On this day in history: On this episode of the Michael Knowles Show, we have a special guest on the show to talk about Ring, a doorbell that keeps your house and family safe. Plus, we discuss the latest in Trump headlines.
00:03:30.180He runs away because that family had Ring.
00:03:33.060When you see what's going on at the front door, you can really stop crime, and that is pretty empowering.
00:03:39.300We're big supporters of our civil rights at the Michael Knowles Show, but hopefully you don't need to get all the way back to your last line of protection.
00:03:47.500Hopefully you can have a little fun while you do it, too.
00:03:49.780With the Ring floodlight and spotlight cams, you can build a ring of security around your entire property.
00:03:54.080It lets you protect your home no matter where you are.
00:03:56.180You can share your clips and keep your neighbors on the lookout for suspicious activity.
00:04:35.160Now, just one other bit of housekeeping.
00:04:37.240I've noticed occasionally, you know, obviously I'm always waiting for Ben to just come in and fire me and kick me out of his broom closet here.
00:04:44.020But occasionally I'll check in and see how our numbers are doing.
00:04:47.480The numbers are way up on the show, so I just want to thank everybody for doing that.
00:04:50.540And hello to new people who are watching.
00:05:13.600Austin Peterson is a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate for Missouri.
00:05:16.760In 2016, Austin ran for president in the Libertarian Party primary, receiving the backing of erstwhile Republicans Mary Matlin and Eric Erickson.
00:05:26.280After the Libertarian Party primaries concluded, Austin endorsed Gary Johnson for president.
00:05:30.300Last September, during his Senate campaign, Austin was banned from Facebook for giving away a rifle as a campaign promotion and to highlight Democrat incumbent Claire McCaskill's terrible record on defending Americans' constitutionally protected civil right to keep and bear arms.
00:05:46.620It later came out, by the way, that Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandberg, has just, you know, just coincidentally donated the maximum amount of money permitted by law to McCaskill's campaign.
00:05:57.060It's kind of one of those weird coincidences.
00:06:03.420So there's no bias at Facebook, right?
00:06:05.560Clearly there's no, they don't have any bias against conservatives.
00:06:09.020No, Silicon Valley loves conservatives, right?
00:06:12.020That's why Dennis Prager is having to sue YouTube.
00:06:13.960That's why conservatives all around the country, I mean, I've been here in Missouri.
00:06:18.180I ask everybody at these little Republican town meetings, you know, old people even that are on Twitter or Facebook, has anybody here been censored by Facebook or Twitter for being too conservative?
00:07:25.320And trust me, I know how hard it can be to make a living, especially when they're squashing our views and the algorithms seem to be biased against us.
00:07:32.620But that creates a market opportunity, right?
00:07:35.520The socialists would step in and say, well, it's a market failure and we need to regulate.
00:07:39.380So let's not give in to their arguments.
00:08:30.240Do you think moving forward, I know a lot of people who have already been elected are saying they need to start regulating them as a publisher.
00:08:38.000On that specific regulation, do you think it's still playing too much with fire to get into regulation or do you think we should level it out?
00:08:51.760I have a small audience and I make a little bit of my revenue from Facebook, from Twitter.
00:08:57.420But I just think it's really important for us to keep the government off the internet because then you kind of get the camel's nose under the tent on some of these things.
00:09:06.860And it's just like net neutrality, right?
00:09:08.460It's like, oh, it's sold to us for public good.
00:09:10.240But there's always these unintended consequences that come at us later on down the line.
00:09:14.340So, you know, I just I really wish that Facebook would stop.
00:09:17.380I would really just like some clarity, right?
00:09:19.420Just just be honest about your biases.
00:09:21.700You know, a lot of times, you know, we get this like fake news, right, that comes from the left and they're trying to pretend like they're objective.
00:09:48.760This is I think a lot of people don't understand this who haven't been in publishing on Facebook.
00:09:53.640There are and at all of these tech companies, there are so many levels of people that exist just to make their terms of service seem unclear to the people who use their platform.
00:10:03.920So you call them and they say, oh, no, well, we'll run it up the flagpole.
00:10:07.960And their whole point is not to not to make it clear.
00:10:12.040Now, you brought up blockchain and this is you have an accomplishment in this regard.
00:10:18.280You have received the national record for the largest Bitcoin donation in American campaign history.
00:10:24.120The downside of this is that was back when Bitcoin was trading at around $16,000 per coin.
00:10:29.300And the cryptocurrency is now in a slump of about 44 percent.
00:10:34.040One, would you prefer if people donate cash from now on?
00:10:37.140And two, on the larger point, on the political point, libertarians in particular have embraced cryptocurrencies.
00:10:43.600Do you think these sorts of technologies are a fad like the tulip bubble or does Bitcoin have a future?
00:10:49.120And how do you get your 44 percent back?
00:10:51.960Well, you know, actually, the tulip bubble was kind of an overblown story.
00:10:55.000A lot of people use that, but it wasn't quite as bad a bubble as many people said.
00:10:58.660So you should definitely check that out.
00:11:00.080The Economist kind of debunked that recently.
00:11:01.960But when it comes to crypto, donate it.
00:11:03.900Yeah, we actually get more value out of Bitcoins than we do of Federal Reserve notes because all of the publicity that Bitcoin gets, whether it's up or down, really does bolster us.
00:11:12.400And it gives me the chance to talk about federal monetary policy, which I don't get to talk about.
00:11:18.320You know, I usually got to stick to God's gun, God guns and weed.
00:11:52.520But what I think is just really exciting is that a lot of the sort of libertarian and conservative economists, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, they kind of predicted this, in a sense, before the digital revolution happened, where they would talk about, like, baskets of currencies.
00:12:06.320So, in a way, what we're doing is we're experimenting to determine what is the best form of money.
00:12:12.660And Hayek actually wrote back in the day that we don't know what good money is because government controls the tap, the supply, the amount of money into the money supply with the interest rates.
00:12:23.180But Bitcoin doesn't have a central bank.
00:13:16.820Well, I want to, on the political side of things, this libertarian-Republican tension does create some problem.
00:13:25.860You've got some powerful endorsements behind you in your campaign.
00:13:28.720Bob Barr, Joe Walsh, from what I can tell, a lot of others.
00:13:32.580But the big magilla in the room, President Covfefe, the Donald, as well as Vice President Pence and Leader McConnell, have endorsed your opponent, Josh Hawley.
00:13:45.180And do you think you can sway their support?
00:13:47.640Do you think their support will matter in the race?
00:13:49.280I think that it probably, of course, it helps in the primary, but it may hurt in the general, right?
00:13:56.600Imagine that, you know, Claire McCaskill and the left, they can easily tie whatever the president does to whoever the candidate is, right?
00:14:04.120But sort of being sort of independent, such as I am, and just calling shots like Ben Shapiro does, I think actually makes my case a little bit stronger because I'm trying to be a statesman, not just some pander bearer to the establishment interests.
00:14:14.280And just remember, I mean, Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove were the people who bragged that they pushed Josh Hawley into the race, right?
00:14:21.040So I think that the thing with the president, the president isn't paying attention to the primary in Missouri, right?
00:14:25.780He's got Mike Pence and he's got those people like McConnell saying, hey, do us a favor, Mr. President, just back this kid.
00:14:33.920And, of course, I did try and run in 2016 as a libertarian, so maybe there's a little bit of angst on some people.
00:14:39.980But, you know, conservatives and libertarians have a lot in common.
00:14:42.860This is something, you know, I think you want to talk about perhaps the future of the conservative movement, the GOP, where it's at and where it's going.
00:14:49.700So I would just say that, you know, having a conservative libertarian alliance going forward is a good way to sort of springboard from where we're at, which is just sort of bland populism without principle in some ways.
00:15:02.480And if we want to go forward with a real intellectual revolution and sort of complete the promise of the Tea Party days, then a conservative libertarian alliance is the way to go.
00:15:10.540Do you think as a political matter that your affiliation with the libertarian party is going to hurt you with Republicans?
