The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 156 - When Mueller Colluded With The Russians

00:00:00.000 Because satire is now impossible and reality has become the only source of comedy,

00:00:05.320 a new bombshell report reveals that after a full year of the Mueller investigation of Russia

00:00:12.040 collusion, it turns out Mueller himself colluded with Russian oligarchs. That is a true story,

00:00:17.880 you cannot make that up. We will analyze this major conflict of interest for Robert Mueller

00:00:22.000 and his never-ending probe. Then, speaking of comedy, the legendary stand-up and SNL alum

00:00:27.800 Dennis Miller stops by to talk comedy in the age of Trump. Finally, a silver lining for our

00:00:33.900 vomitive culture. I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:45.320 I like that word, vomitive. That's a good, I'm going to start using that one. We've got a lot

00:00:50.000 to get to today. Before we talk about these things and the single funniest news story of the last ever,

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00:02:41.900 You're not going to believe this one today. This news story is so good. And I can't believe,

00:02:48.760 this is like the perfect punchline to the entire Robert Mueller Russia collusion investigation.

00:02:54.140 It turns out in 2009, special counsel Robert Mueller, now investigating President Trump for

00:03:01.040 colluding with the Russians, himself colluded with the Russians.

00:03:04.220 I know. I'm just as shocked as you are. It is an absurd punchline. We'll get through this because

00:03:12.460 I want to get to Dennis as quickly as we can. Of all of the arguments to take down the Mueller

00:03:17.580 investigation, to stop this anti-constitutional, clearly un-American power grab here to overturn a

00:03:24.740 presidential election, of all of the arguments to take down this investigation, this one is the best.

00:03:29.300 Here's what happened. See if you can follow this. It kind of seems like a really weird, sad James Bond

00:03:36.000 story. But because it's real life government, there's a lot of just inefficiency and poor

00:03:42.020 decisions that happened along the way. So in 2009, Robert Mueller was running the FBI and the FBI

00:03:47.780 asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska for some help to help them with an operation that they were

00:03:55.420 doing. Even the name, I have to assume that Oleg is short for oligarch because that is like out of a 0.54

00:04:02.800 cartoon that the Russian oligarch's name is Oleg. Oleg. So the FBI asks Oleg for some help on this

00:04:10.040 operation. I'm going to call him Garky. I think that's another good nickname for him. So the FBI asked

00:04:15.540 Garky, they asked Deripaska to spend millions of dollars of his own money to fund an FBI-backed

00:04:21.780 operation to rescue a former FBI agent, Robert Levinson, who was captured in Iran while working

00:04:27.920 for the CIA in 2007. Former FBI agent, now working for the CIA, abducted in Iran in 2007. Now it's 2009.

00:04:36.280 FBI asks the Russian oligarch for help. Deripaska agreed. Deripaska spent millions of dollars of his

00:04:42.660 own money. He had meetings with the FBI. He had meetings with that disgraced former FBI agent,

00:04:48.220 Andrew McCabe, in Paris, in Vienna, in Budapest, in Hungary, in Washington, D.C. All over the place

00:04:55.180 they meet. They're working together very closely. Now the operation worked. They actually were able

00:04:59.740 to locate Levinson with video and photographic evidence. They tracked him down in Iran. They were

00:05:04.900 about to go get him. And then Hillary Clinton shut everything down. Hillary Clinton at the time was the

00:05:10.380 Secretary of State. She shut everything down at the last minute. Who knows why? Maybe she didn't want 1.00

00:05:15.740 to deal with the political fallout. Maybe she didn't want this mission to imperil her presidential

00:05:20.300 ambitions. Who knows? They were on the verge of getting him. Millions of dollars had been spent.

00:05:25.040 They had evidence. They knew where he was. And then he was gone. The operation ended in 2011.

