Ep. 346 - The High Price Of Free Stuff
Summary
Joe Biden made waves yesterday by promising free health care for illegal aliens. But Joe is just trying to keep up with the rest of the 2020 Democratic PAC, which is promising free everything for everybody. We ll analyze the high price of free stuff, then the mailbag.
Transcript
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Joe Biden made waves yesterday by promising free health care for illegal aliens.
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But Joe is just trying to keep up with the rest of the 2020 Democratic PAC,
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which is promising free everything for everybody.
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Then the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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You know, you're looking at me today, you're thinking, gosh, Michael, you sound a little tired.
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He's got, I believe, at the latest measure, a 32-point lead over the next strongest Democrat in the race, Bernie Sanders.
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And so now he's going back to that old tried-and-true Democrat playbook, promise everything for free to everybody.
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How's he going to do it? Free health care for illegal aliens.
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Do you think that undocumented immigrants who are in this country in our law abiding should be entitled to federal benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, for example?
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Look, I think that anyone who is in a situation where they're in need of health care, regardless of whether they're documented or undocumented, we have an obligation to see that they're cared for.
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That's why I think we need more clinics around the country.
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And this idea that undocumented, and by the way, a significant portion of undocumented folks in this country are there because they've overstayed their visas.
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It's not people breaking down gates coming across the border.
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And so, look, the biggest thing we've got to do in this is just tone down the rhetoric.
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Because of that, and then he describes in very graphic, unflattering terms, that other, the immigrant.
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So Rambling Joe made about five points, or he started and tried to make about five points, and he didn't make any of them.
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Maybe this is where President Trump is going with his Sleepy Joe nickname.
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But the image that President Trump is trying to give is that Joe Biden is tired.
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And that is the feeling that you get from that answer.
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So just to begin, Joe Biden is talking about how we blame illegal immigrants for taking our jobs.
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Nobody is blaming anyone for taking their job right now because unemployment is at a 49-year low.
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There are many, many, many more jobs to be filled in this country than people who are looking to fill them.
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So nobody is blaming anybody about taking anybody's job.
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I understand why Joe Biden got confused here because the unemployment rate during the Obama-Biden years was 9%, upwards of 10%.
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That unemployment rate actually didn't drop below 9% until 2011, almost until the end of the first term.
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The question of illegal immigration is not primarily one of employment.
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There are many other factors here, factors that pertain to our social services, factors that pertain to our culture, factors that pertain to the rule of law.
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Now, Joe Biden does make a cogent point, or a nearly cogent point.
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He says most illegal aliens are visa overstays.
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Now, this would have been a cogent point about two years ago.
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Right now, we have about 3,000 illegal aliens per day pouring over the border with Mexico.
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On average, we have about 700,000 visa overstays per year.
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But if we have a million illegal aliens coming in, if you annualize the number of people who are coming in per day,
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you actually have more people crossing the southern border illegally.
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But let's say that Joe Biden's point were true.
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Let's say that the majority of illegal aliens in this country didn't cross the southern border, but they were visa overstays.
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Our completely porous immigration system that makes a mockery of the rule of law and American citizenship,
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It's people taking airplanes, not crossing the Rio Grande.
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It still means that our federal legislators have failed at a basic task.
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They've failed to enforce our national borders, the things that make up our nation, the things that define our nation.
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He says illegal aliens should have access to medical care.
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We currently provide medical care to illegal aliens at hospitals.
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If you show up at a hospital, regardless of your immigration status, regardless of your citizenship, regardless of whatever, you will be treated.
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The left wants to portray conservatives as these heartless people who want illegal aliens to die in the street, like we're Mr. Burns, you know, counting our dollar bills and not caring about anybody else.
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And yes, we want people who are here to have medical care.
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We don't want people to be turned away because they don't have enough money or because they're not citizens.
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What sort of society would we be if we did that?
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The area when it gets complicated is that Democrats are pushing for socialist health care now.
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So it's not just you show up last ditch, you show up to the emergency room and we take care of you because we're a good country.
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Now it's socialist medicine, a much bigger system, a much more expensive system, and a system with much less patient choice.
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So let's see how quickly that gets out of hand.
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Already you hear Joe Biden say, listen, we can't just provide free socialist health care for American citizens.
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We've got to provide it for the 20 million illegal aliens in the country.
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The country only has, what, 300, 320 million people?
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Well, you increase that by 10, 20 million people, that's significant.
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And then once you grant the premise that the government won't just subsidize health care,
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won't just pay for a little bit of health care like Medicare, but will actually run the health care system,
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what is the limiting principle that is going to rein in costs and rein in services?
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This is why the government shouldn't negotiate with public sector unions.
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This is why public sector unions don't make any sense because you have the government negotiating with itself.
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You have the government negotiating with the people who make donations to politicians and the people who go and vote for politicians
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If what you're dealing in is votes, if the thing that you are most covetous of is votes,
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then you are going to try to buy off as many of those as possible.
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And by the way, once Democrats take power, once you get a Democrat president with a Democrat Senate and a Democrat House,
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you are going to see mass amnesty for illegal aliens.
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Why? Because they'll legalize instantly 10 million votes.
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We know statistically recent immigrants, legal and illegal, from Latin America,
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which is where the vast majority of these immigrants that we're talking about,
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DREAMers and crossing the southern border, are from,
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They are eight times as likely in some cases to identify with Democrats as with Republicans.
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And so Joe Biden is using an old tried and true trick.
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He's saying, yeah, we're going to give a lot of free stuff away to everybody.
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The taxpayers aren't going to attack me for it.
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And because they're just not paying enough attention and we're going to overwhelm them
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and we're going to turn California blue and we're going to turn Texas blue.
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And then I'm going to pander to this group of people that I'm about to make legal.
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This is more evidence of what this election is turning into,
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I could use another term that's a little saltier, but free stuff is what it is.
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Democrats are currently promising a whole host of free programs,
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not just the typical, hey, vote for me and I'll give you a little something extra.
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We are talking about radically transforming our system of government and our economy.
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But what the Democrats are offering is the free stuff primary.
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Parents should no longer take care of their children.
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The government is going to come in and take care of your children.
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We don't want parents, you know, instilling any of those crazy ideas like religion and traditional values in their kids.
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No, we need the government to come in and raise your kids for you.
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So Elizabeth Warren is now calling for free child care.
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Child care, by the way, can sometimes cost about as much as college tuition.
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In the state of Massachusetts right now, where Liz Warren is from, well, I guess she's from some Indian tribe somewhere on the Great Plains, but where she's currently living in Massachusetts,
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sometimes child care can cost up to $34,000 per year to enroll both an infant and a toddler.
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Now, Massachusetts is particularly expensive, but it's not the only expensive place for child care.
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So if we're now going to offer this as a new entitlement program to everybody in the country, how much money is that going to cost?
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How much is that going to cost you and your taxes?
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Next thing you're giving away for free is free college.
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Bernie is now offering free community college and four-year public universities for families earning less than $125,000 per year.
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Elizabeth Warren, Liawatha, is doing him one better.
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She's saying forget about free community college and free, you know, a four-year public college.
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She's saying that regardless of where you go to college, the federal government will pay off up to $50,000 worth of loans for any graduate earning less than $100,000 a year.
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What did you earn in your first job out of college?
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Unless you were working at an investment bank or in consulting, something tells me your first job out of college, you weren't making $100,000 a year.
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So now Liz Warren is going in and essentially saying to every single college graduate, hey, we'll give you $50,000 for free.
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And she has to be more radical than Bernie because she's polling a lot lower than Bernie.
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And as we have been predicting for months, this primary is just to see who can be the farthest left candidate, who can be the most extreme radical candidate, who can give away the most stuff for free.
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So then Kamala Harris comes in, Cory Booker comes in, Kirsten Gillibrand, all in the Senate, they co-sponsor the Debt-Free College Act.
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They always tell you how some people are going to get stuff for free.
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They don't tell you about who's going to pay for it.
