Ep. 156 - When Mueller Colluded With The Russians
Summary
A bombshell report reveals that after a full year of the Mueller investigation of Russia collusion, it turns out Mueller himself colluded with Russian oligarchs. We will analyze this major conflict of interest for Robert Mueller and his never-ending probe. Then, speaking of comedy, the legendary stand-up and SNL alum Dennis Miller stops by to talk comedy in the age of Trump.
Transcript
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Because satire is now impossible and reality has become the only source of comedy,
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a new bombshell report reveals that after a full year of the Mueller investigation of Russia
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collusion, it turns out Mueller himself colluded with Russian oligarchs. That is a true story,
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you cannot make that up. We will analyze this major conflict of interest for Robert Mueller
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and his never-ending probe. Then, speaking of comedy, the legendary stand-up and SNL alum
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Dennis Miller stops by to talk comedy in the age of Trump. Finally, a silver lining for our
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vomitive culture. I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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I like that word, vomitive. That's a good, I'm going to start using that one. We've got a lot
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You're not going to believe this one today. This news story is so good. And I can't believe,
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this is like the perfect punchline to the entire Robert Mueller Russia collusion investigation.
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It turns out in 2009, special counsel Robert Mueller, now investigating President Trump for
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colluding with the Russians, himself colluded with the Russians.
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I know. I'm just as shocked as you are. It is an absurd punchline. We'll get through this because
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I want to get to Dennis as quickly as we can. Of all of the arguments to take down the Mueller
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investigation, to stop this anti-constitutional, clearly un-American power grab here to overturn a
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presidential election, of all of the arguments to take down this investigation, this one is the best.
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Here's what happened. See if you can follow this. It kind of seems like a really weird, sad James Bond
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story. But because it's real life government, there's a lot of just inefficiency and poor
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decisions that happened along the way. So in 2009, Robert Mueller was running the FBI and the FBI
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asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska for some help to help them with an operation that they were
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doing. Even the name, I have to assume that Oleg is short for oligarch because that is like out of a
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cartoon that the Russian oligarch's name is Oleg. Oleg. So the FBI asks Oleg for some help on this
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operation. I'm going to call him Garky. I think that's another good nickname for him. So the FBI asked
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Garky, they asked Deripaska to spend millions of dollars of his own money to fund an FBI-backed
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operation to rescue a former FBI agent, Robert Levinson, who was captured in Iran while working
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for the CIA in 2007. Former FBI agent, now working for the CIA, abducted in Iran in 2007. Now it's 2009.
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FBI asks the Russian oligarch for help. Deripaska agreed. Deripaska spent millions of dollars of his
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own money. He had meetings with the FBI. He had meetings with that disgraced former FBI agent,
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Andrew McCabe, in Paris, in Vienna, in Budapest, in Hungary, in Washington, D.C. All over the place
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they meet. They're working together very closely. Now the operation worked. They actually were able
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to locate Levinson with video and photographic evidence. They tracked him down in Iran. They were
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about to go get him. And then Hillary Clinton shut everything down. Hillary Clinton at the time was the
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Secretary of State. She shut everything down at the last minute. Who knows why? Maybe she didn't want
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to deal with the political fallout. Maybe she didn't want this mission to imperil her presidential
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ambitions. Who knows? They were on the verge of getting him. Millions of dollars had been spent.
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They had evidence. They knew where he was. And then he was gone. The operation ended in 2011.
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Levinson has never been found. This is 11 years now after he was captured. Score another failure for
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Hillary Clinton. So this story, by the way, which is a punchline to the Mueller investigation,
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actually is another piece of evidence for why it's so good that we did not elect Hillary.
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Because she totally bungled this and appears to have made certain political calculations that left
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this guy stranded in Iran, God knows where. Back to Robert Mueller. So the Russian oligarch,
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Dara Pasca, turned up in the Mueller investigation. Dara Pasca has longstanding ties to Paul Manafort,
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the former Trump campaign chairman. Manafort allegedly offered Dara Pasca private meetings
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about the 2016 campaign. They had longstanding financial ties before this. Dara Pasca sued
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Manafort this past January because he was alleging fraud in a 2007 investing deal. So now let's bring
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in the hookers. Now Dara Pasca's former mistress, the Belarusian prostitute Anastasia Vashukovic,
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who was videotaped on a yacht with Dara Pasca and the deputy prime minister of Russia because the
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oligarchs run the country. It's a very corrupt country. This Belarusian prostitute is claiming
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to have evidence that Dara Pasca had a plan to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
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Okay, so you say, where's the evidence? Let's bring in the evidence. The only trouble,
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of course, and this happens with Belarusian hookers, is that she's currently stuck in a Thai prison.
