The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1450 - My Trip To Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Event

00:00:00.000 Bernie Moreno, the Trump-endorsed candidate in last night's Ohio Senate primary, has defeated

00:00:05.780 his two more establishment-friendly foes. And despite a brutal campaign fight,

00:00:11.940 the results were not even all that close. Moreno bested his opponent, State Senator Matt Dolan,

00:00:19.120 and Secretary of State Frank LaRose with over 50 percent of the vote. Moreno credited much

00:00:24.540 of his victory to Trump's last-minute rallying for him, which is just another reminder that Trump

00:00:31.820 owns the GOP. Coincidentally, I'm coming to you now not from Mar-a-Lago, but I was at Mar-a-Lago last

00:00:37.280 night. Now I'm staying at the much cheaper hotel near Mar-a-Lago. But I saw it up close, and you

00:00:43.920 don't need to see it up close. You can just see it from the results in these elections. Trump owns the

00:00:48.500 GOP. Trump did not just win the 2024 presidential nomination because of high name recognition. He

00:00:55.900 didn't just win his presidential nomination because he had a major head start over the

00:01:02.100 other Republican candidates. He started campaigning earlier than the other governors say. Trump won

00:01:08.060 because he controls the GOP. His candidates win their primaries. His issues occupy the minds of

00:01:15.900 Republican voters. It's not just that he's brash. It's not just that he's funny. He's the undisputed

00:01:20.320 leader of the party, and everyone other than the Republican Party elites seems to know it.

00:01:26.240 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:45.900 Welcome back to the show. Really distressing report coming out of the Guttmacher Institute,

00:01:52.320 which is the think tank wing of Planned Parenthood, basically, which shows that 60% of abortions

00:01:58.480 these days are carried out by the abortion pill, and the pro-abortion movement is making it easier

00:02:05.000 and easier to access that pill. We'll get into what that means because it has political implications

00:02:09.200 even beyond the issue of abortion. First, though, go to luxblocks.com. Use promo code

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00:03:20.220 Michael25 for 25% off. Luxblocks.com. Promo code Michael25 for 25% off. What were the Ohio Republican

00:03:31.420 primary voters voting on? According to CBS News, the top issue in Ohio was, can you guess?

00:03:38.820 Maybe you can. I probably would have guessed this, or it would have at least been in my top two.

00:03:43.720 It's immigration. It's not the economy. It's not the war breaking out. It's immigration. It's that

00:03:48.120 open border, and it's all of the myriad political effects that come about as a result of a broken

00:03:53.380 border and a system of mass migration, which we've had even legally in our country for 60 years.

00:03:57.480 A plurality of voters, 45%, say that immigration was their number one concern. Then the economy

00:04:05.480 only came in at 29%. So there's that old line from James Carville, the famous Democrat campaign

00:04:12.340 consultant, who said, it's the economy, stupid. People vote with their wallets. It's always about

00:04:16.840 the economy. I just don't think that's really true at this moment. I don't think it's been true

00:04:22.560 for quite a number of years now. If that were true, then a lot of Tea Party candidates would

00:04:28.160 have done a lot better because they were just focusing on economic issues at a time when the

00:04:31.700 economy was terrible because of Barack Obama. The misery index was very high, and it didn't really

00:04:36.160 matter. Obama got reelected. A lot of his allies got reelected. And this poll seems to reflect that.

00:04:42.560 45% immigration, 29% say the economy. 13% said abortion, which is frankly probably good news

00:04:50.400 for Republicans. I vote on abortion. It's not the only issue I vote on, but it's a big one.

00:04:59.640 I'm pro-life. I'm going to be much more inclined to vote for the pro-life candidate.

00:05:04.160 There aren't all that many people who vote largely or primarily on pro-life, on the abortion issue,

00:05:11.700 on the right. There are, it seems to me, a lot of people, or at least as many people as there are

00:05:18.500 pro-lifers who are pro-abortion, who go out to the women's march and they wear the dumb pink hat and

00:05:22.460 they scream about how important it is to kill babies. If that number is very high, we're going

00:05:29.400 to lose. The Democrats keep saying that abortion is a major issue motivating Democrat voters,

00:05:36.020 and that's why in the wake of the overruling of Roe v. Wade, Republicans are going to get shellacked

00:05:40.540 unless they run away from the abortion issue and endorse infanticide and stop protecting babies

00:05:44.380 because Democrats vote on abortion. And it's just not true. A little bit they do. A little bit they

00:05:49.280 do. What's the number? 13%? Okay. Nowhere near the degree to which people vote on the economy.

00:05:56.260 And that itself is nowhere near the degree to which people vote on immigration. And the Democrats are

00:06:01.720 cartoonishly awful on immigration. They call on illegal aliens to surge to the border. They insist on

00:06:10.260 giving illegal aliens not only the same rights as Americans, but even further privileges. They're

00:06:15.020 going to put them up in really nice hotel rooms in New York that you can't afford. They insist on

00:06:21.400 flying these people all around the country to politically convenient areas. Crime goes up.

00:06:28.160 Drugs go up. You have a major mass, I can't even call it a mass drug problem. It's a mass poisoning

00:06:33.300 problem through the fentanyl epidemic, all of which is coming across the southern border, all of which

00:06:38.820 it's leading to all these awful overdoses. They do nothing. And the moment you object,

00:06:45.880 they call you a racist. And still, the Democrats win. So I don't want to hear it. I really don't

00:06:51.720 want to hear it about abortion. Oh, you Republicans, you just got to stop protecting life. Yeah,

00:06:56.420 I don't know. All the data show that it's not a major issue driving voters. And even if it were,

00:07:01.540 by the way, the biggest issue is immigration. And you guys still keep winning some issues there.

