Ep. 284 - Oh, Is The Government Shut Down？
Summary
A Catholic podcast hosted by a Catholic has been banned in the Holy See and the Vatican City. The government is still shut down, and the culture of death continues in Holland on the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Transcript
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With all this excitement about baby Hitler and punching teenagers, does anybody even remember
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that the government is shut down? We will analyze where the impasse stands. Then more mediocre
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presidential candidates enter the race for the Democrats. We take a look at the case for Kamala
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and wonder how Kirsten Gillibrand ever got elected to the Senate in the first place.
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Finally, the culture of death in Holland on the 46th anniversary of Roe versus Wade.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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You know, I do have to point out before we get started here, yesterday I spent virtually all
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of the show talking about how the mainstream media and politicians and pundits on the left and the
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right and parts of the Catholic Church totally maligned, unfairly defamed, smeared those Covington
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High School kids from the video clip in Washington, D.C. So I was talking about that for most of the
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show yesterday. I then, right after the show, I went and I did an interview for EWTN, which is the
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Catholic News Channel, and we were talking about the same issue. We were talking a little bit about
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the March for Life, and okay. Immediately after I finished the interview for the Catholic News
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Channel, I go to my computer and I am notified that my episode of my show for that day has been
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banned in the Holy See. It was banned in Vatican City. It was banned all around there, and China,
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and China, which a note for the Holy See, when you find yourself on the side of China, you're probably
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doing something wrong, especially when it comes to free speech and matters of the church and the faith.
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So I find that very amusing that my criticism, apparently, who knows, maybe it was a mistake,
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maybe it was a mistake from YouTube, but apparently the one episode in which I really criticize
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some prominent priests and some prominent bishops and archbishops gets my show banned in the Holy See
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and the Vatican. I don't know which force, if this was intentional, I don't know which forces in the
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Holy See have conspired to ban my very dangerous episode where I just lay out the facts of this
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event and non-traversy in Washington, D.C., but whoever they are, I guess you're known by your
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friends and you're known by your adversaries, so I get a real kick out of that. One of the few
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popular podcasts hosted by a Catholic has been banned, at least one episode, in the Vatican City.
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Very, very funny. We have a lot to get to today, but first, let's make a little money, honey.
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the smart shopping assistant that helps save you time and money. So the government's shut down.
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You probably don't remember that. This is a wonderful moment in our politics where what
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should be the biggest story, Democrats have held this over Republicans' heads for years. If you shut
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down the government, the people are going to go crazy. They're going to throw you out of office.
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It's proving the adage which Mitch Daniels, the former governor of Indiana, said, which is you'll
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be amazed at how much government you won't miss. And that's what we're seeing here. People don't
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even know that this shutdown is happening. We're talking about the Covington kids. We're talking
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about baby Hitler. Nobody notices because, frankly, at this point, it may be the strategy of the Trump
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administration to just keep these federal workers away forever. These non-essential employees,
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we are not missing any government. So what are we going to get? Are we going to get a compromise?
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Are we going to get a deal? President Trump has offered a proposal, a deal. And the deal is pretty
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simple. He's offering partial DACA relief, partial relief for the dreamers or the illegal aliens brought
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here before the age of 18 in exchange for part of the border wall. It's not amnesty for DACA. It's not
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the whole border wall. It's a temporary relief, a few years where the DACA people won't get deported
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for a little bit of wall funding. And just take a guess at how the mainstream media and Democrats
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Senate Republicans are pushing for that vote on the president's so-called compromise. That's the
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plan that would provide temporary protections for dreamers in exchange for the $5.7 billion that the
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president has been demanding for his wall. But Democrats say it is dead on arrival. They will
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not vote for it. They are adamant that they won't negotiate until Republicans agree to reopen the
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government. And there are no signs that they're going to cave on that. George, the Senate Democratic
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leader Chuck Schumer saying, quote, it's very hard to negotiate when a gun is being held to your head.
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Oh, wow. That's a big quote. It's very hard to negotiate when a gun is being held to your head.
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So the Democrats are saying they won't negotiate until Trump reopens the government, which is to say
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they won't negotiate until Trump gives them everything they want and they get and he has to
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give or he gets nothing in return. Rather, they won't negotiate until Donald Trump gives up the
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entire negotiation. And the mainstream media are applauding them for this. You know, it would be
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pretty interesting to see how this would be covered if it were a Democrat president and the
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Republicans were the ones in the Congress who were refusing to come to the table or deal with
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any negotiations. What President Trump offered is a totally fair proposal. If anything, it's got
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people on the right very upset because they don't want any even partial amnesty for DACA. Now, the more
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moderate Democrats, the more reasonable Democrats are the ones who are saying, hmm, possibly we should
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take this deal. Possibly we should reopen the government. Then we can actually try to negotiate
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around the edges, try to expand protections for DACA, whatever. But the Democrats are being held
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hostage by a radical base. And don't just take my word for it. Take the word of a well-known Democrat,
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It's a very troubling time. I think the Democrats are as much to blame right now as the Republicans
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are. They've got control of the House, but they're mostly just, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not going to
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do what you want to do. I haven't seen a grand plan. And you've got the young people running
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through the halls who are the new members of Congress who are conducting pep rallies every
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day instead of getting together with the more moderate people or the people from the people
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from the Midwest who have won in Ohio and Wisconsin and Minnesota where they need to win again if
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they're going to get control. But they're being driven hard by the left.
