Ep. 581 - We Hardly Knew ‘Ye
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
179.13763
Summary
Kanye West drops out of the 2020 presidential race. President Trump ousts his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and hires Bill Stepien to replace him. Plus, a look at how the Trump campaign is getting into high gear.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Terrible news in the world of politics. The birthday party is over, at least for now.
00:00:07.320
Kanye West has dropped out of the 2020 presidential race. And I have to tell you,
00:00:13.460
as excited as I was and enthusiastic about Kanye's campaign, I had a feeling this might happen.
00:00:20.720
Part of the reason that I had this feeling was that Kanye has released, to my knowledge,
00:00:25.520
only one videoed statement on the campaign. And that statement did not exactly inspire confidence.
00:00:34.440
Hey, what's up, everybody? It's Jay. I'm here at the county clerk's office. And I wanted to
00:00:37.840
show you how I just registered to vote. See, that was the issue. The I just
00:00:42.440
registered to vote, apparently for the first time, does not make me think that the campaign was in
00:00:48.980
best shape to get all the paperwork filed, do all the right campaigning, get everything in place.
00:00:53.540
A lot of campaigns are up in the air right now. Jeff Sessions got wiped out in Alabama. Big shake
00:00:59.560
shape ups at the Trump campaign. Numbers from polling all over the place. Kanye, we hardly knew,
00:01:06.640
yay, hey. But it's anybody's race. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:11.020
Welcome back to the show. Lots going on specifically in politics. You know, very often we're talking
00:01:26.820
about the culture and how the cultural issues are going to affect politics. Well, the effects are
00:01:30.440
here. The campaigns are getting into high gear and some very important changes are being made.
00:01:34.940
Before we get into that, I have to thank our friends over at Keeps. You know, two out of three
00:01:41.340
guys will experience hair loss, some form of male pattern baldness by the time they are 35. We were
00:01:48.660
talking about where all of our power comes from. You know, at least 80% of my power is derived from
00:01:54.100
my hair. That is why my YouTube channel blew past Clavons. You know, I just, I need it. And the best way to
00:02:00.320
prevent hair loss is to do something about it while you still have hair left. You used to have to go to
00:02:05.380
the doctor's office for your hair loss prescription. Now, thanks to Keeps, you can visit a doctor online
00:02:10.200
and get hair loss medication delivered right to your home. Prevention is key. Keeps treatments can take
00:02:15.700
up to four to six months or more to see results. So it's important to act fast. The sooner you start
00:02:21.220
using Keeps, the more hair you will save. Find out why Keeps has more five-star reviews than any of its
00:02:26.620
competitors and nearly 100,000 men trust Keeps for their hair loss prevention medication. It's so
00:02:32.500
simple. You just got to do it. And the treatment started just $10 for, for each month. And your,
00:02:38.520
your first month will be free for a limited time. If you're ready to take action and prevent hair
00:02:42.320
loss, go to Keeps.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S to receive your first month of treatment
00:02:48.900
for free. That is K-E-E-P-S dot com slash Knowles. So major shakeups beyond the Kanye
00:03:00.800
presidential collapse. This on the Trump campaign, President Trump has ousted his campaign manager,
00:03:06.560
Brad Parscale. He ousted Parscale and he promoted this guy named Bill Stepien. What does this mean?
00:03:13.780
It means what we've known for a long time, which is that the Trump campaign was veering in the wrong
00:03:18.540
direction and it needed to correct course. And it did correct course, not a moment too soon.
00:03:23.460
We are now less than four months away from the presidential election. So it's, it, these sorts
00:03:29.080
of changes had to happen. You know, on this show, when I have criticized certain things that the
00:03:33.500
White House or the campaign is doing, I, I like to point out that, that it most likely it's that the
00:03:38.980
president is getting bad advice. Now, I don't know if the problems were Parscale's fault. The issue,
00:03:44.780
however, is that on a presidential campaign, the buck stops at the top. And so if there were problems
00:03:50.900
even further down the line, it's that campaign manager's job to deal with those problems. And
00:03:55.680
obviously President Trump thought that Parscale would be in a better position elsewhere. The thing
00:04:00.540
to know about what's happened, and don't forget in 2016, Trump shook up his campaign management
00:04:05.600
constantly. You know, all these different names that came up, Corey Lewandowski, Steve Bannon,
00:04:10.580
Kelly and Conway, they were all coming up. They were all churning the whole time that that's in,
00:04:15.140
in part, I think how he was able to, to continue to improve his campaign. Just because you start
00:04:21.080
out and it's a little weak, doesn't mean you have to end that way. Brad Parscale, who was running the
00:04:25.100
Trump campaign was the campaign's digital director in 2016. And the Trump campaign did great on digital
00:04:31.860
in 2016, but just because you can do one job on a campaign extraordinarily well does not mean
00:04:37.180
that you can necessarily run a campaign extraordinarily well. In fact, in many ways,
00:04:41.340
those are completely different jobs. You know, one is much more about management. The other is much
00:04:47.280
more creative. So the guy that he's replaced him with, this guy, Bill Stepien, is a political veteran
00:04:52.880
and crucially he's run a number of campaigns and he ran Chris Christie's two successful gubernatorial
00:05:00.560
campaigns. Did not run the unsuccessful presidential, but he ran the two successful gubernatorial ones.
