The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 43 - President Trump at #War

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00:00:37.960 President Donald Trump is facing war on all fronts. He's been accused of insensitivity toward a gold

00:00:44.460 star widow. Former future President Hillary Clinton is slamming his North Korea strategy as dangerous,

00:00:51.680 and rumors swirl over a Bannon-induced White House conflict with Mitch McConnell. We'll discuss the

00:00:57.500 fallout. Then, Alicia Krauss, Amber Athe, and Amanda Prestigiacomo join the panel of deplorables to talk 1.00

00:01:04.340 gay Nazi Jews, Rand Paul smacking around John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and elementary schools 0.99

00:01:10.320 canceling Halloween in favor of the politically correct Orange and Black Spirit Day. I'm Michael 0.99

00:01:16.520 Knowles, and this is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:26.240 We have so much to get to today. It's just war, war, war the whole time. Alicia Krauss from the

00:01:31.740 conversation at the Daily Wire is making her panel of deplorables debut. But before we get to any of

00:01:36.540 that, I have very good news, especially for me, but I guess for all of us. We have a new sponsor.

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00:03:08.680 at three in the morning, which is when I do most of my work. In the old days, you know,

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00:03:17.100 how businesses would post for their packages and for their letters. They would always break. They

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00:04:05.140 help us keep the lights on. Okay, we've got so much to get to right now. Let's begin with this

00:04:10.600 story that's all over the news. Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, it's always some

00:04:15.900 Florida woman, has come out swinging against President Trump with an allegation that one of 1.00

00:04:20.720 her constituents, a gold star widow, received a phone call from Trump after her son, Sergeant

00:04:26.560 La David Johnson was killed in Niger two weeks ago. Wilson alleged that this is the Congresswoman

00:04:32.940 alleged that Trump told told the widow, quote, Well, I guess he knew what he signed up for. But I

00:04:38.860 guess it still hurt. We don't know what he said. You know, we do know that this Florida Congresswoman

00:04:45.540 is pretty kooky. And she comes from a far left ideological background. She famously introduced 1.00

00:04:51.480 a congressional resolution to honor Trayvon Martin. She called for Trump's impeachment a

00:04:56.500 couple months ago. And she wears these weird hats all the time. The timing is also a little 0.89

00:05:01.400 coincidental. Just a couple days ago, Trump suggested that Obama didn't call gold star families

00:05:07.580 when soldiers were killed in action. Now we have this Democratic rep swinging back. A great guy on

00:05:14.880 Twitter, Matt's ideas shop laid it out fairly well in a likely unlikely diagram. Because look,

00:05:20.580 Trump may have said something to that effect. He's not exactly the most eloquent guy in the world.

00:05:25.180 He might have said something to the effect of my condolences. Your husband made the ultimate

00:05:28.900 sacrifice. He bravely enlisted. He he knew what he signed up for. He is ready to give his life. He's a

00:05:34.740 hero. So that's one version of this. Some some series of those kind of lines. Or he might have said,

00:05:41.020 hey, yo, it's me, the Donald. Your husband knew what he signed up for. Are we cool? What do you

00:05:45.140 think it is? I don't I'm sorry. I don't care how inarticulate Donald Trump can be. I don't think it

00:05:50.120 was the latter. I he may have said some comment to that effect. But the Democratic Congresswoman

00:05:55.940 who's made this a cudgel, given the timing and given her past history, I think it is

00:06:00.060 worth questioning what her political motives are here. Regardless, the really sad thing about this

00:06:07.660 episode is that there's a brave American Sergeant David Johnson who made the ultimate sacrifice for

00:06:13.240 our country, for my freedom and for yours. And he's now being used as a blunt political cudgel

00:06:18.340 by a cynical Democrat Congresswoman. It's really awful. And and we shouldn't give it. We should

00:06:24.540 address it. Obviously, we should address the allegations, but we should not spend more time

00:06:28.320 talking about this. This cynical woman, this this Democratic propagandist that even even if she's 0.99

00:06:36.560 alluding to some truthful comment here is obviously twisting it for political purposes in other war

00:06:42.860 related news, my battle axe of a cousin, Hillary Clinton, is despicably mouthing off on foreign soil. 1.00

00:06:49.060 The former future president slammed President Trump's North Korea policy as, quote, dangerous

00:06:54.000 and short sighted today during a speech in South Korea. She alleged, quote, picking fights with Kim

00:07:00.080 Jong-un just puts a smile on his face. I think the real quote went like, what happened? Something like

00:07:06.720 that. But we were translating it, obviously, for for the American audience. The irony defies reason,

00:07:12.720 but then the Clintons are immune to shame. Donald Trump is Clemens von Metternich compared to Hillary

