The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 109 - What Do Conservatives Want In The Age Of Trump？ ft. Mike Franc

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00:00:37.720 What do conservatives want in the age of Trump?

00:00:41.020 Fun as it is to talk about how Michael Moore colluded with the Russians, 0.85

00:00:44.260 or how Joy Reid colluded with the Russians, or how Barack Obama actually colluded with the Russians.

00:00:49.280 At some point, we should probably talk about actual public policy

00:00:52.700 and what sort of policy conservatives should try to wring out of the Trump administration

00:00:56.700 while we've still got control of the House and the Senate.

00:00:59.660 We will discuss with the great Mike Frank, research fellow and director of DC programs at the Hoover Institution,

00:01:05.860 former policy director and counsel for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,

00:01:10.080 and from 1997 to 2013, VP of Government Relations for the Heritage Foundation,

00:01:15.140 where he managed all of the think tank's outreach with Capitol Hill and the White House.

00:01:19.700 Mike has also served as communications director for former House Majority Leader Dick Armey,

00:01:24.180 and in roles at the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

00:01:30.120 Mike's appointment by Majority Leader McCarthy was widely hailed as a win for conservatives

00:01:34.660 and a sign that the GOP leadership would stop being so squishy,

00:01:38.740 which is something we all frequently hope for.

00:01:41.060 That's a very, very good thing.

00:01:42.560 In other news, after we speak to Mike, we will discuss Democrats taking a page out of the Hamas handbook 0.98

00:01:47.860 and using traumatized children as human shields to deflect criticism and smooth their paths

00:01:53.300 for incoherent, gut-grabbing legislation.

00:01:56.720 A Catholic's take on Billy Graham, the late Billy Graham,

00:01:59.460 and the greatest Olympian since Orsippus.

00:02:02.040 I am Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:04.240 We have got to get to Mike very quickly, but one thing, I will say, one thing with Mike Frank,

00:02:15.420 one of the great people in D.C., one of the few great people in D.C., perhaps,

00:02:20.060 is he's served many roles in his career, and a lot of us serve many roles in our careers these days

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00:05:18.140 Let's, speaking of Michaels, let's get to Mike Frank.

00:05:20.440 Mike, thank you for being here.

00:05:23.200 Doing very well.

00:05:24.160 Last time I saw you, we were in sunny Palm Beach doing a panel on the future of conservatism

00:05:29.060 with a couple hecklers in the audience calling us weasels.

00:05:32.820 And now we're, we are such impressive weasels, I hope, that we can now talk about the future

00:05:39.160 of conservatism under President Trump and in this new era moving forward.

00:05:44.100 So my first question to you, how is President Trump doing on policy in three levels compared

00:05:50.800 to what we expected from him, compared to what we could have expected from other Republican

00:05:55.740 presidents if somehow Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz won Michigan or Pennsylvania, and compared

00:06:03.360 to what we expected from former future President Hillary Clinton? 0.99

00:06:07.460 Well, in the last point, unmitigated success, if you do that comparison.

00:06:12.760 On the second point, I think that there's sort of two tribes in Washington right now, the

00:06:21.260 Republican tribe, the Democratic tribe.

00:06:24.380 Trump sort of did a hostile takeover in some ways of the Republican tribe, and he's stuck

00:06:29.960 with them.

00:06:30.620 In other words, there aren't a lot of people who will cross over anymore from one tribe

00:06:34.420 to the other, as there may have been 30, 40, 50 years ago.

00:06:37.720 And as a result, the kind of people he's been appointing to the agencies, the kind of judges

00:06:43.920 he's nominating to the federal courts, folks who've been nominated to the independent agencies,

00:06:48.940 all those kind of appointments have been drawn fairly, I'd say 80 to 90 percent from the same

00:06:55.840 pool of people that any of the other, what, 15 or 16 candidates who were vying for the Republican

00:07:02.440 nomination, who would have been drawing from them as well.

00:07:05.320 So it's a, you know, whether it's Pruitt at EPA, whether it's the kind of cabinet officials

00:07:10.580 he's named across the board, probably Jim Mattis, those kinds of individuals, not to

00:07:16.720 mention Justice Gorsuch, are straight from the, you know, from the core Republican playbook

00:07:23.860 as far as who should be running what agencies and the kind of policies they've been implementing

00:07:27.940 and the kind of advice they've been giving to lawmakers on Capitol Hill are very much in

00:07:33.740 line with that. And I think to the extent that he's exceeded my expectations, it's largely

00:07:38.380 been in that area where he's deregulated quite a bit. The tax bill, about as good as one could

00:07:44.300 expect, given the kind of political cross pressures you get on class warfare issues and so on.

00:07:51.080 It was an extraordinarily pro-growth corporate reform in a lot of different ways. On the individual

00:07:57.420 side, it was a mixed bag, but unbalanced. It did some pretty good things and we should,

00:08:01.480 we can talk about. Um, so he's exceeded my expectations in, in that regard.

00:08:07.180 Do you think, cause you bring up this great point of tribalism. One of my fears with President Trump,

00:08:12.540 I think a lot of people's fears was that he would make a deal with Democrats. He would compromise.

00:08:17.260 His true blue New Yorkerism would come out and he'd be wheeling and dealing with Chuck Schumer.

00:08:22.780 Is it the case that now because he picked a team and because the other side is dug in their heels so

00:08:29.420 much that actually partisan tribalism is, uh, preventing Donald Trump from, uh, moderating or, or, uh, losing

00:08:37.180 his conservative credibility? Yeah. You know, that's one way to look at it. I think there've been a couple

00:08:41.660 of instances so far where the president has offered things to, uh, Senator Schumer to, uh, uh, minority

00:08:50.140 leader Pelosi and they just haven't been able to say yes. Even though I think privately they probably

00:08:56.140 were inclined to want to say, Hey, we can get 30, 40 or 50% of what we're looking for here. Let's cut

00:09:01.260 a deal. Their base is so, um, uniformly hostile toward President Trump that they have not allowed

00:09:08.780 their leaders on Capitol Hill to cut these deals with them. So in some ways, uh, they're, uh, kind

00:09:14.620 of unmitigated, uh, you know, hostility toward President Trump has forced the Republican tribe

