The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 287 - Bible Literacy For Dummies

00:00:00.000 President Trump touts Bible literacy bills that seek to teach students about the most

00:00:05.400 influential book in the history of the world. Naturally, the left is up in arms.

00:00:10.180 Then the FBI arrests 66-year-old foppish GOP operative Roger Stone. Finally, our streets are

00:00:17.160 safe. 2020 gets even wilder for Democrats. Texas uncovers massive voter fraud, and pop culture

00:00:23.360 admits that unborn babies are unborn babies. That's pretty good. I'm Michael Knowles,

00:00:27.440 and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 So much to get to today. I love this Bible literacy tweet. President Trump tweeted it out. He said

00:00:41.380 that we're going to get Bible literacy in schools. If political reforms can instill Bible literacy

00:00:47.940 in American students, that will be the most beneficial and consequential political reform

00:00:54.940 of my entire lifetime. We'll get to that in a second. First, we've got to talk about Stone,

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00:02:24.520 that at 1-800-Flowers.com. Code COVFEFE, C-O-V-F-E-F-E. Before we get to Bible literacy, I want to talk

00:02:32.540 about the arrest of Roger Stone. You probably saw this. CNN had footage of this. In the middle

00:02:38.240 of the night, 29 FBI agents came in 17 vehicles, lights flashing, automatic weapons in tow to kick

00:02:47.560 in the door and arrest a 66-year-old political operative named Roger Stone. He's this foppish

00:02:53.820 political operative. He has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back. He has said for months now that

00:02:59.400 if Mueller wants him, he's happy to turn himself in and cooperate. But no, the FBI investigation had

00:03:07.320 to kick in his door and somehow CNN found out about it. How'd they find out about it ahead of

00:03:11.720 time? I don't know. They're just, they're just such good reporters there. That must, that must be the

00:03:15.640 reason. So they kick him in, they arrest him, they bring Roger Stone, haul him down to the clink.

00:03:21.100 And then a couple hours later, he's released on $250,000 bond. He gives this great press conference.

00:03:27.600 He walks out because he's a big fan of Richard Nixon. He walks out with the two V signs up in the air,

00:03:33.980 just like Richard Nixon. He's got the V up there. Side note, the hippies took over the V sign and made 0.77

00:03:40.300 it the peace Nick sign. The V sign is great. Churchill used it. Nixon used it. I think we need

00:03:44.460 to reclaim it. Roger Stone is reclaiming it. He went out and he gave this press conference.

00:03:49.540 As I have always said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

00:03:57.840 This is a line that he's used a lot. I've heard it. It's a kind of common knowledge in politics. The

00:04:03.220 only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. And by the way,

00:04:07.760 this is why I think he actually might get off just fine in this whole thing. I think Roger Stone's

00:04:14.620 dishonesty might save him. When he emerged and gave this press conference, he looked as happy as I've

00:04:20.520 ever seen the guy. Roger Stone, for those who don't know him, he's an old time political advisor to

00:04:25.520 Donald Trump. Not exactly necessarily on presidential politics. It looks like he got kicked off that

00:04:30.200 Trump presidential campaign pretty early, but he helped him out with local lobbying stuff.

00:04:35.060 Stone does a lot of ballot propositions. He writes books. He goes on speaking tours.

00:04:40.360 And as a lot of people have observed, he brags about doing a lot of things that he most likely

00:04:47.020 didn't do. So if they think they're going to get him on colluding with Russia or talking to

00:04:51.700 WikiLeaks or whatever, there's a good chance he bragged about doing that, but he didn't actually

00:04:55.760 do it. Stone goes on. After a two-year inquisition, the charges today relate in no way to Russian

00:05:05.420 collusion, anti-leaks collaboration, or any other illegal act in connection with the 2016 campaign.

00:05:13.500 I am falsely accused of making false statements during my testimony to the House Intelligence

00:05:20.320 Committee. That is incorrect. Any error I made in my testimony would be both immaterial and without

00:05:30.680 intent.

00:05:32.800 So Stone has been waiting to be indicted for a while now. I get a real kick out of this guy,

00:05:39.720 especially I'm from New York. He spends a lot of time in New York, has been based out of New York.

00:05:44.980 I get a real kick out of him in politics because he's a total showman. He wears crazy clothing and

00:05:51.940 he got into a bit of hot water in 1996. He was on the Dole for President campaign and it came out that

00:05:58.160 he had run a sex ad in some swingers magazine trying to pick up different people to go on swinging

00:06:03.860 threesomes, whatever. He's always been a libertarian. He's now a member of the Libertarian

00:06:09.500 Party and he calls himself a libertine. I mean, he comes from that libertine wing of the

00:06:13.640 Republicans. P.G. O'Rourke wrote a famous essay called Republican Party Reptile, how to drive fast on

00:06:19.740 drugs while getting your wing-wang squeezed and not spill your drink. Roger Stone comes from that side of

00:06:24.680 the Republican Party. And I, you know, I get a kick out of him, but I think this is where he comes out and

00:06:31.560 says, I'm not guilty. The only crime that they're accusing me of is lying to Congress because he said that he

00:06:39.260 telephoned somebody when in fact he might have emailed that person and they've got him now and

00:06:44.980 they're going to try to squeeze him on this. But he said that's immaterial and that was done without

00:06:48.100 intent. So he'll very possibly get off on that. And they're trying to say that he colluded with

00:06:54.680 the Russians. What a lot of this comes down to is, did Roger Stone speak directly to WikiLeaks?

