The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 Great news from the White House today. Just as President Trump's supporters had nearly

00:00:05.220 abandoned all hope for a wall on our southern border, the White House announces plans to divert

00:00:10.540 $3.6 billion for military construction projects to build the border wall. We will examine how

00:00:17.140 likely it is that the money makes it to the southern border and what it means for 2020.

00:00:21.200 Then, speaking of 2020, a new poll spells bad news for President Trump, but it also spells

00:00:26.560 bad news for Joe Biden, which is good news for Elizabeth Warren, which is good news for President

00:00:31.220 Trump. How does that work? It's a complex poll. We will break it down. Over in the motherland,

00:00:36.260 the UK's Prince Harry gives a hypocritical speech on environmentalism. The speech tells us a lot

00:00:42.360 more about the state of Western religion than it does about science. Finally, some hope from

00:00:47.840 left-wing Hollywood. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

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00:03:30.980 DanielsNYC.com. I love them and you will too. Great news beyond our briefcases and how great we

00:03:39.480 all will look with them. Great news from the White House today. It actually came out yesterday in the

00:03:46.100 evening, but the news is finally hitting this morning. President Trump has announced plans to

00:03:51.020 divert $3.6 billion from military construction projects to build the border wall. This is the most

00:03:59.360 significant news on building the border wall that we've had so far. There, you know, President Trump

00:04:06.720 had been telling people that he'd built a lot of wall. There's a lot of new wall, not just replacing

00:04:10.700 old wall. Then there was a report that came out just a few months ago from Customs and Border Protection,

00:04:16.400 which showed that he hadn't built a single inch of new wall. He had replaced old walls, but in terms

00:04:22.260 of new wall, there had been nothing. A huge embarrassment, a huge vulnerability for the 2020

00:04:28.120 election campaign. Then within the past few weeks, we got news from the Supreme Court that President

00:04:33.180 Trump's cash grab to take about $2.5 billion from military construction was allowed to go through.

00:04:40.700 It was a 5-4 decision. It shows you how important getting good judges on the Supreme Court can be.

00:04:46.380 And this even dwarfs that. So what is going to happen? Of this $3.6 billion, half of it will come

00:04:53.840 from projects overseas. You know, we have a ton of military construction that we do all around the

00:04:59.040 world. So half of it will come from that. Half of the money will come from domestic projects, which

00:05:04.000 means that certain congressmen are going to be extremely ticked off because they're losing their

00:05:08.660 earmarks. And the White House is going to need to massage that and work with Congress, which they've

00:05:13.420 not been extremely successful at so far. But perhaps that is already in the works. I should hope

00:05:18.580 that it is because otherwise Congress is going to raise a lot of trouble about this. Either way,

00:05:22.800 the White House is empowered to do it. Still a very good start here, particularly after that SCOTUS

00:05:29.300 ruling in July that Trump could use $2.5 billion to build the wall as well. So what did the $2.5 billion

00:05:36.620 get us? That first move that came in July, $2.5 billion permitted about 100 miles of new border

00:05:46.140 wall. So that's in addition to all the wall that's been built over the past few decades.

00:05:50.860 Now, if $2.5 billion got 100 miles of new wall, then you just do the math. This $3.6 billion should

00:05:58.220 get us another 144 miles of wall. So in the past two months or so, we're looking at an additional

00:06:05.740 244 miles of border wall. What does that mean? Obviously, we're looking at an almost 2,000 mile

00:06:13.220 border with Mexico. 244 miles doesn't sound like a whole lot, but you've got to think of it in the

00:06:18.780 perspective of the wall that we already have. I mean, we have been trying to build this wall

00:06:23.120 since 1990. We've been trying to build this wall since the first George Bush administration. And then

00:06:29.940 that proceeded beginning with George H.W. Bush through Bill Clinton, through George W. Bush,

00:06:35.040 who really ramped up efforts to build the wall and actually got some bipartisan buy-in even from

00:06:40.460 Chuck Schumer, who was for the wall before he was against the wall, just like a lot of Democrats who

00:06:44.580 were for proposals before Republicans were for them and now they're against those proposals.

00:06:49.020 So all the way up through that, you got 649 miles of wall. Like in the course of about 30 years,

00:06:59.280 you got 649 miles of wall. Now, you're also not going to build 2,000 miles of wall anyway, right?

00:07:06.580 You're not going to build wall over water. You're not going to build wall in certain places that are

00:07:09.740 not trafficked areas and are not hotspots for traffickers and coyotes to come through. So 649 so

00:07:17.020 far, if you build an additional 244 miles of wall, then you're looking at a 38% increase just this year

00:07:28.760 as you're going into the election over the past 29 years. That is big news. If you can say, okay,

00:07:36.740 it took 29 years, three presidents plus Obama who didn't do anything, who actually halted a lot of

00:07:42.000 that construction. So four presidents, 29 years to get 649. Then you get a 38% increase over that

00:07:50.020 in just one term with just one president. That is a pretty good pitch. You know, we've said on this

00:07:56.340 show for a long time that the absence of the wall, of the new wall is a major campaign vulnerability.

00:08:05.800 And I like to think that President Trump heard that. We know that he likes to watch Fox and Friends.

00:08:11.220 I hope that he likes to watch this show. And I hope that his aides listen to this show as well.

00:08:16.600 Either way, other people have been saying it too. And it appears that the White House

00:08:20.100 has listened. It's very difficult for him to make his pitch in 2020 to his base, to his supporters.

00:08:26.900 If a major campaign promise like build the wall, which everybody was chanting through the whole 2016

00:08:32.140 campaign, if he totally flops on that. If President Trump can now go to the public

00:08:38.180 in 2020 and say that he has expanded the wall by 38% or he has laid the groundwork such that

00:08:46.260 we're right on track to expand the wall by 38%. In the face of hardcore obstruction from the left

00:08:53.060 and from many people on the right, that is real progress. It's not a big, beautiful wall that's 10

00:08:58.560 feet higher that Mexico paid for that goes from coast to coast. Sure. But people don't care about

00:09:04.200 that. I mean, his critics will use that as a way to try to jab him and say, he didn't give you

00:09:09.440 everything you want. Trump supporters don't really care about that. I think Trump supporters are very

00:09:14.920 realistic and realize that this is a very difficult task. You're talking about a huge architectural

00:09:20.740 endeavor, a massive political endeavor with nearly unprecedented obstruction. If you get a good chunk

00:09:28.120 of it, upwards of 40% additional wall, that's pretty good. That's a pretty good start. Good news,

00:09:34.500 thankfully, for the White House. Bad news for the Democrats. And actually there's bad news for the

00:09:41.260 Democrats that looks like bad news for the White House. That is bad news for the White House, except

00:09:45.100 it's also bad news for the Democrats, which means it's good news for the White House. How does that work?

00:09:49.860 There's a new poll out that shows that Joe Biden's lead in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary

00:09:56.060 is shrinking. This is a poll from IBD, T-I-P-P, L-M-N-O-P, W-X-Y-Z, no, it's a lot of alphabet in there,

00:10:06.720 but this is a pretty reliable poll. IBD, T-I-P-P was the poll that most accurately predicted the 2016

00:10:14.340 general election. And this poll has Biden's lead diminishing and other candidates rising.

00:10:21.220 And the poll has Biden up 12 points on President Trump. Now, this is a complex poll and it has

00:10:32.400 complex implications. So let's break it down. If Biden is diminishing in the poll, he's been the

00:10:39.040 front runner the whole time since he announced, even since before he announced. If he's diminishing,

00:10:43.720 Liz Warren is surging. So she's up in just the month of August, I think she's up seven points or

00:10:48.680 something, according to this poll. That puts Liz Warren within four points of Joe Biden.

00:10:56.760 But the poll still places Biden as the best choice against President Trump. According to the poll,

00:11:02.400 Biden is up 12 points on President Trump. Warren, however, when you look at her head to head against

00:11:07.460 President Trump is only up three points on the president, which is not terribly significant. I

00:11:12.860 mean, that's basically a dead heat. And it's even more confusing. It's even more difficult because

00:11:18.060 while the IBD-TIPP poll was the most accurate in the 2016 general election, it wasn't actually

00:11:25.620 accurate. It predicted that Trump would win the popular vote by two percentage points. He didn't

00:11:30.120 win the popular vote at all. He actually lost the popular vote, but he won the electoral vote.

00:11:36.320 So you got to take this poll, even a good poll, with a grain of salt, as you do of all polls.

00:11:42.280 So what does this mean in terms of how we should view the general election polls,

00:11:46.060 how we should view the Democrat poll? And the question that's being debated in the media right

00:11:50.940 now, in the left and right media is, is this poll good news for Trump or bad news for Trump? It

00:11:56.960 actually is both, but there is a correct answer in the end. We'll get to that in one second.

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00:13:49.300 Is this poll good for Trump or bad for Trump? First of all, I will put my cards on the table in terms of

00:13:58.140 how I view these polls generally. I am skeptical of the general election polls. Specifically, I am

00:14:04.480 skeptical of the polls that show Trump losing in the general election. Is that because I think Trump

00:14:10.040 can't lose the general? Absolutely not. I think he's vulnerable and he could lose the general.

00:14:15.280 Is it because I like Trump? No, I do like Trump, but that's not why. The reason that I'm distrustful of

00:14:20.800 these general election polls is first of all, the campaign has barely begun. Forget the general

00:14:26.600 campaign. Even the Democratic primary campaign has barely begun. We're about to look at what the

00:14:31.180 third Democratic presidential debate. There's going to be 12 total. We are not even scratching

00:14:37.560 the surface of where this campaign is going to go. So far, the Democratic candidates have pretty

00:14:42.100 much not attacked one another. Kamala Harris got to dig in at Joe Biden and Tulsi Gabbard got to dig

00:14:47.660 in at Kamala Harris. That's pretty much it. Otherwise, they've all been nice and they've all been going

00:14:51.700 after Trump. They've said a lot of crazy things, but they've been nice to one another. The main

00:14:56.820 reason that I don't trust these general election polls is not even all that. It's because a little

00:15:01.020 while ago, there was a poll out that showed that head to head, Cory Booker would beat President Trump

00:15:09.020 by a significant margin. And I don't know a whole lot in this life, folks. I'm not, look,

00:15:15.360 I'm not Nostradamus. I can't predict the future. But Cory Booker is not going to beat Donald Trump

00:15:24.020 for president. He's not going to beat any of the Democrats to get the nomination for president.

00:15:30.320 If he's lucky, he'll get to keep his Senate seat. Cory Booker ain't going to the White House in 2020,

00:15:35.560 folks. And if a poll tells you it is, that tells you more about the poll than it does about 2020.

00:15:40.560 It is very, very early. These polls are very, very wacky. So I'm pretty much putting the general

00:15:47.400 election polls off to the side for now. Doesn't mean they don't worry me. Doesn't mean that they

00:15:52.140 don't tell you something, but it's just so remote at this point. Much more interesting than the general

00:15:58.400 election polls are the primary polls. The primary polls right now, especially this IBD-TIPP poll,

00:16:05.960 is pretty much showing what we've been saying the whole time. The poll is saying Trump has

00:16:13.380 vulnerabilities. I've been shouting that from the rooftop. The poll is saying a more moderate Democrat,

00:16:20.080 or at least a Democrat who is perceived as more moderate, could possibly beat President Trump.

00:16:26.080 I've been saying that the whole time. And it shows that the Democrats are radicalizing,

00:16:32.100 which is the key here. Biden is tanking. Warren is surging. Biden is the old guard. Biden has really

00:16:42.520 held at virtually every position throughout his entire career. And he doesn't have any actual

00:16:47.000 beliefs. And he'll say whatever he wants to say that if he thinks it's politically convenient,

00:16:52.000 and he has no regard for the truth. So there's that part. But at least for most of his career,

00:16:55.820 he felt it was convenient to be perceived as a moderate. Liz Warren is a dyed-in-the-wool

00:17:00.580 progressive. She's been a progressive for her entire public career. And she spent most of her

00:17:05.560 career in academia at very left-wing universities, which tends to make you even more liberal,

00:17:13.020 even more radical. And more radical Democrats will have a much more difficult time beating President

00:17:21.080 Trump. This is reflected in all the polls. This is why Democrats are having a big debate right now

00:17:28.420 over electability. And you've got the Democrats who want to beat President Trump saying,

00:17:33.000 we need somebody like a Joe Biden who might be a total schmuck and a doofus, but at least he could

00:17:40.660 beat President Trump in the general. And then you've got the progressive saying, who cares about

00:17:44.360 electability? What's electability? That doesn't mean anything. Poll after poll after poll shows it.

00:17:50.680 And you don't need the polls to show it. You just have your common sense.

00:17:55.840 If you, if the Democrats are going to be running on open borders, abortion up until the moment of

00:18:01.400 birth, and maybe even after the moment of birth, if you live in Virginia under the Democratic

00:18:05.260 Governor Ralph Northam, or up until the moment of birth in New York under the Democratic Governor

00:18:10.060 Andy Cuomo, if they're going to be running on abolishing ICE, if they're going to be running on

00:18:14.800 soak the rich, spend $93 trillion in the Green New Deal, which virtually all of the major

00:18:19.840 Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed. If you're running on that kind of stuff,

00:18:24.180 that's not going to play in Peoria. That's not the way to win a majority of Americans. That's not,

00:18:30.380 or a plurality of Americans and a majority of voters. That's not good news. It's bad news,

00:18:36.320 especially in this case, in particular for Joe Biden. And you don't need to just look at the poll and

00:18:42.900 we don't need to read the crystals and the tea leaves like we're Marianne Williamson or something.

00:18:46.220 We don't need to just do that. You can see from the Biden campaign,

00:18:49.840 he is terrified. They are more nervous than any presidential campaign I have seen probably in

00:18:56.900 my lifetime. How do I know that? Because they're already downplaying expectations in the early

00:19:03.820 primary and caucus states. They're already saying, don't expect us to win Iowa. So a senior advisor to

00:19:12.000 the Biden campaign told a group of campaign reporters on Tuesday in a background briefing,

00:19:16.600 so it's on background. The advisor doesn't want his name out there, but he does want to be quoted

00:19:22.340 directly. And this wasn't just some guy speaking off the cuff. This was a senior decision from the

00:19:29.500 Biden campaign. He said, quote, do I think we have to win Iowa? No. Where have we heard that? We heard

00:19:37.240 that from Rudy Giuliani. We heard that from a campaign that I worked on from a very good man named

00:19:42.880 John Huntsman, but a campaign that did not end well. And part of that was because of poor decisions by

00:19:48.200 the senior campaign staff to give up Iowa. Campaigns that are not doing well say, well,

00:19:54.000 we're going to give up Iowa. When campaigns that are really not doing well say, we're going to give

00:19:58.200 up New Hampshire. Guess what Joe Biden said? Not only did he say, we're giving up Iowa. He said

00:20:05.220 he might not win New Hampshire. This same senior advisor who was talking to the campaign reporter

00:20:11.720 said, quote, as you all know, historically, there's an incredible home field advantage

00:20:16.420 for a Massachusetts candidate or a New Englander, meaning Elizabeth Warren, who is surging,

00:20:22.700 who is eating Joe Biden's lunch. Really tough news for them. You know, this whole, hey, maybe we're

00:20:29.480 not going to win Iowa. Hey, maybe we're not going to win New Hampshire. First of all, you rarely get the

00:20:33.240 two at the same time, but this is the sort of thing candidates say two weeks out when they're,

00:20:37.700 when they know that they're losing and they want to tamp down expectations. This is not the sort of

00:20:41.940 thing you say five months out from the Iowa caucus, especially when you are the front runner,

00:20:48.260 because Joe Biden is only the front runner on the perception of his electability against

00:20:52.820 President Trump. And the trouble reflected in this poll, reflected in a lot of other polls,

00:20:57.040 reflected in every crazy soundbite you see on TV and on Twitter, is that the Democrats

00:21:01.520 are radicalizing. The problem is the minute that the electability argument goes away,

00:21:09.420 the minute he doesn't win Iowa, doesn't win New Hampshire, he has nothing else because the

00:21:14.040 Democrats are not where Joe Biden is. The Democrats are where Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and all

00:21:19.580 the rest of those second tier people are. Bad news for Biden, bad news for the moderate Democratic

00:21:28.300 contingent. And this is especially bad news as President Trump seems poised and committed

00:21:34.060 to taking care of one of his biggest weaknesses, which is the wall. And, and making matters worse

00:21:41.480 for Democrats is, at least if you've got Biden in the picture, you've got a guy that we've all

00:21:46.180 known for 50 years, who seems kind of acceptable, you know, he's, he's served at high levels of

00:21:50.840 government, whatever people could get past it. We're not terrified that he's going to totally

00:21:55.200 destroy the country. Once you take him out of the picture, then you've got to look at what these

00:22:00.460 people are actually saying, because even Liz Warren or Kamala Harris or Beto O'Rourke or any of these

00:22:06.060 people, they're relatively new faces in the American political scene. They haven't been around since

00:22:10.860 the 1720s when Joe Biden first ran for dog catcher in the colonies. You know, when you listen to what

00:22:18.480 they're saying, you see that the leading Republicans right now are saying, we need to build the wall.

00:22:23.160 We need to support our border patrol. We need to defend our borders. We need to renegotiate trade

00:22:28.980 deals. We need to grow jobs. We need relative peace abroad. What are the leading Democrats saying?

00:22:34.500 Not just the fringe Democrats, not just the random people on Twitter, the leading Democrats.

00:22:38.840 Democrats. Well, one of the leading Democrats who the Democratic national chairman said is the future

00:22:45.520 of the Democratic Party, AOC, and her friends are calling for bailing domestic terrorists out of

00:22:53.040 jail. One party is saying, let's build a wall. Let's support our laws. Let's keep us safe. The other

00:22:57.960 party is clamoring to bail domestic terrorists out of jail in the form of the Antifa thugs who were

00:23:05.800 arrested 36 of them over the weekend because they were attacking police officers and they were

00:23:12.080 attacking regular old patriotic people who were waving American flags in a kind of ironic trollish

00:23:18.200 straight pride parade. That's AOC, leader of the squad, and that's Ayanna Pressley, the Ringo of the

00:23:25.300 squad. Ayanna Pressley tweets out, quote, join me right now in making a contribution,

00:23:31.480 a contribution to a fund that would bail these Antifa violent thugs out of jail. She goes on,

00:23:38.420 thank you to the allies and accomplices who stood in the gap and laid their bodies on the line today

00:23:43.620 in a front hashtag LGBT hate march. Doesn't seem like accurate syntax, but you know, that's the squad

00:23:54.000 for you. To everyone feeling unseen and vulnerable today, we got you equitable outrage. Our destinies and

00:23:59.840 freedoms are tied. Just to remind you, there were 20 patriotic Americans who were engaged in this kind

00:24:05.300 of trollish straight pride parade to make fun of the left. There were thousands of people protesting

00:24:11.620 them and getting violent with them and attacking them. The only people who were unseen and vulnerable

00:24:15.980 were the 200 people who were supporting President Trump and waving American flags, as well as the

00:24:21.920 police officers who were being attacked by these thugs. Antifa was not unseen. They were everywhere.

00:24:26.980 They vastly outnumbered the conservatives. And then AOC, same thing, called for money and support

00:24:32.860 for these organizations. It was, quote, one way to support the local LGBTQ community impacted by

00:24:40.900 Boston's white supremacist parade. So now the straight pride parade, which was really just a kind of

00:24:47.780 patriotic parade, is now being rebranded by AOC as white supremacist because she thinks that everybody

00:24:53.240 who isn't her is a white supremacist, including Nancy Pelosi, AOC goes on, contribute to the bail

00:24:58.620 fund for the activists who put themselves on the line protecting the Boston community, protecting

00:25:03.480 them against memes, protecting them against American flags. By the way, in the straight pride parade,

00:25:09.920 one of the main photos of it was of a transgender woman, which is a guy wearing a dress, but he's a

00:25:15.120 Trump supporter. He's a patriotic American. And he's marching along in the straight pride parade because

00:25:19.220 it was just people who love their country and like their president and support making America great again.

00:25:23.240 AOC goes on. Any money left over goes to the Massachusetts bail fund in Boston Glass,

00:25:29.320 which is an LGBTQ, LMNOP organization. Bailing domestic terrorists out of jail,

00:25:41.020 build the wall, keep us safe. Between that debate, who do you think is going to win in 2020? And still

00:25:46.780 the left insists that they are against violence. Very hard to make that argument when you're bailing

00:25:52.140 violent people out of jail. So how do you make that argument with a straight face? How do you say,

00:25:56.280 okay, we want you to give us money to bail domestic terrorists out of jail, but we're against violence.

00:26:00.660 The way they do it is they say that they're against assault weapons, which is a completely

00:26:05.400 fictitious category of weapons because all weapons are assault weapons because you use them to assault

00:26:09.900 people. Even on this, the hypocrisy is totally cracking. TPUSA, Charlie Kirk's organization,

00:26:17.980 we talked to him a few weeks ago and I give talks for TPUSA a fair bit. They just put out a terrific

00:26:23.540 video exposing how hollow this argument is. This argument, we're against violence. We support

00:26:30.820 violent people, but we're against assault weapons. TPUSA approached virtually every Democratic candidate

00:26:36.000 on the campaign trail and asked them a simple question. They asked them, what is an assault weapon?

00:26:41.000 You will love their answers because it is high-larious. Then the hypocrisy breaks down even with our

00:26:46.540 friends over in the United Kingdom, even Prince Harry, even environmentalism, even what is essentially

00:26:52.120 becoming not a political debate based in facts and evidence and logic, but a religious debate

00:27:02.340 based on a false religion. We'll see what all of that means for 2020. Then maybe if we have time,

00:27:08.240 we'll get a little bit of hope from even left-wing Hollywood. But first, I've got to say goodbye

00:27:12.300 to Facebook and YouTube. Head on over to The Daily Wire, dailywire.com, $10 a month, $100 for an

00:27:18.680 annual membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get

00:27:23.600 the Matt Walsh show, you get to ask questions in the mailbag coming up on Thursday. You get to ask

00:27:29.820 questions backstage. You get everything. You get it all and you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. This is very

00:27:38.280 important. Yeah, this is what you're going to need. When Biden falls apart, when he says five months out,

00:27:44.860 he can't even win Iowa, Democratic front runner. You need this vessel or you will drown. Go to

00:27:50.760 dailywire.com. We'll be right back with a lot more.

00:27:53.400 So the left says, sure, we're bailing domestic terrorists out of jail. Sure, we're intimidating

00:28:09.880 conservatives, stopping them from speaking, getting them disinvited from places, using the

00:28:13.940 threat of brute force against them. But really we're against violence. Why are we against violence?

00:28:18.220 Because we oppose assault weapons. Okay, if that's your argument, fair enough. Just one simple

00:28:28.060 question posed by TPUSA. The question is, for all of the Democratic presidential candidates,

00:28:32.980 what is an assault weapon? I will, I will narrate because it's kind of a little hard to see

00:28:39.340 in the video who's talking. It's kind of hard to hear exactly who it is. So I'll just give you a

00:28:44.940 little pointers on which candidate is speaking. Here is the Democrat candidate's answer on what

00:28:50.540 is an assault weapon. Can you define an assault weapon? Talking to Joe Biden.

00:28:56.900 Define what an assault weapon is. Talking to Joe Sestak. Well, the assault weapons is where you can

00:29:00.960 semi-automatic as well. And also when you put in the- Probably haven't even heard of this guy. He's

00:29:05.920 one of the candidates. His best answer is an assault weapon is when you go- And there's an exact

00:29:11.040 definition that President Clinton had. I didn't think it went far. There's Julian Castro.

00:29:17.200 What is an assault weapon? Thanks. Well, I would say the AR-15 definitely qualifies.

00:29:23.220 Guys, he's only going to sign one of those. But what is an assault weapon? He gives an example,

00:29:27.060 but he can't define it. Because it's an AR-15. What makes an AR-15 an assault weapon? Talking to

00:29:32.700 Mary Ann Williamson. What is an assault weapon?

00:29:34.200 What is an assault weapon?

00:29:36.300 What steps? What steps? What steps? What steps?

00:29:37.860 What steps? What steps?

00:29:39.860 Assault weapons are everything that are military assault weapons. Talking to Amy Klobuchar.

00:29:43.800 What is an assault weapon?

00:29:44.800 Don't ruin me out there.

00:29:45.920 I think you know what it is.

00:29:48.480 She says, I think you know what it is.

00:29:51.220 An assault weapon is the weapon that killed nine people.

00:29:54.380 Nine people in Dayton in 30 seconds.

00:29:57.480 Can you define it though?

00:29:58.880 Assault weapons ban since 1988.

00:30:00.660 Now talking to Joe Biden's wife. Joe Biden's wife is Joe Biden, or not Joe Biden's wife,

00:30:05.640 Bernie Sanders' wife. Bernie won't even turn around to look at the TPUSA reporter. And so

00:30:10.280 Bernie Sanders' wife says, there's been an assault weapons ban since 1988, which is not true.

00:30:15.920 So not a single one of them. I mean, that is a huge representative sampling of Democratic

00:30:23.280 candidates. And actually, if you go over to the TPUSA video online, there are many more

00:30:27.560 Democratic candidates. We don't have time to go through all of them. Not one of them has an

00:30:31.900 answer. And I'd say an assault weapon is a, well, I don't know, but the AR-15 qualifies, right?

00:30:37.720 Why does it qualify? Well, I don't, an assault weapon is anything that is an assault weapon.

00:30:45.580 Circular logic for you. They don't have an answer. It's, it's not reasonable. They're not making an

00:30:51.520 argument based on data. Now, why are they not making an argument based on data? Amy Klobuchar

00:30:55.500 came the closest and you can hear what she said. She knows it's a trap. She's a smart woman. And so

00:30:59.720 she says, well, if you want to know what the AR-15 is, look at Dayton, Ohio, killed nine people there.

00:31:07.340 It's true. The weapons that she's talking about, the AR-15, which is the semi-automatic rifle,

00:31:11.740 it did kill people there. But 22 times as many people each year are killed by handguns as any

00:31:22.420 kind of rifle, including the AR-15. More people are killed by hands, feet, bats, and hammers than

00:31:27.600 by any rifle, including the AR-15. So if you're talking about the actual assault weapon, hands,

00:31:33.960 feet, bats, and hammers are responsible for many more assaults. Handguns are certainly responsible for

00:31:38.880 many, many times more assaults. Multiples. Orders of magnitude more assaults. So why aren't those

00:31:45.360 the assault weapon? Because they know they're not going to ban handguns. Then you'd have to

00:31:49.280 completely abolish the Second Amendment. They don't have an answer. It's just their will. It's just

00:31:54.220 their virtue signaling. It's nearly a sort of religious argument. Like there are good religious

00:32:00.660 arguments and there are bad religious arguments. This is sort of a bad religious argument to signal

00:32:04.720 an intimation that there is some moral universe, but not actually to engage with it in any real

00:32:10.500 way. It just rings so hollow. I mean, when you've got major Democrats like Maxine Waters, let's not

00:32:17.460 forget, actively calling, a sitting congresswoman calling for violence against Republicans, as she

00:32:24.140 did just this year, it's very difficult to make that same argument that you're the ones who are

00:32:28.680 opposed to violence. Here's Maxine Waters. If we can't protect the children, we can't protect

00:32:33.760 anybody. If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline

00:32:42.300 station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not

00:32:50.240 welcome. You get out there, you make a crowd, you go to their homes where their children sleep and you

00:32:55.120 threaten them. But we're the party against violence. We want to stop violence by inciting violence and

00:33:00.200 bailing violent criminals out of jail and taking away your only way to protect yourself against

00:33:05.540 violence, which is your guns. It just rings so hollow. And I don't even want to call them

00:33:10.780 malicious or frauds or deceivers. I mean, they're very likely maybe all of these things. But I think

00:33:17.840 it gets down to a confusion about fact and, uh, and fantasy to a confusion, even about science

00:33:26.040 and religion, or at least between science and false religion. Nowhere does this ring truer

00:33:33.440 than on the issue of climate change, another top 2020 issue for Democrats. Everybody on the left,

00:33:41.700 virtually everyone in our culture speaks about climate change as though the sun monster is

00:33:47.820 going to kill us all. And yet no one behaves as though climate change and the sun monster are

00:33:54.500 going to kill us all. Everyone speaks about all of these issues. They say one thing, but they do

00:34:02.560 another and their behavior tells you a lot more. Over in the UK, Prince Harry has made environmentalism

00:34:08.800 one of his central issues. And yet the same month where he said environmentalism is going to be my main

00:34:13.000 issue this month, climate change. Prince Harry also took a private jet four times in 11 days.

00:34:18.600 But he talks about climate change. So it's okay. He was called out for it. Here is Prince Harry's

00:34:23.100 response rings hollower than ever. Just because it is such a massive undertaking doesn't mean we can't

00:34:28.820 all play our part. Sometimes the scale of the conservation crisis feels overwhelming and that

00:34:34.400 individual actions can't make a difference. I've certainly felt that, but I've learned that we

00:34:39.520 cannot dismiss the idea of trying to do something just because we can't do everything.

00:34:44.240 We can all do better. And while no one is perfect, we all have a responsibility for our

00:34:49.940 own individual impact. The question is what we do to balance it out. So today, after two

00:34:56.100 years of behind the scenes conversations and planning, we're going to start with the tourism

00:35:00.240 industry. So let's first define the problem at hand. The negative impacts of mass tourism and

00:35:06.460 unsustainable tourism are increasingly in the news. Thanks to the reporting of many of you in this

00:35:12.340 room. You've seen it. I've seen it. And here we are in the city of Amsterdam, which joins a growing

00:35:18.620 list of places like Venice and Barcelona that have become overwhelmed by crowds.

00:35:23.320 Oh, this is so pathetic. This is so pathetic. It rings so hollow. And why does it ring hollow?

00:35:30.760 First and foremost, his hypocrisy, right? He says, it's so important. We need to do something. We

00:35:37.140 need action, Britons. We can't keep this up. Climate change is going to kill us all. And also,

00:35:42.980 I'm going to take my private jet four times in 11 days. Okay. So you don't really believe what you're

00:35:46.700 saying. And it's not even just the hypocrisy. Rochefoucault said that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to

00:35:52.400 virtue, meaning I can acknowledge a moral standard and yet fail to live up to that. I do that all the

00:35:58.260 time. So do we all. So it's not even just that. It's, there's the hypocrisy aspect, but then there

00:36:06.660 is the blatant disregard for the facts, for the reality, for the logic. Here are the scientific facts

00:36:13.520 about the climate crisis, climate change, all of these terms. China pollutes so much more

00:36:22.240 than the United States and the United Kingdom. Poor countries, especially in East Asia, pollute

00:36:27.820 so much more than we do that there is nothing that the developed countries, that the rich countries

00:36:36.400 could do to fix it. It rings so hollow because even forgetting the hypocrisy, what the left is

00:36:47.500 addressing is not a scientific problem. It's not a factual problem. It's not a problem in reality.

00:36:52.500 They're addressing their own religious longings, but they're denying the reality of true religion.

00:36:57.880 And so they're trying to fix it with politics. Here's what I mean, because that's a sort of complex

00:37:02.760 idea that, that Prince Harry is trying to figure out and the whole left is trying to figure out

00:37:07.960 and they're not doing it very well. This is not a scientific question. The, the pollution and

00:37:15.320 climate change, the way that Harry is talking about it is not a scientific way. If this were

00:37:20.460 a scientific question, we would invade China and take over their government, slaughter the

00:37:25.420 political party that runs the country and stop them from polluting. If this really were, we have

00:37:30.760 10 months left or the world's going to end. If we don't stop polluting, we would have to invade China

00:37:35.020 tomorrow. China releases 27.2% of all the carbon emissions in the world. That is double what the

00:37:41.700 United States releases. And the U S is the number two largest emitter of carbon. It,

00:37:46.840 that number that China releases is 25 times what the United Kingdom releases. It does not

00:37:52.940 matter if Prince Harry takes private jets. He should take private jets. He's a prince.

00:37:57.840 That's what princes do. That's what the Royal family does. They live a luxurious lifestyle because

00:38:03.820 they are the dignified symbol of the country. And if you don't want your Royals to do that,

00:38:08.280 then you shouldn't have Royals in the first place. It doesn't, forget Prince Harry. It doesn't matter

00:38:12.260 if every single Englishman in the entire island takes private jets. Wouldn't matter at all. China

00:38:20.460 releases 25 times more carbon emissions and actually forget about the carbon. Look at the plastic.

00:38:26.940 China dumps 8.82 metric tons of plastic into the ocean per year. And that's actually sort of an

00:38:32.680 outdated number. I think the new number is significantly higher. That number comes from 2010.

00:38:37.420 The next biggest polluter into the ocean is Indonesia at 3.22 metric tons. Next is Philippines,

00:38:47.020 1.88. Next is Vietnam at 1.83. The United States doesn't even show up on the list, much less the

00:38:57.880 United Kingdom doesn't even show up on the list. But from the language that Harry is using, you would

00:39:04.760 think that Prince Harry is saving the world by getting his countrymen to stop going on vacation.

00:39:11.940 This man's family, Prince Harry, they used to run the Church of England. I guess titularly,

00:39:16.940 they still run the Church of England, but that church has collapsed in recent years. And before

00:39:22.040 Henry VIII established the Church of England, Henry VIII was called by the Pope, a defender of the

00:39:27.880 Catholic faith. These guys used to defend the Church, the moral order. And that's what they're

00:39:33.100 supposed to be doing. But as you've seen the Church collapse in that country, particularly the national

00:39:36.880 church, that role, that religious duty has morphed into the religion of leftism, the religion of

00:39:44.700 environmentalism. Now, Prince Harry is talking about airline carbon that would scientifically do

00:39:50.980 nothing to help any sort of climate change, global warming, whatever. He's talking about it in such

00:39:56.660 a way as to alleviate his religious anxiety. It's the same thing with Democrats and the assault

00:40:02.160 weapons. We know that banning all the assault weapons, getting rid of them, would not really

00:40:08.500 even make a dent into the gun deaths per year. We know that gun control laws, none of them proposed

00:40:13.900 in recent years, would have done anything to prevent the mass shooting incidents that we've seen,

00:40:18.120 or any of the other more prominent shooting incidents, or more prevalent, rather, shooting

00:40:22.760 incidents. We know that the language they're using is moral, or quasi-moral, and not scientific.

00:40:29.180 But the left, just like all of us, needs to grapple with eternal questions, eternal problems that

00:40:35.060 mankind has always dealt with. The problem of pain and suffering, the existence of evil, our feeling

00:40:41.440 and longing and need for salvation, our need to do penance and to atone. So, the way that

00:40:48.120 we've dealt with this for most of the history of our civilization is with religion that makes

00:40:54.580 claims that seem quite credible, if you ask me, to all of those things. But now, because the church

00:41:01.480 has cracked up in the West, you have Prince Harry who's saying, regardless of whether or not it helps

00:41:07.140 the earth, stop going on vacation just to punish yourself, just to discipline yourself, just to teach

00:41:14.140 you how bad you are for committing the sin of pollution. Won't do anything to stop climate

00:41:18.620 change, but you'll feel bad. Joe Biden and Beto O'Rourke say, regardless of whether or not it reduces

00:41:24.860 gun deaths, give up your favorite weapons, most popular gun in America, the AR-15 semi-automatic

00:41:30.700 rifle. Give up your most cherished rights, your Second Amendment rights. Joe Biden says he wants to ban

00:41:36.040 all guns that have more than one bullet in them, which is to say, virtually every gun,

00:41:40.040 except for silly 19th century Derringers. But it won't stop gun deaths. It won't get our life

00:41:48.660 expectancy to tick back up again, even after it's been ticking down because of suicide and drug

00:41:53.700 overdoses. But at least, even if it doesn't accomplish anything real, it will make you feel bad.

00:42:02.660 This is a bad pitch in 2020. You know, one of Trump's superpowers is something that people

00:42:06.900 criticize him for. A little bit on the right, mostly on the left, is evidence of hypocrisy,

00:42:11.040 which is that Trump doesn't seem very religious. You know, he's not a guy who really goes to church

00:42:15.140 a lot. Obviously, he's been thrice married. He has a complex relationship with religion. Let's put it

00:42:21.140 that way. Trump prefers things that are more tangible. He likes to build buildings. He likes

00:42:26.500 money. You know, the Trump game. I have the Trump board game from the 80s, and it says,

00:42:31.420 Trump the game. It's not whether you win or lose, but whether you win. And so, because of this,

00:42:37.920 he talks about building the wall, cutting taxes, fixing trade deficits, very tangible things.

00:42:43.540 Now, we know, you and I know, there is no conflict between faith and science,

00:42:47.800 that science rests on religious premises and principles, and that the smartest people in the

00:42:53.160 history of the world have spent very long time as exegetes of the Bible and apologists and defending

00:43:00.680 particularly Christianity. St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the smartest men that ever lived. St. Augustine.

00:43:05.940 Isaac Newton spent the last years of his life interpreting the Bible. Blaise Pascal,

00:43:11.340 the inventor of the calculator, one of the great geniuses of the modern era. George Lemaître,

00:43:17.260 Father George Lemaître, the Catholic priest who discovered the Big Bang. The man who discovered

00:43:22.160 genetics. All of these people. There's no conflict between true faith and science, but there is a

00:43:30.020 conflict between false faith, false religion, and science. And what the left is peddling this

00:43:36.820 election is false faith on guns, on the environment, on immigration, and on crime, which puts Trump

00:43:41.460 in a good position to make a tangible case to the American people. The economy is booming,

00:43:45.760 unemployment is low, we have relative peace abroad, and the wall is being built. He's got to get it done,

00:43:51.400 though. He's got to actually take the steps in that direction. It looks like he's doing it.

00:43:55.740 He's got to keep it up through 2020. And some evidence, I'll leave you just with this,

00:43:59.360 I'll leave you with Whoopi Goldberg, which sounds like a threat, but it's actually a good thing to

00:44:03.360 hear. Some evidence that the left is going too far is that even for well-known liberals,

00:44:10.860 well-known supporters of left-wing policies, they're saying enough is enough, stop it. We talked

00:44:16.960 yesterday about how Hollywood left-wingers Eric McCormack and Deborah Messing from Will & Grace

00:44:21.580 are calling for a blacklist and an outing of conservatives in town. Whoopi Goldberg,

00:44:28.020 a left-winger, was asked about this on The View, a left-wing show, and in no uncertain terms, she said,

00:44:33.540 this is dreadful.

00:44:36.540 Your idea of who you don't want to work with is your personal business. Do not encourage people

00:44:43.060 to print out lists, because the next list that comes out, your name will be on, and then people

00:44:47.940 will be coming after you. No one. Nobody. We had something called the blacklist, and a lot of

00:44:56.480 really good people were accused of stuff. Nobody cared whether it was true or not. They were accused,

00:45:04.320 and they lost their right to work. You don't have the right. In this country, people can vote for who

00:45:11.760 they want to. That is one of the great rights of this country. You don't have to like it,

00:45:16.600 but you, we don't, we don't go after people because we don't like who they voted for. We don't go after

00:45:24.960 them that way. We can talk about issues and stuff, but we don't print out lists, and I'm sure you guys

00:45:30.960 misspoke when you said that, because you, it sounded like a good idea. Think about it. Read about it.

00:45:37.360 Remember what the blacklist actually meant to people, and don't encourage anyone, anyone to do

00:45:46.320 it. The polls are showing us, the candidates are showing us, the culture is showing us that the

00:45:50.880 left is moving further left. This is not a cause necessarily for alarm. Obviously, in the long run,

00:45:59.060 that's a bad thing. When you look at the short term, when you look at the elections, when you look

00:46:03.300 at how this could affect our politics in the near future, you see that the left is even losing,

00:46:09.220 dyed in the wool liberals, like Whoopi Goldberg. All of that is good news for us who want to restore

00:46:15.840 a little bit of sanity to our culture and to our country. That's our show. We got a lot more to

00:46:19.860 get to. Got to do it tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles

00:46:23.460 Show. I'll see you then.

00:46:24.420 If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.

00:46:35.780 And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends

00:46:40.180 to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

00:46:46.160 Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,

00:46:50.820 The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by

00:46:55.420 Rebecca Dobkiewicz, director Mike Joyner, executive producer Jeremy Boring. Our senior producer is

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00:47:13.820 Nick Sheehan. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:47:18.700 On The Matt Walsh Show, we're not just discussing politics. We're talking culture, faith, family,

00:47:25.180 all of the things that are really important to you. So come join the conversation.

Ep. 409 - We May Get Trump’s Wall After All…

Summary

Transcript