The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 260 - Mueller’s Rats

00:00:00.000 Special counsel Robert Mueller has gotten President Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen

00:00:05.200 to plead guilty to lying to Congress. So now we are all expected to believe the guy who has

00:00:11.440 admitted that he's a liar. We will examine the central problem of Mueller's investigation thus

00:00:15.920 far. Then CNN celebrates the possibility of impeachment. Barack Obama reminds us how awful

00:00:21.480 he is. And the ladies of The View try to forget him. I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael 0.92

00:00:26.680 Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Every day, another one dropping in the Mueller investigation. They're turning it on Trump.

00:00:38.220 They're going for impeachment. There's a big, big problem in this investigation.

00:00:41.860 And we, uh, I'm sorry, hold on. We, before we can get to the Bob Mueller investigation,

00:00:47.200 we have breaking news coming in this. Yes, it has been confirmed. Um, a creepy porn lawyer,

00:00:53.160 Michael Avenatti is still a dirt bag. That is, that is now being confirmed around. It's on the 0.99

00:00:58.840 wires. It's being confirmed all around. Michael Avenatti, a dirt bag. Not exactly a man bites

00:01:04.380 dog sort of story, but, uh, this is, this is just delightful. It turns out that Michael Avenatti

00:01:10.840 has been, uh, improperly using funds that were donated to Stormy Daniels, has been doing things

00:01:16.340 that she didn't want him to do on her behalf, pretending to be her. Here, uh, is Stormy Daniels'

00:01:21.640 statement that she gave to the Daily Beast yesterday. Quote, Michael has been a great

00:01:27.120 advocate in many ways. I'm tremendously grateful to him for aggressively representing me in my fight

00:01:32.080 to regain my voice. We'll get to that in a second. But in other ways, Michael has not treated me with

00:01:38.480 the respect and deference an attorney should show to a client. He has spoken on my behalf without my

00:01:44.000 approval. He filed a defamation case against Donald Trump against my wishes. He repeatedly refused to

00:01:50.060 tell me how my legal defense fund was being spent. Now he has launched a new crowdfunding campaign

00:01:56.020 using my face and name without my permission and attributing words to me that I never wrote

00:02:02.020 or said. First, before we get to any of this, when did Stormy Daniels lose her voice? All I've noticed

00:02:08.320 is Stormy Daniels talking, talking about President Trump's genitals, giving interviews even after she

00:02:13.760 took money in exchange for not describing the sexual encounter. She's going on news shows. She's going

00:02:19.680 on comedy shows. I never saw Stormy Daniels losing her voice. But it's just one of those stupid

00:02:25.980 slogans that lefties say that don't really mean anything. The real meat of this here, 1.00

00:02:31.640 pun unintended, is that Michael has not treated me with the respect and deference an attorney

00:02:37.600 should show to a client. Gee, do you think? Is that really so? What is he being accused of? He's

00:02:43.780 being accused of taking the money that was donated to her, just taking it without her consent, not

00:02:50.600 telling her where the money was being spent, and using it for his own purposes. Now he is saying

00:02:54.660 that he's given, you know, she's used some of the money for security and he's taken the rest for his

00:03:00.200 legal fees. But now he's started a new crowdfunding campaign in her name that she has nothing to do 1.00

00:03:05.060 with. This, by the way, is why very often it's not a good reason or it's not a good idea to donate

00:03:10.500 to crowdfunding campaigns. You have no idea who's running them. It might be on behalf of somebody,

00:03:15.820 but you don't know where that money is going. You don't know how it's going to be spent.

00:03:19.540 We're so tempted because of our compassion to just throw money at anything. But sometimes it

00:03:25.160 ends up going to guys like Michael Avenatti. And this other one, he filed a defamation case against

00:03:30.840 Trump against my wishes. Michael Avenatti said when he filed that defamation suit that he was doing

00:03:38.620 it on her behalf, he's representing her. If he's doing that now against her wishes,

00:03:43.000 that's a serious issue. I mean, that could carry legal consequences. It could carry consequences

00:03:47.940 for his career. So that's not good. All of this, though, what's the big takeaway?

00:03:54.640 He's almost certainly going to be the 2020 Democrat nominee for president. He's all but locked it up at

00:03:59.460 this point. He's abused women. He has improperly stolen charitable donations. This, I think, 0.93

00:04:07.520 makes him an honorary Clinton. This is the definition of being a Clinton. He has already

00:04:11.840 locked it up. Kamala Harris can go home. Cory Booker, Liz Warren, it's just there. It's over.

00:04:16.760 Michael Avenatti is now a Democrat presidential candidate par excellence. He's almost certainly

00:04:22.020 violated the law. That's it. That's it. He's got it locked up. Congratulations,

00:04:26.560 nominee Michael Avenatti. We look forward to a full and robust general election campaign in 2020

00:04:32.800 against Donald Trump. Going to be a lot of fun. Back to the major news story, not the news that

00:04:38.560 we've all known since Michael Avenatti first crawled out of whatever gutter he's living in

00:04:43.540 and got into another gutter called CNN and showed his face on TV. The real story today is that Michael

00:04:49.620 Cohen, the longtime personal attorney for Donald Trump, has pled guilty to lying to Congress. Now,

00:04:56.560 this is a deal that was reached with Robert Mueller, with the special counsel, and it's another one of

00:05:02.840 these plea deals. So what is it about? What he apparently, allegedly, lied about to Congress

00:05:08.500 is when a deal in Moscow for a Trump building was nixed, when they got rid of the deal. What Michael

00:05:18.840 Cohen was saying to Congress is that the Trump organization was looking at building a tower in

00:05:25.940 Moscow, they were going to do it in 2015. And then by January 2016, by the time of the Iowa

00:05:32.960 caucuses, they nixed the deal and there was no more of that. What Bob Mueller has now gotten Michael

00:05:38.940 Cohen to plead guilty to lying about is that they were still discussing that Moscow deal even after

00:05:45.840 the Iowa caucuses into 2016, into the campaign. So here's Michael Cohen, the guy, the personal lawyer

00:05:53.800 who, and the lawyer for the Trump organization, who is coming out and saying, I lied. Trump was trying

00:05:58.820 to do a deal in Moscow during the campaign. He is totally turning on Trump here. And for that,

00:06:04.260 to figure out some of this reaction, we can turn now to President Trump's last interaction with Michael

00:06:09.940 Cohen. If you're a rat, then I'm the biggest mutt in the history of the mafia. 1.00

00:06:15.460 He's got a lower voice than I remember seeing at those White House conferences. But that is what 0.99

00:06:22.540 it sounds like. It does sound like it's these mob dealings. They're building the building. They got

00:06:27.300 to talk to the enforcers in Moscow. You got Bob Mueller. He's forcing these guys to start lying,

00:06:32.660 to start telling narratives. Okay, right, whatever. What did Mueller actually file? In this filing,

00:06:38.400 he said, quote, in truth and in fact, and as Cohen well knew, Cohen's representations about the Moscow

00:06:46.240 project he made to House and Senate intelligence committees were false and misleading. Cohen made

00:06:51.720 the false statements to give the false impression that the Moscow project ended before the Iowa caucus

00:06:56.800 in the very first primary in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations. So that's the false

00:07:04.860 statement. The false statement is maybe the Moscow talks in some form or another went on longer than

00:07:10.820 January 2016. Maybe Trump stopped talking about it in January 2016, but people in the Trump organization

00:07:19.240 were still pursuing it. Maybe there was an email that went out to some developer in Russia. Who knows?

00:07:24.180 Who knows? My question is, who cares? Who cares if it ended in January 2016 or February or March?

00:07:32.680 Where is the law that says that a presidential candidate can't continue to own a business and he can't continue

00:07:40.160 to build his international real estate empire overseas while he's running for president? He's not even the

00:07:46.580 president yet. He's just running, you know, during or after the Iowa caucuses. President Trump takes this

00:07:52.540 same approach. Here is Trump responding to the latest Mueller plea deal.

00:07:57.440 We had a position to possibly do a deal to build a building of some kind in Moscow. I decided not to

00:08:07.080 do it. The primary reason, there could have been other reasons, but the primary reason, it was very

00:08:12.660 simple. I was focused on running for president. There would be nothing wrong if I did do it.

00:08:18.800 So two statements in there, two things to look at. He says, I dropped the deal in January. So the rest of

00:08:24.080 us think, well, why would he drop that deal? It's, it could be a lucrative deal for the Trump

00:08:27.840 organization. Why end it? Because he was focused on running for president. Fair enough. Let me tell

00:08:32.540 you, if you've ever been on a campaign, even a congressional campaign or a local campaign,

00:08:36.460 they are exhausting. When you're running for president, you don't sleep for 18 months.

00:08:40.560 So fair enough. They don't, they're not going to pursue this. They'll do it at a later time. Okay.

00:08:44.580 But then he gives it an alternate theory, which is, let's say he did do it. Let's say that he was

00:08:51.540 building this, trying to build this building in Moscow afterward. So what? Where's the law? Who

00:08:58.460 cares? Now we, we have this intuition that it's against the law. We have this intuition that it's

00:09:04.380 wrong. What if, what if, uh, John McCain were building a building in Moscow? And what if Barack

00:09:09.440 Obama did it? What if, what if Hillary did it? What if, okay, fine. This is what happens when you have

00:09:14.060 a businessman as president. We don't, we haven't had businessmen as president in, I don't, I don't know

00:09:20.940 the last time we had a businessman as president. Truman maybe was true. Truman was a haberdasher

00:09:26.120 or something like that. When was the last time we've just had career politicians, Barack Obama

00:09:30.420 never held a private sector job in his life. Basically, um, uh, George W. Bush, what, you know,

00:09:37.860 he owned a baseball team, but he was a, he was governor. He was, you know, he was a, he was a

00:09:42.180 politician came from a political dynasty family. Bill Clinton only ever ran for office right after law

00:09:47.260 school, ran for attorney general, did that track, uh, George Bush senior. He was an oil man in his

00:09:52.600 young days, but then he was a career politician after that. Um, he had, he'd already finished his

00:09:57.300 business, uh, dealings by the time he was running for office. Uh, before, before that, it goes on and

00:10:02.860 on. Ronald Reagan was a movie star, so on and so forth. Donald Trump is a businessman, not in the way

00:10:09.800 some, everybody has business interests. His business is business. He has a TV show about all the

00:10:15.020 business he did. He's worked in so many different industries, casinos, real estate, golf courses,

00:10:21.180 vodka. That didn't last long. Steaks, television. He's worked in all of these different industries.

00:10:26.560 And so his business is business. And when you got a businessman, businessmen have business

00:10:31.820 interests all around the world. And that's perfectly fine. It's, it's a nice thing to have a

00:10:35.900 businessman in government. Government moves very slow. It's inefficient. Uh, it, it isn't terribly

00:10:41.120 connected to the real world. When you get someone in there from the private sector, things move a

00:10:44.580 little faster, like we've seen in this administration. Okay. Why does Mueller care?

00:10:49.540 What, why does that care? What does this deal in Moscow have to do with the Clinton campaign

00:10:55.260 and hacked emails? And what does it have to do with anything? What does it have to do with the

00:10:59.500 Trump campaign? You know, if the idea is that he was continuing to pursue this, uh, building at the

00:11:05.500 time, okay. So then we're, we're told that the Russians decided to help Trump become president

00:11:11.560 so that he wouldn't return to the private sector and build that building in Moscow. Is that the

00:11:16.140 implication? What, what is the, this is the trouble with this whole Russia narrative is they're trying

00:11:21.420 to construct a coherent storyline out of random disparate events that have no connection to one

00:11:28.280 another. So then the question is, why is Michael Cohen going along with all this? Michael Cohen once

00:11:34.660 said something to the effect of he would take a bullet for Donald Trump before he'd rat. And then the 0.72

00:11:39.300 dirty, rotten rat is ratting. So, uh, what, what is his incentive? President Trump explains that too. 0.99

00:11:46.460 Go back and look at the paper that Michael Cohen wrote before he testified in the house and or Senate.

00:11:54.380 It talked about his position, what he's trying to do because he's a weak person and not a very smart 0.84

00:12:00.900 person. What he's trying to do is end. And it's very simple. He's got himself a big prison sentence.

00:12:09.300 And he's trying to get a much lesser prison sentence by making up a story. Now here's the

00:12:14.940 thing. Even if he was right, it doesn't matter because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted

00:12:21.620 during the campaign. I was running my business, a lot of different things during the campaign. So

00:12:26.640 very simply, Michael Cohen is lying and he's trying to get a reduced sentence for things that have

00:12:33.580 nothing to do with me. So Michael Cohen pleads guilty. This is a count. It faces up to five years

00:12:39.460 in prison and a fine of $250,000. Don't forget though, Michael Cohen has already pled guilty to

00:12:45.020 eight criminal counts. He's pled guilty to bank fraud, tax fraud, campaign finance violations,

00:12:51.500 eight different counts that he's pled guilty to. Only one of them had any connection to the Trump

00:12:55.620 campaign. And that's when Cohen paid off Stormy Daniels. All the other seven have nothing to do with

00:13:00.920 the Trump campaign. They have everything to do with the time long before the campaign when Michael

00:13:05.760 Cohen had his own private business interactions. So what's the timeline here? It's that Bob Mueller

00:13:11.620 takes Trump's personal lawyer, squeezes him, says, we're going to throw you in jail forever on all of

00:13:17.860 these other counts that you had before you were a lawyer during the campaign, unless you rat on Donald

00:13:24.100 Trump. He's got all of this incentive to turn on Trump and do whatever Mueller wants. If he doesn't

00:13:30.700 say what Mueller wants, he could rot in prison. And so let's say that this is true though. Let's say

00:13:35.400 that right now Cohen is telling the truth. He lied to Congress, but now he's telling the truth. The

00:13:39.180 problem is he has no credibility. To use a word that has been much abused in the last couple months,

00:13:46.360 not only does Michael Cohen not have any credibility, none of these guys have any credibility.

00:13:50.840 None of Mueller's star witnesses have a shred of credibility. This is the Mueller's central

00:13:57.280 problem right now. Mueller's central problem is he's built this entire case on calling people liars

00:14:03.540 and having people plead guilty, whether they were or not, to having made a false statement or to being

00:14:09.360 a liar. That's fine. But then we have no reason to believe these witnesses. How many times have they

00:14:15.780 changed their story, changed their tune? What are the indictments so far? The indictments so far

00:14:19.820 against Trump campaign members are George Papadopoulos. Would they get him on? They got

00:14:24.420 him on pleading guilty to making false statements. He was in prison for 14 days. So I guess the

00:14:30.260 statements weren't that bad if he was only there for two weeks. Paul Manafort. Now there are more

00:14:34.780 charges against him. Why? Because he lied. Because Mueller was saying, you're a liar. You lied. Even in

00:14:39.500 your plea agreement with us, you are a liar. Rick Gates, who was Paul Manafort's former, uh, 0.97

00:14:45.060 deputy who, uh, you know, had worked with Manafort on lobbying campaigns, pled guilty to making one

00:14:52.020 false statements charge. Uh, Michael Flynn, same thing. Former national security advisor,

00:14:57.020 pled guilty to false statements. Alex van der Zwan, who's a Dutch lawyer who was working with Rick

00:15:01.900 Gates, pled guilty to making false statements regarding his contact with Rick Gates. And now we

00:15:07.300 have Michael Cohen, who's pled guilty to making false statements to Congress. All of the, I'm not saying

00:15:14.280 that Mueller's central problem is that he's dealing with liars. Prosecutors deal with liars all the

00:15:19.180 time. The problem here is that all the crimes that Mueller, rather, has been able to throw on

00:15:26.240 these guys are the crimes of lying. So if that is all we know about them, if that is the whole reason

00:15:32.820 that they're in the position that they're in, why would we believe a single word coming out of their

00:15:36.800 mouth? Especially now that we know that Paul Manafort is allegedly a liar, then he enters into a

00:15:41.760 plea agreement and then he lies about the plea agreement. So now he's got more charges on him.

00:15:46.000 Why would we believe any of these liars? If Mueller had anything, if Mueller actually had evidence that

00:15:51.600 Trump committed some crime with the Russians or that some campaign member committed a crime with

00:15:55.620 the Russians, he would ring them up on those charges because then at least you can say, we've 1.00

00:16:00.720 got you on this if you flip. But if all you can say is we've got you on being a liar, but now you better 0.96

00:16:06.580 tell the truth. And I don't care what you think the truth is. You better say what I want 0.67

00:16:10.180 the truth to be, what the truth would be if it were convenient for me. You've got nothing.

00:16:16.360 That's just, that is a less than nothing. So even, I mean, this is not a good sign for the

00:16:21.400 Mueller investigation. Right now, the Twitter, left-wing Twitter is so excited because Michael

00:16:26.120 Cohen pled guilty. That's all it says on Twitter, by the way. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleads

00:16:30.240 guilty in court. Guilty to what? Oh, he's a liar. Oh, okay. Okay, fine. Oh, I wonder what he'll say now.

00:16:38.420 Maybe he'll talk about when he was abducted by aliens and go to planet Zebulon 7. There's no

00:16:43.000 credibility at all. Nevertheless, CNN won't let this get them down. CNN's Jeffrey Toobin is so

00:16:49.240 excited. He can, he can just smell the impeachment coming. I'll start with you. What do you make of

00:16:54.580 President Trump seemingly dangling a pardon for Manafort? Is there anything legally dubious

00:16:59.640 about it? Is it obstruction of justice? Well, you have to remember that we are now in the realm of,

00:17:04.680 of possible impeach, impeachable offenses. And that is much more a political question than a

00:17:10.260 legal question. Is this something that would motivate now a democratic majority, uh, in the

00:17:15.860 House of Representatives to impeach the president? I mean, my belief is that the answer is no, that Nancy

00:17:22.620 Pelosi, Jerry Nadler, they've told me and others, they don't want to deal with impeachment, but because

00:17:28.020 they know that there will not be 67 votes in the Senate to remove, uh, the president. So they're just

00:17:33.360 not going to go on that fool's errand. However, that shouldn't distract us from the fact that this 0.97

00:17:39.860 is egregiously inappropriate behavior on the part of the president. It is all but an encouragement to

00:17:46.880 tell, to, to Paul Manafort, to stop cooperating, to don't get involved with Mueller, to take your

00:17:53.540 punishment. I will take care of you later. It's egregiously wrong, but is it something that will

00:18:00.760 lead to impeachment? I don't think so. Is he right? Is it an encouragement to these people not to say

00:18:06.640 whatever Mueller wants them to say? You're damn right it is. And it absolutely should be. Because

00:18:10.860 what Jeffrey Toobin said at the beginning is absolutely right. This has nothing to do with

00:18:15.340 charging someone with a crime. This has everything to do with politics. And I'm beginning to think

00:18:20.260 that this whole Mueller investigation is only about politics. It has nothing to do with crime. It has

00:18:26.220 nothing to do with dredging up some crimes from 2013, some tax issue to try to squeeze somebody,

00:18:33.120 to sing a song, some made-up fiction about Donald Trump. I'm beginning to think it's all about

00:18:37.460 politics. I think it was about politics when Peter Strzok first started the investigation in the first

00:18:44.900 place and 15 days later called it an insurance policy to stop Donald Trump. I think it was all about

00:18:49.940 politics when the FBI hired a paid Democrat operative to come up with dirt on Donald Trump,

00:18:58.700 a guy who had been paid by the DNC and Hillary Clinton. I think it's all about politics now because

00:19:03.840 there's no crime of collusion. They haven't accused these guys of any crimes other than being dirty,

00:19:08.120 rotten liars. And they're trying to use their lies to create the aura that Donald Trump is a bad guy 1.00

00:19:13.920 and he should be impeached from his office. That's what it's about. How are they going to get Donald

00:19:19.200 Trump? I don't think Bob Mueller thinks he's going to get Donald Trump. I think what they're doing is

00:19:23.620 just making him look really, really bad to either encourage impeachment or to have him lose his

00:19:31.480 election in 2020. All about politics. It's always about politics with these guys. Reminds me of the

00:19:37.160 Obama administration when everything was about politics. And you have to watch this. He reminds you

00:19:42.180 how terrible that administration was. He was giving a talk at Rice University. Now,

00:19:49.060 Barack Obama is lambasting our founders. He's taking credit for things that he has no business

00:19:54.260 taking credit for. Here's Barack Obama on identity politics. You start getting politics that's based on

00:20:01.240 that person's not like me and it must be their fault. And you start getting the politics based on a

00:20:10.100 nationalism that's not pride in country, but hatred for somebody on the other side of the border.

00:20:16.960 And you start getting, um, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the kind of, um,

00:20:25.960 politics that does not allow for compromise. Politics does not allow for compromise from Barack

00:20:33.400 Obama, who said, I won't work with Republicans. I've got a pen and a phone and I'll do whatever I

00:20:37.420 want. Uh, that's unbelievable. He says that we hate people on the other side of the border. We don't

00:20:42.300 hate people on the other side of the border. We like them on the other side of the border. We want them

00:20:45.960 to stay on the other side of the border. The other side of the border is where they belong because 0.92

00:20:49.640 they're not American citizens. We don't, we don't even hate them when they get here. We give them an

00:20:53.480 insane amount of welfare. We treat them very well. We arrest them for committing crimes and we still

00:20:58.260 don't even deport them. What an outrageous calumny to say about his fellow citizens. But that's, uh,

00:21:03.900 that's Barack Obama. That's all he does. Talks about, uh, now, now, so he's, he's able to

00:21:10.700 strictly lambast president Trump, even during this very successful time in office. But he does this

00:21:16.340 amazing thing where he takes credit for all the good stuff that Trump does. And he foists all of

00:21:20.960 the bad stuff that he did onto Donald Trump. Here is Barack Obama talking about taking credit,

00:21:25.440 trying to take credit for the oil and natural gas explosion. I was extraordinarily proud of the Paris

00:21:31.220 courts because, uh, look, I know, you know, uh, you know, I know we're an oil country and, uh, we need

00:21:41.240 American energy. And, and by the way, uh, American energy production, uh, you wouldn't always know it.

00:21:47.860 Uh, uh, but you know, it went up every year I was president. Um, and you know, that whole suddenly

00:21:58.220 America's like the biggest oil producer and the biggest get, uh, that was me people. I just want

00:22:03.480 you to, so. Two thoughts here. One, Barack Obama, the guy who said individuals can't accomplish

00:22:11.200 anything and you didn't build that and government does everything is now saying I built that. That

00:22:15.200 was me direct quote. Uh, but two, he's, that isn't true. That is just flat out wrong. The, the production

00:22:23.340 of oil by the federal government on federal lands during Barack, uh, Barack Obama's presidency was

00:22:29.280 flat. It didn't happen. There was no growth. He's right. There was an oil and fracking boom that was

00:22:34.740 all on private land. In many ways that was in spite of his administration, which cut off oil pipelines,

00:22:40.860 which constantly tried to hang up the Keystone XL pipeline, all of these projects. He was hugely

00:22:46.440 anti-oil, anti-energy. And now he's trying to take credit for it, which shows you something.

00:22:51.700 A lot of times people on the left want to paint him as an idealist. Oh, he's an idealist. He's too

00:22:57.180 academic. He's too good for this world. No, he's a hack. Despicable Chicago politician is what he is.

00:23:02.920 Who's willing to take credit for things that he ostensibly opposes when it suits his purposes

00:23:08.000 because his administration was an utter failure. His legacy has been erased and he's nobody. Every,

00:23:13.420 he does these speaking things and I remember that he exists. When I don't see him on TV for more than

00:23:17.580 three days, I forget he ever existed. His, his administration was that meaningless and he goes

00:23:23.340 on. He can't give it up. Here's, here's the rest of the talk. You know, when I hear people say they

00:23:28.620 don't like identity politics, they don't like, uh, I think it's important to remember that identity

00:23:35.520 politics doesn't just apply when, uh, it's black people or gay people or women. No. You know, the, 0.82

00:23:41.620 uh, the, the folks who really, uh, uh, originated identity politics were the folks who said, you

00:23:47.480 know, three-fifths clause and all that stuff. That, that was identity politics. That's still,

00:23:53.420 that's still out there. Maybe, maybe that was a little too controversial for Houston, but, um.

00:24:00.440 Yeah. Oh yeah. That's, no, that's what they said. Barack Obama, constitutional lawyer, allegedly,

00:24:04.860 uh, the framers of our constitution, apparently they said three-fifths clause and all that stuff.

00:24:11.640 That's what they said. Not quite the eloquence of Alexander Hamilton, is it? No, of course not.

00:24:16.360 Barack Obama though, he's, he's using this little trick that lefties do and particularly lightly

00:24:22.500 educated, lightly informed lefties, which is they'll just say a slogan. So he didn't actually

00:24:28.020 make a statement. He said identity politics are the people who, who say, you know, three-fifths

00:24:33.460 clause and all that stuff. No, no, no. What did they say? What did they, what is the three-fifths

00:24:36.960 clause? He doesn't say that because it, it undercuts his entire point. The three-fifths

00:24:42.520 compromise was a compromise between slave states and free states. Really, I suppose really the

00:24:48.380 future slave and free states, the North and the South states with big slave populations 0.56

00:24:52.720 wanted to count slaves as whole human beings. Now, what Barack Obama is trying to imply is that

00:24:59.220 slaves are, they, we considered black people to only be three-fifths of a human being. That is not

00:25:04.600 what it was about at all. In fact, it was just the opposite. The slaveholders wanted to count slaves

00:25:10.120 as full human beings because then their states would be more populous and they would have more

00:25:14.240 representation in the federal government. The states with very few slaves did not want to count the

00:25:20.220 slaves as whole people because the slaves did not have any rights. So if the slaves don't have rights

00:25:25.260 as people, they shouldn't be counted as the population and the South shouldn't be able to 1.00

00:25:28.760 dominate the federal government. They had to come to this compromise to create the country that

00:25:33.660 ultimately elected Barack Obama to our everlasting shame. We elected him, but that was created by those

00:25:41.680 guys, those awful, terrible guys who said, you know, like the three-fifths clause and all that other

00:25:45.900 stuff. What a hack, what an absolute disgrace he is to the country. It's so sad. He's gotten worse 0.98

00:25:51.660 since he's left office. He used to at least try to temper his speech a little bit. Now it's just all

00:25:57.660 that Chicago trash. It's really, really sad. Now, what's really nice though is that we have people 1.00

00:26:02.740 in the White House like Sarah Huckabee Sanders who are fighting back against all of this nonsense.

00:26:07.780 The left right now, you know, they're trying to do the Obama trick, trying to give Obama credit for all

00:26:12.180 the good, all the good Trump stuff and pretend that Obama never did any of the sort of things

00:26:16.840 that, uh, that Donald Trump is doing. Sarah Sanders puts an end to that one, particularly with regard

00:26:22.060 to the border crisis. I was wondering, does the White House regret the, uh, uh, the fact that

00:26:27.900 children were affected by tear gas and that this situation took place and are these are an

00:26:32.440 investigation underway to prevent this from happening again? Certainly, um, the White House would

00:26:38.700 never want children to be in harm's way in any capacity whatsoever. Um, however, that is why we

00:26:47.140 are continuing to encourage people to follow the law and go to ports of entry. Uh, law enforcement

00:26:53.280 officials have used appropriate non-lethal force to protect themselves and prevent an illegal rush

00:26:58.920 across the border. And let's also not forget that this isn't the first time, uh, that non-lethal force

00:27:04.260 like this has been used. In fact, tear gas was used on average once a month during the Obama

00:27:09.200 administration for very similar circumstances. Um, in fact, they were actually for far less

00:27:14.780 circumstances because they didn't have, uh, the same numbers in the mass rush that we're seeing in

00:27:19.440 this caravan take place. Once a month during the Obama administration. How do you like that? How do

00:27:25.720 you like them apples? Because now you're seeing it being used because people are throwing rocks at border

00:27:30.700 patrol. They're trying to climb over and invade and run through. So they're using tear gas. Barack

00:27:36.280 Obama used tear gas much, much more, but you didn't, first of all, you didn't hear a peep about it at

00:27:42.060 the time because the left doesn't really care. They just hate Trump and they hate when conservatives

00:27:46.020 have effective government. But where are the journalists on this? Why don't they mention this?

00:27:51.540 Why don't they talk about it? Finally, we're pushing back. You know, it used to be that, uh,

00:27:56.160 ex-presidents didn't criticize the new president because it's, it's undignified. Well, Barack Obama

00:28:03.260 blew that out of the water. He won't stop criticizing him. Fine. Let loose. I hope that

00:28:08.200 the White House exposes every single aspect of that horrific failed presidency, beginning with all of

00:28:15.800 this BS. You know, the women of The View, they're very, uh, upset about this. They hate the reality of 1.00

00:28:21.740 the Obama administration. They hate that the things they really want to criticize Trump for

00:28:25.640 Barack Obama did as well because they've begun with a conclusion. They didn't begin with the

00:28:30.040 evidence and then they reach a conclusion. They've begun with the conclusion that I hate Trump. I

00:28:35.240 hate, Trump is Hitler. Trump is the worst and they work backwards. So anything that Trump does 1.00

00:28:39.820 is really, really bad and terrible. And then they realized Donald Trump is doing a lot of things

00:28:44.180 that past presidents, including Barack Obama did. And they get so frustrated by it and it's just

00:28:49.240 delicious. Here they are.

00:28:50.680 Last I checked, President Obama is no longer in office.

00:28:53.240 Exactly.

00:28:53.640 President Trump is in office. And he's destroying the country. And he's destroying the country. And

00:28:58.580 this, but Obama defense, you know, doesn't work for me. That's not to say using tear gas. I think

00:29:04.880 it's immoral when you're using tear gas against children. But ProPublica just found that the Trump

00:29:10.080 administration has secretly continued to separate kids from their families. The Obama administration

00:29:16.460 never did that. But I'm just, you know, the ACLU says that kind of separation is unprecedented. So

00:29:21.940 this whole, but Obama did it, but Obama did it. I don't care what Obama did. I don't care what

00:29:26.340 Trump is doing right here, right now.

00:29:29.680 So she's trying to make two points. She's trying to say Obama didn't really do it,

00:29:34.860 especially with child separation. They're trying to say Obama didn't really do it. But the child

00:29:38.640 separation policy isn't a Trump policy. That's a policy that dates back to 1997 to the Flores

00:29:44.340 Consent Agreement. It dates back to a time. And by the way, the reason they separate the

00:29:49.360 parents and the children is because the alternative is throwing children in jail.

00:29:53.700 Imagine if we were putting the children in jail. What would the left say then? You got to separate

00:29:57.020 them. You got to put the kids in a nice place. Yeah, that's what we're doing, guys. So what? And

00:30:01.200 by the way, it's not we who decided it. That's been the rule. That's been the law since the Clinton

00:30:05.760 administration. Now, now if Barack Obama wasn't enforcing the law, I'm not surprised at all. He

00:30:11.680 didn't enforce the law quite a lot. But you can't have it both ways. It would be throwing a hullabaloo

00:30:16.700 if it were the opposite as well. And what you're admitting is that Barack Obama didn't enforce the

00:30:21.720 law. But more importantly than that, what she's saying is, I don't care if Obama did it. I only

00:30:26.800 care if Trump did it. Right. That's right. That's what we've been saying all along. Now you're admitting

00:30:32.380 it. That's all it is. Sometimes even conservatives will say, well, it's whataboutism when you,

00:30:39.420 whataboutery, when Trump does something bad and then you say, well, Obama did it too.

00:30:45.120 That's not whataboutery. In many ways, whataboutery is whataboutery to bring up whataboutism is a

00:30:52.540 whataboutism. But what we're pointing out here is that this is the law and that this is a law for a

00:30:57.640 good reason and that this has been standard policy. It's not whataboutery. You only want to talk about

00:31:02.940 this one particular thing, just like the view lady. I don't want to talk about Obama yet. Well,

00:31:07.360 tough noogies. You have to talk about Obama. That's the way it is. So we've got a lot more

00:31:10.880 to get to. We've got to get to the mailbag. But first, if you're on dailywire.com, thank you very

00:31:14.600 much. You keep the lights in my hotel room on. If you are not, go there right now. It's 10 bucks a

00:31:19.300 month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro

00:31:24.020 show. You get to ask questions in the mailbag, which is coming up. You get to ask questions in the

00:31:28.100 conversation. And do you know the conversation's coming up? Did I tell you that? Monday, December 3rd.

00:31:33.920 Oh, I'm sorry. The conversation's not, it's the backstage that's coming up. You get to ask

00:31:38.260 questions there too, though. It's very confusing. There are so many places where you can ask

00:31:42.120 questions. Where do I get to ask questions? I don't know. No one, no one answers my questions.

00:31:46.340 I just yell down the hallway. Ben tells me to stop making a racket. Monday, December 3rd. Don't miss

00:31:51.080 our next episode of Daily Wire Backstage, the holiday edition. God King, Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro,

00:31:58.160 Andrew Klavan, Elisha Krause, and I will be talking politics, culture, and why frozen leftist tears

00:32:05.900 make the most beautiful snowflakes. So be sure to tune in. I'll be bringing the mistletoe.

00:32:11.380 As always, only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask the questions. Make sure to subscribe today.

00:32:17.080 Do it right now. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back.

00:32:28.160 I'm going to get through all of these today from Scott. Michael, when do you expect the left's

00:32:36.260 romanticism of having mental illnesses will be over? My wife, a hard lefty, always talks about 1.00

00:32:43.360 her mental illness, and I've grown to now be non-sympathetic. I want her to have help if she

00:32:48.860 needs it, but I don't want to give in to her leftist reassurance. What can I do? This is a very

00:32:54.820 important question. This is a question that I have seen personally. We all know people who have

00:33:01.580 mental problems and psychiatric problems, and some of them get help, and some of them don't,

00:33:06.160 and some of them are on medication, and some of them are in therapy. Some of those people keep the

00:33:10.960 problems to themselves and to their friends and family and kind of close. Some people broadcast it.

00:33:15.660 They want to talk about mental illness all the time, and the very sad fact, I won't go into details,

00:33:20.460 but friends of mine in particular who have broadcast the mental illness, and it's good to 0.99

00:33:26.000 talk about the mental illness, have had the worst outcomes from it. This is, again, I'm just talking 0.98

00:33:31.820 in anecdotes, but it really punches me right in the gut when I see this because I am really not

00:33:37.620 convinced that talking about mental illness is helping anybody whatsoever. I think you're exactly 1.00

00:33:43.760 right. I think it is romanticizing it. I think it is glorifying it. You see this when somebody

00:33:49.780 commits suicide and people talk about the suicide, that suicide is on television. You see a spike

00:33:55.840 in suicides. It makes it more accessible. It makes it more comfortable. It is the most heinous act that

00:34:02.520 you can commit. It is so contrary to nature and to natural law, and it is just awful because it's all

00:34:11.480 out there, and we're talking about it as though it's normal. It's a very bad idea, and don't, you know,

00:34:15.880 when people who have mental illnesses say, we need to talk about mental illnesses, you might remember

00:34:21.540 they have a mental illness. They're not, they don't have, I don't mean that in any glib way.

00:34:25.840 They don't have a ton of authority on this exactly. I agree entirely. I hope because what they're

00:34:32.940 doing is they're trying to do what the left has done with identity politics, with intersectionality,

00:34:40.460 which is take insanity, or madness, or mental illness, or whatever you want to call it, and make

00:34:45.680 that a privileged victim group that carries privileges. Mental illness doesn't carry any

00:34:51.220 privileges. Mental illness is awful. It is so terrible. I've seen it in friends of mine, and it's 0.99

00:34:57.360 just awful. We should not pretend it carries any privilege, that it's nice, that it should be

00:35:01.920 celebrated or talked about. It should be medicated, it should be fixed, and we should pray for people

00:35:06.220 who have it. And anybody who encourages people to celebrate or indulge their mental illness is

00:35:14.160 really doing great harm to that person and to society. From Gene, hello Mr. Knowles, I recently

00:35:21.080 found meaning in religion. I come from an atheist, strict atheist home, and I absolutely never came in

00:35:28.720 contact with religion over the first 25 years of my life. I really get the importance of Christianity,

00:35:33.920 the values it brought to our society, but I can't bring myself to really believe. In my head,

00:35:39.860 Christianity is basically just a set of really good values that help you live a meaningful life.

00:35:45.100 I don't know if I'm just being hypocritical, but I don't think I could ever really believe.

00:35:49.640 Well, you should. I really think that you should. It's good that you get the importance of Christianity.

00:35:55.060 It's good that you see the utilitarian argument that it's good for society, that it's good for the

00:36:00.760 individual. I think a lot of people are there. I was there for a long time. I was there from probably

00:36:07.840 18 or 19 through 23. So I get you. I was a kid once. That's fine. What you have to ask yourself is

00:36:15.240 why is it good for society? Why is it good for individuals to believe that God, the divine logic

00:36:23.980 of the universe, the only begotten son of God, was incarnate in the year, oh, right around the year zero,

00:36:30.280 in Bethlehem and became man and died for our sins and then was resurrected and conquered death?

00:36:38.360 Why does that value matter? Why do the values that come from that matter? If it produced good values,

00:36:46.060 then what was it? Did it really happen or did it not really happen? Is Jesus a man who walked on the earth,

00:36:52.580 who was crucified, died and was buried and resurrected on the third day and conquered death

00:36:56.720 and redeemed us from our sins? Or is it just a story? Is it false? If it's false, give me the

00:37:02.360 evidence that it's false. I don't see much evidence. I see a lot of evidence that it's true.

00:37:07.700 If it's good for society, then why isn't it good for you? What is good about that?

00:37:13.160 The one way that you can maybe get yourself to believe is to read apologetics. This is what I did,

00:37:19.200 because what it sounds like is that you've had the intellectual conversion, but you haven't had any

00:37:25.480 spiritual movement. That's fine. We've all been there. Read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Read

00:37:31.280 Orthodoxy by Chesterton. Read really anything by those guys. Read Hilaire Belloc. Read any, you know,

00:37:38.420 the more modern apologists. Then pray. Then go to church. Drew has this thing. He says,

00:37:43.620 how to find God in 60 days. Act as though God exists. Pray, take care of yourself, that sort of

00:37:50.020 thing. See what happens after that. I have great hope that you will find that it's not just useful,

00:37:56.520 but that it's useful for a reason. From Elliot. Hi, Michael. With the Democrats taking the House,

00:38:01.640 do you see a path for us to get funding to build the wall in the next six years,

00:38:04.800 assuming Trump's re-election? Or has that dream passed into the great blue yonder? There is hope,

00:38:10.740 which is that we need to shut down the government and get the wall funding right now, this second.

00:38:15.420 That's the only way we're going to get it. We're not going to take the House back in 2020,

00:38:18.560 probably. Historically, that would be very unlikely. So do it now. Shut down the government,

00:38:24.760 get funding for the Justice Department and for DHS, get the money to build the wall,

00:38:29.140 not a quarter of the wall, not half the wall, build the whole wall. Do it now. Who cares?

00:38:34.080 If we shut the government down, it redounds to our benefit politically. Either way,

00:38:39.040 either we get the wall, which is good, or Democrats let illegal aliens, one third of whom have

00:38:44.460 sicknesses, HIV, hepatitis, lice, all this sort of things, pour over to the border. Caravans full

00:38:51.720 of criminals just pouring over the border. Either way, we win. From Will. Hey there, Mr. Noels,

00:38:58.120 N-O-E-L-S. Get it? I get it. Christmas is coming. Anyway, the BDS movement against Israel seems to be

00:39:04.340 catching on more and more at U.S. universities. Do you foresee a time in the near future,

00:39:08.240 whenever a Democrat is elected president, that an official BDS-like strategy could be implemented

00:39:13.200 as official U.S. policy? Thanks, big fan of your work. Oh, yes. Certainly I do. The Democrat Party

00:39:20.360 is hostile to Israel. They are electing people now to the Congress, to the leadership of the

00:39:25.000 Democrat Party, who are hostile to Israel, who don't like Israel. Louis Farrakhan called Jews termites.

00:39:32.120 Barack Obama smiled in a photo with him in 2005. That's what we're talking about here. They've so

00:39:38.760 far sort of kept a lid on the Jew hatred in the Democrat Party, but even that is starting to crack.

00:39:44.940 You've got Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling Israel an apartheid state. She's the darling of the party, 0.53

00:39:50.480 and she's not just a popular darling. She's a darling of the fundraisers of that party, too. She was

00:39:54.860 flying all over the country, raising money for Democrats and campaigning for them. There is

00:39:58.960 certainly a chance that the Democrats follow the line of the United Kingdom and various European

00:40:06.360 countries and condemn Israel and try to promote some Arab state in what is the nation of Israel.

00:40:15.700 We should be very careful about that. That would be a terrible thing for an American ally,

00:40:19.600 for the entire region, and for justice. From Adrian,

00:40:22.400 Dear Michael, master of all things Covfefe, I would like to get your take on tattoos. Would you?

00:40:28.960 Are you sure you'd? Okay. My mother has always been a very devout Catholic and has always been

00:40:33.380 against tattoos. She would always quote the part from the Bible that says that our bodies are our

00:40:38.240 temple, so we need to keep them clean. I've recently felt the urge to get one, but would like to hear

00:40:43.040 other people's opinions as well, and you have been my go-to for most things that have to do with the

00:40:48.660 Catholic faith. Love the show. Keep up the good work, Adrian. I'll give you an answer. I don't know if

00:40:52.460 this is exactly the Catholic answer, but this is just my answer broadly. If you are a Marine or a

00:40:59.560 convict, get a tattoo. You should have a tattoo. If you served in the military, you know, or you've

00:41:09.640 been convicted of a crime, you make a good case. You can get a tattoo if you want a tattoo. For other

00:41:15.420 people, it's a little tough. You know, look, could I wear a tattoo? Could I wear a face tattoo like

00:41:20.300 Mike Tyson? No. I just don't. I don't have the body for it. I don't have the personality for it. It's

00:41:26.220 not going to work. Some guys get tattoos, like little hipster whiny guys get tattoos, and it's

00:41:31.500 pretty sad. If you're a kind of burly dude and whatever you wear, that's fine. I guess whatever,

00:41:35.940 that's fine. Women, ladies, if you have a tattoo, don't get any more. If you don't have a tattoo, 1.00

00:41:44.600 don't get one. Adrian is a name that could go either way, so I want to give you both answers.

00:41:50.600 I don't like them. Some people really like them. I don't like them. I especially don't like them on

00:41:54.640 women. If they're hidden, that's cool. Whatever. That's fine. If they're really out there, I just 0.99

00:41:59.540 don't like it. That's my preference. Tattoos have been around since the dawn of man. There is evidence

00:42:04.940 that the Visigoths had tattoos. Native Americans have had tattoos. They've been around for a long

00:42:09.740 time, but I don't like them. I think there's a reason why in the West, in most of civilized

00:42:15.180 society, we've kind of gotten rid of them. But there were always eccentric aristocrats who would

00:42:19.220 wear tattoos. English royalty, that sort of thing. Just as my preference, I don't like them, but you do

00:42:24.860 you, kid. From Catherine. Dear Mr. Knowles, did you hear about the scientist in China who is claiming

00:42:31.640 to have made the first gene-edited babies using CRISPR and IVF? Most scientists still see that

00:42:37.900 this is a big problem ethically and morally, but not all. Although support for this type of science

00:42:41.460 is still uncommon, do you think more people will begin to defend such practices? What would be the

00:42:45.360 long-term consequences? Yes. So the story that's come out of China is that a scientist has created 0.95

00:42:51.240 a gene-edited baby who's gone in, changed the genes of a baby to be a certain way, and now that this

00:42:59.100 baby exists in the world. Many more people will defend these practices. This is the logical

00:43:06.600 consequence of a society that condones abortion and in vitro fertilization, because what those

00:43:12.440 techniques do, one, abortion kills babies. In vitro fertilization switches the natural order and makes

00:43:19.900 babies for the parents, as though, rather than parents raising babies, it's babies are being created for

00:43:28.740 the gratification of the parents. And in vitro fertilization, you can kind of pick what you

00:43:34.180 want. I'm not saying everyone who does this does that, but very frequently you fertilize a number of

00:43:38.600 eggs, you've got the little individual humans that will be implanted, and you can pick which ones you

00:43:45.720 want to keep and which ones you don't want to keep. And if you choose to keep all of them, you end up

00:43:49.640 like Octomom, and you have eight kids in you. That's a rarity. This is the logical consequence of that,

00:43:55.040 which is that we can make whatever sort of babies we want. Designer babies, super babies. This is going

00:43:59.920 to continue. It's a horrifically terrifying bioethical problem, but the cat's out of the

00:44:06.300 bag, and we really let the cat out of the bag decades ago. All right, on that happy note, that's

00:44:10.840 our show. Enjoy the weekend. I will finally be back in La La Land starting next week, next Monday,

00:44:17.700 and so it's been a lot of fun being on the road with these speeches. Be sure to tune in,

00:44:21.600 because we're going to be doing backstage then as well. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:44:25.000 This is The Michael Knowles Show. Try not to get indicted by Bob Mueller over the weekend.

00:44:51.600 By Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:44:56.280 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Michael Knowles Show - November 29, 2018

Ep. 260 - Mueller’s Rats

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