00:07:01.320 Was he in contact with Julian Assange? And did he act as a conduit for the Trump campaign

00:07:07.300 to Julian Assange or the Russian government or whatever? The reason I think he probably didn't,

00:07:13.520 maybe he did, he's been an operative and a lobbyist for a long time. But the reason I think

00:07:16.920 he probably didn't is because he brags about doing things that he didn't do. So there are a few great

00:07:22.760 profiles on him, usually profiles that he is instigating. And one of them in the New Yorker

00:07:27.680 talks about all these dirty tricks. He said he played his first dirty trick in the third grade

00:07:31.700 when he supported Kennedy for president. This was before he became a conservative. He supported Kennedy

00:07:36.740 so they had a mock election in class. And he told all the kids that Nixon wanted school on Saturdays

00:07:44.980 and Kennedy won in a landslide. And he's used disinformation ever since. So maybe that happened.

00:07:50.680 Also, that's just a legendary story. We've heard this for years about various presidential campaigns.

00:07:56.600 A lot of people use it. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Stone is just saying that

00:07:59.420 for self-aggrandizement. He says he played a dirty trick on the Nixon re-election campaign.

00:08:05.540 He was a low-level staffer. And he played a dirty trick on a possible primary opponent of Richard

00:08:12.040 Nixon named Pete McCluskey. He says that he donated under a pseudonym Jason Rainier to the Young Socialist

00:08:18.040 Alliance in the name of Pete McCluskey. And then he sent the receipts to the newspaper to make

00:08:23.540 McCluskey look like he was a left-wing stooge and interloper trying to take over the Republican

00:08:29.700 Party or something. Did it happen? Yeah, maybe it did. I don't know. Maybe possibly.

00:08:33.460 Uh, Stone takes credit for the Brooks Brothers riot down in Florida in 2000. This was when

00:08:39.840 Al Gore wanted 50 million recounts of the ballot so that he can cheat his way into the presidency.

00:08:44.520 And there was a riot. There was a big demonstration of a lot of GOP operatives. They called it the

00:08:49.880 Brooks Brothers riot because it was all these buttoned-up conservatives in their nice fancy

00:08:53.740 ties and suits. And Stone takes credit for that. There's a GOP lawyer named Brad Blakeman who says

00:09:00.860 that he was the one who organized the Brooks Brothers riot. He was in the Winnebago. He didn't

00:09:04.960 see Roger Stone anywhere to be found there. Tucker Carlson in a documentary about Stone actually kind

00:09:11.320 of backs that up. He says, it's not so much what Stone has done, but what Stone has gotten you to

00:09:16.620 believe that he has done. That's a documentary made by a pal of mine that I've actually worked with

00:09:22.160 called Get Me Roger Stone. He also takes credit for taking down New York Democrat Governor

00:09:27.200 Elliot Spitzer. Elliot Spitzer was a dirty creep, Democrat Governor of New York, and he was caught

00:09:34.020 using high-end prostitutes and he had to resign. Roger Stone, after this all happened, said that

00:09:40.060 he first found out about it in a dodgy club in Miami from a call girl. And then he let the FBI know.

00:09:46.320 He sent the FBI a letter and he came up with all these lurid details. The FBI says they never got a

00:09:52.000 letter from Roger Stone. We have no idea if he actually talked to this call girl. But Stone,

00:09:56.740 in his political brilliance, is able to insert himself into the Spitzer takedown story. If you

00:10:02.080 asked the regular average political operative on the street, they believe that Roger Stone took

00:10:07.400 down Spitzer. Really, the FBI maintains this is part of a longtime investigation into Elliot Spitzer

00:10:13.220 and Stone didn't have anything to do with it. I bring all of this up because Stone says that he

00:10:19.780 talked to WikiLeaks. He said he was in contact with WikiLeaks. He's now being accused of telling

00:10:25.640 Trump senior campaign aides in June and July of 2016 that WikiLeaks had damaging documents on the

00:10:32.500 Democrats, which might be true. But everybody already knew that WikiLeaks had those documents

00:10:38.820 in June and July of 2016. That was already public knowledge at the time. So Roger Stone is just

00:10:44.840 telling people what everyone already knew. He said he'd spoken to WikiLeaks, but what's the evidence that

00:10:49.620 he actually had? Because by September 2017, he said he never did speak to WikiLeaks. And I tend to

00:10:56.080 believe that. I tend to believe the latter part, not because I think Stone wouldn't do it. I just

00:11:00.920 don't think he had access. And I think he was bragging about it. Donald Trump came out and said,

00:11:05.580 Roger's always taking credit for things that he didn't do. And WikiLeaks has now come out and said,

00:11:09.720 quote, Stone is playing slovenly Democrat-aligned journalists like a fiddle, brilliantly inserting

00:11:15.560 himself, as is his habit to raise his public profile and market his books. He was pushed out

00:11:20.900 of the Trump team a long time ago for just this kind of opportunism. I don't mention this because

00:11:26.460 I don't like Roger Stone or I have a grudge against Roger Stone or anything like that. I get a huge kick

00:11:30.900 out of Roger Stone. I really like him. I think he does pretty good work very often for the conservative

00:11:35.600 cause. I'm saying this because I think his best defense is his dishonesty. And I think that if

00:11:42.880 they really had him on colluding with Vladimir Putin or something, he couldn't have given that

00:11:47.360 press conference. He wouldn't have allowed himself to be that open and that vulnerable. He'd have to

00:11:52.080 be the stupidest political operative on the face of the earth. I think he is, as he has done throughout

00:11:57.100 his entire career, playing the media like a fiddle, as WikiLeaks says. And I can't wait to see the rest of

00:12:05.000 it because, again, you see the headlines. Trump advisor indicted. They've got him.

00:12:12.740 They've got him on a procedural crime, possibly lying to Congress. And even the evidence for that is

00:12:17.940 pretty slim. What do they have the other guys on? George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort. It's all

00:12:24.600 this procedural stuff. It all has to do with the Russia investigation itself. And that's the real story.

00:12:31.380 The real crimes that may have been committed are by the people who launched this Russia 0.99

00:12:35.300 investigation, who colluded with the Democrats, who colluded with the Clinton campaign, and yes,

00:12:39.860 who colluded with the Russians to assemble the Steele dossier on which this whole charade has been

00:12:46.540 based. We'll see as time goes on. But this Russia thing really is falling apart. Look no further than

00:12:52.120 Democrat Rep. Eric Solwell speaking to Margaret Hoover on her Firing Line show. He can't answer even

00:12:58.000 basic questions about his hysterical Russia claims.

00:13:02.880 At what point do you draw the line and not accuse the President of the United States without any

00:13:07.200 evidence of being an agent of Russia?

00:13:09.180 Yeah. He's betrayed our country. And I don't say that lightly. I worked as a prosecutor for seven

00:13:13.800 years. And I...

00:13:14.500 Betraying the country, by the way, we want evidence before you say that. But you said an agent of Russia.

00:13:19.380 Yeah. He works on their behalf. He... Since he met with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July,

00:13:26.360 where he took the interpreter's notes, hasn't told any U.S. official what they discussed,

00:13:30.720 he has taken us out of Syria, which is a top priority of Russia. He sought to diminish or pull 0.65

00:13:35.900 out the U.S. from NATO. And he's easing sanctions on Vladimir Putin's friends who are under investigation.

00:13:41.340 But he didn't pass sanctions against Russia. He has armed Ukraine. 0.60

00:13:44.260 He has killed 200 Russians in Syria. I mean, those aren't the actions of an agent of Russia either.

00:13:49.920 He signed, I think, you know, begrudgingly sanctions against Russia.

00:13:53.920 Oh, it was begrudging. He begrudgingly killed 200 Russians in Syria. He begrudgingly.

00:13:58.880 This is really sad. Eric Swalwell, what does he have here? What can he say? And he's one of the

00:14:04.680 most articulate Democrats I've heard talking about Russia. And he's got nothing. He just says things.

00:14:09.920 He says the talking points. And then you can easily shoot all of them down. And then they've

00:14:15.100 got, he said, well, Trump, yeah, but he only did it begrudgingly. Listen, don't judge Trump on his

00:14:20.620 actions. Judge Trump on what I think his intentions are. That's what Eric Swalwell is saying. That's what

00:14:27.100 the Democrats are saying. You can't judge Trump on what he actually does. You have to judge Trump

00:14:32.340 on our psychobabble interpretation of his intentions. It's ridiculous. It just falls apart.

00:14:38.220 And I think Roger Stone probably couldn't be happier. The FBI got Paul Manafort on some serious

00:14:46.240 shady dealings, not with regard to Trump, not with regard to the Russian collusion in 2016 or anything

00:14:53.120 like that. But they got him on some of his lobbying from years ago. And so you don't see Paul Manafort

00:14:58.240 smiling, happy, bubbly, giving press conferences. Roger Stone is a different character. And for people

00:15:04.420 who have been around political operations, you can see these two types of character. There are guys who

00:15:10.980 actually work and lurk in the shadows, who perform really nefarious operations for dictators around the

00:15:19.700 world. And then there's guys like Roger Stone, who are media figures. Just think about it this way. If you

00:15:26.380 wanted to be a real black ops kind of political operator, would you make certain that everybody

00:15:33.100 knows your name? If you wanted to be a real dark arts political operator, would you wear really silly 1.00

00:15:39.160 multicolored suits and go on TV all the time? Probably not. How many of you had heard the name

00:15:45.120 Paul Manafort before he became prominent with the Trump campaign? None, probably not very many.

00:15:52.360 But how many had seen Roger Stone on TV, in the newspaper, giving an interview, hosting a big

00:15:59.140 political stunt press conference? Probably most of you. Somebody else, I forget who it was, some GOP

00:16:05.840 figure was discussing Roger Stone. Oh no, I'm sorry, it was Hank Sheinkoff, who's a great Democrat

00:16:11.160 political operative, but truly one of the greats. And he's known Stone for a long time. And he said,

00:16:16.940 I always got the impression with Roger that Roger was more focused on his life than his work. He was

00:16:23.920 more focused on how the work served his life and his image than how the image served his work. And I

00:16:29.840 think that's probably accurate. So good on him. I think he's probably going to have the time of his

00:16:33.960 life here. And there is no figure better in conservative politics to make a fool of the mainstream

00:16:42.240 media and this silly investigation probably than Roger Stone. So good luck. And if they catch you

00:16:48.560 having done shady things, I won't be surprised. But if you catch them with their pants down, I'll be

00:16:52.920 even less surprised. The really good news in the cycle today has nothing to do with the Russian 1.00

00:16:58.560 investigation or even political machinations. President Trump tweeted out, quote, numerous states

