The Michael Knowles Show


Ep. 368 - Reparations Are A Terrible Idea


Summary

Happy Juneteenth! Democrats on Capitol Hill are celebrating the end of slavery by pushing for reparations for the Great, Great & Great Great Grandchildren of Black Slaves. Then, President Trump kicks off his bid to make America great again, again. And someone planted Kiddie porn on Alex Jones' Infowars servers. All of that and more on today s episode of The Michael Knowles Show.


Transcript

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00:00:37.640 Happy Juneteenth.
00:00:39.120 Democrats on Capitol Hill are celebrating the end of slavery by pushing for reparations for the great, great, great, great grandchildren of black slaves.
00:00:47.040 We will examine why that's a terrible idea.
00:00:49.380 Then, President Trump kicks off his bid to make America great again, again.
00:00:53.680 And, someone planted kiddie porn on Alex Jones' Infowars servers.
00:00:58.340 All of that and more.
00:00:59.380 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:08.620 So much to get to today.
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00:02:59.340 Before we get to reparations, this is kind of the big story right now.
00:03:02.620 What's happening on Capitol Hill as we speak.
00:03:05.140 Before we get to that, I just have to tell you something.
00:03:07.780 It was an epiphany I had.
00:03:08.940 I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat because I think I have solved, once and for all, the immigration debate in the United States.
00:03:17.140 So, you remember yesterday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that the Trump administration's immigration policies are like the Holocaust.
00:03:28.220 Here's what she said.
00:03:29.060 The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are.
00:03:39.080 They are concentration camps.
00:03:40.560 And, um, if that doesn't bother you, I don't, I don't, I like, we can have, okay, whatever.
00:03:54.840 I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not, that never again means something.
00:04:03.300 So, you heard that.
00:04:04.480 She said it's like concentration camps.
00:04:06.220 She said it's just like never again, which is a direct reference to the Holocaust.
00:04:09.880 So, the Trump administration's immigration policies are like the Holocaust.
00:04:14.900 But then the other fresh face of the Democrat Party, Rashida Tlaib, said that the Holocaust gives her a calming feeling.
00:04:21.500 Just a few, I think two weeks ago or so, we celebrated, or just, it took a moment, I think, in our country to remember the Holocaust.
00:04:29.820 And there's, you know, there's a kind of a calming feeling, I always tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust and the tragedy of the Holocaust.
00:04:36.600 So, if the Trump administration having immigration laws is just like the Holocaust, and the Holocaust gives Democrats a calming feeling, the Trump administration's immigration policies give Democrats a calming feeling, we've come to a national consensus.
00:04:52.480 We don't need to talk about it anymore.
00:04:54.120 That's it.
00:04:54.800 We're doing good on the immigration plans.
00:04:57.120 President Trump, keep going full steam ahead.
00:04:59.020 You have the support of the fresh faces in the future of the Democrat Party.
00:05:03.200 Just, I woke up as if with a start.
00:05:04.740 I said, there it is, one of the central issues in our country.
00:05:08.740 There are some other issues going on in our country.
00:05:11.120 Now that we've solved immigration, we also have to move on to the most important issue of the day.
00:05:16.480 Forget the economy, forget peace abroad, forget immigration, forget our national borders.
00:05:21.440 No, the most important issue of the day is reparations for the great, great, great, great grandchildren of slaves 150 years after slavery was abolished in the United States.
00:05:32.680 They're holding hearings on this right now on Capitol Hill.
00:05:37.240 Why are they doing it today?
00:05:38.640 Today is Juneteenth.
00:05:40.740 And I think some people don't know what Juneteenth is.
00:05:43.160 Maybe this is like a geographic issue.
00:05:45.180 Some people have never heard of it.
00:05:46.580 Juneteenth is a very important day in the ending of slavery.
00:05:49.680 It's not the day when slavery was abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation.
00:05:54.980 That was issued on September 22, 1862 by President Lincoln.
00:06:00.020 And it went into effect January 1, 1863.
00:06:03.500 It's not the day that we exactly freed all of the slaves.
00:06:08.980 It's not the day that we freed all the slaves in the rebelling states.
00:06:12.360 It's the day that slavery was abolished in Texas.
00:06:15.960 So Texas was not a battleground of the Civil War.
00:06:19.660 And so the Emancipation Proclamation didn't have any effect there.
00:06:23.440 And then on June 18th, the Union Army, General Gordon Granger, arrived at Galveston Island with 2,000 federal troops.
00:06:30.840 And he said, federal law is the law here now in Texas.
00:06:34.700 And he announced the next day freedom for the slaves.
00:06:37.280 That's Juneteenth.
00:06:38.200 And this Juneteenth, so many years later, a lot of Democrats are calling for reparations for the descendants of black slaves in the United States.
00:06:47.960 Here's Sheila Jackson Lee.
00:06:49.900 H.R. 40 is in fact, is in fact the response of the United States of America long overdue.
00:06:58.780 Slavery is the original sin.
00:07:02.200 Slavery has never received an apology.
00:07:04.660 Sheila Jackson Lee, one of the dumbest members of the U.S. Congress, which is really saying something.
00:07:11.180 In the U.S. Congress, the average IQ is about 50.
00:07:14.020 And she is a particularly egregious member of Congress.
00:07:18.720 She has come out and said, we need reparations for slavery because the United States has never apologized for slavery.
00:07:30.400 Of course the United States has apologized for slavery.
00:07:32.980 We fought a bloody war where between 600,000 and 750,000 Americans killed themselves to answer for the question of slavery.
00:07:43.380 We then had a civil rights movement and then we had a great society.
00:07:49.300 We had all of these federal welfare programs that we were trying to effect to bring about some equality and apologize for historical slavery.
00:08:00.720 So obviously this is ridiculous.
00:08:02.460 The leftist writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, makes a much better case for reparations.
00:08:07.460 The typical black family in this country has one-tenth the wealth of the typical white family.
00:08:12.500 Black women die in childbirth at four times the rate of white women.
