Ep. 355 - Fake News： From Feminism To Foreign Policy
Summary
Naomi Wolf is the leading feminist author in the world. She was an advisor to Bill Clinton in the 90s. She helped to launch the third wave of feminism. And then, the other day, she collapsed on the radio.
Transcript
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From the foreign policy establishment to third wave feminists,
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Then, Eric Swalwell's parody of a presidential campaign is running out of money.
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And President Trump takes the presidential reality TV show to Japan.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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The greatest radio interview that has ever been conducted in the history of the world
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This is with the feminist author, Naomi Wolf, promoting her new book on BBC Three Radio.
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And during this interview, feminism collapsed entirely.
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Even better, after I got my lovely sleep on my Bowlin Branch sheets,
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I wake up and I get to play this interview with Naomi Wolf.
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For those of you who don't know Naomi Wolf, she is possibly the leading feminist author
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in the world, and she has been a preeminent feminist for at least two decades now.
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So when Bill Clinton had all of his girl troubles in the 90s, he brought in Naomi Wolf to shore
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Al Gore hired her to support his campaign in 2000.
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She literally helped to launch the third wave of feminism with her book, The Beauty Myth.
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She's just been a major figure, and she collapsed on the radio the other day.
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I have to say, a lot of conservatives were really spiking the football on this and were
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I sort of like Naomi Wolf, and I've always liked her, not because she's terribly insightful,
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not because she's honest, as you'll see in this interview, as she gets the facts very,
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very wrong, but I've always felt that Naomi Wolf would at least honestly follow her arguments
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So even if she started with false premises, she would at least take them all the way to
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In 1995, writing in The New Republic, she wrote an essay about abortion, and she said, quote,
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Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must be
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This shocked, obviously, the pro-life movement, and it shocked abortion supporters as well.
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It shocked the pro-life movement because we couldn't believe how honest she was.
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And we have to kill it in order for women to be equal.
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The pro-abortion movement was horrified by this because they're basically saying, don't be
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She said, no, if we want abortion, if the argument for abortion is that men and women
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Well, I guess these days they do get pregnant, but this was, this was back in the old timey
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days before men could be women and women could be men.
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And so the only way to have true gender equality is to allow mothers to kill their babies.
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That's, that's really the only coherent argument for abortion I've ever heard.
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Still, even if she's following arguments, honestly, if the premises are false, then the
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And the, the premise of her new book was just eviscerated live on the air.
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She was doing this interview on BBC Radio 3, and she realized that the, the thesis of
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her book, which is called Outrages, Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love, is based
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Death recorded is, is what's in, I think, most of these cases that you've, you've identified
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It was a category that was created in 1823 that allowed judges to abstain from pronouncing
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a sentence of death on any capital convict whom they considered to be a fit subject for
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I don't think any of the executions you've identified here actually happened.
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Well, that's a really important thing to investigate.
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What is your, what is your understanding of what death recorded means?
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This is also from, I've just read you the definition of it there from the old Bailey website.
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But I've got here a newspaper report about Thomas Silver and also something from, from the
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prison records that, that show the date of his discharge.
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The prisoner was found guilty and sentence of death was recorded.
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Ah, the jury recommended the prisoner to mercy on account of his youth.
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See, I think this, I think this is a kind of, when I found this, I didn't really know
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what to do with it because I think it is, I think it's quite a big problem with your
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Thomas Silver committed an indecent assault on a six-year-old boy.
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It is almost painful to listen to that radio clip.
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So she says, the premise of her book is that gay men were executed for consensual sex in
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the UK in the 19th century, early 20th century.
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And it's this awful oppression and see, it's really been happening over time.
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The reason that she concluded that is because in cases of sodomy, the punishment was death
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And so Naomi Wolf, apparently ignorant of the English jurisprudential tradition, just assumed
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that meant that the person had been executed somehow.
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Death recorded was just a way for the judge to say, okay, you've been sentenced to death
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And also, so obviously this is an egregious error.
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If you're going to write a book with the premise that gay men were executed in the United
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Kingdom, you need to know what these terms mean.
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But okay, I mean, maybe some of us also ignorant of English jurisprudence, maybe we would have
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Then he goes on with a knockout punch at the end.
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He says, also, it's not that these were cases of consensual sex between adult gay men.
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This guy that you're talking about raped a six-year-old boy.
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And then he goes on and points out in so many of the other cases she's observing, where you're
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talking about not just statutory rape, you're talking about a forcible rape between adults.
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None of these cases appear to have been consensual, at least the ones that this interviewer looked into.
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She can say, oh, well, yes, I suppose we should look into that.
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The problem with feminism is not that feminists are bad people.
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The problem with feminism is not that their arguments necessarily go completely off the rails.
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The problem with feminism is that it's based on lies, such as this.
