Ep. 433 - Are Democrats Finally Moderating？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
183.57301
Summary
Debut episode of The Michael Knowles Show. Democrats open rhetorical fire on Liz Warren at last night s presidential primary debate, which clashed with Beto O'Rourke s promise to confiscate or rather mandatorily buy back every gun in America. But as Biden crumbles, a couple candidates try their hand at moderation. Then a new poll shows Democrats are clamoring for a candidate who isn t even running yet, impeachment falls apart, and we celebrate International Pronouns Day.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Democrats open rhetorical fire on Liz Warren at last night's presidential primary debate,
00:00:05.420
which clashed with Beto O'Rourke's promise to confiscate or rather mandatorily buy back
00:00:12.740
every gun in America. But as Biden crumbles, a couple candidates try their hand at moderation.
00:00:19.360
We will examine the winners and losers. Then a new poll shows Democrats are clamoring for a
00:00:24.960
candidate who isn't even running yet. Impeachment falls apart and we celebrate International
00:00:32.520
Pronouns Day. Yes, we do. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:44.880
For the record on this International Pronouns Day, our preferred pronouns are we, us, and our.
00:00:51.960
However, Matt Walsh taught us this because we realized that when everyone refers to us as us,
00:00:59.220
then nobody can ever disagree with us because we are one. And that is our pronoun. We have got to
00:01:06.860
get to this Democratic presidential debate. It was a surprisingly interesting one, not really on the
00:01:12.360
surface. On the surface, it was kind of the same petty sniping as always. But the central feature
00:01:19.600
of this debate was the crumbling of the Biden campaign and a number of people leaping to try
00:01:24.240
to catch that moderate or more moderate lane. We will examine if anyone can do it and if there's
00:01:30.120
even such thing as a moderate in the 2020 Democratic primary. But first, I've got to thank our friends
00:01:34.940
over at Ancestry. I love Ancestry. I've been a customer of Ancestry for long before the Daily Wire
00:01:42.580
existed. You can discover more about your ancestors. You can learn more about your story
00:01:47.360
by combining the Ancestry DNA test with billions of historical family records. So I did the test.
00:01:53.820
That's where you spit in a tube, send it in, and they tell you so much about where your family comes
00:01:58.300
from. But it's not just the places where they come from. Ancestry connects you to the places in
00:02:03.060
the world where your story started using precise geographic detail and then clear-cut historical insights.
00:02:08.220
And you can actually trace your ancestors' journeys over time. And you can follow how and why they
00:02:13.500
moved from place to place. Then you can combine it with Ancestry's incredible documents, incredible
00:02:19.380
amount of records. So you can really find out who's in your family tree. I love this. My grandfather
00:02:25.260
spent years researching genealogy. And you get to find out so many cool things about you. I found out
00:02:30.820
John and Simon Knowles fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And John died of his wounds there. And Simon
00:02:36.540
went on and fought with George Washington. Went to Valley Forge with George Washington. Fought through
00:02:41.480
the whole Revolutionary War. I found all that sort of stuff out. I have it in a family tree
00:02:45.320
on Ancestry. I found out I've got four ancestors from the Mayflower. One of them a pilgrim. The rest
00:02:50.980
kind of a little bit derelict. One of them was John Billington, who was the first guy executed for
00:02:54.840
murder in the New World. All right? Not every record is going to be flattering about your family,
00:02:59.440
but the story will be incredibly interesting. To amplify your results, you start a free trial on
00:03:06.080
Ancestry. You build a family tree, and your ancestors become more than just a name. You've got
00:03:10.540
more than 100 million family trees, billions of records to give you more insight into your genealogy
00:03:15.860
and origins. Only Ancestry can tell such a rich story. All the events that shaped your family,
00:03:22.300
how they made a living, and it's so easy to get started. I love it. You can love it as well. Go to
00:03:28.520
Ancestry.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Do it today for 20% off your Ancestry DNA kit. That is
00:03:35.980
Ancestry.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S for 20% off your Ancestry DNA kit. This is great for history
00:03:42.520
buffs. This is great for people who just love their country, love their family, want to figure out
00:03:47.320
more about who they are. Ancestry.com slash Knowles. The Democratic Party is trying to figure
00:03:54.780
out who it is during these presidential primary debates. The big clips, the big highlights that
00:04:01.100
you see, we'll go through some of them. It's all the sniping, Amy Klobuchar and Liz Warren,
00:04:06.840
and Kamala Harris gets some shots in there at Liz Warren. A lot of people going after Liz Warren.
00:04:11.400
Then you got Buttigieg and Beto going after each other, and that's all very interesting.
00:04:15.200
The central fact of the debate is that Biden is falling apart. His polling is collapsing.
00:04:23.440
His ability to stand on stage is collapsing. Bernie Sanders had a heart attack a week and a half ago.
00:04:29.320
He seemed much, much more lucid and vibrant and energetic than Joe Biden did. And to our knowledge,
00:04:36.300
Joe Biden hasn't had any heart attacks. This was all about Joe Biden. He just, he was saying things
00:04:41.260
that didn't make a lot of sense. He was kind of losing his train of thought. He was,
00:04:45.200
pushing different analogies together. It just didn't inspire confidence that this is the guy.
00:04:51.520
At one point, Biden was explaining his economic plans and he said he was going to, he was going
00:04:56.400
to stop people from clipping coupons in the stock market.
00:05:00.440
What I talked about is how you get things done. And the way to get things done is take a look at
00:05:05.620
the tax code right now. The idea we have to start rewarding work, not just wealth. I would eliminate
00:05:11.840
the capital gains tax that in, I would, I would raise the capital gains tax to the highest rate
00:05:17.480
of 39.5%. I would double it because guess what? Why in God's name should someone who's clipping
00:05:23.040
coupons in the stock market make, in fact, pay a lower tax rate than someone who in fact is,
00:05:29.080
like I said, a school teacher and a firepower. It's ridiculous. And they pay a lower tax.
