Ep. 498 - Bloomberg Blew It
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
186.33473
Summary
Bloomberg smacks Bernie, Warren scalped him, and Joe Biden wrecked himself. We examine the highlights from the wildest 2020 Democratic debate so far, and specifically how Mike Bloomberg fundamentally misunderstands the presidency. Then, AOC wants billionaires to disappear, and the moralists of modernity at Slate Magazine can t quite explain why it s wrong to sleep with your brother. All that and more, coming up on The Michael Knowles Show.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Bloomberg smacked Bernie, Warren scalped Bloomberg, and Joe Biden wrecked himself.
00:00:06.460
We will examine the highlights from the wildest 2020 Democratic debate so far,
00:00:11.280
and specifically how Mike Bloomberg fundamentally misunderstands the presidency.
00:00:16.280
Then, AOC wants billionaires to disappear, and the moralists of modernity at Slate Magazine
00:00:21.960
can't quite explain why it's wrong to sleep with your brother.
00:00:25.960
All that and more, I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:30.000
Oh boy, is there a lot to get to. Mike Bloomberg finally makes the Democratic debates interesting.
00:00:41.400
Sparks flew. This was a brutal, brutal debate. We saw firsthand, because of this debate,
00:00:49.540
pretty much everything that's wrong with modernity. I mean, it was the, it was the most
00:00:53.600
broad overview of everything that's gone wrong with the Democrats, with liberalism, with leftism,
00:00:59.200
with modernity. We'll get to all that in a second. First, got to thank our friends over at Fairway
00:01:03.960
Meat Market. Oh, how I love Fairway Meat Market. Fairway is a family-owned grocery chain that has
00:01:11.080
been in business since 1938. Fairway's premium beef and all-natural pork is raised by family farmers
00:01:17.620
and hand-cut by a highly experienced team of Fairway butchers, from ribs to ribeyes, pork chops,
00:01:23.520
to beef tenderloin, all at fairwaymeatmarket.com. I love Fairway. I discovered them. I was coming back
00:01:29.960
from a long trip, and they had sent me all of this meat, and that meat is so, so good. I love it.
00:01:36.460
These guys are the real deal, and you, you're going to love them too. How would you like to get a deal
00:01:42.520
on Fairway's Heartland Package? This one I would highly recommend personally. That includes eight
00:01:48.700
eight-ounce all-natural boneless pork chops, six eight-ounce USDA choice ribeye steaks, one mouth-watering
00:01:55.420
side dish, which could be loaded baked potato, gourmet cheesy corn, or brisket baked beans.
00:02:01.440
This week, my listeners can get the Heartland Package valued at $230 for just $99.99. Go do it. Do not
00:02:09.220
miss out on this. Plus, you get free shipping when you enter Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S at checkout.
00:02:13.480
That's more than 50% off the best meat in America, plus free shipping. That's fairwaymeatmarket.com,
00:02:19.440
promo code Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, and I would personally recommend look for the Heartland Package.
00:02:25.120
All right. What a crazy debate. Everybody came out of this debate looking terrible. The radicals,
00:02:34.340
the liberals, the billionaires, the everybody looked terrible, but especially, especially Mike
00:02:40.160
Bloomberg. And this was to be expected. This started right out the door of the debate.
00:02:46.400
Mike Bloomberg shows up. Everybody is going after him and Bloomberg simply wasn't prepared. So Warren
00:02:52.400
kicked it all off by attempting, she later completed this, but she attempted to just absolutely end
00:03:00.300
I'd like to talk about who we're running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads
00:03:06.740
and horse-faced lesbians. And no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor
00:03:12.180
Bloomberg. Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax
00:03:21.720
returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop and frisk.
00:03:29.740
All right. Bloomberg's team completely blew this if they did not prepare him for this question. This
00:03:35.320
was obviously going to be a big question because it's very difficult to attack Mike Bloomberg. He's
00:03:40.800
had an extremely successful career. He's a Democrat, so he holds most of the politically correct
00:03:45.620
political positions. But because he runs any large enterprise, there are these NDAs and obviously there's
00:03:52.220
always HR issues. So they're going to try to portray Mike Bloomberg, who's a very good manager of
00:03:57.780
these enterprises as some kind of sexual predator. Because what? Because he made a joke 20 years ago
00:04:02.880
or something. Bloomberg should have seen that coming. His team didn't prep him. No surprise that
00:04:06.960
the geniuses who thought that a campaign strategy was putting Bloomberg's face on a meatball on social
00:04:12.400
media, that somehow they would botch debate prep. But what's so crazy about that moment is Bloomberg
00:04:20.400
could have seen it coming because it's the exact moment that happened to Trump in his debate
00:04:25.540
four years ago. And you remember that first debate, Trump comes out there, everyone's gunning for
00:04:30.840
Trump, and they tried to hit him on the same thing. They said, you've made mean jokes about women. And
00:04:35.980
Megyn Kelly was the moderator and she said, Mr. President, or he wasn't president then, said, Mr. Trump,
00:04:41.480
you've called women fat and ugly and terrible. And instead of doing what Mike Bloomberg did, which was
00:04:46.560
wilt and don't say anything, and then you say, I'm sorry, Trump leaned right into it.
00:04:51.600
You've called women. You don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.
00:05:06.220
One of the most memorable lines in presidential debates, and I remember watching it in real time
00:05:12.880
in 2016 and thinking, oh man, this guy's really got something. This guy is not going to be pushed
00:05:18.860
around. This guy understands how to play the media. And Bloomberg blew it. Now, Bloomberg couldn't have
00:05:23.820
used the exact same line. He couldn't, they couldn't have said, you, Mike Bloomberg, you've called
00:05:28.200
women horse-faced lesbians. And then Bloomberg leans in and says, only Susie in accounting. Yeah,
00:05:34.080
right. That, that obviously isn't going to work, but he could have gotten aggressive.
