The Michael Knowles Show - January 17, 2019


Ep. 282 - The State Of The State Of The Union


Episode Stats


Length

42 minutes

Words per minute

182.65948

Word count

7,849

Sentence count

581

Harmful content

Misogyny

25

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Former DOJ attorney general Bruce Orr testifies that the DOJ and FBI knew about the Steele dossier earlier than they had previously been testified about. Is this evidence of a cover-up? Is this proof that the FBI and DOJ colluded with the Russians?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 The State of the Union is strong, but the State of the State of the Union is not strong.
00:00:05.640 Will Nancy Pelosi disinvite President Trump? 1.00
00:00:08.260 Will President Trump show up anyway?
00:00:10.260 Do we even need a State of the Union speech?
00:00:12.920 We will analyze.
00:00:13.840 Then, Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar implies that Lindsey Graham is gay.
00:00:18.580 Rudy Giuliani implies that President Trump's campaign may have colluded with the Russians.
00:00:23.140 And a pro-life activist gets punched in the face.
00:00:26.000 Then the mailbag.
00:00:26.800 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:30.000 So much to get to, and first, some breaking news.
00:00:38.560 It's coming in just in the last hour or so.
00:00:41.420 Big developments coming through the Russia probe with regard to how the DOJ and the FBI handled that Steele dossier.
00:00:50.600 It looks like a lot of senior DOJ and FBI officials lied.
00:00:53.600 We're getting this from then-Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr's testimony today before Congress.
00:01:00.100 We'll get to that in a second.
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00:02:07.940 I really want to get to the State of the Union today.
00:02:10.220 But first, we have to go over this breaking news.
00:02:12.600 Bruce Orr, you might have heard that name with regard to the collusion investigation, the Russia probe, Mueller.
00:02:20.780 It's one of these names that floats around with Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
00:02:25.820 All of these names, what the Democrats are hoping here is that you are so confused by everything that's going on in the Russia probe
00:02:34.100 that you just can't put the pieces together.
00:02:36.060 Oh, who is Bruce Orr again?
00:02:37.340 Who is this?
00:02:37.740 Who is that?
00:02:38.040 So, Bruce Orr was the associate attorney general.
00:02:42.280 He was the fourth ranking official in the entire Department of Justice.
00:02:45.760 He just testified before the House that the DOJ knew about the Steele dossier,
00:02:52.380 the one that had all those lurid, unverified details about weird sex in Moscow, that they had that earlier than he had previously been testified.
00:03:02.220 Now, Bruce Orr matters because Bruce Orr's wife, Nellie Orr, was working for Fusion GPS,
00:03:08.840 which was an opposition research firm, that put together the Steele dossier that contracted this guy Christopher Steele to do the Steele dossier.
00:03:17.440 This was bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
00:03:21.560 Bruce Orr, the associate attorney general's wife, was working for them, and Bruce Orr did not publicly disclose this.
00:03:27.580 So, this is just one of the many things that smell really fishy about this whole Russia investigation.
00:03:32.740 So, anyway, Bruce Orr goes up to Congress.
00:03:34.420 He testifies that previous testimony about when the FBI and DOJ knew about that Steele dossier was false.
00:03:43.000 Previously, we had heard that the DOJ and the FBI did not know about the Steele dossier until September.
00:03:48.880 And this matters because they then, in October, went to get a FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page working for the Trump campaign.
00:03:57.980 Okay. Now, what we find out from Bruce Orr, who's in a real position to know, is that he told the FBI and the DOJ about Christopher Steele,
00:04:07.300 about how Steele was working for the Democrats, about how Christopher Steele, quote,
00:04:12.280 was desperate that Trump not be elected.
00:04:15.080 He told them about this in July.
00:04:17.780 So, now they know about this in July.
00:04:19.440 They know that this dossier is not only unverified, but it's politically biased.
00:04:23.100 It's bought and paid for by Democrats, and that the guy who put it together has a serious grudge against Donald Trump,
00:04:28.960 does not want him to be elected.
00:04:32.340 Nevertheless, the FBI and the DOJ persist for a few months.
00:04:36.000 Then they go to get the FISA warrant in October, and they basically lie to the federal judge.
00:04:42.760 So, they at least misled the federal judge in October of 2016 to get that FISA warrant.
00:04:47.940 And this is a big deal.
00:04:49.080 You might say, well, lawyers mislead judges all the time.
00:04:52.460 It's very different in the FISA courts.
00:04:54.340 James Comey himself testified about this.
00:04:56.860 He said on December 7th that this amounts to abuse of the FISA system.
00:05:02.620 It is totally expected that when the DOJ and FBI go before the FISA judges, they will present all of the evidence,
00:05:09.340 not just part of the evidence, and say, look, some intelligence person says that Donald Trump made a weird videotape in Moscow
00:05:17.920 with a bunch of hookers on Obama's bed. 1.00
00:05:19.740 That it's not just that you present that, but you'll also say, oh, by the way, this has not been verified.
00:05:25.920 The guy who did it has a grudge against Donald Trump.
00:05:28.860 He's desperate for him not to be elected.
00:05:30.700 Oh, and by the way, it was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
00:05:33.840 If you leave that part out, you are misleading the federal judge.
00:05:36.760 That's what Bruce Orr, fourth-ranking DOJ official, is alleging now, is testifying before the Congress.
00:05:44.020 This is a game-changer.
00:05:45.360 It's not a game-changer in that we already knew that this Russia investigation stunk to high heaven,
00:05:51.440 but now we're getting it from the horse's mouth, or at least the fourth-ranking horse's mouth.
00:05:55.660 A really, really big event.
00:05:58.980 I think probably what it means is you're going to see Mueller turn up the heat even more.
00:06:03.340 You're going to see Democrats rally around Mueller even more.
00:06:06.680 But this whole investigation seems illegitimate.
00:06:10.760 We've got to talk about the State of the Union because the State of the Union is coming up.
00:06:14.660 Or maybe it's not.
00:06:15.440 I don't know if it's coming up.
00:06:16.020 Maybe it's coming up.
00:06:16.660 Maybe it's not coming up.
00:06:17.520 But there is a debate now over whether Nancy Pelosi will invite Donald Trump to give the State of the Union
00:06:23.420 because the State of the Union is held at the Capitol.
00:06:26.400 So the way that it works is the president has his speech.
00:06:29.980 He writes up his memorandum on the State of the Union, and he sends it to the Capitol,
00:06:34.260 and then the Congress invites the president to come give the address.
00:06:38.400 Now the Congress is run by Democrats, so it's up to Nancy Pelosi to invite him.
00:06:43.280 Nancy Pelosi is saying that she won't do it because the government is shut down,
00:06:47.060 and there could be security concerns.
00:06:49.940 Here is Nancy Pelosi.
00:06:51.860 Just during that commercial break, our team on Capitol Hill heard for the first time from Speaker Nancy Pelosi
00:06:57.040 since she essentially uninvited the president for the State of the Union on January 29th.
00:07:02.400 Here's what she had to say.
00:07:03.600 Homeland Security, about all of the resources that are needed to prepare for a State of the Union address,
00:07:11.620 which he calls, what, an event of special security.
00:07:15.440 And so these people are not working, and we've never really had a State of the Union
00:07:23.240 when government has been in a shutdown since the Budget Act in the 70s.
00:07:28.440 So this is respectfully and sadly, proudly, I invited him to come, the people horse, 0.87
00:07:36.940 that we would have the president of the United States.
00:07:39.420 She goes on, she talks about how terrible Trump is, but listen to the tack she's taking.
00:07:45.460 She's not saying, I am not going to invite the president because the government is shut down and I hate his guts.
00:07:51.320 She's not doing that. 1.00
00:07:52.260 She's trying to seem above it all and so mature,
00:07:55.320 and what she's doing is blaming the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security. 0.53
00:07:59.360 She said she was proud to invite the president to give the address,
00:08:03.420 but, you know, the security, it's so, with the government shut down, how can we possibly protect the president?
00:08:10.900 Don't forget, the government is partially shut down.
00:08:13.420 Nothing has changed.
00:08:14.440 Virtually all government services are still running.
00:08:16.620 But apparently, Nancy Pelosi thinks we can't protect the president during a very minor partial shutdown 0.99
00:08:21.800 that has not affected virtually any other aspect of the government.
00:08:25.020 This is pretty cynical.
00:08:26.100 She put this in a letter to the president, which is not really a letter to the president.
00:08:30.100 It's a letter to the Washington Post.
00:08:31.740 She wrote this letter to the president.
00:08:33.160 She immediately released it to the press.
00:08:34.960 I assume the president never even got it.
00:08:36.980 And she said, look, the Secret Service and Homeland Security, they say they just can't do it.
00:08:42.480 That's a lie.
00:08:43.700 That is a lie.
00:08:44.380 And it's not just a lie that they, because they can do it.
00:08:47.300 It's a lie because they've said that they can do it.
00:08:50.460 The statement was released.
00:08:52.360 The Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security said they can handle security at President Trump's State of the Union address.
00:08:57.720 This is from Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen.
00:09:02.600 She said, quote, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service are fully prepared to support and secure the State of the Union.
00:09:11.340 We thank the service for their mission, focus, and dedication for all that they do each day to secure our homeland.
00:09:20.100 Couldn't be more clear.
00:09:21.320 She could not possibly be more clear about this.
00:09:25.060 So it's a sick play from Nancy Pelosi.
00:09:28.800 And it's weak because he could call her out on this.
00:09:31.840 I mean, the big question is she has invited him, but now has suggested they have to postpone it because of security.
00:09:37.900 So if he comes back and says, well, my Secretary of Homeland Security said it's absolutely fine, so deal with it.
00:09:43.820 I'm coming.
00:09:44.560 What is she going to do?
00:09:45.500 Is she going to bar him from coming in?
00:09:47.080 I don't think so.
00:09:48.280 I don't really think that's going to work.
00:09:49.780 And most presidents would abide by the rule, but I don't know.
00:09:53.660 Donald Trump probably won't.
00:09:55.560 You know, if any president is going to go barge in like a conservative speaker on a left wing campus, kick in the doors and go give the speech, it's going to be Donald Trump.
00:10:04.840 So we'll see.
00:10:05.640 I mean, we're getting the reality TV show that we've all asked for.
00:10:08.680 That's why I don't complain about it.
00:10:10.280 This is what we wanted.
00:10:11.580 This is what the president thrives on.
00:10:13.180 This is how he accomplishes much of his agenda.
00:10:15.480 So fine.
00:10:16.080 That's OK.
00:10:17.280 The question is, should we have a State of the Union address at all?
00:10:22.260 Conservatives raise this question all the time.
00:10:23.780 The State of the Union comes from one line in the Constitution from Article 2, Section 3.
00:10:29.840 It reads, he shall, referring to the president, from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.
00:10:43.580 So I know a lot of conservatives, especially the more libertarian minded conservatives, they hate the State of the Union.
00:10:50.420 They think it's monarchical.
00:10:52.060 They think it is too regal for America.
00:10:54.940 They read that line and they say he should just mail them a letter and say, OK, there's information.
00:10:59.320 Read it.
00:10:59.760 Enjoy whatever you want.
00:11:01.480 But the history of the State of the Union is actually a little more regal than that.
00:11:06.060 And it doesn't just go back the last 50 years.
00:11:07.880 It actually goes back all the way to George Washington.
00:11:09.880 We'll get to it in a second.
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00:12:44.340 So these conservatives, especially the libertarian-minded ones, hate the State of the Union.
00:12:48.760 They want to get rid of it, and they think it's just too British.
00:12:53.840 You know, it's like the king walking in in his robes and sitting on the throne,
00:12:57.580 and that's anti-American, and that's terrible.
00:12:59.680 I have a little bit of a different view on this because they push it too much.
00:13:05.560 They take it too much to an extreme.
00:13:07.120 The State of the Union, contrary to what they say, is not only really a product of the 20th century.
00:13:13.120 George Washington gave a State of the Union address on January 8, 1790.
00:13:17.560 He gave that one, obviously, not in the White House, which didn't exist yet, but in New York City.
00:13:23.620 And he delivered the speech, and he was a pretty regal guy.
00:13:26.840 And people stood when he was in the room, and he was certainly no, you know, lowercase d Democrat populist or anything like that.
00:13:37.140 There was a real dignity to the office, obviously a real dignity to the man, and a dignity to the speech.
00:13:43.140 Thomas Jefferson scrapped the practice when he became president, and this tells you all you need to know because Thomas Jefferson was much more of a lowercase d Democrat.
00:13:52.500 He despised the idea of a monarchy or anything monarchical in America, so he discontinued it.
00:13:59.040 And that tradition held for over 100 years.
00:14:01.840 It held until Woodrow Wilson, one of the worst presidents in American history.
00:14:06.220 In 1913, Wilson reestablished the practice.
00:14:10.320 So now the real historical record is a little more complex.
00:14:13.940 Washington did it, so I like that.
00:14:15.920 Jefferson didn't do it, which makes me like the State of the Union even more.
00:14:19.260 Wilson did it, which makes me not like the State of the Union.
00:14:21.820 What are we to land on?
00:14:23.960 He gave the speech.
00:14:25.020 It then continued throughout the 20th century.
00:14:27.640 I believe the last time we skipped it was Jimmy Carter in 1981.
00:14:31.920 Jimmy Carter was so bitter that he had lost the election to Ronald Reagan that he refused to give a State of the Union address,
00:14:37.340 and he just sent the address to Congress, and they read it.
00:14:42.300 I will say Antonin Scalia would not attend the State of the Union.
00:14:46.780 He thought it was a ridiculous farce, and he despised that the judges couldn't smile or move or do anything while they were listening to the executive branch.
00:14:55.240 He felt that it subordinated the judicial to the executive.
00:14:59.720 I kind of like it.
00:15:01.120 I kind of like the State of the Union in so much as the office of the president, he's not just a dog catcher.
00:15:07.980 He's not just a guy at the DMV.
00:15:09.740 He's not just your county executive.
00:15:11.940 There is a real dignity there because he represents the spirit of the nation, the ethos of the nation.
00:15:18.120 He is the executive, and as the nation, as the greatest country in the history of the world, the superpower on Earth,
00:15:25.640 this imbues the office with a sense of the regal.
00:15:30.920 It imbues the office with a real dignity and a real gravity.
00:15:34.880 So I kind of like it for that reason.
00:15:37.040 I think it would be bizarre and incongruous if the president, you know, just sent out a tweet on the State of the Union.
00:15:43.800 I guess if any president were going to do that, it would be this president, but he's also a good showman as well.
00:15:50.200 And the other reason, I mean, we've been talking all week about these different strains of conservative thought.
00:15:56.700 The grander sort of conservatives, the traditionalist conservatives maybe would prefer it a little bit more.
00:16:02.840 The libertarians, not so much.
00:16:05.060 But one thing we should be able to agree on is even if you hate the State of the Union, this is not the way to get rid of the State of the Union.
00:16:12.780 The way to get rid of it is not through a temper tantrum because Nancy Pelosi doesn't like Donald Trump. 1.00
00:16:17.940 That seems kind of wrong to me.
00:16:20.600 You know, the conservative tends to prefer evolution to revolution.
00:16:24.920 We like gradual things.
00:16:26.260 We don't like crazy radical change all at once.
00:16:29.140 And this would seem to be a really sad way for the State of the Union, a legacy of George Washington, to disappear from American public life or to be skipped over.
00:16:38.940 That seems wrong.
00:16:39.980 Nancy Pelosi should grow up. 1.00
00:16:41.460 She's probably not going to grow up, even though she's been called out on the lies that are the basis for her not having President Trump give the State of the Union.
00:16:48.580 He should show up anyway.
00:16:49.740 If she won't have him, he should show up anyway and just take over that chamber.
00:16:54.940 You know, Donald Trump, apparently the White House is now asking Mitch McConnell to see if the Senate Majority Leader can invite the President to give the State of the Union.
00:17:05.360 Traditionally, it is the Speaker of the House.
00:17:07.400 Could the Senate Majority Leader do it?
00:17:08.800 I don't know.
00:17:09.640 I don't know that anybody really has an answer to that.
00:17:11.840 So they're looking at that.
00:17:12.760 But in any case, Pelosi has invited him, and he should take her up on that invitation.
00:17:16.620 We've got to get back to Russia briefly because there was a bizarre exchange on Chris Cuomo's show on CNN today.
00:17:25.160 There are usually bizarre exchanges on Chris Cuomo's show.
00:17:28.460 This is not exactly a man-bites-dog story.
00:17:31.360 But Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer for the president, seems to imply that the Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia.
00:17:38.860 Now, I don't think this is the bombshell story that the mainstream media are making it out to be.
00:17:43.160 But you've got to watch the clip and decide for yourself.
00:17:45.020 I've never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign.
00:17:50.620 Yes, you have.
00:17:50.700 I have no idea.
00:17:51.560 I have not.
00:17:52.180 I said the President of the United States.
00:17:53.480 There is not a single bit of evidence.
00:17:55.180 The President of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here, conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC.
00:18:01.220 First of all, crime is not the bar of accountability for a president.
00:18:04.680 It's about what you knew, what was right, and what was wrong, and what did you deceive about.
00:18:09.520 Those are going to be major considerations.
00:18:11.220 The President did not collude with the Russians.
00:18:12.400 He said nobody had any contact.
00:18:14.020 Whatever collusion is.
00:18:15.380 Nobody colluded.
00:18:16.740 Okay, so the big headline, NBC, New York Times, is that Trump's lawyer is unsure whether campaign colluded with Russia.
00:18:27.620 Now, I mean, this was not a great media appearance for Rudy Giuliani, but it's not as big a story, it seems,
00:18:33.680 because we already know that virtually everybody on both sides of this question colluded with the Russians, whatever that means.
00:18:41.300 I mean, first of all, define collusion.
00:18:44.260 What do we mean by collusion?
00:18:46.080 The reason that the Democrats glommed onto this term is because it's so vague.
00:18:50.280 There's no crime of collusion.
00:18:52.260 There's no impeachable offense of collusion.
00:18:54.740 What does collusion mean?
00:18:55.680 Do I collude with my barista when I go get a coffee in the morning?
00:18:59.200 Do I collude with Andrew Klavan?
00:19:02.760 Regularly, I collude with Andrew Klavan.
00:19:04.720 Does Ben collude with gangsters to have me assassinate?
00:19:07.600 I don't know.
00:19:08.100 I'm just saying, what does collusion mean?
00:19:10.720 We know that Paul Manafort colluded with the Russians, okay?
00:19:16.620 We know that not during the Trump campaign, maybe, but we know that he's worked with pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.
00:19:22.180 This was no secret.
00:19:23.380 He was a lobbyist, an international lobbyist, a very prominent one.
00:19:26.780 By the way, we know that Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman's brother, Tony Podesta, major Democrat lobbyist,
00:19:33.000 also colluded with the Russians on the same campaign.
00:19:35.240 Now, we know that the Democrats and Hillary Clinton and the FBI and the DOJ colluded with the Russians on the Russia investigation.
00:19:43.920 How do we know that?
00:19:45.300 Because they went through Fusion GPS, funded by the DNC and Hillary, to contract Christopher Steele to get them dirt on Donald Trump.
00:19:52.960 And Christopher Steele got that dirt by talking to Russian intelligence and people familiar with Russian intelligence.
00:19:58.960 That's the only way he could have gotten the dirt.
00:20:00.840 All of the information, the apparent state-owned, Kremlin-owned Donald Trump sex tape,
00:20:07.980 that would have had to come from sources within Russian intelligence.
00:20:11.100 So we actually know for a fact that all of the Democrat forces, plus the federal government under Barack Obama,
00:20:17.040 colluded with the Russians in a way much more significant than Paul Manafort,
00:20:21.780 who was briefly the chairman of the Trump campaign, doing some lobbying work for the Russians years ago.
00:20:26.740 The question is not about collusion, as Rudy Giuliani rightly points out.
00:20:32.140 The question is, was there a crime committed?
00:20:35.020 And listen, Chris Cuomo gives away the whole story here.
00:20:38.700 He gives away the whole game of the left.
00:20:40.540 He said, well, the bar of accountability is not crime for the president.
00:20:45.860 The bar of accountability is not crime.
00:20:47.680 Because what Chris Cuomo wants to do is lower the bar of accountability to ever having watched a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode
00:20:54.360 or to ever have read a Russian novel.
00:20:57.620 And then all of a sudden you can say, see, see, he's compromised by the Russians.
00:21:01.920 And they can get him to be impeached or run him out of office, run him out of town on a rail.
00:21:07.420 The bar of accountability here is crime.
00:21:10.600 Cuomo is completely wrong.
00:21:12.000 And Giuliani is right.
00:21:13.280 The bar of accountability is not only crime.
00:21:15.400 It's high crimes and misdemeanors, not misdemeanors meaning, you know, minor offenses like we discuss now.
00:21:22.300 High crimes.
00:21:23.140 We're talking about high crimes and misdemeanors as that phrase was understood to mean in the drafting of the Constitution and the ratification.
00:21:33.240 Did President Trump commit a crime?
00:21:36.320 That's what you've got to ask yourself when you hear about Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andy McCabe.
00:21:41.840 If you've got Bruce Ohr telling all of these people, you know, that the Christopher Steele dossier was funded by Democrats,
00:21:50.300 there was this grudge and all of those people didn't report this or kept it quiet or wouldn't tell the FISA court judge.
00:21:56.360 You hear all of these names, all of these questions, what these timelines, these days, these that.
00:22:00.440 Ask yourself one question.
00:22:01.620 What crime did Donald Trump commit?
00:22:06.140 They're now trying to get him on a campaign finance violation, which is minor.
00:22:11.160 It is nothing.
00:22:12.060 They couldn't even get ex-senator John.
00:22:15.420 What was it?
00:22:16.100 John Roberts.
00:22:17.080 What was that guy's name?
00:22:18.900 Oh, no.
00:22:20.680 John Roberts is the chief justice of the court.
00:22:22.760 Gosh, that guy was so forgettable that he ran for president in 2008 and we don't even remember his name anymore.
00:22:29.240 Whatever.
00:22:29.820 Someone can write it in in the comments.
00:22:30.960 They couldn't even get him on this question.
00:22:33.880 And so the question is the crime.
00:22:36.720 What did he commit a crime with Russian intelligence?
00:22:40.080 John Edwards.
00:22:40.920 That was his name.
00:22:41.740 That's confusing because the psychic TV guy is also named John Edwards.
00:22:45.660 I don't know.
00:22:45.960 There are a lot of John is a very common name, but they couldn't they couldn't get him.
00:22:49.920 What is the crime that they're going to get Donald Trump on?
00:22:51.960 If Chris Cuomo can't give an answer to that, then it's all just huff and puff and puff and a whole lot of hot air.
00:22:58.380 But they can't actually nail down the question.
00:23:01.380 We've also got to get to Lindsey Graham because this was outrageous. 1.00
00:23:03.680 But first, and we got the mailbag coming up, Ben Shapiro tomorrow will be taking his show on the road to the March for Life in D.C.
00:23:10.440 At 10 a.m. Eastern, Ben will be live streaming at the National Mall and 12th Street.
00:23:14.720 So if you're planning to be at the March, head over and see him in person.
00:23:18.360 If you are on Facebook and YouTube, go over to dailywire.com.
00:23:21.240 It's 10 bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership.
00:23:23.580 You get me.
00:23:24.040 You get the Andrew Klavan show.
00:23:24.840 You get the Ben Shapiro show.
00:23:25.880 You get to ask questions in the mailbag.
00:23:27.180 You get the Matt Walsh show.
00:23:28.200 You get to ask questions backstage.
00:23:29.280 You get another kingdom.
00:23:30.440 You get everything.
00:23:31.900 Most importantly, you get the only vessel to drink during the State of the Union.
00:23:38.300 When President Trump rides in, kicks down the door of the Congress, disbands the parliament like Charles II, goes in and gives his make America great again, again, again, again speech of the State of the Union.
00:23:52.800 You're going to need this Leftist Tears Tumblr to collect all of those salty, delicious Leftist Tears.
00:23:56.620 Go to dailywire.com.
00:23:57.620 We'll be right back.
00:23:58.200 Ilhan Omar, who is that anti-Semite Somali-American freshman congresswoman from the Democrat Party, she's the first to wear a hijab in Congress, as the mainstream media have gleefully reported.
00:24:23.480 She is now implying that Lindsey Graham is gay.
00:24:28.540 That the Republican senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, is a gay guy.
00:24:32.840 This insinuation from Democrats has been around for a long time because Graham has never been married and he doesn't have any kids.
00:24:39.200 Listen to her make it and listen to her deny it.
00:24:41.680 We need to ask you about this.
00:24:43.180 You tweeted.
00:24:44.080 We're going to put this up on the screen regarding Republican Congressman Senator Lindsey Graham.
00:24:49.020 I believe we have this tweet saying they got him.
00:24:52.320 He is compromised.
00:24:55.000 And there it is.
00:24:55.980 I wonder if you'd explain what you were talking about there.
00:24:59.980 This has sparked a fair amount of criticism, not just from Republicans.
00:25:04.660 Can you explain that comment?
00:25:05.960 So over the last three years, we have seen many times where Senator Lindsey Graham has told us how dangerous this president could be if he was given the opportunity to be in the White House.
00:25:22.980 And all of a sudden he's made not only a 180 turnaround, but a 360 turnaround.
00:25:29.980 And so I am pretty sure that there is something happening with him, whether it is, you know, something that has to do with his funding when it comes to running for office, whether it has something to do with the polling that they might have in his district,
00:25:51.660 or whether it has to do with some sort of leadership within the Senate.
00:25:58.000 He is somehow compromised.
00:26:01.040 He's somehow compromised.
00:26:02.940 She's implying that he's gay.
00:26:04.120 Notice she leaves out, conspicuously leaves out that it could be about his personal life.
00:26:08.980 But it's the same line we've heard over and over and over.
00:26:11.060 The one point I want to make here, though, about Ilhan Omar is it turns out she's no better at mathematics than she is at political philosophy.
00:26:20.700 She says that Lindsey Graham has made not only a 180 degree turnaround in his opinion of Donald Trump, he's made a 360 degree turnaround.
00:26:29.340 So just for those of you who can visualize it, this, I'll just hold up the leftist here's Tumblr.
00:26:33.960 If I turn the leftist here's Tumblr 180 degrees, you see it's, you can't, you can't read it anymore.
00:26:39.180 It's the opposite.
00:26:40.560 And then if I turn it a full 360 degrees, it's exactly the same.
00:26:46.980 If Lindsey Graham had made a 360 degree turn, that would mean he's saying the same things today that he was saying two years ago.
00:26:53.420 So maybe when Ilhan Omar educates herself on history and political philosophy and civics, maybe she could educate herself on mathematics as well.
00:27:02.740 That might serve our country while she's serving in the legislature. 1.00
00:27:06.620 But she's clearly implying that he's gay, and now she's denying it in this very coy way.
00:27:11.320 She says, oh no, I'm just saying he's compromised.
00:27:13.920 I'm not, I don't know, maybe it's about what he had for breakfast.
00:27:17.020 Maybe he's not proud of eating Pop-Tarts for, I don't know, or that he's a gay guy. 0.98
00:27:21.280 And the way you know this is they've been doing it for years.
00:27:23.620 Here's Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC making the exact same insinuation. 0.98
00:27:27.440 Before Donald Trump got elected, Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump a racist, xenophobic bigot.
00:27:34.300 That is Lindsey Graham's words.
00:27:36.020 I doubt Lindsey Graham could tell you Donald Trump's had a change of heart in the last 24 months.
00:27:40.040 I bet what the change of heart has been with Lindsey Graham, not the president. 0.97
00:27:43.340 Or it could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham.
00:27:50.020 Something pretty extreme.
00:27:51.720 She says, we're going to leave it there.
00:27:53.200 We're going to look pretty extreme.
00:27:54.520 And this raises, so they are, they're implying that he's gay and they've done it for a long time.
00:27:58.940 This does raise an interesting point though.
00:28:01.640 The left tells us that it's not only okay to be gay, it is great to be gay.
00:28:05.920 It is so much better to be gay than to be straight. 0.74
00:28:08.280 It makes you a part of a victim group that then gives you certain advantages
00:28:11.680 and puts you in a more important place in the intersectional hierarchy of victimhood.
00:28:17.380 And that's wonderful and it's diversity and that's great.
00:28:20.380 Except when a Republican is gay, they hate gay Republicans. 0.76
00:28:24.520 They do this all the time.
00:28:26.260 They say they love racial minorities.
00:28:29.600 They love black people and they hate black Republicans. 0.58
00:28:31.700 They love women.
00:28:32.600 They say women are so much better than men, but they hate women Republicans. 0.72
00:28:35.900 They treat them all like dirt.
00:28:37.740 They treat Tim Scott like dirt.
00:28:39.360 Look at how they treated Clarence Thomas.
00:28:42.900 Just on the question of race.
00:28:44.300 Look at those two guys.
00:28:45.440 On the question of sexual orientation.
00:28:47.760 They're gay shaming Lindsey Graham. 1.00
00:28:49.520 Who isn't gay? 0.98
00:28:50.280 We have no evidence that he's gay.
00:28:51.480 He said, he's always asked this question.
00:28:53.740 He says, look, in as much as it matters, I'm not gay, but basically screw you for asking.
00:29:00.860 And it's true. 0.56
00:29:01.740 Who cares?
00:29:02.320 Who cares what his attraction is?
00:29:04.700 I don't know.
00:29:05.460 Maybe he likes girls.
00:29:06.200 Maybe he likes boys.
00:29:06.900 He said he dated a girl when he was younger.
00:29:08.560 He never got married.
00:29:09.520 I don't know.
00:29:10.040 Sex is complicated.
00:29:11.180 Sometimes people don't want to get married, especially if you're a prominent politician.
00:29:14.320 Okay, whatever.
00:29:15.160 The point is they're gay shaming Lindsey Graham, even though he's not necessarily gay or there's
00:29:21.420 no evidence that he is.
00:29:22.540 Same thing with Sarah Palin. 0.99
00:29:24.900 Same thing with Nikki Haley.
00:29:26.180 They talk about how Republicans must hate women because we find Elizabeth Warren unlikable.
00:29:32.440 We have plenty of women who we promote. 1.00
00:29:34.640 Our UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina.
00:29:37.980 Our vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.
00:29:40.580 How did the left treat those women? 0.96
00:29:43.080 What awful things do they say about those women? 1.00
00:29:44.980 What awful things do they say about Hope Hicks in the White House?
00:29:47.640 They were implying that she was sleeping with the president.
00:29:49.740 What awful things do they say about Kellyanne Conway?
00:29:52.260 They make fun of Sarah Sanders' looks. 0.98
00:29:54.520 It's just a lie.
00:29:55.400 And I bring it up not to focus on Ilhan Omar any more than we have to or Lindsey Graham or
00:30:00.900 any of these other people, but just to show you the left doesn't care about racial
00:30:04.900 minorities or sexual minorities or women or they don't care at all.
00:30:10.640 They use them like tools.
00:30:12.180 They turn them into tools to use them as a cudgel to beat up the right. 0.97
00:30:17.960 And before we get to the mailbag, I do also have to point out just a little bit of good
00:30:21.080 news today.
00:30:22.000 The Senate has rebuked Kamala Harris and Maisie Hirono, two Democrat senators, and Kamala 0.79
00:30:28.060 Harris is running for president.
00:30:29.980 The Senate posted this out today.
00:30:32.000 They voted on this rather, and then they posted it to the internet where we could all read
00:30:36.160 it.
00:30:36.280 The sense of the Senate that disqualifying a nominee to federal office on the basis of
00:30:41.000 membership in the Knights of Columbus violates the Constitution of the United States, that's
00:30:47.660 a terrible thing.
00:30:48.480 It's a terrible thing to violate someone's freedom of religion and to try to disqualify
00:30:53.880 a judicial nominee.
00:30:54.640 The reason that they are rebuking these two women, Kamala Harris and Maisie Hirono, is they
00:30:58.860 raised the question over whether a judicial nominee, whose name is Brian Boucher, whether
00:31:03.180 his membership in a Catholic organization disqualified him from being judge.
00:31:07.060 This isn't the first time this has happened.
00:31:08.720 Dianne Feinstein put it in absurdly stark terms, talking about a female Catholic judicial nominee. 0.99
00:31:17.140 The dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern.
00:31:26.200 The dogma lives loudly within you.
00:31:27.900 They do this to Karen Pence. 0.96
00:31:29.060 Karen Pence, the vice president's wife, is working at a Christian school, which holds to
00:31:34.580 Christian moral and sexual teaching, and they're so upset about this.
00:31:39.120 They're furious.
00:31:39.800 How awful.
00:31:40.580 The Democrats have a religion problem here. 0.51
00:31:43.120 They don't take religion seriously.
00:31:44.760 And so, because they don't take religion seriously, they fall into their own ideological religion
00:31:50.440 completely unawares.
00:31:51.780 They don't realize there's any alternative to progressivism, which is their religion.
00:31:56.480 The trouble is, everybody's got to serve somebody, as many people have observed.
00:32:00.000 At bottom, all political problems are theological.
00:32:03.720 And Democrats' blindness on this issue, total, not just ignorance, not just kooky ideas, but
00:32:10.740 actual blindness on the issue is, I think, part of the reason why they are so dysfunctional
00:32:17.780 in our politics at the moment.
00:32:19.460 We can get to all of this in the mailbag.
00:32:21.520 I am determined to get through a lot of questions, so let's start it right now.
00:32:25.000 From Parker.
00:32:25.960 Hi, Michael.
00:32:26.520 Where do you stand on the moral trolley dilemma, where five people will be killed by a runaway
00:32:32.200 trolley, but you can push one person, presumably innocent, in its path to save them?
00:32:38.320 Do you believe saving five lives outweighs the one you'll harm, or do you believe any involvement
00:32:42.860 is morally objectionable?
00:32:44.500 Does the answer to this lie within the Bible?
00:32:46.820 Yes, there is.
00:32:48.420 An answer to this comes, really, from Thomas Aquinas.
00:32:52.500 You've, I think, misstated the problem a little bit.
00:32:55.420 The trolley problem is this question of, you're there, you've got the lever to which way the
00:32:59.680 trolley is going to go.
00:33:00.800 On one side, there are five people tied to the tracks.
00:33:03.300 On the other side, there's one person tied to the tracks.
00:33:05.160 The train is traveling at the five people, and you can pull the lever and have it turn
00:33:09.480 toward the one person.
00:33:11.880 Is this permitted?
00:33:14.240 This is permitted.
00:33:16.100 What would you do?
00:33:17.360 It's really up to you.
00:33:19.320 This relies on the principle of double effect.
00:33:23.100 There are four criteria for the principle of double effect.
00:33:26.000 One is that the action done should be intrinsically good or morally neutral regarding pulling the
00:33:32.220 lever.
00:33:32.420 Two, the bad act must not be the means by which one achieves the good act.
00:33:39.020 So, it cannot be the case that the people are saved because of killing the one guy.
00:33:45.800 Now, killing the one guy might be an effect of saving the five people, but it can't be
00:33:49.660 the case that the five people are killed because you kill the one guy.
00:33:52.620 Number three, you intend the good effect, and you do not intend the bad effect either as
00:33:58.900 a means to the good or as an end in itself, obviously, and the bad effect must not be
00:34:03.540 disproportionate to the good effect.
00:34:05.360 So, in the trolley question, you have a choice.
00:34:10.200 It would be morally permissible to pull the lever and have the train derail and kill the
00:34:15.580 one guy and not kill the five people, or to do nothing would also be morally permissible
00:34:20.100 because you're dealing with a question of double effect.
00:34:24.400 It's funny how this question was answered with great effect by Thomas Aquinas a very, very
00:34:33.260 long time ago, and yet people still discuss it as though there's no answer to the question.
00:34:37.260 There is clearly an answer, and we all know in our gut that probably either one is fine
00:34:43.860 or maybe we'd be more likely to pull it and go for the one guy, but the answer is not quite
00:34:49.920 so clear as we always want it to be, as we want to form some ideology and a checklist and
00:34:55.140 say this is what we do, but the reasoning, the moral reasoning that gets you to that answer
00:34:59.880 I think is much more interesting and has a far greater effect on real problems you will
00:35:06.120 encounter assuming you don't find yourself on the train tracks with many people tied to
00:35:10.600 the rails. From Samuel, hi Michael, is that the famed Shapiro check that sits framed on
00:35:16.700 the fireplace in your studio? Best, Sam.
00:35:20.860 So it's funny you ask that, Sam. There it is. Here is one of my most prized possessions,
00:35:28.780 the check that I received from Ben Shapiro for accurately predicting that Donald Trump would
00:35:33.760 win the 2016 presidential election. He gave me four to one odds, so I only bet a hundred bucks.
00:35:39.180 He gave me 400 bucks, and there in the memo line you can read it says, for ignoring data.
00:35:45.680 I do love it, and I framed it, but just to be clear, I did mobile deposit the check first,
00:35:51.640 so I certainly took the money and would not just leave it sitting there in glass.
00:35:56.460 From Patrick, if you had to pick a candidate to win primary and general in 2020 out of the
00:36:02.340 announced and probable Democrat field for president, which would you prefer? Thanks, PJ.
00:36:06.980 I'd like Liz Warren to win the primary. She's the most beatable candidate for the general election, 1.00
00:36:12.580 so I want her to win the primary. If it had to be someone who would win the primary and the general, 0.99
00:36:19.500 meaning we would have to live with a Democrat president, that's really hard. Of the announced
00:36:24.220 candidates, they're all so far left wing. I suppose Joe Biden is probably the most moderate
00:36:31.660 of the possible nominees he hasn't quite announced yet, but it certainly looks like he's going to
00:36:36.340 run. So I guess if I had to deal with someone, you know, if I had to choose between arsenic and
00:36:40.760 cyanide, I guess I would go with Joe Biden, but they're all pretty terrible. That party has shifted
00:36:46.080 far to the left, and any person who wins the Democrat primary in 2020 is going to so have to
00:36:53.060 shift to the left that they'll probably be indistinguishable by the time the general rolls
00:36:56.800 around. So sad. From Mike. Hi, Michael. My name is also Michael, so you should answer my question,
00:37:02.960 okay? How did the Democrat party become the mainstream party? Could the Republican party
00:37:07.200 ever become the mainstream party, and would that even be a good thing? Thanks, Michael.
00:37:11.800 You have been so brainwashed, Michael, by our pop culture that you don't realize that the
00:37:16.680 Republicans are the mainstream. I don't mean this to attack you or anything like that, but
00:37:21.480 Republicans until about a week ago or two weeks ago held all three branches of government
00:37:27.760 and basically had the Supreme Court and had spent the previous 10 years or eight years
00:37:33.780 taking over every state house in the country. Republicans are the mainstream party. Now,
00:37:38.920 it doesn't seem that way because you're spending time in high school or college or in corporate
00:37:43.860 America or wherever, and you're watching the popular culture in the movies and listening to
00:37:47.720 the music and watching TV news. But just look at the effect. The mainstream has been the Republican
00:37:53.780 party. We have the presidency. We still have two of the three houses of government, to use Alexandria
00:38:01.600 Ocasio-Cortez's incorrect phrasing. We still have the Senate, and we still have the presidency,
00:38:06.180 and the Democrats just retook the House. So we are mainstream. The question is, how will we retake the
00:38:11.560 culture? That's going to be much harder because conservatives don't care that much about the culture. 0.96
00:38:15.400 The left does because they play a longer game, and the left cares more about politics,
00:38:19.280 so they're willing to go further for it. I hope that we can do it. Some people are trying to
00:38:23.400 retake the culture. Drew writes movies. I perform in his audio books and film projects and things like
00:38:29.200 that, but unfortunately, it's going to take a much more concerted effort at the universities and at the
00:38:34.800 movie studios and at the publishing houses rather than just focusing on think tanks and politicians.
00:38:39.860 From Arun, dear Dr. Kofefe, speaking of doctors, what do you think about PhDs asking to be referred
00:38:47.100 to as doctor? Thanks, love the show. PhDs are the only real doctors. Why is a medical doctor
00:38:54.340 referred to as doctor? Why is a physician referred to as doctor? Doctor comes from the Latin word
00:39:00.540 doctor or docere, which means to teach. Doctor means teacher. So when you're a teacher,
00:39:06.780 you're a doctor. So a PhD in art history or something, it makes sense for that person to
00:39:11.560 be a doctor. But a physician is not a doctor. They're a physician or a surgeon. They wear a
00:39:16.880 stethoscope. You know, the word doctor doesn't mean wears a stethoscope. So for those of us,
00:39:23.420 you know, who have wives, for instance, who are working on PhDs right now, I suppose that when those
00:39:30.020 wives get the PhD, then we will be some of the only people whose wives are doctors. 1.00
00:39:37.540 From Nicholas. Hey, Michael, just wondering what you think about Niccolo Machiavelli and the prince.
00:39:43.760 Hashtag came for Ben, stayed for Knowles. That's nice. I saw another one, actually. Someone said,
00:39:48.560 I saw a hashtag came for Ben, stayed for Ben, but I also watch Knowles now, which I'll take what I can
00:39:53.780 get. I love reading Machiavelli. I actually did a translation, the first English stage translation
00:40:00.000 of Machiavelli's first play. A lot of people don't realize that Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote The
00:40:04.780 Prince, kind of invented modern political science and in some ways maybe invented the modern political
00:40:11.040 era. He was also a playwright and a translator of plays. So I did a translation of his first play,
00:40:18.360 The Girl from Andros. I love reading him. I think he's one of the most consequential thinkers in
00:40:22.560 the history of the world. However, he's the guy who invented modernity and I don't care that much
00:40:27.600 for modernity. So I much prefer the actual content of other political thinkers, but he's truly a great
00:40:34.080 genius. And one thing about Machiavelli, also like Edmund Burke, is that he wasn't just a political
00:40:39.140 theorist. He actually was a practitioner. He held offices. He was a diplomat. He was really in the
00:40:46.600 reality of politics and politics as a practical science. So he knew what he was talking about.
00:40:50.860 I have time for one more from Brendan. What is the best book for a college conservative to read?
00:40:58.060 Well, you know my answer. Really fast. I know you're busy in college. The fastest, most important
00:41:03.440 read would be Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide by Michael J. Knowles. But after
00:41:08.100 that, I would recommend that you read The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk. There are too many good books
00:41:13.040 to recommend. Reflections on the Revolution in France, God and Man at Yale, Up from Liberalism, also by
00:41:19.080 Buckley is a good one. Witness by Whitaker Chambers is fabulous. There's so many to read. Obviously,
00:41:25.400 Aristotle and Plato and the Bible and blah, blah, blah. It goes on and on. Read The Conservative Mind.
00:41:30.720 I think that's good for a college-age student, specifically for conservatives, specifically for
00:41:35.480 American conservatives. I think you'll enjoy it. Okay, that's our show. I hope you have a good weekend.
00:41:40.360 In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. I'll see you on Monday.
00:42:10.360 Daily Wire 2019.
00:42:12.000 Hey, guys. On the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to talk about Mike Pence's wife,
00:42:16.820 Karen, who got a job at a private Christian school teaching art, and now the left is outraged
00:42:22.500 about it. The outrage itself is fake and stupid and ridiculous, but there's something ominous
00:42:29.900 about it, which I really want to focus on. We'll talk about that. Also, should people ever really
00:42:36.020 have to apologize for expressing an opinion, even a wrong opinion? I'll say no, and I want to explain
00:42:41.980 why. Finally, I want to give you, Kamala Harris, the Democrat, she had some deep and beautiful words
00:42:50.900 of wisdom in an interview with ABC, and I think it'll change your life. I want to tell you about
00:42:56.200 those as well today on The Matt Wall Show.