00:09:21.660 to gather together, you know, sort of circle the wagons and say, what can we get done with our own

00:09:26.140 numbers? And one of the things, for example, that has happened is, uh, we were seeing more and more

00:09:31.500 erosion of the super majority standards in the U S Senate in ways that will facilitate more judicial

00:09:38.380 nominations, um, of people Trump will put forward in a couple of few years ahead. Uh, so yeah, you

00:09:45.340 know, sometimes you have to be able to say, uh, take yes for an answer when you're, uh, demanding

00:09:50.140 something. That's why I haven't been doing that. I figured when he offered to legalize 1.8 million

00:09:56.540 illegal aliens that the Democrats have been harping on for years, I thought they might take yes for an 1.00

00:10:01.020 answer, but their base won't allow them. And it is funny when people harp on about the swamp,

00:10:07.020 in many ways, uh, the swamp, say moi, you know, people could look in the mirror and the politicians

00:10:12.220 are just doing what their constituents demand of them. Uh, what, what do you think, uh, looking,

00:10:18.460 looking forward, what do you think the president's policy goals from now until 2020? And, uh, perhaps

00:10:24.540 a different question, what should be the president's policy goals from now until the reelection? What

00:10:29.020 do you think they should be? Well, he's made a good down payment on tax reform. I would suggest that

00:10:36.700 if there's a second phase of tax reform in a nutshell, um, it would relate to the fact that

00:10:42.700 it's not discussed a lot, but the percentage of tax filers who currently itemize, uh, I mean,

00:10:49.100 this will be the last year for this is something like a little over a quarter, I believe, uh, 30% range.

00:10:55.180 Some estimates have the number of people who will itemize, meaning that they actually take deductions.

00:11:00.060 They care about the mortgage interest deduction, the state and local deduction, charitable deductions.

00:11:05.900 The, though that percent is likely to come in below 10% nationwide and probably below 5% in a lot of

00:11:13.580 states. So what that really means politically is that a lot of politicians will go back home and find

00:11:19.340 that almost nobody cares anymore about those big here to four, you know, third rail, um,

00:11:25.420 aspects of the tax code. If that's true, then phase two of tax reform could actually be very

00:11:30.300 ambitious and say, look, we'll, we're going to, we're going to further, uh, reduce rates. We're

00:11:34.460 going to further broaden the base by limiting or getting rid of entirely some of these other

00:11:38.540 deductions. We're going to increase the standard deduction even more. And we're basically,

00:11:42.700 basically going to, um, get, you know, several steps closer to, you know, supply side flat tax

00:11:49.420 nirvana. Okay. That's one. Two, uh, people don't really appreciate the extent to which the administrative

00:11:56.540 state, meaning that the agencies that interpret federal law and create regulations and regulatory

00:12:02.380 obligations on the part of individuals and businesses and all kinds of entities, uh, the extent

00:12:08.460 to which that, that side of government has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few decades. In fact,

00:12:15.020 we're on a trajectory where it won't be that much longer before the total estimated annual cost of

00:12:20.060 regulations is going to be greater than how much the IRS brings in in tax revenue. So if you think of

00:12:26.860 taxes as being an easy area to kind of quantify and think about and get angry about, well, regulations

00:12:33.260 ought to generate some of the same, um, juices negatively speaking, uh, when people start to

00:12:39.420 get their hands around that, it's a harder thing to illustrate because it's more hidden in a way than

00:12:44.460 taxes are. But I think reforming the administrative state is a lot of good proposals along those lines.

00:12:50.620 That's a, that's item number two on my agenda. And there's a lot of, um, ways in which the,

00:12:56.140 the executive branch can give away, give back some of the authority as it's glommed onto itself.

00:13:01.180 It's also an unnatural act for a branch of our government to willingly and voluntarily concede

00:13:07.020 authority and power. Trump seems to be inclined to do that. A lot of his appointees are inclined to

00:13:11.820 do that. So here's, you know, fingers crossed that this might actually be number two, a big item on

00:13:17.820 the agenda. And the third thing, and this is on the domestic side too, really is, um, is entitlements.

00:13:23.740 And people your age, Mike, you're, you know, you're going to be paying for my retirement. Thank you very

00:13:28.700 much. Right. Yeah. You're welcome. I didn't volunteer to do that, but you're welcome.

00:13:33.100 That's exactly right. But those numbers keep getting worse and worse. And basically what it

00:13:38.220 amounts to is that the promises that the government has made to Americans of all ages, especially those

00:13:44.220 from about age, you know, 45, 50 and older are well in excess of the ability we will have in the future

00:13:50.700 to pay that. So that the gap measures in the tens of trillions. And it just, it's going to come home,

00:13:56.620 those chickens will come home to roost at some point, and it's going to be sooner rather than

00:14:00.380 later. And that's something, the sooner you address that, the better off we'll all be in the end.

00:14:05.580 And of course, politically, it's very hard as long as there are organizations that want to run ads

00:14:10.860 showing, you know, Paul Ryan throwing a senior citizen in a wheelchair off a cliff, right? As long 1.00

00:14:16.220 as the politicians want to avoid those kinds of ads, they'll find excuses not to confront this, uh,

00:14:21.020 frontally. But I think that's probably the next big thing we have to do beyond regulatory reform and tax

00:14:26.220 further tax reform. And if that's going to be more than anything else, have to be bipartisan.

00:14:31.020 Of course. And that, you know, on the, on the first point with the administrative state,

00:14:34.460 I was able to meet Antonin Scalia a couple of times in college. And he, we asked him what the

00:14:40.380 greatest threat to liberty was. And he said, the greatest threat to liberty in the United States

00:14:44.540 is the administrative state, these unaccountable, headless, godless bureaucracies that don't have

00:14:50.780 to be responsive to the American people. And we even asked him, we said, well, what about

00:14:55.260 states' rights? What about federalism? What about this? He said, why are you asking me about federalism?