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Are you still with me? Are you still tracking this? Because there's a lot going on. So put that
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aside. Speaking of hookers, Dara Pasca is one of the Russians that the FBI questioned about the
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Democrat-funded hit job dossier that alleged that Donald Trump paid Russian hookers to relieve
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themselves on a bed that Barack Obama once slept on. Now the FBI, after this was alleged to have
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happened, the FBI busted into Dara Pasca's hotel room. They asked him about that crazy dossier,
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the Democrat-funded dossier. Dara Pasca laughed at them because he thought they were kidding
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because the story is absurd. Now, okay, none of this really matters much so far. We've got some
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hookers. We've got some strange preferences in bedrooms. We've got some corruption. Okay, fine.
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Everybody in the world has a plan to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.
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Oligarchs frequent a lot of hookers. These are tales as old as time. Nothing really special here.
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What matters here is that Robert Mueller has not mentioned Dara Pasca in the Manafort indictment,
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despite Dara Pasca's being a central figure in all of Manafort's dealings with Russia.
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So we've got this huge, wide-ranging Russia probe. We've got Manafort actually being indicted,
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and yet the central Russian figure here just doesn't show up on the indictment. That's a little weird.
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We also know that the United States has recently instituted sanctions against Dara Pasca,
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The duly elected government, this is coming out of the White House, has been dealing very harshly
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with Dara Pasca, but the unelected anti-constitutional bureaucracy has been playing
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softball with him. Now, why would Robert Mueller play softball with Dara Pasca? Well, Mueller,
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as the director of the FBI, asked a Russian oligarch to underwrite an FBI operation to get around U.S.
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laws. Mueller tried to do something indirectly that he was explicitly prohibited from doing directly.
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Now, okay, he's trying to subvert the law. He's trying to, okay, that doesn't look good.
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But then what really matters is the quid pro quo here, because if you're not familiar with Russian
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oligarchs, one characteristic of them is they don't generally do favors in exchange for nothing.
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They don't do things out of the goodness of their heart. Russian oligarchs are not known
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for the goodness of their hearts. So the question is, what did Dara Pasca get or expect in return
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for his $25 million donation to Mueller's FBI? Maybe, I don't know, does that explain why
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this particular Russian oligarch didn't turn up on Mueller's indictments? Maybe, maybe did Mueller
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want to avoid the transparency that is required by law? I don't know. Let's ask all of the experts on
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this across the political aisle. That's what Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is saying.
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Alan Dershowitz thinks this was a way to avoid transparency because he might have broken the law.
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Melanie Sloan, who's a former Justice Department lawyer for Bill Clinton, former Clinton administration
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lawyer. She wonders if the first FBI operation was even legal. Because that first FBI operation,
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where the FBI asked the Russians to fund this operation, it looks like it violated the Anti-Deficiency
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Act, which prohibits the government from accepting voluntary services. And the reason it does that
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makes perfect sense because then there's an obligation. There's a debt to be paid off,
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and it gets really tricky down the line when you start indicting people for Russian collusion,
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but you don't indict the central Russian oligarch. GW constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley,
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he thinks exactly the same thing. This is not a right-wing conspiracy. This is not all, this is not,
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you know, Sean Hannity saying this on his show. This is Dershowitz, Sloan, Turley. These are all people
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who have worked quite publicly for Democrats, but they're very good lawyers, and this is their legal
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opinion. This is the best ending to all of this, isn't it? Isn't this the best ending to all of
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this? Because this Mueller thing has been going on forever. It's been going on, I don't know, since
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I think the Coolidge administration at this point. But there was the FBI investigation,
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then the Mueller thing. It's basically the one-year anniversary of the Mueller investigation.
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And now the punchline is, Robert Mueller colluded with the Russians. It's just,
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what credibility does he have? What credibility does this investigation now have? We know that
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it's probably unconstitutional. It seems to violate the Supreme Court's rulings, and I think
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the case was Morrison v. Olson, both the opinion and the dissent of the court. We know it's far too
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expansive. But also, it seems that even in the carrying out of it, they're trying to avoid
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transparency. They're trying to skirt the law. They're trying to cover up possibly illegal actions
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that were undertaken by the head of this investigation 10 years ago, 9 years ago.
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Doesn't look like there's a lot of credibility here. But keep looking. I'm sure you'll find that
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Russian collusion somewhere. You might find it really, really close to home. You might find it,
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oh, it might actually be you guys who were doing it. Really, really wild. The Democrats pay,
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collude with the Russians and pay for this Steele dossier. Then the FBI seems to be colluding with the
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Russians. I think Donald Trump is the only guy in this country who has not colluded with the Russians.
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Donald Trump may be the last American who didn't collude with the Russians. Unbelievable.
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In the age of Donald Trump, reality is funnier than absolutely any sketch or standup act around.
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Nevertheless, we will get to a professional, uh, funny man. And one of my favorite comedians,
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Dennis Miller, uh, Dennis Miller just launched his second weekly podcast for podcast one.
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It's titled the Dennis Miller option, where he discusses headlines, pop culture,
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and tries to make sense of an increasingly nonsensical world. Here's Dennis.
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It's going very well. It's going pretty, pretty nicely. Uh, now you have one.
