The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 188 - Common Sense Gunn Control

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00:00:37.740 Should Hollywood director James Gunn have been fired for making pedophile jokes 10 years ago?

00:00:43.200 Samuel L. Jackson, William Shakespeare, and the Lord your God weigh in.

00:00:47.420 Then Alan Dershowitz joins to discuss whether Democrats will or even can impeach President Trump.

00:00:53.360 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:56.980 Oh, there's a lot to get to today.

00:01:05.060 We have got further evidence that Donald Trump is the vengeance of the Lord your God, but we will explain how.

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00:03:04.600 Okay, back to pedophiles. 0.98

00:03:05.940 Back to the pedophiles in Hollywood. 0.88

00:03:07.420 So you saw James Gunn, who's the director for Guardians of the Galaxy.

00:03:11.620 He was about to inherit the whole Marvel universe.

00:03:14.260 You know, he's a big up-and-comer in Hollywood, major player.

00:03:16.940 He just got killed, got fired from Disney because he made pedophile jokes 10 years ago.

00:03:21.960 And some people are saying maybe it's more than jokes. 0.93

00:03:23.940 Hollywood has a pedophile problem.

00:03:25.540 Is he part of that? 0.69

00:03:26.500 Others are saying this is just a witch hunt.

00:03:28.440 You know, he says negative things about Trump, and he's an anti-Trumper,

00:03:31.920 and he's basically getting what he deserves.

00:03:34.300 There was just a character assassination.

00:03:35.680 For reaction, though, because now this is hitting everybody.

00:03:39.960 Trevor Noah's getting hit for racial tweets that he sent out years and years ago.

00:03:45.360 There were all these, Michael Ian Black said some weird pedophile tweets.

00:03:50.400 Sarah Silverman made some weird pedophile tweets. 0.73

00:03:52.600 Patton Oswalt made some weird pedophile tweets. 0.68

00:03:54.600 All of this.

00:03:55.280 For reaction, we cut now to every single person in Hollywood.

00:03:58.380 We got to definitely write a song about how we do not diddle kids.

00:04:05.340 Do not diddle kids.

00:04:06.880 It's no good diddling kids.

00:04:08.960 There is no quicker way for people to think that you are diddling kids than by writing a song about it.

00:04:13.300 You got to write a song.

00:04:14.660 I wouldn't do it with anybody younger than my daughter.

00:04:17.660 Little kids got to be big.

00:04:20.120 Hold them away from my daughter.

00:04:22.380 Something like that.

00:04:23.220 I don't know if that's going to work.

00:04:26.060 I don't know if that's going to convince anybody.

00:04:28.580 So this is the question.

00:04:30.440 Should James Gunn have been fired for this?

00:04:33.080 Should these people who made jokes 10 years ago, should they be liable for those things now?

00:04:40.080 You know, it couldn't have happened to a better guy.

00:04:42.540 That's what I'll first say about it.

00:04:44.320 It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

00:04:45.800 James Gunn is the first one on the line to say, kill people, not literally, figuratively, kill their careers, make them lose their jobs, cancel their shows because I disagree with them politically.

00:04:57.140 James Gunn is the first guy to do that.

00:04:58.640 He's the first in line.

00:04:59.780 He said, here are a couple of tweets from him, not the pedophile tweets, but the anti-free speech ones.

00:05:04.280 He says, quote,

00:05:04.820 I wish some of these so-called defenders of liberty would start to understand what freedom of speech is and isn't.

00:05:10.720 Roseanne is allowed to say whatever she wants.

00:05:12.380 It doesn't mean ABC needs to continue funding her TV show if her words are considered abhorrent.

00:05:18.480 Okay, all right.

00:05:19.520 That's a fair argument, James.

00:05:21.180 But, you know, be careful when you throw stones.

00:05:23.360 Let's see what happens to you.

00:05:24.260 He also said about Laura Ingraham.

00:05:25.580 He said, I hope Hulu stops advertising on the Laura Ingraham show so I can watch it.

00:05:30.000 Online bullying and shaming of teenagers should not be supported by Hulu.

00:05:33.380 Let them know.

00:05:35.400 And he said the same thing about Laura Ingraham.

00:05:37.740 I'm really looking forward to season two of Handmaid's Tale, so I hope Hulu stops advertising on the Aunt Lydia show.

00:05:43.520 I mean on the Laura Ingraham show so I can watch it.

00:05:46.740 Online bullying and shaming of teenagers should not be supported by Hulu.

00:05:50.180 Let them know.

00:05:51.240 So James Gunn, this guy is saying, fire Laura Ingraham, fire Roseanne.

00:05:55.520 They should all lose their shows for, in Roseanne's case, a joke they made, 0.78

00:05:58.660 and in Laura Ingraham's case just because he disagrees with her politics.

00:06:01.480 And now it comes back to him.

00:06:02.980 Be careful about this.

00:06:04.580 This made me realize across a whole broad array of spectrum, not just Hollywood, but in foreign affairs, in politics, to the news media,

00:06:14.420 Donald Trump is the vengeance of the Lord.

00:06:17.460 Donald Trump is the vengeance of the Lord.

00:06:19.180 It made me think of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

00:06:22.040 Here's Samuel L. Jackson explaining Donald Trump.

00:06:24.220 The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.

00:06:37.400 Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.

00:06:51.580 And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.

00:07:02.820 And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. 0.95

00:07:10.320 That's it.

00:07:13.440 He's the vengeance of the Lord.

00:07:14.800 You know, it's funny because Samuel L. Jackson in that movie says, I'm quoting Ezekiel 25, 17, I think.

00:07:20.000 But he's actually misquoting it.

00:07:21.320 He's got a lot of other stuff in there that isn't in Ezekiel 25, 17.

00:07:25.280 This is the direct quote.

00:07:26.320 And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes.

00:07:31.560 And they shall know that I am the Lord when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

00:07:36.240 This is, I'm not saying Donald Trump is laying his vengeance.

00:07:39.500 I'm not saying he's, I'm saying he is the vengeance.

00:07:42.440 Donald Trump is the vengeance. 0.60

00:07:43.900 He is the double standard destroyer. 0.78

00:07:46.540 He wrecks the double standards in all of these people.

00:07:48.920 Because, you know, when I saw the James Gunn thing, my first reaction is, this is an ugly culture.

00:07:53.900 This is a really ugly culture where we're just gunning, pun very much intended,

00:08:00.000 gunning to destroy people for things they said 10 years ago.

00:08:03.720 What jokes did I make 10 years ago?

00:08:05.160 I don't know.

00:08:05.540 Did I make some off-color jokes?

00:08:07.300 Yeah, for sure.

00:08:09.120 I don't know which ones, but certainly I did.

