Ep. 569 - Abolish Whiteness
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
182.31448
Summary
A statue of Abraham Lincoln and a freed slave is being pulled down in protest of the removal of the Emancipation Proclamation in honor of the man who freed them, Abraham Lincoln. Is this about racism? Or is this about racial justice?
Transcript
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Political satire is now impossible. I have just returned from Washington, D.C. I was there for 24
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hours. I was there talking to the Attorney General of the United States, which we will get to a
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little bit later in the show. And while I was there, the rioters, the peaceful protesters
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promised to tear down, in the name of racial justice, a statue of the Emancipation Proclamation
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that freed the slaves. Yes, this famous statue in Washington, D.C., the Emancipation Proclamation
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statue, is one of Abraham Lincoln and a freed slave. It was paid for in 1876 by black people
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recently freed to honor the man who freed them, to honor their freedom. And now that statue,
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to freedom, is considered racist. They are tearing it down. Here are the geniuses who want to pull
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down our history. Our team today, some of my members out here, we don't want to
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tear down the statue today. We understand. We don't want to do it today. We are going to be doing it
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on Thursday at 7 p.m. Okay? Thursday at 7 p.m. Say it. Thursday? Thursday. At 7? At 7? P.m. P.m. P.m. P.m. Okay.
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So we're not, we're not going to be just sitting idly, side on the side, going to Black Lives Matter
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Plaza. No. No, we're not doing that no more. We are going to show up and wake these rich white people up.
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Going to wake those rich white people, you know, rich white people like Abraham Lincoln.
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Now, Thursday at 7 p.m. came and went. As you might imagine, the rioters are not the most reliable
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people on earth, but they still plan to pull down the statue. D.C.'s fake congressman,
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Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, has called for the statue to come down. D.C.'s mayor has suggested
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the statue might come down. But we can't pretend any longer that this is about police brutality or
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systemic racism or about the Confederacy or the slaves, because right now we're talking about
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a statue of the guy who freed the slaves, who beat the Confederacy. The anarchists are targeting
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the most ironic man. They're making it explicitly about race. And ironically, all that could do
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is gin up racial tensions. We'll get into it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to The Michael Knowles Show. It is good to be back here in La La Land after a whirlwind
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trip to D.C., where I like to credit my presence there for delaying the teardown of the Emancipation
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Proclamation statue. I have no evidence that that is true, but look, it's a coincidence, and so clearly
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there's something there. But before we get into that, because there's a racial point here that I think
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the anarchists and the radicals who defend them are completely missing, and it's pretty ironic. But
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Obviously, that rioter who talked about pulling down the Emancipation Proclamation statue is speaking
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in explicitly racial terms because he also was rallying everyone to go show up to Mitch McConnell's
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house and other people. He said, we're going to keep these rich white people up. It's all about
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white, white, white. And obviously now we, we, they can no longer say that it's about tearing
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down statues of slavers because Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. They can't say it's about tearing
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down, I don't know, the Confederate flag because you're talking about the man who saved the union.
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It's a white thing for a lot of people. And that is true even of a lecturer at Cambridge University
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who tweeted out, abolish whiteness. This lecturer's name is Priyamvada Gopal. A lot of people
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reported her because imagine if you said abolish Mexicans, abolish blackness. If you said those
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things, that's, I suppose, threatening. It's at least wishing ill on a whole group of people.
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And so you would be taken down. Twitter the other day took down, or censored rather, a tweet from
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President Trump because he said he would enforce the law against criminals. He said, we're going to use,
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we're going to enforce the law against criminals. They said, this is violent. It's threatening harm
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to other people. And yet abolish whiteness stays up on Twitter. And then what's even crazier is the
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way that Cambridge University reacted to the tweet was to give this woman a promotion. She went from
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a lecturer to a full professor, which tells you just about everything that you need to know about
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the academy. But the tweet got me wondering, what is whiteness? This is a term that's come up among
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these radicals, abolish whiteness. Whiteness is toxic. What is whiteness? I don't think about
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whiteness very much. When I think about how I identify in my life, white is very low on the list.
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What constitutes my identity? Well, I'm Catholic. I'm, if we wanted to get specific nationally, I guess
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I'm of Italian extract. Still don't think about that as white. A lot of people wonder if Italians
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are white. We're a little bit swarthy. I think that I'm a New Yorker, born in New York. I live
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in Los Angeles now. I'm an American. Obviously that's way up there on the list. I'm a man. That's
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way up there on the list. Whiteness is very low. And I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
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It turns out white people have a very low racial consciousness. So Pew Research did this survey in,
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it's the Race in America survey, 2019. And they asked, uh, what percentage of each group say that
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being white or black or Asian or whatever is extremely or very important to how they think
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about themselves? So among, among Asian people, it's 27% say it's extremely important to think of
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their race. 29% additionally say it's very important. So 56%, most Asians say that their race
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is at least very important to their identity. Among Hispanics, the number is 31% extremely
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important. 28% very important. So 59% say their race is at least very important to them. Among
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black people, that number jumps to 74% total. So 52%, most black people say that their race is
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extremely important to their identity. An additional 22% say very important, bringing it to 74. And then
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white people, do you know what the number is? Just 15 total. So 10% say it's very important to their
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identity. And just 5% say it's extremely important to their identity. 15% racial consciousness. So
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ironically, when you have a tweet like abolish whiteness, what that actually has the effect of
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doing is creating whiteness. Whiteness as a concept is not one that's really recognized by a lot of
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people. 85% of white people probably wouldn't recognize that concept. And yet, if we are constantly
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being told you're white, you're white, that is your identity and it's terrible and we shouldn't have it.