00:05:33.800
So none of that is true. Nothing he said even comes close to approaching truth to be, I don't
00:05:41.120
even know how you judge the truth value of the statement clipping coupons in the stock market
00:05:47.220
because people do not clip coupons in this. I guess they would be really, just really good frugal
00:05:54.040
stockbrokers if they clipped, like if there were some coupon to get a better price on some,
00:06:00.180
some portion of a company. It doesn't make any sense. I think what he was trying to say
00:06:04.060
is people gambling in the stock market. That's, that's a frequent analogy you hear from the left
00:06:08.700
and that it's unfair that people who are gambling are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.
00:06:14.620
This is a line Warren Buffett's used this line. It just isn't true. It is not true at all. Where
00:06:20.620
does it come from? It's because the capital gains tax rate is lower than the income tax rate
00:06:25.840
for some people. Actually eat for people who, you know, if you're talking about your secretary,
00:06:32.160
you're talking about the, you know, the janitor is paying more, a higher tax rate than the,
00:06:37.240
the stock broker or the hedge fund manager. Uh, that perhaps isn't, isn't true anyway,
00:06:43.480
even on the income tax rate. But what happens is for a lot of people who work in finance,
00:06:48.000
they get a salary, but then they get most of their money as a bonus. Or in, when you're talking
00:06:53.780
about the millionaire billionaire class, they're paying capital gains on the, uh, they're paying
00:07:00.300
capital gains taxes on their investment income. So you're not even talking about bonuses. You're
00:07:03.920
not talking about income. You're just talking about money that's in the market, that's in
00:07:07.100
investments. And then the money that you make out of those investments, you pay a lower tax rate.
00:07:12.780
Even on that, that is money that has already been taxed at the corporate level. So even that
00:07:18.560
argument is not true, but what the way this gets, uh, interpreted is that billionaires are paying
00:07:26.920
less money in taxes than their secretaries. That is never true. That's not even close to true.
00:07:31.560
The wealthy in this country pay virtually all of the taxes. The top 10% pay the vast majority of taxes
00:07:38.500
in this country. The top 1% pay a lion's share of taxes in this country. I mean,
00:07:43.480
half of the country doesn't pay any taxes at all in terms of federal income taxes.
00:07:49.120
So this whole argument is bogus. The problem with Biden is not that he's making a bogus argument.
00:07:54.020
Everybody was up there. It's that he wasn't even making the argument well, and he was confusing his
00:07:58.520
words. And then here's the knockout punch. They brought up Ukraine. Anderson Cooper brings up Ukraine
00:08:04.720
and Joe Biden incredibly lies on camera again and says he never discussed Ukraine with his son.
00:08:10.140
Mr. Vice President, as you said, your son Hunter today gave an interview, admitted that he made a
00:08:15.680
mistake and showed poor judgment by serving on the board in Ukraine. Did you make a mistake by
00:08:21.740
letting him? You were the point person on Ukraine at the time. If you can answer.
00:08:26.000
Look, my son's statement speaks for itself. I did my job. I never discussed a single thing with my son
00:08:32.260
about anything having to do with Ukraine. No one has indicated I have. We've always kept everything
00:08:37.280
separate. Even when my son was the attorney general of the state of Delaware, we've never
00:08:40.920
discussed anything. So there'd be no potential conflict. Okay. There's a lot of confusion here.
00:08:45.760
First of all, he says he's doubling down on a statement that he made that no one has ever
00:08:50.420
suggested that Joe Biden talked with Ukraine or talked with his son about Ukraine. And there's no
00:08:57.860
evidence of that at all. The trouble is someone has suggested that the person who suggested that
00:09:02.980
was Hunter Biden in a New Yorker profile in July. And he actually reiterated that statement on Good
00:09:09.520
Morning America on ABC News two days ago. Did you and your father ever discuss Ukraine? No.
00:09:16.720
As I said, the only time was after a news account. It wasn't a discussion in any way. There's no but to
00:09:22.640
this. No, we never did. What? Hold on. Hold on. You say, did you ever discuss Ukraine? He goes,
00:09:29.480
no. Just one time. There was one time we did. Oh, shoot. They told me not to say that.
00:09:35.000
No, there's no but. We didn't. It wasn't even a discussion. Sure. We, I said something. He said
00:09:39.000
something. We were talking about it, but that's not, I wouldn't call that a discussion. It was more
00:09:42.800
of a discourse. It was more of a colloquy. It was, um, next question, please pass. Next question.
00:09:49.100
Joe Biden, even in his answer, by the way, he says, we never talked about Ukraine. Uh, even when my son
00:09:54.820
was the attorney general of Delaware, that's not the son we're talking about, Joe, his son, Beau
00:10:00.460
Biden, his late son, Beau Biden was the attorney general of Delaware. The son who was on the
00:10:04.620
Ukrainian energy board was Hunter Biden. And Hunter Biden says he did talk about it. And Hunter Biden
00:10:09.040
goes on because good morning America to their credit actually pushed him on it. They said, hold on,
00:10:12.240
you're saying you didn't talk about it. Then you're saying you did talk about it. By the way,
00:10:15.000
what were you doing on the board in the first place? Your dad said, I hope you know what you're
00:10:18.100
doing. I hope you know what you're doing. I do. And I said, I do. And that was literally the end of our
00:10:22.300
discussion. Why? Because my dad was vice president of the United States. There's literally nothing as
00:10:26.940
a young man or as a full grown adult that, um, uh, my father in some way hasn't had influence over
00:10:34.920
as it does not serve either one of us. When he said, I hope you know what you're doing.
00:10:38.940
What did he think you were doing? Well, he read the press reports that I joined the board of Burisma,
00:10:43.420
which was a Ukrainian natural gas company. And there's been a, a lot of misinformation about me,
00:10:50.840
not about my dad. Nobody buys that, but it buys this idea that I was unqualified to be on the
00:10:55.540
board. What were your qualifications to be on the board of Burisma? Well, I was vice chairman of the
00:10:59.540
board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Program. I was a
00:11:05.080
lawyer for Boies, Schiller, Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. You didn't
00:11:10.260
have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself though? Uh, no, but I think that I
00:11:16.920
had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board, if not more. Yeah, this is,
00:11:21.860
this is not going well for Hunter Biden because he's right. He probably didn't have any less
00:11:26.740
knowledge than anyone else on the board. This is a crooked board. That's what generally that's
00:11:30.340
what boards are. Certainly in oligarchic countries like Ukraine when, and corrupt countries like
00:11:35.900
Ukraine, they say, what previous experience did you have? What qualified you to be on the board of
00:11:39.420
this Ukrainian energy company while you're, while your father was vice president? He goes, well,
00:11:42.740
I was on the board of Amtrak. You know, that other company that has a relationship to the federal
00:11:47.680
government that my father famously travels on so much that they call him Amtrak Joe. Yeah,
00:11:52.360
I was on that. So what are you calling me a nepotistic crook for? Yeah. And before that,
00:11:55.660
I was on another board and Hey, look there, I did have one real job. I worked for Boyd Schiller,
00:11:59.680
which is maybe the most famous democratic lobbying law firm in the country. Okay. All right. Doesn't
00:12:06.240
acquit himself very well here. So Biden collapses on stage in real time, two ways to respond to this for
00:12:12.420
the democratic party and for the candidates. They can either remain hardline progressives or
00:12:17.420
they can try to take Bernie or Biden's place in the moderate lane because that moderate lane now is
00:12:23.720
falling apart. So there is an opening here. I was wondering, I thought why on earth was the LGBTQ
00:12:30.520
town hall on Friday? What was the purpose of this? And then it occurred to me, people were tweeting about
00:12:35.000
this. They had that LGBTQ crazy town, town hall on Friday because then it allowed the Democrats to
00:12:43.680
look more moderate at this debate just a week later, less than a week later while not having to discuss
00:12:50.920
any of the LGBT issues and the pronouns and the genders. So there was a real opening. And I think
00:12:56.000
the democratic party tried to, uh, tried to make sure it looked this way an opening for a moderate.
00:13:02.780
Now, some candidates can't take that. Bernie Sanders is never going to be a moderate.
00:13:06.240
He went full bore leftist last night. He said on the leftist issue par excellence, climate change,
00:13:12.720
he said it's the greatest threat that the planet has ever faced.
00:13:15.740
This planet faces the greatest threat in its history from climate change. And the green new deal
00:13:23.820
that I have advocated will create up to 20 million jobs. As we move away from fossil fuel,
00:13:35.040
All right. The weather, which may or may not increase in temperature slightly a little bit
00:13:39.200
over the next century, is the greatest threat the planet has ever faced, says Bernie Sanders,
00:13:44.380
the man who probably never heard of the Cretaceous paleogene mass extinction event,
00:13:49.180
three quarters of life on earth wiped out. He probably hasn't heard of that one. So he's just,
00:13:52.980
it's a little historical ignorance for him. That's the far left. That's about as far left as you can
00:13:57.280
go with Bernie Sanders. Beto O'Rourke also trying to play into that left lane. Beto's campaign is
00:14:02.380
falling apart. I mean, there's pretty much no reason he should be at this debate anymore.
00:14:06.040
And so he's, he's been trying to signal that he's as left as they come over the past few months.
00:14:12.580
This is after a career where he played himself off mostly as a moderate in Congress.
00:14:17.020
And so he obviously doesn't believe in anything, but he felt leftism was going to bring him all the
00:14:21.920
way. It looks like that's not going to work. So he's one last try. He's going to say that we're
00:14:26.580
going to undermine the second amendment. He's going to take away all your guns. He's going to
00:14:29.100
go door to door, take them all away. How exactly are you going to force people
00:14:33.400
to give up their weapons? You don't even know who has those weapons.
00:14:38.300
Look, we're going to make sure that the priority is saving the lives of our fellow Americans. I think
00:14:43.520
almost everyone on this stage agrees that it's not right. And as president would seek to ban the sale
00:14:49.240
of AR-15s and AK-47s, those are weapons of war. They were designed to kill people effectively,
00:14:55.240
efficiently on a battlefield. To be clear, exactly how are you going to take away weapons
00:15:00.380
from people who do not want to give them up and you don't know where they are?
00:15:04.640
If someone does not turn in an AR-15 or an AK-47, one of these weapons of war, or brings out in public
00:15:11.240
and embrances it in an attempt to intimidate, as we saw when we were at Kent State recently,
00:15:17.340
then that weapon will be taken from them. If they persist, there will be other consequences
00:15:21.660
from law enforcement. Other consequences. So we're going for it. I'm Beto. Hell yeah,
00:15:27.440
we're going to take your AR-15. We're going door to door. We're going to get the cops to come and
00:15:30.700
steal all your guns and completely undermine the constitution. One thing that really bothers me,
00:15:35.920
this was probably the highlight of the night in terms of Orwellian language.
00:15:40.500
Every aspect of this gun debate is dishonest. So there's no such thing as a mandatory buyback.
00:15:46.120
The government didn't sell you your gun in the first place, so it's not going to buy it back from
00:15:50.300
you. I guess you could try to buy guns from people if you're the government, but if it's a
00:15:54.320
mandatory buyback, then you ain't buying it. It's not like it's a free exchange where money is changing
00:15:59.900
hands. It's the government confiscating your weapons. Mandatory buyback. Absolutely outrageous.
00:16:05.780
Same thing with weapons of war. All weapons are weapons of war. All of military or all of firearm
00:16:11.920
technology advances because of war, because of armed conflict. That is the impetus for improving
00:16:19.260
firearm technology. That's been true since the dawn of time and will remain true in the future.
00:16:24.620
And then the other one is assault weapon. All weapons are assault weapons. All weapons are
00:16:28.620
assault weapons. They are designed to assault you. If a weapon is not designed to assault you,
00:16:33.560
it's not a weapon. Like this leftist tears tumbler is not a weapon because it's not meant to assault you.
