The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 The DOJ watchdog concludes that former FBI director James Comey broke FBI policy when he

00:00:06.980 leaked memos of his meetings with President Trump. An MSNBC host is forced to apologize

00:00:11.700 after running a completely unverified report on President Trump's financial dealings. And

00:00:17.240 fresh-faced socialist Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez returns with a new video showing

00:00:23.480 her breathtaking ignorance of our constitution and system of government. Oh, and by the way,

00:00:29.120 it now turns out that a second camera outside of Jeffrey Epstein's jail cell

00:00:33.900 wasn't functioning on the night of his alleged suicide. But please, please tell me more about

00:00:40.340 how President Trump is eroding trust in our institutions. We'll examine all of that and

00:00:45.260 more plus the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:48.440 All of the stories in the news today, I think President Trump may be the thing that we can

00:01:01.380 most trust in our institutions, which is really sort of a scary thought, but it's not really a

00:01:07.580 defense of the president's tweets or the president's rhetoric or the way the president conducts himself

00:01:12.580 in public. It just tells you how absolutely eroded our faith has become in institutions

00:01:19.400 because of the people who've been running them for decades. We will get into all of that. But first,

00:01:25.560 I've got to tell you why I look and feel so good. And you know the reason why. The reason why is

00:01:30.280 bowl and branch. Bowl and branch sheets. Everything bowl and branch makes from bedding to blankets is

00:01:35.240 made from pure 100% organic cotton, which means they start out super soft and they get even softer

00:01:41.740 over time. Buying directly from them, there is no middleman, so you are paying wholesale prices

00:01:47.000 essentially. One of the perks of my job is on rare occasions I've gotten to stay at really nice hotels

00:01:53.420 on the road. And one thing I noticed about the nice hotels is the bedding just feels so much better.

00:02:00.120 It's like completely unlike the regular old cheap motels that I would stay at when I'm picking up the

00:02:04.720 tab. And so I felt this a couple of years ago and I thought, oh great, I should register for this

00:02:09.860 when I get married and get these really nice sheets and blankets and things. Turns out luxury sheets can

00:02:15.220 cost up to like a thousand dollars in the store. But what bowl and branch does is they cut out that

00:02:20.320 middleman. They're only a couple hundred bucks. They are unbelievable quality. You are getting luxury

00:02:25.340 for an incredible deal. Everybody who tries bowl and branch loves them. That's why they have

00:02:29.640 thousands of five-star reviews. That's why I love them too. Shipping is free. You can try them for 39,

00:02:34.640 if you don't love them. You can send them back for a refund, but you will not want to send them

00:02:38.180 back. There is no risk, no reason not to give them a try. To get started right now, my listeners get

00:02:42.800 $50 off your first set of sheets. 50 bucks I'm giving you. Go to bowlandbranch.com, promo code

00:02:48.120 Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Bowlandbranch.com for $50 off your first set of sheets. B-O-L-L and

00:02:54.260 branch.com, promo code Michael. Bowlandbranch.com, promo code Michael.

00:02:58.700 For years now, we have heard that President Trump is eroding faith in our institutions.

00:03:08.160 And the reason we've heard that is twofold. One, because President Trump is an unconventional

00:03:13.180 sort of fella who tweets a lot of things that we don't expect from our politicians. And the other

00:03:18.380 reason is faith in our institutions has been declining for years. There was a 2018 survey from

00:03:23.240 the Edelman Trust Barometer, which showed plummeting trust in institutions. So everybody

00:03:28.880 in the chattering class conflated correlation with causation. They conflated the fact that those

00:03:35.540 things are occurring at the same time with the cause of it and blaming President Trump for that.

00:03:40.960 This is in the left. This is the media. This is the anti-Trump right. This is the establishment

00:03:44.860 right. They're all blaming Trump. But I don't think that's the case. I mean, in some maybe marginal way,

00:03:51.560 President Trump is eroding faith in our institutions. But I think he's actually only doing that among

00:03:56.660 people who don't have faith in our institutions to begin with, namely the left. I would like to

00:04:00.840 propose an alternate theory, an alternative theory rather. I don't think President Trump is really

00:04:07.880 eroding faith in our institutions. I think that Trump is an expression of our distrust in our

00:04:13.740 institutions. Like they're getting it exactly backwards. I think that the federal agencies and the media

00:04:19.360 and the left have so eroded trust in our institutions for decades that the only way that we can respond

00:04:26.440 to that is by electing someone who did not have political experience, who does not come from a

00:04:32.660 political class, who does not have a perfectly defined ideology, who does not go to the sort of

00:04:38.800 think tank beltway circuit, who hasn't spent his whole life running for office or as a lobbyist,

00:04:43.860 a guy who is an expression of the popular culture, so much so that he's been a pop culture icon for 40

00:04:49.080 years. That is President Trump. That is an expression of distrust. That is not the cause

00:04:54.980 of distrust. And you see it in the biggest news of the day. Biggest news of the day right now

00:04:58.620 is the DOJ's inspector general came out with a report that James Comey, former FBI director,

00:05:05.460 probably the most sanctimonious guy in all of Washington, violated FBI policy when he leaked

00:05:11.160 memos about his meetings with President Trump. So between January and April 2017, before Comey got

00:05:18.260 canned, he had these meetings with President Trump and he wrote memos detailing what happened

00:05:23.320 in these meetings. And those memos contain some information. I mean, who knows if they're reliable

00:05:28.360 because we know Comey's a liar, but even let's say they are reliable. They said that Trump asked

00:05:33.400 Comey to be loyal to him and that Trump asked Comey to drop the FBI investigation into former

00:05:39.500 national security advisor, Michael Flynn. Again, it's hard for us to know if that's true or not,

00:05:44.560 sort of beside the point. Weeks after Comey was fired, Comey sent those memos to his friend,

00:05:52.120 Dan Richmond. And he instructed his friend to in turn send those memos to the New York Times,

00:06:00.200 to a specific reporter at the New York Times. So Comey didn't want to leak it himself because

00:06:03.660 he's a coward in a dirt bag. He sent it to his buddy lawyer who he then instructed to send it over

00:06:08.960 to the New York Times. Comey then also failed to notify the FBI after he was dismissed in May of

00:06:14.720 2017 that he had kept some of those memos in a safe at his own home. Completely violated FBI policy.

00:06:24.520 Did Comey apologize? No. Did Comey admit that he did wrong? No. Comey, who we had given stewardship of

00:06:32.260 one of our important institutions, the FBI, totally spun it, totally lied. This was his response.

00:06:39.320 He tweeted out, the DOJ IG, quote, found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released

00:06:45.040 any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.

00:06:49.340 Then he goes on, I don't need a public apology from those who defamed me,

00:06:53.160 but a quick message with a sorry we lied about you would be nice. I got a message for James Comey and

00:06:59.680 that message is not, sorry we lied about you and that message is not happy birthday, but it is two

00:07:04.020 words. The issue isn't the classification of the memos. The issue is the leaks. The issue is the fact

00:07:11.340 that he kept those memos in a safe at his own home. And the issue is that he leaked it to the media.

00:07:16.540 The issue is not telling the FBI that he had the memos. So forget Comey's spin. And actually,

00:07:23.240 you don't even need to take my word for it. Comey is being dragged right now by left-wing media as well,

00:07:28.680 CNN, the Associated Press, because there's just no defending him. The DOJ watchdog came out pretty

00:07:34.460 clearly and said that this guy broke the rules and it was a serious infraction of the rules.

00:07:40.340 Let's quote the IG directly. Inspector General writes, quote, even when these employees,

00:07:46.560 employees of the FBI and the federal agencies, even when they believe that their most strongly

00:07:52.320 held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them

00:07:58.400 not to disclose sensitive information. Former Director Comey failed to live up to this

00:08:03.340 responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his

00:08:08.220 FBI employment and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous

00:08:14.120 example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees and the many thousands more former FBI employees

00:08:20.240 who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information. So that's a dangerous example.

00:08:28.660 But Comey won't just own up to it. Comey won't apologize because Comey is a symbol of the corrupt,

00:08:34.920 corroded federal bureaucracy. Comey is a shining example of why people, even on the left, people left,

00:08:42.780 right, and center don't have trust in those institutions. You know, Comey went on.

00:08:46.900 And this is from the inspector general's report. He writes, quote, Comey said he was compelled to

00:08:53.560 take these actions. If I love this country and I love the Department of Justice and I love the FBI.

00:08:59.080 However, were current or former FBI employees to follow the former director's example and disclose

00:09:05.180 sensitive information in service of their own strongly held personal convictions, the FBI would be

00:09:10.560 unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly, as Comey himself noted in his March 20th,

00:09:18.720 2017 congressional testimony. Comey is admitting the principle here. You can't just leak sensitive

00:09:26.640 information from the federal government willy-nilly because you really believe in something.

00:09:32.840 That's a quick way for institutions to fall apart, which is what we're seeing. We're seeing the faith

00:09:38.320 in the institutions fall apart. Not because of the president, primarily because of the president's

00:09:43.440 opponents. Not just in the federal government, though. Look over at the media. You know, on MSNBC,

00:09:48.920 Lawrence O'Donnell has been forced to apologize after running a completely unverified report

00:09:53.480 insinuating that the president is a lying traitor to his country. Here is Lawrence with the big report.

00:09:59.800 Stop the hammering. Stop the hammering out there. Who's got a hammer?

00:10:03.980 No, sorry. Apparently there was hammering in the control room when we turned to Lawrence for his

00:10:08.240 report. So here is Lawrence with the actual big, super serious, albeit unverified, scoop that he

00:10:16.500 had the other night. It could mean if true, and I stress if true because this is a single source

00:10:21.260 who has told me that the Deutsche Bank obtained tax returns, which they do have, of Donald Trump's,

00:10:29.440 show that the president pays very little income tax. That's probably not going to be very surprising

00:10:36.660 to people. Probably not going to be especially politically damaging since he ran saying,

00:10:42.240 I try to pay as little as possible. Then there's the other part, the loan documents. And that is part

00:10:48.840 of what this subpoena is going after. And this single source close to Deutsche Bank has told me

00:10:55.400 that the Trump, Donald Trump's loan documents there show that he has co-signers. That's how he was able

00:11:03.960 to obtain those loans. And that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs.

00:11:11.660 What? What? Bombshell. Big if true. Whoa. They're still going with the Russian collusion narrative.

00:11:20.760 Can you believe it? Years later, after it was debunked by the Mueller investigation,

00:11:27.080 which they put all of their hopes into, completely debunked, no collusion, no conspiracy with the

00:11:33.980 Russian government. They are still going with it because they have nothing else to do. I mean,

00:11:38.500 they're hoping for a recession. They're praying that the economy tanks so that they have something

00:11:41.640 to run against, something to run on. But so far they don't have that. So they're still going with

00:11:46.360 this imaginary narrative. But how could they go with the collusion narrative if the collusion

00:11:50.340 narrative was debunked by the Mueller report? They would just have to make it up, which is exactly

00:11:54.620 what Lawrence O'Donnell is doing right here. They don't have any evidence of it. So either O'Donnell

00:11:59.260 constructed it in his own mind or some guy that he knows at Deutsche Bank gave him bad information

00:12:04.160 that is completely unverified, completely uncorroborated. He runs it anyway, which is why

00:12:09.380 Lawrence O'Donnell was forced to give a retraction the next night. Last night on this show, I discussed

00:12:14.500 information that wasn't ready for reporting. I repeated statements. A single source told me about the

00:12:20.160 president's finances and loan documents with Deutsche Bank saying, if true, as I discussed the

00:12:26.580 information was simply not good enough. I did not go through the rigorous verification and standards

00:12:31.880 process here at MSNBC before repeating what I heard from my source. Had it gone through that process,

00:12:39.200 I would not have been permitted to report it. I should not have said it on air or posted it on

00:12:45.820 Twitter. I was wrong to do so. This afternoon, attorneys for the president sent us a letter

00:12:50.480 asserting the story is false. They also demanded a retraction. Tonight, we are retracting the story.

