Ep. 319 - It’s Mueller Time
Summary
The Southern District of New York indicts celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti for bank and wire fraud. The leftist tiers have created a tsunami. Get your Tumblr ready and hold your breath. This is the greatest week for American conservatives since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
The special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election
00:00:05.460
has concluded. And Robert Mueller has fully exonerated President Trump and his entire
00:00:13.020
campaign of any collusion with the Russian government. But then, just when you thought
00:00:18.400
that things couldn't get any better, the Southern District of New York steps in,
00:00:22.660
not 10 minutes ago, to charge not President Trump, but Democrat celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti
00:00:29.100
with bank and wire fraud. The leftist tiers have created a tsunami. Get your Tumblr ready
00:00:34.760
and hold your breath. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:44.980
I'm getting ready to go live. I'm getting ready to do my show today. I think this is the best show
00:00:50.900
definitely since Kavanaugh. It's better than Kavanaugh. Best show since, I guess, the 2016
00:00:56.840
election. We didn't even have a show during the 2016 election, so this was already going to be
00:01:00.320
the best show ever. And then, just as I'm about to go live, I see breaking news. The Southern
00:01:05.500
District of New York charges dot, dot, dot. And I think, uh-oh. Because what they did, what the
00:01:10.880
Democrats did is, once the Mueller report came out, totally exonerates Trump, then they immediately
00:01:16.780
pivot. They say, well, the real action is in the Southern District of New York. The Southern District
00:01:22.480
of New York is going to investigate Trump. They're going to investigate his businesses. They're going
00:01:26.800
to investigate his taxes. They're going to, the Southern District of New York is going to take
00:01:31.040
down Trump. Now, maybe they're going to try to. Maybe in the, so I saw the breaking news. I said,
00:01:35.480
uh-oh. Southern District of New York indicts Michael Avenatti. How is this possible? How is this
00:01:47.340
reality? Did I, I don't want to say anything, I don't want to even imagine anything bad happened on
00:01:52.920
my plane trip last night, but did I, did my plane really land in LA or have I been transported to the
00:01:59.600
seventh heaven of political news cycles? I guess we'll have to analyze. This is, this is the greatest
00:02:06.740
week for American conservatives since the fall of the Berlin Wall. I think just everything added
00:02:16.720
together, the culmination of the 2016 election. We'll get to all of it. One second. First,
00:02:22.840
let's make a little money, honey, with Untuck It. You ever wonder why traditional button-up shirts
00:02:28.660
look so long and baggy? It's because they were not meant to be worn that way. Untuck It shirts were
00:02:34.120
specifically designed to be worn untucked. Untuck It is the brand that you've been looking for. It's
00:02:39.740
the original untucked shirt, a modern solution to a very old problem. No tucking or tailoring required.
00:02:44.960
No matter your size or shape, the shirts are the perfect untucked length. I really love them.
00:02:50.020
Jeremy Boring got me into Untuck It shirts. The God King himself, he's been wearing them for years.
00:02:54.980
He loves them. I would always say to him, I'd say, man, that shirt looks really cool. Where's it from?
00:02:59.260
He would say, Michael, do you think I have anything in my entire wardrobe other than Untuck It shirts
00:03:03.080
at this point? And it's true. I think he has one of every single shirt they make. He totally got me
00:03:07.220
into them. I love them. They are, they are just a fabulous, sleek, modern cut. I can't believe no one
00:03:12.320
thought to do this before them. It looks great. Check it. I've gone to their brick and mortar
00:03:16.560
stores where people are really helpful. They'll fit you out for the right size. And obviously you
00:03:21.560
can shop online. Try it on in person at one of Untuck It's 50 stores or go to untuckit.com
00:03:26.340
to get started. They offer free shipping and returns on all orders in the US. You can save 20%
00:03:31.700
on your first order by using my code MKS at checkout. Save 20%. Untuckit.com promo code MKS.
00:03:40.780
Here to analyze Robert Mueller's findings in the Russia collusion investigation,
00:03:45.740
we are privileged right now to be joined by 1970s musical legend, Billy Preston. Billy,
00:03:55.740
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. You gotta have something if you want to be with me.
00:04:14.780
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. You gotta have something if you want to be with me.
00:04:28.360
Nothing from nothing from nothing. They found nothing, nothing at all. 675 days,
00:04:36.060
2,800 subpoenas, 500 witness interviews, 37 indictments, four prison sentences. And at the end
00:04:47.120
of it all, two years later, not one single American found to have committed any crime, any conspiracy,
00:04:56.780
any collusion with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
00:05:03.580
Not what, not Donald Trump, not Donald Trump Jr., not Jared Kushner, not Paul Manafort, not Roger Stone,
00:05:13.700
not anybody associated with the Trump campaign. Not just that, not any American found to have colluded
00:05:21.720
with the Russians. No collusion. This is not shocking to anybody who was reasonable,
00:05:30.400
but there is a takeaway. Before we get to Attorney General Barr's letter describing the Mueller report,
00:05:35.720
we don't have the whole Mueller report yet. We'll never get the whole Mueller report because there
00:05:39.500
are actually laws preventing them from releasing the whole thing, but maybe we'll get some version
00:05:44.020
of it. Everybody seems to want transparency, especially President Trump, because he has been
00:05:48.900
exonerated. But the first takeaway here is people are describing the news as shocking. This is not
00:05:56.300
shocking news. For the last two years, every reasonable person has known that Donald Trump
00:06:03.680
is not a Russian spy. And yet they've built this narrative. Think about how crazy that is.
00:06:11.200
Donald Trump, the guy who was a tabloid icon, the guy who's a real estate developer, the guy who
00:06:18.660
was a casino mogul, you wear his ties, the Trump tie. He was a huge star of reality TV. Donald Trump,
00:06:27.200
an American original. A good number of people in this country managed to convince themselves
00:06:34.240
that that guy was secretly a Manchurian candidate, a Russian spy who had done everything in his life
00:06:43.600
just to lead to the moment when he would get elected president to turn the United States of
00:06:48.380
America into a puppet government for the Kremlin. A lot of people in this country convinced themselves
00:06:54.760
of that. Some people, I think, cynically were just pretending. You know, guys like Van Jones,
00:07:01.840
for instance. Van Jones, big left winger, big CNN host. He was caught on a hidden camera saying,
00:07:08.720
oh, that Russia thing, that's a nothing burger. Russia's a nothing burger. There were some people
00:07:13.300
who knew that, who said, obviously, Donald Trump wasn't a Russian spy, but they peddled it anyway
00:07:19.600
because they thought it would be politically useful, which turns out it wasn't. But a lot of people
00:07:24.300
got fooled. Some people, I think, in the media were honest, honestly wrong and corrupt. Some people
00:07:32.940
among Democrats honestly believe that. Ideology drives people mad. That's the only way to explain
00:07:40.560
it. How could you possibly have believed that? Because ideology drives people mad. But now we know
00:07:49.460
President Trump fully exonerated. Here, even Vox.com, even poor benighted Vox.com said this is a massive
00:08:01.400
political win for Donald Trump. What does Attorney General Barr say? So, so we find out late on
00:08:07.500
Friday, we find out that Mueller has filed his final report. At that time, we knew no new indictments.
00:08:13.740
So we say, okay, that's it. It's over. It's done. No new indictments. This is done. Nobody was found to
00:08:19.940
have colluded with the Russians. No American. But we didn't know what was in it. Then Attorney General
00:08:26.440
Barr, over the weekend, he reads the whole report and then he writes this letter to inform people
00:08:31.020
as just a matter of public interest of what's going on. This is what he writes. Quote,
00:08:35.140
the report further explains. These, those would just be highlights. Obviously, it's a four-page
00:08:39.820
letter. I'll just give you the highlights. The report further explains that a primary consideration
00:08:44.140
for the special counsel's investigation was whether any Americans, including the individuals associated
00:08:50.100
with the Trump campaign, joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election, which would be a
00:08:56.800
federal crime. If they did that, that would be a federal crime. The special counsel's investigation
00:09:01.880
did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with
00:09:09.360
Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states,
00:09:15.480
now he's quoting Robert Mueller here, quote, that investigation did not establish that members of the
00:09:22.040
Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference
00:09:26.880
activities. Now, it sounds a little repetitive, doesn't it? He put that in there because he is
00:09:32.000
quoting the, the report itself from Robert Mueller. It did not happen. And he goes on,
00:09:41.100
our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations
00:09:50.060
that determine the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president. So what
00:09:56.420
they've decided here is they are not going to indict anybody else. The special counsel is not indicting
00:10:02.100
anybody else. Now, I suppose the attorney general could, and they've decided they are not going to do
00:10:07.100
that. And they know that what's going to happen is they're going to say, this was political. This is
00:10:11.840
because constitutionally it's tricky to indict a president. Constitutionally there are some, he said,
00:10:16.900
it's not because of that. He's saying, we are not indicting the president. We're not indicting anybody
00:10:21.220
associated because there is no reason to. There's no evidence. There, there is, there, it was a Russian
00:10:29.440
interference effort. We do know that there was, it was a two-pronged effort. This also apparently from the
00:10:35.100
Mueller report. The internet research agency was an organization that spent some money on social media
00:10:43.100
to stir up discontent in American politics, spread some propaganda. Okay. The Russians have been doing
00:10:48.460
this for a long time. That's the media angle of this. Then the other aspect of Russian interference
00:10:55.000
is hacking the DNC, which the report says that they do. Okay. Two sides, the media angle and the
00:11:04.840
political angle, the government angle, and those two sides of Russian interference reflect the two
00:11:12.120
sides of the real scandal here. The two sides of the real scandal, which is that the DOJ under Barack
00:11:19.920
Obama colluded and conspired with Democrats to spy on the Trump campaign and to try to prevent him from
00:11:25.680
being president. And when that didn't work, to try to overturn the presidential election. That's the
00:11:29.640
political governmental side of the scandal. The media side is that they spread these lies and
00:11:34.780
smears and baseless propaganda for two years. It's amazing to see the Russian interference
00:11:43.060
mirror almost exactly how the Democrats and the media, but I repeat myself, reacted to the real
00:11:50.180
scandal. A little bit more of Barr's letter before we get to the bigger picture. First, let's make a
00:11:55.520
little money, honey, with Ring. Ring's mission is to make neighborhoods safer. You might already know
00:11:59.760
about their smart video doorbells and cameras that protect millions of people everywhere. Ring helps you
00:12:04.780
stay connected to your home anywhere in the world. So if there's a package delivery or a surprise
00:12:09.000
visitor, you will get an alert and be able to see, hear, and speak to them all from your phone.