00:15:17.080Or do you think it might actually help you with people who don't necessarily care much for the Republican Party?
00:15:23.960Well, Missouri actually has a pretty strong liberty Republican base.
00:15:27.640Ron Paul did pretty well in the caucuses out here.
00:15:29.760So there's a there's a strong constitutionalist streak and conservatives tend they're not like conservatives from Alabama.
00:15:35.260They're not like, you know, conservatives from Massachusetts.
00:15:37.480Right. Like the Midwest Republican conservatives are really sort of true constitutional conservatives in many ways.
00:15:42.820So they're very attracted to my candidacy.
00:16:43.780Now, I do want to talk about one thing that we have in common, which is totally separate from the monetary policy and the political issues on the ground.
00:16:54.300I've been in a number of little indie movies that nobody has ever seen and in plays and things like that.
00:17:00.380The Republican Party has run a lot of actors for office.
00:17:03.080Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fred Thompson, Alan Autry, Fred Grandy, George Murphy, Jack Kelly, Clint Eastwood, Sonny Bono, and Ronald Reagan, just to name a few.
00:17:10.980You graduated from Missouri State with a degree in musical theater.
00:17:14.180You've appeared in sketches on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
00:17:17.640You've executive produced a feature film.
00:17:20.580Why is there so much overlap between politics and show business?
00:17:25.760Well, you know, politics is just show business for ugly people.
00:17:37.140No, I think that, you know what it is, is that the reason why I was actually, I think, so successful in politics transitioning from a show business career is because most people in Washington, D.C.
00:17:45.880and in politics have backgrounds, they're all lawyers or they're all poli-sci degrees, right?
00:17:50.840But if you actually have somebody who understands conservative principles and can communicate them and who can produce videos and journalism and who can be, you know, as a television producer for Judge Napolitano at Fox News, right?
00:18:01.840That actually kind of gives you a little bit of an advantage because most of the people in D.C. are doing something else, right?
00:18:07.640So there's a little bit of a value add having a background, a creative background.
00:18:11.680Plus, people are so sick and tired of these sanctimonious Hollywood actors telling, you know, blowing people up by, you know, blood by the gallon and then telling us we can't have guns, right, while making money on the backs of it, right?
00:18:24.200So, I mean, there's a lot of people like Chuck Woolery, there's a lot of good Republican actors, Clint Eastwood, you know, Penn and Teller, right?
00:18:31.760Some of the biggest libertarian, some of the biggest celebrities in the world, right?
00:18:35.980So I think it's actually kind of attractive to have somebody who can communicate the message and who's not a filthy, stinking comic, you know?
00:18:42.340And there's so many, you look at all the lawyers and you think, oh, all right, there's another lawyer running for state assembly or whatever.
00:18:47.540But I've always also felt, obviously, there's a performative aspect to politics and you've got to look good on camera and you've got to sound good and everything.
00:18:55.200But there is also, fundamentally, in the craft of acting and in the craft of statesmanship or politics, it seems to be focused on the human condition, on the eternal questions that people have thought about through all of history.
00:19:10.700You have to enjoy people if you want to create characters and if you want to talk to voters and represent them in Washington.
00:19:16.080There seems to me, even beyond all the glib, you know, we have to look good and everything, there seems to me a significant, a profound relation between those two things.
00:19:25.600And, but this leads to another question.
00:19:27.580Yeah, well, can I just, yeah, let me just say one thing on that.
00:19:32.120Well, just remember the ancient philosophers and statesmen were also playwrights, right?
00:19:36.580And even some of the later ones, you know, 17th or 18th century writer, what, not Tartuffe, the guy who wrote Tartuffe and Candide, Voltaire, right?
00:19:46.700He was a leading political philosopher, but he was also a playwright and he wrote award-winning plays.
00:19:51.920So it didn't used to sort of be some sort of church and state sort of separation between entertainment and politics, right?
00:19:57.700Many of the greatest intellectual thinkers of the time would also delve into playwriting and to, you know, propagandizing their ideas, right, once film became a medium.