00:17:05.280 introducing Bible literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible, starting to make a

00:17:10.740 turn back. Great. And what he was referring to most likely is a segment on Fox and Friends this

00:17:16.700 morning in which a North Dakota representative is talking about a bill to add Bible literacy classes

00:17:23.160 to schools in North Dakota. There are similar bills in Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, and Virginia and

00:17:28.800 Florida. This is so good. This would be the most important political reform of my lifetime. Better than tax

00:17:38.360 cuts, better than foreign interventions, better than raising spending or lowering spending. This would be

00:17:44.280 so important. It's so important because politics is downstream of culture. And our culture, our Western

00:17:51.660 culture, our American culture is incomprehensible without biblical literacy. Of course, the cult and the 0.95

00:18:00.960 culture are related etymologically are related etymologically. And the culture is downstream of the religion.

00:18:06.260 What a culture worships. It is jarring to talk to people around the country and to gauge that they have

00:18:14.840 zero biblical literacy. You know, I read the texts of other religions long before I was seriously exposed to

00:18:24.300 reading the Bible. And this, I think this is just a fact of our public education system right now.

00:18:30.480 Even at really, look, I went to a great college. They're supposed to be the cream of the crop students

00:18:34.760 in the country. Those students were totally biblically illiterate. Almost all of them. 1.00

00:18:41.900 What is this really about? You know, I tweeted out that this would be the greatest policy of my lifetime.

00:18:47.320 And you saw a little fissure on the right. You saw some of the libertarian type saying,

00:18:50.480 oh, well, if you support that, would you support reading the Quran in school? Would you support

00:18:55.920 reading the Vedas or the Bhagavad Gita or this or that? Would you support the Quran? I'd say, 0.96

00:19:03.220 well, I'd support reading the Quran in school if we lived in Saudi Arabia. Of course, because that 1.00

00:19:08.080 culture and that history is incomprehensible without reading the Quran. I read the Quran before I read the

00:19:15.920 Bible as a kid. I read it because everyone told me that Islam was the religion of peace.

00:19:20.480 And I didn't believe it. I was pretty skeptical of that. So I read it at age 14. And of course,

00:19:26.420 none of those people had ever read the Quran. Our history, our culture, our philosophy,

00:19:32.220 everything that has happened, our literature, everything in Western civilization is incomprehensible

00:19:38.440 if you don't know the Bible. How can you understand Shakespeare if you haven't read the Bible?

00:19:43.140 How do you catch references in everything from William Faulkner or all the way back to whomever,

00:19:49.300 modern novels? How do you understand any of it without reading the Bible? William Faulkner,

00:19:55.700 just an example that popped into my head, has a novel called Absalom, Absalom. What does that mean?

00:20:00.740 What does that refer to? Do you know? This audience probably does know because it's disproportionately

00:20:05.540 biblically literate, Jews and Christians. How many other people in the culture do you think catch that

00:20:11.000 reference? Why wouldn't we teach Bible literacy? We're told it's because we have a separation of

00:20:18.740 church and state, which is like sort of true. We have no established religion. That part is true. 1.00

00:20:24.200 But that means that we can't read the most influential book in the history of the world.

00:20:28.440 Think of all the stupid books that you read in high school. You can read all of those. You can read

00:20:33.460 Sula. You can read all these. Howard Zinn, whatever, all these modern books. But you can't read the most

00:20:38.660 influential book in the history of the world? Well, some say, then if we're teaching the Bible,

00:20:44.020 we should teach all of the religious books. We can't. There isn't enough time. Education means

00:20:48.940 you include some things and you exclude other things. This is why I had my high school teacher

00:20:55.620 on the other day because he's being targeted by our high school for his conservative views.

00:21:01.500 Why is he being targeted? There's a superintendent in Bedford Central School District named Christopher

00:21:06.320 Mano, and he doesn't like that there's one openly conservative teacher at that school. So he's

00:21:11.440 trying to get that guy fired. That guy, Christopher Mano, I just found this out, the superintendent who's

00:21:16.520 persecuting my former teacher, when he was a superintendent in New Jersey, he applauded when

00:21:22.560 students were made by their teachers to sing hymns to how great Barack Obama is. He defended that. He said,

00:21:29.700 oh, it's great to do that. What a wonderful educational opportunity. Meanwhile, you have

00:21:34.760 one conservative teacher in a high school. He goes after them because education requires including

00:21:39.140 certain things and not other things. It requires analyzing certain historical periods and not

00:21:44.880 others. It requires reading certain works of literature and not others. And if you're going

00:21:49.020 to include all of these wonderful things, world history, world literature, this, that, and the other,

00:21:54.420 shouldn't you include the most important book ever written? That just seems like common sense.

00:22:01.000 Hillsdale president, Larry Orrin right now, he just came out and made a statement that shouldn't

00:22:06.360 be controversial, but it is, which is that college is not for everyone. College is not for everyone.

00:22:11.860 For a lot of people, it's a huge waste of money. For some people, it's a great thing to do.

00:22:16.560 I love liberal education. I fully intend to send my kids to get a liberal education.

00:22:21.240 That means to major in something that has no applicability to anything in the real world,

00:22:26.100 to study literature or history or whatever. That's what a liberal education is. Liberal

00:22:31.520 education allows you to make sense of your freedom, to use your free time, to think about

00:22:37.960 grand and eternal questions. And then after that, you get some training to go work a real job in the

00:22:42.780 real world. Now, some people could go take STEM classes. They could focus on not just the liberal

00:22:50.340 arts, mathematics or something, but engineering, something really applicable. Okay, that's good.

