The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 127 - Is It Time To Turn On Trump？ ft. Howie Carr

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00:00:37.760 A $1.3 trillion omnibus budget that preserves and expands Obama-era initiatives has conservatives wondering,

00:00:47.440 with Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?

00:00:50.080 Is it time to turn on Donald Trump?

00:00:52.080 We will analyze the budget and the state of conservative policy alongside Howie Carr, author of What Really Happened, How Donald J. Trump Saved America from Hillary Clinton.

00:01:03.360 Then, three cheers for John Bolton.

00:01:05.440 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:07.360 We're here.

00:01:14.800 You can tell I'm not in my regular broom closet of The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:01:18.160 I'm in New York.

00:01:19.180 I'm going to be in New York for the next week or so.

00:01:21.960 I'll be giving a speech at Yeshiva University tonight, and then I'll be giving a speech at Ithaca College on Thursday.

00:01:28.300 The main takeaway from this, of course, is that if you don't write a book, then people will invite you to speak.

00:01:34.820 If you don't use words at all, then people will assume you're good at using words and come give a talk.

00:01:39.940 We're going to be talking tonight about why the left is so humorless, why the right is so funny right now, and the left has absolutely no sense of humor.

00:01:47.460 And then the speech on Thursday will be titled, Give Me That Old Time Religion, America's Christian Foundation.

00:01:52.620 So, two related topics in this beautiful comedy of our lives.

00:01:57.980 But, you know, if you're around, maybe I'll see you around the streets of New York.

00:02:01.320 A good place to check would be all of the cigar bars.

00:02:03.380 We have a lot to talk about today.

00:02:05.220 I want to thank our friends at National Review, by the way.

00:02:07.220 National Review is very kindly hosting me.

00:02:09.900 I was going to do my podcast from just the streets of New York, just kind of walking around, looking at the sky, you know, tattered clothing.

00:02:17.620 But they've been very warm, and they've taken me in.

00:02:19.620 That's very nice of them.

00:02:20.500 So, thank you again to NR.

00:02:23.160 Before, I've already lost my, I've already lost my ad for today.

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00:04:48.280 Okay.

00:04:49.180 We should get into this.

00:04:50.860 I am going to analyze the budget a little bit later in the show.

00:04:54.620 Conservatives are very upset about this.

00:04:56.600 Conservatives are very rightly upset about all this.

00:04:59.220 My whole Twitter feed over the weekend was just people saying,

00:05:02.160 should we turn on Trump now?

00:05:03.120 Is this it?

00:05:03.620 Are conservatives done with Trump?

00:05:05.560 And I did keep going back to this question of gratitude.

00:05:09.320 We've gotten some good stuff out of Trump.

00:05:11.360 And also he saved us from that hellish nightmare of a Hillary Clinton presidency,

00:05:15.560 which we shouldn't underestimate how terrible that would be.

00:05:17.680 I did an interview with radio host Howie Carr, because Howie is the author of a new book,

00:05:23.300 What Really Happened?

00:05:24.480 How Donald J. Trump Saved America from Hillary Clinton.

00:05:28.320 You know, very nice, subtle title.

00:05:30.140 It's a really fun book.

00:05:31.500 I highly recommend reading it.

00:05:33.120 I talked to Harry about this before the budget came out.

00:05:36.420 And so you shouldn't judge Howie as though this were coming out after the budget.

00:05:40.560 But here are some of his thoughts.

00:05:42.040 He knows Donald Trump.

00:05:43.220 He's known him for years.

00:05:43.980 He was the last radio person to speak to him before the election results came in in 2016.

00:05:48.720 So let's cut to Howie for his perspective.

00:05:51.040 Then we'll look at the budget.

00:05:52.220 And then we'll talk about how great John Bolton is.

00:05:56.080 Howie, thank you for being here.

00:05:58.360 Thank you for having me, Michael.

00:05:59.840 The book is called What Really Happened?

00:06:02.220 How Donald J. Trump Saved America from Hillary Clinton.

00:06:05.120 A far, far better book than What Happened, written by My Third Cousin Once Removed Hillary,

00:06:11.620 the only book in history for which the cover answered its own question.

00:06:16.680 Thanks for damning me with faint praise.

00:06:19.280 By the way, here's the cover of the book.

00:06:22.100 You can order it on Amazon.com or HowieCarsShow.com.

00:06:26.620 Click on store.

00:06:27.780 It is really good.

00:06:28.860 I really have to encourage every conservative and Republican to read this book.

00:06:33.520 It is, first of all, you'll learn a lot of things you didn't know.

00:06:37.040 Second of all, it is such a joy.

00:06:39.720 It is the grin I don't think left my face from the beginning to the end,

00:06:44.140 reliving this wonderful event and kind of learning what was going on back behind the scenes.

00:06:48.460 But the title says it all, doesn't it?

00:06:50.500 You know, a lot of Trump critics on the right insist this wasn't a binary election.

00:06:55.180 Oh, Trump isn't that great.

00:06:56.660 He, you know, he tweeted some awful thing.

00:06:58.340 He doesn't hold his Chardonnay glass by the stem.

00:07:01.220 We were headed for four to eight years of Hillary Clinton, 0.99

00:07:04.540 12 to 16 years of Democrat rule.

00:07:06.840 That awful woman who campaigned on gutting the First and Second Amendment, 1.00

00:07:10.240 who called conservatives deplorable and irredeemable.

00:07:13.320 How bad would it have been had Hillary won?

00:07:16.660 Oh, it would have been awful.

00:07:18.160 I mean, I was prepared for the worst that when it was on Election Day,

00:07:23.800 I thought it was over.

00:07:25.020 You know, again, a lot of people don't realize that the First and the Second Amendments

00:07:29.380 and probably more were on the table.

00:07:31.760 You know, I mean, she had publicly said she was going after gun rights and free speech. 1.00

00:07:37.880 You know, she called it Citizens United and the Heller decision on the Second Amendment. 0.94

00:07:41.920 But, you know, read between the lines.

00:07:44.620 That's what she was talking about.

00:07:45.920 The First Amendment and the Second Amendment. 0.74

00:07:47.420 And she would have put on some extreme liberal on the Supreme Court. 1.00

00:07:53.680 They would have had the majority five to four, maybe six to three.

00:07:59.080 It would have been horrible.

00:08:01.200 Open borders, unvetted immigration from terrorist-influenced countries.

00:08:09.480 It just would have been a total disaster.

00:08:11.280 You know, confiscatory tax rates, deficits out of control.

00:08:17.340 It would have been horrible.

00:08:18.320 It was a—we got a break.

00:08:21.060 The United States of America got a break on November 8, 2016.

00:08:25.960 That's what it felt like.

00:08:26.860 It felt like a relief.

00:08:28.060 And you write in the book, you say, quote,

00:08:30.660 Now it would be up to a thrice-married, potty-mouthed, one-time casino-owning billionaire from Queens

00:08:37.060 to defend Adams' moral and religious people,

00:08:40.320 to be the last conservative standing athwart the tide of history,

00:08:43.840 as William F. Buckley once wrote, yelling, stop.

00:08:46.980 I think you're right.

00:08:48.060 What does that tell us about our political culture?

00:08:50.660 Fifty years ago, we had a bookish Catholic wasp from Yale to bring the conservatives to victory. 0.99

00:08:56.760 Now we need a boar from Queens.

00:08:58.740 What does that mean about our culture now?

00:09:00.320 Well, just—obviously, the culture has been coarsened.

00:09:03.820 But I think the—you know, Adams' people, I referred to John Adams saying that you need

00:09:09.220 a religious, moral people to keep a republic.

00:09:14.200 I think John Adams' descendants, the people he was talking about,

00:09:18.760 they understand that they are and were up against the wall.

00:09:23.680 And, you know, they needed a bodyguard.

00:09:26.440 I quoted Tucker Carlson before he took over Bill O'Reilly's slot.

00:09:30.860 And he was writing, I think it was in Politico.

00:09:34.380 And he said, they're not looking for a moral exemplar.

00:09:37.320 They're looking for a bodyguard.

00:09:39.780 Right.

00:09:39.840 And it's the same thing.

00:09:41.120 That's why Stormy Daniels, you know, CNN and MSNBC can have all the fun they want with Stormy Daniels. 1.00

00:09:48.220 But that's not going to cost Donald Trump any votes.

00:09:51.060 It will not cost him one single vote.

00:09:53.560 And if they think that that is what is going to bring this guy down, they are—they're living in a fantasy.

00:09:59.300 Now, you—I think you were Donald Trump's last interview before the polls closed on election night.

00:10:06.100 Did he think that he was going to win?

00:10:08.420 Did you have that sense from him?

00:10:09.600 Well, I don't think he still would have been working the phones, you know, at 6.30 on election night if he hadn't thought he was going to win.

00:10:17.260 The night before the election, election eve, I was in Manchester broadcasting from my affiliate up there.

00:10:23.400 And then we went over to the rally that he had.

00:10:27.800 And that's where he pulled the letters out from—the letter from Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots, endorsing him.

00:10:33.740 And, of course, he'd been endorsed earlier, more or less, by Tom Brady, the quarterback.

00:10:41.000 And, you know, but after he left Manchester that night, he flew to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

00:10:47.440 And he had a rally at 12.30 in the morning in Election Day in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

00:10:53.900 And that's why I laughed when I saw Michael Wolff's book earlier this year, saying, oh, he didn't really think he was going to win.

00:11:01.440 He didn't even want to win.

00:11:03.700 You know, come on.

00:11:04.760 You don't go to a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan at 12.30 in the morning on Election Day if you don't want to win.

00:11:13.180 And he obviously wanted to win.

00:11:15.480 I mean, he's still angry about losing New Hampshire, you know.

00:11:18.180 I saw him right after Christmas at Mar-a-Lago, and he was asking me about New Hampshire because I'm on eight stations in New Hampshire.

00:11:27.280 And he said, why did they pass such a weak voter law?

00:11:34.300 You know, they—

00:11:35.320 This is the same-day registration, right?

00:11:37.360 Same-day registration, right.

00:11:39.200 There were 6,000 people did same-day registration on Election Day.

00:11:44.300 And he lost the state by 3,000 votes, and Kelly Ayotte, the Republican senator, lost her Senate seat by 1,000 votes.

00:11:52.300 And according to New Hampshire law, you have six months after you vote as a same-day registrant to transfer your driver's license.

00:12:02.540 And they—the Secretary of State's office in New Hampshire did a study, and of the 6,000 people who took ballots under the same-day registration law, only 1,000 of them re-registered.

00:12:16.120 So that's—

00:12:17.540 Wow.

00:12:17.940 That means that, you know, he—the election probably was stolen from him, and it was definitely stolen from Kelly Ayotte.

00:12:24.100 And he's—he's very disturbed about that, and he—he keeps—every time I've talked to him since the election, he's—he's brought up New Hampshire.

00:12:32.300 And I'll bet he—you know, I'll bet he's still thinking about it.

00:12:36.000 That's so interesting, because from the Michael Wolff book, you say, oh, he doesn't care, he was just joking, he didn't really want to win.

00:12:41.740 But when you talk to people who know the guy, who have spoken to him about it, he's tracking everything.

00:12:46.600 And I would not be surprised at all.

00:12:48.400 People have no idea of what it's like on the ground.

00:12:51.460 I have seen buses of voters come in across state lines.

00:12:55.540 You see these things happen at polling places, and the Democrats are just better at it than we are.

00:13:00.820 And speaking of another aspect of the Democrat political establishment, let's forget about Hillary for a second, or hopefully forever. 1.00

00:13:08.260 I—I see you right in the book about the mainstream media's incestuous relationship with Democrats.

00:13:14.080 And it—it's even more shocking than I had realized.

00:13:16.940 I spent half of my life harping on the mainstream media, but the relationships you describe are staggering.

00:13:23.320 How against Trump was the deck stacked in 2016?

00:13:27.800 It was totally stacked.

00:13:29.160 You see the—the surveys they do every once in a while, you know, how—how many positive stories versus negative stories it gets.

00:13:35.900 And it's over 90 percent negative.

00:13:37.340 But I think the problem, Michael, is that when I was coming up in the mainstream media, what you did was you started out, you know, whether you were in TV or newspapers, which I was in both, you started out at like a regional newspaper or a regional TV station.

00:13:54.440 And you worked your way up to a major market.

00:13:56.680 But now, as I—as I said in the—as I said in what really happened, the way you move up now is you're a Democrat operative.

00:14:04.720 And that's—most of these people that are—that are, you know, you see on the cable news shows have never been reporters.

00:14:10.760 They've never covered a fire.

00:14:11.920 They never covered the police beat.

00:14:13.240 They never covered the county commissioners.

00:14:15.200 Look at—look at who you have.

00:14:16.260 You have Stephanopoulos, Clinton's spokesman.

00:14:19.320 You have Jake Tapper.

00:14:20.600 He was a—he worked for Chelsea Clinton's mother-in-law, who was a congressman, and her husband went to prison for bank fraud.

00:14:29.280 He was a congressman, too.

00:14:30.600 Ten—still owes $10 million he hasn't made restitution for.

00:14:34.360 You have Chuck Todd from NBC.

00:14:39.360 He was a—he was a spokesman for Tom Harkin, one of the—the stolen valor senator from—from Iowa who claimed he was a combat pilot in Vietnam.

00:14:49.780 He was a pilot, but just on cargo planes.

00:14:53.080 I mean, these—these people, you know, I guess Tim Russert and Chris Matthews started the trend.

00:14:59.740 Right.

00:14:59.920 You know, they were—they were both aides to Democrat politicians, Matthews to Tip O'Neill, the speaker, and—and Russert to Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

00:15:08.580 But that's—that's the way you move up.

00:15:10.480 And they're also—they're always—then all of them are so married into it, I could just go on for an hour just talking about all the people who were married in.

00:15:19.220 David Gregory's wife, right?

00:15:21.300 She was always representing the Clinton aides.

00:15:24.400 Right.

00:15:24.760 She was representing all the people in the email—the email scandal, and she got them all, you know, grants of immunity.

00:15:32.140 And Savannah Guthrie is married to, I think, one of Al Gore's people.

00:15:38.240 And it just—and Christiane Amanpour was married to the—to James Rubin, the Clinton State Department spokesman.

00:15:45.920 I mean, it's just—it just goes on and on and on.

00:15:48.940 And look at—look at—Chelsea Clinton gets the job at NBC.

00:15:54.140 And—

00:15:55.140 That's the—the most highly paid internship in the history of the world.

00:16:00.200 Right.

00:16:00.720 Six hundred thousand dollars.

00:16:03.100 Six hundred thousand dollars.

00:16:04.560 And she—and she's the only intern, Michael, who ever had her own producer.

00:16:09.640 You know, I—I clearly was doing internships wrong.

00:16:12.400 I really should have demanded more in my negotiations.

00:16:15.640 One title I want to ask you about.

00:16:18.760 Chapter four, you title, Never Complain, Never Explain.

00:16:23.320 Why is that?

00:16:25.140 Well, that's a—that's an old saying from a Boston mayor, James Michael Curley.

00:16:29.560 And that's—that's what he always said, you know, never respond to criticism.

00:16:33.220 And I—I use that one time I—I was with Trump on a—on going up to a—a rally in Bangor, Maine.

00:16:40.060 Because he—again, he—for someone who didn't know, didn't want to win the presidency, he knew how Maine operated.

00:16:46.820 They separate the congressional districts in the electoral college vote.

00:16:50.740 So he knew he couldn't take southern Maine, but he could take northern Maine.

00:16:53.820 And he did.

00:16:54.320 So he was—kept going back to Bangor and northern Maine, central Maine, to campaign.

00:17:00.280 So I went with him one day from Boston to campaign in Bangor.

00:17:04.360 And I—and I—and I decided I was going to get a—a—a good response from the crowd.

00:17:09.700 So it was being live streamed.

00:17:11.000 It was on cable TV.

00:17:11.880 So I said, and you know, our senator in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:17:17.500 And so, like, two minutes later, I'm walking off the stage.

00:17:23.120 And one of Trump's aides says, they're already coming after you, Howie.

00:17:26.580 And he shows me on his cell phone.

00:17:27.880 They were already attacking me on Politico and everything.

00:17:30.740 So I thought it was a joke.

00:17:32.440 Because, I mean, how could it be racist?

00:17:34.260 She's not an Indian. 1.00

00:17:35.240 She's a white person masquerading as a Native American. 1.00

00:17:38.180 So I didn't really care.

00:17:39.740 But so I—we were riding—we were—we were on the plane back to New York after the rally.

00:17:44.400 And, you know, I told Trump when it happened that he said—he said to me, whatever you do, Howie, don't apologize.

00:17:53.180 Don't apologize.

00:17:54.200 He said, remember Jimmy the Greek?

00:17:56.620 He was doing okay until he said he was sorry.

00:17:59.360 Then it was like that.

00:18:01.440 That's right.

00:18:02.040 I know.

00:18:02.440 Then I told him about the quote from James Michael Curley, never complain, never explain.

00:18:07.440 I like that you're quoting Curley and Trump is quoting Jimmy the Greek.

00:18:11.400 That's a beautiful image.

00:18:12.620 I have one last question before we let you go.

00:18:15.020 I know we're on a tight time limit here.

00:18:18.140 Trump 2020.

00:18:20.100 There's no Hillary to save us from. 0.99

00:18:22.500 Will Trump be able to muster the same coalition to defeat whichever other old geriatric socialists they drum up? 0.86

00:18:30.020 Or is the Trump victory primarily about saving America from Hillary Clinton?

00:18:36.780 I don't know the answer to that question, Michael.

00:18:39.120 I said at the end of my book that I didn't know if he's like a one-off guy like Julian the Apostate, you know, the Roman emperor.

00:18:50.420 He was the last pagan emperor. 0.82

00:18:53.200 His parents were Christians.

00:18:54.720 He tried to bring it back, and he was the one guy.

00:18:57.520 Or Oliver Cromwell, you know, the new model army.

00:19:00.920 It was a, you know, he seemed to be a game changer until he wasn't a game changer.

00:19:05.340 I don't know how it's going to play out.

00:19:07.000 I certainly hope he gets another four years because, you know, that's, he needs that to, you know, to even begin to drain the deep, the swamp and the deep state.

00:19:17.160 Of course.

00:19:18.220 Well, one hopes that he can pivot. 0.54

00:19:20.120 You know, luckily with the Democrats, we can always count on them to shoot themselves in the foot.

00:19:24.820 So maybe they'll run an even more unlikable, desiccated, socialistic candidate next time. 0.75

00:19:30.900 We'll just have to see.

00:19:31.580 I suggest.

00:19:34.660 I think that's an endorsement.

00:19:36.220 I don't think she's going to make it, unfortunately.

00:19:37.600 I don't think she's going to make it.

00:19:38.820 I really hope they pick up, pick this up, that Howie Carr has endorsed the Democrat nominee Elizabeth Focahontas-Liawatha-Warren for president.

00:19:47.980 Howie Carr, thank you so much for being here.

00:19:49.660 Listen to his show.

00:19:50.940 Buy this book.

00:19:51.740 It is so enjoyable.

00:19:53.180 I promise it is going to be the most enjoyable reading you do for a while.

00:19:57.820 What Really Happened?

00:19:58.880 How Donald J. Trump Saved America from Hillary Clinton.

00:20:02.720 Howie, I'll talk to you soon.

00:20:04.040 Thank you, Michael Knowles.

00:20:05.260 I appreciate it.

00:20:06.240 Bye-bye.

00:20:06.900 He's so diplomatic, isn't he?

00:20:08.420 Just the, ah, it's unbelievable.

00:20:12.520 I really, we really clearly had a melding of the minds.

00:20:15.000 I should have put on my Pocahontas dress and then we really could have come together. 1.00

00:20:19.480 Howie Carr.

00:20:20.100 So that's all the good stuff about Donald Trump.

00:20:22.840 It does remind me, it does warm the cuckolds of my heart, not the cuckolds, the cuckolds of my heart,

00:20:26.920 to think about how, what he saved us from.

00:20:30.380 Because it really would have been awful.

00:20:31.700 Hillary Clinton was campaigning on gutting the First and Second Amendments.

00:20:35.380 Those were separate tabs on her campaign website.

00:20:37.560 So there is all that.

00:20:39.300 Now we've got to talk about how awful this budget is.

00:20:42.400 I try to defend the president here.

00:20:44.300 I'm a member of a team.

00:20:45.380 I'm on the Republican team.

00:20:46.720 Donald Trump has done great work.

00:20:47.960 So I give him more grace than I would give to Liz Warren, Pocahontas or whatever. 0.88

00:20:52.480 This budget is really, really bad.

00:20:54.200 We're going to talk about how bad it is.

00:20:55.780 But out of deference to my party and president, we're going to do it after the paywall.

00:21:00.240 Because we have to talk about that.

00:21:01.600 I also have to talk about John Bolton.

00:21:03.500 What a wonderful, amazing appointment this is.

00:21:06.160 And why people get him totally wrong.

00:21:08.120 They treat him like a caricature.

00:21:10.460 We'll delve a little bit more into John Bolton.

00:21:13.300 But if you are on Facebook and YouTube, you're not on YouTube.

00:21:16.940 But if you're on Facebook, go to dailywire.com right now.

00:21:20.160 Then you hear the whole thing.

00:21:21.140 What do you get for $10 a month, $100 annual membership?

00:21:23.640 You get me.

00:21:24.360 You get the Andrew Klavan show.

00:21:25.320 You get the Ben Shapiro show.

00:21:26.460 You get to ask questions in the mailbag.

00:21:28.640 Now, everybody can listen to the mailbag.

00:21:30.640 But only subscribers can ask the questions.

00:21:32.980 Many are called, but few are chosen.

00:21:34.620 Same thing with the conversation.

00:21:35.820 You can ask questions in the conversation.

00:21:37.840 Next up, I believe, is the Supreme Lord of the Multiverse himself, Andrew Klavan.

00:21:42.540 You get all of that, but none of that really matters.

00:21:44.480 What you really need is the Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:21:47.320 Now, obviously, mine is parked outside in Manhattan.

00:21:51.240 You know, the Leftist Tears are just constantly flowing.

00:21:53.620 They remind me.

00:21:54.400 I lived in Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy.

00:21:56.020 It reminds me a lot like that.

00:21:57.480 So I've got it parked out there so I can ride it all the way back down to the financial district where I'm staying.

00:22:02.580 In the meeting, you have to go get that.

00:22:03.840 I also would like to put in one little plug because we're here at National Review.

00:22:08.760 They've been very nice to us.

00:22:09.800 The William F. Buckley Jr. program at Yale is hosting the Disinvitation Dinner.

00:22:15.200 They do this dinner every year where they take some speaker who's been disinvited from a college campus and they give him a speech to give.

00:22:23.640 It is a really wonderful dinner.

00:22:25.340 I was, I think, the first fellow of the Bill Buckley program at Yale or in the first year of student fellows.

00:22:31.660 It's a wonderful program, one of the few things that is pushing intellectual diversity on college campuses.

00:22:38.620 I can't speak highly enough of it.

00:22:40.880 That dinner is going to be addressed by Charles Murray this year.

00:22:44.860 Charles Murray is wonderful.

00:22:46.600 So that will be Wednesday, April 18th.

00:22:49.660 That will be at the Metropolitan Club in New York City.

00:22:53.700 Black tie optional.

00:22:54.880 It's going to be super chic.

00:22:56.160 So if you're interested, check it out at the Buckley program.

00:22:59.140 Reach out to them.

00:22:59.800 It is a wonderful event.

00:23:01.180 If I can be in town, I certainly will be attending it myself.

00:23:03.820 OK, go to DailyWire.com.

00:23:05.360 We'll be right back to talk about all the bad Trump.

00:23:19.760 I try to resist this the best I could.

00:23:21.940 You know, Ben does the good Trump, bad Trump thing.

00:23:24.520 I really try to resist that.

00:23:26.180 I am a partisan.

00:23:27.460 He is my guy.

00:23:28.380 I really want to defend him.

00:23:30.560 This budget is so terrible.

00:23:32.380 This budget is so phenomenally terrible.

00:23:35.660 I can't get over it.

00:23:37.880 In the past, we know that Donald Trump has called for budgets that will end the Tiger program, grants for transportation projects from the Obama stimulus.

00:23:46.000 That will end ARPA-E, an Obama-era energy research agency.

00:23:51.780 That ends the CDBG, which is an urban slush fund.

00:23:55.540 The CBGB, I don't know, the ABCDEFG, all of these agencies, all of this constant funding.

00:24:00.840 He said, we've got to slash that.

00:24:02.000 We've got to cut that.

00:24:02.720 We need to fund the wall.

00:24:04.060 Mexico is going to pay for it.

00:24:05.100 We'll build this big wall.

00:24:06.040 We need $23 billion to build the wall.

00:24:08.200 What happened in the actual budget?

00:24:10.440 Triples the funding for Tiger.

00:24:11.920 Doubles the CDBG.

00:24:13.780 It boosts ARPA-E budgets.

00:24:16.460 It increases the energy department renewables budget by 14%.

00:24:20.480 The energy department should not exist.

00:24:23.220 I believe this was the department that Rick Perry forgot the name of that he was going to cut.

00:24:27.820 This department should not exist.

00:24:29.600 We should be slashing its funding.

00:24:30.640 We're now increasing its renewables budget 14%.

00:24:33.120 It increases non-military spending, $63 billion.

00:24:38.260 We should be slashing non-military spending.

00:24:41.040 There's no cut in funding to sanctuary cities, as was promised and threatened.

00:24:45.600 There are no new detention facilities for illegal aliens.

00:24:48.620 It doesn't eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts or the National Endowment for the Humanities,

00:24:52.420 as Donald Trump promised.

00:24:53.700 Not that I think we need to end those things.

00:24:55.740 I don't really care.

00:24:56.360 It's not a lot of money, but doesn't do it.

00:24:58.360 Doesn't cut Pell Grants.

00:24:59.300 Doesn't cut Head Start.

00:25:00.240 The Obama Education Program doesn't cut funding to the NIH, National Institutes of Health,

00:25:05.140 or the CDC, Center for Disease Control, both of which are extraordinarily wasteful

00:25:10.360 and get involved in things that they have no business being involved in.

00:25:14.080 It even maintained the EPA's level of funding.

00:25:17.000 The EPA, villain number one.

00:25:19.480 Scott Prude has done a great job at that agency, slashing the bureaucracy,

00:25:23.240 but they're maintaining their funding, which is outrageous because they're cutting their staff.

00:25:26.200 It rolls back a ban on the CDC researching guns as a disease.

00:25:33.020 Right now, there's a ban.

00:25:35.220 The CDC can't research guns as a disease because, as you might realize, guns are not a disease.

00:25:42.460 They're a constitutionally protected civil right.

00:25:44.160 The Democrats have always wanted to research them as a disease because they want to pretend that every terrible thing they don't like,

00:25:50.540 you know, freedom, liberty, defense of our civil rights, that that's a disease somehow.

00:25:56.780 Well, too bad.

00:25:57.880 It's going to roll back that.

00:25:59.060 And we don't get anything in return.

00:26:00.980 The Freedom Caucus said, okay, we'll roll back that provision as long as we can get reciprocity for concealed carry throughout the states.

00:26:08.200 Did we get that?

00:26:09.080 Absolutely not.

00:26:10.700 This bill, this omnibus budget, strengthens gun background checks because I get whatever.

00:26:17.620 I mean, we have strong background checks already and the government just fails to do its job.

00:26:21.960 And in some cases, like the shooting in Florida, the school district intentionally tries to hide all of the warning signs.

00:26:27.540 And in the case of the federal government, Barack Obama used that district as an example of how we should stop disciplining people.

00:26:34.440 There are a lot of gun laws on the books, tens of thousands of gun laws on the books already.

00:26:37.920 But, okay, he's going to strengthen background checks.

00:26:40.040 For what reason?

00:26:40.620 I have absolutely no idea.

00:26:42.520 I give $6 billion to the National Science Foundation.

00:26:45.880 I know these things all sound nice.

00:26:47.740 I have a lot of graduate student friends, a lot of people who are in grad school.

00:26:51.560 The NSF is mostly a scam.

00:26:53.680 The NSF, as Reason Magazine has pointed out, funds studies on how sea monkeys swim in formation, to teach land monkeys how to gamble.

00:27:03.060 They run shrimp on treadmills and watching humans play Farmville.

00:27:06.800 Those are some of the studies that your tax dollars are funding at the NSF.

00:27:10.920 Really, they're just funding grad students who want to get free money.

00:27:14.060 And those are the sort of things that they're seeing.

00:27:16.440 Planned Parenthood is funded for some reason.

00:27:19.140 No idea why.

00:27:20.280 They just did it.

00:27:20.960 Now, I understand maybe it's hard to defund Planned Parenthood.

00:27:24.040 Maybe you need to get some concession from the other side.

00:27:26.860 You're willing to negotiate.

00:27:28.080 What negotiation?

00:27:29.140 What art of the deal?

00:27:30.040 This budget is terrible.

00:27:31.580 It's hard to blame the congressman here because no person has read this 2,000-page bill.

00:27:36.580 Nobody has read it whatsoever.

00:27:38.480 Rand Paul tweeted out a picture of him.

00:27:40.180 They took him 10 hours to print it or something like that.

00:27:43.180 And no one has read it.

00:27:44.680 The president hasn't read it.

00:27:45.760 No member of Congress has read it.

00:27:47.200 Trump actually says he hates the budget.

00:27:48.960 He said, don't ever send me another one like this again.

00:27:52.160 But he signed it anyway.

00:27:53.420 He said it was a matter of national security.

00:27:55.380 Military funding is a matter of national security.

00:27:57.600 But what about the art of the deal?

00:27:59.440 Come on, man.

00:28:00.440 If we lose the house, which I'm actually not predicting,

00:28:04.980 but history would tell us that there's a very good chance we're going to lose the house.

00:28:09.160 If we lose the house, then have we just squandered our opportunity here?

00:28:13.500 Very frustrating.

00:28:14.440 That's the bad.

00:28:14.980 There is some good stuff in this budget.

00:28:16.500 Not enough to make up for the bad, but it hikes defense spending 10%.

00:28:20.220 I suppose that's fine.

00:28:21.360 2.6% military pay raise.

00:28:23.680 Fine by me.

00:28:24.920 $1.6 billion for border security.

00:28:28.320 I guess that's good.

00:28:29.820 But that money explicitly cannot be spent on the wall.

00:28:33.140 The wall is going to cost $23 billion.

00:28:35.300 That's what Trump requested.

00:28:36.540 So far, we have $0 allocated for that.

00:28:38.940 And $1.6 billion for border security.

00:28:41.720 It's a drop in the bucket.

00:28:42.560 There was a 6% cut in foreign aid and other State Department programs.

00:28:48.200 Good.

00:28:48.640 That's a start.

00:28:49.820 It's less than the 25% we were promised, but that's fine.

00:28:53.340 It nixed some slush money for New York.

00:28:56.120 New York City Gateway Rail Tunnel Project.

00:28:58.280 That's not in.

00:28:59.000 Okay.

00:28:59.340 There's no amnesty for illegal aliens. 0.99

00:29:01.140 Good.

00:29:01.540 And it doesn't stabilize Obamacare, which was a real risk that that would make it into the budget.

00:29:06.100 It didn't.

00:29:06.920 Okay.

00:29:07.240 That legitimately is a win.

00:29:09.820 Very, very frustrating.

00:29:11.400 Very frustrating.

00:29:12.780 So is it time to turn on Trump?

00:29:14.480 That's the question.

00:29:15.040 Is it time for conservatives to turn on Trump?

00:29:17.800 No.

00:29:18.900 The answer is no.

00:29:19.740 It isn't.

00:29:20.980 It's easy to get emotional about these single issues.

00:29:23.800 There's a lot of spending.

00:29:25.380 A lot of things that we were hoping for didn't happen.

00:29:28.200 But a lot of things don't happen in the first year of a presidency or the first two years in a presidency.

00:29:32.020 You can't do everything.

00:29:33.000 And I am reminded of the Heritage Foundation, which shows that Donald Trump has completed two-thirds of its agenda and says he's completing it at a faster rate than even Ronald Reagan did.

00:29:44.700 Now you might say Ronald Reagan had a Democrat Congress.

00:29:48.900 That's true.

00:29:49.980 You might say Donald Trump has more to run up against than any president in modern history.

00:29:55.900 They're throwing spaghetti at the wall.

00:29:57.420 The March for Our Lives.

00:29:58.300 The Women's March.

00:29:59.400 The Stormy Daniels interview for some reason.

00:30:01.700 They're throwing everything they can at this guy.

00:30:04.260 It's totally incoherent.

00:30:05.360 It's just because they hate him.

00:30:06.680 91% to 93% of mainstream media coverage of Donald Trump is negative.

00:30:11.700 There are federal bureaucracies and activists within the Democratic Party who are trying to undermine this president who have been trying to delegitimize this president from day one.

00:30:21.280 Okay.

00:30:21.760 That's fine.

00:30:22.180 Those are a lot of excuses.

00:30:23.820 I hope Donald Trump is right.

00:30:25.440 I hope he's right and he says I'll never sign a bill like this again.

00:30:29.400 Because he can't hold us forever.

00:30:30.500 He cannot hold us forever.

00:30:32.200 I mean this is signaling that we need to strengthen gun control laws and we need to fund all of these agencies.

00:30:38.720 Not good stuff.

00:30:39.820 It's really not good stuff.

00:30:41.460 I'm still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because as we talked about with Howie, things are a lot better than they would have been.

00:30:47.440 And they're a lot better than any other Republican who somehow miraculously would have been elected.

00:30:52.100 They're better probably than we would have seen there.

00:30:54.160 But that rope doesn't go on forever.

00:30:57.080 I mean you can't, there cannot be another bill like this.

00:31:01.440 So we'll see.

00:31:02.540 Now on the same day that they announced this omnibus bill, Donald Trump appointed John Bolton to be the national security advisor.

00:31:09.760 And I think he did this just to make me feel happier.

00:31:13.520 I think he did this for conservatives who were going to be so angry about this awful budget.

00:31:18.920 They said, okay, I got to give him something.

00:31:20.140 Let's fire McMaster and hire John Bolton.

00:31:22.360 If you're unfamiliar with John Bolton, here's just a little tour of who he is.

00:31:26.120 The point that I want to leave with you in this very brief presentation is where I started.

00:31:32.920 Is there is no United Nations.

00:31:36.360 There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world,

00:31:44.300 and that's the United States, when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along.

00:31:51.040 The secretariat building in New York has 38 stories.

00:31:53.940 If you lost 10 stories today, it would make a bit of difference.

00:31:58.680 The United States makes the U.N. work when it wants it to work.

00:32:02.420 And that is exactly the way it should be because the only question, the only question for the United States is what's in our national interest.

00:32:10.200 And if you don't like that, I'm sorry, but that is the fact.

00:32:13.580 Yeah, John Bolton.

00:32:15.920 God bless America.

00:32:17.360 What a great, that is such moral clarity. 0.85

00:32:20.300 People are trotting this clip out and they're saying, see, he's crazy. 0.99

00:32:22.900 He's unhinged. 0.98

00:32:23.560 That is such moral clarity.

00:32:25.540 There is no such thing as the United Nations.

00:32:27.880 There is no such of all of us coming together and holding hands.

00:32:30.940 There is one moral leader in this entire world, and that's the United States of America.

00:32:35.560 The most moral, the most generous, the most prosperous, the freest country in the history of the world.

00:32:40.680 And then there are a lot of other people, and they don't all play by our rules.

00:32:43.960 And it's not like they're all happy-go-lucky and trying to help out one another.

00:32:47.480 They're all bombing each other and trying to do horrible things.

00:32:50.160 The United States can exert moral leadership when it serves our interests.

00:32:54.540 People on the right, the left is trying to gin up anger on the right against John Bolton.

00:32:59.980 And mark my words, it is people on the left who are doing this.

00:33:03.140 The Vox.com ran an article why conservatives are very angry about John Bolton.

00:33:08.520 Washington Post is feeding these sort of things.

00:33:10.600 When was the last time you knew what conservatives wanted, Vox?

00:33:13.900 What made you the spokesman for conservatives in America?

00:33:17.440 What they're trying to do is paint him as a neocon, a neoconservative, you know, those guys who want to spread democracy abroad, and they get a little too abstract and all of those things.

00:33:26.900 Because he worked for George W. Bush, and his administration was largely neoconservative, interested in spreading democracy abroad, Wilsonian in its foreign outlook.

00:33:35.340 John Bolton is not a neocon.

00:33:38.160 He's not a neoconservative.

00:33:39.400 He's not interested in spreading democracy abroad as a good, above all other goods, a good in itself.

00:33:45.640 He's interested, as he just said, as he said about the United Nations, in the strategic interests of the United States.

00:33:52.360 What serves our interest, that's what we will do.

00:33:55.060 And coincidentally, it will be good for the rest of the world.

00:33:58.480 It's a caricature to call him a neoconservative.

00:34:01.520 I must say, a little bit of disclosure, I am friends with the Bolton family, but I've admired the guy before.

00:34:07.560 We were friends, and I really like them personally.

00:34:11.060 I got to meet him in D.C. one time years and years ago, and he's one of the smartest people I've met in Washington.

00:34:17.440 You can ask him to talk about, I don't know, Afghanistan, and he'll just monologue.

00:34:22.080 He'll just go, he's so supremely knowledgeable.

00:34:25.380 You will not find anyone in D.C. who says that he isn't knowledgeable.

00:34:28.620 By the way, at the U.N., he had a lot of accomplishments.

00:34:30.400 There's this caricature that he's never seen a country he doesn't want to bomb because he suggests that preemptive war is not a terrible idea, which obviously it isn't.

00:34:38.000 It's a perfectly reasonable idea.

00:34:40.160 But at the U.N., he had a lot of accomplishments.

00:34:41.960 He created a new partnership with Interpol to strengthen sanctions against Al-Qaeda.

00:34:46.960 He got the Security Council to adopt sanctions against those individuals who contributed to the genocide in Darfur.

00:34:53.040 He lifted sanctions against Liberia to help President Asirleev after the brutal reign of that country's previous leader.

00:34:59.780 He was closely involved in diplomatic efforts in Burma, Burundi, and Congo.

00:35:04.380 He pushed Ethiopia and Eritrea to accept international efforts in those countries.

00:35:08.820 He was diplomatic but strong on preventing Iran from enriching uranium.

00:35:13.640 And as tensions with North Korea are reaching a fever pitch, it seems no coincidence that just now John Bolton is being named NSA.

00:35:19.940 He was very strong on North Korea, very tough, called him like he saw him and said that it's a mass murderous, hellish regime. 0.95

00:35:28.360 By the way, the North Koreans, Kim Jong-il at that time, said that John Bolton was a bloodsucker. 0.96

00:35:35.420 They called him a bunch of other names, too.

00:35:37.080 So you can see the Vox doesn't like him, the Washington Post doesn't like him, and the Kim dynasty in North Korea doesn't like him.

00:35:43.760 And then good conservatives do like John Bolton.

00:35:45.740 Should tell you a lot about what you need to know in that case.

00:35:49.340 He speaks very bluntly.

00:35:51.020 He takes America's strategic interests at heart.

00:35:53.680 And it's very good to have that voice in the ear of the president.

00:35:58.500 That is a move to the right.

00:36:00.620 And it's a little different from what Trump talked about on the campaign trail, but that is all right by me.

00:36:05.700 I'll leave on a high note because this budget was so depressing.

00:36:09.240 But there is at least a glimmer of hope there.

00:36:11.040 We'll see what happens with it.

00:36:13.120 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:36:13.860 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:36:14.820 Come back tomorrow.

00:36:15.740 I'll probably be in some other cavern somewhere in New York.

00:36:17.980 We'll do it all again.

00:36:24.040 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.

00:36:27.640 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:36:29.760 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:36:31.860 Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.

00:36:33.640 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:36:36.160 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:36:37.880 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:36:39.880 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:36:42.320 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

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The Michael Knowles Show - March 26, 2018

Ep. 127 - Is It Time To Turn On Trump？ ft. Howie Carr

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