00:05:31.540 Levinson has never been found. This is 11 years now after he was captured. Score another failure for

00:05:36.880 Hillary Clinton. So this story, by the way, which is a punchline to the Mueller investigation,

00:05:41.040 actually is another piece of evidence for why it's so good that we did not elect Hillary.

00:05:45.300 Because she totally bungled this and appears to have made certain political calculations that left 1.00

00:05:51.220 this guy stranded in Iran, God knows where. Back to Robert Mueller. So the Russian oligarch,

00:05:57.320 Dara Pasca, turned up in the Mueller investigation. Dara Pasca has longstanding ties to Paul Manafort,

00:06:03.160 the former Trump campaign chairman. Manafort allegedly offered Dara Pasca private meetings

00:06:09.460 about the 2016 campaign. They had longstanding financial ties before this. Dara Pasca sued

00:06:15.240 Manafort this past January because he was alleging fraud in a 2007 investing deal. So now let's bring

00:06:22.160 in the hookers. Now Dara Pasca's former mistress, the Belarusian prostitute Anastasia Vashukovic, 1.00

00:06:29.200 who was videotaped on a yacht with Dara Pasca and the deputy prime minister of Russia because the

00:06:34.440 oligarchs run the country. It's a very corrupt country. This Belarusian prostitute is claiming 1.00

00:06:40.320 to have evidence that Dara Pasca had a plan to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 0.98

00:06:47.820 Okay, so you say, where's the evidence? Let's bring in the evidence. The only trouble,

00:06:51.500 of course, and this happens with Belarusian hookers, is that she's currently stuck in a Thai prison. 1.00

00:06:55.300 Are you still with me? Are you still tracking this? Because there's a lot going on. So put that 0.94

00:07:00.360 aside. Speaking of hookers, Dara Pasca is one of the Russians that the FBI questioned about the 1.00

00:07:05.760 Democrat-funded hit job dossier that alleged that Donald Trump paid Russian hookers to relieve 0.98

00:07:11.480 themselves on a bed that Barack Obama once slept on. Now the FBI, after this was alleged to have

00:07:17.420 happened, the FBI busted into Dara Pasca's hotel room. They asked him about that crazy dossier,

00:07:23.040 the Democrat-funded dossier. Dara Pasca laughed at them because he thought they were kidding

00:07:27.040 because the story is absurd. Now, okay, none of this really matters much so far. We've got some

00:07:33.640 hookers. We've got some strange preferences in bedrooms. We've got some corruption. Okay, fine. 1.00

00:07:39.280 Everybody in the world has a plan to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. 0.99

00:07:44.140 Oligarchs frequent a lot of hookers. These are tales as old as time. Nothing really special here. 0.99

00:07:48.860 What matters here is that Robert Mueller has not mentioned Dara Pasca in the Manafort indictment,

00:07:56.240 despite Dara Pasca's being a central figure in all of Manafort's dealings with Russia.

00:08:01.120 So we've got this huge, wide-ranging Russia probe. We've got Manafort actually being indicted,

00:08:07.080 and yet the central Russian figure here just doesn't show up on the indictment. That's a little weird.

00:08:12.860 We also know that the United States has recently instituted sanctions against Dara Pasca,

00:08:17.300 The duly elected government, this is coming out of the White House, has been dealing very harshly

00:08:21.620 with Dara Pasca, but the unelected anti-constitutional bureaucracy has been playing

00:08:26.640 softball with him. Now, why would Robert Mueller play softball with Dara Pasca? Well, Mueller,

00:08:33.200 as the director of the FBI, asked a Russian oligarch to underwrite an FBI operation to get around U.S.

00:08:38.920 laws. Mueller tried to do something indirectly that he was explicitly prohibited from doing directly.

00:08:44.660 Now, okay, he's trying to subvert the law. He's trying to, okay, that doesn't look good.