00:05:04.960
I'm pleased to see this change. No, no ill will toward Brad Parscale, but I'm glad to see that
00:05:11.200
Trump is listening and realizes that things were not going as well as they should be. Because if,
00:05:17.320
if the campaign I think were to continue in this way, he might be headed for an unhappy day in
00:05:22.540
November. These things happen. Nobody is guaranteed to be reelected. Nobody is guaranteed to get their seat
00:05:27.620
back. Jeff Sessions learned this lesson the hard way down in Alabama. Jeff Sessions, who served in the
00:05:33.500
Senate for, I think, 300,000 years. I mean, he was there for a very long time. He left to become
00:05:38.220
Trump's attorney general. Then Trump soured on him as attorney general. He ran for his old seat again
00:05:42.700
and he lost. And he didn't, didn't lose just by a little bit. It was a pretty clear loss.
00:05:50.200
To the people of Alabama, I want to thank you for your support over the years. We've fought a good
00:05:56.880
fight in this race and we've taken our case to the people of Alabama and the people of Alabama have
00:06:03.020
spoken. They want a new leader, a new fresh face to go to Washington. I think we're going to have that.
00:06:10.740
I love this state. It's been an honor beyond words for me to serve it. I want to congratulate Tommy
00:06:19.400
Tuberville. He ran a really firm, solid race. He was focused on his goal and on winning. He had a plan
00:06:28.320
to do so and he was able to do so. He is our Republican nominee. We must stand behind him in November.
00:06:38.300
So a very gracious concession speech from Jeff Sessions, you know, increasingly in, in recent
00:06:45.840
years, people don't want to actually admit that they lose elections. That's why you have Stacey
00:06:50.240
Abrams is still the shadow governor of Georgia and all these sorts of things. People don't want to
00:06:55.500
admit when they lose Hillary Clinton, still think she's the president, but, but Sessions has admitted
00:06:59.580
this. This is good news for Trump. This signals that Trump's endorsement still has a fair bit of
00:07:06.040
sway, at least in a bright red state like Alabama, because Trump furious at Jeff Sessions's tenure
00:07:11.980
as AG came out very strongly for Tommy Tuberville. The reason I think why Sessions was so gracious
00:07:19.540
about this is not only because he's a nice, polite man, but also because he got blown out
00:07:23.520
of the water. The race was not even close. Sessions won only three out of Alabama's 67 counties.
00:07:29.040
Tommy Tuberville got 61% of the vote. That to Jeff Sessions's 39%. So what does it all mean for Trump?
00:07:39.340
We don't know very much about Tommy Tuberville. We know a lot about Jeff Sessions. He was a very
00:07:42.700
popular senator, but that, that Trump movement seems to add some influence. Nobody knows anything. So,
00:07:49.540
you know, the minute that someone tells you this is exactly what's going to happen in November,
00:07:52.460
immediately discount what they're saying. This is up in the air. And I think this is the point about
00:07:59.780
politics. No one wants to admit, but it's the point that actually should give us the most hope,
00:08:04.320
which is that nothing is inevitable. Okay. What the left wants you to believe is that it's absolutely
00:08:12.260
inevitable. The Democrat, Joe Biden is going to win in 2016. It was inevitable. Hillary was going to
00:08:16.860
win 98% chance, 99% chance. And it's not, it's up in the air. It's politics. They have a ton of
00:08:22.600
institutional power, but they don't have all of the power. We, the people still have a lot of power.
00:08:26.880
We can send them a message every so often. We can do it. Not just here. It happened in the Brexit vote.
00:08:32.020
It's happened all around the West. There is some popular uprising. There is some popular power.
00:08:37.700
And there is a poll out from Monmouth university polling Institute, which is an independent
00:08:42.940
polling Institute that shows very good news for Trump on this front. It shows that the people have
00:08:49.680
more power and they're playing their cards a little closer to their chest than they, than they might
00:08:54.520
be letting on. The poll is a little bit complicated to read. The conclusions of the poll are a little
00:09:00.520
bit complicated to get, but what it basically says is that people don't want to be honest with
00:09:07.580
pollsters. People don't want to tell everyone that they're voting for Trump. And it's not just
00:09:13.940
the same story we heard in 2016. That phenomenon has actually increased. It's been exacerbated.
00:09:21.660
People are more likely to keep quiet about their support for Trump. Most registered voters,
00:09:27.460
54% say they were surprised in 2016 when Trump ended up winning Pennsylvania's electoral votes.
00:09:33.800
They currently are about divided on where, on where Pennsylvania is going to go this time,
00:09:38.660
46 or 45%. One reason is that 57% believe there are a number of so-called secret voters in their
00:09:46.280
communities who support Trump, but won't tell anyone about it. And less than half that number,
00:09:51.460
27% believe that there are secret voters for Biden. So realize you eat on a poll. You can't ask people,
00:09:58.660
are you a secret voter for Trump? Because if by definition, if you tell the pollster that you're
00:10:05.020
a secret voter for Trump, then you're no longer a secret voter for Trump. So the way the question
00:10:08.980
is phrased is about other people. Do you believe that there are secret voters for Trump? And so our
00:10:14.960
conclusions here are not totally firm. Consider the Black Lives Matter phenomenon, which is
00:10:20.040
when someone uploads a black square to social media or someone uses the hashtag Black Lives Matter,
00:10:25.140
what they're saying is that I believe Black Lives Matter, but a lot of people do not.
00:10:29.100
However, everybody has used this phrase and everybody has said that Black Lives Matter.
00:10:32.800
So that would be an example of people imagining that there are all these sort of phantoms out there,
00:10:38.820
but realizing that they actually, there are not, right? I mean, you know, we have to see there are
00:10:43.760
not, there's not a scourge of Klansmen running around the country. So the question with this poll is,
00:10:50.040
are the people who are saying they believe there are a lot of secret Trump voters out there,
00:10:53.200
is it just a delusion or are there really, do they have good reason to think there are the secret
00:10:57.660
voters? I think it's the latter. I think this is good news for the Trump campaign because the fact
00:11:02.520
is everybody knows a Trump voter. And frankly, everybody knows a secret Trump voter who doesn't
00:11:07.920
want to lose his job, who doesn't want to lose his career and his livelihood. This, this issue of
00:11:14.020
punishment for support of Trump has increased over the last several years and certainly during these race
00:11:19.080
riots. And the fact of the matter is that, you know, Trump did win about half the country voted
00:11:23.800
for him in 2016. So there are a lot of these people. Does not mean Republicans should get complacent.
