The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 380 - Has Politics Ever Been This Fun？

00:00:00.000 President Trump hosts a social media summit at the White House today to combat big tech

00:00:04.920 censorship. Meanwhile, star Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls Nancy Pelosi a racist.

00:00:12.560 Then Iran tries to seize a British tanker, so the Brits threaten to blow Iran's boats

00:00:17.360 out of the water. We ask the important question, has politics ever been this fun?

00:00:22.320 All that and more, plus the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Some people like to pretend that politics has never been this bad. They say, oh no,

00:00:38.180 the chaos in the White House. Oh no, the chaos and the crazy left and the Democrats. 0.99

00:00:43.460 We do this because we like to feign hardship. This is something that people do. This is how

00:00:49.360 people bond sometimes in groups. If you're meeting a new group of people, if you're working together

00:00:54.420 or you're on a project together, you're at a conference or something, you'll notice people

00:00:58.120 like to complain because they sometimes bond over imagined or real hardship. But I am here to tell

00:01:05.480 you, especially with today's news cycle, politics has never been this fun. And it is nowhere clearer

00:01:12.680 than in President Trump's tweet storm about the social media summit. Talk about taking a frustrating

00:01:19.080 news item and turning it to just pure joy. We'll get to that in a second. But first,

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00:03:19.540 There's a social media summit going on at the White House right now.

00:03:23.120 Why are they doing this? Because the social media big tech companies, every single one of them,

00:03:27.900 have shown that they are willing to censor conservatives. And it started out with the

00:03:31.980 fringy people like Alex Jones, and then it moved into more mainstream kind of comedian types like

00:03:36.820 Gavin McGinnis. Then they started going after Stephen Crowder, who's about as mainstream as

00:03:40.960 they get. They're going after all of us. They've demonetized a lot of my videos on YouTube. They

00:03:46.160 have restricted or outright censored some of my videos on YouTube. They restricted my PragerU video

00:03:51.900 about how important words are. They're going after all of us. So President Trump is going to hold a

00:03:57.940 White House summit. Here is how he announced the summit on Twitter. Quote,

00:04:02.180 A big subject today at the White House Social Media Summit will be the tremendous dishonesty,

00:04:07.400 bias, discrimination, and suppression practiced by certain companies. We will not let them get

00:04:12.940 away with it much longer. The fake news media will also be there, but for a limited period.

00:04:17.800 The fake news is not as important or as powerful as social media. They have lost tremendous credibility

00:04:23.340 since that day in November 2016 that I came down the escalator with the person who is to become

00:04:29.060 your future first lady. When I ultimately leave office in six years, or maybe 10 or 14, just kidding,

00:04:36.440 they will quickly go out of business for lack of credibility or approval from the public. That's why

00:04:42.060 they will all be endorsing me at some point, one way or the other. Could you imagine having sleepy Joe

00:04:47.840 Biden or Alfred E. Newman or a very nervous and skinny version of Pocahontas, 1,000 out of 24th,

00:04:56.800 I think he got that fraction wrong. As your president, rather than what you have now,

00:05:01.500 so great looking and smart, a true stable genius.

00:05:08.000 Sorry to say that even social media would be driven out of business along with, and finally,

00:05:15.080 the fake news media. I'm sorry. I thought I could get through it and I can't. I also want to point out

00:05:20.800 there are some kind of random capitalizations in here. When he was referring to Pete Buttigieg,

00:05:26.100 who he calls Alfred E. Newman, like the Mad Magazine character, he actually tagged an Alfred

00:05:30.180 E. Newman account. So I don't know who that person is. This was a masterpiece. Comparative literature

00:05:37.640 classes, poetry classes are going to be studying this tweet storm in the future for its rhetorical

00:05:44.920 brilliance. I'm not kidding. What more could you want? This is hilarious and it actually accomplishes

00:05:52.940 something. So a lot of people, what they think is that Trump's tweet storms are just gratuitous.

00:05:57.200 They're crazy. They're weird. They're wacky. They might be weird. They might be wacky, but they're 0.95

00:06:01.340 not gratuitous. They actually are accomplishing something. They have a point. He's not just writing

00:06:07.100 them because they're funny. He's writing them because they are calling attention to the social

00:06:12.060 media summit. We haven't heard a whole lot about this social media summit. A couple headlines here and

00:06:17.680 there, but the mainstream media and the big tech companies have had every interest in blacking it

00:06:22.560 out. It hasn't really been trending on social media. Mainstream media haven't been covering it. Why?

00:06:27.080 Because conservative voices in social media are a huge threat to both of those institutions.

00:06:32.380 So how does Trump call attention to it? Is he sends out this wacky tweet storm that is too much to ignore.