00:07:19.100 Clinton. Let's just establish that first. She has no credibility here. Her disastrous handling of foreign 1.00

00:07:24.860 affairs from the failed Russia reset to her awful handling of crises in Egypt and Libya and elsewhere

00:07:31.080 in the world, it should disqualify her from saying boo about geopolitics. But more than that, she and

00:07:37.500 particularly her husband bear the lion's share of the blame for the North Korean nuclear crisis that we

00:07:42.620 find ourselves in. In 1994, people might not remember this, Bill Clinton refused to respond when Kim

00:07:49.200 Jong-il pursued nuclear weapons and when Kim Jong-il refused to allow weapons inspectors to review two

00:07:55.420 of his nuclear waste sites in complete violation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Then Hillary

00:08:01.040 Clinton was not just first lady. She was also later secretary of state. She executed a North Korea strategy

00:08:06.520 known as, this is not a joke, strategic patience. Strategic patience. You couldn't make that up in

00:08:14.780 political satire. And that strategic patience was very unstrategic because it only allowed the threat

00:08:20.240 to grow. President Trump and secretary of state Tillerson, their handling of North Korea has

00:08:26.400 apparently been pretty good so far from what we can tell. It's very hard. We're getting mixed signals.

00:08:31.040 We don't really know what's happening. And we're not dead. We haven't been obliterated yet. You know,

00:08:35.380 Trump secured the release of that American student, Otto Warmbier, who was jailed by the Kim regime

00:08:41.280 during the Obama administration. But fine. Hillary is bitter that she lost the presidency twice. 0.97

00:08:46.740 She can't get over it. She's clearly being ripped apart from the inside out. Who cares?

00:08:51.960 The real offense here is that she's criticizing U.S. policy on foreign soil. There has long been a taboo 0.97

00:08:58.200 against doing this. You know, we have robust political debates at home and then abroad American

00:09:03.440 citizens are supposed to present a united front. They're supposed to refrain from criticizing the

00:09:08.320 present policy overseas. Hillary, however, is immune from shame. Patriotism be damned.

00:09:14.860 My cousin. What a traumatic family reunion this will be next year. The third battlefront that 0.88

00:09:20.780 President Trump faces right now is the apparently Steve Bannon-induced war between the White House

00:09:26.780 and Mitch McConnell. President Trump, standing next to McConnell at this press conference, claimed,

00:09:32.320 quote, my relationship with this gentleman is outstanding. Very Trumpian. There's probably an

00:09:36.140 exclamation point at the end. McConnell echoed this. He said, contrary to what some of you have

00:09:40.160 reported, we are together totally on this agenda to move America forward. But then Donald Trump,

00:09:46.400 in typical fashion, went on to say that he also, quote, totally understands the frustrations of Steve

00:09:52.620 Bannon. And Bannon plans to run primaries against congressional leadership and establishment

00:09:57.220 Republicans. Bannon has declared hashtag war on the Republican establishment and the conservative

00:10:02.720 establishment for that manner. For analysis on this last bit on the Bannon-McConnell-Trump,

00:10:08.780 who knows what's happening, we have to bring on our expert panel of deplorables, an all-female panel 1.00

00:10:14.240 just to celebrate Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood falling apart. We decided to bring all the ladies 0.94

00:10:18.380 on the show today. We have Amber Athey from The Daily Caller. We have Amanda Prestigiacomo from The

00:10:23.240 Daily Wire. And making her panel of deplorables debut, we have Alicia Krauss, our old friend Alicia Krauss,

00:10:29.060 who you might have seen in the conversation yesterday with Andrew Klavan, and now The Daily

00:10:32.820 Wire's very own. Ladies, thank you for being here. Thanks. First question, Alicia. In the war between

00:10:40.120 Trump, McConnell, and Bannon, who is winning? I don't know that Bannon is at war with Trump. I have

00:10:47.100 this kind of conspiracy theory that he is working behind the scenes and talking to Donald and is like,

00:10:52.120 I got your back, bro. And he really is doing these things that he thinks maybe are helping Donald

00:10:58.400 Trump. I think that Bannon might be winning this game, though, because as we saw in the Alabama

00:11:05.160 primary or the Alabama race down there, it ended up being Bannon's guy that won, not Trump's guy.

00:11:10.380 And I think that Trump would like to blame Mitch McConnell for that. I don't know if he's going to

00:11:15.460 end up coming out on top with that argument. But I think that Bannon is apparently recruiting

00:11:20.820 candidates across the country to pursue and push forward legislation and agendas that Bannon thinks

00:11:27.860 are what Trump should be doing that he isn't doing anymore. And that's how Bannon positioned his exit

00:11:32.620 from the White House. He said, I'm not being fired. I was always going to leave. I can help Trump a lot

00:11:37.000 more from the outside than I can on the inside. Maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. Amber, is Bannon just

00:11:42.720 trying to position himself in the best possible light, trying to make himself seem like a player here?