00:08:49.520 But then what really matters is the quid pro quo here, because if you're not familiar with Russian

00:08:54.240 oligarchs, one characteristic of them is they don't generally do favors in exchange for nothing. 1.00

00:09:00.360 They don't do things out of the goodness of their heart. Russian oligarchs are not known

00:09:04.380 for the goodness of their hearts. So the question is, what did Dara Pasca get or expect in return

00:09:11.040 for his $25 million donation to Mueller's FBI? Maybe, I don't know, does that explain why

00:09:17.460 this particular Russian oligarch didn't turn up on Mueller's indictments? Maybe, maybe did Mueller

00:09:22.880 want to avoid the transparency that is required by law? I don't know. Let's ask all of the experts on

00:09:29.360 this across the political aisle. That's what Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is saying.

00:09:34.120 Alan Dershowitz thinks this was a way to avoid transparency because he might have broken the law.

00:09:38.800 Melanie Sloan, who's a former Justice Department lawyer for Bill Clinton, former Clinton administration

00:09:44.320 lawyer. She wonders if the first FBI operation was even legal. Because that first FBI operation,

00:09:51.060 where the FBI asked the Russians to fund this operation, it looks like it violated the Anti-Deficiency

00:09:56.740 Act, which prohibits the government from accepting voluntary services. And the reason it does that

00:10:02.200 makes perfect sense because then there's an obligation. There's a debt to be paid off,

00:10:07.340 and it gets really tricky down the line when you start indicting people for Russian collusion,

00:10:11.960 but you don't indict the central Russian oligarch. GW constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley,

00:10:17.200 he thinks exactly the same thing. This is not a right-wing conspiracy. This is not all, this is not,

00:10:23.140 you know, Sean Hannity saying this on his show. This is Dershowitz, Sloan, Turley. These are all people

00:10:28.480 who have worked quite publicly for Democrats, but they're very good lawyers, and this is their legal

00:10:33.780 opinion. This is the best ending to all of this, isn't it? Isn't this the best ending to all of

00:10:40.420 this? Because this Mueller thing has been going on forever. It's been going on, I don't know, since

00:10:45.940 I think the Coolidge administration at this point. But there was the FBI investigation,

00:10:50.980 then the Mueller thing. It's basically the one-year anniversary of the Mueller investigation.

00:10:54.660 And now the punchline is, Robert Mueller colluded with the Russians. It's just,

00:10:59.360 what credibility does he have? What credibility does this investigation now have? We know that

00:11:05.320 it's probably unconstitutional. It seems to violate the Supreme Court's rulings, and I think

00:11:11.960 the case was Morrison v. Olson, both the opinion and the dissent of the court. We know it's far too

00:11:17.160 expansive. But also, it seems that even in the carrying out of it, they're trying to avoid

00:11:23.280 transparency. They're trying to skirt the law. They're trying to cover up possibly illegal actions

00:11:27.580 that were undertaken by the head of this investigation 10 years ago, 9 years ago.

00:11:33.340 Doesn't look like there's a lot of credibility here. But keep looking. I'm sure you'll find that

00:11:36.500 Russian collusion somewhere. You might find it really, really close to home. You might find it,

00:11:40.180 oh, it might actually be you guys who were doing it. Really, really wild. The Democrats pay,

00:11:46.600 collude with the Russians and pay for this Steele dossier. Then the FBI seems to be colluding with the

00:11:51.320 Russians. I think Donald Trump is the only guy in this country who has not colluded with the Russians. 0.77

00:11:55.240 Donald Trump may be the last American who didn't collude with the Russians. Unbelievable. 0.87

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00:13:45.540 In the age of Donald Trump, reality is funnier than absolutely any sketch or standup act around.

00:13:51.140 Nevertheless, we will get to a professional, uh, funny man. And one of my favorite comedians,

00:13:55.860 Dennis Miller, uh, Dennis Miller just launched his second weekly podcast for podcast one.