00:06:40.300 So he, how does he, he goes after the fake news. So he hits them really hard, but maybe they could

00:06:48.160 ignore that. Then he says, we won't let them get away with it much longer. So there's a threat. You

00:06:52.220 think they'd probably have to cover the threat. Then he just starts talking about how he walked down

00:06:57.760 the escalator with his wife. And that's kind of strange. Then he says he might leave office in 10 or

00:07:03.300 14 years. So he might stay beyond his constitutional term limits. He says, just kidding. But you just feel

00:07:09.120 if you're in the media, you have to report on that. Then he makes fun of Joe Biden. Then he makes fun of

00:07:16.440 Pete Buttigieg. Then he makes fun of Elizabeth Warren. And as he's making fun of her, he gets

00:07:23.680 the fraction wrong. She's one 1,024th Native American. He says it's 1,000 out of 24th, which would make her

00:07:30.520 incredibly Native American. It would make her many, many multiples Native American. 0.99

00:07:34.640 It's 1,000 divided by 24 is quite a lot. Then he uses this phrase, which is the one that's

00:07:41.920 actually been plucked out. So great looking and smart, a true stable genius. The media at this

00:07:48.640 point, even if they could ignore the other stuff, they can't ignore that because it's hilarious. 0.99

00:07:53.480 And they will use that to pretend that Trump is a crazy narcissist. He's not. He's just really, 0.99

00:07:58.840 really good at getting attention because he's gotten everyone's attention. Obviously he's got my

00:08:02.940 attention. I'm reading the whole thing, but everybody has been doing this in the mainstream

00:08:06.340 media today. And now we're talking about the social media summit. So what is the social media

00:08:11.000 summit? Trump invited his most ardent social media supporters to the White House to discuss censorship.

00:08:19.340 So CNN, now that they have to report on this, CNN has been describing them as right-wing extremists.

00:08:25.040 The White House is in chaos as the right-wing extremists descend. So who was invited?

00:08:30.000 The head of the students for Trump. See, a right-wing extremist. I mean, he's the young

00:08:37.300 Trump supporter. A Twitter account named Carpe Donctum, which describes itself as the eternally

00:08:44.180 sarcastic meme smith specializing in the creation of memes to support President Donald J. Trump.

00:08:50.960 And the talk show host Bill Mitchell, who is a huge Trump supporter. His Twitter banner is just like a

00:08:56.440 glowing golden picture of Donald Trump. These are not far-right people. He's not inviting

00:09:02.480 white nationalists, neo-Nazis, all the regular gang that the mainstream media scaremongers with. 0.68

00:09:10.940 He is, however, inviting eccentric people. I mean, one of the guy's names is Carpe Donctum. That's 0.86

00:09:16.020 pretty eccentric. This sends the right message. The message that this is sending is that the White 1.00

00:09:22.160 House is not going to back down on this. So he's threatening. He's saying there will be

00:09:26.840 consequences. What will the consequences be? I don't know. He probably doesn't know. But he's

00:09:30.580 saying there will be. He then holds the summit, which in itself shows that they're taking this

00:09:34.960 seriously. And then, crucially, he's not just inviting the buttoned-up people. He's not just

00:09:40.900 inviting the ones who have bow ties on and who are really super serious and have a lot of law degrees.

00:09:46.400 He's inviting these hardcore pro-Trump social media accounts with names like Carpe Donctum.

00:09:54.420 He's saying we're not going to give an inch. We're not going to apologize at all. It sends an

00:09:58.400 important message into 2020. We'll get to that in a second, and then we'll get to this wonderful

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00:12:02.700 So what is the message that Trump is sending here into 2020?

00:12:07.200 The previous GOP strategy, this is like BT. We're dividing time between BT and, I don't know,

00:12:16.180 AT, the year of our Trump. In BT, in before Trump time, the GOP would have experienced all this

00:12:24.740 censorship, would have experienced all this slander, all of these smears, and they would

00:12:28.860 have stayed quiet. Don't dignify it with a response. Don't acknowledge the eccentric figures in our

00:12:36.020 ranks, people who give themselves names like Carpe Donctum and who post memes all over Twitter. No,

00:12:42.340 no, they're not. We just wear bow ties and we go to really fancy lunches in Washington.

00:12:47.680 That was the old, you know, I love George W. Bush, but George W. Bush did not know how to handle the

00:12:53.560 media. Same thing with Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney had no idea how to handle the media. Still doesn't.

00:12:59.540 Trump doubles down. And he doesn't just double down and say, I defend this person. I defend their

00:13:05.160 right to free speech. He doubles down about how good looking he is. He invites Carpe Donctum to the

00:13:12.100 White House. This shows boldness. It's not just words. It's not just paying lip service to giving

00:13:18.380 everyone a fair shot. He is actually exhibiting that boldness himself. We talk about this all the

00:13:23.600 time. The best defense is a good offense. This has always been the case. So my only criticism of this

00:13:32.320 event is that I'm not there, but I'll be in D.C. in a couple of weeks. So maybe I'll get to stop by

00:13:37.720 the Covfefe Palace then. That is the hope. This is good news on the GOP front, but there's even more

00:13:43.740 good news, which is on the Democrat front. And this is the chickens coming home to roost. This

00:13:50.220 was only a matter of time. For years now, the left has baselessly smeared conservatives as bigots.

00:13:58.960 We've warned the whole time this is harmful to the public discourse. It's dangerous in a

00:14:03.440 democratic republic. You shouldn't be able to just smear people as bigots. The Democrats haven't

00:14:08.120 cared. They've egged it on. Now the chickens are coming home to roost because the Democrats are

00:14:14.520 starting to use this same cynical strategy against the older Democrats. How did all of this start?

