Ep. 320 - Democrats’ Worst Week Ever Gets Even Worse
Episode Stats
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Summary
A federal court has just invalidated Obamacare in its entirety, Russia collusion is a hoax, Michael Avenatti is headed to prison, and now the last vestige of Barack Obama s legacy is headed for the dustbin of history. Coincidentally, the New York Times insists this week that an all-knowing, all-powerful God is logically impossible. They make a bad argument.
Transcript
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Democrats, already in the throes of their worst week since 1865, now suffer a further indignity.
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A federal court has just invalidated Obamacare in its entirety.
00:00:47.280
Russia collusion is a hoax, Michael Avenatti is headed to prison,
00:00:50.640
and now the last vestige of Barack Obama's legacy is headed for the dustbin of history.
00:00:55.180
Coincidentally, the New York Times insists this week that an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God is logically impossible.
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They make a bad argument, but after a week like this, who could blame the New York Times writers for losing their faith?
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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This was basically the New York Times' reaction to finding out that there was no Russian collusion.
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The headline basically might as well have said, God does not exist.
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We will examine a very bad opinion piece in the Times by Peter Atterton.
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First, we just need to do a little bit of a roundup because I think we're losing some of the good stuff in the craziness of the news cycle.
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We found out, we found out yesterday, the day before, Robert Mueller files his report, and it totally exonerates Donald Trump.
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Mueller himself totally exonerates Donald Trump on Russian collusion,
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and then the Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein exonerate Trump totally on the question of obstruction.
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Then, that very same moment, Michael Avenatti, the Democrat celebrity lawyer, Trump antagonist, is arrested for extortion, not 24 hours later.
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Then, I was on the air doing Ben's radio show yesterday.
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As I'm on the air, there is breaking news, apparently unrelated, although there are no coincidences these days,
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that the world's fastest melting glacier, which is in Greenland, rather, is now growing in size.
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So, as all of this is happening, as every aspect of the Democrat narrative over the last two years is cracking and falling apart,
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at the very same time, global warming falls apart, too.
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The example, the main ice glacier example that they're pointing to as evidence of global warming starts growing ice all over again,
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And then, then on top of all of that, a little story comes out.
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The DOJ is officially agreeing with a federal court decision in December that invalidates all of Obamacare.
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You'll probably remember the Supreme Court famously upheld Obamacare on some dubious reasoning.
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Now, the federal government, the federal court, and the Department of Justice are agreeing that Obamacare is invalid.
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This is going to go to an appeals court, and we'll see where it goes from there.
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And then, and then finally, maybe the best news of the week.
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I'm going to have to check to see if we get any updates on this.
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Mitch McConnell, cocaine Mitch himself, is ordering a vote in the Senate on the Green New Deal.
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The news today is the filing of the Department of Justice to side with a federal court judge,
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Reed O'Connor, who in December invalidated Obamacare.
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That means that this issue is going to go up to the appellate court.
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You say, I thought we've already adjudicated Obamacare.
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Now this decision is going to go up to an appellate court,
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and it's going up to a very conservative appellate court.
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Which means, very likely, this is heading for the Supreme Court again.
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The argument when Obamacare was upheld, thanks to that traitor John Roberts,
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is that the individual mandate, you know, that you have to pay the penalty
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when you don't have health insurance under Obamacare.
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The individual mandate was appropriate to Congress's powers of taxation.
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Now, it was even a little more clever than that.
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It said, well, the Obamacare mandate is a penalty for the purposes of hearing this case,
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but it's a tax for the purposes of adjudicating this case.
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And because it's a tax, it's valid, it's constitutional, and it will be upheld.
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What's changed is that the individual mandate has been repealed.
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So we've been a little upset with President Trump because he didn't repeal Obamacare, right?
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He said, you said you were going to repeal Obamacare.
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Senators like John McCain, who said they would vote to repeal Obamacare,
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However, you'll also remember in 2017, we got that tax cut.
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We got the tax reform law from the Trump administration.
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And what was hidden in that tax law was the repeal of the individual mandate.
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Now, this seems appropriate because the reason that Obamacare was upheld in the first place
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But by saying it was a tax, then in the tax reform law, they get rid of the individual mandate.
