Ep. 287 - Bible Literacy For Dummies
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Summary
Roger Stone is a political operative who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back. He was arrested by the FBI and charged with one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Transcript
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President Trump touts Bible literacy bills that seek to teach students about the most
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influential book in the history of the world. Naturally, the left is up in arms.
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Then the FBI arrests 66-year-old foppish GOP operative Roger Stone. Finally, our streets are
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safe. 2020 gets even wilder for Democrats. Texas uncovers massive voter fraud, and pop culture
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admits that unborn babies are unborn babies. That's pretty good. I'm Michael Knowles,
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So much to get to today. I love this Bible literacy tweet. President Trump tweeted it out. He said
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that we're going to get Bible literacy in schools. If political reforms can instill Bible literacy
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in American students, that will be the most beneficial and consequential political reform
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of my entire lifetime. We'll get to that in a second. First, we've got to talk about Stone,
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that at 1-800-Flowers.com. Code COVFEFE, C-O-V-F-E-F-E. Before we get to Bible literacy, I want to talk
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about the arrest of Roger Stone. You probably saw this. CNN had footage of this. In the middle
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of the night, 29 FBI agents came in 17 vehicles, lights flashing, automatic weapons in tow to kick
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in the door and arrest a 66-year-old political operative named Roger Stone. He's this foppish
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political operative. He has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back. He has said for months now that
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if Mueller wants him, he's happy to turn himself in and cooperate. But no, the FBI investigation had
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to kick in his door and somehow CNN found out about it. How'd they find out about it ahead of
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time? I don't know. They're just, they're just such good reporters there. That must, that must be the
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reason. So they kick him in, they arrest him, they bring Roger Stone, haul him down to the clink.
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And then a couple hours later, he's released on $250,000 bond. He gives this great press conference.
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He walks out because he's a big fan of Richard Nixon. He walks out with the two V signs up in the air,
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just like Richard Nixon. He's got the V up there. Side note, the hippies took over the V sign and made
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it the peace Nick sign. The V sign is great. Churchill used it. Nixon used it. I think we need
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to reclaim it. Roger Stone is reclaiming it. He went out and he gave this press conference.
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As I have always said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
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This is a line that he's used a lot. I've heard it. It's a kind of common knowledge in politics. The
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only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. And by the way,
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this is why I think he actually might get off just fine in this whole thing. I think Roger Stone's
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dishonesty might save him. When he emerged and gave this press conference, he looked as happy as I've
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ever seen the guy. Roger Stone, for those who don't know him, he's an old time political advisor to
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Donald Trump. Not exactly necessarily on presidential politics. It looks like he got kicked off that
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Trump presidential campaign pretty early, but he helped him out with local lobbying stuff.
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Stone does a lot of ballot propositions. He writes books. He goes on speaking tours.
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And as a lot of people have observed, he brags about doing a lot of things that he most likely
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didn't do. So if they think they're going to get him on colluding with Russia or talking to
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WikiLeaks or whatever, there's a good chance he bragged about doing that, but he didn't actually
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do it. Stone goes on. After a two-year inquisition, the charges today relate in no way to Russian
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collusion, anti-leaks collaboration, or any other illegal act in connection with the 2016 campaign.
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I am falsely accused of making false statements during my testimony to the House Intelligence
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Committee. That is incorrect. Any error I made in my testimony would be both immaterial and without
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So Stone has been waiting to be indicted for a while now. I get a real kick out of this guy,
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especially I'm from New York. He spends a lot of time in New York, has been based out of New York.
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I get a real kick out of him in politics because he's a total showman. He wears crazy clothing and
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he got into a bit of hot water in 1996. He was on the Dole for President campaign and it came out that
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he had run a sex ad in some swingers magazine trying to pick up different people to go on swinging
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threesomes, whatever. He's always been a libertarian. He's now a member of the Libertarian
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Party and he calls himself a libertine. I mean, he comes from that libertine wing of the
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Republicans. P.G. O'Rourke wrote a famous essay called Republican Party Reptile, how to drive fast on
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drugs while getting your wing-wang squeezed and not spill your drink. Roger Stone comes from that side of
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the Republican Party. And I, you know, I get a kick out of him, but I think this is where he comes out and
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says, I'm not guilty. The only crime that they're accusing me of is lying to Congress because he said that he
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telephoned somebody when in fact he might have emailed that person and they've got him now and
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they're going to try to squeeze him on this. But he said that's immaterial and that was done without
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intent. So he'll very possibly get off on that. And they're trying to say that he colluded with
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the Russians. What a lot of this comes down to is, did Roger Stone speak directly to WikiLeaks?