00:14:21.640 How did AOC and her compatriots start accusing Nancy Pelosi of racism? This all started because

00:14:28.960 the most vocal Democrat showboaters on this border crisis refused last week to vote for funding to

00:14:36.540 help mitigate the crisis. That's Ilhan Omar, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley. These are all

00:14:43.980 the young radicals who every day have me wondering if President Trump should just dissolve the Congress

00:14:48.480 and name himself king for life. I mean, if this is the future of our country, this is the future of

00:14:52.940 Congress. It doesn't look very good. And so they've been talking about how important it is to fund this

00:14:58.200 crisis and get the beds and get the sheets and help the kids. And then it comes time for a bipartisan

00:15:03.580 border funding bill. This had broad bipartisan agreement and they wouldn't do it. And even

00:15:10.220 mainstream leftists called them out over this hypocritical border vote. Here is Rashida Tlaib 0.91

00:15:15.720 on Martha Raddatz's show on ABC trying to answer for her hypocritical vote. 0.79

00:15:21.020 I want to stop you here for just a second. McAleenan has been sounding the alarm for months for resources 0.76

00:15:27.300 to help the migrants. You voted against the $4.6 billion emergency border bill to deal with the

00:15:33.480 surge of migrants that included almost $3 billion to provide shelter and care for unaccompanied

00:15:38.980 children. Acting Secretary McAleenan says those funds are critical to get children out of custody and

00:15:45.240 transfer. Even if the bill didn't have anything you wanted. Do you know what the CPP agents said

00:15:50.520 on the ground though, Martha? She's proud. I'm this, I'm that. She won't even let Martha Raddatz

00:15:56.080 get the question out because she knows the question is a total indictment of her. So Nancy Pelosi uses 0.76

00:16:03.120 this opportunity to show, look, guys, these screeching, ignorant, young Congresswomen don't know 1.00

00:16:09.620 anything. They're, they're not actually the leaders of this party. We're the ones getting things done. 1.00

00:16:14.980 Pelosi tells the New York Times and tells Maureen Dowd, who's a columnist there, quote,

00:16:19.260 all these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn't have any

00:16:23.980 following. They're four people and that's how many votes they got. Pretty harsh criticism from the

00:16:29.260 Speaker of the House. She's completely right. AOC made it to Congress with 14,000 votes.

00:16:36.400 There are about a quarter million registered voters in her district, maybe more than that. 0.98

00:16:42.300 She got 14,000 votes in that primary that no one thought was going to matter because there was an

00:16:46.940 entrenched incumbent and Joe, it was Joe Crowley. He'd been there for a long time and he didn't

00:16:52.960 campaign. She went in, she got 14,000 votes. She wins the primary. She makes it to Congress. So she's

00:16:57.700 got this huge, almost 5 million person Twitter following. No one actually in her district likes her

00:17:03.220 that much. She's polling very low in her district. In fact, part of the reason why AOC 1.00

00:17:08.060 is making such a spectacle of herself is because there's a fair chance that she won't get reelected. 0.87

00:17:14.080 There's rumors up in New York that they're going to redistrict her out of her district. 0.99

00:17:18.540 So she makes this big spectacle. AOC seizes on that. How can, or rather Pelosi seizes on that

00:17:25.180 toward AOC? Now, how can AOC respond? She could respond by showing why Nancy Pelosi is wrong on the 0.98

00:17:32.520 border. She could respond by making a principled argument about how Congress's complicity in the

00:17:38.820 border crisis. She could respond by trying to secure the border and discouraging people from

00:17:42.980 putting themselves in this position in the first place by crossing illegally. But she didn't do any of

00:17:47.940 that because she's a hardcore radical leftist and she doesn't know anything. So instead she called

00:17:54.280 Pelosi racist. And I, oh, I love it so much. Oh, it's just the greatest. I wish they would do this all

00:18:02.200 the time. She tells the Washington Post, quote, the persistent singling out, it got to a point where it

00:18:07.700 was just outright disrespectful. The explicit singling out of newly elected women of color. Take that Nancy 1.00

00:18:16.300 Pelosi. Wasn't just AOC. Ilhan Omar jumped on this bandwagon too. She tweeted out, quote,

00:18:23.220 patético. I guess she's, she must've learned from Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker and Julian Castro and

00:18:29.240 Jose Diaz-Balart that in America now we speak Spanish instead of English. I don't know. I wonder

00:18:34.760 why they call her un-American. Patético, she writes. You know they're just salty about who is wielding the

00:18:42.320 power to shift public sentiment these days. Cis, sorry, not sorry. It's like the worst combination

00:18:49.980 of millennial thinking and millennial language. The millennial thinking is if you disagree with me,

00:18:55.100 you're a bigot. Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler. That's, that's the millennial leftist 0.77

00:19:00.320 mantra. And then there's all this stupid language. You call each other cis, S-I-S, like sister, 1.00

00:19:06.260 gender, which means you're assuming their gender. And that's horribly offensive as far as I'm

00:19:11.980 concerned. Then they'll say things like, sorry, not sorry, just these sort of vapid expressions.

00:19:16.640 And all the point, the point is just very blunt and simple. She's calling Nancy Pelosi a racist.

00:19:22.380 What's ironic about this, and you know my feelings on Nancy Pelosi, there is no evidence that Nancy

00:19:28.600 Pelosi harbors some racial bigotry. It's like when they tried to call Biden a racist. There's no evidence

00:19:33.820 of that. There is, however, plenty of evidence that these young, fresh faces, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib,

00:19:41.820 those people, that they actually do harbor racial bigotry. Ilhan Omar, just to remind you, has claimed that

00:19:49.060 Israel hypnotized the world, and she has publicly prayed to Allah to awaken people to the evil of Israel. 0.97

00:19:56.800 She has claimed that politicians only support Israel because the Jews bribe them, and she has also claimed

00:20:02.360 that Jews aren't loyal to the United States. Repeatedly done this, Ilhan Omar. Pelosi was the

00:20:09.680 one who had to say, hey, lady, cool it on the racism. Ayanna Pressley, who's another one of these 1.00

00:20:14.240 fresh faces, she tweeted out just yesterday or two days ago to Kellyanne Conway, quote,

00:20:19.480 at Kellyanne, oh, hi, distraction, Becky. Remember that time your boss tore babies from their mother's 1.00

00:20:25.520 arms and threw them in cages? Yeah, take a seat and keep my name out of your lying mouth. Now, 1.00

00:20:31.740 for those of you who aren't familiar with like weird leftist millennial speak, Becky is a derogatory term 0.72

00:20:38.400 for white women. So Becky is considered this generic white woman name. It's kind of like calling someone

00:20:45.440 a cracker. It's saying you're bland, you know, to be a white woman is to be sort of uninteresting and 0.98

00:20:51.320 boring. This is the sort of thing that we would expect from Ayanna Pressley. To give you context, 0.93

00:20:58.240 Ayanna Pressley is a graduate of the same college as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and it shows.

00:21:04.800 Pressley, rather, has never done anything in her professional life other than work for politicians

00:21:09.600 or be a politician. So she's got a very narrow and shallow background. But just consider the racism 0.85

00:21:17.120 of that statement to call, to criticize Kellyanne Conway on the basis of her race. Imagine if a

00:21:24.720 white congresswoman referred to a black senior White House advisor by some stereotypically black

00:21:30.940 name, as though that were a slur. If they said, oh, hi, distraction, Shaniqua. Oh, hi, distraction,

00:21:37.320 Chantel. I don't know. Imagine the outrage that you would hear from that. Actually, you don't have to

00:21:43.180 imagine it because, forget a Republican congresswoman, a comedian, a generally left-wing

00:21:48.480 comedian, one time made a racially offensive joke about a black senior White House aide who was

00:21:55.460 Valerie Jarrett. That was Roseanne Barr who made that joke. She lost her network TV show within hours. 1.00

00:22:04.360 But Ayanna Pressley, fresh-faced Democratic congresswoman, does the exact same thing to a 1.00

00:22:10.140 woman in the exact same position? Nothing. Nada. Doesn't matter. They don't bring it up. 1.00

00:22:17.060 This has always been the double standard. And I suspect it's going to continue to be the double

00:22:21.200 standard. Conservatives have always just dealt with it. I mean, it is hard to fight back against this

00:22:26.280 because we don't want to get in the muck with them as much as they do. It's just disgusting. You 0.93

00:22:30.540 don't want to get into a fight with a skunk because either way you're not going to leave smelling very 0.99

00:22:33.800 good. But now, finally, the Democrats themselves are experiencing the poisonous fruits of their

00:22:40.840 decades of racial divisiveness. This is it. I mean, Nancy Pelosi and her whole crew, they stoked this

00:22:47.940 racial resentment. They stoked all of this racial division. And now they are the victims of it because

00:22:54.240 it never ends. If you have a politics that's just based on division and entitlement and resentment

00:23:00.140 and envy, that's not going to end. We're not going to reach a point where those evil, wicked lusts and

00:23:08.360 passions are satisfied. They are ravenous passions. They go on forever. And now the Democrats are eating

00:23:13.060 their own, and it's absolutely fabulous to watch. Meanwhile, during this entire clown show, 0.97

00:23:19.860 one story that has not really gone mentioned is we've more or less just averted a war with Iran

00:23:25.040 like yesterday. Yesterday, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the military

00:23:32.540 wing of Iran, attempted to seize a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. So Iran for weeks now

00:23:39.360 has been provoking the West because they're trying to create a sense of urgency to save the Iran deal

00:23:45.140 that is more or less expired. And they're trying to save certain waivers from Europe so that Europe can

00:23:51.160 continue to cooperate with Iran. And so what did they do? They set a couple oil tankers on fire. 0.54

00:23:56.660 They shot down our drone out of the sky. They're trying to provoke us into some kind of conflict

00:24:00.860 to scare the entire world about a war in Iran and a war in the Middle East so that we'll give in to 1.00

00:24:07.100 them and basically appease Iran. I guess we've forgotten that appeasement hasn't worked very well 0.94

00:24:12.920 in history. So Iran now, the latest thing they've done, because the US and Europe has really handled 0.93

00:24:19.520 these provocations with great restraint and pretty well. So what they did yesterday is they sent a

00:24:25.220 couple boats to go seize a British oil tanker. What they didn't expect, though, is that the British 0.85

00:24:32.140 oil tanker was being escorted by the HMS Montrose, which was much more heavily armed than the British

00:24:38.840 tanker. So you've got this incredibly provocative maneuver by Iran to basically force the oil tanker

00:24:45.340 into Iranian waters so that they can seize it. At that point, that's when the Brits turned their 0.85

00:24:50.480 four and a half inch main gun and their surface ship torpedo defense on the Iranian boats, in addition

00:24:57.440 to two 30 millimeter automatic machine guns and a sea captor missile system. And just just to kick it

00:25:04.480 all off, they deployed their rocket launching helicopter to circle the Iranian boats. So it's just like

00:25:10.760 these little, you know, Iranian bullies pull up and then you just see the full weight of the British 0.74

00:25:17.580 empire as though it were resurrected again in the Straits of Hormuz and the Iranians back off. 0.87

00:25:25.240 Of course, what are they going to do? They blow them out of the water. This was the, uh, this was the,

00:25:30.900 the very subdued response from the British. The Royal Navy, HMS Montrose, which was also there,

00:25:37.080 pointed its guns at the boats and warned them over radio at which point they dispersed.