00:22:54.480 Some people should go to trade school and learn a trade. Maybe they don't need to read Absalom

00:22:58.700 to Absalom. Maybe they want to learn a trade. That's a good thing. Maybe some people will go right

00:23:04.240 into the world of work. That's a good thing. Maybe they never really cared about school.

00:23:09.220 They weren't great students. If they go to college, they'll just end up a quarter of a million

00:23:12.800 dollars in debt instead of learning a trade. And then they can instantly start making money

00:23:17.100 and being productive and doing something with their lives. Maybe some people will enlist

00:23:20.560 in the military right out of high school. Maybe they're really good athletes. Maybe they've got a

00:23:25.220 real patriotic focus. Maybe they're going to do that. That's a great thing. Okay, great. Not everybody

00:23:29.560 needs to go to some four-year liberal arts college. That's not for everybody. We have now

00:23:37.600 ostensibly the most educated generation in history. Oh, all these people going to college,

00:23:43.900 so credentialed, and yet they're totally uneducated. Standards have been lowered.

00:23:51.120 Naturally, when you flood college with everybody, standards lower. It means less for those people to

00:23:56.800 end because people in their early education are less educated now than they were a hundred years ago

00:24:02.600 because they've never read the most important book in the history of the world. They haven't read

00:24:06.920 the book that is essential to understanding all of the subsequent literature and history and philosophy

00:24:13.260 and on and on. Even the development of science and mathematics, all is coming out of the church, 0.99

00:24:20.280 which defines our civilization. They don't understand that. And there's a further point because

00:24:26.540 I see some conservatives making the argument that biblical literacy is important because you can't

00:24:31.600 really understand anything else without it. That's true. The other reason that it's important is what all

00:24:36.400 of our really serious founding fathers talked about, which is that our republic is built for a moral and

00:24:42.900 religious people. So actually, it's not just that you learn about it and you know it in some esoteric

00:24:48.540 sense, but it's that what we learn, what we engage with in our culture shapes who we are. We're not just

00:24:55.120 floating brains moving in the air. We have bodies. We have actions. We have habits. If you read trashy novels,

00:25:01.480 you're going to think in a certain way, you're going to behave in a certain way. If you read serious

00:25:05.160 works, if you read the Bible, you're going to behave and think in a different way. You will think

00:25:09.780 toward the virtues. You will think in a moral way. As religiosity erodes, as religious standing,

00:25:17.300 understanding erodes, our religious practice erodes. As our religious practice erodes, our morals erode.

00:25:24.120 You can't have a moral society that is not religious. As morals erode, discipline erodes. Virtue erodes. 0.97

00:25:30.880 The sense of purpose in the world and the sense of purpose for your life erodes. When that happens,

00:25:36.300 liberty erodes. You cannot have liberty without that. Some people want to pretend that you can.

00:25:41.580 You really can't. You can't govern yourself if you don't have all of that before you. We want to cut

00:25:48.560 off civilization from the roots of it. It isn't going to work. You become a ridiculous creature like

00:25:54.660 Kirsten Gillibrand. We'll get to a 2020 update. I want to tell you about my weekend at the

00:25:58.940 commissioning of the USS Michael Monsoor, speaking of virtue and courage. But first,

00:26:04.440 we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. If you are on dailywire.com, thank you. You help

00:26:09.140 keep the lights on. You keep covfefe in my cup. If you're not, go over there. It's $10 a month,

00:26:13.700 $100 for an annual membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show,

00:26:17.100 you get the questions in the mailbag, you get the Matt Walsh show, you get the questions backstage,

00:26:19.740 you get another kingdom, you get so much stuff. And you get this. You get the biblical literacy

00:26:27.620 tumbler. You get... Now, it's not directly related to the Bible, although I'm sure there are many

00:26:33.700 exegetes who can tell you about the scriptural significance of the leftist years tumbler.

00:26:38.340 But what will happen is once these schools start teaching the most important book in the history

00:26:43.720 of the world, the left, they are going to cry. You're going to have maybe a second flood. I know

00:26:49.640 we were told... God said he would never destroy humanity again with a flood, but the left never

00:26:54.820 made that promise and they might do it. So that's why you need to get your leftist tears tumbler.

00:26:58.700 It's your own personal mini arc. Grab it. And we'll be right back with a lot more.

00:27:03.120 When you're biblically illiterate, when you are uneducated, when you are undisciplined, 0.99

00:27:17.680 when you can't govern yourself, you become a ridiculous creature, like the future president,

00:27:23.800 future nominee of the Democrat Party, Kirsten Gillibrand.

00:27:26.360 Of this dark world, we will wear the belt of truth because we know the truth. We speak

00:27:33.080 truth to power. We will put on the bright breastplate of righteousness because we know right from

00:27:42.480 wrong and we will not forget it. We will hold that shield of faith. As Dr. King said, faith

00:27:50.460 is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase. So hold on to that faith

00:27:58.300 tightly. We will wield the sword of the spirit. The sword of the spirit is the word of God and the

00:28:06.860 good book promises us the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

00:28:15.800 The good book tells us in the beginning was the word and the word was with

00:28:23.960 God, God, God. And, uh, the, and the word and well, the point is the sword of the spirit and the

00:28:34.720 please elect me. I'm a Christian, please. Uh, really pathetic display. People made fun of president Trump

00:28:41.700 because he's also not terribly comfortable speaking in a religious setting. And they made fun of him

00:28:47.560 for describing two Corinthians as two Corinthians said, Oh, you're supposed to say second Corinthians.

00:28:53.940 And by the way, some people actually do say two Corinthians, but anyway, they gave him hell over

00:28:57.760 that. They, they constantly go after him as, as incompetent as a religious speaker. What about this?

00:29:04.760 Donald Trump is Jonathan Edwards compared to this lady. Donald Trump is like Jerry Falwell and Billy 0.63

00:29:13.180 Graham and Jonathan Edwards all rolled up into one. Are you kidding me? This is Donald Trump is

00:29:19.280 Fulton Sheen compared to Kirsten Gillibrand. How pathetic is that? This is what happens when you

00:29:24.000 lose a faith tradition. This is what happens. You become a grotesque caricature. I mean, how sad,

00:29:29.780 how, what, what is this? What is she doing? Al Sharpton put this video out. She's trying to

00:29:34.560 appeal to, uh, to predominantly black, uh, Christian voters in the Democrat party. It's

00:29:40.580 not really going to work. What else do we have from the 2020 update? Apparently Kamala Harris had 0.57

00:29:45.480 an affair with a married man 20 years ago. It's another, that's a little tidbit that came out

00:29:49.720 today from the former San Francisco mayor, Willie Brown. Uh, Willie Brown came out and said that he

00:29:56.360 had an affair with Kamala Harris 20 years ago. And in exchange for that, he appointed her to a couple

00:30:02.300 state commissions and launched her entire political career. Pretty brutal stuff from this 80-something

00:30:07.220 year old former mayor. All of which is to say, delicious. Just, just, mm. It is not even February

00:30:18.160 2019 yet, folks. And this is what we're getting out of the 2020 Democrat primary. This is going to be

00:30:23.740 gold. This is going to be so good. Kamala Harris has come out the gate pretty strong and they are

00:30:29.660 already attacking her from every angle. I mean, they are making her out to be Hillary 2.0, except 1.00

00:30:35.740 she's got no moral standards. She's sleeping with married men. She's got, oh, it's just brutal what 1.00

00:30:42.540 they're doing to her. Then Kirsten Gillibrand is doing it to herself. And then you've got Howard

00:30:47.020 Schultz, who is the CEO of Starbucks, coming out and saying that he's going to run an independent bid

00:30:51.740 and spoil it for whoever the ultimate Democrat nominee is anyway. 0.63

00:30:55.000 I am seriously thinking of running for president. I will run as a centrist independent outside of the

00:31:04.980 two-party system. We're living at a most fragile time. Not only the fact that this president is not

00:31:12.040 qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what's

00:31:19.920 necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged every single day in revenge politics.

00:31:26.720 Why run as an independent? Your views have always aligned with the Democratic Party.

00:31:32.800 It's true. I've, you know, I've been a lifelong Democrat. I look at both parties. We see extremes

00:31:39.040 on both sides. Well, we are sitting today with approximately 21 and a half trillion dollars

00:31:46.880 of debt, which is a reckless example, not only of Republicans, but of Democrats as well,

00:31:54.080 as a reckless failure of their constitutional responsibility.

00:31:59.680 Run, Howard, run. Run, Howard, run. Howard Schultz is a far-left Democrat. He's the guy who

00:32:07.440 turns Starbucks into a homeless shelter. He is the one who's installing heroin needles into the

00:32:13.360 Starbucks bathrooms. He is just a real hippy-dippy leftist guy, and he might run in an independent

00:32:21.680 bid. He knows he's not going to win the Democrat primary. There's no way a straight, white, billionaire

00:32:27.260 man is ever going to win that primary. He won't get one vote in it. But he would be able to get a good

00:32:34.160 number of votes as an independent because you've got a sizable number of Democrats, or these days

00:32:39.380 probably former Democrats, who are so turned off by intersectional, nasty identity politics,

00:32:47.220 and you've got those same people who don't really like Donald Trump because he's too right-wing or

00:32:52.420 he's too vulgar or whatever. Howard Schultz would appeal to them, and Donald Trump knows it,

00:32:57.940 and he's encouraging him to run. He tweeted out today that Howard Schultz doesn't have the guts to

00:33:02.360 run for president, and he's doing it with all the subtlety of Donald Trump. He's saying this

00:33:07.440 because if Schultz ran as an independent, it would all but ensure a Trump re-election. So what I am

00:33:13.140 telling you, hear me closely, take notes. If you're driving, pull over. Every one of you has to write a

00:33:20.120 letter to Howard Schultz begging him to run for president. Write it, send it to Starbucks, tweet at

00:33:26.140 him, send him an email. We need to get this guy to run as an independent. It would be phenomenal,

00:33:32.360 it, oh, oh, the joys. He's been signaling that he wants to run for a while, so I think he's probably

00:33:37.460 in it, and it'll just be a singular joy if they can get him in. It's going to become the 2000 election

00:33:46.900 all over again. This is my other observation, even this early on. Do you remember the 2000 election?