00:14:59.580 I'm a fed. I have absolutely no incentive to reduce the power of the federal government. Just as you say,

00:15:06.540 there is, I suppose, some hope with a wrecking ball like Donald Trump, that he doesn't particularly care

00:15:12.540 about the accumulation of power in the executive, despite all of the warnings that he would be a tyrant

00:15:17.660 or an authoritarian or something. He does seem willing to just knock it all to rubble. And that'd

00:15:22.780 be very good on entitlement reform. This is an issue I've worried about for a long time because

00:15:28.140 I don't want to pay for your retirement. And of course, it's been, I intend to live for a very

00:15:33.580 long time, right? So you'll be paying for me for a long time. Decades and decades. And it's always

00:15:40.060 seemed to me like generational theft, like the baby boomer generation spending money that they don't

00:15:45.660 have that we were going to have to pay back. It's considered the third rail of politics.

00:15:50.700 No one's willing to touch it. Any Republican who does try to touch it is immediately demagogued.

00:15:54.780 Paul Ryan probably leading the way. Mitch Daniels gave a speech at CPAC a few years ago where he said,

00:16:00.380 we're facing a new red menace. This one consisting of ink. What is the likelihood going into the campaign?

00:16:06.940 President Trump said that he wouldn't touch social security. He wouldn't touch entitlements.

00:16:12.060 But President Trump says a lot of things on the campaign trail. What do you think the odds are

00:16:16.860 that in this administration or soon thereafter, we actually get entitlement reform, whether that's

00:16:22.380 means testing, whether that's raising the age, whether that's changing the benefit in some way?

00:16:29.100 20 years ago, the stars seem to have been in alignment to do just that. There was a

00:16:33.820 bipartisan commission created for Medicare. There were all kinds of serious proposals on both sides of

00:16:41.740 of the political spectrum that were trying to help design methods to solve that. And then Monica Lewinsky 1.00

00:16:49.260 showed up on the scene and both sides went to their respective corners. And all those reform impulses

00:16:55.580 went away in a nanosecond. So the point being that you kind of need to have the right moment arise

00:17:02.380 and need to have a few people out there who can transcend the partisan divide and say,

00:17:08.140 this is something we have to do as a country. And it's going to require some give and take on both

00:17:12.860 sides. Now, the thing about entitlements, frankly, is that you can do it in a couple of different ways.

00:17:17.420 You can reduce the benefits for the people who are eligible. You can increase the revenue that's

00:17:21.500 supposed to come in to fund it. Or you can do some kind of combination of the two. Well, the problem

00:17:26.300 here is that for the people on the political left, is that you can only do so much on the tax side before

00:17:32.300 you really start to eat into the seed corn for future prosperity. Almost all of the reforms would

00:17:39.500 have to be on reforming the amount of benefits that go out, the terms and conditions under which they

00:17:44.860 go out, and not in creating some kind of unsustainable, debilitating increase in the tax burden.

00:17:51.820 So in a way, if you're on the right, you're about 90% to 95% going to get reforms that will reduce

00:18:00.860 future government outlays in ways that will hopefully protect the core purpose behind these

00:18:06.460 entitlements, basically to prevent older folks from going into really ugly forms of poverty without 0.72

00:18:13.660 bankrupting everybody along the way. That makes perfect sense. Do you anticipate that

00:18:19.500 being at all likely in this administration, or do you think- Well, not in the short term at all,

00:18:23.820 frankly. But I do think you have to be on the lookout for politicians who can speak that language and

00:18:29.900 might show up on the scene and say, you know, I'm going to maybe offend some of my colleagues and my

00:18:35.980 party caucuses and go out there and start forming alliances with people on the other side. And frankly,

00:18:41.980 there aren't a lot of them. Now, the ones that have shown up that I thought might

00:18:45.500 fit that role tend to go into a partisan quarter very quickly, given the nature of Congress these

00:18:51.100 days. But it's going to have to happen and it's going to have to happen sooner rather than later.

00:18:55.500 You know, it's funny on that point of throwing granny off the cliff, a friend of mine and I, 1.00

00:18:59.420 who were on the draft Mitch Daniels campaign in 2012, we aired a TV ad shortly thereafter,

00:19:05.100 where it was the same as the Democrats ad where Paul Ryan throws granny off a cliff,

00:19:09.100 except it was Nancy Pelosi throwing, or Barack Obama or somebody throwing a baby in a stroller off the 0.89

00:19:14.460 cliff. But of course, Democrats don't have a huge problem with that. So it didn't,

00:19:18.060 it didn't catch on, unfortunately. But also younger people historically have not

00:19:23.500 been as motivated to defend their side of that argument. It's always been people, you know,

00:19:28.620 my age and older, who the organizations out there could scare into some kind of active involvement,

00:19:34.620 communicating to their member of Congress and, you know, keep the government's hands off my

00:19:38.620 Medicare or social security. Right, right. And that tends to work more, much more politically

00:19:44.620 than does the alternative of getting younger people motivated. In fact, most young people,

00:19:49.020 when polled, don't think they're going to get anything anyway. So there's an irony,

00:19:53.100 sort of cynical and realistic about that, right? Yeah. Now, in terms of bridging the gap and all of

00:20:00.620 this being able to really operate in this DC mode, you've been in DC for a while, you've been very

00:20:05.180 very successful in DC. You've accomplished a lot of things at all of these conservative

00:20:09.260 institutions. I've been here a long time. Let's put it that way. You've been here a long time.

00:20:12.620 Success? I don't know. You've got your finger on the pulse, at least. How is DC warming up to

00:20:17.660 President Trump? There were reports that he was having trouble staffing early on because the lifers 0.97

00:20:22.860 and the experts were wary of his administration. I know a number of people who were wary of his

00:20:27.820 administration. Is the swamp finally embracing the Donald? No, they're not. But what I do think is

00:20:36.940 that there are some alliances that are forming that are kind of unavoidable in a way. I mean,

00:20:42.860 going into an election cycle like we're about to now, members of Congress who might have had

00:20:48.700 an instinct early on to keep a distance from Trump are thinking, well, I'm going to need a united front

00:20:54.380 on this. And frankly, when you see polling numbers and approval ratings start to turn around a little

00:20:59.820 bit, that gives a lot of politicians who otherwise have weak knees a sense of, okay, maybe I can throw

00:21:05.420 my lot in with this guy and rally my base. Because really what's going to happen probably in this

00:21:11.020 election is the base that's anti-Trump will be inundated with appeals to get out to vote,

00:21:17.740 to convert their friends and neighbors and so on to vote as well.