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So Tom Brokaw going pretty hard after specifically Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and all of these other
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freshman members of Congress who are holding their party hostage. And I think he's got this right,
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Tom Brokaw, as a more old guard Democrat. But look, he is a left winger. He was the anchor of NBC
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News. He is the guy. He is the mainstream media. And even he is pointing this out. It's a tough spot
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for Pelosi. Why would Pelosi take a deal when she's got to fight her base, which is
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rather radical. And they're the ones who go out and donate money. They're the ones who go out
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and hand out palm cards. They're the ones who matter when it comes to primary elections.
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They're the base. And the majority of Americans who do want a deal. They're not answerable to that.
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Even President Trump isn't really answerable. But the way you see it right now, President Trump
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has offered a compromise. Democrats have offered no compromise. I mean, when they say,
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we will not negotiate until you reopen the government, the entire fight is over whether
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and how to reopen the government. So there is no, they're just saying we will not compromise for
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even Tom Brokaw to point that out is pretty illuminating. Ann Coulter, of course, takes
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exactly the opposite approach. Ann Coulter tweeted out, quote, 100 miles of border wall in exchange for
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amnestying millions of illegals. So if we grant citizenship to a billion foreigners,
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maybe we can finally get a full border wall. Because Ann, who previously had written
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e pluribus awesome in Trump we trust, has been disillusioned with the administration and is very
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upset now because she thinks President Trump is going to cave on this. And it's a serious fear.
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But when conservatives are debating, is this a good proposal from President Trump or a bad proposal?
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Is it a good deal or a bad deal? Temporary relief for DACA in exchange for part of the border wall?
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It actually seems like a pretty good deal, only in so much as the dreamers, so-called, already have
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de facto amnesty. At the moment, what they have is they're not being deported. They're not really
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even being used as a political bargaining chip because they're the most sympathetic of the group of
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illegal aliens. So all President Trump is saying in this deal is, okay, we'll put off deporting
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them a few more years in exchange for part of the border wall. It gives both sides the ability to
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walk away, which is really what needs to happen for this government to reopen. The other thing that
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needs to happen for the government to reopen is for people to care about the shutdown. And I think
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ultimately that's why this shutdown is now on its, what, 32nd day or 33rd day, longest shutdown in
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American history, it, people don't feel it. And so if they don't feel it, then President Trump gets
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to rally his base, Nancy Pelosi gets to rally her base, and there's no reason to reopen it. I think
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broadly so far, this is still a win for Republicans. The longer that this is drawn on, it's true that
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President Trump took a slight hit in popularity, but the wall has gotten much more popular and
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government has seemed much less necessary. All of this bloated federal government has seemed a lot
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less necessary during the shutdown. So I guess keep it up. I, as long as President Trump doesn't offer
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a final fix of amnesty, as long as he doesn't say in exchange for part of the wall, we will give
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these illegal aliens, dreamers, we will give them permanent residency or amnesty or citizenship or
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whatever. As long as he's short of that, the other added benefit is that he's showing the country that
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he's the negotiator and, and these guys are being intransigent. Now we've got to get to speaking of
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I've got breaking, shocking news. Kamala Harris is running for president. We knew it was going to
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happen. Here's the opener. Truth, justice, decency, equality, freedom, democracy. These aren't just
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words. They're the values we as Americans cherish. And they're all on the line now. The future of our
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country depends on you and millions of others lifting our voices to fight for our American values.
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That's why I'm running for president of the United States. I'm running to lift those voices, to bring
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our voices together. So please join me in Oakland on Sunday, January 27th, and go to KamalaHarris.org
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to join our campaign. Let's do this together. Let's claim our future for ourselves, for our children,
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Wow. I'm just really got all that groove. I feel like I'm in my mood mix just listening to that fun
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opener. So it's kind of a boring, typical political platitudes. But you do get a sense of the mood.
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Peggy Noonan had a good column in the Wall Street Journal recently where she said running for president
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now is not about ideas. It's not about proposals. It's about mood. It's not even so much personality.
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It's mood. What kind of mood are you in? And so this is a fairly slick video. Nothing really new here.