00:14:00.680 It's titled the Dennis Miller option, where he discusses headlines, pop culture,

00:14:04.820 and tries to make sense of an increasingly nonsensical world. Here's Dennis.

00:14:08.660 Dennis, thank you for being here.

00:14:12.320 Nice to be here, my friend. How's your day?

00:14:14.340 It's going very well. It's going pretty, pretty nicely. Uh, now you have one.

00:14:19.240 Are you, uh, I don't know about you. I'm having, I guess we'll all have to just bite our lips and

00:14:23.080 soldier on without Iran right now.

00:14:26.120 It is really hard. Do you think we'll make it?

00:14:29.060 My Sherpa told me when we were, when we were above the kill zone on Everest,

00:14:33.320 just put one foot in front of each other and keep moving. Somehow we'll get through this together.

00:14:37.900 I, I hope, you know, I was so nervous because Ben Rhodes and Dan Pfeiffer,

00:14:43.200 they assured me that everything was going to fall apart without the cooperation of the worst regime

00:14:49.060 on planet earth. I hope we can make it. I hope we can make it.

00:14:51.960 I, uh, you know, like I feel unprotected. I've been with them so long, probably since not without

00:14:57.960 my daughter, the Betty Mahmood story is when I was first introduced to the lovely vibe in Iran,

00:15:02.900 but somehow, like I said, we'll get through it.

00:15:04.860 We'll soldier out. We'll, we'll truck along. I, now I want to talk about another great foe of the

00:15:09.800 United States, uh, Michelle Wolf. Now you have won multiple Emmy awards. You've won Writers Guild

00:15:15.420 awards. You've hosted a bunch of TV shows. You've hosted radio podcast, the Dennis Miller option.

00:15:21.860 You've also headlined the white house correspondence dinner back in the Bush one years. I wanted to know

00:15:28.200 on a scale of Hiroshima to Nagasaki. How badly did Michelle Wolf bomb?

00:15:33.880 I don't think she did in her world, right? People have to understand it's a completely,

00:15:39.580 it's a schism now between the two sides. I think on her side, she was, uh, I never know if the word

00:15:45.100 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

00:15:52.900 about it and I got angry because, uh, I, I saw Sarah Sanders sitting there. She'll get to him and

00:15:58.620 cry. I said, who is this? I did not know who it was. So I put up a tweet about researching her and

00:16:05.120 getting back, uh, with a joke on, uh, Wednesday, which is when my podcast is. And all of a sudden

00:16:11.320 it was like the, uh, it absolutely hit the fan. And I realized that the internet really is the wild

00:16:18.160 west. You, you put up something that, uh, or a, it would say underwritten all of a sudden you're

00:16:23.000 like the old lady who goes over the horseshoe falls with the trash can and ends up in the

00:16:27.180 whitewater churn at the bottom. You're just getting derma braided out the wazoo for a day or two.

00:16:32.300 And then I realized, I guess that's what the internet is about. And when you were in the crosshairs of it,

00:16:38.500 you should handle it with a suitable degree of a club because certainly I love people on Twitter.

00:16:43.340 Uh, so that's the way, that's the way it happens. And it happens quickly. It seems like it happens

00:16:48.520 like. Well, I, I saw that tweet when you sent it out and I immediately got it. I got the joke,

00:16:54.420 you know, no one knows who this woman is and you're going to have to research her and then you can talk

00:16:58.160 about it on the show. And immediately everyone pounces on you and they say, ha ha, you don't have

00:17:04.440 a quick wit. Ha ha. You know, and I couldn't tell if it was the left being obtuse or if they genuinely

00:17:11.780 just, just didn't get it. And this, this does bring us to it. I think the defining character,

00:17:17.580 uh, characteristic of the Trump era, which is that the left is humorless these days and

00:17:23.020 conservatives during the Obama years, conservatives still had a sense of humor, but now the left seems

00:17:28.800 totally, totally humorless. Why can't they take a joke right now?