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There is no other effect that that could have than to create a racial consciousness. Now, perhaps that's
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the point. Because on the one hand, it's easy not to have a racial consciousness if you're the majority
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population in a country. But I think beyond that, because in the West, we have this idea of anti-racism,
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we have the idea that we're made in the image of God, that we have human solidarity come from a common
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ancestor. We just naturally have a lower racial consciousness. But I suspect the left is pushing
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this because they want there to be a white racial consciousness, because they want to pit racial
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groups against one another. And because liberalism seems to require overcoming the oppressive past
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and having a villain. When there are no more villains to have, then you just have to start
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making them up. Now, that's the ideological side of things. How about the practical side of things?
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Are these riots still going to keep burning? You know, they're making up invisible villains and
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invisible enemies. At a certain point, you think that would burn out. The BHAZ, the Black House
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Autonomous Zone in DC, is still running. But the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, it is no more.
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The dream of Chaz Chop is over. A statement from the Chaz Chop Twitter account says, quote,
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few people remain in our beloved CHOP. The statement was signed by the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest
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Solidarity Committee. And they said, very finally, the CHOP project is now concluded.
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No more CHOP. It's very sad, but that's just the way that it goes.
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It was always ever, it was always ever thus, right? It was always going to go away. It was a
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utopian project. And like all utopian projects, it was disgusting. It was terrible. It was violent.
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People died. It destroyed property. It destroyed the rights of certain people. Yet the mayor of
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Seattle, who was tolerating this, said it was going to be the summer of love. It didn't look very much
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like the summer of love. Now the summer of love has fizzled out. I think it went so quickly because
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we're just moving on a faster timeline here. We're moving on a faster news cycle. We're moving on a
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faster protest cycle. We went from tearing down Robert E. Lee to tearing down statues of Saint
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Junipero Serra very quickly, right? To tearing down any depiction of Jesus that looks white,
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according to Sean King. Things are getting a little bit faster. And the bright side of that is things
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like the Chaz will fizzle out. Now, speaking of fizzling out, our good friend, Joe Biden,
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is still running for president. We'll get a little bit more into the presidential election
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later. But let's not forget, this man is still running and he is losing more and more of his
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consciousness every single day. They are trying to go back and gin up this coronavirus idea. Well,
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Joe Biden has a scary number for you. He is under the impression that coronavirus has hit 120 million
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I just got off the phone this morning with Dr. Vivek Murthy and he and others who, he was a former
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surgeon general and a number of experts who work, I have a meeting, an hour and a half telephone
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conference with them, Zoom conference once a week, I mean, four times a week. And that's why we have a
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major multi-billion dollar investment in mental health. What people drastically underestimate is
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the impact on the mental health of people who now everything is complicated. Not only is the health
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care piece, but people don't have a job. People don't have anywhere to go. They don't know what they're
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going to do. And a lot of people you have unnecessarily. Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID.
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120 million dead. You know, it's funny. I actually have to correct myself. The first time I heard that
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clip, I thought he was saying there were 120 million cases worldwide, which obviously is not
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true. No, what he said is even crazier. He's saying there's 120 million dead. And it seems he's implying
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in America, which is a country of 330 million people. That's a lot, huh? That's actually though,
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the number is not anywhere close to that. It's multiple orders of magnitude lower than that.
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But watching or listening to Joe Biden these days, you have to think the man is not up to the job.
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And yet the poll numbers show he's actually in a pretty good position. Are the polls lying?
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Possibly. But does president Trump think he's going to sail to reelection? I think probably not.
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Now, the coronavirus is back, according to Joe Biden. 120 million dead in America,
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obviously nowhere near that, but still, this is the message that's being sent to everybody.
