Ep. 715 - Our Loathsome Elites
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
162.2782
Summary
On this episode of The Michael Knowles Show, host Michael Kinsley is joined by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and CNN's Jake Tapper to discuss the latest in the Biden administration, including the latest on Joe Biden's stimulus plan and the possibility that the 2016 election was stolen.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Breaking news from the Washington Post, Biden's stimulus showers money on Americans,
00:00:07.260
sharply cutting poverty and favoring individuals over businesses. I think that North Korean state
00:00:14.340
TV would probably blush at that headline. And maybe, maybe my memory is going, maybe I'm
00:00:20.100
becoming a little slow like Joe Biden. But as I recall, when Donald Trump did exactly the same
00:00:25.620
thing, the coverage was just a little bit different. Democracy dies in darkness. I'm
00:00:31.040
Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. My favorite
00:00:42.780
comment from Friday is from Eric Gomez, who says that the P in Psaki is silent. It's the same with
00:00:49.500
the P in President Biden. This is very true. You have White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki,
00:00:55.200
and you have White House resident Joe Biden, who is just sort of being scooted along in the
00:01:00.480
hallways from the TV room to the dining room, back to bed for about, I don't know, six o'clock at night
00:01:07.260
or so while our elite establishment runs the country. Not a very safe time for our traditions
00:01:15.820
and liberties. You know, speaking of safety, you got to go check out LifeLock. With the tax deadline
00:01:21.160
approaching, it's important to take steps to avoid being a victim of tax scams. Cyber criminals have
00:01:25.840
used social security numbers to file fake returns in an attempt to steal refunds. File early, be aware
00:01:31.300
of suspicious activities related to your return, and find out if you're eligible to apply for an IRS
00:01:36.240
identity protection PIN. Very important to understand how cyber crime and identity theft are affecting our
00:01:41.660
lives. Every day we put our information at risk on the internet. In an instant, a cyber criminal could
00:01:47.440
harm what's yours, your finances and your credit. Good thing there's LifeLock. LifeLock helps detect
00:01:52.960
a wide range of identity threats like your social security number for sale on the dark web. I know
00:01:58.000
what you're thinking. You're thinking, no one's after my data. No one's after my identity. I used to think
00:02:02.580
that way. It's just not true. No one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all
00:02:09.620
businesses, but you can keep what's yours with LifeLock identity theft protection. Join now and save up to
00:02:15.340
25% off your first year by going to lifelock.com slash Knowles. That is lifelock.com slash Knowles,
00:02:21.660
K-N-W-L-E-S for 25% off. Same newspaper, same laws, same policy, just stimulus for Americans from
00:02:33.780
the coronavirus, but different political party and power. So when it's Joe Biden, the headline from
00:02:40.180
the Washington Post is Biden stimulus showers money on Americans sharply cutting poverty and favoring
00:02:44.620
individuals over businesses. When that president is Donald Trump, the headline in the Washington
00:02:51.360
Post is, in unprecedented move, treasury orders Trump's name printed on stimulus checks.
00:03:01.240
Hmm. One of those seems more favorable than the other. That's not it though. Washington Post also,
00:03:05.760
when Trump was signing COVID relief, quote, Trump signs $2 trillion coronavirus bill into law
00:03:12.340
as companies and households brace for more economic pain. Brace for pain. Money will be showered over you,
00:03:25.080
cutting poverty and favoring individuals. Brace for pain. Same law, same newspaper. Is it any wonder
00:03:35.880
that people do not trust that people do not trust our established elites? When people question the
00:03:42.860
coronavirus policies, for instance, when people question certain mandates on the vaccine, talk
00:03:49.900
perhaps of mandates on the, on the vaccine, certainly existing mandates on the masks, on social
00:03:57.580
distancing. Are people really so crazy to question the wisdom of our benevolent betters? When people
00:04:05.260
say, hmm, maybe there were some irregularities in the election and then our elites just come down and
00:04:12.140
they say, there was absolutely nothing wrong. We would never lie to you. Everything is totally
00:04:16.520
hunky dory, even though we changed a very important election integrity measures right before the 2020
00:04:21.880
election. Is it any wonder that people might not believe those elites? You know, the, the governor
00:04:27.400
of Mississippi, Tate Reeves has been really, really impressive, uh, of late. And Tate Reeves goes on Jake
00:04:35.200
Tapper's show and wants to talk about reopening Mississippi, where their focus is. But Jake Tapper
00:04:41.840
wants to get one thing clear first. Are you willing to say, are you willing to go on record and say that
00:04:47.420
there was absolutely nothing suspect whatsoever, not even a jot or tittle with the 2020 presidential
00:04:53.740
election? Former president Trump and his allies have now for months and months continued to spread
00:04:59.260
the false and dangerous lie that the election was stolen. You were not part of that campaign,
00:05:04.900
but I want to ask you a simple yes or no question because your answer a few weeks ago to a colleague
00:05:10.660
kind of raised my eyebrows. Do you accept that Joe Biden is the legitimate lawfully accepted lawfully
00:05:16.600
elected president of the United States? President Biden is the president of the United States.
00:05:24.100
But was he legitimately? In our state, we don't allow mail-in voting. Was he, was this the most
00:05:28.900
legitimate election ever with the most integrity? And there's absolutely no questions whatsoever.