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So it removes the justification for upholding Obamacare as constitutional under Congress's powers
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If Obamacare no longer includes a tax, then the chief justification for upholding Obamacare
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Now, the individual mandate is essential to the law.
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You have to make sure that everybody buys insurance or the law falls apart.
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Now the argument for Obamacare is under the interstate commerce clause or something like
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The argument to uphold Obamacare is no longer taxation.
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They'll say, well, it's regulating interstate commerce.
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But first of all, it would have to be regulating interstate commerce that the government mandates,
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But does that argument hold up once you get rid of the taxation?
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So the DOJ has now pounced, to use the language of the mainstream media, they see an opening
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They see that this is headed for a conservative-leaning appellate court.
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And they're going in with a brand new argument.
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And you could see down the line, we're not going to see it anytime soon, the overturning
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of Obamacare, the adjudication that Obamacare is unconstitutional.
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We got news that there were no new indictments, which means the Russian investigation was just
00:09:43.240
Barr saying that Trump was exonerated on everything.
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Then on Monday, we got news that Michael Avenatti got arrested.
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And then on Tuesday, we get news that Obamacare might finally be declared unconstitutional.
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Years after it was wrongly declared constitutional.
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I told you yesterday, I said we should have fun, we should celebrate, then we should be
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Look, the prospect of losing Obamacare in its entirety is really, really great.
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The reckoning is in two parts, just like the Russian interference was in two parts, just
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like the scandal of the Russian collusion hoax investigation had two parts.
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The reckoning has two parts too, the media and the politics.
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Some people in the conservative wing say that we need to just move on, just move on, no more
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investigations, we've had enough, come on, it's no, don't, be a bigger man, be a better
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There is nothing on the high road about just moving on.
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It would be very wrong to just move on because they haven't apologized.
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All these people who lied through their teeth, people who were entrusted with the federal
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government, people who had the public trust, people who had the public trust as members
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Here is what we've seen for the last two years.
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Today was historically bad for President Trump.
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The beginning of the end for the Trump president.
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Mike Pence might have to assume the office of the presidency.
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One astrologer says this means the beginning of the end for President Donald Trump.
00:12:32.740
Do we think that we're going to get apologies for this now?
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Do we think that we're going to get them admitting that they were totally wrong?
00:12:38.740
Do we think that we're going to get some self-reflection from them?
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It's all Russian collusion, collusion, collusion, collusion.
00:14:29.420
It's not just that we are mocking them for their bad reporting.
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It's that we are fighting a battle of the truth against pure propaganda, and the propaganda
00:14:41.800
Because for all of this bunk, garbage, totally fictitious reporting, it's not just that these
00:14:48.920
guys were on your airwaves and printing your newspapers.
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The New York Times and the Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for publishing lies.
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Here is the, for their Russian collusion reporting, the New York Times and the Washington Post won
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Pulitzer Prizes, the highest prize in journalism, for, quote, deeply sourced, relentlessly reported
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coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian
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interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign,
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the president-elect's transition team, and his eventual administration.
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Well, I, I can give you all the understanding you need of Russian interference as it relates
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All, all of the evidence of the Russian interference and collusion with the Trump campaign.
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And this is why it's so important to go after these guys with everything we've got to bring
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more investigations, to bring them before judges, and to put them into orange jumpsuits.
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Because it's not just a bunch of idiots on CNN.
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We know that the federal government and the Democrats and the media conspired together to
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Who exactly committed what improprieties is the next question.
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That's what we'll find out with investigations.
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With such institutional support, all of the print media, all of the mainstream media, the
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Pulitzer Prizes, all of the accolades of this popular culture, all the way down to our
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pillars of government, the DOJ, the FBI, all the way down to the longest continually extant
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All the way down to the Barack Obama administration spying on his political opponents, trying to
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prevent the Republicans from winning the next election.
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All of these institutions working together to subvert the rule of law and to lie and to
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It would be so wrong to just let this go as water under the bridge.
00:17:22.020
The Washington Post bragged when they won that Pulitzer Prize that its reporting, quote,
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helped set the stage for the special counsel's ongoing investigation of the administration.
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They're bragging that they set up a hoax sham investigation.
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And do you know the CNN president, Jeff Zucker, came out.
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And our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did.
00:18:02.360
That sounds like the punchline of an SNL sketch.
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So I think he's just trolling us at this point.