00:08:15.600 And there is, of course, the shame of this land of the free, boasting the largest prison population on the planet, of which the descendants of the enslaved make up the largest share.
00:08:26.960 The matter of reparations is one of making amends and direct redress.
00:08:32.660 But it is also a question of citizenship in H.R. 40, this body has a chance to both make good on its 2009 apology for enslavement and reject fair weather patriotism.
00:08:44.460 To say that a nation is both its credits and its debits.
00:08:48.740 That if Thomas Jefferson matters, so does Sally Hemings.
00:08:52.840 That if D-Day matters, so does Black Wall Street.
00:08:56.700 That if Valley Forge matters, so does Fort Pillow.
00:08:59.980 Because the question really is, not whether we will be tied to the somethings of our past, but whether we are courageous enough to be tied to the whole of them.
00:09:10.780 The case is basically this, that regardless of who's responsible for slavery, regardless, it doesn't matter, Black people do worse in America than other groups.
00:09:21.720 They do worse than not all other groups.
00:09:25.540 There are some groups that do worse specifically, Native Americans, for instance.
00:09:29.980 But on the whole, Black people in America have less money, have higher rates of crime, lower educational attainment outcomes.
00:09:38.240 They marry at lower rates.
00:09:39.680 They have higher out-of-wedlock birth.
00:09:41.300 They have higher rates of abortion.
00:09:43.020 In New York City, rather, 60% of Black babies are aborted.
00:09:48.500 More Black babies are aborted than born.
00:09:50.780 It's the most dangerous place for a Black person in New York, is in his mother's womb.
00:09:56.380 That's terrifying.
00:09:57.400 I mean, that's bad.
00:09:57.980 And so what Ta-Nehisi Coates is saying is, regardless of who's responsible for it, this is the fact.
00:10:04.020 You can't deny that right now, Black people are doing worse in America than other groups are.
00:10:09.760 That's true.
00:10:10.880 What he is saying is that history is affecting Black people today.
00:10:15.360 And I actually agree with him.
00:10:16.760 I think this is a pretty good case.
00:10:19.180 I mean, just speaking personally, when I think of the country, my ancestors helped to found America.
00:10:26.380 Four of them came over here on the Mayflower.
00:10:29.220 They fought in, I think, every American war.
00:10:31.540 John and Simon Knowles fought at Bunker Hill.
00:10:34.040 John died of his wounds there.
00:10:35.440 Simon Knowles was in Washington's army, was with him at Valley Forge.
00:10:39.100 George Cobb Knowles died at the Battle, I think, of Boynton Plank Road in the Civil War.
00:10:43.340 When I look back on the history of America, I see my family's involvement in it.
00:10:49.280 And that gives me a loyalty to the country, a love of the country, a sense of responsibility toward the country.
00:10:55.920 If my ancestors were dragged here on slave ships, I would have a very different view of the United States.
00:11:01.240 That's, it's not anybody's fault.
00:11:04.180 That's, that's just natural.
00:11:06.080 Of course you would.
00:11:06.760 If your, if your ancestors are brought here in chains and suffered systematic oppression and enslavement for 100 years or 150 years,
00:11:14.760 you're going to have a dismal or dim view of the history of the country.
00:11:19.220 Now, maybe that's changed by the fact that America fought a bloody civil war to free the slaves
00:11:24.860 and that America has tried to live up to its own creed over many years.
00:11:30.500 Sure, maybe that changes your view of it, but I totally get the Ta-Nehisi Coates argument.
00:11:37.580 However, Coates' solution doesn't make any sense.
00:11:40.500 The solution of reparations for the descendants of slaves is totally idiotic.
00:11:45.440 Because I guess fundamentally why it's wrong is because it's a Marxist view.
00:11:49.740 So it offers a materialist view of the world.
00:11:53.340 It offers this view of the world that money solves all problems.
00:11:57.940 That basically what Ta-Nehisi Coates is saying, what all of these guys pushing for reparations for slavery are saying,
00:12:04.280 is that all problems stem from the distribution of money and all problems can be solved with the redistribution of money.
00:12:13.380 That's obviously not true.
00:12:15.460 And actually, the Great Society showed us this.
00:12:17.960 I mean, the Great Society programs of LBJ, the massive welfare spending of the 1960s and 70s showed us.
00:12:23.880 We threw money at the problem and the problem didn't get solved.
00:12:29.220 The problem didn't get any better.
00:12:31.500 Actually, the problem just got worse.
00:12:34.400 It actually ended up hurting the people it was intended to help.
00:12:36.980 An example of this outside of, you know, reparations for slavery or anything like that is in education spending.
00:12:44.460 For 40 years, we increased education spending, inflation adjusted by 375%.
00:12:50.500 Guess what happened to test scores?
00:12:54.180 Nothing.
00:12:54.920 They didn't improve at all.
00:12:57.040 We threw money at the problem.
00:12:58.600 We threw more and more money at the problem.
00:13:00.720 Didn't do anything.
00:13:02.160 Because the problem of educational attainment didn't stem from money.
00:13:06.380 And the redistribution of money was not going to solve it.
00:13:09.060 Same thing.
00:13:09.500 We increased welfare spending to right historical racial wrongs, to defeat poverty.
00:13:16.340 They say we fought a war on poverty and poverty won.
00:13:20.320 We actually learned from the Moynihan report that came out after the Great Society that we ended up hurting the people that we intended to help.
00:13:27.380 Crime rates increased.
00:13:28.560 Out of wedlock birth rates increased.
00:13:30.540 Abortion rates increased.
00:13:32.080 Because there were perverse government incentives for the breakdown of the black family.
00:13:37.340 Nevertheless, reparations remain very popular among 2020 Democrats.
00:13:43.860 So right now, currently supporting reparations, you have Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Liz Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Beto O'Rourke, so many.
00:13:55.180 I mean, I think there are probably 800 other Democrats that we can't even name.
00:13:58.740 All of those guys are supporting reparations.
00:14:00.920 This is radical.
00:14:01.980 I mean, this is not a normal policy position to hold.
00:14:05.680 Notably, Barack Obama, who's a very left-wing politician, didn't hold this policy view.
00:14:11.060 And Barack Obama, obviously, the first black president.
00:14:13.240 Barack Obama said, quote,
00:14:14.700 I fear reparations would be used as an excuse for some to say that we've paid our debt and to avoid the much harder work.
00:14:20.920 So what he's saying is, actually, reparations wouldn't go far enough.
00:14:23.900 It would give America the opportunity to just cut a check and say, okay, the problems associated with slavery and Jim Crow and lynchings and all of that, they've just been totally rectified now.
00:14:34.540 We don't have to think about it anymore.
00:14:36.260 Actually, I sort of agree with Barack Obama on this.
00:14:38.700 That's ridiculous.
00:14:39.500 Of course, that doesn't change history.
00:14:41.580 It doesn't change the past.
00:14:42.760 And it doesn't change the way that the past affects the present.
00:14:45.380 So I hate to say it, but I agree with Barack Obama on reparations.
00:14:50.180 I also agree with Mitch McConnell, who makes the point that reparations today, money from white people today to black people today or whoever else they're going to try to organize it, is just incoherent.
00:15:04.540 Yeah, I don't think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea.
00:15:12.140 We've, you know, tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation.
00:15:24.720 We've elected an African-American president.
00:15:27.780 I think we're always a work in progress in this country, but no one currently alive was responsible for that.
00:15:39.020 And I don't think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it.
00:15:45.800 First of all, it'd be pretty hard to figure out who to compensate.
00:15:48.280 We've had waves of immigrants as well who've come to the country and experienced dramatic discrimination of one kind or another.
00:15:56.220 So, no, I don't think reparations are a good idea.
00:15:59.100 Totally makes sense.
00:16:00.140 He actually makes the broader point, which is that, yes, black slavery was a particularly egregious form of oppression, but other groups have faced systematic oppression.
00:16:12.460 When we talk about, I mean, obviously the question of lynching and vigilante justice has been brought up in this conversation about reparations.
00:16:19.820 The largest mass lynching in American history was against Sicilian people in 1891.
00:16:26.380 Does that mean that we're going to have some special federal program for the descendants of Sicilian people?
00:16:31.420 I ask in a leading way.
00:16:32.820 Wouldn't mind a little extra money.
00:16:34.340 No, of course not.
00:16:35.540 How about Jews?
00:16:36.360 How about any other group?
00:16:39.840 The Irish, Hispanics, any other group that's come to America has also faced oppression.
00:16:44.840 Obviously not at the level of a century or more of chattel slavery, but who are you to say that their oppression doesn't demand a little payback from the federal government?
00:16:57.660 Reparations don't make any sense for all of those reasons, and most especially because money doesn't just necessarily solve problems, because we're not fundamentally just material beings.
00:17:11.380 We're not, Winston Churchill said that when great forces are on the move in the world, we learn that we're spirits, not animals.
00:17:18.800 The destiny of man is not measured by material computations.
00:17:23.460 Materialism, Marxism, is wrong.
00:17:25.400 That's not how the world is.
00:17:27.520 It doesn't take into account suffering.
00:17:30.700 It doesn't take into account what history means for the present.
00:17:33.160 It doesn't take into account the actual motivations of people, which are not primarily about money, which are not primarily material.
00:17:39.300 But beyond all of that, reparations will not achieve what people want them to achieve.
00:17:44.440 It is just in practice totally impracticable.
00:17:48.880 It's unclear who should pay whom.
00:17:51.400 It's unclear where the money comes from, where the money is supposed to go.
00:17:54.860 So everybody acknowledges that slavery is a particular moral evil, and most of the founders understood this as well, though they don't get any credit for it.
00:18:03.240 But the case for reparations rests on a basic ignorance about the fundamental facts of slavery.
00:18:09.860 To put this into context, I think a lot of people think that the United States was the chief importer of slaves from West Africa.
00:18:16.880 Not true.
00:18:17.580 The United States imported at most 4% to 6% of the African slaves who came to the New World.
00:18:23.700 The majority of those slaves went to Brazil and South America and Central America.
00:18:28.680 This is obviously not singularly an issue about the United States.
00:18:33.080 It affected the entire world.
00:18:34.600 It's not even just about the West.
00:18:36.360 It's not even just about the Western Hemisphere.
00:18:38.620 It affected the entire world.
00:18:40.240 It still affects the entire world.
00:18:41.700 There is slavery today throughout Asia, throughout the Middle East.
00:18:46.580 It currently exists.
00:18:48.980 We just ended it in the late, or in the mid to late 19th century.
00:18:52.440 Also, and this is the part that people's heads explode, slavery is not simply a racial issue.
00:19:00.880 It's not simply white people had black slaves.
00:19:04.300 Ironically, this is one of these quirks of history that shows you God must exist because it's so whimsical and it's so ironic and you think there's no way this could possibly be true.
00:19:14.400 The first formally recognized slaveholder in America was black.
00:19:21.320 We'll explain who it was and what it was.
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00:21:02.040 This is one of the great historical ironies that nobody really acknowledges.
00:21:10.960 The first formally recognized slaveholder in the United States was not some white southern
00:21:15.880 bumpkin.
00:21:17.020 It was a black guy.
00:21:18.340 The first formally recognized slave owner was a guy named Anthony Johnson.
00:21:22.180 He was a black Angolan farmer.
00:21:23.840 He was captured in Angola by Arab slave traders.
00:21:29.100 The Arab slave traders sold him off.
00:21:31.300 He ended up in Virginia and he was a slave in Virginia.
00:21:34.580 He was eventually emancipated after his indenture was over.
00:21:37.720 He was freed and he himself became a successful farmer.
00:21:41.120 He also owned slaves.
00:21:43.100 So he owned a black slave named John Kasor.
00:21:46.240 And John Kasor felt that at a certain point he should have been freed.
00:21:51.280 He had committed his indenture, his servitude.
00:21:55.140 You know, the idea of indentured servitude was you would be a slave, basically, for a
00:22:00.000 certain period of time.