00:11:47.720 I think that's what Ben Shapiro suggested earlier today. Or is he acting on behalf of the White House,

00:11:53.460 like Alicia thinks? I think it's a little bit of both. I think Alicia is right that Bannon is

00:11:59.240 probably of the mindset that he's helping Trump by opposing these supposedly anti-Trump candidates.

00:12:05.440 But at the same time, I don't think he really has as much power as he lets on. When you look at the

00:12:10.280 Alabama race, Roy Moore was already really, really popular and slated to win that race. So I'm not sure

00:12:15.480 how much of an effect Bannon really had there. And if you consider the fact that he thinks that

00:12:21.640 being at Breitbart gives him a lot of power, that would mean that places like the Daily Caller and

00:12:25.840 the Daily Wire would also be able to, you know, shape electoral races. And I'm just not sure that

00:12:30.880 that's really the case. Oh, I feel no offense to us. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of feel like I can

00:12:35.440 zap lightning out of my fingers or something. But maybe that's just a difference of reaction.

00:12:39.700 Amanda, Trump has been saying very nice things about Mitch McConnell, regardless of the

00:12:44.080 Bannon dynamics, regardless of whether they're working in collusion. He's been saying nice

00:12:48.720 things about like one of the most detested Republicans in the country. Pigs are flying 0.99

00:12:53.300 on a cold day in hell. How long will the bromance last?

00:12:58.000 As long as it's beneficial to Trump. I mean, he can turn on McConnell at the drop of the hat. So

00:13:03.740 it's Trump knows how to play this game better than anyone. If you think it's beneficial to,

00:13:08.440 you know, cozy up to McConnell and have that presser where they're all buddy, buddy, then he'll do it.

00:13:12.960 And then the second he wants to put the blame back on McConnell, he will. And we've seen that before.

00:13:17.520 So it's just whatever is beneficial to Trump, he'll spin it in a way that, um, you know, it's,

00:13:23.760 you know, McConnell's good or bad, you know, it's whatever he is, it's beneficial to him.

00:13:29.400 People are knocking him because they say he has a tough relationship with the truth. You know,

00:13:33.920 he says one thing one day, says one thing the next. I actually really like it. I do think the New

00:13:38.140 Yorker thing is, is it play with my read on that? Because that is just how New Yorkers talk.

00:13:43.020 They'll come out, they'll say, Oh yeah, I love this guy. He's like a brother to me. Yeah. He's,

00:13:46.220 he's, he's doing the great work out there in the back. Yeah. And then the next, you know,

00:13:49.760 the next day, if he, if, if McConnell stabs Trump in the back, he'll say, he's a total loser. I hate 1.00

00:13:54.740 his guts and who cares? You know, there's like, then he'll come back around his, um, I don't say 0.97

00:14:01.340 dishonesty, but his relationship with the truth. I think it's sort of guileless here. He's very,

00:14:07.020 you know, that Donald Trump is going to do this. You know, the minute McConnell turns on him,

00:14:11.740 it's going to be no holds barred. Yeah. And, and, and it, and it helps him kind of push whatever he

00:14:17.740 wants forward. Cause they know that he's, you know, Oh, I'm in his good graces. No for this second.

00:14:22.400 So they know that they're going to be held accountable. Um, and then he kind of, you know,

00:14:26.940 strings them along that way. Gotta love it. It's that, that's that. I think I compared him to

00:14:31.300 Metternich earlier in the show that that's the, I don't know if future historians will

00:14:35.680 recognize the political genius of Donald Trump, but they probably should. He's, he's actually been

00:14:40.680 working at a much higher level than I think a lot of people gave him credit for. Okay. We've got a

00:14:45.580 lot more news to get to. We, we have to get to the war on Halloween before the war on Christmas.

