Ep. 467 - AOC Proves Obama Wrong
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
174.81163
Summary
Barack Obama is convinced that women are better than men. They're just better. Meanwhile, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez couldn't figure out how to enroll in her health insurance plan. We will examine how little Barack Obama understands about men and women. Plus, Hallmark goes lesbian, and the Huffington Post gives us the dumbest article on the internet today.
Transcript
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Barack Obama is convinced that women are better than men.
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At an event in Singapore, he said women are indisputably better than men,
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and everything around the world would be so much better if women were in charge.
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Meanwhile, testing his hypothesis in Washington,
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Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez couldn't figure out how to enroll in her health insurance plan.
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We will examine how little Barack Obama understands about men and women.
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Then, Hallmark goes lesbian, and the Huffington Post gives us the dumbest article on the internet today.
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All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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All right, Mr. Obama, you say that women are much better world leaders than men.
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Exhibit A, to prove you wrong, is actually exhibit AOC, you might say.
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Unfortunately, we don't have video of it, so we'll just have to read it.
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Now, women, I just want you to know, you are not perfect,
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but what I can say, pretty indisputably, is you're better than us.
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I'm absolutely confident that for two years, if every nation on earth was run by women,
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you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything.
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And then he was asked if he was ever considering going back into political leadership.
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And what he said was, he just wanted to step aside, because he's a man, and he's getting older.
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If you look at the world, and look at the problems, it's usually old people, usually old men,
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But, obviously, he doesn't believe what he's saying about men and women.
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The evidence of that is if he actually believed that women are better leaders than men,
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and that men should step aside and let women lead, he would not have run for president in 2008.
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He would have endorsed Hillary Clinton, the woman who was about to become the first woman
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Democratic nominee and the first woman president, and then he beat her pretty unceremoniously.
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And so, he's getting a lot of flack for this, because it's so disingenuous.
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There are few people in this world more unctuous than male feminists.
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But we'll get to what that means broadly for our culture in a little bit.
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But for just right now, I want to focus on an aspect of this that nobody's really talking
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about, which is his comments in Singapore are, sure, just regular leftist boilerplate.
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They also seem to have a very practical application to the 2020 Democratic primaries.
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From the very beginning of this 2020 primary, people have asked Joe Biden why Barack Obama
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Joe Biden was a loyal vice president for both terms under Obama.
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It seems like Obama should come out and endorse his guy.
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Reportedly, in the early stages of Biden's campaign, Obama called him and said, Joe,
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Just go back, have corn pop, massage your leg hair, ride off into the sunset.
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You don't need to try to become the president of the United States.
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Here, he might be sending a message to Joe Biden.
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Nothing that Barack Obama does in politics is accidental.
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This is one of the most calculating politicians that we have seen, certainly in our lifetimes,
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Every aspect of his career was geared toward achieving the next goal, making it to become
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I mean, this guy became president before he had accomplished really anything.
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He wrote two books, both about his favorite subject, and he gave a couple of speeches,
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a couple of okay speeches and a bunch of not that great speeches.
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He barely showed up for his job as state senator in Illinois.
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He was a U.S. senator for about five minutes, and then he runs for president and he wins.
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This is a pretty calculating guy, and he's pretty good at the game of politics.
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He's not just accidentally making this last comment.
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If you look at the world and look at the problems, it's usually old people, usually old men not
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Who is the most prominent old man in politics right now?
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Bernie Sanders is also an old man, but Joe seems tired.
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He seems very old, and it would appear here that in this whole comment about men and women,
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what he's really saying is, I'm leaning toward Elizabeth Warren.
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I know that I can't come out against Joe Biden just yet, but the times are coming when I might
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Just a little psychobabble that I'm reading into this.
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Also, let's not forget Hillary Clinton is doing everything she can to signal that she wants
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So the men and women comments, while they're kind of stupid in the universal application,
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Barack Obama is very likely sending a pretty pointed message here.
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We will get to test his general theory of women being greater statesmen than men across
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We will test that theory by chatting with Maxine Waters and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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All right, Barack Obama says, women universally are better than men.
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And if women were controlling global politics, everything would be so much better.
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How stable and how wise did Maxine Waters come off?
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I believe, even though I don't have the facts to prove it, I believe that Putin wanted to
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He's always wanted to lift these sanctions that were placed on him because of his interfering
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And so I believe that they wanted to elect President Trump.
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And Trump, I believe, agreed, I will always believe this, that he agreed that if he got
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The oratory, the probing insight, the grand strategy from great, great stateswomen like
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I want to point, I mean, I mostly just played that clip to make fun of Barack Obama's point
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and Maxine Waters, but I also want to point out that virtually nothing of what Maxine Waters
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So she, she comes out and says, look, I don't have the facts, but here's my opinion, which
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I actually like how guileless that is, is look, I don't have any actual evidence of my accusations,
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And even though I don't have the facts, I know that he conspired with Vladimir Putin.
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And yeah, I know we had a two and a half year, $32 million investigation into whether that
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And we determined conclusively that it didn't happen, but I think it did.
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And I don't have the facts anyway, but let me tell you something, American people, Putin
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And actually he's been harsher on Russia than Barack Obama was.
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That's the argument that Maxine Waters just made.
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So it would appear that Barack Obama's theory is incorrect.
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But let's look at another prominent stateswoman in America, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been grilling people testifying before Congress.
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She's been trying to push the greater intrusion of the government into employment, and she's
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been trying to get the government to force employers to guarantee much more time off for
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Here is the incredibly insightful argument that she makes to push her policy.
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So, and similarly, your view on parental leave is to let the market decide.
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And I think what we've seen here is that the market has decided.
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Ms. Schabo, 80% of families don't have access and workers don't have access to paid parental
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If people don't care for a child or, seriously, family member, about a half of moms don't have
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And what is the most common length of parental or paid family leave that you have seen?
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Do we know how long puppies are allowed to stay with their mothers after a dog has given birth?
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So the market has decided that women and people who give birth deserve less time with their children than a dog.
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And I think that that, at its core, has shown that the market has failed
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to treat people with dignity and with basic respect.
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And so when that happens, I think it's our job as the public to redefine the rules of society
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and to treat people who give birth with the dignity that they deserve.
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I think there might be a few flaws here in the analogy.
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AOC's argument is if companies are only giving people six weeks parental leave,
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that this is insufficient because even dogs, when they breed, are permitted eight weeks with their puppies.
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And so we're treating women and children in this country worse than we treat dogs.
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Now, the question is what happens after the six or eight weeks?
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After the six weeks, the mother goes back to work and still gets to keep her child.
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In the case of the puppies, the puppies are sold and given away.
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And also, dogs don't really raise their puppies because they're animals.
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But let's take AOC's suggestion to its logical conclusion.
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She says six weeks is not enough time to raise your child.
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So you give birth to a kid, you get six weeks off, and then you've got to go right back to work,
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Okay, I mean, if we're going to change the regulation to go from six weeks to eight weeks,
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Now, is eight weeks enough to raise your child?
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So you get three months, you get 12 weeks parental leave,
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I think what AOC is trying to reach for is saying,
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I think it should be the case that women should be able to raise their children
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We used to have single-parent households, or single-income households, rather.
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there was a movement to have double-income households.
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You can't simultaneously stay home with your child
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What AOC is acknowledging is there is this conflict here.
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These are finite goods that we're talking about.
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unless you just regulate that one parent can't go back to work,
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or unless you're going to regulate that the employer
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But I don't think that's going to work out economically as well,
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but I point that out also to just knock down Barack Obama's argument.
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She then tweeted out her inability to purchase health insurance.
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members of Congress also have to buy their plans off the exchange.
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They are gold plans that are partially subsidized.
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That means I get to choose, she puts it in quotes,
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of getting to choose between lots of different subsidized,
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inexpensive, modern, advanced health care plans.
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This is a woman who needs more problems than she has.
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and so she's complaining about privileges that she has,
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including cheap, good, abundant, varied health insurance.
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Now, I fully grant that our health insurance system
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You should be able to purchase health insurance,
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that women are in all cases at all times universally better than men,
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and our politics would be so much better if she let it.
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But then, I even have to use an example from the Republican side
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First, I've got to thank our friends over at NHTSA,
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and I've got to give an important reminder for this Christmas season.
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Everybody knows about the risks of driving drunk, right?
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Almost 29 people in the United States die every single day
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I know people who have been killed in drunk driving crashes.
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I know drunk drivers who have been involved in those crashes.
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We've all known at least one person like that since high school.
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For the $10 it's going to cost you to get a cab,
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you're going to risk your life and someone else's life?
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when everyone's drinking and full of frivolity and merriment.
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Even though drunk driving fatalities have fallen by a third
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Drunk driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives a year.
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Many people are unaware that driving while high can be just as dangerous.
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In 2015, 42% of drivers killed in crashes tested positive for drugs.
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And from 2007 to 2015, marijuana use among drivers killed in crashes doubled.
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Okay, driving while high, it's just like driving while drunk, it's deadly.
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If you're impaired from alcohol or drugs, do not get behind the wheel.
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Drive high, get a DUI, drive sober, or get pulled over.
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I think we've pretty thoroughly debunked Barack Obama's argument.
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But just, just before we go away, I have to identify a very bad argument that a Republican
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This was made by Carly Fiorina, who I actually really like.
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Carly Fiorina says, we have to impeach President Trump, but she might vote for President Trump.
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Do you believe President Trump should be impeached and removed from office?
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I think he is going to be impeached, and I think he won't be removed from office.
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Whether removed this close to an election, I don't know.
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If he should be impeached, it's because he committed an impeachable offense.
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If he committed an impeachable offense, he should be convicted of that impeachable offense.
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The whole point of the Senate trial is to see whether or not he actually did the thing
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If he actually did the thing that the House is accusing him of, he should be convicted,
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and therefore, he should be removed from office.
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There's no world in which you say he should be impeached but not convicted.
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Then you're saying the House should lie about him?
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The House should put up completely false charges, and then the Senate should knock them down?
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I understand that there might be a personal aspect here,
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because Donald Trump was very harsh on Carly Fiorina during the 2016 campaign.
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So that is important context, but the argument she's making doesn't make sense.
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And then it makes even less sense a little bit later when she says,
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Did you, Carly Fiorina, vote for President Trump?
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Yeah, I actually did, and I've been very disappointed.
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Honestly, it depends who the Democrats put up, and I won't go any further than that.
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So impeachment comes about if a president commits treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
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These are very, very serious offenses that are directly related to his conduct as president.
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And what Carly is saying here is, if he committed that, that's really bad.
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It's so important that we charge him for it and we convict him, but then not convict him for it,
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and then also I'll probably vote for him again.
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And Donald Trump evokes strong emotions in a lot of people,
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but as a matter of the Constitution, as a matter of the law,
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as a matter of philosophical and political coherence,
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that argument does not make a whole lot of sense.
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So that's my knock against Barack Obama's theory.
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Oh, and also the fact that he beat Hillary Clinton in 2008,
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so he just does not believe the thing he's saying.
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It's dumb because it's untrue and it's immature.
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It's not true that women are universally better than men.
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It's also not true that men are universally better than women.
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We can go all the way back to the foundational story about the difference between the sexes in Genesis, right?
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Eve is created in Genesis when God pulls out one of Adam's ribs and she is made from Adam's rib.
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This is an important aspect of the story because if Eve had been pulled out of Adam's head,
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if Eve had been like a piece of hair pulled out of his ear or something,
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to tell you about the relationship between the sexes.
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There have been great women throughout history.