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The Intercept had an interesting question, which is now percolating, which is the problem for Kamala
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Harris is whether or not a prosecutor can become the president or at least the Democrat nominee in the
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age of Black Lives Matter. Brianna Gray had written that piece because Kamala Harris, unfortunately for
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her, has a record. She made her career as a prosecutor. It's why all this cool, hip, my mood mix stuff is
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probably going to fall flat as it's not that authentic. She's a lawyer. She's a prosecutor,
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obviously a pretty successful prosecutor. She became an attorney general of California, then senator,
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and now she's running for president. She was pretty tough, pretty tough on crime. But in an age where
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even Republicans are running away from being tough on crime, in an age where President Trump is bragging
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about how he's letting a lot of criminals out of prison, is a prosecutor really going to work to
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win the Democrat nomination? I'm not so sure about that. And so this is a real problem for her, and I
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think she recognizes that it's a real problem. So what she's doing is she's totally running in the
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direction of identity politics. She's been doing this for a long time, but she's really honed in on
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it. So when did she release her announcement? Martin Luther King Day. This big day. She's
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identifying herself. In that video, the mood mix video, she talked about how she's from Oakland,
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about how she was a young Black woman, and that's why songs about young Black women really inspired her.
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She said that her favorite song is from Funkadelic, and she's really playing into the mood of these
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identity politics. This is a real trouble for her, though, because we're in an age of 4K video.
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We're in an age of Instagram Live. We're in an age of filming our dental cleanings. We're in an age
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where it's very difficult to hide your genuine self. This is sort of an advantage for the public.
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You know, when Franklin Roosevelt was president, most people didn't realize he was in a wheelchair
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because the press covered it up. The press would cover up for JFK's marital infidelities. They'd
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cover up for LBJ's many marital infidelities. There was a huge distance. Even President Reagan,
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not no infidelities, but President Reagan was a scripted president. He would write all his lines
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out really carefully. He was an actor. He was really polished. There was a distance between the
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candidate, the president, and the people. That is gone. We've elected a reality TV star president.
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And really, Barack Obama was the first one to advance this because he was the first president
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of the social media age. Donald Trump has blown it up. The press secretary, Sarah Sanders,
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doesn't need to give press conferences because President Trump is tweeting all the time.
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He was joking about this. He said, well, I told Sarah, she doesn't need to go out there to the
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podium because you'll all lie about her anyway. And what's the difference? We're communicating to
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the American people. And it's true. He is. He's communicating himself through Twitter. And in
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this age of constant contact of high definition video, I don't know that Kamala Harris can portray
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herself as this fun mood mix, you know, introductory video dancing candidate who's a mood, who's a mood
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of identity and hide her record. I mean, she was a prosecutor when you've, when you're an unknown
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entity such as Barack Obama was really before he ran for president. When people don't know a lot
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about you, they can throw their hopes and dreams on you. When you're a known entity, especially when
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you're in a field of probably 20 Democrat candidates, they are going to dig up every single case that
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she ever worked on. There's already stories that are percolating of how she fought to keep an
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innocent man in jail in the age of criminal justice reform, in the age of Me Too. I'm not sure that
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that is going to work really well, but she's not, certainly not the worst candidate. Speaking of
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highly mediocre candidates, Kirsten Gillibrand continues to humiliate herself. And this time
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it came at the hands of none other than Jake Tapper. You said Trump's immigration positions
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are racist. That's a, that's the word you use racist. Now, as you know, you were more conservative
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early on in your career on immigration. CNN's K files out with a new report this week on your 2008
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campaign website and a mailer sent from your congressional office back then a long time ago, but still
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in your, in your public life. Take a look. You said that you were a quote, firm opponent of giving
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quote, amnesty to illegal aliens, unquote. You said English should be quote, the official language of
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the United States. You called for expediting deportation of undocumented immigrants. Now I know you have very
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different positions today, but let me ask you if Trump's immigration positions are racist, were they
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racist when you held some of those positions as well? They certainly weren't empathetic and they were
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not kind. And I did not think about suffering in other people's lives. Oh my gosh. That is so
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brutal. That is so brutal. I mean, Jake Tapper does this every once in a while. He's usually very
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frustrating and he's a left winger and all that. Every once in a while though, you got to give him
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credit. He does come swinging around and plays fair, at least briefly. And so he asks this question,
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Senator Gillibrand, do you still beat your wife? And she stammers. She has no answer. And this is the
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problem of, of Kirsten Gillibrand. If it's a problem for Kamala Harris, it's much worse for
00:20:10.120
Kirsten Gillibrand. She stands for nothing. She means nothing. She is Hillary without the charisma
00:20:16.500
and utter mediocrity. It is a question as to how she ever became a Senator in New York in the first
00:20:23.100
place. It's probably because New York politics are very smoke filled room. They're decided by a
00:20:30.900
corrupt cabal of people. It all takes place on the state level up in Albany, which is in the middle of
00:20:36.480
nowhere and has a lot of room for corruption to fester. She's just so, so weak and she's sold her
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political soul. I mean, she's in a very tough position because she modeled herself after Hillary
00:20:47.860
and she was going to be moderate. And she first was running when all of the country agreed that
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people shouldn't break our laws and we should prioritize citizens over non-citizens. Now her
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party has run far to the left. And because she's still just nothing, she's got to run to wherever
00:21:07.200
the heat is and she's got to become something that she isn't. Jake Tapper wouldn't let her get away
00:21:12.860
with it. Other people aren't letting her get away with it either. And the 20 other Democrats who are
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going to be running for president are certainly going to skewer this poor woman. She even got
00:21:23.260
skewered on ABC's This Week trying to run so far to the left. And Senator, lastly, I want to get your
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reaction to the BuzzFeed report suggesting President Trump instructed his former attorney Michael Cohen to
00:21:35.740
lie to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower Moscow deal. The special counsel's office disputed that
00:21:41.720
report. What was your reaction? And did Democrats seize on that report too quickly?
