Ep. 43 - President Trump at #War
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Summary
Alicia Krauss, Amber Athe, and Amanda Prestigiacomo join the panel of deplorables to talk gay Nazi Jews, Rand Paul smacking around John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and elementary schools canceling Halloween in favor of the politically correct Orange and Black Spirit Day.
Transcript
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President Donald Trump is facing war on all fronts. He's been accused of insensitivity toward a gold
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star widow. Former future President Hillary Clinton is slamming his North Korea strategy as dangerous,
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and rumors swirl over a Bannon-induced White House conflict with Mitch McConnell. We'll discuss the
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fallout. Then, Alicia Krauss, Amber Athe, and Amanda Prestigiacomo join the panel of deplorables to talk
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gay Nazi Jews, Rand Paul smacking around John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and elementary schools
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canceling Halloween in favor of the politically correct Orange and Black Spirit Day. I'm Michael
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We have so much to get to today. It's just war, war, war the whole time. Alicia Krauss from the
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conversation at the Daily Wire is making her panel of deplorables debut. But before we get to any of
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that, I have very good news, especially for me, but I guess for all of us. We have a new sponsor.
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at three in the morning, which is when I do most of my work. In the old days, you know,
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there used to be these postage meters. Marshall's obviously too young to remember this, but it's
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how businesses would post for their packages and for their letters. They would always break. They
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help us keep the lights on. Okay, we've got so much to get to right now. Let's begin with this
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story that's all over the news. Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, it's always some
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Florida woman, has come out swinging against President Trump with an allegation that one of
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her constituents, a gold star widow, received a phone call from Trump after her son, Sergeant
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La David Johnson was killed in Niger two weeks ago. Wilson alleged that this is the Congresswoman
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alleged that Trump told told the widow, quote, Well, I guess he knew what he signed up for. But I
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guess it still hurt. We don't know what he said. You know, we do know that this Florida Congresswoman
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is pretty kooky. And she comes from a far left ideological background. She famously introduced
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a congressional resolution to honor Trayvon Martin. She called for Trump's impeachment a
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couple months ago. And she wears these weird hats all the time. The timing is also a little
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coincidental. Just a couple days ago, Trump suggested that Obama didn't call gold star families
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when soldiers were killed in action. Now we have this Democratic rep swinging back. A great guy on
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Twitter, Matt's ideas shop laid it out fairly well in a likely unlikely diagram. Because look,
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Trump may have said something to that effect. He's not exactly the most eloquent guy in the world.
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He might have said something to the effect of my condolences. Your husband made the ultimate
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sacrifice. He bravely enlisted. He he knew what he signed up for. He is ready to give his life. He's a
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hero. So that's one version of this. Some some series of those kind of lines. Or he might have said,
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hey, yo, it's me, the Donald. Your husband knew what he signed up for. Are we cool? What do you
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think it is? I don't I'm sorry. I don't care how inarticulate Donald Trump can be. I don't think it
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was the latter. I he may have said some comment to that effect. But the Democratic Congresswoman
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who's made this a cudgel, given the timing and given her past history, I think it is
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worth questioning what her political motives are here. Regardless, the really sad thing about this
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episode is that there's a brave American Sergeant David Johnson who made the ultimate sacrifice for
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our country, for my freedom and for yours. And he's now being used as a blunt political cudgel
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by a cynical Democrat Congresswoman. It's really awful. And and we shouldn't give it. We should
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address it. Obviously, we should address the allegations, but we should not spend more time
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talking about this. This cynical woman, this this Democratic propagandist that even even if she's
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alluding to some truthful comment here is obviously twisting it for political purposes in other war
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related news, my battle axe of a cousin, Hillary Clinton, is despicably mouthing off on foreign soil.