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Was he in contact with Julian Assange? And did he act as a conduit for the Trump campaign
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to Julian Assange or the Russian government or whatever? The reason I think he probably didn't,
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maybe he did, he's been an operative and a lobbyist for a long time. But the reason I think
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he probably didn't is because he brags about doing things that he didn't do. So there are a few great
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profiles on him, usually profiles that he is instigating. And one of them in the New Yorker
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talks about all these dirty tricks. He said he played his first dirty trick in the third grade
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when he supported Kennedy for president. This was before he became a conservative. He supported Kennedy
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so they had a mock election in class. And he told all the kids that Nixon wanted school on Saturdays
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and Kennedy won in a landslide. And he's used disinformation ever since. So maybe that happened.
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Also, that's just a legendary story. We've heard this for years about various presidential campaigns.
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A lot of people use it. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Stone is just saying that
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for self-aggrandizement. He says he played a dirty trick on the Nixon re-election campaign.
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He was a low-level staffer. And he played a dirty trick on a possible primary opponent of Richard
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Nixon named Pete McCluskey. He says that he donated under a pseudonym Jason Rainier to the Young Socialist
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Alliance in the name of Pete McCluskey. And then he sent the receipts to the newspaper to make
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McCluskey look like he was a left-wing stooge and interloper trying to take over the Republican
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Party or something. Did it happen? Yeah, maybe it did. I don't know. Maybe possibly.
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Uh, Stone takes credit for the Brooks Brothers riot down in Florida in 2000. This was when
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Al Gore wanted 50 million recounts of the ballot so that he can cheat his way into the presidency.
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And there was a riot. There was a big demonstration of a lot of GOP operatives. They called it the
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Brooks Brothers riot because it was all these buttoned-up conservatives in their nice fancy
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ties and suits. And Stone takes credit for that. There's a GOP lawyer named Brad Blakeman who says
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that he was the one who organized the Brooks Brothers riot. He was in the Winnebago. He didn't
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see Roger Stone anywhere to be found there. Tucker Carlson in a documentary about Stone actually kind
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of backs that up. He says, it's not so much what Stone has done, but what Stone has gotten you to
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believe that he has done. That's a documentary made by a pal of mine that I've actually worked with
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called Get Me Roger Stone. He also takes credit for taking down New York Democrat Governor
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Elliot Spitzer. Elliot Spitzer was a dirty creep, Democrat Governor of New York, and he was caught
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using high-end prostitutes and he had to resign. Roger Stone, after this all happened, said that
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he first found out about it in a dodgy club in Miami from a call girl. And then he let the FBI know.
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He sent the FBI a letter and he came up with all these lurid details. The FBI says they never got a
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letter from Roger Stone. We have no idea if he actually talked to this call girl. But Stone,
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in his political brilliance, is able to insert himself into the Spitzer takedown story. If you
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asked the regular average political operative on the street, they believe that Roger Stone took
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down Spitzer. Really, the FBI maintains this is part of a longtime investigation into Elliot Spitzer
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and Stone didn't have anything to do with it. I bring all of this up because Stone says that he
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talked to WikiLeaks. He said he was in contact with WikiLeaks. He's now being accused of telling
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Trump senior campaign aides in June and July of 2016 that WikiLeaks had damaging documents on the
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Democrats, which might be true. But everybody already knew that WikiLeaks had those documents
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in June and July of 2016. That was already public knowledge at the time. So Roger Stone is just
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telling people what everyone already knew. He said he'd spoken to WikiLeaks, but what's the evidence that
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he actually had? Because by September 2017, he said he never did speak to WikiLeaks. And I tend to
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believe that. I tend to believe the latter part, not because I think Stone wouldn't do it. I just
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don't think he had access. And I think he was bragging about it. Donald Trump came out and said,
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Roger's always taking credit for things that he didn't do. And WikiLeaks has now come out and said,
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quote, Stone is playing slovenly Democrat-aligned journalists like a fiddle, brilliantly inserting
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himself, as is his habit to raise his public profile and market his books. He was pushed out
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of the Trump team a long time ago for just this kind of opportunism. I don't mention this because
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I don't like Roger Stone or I have a grudge against Roger Stone or anything like that. I get a huge kick
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out of Roger Stone. I really like him. I think he does pretty good work very often for the conservative
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cause. I'm saying this because I think his best defense is his dishonesty. And I think that if
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they really had him on colluding with Vladimir Putin or something, he couldn't have given that
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press conference. He wouldn't have allowed himself to be that open and that vulnerable. He'd have to
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be the stupidest political operative on the face of the earth. I think he is, as he has done throughout
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his entire career, playing the media like a fiddle, as WikiLeaks says. And I can't wait to see the rest of
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it because, again, you see the headlines. Trump advisor indicted. They've got him.
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They've got him on a procedural crime, possibly lying to Congress. And even the evidence for that is
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pretty slim. What do they have the other guys on? George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort. It's all
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this procedural stuff. It all has to do with the Russia investigation itself. And that's the real story.