00:21:47.720
The report is highly concerning, Martha. It just shows more evidence that perhaps this president did
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obstruct justice. It shows that even though the special counsel disputes it. Martha, it raises a
00:22:02.400
question in my mind that is very serious. And so what we need is Mueller to be able to finish his
00:22:07.520
investigation. And one of the things that I'm most concerned about is that Senator McConnell will not
00:22:13.000
let a bipartisan bill come to the Senate floor to allow us to protect that investigation, to make sure
00:22:19.000
he cannot be fired prematurely. And the law says he can only be fired for cause. And so what our bill
00:22:25.440
does is it goes to a judge. So a judge can make an in-camera decision about whether this was done
00:22:30.080
properly and preserve all the evidence. So we have to protect the Mueller investigation. We need the facts.
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And so this just shows how urgent that investigation is.
00:22:38.280
Okay. Thanks very much for joining us this morning, Senator.
00:22:42.060
Oh, it's so awkward to watch because this was the moment in English class when the teacher asks, you know,
00:22:50.920
what did you think about the book? What did you think about chapter four? And then, you know, you didn't read
00:22:57.520
the chapter. And so you say, well, you know, and you just spout all these vagaries. And she said, what? What are you?
00:23:03.060
Are you? You're talking about a different book. What are you? That character is not in the book.
00:23:07.340
What are you? And then you just start spinning. You're just, well, but really what I meant is it,
00:23:11.260
well, and, and, and, and another thing is I had a bagel for breakfast this morning and, uh,
00:23:15.100
and anyway, thank you so much for asking me the question. Thank you. So, so awkward and cringe
00:23:20.820
inducing because now she's saying that a, a, a totally discredited report from Buzzfeed is evidence
00:23:29.060
that we have to attack Donald Trump. I don't know. What is it evidence of? It doesn't mean
00:23:34.920
anything. The, the Buzzfeed hit job was so egregiously wrong that the special counsel,
00:23:41.540
which famously does not speak to the press issued its first statement in a year to say it wasn't
00:23:48.140
true. What is she talking about? Just a total mediocrity. And, uh, and yet she'll be running.
00:23:55.340
And, and so you look around the field and you think, gosh, Kamala Harris is relatively
00:23:59.240
good compared to her. Joe Biden is probably going to run. Who knows though? He hasn't been
00:24:03.820
tested in a little while. Beto is a fine candidate, I guess, but he's a straight white man, ostensibly
00:24:09.360
in a, in intersectional race. Bernie is a hundred years old. And you start looking and they're all
00:24:16.440
weak candidates, but there is one candidate that the Democrats agree they want to see run for
00:24:22.220
president. One candidate so strong, so powerful, so compelling that 74% of Democrats want her to be
00:24:32.340
their nominee for president. Do you know who that person is? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. We will get to
00:24:39.720
why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is actually offering the American people something that they want.
00:24:45.820
We will get to the heart of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's legitimate appeal in just a second. But first,
00:24:52.120
it's almost time for our next episode of The Conversation. Tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern,
00:24:56.360
4 p.m. Pacific, Drew will be taking all of your questions, every query that has burned in your
00:25:01.700
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00:25:09.800
Elisha Krauss will be there too. As always, this episode will be free for everyone to watch on
00:25:13.880
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questions answered by Andrew Klavan tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, and join the
00:25:23.240
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00:25:37.200
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00:25:51.660
Thursday. Get your questions in. You'll get to ask questions on Backstage. You'll get another
00:25:55.040
Kingdom. You'll get everything. You'll just get everything. Plus this, the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
00:26:04.160
This, oh, this vintage is really good. This vintage, it's still, we can't ship this out yet. It still
00:26:10.280
needs to mature just a little bit. This is the New York Times getting sued for libel over the
00:26:15.440
Covington Kids vintage. And this is really nice. This was an unexpected vintage. We didn't think
00:26:21.160
the crop would be so good this year. But when the New York Times gets sued for libeling a bunch of
00:26:25.620
teenage boys, then it's going to just, it's all ready. Very good. It just needs to open up a little
00:26:32.940
bit. So just you take the lid off, open it up, let it breathe a little bit. And you're going to love
00:26:37.040
this batch of Leftist Tears in the Tumblr. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:26:51.180
A new Axios survey monkey poll shows that 74% would vote for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
00:26:59.620
This is very, very terrifying. I think that's 74% of Democrats. I don't think that's 74% of the
00:27:06.440
country. Highly doubt that. But she has a legitimate appeal and she is legitimately showing
00:27:14.080
us something about politics. And some conservatives don't want to admit it because she's very ignorant
00:27:19.680
and doesn't speak like a terribly educated or serious person. But she is offering something real.