00:14:50.020 There's now a war on Halloween. There is so much to talk about, but if you don't subscribe to the

00:14:55.560 daily wire, you can't see the rest of it. We appreciate all the current subscribers. You're helping keep

00:14:59.860 the lights on. You're helping keep a covfefe in my, in my tumbler. But, uh, for the rest of you go

00:15:05.480 over there right now, you'll get me, you'll get the Andrew Klavan show. You'll get the Ben Shapiro

00:15:09.540 show. All that, it's just $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership. But I know you're thinking,

00:15:14.480 I don't know, that's a lot of shows who cares, whatever. But look at this guys, look at this,

00:15:19.280 the leftist tears tumbler filled to the brim with covfefe right now. This is the finest mechanism

00:15:25.000 for drinking tasty leftist tears in the country. This, the vintage we've prepared here, um, is

00:15:31.040 actually from South Korea. It's from Seoul after Hillary Clinton's speech. Obviously it's not a

00:15:36.140 limited run because Hillary Clinton has been spouting salty leftist tears for nine months now and, and 1.00

00:15:40.780 really for the better part of 30 years. But, uh, you can have, that vintage can be yours. If you go to

00:15:45.740 thedailywire.com right now, we'll be right back. An Englishman who has spent 40 years as an active

00:16:02.800 member of a white supremacist movement has announced that he is a gay Jew and he's retiring

00:16:08.140 from neo-Nazism. Alicia, we're talking about a Jewish neo-Nazi here. Um, do, do we have a clip of 0.98

00:16:15.360 this guy? Were you thinking of your mom? No, no. But why not? Because, because that, that term

00:16:23.820 the Jews is, you're presenting a global faceless mass of people that, you know, you can't personalize 1.00

00:16:29.700 it. You can't see an individual there. That's not even your mom. No. And that's the sort of

00:16:35.920 generalization that results in six million people being deliberately murdered. We've heard this term

00:16:42.920 Jewish neo-Nazi before. That's what all the crazy campus lefties call Ben every time he shows up 0.99

00:16:47.980 there. Um, this guy, it's a really interesting interview. He explains that he joined the neo-Nazis

00:16:54.100 and the white nationalists and all that because he was a loner, basically. He didn't have any friends.

00:16:58.520 He didn't have anything to do. Do you think, I don't want to get into too much psychobabble. Yeah. Do you,

00:17:03.540 do you think that explains some of these alt-right guys too? I'm not talking about the Pepe people who

00:17:07.960 are mischievous. I'm talking about the real racist, uh, neo-Nazi types, Richard Spencer. 0.97

00:17:14.900 Does that, uh, social ostracism explain their, uh, political actions? I, maybe potentially. I think

00:17:22.260 this also ties into the hashtag MeToo campaign. Bear with me for a moment. I think Matt Walsh and Ben

00:17:27.340 Shapiro pointed out really good points that when society doesn't have a standard that's set of like

00:17:31.360 what real men need to do and then manliness in general by many in the leftist feminist movement

00:17:37.180 is kind of poo-pooed on and looked down on. Then unfortunately, sometimes you have men that

00:17:42.700 look to the wrong types of groups to create those friendships and those standards of decency that

00:17:48.360 are like really bad and shouldn't be followed. And then once they become a part of that group,

00:17:52.960 they adhere to all those ideas because they don't want to lose their circle of friends.

00:17:56.580 Um, on a very extreme level, we've seen this with ISIS and how ISIS targets young men,

00:18:01.280 specifically on Twitter and in educational, you know, places and in some radical mosques around

00:18:06.100 the world. And I think that it kind of makes sense that the KKK and these neo-Nazi groups

00:18:10.560 would be recruiting people and members in the same way. But I mean, his interview was really

00:18:15.020 impactful. And a friend of the program, Bethany Mandel, has pointed out that when you target those

00:18:19.640 people in a good way and befriend them and show them the face of women, Christians, Jews,

00:18:25.640 gay people, black people, they have a really hard time then just identifying hatred toward the entire

00:18:30.880 group because they've gotten to know you as an individual. Of course. I love that dynamic there, 0.97

00:18:35.860 the individual versus these collective group identities. And yeah, I think that's certainly

00:18:42.780 the case. Even with the Me Too comparison, there is not in the culture an ideal of what masculinity

00:18:51.120 should look like, of what manliness should look like. I think it's the same with these neo-Nazi

00:18:55.700 types. They say they're defending Western civilization, but they don't really understand

00:19:00.100 what Western civilization is.

00:19:02.240 Or adhere to those values.

00:19:03.540 Or adhere to those values. So they say, we want to protect Christendom, but we want nothing to do

00:19:07.560 with Christianity.

00:19:08.680 Yeah.

00:19:09.240 Absolutely. Excellent analogy. Amber, lefties call anybody on the right racist, fascist, neo-Nazi,

00:19:16.680 whatever they have. They accuse us of hate, just as they would accuse David Duke of hate

00:19:21.880 or Richard Spencer. How do we make sure that we don't wake up someday, or woke up probably

00:19:27.700 is more like it, and disavow all of the views that we hold right now? How do we know that

00:19:32.140 we're not as crazy and awful as they say that we are?

