The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.560 We're getting some breaking news here. Yes, it seems that the left is still really mad.

00:00:07.280 What was that? Yes, no, really, really, really mad. More specifically, the left is furious about

00:00:13.980 Judge Fill-in-the-Blank. We're receiving reports right now from NBC, ABC, CBS, NYT, CNN, that Judge

00:00:20.520 Fill-in-the-Blank is the most dangerous and egregious Supreme Court nominee in all of U.S.

00:00:25.100 history. And they are certain that he or she will ensure the destruction of the republic.

00:00:29.140 We will analyze the SCOTUS pick, the fallout, and how Republicans should react. Then what the

00:00:34.820 nomination means for the midterms and Democrats' central problem. I'm here to help as the leading

00:00:40.300 expert on the Democrat Party, writing the most important political tome on the Democrat Party.

00:00:46.140 I will explain to you Democrats your problem. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles. This is

00:00:50.440 The Michael Knowles Show. So many thoughts on this nomination, what the nomination means for the

00:01:02.080 court, what it means for the White House, and also just what the reaction means, because that's really

00:01:07.060 the best part of all of this. That's why we're all here, isn't it? Before we get to that, got to make

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00:02:43.480 President Trump, you know, say what you will about him. That guy is so good for civics,

00:02:49.060 for the civics education of the United States. And think about the reality showness of this

00:02:56.080 nomination. How many, first of all, how many Supreme Court potential nominees, you know,

00:03:01.200 Pete Names that had been floated, possible judges that could go up to the Supreme Court.

00:03:04.900 How many in history did you ever know about? None. Maybe the nominee. Maybe. And maybe like

00:03:14.660 one name, maybe one other name. Not the case with President Trump because President Trump

00:03:19.480 is the master of reality television. So for days now, we've just been on the edge of our seats.

00:03:24.200 Oh, is he going to pick Amy? I like Amy. She's really good looking and she has seven kids and

00:03:28.620 she's super Catholic and I really wish it were Amy. Damn it. We'll talk about that in a second. Or,

00:03:33.520 you know, is it going to be Ray Kethledge or is it going to be Kavanaugh, Brett Kavanaugh? Or is it

00:03:39.160 going to be Hardiman? Is it going to be Pryor? Who's it going to write? And we're all tuned into

00:03:42.980 this. This is actually a good thing for American civics because now that Donald Trump in large

00:03:47.840 part has made politics replace entertainment, we're paying attention to it and we actually learn a few

00:03:52.600 things. Even, you know, the Joe Schmo on the street is picking up a few things because it's

00:03:57.700 dominating all of our media. So that, I think, is a good aspect of it. It's like edutainment.

00:04:03.820 That's what they say about Bill Nye, except Bill Nye is terrible. You know, Donald Trump is like the

00:04:07.820 good Bill Nye. He wears loud clothing. You know, he's been on television since we were all kids.

00:04:14.560 And but he's like the good version. He does good things and Bill Nye just spouts nonsense.

00:04:18.620 So let's get into it. I've already shown my hand a little bit with the Amy Barrett whiff. Some,

00:04:26.620 especially cultural conservatives, we're really hoping for Amy Coney Barrett, who's a federal judge

00:04:32.480 who was nominated last year and confirmed under President Trump. And I will say a little bit of

00:04:39.180 this is just the reality TV-ness of it. Because before three months ago, what did you know about

00:04:44.580 any of these judges? Nothing? Nothing. Of course not. And what do you know now? Probably not very

00:04:49.560 much, though. You've read a little bit. I mean, it has kind of seeped in a little bit, osmosis.

00:04:53.640 Maybe you've read some decisions or you've read about some decisions. So the cultural right was

00:04:58.360 a little upset that they whiffed on Amy Coney Barrett. She was a clerk for Scalia. She's written about

00:05:04.340 originalism pretty explicitly. Judge Kavanaugh, who was ultimately nominated, they thought, oh,

00:05:10.640 you know, he's got ties to the Bush family. Oh, he talks a little bit about precedent.

00:05:14.220 Ooh, I don't know about this. But it's worth pointing out, intense, hardline, rock-ribbed

00:05:20.340 cultural organizations on the right have come out in favor, pretty vocally, of Brett Kavanaugh. It's

00:05:25.520 not like Kavanaugh is Justice Kennedy or Souter or something like that. That's ridiculous.

00:05:30.820 National Right to Life says that he has a good record as an originalist. The Susan B. Anthony list,

00:05:36.480 pro-life list, says that he's an outstanding choice, their quote. Tony Perkins from the Family Research

00:05:42.040 Council said, quote, Judge Kavanaugh has a long and praiseworthy history of judging as an originalist.