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So somebody is going to pay for that, and that's going to be me and you.
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To their credit, I hate to be nice to the guy because he's a huge jerk, but Pete Buttigieg actually has come out against this idea.
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There's at least some modicum of almost sensibility going on in the Democrat primary.
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Next thing they're going to give away, they're giving away daycare.
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So the entire Democrat field right now is offering free money to everybody.
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The guy who's never going to win the Democrat nomination?
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And Tulsi Gabbard, Congresswoman from Hawaii, I think.
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Other than them, the entire Democratic field has endorsed a universal basic income for Americans.
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And not just a universal basic income in some great philosophical way.
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They're endorsing a universal basic income for Americans who are, quote, unable or unwilling to work.
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I understand the philosophical and the policy argument for a robust social safety net.
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Even for a universal basic income to people who really can't provide for themselves.
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What they all support is the UBI for people who are unwilling to work.
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So if you bring this up to them, they'll say, no, I was supporting that environmental legislation.
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Well, the environmental aspects of the Green New Deal are actually a relatively small portion of the law.
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The much more significant portions of the law are completely upending our health care system,
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fully socialist health care, redistribution of wealth, and yes, a universal basic income for all Americans.
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But believe it or not, the free money part isn't even the most radical.
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Historically speaking, there are now Democrats who are supporting reparations for the great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren of black slaves in the United States.
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Just a cash payment, a transfer of wealth from who?
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Maybe from the great-great-great-great-grandchildren of slaveholders?
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But there weren't that many slaveholders, and who knows where their descendants are.
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Is it going to be a transfer from just white people?
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One of the earliest slave owners in the Americas was black.
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Are they going to decide it based on race or gender or lineage or immigration status?
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Probably they'll just take it from the federal government.
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Now, lest you think that reparations for slavery is some radical, crazy, fringe idea,
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do you know which Democrats in the 2020 field are endorsing reparations?
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Beto O'Rourke was sort of a holdout, and now he's endorsed it too.
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Every single Democrat running for president has endorsed reparations for slavery.
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So now, child care, college, free money, free money, but only if you're black,
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so free extra money, but only if you're the descendant of African slaves.
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You've got to store it all somewhere, so the government's going to give you a free house.
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Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris,
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Direct payments, mortgage assistance, free housing.
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And then the most important one of all, the great fever dream of the left for the last 100 years,
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They've wanted a federal health care entitlement for all Americans for 100 years.
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Medicare is a federal-funded health care program.
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So you have your own doctor, you're using private programs, private clinics, private insurance, whatever,
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Medicare for all would be single-payer, run-down just between you and the government.
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We've seen how terrible this can go in the United Kingdom.
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There were those two poor little babies, Charlie Gard and baby Alfie.
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Their parents wanted to take them out of the hospitals and get them treatment elsewhere.
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And the government-run hospitals said, no, your baby belongs to us.
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He said, please, bring the babies here to the hospitals at the Vatican.
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And the U.K. health care system said, no, the babies belong to us.
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President Trump said, bring the babies to the United States.
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Because the government, big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything that you have.
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And so, all of these presidential candidates for the Democrats are promising free health care and Medicare for all.
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Why are they using the phrase Medicare for all?
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It's because Medicare is very popular among old people.
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And so, they're trying to use that phrase to sell it to everybody.
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It would take over one-sixth of the economy, take away choice, and put very serious and every day, daily, life-and-death decisions in the hands of the government.
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Now, ironically, sometimes I think the Democrats are just trolling us.
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Sometimes I think they're in on the joke and they just want to see us react.
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But, ironically, you saw they want to give you child care, free money, reparations, housing, college, medical insurance.
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The only thing under their proposals that you don't get for free is your own money.
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You know, people say, well, Joe, how are you going to do all this?
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First thing I do is going to repeal this Trump tax cut.
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All of this free stuff that Democrats are promising isn't about generosity or charity.
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He's saying, I'm going to give you all this free stuff.
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I'm going to give you this free thing and this free thing and this free thing.
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And people ask me how I'm going to pay for all that free stuff.
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And I tell them, I'm going to take away more of your money.
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Yeah, I'm going to give you all this free stuff.
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I'm going to give you a ton of free stuff and then I'm going to rob you and I'm going to take all your money away.
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It shows you that the left, it's like that controlling parent, that controlling parent you have.
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You know, maybe it's a really nice mother or grandmother, I guess it could be a father.
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You go off, you're living on your own and they send you money, they write you a check, hey, go buy yourself something nice.
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I live in LA where every single person is financially dependent on their parents because none of them make any money or really work at all.
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But, you know, I sure would like it if you'd come home for this holiday.
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I mean, come on, we're doing all that nice stuff for you and you're not going to do me a little favor?
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People can give money away in charity and in love and they can also give money away so they get some control over
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how you behave and that's what the left is doing.
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Let's say, for instance, that Joe, I don't think the numbers work for Joe Biden,
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namely because just the Green New Deal costs $93 trillion and you're not going to be able to pay off $93 trillion
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by repealing President Trump's modest tax cuts from 2018.
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And so the government is going to pay for everything that they're promising you for free
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by taking away exactly that same amount in your taxes.
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Why do we want the government to do that at all?
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If it's a wash, if Joe Biden is saying, I'm going to just pay for it by taking away your money in taxes,
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Wouldn't you rather pay for your own college and your own housing and your own health care
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It's going to cost you the same amount of money.
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It's actually going to cost you less money to do it yourself because there's not that government overhead
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But if it's going to be a wash, if somebody's got to pay in the end,
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if the bill eventually comes due, you would want the money yourself.
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And you, look, I hate the modern health care system.
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Unless you have something like an HSA, you basically never see the prices of doctor visits and tests
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Even so, and even though our system is very expensive,
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you will never believe how expensive health care gets when it's free.
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You will never believe how expensive child care gets when it's free.
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You will never believe how expensive health care gets.
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How much schooling, tuition, housing, UBI, money, reparations.
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It's so much more expensive when the left wing tells us that it's all free.
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That's the primary that we're dealing with right now.
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He didn't get the message that everyone moved on to free stuff, so he is still stuck on the Mueller report.
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But I guess I'm a little bit slow then, too, because Eric Swalwell is me, and I am Eric Swalwell,
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We'll get to that in a second, plus the mailbag.
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But first, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:26:14.480
I'm here right now at the Missouri State Capitol.
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We were previously in this beautiful office of State Senator Eric Burleson,
00:26:21.340
a tremendous guy who's been so hospitable today.
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And then the minute I went to broadcast this podcast,
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So I'm now in the bunker here broadcasting from Missouri.
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I got to speak here today on the importance of liberal education and free speech on campuses.
00:26:38.720
I'm going to be going to Philly tomorrow to go to my friend Matt Walsh's pro-life rally
00:26:44.720
If that punk state representative, Brian Sims, wants to show up and take on somebody his own size,
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But he's a coward who would rather stalk little underage girls and elderly women,
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Maybe I'll see you out there tomorrow if you're in Philly.
00:27:09.720
You get the Leftist Tears Tumblr, and you're going to need it tomorrow.
00:27:25.700
He didn't get the message that it's all just about free stuff,
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so now he's focusing on the Mueller report still.
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He tweeted out one of the stupidest tweets I've ever read.
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Do you know how many thousands of stupid tweets I read every single day?
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And yet this one ranks at least in the top ten.
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Remember that time Pearl Harbor was bombed and FDR called the Emperor of Japan?
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Or the time the Twin Towers were struck and Bush ringed Osama bin Laden?
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So why did Donald Trump call Putin after the Mueller report was released?
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Before I begin to take this tweet apart, I would just like to personally apologize for the tweet
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because unfortunately I am Eric Swalwell and you are Eric Swalwell
00:28:33.880
But if I weren't Eric Swalwell, I would be able to eviscerate it because how stupid.
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First of all, just as a general rule, don't compare anything to 9-11.
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It astounds me that politicians still make this extraordinarily basic mistake.
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When has a politician ever compared anything to 9-11 and it turned out well for him?
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Because on September 11th, 3,000 American civilians were killed by terrorists who hijacked airplanes.
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And in the Mueller report, a special counsel discovered that the president of the United States
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You see, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, kamikaze Japanese pilots took out our fleet in Hawaii,
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And in the Mueller report, a lawyer figured out that Donald Trump didn't collude with the Russians.
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So I could see how you'd get confused, but they're actually different things.
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What Eric Swalwell is doing here, because he's kind of invested all his eggs in this basket of Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
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And so even though the Mueller report very clearly says that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians,
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it exonerates him on charges of criminal conspiracy or committing any crime with the Russians.
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Some of you very likely have read the Mueller report.
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We know that the special counsel and the attorney general exonerate President Trump on the charge of colluding with the Russians.
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And yet, I bet if you polled the American people today, I bet most of them think Trump colluded with the Russians.
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And so now the Democrats are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
00:30:41.680
They're stuck between the reality they were really hoping for this Mueller report to convict Trump of being some KGB spy.
00:30:53.020
And so now you've got all the people they misled calling for impeachment.
00:30:56.320
But then broadly, you've got the American people who really don't want impeachment.
00:30:59.980
And Nancy Pelosi has to answer out of both sides of her mouth.
00:31:03.120
And I have said the president is goading us into, wants to goad us into impeachment because he knows, as do I,
00:31:19.180
But the point is, is that every single day, whether it's obstruction, obstruction, obstruction, obstruction of having people come to the table with facts,
00:31:32.180
ignoring subpoenas, ignoring subpoenas, every single day, the president is making a case.
00:31:40.260
He's becoming self-impeachable in terms of some of the things that he is doing.
00:31:59.840
She she's doing something that politicians have to do, which is just babble senselessly, give an answer that isn't an answer.
00:32:06.620
Sometimes when you ask a politician a tough question, they don't have an answer.
00:32:09.520
They'll say, listen, I think it's very, very important.
00:32:17.520
So I don't want to actually do anything, but they have to seem like they care.
00:32:20.420
And so Nancy Pelosi here is she's talking like she's really serious, but she knows she can't impeach him.
00:32:29.540
The latest polling shows only 29 percent of Americans want to impeach Trump.
00:32:34.160
However, the majority of Democrats still want to impeach Trump.
00:32:38.920
And she needs to hold a fractious House caucus together.
00:32:41.440
So when she's asked this question, she can only babble nonsense.
00:32:44.240
It reminds me of when you're in class and the teacher asks you, hey, what do you think of this chapter of the book?
00:32:53.020
And so you just start saying mealy mouth nothing.
00:32:56.060
She goes, well, if you're asking me about impeachment, I mean, really, I could impeach, I guess.
00:33:03.580
Or, I mean, really, when you really think about it, he's sort of self impeaching himself, I think.
00:33:13.660
So what is the Democrats' message going into this election?
00:33:27.760
Now, if he did commit a crime, what crime did he commit?
00:33:31.200
The Mueller report says he didn't collude with the Russians.
00:33:37.320
Now, if he did commit a crime, whatever magical crime they're going to come up with,
00:33:45.480
If Nancy Pelosi, if they caught the president committing a crime, they should impeach him.
00:33:50.920
If they're not going to impeach him, then why do they keep pushing the narrative that he committed a crime?
00:33:55.740
It just makes them look impotent or incompetent.
00:33:59.500
If he didn't commit a crime and they're not going to impeach him, then what is wrong with Donald Trump?
00:34:12.560
Wages are rising for the first time in a long time.
00:34:18.960
You've got way more job openings than people to fill them.
00:34:31.300
Everything is going great, and yet Trump's approval is just between 46 and 50 percent.
00:34:42.840
But, even according to Gallup, Donald Trump is doing better than Barack Obama at the same point in his presidency.
00:34:51.760
So, Trump's poll numbers are better than Obama's poll numbers.
00:34:55.180
However, you've got to remember, the Obama years were terrible.