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The real crimes that may have been committed are by the people who launched this Russia
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investigation, who colluded with the Democrats, who colluded with the Clinton campaign, and yes,
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who colluded with the Russians to assemble the Steele dossier on which this whole charade has been
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based. We'll see as time goes on. But this Russia thing really is falling apart. Look no further than
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Democrat Rep. Eric Solwell speaking to Margaret Hoover on her Firing Line show. He can't answer even
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basic questions about his hysterical Russia claims.
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At what point do you draw the line and not accuse the President of the United States without any
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Yeah. He's betrayed our country. And I don't say that lightly. I worked as a prosecutor for seven
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Betraying the country, by the way, we want evidence before you say that. But you said an agent of Russia.
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Yeah. He works on their behalf. He... Since he met with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July,
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where he took the interpreter's notes, hasn't told any U.S. official what they discussed,
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he has taken us out of Syria, which is a top priority of Russia. He sought to diminish or pull
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out the U.S. from NATO. And he's easing sanctions on Vladimir Putin's friends who are under investigation.
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But he didn't pass sanctions against Russia. He has armed Ukraine.
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He has killed 200 Russians in Syria. I mean, those aren't the actions of an agent of Russia either.
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He signed, I think, you know, begrudgingly sanctions against Russia.
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Oh, it was begrudging. He begrudgingly killed 200 Russians in Syria. He begrudgingly.
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This is really sad. Eric Swalwell, what does he have here? What can he say? And he's one of the
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most articulate Democrats I've heard talking about Russia. And he's got nothing. He just says things.
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He says the talking points. And then you can easily shoot all of them down. And then they've
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got, he said, well, Trump, yeah, but he only did it begrudgingly. Listen, don't judge Trump on his
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actions. Judge Trump on what I think his intentions are. That's what Eric Swalwell is saying. That's what
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the Democrats are saying. You can't judge Trump on what he actually does. You have to judge Trump
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on our psychobabble interpretation of his intentions. It's ridiculous. It just falls apart.
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And I think Roger Stone probably couldn't be happier. The FBI got Paul Manafort on some serious
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shady dealings, not with regard to Trump, not with regard to the Russian collusion in 2016 or anything
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like that. But they got him on some of his lobbying from years ago. And so you don't see Paul Manafort
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smiling, happy, bubbly, giving press conferences. Roger Stone is a different character. And for people
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who have been around political operations, you can see these two types of character. There are guys who
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actually work and lurk in the shadows, who perform really nefarious operations for dictators around the
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world. And then there's guys like Roger Stone, who are media figures. Just think about it this way. If you
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wanted to be a real black ops kind of political operator, would you make certain that everybody
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knows your name? If you wanted to be a real dark arts political operator, would you wear really silly
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multicolored suits and go on TV all the time? Probably not. How many of you had heard the name
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Paul Manafort before he became prominent with the Trump campaign? None, probably not very many.
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But how many had seen Roger Stone on TV, in the newspaper, giving an interview, hosting a big
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political stunt press conference? Probably most of you. Somebody else, I forget who it was, some GOP
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figure was discussing Roger Stone. Oh no, I'm sorry, it was Hank Sheinkoff, who's a great Democrat
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political operative, but truly one of the greats. And he's known Stone for a long time. And he said,
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I always got the impression with Roger that Roger was more focused on his life than his work. He was
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more focused on how the work served his life and his image than how the image served his work. And I
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think that's probably accurate. So good on him. I think he's probably going to have the time of his
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life here. And there is no figure better in conservative politics to make a fool of the mainstream
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media and this silly investigation probably than Roger Stone. So good luck. And if they catch you
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having done shady things, I won't be surprised. But if you catch them with their pants down, I'll be
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even less surprised. The really good news in the cycle today has nothing to do with the Russian
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investigation or even political machinations. President Trump tweeted out, quote, numerous states
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introducing Bible literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible, starting to make a
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turn back. Great. And what he was referring to most likely is a segment on Fox and Friends this
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morning in which a North Dakota representative is talking about a bill to add Bible literacy classes
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to schools in North Dakota. There are similar bills in Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, and Virginia and
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Florida. This is so good. This would be the most important political reform of my lifetime. Better than tax
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cuts, better than foreign interventions, better than raising spending or lowering spending. This would be
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so important. It's so important because politics is downstream of culture. And our culture, our Western
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culture, our American culture is incomprehensible without biblical literacy. Of course, the cult and the
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culture are related etymologically are related etymologically. And the culture is downstream of the religion.
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What a culture worships. It is jarring to talk to people around the country and to gauge that they have
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zero biblical literacy. You know, I read the texts of other religions long before I was seriously exposed to
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reading the Bible. And this, I think this is just a fact of our public education system right now.
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Even at really, look, I went to a great college. They're supposed to be the cream of the crop students
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in the country. Those students were totally biblically illiterate. Almost all of them.
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What is this really about? You know, I tweeted out that this would be the greatest policy of my lifetime.
