Ep. 442 - Democracy Dies In Barkness
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Summary
Trump tweets out a dog meme and the mainstream media lose their collective minds. We will explain why fanatics never laugh and how democracy dies in barkness. Then, Real Clear Investigations uncovers the possible identity of the impeachment whistleblower. We examine who he is and why it matters. Finally, Facebook and Twitter take opposite approaches to political advertising in 2020 and the legacy media dependent left is furious.
Transcript
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President Trump tweets out a dog meme and the mainstream media lose their collective
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minds. We will explain why fanatics never laugh and how democracy dies in barkness.
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Then Real Clear Investigations uncovers the possible identity of the impeachment whistleblower.
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We will examine who he is and he sure does look an awful lot like Matt Walsh.
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Then we will examine why it matters. Finally, Facebook and Twitter take opposite approaches
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to political advertising in 2020 and the legacy media dependent left is furious. All that and
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more. I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
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A side note before we begin, I have to thank the Washington Post for giving me my second dog pun
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title of the week. I really couldn't have done it without you guys. Obviously we had zero bark 30
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earlier in the week and now because of the Washington Post's absurd reaction to a dog
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meme tweeted out by the president, we now have today's democracy dies in barkness. So thank you
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again. This is media. This is journalism. That's the Washington Post. President Trump tweeted out a
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meme. We're very proud of this meme here at the Daily Wire because it was our meme. It was a meme of
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President Trump was putting a medal on to somebody obviously onto like it was a medal of honor
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recipient. And we subbed out the guy and put in a picture of that dog who killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
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and tweeted it out. So then Trump took it and he just put the words American hero all in caps.
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This is very funny, right? This is not, of all the intense fury inducing things that happen in
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politics today, just a nice little moment of levity to celebrate this dog that people like
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and through that to celebrate the killing of the head of ISIS, right? We'll just leave it at that.
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Okay. No, of course we can't leave it at that because the mainstream media have lost their minds.
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This was the response from Steve Herman, Steve Herman from Voice of America. It's a left-wing
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outlet. He was determined to get to the bottom of this picture because something just didn't look
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right to him. He tweeted out, I've requested details from the White House on this photo.
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There was no such canine event on today's president's schedule, but there is a medal of
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honor ceremony set here for later today for an active duty green beret. You're going to get to
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the bottom of it, Steve. You're going to find out, hold on, something about, you know, that picture of
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the smiling dog with his tongue out, having a medal put on him by the president, a medal, which by the
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way, has a little paw on the ribbon, just a little bronzed paw. Uh, maybe that's not a real photo.
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Maybe that was photoshopped or something. Let's, let's see. The New York Times investigates it too.
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New York Times headline quote, Trump tweets faked photo of hero dog getting a medal. It's not a real
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photo. He didn't even hold a ceremony where he gave a dog the medal of honor. It was fake, fake news.
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You see in the original photo, President Trump is seen giving the medal of honor to James C.
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McLaughlin or McLoan. I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it, but this guy's like an actual
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American hero. He's a great guy, won the medal of honor. So the New York Times reports in a phone
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interview on Wednesday, Mr. McLaughlin, 73, who had not seen the image before, a reporter sent it to him,
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said that he interpreted it as Mr. Trump recognizing the dog's heroism, the paper reports.
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He certainly was not offended and laughed when he compared the two images. Thank you,
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New York Times, for getting to the bottom of this, calling up the actual medal of honor recipient.
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They say, excuse me, sir, excuse me, you American hero who won the medal of honor. You great
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example of an American man. Do you think dog memes are funny? Uh, yes, New York Times. I,
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I think dog memes are funny. Okay. Thank you very much. We've got to get this out. Oh, stop the
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presses. The medal of honor recipient believes that dog memes are funny. Then for the absolute best
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one, wasn't Voice of America, wasn't the New York Times. It was the Washington Post. A White House
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spokesman declined to comment. McLaughlin, 73, could not be reached for comment. Jeremy Boring,
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the chief operating officer at the Daily Wire dismissed, emailed questions about whether the
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By the altered photo, they mean the meme. And by the meme, we're referring to that image that the
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president tweeted out, which had our watermark on it. It's not, it's not like hiding the question of
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whether we made the meme. We're very proud of the meme. We're very happy that the president also has a
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sense of humor. It says at the bottom, at real Daily Wire. It's us. You got us. But even the way
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that WAPO describes it is not true. Jeremy did not dismiss questions about whether or not we made
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the meme. And I know this because I saw the email interaction. Jeremy showed it to me. Here's the
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interaction. Alex Horton from the Washington Post emails Jeremy Boring, COO of the Daily Wire.
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Hello, I'm with the Washington Post and wanted to get confirmation this photo originated with you.