00:11:30.340
More good polling news. Rasmussen shows Trump has ticked up seven points nationally, narrowed Biden's
00:11:35.360
lead to three points in recent days. So Joe Biden right now is at 47%. And among U.S. likely voters,
00:11:43.340
Trump is at 44%, 5% prefer another candidate and 4% are undecided. It's anybody's game. It's anybody's
00:11:52.560
race. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Don't let anybody intimidate you into giving up and staying
00:11:57.480
home and being locked up, staying home, whether because you're afraid to go outside and breathe
00:12:01.520
the fresh air or staying home more specifically on politics because you don't feel that your vote
00:12:07.860
will matter in the election. That is what the left is banking on. Now there is a cultural aspect to all
00:12:15.040
of this as well. The cultural has become absolutely insane, particularly on the subject of race. You
00:12:21.080
thought Nick Cannon was bad yesterday talking about how white people are animals. A friend of his,
00:12:25.540
an even more famous friend of his in the mainstream entertainment industry, came out and defended him.
00:12:31.180
A little bit of a double standard. Kind of reminds me, probably not a whole lot of white supremacy
00:12:34.440
going on. We'll get to that in one second. First though, I got to thank our friends over at We
00:12:38.360
the People Holsters. You know, if you have a good handgun, but no holster, you're just not doing gun
00:12:45.860
ownership right. Okay. You got to be safe and you got to get an excellent holster starting at just $39.
00:12:54.260
We the People Holsters are custom designed to fit your firearm perfectly. They're made right here in the
00:12:59.860
U.S. of A. They have thousands of options to choose from, plus an amazing selection of printed
00:13:05.440
holsters. Their proprietary clip design allows for you to easily adjust both the cant and ride of your
00:13:10.080
holster so that it will fit comfortably and securely at all times. I've loved this company for years now.
00:13:16.900
I think they make an incredible product. And I think now more than ever is the time to support
00:13:20.820
American companies. It's a pretty patriotic. Imagine exercising your second amendment rights
00:13:25.640
while using an American company. It's just, it's perfect. It's beautiful. Go to
00:13:30.160
WeThePeopleHolsters.com slash Knowles to get yours. Every holster ships free, comes with a lifetime
00:13:34.260
guarantee. And by the way, you can get an additional 10 bucks off with the promo code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S.
00:13:40.100
So that brings it down, what, to like $29? It's unbelievable. Satisfaction guaranteed. If it's not a
00:13:45.800
perfect fit, send it back for a total refund. WeThePeopleHolsters.com slash Knowles.
00:13:50.500
WeThePeopleHolsters.com slash Knowles. Offer code Knowles.
00:13:54.100
The culture has become nuts, particularly on race. I think that's why people are now even
00:14:00.600
less likely to admit that they're willing to vote for the Republican candidate. There's
00:14:05.820
so much racial demagoguery. We had the Nick Cannon talk yesterday where Nick Cannon said white
00:14:11.860
people are savages and barbaric and soulless and animals. Well, Puff Daddy, P-Diggity-Doo Dad,
00:14:20.500
is coming out and defending him. P-Diddles tweeted out, quote, Nick Cannon has come home to,
00:14:28.500
Nick Cannon, come home to Revolt TV, truly black owned. We got your back and love you and what you
00:14:35.540
have done for the culture. We are for our people first, for us, by us. Let's go.
00:14:42.580
Can you, so the stuff that Nick Cannon said yesterday is pretty disgusting stuff about how terrible white
00:14:49.740
people are, how they don't have souls, about how you get power from melanin in your skin and because
00:14:54.220
white people don't have that. They're animals. And now you've got an even more mainstream guy,
00:15:00.140
P-Diddy, coming out and defending that. Imagine if this were reversed. Imagine if a popular white
00:15:07.980
musician tweeted at, I don't know, Richard Spencer or David Duke or somebody and said,
00:15:14.020
David Duke, come home to Revolt TV, truly white owned. Yes, with a thumbs up, you know,
00:15:21.280
white thumbs up emoji. We got your back. We love what you do and what you've done for the culture.
00:15:27.180
We are for white people first, for us, by us. Let's go. Probably that wouldn't go over very well,
00:15:35.140
would it, in the culture? And yet we are told this lie that we are living in a white supremacist nation.
00:15:40.620
Of course, that is not the case. We've gone over this on this show many other times.
00:15:45.580
The, the, there's, there's one aspect of our law that is still racially discriminatory as a matter
00:15:51.620
of law. That is called affirmative action and that disadvantages, doesn't advantage, it disadvantages
00:15:57.040
white people and Asian people, particularly on university admissions, which is why a group of Asian
00:16:02.300
students sued Harvard University. That's it. That's the only one. If you're told that there is white
00:16:08.200
supremacy by law, you are being lied to. And even in the culture, no sort of nonsense like this, if it
00:16:16.220
were, if it were posted by white people, would, would ever be tolerated. You would lose your life.
00:16:21.140
You would lose your livelihood without question. We're for our people for something like that.
