Ep. 500 - Coronavirus Kills The Economy
Episode Stats
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Summary
Coronavirus is spreading and economies all over the world are grinding to a halt. We will examine whether we re all going to die before we go broke. Then, new polling shows a big boost to Bernie s chances of winning the Democratic nomination. Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar admits she s un-American, and Harvey Weinstein is headed for the clink. All that and more on today s show.
Transcript
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Coronavirus is spreading and economies all over the world are grinding to a halt.
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We will examine whether we're all going to die before we go broke.
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Then, new polling shows a big boost to Bernie's chances of winning the Democratic nomination.
00:00:50.960
Freshman Representative Ilhan Omar admits she's un-American and Harvey Weinstein is headed for the clink.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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So many things out there are trying to kill you.
00:01:12.700
One big threat that's out there that is not as physical as it is informational would be threats to your data.
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Did you know that your internet service provider, say Comcast or Verizon maybe, they know every single website that you visit?
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What's worse is they can sell this information to ad companies and tech giants who will then use your data to target you.
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It creates a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet so that your online activity cannot be seen by anyone.
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Phones, laptops, even routers so that everyone who shares your Wi-Fi can still be protected even if they don't have ExpressVPN.
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So if you're like me and you believe that your online activity is your business, no one else's, secure yourself by visiting expressvpn.com slash Michael today.
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Use my link, E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash Michael and you can get an extra three months for free.
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The coronavirus poses a major threat to the whole world, but that threat is not exactly the kind of threat you think it is.
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There is a ton of misinformation going around about coronavirus.
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So let's just look at the numbers very quickly so you can see where the threat really lies.
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So far, during the outbreak of this virus, 2,600 people have died.
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The population of that province is 58 and a half million people.
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Italy, by the way, has one of the worst death tolls anywhere from coronavirus.
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And that death toll is now at five confirmed deaths.
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But to put that in perspective, we're also in flu season, right?
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During this flu season alone, do you know how many people have died from the flu?
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So far, during just this flu season, five times as many people have died from the flu, the regular old flu, as have died from coronavirus.
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Last flu season, when everything was said and done, over 61,000 people died.
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So if you're healthy and you get the flu, most likely you're going to be totally fine.
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If you're very, very young or very, very old, then it can be dangerous.
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In mainland China, the death rate for coronavirus is, in some provinces, about 0.4%.
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Even in Hubei province, right, the epicenter of coronavirus, the death rate has peaked at 2.9%.
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So that's mainland China, the province where it's happening, right, the city where it's happening.
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If you control for America's vastly superior public health infrastructure,
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the death rate for coronavirus is not dramatically higher than the death rate for the flu.
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So the unique threat that coronavirus poses right now, not really to our health as much.
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I mean, people are monitoring it, but the real threat seems to be to the economy.
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Right now, China's economy was already on the fritz, all right?
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It was already at the lowest level of growth that we've seen since 1990, so 30 years.
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As a result of this coronavirus, the country has more or less ground to a halt.
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So Italy right now, the city of Milan, which drives the whole Italian economy, has ground to a halt.
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I think the Italians just look for any excuse to stop working.
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But regardless, the economic effect is the same.
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Yesterday, the Dow Jones dropped 1,000 points because of coronavirus fears.
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Maybe there's a little pricing in there of fears about Bernie Sanders.
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They don't want the leading world economy to have a socialist president.
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But I think probably a lot of it's traceable to coronavirus.
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This was the third worst point drop in the history of the Dow Jones.
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So this is why President Trump is downplaying coronavirus.
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The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.
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We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries.
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CDC and World Health have been working hard and very smart.
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Now, he's obviously trying to boost confidence here.
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I don't know if he really thinks the stock market's looking good because
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Nevertheless, President Trump understands the real threat here is economic.
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If the economy tanks, that is pretty much the only way that Trump loses this presidential election.
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Okay, things are looking very good right now for President Trump.
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You've got this wacko socialist who is double and tripling down on Fidel Castro,
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You've got the so-called moderate, can't even say his own name on the campaign trail, Joe Biden.
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You've got the other moderate, Pete Buttigieg, is actually a huge radical who drags nine-year-old boys on stage
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at his campaign events to come out as homosexual.
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Whose father was the head of the International Gramsci Society.
