Ep. 191 - Silly Season
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
189.94907
Summary
A gay male congressman rants about tampons, a transgender left-wing activist calls the American flag racist, and so not to be outdone, CNN runs the shock story of that one time President Trump politely asked for a Coca-Cola.
Transcript
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We're in the throes of silly season, those delightful summer months when the mainstream media focus on frivolous news stories while everybody vacations.
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Here in the United States, where there's no difference between the mainstream media and the Democrat Party,
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it's lefty politicians and activists leading the silly season.
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A gay male congressman rants about tampons, a transgender left-wing activist calls the American flag racist,
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and so not to be outdone, CNN runs the shock story of that one time President Trump politely asked for a Coca-Cola.
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Unreported as Democrats fizz over silly season, President Trump successfully negotiates a better trade deal with the EU.
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He averts a trade war, he compels NATO allies to pay their fair share for security,
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and demonstrably he begins to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons.
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But tampons and Coca-Cola, that's the real story, isn't it?
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Then, Ali Stuckey drops by to discuss her nefarious fake news satire of batty socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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And actually, of the gay male congressman who is focused almost exclusively on tampons,
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something that probably shouldn't involve him too much.
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Okay, back to the great issue of the century, tampons.
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Before we load this, we're talking about Sean Patrick Maloney.
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He's from my home district of New York's 18th Congressional District.
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My company, my political company that I founded, regularly advises candidates who run against this guy.
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My office recently got smacked down by the powers that be in the house because we had the temerity to offer feminine hygiene products to the women who work for me.
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By the way, a majority of my staff is female, and we have a million people come through our office, and we provide things like paper towels or tissues or first aid, like Band-Aids, supplies that people need.
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And those are paid for by an office budget, pretty normal stuff.
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But we were informed a couple days ago that we couldn't buy tampons, and we thought that was crazy.
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But I was supposed to write a $37.16 check to reimburse the house for those purchases because they were considered inappropriate.
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And now the House Administration Committee, which makes all these rules and is controlled by the Republicans, is lying about it and saying, that's not their policy, and I'm making it up.
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Sean Patrick Maloney, ladies and gentlemen, tampons.
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It's a big issue because there's nothing else that the Democrats can criticize right now.
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Everything is going too well on domestic affairs, foreign affairs, so they have to make this stuff up.
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And I bring this up because I have known Sean Maloney since I was, I don't know, 21, 22.
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When he first ran for Congress, I was working on the campaign of the incumbent congresswoman, and so I got to see him on the campaign trail all of the time.
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And I got to tell you, I have never seen a slicker politician than this guy.
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Have you ever seen, just from that little video clip, have you seen a smarmier person in Congress?
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This guy, talk about slick, oily, unctuous New York politics.
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This guy was staff secretary to Bill Clinton, guarding the Oval Office door well.
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The interns were flitting about, coming and going.
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Then he worked, as if not to be outdone, he worked for the most corrupt politicians in the country,
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Eliot Spitzer, that creepy-looking former attorney general who was governor of New York
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and got caught doing really weird things with hookers for just tens of thousands of dollars a night.
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Then he worked for another corrupt politician, David Patterson.
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Then, at one point, his company, I think he was advising Enron.
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Then he goes down, he's in Congress, and now he's in Congress.
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He's at New York's 18th Congressional District, and he, this year, is simultaneously running for two offices at the same time.
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He's running for New York Attorney General at the same time that he's running for Congress in New York,
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He's focusing on tampons now because he thinks this is going to endear him to the women voters
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He's running against a few women for Attorney General in New York before he runs for Congress again.
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And so he thinks this is going to endear him to them.
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And he's making it out that tampons are some extraordinarily expensive thing.
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You know, if the argument here is that people should have access to tampons,
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If the argument here is that people should have tampons, okay, sure.
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Luckily, people are so prosperous in this country.
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You can afford the 19 cents for your personal products.
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There are a lot of personal products that I use that Sean Maloney doesn't pay for.
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But he's just demagoguing on this because it's silly season.
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And this guy is desperate for attention just like all congressmen are.
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I just had a congressman try to jump up in my Twitter mentions,
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start a little Twitter fight because they're all desperate for attention.
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There are so many of them that they need to distinguish themselves somehow.