00:25:42.680 Classic British understatement. You know, it's, it's, as if to say, yes, well, no, no big deal. You

00:25:47.600 know, uh, it's okay. We, we averted it. This was a major provocation. This could have turned into open

00:25:52.400 fire. How was this averted? How was the possibility of war averted? It was because the British were 0.68

00:25:59.400 prepared to go to war. I mean, this is the premise that we've been talking about for weeks.

00:26:04.520 The way you get peace is by being prepared for war. You get peace through strength. It's the

00:26:11.360 phrase of Ronald Reagan. It's the phrase of Barry Goldwater. It's the phrase of conservatives now

00:26:15.300 for 70 years. Peace through strength. You'll hear the left try to, uh, browbeat conservatives and say,

00:26:25.040 you're warmongers, you're hawks, you're bloodthirsty because we want to build up the military.

00:26:30.500 You should point out to them that the two most peaceful presidents in modern history

00:26:35.400 are Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. And those are the two guys who were called cowboys. Those

00:26:39.900 are the two guys who were called warmongers. Those are two guys who have built up the military

00:26:44.080 dramatically, but they've built up the military because they know by building it up, they're

00:26:48.880 reducing the likelihood that, that we're going to actually have to deploy the military.

00:26:52.680 Bullies. When you don't stand up to a bully, when you appease a bully, that is an open invitation for

00:27:02.160 aggression. That is an open invitation for war. When you stand up to them and you launch your, 0.60

00:27:09.880 you deploy your rocket launching helicopter to circle them and you point all your guns at them

00:27:14.020 and you say, we will blow you out of the water. Not a shot is fired. That's how you have peace.

00:27:22.020 It's a lesson the left doesn't usually get, but we should send it because the lessons of history

00:27:26.660 are clear. Appeasement doesn't work and, and being prepared for war does work. And moreover,

00:27:32.780 imagine if a bullet had gone off yesterday, we would be talking today about possible war with Iran.

00:27:37.240 And now we don't have to talk about that. Now we just get to talk about Donald Trump calling himself

00:27:42.720 good-looking and youthful and a very stable genius and making fun of Sleepy Joe and making fun of

00:27:49.340 Alfred E. Newman, Pete Buttigieg and watching the democratic party implode on its own premises

00:27:54.900 because now they're just all calling each other racists and bigots. We get this wonderful news cycle.

00:28:01.000 Politics has never been more fun than it is right now. And the reason it's fun is because we're

00:28:06.100 extraordinarily prepared. We're showing a tough face to big tech, tough face to censorship,

00:28:11.440 tough face to Iran. Because we are standing up, willing to do hard things, we get to have as much 1.00

00:28:19.300 fun and we get to guzzle as many leftist tears as we want. We've got to get to the mailbag. But first,

00:28:23.920 speaking of leftist tears, go over to dailywire.com. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show,

00:28:27.900 you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Wolfe show, you get to ask questions in the mailbag

00:28:31.800 that's coming up right now. You get to ask questions backstage. You get another kingdom,

00:28:35.600 you get everything and you get the leftist tears tumbler. Never more important than now. And it's

00:28:41.260 only going to heat up as we approach 2020. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back with the mailbag.

00:28:45.780 Jumping right in from Brett. Michael, was Martin Luther King a socialist? Yes. Yes, he was.

00:29:04.580 Don't take my word for it. In a letter dated July 18th, 1952, Martin Luther King wrote, quote,

00:29:11.580 quote, I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than

00:29:16.900 capitalistic. It was 1952. One of the lines that sometimes conservatives will say is that

00:29:23.200 Martin Luther King for most of his life was very conservative and he was very capitalistic and

00:29:28.940 oriented toward free markets. And then only later in his life, in the early 1960s, did he become a

00:29:34.260 little more radical and more socialistic. That isn't true. He always had a pretty socialist economic

00:29:39.400 bent to him. Both sides want to claim Martin Luther King. The conservatives claim Martin Luther King

00:29:45.560 because of his most famous speech, I Have a Dream, in which he talks about a world in which racial

00:29:50.660 division won't matter and black children will play with white children. And this is a vision that 0.98

00:29:55.580 conservatives love. And the left claims Martin Luther King because he said certain things that these

00:30:00.880 days we might call identitarian. He was an advocate for black people, for black rights, because he was

00:30:07.060 economically quite radical. He wanted a jobs program. He wanted the war on poverty. He wanted

00:30:11.660 more socialist economics. He at one point talked about the nationalization of industry as being a

00:30:17.700 good thing. And so he's a complex figure. We have made him a simple figure because we claim him as a

00:30:23.820 secular saint. I mean, we have a day for him. We celebrate him on the secular liturgical year.

00:30:29.100 We've turned him into a legend that he really was not. You know, he had supreme moral clarity in

00:30:37.180 certain areas. If you watch his speech, I've Been to the Mountaintop, it's one of the most powerful

00:30:41.580 speeches in American history. And then he was murdered the next day. Then you learn that he was

00:30:47.580 one of the most prolific womanizers in the history of American politics. You realize that he didn't always

00:30:53.160 practice his moral vision himself. And parts of his moral vision were wrong, like socialism.