00:08:11.780 Did you?

00:08:12.480 Yes, you did too.

00:08:13.360 So did every single person.

00:08:14.660 So should people lose their careers because of jokes?

00:08:16.920 Even bad jokes, even crass jokes, even unfunny jokes that they made 10 years ago?

00:08:20.940 No, I don't think so.

00:08:21.960 But if you're going to dish it, you better be able to take it.

00:08:26.820 And James Gunn, those are the rules he wants to play by.

00:08:29.600 We didn't make those rules.

00:08:30.720 We didn't make the rules that you lose your job because you make a bad joke or because you made a bad joke 10 years ago.

00:08:36.100 That was the left that did that.

00:08:37.500 That was James Gunn begging for it over and over and over.

00:08:40.580 And now he is being swept up in that.

00:08:42.660 What you deal out, you're going to have to receive back in return.

00:08:45.380 And President Trump is the one to give it to you.

00:08:47.580 He is the evidence of that.

00:08:48.760 Do we like the politics of personal destruction?

00:08:50.800 No, that phrase, by the way, coined because of the things that Hillary Clinton was saying about her husband's accusers. 0.98

00:08:56.340 She says they're trailer trash, they're this, they're that. 0.98

00:08:58.920 No, I don't like that at all. 0.98

00:09:00.300 But if they're going to dish it out, we're not going to unilaterally disarm.

00:09:03.440 No way.

00:09:04.020 That would be crazy.

00:09:04.900 We're not going to lie down and let them destroy the culture, destroy our politics, destroy our media.

00:09:11.540 No.

00:09:12.200 If they're going to claim a scalp, we're going to claim a scalp.

00:09:14.140 James Gunn, it's good that he lost his job.

00:09:16.060 Now, it's a good thing in this context because they're dishing it out.

00:09:19.860 But it would be much better if we lived in a culture where you could just tell jokes and you didn't have to deal with this.

00:09:26.160 If we lived in a culture where the president didn't have to go out and have personal invective against people or say these things or be, you know, loud mouthed or be aroused the public passion.

00:09:37.440 I don't think the president should be arousing the public passions, but if the left is going to do it, we have to do it too.

00:09:43.620 If Barack Obama is going to go out there and rub our nose in every cultural victory that he has, if he's going to rewrite the Constitution and then paint the White House in rainbow colors, then absolutely Donald Trump should go out there and rub their nose in it too.

00:09:58.640 Absolutely.

00:09:59.200 That is the vengeance that they have asked for.

00:10:01.700 That is their just dessert.

00:10:02.720 And I don't want to live in a world of just desserts, but if they're going to have it, we have to answer that.

00:10:08.140 And once they decide to back down a little bit on the left, then we can back down too.

00:10:11.480 You see this even in Iran.

00:10:14.140 You know, it's just Donald Trump is just the double standard smasher.

00:10:19.380 In Iran, the president of Iran, Rouhani, he said, you know, he's very upset that President Trump is ripping up that awful nuclear deal that Obama negotiated.

00:10:28.920 And so he said, you know, peace with Iran is a wonderful, terrific peace.

00:10:34.720 And war with Iran is war unlike anything you've ever seen. 0.70

00:10:37.920 And they're rattling.

00:10:38.720 Iran always rattles, right? 1.00

00:10:39.900 They say death to America. 0.91

00:10:41.120 They're always saber rattling, saying awful things about America.

00:10:44.560 And American presidents lie down and take it.

00:10:47.140 Not President Trump.

00:10:48.280 President Trump tweeted, in all caps,

00:10:50.060 Now, do I want the president to have to say these things?

00:11:09.060 Do I want the president to have to scream like this?

00:11:12.300 Digitally scream, which means all capitals?

00:11:14.480 No, I don't want that.

00:11:15.760 But I'm not going to live in a world where the United States just takes it, 0.74

00:11:20.260 where these tinpot dictators in Iran or wherever, these mullahs, start saying crazy things to us 0.95

00:11:25.920 and start threatening the United States. 0.94

00:11:28.000 And we say, oh, okay, well, that's fine.

00:11:29.500 No, no way, buddy.

00:11:30.840 You guys calm down and we'll calm down too.

00:11:33.640 But we can't have it that way.

00:11:35.780 Some people now, the experts are saying,

00:11:38.340 well, you know, Rouhani, he's really just,

00:11:40.780 he's just saying that to get the hardliners off his back.

00:11:45.140 He's really, oh, he's just, look, he's not really making a threat.

00:11:48.560 He's really just trying to get the pressure off of him from the hardliners.

00:11:51.360 Yeah, okay, well, maybe he should have tried to get the pressure off a different way then, huh?

00:11:54.820 Because that is not acceptable.

00:11:55.940 That is not acceptable behavior in the international community.

00:11:58.860 We're not going to take it anymore.

00:12:00.120 Very, very pleased to see that.

00:12:02.020 How about Carter Page?

00:12:04.120 So you've seen this Carter Page application.

00:12:08.300 The FISA application has been revealed in some way.

00:12:12.520 It's still heavily redacted.

00:12:13.960 But Judicial Watch got this FISA application to find out

00:12:18.140 if Barack Obama's administrative agencies were spying on the Trump campaign.

00:12:22.060 The answer is yes.

00:12:23.380 They had made statements in public.

00:12:24.960 They'd said, no, no, we weren't.

00:12:27.020 We didn't use the Democrat-funded Steele dossier to spy on Carter Page.

00:12:31.540 Now, we didn't use that really at all.

00:12:33.700 That was very minor.

00:12:35.120 We know from this application that's not true.

00:12:37.200 It was based on the Steele dossier.

00:12:38.660 The Steele dossier was ordered and funded by Democrats.

00:12:41.340 It was poison fruit from the very beginning.

00:12:43.800 And they lied.

00:12:45.000 They lied.

00:12:45.520 These people that we said, you can't criticize the FBI.

00:12:48.320 You can't criticize the CIA.

00:12:49.540 You can't criticize James Comey or Bob Mueller or John Brennan.

00:12:52.480 You're not allowed to criticize them.

00:12:53.940 No, we need to build up our intelligence agencies, our administrative agencies.

00:12:58.460 It's terrible to criticize them.

00:13:01.180 Sure, but they need to act in the right ways.

00:13:03.680 And if they're going to be corrupted, if they're going to act as partisan hacks that are spying

00:13:07.700 on a presidential campaign, then we're going to have to criticize them, aren't we?

00:13:10.900 We're going to have to attack them.

00:13:11.840 It would be better to live in a world where we didn't have to do that, but we're not going

00:13:14.920 to lie down.

00:13:16.380 We're not going to allow this double standard.