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The reason I bring up Maloney too, though, is because unlike virtually all the other congressmen,
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Most congressmen I've met are just vacuous imbeciles.
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All that he's interested in is his own ambition.
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You know, I don't remember him raising the tampon issue when Democrats controlled the House.
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And it's really fun to watch his race right now because when politicians' ambition gets the better of them,
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You know, this happens sometimes for president.
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You'll have a sitting governor or a sitting congressman or a sitting senator, rather.
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And you kind of understand that the president, you know, it's the most important position.
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But when these career guys are just jockeying for positions, all they care about is the next move.
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Because Sean Maloney thinks if he goes from Congress to attorney general,
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then he can go from attorney general to governor and then governor to president.
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Except we're in silly season, so it is going to work.
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That brings us to our next story, which is the transgender left-wing activist Huffington Post blogger
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who thinks that the American flag is now racist.
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So Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, has come out finally.
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They don't get to go do jumping jacks down the street.
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They stand toes on the line for the national anthem.
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I'm going to become like Chris Christie, you know, a native New Yorker,
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New Jersey, you know, kind of going over and becoming a Cowboys fan because this is American.
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You should have to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance when you're playing football.
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So this guy, Charles Clymer, who's now, he's transgender, so now he goes by Charlotte Clymer,
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radical left-wing activist, blogger on the Huffington Post.
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And I will never again watch a Cowboys game so long as Jerry Jones' racist, white supremacist,
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His conduct is hateful, cowardly, and embarrassing.
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if you put a regular, normal judge on the court,
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you're complicit in evil and you're Satan and it's evil.
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How utterly exhausting it must be to have everything.
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You can't stay at your regular, normal, stasis level of outrage.
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So now, the suggestion is that respecting the flag is racism, white supremacism, hateful, cowardice, blah, blah, blah.
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That voting for a judge, which our elected representatives have done for the whole history of the country,
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that's complicity and evil and Satan and blah, blah, blah.
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I will point out, though, because some conservatives get this wrong,
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this free speech issue on the flag protests at the national anthem.
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They say, well, if we make the players in the NFL stand for the American flag,
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then we're just like the anti-free speech people.
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They should have their free speech and free speech.
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NFL players, professional athletes, do not have the right to do whatever they want on national television.
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One of the rules of the NFL is to stand and respect the national anthem and to respect the flag.
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One of the rules at the Dallas Cowboys is that you don't get to disrespect the flag.
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The NFL players don't have the right to go onto the field and play baseball.
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And by the way, sports are an entertainment event.
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That's where virtually everybody who watches football watches it.
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A TV actor does not have his free speech rights trampled on because the director makes him read from a script.
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That's not, but I want to say what I want to say.
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You don't, you can't, that's not what free speech is.
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Uh, so I think conservatives get this wrong a little bit.
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The other reason you have to respect the flag is that it's the, the flag is the symbol of the country and the country gives you your right to free speech.
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If you protest the country, you're protesting your right to free speech.
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As Chesterton said, there's a thought that stops thought and that's the only thought that ought to be stopped.
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I've got to move on, but there's a lot more you could say on that topic.
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Maybe we'll get to it a little bit in the mailbag.
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Now we've got to get to the most important news story.
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They finally, CNN, the Washington Post, Mashable.
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Then we've got the big scoop, which is that one time, a couple years ago, get ready for, I hope you're sitting, are you sitting down?
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If you're, if you're driving, pull over, please.
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A couple years ago, one time, President Trump politely asked for a Coca-Cola.
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And I'm, you know that I'm a defender of the president.
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People are losing it over this moment in the leaked Trump tape.
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People are losing it over this moment in the trailer.
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This is, this is really how you know they're desperate.
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On the Coke, in, in the tape, in the big, crazy bombshell tape, at one point, he's talking
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to Colin, and then he says, can you get me a Coke, please?
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This is, this is a good example, because what the media do is they take little jokes.
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They take little jokes, and they create, take it seriously.
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They bring it into a scandal, or they take an offhanded comment, which is nothing like
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They try to make that into a story, because if you see a news headline, you assume there's a
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It's a, if it's in a news headline, you'd think that there's a news story, but there
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And, and the, the most obvious, the most absurd version of this I've seen in the last week,
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The, the other thing, by the way, I, I meant to point this out yesterday.
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When you listen to that Trump-Cohen tape, it, it sounds like a David Mamet play.
