Ep. 344 - Pete Buttigieg is a Jerk
Summary
The problem with growing businesses is that sometimes they don t know their numbers because of their hodgepodge of business systems. If you had known about NetSuite when I was starting my first business right out of college, it probably would have turned out better than it did.
Transcript
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Stocks are plunging as investors scramble over a potential trade war with China.
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While President Trump talks tough on trade, we examine the case for tariffs. So many
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conservatives still fail to understand the case for tariffs. Then, 2020 Democratic presidential
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candidate Pete Buttigieg attacks President Trump's marriage, because Pete Buttigieg is a jerk.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Mayor Pete, such a nice guy, isn't he? He's got that nice face, beautiful, big blue eyes. He's a good
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old boy scout. Except he's not. He's a huge jerk, and he keeps demonstrating this every single day.
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So we will analyze. But first, if you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business. The
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Pete Buttigieg is a jerk. No other way to put it. Pete Buttigieg is a totally unknown guy.
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He was the mayor of a small town in Indiana. He's announced that he's running for president,
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and we're told by everybody he's so nice. He's got so much dignity. He's got so much integrity.
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He's a Boy Scout. He's going to be the positive candidate. What have we actually seen him done so
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far? Or what have we actually seen him do so far? He attacked Mike Pence, basically called Mike Pence
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a bigot. Why? I don't know. Mike Pence has only ever said nice things about Pete Buttigieg.
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When Pete Buttigieg deployed to Afghanistan, Mike Pence personally called him to wish him well.
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When Pete Buttigieg came out as a gay guy, Mike Pence said, Pete Buttigieg, I have the utmost respect
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for. He's a patriot. He's a great guy, and I really like him. And then Pete Buttigieg announces
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he's running for president, and he goes after Mike Pence, and he says Mike Pence is this sort of bigot.
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Then what? We've seen Pete Buttigieg come out and question the faith of other Christians.
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We've now seen him attack President Trump's marriage, completely unprovoked. It's not as
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though President Trump was going after Buttigieg. Buttigieg goes after him in this really personal,
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nasty way. And now Buttigieg is saying that Republicans are also bad Christians. He's a
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jerk. He's nasty. I don't like him. We're all told he's this sweet little guy, and he's so
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mean-spirited. No major figure on the right has attacked Pete Buttigieg's romantic relationships.
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Show me one who has gone after Pete Buttigieg because of his sexual preferences or his domestic
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life. I don't think you're going to find one. But Pete Buttigieg is going after others for that
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exact same thing. Here is Pete Buttigieg going after President Trump's marriage.
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Look, my emotions about this president are not what's going to matter most. I'm not interested
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in expressing my anger about him as much as I am in defeating and ending his presidency. If we want
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to have a debate with him, a fight over any number of things, from the difference between the way I
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approach service and the way he did, the fact that I was packing my bags for Afghanistan while he was
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working on season seven of Celebrity Apprentice, we can have that fight if somebody wants to raise
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a question of which one of us has a more traditional attitude on marriage. We can have that fight. But
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at the end of the day, it's not about him. It's not about me. It is about you. Not you,
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but our host this evening, but you, the American voter.
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If someone wants to raise that question, nobody's raising that question. If someone wants to raise the
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question of service, if someone wants to raise the question of marriage, nobody's raising that
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question except for you, Pete Buttigieg. It's not about me. Also, so his first attack on Trump that
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Buttigieg was packing up for Afghanistan while Trump was doing season seven of The Apprentice,
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does Buttigieg think Donald Trump should have enlisted in the army at age 62? Is that what he's
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really suggesting? I guess he could go after President Trump for getting deferments from Vietnam.
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That would be, if he actually wants to have an attack on Donald Trump for dodging military service,
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he should go after him for not fighting in Vietnam. Why isn't Pete Buttigieg doing that is because he's
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going to need the support of a lot of other draft dodgers. So he's going to need this. Bill Clinton
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is a great example. Democrats nominated a guy and reelected him. He was served two terms as president,
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Bill Clinton, who was a draft dodger. Maybe he's going to want Bill Clinton's support eventually.
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So he's not going to go after the draft dodger issue. Not going to go after a lot of other
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Democrat senators, maybe ex-senators, governors. So he goes after him on Afghanistan. Weak sauce.
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But then to go after a man's marriage is really, really nasty. He's not just saying Donald Trump
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speaks badly about women. Donald Trump treats women badly. No, he's saying Donald Trump's marriage
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is somehow wrong, somehow not traditional. By the way, it's not true. Donald Trump has a more
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traditional view of marriage than Pete Buttigieg. Why doesn't Donald Trump have a traditional marriage?
