The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 41 - The NYT Is Trash： An Historical Retrospective

00:00:00.000 A writer in the New York Times accused primarily Ben Shapiro, but also Molly Hemingway, Ben

00:00:06.220 Domenech, and me of pandering to our audiences.

00:00:09.340 So, playing against type as always, on today's show we will examine the various and sundry

00:00:14.260 ways in which the New York Times is trash, an historical retrospective.

00:00:19.180 Then, Ali Stuckey and Jacob Airy join the panel of deplorables to discuss Rex Tillerson's 0.92

00:00:24.420 reported castration, a congressional candidate abducted by aliens, E.T., not S.A., and

00:00:30.600 the latest navel-gazing Facebook meme in the wake of the Weinstein scandal.

00:00:34.560 Scores of women posting, Me Too.

00:00:37.020 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:46.560 This Times piece may have been the great highlight of my weekend.

00:00:50.760 It was called The Hollow Bravery of Ben Shapiro.

00:00:54.420 And, look, I do not need to defend Ben Shapiro.

00:00:57.460 Ben is a big boy.

00:00:58.700 He can defend himself just fine.

00:01:01.360 Twitter excoriated this poor chick at the New York Times and really showed her piece to 1.00

00:01:08.040 be without evidence and frivolous.

00:01:10.540 And I've never been one to accuse the New York Times of standards, but even below their

00:01:15.100 paltry standards that they once had, perhaps just in my imagination.

00:01:20.060 But the Times article also talked about me.

00:01:22.680 It linked to my episode last week or two weeks ago on Christopher Columbus.

00:01:27.160 Christopher Columbus was actually a great man.

00:01:29.900 It linked to that.

00:01:30.600 It disparaged it.

00:01:32.080 It didn't explain why it disparaged it.

00:01:34.160 It didn't actually make any criticism of it.

00:01:36.200 It just said this was evidence of pandering and frivolous journalism.

00:01:41.240 Now, our audience likes the truth.

00:01:44.860 It likes history.

00:01:46.340 It likes philosophy.

00:01:47.240 It likes people taking history seriously and philosophy seriously.

00:01:50.500 So if that's pandering, then I suppose we're pandering, right?

00:01:53.880 We're pandering to people who want an alternative to anti-historical, ridiculous partisan narratives

00:02:00.480 like we see in the New York Times.

00:02:01.880 But it gave me this great opportunity today to take a brief walk down memory lane in all 0.99

00:02:08.200 of the ways that the New York Times is absolute garbage. 0.97

00:02:11.360 And we'll begin with this article. 0.99

00:02:12.880 The article begins and says,

00:02:14.400 It's true that campuses tend to be hostile places to conservatives like Mr. Shapiro, Charles

00:02:20.520 Murray, and Heather MacDonald.

00:02:22.120 But the notion that they are the cultural underdogs is bogus.

00:02:25.620 What Mr. Shapiro does on campus is shadowboxing, meant to pander to his conservative fans whose

00:02:30.280 values dominate mainstream American culture.

00:02:33.260 If he wanted to be genuinely brave, he'd challenge some of the wrongheaded ideas held by his right-wing

00:02:38.720 fans.

00:02:39.920 Instead, he uses his megaphone, the website The Daily Wire, to reinforce what they already

00:02:43.500 believe.

00:02:44.400 Now, I'm not sure of this, but I think Jane, who wrote this article, should have Googled

00:02:50.700 Ben Shapiro before she wrote this piece.

00:02:54.500 Ben Shapiro, the leading anti-Trump voice during the election, the guy whose entire year was

00:03:00.080 spent making enemies out of conservatives because he told them things they didn't want to hear.

00:03:04.320 This is the guy that she holds up as an example of someone who panders to the right.

00:03:09.820 It's unbelievable.

00:03:10.900 It – she goes on – I guess the more egregious claim – Ben is Ben.

00:03:15.860 You can think whatever you want about him.

00:03:17.340 But the more egregious claim is that conservatism is the dominant culture in America.

00:03:22.600 When can you turn on a television?

00:03:25.760 When can you go see a movie?

00:03:26.900 When can you go look at a poster, even on the Internet, even with censoring of conservative

00:03:31.600 videos by YouTube, by Facebook, alleged censoring by Twitter?

00:03:36.140 Where can you look where conservatism and conservative thoughts are not under fire?

00:03:41.520 People being fired, having to leave their companies.

00:03:44.140 Brandon Eich at Mozilla forced to leave his company because he supported the definition

00:03:49.740 of marriage that everyone agreed on until the day before yesterday.

00:03:52.480 The culture is oppressively left-wing.

00:03:57.400 People are being fired from Google for passing around basically unobjectionable memos questioning

00:04:03.780 discriminatory policies.

00:04:06.380 People are being suspended at universities.

00:04:09.120 They're not being allowed to speak.

00:04:10.080 You talk about the hollow bravery of Ben Shapiro.

00:04:12.660 When he went to Berkeley, it cost $600,000 to defend Berkeley against a 5'9 Jewish guy 1.00

00:04:20.640 who's completely in the mainstream of conservative culture and is even so nuanced about it that

00:04:27.380 he can't fully support Donald Trump.

00:04:30.300 He calls it balls and strikes and calls it like he sees it.

00:04:33.420 So that's $600,000 to defend against that guy.

00:04:36.340 It's basically like the president coming to town.

00:04:38.540 They're shutting down the city, but one conservative who has mainstream ideas is so terrifying to

00:04:44.380 the left, so unpopular, so censored that it costs that much money to bring him into town.

00:04:50.340 The piece was without evidence.

00:04:51.680 I don't think we need to go much further than that.

00:04:55.280 She was excoriated.

00:04:56.600 I'm, believe it or not, even shocked that the Times would run it.

00:05:00.140 But then I rethought about this and I thought, lest we think this is an isolated incident,

00:05:05.280 let's cover a few more.

00:05:06.100 Just today, there was a headline in the New York Times that said,

00:05:10.880 Aiding transgender case, Sessions defies his image on civil rights.

00:05:16.100 What image?

00:05:17.020 What your image?

00:05:17.860 The image that you have painted of him.

00:05:19.880 He's defying that image.

00:05:21.060 And he's defying that image because it's a false image.

00:05:23.740 It's a slanderous, smearing narrative that you're painting of him.

00:05:27.660 The whole article was about what a terrible guy Sessions is, and then it just explains away all of his work.

00:05:35.640 The article said this.

00:05:38.380 Critics and supporters agree that Mr. Sessions is more likely to pursue civil rights matters in individual cases rather than trying to address larger systemic issues as the Obama administration did.

00:05:50.280 He has promised to punish any police conduct that violates civil rights, for example, but is skeptical of efforts to force department-wide overhauls.

00:05:57.720 He supports prosecuting those who commit violence against transgender victims but opposes reading the law in a way that broadly extends discrimination protection for transgender people.

00:06:08.840 This is not that complicated for people who aren't in the ideological bubble of the New York Times.

00:06:13.320 Jeff Sessions is a federalist.

00:06:16.320 He doesn't think we need a gigantic federal government that's solving all of our problems for us because as it tries to solve those problems, it will create many more that we can't foresee.

00:06:25.900 So, yes, he's prosecuting these cases, but he doesn't believe that we need these sweeping powers created by unaccountable, godless bureaucracies that are not accountable to the American people.

00:06:38.040 This example here is called the Fox-Butterfield effect.

00:06:41.760 We'll talk about this later.

00:06:43.320 But it's an example specifically in the New York Times where they look at a situation and they see a paradox where really there's a causal connection.

00:06:50.320 So they say it doesn't make any sense that Jeff Sessions would prosecute these cases, but he doesn't want huge sweeping programs from the federal government.

00:06:59.400 Of course it makes perfect sense that he understands the role of his department and it comports perfectly well with his view of politics and his view of the government.

00:07:09.880 Next.

00:07:11.180 This is from New York Times.

00:07:13.320 Wall Street Journal editor admonishes reporters over Trump coverage.

00:07:17.460 Now, this is very scary.

00:07:18.420 They report, quote,

00:07:19.540 Gerard Baker, the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, has faced unease and frustration in his newsroom over the stewardship of the newspaper's coverage of President Trump, which some journalists there say has lacked toughness and verb.

00:07:34.680 Some journalists there or some journalists at the New York Times.

00:07:37.140 I'm not quite sure.

00:07:38.940 The baker responded to these emails.

00:07:43.080 There was an exchange that was uncovered.

00:07:45.080 He said, sorry, this is commentary dressed up as news reporting.

00:07:49.260 So he's taking some of the stories that were too hard on Trump.

00:07:52.360 He said, you're injecting your commentary here.

00:07:54.360 We have to be straight news.

00:07:55.560 He wanted to say, could we please just stick to reporting what he said rather than packaging it in exegesis and selective criticism?

00:08:03.340 So he's suggesting that the news organization do what news organizations are supposed to do.

00:08:07.880 The New York Times is shocked by this.

00:08:10.340 The only way they can view this is that it's soft coverage.

00:08:12.820 It isn't soft coverage.

00:08:14.020 It's keeping the opinion separate from the news reporting.

00:08:17.060 This used to be done or at least attempted in the mainstream media, but for years it has not been, which is why you see the nonsense that comes out of the New York Times as it does.

00:08:26.800 Then there was a letter from the publisher, to our readers, from the publisher and executive editor, and President Trump described this as an apology for all the terrible coverage that they did of him and their awful predictions about the election, none of which came true.

00:08:41.480 The paper pushed back and said the New York Times never apologized, but the New York Times public editor herself, Liz Spade, admits that they blew it too.

00:08:49.720 So in this letter, they say, after such an erratic and unpredictable election, there are inevitable questions.

00:08:57.720 Did Donald Trump's sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?

00:09:05.540 Gee, I wonder.

00:09:06.660 What forces and strains in America drove this divisive election and outcome?

00:09:12.780 The second part, the second sentence, that's the part.

00:09:15.840 Yes, you did misunderstand half of this country.

00:09:18.940 You totally blew it.

00:09:20.460 You don't know anything about them.

00:09:22.180 But then, and you acknowledge this, you apologize for this, and then you immediately follow it up and say, what led to this awful, divisive, terrible election?

00:09:30.880 It's only divisive because you make it divisive.

00:09:32.880 Any election, by definition, is divisive.

00:09:35.300 Half the people vote for one guy, roughly half vote for the other guy.

00:09:37.940 But only you, because of your horror at Donald Trump and your total inability to understand why anybody would oppose your narrative, would vote for your preferred candidate, only then is it divisive.

00:09:52.760 Only then is it awful.

00:09:53.780 And so even in their apology, of course they don't see it as an apology because it's a false apology.

00:09:59.400 They're saying we did something wrong, but really we didn't do anything wrong.

00:10:01.960 It was on half of the country that made us do it.