00:05:47.060 We look forward to having a justice with his philosophical approach on the court. That's

00:05:51.640 pretty good. You know, I'm not saying this is the perfect nominee ever, but that's pretty good. We

00:05:57.760 really don't have a lot to complain about. And remember, we thought it was going to be Hillary,

00:06:01.920 so now it would just be awful and our Constitution would be ripped to shreds. And then when Trump got

00:06:06.340 it, there were a number of us, myself included, who thought, well, he might be like a Democrat. He's

00:06:10.420 been a Democrat at points of his life. He's said very left-wing things at various points. He might,

00:06:14.880 oh, maybe the best we could hope for is Kennedy. And that's not true. We're getting much more

00:06:18.580 originalist, much more textualist, more conservative lowercase c justices, including

00:06:24.460 Brett Kavanaugh. That's pretty good. You can't really complain about that. I also don't want to

00:06:28.140 become one of these, like, never Trump people, even for two seconds. And that is what the Hill

00:06:34.180 ran this headline today. Hashtag never Trumpers dominate media despite Trump party loyalty at

00:06:41.160 historic high. And you might have noticed that if you have tuned in at all to the mainstream media,

00:06:47.320 which I have not. But they get all these guys on television, like Bill Kristol, Steve Schmidt,

00:06:54.700 former GOP, you know, who left Jennifer Rubin. I don't know that she was ever actually a Republican,

00:06:58.820 but she plays one on TV. Anna Navarro. And they just go, they're on TV all the time. Except what's

00:07:04.620 so strange about that is that David Brooks, Brett Steven, I mean, it goes on and on and on. David

00:07:08.880 Frum. What's so strange about that is, according to Gallup, right now, President Trump has record

00:07:13.920 high approval within his own party. 87%. The polls show anywhere from 83% to 90% approval within his

00:07:20.800 own party. This beats everybody. This beats Ronald Reagan. There's one minor exception. After 9-11,

00:07:26.940 President Bush had a comparable or higher approval rating within his own party. But that waned shortly

00:07:33.120 after 9-11. Right now, approval among Republicans of Donald Trump is higher than approval of Ronald

00:07:38.880 Reagan at his 500-day mark in office. That is pretty good. The one caveat to, I'll say my worries

00:07:46.300 about Kavanaugh, and then we'll get into just celebrating it because the leftist tears are too

00:07:50.060 much and we'll drown if we don't celebrate and start guzzling them quickly. The thing with Kavanaugh is

00:07:55.700 he better have some hard ribs. He really better show up because this was a once-in-a-lifetime

00:08:05.060 opportunity. You've got a Republican Senate. You've got the swing vote, the major swing vote

00:08:11.540 resigning. And you've got this conservative Republican president in office. You've got the

00:08:16.240 simple majority to confirm the Supreme Court justice. So we were like, you know, I kind of

00:08:21.000 wanted Attila the Hun. I was campaigning for a Justice Hun or a Justice Khan, Justice Genghis Khan.

00:08:28.300 I thought he might be good too. You really want somebody who is hardcore like a Mike Lee or

00:08:32.380 apparently like a Justice Amy Barrett, Judge Amy Barrett, because you want to make sure that we

00:08:38.840 can undo some of the havoc that the left has wrought on the American legal system, in particular

00:08:45.360 Roe versus Wade, in particular, but many other cases that emanate from that. And I think a lot

00:08:50.280 of cultural conservatives are a little nervous because the anti-Roe v. Wade bona fides of Brett

00:08:57.580 Kavanaugh are slightly in question. I don't want to overstate this. There are just certain things that

00:09:03.160 make us feel a little uneasy. We know that Justice Roberts gave us a very, an absurd opinion in

00:09:11.020 Obamacare. We just are, we've been burned before. We've been burned by Roberts a little bit, certainly

00:09:16.320 by Kennedy, definitely by Souter, very much by Souter. So we just don't want to get burned again.

00:09:20.800 This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I hope it works out because if it doesn't work out,

00:09:25.520 the cultural right is just never going to forgive the establishment right. And it is going to create

00:09:32.560 real fissures in this party and it's going to make the nominating process even harder than it was

00:09:36.000 before. So let's hope it works out. My last worry is about Judge Kavanaugh. I'll show you a little bit

00:09:43.660 just in the clip of his remarks last night, and then we'll get down to celebrating. Here's future

00:09:48.920 Justice Brett Kavanaugh. A judge must interpret statutes as written and a judge must interpret

00:09:55.560 the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent. My law clerks come from

00:10:04.780 diverse backgrounds and points of view. I am proud that a majority of my law clerks have been women.

00:10:13.880 Okay, those were two remarks that stuck out to me. Doesn't seem like a huge deal. That what,

00:10:19.480 Michael, you don't like women? I love women. Look, I was kind of hoping a woman would be nominated to

00:10:24.040 the court this time. I just found those remarks a little worrying because he said the text has to be

00:10:30.080 interpreted by, you know, what the text plainly means, what it meant at the time of ratification,

00:10:34.160 by tradition, and precedent. And what we're assuming is this was just a line he threw away

00:10:39.700 for the Democrats during the nominating process so they can point to it and say, no, he accepts

00:10:44.440 precedent. He accepts story decisis. Justice Scalia himself, no less a man than the great,

00:10:49.360 great Justice Scalia, said that he was a fainthearted originalist because there is a role

00:10:54.520 for story decisis. There is a role for precedent in jurisprudence. I just got, you just get a little

00:10:59.220 worried. You just think, what's that? What does that mean? I don't know what that means. And then

00:11:03.240 the women remark, he said, I'm proud that most of my clerks have been women. I just sort of thought

00:11:08.100 like, why? Why are you proud of that? I don't, why do you care one way or the other? If the whole

00:11:13.900 idea is that the clerks and the justices are supposed to interpret the texts as they mean,

00:11:18.380 what does their sex have anything to do with it? It just, now look, I know why he did it. He's kind

00:11:23.340 of throwing out these lines to make him more palatable to Democrats. I just think, are we going

00:11:28.960 to play that game? Is that what we, it sounds a little squishy. Just like I'm proud. It's like

00:11:32.680 the binder's full of women. I'm so proud that I, that most of my employees are women. Why? Who cares?

