The Michael Knowles Show

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00:00:37.760 Joe Biden is in, and according to Morning Consult, he opens with an eight-point lead,

00:00:43.500 not just over Bernie Sanders, not just over the Democrats, but over President Trump himself.

00:00:49.460 We will analyze how that shameless liar, Joe Biden, stands in 2020.

00:00:54.500 Then the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:04.920 Huge poll numbers for Joe Biden. Nobody, I think, expected this on his first day.

00:01:09.780 We expected it to be a big day, but according to Morning Consult and Politico,

00:01:13.860 there was a poll just over the last week of a little under 2,000 registered voters.

00:01:18.880 He is now leading President Trump by eight points. This is a significant edge over Trump among key

00:01:27.580 demographics, 17 points over women, 17 points over Trump with women voters, 22 points with

00:01:34.520 millennials, 10 points with independents. We will get into how he stands and we'll get into his shameless,

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00:03:15.800 learn more. What a great day for Joe Biden. What a fabulous open. A lot of people who have been Biden

00:03:24.580 skeptics say that Joe Biden's best day is going to be his first day. Maybe that's true. If that's the

00:03:29.200 case, then he's got a long way to fall before he's having a bad day. This is really good. Among

00:03:34.780 Democrats right now, Joe Biden has about 30%. The number two candidate in the race is Bernie Sanders

00:03:42.220 with 24%. But that six-point lead is even higher in the early states. Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina,

00:03:48.940 Nevada, he's got a lead of about 34 to 26. He's got more like an eight-point lead there. Also important

00:03:55.920 for Joe Biden. You've got 21, 22 candidates in the race right now. Joe Biden is the number one choice

00:04:02.820 for 30% of registered Democrats, but he's the number two choice for basically everybody. For

00:04:09.700 supporters of Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and others, Joe Biden is the number

00:04:18.480 two pick. So if it comes down to it and people have to pick and some of their number one candidates

00:04:23.140 fall out, Joe Biden right now is poised to pick up all of those votes. The coalition right now

00:04:30.060 is older, it's more racially diverse, and it's more likely to identify as moderate. You might be

00:04:36.060 surprised by that. I think a lot of people on the left want to pretend that Bernie Sanders has the

00:04:40.980 racially diverse coalition, that Bernie Sanders is bringing in all these more radical people who are

00:04:48.620 less moderate, less racist, less old white guys than Joe Biden. That's not true. Joe Biden has the

00:04:54.720 more racially diverse coalition. The only downside for Joe Biden right now is that his net favorability

00:05:01.420 has taken a five-point hit since January. So in January, it was the first time stories came out

00:05:06.540 that he might run. His net favorability is down. Now 40% of Democrat likely voters have a positive view

00:05:13.880 of him. That's about the same as Bernie Sanders and only 14% have a negative view of him. So the

00:05:18.840 numbers are really strong. However, you got to remember Hillary Clinton had really good approval

00:05:23.360 numbers too before she got in the race. Hillary Clinton was the inevitable candidate, inevitable

00:05:28.920 nominee, inevitable future president before she got into the race. And then those approval ratings

00:05:33.900 took a massive hit once she got in. So what's going to be more telling is how those numbers look a week

00:05:39.600 from now or two weeks from now. So how did Joe Biden open up his campaign? He aired about a three and a

00:05:46.540 half minute or so campaign announcement. This is the very beginning of the announcement. This is the

00:05:53.920 very first tone that he wants to set for his campaign.

00:05:59.640 Charlottesville, Virginia is home to the author of one of the great documents in human history.

00:06:04.440 We know it by heart. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,

00:06:12.640 endowed by their creator with certain and alienable rights. We've heard it so often it's almost a

00:06:17.720 cliche, but it's who we are. We haven't always lived up to these ideals. Jefferson himself didn't,

00:06:24.600 but we have never before walked away from them. Charlottesville is also home to a defining moment

00:06:30.680 for this nation in the last few years.

00:06:37.760 It was there in August of 2017, we saw Klansmen and white supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the

00:06:44.120 open. Their crazed faces, illuminated by torches, veins bulging and burying the fangs of racism,

00:06:54.740 chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the 30s.

00:06:59.160 That's the opening. Same bile heard across Europe in the 30s. Anti-Semitic bile. Donald Trump is a

00:07:09.180 Nazi. That's the campaign. That's Joe Biden's opening salvo. Donald Trump is a Nazi, therefore

00:07:17.400 elect me. Donald Trump is a Nazi. The same people who marched for him marched for Hitler in the 1930s.

00:07:25.480 Never mind, by the way, that the state of Israel named a train station at the Wailing Wall after

00:07:32.020 him. Never mind, by the way, that Israel is about to name a town after Donald Trump. Benjamin Netanyahu

00:07:41.560 said that just the other day. Never mind any of that. Never mind that this president is the most

00:07:47.420 pro-Israel president in the history of this country. Never mind that his daughter is a convert to Judaism.

00:07:53.440 Never mind that his son-in-law, who's a senior advisor, convert to Judaism, or is rather a Jew

00:07:59.380 himself. No, no, never mind that. Donald Trump is a Nazi. That's the opening salvo.

00:08:04.700 Okay, he's taken a strong punch. The problem with this line, he actually, he makes it even more

00:08:11.440 explicit. So he opens up on Charlottesville, the dark, the torches. This is what we heard in the 30s.

00:08:18.000 Then he goes for the jugular and explicitly ties Donald Trump to neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

00:08:25.780 And that's when we heard the words of the president of the United States that stunned the world and

00:08:31.420 shocked the conscience of this nation. He said there were, quote, some very fine people on both sides.

00:08:38.700 Very fine people on both sides. With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral

00:08:47.400 equivalence between those spreading hate and those of the courage to stand against it.

00:08:54.540 That is not true. That did not happen. Donald Trump did not say that there were fine people

00:09:00.580 among the neo-Nazis and white nationalists and white supremacists. That did not happen.

00:09:06.360 This is one of the most pernicious lies propagated by the fake news mainstream media

00:09:12.180 over the last two years. I know that you think it happened. I know. I sort of thought it happened too

00:09:18.020 because I saw the clips that were being played and then I heard the mainstream media people in their

00:09:22.520 ties and their suits and their serious faces. So I thought also that Donald Trump called white

00:09:28.540 nationalists and neo-Nazis fine people in Charlottesville. That is simply a mass delusion

00:09:35.300 propagated by the mainstream media. Not only did Donald Trump not call white nationalists and

00:09:41.120 neo-Nazis very fine people at Charlottesville, he explicitly condemned them in the same paragraph

00:09:47.080 when he was using the phrase very fine people. Here is the cut that nobody in the mainstream media

00:09:53.780 is willing to show you.

00:09:59.600 And you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people

00:10:06.580 on both sides. You're changing history. You're changing culture. And you had people, and I'm not

00:10:12.200 talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. But you had

00:10:17.900 many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated

00:10:24.720 them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had

00:10:31.780 troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball

00:10:38.360 bats. You had a lot of bad, you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.

00:10:43.100 This is objectively true. It is true that there are some race-obsessed activists on the right.

00:10:52.360 Donald Trump explicitly condemned them. It's also true that Antifa exists on the left and they wear

00:10:58.840 their masks and they physically assault people. Happened to me. Happens to a lot of speakers all

00:11:03.440 around the country who are conservative. Happens to a lot of conservative activists.

00:11:07.540 He never, ever, not once referred to neo-Nazis and white nationalists as fine people. Now,

00:11:17.200 it's a good attack. It's completely dishonest. It's a total abject lie, but it's been a good attack for

00:11:23.180 two years. Think about the kind of stony, cynical dishonesty it takes, not just to utter that line,

00:11:34.200 not just to rehash that attack, but to open your presidential campaign on a lie, to define your

00:11:42.620 presidential campaign by a race hustling, cynical lie. That's Joe Biden. Oh, nice old Joe Biden.

00:11:51.420 Joe Biden's so genuine. Joe Biden's, what you see is what you get is Joe Biden. No, he's a man who has

00:11:58.860 worked in politics for his entire life. He's been very successful in politics. He's been able to

00:12:03.820 maintain power for a very long time. He is a jaded, cynical, lying, race hustling politician.

00:12:10.900 That's his MO. That's what he does. He did it to Mitt Romney in 2012.

00:12:15.120 He's going to let the big banks once again, write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street.

00:12:24.080 They're going to put you all back in chains.

00:12:26.400 Going to put you all back in, Mitt Romney is going to put you all back in chains. By the way,

00:12:29.660 most people in that audience were black. I assume you knew that just judging by his rhetoric.

00:12:34.420 They're going to put you all back in chains. Joe Biden did this to Mitt Romney.

00:12:39.820 He did it to Mitt Romney in 2012. He did it to Donald Trump in 2016 or 2020 now. He'll do it to

00:12:46.700 you. If you ever run for office against Joe Biden, he'll call you a neo-Nazi, racist, slaver,

00:12:52.340 bigot. He'll do it because he's totally dishonest. The guy is nothing. The guy is just a big walking

00:12:58.420 simper, like a giant set of teeth. You know, those big giant white teeth that look about as

00:13:05.000 artificial as teeth can possibly look. That's Joe Biden. That's why the attack on him that he

00:13:10.220 kisses people on the forehead and gives them shoulder rubs. That's why that attack was never

00:13:14.260 going to work is that's not some secret facet of Joe Biden's political career. That's the entirety

00:13:20.500 of his political career. He's just a used car salesman. He just walks around and says, Hey,

00:13:25.140 I love you. I love you. I'm, I'm so genuine. I really care about you. I will say anything you

00:13:34.360 need me to say to get your vote. I'm Joe Biden. I'm really concerned. I really like you. That's

00:13:40.860 his whole career. That's all we expect from him. Now, this is ironic. It's ironic that he's such a

00:13:47.960 race hustler because Joe Biden made one of the most famously racial comments about Barack Obama

00:13:54.500 that anybody has made much more than any Republican has made at the presidential level. He said, quote,

00:14:01.340 while they were running in 2008, I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is

00:14:06.880 articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy. I mean, that storybook, man.

00:14:12.640 Joe Biden called Barack Obama, the first African-American ever, I guess, who is articulate

00:14:22.580 and bright and clean and a nice looking guy. Because I guess according to Joe Biden, most black people

00:14:29.740 are inarticulate, stupid, dirty, and ugly. That's what he said. The first mainstream African-American

00:14:39.480 who's articulate, bright, clean, and nice looking. Because all those other African-Americans are

00:14:45.160 inarticulate, dumb, dirty, and ugly, according to Joe Biden. Storybook. That's storybook, according

00:14:52.820 to Joe Biden. So how's the kickoff? Basically a good start. It's a good start and coming out this way

00:15:01.820 with the Charlottesville and Trump's a Nazi, even though it's completely a lie, 100% made up BS,

00:15:08.480 it's a good first punch because he's attacking really hard. And the left is so wound up in their

00:15:14.320 hatred of Trump. They want to see someone be a fighter. This was one of the lines about Donald

00:15:18.300 Trump in 2016. At least he's a fighter. At least he punches. The downside for Joe Biden is he's launching

00:15:24.080 his campaign on an attack ad. And that doesn't usually work. When you're running for office,

00:15:32.960 you cannot just tell people not to vote for the other person. Attack ads work, negative ads work,

00:15:39.540 but you can't only offer that. You have to offer something positive. You have to give people a

00:15:44.660 reason to vote for you. Because if Joe Biden is framing this entire campaign around Donald Trump,

00:15:51.420 if the only question in this campaign is Donald Trump, it's not Donald Trump versus Joe Biden.

00:15:56.960 It's just, is Donald Trump good or is Donald Trump bad? Donald Trump's going to win.

00:16:00.000 Because it's all about Donald Trump. It's not about you. Who are you? Who's Joe Biden? What do

00:16:05.520 you do? You're that guy who dropped out of the race in 1988 because you were a plagiarist.

00:16:10.320 Is that, that was you? You're the guy who lost in 2008. You're a loser. Who's Joe Biden? You're the

00:16:16.160 guy who was a punchline during the Obama administration. That's you. You're the guy who

00:16:20.360 smells people's hair. What, who is Joe Biden? What does Joe Biden stand for? Nothing. Because he's a

00:16:25.620 walking simper. Nothing. Because he's just a giant set of dentures with legs on it that goes around

00:16:30.360 and smells girls' hair with a little nose on top of the dentures. That's Joe Biden. Now it's even

00:16:38.620 worse for him because he's launching an explicitly negative campaign when he's got 21 opponents in

00:16:47.380 the Democrat party. So he's running against Trump. He's showing he can take a swing at Trump. Okay. Yeah.

00:16:52.780 Okay. We all agree. Trump's terrible. We hate Trump. Why would we choose you over the 21 other

00:16:59.260 people who are offering us a positive message? What he's hoping, what he thinks is going to happen

00:17:04.440 is because he has the highest name recognition of anybody in the race. He thinks that he doesn't

00:17:08.820 have to offer a positive message for himself. He thinks he can ride name recognition and slickness

00:17:14.080 all the way to the nomination. That's not going to work. It might work against people like Pete

00:17:20.960 Buttigieg or against people like Kamala Harris who have relatively lower name recognition.

00:17:25.840 It's not going to work against Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders was almost the 2016 Democrat nominee.

00:17:32.180 Bernie Sanders is a well-known national figure. He has nearly 100% name recognition.

00:17:38.460 Joe Biden can't just ride, we hate Trump. We want an alternative. The only alternative we've

00:17:43.980 ever heard of is Joe Biden. Therefore we'll nominate Joe Biden. We've heard of other,

00:17:48.160 we've heard of Bernie Sanders. Forget all the other candidates. We've heard of Bernie. That,

00:17:53.780 that line of strategy is not going to work against Bernie Sanders. Now, of course, Donald Trump

00:18:00.120 comes out swinging against Joe Biden. Donald Trump is not one to back away from a fight.

00:18:05.540 He answers basically anybody who's ever said anything negative about him. So here's his attack.

00:18:10.280 Welcome to the race, sleepy Joe. I only hope you have the intelligence long in doubt to wage a

00:18:17.940 successful primary campaign. It will be nasty. You will be dealing with people who truly have some

00:18:23.420 very sick and demented ideas. But if you make it, I will see you at the starting gate.

00:18:28.360 His way with words is poetic. So he comes out, a lot of this tweet I like. I like that he's

00:18:41.100 calling all of the Democrats sick and demented people, which they are. I like that he's questioning

00:18:48.260 Joe Biden's intelligence. This is a good attack line against Joe Biden because Joe Biden is not very

00:18:52.980 smart. He, he did very poorly, went to a low ranked law school and didn't do very well in his class.

00:18:59.300 He has just been a politician his whole life. Intelligence is not a prerequisite for politics.

00:19:04.480 Actually, it's a hindrance in politics. He's totally gaffe prone. He just isn't very smart. So that,

00:19:10.760 I think that's a pretty good line of attack. I like the idea. It says, I'll see you at the starting

00:19:15.400 gate. It's reminding people, Joe Biden, you got to get through this primary first. You're pretending

00:19:20.220 you're running against me. You got to get through 21 other Democrats. The only thing I question is

00:19:25.420 Sleepy Joe. Far be it from me to question the nickname master of the world, Donald Trump,

00:19:33.360 the guy who always seems to come up with these solid nicknames. And why are the nicknames solid?