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So, Trump is looking great unless the economy tanks.
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Record low unemployment, record high stock markets, great growth.
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The way it could tank is if you have this totally unpredictable virus that's taking over the whole world.
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Is that why the media are playing up coronavirus so much?
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That's a good question because we know the death rate is relatively low.
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We know relatively few people have been affected by it.
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And yet the media are treating us as though it's the next bubonic plague that's going to kill all of us.
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Some prominent people in the media have been hoping for a recession.
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And they've been hoping for a recession because even though it's going to hurt a lot of people,
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the recession will reduce the chances that President Trump gets re-elected.
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We saw this on Bill Maher's show just a few months ago.
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Farmers out there saying, well, he must know what he's doing.
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I guess they're just going to have to keep touching this hot stove.
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I'm not wishing for a recession, but if the farmers want to keep touching the hot stove.
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Well, you should wish for a recession because that will definitely get him unelected.
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Okay, but Bill, you don't really want a recession.
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You're going to knock lower middle income people out of work.
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Look, at least Bill Maher tells you what he thinks, right?
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And I think a lot of other people in the media feel exactly the same way.
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Okay, now, I don't think that liberals invented coronavirus.
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I don't think they went to, like, the Lib Lab and developed this bioweapon so that they could get rid of Donald Trump.
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However, I don't think it came from bats either.
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Remember, the initial story with coronaviruses.
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Some people in Wuhan ate some bat soup, and that was dumb.
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And now one of the bats had coronavirus, and now everybody's sick.
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There is now a lot of evidence that the coronavirus was cooked up as potentially a biological weapon in a Chinese government lab.
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The evidence of this is that the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology just released a new directive titled, quote,
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Instructions on Strengthening Biosecurity Management in Microbiology Labs that Handle Advanced Viruses Like the Novel Coronavirus.
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You say, well, how many of these labs do you have floating around China that just happen to be handling these radical viruses?
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And the answer is they have one, and that one lab happens to be in Wuhan.
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So it may be the case that China, the Chinese government, was cooking up this new biological weapon.
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We've got more bad news for the economy, but I do want to remind you, if you are a Daily Wire subscriber,
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if you're a member and you have the app or you're on the website right now, write in your questions,
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and we're going to be taking a few live questions during the show.
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Your pressing, deepest, most burning questions that you've got, we will do our best to answer them.
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On top of the coronavirus, we've got more bad news for the economy.
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Well, he's going to freaking kill the economy, but he's also freaking killing it in the Democratic primary race.
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Bernie Sanders just took a major boost to his campaign.
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Bernie has taken the lead among black Democratic primary voters nationally.
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Bernie had the momentum, but Bernie's base has always been pretty narrow.
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He's always had a very white, very far left base.
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And so he was going to struggle in states like, say, South Carolina.
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Joe Biden's only argument for electing him or nominating him this year was that he's the only guy who can win black votes.
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Well, now Bernie Sanders is doing better among black voters than Joe Biden is.
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This is according to a morning consult poll that was just released yesterday.
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Nationally, Bernie Sanders is at 32% among black Democratic primary voters.
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Biden is all the way down in third at 18%, followed by Buttigieg and Warren, who both have 11%.
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Evidence of our thesis yesterday, which is that a classic blunder in politics is people think they can win by losing.
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They think they can skip Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and Nevada, but, you know, they're going to come back afterward.
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Now, Mike Bloomberg is technically skipping those elections.
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He's not on the ballot, but he's spending heavy.
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He is on the airwaves in those states as though he is running.
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And so because he's got a kind of unique candidacy, he came in so late.
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He's being considered among the candidates, even though he's not really on the ballot.
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He is not showing up to these places as strongly as he used to be.
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He's been on the ballot in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he keeps losing.
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So all of a sudden, Joe Biden then drops down to third.
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You've got black voters in these states saying, gosh, Joe Biden was the number one guy.
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He can't win any state that he's been on the ballot.
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I guess our best shot is Bernie, who has been winning.
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And our second best shot is Mike Bloomberg, who's not even on the ballot yet, but he's
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And Joe Biden is reacting in exactly the way you would expect.
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And recently on the campaign trail, just yesterday, he forgot what office he's running for.
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And you're the ones that sent Barack Obama to the presidency.
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Where I come from, you don't get far unless you ask.
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I'm a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate.
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Joe Biden has not been in the Senate for 12 years.
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Then he was the vice president after Obama won in 2008.
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But he did run for Senate for a very long time.
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And he was there all the way through Anita Hill.
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He was the judiciary chairman during Anita Hill.
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So he's, I think he's just reverting back to his default mode, which is, hi, I'm Joe Biden.
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I'm a total glad handing politician who doesn't stand for anything.
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Even the way he closes it was like a typical caricature of a politician from 20, 30 years ago.
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If you don't like me, vote for the other Biden.
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If you don't like me, you should still vote for me because my name will be on the ballot.
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So probably very few people are going to vote for you.
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His campaign, I think, knows that this is falling apart.
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Not just because he doesn't know how to speak on the campaign trail, also because his whole
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strategy was predicated on crushing it in South Carolina.
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And now it looks like he's headed for not only a weak performance.
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I guess there's a chance he still wins, but he's neck and neck with Bernie right now.
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There's actually a chance he loses South Carolina.
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And Joe Biden said from the very beginning, he said, South Carolina is my firewall.
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By the way, when you're a candidate running for president and you say that a state far
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from now is your firewall, that is evidence of a weak campaign.
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That's evidence that you think you're going to do badly in the earliest states, but you're
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And Joe Biden immediately denies that he ever called South Carolina the firewall.
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And I think I have a real firewall in South Carolina.
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It's a direct quote that he gave to the press less than a month ago.
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And then we go into the Super Tuesday states that have a significant number of minorities
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I think I have a real firewall in South Carolina.
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Yeah, I said, look, I said maybe I'd do well there.
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Doesn't remember what office he's not going to win.
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And so the question is, how on earth can the Democrats beat Trump?
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If Bernie is the nominee, you've got a radical candidate out there.
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So presumably you're going to have to balance that out with some kind of moderate.
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However, the new chatter among the left-wing pundit class is that they're not going to
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They're actually going to go for the next most radical candidate that Bernie Sanders might
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Their analyst, Jonathan Zogby, just reported that the Sanders-Warren ticket currently beats
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President Trump and Mike Pence by 48 to 45 percent.
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It would be terrible because Bernie Sanders is pretty old.
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So there's actually a chance that you had a President-Warren by the back door.
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This guy, Zogby, believes that this is an easy way to beat President Trump.
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The more people see Warren, the less people like her.
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Remember, she was doing very, very well early on when she wasn't out there as much, and then
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Then she came out with her health care plan, and she tanked.
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The more people see of her, the less they like her.
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However, here it actually could hurt Bernie because he just actually had a heart attack
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on the campaign trail, and he's now refusing to release his medical records.
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Hopefully for a very long time, but still, we don't know about the guy's health.
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So you've got a serious chance that this Vice President becomes President, and Elizabeth
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Everyone says whenever you criticize Liz Warren, it's sexist.
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He's terrible and he's dangerous, but he's honest.
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We'll get to that in a second because he's doubling and tripling down on his support of
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Fidel Castro and other communist thugs, but he's not the only Democrat to do that.
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Should I attend the GOP primary and show my support for the president, or should I vote
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Bernie in the Democratic primary and sabotage the left?
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If some states are closed primaries, so you can only vote for the party that you're registered
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in, which seems to me to make sense, some states are open primaries, so a Republican
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can vote in the Democratic primary and vice versa.
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Okay, I think conservatives should want Bernie to be the nominee.
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I think he does have the least chance of being elected in November.
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There is, this is a risky bet because if we take this risk and we lose, all of a sudden
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At least a very strong socialist president, and that's pretty scary.
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However, my other theory is that Bernie Sanders is pretty much just as radical as the other
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Actually, some Democrats are even more radical than Bernie.
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I'm here for an honest vote, and I want to sabotage the left.
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So look, if you made it into the Democratic primary, you voted for Bernie, and we got
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the battle that America deserves, Trump versus Bernie, you know, there are worse things in
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And I like the honest fight because I think we win the honest fight.
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Bernie, you know, he said he liked Fidel Castro.
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This line of attack is not totally fair to Bernie, okay?
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Because Bernie is just saying what other Democrats have said.
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He's just saying it more honestly and more forcefully.
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Even Barack Obama, not that long ago, just a few years ago, was defending Fidel Castro with
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the same talking points that Bernie Sanders used.
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If you just read a transcript of what Barack Obama said about Castro and what Bernie Sanders
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I said, look, you've made great progress in educating young people.
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You know, the life expectancy of Cubans is equivalent to the United States, despite it
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being a very poor country because they have access to health care.
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But you drive around Havana and this economy is not working.
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So as usual, Barack Obama totally misrepresenting things, not surprising at all.
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They're both wrong because, first of all, Cuba cooks the books on their health care.
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And part of the reason that they have a relatively high life expectancy is because they do everything
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they can to prevent infant mortality to make sure that that number looks pretty good.
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How come we don't give him as much guff about it as Bernie Sanders?
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Here's what the media were saying about Fidel Castro when he died just a few years ago.
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Declared socialist, he dramatically improved health care and literacy.
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I think he will be revered as someone who brought education and social services and medical care to all of his people.
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Well, Fidel Castro was considered, even to this date, the George Washington of his country.
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There is no doubt that he is considered here a revolutionary hero, not only in Cuba, but in many places around the world, and also for his defiance of the United States.
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That's, by the way, that last part isn't true either.
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The people in Cuba despised Fidel Castro, every single person that I talked to.
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But the whole left, the whole Democratic Party has been trending this way for a very long time.
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And now they're just being more honest about it.
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Left-wing candidates for the last hundred years would hide the fact that they were socialists.
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We all kind of suspected they were deep-down socialists, but they would hide it.
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How offensive that you would call me a socialist.
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It was considered a really offensive thing, a real insult.
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They would, if you called someone an atheist, they'd say, how dare you?
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And most of them were atheists, but they would say, no, you couldn't possibly call me that.
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That's when it was considered socially unacceptable to be an atheist and a socialist.
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And so now they're a little bit more open about it.
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You know, when you think about how Joe McCarthy is taught in schools, people say Joe McCarthy
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was so terrible, he so crossed the line, he had no dignity, he had no shame, because he
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And we caught many socialists working in the government.
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So if it's okay to be a socialist, why was, why was it so terrible when Joe McCarthy would
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Now they're even admitting their un-American-ness.
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Until yesterday, if I called Ilhan Omar, that squad member, freshman representative, if I
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called her un-American, I would be pilloried as racist, xenophobic, bigoted, hateful.
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Well, President Trump implied that she was non-American.
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When he sent out that tweet, he said, you should go back to your countries.
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They went, they were so upset that he would say this to somebody like Ilhan Omar.
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Well, it turns out that he was right by her own admission.
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Ilhan Omar yesterday tweeted out, I am hijabi, Muslim, black, foreign-born, refugee, Somali,
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easily triggering conservatives, right-wing bloggers, anti-Muslim bigots, tinfoil conspiracy
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theorists, birthers, pay me money to bash Muslim fraudsters, pro-occupation groups, and
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I am hijabi, Muslim, black, foreign-born, refugee, Somali.
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It's not even that she doesn't mention nations on that list.
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She considers herself Somali, but not American.
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So when people say, go back to your country, that's considered bigoted, except it's by her
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own admission that her country is Somali, not American.
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If you ever question somebody's patriotism, that was considered off the table, right?
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But what about when the candidates themselves are questioning their own patriotism?
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If you called someone a socialist off the table, what if the candidates themselves are calling
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I prefer that honest fight, because then Americans have an honest choice.
00:27:31.960
We have a question come in from a listener, from KC.
00:27:36.100
What are the odds Ilhan Omar is Bernie's VP choice?
00:27:43.900
I think she's over 35, so she's constitutionally allowed to do it.
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I bet that's a little over the line for the Democratic Party.
00:27:52.180
I don't think they're going to let them get two total radicals out there.
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I think the most radical you're going to be allowed to get is somebody like Elizabeth Warren,
00:28:05.680
She's a woman, and she's at least one 1,024th Native American, so she checks the intersectionality
00:28:12.240
Ilhan Omar just has too many legal questions surrounding her, especially the suggestion
00:28:20.160
that seems very likely that she married her brother for immigration purposes.
00:28:26.600
I know that the Democrats have never been the party of family values, but if you start
00:28:31.440
promoting people who marry their own brothers, well, maybe that's the way that they can recover
00:28:36.740
I guess in a certain sense, that's the most family value you can have.
00:28:39.860
I still don't think it would play well in Peoria, so I think luckily we have avoided that.
00:28:44.500
Although, frankly, we live in the age of Trump.
00:28:47.300
We live in the age of Bernie soaring to the nomination.
00:28:52.480
We've got to get to Harvey Weinstein, which we will in just one second.
00:28:55.120
But I want to bring your attention to a possibly overlooked but highly valued Daily Wire membership
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00:30:06.980
Will he be found guilty for leading the Me Too crimes of Hollywood, or will he walk?
00:30:26.340
So at the long end, this could be a life sentence for Harvey.
00:30:29.600
The Harvey Weinstein verdict matters not just because what it says about our legal system,
00:30:34.820
but what it says about the relationship of our legal system to our culture.
00:30:39.460
That's the part that nobody's talking about, but that's actually the only really interesting
00:30:43.180
So the jury took five days to deliberate, and they found Weinstein was guilty of third
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degree rape and criminal sexual act, but the jury acquitted Weinstein on the three other
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counts, which included the most serious counts, predatory sexual assault.
00:31:04.260
This was actually a somewhat controversial case.
00:31:06.200
I know that Harvey Weinstein is just an absolute monster who, in the light of perfect moral
00:31:12.080
justice, would be put down like old Yeller, but in terms of the legal aspect of it, it
00:31:20.940
Because Weinstein allegedly raped these women or assaulted them or abused them, but he had
00:31:30.000
So you would see these emails and messages between them that were very nice between both of them.
00:31:36.200
The most prominent incidents that we saw took place, not in a dark alleyway, they took place
00:31:44.080
And they would happen over years, and the women would keep coming back.
00:31:47.320
So there was a real question over whether or not Harvey Weinstein would get off, because
00:31:51.340
he'd say, look, I've had relationships with these women for years.
00:31:54.260
If I raped them, why did they keep visiting me and being nice to me and going to my hotel room?
00:31:59.680
When the verdict was read, if you saw it in the courtroom, Weinstein looked shocked.
00:32:11.860
The actual, the funniest moment of the whole trial is that Harvey Weinstein was so shocked
00:32:15.880
when the verdict was read that when he walked out of the courtroom, he forgot to take his walker.
00:32:20.680
So for the whole trial, he's been pretending that he's really old and decrepit and handicapped.
00:32:25.660
So he would use this walker and he could barely walk up the stairs.
00:32:29.660
And then when the verdict was read and he was found guilty, he's like, all right, well,
00:32:37.740
Obviously, Harvey Weinstein is a sicko and should be kept very far away from polite society.
00:32:44.520
For many, the question remained unclear as to whether he committed the crimes that he was
00:32:50.320
Took the, took the jury five days and they only got him on the two lower counts.
00:32:55.140
The, the aspect that matters here is less the legal aspect, more the cultural aspect.
00:33:06.500
Harvey Weinstein, regardless of what the jury found, regardless of any aspect here, Harvey
00:33:13.660
It was far from clear that he violated the law of the land.
00:33:17.220
Many analysts thought he'd be acquitted, but it was very clear that Harvey violated the moral
00:33:21.640
And our culture is extremely permissive when it comes to that sort of thing, right?
00:33:25.540
We live in a permissive culture where we say, oh, if it doesn't obviously hurt anybody else,
00:33:39.860
And so even if Weinstein didn't commit the specific crimes that he was accused of, he was
00:33:47.420
You see this from the perspective of rights all the time in politics, right?
00:33:51.640
The Constitution affords us lots of different rights.
00:33:56.020
The Constitution also is built for a moral and religious people.
00:34:01.940
The Constitution is not fit for people who are not moral and religious.
00:34:05.880
So as moral and religious rigidity has fallen away, often through a concerted effort in our
00:34:12.400
culture, the effect of that has not been more freedom.
00:34:16.060
That's what they promised us in the 60s, right?
00:34:17.840
They said, look, we've got a very permissive legal system and we've got this rigid morality.
00:34:23.440
So just get rid of your moral discipline and then you'll be very free.
00:34:29.480
Paradoxically, though, the effect of that has been less freedom.
00:34:32.700
As people have become less morally disciplined, the government has stepped in to discipline them.
00:34:38.280
The reason for that is that order must be preserved.
00:34:43.540
So as a result, we lose our personal discipline.
00:34:48.560
The effect of that is endless regulations, new speech codes, now an ever-changing sexual
00:34:59.920
So either we could discipline ourselves or we will have discipline imposed from above.
00:35:05.460
Either Harvey Weinstein can act like a civilized human being or he's going to go to the clink.
00:35:10.700
And that doesn't matter how well his lawyers can argue that he did not violate the law.
00:35:17.180
Speaking of sexual ethics, now this is this left-wing outlet.
00:35:21.940
They post all these little videos all over social media.
00:35:25.940
They're following Joaquin Phoenix's speech recently where he called to end the terrible,
00:35:36.760
Now this has come out with one that talks about how fish actually on some level can feel pain.
00:35:42.980
And that's why it's so unthinkable that we should ever pick them up with our little hooks
00:35:50.380
You probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about fish.
00:35:53.680
And when you do, it's likely in the context of dinner.
00:35:59.880
They're so different from us, they might as well be aliens.
00:36:03.020
It's hard for us to attribute thoughts, emotions or any kind of inner life to them.
00:36:14.600
Because our being unable to relate to these creatures as live, conscious beings means
00:36:20.520
that many of us can't even conceive of them having the most basic element of sentience,
00:36:34.780
Fish have the same pain receptors as humans do.
00:36:37.120
And they act just like any animal would when those receptors are activated.
00:36:46.260
Take the exact same video, the same script, and replace fish with babies.
00:36:51.540
You know, we can't really relate to unborn babies.
00:36:59.840
But actually, they are a lot more like us than you think.
00:37:04.440
Unborn babies are definitely a lot more like us than fish are.
00:37:07.500
Unborn babies actually can feel pain by at least as early as 20 weeks.
00:37:17.400
And that's why we need to start thinking of unborn babies more like humans.
00:37:23.960
It's such a bizarre characteristic of the left.
00:37:28.140
That they care so much for the little delta smelt.
00:37:38.120
You know, they always care so much for humanity.
00:37:40.060
But they don't care all that much for actual humans.
00:37:43.780
But I think animal rights is an interesting angle to talk about this issue of abortion.
00:37:49.180
Because the more and more we're learning about the brain.
00:37:54.020
The more we're learning about sentience and consciousness.
00:37:56.800
The more we can apply that to human beings as well.
00:38:01.460
In the short term, what that means is you should never take seriously these left wing arguments about animal rights.
00:38:12.000
You've got, you should, I don't think that being pro-life means that you have to become a vegan.
00:38:18.260
But certainly it is the case that if you are a vegan, you have to be pro-life.
00:38:21.600
Because the kind of ethics, bioethics that surround veganism are so much more narrow that you've absolutely got to apply that.
00:38:32.760
They're so much more rigid that you've absolutely got to apply that to human beings.
00:38:39.440
Think about how ridiculous you have to be to shed tears like Joaquin Phoenix over the milk.
00:38:46.880
Which, by the way, the science is very inconclusive that fish can feel any sort of pain.
00:38:53.580
Think about how crazy and absurd you've got to look to shed tears over a little flounder.
00:38:58.840
But to be perfectly fine just chopping up a baby.
00:39:04.500
We've got to get to the dumbest article on the internet today.
00:39:16.700
I mean this is really just the leftist tears article of the day.
00:39:24.560
For the vast majority of the history of the CIA, the left has been calling for it to be abolished.
00:39:33.780
And he's appointed a new acting director of national intelligence.
00:39:37.280
So a new acting top spy who is a very impressive person, Richard Grinnell.
00:39:47.780
And there's been some suggestion that Grinnell is going to weed out some bad actors in the intelligence community.
00:39:55.680
Here it is from Jane Harman in the New York Times.
00:40:03.500
Said, I helped create the nation's top spy job.
00:40:11.540
While our intelligence community is the most impressive in the world, we can't see and know everything.
00:40:15.840
A purge of our best and brightest intelligence officers will signal to them that new management is coming and current relationships aren't useful any longer.
00:40:26.720
Allied services also won't trust us if our own officers face constant pressure to politicize intelligence.
00:40:33.100
A so-called house clearing could damage our intelligence abilities for at least a generation.
00:40:38.480
Recruitment and retention will, of course, plummet.
00:40:41.100
And those officers and analysts left won't have the mentorship or the experience to ensure our assessments are based on truth.
00:40:51.440
Jane Harman, a Democrat representing California in the Congress.
00:40:58.080
The issue of politicizing intelligence is crazy.
00:41:02.080
The intelligence apparatus serves in our political system.
00:41:07.800
But what she's really saying is we should not allow the people who govern themselves, who elect our representatives, to have any say over the intelligence apparatus.
00:41:18.380
She's saying the intelligence apparatus, the deep state or part of it, should operate without any accountability to the people whatsoever.
00:41:25.880
Because we might miss out on some clues if we have any oversight whatsoever.
00:41:29.820
Now, to be clear, there's no evidence that Richard Grinnell or Donald Trump or anybody else is going to gut the intelligence apparatus.
00:41:36.120
They're just going to fire some bad guys if the guys are shown to be bad.
00:41:39.600
And we've seen that there have been some shenanigans up in the intelligence community in recent years.
00:41:47.020
And even the suggestion that they would fire the worst employees, the most corrupt employees, that creates all this pushback.
00:42:02.200
You know, there is such an irony here because the Democrats say that they want this sort of democratic ideal where the majority rules and we've got power to the people.
00:42:14.940
In practice, what they want to do is take rights away from people and when they get into power, install a bunch of technocratic experts who know how to run your life better than you know how to run your life and who are sitting on panels and boards and agencies that have no accountability whatsoever.
00:42:30.640
And if the left wins this election, you're going to see that hardened.
00:42:37.420
The fact that now the intelligence community, which is not that old, it's an invention of the last hundred years, that we can't even fire bad people within it and that when you try to do it, even the left, which has pretended for years that they hate the intelligence community, are the ones defending them.
00:42:55.720
That tells you that Ronald Reagan was right when he said that a federal job, a federal agency is the nearest thing to eternal life on earth.
00:43:03.820
We've got to be very, very careful about that because if the left wins in this year's elections, you're going to see that hardened.
00:43:11.860
It's going to be even more difficult to fire those bad people.
00:43:21.660
You know, I have absolutely no idea who that is.
00:43:27.240
I think I know that person, but I don't, can't quite place him.
00:43:30.500
That does bring us, though, to a quick thank you that I have to make because today is our 500th episode, which is an absolutely shocking number, mostly shocking to Ben, who was hoping that he would be able to can us somewhere around episode 12.
00:43:44.960
But it's also shocking to me, and I just want to take a moment to thank everyone for listening.
00:43:49.360
The show has grown an order of magnitude and many multiples in size since our early episodes, and it is because of all of you who tune in and post it around the internet and send it around to your friends.
00:44:00.520
When we started, I was but a wee blank book author, and thanks to all of you who have listened in, we've been able to launch so many new projects.
00:44:09.380
The YAF Campus Tours, Three Seasons of Another Kingdom, The Book Club Show at PragerU, and obviously most recently, Verdict with Ted Cruz, which incredibly rose to become the number one podcast on the charts for two weeks.
00:44:20.820
And I'm actually flying out this afternoon to D.C. to start filming that again.
00:44:24.100
The Senator and I are going to be doing a live show at CPAC this year, so if you're in Washington, I hope you will come out.
00:44:29.600
And if I don't see you there, then I'll look forward to meeting you around the country on the YAF Tour, which is going to kick off in about a week or so.
00:44:36.340
And if I miss you there, too, where are you? Where do you live?
00:44:39.880
I will at least look forward to hearing from you in the mailbag.
00:44:43.440
So get those questions in. The mailbag will be on Thursday.
00:44:45.960
Thank you again for these first 500 episodes, and I look forward to 500 more.
00:44:50.580
I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:45:51.140
Hey, everyone. It's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:45:57.100
but the creepy left-wing culture that created him is still on the loose
00:46:00.820
and running for president. We'll talk about it on The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:46:18.660
TD can help ease those butterflies with renovations.
00:46:23.140
Refinancing can help you keep the home you love while increasing its value.
00:46:26.860
And although moving comes with new costs, like closing fees,