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Well, he's cheated on his wives. Cheating on your wife is very traditional. It's not good. It's wrong
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to cheat on your wife, but it is very traditional. Adultery plays central roles in the Iliad, in the
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Odyssey, in the book of Genesis, in all of human history. Adultery has played a big role. It's very
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traditional. It's bad, but it's traditional. Well, he's gotten divorced. A lot of people have gotten
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divorced. The law of Moses allows for divorce, as Christ discusses in the New Testament and disapproves
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of. Well, he got divorced. Right. The Church of England was founded on a guy who wanted to get a
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divorce. Very traditional. Wrong, but very traditional. Well, he's, he slept with a porn
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star. Right. Uh-huh. I know. This, yes. Sometimes rich, powerful men cheat on their wives, and that's
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a terrible thing. Donald Trump still holds a more traditional view of marriage than Pete Buttigieg.
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Pete Buttigieg might be monogamous. He might go to church every Sunday. The traditional view of marriage,
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for all of human history, until five minutes ago, was that sexual complementarity, sexual difference
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is essential to marriage. That marriage is the union of husbands and wives. Now, maybe it's one
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husband and ten wives in certain ancient cultures, but always husbands and wives. And really, for the
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span of Western civilization that we're talking about over the last 2,000 years, we're talking about one
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husband and one wife. Christian marriage, one husband and one wife. Sexual complementarity has
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inherited in all definitions of marriage for all of human history until about five minutes ago. So even
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if Pete Buttigieg is a really good guy, if his new definition of marriage says that sexual difference
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doesn't matter, it is necessarily less traditional. Now, Pete Buttigieg might make the argument that
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same-sex marriage is actually better. It's more virtuous. It's more holy. It's more Christian. He
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can try to make that argument if he wants. That's not the argument that he just made, though. What he's
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saying is his views of marriage are more traditional than Donald Trump's. That just isn't true. And Pete
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Buttigieg isn't just going after Trump. He's going after all Republicans.
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You've also spent a fair amount of time talking about your faith.
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It's important to me. And I think it's also important that we stop seeing religion used as a kind of
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cudgel, as if God belonged to a political party. And if he did, I can't imagine it would be the one
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that sent the current president into the White House.
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What a jerk. Listen, I think we need to stop pretending that God belongs to a political party
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and realize that God is a Democrat. Okay? I'm Mayor Pete. I'm a really nice guy. I'm from Indiana.
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I'm just, come on, let's just common sense. God does not belong to a political party. Also,
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he's obviously a Democrat. That's what he's saying. Again, nobody on the right has said God is a
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Republican. God is not a Republican. God is not, he, God is not an American partisan. God is a king
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of all of creation. He has his own kingdom. But what Pete Buttigieg is doing by saying that God is
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not a Republican is implying, maybe God is a Democrat. What he's implying more to the point
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is that Republicans are bad Christians. He's more or less saying God would be a Democrat.
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This is a bad strategy for Pete Buttigieg, who is a big jerk. We'll explain why in a second. But
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The smartest way to hire. This, I think, is a bad move for Buttigieg.
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His professed Christian faith is a big advantage in this race. You'll notice all of these Democrats
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are running as far left, intersectional, secular as they possibly can. Buttigieg has this kind of
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Midwest Christian charm about him. So that is an advantage, but it's not an advantage if he starts
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mocking the faith of every other Christian or criticizing the faith of every other Christian
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or ridiculing him. Even the fact that he's gay. We've never had a gay president. We've never had
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a gay presidential candidate. I think he could get over that issue, but I don't think he can get over
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the issue if he plays the victim constantly. This is the big mistake that he's making. So what Buttigieg
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is thinking is, the only way that he can possibly distinguish himself in this field of 21, 22
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candidates is if he plays the victim. If everyone is embracing this intersectional victimhood grievance
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mentality, Buttigieg says, well, gosh, I'm an Ivy League educated, military veteran, Rhodes scholar,
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white male, privileged. The only way that I can pretend to be a victim is to play up my gay grievances.
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That's what he's thinking. This will kill him in the long run, and it probably won't even help him
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in the short run. Consider two examples here. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. We had never had a black
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president. We'd never had a serious black presidential candidate. Barack Obama comes out. Does Barack Obama
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play the racial victim card? No. No, basically never does he play the racial victim card.
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His big speech that he gave in 2004 at the Democrat National Convention, he comes out, he says,
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there's no white America. There's no black America. There's the United States of America. There's no
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red America, no blue America, no yellow, purple, green, rainbow, sprinkles. No, he's all just uniting.
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He's coming together. I'm not going to play the victim. I'm the inspiring candidate. Hope and change.
