Thousands take to the streets around the country to protest draconian lockdowns, the liberals in the squishes are furious, but President Trump is cheering them on. And believe it or not, the anti-lockdown protesters are getting some encouragement from one of the world s leading public health experts. Then, Congressman Dan Crenshaw destroys Bill Maher's anti-Trump talking points, Harvard tries to ban homeschooling, and Brian Stelter cries.
00:00:00.080Thousands take to the streets around the country to protest draconian lockdowns.
00:00:05.480The liberals in the squishes are furious, but President Trump is cheering them on.
00:00:09.660And believe it or not, the anti-lockdown protesters are getting some encouragement
00:00:13.280from one of the world's leading public health experts.
00:00:16.780Then, Congressman Dan Crenshaw destroys Bill Maher's anti-Trump talking points,
00:00:21.640Harvard tries to ban homeschooling, and Brian Stelter cries.
00:00:25.320All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:30.000Brian Stelter cries is not exactly a man bites dog story, but we will get to it.
00:00:40.540Not because it's a shocking event, but because it tells us something about our mainstream culture
00:00:46.120and certainly about the mainstream media. First, we've got to cover these rallies.
00:00:49.780I believe, you know how much I hate to say I told you so on this show. I never do it.
00:00:55.060Well, I try not to do it, but I told you so.
00:00:57.340So I predicted a few weeks ago when we were asked, how long is this shutdown going to go on for?
00:01:02.920People said it's going to go on for six months. It's going to go on for 10 months. It's going to
00:01:06.100go on for 18 months. I said, it's not. It can't go on for 18 months because people will take to the
00:01:12.040streets. And that is already happening. I thought it would happen sometime after three weeks, four weeks.
00:01:19.340In reality, what are we at now? Like five weeks? So pretty close. People are taking to the streets
00:01:25.020around the country to protest the lockdowns. And part of the reason they're protesting them is
00:01:30.260you'll remember everybody went along with the lockdowns when we were told we have to,
00:01:36.340millions of people are going to die, stay in your home, save lives. Everybody went along with it.
00:01:40.680There was no problem. And then the numbers started to come out. The real numbers started to come out.
00:01:46.600And all of a sudden it wasn't 2 million people are going to die. It wasn't 4 million people are
00:01:50.060going to die. It was half a million people. Then it was a hundred thousand people. Then it was 60,000
00:01:54.060people. Now we just don't know. First, we were told very few people had it. And then we're told
00:01:57.680actually many, many more people had it. We've got some news on that today from, from various scientists.
00:02:03.800So then all of a sudden we said, hold on, this is not nearly as bad as people were saying it was.
00:02:08.640And instead of getting a little looser with the lockdowns, instead of the politicians reacting to the
00:02:15.280new scientific information and lightening up a little bit, instead they doubled down. And that's why
00:02:19.780people are protesting. It's happening in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Washington state, and another
00:02:27.880many states as well. People are sick and tired of being told that they can't work. They can't make
00:02:35.500any money. They can't do any of the things that they want to do. They can't exercise their political
00:02:39.980rights. They can't even go outside in most cases. And president Trump, for his part, is totally
00:02:47.040siding with the protesters. Here is a reporter in the white house briefing room, trying to egg Trump
00:02:52.580on, trying to get Trump to turn against these protesters. Trump having none of it.
00:02:58.440Are you concerned that you're talking about liberation in the second minute?
00:03:01.680Are you inciting violence among a few people?
00:03:04.520I've seen the people. I've seen interviews of the people. These are great people. Look,
00:03:09.160they want to get, they call cabin fever. You've heard the term. They've got cabin fever. They want
00:03:14.800to get back. They want their life back. Their life was taken away from them. And you know, they learned
00:03:20.920a lot during this period. They learned to do things differently than they have in the past. And you know,
00:03:25.120they'll do it hopefully until the virus has passed. And when the virus passes, I hope we're going to be
00:03:30.380sitting next to each other in baseball games, football games, basketball games, ice hockey
00:03:34.800games. I hope we're going to be sitting next to each other. I hope you have golf. The Masters is going to
00:03:39.380have 100,000 people, not 25 people watching at the course.
00:03:45.020I think these people are, I've never seen so many American flags. I mean, I'm seeing the same thing that
00:03:54.300you're seeing. I don't see anything differently. They're two. They're who? Nazi. Well, that I
00:03:58.340totally would say no way. But I've seen, I didn't see that. I see all, of course, I'm sure
00:04:04.660the news plays that up. I've seen American flags all over the place. I have never seen so many
00:04:11.820American flags at a rally as I have in the Israelis. These people love our country. They want to get
00:04:17.060back to work. That's the right tone. That's the right attitude. Between Trump and the media on
00:04:23.520this question, Trump is the reasonable one. The media is the hysterical one. Because of course,
00:04:30.080there are Nazis, right? You heard that reporter at the end. Trump says they're, they're waving
00:04:33.860American flags. They just want their lives back. They want their rights back. They want their economy
00:04:37.480back. And the reporter said, they're Nazis. Where's the evidence that they're Nazis? I don't,
00:04:42.140there's no, that's what they say. Anybody slightly to the right of Hillary Clinton,
00:04:45.920they call a Nazi. Okay. Trump is the reasonable one here. The media are the unreasonable ones.
00:04:51.960And on this question of the reopenings and the protests, guess what? The protesters are the
00:04:58.900reasonable ones. And the vaunted public health experts that say we need to remain imprisoned in
00:05:04.500our own homes for two years. They are the unreasonable ones. It's what the left has tried to do this whole
00:05:11.700time is say that there are only two options. Either completely grind the global economy to a halt,
00:05:17.520imprison everybody inside of their own homes, do not go anywhere, lose all of your political rights,
00:05:23.060or go outside and do exactly what you want and everyone will die. That's what we were told.
00:05:28.940Those are the two options. Those are not the two options.
00:05:30.840Both of those things are unreasonable, right? The middle ground is much more reasonable here.
00:05:38.300Middle ground perhaps being now that we've seen that the virus is not as virulent as we previously
00:05:42.900thought. Maybe people who are basically healthy can go back to work. People who are frail and who
00:05:48.420are old maybe should stay at home still or should take responsible measures. Maybe we should all wash
00:05:53.420our hands. Maybe we shouldn't shake hands all the time just yet. Okay. Obviously there is this
00:05:58.220reasonable middle ground. The media doesn't want any of it. We have a lot more credibility on this,
00:06:05.740the skeptical people, because we all took it seriously in the beginning and then the doomsday
00:06:12.120models did not come to pass. I'll give you an example of this. You know, each day the models are
00:06:16.520being readjusted down. Just look at what happened in Florida, Florida model. So this was as of Friday,
00:06:22.740the main model that we are using to look at coronavirus spread and death. The Institute for
00:06:28.620Health Metrics and Evaluation changed its model from Florida significantly. It said that the state
00:06:34.420will have 1,363 deaths from COVID-19 by August 4th. That number is down from the original
00:06:42.380projection, which was 4748. Oh, it's not even the original projection. That's just the projection
00:06:48.960they had earlier in the week. So earlier in the week, they say almost 5,000 deaths by August.
00:06:55.740Now we're, we're told that's going to be about 1,300 deaths by August. This is good news, right?
00:07:00.820This is a reason to celebrate, but it's also a reason to take a look at some of our policies and
00:07:06.100say, this is an overreaction. We don't need to give up all of our rights. We don't need to give up
00:07:10.720our economy necessarily. And yet some people don't like the liberation talk. And we've got to get into
00:07:17.380that because there's, there's a real debate going on over who's being responsible, who's being
00:07:22.860irresponsible. And we've got to hear in from Joe Biden on this issue. But first, I've got to thank
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00:08:29.060So some conservatives are a little upset with President Trump and with the protesters. Trump
00:08:37.220tweeted out over the weekend, he said, liberate Michigan, liberate the state, liberate America,
00:08:41.740right? He's encouraging the protesters. Some people don't like that liberation talk and they
00:08:46.280say that it's irresponsible. Really what is irresponsible here is letting politicians get
00:08:52.240away with massive power grabs, which is what they are doing. Okay. I want this to be crystal clear.
00:09:00.520When this was briefly just a medical scientific biological issue, we were all on board to protect
00:09:08.560people and save lives. Then the left politicized this thing and they started passing absurd policies
00:09:16.240that had nothing to do with the coronavirus. They tried to get the green new deal into the
00:09:20.540coronavirus funding package. Don't forget that. They tried to hold small business funding hostage
00:09:25.840so that they could reduce fuel emissions in commercial airliners. They took the opportunity
00:09:31.300to let criminals out of jail, even while they were arresting law abiding citizens because they
00:09:35.860weren't paying enough heed to the public health experts. Okay. These were huge power grabs.
00:09:43.020What is irresponsible is letting the politicians get away with it. We need to liberate America.
00:09:49.760Simple as that. Does not mean that we need to reopen Manhattan tomorrow. Okay. It doesn't mean we need
00:09:54.820to reopen the center of Boston tomorrow where we see some hotspots, but we don't need to lock down
00:09:59.740South Dakota. Okay. We don't need to lock down Montana. We need to start taking a much more
00:10:06.140scientific view of this entire thing and looking at where the hotspots are and looking at where the
00:10:11.860hotspots are not. We will do that in just a second. This reaction has gone very, very far.
00:10:17.340There is no evidence whatsoever that continued nationwide lockdowns are helping anything. All right.
00:10:24.940And the power grabs are too much for more on that. We turn now to democratic presidential candidate,
00:10:30.000Joe Biden. We got to, it's just, but you gotta, I mean, we gotta reassure, look, my, my message to
00:10:40.540everybody I talked to. Yep. That's very insightful stuff. Thank you, Mr. Biden. In New York city,
00:10:47.480we are seeing the flaws of this strategy already. Okay. Well, I guess we've seen them for a while. If you
00:10:54.380want to see flawed political strategy, look to New York city, the Bolshevik mayor there, Bill de
00:10:58.740Blasio is now using this crisis as an opportunity to try to turn citizens into government snitches.
00:11:06.900His new policy is if you see anybody not listening to the vaunted public health experts, and more
00:11:12.240importantly, anybody not listening to me, mayor de Blasio, you should rat, you should take photos of
00:11:17.580them. You should upload those photos and you should rat them out to the government. Now, look, thank you
00:11:22.280everyone who's done it the right way, but we still know there's some people need to get the message.
00:11:26.360And that means sometimes making sure the enforcement is there to educate people and make clear we got to
00:11:32.820have social distancing. So now it is easier than ever. When you see a crowd, when you see a line
00:11:38.820that's not distance, when you see a supermarket that's too crowded, anything, you can report it
00:11:43.660right away so we can get help there to fix the problem. And now it's as simple as taking a photo.
00:11:48.740All you got to do is take the photo and put the location with it and bang, send a photo like this
00:11:56.200and we will make sure that enforcement comes right away. Text the photo to 311-692 and action will
00:12:05.500ensue. Enforcement will come to get the help we need, or you can use the 311 app, send that photo
00:12:12.620there and you'll make sure immediately there's follow-up. 311-692 and enforcement will ensue.
00:12:21.100Sure would be a shame if people texted their opinion of this policy in photos to that number,
00:12:27.800wouldn't it? Sure would be a dirty, rotten shame. You know, when I was a kid, I was told that snitches
00:12:33.680get stitches. Now we're being told that tattletailing is going to be the full-time policy of the city of New
00:12:42.100York. It reminds me of very good advice that Mr. Brady gave his daughter in a very Brady movie.
00:12:48.420By tattling on someone, you're really just telling them I'm a tattletale. Now, is that the tale you
00:12:54.120want to tell? Is that the tale you want to tell? I don't think so. And it's so profoundly hypocritical.
00:12:58.700De Blasio is the most hilarious person to be pushing this policy because in the early days of
00:13:04.800the pandemic, when President Trump was taking it seriously and liberals like Bill de Blasio and
00:13:09.640Nancy Pelosi were not taking it seriously and Joe Biden were not taking it seriously. In those early
00:13:14.620days, de Blasio didn't lift a finger. When he finally did order the lockdown, he himself wouldn't
00:13:20.920lock down. He got into a little bit of trouble because he was still going to his gym. And they,
00:13:27.060they said, Mayor de Blasio, how come you're telling everyone else they can't go to gym,
00:13:31.180but you're allowed to go to your gym? And he said, well, you know, I got to work out.
00:13:35.220I don't, I feel, I don't feel good when I'm not working out. Yeah. Okay. Well,
00:13:39.500Bill de Blasio gets to go do whatever he wants, but the people do not. And that's what this is
00:13:43.820all about. This is, if this were about protecting public health, he wouldn't have gone to his gym,
00:13:47.140but because it's not, because it's just a power grab, you, you've now got a policy that has been
00:13:52.100implemented in every tyrannical regime throughout human history, which is the trouble with tyrannical
00:13:58.600regimes is you can't police everybody all of the time. There just aren't enough government thugs
00:14:03.820to, to police everybody all of the time. So what you need to do is turn the people into the
00:14:10.260policemen for each other. And you incentivize them in various ways. You say, if you don't report on a
00:14:15.740crime, you're going to be punished. Crime, you know, some infraction of whatever the policy is.
00:14:20.480If you don't report on it, you'll be punished. And if you do report on it, you'll be reported. And
00:14:24.520it's so easy to report on it. That is what de Blasio is doing. Nobody in New York should follow
00:14:30.640this policy. Everybody should, should do their best to, uh, make light of this policy. It's
00:14:37.320outrageous. Uh, there's also evidence from one of the world's leading public health experts that
00:14:45.720none of these policies are helping at all. We'll get to that in a second. First, I got to thank our
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00:16:11.380information. So de Blasio instituting this policy, governors, mayors around the country instituting
00:16:19.240these awful policies. And yet one of the world's leading public health experts, leading epidemiologist
00:16:26.760says that the shutdowns are absolutely pointless. Professor Johan Giesecki, one of the world's top
00:16:38.160epidemiologists, he's an advisor to the Swedish government. He was the first chief scientist of
00:16:43.400the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. He is an advisor to the director general of
00:16:48.220the World Health Organization, but he probably doesn't get listened to very much. He says in
00:16:53.120three words, shutdowns are dumb. So at this, at the point we are now, what you're advocating then is
00:17:01.200we protect those groups better. And as far as the rest of the population is, is concerned, we just allow
00:17:08.420it to pass through the population. Essentially. Essentially. Yes. Which is, I mean, I know that it's
00:17:17.840not just the old and frail. I mean, there are the people that should be protected, but I don't think you can stop it. It's spreading. You can stop it for some time. But then, I mean, countries that have been successful, South Korea is giving up now. They can't maintain their policy.
00:17:24.840Taiwan, I don't know about Taiwan. They were quite successful. Singapore, similar problem.
00:17:31.840There's no way you can stop it. Listen to what he's saying. And listen to what he's not saying. Because what we're hearing from people who are,
00:17:36.840but you know, I don't know about that. And there's no way you can stop it. Listen to what he's saying and listen to what he's not saying.
00:17:48.840I don't know about Taiwan. They were quite successful. Singapore, similar problem.
00:17:53.340There's no way you can stop it. Listen to what he's saying and listen to what he's not saying.
00:17:59.020Because what we're hearing from people who are supporting the lockdowns, who are both liberals
00:18:04.740and conservatives and in the middle and everything in between, what they're saying is either we lock
00:18:10.580down the whole country or we throw granny out to die. That's not what he's saying. He's saying the
00:18:15.060old and the frail and the sick should be protected and the immunocompromised and all the people who
00:18:20.160need to be protected should be protected. But the rest of the people need to go out and develop
00:18:25.720what's called herd immunity. This is the policy that Sweden has been pursuing. Now, Sweden has
00:18:31.900a higher death rate than other countries in the region. That's true. But the question is not who's
00:18:38.160going to have the highest death rate for the next two months. The question is now that we know that
00:18:42.320coronavirus is going to come back. Now that we know that coronavirus is not merely going to disappear.
00:18:47.560How do you protect the most people in the long run? Sure. Let's say the United States flattens the
00:18:53.680curve and then the curve is like this until June or July. And then the curve goes right back up again,
00:18:59.680according to all of the models. Well, okay. Who cares if the curve goes up three months from now or
00:19:04.700today? Maybe you're just prolonging the inevitable. If you're prolonging the inevitable,
00:19:09.240why did we shut down the economy? Okay. His point, this epidemiologist is that there may be more
00:19:18.220deaths up front, but in the end, the results will be exactly the same. That's what he says later in
00:19:23.760the interview. So the only question is, do you take away rights and destroy the economy first?
00:19:28.680For comment, we turn to presidential candidate Joe Biden. I sat with a guy yesterday on, on a
00:19:34.140telephone. And he's telling me, he said, I don't know. He said, look, I, I, I, I, I, I worked at the
00:19:39.760hospital and he said, then I, I got, I got myself in a position where I got the virus. So they quarantine
00:19:45.420me and, and they put me in the hospital and I made it out. And so I'm out, but they don't want me with
00:19:50.100my family. I'm on the third floor. I spent 15 minutes on the phone with them saying, he said,
00:19:55.360I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old. And they come to the door outside and they just knock on
00:19:59.940the door and say, daddy, daddy, can I see you, daddy? Can I see you, daddy? So we spent time
00:20:04.880going through it. I used to do with my kids when they were little and I couldn't see them.
00:20:08.600And we'd play games. I said, knock, make up a game, knock, knock on the door and say, this is,
00:20:14.100you know, practical things. The guy's scared to death. Very insightful, Mr. President,
00:20:19.620Mr. Vice President, Mr. Probably not going to be a future president. Thank you very much.
00:20:24.140What is the purpose of the lockdowns? I think people don't understand what the purpose of the
00:20:28.780lockdowns is. Is the purpose of the lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus? No, no one has ever
00:20:36.180said that the lockdowns are going to stop the spread. That cannot happen. Is the purpose of
00:20:41.860the lockdowns to reduce the spread of the virus? No, no, it's not. No matter how much you flatten the
00:20:50.900curve, the same exact number of people are going to be infected eventually. Flattening the curve
00:20:58.580is not reducing the number of people who get the virus. It's just spreading them out over time.
00:21:04.940Okay. So it's not reducing the spread. The only purpose of the lockdowns is to slow the spread.
00:21:10.480Why do we need to slow the spread? So that we can not overwhelm the healthcare system.
00:21:16.500Because if the healthcare system were not even a consideration here, then you wouldn't have to
00:21:20.840reduce the spread. Who cares? You're either going to get it tomorrow. You're going to get it today.
00:21:23.740Might as well do it today. Why procrastinate? But the whole point is not to overwhelm the
00:21:28.420healthcare system. And guess what? We've succeeded at that. Okay. There are empty hospital beds in New
00:21:32.600York. They converted the Javits Center into a makeshift hospital, completely unnecessary.
00:21:36.740They sent that federal ship down to be a hospital ship in New York. Didn't need it. New York was the
00:21:41.720epicenter in the United States. I suppose it still is. And we have not overwhelmed the healthcare system.
00:21:47.200So good. That's great. We'll see whether or not the reason for that was the lockdowns. Sort of beside
00:21:52.720the point. We now know the only reason the lockdowns existed, we've achieved it. So why
00:21:59.100do we still have the lockdowns? Right? That's what, that's one argument right there for ending the
00:22:04.600lockdowns is they no longer will serve any purpose. There isn't, there is no longer a purpose left that
00:22:10.160they could serve, but we've got another reason. Another reason to possibly lift some of the lockdowns is
00:22:16.340there's a lot of evidence now that the lockdowns might not have reduced the spread of the virus
00:22:22.280much at all. Where are we getting this information? We're getting it out of Massachusetts, which is
00:22:27.020now flaring up as a major center of the virus. So researchers with Massachusetts general hospital
00:22:33.920took to the streets of Chelsea, which is becoming a real hotspot to get blood tests for people to see
00:22:42.700if they had not the coronavirus, but coronavirus antibodies. That is to check on people to see if
00:22:48.160they've already had coronavirus and now have the antibodies because they've moved past it.
00:22:52.740This has been one question the whole time is how many people have it? The, all the models are,
00:22:57.680are suggesting that it's a very small number of people who have it. It's just the confirmed cases.
00:23:02.560A lot of us who are skeptical have said, I don't know, maybe you've got 10 times as many cases as
00:23:07.980people actually think. If you have way more cases, then obviously the death rate is much lower.
00:23:12.700The hospitalization rate is much lower. So these guys, Massachusetts general, just go out there
00:23:17.960and they talk to 200 random Chelsea residents and they prick their fingers and they get their blood.
00:23:24.460Guess what percentage of them had antibodies for coronavirus? All of them looked healthy.
00:23:29.900None, you know, none of them were showing symptoms. Guess what percentage of those 200 people
00:23:35.160have already had coronavirus and have recovered from it without even knowing it, without going to the
00:23:40.780hospital. One third, almost exactly one third, 64 out of 200 have already had the coronavirus. They
00:23:53.180didn't even know they had it. Okay. Now Chelsea is a particularly hot spot right now for the,
00:23:59.780for the virus. So I'm not saying it's one third of people throughout the United States,
00:24:02.840but that means that the number of people who've had it are so much larger.
00:24:06.700The flu comparison might be fairly legitimate. Another person who suggests this is Jay Bhattacharya.
00:24:13.380He's that Stanford scientist who made huge headlines a few weeks ago when he went on Peter Robinson's
00:24:18.440show. And when he wrote a wall street journal op-ed and he said, you know, we think that the actual
00:24:23.560infection rate is much higher. We think that the death rate is significantly lower. Well, what is he
00:24:30.280doing? He's conducted a lot of research on this far more scientifically rigorous than just going out and
00:24:35.520talking to 200 people. And he found recently that the infection rate, when you could, when you're
00:24:41.780not looking at a hotspot, when you're controlling for different factors is something like three or
00:24:45.9004%. So obviously not nearly as high as 30 or 35%. Sure. But what that means is even if the infection
00:24:54.060rate is just three to 4%, then when you compare that to mortality, it would bring the mortality rate down
00:25:00.820to something like a very bad flu, which is what the skeptics have been saying from the beginning,
00:25:09.080which is what they have been pilloried for from the very beginning.
00:25:14.620You know, it's a great thing that Sweden is remaining open. Sweden is not locking down.
00:25:20.860Sweden, we're going to see what happens when you don't institute these national lockdowns.
00:25:24.300It gives us a control case. Okay. We're not going to know the right answer for many, many months
00:25:28.880because the death rate is going to be higher there for a little bit, but in the long run,
00:25:32.360we're going to see after the second wave. If there's at least one country that does not shut
00:25:38.340down, then in two years or however long it takes to get a vaccine, we will be able to know what that
00:25:44.760looks like. That's going to be very important to assess our response here because every single day,
00:25:50.860all of the new information that's coming out hour by hour is justifying the skeptics. It's
00:25:58.360justifying the liberate America protesters. And it is smacking down the doomsday predictions of
00:26:07.200opportunistic politicians, the mainstream media, and the self-appointed public health experts who
00:26:13.600want to dictate our lives for us. For more on this, we turn to Democratic vice presidential,
00:26:19.160Democratic presidential candidate, former vice president, Joe Biden.
00:26:22.440You know, there's a, during World War II, you know, where Roosevelt came up with a thing
00:26:28.480that, you know, was totally different than a, than the, it's called, he called it the,
00:26:35.200you know, the World War II, he had the war, the war production board.
00:26:39.960I think Joe Biden is rubbing off on me. The more Joe Biden clips I play, the less I am able to speak.
00:26:46.040So that's not great. Imagine if that guy becomes our president. There is, obviously we're talking
00:26:52.620about the scientific news of coronavirus and there's a lot of important information coming
00:26:56.240out there. There's also a lot of information coming out on the international front. I spoke to
00:27:01.440Senator Ted Cruz on our show Verdict, uh, just a few days ago. Senator Cruz broke some news on that show
00:27:08.620because he had spoken to the National Institutes of Health. It's all starting to become a little bit
00:27:15.680clearer why a lot of politicians, a lot of people in the media are trying to cover for communist China,
00:27:23.000why they're trying to parrot Chinese propaganda on how this virus got started. There was a big bombshell
00:27:28.660in a report that NIH gave to Senator Cruz. We'll get to that in just one second. We will get to, uh,
00:27:36.400Dan Crenshaw committing absolute murder on the Bill Maher show. It was just devastating. We'll get
00:27:41.880to a Harvard homeschooling, uh, invective and we'll get to Brian's daughter crying. We'll get to all of
00:27:49.480it. But first I've got to take a quick break and say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. Head on over
00:27:54.580to dailywire.com. You already should do that by the way. You should be members already. Why? Because
00:28:00.200you get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, the Ben Shapiro show, the Matt Wall show, you get the
00:28:03.080Alexis stuff. If you get up to that tier, which you certainly should, you, you know, you look,
00:28:06.600you get everything and you get this, the leftist tiers tumbler, the Brian Stelter smoothie vessel.
00:28:16.420Okay. You need it. Otherwise you're going to drown. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:28:33.080So, you know, obviously I would never say I told you so, but on this show about three weeks,
00:28:40.820four weeks ago, we suggested maybe, Hey, just maybe there was a link between the Wuhan Institute
00:28:47.180of Virology and the virus found in Wuhan. And that maybe this, this story we were hearing from
00:28:53.960the Chinese government and the American mainstream media, but I repeat myself was a little bit of a
00:28:58.240cover that maybe this didn't just come from a bad batch of bad soup, but it had something to do with
00:29:02.540that level four viral lab that was just a few hundred yards away. Turns out increasingly that
00:29:09.900seems to be the case. Why on earth then was everybody covering up for China? Was it just the
00:29:16.200money? You know, China buys up a lot of American media. Was it the ideology? The media obviously hate
00:29:20.780Donald Trump, or is it the case that people knew about this lab? They knew about the research that was
00:29:27.340being conducted there. And maybe even just maybe the U S government was funding the research at the lab.
00:29:37.480Here's Senator Cruz breaking the news. Well, it turns out there was, it wasn't just one,
00:29:41.940there were two labs within miles of where this outbreak occurred that were studying Corona viruses
00:29:47.700from bats and, and that there were internal state department wires before this pandemic raising
00:29:55.680concerns about the security in those labs and that an accidental, a virus could escape and cause a global pandemic.
00:30:03.460But I'll tell you, it's worse than that. And, and, and let me give you some, some breaking news right now,
00:30:08.060which is the U S government was funding the Chinese research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
00:30:17.240your taxpayer dollars and my taxpayer dollars. And let me give you specifics that we just got today,
00:30:23.980today and inquiring of the national institutes of health. Did any of your money go to the Wuhan
00:30:30.140Institute of Virology? The answer is yes. And, and, and here's what, here's what they told us in writing
00:30:35.540today. They said in fiscal year 2019, the funding for the Wuhan Institute for Virology was $76,000 and the,
00:30:44.120and the $301, $76,000, $301. So you and I, and every, all of all American taxpayers were spending over
00:30:53.400$76,000 to fund the research at this laboratory. What research were we funding? Specifically,
00:31:00.280we were paying the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study viral diversity in bat reservoirs and survey
00:31:07.920people who live in high risk communities for evidence of bat coronavirus infection and to conduct lab
00:31:13.360experiments to analyze newly discovered viruses. So we were paying them to do all of the research
00:31:23.860that it seems increasingly likely was the cause of the coronavirus outbreak that they then lied about
00:31:30.800for months and caused to spread all the way around the world and shut down the greatest economy ever
00:31:35.200and throw 22 million Americans out of work and kill another 40,000 at last count Americans.
00:31:40.440And this is a very bad situation. It also, so it reminds us, I think, of two things here.
00:31:50.100One, politicians, the media, people in government have a lot of incentives here to cover up what
00:31:57.800really happened. Ton of political incentives, ton of financial incentives. Okay. They have a lot of
00:32:04.440incentive to call. And anyone who raises questions, wacky, crazy, conspiracy theorist, right? That's what
00:32:09.560they did. They called Tom Cotton, the Senator, a conspiracy theorist because he said maybe the
00:32:14.200virus has something to do with the laboratory. Now it turns out he was almost certainly right
00:32:18.020and they were completely wrong. That's one thing. Calls for a little bit of courage when you're
00:32:22.760standing up there. Calls for maybe not being so condescending to the liberate America people who
00:32:27.700maybe there's actually a good cause to liberate America. That's the first part. Second thing we know
00:32:31.860is that China lied. They lied from the very beginning and the U S media are helping them do
00:32:37.040it. So here was a report. This is, it's so insidious how they do it. I was reading the
00:32:41.980Associated Press yesterday for some reason. Here's the report from the AP quote, the U S death toll from
00:32:48.500the novel coronavirus rose to more than 40,000 on Sunday, the highest in the world and almost double
00:32:53.620the number of deaths in the next highest country, Italy, according to a Reuters tally.
00:33:00.960So that's not true. That nothing, listen to how silly this is. The novel coronavirus,
00:33:09.600they won't call it the Chinese coronavirus. They won't call it the Wuhan coronavirus. It's the,
00:33:12.920it's the novel coronavirus. Death toll rose to 40,000, the highest in the world. It's not the
00:33:17.140highest in the world. The only way that the U S has the highest death count in the world from this
00:33:20.660is if China is giving honest numbers. We know China is not giving honest numbers. You can see
00:33:25.360the growth of the virus in every single country. It looks like this and it goes up, up, up. And then
00:33:30.900eventually it kind of levels off. Here's how it looked in China. It starts to go up, up, up, up,
00:33:35.540up. Then it levels. And then it just completely crashes down because they stopped reporting the
00:33:39.220numbers because they lied. By the way, you don't need to believe me on that. Even the Chinese
00:33:43.040government is beginning to admit some of their lies. They say the death count out of Wuhan was not
00:33:47.460accurate. They increased it just a few days ago by more than 50%. And that's still nowhere near
00:33:51.780enough to get to an actual honest number. So the, it is simply a fact that the U S does not have more
00:33:57.540coronavirus deaths than any other country in the world. China does, but let's even say that we
00:34:03.680could move past that. They then write that this Reuters tally says that, uh, the United States has
00:34:11.640almost double the number of deaths in the next highest country, Italy. What they fail to mention is that
00:34:16.660the United States is more than five times bigger than Italy population, more than five times as
00:34:22.520large. So if the U S has double, then that's not nearly as bad as Italy, right? Cause you're not
00:34:29.760interested in the total number of deaths. You're interested in per capita deaths. That's a much
00:34:33.720more meaningful statistic. So this is the one silver lining I would say about the coronavirus.
00:34:40.980It's exposing the mainstream media. Obviously you can look at reports like that and just say,
00:34:47.280this is so absurd. It's, it's also taking away a lot of the mainstream media's power of persuasion.
00:34:54.840Dan Crenshaw, U S Congressman, former Navy SEAL. He showed this the other night on the Bill Maher show.
00:35:02.060You know, all of the talk shows are still going on all the late night shows, all the talk shows,
00:35:06.080the news shows. They're still going on, but most of them are being filmed in people's homes. So Bill
00:35:10.800Maher has his show, but he doesn't have his audience. He doesn't have his applause sign.
00:35:17.060He doesn't have all of the majesty that goes along with the TV show. So it's just him in front of a
00:35:24.520camera. And then it's Dan Crenshaw in front of a camera. And without all of those props to help
00:35:30.200Bill Maher seem like he's being the persuasive one, Dan Crenshaw just wrecks him without all of the
00:35:38.860props that allow the liberal media to make it seem like the liberal position is always correct.
00:35:45.640And the conservative position is ridiculous. The conservative position shines through.
00:35:50.360Just take this one example of Bill Maher going after president Trump for coronavirus and Dan
00:35:55.560Crenshaw smacking it down. Peter Navarro, somebody else who talks to Trump a lot, told him directly
00:36:01.120January 29th, you got to get ahead of this. February 10th. Two days later, he implemented a restrictive
00:36:07.020travel ban from China, which he was widely criticized for. That same day on January 31st,
00:36:13.440Nancy Pelosi proposed the No Ban Act, which would be congressional limitation on what President
00:36:18.060Trump's actually able to do with that travel restriction. Okay, but that's right. I mean,
00:36:23.100he lies about that. He first of all, he didn't lie about it. What do you mean? He said he stopped
00:36:27.500people coming in from China. He did not. He said he was ahead of it. 43 countries did it before we did.
00:36:33.620There are still people coming in from China. He only stopped foreign nationalists. Let me address that
00:36:38.760because I know that's that's what people are saying right now. But the reality is that was about 40,000
00:36:43.160people came in after that. These are U.S. citizens and green card holders and passport holders being
00:36:48.260repatriated. U.S. citizens. So you have to make the argument then that we shouldn't allow them in.
00:36:55.120I mean, it sounds to me like you're fully agreeing with President Trump on this when everybody else
00:36:59.160disagreed with them. And if you're saying that you wish that that travel restriction had been more
00:37:03.640extreme, okay, fine. I mean, you apparently had the foresight back then when nobody else did.
00:37:09.480But the fact is, you know, if Joe Biden was in charge at that moment, he's already said he wouldn't
00:37:14.580have done it. He criticized it at the time. Nancy Pelosi actually proposed legislation to stop it.
00:37:21.480Okay, but people are still coming in from China. It wasn't just foreign nationals. But let's get off
00:37:27.900that. Let me just go back to the timeline for a minute. Let's get off of that because uncle, uncle,
00:37:33.160stop it, Dan. This hurts too much. Stop smacking me down. Now, if they had done that in Bill Maher's
00:37:39.040studio, he would have had the audience and the lights and the camera and the close up on his face.
00:37:43.520Kind of smirk or something. And the audience would drown out Crenshaw with his cheers. But because
00:37:48.640it's just these two people, it's just the arguments. And obviously the conservative argument is much
00:37:55.500stronger here. I really like this. This is a real, this really is a silver lining. If the left loses all
00:38:01.740of their institutional aids to pretending to be more persuasive, to propping up their weak arguments,
00:38:08.600then we're going to do a great job at persuading the American people. This is why President Trump is
00:38:13.160holding daily press briefings. He's holding daily press briefings because it is the Crenshaw Bill
00:38:18.680Maher moment, right? It's not NBC news at night with the lights and the cameras and the editors
00:38:24.340and everything designed to make Trump look bad. It's just the reporter and it's Trump. And when you
00:38:29.520get a fair fight and it's one-on-one and it's live, Trump wins. When it's edited and it's later at night
00:38:35.400and they can chop it up and make it look bad, then the media win. Same thing here. We should,
00:38:40.560I don't think conservatives should ever do a pre-taped interview again. I think we only live
00:38:46.000interviews from now on because we win every single one of those. It's not just that the media are
00:38:54.940trying to maintain their stranglehold on culture. The Academy is doing it too. This is the dumbest
00:39:00.080article I saw on the internet all weekend. It came from Harvard Magazine. So, you know,
00:39:05.440and the title of it is The Risks of Homeschooling. The Risks of Homeschooling.
00:39:12.980The photo, you can see, it's got this house and it's a jail cell. And there's some poor little kid
00:39:20.080locked behind the jail cell. And she's looking out so sad at all the kids playing outside,
00:39:26.100but she's locked in in homeschool. I guess those kids are in public school or something.
00:39:29.240And then the house just has these books and it says, reading, writing, arithmetic, Bible. Oh,
00:39:36.200heaven forfend you read the most important and wise book ever written. No, we've got to read like
00:39:41.060Sula or something that if you got to read some modern thing, that's so much smarter than the Bible.
00:39:46.480What's really funny about this though, you can't see it on this photo because I believe they've
00:39:50.040updated it. The first photo I saw attached to this article, they misspelled arithmetic.
00:39:54.840I'm not joking. You can look it up. It's still on Twitter. If you look, so this is reading,
00:40:01.380writing, arithmetic, Bible, but the original one, it said arithmetic. They, they come. Okay. Well,
00:40:09.740look, Harvard can't spell the word arithmetic. I bet you every homeschooler I know could spell the word
00:40:15.580arithmetic. And this is the irony. Most homeschoolers I know, and I know many of them are much better
00:40:22.940educated than people who went to public school or private school or elite colleges. And many
00:40:29.440homeschoolers I know went to elite colleges. They were some of the smartest kids at the elite
00:40:33.100colleges. The article begins a rapidly increasing number of American families are opting out of
00:40:37.540sending their children to school, choosing instead to educate them at home. Homeschooled kids now
00:40:42.300account for roughly 3% to 4% of school age children in the United States, a number equivalent to those
00:40:48.100attending charter schools and larger than the number currently in parochial schools. Yet Elizabeth
00:40:53.380Bartholet, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director at the law school's
00:40:59.440child advocacy program sees risks for children and society in homeschooling and recommends a presumptive
00:41:05.740ban on the practice, not just a discouragement of it, a ban on homeschooling. You got to send your
00:41:11.400kids to that public school. How else are they going to learn that there are 56 genders
00:41:14.760in preschool, which is actually being taught right now in Brooklyn public schools? Homeschooling,
00:41:22.120she says, not only violates children's right to a meaningful education and their right to be
00:41:26.060protected from potential child abuse, but may keep them from contributing positively to a democratic
00:41:31.100society. Yeah, they're not going to learn how to go and, and campaign for Bernie Sanders if they go to
00:41:37.420homeschool. You know, they can't be productive. This is the real money line. This, this paragraph shows
00:41:43.060you everything you need to know about the, the article. In a paper published recently in the
00:41:46.880Arizona law review, she notes that parents choose homeschooling for an array of reasons. Some find
00:41:51.240local schools lacking or want to protect their child from bullying. Now, look, that's undeniable.
00:41:56.480Many public schools in different places are absolutely terrible and don't equip your child to learn
00:42:01.560anything at all. Barely teach them to read. Others do it to give their children the flexibility to pursue
00:42:09.020sports or other activities at a high level. That's okay too. If your kid's getting bullied, it's okay.
00:42:13.580If your kid wants to play baseball, that's okay. Probably soccer, if we're being honest about these
00:42:19.520people. Others do it for this reason, but surveys of homeschoolers show that a majority of such families,
00:42:25.440by some estimates up to 90%, are driven, dun, dun, dun, by conservative Christian beliefs and seek to
00:42:33.640remove their children from mainstream culture. Bartholet notes that some of these parents are
00:42:38.540extreme religious ideologues who question science and promote female subservience and white supremacy.
00:42:44.560They had to get white supremacy in there because anytime that anybody is slightly to the right
00:42:48.000of Barack Obama, then you're a white supremacist, neo-Nazi, right? Whatever.
00:42:53.840Now, extreme religious ideology, very bad. Gender ideology and telling four-year-olds that boys can be
00:43:03.240girls and they should chop off their genitals, that's really good. That's not extreme. That's
00:43:06.780not an ideology. But saying that Jesus Christ died for your sins, that's extreme. That's crazy. Nobody
00:43:13.080can even be exposed to that. Because if you're raised reading the Bible, the most important text
00:43:19.260ever written, the most profound work that has completely shaped our culture, if you're raised
00:43:24.020reading that ever, like even once being exposed to that, then you're going to become a total dunce
00:43:31.140idiot and not be able to contribute to society. Whereas if you are actually prohibited from reading
00:43:37.680the Bible in school, then you can become a really smart person and not know how to spell arithmetic.
00:43:42.740That's sort of, then you'll know that boys can, can really be girls and babies aren't really people
00:43:46.780and there are 56 genders. Then, you know, in other words, you'll be educated like the people at Harvard.
00:43:51.820Harvard. I guess they're oblivious. I guess it's not intentional. I guess it's oblivious.
00:44:00.660This article is very dumb. If this is indicative of the kind of education that you can get at Harvard,
00:44:10.000no one should go to Harvard. Okay. Harvard charges $70,000 per year for a gender studies degree.
00:44:18.740And they are now saying that homeschooling is unfair to students. You know what this is really
00:44:24.640about? It's about the same thing we've seen throughout this whole pandemic. Control. That's
00:44:32.480what it's about. The, the politicians who are arresting pastors for having church services,
00:44:40.360it's not about public health. It's about control. They're letting the marijuana shop remain open.
00:44:45.480They're letting prisoners out of jail, violent criminals out of jail. They're allowing all that
00:44:51.960stuff to happen. They're allowing abortion clinics to operate 24 seven, but they won't let people go
00:44:57.700to drive through church where they won't touch anybody. That's not about public health. That's
00:45:03.340about control. Mainstream media here. They're concerned not about public health, not about what
00:45:09.060really happened in China, not how these mitigation strategies are actually affecting the virus,
00:45:14.140not how we can prevent a pandemic in the future. They don't care about that. They care about control.
00:45:18.560They want to control the narrative. They want to control their financial access to the Chinese
00:45:23.720market. They want to control you and what you can understand. Harvard university does not care
00:45:31.460about how children can be educated. The schools are all shut down. The only way that children can
00:45:36.400currently be educated is homeschooling. They're all locked at home. There's nowhere else to go.
00:45:41.480And Harvard is actually saying this should be illegal. They're saying it would be better
00:45:45.880for your child not to receive an education than for you to teach your child something that God forbid
00:45:52.620contradicts leftist orthodoxy, which by the way, is another term for idiocy, for unreality, for ignorance.
00:46:01.34056 genders. 56 genders. That's ignorant. Okay. Arithmetic. That's ignorant. But they'd rather your kid be uneducated
00:46:11.180than educated in the tradition of our civilization. In the tradition that gave us William Shakespeare
00:46:19.280and Dante and Isaac Newton and like all the greatest thinkers of all time, Thomas Aquinas, right? They'd
00:46:26.880forget that. Either you read postmodern drivel or it's child abuse. That's the control. And
00:46:35.580these people are cultural elites, self-appointed. They're really upset that they're losing that control.
00:46:42.960Brian Stelter, the representative of CNN, the representative of this whole culture.
00:46:50.320He cried and he didn't cry because he's afraid of coronavirus and he didn't cry because he's lost
00:46:58.180his job. He hasn't lost his job yet. He cried because this pandemic is changing things. Obviously
00:47:05.160some for the worse, but maybe it's exposing some weaknesses of our culture. Maybe it's causing some
00:47:11.280people to start to lose their control. Brian Stelter tweets. I crawled in bed and cried for our
00:47:18.700pre-pandemic lives. Tears that had been waiting a month to escape. I wanted to share because it feels
00:47:24.180freeing to do so. Now is not a time for faux invincibility. Journos are living this, hating this like everyone else.
00:47:33.620For comment, we turn not to Joe Biden, but to the godfather, Don Vito Corleone.
00:47:44.040You can act like a man. What's the matter with you? Is this how you turned down a Hollywood
00:47:50.300binocchio that cries like a woman? What can I do? What can I do? What does that mean? Ridiculous.
00:47:59.320You can act like a man. What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you?
00:48:06.720This is obviously very humiliating for any man to tweet out ever, and he should feel humiliated.
00:48:12.100But more than that, the mainstream media, the academy, the stewards and gatekeepers of our culture,
00:48:21.940they should feel afraid. They should be crying because I think they've lost a lot of credibility
00:48:30.080in all of this, and I don't think they're going to get it back once this is over. In fact,
00:48:35.080I think that we're going to keep flattening that curve of their credibility as we move forward,
00:48:40.240and I think maybe we're developing a little bit of a herd immunity to it. All right, that's our show.
00:48:43.840I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. See you tomorrow.
00:48:46.560If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
00:48:57.540And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends
00:49:01.940to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
00:49:07.920Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,
00:49:12.580The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
00:49:15.040The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies and directed by Mike Joyner.
00:49:20.440Executive producer, Jeremy Boren. Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
00:49:26.140Technical producer, Austin Stevens. Assistant director, Pavel Widowski. Editor and associate
00:49:31.820producer, Danny D'Amico. Audio mixer, Robin Fenderson. Hair and makeup, Nika Geneva. Production
00:49:38.880assistant, Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
00:49:45.040You know, The Matt Walsh Show, it's not just another show about politics. I think there are
00:49:49.360enough of those already out there. We talk about culture because culture drives politics and it
00:49:54.400drives everything else. So my main focuses are life, family, faith. Those are fundamental. And
00:50:01.760that's what this show is about. I hope you'll give it a listen.
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