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And you saw a little fissure on the right. You saw some of the libertarian type saying,
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oh, well, if you support that, would you support reading the Quran in school? Would you support
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reading the Vedas or the Bhagavad Gita or this or that? Would you support the Quran? I'd say,
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well, I'd support reading the Quran in school if we lived in Saudi Arabia. Of course, because that
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culture and that history is incomprehensible without reading the Quran. I read the Quran before I read the
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Bible as a kid. I read it because everyone told me that Islam was the religion of peace.
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And I didn't believe it. I was pretty skeptical of that. So I read it at age 14. And of course,
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none of those people had ever read the Quran. Our history, our culture, our philosophy,
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everything that has happened, our literature, everything in Western civilization is incomprehensible
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if you don't know the Bible. How can you understand Shakespeare if you haven't read the Bible?
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How do you catch references in everything from William Faulkner or all the way back to whomever,
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modern novels? How do you understand any of it without reading the Bible? William Faulkner,
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just an example that popped into my head, has a novel called Absalom, Absalom. What does that mean?
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What does that refer to? Do you know? This audience probably does know because it's disproportionately
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biblically literate, Jews and Christians. How many other people in the culture do you think catch that
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reference? Why wouldn't we teach Bible literacy? We're told it's because we have a separation of
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church and state, which is like sort of true. We have no established religion. That part is true.
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But that means that we can't read the most influential book in the history of the world.
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Think of all the stupid books that you read in high school. You can read all of those. You can read
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Sula. You can read all these. Howard Zinn, whatever, all these modern books. But you can't read the most
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influential book in the history of the world? Well, some say, then if we're teaching the Bible,
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we should teach all of the religious books. We can't. There isn't enough time. Education means
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you include some things and you exclude other things. This is why I had my high school teacher
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on the other day because he's being targeted by our high school for his conservative views.
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Why is he being targeted? There's a superintendent in Bedford Central School District named Christopher
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Mano, and he doesn't like that there's one openly conservative teacher at that school. So he's
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trying to get that guy fired. That guy, Christopher Mano, I just found this out, the superintendent who's
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persecuting my former teacher, when he was a superintendent in New Jersey, he applauded when
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students were made by their teachers to sing hymns to how great Barack Obama is. He defended that. He said,
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oh, it's great to do that. What a wonderful educational opportunity. Meanwhile, you have
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one conservative teacher in a high school. He goes after them because education requires including
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certain things and not other things. It requires analyzing certain historical periods and not
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others. It requires reading certain works of literature and not others. And if you're going
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to include all of these wonderful things, world history, world literature, this, that, and the other,
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shouldn't you include the most important book ever written? That just seems like common sense.
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Hillsdale president, Larry Orrin right now, he just came out and made a statement that shouldn't
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be controversial, but it is, which is that college is not for everyone. College is not for everyone.
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For a lot of people, it's a huge waste of money. For some people, it's a great thing to do.
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I love liberal education. I fully intend to send my kids to get a liberal education.
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That means to major in something that has no applicability to anything in the real world,
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to study literature or history or whatever. That's what a liberal education is. Liberal
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education allows you to make sense of your freedom, to use your free time, to think about
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grand and eternal questions. And then after that, you get some training to go work a real job in the
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real world. Now, some people could go take STEM classes. They could focus on not just the liberal
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arts, mathematics or something, but engineering, something really applicable. Okay, that's good.
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Some people should go to trade school and learn a trade. Maybe they don't need to read Absalom
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to Absalom. Maybe they want to learn a trade. That's a good thing. Maybe some people will go right
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into the world of work. That's a good thing. Maybe they never really cared about school.
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They weren't great students. If they go to college, they'll just end up a quarter of a million
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dollars in debt instead of learning a trade. And then they can instantly start making money
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and being productive and doing something with their lives. Maybe some people will enlist
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in the military right out of high school. Maybe they're really good athletes. Maybe they've got a
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real patriotic focus. Maybe they're going to do that. That's a great thing. Okay, great. Not everybody
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needs to go to some four-year liberal arts college. That's not for everybody. We have now
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ostensibly the most educated generation in history. Oh, all these people going to college,
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so credentialed, and yet they're totally uneducated. Standards have been lowered.
00:23:51.120
Naturally, when you flood college with everybody, standards lower. It means less for those people to
00:23:56.800
end because people in their early education are less educated now than they were a hundred years ago
00:24:02.600
because they've never read the most important book in the history of the world. They haven't read
00:24:06.920
the book that is essential to understanding all of the subsequent literature and history and philosophy
00:24:13.260
and on and on. Even the development of science and mathematics, all is coming out of the church,
00:24:20.280
which defines our civilization. They don't understand that. And there's a further point because
00:24:26.540
I see some conservatives making the argument that biblical literacy is important because you can't
00:24:31.600
really understand anything else without it. That's true. The other reason that it's important is what all
00:24:36.400
of our really serious founding fathers talked about, which is that our republic is built for a moral and
00:24:42.900
religious people. So actually, it's not just that you learn about it and you know it in some esoteric
00:24:48.540
sense, but it's that what we learn, what we engage with in our culture shapes who we are. We're not just
00:24:55.120
floating brains moving in the air. We have bodies. We have actions. We have habits. If you read trashy novels,
00:25:01.480
you're going to think in a certain way, you're going to behave in a certain way. If you read serious
00:25:05.160
works, if you read the Bible, you're going to behave and think in a different way. You will think
00:25:09.780
toward the virtues. You will think in a moral way. As religiosity erodes, as religious standing,
00:25:17.300
understanding erodes, our religious practice erodes. As our religious practice erodes, our morals erode.