00:16:38.420
It's meant to receive the leftist tears after you have been assaulted by facts and logic. So that
00:16:43.880
language just goes on and on throughout the entire debate. Beto is running on it. It's not going
00:16:51.700
anywhere. He probably won't even be at the next debate. Pete Buttigieg, however, sees Bernie's going
00:16:57.300
far, hard left. Beto's going hard left. Liz Warren doesn't know exactly where she wants to be.
00:17:01.880
So Buttigieg sees an opening because at the early part of this primary, he was doing pretty well. He was
00:17:07.540
getting some press because he was the reasonable one. He was at least pretending to be a Christian.
00:17:12.060
He was at least pretending to be moderate. He was at least pretending to be a good old boy from
00:17:17.240
the Midwest. And so Buttigieg takes on Beto O'Rourke head on and pretty much wipes the floor
00:17:26.060
with him on the question of guns. Let's follow their inspiration and lead and not be limited by
00:17:30.520
the polls and the consultants and the focus groups. Let's do what's right before we have time to do
00:17:35.400
what's right. Mayor Buttigieg? The problem is in the polls, the problem is the policy. And I don't need
00:17:40.240
lessons from you on courage, political or personal. Everyone on this stage is determined to get
00:17:46.980
something done. Everyone on this stage recognizes, or at least I thought we did, that the problem
00:17:52.760
is not other Democrats who don't agree with your particular idea of how to handle this.
00:17:57.460
The problem is the National Rifle Association and their enablers in Congress. And we should be united
00:18:02.200
in taking the fight for that. Poor Beto. You can see it in his eyes. He just thinks,
00:18:06.280
oh man, I totally walked into that because he's saying we need the courage to steal people's guns
00:18:10.400
and undermine the constitution. And there's Pete Buttigieg who comes in. He's one of two people
00:18:15.180
on that stage who's ever served in the military. So I don't need lessons from you about courage.
00:18:19.720
Totally wipes the floor with him. So Buttigieg trying to take that moderate lane. The other person
00:18:24.580
on stage who was gunning for that moderate lane was Amy Klobuchar. And Amy Klobuchar showed up to this
00:18:31.620
debate with one goal in mind, and that was to destroy Elizabeth Warren. Warren Delenda Est.
00:18:39.620
Warren must be destroyed. She even showed up wearing the exact same outfit that Liz Warren
00:18:44.940
was wearing, which was a little coincidental and slightly creepy. And she just kept up her
00:18:49.360
attacks on Warren all night long. I want to give a reality check here to Elizabeth because no one on
00:18:54.560
this stage wants to protect billionaires. Not even the billionaire wants to protect billionaires.
00:18:58.920
We just have different approaches. Your idea is not the only idea. I appreciate Elizabeth's work.
00:19:06.200
But again, the difference between a plan and a pipe dream is something that you can actually get done.
00:19:12.460
And we can get this public option done and we can take on the pharmaceutical companies and bring down
00:19:18.080
the prices. Get her, drag her, Amy. Yes, Queen. I don't know all this lingo, but that's basically what I
00:19:26.380
was feeling when I saw this happen, especially because Amy Klobuchar is about as lame a candidate
00:19:30.420
as you can possibly get. She tries to make the same jokes over and over. She doesn't know how to
00:19:35.040
deliver them. She's got this voice that doesn't sound really inspiring. And she speaks in a really
00:19:40.860
kind of realistic way, at least relative to the Democratic Party. So she's almost certainly not
00:19:45.800
going anywhere, but she did have a relatively good debate. And she's hitting Warren on the unreality
00:19:53.480
of her proposals. She's hitting Warren on Warren not being honest about how she's going to pay for
00:19:58.340
everything. At the same time that Warren's getting hit from the left on not being honest about how
00:20:02.840
she's going to pay for everything. So it's a good time. She's vulnerable and Klobuchar is trying to
00:20:06.560
take that lane. Warren herself, for that matter, was trying to seem more moderate in last night's
00:20:13.320
debate. She doesn't think that her vulnerability is on the left, that she needs to move more to the
00:20:18.760
left. She's seeing it more on the moderate side. And so she gets into an exchange with Kamala Harris,
00:20:24.280
Kamala, who's running far to the left, Kamala, who's a total joke. And she's saying that we need
00:20:28.740
to kick Trump off Twitter. It's a matter of national importance that Twitter, a company,
00:20:34.400
kicks the president of the United States off of its platform. And are you, Senator Warren,
00:20:38.880
going to go for that? Liz Warren backs off it and Kamala just tries to nail her on it.
00:20:42.960
Because here we have Donald Trump, who has 65 million Twitter followers,
00:20:48.260
and is using that platform as the president of the United States to openly intimidate witnesses,
00:20:54.800
to threaten witnesses, to obstruct justice. And he and his account should be taken down.
00:21:02.420
Okay. So she's, you got to do this. You got to go after her. Okay. It was a good hit. It made Kamala
00:21:09.320
look like the tougher, more leftist one. Liz Warren didn't, didn't want to respond to this.
00:21:14.500
The trouble with Kamala though, is when she thinks she did something sort of well,
00:21:20.020
she just hammers it ad nauseum until it seems disingenuous. And she loses any credit that she
00:21:25.140
would have gotten for the hit in the first place. She goes on.
00:21:27.080
So look, I don't just want to push Donald Trump off Twitter. I want to push him out of the White
00:21:32.160
House. That's our job. But the way, join me in saying that his Twitter account should be shut
00:21:37.400
down. Let's figure out why it is that we have had laws on the books for antitrust. I announced
00:21:45.540
this morning, I announced. So she's pushing for that. Liz Warren is moderating. And then Kamala
00:21:52.300
really, really just shows herself to be the weak candidate that she is. On paper, Kamala Harris could
00:21:58.840
have been a killer candidate. She could have been a real top tier contender, but she's just
00:22:03.240
not good at presenting herself with any kind of sincerity to the American people. Everything
00:22:10.840
feels contrived. Everything feels like she's trying to be a little too cool. And her, her conclusion,
00:22:16.620
her big, her big inspirational statement of this debate was with regard to President Trump,
00:22:22.220
dude got to go. This is a crisis of Donald Trump's making, and it is on a long list of crises of Donald
00:22:30.580
Trump's making. And that's why dude got to go. And when I am commander in chief, we will stop this
00:22:36.840
madness. Dude got to go. You have nothing to fear, but fear itself. We will go to the moon.