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Are you, uh, I don't know about you. I'm having, I guess we'll all have to just bite our lips and
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My Sherpa told me when we were, when we were above the kill zone on Everest,
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just put one foot in front of each other and keep moving. Somehow we'll get through this together.
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I, I hope, you know, I was so nervous because Ben Rhodes and Dan Pfeiffer,
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they assured me that everything was going to fall apart without the cooperation of the worst regime
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on planet earth. I hope we can make it. I hope we can make it.
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I, uh, you know, like I feel unprotected. I've been with them so long, probably since not without
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my daughter, the Betty Mahmood story is when I was first introduced to the lovely vibe in Iran,
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but somehow, like I said, we'll get through it.
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We'll soldier out. We'll, we'll truck along. I, now I want to talk about another great foe of the
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United States, uh, Michelle Wolf. Now you have won multiple Emmy awards. You've won Writers Guild
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awards. You've hosted a bunch of TV shows. You've hosted radio podcast, the Dennis Miller option.
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You've also headlined the white house correspondence dinner back in the Bush one years. I wanted to know
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on a scale of Hiroshima to Nagasaki. How badly did Michelle Wolf bomb?
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I don't think she did in her world, right? People have to understand it's a completely,
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it's a schism now between the two sides. I think on her side, she was, uh, I never know if the word
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is, is it F E T E D faded? You know, uh, I think she was probably praised. My only thing was when I read
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about it and I got angry because, uh, I, I saw Sarah Sanders sitting there. She'll get to him and
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cry. I said, who is this? I did not know who it was. So I put up a tweet about researching her and
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getting back, uh, with a joke on, uh, Wednesday, which is when my podcast is. And all of a sudden
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it was like the, uh, it absolutely hit the fan. And I realized that the internet really is the wild
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west. You, you put up something that, uh, or a, it would say underwritten all of a sudden you're
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like the old lady who goes over the horseshoe falls with the trash can and ends up in the
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whitewater churn at the bottom. You're just getting derma braided out the wazoo for a day or two.
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And then I realized, I guess that's what the internet is about. And when you were in the crosshairs of it,
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you should handle it with a suitable degree of a club because certainly I love people on Twitter.
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Uh, so that's the way, that's the way it happens. And it happens quickly. It seems like it happens
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like. Well, I, I saw that tweet when you sent it out and I immediately got it. I got the joke,
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you know, no one knows who this woman is and you're going to have to research her and then you can talk
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about it on the show. And immediately everyone pounces on you and they say, ha ha, you don't have
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a quick wit. Ha ha. You know, and I couldn't tell if it was the left being obtuse or if they genuinely
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just, just didn't get it. And this, this does bring us to it. I think the defining character,
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uh, characteristic of the Trump era, which is that the left is humorless these days and
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conservatives during the Obama years, conservatives still had a sense of humor, but now the left seems
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totally, totally humorless. Why can't they take a joke right now?
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Oh, I don't know. I want, you know, I, I will say this when Obama, when Obama won and I watched
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that feast that first night in Grant park. And I, I think that's the park in Chicago, right? I'm not
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that much of a Chicago, uh, but then I saw those upturned faces and people with all that hope in
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that. And I thought this will be good for this country. Honest to God, I remember thinking, I hope
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he does well. I'll give him a few months here to see, but I don't, I don't think we're like,
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you were laughing that I put that thing up about, I don't think the left has handled Hillary's loss
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all that well. It's the simple truth that I think that was such a lock in their head that all I can
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say is it must be, uh, it, it must've been a cataclysm for them. I remember when I watched the
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Jacob Javits center that first night and it was like a snowflake Jonestown. And I thought, my God,
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I have never in all my years of having political opinions. Have you ever come within a light year
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of crying over a politician? I never, I don't take it like that. It's not that important. Uh, I, you
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know, I was, uh, you know, Obama's approach to it was not my approach, but he seemed like a genial
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bloke, seemed like a good family man. I didn't agree with a lot of it, but I, I never hated him.
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I never wanted to cry that he became president. And I was just looking at it and I go, I guess
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they've got more vested in it on the secular side because they seem genuinely, um, you know,
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devastated. I just don't get that devastated. So can I speak and say that there's nobody on the
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left who's having any fun with it? No, I can't. I see some guys who are having fun with it, but can I
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say by and large, the, uh, the, the left was devastated by her loss. Yeah. Which is surprising
00:19:23.060
to me because I didn't even think she was the ideal candidate. It's not like Obama lost or
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something. You can see he has charisma. He's a great speaker. And like I said, he was of the era.