00:25:24.120
You can't have a moral society that is not religious. As morals erode, discipline erodes. Virtue erodes.
00:25:30.880
The sense of purpose in the world and the sense of purpose for your life erodes. When that happens,
00:25:36.300
liberty erodes. You cannot have liberty without that. Some people want to pretend that you can.
00:25:41.580
You really can't. You can't govern yourself if you don't have all of that before you. We want to cut
00:25:48.560
off civilization from the roots of it. It isn't going to work. You become a ridiculous creature like
00:25:54.660
Kirsten Gillibrand. We'll get to a 2020 update. I want to tell you about my weekend at the
00:25:58.940
commissioning of the USS Michael Monsoor, speaking of virtue and courage. But first,
00:26:04.440
we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. If you are on dailywire.com, thank you. You help
00:26:09.140
keep the lights on. You keep covfefe in my cup. If you're not, go over there. It's $10 a month,
00:26:13.700
$100 for an annual membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show,
00:26:17.100
you get the questions in the mailbag, you get the Matt Walsh show, you get the questions backstage,
00:26:19.740
you get another kingdom, you get so much stuff. And you get this. You get the biblical literacy
00:26:27.620
tumbler. You get... Now, it's not directly related to the Bible, although I'm sure there are many
00:26:33.700
exegetes who can tell you about the scriptural significance of the leftist years tumbler.
00:26:38.340
But what will happen is once these schools start teaching the most important book in the history
00:26:43.720
of the world, the left, they are going to cry. You're going to have maybe a second flood. I know
00:26:49.640
we were told... God said he would never destroy humanity again with a flood, but the left never
00:26:54.820
made that promise and they might do it. So that's why you need to get your leftist tears tumbler.
00:26:58.700
It's your own personal mini arc. Grab it. And we'll be right back with a lot more.
00:27:03.120
When you're biblically illiterate, when you are uneducated, when you are undisciplined,
00:27:17.680
when you can't govern yourself, you become a ridiculous creature, like the future president,
00:27:23.800
future nominee of the Democrat Party, Kirsten Gillibrand.
00:27:26.360
Of this dark world, we will wear the belt of truth because we know the truth. We speak
00:27:33.080
truth to power. We will put on the bright breastplate of righteousness because we know right from
00:27:42.480
wrong and we will not forget it. We will hold that shield of faith. As Dr. King said, faith
00:27:50.460
is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase. So hold on to that faith
00:27:58.300
tightly. We will wield the sword of the spirit. The sword of the spirit is the word of God and the
00:28:06.860
good book promises us the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
00:28:15.800
The good book tells us in the beginning was the word and the word was with
00:28:23.960
God, God, God. And, uh, the, and the word and well, the point is the sword of the spirit and the
00:28:34.720
please elect me. I'm a Christian, please. Uh, really pathetic display. People made fun of president Trump
00:28:41.700
because he's also not terribly comfortable speaking in a religious setting. And they made fun of him
00:28:47.560
for describing two Corinthians as two Corinthians said, Oh, you're supposed to say second Corinthians.
00:28:53.940
And by the way, some people actually do say two Corinthians, but anyway, they gave him hell over
00:28:57.760
that. They, they constantly go after him as, as incompetent as a religious speaker. What about this?