00:12:13.360
That's thanks to the HD video and two-way audio features on Ring devices. Speaking of hacking and
00:12:19.640
people trying to get into your private affairs and into your house, my senior producer, Jonathan Hay,
00:12:26.060
the other night he was woken up at three in the morning by some weirdos who were trying to see if
00:12:30.760
anybody's home. So they ring the bell. He starts talking to them from his bed. He says, yeah, what
00:12:34.520
do you want? They didn't think anyone was home. Oh, nothing. Now, by the way, Jonathan could have
00:12:39.240
been on a beach. He could have been at the office because you can do this from anywhere. He said,
00:12:43.820
yeah, well, you know, you're not going to want to come into this house just letting you know.
00:12:47.540
So, oh, yeah, okay, these kind of drug-addled weirdos, and then they wander away. It's really helpful.
00:12:52.620
It makes you feel safer wherever you are, even if you're in your own bedroom or if you're far away from home.
00:12:57.720
As a listener, you have a special offer on a ring starter kit available right now. I love my ring.
00:13:04.280
It makes me feel safer. I give it to all of my friends. With a video doorbell and motion-activated
00:13:08.020
floodlight camera, the starter kit has everything you need to be building a ring of security around
00:13:12.960
your home. Just go to ring.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. That's ring.com slash Knowles.
00:13:20.280
Okay. Now, there are two questions that the special counsel is weighing in this letter.
00:13:29.780
You've got the question of did the Trump campaign collude with Russia? No. No way. Didn't happen.
00:13:36.680
Then there's the question of obstruction of justice. This is the process crime. This is where
00:13:41.800
they say, well, there was no crime, but he didn't answer investigators or he lied to investigators.
00:13:46.260
So that's where the Democrats thought they had him. Most smart Democrats, most reasonable Democrats
00:13:52.200
have known for a while this Russia thing isn't going to turn up any collusion. So what they were
00:13:57.300
hoping for is, okay, what we can do now is, there's no crime, but we're going to catch him in a lie.
00:14:04.960
We're going to make him perjure himself. We're going to make him give up some other crime that he did.
00:14:08.080
We're going to make him do that. So that's what they were trying to get him on.
00:14:10.500
So what happened with obstruction? The special counsel did not find obstruction. Now, technically,
00:14:18.480
the special counsel apparently didn't weigh in. The special counsel outlined arguments on both sides
00:14:23.280
of the difficult issues of law and fact, and then Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney General
00:14:31.060
Rod Rosenstein concluded that the Trump conduct does not rise to the level of obstruction. Rod Rosenstein,
00:14:38.920
remember, they're going to try to paint Barr as some political actor. He's not, he's got a sterling
00:14:42.840
reputation. He was admired by both sides of the aisle, but Rod Rosenstein has basically been
00:14:49.860
implicated by his old pals at the DOJ and the FBI of hating Donald Trump and trying to overturn the
00:14:57.160
election. Rod Rosenstein also concluded that whatever Donald Trump did does not rise to the level of
00:15:03.280
obstruction of justice. He says, quote, generally speaking, to obtain and sustain an obstruction
00:15:10.880
conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acting with
00:15:15.660
corrupt intent engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to a pending or contemplated
00:15:23.100
proceeding. In cataloging the president's actions, many of which took place in public view,
00:15:28.920
the report identifies no actions that in our judgment constitute obstructive conduct, had a
00:15:36.260
nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent, each of which under
00:15:41.740
the department's principles of federal prosecution guiding, guiding, charging decisions would need to
00:15:48.120
be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to establish an obstruction of justice offense. This is Attorney General
00:15:53.420
Barr saying, dear cynical Democrats, you're going to try to smear us and say this was just political.
00:16:00.120
Here is in perfect terms why we could not charge Donald Trump with obstruction. To say nothing of the
00:16:08.880
fact that there's no crime. There was no underlying crime. That's what the special counsel found in no
00:16:14.520
uncertain terms. So what would he be obstructing? What justice would he be obstructing?
00:16:19.320
A full exoneration. There's no, say it loud, say it proud. No conclusion. No, no conclusion. There is a
00:16:28.500
conclusion and the conclusion was no collusion. Consider this too. Consider how weird this is. Donald Trump,
00:16:36.160
braggadocious, hyperbolic Donald Trump, has had a better record of accuracy and disinterested statements
00:16:46.060
over the past two years than the entire mainstream media. Donald Trump's tweets have a better record
00:16:54.120
of journalistic integrity than the entire mainstream media. Consider this show. I'm a partisan. I have a
00:17:01.740
side. I have opinions. I first got any notoriety because I did a blank book called Reasons to Vote for
00:17:08.100
Democrats. I have a much better record of journalistic integrity of disinterested, accurate, just the facts
00:17:15.880
reporting than the entire mainstream media. That is extremely messed up. That is absurd. That should not
00:17:23.400
be the case. Donald Trump and I should not have a better record of disinterested, objective reporting
00:17:30.680
than the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN. We should, we should not. We, I am a
00:17:38.180
political actor. I have a position. I have a side that I'm advocating for. Donald Trump is the Republican
00:17:44.260
president of the United States. He's an, he's an activist. He's pushing something. He's pushing an
00:17:49.260
agenda. He's a much better journalist than anybody at those outlets. That is really messed up. You might be
00:17:55.120
really confused by the way. You might be confused as to how this is possible, how it's possible that
00:18:02.800
Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians. And you're confused because this is what you heard
00:18:06.920
for two years. There are indictments in this president's future. That's a bombshell. The bombshell.
00:18:13.140
This bombshell. Drop the bombshell. Bombshell accusation. Bombshell accusation. This is evidence of
00:18:19.440
willingness to commit collusion. This Buzzfeed news report is true. Then we are likely on our way
00:18:26.460
to possible impeachment proceedings. If this story is true, we must begin impeachment proceedings.
00:18:32.640
This is suborning perjury. I think there's no question it's an impeachable offense. And at that
00:18:37.600
point, we are in high crimes and misdemeanor and we are an impeachment. This president needs to be
00:18:43.380
impeached. Impeachment is the remedy. I mean, the president can't. It's the only remedy. The spirit of what
00:18:48.680
Trump did is clearly treasonous. This is moving into perjury, false statements, and even into
00:18:54.940
potentially treason. There's outright treason. I mean, there is no question. I think he's feeling
00:19:00.040
the noose around his neck. The noose is tightening. And I think they're shocked that the noose is
00:19:04.540
tightening. He feels the noose is tightening. The noose is tightening. The sound of hoofbeats of all
00:19:10.580
those investigations catching up with Donald Trump must be loud in his ears. He may be the first
00:19:16.460
president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. People might go to jail.
00:19:21.760
You're exactly right. For the rest of their lives. I think they're all going to jail. Well,
00:19:25.320
I think they're all going to end up together in prison and maybe that's a good thing. Oh my God.
00:19:28.820
He has no idea that he's going down. I could play you hours and hours and hours more of that.
00:19:39.180
He's going down. He's going to jail. He's going down. Two years of that. 2,285 minutes of that
00:19:47.440
just on the networks. Obviously, Newsbusters, you got to love the Media Research Center,
00:19:53.680
they put together just on ABC, CBS, and CNN. Not CNN, not MSNBC, not any of those other stations,
00:20:01.380
just the networks. For the last two years, 2,285 minutes. They have had an average of three
00:20:08.720
minutes per night for 791 consecutive nights. An average of every 791 nights for at least three
00:20:19.720
minutes. By the way, Trump colluded with Russia. By the way, he's a criminal. By the way, he's going
00:20:23.380
to jail for that. And totally wrong, totally baseless. That's all in the midst of an average
00:20:30.020
of 92% negative coverage. And we only mentioned the evening networks here. This is just evening
00:20:36.480
news, by the way. This is not even morning shows. Evening news because evening news still has a
00:20:41.920
larger audience than the morning shows or than cable news. 24 million people combined in the audience.
00:20:47.660
Totally wrong, totally without any basis. You'll notice I'm on the one hand celebrating. I'm so
00:20:55.600
excited. And on the other hand, I'm furious. And that's, I think, how conservatives should feel
00:21:00.440
right now. Bill Kristol, you know, never Trump, anti-Trump conservative, conservative, quote unquote.
00:21:09.800
All he's done for the last two years is try to stop the most conservative administration in American
00:21:14.460
history. He came out, he said, why are the Trumpers so upset? Why are they so angry? First of all,
00:21:21.320
they're not. We're very happy. We're elated. I was sitting in middle seat coach yesterday on my
00:21:25.720
airplane. It was the best flight I've ever had because I was reading the reaction and tweeting
00:21:29.120
the whole time. It was so fun, so great. My Tumblr is running over. However, why are they angry? I'm a
00:21:34.840
little angry too. Because for two years, those guys, the media, aided by the Democrats, aided by
00:21:43.680
crooks in the FBI and the Department of Justice, tried to overturn a presidential election based on
00:21:48.660
nothing. And before they did that, they tried to prevent the guy from being president in the first
00:21:53.000
place. And before they did that, they spied on the guy illegally to try to fix the campaign. So yeah,
00:22:00.600
I'm a little angry. You should be angry too. We should celebrate and then we should be angry.
00:22:10.040
And we need to get to the bottom of this. We need to get to the bottom of how this happened. Don't
00:22:14.900
just leave it with how happy this is. Don't just leave it with, oh, we can celebrate. Good. It turns
00:22:22.300
out Trump's fine. No. Who launched this hoax in the first place? Who with the DOJ? Who came up with
00:22:28.900
the Steele dossier? Who pushed the Steele dossier? Who spread the Steele dossier to the whole
00:22:33.000
mainstream media? Who was behind that? Democrats and Republicans and so-called nonpartisan FBI and
00:22:41.280
DOJ officials. I want those people run up in front of a judge and I want them in orange jumpsuits.
00:22:47.920
And I want everyone who was, Michael Flynn, for instance. Michael Flynn apparently made some
00:22:53.960
misleading statements to investigators when they set a trap for him and tried to send him to prison.
00:22:58.180
I want that guy pardoned like this minute. Paul Manafort, who goes, look, Paul Manafort is a
00:23:04.200
sort of crooked, uh, lobbyist operative type. There were about 7 million other guys like him in
00:23:10.100
Washington, many of whom have done a lot worse things than he did. That guy's in prison right
00:23:14.400
now or he's going to prison because he worked for Donald Trump. That's the real crime he's going to
00:23:18.400
prison for. I want that guy totally pardoned too. And I want all the hoaxers who, who started this
00:23:23.220
mess in the first place. I want them in orange jumpsuits for a very long time. And then you're
00:23:28.240
going to see a lot of tears. You're already seeing, seeing a lot of leftist tears over the past two
00:23:32.040
nights. Here was, oh my gosh, this one was great. When my doppelganger on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow had to
00:23:38.120
break the news that the Mueller report found no collusion. There was a Twitter account. Carly Bone
00:23:44.600
was suspended for posting this clip. Here's the clip that she posted of her own TV onto Twitter.
00:23:51.620
To do that, Bill Barr stopped Mueller from doing. And, and that's, that's from Robert Mueller as
00:24:02.360
well. At this point, it's only Bill Barr who was speaking on Mueller's behalf. Robert Mueller is
00:24:09.380
still at this point publicly silent as he has been from the very beginning. Although we'll have more
00:24:14.960
on that in a moment. She's crying. So that account was suspended for that reason.
00:24:24.540
Rachel Maddow there is by the way, now denying that she was holding back tears. You can see it. You can
00:24:28.800
look. She's clearly emotionally choked up and her eyes are really shiny. So I don't know, maybe she put
00:24:33.560
in eye drops right beforehand or something, but it looks as though it's pretty clear she's holding back
00:24:37.560
tears. Why? Because these people were so personally invested in this. They were so invested. This was
00:24:44.840
their fantasy and you're watching it crash down around them like a doomsday cult. And the ones who
00:24:50.100
can't double down are crying. But like any doomsday cult, most people are just doubling down. You know,
00:24:57.500
the doomsday cult goes out into the desert. They're waiting. The world is going to end at midnight and
00:25:01.960
they're waiting there for the world to end. And then what happens at midnight? The world doesn't end.
00:25:05.920
So do they say, oh, I guess we were wrong. Better luck next time. No, they double down. They say,
00:25:11.760
ah, this is proof that we were right. We really, this is proof that we were right. Now it's going
00:25:17.640
to happen in two weeks. And that's what's happened. We're seeing denial now among the mainstream media.
00:25:22.600
Here's CNN. What we, what we're hearing from the president is that I'm 100% exonerated that
00:25:27.260
everything we did under the campaign was okay. And, and what I'm suggesting is that it's,
00:25:32.160
it may not have been. And the question is, uh, you know, down on very quickly, uh, impeachment,
00:25:36.640
are they going to do anything or are they going to look into Nancy Pelosi and say, forget about it?
00:25:40.840
We're not, we're not there yet. I think that the most important thing that we're going to look for
00:25:44.720
next is what Jerry Nadler just said, which is he's going to have Barr come up. They're going to grill
00:25:48.740
him on this, uh, maybe even Mueller. And then they're going to take the next step.
00:25:52.540
And that's, oh yes. Oh yes. Of course. That's, it doesn't, it doesn't really conclude. It doesn't,
00:25:59.320
well, you know, who knows? It doesn't exonerate him. Well, no, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. And then
00:26:03.980
some get even bolder than this. Some get even bolder than questioning impeachment. That's where
00:26:12.500
we have to turn to Chuck Todd. But first, before we get there, and then before we get to the total
00:26:17.100
cherry on top of the Sunday, which is that the Southern district of New York is indicting
00:26:22.000
Michael Avenatti, not Donald Trump, Michael Avenatti. Before we get to that, we've got
00:26:25.800
to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. Go over to dailywire.com. It is 10 bucks a month,
00:26:31.220
a hundred dollars for an annual membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show,
00:26:34.280
you get the Ben Shapiro show. You get to ask questions in the mailbag coming up on Thursday.
00:26:37.820
You get to ask questions in backstage. We're doing those all the time now. You get to watch
00:26:43.600
another kingdom and you get this now more than ever, baby, the leftist tears Tumblr. I guess I'm
00:26:50.560
preaching to the choir because if you don't have a leftist tears Tumblr right now, if you're not
00:26:54.120
currently a subscriber, you've been drowned and you're dead. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear that.
00:26:59.300
You know, I warned you many times. Get a second Tumblr. I know all of you are already subscribers.
00:27:05.320
Go get a second Tumblr because you're going to see a lot more waves coming. Go over to dailywire.com.
00:27:21.500
So you've got a few different responses from the media. You've got
00:27:24.500
people like Rachel Maddow who are crying on television. At least those guys are honest.
00:27:30.940
At least Rachel Maddow is, well, there's no, no collusion. I mean, some, they looked so sad.
00:27:37.720
I think it was Katie Tour. It was so sad. They were all just, there's no, oh, there's no collusion.
00:27:45.080
Van Jones, actually, the one who in his secret candid statement said, yeah, the Russia thing is
00:27:51.500
a nothing burger. He said, Democrats just need to be sad about this for a while. They need to be sad
00:27:56.140
that our president's not a traitor, that the government has not been sold out as a puppet
00:27:59.840
state of Russia. They just need to be really sad. They were really hoping for it. And then they can
00:28:04.140
move on. He's right. They do need to move on. Some, there's another reaction. Some are even
00:28:09.760
bolder. Here is Chuck Todd with his new tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.
00:28:16.640
And look, I think Democrats very fairly will say, well, wait a minute. If this doesn't exonerate
00:28:22.360
them on the obstruction question, then if you haven't resolved obstruction, how do you resolve
00:28:26.780
collusion? Because if you didn't get cooperation and they obstructed in the investigation, could you
00:28:35.260
necessarily get to the bottom of the collusion question? But Kate, I'll be, I'll be honest with
00:28:40.000
you. I think that is a hard political argument to make for Democrats to push as hard as perhaps
00:28:48.400
As perhaps some would like them to push me, me, I want you to push. It's not just a hard political
00:28:54.520
argument. It's a hard argument, period. It's a hard legal argument. It's a hard historical argument.
00:29:02.020
It's a hard factual argument. Because what Chuck Todd is doing here, did you catch that? He said,
00:29:07.820
well, the special counsel concludes no collusion on the underlying crime. But the special counsel
00:29:16.120
doesn't reach any conclusion one way or the other on obstruction of justice. But if you can't reach a
00:29:24.140
conclusion on obstruction of justice, can you really reach a conclusion on collusion?
00:29:32.740
Yes, you can. The answer is yes. He wants, he's so hoping that he can just be clever and confusing
00:29:39.520
enough to overturn the special counsel's decision, the special counsel's findings. Yes, you can conclude,
00:29:48.620
even if there's an open-ended question on obstruction, you can conclude whether or not there was any
00:29:53.580
collusion. Two years, 2800 subpoenas, 500 interviews. By the way, President Trump did cooperate. He submitted
00:30:03.980
a ton of answers to a ton of questions by the special counsel. So that's just a flat-out lie. Yes, you can
00:30:09.240
conclude. We can conclude definitively, as does the special counsel, as does the attorney general, as has every
00:30:17.220
reasonable person for two years. Trump did not collude with Russia. You can conclude that and still leave
00:30:24.740
open the question of some obstruction, which isn't open anymore because both Rod Rosenstein and the
00:30:29.720
attorney general have said there is no way that they could possibly go after the president for
00:30:35.600
obstruction. Sorry, dude, it just didn't work. It's not just a political, no, sorry, it just didn't happen.
00:30:43.300
He goes on. It's not just, but he goes on. Here, here is the end of his conspiracy theory.
00:30:50.840
This, I imagine, is a good day for the president. He must be feeling relatively good right now.
00:30:56.580
He is, and he's probably feeling relatively good about his selection of Bill Barr as his attorney
00:31:00.560
general, because this memo and the initial understanding of what's in the Mueller report,
00:31:08.580
this will color what's in the Mueller report before any of us actually see it. And so the two big
00:31:15.060
determinations being, one, no evidence of any conspiracy with Russia and the Trump campaign.
00:31:23.060
But the second on obstruction, boy, I tell you, you know, Katie, it's very confusing in here.
00:31:29.640
The report did not make a decision on obstruction. It's the attorney general that's making a decision
00:31:35.220
on obstruction. We already know he had a very expansive view of executive power on this front.
00:31:41.540
So that isn't going to resolve the obstruction question as far as congressional Democrats are
00:31:47.660
concerned in general and probably many members of legal committee.
00:31:51.360
Did you hear that little, little line, that little jab at the beginning? Well, well, I'm sure that Donald
00:31:58.280
Trump is really happy with his selection of attorney general Barr. Yeah, I'm really, I bet he's really happy
00:32:04.700
about that. Right. The implication being that Barr is some crooked actor. He's some liar who is
00:32:11.560
misrepresenting what's in the Mueller report. Oh yes. He's really happy about Barr. No, I think he's
00:32:18.400
actually really happy about the appointment of Robert Mueller. Do you know why? Because Robert Mueller
00:32:22.980
found no evidence of collusion, you hack. That's why. Oh, he's really, because here's why he's really
00:32:29.240
happy about it because the Mueller report was filed and they didn't just release all of it to the,
00:32:34.840
to the public. Right. Because it's illegal to do that because you're not allowed to release
00:32:39.160
investigators, information and names about people who were investigated, but not indicted. That's
00:32:45.820
illegal. You can't do that. And it would be very terrible if you could do that for anybody just to
00:32:50.720
spread insinuations baselessly. So he can't do that. So he says, yeah. So you see, because they
00:32:57.100
couldn't release that whole report. So the first thing that anybody's hearing about this report
00:33:01.960
is from the attorney general. Yet, duh, who else would you hear it from? Who else could you possibly
00:33:09.240
hear it from? A leak? Yeah, I guess you could hear it from a leak. You could hear it from some
00:33:14.760
corrupt crone in the government, or you could make it up, Chuck Todd, like you've been doing for two years.
00:33:21.060
That's what you're upset about. Actually, the first thing we heard about, about this entire Russia
00:33:25.220
collusion thing was from you. And it was lies and lies and lies. So no, I don't think it's that Trump
00:33:30.560
is happy about the appointment of Barr. I think he's happy about the appointment of Mueller. Remember,
00:33:34.800
special counsel, Robert Mueller has made two public statements during the entire investigation.
00:33:40.520
What do you think those statements were? Were they to correct the president when he misrepresented
00:33:44.960
the investigation? No, it was to correct the media. It was to correct guys like Chuck Todd,
00:33:50.720
who were spreading lies based on nothing. And now the truth has come out, and Chuck Todd is really
00:33:55.540
upset about that. Now, some are admitting that the report is legitimate. So you see that there's
00:34:02.120
Rachel Maddow. There's the kind of first reaction, which is, yeah, the report's legitimate.
00:34:06.940
Man, that's awful. And then there's the second reaction, which is the report, no, no, it's not true.
00:34:12.780
There's nothing to see here. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That's the Chuck Todd
00:34:17.140
reaction. And then there's this third reaction, which is kind of a combination. You saw this one
00:34:21.420
on MSNBC, which is that the report is legitimate. There, yeah, I guess there's no collusion, but it's
00:34:28.480
illegitimate because it's racist or something. Look, if I'm the Trump children and I'm having,
00:34:34.880
I'm having a party tonight, right? Like they won the white privilege of regatta. All right. Like you
00:34:39.540
cannot, you cannot invest, there is not an African-American person in this country that could
00:34:43.880
have been investigated for 22 months, had their family investigated for 22 months and come away
00:34:48.600
scot-free. If they did that to me, they'd pop me for sharing Netflix passwords with my wife. All
00:34:53.700
right. Like, so the fact that, and while I fundamentally agree that there are more avenues
00:35:02.560
of investigation against these people, there's going to be an SDNY investigation. There's the
00:35:06.660
inaugural committee. There are lots of other ways to get at the children. In this particular case,
00:35:11.320
these grown adult children who were part of what appears to be the collusion or the conspiracy
00:35:19.320
with Russia, the point people in that, these people have escaped scot-free with no indictments.
00:35:26.060
And there's going to be nothing in that Mueller report that is, sorry, it is unlikely there's going
00:35:31.820
to be anything in that Mueller report that's going to satisfy me in terms of why these people weren't
00:35:36.620
even brought in under oath for questioning. And there it is. And there is, there he is. You finally
00:35:42.740
get it at the very end. He says, there's nothing in the Mueller report that will satisfy me.
00:35:47.460
Because Robert Mueller, who we've all said for two years is this great guy and the Mueller report
00:35:51.260
is totally legitimate. He didn't reach the conclusion that I wanted. So there was nothing
00:35:55.420
that he could say that will satisfy me. And then what is his other conclusion? What's that guy's
00:36:00.280
named? Ellie Mistal or something? Straight out of central casting for MSNBC. This guy, Ellie Mistal,
00:36:07.040
he says, Robert Mueller is a racist, I guess. I guess that's their conclusion. Because this is what
00:36:14.120
they do. When the left has no argument, they just call you a racist. This is always the evidence.
00:36:19.380
When a leftist calls you a racist, you know you've won the argument. It's just, he's a racist.
00:36:25.780
Yeah, I can't account for my lies and smears and deceptions and propaganda over the last two years.
00:36:31.440
So he's a racist. Yeah, that one's gonna, that's the one I think. Uh-huh. Yeah, we're gonna stick
00:36:38.120
with he's a racist. That's the one. Here is, when they're not smearing, here's what they do. The last
00:36:43.740
thing that the left can do, you've got all the different, the sadness, the tears, the pay no
00:36:50.280
attention to the man behind the curtain, the yeah, I guess it's true, but it's racist. The last thing
00:36:55.380
that they can do, and this is really the most dishonest of all of them, is to gaslight, to say
00:37:01.900
it's not real. That's not what Mueller's saying. That's not no. No, no, no. La, la, la, la. Here's
00:37:10.340
Maxine Waters, also on Joy Reid's show. And you have Donald Trump supporters, including his former
00:37:16.140
UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, out there tweeting and saying, essentially presuming that the president
00:37:22.000
has been exonerated by the report. And in Nikki Haley's case, uh, saying that it's been completed
00:37:27.340
and everyone should just move on. It's, it's, it's a curious position to take since we don't know
00:37:32.140
what's in the report. Um, but do you see colleagues on the other side of the aisle sort of declaring
00:37:37.740
this whole thing at an end, uh, and wanting no further inquiry? I know that the house has something
00:37:42.600
like 80 subpoenas still out. Absolutely. Well, I want to tell you that this president has a way
00:37:49.080
of trying to get into people's heads and indoctrinate them. He's been saying no collusion,
00:37:54.700
no collusion, no collusion over and over again for a long time now. And he's going to try and conclude,
00:38:00.660
uh, that there, this report is proving that there's no collusion. And you have a lot of his sycophants
00:38:07.100
who will, you know, take the nod from him and they'll say the same thing. Uh, but we cannot
00:38:12.760
allow them to get away with this. We cannot allow them to accurately and precisely read verbatim the
00:38:21.420
Mueller report. That's what she's saying. It's not Trump who's saying that it's Robert Mueller. It's
00:38:26.440
the special counsel. And then it's the attorney general. And then it's the president because
00:38:30.920
that's the truth. So this is mostly a media scandal. I focus mostly on the media because they are
00:38:37.020
the real dirt bags and all of this, and they have no credibility and you should never, if they, if
00:38:42.280
you, if you find a mainstream media reporter in a bar and you say, Hey, what are you drinking? And he
00:38:48.980
said, Oh, I'm drinking a Bud Light. Don't believe him. He's probably lying. You can't even believe them
00:38:53.000
on that. That is how much they have totally destroyed their credibility over the last two
00:38:59.760
years because of this. It's mostly a media scandal. This hoax is not just the great, one of the
00:39:06.660
greatest political scandals in U.S. history. It is the greatest, single greatest media scandal in U.S.
00:39:12.120
history. But it's also a political scandal. It's not just the MSM. It's the politicians who hyped
00:39:18.680
this. We expect them to do this. We expect the cynical politicians to do this. Doesn't mean we
00:39:23.980
should let them off the hook. Here is House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler trying to hold a press
00:39:30.020
conference today. And the, the wonderful Patriots standing out there won't let him off the hook
00:39:37.280
for his lies. Executive privilege must be asserted by the president personally. And, um, and as the
00:39:45.800
Nixon case in front of the Supreme Court, which was decided nine to nothing pointed out, pointed out,
00:39:51.160
executive privilege cannot be used to shield or hide wrongdoing. You're a bunch of losers. That's
00:40:00.360
what he said. Lose again, Nadler. You're a bunch of, you're a bunch of losers. And, and that's true.
00:40:05.580
That, that is obviously true. They lost. We won. They lost. Reality won. Fantasy lost. Cynical fantasy.
00:40:12.420
But more than that, they're a bunch of sore losers. Everybody loses sometimes. You lose,
00:40:18.520
you act like a gentleman and you move on, but they didn't do that. They tried to overturn an
00:40:25.660
election and they're still trying to do it. Here's Beto O'Rourke living in Beto fantasy land.
00:40:31.020
I'll tell you what I see from my perspective. You have a president who, in my opinion, beyond the
00:40:37.060
shadow of a doubt, sought to, however, ham-handedly collude with the Russian government, a foreign power
00:40:44.340
to undermine and influence our elections. Oh, he is just awful. He is just sends shivers up my spine
00:40:52.340
how creepy this guy is. We will, we, in my opinion, this is another example of people don't know what
00:40:58.460
the word opinion means. They think it just can be a subjective preference. Like I like chocolate ice
00:41:04.060
cream. You like vanilla ice cream. That's my opinion. No, no, no. That's a preference. Preferences
00:41:08.160
are subjective. Opinions are statements of fact. I think it's my opinion that the sky is blue. It's
00:41:15.540
my opinion that two plus two equals four. That's my opinion. You can have true opinions or false
00:41:20.540
opinions. So Beto O'Rourke says, well, it's my opinion that Donald Trump colluded with a foreign
00:41:27.100
power. Okay. That's your opinion, but it's wrong. That's an incorrect opinion. Don't take my word for
00:41:33.660
it. Take Bob Mueller's opinion for it. Beto O'Rourke's opinion is not worth very much if that's
00:41:41.480
his opinion because that opinion is wrong. His judgment isn't worth very much, but we already
00:41:45.740
knew that. This underlines what I've been saying about the Democrat primary for weeks now. It is
00:41:50.840
divorced from reality. It's like play acting. That's what it is. They are play acting in a,
00:41:56.940
in a fantasy universe. Good actors, good actors in good plays and movies live truthfully in imaginary
00:42:03.480
circumstances. So they take the circumstances around them and they react truthfully to them.
00:42:08.480
Bad actors just say rehearsed lines automatically, regardless of circumstances.
00:42:15.420
They say acting, good acting is reacting. This guy's not reacting. He's just saying his programmed
00:42:20.320
line that he's been saying the whole time. Trump colluded with Russia. Trump, no,
00:42:24.100
the circumstances have changed. They now tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, it didn't happen.
00:42:29.180
But he keeps playing the fantasy and the fantasy came crashing down. And this is the central
00:42:35.980
conservative consolation, not just here, not just with regard to Russia or Donald Trump or any of
00:42:41.980
that. Broadly speaking, when you think about everything conservatives are up against, cynical
00:42:48.660
identity politics, pandering, mob rule, the rousing of passions among the mob, all of the things that
00:42:56.020
we're up against as conservatives, the one consolation we have in the long run is that
00:43:02.400
eventually reality reasserts itself. And reality has reasserted itself here. That's what has
00:43:10.500
happened. Reality has, took two years, took 2,800 subpoenas. It took an average of three minutes a
00:43:18.720
night for 791 days on the media. It took so long, but reality has reasserted itself.
00:43:27.560
And so we are going to celebrate and we're going to dance and we're going to play Billy Preston saying
00:43:32.320
nothing from nothing leaves nothing in the Mueller report. And then tomorrow we should be furious and we
00:43:41.200
should take every bit of energy, every bit of focus that the Democrats and the media have had for two
00:43:49.120
years pursuing fantasy, smearing, spreading lies. We should take all of that focus and pursue the truth.
00:43:55.720
And we should find out who started this hoax. We should find out who funded this hoax. We should
00:44:00.600
find out which crooks in the government use this hoax as an excuse to spy on the Trump campaign and who
00:44:06.340
pushed it in the media and who pushed it in the government and who pushed it among the dent. We should find
00:44:10.380
them. We should line them up before a judge and we should put them in orange jumpsuits. That's what's
00:44:15.260
next. Investigate the dossier. The Democrats are not going to let up. They're going to keep these
00:44:20.080
investigations going and we should fight their fantasy with reality. We have the upper hand right
00:44:26.360
now. We are on the higher ground. We should use it. President Trump is at a real turning point in his
00:44:33.520
presidency. He can either take the win and move on as some want him to do, or he can fight. And
00:44:40.360
we know he's a fighter. He fought these guys tooth and nail for two years and he won because reality
00:44:45.300
was on his side and I can't wait for the next two years. That's our show. I'm going to be sitting in for
00:44:49.000
Ben's radio show today. So the back two hours of that I'll be in for. Obviously, we could keep talking
00:44:53.880
about this for two more hours and we're going to do that. I will have Professor Alan Dershowitz and
00:44:58.720
former independent counsel Ken Starr will be joining us to talk about the legal and political
00:45:03.580
ramifications. Check it out in the meantime. And otherwise, I'll see you tomorrow. I'm Michael Knowles.
00:45:38.180
Hey, guys, over on The Matt Wall Show today, of course, we've got the Mueller report coming out
00:45:42.360
and it says that there's no evidence of collusion. Well, the left is in mourning about that.
00:45:47.780
What does it say that they're upset? Think about what they're upset about. They're upset
00:45:51.060
that the president didn't collude with Russia. Shouldn't they be happy about that? Also,
00:45:58.020
what does it say about the media that they spent two years pushing this hoax? Well,
00:46:02.440
nothing good on both counts. We'll talk more about that. Also, Kamala Harris says that all
00:46:07.200
teachers need a raise. But is that true? We'll get into the specifics there today as well