00:07:06.780 So maybe what's going on in these races is a little bit more complex. In any case, 73% of

00:07:13.340 respondents in Ohio said that illegal aliens who have crossed Biden's wide open border should be

00:07:18.000 deported. 23% said they should be offered a chance for legal status. So that's a scary number,

00:07:26.720 too. Which is, you got, okay, almost three quarters say, yeah, deport these people who are unvetted,

00:07:32.960 who, many of whom now aren't even coming from Latin America. They fly in from places like the

00:07:37.600 Middle East. They fly in from places like China. Then they walk across that border totally unvetted.

00:07:42.880 A number of them are committing murders and even larger violent attacks. So three quarters saying,

00:07:50.220 get them out of here. But then you got 23% of Republican primary voters saying they should be

00:07:54.920 offered a chance for legal status. Which is a reminder that if you are listening to this show,

00:08:01.800 if you tune in to all the latest political news, you watch all of the speeches from the candidates,

00:08:08.440 maybe you show up to some political events, you are so much more tuned in to American politics,

00:08:16.260 not just than your average Joe blow on the street, but even compared to primary voters,

00:08:21.640 people who are actually going to go register, show up, put it on your calendar, maybe research

00:08:28.520 the candidates. You are so much more informed on these issues because the, well, they should maybe

00:08:34.800 have a path to citizenship vote is just the vote of, well, I'm kind of a nice person. I know illegal

00:08:41.480 immigration is bad, but you know, come on, what's the big deal? It's, it's the gut reaction of people

00:08:47.240 who have not reflected on politics. It's the gut reaction of people who don't think about how

00:08:52.620 second and third order effects work, how incentives work, that if you give illegal aliens mass amnesty,

00:09:00.860 then you're going to get a lot more illegal immigration. The people who say, well, we got to

00:09:05.020 stop this illegal immigration, but we don't want to be mean to the people who were here.

00:09:08.180 Yeah. No one wants to be mean to anybody, but you, you, you can't incentivize the very behavior

00:09:16.280 that you're attempting to disincentivize. Ronald Reagan tried that in the eighties. It didn't

00:09:19.700 work. He gave a mass amnesty. The Democrats didn't close the border. And now we have many,

00:09:23.660 many multiples, probably over an order of magnitude, more illegal immigration than we had all those years

00:09:28.900 ago. That's a quarter of the Republican primary vote. So we can't afford to get locked in our own

00:09:37.740 bubble. Yes, it's true. If people paid attention to politics as closely as you do, and they were

00:09:42.320 thinking totally logically about politics, they would say, oh my goodness, amnesty, that's crazy.

00:09:47.140 But they don't. And so Republican candidates, particularly as we move toward the general

00:09:51.000 election, are going to have to keep that in mind and adjust the way that they're speaking.

00:09:54.340 There's that old line, as goes Ohio, so goes the nation. Good news when it comes to the primary,

00:09:59.320 I suppose. But it's really only going to matter when we get to the general election.

00:10:06.540 That's it, because the winners go to Washington and the losers go home, to quote Cocaine Mitch.

00:10:10.820 Speaking of common sense issues, really sad case coming out of the Supreme Court, or not coming out

00:10:17.200 of the Supreme Court, I guess. The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of an Indiana couple

00:10:23.500 whose son was taken from them because they refused to believe a man can be a woman.

00:10:30.000 So the Indiana Child Services took Jeremy and Mary Cox's son from them at the age of 16 because

00:10:38.060 they refused to lie. They refused to lie to their kid. They refused to subject their kid to harmful

00:10:45.260 medical experiments. They told their kid the truth, and the truth will set you free, and that's why the

00:10:50.180 libs can't have that. I discussed this case at Mar-a-Lago last night in the context of parental

00:10:57.160 rights, which are obviously very much under attack. What is the court doing here? The court's not

00:11:03.900 ruling and saying, yeah, it's good. Get all of the kids out of their parents' homes so they can be

00:11:09.160 indoctrinated in weird sex stuff. The court just doesn't want to hear it. Oopsie-daisy, Indiana Child

00:11:15.500 Services took the kid away because the parents think that men and women are different and

00:11:20.160 one cannot become the other. Ah, well, sorry, we're a little busy. We have a tea time.

00:11:24.780 This court decision or non-decision seems to be quite contrary to a major Supreme Court decision

00:11:32.900 that was almost 100 years ago, 99 years ago, which declared that, quote, the fundamental liberty

00:11:39.360 upon which all governments in the union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize

00:11:46.180 its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. Now, the court goes on

00:11:53.360 and says, the child is not the mere creature of the state. Those who nurture him and direct his

00:11:59.060 destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to educate him. So that comes from a case called

00:12:03.860 Pierce versus Society of Sisters, 1925. It was a case that pertained to an Oregon law forcing kids into

00:12:10.540 public education. I'm not saying that these two cases are identical, but they pertain to the exact

00:12:17.460 same thing because education is not just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Education means the raising

00:12:24.600 of a child, the upbringing of a child. It's everything. You start being educated the moment that you become

00:12:30.080 even somewhat conscious, probably even before you're conscious. Human beings are mimetic and, you know,

00:12:35.100 little kids are like sponges. They pick up all the behaviors and all the attitudes of the people and the

00:12:40.020 things around them. So 100 years ago in Oregon, they had a law that said you got to send your kid to

00:12:46.580 public education. The court said, no, the state doesn't have a right to do that because the child

00:12:54.460 is part of the family before the child is part of the state. The family unit, owing to subsidiarity

00:13:01.400 and many other principles that we hold dear, the child is part of the family first. The parents have

00:13:08.540 rights that the state cannot take away because the child is not merely a creature of the state.

