The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. This is the famous Christian Baker gay wedding case you ve heard about for years. If the Supreme Court hasn t totally given itself over to nonsense on the First Amendment, Jack Phillips will win this case. And there s actually good reason to be hopeful for free speech.
00:00:24.800We will discuss Masterpiece Cake Shop, the Supreme Court, and why no only means no until hashtag Love Wins.
00:00:31.740Then, Roaming Millennial and Amber Athey join the panel of deplorables to discuss what the resignation of John Conyers tells us about Democrat strategy,
00:00:40.040the Supreme Court's upholding of Trump's travel ban, and the joyful post-Michelle Obama return of 1% chocolate milk to school lunches.
00:00:47.880I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:54.800The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
00:01:03.200This is the famous Christian Baker gay wedding case that you've heard about for years.
00:01:07.400If the Supreme Court hasn't totally given itself over to nonsense on the First Amendment, the Baker, Jack Phillips, will win this case.
00:01:13.920And there's actually good reason to be hopeful for free speech and religious liberty here.
00:01:17.800This Supreme Court has been generally excellent on First Amendment issues, Citizens United, obviously.
00:01:23.460The fear is that Anthony Kennedy showed us in the Obergefell decision that when it comes to gay marriage,
00:01:29.620he stops thinking like a lawyer and starts writing like a lyrical 19th century poet.
00:01:33.760In that case, he found a right to intimacy somewhere in the Constitution,
00:01:38.960which seems that it doesn't jive that well with the hashtag MeToo climate, does it?
00:01:43.000If there were a constitutional right to intimacy, then Harvey Weinstein would get off scot-free.
00:01:48.720Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, Roy Moore even, he'd be seated immediately.
00:01:52.320The right to intimacy is obviously ridiculous.
00:01:55.540I think Scalia said at the time that the right to intimacy isn't found in marriage also, by the way.
00:12:24.940It seems to me this all comes down to Anthony Kennedy.
00:12:27.420Is the baker going to win or his big, oppressive, coercive government?
00:12:31.780I actually think this is towards the baker because there was a discrimination case at a Denver area bakery where that baker refused to make cakes for traditional marriages.
00:12:45.500And the Diversity Commission ruled there that it, or excuse me, the Diversity Discrimination Commission ruled there that it was not discrimination against that person's Christian beliefs for a baker to refuse to make a cake for a traditional wedding.
00:13:00.060Well, this happened in three cases, apparently, in Denver.
00:13:03.600So it's only discrimination when you're discriminating against the politically correct class.
00:13:10.520But when it's the politically incorrect class, it isn't discrimination.
00:13:13.740But how is the Supreme Court going to rule?
00:13:15.640Well, they definitely seem sympathetic to the fact that in the role reversals, it was not considered discrimination.
00:13:20.960Reading through a lot of the arguments today, they seem to be grappling with the idea that art is free speech and to what extent can the government compel someone to provide a service and how does that infringe on their art?
00:13:34.380So basically all the things that you talked about in your monologue.
00:13:36.960The thing that really bothers me about this issue is, as Roaming Millennial said, if someone is willing to discriminate against you, why would you want to give them your business anyway?
00:13:47.880Why would you want to then turn around and give them your money after you just found out the only reason that they're willing to provide you with that cake is because the government is forcing them to do so?
00:13:58.340I mean, let's say you go to a restaurant and you have the absolute worst service of your life.
00:14:02.700Your waiter comes in, they spill water on you, your food is terrible.
00:14:05.860And then at the end of the meal, your waiter says, well, we're going to give you a gift certificate so you can come back and eat here again instead of comping your meal.
00:14:13.780I mean, what person in their right mind would want to go back to that restaurant?
00:14:46.740I think this is absolutely politically motivated.
00:14:49.140I think that they're trying to prove an ideological point here that goes beyond the plight of just looking for a wedding cake.
00:14:56.020I think they've absolutely made this a political issue.
00:14:58.480And I really hope that you, regardless of whether you're Christian or not, and, you know, personally, I'm Christian and I wouldn't have a problem with the cake thing.
00:15:05.560But regardless of how you feel about that specific issue, this is just about being compelled to do something that you don't believe in.
00:15:13.420And to express an idea that you don't believe in.
00:15:15.560Right, and I think that's something that everybody should be able to get behind, whether you're, you know, Christian and atheist, whether you're conservative or liberal.
00:15:24.040And, you know, Stephen Crowder, who's on YouTube, I'm a big fan of his.
00:15:27.700He's done an experiment before where he's actually gone into Muslim bakeries and asked for gay wedding cakes to be made.