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The former future president slammed President Trump's North Korea policy as, quote, dangerous
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and short sighted today during a speech in South Korea. She alleged, quote, picking fights with Kim
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Jong-un just puts a smile on his face. I think the real quote went like, what happened? Something like
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that. But we were translating it, obviously, for for the American audience. The irony defies reason,
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but then the Clintons are immune to shame. Donald Trump is Clemens von Metternich compared to Hillary
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Clinton. Let's just establish that first. She has no credibility here. Her disastrous handling of foreign
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affairs from the failed Russia reset to her awful handling of crises in Egypt and Libya and elsewhere
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in the world, it should disqualify her from saying boo about geopolitics. But more than that, she and
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particularly her husband bear the lion's share of the blame for the North Korean nuclear crisis that we
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find ourselves in. In 1994, people might not remember this, Bill Clinton refused to respond when Kim
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Jong-il pursued nuclear weapons and when Kim Jong-il refused to allow weapons inspectors to review two
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of his nuclear waste sites in complete violation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Then Hillary
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Clinton was not just first lady. She was also later secretary of state. She executed a North Korea strategy
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known as, this is not a joke, strategic patience. Strategic patience. You couldn't make that up in
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political satire. And that strategic patience was very unstrategic because it only allowed the threat
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to grow. President Trump and secretary of state Tillerson, their handling of North Korea has
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apparently been pretty good so far from what we can tell. It's very hard. We're getting mixed signals.
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We don't really know what's happening. And we're not dead. We haven't been obliterated yet. You know,
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Trump secured the release of that American student, Otto Warmbier, who was jailed by the Kim regime
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during the Obama administration. But fine. Hillary is bitter that she lost the presidency twice.
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She can't get over it. She's clearly being ripped apart from the inside out. Who cares?
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The real offense here is that she's criticizing U.S. policy on foreign soil. There has long been a taboo
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against doing this. You know, we have robust political debates at home and then abroad American
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citizens are supposed to present a united front. They're supposed to refrain from criticizing the
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present policy overseas. Hillary, however, is immune from shame. Patriotism be damned.
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My cousin. What a traumatic family reunion this will be next year. The third battlefront that
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President Trump faces right now is the apparently Steve Bannon-induced war between the White House
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and Mitch McConnell. President Trump, standing next to McConnell at this press conference, claimed,
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quote, my relationship with this gentleman is outstanding. Very Trumpian. There's probably an
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exclamation point at the end. McConnell echoed this. He said, contrary to what some of you have
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reported, we are together totally on this agenda to move America forward. But then Donald Trump,
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in typical fashion, went on to say that he also, quote, totally understands the frustrations of Steve
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Bannon. And Bannon plans to run primaries against congressional leadership and establishment
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Republicans. Bannon has declared hashtag war on the Republican establishment and the conservative
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establishment for that manner. For analysis on this last bit on the Bannon-McConnell-Trump,
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who knows what's happening, we have to bring on our expert panel of deplorables, an all-female panel
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just to celebrate Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood falling apart. We decided to bring all the ladies
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on the show today. We have Amber Athey from The Daily Caller. We have Amanda Prestigiacomo from The
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Daily Wire. And making her panel of deplorables debut, we have Alicia Krauss, our old friend Alicia Krauss,
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who you might have seen in the conversation yesterday with Andrew Klavan, and now The Daily
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Wire's very own. Ladies, thank you for being here. Thanks. First question, Alicia. In the war between
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Trump, McConnell, and Bannon, who is winning? I don't know that Bannon is at war with Trump. I have
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this kind of conspiracy theory that he is working behind the scenes and talking to Donald and is like,
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I got your back, bro. And he really is doing these things that he thinks maybe are helping Donald
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Trump. I think that Bannon might be winning this game, though, because as we saw in the Alabama
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primary or the Alabama race down there, it ended up being Bannon's guy that won, not Trump's guy.
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And I think that Trump would like to blame Mitch McConnell for that. I don't know if he's going to
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end up coming out on top with that argument. But I think that Bannon is apparently recruiting
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candidates across the country to pursue and push forward legislation and agendas that Bannon thinks
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are what Trump should be doing that he isn't doing anymore. And that's how Bannon positioned his exit
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from the White House. He said, I'm not being fired. I was always going to leave. I can help Trump a lot
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more from the outside than I can on the inside. Maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. Amber, is Bannon just
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trying to position himself in the best possible light, trying to make himself seem like a player here?
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I think that's what Ben Shapiro suggested earlier today. Or is he acting on behalf of the White House,
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like Alicia thinks? I think it's a little bit of both. I think Alicia is right that Bannon is
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probably of the mindset that he's helping Trump by opposing these supposedly anti-Trump candidates.