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Coronavirus is back. We've all got to worry. But what about the past few weeks where the
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public health officials and the politicians have been encouraging people to go out, not social
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distance, be around hundreds of thousands of other people? The Seattle Autonomous Zone is the summer
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of love. What about all of that? Clearly, there is a political agenda at work here. If the virus is
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super duper deadly dangerous, stay in your house, wear a mask one minute, and then when it's advantageous
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to the left, they say, no big deal. Go out and protest for whatever racial or social issue you
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want to. Well, they're back on it shamelessly, and they want you to know that the reason the
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coronavirus is spiking has nothing to do with the protests. It's almost, it's almost hilarious. If
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it weren't so corrupt, it would be hilarious that at this point, they actually have headlines like this
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in NPR. Parties, not protests, are causing spikes in coronavirus. Parties. So those scenes that you've
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seen for weeks now of hundreds of thousands of people together, that has nothing to do with
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coronavirus. But when you go over and have dinner with your friend, that is what's causing the spike
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in coronavirus. You remember the public health officials, 1,200 of them at least, signed a petition
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that said that you should encourage the protests because white supremacy is a public health issue
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that is causing coronavirus to spike. I kid you not. And social justice protests, SJW radical BLM
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protests will actually help reduce the spread of coronavirus based on what? Based on the science,
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I guess. Another article, this one just came out yesterday. Black Lives Matter protests haven't led
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to COVID spikes. It may be due to people staying home. Oh, that's why we're getting a spike as people
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are staying home. All right, then lift the lockdown orders. They're probably not going to support that
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either. All they want to do though is protect BLM or Antifa or the Chaz Chop zone. All they want to do
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is protect anything that can hurt Trump and they will not permit any of that to lift for the next five
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months. It is all about the presidential election. And the sad thing is it may be working. I mean, even
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just the next time they bring up the masks to you, I just, a word to the wise, point to Denmark,
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point to Finland, point to Norway, point to Sweden, all of which governments are advising against wearing
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the masks in public. But the masks, as we know, have become a political symbol. Joe Biden, when he was
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giving a speech, wore the mask dangling from his ear, wasn't covering his face, so it wasn't preventing
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the spread of the virus. But he couldn't take it down because now he's telling everyone they have to wear
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the mask. They're just dangling from his ear. That's the political symbol. It's incoherent. Obviously, the headlines
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are ridiculous. And yet, I think it might be working because, not Cuomo, Biden's numbers are
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actually up fairly high. So according to a New York Times Siena College poll that came out on Thursday,
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Joe Biden is opening up a wide lead in important states, particularly Michigan, Pennsylvania, and
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Wisconsin. Biden leads those states by double digits. Now, do I believe the polls? Not really.
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I don't. But we can see some frustration among Trump supporters because the riots have been allowed
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to carry on without very much in the way of consequences, although the attorney general says
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consequences are coming, which we'll get to in a little bit. The economy, obviously, we threw 40
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million people out of work over this lockdown, which now seems to be based on completely bunk science.
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So am I worried that if the election were held today, Trump would lose all those states?
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Not necessarily. But I am worried in general that if the president doesn't turn something around,
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if the president doesn't change his messaging a little bit, if the president doesn't show hard
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results and a return to law and order, he's going to have trouble in November because all of the media
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complex, everything is geared against him. Just on this example of the coronavirus, consider how they are
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covering the coronavirus. So Andy Cuomo, governor of New York, has handled this worse than any governor
00:18:25.660
in America. New York got hit the worst. They dealt with it the worst. They had no idea how to keep
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their hospitals open. They had no idea. They had to call in the federal government for that. They had
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no idea how many ventilators they needed. Then they got it wrong the first time on, on, they had too
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few. Then they had too many. They then sent sick people into nursing homes, the most vulnerable
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population killed thousands of elderly New Yorkers. I mean, it's just been a bungled disaster. And the
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fault lies at the feet of governor Andrew Cuomo. But you wouldn't know that if you watch the mainstream
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media, because the coverage he's getting is on a television show hosted by his brother on CNN.
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Everything that he ever said mattered to him about public service is what you demonstrated
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right here and right now during this period when your state needed it most. And I hear it all the
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time. Not everybody likes you. Not everybody likes me. Everybody seems to like pop now. That's the benefit
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of being out for a while, maybe gone. I just hope you recognize what even I'm able to recognize, being
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spawned from the same wolf pack. I hope you are able to appreciate what you did in your state and what it
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means for the rest of the country now and what it will always mean to those who love and care about you
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the most. I'm wowed by what you did. And more importantly, I'm wowed by how you did it. This
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was very hard. I know it's not over. But obviously, I love you as a brother. Obviously, I'll never be
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objective. Obviously, I think you're the best politician in the country. But I hope you feel
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good about what you did for your people because I know they appreciate it. They don't appreciate it.
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They don't like it because what you did is kill people unnecessarily through very stupid policies.
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He did. I mean, just consider this. In the same interview, Andy Cuomo attacks the governor of
00:20:17.060
Florida, Republican governor of Florida, and says that he gambled on the virus and he lost.
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New York has 10 times as many coronavirus deaths as Florida. 10 times. Florida reopened early. New York
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did not. They've been playing this up in the press as what a great job Andy Cuomo did. Cuomo's
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response to the virus led to more deaths than the Republican response in Florida.
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That's not the way it's going to be played. If they can lie as brazenly as all that,
00:20:49.580
consider how the rest of the election season is going to play out. Trump has got to get on top of
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this messaging. It tends to be his strength. I mean, that's why he uses Twitter. But now Twitter
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is censoring him, right? He uses Twitter to speak directly to the American people. Well, now,
00:21:05.420
big tech is going to shut that down too. Everything about the deck of this election is stacked
00:21:10.380
against President Trump, but he's got to get tougher on his messaging. Otherwise,
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how do you stand up to these corrupt institutions? Meanwhile, they, they pretend to be moderate. They
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pretend to be the reasonable people here. Andy Cuomo was asked on NBC News what he thought about the
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rioters tearing down all of these statues. And I kid you not with a straight face. He said that
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ripping down statues, roving mobs of anarchists is a healthy expression of political opinion.
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The Teddy Roosevelt statue, I think was less about Teddy Roosevelt, but the other parts of that of that
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statue. And look, people are making a statement about equality, about community, to be against
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racism, against slavery. I think those are good statements. And it depends, you know, can you
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overdo it? Of course you can. But in New York, I don't think we've overdone it. And I think that I
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think it's a healthy expression of people saying, let's get some priorities here and let's remember
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the sin and mistake that these, this nation made and let's not celebrate it. A healthy expression.
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I like that he uses the phrase healthy too, because they tell us specifically on the question of health.
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If you go outdoors, you're going to get coronavirus and it's going to kill you and kill everyone around
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you. But when you're gathering to tear down statues, that's healthy. And obviously on the
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metaphorical sense, it's not healthy either as a country to just roam around and rip down your
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own history, to hate yourself as a nation and to destroy property. Nothing about that is healthy.
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But what he does is he equates tearing down statues with opposing racism and opposing slavery.
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Let me ask you something. How many people do you know these days who are pro-slavery?
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You know, they've got bumper stickers and one of the bumper stickers is, I support slavery.
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Bring back slavery. Nobody. Nobody is pro-slavery. And yet it's this rhetorical slate of hand. He's
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saying, look, they're making this bold statement, this brave, courageous statement that they oppose
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racism and slavery. And so we've got to let them make that expression. It's the same thing we've
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been talking about for a long time, which is they have to set up fake villains. Early on,
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they said that all of these riots, all this mayhem, it's being caused by white supremacists.
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How many white supremacists are there in America? Like three? We went through the numbers.
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Very few people have any sort of white racial consciousness at all. And I think the only
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people wearing Klan hoods anymore, well, actually they're a Democrat governor of Virginia. I guess
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he would be one. We have photographic evidence of that. Not that it caused his reputation to be
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canceled at all. But they have to invent this imaginary enemy. And so that's what Cuomo does with a
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straight face. Yeah. You know, we're the brave few who oppose slavery and racism. The implication being,
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by the way, that if you oppose the tactics of these anarchists and Marxists, then you support
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slavery and you support racism. That's the way it is. So they'll cancel U.S. Grant. They'll cancel who
00:24:08.460
won the war that freed the slaves. They'll cancel Abraham Lincoln, the president who freed the slaves.
00:24:13.540
They'll cancel St. Junipero Serra. They'll cancel Jesus himself. Okay. They'll cancel all of these
00:24:20.420
people. Now the cancel culture is having an effect beyond this. There was a person that I had never
00:24:25.660
heard of until yesterday who is one of the most prominent YouTubers. Her name is Jenna Marbles.
00:24:32.580
And a very important stuff, Jenna Marbles. Jenna Marbles has a YouTube channel of 20 million
00:24:36.880
people, 20 million subscribers. She's been around making videos now for 10 years.
00:24:42.880
And they're just kind of funny videos. Well, she's quitting now. She's quitting the whole thing
00:24:47.340
because people are digging up old videos of hers that she had deleted, where I guess she told some
00:24:51.540
jokes that she now thinks are offensive. And they're trying to ruin her reputation 10 years
00:24:57.060
after the fact, after they were deleted. Here is her tearful goodbye. And I don't want to put anything
00:25:02.960
out in the world. It's going to hurt anybody. So I need to be done with this channel for now or for
00:25:10.640
forever. I don't know. So, all right. Good talk. See you guys.
00:25:16.620
Ms. Marbles is apparently such a prominent YouTuber that she actually has a statue
00:25:20.580
at Madame Tussauds Museum. Although certainly that statue at this point, all the statues are coming down
00:25:25.760
and especially that one of her. That line she says, I don't want to put anything out in the world that
00:25:29.960
hurts anybody. This is the problem. What we are now being told is that if you, if a person has done
00:25:37.880
anything bad ever, anything that is not perfect, that is grounds to tear down the statue. But
00:25:42.680
consider the argument in all of these shootings and all the shootings that allegedly led to the
00:25:48.360
protests. Candace Owens got in a lot of trouble because she pointed out that the media haven't
00:25:52.480
told the whole story about some of these officer involved killings. And, and that in some cases,
00:25:57.260
the people who were killed had a long criminal rap sheet. Maybe they were committing crimes at the
00:26:01.420
moment that they were killed. The response to that, the popular response is how dare you bring up
00:26:06.360
that person's past. That person's past has nothing to do with what happened in that moment. And we
00:26:12.180
shouldn't judge a man based on the bad things that he did in his life. Even, even if they've done
00:26:18.020
years and years of long, terrible things, beat their wife, abuse their kids, we can't judge them for any
00:26:22.560
of that. We should only judge them on their, their few best moments. And yet the statue argument,
00:26:29.580
the cancel culture argument is doesn't matter how much good you do in your life. If you've committed
00:26:33.540
one or two bad things, that's what you should be judged by. The, the double standard is absurd and
00:26:38.700
it's obviously incoherent, but we are long past the stage of making finely tuned arguments. This is
00:26:44.900
about brute political force. This is about an ideological group clubbing everybody on the head
00:26:51.740
for their own interests. Whether their arguments make any sense, that isn't the point. This is a bare
00:26:57.120
knuckle brawl at least until November. And I think unfortunately one side of this is going to go
00:27:03.120
wishy-washy and buy into the, the lying premises of guys like Andrew Cuomo and the anarchists and the
00:27:09.080
avowed, admitted Marxists who are running BLM. And they'll say, well, I just don't want to hurt
00:27:14.480
anybody. Please don't come after me. I'll quit. We can't quit folks. We can't quit. This is the fight.