00:15:33.820They're not crazy about the idea either, but you don't see any lawsuits against them because it's not a popular thing to talk about.
00:15:38.940You rarely say, other than Crowder, who's out of his mind and is like the last journalist in America, but other than him, they, you never see people going into Muslim bakeries.
00:15:47.840You don't see people going into Jewish kosher bakeries.
00:15:50.880It seems to always be these Christian bakeries.
00:15:53.800So I am going to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:15:56.560But before I do that, I have got to tell you, folks, our third episode of The Conversation is coming up on Tuesday, December 12th at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific,
00:16:05.240featuring the one and only Ben Shapiro, the boss man himself, the slayer of leftist snowflakes.
00:16:14.120So subscribe today to be a part of The Conversation and ask Ben live questions, which he will answer for everyone to hear.
00:16:20.040Now, Ben's episode of The Conversation will stream live on the Ben Shapiro Facebook page and the Daily Wire YouTube channel,
00:16:25.180and it will be free for everyone to watch, but only subscribers can ask the questions.
00:16:28.680To ask a question as a subscriber, log into our website, dailywire.com,
00:16:32.520head over to The Conversation page to watch the live stream.
00:16:36.380After that, just start typing into the Daily Wire chat box where Ben will answer questions in the order they are entered into the live feed for an entire hour.
00:16:44.240Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by Ben Tuesday, December 12th, 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific, to join the conversation.
00:16:51.060Now, while you're over there, what else are you going to get if you subscribe?
00:16:53.600If you get an annual membership, that's just $100 a year.
00:16:56.400It's $10 a month or annual is $100 a year.
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00:17:02.520But you get The Leftist Tears Tumblr, folks.
00:17:04.980This is going to be very important, especially depending on what the Supreme Court does in this important case.
00:17:11.180So if those cakes are allowed to be made with artistic freedom of choice, you are going to need this to collect all of the salty runoff.
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00:18:59.860Compare it online on your own terms and your own time, PolicyGenius.com, because you should only be forced to speak to an agent if you've committed a federal crime.
00:19:08.000And I should never be forced to speak to Marshall.
00:19:10.320So go over to PolicyGenius and also go to DailyWire.com if you want to watch the rest of the show.
00:19:16.300That's the only way you're going to hear from the lovely, brilliant, all-female panel of deplorables, Amber Atheon Roaming Millennial.
00:20:01.340Why are they throwing—other than this guy's old and desiccated and of no use to them anymore—why are they going after him?
00:20:07.080There are a couple of things at play here.
00:20:09.260So, first of all, Democrats have been hammered by the right for going after Roy Moore and Donald Trump because they haven't been taking care of their own harassers in their own house.
00:20:18.580At the same time, though, it's very politically expedient to get rid of John Conyers because now he's calling for—he endorsed his son today.
00:20:28.680And then apparently his grandnephew is also running for the seat.
00:20:33.140So not only are they going to replace Conyers with another Democrat, they're going to replace Conyers with probably one of his own family members.
00:20:40.340And we saw Democrats do the exact same thing during the trial of Senator Bob Menendez.
00:20:44.780They were asked repeatedly if he should resign if convicted, and they refused to say—because guess what?
00:20:50.860Chris Christie was still governor of New Jersey, so they were worried that if they came out and told him to resign if convicted, he would have to resign when Christie was in a position to replace him with another Republican senator.
00:21:02.160So in my opinion, they don't really deserve that much credit for calling—for Conyers to resign because this is just pretty much political expediency.
00:21:09.780And it's always nice to see people keep the family in the family business, you know, the public business, the people's business.
00:21:16.920Roaming, we've heard whispers throughout the campaign and so on about all of the women who are alleging misconduct by Donald Trump, and it kind of disappeared.
00:21:28.420Some of it appears to have been discredited, but not all of it.
00:21:31.200Is that what they're saying now, we're willing to throw out this old guy who doesn't mean anything anymore, we're willing to throw him out and trade him so that we can finally go after Donald Trump?
00:21:41.920Is that the strategy we're going to see?
00:21:43.320I think it's absolutely the strategy, and not only are we seeing the Democrats kind of throw Conyers under the bus, but we're also seeing them do that in large part to Bill Clinton as well, because he's no longer politically useful.
00:21:55.040So it's very convenient for them to say, oh, look, now we're all of a sudden the party that actually cares about the sexual harassment allegations, when the people in their party that are facing these charges, not even charges, these rumors, I mean, nothing I've seen has, I would think, be enough to convict anybody.
00:22:12.680But when we look at what the Republicans are facing, it's a little bit more difficult, and I think they're absolutely gearing up to start on the allegations against Trump again.