00:30:58.180 socialism. The worship, the veneration of Martin Luther King, veneration is the better word here.

00:31:05.180 The veneration of Martin Luther King is problematic because he's a sort of problematic figure.

00:31:11.640 This is why a lot of conservatives at the time that the Martin Luther King Day was created

00:31:15.560 suggested that if there was going to be a day for the advancement of black people and for the

00:31:21.180 abolition of slavery and to commemorate the advancement of civil rights, particularly for blacks,

00:31:25.900 that that day should celebrate Frederick Douglass rather than Martin Luther King. And I tend to be

00:31:30.860 of that persuasion too. I think Frederick Douglass is one of the greatest writers in American history.

00:31:35.260 He was profoundly anti-socialist. He defended the rights of property. And this obviously partakes

00:31:43.620 much more of sort of our theories of natural law and the foundation on which the country was built.

00:31:48.680 So it would be nice to have a Frederick Douglass Day. It would be nice if he were the one that we

00:31:52.760 were to look to because unfortunately the left has a point when they say Martin Luther King had many

00:31:58.480 leftist dogmas and many socialist dogmas. That's true and it was true even in the early 1950s.

00:32:04.320 From Adam, would you rather meet and have a conversation with your great-great-great-grandfather

00:32:09.940 or your great-great-great-grandson? Who would you like to learn more from, the past or the future?

00:32:16.480 Certainly my great-great-great-grandfather. There's no question about that. I don't care

00:32:20.340 what happens to my great-great-great-great-grandson. I don't care what his world is like. It won't

00:32:25.540 affect me. I'll be long dead by the time he comes around. And to meet my great-great-great-grandson

00:32:32.160 would compromise my free will because I'd see how history has unfolded. And so I wouldn't be living it in

00:32:37.540 real time. I would be dooming myself to a sort of fatalism or a determinism. And I don't want any of

00:32:42.380 that. But I am interested in the future. And the way that you learn about the future is you learn

00:32:46.680 about the past. Because we live our lives in narrative. We live our lives in stories. And our

00:32:52.100 understanding of the past profoundly influences our understanding of the present which shapes

00:32:56.400 our future. So I would love to meet my great-great-great-grandfather. And for a couple

00:33:01.560 reasons. One, I think there's a lot that has been lost over the last 100 or 200 years. And so it would

00:33:07.100 be good to see what's been lost and try to bring it back. On the other hand, I think conservatives

00:33:11.440 in particular are given to nostalgia, which is history after a few drinks, as my priest Father

00:33:16.820 Rutler says. So you don't want to be nostalgic either. You want to talk to this guy and he'll

00:33:21.120 tell you, yeah, things weren't so great then either. Yeah, we had the same daily concerns that you guys

00:33:26.160 have too. And this is what happens generally when you open a history book. When you engage with the

00:33:31.500 reality of history, you realize that the legends that we tell ourselves aren't quite so simple.

00:33:36.700 And actually what happened is much more complicated and much more interesting from

00:33:41.100 Anonymous. Dear Michael, King of Covfefe, my girlfriend and I have had issues lately. We've

00:33:48.760 been dating for four years and recently have discovered some religious and philosophical

00:33:53.280 differences in us. For example, she's open to the idea of Christianity, but she can't guarantee

00:33:59.720 conversion. She doesn't explicitly denounce abortion as evil, etc.

00:34:05.100 What do you suggest is the best course of action? Do I try to convert her to my Christian 0.98

00:34:11.380 morals and beliefs? If so, how? I love her very much and want to make this work. Thanks. All

00:34:16.540 the best, Anonymous. I would not recommend picking a girlfriend or a fiance or a wife based on some

00:34:29.080 checklist. I would not recommend doing it based on whether she checks off all the boxes. I think

00:34:36.600 that's so clinical. It's not how love really works. And what we're talking about is love. You're not

00:34:42.580 just picking someone to serve you. You are falling in love. And if you're falling in love, then your love

00:34:49.020 for that person, your desire, your will will help to transform that person. You know, I've known sweet

00:34:54.880 little Elisa since we were about 10 years old and we dated in high school. We split for college. We

00:34:59.820 got back together later. We've kind of weaved in and out. We were always in each other's lives

00:35:02.940 though. And you learn something, which is you either grow together or you grow apart.

00:35:08.640 And it is almost impossible not to grow together if you love each other and you, you spend a lot of

00:35:15.440 time together. You, you sort of have to, I mean, it's, that's just how people, I mean, this happens

00:35:21.540 with your friends. You will be influenced by your friends. You will be known by the friends you keep.

00:35:25.780 And that is all the more true when you're talking about someone you're dating or fiance or wife.

00:35:32.120 That said, doesn't mean you should just lay off and say, oh, it doesn't matter at all.

00:35:36.400 If you have religious and philosophical differences, you should talk about it. Not in a scolding way,

00:35:41.540 not in a debating way, but in a loving way. You, you think that you understand the truth and you

00:35:49.100 obviously then want to convince the person you love of the truth. And I suspect the same is true

00:35:53.780 of her. You know, in that, since I've been 10 years old, since I met sweet little Elisa,

00:35:59.900 she and I have held very different views. We've kind of gone in all sorts of directions and we've

00:36:05.000 grown together. Now we agree on probably most things, but it's not always the case. And our views

00:36:09.960 are changing on things all the time too, as new evidence presents itself and circumstances change.

