The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 344 - Pete Buttigieg is a Jerk

00:00:00.000 With 20 years reporting on the markets, I know that some industries are built to last,

00:00:03.980 but others are built to lead. John Oelichman here. If you want exposure to what's really

00:00:08.280 shaping our world, think beyond trends. Think defense, healthcare, telecom, real estate,

00:00:13.920 gold, crypto. They're not just headlines, they're foundations. And with GlobalX,

00:00:18.400 one of Canada's largest ETF providers, you can invest in them intelligently. With a range of

00:00:23.660 ETFs designed for long-term growth and steady income opportunities. GlobalX,

00:00:28.120 where innovation meets investing. Brought to you by GlobalX Investments Canada, Inc.

00:00:32.440 For key risk information, please refer to the ETF's prospectus, available at globalx.ca.

00:00:37.920 Stocks are plunging as investors scramble over a potential trade war with China.

00:00:43.140 While President Trump talks tough on trade, we examine the case for tariffs. So many

00:00:48.180 conservatives still fail to understand the case for tariffs. Then, 2020 Democratic presidential

00:00:53.740 candidate Pete Buttigieg attacks President Trump's marriage, because Pete Buttigieg is a jerk.

00:00:59.580 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:09.060 Mayor Pete, such a nice guy, isn't he? He's got that nice face, beautiful, big blue eyes. He's a good

00:01:14.740 old boy scout. Except he's not. He's a huge jerk, and he keeps demonstrating this every single day.

00:01:20.300 So we will analyze. But first, if you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business. The

00:01:26.160 problem with growing businesses is that sometimes they don't know their numbers because of their

00:01:32.220 hodgepodge of business systems. I know this. I've been involved in a number of businesses as they've

00:01:37.060 started up, and I'm not exactly a numbers guy, and I'm not exactly the most organized fella in the

00:01:41.640 world. And it becomes a mess, and you can lose a lot of money. You can lose a lot of time. You can lose

00:01:46.960 your business. So maybe a business has one system for accounting, another for sales, another for

00:01:51.600 inventory, and it's just an inefficient mess. Takes up too much time, too many resources. Hurts the

00:01:56.960 bottom line. Introducing NetSuite by Oracle, the business management software that handles every

00:02:03.560 aspect of your business in an easy-to-use cloud platform, giving you the visibility and control

00:02:09.800 you need to grow. If I had known about NetSuite when I was starting my first business right out of

00:02:16.980 college, it probably would have turned out better than it did. NetSuite will save you time, money,

00:02:22.800 unneeded headaches by managing sales, finance, and accounting orders in HR instantly right from your

00:02:28.560 desktop or phone. That's why NetSuite is the world's number one cloud business system. Right now,

00:02:33.060 NetSuite is offering you valuable insights with a free guide. Seven key strategies to grow your profits

00:02:38.740 at NetSuite.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Don't be a dummy. Go over there right now. Check out the 1.00

00:02:45.040 free guide, NetSuite.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Download the guide, seven key strategies

00:02:52.140 to grow your profits. What have you got to lose? Nothing. NetSuite.com slash Knowles.

00:02:59.860 Pete Buttigieg is a jerk. No other way to put it. Pete Buttigieg is a totally unknown guy.

00:03:06.600 He was the mayor of a small town in Indiana. He's announced that he's running for president,

00:03:11.780 and we're told by everybody he's so nice. He's got so much dignity. He's got so much integrity.

00:03:17.040 He's a Boy Scout. He's going to be the positive candidate. What have we actually seen him done so

00:03:21.840 far? Or what have we actually seen him do so far? He attacked Mike Pence, basically called Mike Pence

00:03:29.800 a bigot. Why? I don't know. Mike Pence has only ever said nice things about Pete Buttigieg.

00:03:35.060 When Pete Buttigieg deployed to Afghanistan, Mike Pence personally called him to wish him well.

00:03:41.360 When Pete Buttigieg came out as a gay guy, Mike Pence said, Pete Buttigieg, I have the utmost respect

00:03:49.240 for. He's a patriot. He's a great guy, and I really like him. And then Pete Buttigieg announces

00:03:54.380 he's running for president, and he goes after Mike Pence, and he says Mike Pence is this sort of bigot.