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Uh, you know, you can understand why that might've devastated. But Hillary, I mean, Jesus, say what
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you will about Donald Trump, but give him this. I think that his, uh, outer voice is indeed an
00:19:45.860
accurate depiction of his inner voice, warts and all. Whereas I don't think Hillary's inner
00:19:51.560
voice and outer voice have ever even had a cup of coffee together. And so to see people crying
00:19:57.640
about it, I thought, my God, something, something's happened here. It's, uh, it's bizarre. Are
00:20:02.520
they humorless about it? I don't know. I think they're starting to get to lick their wounds a
00:20:06.120
little more, but up to this point, I would say that there's a pretty virulent schism in this
00:20:10.980
country right now. And whenever, uh, they, the ones who have just lost get a shot, they're going
00:20:17.240
to take a shot at you. And that's, that's what, that's the way of the world. And it was, I love
00:20:22.140
that phrase, the snowflake Jonestown. That is when you looked out of that scene, that Brooklyn scene,
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when Hillary lost, I remember John Podesta came out because she didn't show up. She was throwing
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desk lamps in her hotel room or something. And he comes out and he says, thank you for being here for
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Hillary. She's always been here for you, except for right now, the only time it matters. And she's
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not here for you. They, they were devastated. And yeah, for, yeah, that side is more secular.
00:20:48.060
The Democrats booed God at their national convention a few years ago. So perhaps they've got some
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misplaced longings. But when I watched that set of Michelle Wolf at the white house correspondence
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dinner, I didn't hear many jokes. She told a few jokes, but what I heard a lot of is she just
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accused people of being liars. That was like her punchline. She said, you're a liar and you lie and
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you're a disappointment to women. And as though that were sufficient to qualify as a joke, which
00:21:18.720
I don't think it did. How was the culture of that dinner and politics and political comedy,
00:21:25.540
how radically different was it back in the early nineties when you were doing it for George Bush,
00:21:32.200
senior? Well, first off, I would say that whether you liked her jokes or hated her jokes, I don't
00:21:38.620
think she did that badly in the room. Am I, am I missing the point? No, you're, you're absolutely
00:21:42.760
right. They did. Those journalists were laughing. Yeah. When I listened to clips and when I saw people
00:21:47.880
cutaways with like they always do, people were laughing a lot. I think I remember when I missed it,
00:21:56.200
didn't I miss do it one year? And I do remember that being a bit of a train wreck, wasn't it? Didn't I miss
00:22:02.020
comedy? It was actually quiet in the room? That's true. I mean, they, they did give it to Michelle
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in the room. I sort of felt it was that distinction of claps, not laughs, that they were going along
00:22:14.080
with her because she was saying things that they politically agreed with, even if she wasn't
00:22:19.140
reinventing comedy. Well, we might all have selective hearing and maybe I as a comedian am, uh,
00:22:24.840
listen. I'll have to defer to your expertise. Yeah. I remember getting some laughs and I will say
00:22:30.620
this. I was surprised to hear that nobody vetted it because when I did it for Bush 41,
00:22:36.380
I can tell you, I was, I had to get my wazoo armor all. I was so vetted out the wazoo. I had
00:22:42.980
to run jokes by the white house correspondence people. I had to run jokes by the white house
00:22:49.420
people. And then when I was in the green room, I remember Bush 41 is such a mensch. He comes up and
00:22:55.500
exam with Bart and I don't say the F word. And I said, Oh, Mr. President, you think I'm going to
00:23:00.500
crank up an F word in front of you? So it was a bit of a different thing then. But listen,
00:23:05.160
man, the curtain comes down on the culture now in the space of a, an evening. It can happen midway
00:23:11.200
through an evening in a commercial break. The culture can change back then. When, when is that?
00:23:16.640
I don't even know when I did it. Is it 15 years ago, 18 years ago? I'm not sure.
00:23:20.900
Well, come on. It's over 5,500 days. The world turns now in around 15 seconds, things go away
00:23:28.900
or they come back. We're living. I assume it was always like this. Even in primordial days,
00:23:35.620
I assume this is human behavior. It's just now through social media, the entire world is privy
00:23:42.460
to your synapses, your reactions to things, our animus, our collective consciousness. It all happens
00:23:48.880
in real time, almost all across the planet. I would say the big thing that's changed is
00:23:54.220
social media. Do I think human nature's changed? No. I think there'll be a point in somewhere way
00:24:00.420
down the line. You don't even hear this stuff. Like it's the Outer Limits episode where David
00:24:05.140
McCallum gets a huge skull and they can just start talking to each other with your thoughts.
00:24:09.380
And we can tear each other a new asshole and never even open our mouth. I think that's what's
00:24:13.340
coming down the road. So I think right now, all this changes, the animus level is consistent
00:24:18.500
throughout history. It's just that right now we're all privy to each other's crankiness.
00:24:22.900
Well, that's, and that's certainly true that the culture can change on a dime.
00:24:26.920
Speaking of cultural changes on social media, I don't know. I don't, I know you've been on
00:24:31.440
Twitter a little bit. I've been perusing your Twitter feed the last couple of weeks.
00:24:34.540
You might've heard of this fella, Kanye West. He's a famous rapper apparently. And he's been
00:24:40.580
tweeting a lot of very conservative sounding things. Very conservative though. He's tweeting out
00:24:45.900
Scott Adams videos and Thomas Sowell quotes and all these little conservative YouTube videos.
