Ep. 282 - The State Of The State Of The Union
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
182.65948
Summary
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
00:00:00.000
The State of the Union is strong, but the State of the State of the Union is not strong.
00:00:13.840
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.
00:00:26.800
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.
00:00:41.420
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.
00:01:00.960
But first, let's make a little money, honey, with Lending Club.
00:01:03.880
If you are carrying revolving debt, that means that you're not paying off your card every month,
00:01:09.000
and you could be paying thousands in interest every year that you don't have to.
00:01:12.900
With Lending Club, you can consolidate your debt or pay off credit cards with one fixed monthly payment.
00:01:17.900
Since 2007, Lending Club has helped millions of people regain control of their finances with affordable fixed-rate personal loans.
00:01:27.380
This really appeals to me as a millennial because I never want to leave my couch.
00:01:32.100
Tell them about yourself, how much you want to borrow.
00:01:34.020
Pick the terms that are right for you, and if you're approved, your loan is automatically deposited into your bank account in as little as a few days.
00:01:42.220
Lending Club is the number one peer-to-peer lending platform with over $35 billion in loans issued.
00:01:48.080
Just go to LendingClub.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
00:01:52.860
Check your rate in minutes and borrow up to 40 Gs.
00:01:55.900
That's LendingClub.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
00:02:03.380
All loans made by WebBank, member FDIC, equal housing lender.
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
00:02:38.040
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.
00:03:34.420
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,
00:04:19.440
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,
00:04:32.340
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.
00:04:49.080
You might say, well, lawyers mislead judges all the time.
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
00:05:19.740
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.
00:05:30.700
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.
00:05:45.360
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.
00:05:58.980
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.
00:06:17.520
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,
00:06:51.860
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.
00:07:03.600
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,
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.
00:07:52.260
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.
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.
00:08:14.440
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
00:08:21.800
that has not affected virtually any other aspect of the government.
00:08:26.100
She put this in a letter to the president, which is not really a letter to the president.
00:08:36.980
And she said, look, the Secret Service and Homeland Security, they say they just can't do it.
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.
00:08:52.360
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.
00:09:21.320
She could not possibly be more clear about this.
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.
00:09:49.780
And most presidents would abide by the rule, but I don't know.
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.
00:10:05.640
I mean, we're getting the reality TV show that we've all asked for.
00:10:13.180
This is how he accomplishes much of his agenda.
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.
00:10:54.940
They read that line and they say he should just mail them a letter and say, OK, there's information.
00:11:01.480
But the history of the State of the Union is actually a little more regal than that.
00:11:07.880
It actually goes back all the way to George Washington.
00:11:10.800
But first, let's talk about Purple Mattress, which I love.
00:11:16.420
It's been raining in L.A. for about seven years now.
00:11:19.780
And so my allergies are just really, really acting up.
00:11:24.060
The only thing that is giving me a good night's sleep is my Purple Mattress, which I love.
00:11:29.920
Purple is unlike any mattress you've ever slept on.
00:11:36.380
It is this proprietary technology developed by a rocket scientist.
00:11:47.680
It sleeps really cool, unlike some other mattresses where you just feel like it's trapping all the heat.
00:11:52.720
It's just the best mattress I've ever slept on.
00:11:56.660
I'm chipping in and buying some for my friends.
00:12:05.460
If you're not fully satisfied, you can return your mattress for a full refund.
00:12:09.600
It's backed by a 10-year warranty, free shipping and returns, free in-home setup, and old mattress removal.
00:12:15.480
And right now, my listeners will get a free Purple Pillow with the purchase of a mattress.
00:12:19.820
That's in addition to the great gifts they're offering site-wide.
00:12:39.640
It's a small price to pay for the best sleep of your life.
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,
00:12:59.680
I have a little bit of a different view on this because they push it too much.
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.
00:14:01.840
It held until Woodrow Wilson, one of the worst presidents in American history.
00:14:10.320
So now the real historical record is a little more complex.
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.
00:14:27.640
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.
00:15:01.120
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.
00:15:11.940
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.
00:15:37.040
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.
00:16:05.060
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.
00:16:20.600
You know, the conservative tends to prefer evolution to revolution.
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.
00:16:41.460
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.
00:16:49.740
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.
00:17:09.640
I don't know that anybody really has an answer to 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.
00:17:31.360
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.
00:17:55.180
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.
00:18:11.220
The President did not collude with the Russians.
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.
00:18:46.080
The reason that the Democrats glommed onto this term is because it's so vague.
00:18:55.680
Do I collude with my barista when I go get a coffee in the morning?
00:19:04.720
Does Ben collude with gangsters to have me assassinate?
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.
00:19:23.380
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.
00:19:45.300
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.
00:20:35.020
And listen, Chris Cuomo gives away the whole story here.
00:20:40.540
He said, well, the bar of accountability is not crime for the president.
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
00:20:57.620
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.
00:21:15.400
It's high crimes and misdemeanors, not misdemeanors meaning, you know, minor offenses like we discuss now.
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.
00:21:36.320
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.
00:22:06.140
They're now trying to get him on a campaign finance violation, which is minor.
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.
00:22:36.720
What did he commit a crime with Russian intelligence?
00:22:41.740
That's confusing because the psychic TV guy is also named John Edwards.
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.
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.
00:23:31.900
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.
00:23:58.200
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.
00:24:44.080
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.
00:24:55.980
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.
00:25:05.960
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.
00:26:04.120
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.
00:26:40.560
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.
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.
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.
00:27:27.440
Before Donald Trump got elected, Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump a racist, xenophobic bigot.
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.
00:27:43.340
Or it could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham.
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.
00:28:01.640
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.
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.
00:28:29.600
They love black people and they hate black Republicans.
00:28:32.600
They say women are so much better than men, but they hate women Republicans.
00:28:53.740
He says, look, in as much as it matters, I'm not gay, but basically screw you for asking.
00:29:11.180
Sometimes people don't want to get married, especially if you're a prominent politician.
00:29:15.160
The point is they're gay shaming Lindsey Graham, even though he's not necessarily gay or there's
00:29:26.180
They talk about how Republicans must hate women because we find Elizabeth Warren unlikable.
00:29:34.640
Our UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina.
00:29:43.080
What awful things do they say about those women?
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?
00:29:55.400
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.
00:30:12.180
They turn them into tools to use them as a cudgel to beat up the right.
00:30:17.960
And before we get to the mailbag, I do also have to point out just a little bit of good
00:30:22.000
The Senate has rebuked Kamala Harris and Maisie Hirono, two Democrat senators, and Kamala
00:30:32.000
They voted on this rather, and then they posted it to the internet where we could all read
00:30:36.280
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
00:30:48.480
It's a terrible thing to violate someone's freedom of religion and to try to disqualify
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.
00:31:08.720
Dianne Feinstein put it in absurdly stark terms, talking about a female Catholic judicial nominee.
00:31:17.140
The dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern.
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.
00:31:44.760
And so, because they don't take religion seriously, they fall into their own ideological religion
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
00:32:21.520
I am determined to get through a lot of questions, so let's start it right now.
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
00:32:48.420
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
00:33:00.800
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
00:33:23.100
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
00:33:32.420
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
00:34:05.360
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
00:35:20.860
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,
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,
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.
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.
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.
00:42:12.000
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