00:03:59.180 Then what? We've seen Pete Buttigieg come out and question the faith of other Christians.

00:04:03.920 We've now seen him attack President Trump's marriage, completely unprovoked. It's not as

00:04:09.200 though President Trump was going after Buttigieg. Buttigieg goes after him in this really personal,

00:04:14.080 nasty way. And now Buttigieg is saying that Republicans are also bad Christians. He's a

00:04:21.240 jerk. He's nasty. I don't like him. We're all told he's this sweet little guy, and he's so

00:04:28.960 mean-spirited. No major figure on the right has attacked Pete Buttigieg's romantic relationships.

00:04:35.860 Show me one who has gone after Pete Buttigieg because of his sexual preferences or his domestic

00:04:41.460 life. I don't think you're going to find one. But Pete Buttigieg is going after others for that

00:04:46.600 exact same thing. Here is Pete Buttigieg going after President Trump's marriage.

00:04:51.300 Look, my emotions about this president are not what's going to matter most. I'm not interested

00:04:58.120 in expressing my anger about him as much as I am in defeating and ending his presidency. If we want

00:05:03.820 to have a debate with him, a fight over any number of things, from the difference between the way I

00:05:11.120 approach service and the way he did, the fact that I was packing my bags for Afghanistan while he was

00:05:15.500 working on season seven of Celebrity Apprentice, we can have that fight if somebody wants to raise

00:05:22.140 a question of which one of us has a more traditional attitude on marriage. We can have that fight. But

00:05:25.860 at the end of the day, it's not about him. It's not about me. It is about you. Not you,

00:05:31.220 but our host this evening, but you, the American voter.

00:05:35.040 If someone wants to raise that question, nobody's raising that question. If someone wants to raise the

00:05:41.140 question of service, if someone wants to raise the question of marriage, nobody's raising that

00:05:45.860 question except for you, Pete Buttigieg. It's not about me. Also, so his first attack on Trump that

00:05:52.500 Buttigieg was packing up for Afghanistan while Trump was doing season seven of The Apprentice,

00:05:57.780 does Buttigieg think Donald Trump should have enlisted in the army at age 62? Is that what he's

00:06:02.820 really suggesting? I guess he could go after President Trump for getting deferments from Vietnam.

00:06:09.580 That would be, if he actually wants to have an attack on Donald Trump for dodging military service,

00:06:15.060 he should go after him for not fighting in Vietnam. Why isn't Pete Buttigieg doing that is because he's

00:06:21.000 going to need the support of a lot of other draft dodgers. So he's going to need this. Bill Clinton

00:06:25.180 is a great example. Democrats nominated a guy and reelected him. He was served two terms as president,

00:06:31.140 Bill Clinton, who was a draft dodger. Maybe he's going to want Bill Clinton's support eventually.

00:06:35.500 So he's not going to go after the draft dodger issue. Not going to go after a lot of other

00:06:40.200 Democrat senators, maybe ex-senators, governors. So he goes after him on Afghanistan. Weak sauce.

00:06:46.580 But then to go after a man's marriage is really, really nasty. He's not just saying Donald Trump

00:06:52.480 speaks badly about women. Donald Trump treats women badly. No, he's saying Donald Trump's marriage

00:06:58.520 is somehow wrong, somehow not traditional. By the way, it's not true. Donald Trump has a more

00:07:05.740 traditional view of marriage than Pete Buttigieg. Why doesn't Donald Trump have a traditional marriage?

00:07:12.960 Well, he's cheated on his wives. Cheating on your wife is very traditional. It's not good. It's wrong

00:07:19.900 to cheat on your wife, but it is very traditional. Adultery plays central roles in the Iliad, in the 0.60

00:07:26.120 Odyssey, in the book of Genesis, in all of human history. Adultery has played a big role. It's very 1.00

00:07:32.480 traditional. It's bad, but it's traditional. Well, he's gotten divorced. A lot of people have gotten

00:07:39.420 divorced. The law of Moses allows for divorce, as Christ discusses in the New Testament and disapproves

00:07:46.760 of. Well, he got divorced. Right. The Church of England was founded on a guy who wanted to get a

00:07:52.680 divorce. Very traditional. Wrong, but very traditional. Well, he's, he slept with a porn

00:07:59.520 star. Right. Uh-huh. I know. This, yes. Sometimes rich, powerful men cheat on their wives, and that's 0.96

00:08:06.320 a terrible thing. Donald Trump still holds a more traditional view of marriage than Pete Buttigieg.