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And our role is to report the facts as we know them.
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The way you know the facts is that the Democrat Party sends you talking points and you spout them shamelessly.
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The way you're supposed to know facts is to investigate.
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I suppose, broadly speaking, an opinion writer is a journalist.
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They have to have coherent arguments based on sound premises and evidence.
00:19:14.640
Listen, it doesn't matter if you're factually correct as long as you're morally right.
00:19:25.320
Now they are denying their jobs as journalists.
00:19:39.540
You thought that because we're news reporters that we're supposed to investigate the news.
00:19:53.900
He's saying our role is to report the facts as we know them.
00:20:02.480
And you can't know them if you don't investigate.
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What he's really saying is our role is to report our truth.
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And in this statement, he's saying, no, no, it doesn't matter.
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There's Mueller madness right there in the center.
00:21:21.320
Who's going to win between Don Lemon and Chris Hayes?
00:21:24.340
Don Lemon said the walls are closing in on Trump.
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But Chris Hayes said a cornered president storms out as the Mueller probe closes in.
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And these are four segments, distinct segments of people.
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And it's very telling, by the way, that John Brennan is in the cable news segment.
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That's, I mean, that's what's so damaging about this.
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That's what's so corrupt about how this whole hoax investigation started.
00:21:54.960
It wasn't just the Democrats funding some oppo research.
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If it were the Democrats funding some oppo research, whatever.
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And then the oppo research firm used a foreign intelligence contact
00:22:15.380
who had ties to the U.S. intelligence agencies.
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And the U.S. DOJ had ties to the oppo research firm.
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Not just loose ties, ties of marriage that were never disclosed as a conflict of interest.
00:22:30.860
And then once the Democrats paid for that oppo research using the foreign intelligence,
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And the federal government used that bought and paid for oppo research to launch an investigation
00:22:48.340
And then once they did that, other people within the federal government handed it off to the media
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And then the media created a ton of public pressure and hysteria based on nothing
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that then pressured the federal government and the politicians
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to launch an even greater investigation that gave us two years of lies
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that were then parroted again and again and again by the mainstream media.
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791 consecutive days for an average of three minutes a night spreading a lie.
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A whole investigation and they're still spreading lies and they're still unapologetic.
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If it were just one segment, you could isolate it.
00:23:32.960
If it were just CNN, you'd say, okay, you're a bunch of clowns.
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If it were just the federal government, you could fire the crooks.
00:23:41.240
If it were just the electeds, you know, they're electeds.
00:23:53.060
John Brennan, is he a cable news talking head or is he former CIA director?
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He certainly never should have been the CIA director.
00:24:07.100
He said that Donald Trump, quote, is wholly in the pocket of Putin.
00:24:13.900
Not just making an insinuation or implying something.
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He says Trump, quote, is wholly in the pocket of Putin.
00:24:23.140
I'm just curious, Mr. Director, how surprised were you by the findings yesterday, by the
00:24:33.200
And I'm just curious, did you receive bad information throughout this process, like so
00:24:39.640
many of us did, that there was more there than ended up in the report regarding collusion?
00:24:46.580
Well, I don't know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected that there was more
00:24:54.160
And I am relieved that it's been determined that there was not a criminal conspiracy with
00:25:06.100
And so I still point to things that were done publicly or efforts to try to have conversations
00:25:13.680
But I'm not all that surprised that the high bar of criminal conspiracy was not met.
00:25:21.320
I am surprised at that second part of the obstruction of justice in terms of how it came out.
00:25:25.820
I don't know whether or not Bob Mueller wanted the attorney general to pronounce on that issue
00:25:30.440
whether or not Bob Mueller felt that it would be best for Congress and American people to
00:25:34.080
determine whether the weight of the information indicates that Donald Trump did try to obstruct
00:25:42.800
And that's why I think getting to the full Mueller report is the best way to get some of
00:25:50.100
First of all, that last part he said is just BS.
00:25:52.620
That's just total BS to say that I don't know if Robert Mueller wanted the attorney general
00:25:58.720
to pronounce on the question of obstruction of justice.
00:26:02.140
He certainly did want Barr to pronounce on the question of obstruction of justice.
00:26:09.180
That's the only possible outcome that could have happened when Bob Mueller did not come to
00:26:14.660
So Bob Mueller is analyzing obstruction of justice and he presents arguments for both sides.
00:26:22.620
The AG has to come to a conclusion because there's, there's a potential crime here.
00:26:29.700
If the AG just said, well, I don't know, I don't know, he wouldn't be doing his job because
00:26:38.780
Let's say members of the Trump administration did obstruct justice.
00:26:51.420
So Bob Mueller, by leaving that open for his boss, whose job it is to come to the conclusions,
00:26:58.920
he is saying, you have to come to the conclusion because I am not going to do it.
00:27:03.440
And then he said, well, yeah, you know, I'm glad, glad that Russia didn't take over our country.
00:27:10.640
Um, but, uh, but I still, still stand by a lot of what I said.
00:27:17.200
You said Trump is wholly in the pocket of Putin.
00:27:27.740
If you don't want to apologize and you get everything completely wrong, then shut up because your opinion
00:27:33.360
is worth nothing and your judgment is worth nothing and you have no humility at all, even
00:27:42.040
So we might want to, we might want to play into that a little bit.
00:27:45.640
If he doesn't want to shut up, maybe we should bring him in for some investigations.
00:27:49.080
Maybe we should find out what his role was in all of this.
00:27:51.680
Maybe we should find out what John Brennan knew.
00:27:53.260
Maybe we should find out what the intelligence agencies knew during the Obama administration
00:27:58.920
when they launched these illegal, this illegal surveillance of the Trump campaign.
00:28:05.920
Maybe we should find out who was talking to whom.
00:28:12.960
Run your mouth all the way into an orange jumpsuit.
00:28:14.860
Or at least tell us what we need to know to figure out who was behind this major political
00:28:23.280
scandal so that we can get to the bottom of this and have some justice.
00:28:33.020
And there needs to be consequences to show them that they can't get away with these sort
00:28:39.420
We've got Lindsey Grahambo coming out for a new investigation.
00:28:42.220
We've got a pretty dumb article in the New York Times and we've got the Green New Deal.
00:28:49.700
Ten bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership.
00:28:51.700
You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get to ask
00:28:54.020
questions in the mailbag, you get the Matt Walsh show, you get to ask questions backstage.
00:28:58.200
Don't forget to ask questions mailbag coming up on Thursday.
00:29:02.220
The most important week for this, obviously, if you are listening to this right now or watching
00:29:06.700
this, you already are a subscriber because otherwise you would have drowned and left
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By the way, tonight at 7 p.m. Pacific time, 10 p.m. Eastern time at the University of Redlands,
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I will be harvesting delicious leftist tears if there are any left to be cried out during
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my latest speech on my Young America's Foundation tour.
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Come on out, bring a friend, bring some questions, and as always, bring your empty tumblers.
00:29:59.360
The people we need to investigate are the current and ex-government officials who perpetrated
00:30:10.160
What makes no sense to me is all the abuse by the Department of Justice and the FBI, the
00:30:27.600
I've been calling since the end of 2017 for a special counsel to be appointed to look at
00:30:34.700
whether or not the FISA warrant process was abused for political purposes, whether or not
00:30:40.660
a counterintelligence investigation was opened up regarding the Trump campaign as a backdoor
00:30:53.260
I'm glad that Graham Bowe is coming out there and calling for it.
00:30:56.900
I know we say we're done with the investigations.
00:31:05.960
Now, speaking of the hard work of government, some of the lighter and more fun side of this,
00:31:11.280
Mitch McConnell, cocaine Mitch, is currently, it may have already happened, calling for
00:31:22.860
I'll try to do it in my best cocaine Mitch voice.
00:31:25.640
I could not be more glad that the, no, that's, no, that's sort of like cocaine.
00:31:31.740
That's what I imagine when I see cocaine Mitch is just say hello to my little, but this is
00:31:36.720
He said, quote, I could not be more glad that the American people will have the opportunity
00:31:41.940
to learn precisely where each one of their senators stands on the Green New Deal, a radical,
00:31:48.640
top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy.
00:31:54.680
And then, you know, he had that little cocaine Mitch smirk right there at the end, because
00:31:59.780
So, the Green New Deal proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, socialist from New York.
00:32:06.760
It would ban planes, trains, and automobiles over 88% of the American energy industry.
00:32:11.940
Obviously, because of that, on day one, it would kill 5.8 million jobs, but because it's
00:32:16.040
taking out the energy industry, it would take away all of the other jobs shortly thereafter.
00:32:20.300
It calls to knock down every building in the country and then rebuild every building in
00:32:28.280
I'll probably be speaking about this at the University of Redlands this evening.
00:32:32.620
Cocaine Mitch says, all right, Alexandria, we'll bring this up for a vote.
00:32:38.800
When she proposed it, there was a Green New Deal resolution in the Senate, and it was
00:32:43.840
co-sponsored by every Democrat who is currently running for president from the Senate.
00:32:50.320
Liz Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, all coming out to say,
00:32:58.640
yes, this is what we want, because they're all running to see who's the craziest radical leftist
00:33:05.100
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this is what she's asking for.
00:33:07.620
All these senators, this is what they're asking for.
00:33:09.960
So Cocaine Mitch says, okay, we'll bring it up for a vote.
00:33:18.900
I'll just read it straight from the breaking news articles.
00:33:23.360
She said, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, Mitch McConnell doesn't want to save our planet.
00:33:36.560
He says, Cocaine Mitch thinks, I don't think she called him Cocaine Mitch, but Mitch McConnell
00:33:42.120
thinks, quote, we can all drink oil in 30 years.
00:33:53.240
No, unless your legislation is going to have us all drinking oil in 30 years.
00:34:00.340
What Mitch McConnell's doing is that he's trying to rush this bill to the floor without a hearing,
00:34:05.320
without working through committee, because he doesn't want to save our planet.
00:34:14.180
Because the Green New Deal is a joke, and everyone knows it's a joke.
00:34:17.380
Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knows it's a joke.
00:34:20.200
Even her handlers know it's a joke, and every single person in the Senate co-sponsoring it
00:34:30.520
You would have to cut off all government spending, all, I mean, abolish the military,
00:34:35.300
cut off every department of the government, except, I guess, for the IRS, and then
00:34:39.280
after collecting taxes for 30 years, maybe you could start to pay for it, except obviously
00:34:50.000
But AOC wrote draft legislation for this thing.
00:34:53.080
It's their bill that Cocaine Mitch is bringing to the floor, and what he's doing is calling
00:34:56.480
out their hypocrisy and their childishness, and they are whining and screaming and crying
00:35:03.640
I mean, I guess Cocaine Mitch had just been waiting for the GOP's greatest week ever because
00:35:22.640
Get every single Democrat senator on the record for the Green New Deal.
00:35:27.600
It's going to come back to haunt them in the general election in 2020.
00:35:30.220
Cocaine Mitch does have a view of the long game.
00:35:38.380
In politics, you always want to put your opponent in an impossible situation, and that's exactly
00:35:44.200
All of these people who have co-sponsored the Green New Deal draft resolution have to vote
00:35:50.740
They would be rank hypocrites if they don't vote for the Green New Deal.
00:35:53.680
If they vote for the Green New Deal, that actually might help them in the primary, though
00:35:59.260
Who knows how this primary is going to shape out?
00:36:01.020
But it is going to kill them in the general election.
00:36:04.140
Every GOP ad in 2020 is going to be about this stupid thing.
00:36:08.700
And they're going to be furious at AOC, and this might cut AOC's career short, too, which
00:36:19.160
Before we get out of here, I want to, one, I'd like to thank the good Lord for this wonderful
00:36:23.540
news week that has been so greatly enjoyable and very good for our nation.
00:36:27.680
But I'd also like to call your attention to the New York Times.
00:36:32.260
There was an op-ed in the New York Times by Peter Atterton, and the op-ed was called
00:36:43.080
The idea of the deity most Westerners accept is actually not coherent.
00:36:48.620
Okay, if I were the New York Times and I had a week like they just had, I would probably
00:36:56.860
But this is really important because virtually every question I get in the mailbag when I
00:37:05.780
Either it's religious in a tangential way or it is directly religious.
00:37:09.360
And it's because you have an entire generation, I guess now two generations, millennials and
00:37:13.780
Zoomers, who were raised without religion, who were raised religiously unaffiliated or
00:37:19.860
in some milquetoast quasi-religion, cafeteria Catholic, whatever.
00:37:24.840
They were raised, even at the most religious, they were raised with the idea that there is
00:37:30.240
a God without wrath leading a people without sin to a kingdom without judgment through the
00:37:34.440
ministrations of a Christ without a cross, as a theologian who escapes my mind famously
00:37:42.260
Most people, I think, are attracted to some sense of meaning.
00:37:50.200
Young people are more miserable than they've ever been.
00:37:52.760
Anxiety, stress, suicidality are all skyrocketing.
00:37:57.780
Millennials, more than any other generation, are looking for purpose.
00:38:08.060
Stop trying to make everything about social justice.
00:38:10.820
But the reason they want that is they don't feel purpose anywhere else in their lives.
00:38:18.220
And this crisis is, I think, well, it's obviously caused by the devil ultimately.
00:38:24.220
But what it's caused by in a more proximate way is the lack of education, the lack of culture,
00:38:32.320
and the degradation of not just our universities, but even our journalists, even our news sites.
00:38:51.760
It reminds me of when Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and all those guys had that little publishing movement in the mid-2000s,
00:39:01.940
It was never really a serious philosophical movement, but it was a publishing phenomenon.
00:39:06.100
And they didn't really make arguments against God, but they wrote books.
00:39:13.300
Christopher Hitchens wrote a book, God is Not Great.
00:39:15.700
And the book never took on the question of whether or not God is great.
00:39:19.520
He just pointed out that religious groups have done bad things at some points throughout history.
00:39:24.420
And this was heralded as some great, great mind, some great work, some real powerful thoughts.
00:39:32.180
And stupid things like this encourage people in their delusions that life has no meaning.
00:39:40.880
So I just want to go through very quickly some of the stupid ideas in this short column and point out how dumb they are.
00:39:47.780
Because it's very fun to do that as well with the New York Times.
00:39:50.860
So the column begins, if you look up God in a dictionary, first of all, you know, people, when you are writing
00:39:59.880
or when you are giving a speech or a eulogy or a toast, the worst way that you can possibly begin is
00:40:07.460
when I looked up such and such in the dictionary, it said blah, blah, blah.
00:40:15.080
Or to this, Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines, I mean, this is the cliche worst way to begin a piece of writing or an oration.
00:40:24.020
That's just a little bit of advice for you if you're ever giving a best man toast or a eulogy or something.
00:40:29.840
If you look up God in a dictionary, the first entry you will find will be something along the lines of,
00:40:33.840
quote, a being believed to be infinitely perfect, wise, and powerful creator and ruler of the universe.
00:40:44.320
Certainly, if applied to non-Western contexts, that would be puzzling.
00:40:47.280
But in a Western context, this is how philosophers have understood God.
00:40:51.320
The question, does the idea of a morally perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing God make sense?
00:40:56.300
Does it hold together when we examine it logically?
00:41:03.840
So you could just stop the article there, but let's go on to see what he thinks.
00:41:09.560
You've probably heard the paradox of the stone before.
00:41:16.200
If he can create such a stone, then he's not all-powerful since he cannot lift it.
00:41:20.060
On the other hand, if he cannot create a stone that cannot be lifted, then he is not all-powerful since he cannot create the unliftable stone.
00:41:29.360
So this is something that when freshmen, students in college smoke pot during their first semester and sit around at night, they think this is really profound.
00:41:40.280
What is actually written there is more semantically similar to, da, da, da, da, da.
00:41:49.900
He acknowledges that God cannot do self-contradictory things, as Thomas Aquinas acknowledged.
00:41:55.020
But, he says, other people believe that God can do self-contradictory things.
00:42:02.060
Now, what this author doesn't write is that actually Muslims think this as well.
00:42:07.040
Pope Benedict, channeling Ibn Hazim, the Muslim scholar, talks about this.
00:42:11.100
How a difference between the God of Christianity and the God of Islam is that the God of Christianity is a God of intellect and will.
00:42:23.420
Allah is so utterly willful that if Allah willed for you to worship idols, you would have to worship idols.
00:42:37.120
He doesn't go there because that's politically incorrect.
00:42:39.560
So, he says, but Rene Descartes thought that Thomas Aquinas was wrong.
00:42:44.060
Joe Blow down the street thinks that Thomas Aquinas is wrong too, but Joe Blow's a dummy.
00:42:51.100
He kind of, he says, okay, it evidently would be a world very different from the world that we currently inhabit if God could create a world in which evil does not exist.
00:43:04.700
Indeed, if God is morally perfect, it's difficult to see why he would have created such, why he wouldn't have created such a world.
00:43:12.420
So, he's saying, why is there evil in the world?
00:43:16.280
Now, this is the only argument against God that really has any strength whatsoever.
00:43:23.320
And actually, it ends up being an argument for God.
00:43:25.920
He points out that according to Alvin Plantinga, a favorite of mine,
00:43:30.840
to create creatures capable of moral good, God must create creatures capable of moral evil.
00:43:35.320
And he can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil at the same time, preventing them from doing so.
00:43:41.980
The reason that evil exists is because we have freedom.
00:43:47.140
Now, why would God create a world with freedom if freedom necessitates that evil would exist?
00:43:52.960
Possibly because that's the greatest possible world.
00:43:56.060
We say, oh, happy fault that won for us so great, so glorious a savior.
00:44:00.800
The fall of man, the pride, the original sin, results in the fall of man.
00:44:05.620
It results in all these awful things, but then it wins for us redemption, which is the greatest possible world.
00:44:10.380
And then this guy says, but it doesn't explain, as Darwin noticed, why there's so much pain and suffering in the animal kingdom.
00:44:16.540
Why there's so much physical suffering caused by non-human causes, like earthquakes or something.
00:44:22.160
The way John Milton explains this is the way that Paul explains this, which is that the original sin that ruins perfection doesn't just result in one person's free will affecting only himself.
00:44:38.200
What happens is that when sin enters the world, sin pervades the world, and death comes from sin.
00:44:48.740
If I swing my hand, I could knock over my leftist tears tumbler, I'd spill the leftist tears all over the ground.
00:44:56.080
Someone might walk into the room and breathe in the mold.
00:44:58.260
These endless number of effects of my evil, of when I commit a sin.
00:45:05.820
This is actually what the doctrine of indulgences is about.
00:45:09.460
We don't have time to go into that here, but this is a question that many deeper thinkers than this guy in the New York Times have thought about for a long time.
00:45:20.260
If God knows all there is to know, then he knows at least as much as we know.
00:45:23.280
But if he knows what we know, then this would detract from his perfection.
00:45:27.380
Because there are some things that we know that if they are also known to God, would make him a sinner.
00:45:32.240
Which, of course, is in contradiction to the concept of God.
00:45:35.500
One cannot know lust and envy unless one has experienced them.
00:45:41.240
I can know cancer without having experienced cancer.
00:45:49.660
When he's operating on a cancer patient, it doesn't mean he has to have had cancer himself.
00:45:54.600
One does not need to have experience of these things, to have knowledge of these things.
00:46:00.400
He talks about, well, he tries to, he brings this one for a little while.
00:46:10.980
It's logical inconsistencies like these that led the 17th century French theologian Blaise Pascal.
00:46:18.080
To reject reason as a basis for faith and return to the Bible and revelation.
00:46:21.960
It is said that when Pascal died, his servant found sewn into his jacket the words,
00:46:31.360
And he's saying because Blaise Pascal rejected reason as the basis for faith, that's wrong.
00:46:36.200
Blaise Pascal, of course, was a member of a largely heretical Christian movement called Jansenism.
00:46:42.180
It was, which was roundly condemned many times for getting things wrong.
00:46:46.560
Blaise Pascal, one of the great geniuses, but can get certain things wrong.
00:46:52.600
I go through this, one, because it's fun to knock down stupid arguments,
00:46:56.240
even if we have very limited time and we can't go into it in as much depth as we would like to.
00:46:59.980
But I bring this up because this is the point on the media that we've been making all week.
00:47:26.380
It was so clear that Donald Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin, to quote John Brennan.
00:47:33.020
It was so clear that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
00:47:43.060
And we need to crack ourselves out of shallow thinking.
00:47:45.600
We need to stop being so damn gullible and falling for it.
00:47:52.780
And it's not just on little political scandals.
00:47:55.400
Big political scandals, which in the grand scheme of things are little.
00:48:06.460
Maybe I'll see you at the University of Redlands tonight.
00:48:42.300
President Trump has the best day of his presidency.
00:48:47.960
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