00:19:38.520 Crooked Hillary, Little Marco, Lion Ted, all of the others. The reason they work is because they speak to

00:19:47.800 some visual aspect of the candidate. So in the case of Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz is not a liar. Ted Cruz is an

00:19:54.880 extraordinarily honest politician, but he kind of has that look. He has that look of a sort of

00:20:00.660 politician. Donald Trump zoomed in on that and he called him a liar and it worked for the primary

00:20:05.300 campaign. Marco Rubio, I guess relatively he's not very tall. So, okay, he goes after that. Crooked

00:20:10.800 Hillary. Crooked Hillary was his best one because crooked Hillary is crooked. It speaks to something

00:20:18.440 that is really negative, that is really unlikable, that is really unattractive, and it's totally

00:20:24.300 credible in her. And she also looks crooked. Sleepy Joe, I don't know about. The point he's trying

00:20:31.700 to make is that Donald Trump has very high energy. Joe Biden has lower energy, which is true. Donald

00:20:37.160 Trump doesn't appear to be his age and Joe Biden seems like an old man. It's kind of the argument

00:20:42.540 that he made about Jeb Bush. He's basically saying it's low energy Joe. The other advantage that sleepy

00:20:48.840 has is that it rhymes with creepy. So creepy Joe Biden has been a nickname for years now, and he's

00:20:53.860 sort of referring to that, but in an implicit way. Okay, that's fine. Still, it's a little bit weak sauce.

00:21:00.620 Nobody's going to not vote for a man because he's a little sleepy. Frankly, after all the tumult,

00:21:08.280 all of the craziness in politics of the last two years, people might want a sleepy candidate. It does

00:21:14.320 often seem to be the case that presidents are the opposite of the presidents who came before them.

00:21:21.400 So you have, you have Ronald Reagan. You start out with Ronald Reagan. Start out with Jimmy Carter.

00:21:27.620 I mean, you could take this back however far. You got Jimmy Carter. He's this weak guy,

00:21:32.280 timid, pulling away from the world. He, he's not very good on camera. He's, he doesn't seem very

00:21:39.220 strong. Then you get Ronald Reagan. You get a movie star who says, I've outlawed the Soviet Union. The

00:21:45.200 bombs drop in five minutes. You, Ronald Reagan, the day he gets into office, the hostages are released

00:21:50.020 from Iran. Big movement conservative guy. Then after Reagan, you get George H.W. Bush. He's the

00:21:57.220 establishment wing. He's the Ivy League guy. He's the deep state guy. He's the quiet, reserved New

00:22:05.720 England. Okay. Then after him, this, this totally upright man, you get Bill Clinton, just a degenerate

00:22:12.180 from the South, a derelict who was using his secretary as a human humidor in the Oval Office.

00:22:17.780 Then after, uh, after Bill Clinton, you get George W. Bush, good old boy, Christian values. He,

00:22:25.740 uh, my favorite philosopher is Jesus Christ because he changed my heart. He, you get that guy. He ran on

00:22:31.520 restoring dignity to the Oval Office. After George W. Bush, who in his later years was viewed as a cowboy,

00:22:37.820 reckless, going in American exceptionalism, spreading democracy throughout the whole world,

00:22:42.500 you get Barack Obama. Barack Obama won that primary because he voted against the Iraq war,

00:22:47.960 unlike Hillary Clinton. So you get Barack Obama. He's so much better spoken. He is less prone to

00:22:55.520 rhetorical gaffes. He says, we're going to pull away from spreading democracy throughout the world.

00:23:01.840 He is a liberal. He apologizes for American exceptionalism. He's the opposite of a cowboy.

00:23:07.140 Then after Obama, you get Trump. So the question is, can you run against a candidate because he's

00:23:13.940 totally different from you? I don't think that's a very good strategy. Now, President Trump is known

00:23:19.720 to shop different taglines, different nicknames until he comes up with a good one. I don't think

00:23:25.320 Sleepy Joe is going to be the one that we should land on. I think we've got to keep workshopping this.

00:23:31.060 He tried this with Hillary. He, first it was no stamina Hillary, a few other Hillary names. Then he

00:23:36.100 landed on Crooked, which was way better. I think we need to keep workshopping Sleepy Joe and keep

00:23:40.740 going after him. We've got a lot more to get to, but we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube

00:23:44.660 and Another Kingdom fans. Andrew Klavan's book, based on the popular series, is out now. It is

00:23:50.880 getting rave reviews. And I got to tell you, the audio book of Another Kingdom is one of the greatest

00:23:57.040 performances of literature I've ever heard. Whoever did that audio book deserves,

00:24:03.440 he deserves an Oscar for it, frankly. Go over there, get the audio book, or you can get the physical

00:24:08.220 book. If you haven't picked up a copy, go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and order one. Trust me,

00:24:12.320 it's fantastic, and you will be glad that you did. We will say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.

00:24:18.600 Ten bucks a month, hundred dollars for an annual membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan

00:24:22.080 show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Walsh show, you get to ask questions in the

00:24:26.200 mailbag coming right up. You get to ask questions backstage, you get Another Kingdom podcast,

00:24:31.280 you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. 21, 22 Democrat candidates in the race.

00:24:38.860 Only going to get crazier. You are going to need the Tumblr. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back.

00:24:54.060 Okay. I was at Cal State LA the other day. You remember this? So I was giving a speech on

00:25:00.320 immigration. Pretty basic speech outlining facts about immigration that the mainstream media won't

00:25:07.680 tell you, outlining the case for protecting our borders, for building a border wall, outlining the

00:25:12.820 negative behavior associated with illegal immigration, the negatives for the United States,

00:25:19.240 the negatives for illegal immigrants and illegal aliens who come over themselves.

00:25:22.720 A woman gets up, who I assumed was a student. Turns out she's actually a member of the faculty

00:25:29.060 at Cal State LA. And she proceeded to tell me that speech is violence. I thought she just was

00:25:37.200 making a verbal gaffe. I thought she couldn't possibly be saying that. She did. Here's the exchange.

00:25:43.980 I also support our protester in the back. What do you support specifically? Do you think that anti-immigrant

00:25:51.120 rhetoric is violent free speech? Yes, because of the reasons I'm talking about. You think that speech is

00:25:55.960 violence? No, I think that the conversation that you're having is oppressive. So I am oppressing people by

00:26:04.320 what I'm doing. I am exerting violence on people by my speech. That's what the sign says. And that's what you

00:26:10.120 just said. It contributes to... And the protester is saying that's exactly what I'm doing. And she's

00:26:13.980 saying that's exactly what her sign means. So that means that you, a faculty member at an American

00:26:18.580 public university paid for by taxpayer dollars, are conflating speech with violence.

00:26:26.300 Yes. Speech can be violent. What you are saying contributes to systemic racism in this country.

00:26:32.720 I've been to art school for eight years. I understand liberal arts extremely well. I am an artist.

00:26:36.740 I don't think you do. I'm sure you've been to art school for eight years, but you do not understand

00:26:41.420 the liberal arts. My colleague goes for there. It's popping up a sign which says disrupting speech

00:26:43.500 is fascism. You are continually disrupting me. No, no, no. The sign says anti... Oh, that one.

00:26:47.320 Disrupting speech. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You understand? Yes. These people who are yelling are disrupting

00:26:51.400 my speech, and I agree it's fascism. You're interrupting me. You're interrupting me, and I think that you

00:26:58.440 need to look up violence in the dictionary or expand your idea of violence. So guess what I did? I looked up

00:27:06.080 violence in the dictionary. I have the, I have the definition right there. Violence, a noun. Behavior

00:27:13.080 involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. I looked it up in the

00:27:20.600 dictionary. If that professor that I was speaking to has a different dictionary, I'm more than happy to

00:27:27.280 read it. She can send it over here. But what it looks like is that she's completely wrong, and I'm

00:27:32.680 completely right. And it's very consequential that she's wrong, and I'm right. Because I'm not even a

00:27:37.380 professor at a university. She is. And she's saying that speech is violence. Why is this so important?

00:27:43.260 Because the university consists in speech. We read words at the university. We have professors

00:27:49.020 give lectures. We go to seminars. We discuss ideas. We start with premises in speech, and then we analyze

00:27:56.440 them, and we come to conclusions, and we explore different concepts. The left wants to shut down

00:28:02.420 speech at universities. They want to hollow out the essence of liberal education itself. But how can

00:28:08.420 they do that? The left, the only way the left can do that is with violence. That's the only way you can

00:28:12.320 really shut somebody up in the end, is you need to threaten them with violence, or you need to

00:28:15.920 physically assault them. Now, the left brings violence to the table because they have no arguments.

00:28:20.000 The right brings speeches to the table. Speeches, debates, and arguments. So how can the left

00:28:27.060 justify using violence to shut down speech? The only way they can do it is by redefining speech

00:28:34.640 as violence. Because the way it looks now, when these left-wingers show up to conservative speeches

00:28:40.740 and physically assault us and threaten us and shout us down, they are the aggressors,

00:28:45.000 and we are being victimized. But they can't have it look that way. So instead, what they need to do

00:28:51.740 is say, no, no, no. It's not that you're giving a speech and then I'm responding violently. It's that

00:28:58.780 you are instigating the violence. You, by your very speech, are committing violence on me, and I am

00:29:05.900 simply defending myself. That's their argument. When I punch you in the face unprovoked, I'm actually the

00:29:13.640 victim. Because you've committed violence on me with your speech. I wonder how many kids these days

00:29:20.020 still hear the expression, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

00:29:28.720 Do kids say that anymore? They said that when I was growing up.

00:29:32.800 You, you go up to your parents and you say, Johnny was mean to me. Johnny said I'm no good.

00:29:38.460 But your parents say, well, son, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

00:29:44.740 I don't think they say that anymore. I think what these professors at universities are saying is,

00:29:50.300 sticks and stones may break your bones and words will also hurt you. So if somebody says something

00:29:55.720 you don't like, you should throw a stone at them and hit them with a stick. That's what she's saying.

00:30:00.440 She is hollowing out. She is undermining the essence of liberal education itself. If you live in LA,

00:30:07.640 your tax dollars are paying her salary. And I can't imagine she's the only one. Actually,

00:30:12.520 she's not. There was another professor I spoke to at this same event who said the same thing,

00:30:16.800 speech is violence. How many professors think that? Major scandal. This is a major scandal.

00:30:24.720 And there needs to be some disciplinary action for professors who would conflate the two

00:30:29.680 because it, it, it crumbles the entire university itself. A lot more to get to,

00:30:34.660 but we don't have time. So we're going to go to the mailbag

00:30:36.100 from your fish, your fish. This is probably, this is from the Twitter account, my pet fish.

00:30:45.120 There are a lot of fake daily wire Twitter accounts like Jeremy Boring's beard and I don't know,

00:30:50.320 a bunch of different fake Twitter accounts. And one of them is Michael Knowles' pet goldfish.

00:30:53.380 So this is from my fish, I suppose. Dear Michael, I need spiritual help. I'm so depressed.

00:30:59.900 Very few things make me happy. I often find myself struggling to find reasons to continue on to the

00:31:05.420 next day. I do go see a psychologist, psychiatrist weekly, and I'm on a daily antidepressant medication,

00:31:12.120 but nothing seems to be helping me anymore. My family and church leaders just tell me to get over

00:31:16.900 it. I don't know what else to do or where else to turn. Do you know of any religious resources

00:31:22.120 that might be able to help me improve? Thanks. Sincerely, your pet fish. Sorry to hear that,

00:31:27.360 fish. It seems to me, if you're going to see a psychologist and a psychiatrist, that's good.

00:31:34.400 If the psychologist and psychiatrist are not helping, you should get a new psychologist and

00:31:38.900 psychiatrist. I know multiple people who have been helped by their psychologists.

00:31:43.460 I know many more people who have not been. And I think it's because very often today,

00:31:49.580 psychologists or really psychiatrists are just glorified drug dealers who don't ever treat

00:31:54.520 the actual problems. They're just giving you a prescription for some antidepressant drugs.

00:32:01.620 And by the way, you're not alone. The entire country is extremely depressed. One in six Americans

00:32:06.000 is on antidepressant drugs. One in 20 American teenagers between 12 and 17 are on antidepressant

00:32:12.960 drugs. When people get on these drugs, they remain on them for a very long period of time.

00:32:19.660 Diagnoses of anxiety, depression, stress are way, way up. Teen suicide is way, way up, 70%.

00:32:25.200 This is a major epidemic that cannot simply be explained by psychiatry. That cannot simply be

00:32:33.700 explained as a medical condition. There seems to be a philosophical problem here as well. So what I

00:32:39.560 would recommend is if the psychologist or psychiatrist you're seeing is good, stick with

00:32:43.860 them. If not, go get a new one. You should make sure to be in consultation with doctors who can treat

00:32:51.580 the medical side of it, whatever it is. There is also a philosophical and a spiritual issue here.

00:32:58.860 One issue I think that is leading to this epidemic is that we expect to be happy all the time.

00:33:05.220 We love pleasure. We expect gratification. We look on Instagram and everybody's eating

00:33:10.440 $200 meals every night and everybody's at some beach in the Caribbean every day because we are

00:33:15.760 seeing all around us only the highlight reel of people's lives. And especially if you find yourself

00:33:21.140 as someone who is on the internet most of the time rather than in the real world, you will get a

00:33:25.580 completely warped view of what the real world is really like. Now, another side of this is our society

00:33:33.540 has lost the sense of suffering. We think suffering is evil. We think suffering is bad. Suffering is

00:33:39.320 not evil or bad at all. Suffering is morally neutral. The only moral question is our reaction to

00:33:45.680 suffering. Saint Paul writes about this. Saint Paul says, I rejoice in my suffering for I am making up in

00:33:53.680 my flesh that for you that which is lacking in the suffering of Christ, in the cross of Christ.

00:34:04.900 That suffering has a sanctifying quality. This is the old expression that you hear old Catholics

00:34:11.100 sometimes say. They say, kiss it up to God. Oh, you're hurting? Kiss it up to God. There's real

00:34:16.500 wisdom in this. The great saints of history all suffered immensely.

00:34:22.620 Suffering is a fact of existence. You can react to suffering with self-pity or with blandness or

00:34:29.300 with apathy or with lethargy or you can accept suffering as a cross to bear. Take up your cross.

00:34:36.680 Just that mental switch, just that switch in perception I have found has gotten me through

00:34:43.840 difficult periods of time. We don't allow for grief. We don't allow for those feelings. The other

00:34:50.640 thing then is in this society that we're in, I think we very often convince ourselves nothing

00:34:58.500 really matters. We're all just sort of atoms floating around, bags of chemicals. Life is a

00:35:04.040 tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Oh, we're all going to just

00:35:09.160 turn to worm food someday. It doesn't really matter. There's no moral law. It doesn't matter if I get

00:35:13.160 out of bed in the morning. It does. God exists. God created you. You have a purpose. There will be

00:35:25.020 a final accounting. You will be held to account for what you did for the life that you were given,

00:35:30.460 that you did not create, that you do not exactly deserve, that was given to you freely as a gift.

00:35:35.580 This is why sloth is a sin. We think about sins, we focus on sexual sins or sins of wrath and anger.

00:35:44.600 Sloth is a sin too. You only have a certain number of minutes in this world.

00:35:48.360 You have to make sure you use them in a way that is respectful and grateful for the gift that you've

00:35:53.160 been given. This society that we're in right now is so radically skeptical. We are taught that you have

00:36:00.960 to doubt everything. We should just doubt every single thing. We can't be certain of anything.

00:36:05.260 That's the exact opposite way to look at the world. Cardinal Newman wrote about this. John Henry

00:36:11.040 Newman, one of the great thinkers in all of history, wrote about this in the idea of the university,

00:36:16.440 about how our education system is exactly backwards. We have this idea that action follows from belief.

00:36:23.580 That's not true. Belief follows from action. We are active creatures. We live in time and space.

00:36:29.180 We do things. We're on the move. We're not just brains floating in the air where there's no stakes.

00:36:35.640 There's no urgency. We are actors in this great comedy of the world. And when you lose that sense

00:36:45.240 of purpose, it's easy to fall into a sort of despair. What is despair? It means the absence of hope.

00:36:51.520 What is your hope? What are we hopeful for? In this culture, we're hopeful for nothing.

00:36:54.980 We're optimistic. We pretend to be hopeful. We say, oh, well, you know, let's be happy and I'm happy

00:37:02.580 and let's self-love and let's affirm ourselves and let's just be happy. It's who are you trying

00:37:08.820 to convince? You can't be happy. You can't be happy because you want to be happy. Happiness is a

00:37:15.560 fleeting feeling. Joy is real. Joy is not always happy. Joy comes from hope, which is the opposite of

00:37:22.000 despair. And what is hope? It's a theological virtue. Faith, hope, and charity. Faith, hope,

00:37:27.040 and love. If you find that you're pitying yourself, it's not that you should think less of yourself.

00:37:32.020 You should think of yourself less. Go do something outside of yourself, especially in the real world,

00:37:41.340 not on the internet. The internet is a bad place for this sort of despair. And I have no doubt

00:37:46.400 that the rise of the internet and the rise of social media are in part to blame for this widespread

00:37:51.540 epidemic of despair throughout the country. We could go on about this for a long time, but I hope

00:37:56.820 that begins to help young fish. From Veronica, hey, Mikey Poo, how many electoral votes would California

00:38:04.160 lose if the number were based on legal citizens versus total population? Shouldn't the electoral votes

00:38:09.380 reflect the number of voters anyway? Am I totally wrong about how this works? Thanks. This is a great

00:38:15.220 point. This is why there's now a battle over the U.S. Census. So at various points, we've asked on the

00:38:20.900 census whether you're a citizen or not. Democrats don't like this. Currently, that question is not

00:38:26.640 on the census. Republicans want to put it back on. The Trump administration wants to put it back on.

00:38:31.040 The left is challenging this. It went up to the Supreme Court. And in oral arguments, the court's

00:38:36.040 conservatives seem to suggest that they would allow the question to go back on the census. It looks like

00:38:42.520 it'll be a 5-4 decision. Now, the argument from the left is that the primary purpose of the census is

00:38:49.940 to count the number of people, not the number of citizens. So we shouldn't ask that question.

00:38:54.440 Now, that's true, but we ask plenty of other questions on the census. We ask questions about

00:38:59.900 sex. We ask questions about race and ethnicity. We ask all sorts of questions. So if we take out the

00:39:05.780 citizenship question, certainly we should take out all those other questions. If we don't take out all

00:39:10.060 these other questions, I think it's very clear that while the primary purpose might be to count the

00:39:14.920 number of people, there are many other purposes as well. What this comes down to is a battle over

00:39:19.720 immigration. It comes back to immigration again because illegal immigrants are already giving an

00:39:25.680 unfair advantage to Democrats. Why is that? Because they tend to be in blue places. They artificially

00:39:31.680 inflate the population in those places. And then as seats are allocated in Congress, Democrats get

00:39:38.000 greater representation. Now, that's very unfair. That's a bug of our constitution. It's a bug of our

00:39:46.920 immigration system. I imagine that when the framers were writing our constitution, they did not expect

00:39:53.600 that there would be tens of millions of illegal aliens living in the country, radically changing

00:39:58.560 our representation. As a matter of fact, in the constitution, they leave Native Americans out of

00:40:03.880 those counts because they're a separate nation. They are foreign nationals. Well, that's certainly

00:40:08.740 the case for the foreign nationals who enter our country illegally and reside here. It does give an

00:40:15.900 unfair advantage to Democrats. It's why the census battle is going to be so important. Hopefully the

00:40:19.640 Supreme Court stays strong. Hey, Michael, I'm starting a summer internship in a lab at the end of this

00:40:24.640 month. The current lab intern has been training me to do the job all month, and I've developed a huge

00:40:29.380 crush on her. The only issue is that she's moving back home post-graduation while I've still got

00:40:34.420 another year of school. Should I still go for it and tell her I like her? Thanks, Anonymous, just in

00:40:39.260 case she listens to your show. All the cute girls listen to my show, so that's good that you used

00:40:43.940 Anonymous. Absolutely. Of course. Turn off this program and go do it right now. Why not? She's cute.

00:40:52.660 You like her. You've got some things in common. You've got to kiss the girl. Go do it. What are you

00:40:58.700 talking? You're a young guy. Go have fun. From Alec. Hey, Michael, what is the origin of the idea of

00:41:05.120 purgatory, and is it biblically based? Love the show. Yes. Very good question. Most people don't

00:41:10.600 understand purgatory, which makes it difficult to understand literature. Lots of, obviously, Dante or

00:41:17.080 Shakespeare makes it very difficult to understand so many of these references in our culture.

00:41:23.200 Purgatory is biblical. Like the Trinity, it's not explicitly named in the Bible. The Trinity is not

00:41:32.020 explicitly named in the Bible, but the Trinity is very biblical. We can easily deduce the Trinity,

00:41:38.180 and we can easily deduce purgatory. Purgatory is purification to achieve the holiness necessary

00:41:46.020 to enter the joy of heaven. So it's a purification. It's very different from hell,

00:41:51.500 which is punishment for the damned. Purgatory is a sanctification, a purification to achieve the

00:41:59.820 perfection that will get you into heaven and the holiness. What is the biblical basis for this?

00:42:06.940 Christ in Matthew refers to the sinner who will, quote, not be forgiven either in this age or in the

00:42:14.380 age to come. So what we can deduce from this is that it is logically possible to be forgiven in this

00:42:20.660 age or in the age to come. We know we can be forgiven in this age, but what does it look like

00:42:25.660 to be forgiven in the age to come? To be forgiven in the age to come implies that there is something

00:42:33.440 other than eternal torment that also involves a purification or a need for forgiveness or an

00:42:41.940 imperfection. St. Paul does this as well. St. Paul discusses what happens when a righteous man is

00:42:48.400 judged and the righteous man fails the trial, fails the test. He says in the first letter to the

00:42:53.820 Corinthians, he will suffer loss though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. So this is

00:43:01.400 the explicit imagery of the fire of purgatory. If he's a righteous man, but his works fail the test,

00:43:09.240 he will suffer loss. He will be saved. He will only be saved as though through fire.

00:43:14.080 We see this in Maccabees. There are prayers for the dead in Maccabees, meaning that there is some

00:43:20.440 hope for the dead who are not yet in paradise, not yet in perfection. For those people who wanted to

00:43:26.560 get rid of purgatory, who wanted to deny the existence of purgatory, in the 16th century,

00:43:31.960 they just got rid of the book of Maccabees from the Bible just because Maccabees was so clear about

00:43:37.620 this that they had to erase it in order to help them erase purgatory. We also see in Revelation,

00:43:43.380 we know that nothing unclean will enter the presence of God in heaven. We know in Hebrews

00:43:48.460 that it is appointed for men to die once and that after that death comes the judgment,

00:43:53.580 though there is another judgment at the end of time when Christ returns. That is the general

00:43:57.960 judgment. And we hear Christ say in Luke, I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the

00:44:05.500 very last copper. That there is some purification. There is some period between a judgment, between

00:44:16.240 death and getting out. How do you get out if there's an unbridgeable gulf between heaven and hell?

00:44:22.120 This is purgatory. And this goes back very far. We know that Monica, Saint Monica, the mother of

00:44:27.760 Saint Augustine, the author of the City of God, asked her son in the fourth century to remember her soul

00:44:33.780 in the masses. Why would she ask her son to remember her soul, her son, the Bishop of Hippo?

00:44:41.780 Or the Bishop, what was he? Augustine of Hippo? Yeah. My gosh, I'm like getting totally confused.

00:44:46.060 She asks her son to remember her soul because she doubts that her soul will be in heaven.

00:44:54.240 That there's something where her soul might very well be.

00:44:57.460 So anyway, there are a lot of attestations of purgatory in the Bible, in scripture, in the church

00:45:06.420 tradition. And I think it would be much better if people would be open to these questions because

00:45:16.600 when one takes a purely narrow, rigid, literal view of pieces of scripture, you lose so much of the faith,

00:45:25.220 you lose the Trinity itself. But when you are open to what is clearly there, though not always

00:45:31.580 spelled out in exactly the words you want it to be spelled out in, you open yourself up to the truth

00:45:36.840 and the magnitude of the faith. All right, that's all we have time for. We've got a lot more to get

00:45:43.940 to, but unfortunately we just don't have time. So I will see you on Monday in the meantime. I'm

00:45:47.800 Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:45:49.760 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner.

00:45:59.900 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer

00:46:04.880 is Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is

00:46:10.520 mixed by Dylan Case. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Ulvera. And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan.

00:46:16.020 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:46:20.800 Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, Joe Biden jumps into the race and we break it all down. That's

00:46:25.360 today on the Ben Shapiro Show. Those sweltering summer nights that leave you tossing and turning,

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Ep. 338 - Joe Biden Is A Shameless Liar

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