00:16:27.200
Crazy. And yet we are living under this delusion, actually, that, you know, these, these polls and,
00:16:32.820
and these polls about how people think one thing and they think other people think another thing and
00:16:37.940
they think other people think that other people think another thing. We're all trying to guess
00:16:40.960
where everybody is because we are living in a, a properly ideological vision and the ideology is,
00:16:48.500
is disconnected from the reality in many cases. So you're going to see more of this. This is
00:16:54.900
increasingly what politics is going to become about. You're already seeing it in Asheville,
00:16:58.720
North Carolina, Asheville, North Carolina, first place in the country to now officially vote for
00:17:02.920
reparations for slavery. Asheville voted seven to nothing. So a total unanimous vote at the city
00:17:12.080
council to formally apologize to black residents for the city's role in slavery and other racist
00:17:19.260
policies throughout history. I guess, I guess the residents, maybe they thought that the town was
00:17:23.960
happy about slavery or something. So they had to issue this formal apology 150 years after the
00:17:28.320
abolition of slavery and the measure calls to provide reparations to black residents in the
00:17:34.180
form of investments in their community, such as increasing minority home ownership, increasing
00:17:38.600
minority business ownership, and career opportunities. Now, obviously this is, this is racial discrimination
00:17:43.380
because you're giving certain advantages to people based on the color of their skin.
00:17:47.100
So it's not certainly not white supremacy, but it's, we have seen this kind of thing before,
00:17:52.340
particularly in affirmative action and similar policies, but it should, it should be noted that this is not
00:17:57.840
what people mean by reparations. The, the black residents of this town are not going to get direct
00:18:02.200
payments. It's just going to be another welfare program. It's just going to be another affirmative
00:18:06.780
action program, the likes of which we've seen for the past 50 years, none of which have worked.
00:18:13.180
It hasn't worked. We're just going to get more of the same. This is one marketing piece of genius that
00:18:19.720
we've seen from the left in recent years is they are repackaging their old stupid policies that don't work.
00:18:24.700
They're just repackaging them and making them seem fresh and new. None of these programs, forget even race
00:18:31.680
for a moment, the green new deal, none of these giant government programs are anything really new.
00:18:37.560
They are just vast expansions of policies that were already in place. Just regular old welfare programs,
00:18:45.660
regular old power grabs by people who are exploiting our fears on the sun monster, you know, the environment
00:18:51.700
or race or whatever. And probably we can expect the same results again, but now we're all focused
00:18:58.920
on race and the results of it. If you are living in the ideology, if you were living in the world in
00:19:04.700
which the Klan is running around and towns are still happy about slavery 150 years later, and we have
00:19:10.720
white supremacy, then you don't notice the absurdity. But if you're a normal person, you do.
00:19:16.560
There was a new set of guidelines that was just put out by the National Museum of African-American
00:19:23.860
History and Culture. It was describing aspects and assumptions of whiteness and white culture.
00:19:33.040
Do you know what the National Museum of African-American History and Culture believes to be explicitly and
00:19:39.620
exclusively white cultural aspects? Individualism. That's the first one.
00:19:48.320
Family structure. Having a mother and a father is white. Apparently black people, they don't have that.
00:19:56.980
The scientific method. I'm not joking. They put this out there. Science is white. I don't,
00:20:03.180
I guess, shamanism or something. Soothsaying would be black or for other people of color,
00:20:09.380
but white people have a stranglehold on science. History. History is an aspect of whiteness and white
00:20:16.540
culture. The Protestant work ethic. Working, like getting up and doing your job. That is now
00:20:27.740
exclusively a white cultural aspect, according to this African-American museum. Religion.
00:20:35.380
Believing in Christianity. That is exclusively white. Perhaps they should read the book.
00:20:41.000
Are they just kidding? You imagine what's going to happen when they read the Gospels.
00:20:45.340
Future orientation. So planning ahead for the future. That's white. Black people can't do that,
00:20:50.280
I guess. They're just stuck in the eternal present. Time. Time is listed on here as exclusively white.
00:20:56.400
Aesthetics, like beauty. Beauty is white. I can't, I actually cannot believe, I cannot allow myself to
00:21:05.560
believe that this was put out seriously by, by a nominal, a group of African-American, the National
00:21:12.300
Museum of African-American History. Is David Duke running the National Museum of African-American
00:21:16.460
History? Is this like a Richard Spencer, like joke project? Holidays, justice, competition, all white.
00:21:25.300
Crazy. That's crazy. And very offensive to black people. But when you're, when you're stuck in this
00:21:32.540
kind of ideological framework, you can't notice that. In this world, even mainstream reporters are
00:21:40.720
asking, even in interviews with the president of the United States, this kind of madness, this sort of
00:21:46.080
thing. Do you, do you believe that black lives matter? Asking the president of the United States,
00:21:50.240
do you condemn the police who are killing all these black people, which by the way, isn't happening,
00:21:54.800
not happening at all. So in that world, President Trump, mainly, mainly alone, possibly alone among
00:22:02.320
his contemporaries is willing to stand up and reject the premise. Let's talk about George Floyd. You said
00:22:08.460
George Floyd's death was a terrible thing. Terrible. Why are African-Americans still dying at the hands
00:22:14.180
of law enforcement in this country? And so are white people. So are white people. What a terrible
00:22:19.780
question to ask. So are white people. More white people, by the way, more white people.
00:22:26.580
A lot of people are criticizing Trump for this response. I actually kind of liked this response.
00:22:30.700
It wasn't the perfect one. I think the perfect response would have been to reject the premise
00:22:34.440
about the cops to say, actually, the cops aren't killing that many people. There are very few officer
00:22:39.260
involved killings every year and they are not targeting black people. And, you know, you can
00:22:43.760
get to the second part about how a lot of more white people are being killed by the cops. And you
00:22:47.720
get to that second, I think he could have gone further and just rejected the whole thing about
00:22:51.440
the cops and just defended the blue. But I do at least like the point that he's not playing into this
00:22:56.640
fiction that black people are being hunted down all around the country by racist police.