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Now, compare that to Hillary Clinton, who, by the way, lost to him. Hillary Clinton comes out,
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and it's wah, wah, wah. I'm a woman. Everyone hates me because I'm a woman. I can't do anything
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because I'm a woman. Wah, wah, wah. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's entire political career exists
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because she married Bill Clinton. Her husband gave her her entire political career. He handed her a
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Senate seat from New York. He gave her a presidential campaign. He, he gave her through all of that,
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the secretary of state role. And she, and she says, wah, wah. I'm a woman. I, I can't do anything.
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Everyone's keeping me down. And she lost. She lost twice because people hate that. It's so annoying.
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It's so, oh, everybody's got a problem. Everybody's got a problem, guys. Everybody goes through
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hardship. Everybody struggles. There's a great line in a play by Tennessee Williams called Orpheus
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Descending. And you got this kind of vagabond guy wandering through town. He's trying to,
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trying to get a room at this woman's house and he's trying to seduce her and, you know,
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stay there for the night. And she's having none of it. And he says, but I got nowhere to go. And she
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says, well, everybody's got a problem and that's yours. Yeah. Everybody's got hardship. Everybody
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struggles. So you can either whine about it all the time, or you can show some grit and determination.
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The American people like dignity. They like suffering silently. They like grit. They don't
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want whiny little brats, which is what you saw from the Hillary Clinton campaign. It's what you're
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seeing now from Pete Buttigieg. He really could offer youthful Midwestern optimism. He could. He's very
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smart. He served his country. He could do, he could offer that. He's throwing it away on this
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intersectional gambit that is probably not going to pay off. So then he becomes this nasty, catty
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jerk, and he loses the only thing that people actually like about him. It also reminds us this
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theme that just keeps coming back again and again, which is the left is always projecting.
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Pete Buttigieg for the last few weeks has been accusing conservative Christians of being closed
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minded and vindictive and judgmental. And they're the Mike Pence's of the world and God wouldn't be a
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Republican. And wow, what is he doing? He's doing all the things that he's accusing conservative
00:17:00.720
Christians of doing. He's questioning other people's faith. He's judging them, their actions and their
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faith. He's been nasty. He's been cruel. He's been uncompassionate. He's doing all the things he's
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accusing them of doing. That's not just Buttigieg. Do you remember that Pennsylvania guy that we talked
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about yesterday? That guy, Brian Sims, a Pennsylvania House of Representatives member. He was the guy who goes
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out and starts screaming at this woman who was protesting at a Planned Parenthood and mocking
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her appearance and harassing her and trying to film her. So it turns out he's back. But this time,
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he's not mocking women of a certain age. Instead, he is trying to dox three teenage girls. Here he is.
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Hi, everyone. Representative Brian Sims here. And I am outside the Planned Parenthood at southeastern
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Pennsylvania. Oh, no, they're leaving now. What we've got here is a bunch of protesters. A bunch
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of pseudo-Christian protesters who've been out here shaming young girls for being here. And so here's
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the deal. I've got $100 to anybody who will identify any of these three. So I'm going to donate to
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Planned Parenthood. I'm going to donate to Planned Parenthood. So look, a bunch of white people standing
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out in front of a Planned Parenthood shaming people. There's nothing Christian about what you're doing.
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Nothing Christian at all about what you're doing. Hi, nothing Christian or loving or godly about
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what you're doing. So I've got $100 to anybody who will identify this. $100. See if you've got
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some friends out here. $100. It'd be easier if you'd just give me your name and your address.
00:18:37.980
Rich, what makes you think that it's your job to tell women what's right for their bodies?
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And the truth is, I'm not really asking because I don't care. Shame on you.
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Oh, man, what a wacko. So he first goes up and offers $100 to get the identities and the addresses
00:18:56.100
of three teenage girls. Imagine if I did that, just by way of comparison. I would not be allowed
00:19:03.280
within 150 yards of any schools or public grounds if I did that. But this guy, who is an elected
00:19:10.240
representative in Pennsylvania, goes out, no consequence, no ban from Twitter, no censure
00:19:17.340
from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. No, nothing. It's okay. He's allowed to go do that.
00:19:23.140
So then he goes out and he says it's these three white women, teenage girls. Now he's white,
00:19:28.760
but he uses white as this insult. And what's funny is one of the girls is not white. She's saying,
00:19:33.880
I'm not white. I'm Hispanic. I'm not, but he doesn't really care about that. So then he sort
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of chases them away. Then he turns to another guy who's protesting and he says, I'm going to get
00:19:43.000
your information. So you should just tell me who you are now. And the guy in perfect humility says,
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oh, this is my name. He says, yeah, where are you from? He says, I'm from this place.
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Total humility. And he says, well, why do you think it's good to protest Planned Parenthood?