00:24:52.380
Do you think that that reflects any change in the culture, no matter how short that change may be?
00:24:59.420
Is, are, are the conservatives and the right finally winning a little bit of the popular culture with
00:25:05.900
Donald Trump and Kanye West? Or am I, am I celebrating too much and reading too much into it?
00:25:11.380
No, I think, listen, next to Warhol in the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes,
00:25:18.380
which looking back on, I had always taken him with a bit of a grain of salt because I'm not a modern
00:25:23.040
artist fan. And I always thought he was just a, you know, a hang, you know, a studio 54 sort of New
00:25:28.520
York downtown scene guy. But when I look back on that, that is so prescient that I think I should
00:25:33.440
read more about him because that's a pretty brilliant thing to say. The second most brilliant thing I've
00:25:38.440
heard or 1A is that Breitbart saying that politics are downstream from culture. Right. And I do think
00:25:44.580
this Kanye West thing, listen, up to this point in my life, my introduction, my only knowledge of
00:25:50.220
Kanye, Kanye West, since I'm not a, uh, a hip hop fan is that I remember him being loaded on stage at
00:25:57.540
an award ceremony with Taylor Swift and grabbing her award thing. That's very boorish behavior.
00:26:02.740
That's my take on him. But when I see what he's done in the last couple of weeks, do I lionize him?
00:26:08.660
Is he my new, uh, you know, ID fix? Are they the monolith in 2001? I don't think that, but that's a
00:26:17.540
pretty important defection on their side. I really think that, uh, I think he, in the, in the lexicon of
00:26:26.340
the day, I think he was tired of getting played. I, I think the Democrats are playing African
00:26:32.600
Americans. And I, I, I, I think that things are starting to fall. That's really interesting what
00:26:38.980
he did. Soul's been out there for years on the front lines of this. I don't even think, you know,
00:26:43.720
just the fact that Kanye West is reading Thomas Soul, I thought, well, good for you, brother,
00:26:48.100
because I like a curious mind and Thomas Soul's brilliant, absolutely brilliant man who they've
00:26:54.640
been ignoring for years. So is something, is there some fissure there? Yeah. Now I don't quite
00:27:00.500
understand why I don't hear as much about it now. Is it, is it strictly on that flash poll they did
00:27:05.700
where Trump's approval goes from 11 in the black community to 22% in the black community. And as
00:27:11.220
maybe the people on the left thing, we can't keep crucifying Kanye because that that's not going to
00:27:16.780
play. I just like, I like free thinkers. I like people who don't walk in lockstep. And when he
00:27:23.980
stepped out like that, I thought, well, I now have another swing thought on Kanye West. It's not just
00:27:29.320
grabbing the trophy off Taylor Swift. I should, I should learn a little more about this cat because
00:27:34.880
I think what he's done is pretty brave. And I think it's opened up, uh, an amazing tributary of
00:27:40.680
dialogue. Remember Eric Calder always said, this country's too afraid to have that conversation.
00:27:46.780
All right. Well, where's Eric Calder coming forward in the last week or so and say, well,
00:27:51.080
I guess somebody is not afraid to have a conversation. We found the guy.
00:27:56.000
Yeah. Well, I, I, I really think, I hope that's what Holder was referring to. The fact that this
00:28:01.640
guy's not getting much, you know, supply train, uh, support is, uh, uh, I think that's very telling.
00:28:08.660
I think that's going to help Kanye's cause more than it will help the, uh, the liberal cause.
00:28:13.260
That is a really good point. And you, you know, you've been a comedian and a amazing cultural
00:28:19.500
observer for, for such a long time. And really one of my favorites have on this point that you
00:28:25.540
brought up a little earlier on the boorishness of the culture or, you know, the, the F word that,
00:28:31.640
uh, George Bush senior, he said, Oh, come on. I got my wife here tonight. Don't go blue
00:28:35.640
or that sort of thing. Now it's not just the white house correspondence dinner. It's not just
00:28:40.180
Kanye taking that award from Taylor Swift. You hear it. Even those comedy central roasts
00:28:45.720
with few exceptions are so often just a litany of vulgarities and the most trying to one up one
00:28:52.440
another of the most disgusting thing to say. We use a loose language all the time. Now, is there any
00:28:57.960
hope that the culture will rebound in a way that gives us back a little dignity or a little class
00:29:04.320
or using language in a nicer, more elevated way? Or do you think for the time being that might be
00:29:10.920
lost and we've got to navigate these new waters that we're in? I would be funny if I commented on
00:29:16.400
that. I say the F bomb all the time in my act. That's true. I just don't do it on air. Well,
00:29:21.660
except when I'm, when the job description is not, but left to my own devices, I find it a good word
00:29:27.320
in my act. Do I, am I vulgar in my act? No, I don't think I am. But if I use the, uh, the F bomb,
00:29:33.400
yeah, I can't lecture anybody on that. But when I'm in front of a president or when I'm on TV
00:29:38.080
or when I'm in front of a corporate crowd that doesn't need that stern and drang in their day,
00:29:42.740
is it very easy for me to not do it? Of course it is. Every time I do a corporate, I say to the guy,
00:29:47.340
I say, who's the guy who signs this check? And then I say to him, do you want it, uh, PG? Do you want
00:29:52.540
it, uh, PG-13 or do you want it R? And if he says PG, I say, fine, there'll be no swearing in it.