00:13:15.720 The communists might say the child is a creature of the state first, but the first political society

00:13:21.900 he's a member of is the family. And that's why the parents have those rights. And what's so absurd is

00:13:28.580 today? We're not discussing some, some right of parents that was controversial for most of human

00:13:35.000 history. I guess, I guess now it is controversial. We're asking, do parents have a right to tell their

00:13:42.040 kids that men can't become women? Do parents still have that right? Supreme court implicitly says

00:13:49.260 no. Which then leads to the next question. Do parents have any rights at all anymore? We did

00:13:57.060 for a lot of American history and the court spelled it out in really clear, downright philosophical terms,

00:14:03.340 legal terms, but downright philosophical terms. Now, if a parent doesn't have the right to tell his kid

00:14:09.320 a man can't become a woman, does a parent have any right at all? There's so much more to say.

00:14:15.500 First though, go to pepperdine.edu slash Knowles. If you are passionate about pursuing a political

00:14:21.760 career and want to take the next step, apply to the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.

00:14:27.240 Pepperdine School of Public Policy stands out among the 200 plus graduate policy programs in the country

00:14:32.020 as one of the few that is based out of a Christian university. This program equips leaders to apply

00:14:38.700 America's timeless principles to today's policy issues. The unique curriculum balances a rigorous study

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00:15:02.540 program's effectiveness in preparing students for great political careers. Pepperdine School of Public

00:15:08.440 Policy sits at the top of Malibu, California, in probably the most beautiful part of the

00:15:13.220 continental United States, certainly in the top five. Campus is nestled in the rolling foothills

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00:15:29.860 scholarship offerings. When you go to pepperdine.edu slash Knowles, pepperdine.edu slash Knowles to request

00:15:35.880 more information and start your application. The event that I was at last night where we discussed

00:15:41.200 parental rights and a number of other rights was for a group called Catholics for Catholics,

00:15:46.420 which I love that name. It's a great, blunt political name. This is a political organization

00:15:52.920 to advance a Catholic political vision, specifically in 2024. Obviously, everyone in that room last night

00:16:01.000 is supportive of Trump. Now, this is kind of weird, isn't it? It's kind of weird because Joe Biden

00:16:06.940 is ostensibly Catholic and our second Catholic president. But in practice, Donald Trump advances

00:16:16.540 a much more Catholic political vision than Joe Biden does. Why is that? It's kind of weird.

00:16:23.720 And why are Catholics all that involved in politics at all? Well, there is a strange fact that's cropped up

00:16:29.680 nowadays in American politics, which is it seems a president can't win the election without the

00:16:35.680 Catholic vote. The Catholic vote is notoriously not exactly monolithic, but it does sway here and

00:16:41.080 there. And it seems to be decisive in presidential elections. As goes Ohio, so goes the nation.

00:16:48.080 We used to say, now maybe we would say, as goes the Catholic vote, so goes the nation. Why is that?

00:16:53.580 You'll notice, I've noticed this, especially traveling all around the country, a lot of young people

00:16:58.200 who are kind of interested in that more traditional faith. Why is that? Why is that? I think it's

00:17:05.900 because, putting all theological and doctrinal points aside for a moment, just looking at the

00:17:12.760 social and political phenomenon, why do Catholics seem to have a bigger voice right now? I think it's

00:17:18.360 because we are living in an age that's really wishy-washy and relativistic and subjectivist,

00:17:23.320 where everything is becoming unmoored, where the most basic settled questions of society

00:17:28.600 are now up for debate, apparently, where the settled rights that we've all enjoyed for so long

00:17:34.440 apparently seem to be up to debate based on the sheer tyranny of will of the leftists and the

00:17:41.380 lack of confidence and the lack of courage and the inability to articulate strong moral arguments on

00:17:49.320 the right. I think in that world, people are going to be attracted to something that has some inertia,

00:17:55.740 that has some weight, that has some historical permanence. So I think that's why people are

00:18:00.900 attracted to that. Donald Trump articulates that view because he's just kind of old-fashioned.

00:18:07.600 You know, when Donald Trump comes out in 2016 and he says, look, what's my vision? I want to make

00:18:16.100 America great again. And I want, I'm running for president because I want good neighborhoods,

00:18:21.160 okay? And I want, I want the people who are weakening America, I want them to be weaker,

00:18:26.040 okay? And I want the, the good people and the workers and the families, I want them to be stronger

00:18:30.240 and I want to make America great again. And all the smart set, all the Beltway people made fun of him.

00:18:34.720 This dumb idiot, he doesn't even understand that presidents aren't supposed to make neighborhoods

00:18:38.860 better. This dummy, this, this crazy nostalgic man, he wants to make America great again. We don't,

00:18:45.280 why do you want to go make America great again when you could have it be weak and weird and creepy and

00:18:49.400 falling like it is right now? And they all kind of mocked him. But that simplicity actually reveals

00:18:56.260 some profound truths. We know that the civil law derives from the natural law, which is man's

00:19:03.600 participation in the eternal law. And we know the basic precept of the natural law is do good and

00:19:08.460 avoid evil. So all of a sudden, Donald Trump, who doesn't have three PhDs and hasn't worked in

00:19:14.140 politics his whole life, when he comes out and he says, yeah, I want more good stuff and less bad

00:19:17.780 stuff, which is basically what his politics comes down to, that actually reveals a profound political

00:19:22.820 truth. So then when you get to the practical aspects of the policy, you know, the bishops will

00:19:29.540 sometimes say there are non-negotiable issues. The right to life is a non-negotiable issue. Pope

00:19:35.160 Benedict XVI famously said that on a question such as the death penalty, there can be reasonable

00:19:40.840 disagreement among Catholics. The Catholic tradition obviously is pretty much totally in favor and

00:19:47.700 defends the death penalty. But some people argue that now, because of the development of modern

00:19:51.740 technology, we actually don't need in practice to implement it. Okay, Pope Benedict says reasonable

00:19:56.260 people can disagree. On an issue like, can you kill babies? Is it right to murder innocent little

00:20:00.540 babies? That's a non-negotiable. Reasonable people can't disagree over that. Look at that issue.