00:23:03.160
That is a fiction. The idea that individualism and family and Christianity and science and history
00:23:09.440
and working are exclusively white, that is a fiction. The idea that we're living in a white
00:23:15.280
supremacist culture is a fiction. The idea that melanin gives you power and that white people are animals
00:23:20.720
and savages is a fiction. It's a lie. No one should give any quarter to this. We've talked a lot on this
00:23:27.660
show about how you cannot stand in the middle on these issues. These are very clear issues. If you
00:23:33.640
stand in the middle of the road, you are going to get hit by a truck. We're in an election year. You
00:23:38.080
need clear messaging, clear positioning. If you stand in the middle of the road, you are going to get run
00:23:42.640
over by the people who are running against you. Okay. So President Trump, you can criticize his
00:23:49.640
response and say, oh, it wasn't, it wasn't quite politic. He could have massaged it this way. That's fine.
00:23:54.400
But at least he is rejecting this fictional racial narrative that is being pushed. The culture has
00:24:02.360
become insane. Beyond race, you know, race is the hot topic right now, but it's become insane on sex
00:24:09.140
too. I meant to get to this earlier in the week, but I'm glad we can get to it now. This seems like a
00:24:14.800
trivial story. This seems like it doesn't matter, but it has wide ranging effects on the whole culture
00:24:20.580
and therefore on our politics. Will and Jada Smith. Will Smith and Jada Smith married for a long
00:24:27.780
time. They've said they are not getting divorced. They've got a solid marriage. Let's just come out
00:24:34.060
that Jada Smith was dating some other guy during their marriage. And so on Jada's show, her social
00:24:41.820
media show, the red table, Will Smith came down and they talked openly about infidelity within their
00:24:50.420
marriage. We decided that we were going to separate for a period of time and you go figure out how to
00:24:58.160
make yourself happy and I'll figure out how to make myself happy. Well, at that particular point in time,
00:25:02.780
it was indefinite. Yeah. I really felt like we could be over. Yeah, no, we were over. And then what did
00:25:09.800
you do, Jada? Well, you know, I think from there, you know, as time went on, I got into a different
00:25:17.760
kind of entanglement with August. One thing I want to get clear about and clean up, one of the things
00:25:24.220
that was kind of swirling in the press about you giving permission, which is, you know, the only person
00:25:33.000
I could give permission in that particular circumstances myself. Yes, exactly. Yeah. But what
00:25:40.600
August was probably trying to communicate, because I could actually see how he would perceive it as
00:25:48.460
permission because we were separated amicably. And I think he also wanted to make it clear that he's
00:25:57.420
not a homewrecker, which he's not. Oh my gosh, this is so awkward. And most of what she just said
00:26:05.700
is not true. I mean, she's right that she had this affair with this guy, but, but her conclusions about
00:26:11.700
that are not true, but it's so awkward to watch this. I don't want to watch Will Smith admitting to
00:26:17.060
being a cuckold on camera and yet he's willing to do that. And it's, it's engrossing stuff. And,
00:26:22.020
and in many ways we can give these people some respect for coming out and addressing these
00:26:28.600
rumors that have been swirling about infidelity within the marriage, particularly Jada Smith's
00:26:33.620
infidelity. And so you give them a little bit of credit for confronting this head on, but it is so,
00:26:38.480
so awkward. And it's based on a misunderstanding of family, right? She says in here, one of the rumors
00:26:46.140
was that Will Smith gave this guy August permission to sleep with his wife. And she's saying, that's not
00:26:50.960
what happened. And by the way, you wouldn't be the one to give permission. I would be the only one who
00:26:55.020
could give permission. That's not true. When you are married and the wife wants to go sleep with some
00:27:00.380
other guy, it is, she does not have the right. She is, she is not the one who can do that. And her,
00:27:07.180
her, I guess her husband could give permission, but he shouldn't. No, this is, no, this is not, sorry guys.
00:27:13.300
This kind of hyper-individualism, this total focus on the self is extraordinarily destructive.
00:27:24.820
This, a lot of what we're seeing here typifies leftist culture, particularly on sex and marriage.
00:27:31.920
But there was a little glimmer of hope at the end, a kind of ironic glimmer of hope,
00:27:35.460
which is the conclusion that they made, which is that they're not going to get divorced.
00:27:55.080
Bad marriage for life. So obviously a reference to, uh, to bad boys ride together, die together,
00:27:59.840
bad boys for life, bad marriage for life. There's something actually to be said about that.
00:28:04.720
You know, in, in most of modern culture, they would just get divorced, right? The minute any
00:28:08.540
trouble happens, you just split up and you remarry. And the Smiths have been interesting
00:28:12.600
because they won't do that. Even though obviously they've fallen prey to the same sort of troubles
00:28:17.880
that happened throughout Hollywood and really happened to a lot of marriages anyway. So there's
00:28:22.580
something really admirable there. You're seeing, uh, a reaching for a kind of more traditional
00:28:29.060
culture. The things that typify leftist culture here is this insistence on being transparent.
00:28:33.980
You notice this reading the leftist intellectuals throughout history. They always want to be really
00:28:38.060
transparent, particularly about sex. A lot of, uh, let you know, Karl Marx and, uh, Rousseau
00:28:44.360
and a lot of these people want to be very transparent about their sexual exploits. They
00:28:51.620
want to hear about their sexual partner's exploits. And this is a weird thing. Conservatives
00:28:55.160
don't want to do that. Just like, ah, don't tell me about your past. I don't want to hear
00:28:58.020
about your ex-boyfriend or your ex-girlfriend. Just shut up. Let's move on now. But they, they
00:29:02.380
want to be very transparent. I think part of this is because they want, they, they live
00:29:08.800
by ideology, which is supposed to, you know, be universally applicable and, you know, they're
00:29:13.000
living basically only on their reason, not on their gut. You can see Will Smith. He, he
00:29:17.300
doesn't look happy to be hearing about his wife's relationship with this guy. And yet he's
00:29:21.580
still listening to it and putting it on camera here. I think if we couldn't correct this problem
00:29:27.400
of selfishness, of always needing to be happy all the time, of, uh, following our individual
00:29:33.240
appetites all the time, if we can, if we can fix that part and we can keep, maybe learn
00:29:40.180
a lesson from this idea of, you know, good marriage, bad marriage, we're in a marriage.
00:29:43.580
We're not going to split up. That could be a path forward because it seems like a trivial
00:29:49.140
story, but the building block of society is the family, is the marriage. That's why the
00:29:53.260
left attacks it as often as it does. If you don't have working marriages, you won't have
00:29:58.880
a working society. You won't have a working politics. There's actually something to be
00:30:02.860
learned, even from the obviously dysfunctional marriage of Will and Jada Smith. Probably
00:30:09.280
we're going to get a lot of information about dysfunctional marriages soon too, because
00:30:12.780
Twitter was hacked yesterday. Even some of the biggest accounts, Joe Biden, Tesla, Tesla
00:30:17.600
CEO, Elon Musk, Kanye West, it looks like Obama, Bloomberg and Bezos may have been
00:30:22.600
affected too. Totally took over these accounts. Probably some nefarious actor, state or private
00:30:28.340
has access to a lot of DMs. We'll see. There'll probably be a lot more transparency coming out
00:30:33.420
soon as well. And speaking of private messages, you've sent me your mailbag questions. We will
00:30:38.520
get to them in just one second, but I've got to thank all of you for subscribing to the
00:30:42.780
show on Apple podcasts and on YouTube. Be sure to check out exclusive content posted on
00:30:47.780
that channel, like my interview with Dave Rubin, which was just very recent. Also, Ben's got
00:30:51.600
a new book. Get his book. It's called How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps. When
00:30:56.440
he wrote this, he foresaw things that are happening right now. It's very accurate. Great read as
00:31:03.200
always. Goes on sale Tuesday, July 21st at 6 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Pacific. Ben will be
00:31:09.440
doing a virtual live signing event on the day of release. With your purchase of a signed
00:31:13.220
copy, you can write in a question, which may be read and answered as he signs your book
00:31:17.520
live on the air. You can pre-order your signed copy and write in your question, dailywire.com
00:31:21.640
slash Ben. Head on over to Daily Wire and then come on back. We've got a whole lot more.
00:31:27.740
If you go get, go get your reader's pass, it'll be 99 cents per, for, for the first month. Then
00:31:31.640
it'll be $3 per month. After that, you get a whole bunch of stuff. We'll be right back with
00:31:35.300
the mailbag. Welcome back to the mailbag, our first sponsored mailbag. This week's mailbag
00:31:52.280
sponsored by the Benham Brothers. Learn how to own a business without it owning. You get a 15%
00:31:56.940
discount on the Benham Brothers new course, expert ownership at benhambrothers.com
00:32:01.080
slash talent. All right, let's jump right in from Ryan. Hi, Michael. I was talking to a leftist
00:32:07.040
friend of mine who said that the polls in 2016 weren't wrong. Hillary did have a 99% chance of
00:32:12.640
winning, but Trump just hit that 1% likelihood. Okay. Before I go insane, can you tell me that
00:32:18.820
leftists deep down don't believe anything they say and that they don't really trust the mainstream
00:32:23.400
media this blindly? No, they do. I mean, this is the issue with, with polling is you're always right.
00:32:29.640
But whatever happens, you can always be right. And you can always defend your wrong predictions by
00:32:34.880
saying, well, that was just, I believe part of the lower chance and it did work. Then you look in the
00:32:40.220
various states and they'll say, look, Trump, he really barely won. He didn't really, he didn't
00:32:43.940
even really win. Just, you know, a hundred thousand votes go this way in one state, a hundred thousand
00:32:47.920
votes go that way in another state. And that's why he won. Yup. Uh-huh. That's what the polls are
00:32:54.000
supposed to tell us. And then moreover, you know, there weren't polls that said 99% of people are going to
00:32:59.080
vote for Hillary Clinton. What, where we got this 99% number is there were a lot of analyses of this
00:33:03.720
polls, of all of these polls that said, okay, looking at all the polls seems 97 or 99% likely
00:33:09.600
that, that Donald Trump will lose. Say, well, I guess that one, that 1% number came in. It's very
00:33:15.440
difficult to trust these polls, particularly now we mentioned earlier, people are just afraid to talk
00:33:19.600
to pollsters. So, you know, the, the polling matters in, in as much as the campaign should be
00:33:26.400
paying attention to this and not getting complacent at all. But if you're actually going to, you know,
00:33:31.240
if you're going to bet the house on something you read in the polls, I think you'd probably be a
00:33:35.160
foolish gambler from Jack. Michael just signed up for the daily wire. So I could tell you this
00:33:39.140
a couple of weeks ago, my wife's cousin in LA went to get tested for COVID. He filled out the
00:33:43.300
paperwork and waited over three hours before deciding to leave. Then a few days later, he got a call from
00:33:47.820
the clinic telling him he tested positive for COVID-19. He was never tested. I thought it was crazy,
00:33:53.320
but I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe a clerical error until I told my good friend here
00:33:58.660
in Texas about what happened. And he said, you're not going to believe this. T, our mutual friend
00:34:03.380
told me the exact same thing happened to him. He also got that phone call telling him he tested
00:34:07.900
positive for COVID, even though he had left the clinic before getting tested. Question, would you
00:34:12.720
consider these isolated incidents, a smoking gun or just a coincidence? I always thought COVID numbers
00:34:18.280
were skewed. How can I believe any data at this point? Your newest fan came for Ben, stayed for the
00:34:22.580
covfefe. Yeah, this is a, thanks for sending in that story because obviously, you know, we're looking
00:34:28.400
for data here, but if the plural of anecdote given often enough is data. And we do know that there has
00:34:35.900
been a lot of madness. I mean, people who have been shot and died from gunshot wounds have been listed
00:34:40.800
as COVID deaths. And there have been lots of different tests for COVID. And there's been a lot
00:34:45.700
of contradictory information that's come out from the so-called public health experts and the
00:34:49.960
mainstream media. And we know that this has been extraordinarily politicized. And we also know
00:34:54.520
that, that medical providers are receiving more money from, in the form of government funding based
00:35:01.260
on their, their work with COVID patients. So I don't know if any of these particular examples you're
00:35:08.700
using are accurate or if they're misunderstood or if there's confusion, but, but surely the, the basic
00:35:15.140
thing we can say here is that when you're looking at the COVID reporting, you need to be skeptical.
00:35:21.120
Does that mean there's some nefarious, super duper conspiracy? Maybe there could be, you know,
00:35:26.500
the reason that conspiracies, conspiracy theories catch on is because every so often there are
00:35:30.720
conspiracies. You know, you hear these conspiracies about, I remember I used to reject this completely
00:35:36.260
outright. They'd say there is a conspiracy out there that a bunch of elite, wealthy, powerful people
00:35:43.000
in, in government heads of state, the Royal family, or they're all, there are pedophiles among them and
00:35:49.480
they have this pedophile ring. And I'd say, oh yeah, that's so ridiculous. Oh my gosh, Jeffrey Epstein.
00:35:54.360
That's so crazy. So every so often, you know, that that's how the, the crazier theories, uh, propagate.
00:36:01.420
So I don't know what's happening with COVID. All I can caution you is you ought to be skeptical.
00:36:06.600
And the people who try to shame you and bully you for being skeptical of what you're hearing
00:36:11.320
on any particular given day from the medical establishment that maybe they're going to change
00:36:16.880
their mind on in two days. The people who are bullying you about that are probably the least
00:36:22.680
to be trusted of anybody from Josh, dear Mr. Knowles. What if we try actually putting the left
00:36:27.180
on defense by calling cancel culture, the KKK cancel culture club with this and the movement? No,
00:36:34.420
no, it wouldn't. It's kind of funny. I mean, I get a kick out of it, but that it would not end
00:36:38.400
anything. Republicans have tried this strategy for at least the past couple of decades, maybe longer,
00:36:44.320
which is to respond to the baseless charges of racism by saying Democrats are the real racists.
00:36:52.900
You're, I'm the least racist. You're the most racist as, as if this would shame the Democrats
00:36:57.500
into, into either changing their mind or cutting out the baseless attacks. It won't. They don't care.
00:37:04.500
They've, they've, first of all, they've redefined racism to just mean whatever they think, right? So
00:37:09.780
racism, which once had a meaning, this, this idea of, of discriminating against people, being harsh
00:37:16.700
against people, attacking people based explicitly on the color of their skin now has been transformed
00:37:23.260
to anything white people do. Anything white people do is racist. And by the way, when black people
00:37:28.900
exhibit racism, that's not racist because they're black. I mean, that's just a, it's the Nick Cannon
00:37:34.240
example. So the word no longer means anything other than something a leftist doesn't like. And so you're
00:37:40.760
not going to be able to convince them. And I don't think they're interested anyway. Republicans, God bless
00:37:46.360
them. They still think that we're in an era 30 years ago where you could have some kind of reasonable
00:37:52.900
debate. That's not what's going on. We are in a bare knuckle brawl for our government, for our
00:38:01.280
politics. The left has admitted this. I mean, they now deny objective truth, right? They're saying another
00:38:06.600
one of these sheets about white culture said that objective truth is a white concept. Science, this one
00:38:13.120
says science is a white concept. So you're not going to be able to deal with an American left that
00:38:22.780
denies the universality of reason and truth. This is going, this, this election in November is not going
00:38:28.940
to be about convincing these people in the middle. I don't think that's what it's about. I think it's
00:38:32.640
going to be much more like the George Bush 2004 reelection campaign. It's going to be about turning
00:38:37.620
out the base. You've got to turn out the base. And that's, that's all we're going to do. Rather than try
00:38:44.200
to argue and convince people on the other side that you're not a terrible person, you have got to rally
00:38:49.820
and encourage your own side. From Sean, I saw quite possibly the most leftist article from 12 News in
00:38:56.240
Arizona today. The headline was, will Christmas be called off by COVID-19? Do you think they have a chance of
00:39:01.140
taking Christmas from us too? Or will it wear off before then? Thank you for all that you do.
00:39:06.000
They've been trying to take Christmas away from us since the first Christmas. Let's not forget King
00:39:12.460
Herod was trying to take Christmas away. He was chatting with those magi, trying to figure out a
00:39:17.540
way to snuff out the first Christmas before it had barely begun. We've had the war on Christmas here,
00:39:22.500
which the left mocks as though it didn't exist. Meanwhile, they rename all the Christmas trees
00:39:26.740
holiday trees and they, they take Merry Christmas out of public marketing and they make it about
00:39:30.880
season's greetings. So they all, they all engage in that. They've been trying to do that for many years.
00:39:34.400
And now sure, I'm sure they are certainly going to try to shut down travel and not have people go
00:39:38.920
visit their relatives for Christmas. You know, it's important to fight back against this culture.
00:39:44.940
And we want to have a politics and a culture that are safe for Christianity, for the exercise of
00:39:50.500
religion. But we should also acknowledge while we're doing that, that the popular culture, this
00:39:57.680
world, the prince of darkness of this world has always been trying to stop that. And so, you know,
00:40:02.460
you shouldn't just complain and whine and despair about it. You should fight back and try to make
00:40:06.660
a better culture and politics for the religion. But, you know, it sort of was ever thus from Chris
00:40:12.060
cigar master knows if a nine-year-old can have the agency to change their gender, then wouldn't a
00:40:17.560
nine-year-old have the agency to make the choice to go back to school, according to leftist logic?
00:40:22.420
Of course, but it goes actually further than that. This, the left's argument on transgender children
00:40:28.560
is cutting against their argument about liberal adults. You know, one thing we've heard in recent
00:40:35.780
years about the campuses is that there's an epidemic of rape and one in four women are going
00:40:41.820
to be raped, which would make Harvard yard more dangerous for women than Fallujah. I don't think
00:40:46.740
anybody really believes that that is the case. What they're talking about is, well, college kids drink
00:40:51.300
and then they go hook up, you know, they have these kind of increasingly, you know, clinical sexual
00:40:58.020
interactions that, that, you know, because of free love and sexual liberation, this is just to be
00:41:03.440
expected. And then sometimes the next morning, uh, one, one or more of the parties will have regret
00:41:09.020
and then they'll say that was rape. You know, I was drunk or I didn't want to do that. Or even though
00:41:14.340
I did want to do that now, I don't want to do that. So what they're effectively saying is that
00:41:19.840
a nine-year-old has sufficient mental faculties to make life-changing sexual decisions,
00:41:28.820
but a 22-year-old does not have the mental faculties to make temporary sexual decisions,
00:41:36.320
right? A nine-year-old has the mental faculties to permanently alter his body chemistry in a way
00:41:44.300
that can never be corrected, but a 22-year-old woman can't have a one-night stand.
00:41:51.900
That doesn't make any sense, but the left has to preserve the cult of sexual liberation. The left
00:41:59.280
has to preserve the cult of individual autonomy, maximizing individual autonomy, and the left has
00:42:06.820
to preserve the cult of feminist victimhood. You can't, you can't have all of those at once. It's the
00:42:13.100
the trans issue is just such a wedge here because the left has told us for years and years that
00:42:18.240
homosexuals are born that way and no one should tell them to suppress their desires. And how dare
00:42:24.860
you? You know, a man loving another man sexually is totally natural and actually inescapable. And
00:42:31.960
who would choose this? And also there's no such thing as men or women. Well, there's no such thing
00:42:38.080
as men or women. There's no such thing as objective sex, immutable sex. Then there's no
00:42:43.460
such thing as homosexuality. Homosexuality requires there to be immutable sexes. They
00:42:50.100
haven't dealt with that and I'm not holding my breath for them to deal with that. It's just
00:42:55.340
another incoherent aspect of their ideology that's not going to probably change through reasoned debate.
00:43:01.220
They're just using it as a political cudgel. From Nick, austere religious podcaster. I saw that
00:43:05.840
you and the Lord of the multiverse, Andrew Klavan, did a review of Hamilton. I was wondering if you
00:43:09.920
will be doing other reviews and similar topics such as movies and TV shows. I'm asking because
00:43:14.120
I was unable to watch the musical Hamilton since I'm both a man and straight. Thank you. I guess
00:43:18.700
that relates to the previous question as well. Yes, I hope so. I had a great time doing that with
00:43:23.640
Drew because we just went over and smoked cigars and had a good time, which we do anyway. Let me know
00:43:27.820
in the comments if there's something in the culture you think we should watch. I need a new show
00:43:31.360
anyway. It's been, you know, it's been a long week for a lot of people, long several weeks,
00:43:35.460
long several months. We're now 122 days since we were told 15 days to slow the spread. Some of us
00:43:42.580
knew it wasn't really going to be 15 days anyway. So that's all we're doing, trapped in our homes,
00:43:46.820
watching TV. Unless we take the opportunity before us, we realize that politics is not inevitable,
00:43:54.500
the political outcomes that the left wants, that we can actually change our political future if
00:43:59.440
only we have the courage to act. That's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles
00:44:09.620
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
00:44:14.860
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends
00:44:19.260
to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
00:44:25.260
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts,
00:44:28.120
including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
00:44:32.420
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring,
00:44:38.240
supervising producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, technical producer Austin Stevens,
00:44:43.940
assistant director Pavel Widowski, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Robin
00:44:50.800
Fenderson, hair and makeup Nika Geneva, production assistant Ryan Love.
00:44:55.740
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
00:45:01.100
You know, The Matt Walsh Show, it's not just another show about politics. I think there are
00:45:05.040
enough of those already out there. We talk about culture because culture drives politics and it
00:45:10.080
drives everything else. So my main focuses are life, family, faith. Those are fundamental,
00:45:16.800
mental. And that's what this show is about. I hope you'll give it a listen.
00:45:19.980
Those sweltering summer nights that leave you tossing and turning, desperately kicking off the
00:45:28.620
covers, don't have to ruin your sleep. Crafted from the finest 100% organic cotton, Bowlin Branch's
00:45:33.400
premium sheets feature a soft, breathable weave that's built to last. Get the best savings of
00:45:37.980
the season during Bowlin Branch's annual summer event. Get 20% off plus free shipping on your first
00:45:42.640
set of sheets at bowlinbranch.com slash dailywire. That's bowlinbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D branch.com
00:45:49.880
slash dailywire to save 20% off and unlock free shipping. Limited time only, exclusions do apply.