Ep. 143 - Groundhog Kanye： Six More Years Of Trump
Summary
Selena Zito, author of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition, Reshaping American Politics, joins me to discuss her new book, The Great Revolution: How Trump's Populists Shaped American Politics. She also discusses why she thinks Kanye West, Shania Twain, and Eminem have me more hopeful than ever for Trump 2020.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
This Men's Mental Health Month, CAMH is confronting a silent crisis.
00:00:04.380
Did you know men account for 75% of all suicide deaths in Canada?
00:00:11.740
CAMH is on the front lines pioneering breakthroughs
00:00:18.540
so no father, son, brother, or family is left behind.
00:00:21.480
To join us in building better mental health care for men across Canada,
00:00:30.820
Groundhog Kanye has seen red pill black Candace Owens' shadow,
00:00:35.660
which means we can expect six more years of Trump.
00:00:38.640
Political pundits in the mainstream media can discern the face of the sky,
00:00:42.260
but they cannot discern the signs of the times.
00:00:50.640
Inside the Populist Coalition, Reshaping American Politics.
00:00:54.480
Then we'll discuss what Kanye West, Shania Twain,
00:01:02.200
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:13.460
It's inevitable the blue wave is going to come.
00:01:15.560
Trump is toast because of Russian porn star, former FBI directors.
00:01:24.820
Shania Twain, Kanye West, Eminem have me more hopeful than ever for Trump 2020.
00:01:30.620
And it's not just because I'm coming down off all my drugs from Coachella.
00:01:33.840
Even Coachella has me happy about Republican prospects in 2018 and 2020
00:01:38.980
because they speak to the common sense of Americans.
00:01:43.640
Not precisely ideological rigor, not even an ideological shift,
00:01:49.160
but a demographic and a dispositional shift, I think, in politics.
00:01:56.700
First, to lay the groundwork of why I'm excited politically.
00:02:01.260
Let's bring on Selena Zito to discuss the populist movement
00:02:10.240
Selena Zito is a national political reporter and columnist at the Washington Examiner
00:02:28.480
So the book is The Great Revolt Inside the Populist Coalition,
00:02:36.440
You have managed to get this book blurbed by Senator Tom Cotton, Rush Limbaugh, and Jake Tapper,
00:02:42.540
which is a pretty broad swath of the political spectrum.
00:02:48.540
You call 2016 the Great Revolt and you find the populists are the ones reshaping American politics.
00:02:54.840
What are your main findings from your research?
00:02:57.480
Well, what I found through my research, first of all, is something that I noticed leading up to 2016,
00:03:07.360
that this technological industrial revolution going on in this country has impacted everyone,
00:03:18.340
And we have found our way not to just express ourselves through politics,
00:03:22.860
but how we shop, how we buy, what brand loyalty we have to institutional brands that have had us forever.
00:03:34.740
And when that all changed, it impacted politics.
00:03:39.080
And I don't think people were paying attention to that.
00:03:42.680
And so after the election, there was this rush to see, well, have Trump's voters changed their mind?
00:03:50.160
And you see sort of reporters parachuting in for a day, asking, you know, did you change your mind?
00:03:57.240
And they are sort of digging in and understanding what has unsettled the electorate in the way that it has.
00:04:05.640
Well, you know, they parachute in and they paint this picture of the Trump voter as this uneducated rube
00:04:13.160
who probably has some fairly significant racial animus.
00:04:22.180
And you describe a variety of characters, character types who voted for Trump.
00:04:28.140
And I got to tell you, I know people from these areas.
00:04:31.200
I have family in these areas, some of whom voted for Trump.
00:04:34.540
And so I knew immediately that the picture that was being painted by the mainstream media isn't right.
00:04:39.960
What are the character types that you found of people who voted for Trump?
00:04:44.160
Well, I went to all the counties in the Great Lakes Midwest, the states that changed the election, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa.
00:04:59.360
And I went to only the counties that voted Obama, Obama, Trump, because I felt it was most important to look at those counties because they're the ones that show the shift.
00:05:18.260
And I removed counties that voted Republican in 2014.
00:05:23.560
So say you voted for Joni Ernst in Iowa in 2014.
00:05:27.200
That county was taken out because I wanted to see the purest flip.
00:05:31.200
And then I interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people.
00:05:34.340
And along with Brad Todd, we took a look at these voters and we started to see a pattern about seven different archetypes of voters that were largely missed in the election and who are making up this new coalition.