00:20:06.000 Trump, pro-life, most pro-life president of my lifetime. Joe Biden, apparently fanatically in

00:20:13.800 favor of killing babies. So I think that's in part why you're seeing the Catholic vote shift a little

00:20:19.120 bit. The second one, though, why Catholics are having this larger voice now in politics, it goes back to

00:20:27.040 the greatest observer of American politics, probably in history. That would be Alexei de Tocqueville,

00:20:32.640 who wrote one of the most famous works on American politics, Democracy in America. And everybody across

00:20:39.060 the political spectrum quotes Alexei de Tocqueville. But they leave out an important observation he made,

00:20:44.040 which is, he said, America, it's really religious. It's one of our most charming qualities, actually.

00:20:49.100 Now, you know, some of my ancestors, who were some of the earliest people in the country on the

00:20:53.180 Mayflower, they were fanatically Protestant, you know, very zealous Protestants. The pilgrims actually

00:21:00.060 weren't exactly Puritans. They were separatists. And there's a whole long, long history to discuss

00:21:07.240 there. But then you had Massachusetts Bay Colony. You had a lot of Puritans in New England. You had

00:21:11.660 all sorts of Protestant church and political movements crop up around America. So we say

00:21:17.920 America is a Protestant country. And in a certain sense, that's true. But you got to remember,

00:21:24.180 it was the Catholic Church that existed unchallenged in the West for over 1,500 years.

00:21:29.980 So the wiring tends to have a Catholic aspect to it. The very fact that natural law is so

00:21:36.900 important in the way that we view our politics seems to come from some natural wiring. The fact

00:21:41.900 that we have the system of government with an executive and a legislature and a judiciary

00:21:45.520 that balance each other out, that represent a kind of monarchical element, plus an aristocratic

00:21:51.760 element, plus a democratic element, that comes basically right off the pages of St. Thomas

00:21:56.560 Aquinas. Whether the framers of the Constitution read him directly or read him mediated through

00:22:01.580 other philosophers, that stuff, it's kind of there. And so anyway, all of that is prefaced

00:22:05.760 to say, Alexei de Tocqueville, observing as a Frenchman, as a foreigner, just traveling around

00:22:12.020 America, he said, okay, America's really religious, but the religion is going to change over time.

00:22:18.360 And America is either going to become more Catholic, or it's going to become more atheist.

00:22:26.020 It's either going to move in those, one of those two directions, though. It's going to become

00:22:31.220 Catholic or it's going to give up religion altogether. So when you see this sort of stuff

00:22:35.060 happening, it really shouldn't be all that surprising. If you just read the surface level

00:22:39.780 of the history, it might be kind of surprising. What are these macro-snapping papists doing

00:22:43.820 at Mar-a-Lago advocating for another Trump presidency? But below the surface, I think

00:22:50.580 that's probably been waiting there, certainly since at least Alexei de Tocqueville was writing

00:22:53.940 probably a little bit longer. MSNBC is not so happy with all the people complimenting Trump.

00:23:01.000 They're not so happy with his positive poll numbers. They're not so happy that he's looking

00:23:05.440 stronger than Biden in all the swing states. They don't like that. So they've got to convince

00:23:11.620 people that Donald Trump poses an historic threat to the country. And it's not going to be enough

00:23:17.300 to have their usual talking heads. No, they need to give their fanatical opposition to Trump

00:23:23.400 some patina of scholarly, academic, historical legitimacy. So they invite on one of the two or

00:23:32.040 three liberal court historians. He's a pop historian who goes on all the liberal channels. Michael

00:23:37.680 Beschloss. And here is Michael Beschloss's take on the dangers of Trump. I want to ask you about

00:23:44.360 Donald Trump increasingly sounding like a fascist, a dictator, mimicking them and using words that are

00:23:51.140 clearly out of the pages of some of the most powerful autocrats or dictators of our time.

00:24:00.580 That's how fascism and totalitarianism and in Germany's case, the Holocaust came to Germany,

00:24:07.320 which had been a country where there were big institutions of democracy until, as you well know,

00:24:13.640 the early 1930s. When he tells you he'll be a dictator for a day, we all know that dictators don't resign

00:24:19.920 after a day when he uses the word bloodbath. Yes, it was in the context of an automobile industry

00:24:25.620 speech, but he knew exactly what he was saying. We have never seen anything remotely like this

00:24:30.940 in American history. A major party candidate is saying, you elect me, there's going to be

00:24:36.680 dictatorship, bloodbath, violence, retribution against my political enemies. That equals what

00:24:43.320 we saw in Italy and Germany and other places. I'm bringing on Michael Beschloss now, the historian,

00:24:50.180 very super serious academic historian. Mr. Beschloss, Trump is evil, super duper Hitler. It seems very

00:24:59.260 much, much fascism. What's your take? Well, yes, Mika, thank you for having me. Very, very Hitler. Very,

00:25:07.900 very super duper fascist Hitler. He will do many war crimes. He is very, very Holocaust, is Trump.

00:25:19.100 Hitler. He is Hitler. Thank you. Do you have any other questions? Yes. Could you say Hitler again?

00:25:24.660 Hitler. He's Hitler. Yes. Wow. Boy, that historian, he really just presented a new idea. I'm seeing Trump

00:25:34.020 in a totally new light. Thank you so much for shedding light on the Trump presidency by pointing

00:25:43.140 to one of the two historical events that most people have ever heard of, those two being the Second World

00:25:48.220 War and the fall of Rome, neither of which compare to Trump. If either of those two, if either of those

00:25:55.500 two historical events, which tend to be the only historical events that anyone's ever even heard

00:26:00.600 of, if either of them apply to Trump, I would imagine it's probably more the fall of Rome, the fall of the

00:26:06.340 Roman Republic when Donald Trump crosses the Rubicon and establishes the empire. But I don't think he's

00:26:10.620 going to do that, actually. And I don't think he's Hitler. And I don't think he's Mussolini.

00:26:14.440 And the irony, too, when this guy Beschloss says, we've never seen anything like this,

00:26:20.500 an autocrat, a dictator in America. I think we have. His name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was

00:26:26.920 actually the dictator. And he, unlike Donald Trump, who served one term, and then the Democrats rigged

00:26:33.840 the election, changed all the voting rules, and he lost. And he just left power. And then they tried to

00:26:40.380 destroy him and take all his property and imprison him. And then he ran for election again. We'll see

00:26:45.700 if he gets it. FDR just stayed in office for four terms until he died and would craft policy totally

00:26:54.000 out of keeping with the constitutional tradition on a whim as a dictator. Like, he would just say

00:26:59.960 things and they would happen. And then when the courts would try to stop him, he threatened to

00:27:03.420 destroy the Supreme Court and they'd finally just kind of go along with him. We had a dictator.

00:27:07.000 The dictator was from Mika Brzezinski's and Michael Beschloss's political party.

00:27:11.980 That same dictator interned Japanese Americans. You remember that? It's actually kind of a complex

00:27:16.680 historical circumstance because the Japanese admitted that they had spies in America. And

00:27:21.260 this was reported many decades later in the mainstream press. And it came as a result of

00:27:26.740 declassified CIA files. So I'm not even totally knocking Franklin Roosevelt for prosecuting a war when he

00:27:32.360 was president. But nevertheless, every single thing, every single thing that they are accusing Trump of

00:27:38.360 not only has some precedent, but was done by not only a president of their own party, but one of their

00:27:46.800 very favorite presidents ever. That all happened. But you see, Trump, super duper Hitler is what he is.

00:27:54.280 And I don't think that's going to play. I'm not saying that never works. Usually accusations of racism

00:28:01.760 are extremely effective. Usually accusations of a threat to democracy and, you know, being outside the

00:28:08.520 pale of mainstream political discourse. Usually that is effective and it works to cancel people. But

00:28:14.880 they didn't cancel Trump. And then he became president. And we all saw that he didn't do a

00:28:22.260 super duper Hitler. And then he lost after they changed all the rules. And we saw that he didn't

00:28:29.240 cling to power and shred the constitution and refuse to leave off. He just kind of left.

00:28:34.060 And then they tried to destroy him and he ran for president again. So I just don't think that

00:28:40.000 persuades anyone, not because their, their accusations of racism and this ism and that ism

00:28:46.220 don't, don't carry weight. They, they do. It's just with Trump, we already, we're already past that.

00:28:53.140 We're already past that. They're going to need to get some, some better arguments from the fancy

00:28:58.360 Thai historians on MSNBC. Speaking of president Trump and the ways they're trying to destroy him,

00:29:04.820 there is a decision, a civil decision in New York to take away a lot of Trump's money.

00:29:13.540 That was for 300 million some odd dollars. It's now up to $464 million in this civil business fraud

00:29:20.480 judgment because they keep adding interest to it. And the lawyers representing president Trump

00:29:25.840 obviously are observing that he can't just come up with half a billion dollars.

00:29:31.440 Nobody can. Elon Musk couldn't come up with half a billion dollars overnight. Richest man in the

00:29:36.400 world couldn't do it. It's just not possible. So to secure this bond, they're trying, they're going

00:29:43.740 to all these different places, but they're just coming up short. It's just not possible, which is

00:29:48.440 exactly what New York wants. New York wants Trump not to be able to come up with this absurd figure

00:29:55.400 based on a ridiculous ruling saying that Trump misstated the value of his properties. Let me tell you,

00:30:00.840 they tried to argue that Mar-a-Lago is worth $17 million. I've had the privilege to visit Mar-a-Lago

00:30:06.760 twice now. It is an amazing property. It is absolutely beautiful. It is one of, if not the

00:30:15.640 most beautiful single piece of property I've ever been on in the United States, certainly in the

00:30:22.500 continental United States. Maybe Hawaii has got a couple of legs up. It is water to water property

00:30:28.760 and some of the most valuable real estate in the United States in Palm Beach. The buildings are

00:30:33.780 beautiful. The art is beautiful. The property alone is worth many, many multiples, probably an

00:30:40.660 order of magnitude and then some multiples of what New York was arguing it's worth. And that doesn't

00:30:46.640 factor in the business, which every year makes $25 million, which is significantly more than they're

00:30:51.080 saying the whole thing is worth. Completely absurd. They want to accuse Trump of, of getting a little

00:30:57.100 creative with, with the numbers of his property. Look at, he never, he never got anywhere near as

00:31:02.740 ambitious as these guys are. But what's this about? This is about them wanting to take a piece of that

00:31:08.640 property. That's why they're, they're going after it. Letitia James said that. Letitia James came out.