00:36:14.380 That's the way that I would do it. You know, Cole Porter saying, let's do it. Let's fall in love.

00:36:19.620 He didn't say, let's do it. Let's make sure that on a checklist, we all check every single box

00:36:24.260 and that you can be a good spouse for me and fulfill my needs. It's not how it goes.

00:36:30.460 You want to make sure that you don't have fundamental oppositional ideas of the world.

00:36:36.040 I mean, that's going to be very important when you raise children, but it doesn't sound like

00:36:39.460 that's quite the issue. So I would, uh, I would say go along with it and, you know,

00:36:44.280 have a love affair. And, and, uh, if it stops working, it's fine. Break up, find somebody else.

00:36:49.560 But if you're just worried about something 30 years down the road, some problem that you're

00:36:53.260 inventing, don't borrow a problem from the future for today, sufficient to today or the problems of

00:36:59.800 of today. From Mark, Michael, I think you were off base when you criticized Megan Rapinoe for saying,

00:37:07.700 I deserve this when she won the soccer game. I'm not a fan of Megan. She and her team had just won

00:37:13.420 the world woman's cup and was basking in that glory. That did look like an alcoholic beverage 0.94

00:37:18.000 in her hand. I suspect that her statement was more from an ego fulfilled than from leftism.

00:37:23.100 She just won big time. Love the commentary. Keep up the great work. Mark. I agree with you that

00:37:29.560 what she was doing was fulfilling her own ego. I'm just saying that's wrong. And it's,

00:37:34.440 it's especially wrong in sports. It's unsportsmanlike. You're not supposed to do that.

00:37:38.740 At the end of a game, you're supposed to go around and say good game to everybody. You're supposed to

00:37:42.040 be humble. You're supposed to obviously take some joy in your achievement. You're supposed to

00:37:46.940 succeed. You're supposed to win. But then you're not supposed to just talk about how great you are and say,

00:37:53.000 I deserve this. I deserve this. I mean, she wasn't joking when she said, you can sort of joke about

00:37:58.580 I'm the greatest. Muhammad Ali sometimes would joke about it. I'm the greatest. But there was a real

00:38:03.560 wit. There was a real cleverness. She didn't have wit or cleverness. She said, I deserve this.

00:38:07.340 She doesn't deserve this. She won a sports game for a variety of reasons, some of which are her own

00:38:11.660 talent, which she doesn't deserve. She was just given her talent. Some of which is her skill, which she has

00:38:16.900 worked on and developed over time. Some of which are the circumstances of the people she was playing with

00:38:21.640 and the people that she was playing against. Say thank you. Say good game to the other guys. Say,

00:38:26.940 I'm really glad we won. Say, it's really cool that I get to hold this trophy. Say, I'm so grateful to

00:38:31.000 this country that they would allow me to represent them, to have this great feat. But I deserve this.

00:38:37.060 She doesn't deserve anything. What you're saying is it's not about leftism. It's about ego fulfilled.

00:38:42.920 Leftism is ego fulfilled. I mean, they actually celebrate pride. It's all just me, me, me. I deserve this.

00:38:49.680 I deserve that. That is what it is. You're completely right, but that's leftism and that's

00:38:54.700 no good. From Michael. Hey, Michael. It's Michael. Hi, Michael. Out of all in the Daily Wire, cheers

00:39:00.100 to you for having the best show. That's very kind. Thank you very much. Feel free to gloat. Well,

00:39:04.240 I'm not Megan Rapinoe, so maybe I won't. Anyways, how do you react when there are things that are

00:39:09.140 personally challenging for your faith, whether that be history or doctrine? Good question. History

00:39:15.880 doesn't challenge my faith. One, because the history of Christianity is extraordinarily misrepresented in

00:39:23.320 the pop culture. And as someone who spent even a few moments skimming through the history,

00:39:28.500 you can just point out the glaring historical inaccuracies that people regularly point to.

00:39:34.020 You know, the Crusades is the worst event in the history of the world or something like that.

00:39:38.540 So the history wouldn't bother me, though, even if it were true, because people are fallen and

00:39:43.440 institutions are imperfect. And that's just that not only is history imperfect and flawed,

00:39:50.860 but so is the present and so will be the future. That doesn't challenge my faith at all. Actually,

00:39:54.600 my faith tells us that. My faith tells us the poor will always be with us. My faith tells me,

00:40:00.600 take up your cross and bear it. So that's fine. The doctrinal aspects are actually one of the reasons

00:40:08.320 why I'm Catholic and why I like the Catholic Church quite a lot is because despite all of the many,

00:40:16.060 many immense problems over the millennia in the Catholic Church, the weight of their history,

00:40:21.680 the inertia of that institution has, I think, protected it from a lot of the doctrinal craziness

00:40:27.860 that we're now seeing in some of my other friends' churches, where they've got pride flags outside of

00:40:32.060 the church or they're changing doctrine willy-nilly or they're radically changing views of the human

00:40:40.360 person and marriage and abortion and life and all of these things. It's not to say that there aren't

00:40:45.740 a lot of Catholics who do want to change those things. It's just that the institution of the

00:40:50.200 church has prevented them from doing it because it's so old and has so much history. Even the popes

00:40:55.020 can't change doctrine. The popes are very fallible when they're trying to change doctrine. So it

00:41:01.520 doesn't present many challenges. I do have a lot of questions about the faith. I mean,

00:41:06.540 I don't know even one drop in the ocean of what the faith is. I don't comprehend even one iota of

00:41:14.100 the faith. But 10,000 problems or 10,000 questions doesn't make one doubt, as I believe John Henry

00:41:21.340 Newman said. From Nick. Hey, Eric Swalwell. I'm sorry you had to drop out of the presidential race.

00:41:27.340 Me too. Since you've acted in plays, I'm curious, what's your favorite work of Shakespeare if you

00:41:32.220 had to pick one? Personally, I don't think it gets any better than Hamlet. But what is your pick and

00:41:36.700 why? You're absolutely right, Nick. The answer is Hamlet. I think it's the greatest play ever written.

00:41:41.740 And the reason for that, I mean, there's a reason why it is considered the greatest play ever

00:41:46.120 written and why it's done all the time. Because it is so powerfully, broadly, and profoundly human.

00:41:54.040 And because the play is about a question that interests me very much, which is the history of

00:42:00.560 Western Christendom, particularly in light of the Protestant Revolution. So the play is really all about

00:42:06.960 the Protestant Revolution and the points that the Protestant revolutionaries were making,

00:42:13.020 and the problems of the Catholic Church and the points that the Catholic Church were making,

00:42:17.560 and what it means for Europe, that Christianity had this big split in Western Europe. And,

00:42:24.500 you know, even early on, Gertrude, the mother of Hamlet, says, don't go to Wittenberg. Don't go to

00:42:30.740 the center of Protestantism. You have Hamlet debating throughout the whole play doctrines of the faith.

00:42:37.060 From the very beginning, we see the soul of Hamlet's father is coming out from purgatory.

00:42:43.320 Many Protestants doubt the existence of purgatory. Later on, Hamlet doubts the existence of purgatory.

00:42:48.860 These questions are being debated throughout the whole play. And those are the questions that really

00:42:53.660 are animating the modern era from, say, 1500 to the present. And so we're seeing them work out there.

00:43:01.820 Unfortunately, the end of Hamlet is not terribly uplifting. That probably gives you a preview of

00:43:07.120 what we're in store for in modern Western Christendom. But, you know, it tells the story,

00:43:14.500 at least. And that's the purpose of art. All right, one last question. Let's see. One last question here.

00:43:22.160 I'll go down. I want, like, a good question. Okay, here we go. From Kurt.

00:43:26.720 Hey, Covfefe. I enjoy the show. What advice would you give to applicants who feel they have a

00:43:33.140 disadvantage in today's world for being a white male? Would you suggest they describe themselves

00:43:37.660 as Native American following the footsteps of Elizabeth Warren? Thanks, Matt. Well, you could

00:43:43.720 honestly say that. You could say that I'm a Native American. Native means born and from birth. And

00:43:50.920 American is American. I'm American from birth. I'm a Native American. That's it. So I could put that

00:43:56.120 down on my college essay, though I don't do it. It is true that right now there are laws on the books

00:44:02.000 that discriminate against white people and Asians, for instance, affirmative action in college

00:44:07.800 admissions. There is a sort of sense in the popular culture that being white is a bad thing. You heard

00:44:14.580 Ayanna Pressley make that derogatory comment about white women before. She's a member of Congress with 1.00

00:44:20.120 no pushback whatsoever from the media. Beyond race on sex, there is a sense that men are

00:44:26.100 awful. They talk about toxic masculinity. Women do everything better than men. Men are terrible 1.00

00:44:31.880 knuckle-dragging people who don't deserve due process or consideration of their opinions. Yeah, 0.94

00:44:36.640 that's all frustrating and stupid. I don't like to complain about it too much. I mean, I like to call 0.99

00:44:41.360 attention to it. I like to fight it. I don't want to whine and complain. You know, everybody's got a

00:44:46.080 problem and that's ours. It's a line from Tennessee Williams' play, Orpheus Descending.

00:44:50.620 There's a vagabond guy who he wants to spend the night at a woman's house and she says, no. He says, 0.79

00:44:56.340 I got nowhere to go. And she says, well, everybody's got a problem and that's yours. I mean, people have

00:45:00.800 problems historically in the grand scheme of things. Having the Hollywood and the mainstream media go

00:45:06.260 against you isn't the biggest one. Also, suffering can be sanctifying. So if you do it nobly, if you

00:45:13.540 respond to suffering in a dignified way, that is good for your soul and it's good for society. So that's what I

00:45:19.800 would do. I wouldn't try to cheat it. I wouldn't try to get around it. I would just honestly say,

00:45:23.900 I am who I am. I'm not ashamed of the circumstances of my birth. Neither are you. I would point out the

00:45:31.600 contradictions and the double standards in their racial and sexual arguments. And I would go on

00:45:37.540 with my life and laugh at all of their craziness because they're the ones who seem to be so upset and

00:45:42.360 angry and crazed all the time. And I think you and I are having a great time because politics has

00:45:46.820 never been more fun. All right, that's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles

00:45:50.260 Show. I'll see you next week.

00:45:51.500 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner. Executive

00:46:02.220 producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover. And

00:46:08.220 our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.

00:46:13.900 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan. The Michael Knowles

00:46:18.700 show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019. Today on the Ben Shapiro show,

00:46:24.420 AOC versus Nancy Pelosi, the cat fight. Can we call it that? Begins. That's today on the Ben Shapiro show.

The Michael Knowles Show - July 11, 2019

Ep. 380 - Has Politics Ever Been This Fun？

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