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But at the same time, I don't think he really has as much power as he lets on. When you look at the
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Alabama race, Roy Moore was already really, really popular and slated to win that race. So I'm not sure
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how much of an effect Bannon really had there. And if you consider the fact that he thinks that
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being at Breitbart gives him a lot of power, that would mean that places like the Daily Caller and
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the Daily Wire would also be able to, you know, shape electoral races. And I'm just not sure that
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that's really the case. Oh, I feel no offense to us. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of feel like I can
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zap lightning out of my fingers or something. But maybe that's just a difference of reaction.
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Amanda, Trump has been saying very nice things about Mitch McConnell, regardless of the
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Bannon dynamics, regardless of whether they're working in collusion. He's been saying nice
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things about like one of the most detested Republicans in the country. Pigs are flying
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on a cold day in hell. How long will the bromance last?
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As long as it's beneficial to Trump. I mean, he can turn on McConnell at the drop of the hat. So
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it's Trump knows how to play this game better than anyone. If you think it's beneficial to,
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you know, cozy up to McConnell and have that presser where they're all buddy, buddy, then he'll do it.
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And then the second he wants to put the blame back on McConnell, he will. And we've seen that before.
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So it's just whatever is beneficial to Trump, he'll spin it in a way that, um, you know, it's,
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you know, McConnell's good or bad, you know, it's whatever he is, it's beneficial to him.
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People are knocking him because they say he has a tough relationship with the truth. You know,
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he says one thing one day, says one thing the next. I actually really like it. I do think the New
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Yorker thing is, is it play with my read on that? Because that is just how New Yorkers talk.
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They'll come out, they'll say, Oh yeah, I love this guy. He's like a brother to me. Yeah. He's,
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he's, he's doing the great work out there in the back. Yeah. And then the next, you know,
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the next day, if he, if, if McConnell stabs Trump in the back, he'll say, he's a total loser. I hate
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his guts and who cares? You know, there's like, then he'll come back around his, um, I don't say
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dishonesty, but his relationship with the truth. I think it's sort of guileless here. He's very,
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you know, that Donald Trump is going to do this. You know, the minute McConnell turns on him,
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it's going to be no holds barred. Yeah. And, and, and it, and it helps him kind of push whatever he
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wants forward. Cause they know that he's, you know, Oh, I'm in his good graces. No for this second.
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So they know that they're going to be held accountable. Um, and then he kind of, you know,
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strings them along that way. Gotta love it. It's that, that's that. I think I compared him to
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Metternich earlier in the show that that's the, I don't know if future historians will
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recognize the political genius of Donald Trump, but they probably should. He's, he's actually been
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working at a much higher level than I think a lot of people gave him credit for. Okay. We've got a
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lot more news to get to. We, we have to get to the war on Halloween before the war on Christmas.
00:14:50.020
There's now a war on Halloween. There is so much to talk about, but if you don't subscribe to the
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daily wire, you can't see the rest of it. We appreciate all the current subscribers. You're helping keep
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the lights on. You're helping keep a covfefe in my, in my tumbler. But, uh, for the rest of you go
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over there right now, you'll get me, you'll get the Andrew Klavan show. You'll get the Ben Shapiro
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show. All that, it's just $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership. But I know you're thinking,
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I don't know, that's a lot of shows who cares, whatever. But look at this guys, look at this,
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the leftist tears tumbler filled to the brim with covfefe right now. This is the finest mechanism
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for drinking tasty leftist tears in the country. This, the vintage we've prepared here, um, is
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actually from South Korea. It's from Seoul after Hillary Clinton's speech. Obviously it's not a
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limited run because Hillary Clinton has been spouting salty leftist tears for nine months now and, and
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really for the better part of 30 years. But, uh, you can have, that vintage can be yours. If you go to
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thedailywire.com right now, we'll be right back. An Englishman who has spent 40 years as an active
00:16:02.800
member of a white supremacist movement has announced that he is a gay Jew and he's retiring
00:16:08.140
from neo-Nazism. Alicia, we're talking about a Jewish neo-Nazi here. Um, do, do we have a clip of
00:16:15.360
this guy? Were you thinking of your mom? No, no. But why not? Because, because that, that term
00:16:23.820
the Jews is, you're presenting a global faceless mass of people that, you know, you can't personalize
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it. You can't see an individual there. That's not even your mom. No. And that's the sort of
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generalization that results in six million people being deliberately murdered. We've heard this term
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Jewish neo-Nazi before. That's what all the crazy campus lefties call Ben every time he shows up
00:16:47.980
there. Um, this guy, it's a really interesting interview. He explains that he joined the neo-Nazis
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and the white nationalists and all that because he was a loner, basically. He didn't have any friends.