00:21:21.020 And so it's going to become a base election in many ways. If you look at the electorate and the

00:21:26.700 way it's distributed by congressional districts and so on, if you can motivate your base and if you're

00:21:32.540 Trump, that means you can win a lot of districts across the country. I think he won about 240 or so

00:21:38.620 in the last election, lost about, I think, 23 to Secretary Clinton. And he won 12 districts that

00:21:47.500 have Democrats in them. So there were 23 currently sitting Republican districts that went for Clinton,

00:21:52.780 13 or so that went for Trump. If you can basically rally those areas of the country together,

00:21:59.580 the Republicans can hold on to a House majority, slim as it might be. And the numbers in the Senate

00:22:05.340 side suggest there's quite a few red states that have Democratic incumbents up, as we all know.

00:22:11.180 And, you know, if these numbers start to solidify, if the tax bill law becomes much more popular than

00:22:19.340 it has been, and it's gotten more popular. It has grown in popularity, at least.

00:22:23.660 Sure. I mean, when it was passed and voted on, most people were being told,

00:22:28.300 this is a tax increase. So they said, when asked by a pollster, do you like it or not like it? Oh,

00:22:33.180 this is a tax increase. I'm against it. Now they're starting to find out that it's leading to

00:22:38.300 some reduction in their tax burden. But it's also leading their employers to say, look,

00:22:42.220 we have more revenue coming in because of lower rates on corporate profits. And we have other

00:22:46.860 kinds of immediate expenses we can do when we invest in equipment and so on. So we're going to

00:22:50.860 expand our factory floor production. We're going to hire more workers. We're going to get raises,

00:22:55.580 put more money into 401 plans and retirement accounts. Hey, this bill's pretty good. It's not

00:23:01.420 what I was told it was going to be. So I think only 24 percent of Americans on the day that it was

00:23:06.940 signed into law thought they were getting a tax cut. And we all know that number,

00:23:10.620 according to some estimates, is as high as 80 percent. So as more and more people realize

00:23:15.340 that their initial expectation was off and they're going to be pleasantly surprised,

00:23:19.260 when you create a very low bar in general for a politician, it's easy to exceed it than if the bar

00:23:25.260 is very high. By the way, that's, I think, a theme for the Democrats and Trump. They define him to be

00:23:32.220 basically a fascist racist who has all these horrible, you know, personal character traits. 1.00

00:23:37.420 And an idiot. So not just a fascist and a racist, but also completely incompetent. 1.00

00:23:41.340 And mentally unstable. So all the, if he exceeds any of those or some of those, 1.00

00:23:46.540 he's already exceeded expectations. So it's a very easy bar to surmount.

00:23:50.300 I'm not sure why they're doing it that way, but that's their chosen path.

00:23:53.100 Well, it's funny. I remember Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both did a forum and they talked about

00:23:58.780 one of the political advantages they had is that they both played a little bit dumber than their 0.99

00:24:03.420 mark. And Bill Clinton played like a real nice guy. Hey, I feel your pain. And George Bush, 0.92

00:24:08.140 he played a little dumber than his mark and it helped them. And clearly in the eyes of the 0.99

00:24:12.060 mainstream media and the democratic party, Donald Trump has raised this to a high art form.

00:24:17.180 Oh yeah. I mean, so he's, if he continues where he is, I think the last, I saw a poll,

00:24:22.620 the Rasmussen 48% approval, you know, that's, he, Rasmussen's generally in the general ballpark

00:24:29.900 of the other polls. So if Trump maintains a high forties even for approval rating, that's about

00:24:36.460 where Obama was for a long part of his eight years. You never know. I mean, if you, if you,

00:24:40.540 if they're concentrated in certain 48% nationwide might translate into 55 or 60% in certain key

00:24:47.420 competitive congressional seats, well, if you have a pretty good approval rating above water

00:24:52.860 in those places, you might, he might sustain, you know, and retain a lot of seats for his,

00:24:57.580 his party base. Now, how do you think looking at these first 13 months, because something that has

00:25:03.020 bothered me a little bit about the Trump critics on the right is that I think they're missing the

00:25:08.300 forest for the trees and they're focused on how he sips his Chardonnay rather than tax reform or

00:25:14.140 rather than regulatory reform or whatever. In these first 13 months, how do you think

00:25:18.860 Donald Trump's administration compares with past Republican administrations, Eisenhower, Nixon,

00:25:24.300 Reagan, the Bushes, part of Clinton, I guess, depending on how you look at it.

00:25:29.420 There is one thing I'll say that I don't like about the way the president operates, which is

00:25:35.740 a lot of Americans, and I'll give you some examples of, you know, my mom happens to be in a nursing

00:25:40.620 home. And most of the people who work there are these wonderful, hardworking folks from

00:25:44.940 Sierra Leone and Ghana and Ethiopia and countries like that. And they're very polite. But when they,

00:25:50.860 when we talk about this and President Trump in particular, they say, you know, I wanted,

00:25:55.580 I want a president who's more presidential. I want someone I can look up to and admire and be inspired by,

00:26:01.100 and they're not getting that out of President Trump. And I think that's, that's a problem in a lot

00:26:06.860 of ways, because there is a kind of psychological side to what a president is supposed to do that

00:26:14.540 can inspire and elevate and, and make people, you know, better and more hardworking and more proud

00:26:21.180 of their country. In some ways, all this discord, I think it's in the way of that. And I wish,

00:26:26.140 like a lot of other people, he would turn off the Twitter account and focus on, on being more inspiring

00:26:32.940 and being a leader in a more traditional sense. And that just may be, you know, my age speaking here,

00:26:38.700 but it kind of wonder, like, how, how can you ultimately, you know, can convert people to the

00:26:46.380 things that I think are better policies and better outcomes for Americans? If, if your style is getting

00:26:53.740 in the way of, of having that conversation with somebody and opening up their eyes and their hearts

00:26:58.700 and their souls to a better, a better path forward to prosperity, uh, elevating your family and your,

00:27:04.780 your kids and giving them a shot at a good future, all those things sometimes require the, the non,

00:27:10.220 you know, policy stuff that the, the, the, the evangelical inspirational side of being a president.

00:27:17.260 So that's my big complaint. I, I, I totally see that complaint. I, I'm a big defender of the Twitter.

00:27:23.260 I love the Twitter, not because I like the style per se, I'm not defending that, but I think that

00:27:29.500 the mainstream media have become so viciously corrupt in a way that we didn't even see during

00:27:35.820 the Bush years or even during the Clinton years, they become so viciously partisan, particularly the

00:27:41.020 Washington Post and CNN and the New York times that I, I wonder if we just need this wrecking ball.

00:27:47.020 And I, I long for the days of Ronald Reagan and morning in America and this genteel, more dignified

00:27:54.300 conservatism. But I wonder if before we can get that again, we need this bulldog who speaks like

00:28:00.380 he's from a construction site to go in and smack CNN around. Maybe I'm putting lipstick on a pig, 0.99

00:28:06.140 but I, I get a real, uh, a joy out of it because Barack Obama in so many ways looked like a president. 0.74

00:28:12.300 He in so many ways sounded like one. He went on TV with Chris Wallace. He said, Chris,

00:28:16.860 we, we are not abusing our powers. Chris, full stop. I assure you. And he really, you really,

00:28:23.020 I even have to question myself because now we know for a fact he was lying through his teeth,

00:28:27.660 but he was such a good actor that I still, I don't know whether to trust, uh, you know,

00:28:32.700 the reality, you know, my, my lion eyes or what he's telling me. And I wonder if there's something

00:28:37.740 about the, the, just the fact of what Donald Trump is doing. This gets to my, my real question

00:28:44.140 here, which is, is it fair to call Donald Trump, uh, a man who speaks brashly and he's from New 0.99

00:28:50.700 York and he's donated to Nancy Pelosi and he, you know, uh, didn't come up through the

00:28:56.940 Bill Buckley school of conservative education. Is it fair to call him a conservative?

00:29:00.700 I wouldn't call him a conservative. Uh, I think, I think a lot of what he's doing is situational

00:29:07.500 ethics in the sense that he is, uh, aligning with his, his tribe, as we talked about at the

00:29:12.620 beginning of this. And I think if he had sensed that there was an opening in the democratic field,

00:29:17.740 when he came down that escalator that day, he might've been announcing that he'd run as a Democrat. I,

00:29:22.460 I don't get the sense that he's had this, uh, any firm ideological, uh, you know, groundings for,

00:29:29.580 uh, for his life. I grew up in New York city and Donald Trump's always been background noise in my

00:29:35.180 life ever since he fixed the Ingalls rink in central park when I was thinking high school,

00:29:39.420 you know? And, um, so he's done some effective things and so on, but, um, I would not call him

00:29:46.380 a principal conservative. And my earlier point, Mike, is I think that we need, someone needs to do

00:29:52.220 the, the, uh, inspirational side of things. And, you know, maybe it's not the president,

00:29:56.380 maybe it's someone else, but, but I don't think you can leave that vacuum out there and expect that

00:30:01.420 young people who are just coming in and being exposed to politics for the first time are going

00:30:07.100 to be able to kind of latch onto, uh, an idea and a way of, of expressing it the way I did.

00:30:13.980 And when I was coming into, to this part of my life, it was late 1970s, New York city was really

00:30:20.540 failing. And I started reading and learning about alternatives to the kind of policies that we

00:30:26.380 were being told were just the new normal and you had to get used to crime. It was okay that the

00:30:31.660 Bronx was burning because that's the way things are. Yeah. And, and people started offering different

00:30:39.260 ideas. And this guy named Ronald Reagan came along and a lot of people inspired by him like a Jack Kemp

00:30:44.300 and so on were out there offering an alternative vision that to me was very inspiring. And I know to a

00:30:49.740 lot of my peers, same way who's doing that right now with, um, you know, for younger people and who

00:30:56.460 were thinking or people who just become citizens who are open to these ideas and can be really, um,

00:31:02.140 easily, uh, converted into being, uh, principled and lifelong conservatives. Uh, I, I think that's

00:31:08.380 missing. And I, I kind of, I wish it weren't the case. I do see that because when I go to the Reagan

00:31:13.180 library, which I do frequently, I cannot get through that library without shedding a tear.

00:31:19.100 I can't get, it's so unbelievably inspiring to do that. And I, I wonder about the Trump library,

00:31:25.420 what that experience will be like. And the one thing that gives me great comfort is I know that

00:31:29.580 Democrats won't be able to get through it without shedding a tear. And those are different kinds of

00:31:33.340 tears, but it does give me, it is a, I suppose it's a pleasure for, uh, 2018 because this Twitter

00:31:40.300 aspect, I think the reason Donald Trump has been so effective on Twitter is that he's so authentic

00:31:45.660 on Twitter. You get this feeling that you are getting this guy's gut reaction. And I actually

00:31:50.540 know it's fairly authentic because when he tweeted my blank book, when he endorsed my blank book,

00:31:55.740 it wasn't some grand plan by the white house. He tweeted it as I was on television. He saw it

00:32:00.940 happening on television, tweeted a couple of things from it. I know it was happening in real time.

00:32:04.860 That's why it's so nice. And you even see this with movie stars. Now movie stars used to be so removed

00:32:10.140 from the public, but now the movie stars, they're in your face, they're yelling at you on Instagram

00:32:15.500 and doing all this political stuff. And it is a little more shallow. It is a little too tangible,

00:32:22.460 a little too real. There's nothing where you're really looking up at the big screen anymore. I

00:32:27.020 wonder if this is just a fact of the culture in 2018. I wonder if Donald Trump in this way.

00:32:32.540 I don't doubt that. I've wondered too, I like to read a lot of history, you know, and

00:32:35.900 I'm wondering when the histories of Donald J. Trump are being written in the future and they're

00:32:42.300 being sourced by some renowned historian at a major university, are they going to be all

00:32:48.060 citing to Twitter? There's not going to be citing to diaries or letters written, you know,

00:32:53.340 formal documents, whatever. None of that's going to be available. It's going to all be

00:32:57.500 whatever the Twitter feed generated. And I imagine someone somewhere is capturing and

00:33:02.620 saving all the official presidential documents when it's a private Twitter account. I don't know.

00:33:07.340 I don't know what the legalities are of this, but someone's collecting it.

00:33:10.380 And that's what the historians will be working off of it. 3.23 in the morning,

00:33:14.700 February 21st, 2018. Here's what the president tweeted. You know, it's, it's going to be a different

00:33:19.980 kind of history. That's for sure. You know, Ronald Reagan had all of those great love letters

00:33:23.660 that have been uncovered that he wrote to Nancy. Could you imagine we were just,

00:33:27.020 hey, Nancy, you up? Question mark. Smiley emoji. That basically is going to be, well,

00:33:32.620 that says a lot about the culture now, but you know, we only get one day at a time. And if,

00:33:36.300 if we've gotten this first good year out of Trump, even as a matter of situation,

00:33:39.980 I suppose hope springs eternal in the human breast. And maybe we can wring a little bit more liberty out

00:33:44.860 of this great nation before it finally smolders into eternity. Well, if you think about it, contrast

00:33:51.100 Trump to Reagan in a way, Trump's coming in as president with an infrastructure of like-minded

00:33:57.660 and generally meaning party, Republican right of center thinking, ensconced at the state level,

00:34:04.140 all the governors in the state legislative chambers, majorities in the House and Senate.

00:34:07.900 When Ronald Reagan came in, the conservative movement was very much a, a new and developing

00:34:14.060 thing. And there was some converts to it who may not have really understood the details,

00:34:19.020 but the president, President Reagan was pretty much leading a parade that was forming behind him

00:34:24.940 anew, whereas Trump's coming in and inheriting a very well-developed and deep movement.

00:34:31.260 But what it lacks right now, I think it, like I said earlier, is the inspiration and the kind of

00:34:37.820 appeal to people that will cause realignments and conversions to occur.

00:34:42.940 Sure. I see that. And well, you know, listen, we're only in the first year. Maybe we'll get a little

00:34:46.700 more out of it. At least, at least I'm grateful for what we've gotten so far. And maybe we can,

00:34:51.180 maybe we can hope that during the Trump presidential library, by the end of it,

00:34:55.900 we'll get two kinds of tears. I think that's what we're all hoping for.

00:34:58.540 Where, where, where will the Trump presidential library be located?

00:35:01.980 That's Mar-a-Lago, baby. We're going to fly back down to Palm Beach to go visit.

00:35:05.900 Yeah.

00:35:06.220 Mike, thank you so much for being here. We got, we got to hop out. Mike Frank, we got to bring you

00:35:12.140 back because you are the expert on all of these things. Thank you very much. Now we have got to

00:35:16.380 get onto the news, but before we do that, I got to tell you about a couple of things.

00:35:19.500 Now, look, you might be looking at me and say, Michael, you got these horrible bags under your

00:35:23.740 eyes. Why is that? Well, it's because I didn't get my requisite 20 hours of sleep last night.

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00:37:31.420 Don't say I never did anything for you. HelixSleep.com slash Knowles. Okay. We got to say

00:37:36.300 goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. I said goodbye to YouTube a long time ago, but I'll say goodbye

00:37:39.980 to Facebook. If you are on the dailywire.com right now, thank you. You help keep the lights

00:37:45.900 on and covfefe in my mug. If you are not, please go there. It is $10 a month or $100 for an annual

00:37:52.060 membership. What do you get? Me, The Andrew Klavan Show, The Ben Shapiro Show, The Conversation,

00:37:56.220 next time starring the big boss, Ben Shapiro himself. You get no ads on the website. All

00:38:01.220 that's great. Blah, blah, blah. They're going to start construction of the Donald Trump presidential

00:38:05.840 library very soon. When you go, you will not be, you will drown by the final exhibit unless you have

00:38:12.600 the leftist tears tumbler. This is the only way that you're going to be able to see it. It is going

00:38:16.420 to be huge. It is going to be beautiful. It is going to be a big, beautiful presidential library,

00:38:20.800 but unfortunately it will flood and all be for naught. If you don't have your leftist tears

00:38:24.440 tumbler, the only FDA approved vessel to carry salty, delicious leftist tears. So go to dailywire.com.

00:38:30.900 We have so much more to talk about the Florida kids who are being pimped out by the left-wing

00:38:34.900 press and the democratic party, the great Billy Graham and, uh, and more, but be sure to come

00:38:41.220 back and visit us. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back.

00:38:50.800 This is really despicable is what's being done with these Florida students. It is so awful.

00:38:59.860 These Florida students are being manipulated by the mainstream media and Democrat activists to

00:39:05.080 push a gun control agenda, a completely nonsensical gun control agenda that would not have prevented this

00:39:11.080 shooting or others. There are now walkouts that are being staged. These kids are being thrown on TV

00:39:16.320 constantly and, and by TV, I mean CNN. I'm not talking about actual news channels. I'm talking

00:39:21.540 about CNN. Uh, I have tried to avoid talking about this and writing about these kids because I feel

00:39:27.060 very bad for them. I feel bad obviously because they've had this trauma and also because they're

00:39:31.480 being used in the same way that Hamas uses kids as a human shield so that any criticism you could make

00:39:37.060 of Democrats, it nonsensical proposals, uh, is considered hateful and it looks like you're attacking

00:39:43.100 kids. It's so despicable and disgusting what the Democrats are doing here. Um, but look, 0.94

00:39:49.000 if someone's going to enter the public sphere and inject himself into a public conversation,

00:39:54.340 we have to grapple with that. We have to respond to that. We have to talk about that.

00:39:57.400 Even if he's a high school senior, even if he's being exploited by adults around him,

00:40:01.880 like his parents and like the politicians who are pimping him out, who should know a lot better

00:40:05.880 without any further ado. Here is Marjorie Stoneman, Douglas high school senior, David Hogg.

00:40:10.120 People are going to keep saying, Oh, this is just another shooting. It's never going to happen

00:40:14.040 to me. But what happens is when you don't take action, things like this eventually will happen

00:40:18.960 to you. And that's not acceptable. And that's why I call on people to stand up, talk to the

00:40:22.800 congressman, talk to people and don't stop fighting because children will continue to die. If we don't

00:40:28.540 take a stand now, what we really need is action because we can say, yes, we're going to do all these

00:40:32.600 things, thoughts and prayers. What we need more than that is action. Please. This is the 18th one this year.