00:27:19.940
We're in it now. And you can either stand up and, and fight that fight and hopefully preserve
00:27:25.120
America before they tear the whole thing down, preserve American solidarity before they divide
00:27:30.460
us up completely, or you can surrender. Well, that's it. Luckily I sat down with a fighter
00:27:37.740
yesterday in two days ago in Washington, DC. I was there for 24 hours. And as part of my show
00:27:43.040
with Senator Cruz verdict, we sat down with the man, the myth, the legend, the attorney general of the
00:27:48.860
United States, William Barr. Take a listen to a quick part of our conversation.
00:27:52.760
Senator, you have brought a friend. Thank you, Mr. Attorney General for being here. You know,
00:27:57.840
the news broke just moments ago that you will testify before the house judiciary committee
00:28:01.760
next month. So we are honored that you would sit down with us first and very much appreciate it.
00:28:07.400
I want to get right into this. Obviously there's so much going on and it occurs to me,
00:28:11.180
we have a man who writes the laws. We have the man who enforces the laws and we have popular calls
00:28:18.400
for utter lawlessness in the country. How do we restore order?
00:28:24.360
Well, it's going to, it's going to take both state and local government as well as federal
00:28:28.460
government. The federal government is best positioned to address this kind of violence
00:28:34.060
and lawlessness after it occurs because we don't have FBI agents walking the beat.
00:28:40.300
And in fact, when the real violence started around May 25th, 6th and so forth, we started using our
00:28:50.180
joint terrorist task forces around the country. And there are 35 of them around the country. It
00:28:57.600
involves all state and local in those jurisdictions and all the federal agencies. And it's the system we
00:29:02.740
designed to follow terrorists. And now they are starting to go full bore cranking out investigations
00:29:09.680
indictments against the people who are involved in this violence. So we've, we've had scores of
00:29:15.420
indictments already for, for such things as arson, destruction of federal property, things like
00:29:21.420
that. And we have right now about 500 investigations underway. So it's picking up pace and we are committed
00:29:30.800
to holding accountable. The people are engaged in this, but we still have to try to stop it before
00:29:35.720
it happens. And that's where the burden is right now on state and local. And in many
00:29:39.660
places, they're not stepping up to the plate. They're, they're not doing their job.
00:29:43.460
So I know it's early, but, but how much indications are y'all saying of coordination and planning rather
00:29:53.360
Right. We are, we are seeing strong evidence of, of coordination in many of these violent episodes.
00:30:02.900
Fundamentally, what you have here is you have demonstrators. Some of them go there with the intent of
00:30:07.040
demonstrating, but you have a group of provocateurs and agitators, sometimes a significant group that
00:30:13.520
try to convert those into violent activity. And, uh, they seem to be very well coordinated when they
00:30:20.060
show up. Uh, a number of them are associated with the movement called Antifa, but they go by various
00:30:26.600
names, uh, but frequently anarchistic. They want to tear down the country. Uh, the, they're different than
00:30:34.340
many traditional groups. Uh, and, and frequently the signs of coordination and activity are very close
00:30:41.380
to the event itself. So like the morning of or the day before, and things are very fast moving. Uh,
00:30:47.240
but we definitely see signs out on the street of communication, of organization, of pre-planning,
00:30:54.260
pre-positioning of, of things. So it's definitely, uh, organized activity.
00:30:59.520
Well, if, if you're calling in the terrorism task force, that means presumably that we're dealing
00:31:04.200
with terrorism here. I know, I know the president, uh, came out and said just a couple of days ago
00:31:09.580
that this will not be tolerated on federal land. You cannot destroy federal property. And he's
00:31:14.440
authorizing the government to go and hold people accountable. Uh, what will this mean in terms of a
00:31:21.480
change of policy or an acceleration of a policy that was already in place?
00:31:24.440
Well, it's not, it's not a change in policy in the sense that we've always had the obligation
00:31:29.500
as the federal government to protect federal facilities and federal landmarks and monuments
00:31:34.640
and so forth. But now, because in some places the local police are not doing an adequate job,
00:31:40.260
we're going to have to step up the federal effort to do that. Uh, and so there are two aspects to it.
00:31:46.240
Obviously we're going to prosecute right now, all the videos, uh, involved in the attack on the,
00:31:52.340
the, uh, president Jackson's statute are being carefully reviewed and we will go after people.
00:31:58.400
Uh, so if you attack a monument on federal property, you're going to get prosecuted.
00:32:04.260
That's right. But we're also going to, and, and the, the criminal statute has, has serious jail
00:32:12.000
time. I mean, 10 years, 10 years. Yep. And, uh, the other thing is, uh, we have to do a better job
00:32:18.560
of trying to stop these groups when they, before they are able to do damage to these monuments and
00:32:23.960
statues. It's fine to punish them afterward, but I think a lot of us would like the statues to remain
00:32:27.560
up. Uh, we spent another probably half an hour or so with attorney general Barr. He got into some
00:32:34.320
real specifics on not just the riots and what's happening and how many people are being indicted,
00:32:38.620
but he got into big tech, what the administration is doing to combat big tech and what we can expect
00:32:45.140
in the next few weeks. He got into Obamagate. He got into some of the politicization of the DOJ
00:32:51.220
before he took office and Senator Cruz gave Bill Barr a nickname. He, so go check out that. I won't,
00:32:59.840
I won't tell you any more than that, but go check out the episode on verdict, which is called
00:33:03.820
Bill Barr is the honey badger. Uh, also thanks so much for getting our Michael Knowles show YouTube
00:33:10.040
channel way up there in the subscriptions. We are nearly going to pass a hundred thousand. We will
00:33:16.500
do that with your help. So thanks. I appreciate you checking out the daily wire YouTube channel,
00:33:20.020
but then, you know, Ben doesn't need all those views. Head on over to the Michael Knowles show
00:33:23.260
YouTube channel. We've got a lot of fun bonus content and interviews and things like that.
00:33:27.500
If you're not already a daily wire member, you should consider getting a reader's pass
00:33:30.700
to dailywire.com. Great value, just three bucks a month for the first month. My gift to you,
00:33:36.340
it is only 99 cents. You'll get access to our mobile app articles, ad free access to exclusive
00:33:41.840
editorials like this one. Which one is this? This from Christian Toto, great writer, great writer on
00:33:47.120
Hollywood too. And, uh, Toto has an article up now just for daily wire members, Fallon, Kimmel,
00:33:52.820
and Stern. Here's the naked truth behind cancel culture. Gives you a real insider view into Hollywood
00:33:57.960
from a conservative perspective. We have so many other pieces back there from a lot of different other
00:34:03.680
writers. So head on over dailywire.com slash subscribe. We'll be right back with the mailbag.
00:34:19.580
All right. First question from James. Hi, Michael. I've heard a lot of people say
00:34:23.860
statues coming down. Don't erase history. Read a book. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks.
00:34:31.780
This is an excuse made by people who are trying to rewrite history. So it's true. Uh, as long as
00:34:39.000
you're not burning books, which is going to be the next thing that they try to do, they're already
00:34:42.020
rewriting historical books and they're already kicking many books off of curricula and already
00:34:46.940
banning books from schools. But let's say it were true. Let's say you could read the history in the
00:34:51.480
book. That's all well and good, but very few people read books. Something like only 30% of Americans
00:34:55.460
read a book at all last year. So when you say that, what you're really saying is, okay, if you want,
00:35:00.300
if you have this silly little preference of wanting to know the facts about your country's
00:35:04.300
history, that's fine. But don't stop us from rewriting it because for most people seeing
00:35:09.020
statues, seeing monuments is how we really live our history. It's how we acknowledge our history
00:35:14.060
as a country. Think about it in say the middle ages when many people could not read. And when books
00:35:20.880
were so expensive that many people did not have access to the Bible, the way that you would see
00:35:25.520
the faith and understand the faith would be through statues and icons, iconography, stained glass
00:35:30.820
windows, works of art. That's how you could experience it and see it and take it in, even
00:35:36.960
if you couldn't read a single word. It's the same way that we understand ourselves as a country.
00:35:43.400
When we knock those things down, then we knock down the history itself. We knock down what is
00:35:49.480
important. Regardless of your modern feelings of being offended by looking at a Confederate
00:35:56.100
statue, the Civil War is a very important part of our history. There is a lot for us to learn.
00:36:02.860
It's a lot for us to learn how we got into the Civil War and how we got out of the Civil War and
00:36:06.180
what the people who won the Civil War told us we should think about it, suggested that we think
00:36:10.180
about it. And when you tear down those statues, you lose all of that sort of thing. What it's really
00:36:15.900
about is an antipathy for the past because the past constrains radicals who want to rewrite the
00:36:21.540
future. And of course, they've put us in a ridiculous position because they've said,
00:36:25.660
why don't you want us to smash statues? Say, that's not the question. I think the burden of
00:36:31.340
argument is on you, the people who want to smash the statues. Smashing statues is not a normal thing
00:36:36.260
to do. It doesn't go in the normal course of daily events. It's a radical change. If you want to
00:36:41.500
effect it, then you've got to explain why you want to do it. But they won't tell you why. And the
00:36:44.940
real reason is because they have a radical vision for the future of the country and they can't,
00:36:50.240
they can't effect it if they are constrained by the past. From Andrew, have you or your fellow
00:36:56.880
Daily Wire hosts or contributors at all joined or considered joining Parler? Parler, I think it
00:37:02.680
would be nice if you and your hosts did join in order to bring a larger audience to the platform
00:37:06.220
and challenge the likes of Twitter. Why not? Give it a shot. Thanks. You know, I actually did join
00:37:11.620
Parler yesterday. I joined it because first of all, they're going to kick us all off of
00:37:14.900
Twitter soon enough and they're currently censoring the duly elected president of the United States
00:37:18.620
on Twitter. So I started a Parler. The trouble is because it's new and it's just getting started,
00:37:22.600
I realized there was a fake account pretending to be me. It wasn't like a parody account. It was
00:37:26.360
actually a guy just pretending to be me. So I think Parler is getting rid of him. But if you want,
00:37:31.320
if you're on Parler and you want to start following me, I'm just at Michael J. Knowles.
00:37:35.660
J is important there. That's in the real one. And I'll probably post a few things on over there,
00:37:40.400
but this doesn't solve the problem of big tech censorship because the issue with big tech,
00:37:45.740
and we spoke about this with AG Barr, is they have cornered the market. They are the public square.
00:37:51.460
And they did it on a false pretense, two false pretenses. One, they pretended to be a neutral
00:37:55.600
platform rather than a publisher that curates content. And so that got a lot of buy-in from
00:38:00.120
people. And two, they said that this would be an open forum for all sorts of ideas. And then
00:38:08.180
those are distinct concepts, but they are related concepts. And then when they got a critical mass
00:38:13.760
of people, when they became the public square, then they changed the rules. But it was too late.
00:38:17.820
The whole point of social media, the whole reason you would go and use a certain social media platform
00:38:21.600
is because everybody is there. So once everybody's there, it's very difficult, if not impossible,
00:38:27.200
to get them to move to another platform. You know, sometimes people say, oh, Michael,
00:38:32.140
if you think that big tech has a monopoly, that they've cornered the market, don't forget about
00:38:37.860
MySpace. Remember when everyone said that about MySpace? MySpace never cornered the market. They
00:38:44.020
never had the kind of critical mass that Facebook and Google and Twitter have. They didn't. They had
00:38:49.880
like funny little gifs and it was mostly used by teenagers and kids, right? Your mom was probably not
00:38:55.900
on MySpace. Your grandma was probably not on MySpace. And yet your mother or grandmother very likely are on
00:39:01.640
Facebook and possibly even on Twitter. They've cornered that market. So we do need to use the
00:39:06.980
legal remedies available to us to stop them from abusing their power and violating the law, which
00:39:12.820
is what they are. Parler might be a good use, a nice stopgap in the meantime, but it doesn't excuse
00:39:17.860
us from going after big tech. From Daniel, why hasn't Trump sold red MAGA masks yet? That's the best way
00:39:25.800
to get Democrats to give up the charade. There'd be a national announcement saying that masks are useless
00:39:30.980
and only racists and white supremacists wear them. Checkmate. Not a terrible idea, except it does cut
00:39:36.900
against some of the argument here because the mask itself has become a political symbol and it's a
00:39:42.620
political symbol for the left. I'm not saying masks are not ever useful. I mean, I don't think they're
00:39:47.540
useful in the way that the left tells us they're useful right now, which is what the left says is
00:39:51.040
the whole point of the mask is to stop other people from being infected. But their argument before
00:39:56.060
was that it stopped you from being infected and their argument before that was that masks are totally
00:39:59.080
useless. So they keep changing their story, but I'm not saying they don't have any uses. There's
00:40:02.980
a reason why surgeons wear masks. The question is, are they useful now in stopping the spread of the
00:40:08.760
virus? Well, we showed you those, those facts out of Scandinavia that show that they don't really
00:40:13.780
seem to matter very much there. They don't seem to matter very much here either. They are merely a way
00:40:18.320
to signal your virtue. It's why Joe Biden wore one dangling from his ear. He didn't care if it would
00:40:22.760
affect his breathing. He just, he just wanted to show everybody that he's on the right team
00:40:27.160
because he's wearing the right symbol. So even if you put a MAGA symbol on it, very likely that
00:40:33.720
would still cut against your argument. Now, some people who are especially vulnerable to the virus
00:40:37.880
or who are germaphobes or something like that, you can understand why they would wear the mask
00:40:42.000
regardless of their political views. But the left has undeniably turned it into a political symbol.
00:40:46.600
And so Trump probably can't sell them. From Xavier, I'm Michael, big fan of your show. I'm listening
00:40:51.780
from Europe here in Belgium. My grandparents lived in Belgium for a while. Maybe they, I've,
00:40:56.840
I've never been, but maybe I'll come visit now that I know we have one Belgian listener.
00:41:00.440
I see that you commented that the French revolution was the worst thing that happened.
00:41:04.980
Well, that's not quite true. I said it was one of the worst events in the history of the world.
00:41:08.400
It was a bad thing. It's, and it, you know, it's definitely up there. Could you explain to me a
00:41:13.560
bit why? I vaguely remember my history class about this period and Louis the 16th and other bourgeois
00:41:17.620
wasn't open-minded and friendly with the people. Uh, thanks for reading me. Have a nice day.
00:41:24.180
Um, I think I, I think I understood that. It's funny. As I read that, I could like hear it in
00:41:28.640
an accent, but, uh, thank you, Xavier, for the question. The French revolution is now taught
00:41:33.160
in schools as a good event. It's the beginning of the modern world. And yet it was one of the
00:41:38.940
worst events in the history of the world. The way it's presented in school is that it overcame
00:41:43.420
an oppressive past and gave people freedom, freedom and equality and fraternity. And that's not
00:41:50.640
really what happened. Consider this at least over three times as many people were killed in one year
00:42:00.020
of the terror of the French revolution as were killed in the entire 350 years of the Spanish
00:42:06.540
inquisition. At least three, that might've been as much as five times or even a little bit more than
00:42:11.020
five times as many where people were killed. The French revolution is the guillotine. The French
00:42:16.360
revolution took everything that came before it and ripped it apart, said all of the inherited
00:42:21.140
wisdom of the world is trash. They took down a statue of our lady in Notre Dame, put up the goddess
00:42:29.460
of reason. They created a religion of a reason of secularism. They rewrote all the neighborhoods in
00:42:34.820
Paris and made them finely tuned rationalist, uh, experiments. They, they redid the entire calendar.
00:42:44.600
They thought that they could create the world from scratch on the promise of a rational utopia
00:42:49.840
because it would be so much better than what came before it. And what did that lead to?
00:42:53.800
The guillotine. It led to a, a far worse, far crueler society. One of the, the, perhaps the worst
00:43:02.500
social experiment ever in history and a, and a precursor to all of the evils that we would see
00:43:09.140
later in modernity, national socialism, fascism, and communism. Finally, though, a little bit of
00:43:16.340
the old tradition crept back through again. Turned out people weren't quite as smart and rational as
00:43:20.980
they all thought that they were and that there was something to learn from the inherited tradition.
00:43:24.960
There's much more to be said about the French revolution, but we do have to move on. That's a,
00:43:27.800
just a beginning at least. From Matt, austere religious podcaster and Lord of Covfefe. I've heard
00:43:34.320
you and Clavin refer to the American revolution as a conservative revolution. That's funny,
00:43:38.760
funny position of that question. Can you elaborate on what that means? How can a revolution be
00:43:42.260
conservative? Also, I've heard you say that as American conservatives, we're defending a liberal
00:43:46.020
tradition, sort of. What does that mean? And how can the concept of a conservative revolution be
00:43:50.040
reconciled with defending a liberal tradition? Thanks. We're using these words kind of broadly
00:43:53.540
conservative and liberal, but the big difference here between the American revolution and the French
00:43:57.160
revolution is the French revolution sought to destroy everything that came before it
00:44:01.020
and overturned society entirely. The American revolution did not. The American revolution
00:44:05.200
maintained most aspects of the society that it had left and it, and it maintained its Anglo tradition.
00:44:11.260
And that's why we have such a special relationship with the United Kingdom, even still today.
00:44:15.020
That was not the case when the, the revolutionaries in France overturned the old regime. In America,
00:44:20.940
they kept their way of life. They kept their institutions, most of them. They kept their families.
00:44:25.480
They kept their religion. They kept most of their political ideas and their system of,
00:44:29.740
of law and government. In France, they did not. They overturned all of those things in France.
00:44:35.660
And so the American revolution is far more conservative. You could call it a conservative
00:44:39.380
revolution. That's why Edmund Burke defended the American revolution and opposed the French
00:44:43.200
revolution in his most famous work, Reflections on the Revolution in France, which was the beginning
00:44:47.080
in many ways of modern conservative political philosophy. Now in America, we do have this liberal
00:44:52.980
tradition in the sense that some of the prominent liberal thinkers impacted the way that we thought
00:44:59.080
about our government. Now, I think the effect of those liberal thinkers has been overstated. So for
00:45:03.900
instance, we're told that John Locke basically created the American regime. I'm not totally convinced
00:45:08.160
of that, but it does put American conservatives in kind of a weird position in that in some ways,
00:45:12.580
some of the tradition that we're defending is somewhat liberal. But the way I think about it,
00:45:18.000
there was a, a writer, I think it might've been Patrick Deneen who, who described this problem.
00:45:23.260
And the, the problem is that we have this high flying Lockean liberal language in documents like
00:45:30.040
Declaration of Independence. And yet we had a very conservative society. And though I think it was
00:45:35.620
Deneen, but it was one of these conservative writers who's writing today, described that as
00:45:39.680
saying that Americans in the revolutionary era talked like Lockeans. They talked like liberal
00:45:45.940
revolutionaries, but they lived like Burkeans. They lived like conservatives. They didn't always
00:45:52.340
preach what they actually practiced. And, uh, Alexi de Tocqueville who wrote Democracy in America,
00:45:58.260
coming from France, observing the American revolution and how that led to our society in the 19th century,
00:46:04.600
he describes this. He said, they have their civic associations, they have their traditions,
00:46:08.780
they have their family, they have their religion, things that ultimately liberalism would come to
00:46:13.280
oppose. The Americans still maintained and you can, you can see the breakdown of American society.
00:46:20.140
The more we've come to embody those rationalist, ideological liberal ideas and the, the less that
00:46:27.520
we've come to live our own conservative institutions. Probably the only way we're going to be able to
00:46:31.760
get that back is if we can rebuild those institutions and turn down the ideology. That's the battle we've
00:46:37.420
got right now in Chaz and Chop and all the way to November. Will we stand up or will we surrender?
00:46:42.080
I sure hope it's the former. I guess we're going to have something to say about which one it is
00:46:46.660
and then we can wait and see. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles
00:46:54.540
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
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Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,
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The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring,
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supervising producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, technical producer Austin Stevens,
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assistant director Pavel Widowski, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Robin
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Fenderson, hair and makeup Nika Geneva, production assistant Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles Show is a
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Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2020. You know, The Matt Walsh Show, it's not just another
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show about politics. I think there are enough of those already out there. We talk about culture
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because culture drives politics and it drives everything else. So my main focuses are life,
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family, faith. Those are fundamental. And that's what this show is about. I hope you'll give it a listen.