00:27:25.620
First of all, she's pretty good at politics. I think she's basically only ever done politics.
00:27:30.680
She's been an activist. I guess she was briefly a bartender and she was just always trying to run
00:27:36.080
for office. And then she became a very young congresswoman. Here is just the sort of example
00:27:40.700
though of her natural aptitude for politics. What would you say to some of those people who have
00:27:45.760
concerns about anti-Semitism within the Women's March group? Absolutely. Well, first of all,
00:27:50.080
I think that right now in this moment in the United States, we have to center this conversation.
00:27:54.940
I think that concerns of anti-Semitism with the current administration and the White House are
00:28:00.640
absolutely valid. And we need to make sure that we are protecting the Jewish community and all those
00:28:05.720
that feel vulnerable in this moment. I think right now, as it pertains to today, it's so important to
00:28:11.700
recognize why all of these women are coming together. And the reason all of these people are coming
00:28:17.640
together is to make sure that the rights of women are protected and advanced.
00:28:21.840
Okay. So you'll notice she didn't answer the question. The question was, what do you have to
00:28:27.720
say about the anti-Semitism in the Women's March? And she said, yes, we do need to talk about anti-Semitism
00:28:34.560
in the Trump administration and women are coming together in solidarity. That's what she said. But
00:28:40.600
she did it either because she's shallow minded or because she's a shrewd politician. And I think it's
00:28:48.620
both, but it leans on the latter, is she doesn't want to answer this question about the Women's
00:28:53.500
March, which is highly anti-Semitic. She doesn't. What does it benefit her? How does she advance by
00:28:59.800
answering that reporter's question? It's an old rule of politics. Don't answer the question you're
00:29:03.860
asked. Answer the question you want to ask or you want to be asked. And so she says, yes, we do need
00:29:10.180
to talk about anti-Semitism in the Trump administration, which is, by the way, patently absurd.
00:29:14.220
They named a train station in Israel after Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been a great friend to
00:29:19.200
the Jewish people. Many presidents have promised to move our U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
00:29:24.500
They've all flopped on it, except for Donald Trump, who actually did it. His senior advisor
00:29:28.760
is an Orthodox Jew. His daughter converted to Judaism. His grandchild is Jewish. It's just insane
00:29:35.020
to suggest that he's anti-Semitic. But it doesn't matter. She says it convincingly. She knows how to pivot
00:29:41.280
and she knows how to do it shamelessly. So she's got the political chops. It doesn't mean
00:29:47.120
that she's smart. It doesn't mean that she's educated. She's neither of those things. But
00:29:50.500
she is shrewd and she's got good political chops. So what is she selling? She's selling
00:29:58.700
I think that the part of it that is generational is that millennials and people and, you know,
00:30:06.220
Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we're like, the world is going to
00:30:12.860
end in 12 years if we don't address climate change. And your biggest issue is your, your biggest issue
00:30:21.820
is how are we going to pay for it? And like, this is the war. This is our World War II.
00:30:28.220
You know, climate change actually is our World War II. That is correct. She is right. Generations
00:30:38.300
all face their own problems. So the greatest generation, as it's called, rightly so in modern
00:30:45.160
history, their challenge was World War II. Then the baby boomers, their challenge was the destruction
00:30:51.680
of the culture, which they helped to advance. Now, our challenge is imaginary. That's our challenge.
00:30:58.540
We have imaginary challenges. And we have imaginary challenges that are really driving us crazy.
00:31:04.660
The millennials are the most depressed, anxious, stressed out, suicidal generation in recent history.
00:31:11.800
25% of American college students, according to an ASU study, suffer PTSD from the 2016 election,
00:31:18.180
clinically high levels of stress based on imaginary things. It's not based on real things. Materially,
00:31:25.700
as a matter of peace, as a matter of foreign and domestic policy, we've never really been doing
00:31:32.020
any better than we are now. But in our imagination, things are really bad. So what she's saying is that
00:31:36.700
in 12 years, the world is going to end because of the snow monster or the sun monster or climate change
00:31:44.660
or whatever, nobody suggests this. There's no evidence of this, of course, at all. And let's
00:31:51.140
just take a little bet. I'm pretty good at bets. I got 400 bucks from Ben over there. I would like to
00:31:56.040
bet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the same amount that Ben and I bet, $400, that in 2031, the world will not
00:32:04.600
have ended. Okay? Alexandria, I know you watch this show. Do you take the bet? Just tweet me, let me
00:32:12.760
know. 400 bucks. You say the world's going to end in 12 years. I say the world will not end in 12 years.
00:32:19.100
Do you take the bet? I bet she won't take that bet. Because what she's offering is this radicalism.
00:32:24.220
What she's offering is this chaos. And the sneaky little truth is that that's what people want.
00:32:29.600
Specifically, what people want is a sense of purpose. And this is something that other forms
00:32:36.240
of government and other cultures are much better at instilling than our postmodern democratic culture,
00:32:43.700
liberal culture. In our culture, all that we can talk about is freedom or equality. Okay, those are
00:32:52.840
good. I like those things. I like spiritual equality and I like freedom, ordered liberty.
00:32:58.620
But there's not a sense of purpose. This has always been the critique of liberal society is that you
00:33:04.400
don't have a sense of purpose. It just leads to a society of consumption or it leads to a society of
00:33:10.040
decadence or it leads to, okay, fine. And what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is saying is vote for me and we will
00:33:17.000
save the world, which is on the brink of destruction and which will not exist in 12 years unless you take up
00:33:23.800
this great crusade, this great cause and vote for me. That's what she's saying. And that's compelling
00:33:30.160
because everybody wants purpose. But in particular, in a culture which is decadent, which is liberal,
00:33:38.420
people need to feel that there's some meaning to their lives, especially now our culture is so
00:33:43.580
materialistic. We just think, oh, well, people are born. Life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound
00:33:48.560
and fury signifying nothing. Then we turn to worm food and we die and it all doesn't mean anything
00:33:53.080
at all. And she's saying you can save the world if you vote for me. That's compelling. People want
00:33:58.140
that. People also want to frame politics in moral language as she does. But do you think it is moral
00:34:05.640
for individuals to, for instance, do we live in a moral world that allows for billionaires?
00:34:12.260
Is that a moral outcome in and of itself? No, it's not. It's not. And it's not. And I think it's
00:34:19.900
important to say that I don't think that necessarily means that all billionaires are immoral. It is not to
00:34:29.620
say that someone like Bill Gates, for example, or Warren Buffett are immoral people. I do not believe
00:34:35.840
that. First of all, it is to say that if having a billion dollars is immoral, then people who have
00:34:42.060
a billion dollars are immoral people. The reason she's she's qualifying her statement is she wants
00:34:47.180
all that good, good billionaire money for when she runs for president. So she does. She hates
00:34:51.780
billionaires to a point. But also, what a stupid conversation. The fact that people on the left think
00:34:56.600
Ta-Nehisi Coates is not just they think he's a great mind. The fact that they think that he's even
00:35:02.500
a middling mind is just astounding. And it shows you that we're living in the dark ages. But you're
00:35:07.480
having this conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I think if I went over to
00:35:14.360
Ben's house and I watched his children say Google Gaga to one another, I'd probably learn more. But they're
00:35:19.920
having this conversation. He says, you know, is it is it moral to have billionaires? She goes, no, it's not.
00:35:25.320
What does that mean? She's saying that allowing people to prosper and keep their own property
00:35:33.700
is immoral. So therefore, what she's saying is that stealing other people's property is moral.
00:35:39.880
It's not just moral. That's the moral corrective to the immorality of keeping your own property
00:35:44.220
and to the immorality of prospering. It's obviously insane, but it's framing a debate in moral language,
00:35:53.100
which until recently, Republicans and conservatives have failed to do. We talk about reforming the
00:35:58.280
debt. We should reform the entitlement state. We should take care of our debt. We should take
00:36:03.760
care of our deficits. This is a very important issue. But you're not going to do that by having
00:36:09.540
policy wonks tell you about how much money they're going to save you on your retirement plan. That's not
00:36:15.060
compelling to anybody. But Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking in moral terms and doing it in the cynical
00:36:20.960
way, which is to vilify a whole group of people and doing it also in a cynical way because she's
00:36:26.420
substituting immorality for morality is pretty bad. But it's at least compelling and it's at least
00:36:32.460
giving people what they want. The other thing people want is courage.
00:36:35.600
On a scale of zero to some, how many do you give? I think it's zero.
00:36:50.820
Funny answer. Pretty sad that we're in this culture now where a network late night host uses that word
00:36:59.380
to a member of Congress on television on, you know, and everyone's applauding and hooting and
00:37:05.340
hollering. That's kind of sad for the culture. I'm all for speaking like a sailor in various specific
00:37:10.620
circumstances. That's not the circumstance that debases our culture and our government. Nevertheless,
00:37:16.880
that's what she's saying. She's learned this from Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the king of this,
00:37:21.220
right? He says, I don't care. I'm going to build the wall 10 feet higher. I'm going to make you pay.