00:20:06.140So it's definitely not so separate as many people would think.
00:20:40.800But I think it's because it's empathy first, right?
00:20:44.020In order to be like a good actor or to emote, right, you go to a part of your brain that sort of avoids things like rational calculations, right?
00:20:51.880Rather than using the kind of cold, hard logic that's necessary in order to make determinations on fiscal policy, right, you're going to go towards what feels good.
00:21:00.200So I think that that's really what it is, is you're leading with your heart.
00:21:03.020And there's that old Winston Churchill quote, right?
00:21:04.840If you're young and you're not a socialist or a liberal, then you've got no heart.
00:21:08.860If you're old and you're not a conservative, then you have no brain.
00:21:11.440And I say if you're not a libertarian, by the time you're 90, you've got no heart and no brain.
00:21:22.460And we stand, we could learn a lot, right, from the left in that sense.
00:21:25.920It's many times libertarians and some conservatives, we come off as cold and heartless and calculating when we really do need to empathize.
00:21:32.500I believe in the Second Amendment and I totally feel for what happened to those kids down in Florida.
00:21:36.960But there's no tragedy, no matter how great, that justifies taking away rights from innocent people, right?
00:21:42.760And that's, I think, the best way to package this message.
00:21:44.880And, of course, you could also say mass shootings have declined a lot, school shootings have declined a lot, gun homicides are way down in this last several decades.
00:21:51.580And it all seems to bounce right off because you have Hollywood celebrities, you have Jimmy Kimmel crying on television and he says, you don't care, you don't care.
00:22:00.780And some of the best conservative leaders that we've ever had, like Ronald Reagan, were able to match both of those things together, the reason and the empathy and the communication.
00:23:03.640This is my working strategy with regard to Donald Trump.
00:23:06.860Whenever Trump says anything or does anything, I get a thousand text messages from my never-Trump conservative friends and from my lefty friends.
00:23:13.800They say, see, now are you going to disavow him?
00:23:15.360You have to disavow, come on, do it, do it, do it.
00:23:17.840My strategy with regard to Donald Trump, keep calm and covfefe.
00:23:25.820He told us a week or two ago that he was going to confiscate our guns and then we'll have due process later because we don't have time.
00:23:35.040About 12 hours later, he sent out a tweet and he said, respect the Second Amendment.
00:23:39.120Now we have a gun bill that he's pushing that does not even raise the age to buy these guns.
00:23:44.140It is simply about arming people who are in schools, allowing people who are in schools to carry guns to present these awful shootings that we've seen.
00:23:54.420If I had freaked out the minute he said he was going to steal all my guns, if I had started ripping my hair out, if I did that every time he sent out a tweet, I would have a very miserable life.
00:24:02.840But because I wait a little bit, because I keep calm and covfefe, it's very nice.
00:24:07.740Everything in politics is going just dandy.
00:24:10.160Much more conservative than we've seen in decades.
00:24:15.120We were told on these steel and aluminum tariffs that Trump has been threatening for a while and that now it appears that he's instituting that this was going to cause crazy trade wars.
00:24:23.760The global economy is going to plunge.
00:24:26.660Our allies, our trading partners are going to turn on us.
00:24:29.980He's already rolling back the tariffs.
00:24:31.880And good Trump observers knew this from the beginning.
00:25:51.320The Obama administration actually filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization because China is subsidizing its steel industries.
00:25:57.960But nobody cared because Barack Obama was weak and they knew that he wouldn't take any retaliatory action and he had no credible threat of violence or trade violence.
00:26:06.740This is the same thing that we've been seeing from Trump all along.
00:26:10.180And if these tariffs are only poised to target China, that might not be the worst thing in the world.
00:26:16.860If they're really just being used as leverage to renegotiate deals with China and try to get China to stop breaking the law and to stop violating the terms of the World Trade Organization, that's a very good thing.
00:26:27.260Candidates of both parties have been talking about this for a long time.
00:26:30.320This is the first one, first president we've seen in a while who's actually doing it.
00:26:33.880Okay, I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:26:36.700And I get, you know, it's funny because I keep getting killed on YouTube from the YouTube side of it, but the numbers keep going up.
00:26:44.360I don't know if you're paying off people at the YouTube headquarters or something, but we appreciate it.
00:26:48.640Our next episode of The Conversation is coming up on Tuesday, March 13th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 Pacific, featuring the one and only, the big boss himself, Ben Shapiro.
00:26:58.520Subscribe today to be a part of this hour-long live Q&A.
00:27:02.300You can ask Ben questions, which he will answer for everyone to hear.
00:27:06.260Ben's episode of The Conversation will stream live on the Ben Shapiro Facebook page and the Daily Wire YouTube channel for about three seconds before they shut us down.
00:27:13.160And it will be free for everyone to watch, but only subscribers can ask the questions.
00:27:17.700Many will be called, but very few will be chosen.
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00:27:25.900Head over to The Conversation page to watch the live stream.
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00:27:39.860Subscribe to get your questions answered by Ben Shapiro, Tuesday, March 13th.
00:27:44.300That is tomorrow, 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 Pacific, and join The Conversation.
00:27:49.200All right, but forget about all that stuff.
00:27:50.780What you really need, look, you subscribe to the Daily Wire, you get me, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get, you know, take the conversation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:28:02.640And let me tell you, if Austin Peterson sends you an AR-15 from this Facebook raffle, you are going to need this because all those tears are going to be pouring out of Menlo Park.
00:28:12.280Cheryl, whatever her name is, at, Cheryl Sandberg at Facebook is going to be weeping Lefty Tears, and you're going to want to collect them.
00:28:19.800This is the only FDA-approved vessel for Leftist Tears.
00:29:27.300Abu Nidal, who killed the Israeli ambassador in London in 1982, he was allowed in.
00:29:32.120Mustafa Mahmoud Mazay, who blew himself up with two floors of a London hotel while trying to murder British author and former Muslim Salman Rushdie for insulting Islam.
00:29:42.300Four Muslim terrorists who murdered 52 people and injured 700 by targeting public transit during rush hour in 2005.
00:30:00.400Also to the airport, I guess, because they rammed their way in.
00:30:02.680Two Muslim extremists who murdered and decapitated the British soldier Lee Rigby in 2013.
00:30:07.000Muhaideen Meyer, who attacked three tube travelers with a knife while shouting, this is for Syria in 2015.
00:30:15.100Salman Abedi, who was radicalized in Syria before returning to the U.K. and murdering 22 people and injuring 250 at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last year.
00:30:24.740The three Muslim terrorists who rammed 48 people in a white van across London Bridge, after which they leapt out and started stabbing people also last year.
00:30:33.200Remember, they were allowed in, and Ahmed Hassan, an 18-year-old Iraqi who blew up the tube stop at Parsons Green, injuring 30 people also last year.
00:30:42.160They were all allowed into the country, and Lauren Southern was not.
00:30:45.620Also allowed into the country for decades are those Middle Eastern immigrants who groomed upwards of 1,000 children in Britain's worst ever sex abuse scandal,
00:30:53.840which was just being reported on today, where sex gangs targeted girls as young as 11.
00:30:59.320What the British do here is they call them Asian men, but what that means is Middle Eastern men, Muslim immigrants into the United Kingdom,
00:31:07.020but they call them Asian for fear of racism.
00:31:09.120The British authorities reportedly and intentionally have failed to record details of the Middle Eastern abusers of these many, many very young girls for fear of racism.
00:31:21.660It's, I think, on the authorities' part, fear of being called a racist and losing your job and your status and being probably deported at this point in the U.K.,
00:31:29.240but also it's the fear that if they say the identity of these people, if they talk about the identity of these abusers,
00:31:36.720then other Muslim people will be unfairly targeted.
00:31:40.100Mind you, this does not happen in large scales ever after any of these attacks.
00:31:44.260The number of attacks that happened in the United States on Muslims after September 11th is not shocking for how many there were.