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He didn't have anything to do. Do you think, I don't want to get into too much psychobabble. Yeah. Do you,
00:17:03.540
do you think that explains some of these alt-right guys too? I'm not talking about the Pepe people who
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are mischievous. I'm talking about the real racist, uh, neo-Nazi types, Richard Spencer.
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Does that, uh, social ostracism explain their, uh, political actions? I, maybe potentially. I think
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this also ties into the hashtag MeToo campaign. Bear with me for a moment. I think Matt Walsh and Ben
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Shapiro pointed out really good points that when society doesn't have a standard that's set of like
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what real men need to do and then manliness in general by many in the leftist feminist movement
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is kind of poo-pooed on and looked down on. Then unfortunately, sometimes you have men that
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look to the wrong types of groups to create those friendships and those standards of decency that
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are like really bad and shouldn't be followed. And then once they become a part of that group,
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they adhere to all those ideas because they don't want to lose their circle of friends.
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Um, on a very extreme level, we've seen this with ISIS and how ISIS targets young men,
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specifically on Twitter and in educational, you know, places and in some radical mosques around
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the world. And I think that it kind of makes sense that the KKK and these neo-Nazi groups
00:18:10.560
would be recruiting people and members in the same way. But I mean, his interview was really
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impactful. And a friend of the program, Bethany Mandel, has pointed out that when you target those
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people in a good way and befriend them and show them the face of women, Christians, Jews,
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gay people, black people, they have a really hard time then just identifying hatred toward the entire
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group because they've gotten to know you as an individual. Of course. I love that dynamic there,
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the individual versus these collective group identities. And yeah, I think that's certainly
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the case. Even with the Me Too comparison, there is not in the culture an ideal of what masculinity
00:18:51.120
should look like, of what manliness should look like. I think it's the same with these neo-Nazi
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types. They say they're defending Western civilization, but they don't really understand
00:19:03.540
Or adhere to those values. So they say, we want to protect Christendom, but we want nothing to do
00:19:09.240
Absolutely. Excellent analogy. Amber, lefties call anybody on the right racist, fascist, neo-Nazi,
00:19:16.680
whatever they have. They accuse us of hate, just as they would accuse David Duke of hate
00:19:21.880
or Richard Spencer. How do we make sure that we don't wake up someday, or woke up probably
00:19:27.700
is more like it, and disavow all of the views that we hold right now? How do we know that
00:19:32.140
we're not as crazy and awful as they say that we are?
00:19:37.640
Well, part of the reason why we're not going to wake up one day and disavow all of our views
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is because, for one, our views are rooted in truth, are not hateful, bigoted views, as
00:19:48.540
the left would have us believe. So we kind of have an advantage over the people who are
00:19:51.440
actually neo-Nazis, because we are grounded in some kind of truth and value.
00:19:55.900
But don't you think that these neo-Nazi guys think that their racial theories are rooted
00:20:03.220
in truth? And we have other theories that we ground our political views in. How do we know
00:20:09.060
that we have the right ones? How do we know that we have the true ones?
00:20:17.400
You know, I think it shows why it's so important to be really careful about how we label people
00:20:23.280
and how we collectivize people, because if we're going by that standard, then anyone could be a
00:20:30.400
Nazi. Anyone could be a neo-Nazi. Anybody could be hateful. We could easily turn that term around
00:20:35.280
on the left and accuse them of being neo-Nazis. And if they defend it, you can just say, well,
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of course you don't think you are, because you don't want to, you know.
00:20:44.140
You don't want to face the facts. Yeah, absolutely.