00:22:00.920 Then you would be emancipated.
00:22:02.520 And John Kasor felt that he had served his sentence and should have been emancipated.
00:22:07.400 And Anthony Johnson, the black Angolan farmer, said, no, you're my slave for life.
00:22:12.980 They took it to court and a Virginia court ruled that Johnson owned John Kasor for life.
00:22:18.700 So the question is, are the black descendants of Anthony Johnson, a slave owner, entitled
00:22:24.660 to reparations for slavery?
00:22:26.940 Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?
00:22:29.540 Are the black descendants of John Kasor, the slave owned by Anthony Johnson, entitled to
00:22:35.580 reparations from the black descendants of Anthony Johnson?
00:22:38.040 So that means that when we have reparations for slavery, some black descendants of slave
00:22:42.380 owners have to pay the reparations to some black descendants of slaves?
00:22:47.140 Is that, how are we going to work that?
00:22:48.400 Are we going to be taking DNA tests and Ancestry.com is going to get hundreds of millions of dollars
00:22:53.460 in federal grants just to figure out who was descended from whom?
00:22:56.000 What if you're descended from a black slave owner and a black slave, which does it cancel
00:23:00.460 out, or a white slave owner and a black slave?
00:23:02.780 Well, how are we going to adjudicate your culpability today in 2019 for the sins of your great, great,
00:23:10.960 great, great, great grandfathers?
00:23:13.140 Or which great, great, great, great, great grandfather?
00:23:16.260 Also, this complicates it even more for the woke social justice crowd.
00:23:20.520 It wasn't only white people and black people who owned slaves.
00:23:24.560 Native Americans also held slaves and Native Americans owned a lot of slaves.
00:23:29.540 There were some black slave owners.
00:23:32.220 There were a lot of white slave owners.
00:23:34.560 There were a lot of white Native American slave owners.
00:23:37.220 Of the five, they were called the five civilized tribes, the five major tribes.
00:23:40.800 We're talking about the Cherokee, the Choctaw.
00:23:42.740 Those five tribes adopted chattel slavery, like the really awful, terrible, worst form of slavery
00:23:49.820 you can imagine.
00:23:50.720 They adopted it.
00:23:51.820 In 1809, the Cherokee had 600 black slaves.
00:23:56.960 By 1838, so the time of the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee marched thousands of slaves down
00:24:04.380 the Trail of Tears ahead of them or sent them by ship to the new territory.
00:24:08.040 By 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the Cherokee had 21,000 black slaves.
00:24:14.400 Those five major tribes owned slaves, black African slaves, at the same rate as southern whites.
00:24:20.060 Now, this gets even more complicated because it's not just that the five civilized tribes
00:24:26.300 held black slaves at the same rate as southern whites and then slavery was over and then that was it.
00:24:32.820 Because when the federal government freed the slaves, the Emancipation Proclamation
00:24:36.840 and the 13th Amendment and Juneteenth and all that, when they freed the slaves,
00:24:41.320 that didn't free the slaves in the Indian territories because the Indian territories were sovereign.
00:24:46.140 They had their own territory.
00:24:47.440 They had their own system of government.
00:24:48.520 They had their own laws and they weren't bound by the laws of the United States.
00:24:51.860 So, actually, the Indians kept black slaves longer than the United States did.
00:24:57.780 Now, eventually, the federal government intervened here.
00:25:02.160 So, the five civilized tribes did not free the slaves on their own.
00:25:06.600 The federal government came in and forced them, basically, to sign a treaty in 1866.
00:25:11.300 And one provision of that treaty was that they free the slaves.
00:25:14.060 And this was a sticking point in the negotiations, but eventually, all of the tribes agreed to it.
00:25:18.840 And so, in 1866, a year after the Civil War ended, the Indians finally agreed to free their slaves and abolish slavery.
00:25:26.700 So, are the great, great, great, great grandchildren of black slaves today entitled to reparations from Native American tribes?
00:25:34.560 Not just the descendants of Native Americans, but the actual sovereign tribes as they exist today.
00:25:40.660 Are they entitled to that?
00:25:42.580 Are we going to, is this federal commission that the Democrats want to set up going to send a bill to the Native American tribes for slavery,
00:25:51.120 for holding slaves longer than even the Americans did?
00:25:53.940 Probably not.
00:25:54.800 That doesn't really work well with the intersectional victim pyramid, does it?
00:25:58.360 What is the conclusion from all of this?
00:26:02.000 It's an obvious one.
00:26:03.700 You can't fix the past.
00:26:05.960 Can't do it.
00:26:07.100 It's not, that's why it's the past.
00:26:08.560 That's the definition of the past.
00:26:10.240 You've only got the present.
00:26:12.380 And you specifically can't correct a past injustice with a present injustice.
00:26:18.760 Taking somebody's property because of the sins of their great, great, great, great grandfathers.
00:26:22.500 Or the sins of one of their great, great, great, great grandfathers, but not their other great, great, great, great grandfather.
00:26:30.040 And you've got to, you've got to basically come to some sort of biologically determined adversity suffering victimhood score.
00:26:36.800 And then what do you, you find out you're 72% victim.
00:26:39.880 So you only have to pay 28% of the reparations tax on that.
00:26:46.400 What is it?
00:26:46.960 How on earth is this going to be put into practice?
00:26:51.120 It's a total injustice.
00:26:52.960 Why are Democrats focusing on this?
00:26:54.520 This is absurd.
00:26:55.180 Even Barack Obama thinks it's absurd.
00:26:57.120 Very left-wing guy.
00:26:57.960 First black president.
00:26:59.880 The reason they're focusing on this is because the left has no present problems to focus on.
00:27:05.700 Things are too freaking good.
00:27:08.360 So they have to relitigate slavery 150 years later.
00:27:12.400 Why?
00:27:12.820 They can't run on the economy.
00:27:13.800 The economy is going great.
00:27:14.820 Can't run on jobs.
00:27:15.700 We have record low joblessness.