00:35:05.280
I mean, not only do I not remember when things were going so well in this country during my lifetime,
00:35:10.280
I don't remember when things were going this well economically and as a matter of foreign affairs, ever.
00:35:18.440
This may be, when you just look at the economy and foreign policy,
00:35:22.380
this may be the best time in the history of the United States.
00:35:25.940
And yet, Trump's numbers are only 46 to 50 percent.
00:35:28.920
Now, in part, this is due to a country that is very politically divided
00:35:32.780
and that has been increasingly politically divided over the last several decades.
00:35:41.020
Also, part of this is many people find Trump personally repulsive.
00:35:50.540
But many people find Donald Trump personally repulsive.
00:35:57.300
Many people found Obama personally likable, but they hated his policies.
00:36:05.760
But with Trump, people love his policies, and many of them don't like him personally.
00:36:10.460
So this is the question that Democrats and the free stuff primary have to ask.
00:36:14.140
If their only chance is to make 2020 about personality, are people really going to trade prosperity for personality?
00:36:24.100
Are they going to really trade their own hard-earned money and their own economic freedom for free stuff that costs more money than the stuff they're getting?
00:36:33.640
If people would trade all that prosperity for personality, then the question is, which personality is going to beat Trump?
00:36:54.280
But if it really comes down to personality, are you going to be able to beat the king of reality TV?
00:37:01.940
Let's get to the mailbag before we've got to go.
00:37:06.000
If you were to have a chance to sit and talk with the more prominent members of the Inklings, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, et cetera, and could ask them one question, what would it be?
00:37:21.420
Because all those guys are definitely in heaven, right?
00:37:28.540
I don't like fantasy stuff, but I still like Tolkien as a person, as a thinker.
00:37:39.400
I want to know their thoughts on theology and God and religion.
00:37:51.820
That's what I ask them every night that I read their books.
00:37:59.640
Michael, would you be in favor of runoff elections so that third parties actually have a shot at election?
00:38:17.260
If there is a runoff, you've got these little parties that come up and spring out of nowhere,
00:38:24.180
and you get an organized group of activists, and they make a big dent.
00:38:40.360
There are some radical changes that I would make tomorrow if I were king,
00:38:47.080
But even those radical changes that I want, I would be cautious about,
00:38:52.140
And those big parties do have real institutional heft and inertia to them,
00:38:57.980
and they do have some coherence, especially these days.
00:39:01.100
In the old days, the parties didn't line up exactly with political ideologies,
00:39:06.520
didn't line up with leftism or with conservative thought.
00:39:13.320
The Republican Party more or less represents a conservative view of the world.
00:39:19.060
I know it's imperfect, but all human institutions are imperfect,
00:39:22.100
and so it more or less represents conservative thought.
00:39:24.260
The Democratic Party, also imperfect, also corrupt, also all those things,
00:39:28.560
basically represents the left-wing view of the world.
00:39:34.320
There are a lot of little parties that would represent incoherent views.
00:39:38.820
There would probably be a party of social, liberal, fiscal conservatives.
00:39:45.640
And there are a lot of people who would call themselves socially, liberal, fiscally conservative.
00:39:57.100
I would have called myself that at different times.
00:40:00.300
I like that there is clarity between the two parties,
00:40:02.880
and I like that, especially these days, they're having an honest fight.
00:40:07.400
Dear Dr. Kofefe, I very much enjoyed your take on tariffs.
00:40:11.180
Along the same lines, what do you think of Tucker's idea of banning self-driving trucks?
00:40:15.980
Should we ban certain economic shifts if the resulting cultural damage,
00:40:20.780
in this case mass unemployment, would be too much to bear?
00:40:26.360
So I don't take an idolatrous view of free trade.
00:40:31.980
I think there are negative consequences of free trade,
00:40:34.120
particularly to culture, particularly of questions of mass migration,
00:40:38.160
particularly in questions of surrendering some of your national sovereignty.
00:40:42.900
Because necessarily, when you engage in free trade in the 21st century,
00:40:47.380
that usually doesn't mean bilateral trade deals.
00:40:50.160
What that usually means is you're engaging in these massive international,
00:40:55.300
supranational organizations, the World Trade Organization, the IMF,
00:41:00.560
And when you engage in those free trade systems and organizations,
00:41:05.720
you, by definition, give away some of your national sovereignty
00:41:09.280
to a group that is not accountable to your people.
00:41:14.500
and that's why I think there are plenty of good reasons
00:41:21.340
I don't think this is the case for banning self-driving trucks.
00:41:24.040
I question the premise that self-driving trucks would cause mass unemployment.
00:41:33.320
We have something like a million more jobs open than we can fill.
00:41:37.960
So I don't think we're going to have mass unemployment
00:41:42.520
However, it is true, technological innovation changes culture.
00:41:54.040
Now, I'm skeptical that you can predict the negatives of certain technological changes.
00:42:00.820
I'm skeptical that anyone can predict the future.
00:42:03.520
But it is certainly the case that massive, rampant technological change,
00:42:09.120
particularly when it is married to globalization, mass migration, free trade organizations,
00:42:15.440
when it's married to all of this, this can have massive cultural change.
00:42:19.080
And if a people wants to defend its culture against even technological innovation, they should.
00:42:24.960
The trouble now for us in the West is we don't believe in our culture anymore.
00:42:30.360
We don't participate in our cultural institutions.
00:42:32.760
So it might be a moot point because I don't think that anybody is going to trade their iPhone
00:42:37.740
for another extra couple nights at the Lions Club.
00:42:40.380
I don't think anybody wants to go back in time, nor should they go back in time.
00:42:45.900
But I don't think people are more protective of their culture than they are of their stuff.
00:42:51.200
And that's a cultural problem in and of itself.
00:42:53.620
From John, hey, Michael, I recently had a friend tell me they did not keep the baby when she was younger.
00:43:02.080
It has been close to 10 years since, and she still suffers from her past actions.
00:43:07.000
She still cries about this, and you can tell it weighs on her.
00:43:10.180
I'm not sure what I can say as she is looking to me for comfort.
00:43:14.220
Any thoughts or self-help books that might help her with her struggles?
00:43:17.760
I will tell you to tell your friend what an ex-mobster turned born-again Catholic told me one time in New York.
00:43:36.140
People do very bad things, and abortion is a very bad thing.
00:43:49.340
At the time, maybe you didn't think abortion was a serious issue.
00:43:55.040
Life goes on, and you shouldn't wallow in self-pity and wallow in regret and wallow in the past.
00:44:05.660
The devil wants you to go wallow in the past and wallow in self-pity.
00:44:11.360
You made a bad decision, in some cases a very bad decision.
00:44:21.720
You move on with your life, and you live a good life.
00:44:25.400
What if Paul just decided, after he saw Christ on the road to Damascus, he says,
00:44:34.820
I can't become one of the greatest evangelists in all of history because I killed people.
00:44:42.000
We wouldn't have Christianity today if that were the case.
00:44:53.500
And even that suffering that she's experiencing right now doesn't have a moral quality.
00:44:59.980
It's your reaction to suffering that determines if you're going to respond in a good or a bad way.
00:45:03.940
From Ivan, Dear Pedro Knowles, no, now I'm Eric Swalwell.
00:45:12.000
Dear, I'll change that, Eric Swalwell, since you are of Italian descent, what do you think of Benito Mussolini
00:45:17.820
and how much distance Italy has put between itself and the days of the fascist kingdom of Italy?
00:45:42.340
Dante in the Divine Comedy refers to Italy as a slave.
00:45:51.420
We've had something like 45 governments in Italy since World War II.
00:46:01.580
And if tradition is any predictor of the future, it's going to remain absolutely awful.
00:46:06.520
All right, we've got a lot more to get to, but unfortunately we're out of time.
00:46:09.880
I'm going to Philly tomorrow, so maybe I'll see you there.
00:46:16.360
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner.
00:46:42.840
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
00:46:47.800
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, Democrats in the Judiciary Committee hold the Attorney General in contempt and declare a constitutional crisis.