00:29:58.620
If he wants PG-13, I say, fine, there might be a couple of swear words, but, uh, I won't use the
00:30:03.360
F bomb. I just find it easy to ship that stuff out. And like I said, is there, is there a new
00:30:09.780
vulgarianism in the country? I don't think so. I think this is the way it has always been in small
00:30:16.880
clutches, except our small clatch now is the entire world due to social media. I really think that social
00:30:24.480
media, uh, never have lives less lived, been more chronicled. The minutiae, the innocuuea to invent a
00:30:34.600
word and not a, uh, I think that might be Elizabeth Warren's Indian. Yeah. Good, good use of the native
00:30:41.700
language. We're all privy to that now. This is all the stream of consciousness that for years was either
00:30:48.320
in our own head, in our own living room or with our own friends at a tavern or a bar or with a group
00:30:54.680
of like-minded people. Now everybody knows everything about everybody. And what I say is
00:30:59.500
social media has allowed us to all come together as one and probably realized there was never really
00:31:05.600
any good reason for us to all come together as one. That is a devastating, but accurate observation
00:31:14.820
because it's true when I tweet or I go on Facebook, I don't, I don't feel as though I'm addressing a
00:31:20.140
crowd of thousands. I feel like I have a drink in my hand and I'm spouting off on whatever thing
00:31:26.040
crosses my mind. That, that is very true. It makes you think twice before you tweet. Uh, Dennis,
00:31:31.920
before I let you go, you have this new podcast. It's very, very good. The Dennis Miller option.
00:31:36.880
It just launched. How's it going and where can people find it? Well, listen, I've done two and
00:31:41.620
the third one's on tomorrow. Dana Carvey's on it. Uh, it's, you can download these on iTunes and I'm
00:31:48.080
just learning the lexicon. So I, I will spare you hearing me say we drop on Wednesday, like, um,
00:31:53.760
you know, putting out a new, new album. We, we appear on Wednesday.
00:32:01.920
You can go to podcast one. Uh, I was bringing sports one, but we decided to get rid of it
00:32:06.920
because I found out that sports is the most you're going to get. It seems to me, unless
00:32:13.020
you're a big Dan Patrick or something like that, you're probably going to get $20,000. People
00:32:17.380
were sending me emails, but I'm not saying they were shoveling them in, uh, like Cole into
00:32:21.880
a speeding train car, but I wasn't getting emails saying, listen, I like residency, but I
00:32:25.640
don't, I don't like sports. So we're putting it into a more generic thing called the Dennis
00:32:29.880
Miller option. We're probably going to do two of those a week. The next one's tomorrow. Like I
00:32:34.640
said, it's an hour with Carvey. He's absolutely the best guest. He and Marty short in the history
00:32:39.500
of any sort of medium and, uh, comedy. It's my thoughts on the world. It's my thoughts on
00:32:45.000
politics. It's just sort of stream of consciousness for an hour. I was just looking at it on iTunes
00:32:49.800
and I don't know much about the rating, but it seems to be okay on there and we'll see how it
00:32:54.100
goes. I think that you pretty much have to fall back into this and say, say out loud what you're
00:33:00.020
thinking and see who shows up for that. If it's enough, they keep you on. If it isn't,
00:33:04.340
they whack you. That's sort of where I'm at. It's really, really good. I listened to the first
00:33:09.220
episode right when it came out. I am, I got, I don't want to fangirl too much, you know, but I am a
00:33:14.000
big Dennis Miller fan myself and have been for years. So, uh, you, everybody, I highly recommend
00:33:19.000
going out and getting the podcast. Absolutely. I'm glad you can't, you can't see me right now,
00:33:24.680
but I'm blushing even in my swarthy Italian skin. Dennis, very good to talk to you in the,
00:33:30.560
in the future. Like I said, if we know everybody's thoughts on the future, there will be a blush
00:33:36.320
meter on your eyes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's something I probably shouldn't tweet note
00:33:40.540
to self note. Dennis, thank you so much for being here. Great to talk to you. And I can't,
00:33:44.860
I'm looking forward to the podcast with Dana. All right. Thank you. Bye.
00:33:49.000
Dennis Miller. How cool is that guy? On Saturday, May 19th, Dennis will be performing at the
00:33:55.000
Riverside Theater in Milwaukee. On Saturday, June 23rd, Dennis will be taping his next standup
00:33:59.620
special at the Bijou Theater in Knoxville, Tennessee. Dennis can also be heard on his other
00:34:04.220
weekly podcast, Red Circle Sports with Dennis Miller with podcast one and his twice daily syndicated
00:34:11.140
60 second radio feature, the Miller Minute. I want to get some of those. That guy's got so many
00:34:16.000
podcasts. Okay. I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. Don't forget. Don't forget. The
00:34:20.600
conversation is today. It's coming up. This is it. This is your last chance to subscribe. If you go
00:34:25.580
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00:34:30.820
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00:34:37.740
to watch, but only subscribers can ask. Many are cold, but few are chosen. We thank everybody who
00:34:43.880
is already a subscriber. You help us keep the lights on. It's very nice of you. If you subscribe,
00:34:48.320
you get me, you get the Andrew Claven show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get to ask questions
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in the conversation. You get to ask questions in the mailbag, which you can go do right now.
00:34:54.900
There it is. Now we, I have been sipping deep the John Kerry vintage for the last week.
00:35:01.260
The Kanye vintage, Kanye caused all of those to pour in. I'd been, and those were delicious. I don't,
00:35:06.460
I'm saving those now for a special occasion because now I'm on the Bob Mueller colluded with
00:35:12.280
the Russians vintage. Oh, that's, that's a really sophisticated, uh, brew and it is best served
00:35:22.740
cold because after a year of Democrats trying to overturn this presidential election, now it looks
00:35:28.920
like they're the ones who colluded with the Russians. Mmm. Serve it cold. Nice chilled leftist tears.
00:35:34.340
Mm-mm-mm. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back to talk about our vomitive culture.
00:35:50.240
Vomitive. I'm only, I'm just covering this story so that I can say the word vomitive.
00:35:54.500
So, the word vomitive is being used to describe Lars von Trier's new murder movie called The House
00:36:04.240
That Jack Built. It's at Cannes Film Festival. Uh, here is the preview for The House That Jack Built.
00:36:09.140
The old cathedrals often have sublime artworks hidden away in the darkest corners for only God to see.
00:36:29.160
Apparently, that's the only eight-second clip of the movie that does not entail dismembering children,
00:36:34.320
so that's all they could use for the trailer. This movie just debuted at, at Cannes, and it actually
00:36:40.020
prompted the moviegoers almost uniformly to storm out of the theater in disgust. That's true. Uh,
00:36:48.620
just to, to point this out, because I, it should go without saying, but some people aren't familiar
00:36:52.920
with these festivals. It's not that it caused an audience of your sweet aunt Ethel to storm out in
00:36:58.120
disgust. It caused the attendees of the Cannes Film Festival to leave in disgust. The Cannes Film Festival
00:37:04.500
attendees are some of the most decadent, debauched people on the face of the earth. They're all these
00:37:11.020
show business types. They're show business elites. Uh, how many times has Harvey Weinstein attended the
00:37:16.540
Cannes Film Festival? One of the attendees this year, Kirsten Stewart, took off her shoes on the red
00:37:22.760
carpet and walked in barefoot. They are debased people. They are debauched people. And even they said
00:37:28.660
that this movie is too much. One reviewer said of the film, he said that it is gross, pretentious,
00:37:36.020
vomitive, torturous, and pathetic. That's actually the review that Ben gave of my show,
00:37:41.400
but it applies differently to this movie because of how gruesome and bloody it is.
00:37:45.520
Another reviewer, uh, called it a vile movie should not have been made actors culpable.
00:37:52.360
As if to say the people who just got the script, they just played their parts. They are morally culpable
00:37:57.860
for how filthy and rotten and demonic this movie is. So what's the movie about? According to Rotten Tomatoes,
00:38:04.300
Lars von Traja, his upcoming drama, quote, follows the highly intelligent Jack, Matt Dillon, over a span of
00:38:11.640
12 years and introduces the murders that define Jack's development as a serial killer. We experience the
00:38:18.300
story from Jack's point of view. Well, he postulates each murder is an artwork in itself. As the inevitable
00:38:25.360
police intervention is drawing nearer, he takes greater and greater risks in his attempt to create
00:38:30.980
the ultimate artwork of dismembering children. One viewer, uh, from Khan, this is not a reviewer,
00:38:37.960
but one of the people who saw it tweeted out and said, seeing children being shot and killed is not art
00:38:45.080
or entertainment. So this, you know, people have been scandalized by artwork for a very long time.