00:12:57.560 Yeah, that's right. You are. Damn right you're retracting that story. Not because Lawrence O'Donnell

00:13:02.920 has some integrity, not because he, if he had integrity, he wouldn't have run the story in the

00:13:06.640 first place. He's not even really apologizing here. He's saying, well, you know, the president's

00:13:11.820 lawyers demanded we run a retraction. And so we are going to run a retraction. Obviously he's,

00:13:16.640 he's pretty afraid of Trump's lawyers. I don't know that Trump is going to sue. You don't want,

00:13:20.700 you don't want a lot of this kind of information to come out in discovery, but the threat is very

00:13:25.800 real. Obviously O'Donnell should never have run this story. And so he, he's running scared and he's

00:13:32.980 pulling it, but he couldn't even just fully retract the story. He had to kind of mealy mouth,

00:13:37.480 negate his own retraction. We don't know whether the information is inaccurate, but the fact is we

00:13:45.100 do know it wasn't ready for broadcast. And for that, I apologize. Oh, we don't know. He's look

00:13:52.660 in America, according to Lawrence O'Donnell in America, according to Bob Mueller in America,

00:13:57.620 according to the left, when it suits their purposes, you are guilty until proven innocent.

00:14:02.440 So we don't know. Hey, look, I, I got a report from a friend of mine that Lawrence O'Donnell still

00:14:09.060 beats his wife. Now I don't know if that's true. Okay. This has not been corroborated. This has not

00:14:14.600 been verified. So I don't know, but I don't know that it's not true. Okay. I don't, I cannot say

00:14:22.840 definitively that Lawrence O'Donnell doesn't still beat his wife. So I'm just, look, obviously I would

00:14:29.320 never report that Lawrence O'Donnell still beats his wife because it's not verified and it's not

00:14:33.700 corroborated. I'm just, just, just want to remind you all, I don't know that he doesn't still beat

00:14:40.840 his wife. Okay. I don't know that president Trump has been fully exonerated on colluding,

00:14:47.800 not just with foreigners in Russia. I don't know that he hasn't colluded with Martians to take over

00:14:54.140 the earth through area 51. I don't know that he hasn't been fully exonerated of that. So I'm just

00:14:59.540 saying, you know, I'm just, look, I'm just, I'm just saying. And by the way, even this bogus kind

00:15:04.260 of weak retraction that he, he posted is the typical leftist formula, right? Lawrence O'Donnell

00:15:11.360 tweets out, I've got the scoop. Trump colluded with the Russians. Tens of thousands of retweets,

00:15:18.260 tens of thousands of likes, all the blue check marks, all the celebrities posting about it.

00:15:22.700 Then he posts, then he tweets his retraction. Few hundred retweets. This is as of last night.

00:15:29.560 Few, okay. Few, it doesn't matter what the retraction is. It's like you run the story on

00:15:33.180 page A1 and then you run the retraction on page Z75. No one's going to see the retraction.

00:15:38.580 And I guarantee you of the people who saw this story, the vast majority of them didn't notice

00:15:44.180 the retraction, didn't pay attention to the retraction. And even if they did, they're not

00:15:47.760 going to believe the retraction because the shock of the story was so big that that's what's

00:15:51.740 going to stick in your mind. This is, I wonder, I wonder why we don't have faith in the media.

00:15:55.380 I wonder why we don't have faith in our institutions. Then we go to our institutions

00:15:58.200 of lawmaking. Our friend is back. AOC is back. Not one day after I tweeted out the strange coincidence

00:16:05.420 that immediately after she fired her chief of staff, she went radio silence, stopped appearing

00:16:11.100 in the newspapers. Not one or two days after that, she starts making a spectacle of herself again,

00:16:15.920 because I guess she doesn't want it to become clear that her fired chief of staff,

00:16:19.020 Psychot Jagrabarty was the, the whole brains of the operation. And I use the brain, the brains of

00:16:23.940 the operation very, very liberally here. AOC has come out with a new video to tell us that the

00:16:31.380 Electoral College is a sham. One of our nation's oldest institutions. She says, we need to get rid of

00:16:37.540 it. The Electoral College has worked well for 232 years, but AOC says it's no good. So it's gone.

00:16:43.260 Over that time that we've had the Electoral College, we've become the richest, freest,

00:16:47.660 most equitable, most just nation in the history of the world. But you know, AOC doesn't like it.

00:16:52.220 So we got to get rid of it. The trouble is AOC doesn't seem to know what the Electoral College

00:16:59.280 is. It's true. I'm not taking it back. It's bogus. It's a scam. Um, and like, it's not just,

00:17:07.500 it's not even about rural voters versus urban voters. That's the thing about the Electoral College.

00:17:13.200 It's actually not about rural voters versus urban voters.

00:17:18.080 Stop. So the, the thing I learned, the main thing I took away from this video is not that AOC

00:17:25.620 doesn't know what the Electoral College is because I assumed she, she didn't know what the Electoral

00:17:29.540 College is or much about our government. The main thing I took away from it is that AOC can't pronounce

00:17:34.820 the word rural. She did, she said rural. Oh, she sounds like Jenna Maroney on 30 Rock. And she sounds

00:17:44.680 like when everyone tries to pronounce Jenna's new screenplay, The Rural Juror.

00:17:50.660 Coming up, I'll be talking to the girly show star, Jenna Maroney, about her upcoming project,

00:17:56.100 The Rural Juror.

00:17:57.780 The Rural Juror. This is not about rural voters. This is about democracy. I don't know.

00:18:03.480 So AOC then goes on to get to, I guess, something vaguely resembling a point.

00:18:09.880 If you cared about the voices of rural voters, you would allow all of, you would allow all rural

00:18:18.720 voters to come together and to have their vote, all of their votes counted. But instead,

00:18:24.620 if your state is a blue state and you're a rural voter, your vote is essentially erased,

00:18:31.460 you know, and so for all those like Republicans that are like, oh, blah, blah, blah, this helps

00:18:35.440 us. What about all of those Republican, what about all of those Republican voters in, for example,

00:18:40.940 New York or in California who feel like their votes don't matter? Well, I suppose if they're

00:18:46.220 in a popular vote, everyone's vote would count equally and we wouldn't give essentially

00:18:51.840 affirmative action to a very few small band of voters. Okay. Since you asked AOC, I will say as

00:19:01.660 a conservative, a Republican in a blue state, actually formerly, you know, lived in New York

00:19:06.700 most of my life. I love the electoral college. Keep it. Thanks for asking my opinion. I'm glad you

00:19:11.540 want to know what we think. Keep the electoral college. It's great. What she's saying is not true.

00:19:17.240 What's, what's so funny is she's admitting that rural voters, rural, rural voters are Republicans

00:19:24.300 and conservatives generally. Now this isn't true across the board. There are plenty of rural voters

00:19:28.180 who are Democrats, but she's basically just saying, no, we're going to give up all the rural voters.

00:19:33.020 We're going to keep all of the city voters. The problem with her analysis is not, uh, is not even on

00:19:42.080 the weight of the votes itself. It's true. If you're, if you live in a smaller state, for instance,

00:19:50.440 doesn't have to be rural or, or metropolitan, but if you just live in a smaller state, your vote,

00:19:56.120 given the electoral college does carry greater weight than if you lived in a, uh, larger state.

00:20:01.920 The reason for this is because of how the electoral college is set up. It takes into account,

00:20:06.180 but the states themselves and also the population of the states, but let's take, so it takes into

00:20:12.160 account, right? The Senate, every state gets two senators and then it takes into account the house

00:20:16.220 of representatives, which is apportioned based on population. But let's take AOC's logic to its

00:20:21.480 logical conclusion. If AOC is right, then we need to abolish the Senate. Forget about the electoral

00:20:26.380 college. The electoral college is like pretty, pretty even. I mean, the electoral college is a pretty

00:20:31.160 good representation of the popular, uh, representation of the country, of the, of the

00:20:36.860 populace generally. The Senate is not. The Senate is a representation of the states. Every state gets

00:20:42.560 two votes, whether you're Rhode Island or whether you're California. So if you really want direct

00:20:46.680 democracy, which is what she's talking about, then you forget the electoral college. You have to

00:20:50.520 abolish the Senate. She's not willing to go that far yet, probably because she wants to run for

00:20:54.460 Senate against Kirsten Gillibrand in a few years. But what this belies is not just that she

00:21:00.200 doesn't understand the electoral college. She doesn't understand federalism. She doesn't

00:21:04.040 understand what our country is. She seems to think that our country is called the United

00:21:08.720 Individuals of America, the United Population of America. It's not. It's the United States

00:21:16.080 of America. We have a federal system. I wish I didn't have to explain this to a representative

00:21:20.700 in our federal government, but what federalism does is it divides power between the federal power

00:21:26.980 and the states and local communities. And it divides power between the different branches

00:21:32.540 of government, the legislative, the judiciary, and the executive. And it divides power between the

00:21:38.860 people and the states and the federal government. We have balances of power in this country. We're not

00:21:45.540 just all spread out individuals ready to be clobbered by the federal power that AOC wants to expand.

00:21:52.260 Then she goes on to try to make this a racial issue or in a sexual issue or in some other way,

00:22:01.820 a grievance, intersectional matter.

00:22:04.820 And for all these folks that say the electoral college is to instill fairness, well,

00:22:09.320 we literally only select one very narrow group to allow their votes to count more than other people.

00:22:16.680 Why don't we give Indian reservations an electoral vote? Why don't we give Puerto Rico and U.S. territories,

00:22:27.360 U.S. all hundreds of thousands, if not millions of U.S. citizens have zero representation. Why don't

00:22:34.660 we give them an electoral vote? Why don't we accommodate our democracy for black Americans who

00:22:39.920 were disenfranchised and in many ways continue to be disenfranchised for hundreds of years?

00:22:44.420 We don't give Native American nations a vote because they're sovereign nations. So that's why.

00:22:51.160 We don't give Puerto Rico a vote because it's not a state and Puerto Rico doesn't pay any taxes.

00:22:56.900 And we don't give black people multiple votes because they're people, like all of us. You might

00:23:01.940 not think that they're people, but we think they're people. And so they get the same votes as all the

00:23:05.400 other people. Good lordy. But it's, you see, there's no, she, she hasn't followed any of the

00:23:12.380 ideas, these ideas to any sort of logical end. She's just trying to gin up grievance. What about

00:23:19.900 the Native Americans? What about them? If a Native American assimilates into American society,

00:23:24.640 doesn't live as a, as a member of a sovereign nation, they can do whatever they want.

00:23:28.860 What about Puerto Rico? I don't know. If you, Puerto Rican moves to Florida, then you get to

00:23:34.120 vote. But Puerto Rico is not a state and Florida is a state and we're the United States of America.

00:23:38.280 Well, why don't black people get seven votes? What? What are you talking about?

00:23:43.700 Then she goes on and promotes one of the most pernicious canards of all that she suggests that

00:23:51.820 the electoral college is really, it's so illegitimate because it was only set up to protect

00:23:57.980 slavery. We don't do any of that. We only consider fairness for a very, for a very like small band.

00:24:06.700 And frankly, this original compromise was to accommodate slave owners.

00:24:12.340 Yep. Not true. Completely put that away with the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. This is a

00:24:16.620 persistent legend, but it is not true. You don't need to take my word for it. You don't even need to

00:24:20.420 take conservatives' word for it. You can go to the left-wing newspaper, par excellence,

00:24:24.960 the New York Times. New York Times ran a good piece on this by Sean Wilentz, who is an historian

00:24:30.020 who had actually previously written a book asserting this very legend that AOC was talking about.

00:24:36.440 And he had to amend that. He had to edit that in the second edition of his book. And he wrote a New

00:24:40.720 York Times op-ed about it. The electoral college was not about accommodating slave owners. How do I know

00:24:46.080 that? The electoral college approved by the constitutional convention combined the, or

00:24:52.500 counted the electors rather by combining the house and the senate. So the number of representatives you

00:24:56.340 get in the, the house plus the senators, that's your electoral apportionment. Now by including the

00:25:04.240 house there, that helped the bigger states by including, right, because they have a bigger

00:25:09.560 population. By including the senate there, that helped the smaller states because they get outsized

00:25:14.440 representation for their smaller size. Why did they protect the states? Well, one, because it's United

00:25:19.800 States and the states are different. But also the states would not sign on if Rhode Island's vote was

00:25:25.120 going to get completely washed out by California. I mean, this is true today. There are big differences

00:25:30.380 between, I don't know, Oklahoma and California. There are big differences between Rhode Island and

00:25:36.360 California for that matter, even though they might vote the same way. They have very different

00:25:40.080 interests and they have different culture and different politics. It's completely unfair. It's

00:25:47.060 completely out of step with our political tradition to just destroy the representation of Rhode Island

00:25:54.180 in the federal government. So there was a compromise which came to the electoral college. Now the slave

00:26:01.440 owning states were not thrilled about this. The slave owning states wanted it just to be based on

00:26:05.500 population because they would have the three-fifths compromise involved in that calculation, which

00:26:10.600 counted their slave population, at least three-fifths of it, for apportionment to give them more

00:26:16.540 representation in the federal government. And if that were the way that we elected presidents, to give

00:26:21.540 them more control over electing presidents. There's this really silly idea that the three-fifths

00:26:27.160 compromise is offensive to black people and the descendants of slaves because it only valued

00:26:34.600 black people as three-fifths of a person. Actually, the opposite is true. The more just agreement

00:26:41.300 that could have been come up with is to not count the black slaves at all. That's what the

00:26:45.840 abolitionists wanted. They didn't want to count black slaves as any bit of a person for the purpose of

00:26:51.060 politics because it gave the slave owning states an outsized role in the federal government, outsized

00:26:56.340 power. The idea was if you don't have political rights, then you shouldn't be counted as part of the

00:27:00.880 population. And if you are going to be counted as part of the population, then you shouldn't be

00:27:04.560 held as slaves. You should have political rights. And the three-fifths compromise was a way to form

00:27:08.540 a nation with that great tension, even from the very beginning. So that was the direct election,

00:27:14.880 just based on the apportionment of the population, was defeated. That was defeated pretty early on

00:27:21.520 by people who feared mob rule. Once that was defeated, the most ardently pro-slavery states

00:27:27.540 actually opposed the electoral college. North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia opposed the proposal.

00:27:33.320 Also under the initial apportionment of the electoral college, the slave holding states only would have

00:27:39.860 held 39 out of 92 electoral votes. So they didn't dominate the presidential elections. Also, and this

00:27:46.400 is important to look at the effects of the electoral college, the electoral college didn't really seem to

00:27:51.440 tip any election during slavery, during slave times, except possibly one, which was the election of

00:27:58.680 John Quincy Adams in 1824. John Quincy Adams being maybe the most ardent anti-slavery crusader of his

00:28:06.600 age. And he lost the popular vote and the electoral vote to the pro-slavery Andrew Jackson. And because

00:28:12.740 that election was ultimately decided after great contest in the House of Representatives, it went to

00:28:17.780 John Quincy Adams. So the only time that the electoral college during slave days would have really

00:28:22.600 weighed in on this question. It helped the anti-slavery cause and an anti-slavery candidate.

00:28:28.920 Now, I don't expect AOC to know that. I also don't expect her to be in Congress and I don't expect her

00:28:33.660 to be considered the future of the party by the head of the Democratic National Convention. But she is

00:28:41.220 directly undermining trust in an American institution, the electoral college, an important one and a

00:28:46.620 longstanding one. And she's undermining trust in Congress just by being there. It's so, so disingenuous

00:28:54.680 to blame President Trump for eroding trust in our institutions. We can't even keep a high-level sex

00:29:02.540 trafficker in jail. Now they say it's a suicide, even though he's got broken bones in his neck that

00:29:08.180 are more likely from strangulation. And even though the guards just happened to fall asleep at exactly

00:29:13.020 the same time. And even though the camera didn't work, now we're finding out a second camera outside

00:29:16.420 his jail didn't, outside of his cell didn't even work. That's why we don't have trust in institutions

00:29:23.060 because the institutions are failing us. The reason we don't have trust in our institutions

00:29:27.420 is because they have been hollowed out and corrupted from within for decades and decades and decades.

00:29:32.000 That ain't Trump's fault. You know, H.L. Mencken said democracy is the theory that the people know

00:29:38.000 what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard. And we elected President Trump because

00:29:42.600 of these issues. So you want to blame him for the tweets? Fine. You want to blame him for further

00:29:48.080 reducing our trust in institutions? Okay. Fair enough to have that argument. But don't,

00:29:54.560 don't blame him for the decline in trust. The decline in trust is the reason that we got Trump

00:29:58.960 in the first place. Speaking of eroding our trust in institutions, we've quickly got to get to eroding

00:30:04.860 our trust in language. Then we got to get to the mailbag. But first, before I get to the difference

00:30:10.480 between non-binary gender and lesbians and whether non-binary people can be lesbians and how we can't

00:30:17.360 even have faith in our perception of reality itself anymore, it seems in this country,

00:30:22.520 the Daily Wire has turned four years old. It identifies as four years old and it actually is

00:30:27.500 four years old. As a thank you to our fans, we are giving away one month of our premium monthly

00:30:32.720 subscription to anyone who uses the code birthday. For all of August, which is quickly winding down as we

00:30:38.300 celebrate this milestone, we've been giving away a free first month for new premium monthly

00:30:42.380 subscribers. Again, just use that code birthday. Time is running out. There are only two days left

00:30:47.400 to get this deal. So subscribe today and come join in on the fun. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right

00:30:52.100 back with a lot more. We got to get to the mailbag, but first we've got to touch on this story because

00:31:06.540 this is the question that is really on all of our minds. Can you be non-binary, whatever that is,

00:31:14.000 and a lesbian? A few non-binary lesbians explain. So can you be non-binary and lesbian? This is

00:31:22.000 something I often get asked because when you identify as non-binary, you're saying that you're

00:31:26.820 not female. And if you're not female and you're attracted to women, does that make you a lesbian?

00:31:31.080 I think it's sort of disingenuous to claim that you can't be both non-binary and a lesbian because

00:31:36.520 you can definitely have an authentic lesbian experience as a non-binary person. Because at

00:31:41.440 the end of the day, they are terms. They are linguistic tools used to describe an experience

00:31:45.960 that already exists. So someone telling me that I can't be a non-binary lesbian doesn't mean anything

00:31:52.320 because I already am one. And I'm just using the language that I have available to me to describe

00:31:57.200 that. There is so much bad philosophy in here. And these women probably earnestly believe it,

00:32:05.720 but it's worth getting to because this is a video making the rounds on the internet. And it does

00:32:10.140 reflect a serious confusion going on in the culture. To begin, the lesbian experience can be authentic

00:32:17.200 among non-binary people. The reason for that is because the lesbian experience is authentic and the

00:32:23.980 non-binary experience or the perception that you are neither male nor female is inauthentic.

00:32:28.880 The lesbian part is real. The non-binary part is not real. Why? That's because sex is real and gender

00:32:36.840 as a distinct human category is imaginary. It's completely fiction. It is dreamed up by people who

00:32:44.340 want to make a distinction without a difference. So these women, these lesbians realize that there's a

00:32:49.020 contradiction here, but they don't care, right? This is the triumph of the will over the intellect.

00:32:57.300 They're lesbians in the sense that they're women who are sexually attracted to women and they have

00:33:00.840 authentic lesbian experiences because despite what they say, they, they actually are women,

00:33:05.440 but they also want to say that they are not women. So over the, over the intellect, over the reason,

00:33:12.440 which shows them that they are women who have sex with other women is this will,

00:33:17.200 which is to say, I want to be a woman who has sex with other women, but I also don't want to be a

00:33:21.140 woman and I'm going to do both. They're, they are going to presume to force their will on others.

00:33:27.420 You know, the reason we have reason, the reason we use reason is because it's objective. We are

00:33:32.600 reasoning about things that are outside of ourselves. So I can communicate what I think

00:33:36.620 about something outside of me to you and then you using your faculties of reason can try to

00:33:41.100 understand that and we can have communication and talk about it. If it's just will, there's no

00:33:46.020 communication. You're just grunting brute animals in a forest. Basically, you're not referring to

00:33:50.940 anything objective. You couldn't perceive anything anyway, because we're only talking about our

00:33:55.860 willfulness, what we will have to be true. And this is called bullying. These women perceive this

00:34:04.020 as bullying, but they, they, they're actually getting the bullying backwards. So my personal experience

00:34:09.460 with the lesbian community since coming out as non-binary has been rather dismal. A lot of

00:34:17.280 lesbians that I've encountered, especially on dates, haven't accepted my identity as something

00:34:21.660 that they are interested in dating or accepting to the point where some women have wanted me to

00:34:29.000 use my birth name, which I feel very uncomfortable to use, um, because they want me to be more of a

00:34:35.660 woman rather than, uh, someone who identifies in the middle. So that almost bullying me out of my

00:34:41.620 own identity, which is quite frustrating. It's quite frustrating. It's quite frustrating that the

00:34:46.720 lesbians want to date women. Why do the lesbians get to date women when I don't want them to? That's

00:34:53.580 what this woman is saying. She's saying, look, I don't, I don't want lesbians to be attracted to

00:35:00.880 women. I want them to be attracted to this imaginary category that I've invented. There is

00:35:05.660 bullying going on, but it's bullying in the other direction. Lesbians like girls. So if you say you're

00:35:10.560 not a girl, then by definition, lesbians are not going to be interested in you. And this woman has a

00:35:15.580 real frustration. The real frustration is deep down. She knows she's still a girl. So she thinks it's

00:35:19.860 unfair that lesbians are not interested in her because she is a girl, but there's a difference

00:35:23.820 between what she feels or what she, she, she wants to put out to the world and what she's presenting

00:35:30.100 and what is true, right? She knows deep down she's a lesbian, she's a girl, but she's putting out to

00:35:36.460 the world that she's not a girl. But all the lesbian has to go on is that you're saying you're not a girl.

00:35:41.760 And if you're not a girl, then the lesbian is not attracted to you. And I thought we've just spent 20

00:35:45.120 years saying that lesbians are allowed to love whoever they want. But now you're saying they're not

00:35:48.680 allowed to love whoever they want if it interferes with your willfulness. If you insist by going by

00:35:54.060 a male name or by some androgynous name like Skylar or something like that, then this lesbian is not

00:36:00.020 going to perceive you as a woman and she's not going to be attracted to you. This is the extreme of

00:36:03.560 wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Okay. You can be a lesbian or you can be a man, or at least

00:36:09.060 you can at least pretend to be a man, but you cannot be a lesbian and a man. And you see what they're

00:36:15.460 saying here is, well, it's all just words. It's all words, words, words, right? Words are symbols

00:36:20.300 that reflect reality. That's what words are. And the reason that the left so manipulates language

00:36:28.020 is always trying to change language and pervert language and pervert the meaning of words is

00:36:32.380 because they hate the reality underneath. They are trying to insist on their own fiction. They are

00:36:38.080 using words to try to construct a reality of words, which is really a fantasy rather than what

00:36:46.600 conservatives do and what people should do, which is using words to express the objective reality, not

00:36:51.540 to try to create a fantasy universe, but using those words, which are symbols to express the reality

00:36:56.700 itself. These non-binary lesbians have my sympathy, but it is easily fixed if they just

00:37:03.480 make their language correspond to reality. You non-binary lesbians. All right, let's get to the

00:37:12.480 mailbag quickly in the time we have left. I'm going to fly through these. Justin. Hi, Michael. I've been

00:37:17.500 hearing a lot lately about how the Democratic Party and the Republican Party supposedly switched. I have

00:37:21.480 no knowledge of this and was hoping you could shed some light and share your knowledge. Thanks for all you

00:37:25.140 do. Yes, this is a legend that is put forth by Democrats because they don't want to own up to the fact

00:37:30.780 that they are members of just an absolutely terrible political party with a history of human misery and

00:37:37.920 a party that was founded. It's the oldest continuously extant political party in the world and it's the

00:37:44.300 party that defended slavery and Jim Crow and the KKK and Redlining and all of those things. So what

00:37:51.360 they have to do, and you'll hear this usually from like baby boomers, is they'll say, yeah, well,

00:37:56.980 I'm a Democrat. But around the time, coincidentally, when I became politically conscious Democrat,

00:38:03.120 the parties just, they switched. So even though the Republican Party was founded against slavery

00:38:09.800 and the Republican Party was founded to protect American workers and against monopoly, against the

00:38:14.580 monopoly of slave owners and against the monopoly of industry, and even though the Republican Party

00:38:18.580 was the persistent advocate of civil rights for everybody, including black Americans,

00:38:24.680 and even though the Republican Party authored many, many civil rights bills, and even though the

00:38:29.140 most famous civil rights bill from the 1960s was only passed because of the support of Republicans,

00:38:33.960 not because of the support of congressional and Senate Democrats. Forget all of that.

00:38:38.860 Forget that. Then they switched. So actually the Republicans became the Democrats. The Democrats

00:38:43.140 became the Republicans. Ask yourself if this makes sense. Do you think the head of the GOP and the

00:38:47.260 Democrats just sat down one day and they said, okay, from now on, you're going to be the other one and I'm,

00:38:50.920 and I'm going to be you and that's going to, why are we doing that? I don't know. Couldn't possibly tell

00:38:54.940 you. Doesn't make sense. Part of the reason they insist on this is because geographic loyalties have

00:39:00.140 changed a little bit. This began in the 60s and 70s, especially when the new left took over the

00:39:06.100 Democratic Party, which used to be more moderate or have more moderates. So there were people who were

00:39:12.280 Democrats who said, well, I can't get on board with atheism and abortion on demand. So I guess I have to

00:39:17.820 identify with the other party. I can't get on board with those things. And so you saw some

00:39:21.320 geographic realignment into more ideological terms, but the GOP is the GOP. The Democratic Party is the

00:39:27.100 Democratic Party. They can try to run away from their horrible history as much as they like, but ain't

00:39:31.860 gonna work. From Logan. Dear Kofefe Sensei, I'm 20 and a sophomore in college, double major. I work two jobs

00:39:38.960 and I'm an ROTC cadet. Good for you. Now a part of me wants to cut back on my obligations and try to have a

00:39:45.460 romantic life. I've never had a girlfriend or have, or been on a date. As a person who has become

00:39:51.520 incredibly successful as a young age, how do you prioritize love and building a family with your

00:39:57.600 professional aspirations and obligations? Best wishes. And again, thank you for all that you do.

00:40:02.800 Best, Logan. Sounds like you got a lot going for you, so I don't think it'll be too hard for you to go

00:40:09.960 out on a date, but I would make time to do that. There was an expression we had in college, which

00:40:15.220 was that you could either, there were three things you could do. Work, sleep, go out and have a good

00:40:23.040 time. And you got to pick two. So sleep is for wimps, Buster. Go out and have a good time. I mean,

00:40:29.560 go get a girl. This is going to be much more important than whether you, you know, spend an

00:40:33.700 extra hour on your term paper or something, or you spend an extra hour working at whatever one of

00:40:38.000 your jobs is. If you don't need the money, then you got to get some balance in your life.

00:40:42.120 If you end your life alone and overworked and miserable, then what's it going to say in your

00:40:47.460 tombstone? Here lies Justin or Logan rather. Here lies Logan. He did a really good job. No,

00:40:54.700 I don't think you want that. So yeah, go out and do it. And I wonder if some of the overworking and

00:40:58.740 all of that prioritization comes from maybe an insecurity or a lack of confidence in going out and

00:41:04.280 getting a girl. Because man, if I were single, you couldn't keep me away from going on

00:41:07.840 dates. You would have to have the entire army try to hold me back. It still wouldn't work.

00:41:12.140 So yeah, I would absolutely go out there and do it. And if it means working fewer hours,

00:41:16.420 fine. Just make sure you have enough money to pick up the tab for dinner. Go do it. Go get the girl.

00:41:21.260 Act like a man. Sounds like you're already kind of a man. You're working hard. You're in ROTC.

00:41:25.600 That's great. But to quote Don Corleone, a man can never be a man if he doesn't spend time with his

00:41:32.260 family. So go out there, meet a girl, have a nice time, start a family. From Anonymous,

00:41:38.320 I'm terrible at making decisions in life and I'm always fearful of making the wrong decision.

00:41:43.680 Have you ever struggled with anything like this? And if not, do you have any words of advice on how

00:41:47.940 you approach tough situations to make a decision easier? Yes, I agonize over decisions. I tear my hair

00:41:56.820 out. I can't, I can't so much as buy a new shirt without analyzing and examining every single angle

00:42:04.420 of it. And then eventually I force myself to make a decision and then I don't think about it again.

00:42:11.900 This I think is the key. I don't think you should be reckless or hasty or rush into a decision.

00:42:16.020 You should really take time to do it and then cut yourself off. You can't take time forever.

00:42:22.580 Pick a deadline, make a decision, and then don't regret it. Just move on there. You have other

00:42:28.920 decisions to make. Sometimes a wrong decision is better than indecision. You've got, you can do

00:42:36.440 both things. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Take time, examine it carefully, and then do it and

00:42:42.280 move on. And how do you do that? For me, I have great faith in providence. Providence, the idea that

00:42:48.800 the world makes sense, or for you more religiously minded people, the more precise way of saying that

00:42:53.980 is that God is God. You know, all nature is but art unknown to thee, all chance direction which thou

00:42:59.620 canst not see. I think as long as I do my best, God will do the rest and I'm going to move on. And

00:43:04.740 if I make a bad decision, I rejoice in my sufferings and I'll move on then too. From Valerie, my parents

00:43:11.140 and I are conservative and voted for President Trump and my boyfriend is liberal and voted for Hillary.

00:43:15.220 Are you sure he's your boyfriend? Is he maybe non-binary or, no, I don't, non-binary lesbian?

00:43:20.180 No, I'm kidding. She goes on. Both sides feel very strongly about politics and I feel that I'm stuck

00:43:25.520 in the middle because I love them all the same. Do you have any words of advice on what I could say

00:43:32.180 to my parents and boyfriend so that all sides respect each other and can get along? Yes, you're in a

00:43:37.840 slightly tough spot because typically in this kind of divided scenario would be the man who's more

00:43:44.760 conservative and the woman who's a little more liberal. It's just the way it shakes out. And so

00:43:50.100 it's a little weird when men are liberal. It's just, it's like it happens. I have liberal male

00:43:55.760 friends. It's just like a little more weird. It might make it a little trickier. But, you know,

00:44:00.500 I've got a couple of friends married. The wife is much more conservative and the guy is much more

00:44:06.740 liberal. But they're incredibly respectful people. And I think that what is usually the case, and this

00:44:15.060 has been borne out by social science, is that conservatives understand leftism and liberalism

00:44:20.060 much better than liberals and leftists understand conservatism. It's not because we're so superior.

00:44:26.440 It's largely because the popular culture is leftist. So if you're in the culture, you just kind of get it.

00:44:30.900 And if you have a contrary view, then you're going to understand both of those. Whereas the leftists

00:44:36.020 in the culture don't really need to understand conservatism. What is crucial is for your

00:44:41.600 boyfriend to know, to at least trust that conservatives have a reason for thinking the

00:44:47.500 things they do. He has to at least trust that there is a good faith, goodwill reason that

00:44:53.580 conservatives exist. And it's not just that they're evil, vicious, awful, terrible, greedy, mean people.

00:45:00.000 And what the conservative side of your family needs to have is patience, you know, and some goodwill and

00:45:06.040 a little bit of humility and say, well, look, there before the grace of God go I. I was a liberal very

00:45:09.980 briefly in my life, so I understand a lot of their arguments too. If you have that, just that,

00:45:16.600 I guess it's a respect, but it's a simple humility to say, gosh, you know, I don't understand

00:45:23.840 everything. Maybe that conservative gets something that I don't get, or even maybe that liberal gets

00:45:28.240 something I don't get. I think you'll be just fine. And then eventually he'll change his mind

00:45:31.760 because you're right and he's wrong. Final question from James. Mr. Knowles, have you

00:45:35.520 considered running for political office? Perhaps the Senate best regards James. If an opportunity

00:45:41.400 came up and I felt that I could actually do something, I guess I would do it. If I were just

00:45:47.800 going to run and were just some like vacuous guy doing nothing in the federal government, I have

00:45:52.740 absolutely no interest in that whatsoever. It seems like a waste of time, a waste of money.

00:45:57.820 It seems to really make life unpleasant. So if there were an opportunity to actually do something

00:46:01.740 good, I would certainly do it. I think that's great. I think it's wonderful to go into politics

00:46:08.340 for the right reasons. But if it's just, you know, getting your name on a billboard, I don't

00:46:12.660 need to do that. That doesn't, I can do that some other way. I'll go write another blank book and then

00:46:17.220 I'll get a billboard. As for running for the Senate, I was not interested in it really until today

00:46:22.780 when AOC basically threatened to abolish it. So I guess if I'm going to run for Senate,

00:46:26.620 I better do it sooner rather than later, even though I'm actually, you know, I'm too young

00:46:31.060 to run for the, for either office right now for the Senate or president. So hopefully,

00:46:35.460 hopefully AOC doesn't abolish the Senate before I have a chance to go at it. All right. That's

00:46:39.300 our show. Come back on Monday. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles

00:46:43.200 show. I'll see you then.

00:46:49.640 If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.

00:46:54.820 And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends

00:46:59.240 to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

00:47:05.240 Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,

00:47:09.880 The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by

00:47:14.480 Rebecca Dobkowitz, director Mike Joyner, executive producer Jeremy Boring. Our senior producer is

00:47:20.620 Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover, technical producer Austin Stevens, editor Danny

00:47:26.980 D'Amico. Our audio mixer is Mike Coromina, hair and makeup by Jesua Olvera, production assistant

00:47:32.880 Nick Sheehan. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:47:37.760 If you prefer facts over feelings, if you aren't offended by the brutal truth, if you can still

00:47:43.940 laugh at the nuttiness filling our national news cycle, well, tune on in to The Ben Shapiro Show,

00:47:48.400 where you'll get a whole lot of that and much more. We'll see you there.

Ep. 407 - TrUmP eRoDeS tRuSt In OuR iNsTiTuTiOnS!

Summary

Transcript