00:37:27.160
Hey, listen, you listen, mother effer, whatever. It's that attitude, which people want. And I don't
00:37:33.040
know. Some people who were never Trump criticize this attitude. I don't criticize it. People
00:37:37.200
genuinely want it. We want to see some political courage. We don't want spineless cowards like
00:37:41.320
Mitt Romney to go around and be mealy mouthed and speak out of both sides of their mouth and then stab
00:37:47.400
his supporters in the back. They don't want that. They don't want people who are disloyal to a cause
00:37:53.220
or to their constituents. They want courage and they want people to stick up for them and fight
00:37:58.180
for them. And, and she's doing that. She offers that to a number of people. So I'm not surprised
00:38:03.000
at all. And because she has the political chops to get some media attention, I'm not surprised that
00:38:08.460
74% of Democrats would vote for her for president. I think she, obviously some of this is name
00:38:15.460
identification. So a lot of people don't recognize the name Kirsten Gillibrand, but they certainly
00:38:19.680
recognize Alexandria's name. And I assume a lot of this is going to fade away over the next six
00:38:28.280
years before Alexandria is old enough to run for president. But for right now, she's offering
00:38:33.460
something that people want. And I think President Trump offers that as well. And all the other
00:38:37.840
conservative politicians need to figure out how to offer that too, because Trump ain't going to stick
00:38:42.040
around forever, especially if the mainstream media and Bob Mueller get their way. So we've got to
00:38:47.080
figure out how to, to emulate both of them. And while emulating the form of them, bring the content,
00:38:55.380
which is real moral discourse, real policy solutions, real ways to reform our government
00:39:01.720
and real ways to reawaken an American spirit, which is lagging. The, all of those statistics about
00:39:09.000
millennials remain true. They're depressed, they're anxious, they're stressed, and they're suicidal.
00:39:12.800
That's a cultural malaise. That's a spiritual malaise. And we need to figure out a way to
00:39:17.360
re-excite a lot of our countries, and especially the younger parts of our country, because they will
00:39:23.900
be the majority of our country, and they will, they will define our culture for decades to come.
00:39:29.200
We have also got to talk about some breaking news. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision,
00:39:34.400
has decided to lift a temporary injunction against the transgender ban from the military.
00:39:40.720
So I know that wording is a little complicated. The, you know, the Trump administration,
00:39:46.720
I'll even rewind a little further. For all of human history, people, men who think that they're
00:39:53.620
women have not been allowed to serve in the American military, because they have a pretty
00:39:58.040
significant mental disorder, and it creates some troubles on the battlefield. So Barack Obama,
00:40:06.020
toward the end of his administration, decided to change that and say that men who think they're
00:40:09.840
women can serve in the military. This creates a lot of problems. This creates some morale issues.
00:40:15.220
President Trump came in and said, no, we're going to reverse that. America did very well until three
00:40:20.440
years ago. They did just fine without allowing people who are confused about their gender to
00:40:25.640
serve in the military. So we're just going to go back to the thing we've done for all but the last
00:40:29.300
three years. And people lost their minds. There were court orders, injunctions. They stopped it.
00:40:34.280
What the Supreme Court today did in a 5-4 decision, write down the expected lines. The five conservatives
00:40:41.380
against the four liberals said that the Pentagon could prevent people who are confused about their
00:40:48.700
sex from serving in the military. This makes perfect sense. This is very good. Obviously,
00:40:55.800
transgenderism is a mental disorder. This affects only a handful of service members. It doesn't affect a lot
00:41:01.500
of them, but the principle affects a lot more people. If it were just about a handful of people,
00:41:06.020
then you could always say, leave it to the discretion of their commanding officers or whatever
00:41:11.660
and make the decisions on a per-person basis. But because the left has made this a national issue,
00:41:17.740
they've done that because they're trying to push through a whole slew of premises. Premises including
00:41:22.680
whether men and women are different, whether there's a legitimate sexual difference between men and women,
00:41:28.880
whether there's a legitimate difference between marriage and various new definitions of marriage,
00:41:36.400
whether they're trying to attack the nature of objective truth, and of course, they're trying to
00:41:42.700
attack the tradition. Is there an objective reality? And further, do we have a right to govern ourselves?
00:41:47.940
If we elect a commander-in-chief and he says people with a certain mental condition are not to be
00:41:53.280
serving in the armed forces, are we allowed to do that? Or are a bunch of leftist bureaucrats going to
00:41:58.660
come in and tell us no? That is a real serious question. I also have to bring this up. Unfortunately,
00:42:05.880
we're not going to get to some other things today, but we'll get to it tomorrow. Those Covington kids,
00:42:12.020
I talked to them. I talked about that yesterday. All of the mainstream media, the politicians, the church,
00:42:18.160
everybody who condemned those kids wrongly, defamed them. New evidence came out. Most of them didn't
00:42:23.480
apologize. Covington Catholic School had to cancel school today. One journalist for INE Entertainment,
00:42:29.580
Erica Briss, has been fired for saying that he wanted to kill the kids. He said, quote,
00:42:34.280
I don't know what it says about me, but I've truly lost the ability to articulate the hysterical rage,
00:42:38.900
nausea, and heartache this makes me feel. I just want these people to die. Simple as that.