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The problem with gender theory is it's based on lies, such as this.
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Even third-wave feminists now will say that until 1965, women were brutally, horribly oppressed in this country.
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Before second-wave feminism, women were horribly oppressed.
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Then with the rise of second-wave feminism, women's station in life gradually increased.
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They got more political rights, more opportunities in the workplace, more social privileges.
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The problem with that narrative that women had it terrible before the 60s and now it's really great
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is that study after study shows, women have become less happy, specifically since that time.
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Specifically since the rise of second-wave feminism, women have become less happy in both absolute terms
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and in relative terms, relative to men's happiness.
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Based on lies, these gender theory ideas that come around are based on the lie that men can be women and women can be men.
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And so they make arguments from those premises of which bathrooms you should use, what hormones you should inject,
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The arguments, I suppose, sort of make sense, except they're based on a lie.
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And so what Naomi Wolf is demonstrating here and what a lot of these radicals do is they have to change the past.
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They have to say that gay men were executed for consensual sex as a widespread epidemic in the United Kingdom in the past.
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We can look into the historical record and show that it didn't.
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But by controlling the past, you control the future.
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That's why the radical left wants to tear down monuments, rename buildings, rename memorials.
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By controlling the past, you control the future.
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This is why Oliver Stone makes a movie about the assassination of JFK in which JFK is not killed by a communist as actually happened
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and as we know happened, but he's killed by a bunch of Republicans or the military-industrial complex or the CIA or whatever.
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This is why Adam McKay needs to make a movie about Dick Cheney in which Dick Cheney does a number of awful things that we know for a fact he didn't do.
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In Adam McKay's movie, In Vice, Dick Cheney leaks the identity of this CIA operative Valerie Plain.
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By controlling the past, by rewriting the past, you get to control the future.
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The thesis of her book, Proven Incorrect on Air, we'll see which way she can take it because this is the question that fake news has to deal with everywhere.
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She came out and she said, oh, I'll have to look into that.
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Or, oh, yes, okay, this merits further investigation.
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Obviously, they're going to have to indefinitely push the release of this book.
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She can find one case somewhere where consensual gay guys were killed for being gay.
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Or more likely, she can say, okay, they weren't killed for being gay and having gay sex, but they were killed.
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Or rather, they did suffer political consequences.
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And really, this is just as bad as capital punishment.
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So really, if you really think about it, actually, really, the thesis of my book is correct.
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I mean, it would be a little pathetic, but she could try to do it.
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Now, the other thing she can do is admit that she was wrong.
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This is the hardest thing for people to do, especially political activists, especially people with a highly defined ideology.
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The best thing that they can do is admit that they were wrong.
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You know, the old conservative columnist, the late great Charles Krauthammer, was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal when he was a young man.
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He was a speechwriter for the Democrat presidential candidate Walter Mondale.
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And then he became one of the leading figures during the Reagan administration and later during the Bush 2 administration.
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I got to ask him this question while he was alive.
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And he said that he realized that the policies that he had supported, the liberal policies, actually hurt the people that they were intended to help.
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He came to the same conclusion as Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
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Pat Moynihan, a Democrat, wrote the Moynihan Report on the consequences of all of those great society welfare programs.
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He realized they were hurting the people they were intended to help.
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This is a liberating experience when you can change your mind.
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I have changed my mind on a number of topics throughout the years.
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I am sure I thought a lot of stupid things about politics when I was 13 or 14 years old.
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Abortion's been in the news a lot the last couple weeks.
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I had a conversation with a female bioethicist when I was a student fellow in D.C.
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She told me things about abortion that I didn't know.
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And I'm glad I did because my old opinion was incorrect.
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The more I learn about abortion, the more wrong I realize that I was.
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The trouble with ideology and being so committed to ideology is it makes you look ridiculous.
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When you could admit that you are wrong, that is an act of humility.
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She's always been one of the better feminists, I thought.
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But she's always been a little better than some of the other shrieking ones.
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I hope she comes out and says, wow, I was wrong.
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I hope she goes out and writes the opposite of this book.
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Says, look, people weren't oppressed for their sexual preferences.
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Look, people weren't really victimized to the degree that I thought they were.
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I've learned something about my cultural history and that makes me like my history more.
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Not holding my breath, but that would be a true breath of fresh air,
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especially in a highly partisan and ideological time such as we are in.
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But the fake news of the weekend was not limited to feminism.
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There was also major fake news that came out of the foreign policy establishment.
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If you haven't heard of Ian Bremmer, he is the real deal.
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This is a major establishment figure in foreign policy.
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This is not just some two-bit tweeter or political pundit or something.
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This guy has credibility or had credibility in foreign policy.
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And he sent out a tweet while President Trump was in Tokyo.