00:05:50.900
And it's a coalition that actually has its roots in 2006 when the Republicans first lost the House and they lost conservative Democrat voters and they lost independent voters because they were unhappy with the status quo.
00:06:07.360
So this is like a wrecking ball to all establishments, Republican or Democrat.
00:06:14.600
And these voters, more than often than not, are highly, you know, have a college degree, have a successful life.
00:06:26.460
Women with guns, that's like one of my favorite chapters, girl gunpower, because they went completely undetected.
00:06:35.100
Suburban women who believe that the Second Amendment is the most feminist thing they can do because it completely empowers them.
00:06:45.180
They have total control of their life and their destiny.
00:06:53.460
On the feminist gunpower, I do love that, you know, women are not as strong as men.
00:07:01.860
And so the only thing that can be an equalizer, the only thing that actually can bring sexual equality as a matter of fighting off aggressors is a gun.
00:07:12.500
And the Democrats have just totally gone off the rails on that issue.
00:07:18.640
I'm just going to go down a little rabbit hole for a second.
00:07:21.400
And so I teach this class at Harvard where I take the students out of Cambridge and place them in different parts of the country and immerse them and have them approach reporting the way I do.
00:07:35.300
No interstates, no airplanes, nothing but back roads, live in a bed and breakfast.
00:07:40.900
So the first person you meet is a small business person.
00:07:46.320
And the first group of people that they met there were a group of about 40 women, suburban women between the ages of 20 and 45.
00:07:55.160
And they just sort of validated the entire chapter on women with guns.
00:08:01.020
You know, I think a lot of people, they think that the reason people voted for Trump is his personality.
00:08:09.280
They were out for blood, they were angry, they liked his bad language, they liked his rudeness.
00:08:14.380
And yet what I noticed in your book, so many of the people profiled say, I like Trump, I still stick with Trump, I just wish he wouldn't tweet.
00:08:23.600
And I've heard this from friends of mine and relatives of mine.
00:08:28.300
One, what does that tell us about the people who are supporting him, these forgotten Americans?
00:08:33.180
And two, in your opinion, observing politics, are the tweets good or bad for Donald Trump?
00:08:43.880
You know, even the people, as you said, a lot of the people that I interviewed who love his policies and love his sort of approach to Washington, wish he wouldn't tweet all the time.
00:08:57.360
But even that, I think he's really toned down in the past few months.
00:09:02.800
But also, they weren't looking for someone to like.
00:09:12.420
A lot of these people in this new Trump coalition did.
00:09:21.360
And that's why Democrats lost the midterms, was because they were punished for Obama's policies.
00:09:30.120
But Obama was still this likable character, whereas Donald Trump, they don't care if they do or do not like him.
00:09:43.920
And then the other thing is, you know, when you said about angry, it's one of the things that really gets under my skin.
00:09:49.400
Because a lot of pundits missed, and reporters as well, missed what Make America Great Again meant.
00:10:03.380
They thought it was something that was, you know, looking backwards.
00:10:11.680
Americans want to be part of something bigger than themselves.
00:10:17.260
And they haven't felt that for an incredibly long time.
00:10:20.840
And that's what Make America Great Again was about.
00:10:25.480
I love in the book how you point out everyone thinks these people are desperate and they're bitter clingers or whatever.
00:10:35.880
In September, you wrote in The Atlantic, I believe,
00:10:38.400
that the press takes Trump literally, but not seriously.
00:10:42.700
His supporters take him seriously, but not literally.
00:10:46.240
And when I read that, I thought, yes, that's exactly as a New Yorker who knows how New Yorkers talk.
00:10:55.680
Well, you know, I mean, take the rough rebounders in the in the book.
00:11:00.080
This is one of the types of Trump voter you identify in the book.
00:11:07.220
But when they hear him talk, they're like, yeah, I could have seen me saying something like that.
00:11:16.420
And even the people that don't like the way he talks but still love his policies,
00:11:21.660
understand that people in business do talk like that,
00:11:25.800
that people in business do do fake outs to to get what they want.
00:11:30.780
A lot of people have in their family, they own businesses or friends, they get his personality.
00:11:38.720
Sometimes it, you know, grates on their nerves, but it doesn't detach them from him.
00:11:49.160
Donald Trump was not the cause of this movement.
00:11:54.960
And the important thing to take from the book is this movement.
00:11:59.360
If the movement's up here, the peak, we're still about here.
00:12:06.340
This is still going to impact politics, business, culture, entertainment, sports.
00:12:15.240
I think it's what Kanye West is referring to as the shifting consciousness.
00:12:19.060
If you've been watching his highly entertaining tweets the last few days.
00:12:23.780
I retweeted Kanye West three times in the past 24 hours, and I've never even followed him.
00:12:31.660
There were several of his tweets were very aspirational.
00:12:34.420
And that's what people, that's what people miss.
00:12:37.800
Like reporters and pundits tend to think anger, anger, anger.
00:12:44.480
People want to be part of something bigger than themselves.
00:12:50.500
It is in our DNA, and people miss that all the time.
00:12:54.220
And we've already talked about the girl gun power.
00:12:57.280
One of the most perplexing, I think, groups that you identify in the book,
00:13:02.040
and even for me, I've had to wonder how it worked out for Trump, are the suburban moms.
00:13:08.060
The late, great Barbara Bush said in 2016 that she couldn't understand why any woman would vote for Trump.
00:13:15.380
And you say that the silent suburban moms constituted a crucial part of his coalition.
00:13:22.600
Why did they vote for him, and why were they so important?
00:13:25.980
It was interesting how much they've been insulted by Hillary Clinton.
00:13:36.640
Look, these women are looking for a strength in leadership, but they're also looking for a wrecking ball,
00:13:47.100
because they do not believe that Washington and either party have served their families and their communities well.
00:13:59.260
You know, a lot of these suburban women have lived in this same area all their lives.
00:14:04.600
Their mother's mother's mother has lived there, right?
00:14:08.380
And they have seen sort of how the family has prospered and gotten better each time.
00:14:13.800
And they don't, they didn't see that under the last two, maybe the last three administrations.
00:14:23.140
They believe that there was hope in his way of doing business to maybe make their communities and their areas be prosperous again.
00:14:37.260
That's a very good point, and it is, you know, Hillary Clinton said she made fun of the mothers who baked cookies and things like that in the 1990s.
00:14:52.920
One aspect that surprised me a little and actually changed my analysis of the election is the education.
00:15:01.280
We all know that President Covfefe loves the uneducated was a phrase that he used in his speech.
00:15:05.900
You write, Americans who live their lives among a group of friends and neighbors with varied educational backgrounds preferred Trump more than Clinton or Romney,
00:15:15.220
while college-educated Americans who live exclusively among other degree holders were less likely to support Trump, even if they were Republican.
00:15:23.600
So it's not the education itself that is the predictor of Trump support.
00:15:27.360
It's the education of your friends and the people you live with.
00:15:31.700
What does that say about just the geography of America, the social breakdown, I suppose, of America?
00:15:39.020
Well, there's this whole thing about the super zip codes, right?
00:15:42.560
And so the people who live in these super zip codes, so think about the six counties that surround Washington, D.C.,
00:15:49.320
or the counties that in New York and Connecticut that surround New York City or around Los Angeles.
00:15:55.660
In those areas, and this is like, you know, Virginia, Maryland, parts of Virginia, parts of Maryland, in those suburban zip codes,
00:16:04.640
if you had, just say you had a graduate degree, you didn't vote for Trump because everyone around you was doing well.
00:16:15.160
But in looking districts around in Kenosha, Wisconsin, or in suburban Pittsburgh or suburban Philadelphia,
00:16:24.200
these areas, I actually should say exurban Philadelphia,
00:16:29.440
these areas have a mix of college education, blue-collar worker, technical workers.
00:16:37.640
These are people who interact and it's part of their daily life or their family life to interact with people with a variety
00:16:49.180
And so they were much more apt to support Trump because they have seen the carnage.
00:16:57.480
You know, he got made fun of for saying that word, go to Youngstown, Ohio, and you see carnage.
00:17:04.000
You know, go to a lot of these places in the country and you see carnage.
00:17:08.620
And so they have seen the impact of some of these economic policies.
00:17:13.840
And so they were persuaded to go vote for Trump over Clinton because they felt that he was more in touch
00:17:26.120
They want their whole community is their identity.
00:17:35.140
And when they see parts of it crumble, they want someone who's going to make everyone better,
00:17:41.900
not just, you know, the nice street that they live on.
00:17:45.720
Yeah, that reminds me of how the left loves humanity, but they don't really like humans very much.
00:17:51.180
And so you see those lecturing us on who we have to vote for and who has compassion for the poor
00:17:56.700
or the uneducated or this, that, whatever terms they use.
00:18:00.040
They tend only to ever go to cocktail parties with their fellow Harvard alumni.
00:18:04.920
And they don't actually speak to any of these people.
00:18:07.540
And they break out in hives when they get more than 150 miles outside the city.
00:18:12.220
Now, all of this makes a good case for a movement, a vaguely populist, not terribly ideological
00:18:20.680
movement of people who have been the victims of certain neglect, economic neglect, drug epidemics,
00:18:29.620
Now, Trump's pitch when he ran was largely about management.
00:18:38.520
It's about sort of my expertise in running things.
00:18:49.240
So once Trump is done after his third or fourth term, I don't know, whenever, you know, whenever
00:18:54.080
we've got to say goodbye to him, how does that movement continue if it's about a man instead
00:19:06.500
I actually think it's about the people that are part of the coalition.
00:19:10.940
So as I said, he was the he was not the cause of it, but he was the result of it.
00:19:18.000
I think our policy, you know, every so many years, I typically a hundred are Teutonic plates
00:19:25.300
realign and and and and our electorate makes different choices than the past behavior.
00:19:32.960
And I think we're in the middle of that movement.
00:19:37.000
And this is a book that's that across the ideological spectrum, I think, is important
00:19:43.100
to read, because if we don't understand what's going on in this country, we are going to continue
00:19:54.180
And and and while that is important at the top level, at the bottom level, like in Congress,
00:20:02.280
that can sometimes be really unstable because nothing really gets done.
00:20:09.160
So but but, you know, I mean, the Democrats are going through their own, you know, their
00:20:16.980
We don't talk about it much because they're not the party in power.
00:20:20.840
Uh, but but but there is theirs is very fractured and that's their challenge.
00:20:28.660
It's one little extra bit about this coalition, because they have, as you say, they have different
00:20:37.320
I want to talk about the Christians, evangelical Christians in particular, but Christians broadly
00:20:42.940
who support Donald Trump get a lot of flack for it.
00:20:47.300
People say that they're associating with a morally corrupt guy.
00:20:52.720
You call them the King Cyrus Christians are Christians who voted for Trump hypocrites.
00:21:00.160
No, I think that's the I think they would be very when they are very offended when they
00:21:09.380
Being a Christian is, first of all, about forgiveness.
00:21:13.200
Very important aspect that people tend to forget when they talk about Christians.
00:21:17.300
Uh, second of all, the, these voters who were the last ones to go across the line for
00:21:24.280
Trump, they, I call them King, the King Cyrus because King Cyrus was the Persian.
00:21:30.420
I'm not get this totally correct, but he was the Persian king who led the, uh, who protected
00:21:39.000
And even though they had no ideological and religiosity connection because he was going
00:21:50.060
And this is, this is sort of what evangelicals saw in Trump.
00:21:58.460
It had been a long time since someone stood up for them, including George W. Bush.
00:22:04.200
And, and, and he, which is interesting because he's a Christian and I don't know what Trump
00:22:11.440
Uh, but he had that whole Corinthians thing all wrong.
00:22:20.880
I don't remember that was pretty funny, but I'm sorry to interrupt, but you, you do put
00:22:26.040
in the book, you, you talk about the various times he sort of tried to bumble out an explanation
00:22:32.480
And he, you know, one time he said he was asked, do you ever ask for forgiveness?
00:22:36.120
And he said, yeah, you know, I try not to make mistakes so that I don't have to ask forgiveness.
00:22:40.160
It's very, it was very funny to watch each time, but you know, the, the point being is
00:22:49.340
So they didn't go for the Christian guy this time or woman.
00:22:52.740
And, and, and Hillary Clinton is a devout Methodist.
00:22:56.380
I've interviewed her about, about her religion and, and its impact in her life.
00:23:02.340
But, you know, they went for the person that would have their back.
00:23:05.740
And one of the most important things in having their back was what the makeup of the Supreme
00:23:15.640
I mean, of all of the members of the, all the different parts of his coalition, the evangelicals
00:23:21.960
have received back the most for their investment in their vote.
00:23:28.640
I must say, when I read that chapter, when the whole book is illuminating, when I read that
00:23:33.340
chapter in particular, as a Christian who supports Donald Trump, I thought, oh yes, she gets it.
00:23:38.840
She actually understand that this group of people, I, I knew they existed because I'm
00:23:43.320
one of them, but it's, yeah, it's finally a fair dealing for Christians who support Trump.
00:23:49.780
My last question, I have to ask you, you're a senior political analyst.
00:23:57.600
What does this mean for 2018 and 2020, if you're willing to venture any predictions?
00:24:04.280
Well, I'm one of the few people that have, that I'm hesitant to say this blue wave is
00:24:10.880
going to take over because I don't have an understanding of what the primary outcome is
00:24:19.320
There's also, you know, Republicans and independent voters tend to come home and come home late
00:24:28.960
In terms of Donald Trump, you know, as I say in the book, this coalition is a wrecking ball
00:24:39.220
You know, part of that's going to be disrupting some establishment Republicans.
00:24:44.320
You know, they've been unsatisfied with them, in particular on some issues like healthcare
00:24:57.840
I would probably say, ask me again in August, but the Trump coalition hasn't changed.
00:25:06.460
And I find evidence, as I'm out on the road, which is all the time, of it gathering more
00:25:16.420
I'm so glad to hear you say that because I think that I'm a crazy person when I have
00:25:22.460
I say, historically speaking, I guess Democrats should take the house.
00:25:32.680
And you point out in the book, I think it's something like 18% of Trump voters are, are
00:25:38.560
nervous about telling people that they're Trump voters.
00:25:40.820
And among certain demographics, that number shoots up to 40% or, or, you know, pretty significant
00:25:47.720
Do you think, I know I said the last one was the last question, but really this is the
00:25:51.420
Do you, do you think that, that social anxiety that we have to keep quiet, that we can't tell
00:25:59.740
anybody that we're voting for Trump, do you think that that produces skewed public opinion
00:26:04.560
polls and therefore we can, uh, just as happened in 2016 when Princeton said two nights before
00:26:11.620
the election, 99% chance Hillary Clinton's going to win.
00:26:16.380
Do you think that we can trust these polls going into 2018 or are these silent voters
00:26:25.520
Polling has been difficult period since the advent of the, uh, the iPhone and the BlackBerry.
00:26:31.460
Uh, people just, you know, we look at our phone and we're like, I'm not answering that.
00:26:36.680
Uh, so they, they, polling is much more challenging.
00:26:42.600
Uh, but also, yes, I mean, I, I have done stories lately where people will not, I mean,
00:26:49.220
they'll give me their name, uh, but they won't want their name to be punished.
00:26:58.200
And then for, yeah, I mean, you know, and, and these are, are businessmen and women who
00:27:04.000
are very supportive of the president, but they're like, I, I, you know, I have a business.
00:27:09.360
I don't need that aggravation with what they do to people or, you know, I have to work
00:27:14.160
with clients, uh, or I don't want to be, you know, uh, outed on social media.
00:27:20.020
And, and so there's, I, I don't think, I actually think that number has grown since, uh, and
00:27:27.220
probably is even higher to people who, um, since 2016.
00:27:34.160
And I have to say your writing is always on point.
00:27:37.320
Uh, if you don't, if you don't follow Selena, Selena Zito is one of the, uh, few people in
00:27:42.860
the national media who actually seems to get it and is not in a, just an echo chamber.
00:27:49.700
The book is the great revolt inside the populist coalition, reshaping American politics.
00:27:56.620
It is the best book I have read about the 2016 election with one exception, a Hillary
00:28:02.520
Clinton's what happened because it answers the question right on the cover, Hillary Clinton.
00:28:07.960
With that exception, the cover itself gives a good view.
00:28:11.640
This is the most insightful book I've read about it.
00:28:18.700
Do I have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube now?
00:28:20.780
That is a terrible shame because this is groundhog yay.
00:28:24.260
Today, we're going to talk about how Kanye West and Shania Twain and Coachella and Eminem
00:28:30.860
are all giving us good hope for the future, for Donald Trump's presidency, for the policies
00:28:37.020
he's trying to enact and for the voters that he talked to that, uh, other politicians haven't
00:28:43.820
Stick around, but you can only do that at dailywire.com.
00:28:48.360
You help keep the lights on and the lights today, you know, they're a little different.
00:28:51.060
It looks like my eyes are even more dilated from all the peyote I did at Coachella over
00:28:57.420
the weekend, uh, but it really helps us out and, uh, you know, what do you get?
00:29:02.160
It's 10 bucks a month or $100 for an annual membership.
00:29:04.640
You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get to ask
00:29:09.200
And I think I'm coming up next, uh, this coming month, I will be doing the, uh, conversation
00:29:15.680
Everybody can watch, but only subscribers get to ask the questions.
00:29:22.320
What really matters is the leftist here's Tumblr because guys, today was a big day for leftist
00:29:30.320
Like if you don't have it already, run, just run.
00:29:34.180
It's too late to get, if you do have a Tumblr, get ready because Kanye West, the pop culture
00:29:39.820
figure is just tweeting out these extremely conservative sentiments beginning with how much
00:29:46.280
he likes red pill, black Candace Owens, who's a friend of the show.
00:29:50.700
Uh, so you're going to need this because they're going to, you know, all this pop culture, they're
00:29:57.780
And then the, the floodgates are going to explode.
00:30:00.800
Make sure you have your leftist tears Tumblr because if you don't have it, then you're going
00:30:24.240
And this is because I'm coming back from Coachella.
00:30:28.000
Drew made me for the Andrew Klavan show, watch Coachella and report on what's, what's happening,
00:30:36.920
I was really surprised because this, if, if you missed it, which I assume probably you
00:30:41.960
did, this is what Eminem, this is how he began one of his songs at Coachella.
00:30:54.260
How many people are proud to be citizens in a beautiful country of the Lord?
00:30:59.060
The stripes to the stars for the lightning nicks for the free of the sea.
00:31:03.880
How many people are proud to be citizens of this beauty, beautiful country of ours?
00:31:09.520
If you couldn't see, there were huge American flags on the screens and it wasn't ironic.
00:31:14.400
You know, he went into some song where he's singing about himself, but it wasn't like an
00:31:23.180
I have to clean up his language, but he said, it's good to be back from overseas.
00:31:28.720
And this is a big turnaround because for the last few months, Eminem has been trying desperately
00:31:33.960
to get Donald Trump's attention, even though Trump just won't do it.
00:31:38.480
But this is what he was rapping just a few months ago.
00:31:48.000
But that's all I got till I come up with a solid.
00:31:55.920
Got a plan and now I got a hatchet like a damn Apache with a tomahawk.
00:32:00.660
I'm a walk inside a mosque on Ramadan and say a prayer that every time she talks, she gets
00:32:16.560
But we better give Obama props because what we got in office now is a kamikaze that'll
00:32:24.700
And while the drama pops and he waits for to quiet down, he'll just gas his plane up and
00:32:48.040
The rhymes were forced and weird and really sad.
00:32:58.260
And Coachella, you'd expect it to be super political.
00:33:01.680
Beyonce was the big headliner and the songs weren't good.
00:33:06.480
But even she didn't get really political there.
00:33:09.040
I found out apparently the guy who owns Coachella is a Christian billionaire, a conservative Christian
00:33:17.460
But what I think actually reigned it in is that entertainers and people in the pop culture are realizing this doesn't play.
00:33:26.720
And some of them, I think, are having epiphanies themselves.
00:33:33.560
We knew that Kanye kind of liked Donald Trump because during the campaign or maybe right after the election, he went and visited him at Trump Tower.
00:33:40.520
He actually showed up, you know, and took pictures with him.
00:33:48.460
Kanye West just started tweeting out these amazing tweets.
00:33:52.780
Over the weekend, he goes, I love the way Candace Owens thinks.
00:34:03.500
And she speaks directly to black people in particular.
00:34:10.880
Express what you feel, not what you've been programmed to think.
00:34:23.160
He goes, we have freedom of speech, but not freedom of thought.
00:34:28.500
And sometimes we don't even have freedom of speech.
00:34:30.520
He goes on, the thought police want to suppress freedom of thought.
00:34:34.520
That is the definition of political correctness.
00:34:39.780
He then goes on and says, constantly bringing up the past keeps you stuck there.
00:34:44.280
So he's actually pivoting points, but to another correct one and a conservative talking point.
00:34:49.440
And then he says, there was a time when slavery was the trend.
00:35:00.540
And finally, he says, self-victimization is a disease.
00:35:10.720
Scott Adams is the Dilbert guy who rightly predicted Donald Trump winning the presidency.
00:35:16.260
And has been a really good observer of the Trump effect and why people like him and why people vote for him.
00:35:24.280
Now I know Ben, I think he said on the show today, he wrote a piece about this.
00:35:28.700
He said, conservatives shouldn't be thrilled about this.
00:35:37.080
And he said, George Bush doesn't care about black people.
00:35:39.600
And so we shouldn't suddenly embrace him because he's saying the correct things.
00:35:46.680
I'm not saying that Kanye West is now the great intellectual leader of the conservative movement.
00:35:52.600
Or he's some political philosopher or some luminary.
00:35:56.320
But it is so important that guys like Kanye West say the sort of things that we believe.
00:36:09.400
Conservatives have ceded the popular culture for so long.
00:36:14.520
And it's why the left was dominant for decades upon decades.
00:36:18.600
And now we're playing into the popular culture.
00:36:22.700
That's what Andrew Breitbart always used to say.
00:36:29.680
Because all battles ultimately are cultural battles.
00:36:34.260
Even the question of how much we should lower taxes is cultural.
00:36:40.800
What we think of when we think of private property in the United States.
00:36:44.340
And how individuals should react to their property.
00:36:48.840
I think he is freeing people from certain social stigmas they might have about politics.
00:36:58.180
She said that education wasn't the predictor of voting for Trump or not voting for Trump.
00:37:08.840
So if you're constantly being bombarded with people saying it's totally unacceptable to support Donald Trump.
00:37:14.480
It's totally unacceptable to be a conservative.
00:37:23.700
And guys like Kanye West saying like nah I don't really like Hillary.
00:37:28.040
Or Roseanne Barr another person who's not a conservative.
00:37:38.940
You know Shania Twain the Canadian singer said last week that she would.
00:37:50.180
The apparatus of the mainstream media and the entertainment industry descended upon her like vultures.
00:38:01.740
And it was a little bizarre because she clearly stated her opinion.
00:38:05.160
And then she said basically I'm sorry for stating my opinion.
00:38:10.660
But they descend on you and say you can't say that.
00:38:17.060
And this is a wonderful sign for Republicans and for the Trump people.
00:38:22.040
Because as long as they are pressuring you and saying if you believe a certain thing you're going to lose your job.
00:38:28.920
If you state common sense you're going to lose your job at Google like James Damore.
00:38:32.480
Or if you hold a political view that was the main consensus political view until five minutes ago.
00:38:40.000
Like Brandon Icke on the issue of gay marriage.
00:38:48.100
And what that means is they're going to be less honest with pollsters.
00:38:51.660
They're not going to be willing to say I'd vote for Trump.
00:38:56.960
But they're still going to go vote for Donald Trump.
00:39:04.780
This is a groundhog yay is really what I think about it.
00:39:08.380
I think this is a wonderful sign for 2018 and 2020.
00:39:15.300
By all rights the Democrats should retake the House.
00:39:20.940
People are being so censored and silenced to say well yeah I actually kind of like the president.
00:39:29.020
It appears he's bringing peace to Korea after 70 years.
00:39:32.120
And is denuclearizing the craziest state on planet earth.
00:39:35.820
If they even say that they could lose their reputations.
00:39:39.980
And that silent majority is just going to keep on going right to the voting booths.
00:39:45.320
And I think the first time I've ever said something nice about Kanye.
00:39:49.200
I actually think Kanye West has great taste in music.
00:39:51.920
He just I don't know that what he does with the music is great himself.
00:39:55.700
But he clearly has a good ear you know and takes good songs and does whatever he does to them.
00:40:00.300
And now he's he's doing that to political speech and to political philosophy and fine by me.
00:40:11.740
We have a lot of cool guests coming up but I can't tell you.
00:40:17.220
I'm going to keep I'm just like the silent majority.
00:40:28.800
The Michael Knowles show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.
00:40:54.200
Did you know that over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. grocery stores is imported?
00:40:59.120
That's why I buy all my meat from GoodRanchers.com instead.
00:41:02.760
Good Ranchers products are 100% born, raised, and harvested right here in the USA from local family farms.
00:41:08.460
Plus there's no antibiotics ever, no added hormones, and no seed oils.
00:41:15.120
Best of all, Good Ranchers delivers straight to your door for added convenience.
00:41:18.700
So lock in a secure supply of American meat today.
00:41:21.240
Subscribe now at GoodRanchers.com and get free meat for life and $40 off with code DAILYWIRE.
00:41:26.300
That's $40 off and free meat for life with code DAILYWIRE.