00:13:18.200 Not anymore.

00:13:18.900 Donald Trump is not going to allow that to happen.

00:13:21.600 You know, the FBI said on four separate occasions that the Steele dossier was not the source

00:13:27.000 for that Isikoff article, one of the articles that was also used to spy on Carter Page.

00:13:32.580 We now know that wasn't true.

00:13:34.840 How long is this Mueller investigation going on for?

00:13:37.060 What is the purpose of this?

00:13:38.160 What is the scope?

00:13:38.800 Why is Bob Mueller the most important man in Washington?

00:13:42.080 We can't tolerate these double standards anymore.

00:13:44.520 No way.

00:13:46.580 You know, actually, that whole bit from Ezekiel 25 is important.

00:13:51.360 The thing that Samuel L. Jackson misquoted.

00:13:53.900 It's important.

00:13:55.200 It tells you about our moment.

00:13:56.600 Ezekiel 25 reads, this is what the sovereign Lord says.

00:14:00.380 Because the Philistines acted in vengeance and took revenge with malice in their hearts 1.00

00:14:04.880 and with ancient hostility sought to destroy Judah, therefore, this is what the

00:14:08.720 sovereign Lord says.

00:14:10.160 I am about to stretch out my hand against the Philistines and I will wipe out the 1.00

00:14:13.320 Karathites and destroy those remaining along the coast. 1.00

00:14:16.100 I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. 1.00

00:14:19.320 Then they will know that I am the Lord when I take vengeance on them.

00:14:22.580 The reason he's taking vengeance on them, the reason there is a vengeance of the Lord,

00:14:27.280 is because the Philistines acted in vengeance and took revenge.

00:14:30.440 If they're going to do it, they're going to get back what they have.

00:14:33.140 But there is another option.

00:14:36.520 It would be much better to live in a world where we didn't have to do that, where you

00:14:39.520 didn't have your career ruined for saying a choke 10 years ago, where you didn't have

00:14:43.160 to have the president screaming, you know, apparently like a crazy person, but maybe that 0.94

00:14:47.100 crazy person is the last sane guy in the world. 0.67

00:14:49.800 It would be much better to live in a world of mercy and grace.

00:14:52.860 It reminds me of this line from the Merchant of Venice that Portia says to Shylock.

00:14:57.060 And I'm probably, now the, what was that, the Southern Poverty Law Centers, now they're

00:15:02.260 going to say, here's evidence that Knowles is a racist.

00:15:04.460 He quotes the Merchant of Venice.

00:15:06.000 So get ready for that one.

00:15:07.420 But it's a great line.

00:15:08.280 I remember this from acting school.

00:15:09.580 Portia to Shylock says, though justice be thy plea, consider this, that in the course

00:15:15.160 of justice, none of us should see salvation.

00:15:18.260 We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.

00:15:23.720 I've spoke thus much to mitigate the justice of thy plea.

00:15:27.060 Which, if thou follow, the strict court of Venice must needs give sentence against the

00:15:31.460 merchant there.

00:15:32.460 In the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.

00:15:35.440 So if the left is going to keep this up and say, we're getting him, we're going to get

00:15:38.820 Ingram, we're going to get this show canceled, we're going to get this guy fired, then we're

00:15:41.820 going to do it too.

00:15:42.880 And see what kind of society that is.

00:15:46.860 See if you like that.

00:15:47.660 See if you like a taste of your own medicine. 0.99

00:15:49.220 It's an ugly society. 0.98

00:15:50.580 It's an ugly, divisive society. 0.92

00:15:52.660 And I hope that the left gets the message here.

00:15:55.220 Probably they won't.

00:15:56.040 Speaking of this exact question, we've got to bring on Alan Dershowitz to see if the

00:16:00.840 left is going to learn their lesson, or if they're going to go ahead and try to impeach

00:16:03.760 Trump for absolutely no reason.

00:16:05.540 If they're going to try to create some totally bogus, just political story, anti-legal case

00:16:10.180 to impeach Trump.

00:16:11.560 Alan Dershowitz, you all know him.

00:16:13.540 He is the world-renowned scholar of con law and criminal law.

00:16:17.060 He is the author of The Case Against Impeaching Trump.

00:16:19.400 Alan Dershowitz, Professor Dershowitz, at age 28, became the youngest law professor in

00:16:24.420 the history of Harvard University.

00:16:26.560 He also famously got OJ off.

00:16:28.460 But now he's getting more flack for defending President Trump.

00:16:31.520 Defending the double murderer, that's fine.

00:16:33.580 Defending President Trump, absolutely unacceptable.

00:16:35.780 We talked to Professor Dershowitz.

00:16:37.000 There's no greater expert in the country on this question than him.

00:16:39.920 And we will analyze.

00:16:41.040 Will the Democrats learn their lessons, the vengeance of the Lord?

00:16:43.540 Or are they going to try to impeach President Trump?

00:16:46.520 Here is Professor Dershowitz.

00:16:48.400 Professor Dershowitz, thank you so much for being here.

00:16:51.240 Thank you.

00:16:52.080 So you've done the unthinkable thing in our current political climate, which is you are

00:16:58.180 defending President Trump against the ubiquitous calls on the political left for impeachment.

00:17:04.420 I notice there are many Democrats who are, you know, it'll be in their Twitter bio.

00:17:09.260 It will say hashtag impeach Trump.

00:17:10.660 And Maxine Waters is saying that impeachment is whatever Congress says it is, that there's

00:17:15.620 no law about that.

00:17:17.280 Other people have said that in the past.

00:17:19.100 In your book, you say totally otherwise.

00:17:21.640 What is the case against impeachment for those who have not yet read the book?

00:17:26.540 Well, first, you have to read the book because it lays it out.

00:17:29.700 Of course.

00:17:30.120 In readable detail, it's really a relatively simple argument.

00:17:34.720 That is, the framers of our Constitution considered making the criteria for impeachment, mal-administration

00:17:41.840 in office, or other European or British criteria for removing a president.

00:17:46.500 They rejected it.

00:17:47.680 And they said in order to remove a president, particularly, you need to have evidence of

00:17:53.100 treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

00:17:57.220 Those are very specific.

00:17:58.520 They all require crimes.

00:17:59.520 You need to have a trial in the Senate that has to be a conviction, and a conviction must

00:18:04.800 be based on a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

00:18:07.040 If any of those criteria fail, you cannot remove a president.

00:18:11.560 And just like you can't change the two-thirds requirement, you also can't change the requirement

00:18:16.460 of a conviction for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

00:18:20.640 You can't just make it up, even if you don't like the president.

00:18:23.340 I made the same argument, by the way, when Bill Clinton was being impeached.

00:18:28.060 I've made the same argument when Richard Nixon was being impeached.

00:18:31.880 I'll make the same argument when Bernie Sanders gets elected president and he gets impeached.

00:18:37.120 In fact, you know, I'm so determined to make that point that I have the publisher come up

00:18:42.780 with a mock cover for my book, and it's called The Case Against Impeaching Hillary Clinton,

00:18:48.980 because that's the book I would have written had Hillary Clinton been elected president.

00:18:54.500 It would have been exactly the same book, just with the title.

00:18:57.660 And inside, I would have been talking about how you can't prosecute her for obstruction

00:19:02.160 of justice for the emails and that there was no crime.

00:19:05.740 Exactly the same argument.

00:19:07.000 But they'd be building statues to me on Martha's Vineyard and other liberal enclaves if I were

00:19:12.980 making this case for Hillary Clinton.

00:19:14.360 But making the identical case, word for word case, for a president I didn't vote for, I

00:19:20.780 opposed, I campaigned against, has caused me to literally lose friends and people just

00:19:28.460 won't engage.

00:19:29.500 They won't even get involved in a conversation.

00:19:31.800 They do not want to hear the other argument.

00:19:34.300 They remind me of college kids and college professors who want safe spaces, trigger warnings.

00:19:39.840 Please don't tell me anything I don't want to hear.

00:19:42.380 I don't want you to upset me.

00:19:43.880 That's the level of discourse we've gotten to in America today.

00:19:47.560 It is really quite sad when you see these members of Congress or even senators saying

00:19:51.480 impeach, impeach. 0.97

00:19:52.740 They think it's just a political matter and they say it pretty explicitly.

00:19:57.760 Maxine Waters said that impeachment is whatever I say it is.

00:20:01.320 And I think people are losing sight that there is a crime component here.

00:20:06.300 They can't just do it.

00:20:07.180 You point out in the book that, and the Constitution points this out too, that when the president is

00:20:12.560 being tried, the chief justice of the Supreme Court has a role.

00:20:16.200 He's presiding over that.

00:20:17.800 I mean, what does that say about the role of crime, the role of the judiciary here and reigning

00:20:24.700 in Congress from just doing whatever it wants and throwing out a president that it doesn't

00:20:28.660 like?

00:20:28.980 Well, Hamilton explained that in the Federalist Papers.

00:20:32.340 He said there were some who wanted to have the Supreme Court preside over the trial of a president.

00:20:37.940 And the compromise, he used that term compromise, was to have the chief justice preside.

00:20:42.800 Now, the chief justice doesn't preside just because he looks pretty in robes or to lend dignity to the

00:20:47.980 proceeding.

00:20:48.540 He presides because he is the chief judicial officer of the United States and he has a role to play.

00:20:55.000 And if I were the president's lawyer and he were impeached, and I am not, but if I were,

00:21:00.780 the first motion I would make, if he were impeached for something that wasn't a constitutionally

00:21:04.800 specified crime, I'd make a motion to the chief justice to dismiss the impeachment.

00:21:09.080 The same way, he'd make a motion to dismiss an indictment in front of a judge before there

00:21:13.620 could be a trial.

00:21:15.020 So this is a legal proceeding.

00:21:16.920 There is a political element.

00:21:18.480 Even if the president commits impeachable offenses, Congress doesn't have to remove him.

00:21:23.400 If political considerations lead to less than two thirds of the vote to remove him, he stays

00:21:29.360 in office, but he has to be impeached only and removed only on the basis of these specified

00:21:35.820 crimes.

00:21:36.340 So it's a necessary but not sufficient condition.

00:21:39.760 Politics only comes into play once there's evidence, enough evidence to convince two thirds

00:21:45.360 of the Senate that he has committed an impeachable crime.

00:21:48.840 Right, and it's interesting because you're bringing out all of the legal aspect, the constitutional

00:21:54.720 and the legal aspects, and all people are talking about is the political aspect of this.

00:21:59.600 So I think you've pointed it out before.

00:22:01.540 You're getting much more flack for defending the president against impeachment than you got

00:22:05.920 for defending O.J. Simpson in his murder trial.

00:22:08.680 People are really, really fired up about this.

00:22:11.360 And you bring up some interesting questions in this book, which is that, for instance,

00:22:16.380 a removal from office is not enforced, is not self-enforcing.

00:22:20.440 Someone has to remove him.

00:22:22.100 So what happens, you know, what happens if the president says, I don't want to be removed

00:22:26.180 from office?

00:22:27.320 Yeah, it's so interesting.

00:22:29.960 Impeachment has been on our books for 225 years.

00:22:32.660 I know of no academic who has ever raised this question before, none.

00:22:36.940 Let's assume the Senate were to remove, order him removed by a two-thirds vote for mal-administration

00:22:44.020 in office.

00:22:45.000 There are three branches of government.

00:22:47.040 Each can interpret the Constitution as they believe is justified.

00:22:51.200 If the Senate interprets the Constitution as saying we can remove a president for a non-crime

00:22:55.840 and the president says, no, that's not my interpretation, my legal counsel, my advisors all tell me

00:23:02.020 you need a crime, the president says, this is an unconstitutional act of removal.

00:23:08.000 I'm not going anywhere.

00:23:09.740 At that point, what is the Congress going to do?

00:23:12.700 Pull out the marshals?

00:23:13.940 Right.

00:23:14.300 Pull out the army?

00:23:16.060 No, bring it to the United States Supreme Court.

00:23:18.820 When we have a conflict between constitutional interpretation by the president and by the Congress,

00:23:23.800 as we did in Marlboro v. Madison, the case goes to the United States Supreme Court.

00:23:28.740 Two justices have already opined that they very well might have jurisdiction to consider

00:23:34.140 a case if Congress acts beyond its authority.

00:23:37.460 But again, I don't know of a single academic who has said that the Supreme Court has a role

00:23:42.500 to play.

00:23:43.020 So I'm out there all along, but I'm very comfortable out there because I think I'm right.

00:23:48.360 If you disagree with me, read the book, write your own book, write an article, write a book

00:23:53.540 review, argue with me, defeat me in the court of public opinion.

00:23:56.300 But don't refuse to engage with me, even if I'm wrong.

00:23:59.920 And it's possible I'm wrong.

00:24:01.900 I've laid out an important constitutional argument that nobody laid out before.

00:24:06.160 And that argument has to be taken into account, especially if we try to remove a duly elected

00:24:11.420 president of the United States.

00:24:13.040 Of course, because you might win in the short term, but you'll certainly that creates awful

00:24:17.940 precedent in the long run.

00:24:19.780 And it's so funny that people on the left are disparaging you for this as though you've

00:24:25.720 shifted sides.

00:24:27.400 All of a sudden, Alan Dershowitz is some conservative Republican hack or something.

00:24:32.400 But you're the one who has remained consistent here.

00:24:35.340 It is partisans, I suppose, on both sides who keep shifting their arguments.

00:24:40.720 But I wonder in this climate, especially you see it in particular on campuses, but you see

00:24:45.300 it in political discourse, too.

00:24:46.840 People seem to have very little respect for reason, for civil arguments, for engaging with

00:24:52.660 the other side, very little interest in referencing the law or the Constitution.

00:24:57.740 Does that spell a sort of demise or doom for our constitutional Republican, for our political

00:25:05.060 culture?

00:25:05.460 Or is this just more of the same partisan arguments that we see again and again over the years?

00:25:10.520 Look, we've had this for decades.

00:25:13.220 In my own lifetime, we saw a liberal president of the United States detain 110,000 Japanese

00:25:19.180 Americans in detention camps.

00:25:21.760 And who supported that?

00:25:23.280 All the liberal justices of the Supreme Court, Douglas and Black and others.

00:25:28.640 The dissenters were more conservative.

00:25:30.800 We saw it during the McCarthy period.

00:25:32.220 Oh, this time it's different.

00:25:33.560 Communism is such a great threat.

00:25:34.860 We have to really deny civil liberties.

00:25:37.760 Or the Vietnam War.

00:25:38.940 Let's draft political dissenters to stop them from dissenting.

00:25:42.960 Or after 9-11.

00:25:44.360 In every generation, I've seen efforts to limit civil liberties.

00:25:49.220 And what's different about this one is with Trump, you have to pick sides.

00:25:53.620 Nobody's in the middle.

00:25:54.760 You either must hate him and think he is the worst president in the history of the country,

00:25:58.420 or you must love him and think he's the best.

00:26:00.680 And there's almost no room for nuance.

00:26:03.500 And even if you hate him and think he's the worst, you have to defend his civil liberties

00:26:08.340 because his civil liberties are our civil liberties.

00:26:10.260 If you can deny a president constitutional rights, you can deny anybody constitutional rights.

00:26:16.060 And all the arguments I'm making are civil libertarian and liberal arguments.

00:26:20.640 And again, if Hillary Clinton were the one who was being impeached or prosecuted, 0.99

00:26:24.860 all the liberals would be making the same exact arguments.

00:26:28.460 But because I make them at a time when Trump is the president, I'm regarded as a pariah of the left.

00:26:35.620 And also, what's even more disturbing is I'm a hero of the right.

00:26:39.560 I don't want to be a hero of the right.

00:26:41.240 I'm not a Trump supporter.

00:26:43.200 I'm not somebody who is making this argument only because it's Trump.

00:26:47.140 I'm making this argument because I support the Constitution of the United States.

00:26:50.920 So both sides misunderstand me.

00:26:53.280 Look, it's clear when I, you know, I'm a fervent Boston Red Sox fan.

00:26:57.740 And some of my best friends are New York Yankee fans.

00:27:00.620 And, you know, you can't, there's no argument.

00:27:03.480 Either the Red Sox are the greatest team in baseball, they are, or the Yankees are the greatest team.

00:27:08.360 They were.

00:27:09.180 But you can't have a kind of argument.

00:27:12.000 You have to pick sides.

00:27:12.720 You have to pick teams.

00:27:13.780 That's what's happening.

00:27:14.680 It's OK in sports.

00:27:15.900 It's not OK in governance.

00:27:17.420 You know, as you were pointing out that you've now become an unwitting and unlikely hero to the

00:27:24.780 political right, I was trying to figure out in my studio where I was going to put up the

00:27:28.580 Alan Dershowitz poster.

00:27:30.420 But then you made that comment about the Red Sox and the Yankees.

00:27:32.980 And I've got to scrap the plans for it altogether, unfortunately.

00:27:36.980 Now, there is one aspect where nuance has been coming in on the pro-impeachment side here,

00:27:42.980 though, which is that people who are calling for the impeachment of Trump are saying that

00:27:47.080 he colluded with Russia and this is somehow sufficient to impeach him.

00:27:52.580 Does collusion rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors?

00:27:56.440 It doesn't even rise to the level of low crimes and misdemeanors.

00:27:59.720 It's not a crime.

00:28:00.560 Collusion is not a crime, except if business people collude together to violate the antitrust

00:28:05.460 laws.

00:28:06.260 In my book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump, I give the most extreme hypothetical.

00:28:10.340 During the campaign, candidate Trump calls up President Putin and says, hey, Vlad, do

00:28:17.160 I have a deal for you?

00:28:18.700 I want to be elected president.

00:28:20.340 I know you have some dirt on Hillary Clinton.

00:28:22.040 You've already gathered.

00:28:23.600 If you send me the dirt on Hillary Clinton and help me get elected president, it's much

00:28:27.840 more likely that we'll get rid of these sanctions because I don't like these sanctions.

00:28:31.820 That's what politicians do all the time. 1.00

00:28:34.240 They say to people, give me money, give me support.

00:28:37.880 You know I'm on your side.

00:28:39.160 I'll help be pro-choice.

00:28:41.180 I'll help be pro-gun control. 1.00

00:28:43.720 Vote for me because I'm going to help your agenda.

00:28:46.560 That's not a crime.

00:28:47.440 Now, people say it's different because it's a foreign government.

00:28:49.980 But what the foreign government was doing here was giving, under my hypothetical, information.

00:28:53.820 Information is different from money because it's protected by the First Amendment.

00:28:57.560 For the same reason the New York Times, the Washington Post, was able to publish the Pentagon

00:29:02.280 papers, Snowden, Manning, all of those stolen materials, is once it's stolen, the First Amendment

00:29:10.280 protects its publication or its use by a candidate.

00:29:13.840 Now, if candidate Trump said to the Republican, to Putin, please hack the Democratic National

00:29:20.460 Committee, that would be a crime because then he is urging them to do a crime.

00:29:25.420 But if he says, if you've already hacked them and you have the information, give it to me.

00:29:29.920 That's no more a crime than what the Washington Post and the New York Times did.

00:29:33.440 That's a great point.

00:29:35.280 And before I let you go, I've already taken up a lot of your time.

00:29:37.680 I do want to ask about the procedural aspects of all of this.

00:29:41.940 We've got the Mueller investigation.

00:29:43.580 I think at this point it's been going on since 1857 or so.

00:29:47.280 It looks like it'll be going on forever.

00:29:49.420 And yet you hear from partisans on both sides that if one is to criticize the Mueller team

00:29:55.340 or Mr. Mueller himself, that is an outrage.

00:29:58.160 It's an attack on the American administrative agencies or whatever, the investigative services,

00:30:04.580 the intelligence services.

00:30:06.640 Is it kosher, to put it bluntly, is it kosher to criticize or question Mueller?

00:30:12.620 Well, it's so interesting because I grew up as a liberal.

00:30:14.880 All my life I'm a liberal.

00:30:16.260 What do liberals do? 0.60

00:30:17.500 They question law enforcement.

00:30:19.300 What did liberals do when the Bay of Pigs happened?

00:30:22.640 We questioned intelligence.

00:30:24.320 What happened in the run-up to the Iran-Iraq war?

00:30:28.160 We questioned the WMD intelligence.

00:30:31.220 We always questioned intelligence.

00:30:33.060 We're always critical of the FBI.

00:30:35.220 I spent most of my career as a young man criticizing J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

00:30:39.940 That's what liberals did. 0.82

00:30:41.540 Conservatives always came to the defense and said, we believe in law and order.

00:30:45.840 And liberals said, we believe in civil liberties.

00:30:48.600 So the idea that liberals are now the ones saying, oh my God, you can't ever question law enforcement,

00:30:55.620 the FBI, the CIA. 0.89

00:30:58.360 I mean, talk about hypocrisy with a capital H.

00:31:01.560 My God, that's what liberals and civil libertarians have always been doing.

00:31:05.040 But now that Mueller is the guy who might be able to get Trump, he is no longer an appropriate subject of criticism.

00:31:12.860 Well, it is quite ironic.

00:31:14.160 It hadn't occurred to me until you put it that way, that for years at this point, even in recent memory,

00:31:19.820 the left has pilloried local law enforcement.

00:31:22.420 They've said, we need to abolish ICE.

00:31:24.420 That's one of the lines in this campaign, that we need to demilitarize the police, take away power from the police.

00:31:30.040 And then in the same breath, they're saying, if you criticize law enforcement at the federal level,

00:31:33.800 or with regard to President Trump, you're some sort of anti-American traitor.

00:31:38.240 That is a real irony. 0.99

00:31:39.980 It's obvious.

00:31:41.000 It's civil liberties for me, but not for thee.

00:31:43.980 Free speech for me, but not for thee.

00:31:47.120 And that's what's called hypocrisy.

00:31:48.920 If you're going to be a civil libertarian and a supporter of free speech,

00:31:52.880 you have to be a supporter of those concepts, no matter who the beneficiary is and who the loser is.

00:31:58.820 When I was a kid in college, I defended the right of communists to speak at Brooklyn College.

00:32:03.800 I hated communism.

00:32:04.740 I was brought up in a very anti-communist household, but I supported the right of communists to speak and to run for office.

00:32:11.900 So I, early on in my life, and then I supported the rights of Nazis to march through Skokie. 0.77

00:32:16.320 My mother didn't talk to me.

00:32:17.340 She said, whose side are you on, the Nazis or the Jews?

00:32:20.220 And I said, Mom, on the side of civil liberties, she said, don't give me that.

00:32:23.120 I'm your mother.

00:32:23.900 You've got to pick sides, the Jews or the Nazis. 0.55

00:32:26.680 Well, my mother wasn't college educated. 0.99

00:32:28.700 But the people who are criticizing me today are, many of them lawyers.

00:32:32.720 They have to know that if you believe in civil liberties, you will sometimes end up defending people you don't like.

00:32:38.700 It was H.L. Mencken who said, first they go after the SOBs, and they establish the precedent on them,

00:32:44.940 and then they come after the rest of us.

00:32:46.520 That's why I'm going to continue to defend the rights of every American, whether it was David Duke or whether it's some communist on the left or whether it's President Trump or President Clinton or Bernie Sanders or anybody else.

00:33:02.160 I don't think you can draw lines depending on whose side people are on.

00:33:06.820 I always ask myself, have I passed the shoe on the other foot test?

00:33:10.440 If the shoe were on the other foot, if it were Gore versus Bush rather than Bush versus Gore, would the Supreme Court have come out the other way?

00:33:16.720 I wrote a book saying no.

00:33:18.240 I wrote a book called Supreme Injustice.

00:33:19.820 The liberals loved my book.

00:33:20.900 Then, because I criticized the Supreme Court.

00:33:23.860 But if I made the same criticism today of law enforcement and judicial, I'd be a pilloried.

00:33:29.220 So I'm going to stick to my guns.

00:33:30.860 I've been doing it.

00:33:31.820 I'm almost 80.

00:33:33.020 I've been doing it.

00:33:34.000 That's been my life.

00:33:35.080 I'm not changing.

00:33:36.200 I think that's a great point.

00:33:37.900 And the book is really, really good.

00:33:39.860 I really enjoyed it.

00:33:40.460 The Case Against Impeaching Trump.

00:33:41.680 My last question before I let you go, you know, you obviously have an expertise and preeminent expertise on these matters as a matter of law and constitution.

00:33:52.460 As a matter of politics, if you were a gambling man, do you think that the partisans, the pro-impeachment crowd, will impeach Trump if given the opportunity?

00:34:01.420 Or do you think that your sound arguments and cooler heads will prevail?

00:34:06.480 Well, I think there'll be many in the Democratic Party who will want to impeach Trump.

00:34:10.860 Already some people are running on that platform. 0.96

00:34:13.840 A real jerk who is a professor at the University of Minnesota named Painter, who's running on an impeach Trump campaign. 0.96

00:34:24.120 There are others who are running on an impeach Trump campaign. 0.99

00:34:27.480 It will hurt the Democrats if they do that, just like it hurt the Republicans when they impeach Clinton.

00:34:32.900 It's easy to get an impeachment if you control the House, but very hard to get a removal.

00:34:37.480 So my prediction here is unless there's new evidence that comes out, material we're not aware of, I don't think President Trump will be removed from office other than through elections.

00:34:48.960 And might very well be removed from office in the 2020 election.

00:34:53.180 And that's something that people who are opposed to him should be focusing on, not impeachment.

00:34:57.800 Excellent point.

00:34:59.520 And I really, really enjoyed the book.

00:35:01.220 So I encourage everybody to read it.

00:35:03.480 The Case Against Impeaching Trump by Alan Dershowitz.

00:35:06.780 I think you've written about 750,000 other books, which are also quite good.

00:35:10.980 But I really recommend reading this.

00:35:12.540 It is just finally a cool, logical arguments that simply are not really getting airtime as people are blowing a bunch of partisan hot air.

00:35:22.040 Professor Dershowitz, thank you so much for being here.

00:35:24.460 Thank you so much.

00:35:25.320 I appreciate it.

00:35:27.720 Alan Dershowitz, he lays it out.

00:35:29.360 He's the last liberal standing in the world, I think.

00:35:32.000 The last honest liberal.

00:35:33.940 We've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.

00:35:36.160 Thank you if you're already on Daily Wire.

00:35:38.680 You help keep the lights on.

00:35:39.760 You keep Covfefe in my cup.

00:35:41.460 If you're not, go to Daily Wire right now.

00:35:43.120 It's $10 a month, $100 for an annual membership.

00:35:46.260 You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get to ask questions in the mailbag, you get to ask questions, which, by the way, is coming up Thursday.

00:35:51.240 Get your questions in.

00:35:52.240 You get to ask questions in the conversation.

00:35:53.560 I think I'm coming up next, so get ready for that.

00:35:56.320 Again, none of that matters.

00:35:57.400 You need the Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:35:58.660 You need the, this is the James Gunn edition, obviously.

00:36:01.700 We've got a little common sense gun control here.

00:36:03.540 Look, I don't, look, I don't, I don't want to, I'm not trying to destroy James Gunn.

00:36:07.720 I just, I'm not trying to take away James Gunn's career.

00:36:10.220 I just want some common sense gun control and to collect all those delicious tears in my Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:36:15.360 But I have a favor to ask of you. 0.99

00:36:17.540 I, look, I don't, I only ask for your money and help for a stupid joke like once a year at this point. 0.95

00:36:25.580 I think that's my record. 0.93

00:36:26.920 So you might have seen the Shapiro store has opened up, the long-awaited Shapiro store, which Ben has been promising since like the Clinton administration.

00:36:35.640 And we finally got it up and it's got some shirts.

00:36:38.000 So there's a shirt up with my face on it.

00:36:41.020 They've got a couple of presidential series.

00:36:42.680 And they've got this one, which says, I like Mike on it.

00:36:46.300 And they've got one for Ben, too.

00:36:48.160 And they've got one for Drew.

00:36:50.280 I need you to go buy this shirt.

00:36:52.740 And not because you need to wear it.

00:36:54.600 Probably if you wear it in polite society, you'll just be pilloried, beaten with Antifa bats.

00:36:59.360 You know, it won't go well.

00:37:00.680 But the reason you need to buy this shirt is I think it would be very, very funny if I sell more shirts than Ben.

00:37:06.160 I really, really want that to happen.

00:37:08.620 I don't think the grin will ever leave my face if I manage to do that.

00:37:12.120 So I need you to go buy this shirt to make Ben frown and to give me some chuckles for like, I don't know, like a month or two at least.

00:37:23.960 Go to dailywire.com right now.

00:37:26.220 I want to wrap up on this question of Russia, why Russia keeps coming up, what it really means, what it has to do with the vengeance of the Lord.

00:37:33.700 We'll have all that and more.

00:37:34.660 Go to dailywire.com.

00:37:35.480 We'll be right back.

00:37:42.120 Too much fun.

00:37:47.140 Too much fun.

00:37:47.660 Everything from selling more shirts than Ben, really, that would be the most fun of all.

00:37:51.220 But watching the logic of these lefties play out right on them.

00:37:55.680 It's like them, you know, they're like they're aiming at Donald Trump with a boomerang.

00:37:59.460 And they say, well, I'm going to get Trump now.

00:38:01.260 And they throw it, right?

00:38:02.440 But it doesn't quite hit Trump, does it?

00:38:03.700 No, it just boom, hits him right in the head.

00:38:06.000 And it's great to watch that logic turn out because for so long it's been a double standard.

00:38:11.460 They get to run roughshod over us and we're not allowed to fight back.

00:38:14.420 We say, no, we can't.

00:38:15.200 Oh, it would be, oh, no, it would be so uncouth.

00:38:17.880 Oh, that's not nice.

00:38:19.300 Well, one simply doesn't do that.

00:38:20.960 You drink your tea with your pinky out, right? 0.85

00:38:22.840 And then in comes Donald Trump, the vengeance of the Lord.

00:38:26.360 And we see it play out on them.

00:38:29.400 This is all focused on Russia right now, right?

00:38:31.800 They're all, as a matter of politics, they're aiming to get Trump on Russia.

00:38:35.320 You've got candidates campaigning for Congress, for the Senate on an impeached Trump platform.

00:38:41.080 What crime did he commit?

00:38:42.200 I don't know.

00:38:42.840 What are the legal grounds for impeaching him?

00:38:45.200 I don't know, right?

00:38:46.000 That's just, but they're going to do it.

00:38:47.840 And the question is, why does President Trump let this go on?

00:38:52.880 Not just let this go on, why does he play into it?

00:38:55.320 I had a professor friend of mine.

00:38:57.480 I won't say where he's a professor.

00:38:59.420 It's not Professor Dershowitz.

00:39:00.660 And he messaged me and he said, you know, Michael, I really think Trump might be guilty

00:39:05.280 here.

00:39:05.780 He sounds so guilty.

00:39:07.400 He always is saying, it's a witch hunt and all the exclamation points.

00:39:10.200 Why is he sounding like a guilty guy?

00:39:13.280 Why is he letting this Russia thing keep going on and on and on? 1.00

00:39:16.380 And, you know, I know that everybody thinks that Donald Trump is an idiot. 1.00

00:39:19.580 That's the line conservatives seem to think that. 1.00

00:39:21.680 The left certainly thinks that. 0.98

00:39:23.240 He's not an idiot. 0.99

00:39:24.060 He's a smart guy. 0.91

00:39:24.840 Did it ever occur to you that maybe this Russia narrative plays to President Trump's advantage?

00:39:31.680 That it actually gives him an advantage in electoral politics?

00:39:34.400 Did anyone consider that?

00:39:35.380 People are saying, why didn't he fire Jeff Sessions when Jeff Sessions recused himself?

00:39:39.020 He's fired everyone else in the cabinet.

00:39:40.560 Why not Jeff Sessions?

00:39:41.620 Did it ever occur to people that maybe this Russia story helps Trump?

00:39:46.200 Because why wouldn't it?

00:39:47.620 Here, just a little bit of evidence.

00:39:48.840 So, first of all, to answer my professor friend's question, isn't this evidence that President Trump committed a crime?

00:39:55.760 No, it isn't.

00:39:56.760 First of all, what crime?

00:39:57.840 If this were evidence, some smoking gun, you know, President Trump was going to be taken down over this,

00:40:03.440 don't you think he'd be at least accused of a crime?

00:40:07.340 What crime has he been accused of?

00:40:08.620 As Professor Dershowitz just said, collusion is not a crime.

00:40:12.420 It's just a silly little euphemism that the left is using to cudgel Donald Trump.

00:40:16.780 But that's not a crime.

00:40:17.620 So, you'd think he might be accused of a crime.

00:40:20.200 If he were guilty of something, they'd have something on him.

00:40:23.480 This has been going on now for two years.

00:40:25.540 Don't you think they'd have something on him at this point, something tangible that could wrap around him?

00:40:29.320 The Mueller investigation has been going on since the Grant administration at this point.

00:40:32.940 They don't have anything on him.

00:40:35.560 Also, don't you think if they had something on him, maybe his accusers wouldn't have so much to cover up?

00:40:41.140 I mean, James Comey lied.

00:40:43.320 John Brennan has lied.

00:40:44.840 The FBI, political players in the FBI, the CIA, they've been revealed to have lied during all of this.

00:40:52.700 The meeting on the tarmac between former President Clinton and Loretta Lynch,

00:40:57.680 James Comey saying that Hillary clearly committed a crime, but we're not going to get her for it anyway.

00:41:02.520 We've drafted up memos exonerating Hillary Clinton before we even interviewed Hillary Clinton.

00:41:07.520 Why don't we have the DNC server that was allegedly hacked?

00:41:11.780 Isn't it a little weird, don't you think, that these guys might have a little less at stake if President Trump,

00:41:17.380 if they really had something on him, if it weren't just a political action?

00:41:21.300 But why does he allow it to keep going?

00:41:23.340 And why does President Trump keep it in the news?

00:41:25.420 Whenever this thing goes out of the news, President Trump sends another tweet.

00:41:28.260 He says, it's a witch hunt!

00:41:29.300 Why wouldn't he, if it were really a danger to his presidency, wouldn't he be quiet about it?

00:41:35.540 Maybe it's not a danger to his presidency.

00:41:37.280 Maybe this is exactly the right strategy for Republicans.

00:41:40.920 You know, according to Gallup, fewer than half a percent of Americans think that this Russia collusion thing is an important public issue.

00:41:51.900 Not just less than one percent, less than half a percent of Americans think that this is an important issue.

00:41:57.280 Americans care about immigration, they care about the economy, they care about foreign affairs broadly, you know, wars and things like that,

00:42:04.060 nuclear weapons in North Korea.

00:42:05.860 They do not care about Russia at all.

00:42:09.020 I mean, statistically, zero percent of Americans care about this.

00:42:13.140 Democrats have put all their eggs in this basket, and President Trump is forcing them to keep their eggs in it.

00:42:17.200 And every single time that he says, it's a witch hunt, it's awful, it's crooked, right, they have to double down on that attack.

00:42:22.960 This is a manageable attack for Republicans.

00:42:25.780 This is a, the whole Russia thing, good, keep it in the news, this is great.

00:42:28.860 This is an attack that Republicans can manage.

00:42:31.060 There might be some other lines that they could try to hit.

00:42:33.280 I don't know, things are going so well, it's actually really hard for them to pull something up.

00:42:36.820 But at least this one they can keep a hold on, so keep it in the news.

00:42:39.980 I know this doesn't occur to anybody, but maybe President Trump actually knows what he's doing.

00:42:45.120 Maybe the Republicans know what they're doing.

00:42:46.400 And maybe Democrats are so, they're so revved up that they're being consumed by their own logic.

00:42:53.300 They're being consumed by the logical conclusions of their own actions.

00:42:56.140 It is the vengeance of the Lord.

00:42:57.880 They rev it up so much, they dish it, and they dish it, and they dish it.

00:43:00.960 And now, I don't know what it is about the President, but because of him, they have to take it, too.

00:43:07.060 And they're forced, they're wedged into this corner.

00:43:09.520 How can they pivot off of this issue?

00:43:11.140 It's not like Democrats don't read the polls.

00:43:12.760 They read the polls, they see, oh gosh, Americans don't care about this at all. 0.98

00:43:15.600 We're expending all of our energy, all of our capital on this, and we're looking like fools. 0.99

00:43:19.900 Every step of the way, we're getting proven more partisan, more corrupt, more crooked. 0.95

00:43:24.460 But how do they pivot out of it?

00:43:25.820 They've made such a big deal.

00:43:26.840 They've said basically, Trump is, you know, Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle.

00:43:32.500 They've really invested in this.

00:43:34.500 They can't pivot out of it.

00:43:35.440 It's a great place to put them.

00:43:36.440 And the Republicans right now have Democrats against the ropes everywhere as a matter of culture,

00:43:41.920 as a matter of economics, as a matter of public policy, as a matter of electoral politics.

00:43:46.300 They've just got them on the ropes.

00:43:48.440 And I'll say this, I'll close it on this free speech thing, the vengeance of the Lord.

00:43:53.000 With James Gunn, do I want to live in a world where people can make jokes 10 years ago and

00:43:58.540 they don't have their lives ruined for it?

00:43:59.780 Yes, I do.

00:44:01.460 Some conservatives, I think, are being a little obtuse on this.

00:44:03.720 They're saying, well, look, it's not a First Amendment issue.

00:44:06.280 Look, the market has spoken.

00:44:08.180 The market has spoken.

00:44:09.120 He made these comments.

00:44:09.920 Disney had to fire him.

00:44:10.720 It's the market.

00:44:12.020 Right.

00:44:12.520 But this is looking at free speech ideologically too narrow.

00:44:16.940 Free speech is not just about politics.

00:44:19.420 It's not just about the First Amendment.

00:44:20.780 It's not just about economics.

00:44:22.540 It's not just about the market.

00:44:24.060 It's about the culture.

00:44:25.560 What kind of culture do we want to live in?

00:44:27.020 A culture where you can joke around or a culture where you can't joke around?

00:44:29.280 Obviously, we want to live in a culture where you can joke around.

00:44:32.760 But the left has to stop poisoning that culture. 0.55

00:44:36.560 And until they stop poisoning that, the vengeance of the Lord will keep smacking them in the face.

00:44:42.960 And it's pretty funny to watch.

00:44:43.920 It's pretty enjoyable.

00:44:44.780 Come back tomorrow.

00:44:46.160 Ran a little late, as usual.

00:44:47.920 Come back tomorrow.

00:44:48.660 We've got a lot more to talk about.

00:44:49.800 Some great guests this week.

00:44:51.560 And in the meantime, I'll see you then.

00:44:53.360 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:44:54.040 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:44:54.980 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal.

00:45:03.760 Executive producer, Jeremy Borey.

00:45:05.820 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:45:07.680 Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover.

00:45:10.260 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:45:12.900 Edited by Jim Nickel.

00:45:14.420 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:45:16.700 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:45:19.280 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:45:22.460 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

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The Michael Knowles Show - July 23, 2018

Ep. 188 - Common Sense Gunn Control

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