00:08:13.720 Pete Buttigieg might be monogamous. He might go to church every Sunday. The traditional view of marriage,

00:08:22.280 for all of human history, until five minutes ago, was that sexual complementarity, sexual difference

00:08:30.260 is essential to marriage. That marriage is the union of husbands and wives. Now, maybe it's one 0.72

00:08:40.100 husband and ten wives in certain ancient cultures, but always husbands and wives. And really, for the 0.69

00:08:47.200 span of Western civilization that we're talking about over the last 2,000 years, we're talking about one

00:08:52.380 husband and one wife. Christian marriage, one husband and one wife. Sexual complementarity has 0.65

00:08:59.840 inherited in all definitions of marriage for all of human history until about five minutes ago. So even

00:09:06.060 if Pete Buttigieg is a really good guy, if his new definition of marriage says that sexual difference

00:09:12.400 doesn't matter, it is necessarily less traditional. Now, Pete Buttigieg might make the argument that

00:09:18.740 same-sex marriage is actually better. It's more virtuous. It's more holy. It's more Christian. He

00:09:25.440 can try to make that argument if he wants. That's not the argument that he just made, though. What he's

00:09:29.440 saying is his views of marriage are more traditional than Donald Trump's. That just isn't true. And Pete

00:09:35.480 Buttigieg isn't just going after Trump. He's going after all Republicans.

00:09:39.140 You've also spent a fair amount of time talking about your faith.

00:09:43.900 Yes.

00:09:44.740 Why?

00:09:45.800 It's important to me. And I think it's also important that we stop seeing religion used as a kind of

00:09:51.760 cudgel, as if God belonged to a political party. And if he did, I can't imagine it would be the one

00:09:57.760 that sent the current president into the White House.

00:10:00.680 What a jerk. Listen, I think we need to stop pretending that God belongs to a political party

00:10:08.320 and realize that God is a Democrat. Okay? I'm Mayor Pete. I'm a really nice guy. I'm from Indiana.

00:10:14.640 I'm just, come on, let's just common sense. God does not belong to a political party. Also,

00:10:18.980 he's obviously a Democrat. That's what he's saying. Again, nobody on the right has said God is a

00:10:25.300 Republican. God is not a Republican. God is not, he, God is not an American partisan. God is a king

00:10:34.480 of all of creation. He has his own kingdom. But what Pete Buttigieg is doing by saying that God is

00:10:41.560 not a Republican is implying, maybe God is a Democrat. What he's implying more to the point

00:10:47.760 is that Republicans are bad Christians. He's more or less saying God would be a Democrat.

00:10:53.780 This is a bad strategy for Pete Buttigieg, who is a big jerk. We'll explain why in a second. But

00:11:01.500 first, hiring is challenging. And there is one place you can go where hiring is simple,

00:11:05.900 fast, and smart. A place where growing businesses connect to qualified candidates. And that place

00:11:11.020 is ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles. K-N-O-W-L-E-S. ZipRecruiter does so much. ZipRecruiter sends your job

00:11:19.320 to over 100 of the web's leading job boards. And they don't just stop there. With their powerful

00:11:24.640 matching technology, ZipRecruiter scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience

00:11:29.920 and invite them to apply to your job. So when you're looking at different services to hire people,

00:11:35.160 you can either do the one where you throw spaghetti at the wall and say, oh, I hope someone good sees

00:11:38.760 this at some point. Or you can use ZipRecruiter, which gives you so many services. ZipRecruiter,

00:11:44.460 which actually goes out there proactively, finds people who'd be a good match. They analyze,

00:11:48.580 they spotlight the top candidates so that you never miss a great match. They invite them to

00:11:53.240 apply to your job. It's so effective that four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a

00:11:59.000 quality candidate through the site within the first day. Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter

00:12:03.620 for free at this exclusive web address, ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles. K-N-O-W-L-E-S. 0.55

00:12:09.920 That is ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles. K-N-O-W-L-E-S. ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles.

00:12:15.300 The smartest way to hire. This, I think, is a bad move for Buttigieg.

00:12:23.800 His professed Christian faith is a big advantage in this race. You'll notice all of these Democrats 0.83

00:12:29.340 are running as far left, intersectional, secular as they possibly can. Buttigieg has this kind of

00:12:35.360 Midwest Christian charm about him. So that is an advantage, but it's not an advantage if he starts

00:12:41.120 mocking the faith of every other Christian or criticizing the faith of every other Christian

00:12:46.140 or ridiculing him. Even the fact that he's gay. We've never had a gay president. We've never had 0.93

00:12:53.160 a gay presidential candidate. I think he could get over that issue, but I don't think he can get over 1.00

00:12:58.620 the issue if he plays the victim constantly. This is the big mistake that he's making. So what Buttigieg

00:13:04.540 is thinking is, the only way that he can possibly distinguish himself in this field of 21, 22

00:13:10.800 candidates is if he plays the victim. If everyone is embracing this intersectional victimhood grievance

00:13:18.360 mentality, Buttigieg says, well, gosh, I'm an Ivy League educated, military veteran, Rhodes scholar,

00:13:25.880 white male, privileged. The only way that I can pretend to be a victim is to play up my gay grievances. 0.78

00:13:33.360 That's what he's thinking. This will kill him in the long run, and it probably won't even help him

00:13:39.080 in the short run. Consider two examples here. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. We had never had a black 1.00

00:13:48.500 president. We'd never had a serious black presidential candidate. Barack Obama comes out. Does Barack Obama

00:13:54.080 play the racial victim card? No. No, basically never does he play the racial victim card.

00:14:02.040 His big speech that he gave in 2004 at the Democrat National Convention, he comes out, he says,

00:14:09.120 there's no white America. There's no black America. There's the United States of America. There's no 0.99

00:14:14.640 red America, no blue America, no yellow, purple, green, rainbow, sprinkles. No, he's all just uniting.

00:14:22.760 He's coming together. I'm not going to play the victim. I'm the inspiring candidate. Hope and change.

00:14:28.320 Now, compare that to Hillary Clinton, who, by the way, lost to him. Hillary Clinton comes out, 0.99

00:14:34.480 and it's wah, wah, wah. I'm a woman. Everyone hates me because I'm a woman. I can't do anything

00:14:39.880 because I'm a woman. Wah, wah, wah. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's entire political career exists 1.00

00:14:45.760 because she married Bill Clinton. Her husband gave her her entire political career. He handed her a

00:14:53.500 Senate seat from New York. He gave her a presidential campaign. He, he gave her through all of that,

00:15:01.820 the secretary of state role. And she, and she says, wah, wah. I'm a woman. I, I can't do anything.

00:15:08.880 Everyone's keeping me down. And she lost. She lost twice because people hate that. It's so annoying.

00:15:14.840 It's so, oh, everybody's got a problem. Everybody's got a problem, guys. Everybody goes through

00:15:20.700 hardship. Everybody struggles. There's a great line in a play by Tennessee Williams called Orpheus

00:15:25.360 Descending. And you got this kind of vagabond guy wandering through town. He's trying to,

00:15:29.740 trying to get a room at this woman's house and he's trying to seduce her and, you know,

00:15:35.800 stay there for the night. And she's having none of it. And he says, but I got nowhere to go. And she

00:15:41.160 says, well, everybody's got a problem and that's yours. Yeah. Everybody's got hardship. Everybody

00:15:47.600 struggles. So you can either whine about it all the time, or you can show some grit and determination.

00:15:54.480 The American people like dignity. They like suffering silently. They like grit. They don't

00:16:00.280 want whiny little brats, which is what you saw from the Hillary Clinton campaign. It's what you're 1.00

00:16:07.600 seeing now from Pete Buttigieg. He really could offer youthful Midwestern optimism. He could. He's very

00:16:15.880 smart. He served his country. He could do, he could offer that. He's throwing it away on this

00:16:23.540 intersectional gambit that is probably not going to pay off. So then he becomes this nasty, catty

00:16:28.940 jerk, and he loses the only thing that people actually like about him. It also reminds us this

00:16:33.780 theme that just keeps coming back again and again, which is the left is always projecting.