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I didn't realize how good a playwright David Mamet is.
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He's the guy who wrote Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, until I heard that tape.
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But it does sound like, it goes, oh, well, we're not talking.
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We're, is it, hey, and get the, and the check, and write, and this is, get me a Coke, please.
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Meanwhile, meanwhile, while all of this is going on, the tampons, and the, and the Coke, and
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Meanwhile, uh, here's President Trump and, uh, the commissioner of the EU.
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We met right here at the White House to launch a new phase in the relationship between the
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United States and the European Union, a phase of close friendship, of strong trade relations
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This is why we agreed today, first of all, to work together towards zero tariffs, zero non-tariff
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barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods.
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We will also work to reduce barriers and increase trade in services, chemicals, pharmaceuticals,
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Soybeans, soybeans is a big deal, and the European Union is going to start almost immediately
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Buy a lot of soybeans from our farmers in the Midwest, primarily.
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There are also, the European Union is going to buy more liquefied natural gas, possibly oil.
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This is what Trump had been signaling for the last few weeks now.
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He says, why does Europe buy their oil and their gas from Russia?
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And you're seeing the culmination of that in this conference today.
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We have been told now for weeks and weeks and months and months from all the smart set,
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from Trump's detractors on the left and the right, that President Trump, he doesn't
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Only a crazy person would threaten tariffs on Europe.
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Only a crazy person would threaten our allies in NATO, you know, and criticize them and
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Only a crazy person would negotiate with Kim Jong-un and go over and have a summit with
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They said they're just finalizing, putting the finishing touches, but they've come to
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They're going to work to eliminate all of the non-auto tariffs that there currently are.
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That's good politically and it's good for America's farmers.
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And they're going to buy more natural gas and possibly oil.
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That's strategically quite important and another big win politically and for American producers.
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We've heard from the Secretary General of NATO that whereas four years ago, only three
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allies, NATO allies, were actually paying their fair share, what they said they were going
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Probably, perhaps, let's say, it's because President Trump had the courage to say, hey
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guys, you're not paying what you're supposed to pay and you have to pay.
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Looking over the Pacific right now, you've got Kim Jong-un.
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We have satellite images demonstrating that Kim Jong-un is dismantling his nuclear program.
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Now, we've been told, oh, he's not going to do it.
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He's faking, don't believe Kim, it's the worst thing ever to have the American president
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There are analysts now, international intelligence analysts saying that the sites that are being
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dismantled right now, launch sites, factories, bomb factories, production facilities for
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This is at least a gesture of goodwill and it's a step in the right direction.
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I told you last time at the summit that we were in inning one, now maybe we're in inning
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All of President Trump's critics who said he's a crazy person, only a crazy person would
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They've been proven wrong on every front this week.
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And so I might just suggest that this madman strategy of President Trump seems to be working.
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You know, this isn't some crazy conspiracy theory.
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It's to appear volatile, unpredictable, and reckless, willing to, you know, have a credible
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threat of violence, both economic violence, military violence, political violence.
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And he has that credible threat and it's worked.
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Niccolo Machiavelli wrote about this pretty credibly in the discourses on Livy 500 years
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He said it, I'm paraphrasing, but at times it's quite helpful.
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It's quite useful to appear mad, to appear reckless or insane.
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And we're seeing this work out with President Trump.
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I wonder when his detractors are going to get the message because it's just working so consistently
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You would think they'd get the message soon, but they probably won't.
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Okay, we've got to bring on, speaking of the culmination of silly season, we've got to
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bring on our very good friend, Allie Stuckey, who is being accused of spreading fake news.
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Obvious satire, making fun of a widely seen clip of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Margaret
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You're making Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look like a fool.
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Allie, what do you have to say for yourself, young lady?
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I have to say, I am so sorry, and I've learned my lesson.
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I am never, ever, ever going to tell a joke ever again.
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And what I realized is that that practice is really only exclusively reserved to comedic
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geniuses like Michelle Wolf, like Samantha Bee, like Stephen Colbert.
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All of those people that are so original and compelling in their comedy.
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I'm really glad to hear that because, as you know, only left-wingers are allowed to
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And when you make jokes, I've been watching a lot of Jimmy Kimmel recently and Michael
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And you have to, you're supposed to not make people laugh.