00:19:58.880
And then Brian Sims does what the left always does. He says, I don't want to hear the answer. I'm
00:20:05.300
going to run away. Why? Because he knows that he can't win a battle of ideas.
00:20:11.580
He's ranting and raving about how it's so great to kill babies and how it's awful to not kill babies.
00:20:19.180
He says, there's nothing Christian about not killing babies. I recommend, he should try reading
00:20:22.920
the Bible because the Bible has a few things to say about this or just any sort of moral philosophy at
00:20:28.700
all. But he he's ranting and raving and accusing people and being cruel and harassing them and calling
00:20:36.260
them names. And then he approaches a man who has total humility and who he knows is going to give
00:20:43.840
him an argument. And then all of a sudden he runs away because he can't take it. A couple of lessons
00:20:49.080
here. One is this is, we should approach our political disagreements the way that that last guy did
00:20:56.120
there with the last guy that Brian Sims is talking to, who's just there. He's totally calm. He's
00:21:01.440
totally collected. Says, well, yeah, this is my name. If I'm happy to answer any questions that you
00:21:05.820
have. Well, it's bad to kill babies because babies are people. So we shouldn't slaughter babies because
00:21:12.000
they're babies. They're humans. They're living. They haven't had due process. They're innocent.
00:21:18.080
And we shouldn't rip them out of their mother's wombs or leave them to die on an operating table.
00:21:22.440
Well, that's what he was going to say. And that guy, Brian Sims, the representative from Pennsylvania,
00:21:29.080
he knew that there was going to be a debate that he is not able to engage in. So he runs away from it.
00:21:36.420
That's very telling. That shows you a whole lot. Now, the reason that he keeps making the rounds
00:21:43.460
right now is because of the censorship that's been going on on social media. You've got parody
00:21:50.460
accounts being censored. You've got conservatives being censored. You've got all sorts of people
00:21:53.960
being censored. And that guy is allowed to keep his Twitter account, which he uses explicitly to
00:22:01.440
harass, humiliate, and dox people. Not just any people, but minors as well. Not just any sort of
00:22:08.720
minor, but teenage girls as well. This is a test for social media. This is a test for Twitter.
00:22:15.580
Are you going to take away that guy's account? I'm not saying you should take away that guy's
00:22:20.960
account necessarily. But if you're taking away conservatives' accounts, you definitely have to
00:22:26.540
take away that guy's account. And if you don't, then clearly this is not a level playing field.
00:22:34.840
Clearly this is not an open platform. And we should go and use every single tool of the law
00:22:41.980
at our disposal to rip these guys to shreds. To rip their platforms to shreds.
00:22:51.740
Well, they're a private company. Don't care. They're sort of a private company. Yeah, they're sort of.
00:23:00.080
But there are provisions of the law to protect platforms. There are different provisions of the
00:23:05.100
law for publishers. The law is murky. All shallows are clear, but the law is murky. And we should go
00:23:13.200
in there and go after them. Because this is a warning shot for 2020. That's what this is all about.
00:23:20.300
This is why conservatives are being kicked off of these platforms. This is why an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
00:23:27.020
parody account was taken off of Twitter yesterday. A parody account. It said it was a parody. It said
00:23:35.680
it was unaffiliated with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It labeled itself very clearly. It was taken off.
00:23:40.760
Meanwhile, plenty of Donald Trump parody accounts still are allowed to exist. Why was the AOC one
00:23:46.940
taken down? Because it's become pretty popular. It had about 85,000 followers. So they have to take
00:23:51.560
it down. And this is a warning shot. Don't forget, the year is 2019. Presidential election is in 2020.
00:23:58.140
And what they're doing is they're saying, what happens if we take away this kind of funny parody
00:24:02.420
account? Are they going to move? Are they going to move? Okay. What happens if we take away this
00:24:07.020
conservative's account? What happens if we take away this not conservative, but kind of right-wing,
00:24:12.000
and he's pretty objectionable? And what if we take away his? Are people going to do anything to stop us?