00:29:04.760
Donald Trump is Jonathan Edwards compared to this lady. Donald Trump is like Jerry Falwell and Billy
00:29:13.180
Graham and Jonathan Edwards all rolled up into one. Are you kidding me? This is Donald Trump is
00:29:19.280
Fulton Sheen compared to Kirsten Gillibrand. How pathetic is that? This is what happens when you
00:29:24.000
lose a faith tradition. This is what happens. You become a grotesque caricature. I mean, how sad,
00:29:29.780
how, what, what is this? What is she doing? Al Sharpton put this video out. She's trying to
00:29:34.560
appeal to, uh, to predominantly black, uh, Christian voters in the Democrat party. It's
00:29:40.580
not really going to work. What else do we have from the 2020 update? Apparently Kamala Harris had
00:29:45.480
an affair with a married man 20 years ago. It's another, that's a little tidbit that came out
00:29:49.720
today from the former San Francisco mayor, Willie Brown. Uh, Willie Brown came out and said that he
00:29:56.360
had an affair with Kamala Harris 20 years ago. And in exchange for that, he appointed her to a couple
00:30:02.300
state commissions and launched her entire political career. Pretty brutal stuff from this 80-something
00:30:07.220
year old former mayor. All of which is to say, delicious. Just, just, mm. It is not even February
00:30:18.160
2019 yet, folks. And this is what we're getting out of the 2020 Democrat primary. This is going to be
00:30:23.740
gold. This is going to be so good. Kamala Harris has come out the gate pretty strong and they are
00:30:29.660
already attacking her from every angle. I mean, they are making her out to be Hillary 2.0, except
00:30:35.740
she's got no moral standards. She's sleeping with married men. She's got, oh, it's just brutal what
00:30:42.540
they're doing to her. Then Kirsten Gillibrand is doing it to herself. And then you've got Howard
00:30:47.020
Schultz, who is the CEO of Starbucks, coming out and saying that he's going to run an independent bid
00:30:51.740
and spoil it for whoever the ultimate Democrat nominee is anyway.
00:30:55.000
I am seriously thinking of running for president. I will run as a centrist independent outside of the
00:31:04.980
two-party system. We're living at a most fragile time. Not only the fact that this president is not
00:31:12.040
qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what's
00:31:19.920
necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged every single day in revenge politics.
00:31:26.720
Why run as an independent? Your views have always aligned with the Democratic Party.
00:31:32.800
It's true. I've, you know, I've been a lifelong Democrat. I look at both parties. We see extremes
00:31:39.040
on both sides. Well, we are sitting today with approximately 21 and a half trillion dollars
00:31:46.880
of debt, which is a reckless example, not only of Republicans, but of Democrats as well,
00:31:54.080
as a reckless failure of their constitutional responsibility.
00:31:59.680
Run, Howard, run. Run, Howard, run. Howard Schultz is a far-left Democrat. He's the guy who
00:32:07.440
turns Starbucks into a homeless shelter. He is the one who's installing heroin needles into the
00:32:13.360
Starbucks bathrooms. He is just a real hippy-dippy leftist guy, and he might run in an independent
00:32:21.680
bid. He knows he's not going to win the Democrat primary. There's no way a straight, white, billionaire
00:32:27.260
man is ever going to win that primary. He won't get one vote in it. But he would be able to get a good
00:32:34.160
number of votes as an independent because you've got a sizable number of Democrats, or these days
00:32:39.380
probably former Democrats, who are so turned off by intersectional, nasty identity politics,
00:32:47.220
and you've got those same people who don't really like Donald Trump because he's too right-wing or
00:32:52.420
he's too vulgar or whatever. Howard Schultz would appeal to them, and Donald Trump knows it,
00:32:57.940
and he's encouraging him to run. He tweeted out today that Howard Schultz doesn't have the guts to
00:33:02.360
run for president, and he's doing it with all the subtlety of Donald Trump. He's saying this
00:33:07.440
because if Schultz ran as an independent, it would all but ensure a Trump re-election. So what I am
00:33:13.140
telling you, hear me closely, take notes. If you're driving, pull over. Every one of you has to write a
00:33:20.120
letter to Howard Schultz begging him to run for president. Write it, send it to Starbucks, tweet at
00:33:26.140
him, send him an email. We need to get this guy to run as an independent. It would be phenomenal,
00:33:32.360
it, oh, oh, the joys. He's been signaling that he wants to run for a while, so I think he's probably
00:33:37.460
in it, and it'll just be a singular joy if they can get him in. It's going to become the 2000 election
00:33:46.900
all over again. This is my other observation, even this early on. Do you remember the 2000 election?
00:33:52.180
I was such a political hound that I've been following politics since, really, since I was two
00:33:57.360
years old, and I remember in the 2000 election, I was about 10 years old, and it struck me that that
00:34:02.140
election was about nothing. What was that election about? What was the big issue? Nothing. The election
00:34:09.080
was about how Bill Clinton's a degenerate, and the economy was going pretty well, and everything was
00:34:14.960
basically fine. 9-11 hadn't happened yet. It was just about nothing. You got all of these candidates,
00:34:19.800
and you had third parties making a push. In 92, Ross Perot ran as the Reform Party candidate. He
00:34:26.740
spoiled it for George Bush. George Bush lost the election. Bill Clinton became president. In 2000,
00:34:31.020
Donald Trump almost ran for president as the Reform Party candidate. He was running for the Reform Party
00:34:37.040
nomination against Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan, then, is running in the 2000 election, takes a lot of votes
00:34:42.940
away. Ralph Nader was another one, a spoiler, who probably threw the election to George Bush.