00:19:37.640 Well, part of the reason why we're not going to wake up one day and disavow all of our views

00:19:41.240 is because, for one, our views are rooted in truth, are not hateful, bigoted views, as

00:19:48.540 the left would have us believe. So we kind of have an advantage over the people who are

00:19:51.440 actually neo-Nazis, because we are grounded in some kind of truth and value.

00:19:55.900 But don't you think that these neo-Nazi guys think that their racial theories are rooted

00:20:03.220 in truth? And we have other theories that we ground our political views in. How do we know

00:20:09.060 that we have the right ones? How do we know that we have the true ones?

00:20:14.020 Man, you just went full lefty on me.

00:20:17.400 You know, I think it shows why it's so important to be really careful about how we label people

00:20:23.280 and how we collectivize people, because if we're going by that standard, then anyone could be a

00:20:30.400 Nazi. Anyone could be a neo-Nazi. Anybody could be hateful. We could easily turn that term around

00:20:35.280 on the left and accuse them of being neo-Nazis. And if they defend it, you can just say, well,

00:20:41.240 of course you don't think you are, because you don't want to, you know.

00:20:44.140 You don't want to face the facts. Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:46.400 So it's really dangerous. Right. Yeah, exactly. So it just shows how important language is and how

00:20:51.220 people will, if you overuse terms, they start to lose their meaning and they start to lose their

00:20:57.820 value.

00:20:58.180 And we easily could turn that term around on them. I mean, a lot of the premises that are shared by

00:21:03.180 these far, fringy, extremist racial groups, neo-Nazis or whatever, are premises that are

00:21:09.980 indulged in by the left, that racial group identity is what defines a person rather than a person's soul

00:21:17.460 and equality before God and individuality. By the way, I think that's why we're not going to woke up

00:21:22.560 someday and realize that really we should have been, you know, lefty social justice warriors is

00:21:28.940 because their premises are similarly wrong to those neo-Nazi premises. And as Alicia suggested,

00:21:36.880 you know, we're the ones who are saying, look at the individual, judge the individual. You know,

00:21:41.560 we're all created in God's image and we have to live out those ideas that have been, that have caused

00:21:47.580 the West and that have been developed in the West.

00:21:49.960 But part of these problems, I mean, not to get too theological here, but going back to-

00:21:53.440 Oh, get too theological. We're delving into Shiite Catholicism on this show, so please bring it up.

00:21:57.960 We are, you know, created in the image of God and that's where our belief in natural law starts and

00:22:02.600 the equality of man starts. But unfortunately in our culture, leftists have distanced God from the

00:22:09.080 involvement of human importance, right? Or human value, especially. I mean, look at what they do to

00:22:15.520 babies in utero. And so therefore that individualism isn't important to them because they do like the

00:22:22.440 group think of you, you are this and this group is more important than this because it's more

00:22:26.880 politically appropriate or it can be a political use to them and a tool to them at that time.

00:22:31.800 And it started years and years ago with the growth of, you know, progressivism and that movement away

00:22:37.160 from where does natural law come from? And the belief in our founders that, you know, this has to come

00:22:41.740 from God and this is where this right came from. And it's not being taught to kids today. I mean,

00:22:46.360 I was hashtag homeschooled all 12 years, but I've even talked to fellow homeschoolers and other

00:22:51.340 millennials. I'm a grandma millennial. You're on the younger millennial age. I'm like 31 over here.

00:22:55.580 Stop it. You're going to make me blush.

00:22:56.680 But, you know, so I'm a few years older than you. It isn't taught to an entire swath of Americans and it

00:23:05.040 hasn't been for 20 plus years. So really, I think in order to not wake up one day and to answer your

00:23:11.300 question a little bit, we have to start training people of where those rights come from and what,

00:23:15.700 what, you know, America really stands for. And that's, that's where it begins. It doesn't begin

00:23:19.800 when you're donating to politicians. It begins a lot earlier than that. And it's how the left has

00:23:24.680 gained so much ground. Amanda, this guy was a member of the National Front. It's a very fringy,

00:23:30.220 far right UK political party. It doesn't have any seats in parliament or anything. It's fascistic.

00:23:36.840 It's nationalistic. Is there any fear for us that good old red, white, and blue American nationalism,

00:23:43.640 American patriotism, that it will morph into a grotesque like national front racial populism?

00:23:52.000 I mean, there's always the threat of that, I suppose. I mean, we've seen it, you know,

00:23:56.740 it's basically reactionary, right? Like we've seen this during the 2016 election where we had the rise

00:24:01.500 of the alt-right, maybe a couple years before that, because the left, as they keep moving left,

00:24:05.740 they perpetuate this groupthink, identity politics, they keep moving that way. And then plus on top of

00:24:11.840 that, they call their opponents, you know, racists and bigots and homophobes and all this and that.