00:38:52.060
This is nothing new, but perhaps this has gone too far. Perhaps, who knows? I haven't seen the movie
00:38:58.540
yet. I've only seen the eight seconds, which still have blood all over them, but apparently they're the
00:39:02.380
safest to air. I think there's a silver lining here actually for the culture. You might ask, what is the
00:39:07.740
silver lining to naming and mutilating children? The silver lining, I think, is that the culture has
00:39:13.080
turned a corner because you, you can keep going down this path. Obviously, uh, certain material would be
00:39:20.640
shocking even 50 years ago that today would be absurd. You know, Ricky and Lucy on I Love Lucy, they
00:39:26.920
didn't sleep in the same bed. They're a married couple and they slept in separate beds on this show
00:39:31.740
because it would have been too scandalous to, uh, to out there to show them sleeping in the same bed. They
00:39:37.860
couldn't use the word pregnant. That was a culture back then. Now you just maim and torture all of
00:39:43.740
these children on, on screen. And that, that's pushing a boundary slightly. These things can't
00:39:49.400
go on forever. A grotesque culture will exhaust itself eventually. Jimmy Kimmel actually talked
00:39:55.280
about this yesterday. He said, oh, I think we've had enough of the Trump jokes, of the Trump hate.
00:39:59.640
Have you, Jimmy? You hate Donald Trump, but they've just gotten to the end. What more is there to do?
00:40:04.640
How much further can you go? Kanye West is talking about this. He says, you know, everyone's just
00:40:08.880
hating really hard and hating and hating and mean and mean and hating and hating. I'm going to love
00:40:13.060
people. I'm going to try something different. I'm going to do something that's, that's not within
00:40:17.120
the popular culture. Uh, Facebook and Twitter are talking about this even. They're offering a bad
00:40:21.680
solution because their solution is, uh, censorship, but they're talking about this problem of just
00:40:27.100
meanness and crassness and vulgarity. People criticize Donald Trump for being a little bit vulgar,
00:40:32.960
or, but they themselves behave in a much more vulgar way than the president does.
00:40:37.000
Maybe, you know, take a look at the man in the mirror, huh? There's so much meanness. There's
00:40:41.360
so much coarseness and vulgarity. Michelle Wolfe at that White House Correspondence Dinner is so
00:40:45.460
gross. It's so, how much further can you go? It's like the experience of reading the Marquis de Sade.
00:40:50.840
If you ever read, the Marquis de Sade wrote a book called 120 Days of Sodom,
00:40:54.360
and he's where we get, um, sadism from and sadistic. So the Marquis de Sade was both a
00:41:00.280
pornographer and a philosopher, and you read it, and you start to read it, and you think,
00:41:04.460
ooh, this is a little, ooh, this is a little titillating. Oh, yikes. Should I, I don't,
00:41:08.660
should I be aroused by? I don't know. This is, and then you get to the end, and you're just so
00:41:12.460
horrified and disgusted with the material and with yourself. It sounds like this movie, you know,
00:41:17.560
which is just people are doing all sorts of depraved things, and it gets violent and vicious
00:41:23.120
and all of that. And by the end you say, ah, gross. It's the experience, I think, of whenever you
00:41:30.900
really feast the flesh. So whenever you can just, let's just use Thanksgiving as an example. You
00:41:36.380
could use more scintillating examples, but let's use Thanksgiving. You go and you say, okay, I'm just
00:41:41.440
going to eat as much as I can all day. So you start out the day, you start eating and drinking and
00:41:46.920
eating pie and turkey. By the end, you don't want to eat anymore. You're just so fat and full and
00:41:52.920
disgusted with yourself, tired, and you want to go to bed and do something else. This is true
00:41:58.260
whenever you feast the flesh on anything. It could be sex, it could be gambling, it could be drinking,
00:42:04.640
it could be carousing, whatever. Whenever, you just get exhausted by the end of it. And I think that's
00:42:08.600
what the culture has done here with crassness and meanness and vulgarity. That's not to say that
00:42:13.040
we're going to have a really nice, pristine culture now. I just think we've sort of reached the end
00:42:16.820
of it. In some ways, the Trump election might mark the end of that. And what comes afterwards? I don't
00:42:23.160
know, but you're seeing the culture slowly starting to move. And if these debauched, depraved showbiz
00:42:29.440
types are going to walk out of a movie because it's too crass and vulgar and violent, that could
00:42:33.620
be a good sign. Things are looking bright. Among all of the dead bodies on screen and the husk of our
00:42:39.820
culture, things could be getting better. Okay, make sure to tune in for the conversation. That will be
00:42:44.560
happening in like three seconds. It's going to be at 2.30 Pacific, 5.30 Eastern time. So do that.
00:42:50.580
It'll be with Alicia Krause and me and ask all of your questions. I won't answer. I believe Ben
00:42:56.840
touted my conversation as me staring blankly at the screen and then quoting an obscure Catholic
00:43:03.540
theologian that nobody's heard of. That's probably what's going to happen. So, you know, tune in and
00:43:07.560
and I'll just, I'll give you this. Just straight, just. And then I'll quote some theologian. But
00:43:13.520
you got to tune in to find out which one. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. I'll see
00:43:18.220
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal. Executive producer, Jeremy Borey. Senior
00:43:29.880
producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is
00:43:35.340
Austin Stevens. Edited by Jim Nickel. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by
00:43:41.660
Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production. Copyright Forward