00:24:17.140
And what this is becoming is an in-kind contribution to Democrats. What this is becoming
00:24:23.040
is a platform for the promotion of Democrats in political campaigns. And if we don't fight back
00:24:31.980
now, we're going to find ourselves at a severe disadvantage in 2020. Speaking of political fights,
00:24:39.040
speaking of war, the Dow has been dropping 500 points today under a trade war threat because President
00:24:46.500
Trump is ratcheting up tensions with China in this trade war that we're engaged in. We will
00:24:51.480
analyze the case for protective tariffs. Basically, no conservatives are defending tariffs. I would like
00:24:58.560
to make the case for tariffs because I'm not saying that we need to have economic protection. I'm not
00:25:05.260
saying free trade is a bad thing. But I think conservatives have become very ideological. They've allowed
00:25:10.380
ideology to blind them on this question of tariffs. And there are plenty of good reasons
00:25:15.780
to limit free trade. There are plenty of good arguments against free trade. We'll get into
00:25:21.400
them in one second. But first, go to dailywire.com. 10 bucks for a monthly membership, $100 for an
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back with a lot more. The Dow is down 500 points. Why? Because the US and China might escalate their
00:26:03.540
trade war. Now, this latest tension began a few days ago when President Trump tweeted out,
00:26:10.220
for 10 months, China has been paying tariffs to the USA of 25% on $50 billion of high tech and 10%
00:26:17.680
on $200 billion of other goods. These payments are partially responsible for our great economic
00:26:23.000
results. The 10% will go up to 25% on Friday. $325 billion of additional goods sent to us by China
00:26:31.480
remain untaxed, but it will be shortly at a rate of 25%. The tariffs paid to the United States
00:26:41.620
have had little impact on product costs, mostly borne by China. The trade deal with China continues,
00:26:48.080
but too slowly as they attempt to renegotiate. No, no, sad. So when this threat came out from Donald
00:26:57.540
Trump, the markets didn't really move because they didn't really believe it. It's more tweeting.
00:27:03.380
Okay, we'll see if anything actually happens. Then when China and the United States didn't come to
00:27:08.820
some sort of agreement over the ensuing few days, all of a sudden the markets start to take this
00:27:14.120
seriously. Say, gosh, we really might get a trade war. Now, in the midst of all this, Chuck Schumer tweets
00:27:20.720
out and says, President Trump, stay strong on China. That's the only way to deal with them is to get
00:27:25.800
tough. Some people read this as Schumer being sarcastic, as Schumer saying, yeah, keep up,
00:27:33.000
keep up those tariffs, buddy. Great job. Let the economy tank. And then that way we'll sweep to
00:27:39.620
victory as Democrats in 2020. He actually wasn't being sarcastic. It's a sign of our times that we
00:27:45.040
assume anytime a Democrat agrees with a Republican, that it's sarcasm. But Chuck Schumer has been pretty
00:27:51.000
consistent on this for a while. Chuck Schumer in 2005 led the push in Congress to impose a 35%
00:27:58.180
tariff on China, which is ultimately what led the Chinese to allow their currency to weaken a little
00:28:04.080
bit. Schumer is calling for a little toughness on China. So is President Trump. The case for tariffs
00:28:12.520
right now is particularly geared toward China. First of all, let's just point out that the economy is
00:28:21.320
doing very, very well. President Trump has been saying it's the best economy we've ever had.
00:28:26.100
In many ways, that's true. We're at 49 year lows of unemployment. Average wages are up to 27.77 per hour.
00:28:33.920
We now have many, many more job openings than people who are looking for jobs. We've got, we were told by
00:28:42.900
Barack Obama's economists that we would never see 3% economic growth. Larry Summers, chief economist to
00:28:48.960
Obama, said that the predictions of 3% economic growth were basically like wishing for the tooth fairy.
00:28:55.440
He used that phrase, the tooth fairy. And then what happened? We hit 3% economic growth by the second quarter
00:29:01.000
of President Trump's first year. So we had 3%. It rose significantly higher than that in 2018.
00:29:08.540
We, again, in just this last quarter, very, very strong economic growth. So you can't simultaneously make
00:29:16.060
the case that Trump is this economic idiot and his tariffs are destroying the economy and also observe
00:29:21.880
that we have the strongest economy basically that we've ever had. So what is the case for tariffs?
00:29:26.540
Well, on China, the case is we're already in a trade war. We're already in a trade war. China is
00:29:33.900
waging a trade war. They've been doing it for years and years, and we should be able to fight back.
00:29:38.920
And we should fight back. They steal our intellectual property. They illegally manipulate their currency.
00:29:45.020
They illegally subsidize their steel and aluminum industries, and they cheat on World Trade
00:29:50.280
Organization treaties. China always cheats. When China was admitted to the World Trade Organization
00:29:55.800
in 2001, they almost immediately began cheating. And they don't just cheat on the economic front.
00:30:02.020
They cheat on everything. During the Obama administration, China promised us that they
00:30:06.540
would not militarize the South China Sea. What happened? They began to militarize the South China Sea.