00:22:46.600
Not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Dude got to go.
00:22:57.720
There, one of these things is not like the other in the great history of presidential rhetoric.
00:23:02.420
And that would be Kamala Harris's attempts. So she's not a serious candidate. She needs to go home and
00:23:09.160
work on her skills for four or eight years. And maybe, maybe she can try again. She's got a good
00:23:13.960
resume, but she's really bad on stage. Then you had, you had to ask yourself this question.
00:23:22.440
They're trying to moderate Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, even Elizabeth Warren. They're trying
00:23:27.480
to moderate. Are they moderate? And you realize, no, the parties are actually too far apart now.
00:23:35.620
The conservative movement and the Republican party is now much more conservative.
00:23:39.520
The Democratic party is much more leftist. So we're thrilled when a candidate says,
00:23:46.760
hmm, maybe, maybe one of the biggest tech platforms shouldn't censor the president of
00:23:50.180
the United States. We're thrilled. We're like, oh, thank you so much. How great.
00:23:54.160
We're thrilled when a candidate says, maybe we shouldn't steal all of Americans' guns. We think,
00:23:58.740
oh, you're so moderate. Tulsi Gabbard has been getting a lot of credit for being the moderate in the
00:24:04.180
race. She's not, she's not. She came out last night and supported the universal basic income,
00:24:09.480
which is a massive, massive expansion of the welfare system like you've never seen before in
00:24:14.600
America. And that would get every single American hooked on the teat of government. She endorses it
00:24:20.420
just flippantly last night. I agree with my friend, Andrew Yang. I think universal basic income
00:24:25.440
is a good idea to help provide that security so that people can have the freedom to make the kinds of
00:24:31.320
choices that they want to see. That's the moderate welfare for all. That's the big moderate. And then
00:24:36.220
it's not just on economic issues. Tulsi Gabbard is getting a lot of credit because she, she's a
00:24:42.460
moderate on abortion according to today's democratic party. But today a moderate on abortion is just
00:24:47.400
Hillary Clinton in 2008. It's, it's even a little more radical than that. Tulsi Gabbard is saying that
00:24:53.820
maybe we shouldn't kill babies after 26 weeks after they're so obviously babies.
00:25:01.320
And after they can obviously survive outside of the womb. But before that fair game,
00:25:05.860
you can kill whoever you want. This is often one of the most difficult decisions that a woman
00:25:09.980
will ever have to make. And it's unfortunate to see how in this country it has for so long
00:25:14.460
been used as a divisive political weapon. I agree with Hillary Clinton on one thing, disagree with
00:25:22.500
her on many others. But when she said abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, I think she's correct.
00:25:28.580
We see how the consequences of laws that you're referring to can often lead to a dangerous place,
00:25:33.140
as we've seen them as their past in other countries, where a woman who has a miscarriage
00:25:37.680
past that six weeks could be imprisoned because abortion would be illegal at that point.
00:25:44.920
I do, however, think that there should be some restrictions in place.
00:25:48.920
I support codifying Roe v. Wade while making sure that during the third trimester, abortion is not
00:25:55.160
an option unless the life or severe health consequences of a woman are at risk.
00:26:00.880
Okay. So, hey, look, that's something. All the other candidates support abortion basically up until
00:26:05.060
the minute you're born. The law in New York signed by Andy Cuomo is that you can kill a baby as it's being
00:26:11.000
born. And that's perfectly legal. And in Virginia, the governor of Virginia said you can kill a baby
00:26:16.040
after he's been born. So I guess Tulsi is relatively moderate on this, but that's not moderation.
00:26:23.060
It's also, I love this, this argument that this is what they would say. Abortion is one of the most
00:26:27.740
difficult decisions a woman will ever have to make. First of all, the vast majority of women don't get
00:26:31.440
abortions, but plenty of women do get abortions. I know people who've gotten abortions. Good friends
00:26:35.560
of mine have gotten abortions. Most of them, to my knowledge, deeply regret it now. That's another
00:26:41.320
story for another time. But it's not a decision that a woman has to make. You don't have to kill
00:26:48.600
your baby. It's like saying not killing your mother-in-law is one of the most difficult decisions
00:26:53.040
you ever have to make. It would be maybe convenient. Maybe you have somewhere an impetus to do it, but
00:26:58.040
it's always wrong. It is always wrong. And it is just as ridiculous to talk about the difficult
00:27:06.200
decision and the right to choose to kill your mother-in-law as it is to talk about the difficult
00:27:10.200
decision and the right to kill your own child. It's actually, I think it's probably less ridiculous
00:27:15.680
to talk about the mother-in-law thing. That is a ridiculous and silly argument. If you can't kill
00:27:23.840
the baby at 26 weeks, if it's wrong to kill the baby at 26 weeks, long after it can live outside the
00:27:30.140
womb, by the way, because technology has advanced so much, you've got babies living outside the womb at
00:27:33.920
20 weeks now. So you're talking six weeks after that. That's a lot. But if it's wrong to kill the
00:27:42.880
baby at 26 weeks, why is it right to kill the baby at 25 weeks? Well, Michael, it's so blurry. It's just,
00:27:51.060
it's a great mystery of when life begins. No, there's no mystery. We know when life begins.
00:27:55.600
The little thing in there is moving around. It's got a heartbeat at 10 or 15 days.
00:27:59.420
Well, it's just, but when, you know, it's just so complicated. It's not complicated.
00:28:06.460
It's the same little baby at 26 weeks as it is at 25 weeks. How about 24 weeks?
00:28:13.700
23, 22, 21. You know, one of the most insane lines of the night, Cory Booker, I don't even want to give
00:28:22.220
Cory Booker airtime. Cory Booker said that the right to an abortion, the right to kill babies is one of the
00:28:28.620
most sacrosanct ideals in the country. Those are his exact words. He said, the right to kill a baby
00:28:37.940
is a fundamental ideal. He said, sacrosanct, sacred to kill a baby. And I thought, is there any way you
00:28:46.280
could make that argument? If something were a sacrosanct ideal in this country, obviously it's
00:28:52.100
never sacred to kill a baby, only in really awful, terrible pagan religions. But where do we get our
00:29:00.020
sacrosanct ideals? Well, often we look to the Declaration of Independence, which says that we
00:29:03.420
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their
00:29:07.300
creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:29:12.380
It doesn't say that men get those rights at 26 weeks or 27 weeks or 25 weeks. It says they are
00:29:18.680
created with those rights. When are you created? You're not created at 26 weeks. At 26 weeks,
00:29:24.620
you're the same entity, the same being that you were at 25 weeks, 24, 23, 22. You are created
00:29:31.300
at your conception. That's what the words mean. Not that they've read the Declaration of Independence
00:29:38.320
anytime recently. We've got a lot more to get to. We've got to get to a secret candidate in the race
00:29:43.400
who's polling better than anybody right now in the entire democratic primary. Then we've got to get to
00:29:48.080
impeachment. And then of course we have to get to International Pronouns Day, but you've got to go
00:29:51.500
to dailywire.com to do that. $10 a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me, you get the
00:29:56.760
Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Wall show, you get to ask questions
00:30:00.340
in the mailbag. You get Another Kingdom, which is now the third episode is out, just was released
00:30:05.040
this Monday. Subscribers get it on Friday. It's really good at getting a lot of good reviews and
00:30:10.720
thank you for the notes for those of you who have sent in nice notes about it. You get everything and
00:30:15.140
you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:30:29.500
Who won the debate? There's no real winner, I would say. Liz Warren did very well. She is still
00:30:34.480
leading in the field. Of the people who really helped themselves during the debate, Pete Buttigieg
00:30:39.140
and Amy Klobuchar did a lot of good for themselves. I think Amy Klobuchar is still so
00:30:43.820
unlikable. She's still so distant from the electorate and the audience that she doesn't
00:30:50.120
really have a chance. Pete Buttigieg is excellent on the campaign trail and really understands how
00:30:55.240
to connect to people. And I think he's the biggest jerk in the whole race and a scold and a heretic and
00:31:00.460
an absolute jerk. But credit where credit's due, he's a pretty good candidate. So he helped himself
00:31:06.080
a lot. Nevertheless, these candidates, and Bernie helped himself by looking very energetic, which he
00:31:12.420
did. None of these candidates are the clear cut winners. None of these candidates are obviously the
00:31:20.120
person who's going to get the nomination. And the reason I know this is because of a recent poll
00:31:24.200
came out from Boston Herald and Franklin Pierce University survey. This was released on Monday.
00:31:31.460
It showed a three-way tie for the top spot in New Hampshire, more or less a three-way tie. Elizabeth
00:31:38.540
Warren at 25% support, former vice president Joe Biden at 24%, Bernie Sanders at 22%. So mostly a tie,
00:31:48.920
though Liz Warren is at the top of that. There was a candidate, however, who came in at 26%. The reason
00:31:54.920
that candidate didn't register right away is because the candidate is not running for president.
00:31:59.740
That candidate is, drum roll, Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama, if she jumped into the race,
00:32:06.920
according to this one poll in New Hampshire, she would get 26% of support from likely Democratic
00:32:13.100
primary voters in New Hampshire. And Warren and Biden would be at 20% and Sanders would be at 15%
00:32:20.540
if Michelle Obama got into the race. This has long been floated as a possibility. Michelle Obama is
00:32:26.760
very well-liked. She's, comes from an era that Democrats more or less enjoy and are nostalgic for.
00:32:35.520
She's, she checks intersectional boxes, which is apparently important to the Democratic
00:32:40.040
primary voters in 2020. Now, if she actually did jump into the race, those numbers would drop very
00:32:47.680
quickly because all candidates are better hypothetically than they are in reality. It's,
00:32:54.000
it's like that Paul Simon song, Kodachrome. Everything looks worse in black and white.
00:33:01.140
It's always the line. And when I think back on all the girls I knew in high school,
00:33:05.240
if I put them all together for one night, I know they'd never match my sweet imagination.
00:33:09.260
Everything looks worse in black and white. And so if you get the candidates who are now in this
00:33:13.940
vivid color in your imagination, when you put them on the campaign trail, everything's black and
00:33:17.680
white. Everything's very stark. Everything's very clear. And so Michelle Obama's numbers would drop.
00:33:22.240
But what it suggests that voters, at least in New Hampshire, are yearning for her is that there is
00:33:29.380
a sense. They're starting to come to their senses that you need a more moderate candidate. You don't
00:33:33.980
really want candidates who think there are 750 genders and Julian Castro, who thinks that we should
00:33:40.680
have abortion rights for men. And Beto O'Rourke, who says we're going to take away all of your guns,
00:33:45.480
definitely not in New Hampshire. You don't really want that. It's like every, but people do this in
00:33:51.220
meetings. People do this in group settings sometimes. They just go with the madness of
00:33:58.380
the crowd. So if everyone's talking in a particular way, you just want to fit in. I mean, you want to
00:34:04.080
be a part of that. And so you kind of go along, even though you don't really believe it. Maybe
00:34:07.640
the guy who's telling you doesn't really believe it. Maybe nobody really believes it. I think you're
00:34:11.440
starting to see that with the leftism of the Democratic Party. You're seeing them very slowly. It takes
00:34:16.760
them a long time, but very slowly coming to the realization that this is not going to play in
00:34:21.220
Peoria. And we wouldn't really want it to, even if we could. That creates a yearning for somebody like
00:34:27.040
Michelle Obama. But it's a yearning that it's looking for a real candidate. It's not really
00:34:35.780
looking for Michelle Obama. It's looking for a real candidate to come in and fill that lane. So far,
00:34:39.280
no one has. A lot of people are comparing this election in 2020 to the Republicans in 2016.
00:34:46.480
On the surface, there are a lot of similarities. You know, there are so many candidates.
00:34:50.500
In 2016, there were 17 Republicans. Now that we're down to 12 Democrats, but there are so many more who
00:34:56.060
were running. And the idea being that in 2016, the Republicans thought they could beat Hillary Clinton.
00:35:03.880
And in 2020, the Democrats think they can beat Trump. And so everybody is running. But I don't think
00:35:08.560
that comparison holds it all. In 2016, you had really good Republican candidates.
00:35:15.140
Almost all of the candidates were really top tier candidates. Trump kind of came out of nowhere for
00:35:19.600
most political observers, but Ted Cruz, top tier candidate. Marco Rubio in any other election would
00:35:25.540
have been a serious contender. Even John Kasich was a very successful governor, kind of annoying
00:35:30.300
personality on the campaign trail, but successful governor. Chris Christie, one of the most popular
00:35:34.760
governors in the country, the list goes on and on. Who do we have in 2020 for the Democrats?
00:35:42.260
It's kind of a bunch of nobodies. Julian Castro is like truly a nobid, former secretary of HUD and a
00:35:47.280
mayor of San Antonio. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, population 100,000.
00:35:53.740
Amy Klobuchar, Tim O'Brien. You remember Tim O'Brien? Me neither. Eric Swalwell.
00:35:58.300
Paul, those, those are not comparable fields. I actually think the greater similarity for the
00:36:04.380
Democrats in 2020 is not the Republicans in 2016. It's Republicans in 2012. 2012, you have a lot of
00:36:12.580
Republicans running. Mitt Romney eventually got the nomination. That went great, didn't it?
00:36:16.900
You had all the serious candidates stay off the table because they didn't think it was going to be
00:36:21.360
possible to unseat Barack Obama. The incumbent has a great advantage. And so it was mostly a clown show
00:36:26.780
for 2012. I think that's sort of what you're seeing in 2020. And if certain Democrats want to
00:36:33.540
get in the race, a Michelle Obama, for instance, or somebody like her, I think they're going to wait
00:36:37.760
until they have a clearer shot in 2024. And, and some of my evidence for this is they're, the Democrats,
00:36:44.300
again, like the madness of crowds are trying to convince themselves that Trump is going to be
00:36:48.200
impeached or removed from office. This impeachment thing is falling apart right now. Nancy Pelosi just
00:36:53.660
gave a press conference in which she completely forgot the reason that she's ostensibly trying
00:36:59.040
to impeach Trump. Our founders had very deep suspicion about foreigners interfering in our
00:37:05.520
government. And as again, in our elections and the emoluments clause was there put there specifically
00:37:11.740
for that purpose to protect us from any influence of foreign governments. So the fact that we would be
00:37:19.580
here in an inquiry that relates to the president asking a foreign government to help the president
00:37:27.560
in his reelection by withhold, granting or withholding the timing of military assistance that had been
00:37:35.900
voted on by the Congress is just, has so many violations in it. It undermines our national security.
00:37:45.620
We were sending that military assistance because of Ukraine needing that vis-a-vis Russia. All roads
00:37:55.360
seem to lead to Putin with the president though. Isn't it so? All roads seem to lead to Putin. No,
00:38:01.080
no, no, Nancy, Nancy, that was the last time you were trying to impeach Trump. Last time you tried
00:38:06.680
to impeach Trump, you said he was colluding with the Russians and Vladimir Putin. This time you're saying
00:38:11.580
he's colluding with the Ukrainians who are Russia's sworn enemy. And how did that happen? I don't know.
00:38:16.720
You haven't really explained that, but you got to keep your impeachment stories straight,
00:38:21.000
especially when the two stories contradict one another. Yeah. Trump is cozying up to Russia or
00:38:26.420
is it Ukraine or is that's one of those two. Yeah. He's cozying up to the US or is it the USSR? I
00:38:31.960
forgot. I don't know. One of those two. Anyway, he's a bad guy. We're going to impeach him.
00:38:34.380
That's what they're saying. It wasn't Stormy Daniels. He cozied up to Stormy Daniels quite
00:38:38.420
literally, I guess, in that case. It's, it's falling apart. I mean, even she can't keep the
00:38:42.380
story straight. Now they're saying that they might not take a vote on impeachment anytime soon.
00:38:49.080
And this is why I haven't taken the impeachment inquiry very seriously. They are not following
00:38:55.380
any sort of constitutional process right now in the house. If you want to impeach a president,
00:39:00.640
you got to vote for it. You got to vote. You got to go on the record. This is why Nancy Pelosi isn't
00:39:05.920
saying they're impeaching the president. What she's saying is we're launching a formal official
00:39:10.580
impeachment inquiry to begin to inquire as to whether or not we should ask people to lunch,
00:39:18.240
to talk about taking a vote on whether to impeach the president. That's not, that's not real. That's
00:39:23.680
not a real thing. They want to get the credit for impeachment without actually having to go through
00:39:28.140
the difficult political rigmarole. There are polls out. There's a Gallup poll out that shows the
00:39:34.340
majority of people now support impeachment and removing Trump from office. There was the Fox
00:39:38.180
news poll said majority of people support impeachment. So why aren't the Democrats moving
00:39:42.500
full steam ahead? I think the reason is they know, they know how this is going to play out. Public
00:39:48.800
opinion moves back and forth very quickly, especially on highly politicized questions like impeachment,
00:39:55.100
especially in the heat of an election campaign. And they, they just know that it's going to put them
00:39:59.980
in a politically vulnerable position because they don't have anything. Maybe they'll find
00:40:03.980
something. I'm not saying that Trump is totally squeaky clean on everything. I'm sure he's got,
00:40:08.040
there's a lot of things they could get him on in his taxes or in this or that, you know,
00:40:11.840
you could indict a ham sandwich, but does any of that rise to the level of high crimes and
00:40:15.980
misdemeanors? Does any of that become an impeachable offense? And are they going to be able to say to a
00:40:19.600
straight, with a straight face to the American people? Yes, we're going to impeach the president
00:40:23.280
and overturn the 2016 election in the one year or less before another presidential election because
00:40:29.680
the president had a phone call with Ukraine that you've all already read. That is fine. No, probably
00:40:35.180
not. So that's falling apart. And this gets to not just a political question, but a cultural question,
00:40:44.000
which is the, the, the internal logic of our politics is falling apart because more broadly,
00:40:49.680
we have difficulty speaking to one another. We have difficulty, uh, understanding our own history,
00:40:55.120
our own constitutional processes. Uh, we're, we're just not as smart as we used to be in our
00:41:00.720
self-government and in our Republic. This seems to happen to Republics, Republics and democracies
00:41:05.700
become decadent. They become a little soft intellectually and spiritually and institutionally.
00:41:11.240
And that seems to be happening. You see it, uh, probably most clearly, uh, today because today is a
00:41:17.820
holiday. Today is international pronouns day. You know, you know, every day on Twitter seems to be
00:41:24.920
a different kind of day. It's like cheeseburger day or sibling day. Well, this month is the second
00:41:29.740
month of the year dedicated to the LGBTQ sexual revolution movement. And so we've now got a sixth of
00:41:38.520
the year dedicated to four and a half percent of the population. Half of whom I suspect don't buy into
00:41:44.840
any of this ridiculous nonsense. It's international pronouns day. And maybe a lot of people aren't
00:41:50.980
acknowledging it, but Julian Castro, democratic candidate for president, sure is. He put a tweet
00:41:56.440
out. He said, using someone's correct pronouns and giving your own isn't difficult. I'm Julian Castro.
00:42:04.060
He, him, L should be hit. He, him, his, but he made it L because he can't keep his languages straight
00:42:14.120
because he's not so good at, uh, at thinking. He's not so good with the stuff between the ears.
00:42:18.420
He goes on. It takes one extra breath to help people feel seen and respected. I think that's
00:42:23.760
worth it. Hashtag pronouns day. What he said here, obviously everything is total nonsense,
00:42:30.440
but what he said at the very top is explicitly incorrect. He said using someone's correct
00:42:36.100
pronouns. Meaning if you call a man who identifies as a woman, she, according to Julian Castro,
00:42:42.560
that's correct. But of course it's not correct. He is, it remains a he, even if he puts on a dress.
00:42:48.860
So his correct pronoun would be he. To misgender him would be to use the new politically correct
00:42:53.680
transgender pronouns. This is an argument over what truth is itself. Is truth objective reality
00:43:03.460
or is truth your subjective feelings that change every single day? That is now a debate. This debate
00:43:10.560
would have been unthinkable, unthinkable a year ago or two years ago. Now it is a debate that is being
00:43:18.080
had at the presidential level. International pronouns day. Somebody put this together has
00:43:24.220
a website. They say it seeks to make respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns
00:43:28.640
commonplace. Fair enough. They go on. The international pronouns day website is actually much more honest
00:43:36.440
about this. They don't use really loaded terms like correct pronouns to refer to incorrect pronouns,
00:43:42.000
but they explain the logic. Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves
00:43:46.240
is basic to human dignity. Being referred to by the wrong pronouns, right? There we go. Now you get
00:43:52.900
that language. The wrong pronouns as you feel it particularly affects transgender and gender
00:43:59.260
non-conforming people. Together we can transform society to celebrate people's multiple intersecting
00:44:06.060
identities. This is more or less an honest take and it shows you the stakes of this.
00:44:13.260
They're saying that referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is basic
00:44:19.080
to human dignity. That is not true. That's the opposite of true. They're saying indulging people's
00:44:24.220
fantasies and lying to people is basic to human dignity. No, that's an affront to human dignity.
00:44:31.860
What is basic to human dignity is treating people with respect and treating people with respect means
00:44:37.260
not lying to them and not treating them like children and not condescending and not patronizing,
00:44:42.400
but treating them as you would like to be treated, which is to be told the truth.
00:44:47.860
Together we can transform society. That's what they want to do. They want to transform society. This is
00:44:51.840
not just some kooks on Twitter. This is not just some random website. This is debate being had
00:44:55.820
at the presidential level. That is the stake. Those are the stakes rather. The transformation of society,
00:45:05.740
not just raising taxes or lowering taxes, not even just banning one gun and another gun,
00:45:09.780
not even just saying we're going to protect human life at this week and not at that week.
00:45:15.340
This transformation will get down to the nature of reality itself and who has the right to define it
00:45:19.820
and who has the right to pervert it and who has the right to declare that any sort of truth exists
00:45:25.740
at all. That's the stakes. We'll see how that plays out in the next seven Democratic presidential
00:45:32.380
primary debates and then of course in 2020. That's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael
00:45:36.160
Knowles show. See you tomorrow. If you enjoyed this episode and frankly, even if you didn't,
00:45:46.520
don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review
00:45:51.700
and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you
00:45:57.500
listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro
00:46:03.120
show, the Andrew Klavan show, and the Matt Walsh show. The Michael Knowles show is produced by Rebecca
00:46:08.360
Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan
00:46:14.100
Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
00:46:19.920
Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
00:46:25.780
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan.
00:46:30.180
The Michael Knowles show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
00:46:35.500
If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the
00:46:40.020
insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to the Ben Shapiro show. We'll get a whole lot
00:46:46.180
Those sweltering summer nights that leave you tossing and turning, desperately kicking off the
00:46:53.380
covers, don't have to ruin your sleep. Crafted from the finest 100% organic cotton, Boland Branch's
00:46:58.160
premium sheets feature a soft, breathable weave that's built to last. Get the best savings of the
00:47:02.860
season during Boland Branch's annual summer event. Get 20% off plus free shipping on your first set of
00:47:07.660
sheets at BolandBranch.com slash Daily Wire. That's BolandBranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D Branch.com
00:47:14.660
slash Daily Wire to save 20% off and unlock free shipping. Limited time only, exclusions do apply.