00:05:38.460
Okay. If this is going to be the line of attack on brash New York billionaires, which is that they
00:05:42.560
make off color jokes, he could have leaned into it and gone on the attack and been even more brash and
00:05:47.300
said, you know, Elizabeth, you're one of the most notorious liars in the country. You lied about
00:05:51.720
your DNA for decades and took jobs away from native Americans. You lied about where your kids go to
00:05:56.160
school. You lied about being fired for being pregnant. So excuse me, if I don't take you
00:06:03.160
seriously, I'm, I shouldn't be surprised that you would lie about me too. If he just leaned in and made
00:06:08.360
it an attack, I think people would have stood up and loved him for it. You know, nobody wants this
00:06:14.300
awful lying, dishonest woman to Hector, some guy who's had a very successful career in business.
00:06:21.680
That doesn't look good to most Americans, but if she's going to be able to push him around, then she's
00:06:27.120
going to win the exchange, which is exactly what happened. On the issues, not the style necessarily,
00:06:33.940
but the issues, Bloomberg was actually pretty good. I mean, this was by far the best he did all night.
00:06:39.060
He got some pretty good zingers in at Bernie Sanders and Bernie was really going after him for
00:06:45.220
being a billionaire. And you remember Bernie Sanders used to go after the millionaires and
00:06:50.000
billionaires, but then Bernie made over a million dollars. So all of a sudden the millionaires were
00:06:54.640
okay. And it was only the billionaires. I mean, Bernie Sanders, a total fraud and Mike Bloomberg
00:06:59.680
called him out for it. He had one of the great lines of the night. He said, what a great country we live
00:07:04.280
in, that the most famous socialist in the country is a millionaire with three houses.
00:07:10.440
What a wonderful country we have. The best known socialists in the country happens to be a
00:07:15.620
millionaire with three houses. What'd I miss here? Well, you'll miss that I work in Washington,
00:07:21.480
house one. That's the first problem. Live in Burlington, house two. That's good. And like
00:07:25.700
thousands of other Vermonters, I do have a summer camp. Forgive me for that. Where is your home?
00:07:30.440
Which tax, which tax haven do you have your home? New York City. Thank you very much.
00:07:35.400
And I pay all my taxes. Oh my gosh. Absolutely a devastating response because
00:07:41.180
Bernie is an obvious fraud. Okay. He is a multimillionaire, right? He's got all these houses
00:07:48.200
and yet he's claims to be a man of the people and a socialist. This is a guy who's
00:07:52.360
hasn't done any productive work in his entire life. He was a vagrant who got kicked off of a commune.
00:08:00.140
Then he realized that his best chance at success was working in government. And then he did that
00:08:04.480
for the rest of his life. And then he whined and complained. He didn't even accomplish anything there
00:08:07.700
in, in government itself. So Bloomberg goes out, he goes, yeah, Bernie, you're a complete fraud and
00:08:13.660
you're a millionaire and you have multiple houses. And Bernie had no answer for that. Bernie said,
00:08:18.500
okay, well, yeah, I work in Washington. Uh, and Bloomberg, you got that New York, that dry just hits.
00:08:24.320
He goes, yeah, that's the first problem. He goes, and, and Bloomberg didn't have an answer or
00:08:28.800
Bernie rather didn't have an answer for his third home because it's a summer home.
00:08:33.100
He goes, well, I have a summer home. Like, you know, so many Americans do so many Americans have
00:08:37.460
summer homes. Well, it's news to me. I guess I got to become one of those so many Americans
00:08:42.620
because I sure would love a summer home. So he really gets that zing in there. And even then he
00:08:47.180
tries to deflect it by hitting Bloomberg on having a tax haven, but Bloomberg doesn't live in a tax haven.
00:08:51.860
He lives in New York and pays extremely high taxes. So that was a great line.
00:08:55.300
A speaking of taxes, there was a wonderful exchange where Bernie said, you know, the
00:09:00.620
billionaires pay lower taxes than the middle class, which is simply not true. But Bloomberg
00:09:06.960
actually got a great line of attack and he leans in and he says, Bernie, who writes the tax code?
00:09:13.760
Right. Bloomberg just runs a business. Bernie Sanders is a Senator. It's the, it's the politicians
00:09:20.120
who write the tax code. Right. So then Bernie tries to flip. He says the billionaires write that. I mean,
00:09:24.460
the politicians at the behest of the billionaires write the tax code. So Bernie's admitting that the
00:09:29.840
politicians are all bought off. But then the, the punchline was Bloomberg leans in there. He says,
00:09:35.660
Bernie, most billionaires are Democrats. And they are. It's true. I think of the 10 richest people in,
00:09:41.500
in the country, seven of them are Democrats. There are two billionaires in the democratic
00:09:46.760
presidential primary right now, Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. All the most famous billionaires we can
00:09:54.400
think of. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, right? They all are leaning left. Mike Bloomberg.
00:09:59.880
They all lean left. They're virtually all Democrats. So these were all great, really good hits. Then
00:10:06.040
Bloomberg moves on from those good zingers and shows the radicalism of the democratic party because
00:10:12.600
he says, look guys, we're not going to destroy capitalism. We're not going to all of a sudden
00:10:18.560
become communist. Communism doesn't work. And do you know what happened? When Bloomberg said
00:10:23.580
communism doesn't work, he got booed by the audience and by the other candidates.
00:10:29.940
I can't think of a ways that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get reelected than listening to
00:10:34.580
this conversation. It's ridiculous. We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that.
00:10:42.320
Other countries tried that. It was called communism and it just didn't work.
00:10:45.540
Oh, hold on a sec. You're going to go after communism now? Hold on. I don't know about that,
00:10:52.220
guys. You see Elizabeth Warren, it like pains her when he says communism just didn't work. She goes,
00:10:57.320
well, hold on. You look at Bernie. It looks like he's about to collapse. What do you mean communism
00:11:01.280
doesn't work? So it's a wild moment because five years ago, even five, five, six years ago,
00:11:09.580
if you had told me that a democratic debate would mention communism and an attack on communism would
00:11:16.180
get booed, I'd say, nah, that's crazy. That's too radical even for them. I mean, consider the fact
00:11:21.400
just in the Bloomberg questioning, the Democrats went wild for an attack over a sex joke,
00:11:29.860
but they booed an attack on communism. Liz Warren goes after Bloomberg because he made a joke about women
00:11:38.420
like once and wild applause. And then Bloomberg said, hey guys, I think communism is bad and
00:11:45.800
boos from the audience and from the other candidates. But Bloomberg was not deterred. He tripled down on
00:11:50.220
economic freedom. They were good issue points, but then he totally blew it in the end. We'll get to
00:11:55.800
that in a second. First, got to thank our friends over at Tecova's, Tecova's cowboy boots. They're
00:12:01.840
handmade. They have high quality full grain leathers by world-class boot makers, and they just look
00:12:08.300
great. They look really, really cool. Even a city slicker like me can wear Tecova's, and I know you
00:12:14.320
can too. They're just a really beautiful product. And my favorite part of it is they are built to be
00:12:19.600
comfortable right out of the box, all right? I'm not exactly wrangling cattle over here in the middle
00:12:24.440
of Los Angeles. Sometimes it kind of feels that way when you're sitting in LA traffic.