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Quote, President Trump in Tokyo, Kim Jong-un is smarter and would make a better president
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And people started retweeting this, thousands of retweets.
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Someone responded and said that cannot be a real quote.
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And Bremmer responded to her and said, it's plausible.
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Okay, now, you and I know this is not plausible.
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Anybody who has not been totally deranged by the Trump administration, who has not become
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this totally reactionary maniac who believes that Trump is a secret super-duper KGB Nazi
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spy, traitor, whatever, realizes that is not plausible.
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President Trump says a lot of colorful things, but he would not go out and say Kim Jong-un
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is smarter and would make a better president than Joe Biden.
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This quote is only plausible to people who have an unrealistically negative view of Trump.
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Look, Trump would say, he actually has said a lot of things about Joe Biden and about Kim
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Jong-un and about Kim Jong-un and Joe Biden, but he wouldn't say that.
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There's no way that the president would endorse a North Korean dictator for president over Joe
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Biden, right? However, among people who have an unrealistically negative view of the president,
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they all believed it. They showed themselves to be gullible fools.
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Anna Navarro, who is a fake Republican, she goes on television and pretends to be a Republican,
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even though she is not. I don't remember the last time she did anything that in any way aided
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any Republican. She came out and tweeted, quote, she, she retweeted Bremer and she said,
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don't shrug your shoulders. Don't get used to this insanity. The president of the United States
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praising a cruel dictator who violates human rights, threatens nuclear attacks, oppresses his people
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and kills political opponents. Quotes or capital letters is not freaking normal.
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Anna Navarro is not kidding around. Zach Petkonos, who is a former senior advisor to Hillary Clinton,
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former senior advisor to the Democrat National Committee. He tweeted out, same thing, same Ian
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Bremmer quote, the president of the United States is not in control of his faculties, hashtag 25th
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amendment, suggesting we need to remove the president from office because of the quote that
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Ian Bremmer attributed to him. Then Bremmer came out and he admitted the quote is completely
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ridiculous. He said, this was Bremmer's explanation of it. This is objectively a completely ludicrous
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quote and yet kind of plausible, especially on Twitter where people automatically support whatever
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political position they have. That's the point. So, so what Bremmer is saying is, see, I got all of you.
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I was exposing how gullible you are. This isn't a hoax. This is just an experiment. This is just a sort of
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art piece to show you how gullible all of you are and also to show you how president Trump says
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outrageous things so that when he says something that is even beyond the pale for president Trump,
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you sort of believe it, especially if you already don't like president Trump. That's, that was
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Bremmer's spin on this because he got a huge negative reaction. People rightly pointed out that
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he spread fake news, the definition of fake news. President Trump then came out and tweeted about it.
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He said, Ian Bremmer now admits that he made up a completely ludicrous quote attributing it to me.
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This is what's going on in the age of fake news. People think they can say anything and get away
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with it. Really, the libel laws should be changed to hold fake news media accountable. I won't get into
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the libel law discussion now. That will take us an hour probably, but Trump goes out and he says,
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this is fake news. Look what he did. It got thousands and thousands of retweets before he
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finally admitted that it wasn't true. And Bremmer now has since apologized. He said,
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my tweet yesterday about Trump referring Kim Jong-un to Biden as president was meant to ingest.
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The president quoted me as saying it was completely ridiculous. I should have been clearer.
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My apologies. Everybody is angry at Ian Bremmer for this fake news. The right is angry because
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it, it, he, he was trying to make Donald Trump look crazy and unpatriotic. And a lot of people,
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thousands and thousands of people retweeted this before he came out and admitted it was fake.
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The left is angry with Ian Bremmer because it makes them look stupid and a little bit crazy,
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which is no surprise to any of us, but obviously he just made them look like gullible fools.
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So what about Ian Bremmer's excuses? What about his excuse that he was just showing us one,
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how outrageous Trump can be to how gullible we are all, all are on Twitter. Three, the, the
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integrity of, of the news media and how the integrity has been diminished, how the credibility
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has been diminished, how we don't check anything anymore, how we don't fact check, how we don't
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look into things for ourselves. Does he have a point? Yes, totally. He totally has a point.
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You should never run with something because you saw a tweet about it. You should never quote anybody.