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You're supposed to just sit into the camera and cry.
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I got to tell you, this blow up from your video is my favorite news story of the week.
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My real question on this, because the video is obvious satire.
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It's in, you know, you're in different clothing.
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This is not, you know, some great selective editing.
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My question is, are the press and the Democrats being obtuse here, intentionally misrepresenting
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No, I think that, I think that you're right, that they're misrepresenting the, the inner,
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And you made a comment earlier that they take something that they know is a joke and they
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blow it up into this national scandal in order to discredit any legitimate humor that's
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Because one, number one, a conservative is not allowed to be funny.
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If a conservative is being funny, then it's mean.
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But if Sacha Baron Cohen is funny, or if he makes fun of someone on the right, then it's
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But if a conservative does it, then it's bigoted.
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And number two, I also think it hit a little bit too close to home for them.
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Because I think it was a little bit, now that I look back, difficult to distinguish Alexandria
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actually making a fool of herself in the PBS interview, and us making her make a fool of
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So I think the left has tried really hard for the past week to make us forget about that
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firing line interview, to cover up the fact that Alexandria really has no earthly idea what
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And this just hit a little bit too close to home.
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And I think that's why they didn't take this joke very well.
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I think I'm not being a conspiracy theorist when I observe that the left and the Democrats
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had this real problem, which is that their superstar girl, who won this big surprise election
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I mean, not only did she not know anything, but she was proudly ignorant.
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She said, oh, hee, hee, hee, I'm not the expert on this simple thing.
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You know, she's got a degree in international relations from Boston University.
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She said, oh, I think people aren't comfortable with politicians who don't know everything.
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And I think the left and the media honed in on this and they said, shoot, how are we going
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And say, oh, we're going to, we found the satire video.
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It's Ali Stuckey's fault that Ocasio-Cortez looks like an idiot on the video.
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They're basically using you as the scapegoat for why their own candidate looks foolish.
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I think that that's a really good point to make.
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And what they don't realize is that I have gotten multiple emails from Democrats, from
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But thank you for doing that because this is not going to be the future of my party.
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We have a lot of people backing away from the socialist label and backing away from her
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specifically because not only is she a far left socialist, which I think a lot of Democrats
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actually oppose whether they say it or not, but she's a stupid socialist.
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It would be one thing if she was smart, if she was able to back up what her beliefs are,
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if she was able to say, well, here's why I think Israel is occupying Palestine, then
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So I've actually seen a lot of people from the left come forward and say, thank you so
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But what we see is the front runners for this, particularly the millennials on the left,
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And I do want to ask about the topic of the satire video itself.
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This girl doesn't know anything, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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I know this because I come from almost exactly the same places that she comes from at almost
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So I just, I know for a fact that she's a liar.
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And I do wonder, how are Democrats going to react here?
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You know, socialists have relied on useful idiots for the entire history of socialism.
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Lenin did, Stalin did, all the way right up to little Miss Ocasio-Cortez.
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Is the party going to embrace this leftward lurch, double down on their base,
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try to bring out the base for the midterms and move it, you know, left of Lenin?
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Or are they going, or is that going to be unsuccessful?
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Are they going to have to go back to the center and, you know,
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nominate Joe Manchin in 2020 or something like that?
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Well, I think that the party doesn't really have a choice.
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It's where the people say the party is going to go.
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So millennials are going to be the biggest voting bloc if they do vote once more baby boomers die.
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But I think that they're looking at millennials and saying, OK, these are going to be the voters.
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And unfortunately, we know that a lot of millennials do lean to the left.
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And a lot of young people in general advocate for things like free health care coverage and free college.
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We know that the Democrats are trying to pass a bill right now that demands free two-year community college.
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And we know that's just a stepping stone into the whole free four-year college direction.
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So I think if that's any indication, it looks like, even though it seems like it's on the fringe,
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it looks like the entirety of the Democratic Party is going where I think it has to go in order to attract young voters.
00:27:00.220
And I think that is in the direction of socialism.
00:27:04.220
I always wondered why Pelosi and Schumer didn't try to work with President Trump when he came into office.
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President Trump is relatively un-ideological for a Republican president.
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I felt they could have maybe worked with him, but their base wouldn't let them.
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I mean, their voters simply had them in a corner.
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And this question I have, and then I'll let you go.