00:31:15.160 He said, if he does not, Letitia James is the attorney general in New York who's, who ran on,

00:31:20.400 I'm going to destroy Trump and who has spent every waking moment in office on this jihad to destroy

00:31:26.320 the man. She says, if he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment

00:31:32.060 enforcement mechanisms in court. And we will ask the judge to seize his assets. We are prepared to make

00:31:37.340 sure that the judgment is paid to New Yorkers. And yes, I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day.

00:31:41.640 40 Wall Street is one of Trump's buildings downtown. I used to live right near it.

00:31:45.580 Beautiful building. And she's saying, let's go. So I'm going to go into court and I'm just going to,

00:31:53.000 I don't know, throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall. And I know that we got a bunch of liberal

00:31:57.000 judges, so they hate Trump too. And they'll do whatever to, to destroy him. And then we're going

00:32:03.500 to come up with some ridiculous figure that no one on earth could possibly pay. And then,

00:32:08.080 you know what we're going to do? Take his nice building that I like. Yeah, that's right. Give me

00:32:12.900 that building. All of the arguments that Letitia James is presenting in court, pretty much all the

00:32:21.680 arguments around the country in the four prosecutions that are being presented against

00:32:25.660 President Trump are just flimsy facades over raw political interest. That's what it is. I'm not

00:32:34.900 saying that there is no basis whatsoever for any of these prosecutions. In the case of the documents,

00:32:43.580 yeah, Trump had classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. He had classified documents that were in a place

00:32:49.500 that I guess they shouldn't have been. That's been true for most recent presidents. It's true for the

00:32:58.480 current president who improperly stored those documents when he was not president, actually,

00:33:05.060 and when he did not have ultimate declassification authority. So his version of the crime was much,

00:33:10.160 much worse than anything you could accuse Trump of. I don't even think you could, you could call

00:33:15.280 what they're accusing Trump of in the documents case even to be a crime. And they let Biden off the

00:33:20.780 hook. And they try to destroy Trump. That's what I'm talking about. Sure, I get, in principle,

00:33:26.200 it's true. One should not mishandle classified documents. And in principle, I actually, in

00:33:32.200 principle, don't think a president can mishandle classified documents. But as a matter of political

00:33:36.460 prudence and tradition, I suppose the president should work with this or that organization,

00:33:42.360 the National Archives, to deal with them. Oh, yeah, okay. I guess I could go along with that in

00:33:46.460 principle. But that's not what this is about. This is about selectively prosecuting one guy for a

00:33:54.280 crime that you've really never gone after anyone for in a circumstance where you probably don't

00:34:00.040 have any right to prosecute it to begin with. Did Trump inaccurately state the value of some of his

00:34:07.840 properties? I don't know. They're saying he undervalued them. Did he undervalue them nearly

00:34:16.480 as much as they did in New York? I don't think so. But even so, this is what we go after presidents

00:34:23.780 for? This is what we go after the leader of political opposition for? No. Like, maybe in

00:34:28.960 principle, you could say, well, you know, you actually, sorry, Buster, you had a comma on form

00:34:35.740 372BZ5. And that was really supposed to be a semicolon. Lock him up, 700 years in the can,

00:34:42.820 the most popular presidential candidate in America. The people just can't vote for him.

00:34:46.740 Whoopsie-daisy. No, you didn't file your TPS report on time. Off with his head. That's what

00:34:52.720 this is really about. Very flimsy arguments, when they are arguments at all, to mask raw political

00:35:00.560 interest. And this is pretty ancient. There were a number of really interesting people at this event

00:35:06.320 last night. General Mike Flynn was there. And Roger Stone was there. It was a lot of fun. Tim

00:35:13.460 Ballard, Jim Caviezel. So anyway, we're chatting with all these people. But because General Flynn

00:35:18.180 was there, there were a lot of people who had some national security expertise. We ended up talking

00:35:24.960 about Mexico. We ended up just talking about how politics works in Mexico. And one fellow I was

00:35:31.220 talking to said, well, you know, in Mexico, it used to be the case that after you left office,

00:35:36.440 you would leave the country. Why is that the case? Well, because your political opponents who took

00:35:42.480 office would prosecute you. So you just leave the country. This is true in a lot of places in Latin

00:35:47.560 America. It's been true throughout history. What they're doing to Trump right now, we say it's

00:35:56.240 unprecedented. It is in American history. But in history, history, it's quite precedented. This is

00:36:01.460 this is how a less civilized form of politics used to work, which is when you got beat, you would be

00:36:09.080 exiled. You would have your property taken from you. You might be killed. And I don't think we ought

00:36:14.460 to return to that. I thought we had a kind of a nice system here where we don't throw our opponents

00:36:18.220 into prison. Even Trump, you know, he had that line at the campaign rally, lock her up, lock away.

00:36:22.680 You'd be in jail if I got elected. No one really believed it, though. Least of all Trump. He never

00:36:27.580 lifted a finger to prosecute her, nor should he have. She deserved to be prosecuted, but it's just

00:36:32.900 bad for the American political order to throw Hillary Clinton, even Hillary Clinton, into prison.

00:36:39.440 Now we're there. And so they'll take his property. They'll try to throw him in the can. They might try

00:36:45.480 to kill him. That's a return to a less civilized age. Jeremy's razors is very civilized, and it's

00:36:54.240 doing the unthinkable. This is a sale you cannot miss out on. Jeremy's razors is lowering all prices

00:36:59.580 for every razor. You want a trial set? Lower price. You want the starter set that comes with more

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00:37:11.280 of Jeremy's march of madness now. You get it? Not madness. It's madness. Go to jeremysrazors.com.

00:37:18.860 Get your razor at a discount today. My favorite comment yesterday is from Enkidus Purpose.

00:37:25.360 Smokey Mike, you should hire Kristi Noem to promote Mayflower cigars. That's a great idea. What's she

00:37:31.920 doing dentistry commercials for? Why is she promoting insoles for shoes when she could be plugging

00:37:39.100 Mayflower cigars? We did all have, we'll tell some tales out of school. Some of us who were at the

00:37:46.820 event last night did end the evening with a delicious Mayflower cigar. I realized I should

00:37:53.540 have gotten pictures. It actually would have been good to promote this, you know, get all these kind

00:37:57.940 of cool political and film stars all have, but they all, I'm not, I am not making this up. You can ask

00:38:04.460 the speakers who had the cigar. They told me it was magnificent. They loved it. They said,

00:38:12.800 they said things about it. I'm not, some of them said it was like the greatest cigar they'd ever had.

00:38:18.040 Anyway, I think we still have some stock. Not positive because we, not only do we overorder,

00:38:24.120 but we, we kind of secretly ordered more even than it seemed that we had. I know most of it sold out.

00:38:30.840 And I think some of like the samplers and things are sold out, but there were still some to get

00:38:34.860 at MayflowerCigars.com. You must be 21 years old or older to order. Some exclusions apply.

00:38:42.760 Speaking of dubious legal arguments, Washington state is ditching the bar exam requirement to

00:38:49.440 practice law. You know, usually if you're a lawyer, usually you would go to law, you'd take the LSAT.

00:38:55.880 Then based on your LSAT score, you'd get into law school. Then you'd take your law school exams and

00:39:02.300 papers and things. And then really all of that was just the appetizer. That's the amuse-bouche. The one

00:39:08.240 thing that matters for practicing law is passing the bar exam. But this is a problem. And the problem is

00:39:19.220 diversity, equity, and inclusion. According to Washington state, there is insufficient equity

00:39:29.380 brought about by the bar exam. And so in a pair of orders on Friday, the Supreme Court of Washington

00:39:35.800 approved, quote, alternative pathways to lawyer licensure in this press release. Okay. What does

00:39:43.540 this mean? It means that the white people are doing pretty well on the bar exam and the black people are

00:39:48.380 doing worse? Pretty much is what it means. And I'm sure there are different racial breakdowns. Just

00:39:56.240 judging by other standardized tests, probably the Asians are doing better than the whites and, you

00:40:00.280 know, the Hispanics are doing a little bit. They're somewhere kind of in the middle. And, but in any case,

00:40:05.560 it's true. Different groups have different outcomes and different things. That's true. That's true.

00:40:12.140 So if you begin looking at the issue with the conclusion, we need more lawyers of XYZ race,

00:40:22.000 then you're going to come to the conclusion that, oh, wow, this bar exam is not serving the purpose.

00:40:26.700 The purpose of the bar exam is to get us the exact racial breakdown of lawyers that I want.

00:40:32.680 And the bar exam is not doing that. So we got to get rid of the bar exam or at least the requirement

00:40:37.700 to take the bar exam. But is that really the purpose? Is that the purpose of the bar exam? Is

00:40:42.420 that the purpose of law school and the legal profession? Is the purpose of the legal profession

00:40:48.320 to make certain racial groups feel good about themselves or even to generate income for certain

00:40:56.500 racial groups? Is the, is the purpose of the legal profession to have more lawyers or is the purpose

00:41:07.060 of the legal profession to serve clients, to give people the opportunity to defend themselves in

00:41:14.900 court, to give the state, the opportunity to prosecute criminals, to exact justice. What's the point

00:41:21.940 here? Seems to me we're putting the cart before the horse and we do this in so many other places in

00:41:28.140 life. I, I, when I flew out to Florida yesterday, I had a female pilot and some of my producers,

00:41:37.580 including Professor Jacob over there, were making some jokes about this because of the DEI policies.

00:41:42.260 They said, uh-oh, get off the plane. Get off. Run. This thing, man, you ain't going to make it to Palm

00:41:48.120 Beach. And the flight was just fine and the female pilot was, was great. But even though it was a little

00:41:54.420 bit delayed actually and we almost missed our connection. Anyway, anyway, as I'm getting too

00:41:57.980 in the weeds here. That particular pilot was great. But why did Professor Jacob have that reaction? Is

00:42:02.880 it just because he's a malignant, vicious sexist? I'm sure that's part of it. I'm sure that's part of

00:42:09.140 it. But the main reason is because the liberals tell us we now are implementing a policy according

00:42:15.960 to which less qualified people are going to get these jobs. And the reason we know they're less

00:42:21.580 qualified is because the companies are saying, we are going to hire not based on merit. We are

00:42:27.740 going to prioritize something, be it race or sex or sexual behaviors or I don't know, whatever,

00:42:32.320 the cut of your jib, over merit. But the moment that you prioritize something over merit in a profession

00:42:38.840 that is supposed to serve me, the customer, well, I get a little bit worried, especially when that

00:42:43.820 profession is keeping me in a tin can in the air at 30,000 feet long enough so that I can make it to

00:42:48.900 whatever city I'm going to. And the same principle holds in the legal profession.

00:42:55.640 If you are a client in Washington state, as a result of this ruling, you are going to be less

00:43:03.680 likely to hire a black lawyer. You just are. Clarence Thomas wrote about this many years ago.

00:43:10.760 And he wrote about this because he, Clarence Thomas, one of the great jurists and legal minds

00:43:14.780 in our country, one of the great public figures, actually, a graduate of Yale Law School, the best

00:43:19.240 law school in the country. But he had trouble getting a job after law school. And he writes

00:43:23.180 about this in his memoir. He says, the reason I had a tough time getting a job is not because I

00:43:28.020 didn't have good grades. It's not because I didn't go to a good law school. It's because I am black

00:43:33.420 and people assumed I was just an affirmative action case. And that's actually a decently rational

00:43:39.560 conclusion to come to. If you have a policy that says, hey, we're going to give unqualified black

00:43:43.980 people access to this institution. If you have a policy that says we're going to give qualified

00:43:50.040 black people access to this institution, then that's great. No one would have batted an eyelash

00:43:53.980 about hiring Clarence Thomas. If the policy at the airlines was, we're not going to prohibit female

00:44:02.680 pilots. We're going to hire the best person for the job. Maybe it's a female. Then Professor Jacob

00:44:07.120 wouldn't have made his vile, misogynistic comment to me on the airplane. But that's not the way it

00:44:13.660 is. So just the practical conclusion of this is, if you've got your life on the line, whether we're

00:44:20.020 talking literally on an airplane or we're talking legally, someone could throw you in prison for the

00:44:24.100 rest of your life, you're going to be more likely in Washington now to hire a straight white male or

00:44:32.360 whatever Asian guy or whatever group historically does best on the bar exam, you're going to hire

00:44:37.340 that group because you're going to assume that everyone else is just there as an affirmative action

00:44:43.820 case, as a D-E-I hire. Speaking of what things are for, really troubling study out of the Guttmacher

00:44:53.320 Institute. More than 60% of U.S. abortions in 2023 are done by the abortion pill. We already

00:45:02.300 knew this as of last year. We knew that most abortions, it seemed, were done through a pill

00:45:09.760 rather than through surgery. I thought the number was about 51 to 53%. It's 60%. And the Guttmacher

00:45:16.920 Institute, even though they are affiliated with just about the most evil organization in America,

00:45:22.280 they actually have pretty reliable numbers. 60%. This follows a dramatic decline in surgical

00:45:31.860 abortion access after Roe v. Wade was overruled where states then finally got to pass their own

00:45:36.100 laws and a lot of them restricted abortion. So now it's about the abortion pill. This to me,

00:45:41.860 put abortion aside for a second, this to me is similar to in the 90s and 2000s, the proliferation of

00:45:49.720 internet porn. In the sense that before the 90s and 2000s, if some guy wanted to look at pervy

00:45:58.640 images or videos, he would have to go to that seedy block in New York City, you know, right around

00:46:05.260 Times Square, 8th Avenue. He'd have to go into some really gross little movie theater or something in

00:46:11.680 Times Square. He would have to, if he wanted to get his jollies off in a really immoral way, he would

00:46:18.940 have to maybe go to a bar and pick up a woman and cheat on his wife. Or he'd have to go drive down the

00:46:24.280 street and pick up a hooker or something like that. But he'd have to do something that involved

00:46:29.760 public shame. Then the internet comes around and internet porn proliferates and the Supreme Court

00:46:37.480 and other liberal judges gut the regulations on pornography. And all of a sudden, he doesn't

00:46:46.460 have any of that shame. And so the engaging in that perverse act just spreads everywhere,

00:46:51.840 becomes basically ubiquitous. I think that's what we're seeing here. Even today in our shout your

00:46:56.160 abortion, kill your baby kind of culture, there is a great deal of just unavoidable shame involved in

00:47:02.160 walking to go into the bad part of town and then walking into the abortion clinic and just seeing it

00:47:08.800 and seeing the faces of the women and these demoniac doctors and actually, you know, going in and

00:47:14.920 saying, yes, I'd like to kill my kid. I'm going to sign this form. That is a disincentive to do it.

00:47:20.800 But if you just, if you're a girl and you're in trouble and you are really scared and you just

00:47:26.020 want this problem, the baby to go away and you're getting pressure from your boyfriend, you're getting

00:47:30.180 pressure from your family and you can just go to a drugstore and just get that abortion pill and just

00:47:36.620 no big deal. I mean, it could really harm your body. It obviously kills your kid. You're going to

00:47:42.180 live with all that same psychological trauma. But if you just feel that you can kind of do it in

00:47:46.500 private, now you can cheat on your wife in private thanks to pornography. Now you can kill your kid in

00:47:52.060 private. You don't even have to look at the abortionist in the face. You don't even have to look at the

00:47:55.240 women in the waiting room or walk down the sidewalk to do it. That's going to greatly increase the

00:48:00.660 likelihood that you will do that. I'm not surprised at all that the number of pill abortions keeps going

00:48:05.620 up. So as with the other problem, as with porn, as with so many of our social pathologies, the key is to

00:48:11.780 reinstitute a little bit of shame. The key and the way you do that is by making the things that have

00:48:16.960 been totally privatized, making them a little bit more public again. Because when we see people and

00:48:21.660 we recognize that we live in a society, we have some sense of the consequences of our actions. The

00:48:27.480 fact that it's not just a glittering screen, that it's not just a clump of cells that comes out of you

00:48:31.780 as a result of a pill, but these are real people who are real proper subjects with real consciousness and

00:48:37.200 real moral worth. Then you're going to be less inclined to be so selfish. It's Woke Wednesday,

00:48:44.400 baby. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code

00:48:48.580 Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:49:07.200 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 20, 2024

Ep. 1450 - My Trip To Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Event

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