00:05:34.160
Will you say it? Will you say it? Goodness gracious. It is so difficult to put up with watching
00:05:41.080
Jake Tapper. It's so hard to do it. I only do it for you because I know that I have to relate
00:05:46.240
these things to you, dear listener, which is why I will do it. But otherwise, I would never watch
00:05:50.740
this man who is raising this question, I think, in the minds of some other people who are skeptical
00:05:57.300
of our elites, which is, if this is the most totally hunky-dory election of all time and there were no
00:06:03.080
questions whatsoever anywhere, even on the smallest scale of fraud or irregularities or illegal election
00:06:09.660
procedures, all of which we've detailed pretty regularly on this show. If that's the case,
00:06:16.620
why is it so important to you, Jake Tapper, that this governor says exactly what you want him to say?
00:06:23.900
If it's so clear, if it's so obvious that there were no questions whatsoever, why does every
00:06:29.620
Republican politician have to repeat this kind of mantra? The 2020 election was totally perfect and
00:06:36.280
there were no questions. Why do we have to keep repeating that ad nauseum? Why do you need to
00:06:41.340
deplatform anybody that in any way suggests that, huh, maybe it was a little weird that the
00:06:46.700
Pennsylvania election officials violated their state constitution with the mail-in votes?
00:06:52.760
Why, why are we not allowed to say that? Why is the governor of Mississippi not allowed to raise
00:06:57.520
these sorts of questions on the air? Is it maybe because you're a little insecure about the 2020
00:07:02.400
election? Not saying that the result in the end was different than it would have been. I'm just
00:07:07.600
saying it is undeniable that the election was highly irregular, that the processes for the election
00:07:16.480
were upended in the days and weeks before, that election integrity measures were stripped away,
00:07:21.600
that it was the strangest election in our lifetimes. Why aren't we allowed to say that? Governor
00:07:27.440
Reeves continues. In our state, we do not allow mail-in voting. And the reason we don't allow
00:07:32.920
mail-in voting is because we don't think that it, we think that it allows for lots of opportunities
00:07:39.020
for fraud and other things. And I don't think mail-in voting should be allowed in other states
00:07:42.720
around the nation, but president Biden is the duly elected president and we're going to do everything
00:07:47.480
we can to work with him to help the citizens of Mississippi. Even that is not enough for Jake
00:07:52.960
Tapper. He keeps going back. He's like, yeah, but say that Biden's great. Say he's awesome. Say the
00:07:57.060
election was totally perfect. But what the governor is saying here is absolutely right.
00:08:02.520
Mail-in voting is a direct threat to our democracy, which dies in darkness. I am reliably informed by
00:08:07.620
the Washington Post and we should not have widespread mail-in voting. Barack Obama was saying that not so
00:08:14.200
long ago. Everybody agreed with that. It's just obvious. But now we're not allowed to say obvious
00:08:19.560
things because this power grab has become so transparent. Turning from good governors like the governor of
00:08:25.660
Mississippi to bad governors like Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo is really, really in hot water right now.
00:08:32.680
Two more women have come forward. I think the number now is up to five. Some of these claims
00:08:37.440
are fairly dubious. I actually want to be fair to Cuomo. Some seem a little vague. Okay. But really what
00:08:45.560
this is about is booting out the guy after he got exposed for his failures and cover up on COVID.
00:08:50.140
And there is a little schadenfreude. Even if conservatives think that this me-tooing of
00:08:56.280
Andrew Cuomo is at least formally just as distasteful as the me-tooing of other people,
00:09:01.980
the schadenfreude is really great. For instance, when the Dems use these kind of tactics on Brett Kavanaugh
00:09:08.160
with far less credibility to them, Andrew Cuomo was all for it.
00:09:12.840
There is a disrespect for women that this administration chronically
00:09:21.660
exemplifies. After the me-too movement, they did absolutely nothing when it came to sexual harassment.
00:09:32.680
They have always diminished the charges of women. Always. Consistent. And they're doing it again.
00:09:44.220
This administration is so terrible to women, they never even compliment the high heels worn by women
00:09:55.140
around the office. They never would even greet their secretary with a nice little kiss, just to be
00:10:01.640
polite. They never offer reporters in the room a nice delicious hot dog and then tell them they got
00:10:09.700
to finish it. Well, well, they're watching. They're terrible, terrible to women. And so it's wonderful
00:10:18.900
to watch Andrew Cuomo kind of squirm, even though I think it's preposterous the way that they're going
00:10:24.840
after him. This is all about the nursing homes. The real scandal is that Andrew Cuomo, with the applause
00:10:35.500
of the entire Democratic establishment, not just the elected officials, not even just the bureaucrats and the
00:10:42.700
activists, but the media as well. Andrew Cuomo's policies were the absolute deadliest COVID policies in the
00:10:52.460
entire country. They needlessly killed thousands and thousands of elderly New Yorkers. Then he knew
00:10:59.040
about it. We now know he knew about it because we know that he tried to cover it up while he was
00:11:05.760
publishing a book on leadership lessons from COVID-19. During all of this, Democrats had him speak at their
00:11:13.980
national convention. The mainstream media sexually harassed Andrew Cuomo, for goodness sakes. They should
00:11:22.000
have had some Me Too allegations against them. They were so hot for this guy. And now to distract from
00:11:29.360
all of that and to go after him for a more palatable reason, now we're told it's because he complimented his
00:11:37.020
secretary or tried to kiss some girl or something, which inappropriate though it may be, not even in the
00:11:44.720
same stratosphere, not even, not even in the same galaxy from the COVID-19 scandal. But because they're
00:11:53.060
masterful machine politicians in New York, Andrew Cuomo included, but certainly the state representatives
00:11:59.400
up in Albany, the Democratic leaders in New York are calling for Andrew Cuomo to resign. AOC kicked this
00:12:06.780
off a little while ago. And you heard some Democrats at the national office start to float this. They say,
00:12:11.000
we need an investigation, right? They stopped totally defending Cuomo. Their crush ended.
00:12:17.360
But now that the powers that actually matter, the political pressure in New York
00:12:21.040
is coming after Cuomo and saying, hey buddy, you're causing us a whole lot of headaches.
00:12:26.440
This is not going to work for us anymore. So you need to step down. Andrew Cuomo remaining defiant.
00:12:33.280
If you want to remain defiant in the face of high prices on your auto parts,
00:12:38.160
then you should go check out rockauto.com. Rockauto.com is a family business serving auto
00:12:42.740
parts customers online for 20 years. Go to rockauto.com to shop for auto and body parts from
00:12:47.920
hundreds of manufacturers. Best of all, prices at rockauto.com are always reliably low and the same
00:12:53.800
for professionals and do-it-yourselfers. Why on earth would you spend up to twice as much for the
00:12:58.960
same parts? Why on earth would you subject yourself to the indignity and degradation of going into the
00:13:05.740
brick and mortar auto parts store and having some punk behind the counter ask you all these
00:13:09.960
questions about your car you don't know the answers to? Then he goes in the back. They never
00:13:13.180
have the part. They order it online, probably from Rock Auto, and then they charge you twice as much.
00:13:17.500
Do not save yourself that humiliation. Just go to rockauto.com. They've got a great selection.
00:13:23.180
They've got reliably low prices. They don't have a ton of gimmicks going up and down. You got to order
00:13:27.120
it on Tuesday at two o'clock. None of that. And the website is so easy. Even I can navigate it.
00:13:32.820
Go to rockauto.com right now. See all the parts available for your car or truck.
00:13:36.920
Then write Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S in there. How did you hear about us box? So that they know we sent
00:13:42.540
you. The Senate majority leader in the state of New York, Andrea Stewart-Cousins is saying,
00:13:49.040
quote, every day there is another account that is drawing away from the business of government.
00:13:53.980
We have allegations about sexual harassment, a toxic work environment, the loss of credibility
00:13:58.380
surrounding the COVID-19 nursing home data, and questions about the construction of a major
00:14:02.420
infrastructure product. For the good of the state, Andrew Cuomo must resign.
00:14:07.840
Pretty, there were actually some misspellings in here because some of these Democrat state
00:14:13.240
politicians, not the brightest bulbs in the pack. But if you take that aside, this is an absolutely
00:14:18.160
brilliant political statement here. Because notice what she did. It's the sandwich. It's the
00:14:24.720
classic sandwich strategy of scandals. This woman says, you know, Andrew Cuomo, he, he didn't call
00:14:33.580
his grandma when he was supposed to call his grandma. And he was very rude to Mrs. Bethany across
00:14:41.060
the street. And he also killed thousands of people and covered it up. And he also didn't show up to
00:14:47.500
church on Sunday at the time that he said he would. And so that's why we need to kick him out of
00:14:52.980
the office. And you say, wait, what was that? Oh yeah. I said he didn't show up to church to the,
00:14:58.260
to the mass he said he was going to show up to. So no, before that. Oh yes. He gave a really mean
00:15:04.980
look to his neighbor. No, after that. Oh yeah. He killed thousands of elderly New Yorkers and then
00:15:11.620
covered it up and now there's an FBI or a federal probe into it. Oh, that's the scandal. Right. All
00:15:18.580
the rest of this was just sort of a sandwich because you guys don't want to deal with the
00:15:23.680
failure of your policies, not just Andrew Cuomo's, but yours broadly. You guys were in on this sort of
00:15:30.900
stuff. State assembly leader in New York, Democrat Carl Heastie says, we have many challenges to
00:15:37.600
address. And I think it is time for the governor to seriously consider whether he can effectively
00:15:42.320
meet the needs of the people of New York. So Trump has now, or Cuomo rather, they're both kind of
00:15:48.760
tough talking New Yorkers. So it's an interesting sort of Freudian slip. Cuomo has lost his base of
00:15:54.940
support. Who is his support now? All the people propping this guy up so implausibly have fled him.
00:16:02.180
So is Cuomo going to resign? No way. Cuomo comes out and he says, I think this is actually a pretty
00:16:09.800
good defense. He says, I was elected by the people of the state. I wasn't elected by politicians.
00:16:16.560
I'm not going to resign because of allegations. The premise of resigning because of allegations
00:16:21.560
is actually anti-democratic. Anybody has the ability to make an allegation in a democracy and
00:16:27.800
that's great. But it's in the credibility of the allegation. Wow. Where was this guy during the
00:16:32.560
Kavanaugh scandal? Huh? Where was that? Wow. This Andrew Cuomo is pretty level headed. I actually give
00:16:38.700
him credit for not stepping down. To be clear, Andrew Cuomo should not be in office. Not because
00:16:46.480
he winked at his secretary, but because he killed all the elderly New Yorkers. For the coverup, the guy
00:16:53.420
possibly should be wearing an orange jumpsuit. There should at least be a serious investigation
00:16:57.920
into it. But just as a bare knuckle political matter, I have to give the guy credit for refusing
00:17:06.180
to resign because the point he's making is legitimate. I was not elected by politicians
00:17:12.700
who are vying and jockeying for power. Politicians are also the people who are making many of these
00:17:19.320
allegations, right? I was elected by the people and resigning over allegations is anti-democratic.
00:17:24.200
I actually sort of agree with that in a way. We have accountability measures in this country.
00:17:30.100
They happen at the ballot box. Now we're losing election integrity protections, which is not good.
00:17:37.880
But I think that's very important. When the left in this country hated Richard Nixon,
00:17:44.000
they got rid of it. They tried to get rid of him at the ballot box. They probably stole the 1960 election,
00:17:50.220
but that's a topic for another day. Then they tried to get rid of him at the ballot box in 68. Didn't
00:17:55.900
work. Then they tried to get rid of him at the ballot box in 72. Doesn't work. So what do they do?
00:18:04.160
They get some deep stater to toss him out of office because some crook couldn't tape a door correctly.
00:18:10.580
Sort of minor political scandal that both sides have been doing for a very long time.
00:18:16.540
That is anti-democratic. You saw similar things with Trump. They try to beat Trump in 2016. It doesn't work.
00:18:23.060
So they just try to throw him out of office. They gin up a bunch of scandals. They try to impeach him.
00:18:26.920
They do all this. That is actually anti-democratic. And as we all know from the Washington Post,
00:18:31.380
democracy dies in darkness. Cuomo has a lot of people furious at him, even on the left,
00:18:38.060
because people don't understand this if they haven't spent some time in New York and they
00:18:43.240
haven't looked at New York politics. Cuomo is in some ways one of the more conservative figures in
00:18:48.860
New York. He's still an absolute horrible leftist who lit the New York City buildings up in pink when
00:18:56.060
he could celebrate the expansion of abortion in that state, right? Cuomo is a horrible, horrible guy,
00:19:01.340
but by New York standards, he's actually somewhat conservative. And so a lot of the leftists in the
00:19:06.120
state don't really like him very much. Teachers don't really like, teachers unions don't really
00:19:11.800
like him very much. There are a whole lot of forces there. So we'll see how this plays out. It's hard to
00:19:15.560
imagine he survives much longer like this, but you are noticing the narrative changing here. You're
00:19:21.000
noticing the narrative about Cuomo beginning to change. You're noticing the narrative more broadly
00:19:25.080
about COVID changing. The head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten,
00:19:30.280
this organization that is doing its damnedest to keep schools closed in America is now trying to
00:19:36.600
change the narrative. Speaking with another Cuomo, Fredo Cuomo on CNN saying, what, who, us? No,
00:19:42.800
we don't want to keep the schools closed. No, all you got is a big misunderstanding. We're actually
00:19:48.040
trying to open the schools. My union has been trying to reopen schools since last April. We know how
00:19:55.720
important in-school learning is. But we had a president who refused to collect data, give us
00:20:03.160
the guidance that the CDC has just given us, and given us the resources. These are the three things.
00:20:09.000
And I was on your show. I begged for it for months and months and months. And ultimately,
00:20:14.760
what's happening is that between some of the resources we already got in December, which is
00:20:20.600
starting to be starting to be out there, the resources in the Rescue Act, this vaccine announcement,
00:20:27.160
and the CDC guidance, you've already seen in the last few weeks, a turnaround that all the school
00:20:34.600
districts that had closed in November or December because of the surge are now reopened.
00:20:40.280
So this defense from the American Federation of Teachers is one of the most outrageous examples
00:20:49.240
of gaslighting I've seen in recent years. And we've gotten a whole lot of it in around the inauguration,
00:20:57.160
around the election, around the entire year of 2020, practically. She says, look, we want to go back.
00:21:03.720
We've been trying to go back since April. We've just been waiting for guidance from the CDC. CDC has
00:21:10.040
been issuing guidance, I think, the whole time. Well, we've just, because of the bungled COVID policies
00:21:15.000
of Trump. Trump led the development of a vaccine in world record time and got you a vaccine
00:21:28.760
really before the election, but at the very least we can say within days after the election.
00:21:33.640
The election was in early November. It's now March. What is the holdup? And they say, no,
00:21:43.320
we just need more protections, more, but we're trying to reopen. We're following the science.
00:21:51.080
All the studies show that the transmission of the virus is not any higher in schools than it is
00:21:56.520
anywhere else. All the science shows the kids are not particularly vulnerable to the thing. Well,
00:22:02.600
no, we're just, we're just trying so hard. We're just, yeah. Okay. Is it any wonder,
00:22:08.120
is it any wonder that people have no faith in their elites when we just get lied to, when we get gaslit
00:22:16.440
by these sorts of people, not just the electeds that we get gaslit by them, but by the media and by
00:22:24.680
union bosses, such as this woman, there was just a vote. The LA teacher union just had a vote. Should
00:22:30.680
we go back to work? Simple enough question. 91% of LA teacher union members voted not to go back to
00:22:40.040
work. And the way they're pitching it, they say, this vote signals that in these trying times,
00:22:46.120
our members will not accept a rushed return that would endanger the safety of educators,
00:22:51.560
students and families. That's according to the LA teacher union president, Cecily Maillard Cruz.
00:22:58.360
A rushed return. This has been going on for a year. Oh, we can't, it was supposed to be two weeks.
00:23:07.000
Oh, we can't rush it though. It's been an extra 50 weeks, but we can't, we don't want to rush it.
00:23:11.720
It could endanger the safety of students. Students are at statistically zero risk from this virus.
00:23:21.320
The same is basically true of educators and families as well, but certainly of the students
00:23:26.680
statistically like nothing. It raises this question. Are there any elites less likable
00:23:36.300
than these teacher union bosses? And they're actually, the answer to that is yes.
00:23:44.060
Princesses and billionaire talk show hosts. Meghan Markle sitting down for a wild interview with Oprah,
00:23:52.940
which actually does affect US politics. It seems like it doesn't, but it does. Ben's going to be
00:23:57.820
talking about this, but first I'm going to be talking about this because I'm a little more sympathetic
00:24:01.740
to the crown than some of my more libertarian pals over here at the Daily Wire and broadly in the
00:24:09.660
United States. I'm, I'm more sympathetic to them. And this Meghan Markle thing is just so
00:24:14.760
hideous. It exposes not just what's wrong with British politics, really exposes what's wrong with
00:24:19.820
American politics. What if the police could go on strike at a moment's notice? What if firefighters
00:24:26.680
could go on strike at a moment's notice? The military, imagine the kind of disruption and chaos that would
00:24:30.380
create. These are the dangerous scenarios associated with public sector unions. In the latest episode
00:24:36.040
of the new series debunked, Ben Shapiro will break down all of the known lies and platitudes
00:24:40.500
that most people are fed with regard to unions. This latest episode, which dropped this past weekend,
00:24:46.840
covers all of that and more, but here's the but you've got to be a Daily Wire subscriber to watch.
00:24:52.420
Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code debunked to get 25% off your new membership. That is code
00:24:58.940
debunked for 25% off at dailywire.com slash subscribe. We will be right back with a lot more.
00:25:17.000
There is, by my calculation, not a single thing less appealing than listening to a Hollywood actress
00:25:26.100
complain to a billionaire talk show host about how hard it was to be a princess. That is the actual
00:25:37.320
mathematical, perfectly least likable thing that I think anyone could possibly do. Meghan Markle
00:25:46.060
sits down with her poor, poor husband and talks to Oprah about all the dirty laundry from the royal
00:25:58.480
family. There was no guidance as well, right? There were certain things that you couldn't do, but you
00:26:05.580
know, unlike what you see in the movies, there's no class on how to, how to speak, how to cross your
00:26:11.280
legs, how to be royal. There's none of that train. That might exist for other members of the family.
00:26:16.440
That was not something that was offered to me. So nobody tells you anything? No. Nobody prepares
00:26:20.800
you. No, I mean, no, but even down, sorry, but even down to like the national anthem. No one thought
00:26:25.840
to say, oh, you're American. You're not going to know that. That's me late at night Googling how,
00:26:31.280
what's the national, I've got to learn this. I don't want to embarrass them. I need to learn these
00:26:35.100
30 hymns for church. All of this is televised. We were doing the training behind the scenes because
00:26:40.840
I just wanted to make them proud. I just, I just wanted to make them proud. And that is why
00:26:45.540
I'm sitting down with you, Oprah, to say that these are the worst people on earth because I'm just,
00:26:50.220
I just care and I want to make them proud. It's just, you know, it's crazy. All I wanted to do,
00:26:55.040
all I wanted to do as a divorced American actress was become a princess in another country and they
00:27:05.020
expect me to learn the national anthem? Uh, what? Is that crazy? What, what do they think I have?
00:27:11.040
Google? What do they, what do they think that I can like look it up? That's crazy. That's, I need,
00:27:17.120
well, actually, you know, shut up, shut up, Harry. Stop it. It's just ridiculous. You know, I,
00:27:23.720
you see, I'm a victim, says the princess. So President Trump, as always, summed this up a
00:27:34.460
couple of years ago. He was asked about some criticism that Meghan Markle had made of him.
00:27:38.800
She was not at that time, uh, attacking the, the government and the royalty of her adopted country.
00:27:46.000
She was attacking her own government. And President Trump, I thought, uh, had the most compassionate
00:27:52.040
and precise take on Meghan Markle that one can muster.
00:27:55.740
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, uh, chimed in on the U.S. election and essentially encouraged people
00:28:00.560
to vote for Joe Biden. What did you get your reaction to that?
00:28:04.880
I'm not a fan of hers. And, uh, I would say this, and she probably has heard that, but, uh,
00:28:14.480
I wish a lot of luck to Harry because he's going to need it.
00:28:22.640
He's going to need it. That poor guy does need it. This woman comes in. The reason I mentioned,
00:28:30.300
by the way, that she's divorced is she is entering into the royal family of a country with a state
00:28:37.240
church. So that's actually a big problem. And rather than say, oh my gosh, thank you for making
00:28:43.620
this exception. I know this is bad. I know it's, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be doing this here in
00:28:48.140
the royal family. Instead, she complains about having to learn hymns. What, they expect me to
00:28:52.840
learn the hymns because I'm entering into the family that runs the state church? Come on, give me a break.
00:29:00.500
Poor, poor Harry. So because she doesn't like it, because it turns out that being a royal
00:29:05.580
is not just about glitz and glamour and putting a tiara on because she found out it actually involves
00:29:10.940
duty and work, you know, very difficult sort of chores like learning the national anthem of your
00:29:17.060
country, of your new country. Because of that, she made her husband leave his family
00:29:23.880
and abdicate all of his duty, all of his responsibility to the country that had been
00:29:29.840
so good to him and that he was born for. Like, no, we got to go because I want to do voiceovers in
00:29:35.960
Disney cartoons or something. So they leave. Now they're in LA. They get to keep a lot of money
00:29:42.440
and poor Harry is just struggling through. Now they're attacking his family on television.
00:29:48.900
And the minute he tries to interject, she tells him to keep quiet. But then she talks about real
00:29:53.800
struggles. And this, I actually, I don't want to make light of this. I just want to show how perverse
00:29:58.780
are thinking of this is. As Meghan Markle says, this was so tough to be a princess that I contemplated
00:30:06.920
suicide. And she very well may have. People in Hollywood are unstable people, generally speaking.
00:30:12.660
And maybe she just couldn't take it. Maybe she did not. She had a completely different vision of what
00:30:18.340
it meant to be a royal. Maybe she thought it was all about privilege and not at all about duty and
00:30:23.220
responsibility. So she was genuinely shocked and she just couldn't handle it.