00:30:11.460
So we know that they're cheaters. We know that they don't respect WTO treaties. So the case for
00:30:18.740
tariffs now is it gives them an incentive to start complying with what they should have been doing
00:30:24.440
for years, to not steal our property, not steal our technology. So if we put these tariffs on,
00:30:32.080
and then we say, we will pull back on those tariffs if you comply with what you're already supposed to
00:30:37.420
be doing, that at least gives them some incentive to comply. It adds real pressure, not fake Obama
00:30:44.200
pressure like, yes, you better do it. I got a red line. Here's your red line, China. No, actual pressure
00:30:48.940
because they are feeling the effects of those tariffs. If the threat to China is going to have
00:30:55.440
any teeth on tariffs, it needs to be a serious case. This, I think, is the issue that conservatives can
00:31:04.020
get behind. Conservatives are saying, well, tariffs are always awful. They're just terrible. But in a
00:31:10.000
negotiation, it helps you if you seem half crazy. Warren Buffett says this too. He says, in a
00:31:15.660
negotiation, sometimes you want to seem like you're totally crazy. You're a madman. You'll do anything,
00:31:21.340
even if it is insane. They're saying that Donald Trump, he's just playing the madman.
00:31:25.920
Well, I don't know. If it's just that, I don't think it's going to have very much teeth.
00:31:34.040
The markets didn't move when it was just Trump tweeting. They moved today when it looked like he
00:31:38.120
was serious. And there is a serious case to be made for tariffs. I know this is a heresy. I'm going to be
00:31:47.180
cast out of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. I will be thrown into the outer darkness
00:31:53.660
where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Well, too bad because there actually is a case to be made
00:31:59.120
for tariffs. To begin, the Republican Party was founded on tariffs. Abraham Lincoln was a staunch
00:32:05.920
defender of tariffs. Abraham Lincoln said, give me a tariff. I'll give you the best country in the world.
00:32:11.440
Daniel McCarthy made a good case for tariffs. Daniel McCarthy, who writes for Modern Age,
00:32:16.840
Conservative Journal, he points out that tariffs can accomplish a few things. First of all,
00:32:22.560
they can accomplish the goal of maintaining industries necessary for preventing full-scale
00:32:28.900
war. So the idea with free trade is, look, we don't need to actually produce anything in the
00:32:34.380
United States because we're so rich and China has slave labor. So we can just buy all of our goods
00:32:40.200
from China and it'll be cheaper and that way we'll all save money. Okay, fair enough argument. The issue
00:32:46.680
is when you move all of your industry to China, what happens when China declares war on you?
00:32:52.560
All of your free trade just broke down. When you're at war with a country, you're probably not trading
00:32:58.720
very freely. And now China has all of your manufacturing capacity. You have no industrial
00:33:04.860
capacity anymore. Now you might have a lot of money, but where are you going to get the industries
00:33:10.020
necessary to wage a war? That goes away. This came into play in particular in the Civil War.
00:33:17.740
This is in no small part why the Republican Party has always had some affinity, at least in its early
00:33:23.940
days, for protective tariffs. In the Civil War, if the North did not have an industrial advantage,
00:33:30.260
would the North really have won? The North had a completely dominant industrial advantage over the
00:33:36.340
South. What if the South had industrialized? Are we sure that the country would look like it does
00:33:42.480
today? How about in World War II? If the U.S. had not had industrial capacity, major industrial
00:33:49.420
capacity in World War II, would there have been a Western front to that war? Don't forget the United
00:33:55.460
States was attacked by Japan. We're fighting a war in the Pacific. We are simultaneously fighting a war
00:34:00.860
in Europe. Now why are we fighting the war in Europe? Because if the United States didn't come in,
00:34:05.560
Britain would have fallen. Winston Churchill's biggest strategy in World War II was begging the United
00:34:10.540
States for help and to come in to the rescue of the old world. If the United States didn't have
00:34:16.400
massive industrial production, there's no way we could have fought both sides of that war. Who knows
00:34:20.460
what would have happened in Europe? So this is one argument. Not everything is just an economic chart.
00:34:28.340
I think what people who worship at the idol of free trade as though it's a good unto itself,
00:34:35.460
they say, well, look at all of our economic charts. Right, economic charts break down in the real
00:34:40.160
world because countries aren't just trading entities. Countries go to war. Countries have
00:34:45.460
diplomacy. Countries have interests in other regions. Countries are much more complicated
00:34:50.280
than buying and selling cheap t-shirts. Another reason, another argument for protective tariffs
00:34:55.980
is the middle class. Do we want a small elite or do we want a giant base of, rather a small elite
00:35:04.820
and a giant base of worker bees or do we want a substantial middle class? Now you might say,
00:35:10.120
Michael, I don't care. Who are you to decide where people should fall in, in economic strata?