00:20:46.400
So it's really dangerous. Right. Yeah, exactly. So it just shows how important language is and how
00:20:51.220
people will, if you overuse terms, they start to lose their meaning and they start to lose their
00:20:58.180
And we easily could turn that term around on them. I mean, a lot of the premises that are shared by
00:21:03.180
these far, fringy, extremist racial groups, neo-Nazis or whatever, are premises that are
00:21:09.980
indulged in by the left, that racial group identity is what defines a person rather than a person's soul
00:21:17.460
and equality before God and individuality. By the way, I think that's why we're not going to woke up
00:21:22.560
someday and realize that really we should have been, you know, lefty social justice warriors is
00:21:28.940
because their premises are similarly wrong to those neo-Nazi premises. And as Alicia suggested,
00:21:36.880
you know, we're the ones who are saying, look at the individual, judge the individual. You know,
00:21:41.560
we're all created in God's image and we have to live out those ideas that have been, that have caused
00:21:47.580
the West and that have been developed in the West.
00:21:49.960
But part of these problems, I mean, not to get too theological here, but going back to-
00:21:53.440
Oh, get too theological. We're delving into Shiite Catholicism on this show, so please bring it up.
00:21:57.960
We are, you know, created in the image of God and that's where our belief in natural law starts and
00:22:02.600
the equality of man starts. But unfortunately in our culture, leftists have distanced God from the
00:22:09.080
involvement of human importance, right? Or human value, especially. I mean, look at what they do to
00:22:15.520
babies in utero. And so therefore that individualism isn't important to them because they do like the
00:22:22.440
group think of you, you are this and this group is more important than this because it's more
00:22:26.880
politically appropriate or it can be a political use to them and a tool to them at that time.
00:22:31.800
And it started years and years ago with the growth of, you know, progressivism and that movement away
00:22:37.160
from where does natural law come from? And the belief in our founders that, you know, this has to come
00:22:41.740
from God and this is where this right came from. And it's not being taught to kids today. I mean,
00:22:46.360
I was hashtag homeschooled all 12 years, but I've even talked to fellow homeschoolers and other
00:22:51.340
millennials. I'm a grandma millennial. You're on the younger millennial age. I'm like 31 over here.
00:22:56.680
But, you know, so I'm a few years older than you. It isn't taught to an entire swath of Americans and it
00:23:05.040
hasn't been for 20 plus years. So really, I think in order to not wake up one day and to answer your
00:23:11.300
question a little bit, we have to start training people of where those rights come from and what,
00:23:15.700
what, you know, America really stands for. And that's, that's where it begins. It doesn't begin
00:23:19.800
when you're donating to politicians. It begins a lot earlier than that. And it's how the left has
00:23:24.680
gained so much ground. Amanda, this guy was a member of the National Front. It's a very fringy,
00:23:30.220
far right UK political party. It doesn't have any seats in parliament or anything. It's fascistic.
00:23:36.840
It's nationalistic. Is there any fear for us that good old red, white, and blue American nationalism,
00:23:43.640
American patriotism, that it will morph into a grotesque like national front racial populism?
00:23:52.000
I mean, there's always the threat of that, I suppose. I mean, we've seen it, you know,
00:23:56.740
it's basically reactionary, right? Like we've seen this during the 2016 election where we had the rise
00:24:01.500
of the alt-right, maybe a couple years before that, because the left, as they keep moving left,
00:24:05.740
they perpetuate this groupthink, identity politics, they keep moving that way. And then plus on top of
00:24:11.840
that, they call their opponents, you know, racists and bigots and homophobes and all this and that.
00:24:18.200
You kind of have this reaction to kind of, you know, kind of fill into that same identity politics
00:24:24.540
thinking and then kind of fulfilling that prophecy that they called you. So sure, there's definitely
00:24:30.120
a threat of that happening. And like I said, we kind of have like this very small minority
00:24:35.360
of actual potent white supremacists, because again, the alt-right's not actually all white
00:24:40.620
supremacists. Right. It's a very, very small, but I'm just saying as the left keeps pushing left and
00:24:47.820
they keep playing up this identity politics, sure, you can see a reaction. And then also, I mean,
00:24:54.660
I don't know how PC this is, but I think, you know, a mixing of demographics as we keep getting more
00:24:59.480
mixed and there's no assimilation. That's the key part. When they're not adopting American values,
00:25:04.720
you're going to have some conflict, unfortunately. So I think assimilation is huge too. That can kind
00:25:09.520
of, you know, push this, this alt-right movement a little, you know, give it more prominence.
00:25:14.220
Got to turn up that temperature in that melting pot. Got to make it all melt a little,
00:25:17.720
a little faster, make a big, delicious American goop, a nice fondue. A nice American fondue is what I
00:25:23.720
want. An elementary school in Massachusetts has canceled Halloween. They have canceled Halloween
00:25:29.140
for not being, quote, inclusive enough. In its place, they will now hold black and orange spirit
00:25:35.500
day. Amber, is this why Trump won? Is this story the reason Donald Trump won the presidency?
00:25:42.300
Yeah, actually, yes. This is the exact story. Yeah, actually it is, because this is just another
00:25:48.640
example of how people think it's more important to not offend other sense of other people's
00:25:53.500
sensibilities than it is to, I don't know, have fun or even just promote truth. You know, I think
00:25:59.160
this black and orange day sounds a little bit racist, you know, throwing a term black around
00:26:03.580
like that. What's that about? And orange against people of El Presidente's dissent.
00:26:08.380
Exactly. But this happens all the time. Google actually was being called out, I think it was
00:26:14.640
yesterday because they added this part to Google Maps where if you click on a route, they tell
00:26:20.720
you how many calories you could burn if you walk the route instead of driving. And then
00:26:25.600
it's like, oh, well, if you could burn 300 calories, that's three mini cupcakes. And people got really
00:26:30.880
offended by that and were really triggered by it and like forced them to remove this. So apparently
00:26:37.120
offending people is or not offending people is more important than, I don't know, combating
00:26:42.740
the obesity epidemic in the United States. Amber, as a gavone myself, I am deeply triggered
00:26:47.960
by that. I don't want to know how many calories. Now I'm just, now all I can think about is
00:26:51.580
cupcakes. The story, this Halloween story, it gets to my central theory of the left, that
00:26:57.120
the left, what it really wants is the hollow shell, the husk of an institution, of a great
00:27:03.180
institution, but not the animating principle of it, not all the stuff that's inside. So they
00:27:07.960
drink decaf coffee. They get fancy university degrees without a university education that
00:27:12.980
you see it in a lot of churches. I actually thought about this in Westminster. It has the
00:27:17.180
husk, the Anglican church, the husk of a liturgy and traditional church, but it's gotten watered
00:27:24.400
down in a lot of its principles and its dogma. So, you know, it's been much like my dear alma
00:27:30.240
mater Yale has been invaded by the left and hollowed out because of it. Is black and orange
00:27:37.040
day, Alicia, is it actually different than Halloween? What is the difference here? If
00:27:41.560
you change those words, what, what changes? I actually read this piece and I was like,
00:27:46.400
wait a second, is, is this any different than Halloween? They will take my daughter's elementary
00:27:51.780
school Halloween from like parade from me with in my cold dead hands. Like I am all for
00:27:56.740
the full family Halloween costumes. You're amazing at Halloween costumes. Seriously,
00:28:00.340
if you like Halloween, get married and have kids and then you can enjoy it forever. Like
00:28:04.680
it is amazing. But I don't know how different it is. And it's so funny because in their effort
00:28:11.000
to not offend anyone, I think that they are really offending more people. I mean, Halloween
00:28:16.440
is like a pagan holiday. Growing up in the Bible Belt of America, like we couldn't celebrate
00:28:21.740
Halloween. We had to dress up as Bible character. So they do. I've heard they do this thing
00:28:26.040
called a hell house where you go and you get scared by sin. So there's actually people
00:28:31.620
like that they're, they're now, they're trying to appease the leftist, like politically correct
00:28:36.740
people, but they're probably like unknowingly appeasing a lot of Southern Baptists somewhere
00:28:41.780
in the country. It's going to have the opposite effect that they intended. Tell them that and
00:28:45.740
they will immediately reinstate Halloween. It will be a matter of minutes. Amanda, the reason
00:28:51.440
they canceled Halloween allegedly is because Halloween is not inclusive enough. You know,
00:28:57.880
the, the holiday where you dress up like whatever you want and get a candy corn. What is meant
00:29:03.660
by inclusion by these school administrators? Yeah. I'm so mad you asked me this cause I had
00:29:09.820
the same question when I was reading the piece. Like I really had no idea. I was like, how, how
00:29:15.180
you can dress as anything you want. Um, I don't know. Honestly, this is kind of like info war Z,
00:29:21.960
but I don't know. This is the conspiracy central baby. Bring it to us. I don't know. Maybe there's
00:29:28.000
like some religious, I don't know, somebody complaining. So they want to like preemptively
00:29:33.900
stop everything. And it's probably not a Christian family. I don't know. I mean, who knows? I mean,
00:29:38.100
I mean, everyone's terrified of, you know, everything these days. So perhaps I just wanted to,
00:29:42.780
you know, preemptively appease, um, people who are not going to celebrate Halloween. And I don't
00:29:48.800
think it's the Christians that they're looking out for. So I don't know. Maybe that's the good
00:29:52.620
unintended consequence of this. It's like, put the Christ back in Christmas. It's put the
00:29:56.460
hallows back in Halloween, put the saints back in it. I don't know. That's a, I'm always trying to
00:30:01.340
look on the bright side of these things. Yeah. Actually, I don't like Halloween. Like I'm that old. I'm
00:30:06.280
like a, you know, inside, I'm like a 75 year old Southern, uh, like Baptist, like preacher. Like I,
00:30:11.360
I hate it. I'm like, Oh no, like, I don't want to do this. I want like, can we just be on the all
00:30:16.260
nice and like sing church hymns? Like, I don't, I don't like it actually. That is so beautiful.
00:30:19.820
Cause Amanda, you do have a reputation in your, in your writing of being a little, you know,
00:30:25.140
on occasion curmudgeonly. I do love the idea of like a little trick or treat or knocking on your
00:30:29.800
door. You just rip the candy from them, have everybody sing like hymns. And that's beautiful.
00:30:34.080
That's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Yeah. Just all for the greater good. Very Christian.
00:30:37.380
You're probably saving their souls. Moving on. Senator Rand Paul has recently slammed John
00:30:43.140
McCain and Lindsey Graham. I know you're shocked. He slammed them for parading as conservatives.
00:30:48.460
Senator Paul tweeted, Senators McCain and Graham are torpedoing the budget by insisting on busting
00:30:54.260
the budget caps for more spending. Amanda, does Rand Paul have any credibility here? He has been
00:31:00.080
torpedoing conservative legislation all year, except that he's doing it from a libertarian perspective
00:31:09.740
I gotta, I gotta go with Rand Paul here. He's, he's the only one who somewhat sticks to
00:31:14.400
conservative libertarian, libertarian values. And yes, he's been kind of a thorn in the side
00:31:19.800
of president Trump. But as we just saw with the healthcare thing, he's, you know, he helps
00:31:23.900
with that executive order to, to allow more, you know, to get rid of our regulations. So I think,
00:31:29.620
I mean, I don't want to sound like a shill for, for Rand Paul here, but I feel like he's actually
00:31:34.440
trying to push something semi-libertarian, semi-conservative because, because my goodness,
00:31:40.040
I mean, McCain and Graham, I mean, they're, you know, they're all the way on the left. So I kind
00:31:44.780
of think that he does have some credibility just because every now and then he'll stick to his
00:31:49.660
I will say I've been hitting Rand Paul a lot in the last few weeks because he's been
00:31:54.320
completely useless in the Senate recently, but he is on the side of fiscal responsibility here.
00:31:59.820
He, he's, he's brought up a term that people have, have not been discussing. Even conservatives
00:32:05.840
haven't been discussing all year, which is federal spending, which is the national debt,
00:32:10.200
which is debt to GDP. Um, Amber, do you think that in this age of cultural battles,
00:32:15.420
which is clearly what we're in, it's clearly what we elected Donald Trump to do,
00:32:20.040
can debt to GDP ratios still excite conservatives?
00:32:23.480
Gosh, I really hope so. Um, I'm reminded of the days back from like 2008 to 2012 where the tea party
00:32:31.660
was really popular and they were all about bringing down the national debt. And even if this isn't
00:32:37.860
something that's super popular among maybe Donald Trump's base, there are still conservatives in
00:32:42.560
Congress who care about this. We saw this in all of these debates about the, um, disaster relief bills
00:32:48.620
just yesterday. Um, a bunch of conservatives voted against a bill that would help Puerto Rico
00:32:53.460
because they were upset that a lot of the spending, um, wasn't going to, um, straight disaster
00:32:59.580
relief. I think, um, Mark Meadows was among those Jim Jordan. So it's still something that they talk
00:33:05.300
about. It's not as, uh, to the front of the conversation as it used to be, but I think, um,
00:33:11.220
President Trump would be really smart to get on board with lowering the national debt because he loves
00:33:15.880
to talk about GDP growth. And as we all know, a $20 trillion national debt is not going to, um,
00:33:22.900
be super useful for growing the economy. When you have something like 90% debt to GDP or approach,
00:33:28.240
you know, approaching a hundred percent debt to GDP, that is a drag on the economy. It would be
00:33:32.420
nice if they did that. Back to McCain, Alicia, John McCain has malignant brain cancer. It's unlikely
00:33:38.640
that he will be around this time next year, but this guy is going to go down swinging. He's going to
00:33:44.840
swing against his political opponents. He's going to probably swing against his own brain cancer.
00:33:49.100
You gotta, even if you don't agree with McCain on a lot of things as I don't, you do kind of have to
00:33:54.640
admire that spirit. I mean, this guy is piss and vinegar pretty much till the end. Do you, uh,
00:34:01.840
do you think that conservatives knowing that John McCain is not long for this world, can we in good
00:34:08.140
taste fight back against his terrible legislative goals? Um, well, one, I hope that he does fight this
00:34:15.120
and win. I mean, he is the maverick and I think that that would have been something that they should
00:34:18.760
have, uh, pushed a little more back in 2008 when he was running against then Senator Barack Obama.
00:34:23.460
I think that there were a lot of pros of McCain's character and past experience that they, the, you
00:34:29.400
know, people that were working on the campaign didn't work on enough. Um, and I think that there's
00:34:33.260
still members of the GOP in the Senate that can go to the Senator and, and they can work together.
00:34:40.260
I really don't think that he wants to go down destroying his side of the aisle. I don't think
00:34:46.480
that at all, but I think, um, it could be interesting to see what happens. And listen,
00:34:51.720
I mean, Rand Paul has been as divisive to goals of the GOP as John McCain and Lindsey Graham have.
00:34:57.980
So, uh, I think that there just tends to be a lot of attention on Senator McCain because of where he
00:35:05.180
is in his life and the, and the specific things he said about the president that maybe Rand Paul isn't
00:35:09.180
saying. Right. And I hope, you know, John McCain, he's a mixed bag to conservatives. He's been
00:35:14.300
a rhino for a long time, but he also has been a Republican fighter before he ran for president in
00:35:20.480
2000. He was pretty reliably on the right, voted pretty reliably with Republicans. It would be nice
00:35:26.060
if in this, uh, last part of his career, if he would, uh, come back and help us out and, and affect
00:35:32.560
some policy rather than just run down Trump's agenda. But I don't know. I don't think he watches my
00:35:36.860
show. We should make him. There are some things to be fair. There are some things in Trump's agenda
00:35:41.300
that ain't so conservative. And so, uh, you know, if, if, if, if McCain is going to run down the parts
00:35:46.940
of Trump's agenda that aren't conservative, then I am all for him in that way. Sure. Sure. But we hope,
00:35:51.860
we, we just hope that, uh, something like Obamacare repeal or something that should be a
00:35:56.900
no brainer, you know, that he'll, he'll come around on it, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
00:36:01.380
That's our show today. Panel, thank you for being here. Amber Athie from the Daily Caller,
00:36:06.060
Amanda Prestigiacomo from the Daily Wire, and first timer, our old pal, Alicia Krause. Can't
00:36:11.060
wait to have you all back. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Be sure to check
00:36:15.720
out, uh, my new podcast with Andrew Klavan. It's narrative fiction. Hollywood is falling apart and
00:36:21.920
we are, uh, pulling up some, uh, culture hopefully and some art from the conservative side. It's called
00:36:27.760
Another Kingdom. Check it out on iTunes and on Ricochet. And, uh, then also get your mailbag
00:36:33.540
questions in for tomorrow and we will answer all of the questions that you have for the entire
00:36:39.280
rest of your life. So get it in. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. We'll see you tomorrow.