00:24:18.200 You kind of have this reaction to kind of, you know, kind of fill into that same identity politics

00:24:24.540 thinking and then kind of fulfilling that prophecy that they called you. So sure, there's definitely

00:24:30.120 a threat of that happening. And like I said, we kind of have like this very small minority

00:24:35.360 of actual potent white supremacists, because again, the alt-right's not actually all white

00:24:40.620 supremacists. Right. It's a very, very small, but I'm just saying as the left keeps pushing left and

00:24:47.820 they keep playing up this identity politics, sure, you can see a reaction. And then also, I mean,

00:24:54.660 I don't know how PC this is, but I think, you know, a mixing of demographics as we keep getting more

00:24:59.480 mixed and there's no assimilation. That's the key part. When they're not adopting American values, 0.77

00:25:04.720 you're going to have some conflict, unfortunately. So I think assimilation is huge too. That can kind

00:25:09.520 of, you know, push this, this alt-right movement a little, you know, give it more prominence.

00:25:14.220 Got to turn up that temperature in that melting pot. Got to make it all melt a little,

00:25:17.720 a little faster, make a big, delicious American goop, a nice fondue. A nice American fondue is what I

00:25:23.720 want. An elementary school in Massachusetts has canceled Halloween. They have canceled Halloween

00:25:29.140 for not being, quote, inclusive enough. In its place, they will now hold black and orange spirit 0.89

00:25:35.500 day. Amber, is this why Trump won? Is this story the reason Donald Trump won the presidency?

00:25:42.300 Yeah, actually, yes. This is the exact story. Yeah, actually it is, because this is just another

00:25:48.640 example of how people think it's more important to not offend other sense of other people's

00:25:53.500 sensibilities than it is to, I don't know, have fun or even just promote truth. You know, I think

00:25:59.160 this black and orange day sounds a little bit racist, you know, throwing a term black around

00:26:03.580 like that. What's that about? And orange against people of El Presidente's dissent.

00:26:08.380 Exactly. But this happens all the time. Google actually was being called out, I think it was

00:26:14.640 yesterday because they added this part to Google Maps where if you click on a route, they tell

00:26:20.720 you how many calories you could burn if you walk the route instead of driving. And then

00:26:25.600 it's like, oh, well, if you could burn 300 calories, that's three mini cupcakes. And people got really

00:26:30.880 offended by that and were really triggered by it and like forced them to remove this. So apparently

00:26:37.120 offending people is or not offending people is more important than, I don't know, combating

00:26:42.740 the obesity epidemic in the United States. Amber, as a gavone myself, I am deeply triggered

00:26:47.960 by that. I don't want to know how many calories. Now I'm just, now all I can think about is

00:26:51.580 cupcakes. The story, this Halloween story, it gets to my central theory of the left, that

00:26:57.120 the left, what it really wants is the hollow shell, the husk of an institution, of a great

00:27:03.180 institution, but not the animating principle of it, not all the stuff that's inside. So they

00:27:07.960 drink decaf coffee. They get fancy university degrees without a university education that

00:27:12.980 you see it in a lot of churches. I actually thought about this in Westminster. It has the

00:27:17.180 husk, the Anglican church, the husk of a liturgy and traditional church, but it's gotten watered

00:27:24.400 down in a lot of its principles and its dogma. So, you know, it's been much like my dear alma

00:27:30.240 mater Yale has been invaded by the left and hollowed out because of it. Is black and orange

00:27:37.040 day, Alicia, is it actually different than Halloween? What is the difference here? If

00:27:41.560 you change those words, what, what changes? I actually read this piece and I was like,

00:27:46.400 wait a second, is, is this any different than Halloween? They will take my daughter's elementary

00:27:51.780 school Halloween from like parade from me with in my cold dead hands. Like I am all for

00:27:56.740 the full family Halloween costumes. You're amazing at Halloween costumes. Seriously,

00:28:00.340 if you like Halloween, get married and have kids and then you can enjoy it forever. Like

00:28:04.680 it is amazing. But I don't know how different it is. And it's so funny because in their effort

00:28:11.000 to not offend anyone, I think that they are really offending more people. I mean, Halloween

00:28:16.440 is like a pagan holiday. Growing up in the Bible Belt of America, like we couldn't celebrate

00:28:21.740 Halloween. We had to dress up as Bible character. So they do. I've heard they do this thing 1.00

00:28:26.040 called a hell house where you go and you get scared by sin. So there's actually people

00:28:31.620 like that they're, they're now, they're trying to appease the leftist, like politically correct