00:22:22.200And I think what also doesn't help Republicans' case is that although Nancy Pelosi originally kind of stood by, describing him as what, an idol or a hallmark or something like that, she did the turnabout really, really fast, saying that he should resign.
00:22:38.020Contrast that to how we have Trump handling Roy Moore right now.
00:22:43.280He's actually come out and said, yeah, this guy, he should definitely be voted in, and I understand why the Republicans might think it's important to at least get some Republican in in Alabama, but if we look at the larger picture, it doesn't look good for the Republican case of, yeah, we're not rapey, frankly.
00:23:00.500Right, and obviously in the case of Roy Moore, his opponent Doug Jones does support fourth trimester abortions, so it gets complicated on that political issue as well, not to say nothing of the Senate majority.
00:23:11.520We see these figures coming up in 2018, 2020, there's talk that they'll nominate Kamala Harris or she'll be a real contender.
00:23:20.680So you can see it building toward this campaign, this hashtag MeToo campaign that is totally fact-free.
00:23:28.520It looks like the economy might do quite well under Trump.
00:23:30.980It looks like he's doing an able handling of foreign affairs, so they're going to have to make it all this feelings-based MeToo stuff.
00:23:39.340Are there any credible allegations against Trump?
00:23:42.820I'm not saying that there are or there aren't, but are there any allegations that we see that are going to jump to the fore and be the ones that they're going to smack him with, either Roaming or Amber?
00:23:54.940I'm not really sure, to be perfectly honest with you, because the ones that were brought up during the election obviously were pretty much brushed aside.
00:24:03.540So I find it somewhat hard to believe that they would necessarily be re-litigated to the point that people would find them more credible in 2020 than they did in 2016.
00:24:14.960That being said, one of the cases is in a lawsuit right now, so we'll see what happens with that.
00:24:21.220But I just don't think that people are going to want to dredge it back up now that they pretty much already decided that they're okay with overlooking that to put Trump into office.
00:24:32.580It's unlikely that that's going to become a major issue again.
00:25:25.060This is absolutely not a Muslim ban, and if it is a Muslim ban, it's one of the least effective Muslim bans that you could have designed.
00:25:31.880You know, the largest Muslim countries, places like Indonesia, they're not on the list.
00:25:37.200This doesn't affect Muslims who aren't from the areas that were highlighted of concern, you know, places like Iran, Libya, and stuff like that.
00:25:44.360So if it doesn't affect Muslims who aren't in those countries, and most Muslims aren't in those countries, I feel like you have to really reach to call it a Muslim ban.
00:25:53.320Is it – obviously, I saw some statistic that only one of the countries on the list is in the top ten most populous Muslim countries in the world, and none are in the top five.
00:26:06.920But, Amber, is it genuine ignorance, or are they just being obtuse when they flip their lids over President Trump's travel restrictions, but they probably didn't even know that Barack Obama imposed travel restrictions?
00:26:21.320Is that comparison legitimate, and why didn't the Democrats freak out at the time?
00:26:26.780Well, it's such an obvious political play, and I mean, let's not kid ourselves.
00:26:33.200All politicians are hypocrites, so it's not really that surprising.
00:26:41.380So, like, Democrats can say that Trump is bigoted towards Muslims, and then when the tax reform bill passes, they can say that tens of thousands of people are going to die.
00:26:49.360It's this really aggressive, ramped-up rhetoric that somehow people buy into because, I mean, most people don't want to die, I would guess.
00:27:01.680As Roaming said, this isn't a Muslim ban.
00:27:03.460This is about protecting American sovereignty and also making sure that people are coming into the country properly vetted, and the countries that are on this ban list apparently do not properly vet their citizens.
00:27:14.940So, I mean, Democrats can play this game, but the Supreme Court just ruled in favor of Trump, so they've pretty much already lost here.
00:27:22.700I also love that we have Neil Gorsuch on the court because if Hillary Clinton had won, all of these decisions that we're just dancing covfefe about wouldn't happen, baby, would not happen.
00:27:33.120So, on to the most important – I'm sorry, Roman, go ahead.
00:27:56.960But apparently Antonin Scalia asked David Axelrod when that first nomination came up during the Obama years, the one that eventually went to Sonia Sotomayor.
00:28:05.340He said, listen, I'm under no misconception that you're going to send someone who agrees with me on the Constitution, but at least send us somebody smart, not to put too fine a point on it.
00:28:15.940Send us Elena Kagan, whom he knew socially and, I suppose, professionally.
00:28:19.940And they sent Sotomayor, who is not smart at all.
00:28:43.720Michelle Obama's tyrannical policy of banning one percent chocolate milk from school lunches has wonderfully been overturned by Donald Trump's Department of Agriculture.