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And if it did, that you digitally removed Medal of Honor recipient James McLaughlin and replaced him
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with a dog. Then Jeremy responded to the Washington Post. Alex, on the record, you've got to be effing
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joking. He spells it out. I can't because this is a family show. You've got to be effing joking.
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Please quote me on that. Thanks, Jeremy. Jeremy Boring, COO of Daily Wire.
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The easiest way to tell a fanatic is that they lack a sense of humor.
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That's, that's why this matters. The easiest way. Look, this was a fun moment. Daily Wire tweeted
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out this meme. It's a pretty funny meme. The president laughed at it. He tweeted it out too.
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All the rancor in Washington. Maybe we could all just come together and have a little laugh.
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The internet was made for dog memes. I guess maybe the Washington Post, they're sort of cat people
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perhaps, but the internet was made for memes of silly looking animals. We can all come together
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and beyond that, we can enjoy this, this critical defeat of ISIS. That would be nice, right?
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The left can't do that. And the left is no, it's no longer that leftist politicians are leading the
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media. Now, in many ways, the media are leading the leftist politicians, but all of them taken
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together, the way you can tell they're fanatics, the way you can tell they've lost the narrative
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is that they've lost their sense of humor. The left has become so fanatical in its hatred of
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conservatives that they can't even laugh at a dog meme. In order to laugh, you need to have a sense
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of humor. In order to have a sense of humor, you need to have a sense of proportion. You need to have
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a sense of balance. You know, we could talk for hours about what makes something funny and there is
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nothing, I assure you, there's nothing more hilarious than listening to somebody explain a joke,
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but part of humor is incongruity. You see a really, really tall, thin guy next to a really,
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really short, fat guy. Just that image alone is very funny. Why is it funny? Because of the
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incongruity. How do you perceive incongruity? If you have a sense of proportion. You recognize that
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those two proportions are way out of the norm and so that gets you to laugh. Frankly, the president
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tweeting out a dog meme and the left losing its collective mind is very funny. It's funny to us.
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The left is being funny. They just don't know they're being funny. Fanatics are not able to do
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that. This is a problem, not just about one dog meme. It represents the left's biggest challenge
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here. It represents, I think, why they're a little bit in trouble for 2020. We'll get to that in a
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So, the left has lost its sense of humor because the left has lost its sense of proportion.
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This is true, not just in the press, not just in the mainstream media. It's true also in our
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government. We've got some new information out about the so-called whistleblower, about the latest
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attempt to overturn the 2016 presidential election and impeach President Trump. Real clear investigations
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believes it has identified the whistleblower. This is a great contrast. You have Washington Post,
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Democracy Dies in Barkness, talking about how they've got to get to the bottom of who made a dog
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meme. And then you've got real clear investigations, which actually is going to show us something about
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this whistleblower. They believe that the whistleblower is Matt Walsh. No, I'm joking. It's not Matt
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Walsh, but the guy who they think it is looks a lot like Matt Walsh. You know, I knew Walsh was a
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little lukewarm on the president. Didn't know he would overturn the election. This is what real
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clear investigations believes. They believe it's a 33-year-old named Charamella, Eric Charamella.
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He's a registered Democrat holdover from the Obama White House. He worked before that with Vice
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President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan. Vocal critic of Donald Trump, he helped
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initiate the Russia collusion investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
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Charamella left the NSC. He was on the National Security Council. He left that in mid-2017. Why did
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he leave? Because there were concerns that he was leaking to the media. That would appear to be
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justified now. He then returned. After he leaves the White House, he returns to the CIA in Langley,
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Virginia. He's accused of working against Trump and of leaking against Trump. So this is according to
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officials on the NSC who were speaking on the condition of anonymity while discussing intelligence
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matters. What else do we know about this guy? This guy actually was at Yale right around the same time
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I was. He graduated in 2008. I got there in 2008. That tells me a lot about this guy because I knew a
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whole lot of activist Democrats who thought that they were kings of the world, who went and immediately
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started working in the swamp after college. And it, it shows you the real stakes of this impeachment.
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Nobody elected Eric Charamella to be president. Nobody elected this 33 year old guy who's worked
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in the bureaucracy and the intelligence community. People did elect Donald Trump, but this guy
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reportedly, allegedly Eric Charamella, but whoever the whistleblower is, this guy believes that he knows
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better than the American people. This guy believes that he has the right to elect whatever president
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he wants. 330 million Americans be damned. Charamella, while he is out there going out to
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try to uncover this, you know, Ukrainian collusion story, right before he goes and, and files the
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complaint, he seeks guidance, guidance, quote unquote, from Adam Schiff. Why Adam Schiff? Why would he,
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why does he have this cozy relationship with Democrats? Charamella worked with the DNC. He
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worked with the DNC operative who dug up dirt on Trump during the 2016 election. He actually invited
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her to the White House for meetings. That's according to former White House colleagues. This operative,
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Alexandra Chalupa, is a Ukrainian American who tried to help Hillary Clinton. They led an effort to link
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the Republican campaign, the Trump campaign to the Russian government. Another former coworker says he
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knows her, he had her in the White House. This is what we're about to see. So what we're seeing
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right now is the impeachment, the Ukrainian, the phone call. We don't really know what that's about.