00:16:39.180 Pete Buttigieg for the last few weeks has been accusing conservative Christians of being closed

00:16:47.260 minded and vindictive and judgmental. And they're the Mike Pence's of the world and God wouldn't be a

00:16:54.120 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 0.92

00:17:07.240 faith. He's been nasty. He's been cruel. He's been uncompassionate. He's doing all the things he's

00:17:17.240 accusing them of doing. That's not just Buttigieg. Do you remember that Pennsylvania guy that we talked

00:17:20.960 about yesterday? That guy, Brian Sims, a Pennsylvania House of Representatives member. He was the guy who goes

00:17:28.600 out and starts screaming at this woman who was protesting at a Planned Parenthood and mocking

00:17:33.900 her appearance and harassing her and trying to film her. So it turns out he's back. But this time,

00:17:39.280 he's not mocking women of a certain age. Instead, he is trying to dox three teenage girls. Here he is.

00:17:47.980 Hi, everyone. Representative Brian Sims here. And I am outside the Planned Parenthood at southeastern

00:17:53.640 Pennsylvania. Oh, no, they're leaving now. What we've got here is a bunch of protesters. A bunch

00:18:00.440 of pseudo-Christian protesters who've been out here shaming young girls for being here. And so here's

00:18:04.580 the deal. I've got $100 to anybody who will identify any of these three. So I'm going to donate to

00:18:09.000 Planned Parenthood. I'm going to donate to Planned Parenthood. So look, a bunch of white people standing 0.92

00:18:13.680 out in front of a Planned Parenthood shaming people. There's nothing Christian about what you're doing.

00:18:17.800 Nothing Christian at all about what you're doing. Hi, nothing Christian or loving or godly about 1.00

00:18:23.300 what you're doing. So I've got $100 to anybody who will identify this. $100. See if you've got

00:18:28.840 some friends out here. $100. It'd be easier if you'd just give me your name and your address.

00:18:34.360 Rich, where are you from?

00:18:37.980 Rich, what makes you think that it's your job to tell women what's right for their bodies?

00:18:41.400 And the truth is, I'm not really asking because I don't care. Shame on you.

00:18:44.180 Oh, man, what a wacko. So he first goes up and offers $100 to get the identities and the addresses 1.00

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, 0.68

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

00:19:38.300 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,

00:19:47.780 oh, this is my name. He says, yeah, where are you from? He says, I'm from this place.

00:19:53.180 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. 0.99

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 0.74

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 0.51

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

00:25:28.260 annual membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the

00:25:31.440 Matt Walsh show, you get to ask questions in the mailbag. You get another kingdom and you get the

00:25:37.760 leftist tears tumbler. So delicious. Pete Buttigieg. Wow, wow, wow. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right

00:25:45.920 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 1.00

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 0.78

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 0.88

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 0.98

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 0.54

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 0.56

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 0.69

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 0.99

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 0.87

00:38:12.720 no question at all? Should Americans be allowed to freely trade with Iran? We're not currently 0.84

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, 0.88

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 1.00

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

00:45:15.200 Knowles Show. I'll see you then.

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

00:46:04.780 The Andrew Klavan Show. I'm Andrew Klavan.

00:46:07.360 Is that the key in the arrow?

00:46:08.440 You know it is. With three to choose from, I had way more to consider than just the color.

00:46:12.420 Three.

00:46:13.300 Electric, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid. Duh. With up to 835 kilometres of range on my hybrid,

00:46:18.880 I can give my wallet a break at the pump.

00:46:20.380 How is it to drive?

00:46:21.380 It's perfect for me. With features like Smart Park Assist, it really has everything.

00:46:25.660 Color me impressed.

00:46:27.920 Test drive a Kia Niro today and see why Canada counts on Kia. See Kia.ca for details.

00:46:34.700 Kia. Movement that inspires.

The Michael Knowles Show - May 07, 2019

Ep. 344 - Pete Buttigieg is a Jerk

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript