The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 433 - Are Democrats Finally Moderating？

00:00:00.000 Democrats open rhetorical fire on Liz Warren at last night's presidential primary debate, 0.99

00:00:05.420 which clashed with Beto O'Rourke's promise to confiscate or rather mandatorily buy back

00:00:12.740 every gun in America. But as Biden crumbles, a couple candidates try their hand at moderation.

00:00:19.360 We will examine the winners and losers. Then a new poll shows Democrats are clamoring for a

00:00:24.960 candidate who isn't even running yet. Impeachment falls apart and we celebrate International

00:00:32.520 Pronouns Day. Yes, we do. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:44.880 For the record on this International Pronouns Day, our preferred pronouns are we, us, and our.

00:00:51.960 However, Matt Walsh taught us this because we realized that when everyone refers to us as us,

00:00:59.220 then nobody can ever disagree with us because we are one. And that is our pronoun. We have got to

00:01:06.860 get to this Democratic presidential debate. It was a surprisingly interesting one, not really on the

00:01:12.360 surface. On the surface, it was kind of the same petty sniping as always. But the central feature

00:01:19.600 of this debate was the crumbling of the Biden campaign and a number of people leaping to try

00:01:24.240 to catch that moderate or more moderate lane. We will examine if anyone can do it and if there's

00:01:30.120 even such thing as a moderate in the 2020 Democratic primary. But first, I've got to thank our friends

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00:02:25.260 spent years researching genealogy. And you get to find out so many cool things about you. I found out

00:02:30.820 John and Simon Knowles fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And John died of his wounds there. And Simon

00:02:36.540 went on and fought with George Washington. Went to Valley Forge with George Washington. Fought through

00:02:41.480 the whole Revolutionary War. I found all that sort of stuff out. I have it in a family tree

00:02:45.320 on Ancestry. I found out I've got four ancestors from the Mayflower. One of them a pilgrim. The rest

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00:03:42.520 buffs. This is great for people who just love their country, love their family, want to figure out

00:03:47.320 more about who they are. Ancestry.com slash Knowles. The Democratic Party is trying to figure

00:03:54.780 out who it is during these presidential primary debates. The big clips, the big highlights that

00:04:01.100 you see, we'll go through some of them. It's all the sniping, Amy Klobuchar and Liz Warren,

00:04:06.840 and Kamala Harris gets some shots in there at Liz Warren. A lot of people going after Liz Warren. 1.00

00:04:11.400 Then you got Buttigieg and Beto going after each other, and that's all very interesting.

00:04:15.200 The central fact of the debate is that Biden is falling apart. His polling is collapsing.

00:04:23.440 His ability to stand on stage is collapsing. Bernie Sanders had a heart attack a week and a half ago.

00:04:29.320 He seemed much, much more lucid and vibrant and energetic than Joe Biden did. And to our knowledge,

00:04:36.300 Joe Biden hasn't had any heart attacks. This was all about Joe Biden. He just, he was saying things

00:04:41.260 that didn't make a lot of sense. He was kind of losing his train of thought. He was,

00:04:45.200 pushing different analogies together. It just didn't inspire confidence that this is the guy.

00:04:51.520 At one point, Biden was explaining his economic plans and he said he was going to, he was going

00:04:56.400 to stop people from clipping coupons in the stock market.

00:05:00.440 What I talked about is how you get things done. And the way to get things done is take a look at

00:05:05.620 the tax code right now. The idea we have to start rewarding work, not just wealth. I would eliminate

00:05:11.840 the capital gains tax that in, I would, I would raise the capital gains tax to the highest rate

00:05:17.480 of 39.5%. I would double it because guess what? Why in God's name should someone who's clipping 0.99

00:05:23.040 coupons in the stock market make, in fact, pay a lower tax rate than someone who in fact is,

00:05:29.080 like I said, a school teacher and a firepower. It's ridiculous. And they pay a lower tax. 0.96

00:05:33.800 So none of that is true. Nothing he said even comes close to approaching truth to be, I don't

00:05:41.120 even know how you judge the truth value of the statement clipping coupons in the stock market

00:05:47.220 because people do not clip coupons in this. I guess they would be really, just really good frugal

00:05:54.040 stockbrokers if they clipped, like if there were some coupon to get a better price on some,

00:06:00.180 some portion of a company. It doesn't make any sense. I think what he was trying to say

00:06:04.060 is people gambling in the stock market. That's, that's a frequent analogy you hear from the left

00:06:08.700 and that it's unfair that people who are gambling are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

00:06:14.620 This is a line Warren Buffett's used this line. It just isn't true. It is not true at all. Where

00:06:20.620 does it come from? It's because the capital gains tax rate is lower than the income tax rate

00:06:25.840 for some people. Actually eat for people who, you know, if you're talking about your secretary,

00:06:32.160 you're talking about the, you know, the janitor is paying more, a higher tax rate than the,

00:06:37.240 the stock broker or the hedge fund manager. Uh, that perhaps isn't, isn't true anyway,

00:06:43.480 even on the income tax rate. But what happens is for a lot of people who work in finance,

00:06:48.000 they get a salary, but then they get most of their money as a bonus. Or in, when you're talking

00:06:53.780 about the millionaire billionaire class, they're paying capital gains on the, uh, they're paying

00:07:00.300 capital gains taxes on their investment income. So you're not even talking about bonuses. You're

00:07:03.920 not talking about income. You're just talking about money that's in the market, that's in

00:07:07.100 investments. And then the money that you make out of those investments, you pay a lower tax rate.

00:07:12.780 Even on that, that is money that has already been taxed at the corporate level. So even that

00:07:18.560 argument is not true, but what the way this gets, uh, interpreted is that billionaires are paying

00:07:26.920 less money in taxes than their secretaries. That is never true. That's not even close to true.

00:07:31.560 The wealthy in this country pay virtually all of the taxes. The top 10% pay the vast majority of taxes

00:07:38.500 in this country. The top 1% pay a lion's share of taxes in this country. I mean,

00:07:43.480 half of the country doesn't pay any taxes at all in terms of federal income taxes.

00:07:49.120 So this whole argument is bogus. The problem with Biden is not that he's making a bogus argument.

00:07:54.020 Everybody was up there. It's that he wasn't even making the argument well, and he was confusing his

00:07:58.520 words. And then here's the knockout punch. They brought up Ukraine. Anderson Cooper brings up Ukraine

00:08:04.720 and Joe Biden incredibly lies on camera again and says he never discussed Ukraine with his son.

00:08:10.140 Mr. Vice President, as you said, your son Hunter today gave an interview, admitted that he made a

00:08:15.680 mistake and showed poor judgment by serving on the board in Ukraine. Did you make a mistake by

00:08:21.740 letting him? You were the point person on Ukraine at the time. If you can answer.

00:08:26.000 Look, my son's statement speaks for itself. I did my job. I never discussed a single thing with my son

00:08:32.260 about anything having to do with Ukraine. No one has indicated I have. We've always kept everything

00:08:37.280 separate. Even when my son was the attorney general of the state of Delaware, we've never

00:08:40.920 discussed anything. So there'd be no potential conflict. Okay. There's a lot of confusion here.

00:08:45.760 First of all, he says he's doubling down on a statement that he made that no one has ever

00:08:50.420 suggested that Joe Biden talked with Ukraine or talked with his son about Ukraine. And there's no

00:08:57.860 evidence of that at all. The trouble is someone has suggested that the person who suggested that

00:09:02.980 was Hunter Biden in a New Yorker profile in July. And he actually reiterated that statement on Good

00:09:09.520 Morning America on ABC News two days ago. Did you and your father ever discuss Ukraine? No.

00:09:16.720 As I said, the only time was after a news account. It wasn't a discussion in any way. There's no but to

00:09:22.640 this. No, we never did. What? Hold on. Hold on. You say, did you ever discuss Ukraine? He goes,

00:09:29.480 no. Just one time. There was one time we did. Oh, shoot. They told me not to say that.

00:09:35.000 No, there's no but. We didn't. It wasn't even a discussion. Sure. We, I said something. He said

00:09:39.000 something. We were talking about it, but that's not, I wouldn't call that a discussion. It was more

00:09:42.800 of a discourse. It was more of a colloquy. It was, um, next question, please pass. Next question.

00:09:49.100 Joe Biden, even in his answer, by the way, he says, we never talked about Ukraine. Uh, even when my son

00:09:54.820 was the attorney general of Delaware, that's not the son we're talking about, Joe, his son, Beau

00:10:00.460 Biden, his late son, Beau Biden was the attorney general of Delaware. The son who was on the

00:10:04.620 Ukrainian energy board was Hunter Biden. And Hunter Biden says he did talk about it. And Hunter Biden

00:10:09.040 goes on because good morning America to their credit actually pushed him on it. They said, hold on,

00:10:12.240 you're saying you didn't talk about it. Then you're saying you did talk about it. By the way,

00:10:15.000 what were you doing on the board in the first place? Your dad said, I hope you know what you're

00:10:18.100 doing. I hope you know what you're doing. I do. And I said, I do. And that was literally the end of our

00:10:22.300 discussion. Why? Because my dad was vice president of the United States. There's literally nothing as

00:10:26.940 a young man or as a full grown adult that, um, uh, my father in some way hasn't had influence over

00:10:34.920 as it does not serve either one of us. When he said, I hope you know what you're doing.

00:10:38.940 What did he think you were doing? Well, he read the press reports that I joined the board of Burisma,

00:10:43.420 which was a Ukrainian natural gas company. And there's been a, a lot of misinformation about me,

00:10:50.840 not about my dad. Nobody buys that, but it buys this idea that I was unqualified to be on the

00:10:55.540 board. What were your qualifications to be on the board of Burisma? Well, I was vice chairman of the

00:10:59.540 board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Program. I was a

00:11:05.080 lawyer for Boies, Schiller, Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. You didn't

00:11:10.260 have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself though? Uh, no, but I think that I

00:11:16.920 had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board, if not more. Yeah, this is,

00:11:21.860 this is not going well for Hunter Biden because he's right. He probably didn't have any less

00:11:26.740 knowledge than anyone else on the board. This is a crooked board. That's what generally that's

00:11:30.340 what boards are. Certainly in oligarchic countries like Ukraine when, and corrupt countries like

00:11:35.900 Ukraine, they say, what previous experience did you have? What qualified you to be on the board of

00:11:39.420 this Ukrainian energy company while you're, while your father was vice president? He goes, well,

00:11:42.740 I was on the board of Amtrak. You know, that other company that has a relationship to the federal

00:11:47.680 government that my father famously travels on so much that they call him Amtrak Joe. Yeah,

00:11:52.360 I was on that. So what are you calling me a nepotistic crook for? Yeah. And before that,

00:11:55.660 I was on another board and Hey, look there, I did have one real job. I worked for Boyd Schiller,

00:11:59.680 which is maybe the most famous democratic lobbying law firm in the country. Okay. All right. Doesn't

00:12:06.240 acquit himself very well here. So Biden collapses on stage in real time, two ways to respond to this for

00:12:12.420 the democratic party and for the candidates. They can either remain hardline progressives or

00:12:17.420 they can try to take Bernie or Biden's place in the moderate lane because that moderate lane now is

00:12:23.720 falling apart. So there is an opening here. I was wondering, I thought why on earth was the LGBTQ 1.00

00:12:30.520 town hall on Friday? What was the purpose of this? And then it occurred to me, people were tweeting about

00:12:35.000 this. They had that LGBTQ crazy town, town hall on Friday because then it allowed the Democrats to 0.99

00:12:43.680 look more moderate at this debate just a week later, less than a week later while not having to discuss

00:12:50.920 any of the LGBT issues and the pronouns and the genders. So there was a real opening. And I think

00:12:56.000 the democratic party tried to, uh, tried to make sure it looked this way an opening for a moderate.

00:13:02.780 Now, some candidates can't take that. Bernie Sanders is never going to be a moderate.

00:13:06.240 He went full bore leftist last night. He said on the leftist issue par excellence, climate change,

00:13:12.720 he said it's the greatest threat that the planet has ever faced.

00:13:15.740 This planet faces the greatest threat in its history from climate change. And the green new deal

00:13:23.820 that I have advocated will create up to 20 million jobs. As we move away from fossil fuel,

00:13:31.740 to energy efficiency, and sustainable energy.

00:13:35.040 All right. The weather, which may or may not increase in temperature slightly a little bit

00:13:39.200 over the next century, is the greatest threat the planet has ever faced, says Bernie Sanders,

00:13:44.380 the man who probably never heard of the Cretaceous paleogene mass extinction event,

00:13:49.180 three quarters of life on earth wiped out. He probably hasn't heard of that one. So he's just,

00:13:52.980 it's a little historical ignorance for him. That's the far left. That's about as far left as you can

00:13:57.280 go with Bernie Sanders. Beto O'Rourke also trying to play into that left lane. Beto's campaign is

00:14:02.380 falling apart. I mean, there's pretty much no reason he should be at this debate anymore.

00:14:06.040 And so he's, he's been trying to signal that he's as left as they come over the past few months.

00:14:12.580 This is after a career where he played himself off mostly as a moderate in Congress.

00:14:17.020 And so he obviously doesn't believe in anything, but he felt leftism was going to bring him all the

00:14:21.920 way. It looks like that's not going to work. So he's one last try. He's going to say that we're

00:14:26.580 going to undermine the second amendment. He's going to take away all your guns. He's going to

00:14:29.100 go door to door, take them all away. How exactly are you going to force people

00:14:33.400 to give up their weapons? You don't even know who has those weapons.

00:14:38.300 Look, we're going to make sure that the priority is saving the lives of our fellow Americans. I think

00:14:43.520 almost everyone on this stage agrees that it's not right. And as president would seek to ban the sale

00:14:49.240 of AR-15s and AK-47s, those are weapons of war. They were designed to kill people effectively,

00:14:55.240 efficiently on a battlefield. To be clear, exactly how are you going to take away weapons

00:15:00.380 from people who do not want to give them up and you don't know where they are?

00:15:04.640 If someone does not turn in an AR-15 or an AK-47, one of these weapons of war, or brings out in public

00:15:11.240 and embrances it in an attempt to intimidate, as we saw when we were at Kent State recently,

00:15:17.340 then that weapon will be taken from them. If they persist, there will be other consequences

00:15:21.660 from law enforcement. Other consequences. So we're going for it. I'm Beto. Hell yeah,

00:15:27.440 we're going to take your AR-15. We're going door to door. We're going to get the cops to come and

00:15:30.700 steal all your guns and completely undermine the constitution. One thing that really bothers me,

00:15:35.920 this was probably the highlight of the night in terms of Orwellian language.

00:15:40.500 Every aspect of this gun debate is dishonest. So there's no such thing as a mandatory buyback.

00:15:46.120 The government didn't sell you your gun in the first place, so it's not going to buy it back from

00:15:50.300 you. I guess you could try to buy guns from people if you're the government, but if it's a

00:15:54.320 mandatory buyback, then you ain't buying it. It's not like it's a free exchange where money is changing

00:15:59.900 hands. It's the government confiscating your weapons. Mandatory buyback. Absolutely outrageous.

00:16:05.780 Same thing with weapons of war. All weapons are weapons of war. All of military or all of firearm

00:16:11.920 technology advances because of war, because of armed conflict. That is the impetus for improving

00:16:19.260 firearm technology. That's been true since the dawn of time and will remain true in the future.

00:16:24.620 And then the other one is assault weapon. All weapons are assault weapons. All weapons are

00:16:28.620 assault weapons. They are designed to assault you. If a weapon is not designed to assault you,

00:16:33.560 it's not a weapon. Like this leftist tears tumbler is not a weapon because it's not meant to assault you.

00:16:38.420 It's meant to receive the leftist tears after you have been assaulted by facts and logic. So that

00:16:43.880 language just goes on and on throughout the entire debate. Beto is running on it. It's not going

00:16:51.700 anywhere. He probably won't even be at the next debate. Pete Buttigieg, however, sees Bernie's going

00:16:57.300 far, hard left. Beto's going hard left. Liz Warren doesn't know exactly where she wants to be. 0.94

00:17:01.880 So Buttigieg sees an opening because at the early part of this primary, he was doing pretty well. He was

00:17:07.540 getting some press because he was the reasonable one. He was at least pretending to be a Christian. 0.92

00:17:12.060 He was at least pretending to be moderate. He was at least pretending to be a good old boy from 0.79

00:17:17.240 the Midwest. And so Buttigieg takes on Beto O'Rourke head on and pretty much wipes the floor

00:17:26.060 with him on the question of guns. Let's follow their inspiration and lead and not be limited by

00:17:30.520 the polls and the consultants and the focus groups. Let's do what's right before we have time to do

00:17:35.400 what's right. Mayor Buttigieg? The problem is in the polls, the problem is the policy. And I don't need

00:17:40.240 lessons from you on courage, political or personal. Everyone on this stage is determined to get

00:17:46.980 something done. Everyone on this stage recognizes, or at least I thought we did, that the problem

00:17:52.760 is not other Democrats who don't agree with your particular idea of how to handle this.

00:17:57.460 The problem is the National Rifle Association and their enablers in Congress. And we should be united

00:18:02.200 in taking the fight for that. Poor Beto. You can see it in his eyes. He just thinks,

00:18:06.280 oh man, I totally walked into that because he's saying we need the courage to steal people's guns

00:18:10.400 and undermine the constitution. And there's Pete Buttigieg who comes in. He's one of two people

00:18:15.180 on that stage who's ever served in the military. So I don't need lessons from you about courage.

00:18:19.720 Totally wipes the floor with him. So Buttigieg trying to take that moderate lane. The other person

00:18:24.580 on stage who was gunning for that moderate lane was Amy Klobuchar. And Amy Klobuchar showed up to this 1.00

00:18:31.620 debate with one goal in mind, and that was to destroy Elizabeth Warren. Warren Delenda Est.

00:18:39.620 Warren must be destroyed. She even showed up wearing the exact same outfit that Liz Warren

00:18:44.940 was wearing, which was a little coincidental and slightly creepy. And she just kept up her

00:18:49.360 attacks on Warren all night long. I want to give a reality check here to Elizabeth because no one on 0.70

00:18:54.560 this stage wants to protect billionaires. Not even the billionaire wants to protect billionaires.

00:18:58.920 We just have different approaches. Your idea is not the only idea. I appreciate Elizabeth's work.

00:19:06.200 But again, the difference between a plan and a pipe dream is something that you can actually get done.

00:19:12.460 And we can get this public option done and we can take on the pharmaceutical companies and bring down

00:19:18.080 the prices. Get her, drag her, Amy. Yes, Queen. I don't know all this lingo, but that's basically what I

00:19:26.380 was feeling when I saw this happen, especially because Amy Klobuchar is about as lame a candidate 1.00

00:19:30.420 as you can possibly get. She tries to make the same jokes over and over. She doesn't know how to 1.00

00:19:35.040 deliver them. She's got this voice that doesn't sound really inspiring. And she speaks in a really

00:19:40.860 kind of realistic way, at least relative to the Democratic Party. So she's almost certainly not

00:19:45.800 going anywhere, but she did have a relatively good debate. And she's hitting Warren on the unreality

00:19:53.480 of her proposals. She's hitting Warren on Warren not being honest about how she's going to pay for

00:19:58.340 everything. At the same time that Warren's getting hit from the left on not being honest about how

00:20:02.840 she's going to pay for everything. So it's a good time. She's vulnerable and Klobuchar is trying to

00:20:06.560 take that lane. Warren herself, for that matter, was trying to seem more moderate in last night's 1.00

00:20:13.320 debate. She doesn't think that her vulnerability is on the left, that she needs to move more to the 0.95

00:20:18.760 left. She's seeing it more on the moderate side. And so she gets into an exchange with Kamala Harris,

00:20:24.280 Kamala, who's running far to the left, Kamala, who's a total joke. And she's saying that we need

00:20:28.740 to kick Trump off Twitter. It's a matter of national importance that Twitter, a company,

00:20:34.400 kicks the president of the United States off of its platform. And are you, Senator Warren,

00:20:38.880 going to go for that? Liz Warren backs off it and Kamala just tries to nail her on it. 1.00

00:20:42.960 Because here we have Donald Trump, who has 65 million Twitter followers,

00:20:48.260 and is using that platform as the president of the United States to openly intimidate witnesses,

00:20:54.800 to threaten witnesses, to obstruct justice. And he and his account should be taken down.

00:21:02.420 Okay. So she's, you got to do this. You got to go after her. Okay. It was a good hit. It made Kamala

00:21:09.320 look like the tougher, more leftist one. Liz Warren didn't, didn't want to respond to this. 0.91

00:21:14.500 The trouble with Kamala though, is when she thinks she did something sort of well,

00:21:20.020 she just hammers it ad nauseum until it seems disingenuous. And she loses any credit that she

00:21:25.140 would have gotten for the hit in the first place. She goes on.

00:21:27.080 So look, I don't just want to push Donald Trump off Twitter. I want to push him out of the White

00:21:32.160 House. That's our job. But the way, join me in saying that his Twitter account should be shut

00:21:37.400 down. Let's figure out why it is that we have had laws on the books for antitrust. I announced

00:21:45.540 this morning, I announced. So she's pushing for that. Liz Warren is moderating. And then Kamala

00:21:52.300 really, really just shows herself to be the weak candidate that she is. On paper, Kamala Harris could 1.00

00:21:58.840 have been a killer candidate. She could have been a real top tier contender, but she's just 1.00

00:22:03.240 not good at presenting herself with any kind of sincerity to the American people. Everything

00:22:10.840 feels contrived. Everything feels like she's trying to be a little too cool. And her, her conclusion,

00:22:16.620 her big, her big inspirational statement of this debate was with regard to President Trump,

00:22:22.220 dude got to go. This is a crisis of Donald Trump's making, and it is on a long list of crises of Donald

00:22:30.580 Trump's making. And that's why dude got to go. And when I am commander in chief, we will stop this

00:22:36.840 madness. Dude got to go. You have nothing to fear, but fear itself. We will go to the moon.

00:22:46.600 Not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Dude got to go.

00:22:57.720 There, one of these things is not like the other in the great history of presidential rhetoric.

00:23:02.420 And that would be Kamala Harris's attempts. So she's not a serious candidate. She needs to go home and 1.00

00:23:09.160 work on her skills for four or eight years. And maybe, maybe she can try again. She's got a good

00:23:13.960 resume, but she's really bad on stage. Then you had, you had to ask yourself this question.

00:23:22.440 They're trying to moderate Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, even Elizabeth Warren. They're trying

00:23:27.480 to moderate. Are they moderate? And you realize, no, the parties are actually too far apart now.

00:23:35.620 The conservative movement and the Republican party is now much more conservative.

00:23:39.520 The Democratic party is much more leftist. So we're thrilled when a candidate says,

00:23:46.760 hmm, maybe, maybe one of the biggest tech platforms shouldn't censor the president of

00:23:50.180 the United States. We're thrilled. We're like, oh, thank you so much. How great.

00:23:54.160 We're thrilled when a candidate says, maybe we shouldn't steal all of Americans' guns. We think,

00:23:58.740 oh, you're so moderate. Tulsi Gabbard has been getting a lot of credit for being the moderate in the

00:24:04.180 race. She's not, she's not. She came out last night and supported the universal basic income, 1.00

00:24:09.480 which is a massive, massive expansion of the welfare system like you've never seen before in

00:24:14.600 America. And that would get every single American hooked on the teat of government. She endorses it 1.00

00:24:20.420 just flippantly last night. I agree with my friend, Andrew Yang. I think universal basic income

00:24:25.440 is a good idea to help provide that security so that people can have the freedom to make the kinds of

00:24:31.320 choices that they want to see. That's the moderate welfare for all. That's the big moderate. And then

00:24:36.220 it's not just on economic issues. Tulsi Gabbard is getting a lot of credit because she, she's a

00:24:42.460 moderate on abortion according to today's democratic party. But today a moderate on abortion is just

00:24:47.400 Hillary Clinton in 2008. It's, it's even a little more radical than that. Tulsi Gabbard is saying that

00:24:53.820 maybe we shouldn't kill babies after 26 weeks after they're so obviously babies.

00:25:01.320 And after they can obviously survive outside of the womb. But before that fair game,

00:25:05.860 you can kill whoever you want. This is often one of the most difficult decisions that a woman 1.00

00:25:09.980 will ever have to make. And it's unfortunate to see how in this country it has for so long

00:25:14.460 been used as a divisive political weapon. I agree with Hillary Clinton on one thing, disagree with 0.72

00:25:22.500 her on many others. But when she said abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, I think she's correct. 0.99

00:25:28.580 We see how the consequences of laws that you're referring to can often lead to a dangerous place,

00:25:33.140 as we've seen them as their past in other countries, where a woman who has a miscarriage

00:25:37.680 past that six weeks could be imprisoned because abortion would be illegal at that point.

00:25:44.920 I do, however, think that there should be some restrictions in place.

00:25:48.920 I support codifying Roe v. Wade while making sure that during the third trimester, abortion is not 0.96

00:25:55.160 an option unless the life or severe health consequences of a woman are at risk.

00:26:00.880 Okay. So, hey, look, that's something. All the other candidates support abortion basically up until

00:26:05.060 the minute you're born. The law in New York signed by Andy Cuomo is that you can kill a baby as it's being

00:26:11.000 born. And that's perfectly legal. And in Virginia, the governor of Virginia said you can kill a baby 0.74

00:26:16.040 after he's been born. So I guess Tulsi is relatively moderate on this, but that's not moderation. 0.92

00:26:23.060 It's also, I love this, this argument that this is what they would say. Abortion is one of the most 0.97

00:26:27.740 difficult decisions a woman will ever have to make. First of all, the vast majority of women don't get 1.00

00:26:31.440 abortions, but plenty of women do get abortions. I know people who've gotten abortions. Good friends

00:26:35.560 of mine have gotten abortions. Most of them, to my knowledge, deeply regret it now. That's another

00:26:41.320 story for another time. But it's not a decision that a woman has to make. You don't have to kill 1.00

00:26:48.600 your baby. It's like saying not killing your mother-in-law is one of the most difficult decisions

00:26:53.040 you ever have to make. It would be maybe convenient. Maybe you have somewhere an impetus to do it, but

00:26:58.040 it's always wrong. It is always wrong. And it is just as ridiculous to talk about the difficult

00:27:06.200 decision and the right to choose to kill your mother-in-law as it is to talk about the difficult 1.00

00:27:10.200 decision and the right to kill your own child. It's actually, I think it's probably less ridiculous 0.99

00:27:15.680 to talk about the mother-in-law thing. That is a ridiculous and silly argument. If you can't kill 0.99

00:27:23.840 the baby at 26 weeks, if it's wrong to kill the baby at 26 weeks, long after it can live outside the

00:27:30.140 womb, by the way, because technology has advanced so much, you've got babies living outside the womb at 0.78

00:27:33.920 20 weeks now. So you're talking six weeks after that. That's a lot. But if it's wrong to kill the

00:27:42.880 baby at 26 weeks, why is it right to kill the baby at 25 weeks? Well, Michael, it's so blurry. It's just,

00:27:51.060 it's a great mystery of when life begins. No, there's no mystery. We know when life begins.

00:27:55.600 The little thing in there is moving around. It's got a heartbeat at 10 or 15 days.

00:27:59.420 Well, it's just, but when, you know, it's just so complicated. It's not complicated.

00:28:06.460 It's the same little baby at 26 weeks as it is at 25 weeks. How about 24 weeks?

00:28:13.700 23, 22, 21. You know, one of the most insane lines of the night, Cory Booker, I don't even want to give

00:28:22.220 Cory Booker airtime. Cory Booker said that the right to an abortion, the right to kill babies is one of the

00:28:28.620 most sacrosanct ideals in the country. Those are his exact words. He said, the right to kill a baby

00:28:37.940 is a fundamental ideal. He said, sacrosanct, sacred to kill a baby. And I thought, is there any way you 1.00

00:28:46.280 could make that argument? If something were a sacrosanct ideal in this country, obviously it's

00:28:52.100 never sacred to kill a baby, only in really awful, terrible pagan religions. But where do we get our 0.99

00:29:00.020 sacrosanct ideals? Well, often we look to the Declaration of Independence, which says that we

00:29:03.420 hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their

00:29:07.300 creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:29:12.380 It doesn't say that men get those rights at 26 weeks or 27 weeks or 25 weeks. It says they are

00:29:18.680 created with those rights. When are you created? You're not created at 26 weeks. At 26 weeks,

00:29:24.620 you're the same entity, the same being that you were at 25 weeks, 24, 23, 22. You are created

00:29:31.300 at your conception. That's what the words mean. Not that they've read the Declaration of Independence

00:29:38.320 anytime recently. We've got a lot more to get to. We've got to get to a secret candidate in the race

00:29:43.400 who's polling better than anybody right now in the entire democratic primary. Then we've got to get to

00:29:48.080 impeachment. And then of course we have to get to International Pronouns Day, but you've got to go

00:29:51.500 to dailywire.com to do that. $10 a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me, you get the

00:29:56.760 Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Wall show, you get to ask questions

00:30:00.340 in the mailbag. You get Another Kingdom, which is now the third episode is out, just was released

00:30:05.040 this Monday. Subscribers get it on Friday. It's really good at getting a lot of good reviews and

00:30:10.720 thank you for the notes for those of you who have sent in nice notes about it. You get everything and

00:30:15.140 you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back with a lot more.

00:30:29.500 Who won the debate? There's no real winner, I would say. Liz Warren did very well. She is still

00:30:34.480 leading in the field. Of the people who really helped themselves during the debate, Pete Buttigieg

00:30:39.140 and Amy Klobuchar did a lot of good for themselves. I think Amy Klobuchar is still so

00:30:43.820 unlikable. She's still so distant from the electorate and the audience that she doesn't 0.97

00:30:50.120 really have a chance. Pete Buttigieg is excellent on the campaign trail and really understands how

00:30:55.240 to connect to people. And I think he's the biggest jerk in the whole race and a scold and a heretic and 1.00

00:31:00.460 an absolute jerk. But credit where credit's due, he's a pretty good candidate. So he helped himself 1.00

00:31:06.080 a lot. Nevertheless, these candidates, and Bernie helped himself by looking very energetic, which he

00:31:12.420 did. None of these candidates are the clear cut winners. None of these candidates are obviously the

00:31:20.120 person who's going to get the nomination. And the reason I know this is because of a recent poll

00:31:24.200 came out from Boston Herald and Franklin Pierce University survey. This was released on Monday.

00:31:31.460 It showed a three-way tie for the top spot in New Hampshire, more or less a three-way tie. Elizabeth

00:31:38.540 Warren at 25% support, former vice president Joe Biden at 24%, Bernie Sanders at 22%. So mostly a tie,

00:31:48.920 though Liz Warren is at the top of that. There was a candidate, however, who came in at 26%. The reason

00:31:54.920 that candidate didn't register right away is because the candidate is not running for president.

00:31:59.740 That candidate is, drum roll, Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama, if she jumped into the race, 0.94

00:32:06.920 according to this one poll in New Hampshire, she would get 26% of support from likely Democratic 0.91

00:32:13.100 primary voters in New Hampshire. And Warren and Biden would be at 20% and Sanders would be at 15%

00:32:20.540 if Michelle Obama got into the race. This has long been floated as a possibility. Michelle Obama is

00:32:26.760 very well-liked. She's, comes from an era that Democrats more or less enjoy and are nostalgic for.

00:32:35.520 She's, she checks intersectional boxes, which is apparently important to the Democratic 0.98

00:32:40.040 primary voters in 2020. Now, if she actually did jump into the race, those numbers would drop very

00:32:47.680 quickly because all candidates are better hypothetically than they are in reality. It's,

00:32:54.000 it's like that Paul Simon song, Kodachrome. Everything looks worse in black and white.

00:33:01.140 It's always the line. And when I think back on all the girls I knew in high school,

00:33:05.240 if I put them all together for one night, I know they'd never match my sweet imagination.

00:33:09.260 Everything looks worse in black and white. And so if you get the candidates who are now in this

00:33:13.940 vivid color in your imagination, when you put them on the campaign trail, everything's black and

00:33:17.680 white. Everything's very stark. Everything's very clear. And so Michelle Obama's numbers would drop. 0.79

00:33:22.240 But what it suggests that voters, at least in New Hampshire, are yearning for her is that there is

00:33:29.380 a sense. They're starting to come to their senses that you need a more moderate candidate. You don't

00:33:33.980 really want candidates who think there are 750 genders and Julian Castro, who thinks that we should

00:33:40.680 have abortion rights for men. And Beto O'Rourke, who says we're going to take away all of your guns, 1.00

00:33:45.480 definitely not in New Hampshire. You don't really want that. It's like every, but people do this in

00:33:51.220 meetings. People do this in group settings sometimes. They just go with the madness of

00:33:58.380 the crowd. So if everyone's talking in a particular way, you just want to fit in. I mean, you want to

00:34:04.080 be a part of that. And so you kind of go along, even though you don't really believe it. Maybe

00:34:07.640 the guy who's telling you doesn't really believe it. Maybe nobody really believes it. I think you're

00:34:11.440 starting to see that with the leftism of the Democratic Party. You're seeing them very slowly. It takes

00:34:16.760 them a long time, but very slowly coming to the realization that this is not going to play in

00:34:21.220 Peoria. And we wouldn't really want it to, even if we could. That creates a yearning for somebody like

00:34:27.040 Michelle Obama. But it's a yearning that it's looking for a real candidate. It's not really

00:34:35.780 looking for Michelle Obama. It's looking for a real candidate to come in and fill that lane. So far,

00:34:39.280 no one has. A lot of people are comparing this election in 2020 to the Republicans in 2016.

00:34:46.480 On the surface, there are a lot of similarities. You know, there are so many candidates.

00:34:50.500 In 2016, there were 17 Republicans. Now that we're down to 12 Democrats, but there are so many more who

00:34:56.060 were running. And the idea being that in 2016, the Republicans thought they could beat Hillary Clinton.

00:35:03.880 And in 2020, the Democrats think they can beat Trump. And so everybody is running. But I don't think

00:35:08.560 that comparison holds it all. In 2016, you had really good Republican candidates.

00:35:15.140 Almost all of the candidates were really top tier candidates. Trump kind of came out of nowhere for

00:35:19.600 most political observers, but Ted Cruz, top tier candidate. Marco Rubio in any other election would

00:35:25.540 have been a serious contender. Even John Kasich was a very successful governor, kind of annoying

00:35:30.300 personality on the campaign trail, but successful governor. Chris Christie, one of the most popular

00:35:34.760 governors in the country, the list goes on and on. Who do we have in 2020 for the Democrats?

00:35:42.260 It's kind of a bunch of nobodies. Julian Castro is like truly a nobid, former secretary of HUD and a

00:35:47.280 mayor of San Antonio. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, population 100,000.

00:35:53.740 Amy Klobuchar, Tim O'Brien. You remember Tim O'Brien? Me neither. Eric Swalwell.

00:35:58.300 Paul, those, those are not comparable fields. I actually think the greater similarity for the

00:36:04.380 Democrats in 2020 is not the Republicans in 2016. It's Republicans in 2012. 2012, you have a lot of

00:36:12.580 Republicans running. Mitt Romney eventually got the nomination. That went great, didn't it?

00:36:16.900 You had all the serious candidates stay off the table because they didn't think it was going to be

00:36:21.360 possible to unseat Barack Obama. The incumbent has a great advantage. And so it was mostly a clown show

00:36:26.780 for 2012. I think that's sort of what you're seeing in 2020. And if certain Democrats want to

00:36:33.540 get in the race, a Michelle Obama, for instance, or somebody like her, I think they're going to wait

00:36:37.760 until they have a clearer shot in 2024. And, and some of my evidence for this is they're, the Democrats,

00:36:44.300 again, like the madness of crowds are trying to convince themselves that Trump is going to be

00:36:48.200 impeached or removed from office. This impeachment thing is falling apart right now. Nancy Pelosi just 1.00

00:36:53.660 gave a press conference in which she completely forgot the reason that she's ostensibly trying

00:36:59.040 to impeach Trump. Our founders had very deep suspicion about foreigners interfering in our

00:37:05.520 government. And as again, in our elections and the emoluments clause was there put there specifically

00:37:11.740 for that purpose to protect us from any influence of foreign governments. So the fact that we would be

00:37:19.580 here in an inquiry that relates to the president asking a foreign government to help the president

00:37:27.560 in his reelection by withhold, granting or withholding the timing of military assistance that had been

00:37:35.900 voted on by the Congress is just, has so many violations in it. It undermines our national security.

00:37:45.620 We were sending that military assistance because of Ukraine needing that vis-a-vis Russia. All roads

00:37:55.360 seem to lead to Putin with the president though. Isn't it so? All roads seem to lead to Putin. No,

00:38:01.080 no, no, Nancy, Nancy, that was the last time you were trying to impeach Trump. Last time you tried

00:38:06.680 to impeach Trump, you said he was colluding with the Russians and Vladimir Putin. This time you're saying

00:38:11.580 he's colluding with the Ukrainians who are Russia's sworn enemy. And how did that happen? I don't know. 0.61

00:38:16.720 You haven't really explained that, but you got to keep your impeachment stories straight,

00:38:21.000 especially when the two stories contradict one another. Yeah. Trump is cozying up to Russia or

00:38:26.420 is it Ukraine or is that's one of those two. Yeah. He's cozying up to the US or is it the USSR? I 0.72

00:38:31.960 forgot. I don't know. One of those two. Anyway, he's a bad guy. We're going to impeach him.

00:38:34.380 That's what they're saying. It wasn't Stormy Daniels. He cozied up to Stormy Daniels quite

00:38:38.420 literally, I guess, in that case. It's, it's falling apart. I mean, even she can't keep the

00:38:42.380 story straight. Now they're saying that they might not take a vote on impeachment anytime soon.

00:38:49.080 And this is why I haven't taken the impeachment inquiry very seriously. They are not following

00:38:55.380 any sort of constitutional process right now in the house. If you want to impeach a president,

00:39:00.640 you got to vote for it. You got to vote. You got to go on the record. This is why Nancy Pelosi isn't

00:39:05.920 saying they're impeaching the president. What she's saying is we're launching a formal official

00:39:10.580 impeachment inquiry to begin to inquire as to whether or not we should ask people to lunch,

00:39:18.240 to talk about taking a vote on whether to impeach the president. That's not, that's not real. That's

00:39:23.680 not a real thing. They want to get the credit for impeachment without actually having to go through

00:39:28.140 the difficult political rigmarole. There are polls out. There's a Gallup poll out that shows the

00:39:34.340 majority of people now support impeachment and removing Trump from office. There was the Fox

00:39:38.180 news poll said majority of people support impeachment. So why aren't the Democrats moving

00:39:42.500 full steam ahead? I think the reason is they know, they know how this is going to play out. Public

00:39:48.800 opinion moves back and forth very quickly, especially on highly politicized questions like impeachment,

00:39:55.100 especially in the heat of an election campaign. And they, they just know that it's going to put them

00:39:59.980 in a politically vulnerable position because they don't have anything. Maybe they'll find

00:40:03.980 something. I'm not saying that Trump is totally squeaky clean on everything. I'm sure he's got,

00:40:08.040 there's a lot of things they could get him on in his taxes or in this or that, you know,

00:40:11.840 you could indict a ham sandwich, but does any of that rise to the level of high crimes and

00:40:15.980 misdemeanors? Does any of that become an impeachable offense? And are they going to be able to say to a

00:40:19.600 straight, with a straight face to the American people? Yes, we're going to impeach the president

00:40:23.280 and overturn the 2016 election in the one year or less before another presidential election because

00:40:29.680 the president had a phone call with Ukraine that you've all already read. That is fine. No, probably

00:40:35.180 not. So that's falling apart. And this gets to not just a political question, but a cultural question,

00:40:44.000 which is the, the, the internal logic of our politics is falling apart because more broadly,

00:40:49.680 we have difficulty speaking to one another. We have difficulty, uh, understanding our own history,

00:40:55.120 our own constitutional processes. Uh, we're, we're just not as smart as we used to be in our

00:41:00.720 self-government and in our Republic. This seems to happen to Republics, Republics and democracies

00:41:05.700 become decadent. They become a little soft intellectually and spiritually and institutionally.

00:41:11.240 And that seems to be happening. You see it, uh, probably most clearly, uh, today because today is a

00:41:17.820 holiday. Today is international pronouns day. You know, you know, every day on Twitter seems to be

00:41:24.920 a different kind of day. It's like cheeseburger day or sibling day. Well, this month is the second

00:41:29.740 month of the year dedicated to the LGBTQ sexual revolution movement. And so we've now got a sixth of

00:41:38.520 the year dedicated to four and a half percent of the population. Half of whom I suspect don't buy into

00:41:44.840 any of this ridiculous nonsense. It's international pronouns day. And maybe a lot of people aren't 0.55

00:41:50.980 acknowledging it, but Julian Castro, democratic candidate for president, sure is. He put a tweet

00:41:56.440 out. He said, using someone's correct pronouns and giving your own isn't difficult. I'm Julian Castro.

00:42:04.060 He, him, L should be hit. He, him, his, but he made it L because he can't keep his languages straight 1.00

00:42:14.120 because he's not so good at, uh, at thinking. He's not so good with the stuff between the ears.

00:42:18.420 He goes on. It takes one extra breath to help people feel seen and respected. I think that's

00:42:23.760 worth it. Hashtag pronouns day. What he said here, obviously everything is total nonsense,

00:42:30.440 but what he said at the very top is explicitly incorrect. He said using someone's correct

00:42:36.100 pronouns. Meaning if you call a man who identifies as a woman, she, according to Julian Castro,

00:42:42.560 that's correct. But of course it's not correct. He is, it remains a he, even if he puts on a dress. 0.99

00:42:48.860 So his correct pronoun would be he. To misgender him would be to use the new politically correct 0.96

00:42:53.680 transgender pronouns. This is an argument over what truth is itself. Is truth objective reality 0.82

00:43:03.460 or is truth your subjective feelings that change every single day? That is now a debate. This debate

00:43:10.560 would have been unthinkable, unthinkable a year ago or two years ago. Now it is a debate that is being

00:43:18.080 had at the presidential level. International pronouns day. Somebody put this together has 0.89

00:43:24.220 a website. They say it seeks to make respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns

00:43:28.640 commonplace. Fair enough. They go on. The international pronouns day website is actually much more honest

00:43:36.440 about this. They don't use really loaded terms like correct pronouns to refer to incorrect pronouns,

00:43:42.000 but they explain the logic. Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves

00:43:46.240 is basic to human dignity. Being referred to by the wrong pronouns, right? There we go. Now you get

00:43:52.900 that language. The wrong pronouns as you feel it particularly affects transgender and gender

00:43:59.260 non-conforming people. Together we can transform society to celebrate people's multiple intersecting

00:44:06.060 identities. This is more or less an honest take and it shows you the stakes of this.

00:44:13.260 They're saying that referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is basic

00:44:19.080 to human dignity. That is not true. That's the opposite of true. They're saying indulging people's

00:44:24.220 fantasies and lying to people is basic to human dignity. No, that's an affront to human dignity.

00:44:31.860 What is basic to human dignity is treating people with respect and treating people with respect means

00:44:37.260 not lying to them and not treating them like children and not condescending and not patronizing,

00:44:42.400 but treating them as you would like to be treated, which is to be told the truth.

00:44:47.860 Together we can transform society. That's what they want to do. They want to transform society. This is

00:44:51.840 not just some kooks on Twitter. This is not just some random website. This is debate being had

00:44:55.820 at the presidential level. That is the stake. Those are the stakes rather. The transformation of society,

00:45:05.740 not just raising taxes or lowering taxes, not even just banning one gun and another gun,

00:45:09.780 not even just saying we're going to protect human life at this week and not at that week.

00:45:15.340 This transformation will get down to the nature of reality itself and who has the right to define it

00:45:19.820 and who has the right to pervert it and who has the right to declare that any sort of truth exists

00:45:25.740 at all. That's the stakes. We'll see how that plays out in the next seven Democratic presidential

00:45:32.380 primary debates and then of course in 2020. That's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael

00:45:36.160 Knowles show. See you tomorrow. If you enjoyed this episode and frankly, even if you didn't,

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00:45:57.500 listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro

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The Michael Knowles Show - October 16, 2019

Ep. 433 - Are Democrats Finally Moderating？

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