00:28:54.780Little boys and girls everywhere can now drink one percent chocolate milk at lunch.
00:28:58.920I'm sure they're very happy about this.
00:29:02.240This, again, seems like a trivial issue.
00:29:04.040Who cares if the kids have chocolate milk?
00:29:05.640But does it send an important message and is it materially significant that this administration is giving people, even down to little kitties, even maybe chubby little kids, is giving them choice and giving school districts choice over what they serve those children?
00:29:22.340I think this is absolutely an important issue.
00:29:24.720And as someone who is, you know, no longer in school, no longer facing these school lunches, it may not affect me personally.
00:29:30.400But I saw some of the lunches that were presented under Michelle Obama's initiative, and I'm sure we all saw how unsatisfying, you know, just not enough calories, just unpleasant to look at.
00:29:40.880So I think this is absolutely a step in the right direction.
00:29:43.680And childhood obesity, it's not something to be lapped at.
00:29:48.320But I think really it's something that needs to be tackled at the at the home level.
00:29:52.520It's not something that we can just, you know, big government fix at in schools.
00:29:56.940It will be, what, eight hours a day you might have kids, and even then we don't have them during the summer.
00:30:02.140So to try and fix something that's so dependent on family intervention at the government level, like childhood obesity, it was never going to work in the first place.
00:30:11.680And you bring up this point, it's nothing to be laughed at.
00:30:15.100It's funny because I think for the photo, I don't remember, I think we selected a silly photo of a fat child.
00:30:20.300But it's occasionally to be laughed at, but it is a serious issue.
00:31:04.080Because after Al Gore's stupid movie, they made us use all those hideous fluorescent light bulbs that destroyed the lighting quality of our home and poisoned us with mercury.
00:31:12.320And they banned all of the good light bulbs.
00:31:27.200If it's a stupid issue, then you back off.
00:31:29.580Why is it a stupid issue when I want to hold my side of it and the side of freedom and choice, but it's not a stupid issue when you pass legislation to limit what kind of light bulb that I can have?
00:31:40.640Amber, we're talking about these cultural battles.
00:31:44.940Meanwhile, Donald Trump is reforming taxes.
00:31:50.140He's packing the courts with good originalist justices.
00:31:52.840He's deregulating at the federal level.
00:31:54.760Is this administration going to be a culture war administration, as many have thought, or is the culture war just distracting from the economic focus of the administration?
00:32:04.800How are we going to look back on Trump?
00:32:20.340I was on free lunches for a couple of years back when I was in middle school.
00:32:24.480And let me tell you, when you have a school lunch in front of you that has charred pizza and brown lettuce, you are really, really grateful for that carton of chocolate milk, which, by the way, is only about like 150 calories per carton and is really good post-workout.
00:32:38.800So Michelle Obama and her like nutrition guidelines need to just go somewhere else.
00:33:08.220Just on this point, I'm still so happy.
00:33:09.880I'm still dancing covfefe over tax reform.
00:33:11.780The tax reform did something that we didn't quite expect.
00:33:15.460It repealed the Obamacare mandate in the Senate that might make it to the final bill, which seems to set the stage.
00:33:21.400It creates so much political pressure to now repeal all of the Obamacare regulations and reform all of those health care regulations.
00:33:29.240It also might set the stage for entitlement reform.
00:33:31.900That's what Rubio and Ryan are both saying.
00:33:33.860Roaming, are we going to – am I just having a fever dream right now?
00:33:37.000Am I just exploding out of my head, or is it possible that we're going to get all of these legislative goals like health care and like entitlement reform that we thought were impossible with Trump?
00:33:50.440Well, I would like to say that it's possible.
00:33:52.700I mean if there's ever a time that it would be possible, it should be now.
00:34:01.000But, you know, you of course still have those people who shall remain nameless but are John McCain that seem to be committed to holding things back.
00:34:09.920And I really think that, you know, the constituents – look up how your representatives are voting.
00:34:17.040Please look up how your senators are voting.
00:34:18.900And if they're not voting in favor for things like tax reform, you need to be writing to them and your specific representative because they're only going to listen to you if you're a constituent.
00:34:27.860I mean even not really listen to you, but at least, you know, make a note of it.
00:34:30.880And I think it is – entitlements are an important discussion to have.
00:34:35.040We can't really say we're serious about tax reform and serious about tackling the deficit unless we look at government spending.
00:34:41.240And the biggest part of that is entitlement.
00:34:43.520So absolutely, this needs to be part of a giant conversation we have about big government and government spending.
00:34:48.680By the way, it is usually McCain obstructing, but I got to give it to him on tax reform.