00:11:38.260 It's fine if most of your employees are women. It's fine if most of your employees are men. I don't

00:11:42.300 care. It doesn't matter. Just those were the two things. Give me a little, I don't know about that.

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00:14:00.680 stuff. Can we? I'm done fretting. I just wanted to, you know, just wanted to get that off my chest.

00:14:05.600 If it were, if today, you know, we had like some, you know, Genghis Khan, Justice Khan were about to

00:14:10.980 take control of the court and just obliterate Roe v. Wade and just the crash, the administrative

00:14:15.100 state overturned Chevron deference, I'd be dancing on my desk. But this is pretty good too. This isn't

00:14:19.480 so bad. One thing I know that we have to do now that I've gotten that off my chest is conservatives

00:14:24.100 and Republicans have to unify behind Brett Kavanaugh. We need to unify behind this pick for a number of

00:14:30.900 reasons. One, he's a good pick. He's a good pick. The main objection to him from some quarters that

00:14:37.120 he was a Bushy, he worked for George Bush. That's ridiculous. If you're a young legal star

00:14:41.560 in the last quarter century, you're going to work for a Bush. That's just how, you know,

00:14:45.720 the Bushes have been the previous two Republican presidents. That's who you're going to work for.

00:14:51.780 He's a good pick. He's got a long record too. This was kind of the argument which I felt about

00:14:56.240 Judge Barrett is she seems great. You know, she seemed so rock ribbed, worked for Scalia,

00:15:01.340 but she's only been a judge for a year. So there's not a lot of record there. And I actually did have

00:15:05.360 this thought. I thought, you know, if Judge Barrett gets it and she turns out to not be really rock

00:15:11.920 ribbed or originalist down the road, I'll feel kind of bad because we're just, we're making a little

00:15:16.240 bit of a bet here. You know, it was only one year that she's been a judge. This guy's been a judge

00:15:20.440 for a dozen years. That's pretty good. Also, the president should have some leeway

00:15:24.120 on here. This president has been good so far. He's been really good for conservatives. He's been

00:15:28.700 the most conservative president in most ways that I've, certainly in my lifetime and that I could

00:15:34.220 even imagine really. So that's pretty good. And the final reason why we need to unify,

00:15:39.700 because you know, the left is going to rip him apart. They're already trying to rip apart

00:15:42.780 Judge fill in the blank. The main reason we have to unify and support Judge Kavanaugh.

00:15:47.860 Wow. These tears are just so delicious. They're just so good. I can't, do you really want to

00:15:55.520 deprive yourself of these? Because I don't think I could do it. The left is generically outraged.

00:16:02.860 They're not particularly outraged because they don't know anything about this guy and they were

00:16:06.320 already outraged before the pick came out, but they're generically outraged. And that makes today

00:16:12.940 so, so yummy. Very good. They outside, there was this major protest outside of the Supreme Court

00:16:20.460 last night. And I kid you not, there were journalists who caught photos of the people.

00:16:26.480 They just showed up with fill in the blank protest signs. They say, we need to stop blank. Judge

00:16:32.200 blank. Stop blanks. Nomination. Blank is a racist. Blank is a second, whatever. Blank is going to

00:16:38.280 destroy women or something. You just think, guys, are you, you are so transparent in your just

00:16:44.600 partisan hackery. There's nothing, you're not even like, you didn't even go into a little corner and

00:16:49.180 fill, no, you just showed up with a blank, fill in the blank sign. And then the other great one,

00:16:55.260 if you, if you sign up on political websites and you have an email inbox, and I'm sure you saw this

00:17:00.820 yesterday, a bunch of these left-wing organizations sent out their generic fill in the blank email and

00:17:07.280 they forgot to fill in the blank. So they, this was the Women's March statement on Trump's extremist

00:17:15.560 SCOTUS nominee. That was the headline of this press release. Quote, a response to Donald Trump's

00:17:22.120 nomination of XX to the Supreme Court of the United States, the Women's March released the following

00:17:26.920 statement. All right. It's not like X-mas, you know, Christmas, like that stands in. I don't think

00:17:33.420 that works for Brett Kavanaugh. It's just, they wrote, they probably wrote it a week ago. They

00:17:38.740 say, this is terrible. It really takes the wind out of their sails, really makes their argument

00:17:41.840 a little incredible. Democracy for America, another one of these left-wing groups, sends out this

00:17:46.560 message. SCOTUS, DFA will fight Kavanaugh, says she represents a generational assault on justice,

00:17:53.920 freedom, and core democratic values. Now, did you catch that? Did you catch what happened there?

00:17:58.620 They thought it was going to be Barrett. So they wrote, they just assumed they put the pronoun

00:18:03.280 she. I can't believe, by the way, Democracy for America, they didn't even ask Judge Kavanaugh his

00:18:07.900 preferred pronoun. Did they assume his gender? They have to ask, you have to ask your preferred

00:18:12.800 pronoun. Just totally weak hackery. But it wasn't just them. You know, it was everybody. It was all of

00:18:19.260 these activists at the Supreme Court. Shannon Breen for Fox was out there. She was going to do a show,

00:18:24.260 a live show, at the Supreme Court. They had to shut it down because she felt unsafe. She said,

00:18:28.800 I've never really felt unsafe reporting on the ground. This is insane. Way worse than the Gorsuch

00:18:33.880 nomination, which is funny because it seems like Gorsuch is a more rock-ribbed nominee. I'm not