00:30:27.620
We had to go to this event and I remember him saying, I don't think you can go. And I said,
00:30:31.800
I can't be left alone. Because you were afraid of what you might do to yourself.
00:30:40.220
And we went and that. I'm so sorry to hear that. And that picture, if you zoom in, what I see
00:30:48.220
is how tightly his knuckles are gripped around mine. You can see the whites of our knuckles because
00:30:54.920
we are smiling and doing our job, but we're both just trying to hold on. And every time that those
00:31:01.480
lights went down in that royal box, I was just weeping and he was gripping my hand and then it
00:31:08.720
was, okay, intermission's coming. It takes so much courage to admit that you need help.
00:31:14.100
So before I criticize what she has to say here, there is truth to this. It does take courage to
00:31:25.680
admit when you need help. This is part of the process of recognizing our own brokenness in
00:31:33.400
our human nature, right? This is a central fact of a Christian life is having the courage to recognize
00:31:42.240
you are not perfect, that you need help, that you are a miserable sinner and that you cannot fix your
00:31:48.960
brokenness on your own, right? It's actually a keen insight. And unfortunately, in our now secularized
00:31:55.180
culture, a lot of people don't understand that. And so they're not willing to get help. And that's,
00:31:58.400
that's why there actually is some legitimately legitimacy to this idea that we need to reach out.
00:32:04.980
We need to, you know, muster the courage to recognize our own inner problems. Sure. All true.
00:32:11.080
Whether or not going on Oprah Winfrey's show to whine about your husband's family that you made him
00:32:19.420
essentially divorce, whether that is helpful to your inner struggle seems a little dubious to me,
00:32:25.960
but the principle, fair enough. There's a flip side though, to all this talk about the courage
00:32:31.180
to muster the strength, to just think about yourself all the time. The flip side of that is
00:32:36.720
it also takes courage to do your duty. It also takes courage to fulfill your responsibilities
00:32:46.840
to other people and not just yourself. When you marry into the royal family, it's not as though,
00:32:55.400
you know, on the fifth date or something, Harry sits Megan down and says, you know, you know,
00:33:01.700
I love, you know, the problem. I love, I have something to admit to you. I'm a prince of England.
00:33:09.180
What, Harry? Yes. Deary, I know you thought I was a motorcycle mechanic, but actually I'm a prince.
00:33:16.860
Oh my gosh. Well, we'll make it through, Harry. Well, I hope that we can survive this because I love
00:33:21.560
you and I had no idea that you were a prince. Now, I think she knew from the beginning. She just was,
00:33:27.900
it would seem only focused on the glitz and the glamour and the privilege of it all. But it is
00:33:32.580
a weighty, weighty responsibility. I think too many of our elites, forget Meghan Markle for a second,
00:33:39.260
too many of our elites don't understand this. They think when you become prominent in, I don't know,
00:33:45.400
politics or the media or this, that, or the other thing, it's just all about privilege. It's just all
00:33:51.920
about glitz and glamour. They don't want to recognize the duty and the responsibility and
00:33:58.480
the gravity and the weight of that. If you forget about being a royal where your entire life is
00:34:05.180
duty, it's why I can't get on board with the, the kind of conservative American hatred for the royals,
00:34:12.440
you know, or all the jokes about the royals. Well, they live in palaces. They have fancy clothing.
00:34:16.100
And the, the royals' lives are very difficult. From the moment they are born, their entire life
00:34:22.120
is just about serving the country and doing whatever the country needs them to do. And it
00:34:28.280
might seem kind of frivolous because it's photo ops and it's opening up different markets and
00:34:32.760
things like that and welcoming foreign dignitaries. But you are born into a very specific job with a ton
00:34:39.940
of media scrutiny and you can never change it unless you abdicate like Harry because he met this
00:34:48.460
American wife. Unless you abdicate and bring shame on yourself, you just have to do that job. Most of
00:34:55.680
us don't even want to do the job that we chose for our entire lives. A lot of people, they start doing
00:35:01.460
a job and they're like, I kind of want to do something else. Maybe they start doing something else
00:35:04.260
within the broader industry. Maybe they switch careers, right? You don't get to switch careers
00:35:08.360
if you're a royal. You don't get to just do whatever you want all the time. You have to
00:35:13.640
focus on that responsibility. But none of our elites in this country seem willing to do that.
00:35:21.840
Takes courage to confront inner challenges. Also takes courage to confront outer challenges.
00:35:27.780
There are a lot of outer challenges that require real courage, not just looking in on ourselves,
00:35:32.520
though that's important sometimes, but looking out. In this country, a huge one is that our elites
00:35:38.020
who have taken all that power feel no responsibility to our American traditions or the American people
00:35:43.460
broadly. They consider the American people to be deplorable, irredeemable, bitter clinging rubes
00:35:48.260
and idiots and neo-Nazis who should not be able to speak in public, up to and including the former
00:35:55.720
president of the United States. Donald Trump gave a speech at CPAC, the conservative political action
00:36:01.120
conference where he talked about many of the problems facing the country, questions about the election,
00:36:08.560
what he might do in 2024. YouTube will not permit this video on the internet. So there was a channel,
00:36:18.080
just one channel among many, posted the video. They had it taken down. They were not allowed to
00:36:26.100
broadcast it. Then there was a question, was it just this channel or is YouTube more broadly?
00:36:29.820
YouTube has now clarified. They've said that unless users add countervailing viewpoints
00:36:36.680
about Trump's speech, they won't allow Trump's speech up there. So for instance,
00:36:40.780
I could play Trump's speech right now on this channel as long as after he talks, I say,
00:36:47.080
he's wrong. He's bad. Orange man bad. If I do that, then I'm allowed to have Trump's speech on YouTube.
00:36:52.800
But if I don't, or if I say, yeah, well, I made some pretty good points, that video will be taken
00:36:58.800
down. YouTube says, we enforce our community guidelines consistently, regardless of speaker
00:37:04.820
or political leaning. They're just as consistent, I think, as the Washington Post. Joe Biden showers
00:37:11.060
money on Americans. Trump braces us all for economic pain. In accordance with our established
00:37:18.360
presidential election integrity policy, established as of what, like five minutes ago, which prohibits
00:37:24.280
content uploaded after the St. Harvard deadline, claiming widespread fraud changed the outcome of
00:37:28.880
the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we removed this video from RSBN.
00:37:37.360
They're barely even mustering a justification for this. They never took down any videos of Stacey
00:37:45.240
Abrams and other people claiming that that election was stolen because Stacey Abrams is a
00:37:49.400
Democrat. They never took down any videos of Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats claiming that
00:37:54.980
that that election was stolen after the safe harbor deadline because those people are Democrats. But
00:38:00.240
they will take down any, any speech that they find threatening to their political agenda from Donald Trump
00:38:07.280
or other Republicans because they enjoy the privileges of being elites and controlling the flow of
00:38:15.360
information around the internet. But they have no sense of responsibility to the American way of
00:38:21.040
life. They actually don't like those American traditions. They want to get rid of those and
00:38:25.620
institute their own new guidelines. This is the thesis of my book, which I explain in painstaking
00:38:33.100
detail. It's called Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. I, I actually do sort of suspect
00:38:38.280
that this book is going to face censorship from the left. Not because it's some outrageous,
00:38:44.260
raucous, shock jock kind of book. It's not at all. But I think that's actually the point.
00:38:49.420
The book very consistently shows you what the left has done, how the development of this political
00:38:57.880
correctness and the censorship is different than conservatives have traditionally understood it.
00:39:03.080
And, and the book, I think explains how, if we, if we want to fight it effectively, which we haven't
00:39:07.440
done for now a hundred years, we need to radically change course. I think they're probably going to go
00:39:12.620
after that sort of thing. So I recommend you pre-order it by the way, before, before they take it down.
00:39:16.900
Dr. Seuss. Now we're all joking about Dr. Seuss. Oh my, the left is so crazy. The tolerant left is so
00:39:33.900
crazy that now they're, they're taking down Dr. Seuss books. Gosh, isn't this hilarious? Yeah, I mean,
00:39:40.400
it's funny, I guess. It's also very, very dangerous and it makes absolute sense in the
00:39:47.500
left-wing system. Now what some people are going to tell you is, well, look, after they took down
00:39:51.440
those Dr. Seuss books, Dr. Seuss skyrocketed to the charts, top of the charts. See, the free market
00:39:57.100
wins. No, not really. Sure. I guess we're going to put some more money in the pockets of the Dr.
00:40:03.680
Seuss publishers who were censoring him in the first place, which seems kind of crazy to me,
00:40:06.960
but also they're, they're not going to start publishing the book again. They're just going
00:40:10.960
to squeeze a little bit of more, more money out of it at the very end. And then they're going to
00:40:15.260
continue to censor those old beloved books. Kevin McCarthy, leader in the, uh, the Republican
00:40:27.360
house, right? The minority leader among Republicans in the house of representatives. He decided to go after
00:40:34.020
this kind of craziness. He was going to read some Dr. Seuss books on camera. Green eggs and ham by Dr.
00:40:42.920
Seuss. I am Sam. I am Sam. Sam I am. That's Sam I am. That's Sam I am. I do not like that Sam I am.
00:40:57.560
Do you like green eggs and ham? Do you like green eggs and ham?
00:41:03.020
I do not like them Sam I am. I do not like green eggs and ham.
00:41:07.840
Okay. You, you get the point. What's funny of course, is that Senator Cruz did this exact thing
00:41:13.040
years ago. I think he, I think it was like eight years ago during some of his absolute wonderful,
00:41:20.340
uh, performances on the floor of the Senate, you know, trying to hold up Obamacare,
00:41:24.660
trying to hold up really bad legislation. He, uh, Ted Cruz famously read green eggs and ham. So
00:41:29.920
that, that's great. And Kevin McCarthy clearly has a good taste in literature, I guess. But
00:41:34.880
I, I felt this fell flat. I'm giving this as constructive criticism because I like Kevin
00:41:40.420
McCarthy, but I felt this fell flat because the left is not censoring green eggs and ham.
00:41:46.920
They're not. Green eggs and ham is now at the top of the charts on Amazon. But what the left is
00:41:51.140
censoring is a handful of books, the Mulberry street books, a few other Dr. Seuss books that
00:41:57.020
they feel are racially insensitive, politically incorrect. So I looked at some of the books and
00:42:02.380
I don't think they are. There's, there's a drawing. It's allegedly racist of a Chinese man.
00:42:10.180
And this is very offensive because he's got a traditional Chinese hat on or something.
00:42:14.540
It's not, there's, there's not, compared to other Dr. Seuss cartoons, there's nothing offensive
00:42:18.920
about this cartoon. So it seems to me, if we want to fight back against this sort of thing,
00:42:23.860
it's not that we should read green eggs and ham. We should read that book, right? If, if our argument
00:42:29.400
really is that these books, these handful of books that the left is saying are racially offensive,
00:42:33.800
if we're saying, no, they're not, they're not, everybody needs to get over themselves and just
00:42:39.200
not cancel everybody for the slightest, silliest reason, then we should be reading those books.
