Ep. 273 - The 2020 Campaign Trail Of Tears
Episode Stats
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Summary
Elizabeth Warren announces her intentions to run for president, and the New York Times makes a surprisingly conservative pick for the song of the year, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spends her Christmas vacation attacking little old me on Twitter.
Transcript
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The 2020 race officially begins as Elizabeth Warren announces her intentions to run for president.
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We will take an early look around the campaign trail of tears.
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Then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spends her Christmas vacation attacking little old me on Twitter.
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Future fake Republican Senator Mitt Romney kicks off 2019 by attacking President Trump.
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And the New York Times makes a surprisingly conservative pick for the song of the year.
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I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Now we're back in 2020 because Liz Warren has kicked off the 2020 presidential race.
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In our country, if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to take care
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Growing up in Oklahoma, that promise came through for me and my family.
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After my older brothers joined the military and I was still just a kid, my daddy had a heart
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My mom found a minimum wage job at Sears and that job saved our house and our family.
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My daddy ended up as a janitor, but he raised a daughter who got to be a public school teacher,
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Elizabeth Warren got to, what was it, something about she was raised by people who didn't have
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a lot of money and then she got to become a senator.
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And now, most importantly, she gets to run for president and complain about how terrible
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that wonderful country is that gave her everything that she has and let someone begin in very modest
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circumstances in life and rise to become a U.S.
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You're going to get Hillary Clinton 2.0, Hillary Clinton 2 electric boogaloo.
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She's running the same playbook, hard, you know, trying to appeal to suburban people, trying
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to appeal to, well, really her only appeal, I think.
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And this is what's really going to hurt her, is that her only appeal is to effete white
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But it's just, it's so narrow, her appeal doesn't really, doesn't really reach that far.
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Her main issue here, as you see in this opening, is income inequality.
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And income inequality as a campaign issue really means envy.
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It just means someone has more than I have, and I want to have what they have, and I want
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them to have less than they have, because that, I guess, will mean that I have more.
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It's not really about everyone having more wealth.
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It's not about the middle class having more wealth.
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It's about the rich having less wealth, because that's how income inequality works.
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Whenever anyone talks about income inequality, you see everybody is increasing in wealth.
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But the wealthy are getting more wealth relative to the poor people, according to her premise.
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But she's not talking about how the poor are getting wealthier.
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She's just talking about how awful it is that the rich are getting wealthier at a faster rate
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Maybe if the economy totally tanks, it'll get some traction.
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But as a campaign issue, the 2020 campaign is not going to be about what we would consider
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This is because, so far, we're not going to see a primary contest for the Republicans.
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We're only going to see the primary on the left for the Democrats.
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They might have little pet issues here and there, the Green New Deal or health care or
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income inequality, but there's no unifying issue.
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And because their entire politics now is predicated on identity, on intersectionality, on I'm more
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of a woman, I'm more of an ethnic minority, I'm more of an oppressed victim group, that's
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And this is going to kill Warren in particular, because if the race is about identity, she loses
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on what her actual identity is, which is a privileged old white woman, and she loses on her fake
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identity because she pretends to be a Native American when she's not.
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She's already basically toast because of this issue.
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Here is Warren announcing her presidential intentions, and she's being interviewed, this is on CNN, and she has to dodge the
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What's your message to the Democratic primary voter who says, I love where Senator Warren stands on the issues, but I worry about
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I worry about a campaign more about Native American ancestry than the middle class.
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You know, look, I'm in this fight because I understand what's happening to working families.
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I grew up in a paycheck-to-paycheck family, and my big chance was a commuter college that cost $50
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I run for office because I'm grateful down to my toes for the opportunities that were given to me, and I am determined
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that we will give those same opportunities, not just to some of our kids, but to all of our kids.
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I think when we fight for something positive, for something big, when we show, not just tell, but show, what
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Democrats will get out there and make happen, I think that's how we win.
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So that's the giant elephant in the room is they say, what do you say to people who like you, who like
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your policy ideas, who like that you're a big liberal and a big left-winger, but they say you're not
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electable because you're a fraud and you lied about your Native American ancestry for decades to advance
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your career, and now you got called out on it and you don't have a good answer. And she doesn't have a good
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answer. She doesn't answer that. She pivots and says, well, we're going to talk about hard scrabble.
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Well, I'm so grateful. I'm blah, blah, blah. But she doesn't have an answer. She doesn't have an
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answer. She's had months to come up with an answer. She's had years to come up with an answer. This
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issue has plagued her now since what, 2012, 2014? And now President Trump, at least for two years,
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over two years, has been calling her Pocahontas. If she had an answer on it, she would have come up
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with it before she announced her intentions to run for president, but she doesn't. And this isn't
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about Republican versus Democrat or right versus left. The left itself, the Democrat party is going
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to do a much better job than we would ever do of attacking Liz Warren over this issue. And they'll
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do a better job, one, because they have an incentive to do it. You're going to have a lot of people vying
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for that presidential nomination, and this is her weak point, and they're going to attack her for it.
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But two, identity politics matters much more to the left than it does to us. When we talk about
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identity politics on the right, we usually joke about it. We joke about Pocahontas or Ocasio-Cortez
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or whatever, pretending to be something that they're not. But we're kind of laughing. We don't
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really care. It's just kind of a stupid line that they've used, and it's stupid for them to even care
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about it so much. It's stupid to pretend to be a victim. It's stupid to want to be a victim. I don't
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want to be a victim. I want to be a winner. It's stupid to gripe about privilege. I want privilege.
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I want more privilege. Give me all the privilege I can have. I want my family and my friends to have
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privileges. I want everybody to have privileges, and they already do. They were born in, and they
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live in, the greatest country in the world at the greatest time of peace and prosperity in all of
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human history. So that's a good thing. We shouldn't whine about that or complain. When the left talks
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about it, though, they're really earnest. It really matters to them. And so she doesn't have that answer,
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okay, that's going to hurt her. What people are not talking about, though, is she has this other
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liability, which is she's even a fraud about the bootstrap stuff. So, okay, she obviously now is in
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much better financial circumstances than she was when she was raised and brought up. But this whole
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pull yourself up by your bootstraps, I went to a commuter college, and I paid my own way through
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life is simply not true. Elizabeth Warren, a lot of people don't know this, Elizabeth Warren married
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her high school sweetheart. She had two kids with her high school sweetheart. Her hubby put her through
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college. Her hubby put her through law school. And then when she got a job at the University of
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Houston Law Center, she met a visiting professor named Bruce Mann. She instantly divorced her
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husband. This was a quickie divorce, not even she made the decision quickly to divorce him. The divorce
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was over within 73 days. She divorces her husband, who put her through law school, the father of her two
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children, within 73 days. And six months later, she's married to this visiting professor that she met at
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law school, her old colleague at the University of Houston Law Center. This is a major sex scandal.
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We'll get to sex scandals a little bit later when we talk about Mitt Romney's prattling on and moral
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narrow-mindedness and moral idiocy in many ways. But this is a major sex scandal. And people haven't
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brought it up yet. They will. The left will bring this up. Democrats will bring this up. And we know
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Liz Warren is nervous about this because she's tried to change the story. So it's variously been
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reported that she actually got divorced in 1978. And it was actually two years before she remarried
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her husband. Court records show that isn't true, that she was actually divorced in 1980.
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Why haven't we heard about this before? In part, it's because her ex-husband, Jim Warren,
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died in 2003. So he's not been around for her political career. He's not been around to give his
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side of the story. They will bring this up. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Hillary,
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whoever's going to run is going to bring this up. And she's going to have to answer for it. Because
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let's say, I mean, the big issue is her Native American lying about her ancestry to push her
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career. That's the big issue with the identity politics. But this bootstrapping stuff, this what
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is tantamount to a sex scandal, is going to be the one that I think finishes her off. And if this is
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the first you're hearing about it, I guarantee you this will not be the last. The identity politics,
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by the way, is now also swinging back around and hitting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I spent one wild
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night tweeting with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I was living rent-free in her head for a day.
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Ring.com slash Knowles. I had a wild time with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over my Christmas break.
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So we haven't been on the air now in over a week. I flew down after Christmas. I was down in Florida
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and I was just there with some friends. We were hanging around. I, you know, being slightly to
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the right of Attila the Hun, I was exclusively referring to this time as hashtag beach week
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in reference to Brett Kavanaugh's beach excursions with his pals in high school. And I actually,
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I got this shirt that it was Brett Kavanaugh holding a beer at his confirmation hearing,
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you know, through Photoshop. And it said, still like beer. I was just living in my own conservative
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bubble. I was thinking, gosh, nothing could get better than this. I'm having
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martinis. I'm sitting in the sun. I thought there's no way that Christmas could get any better
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than this. And then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave me a, such a wonderful Christmas gift. I really,
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I haven't thanked her publicly for it, but I really have to thank her for it. She tweeted out
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a picture of her congressional plaque, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And she wrote on it,
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don't be fooled by the plaques that we got. I'm still, I'm still Alex from the Bronx.
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Like that song, like the, what is it? Jennifer Lopez song. I'm still Jenny from the block.
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So she tweets that out and I look down, I see this, I'm sitting there, a couple of martinis in. I say,
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oh, uh, you're not from the Bronx or you were from the Bronx when you were a little kid,
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but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her entire life, beginning in kindergarten and when she was just
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barely conscious, uh, lived in Yorktown Heights, which is a very wealthy suburb.
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It's a town in Westchester County. And coincidentally, it's the town right next to the
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town that I grew up in, except the town that she grew up in is much more homogenous, much less
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diverse, much more affluent than the town that I grew up in. And, but it was right next door.
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And we both moved there when I was really little. My parents were living in the city,
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in a, in a, in a, uh, borough of the city. I think, uh, that was in Brooklyn. Alexandria was in
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the Bronx and we both moved up to these towns. So you have a parallel life story, at least for
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childhood. And, uh, so she, but she keeps pretending that she's from the Bronx, that she
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grew up in the Bronx. She actually put this in her campaign website. She said that she commuted all
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the time between the Bronx and her school in Westchester, which is not possible. She went to a
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public school. You don't get to commute to public schools. You're districted into them. So she lived
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there. She lived in Westchester in Yorktown Heights. And maybe she visited the Bronx as a kid.
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I visited the Bronx as a kid all the time. I did my grocery shopping in the Bronx. That's where all
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the good Italian food is. I started smoking cigars at the cigar roller in the Bronx. I, I probably
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spent more time in the Bronx as a kid than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did, but who knows? I'm not sure.
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So anyway, she tweets us out and I just started tweeting out and pointing out that she didn't
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grow up in the Bronx. So I say, you grew up in Yorktown Heights. Uh, the, the average household
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wealth of a, uh, you know, in, in Yorktown Heights in this suburb is $1.2 million. And I say this
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because when you compare it, the average household wealth in the Bronx is about $400,000. So it's well
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more than double, almost triple in Yorktown Heights where she grew up. So I'm tweeting out
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all these things. People are getting very angry at me. They're saying, well, but it doesn't mean
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she, that doesn't mean she's wealthy. It doesn't mean she had the average wealth. I said, well,
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that's not the point. The point is she grew up in a way more affluent area than she's pretending
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that she grew up. She had all the advantages of it. Excellent school system, sent her to whatever
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college she wanted to go to. She could have, uh, really enjoyed a life of the mind. She had all of
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the advantages that would set her up for that. So Alexander, I'm sitting there, I'm just kind of
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having fun. And she responds to me. She had never responded to me before. Although I've
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frequently pointed out that she's a total fraud about her upbringing. And so she responds and she
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says, quote, in which a Republican, that's me, literally tries mansplaining my own childhood and
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life to me. And in true mansplaining form, he's doing it wrong with an great degree of confidence.
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It begs the question, is the GOP really sending us their best? Yeah, that'll show me that. So
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for those of you who are listening that there are all of the fallacies in there, right? All of the
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fallacies that you've got, it's ad hominem. She starts talking about mansplaining as though I'm
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not allowed to have an opinion because I'm a man. If I were a woman, I can have an opinion. If I'm a
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woman, I can point out the incontrovertible fact that this liar did not grow up in the Bronx. She
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grew up in Yorktown Heights. But because I'm a man, I'm not allowed to do that. She then,
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obviously there are all the misspellings she uses literally in a very emphatic way. And she's saying
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that I'm explaining her own childhood to her. Well, no, I'm not. I'm explaining her own childhood
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to everybody else that she's duping. She knows her childhood. She knows she didn't grow up in the
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Bronx. She knows she grew up in a beautiful place with little deer jumping around and excellent,
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heavily taxpayer funded public schools that was able to send her to a private college.
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And she knows that, but she's lying to people. And so I'm explaining it to them. And then she also
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says it begs the question, which she uses incorrectly. She uses, she says it begs the
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question as if to say it raises the question, but that's not what that means. It means it to,
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to beg the question is to presume the conclusion of your own argument. This is a sort of a minor
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semantic point, but it is ironic because she's saying that I'm, I'm of some sort of inferior mind
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when she is blatantly misusing the English language, but that's par for the course.
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She's not the expert. And then she says, is the GOP really sending us their best?
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I'm not an elected Republican politician. I hold no office. I'm not a member of Congress. I'm not a
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senator. I'm not a governor. I'm not a mayor. She is the, she is the public servant here. She is the
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one holding office. I am someone with a show who is pointing out that she is a liar and she instantly
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responds. So this is how you know that she's scared. She says she grew up in the Bronx. I say
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she did not grow up in the Bronx. Her response to that never denies the charge. She calls me a liar.
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She says I'm mansplaining. She says that I'm not the best. She, okay, but she never says that she
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grew up in the Bronx anymore. She can't say that now because it, because she didn't. So then, then I was
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still living in her head. And this was obviously becoming a big thing on the internet. So then she
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keeps trying to respond to this and retweeting things. And then she finally gives her better
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response. This is actually the response that she should stick with, even though it's BS. It's,
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it's much more plausible, which is quote, yes, as everyone knows, I grew up between two worlds
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and experienced firsthand how a child's zip code can shape their destiny. It was scrubbing those
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households, toilets with my mother that I saw and breathed income inequality. I decided
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to make a difference. You, Michael, decided to do this. Okay. Where to begin?
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Now she's making the claim that she scrubbed toilets with her mother. I don't know if she
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did. I don't know if she didn't. Her father's an architect and she's living in Northern Westchester.
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Maybe she did. We've never really heard about this before. This was not a plank of her campaign
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for Congress in 2018. So I'm a little skeptical. If that's, if you're going to run on identity
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politics, you'd probably talk about all of your life experience scrubbing toilets. We know that
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she worked as a community organizer, basically. She was a professional activist and a bartender in
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New York, living in Manhattan, by the way, not living in the Bronx and working in Manhattan. And so I,
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I'm, I don't know, I'll, I'll reserve judgment. I just don't, don't have enough knowledge to call
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that one way or the other. What I can point out though, is that she didn't grow up between two worlds.
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She didn't. She grew up in Northern Westchester. She grew up in total privilege. She grew up in one
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of the most privileged environments in the history of the world. She benefited immensely from those
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privileges. I don't begrudge her those privileges. Good for her. I'm glad she got to enjoy them.
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It's ridiculous now, however, that she's pretending that she's a victim when she's not. I grew up in
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almost the same privilege, slightly less wealthy town. It's okay. It's not exactly, exactly the same,
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but okay, fine. Almost the same privilege, almost in the same geographic area. Exactly.
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The difference here, I don't pretend that I'm a victim. I'm really happy. I'm really pleased that,
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that we live in this wonderful country of ours and that I got to grow up with those things.
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She does. She lies about it. This is the only answer she's going to be able to muster this,
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I grew up in two worlds thing, but, but she didn't. Um, she's a shrewd politician. She obviously,
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she was able to upend this longtime incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley in that district. She was
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able to get in there. She is pretty shrewd in that way. She should not be underestimated. This is her
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weakness. I think some conservatives even have said to me, Oh, Michael, don't point out that she
00:22:09.280
is a total fraud on her biography. Just talk about why socialism is so bad. Just talk about why she's
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wrong on the issues. You're not going to beat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by pointing out how awful
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socialism is. Her assent is not about issues. Her assent is all about a very base appeal to
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identity politics. That's what it's all about. If, if, if all we had to do is point out how awful
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socialism is, it would be over. We, you'd point to Venezuela, you'd point to North Korea, you'd point
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to China, you'd point to Russia, you'd point to everywhere, Cuba, you'd point to everywhere that
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socialism has ever been tried and how awful it is and what it does, uh, how it destroys whole people.
00:22:49.680
How it destroys not only the economic life of people, but it's the spiritual life of people
00:22:53.760
as well. But that doesn't work. That doesn't work on the people who are following her. What,
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what does work is that she's still, she's still Alex from the Bronx. I actually sort of feel bad
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for Ocasio-Cortez because I don't think she tweeted that picture out. I assume it was her
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social media intern. She probably knows that this is a really tricky issue for her. She knows that
00:23:13.660
during the campaign, when it was called out that she lied about her background, that she had to
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change her campaign bio. She scrubbed it from her website. She knows this is a huge weakness
00:23:21.900
and whatever dumb social media intern took that photo, just walked her right into that trap. But
00:23:29.300
this is the, this is the trap. This is the wedge. This is where you separate her, a young darling of
00:23:35.340
the left, a fundraiser now for the Democrats, a future leader of that party possibly moving it
00:23:40.860
horribly, horrifically to the left. This is her weakness. This is how you separate her from her base.
00:23:46.500
And we should talk about it all the time. It's going to kill Liz Warren's presidential campaign
00:23:51.060
and it could really be the way to go in and stop Cortez. Because I think some people on the right,
00:23:56.400
they joke, they say, oh, she's not very intelligent. Oh, she's, she says stupid things or
00:24:00.660
she did upend Joe Crowley. She did make it to Congress. She has managed to get herself in the
00:24:07.140
newspapers all the time. People refer to her as a leader of the left. She is not to be totally
00:24:13.720
dismissed. She really could pose a threat because the ideas that she holds are awful,
00:24:18.800
anti-human ideas that would destroy economies that have destroyed whole scores of people and left
00:24:24.760
them enslaved all around the world, all throughout history. And we should take that seriously and we
00:24:29.600
should go after her with everything we've got. A lot more to get to because we're not just going
00:24:34.160
to talk about attacks from the left. We're going to talk about attacks from ostensibly the right,
00:24:38.120
Mitt Romney. Then we've got one of the most shocking conservative cultural moments of the
00:24:43.680
year. The New York Times chooses a shockingly conservative song to be its song of the year.
00:24:48.660
And then the absolute worst video that you all missed while you were hanging around with your
00:24:54.360
families on Christmas and New Year's. We'll get to all of that. But first, coming up tomorrow,
00:24:57.920
don't miss our next episode of Daily Wire backstage. Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Elisha Krause,
00:25:03.720
Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, and little old me. We'll be ringing in the new year while
00:25:08.540
drinking tumblers of melted leftist snowflakes. So be sure to tune in. As always, only Daily Wire
00:25:14.820
subscribers get to ask the questions. Make sure to subscribe today. You get me, you get the Andrew
00:25:20.200
Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get to ask questions in the mailbag, you get all
00:25:23.580
these things. What day is it? Today is Wednesday. That means that tomorrow is the mailbag. If you
00:25:28.180
subscribe, you get to ask questions in the mailbag. Get your mailbag questions in. But this is really what
00:25:33.260
you want. This is what you, this is the, this is a nice local vintage of the Yorktown Heights
00:25:38.920
leftist tears. These are really good. They don't taste very much like the leftist tears from the
00:25:43.660
Bronx, actually. They taste very, very different. You should go check it, check it out. Get your leftist
00:25:48.500
here's Tumblr. We'll be right back with a lot more. Mitt Romney is kicking off the new year by
00:26:02.600
attacking the Republican president. That's our boy. That's Romney. That's the Mitt Romney we've all come
00:26:07.900
to know and expect. This is what he wrote in the Washington Post, a ridiculous, frivolous,
00:26:14.040
left-wing rag that used to have some respectability but certainly doesn't anymore. It makes the New
00:26:20.120
York Times look positively objective. He wrote, quote, the Trump presidency made a deep dissent in
00:26:26.420
December. Presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable and it is in this
00:26:31.720
province where the incumbent's shortfall has been most glaring. Trump has no character. That's what
00:26:39.060
he's saying. Don't you get it? He has no character. So does Mitt Romney have character? Because Mitt
00:26:47.540
Romney accepted the support of Donald Trump in 2012. Do you guys remember that? There are some
00:26:53.840
things that you just can't imagine happening in your life. This is one of them. Being in Donald
00:26:59.580
Trump's magnificent hotel and having his endorsement is a delight. I'm so honored and pleased to have his
00:27:05.820
endorsement. And of course, I'm looking for the endorsement of the people of Nevada.
00:27:13.900
Oh, it's a delight, is it? It's such a privilege. It's a pleasure. It's an honor to have Donald Trump's
00:27:19.360
endorsement in 2012. Was Donald Trump a different person in 2012? Because as I recall, Donald Trump was
00:27:24.680
one of the people leading the birther question, the birther movement. I guess Hillary Clinton sort of
00:27:31.220
started it. But Donald Trump was leading that, was making a big media splash in 2011. So that was
00:27:37.500
already happening. That was all going on. And Mitt Romney, thank you, Donald. What an honor to be here
00:27:41.920
in your beautiful, wonderful hotel. But then he didn't like him. Do you remember when Mitt Romney
00:27:47.800
didn't like Donald Trump? Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree
00:27:55.340
from Trump University. His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies
00:28:05.820
would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be
00:28:10.740
president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city
00:28:16.800
on a hill. His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who work for them.
00:28:23.500
He inherited his business. He didn't create it. And whatever happened to Trump Airlines? How about
00:28:30.000
Trump University? And then there's Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks and Trump Mortgage.
00:28:38.240
A business genius he is not. Wow, a whole lot changes in four years, doesn't it? Because Mitt Romney,
00:28:46.780
you know, the man of impeccable character, such an upright, honest broker, impeccable character man.
00:28:52.100
He, he loved Trump. He was so happy to have his endorsement. Trump did so well in business. That's
00:28:57.320
one of the reasons, by the way, why he really loved having his endorsement in 2012. Then he hated him.
00:29:02.720
It's not like he just said, I don't like Trump. It's not like he just said, I don't support Trump.
00:29:06.640
He went on a diatribe, a totally gratuitous diatribe about how he's a fraud. He's a charlatan. He's
00:29:13.800
worthless. His word is utterly worthless. So he does that. And then what happened when he ran for
00:29:19.780
Senate from Utah, Utah is his new state. I know you thought he was from Massachusetts or from
00:29:24.420
Michigan, or then I guess he was living in New Hampshire for a while when he ran for president.
00:29:27.460
But actually now Mitt Romney is from Utah, the totally upright, moral, honest broker. He lives
00:29:33.120
in Utah. And when he was trying to become the senator from Utah, he welcomed Donald Trump's
00:29:37.720
endorsement. That was what, um, five minutes ago. That was about two months ago. And he tweeted out,
00:29:42.380
quote, thank you, Mr. President for the support. I hope that over the course of the campaign,
00:29:46.840
I also earn the support and endorsement of the people of Utah. So he basically just echoed the
00:29:51.080
same thing he said about Trump when he was being really nice, nice in 2012. And then what happens
00:29:54.700
just a few months later, he turns around and stabs him in the back in a completely unnecessary
00:29:58.700
article for the Washington Post. That's Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney, that upright guy. If only Trump had
00:30:04.880
the character of a little quizzling, weakling, backstabbing Mitt Romney. If only he had that wonderful
00:30:12.560
character. This, by the way, isn't just with Trump, lest you think that only Donald Trump provokes this
00:30:17.560
sort of wishy-washy, dishonest, just series of lies from Mitt Romney. Uh, just remember this is when
00:30:24.440
Mitt Romney was running for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in, in Massachusetts. That was his old
00:30:29.760
state before. Now he lives in Utah. Uh, his, uh, he was asked about the time of Ronald Reagan and George
00:30:36.300
Bush in the 1980s, the great Reagan revolution. Where was our honest, dignified, full of integrity,
00:30:42.560
conservative leader, Mitt Romney then? Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan Bush.
00:30:47.580
I'm not trying to return to Reagan Bush. What a joke. What a joke this man is. I, I've never been
00:30:53.060
a huge Mitt Romney fan. I voted for him in the general election in 2012. Uh, that was after working
00:30:58.400
for two of his candidates or two of his rather two of his opponents in the 2012 Republican primary. I did
00:31:04.260
my best to deprive Mitt Romney of the nomination that year. And then ultimately, obviously he would,
00:31:09.260
he would have been better than Barack Obama, but what a joke to be lectured on, on politics,
00:31:15.200
on governance, on the presidency or, or on honesty or on integrity for Mitt Romney. Give me a break.
00:31:22.200
The guy, he's never met an office. He didn't want to run for. He's, he's been running for president
00:31:26.580
forever. He's been probably envisioning that since his father failed to win the presidency. Uh, he's,
00:31:34.100
he's invented Obamacare as the governor of Massachusetts. He, he's talks out of both
00:31:40.560
sides of his mouth. He ended up losing the 2012 election in part because Obama was a better
00:31:45.720
candidate, but in part because of major gaffes, in part because he called half of the country,
00:31:50.140
a bunch of, uh, degenerate, uh, people out on the dole. And he was caught on tape doing that.
00:31:55.580
He said 40, 47% are takers. And then, uh, which really hurt him in public opinion polls. And then
00:32:02.220
when Candy Crowley, during that debate with Barack Obama, uh, lied on, on television and said
00:32:08.380
that, uh, Obama said something when he didn't. And then she contradicted Mitt Romney lied about
00:32:14.300
it right on television. What did Romney do? He wilted. Could you imagine what president Trump
00:32:18.340
would have done? He would have won the presidency is what he would have done. And Mitt Romney didn't
00:32:21.720
do it. But now we have to hear these ridiculous odes about how Mitt Romney is. He's a good man.
00:32:26.840
This is the line. This is what we always hear about Donald Trump. Well, look, he's been pretty
00:32:31.600
conservative, but he's a bad guy, but he's really bad. And Mitt Romney, he's, he's kind of, he's a
00:32:38.380
really good guy. He's a really good guy with character. And Trump is a terrible degenerate
00:32:43.980
without saying that Mitt Romney is the worst person in the world, without saying that Donald Trump is
00:32:51.000
the best person in the world. Certainly neither of those statements are true. Character is a little
00:32:57.420
more complicated than this. Roger Kimball had a great piece in American greatness, uh, over, I think
00:33:02.660
it was over the weekend where he, he talked about a line from Cardinal Newman, John Henry Newman, a great
00:33:08.660
cardinal of the Catholic church, formerly an Anglican priest. Uh, he's going to become a saint this year.
00:33:13.720
And he pointed out a good man may make a bad King. Profligates have been great statesmen or magnanimous
00:33:21.200
political leaders. We hear sometimes this line, which is as, as Roger Kimball points out, mistranslated
00:33:27.040
from Heraclitus, that a man's character is his destiny. And that actually might not be entirely a
00:33:32.660
fair translation of it, but what is the point? Is the idea that if someone is a bad guy, he can't be a
00:33:38.140
good president. Oh, I don't know. I mean, does Donald Trump have good characters? I guess the
00:33:43.920
question that is being raised by the Romney types and by the anti, anti-Trump right as well as left.
00:33:52.120
And the, the answer to that question is compared to whom does he have absolutely good character? No,
00:33:58.920
but we look the same people who tell us that will certainly tell us that all fall short of the glory
00:34:03.500
of God. All has sinned. So the question is, does he have good character compared to whom? Does he
00:34:08.120
have good character compared to Bill Clinton? Yeah. Yeah, he does. Bill Clinton's accused of rape.
00:34:15.040
And, and I know the word credibly has been belabored a little bit in recent months,
00:34:19.060
but pretty credibly accused of rape in a way that Donald Trump has not. Does he have better
00:34:24.620
character than LBJ? Just to talk on the women thing, LBJ was a notorious womanizer. LBJ held
00:34:31.660
meetings with his advisors sitting on the toilet. He would pull out his genitals in public
00:34:37.560
frequently. He used awful language. He used awful slurs against people, racial slurs,
00:34:42.960
all of the sort. How about JFK? JFK is a famous womanizer. How about him? How about FDR died in
00:34:48.920
his mistress's arms? How about Grover Cleveland? The first Democrat president in the, I suppose,
00:34:55.860
in the 15 years after the civil war, I think that's right, taking out Andrew Johnson. He, he was caught
00:35:00.740
in a big sex scandal. He fathered a kid out of wedlock. One of the great Republican lines was,
00:35:06.140
mama, where's my pa? And actually the Democrat response to that when Grover Cleveland won the
00:35:12.220
election was, he's in the White House. Ha ha ha. So there was this debate going on even then. Of
00:35:17.460
course, Donald Trump has at least as good character as those guys. But what about even on these other
00:35:23.580
issues? Donald Trump, as a matter of what he's done in office, has done wonderful conservative
00:35:28.620
things. And he's kept his promises. He's been true to his word in, at least at a higher rate than
00:35:34.840
virtually any of his predecessors. Can the same be true of Romney? Can the same be said of Romney?
00:35:40.180
Romney invented Obamacare. That's what he did. He invented Obamacare. He was a bad candidate.
00:35:45.940
He lost. He kept losing. He attacks his own side. He takes an endorsement from someone. Then he
00:35:51.560
stabs him in the back. Then he says nice things about them. Again, he stabs them in the back.
00:35:54.700
But are you really going to tell me that Mitt Romney has universally better character than
00:36:00.480
Donald Trump? He doesn't. In some ways he does. And in some ways he doesn't. Because character
00:36:06.060
is complex in that way. Harry Reid right now, who's dying of pancreatic cancer,
00:36:13.080
so we have to say nice things about him because he's not doing very well. Let's not forget in the
00:36:19.960
glow of that upcoming hagiography that Harry Reid was a profligate liar throughout his entire life.
00:36:25.860
Harry Reid accused Mitt Romney of not paying any taxes. And he just lied about it. Everyone knew
00:36:30.760
he was just lying about it. Harry Reid is saying Trump is amoral, no conscience, worst president
00:36:35.120
ever. We're imbibing this line right now, not only from the left, but because of people like Mitt
00:36:42.000
Romney from the right as well. History changes very, very quickly. If you had asked even conservatives
00:36:48.780
in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, according to many conservatives, was a dunce divorcee. And according
00:36:55.240
to the left, he emboldened racists and Nazis. That was until he became the greatest president of the
00:37:00.920
21st century. History changes very quickly. And I'm just a little sick of it. I'm all for pointing out
00:37:08.480
the myriad moral failings of Donald Trump. And there are many. He points them out too. He admits it as
00:37:14.400
well. But to hear it from Mitt Romney, who pretends to be this perfect guy, give me a break. Talk about
00:37:20.420
totally missing the point. And now we're going to have to suffer this guy as a U.S. senator. Great way to
00:37:26.840
start off the new year. You know what would have been a good idea, actually, is if instead we had gotten
00:37:31.160
a Republican senator from Utah. That would have been nice. But there is some good news as well, which is that
00:37:36.940
the New York Times, they chose a song of the year to round out 2018. And so you figure it's going to be
00:37:43.860
this crazy left-wing song. I think they sort of think it's a crazy left-wing song. I think the song
00:37:49.280
they picked is pretty conservative. The song is by the 1975. It's called Love It If We Made It. The
00:37:58.560
In a swirl of harp-like arpeggios over a stubborn beat, Maddie Healy rails at hypocrisy and
00:38:05.480
disinformation, complaining, modernity has failed us, and admits to individual ambition, despite it all,
00:38:12.960
a millennial's plight. Here's just a little clip of the song.
00:38:15.960
So you might not have been able to hear it. And obviously, it's not the most creative music,
00:38:42.460
musically speaking. I'm not going to be listening to this all the time. But the lyrics are pretty
00:38:46.600
interesting. Because on the one hand, on the surface level, it sounds like it's this left-wing
00:38:53.440
polemic. But in a really deeper way, I think it's actually articulating everything conservatives are
00:39:00.480
complaining about, about the culture. Everything conservatives are pointing out is wrong about
00:39:04.200
the culture and that we need to change. He says,
00:39:06.240
F-ing in a car, shooting heroin, saying controversial things just for the hell of it,
00:39:13.260
selling melanin, and then suffocate the black man. Start with misdemeanors, then we'll make a
00:39:18.700
business out of them. And we can find out the information, access all the applications that are
00:39:23.500
hardening our positions based on miscommunication. So you've got, he's talking about obviously the
00:39:28.540
opioid epidemic. He's talking about sort of childish, animalistic behavior, not just on drugs, but even
00:39:38.760
on sex. F-ing in a car, talking about promiscuity in that way. And then saying controversial things
00:39:46.040
just for the hell of it, just saying, just using words loosely. You know, words are, words are in the
00:39:53.660
act of creation, right? God says, let there be light and there is light. Christ is the word.
00:40:00.940
It breathes it out. You always hear the word of God. A man in his, in his act in the Garden of Eden
00:40:08.360
names all of the animals. Our politics is the use of political speech, is the use of persuasive speech
00:40:14.940
to have civil government. Animals have brute force, but human beings use our reason through our speech
00:40:20.960
to persuade each other of things and to have a civil society. He's talking about all this use,
00:40:26.340
loose language, selling melanin, selling melanin is one of the lyrics to talk about identity, to talk
00:40:32.760
about pimping out identity, pimping out your skin color, that, and then, and, and suffocate the black
00:40:39.840
man. What does that mean? I think the New York Times and the left read that line as, you know, police
00:40:44.580
killing black people or hurting, you know, hands up, don't shoot, or Eric Garner or any of those
00:40:50.840
people. But what, what does it also mean? What, what does it mean when we've heard on, on just a
00:40:56.380
couple of days ago, Kanye West talking about how he feels that as a black man, he is being bullied
00:41:01.440
into supporting one particular point of view. He feels that he's being forced into one particular
00:41:06.920
point of view. He's not allowed to use his speech, his reasonable speech. He's, he's being bullied
00:41:12.280
around. And then, uh, he talks about the information, accessing the applications. And then this line is
00:41:19.080
what really convinced me. This song is pretty conservative. It says, oh, F your feelings.
00:41:24.900
Truth is only hearsay. We're just left to decay. Modernity has failed us. This is what conservatives
00:41:30.480
think. We think modernity has failed us. We think that this modern project of divorcing our
00:41:36.580
civilization from the religious underpinnings that created the culture, that created the politics of
00:41:43.240
that civilization is a fool's errand. It's impossible. It has coarsened us. It has, it's the
00:41:48.840
reason why suicide is spiking. Anxiety is spiking. Depression is spiking. Younger generations are far
00:41:55.380
more likely than older generations to be suicidal, to be hooked on depression pills. There is a real
00:42:01.640
cultural malaise, even in the midst of a material wealth and a material growth. And it's because the
00:42:08.020
civilization has decayed spiritually. It has decayed culturally, and it is nearly rotten to the core.
00:42:15.500
Modernity has failed us. And I'd love it if we made it. Yes, I'd love it if we made it. Yes,
00:42:19.800
I'd love it if we made it. Next, next stanza. And poison me, daddy, the drugs, talking about putting
00:42:26.720
drugs in your veins. I got the Jones right through my bones. Jonesing, meaning I'm craving the drugs.
00:42:32.780
And Jones, there's also a sort of, because of the craving and the imagery of the bones,
00:42:36.720
there's a sexual image here too. Jonesing for jumping my bones. Write it on a piece of stone.
00:42:42.360
A beach of drowning three-year-olds. What does this evoke? This evokes this migrant crisis.
00:42:48.480
You've got people pouring in. And on the left-wing interpretation of this, it's the tragedy is that
00:42:54.900
these awful conservatives won't knock down national borders and let the kids in. Maybe the crisis is
00:43:00.660
those awful incentives in the first place, pulling people in, drawing people to commit
00:43:06.560
these acts which are legally and intellectually insupportable. You couldn't possibly have a
00:43:13.980
nation with open borders. It would cease to be a nation. Rest in peace, little peep. That's a guy
00:43:20.060
who died of drugs. The poetry is in the streets. Jesus save us. Modernity has failed us. This line,
00:43:29.000
I don't know how, you can read other lines in other ways. The kid drowning, maybe you could read in
00:43:33.220
another way or the saying outrageous things just for the hell of it, you could read in a different
00:43:38.200
way. But look at that juxtaposition. Jesus save us. Modernity has failed us. I'm saying modernity,
00:43:44.320
this idea of breaking our civilization away from its religious underpinnings, has failed. Jesus save us.
00:43:50.940
Save us. Not just the religious foundation, but the incarnate reason. There's the F your feelings.
00:43:56.980
Truth is only hearsay. And then what he's saying is Jesus, the way and the truth and the life save us.
00:44:02.360
That's our only antidote against modernity. Tell me something I didn't know. Consultation,
00:44:08.820
degradation, fossil fueling, masturbation, immigration, liberal kitsch. He's not just
00:44:14.880
talking about left-wing issues. He's mocking the left here. Immigration, liberal kitsch. There's a lot
00:44:20.500
of liberal kitsch. What's an example of this? Kneeling on a pitch. Kneeling on a pitch,
00:44:24.820
which is what Colin Kaepernick is doing in his absurd protest against the United States.
00:44:30.860
Then they quote Donald Trump. I moved on her like a female dog. So he's getting the attack in on
00:44:37.820
Trump there. But I think a lot of people would be happy to criticize President Trump in context.
00:44:44.100
They would be able to criticize the rhetoric, the way that we speak to each other, the way that we
00:44:48.340
interact with the culture. Of course, that's not to attack Trump for what he's doing. He's doing what
00:44:52.320
he's got to do in a culture where he's got to do it. But it is to bemoan the degradation of that
00:44:57.380
culture and to say, modernity has failed us. Jesus, save us. Unrequited house with seven pools.
00:45:04.140
It goes on and on and on. And I'd love it if we made it. And I'd love it if we made it.
00:45:09.840
But modernity has failed us. This, I mean, the song goes on and on and on. I'm really pleased that
00:45:16.980
the New York Times missed out what this song means. And I think, I think actually maybe the
00:45:22.780
left is sensing something too, which we are sensing, which is something has gone seriously
00:45:28.060
wrong here. And now it's not just that taxes are too low for wealthy people. It's not just
00:45:34.000
whatever, that they don't want to be fighting some war. They want a different war over that war.
00:45:38.040
That's not just that. They're sensing something's rotten with the culture. Something's rotten in our
00:45:43.880
spiritual life. And I think they're inching closer to what that might be. Maybe it's that
00:45:48.480
modernity has failed us. Maybe Jesus has to save us. I'd love it if we made it. Yes, I'd love it if
00:45:53.380
we made it. And I'm hopeful looking into 2019. I hope you are too. We've got a lot more tomorrow,
00:45:57.660
a lot more to get to that we can't get to. But that's just the way it is. Glad to be back. I missed
00:46:01.280
you all very much. I hope you had a very good Christmas and New Year. And I'll see you tomorrow.
00:46:05.560
Get those mailbag questions in. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:46:13.880
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal. Executive producer, Jeremy Borey.
00:46:19.440
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover. And our technical
00:46:24.460
producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Jim Nickel. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup
00:46:30.960
is by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
00:46:37.720
Hi, everybody. I'm Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. Happy New Year. It's 2019.
00:46:44.160
We're going to look at the news and remember why we're here and what we're fighting for
00:46:48.200
and why I think we're living in a quiet place. I'm Andrew Klavan. That's on The Andrew Klavan Show.