00:18:39.100 entirely sure that's fair. It's really hard to rank judges on scales of conservatism or originalism

00:18:44.720 because there are just so many issues that come before them. But yeah, apparently the protests

00:18:49.280 against this guy, Kavanaugh, were much, much worse than against Gorsuch. Why is that? It's just all

00:18:54.600 fake, astroturfed election year nonsense. So let's get to what really matters. Because the

00:19:03.140 Democrat activists weighed in, that's fine. The Democrat PACs weighed in, that's fine. But the real

00:19:07.520 leaders of that party, the real spokesmen, are the celebrities. They're my neighbors here in sunny

00:19:12.440 Hollywood. And the things they tweeted were both, they were disingenuous, they were fill-in-the-blank,

00:19:18.800 and they were also just like very stupid, as is always the case in Hollywood. It's why my

00:19:24.000 Tumblr is especially full this morning. I know some of you in the center of the country and on the

00:19:27.880 East Coast, you don't get to enjoy quite as many salty tears as I do. Joss Whedon, the director,

00:19:33.320 tweets out, even considering this nomination will cement the first American dictatorship.

00:19:41.720 Kavanaugh. Get it? His name is Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh. So it will cement the first

00:19:48.620 American dictatorship. I don't think there's ever been an American dictator. If there had,

00:19:55.920 would it be Donald Trump, the guy who's lowered taxes, increased religious liberty,

00:20:01.080 decreased regulation? Would it be that guy? Or the one who remained president for the entire rest of

00:20:08.920 his life, four terms, interned Japanese Americans, just put a bunch of Americans into prison camps,

00:20:14.680 tried to stack the court, overturned the constitutional order, create blatantly anti-constitutional

00:20:20.260 government programs? Which one would it be? Would it be that guy, the great Democrat president,

00:20:25.020 Franklin Roosevelt? Or would it be Donald Trump, who despite all of the press releases and all of the

00:20:30.760 Democrat hullabaloo to the contrary, is not authoritarian at all? Has not shown any authoritarian

00:20:37.880 tendencies whatsoever? Great question. Joss Whedon.

00:20:40.900 Maybe his historical knowledge only goes back to like 98. It's like, yeah, but you got to go back

00:20:47.900 a little further, man. So Ron Perlman, another one. He was in Hellboy. Hellboy. Ron Perlman tweets out,

00:20:53.760 okay, ladies and gentlemen, who care for and respect ladies, it is official. The move back to medieval

00:21:00.140 values, Sharia law even, where old bitter men get to tell women what is best for their bodies,

00:21:06.700 lives, and well-being is as done a deal as this is, unless we say, no, no. Medieval values.

00:21:17.200 I actually love medieval values. I don't know that he totally understands medieval values,

00:21:21.040 scholasticism, all that great height for the Catholic Church. But I do love this. I've noticed

00:21:26.480 that the left does this sometimes. When they're attacking, they tell us Islam is the religion of

00:21:31.100 peace. Islam is wonderful. They call people who question some aspects of Islamic doctrine or

00:21:36.500 history, they call us Islamophobic. They say Islam is wonderful, religion of peace. And then the minute

00:21:41.820 they want to insult Christianity, they compare it to Islam. Christianity is so bad, it's like Sharia

00:21:48.980 law. But yes, you were just defending Sharia law. Weren't you just saying, no, yeah, that was,

00:21:53.320 but yesterday Sharia law was good, but now it's bad. So I do, it is a really fun little place they put

00:21:57.880 themselves in because the best way to attack Christianity is to admit that Islam might not

00:22:02.240 be a perfect religion of peace. So great job. Thanks for that, hell boy. Next one up from Rob

00:22:08.360 Reiner from Meathead himself. Meathead tweets out, it's official. Trump, who is under investigation

00:22:13.320 for obstruction of justice and conspiring with an enemy to destroy democracy. By the way,

00:22:18.340 random capitalization throughout all of that. They always knock Trump for randomly capitalizing

00:22:22.320 things. He does the exact same thing. He goes on, has selected the judges who could rule on whether

00:22:27.780 he can be forced to testify, be indicted, or pardon himself. Autocracy, here we come. Vote.

00:22:36.660 So that isn't true. The indictment thing. We'll get to that. Actually, John Cryer puts this in stark

00:22:42.480 light. So it was just, I mean, that was basically what Rob Reiner said is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

00:22:46.460 blah, blah, blah. Because what he was saying, just reference things that aren't true. And that is the

00:22:51.400 question that they seem to have settled on, even though it was answered hundreds of years ago. Can a

00:22:55.860 president, sitting president, be indicted? John Cryer, who is on that CBS show, the one with Charlie Sheen's

00:23:02.900 sidekick, John Cryer, tweets out, quote, the first question every Democratic senator should ask Kavanaugh,

00:23:09.200 will you recuse yourself from any case involving whether the president can be subject to criminal

00:23:15.320 investigation, required to testify, or indicted? Why would he recuse himself?

00:23:21.300 What has he, why would that happen? What Cryer, I think, is suggesting is because

00:23:28.220 Judge Kavanaugh has an opinion on that, has written about that issue, that he should recuse himself.

00:23:35.120 Just follow the logic of that for a second. If judges who have written opinions about public

00:23:41.140 matters recuse themselves when those matters came up to higher courts, there wouldn't be any judges

00:23:46.120 anymore because that's their job. That's what they do. They write opinions on public matters.