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This one I see all the time on the internet. You'll see a picture of somebody and then a quote next to
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them. The famous version of this is a picture of Abraham Lincoln. And it says, don't believe
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everything you read just because you saw it on the internet. Abraham Lincoln. And this is obviously
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mocking what people do, which is they'll read a quote, they'll see it next to a person's name,
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and they'll just assume it's true. I, I investigate every single quote that I put on this show or I put
00:24:41.000
in writing or that I read on the internet. 95% of the time, the quotes that you read on the internet
00:24:47.340
attributed to historical figures are false. They never said them. Almost 100% of the time,
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it's not a scientific number. I'm just telling you from experience. It virtually every quote you
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read attributed to Winston Churchill or George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln
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is just not true. And so when you see a quote on the internet, especially one that seems a little
00:25:10.680
ridiculous, you should look it up. Bremers are right about that. Is he right that the president says
00:25:15.840
outrageous things? Yes, he does. President Trump says outrageous things and his critics,
00:25:23.820
Trump's critics in particular, don't know where the line of plausibility is. Trump could go out and
00:25:28.760
say, oh, Kim's a really nice guy. Or he could say, yeah, Joe Biden's an idiot. And we, and we would
00:25:33.580
all assume that that is totally plausible. It is not plausible that Donald Trump would go out and say,
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I think Kim Jong-un would make a great president of the United States compared to Joe Biden. That's,
00:25:43.320
that is just too ludicrous. Bremers is also right that Twitter is fundamentally performative.
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Twitter is not about conversation. It is not about the exchange of ideas. It is performative. It's
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performative in the way that a presidential debate is not about conversation or exchanging ideas.
00:26:01.880
It's about scoring points and showing your audience that your opinion is correct and the
00:26:06.400
other guy's opinion is wrong. That is what Twitter is for. People have Twitter audiences.
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Those audience are waiting for the people they're following and we are waiting for the people that
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we're following to say things and to score points and to show that the opinions that we all share
00:26:21.280
are more correct than the opinions that we all oppose. People don't really fact check, particularly
00:26:26.360
the left. People don't use common sense, particularly the left, because the left doesn't have a whole lot
00:26:32.180
of common sense. So should Ian Bremmer have posted that? Since it had, it did have a lot of value in that
00:26:38.360
tweet. And I really like it because it's hilarious to show how gullible the left is. Should he have
00:26:43.300
posted it? No, he shouldn't have. We'll get to why in a second. We'll get to what President Trump
00:26:48.440
actually said about Kim Jong-un and Joe Biden, which is almost as outrageous, not quite, but it's
00:26:54.620
almost as outrageous. Pretty funny. A lot of people are upset about it. And we'll get to Eric Swalwell,
00:26:59.340
but first got to go to dailywire.com. 10 bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me,
00:27:04.540
you get the Andrew Klavan show. You get the Ben Shapiro show. You get the Matt Wohl show. You get
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to ask questions in the mailbag coming up on Thursday. You get to ask questions backstage
00:27:13.860
coming up today. Get ready for backstage. You get another kingdom. You get so much stuff. You get
00:27:18.980
the leftist tears tumbler. Oh, that's really good. That is really good. Three major political models
00:27:29.500
are predicting that President Trump is going to win in 2020. And the New York Times had to admit it
00:27:33.580
over the weekend. You're going to need the tumbler before that. Look, we're pretty early in the 2020
00:27:39.560
race. You're already seeing the front runner hiding from everybody in the race. You're already seeing
00:27:45.100
the New York Times admit that they might not win. Get the tumbler or you could drown. Go to
00:28:00.760
So Ian Bremmer's tweet has a point. It shows that people on Twitter are too gullible. It shows that
00:28:07.420
the president does say some outrageous things. It shows that the media are undignified and usually
00:28:14.840
spread fake news. So it does have a point. He still shouldn't have tweeted it. Why? Because he
00:28:20.620
has a reputation. And it's not just him. We all have reputations. But Ian Bremmer is a recognizable
00:28:28.860
name. He has a little blue check mark. He goes to lunches at the Council on Foreign Relations.
00:28:33.620
This is a real guy. And he is risking, he is tarnishing his reputation and his credibility
00:28:42.180
by engaging in this little joke or hoax or experiment or art piece or whatever you want
00:28:48.400
to call it or whatever he wants to call it. That is fake news. He did it. He shouldn't do it. I get
00:28:55.280
the point that he's trying to make. But he's making that point at the expense of his credibility.
00:29:00.440
The mainstream media have lost all of their credibility over the last three years too.
00:29:04.660
So I guess maybe that's not a terrible thing. That's the fake news about Trump and Kim and
00:29:09.420
Joe Biden. The real news is pretty out there as well. The real news actually is a news story.
00:29:15.380
President Trump during a press conference in Japan was asked about a quote from Kim Jong-un
00:29:21.540
where Kim Jong-un criticized Joe Biden and called him an idiot. Here is how President Trump
00:29:28.260
responded to this question. Well, Kim Jong-un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low IQ
00:29:35.400
individual. He probably is based on his record. I think I agree with him on that. But at the same
00:29:41.980
time, my people think it could have been a violation, as you know. I view it differently. I view it as a man
00:29:50.000
perhaps he wants to get attention. And perhaps not. Who knows? It doesn't matter. All I know is that
00:29:56.860
there have been no nuclear tests. There have been no ballistic missiles going out. There have been no
00:30:02.900
long-range missiles going out. And I think that someday we'll have a deal.
