some people the capacity to speak up in ways that they wouldn't have otherwise.

01:00:18.400 It makes them feel emboldened, like, okay, this guy's doing a funny thing and I can do a funny thing too.

01:00:23.300 And some of that's good.

01:00:24.480 Some of that's good.

01:00:25.160 But trolling is inherently dehumanizing to the people who you're very often trying to talk to.

01:00:31.000 And you don't actually end up drawing people.

01:00:32.840 Sincerity, I actually think, is the left's main draw.

01:00:35.020 They're sincere in their wrong beliefs.

01:00:36.740 And that sincerity is very convincing to a lot of people, even if it's faux sincerity.

01:00:40.000 It's all about how much they care.

01:00:41.340 It's all about how sincere they are in their beliefs.

01:00:43.240 And you'll even hear people on the left admit this, right?

01:00:45.380 They'll say things like, I may not, I mean, AOC said this, right?

01:00:47.960 I basically don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm morally correct, right?

01:00:50.460 Her sincerity is the selling point.

01:00:52.380 Jim Biden actually said that too.

01:00:53.400 Right, Biden said that too.

01:00:55.020 So I think that trollery is the preferred methodology of people online.

01:01:00.420 But in real life, it's actually extraordinarily off-putting when you're trying to convince people.

01:01:04.340 And I think that's important.

01:01:05.620 The second thing is that simultaneously, you cannot go into battles negative.

01:01:11.400 You do want to be upbeat.

01:01:13.600 It's unattractive to be negative all the time.

01:01:15.340 It's the reason why the left, I really believe there is going to be a backlash against the left because they're so damned annoying.

01:01:20.540 I mean, they're intensely humorless and annoying.

01:01:23.440 Like, if the future looks like Hannah Gadsby, kiss your future goodbye, gang.

01:01:27.100 I mean, no one is going to vote for Hannah Gadsby.

01:01:28.920 That's not a thing.

01:01:29.520 You know, trying to redefine humor to say that, well, you know, when you weren't laughing and you felt like actually taking a drill bit and putting it directly between your eyebrows and just...

01:01:37.980 That was the funny part.

01:01:39.060 Right.

01:01:39.680 And when you felt like that, that's what humor feels like.

01:01:44.160 What humor feels like is that feeling of a drill bit going directly into your prefrontal cortex, which is a Hannah Gadsby special.

01:01:50.180 When we're going to redefine humor to do all of that, it's annoying to everybody.

01:01:53.840 The woke-schooled left is alienating an enormous number of young people.

01:01:57.580 It's why you get people...

01:01:58.640 This is amusing to me.

01:01:59.700 This I do love.

01:02:00.580 Is you get people like Kara Swisher over at Recode, who's a wild leftist.

01:02:04.320 And she's saying to Susan Wojcicki, the head of YouTube, she's like, I think I've lost my son.

01:02:08.560 He's watching Ben Shapiro videos.

01:02:10.200 Well, lady, did it ever occur to you maybe the reason that your son is watching my videos?

01:02:13.400 Is that more amusing than you?

01:02:14.740 It's because you're so irritating all the time.

01:02:17.700 I don't mean to rip on your mom, dude.

01:02:19.200 But she's very irritating in the way that she approaches these issues.

01:02:22.980 Because the original suggestion is, if you disagree with me, you're a moron.

01:02:25.800 We can't have a conversation in all of this.

01:02:27.600 So conservatives have a tendency, because the culture is against us, because Hollywood is against us, and the universities are against us, and the media are against us.

01:02:34.700 It's very easy to fall into this feeling of, I'm beaten down by the world, that anger is our best solution out.

01:02:41.120 That if I just channel my anger, then my anger will free us all.

01:02:44.520 My righteous rage will free us all.

01:02:47.080 The truth is that if you actually want to win, it is, yes, battling.

01:02:51.660 But battling with happiness and demonstrating that you're happy in your life, because unhappiness is unattractive.

01:02:55.640 We actually do have to coexist.

01:02:57.140 I mean, I hate to use that word.

01:02:58.060 You're right, Jeremy.

01:02:59.580 Eric McCormick and Deborah Messing aren't going to move to the USSR, no matter how many tweets you give them saying that they should.

01:03:06.540 Those guys are our neighbors.

01:03:08.080 Those guys are our fellow citizens.

01:03:09.460 Those guys are our, we've got to find some way to win the policy arguments, win the political arguments.

01:03:16.380 But aren't we sort of saying the same thing?

01:03:18.380 It seems to me the thing we're all identifying with the left that's so annoying and so off-putting to the public is that they're so damned self-serious all the time.

01:03:27.400 And they're constantly scolding us.

01:03:28.760 And it seems to me the reason that that kid likes your show and the reason that Donald Trump got elected president is because conservatives can take themselves lightly every so often.

01:03:39.280 Not to say we take the world lightly, but we can take ourselves a little bit lightly.

01:03:43.500 Chesterton had that line.

01:03:44.480 He said, the angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.

01:03:47.040 I think the more we bog ourselves down, when I think of the anger and the fury and all this stuff, I think of the left.

01:03:54.160 I don't really think of the right.

01:03:55.800 I want to give one really specific piece of advice, though, because we've talked in pretty general terms.

01:04:01.140 The question was, what can young people, what can millennials do to help win the debate between left and right?

01:04:08.760 And the answer is, get married and have children as soon as possible.

01:04:16.340 That is the honest-to-goodness answer.

01:04:18.100 You are, if you're listening and asking this question, you are the caretaker of a set of values that until now in this country we have taken for granted that those values will automatically be pushed forward.

01:04:30.540 They will only be pushed forward if you push them forward, and there will only be someone to push them forward to if you create that someone to push them forward to.

01:04:40.240 You can't—the political fight is ultimately a cultural fight.

01:04:44.360 The cultural fight is ultimately a fight for the soul of every individual to actually put legs to their values.

01:04:52.740 I've told this story before.

01:04:54.720 I was a huge proponent for free markets.

01:04:57.040 I was a huge proponent for human freedom.

01:04:59.100 I was a huge proponent of human accomplishment.

01:05:01.940 I pride myself a little bit on—for most of my friends, I was like a little bit of—even when they would disagree with me, maybe I was still the guru of these ideas in our friend community.

01:05:11.860 I was at least the guy you would argue with, you know.

01:05:15.800 I didn't make any money.

01:05:17.860 I didn't make any money for 15 years of being a proponent for these things because I wouldn't apply them to myself.

01:05:24.080 I'm a huge proponent for people having children.

01:05:26.060 I don't have any children.

01:05:26.860 I'm a huge proponent for people getting married young.

01:05:29.460 I got married at 30 because I didn't apply any of my values to myself.

01:05:33.560 I thought that they—I thought that it was a battle of ideas, and it isn't.

01:05:36.680 It's a battle for your life.

01:05:38.420 And I don't mean you're fighting for your life.

01:05:40.080 I mean you're fighting to live your life.

01:05:42.900 It's only worth something if you do live it.

01:05:45.040 If you read the books, if you do the thing—

01:05:46.700 I cannot tell you how much I agree with this because I think that it is an amazing thing.

01:05:51.300 The left is selling something kind of easy.

01:05:53.380 Don't have kids because, you know, it's a terrible world.

01:05:56.240 You shouldn't—

01:05:56.600 Yeah.

01:05:57.000 You don't have to get married.

01:05:58.680 Whatever your sexuality is, that's your identity, which is nonsense to begin with.

01:06:03.500 To live the life that you say you're supposed to live is everything.

01:06:07.960 And by the way, I also think it's the definition of manhood.

01:06:10.760 To live the life that you say you want to live is the definition of manhood.

01:06:13.960 You know, I was—I'm reading these wonderful books that I wish you would read.

01:06:16.840 I think you would love them.

01:06:18.420 Anthony Trollope was the great—was the conservative Dickens.

01:06:21.880 And he wrote these two books that are the best books I've ever read about politics,

01:06:25.220 aside from The Power Broker, which one is called Phineas Finn,

01:06:28.020 and the other is called Phineas Redux, which is about this politician in parliament.

01:06:32.080 And at one point he asked, what's manhood?

01:06:34.420 And he said, manhood is being who you seem to be.

01:06:37.120 He's being who you appear to be.

01:06:39.440 He said, a woman can be fake without compromising her womanhood.

01:06:43.820 It may not be right for her to do it, but it won't compromise her womanhood

01:06:46.620 because there's a little bit of show to womanhood, not to manhood.

01:06:49.520 To be a man, you really have to live the life you say you're going to live.

01:06:52.960 And I can't tell you how much of the stuff in the mailbag is guys who have the right ideas,

01:06:57.720 but they're not living out that life.

01:06:59.680 And you know what?

01:07:00.440 If you didn't live it yesterday, live it today.

01:07:02.840 You know?

01:07:03.120 You only have today.

01:07:04.360 You cannot make up for the past.

01:07:06.040 Live it today.

01:07:06.540 Start living it now.

01:07:07.460 And I just think it's everything.

01:07:08.620 And your life isn't about the things that you're...

01:07:11.260 It isn't about the people outside of you who you think mean you harm.

01:07:14.560 That's right.

01:07:15.100 Like your life isn't about owning the libs, and your life isn't about getting Donald Trump re-elected president.

01:07:22.000 Your life isn't about making the best meme on the internet.

01:07:25.460 Those are things that you think, and those are things that your life is about yourself, your community, your family, the work that you do.

01:07:36.700 You know, God isn't served by human hands as though he needed anything.

01:07:39.300 And yet the same guy who said that one city later says he's God's servant.

01:07:43.420 There's no contradiction because what he's saying is God doesn't need us.

01:07:47.380 We are nevertheless his instruments.

01:07:50.220 We're not contributing to him as though he were in need, but he does use us to accomplish things on earth.

01:07:55.700 And if you're fighting against that mission, who cares if Donald Trump gets four more years?

01:07:59.980 And I really do think this is a fundamental distinction between right and left, is that when we talk about ideas and living out your ideas, the dominant position of the left is that you never have to live out your ideas.

01:08:10.160 You can say all of these wonderful things about all the things you're going to do for other people, but all it really requires is for me to say that I want to do them, and now I'm a good person.

01:08:16.800 It's all virtue signaling or taking money out of somebody else's pocket.

01:08:19.820 I can talk about the value of helping the poor, but what I really mean by that is that I'm going to use the government to point a gun at a bunch of people who aren't me.

01:08:25.280 And force them to help the poor, or I'm going to take their money.

01:08:28.280 The fact is that the best proof of what, I mean, we all agree on this, but the best proof of what everybody in the room is saying is that when you die, the ideas are basically going to be gone, but all of the stuff that you did is not going to be gone, particularly if you had kids.

01:08:42.440 If you built up an institution, if you had children, if you have a community and a family, when you die, no one's going to realize what your intentions were, because it's going to be gone, everybody's going to forget about that.

01:08:52.320 The only thing that's going to matter is the works that continue on through a ripple effect into the world.

01:08:57.280 You know what's funny is it works the other way, too, is that the left is constantly talking about, oh, everybody should do everything sexual they want to do.

01:09:03.840 But they live, so many of the leftists I know live these conservative lives.

01:09:08.140 And what was that wonderful line in Charles, what's his name?

01:09:11.680 Charles Murray.

01:09:12.140 Yeah, where he says they don't preach what they practice.

01:09:14.560 And I think it does work the other way, that a lot of them are living lives that we would admire and then saying things that we think are completely ridiculous.

01:09:20.960 By the way, one reason we should have a flat tax that I'd never thought about, I mean, I've always wanted us to have a flat tax because it's the only moral, if any tax is moral, the only moral version of it is that we all pay the same as a percentage, right?

01:09:32.480 If you pay...

01:09:33.280 Percentages mean that I still pay more if I make more money.

01:09:35.820 That's right.

01:09:36.200 In fact, I pay my fair share, which is the share of what I...

01:09:42.560 But the other reason to have a flat tax is because if you have a flat tax, then every time that the left tries to self-congratulate them, to congratulate themselves on the basis of the things that they believe, it would be their money that they're spending.

01:09:55.960 So people on the left will actually say, I don't need to give charity.

01:10:00.360 I'm for the government taking care of people.

01:10:02.020 So there was a New York Times article, and it was specifically about the differentials in charitable giving.

01:10:06.200 Between red states and blue states.

01:10:07.560 And of course, red states give enormously more charity than blue states.

01:10:10.380 And religious believers in America give enormously more charity than non-religious believers.

01:10:13.980 There's this one telling line.

01:10:15.360 And it said, well, that's true, but if you take into account local tax rates, then the left gives a lot of money.

01:10:22.040 And it's like, yes, but the people they're taxing are also the same red county Republicans, right?

01:10:28.000 A lot of those people are paying twice, right?

01:10:29.460 Like, I give a lot of charity and I pay enormous amounts of taxes in the state of California.

01:10:33.520 And if you think, well, in order to fight carbon change, we need a carbon tax, and I'm going to have to pay part of that carbon tax out of my own pocket,

01:10:44.120 instead of just the evil Koch brothers having to pay for the whole thing, suddenly now you have to think, do I give a shit about carbon tax?

01:10:50.220 Yeah, yeah.

01:10:50.740 I don't care that much about these hurricanes.

01:10:52.260 I had a funny experience over the weekend.

01:10:55.180 My wife and I went to see this movie called Don't Let Go.

01:10:57.740 It's a little police movie, but it has a thing.

01:11:00.400 Did they let go?

01:11:01.680 No, they don't.

01:11:02.640 But it's funny because it has a time travel thing, and I always joke about time travel is you can't make it make sense because you can't travel in time.

01:11:10.200 And they solved the problem by God because with God all things are possible.

01:11:13.440 I thought, well, that was actually a good plot point, a good way to introduce faith.

01:11:16.660 Next day, Sunday, that's Saturday night, Sunday morning I'm in church, and I look over, classic Hollywood experience,

01:11:21.980 and that looks just like the guy who starred in that movie.

01:11:24.140 It's the guy who starred in that movie praying, and I thought, well, that's how he solved the problem.

01:11:28.960 Alicia, we're going to do a rapid fire round.

01:11:31.260 Let's go through 10 questions, highly targeted.

01:11:33.620 We're going to do our absolute best for just the person to whom the question is addressed.

01:11:37.880 Okay.

01:11:38.280 We'll answer the question.

01:11:39.460 We will not succeed, but we're going to do our level best.

01:11:42.620 All right, this one is for Michael, and he was talking about the squad earlier.

01:11:46.020 This listener or viewer wants to know, why isn't there a Democratic presidential candidate

01:11:50.320 who's combating the squad and making it known to America's voters that the moderates in the Democratic Party

01:11:56.340 won't stand for the Democratic Party being hijacked?

01:11:58.980 Because that candidate would lose.

01:12:00.480 There's that poll out from IBD, TIPP Today, shows really good news for Democrats.

01:12:05.400 Joe Biden is up 12 points on Donald Trump.

01:12:07.880 See, the election's over.

01:12:09.140 Bad news is Liz Warren is surging.

01:12:11.120 She's up seven points in just the month of August.

01:12:13.040 She's within three points, right within striking distance of Joe Biden.

01:12:17.000 Bad news for poor Joe because the Democratic Party does not want that moderate candidate.

01:12:21.660 They are moving to the left.

01:12:22.940 If they would moderate, the election very, very likely could be theirs, but they just don't want it.

01:12:28.440 And so the candidates who are a little squishy, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden for that matter,

01:12:33.760 who's now running as fast to the left as he can, realize there is no future in that for them.

01:12:38.360 And so they're moving to the left.

01:12:39.220 I understand that it's supposed to be one thing, but I just have to say one quick thing about Elizabeth

01:12:41.860 Warren. Elizabeth Warren is the proof positive of this.

01:12:44.540 Elizabeth Warren in 2003 wrote a book called The Two-Income Trap.

01:12:46.820 Yes, I read your piece about this.

01:12:48.020 It was excellent.

01:12:48.480 Okay, The Two-Income Trap is a really interesting book.

01:12:50.580 It's actually a really interesting book on a variety of levels.

01:12:52.480 So basically her premise is that two income families actually have it harder when it comes

01:12:57.460 to bankruptcy than one income families.

01:12:59.060 Why?

01:12:59.560 Because let's say I'm working and my wife is not, and then I get laid off.

01:13:02.380 Well, we've been spending to keep up with my income level, but I get laid off.

01:13:05.780 Now there are two possible workers in the household who can make up that income.

01:13:08.800 If my wife and I are both working and then I lose my job, well, there's only one possible

01:13:12.600 worker who can make up that income, and that's me.

01:13:14.420 So we actually drop further into the hole than we would if my wife, who isn't working, suddenly

01:13:18.180 entered the workforce, and now we've doubled our chances of getting a job.

01:13:20.700 So what she comes up with is she says, well, you know, the reason that so many of these

01:13:25.100 families are going bankrupt is because they're all moving out to the suburbs because education

01:13:28.980 in cities sucks.

01:13:30.280 So they're moving out to the suburbs.

01:13:31.460 And so here's a couple of things we need to do.

01:13:32.940 We need school choice.

01:13:34.020 It was Elizabeth Warren in 2003.

01:13:35.260 And she sounds like Betsy DeVos, right?

01:13:37.300 She's saying, we need school choice.

01:13:38.900 And then she says, you know what we really don't need?

01:13:40.880 We don't need college tuition subsidized by the state.

01:13:43.900 So we shouldn't have any sort of loan forgiveness, and we shouldn't have additional taxpayer money

01:13:48.160 spent on colleges.

01:13:49.340 We shouldn't have any of that.

01:13:50.080 We should cap tuition.

01:13:51.440 I mean, we should cap the amount of money that can be charged by public universities,

01:13:54.960 and then it would force them to cut out a lot of the crap that they're spending money

01:13:57.560 on, and they would have to compete, right?

01:13:59.680 And then she says, we're not looking for socialist redistribution.

01:14:02.980 We're not looking for regulatory restructuring.

01:14:05.340 We're not looking to be radical.

01:14:06.940 She writes this whole book, and it's really interesting.

01:14:09.000 There's a bunch of stuff in there also about how credit card companies suck, and that stuff

01:14:12.080 is all overwrought.

01:14:13.180 But it's actually somebody you'd want to have a conversation with.

01:14:16.760 Elizabeth Warren in 2007, 2008, becomes a darling of the left because she's going to

01:14:20.540 create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

01:14:22.860 And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is this supposed watchdog that's going to protect

01:14:26.520 you as the consumer.

01:14:27.640 It doesn't really do that.

01:14:28.560 It's basically a democratic dictatorship that's going to dictate to, independent of the president,

01:14:32.980 that is going to dictate to companies how they ought to operate.

01:14:35.420 She thinks she's going to be the next head.

01:14:36.940 The Republicans stop her from being the next head.

01:14:39.180 She goes and runs for Senate.

01:14:40.380 She wins, and now she's running for president.

01:14:42.100 And she has completely abandoned everything that ever made her mildly interesting.

01:14:45.620 Elizabeth Warren circa 2019.

01:14:47.140 We look at Elizabeth Warren circa 2003, and she would think, you cuck, right?

01:14:51.400 How could you possibly think all these things?

01:14:53.720 Anything that possibly could make Elizabeth Warren interesting, and a possible victor in a general

01:14:58.680 election, she has abdicated specifically so she can run harder to the left and maybe win

01:15:02.880 the primaries in the Democratic Party.

01:15:04.500 Nine.

01:15:05.200 All right.

01:15:05.640 This question goes to the God King himself.

01:15:07.440 What would you suggest others do to create a truly impartial and unbiased news organization?

01:15:13.120 What would I do to ensure a truly impartial and unbiased news organization?

01:15:17.940 I wouldn't.

01:15:18.520 I don't believe that that has ever existed, and I don't believe that it's to be desired.

01:15:23.700 I believe that there was a consensus after the Second World War where America came together

01:15:28.400 as America.

01:15:29.440 America celebrated itself as America.

01:15:31.780 The space race in the early Cold War, I think, solidified that notion for a generation that

01:15:36.860 America was this monolith, that we were all in it together, and it created this moment in

01:15:40.900 time where it seemed like everyone was pulling in the same direction.

01:15:44.860 And in only that window did the idea of objective journalism the way that we've come to understand

01:15:51.680 it exist.

01:15:52.240 Up until that time, you had the actual newspaper wars that dominated this country for the first

01:15:57.900 whatever that is, for the first almost 200 years of the history of the nation.

01:16:02.500 This is why newspapers have names like the Tennessee Democrat, because Democrats ran the

01:16:08.140 newspaper.

01:16:09.000 It's why Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, when they engaged in the second presidential election

01:16:15.380 or the third presidential election, I guess, technically.

01:16:18.840 They didn't have campaigns the way that we think of it.

01:16:23.580 They didn't buy ads.

01:16:24.740 You know, they didn't directly campaign because it was still seen as sort of vulgar to do that.

01:16:29.560 Instead, half the newspapers supported Jefferson, and half the newspapers supported Adams, and

01:16:34.820 they warred with each other.

01:16:35.780 And I call it wars because if you take the Spanish-American War as an example, I'm pretty sure newspapers

01:16:41.140 actually just created that.

01:16:42.560 Newspapers plus Teddy Roosevelt just created that war.

01:16:45.300 But you knew where you stood.

01:16:46.700 When you read the Tennessee Democrat, you knew who they supported.

01:16:50.560 The editorial board of the Tennessee Democrat were Democrats.

01:16:53.660 The reporters at the Tennessee Democrat were also Democrats.

01:16:56.920 There were smaller oppositional newspapers in Tennessee.

01:17:00.260 And if you wanted to read oppositional points of view, that's where you went.

01:17:02.800 In other words, everyone had to own their biases.

01:17:05.060 Now, this doesn't mean that I don't believe that there is fair journalism.

01:17:09.220 It doesn't mean that I don't believe that fair reporting is to be desired.

01:17:12.360 I think that the role of the journalist should be to own their biases, but present fair looks

01:17:19.940 at situations from the point of view of their biases.

01:17:24.000 And that's, I know, a very difficult concept to comprehend.

01:17:27.760 But I like the world that we live in as much as there's trouble with it.

01:17:32.080 I like the world of the Daily Caller and the Daily Wire and the Blaze and Breitbart and Drudge

01:17:37.700 Report and the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos and Vox and Vice.

01:17:42.780 That's a better world as long as everybody owns what they are.

01:17:46.340 The thing that causes us problems is when you keep your head down for 20 years between

01:17:50.760 Vietnam, between the Second World War and Vietnam, and you think that Walter Cronkite is

01:17:56.180 the voice of us all.

01:17:57.560 You think that Walter Cronkite represents truth, objective truth.

01:18:01.260 He represents fact, objective fact.

01:18:03.560 There is no bias.

01:18:04.580 And then you look up one day and one guy decides whether or not we win or lose a war.

01:18:10.780 Spoiler alert, he always had a point of view.

01:18:13.400 He always had a bias.

01:18:14.760 They just fed us alive for 20 years.

01:18:16.380 And then somehow, even after the Cronkite Vietnam story, we didn't learn this lesson.

01:18:20.560 Throughout the sort of big anchor, big chair, listen, I have an affinity for those, Tom Brokaw

01:18:26.180 in particular, and Peter Jennings, I thought was a lot of fun.

01:18:30.820 Sam Donaldson.

01:18:31.220 Sam Donaldson.

01:18:31.840 It's not that there wasn't a charm to the era, but what there wasn't was objectivity

01:18:36.100 during that era.

01:18:37.080 They were pretending to be that which they were not.

01:18:39.700 Far better, own what you are.

01:18:42.260 Don't lie.

01:18:43.520 I think that it's fair to say don't lie.

01:18:44.980 If you lie, you're not a journalist.

01:18:47.060 If you lie, you're just an opinion slinger.

01:18:49.300 You're just a propagandist.

01:18:51.060 But if you own your bias and try to be as fair as you can from the point of view of

01:18:55.400 your bias, I think that that's a better way to go.

01:18:57.660 I actually trust people, especially in the age of the internet, they're going to get more

01:19:01.460 than one newspaper.

01:19:02.560 They're going to be able to read the Daily Wire and read the Huffington Post and make

01:19:07.660 their own assessments as to what's right and what's wrong.

01:19:09.560 That's my view of it.

01:19:10.080 You just destroyed the New York Times business model.

01:19:12.600 Don't lie.

01:19:13.400 I don't know.

01:19:13.840 This question is for Ben, and I actually have a theory on this, but I want to know what

01:19:17.360 he thinks.

01:19:18.260 Does a straw have one hole or two?

01:19:22.940 Wow.

01:19:25.800 Deep thoughts here.

01:19:26.940 You don't...

01:19:27.680 I mean, I actually would argue that a straw doesn't have a hole, because doesn't a hole

01:19:32.440 always have a bottom?

01:19:35.880 You're going to offend half the country, whatever you say.

01:19:38.140 You've got to be very careful.

01:19:39.100 Is a straw a tunnel?

01:19:39.880 I was actually...

01:19:40.940 Right.

01:19:41.620 Yeah, I mean, I was actually going to go with you, because basically it is a flat plane

01:19:45.440 that is just connected on itself, so it doesn't...

01:19:48.220 That's very two-dimensional.

01:19:50.820 Does Swiss cheese not have holes?

01:19:52.240 I'll make one.

01:19:53.360 Swiss cheese has holes, right?

01:19:54.940 See, you can make one just like this.

01:19:56.540 It's amazing.

01:19:57.180 Did I just create a hole?

01:19:58.640 I don't think so.

01:19:59.320 God, this guy is so talented.

01:20:00.140 I know.

01:20:00.380 Look at that.

01:20:01.920 Paying your salaries and making straws out of paper.

01:20:04.700 I mean, I know that...

01:20:05.380 That's the only kind of straw you're allowed to have anymore, by the way.

01:20:07.380 I insist that we move on to question number seven.

01:20:09.920 That's a horrible question.

01:20:10.980 Thank you for that.

01:20:11.520 I appreciate it.

01:20:12.420 All right.

01:20:12.860 Nate from Texas says that he is a proud supporter of the Daily Wire and a subscriber.

01:20:16.540 Thank you so much for that, Nate.

01:20:18.220 This Oki will allow it.

01:20:19.940 And this question is for Andrew Clavin.

01:20:21.840 Andrew, Nate wants to know, what do you think of the new Dave Chappelle special?

01:20:25.560 Oh, I liked it.

01:20:27.920 I don't think it's as funny as some of the guys that I really like, like Bill Burr and

01:20:32.680 Ricky Gervais, but I thought it was daring.

01:20:36.860 I thought that the whole idea that we have to judge every joke on its political correctness,

01:20:43.960 on its righteousness, is absurd.

01:20:46.680 There is a relationship between humor and evil.

01:20:49.680 There is a relationship between humor and evil because there is a relationship between masculinity

01:20:53.660 and evil.

01:20:54.520 Humor is a masculine trait that we developed in order to charm women.

01:20:58.200 I think it is.

01:20:59.420 That's what it is.

01:21:00.260 That's why men are funnier than women.

01:21:01.620 And so I think that when we have a guy, when we have a comedian, his job is to break the

01:21:07.960 boundaries, to say the thing that nobody says, to say the thing that we're kind of thinking,

01:21:12.220 but we're not really thinking.

01:21:13.300 So that's human evil is funny.

01:21:13.700 Human evil is funny.

01:21:14.640 Human evil is funny.

01:21:15.420 Human evil is funny because of the fall of man.

01:21:18.880 Human evil is funny because we're supposed to be one thing, but we're another thing.

01:21:21.760 And what we look like is a guy in a tuxedo falling in a mud puddle.

01:21:24.540 Right, exactly.

01:21:25.620 This is Walter Kerr's take on the distinction between tragedy and comedy.

01:21:28.840 The tragedy is that we are these mortal beings who are bound to these bodies, but we have

01:21:32.160 dreams of the stars and can understand all this beyond ourselves.

01:21:34.720 And comedy is we have all these dreams of ourselves beyond the stars, but we fart.

01:21:38.580 And the funny thing about Chappelle is I thought the ugliest, meanest, most terrible thing he

01:21:44.700 said was about Michael Jackson, and it made me laugh out loud.

01:21:48.000 You know, humor, like horror, like the horror genre, is a vacation.

01:21:51.920 It's a vacation from the real world.

01:21:53.440 It's a vacation from the world in which we try to do what's right.

01:21:55.760 We try to say what's right.

01:21:56.580 We try to be kind and polite.

01:21:57.840 It's a place where we go to let that stuff out.

01:21:59.800 So I thought it was a good show.

01:22:01.360 I wish he'd been a little, like Bill Burr does this stuff and he makes me laugh till I cry.

01:22:05.960 Chappelle made me chuckle.

01:22:07.220 And then on the Michael Jackson stuff, I got a big laugh.

01:22:09.020 But anyway, I thought it was a good show.

01:22:10.780 We're going to own the comedy space, by the way.

01:22:12.080 What's that?

01:22:12.300 The left has no sense of humor.

01:22:13.300 We're going to own the comedy space.

01:22:14.260 They're losing it.

01:22:14.960 Sarah Silverman was like, I can't deal with the woke school.

01:22:17.320 Sarah Silverman.

01:22:18.180 I know.

01:22:19.020 Did you see Aziz Ansari's latest special on Netflix?

01:22:21.580 He does the exact same thing, Aziz Ansari.

01:22:23.260 He starts off and he does what he has to do.

01:22:24.880 He does the apologetic, I feel bad that I ever made a woman feel this way, even though

01:22:28.560 she obviously was just being a terrible person who went back to his apartment and acted

01:22:32.560 like a horrible person and then felt bad and decided to ruin his career.

01:22:35.640 And he had to go and do the Mia Culpa thing.

01:22:37.360 And then the rest of his special was about how everybody's a jerk and we should all just

01:22:41.520 lighten up.

01:22:42.580 And how annoying the progressive woke scolds are.

01:22:45.280 That was his entire special.

01:22:46.740 The world of comedy cannot abide the level of puritanical self-satisfaction of the left.

01:22:53.280 It just cannot abide it.

01:22:54.100 The guy I miss most of all was Louis C.K.

01:22:56.200 Agree.

01:22:56.680 And Louis C.K.

01:22:57.360 First of all, he's unbelievably good.

01:22:59.100 Unbelievably good.

01:22:59.960 But one of his routines is about the things we think when we're driving in cars.

01:23:03.860 It's so good.

01:23:04.480 And those of us who live in Los Angeles know this very well.

01:23:07.160 You wish people dead when you're living in cars.

01:23:09.240 And my wife has a very funny routine where I'll curse and she'll say, you know, he is

01:23:12.780 a child of God.

01:23:13.780 And I'll say, I'll kill that guy.

01:23:15.680 And he just captures the fact that we are not who we want to be.

01:23:19.560 And I think that by letting that out a little bit, you know, what Stephen King called walking

01:23:24.240 the dog, you walk the big dog, you take the monster out and you take him for a walk around

01:23:27.740 the block and you put him away again.

01:23:29.260 And I think that that's a wonderful thing that human does.

01:23:31.540 It's interesting that you say that comedy is inherently masculine because it is true.

01:23:34.400 And Norm Macdonald makes this great observation that whenever you were a kid and you'd hear

01:23:38.900 a group of kids laughing and you'd run over there, it would never, he says, there'd

01:23:41.840 never be a broad standing in the middle of it.

01:23:43.840 And it's true because men, and when you think about the funniest women, Sarah Silverman, who

01:23:48.020 is legitimately hilarious, especially in her early career, but she was emulating a man.

01:23:52.800 Like what she was doing.

01:23:53.420 Roseanne Barr.

01:23:54.060 Roseanne Barr was emulating a man.

01:23:55.240 Shock, dirty humor, yeah.

01:23:56.100 It's not that no woman is funny.

01:23:57.980 It's not that, of course it's not that no woman.

01:23:58.700 Christopher Hitchens has a theory on this, but let's skip it.

01:24:00.880 Of course it's not that no woman is funny.

01:24:02.880 It's that humor is inherently masculine.

01:24:05.240 Right.

01:24:05.640 Listen, there are plenty of things that are inherently feminine and men can do them.

01:24:08.640 Well, also because-

01:24:09.280 That's not the question.

01:24:10.160 Because men purport to be invulnerable and then humor is about vulnerability, which is why my

01:24:13.480 wife laughs her ass off every time I clock my head on the stove.

01:24:15.860 Whereas if she clocked her head on the stove, I wouldn't laugh for a second.

01:24:17.860 I'd be like, are you okay?

01:24:19.200 That's a great example, yeah.

01:24:21.300 All right, what's next?

01:24:22.020 All right, Ben, if you could go back in time, which past U.S. president do you think would

01:24:26.020 be the best possible president for right now?

01:24:28.820 I mean, the ones who are already gray, right?

01:24:30.120 Washington and Lincoln would be the best possible because they understood the job the best.

01:24:33.940 But the one who's never mentioned, but Reagan would have mentioned him, is Calvin Coolidge.

01:24:37.200 Yeah.

01:24:37.360 Right?

01:24:37.600 What you need is a minimalist president whose job it is to reduce government to the idea that

01:24:41.880 you don't have to care about the government anymore.

01:24:43.540 It was Rick Perry's, it was the most charming thing I've heard in presidential politics in the

01:24:47.100 last 15 years when Rick Perry in 2012 said, my job is to make it so that Washington, D.C.

01:24:52.180 is not important in your life, is unimportant in your life.

01:24:55.340 And I thought to myself, that sounds so great.

01:24:57.540 That sounds so fantastic.

01:24:59.100 I don't want a godlike leader like Barack Obama who's going to lead me with his vision

01:25:03.060 and every picture of him is staring off into the distance, slightly backlit, but chin upturned.

01:25:07.440 I don't want that.

01:25:08.260 I don't want Donald Trump to make America great again with sheer power and force of hair.

01:25:12.000 I don't need that.

01:25:13.160 What I need is a guy who goes there and does his delegated powers and fires 2 million people

01:25:17.620 from the executive branch and leaves me alone.

01:25:20.980 That's what I want, right?

01:25:21.900 What I want is to be left alone.

01:25:23.700 And Calvin Coolidge was the, I'm going to leave you alone.

01:25:25.500 I'm not even going to talk to you, right?

01:25:26.660 Like, I have no, there's so many great Coolidge stories, right?

01:25:29.560 There was a very famous story of Coolidge was at some cocktail party and he was famously

01:25:33.200 taciturn.

01:25:33.820 He famously didn't talk at all.

01:25:35.120 Like, you could not get, you wouldn't engage him in a conversation.

01:25:37.340 Silent Cal.

01:25:37.640 Right, exactly.

01:25:38.660 And by the way, unbelievably articulate.

01:25:41.040 If you ever read his July 4th address, his Independence Day address from like 1924, it's

01:25:46.160 phenomenal.

01:25:46.840 It might be 26th.

01:25:47.540 It's just terrific.

01:25:48.800 But there's this famous story where he's at a cocktail party and some guy walks up to

01:25:52.240 him and says, you know, I just made a bet with my buddy over here that I can get you

01:25:56.640 to say three words.

01:25:59.060 And Coolidge looks at him and goes, you lose.

01:26:02.280 That sounds great.

01:26:03.180 Can you imagine?

01:26:03.920 Like, if that were the presidency.

01:26:05.180 By the way, if that were Donald Trump and he were doing all the things he's doing

01:26:08.120 right now, he'd win 90% of the vote.

01:26:10.360 Yeah, that's a good point.

01:26:11.160 Right?

01:26:11.360 If Donald Trump were just like doing all the good stuff and then like every time you

01:26:14.140 went up to him, be like, meh, not interested.

01:26:16.060 It'd be so good.

01:26:16.840 Four more, Alicia.

01:26:17.900 Four in rapid succession.

01:26:19.320 All right.

01:26:19.760 I'm just, can't get over the image of Obama chin upturned and backlit because that's what

01:26:23.880 I aim for in every Instagram.

01:26:27.420 This question is for the God King.

01:26:29.460 It comes from Johnny.

01:26:30.220 He says, as we approach the end of the 2010s, which I think you'll agree was the weakest

01:26:34.180 decade in cinematic history, I was wondering what you consider to be the best movie of this

01:26:39.040 decade.

01:26:39.740 Ooh, that's a tough question.

01:26:41.340 We were actually just talking about the pictures before we went live today.

01:26:46.660 What is the best movie of the 20 teens?

01:26:49.160 And I will say that I think, because I had said this before, I think that the best acting,

01:26:55.820 the best acting that appeared in film in the 20 teens was the film Master.

01:27:00.740 I think that-

01:27:01.560 The Master, right?

01:27:02.020 The Master.

01:27:02.880 Thank you.

01:27:03.640 I think that Philip Seymour Hoffman gave what may be the greatest performance of the last

01:27:08.340 20 years on camera if Joaquin Phoenix's performance in the same film hadn't existed.

01:27:13.500 And I think it was a Brando-esque performance from Joaquin Phoenix.

01:27:17.080 Who's excited about Joker, by the way?

01:27:18.200 Oh, man.

01:27:18.940 It looks great.

01:27:19.580 Because I think Joaquin Phoenix is, it's just like when you watch early Brando, you were

01:27:24.700 watching someone do something wholly on a transcendent plane from what everyone else in the film

01:27:30.540 was doing, even though everybody else in the film gave amazing performances.

01:27:34.280 Is the Master the greatest film of the 20 teens?

01:27:36.520 No, I mean, I wouldn't say that.

01:27:38.160 But I do think it was the great performances.

01:27:40.440 I think, I'm going to allow us to break the rule.

01:27:43.940 Three of you, what do you think the greatest movie of the last decade?

01:27:46.380 Hail Caesar.

01:27:47.340 Oh, Hail Caesar.

01:27:47.900 By the Coen brothers.

01:27:48.740 Yeah.

01:27:49.400 Bad news, yeah.

01:27:50.200 I go Death of Stalin.

01:27:52.640 Death of Stalin.

01:27:53.200 Since 2010.

01:27:54.280 Because there are a lot of movies that were made just before 2010 that are also really

01:27:57.320 good, right?

01:27:57.760 Yeah.

01:27:58.100 No, I would actually go with Knowles.

01:27:59.560 I think Hail Caesar is like the best film I've seen in a long time.

01:28:02.140 It's a great movie.

01:28:03.040 I'm a little bit more user-friendly than you guys.

01:28:06.060 Yeah.

01:28:06.400 I'd go with Logan.

01:28:07.660 I think Logan's terrific.

01:28:08.520 Logan's a terrific film.

01:28:09.820 Yeah.

01:28:10.020 No, those are great films.

01:28:10.860 Those are terrific films.

01:28:11.480 It is the era of television, though.

01:28:13.820 Yeah, for sure.

01:28:14.020 More good stuff on television than in the theaters.

01:28:16.520 Oh, so much good stuff on television.

01:28:18.040 I'm currently addicted to Yellowstone, and I'm really bummed that it's over.

01:28:21.260 I hear that's good.

01:28:22.000 Oh, such a good show.

01:28:23.140 All right.

01:28:23.420 Michelle wants to know, from Michael Knowles, how do you overcome a Biden-Warren or Biden-Harris

01:28:28.780 ticket?

01:28:29.220 And she is very worried about either of those outcomes.

01:28:31.900 Oh, I think it's easily overcome.

01:28:34.080 I think Joe Biden is going to slur his words one too many times, and he's going to fall

01:28:37.000 apart.

01:28:37.480 I know that he's really up in the polls right now, and I don't discount that.

01:28:40.340 I think Trump has a lot of vulnerabilities.

01:28:42.340 The big vulnerabilities are the economy and the wall.

01:28:44.760 The New York Times economist came out, and he said he doesn't think we're heading into

01:28:47.540 a recession.

01:28:48.020 And on the wall, we just got $3.6 billion for more wall, in addition to $2.5 billion that

01:28:52.760 we got a month ago, so that you're looking at, Trump at least could say, he's got an

01:28:56.340 additional 244 miles of new wall being built.

01:28:59.100 In addition to 650, you've got almost half the entire border, if not more, because of

01:29:03.360 previous funding.

01:29:04.060 So I think those vulnerabilities, he's doing very well on at this moment.

01:29:08.280 Joe Biden is worse the more he's on television.

01:29:12.180 He had that big lie about the war story the other day.

01:29:14.720 He lies about everything since the 1980s, and he's got really, really disturbing lies.

01:29:19.200 Lies about the death of his family.

01:29:20.440 He lies about the death of his family, and people don't know this.

01:29:23.080 In 1972, tragically, his wife and daughter were killed.

01:29:27.000 The driver was found innocent of anything.

01:29:29.280 The driver dies in 1999.

01:29:30.940 Biden immediately begins smearing him baselessly as a drunk.

01:29:34.060 The Atlantic, even the left-wing Atlantic, calls him out for this.

01:29:37.080 It's really, really disturbing.

01:29:38.480 I think he wears thin.

01:29:40.200 I think it's why he failed to win the presidency in 88.

01:29:42.520 It's why he failed in 2008.

01:29:43.980 I think he would fail again if he were the nominee.

01:29:47.300 I think Warren probably would have a better chance against Trump.

01:29:51.220 But if she keeps going, as you pointed out earlier, Ben, if she keeps moving so radically

01:29:55.680 to the left-

01:29:56.200 I think the other way around, by the way.

01:29:57.460 I think that what you're not counting on is that right now is the moment when the media

01:30:01.560 want to take Biden out.

01:30:02.880 Once he's past the primaries, then you get the glowing media coverage from there to the

01:30:05.900 election.

01:30:06.340 With Warren, it's sort of the opposite in the sense that you're going to get everything

01:30:09.280 glowing that is possible on her from now to the actual end of the primaries, at which

01:30:13.660 point, Trump sinks his teeth into her and starts shaking her like a rag doll.

01:30:17.280 Because that is his specialty, is taking people and dragging them down into the mud and then

01:30:21.140 just tromping all over them.

01:30:22.320 I don't think Biden's going to make it.

01:30:22.620 And it's much harder for him to bring down.

01:30:24.060 I think it'll be much harder for him to bring down Biden.

01:30:26.260 I agree.

01:30:26.500 Because Biden represents in the minds of everyone who, you know, politics is a little bit about

01:30:32.160 wish fulfillment and projection.

01:30:33.700 And people will want to see Biden as a return to normal.

01:30:37.260 But Elizabeth Warren is sort of a nothing in the public imagination.

01:30:41.180 About the only thing that the average American knows about her is that she is definitely not

01:30:45.060 Native American.

01:30:46.660 And Donald Trump will get to define her.

01:30:48.180 And she has 0% black support, which is very tough.

01:30:51.740 I don't think Biden's going to make it, you guys.

01:30:53.560 I think Warren, right now, I would guess Warren is going to be the number.

01:30:56.380 Biden may not make it through the primary.

01:30:58.060 If he makes it through the primary, he has a fair shot at competing for it.

01:31:00.300 Yeah, I think we all agree on this, isn't it?

01:31:02.160 Warren is climbing and he's sliding.

01:31:03.520 Two questions.

01:31:04.300 Alicia.

01:31:04.900 All right, Drew, this question is for you.

01:31:06.660 What do you think historians in the future will say about this era of Trump?

01:31:11.180 What I genuinely think historians will say in the future is that this is the era of unbridled

01:31:17.780 abortion.

01:31:18.600 I think that when we talk about this era, I think they won't care about our technology.

01:31:23.820 They won't care about our inventions.

01:31:26.380 They won't care about our economy.

01:31:27.820 They won't care about the fact that we slaughtered children like they were, I don't know, cannon

01:31:33.260 fodder.

01:31:34.100 So that's where I think a lot of statues are going to be taken down that supported abortion.

01:31:38.940 And I think that we're going to be treated the way they treated the slave generation.

01:31:42.960 We're not far off, dude.

01:31:43.920 I don't think that's a century away.

01:31:45.320 Have you seen the quality of ultrasounds now?

01:31:47.500 No, I know.

01:31:48.340 It's insane.

01:31:49.140 Not right.

01:31:49.460 Not just, and I'm not just talking about the 40 ultrasounds in 20 weeks.

01:31:52.140 I'm talking about ultrasound, ultrasounds at like 10, 11 weeks.

01:31:55.360 And I think it's kind of wonderful to watch these people attack the slave holding generation

01:32:00.060 without understanding how completely you get swept away in the narrative of your time,

01:32:04.400 the narrative of our time.

01:32:05.820 Somehow it was all right to do this.

01:32:07.620 It is not all right to do this.

01:32:08.940 I do think Trump, listen, I feel about Trump that he is a symptom of something that's going

01:32:15.360 on.

01:32:16.000 I think the thing that is going on that he represents is a good thing.

01:32:19.640 It is a return to the idea that the individual matters, that the guy out there with his checked

01:32:24.920 shirt and his rifle and his family matters and the middle of the country matters and the

01:32:29.580 people who do the job of building the country matter.

01:32:32.980 It's unfortunate he is not a, you know, he's not a perfect instrument.

01:32:37.280 He's a big guy with big flaws.

01:32:39.200 But as Christopher Caldwell points out in this Brexit piece, it's hard to find people

01:32:43.600 who oppose the elites, who have the power to stand up to the elites, who are not elites.

01:32:48.360 And so he's kind of all we had.

01:32:50.540 If we're lucky, maybe he'll be seen as a political purgative.

01:32:53.100 Yeah, I think so.

01:32:54.380 I'm hoping, my best, you know, it's funny, you and I had this conversation, I keep bringing

01:32:57.920 this up on my show.

01:32:58.580 You and I had a conversation at the spot in Dallas where Kennedy was shot, where you said

01:33:02.260 to me, what is your best scenario of Donald Trump's presidency?

01:33:06.340 And I actually outlined almost everything that happened.

01:33:08.680 So he's been the best version of himself.

01:33:11.020 It was not like, oh, it's going to be great.

01:33:12.720 It was, here are the things that are going to be bad, but this will be the best thing

01:33:15.360 we get.

01:33:15.820 And it's been that.

01:33:16.500 He's cut taxes.

01:33:17.340 He made the economy work.

01:33:19.040 And then he did a lot of things that drive us all crazy, which is, I said to him, he's

01:33:22.000 going to drive us nuts.

01:33:23.380 And he has.

01:33:24.260 But he also has got this great economy.

01:33:25.820 And then I think, you know, it is possible that we will return to normal in a better

01:33:30.840 way than Joe Biden, that I think it's important for Trump to win.

01:33:35.200 I hope he does win.

01:33:36.680 But I think after that, we really have to get to a point, you know, Jim Mattis is the

01:33:40.540 guy who's saying it, and everybody's trying to get him to attack Trump.

01:33:43.420 And he's saying, you know, the problem is not Trump.

01:33:45.620 The problem is us.

01:33:46.760 The problem is what we're doing to one another.

01:33:48.300 And you keep saying this, and I agree with both of you.

01:33:50.620 I think that we need to get to a place, and it has to do with the media balancing out.

01:33:55.060 It has to do with media either becoming your European version of it or returning to some

01:34:00.240 idea that we can have a moderate media somewhere in between that represents all of us, so that

01:34:04.980 we're not screaming at each other all the time.

01:34:06.780 Because it just doesn't work.

01:34:08.080 It just is not the way the country should be.

01:34:10.380 I mean, look, democracy is messy.

01:34:12.040 Democracy is loud.

01:34:13.180 But I think that this is a period of intense, a violation of the norms of human interaction.

01:34:20.540 By the way, I really, really do wonder if there is a single left podcast where they

01:34:24.600 sit around lamenting the death of conversation.

01:34:27.180 I really don't think so.

01:34:28.260 I mean, I really don't think so.

01:34:29.260 I think that on the left, they lament that there are people on the other side who want

01:34:32.240 to have a conversation.

01:34:33.460 There was that full editorial in the Washington Post that was literally about this, basically

01:34:36.380 saying, all these right-wingers who keep saying they want conversations, you know

01:34:39.260 who else said that?

01:34:40.560 Slaveholders.

01:34:41.980 I was like, are you insane?

01:34:44.060 I'm fairly certain that the problem with the slaveholders was the slaveholding.

01:34:47.280 But not the conversation.

01:34:49.620 Not the conversation.

01:34:50.280 Also, also, don't wear check shirts.

01:34:52.620 Alicia, the final question.

01:34:55.420 All right.

01:34:55.840 So I'm no Sam Ponder, and I don't get sports analogies, so I hope I'm using this right.

01:35:00.540 I'm going to call an audible and say that everyone needs to answer this final question

01:35:04.300 because it's too good.

01:35:04.920 You did it right.

01:35:05.480 That was good.

01:35:05.840 Oh, sweet.

01:35:06.440 Yay.

01:35:07.000 All right.

01:35:07.320 Ryan wants to know, on a scale from John Kasich to Hillary Clinton, how will Joe Walsh's campaign

01:35:12.960 end up?

01:35:14.900 Well, his Maserati does 185.

01:35:17.280 Yeah, that's true.

01:35:18.760 You know, life's been good to him so far, so I assume he'll be.

01:35:22.500 I forgot he was running until you reminded me, and that's, I think, about how his campaign

01:35:26.200 is doing.

01:35:26.220 I'm reminded of the joke of the guy who jumps off the Empire State Building, and as he's

01:35:29.780 passing the 60th floor, somebody says, how are things going?

01:35:32.600 He says, all right, so far.

01:35:34.540 I think that's Joe Walsh's campaign.

01:35:36.440 I think the problem that Joe Walsh has is that Joe Walsh is not an alternative to Trump.

01:35:41.480 Like, Joe Walsh is a very Trumpian figure who-

01:35:45.560 He's more Trump than Trump in many ways.

01:35:47.180 He's more Trump than Trump in many ways.

01:35:49.020 It's so funny to see, and listen, Ben probably has to be nicer than I do, but when I see a

01:35:53.920 guy like Bill Kristol pretending to be happy about Joe Walsh, it's the most egregious,

01:36:02.100 narcissistic, self-satisfied bullcrap that you've ever seen in politics since Barack Obama.

01:36:09.800 Because Bill Kristol would hate Joe Walsh as much as he hates Donald Trump.

01:36:14.260 He just is so deranged by his hatred of Trump that he's happy to see anything that could

01:36:22.140 pull off one, two, three votes from Donald Trump.

01:36:24.880 It's all he cares about.

01:36:26.380 But don't let anybody fool you into thinking that Joe Walsh is some sort of reasonable conservative

01:36:31.360 alternative to Donald Trump.

01:36:33.520 It's just nonsense.

01:36:34.300 First of all, he was a great coach of the San Francisco Party.

01:36:36.300 But in his post-playing career, in his post-coaching career, you know, look, I think that what

01:36:44.200 Joe Walsh suffered from, it's not interesting to me what happens to Joe Walsh because the

01:36:47.500 answer is the same that everybody knows, right?

01:36:49.180 Which is, this is going nowhere.

01:36:50.800 But what's fascinating to me is what went through Joe's head when he was like, you know

01:36:54.280 what?

01:36:54.780 I'm doing this thing.

01:36:55.800 It's on.

01:36:56.620 But what sort of thought process was happening there?

01:36:58.920 Good question.

01:36:59.640 And I do think that that is interesting.

01:37:00.820 And I think that the answer is that there is this belief on the right that strange new

01:37:05.720 respect is real.

01:37:07.060 Yeah.

01:37:07.220 Right?

01:37:07.420 And this is a bigger problem with a lot of folks on the right.

01:37:10.220 And listen, as the beneficiary of occasional strange new respect, I can tell you it's

01:37:14.300 very-

01:37:14.860 You should explain what that is.

01:37:16.040 Okay.

01:37:16.180 So what this means is there comes a point where somebody in your own party does something

01:37:20.260 and you don't like it.

01:37:21.040 So in 2016, I didn't like a lot of the things Trump was saying.

01:37:24.120 And I would say, listen, I don't like what he's saying.

01:37:26.040 I think this is bad.

01:37:27.160 Right?

01:37:27.280 I think what Breitbart is doing with the all right is bad.

01:37:28.940 And suddenly I had an editorial in the Washington Post and suddenly there were people in the

01:37:32.840 mainstream media who were giving me the time of day.

01:37:34.620 And suddenly it was, oh, you know, he's considered issues in a way I never thought he'd considered

01:37:38.940 issues before.

01:37:39.960 I have a strange new respect for Ben Shapiro.

01:37:41.400 I have a strange new respect for Ben Shapiro.

01:37:43.640 And then, of course, the election happens.

01:37:44.900 And literally the day after they go, oh, that guy's a conservative.

01:37:47.680 He's the worst.

01:37:48.540 That guy's garbage.

01:37:49.700 He's the alt-right.

01:37:50.280 The alt-right that I had derided in the pages of the Washington Post, I was suddenly aligned

01:37:54.440 with in the titles of economist articles.

01:37:57.080 Right?

01:37:57.540 And it was that fast.

01:37:58.940 Because it turns out that the strange new respect only lasts as long as they can use

01:38:02.780 you as a tool.

01:38:03.900 Now, I didn't say any of this stuff because I wanted to be used as a tool by the left.

01:38:06.420 I say it because I believe it.

01:38:07.500 And I've been perfectly consistent in criticizing Trump when I think that he's wrong all the

01:38:11.100 way through now.

01:38:11.960 Right?

01:38:12.140 I mean, so that has not changed.

01:38:13.840 But there is this feeling on the right that, well, if we were just nicer to the folks at

01:38:18.460 MSNBC, if we just gave them what they want.

01:38:20.540 We forget John McCain's actual 2008 campaign.

01:38:23.580 This is exactly right.

01:38:24.340 We believe that we've bought into too many people on the right because, in the words

01:38:29.000 of Rodney Dangerfield, we don't get no respect.

01:38:31.300 There is this belief that the minute we get any level of respect, then that is worth something.

01:38:35.600 In fact, I think it's one of the reasons why Trump is president, frankly.

01:38:37.640 I think that a lot of people in the Republican Party were so tired of being pissed on by the

01:38:41.640 entirety of Hollywood that when somebody from Hollywood, a big celebrity, looked at conservatives

01:38:45.580 and said, I get you guys.

01:38:46.660 We're like, oh my God, this is unbelievable.

01:38:49.480 And you see it consistently.

01:38:50.760 When any celebrity issues even like the most remote sense of sympathy for people on the

01:38:57.700 right, we're all like, oh God, that's so wonderful.

01:39:00.600 In any case, the stranger is, so I think what happened to Joe Walsh is he figured, here's

01:39:04.160 what's going to happen.

01:39:04.780 I'm going to declare that I'm running.

01:39:06.180 The media hate Trump.

01:39:07.720 I hate Trump.

01:39:08.680 So the media are going to give me the stranger respect.

01:39:10.980 I'm going to jump in and they're going to be like, this guy's great.

01:39:13.860 They're going to ignore all the stuff I said in the past.

01:39:15.440 I'll just go on.

01:39:16.040 I'll do a mea culpa.

01:39:16.780 It'll be fine.

01:39:17.660 They'll treat me great.

01:39:18.680 And suddenly I'll be built up.

01:39:20.200 And worst that happens is I'm the bearer of the sort of true conservative banner in the

01:39:24.480 eyes of the media.

01:39:25.440 And I've upped my career and I'm more prominent and I've pushed my ideals and they've treated

01:39:30.280 me well.

01:39:30.880 And that's an important thing.

01:39:32.860 I think that's what went through his head.

01:39:33.980 I think what he neglected is a couple of things.

01:39:35.720 One, the stranger respect that he expected would come will never apply while Trump is president.

01:39:41.480 And the reason for that is because the goal of the left is to lump the entire right in

01:39:44.980 with Donald Trump.

01:39:45.700 They want everything that is bad about Trump lumped together with the entire right.

01:39:49.100 And they want everything bad about the white supremacists lumped in with Trump.

01:39:51.840 Right.

01:39:51.940 It's all transitive property garbage.

01:39:53.620 It's all the white supremacists like the alt-right and the alt-right Trump winked and

01:39:57.820 nodded at them.

01:39:58.540 And Trump is bad.

01:39:59.440 And you're bad.

01:40:00.320 And people who know you are bad.

01:40:01.600 And everybody who's ever had a conversation with you is bad.

01:40:03.740 I mean, that's literally the chain of thinking.

01:40:05.100 And so Walsh went on TV and he was like, OK, here it comes.

01:40:08.900 Strange and respect.

01:40:09.620 Come and get me, guys.

01:40:10.660 And did you watch any of his appearances on MSNBC?

01:40:13.220 Oh, yeah.

01:40:14.020 He got clocked right in the face.

01:40:15.200 I mean, they came right at him because the truth is they don't want anybody who is conservative

01:40:19.140 not to be quote unquote Trumpian.

01:40:20.920 That's right.

01:40:21.360 They want everybody to be the devil on the right.

01:40:23.360 And Joe Walsh, they would actually prefer Donald Trump not only to be the nominee, but

01:40:27.160 to be the face of the Republican Party forever.

01:40:29.320 Right.

01:40:29.420 That is now their goal.

01:40:30.440 Plus, there's an effective way for the anti-Trump conservatives to get their ideas across.

01:40:36.460 And there is an ineffective way.

01:40:38.220 And to your point on Bill Kristol, I personally really like Bill Kristol.

01:40:42.180 And he is doing both of those ways right now, the good way and the bad way.

01:40:45.480 The good way is if you think conservatives need to read more Aristotle and get back in

01:40:49.620 touch with founding ideals and the liberal education that creates good citizens, do that.

01:40:55.780 Bill Kristol has a podcast.

01:40:56.900 I was listening to it this morning where he does all of that.

01:40:58.940 It's a good platform to do that.

01:41:00.720 The bad way to do that is to run Joe Walsh for president.

01:41:04.020 Joe Walsh is the antithesis of everything that you would seem to be talking about.

01:41:09.340 He's going nowhere.

01:41:10.580 It is a waste of time.

01:41:11.560 It's a waste of energy.

01:41:12.660 It makes one seem bitter.

01:41:13.980 It makes one seem really divorced from reality.

01:41:17.080 And look, there are plenty of reasons to criticize the president.

01:41:19.500 And I get all the arguments against him.

01:41:22.140 Tell people to read Aristotle.

01:41:23.640 Have conversations.

01:41:24.600 Go into the media.

01:41:25.340 Get your ideas out there.

01:41:26.360 But don't run these ridiculous campaigns that are only going to hurt your own side.

01:41:30.660 The philosopher Roger Scruton has talked about the fact that there's always a kind of reactionary quality to conservatism in the sense that we are always fighting somebody who's trying to take our freedoms away.

01:41:43.500 So during the Reagan era, it was the Soviet Union.

01:41:45.920 And one of the reasons that Reagan doesn't resonate the way he used to is because he won.

01:41:49.980 He destroyed the Soviet Union.

01:41:51.320 And I think that what we're fighting now is an administrative state, a way of governing that is not representative, a way of governing that delegates the power that we delegate to our representatives to somebody else, to these incredible organizations.

01:42:03.360 Trump represented that.

01:42:05.260 He represented our desire to have our governance, not global, but national.

01:42:10.520 He represented our desire to have our governance representative, not administrative.

01:42:14.440 And I think that the mistake that guys like Crystal made, the mistake that all these never-Trumpers made is to not say, stop for a minute and say, well, wait a minute.

01:42:23.000 I may not like Trump personally.

01:42:24.880 Who could?

01:42:26.440 But what did he mean?

01:42:28.300 What were people saying?

01:42:29.600 And how can we get that in a new way?

01:42:32.020 I'm also just bewildered by the characterization of people, the self-characterization of people as never-Trump now.

01:42:36.920 Because never-Trump was inaccurate.

01:42:38.460 Now the media uses it completely improperly.

01:42:40.600 Never-Trump was just a bunch of people in 2016 who said, I'm not voting for Trump.

01:42:43.740 Right.

01:42:43.940 Okay, so I was never Trump in 2016.

01:42:46.560 And then Trump was president.

01:42:48.040 Okay, I don't define my philosophy by Donald Trump.

01:42:51.140 He's not my lodestar.

01:42:52.420 I'm not sitting around going, oh, what does Donald Trump think about the issues?

01:42:55.120 This would presume that Donald Trump has thoughts.

01:42:57.040 Okay, Donald Trump has a lot of positions, and I like a lot of his positions, actually.

01:42:59.980 He and I are in agreement on a lot of his positions.

01:43:01.920 But my entire system of thought has literally nothing to do with Donald Trump.

01:43:06.900 So if you're defining yourself either in opposition to Trump or in complete support of Trump,

01:43:11.200 let me suggest that you're doing philosophy and ideas wrong.

01:43:13.820 Because who does that?

01:43:15.060 It's bizarre.

01:43:15.360 But I do think conservatives are responsible to individual freedom.

01:43:20.880 We are responsible to that.

01:43:22.040 And when the individuals speak up and say, hey, you know what, we've been forgotten, we've been destroyed, our communities, our lives, our jobs have been destroyed, I think we need to answer.

01:43:31.000 I think we need to say, you know what, fighting the Soviet Union isn't going to work anymore.

01:43:35.020 We need to fight this new idea, this administrative state.

01:43:38.920 And, yeah, again, you know, God, I know Trump is a flawed vehicle for this.

01:43:43.240 But we have to understand that, as they say in politics, you can't beat someone with no one.

01:43:48.660 He's the guy we've got right now, and I hope we can move on to better people.

01:43:51.640 But the ideas that he's representing, I think, matter.

01:43:54.220 I think those ideas matter.

01:43:55.520 And I think we have to hook into those and develop them.

01:43:58.440 I disagree with you somewhat on that, but it's a topic for another day.

01:44:01.460 Okay.

01:44:01.920 Because...

01:44:03.380 We're done.

01:44:03.920 We're done.

01:44:05.160 Thanks to everybody who sent in questions.

01:44:06.820 Elisha, thank you for being a great host of the questions for us this evening.

01:44:09.960 And thank you guys for...

01:44:11.500 Yeah.

01:44:12.020 Yeah.

01:44:12.640 Yeah.

01:44:13.000 Yeah.

01:44:13.180 Yeah.

01:44:13.580 Yeah.

01:44:13.800 Yeah.

01:44:13.980 Yeah.

01:44:14.000 Yeah.

01:44:14.500 Yeah.

01:44:15.000 Yeah.

01:44:15.500 Yeah.

01:44:16.000 Yeah.

01:44:16.500 Yeah.

01:44:17.000 Yeah.

01:44:17.500 Yeah.

01:44:18.000 Yeah.

01:44:18.500 Yeah.

01:44:19.000 Yeah.

01:44:19.500 Yeah.

01:44:20.500 Yeah.

01:44:21.500 Yeah.

01:44:22.500 Yeah.

01:44:23.500 Yeah.

01:44:24.500 Yeah.

01:44:25.500 Yeah.

01:44:26.500 Yeah.

01:44:27.500 Yeah.

The Michael Knowles Show - September 04, 2019

Daily Wire Backstage： Watch and Wait Edition

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