00:35:21.040
Who are you to decide how much, how big the middle class should be, how big the upper class should be,
00:35:25.300
how big the worker class should be? Who, what does it matter to you if a very small number of people
00:35:31.600
make an insane amount of money and then everybody else still does fairly well, but they have
00:35:36.600
radically less money than the elite? I don't really care in principle, but I do care politically.
00:35:46.900
So over the past decade, two decades, wages among the middle and lower classes have mostly flatlined.
00:35:54.120
Wages of the elites have increased tremendously. If that situation persists, if it grows,
00:36:01.600
if it's exacerbated, you get political revolution. This almost happened in the 1930s. This has
00:36:08.520
happened in many countries all around the world and continues to happen today.
00:36:14.000
Eventually you get a revolution there. Look at the Met Gala yesterday. You saw those crazy
00:36:19.840
costumes. This, uh, the Met Gala basically shows us how the French revolution happened. I think
00:36:24.500
bunch of French peasants thought, are you kidding me? You're dressing like that and you're eating that
00:36:29.600
and you're behaving that way. We're going to burn down palaces and behead our monarchs is basically
00:36:35.700
what they're thinking. The argument here is that a stable economy requires a stable political system.
00:36:46.520
Now, a stable political system requires a stable economy. So there's a, there's a push and pull here,
00:36:52.960
but it cannot be the case that you've got one guy who's got all the money and everybody else has
00:36:59.380
radically less money and you've got a stable political system. That is very unlikely to happen.
00:37:03.480
And so it is in the interest of the economy often to have a thriving middle class. And, and then the
00:37:10.020
third case is economic prosperity. Perhaps it is the case that perfect free trade is not the only route
00:37:15.780
to national wealth. Every country has protective tariffs. The United States has always had protective
00:37:21.440
tariffs. Every other country has them too. There's a reason for that. It's because the economy
00:37:27.480
is complicated. Free trade is very clear. All shallows are clear. The question you've got to ask
00:37:36.520
yourself is what is the purpose of free trade? Is free trade a good in and of itself? It's perfectly
00:37:43.200
unfettered free trade, not just among people in a country, but, but among people in different
00:37:47.520
nations. Is it the case that an American defense contractor should be allowed to have trade deals
00:37:56.520
with any foreign government with no regulations whatsoever? Is it the case that American defense
00:38:02.960
contractors should be building up China's army? How about in the 1930s? Should American defense
00:38:07.800
contractors be building up Hitler's army? How about other foreign governments? Should they be just
00:38:12.720
no question at all? Should Americans be allowed to freely trade with Iran? We're not currently
00:38:19.020
allowed to do that. We have sanctions on Iran. How about North Korea? No. What is the purpose of
00:38:24.740
free trade? It's not an end unto itself. It is a means to an end. And the means that it is an end to
00:38:31.560
is human flourishing. And in the United States, it's a means to American flourishing. And if free trade
00:38:37.840
is not serving the ends of American flourishing, that's an argument against free trade. The left
00:38:43.060
is very ideological. They, they adhere to very narrow ideologies that you can write down on a little
00:38:49.060
sheet of paper and have bullet points. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Here's the manifesto. Here is leftism.
00:38:54.620
Conservatives are supposed to oppose that because we know that reality can't be rationalized into some
00:39:01.420
silly little doctrine. Reality is much more complicated. Sometimes on this issue, we get a
00:39:08.020
little too ideological. And then the other question is, are we primarily consumers? This was always
00:39:15.620
one of Milton Friedman's great arguments, all those wonderful videos on YouTube of Milton Friedman
00:39:19.960
talking about free trade and free markets. He'll say, look, everybody's a consumer. You might be a
00:39:25.960
producer for eight hours of your work day, but then you come home and you're a consumer. And so
00:39:30.440
if free trade means that you lose a little bit of money on your wages, but you gain so much more
00:39:36.340
money in savings when you buy consumer goods, you've actually gotten a raise. Whether you get
00:39:42.120
the money from your employer or you save the money when you shop at Walmart, either way, you've got more
00:39:46.600
money in your bank account as a result of free trade. But this does get to another question in
00:39:51.820
society, which is, do we want to be primarily consumers? Everybody's both. We're producers, we're
00:39:58.320
consumers, we're all those sorts of things. But do we want to have a consumerist society?
00:40:03.920
Consumerism is disgusting. It's so gross when you just walk around places where people are only
00:40:09.760
concerned with material goods and getting a good deal and buying the latest gadgets and just buy,
00:40:15.640
buy, buy, consume, consume, consume. That's a disgusting culture. Do we want a culture that
00:40:20.480
replaces cathedrals with shopping malls? No. How is that conservative? There's nothing conservative
00:40:25.900
about consumerism. You need to have a moral basis to even tolerate freedom and free markets and free
00:40:38.720
trade. You need to have discipline in yourself. You need to not just become this gluttonous materialistic
00:40:46.300
culture, which sometimes is fed by worshiping at the idol of free trade. Now, there are costs
00:40:55.880
to tariffs. So we just made the case for tariffs. There are costs to tariffs. Tariffs usually mean
00:41:02.340
less wealth for everyone because it's basically the government imposing a tax on its own people.