00:23:50.200 Having an opinion on a public matter is not grounds for recusing yourself. You recuse yourself if

00:23:56.000 there's some conflict of interest or something. If Judge Kavanaugh were Donald Trump's son,

00:24:01.420 perhaps he shouldn't recuse himself because he had an opinion about it. That's the premise of the

00:24:06.520 judiciary. But no one's ever blamed network sitcom actors for being too precise in their historical

00:24:14.160 knowledge. The other question here is that Rob Reiner brings up, John Cryer brings up, all these guys are

00:24:19.140 bringing up. Can the president be indicted? The Democrats are focusing in on this line of attack.

00:24:23.820 They're going to say, Kavanaugh is, he's really there to help Trump not be indicted for whatever.

00:24:30.680 Like, the president can't be indicted. The sitting president of the United States can't be indicted.

00:24:36.180 This is not a debated legal question. This is not a really difficult one to figure out. If you have

00:24:40.980 Google, you'll figure it out. Alexander Hamilton settled the question pretty clearly in Federalist 69.

00:24:46.000 The president of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and upon conviction of

00:24:51.920 treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, removed from office, and would

00:24:56.400 afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.

00:25:02.580 So, Donald Trump could be indicted for something, but President Trump could not. In order to indict the

00:25:10.020 president, what you have to first do is impeach him, try him, find him guilty, convict him,

00:25:15.300 remove him from office, and then you can deal with indicting him or whatever you want to do.

00:25:20.600 That is, there, I don't, I guess they've never read the Federalist. That, of course, obviously,

00:25:25.280 obviously Democrats have never read the Federalist papers. If they had, they'd be Republicans.

00:25:28.540 But they, they don't understand that this is a, this is a simple matter. Uh, the, the question of,

00:25:35.620 uh, of these celebrities is, I, look, celebrities are always dummies. They always say stupid things.

00:25:41.180 The mainstream media are really to blame here because they, they should know better.

00:25:46.060 They are so focused on this line of attack, this secret backroom deal, and it's a machination,

00:25:53.240 and Trump colluded with the Federalist Society, or whatever they, you know, they probably think the

00:25:58.340 Federalist Society is like an arm of the KGB in Moscow or something. Uh, Leanne Caldwell at MSNBC

00:26:04.420 reported that, uh, there was a secret backroom deal for months of negotiations that Justice

00:26:11.380 Kennedy would name his successor, and only then would he retire, and this, and none of that makes

00:26:17.700 any sense. Uh, but what was, was really interesting about that report from NBC is that it's based on

00:26:25.020 nothing. They, even NBC had to sort of walk it back. But the, the way they do it, of course,

00:26:30.480 is they say some outrageous, ridiculous, stupid thing without any sourcing. And then everyone

00:26:35.720 tweets it, and that spreads everywhere, and it's out in the ether. And then a little later on,

00:26:39.820 they say, oh, but maybe we weren't right. But nobody tweets that one. Nobody tweets the correction.

00:26:43.600 Nobody tweets the retraction. So what Leanne Caldwell at NBC reported is there were these

00:26:48.220 assurances, these backroom deals, was all this haggling with Justice Kennedy, which of course makes

00:26:52.860 no sense if you look at the incentives for any of that to happen. But she based that on one source

00:26:58.540 that wasn't, didn't hear firsthand any of that happening, he heard it as a secondhand rumor from

00:27:05.240 someone else who also isn't named. So their source, not corroborated by anybody, is just like gossip in

00:27:12.080 the children's cafeteria. That's NBC. That's what they've reduced themselves to. But, but that's,

00:27:18.140 they're just hacks at this point, right? They're not actually doing investigative journalism. They're

00:27:22.940 just, they've just become hacks. I wish they knew something here because it would make it sort of

00:27:30.880 more interesting to grab hold of and argue with them. But it is really entertaining that they don't

00:27:35.320 know anything. At this point, I actually think President Trump could have nominated Merrick Garland

00:27:39.300 and they would find a way to attack him. They would say, well, it was a backroom deal with Garland.

00:27:44.500 Garland's now a Republican or something. It doesn't make any sense. All of the lefties who know nothing

00:27:49.880 are extremely mad. There is one lefty, whom I actually know, who knows something because he's

00:27:55.940 a leading expert on constitutional law. And that is Yale Professor Akhil Amar. And he wrote a big piece

00:28:02.300 in the New York Times today defending Judge Kavanaugh. And Professor Amar is a lefty. There

00:28:08.960 is no doubt about it. He was a professor while I was in college. He was always very nice whenever I

00:28:13.920 would speak to him, very cordial. I sat in on a number of his lectures. Very, very sharp guy,

00:28:18.680 but decidedly a left winger. And, you know, I think even when he was in college, he was the head

00:28:23.120 of the liberal party of the debating society. He wrote this piece, a vocal defense of Judge

00:28:29.040 Kavanaugh. And it's really interesting because I think we, the conservatives should hone in on that

00:28:33.560 and use that to separate the lefty hacks from vaguely serious lefties. He writes in the New York

00:28:41.040 Times, the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice is President

00:28:46.240 Trump's finest hour, his classiest move. I know, I'm as worried as you are at this point reading

00:28:51.100 this from from a former lefty professor. But nevertheless, he's a sharp guy. Listen to his

00:28:55.960 logic. He says, last week, the president promised to select someone with impeccable credentials,

00:29:01.040 great intellect, unbiased judgment, and deep reverence for the laws and constitution of the

00:29:05.480 United States. In picking Judge Kavanaugh, he's done just that. In 2016, I strongly supported Hillary

00:29:10.480 Clinton for president, as well as President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court Judge Merrick Garland.

00:29:14.580 But today, with the exception of the current justices and Judge Garland, it's hard to name

00:29:19.240 anyone with judicial credentials as strong as those of Judge Kavanaugh. He goes on,

00:29:24.240 Democrats could try to sour the hearings by attacking Judge Kavanaugh and looking to complicate

00:29:28.960 the proceedings whenever possible. This would be a mistake. Judge Kavanaugh, again, is a superb nominee.

00:29:36.040 Really strong words from a leading light of a leading left-wing legal scholar and a really

00:29:42.680 prominent figure. There was some talk of him possibly being nominated to the court by President

00:29:46.660 Obama. This is a big guy and a big deal. And he's right. He's really right. If there is a

00:29:52.300 political strategy here, which of course there is to the nomination of Kavanaugh, it's that it will

00:29:57.780 make Democrats look foolish. You know, the political idea behind nominating Justice Barrett is it would

00:30:05.820 become this religious fight. You'd have Democrats ripping apart religion on national television and it

00:30:11.480 wouldn't play well in Peoria and they'd lose the midterms. This one is good too, though, because

00:30:15.840 he's this basically unimpeachable candidate. He's not the furthest, most hardcore originalist or

00:30:23.540 conservative on the court among the names that were floated. And so it will just make them look foolish

00:30:29.540 when he goes up there during the confirmation process. Kavanaugh also is, by all accounts, so smart

00:30:35.280 and will sail through because I think his IQ is about 17 standard deviations higher than the

00:30:40.360 congressional IQ on average. But we should take a look on that because Professor Amar, he concludes

00:30:47.340 this piece. He says, well, we should, the Democrats should push for a compromise. Vote yes. Senate

00:30:54.200 Democrats should vote yes on Kavanaugh or clearly state two better nominees who even possibly could have

00:31:00.440 been nominated by this administration, by a Republican administration. Vote yes or state two

00:31:05.040 better people. And of course, no Senate Democrat could do that. They probably couldn't name three

00:31:08.900 federal judges, period. And in exchange for that, Kavanaugh would answer all of the questions fairly.

00:31:14.740 In that case, the reasoning here is that Judge Kavanaugh could be nominated or confirmed by 90 plus votes

00:31:21.360 instead of the 50 or 51 votes that he's going to get to be confirmed. That would be nice. It would be

00:31:27.940 good in the United States to have some sense that not everything is just some bitter partisan battle

00:31:32.660 and some hacked battle, you know, that there actually is some consensus over what the role of

00:31:37.020 government is, what the role of the executive is, how the Senate can play a role in that to advise and

00:31:42.380 consent from these justices. It would be smart for Democrats to do that. So you know what that means.

00:31:47.540 They're not going to do it. They're certainly not going to do it. And I think Professor Amar knows

00:31:51.100 they're not going to do it. He's pleading with them in the New York Times, but it just isn't going to

00:31:55.180 happen because this is a bitter, bitter fight. And it also will back some Democrats into a corner in

00:32:00.700 these red states, states that President Trump won by a landslide. It's really going to put them in a

00:32:06.660 tough spot. It's going to either rip them off their base or rip them off of the broader electorate.

00:32:11.960 New polling supports this. This is the good news. Do I have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube?

00:32:15.980 I do. Oh, let's, oh, I was just going to, we're going to get into like the central problem of the

00:32:22.140 Democrat party and why this still spells really good news for Republicans in November. But I'm

00:32:28.240 sorry. If you're on Facebook or YouTube, go to dailywire.com right now. Why? Forget it. You know,

00:32:33.560 you get the shows, you can ask questions in the mailbag, whatever. We've got the conversation coming

00:32:36.900 up, by the way, next one with the Supreme Lord of the multiverse, Andrew Klavan. Just forget all of

00:32:41.060 that today. Forget all of it. Forget getting the Ben Shapiro's wife is a doctor t-shirt on Amazon

00:32:46.020 right now. Forget, forget anything in the Daily Wire orbit other than this. You're going to need

00:32:51.900 this to get through the confirmation hearings. You won't survive. You're going to get borked. You're

00:32:56.380 going to get like, like stick a bork in him. You're done. You're going to be dead if you don't have your

00:33:00.160 leftist years tumbler because you will drown. Go to dailywire.com right now. We'll be right back.

00:33:11.060 So what does this mean for the midterms? It looks like we're going to be able to get

00:33:19.760 Judge Kavanaugh through the confirmation process before the midterm elections. That would be a

00:33:24.980 very good thing. It would make it much easier to do that. Will the GOP hold the Senate? Will the

00:33:28.520 GOP lose the Senate? I don't know. Historically speaking, again, you know, the party that's in

00:33:33.780 power, the party that holds the White House, is at a great disadvantage in Congress. A new major

00:33:39.280 batch of polls from Axios shows that Republicans are likely to hold the Senate 52 to 48. So

00:33:44.920 actually we would gain, gain momentum in the Senate. Don't, I'm, I'm loath to report that

00:33:51.040 because I don't want anybody getting comfortable. This is going to be a tight election and history

00:33:54.020 is against us, but we, we could hold that. That would be very good news because then we

00:33:57.600 could push another justice at some point. Obviously no one, no one wishes ill of any of the left-wing

00:34:03.120 justices, but you know, if Father Time retires them or they choose to retire sometime during

00:34:09.160 the Trump administration, we could push a conservative and an originalist and a textual

00:34:14.160 judge through. The polling looks good for Republicans, but not great. There is a specific

00:34:20.420 polling on this issue. The Terrence Group has a poll out that shows the majority of voters in

00:34:27.400 battleground states want the nominee confirmed. They want President Trump's nominee confirmed by

00:34:33.140 fair majorities. In Florida, it's 56 percent. Indiana, I think it's also 56 percent.

00:34:38.920 Missouri, 57 percent. North Dakota, 68 percent. West Virginia, 59 percent. They want this to go

00:34:45.260 through. Now what does that mean for guys like Joe Manchin or Claire McCaskill, people who are

00:34:50.660 Democrats, nominal Democrats at least, in these battleground states? Are they going to have to

00:34:55.180 vote for the nominee? It's going to put them in a real pickle and probably that's the case. Also

00:34:59.500 interesting finding on this group of, this poll from Terrence Group is that the majority of people

00:35:05.280 in these battleground states want abortion to be decided by the legislature, not by an activist

00:35:11.480 court writing laws. This is a big deal because we've been talking about Roe v. Wade a lot this

00:35:17.400 week. This is a huge deal. This is a shift in public opinion, not just on the question of abortion,

00:35:21.920 which has moved in the pro-life direction since the Roe v. Wade decision. Now the country's split

00:35:26.080 50-50 and when you really drill down, I think it's probably more pro-life.

00:35:30.880 But this is a big split on federalism. This is a big split on separation of powers, on the different

00:35:36.380 roles of government. Because Roe v. Wade, it isn't just about abortion. It's about what the court gets

00:35:40.280 to do. Does the court get to write laws? Does the legislature have a say? Do the people have a say?

00:35:44.720 Do the states have a say in the laws that govern them? Or do the courts, just nine black-robed kings

00:35:51.160 and dictators, do they get to say what goes on? This small oligarchy. Well, it seems the public

00:35:56.340 opinion is shifting in favor of separation of powers, of the legislature actually doing

00:36:01.000 what it's supposed to do. That's a really great move. Now with all of these numbers going against

00:36:06.100 them, all of this tide turning against them, the deluge of leftist tears flowing down upon us,

00:36:11.560 what are the Democrats doing? What do you think they're going to do? Think they're maybe going to

00:36:16.100 moderate a little? Do you think maybe they're going to try to get on board, come up with some new? No,

00:36:20.740 they're going to nominate Hillary. They're going to nominate Hillary Clinton. She's running again.

00:36:25.440 She's at least running now. Who knows if she'll ever officially declare that she's running. She

00:36:29.360 might peter out eventually. But she is behaving as though she is running for president. She's going

00:36:34.000 to major events. She went to an event for the American Federation of Teachers, gave speeches with

00:36:38.840 Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. There's big 2020 contenders, Democrat contenders for president.

00:36:44.680 Their combined age is 7,000 or something, 750,000. Hillary also has this super PAC now that she's

00:36:54.300 running onward together. This is being run by Brian Fallon, her former campaign press secretary.

00:37:00.200 And why is she spending all this money? Why is she raising money? Why is she spending money? Because

00:37:03.860 she's behaving as though she's running for president. What are the other options? The other options are

00:37:08.220 Pocahontas and Bernie Sanders, crazy old Bernie. This goes back to a strategy from Democrats in 2006

00:37:16.880 when Howard Dean took over that party. And he said, I'm from the Democrat wing of the Democrat party,

00:37:20.980 and we're going to run left. We're going to move far left. And what the Democrats did is they doubled

00:37:24.940 down on their most radical base. They doubled down on these latte-sipping lefties who have disdain

00:37:32.820 for their fellow countrymen. And it sort of worked for them in the short term. But it's moved them

00:37:37.780 away from other key aspects of their coalition, specifically on base issues. On the question of

00:37:43.240 do you believe in God? These are like very essential bedrock questions of politics. Politics is downstream

00:37:48.640 of culture. Culture is downstream of the cult, of what we worship. On that base issue, the vast majority

00:37:54.760 of white Democrats are practical atheists. They don't believe in a God that resembles the God of the

00:38:00.300 Bible. The vast majority. And yet the vast majority of Hispanic Democrats and black Democrats do believe

00:38:05.580 in God. This creates a big issue. On fundamental questions, first principles questions like that,

00:38:12.700 the Hispanic and black voters, what the Democrats would call the coalition of the ascendant, this kind

00:38:16.800 of intersectional coalition of various demographic groups who might not share ideology, but they should

00:38:21.420 share some combined grievance or something, they more closely resemble Republicans. And you're seeing a

00:38:26.940 shift away from the Democratic Party. The great walk away. This was trending on Twitter the other

00:38:31.280 day. This is great news for Republicans. Really, really stupid for Democrats. And that central problem

00:38:38.100 that they have, that they've had now for at least 12 years, but probably many, many more decades than

00:38:45.320 that, is the Democrats have no imagination. That's their problem. They have no imagination. 2020, they just

00:38:51.380 get clobbered by President Covfefe. You know, they get clobbered by this guy who was a reality TV star.

00:38:57.040 They thought he was gonna be the easiest candidate to beat ever. And what do they do? They say, maybe we'll

00:39:00.360 nominate Hillary again. Or that other, or that lady who looks exactly like Hillary, but says that she's an

00:39:04.960 Indian. Or that guy who kind of looks like Hillary too, you know, but has that voice from Seinfeld.

00:39:11.040 Maybe, or curb your enthusiasm. Maybe that's what we should do. These decrepit old people, they don't have

00:39:16.380 any imagination. They don't have any new idea. What is their new idea? What is the big move that

00:39:21.120 Alexandria Cortez is pushing, the Democrat nominee for Congress in Queens, that Bernie Sanders is

00:39:27.680 pushing, that Liz Warren is pushing, that Kirsten Gillibrand is pushing? They're pushing socialism.

00:39:32.120 Is there anything more old and decrepit and unimaginative than socialism? Socialism in its

00:39:37.120 modern form has been around since the 1820s. That's their new idea? Are you kidding me? That's

00:39:42.460 pathetic. That is pathetic. But they're a party of decrepit old people and decrepit old ideas.

00:39:47.200 And they're doubling down on it. It's really good. You see it in the signs. At the protests,

00:39:52.200 those blank signs, that shows you the Democrat party. They have no imagination. It's just blank.

00:39:56.760 It's just fill in the blank. We must oppose the extremist, racist, sexist, violent, misogynist

00:40:03.600 judge blank. It's like a template. They didn't even get like, I don't know, move a couple words around

00:40:10.100 or something. They say, these Republicans, you're all racists and sexists. Cabot Phillips from Campus

00:40:15.560 Reform, he went out before the nominee was picked, and he just asked these NYU students on the street,

00:40:21.620 he said, hey, what do you think of Trump's new nominee, who had not yet been picked? And they said,

00:40:25.560 oh, yeah, very racist, very dangerous, very sexist. Just making it up, just because that's just,

00:40:30.980 they're like robots. They're automatons that are just programmed to repeat these tired old lines.

00:40:35.680 And it's part of that ideology. It's because when you're in that very ideological mindset,

00:40:43.120 you just kind of get broken down a little bit. You go on autopilot. You don't see things around you.

00:40:48.100 Ideologues don't see the world. They just see these narrow takes on the world. They don't have,

00:40:53.840 they're not really perceiving things in real time. And it's good news for us because the Trump era

00:40:59.700 is anti-ideological, isn't it? I mean, he was not a checklist conservative candidate. He didn't check

00:41:05.700 most of the boxes. But he's delivered some of the best conservative public policy,

00:41:11.360 judicial nominations. We're just in like the age of covfefe. This is really good. By the way,

00:41:16.340 I'm doing this tour with YAF. It's coming up this fall, Young America's Foundation. We're going to

00:41:20.520 be doing all of this, the covfefe on campus tour, and we'll be taking on a lot of issues. I will define

00:41:26.100 what covfefe is. People seem not to understand what covfefe is. I'll give you the real definition.

00:41:29.800 You'll finally learn. But you see it in the Trump era, in the age of covfefe, that this thinking

00:41:35.040 outside the box, to borrow a cliche, this cracking old checklists and cracking old ideologies actually

00:41:41.460 allows you to affect your political vision much more easily. And the Democrats are falling into

00:41:45.720 that trap. They have nothing new about them, nothing imaginative, nothing fresh, nothing alive about

00:41:51.600 them. I hope that Republicans are able to maintain this. And one way we're going to be able to

00:41:56.000 do it is rallying around this judge, even if he's not our favorite pick. Really, it's only because

00:42:01.460 of the age of covfefe that we even knew there were other picks available. We're really even thinking

00:42:06.280 about them because of this reality TV show, because of this right-wing exuberance. And we've got to

00:42:11.080 rally around it for no other reason. One, because it's important to protect our liberty. Another one,

00:42:15.700 because it's important to win more elections and keep the momentum going in this liberty movement.

00:42:21.040 one, the other one is just these tears, man. You just need it. You just, if you're, if you're

00:42:26.060 missing out on this, you're missing out on the single, singular political delight of our lifetimes.

00:42:33.320 Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't, don't let, you know, be talking to your grandkid in 50 years

00:42:38.760 and say, grandpa, what were you doing during the age of covfefe? Were you, oh, I was, I was thirsty.

00:42:45.920 I was parched. I was parched. What can I say? I didn't, it didn't occur to me. I'm sorry now.

00:42:50.160 It was a different time. We didn't know. Don't do that. Don't say that. You want to be able to look

00:42:54.300 your grand grandkids square in the eye and say, your great granddaddy was guzzling leftist tears.

00:42:59.100 I was 80% saline. I turned into a pillar of salt, like Lot's wife. That's our, that's our show for

00:43:06.040 today. Come back tomorrow, get your mailbag questions in. There's a lot more to talk about,

00:43:10.460 but I really wanted to go in a little bit on what this judge means today. Sip them up, enjoy them.

00:43:14.740 We're going to have a, we're going to have a nice couple, couple salty cocktails later on today,

00:43:18.080 and I will see you tomorrow. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:43:21.020 This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:43:51.020 Michael Knowles. This is Michael Knowles Show. They're segundo matchbooks.

00:43:54.080 Mr9x5 Mmm.

00:43:56.000 Speaker 1, 3, 2, 3, 3, 4 for the weekend.

00:43:59.980 I'm Michael Knowles. This is Michael Knowles Show.

00:44:04.200 Broubles meantime.

00:44:09.500 Broubles meantime.

Ep. 181 - BREAKING： Leftists Really Mad About _________ !

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