00:17:32.580 Oh, I don't know. I want, you know, I, I will say this when Obama, when Obama won and I watched

00:17:40.760 that feast that first night in Grant park. And I, I think that's the park in Chicago, right? I'm not

00:17:46.980 that much of a Chicago, uh, but then I saw those upturned faces and people with all that hope in

00:17:53.180 that. And I thought this will be good for this country. Honest to God, I remember thinking, I hope

00:17:57.640 he does well. I'll give him a few months here to see, but I don't, I don't think we're like,

00:18:03.240 you were laughing that I put that thing up about, I don't think the left has handled Hillary's loss

00:18:08.780 all that well. It's the simple truth that I think that was such a lock in their head that all I can

00:18:17.040 say is it must be, uh, it, it must've been a cataclysm for them. I remember when I watched the

00:18:23.040 Jacob Javits center that first night and it was like a snowflake Jonestown. And I thought, my God,

00:18:28.440 I have never in all my years of having political opinions. Have you ever come within a light year

00:18:36.120 of crying over a politician? I never, I don't take it like that. It's not that important. Uh, I, you

00:18:44.260 know, I was, uh, you know, Obama's approach to it was not my approach, but he seemed like a genial

00:18:50.340 bloke, seemed like a good family man. I didn't agree with a lot of it, but I, I never hated him.

00:18:55.420 I never wanted to cry that he became president. And I was just looking at it and I go, I guess

00:18:59.880 they've got more vested in it on the secular side because they seem genuinely, um, you know,

00:19:06.880 devastated. I just don't get that devastated. So can I speak and say that there's nobody on the

00:19:12.660 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

00:19:17.520 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

00:19:28.160 something. You can see he has charisma. He's a great speaker. And like I said, he was of the era.

00:19:33.420 Uh, you know, you can understand why that might've devastated. But Hillary, I mean, Jesus, say what 0.95

00:19:39.200 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,

00:20:27.920 when Hillary lost, I remember John Podesta came out because she didn't show up. She was throwing

00:20:32.560 desk lamps in her hotel room or something. And he comes out and he says, thank you for being here for

00:20:37.420 Hillary. She's always been here for you, except for right now, the only time it matters. And she's

00:20:42.180 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

00:20:53.500 misplaced longings. But when I watched that set of Michelle Wolf at the white house correspondence

00:20:59.600 dinner, I didn't hear many jokes. She told a few jokes, but what I heard a lot of is she just 0.81

00:21:06.260 accused people of being liars. That was like her punchline. She said, you're a liar and you lie and

00:21:12.620 you're a disappointment to women. And as though that were sufficient to qualify as a joke, which 1.00

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

00:22:07.940 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 0.91

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. 1.00

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 1.00

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. 1.00

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 0.70

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 0.99

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 to dailywire.com right now, you subscribe. You can ask questions during the conversation. That will be

00:34:30.820 coming up real soon. 530 Eastern, 230 Pacific. Only subscribers can ask the questions. Everybody gets

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

00:34:50.640 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. 0.93

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.

00:36:15.420 The same goes for murder.

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, 0.98

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 0.98

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 1.00

00:39:43.740 these children on, on screen. And that, that's pushing a boundary slightly. These things can't 0.98

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. 0.91

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 0.95

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 1.00

00:42:29.440 types are going to walk out of a movie because it's too crass and vulgar and violent, that could 0.99

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

00:43:17.440 you in like an hour.

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

00:43:47.000 Publishing 2018.

00:44:17.860 Dep cerebral四 plant Art of crack

00:44:23.440 usters. Edited byanboy

00:44:26.940 Edited by Scott

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00:44:33.060 Edited by Scott

00:44:35.760 Grim

00:44:37.180 Edited by Scott

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00:44:41.100 Edited by Scott

The Michael Knowles Show - May 15, 2018

Ep. 156 - When Mueller Colluded With The Russians

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