00:12:28.820
You don't need to break them in. They're just comfortable immediately. You can wear them to the
00:12:33.560
office. You can wear them at home. You can wear them on the town. They've got tons of timeless
00:12:37.500
styles. They're designed to be fashionable 50 years from now, just as fashionable as they are
00:12:42.780
today. And because Tecova's cuts out the middleman, they sell direct to you with a great price. Do what
00:12:47.060
I did. Get yourself a pair of Tecova's cowboy boots today at tecova's.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
00:12:53.940
That is T-E-C-O-V-A-S dot com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, tecova's.com slash Knowles.
00:13:01.340
So Bloomberg triples down on this, right? He is not going to get rid of economic freedom. He's not
00:13:09.740
going to get rid of capitalism. He's asked at one point by a moderator. This is pretty amazing.
00:13:16.920
Do you think that you should have made all that money that you made? Because I love when people
00:13:22.280
feel they're entitled to everybody else's stuff. And that's somehow virtuous, that the vice of envy
00:13:27.320
is now somehow a virtue on the left. But that's the question that's asked. Do you think
00:13:31.900
you should have made all that money? And Bloomberg says, you're damn right, I should have.
00:13:36.700
Mayor Bloomberg, should you exist? I can't speak for all billionaires. All I know is I've been very
00:13:41.960
lucky, made a lot of money, and I'm giving it all away to make this country better. And a good chunk
00:13:46.680
of it goes to the Democratic Party as well. Is it too much? Have you earned too much money?
00:13:52.380
Has it been an obscene amount of money? Should you have earned that much money?
00:13:55.960
Yes. I worked very hard for it. And I'm giving it away.
00:14:02.300
Great answer. I love too. Bloomberg has to catch it. He's like, by the way, I am using a lot of my
00:14:07.520
money to bribe the Democratic Party. Don't forget, it's not just that I'm making it and stimulating
00:14:12.380
the economy and donating to charity. I'm also bribing your party. So, you know, that's okay. That's the
00:14:17.580
only reason I'm in the debate right now is because I made a $300,000 donation to the Democrats
00:14:21.760
right before I got in the race. So just want to let you know, I'm using my money wisely.
00:14:26.540
Obviously, a little, a little grift and cronyism going on here in the Democrats, but he makes a
00:14:33.020
very good point. He goes, I worked very hard and I'm giving all my money away. Think about how much
00:14:37.640
money Mike Bloomberg gives to charity. He's one of the most philanthropic men in the country.
00:14:42.900
How much money do you give to charity? How much money does Chuck Todd give to charity? How much
00:14:47.120
money do any of the Democrats on stage? Bernie Sanders, oh my God, I don't know that guy ever gave
00:14:51.320
to charity. It's a pretty, pretty low amount according to his tax returns. So I like that
00:14:56.640
he tripled down on that. I thought Bloomberg made some good issue points. His style was not
00:15:02.680
terribly effective. I got a kick out of it as a New Yorker, but wasn't very effective.
00:15:06.600
Overall, the debate was a loser for Bloomberg. It was a, it was a big loser. And the reason is he
00:15:14.660
didn't accomplish the one thing that he was supposed to accomplish at this debate. He didn't
00:15:20.540
connect with voters. He did. That's the, why else would he have shown up to this debate? He was
00:15:25.680
already buying the primaries. His, his numbers were surging, even though he had never appeared on a
00:15:30.500
stage, right? He was just buying a ton of airtime, spent like half a billion dollars or something.
00:15:36.980
Why show up and open yourself up to all of these attacks, which he got? The only reason to do it
00:15:41.380
is to connect with voters, to show you're not afraid, to show that you got something here.
00:15:47.720
He didn't do that. If anything, he distanced himself from voters. Nowhere is that clearer than in his
00:15:54.760
response to a challenge, one of these dumb political challenges. They say, are you going to release
00:15:58.940
your tax returns? Now, I don't think politicians are obligated to release their tax returns. And
00:16:05.320
actually in the post-Trump era, I don't know that they will be required to, but it's one of these old
00:16:09.700
lines and they especially use it against businessmen because the tax returns of politicians are very
00:16:14.180
easy because they don't work in the productive economy. Whereas the tax returns of businessmen are
00:16:18.880
very complicated. And so there's a lot to pick apart and use in attack ads. And Bloomberg says, look,
00:16:24.140
okay, I'll release my tax returns, but I'm a billionaire with businesses all around the world.
00:16:29.780
It's not so easy. But he gave an answer that seemed pretty condescending and a little offensive
00:16:38.520
Your campaign has said that you would eventually release your tax records when it comes to transparency,
00:16:44.520
but people are already voting now. Why should democratic voters have to wait?
00:16:48.260
It just takes us a long time. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I make a lot of money and we do
00:16:56.660
business all around the world and we are preparing it. The number of pages will probably be thousands
00:17:02.280
of pages. I can't go to TurboTax. I got to tell you, I actually really liked this line. I thought it
00:17:08.300
was pretty funny because it's such an obvious point. It's like, look, guys, I, I know you think that
00:17:15.000
releasing my taxes is like, I click print on my computer, but I'm Michael Bloomberg. Okay. I have
00:17:21.300
got a ton of business interests everywhere. This will be thousands of pages long. And yeah, you can't,
00:17:26.920
you can't go to TurboTax, right? You can't walk to H&R Block and have them prepare your taxes.
00:17:31.340
A very funny line, but it's, it seems a little sneering too, right? So it's funny, like for a standup
00:17:38.280
and it's funny if you have a connection to voters, it's fine. I think Trump could have gotten away with
00:17:44.220
that line because Trump has this connection to voters. You have the real sense that Trump really
00:17:48.720
likes his voters. He really likes his supporters. He really likes his countrymen, right? You don't
00:17:54.040
get that sense with Bloomberg. And so with Bloomberg, it just emphasizes, it underlines the, the major
00:18:01.760
weakness of his campaign, which is that he seems like this elitist who doesn't like people, who
00:18:05.740
doesn't care about people, who doesn't, doesn't want to be listening to their concerns. So I'm,
00:18:10.940
I can't go to TurboTax like you little people, like you peasants. I'm Michael Bloomberg. So he
00:18:16.600
took a line that could have been pretty funny and, and just blew it because of his attitude.
00:18:22.820
Then he blew it worst of all. This was the moment nobody is talking about this,
00:18:27.140
but I actually think it was the worst moment of the entire debate for Bloomberg. And I, I didn't see
00:18:33.660
anybody really mention it on Twitter. In his closing statement, Mike Bloomberg finally makes the case
00:18:40.480
for why you should elect him. And he revealed that he fundamentally misunderstands the American
00:18:47.440
presidency. He said his big case for why you should elect him is that the presidency is a
00:18:53.740
management job and he's a good manager. This is a management job and John Donald Trump's not a
00:19:01.960
manager. This is a job where you have to build teams. He doesn't have a team. So he goes and makes
00:19:06.960
decisions without knowing what's going on at the implications of what he does. We cannot run the
00:19:11.880
railroad this way. This is so wrong. This is so incorrect. The presidency is not a management job
00:19:21.800
primarily. Obviously there's a little bit of managing going on. I guess there's a little bit
00:19:25.720
of managing that goes on in most jobs, but the presidency is not primarily a management job.
00:19:31.180
And it just reveals why nobody really supports what Bloomberg thinks. Not the left, not the right,
00:19:38.640
probably not even the center. Mike Bloomberg is a neoliberal technocrat. That would be the precise
00:19:45.840
term for him. He looks at all the political problems of the world and he doesn't think of them in terms
00:19:50.900
of great ideas or philosophy or the theological basis of those ideas or what moves and stirs the human
00:19:57.880
soul. He thinks about them from the perspective of getting a little more efficiency out of the
00:20:03.960
market, of just putting a few experts in there. And if they're smart enough, if they got more gray
00:20:08.640
matter, like Bloomberg said the other day, then they'll be able to get a little more money out of
00:20:12.760
the economy and then everybody will go along because we've got this perfect technical vision
00:20:18.500
of the world. And that's not how the world works. But that's, that's how Mike Bloomberg's always
00:20:22.880
thought of politics. When Mike Bloomberg ran for mayor of New York, he said, we can't have
00:20:27.220
more than two terms for mayor. Then he becomes mayor. He says, all right, we're going to add a
00:20:30.600
third term. Why? Because I'm the expert. I'm Mike Bloomberg. I can do whatever I want. Rules don't
00:20:34.920
apply to me. Then he gets the third term and he takes away the third term for everybody else.
00:20:40.120
He finally gets booted out of power in New York. And do you know what his, the next job was that he
00:20:45.240
wanted? It wasn't president right away. He considered becoming mayor of London. There was a real push for
00:20:52.420
Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York to become the mayor of London. That's so weird,
00:20:56.340
right? He's not English. He didn't live in England. Why would he be, because to Mike Bloomberg
00:21:00.460
running these cities, it's all the same. It's all cookie cutter. You just have to get the right
00:21:04.720
technical systems in place and, you know, build teams and have, have good retreats and then
00:21:09.900
implement these good PowerPoint strategies and models. And then the, the, the city will run the
00:21:17.100
right way. And it has nothing to do with the ideas that lead politics. It has nothing to do
00:21:24.120
with actually accomplishing something in politics beyond efficiency. It has nothing to do with the
00:21:30.800
people, right? To Mike Bloomberg. Yeah. Okay. New Yorkers, Englishmen, Londoners, whoever, any,
00:21:39.420
you can substitute any people. It doesn't matter. But of course, people are the most important thing
00:21:43.160
in politics. Politics is how we people all get along in society. And Bloomberg just,
00:21:49.580
just fundamentally doesn't get it. Our framers did not think that the presidency was a management
00:21:56.080
job. Our, our founders and framers thought that the presidency was the spirited part of the
00:22:01.780
government. This is where some people on the right get it wrong too. Some people on the right say,
00:22:05.380
ah, the president, he's just a regular bureaucrat, just like anybody else. No, he isn't. The government,
00:22:10.540
the presidency rather, as the framers intended, is not just some random bean counter. He's not just some
00:22:16.320
random bureaucrat. He's the spirit, the embodiment of the spirit of the government. When the framers
00:22:21.720
set up our government, it's in three parts, right? The judiciary, the legislature, and the executive.
00:22:26.240
Those three parts are designed to correspond to the three parts of the human soul. They're designed to
00:22:32.500
correspond in the judiciary that corresponds to the logical part of the soul. The legislature responds to
00:22:38.660
the emotional part of the soul and the executive responds to the spirited part of the soul. In Greek,
00:22:44.640
it would be the logos, the pathos, and the ethos. I mean, it's the, it's the three divisions of the
00:22:49.940
soul, the three divisions of government. They work very well, but it's about the soul. It's about people.
00:22:54.560
It's about great forces that move us, not just making, uh, some plastic goods a little bit cheaper
00:23:00.340
and markets a little bit more efficient. That's why Bloomberg doesn't get it. And that's why very
00:23:04.620
likely, even beyond all the other attacks on him all night, that is why very likely he's not going
00:23:09.400
anywhere. The other candidates are all jokers too. We've got to get to, uh, AOC, by the way,
00:23:14.360
being the, the, uh, future of the democratic party. And we've got to get to why slate magazine
00:23:20.200
doesn't understand that a sister should not have sex with her brother. We'll get to all of that.
00:23:25.140
Plus the mailbag first got to thank our friends over at rock auto. I love rock auto. You know,
00:23:31.520
I love rock auto. I love it because it's a family business. I also love it because it's so much better
00:23:36.760
than all those chains to, you know, chain stores have different price tiers for professional
00:23:41.840
mechanics and do it yourselfers. Rock auto.com doesn't even require membership or an account
00:23:47.580
login. I love that because when my car breaks down, I go to the chain store, I go to the physical
00:23:53.280
shop, right? And all they, they never have the part. They just go online and they order the part
00:23:58.500
probably from rock auto. And then they charge me a huge markup and I don't know. And it's very opaque
00:24:02.500
and it's very hard to see what's going on. Not with rock auto. Rock auto gives you fair prices
00:24:06.720
all the time. Everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps, motor oil,
00:24:11.860
and even new carpet. Whatever car, whatever truck it's for, you can get everything in a few easy
00:24:16.740
clicks. Even I can understand the website. Go to rockauto.com right now. See all the parts available
00:24:23.620
for your car or truck. Write Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S in their how did you hear about us box.
00:24:29.880
And then they will know that we sent you rockauto.com. Okay. All the other candidates, uh,
00:24:35.380
were jokers. That's no surprise at all. Um, the winner was Bernie. Bernie won. Warren did pretty
00:24:41.320
well too, but that's only because the moderators refused to go after her weaknesses. Moderators
00:24:47.060
have gone after every other candidate. They haven't gone after Warren. They've gone after
00:24:51.220
Buttigieg on race. They've gone after Sanders on his alleged statement that women can't be president.
00:24:55.940
You went after, they went after Bloomberg, obviously on everything. Uh, they went after Amy for
00:25:00.100
forgetting the name of a foreign leader, but they don't go after Warren. Why?
00:25:06.020
Warren is the most, is the weakest of the candidates. She lied about being a native American
00:25:10.060
for her whole career. Probably took a job away from an actual native American. She's lily white.
00:25:15.940
Then lied about her kid's school. Then lied about getting fired for, for being pregnant. Then just
00:25:20.100
lies, lies, lies, but they won't go after her. And I think the reason they won't go after her
00:25:23.860
for the Indian thing is because it looks like a Trump attack. It's an attack that Trump has now
00:25:29.860
totally owned. They don't want to be accused of playing into a Trump attack. They don't want to be
00:25:33.660
accused of being harsh on women. They don't want to be accused of any of that. So they,
00:25:37.620
uh, they just go, they go easy on her. And even with all of that, she's still not doing very well
00:25:41.780
in the polls. All radical candidates on that stage last night with, with maybe the sort of
00:25:48.640
exception of Mike Bloomberg who got clobbered. What this shows us is that someone like AOC who
00:25:55.640
the DNC chairman, Tom Perez said last year, two years ago was the future of the democratic party.
00:26:00.900
It shows that she's not just some strange outlier or some exception. She really,
00:26:06.280
really is the future of that party. While all the candidates were debating on stage with Bloomberg,
00:26:11.280
AOC went on the view to actually serve up one of the questions from the debate.
00:26:19.280
AOC went on the view. One of the questions from the debate from Chuck Todd was,
00:26:22.680
Hey, Mike Bloomberg, should you exist? That was from AOC who said explicitly on the view,
00:26:27.660
billionaires, right? There are fellow countrymen, citizens of America should not exist.
00:26:33.780
Here's the thing is that if you, if the amount of money that you have can force the DNC to change
00:26:39.740
their rules, but the DNC would not change their rules for Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris,
00:26:45.200
that is a, that is an actualization of power. And we all know how I feel about billionaires. I don't
00:26:51.800
think that in a place where 60% of Americans can't even, you know, make more than $40,000 a year,
00:26:59.180
that the presence of a billionaire who largely makes their money off of businesses underpaying
00:27:03.880
their workers like Walmart, like Amazon, like so on should exist. Billionaires should not exist.
00:27:10.660
They shouldn't exist. Now, when you couple that with what we're hearing from the rest of the
00:27:15.920
Democrats, the activists in the field, guys like one of Bernie Sanders' current campaign workers,
00:27:21.800
who said that after the revolution, they're going to line up all the bourgeois and send them to the
00:27:27.960
gulag. They're going to line them up on the wall and kill them. That's like actually what a campaign
00:27:31.360
worker for Bernie said. And you hear this kind of language, it gets you a little worried because
00:27:35.760
every radical socialist communist regime in history has, has had to liquidate classes of
00:27:41.940
people. Liquidate is another word for murder. They've had to purge people. They've had to crack
00:27:46.860
a few eggs to make an omelet. So that kind of language is, is not great. And you're hearing
00:27:51.860
it from the young, fresh face of the party, AOC. Not a good sign, not a good sign for the country.
00:27:59.960
The one glimmer of hope, however, is that AOC is a hypocrite. And AOC revealed that in the same
00:28:08.020
interview with The View, because she castigated all those rich men. And yet, right now she's
00:28:13.800
campaigning for a rich man. Our entire political system
00:28:17.500
revolves, frankly, around rich men. And rich men are not the center of my universe. Working families
00:28:25.960
are. Yeah, okay, AOC. Well, what's interesting is AOC, the reason she hasn't been doing her job
00:28:31.920
lately is because she's on the campaign trail for Bernie Sanders, who is a very rich man.
00:28:39.800
He's an old rich man. That's like three strikes against him. So that is a lie. I mean, what she's,
00:28:45.260
what she's trying to say, oh, men, rich men, they're not the center of my universe. Working
00:28:48.940
families are. AOC doesn't answer the phone in her district office for those working families,
00:28:53.320
but she does spend a lot of time on the campaign trail for, for Bernie Sanders. That's a little
00:28:59.240
glimmer of hope. Uh, however, if we've, uh, if, if the best hope we've got is Democrats hypocrisy,
00:29:06.780
I mean, that's something we can rely on, but it doesn't say very much about the Democratic Party.
00:29:10.820
Um, before we get to the mailbag, I've got to talk about the grossest, the grossest article.
00:29:18.440
This was in Slate. It was a letter written into Slate Magazine. It's called,
00:29:22.700
My Wife Wants Us to Have Sex with Her Brother. Not just that she wants to have sex with her brother,
00:29:26.580
but she wants them both to. Here's the letter. Dear, how to do it. My wife and I have been in
00:29:32.940
an open marriage for five years. So they're cheating on each other. They sleep with other
00:29:36.220
people. On the whole, our relationship has been uncommonly open and supportive. Definitely
00:29:42.060
uncommonly open. We both strive to encourage one another to explore and even playfully push the
00:29:47.140
limits romantically and sexually. For as long as I've known her, my wife has been interested in
00:29:51.580
incest role play. Okay. While it isn't my cup of tea exactly, I've been willing and happy to support
00:29:57.780
her in her exploration of this kind of fantasy and role play. Often she will have me dress up as her
00:30:02.560
father, wear his cologne, et cetera, while she will wear her high school clothes. Okay. Recently though,
00:30:11.220
things have started to move in an uncomfortable direction. Recently, not before that, all that other
00:30:15.760
stuff was comfortable. Wearing your dad's cologne, totally normal, but now it's moving in an
00:30:19.900
uncomfortable direction. My wife is very close with her older brother who is also bi, bisexual,
00:30:25.400
and with whom we often speak very openly about sex and sexuality. A few nights ago and after a few
00:30:29.920
drinks, my wife got to talking fairly explicitly about some of the family role playing that she and
00:30:34.380
I are into. And her brother, who I thought would be kind of horrified, was not only entirely supportive,
00:30:39.740
but vaguely expressed interest in exploring this kink with us. Exploring this kink, by the way,
00:30:44.560
is a euphemism for having sex. When I got, when we got home, I expected my wife to make it clear
00:30:49.840
that her brother ever joining us in the bedroom was entirely off the table, but instead she seemed
00:30:53.920
to think it was a really good idea. In principle, I don't have a problem with this idea. I've got to
00:31:01.440
pause here for a second. If in principle you don't have a problem with you and your wife having sex with
00:31:08.520
her brother, you probably don't have very many principles. You're probably not a very principled
00:31:15.660
person. If that is in principle, you don't have a problem. Uh, my wife and I have also enjoyed group
00:31:21.420
sex, orgies, and so that isn't the problem either. I'm just worried about how this could affect my
00:31:27.260
relationship with my brother-in-law. Is there a way for me to make this happen without it getting
00:31:30.800
weird? It's weird. It's weird, buddy. Uh, Slate doesn't have much of an answer to it. The, the
00:31:39.700
advice columnist to respond says, well, look, if you're worried about how it's going to affect your
00:31:44.280
relationship with your brother, then, then don't do it basically, right? That's all it says. Doesn't,
00:31:48.260
doesn't explain in principle why this is a bad idea. So you'll notice what he says, right? He says,
00:31:54.380
I'm kind of uncomfortable with this. This is a little weird. And then he refers to the family
00:31:58.200
role-playing that he and she are into, but he just said, he's not really into it. He's just doing it
00:32:02.580
to humor her, right? He said, it's not my cup of tea, but then he says, I'm into it. So he's obviously
00:32:06.380
not the manliest man in the world. He's obviously getting pushed around quite, quite a lot here.
00:32:14.720
All of the reasoning for why not to sleep with your wife's brother is very, um,
00:32:23.580
it's just very subjective. It's very well, if it'll affect your relationship, well, if it'll make
00:32:27.900
family dinners awkward, well, if it'll make family dinners sexual, well, if it, you know,
00:32:33.120
okay, it might just situationally, it might not work out great. The reason not to have sex with
00:32:40.880
your wife and her brother at the same time is because it's wrong. It is morally wrong. It is
00:32:48.620
objectively wrong, wicked, not just a little bit creepy. It's actually wrong to do it. It's a violation of
00:32:57.540
the moral order on top of all the other gross aspects of it. But we're not allowed to say that
00:33:02.260
anymore because we're not allowed to say in this modern cult, sexually liberated culture of anything
00:33:07.220
goes and if it feels good, do it. We're not allowed to say that certain sexual acts are intrinsically
00:33:12.460
disordered. This gets to the big debate that's been going on on the right for months now. It started
00:33:19.560
with the porn thing. Should we regulate porn? And you had the kind of libertarian leaning people on
00:33:24.320
the right say, no way. If it doesn't hurt anybody, it doesn't matter. If it feels good, do it. And
00:33:28.900
then you had the conservatives say, no, this is pretty bad. It's an epidemic. It's causing huge
00:33:33.720
rises in ED. It's causing men to become perverted. It's a big problem in the country and we don't want
00:33:39.100
perverts running our country. There is no, there is no violation of the moral order that doesn't affect
00:33:50.180
anybody, right? There is no victimless crime as they say. All crimes have victims. Even if you're
00:33:55.700
the victim and the effects on other people are difficult to measure, but they can be measured.
00:34:01.020
Like for instance, if I become a drug addict and kill myself, God forbid, you could say that's a
00:34:05.720
victimless crime in that it's only affecting me. But of course it affects many more people than you.
00:34:09.440
It affects your family. It affects your friends. It affects your community. That, that is just what
00:34:14.000
happens with these violations of the moral order. You see it in, uh, in Utah right now. Utah just,
00:34:20.060
uh, passed a bill to legalize polygamy. Polygamy, much, much more understandable than, uh, having sex
00:34:28.000
with your wife and a brother at the same time, but still a violation of, uh, of our social and sexual
00:34:33.700
mores today. In the, if it feels good, do it culture. Why is polygamy wrong? By, by the logic of
00:34:40.840
Obergefell, the decision that redefined marriage to include monogamous same-sex unions, by the logic
00:34:46.320
of that Supreme Court decision, which discovered somewhere in the constitution, a right to intimacy,
00:34:51.220
not sure where that was, it's between the articles, I think, by the logic of it,
00:34:56.060
why should marriage not be redefined again to include polygamy? Love is love. If it feels good,
00:35:02.900
do it. It's not hurting anybody. It's a victimless crime, right? And yet we all know, yeah, there's
00:35:07.000
something wrong about that. There's something right there. We all know there's something wrong
00:35:10.780
about sleeping with your wife and her brother at the same time, but we've convinced ourselves in
00:35:17.200
this very narrow, rationalistic way, this shallow way that we cannot take seriously moral discussion,
00:35:25.000
moral disagreement. It all just has to be about us. Well, it doesn't really hurt me. It doesn't
00:35:29.460
really affect me. That's not a mature moral discussion. It's not the discussion that our
00:35:33.200
framers had. It's not the discussion that any of our ancestors had who built this great
00:35:36.980
civilization. And if we don't start having that discussion again, we're not going to have the
00:35:40.580
civilization for very long. Okay. We got to get to the mailbag running late as usual. I want to bring
00:35:45.220
your attention to a possibly overlooked, but a highly valued Daily Wire membership tier.
00:35:50.200
That is the reader's pass. A reader's pass gets you the articles ad-free, including Ben Shapiro's op-eds,
00:35:56.300
which are exclusive for Daily Wire members only. You also get access to our mobile app to read all of
00:36:01.240
our stories and receive push notifications for breaking news and special content. Perfect when
00:36:06.220
you want to stay up to date on the go. This membership tier is already a bargain at three
00:36:10.920
bucks a month. But if you are still a little doubtful, if you're not a billionaire like Mike
00:36:15.560
Bloomberg or a millionaire like Bernie Sanders, listen to this offer right now. You get one month
00:36:19.800
for 99 cents. 99 cents. That's mobile ad-free access to all of the Daily Wire news, exclusive op-eds
00:36:25.260
from Ben Shapiro, and breaking news and updates on our mobile app, all for the low price of $1.
00:36:30.580
So go check it out. You will not be disappointed. DailyWire.com. We'll be right back with the mailbag.
00:36:47.760
Right back with the mailbag. Dear Master of Covfefe, and resident papist of the Daily Wire,
00:36:53.440
I am a conservative and a Christian, and I believe in the differences of the sexes and that God made
00:36:58.160
us to be different and to suit different roles. I don't accept the nonsense put forward by the left
00:37:03.140
that gender is separate from sex. However, I experience gender dysphoria. I know that this
00:37:08.780
is a psychological problem and that I need to solve it. But any therapist I approach will only
00:37:13.340
give me affirmation therapy, and I'm ashamed to approach my family, friends, or religious leaders.
00:37:18.700
And so I come to you, a social and political commentator who I only know on the internet.
00:37:22.700
What would you advise I do? Sincerely, and may God bless you and yours.
00:37:28.380
Okay. I'm very sorry to hear that you're going through that. It's a very tough affliction,
00:37:33.880
particularly because we don't know exactly how to treat it. First of all, I would correct you a
00:37:38.860
little bit here when you say, you've got to solve it. It'd be nice if you could solve it. It'd be nice
00:37:45.480
if you could get rid of it. But that's not the way that afflictions always work. Sometimes we just
00:37:50.580
kind of bear suffering, and suffering sanctifies us spiritually, but it also shapes our character.
00:37:57.100
It also deepens our understanding of the world. Everybody suffers. So you are not alone in
00:38:01.380
suffering, though you do have this particular affliction. You also have this problem, which is
00:38:08.120
we live in a really dumb society right now where any psychologist you go to is not going to give you
00:38:12.340
good psychological advice. So here is my advice. First of all, a little bit of encouragement.
00:38:17.200
I don't know how old you are, but when this gender dysphoria occurs, especially in young people,
00:38:24.640
statistically, for the majority of people, it will go away over time.
00:38:29.800
Huge, I mean, 80 to 90% of teenagers who experience gender dysphoria, it just kind of goes away. So
00:38:35.980
that bit of advice could just be try to bear it out and hope that it goes away because statistically,
00:38:42.700
it very possibly will. The next thing you should do, you say you're afraid to talk to your family
00:38:48.160
about it. I don't know your family situation. That might be totally justified. You don't want
00:38:52.960
to talk to therapists because a lot of them are quacks. Totally true. You're afraid of talking to
00:38:58.320
your religious leaders. I don't know who your religious leaders are. What I would recommend is
00:39:02.420
you talk to my religious leaders, and that's because the Catholic Church has a nuanced view of
00:39:08.140
this. They've been dealing with, they've been thinking, you know, the Catholic Church, as with
00:39:12.380
most things, has been thinking about it for 2,000 years. So there, there is a kind of nuanced view,
00:39:16.340
and I think you would probably get pretty good balanced advice, even on what sort of psychologists
00:39:22.220
to go seek out. So I would recommend you talk to a Catholic priest about it. Even if you are not
00:39:28.460
Catholic yourself, I just think you're more likely, and with various other Protestant denominations,
00:39:33.620
it might be more hit or miss, just because there's so many different doctrines that are out there.
00:39:38.020
You know, I don't, I don't want to send you to the, the wrong people, even if there, there could
00:39:42.780
be some good ones out there as well. I would do that, and then I would do your best, on, actually,
00:39:47.840
on the Catholic point, I would recommend finding a Catholic psychologist, or at least, I say Catholic
00:39:52.620
psychologist because Catholic psychologists will accept the natural law, so they won't push some wacky
00:39:57.580
gender Gnostic ideology on you. But if you find any psychologist who recognizes the natural law,
00:40:05.720
then I think you'll be in a good place. In the meantime, what you should do is not lose heart,
00:40:13.200
be encouraged, everybody is suffering, you've got this particular affliction. There are people out
00:40:18.820
there who you can speak to about this. There are people who are living with gender dysphoria,
00:40:23.360
who are, or who regret going through sex affirmation surgery. So I interviewed one of
00:40:30.960
them, I know I forget his name, Peter something, when I was guest hosting Ben's radio show. I know
00:40:34.860
Walt Heyer talks about this a lot. He's another person who has gone back and he regretted his surgery.
00:40:41.320
Those, those kind of voices are out there as well. And I would recommend, just given my own
00:40:48.500
knowledge of these religious leaders, I would recommend talking to a priest about it. And just
00:40:53.440
seeing, even if they don't give you religious advice that you like, if they can lead you to
00:40:57.400
psychological advice, because there, there are resources out there. And best of luck. I will pray
00:41:01.620
for you, my friend. From Grant. Hi, Michael. I find a choir member in the church extremely attractive,
00:41:06.780
and she seems exceptionally sweet and genuine. I want to ask her out, but have no idea how to approach
00:41:12.020
that. Any tips on asking her out? What could my opening line be? I've never talked to her before,
00:41:17.280
but she has noticed me a couple of times. I'm extremely nervous and don't want to botch this.
00:41:21.140
Thank you for any advice. Yes, I do have advice. How about you open with a compliment? This is now
00:41:28.020
in our kind of ironic culture. We, the idea of complimenting somebody is unthinkable, but how
00:41:35.800
about you try that? A real compliment, not flattery. People hate flattery, but actually, you know,
00:41:40.700
hey, that was a lovely cantata you sang. Oh, I really love this hymn. Good choice. Those sort of
00:41:46.960
things, right? And make it genuine. Oh, lovely dress. I mean, you know, it could be as simple
00:41:51.860
as that. And probably because men don't understand how to talk to women very much anymore.
00:41:59.780
She will like that, especially if she's been noticing you. That's, she's probably looking
00:42:03.680
for an opportunity to talk to you as well. And then you can start a conversation. And if you
00:42:08.000
open with a compliment, it allows you to take the conversation somewhere that has some mutual
00:42:13.480
interest. So if you say, oh, I really loved how you sang, how great thou art, that hymn
00:42:19.720
that you were singing. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I love how great thou art. Yeah, it's
00:42:22.660
really good. And then you can start talking about hymns and then you'll have some common
00:42:25.820
interest there. I assume if you're both in the church choir and then you can bring it
00:42:29.180
to the place where I'm sure you want to bring it to, which is, oh, wow, we, we certainly
00:42:32.600
should discuss this further. Do you want to get a drink after, after choir practice or you
00:42:36.620
want to go to dinner after you want to grab a coffee or something? That's where I would
00:42:40.280
begin. People always ask, how do I pick up a girl? And, uh, the answer is so simple
00:42:46.240
that people overlook it, which is be genuinely interested in them. Be curious about what they
00:42:52.220
have to say, like them. They want to be around them. And, uh, I think you'll probably have
00:42:57.240
a good shot because it sounds to me like she's interested as well. Okay. From John, dear
00:43:01.940
Dr. Covfefe slash Mr. Swalwell. Thank you for using both of my names. Winner of the Iowa
00:43:06.400
caucus. Good. Thank you for using my title. Given Trump has been using the pardon power,
00:43:10.200
this week, I decided to refresh myself on the reasons for the pardon power and find
00:43:14.740
myself unsatisfied by James Madison's rationale that the executive has the power to check the
00:43:19.520
criminal justice system when it goes awry. It seems to be generally abused by presidents.
00:43:24.100
Trump has used it relatively sparingly. Uh, if you had your druthers, would you erase the
00:43:29.320
pardon power altogether? Huge fan of the show and your literary work. Thank you very much.
00:43:32.760
I would not. I love the pardon power. I think it's great. I think the founders and framers
00:43:36.700
were smart to put it in the constitution because it humanizes the government. And after all,
00:43:44.260
what is our government? It's our fellow humans governing us. So obviously we are a nation of
00:43:48.420
laws, not a nation of men. We have this justice, but justice without love, justice without mercy
00:43:53.180
is tyranny. It's brittle. It will crack. And so you need a little safety valve in there. And
00:43:59.100
that safety valve is the pardon power. I love that the executive, the spirited part of our
00:44:03.180
government has the ability to do that. Some presidents abuse it. Bill Clinton abused it.
00:44:07.960
Barack Obama certainly abused it as well. But, uh, I don't think Trump is abusing it. And I'm,
00:44:14.020
I would rather run the risk of presidents pardoning too many people than not have that ability
00:44:19.440
at all. All right. That is our show. We've got a lot more to get to, but you know, of course
00:44:24.680
we don't have time. We run out of time every single week. Tune back in on Monday in the meantime,
00:44:30.500
by the way, I should announce, uh, I'm going to fly out next week to Washington DC because Senator
00:44:36.120
Ted Cruz and I will be doing a live verdict podcast at CPAC this year. So if you're going
00:44:41.920
to be at CPAC, uh, we hope to see you there in the room. If not, you know, go on out there.
00:44:46.400
Maybe we'll see you there and, uh, I'll see you on the East coast. In the meantime,
00:44:50.120
I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show.
00:44:58.000
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
00:45:03.100
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends
00:45:07.600
to subscribe. We're available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
00:45:13.580
Also be sure to check out the other daily wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro show,
00:45:18.260
the Andrew Klavan show, and the Matt Walsh show. The Michael Knowles show is produced by Ben Davies
00:45:23.860
and directed by Mike Joyner, executive producer, Jeremy Boren, supervising producers, Mathis Glover
00:45:30.360
and Robert Sterling, technical producer, Austin Stevens, assistant director, Pavel Widowski,
00:45:36.600
editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico, audio mixer, Robin Fenderson, hair and makeup,
00:45:43.060
Nika Geneva, production assistant, Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles show is a daily wire
00:45:48.100
production. Copyright daily wire 2020. Hey everyone. It's Andrew Klavan, host of the
00:45:52.880
Andrew Klavan show. Mike Bloomberg fell short at the debate last night after Pocahontas drew
00:45:58.160
her tomahawk and cut him down to size. We'll talk about that and other cheap height jokes
00:46:03.480
Did you know that over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. grocery stores is imported? That's why I buy
00:46:11.600
all my meat from GoodRanchers.com instead. Good Ranchers products are 100% born, raised and harvested
00:46:17.440
right here in the USA from local family farms. Plus, there's no antibiotics ever, no added hormones
00:46:23.080
and no seed oils. Just one simple ingredient. That's meat. Best of all, Good Ranchers delivers
00:46:28.280
straight to your door for added convenience. So lock in a secure supply of American meat today.
00:46:33.020
Subscribe now at GoodRanchers.com and get free meat for life and $40 off with code DailyWire.
00:46:37.860
That's $40 off and free meat for life with code DailyWire. Good Ranchers, American meat delivered.