Tax reform finally passes the House of Representatives, and now it s on the President s desk. Will he sign it? Will he veto it? Or will he allow it to become law? And what will it mean for the economy? Plus, a woman who is only two months older than her daughter, the Catholic sex abuse scandal, and more.
00:13:59.100She's like your great aunt that comes to Thanksgiving and yells at the cat or something.
00:14:03.160But anyway, no, my hope with Trump was that he would get into office and kind of let his administration do things, which I think is what he's doing.
00:14:13.360And so a lot of the things that his administration does have been very good, and I'm happy with them.
00:14:18.160I think when it's just him unfiltered, and that's like Twitter or if he's giving a speech or something without a prompter, that's when things go off the rails and he undermines his own agenda with his bad communication skills.
00:14:30.980So that's the part that's going to hurt.
00:14:33.160But do you think, because I once thought this, and I opposed Trump in the primary pretty vigorously.
00:14:46.380Do you think it's that he is undermining his legislative or his policy agenda through his rhetoric, or do you find that it's so just uncouth, it's so vulgar that it seems to undermine the nice patinas of credibility?
00:15:04.260I don't care about vulgarity, and I don't care about being harsh or anything like that.
00:15:08.500You know, I've been accused of that myself a few times.
00:15:12.240I don't see, when Trump is feuding with LeVar Ball or Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatever he's doing, or he's complaining about CNN nonstop, I don't see how that advances the agenda.
00:15:27.040It's because we have the great reality show runner, one of the kings of it for 15 years, network TV number one.
00:15:34.260We have him in office, and he knows, maybe I'm reading too much in, but it's certainly how it works on me.
00:15:38.700He knows that in order to keep people glued to that Twitter, glued to him rather than glued to CNN, you have to entertain.
00:15:46.560You have to fight these cultural battles.
00:15:48.660So on the one hand, you get a great—I like that he's smacking down Colin Kaepernick.
00:15:52.860I like that as a matter of culture, but I also like that he's keeping the show engaging enough for people that they keep tuning into that Twitter account, and it bypasses CNN and the New York Times.
00:16:03.740Yeah, but I don't think there's a—see, this is what's been happening with Trump since the beginning.
00:16:07.820I think smart conservatives like yourself are helping him, are kind of intellectualizing what he's doing, when in reality, I think he just gets—he's just a 71-year-old man who gets up in the morning and turns on Fox and Friends and just gets mad about things and starts shouting.
00:16:22.740But he has—unlike most 71-year-old men, he has Twitter that he could shout into Twitter.
00:16:27.680And so that's—I think that's all that's really happening.
00:16:29.720I don't think there's a lot of strategy to it, and I still don't see the value.
00:16:32.780Yeah, okay, he's got people glued, they're paying attention, and they're paying attention, and then they see him complaining about an athlete.
00:16:40.820How do we—now, if he was using his Twitter, which he does sometimes, to call attention to actually important issues, then I would say great.
00:16:48.860But don't you think—Andrew Breitbart used to always say politics is downstream of culture, and we're in a cultural moment right now.
00:16:55.800Do you not think there's value in calling out Colin Kaepernick or the NFL, which is kneeling for not just some issue, but in front of the American flag itself, the Star-Spangled Banner itself?
00:17:07.160Yeah, I'm not in favor of the kneeling thing.
00:17:10.500I think we've all made our opinion known about that.
00:17:14.040I don't think—the idea that had to be this year-long issue that we're all—that we're outraged about for a year, I just think—I don't know what the value is.
00:17:25.140Of all the great villains in the culture, I don't think the NFL is even in the top 100.
00:17:30.960If I'm going to start—okay, what are the sort of organizations and institutions that we as conservatives need to be attacking relentlessly?
00:18:00.920Well, but as it's—and I don't blame him for this entirely because it's the Republicans in the Senate and the Congress.
00:18:06.140But the fact is that we have a Republican House, Senate, and White House, and we are still giving hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the abortion industry, which—why aren't people more upset about that?
00:18:18.360I mean, to me, that should have been priority day one.
00:18:20.960I get in the office. I'm getting rid of that.
00:18:23.360I'm doing whatever I can to get rid of that.
00:18:35.000But even the—I think there is a—we should stand up against things like that.
00:18:39.800But for it to be the primary focus for as long as it was, I just—
00:18:45.580It's too much covfefe. People are ODing on covfefe.
00:18:49.300Yeah, I think that's what I was searching for, yeah.
00:18:51.180Mr. Bois, Paul Cardinal Bois, when it comes to Democrats' long-term lies—we'll get back to Trump later.
00:18:56.680Every conversation for the last two years obviously has to come back to Trump at some point.
00:19:00.860But when it comes to Democrats' long-term lies, not just tax reform killing everybody, WMDs in Iraq, the JFK assassination, the party switching, that sort of thing.
00:19:10.940How do Democrats convince everybody not to trust our own lying eyes, the things that we know to be true?
00:19:17.920I think because they've raised an entire generation, an entire populace, to not think and feel only, to feel only emotion.
00:19:25.640So that's why I think everything—from pretty much since the moment we're toddlers and we're put in front of a television,
00:19:36.060everything is geared towards you feeling your way through life, if you feel it, if you feel this, if you feel that.
00:19:44.780And sometimes you feel a little too low, and then you have to resign from the Senate.
00:19:47.360Yeah. And then, so by creating an entire generation that just basically lives their intellect,
00:19:56.160basically subordinates to their emotions rather than the other way around, that's pretty much it.
00:20:01.460You don't have anything. Logic goes out the window.
00:20:03.840And there's not a single argument that I've ever been in with a leftist or somebody who's just sort of on the fence with things.
00:20:10.940I would say even the average American, really, that the argument that's being put forth is based on logic or based on reason or evidence-based or point A to point B.
00:20:24.780I blame rock and roll music. It puts everything in their bodies and they stop thinking,
00:20:28.300Jacob, the mainstream media has changed its tune overnight on this tax reform, probably because we're all still here and we're not dead.
00:20:34.840Is this Blythe ignorance or is it cynicism? When the media report falsehoods like it's going to kill everybody, it's going to raise everybody's taxes, are they lying or are they just weak and ignorant?
00:20:45.100I think they are lying. I think it's an intentional falsehood that the mainstream media puts out all the time.
00:20:51.100It's like we were talking about how when Ted Kennedy died, they didn't mention the fact that he committed manslaughter, right?
00:20:56.380In fact, someone said, oh, the girl he left to die helplessly, she would have voted for him if she was still alive.
00:21:02.280That's right. They put that stuff out there. And the sad thing is Republicans repeat it.
00:21:07.380When Mitt Romney ran against Ted Kennedy, who, by the way, he almost beat Ted Kennedy, Romney didn't say, oh, Ted Kennedy committed manslaughter.
00:21:15.660That should have been enough to win the election. But Mitt Romney just went along with these mainstream media lies.
00:21:20.760Oh, Ted Kennedy, he's such a lion in the Senate.
00:21:24.120Oh, my gosh. He ate that poor girl alive. Lion of the Senate.
00:21:26.980Exactly. And I think it is an intentional falsehood. And the sad thing is the American people don't hold them accountable when they have egg on their face for whatever reason.
00:21:37.900Yeah, that is true. It's not enough covfefe.
00:21:41.860See, it's a balancing act. You can't have too much. If you get too much, you're going to overdose on it.
00:21:46.080Now, speaking of overdosing, we have much more to talk about. We have Nikki Haley and Donald Trump smacking around the U.N.
00:21:52.780That's a glorious. We're going to talk about Cardinal Law, former Archbishop of Boston, who was at the center of the Catholic abuse scandal.
00:22:00.100We're going to be talking about that with our three quarters Catholic panel because he just died today.
00:22:04.660We're going to be talking about the mother who is two months older than her daughter.
00:22:08.360And we're going to be talking about the war on Christmas.
00:22:10.420And I'm going to try to enlist Matt Walsh into Santa's army.
00:22:13.220But you can't see any of that unless you go to DailyWire.com right now.
00:22:16.920We appreciate all of the people who already subscribe.
00:22:19.480You help keep the lights on. Covfefe in my cup.
00:22:21.900If you don't, it's Christmas time. Go over there. Treat yourself.
00:23:35.580For all of these nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security Council or they vote against us potentially at the Assembly, they take hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars, then they vote against us.
00:23:51.460But this isn't like it used to be, where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what they're doing.
00:23:59.140You know, Jacob, that sounds like a threat to me.
00:25:46.700And if he actually does it, which I hope he does, then I will gladly say that this is something that no other Republican would have done, and it's a good thing.
00:25:53.460And it's exactly the kind of thing that if we can get Trump doing this sort of thing, then I think people who supported Trump can make the argument that in the end it was the right thing to support him over the other 17 candidates because it's the sort of move that no other Republican would pull.
00:26:11.020And he does get better, too, one notices.
00:26:14.740Like, during the campaign, his rhetoric was in many places quite objectionable, and it's gotten less objectionable, and he's getting more of these good things.
00:26:23.520So if it keeps on getting better and better, I would be very pleased with it.
00:26:28.000I would be – my skepticism will have vanished, basically.
00:27:07.000Bernard Cardinal Law, the former Archbishop of Boston, whom the Boston Globe exposed to have covered up sexual abuse by priests, has died.
00:27:15.880We are three-quarters Catholic today, and we're working on Jacob.
00:27:18.560Maybe by the end of the show it will be 100%.
00:27:20.180Paul, you are a cardinal yourself, obviously, your eminence.
00:27:24.240How has the church recovered from the sex abuse scandal now 15 years later?
00:27:28.020I would have to say internally they're doing a better job, certainly trying to clean out the seminaries and input solid protections that were in place prior to the 1950s that led to this.
00:27:50.580There's certainly a lot of liturgical abuses going on and a lot of liberalism going on in the church, and frankly, that is what this stemmed from.
00:27:59.260The leftists want to go ahead and say that, oh, it was the Catholic culture and the celibacy.
00:28:05.500If a priest throughout history was having difficulty with his celibacy, they would find him with a prostitute or with a married woman or someone else in the parish.
00:28:14.540Some of those popes, like the Borgia popes, right?
00:28:18.500I mean, they had a ton of illegitimate children and all of that.
00:28:21.420So that's a bunch of fraudulent nonsense.
00:28:25.740In terms of the public image, I don't think it's gotten much better, and that's largely because Catholic media is just horrible right now,
00:28:33.820and the Catholic message is horrible right now in the culture.
00:28:37.300And Hollywood just created spotlight, and of course, they're never going to tell the truth about what really was taking place.
00:28:44.840I think it's going to take a longer time to fully recover it.
00:28:47.880I do think that what's happening in Hollywood right now with the Me Too movement and the sex scandals is sort of shifting the pendulum.
00:28:54.840I think the Catholic Church, they went through their beating, if you will, and now we're kind of turning the spotlight on leftist culture and their madness.
00:29:04.140And this is the moment for Catholics and media to take the mantle and turn it back on them and really take it home.
00:29:13.340And just say, like, you know, like, we have the right answer and just take it away from leftists.
00:29:18.500I'm just pleased that you're blaming the sex abuse scandal on bad liturgy.
00:29:22.140Those acoustic guitars drive me so crazy.
00:29:25.760Matt, many people have been hoping for and predicting the end of Christianity of the Catholic Church since approximately, I think, the year zero.
00:30:26.700But what we've been saying for the past 15 years is all these people that are acting so shocked by the church, they have their own issues in their own institutions.
00:30:39.020And, in fact, even in – if you look, there have been studies done that in the Protestant church, sex abuse is an even bigger problem than it ever was in the Catholic church.
00:30:47.220In public schools, I mean, it's just – I forget what the stat is, but one in every – I want to say one in every – well, I won't say it because I don't want to misquote it.
00:30:55.220But thousands and thousands of kids, let's put it that way, are being abused by teachers in public schools.
00:30:58.280I see those stories of the cute blonde teacher and the little 15-year-old boy.
00:31:04.240It really is every day, more than every day.
00:31:06.880So there always is this difficult game to play where it's not a game, but it's this difficult move where you want to also shed the light on this greater problem that's happening in the culture across the board without trying to do the what about thing.
00:31:45.220I don't think it was a problem within the Catholic church itself.
00:31:49.900I personally, and I know I'm probably even going to take flack from some of my fellow Protestants, but I believe as long as you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you go to heaven.
00:31:58.640And so I didn't see it as an issue within the Catholic church other than cardinal law should have been defrocked.
00:32:06.020I think that was a bad move to move him to Rome because that made it look like the Catholic church was covering something up.
00:34:53.980We store them like hot pockets in the freezer, but these are human beings.
00:34:58.680And so the first question is, well, it's wrong to do that.
00:35:02.800The second question is, now that they're there because of this immoral act, what do we do with them?
00:35:09.020And that's the I don't know part because normally, and I know the church teaches, and I think this is just consistent with natural law, that to go and pull a human being out of storage and implant them in your body is unnatural and wrong.
00:35:46.200And if you're, if your attention is active mercy, rescue the human being from limbo, bring him into, you know, the world, um, then I think it's right.
00:35:54.660If your intention is, I have a problem I need to solve, I'm infertile, and oh, we've got these embryos hanging around.
00:36:05.020Paul Cardinal Bois, you are an eminent cardinal.
00:36:08.040There are, there are lots of these little frozen embryos.
00:36:11.140So should there be a movement now to save them from earthly limbo, like Matt is saying, should there be a movement to go and rescue these little frozen pre-babies, or is that taking pro-life too far?
00:37:02.360Because with regular IVF, very often there will be multiple embryos that are created and then they'll implant them and it's very expensive.
00:37:12.600It's very hard to see which one will implant and then they'll abort some of the others.
00:37:16.020So there's this abortion component for regular IVF that you don't have with, uh, embryonic adoption.
00:37:21.640Yeah, so the goal really is to stop this from happening, stop the IVF, that's going to be very hard in this culture, uh, stop, um, the freezing of these embryos, the creating of these, and then the freezing and the storing of them.
00:37:35.340And then while you're doing that, these poor souls that are stuck in earthly limbo, get them a chance, try and get them a chance, uh, to be adopted without turning it into this, uh, trendy thing of like, oh, we're picking up these embryos.
00:37:56.680Spiritually, I'm thinking to myself, I mean, that's something, because every child at the moment of conception has a soul.
00:38:01.920These, I mean, theoretically, these are all souls that are not able to die or depart from their bodies, uh, for, could happen for, I don't know, decades.
00:38:59.760Well, no, that's, well, I know, that's what I'm saying, it puts me, it puts me in this awkward position.
00:39:04.760I have a couple of physicians who that might describe them.
00:39:06.660Well, I just think that, I'm just going to say, I don't think clones have souls.
00:39:10.300I don't, I think they're, they're just organic robots and that's my humble opinion.
00:39:14.320But it also, but also I think that they have a, uh, but, but now that this is a part of what we are, it's, we're going to have to take a serious look at it.
00:39:23.020I honestly don't know where this leaves, uh, conservatives.
00:39:26.080Are we going to move forward and, and get these people out and, uh, give them an opportunity to life?
00:39:31.960Because one of the biggest rights in America is you have the right to life.
00:40:57.080I, uh, I think it's even dumber than the, than the standing, than the NFL thing, to be honest with you.
00:41:02.100I, um, there, there, there are two aspects to it.
00:41:06.580Um, the, you know, the question is, is it, is it an important issue?
00:41:10.820Like, is it something we should worry about?
00:41:11.880And the other question is, should we even, is it even, is it helping Christmas?
00:41:15.560In other words, when we try to essentially force people to say Merry Christmas and to decorate their department stores with, uh, with mistletoes and plastic reindeer and everything.
00:41:25.080And so on that second, I think I've moved right to that second question.
00:41:28.560I would say that it's, it's, I don't think that we, we, we help Christmas.
00:41:31.840In other words, if you have, um, what would we consider an act of war on Christmas?
00:41:36.940If like, for instance, uh, if Macy's were to say, we're banning Christmas decorations, you're not allowed to say Merry Christmas, right?
00:41:44.320Then that's, that's the war on Christmas, isn't it?
00:41:45.880It's the latter though, because they still have the decorations.
00:41:51.100People put them up because they, they put them up earlier and earlier actually, because they want to get people to buy more presents and these sorts of things.
00:41:59.060The, the act of the war on Christmas and why I think it's so insidious is it's all about language.
00:42:04.360It's just a front in this politically correct, uh, euphemistic battle.
00:42:10.340So what they do is they have all the, the reindeer even, they have the little Christmas snowflakes or whatever, but they won't, they won't call it Christmas.
00:42:21.180They use this euphemism holidays, even though there's only one major holiday in December.
00:42:26.180So how, let me ask you, how is the sacredness of Christmas preserved by having the cashier at JCPenney just have this rote greeting of Merry Christmas, as opposed to saying happy holidays, which by the way, as you know, holidays means holy day.
00:42:41.900So they're still acknowledging, but they say holidays, but there's only one, there's only one major holiday in December.
00:43:11.600I totally grant that that's a problem.
00:43:13.440But isn't hypocrisy the tribute that vice pays to virtue?
00:43:18.240Is that situation really made better by indulging this bizarre campaign to replace Christmas, obviously the central holiday of Christmastime, with this weird euphemism, holidays, where we pretend that Hanukkah is a major holiday, even within the Jewish religion?
00:43:35.580And that Kwanzaa is anything but a socialist contrivance.
00:43:38.780It seems to me, you know, we have Santa Claus up.
00:43:41.500What does Santa Claus have to do with the birth of Christ?
00:43:44.200Not terribly much, except that this folk tradition that we have, the merging of Christianity with these various folk traditions, does speak a little bit to it.
00:44:08.360I would love to incorporate the latter, too, at our Christmas traditions as well.
00:44:11.400Yes, it's only at the Knowles House, the Walsh House.
00:44:13.560I think, I mean, if they started doing that at Macy's, I would be totally in favor of it.
00:44:17.520But I guess the, here's the way I look at it.
00:44:21.740If a department store company or whatever says, don't say Merry Christmas, say Happy Holidays, their logic partly is, well, we can't really wish, because Christmas means Christ mass.
00:44:32.280As you know, it's a very religious phrase.
00:44:45.540And so they're saying, well, we're a secular company.
00:44:47.960We're not interested in promoting a religion.
00:44:49.180So we're just going to back off and not say anything or just use this generalized phrase.
00:44:53.360And my point is, in that decision, they're actually showing more respect, even if, not intentionally, but they're showing more respect for the religious nature of Christmas than are a lot of Christians who only care about Christianity when it's Christmas time.
00:45:07.700But then shouldn't they not use the word Holy Day?
00:45:10.360Shouldn't they not use the phrase Holidays?
00:45:12.520If they're saying we don't want to take a religious stand, because I think they're not using it for that reason.
00:45:16.740I think they're not doing it because there's a left-wing, euphemistic struggle that infects all of our politically correct language.
00:45:24.040Christmas is just one little aspect of that.
00:45:26.500But by that logic, if there is only one major holiday that is celebrated in December, shouldn't they just not acknowledge anything?
00:45:34.320If they're going to acknowledge that there is something, there is a holiday that must not be named because we're respecting the religious nature of this country and of the people who celebrate Christmas,
00:45:44.200then they should take down the ornaments, right?
00:45:46.860They should take down the snowflakes and the trees and the reindeer.
00:45:50.480So I guess my problem with the war on Christmas is that they're not going far enough.
00:46:04.800We live in a, part of the point I made in that piece, we live in a godless, satanic culture.
00:46:09.800We should have to face that fact, even around Christmas.
00:46:12.540I know we want to run from that and we want to pretend we're driving down the street, we see the Christmas lights everywhere.
00:46:16.980We say, oh, look at all these Christians, they're so great.
00:46:19.360And meanwhile, you know, those people with the Christmas lights are in their house, you know, they're looking at porn, they're whatever, beating their kids, whatever they're doing.
00:46:26.580So what you want to do, you want to take down the reindeer and you want to replace them with little devils and little, like, Baphomet.
00:46:31.240I think it would be good if we got to a point in our culture where only the people who are authentically, really, devoutly, observantly Christian even acknowledge or celebrate Christmas.
00:46:42.740Because they're the only ones who should be.
00:46:44.460They're the only ones that, this is not a holiday for everyone to enjoy.
00:46:48.380The spirit of Christmas is giving to people.
00:46:57.760And so it's the people who actually care about Christianity who have a right to our celebration.
00:47:01.680I don't like how our culture comes in and takes all of the Christmas, all the Christian celebrations and gets rid of all the religious significance.
00:47:09.140And they just keep the, they keep the celebrations for themselves.
00:47:35.920They lived at a time when there was, there were prophecies floating around that the ruler of the world would come from Judah.
00:47:42.320But even in that incarnation, in the first year of incarnation, you see a journey of the world who might be kind of kooky on their religious views or a little out there or not quite.
00:47:54.120They might be magi from which we get magician.
00:47:56.160But they were drawn a little closer to Christ.
00:48:00.340It seemed, I'm looking at it a little more glass half full if we can get them to like Santa Claus.
00:48:06.020He really liked Christmas as a boy, even though he came from a basically secular Jewish household.
00:48:12.160And years later, that played some role in his conversion to Christ in a way that didn't involve Christmas cookies and, you know, little decorations on the tree.
00:48:22.240Yeah, and here's where I want to kind of put my, because I think in where I disagree with you, Matt, is what you're talking about is a society that completely and totally takes away their decorations and it's gone and it's everything.
00:48:33.200That's not a society that takes away their decorations and we're going to let the Christians do their thing.
00:48:37.640That's a society like the Soviet Union.
00:48:39.740They don't just take the decorations down.
00:48:41.540They ensure that nobody puts any decorations up.
00:48:44.340So, we're in a post-Christian society right now, but we are not yet fully in an anti-Christian society yet.
00:48:53.020And so long as that shell of a Christian society remains, we have to protect that shell so we can fill it up with something Christian.
00:49:00.480Because that natural law of being around the beauty of the decorations of Christmas and hearing people say Merry Christmas and Santa Claus, like he said about Andrew Klavan, could play a role in somebody's conversion later on.
00:49:11.840I know how to do it. I know how to make all of this work and to unite all of these various armies, some who want more Santa Claus and some who want the war to go further and, you know, have the devils go up.
00:49:23.760We have to add this important component of punching heretics to our Christmas tradition as St. Nicholas, as Santa Claus himself would have wanted.
00:49:57.140The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover.
00:50:12.520Our technical producer is Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro.