Ep. 334 - Still No Collusion, Still No Obstruction
Summary
A report released by the Justice Department exonerates President Trump of any wrongdoing in the Robert Mueller investigation. But is this a good or bad thing for the media and the Democrats who have been pushing the story for two years? And what does it mean for 2020?
Transcript
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Attorney General William Barr has released the Mueller report with relatively few redactions,
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and he gave a highly entertaining press conference this morning at about 6.30 a.m. Pacific.
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We will go through the good, the bad, and the ugly of all of the relevant sections of the report,
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what it means for President Trump, what it means for the media, what it means for 2020.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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I had Edelweiss in my head because apparently that's what was being played at the White House
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Just a beautiful sunshine day because obviously the White House is presenting this report as
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fully exonerating President Trump and totally condemning the media and the Democrats who
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There's stuff in the report that doesn't reflect well on President Trump, but all in all, they
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All in all, this is a really, really good day for President Trump.
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They were playing the song Edelweiss at the White House, and Maggie Haberman of the Democrat
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Party, I mean of the media, I mean of the New York Times or whatever she writes for,
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She's trying to call Trump a Nazi because Edelweiss comes from The Sound of Music.
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What she forgets is that it was sung by people opposing the Nazis in The Sound of Music.
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That exemplifies how the media have gotten this story wrong from the very beginning.
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And that is why the day began, before they released the redacted report, the day began
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with Attorney General William Barr giving a press conference on the report, why they're
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releasing the report, why certain parts of the report have been redacted, and taking
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The main takeaway here, the main takeaway from this whole press conference, is that Attorney
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General William Barr has an IQ at least twice that of every reporter in that room combined.
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It was dizzying and distressing to look at how stupid the reporters came off and how well
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The media are now trying to present him as some sort of hack, private lawyer for President
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That really came through in this press conference.
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It actually reminded me a lot of Antonin Scalia, the way that he would listen to questions,
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the way he could identify instantly where these reporters were going, and the way he just clobbered
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So the left has been going after William Barr for a couple of weeks now.
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The question that is to be asked is, is the summary that William Barr gave of the Mueller
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report a fair assessment or an unfair assessment?
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Is the assessment that he gave basically correct when he released his four-page report a couple
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Or is he covering up and spinning and trying to fix the media for Donald Trump?
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The counsel found no evidence that any American, including anyone associated with the Trump
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campaign, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government or the IRA in this illegal
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Indeed, as the report states, quote, the investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. person
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knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRA's interference operation, unquote.
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Put another way, the special counsel found no collusion by any Americans in IRA's illegal
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He makes a point of simplifying this for people.
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I think even the sophisticated Democrats in the media have known there's no collusion.
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Van Jones, a very sophisticated left winger, said a year ago, over a year ago, the Russia
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So then the question comes down to, was there obstruction?
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It's not as though President Trump was working with Vladimir Putin to fix the 2016 election.
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But even though there was no collusion, was there obstruction?
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So once the Mueller investigation began, did President Trump try to obstruct the investigation?
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Now, it's a perfectly legitimate question to ask, how can you obstruct an investigation
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If I haven't committed a crime, how can I be said to try to obstruct an investigation
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Arguments on both sides, which we'll get to in a second here.
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But did President Trump behave in some crooked way to fix this investigation, to fix the conclusions
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here, to work with Barr, to work with Mueller, to work with any of these things?
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Now, the mainstream media are furious today and Democrats are furious because William Barr
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and the DOJ briefed the White House on the report.
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So this is now their big takeaway and they're saying this is the evidence of some corruption
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here in the Trump administration and the DOJ because the Attorney General briefed the
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President's team before releasing it to Congress and before giving this press conference and
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William Barr clears up this question, which all of the news media have been going on and
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Chuck Todd said it was evidence that Trump colluded with the Attorney General.
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William Barr gives the very simple explanation of why the White House was briefed on this
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Following my March 29th letter, the Office of the White House Counsel requested the opportunity
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to review the redacted version of the report in order to advise the President on the potential
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invocation of privilege, which is consistent with longstanding practice.
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Following that review, the President confirmed that in the interest of transparency and full
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disclosure to the American people, he would not assert privilege over the special counsel's
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Accordingly, the public report I am releasing today contains redactions only for the four
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categories that I previously outlined and no material has been redacted based on executive
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Very important that he makes this point because they say, well, you briefed the White House.
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The President is fully within his rights to exercise executive privilege and determine what
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He's fully within his rights to do that, and therefore he has to see, or I suppose his team
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has to see the redacted version of the report before it goes out.
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William Barr sends it over to them, and they do not make any additional redactions.
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So the White House has not interfered in this report.
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The White House being briefed on this did not result in any additional redactions, any
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Now, the thing to remember here, the thing you've got to always keep in mind, is that
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I don't even mean this just to beat up on the media, but they're just not that intelligent.
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The reason you sometimes think they're very intelligent is because they wear suits and
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they have nice ties and they speak really seriously into a camera.
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And you see this in the exchanges that the reporters are having with William Barr.
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So this one reporter goes on for probably a whole minute trying to basically make the
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case that Barr has acted improperly and that this is a crooked press conference and she's
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And just look at how swiftly William Barr takes her down.
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And here you have remarks that are quite generous to the president, including acknowledging his
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So what do you say to people on both sides of the aisle who are concerned that you are
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Well, actually, the statements about his sincere beliefs are recognized in the report that
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So I'm not sure what your basis is for saying that I'm being generous to the president.
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It just seems like there's a lot of effort to say, to go out of your way, to acknowledge
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Okay, so unprecedented is an accurate description, isn't it?
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What do you say to people who are concerned that you are trying to protect the president?
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Well, you're being really, really generous to the president.
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Well, you, you're, you're saying this is unprecedented.
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There are a lot of exchanges that go on in this press conference just like that.
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It basically sums up the forces of reality, the people who are analyzing this document,
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and the media who have cooked up a narrative for two years.
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You are watching that narrative collapse in real time.
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They're very angry that William Barr is handily explaining all of the totally proper procedure
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that's gone on here with the release of this report.
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The left has been building up Bob Mueller for a long time now.
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And so one reporter asks, why is Bob Mueller not here giving this press conference?
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And William Barr clears up this very important point.
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There's a lot of public interest in the absence of the special counsel and members of his team.
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This is his report, obviously, that you're talking about today.
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It's a report he did for me as the attorney general.
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He is required under the regulation to provide me with a confidential report.
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I'm here to discuss my response to that report and my decision, entirely discretionary, to make
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it public, since these reports are not supposed to be made public.
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What the media have been trying to do is to establish this very dubious legal idea that
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Why on earth is some random lawyer who gets picked suddenly the most powerful person on
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the face of the earth, more powerful than the president of the United States?
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The media have been trying to build this up because they don't like that Donald Trump was
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They don't like that Donald Trump's appointees are now running the government.
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So, that reporter says, look, this is Bob Mueller's report.
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And Attorney General William Barr says, no, no, that's my report.
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He did it for me because I am the attorney general and some randomly appointed special
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counsel is not allowed to be the most important political figure on the face of the earth.
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Now, this brings up another question, too, because there is some discrepancy between the Mueller
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report and the way that Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
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are talking about it, which we'll get to in one second.
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This last gasp, though, the last gasp of these reporters who really, really want to convince
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They actually just ask this to Barr straight out, and Barr gives them a straight answer.
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Impropriety for you to come out and sort of what appears to be sort of spinning the
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report before the public gets the chance to read it?
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It's obviously proper if he hadn't given this press conference, the left would be screaming
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The reason I open up with this is because there isn't very much new in the report.
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I haven't made it through all 400 pages yet, or 380 pages, or whatever it is.
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You really don't need to read the whole thing because only certain sections of it are relevant
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Did senior members of his campaign obstruct justice?
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So, you, you actually can get basically all the information you need with about 100 pages
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of it, and the main takeaway here is that we don't really learn anything new.
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We don't learn anything new that we didn't already know about President Trump or that we
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didn't already strongly suspect that he was doing.
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We knew that President Trump didn't like the special counsel.
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We knew that President Trump wanted to shut down the special counsel.
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We knew that President Trump wasn't as familiar as lifelong politicians with the way that government
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We know that he behaved like a real estate developer in New York rather than as a lifelong politician.
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I think the Mueller report tells us more about the Mueller investigation than it tells us about
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Anybody out there who's telling you, this is a bombshell, this is explosive, this is amazing,
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ask that person, what new conclusion can they reach?
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All of the fake news, all of the mainstream media, cable news, they're trying to spin this as some
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I'll tell you the one point that they bring up.
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The one point that a lot of them dishonestly bring up, as they say, this is from the special
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According to notes written by Hunt, when Sessions told the president that a special counsel had been
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appointed, the president slumped back in his chair and said, oh my God, this is terrible.
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Now, this is the line that you're going to see flying around the internet.
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A lot of people tweeting this saying, this is not something an innocent man would say.
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What you have to ask yourself is, if that's evidence that he committed a crime, how come
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the special counsel couldn't find that he committed a crime?
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If that's evidence that President Trump committed a crime, how come we had an investigation for
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two years that concluded he didn't commit any crime with the Russian government during
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Now, you might say, what the left would say is, well, maybe the crime he committed was
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But he said this when the special counsel was appointed.
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This is before obstruction could have taken place.
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What the hacks want you to think is that this is referring to some action he took during the
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Actually, Bob Mueller himself explains later in the report what this means.
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He says, the president returned to the consequences of the appointment and said, everyone tells
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me if you get one of these independent counsels, it ruins your presidency.
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It takes years and years and I won't be able to do anything.
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This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.
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He puts that in that same paragraph in the special counsel report, which the left doesn't
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What he's pointing out is that once the independent counsel or the special counsel gets appointed,
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It stalls all of your plans, stalls your legislative agenda.
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It gets the media constantly talking against you.
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We saw this happen during the administration of Bill Clinton.
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These redactions, by the way, are for very limited reasons.
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You're not allowed to release information about people who were investigated, but ultimately
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They did not have any accusations in a court of law.
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They didn't have the opportunity to defend themselves or to clear their names.
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So you can't just arbitrarily release what could be damaging information against them
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without giving them the opportunity to defend themselves.
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This is another big one that you see throughout the report.
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So a lot of these things are still being investigated, so they can't release information that is going
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There's a section on the special counsel investigation, the investigation itself.
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There's a section on the social media campaign that Russia ran to try to sow discord in the
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There's a section on Russian hacking and dumping.
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The Russian government directing the hacking of the DNC and of Hillary Clinton and the document
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Then the fourth section, which is on the Russian government contact with the Trump campaign.
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And finally, on prosecution and declination decisions.
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Only three of those sections matter to what we're talking about today.
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We don't care really about what the Russians did themselves.
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We care about any relations that the Trump campaign had with Russia, and we care about
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So those are the only really relevant sections of the Mueller report that we care about.
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We've talked about the investigation itself ad nauseum.
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Section 4, Russian government contact with the Trump campaign.
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The office identified multiple contacts, links, in the words of the appointment office,
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between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government.
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Based on the available information, the investigation did not establish coordination
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Section 5, this gets to specifically obstruction here.
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The office determined that certain individuals associated with the campaign lied to investigators
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about campaign contacts with Russia and have taken other actions to interfere with the investigation.
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So, we're now talking about obstruction of justice.
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The takeaway here is that people in politics behaved like people in politics.
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Don't let anybody tell you that everyone behaved beautifully here.
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These campaign guys behaved like campaign guys in some cases.
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In some cases, the charges were totally overblown.
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How was this crime derived, uncovered, contrived, whatever?
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What does it mean in the broad scope of Russian interference?
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George Papadopoulos, campaign official who lied to investigators.
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He said he met the intelligence asset because the guy said that he had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
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And George Papadopoulos said that he met with him before he started working for the Trump campaign.
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Now, it turns out he met with him after he learned he was going to work with the Trump campaign.
00:26:13.540
He asked him, why would somebody approach you with dirt on Hillary Clinton if you weren't working for the Trump campaign?
00:26:20.800
And George Papadopoulos said it was a very strange coincidence.
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Why did that asset, Joseph Mifsud, approach George Papadopoulos when he was already working for the Trump campaign?
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Was there maybe something going on behind the scenes that we don't know about with the intelligence agencies and the Obama administration?
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There are going to have to be other investigations to figure that out.
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Guys like George Papadopoulos did lie to investigators.
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He told investigators that he did not ask the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak,
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to refrain from escalating tensions in response to the U.S. imposition of sanctions on Russia.
00:27:21.900
He then, apparently, the other false statement he made was he asked the Russian ambassador to vote against a resolution submitted by Egypt to condemn Israel.
00:27:31.180
And he said he didn't ask him to do that, and he did.
00:27:35.500
That seems a lot less fair to get Michael Flynn on that than George Papadopoulos.
00:27:39.900
George Papadopoulos, it looks like they got him pretty much dead to rights.
00:27:46.880
Just to show you the difference between how different members of the campaign were treated.
00:27:52.340
When we talk about this as a witch hunt, to see which parts of the witch hunt, which parts are not.
00:27:56.560
Obviously, what we care about is President Trump.
00:28:01.720
One, Bob Mueller says there are lots of problems with prosecuting a sitting president.
00:28:07.020
And he says, specifically, if we had confidence, after a thorough investigation of the facts, that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.
00:28:17.520
Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.
00:28:23.500
So, in other words, if they could totally exonerate the president of obstruction of justice, they would have.
00:28:37.580
They couldn't find any crime that he committed.
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So, accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.
00:28:47.500
The guys on the left are going to say, it does not exonerate him.
00:28:50.320
And the guys on the right are going to say, it does not conclude that he committed a crime.
00:28:58.300
He told the White House Counsel to stop Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself.
00:29:03.840
He told the White House Counsel to stop what started the chain events that led to the special counsel investigation.
00:29:11.660
Then he complained that his AG wasn't helping him out.
00:29:15.260
And then he asked Sessions to unrecuse himself.
00:29:24.960
Then, when the investigation was announced, President Trump asked the Director of National Intelligence and the heads of the CIA and the NSA what they could do to publicly dispel the collusion narrative.
00:29:36.520
No, it's not obstruction because the collusion narrative was false.
00:29:44.440
Now, if Trump had actually conspired with the Russian government and he called his intelligence agencies and he said, go out there and lie for me, that would certainly be obstruction.
00:29:52.300
But in this case, what it sounds like is President Trump called up the agencies and said, hey, you guys know I didn't do this.
00:30:10.040
Maybe he wasn't as well practiced as lifelong politicians.
00:30:16.580
He also asked James Comey to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation after James Comey said the FBI was not investigating him personally.
00:30:29.740
He just asked James Comey, then head of the FBI, hey, James Comey, you know that I didn't collude with the Russians.
00:30:38.900
You're going to take out a sitting president for that?
00:30:43.580
He then referred to the appointment of the special counsel as the end of his presidency.
00:30:50.880
Did that because special counsels in general disturb presidencies.
00:31:04.400
Then he told Don McGahn, the White House, White House counsel, that special counsel Bob Mueller had conflicts of interest and he should be removed.
00:31:13.580
This is one that the left is really focusing on.
00:31:16.640
But Don McGahn, the White House counsel, didn't follow the orders and then nothing happened.
00:31:20.700
So you have Trump complaining to the White House counsel and saying that the special counsel should be removed.
00:31:28.820
Don McGahn does not remove the special counsel.
00:31:30.820
Even if he had removed the special counsel, I don't think that's grounds even to say that Trump should be impeached for obstruction.
00:31:39.640
Then he asked Corey Lewandowski to tell Jeff Sessions to say the investigation was unfair to the President of the United States.
00:31:48.540
Lewandowski didn't do that because he didn't want it on the record because he didn't want to end up in this report like he ended up anyway.
00:31:53.000
Then he edited a press statement for his son, Donald Trump Jr., to delete a line that Trump Tower might involve, the Trump Tower meeting, the famous Trump Tower meeting with Russians, might involve information helpful to his campaign.
00:32:08.760
This one, I think, is probably the one that gets closest to obstruction because he's there kind of working with his son to work on the press and present this Trump Tower meeting as something different.
00:32:28.100
So regardless of the Trump Tower meeting, regardless of the emails, regardless of the press statement, it amounts to nothing.
00:32:33.980
He then pressured Don McGahn, the White House counsel, to deny media reports that he asked him to get the special counsel removed.
00:32:44.400
Which, by the way, the White House counsel did not do, even if he had.
00:32:47.860
I don't think that really amounts to that much.
00:32:50.080
He asked Michael Flynn's legal team to give him a heads up on information that implicated him.
00:33:03.980
If you're obstructing justice, you do it in secret.
00:33:12.360
Can you name one other example of a president obstructing justice in public like that?
00:33:20.740
Bob Mueller, by the way, makes this point in the report.
00:33:23.660
He says several features distinguish this from typical obstruction cases.
00:33:27.080
Some of the actions, like firing FBI Director James Comey, totally within his authority as president.
00:33:37.940
Also, the Twitter of it all, they took place in public view.
00:33:42.480
It's going to be very hard for the left to twist this report into some awful indictment of the president.
00:33:55.840
We know that President Trump is a real estate developer from New York.
00:33:59.000
We know he pressures and bullies people like business executives do.
00:34:02.880
We know that he pressures and bullies people like he does in public on the campaign trail, even to members of his own administration.
00:34:10.260
We know that there's no Russian collusion, and as, this is an important point, as William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein point out, he is exonerated on obstruction of justice.
00:34:25.900
Bob Mueller submits the report, not to the American people, not to Congress, not to the president, to the Attorney General.
00:34:31.500
Then, it is up to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General to determine whether or not he is to be gone after, whether or not he's committed a crime, or whether or not there isn't evidence that he's committed a crime.
00:34:46.060
It is not for the Attorney General to say, well, here's the report, make up your own decision.
00:34:50.920
No, it's up to the Attorney General to make that decision.
00:34:53.940
He and the Deputy Attorney General both concluded no obstruction of justice.
00:34:59.360
Our long national nightmare is over, the Russian collusion narrative is over, the Mueller investigation is over, two years for nothing to find out that Donald Trump is a tough-talking guy who pressures his subordinates, which we already knew.
00:35:23.500
My college speaking tour just got 10 schools longer.
00:35:26.780
We announced yesterday a partnership with the Young America's Foundation.
00:35:32.480
Not only are we not going to cancel the speaking tour because of that ridiculous leftist assailant at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, we are going to turn it up into high gear.
00:35:42.900
If you would like to have the tour stop by your school, go through the Young America's Foundation, put in a request through them.
00:35:49.960
We are going to make college campuses great again.
00:36:09.100
Ran a little late, but one of the bigger news days of the year, so we got to get through all of that Mueller report, especially as we lap up those leftist tears.
00:36:21.900
Hey, Michael, would you talk about your stance on body positivity movement, the body positivity movement we see in the media and the culture?
00:36:32.460
There was a student at one of the schools I spoke at who wore a shirt that said fat, like she was proud that she's fat.
00:36:41.560
And you see all of the body positivity movements in all its various forms.
00:36:46.340
This is sad because as with virtually all positivity movements, nobody who says, I'm positive, I'm positive, I'm positive, I'm just so happy, actually is.
00:36:58.680
That's always hiding some amount of shame or discontentment or negativity.
00:37:07.520
The answer to this is not to think less of yourself.
00:37:12.420
Obviously, it's not healthy to be really overweight.
00:37:18.780
It's not evil to be really overweight, but it's not healthy.
00:37:25.000
We all have things about ourselves that we want to improve.
00:37:29.640
I have plenty of things about myself that I want to improve.
00:37:31.780
It doesn't mean that I hate myself all the time.
00:37:41.780
Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
00:37:45.280
Only the left could turn the queen of all sins into the greatest possible virtue, pride.
00:38:02.500
There are many more interesting things in the world than your own body weight.
00:38:12.100
Why do so many ex-leftists hesitate to call themselves conservatives?
00:38:26.700
What we're seeing now is not just a binary between leftists and conservatives.
00:38:32.020
We're seeing another category, which is liberals.
00:38:34.260
So, I happen to know Jordan and Dave, and I don't think they're conservatives.
00:38:42.000
Dave just invited me on his show, so maybe we can actually talk about this question.
00:38:48.700
And in American political speak, we like to say that classical liberals and conservatives are the same thing.
00:38:57.400
Friedrich Hayek, who's an economic hero of many conservatives and libertarians, famously wrote an essay where he said,
00:39:11.860
What happens in this particular moment, however, is that the far left is pushing things that both liberals and conservatives disagree with.
00:39:20.740
The far left has turned strongly against freedom.
00:39:26.780
So, classical liberals like Dave Rubin, who says, I believe in free speech.
00:39:33.600
They partner up with conservatives like me, who I don't exalt freedom, liberty, some abstract right to that,
00:39:42.120
as though it's the be-all and end-all of society, as though it's the very end of politics.
00:39:52.060
I like all of those things that probably Dave is a little more skeptical of.
00:39:55.940
But the classical liberals and the conservatives now are teaming up because we've got this urgent, totalitarian enemy
00:40:02.640
that is trying to shut down all discourse in the United States, which is the left.
00:40:08.800
So, I think it's actually very honest of them not to call themselves conservatives,
00:40:11.880
and I'm glad that we can have allies in this battle against censorship and against relativism
00:40:18.160
and against all of those pernicious ideologies, those destructive ideologies that are coming from the left
00:40:25.080
and are going after liberals and conservatives alike.
00:40:31.560
I'm in a really big dilemma with my future mother-in-law.
00:40:34.540
I've been with my wonderful fiancé for almost four years.
00:40:37.860
Ever since I met him, his mother has had an issue with me.
00:40:45.000
We are not hosting a wedding reception because we're paying for everything.
00:40:53.020
She said many horrific things to me that I would never say to anyone.
00:40:56.560
She called me the B word, ding dong, ding dong, etc.
00:41:07.120
Out of respect for him, I kept my mouth shut and took it.
00:41:20.900
Gets nasty about your family and he goes upstairs and cries?
00:41:29.780
Clearly there's some weird mommy issue going on here.
00:41:32.700
He'll never love a woman like he loves his mother or whatever.
00:41:38.520
I've seen these kinds of relationships sometimes and they're really sick.
00:41:42.340
Doesn't mean you have to cut off contact altogether, but you need to make clear.
00:41:53.820
And he needs to man up and accept that and put his foot down.
00:41:57.780
To abandon your fiancé there while your mother is yelling profanities and insulting her family?
00:42:05.740
Not only does the mother-in-law need to apologize.
00:42:14.960
And those problems are going to be a lot easier to deal with if it's clear who's the man, who's in charge, and who the most important woman in his life is.
00:42:28.220
Michael, you recently spoke mockingly and derisively of the value of celebration of life ceremonies.
00:42:33.120
But what about the wishes of the deceased and those who expressly say that they want a celebratory event as opposed to a much more somber church service?
00:42:43.720
Why do you believe the wishes of the event organizers should hold primacy over those of the deceased?
00:42:50.840
First of all, the wishes of the deceased don't really count for anything because they're dead.
00:42:55.160
But neither really do the wishes of the event organizers, as you call them.
00:42:59.600
And what you're really referring to are the loved ones and the family of the deceased.
00:43:04.680
Because we're not just talking about preferences.
00:43:07.300
The whole conversation about, oh, I prefer this, I prefer this, is actually what got us into this mess in the first place.
00:43:19.260
Even if they live to be 100 years old, even if they lived a good life, yes, you can take solace that they lived a good life.
00:43:26.840
You can take solace that they're no longer in pain.
00:43:38.000
Even Jesus grieves when his friend Lazarus dies, even though he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead.
00:43:43.840
But to pretend that a funeral is some giddy, happy ceremony, like the one in that magazine article where there are hot dog carts and Jerry Seinfeld is doing comedy sets, it's not true.
00:44:01.860
You're trying to convince yourself of something that isn't true.
00:44:11.000
Because when people have these celebration of life ceremonies that aren't funerals, in my experience, I know people who have done them, and I've read about others, the people who hold them tend to be atheists.
00:44:23.300
They tend to think that there's no life after death, and when you die, you just turn to worm food, and ultimately there's not a whole lot of meaning in the world, and it's all just kind of an accident, but hey, you had a good time.
00:44:36.940
That's the most depressing thing I've ever heard.
00:44:40.420
And a funeral, which you call somber, is not a depressing event.
00:44:49.400
It's inspiring, because we're sad that we're losing our loved one.
00:44:53.980
But when you have a funeral and you believe in the resurrection, you know that they are in a better place.
00:44:59.680
You know that they are seeing their maker face to face.
00:45:04.540
You have hope that they're living an everlasting life.
00:45:11.620
But you're not going to be able to reach that joy if you just pretend that everything is happy-happy and death isn't death, and that you're going to celebrate something that ultimately you don't believe has any hope.
00:45:23.380
Dante, when he writes the Divine Comedy, in order to get up to heaven, in order to see the love that moves the sun and the other stars, he has to go down through hell.
00:45:33.300
He has to come out the other side, and then ascend up through purgatory and up to paradise.
00:45:37.140
In our culture, we want everything to be really nice all the time.
00:45:42.200
We don't have to want to deal with any of the inconvenient, tragic facts of life.
00:45:52.840
It's a tragic fact, and there happens to be a happy ending.
00:45:56.920
It happens to actually turn out to be a comedy, but it's a comedy.
00:46:00.500
It has a happy ending because of this true hope that lives within us, and that's the hope that you're going to see in a church,
00:46:09.660
looking at your maker face-to-face, not eating hot dogs and watching a comedian do a set at some frivolous celebration of life.
00:46:17.620
From Tom, what is the best way for a beta male to become an alpha male, especially in terms of relationships?
00:46:29.580
It's just this issue of, if you're just talking about manliness and alpha male and masculinity all the time,
00:46:41.700
If you've got to talk about it, if you've got to say it, probably you don't exhibit a whole lot of it.
00:46:48.900
You could go, I mean, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, I guess.
00:46:52.760
But how to be a man, you, first of all, should be a gentleman.
00:46:57.840
If you're asking specifically with regards to relationships and women,
00:47:02.200
alpha male type wannabe idiots do this all the time.
00:47:05.420
And they try to be really boastful and they peacock and they try to be big jerks.
00:47:30.800
Then, don't feel that you have to prove yourself.
00:47:44.600
There's a good book on this called Manliness by Harvey Mansfield.
00:47:49.060
And whenever you hear people going on to you about alpha and beta, just ignore what they have to say.
00:47:55.560
That's going to be probably the most helpful advice on your journey to become a man.
00:48:05.040
You've got to read a 400-page report first thing in the morning.
00:48:17.960
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner.
00:48:44.420
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
00:48:55.460
Well, some people have been waiting for it anyway.
00:48:57.620
Nobody has read the whole thing yet because it's 448 pages long.
00:49:03.680
Well, I think that there are a few basic takeaways that we can ascertain already.
00:49:08.060
And they are not takeaways that the left is necessarily going to like.
00:49:13.960
Also, some other topics, including the fact that Bernie Sanders, the socialist, is, it turns out, pretty stingy when it comes to his own charitable giving.
00:49:23.000
We'll talk about that and more today over on The Matt Wall Show.