00:33:52.180 I was such a political hound that I've been following politics since, really, since I was two

00:33:57.360 years old, and I remember in the 2000 election, I was about 10 years old, and it struck me that that

00:34:02.140 election was about nothing. What was that election about? What was the big issue? Nothing. The election

00:34:09.080 was about how Bill Clinton's a degenerate, and the economy was going pretty well, and everything was

00:34:14.960 basically fine. 9-11 hadn't happened yet. It was just about nothing. You got all of these candidates,

00:34:19.800 and you had third parties making a push. In 92, Ross Perot ran as the Reform Party candidate. He

00:34:26.740 spoiled it for George Bush. George Bush lost the election. Bill Clinton became president. In 2000,

00:34:31.020 Donald Trump almost ran for president as the Reform Party candidate. He was running for the Reform Party

00:34:37.040 nomination against Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan, then, is running in the 2000 election, takes a lot of votes

00:34:42.940 away. Ralph Nader was another one, a spoiler, who probably threw the election to George Bush.

00:34:48.260 This is deja vu all over again. I can't wait to have an election about nothing, because elections

00:34:55.340 about nothing just become about people and all this stupid fighting. For years now, we've been told

00:35:01.320 how terrible a person Donald Trump is. Everybody else is so pure, so wonderful, all those sanctimonious

00:35:09.460 pseudo-conservatives, all the way to the crazy virtue-signaling leftists. They're all so morally

00:35:16.120 pure and good, and only Donald Trump is bad. We're about to find out what degenerates all these

00:35:20.740 people are. We're about to find out that Kamala Harris had an affair with a married man 20 years

00:35:25.680 ago, and did it so that she could just advance her career. Pretty cynical move. We're about to find

00:35:31.420 out a lot of things about a lot of these people. I can't wait. That'll be a lot of fun. It's not just

00:35:37.560 the schadenfreude that I'm looking forward to. It's not just having delicious tears at their

00:35:43.080 expense and drinking up their misery. It's because they need to be taken down a peg. They are so

00:35:48.360 sanctimonious. They are so prideful, and they're about to find out the wages of that. In other

00:35:55.340 shocking news, the government reopened. Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, the government reopened.

00:36:01.020 Whatever. Okay. During the shutdown, I said, okay, the government's shut down. Is it shut down? Does

00:36:06.160 anyone know? Is it? And now it's open. All right, whatever. I guess Trump sort of gave in. Maybe

00:36:11.780 it'll close again in three weeks. I don't know. Whatever. What it does bring up to me, though,

00:36:17.860 is that this immigration debate is about a lot more than a border wall. We're all talking about it as

00:36:23.000 the border wall. We're all talking about it just as a matter of illegal immigration. It's actually

00:36:27.840 about more than that, and of all people, the left-wing former anchor of NBC News, Tom Brokaw,

00:36:32.680 is making this clear. He fits in a true statement in between a bunch of kind of leftist claptrap

00:36:39.320 about how Republicans are racist, but he actually gets a true statement in there as well about

00:36:44.180 assimilation. And a lot of this we don't want to talk about, but the fact is, on the Republican side,

00:36:49.220 a lot of people see the rise of an extraordinary, important new constituency in American politics,

00:36:55.100 Hispanics, who will come here and all be Democrats. Also, I hear when I push people a little 1.00

00:37:00.180 harder. I don't know whether I want brown grandbabies. I mean, that's also a part of it. 1.00

00:37:05.640 It's the intermarriage that is going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other. 0.89

00:37:09.820 I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation. That's one of the 1.00

00:37:13.820 things I've been saying for a long time, that they ought not to be just codified in their communities,

00:37:18.920 but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English and that they

00:37:22.680 feel comfortable in the communities. And that's going to take outreach on both sides, frankly.

00:37:27.340 Now, of course, this last thing that he makes, this last point that he makes is true.

00:37:34.320 Hispanics need to assimilate into American culture. It's not just their fault that they're 0.99

00:37:38.560 not assimilating at the same speed at which other immigrant groups have done it. A lot of it is 0.99

00:37:43.920 thanks to the culture, which discourages them from assimilating, which tells them to keep speaking 0.98

00:37:48.500 Spanish, which tells them that America is awful and the West is a terrible place. Why they would want 1.00

00:37:52.940 to come here? I have no idea why we would take in over a million people a year. I can't imagine if

00:37:57.320 we're such a terrible place. But that point is right. The point about Republicans don't want brown 1.00

00:38:03.500 grandbabies, that's just typical leftist NBC nonsense. But the point he's making about assimilation is

00:38:10.380 fair, I think. And that's not just illegal immigration that that has to do with, that's legal

00:38:16.660 immigration. There was a big poll that came out, I think from Harvard Harris, which showed that the

00:38:20.180 majority of Americans don't just want less illegal immigration, they want less legal immigration.

00:38:25.660 And they don't just want less legal immigration, they want radically less legal immigration. Right

00:38:29.900 now we're at about 1.2 million a year. They want that down to about half a million. And why is that?

00:38:35.680 Well, one, that's a million people a year is a lot of people to absorb into a country, 0.99

00:38:39.960 constantly coming in. But I think we could absorb it if we encouraged assimilation. But I think a lot 1.00

00:38:46.240 of people really hate pressing one for English, and I think they're totally justified in doing that.