00:42:43.840
Every single one of them and their parents. That guy at least got fired. What about the others?
00:42:48.620
What about the others? When are the other journalists going to be fired? When are the
00:42:54.800
other politicians going to be thrown out of office? When is the Catholic Church in the Diocese of
00:42:59.740
Covington and Father James Martin and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz and Bishop Foyes and all of those people,
00:43:06.300
when are they going to apologize? When are they going to have consequences? This reminds me of the
00:43:11.060
Catholic Church scandal. The sex scandal comes out. There were cover-ups. There were this and this.
00:43:16.280
Oh, there's going to be a reckoning. And when is it? Rarely do you see a bishop resign. Rarely do
00:43:21.340
you see consequences. It's outrageous. This is literally the same issue in that we're talking
00:43:26.180
about child abuse. We're talking about that in the Catholic Church cover-up. We're talking about
00:43:30.220
that here with journalists, mostly vast majority left-wing journalists, smearing and defaming kids,
00:43:36.100
ruining their lives. When are they going to face consequences? All those celebrities who tweeted
00:43:42.260
things about them, doxing them, Kathy Griffin, when are they going to face consequences? When is
00:43:47.860
the diocese going to do it? I don't know. I hope soon. A lawyer named Robert Barnes has offered to
00:43:52.820
represent the kids to sue the outlets that defamed them, specifically Maggie Haberman at the New York
00:43:58.000
Times, who was calling for the kids to be expelled. There need to be consequences here. I wrote a piece
00:44:03.700
today, a column at foxnews.com, and it was outlining how the Covington thing happened, what it says about
00:44:10.960
our culture, and who's at fault. And someone wrote in to me and said, Michael, you're beating a dead
00:44:16.340
horse. This was a left winger. Move on, move on. It's okay. It doesn't matter. Move on, move on. I bet
00:44:21.640
the left wants us to move on. I bet the left, they tried their character assassination hit job. It failed
00:44:27.300
because thankfully someone else took a video and proved them wrong. And now they say, okay, it's old
00:44:32.220
news. It's the Bill Clinton playbook. Oh, it's old news. No, move on, move on. No, we're not going to
00:44:37.400
move on. We're not going to move on until somebody faces consequences. I hope these kids sue the New York
00:44:43.040
Times. I hope they get a lot of money from the New York Times. I hope they sue the individual journalists
00:44:48.660
who defamed them, who intentionally deceived the public and assassinated these kids' characters. I hope
00:44:55.740
they sue them into the ground. That would be a wonderful thing. And we're going to bring this up, not all the
00:45:00.940
time, but every once in a while, we're going to bring this up until they face consequences because they won't
00:45:05.940
stop. The left is still, the left is saying now there's a photo of the kids 10 years ago at this
00:45:10.740
school wearing blackface. That was going around the internet. It's not true. Alumni of the school
00:45:16.360
are saying they did this at all of the various games. They were different, they were different
00:45:22.060
colors. So one was black out, one was blue out and they were all dressed in blue. The other was
00:45:26.400
another color and they all wore these, which of course makes sense. You would expect if there were 20
00:45:31.080
people at a high school wearing blackface, it probably would have made the news. Don't you
00:45:35.940
think? Isn't that a little weird? Isn't that a little convenient? They're going to go. They're
00:45:38.940
all ready. I'll tell you what's going to happen next. The vultures in the media are going to go
00:45:44.480
through all of these kids' backgrounds. They're going to try to assassinate their character. And all
00:45:49.660
of this, all of it is beside the point. Did some kids at this school wear blackface 10 years ago?
00:45:53.880
It looks like they didn't. But it's all beside the point. The point is, did the kids harass the Indian
00:45:57.900
guy? Did the Indian guy and the black Israelites harass the kids? That's the only point. And they
00:46:02.980
lost on their major point. They were exposed as liars. So now they're trying, the next step is
00:46:07.540
going to happen is they're going to find that one of these kids said something racist 10 years ago
00:46:11.840
or something or sexist or whatever on Facebook. And then they're going to go after him for that.
00:46:15.640
Then they're going to find out one of the kids made a pass at a girl at a party six years ago.
00:46:20.180
And that's going to be, that's going to be a new skit. See how bad, how awful these kids are.
00:46:23.680
It's all beside the point. Was the mainstream media narrative correct?
00:46:28.600
Or did the mainstream media defame these kids? They defamed them. They should pay for it. They
00:46:32.080
should pay for it dearly. Got a lot more to get to, but too bad. We'll do it tomorrow.
00:46:37.180
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. I'll see you then.
00:46:44.980
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
00:46:49.560
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover. And our technical
00:46:54.320
producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Dylan Case. Production
00:47:00.060
assistant, Nick Sheehan. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire
00:47:05.500
production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019. Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, our journalistic firefighters
00:47:11.540
get down to the crucial business of investigating high school students. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez says the
00:47:16.900
world will end in 12 years and Democrats play the 2020 game. That's today on The Ben Shapiro Show.