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I have said for a long time, impeachment is a defensive measure to exonerate Democrats early
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or to mitigate the disaster of the upcoming investigations from the DOJ and from John Durham.
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The investigations into what they did in the 2016 election. They're not giving up on this.
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They will not give up. They won't admit that they lost. Bill Clinton on TV admitted that Hillary
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Clinton might run for president again. She may or may not ever run for anything,
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but I can't legally run for president again. So Bill Clinton, listen, the trouble with believing
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Bill Clinton, of course, is he's occasionally been dishonest on national television before.
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Now, listen, I'm telling you the truth here. I, I did not have, well, you know, you know how it
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finishes. But he did have relations with those women and I don't think Hillary Clinton's going to run
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again, but he's leaving the door open. He's leaving the door open as did her senior advisor,
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Philip Raines, as did her campaign staff when they were talking to the New York Times.
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Even now, after all of these years, Hillary's not willing to give up on the 2016 election. Neither
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was this whistleblower. Neither are the people who insist that they know better than the American
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people. All a cause for concern because I think the way the mainstream media portray this,
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you have president Trump, this rogue, this monster, this guy who's going to institute world war three
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and he's being held back and reined in by the good, glorious, hardworking men and women
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of the intelligence community, the CIA or the bureaucracy or the state department. And thank
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goodness for those guys, right? No. If real clear investigations is right, then the, the American
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people who elected president Trump are being told to sit down and shut up by some 33 year old schmuck
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from Yale who thinks he knows better than not just the American people, but the founding fathers
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and the great institutions of our country, which have set up a method for electing the president.
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Apparently this guy was involved in the first attempt to take Trump out because he knows better
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he's masters of the universe in Washington DC, Hillary Clinton, all these years later, still
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considering running, still going out there. You know, this takes us into other 2020 news because
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we got bad news for Joe Biden. His polls are still falling. Democrats are still a little bit weak.
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Actually there was that one poll out of the, uh, Boston Herald for New Hampshire. It showed that
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you've got basically Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders rather all
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tied in New Hampshire. But if Michelle Obama gets into the race, all of a sudden she's got 26%.
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Liz Warren has 20. Biden and Bernie have 15%. Race totally changes. They want Michelle Obama,
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except they don't really because everyone likes these candidates who are not in the race. In theory,
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the minute they get in, their poll numbers drop. Just to remind you of this, Michelle Obama was going
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out. She was answering a question at a Q and a, and she reminded us why she was so unlikable in
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the white house in the first place. People doubted us coming through. Are you printed a material? Can
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you really make the grade? Can you cut it? What do you do in those instances? All you can do is put
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your head down and do the work and let the work, your truth speak for yourself. I can't make people
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not afraid of not afraid of black people. I don't know what's going on. I can't explain what's
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happening in your head. But maybe if I show up every day as a human, a good human doing wonderful
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things, loving my family, loving your kids, taking care of things that I care about, maybe just maybe
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that work will pick away at the scabs of your discrimination. And maybe that slowly will unravel it.
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That's all we have because we can't do it for them because they're broken. Their brokenness
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and how they see us is a reflection of their brokenness. And you can't fix that. All you can
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do is the work. This is why Michelle Obama is a bad presidential candidate. This is why these polls
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saying that she's going to get the nomination if she jumps in are just not true is people, people don't
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really remember this, but she has the same problem as Hillary Clinton, which is she's bitter. She
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doesn't like her fellow Americans. I mean, listen to this. This is the woman, the first black first
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lady of the United States, wife to the first black president of the United States, elected not just
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once but twice. All these years later talking about how Americans hate black people, how people
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just hate black people and she doesn't get what she deserves and she's better than them and they're
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broken, but she's not broken. Look, everybody's got original sin, but not Michelle Obama. No, she
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is pure as the driven snow. Michelle Obama, so much better than all of us and how awful these Americans
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are to, to what, to elect her husband twice. Same thing, you know, in, in 2008 when her husband got
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elected, she very famously went on, on TV and said that the election of her husband was the first time
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in her life that she was proud of her country. Let me tell you something. For the first time in my
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adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country and not just because Barack has done well, but because
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I think people are hungry for change. It's that bitterness. It's that entitlement. It's that total
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lack of gratitude. It's that total lack of proportion. Same thing with Hillary. Hillary's had a lovely career.
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The American people have been very good to the Clintons and it's the same thing. You owe me this.
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I deserve to be president. I'm so angry. Michelle Obama, her husband gets elected president. She
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doesn't say, wow, what a great country this is. Gosh, you know, maybe I was wrong about not being
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proud of this country for my entire life because, you know, we, they just elected my husband. What a
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great country. And my big knock on the country is that it's hopelessly bigoted, but then obviously it's
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not because we just elected a black guy president. No, she doesn't say that. The left can't change
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the narrative when new facts emerge. The left, when, when circumstances change that should delight
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them, that give delight, that give surprise, that give a little bit of wonder, they can't accept that.
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They can't have a good laugh and say, gosh, how lovely is that? So Michelle Obama says,
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this is the first time in my life that I'm proud of my country. Doesn't not, didn't look happy when
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she says it. Same thing. They elect her husband. They elect her husband a second time. America has
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been very good to her. Gave her a bestselling book. She says, look, this country, they hate,
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hates black people. People in this country, so many people hate black people and I didn't get what I
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deserved and people were hard on me and my life is so terrible. But the woman went to Princeton. Then she
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married this politician who goes on to become president. Then she gets a bestselling book. Michelle Obama
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is one of the 0.0000000001% of luckiest, most privileged people in the history of the world. And still
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she complains. Same with Hillary Clinton. Same exact thing. They can't change the narrative. Doesn't matter.
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They could elect Michelle Obama president. They could elect Hillary Clinton president.
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It'd still be bitter. It's that fanatic attitude. Now on the 2020 front, by the way, regardless of
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whether those two get into the race, there is some breaking news out of Twitter, major move, which
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shows that Twitter is going to ban all political advertising in 2020. And this is significant because
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it's the opposite approach that Facebook is taking. Facebook is going to allow virtually all political
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advertising. Now what the left wants to do is they want there to be political advertising,
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but they only want it to advertise for left-wing candidates. So AOC with just last week was begging
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Mark Zuckerberg, sort of browbeating him saying, why on earth are you going to elect conservatives
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post advertising on Facebook? Why are you going to be in the way AOC couched this, which she said,
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those conservatives are lying about us. You can't allow lies in political advertising. You need to
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fact check the conservatives. And by the way, you can only partner up with left-wing fact checkers,
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but you can't partner up with organizations like the Daily Caller. I mean, she was AOC during this,
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in the same exact breath was saying, you need to fact check conservatives and all the fact checkers
00:23:01.720
have to be liberals. What they want is only political advertising for me, but not for thee.
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Twitter is taking this opposite approach and they're saying no political advertising at all. It
00:23:14.760
doesn't matter as much for Twitter because their advertising tools aren't that good and political
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ads make up only a small portion of their revenue. But I think Facebook has the better policy here. I
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think we would be a better country if we adopted the Facebook policy, which is say whatever you want.
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Make your argument. Have speech. Let's not forget in a self-governing republic, speech is politics.
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Politics is speech. Go for it. It's yours. And if you make a bad argument, if you tell a lie,
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you're going to be called out for it. What all of this shows is that the left does not feel
00:23:57.500
confident heading into this election cycle. Hillary Clinton does not believe that any of
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the candidates out there are going to beat Trump. She thinks she's a better candidate than those
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candidates out there. The Democratic primary voters, at least in New Hampshire, don't believe
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that any of those candidates out there are going to beat Trump. That's why they're asking Michelle
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Obama to jump into the race. AOC does not believe that they can win this battle on the merits.
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That's why she's trying to get conservatives kicked off of Facebook. Twitter knows that the
00:24:29.400
left is going to be out of their mind anytime they let a conservative advertise anywhere, anytime they
00:24:34.900
let Trump advertise anywhere. So Twitter is just throwing up their hands. Jack Dorsey is saying,
00:24:44.920
Trump dominated social media in 2016. Conservatives are much better at social media than the left.
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This is not just some empty boast. This is true across organic social media and paid social media.
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Trump was the only one taking YouTube and Facebook seriously. Wasn't Russians. It wasn't
00:25:02.720
Macedonian click farms. It was actual strategies from the two campaigns. Trump beat Hillary on
00:25:08.420
social media. That's all it is. Why is the right so much better at social media and new media than
00:25:14.580
the left? Because the left relies on the legacy old media. The left has for decades. The old media has
00:25:22.580
been the great protector and gatekeeper for the left and they've kicked out right-wingers and they've
00:25:27.600
framed the narrative so in opposition to right-wingers. So the left has gotten lazy and complacent with the
00:25:33.820
legacy media. Now the legacy media are being virtually totally rejected. We just realized we're, we're
00:25:44.820
shutting out the mainstream media because the mainstream media have no credibility. You know,
00:25:50.260
the, the lack of credibility from the mainstream media allowed the growth of social. Then the growth
00:25:54.400
of social pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the mainstream media because we were able to get
00:25:58.360
some true information finally for once. A mainstream media that takes dog memes seriously is not a
00:26:05.120
mainstream media that can command our respect. And so you're seeing all of these angles intersect.
00:26:13.840
Trump tweets a dog meme, which triggers the mainstream media, which makes us all laugh at the
00:26:19.580
mainstream media, more reliant on the new media, which terrifies the left and the Democrats who call for
00:26:24.900
censorship on the new media. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. This is going to
00:26:30.720
get a lot more intense before it gets any lighter. And so much of the 2020 election is going to hinge
00:26:37.920
around that question of the relationship between the new media and the old media of whether the new
00:26:44.780
media are going to kick out the right, just like the old media did. As long as you're hearing talk of
00:26:51.100
candidate Michelle, candidate Hillary, you know that the Democrats, frankly, as long as you're hearing
00:26:56.080
talk of impeachment and whistleblowers and trying to overturn the 2016 election, even as we're heading
00:27:01.880
into the 2020 election, what that tells you is the left does not feel confident and they shouldn't feel
00:27:07.340
confident because they have lost the narrative. They have lost their sense of humor. They've lost their
00:27:12.140
sense of proportion and people out here living in reality are going to have a good laugh at them.
00:27:17.120
And they're going to go with the guys who are basing their campaigns in the truth, in reality,
00:27:23.980
in what we can see with our own eyes. They're going to vote for the guys who show the American
00:27:29.620
people a little bit of respect and don't keep throwing their finger up at them. Don't keep trying
00:27:35.940
to overturn their elections. Don't turn around to them and say, F you, F this, I've got the microphone.
00:27:40.920
And on that point, I was at Politicon over the, over the last weekend. And if you didn't catch the
00:27:47.600
debate, I, I strongly encourage that you do because it was extraordinarily fun for me to be up there.
00:27:53.740
And it shows you how desperate the left is to maintain their monopoly on information. I'm not
00:28:01.700
talking about Chris Hahn, who I was debating. Chris Hahn is the Fox News Democrat who theoretically was my
00:28:08.220
sparring partner here. Chris was fine. We had a nice exchange. The actual sparring partner in the
00:28:15.440
debate was Clay Aiken, who was supposed to be the moderator. And Clay, he's like a stand-in for the
00:28:20.420
mainstream media because he is obviously a very left-wing Democrat. He ran for office as a Democrat,
00:28:25.900
but he comes out there and pretends to be objective. And within a few moments, just completely loses his
00:28:31.760
mind, starts swearing at people. We actually summed it up. If you haven't caught the debate,
00:28:36.140
we summed it up in a very short episode of it's always sunny in Philadelphia, which we're calling
00:28:45.360
I'm asking the question. So hold on a second. Hold on a second. I'm asking the questions.
00:28:50.020
All right. Feel free to try to control it, but you won't get there.
00:28:55.440
I want to know what can be done. I'm not one of them. I'm asking you what can be done about climate
00:29:01.620
change. I'm pretty ignorant about the whole argument myself, I'll admit. I'm asking you,
00:29:05.580
what should we do? Unless you want to cede the ground to Democrats to be the ones who come up
00:29:10.860
with ideas, are people who are marching and shouting Jews will not replace us, are they good
00:29:15.320
people? It's a yes or no question. Yes or no. No, it's a yes or no question. Are people who are
00:29:20.440
marching shouting Jews will not replace us, are they good people? Can you say yes or no to this? Are you
00:29:24.660
capable of that? I don't need to answer a question because I'm not on the stage. No, I did not ask you if
00:29:28.860
Nazis were bad. And I understand those are big words. People who don't like Jews, people who are
00:29:32.180
Nazis are bad people. That's not what I asked you. I've answered this five times. No, you haven't.
00:29:37.080
You're rewording. I think we'll be able to find that I didn't. You're rewording. I feel so bad for
00:29:40.380
you. I feel so badly for you. It's very easy to play a victim. You can boo all you want to. I don't
00:29:47.160
give a half a f***ing s***. I asked a yes or no question. Does President Trump lie? Yes or no?
00:29:53.400
Before you start, since clearly the audience thinks I'm biased, we're going to let them ask some
00:29:58.800
questions too. Well, I may be a hack, but I've got a f***ing microphone.
00:30:04.520
That's what the left is doing to us. That's what the mainstream media are doing to us right now. And
00:30:09.560
I don't think that's a position of strength. I think that is great news for us and we can smile
00:30:17.200
and have a good laugh and have a sense of humor. And we're not just laughing at dog memes, folks.
00:30:22.340
We're laughing at Clay Aiken. We're laughing at that whole mainstream media apparatus. We've got to get to
00:30:27.940
the mailbag. We'll get to that in a second, but first I'm going to say goodbye to Facebook and
00:30:31.560
YouTube. Head on over to dailywire.com. 10 bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me,
00:30:38.500
you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Walsh show,
00:30:41.660
you get to ask questions in the mailbag. That's coming right up. You get another kingdom, the last
00:30:46.580
season, the best season. So go check that out. And you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. Very,
00:30:52.000
very important. As the New York Times and the Washington Post do their hard investigative work
00:30:59.160
to figure out the origin of dog memes, you and I can sit there and lap up those salty tears.
00:31:04.000
dailywire.com. We'll be right back with the mailbag.
00:31:05.880
All right, we're back. Let's get through as much of the mailbag as we possibly can from Heather.
00:31:22.600
How do we reconcile our moral obligation as Christians to care for the widow, the orphans,
00:31:27.760
the poor with the desire to not have our tax dollars funding inadequate and abused social
00:31:33.880
programs? Thanks. The way that we do that is that we care for the widow and the orphans and the poor.
00:31:42.560
We don't just give our money to the government. Giving your, what the left has done,
00:31:49.420
if pretty effectively actually, is convinced you that giving your money to the government
00:31:54.440
is the same thing as caring for the widow, the orphans, and the poor. But it's not.
00:31:59.560
It's extraordinarily inefficient. It, most of that money, much if not most of that money is just
00:32:08.180
eaten up by the Washington bureaucracy. Some of it will go toward programs that will then be
00:32:13.800
directed toward the poor that very often harm the very people that they were intended to help.
00:32:18.520
This is the premise of the Moynihan Report. This is what turned so many liberals into conservatives
00:32:22.540
in the late 20th centuries. They realized that those federal welfare programs actually ended up
00:32:29.500
harming the people they were intended to help. Charity and taxation are very different things
00:32:35.160
because there's also a moral, a moral interaction here. I think Dinesh D'Souza summed this up.
00:32:40.920
He said, if I'm walking down the street and I see a, a bum lying on the street, I'm eating a sandwich
00:32:47.860
and he says, Hey, can I have that sandwich? I'm hungry. If I give him that sandwich,
00:32:53.320
there's a moral interaction here. He's asking for some help. He's asking for charity. I give him
00:33:00.200
that charity. He is grateful for that charity. I have engaged in an act of charity. That's a moral
00:33:05.900
exchange. If however, I'm walking down the street with my sandwich and the bum says, Hey, gimme, gimme.
00:33:12.100
And then Barack Obama rides up on a white horse with a pistol pointed at my head and he says,
00:33:16.240
give him the sandwich. That is not a moral exchange at all. I resent the beggar and
00:33:24.660
Barack Obama for stealing my food. The beggar feels entitled to my food. He doesn't feel gratitude.
00:33:30.880
He feels entitled to it because Obama said it's his right. And Obama has done nothing other than
00:33:34.960
threaten me with a gun. That's not a moral exchange at all, but that's what taxation looks like. So
00:33:40.220
engage in charity and try to get the government's hands out of your pockets. From Evan, dear skinny boy,
00:33:46.640
is it all right for parents to enforce a candy tax upon their young children who go trick-or-treating?
00:33:54.660
who believe that taxation is theft. I would love to hear your thoughts. I think that's a really good
00:34:01.180
way to get your children to hate you. I don't know if it's a great way to teach them about taxation.
00:34:06.660
Let the kids have Halloween. This used to always bug me when I was a kid. When I would go out,
00:34:14.740
I'd go trick-or-treating and then some house would give us an apple. I don't want an apple.
00:34:20.440
Halloween is not for apples. Halloween is for candy. Halloween is so that little kids can glut
00:34:25.560
themselves on candy because it's a day of a little bit of mischief and we live in a very rich country and
00:34:32.180
candy is delicious and kids like candy. No raisins, no apples, no lessons. This is the other
00:34:38.660
one. You'd go out trick-or-treating and for some of my friends, their parents would like take their
00:34:44.180
candy and they'd inspect it for razor blades because some suburban mother saw some news report
00:34:52.060
from some fake journalist that there was this epidemic of weirdos giving, putting razor blades
00:34:57.280
into kids candy. That doesn't happen. How many times has that happened in history? Like three
00:35:02.140
times? Don't do that. The kids get Halloween. They should be able to go out trick-or-treating.
00:35:06.860
They should get a lot of candy. They don't need to learn lessons about taxation. The way to teach
00:35:11.340
your kids to be good American citizens is to raise them well, to respect you, to like you,
00:35:19.660
to take your ideas seriously. And I promise you, if you take their candy away from them,
00:35:24.040
they will not respect you. They will not like you. I fear they will become huge reactionary
00:35:29.340
liberals. From Al, if the UN and NATO and the G7 don't work, how can freedom-minded countries get
00:35:36.800
together or is that a thing of the past? Thanks. Get together for what? What are we going to get
00:35:45.860
together for? Are we just going to go out and play golf? What, this is the question when we talk about
00:35:50.380
NATO, for instance, what is the purpose of NATO? NATO was formed in the mid-20th century to protect
00:35:58.300
Western European countries and American allies broadly who support freedom and oppose communism
00:36:06.260
to protect them from the Soviet Union. NATO is an institution built for the Cold War. The Cold War
00:36:14.400
is over. The Cold War has been over since 1990. So now what? What are we doing? I'm not saying we
00:36:23.880
need to disband NATO tomorrow, but we need to at least know what the purpose of it is. What's the
00:36:28.460
purpose of the UN? Is that to protect freedom-loving countries? No, the vast majority of member states
00:36:32.520
of the UN are the worst people on earth. The UN lets all sorts of terrible people in. There's no such
00:36:40.260
thing as the United Nations though. What is the United Nations? We all come together, paid for by
00:36:45.660
the United States on really nice real estate in Manhattan, and then all the worst people on earth
00:36:50.700
lecture America on how terrible we are, and we pay for that too, and then we send them home.
00:36:55.520
That doesn't accomplish anything. To quote John Bolton, there is no such thing as the United Nations.
00:37:01.660
It doesn't matter. We could build the building 20 stories taller. There still would be no such thing
00:37:06.080
as the United Nations. There is the international community. There are the nations of the world,
00:37:13.260
and there is the national interest of the United States. When those things intersect,
00:37:20.860
I am more than happy to work with every nation on earth. But when those don't intersect,
00:37:28.620
then what are we doing? Charles de Gaulle said that nations don't have friends, they have interests.
00:37:35.420
This seems cold-blooded to some people, but it's not. It's just true. Nations are not exactly like
00:37:43.080
people. We have relationships, we have alliances, but nations have interests over time.
00:37:50.540
Same thing. What is the G7? What is the point of the G7? What we should do is support our allies
00:37:56.060
and pursue our interests and be smart about it and not imprison ourselves into a foreign policy that
00:38:05.380
made sense 100 years ago, but doesn't make sense today. That's the purpose. I mean, the purpose of
00:38:10.800
all of these institutions is to advance national interests. If there's no national interest to
00:38:14.640
advance, I don't think we need to pay a whole lot of attention to those organizations.
00:38:19.340
From anonymous, I go to law school at Georgetown University Law Center. Now I see why you wanted
00:38:26.480
to remain anonymous. You can't out yourself for listening to this show or to anything to the
00:38:32.040
right of Hillary Clinton. I go to law school at Georgetown University Law Center, just received
00:38:36.100
an email telling me that I will be paying a reparations fee next fall to establish a fund
00:38:42.580
to support our descendants. I knew nothing of this before coming there. How is this reconcilable
00:38:50.880
with Title IX? What action would you recommend? Thanks. That is really bizarre. I had not heard
00:38:57.640
anything about that, but I'm not surprised that universities would put in a reparations fee
00:39:02.580
or any other manner of social justice tax applied unfairly to benefit certain students. If I were you,
00:39:10.940
I would not pay it. And if they yell at you about it, which I don't think they will do,
00:39:16.660
I think they'll just let it go. If they go after you for it, I would just tell them very politely
00:39:23.620
that you're here to be educated and you're here to learn about the law and you're not here to engage
00:39:28.640
in any sort of social justice left-wing activism. And if they kick you out for that, well, I don't
00:39:33.900
know, go to Antonin Scalia School of Law or something like that. This is especially important for law
00:39:40.920
school because as a lawyer, your integrity is so essential to the job. Who you are, the decisions
00:39:50.100
you make in your life is so essential. It's a little different than a kid who's just trying to
00:39:54.120
squeeze through an undergraduate class so he keeps his head down a little bit.
00:39:57.800
If you're a lawyer, then you are participating in the legal community. You might run for office.
00:40:02.080
You are presenting yourself as in your work life, relying upon your integrity. So I would not
00:40:11.760
compromise that in law school because if you compromise in law school, you're going to
00:40:15.460
compromise the rest of your career. There are plenty of lawyers who compromise their integrity,
00:40:18.920
but you don't want to be one of them. From Dylan, dear charismatic conqueror,
00:40:23.660
I watched your double debate at Politicon in which you debated the liberal Chris Hahn and the
00:40:29.000
moderator whose identity is irrelevant. I was wondering how you were able to stay composed,
00:40:34.180
be charming and charismatic while also staying on topic. Go on, stop it. I know, go, what do you
00:40:42.480
really think? Thank you for the question and the compliment. The, I did get a few versions of this
00:40:49.640
question over the past week, most of which just said, when you've got these two liberals screaming in
00:40:55.360
your face, how can you not get angry? Why would I get angry? People get angry when they know they're
00:41:02.180
losing the argument. I mean, there is, there is a place for righteous anger. If someone goes up and
00:41:07.140
calls your wife fat and calls your son stupid, then I guess you can punch him in the face. But
00:41:11.760
most of the time, if you're having a political debate, if you're having a debate about something
00:41:17.540
objective, you know, outside of yourself, something that isn't really personal,
00:41:21.740
if you have a good argument, if you're confident in your argument, then you don't need to yell and
00:41:28.860
name call and become all sort of angry. The left has lost the sense of this. One, because they've
00:41:35.280
lost the argument and two, because of a change that happened in the 1960s. In the 1960s, the left
00:41:40.980
decided that the personal is the political. This became a major slogan of the feminist movement and
00:41:47.360
it was adopted by other left-wingers as well. What that means is that we need to eradicate the
00:41:53.780
traditional difference in our republic between the public and the private. But free government,
00:42:00.480
self-government, relies upon this distinction between the public and the private. Meaning,
00:42:07.300
I've got my family life, I have my personal endeavors, and then I put on my suit and I
00:42:13.800
finish up my tie, and I go out, and I do the business of the people. And those are different
00:42:19.860
things. And so, while you might have some personal animosity towards somebody, you let that go in
00:42:25.540
public. Or, vice versa, when you, if you have a public relationship with somebody, you have a
00:42:32.880
different relationship in private. That vanished with the left. The left made the personal the
00:42:38.720
political, to the great detriment of self-government. I don't take these things personally. I've worked
00:42:43.940
as an actor. I've worked in politics. That's a blood sport. So, you just take the hits and,
00:42:50.380
and you move on. If you're, if you're taking these things personally, if you're really getting heated,
00:42:55.640
maybe it's because you don't quite understand what you're saying, and you don't quite understand
00:43:00.820
what the other guys say. From Jasmine, recently you said rap was the devil's music. I couldn't quite
00:43:06.540
tell if that was in jest or a true opinion of yours. Much of the rap genre is excreble,
00:43:11.920
but there is a lot of good Christian rap. Many of the artists in the clip you played were Christian
00:43:17.420
rappers. Was that intentional or not? Thanks. I don't remember the clip. I'm not sure I even
00:43:22.280
pulled it myself. Rap is terrible. It's just awful. And it almost certainly is the devil's music,
00:43:27.660
but God makes a habit of confounding the devil's plans as he did in Kanye West's recent album,
00:43:34.060
which is very, very good. I have almost never found a rap song that I liked. There have been a
00:43:42.040
couple, I guess. I've found, I will say I've found more rap songs that I like than contemporary
00:43:47.720
Christian songs that I like. I consider those contemporary Christian songs to just be absolutely
00:43:52.260
awful, saccharine, twaddle, ridiculous, insipid, terrible, terrible music, which is why I was so
00:44:01.680
surprised by Kanye's album because I felt Kanye's album actually took religion seriously. It took
00:44:08.100
the human condition seriously, more seriously than most. If you like these modern songs though,
00:44:13.480
I hope you're not offended. I don't like most popular music. It's just really decayed. It's
00:44:20.340
really awful. This is actually kind of my feeling about liturgy, my feeling about church services,
00:44:25.720
my feeling about the mass. I don't like the modern ones with the acoustic guitars and the sappy
00:44:31.820
seventies hymns that weren't even cool 40 years ago because they're not beautiful. They're not that
00:44:38.380
beautiful at least. Classical liturgy, traditional worship services are much more beautiful.
00:44:48.040
The typical response to this is, oh Michael, you old fuddy-duddy, come on. The people are
00:44:54.420
listening to the popular music. Yeah, I know that. I know that more people listen to Miley Cyrus than
00:45:00.120
listen to Bach, for instance. Bach is more beautiful than Miley Cyrus. And therefore, when I'm
00:45:10.540
engaging in worship, when I'm in a liturgy or I'm in the mass, I want the beautiful thing. I want the
00:45:17.460
beautiful thing in all facets of life. That does require a little bit of cultivation and understanding.
00:45:23.480
It's much harder to understand what Bach is doing than what Miley Cyrus is doing.
00:45:27.980
But that's some of the work that we have to do in the culture. And so when we win the culture,
00:45:33.640
it doesn't just mean that we need to have the best memes, that we need to have the funniest jokes. I
00:45:38.000
mean, that's important too. It also means that we need to work on elevating the culture from this
00:45:42.400
degraded level of pop and kitsch. We need to work on elevating that and elevating our understanding.
00:45:48.440
It will make us all chill out a lot more. It will reduce anxiety, reduce stress, reduce people
00:45:53.460
screaming at you in political debates. It will make you understand much better what everybody is
00:45:57.960
saying. And it will make you feel just at least a touch of that awe and wonder for that which is
00:46:04.860
beautiful. Because that which is beautiful is connected to that which is good and that which is
00:46:08.860
true. That's how you win the culture. You also win the culture with funny dog memes. That's
00:46:13.940
our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you Monday.
00:46:16.760
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
00:46:27.760
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00:46:32.160
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00:46:38.160
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00:46:42.800
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00:46:45.260
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00:47:01.640
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00:47:07.420
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00:47:14.160
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