00:42:45.900
That, that would be much more provocative. And I think it would, it would make a far greater
00:42:50.860
defense, but people don't want to do that because so many conservatives, I'm not accusing Kevin
00:42:55.160
McCarthy of this, might've just been, he was reading one of the most popular Dr. Seuss books,
00:42:59.040
but a lot of conservatives will talk a good game on political correctness,
00:43:03.780
but they're not willing to actually get in there and determine what things we should say and what
00:43:10.680
things we shouldn't say. This is another topic I go into in great detail in my book.
00:43:17.240
I don't think that the conservative response to political correctness should be to say all sorts
00:43:23.120
of terribly offensive things. I don't think the conservative response to political correctness
00:43:27.440
is to start using the N word, you know, all the time in polite conversation. That's, to me,
00:43:33.180
that's not, maybe it's politically incorrect. To me, it's just quite rude to do. I don't think the
00:43:39.340
answer to political correctness is rudeness. I think the answer to political correctness
00:43:42.500
is stating things that are perfectly just, true, acceptable without fear of the left-wing mob.
00:43:53.400
It's going out there and saying things like men are not women or saying things like, I don't know,
00:43:58.460
if you're reading the Dr. Seuss book, saying things like different cultures wear different
00:44:01.180
sort of clothing. That, that sort of thing is very important. Go in there and actually make these
00:44:07.820
statements, but people don't want to do it. They want to shy away from that sort of thing.
00:44:12.620
Meanwhile, Dr. Seuss is not the only, only cartoonist under fire. The cat in the hat is not
00:44:18.340
the only victim of cancel culture. Pepe Le Pew, you know, Pepe Le Pew, he's that sort of girl crazy
00:44:25.560
snake or skunk rather from, from the old cartoons. Pepe Le Pew is being accused of perpetuating
00:44:33.060
rape culture, according to Charles Blow at the New York Times, which is on the same tier of
00:44:38.740
journalism as the Washington Post. Charles Blow writes, some of the first cartoons I can remember
00:44:42.680
included Pepe Le Pew, who normalized rape culture. Blow then followed this up. He said, right-wing
00:44:47.980
blogs are mad because I said Pepe Le Pew added to rape culture. Let's see. One, he grabs,
00:44:52.780
kisses a girl stranger repeatedly without consent and against her will. She struggles mightily to
00:44:58.900
get away from him, but he won't release her. Three, he locks a door to prevent her from escaping.
00:45:05.280
Boom. There it is. Lock him up. Lock up that skunk. Pepe Le Pew, he did it.
00:45:12.440
Seems to me no one has ever committed rape because a cartoon skunk told them that it was okay.
00:45:20.100
I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that. But I actually don't think that that is why they want
00:45:27.900
to cancel Pepe Le Pew or any sort of old cartoons that in any way contradict the ever-changing dictates
00:45:36.320
of political correctness. I think it's something deeper than that. I think it's because, one,
00:45:43.560
the left has a point when they talk about anti-racist babies. They actually do have a point.
00:45:47.240
Our brains are forming when we're very little. That's why we educate children more than we
00:45:53.080
educate adults. It's because you can shape those brains. So, sure, that matters. Also, because
00:45:59.700
these cartoons subtly are questioning the premises of political correctness.
00:46:06.080
It's exaggerated and sort of ridiculous with Pepe Le Pew. But what is being exaggerated? What's being
00:46:12.740
exaggerated is that men find women attractive? That men and women are different. They are
00:46:18.200
complementary. Men pursue women in a way that women do not pursue men because men and women relate to
00:46:26.320
sex and romance differently. That's the problem. That's what the left doesn't like.
00:46:34.020
That's what is a threat to the left-wing agenda. Not because anyone thinks a skunk is getting people
00:46:38.360
to commit rape. What's offensive in those Dr. Seuss books? Well, the Dr. Seuss books are saying
00:46:42.940
different cultures are different. They have different customs, different traditions. It's not
00:46:47.640
all just the same bland secular liberalism. That's the threat. That's the big threat here.
00:46:53.740
And these are, you don't need to defend Pepe Le Pew's rape culture to say, wait a second here, guys.
00:47:01.280
We need to keep these old cartoons, these old jokes, this old fun. Because one, these jokes,
00:47:11.000
this levity, this artwork embellishes life, makes it much more interesting. But also because there are
00:47:19.220
some premises in here. And they're deeper and they're basic and they're absolutely just and
00:47:23.320
they're absolutely defensible. But our elites, they do not want to do that. I don't even know if they
00:47:29.800
can muster the argument for that. Is there any question why people are losing faith in their
00:47:37.080
institutions, in their rituals, in their system of government? I don't think it's the people's
00:47:41.740
fault. I think it's the fault of this desiccated, shallow elite that refuses to take on any sort of
00:47:49.040
responsibility to the people. And when the elite are not responsive to the people, we hear about this
00:47:52.960
in the Federalist Papers, then society starts to break down. Let's see if we can build it back up.
00:47:58.160
I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. See you tomorrow.
00:48:28.160
Produced by Ben Davies. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
00:48:34.480
Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling. Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky.
00:48:40.200
Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico. Audio mixer, Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup by
00:48:46.240
Nika Geneva. And production coordinator, McKenna Waters. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire
00:48:54.200
Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Meghan Markle accuses the royal family of racism. Joe Biden
00:48:59.720
blows out the spending with a $1.9 trillion bill. And the media insists that censorship isn't
00:49:03.800
censorship, so long as the stuff being censored is the stuff they don't like. That's today on