Ep. 260 - Mueller’s Rats
Summary
Avenatti is still a dirt bag, and now he's a Democratic presidential candidate. Michael Avenatti has been accused of using funds that were donated to Stormy Daniels, without her consent, without telling her where the money was going, and using it for his own purposes.
Transcript
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Special counsel Robert Mueller has gotten President Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen
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to plead guilty to lying to Congress. So now we are all expected to believe the guy who has
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admitted that he's a liar. We will examine the central problem of Mueller's investigation thus
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far. Then CNN celebrates the possibility of impeachment. Barack Obama reminds us how awful
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he is. And the ladies of The View try to forget him. I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael
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Every day, another one dropping in the Mueller investigation. They're turning it on Trump.
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They're going for impeachment. There's a big, big problem in this investigation.
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And we, uh, I'm sorry, hold on. We, before we can get to the Bob Mueller investigation,
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we have breaking news coming in this. Yes, it has been confirmed. Um, a creepy porn lawyer,
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Michael Avenatti is still a dirt bag. That is, that is now being confirmed around. It's on the
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wires. It's being confirmed all around. Michael Avenatti, a dirt bag. Not exactly a man bites
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dog sort of story, but, uh, this is, this is just delightful. It turns out that Michael Avenatti
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has been, uh, improperly using funds that were donated to Stormy Daniels, has been doing things
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that she didn't want him to do on her behalf, pretending to be her. Here, uh, is Stormy Daniels'
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statement that she gave to the Daily Beast yesterday. Quote, Michael has been a great
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advocate in many ways. I'm tremendously grateful to him for aggressively representing me in my fight
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to regain my voice. We'll get to that in a second. But in other ways, Michael has not treated me with
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the respect and deference an attorney should show to a client. He has spoken on my behalf without my
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approval. He filed a defamation case against Donald Trump against my wishes. He repeatedly refused to
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tell me how my legal defense fund was being spent. Now he has launched a new crowdfunding campaign
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using my face and name without my permission and attributing words to me that I never wrote
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or said. First, before we get to any of this, when did Stormy Daniels lose her voice? All I've noticed
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is Stormy Daniels talking, talking about President Trump's genitals, giving interviews even after she
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took money in exchange for not describing the sexual encounter. She's going on news shows. She's going
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on comedy shows. I never saw Stormy Daniels losing her voice. But it's just one of those stupid
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slogans that lefties say that don't really mean anything. The real meat of this here,
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pun unintended, is that Michael has not treated me with the respect and deference an attorney
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should show to a client. Gee, do you think? Is that really so? What is he being accused of? He's
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being accused of taking the money that was donated to her, just taking it without her consent, not
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telling her where the money was being spent, and using it for his own purposes. Now he is saying
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that he's given, you know, she's used some of the money for security and he's taken the rest for his
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legal fees. But now he's started a new crowdfunding campaign in her name that she has nothing to do
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with. This, by the way, is why very often it's not a good reason or it's not a good idea to donate
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to crowdfunding campaigns. You have no idea who's running them. It might be on behalf of somebody,
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but you don't know where that money is going. You don't know how it's going to be spent.
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We're so tempted because of our compassion to just throw money at anything. But sometimes it
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ends up going to guys like Michael Avenatti. And this other one, he filed a defamation case against
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Trump against my wishes. Michael Avenatti said when he filed that defamation suit that he was doing
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it on her behalf, he's representing her. If he's doing that now against her wishes,
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that's a serious issue. I mean, that could carry legal consequences. It could carry consequences
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for his career. So that's not good. All of this, though, what's the big takeaway?
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He's almost certainly going to be the 2020 Democrat nominee for president. He's all but locked it up at
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this point. He's abused women. He has improperly stolen charitable donations. This, I think,
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makes him an honorary Clinton. This is the definition of being a Clinton. He has already
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locked it up. Kamala Harris can go home. Cory Booker, Liz Warren, it's just there. It's over.
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Michael Avenatti is now a Democrat presidential candidate par excellence. He's almost certainly
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violated the law. That's it. That's it. He's got it locked up. Congratulations,
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nominee Michael Avenatti. We look forward to a full and robust general election campaign in 2020
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against Donald Trump. Going to be a lot of fun. Back to the major news story, not the news that
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we've all known since Michael Avenatti first crawled out of whatever gutter he's living in
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and got into another gutter called CNN and showed his face on TV. The real story today is that Michael
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Cohen, the longtime personal attorney for Donald Trump, has pled guilty to lying to Congress. Now,
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this is a deal that was reached with Robert Mueller, with the special counsel, and it's another one of
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these plea deals. So what is it about? What he apparently, allegedly, lied about to Congress
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is when a deal in Moscow for a Trump building was nixed, when they got rid of the deal. What Michael
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Cohen was saying to Congress is that the Trump organization was looking at building a tower in
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Moscow, they were going to do it in 2015. And then by January 2016, by the time of the Iowa
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caucuses, they nixed the deal and there was no more of that. What Bob Mueller has now gotten Michael
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Cohen to plead guilty to lying about is that they were still discussing that Moscow deal even after
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the Iowa caucuses into 2016, into the campaign. So here's Michael Cohen, the guy, the personal lawyer
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who, and the lawyer for the Trump organization, who is coming out and saying, I lied. Trump was trying
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to do a deal in Moscow during the campaign. He is totally turning on Trump here. And for that,
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to figure out some of this reaction, we can turn now to President Trump's last interaction with Michael
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Cohen. If you're a rat, then I'm the biggest mutt in the history of the mafia.
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He's got a lower voice than I remember seeing at those White House conferences. But that is what
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it sounds like. It does sound like it's these mob dealings. They're building the building. They got
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to talk to the enforcers in Moscow. You got Bob Mueller. He's forcing these guys to start lying,
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to start telling narratives. Okay, right, whatever. What did Mueller actually file? In this filing,
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he said, quote, in truth and in fact, and as Cohen well knew, Cohen's representations about the Moscow
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project he made to House and Senate intelligence committees were false and misleading. Cohen made
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the false statements to give the false impression that the Moscow project ended before the Iowa caucus
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in the very first primary in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations. So that's the false
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statement. The false statement is maybe the Moscow talks in some form or another went on longer than
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January 2016. Maybe Trump stopped talking about it in January 2016, but people in the Trump organization
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were still pursuing it. Maybe there was an email that went out to some developer in Russia. Who knows?
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Who knows? My question is, who cares? Who cares if it ended in January 2016 or February or March?
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Where is the law that says that a presidential candidate can't continue to own a business and he can't continue
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to build his international real estate empire overseas while he's running for president? He's not even the
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president yet. He's just running, you know, during or after the Iowa caucuses. President Trump takes this
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same approach. Here is Trump responding to the latest Mueller plea deal.
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We had a position to possibly do a deal to build a building of some kind in Moscow. I decided not to
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do it. The primary reason, there could have been other reasons, but the primary reason, it was very
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simple. I was focused on running for president. There would be nothing wrong if I did do it.
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So two statements in there, two things to look at. He says, I dropped the deal in January. So the rest of
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us think, well, why would he drop that deal? It's, it could be a lucrative deal for the Trump
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organization. Why end it? Because he was focused on running for president. Fair enough. Let me tell
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you, if you've ever been on a campaign, even a congressional campaign or a local campaign,
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they are exhausting. When you're running for president, you don't sleep for 18 months.
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So fair enough. They don't, they're not going to pursue this. They'll do it at a later time. Okay.
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But then he gives it an alternate theory, which is, let's say he did do it. Let's say that he was
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building this, trying to build this building in Moscow afterward. So what? Where's the law? Who
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cares? Now we, we have this intuition that it's against the law. We have this intuition that it's
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wrong. What if, what if, uh, John McCain were building a building in Moscow? And what if Barack
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Obama did it? What if, what if Hillary did it? What if, okay, fine. This is what happens when you have
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a businessman as president. We don't, we haven't had businessmen as president in, I don't, I don't know
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the last time we had a businessman as president. Truman maybe was true. Truman was a haberdasher
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or something like that. When was the last time we've just had career politicians, Barack Obama
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never held a private sector job in his life. Basically, um, uh, George W. Bush, what, you know,
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he owned a baseball team, but he was a, he was governor. He was, you know, he was a, he was a
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politician came from a political dynasty family. Bill Clinton only ever ran for office right after law
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school, ran for attorney general, did that track, uh, George Bush senior. He was an oil man in his
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young days, but then he was a career politician after that. Um, he had, he'd already finished his
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business, uh, dealings by the time he was running for office. Uh, before, before that, it goes on and
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on. Ronald Reagan was a movie star, so on and so forth. Donald Trump is a businessman, not in the way
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some, everybody has business interests. His business is business. He has a TV show about all the
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business he did. He's worked in so many different industries, casinos, real estate, golf courses,
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vodka. That didn't last long. Steaks, television. He's worked in all of these different industries.
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And so his business is business. And when you got a businessman, businessmen have business
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interests all around the world. And that's perfectly fine. It's, it's a nice thing to have a
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businessman in government. Government moves very slow. It's inefficient. Uh, it, it isn't terribly
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connected to the real world. When you get someone in there from the private sector, things move a
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little faster, like we've seen in this administration. Okay. Why does Mueller care?
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What, why does that care? What does this deal in Moscow have to do with the Clinton campaign
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and hacked emails? And what does it have to do with anything? What does it have to do with the
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Trump campaign? You know, if the idea is that he was continuing to pursue this, uh, building at the
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time, okay. So then we're, we're told that the Russians decided to help Trump become president
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so that he wouldn't return to the private sector and build that building in Moscow. Is that the
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implication? What, what is the, this is the trouble with this whole Russia narrative is they're trying
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to construct a coherent storyline out of random disparate events that have no connection to one
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another. So then the question is, why is Michael Cohen going along with all this? Michael Cohen once
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said something to the effect of he would take a bullet for Donald Trump before he'd rat. And then the
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dirty, rotten rat is ratting. So, uh, what, what is his incentive? President Trump explains that too.
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Go back and look at the paper that Michael Cohen wrote before he testified in the house and or Senate.
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It talked about his position, what he's trying to do because he's a weak person and not a very smart
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person. What he's trying to do is end. And it's very simple. He's got himself a big prison sentence.
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And he's trying to get a much lesser prison sentence by making up a story. Now here's the
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thing. Even if he was right, it doesn't matter because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted
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during the campaign. I was running my business, a lot of different things during the campaign. So
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very simply, Michael Cohen is lying and he's trying to get a reduced sentence for things that have
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nothing to do with me. So Michael Cohen pleads guilty. This is a count. It faces up to five years
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in prison and a fine of $250,000. Don't forget though, Michael Cohen has already pled guilty to
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eight criminal counts. He's pled guilty to bank fraud, tax fraud, campaign finance violations,
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eight different counts that he's pled guilty to. Only one of them had any connection to the Trump
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campaign. And that's when Cohen paid off Stormy Daniels. All the other seven have nothing to do with
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the Trump campaign. They have everything to do with the time long before the campaign when Michael
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Cohen had his own private business interactions. So what's the timeline here? It's that Bob Mueller
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takes Trump's personal lawyer, squeezes him, says, we're going to throw you in jail forever on all of
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these other counts that you had before you were a lawyer during the campaign, unless you rat on Donald
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Trump. He's got all of this incentive to turn on Trump and do whatever Mueller wants. If he doesn't
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say what Mueller wants, he could rot in prison. And so let's say that this is true though. Let's say
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that right now Cohen is telling the truth. He lied to Congress, but now he's telling the truth. The
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problem is he has no credibility. To use a word that has been much abused in the last couple months,
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not only does Michael Cohen not have any credibility, none of these guys have any credibility.
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None of Mueller's star witnesses have a shred of credibility. This is the Mueller's central
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problem right now. Mueller's central problem is he's built this entire case on calling people liars
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and having people plead guilty, whether they were or not, to having made a false statement or to being
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a liar. That's fine. But then we have no reason to believe these witnesses. How many times have they
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changed their story, changed their tune? What are the indictments so far? The indictments so far
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against Trump campaign members are George Papadopoulos. Would they get him on? They got
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him on pleading guilty to making false statements. He was in prison for 14 days. So I guess the
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statements weren't that bad if he was only there for two weeks. Paul Manafort. Now there are more
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charges against him. Why? Because he lied. Because Mueller was saying, you're a liar. You lied. Even in
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your plea agreement with us, you are a liar. Rick Gates, who was Paul Manafort's former, uh,
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deputy who, uh, you know, had worked with Manafort on lobbying campaigns, pled guilty to making one
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false statements charge. Uh, Michael Flynn, same thing. Former national security advisor,
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pled guilty to false statements. Alex van der Zwan, who's a Dutch lawyer who was working with Rick
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Gates, pled guilty to making false statements regarding his contact with Rick Gates. And now we
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have Michael Cohen, who's pled guilty to making false statements to Congress. All of the, I'm not saying
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that Mueller's central problem is that he's dealing with liars. Prosecutors deal with liars all the
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time. The problem here is that all the crimes that Mueller, rather, has been able to throw on
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these guys are the crimes of lying. So if that is all we know about them, if that is the whole reason
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that they're in the position that they're in, why would we believe a single word coming out of their
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mouth? Especially now that we know that Paul Manafort is allegedly a liar, then he enters into a
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plea agreement and then he lies about the plea agreement. So now he's got more charges on him.
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Why would we believe any of these liars? If Mueller had anything, if Mueller actually had evidence that
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Trump committed some crime with the Russians or that some campaign member committed a crime with
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the Russians, he would ring them up on those charges because then at least you can say, we've
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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
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tell the truth. And I don't care what you think the truth is. You better say what I want
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the truth to be, what the truth would be if it were convenient for me. You've got nothing.
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That's just, that is a less than nothing. So even, I mean, this is not a good sign for the
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Mueller investigation. Right now, the Twitter, left-wing Twitter is so excited because Michael
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Cohen pled guilty. That's all it says on Twitter, by the way. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleads
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guilty in court. Guilty to what? Oh, he's a liar. Oh, okay. Okay, fine. Oh, I wonder what he'll say now.
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Maybe he'll talk about when he was abducted by aliens and go to planet Zebulon 7. There's no
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credibility at all. Nevertheless, CNN won't let this get them down. CNN's Jeffrey Toobin is so
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excited. He can, he can just smell the impeachment coming. I'll start with you. What do you make of
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President Trump seemingly dangling a pardon for Manafort? Is there anything legally dubious
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about it? Is it obstruction of justice? Well, you have to remember that we are now in the realm of,
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of possible impeach, impeachable offenses. And that is much more a political question than a
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legal question. Is this something that would motivate now a democratic majority, uh, in the
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House of Representatives to impeach the president? I mean, my belief is that the answer is no, that Nancy
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Pelosi, Jerry Nadler, they've told me and others, they don't want to deal with impeachment, but because
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they know that there will not be 67 votes in the Senate to remove, uh, the president. So they're just
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not going to go on that fool's errand. However, that shouldn't distract us from the fact that this
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is egregiously inappropriate behavior on the part of the president. It is all but an encouragement to
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tell, to, to Paul Manafort, to stop cooperating, to don't get involved with Mueller, to take your
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punishment. I will take care of you later. It's egregiously wrong, but is it something that will
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lead to impeachment? I don't think so. Is he right? Is it an encouragement to these people not to say
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whatever Mueller wants them to say? You're damn right it is. And it absolutely should be. Because
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what Jeffrey Toobin said at the beginning is absolutely right. This has nothing to do with
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charging someone with a crime. This has everything to do with politics. And I'm beginning to think
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that this whole Mueller investigation is only about politics. It has nothing to do with crime. It has
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nothing to do with dredging up some crimes from 2013, some tax issue to try to squeeze somebody,
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to sing a song, some made-up fiction about Donald Trump. I'm beginning to think it's all about
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politics. I think it was about politics when Peter Strzok first started the investigation in the first
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place and 15 days later called it an insurance policy to stop Donald Trump. I think it was all about
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politics when the FBI hired a paid Democrat operative to come up with dirt on Donald Trump,
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a guy who had been paid by the DNC and Hillary Clinton. I think it's all about politics now because
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there's no crime of collusion. They haven't accused these guys of any crimes other than being dirty,
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rotten liars. And they're trying to use their lies to create the aura that Donald Trump is a bad guy
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and he should be impeached from his office. That's what it's about. How are they going to get Donald
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Trump? I don't think Bob Mueller thinks he's going to get Donald Trump. I think what they're doing is
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just making him look really, really bad to either encourage impeachment or to have him lose his
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election in 2020. All about politics. It's always about politics with these guys. Reminds me of the
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Obama administration when everything was about politics. And you have to watch this. He reminds you
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how terrible that administration was. He was giving a talk at Rice University. Now,
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Barack Obama is lambasting our founders. He's taking credit for things that he has no business
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taking credit for. Here's Barack Obama on identity politics. You start getting politics that's based on
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that person's not like me and it must be their fault. And you start getting the politics based on a
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nationalism that's not pride in country, but hatred for somebody on the other side of the border.
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And you start getting, um, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the kind of, um,
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politics that does not allow for compromise. Politics does not allow for compromise from Barack
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Obama, who said, I won't work with Republicans. I've got a pen and a phone and I'll do whatever I
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want. Uh, that's unbelievable. He says that we hate people on the other side of the border. We don't
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hate people on the other side of the border. We like them on the other side of the border. We want them
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to stay on the other side of the border. The other side of the border is where they belong because
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they're not American citizens. We don't, we don't even hate them when they get here. We give them an
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insane amount of welfare. We treat them very well. We arrest them for committing crimes and we still
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don't even deport them. What an outrageous calumny to say about his fellow citizens. But that's, uh,
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that's Barack Obama. That's all he does. Talks about, uh, now, now, so he's, he's able to
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strictly lambast president Trump, even during this very successful time in office. But he does this
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amazing thing where he takes credit for all the good stuff that Trump does. And he foists all of
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the bad stuff that he did onto Donald Trump. Here is Barack Obama talking about taking credit,
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trying to take credit for the oil and natural gas explosion. I was extraordinarily proud of the Paris
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courts because, uh, look, I know, you know, uh, you know, I know we're an oil country and, uh, we need
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American energy. And, and by the way, uh, American energy production, uh, you wouldn't always know it.
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Uh, uh, but you know, it went up every year I was president. Um, and you know, that whole suddenly
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America's like the biggest oil producer and the biggest get, uh, that was me people. I just want
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you to, so. Two thoughts here. One, Barack Obama, the guy who said individuals can't accomplish
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anything and you didn't build that and government does everything is now saying I built that. That
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was me direct quote. Uh, but two, he's, that isn't true. That is just flat out wrong. The, the production
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of oil by the federal government on federal lands during Barack, uh, Barack Obama's presidency was
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flat. It didn't happen. There was no growth. He's right. There was an oil and fracking boom that was
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all on private land. In many ways that was in spite of his administration, which cut off oil pipelines,
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which constantly tried to hang up the Keystone XL pipeline, all of these projects. He was hugely
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anti-oil, anti-energy. And now he's trying to take credit for it, which shows you something.
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A lot of times people on the left want to paint him as an idealist. Oh, he's an idealist. He's too
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academic. He's too good for this world. No, he's a hack. Despicable Chicago politician is what he is.
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Who's willing to take credit for things that he ostensibly opposes when it suits his purposes
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because his administration was an utter failure. His legacy has been erased and he's nobody. Every,
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he does these speaking things and I remember that he exists. When I don't see him on TV for more than
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three days, I forget he ever existed. His, his administration was that meaningless and he goes
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on. He can't give it up. Here's, here's the rest of the talk. You know, when I hear people say they
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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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
00:28:50.680
Last I checked, President Obama is no longer in office.
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
00:29:29.680
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
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
00:33:26.000
talk about the mental illness, have had the worst outcomes from it. This is, again, I'm just talking
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
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
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,
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,
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
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
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.