00:34:48.260
This is deja vu all over again. I can't wait to have an election about nothing, because elections
00:34:55.340
about nothing just become about people and all this stupid fighting. For years now, we've been told
00:35:01.320
how terrible a person Donald Trump is. Everybody else is so pure, so wonderful, all those sanctimonious
00:35:09.460
pseudo-conservatives, all the way to the crazy virtue-signaling leftists. They're all so morally
00:35:16.120
pure and good, and only Donald Trump is bad. We're about to find out what degenerates all these
00:35:20.740
people are. We're about to find out that Kamala Harris had an affair with a married man 20 years
00:35:25.680
ago, and did it so that she could just advance her career. Pretty cynical move. We're about to find
00:35:31.420
out a lot of things about a lot of these people. I can't wait. That'll be a lot of fun. It's not just
00:35:37.560
the schadenfreude that I'm looking forward to. It's not just having delicious tears at their
00:35:43.080
expense and drinking up their misery. It's because they need to be taken down a peg. They are so
00:35:48.360
sanctimonious. They are so prideful, and they're about to find out the wages of that. In other
00:35:55.340
shocking news, the government reopened. Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, the government reopened.
00:36:01.020
Whatever. Okay. During the shutdown, I said, okay, the government's shut down. Is it shut down? Does
00:36:06.160
anyone know? Is it? And now it's open. All right, whatever. I guess Trump sort of gave in. Maybe
00:36:11.780
it'll close again in three weeks. I don't know. Whatever. What it does bring up to me, though,
00:36:17.860
is that this immigration debate is about a lot more than a border wall. We're all talking about it as
00:36:23.000
the border wall. We're all talking about it just as a matter of illegal immigration. It's actually
00:36:27.840
about more than that, and of all people, the left-wing former anchor of NBC News, Tom Brokaw,
00:36:32.680
is making this clear. He fits in a true statement in between a bunch of kind of leftist claptrap
00:36:39.320
about how Republicans are racist, but he actually gets a true statement in there as well about
00:36:44.180
assimilation. And a lot of this we don't want to talk about, but the fact is, on the Republican side,
00:36:49.220
a lot of people see the rise of an extraordinary, important new constituency in American politics,
00:36:55.100
Hispanics, who will come here and all be Democrats. Also, I hear when I push people a little
00:37:00.180
harder. I don't know whether I want brown grandbabies. I mean, that's also a part of it.
00:37:05.640
It's the intermarriage that is going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other.
00:37:09.820
I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation. That's one of the
00:37:13.820
things I've been saying for a long time, that they ought not to be just codified in their communities,
00:37:18.920
but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English and that they
00:37:22.680
feel comfortable in the communities. And that's going to take outreach on both sides, frankly.
00:37:27.340
Now, of course, this last thing that he makes, this last point that he makes is true.
00:37:34.320
Hispanics need to assimilate into American culture. It's not just their fault that they're
00:37:38.560
not assimilating at the same speed at which other immigrant groups have done it. A lot of it is
00:37:43.920
thanks to the culture, which discourages them from assimilating, which tells them to keep speaking
00:37:48.500
Spanish, which tells them that America is awful and the West is a terrible place. Why they would want
00:37:52.940
to come here? I have no idea why we would take in over a million people a year. I can't imagine if
00:37:57.320
we're such a terrible place. But that point is right. The point about Republicans don't want brown
00:38:03.500
grandbabies, that's just typical leftist NBC nonsense. But the point he's making about assimilation is
00:38:10.380
fair, I think. And that's not just illegal immigration that that has to do with, that's legal
00:38:16.660
immigration. There was a big poll that came out, I think from Harvard Harris, which showed that the
00:38:20.180
majority of Americans don't just want less illegal immigration, they want less legal immigration.
00:38:25.660
And they don't just want less legal immigration, they want radically less legal immigration. Right
00:38:29.900
now we're at about 1.2 million a year. They want that down to about half a million. And why is that?
00:38:35.680
Well, one, that's a million people a year is a lot of people to absorb into a country,
00:38:39.960
constantly coming in. But I think we could absorb it if we encouraged assimilation. But I think a lot
00:38:46.240
of people really hate pressing one for English, and I think they're totally justified in doing that.
00:38:50.180
And it's wrong for the immigrants, it's wrong to encourage them not to learn English, so that
00:38:54.880
they're a permanent second class, so that certain jobs just are cut off from them, that certain
00:38:59.000
educational opportunities just are cut off from them. You have to assimilate. When my great-grandfather
00:39:05.320
came to America from Italy, he was basically ashamed of being Italian. And he was rightly ashamed of
00:39:11.980
being Italian, because he's in America, and he has to learn English. So he would read the newspaper
00:39:16.300
in English all the time. He wouldn't speak Italian really in the home. He felt that he had left a
00:39:22.280
culture for good reason. And he was coming to a new culture, and he was going to succeed at that
00:39:26.920
new culture. That is a radically different attitude than what the left tells us to do today, which is
00:39:32.040
that we should assimilate to immigrants. We certainly should not do that. That's crazy. And it creates a
00:39:36.220
bad situation, not just for the country, but for the immigrants as well. A really interesting point at
00:39:42.000
the end there by Tom Brokaw. Of course, he's had to walk it back now, because the left pounced on him,
00:39:45.960
and a conservative hasn't watched NBC News in 30 years. This ties into some other aspects of this
00:39:53.220
debate, which we'll just have to get to tomorrow, because I want to point out before I leave, I had
00:39:56.420
the honor this weekend of attending the commissioning of the USS Michael Monsoor down at Coronado. This is a
00:40:03.840
Zumwalt-class ship. It's a destroyer. It looks like it's something out of Star Wars. It is a really cool
00:40:09.340
ship. It's been in the process of being built now for over 20 years, and being designed and being
00:40:15.540
thought of. And so this was the last step on the way for the Michael Monsoor, and it was commissioned
00:40:21.840
on Saturday. Michael Monsoor was named after Michael Monsoor, who's a Navy SEAL, who was killed in
00:40:27.900
Ramadi in action in 2006, I believe. And he was a young man, really young man, 24, 25 years old. And I bring
00:40:37.620
this up because it's an unbelievably inspiring story. He's a national hero. He previously had
00:40:44.800
been, a teammate of his had been shot in the street, wide open, and he ran out with a heavy
00:40:51.420
machine gun, was shooting at the bad guys, had 100 pounds on his back, and still managed to drag this
00:40:56.680
guy, his teammate, to safety. And that teammate of his had a vision, as he was going in and out of
00:41:05.320
consciousness, of an angel. And Michael Monsoor was a devout Catholic who went to daily mass.
00:41:11.420
He went to, even when he was in theater, he would go to daily mass. He was named after St. Michael,
00:41:16.880
the archangel, who is the defender of warriors. There's the prayer at the end of every mass,
00:41:21.100
St. Michael, the archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of
00:41:26.000
the devil. And the crest of this ship includes a wing and a sword from St. Michael. He was killed
00:41:36.560
in action when he was on a rooftop. And there were enemy combatants who came up, and someone hurled a
00:41:45.140
grenade at him, and it bounced off of his chest. And Michael Monsoor saw the grenade there, and he
00:41:50.560
could have lunged to safety. He was apparently near a doorway. But his teammates and the Iraqi
00:41:57.240
soldiers who were with them were cut off, and they almost certainly would have been killed.
00:42:02.100
And you're talking about a split-section decision. The grenade bounced off him, landed in front of him,
00:42:07.620
and he screamed grenade, and he jumped on the grenade, and everyone else survived. And he did not.
00:42:12.900
And he gave his life for his friends and for his teammates and for his country. Coincidentally,
00:42:22.460
on the feast day of St. Michael, Michael Monsoor clearly had a sense of purpose and a sense of
00:42:28.820
virtue and honor. But purpose, providence, what are the odds? What are the odds that that would happen
00:42:37.760
on the feast day of St. Michael? Devout Catholic, named after Michael the archangel. What are the
00:42:43.120
odds? Well, in a world that has purpose, in a world in which all nature is but art unknown to thee,
00:42:48.780
and all chance, direction, which thou canst not see, it happens all the time. And we're talking today
00:42:55.860
about biblical literacy, about virtue, about honor. In all of those speeches at the commissioning of the
00:43:01.160
USS Michael Monsoor, everything was appropriate. Everything was serious. Everything was about
00:43:07.400
honor and virtue, goodness, patriotism. And when you look around the culture today, you don't see a
00:43:14.440
whole lot of that. You see people whining about microaggressions. You see a quarter of college
00:43:19.740
students having PTSD because their preferred political candidate didn't win the presidential
00:43:24.920
election in 2016. That's because they don't have a sense of virtue, a sense of purpose, a sense of
00:43:31.880
moral reality, and a sense of providence. Michael Monsoor had it. He's an unbelievable inspiration to
00:43:40.440
the entire country. The USS Michael Monsoor will now sail for hopefully 40, 45 years, and we wish them
00:43:48.780
fair winds and following seas. That's our show. Come back tomorrow. We've got a lot more to talk
00:43:54.840
about it in the meantime. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:43:57.160
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
00:44:07.300
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover. And our technical
00:44:11.780
producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Dylan Case. Production
00:44:17.520
assistant, Nick Sheehan. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire
00:44:22.960
production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019. Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to
00:44:27.860
talk about Elizabeth Warren who shamed an NFL owner for being rich and said that this guy, because he's
00:44:34.660
rich, he needs to help pay off people's student loan debt. And we're going to talk, there are so many
00:44:39.360
problems with all of this that we're going to try to break it down today on the show. Also, the Bishop
00:44:44.020
of Covington issued a sort of apology for throwing the Covington kids under the bus, but the apology is
00:44:51.700
pretty worthless and useless. And we'll talk about why today on the show.