00:28:36.740 people, but they're probably like unknowingly appeasing a lot of Southern Baptists somewhere

00:28:41.780 in the country. It's going to have the opposite effect that they intended. Tell them that and

00:28:45.740 they will immediately reinstate Halloween. It will be a matter of minutes. Amanda, the reason 0.98

00:28:51.440 they canceled Halloween allegedly is because Halloween is not inclusive enough. You know,

00:28:57.880 the, the holiday where you dress up like whatever you want and get a candy corn. What is meant

00:29:03.660 by inclusion by these school administrators? Yeah. I'm so mad you asked me this cause I had

00:29:09.820 the same question when I was reading the piece. Like I really had no idea. I was like, how, how

00:29:15.180 you can dress as anything you want. Um, I don't know. Honestly, this is kind of like info war Z,

00:29:21.960 but I don't know. This is the conspiracy central baby. Bring it to us. I don't know. Maybe there's

00:29:28.000 like some religious, I don't know, somebody complaining. So they want to like preemptively

00:29:33.900 stop everything. And it's probably not a Christian family. I don't know. I mean, who knows? I mean, 0.99

00:29:38.100 I mean, everyone's terrified of, you know, everything these days. So perhaps I just wanted to,

00:29:42.780 you know, preemptively appease, um, people who are not going to celebrate Halloween. And I don't

00:29:48.800 think it's the Christians that they're looking out for. So I don't know. Maybe that's the good 1.00

00:29:52.620 unintended consequence of this. It's like, put the Christ back in Christmas. It's put the

00:29:56.460 hallows back in Halloween, put the saints back in it. I don't know. That's a, I'm always trying to

00:30:01.340 look on the bright side of these things. Yeah. Actually, I don't like Halloween. Like I'm that old. I'm

00:30:06.280 like a, you know, inside, I'm like a 75 year old Southern, uh, like Baptist, like preacher. Like I,

00:30:11.360 I hate it. I'm like, Oh no, like, I don't want to do this. I want like, can we just be on the all

00:30:16.260 nice and like sing church hymns? Like, I don't, I don't like it actually. That is so beautiful.

00:30:19.820 Cause Amanda, you do have a reputation in your, in your writing of being a little, you know,

00:30:25.140 on occasion curmudgeonly. I do love the idea of like a little trick or treat or knocking on your

00:30:29.800 door. You just rip the candy from them, have everybody sing like hymns. And that's beautiful.

00:30:34.080 That's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Yeah. Just all for the greater good. Very Christian.

00:30:37.380 You're probably saving their souls. Moving on. Senator Rand Paul has recently slammed John

00:30:43.140 McCain and Lindsey Graham. I know you're shocked. He slammed them for parading as conservatives.

00:30:48.460 Senator Paul tweeted, Senators McCain and Graham are torpedoing the budget by insisting on busting

00:30:54.260 the budget caps for more spending. Amanda, does Rand Paul have any credibility here? He has been

00:31:00.080 torpedoing conservative legislation all year, except that he's doing it from a libertarian perspective

00:31:06.300 instead of from a neoconservative perspective.

00:31:09.740 I gotta, I gotta go with Rand Paul here. He's, he's the only one who somewhat sticks to

00:31:14.400 conservative libertarian, libertarian values. And yes, he's been kind of a thorn in the side

00:31:19.800 of president Trump. But as we just saw with the healthcare thing, he's, you know, he helps

00:31:23.900 with that executive order to, to allow more, you know, to get rid of our regulations. So I think,

00:31:29.620 I mean, I don't want to sound like a shill for, for Rand Paul here, but I feel like he's actually

00:31:34.440 trying to push something semi-libertarian, semi-conservative because, because my goodness,

00:31:40.040 I mean, McCain and Graham, I mean, they're, you know, they're all the way on the left. So I kind

00:31:44.780 of think that he does have some credibility just because every now and then he'll stick to his

00:31:48.980 principles.

00:31:49.660 I will say I've been hitting Rand Paul a lot in the last few weeks because he's been

00:31:54.320 completely useless in the Senate recently, but he is on the side of fiscal responsibility here.

00:31:59.820 He, he's, he's brought up a term that people have, have not been discussing. Even conservatives

00:32:05.840 haven't been discussing all year, which is federal spending, which is the national debt,

00:32:10.200 which is debt to GDP. Um, Amber, do you think that in this age of cultural battles,

00:32:15.420 which is clearly what we're in, it's clearly what we elected Donald Trump to do,

00:32:20.040 can debt to GDP ratios still excite conservatives?

00:32:23.480 Gosh, I really hope so. Um, I'm reminded of the days back from like 2008 to 2012 where the tea party

00:32:31.660 was really popular and they were all about bringing down the national debt. And even if this isn't

00:32:37.860 something that's super popular among maybe Donald Trump's base, there are still conservatives in

00:32:42.560 Congress who care about this. We saw this in all of these debates about the, um, disaster relief bills

00:32:48.620 just yesterday. Um, a bunch of conservatives voted against a bill that would help Puerto Rico

00:32:53.460 because they were upset that a lot of the spending, um, wasn't going to, um, straight disaster

00:32:59.580 relief. I think, um, Mark Meadows was among those Jim Jordan. So it's still something that they talk

00:33:05.300 about. It's not as, uh, to the front of the conversation as it used to be, but I think, um,

00:33:11.220 President Trump would be really smart to get on board with lowering the national debt because he loves

00:33:15.880 to talk about GDP growth. And as we all know, a $20 trillion national debt is not going to, um,

00:33:22.900 be super useful for growing the economy. When you have something like 90% debt to GDP or approach,

00:33:28.240 you know, approaching a hundred percent debt to GDP, that is a drag on the economy. It would be

00:33:32.420 nice if they did that. Back to McCain, Alicia, John McCain has malignant brain cancer. It's unlikely

00:33:38.640 that he will be around this time next year, but this guy is going to go down swinging. He's going to

00:33:44.840 swing against his political opponents. He's going to probably swing against his own brain cancer.

00:33:49.100 You gotta, even if you don't agree with McCain on a lot of things as I don't, you do kind of have to

00:33:54.640 admire that spirit. I mean, this guy is piss and vinegar pretty much till the end. Do you, uh,

00:34:01.840 do you think that conservatives knowing that John McCain is not long for this world, can we in good

00:34:08.140 taste fight back against his terrible legislative goals? Um, well, one, I hope that he does fight this

00:34:15.120 and win. I mean, he is the maverick and I think that that would have been something that they should

00:34:18.760 have, uh, pushed a little more back in 2008 when he was running against then Senator Barack Obama.

00:34:23.460 I think that there were a lot of pros of McCain's character and past experience that they, the, you

00:34:29.400 know, people that were working on the campaign didn't work on enough. Um, and I think that there's

00:34:33.260 still members of the GOP in the Senate that can go to the Senator and, and they can work together.

00:34:40.260 I really don't think that he wants to go down destroying his side of the aisle. I don't think

00:34:46.480 that at all, but I think, um, it could be interesting to see what happens. And listen,

00:34:51.720 I mean, Rand Paul has been as divisive to goals of the GOP as John McCain and Lindsey Graham have.

00:34:57.980 So, uh, I think that there just tends to be a lot of attention on Senator McCain because of where he

00:35:05.180 is in his life and the, and the specific things he said about the president that maybe Rand Paul isn't

00:35:09.180 saying. Right. And I hope, you know, John McCain, he's a mixed bag to conservatives. He's been

00:35:14.300 a rhino for a long time, but he also has been a Republican fighter before he ran for president in

00:35:20.480 2000. He was pretty reliably on the right, voted pretty reliably with Republicans. It would be nice

00:35:26.060 if in this, uh, last part of his career, if he would, uh, come back and help us out and, and affect

00:35:32.560 some policy rather than just run down Trump's agenda. But I don't know. I don't think he watches my

00:35:36.860 show. We should make him. There are some things to be fair. There are some things in Trump's agenda

00:35:41.300 that ain't so conservative. And so, uh, you know, if, if, if, if McCain is going to run down the parts

00:35:46.940 of Trump's agenda that aren't conservative, then I am all for him in that way. Sure. Sure. But we hope,

00:35:51.860 we, we just hope that, uh, something like Obamacare repeal or something that should be a

00:35:56.900 no brainer, you know, that he'll, he'll come around on it, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

00:36:01.380 That's our show today. Panel, thank you for being here. Amber Athie from the Daily Caller,

00:36:06.060 Amanda Prestigiacomo from the Daily Wire, and first timer, our old pal, Alicia Krause. Can't

00:36:11.060 wait to have you all back. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Be sure to check

00:36:15.720 out, uh, my new podcast with Andrew Klavan. It's narrative fiction. Hollywood is falling apart and

00:36:21.920 we are, uh, pulling up some, uh, culture hopefully and some art from the conservative side. It's called

00:36:27.760 Another Kingdom. Check it out on iTunes and on Ricochet. And, uh, then also get your mailbag

00:36:33.540 questions in for tomorrow and we will answer all of the questions that you have for the entire

00:36:39.280 rest of your life. So get it in. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. We'll see you tomorrow.

00:36:57.760 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - October 18, 2017

Ep. 43 - President Trump at #War

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