00:10:05.720 Slap, slap. 1.00

00:10:06.380 Why did you make me do it?

00:10:07.340 I hate it when you make me do this.

00:10:08.720 Then they did an entire piece, a huge piece.

00:10:13.420 You can get it right now, called Trump Lies.

00:10:16.360 This is the serious journalism.

00:10:18.380 Democracy dies in darkness.

00:10:19.660 All the news that's fit to print.

00:10:21.000 Trump Lies.

00:10:21.740 Let's go through some of those Trump Lies.

00:10:23.300 I just picked out random ones.

00:10:25.340 And every one that I picked out turned out not to be a lie.

00:10:28.260 It was the New York Times that was lying.

00:10:29.720 They said, quote, this was a quote of Donald Trump's.

00:10:32.920 You had millions of people that now aren't insured anymore.

00:10:36.360 He's referring to Obamacare.

00:10:37.540 The Times adds, the real number is less than one million, according to the Urban Institute.

00:10:42.480 Sure, I guess it's according to the Urban Institute.

00:10:44.360 How about according to MSNBC?

00:10:46.320 How about according to Van Jones?

00:10:47.520 The Urban Institute is a left-wing think tank.

00:10:49.720 But of course they can't disclose that in their reporting.

00:10:52.080 And even the Washington Post admits that after Obamacare was passed,

00:10:56.000 28 million people still lacked health insurance.

00:10:59.000 And it's true that many millions got health insurance because of Obamacare.

00:11:03.340 What they leave out is that they had previously lost their health insurance.

00:11:06.240 So now they had their insurance.

00:11:08.460 They lost their insurance.

00:11:09.500 They got it again.

00:11:11.140 But unfortunately now the premiums increased.

00:11:13.520 The rate of increase increased.

00:11:15.100 And they couldn't choose their doctor.

00:11:17.140 Barack Obama said, if you want to keep your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

00:11:20.020 Not the case.

00:11:21.220 So what Trump said, absolutely true.

00:11:23.080 The New York Times said, not true at all.

00:11:24.480 Another one in the Trump lies section, it's gotten to a point where it is not, this is

00:11:29.060 from Trump, it's gotten to a point where it is not even being reported.

00:11:32.180 And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it.

00:11:36.840 He's talking about terrorism.

00:11:38.020 And the New York Times adds, terrorism has been reported on, often in detail.

00:11:42.940 Yeah, okay, sure.

00:11:44.200 I guess occasionally a story is run.

00:11:46.920 The question is, what is the volume of stories being run?

00:11:49.640 Where are the editors placing these stories?

00:11:52.380 What are they focusing their coverage on?

00:11:53.860 Are they spending 10 hours on one thing, on Russia, which you'll notice nobody is talking

00:11:59.080 about anymore because it was completely frivolous, and then one hour on terrorism?

00:12:03.940 Or are they prioritizing as the American people would prioritize?

00:12:07.920 Now, here's an example of this.

00:12:10.540 White supremacist Dylann Roof shot up that historically black church in Charleston.

00:12:15.080 There was wall-to-wall coverage of this for weeks.

00:12:18.020 We're still hearing about it. 0.95

00:12:19.380 They got vicious white supremacists. 0.90

00:12:21.660 They covered the trial very closely. 0.98

00:12:23.640 It was awful.

00:12:24.200 There's a national conversation about Confederate monuments and Confederate flags and guns and

00:12:29.840 hate speech and censor-censor, what have you.

00:12:33.200 Recently, a Sudanese immigrant, Emmanuel Kadega-Sampson, shot up a historically white church in Nashville.

00:12:40.100 The only reason the shooting wasn't worse than it ended up being is that the usher there,

00:12:44.640 who the guy had pistol whipped, was able to wrestle him to the ground, caused the shooter

00:12:49.620 to shoot himself accidentally, and then pulled out his own gun because he was carrying because

00:12:54.220 they were in Nashville, and that's what people do in Nashville.

00:12:57.020 Of course, the coverage of this was paltry, barely existent compared to the coverage of

00:13:02.900 the other one.

00:13:03.580 Now, both cases, it appears, were rationally motivated.

00:13:06.340 Dylann Roof admitted it, and Sampson, this killer in Nashville, wrote a note that appears

00:13:12.280 to suggest it was revenge for Charleston.

00:13:14.480 They are parallel stories, but it contradicts the New York Times narrative, and if it contradicts

00:13:19.160 their narrative, they're just not going to give it too much ink.

00:13:21.380 Another example is the Orlando nightclub shooting.

00:13:25.600 This was the New York Times headline, Orlando gunmen attacks a gay nightclub, leaving 50 dead.

00:13:30.500 They don't mention his name.

00:13:31.780 All of the Dylann Roof coverage mentioned his name, but they don't mention his name because

00:13:35.340 his name is Omar Mateen.

00:13:37.240 Nowhere in that headline does it mention that Mateen swore allegiance to ISIS, that he was

00:13:42.940 a radicalized Muslim.

00:13:44.880 But all of the New York Times coverage of Dylann Roof, that uses his name because that name,

00:13:48.520 it's clear from the context of that story what was behind that shooting.

00:13:53.160 And now, you know, the Dylann Roof brings us to another lovely New York Times headline.

00:14:00.380 Quote, Sessions, Trump, Dylann Roof, your Tuesday evening briefing.

00:14:07.800 Okay, let's go through that.

00:14:09.440 Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General of the United States, former esteemed senator from

00:14:12.920 South Carolina, or from Alabama, rather.

00:14:14.260 There's a Donald Trump, real estate magnate, reality TV star, president of the United States, 0.96

00:14:20.620 and a white supremacist killer named Dylann Roof. 0.92

00:14:23.000 It's amazing.

00:14:24.040 One of those things seems not like the other.

00:14:26.920 But the Times, they can't even hide it sometimes.

00:14:29.660 There is so, I think, especially in the age of Donald Trump, although they behaved this

00:14:33.900 way during George W. Bush, they get so riled up.

00:14:36.840 They get so excited.

00:14:37.760 They can't help themselves.

00:14:39.040 And they humiliate themselves in headlines such as that.

00:14:42.800 How about this op-ed that the New York Times allowed to run?

00:14:45.540 Quote, Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel's Prisons.

00:14:50.020 Okay, it's a pro-Palestinian piece about the alleged occupation, all the alleged atrocities

00:14:54.960 of Israel.

00:14:55.720 We've seen this a lot.

00:14:56.500 It's my Marwan Barghouti.

00:14:58.780 Now, the article originally stated Marwan Barghouti is a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.

00:15:04.160 Okay, that seems innocuous enough.

00:15:07.860 Except the New York Times public editor, Liz Spade, later wrote a piece, even she, criticizing

00:15:12.580 the Times, for omitting that Barghouti is a convicted murderer who is serving five consecutive

00:15:18.000 life sentences for killing innocent civilians.

00:15:21.680 So, Barghouti is a Palestinian leader.

00:15:24.980 Okay, check.

00:15:25.980 He's a parliamentarian.

00:15:27.900 Check. 0.99

00:15:28.760 He's a vicious murderer who's serving five life sentences for killing innocent civilians.

00:15:33.780 No, no, no, the Times editors, we've got to leave that one out.

00:15:36.460 We're running out of space.

00:15:37.900 We only have space for two of your titles.

00:15:40.080 Let's leave in the completely innocuous ones.

00:15:42.940 Now, trash is not a new quality at the New York Times.

00:15:45.460 In 2004, reporter Fox Butterfield published a headline that would make him legendary.

00:15:50.760 The headline is, quote, More inmates, despite drop-in crime.

00:15:55.480 So, more people are going to prison despite the drop-in crime.

00:15:59.920 This is the Butterfield effect.

00:16:01.360 I think Wall Street Journal's James Taranto named it that.

00:16:04.880 The Butterfield effect is when someone makes a statement that is ludicrous on its face,

00:16:10.540 but it reveals the speaker's own biases, right?

00:16:13.460 So, they express it as though it's a paradox when really there's a causal relationship between

00:16:17.820 them.

00:16:18.520 Why is the crime rate dropping?

00:16:20.320 Possibly because we're throwing all of the criminals into prison.

00:16:23.100 That would make sense.

00:16:24.060 But to Fox Butterfield, to the New York Times, they're living in an ideological fantasy land

00:16:29.280 wherein there can't be a connection between imprisonment and crime.

00:16:33.760 We all know how unjust the prison system is anyway.

00:16:37.320 We should probably open up all of the jails anyway.

00:16:39.740 So, there couldn't possibly be a connection.

00:16:41.480 And this effect, this bias, pervades their reporting.

00:16:47.380 Who can forget Lincoln Steffens, the New York Times reporter who returned from the Soviet

00:16:52.100 Union and declared, I've seen the future and it works. 0.91

00:16:56.440 The Soviet Union.

00:16:57.540 This was what Bill Buckley reacted to when he launched National Review.

00:17:02.940 He said, a conservative is one who stands at the word history yelling stop.

00:17:07.340 He was referring to that, the future and it works.

00:17:09.320 That future doesn't work, but he was shilling for the Soviet Union.

00:17:12.840 Of course, this isn't the only times the New York Times has shilled for the Soviet Union.

00:17:17.200 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Walter Durante famously wrote a series of 11

00:17:22.520 articles on the Soviet Union in 1931, I believe it was.

00:17:27.560 And he denied the Holodomor.

00:17:29.660 He denied the man-made famine that killed between 7 and 10 million people.

00:17:34.940 I believe he still has his Pulitzer.

00:17:36.240 That, this goes pretty, this is almost a century back now.

00:17:40.500 And I will, I will talk more about the New York Times in my final thought, what we should do about it.

00:17:48.400 But now, I think we have to get away from fake news.

00:17:51.240 I've had enough fake news for today.

00:17:52.700 My heart is racing.

00:17:53.820 I need to get to some real news.

00:17:55.200 So it's time to bring on our excellent panel of deplorables.

00:17:58.440 We are going to have on Ali Stuckey. 1.00

00:18:01.600 And we are going to have on Jacob Berry.

00:18:04.200 But, listen, I want you to be able to watch it.

00:18:08.120 I'm hoping, I know they've got a lot of great stuff to say.

00:18:10.860 We have to talk about aliens, illegal aliens and Martians.

00:18:13.940 We have to talk about the Me Too campaign.

00:18:15.880 We have to talk about Bob Corker saying Rex Tillerson is castrated.

00:18:19.380 But you can't watch it unless you go to thedailywire.com right now and subscribe.

00:18:22.420 It is just $10 a month, $100 a year.

00:18:26.700 We want to thank everybody who already has subscribed.

00:18:29.380 It helps us keep the lights on.

00:18:30.960 It keeps me in Rachel Maddow glasses polish.

00:18:34.020 You'll get me.

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00:18:36.040 You'll get the Ben Shapiro Show, biggest podcast on the right.

00:18:38.840 Forget about all that.

00:18:39.740 I know you're bored.

00:18:40.680 Your eyes are glossing over.

00:18:42.220 Well, what about this?

00:18:44.140 Now have I got your attention?

00:18:45.420 The Leftist Tears Tumblr, the single most coveted item in the United States, I believe.

00:18:52.500 It is the perfect way to just collect all of the Hollywood tears, all of the news tears.

00:18:59.580 I used to take this in New York.

00:19:01.620 I'd bring it outside of the New York Times building, and then I could take a shower and

00:19:05.140 fill up my mug at the same time.

00:19:06.760 I really like it.

00:19:07.540 It goes really well with a little Daily Wire punch over here.

00:19:10.340 You pour that in, it makes a delicious cocktail.

00:19:12.920 That's thedailywire.com.

00:19:14.180 Go over there right now, and we'll be right back.

00:19:22.120 Allie, Jacob, thank you for being with us.

00:19:29.120 We need to rush right into all of the important news on the memes.

00:19:33.840 There is the Me Too campaign, which has been launched on Facebook and Twitter.

00:19:38.460 Alyssa Milano kicked this off. 1.00

00:19:39.940 She tweeted,

00:19:40.940 If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote Me Too as a status, we

00:19:46.160 might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.

00:19:49.300 So then you might have noticed your Facebook feeds have just got a lot of lefty people

00:19:53.560 tweeting Me Too, Me Too, Me Too.

00:19:56.200 Allie, there seems to be a pretty wide gulf between sexual assault and sexual harassment.

00:20:01.600 Is this an important gesture to show how widespread the problem of sexual misconduct is, or is

00:20:08.520 it disrespectful and absurd to conflate rape with being winked at at work?

00:20:14.160 Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:15.700 I also think that there's a problem when sexual assault or the idea of sexual assault and people

00:20:21.380 being sexually assaulted becomes a trend in which people feel like they have to jump on

00:20:27.520 a bandwagon in order to be accepted.

00:20:29.580 And I think that's kind of what we see happening here.

00:20:32.420 If you haven't been sexually assaulted or sexually harassed, then you're thinking back, trying

00:20:37.640 to rack your brain, oh, maybe that employer that one time did wink at me, or maybe he did

00:20:44.440 touch my shoulder weirdly.

00:20:46.820 And yes, yes, me too.

00:20:48.960 And it absolutely minimizes the cases of real assault and harassment that are happening when

00:20:54.600 people are simply adding themselves to a trend to either look or sound cool.

00:21:01.580 And it's a shame.

00:21:02.760 It is.

00:21:03.540 I saw this on Facebook today.

00:21:06.120 A girl wrote, you know, I wasn't sure if I'd write Me Too.

00:21:10.080 I wasn't sure if I'd join into this.

00:21:11.820 But then I just thought even the fact that I couldn't tell, I wasn't certain, you know,

00:21:18.760 if the guy winking at me, if that constituted it, that made me realize that I am a part

00:21:23.280 of it and I have to write Me Too.

00:21:26.080 But of course, the opposite is true.

00:21:27.740 If you're not sure, then not you too.

00:21:31.560 You exclude it.

00:21:32.740 Not you.

00:21:33.660 You'll know.

00:21:34.560 I mean, it's an egregious, egregious crime.

00:21:36.480 You'll know if it happens.

00:21:38.460 Jacob, sexual harassment can include unwanted sexual advances.

00:21:43.220 Sexual assault can be a guy at a bar, a drunk guy, you know, trying to kiss you a little

00:21:47.780 too much or being too aggressive in his come-ons.

00:21:51.020 And there may be indeed a spike in sexual assault on campuses or wherever when there's

00:21:57.560 a lot of booze and no social mores and people who have a lot of hormones that are flying

00:22:04.560 through them.

00:22:04.960 But the same feminists who insist on conflating harassment and assault also seem to be the 1.00

00:22:12.000 ones who are supporting this hookup culture, this culture that makes sex basically not

00:22:17.440 a big deal.

00:22:18.500 So therefore, if sex isn't a big deal, then why is sexual assault so much worse than

00:22:22.320 regular assault?

00:22:23.660 Can one coherently list sexual harassment among the most widespread social problems but also

00:22:29.580 support the hookup culture? 0.97

00:22:31.380 No, and I think it's completely hypocritical.

00:22:33.940 I mean, people were saying, oh, when the Harvey Weinstein story broke, people are saying,

00:22:39.800 oh, look, what's his name?

00:22:41.640 The creator of Family Guy, you know, he joked about it when he hosted the Academy Awards

00:22:45.680 and he was saying, I was trying to bring attention to it.

00:22:48.640 Why didn't you just say that he was a sexual harasser?

00:22:52.980 I mean, if you really want to bring attention to it.

00:22:55.940 So I think that, you know, all these ladies are coming forward and I think that it's important

00:23:00.880 that they do.

00:23:01.760 But these other people who said, well, I knew about it, but I just didn't say anything.

00:23:05.800 I think that that is them encouraging this culture.

00:23:09.640 And no, you can't have it both ways.

00:23:11.180 You can't say, oh, I am for hookup culture.

00:23:13.580 But don't wink at me. 1.00

00:23:14.480 Are you crazy? 0.96

00:23:15.400 Right. 0.71

00:23:16.380 Absolutely.

00:23:17.100 Someone brought this up to me in college.

00:23:19.060 We were debating, is there a rape culture?

00:23:21.540 That's the term that feminists use now. 1.00

00:23:23.600 Obviously, there's a rape culture in Pakistan. 1.00

00:23:25.940 There's not a rape culture on Yale University's campus. 0.96

00:23:28.920 Right.

00:23:29.100 But is there a rape culture? 1.00

00:23:31.900 And that's a really difficult question to answer.

00:23:34.560 If sex doesn't matter, if sex is just like any other act, it's like giving someone a high

00:23:38.880 five, if sex is without any moral significance, then why is sexual assault so much worse than

00:23:46.720 regular assault?

00:23:47.500 We would all agree that sexual assault is much worse than punching somebody in the face or

00:23:52.360 what have you.

00:23:53.800 So, but why is it much worse?

00:23:55.600 Obviously, there is a moral weight to it, which flies in the face of the hookup culture that,

00:23:59.720 you know, that defines a generation.

00:24:02.540 Okay, enough about sex. 0.90

00:24:03.920 We've had too much sex. 0.99

00:24:05.220 But we'll stick to sexual organs because a new report from Bob Corker, the showboating 0.99

00:24:10.860 Senator Bob Corker, suggests that the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been castrated. 0.96

00:24:16.560 Here is Tillerson's reaction.

00:24:18.180 I want to ask about Senator Bob Corker, who said something about you.

00:24:21.760 And he was referring, he's a friend of yours.

00:24:23.420 He has tremendous respect for you.

00:24:24.840 He speaks highly of you all the time.

00:24:27.280 He says that you're one of the best things about the cabinet.

00:24:29.680 And he's dismayed he thinks President Trump is constantly undermining you.

00:24:33.380 This is a Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

00:24:35.980 He said that the president has, quote, castrated you before the world stage.

00:24:40.340 That's his word, not mine.

00:24:42.600 What's your response to that?

00:24:44.220 Well, as I indicated earlier, Jake, I think this is an unconventional president.

00:24:48.240 He uses unconventional communication tools.

00:24:51.340 He uses unconventional techniques to motivate change.

00:24:54.220 Again, I would say I am fully committed to his objectives.

00:24:57.860 I agree with his objectives.

00:24:59.220 I agree with what he's trying to do.

00:25:01.120 How he wants to use his own skills tactically to push things toward change, I'm there to

00:25:06.340 help him achieve those.

00:25:08.180 That's all you, you're a cattle, you have a cattle ranch.

00:25:10.340 You don't want to say anything about the Senate, Senator calling, suggesting you've been gelded

00:25:15.080 before the world.

00:25:15.960 That's not anything that bothers you?

00:25:17.460 I checked, I'm fully intact.

00:25:20.700 I did not expect that answer.

00:25:22.780 You do have to love Rex Tillerson.

00:25:24.540 I checked and I'm fully intact.

00:25:26.340 Gotta love the guy.

00:25:27.540 But, Allie, the question remains, has Tillerson been castrated politically, if not physically?

00:25:33.560 I also love how Jake Tapper brought up that he has a cattle ranch as his segue into that

00:25:39.160 question.

00:25:39.740 Yeah, comedy is not his forte.

00:25:42.680 Yeah, that was really interesting.

00:25:45.300 News is not his forte either, but definitely not comedy.

00:25:47.720 I'm sorry, go ahead.

00:25:48.460 No, not really.

00:25:49.420 Well, we have some people saying, okay, this was Trump playing good cop, bad cop.

00:25:53.600 Then you have people saying, absolutely not.

00:25:55.700 This was Trump's way of kind of, I guess, taking the credit for being tough on North Korea

00:26:01.900 and then emasculating Rex Tillerson.

00:26:05.380 And maybe that's true.

00:26:06.780 I kind of actually lean into that camp rather than thinking this was some big strategic heroic

00:26:12.800 move on Trump's part.

00:26:14.460 I think that he should leave diplomacy up to Rex Tillerson.

00:26:17.940 We've already seen that that's not Trump's forte.

00:26:20.820 But Tillerson also knows how much Trump values loyalty.

00:26:25.620 And that's the game that he's playing with the media right now.

00:26:28.400 And I have to say, I think he's doing a pretty good job of it.

00:26:31.180 He pivoted very well with those questions.

00:26:34.280 He's a pro.

00:26:35.220 He's really good.

00:26:36.060 For a guy who spent his career as a private businessman, CEO of ExxonMobil, obviously you

00:26:43.700 develop political skills that way.

00:26:45.260 But he has been absolutely agile, completely adept in politics. 0.99

00:26:50.200 Jacob, should Tillerson have answered the question about calling Trump a moron? 1.00

00:26:55.120 In this interview, he said, you know, people say you called Trump a moron. 1.00

00:26:58.340 Do you deny it? 1.00

00:26:59.140 Did you call Trump a moron? 1.00

00:27:00.360 What happened? 1.00

00:27:00.820 And the question seems to me like the usual mainstream media treatment of, do you still

00:27:06.880 beat your wife? 0.99

00:27:07.860 But should he have answered it?

00:27:09.000 Or should he say, I'm not going to dignify your question with a response?

00:27:12.040 I think it would have been better if he had denied it.

00:27:15.720 But I honestly don't see his, I'm not going to dignify that with a response.

00:27:19.280 I see that as a denial.

00:27:21.000 It just didn't come on strong enough.

00:27:22.860 But I think either way he is saying, no, I did not.

00:27:26.180 I'm not going to play this game with the mainstream media.

00:27:28.960 Because Trump's mistrust of the media, the well-deserved mistrust, I think it trickles

00:27:34.160 down into his cabinet.

00:27:35.620 And so I think Tillerson's saying, look, I'm not going there.

00:27:39.920 I think he's just saying, I'm not playing your game.

00:27:42.480 Absolutely.

00:27:43.200 I disagree.

00:27:44.040 I disagree with that.

00:27:45.220 I think that he was actually saying, or he wasn't saying that he didn't say that. 1.00

00:27:51.740 I think that he would have flat out denied it if he had called Trump an effing moron. 0.99

00:27:56.700 I think, and ironically enough, he said, you know, those are the games of Washington. 0.99

00:28:01.400 I think that he was playing the game of Washington, which is good PR or want to be good PR.

00:28:08.300 But I said, you know, I'm not going to dignify that with a response.

00:28:10.840 That's a really, really good way of saying, oh my gosh, I don't want to talk about that.

00:28:14.700 That was really embarrassing.

00:28:16.200 It is true. 1.00

00:28:18.060 I'm really torn on this because I don't know if he called Trump a moron or not. 0.99

00:28:23.240 I don't really care. 0.97

00:28:23.940 I just certainly believe that in no instances should people be dignifying these little grade

00:28:32.040 school questions from the mainstream media with a response. 0.97

00:28:34.940 Even if, maybe he did call him a moron, but even if he didn't, I think that Tillerson should 0.97

00:28:40.200 have the same answer. 0.98

00:28:41.480 I am not going to play gossip.

00:28:44.360 You know, Jake Tapper, you're supposed to be a serious news reporter.

00:28:47.480 Mainstream media, you're supposed to be reporting news.

00:28:49.280 I'm not going to mention which little insults I've thrown at my boss and colleague.

00:28:55.460 It's just, it's below the dignity of the Office of Secretary of State.

00:28:59.920 But I don't know.

00:29:00.480 He's probably weaseling out too.

00:29:01.580 Who knows?

00:29:02.100 It might have worked in both ways.

00:29:04.240 Okay.

00:29:04.540 The most important news story of the day.

00:29:06.480 A congressional candidate claims to have been abducted by aliens at age seven.

00:29:11.840 The Miami area politician, of course it was a Florida politician, Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera

00:29:17.320 says, aliens brought her onto their space shift. 1.00

00:29:20.900 They predicted that ISIS would develop and they telepathically explained that God is 0.57

00:29:27.100 a universal energy, not a person.

00:29:29.760 He's part of everything, not a person.

00:29:33.560 Gotta love Florida.

00:29:34.660 Allie, in the grand scheme of things, is this woman any nuttier than your average member 1.00

00:29:38.700 of Congress? 0.74

00:29:39.180 That's exactly what I was going to say.

00:29:42.400 I would say the only difference between her and a Congress person is that she's owning 0.94

00:29:46.960 her crease.

00:29:47.680 Right.

00:29:48.140 Well, she's honest.

00:29:48.720 She's owning the fact that she's unstable. 0.90

00:29:50.540 That's great.

00:29:50.860 Yeah, I'm thinking she actually has a leg up on most people in Congress, that she's just 0.99

00:29:54.960 being honest about the fact that she's completely mentally unstable and she might not get anything 0.89

00:29:59.360 done.

00:29:59.940 At least she's telling you beforehand, and honesty is something that she has more than the average

00:30:04.780 Congress person.

00:30:05.800 And I love her radical candor. 0.56

00:30:07.580 Some of those other psychopaths in Washington, they're able to hide their psychoses a little

00:30:12.360 bit better. 0.98

00:30:13.280 Absolutely right.

00:30:14.220 And she, I think this was in Federalist 15, when Madison and Hamilton are explaining that

00:30:21.120 the purpose of the Congress is to throw all of the crazy psychopaths into one room so that

00:30:26.180 they could fight each other and not destroy the country. 0.98

00:30:28.420 I'm paraphrasing, of course.

00:30:29.840 So she seems great.

00:30:30.760 We should endorse her, I think.

00:30:32.200 Jacob, this woman claims that God is a universal energy, not a person.

00:30:36.740 Which seems to favor pantheism over a theistic religion, such as Christianity or Judaism.

00:30:43.020 We hear this all the time.

00:30:44.220 People say this a lot in popular culture.

00:30:45.840 They say, you know, the universe is really good to me.

00:30:48.120 I'm sending you good vibes, man.

00:30:50.280 The universe is bringing it all together, right?

00:30:52.780 They talk about material things instead of metaphysical things.

00:30:55.820 C.S. Lewis claims that this sort of pantheism is the natural state of man.

00:31:01.380 This is the natural temptation of man in thinking about his surroundings and that theistic religion 1.00

00:31:07.600 only comes from the ancient Greeks and the ancient Jews, basically, who realize there's

00:31:12.340 something higher.

00:31:13.440 Is he right? 0.62

00:31:14.320 Are all people naturally pantheists, both crazy congressional candidates and regular old 0.93

00:31:19.840 citizens alike? 0.82

00:31:20.480 I would say so.

00:31:22.060 I think that if you really get down to it, everyone has had some sort of cathartic metaphysical

00:31:28.500 experience, but they don't want to admit that there is a God out there because then they

00:31:32.840 would have to live by his standards.

00:31:36.360 And that's why Ahn Ren said she was an atheist originally.

00:31:39.400 Later, she came back and said, no, I'm just smart.

00:31:41.040 That's why I'm atheist.

00:31:41.900 Yeah, right.

00:31:42.440 But I honestly think, yeah, people want to believe in something bigger than themselves,

00:31:47.360 even bigger than the tangible universe, right?

00:31:50.200 So I think, yes, we're predisposed to this pantheism because it gives us a reason to

00:31:54.760 believe in something without any consequences to our actions.

00:31:58.280 That's true.

00:31:58.980 Allie, looking around the world at our situation today, is it more likely that we're being

00:32:03.880 telepathically controlled by aliens or that there is a just and loving God?

00:32:09.140 Yeah, well, I think C.S. Lewis also said if there's a longing inside of us for something

00:32:13.560 other than this world or bigger than this world, there must be something actually bigger

00:32:17.380 than this world.

00:32:18.040 And I think that that is a commonality that all of us have innately, that we have this

00:32:22.620 longing.

00:32:23.560 And exactly like Jacob said, we want to attach it to something.

00:32:27.300 But instead of attaching it to something that might have moral standard that's going to

00:32:31.280 demand an action, we want to attach it to this relative amorphous, crazy being, ethereal

00:32:39.320 being like the universe or energy or vibes or something like that.

00:32:42.880 Something that's going to make us feel good, but not actually have us do something.

00:32:46.180 I think that we're going in the direction of moral relativity, which is why you're seeing,

00:32:53.440 but we're also going in the direction of wanting to feel good.

00:32:56.800 And so I think that we're going more towards agnosticism than we are atheism.

00:33:02.360 We want to believe that there is something bigger that's going to send us good vibes and

00:33:05.800 good feelings, not something that's going to tell us what to do.

00:33:08.840 And I think that's why we're seeing this kind of a pantheistic, ethereal, weird, I don't

00:33:15.500 even know if it's increasing.

00:33:16.900 I think we've had it forever.

00:33:18.800 But it's certainly becoming, I guess, more prominent when members of Congress are espousing

00:33:23.560 these kind of beliefs.

00:33:24.400 Future members of Congress, that is.

00:33:26.960 Yeah.

00:33:27.440 And you touched on it.

00:33:28.740 Both of you touched on it, that we're afraid of these moral standards.

00:33:33.060 We're afraid of exacting moral standards.

00:33:34.940 So then the thing that's higher than us has to be physical.

00:33:39.160 It has to be the aliens or it has to be the universe.

00:33:41.940 Because you can't derive an ought from an is. 0.94

00:33:44.440 You can't derive a moral standard from a physical thing.

00:33:47.860 So we have to move away from these metaphysical gods into physical gods, whatever that may be.

00:33:53.720 Otherwise, we're going to have to feel bad, man, and not have all the good feels, you know?

00:33:58.300 Okay, panel. 0.85

00:33:59.760 So good to have you as always.

00:34:00.860 Allie Stuckey, conservative millennial from The Blaze.

00:34:04.240 And Jacob Berry, Daily Wire's own.

00:34:06.520 Now it is time.

00:34:07.280 I already have my smart glasses on.

00:34:08.860 It's time for the final thought.

00:34:14.140 Andrew Klavan calls The New York Times a former newspaper because, he says,

00:34:18.980 they used to be a decent paper until they completely sold out as a mouthpiece for the Democrat Party.

00:34:23.740 He makes a good point.

00:34:25.020 The reporters, as opposed to the editors and opinion writers at The New York Times,

00:34:28.880 are still generally excellent.

00:34:30.840 But The Times has always had a strange relationship with the truth. 0.95

00:34:34.060 And over the past decade and a half, it has decayed into utter trash.

00:34:38.540 Some Republicans fall prey to their promise of mainstream or left-wing validation. 0.98

00:34:43.420 The classic example of this is John McCain,

00:34:45.780 whom The New York Times would praise when he criticized Republicans,

00:34:48.960 only later to smear him when he ran against one of their guys.

00:34:52.680 The promise here is that The New York Times can offer the patina of credibility,

00:34:57.280 a desirable sheen for politicians, artists, and cultural figures. 0.99

00:35:01.760 But The New York Times is trash. 0.99

00:35:04.040 The only patina or sheen it can offer is muck because it is premised on a lie 1.00

00:35:08.900 that The New York Times offers fearless, unbiased journalism,

00:35:12.580 when in reality they are the most powerful Democrat communications firm in the country.

00:35:17.060 To cite a personal example that gives me endless joy,

00:35:20.640 my best-selling political tome, Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide,

00:35:25.140 outsold the number one New York Times best-selling book the week that it came out

00:35:29.400 by an order of magnitude.

00:35:31.800 But The New York Times refused to name it on their list.

00:35:34.640 Unlike virtually every other news source in the world,

00:35:37.100 they refused even to acknowledge it,

00:35:38.940 only finally running an op-ed that half-mentioned my book

00:35:42.280 in order to suggest a handful of humorless blank book titles that mocked Republicans,

00:35:47.340 Ted Cruz's friends at work, that sort of thing.

00:35:50.360 The New York Times has its narrative.

00:35:52.640 They're sticking to it,

00:35:53.880 and conservatives shouldn't waste one moment 0.76

00:35:56.340 seeking their favor or indulging their nonsense. 0.73

00:36:00.120 Ah, what a fun show today. 0.85

00:36:02.180 It was really a spiritual experience.

00:36:04.140 I am Michael Knowles.

00:36:05.100 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:36:06.320 Tune in to Andrew Klavan's conversation tomorrow,

00:36:08.300 and also turn back here, and we'll do our show all over again.

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The Michael Knowles Show - October 16, 2017

Ep. 41 - The NYT Is Trash： An Historical Retrospective

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