00:40:38.940 That isn't true. This isn't the 18th one this year. This isn't even the fifth. And even if you're

00:40:43.720 just judging by a gun accidentally going off near a school, I don't even think it's the fifth.

00:40:50.820 They're pretending now that the United States has the, it's the only Western country with mass

00:40:55.080 shootings. It has the most mass shootings in any Western country. The United States isn't even in

00:40:59.120 the top 10 of Western countries with mass shootings. So everything this kid is saying just isn't true.

00:41:05.540 And, but then the political implications of what he's saying, that we need to do something. And if

00:41:10.500 you're not doing something, then you're somehow endangering the lives of children or endangering

00:41:16.100 American lives is a lie. And it's a calumny. It's just not, it's so awful to even say that because

00:41:22.160 Oprah tweeted this out today. She said, we have to do something enough. The implication being, if you

00:41:26.960 oppose whatever gun grabbing laws, they want to pass, you're, you're a monster or you don't care about 0.90

00:41:32.400 human suffering. What law, what law do you want? I asked Oprah this. I would ask this kid this, 0.60

00:41:38.620 but I just feel so bad that he's being pimped out by the irresponsible adults around him,

00:41:42.960 that there is, there isn't a law that could be passed short of banning guns, I suppose.

00:41:49.380 And even then that wouldn't work. There isn't a law that could be passed that would prevent this

00:41:53.620 shooting or shootings like it. There just isn't one. There were more guns than people in this country.

00:41:58.060 So even repealing the second amendment isn't practical. Even repealing the second amendment,

00:42:03.180 repealing the right to keep guns like they did in Australia, didn't result in all the guns going

00:42:07.760 away. Only a third of people surrendered their guns. Not even most people surrendered their guns.

00:42:12.600 In this country, there were more guns than people. That wouldn't happen. What about any of the slew

00:42:17.000 of gun control laws proposed by Democrats in 10 years? Even the left-wing Washington Post admits

00:42:21.620 they wouldn't have prevented these shootings. It is, it's really disingenuous. And we shouldn't say,

00:42:26.880 oh, that's nice. Oh, you mean well. They don't mean well. They don't mean well. They're, they're

00:42:31.880 pushing lie after lie on television. They're exploiting children on television and they're

00:42:38.100 impugning the character and the motives of half of their countrymen. And they're trying to remove a

00:42:42.820 civil right that is basic to the American country, that is basic to our constitution. That was,

00:42:49.300 there was a great debate over whether it should even be included in the Bill of Rights because it

00:42:54.560 should be taken for granted. It was so obvious that people in this country, in a free country,

00:42:59.320 have the right to defend themselves, have the right to arm themselves. Really, really despicable. And

00:43:04.120 all of the adults around these kids should feel deep, deep shame and, and reconsider what they're

00:43:09.420 doing because this isn't going to age well. This is not going to age well in 10 years or 20 years.

00:43:14.400 It's really awful. I can't, I'm surprised even by Democrats at how low they've fallen with this

00:43:20.860 regard. Uh, okay. Now we've got to get to a much happier story. The greatest Olympian since

00:43:25.780 Orsippus is upon us. The single greatest Olympian. I don't like the Olympics. I don't watch them. I

00:43:30.940 don't care about them. I think usually it's just an excuse for NBC to say mean things about the

00:43:35.140 country. But one woman is making the Olympic games great again. Here she is. 1.00

00:43:40.020 Dropping in, trying to get into this right wall for a nice, just kind of up to the top of the wall,

00:43:46.800 going for these grabs, the safety grab you'll see there, and opting for another, just cruising up to

00:43:53.100 the top of the wall, showing the judges she can make it down this half by the queen. With the alley-oop

00:43:59.940 spin down at the bottom, to the left, and then a nice...

00:44:03.820 If you weren't watching because you don't subscribe, that was, uh, Elizabeth Sweeney,

00:44:09.560 who's a 33-year-old Harvard graduate, uh, not doing any tricks, just kind of going back and

00:44:16.220 forth on her skis, uh, not doing anything. She made it to the Olympics by exploiting a loophole in 0.57

00:44:21.440 Hungary. She's an American, but her grandfather was Hungarian or something. So she registered in

00:44:27.280 Hungary, competed in World Cup events, which were the qualifying events for the Olympics,

00:44:32.080 and she regularly finished in the top 30 in Hungary, but only because there weren't 30 competitors

00:44:37.920 or because a couple of girls would crash along the way. So if she just didn't crash, 1.00

00:44:42.920 she would not end up dead last and she would make it. I love this. I also love the commentators

00:44:48.660 trying to take this seriously, where it's like a child just going up and down, you know,

00:44:53.400 but not falling over. This is American ingenuity at its finest. This is trolling at its finest.

00:44:58.100 I really, really appreciate it. Uh, you know, she actually, this Sweeney gave an interview

00:45:04.060 on NBC in which she seemed to take her mediocre athleticism quite seriously, which I was shocked

00:45:10.440 to see. That's not a good look. She sounded maybe a little bit entitled, like an entitled 0.91

00:45:14.620 oblivious millennial from Harvard, but I repeat myself. So I don't know how seriously she takes

00:45:20.200 herself, but then I thought, well, maybe she's just doing a perfect troll. You know, like when I did the

00:45:27.100 blank book, I went on TV and kept a straight face, but I, I, that was like an amateur hour

00:45:32.340 compared to this woman because she's going on into the news and saying, I am, I am a real athlete.

00:45:37.480 I'm a great athlete. So I'm going to choose to view the situation that way. Great troll, great stuff

00:45:42.900 and a, and a wonderful way to mock the Olympic games and show the rest of the world that even

00:45:46.940 our most mediocre countrymen still contribute more to the international community than the entire

00:45:51.500 rest of the world. Great stuff. Okay. And then in sadder news, but hopefully he's up in heaven,

00:45:56.840 Billy Graham is dead at age 99. Uh, if somehow you don't know who Billy Graham is, here is a Billy

00:46:02.980 preaching to 120,000 people at Wembley stadium in the UK in 1954. I believe that we stand on the verge

00:46:10.320 of a historic moment that could have an unparalleled and unprecedented impact in a world that is

00:46:17.180 confused, perplexed, and frustrated at this hour. And I'm convinced of one thing that during the past

00:46:26.260 few weeks, we have seen an easing of world tension. And I believe that one of the contributing factors

00:46:34.980 to the easing of world tension and the prospects of an era of peace is the great spiritual awakening

00:46:43.680 that we believe is taking place in many parts of the world. Billy Graham. So some people wrongly

00:46:51.380 believe that Billy was the first televangelist and there are a million that follow. Now there's the

00:46:56.300 guy who smiles all the time and you know, people are on TV all the time, but he was one of the first,

00:47:01.760 but he wasn't the first televangelist. Uh, the first televangelist was this guy, a Catholic by the name

00:47:06.980 of Fulton Sheen. So we say to them, listen to this statement. I will tell you later who said it,

00:47:13.920 but we address it to the Soviets. If any nation whatsoever is detained by force within the boundaries

00:47:20.920 of a certain state, and if that nation, contrary to its expressed desire, is not given the right to

00:47:29.920 determine the form of its state life by free voting and completely free from the presence of troops

00:47:37.260 of the annexing or stronger state, and without any pressure, then the incorporation of that nation

00:47:44.920 by the stronger state is annexation. It is seizure by force. It is violence. Who said this?

00:47:54.000 Nikolai Lenin. Then Soviets under God follow it. 0.93

00:48:04.100 Free these people. That's the first thing that we have to solve in the world.

00:48:09.580 Then our other problems will be solved. No other problem will be solved until we liberate them.

00:48:14.880 Fulton Sheen. That's a little bit more my speed because it's, it's, uh, this, uh, Catholic clergyman,

00:48:20.220 uh, giving the tear down this wall speech decades before Ronald Reagan did. I really like that just

00:48:26.040 railing against the Soviets, but I like Billy Graham too. So I was trying to think of, uh,

00:48:30.600 what Catholics should think about Billy Graham because obviously his theology was a little bit

00:48:34.760 wonky, not quite there from our perspective. Uh, but I do generally like the guy. He was a fairly

00:48:40.660 anti-Catholic and a Democrat until the, the Richard Nixon presidency. But eventually he came

00:48:46.280 around on both points. As St. John Vianney said, not all the saints started well, but they all ended

00:48:50.380 well. And you, you can see that in, uh, Billy Graham's evolution on those issues. Uh, upon Pope

00:48:56.340 John Paul II's death, uh, St. John Paul II's death, Billy Graham, uh, called, uh, John Paul the most

00:49:04.360 influential voice for morality and peace in a hundred years. He said, quote, I have a very strange

00:49:09.360 feeling of loss. I almost feel as though one of my family members is gone. I loved him very much

00:49:13.820 and had the opportunity of discussing so many things with him. And we wrote each other several

00:49:17.280 times during the years. He was impossible not to like Billy Graham. Uh, a lot of my Catholic

00:49:23.400 friends really liked him. An old family friend of mine, truly a saint, more Catholic than the Pope,

00:49:28.140 uh, would go to confession about 150 times a day and very Catholic, all of Catholic schooling.

00:49:34.260 Um, he, he loved watching Billy Graham. And this is true of a lot of Catholics that I know.

00:49:38.420 He loved seeing him on television. Every, everyone agreed that his, uh, his belief was sincere. He was

00:49:44.280 a sincere man. Billy Graham was cautious of politics, saying of political involvement from

00:49:48.580 the pulpit quote, you know, I think in a way that has to be up to the individual as he feels led of

00:49:53.740 the Lord. A lot of things that I commented on years ago would not have been of the Lord, I'm sure.

00:49:59.280 But I think you have some like communism or segregation on which I think you have a responsibility to speak

00:50:04.780 out. Billy Graham was wonderful on these issues. He personally desegregated audiences. He said,

00:50:10.640 there is no room for segregation at the foot of the cross. An incredible line. It's ultimately where

00:50:16.260 all the, the, the handful of racists on the right or the alt-right types go so wrong because, uh, 0.94

00:50:23.060 they seem blissfully ignorant that the animating force of the civilization they pretend to defend 0.96

00:50:27.760 is one in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free, neither male nor female, 0.92

00:50:32.860 but all are one in Christ Jesus. So what do we make of Billy Graham? Especially if you're a Catholic 0.97

00:50:38.680 or, or Eastern Orthodox or something. Uh, Protestants can lead people to, to higher grounds. They can lead

00:50:45.120 people to the Lord and they can lead people to what I think is a more grounded theology and a more

00:50:50.040 sober theology because it happened for me. I was an atheist for a long time. And, and many of the

00:50:54.940 people, almost uniformly, the people who led me back to the church were Protestants. And some of

00:50:59.580 those people now are also Catholic, but it was a lot of Protestants. I think there, especially in

00:51:03.620 America, there, they can be a little bit of a gateway drug. And so I think it would be very

00:51:07.680 uncharitable for Catholics to say mean things about Billy Graham. Uh, uh, you know, the Lord uses people

00:51:14.900 in a lot of ways. And he, you know, to the extent that Billy Graham did that, to the extent that he

00:51:19.440 led people back to God or led people back to the church. Uh, and he no doubt did that for a lot,

00:51:24.560 a lot of people. That contribution is an incalculable, incalculable worth. That is an

00:51:30.080 incalculably valuable contribution to the world. And, uh, and I, I hope that, uh, Billy Graham is

00:51:37.560 resting in peace. Okay. That's our show. Uh, make sure to get your mailbag questions in. We have a lot

00:51:41.700 to talk about tomorrow. Get them all in until then. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles

00:51:46.000 Show. See you tomorrow.

00:51:51.520 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production. Executive producer,

00:51:57.160 Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Our technical

00:52:02.720 producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Alex Zingaro. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is

00:52:09.180 produced by Jesua Olvera. Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 21, 2018

Ep. 109 - What Do Conservatives Want In The Age Of Trump？ ft. Mike Franc

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