00:41:07.860
The tax eventually is going to be passed on to consumers. That's the likely outcome at least.
00:41:13.440
The other cost to tariffs is it's the government choosing winners and losers. So the government will
00:41:18.160
go in and say, okay, we want to protect the dairy industry, but we don't care about the soy industry.
00:41:23.460
Or we want to protect the soy industry, but we don't care about the paper industry. And so you've
00:41:27.700
got the government going into the economy and picking winners and losers. And unfortunately,
00:41:32.220
the government is very bad at organizing economies and planning economies too precisely.
00:41:39.760
All true. Strong arguments against free trade. But when President Trump goes up there and he's
00:41:44.620
negotiating with China and he's trying to get us a good trade deal, and he's trying to get them to
00:41:49.140
stop violating the trade rules that they've already agreed to. And he tries to get them to stop stealing
00:41:54.420
all of our stuff. And he tries to get them to stop illegally subsidizing their industries.
00:41:59.060
When he threatens tariffs, there are plenty of good reasons for those tariffs. And more or less,
00:42:05.520
the lesson to conservatives here, all the conservatives are accusing each other of not
00:42:10.140
being true conservatives, capital T, capital C, trademark over conservatives. The free traders are
00:42:17.260
saying you're violating free trade orthodoxy, which has been the bedrock of the conservative movement
00:42:23.540
for only like 35 or 40 years, but nevermind that. And then you've got the protectionist people saying,
00:42:29.540
you free traders, you're just a bunch of neoliberal, globalist, modernist, whatever. Okay.
00:42:36.540
All I'm saying is a little bit of a middle way here, which is free markets are generally speaking,
00:42:44.280
the most efficient way to allocate goods and resources in an economy. Economic freedom, free
00:42:51.560
markets usually imply property rights, which are good in and of themselves. Private property is
00:42:58.260
necessary to civilized society. Private property is a moral good. We should be able to use that property
00:43:09.520
as we like with relatively few restrictions, but we should not become idolaters at the altar of the
00:43:17.440
free market. There's nothing conservative about that. There's nothing smart about that. There's
00:43:22.620
nothing highly intelligent about that. There's nothing politically pure about that. What happens when
00:43:28.680
we do that is we put the cart before the horse. And you always, you should ask yourself this when it comes
00:43:35.800
to politics. What is the purpose of this political right? What is the purpose of this political
00:43:43.400
institution? What is the purpose of it? All we want to do as people is make idols out of things,
00:43:50.340
make idols out of the free market, make idols out of voting, make voting is a great example of this.
00:43:56.200
We make such an idol out of voting. We say, you got to go out and vote. Puff Daddy tells me I got to vote
00:44:01.460
or die. Bruce Springsteen come out. He says, you got to rock the vote. Doesn't matter who you vote for,
00:44:07.240
just that you vote. Doesn't matter if you vote. If you're knowledgeable about events and you have
00:44:16.540
good judgment, then you should vote. But voting is not a good in and of itself.
00:44:23.780
Voting is a means to an end. Voting is a means to good government. If we could get better government
00:44:31.220
by restricting the vote, great, cool. If we could get better government by expanding the vote,
00:44:39.000
great. If we could somehow get better government by expanding the vote to include five-year-olds,
00:44:43.520
everybody five years old and older can vote. And then that gives us better government. Fine. Send
00:44:48.020
the five-year-olds to vote. If we could get better government by limiting the vote to people who are
00:44:52.680
50 and above, good. I would do that too. Don't make idols out of these things. The end is human
00:44:59.220
flourishing. And that's what we're all after. And everything else is just putting the cart before
00:45:07.600
the horse. We got a lot more to get to, but ran out of time as usual. Get your mailbag questions in
00:45:11.840
for Thursday. We'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael
00:45:16.100
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner. Executive
00:45:26.800
producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
00:45:32.680
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.
00:45:38.480
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan.
00:45:42.560
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
00:45:47.500
Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. So if the Democrats in the
00:45:51.560
news media, but I repeat myself, aren't going to talk about the booming economy and they're not
00:45:55.540
going to talk about the Obama spying scandal, what are they going to talk about? The answer?
00:46:00.020
Nothing. They'd become The Seinfeld Show. Hilarious, but about nothing. We'll talk about it on
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You know it is. With three to choose from, I had way more to consider than just the color.
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