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Is it wise for conservatives to cheer on the Ocasio-Cortezes, say,
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yeah, guys, nominate the craziest communists you can so we can win the next election?
00:27:40.340
there are 42 Democratic Socialists of America endorsed candidates running in this cycle.
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You know, the more that they run these candidates, the more mainstream socialist ideas get.
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Should we be happy when they nominate these crazy lefties, or should we warn against them?
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You have people like Conor Lamb from Pennsylvania, for example, who came across as a moderate,
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who said, you know, I'm going to be middle of the aisle.
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We kind of praise this as saying, okay, this is good.
00:28:11.140
Maybe there are Democrats who actually want a moderate candidate.
00:28:14.160
But I think what we're going to see is that these people that are running moderately
00:28:17.960
are actually going to rule or legislate to the left.
00:28:21.860
And so I would almost rather someone like Ocasio-Cortez at least come out and say,
00:28:33.040
I just don't think that there is a moderate direction for the Democratic Party.
00:28:37.260
So it's almost like whatever opportunity that we can take to show the stupidity of socialism,
00:28:43.620
It is going to require us fighting that much harder if we are going to actually show the
00:28:50.120
stupidity of it, or else, you know, we'll just be overcome by totalitarianism like every
00:28:58.840
The question might not be here for the Democrats between the far left and the centrists.
00:29:04.960
The question is between people who are honest about their ideological points of view and
00:29:10.260
You know, Ocasio-Cortez, she might lie about her background, but she's at least honest about
00:29:14.900
her ideology, whereas someone like Conor Lamb is hiding it.
00:29:18.780
Kind of depressing, but you like to at least see the things clearly.
00:29:23.540
I also think there's a generational difference.
00:29:25.500
You did, I heard Maxine Waters, I think it was yesterday or the day before yesterday.
00:29:31.240
But she said, look, we are not the socialist party.
00:29:36.740
So I do think that you have baby boomers that do fear that word, not just for braiding
00:29:41.200
purposes, but because you've got a lot of people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Hillary
00:29:48.400
Capitalism has done very well by them, hasn't it?
00:29:51.600
So I do think there's a generational difference there.
00:29:53.740
And it's just a matter of whether Democrats are going to say, okay, we have no choice but
00:29:56.940
to head in the direction of millennials or no, we're going to take our party back.
00:30:04.520
I'm very pleased though that you have finally, you know, self-flagellated mea culpa, mea culpa
00:30:10.240
for that awful, deceptive, deceitful, fake news.
00:30:16.900
Well, thank you for forgiving me, Michael, and still having mea culpa.
00:30:25.960
We've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:30:34.680
If you are on dailywire.com, thank you very much.
00:30:37.840
You keep leftist tears bubbling up through my cup.
00:30:41.820
I've got the Sean Maloney female hygienic product vintage.
00:30:49.260
Frankly, I'd go back and, you know, use the James Gunn vintage or some other one from this
00:30:56.520
And sure, you get my show, Drew's show, the Ben Shapiro show.
00:30:59.780
You get to ask questions in the mailbag, which is coming up.
00:31:28.520
I was wondering if you could clarify the definition of ideology for me.
00:31:33.120
What is the difference between a system of beliefs and ideology?
00:31:36.560
For example, I'm a conservative and a Catholic.
00:31:43.280
Does it just constitute the amount of passion one has?
00:31:51.560
Actually, I pulled some notes out for this one because people misunderstand this one a lot.
00:31:57.900
He's a great political philosopher from Britain in the 20th century, and very few people read him,
00:32:02.500
but they should read him because he's very good.
00:32:07.380
The conservative thought and the Catholic Church and these things are not ideologies.
00:32:19.040
We can fall into ideology, but we should resist it as much as we can.
00:32:24.620
In a great essay called Rationalism and Politics, Oakeshott defines ideology as the formalized abridgment
00:32:29.780
of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition, which is a mouthful,
00:32:44.520
Another definition he gives in a different essay is ideology is a vocabulary of beliefs
00:32:49.300
in terms of which to conduct political discourse.
00:32:55.500
You know, the left, they say, yes, slay, folks, be an ally, and then we can go adulting together.
00:33:04.140
And you can tell that there's an ideological point of view there.
00:33:07.800
You know, ideology gives the appearance of a complete system.
00:33:17.500
You can put an ideology in a book or a manifesto or a doctrine.
00:33:23.140
But you can never fit the totality of knowledge into a book.
00:33:27.480
You always hear, there's some guy, you know, so-and-so is street smart, but he's not book
00:33:33.480
Someone can be very book smart and have no idea how to get along in the world.
00:33:38.920
There's technical knowledge, which you can write down in a book, and there's practical
00:33:43.180
The knowledge that is just, it comes from your gut.
00:33:46.960
It comes from the traditions that you're a part of, the institutions that you're a part of.
00:33:50.620
If you're born into it, and it grows through you as if it's in the air.
00:33:58.600
You know, a good example of this, I guess, is a cookbook.
00:34:05.720
You will not become Mario Batali because I hand you a cookbook.
00:34:08.880
You will have some technical knowledge in there.
00:34:15.980
This is what constitutes this dish or whatever.
00:34:19.260
But that won't make you a great cook because there's a practical knowledge that's required
00:34:23.520
Ideology in a modern sense also can really be traced back to Machiavelli, the guy who wrote
00:34:36.300
Here is for the new prince, the prince who doesn't have generations of political education
00:34:42.940
And this will give you some ideological doctrines that you can incorporate in to your political
00:34:48.120
And, you know, a lot of teenage kids, they read The Prince the first time and they say,
00:34:56.520
He doesn't just offer this book and he says, okay, now you can go govern the principality.
00:35:00.180
He says, here's a book, here's some technical knowledge, but you need me.
00:35:05.420
He writes The Prince in part to get himself a job, right?
00:35:07.860
Because he says, you need someone who has practical knowledge to lead you through it.
00:35:11.660
You know, the teacher can teach from the lecture hall, but that will bring some information
00:35:17.660
But you also have internships for a reason, to work alongside a master that he can't tell
00:35:23.100
you, he can't use words or put it into a book, but you just learn by being in the practice
00:35:29.880
Ideology, this is another bit from Oakeshott, is not the quasi-divine parent of political
00:35:38.040
The ideology comes after the political activity.
00:35:40.580
It doesn't, we don't, we don't comport ourselves as we do in America.
00:35:44.800
We don't, we, we, you know, love liberty or this or that.
00:35:47.360
We don't behave as we do in America because we read a doctrine somewhere.
00:35:52.340
The doctrine comes out of the political tradition that you have.
00:35:56.040
The left would like to pretend it's all in a book, but when you pretend that all of knowledge
00:35:59.660
can just be fit into a book, you go totally off the charts.
00:36:03.860
When, when the French Revolution is a good example.
00:36:06.360
In the French Revolution, they tried to erase all of tradition.
00:36:10.880
Churches are temples of reason now and rip up all the neighborhoods and have new neighborhoods.
00:36:17.140
It leads to the terror because it's just not human.
00:36:21.020
Another good example of this is institutions and traditions.
00:36:25.800
You'll hear conservatives who say, we don't want to be ideological.
00:36:29.680
They'll say, you know, you've got to look to the tradition.
00:36:32.940
One reason why it's very hard to export democracy around the world, why we can't just lift up
00:36:37.780
American ideas and plant them in Iraq and expect it to take hold overnight is because we think,
00:36:43.840
the ideologues think, that the, the traditions and the institutions, the Congress and the court and the this and the that
00:36:50.880
are just expressions of our ideas that we wrote down in a book somewhere.
00:36:56.820
He says, we do not first decide that certain behavior is right or desirable and then express our approval of it in an institution.
00:37:05.180
Our knowledge of how to behave well is the institution.
00:37:08.720
In another place, with every step, it has taken away from the true sources of its inspiration.
00:37:15.540
The rationalist or the ideological character has become cruder and more vulgar.
00:37:19.940
What in the 17th century was l'art de pensée, the art of thinking, has now become your mind and how to use it.
00:37:27.200
A plan by world famous experts for developing a trained mind at a fraction of the cost.
00:37:31.920
It's this crude, vulgar rationalism and, and you bring up the Catholic Church.
00:37:37.980
This does, this is important here because a break, the beginning of rationalism in politics,
00:37:42.880
the beginning of ideology occurred simultaneously with the Protestant Revolution and that's no coincidence.
00:37:48.600
These, these, this idea that you can break away the principles and the doctrines
00:37:52.840
and just have that floating in space without the institution, without the tradition,
00:37:58.520
It's, it's a rationalist idea and you, you see a lot of its character in Protestantism to varying degrees.
00:38:03.900
That, that is why there is a coincidence in the American conservative tradition of Catholics taking the lead.
00:38:10.100
Russell Kirk, Bill Buckley, other writers as well.
00:38:16.160
All of these justices on the Supreme Court because there is an, an, a conservative disposition to institutions
00:38:23.440
that you don't have when people just pretend that you can have doctrines flying up in the air.
00:38:29.420
It's a complicated answer, but I hope that clears it up a little bit because people
00:38:32.920
abuse the word ideology and fall into that a lot and conservatives really shouldn't.
00:38:38.380
It's one of the key aspects that separates the left from the right when the right is at its best.
00:38:47.620
Have you ever checked out the Chrome extension Millennial to Snake People?
00:38:59.360
So I hadn't heard of this until, you know, 20 minutes ago or an hour ago when I read that
00:39:03.620
question briefly in my notes and you have to get it.
00:39:12.020
And what the extension does is every time the word millennial shows up in your browser,
00:39:18.440
So it'll say, you know, like, you know, uh, millennials like to eat avocado toast.
00:39:25.380
And then it'll be like the snake people like to eat avocado toast.
00:39:28.220
You know, 10 ways you know that you're a snake people.
00:39:32.120
It brings the truth of online articles and, uh, and treatises really, really well.
00:39:50.040
In Wednesday's episode, you discussed in vitro fertilization and how pro-life groups do not
00:39:54.540
actively oppose in vitro fertilization often in spite of the indefinite freezing and selective
00:40:00.900
abortion of many embryos or fetuses involved in it.
00:40:03.620
I'm a grad student in genetics and I'm pro-life.
00:40:05.540
I do not disagree in theory with in vitro fertilization, but I do disagree with the
00:40:09.620
discarding of human embryos that have been produced.
00:40:12.560
For this reason, I view adoption as a better option than in vitro fertilization for couples
00:40:19.240
My question is, do you think that pro-life groups do not actively oppose in vitro fertilization
00:40:24.080
because it would be unpopular among their supporters, because they're focusing on other battles that
00:40:28.220
they feel they're more likely to win, it has to opposing a Planned Parenthood, or because
00:40:33.200
Yeah, yes, all of that, and I think certainly the latter.
00:40:39.860
This actually ties in with the ideology question.
00:40:42.520
The pro-life movement is about preserving life and stopping unborn babies from being killed,
00:40:47.760
slaughtered en masse, a million a year or more in the United States.
00:40:51.500
And so they're going to try to save as many babies as they can.
00:40:55.740
One way, if the pro-life movement only focused on the first two days of after fertilization,
00:41:03.500
after conception, you know, the morning after pill, if they directed all of their efforts
00:41:07.800
at the morning after pill, some of which are abortion drugs, some are sometimes abortion
00:41:13.260
drugs and not abortion drugs, it's a little less clear.
00:41:15.460
If they focused all of their efforts on that, they'd be much less successful.
00:41:19.180
If they focused all of their efforts on IVF, in vitro fertilization, because it discards,
00:41:24.200
it creates a ton of conceived people, you know, it creates a lot of fertilized embryos,
00:41:33.140
If it focused only on that, many more babies per year would die.
00:41:37.140
It would be much less effective because people go to IVF because they want to have more children.
00:41:46.280
How could I be opposing life when I'm trying to create more life?
00:41:51.020
But when you focus on a six-month-old baby, unborn baby in the womb, that is so much clearer.
00:42:00.180
And you see villains who are trying to kill that baby.
00:42:05.000
That is a much clearer issue, and it's much easier to win over.
00:42:07.560
So practically speaking, that's where the pro-life movement should focus its efforts.
00:42:13.220
There's nothing about having little fingers that makes your life sacred,
00:42:17.040
and not having little fingers makes your life not sacred.
00:42:20.000
And in vitro fertilization, in practice, all the time, creates so many embryos that are discarded.
00:42:27.220
And adoption might be an answer for this, but, you know, don't forget,
00:42:30.000
if you're going to fertilize eight embryos, if you're going to create eight little sparks of human life,
00:42:35.420
every time you do IVF, that's going to be a lot of kids that you've got to put up for adoption.
00:42:39.240
You've got to find women, surrogates, who would be willing to carry those babies to term.
00:42:45.100
And I don't know that that's a really workable solution.
00:42:47.920
Conservatives should be, they should focus on the areas they can win,
00:42:53.620
But don't pretend that IVF is some simple bioethical problem,
00:43:03.120
And as we keep advancing the pro-life cause, conservatives should think about that.
00:43:15.060
do you believe Sarah Sanders will do us all a favor and ban sad Jim Acosta from the press pool?
00:43:21.260
And if there was a vacancy and the Daily Wire were invited,
00:43:24.360
who would be the best White House correspondent and why?
00:43:28.780
I would be furious if Sarah Sanders banned Jim Acosta from the press pool.
00:43:33.960
Jim Acosta is one of the best characters in all of politics.
00:43:38.140
He's, I've, by the way, I've never seen him in the same room as Will Ferrell at the same time,
00:43:50.420
shouting, Mr. President, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:43:52.940
If he were kicked out by Sarah Sanders and the Daily Wire were invited to join the press room,
00:43:57.840
I would nominate Jim Acosta to be our correspondent in the White House press pool.
00:44:02.040
The guy is great, and I hope he stays on TV a lot more.
00:44:12.480
that Catholicism is incompatible with the American founding.
00:44:15.900
These critics say that because the Constitution does not mention Christ,
00:44:19.120
the founders failed to recognize that all power is given to Christ.
00:44:22.300
This would include power over nations as well as individuals.
00:44:25.240
These critics also point out America's allegedly Masonic roots.
00:44:35.340
Were some of the founders and framers Freemasons?
00:44:39.620
Although there was a big anti-Mason movement too.
00:44:41.920
I think John Quincy Adams led a big anti-Mason movement in the United States.
00:44:45.940
Obviously, the Freemasons don't have a lot of prestige anymore in the U.S.
00:44:50.640
Sure, the nation was founded in 1776 by Protestants,
00:44:56.740
or it was founded in 1620 by quite zealous Protestants in Plymouth.
00:45:02.220
Although, of course, all of America was discovered by a Catholic,
00:45:07.220
who said his book of hours and multiple prayers constantly throughout the day.
00:45:18.880
the first moment that we could say this is the origin,
00:45:22.960
And, you know, America is named after an Italian,
00:45:31.220
The Protestants, obviously, were so prominent in the United States.
00:45:36.320
And the, I think it was Arthur Schlesinger said that anti-Catholicism
00:45:40.780
is the oldest and deepest bias in the United States.
00:45:45.040
But I will say it's, I don't think the United States is opposed to Catholicism
00:45:48.780
in a way that revolutionary France was opposed to Catholicism.
00:45:54.800
You know, revolutionary France knocked down Catholic churches.
00:45:59.340
And it gets back to our question of tradition versus ideology.
00:46:02.160
Is there an ideological reflection in the American founding?
00:46:04.800
Of course, we hold these truths to be self-evident.
00:46:11.900
And ideology is fine to reflect on what you're already doing on occasion.
00:46:22.960
Our revolution, to use the idea of Edmund Burke,
00:46:29.360
We didn't kick everything apart and start from scratch with a blank slate.
00:46:34.640
And we kept, remained connected to those traditions.
00:46:37.500
That inherent traditionalism, I think, and reliance on tradition,
00:46:42.020
makes America perfectly compatible or quite compatible with the Catholic Church.
00:46:46.620
And also the observation of Alexander, Alexander, of de Tocqueville.
00:46:54.100
The observation of de Tocqueville that the United States
00:46:56.640
has these wonderful voluntary civic institutions.
00:46:59.740
People just choose to join them in the civic society, civil society,
00:47:03.420
not just government organizations, but, you know, all these voluntary associations.
00:47:10.380
To rely on institutions and traditions, that's quite good.
00:47:20.280
If it were, it wouldn't have developed in the wonderful way that it did.
00:47:30.940
And, oh, by the way, check out Another Kingdom,
00:47:32.660
because we're starting work on the second season of Another Kingdom.
00:47:38.040
It's Drew's story that I perform all the roles in.
00:47:41.240
So you can still listen to all of season one of Another Kingdom.
00:47:44.020
We've got some really cool stuff planned for season two,
00:47:57.560
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal,