The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 529 - The Backlash Has Begun

00:00:00.000 A new study shows Americans are worried, but they're not worried primarily about the coronavirus.

00:00:04.680 They're worried about something that poses a far more imminent risk to their lives and

00:00:08.280 livelihoods. As the backlash against our national lockdowns begins to brew, the response from mayors

00:00:14.300 and governors separates the politician wheat from the politician chaff. Then Joe Biden gets

00:00:19.300 a major endorsement now that there is no other choice. And the New York Times goes into full

00:00:23.340 damage control mode to cover for grab happy Joe Biden. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles,

00:00:27.700 and this is The Michael Knowles Show. You know, I hate to say that I told you so. You know, I hate it.

00:00:39.580 I would never do it. Okay. But you know, sometimes it might seem like I told you so. I told you this

00:00:46.900 from the beginning. I told you from the very beginning of coronavirus that I thought this

00:00:52.500 was being overhyped, that I thought this was alarmism, that I thought people were becoming

00:00:57.060 hysterical and they shouldn't become hysterical because there's no reason to. And people mostly

00:01:03.200 on the left of me, but some people also who are on the right were furious with me. There were people

00:01:09.820 who genuinely believed that we were all going to die from this thing on both sides of the political

00:01:16.540 aisle. Okay. And that turned out not to be true. The skeptics were right. The alarmists were wrong.

00:01:26.000 We're seeing so much evidence of that all around the country at virtually every level of our society.

00:01:31.920 We will get to that. The alarmists were wrong. Really want to drive that home because what you're

00:01:38.580 going to be hearing a lot in the next several weeks and months, and frankly for years, because this is

00:01:44.060 a world historic event, we've never seen anything like this in the global economy and the government's

00:01:50.060 response to it. People are going to try to be justifying this for a long time. Do not lose

00:01:54.760 sight of the fact that the alarmists were dead wrong. Now the backlash to that is beginning.

00:02:02.240 The backlash is beginning at the local level, state level, the governmental level, the federal level.

00:02:07.860 It's beginning all over the place. And just think about why that is. Okay. Just, just consider

00:02:14.960 Florida and California. Just consider these two places, right? California was not hit hard. Even

00:02:22.120 though we were told by all of our people in California, the mayors, the governor, we were

00:02:26.580 told that California was going to be like New York. It was going to be like Italy. It was going to be

00:02:29.880 worse. But the reason that it wasn't, the reason none of their predictions came true is because

00:02:35.140 California closed down early. Okay. That's what they were saying at least. Closed down on March 19th.

00:02:43.800 Okay. Well, Florida did not close down for weeks. It didn't close down until two weeks later on April

00:02:52.400 3rd. And Florida has 198 fewer deaths as of last night than California. So I guess maybe it wasn't the

00:03:03.720 lockdown because on top of that, Florida didn't even shut down completely. Florida had more

00:03:10.080 exceptions than California did. On top of that, Florida hosts spring break where a bunch of

00:03:14.920 teenagers show up and definitely do not social distance. Definitely a very good way to spread

00:03:20.080 the virus. Florida, I mean, on a whole has fewer deaths. And even if you look at deaths per million

00:03:27.160 people, Florida has only eight more deaths per million people than California. Also, if you look

00:03:34.220 at the relative age of the population, Florida, a lot older. Okay. And yet they look basically the

00:03:41.760 same. Florida is doing pretty well. If the lockdown is what accounts for the relatively low death rate,

00:03:47.100 then Florida should be getting creamed right now. And that's not what's happening, which backs up

00:03:52.040 some studies that we've seen elsewhere. We just talked about the one in Israel yesterday,

00:03:56.840 which showing that the lockdowns really don't do very much. So in the face of all of this,

00:04:01.580 the politicians who called for the alarmism are trying to save face. One way they're doing this

00:04:06.440 is cooking the book. So in New York right now, we just saw within the span of 24 hours, 3,700 new

00:04:13.040 deaths added to the tally from coronavirus. 3,700 in one day. Well, they didn't all die in one day.

00:04:21.680 And actually we'd have no evidence that they died of coronavirus. They just added 3,700 new people

00:04:28.160 to the tally who never tested positive for coronavirus, but who they think maybe had

00:04:33.160 coronavirus. So this brings the total tally up above 10,000. 3,700 out of 10,000, that's a lot

00:04:40.080 of people. Okay. That if you, if you just consider how many people they added to the tally yesterday,

00:04:45.540 they increased the tally by about 55 to 60%. Huge numbers that boosted the nationwide total

00:04:52.980 to 26,000. Well, okay. I mean, if it's legitimate, that's fine, but where's the evidence?

00:05:00.960 I mean, if we just counted every single person who dies every day as a coronavirus death,

00:05:04.220 that's 7,500 people per day. So we have to look a little bit more closely here. There's a very big

00:05:11.620 political incentive for the alarmists to try to pretend that they were not wrong, for the alarmists

00:05:17.740 to try to pretend that they didn't just destroy the economy for no reason. However, the backlash

00:05:26.100 is beginning. We'll get to that in a second. First, I got to thank our friends over at Rock Auto. You

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00:06:17.040 possible. Let's say you happen to need a Delphi FG1456 fuel pump assembly for the 2005 to 2010 Honda

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00:06:37.420 how did you hear about us box. That way they will know that we sent you. They're still the alarmists.

00:06:44.680 They're still trying to say that everything they did was right. And really, frankly, it's going to

00:06:49.100 get even worse. So CNN sent out this tweet yesterday. That's how you know you got to take

00:06:52.900 it with a grain of salt. CNN sent out a tweet, quote, new study from Harvard researchers published

00:06:57.060 today in the journal Science finds that prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary

00:07:03.760 into 2022. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Whatever. Reopen the country. Oh yeah. Okay. No, you guys are super

00:07:13.180 smart. Definitely. Yeah. We're going to have to social distance until 2075. Yeah. Okay. Whatever.

00:07:18.700 Egghead. Open the country up. All right. You were wrong. And I don't care that you're trying to save

00:07:22.460 my face. Move on guys. Okay. People are getting the picture here and the protests are cropping up

00:07:29.920 all over the place. As by the way, I predicted on this very show, they would. So there's a Facebook

00:07:34.940 group in Michigan that is now trying to defy the governor's continued draconian stay at home order.

00:07:42.240 This is Michiganders against excessive quarantine. And they got a whole number of new members. They now

00:07:49.140 are up to, I think, 300,000. Uh, this is also happening in North Carolina and Ohio. So last week

00:07:55.800 in Ohio, dozens of protesters showed up. They were carrying placards. They were carrying signs.

00:08:03.040 Uh, one of the signs said quarantine worse than the virus. And there's a lot of hard evidence that

00:08:08.780 people consider this to be the case. They think that very likely the cure is worse than the disease.

00:08:14.760 A little bit more on that later, but outside of Ohio and North Carolina, North Carolina is my

00:08:19.460 favorite in terms of the, the reaction here, because it shows you just how shameless the

00:08:23.760 government has been in trying to cover their political derrieres. There's a Facebook group

00:08:28.560 called reopen North Carolina. It started last Thursday. It already has 21,000 members calling

00:08:34.120 for protests. I mean, why, why in North Carolina would this be the case? Well, just consider a few

00:08:39.080 numbers. 10.4 million people in North Carolina. That's the population of the state. How many people

00:08:46.280 there have died from coronavirus? This whole time, how long has it been around now? A month, two months,

00:08:52.560 three months, 81, not 81,000, not 8,100, not 810, 81 people have died in a state of 10 and a half

00:09:04.300 million. How many people have been hospitalized? Because you might say, okay, the death rate's low,

00:09:08.620 but the hospitalization, 331 people have been hospitalized in a state of 10 and a half million.

00:09:14.300 That's why they shut down the entire state. I don't think so. So how are the states reacting?

00:09:21.160 There's a big difference here. This really separates the politician wheat from the politician

00:09:25.180 chaff. Okay. The dumb politicians, the way they're reacting to this backlash is they're doubling down.

00:09:30.960 So I saw this in Raleigh, North Carolina the other day. There was a protest to reopen North Carolina.

00:09:37.220 The local officials there reacted by sicking the cops on them. So they sent the police to go break

00:09:44.740 up this perfectly peaceable, perfectly compliant protest. Some people were outraged by this on

00:09:52.600 Facebook. So they go into their Twitter. And so all over social media, they tweeted at the Raleigh PD.

00:09:58.900 They said, why did you break up this, this protest? And the Raleigh PD in perfect obliviousness sent out

00:10:06.420 a tweet. They said, protesting is a non-essential activity. Tell that to Thomas Jefferson. Tell that

00:10:17.460 to Sam Adams. How, how don't you? Protesting is a non-essential activity. Take a little gander at the

00:10:24.920 constitution. Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles, also reacting in a very stupid way. He's doubling

00:10:30.640 down rather than taking the exit ramp because there's a beautiful exit ramp right now available

00:10:34.920 to the alarmist politicians. They can still say, and a lot of people will believe them, that all

00:10:40.160 the draconian measures they took were the whole reason that the virus stopped. It's not a lot of

00:10:45.380 evidence of that, but whatever. Okay. This is politics. They could very easily take that exit ramp,

00:10:50.140 but some dumb politicians like my own mayor here in Los Angeles are doubling down. And so when it,

00:10:57.280 when mayor Garcetti in LA says two weeks ago that there is no world in which two weeks from now,

00:11:03.280 LA is not like New York, then two weeks shows up where nothing like New York, things are doing fine.

00:11:09.920 He extends the lockdown order. He institutes fines for people who don't wear face masks.

00:11:16.760 He, he's just so insistent. I was right. I was right. Except he wasn't.

00:11:23.760 It's clear that the most pressing political liability right now for these guys is not the

00:11:29.640 virus. Okay. They, they're still living in the world of two weeks ago where their most pressing

00:11:34.100 political liability is if they underreact to the virus. That's not the new world we're in.

00:11:39.540 According to the public opinion polls, according to everything we're seeing, the bigger liability

00:11:43.760 is the economic shutdown. This is backed up by Nate Silver over at 538. According to the latest poll

00:11:50.240 averages, 538 is reporting that 38.8% of people, of Americans are very worried that they, someone in

00:12:01.020 their family or someone else they know will become infected with coronavirus. Then on top of that,

00:12:06.960 another 36.3% say they are somewhat worried that that will happen. The percentage who say that they

00:12:14.720 are very concerned has increased by about 6% or so. Now a total of 75.1% say they are somewhat worried

00:12:25.040 about the virus. Now we're seeing 23.6% say they are either not very worried or not at all worried

00:12:34.000 about the virus. But meanwhile, at the same time, you're seeing a huge percentage of people,

00:12:39.260 major surge in the virus or major surge in the population saying that they are very concerned

00:12:45.500 about the economy. And these numbers have been shifting, right? So it starts out people very,

00:12:51.000 very concerned about the virus, not worried about the economy. Steadily, those two numbers have been

00:12:54.980 shifting. We're now at the tipping point where all of a sudden it's going to be all about the economy

00:12:59.440 as we are very clearly on the downslope of virus infections all around the country,

00:13:04.520 even in New York, which was the epicenter of the virus in the United States. The best evidence

00:13:09.360 that the backlash to this whole episode has begun, you don't have to take my word for it. The best

00:13:16.880 evidence is that the A-list politicians, the varsity politicians, the creme de la creme of knowing how to

00:13:25.700 work the levers of political power, the wheat, not the chaff, they are now moving to reopen.

00:13:34.240 Across ideological lines, including very liberal people in very liberal states,

00:13:40.480 they are now moving to reopen because they can tell which way the wind is blowing.

00:13:44.200 Andrew Cuomo in New York, Gavin Newsom in California, totally different sides of the country,

00:13:49.100 major states. But Andy Cuomo had this to say, there is a coalition coming out to reopen America.

00:13:58.080 Those numbers say we can control the spread. Feel good about that. The worst is over. It has not

00:14:07.220 overwhelmed the healthcare system. We have controlled the spread. And there is confidence to be taken in

00:14:16.100 that. And that's an accomplishment. And it was a heck of an accomplishment. Those healthcare workers,

00:14:23.300 for the rest of my life, I will say nothing but thank you to them. And I was not sure that we could

00:14:30.760 keep the tide from overwhelming our hospital capacity. And they did. Feel good about that.

00:14:40.640 And I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart. And I believe we can now start on the path

00:14:47.240 to normalcy. And we can have a plan where you start to see some businesses reopening,

00:14:54.760 understanding the delicate balance.

00:14:57.960 This is a very different Andrew Cuomo than we've seen over the past few weeks.

00:15:02.760 And Cuomo's a very talented politician. You got to remember, this guy's father was governor of New

00:15:07.060 York. And he wasn't just any governor. He was an extraordinarily successful, popular liberal

00:15:12.100 governor of New York. People wanted him to run for president. And Andy Cuomo was basically running

00:15:16.500 the guy's campaign. So this guy has really good political instincts. Two weeks ago, you saw Andy

00:15:21.960 Cuomo in the polo t-shirt, walking around the hospitals and the Javits Center, you know, in the

00:15:28.640 midst of this crisis, we got to shut everything down. Andy Cuomo. Now he realizes the alarmism didn't

00:15:35.960 quite come true, even in New York, which was the worst in America. People now, they don't want to

00:15:41.560 see Andy Cuomo in the polo shirt with whatever was going on, on his pectoral muscles. I don't know if

00:15:46.880 you saw those nipple ring rumors. I'm not going to spread them, but it looked a little weird.

00:15:50.800 They don't want to see that for many reasons, physical and ideological. Now people want to see

00:15:55.320 Andy Cuomo in a suit talking about how we've got to reopen America. He's not the only one doing that.

00:16:01.960 We will get to some more evidence that the politicians see which way the wind is blowing.

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00:17:20.960 WeThePeopleHolsters.com slash Knowles. So Andy Cuomo saying, we're going to reopen. How's he going

00:17:27.800 to reopen? He doesn't tell anybody, but he says, we got a plan. It's much more important if you're

00:17:31.900 a politician to get out ahead of this story and say that we've got a plan than to actually

00:17:36.940 formulate the plan. They can fill that in later. Andy Cuomo was put together, obviously governor

00:17:41.940 of New York, but then governor of New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Delaware

00:17:46.020 put together this coalition, said they're going to reopen the region's economies and schools,

00:17:51.180 and other important aspects of their state. Looks like Massachusetts is joining in too. So

00:17:56.400 that's the sort of Northeast contingent. They're all coming together real quick. I don't know. Maybe

00:18:01.560 they're all reading the same public opinion polls, but they realize this alarmism is not going to help

00:18:05.800 them when they're all up for reelection. So now they're moving to reopen the economy. It's not just

00:18:10.440 the Northeast. The West Coast is doing it too with our very own California governor, Newsom.

00:18:16.140 There's an old African proverb that says, if you want to go fast, go alone.

00:18:20.960 But if you want to go far, go together. That's the spirit of regionalism that's defined our approach

00:18:27.460 to addressing this pandemic. That regionalism extends throughout the state of California

00:18:33.360 and beyond. We have had the deep collaborative spirit advanced now in states large and small

00:18:41.720 all across the United States, but none stronger than the relationships we have formed in Washington

00:18:46.680 state in the state of Oregon. Uh, we just sent out a joint statement of a shared vision, uh,

00:18:53.300 for a process and protocol, a framework. We refer to it, uh, for reopening, uh, not just within our

00:19:00.740 states, but more broadly as a region. Okay. Sounds like he's doing a great job. Doesn't it?

00:19:06.800 Can anyone tell me what the plan to reopen is? No, of course not. Gavin Newsom doesn't know what the

00:19:13.080 plan to reopen is. Gavin Newsom is a cartoonishly empty suited politician, but empty suits tell us

00:19:21.460 some important facts about the state of politics. I think what really happened is Gavin Newsom was

00:19:28.020 sitting back watching the news and he saw Andy Cuomo come out there and say,

00:19:31.360 we've got a coalition to reopen the states. And so Gavin Newsom said, ah, drats, call me a press

00:19:38.540 conference. I'm not letting Andy Cuomo have all the fun. So then he goes out there and says, yes,

00:19:42.500 we must reopen, not close. We've got to get working, not sitting. We, right. And he puts together this,

00:19:49.060 this coalition as well. He's just doing his own version of what Cuomo is doing. That's what all

00:19:54.040 the politicians have been doing this whole time. Don't forget that this was part of my exasperation

00:19:59.900 early on because I have been, well, I'll just say it again. I told you so. I've been predicting

00:20:06.420 since the very beginning that this was an overreaction and that the data would bear that

00:20:12.620 out. But the data didn't matter to the reaction, right? The government reaction was actually,

00:20:19.940 wasn't a reaction. It wasn't reacting to the data that we were seeing of hospitalizations and mortality.

00:20:25.500 It was being proactive, looking at the models and the models are only as good as the data that go

00:20:31.280 in and the data were bunk on the models. So they were projecting out, they're going to be 100,000

00:20:36.520 deaths, 200,000 deaths, 2 million deaths, 4 million deaths. Who knows? There was never any number

00:20:41.560 too large for them. And all of the political incentives were to one-up each other. So I

00:20:46.980 remember it crystal clear when my own mayor here in Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti came out and he said,

00:20:52.360 we're going to have a lockdown order in the state. So, you know, you can't go out unless you're an

00:20:58.300 essential business. We're going to lock down LA because we're taking this seriously.

00:21:02.940 Gavin Newsom, once again, sitting back, probably watching TV. He says, I can't get one-upped by that

00:21:08.660 two-bit mayor, Eric Garcetti. Call me a press conference. We're talking about within one or two

00:21:13.500 hours. Gavin Newsom goes on TV. We're locking down the state. Yeah, you thought you could steal my

00:21:18.880 limelight, Mayor Garcetti. No way. We're going to lock down the state and the other mayors,

00:21:23.440 governors all over the country. We're going to lock down. No, we're going to double lockdown.

00:21:26.320 No, we're going to triple lockdown. And they were all trying to one-up each other on who could react

00:21:31.380 most intensely to the coronavirus. Very different situation today. Now they're all trying to one-up

00:21:39.960 each other again because that's all they ever do, but they're trying to one-up each other on who

00:21:43.820 has the quickest, fastest, most efficient plan to reopen the economies. This is a very good thing.

00:21:50.020 It shows you that the coronavirus phenomenon is officially over.

00:21:59.100 How does it tell us this? Because what we're hearing so often is the way that we'll know when

00:22:04.580 coronavirus is over is by listening to the experts. The way we'll know when coronavirus is over is by

00:22:09.500 monitoring all the data. No, not really. I mean, the data are showing us this too. They've showed us

00:22:14.580 that the disease has accelerated very quickly, then it kind of plateaued for a little bit, and now it's

00:22:19.600 on the decline. Whether that's because of lockdown or not, we don't know. There's a lot of evidence

00:22:24.860 that that's the way the disease spreads even in countries that didn't lock down or only locked down

00:22:29.200 recently. But it's actually not the data and the science that are going to show us

00:22:34.780 when this coronavirus epidemic is over because the disease itself, the virus itself, is only a

00:22:41.480 small part of the phenomenon of coronavirus. The lion's share of the phenomenon is the government

00:22:47.520 reaction. The coronavirus itself is not what's unprecedented. We have plagues. We've had plagues

00:22:54.040 for all of human history. We've had flus. We've had Ebola. We've had bubonic plague. We've had all sorts

00:23:02.440 of diseases that have spread, epidemics, pandemics. What makes this unique, what makes this a world

00:23:07.880 historic event, what makes this hotly debated probably for the next hundred years is the reaction.

00:23:15.780 We've never ground the global economy to a halt within a matter of days because of a disease.

00:23:22.840 What tells us that the coronavirus effectively is over is the political response because the

00:23:32.680 coronavirus has been primarily a political phenomenon. We were talking earlier about separating the wheat

00:23:40.460 politicians from the chaff politicians. Successful politicians have one defining characteristic.

00:23:47.020 They know which way the wind blows. That's what makes a successful politician, regardless of their

00:23:55.440 ideology, regardless of their policies, regardless of what they want to accomplish in office. The

00:24:00.160 really, really good ones know which way the wind blows. They can smell public opinion turning.

00:24:08.800 And Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo, these are successful politicians. Donald Trump, very successful

00:24:16.260 politician. You've seen all the really talented ones shift their tone over the past few days.

00:24:23.780 Now this is about reopening. Very good news. Now for guys like, you know, maybe Newsom,

00:24:31.200 maybe some of the alarmists, Eric Garcetti certainly, for some of these local politicians,

00:24:35.620 let's not let them forget that they were dead wrong in the first place, but we can celebrate at least

00:24:39.260 that the tide has turned. And by the way, I don't think we should rub their faces in it. I mean,

00:24:43.200 I keep, I keep mentioning, you know, that, uh, what was that? Oh, that I told you so. I keep

00:24:47.440 mentioning this because I want it to be clear for all of us to know what this epidemic really was

00:24:55.880 as we get a barrage of misinformation over the next few weeks, as people start inflating death

00:25:00.640 numbers or changing, or I don't want to even use that language. As people start changing the criteria

00:25:06.540 by which they, they record deaths. It's a little more neutral way to put it, meaning they're going

00:25:11.460 to add thousands of people to the death rolls, even if they were never diagnosed with coronavirus,

00:25:15.800 they're going to do a lot to cover their political rear ends. But look, there are plenty of people

00:25:21.200 who've, who've held every extreme position on coronavirus. Some people who said it's going to

00:25:25.180 kill us all. And then immediately after that said, actually it's, it's totally fake and there's

00:25:29.680 nothing to it at all. We got to reopen. Okay. I don't care. Whatever. I don't care

00:25:33.140 their progression on this issue, as long as they end up in the right place, which seems like we are

00:25:39.560 right now. Now there's big political news afoot, not just on the coronavirus front, but in the

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00:27:58.480 Big political news afoot beyond coronavirus. Joe Biden, presumptive Democratic nominee for

00:28:17.200 president. He finally gets the big endorsement he's been waiting for. His former boss, Barack Obama.

00:28:26.320 Now you might've thought that Barack Obama would have endorsed him when it mattered at the beginning

00:28:31.780 of this presidential race. Nah, because Joe, Barack Obama rather didn't think that Joe could win.

00:28:36.940 You might've thought that as the field narrowed, it was initially 27 candidates. Then let's say it

00:28:42.080 narrowed down to five or six. You thought maybe then Barack Obama will weigh in. Nope, he wasn't

00:28:45.980 going to do that. And it was so awkward. People kept asking Joe, Joe, why isn't Barack endorsed you?

00:28:50.360 And he said, I didn't even want his endorsement. Yeah. Okay. Buster. Then it gets down to just him

00:28:55.640 and Bernie. Then of course, that's the time that Barack Obama is going to weigh in, right? It's

00:28:59.900 the politically safest time for him to weigh in. Nope, doesn't do that. Then Bernie drops out.

00:29:05.200 Barack Obama still doesn't weigh in. He actually, Bernie Sanders

00:29:08.900 endorses Joe Biden before Barack Obama does. But finally, Barack came around and offered Joe

00:29:16.480 his tepid endorsement. I'm so proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States.

00:29:22.940 Choosing Joe to be my vice president was one of the best decisions I ever made.

00:29:27.200 And he became a close friend. And I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president

00:29:33.080 right now. He's someone whose own life has taught him how to persevere, how to bounce back when you've

00:29:39.780 been knocked down. When Joe talks with parents who've lost their jobs, we hear the son of a man

00:29:45.680 who once knew the pain of having to tell his children that he'd lost his. I know he'll surround

00:29:51.400 himself with good people. Experts, scientists, military officials who actually know how to run the

00:29:59.520 government and care about doing a good job running the government and know how to work with our allies

00:30:05.800 and who will always put the American people's interests above their own.

00:30:12.520 My favorite part of this endorsement, which has a lot of blather in it, you know, the typical

00:30:17.140 Obama mean girl jabs at his political adversaries. Obama is very different than Trump, right? Trump

00:30:25.300 just goes right for the jugular and acts like a man. Barack Obama just gets these little mean girl

00:30:29.980 jibes in there. Uh, yeah, Joe's actually, he's going to work with people who actually care about

00:30:35.820 America. Not like, not like Trump. Those guys, those guys hate America. He doesn't even call

00:30:41.460 out Trump directly. He doesn't call out his adversaries directly because he's too much of

00:30:44.700 a little mean girl and he's not a man. So very different, obviously, if you look at the Republican

00:30:50.080 side of things, but okay, that's whatever we, we expect that from Barack Obama. The saddest part of

00:30:55.300 this endorsement is the big focus of it is he'll surround himself with good people.

00:31:01.740 That's not an essential part of a political endorsement. All the other stuff goes along with

00:31:08.040 every political endorsement. He'll exercise good judgment. He'll work with our allies. He'll X, Y,

00:31:14.600 and Z. But Barack has to get in there that he'll surround himself with good people because Joe Biden

00:31:19.880 is too old to be president. Joe Biden will be 82 by the end of his first term in office if he were

00:31:26.520 elected. So a lot of people are thinking, gosh, is Joe going to make it? And it's not even just the

00:31:31.060 age thing as a merely chronological factor. He looks, if he literally is 82, he looks like he's

00:31:39.140 102. He's forgetting where he is. He's forgetting his name. He's wandering off camera. He's, he doesn't

00:31:46.660 have it. Okay. So it's going to be very important that he surrounds himself with good people because

00:31:51.320 you don't know who's going to actually be running the country. What Donald Trump said is Joe Biden,

00:31:56.420 if he gets elected somehow, he's not going to run the country. They're going to put him in a home.

00:32:00.180 He's going to be watching TV and the cabinet is going to be running the country. So

00:32:03.740 sadly for Joe, Barack Obama seems to be accepting Trump's premise that, that Joe isn't going to be

00:32:10.720 really leading here. That it's going to matter much more who he surrounds himself with. I also

00:32:17.220 love the rest of it. He's going to work with our allies, allies like Iran. What's he going to do?

00:32:20.660 Let Iran capture more of our sailors and ship them pallets of cash like the Obama administration did.

00:32:25.920 Yeah. He's working with our allies. Great stuff. What's he going to do? Piss off the United Kingdom,

00:32:31.160 piss off Israel, go after it. Yeah. Okay, great. Okay. Obama. I just forgot what a terrible

00:32:36.460 president that guy was. In theory, in the hagiography, in the revisionist history that the

00:32:42.620 left has made for Obama, he's this great guy. Everything was wonderful. And you remember the

00:32:46.940 economy was absolutely terrible. He stole our health insurance. He, uh, he gave money, pallets

00:32:53.500 of cash to our enemies. He let our enemies take our sailors hostage without any consequences other

00:32:58.680 than giving them money. He had a bunch of scandals like the fast and furious scandal. He weaponized

00:33:04.060 the IRS to go after his political opponents. He just, it was just awful. He was just a horrible

00:33:08.580 president who now has no legacy because Donald Trump took it from him. But the one thing I've

00:33:14.120 always marveled at with Barack Obama is his ability to make absurd statements with a perfectly straight

00:33:25.080 face. You know, he says, Joe will actually put the interests of the American people first.

00:33:30.400 What? What? By taking away their health insurance? Saying they can keep their doctor,

00:33:35.340 but then taking their doctors away from them? By admitting that it would be illegal to give

00:33:40.240 millions of people amnesty and then just giving them amnesty anyway? Unbelievable, this guy. But then

00:33:45.660 on this point of being able to make absurd statements with a straight face, he outdid himself.

00:33:51.720 He said the real reason we've got to elect Joe is because the Republicans have this formidable,

00:33:59.660 terrible electoral machine. The Republicans, they own the media. The Republicans have a major war chest.

00:34:07.880 And so it's an uphill battle, but the Democrats may be able to pull it out anyway.

00:34:13.420 So our country's future hangs on this election. And it won't be easy. The other side has a massive

00:34:21.480 war chest. The other side has a propaganda network with little regard for the truth.

00:34:28.260 Massive war chest and a propaganda network with little regard for the truth. Eight out of the 10

00:34:33.040 richest people in the United States are Democrats and major Democrat funders. The news network that

00:34:40.080 Barack Obama is referring to as being conservative is Fox News. Fox News has many liberals and Democrats

00:34:44.800 on the network. Compare that to every other news network, which is explicitly and exclusively left

00:34:51.700 wing. CNN, MSNBC, forget, obviously the major TV networks, NBC, ABC, CBS, the New York Times,

00:34:59.300 the Washington Post, everybody, every single media outlet is single-mindedly and explicitly left wing,

00:35:07.240 except for one, which is slightly conservative. And that's it. They've got a propaganda network.

00:35:15.880 What about all the other networks that are all left wing? What about their war chest?

00:35:20.780 Okay. Virtually all of the billionaires in America are left wing.

00:35:26.580 Now, this reeks a little bit of desperation and there was no way for Obama to avoid this.

00:35:32.840 Unless he came out early for Joe Biden, it would look like he was just settling for Joe Biden. And

00:35:38.000 that's what it looks like the Democrats are doing. And that's a strong position for President Trump.

00:35:42.200 Trump is ignoring the 2020 election, more or less. He's plowing right ahead with his agenda.

00:35:46.820 Major decision came out yesterday. President Trump announced it. He is going to be cutting funding

00:35:52.860 for the World Health Organization, a failed mouthpiece for communist China.

00:35:58.900 He had threatened cutting funding for a little while. Now it's actually going into effect.

00:36:03.460 Today, I'm instructing my administration to halt

00:36:06.840 funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess

00:36:12.860 the World Health Organization's role in severely mismanaging and covering up

00:36:19.940 the spread of the coronavirus. Everybody knows what's going on there.

00:36:25.760 American taxpayers provide between $400 million and $500 million per year to the WHO. In contrast,

00:36:34.320 China contributes roughly $40 million a year and even less. As the organization's leading sponsor,

00:36:41.580 the United States has a duty to insist on full accountability. One of the most dangerous

00:36:47.600 and costly decisions from the WHO was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China

00:36:56.440 and other nations. They were very much opposed to what we did. Fortunately, I was not convinced

00:37:03.380 and suspended travel from China, saving untold numbers of lives. Thousands and thousands of people

00:37:09.980 would have died. This is a very good news from President Trump. The WHO is worse than useless.

00:37:16.460 Just to give you an example, a WHO official said on Monday that she suspected that you could have

00:37:22.220 human to human transmission of the coronavirus as early as December 31st of last year. But the WHO

00:37:30.540 officially was saying the Communist Party line for weeks and weeks after that, saying that there was

00:37:38.140 no human to human transmission. Just one example, they've been parroting the Chinese Communist line

00:37:43.320 this whole time. Also, the WHO is just a big waste of money. They spend less than 15% of their funding

00:37:50.080 each year on the actual priorities of world health. The rest is going to bureaucratic overhead and slush funds.

00:37:56.840 It's just a waste of money. And it'd be one thing if it was our waste of money, but it's not. It's China's

00:38:02.720 waste of money. They took over the organization and they installed to the new head of it. So just pull the

00:38:07.400 money. Good idea. Meanwhile, over in the mainstream media on back to the 2020 politics, the New York

00:38:14.960 Times, as representative of the mainstream media, are going to full damage control mode because Joe Biden is

00:38:22.080 the nominee and Joe Biden has a sexual assault allegation against him. And the sexual assault

00:38:26.420 allegation against him is not all that credible, but it's much, much, much more credible than the

00:38:32.600 allegations against Brett Kavanaugh that we saw two years ago. And the New York Times and everybody

00:38:39.020 else went crazy with those allegations against Kavanaugh. And now they're basically silent on

00:38:44.240 the allegations against Joe Biden. Now they're publishing op-eds about this. The executive editor of

00:38:52.100 the New York Times actually just published an interview in his own newspaper to try to defend

00:38:56.780 his indefensible decision, not to cover the accusations against Biden. Here's the headline

00:39:01.760 of this one. The Times took 19 days to report an accusation against Biden. Here's why. Dean

00:39:06.660 Bacquette, the executive editor of the Times, said the article was published when there was enough

00:39:12.140 reporting to present to readers for them to make their own judgment. But they didn't wait for there to be

00:39:18.180 any information on the baseless claims against Kavanaugh before they ran them two years ago.

00:39:22.900 Why? Here, here is a very long and pointless interview, but here are a couple of important

00:39:27.820 moments. So from the interviewer, I've been looking at the Times' coverage of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

00:39:33.880 I want to focus primarily on the Julie Swetnick allegations. She was the one who was represented by

00:39:38.580 Michael Avenatti and who suggested that Kavanaugh had been involved in frat house rapes and then

00:39:43.420 appeared to walk back elements of her allegations. The Times wrote that story the same day she made

00:39:48.120 the allegation, noting that, quote, none of Ms. Swetnick's claims could be independently

00:39:52.020 corroborated. Why was Kavanaugh treated differently? And now listen to the logical gymnastics this guy

00:39:58.320 goes through. Kavanaugh was already in a public forum in a large way. This is Brett Kavanaugh,

00:40:05.160 the obscure federal judge, not Joe Biden, the U.S. senator and vice president of the United States

00:40:10.640 who we've all known for 50 years. Kavanaugh was, he was in a public forum in a big way because he

00:40:16.440 was a federal judge nominated to the Supreme Court. Unlike Joe Biden, a three-time presidential

00:40:22.400 candidate, Kavanaugh's status as a Supreme Court justice was in question because of a very serious

00:40:28.160 allegation. The very serious allegation with no evidence to back it up. That's the one.

00:40:32.960 The very serious allegation made by a woman who had not made the allegation before for decades and

00:40:39.860 decades. Very serious allegation that was not even backed up by that accuser's friend who was

00:40:46.940 allegedly at the party where it happened. Very serious. And when I say in a public way, I don't

00:40:51.620 mean the public way of Tara Reads. They're both in public ways, right? If you ask the average person

00:40:57.160 in America, they didn't know about the Tara Reid case. Right, because you didn't report on it, dude.

00:41:01.900 The only reason they knew about the allegations against Kavanaugh is because you blew them up and

00:41:05.440 made them into a thing. If you had reported on the Tara Reid case, then the American people would

00:41:09.880 have known about it against Joe Biden. He's pretending that he's not the New York Times.

00:41:16.520 He's pretending that he's just some observer instead of the crafter of news. So I thought in

00:41:22.600 that case, if the New York Times was going to introduce to readers this story, we needed to

00:41:26.600 introduce it with some reporting and perspective. That's a pleasant change of pace. Kavanaugh was a very

00:41:31.980 different situation, right? Because you were just trying to assassinate his political career.

00:41:35.340 It was a live ongoing story that had become the biggest political story in the country,

00:41:39.940 right? Again, because you made it the biggest political story. It was just a different news

00:41:43.500 judgment moment. Yeah. Like now you're trying to exercise some judgment and, or you're, you're

00:41:49.800 actually just acting hypocritically and defending it with judgment. Whereas the previous time you didn't

00:41:53.520 use any judgment. The interviewer then goes on, Christine Blasey Ford seemed to remember it

00:41:58.460 clearly and told the story very, very clearly. Pause. No, she didn't. She changed her story

00:42:05.920 multiple times. She couldn't even remember how many people were at the party. She couldn't even

00:42:10.300 remember what happened at the party. She couldn't remember when the party took place or where the

00:42:13.340 party took place. She changed her story so many times. She then said that she had a door and a

00:42:19.120 separate door installed in her house because of the PTSD from what happened at this party so many years

00:42:25.720 ago. But there's no evidence of that. Actually, there were many other explanations that she'd given

00:42:32.840 for why she had that particular door installed to her house. Then she said she didn't have any

00:42:36.960 political points of view. She had posted her left-wing political ideology all over the internet.

00:42:41.240 Her story was bogus. Do you think that her allegation on its face is more credible than Tara

00:42:48.400 Reade's? Then Dean Baguette says, well, I don't mean to imply that and blah, blah, blah. B.S. There's

00:42:55.340 another one in the New York Times. This one comes out from Michelle Goldberg, the columnist. What to do

00:42:59.660 with Tara Reade's allegation against Joe Biden? Since Reade made her latest accusation, people on both the

00:43:05.960 left and the right have been demanding with a mix of genuine outrage and gotcha glee that the Democratic

00:43:10.540 Party live up to its Me Too commitments and believe Tara Reade. As I've written repeatedly, I think

00:43:15.880 Biden's a weak candidate and I wouldn't be unhappy if the Democratic Party were forced by some last

00:43:19.720 minute emergency to replace him. Maybe with one of the Democratic governors who has shined in response

00:43:24.880 to the coronavirus crisis. But absent other allegations, that's not going to happen. Reade

00:43:29.360 seems almost engineered in a lab to inspire skepticism in mainstream Democrats, both because her story

00:43:35.260 keeps changing and because of her bizarre public worship of Vladimir Putin. And then she goes on to other

00:43:39.500 political issues. If the story changing were enough to get Democrats to drop uncredible allegations,

00:43:47.140 they never would have even talked to Christine Blasey Ford on television. They never would have

00:43:53.040 put her in the newspaper. They certainly wouldn't have put her up there at the Supreme Court confirmation

00:43:56.640 hearing. Christine Blasey Ford is some strange person. I'll put it that way. I don't want to be too mean

00:44:05.440 to Christine Blasey Ford. She was a strange character in American history. Sort of came out

00:44:11.460 of nowhere. Came out with this crazy accusation against Brett Kavanaugh. Had no evidence of it.

00:44:17.460 Even her best friend couldn't back it up. Couldn't remember any of the details. Kept changing her story.

00:44:23.500 And yet the mainstream media believed her. And she kind of went away. That's fine. Now she's gone.

00:44:29.660 This person, Tara Reid, who's accusing Joe Biden, was a Joe Biden staffer. Had a direct

00:44:37.460 relationship to Joe Biden. Much, much more credible. But unfortunately, the mainstream media are just

00:44:48.880 going to keep pushing that. We should not let them get away with it. You know, we're now seeing,

00:44:56.100 obviously, this backlash. The New York Times trying to move on. The mainstream media trying

00:45:01.360 to move on. They're just trying to get into the 2020 election. Trying to move past even their

00:45:06.420 own hypocrisy of the last few years. There's a little glimmer of hope here. Mike Pence

00:45:10.700 just announced that the FDA is going to approve antibodies tests for coronavirus within a matter of

00:45:17.980 days. This offers us a little hope on setting the record straight. Because you know, you see it in

00:45:24.360 the New York Times. They're going to rewrite history any chance they get. We can now set the

00:45:28.620 record straight, at least on this big issue, this world historic event of coronavirus.

00:45:33.300 You need to get the antibodies test if you think you may have had coronavirus. Okay? There are big

00:45:37.960 political incentives right now to inflate the numbers, to rewrite the history of this whole episode.

00:45:42.620 The numbers are already inflated. The only way that we are going to get anything close to accurate

00:45:48.280 numbers is if people who think they've had the virus take the antibodies test. Pence knows this.

00:45:53.600 The Trump administration knows this. That's why they're saying we could get as many as 20 million

00:45:57.720 of them per month. Because the more people who take that test, the higher the infection rate we

00:46:02.400 can see. If the infection rate is much higher than we thought it was, then the whole rationale for the

00:46:07.560 shutdown goes away. The point of the shutdown was to slow the spread. If the shutdown didn't really

00:46:11.880 slow the spread, if everyone got infected anyway, it shows us maybe we didn't need this global

00:46:16.400 shutdown. Also, it brings the death count or the death rate rather way, way, way down, right? If

00:46:24.180 the number of people infected increases dramatically, but the same number of people died, then the death

00:46:30.520 rate goes away, way down. It's a way to shine a little bit of clarity and it's very important.

00:46:34.640 You know, I hate to say I told you so. Well, it's very important for us, at least in the near future,

00:46:38.680 to remind people that we told them so. So that the alarmists, the, the rewriters of history,

00:46:46.340 the revisionists, and the political hacks don't get away with, uh, with changing their tune on a

00:46:53.800 world historic episode that's going to have a lot of implications for our politics going forward.

00:46:58.700 All right. Got a lot more to get to. We'll do it tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:47:01.440 This is The Michael Knowles Show. See you then.

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00:47:24.560 Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,

00:47:29.520 The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.

00:47:31.680 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies and directed by Mike Joyner.

00:47:36.660 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

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00:48:01.820 If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh

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00:48:10.380 We'll get a whole lot of that and much more. See you there.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 15, 2020

Ep. 529 - The Backlash Has Begun

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