00:38:50.180 And it's wrong for the immigrants, it's wrong to encourage them not to learn English, so that

00:38:54.880 they're a permanent second class, so that certain jobs just are cut off from them, that certain 0.95

00:38:59.000 educational opportunities just are cut off from them. You have to assimilate. When my great-grandfather

00:39:05.320 came to America from Italy, he was basically ashamed of being Italian. And he was rightly ashamed of 1.00

00:39:11.980 being Italian, because he's in America, and he has to learn English. So he would read the newspaper

00:39:16.300 in English all the time. He wouldn't speak Italian really in the home. He felt that he had left a

00:39:22.280 culture for good reason. And he was coming to a new culture, and he was going to succeed at that

00:39:26.920 new culture. That is a radically different attitude than what the left tells us to do today, which is

00:39:32.040 that we should assimilate to immigrants. We certainly should not do that. That's crazy. And it creates a 1.00

00:39:36.220 bad situation, not just for the country, but for the immigrants as well. A really interesting point at 0.98

00:39:42.000 the end there by Tom Brokaw. Of course, he's had to walk it back now, because the left pounced on him,

00:39:45.960 and a conservative hasn't watched NBC News in 30 years. This ties into some other aspects of this

00:39:53.220 debate, which we'll just have to get to tomorrow, because I want to point out before I leave, I had

00:39:56.420 the honor this weekend of attending the commissioning of the USS Michael Monsoor down at Coronado. This is a

00:40:03.840 Zumwalt-class ship. It's a destroyer. It looks like it's something out of Star Wars. It is a really cool

00:40:09.340 ship. It's been in the process of being built now for over 20 years, and being designed and being

00:40:15.540 thought of. And so this was the last step on the way for the Michael Monsoor, and it was commissioned

00:40:21.840 on Saturday. Michael Monsoor was named after Michael Monsoor, who's a Navy SEAL, who was killed in

00:40:27.900 Ramadi in action in 2006, I believe. And he was a young man, really young man, 24, 25 years old. And I bring

00:40:37.620 this up because it's an unbelievably inspiring story. He's a national hero. He previously had

00:40:44.800 been, a teammate of his had been shot in the street, wide open, and he ran out with a heavy

00:40:51.420 machine gun, was shooting at the bad guys, had 100 pounds on his back, and still managed to drag this

00:40:56.680 guy, his teammate, to safety. And that teammate of his had a vision, as he was going in and out of

00:41:05.320 consciousness, of an angel. And Michael Monsoor was a devout Catholic who went to daily mass.

00:41:11.420 He went to, even when he was in theater, he would go to daily mass. He was named after St. Michael,

00:41:16.880 the archangel, who is the defender of warriors. There's the prayer at the end of every mass,

00:41:21.100 St. Michael, the archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of

00:41:26.000 the devil. And the crest of this ship includes a wing and a sword from St. Michael. He was killed

00:41:36.560 in action when he was on a rooftop. And there were enemy combatants who came up, and someone hurled a

00:41:45.140 grenade at him, and it bounced off of his chest. And Michael Monsoor saw the grenade there, and he

00:41:50.560 could have lunged to safety. He was apparently near a doorway. But his teammates and the Iraqi 1.00

00:41:57.240 soldiers who were with them were cut off, and they almost certainly would have been killed.

00:42:02.100 And you're talking about a split-section decision. The grenade bounced off him, landed in front of him,

00:42:07.620 and he screamed grenade, and he jumped on the grenade, and everyone else survived. And he did not.

00:42:12.900 And he gave his life for his friends and for his teammates and for his country. Coincidentally,

00:42:22.460 on the feast day of St. Michael, Michael Monsoor clearly had a sense of purpose and a sense of

00:42:28.820 virtue and honor. But purpose, providence, what are the odds? What are the odds that that would happen

00:42:37.760 on the feast day of St. Michael? Devout Catholic, named after Michael the archangel. What are the

00:42:43.120 odds? Well, in a world that has purpose, in a world in which all nature is but art unknown to thee,

00:42:48.780 and all chance, direction, which thou canst not see, it happens all the time. And we're talking today

00:42:55.860 about biblical literacy, about virtue, about honor. In all of those speeches at the commissioning of the

00:43:01.160 USS Michael Monsoor, everything was appropriate. Everything was serious. Everything was about

00:43:07.400 honor and virtue, goodness, patriotism. And when you look around the culture today, you don't see a

00:43:14.440 whole lot of that. You see people whining about microaggressions. You see a quarter of college

00:43:19.740 students having PTSD because their preferred political candidate didn't win the presidential

00:43:24.920 election in 2016. That's because they don't have a sense of virtue, a sense of purpose, a sense of

00:43:31.880 moral reality, and a sense of providence. Michael Monsoor had it. He's an unbelievable inspiration to

00:43:40.440 the entire country. The USS Michael Monsoor will now sail for hopefully 40, 45 years, and we wish them

00:43:48.780 fair winds and following seas. That's our show. Come back tomorrow. We've got a lot more to talk

00:43:54.840 about it in the meantime. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:43:57.160 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:44:07.300 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover. And our technical

00:44:11.780 producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Dylan Case. Production

00:44:17.520 assistant, Nick Sheehan. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire

00:44:22.960 production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019. Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to

00:44:27.860 talk about Elizabeth Warren who shamed an NFL owner for being rich and said that this guy, because he's

00:44:34.660 rich, he needs to help pay off people's student loan debt. And we're going to talk, there are so many

00:44:39.360 problems with all of this that we're going to try to break it down today on the show. Also, the Bishop

00:44:44.020 of Covington issued a sort of apology for throwing the Covington kids under the bus, but the apology is

00:44:51.700 pretty worthless and useless. And we'll talk about why today on the show.

The Michael Knowles Show - January 28, 2019

Ep. 287 - Bible Literacy For Dummies

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