00:30:09.040
Okay. So I just can't help myself. When I heard this clip for the first time, I burst out laughing.
00:30:18.360
Mr. President, Kim Jong-un called Joe Biden an idiot. Well, listen, he called Joe Biden a low IQ
00:30:25.220
individual. Judging from the evidence, this is probably correct. However, and then he goes on,
00:30:31.140
I just burst out laughing. What should he have done here? For the people on the left and the right who
00:30:37.020
are criticizing him for this response and saying it's undignified and saying it's not nice to say
00:30:41.880
mean things about fellow politicians overseas and saying that's all, I get it. What was he supposed
00:30:47.860
to do? He was asked if he agrees with Kim Jong-un. He was asked if he, he was, he was asked about this
00:30:55.300
comment from Kim Jong-un that Biden is an idiot. This is a trap, right? Because as a rule, if you are
00:31:02.020
agreeing with Kim Jong-un, you're doing something wrong. You'd know, no American politician wants to
00:31:07.580
be put in the position where he has to agree with Kim Jong-un. So if he agrees with Kim Jong-un,
00:31:11.740
he looks awful. If he disagrees with Kim Jong-un, he looks like a liar and a hack because President
00:31:17.420
Trump has pointed out that Joe Biden is an idiot for years and years at this point. So you have,
00:31:23.560
Donald Trump says Joe Biden's an idiot. Then Kim Jong-un says Joe Biden's an idiot.
00:31:27.060
Then a reporter says, do you agree with Kim Jong-un that Joe Biden's an idiot? Trump has to say,
00:31:31.680
yeah, of course I do. I've been saying it since way before Kim Jong-un was saying that Joe Biden's
00:31:36.020
an idiot. Also, Joe Biden is an idiot. Little bit of a side note, but Joe Biden had terrible academic
00:31:43.020
records. This is actually the reason that he had to drop out of the 1988 race because he plagiarized a
00:31:49.620
speech and because he lied about his academic record. He said he did well in his law school class.
00:31:54.540
He actually was number 76 out of 85 in his law school class. So just as an objective matter,
00:32:02.000
Joe Biden probably is a low IQ individual. Still, the question is, should he have agreed with Kim
00:32:09.080
Jong-un on this point, especially overseas? On top of all of this, President Trump, as he just said,
00:32:15.860
as you heard him say, thinks that he is going to get a deal with North Korea. A lot of people are
00:32:22.120
highly skeptical that he's going to get a deal with North Korea, but he thinks he is. And he
00:32:26.420
thinks that the way to get a deal is not to antagonize Kim. So I'm not saying this is right.
00:32:32.800
I'm not saying this is moral. I'm not even saying it's likely to work. I'm just saying this is the
00:32:37.840
strategy. Trump comes out, he says, look, there haven't been nuclear tests. He's not shooting off
00:32:42.020
ballistic missiles. He's not. Okay. So I think we've got progress. And, and Kim Jong-un criticizing Joe
00:32:49.780
Biden was probably a way to ingratiate himself to Trump. So I'm not going to antagonize him.
00:32:54.760
That I think is the strategy. Also, we just as Americans find it repulsive when the president of
00:33:03.880
the United States agrees with a hostile foreign leaders criticism of our politicians, even if he's
00:33:10.740
as awful a politician as Joe Biden, by the way, Joe Biden engages in this kind of stuff too.
00:33:15.020
Joe Biden has helped to launch his campaign by saying that he's been talking to foreign leaders
00:33:21.000
about how terrible Trump is and how Trump is a danger to the world. And they want Joe Biden to
00:33:26.100
run for president. So Joe Biden actually is engaging in almost this exact sort of thing. I guess it's
00:33:31.060
from the other perspective. He's engaging from it as he's talking to foreign leaders and he's agreeing
00:33:36.480
with foreign leaders that Trump is a crazy, awful madman and they want him to run. And Donald Trump is
00:33:42.300
agreeing with a hostile foreign leader who's saying that, that Joe Biden is an idiot, which he is.
00:33:48.140
So they're, they're both kind of engaging in this, but we do find it repugnant. We find it repulsive
00:33:53.280
when the president goes over there and ever utters the words, I agree with Kim Jong-un. Okay. How could
00:33:59.180
he have done this better? What he might have said is something to the effect of, they say, President
00:34:06.360
Trump, do you agree with Kim Jong-un that Joe Biden's an idiot? And he, he could say something
00:34:11.640
like, I don't make a habit of publicly agreeing with hostile foreign leaders who criticize our
00:34:18.560
politicians, even when those criticisms are correct. All right. He could have said something like this,
00:34:24.300
where he is acknowledging the principle of not agreeing with a guy like Kim Jong-un publicly,
00:34:28.940
especially over American politicians, and also admitting that it is the case that Joe Biden is
00:34:35.360
an idiot. And he has been saying this for years. He could have done that, except that it's a little
00:34:41.080
too subtle. That is not Trump. Ronald Reagan could have gotten away with that. Ronald Reagan could have
00:34:47.560
turned a phrase such as that, where he acknowledges the principle. He has a dignified response. And then he
00:34:53.640
gets the dig in at the end. He makes a little joke at the end about how his opponent's an idiot,
00:34:57.500
very Reagan-esque. Trump doesn't do that. Donald Trump is too blunt. Donald Trump is too personal.
00:35:05.880
What we are seeing is the presidential politics in the era of reality television. When I see Donald
00:35:13.260
Trump engaging in this kind of behavior, I don't compare that to Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln.
00:35:21.160
That's, I think, what the anti-Trump right wants to do. That's obviously what the left-wingers are
00:35:25.380
trying to do. They're trying to compare these totally anachronistic historical eras and say,
00:35:32.600
see, Donald Trump should have talked like this statesman or that statesman or this foreign leader
00:35:36.760
or that person. That's not how I see it. What I see is that this is reality TV. It's the kind of
00:35:44.060
personal, petty, catty reality TV stuff. When I saw that clip, it reminded me of those old VH1 shows
00:35:50.800
from the 2000s. It reminded me of, there was a show with Flavor Flav called The Flavor of Love,
00:35:57.180
you know, where they have the regular scene is going on and they cut away and everyone's gossiping
00:36:01.840
and saying mean things about each other. It reminded me of a classic reality TV show.
00:36:07.660
I didn't let y'all know. I invited me a special guest.
00:36:12.860
Oh, hell. Who the hell is it going to be now? I'm thinking it's one of his homies or something.
00:36:26.680
In comes this bitch, New York from last season.
00:36:34.900
Your eyes ain't playing tricks on you. This is mad love right here.
00:36:37.940
This is what we're watching. This is what presidential politics, not just in the United
00:36:43.580
States, but around the world has become. It's just Donald Trump there is Flavor Flav. He say,
00:36:48.960
yo, I invited a guest. Yo, Kim Jong-un, come on in. And they come in and they kind of say nice
00:36:53.740
things about each other and everyone is scandalized and everyone is totally shocked and they're all
00:36:58.040
pretending to be appalled. Then it cuts away to, you know, you'll see Donald Trump now. He'll comment
00:37:03.660
on politics as though he were a political pundit. He'll comment on politics as though he's doing a
00:37:09.480
cutaway on a reality TV show. So just a few weeks ago, you heard him talk about Elizabeth Warren.
00:37:14.820
He's asked about Elizabeth Warren. He says, look, frankly, I think she's done for. I think she's
00:37:19.440
going nowhere in this race. She's probably going to have to drop out because she said that she was
00:37:23.200
an Indian, but she's not really an Indian. I could have taken a test. I'd be more Indian than her,
00:37:27.280
even though that's zero. Ha ha ha. Oh yeah. Sleepy Joe Biden is doing this. Crazy Bernie's doing this.
00:37:32.920
It's all reality TV and we love it. We totally love it. That's why we love reality TV.
00:37:42.600
Abraham Lincoln is presidential politics in the era of great oratory. During Lincoln's time,
00:37:48.820
one of the main forms of entertainment was to go out and listen to politicians give three-hour
00:37:53.440
speeches, literally three-hour orations. And this was a major cultural and entertainment event.
00:38:00.140
Before Lincoln became president, he had the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
00:38:02.920
He'd go around the country and it was a road show with Stephen Douglas and they would debate the
00:38:07.700
question of slavery in soaring rhetoric that would go on for hours. Ronald Reagan then is
00:38:13.640
politics, presidential politics in the era of Hollywood's golden age and the kind of final days
00:38:20.360
of glamorous Hollywood. So the Reagan era was highly scripted, cinematic, glamorous.
00:38:27.760
It wasn't the same thing as Abraham Lincoln, but it was Hollywood. It was epic. It was Ronald Reagan going
00:38:35.440
to Berlin and saying, tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, going rather to the Berlin
00:38:43.500
wall. That was politics in the age of Reagan. Big screen. President Trump is presidential politics
00:38:53.280
in the era of reality television. It's smaller. It's cattier. It's more gossipy. It's more focused
00:39:00.880
on personal relationships and personal intrigue. And it's about the funny barb. It's about the
00:39:07.920
cutting barb, the petty barb. It's more authentic. It's not the big screen and the proper framing and
00:39:15.160
the right shots. It's a camera following you around. It's a tweet. It's an Instagram post.
00:39:19.640
It's less guarded. It is less dignified. It is less principled, but that's what it is. And it's not
00:39:26.800
Trump's fault. I'm not defending the president exactly on this line of agreeing that Joe Biden's
00:39:35.660
an idiot with Kim Jong-un. I'm not defending the area of reality television. I'm just saying
00:39:41.940
that's the culture we're in. Reality TV didn't get popular in spite of us. We made reality TV popular.
00:39:50.280
That's what our culture wants. Donald Trump didn't accidentally become president. We voted for him.
00:39:56.440
We voted for the king of reality television to be the president. That's on the culture. That's what
00:40:03.740
the culture wants. You can't then elect the king of reality TV to be the president. And then he behaves
00:40:09.420
like he's on reality TV. And then we all pretend that we're shocked and horrified and appalled
00:40:13.740
that he's behaving like he's on reality TV. That's the culture that we're in. And you can
00:40:20.300
scream and yell and talk about how awful the culture is. That's the reality. And people who
00:40:26.120
are going to succeed in this culture are going to engage in reality TV. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has
00:40:32.540
made herself one of the biggest names in national politics. And because it's the U.S., therefore,
00:40:37.360
global politics. And she does it by making chili in her crock pot at night and live streaming it and
00:40:43.860
rambling incoherently about global warming. She does it while she's, you know, painting her wall
00:40:50.200
or whatever, sitting on her, sitting with a glass of wine on the floor of her apartment. That's reality
00:40:55.860
TV. That's not Reagan. That's not Lincoln. That's not great rhetoric. That's not cinematic Hollywood.
00:41:00.760
That's where we are. President Trump even explained that this is the culture that we're in. He tweeted out,
00:41:07.360
quote, North Korea fired off some small weapons which disturbed some of my people and others,
00:41:12.620
but not me. I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me and also smiled when
00:41:18.440
he called swamp man Joe Biden a low IQ individual and worse. Perhaps that's sending me a signal.
00:41:24.820
That tweet from President Trump is the cutaway in the reality TV show. He's explaining what's
00:41:31.480
happening. It's all personal. It's all just about him and Kim. It's not about the principles
00:41:35.720
or the historic relationship between the U.S. and Korea. He, even at the end, he says,
00:41:40.940
perhaps that's sending me a signal. Oops, I don't know. Who knows? That is the era that we're in.
00:41:47.680
And look, either you can whine and complain about how terrible things are and how everything was so
00:41:53.080
much better in the good old days, or you can deal with reality, accept it as it is. And look,
00:41:58.520
this petty era of politics is giving us some great stuff, such as the fake presidential campaign of
00:42:05.500
Eric Swalwell. I know he thinks it's a real presidential campaign. It is a parody of a
00:42:10.260
presidential campaign. Over the weekend, he sent out a fundraising email. The subject was,
00:42:15.320
we're on a downtrend. My heart started beating fast. I said, oh no, please don't tell me the
00:42:20.160
Swalwell campaign is over because Eric Swalwell said, I am you. Therefore, I am Eric Swalwell.
00:42:24.940
Therefore, my presidential campaign is over. That's no good. He writes, he says, quote,
00:42:29.160
we're writing to you with an urgent request. We just looked at our finances. It seems like we're
00:42:33.020
on a downtrend for this month's fundraising numbers. I hope not, because his is my favorite race in
00:42:38.860
2020. He then posted this video from Vice News, where he is asked why America should elect just
00:42:47.200
another white guy. Why should another white guy be president? Well, a white guy who doesn't see
00:42:53.660
other identities or understand other experiences should not be president. I do. And where there
00:43:00.440
would be gaps in my knowledge or my experience, I will pass the mic to people who do have that
00:43:06.400
experience. I'm a white guy, and I'm really sorry for that, and I'm terrible, and therefore you should
00:43:11.900
elect me president because I won't ever be president or say anything or do anything. I'll let other people
00:43:17.580
who are not white guys do that, and that's why you should elect me a white guy. I am you. That's,
00:43:23.900
that's Eric Swalwell's presidential campaign. You should elect me a white guy because white guys are
00:43:29.900
terrible. That's it. He is a parody of a progressive presidential candidate, and in this video, he not
00:43:37.740
only reveals himself to be vacuous, just absolutely vapid and empty-headed, he also reveals all of the
00:43:45.420
left-wing slogans that he parrots to be empty as well. So at the end, he says, I'm going to pick a
00:43:50.920
woman for vice president. I pledge to pick a woman. Why? Is he going to pick a woman because one particular
00:43:57.920
woman is very talented? No. Any woman will do. Any woman. I, I'm Eric Swalwell, and I value women so much
00:44:05.740
that I think they're all basically the same, and I'm just going to pick one so that it makes it easier
00:44:09.400
to elect me a white guy. His slogan is go big, be bold, do good. What does that mean? I have
00:44:17.760
absolutely no idea. What does Eric Swalwell want to do? Nobody knows because he doesn't care, because
00:44:23.420
he stands for nothing, because he is the emptiest candidate in the race, with the possible exception
00:44:28.100
of Beto O'Rourke. He says he's willing to pass the mic. He says he's going to pass the mic
00:44:33.140
for issues that a white guy shouldn't address. If he's going to pass the microphone, why should we
00:44:38.620
elect him? Shouldn't, if, if he's going to pass the mic to people who are better qualified than he
00:44:44.280
is, shouldn't we just elect the person that he's going to pass the mic to? Is he going to get up
00:44:48.280
there during the Democrat presidential debates, and they're going to ask him a question, and he'll say,
00:44:52.120
you know, before I answer, how about any of the ethnic minorities or women on stage? They should
00:44:56.980
answer. Okay, then I guess we should elect them too, because we're going to pass the mic. When Iran fires
00:45:01.440
some missile at one of our ships in the Middle East, is he going to pass the mic as President
00:45:06.640
Swalwell to someone who knows Iranian culture better? He's going to pass the mic to someone who
00:45:11.800
has eaten more falafel and hummus or something? He's a white guy. What does he know about Iran?
00:45:17.920
We elect politicians not to pass the mic, not to give away their power to some arbitrary identity
00:45:25.340
group. We elect them for their judgment. This is the same problem Beto has. Beto was in Iowa. He
00:45:31.020
came out and he said he wants voters to shape him into the presidential candidate that they want.
00:45:37.000
He wants voters to mold him into the presidential candidate. I guess if you don't have a spine,
00:45:42.560
then you're pretty malleable. You're easily molded. We elect people because they stand for something.
00:45:47.940
If we're just going to mold you into whatever we want, well, why would we ever elect you? Why not
00:45:52.540
elect any of the other people who may be already themselves align more with what we think? And because
00:45:58.040
they're not infinitely malleable, might actually stand for what they say they're going to stand
00:46:02.900
for. They might actually keep their promises. That's why he's not going anywhere. That's why
00:46:07.360
Swalwell is not going anywhere. I mean, these campaigns that stand for nothing are collapsing
00:46:12.160
in real time. Joe Biden is afraid of this. We'll get to him a little bit more tomorrow. Before we go,
00:46:17.720
because it's the day after Memorial Day we weren't on yesterday, I just want to give a thank you to
00:46:22.180
everyone who, obviously to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country and our way
00:46:28.440
of life and our liberty, and also to the families who have had to make that sacrifice by the loss of
00:46:33.840
their family members. Memorial Day is one of the strangest holidays because the way we commemorate it
00:46:41.360
is by celebrating and we have backyard barbecues and we eat hot dogs and we drink too much and we go
00:46:46.780
out to the beach and we just have a really nice day. And Memorial Day exists to honor those who
00:46:53.040
made the ultimate sacrifice, who gave their lives for our freedom. And I know a number of gold star
00:47:00.700
families, so I know that Memorial Day for them is not about beers and burgers and going out to the
00:47:05.780
beach. It's a very difficult day for them. I did a play a few years ago. It was a fundraiser for the USO
00:47:12.640
right here in Hollywood. And it was a play about gold star families and people who gave their lives.
00:47:19.180
And one of the, sort of the central figure of this play was a guy named Lance Corporal Corey Ryan
00:47:24.360
Guerin. He was killed in Iraq at the age of 18. Signed up, gave his life for our country and for
00:47:32.960
you and me and for everyone else around the country. And he did it at age 18. And I got to know his
00:47:39.860
family pretty well, wonderful people. Memorial Day is not an easy day for them. It's a really tough
00:47:44.660
day. And so I just want to give a heartfelt thank you as, as we all did enjoy our day yesterday,
00:47:51.260
which, and I guess this is fitting because we get to enjoy those days because there are people who
00:47:56.400
are willing to make those sacrifices for us and to honor their memory. We enjoy ourselves. We have a
00:48:01.880
nice day, but I do want to send, give a heartfelt thank you to all of the gold star families, the ones who
00:48:06.980
are listening to the show and everyone else as well. And, uh, and a heartfelt thank you to everyone
00:48:12.700
who gave their life for me and you and our whole country. That's our show. Come back tomorrow. Got a
00:48:17.340
lot more to get to in the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. I'll see you
00:48:20.880
then. The Michael Knowles show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner,
00:48:30.980
executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is
00:48:36.560
Mathis Glover and our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by
00:48:42.320
Dylan Case. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan. The
00:48:47.620
Michael Knowles show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019. Today on the Ben Shapiro
00:48:53.280
show, president Trump slams Joe Biden by citing the world's worst dictator and integrate strategy.