00:27:17.060 They can't run on war or peace.
00:27:18.580 We've got relative peace abroad.
00:27:19.980 Pretty good foreign policy.
00:27:21.300 They can't run.
00:27:22.040 And what are they going to run on?
00:27:23.580 They got nothing.
00:27:25.560 So they're trying to relitigate slavery.
00:27:28.060 And it's ridiculous.
00:27:28.940 And it leads to these sort of absurdities like you're seeing in Capitol Hill today.
00:27:32.600 Conservatives don't need to run on those things because our policies are working incredibly
00:27:37.860 well and they're very popular and they're very popular in the here and now.
00:27:41.280 And that is why President Trump officially has kicked off his campaign to make America great again again last night.
00:27:47.480 We're going to keep making America great again and then we will indeed keep America great.
00:27:56.180 We will keep it so great.
00:27:59.220 Better than ever before.
00:28:01.340 We're going to keep it better than ever before.
00:28:04.000 And that is why tonight I stand before you to officially launch my campaign for a second term as President of the United States.
00:28:16.440 Okay, so we all knew this was happening.
00:28:19.420 It's no big surprise that he's announcing his campaign.
00:28:21.820 The campaign never really ended.
00:28:23.300 He's done rallies throughout his presidency.
00:28:26.860 This is true of other presidents too.
00:28:28.480 I mean, so it doesn't seem like a huge moment except there was a massive crowd there in Orlando, Florida.
00:28:34.640 It, everyone was super excited.
00:28:37.560 He's just, it was visually a very good start to the campaign and it had one of the most beautiful moments of recent political memory.
00:28:47.560 You're watching this on CNN.
00:28:49.280 CNN has to cover it.
00:28:50.500 This is, this is the news.
00:28:52.120 And within six minutes of the rally starting, you hear a chant begin spontaneously from the crowd that says,
00:29:02.300 CNN sucks.
00:29:03.680 CNN sucks.
00:29:04.520 You can hear it here.
00:29:05.500 And then what do you think CNN does?
00:29:07.180 They got to cut away.
00:29:26.120 This was our chance to reclaim our government.
00:29:28.980 All right.
00:29:29.400 We've been watching the president kick off his reelection bid.
00:29:32.840 He's been on stage for about six minutes.
00:29:35.940 Yeah.
00:29:36.400 Is that right?
00:29:36.880 CNN?
00:29:37.620 So hold on.
00:29:38.160 Wait, you're telling me you interrupted all of your programming so that you could cover six minutes of the rally.
00:29:44.340 I don't know about that.
00:29:45.780 Usually you'd have to cover, I don't know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes of the rally.
00:29:49.620 They, but they start almost from the beginning.
00:29:52.220 They start, CNN sucks.
00:29:53.500 Trump turns around.
00:29:54.300 He's got a grin on his face from ear to ear.
00:29:56.560 And then within a minute of that happening, CNN cuts away.
00:30:00.360 Okay.
00:30:00.620 Well, yeah, you've heard that.
00:30:01.560 All right.
00:30:01.760 That's enough.
00:30:02.180 Enough of that now.
00:30:02.660 Go away.
00:30:02.960 Also, I mean, show me the lie.
00:30:05.120 This is obviously what the crowd said is just objectively true.
00:30:09.720 And it reminds you why people are really fired up.
00:30:12.980 We're fired up about all of these issues.
00:30:14.540 We're fired up about immigration.
00:30:15.680 We're fired up about the economy.
00:30:18.260 We're fired up about America.
00:30:20.560 You know, loving America, loving the country, keeping the nation, keeping our sovereignty, making America great again.
00:30:25.900 We love all of those things.
00:30:26.860 And we really, really hate being lied to.
00:30:30.580 It drives us crazy when these guys unzip their flies on CNN and then they tell us it's raining.
00:30:38.460 We hate that.
00:30:39.300 And when they tell us not to believe our lying eyes, we hate that.
00:30:41.960 We don't like them.
00:30:42.980 They're dishonest.
00:30:44.200 They're just dishonest people and they don't like this country very much.
00:30:47.360 And they make that clear day after day.
00:30:50.240 And we're sick of it.
00:30:51.920 So it was a great moment.
00:30:53.140 And then President Trump gets to all the classic points of what this campaign is going to be about.
00:30:59.820 With your help, with your love and your devotion, and with your drive, we are going to keep on working.
00:31:08.680 We are going to keep on fighting.
00:31:11.060 And we are going to keep on winning, winning, winning.
00:31:16.080 We are one movement, one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God.
00:31:25.160 And together, we will make America wealthy again.
00:31:31.420 We will make America strong again.
00:31:35.560 We will make America safe again.
00:31:43.980 And we will make America great again.
00:31:49.220 Thank you, Orlando.
00:31:50.800 Thank you, Florida.
00:31:52.340 That's great.
00:31:53.140 Obviously, all the classic points are very popular.
00:31:55.340 And it's exactly the opposite of what the Democrats want to do.
00:31:57.720 Joe Biden says the first thing he's going to do is take away the tax cuts.
00:32:00.520 So Trump wants to make America wealthy, strong, safe, great.
00:32:05.980 What do Democrats want to do?
00:32:07.140 They want to make it less wealthy.
00:32:08.580 They want to take wealth away from you.
00:32:10.320 They want America to be less strong, not to project strength overseas, to reduce our military, reduce our military spending.
00:32:18.340 They don't care for America to be safe.
00:32:20.300 They want totally open borders.
00:32:21.460 And they don't want to deport any criminals.
00:32:22.760 And they want sanctuary cities for criminals who spit in the face of our laws.
00:32:27.240 And they don't want America to be great.
00:32:28.780 They don't think America was ever great to begin with.
00:32:31.140 Andrew Cuomo, sitting governor of New York, he said during a speech, he said, America was never that great to begin with.
00:32:37.380 That's what they believe.
00:32:38.180 Trump is doing exactly the opposite, which is great.
00:32:40.980 And he's also doing something that Republicans haven't really done before.
00:32:45.600 He goes at the Democrats' throat.
00:32:49.040 He goes at the left's throat.
00:32:50.100 We'll see how in a second.
00:32:50.900 But first, I've got great news for you.
00:32:52.380 We are taking our backstage show live on the road, August 21st, to the Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California.
00:32:59.980 It's going to be super fun.
00:33:01.100 Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, the Lord of the Multiverse, Andrew Klavan, and best of all, little old me, yours truly.
00:33:08.560 We'll be live on stage discussing the winners and losers of politics and pop culture and doing our best to answer your burning questions from the audience.
00:33:16.400 Tickets go on sale to the public this Friday, but only Daily Wire subscribers get pre-sale ticket access today through Thursday.
00:33:25.400 You can do it.
00:33:26.260 Time is running out, though.
00:33:27.200 Do it right now.
00:33:27.820 Subscribe.
00:33:28.740 Get your tickets today.
00:33:29.620 Come join us for a fabulous and fantastic event.
00:33:33.060 Much, much more to get to.
00:33:34.240 We've got to get to how left-wing wackos presumably planted kiddie porn on Alex Jones' server, what it means for our country, what it means for conservatism.
00:33:42.780 But first, go to dailywire.com.
00:33:44.740 We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:33:46.400 So, President Trump is hitting all the right notes.
00:33:58.600 This rally, this kickoff for the campaign went off without a hitch.
00:34:02.380 Most importantly, he's going at the left's throat.
00:34:05.620 He is not afraid to get down in the muck with them.
00:34:08.720 Listen to how he describes the left in America.
00:34:11.620 Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage.
00:34:19.020 They want to destroy you, and they want to destroy our country as we know it.
00:34:25.120 Not acceptable.
00:34:26.720 It's not going to happen.
00:34:28.100 This is fabulous.
00:34:30.240 This is great.
00:34:31.480 This is something Trump has done his entire career, is he's nice to people as long as they're nice to him.
00:34:36.380 I mean, it takes us to an extreme.
00:34:37.940 He's sometimes nice to Kim Jong-un if Kim Jong-un is nice to him.
00:34:40.880 But the minute someone goes after him, he goes after them twice as hard.
00:34:45.360 The minute someone says, hey, Trump, you're a racist.
00:34:47.560 He goes, you're a racist.
00:34:48.580 You're a double, triple, awful racist.
00:34:51.300 Hey, Trump, you're not successful.
00:34:53.420 You're a total loser.
00:34:54.520 You're an idiot.
00:34:55.160 You're a failure, and you're a shame to your family.
00:34:57.140 And he just clobbers them.
00:34:58.600 He doesn't take any guff from nobody.
00:35:02.360 I mean, talk about really channeling a classic piece of advice for New Yorkers.
00:35:07.080 He goes so hard.
00:35:08.500 Just think about what the left has been doing.
00:35:10.340 Yesterday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that if you oppose open borders, you are basically Hitler.
00:35:16.900 You are a Nazi.
00:35:17.760 If you don't think that we should have totally open borders in America, Alyssa Milano and many
00:35:23.220 other celebrities, many other left-wingers have said that the MAGA hat, make America great
00:35:27.660 again, that phrase, that hat is the same as a KKK hood.
00:35:32.420 Leftist voices from the mainstream media to academia to elected politicians have called
00:35:37.900 for political violence against conservatives.
00:35:40.620 This is not hyperbole.
00:35:42.040 Maxine Waters, a very prominent member of Congress, did this and then doubled down.
00:35:46.440 She did it twice.
00:35:47.760 Now, in the old days, how did the GOP and conservatives used to handle it when the left would
00:35:53.000 call us racist, bigoted, sexist, awful, the worst people in the world, you should probably
00:35:58.280 get violent with them.
00:35:59.300 How did the GOP used to handle that?
00:36:01.180 Here's John McCain typifying the old school GOP response during the 2008 campaign.
00:36:06.500 We're scared of an Obama presidency, and I'll tell you why.
00:36:11.740 I'm concerned about someone that cohorts with domestic terrorists such as Ayers.
00:36:19.520 I have to tell you, he is a decent person, and a person that you do not have to be scared as president of the United States.
00:36:28.100 Now, I just, now I just, now look, I, I...
00:36:33.320 I got to ask you a question.
00:36:34.720 I do not, uh, believe in, I can't trust Obama.
00:36:39.280 I, I have read about him, and he's not, he's not, he's a, um, he's an Arab.
00:36:46.280 He is not.
00:36:47.440 No?
00:36:47.880 No man, no man, no man.
00:36:51.140 He's a, he's a, he's a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with
00:36:57.320 on, on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about.
00:37:01.580 He's not.
00:37:02.340 Thank you.
00:37:03.480 Thank you.
00:37:05.520 Now, John McCain could have said, no, he's not an Arab, but he is a danger to this country.
00:37:10.840 His views and his policies will damage America.
00:37:14.620 He'll steal people's healthcare, he'll destroy the greatest healthcare system in the world,
00:37:19.000 he will raise your taxes, he'll destroy the economy, he will create eight years of joblessness,
00:37:24.540 he will divide America, he will continue to, which is all things that he did.
00:37:29.320 He could have said that, but he, but John McCain couldn't leave it there and say, no,
00:37:32.300 he's not an Arab, but he's a, he's a pretty bad hombre.
00:37:34.300 No, he had to say, he's a decent man.
00:37:36.340 He's a good man.
00:37:37.620 Oh, the left wing that calls us evil and racist and bigoted and terrible and the worst people
00:37:41.580 on earth, those guys, they're okay.
00:37:44.020 They're good guys.
00:37:44.920 They're good guys.
00:37:45.600 Oh, if they're good guys, then I guess we should elect them.
00:37:47.620 That, that was a bad strategy.
00:37:49.120 And President Trump is saying, no, listen, left wing, if you want to play nice with me
00:37:55.500 and you want to be elevated and you want to say, say that we're decent people and you're
00:38:00.840 decent people and we just have disagreements, I'm willing to do that.
00:38:03.880 But if you're going to call me a Nazi and you're going to call my supporters Nazis and
00:38:07.120 half of this country Nazis, then I'm going to say that you are hateful, prejudiced and
00:38:12.140 fueled by rage, which by the way is true.
00:38:16.200 This is a working strategy.
00:38:18.660 We, the RNC just reported, the RNC now is the Trump campaign.
00:38:21.880 The RNC raised a record $24.8 million in just 24 hours, more than a million dollars an hour
00:38:28.800 after this kickoff.
00:38:30.520 Joe Biden, he raised $6.3 million on his first day.
00:38:34.120 And that was a record haul.
00:38:35.060 Well, Trump raised four times that massive win.
00:38:41.440 And it means the strategy is working.
00:38:42.880 It means we shouldn't back off the strategy.
00:38:44.440 He's absolutely right to do it.
00:38:46.340 We would all like to, we'd all like to live in the nice Trump universe where Trump is nice
00:38:50.760 to people and people are nice to Trump.
00:38:52.740 And, but that's the right attitude.
00:38:54.720 People say he's cruel and mean and needlessly aggressive.
00:38:57.800 He's not needlessly aggressive.
00:38:59.540 He's going to treat you how you treat him.
00:39:01.780 We can't have a society where half the country treats the other half like absolute mongrel,
00:39:07.060 swine, Nazi, hateful, awful people.
00:39:10.340 And then those of us who are being attacked and assailed and smeared have to just say,
00:39:16.980 okay, that's fine.
00:39:17.680 We'll take it.
00:39:18.520 You guys are okay.
00:39:19.400 You do what you want to do.
00:39:20.220 No, we're not going to do that.
00:39:21.240 If they're going to do that to us, we're going to push back and do it to them.
00:39:24.040 And it's going to get ugly and gross until they realize that, hmm, the other side isn't
00:39:29.260 going to unilaterally disarm.
00:39:30.360 This is not a nice way to have a civil society.
00:39:33.120 Maybe we'll elevate the rhetoric a little bit, but it's getting really nasty.
00:39:36.660 I mean, someone apparently has now sent Alex Jones kiddie porn to frame him as some kind
00:39:42.860 of pedophile and ship him off to jail.
00:39:45.580 Headline in the Connecticut Post says, quote, well, you know, you know, Alex Jones, you know,
00:39:49.180 he's the shirtless vitamin salesman.
00:39:50.820 He's the, he's the kind of conspiracy minded radio host, very entertaining radio host.
00:39:56.160 A headline in the Connecticut Post, quote, lawyers for Sandy Hook families say Alex
00:40:00.320 Jones sent them child porn.
00:40:05.000 Let me ask you something.
00:40:05.980 Does that make any sense?
00:40:07.840 Alex Jones is being sued by people.
00:40:09.760 And so he would send them like the most illegal thing you can possibly possess that could send
00:40:16.080 him away to prison for life.
00:40:18.460 Doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.
00:40:19.980 So the headline isn't true.
00:40:21.620 The, there was child pornography that was sent and it was delivered by the Infowars and Alex
00:40:27.500 Jones wasn't sent to the family.
00:40:29.060 It was sent to their lawyers and it wasn't sent from Jones.
00:40:32.760 It actually was, they basically asked for these troves of emails from Infowars.
00:40:37.240 Infowars just turned over all of the emails and some emails that had been sent to Infowars
00:40:43.080 included graphic images of child pornography.
00:40:46.420 So what it appears is that what someone was doing was planting child pornography on the
00:40:51.920 Infowars email servers and email addresses.
00:40:56.380 It seems to me there's no way that Alex Jones knew about this.
00:40:59.500 If he did, if he did know that there were, was child pornography on there, he would never
00:41:06.080 have sent, he would never have given those emails to his adversaries, lawyers.
00:41:09.940 What would he have done?
00:41:10.720 Would have destroyed it or he would have refused to turn over the documents.
00:41:15.040 Also, I suppose illegal, but obviously a lot better than just turning over a bunch of child
00:41:19.680 pornography.
00:41:21.180 So I guess it's possible, you never, you know, never say never.
00:41:24.100 It's possible that Alex Jones is the most incompetent pedophile in the history of sex crimes,
00:41:28.920 probably unlikely, or more likely someone is playing a particularly nasty trick on Alex
00:41:36.020 Jones.
00:41:36.600 They want to ruin his life.
00:41:38.560 They want to send him and people who work with him to prison forever.
00:41:42.140 And this plays on this theme that we're looking at, that we're seeing this fueled by rage,
00:41:47.280 nasty, hateful, spiteful.
00:41:50.060 The left wants to ruin conservatives' lives.
00:41:55.780 They want to ruin Kyle Kashiv's life.
00:41:58.920 They want, they want to ruin everybody, every conservative's life.
00:42:03.140 Some sicko is willing to deal, one, to deal in kiddie porn just to score political points
00:42:09.140 and then to send it to a shirtless vitamin salesman because they don't like his politics
00:42:15.980 or something.
00:42:16.480 They're going to send it to this guy because they think this guy is such a great threat
00:42:20.480 to the country.
00:42:20.980 I'm not saying people didn't naturally have homosexual feelings.
00:42:24.540 I'm not even getting into it.
00:42:25.760 Quite frankly, I mean, give me a break.
00:42:27.940 You think I am like, oh, shocked by it.
00:42:30.400 So I'm up here bashing it because I don't like gay people.
00:42:32.920 I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the frigging frogs gay.
00:42:37.660 Do you understand that?
00:42:39.280 I'm serious crap.
00:42:42.520 I'm sick of being social engineered.
00:42:44.040 It's not funny.
00:42:46.540 I gotta say, he says like some of the craziest things, but I get such a kick out of him.
00:42:51.600 He's like an amazing broadcaster.
00:42:53.520 And that guy, you're willing to deal in child pornography and try to frame a guy, send him
00:42:59.180 to prison for life because he bangs a table and says the frogs are gay.
00:43:04.960 You're sick.
00:43:05.580 Something has gone sick in your mind, in your ideology, if you do that, because you don't
00:43:10.580 like his politics or something.
00:43:13.300 Hollywood celebrities, Deborah Messing, so happy congratulating Harvard for ruining an 18
00:43:18.800 year old kid's life because he said offensive and racial things simply for shock value when
00:43:26.380 he was 16 years old.
00:43:27.320 Journalists encouraging big technology companies to prevent other content creators that they
00:43:33.840 disagree with from making money, from getting their voices out there, de-platforming, not
00:43:37.820 just YouTube, it's Facebook, it's Patreon, payment processors trying to stop conservatives
00:43:41.840 from ever being able to make a livelihood, ruin their lives.
00:43:45.580 This Jones thing, just one particularly egregious example of the left hating the right.
00:43:50.580 You can't have a country like that for very long.
00:43:54.360 It's like when a husband fights with his wife.
00:43:57.320 You're in a fight with your spouse, you're disagreeing about something, and you're just
00:44:02.620 trying to score points on each other.
00:44:04.120 And you did this, well I did this, and you did that, and then you did, I'm going to do
00:44:07.280 this then.
00:44:07.820 And how does that end?
00:44:09.360 You still have to live with the person.
00:44:11.060 You're married to the person.
00:44:13.060 It's half of your flesh over there.
00:44:14.520 Ostensibly you still love each other, you like each other, you've got some bonds holding
00:44:19.820 you together.
00:44:20.320 It's the same thing for a country.
00:44:22.980 You still have to live together.
00:44:25.820 How is this going to end in America?
00:44:28.540 If half the country says that if you don't support open borders you're a Nazi, half the
00:44:35.040 country wants to ruin the other half's life.
00:44:37.360 It doesn't go both ways.
00:44:39.000 Finally, President Trump is fighting back on behalf of the right.
00:44:41.960 But it doesn't go both ways.
00:44:43.100 This is a problem of the left doing this to the right.
00:44:46.460 You can't have a country like that for very long.
00:44:49.260 That's not, you know, this actually brings up a great piece I read yesterday.
00:44:56.340 I highly encourage you all to read it.
00:44:57.720 In First Things, it was by a writer named Elizabeth Corey, and she was talking about the very little
00:45:02.940 known political philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, and it was on this question of what is conservatism?
00:45:08.160 What are we doing?
00:45:09.000 What is conservatism about?
00:45:10.700 And the thesis was that true conservatism requires recognizing the world's beauty.
00:45:16.380 The question is, what is conservatism?
00:45:17.740 If I asked you on the street, what is conservatism?
00:45:20.480 Maybe you would say it's free markets, or it's a strong military, or it's Christian values,
00:45:25.120 or it's low taxes.
00:45:26.060 What is it?
00:45:27.840 Would you say it's that?
00:45:28.500 It's low taxes and a strong military.
00:45:30.180 Is that conservatism?
00:45:31.000 And that doesn't seem like all it is.
00:45:33.280 This philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, says conservatism isn't any of those things.
00:45:38.620 That conservatism is actually a disposition rather than an ideology.
00:45:44.440 It's not, it's more a sensibility, a way of engaging with the world and looking at the world and behaving.
00:45:52.200 It's not about low taxes.
00:45:53.860 I mean, maybe, of course, it may be an implies low taxes or certain values,
00:45:57.520 but it's more about just the way that you behave.
00:46:01.000 He writes, or she writes, talking about his philosophy.
00:46:05.340 The disposition entails, above all, an inclination to enjoy what there is to be enjoyed,
00:46:10.700 rather than to seek for what is not there.
00:46:13.300 You know, the left is so furious.
00:46:14.920 They don't enjoy anything.
00:46:15.860 They don't laugh.
00:46:16.420 They don't have fun.
00:46:17.080 They don't, we live in like the greatest time ever in the history of the world.
00:46:20.100 They are miserable.
00:46:21.120 And some conservatives let themselves be miserable all the time, too.
00:46:26.220 Now, we got to fight back.
00:46:27.560 We got to, we have to stop them from totally destroying the country.
00:46:32.560 We have to wage certain battles.
00:46:34.360 But that's only sometimes.
00:46:35.900 We also have to enjoy what we have or else what's the point of it?
00:46:40.460 It's not just about the fights.
00:46:41.960 It's not just about the battles.
00:46:43.040 It's not just about what is lost.
00:46:44.680 It's a, there is some pleasure in it.
00:46:46.960 This is, this is one of the simple joys of being right.
00:46:49.440 You know, we, we talk about the Western canon and liberal education, how important it is,
00:46:54.200 how important we need.
00:46:54.880 We need good education and to remember our history.
00:46:58.380 How often do we read those books?
00:47:00.480 We talk about how old movies are so much better than new crappy movies.
00:47:03.740 How often do we watch the old movies and enjoy them?
00:47:05.940 We talk about civil society, how great it was when there were all these voluntary organizations,
00:47:11.100 the Lions Club, the Kiwanis Club, the PTA, the Boy Scouts.
00:47:13.880 How often do you join those and go to those and participate in those?
00:47:17.740 We talk about the importance of a nation.
00:47:19.520 How often do we engage with our fellow countrymen?
00:47:22.120 Do we really feel that we have some bonds to them still?
00:47:25.080 You know, we, we need to give the left a taste of their own medicine
00:47:27.640 and we need to show them the stakes of what they're doing
00:47:30.660 and we need to stop them from their path of complete destruction.
00:47:34.260 But over the long haul, the only coherent conservatism
00:47:37.920 is a conservatism that actually engages with and enjoys all of those things
00:47:42.540 that we say are worth conserving.
00:47:44.920 That's our show.
00:47:45.620 We've got more to get to.
00:47:46.280 We'll do it tomorrow.
00:47:46.900 In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
00:47:48.020 This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:47:49.160 I'll see you then.
00:47:49.620 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkiewicz
00:47:58.140 and directed by Mike Joyner.
00:47:59.840 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
00:48:01.860 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
00:48:03.640 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
00:48:06.100 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
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00:48:16.140 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
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