The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 440 - Zero Bark Thirty

00:00:00.000 Somehow, the story of how U.S. troops killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has gotten

00:00:06.580 even better as President Trump declassifies a photo of the dog who chased him down.

00:00:12.980 We will examine what the photo means as most Americans ignore the strategic and symbolic

00:00:18.720 significance of this very, very good boy. Then Pete Buttigieg eats Kamala Harris's lunch in the

00:00:25.220 2020 Democratic primary, and it is all Joe Biden's fault. We will take a look at the latest polls.

00:00:31.360 Finally, a leftist admits and defends the lawlessness of the latest impeachment push 0.97

00:00:37.340 in the dumbest article on the internet today. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, 0.97

00:00:40.940 and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:42.480 Good to be back here in La La Land. We had a good time speaking at Kennesaw State University

00:00:55.740 and the University of Florida, and then debating Clay Aiken. I'm sorry, I mean Chris Hahn

00:01:00.080 in Nashville at Politicon. You can check out that full debate from Politicon on the Daily Wire YouTube

00:01:06.660 channel. It was a lot of fun. Good to be back, even though I'm evacuated from my home. Still,

00:01:11.660 I'm having a much better week than ISIS is because the United States is absolutely obliterating ISIS.

00:01:20.380 We are getting even more good news on that today. We got the news two days ago that the president

00:01:25.900 made the decision to go forward with a raid that killed the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

00:01:34.240 Now we've got more details on that raid, specifically on one of the dogs who

00:01:41.520 was involved in chasing down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. We don't have the name. That has not been

00:01:48.340 declassified by the president, but we do have a picture of him. And what's so great about this

00:01:53.680 picture of the dog is he looks on the one hand like a really sleek, absolute killing machine.

00:02:01.700 You know, he's got really lean and looks like he's ready to go. On the other, he looks like a big,

00:02:06.020 silly dog with his tongue hanging out, smiling. And I love the idea of him being this really good 0.98

00:02:11.240 natured dog who just happens to love chasing down and eating terrorists. So there's this really like,

00:02:16.760 oh, hey, hey, hey, dad. Hey, can I go chase down that ISIS terrorist today? Huh? Huh? Okay,

00:02:21.840 great. You know, and he chases him down into a cave. So this is a terrific way to celebrate.

00:02:27.060 I love Trump's decision to tweet out this pic of the dog, because not only do we have the pic of the

00:02:33.160 dog. I think we've now declassified some video footage of the dog chasing down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

00:02:39.680 Do we have it?

00:02:54.220 Okay, so that was either footage of the raid on Baghdadi or it's a clip from John Wick. It's

00:03:00.660 definitely one of those two. We'll have to check with the team handling the classification of these

00:03:05.920 videos. Either way, great way to celebrate. People kind of went after Trump because they

00:03:11.780 thought this was frivolous and he shouldn't be tweeting out pictures of dogs. And some people

00:03:16.460 even tried to pretend that this would put U.S. soldiers in harm's way if you tweet out a picture

00:03:23.080 of a dog that killed a terrorist. Obviously, it's not one of the greatest things about putting out this

00:03:27.260 picture of the dog is that it doesn't put any soldiers in harm's way. If he tweeted out a

00:03:32.520 picture of the soldiers who went in there and killed Baghdadi, that would put a big target on

00:03:36.480 their backs. But tweeting out the dog is a great way to nod toward the soldiers who did it, but not

00:03:42.420 actually put a soldier in any danger. I like it too because it gives more details on the raid. And this

00:03:50.180 is satisfying to us because we will never see al-Baghdadi's body. I mean, what happened is you had

00:03:55.200 these U.S. special operators come in and they certainly just wrecked this guy very quickly and

00:04:01.680 he ends up getting splattered all over cave walls and then they basically threw him into the ocean.

00:04:06.900 So we're never going to see his body. We're never going to see photos of this thing, but at least

00:04:12.060 we now have an image of it. And this is important because it satisfies our longing for justice, but it's

00:04:18.320 not gruesome. It actually is gruesome to see a terrorist splattered all over a wall, but it's not

00:04:24.800 gruesome to long for justice. It's not vengeance exactly. It's justice that we want. And so it's not

00:04:32.480 gruesome. It's the opposite of gruesome because everybody loves pictures of dogs. That's half of

00:04:38.700 what the internet is for. The other half obviously is for pictures of cats. But there's another reason

00:04:43.460 that this photo is really important and it actually serves a strategic objective and it also tells us

00:04:51.720 something about Trump's foreign policy. We'll get to that in a second. First, I've got to thank our

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00:06:42.760 So three reasons why this picture of the soldier is so terrific. Doesn't put soldiers in harm's way.

00:06:50.420 It gives us some details on the raid and satisfies that desire we have to know about it and to

00:06:55.480 kind of picture the justice that's being exacted. The third reason is the strategic reason, which is

00:07:03.480 that the dog serves special significance here, carries real importance. You'll remember in,

00:07:12.280 in Trump's announcement on Sunday, President Trump invoked a lot of dog imagery, not just the

00:07:17.980 imagery of the dog hunting down Baghdadi, but the imagery of Baghdadi dying like a dog. Here's

00:07:24.080 President Trump. He died after running into a dead end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming

00:07:30.320 all the way. The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear,

00:07:40.960 in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him. Baghdadi was vicious 0.92

00:07:50.340 and violent and violent. And he died in a vicious and violent way as a coward running and crying. 1.00

00:07:58.820 He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place. 1.00

00:08:07.300 He died like a dog. And Trump has reiterated this time and time again. And there's a contradiction here.

00:08:14.260 Because on the one hand, we're exalting the heroism of this very, very good dog

00:08:18.820 who hunted down Baghdadi. And then we're hearing about the cowardice of dogs. But what is permeating

00:08:25.160 all of the narrative is this canine imagery. I don't think this is just a coincidence. You know,

00:08:30.580 Trump actually does choose his words carefully. I know he gets assailed all the time for using

00:08:37.940 loose words. And he exaggerates. He talks like a New Yorker. But he actually uses very precise words.

00:08:45.380 He doesn't use words elegantly. But he does use words carefully. That is how Trump has been

00:08:52.020 a successful communicator for 40 years. That's how he's been successful on TV and in the tabloids and

00:08:56.780 in the press and in politics. You saw this in his letter to Turkey. When he wrote that letter to

00:09:01.260 Turkey, which said, we should have a good deal. Don't be so stupid. People will look at you like 1.00

00:09:07.440 the devil if you make a bad deal. But if you work with us, you'll make a good deal. That letter to

00:09:10.960 Turkey was written in a very elementary style using small words and simple concepts. That was to

00:09:17.940 communicate to a broad audience. You see it in the nicknames. Trump doesn't just choose random,

00:09:23.760 arbitrary words for his political opponents. He hones in on that perfect nickname that sticks

00:09:29.980 with them forever. So Crooked Hillary. He tried out a few others. He tried low stamina Hillary. 1.00

00:09:35.020 That was no good. There have been other nicknames for Hillary in her 40 years in politics. Crooked 1.00

00:09:39.320 just sticks like glue. Sleepy Joe. He didn't go for Creepy Joe. Creepy Joe was the obvious choice

00:09:45.560 because when he gave him the nickname, Joe was doing all those shoulder massages. He used a word that

00:09:49.720 rhymes with Creepy Joe, so it invokes it. But it's sleepy to show that Joe doesn't have any

00:09:54.040 endurance, that Joe is falling apart, that he's old, that he's past his prime. And that has actually

00:09:58.880 been the enduring attack on his campaign. You saw it with Little Marco and Low Energy Jeb. These are

00:10:04.940 very careful words. And you're seeing it here in the imagery about the dogs. Why? Because in Islamic 0.99

00:10:10.460 culture, dogs are considered filthy. Dogs are impure. Dogs are evil in the modern Islamic 1.00

00:10:17.820 conception of them. Ritually impure. The mere sight of a dog during prayer can be considered to negate 0.98

00:10:25.560 the prayer of the faithful in Islam. Why is this? Because historically in Islam, dogs would eat the trash 1.00

00:10:32.640 in the cities. This is true in many cities, but especially true as Islam moved out of the desert, moved 1.00

00:10:39.560 out of these nomads and moved into the great big cities of the Islamic world. The dogs were relied on 0.99

00:10:48.780 to eat the trash and keep people safe. However, as the connection between the proximity to garbage and

00:10:56.000 filth and trash became associated with the spread of disease, dogs were looked on as filthy because they

00:11:02.520 were the ones eating all the trash. So what Trump is doing here is in his initial statement, he's

00:11:08.600 saying, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did not die as a great martyr. He didn't die courageously. He died like a

00:11:16.220 dog, like the filthiest thing you could possibly imagine. And then when he releases the photo, 0.91

00:11:21.340 it's almost worse than releasing a photo of Baghdadi's blown up body. Because if he releases the photo of the

00:11:28.120 dog, he says, your great terrorist leader was run down and chomped away at by a dog, by the filthiest 0.99

00:11:34.920 thing, like a rat, like a cockroach comes and eats his body. It's so offensive. You saw this at, 0.99

00:11:41.460 during the Bush administration, during the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, a lot of the abuses surrounded

00:11:46.940 around dogs. The jailers, the Americans, you know, the, the soldiers would, would drag the inmates 0.87

00:11:53.500 around like a dog on a leech. There would be dogs there because this was offensive to, to the

00:11:59.380 terrorists. Tells us a lot about US grand strategy. Big difference from Barack Obama here. President

00:12:06.080 Trump is playing to win as opposed to the Obama strategy, which was playing not to lose. What's

00:12:13.400 the difference? Barack Obama and Donald Trump campaigned on a very similar foreign policy.

00:12:19.200 They both campaigned against Bush. They both campaigned against the Iraq war and against

00:12:24.700 wars in the Middle East. Now, Obama campaigned on getting us out of the Middle East. And how did he

00:12:31.800 try to do it? By leading from behind, by not disturbing the status quo, by going into Libya,

00:12:37.800 by going into Syria. The old joke was, if I vote for John McCain, we're going to get another war in

00:12:43.920 the Middle East. And they were right. I voted for John McCain. We got more wars in the Middle East. 0.99

00:12:47.340 That was the strategy. Obama says, I'm going to get us out of the Middle East. Somehow we're more

00:12:53.020 involved at the end of his presidency than before. Trump doesn't want to fall into that same trap.

00:12:58.180 So Trump decides he's going to go in and lead from the front. He's going to go in and kill ISIS, 0.99

00:13:03.060 and then he's going to leave. He's not just going to manage threats. He's going to go in and fight 0.99

00:13:07.400 them. The left has tried to insist that this is somehow a bad thing, that this would lead to the

00:13:14.120 reconstitution of ISIS, right? So they would say, okay, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is out. And that doesn't

00:13:21.680 matter at all, because now they're, they're just going to replace him with some new guy.

00:13:26.000 So it's, it's, this actually started earlier. They said, if we pull out of Northern Syria,

00:13:30.440 ISIS is going to reconstitute itself. A week later, we kill the head of ISIS. They say, well, 0.99

00:13:34.440 if you kill the head of ISIS, you're just going to get another head of ISIS. Well, guess what? We 0.99

00:13:37.920 killed the head of ISIS. Then we killed the next head of ISIS too. We just got reports yesterday 1.00

00:13:42.080 that the spokesman for ISIS, a guy named Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, a close associate of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,

00:13:51.240 has also been killed in a raid launched by U.S. military with info from the Syrian Democratic Forces.

00:13:58.400 A U.S. official who was interviewed on Monday said that Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, quote,

00:14:04.640 would have been one of the potential successors to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. And he said it could be

00:14:10.520 anywhere from a few days to a few weeks before the Islamic State announces a new leader.

00:14:19.120 Look at the connections here. Look at the connections between the foreign policy of just

00:14:24.080 the past few weeks, the decision to move the troops out of Northern Syria, the raid to kill

00:14:30.200 al-Baghdadi, the raid to kill the spokesman for ISIS who could be the next guy. Where did the raid

00:14:34.880 to kill the spokesman for ISIS take place? Took place in Northern Syria. But I thought we were

00:14:40.220 withdrawing from Northern Syria. What does this tell us about our reporting on American foreign

00:14:46.760 policy and the Trump doctrine? We'll get to that in one second. Then we'll get to 2020 first.

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00:16:43.400 So, we kill the spokesman for ISIS, the likely successor to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in northern 0.97

00:16:53.320 Syria. Are we really supposed to believe that the decision to pull out of northern Syria and

00:17:00.080 its timing had nothing to do with these two highly targeted and very well-prepared missions?

00:17:06.320 It's not like they just decided one day, okay, we're going to go in and kill al-Baghdadi.

00:17:09.780 They'd been prepping this for a very long time. Tells us about this Trump foreign policy because

00:17:15.660 the decisions were obviously related. In many ways, it looks like a fake out. Looks like two weeks ago,

00:17:21.380 we said, we're going to get out of northern Syria and then everyone expects us to get out of northern 0.64

00:17:24.600 Syria and then we go in and take out our two biggest targets. What it tells us is that Trump

00:17:30.480 wants to get much more specific about foreign policy than the prior eight years. He doesn't like

00:17:37.960 nebulous foreign policy. He likes it to get real specific. You know, Trump actually talked about

00:17:43.800 this. He said, I don't want to just take out ISIS. I want to take out al-Baghdadi. And if you're not

00:17:48.600 doing it, figure out how to do it. Here's Trump. He should have been killed years ago. Another

00:17:54.200 president should have gotten him. But to me, it was a very important, I would say all the time they'd walk

00:18:01.000 into my office, sir, we killed this leader at a low level, this leader. I said, I never heard of

00:18:06.840 him. I want al-Baghdadi. That's the only one I know now. I want al-Baghdadi. Get him. And they got him.

00:18:17.340 Get al-Baghdadi. Then they got al-Baghdadi. That's what he's saying. I don't care about these

00:18:22.360 huge operations with names I don't know. Why are we in there if you're not going to go kill the top guy? 0.92

00:18:27.840 You know, frankly, if, if they had put more focus on this during the Bush administration,

00:18:32.460 I think there would have been a much less significant blowback against the Bush foreign

00:18:39.240 policy in the Middle East, which then became the Obama foreign policy in the Middle East. If

00:18:42.380 they'd just gone in and gotten bin Laden, it would have been a lot easier to sell it to the American 0.99

00:18:46.520 people. To say, look, we have this enemy. We're going to go there and kill the enemy. And we're going

00:18:50.760 to stay for a little while and make sure that other threats don't crop up. That's what Trump is

00:18:55.140 trying to do. He's trying to avoid the mistakes of the Obama administration.

00:19:01.160 There is virtually nobody who is currently advocating for a Bush administration style

00:19:06.800 democracy in the Middle East foreign policy. So the difference between the left and the right now

00:19:12.900 is the left is more or less supporting the liberal consensus, letting the State Department do whatever

00:19:18.800 they want to do, staying in the Middle East, international liberal world order. The right 0.96

00:19:24.380 is saying we need to have specific objectives. If we're going to deploy troops to Syria,

00:19:30.240 we need an objective. You know, we, we, we, uh, use, did this raid by using the intel from the

00:19:36.980 Syrian Democratic Forces and then using U.S. military to go in and execute it. But even the Syrian 0.97

00:19:44.280 Democratic Forces, I had to remind myself, I said, who are they? Okay, I guess they're our friends in the

00:19:47.700 region, but they're not the Free Syrian Army, which we used to support, but no longer support.

00:19:51.600 And they're not the YPG, which are the Kurds, but they're the Kurds that we fought alongside.

00:19:56.000 And now we've pulled out and we're not fighting alongside, but they're different than the Iraqi 1.00

00:19:59.800 Kurds who we really like. They're very different from the Turkish Kurds who nobody likes. 1.00

00:20:03.360 Obviously it's a, that's a very nebulous, complicated situation. We don't have exactly a strategic

00:20:08.660 interest in just maintaining the status quo in the civil war. We do have interests in the region

00:20:13.740 and we're going to execute on them. This is ruffling a lot of feathers among careerists in

00:20:18.840 D.C. Ruffling a lot of feathers among careerists, specifically the State Department. There are three

00:20:25.100 kinds of people in Washington, D.C. There's the talent. Those are the elected guys. There are the

00:20:30.960 appointed people who come and go with the talent. And then there's the bureaucracy. Guess who has the

00:20:37.800 power? Guess who's going to be there the longest? The talent comes and goes. The appointees come and

00:20:45.840 go even faster. It's those careerists, the career guys in the State Department, not just the State

00:20:53.260 Department, but at every level of the federal government. They are going to be there so they

00:20:58.260 can outweigh the people who come and are elected and then are voted out of office. They can outweigh

00:21:04.960 the appointed people who were set to run those departments. They will be there forever and they

00:21:09.540 have a vision of what U.S. foreign policy is going to be and they are going to push back against

00:21:14.200 the electeds who come in and want to change it. Well, Trump is pushing back even harder against that.

00:21:20.120 He's getting really specific. When Obama killed Osama bin Laden, when he made that decision for that

00:21:26.760 raid, there were no photos. There was no imagery. We didn't get a whole lot of details.

00:21:31.340 There were some movies, Zero Dark Thirty, that sort of thing, but we don't really know a whole lot

00:21:37.060 about it. When Trump made the decision to get Baghdadi, he told us a lot about it. Now we have

00:21:42.480 Zero Bark Thirty. Now we know about this dog. Now we know about what it looked like. He got really

00:21:48.500 specific, really personal on operations, on beefs, on solutions. This is no more we don't want to

00:21:54.360 ruffle feathers. We want to maintain the world order. This is Trump holding up a picture and saying,

00:21:57.840 we chased you down like a dog with a dog because you're filthy, disgusting animals, you ISIS 1.00

00:22:02.780 terrorists, and we're going to go in and kill more of you. So don't think that we're maintaining any 1.00

00:22:07.960 sort of status quo and don't think that you can predict what we're going to do because the moment

00:22:11.940 you think we're going to leave Northern Syria, we're going to turn right around and go right back 0.99

00:22:15.580 in and kill your top guy. That specificity is going to rattle norms. Maybe it's a good thing to 0.99

00:22:21.640 rattle norms. Speaking of rattling norms, turning from the foreign front into the domestic front.

00:22:27.840 On the 2020 campaign trail, Joe Biden is falling apart. Joe Biden just did an interview with 60

00:22:34.800 Minutes, trying to resurrect his campaign, trying to prove he's with it. He can barely answer a

00:22:38.780 question. The Democratic Party has had Jack Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. This is your third run

00:22:45.420 for president. Why Joe Biden? Well, because I think, as I said, we need somebody who on day one knows

00:22:52.040 exactly what to do, can command the world stage. No one wonders whether I know a great deal about

00:22:57.940 these issues in foreign policy and domestic policy. There's things I've done. And that might be one of

00:23:03.160 the criticisms, too, that you're offering essentially four more years of an Obama-like

00:23:07.220 administration. Well, let me tell you something. I love the fact that all of a sudden the Democratic

00:23:15.560 Party doesn't think Obama was that great a president. I find that fascinating.

00:23:21.060 Some have asked, why hasn't President Obama endorsed you? You guys served together for eight

00:23:25.000 years. Because I want to earn this on my own. Did he offer to endorse you? No, we didn't even get

00:23:31.100 there. I asked him not to. He said, OK, I think it's better. I think he thinks it's better for me.

00:23:36.060 I have no doubt when I'm the nominee, he'll be out on the campaign trail for me.

00:23:39.400 I don't, I don't, I, you know, look, I'm, I'm my own, I'm my own man. And, but I'm also the

00:23:44.620 extension of Obama, unless you don't like Obama, but it's kind of weird that you don't like Obama.

00:23:48.740 And I, I didn't want, but I didn't want him to endorse, even though I am the extension of him.

00:23:52.060 And, but he doesn't like me. Where are we again? What's happening? Where am I? Joe Biden falling

00:23:59.600 apart. This is providing a major opportunity to a dark horse presidential candidate. And this is

00:24:07.180 seriously hurting another presidential candidate. We will get to who it is and why. We'll get to

00:24:12.800 the dumbest article on the internet today. But first I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and 0.92

00:24:17.100 YouTube. If you, by the way, if you want to stay up to date, I, over the past week, you know,

00:24:22.980 I've gone and given two speeches and did that debate. Just follow me on Twitter at Michael J.

00:24:28.160 Knowles, spelled of course, like Beyonce. If you head over there, I'll, I'll be posting links to

00:24:33.900 that full debate and some of our YAF speeches over the past week. We've got some more speeches

00:24:37.980 coming up in the future. So head on over there. Also go to dailywire.com, 10 bucks a month,

00:24:42.600 a hundred dollars for an annual membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show,

00:24:46.120 you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Walsh show. You get to ask questions in the mailbag

00:24:49.400 coming up on Thursday. You get another kingdom, the final season and the best season. You get all of

00:24:55.020 that. Plus you get the leftist years Tumblr. You are going to need that as the Democrats best hope

00:25:00.000 at taking the white house falls apart. We are going to survive the torrent of leftist tears.

00:25:05.720 As I'm evacuated from my apartment in the California wildfires, the only way that I can

00:25:11.600 stay hydrated at all with all that heat, my leftist tears. Go to dailywire.com. We will be right back

00:25:17.140 with a lot more. So Biden is falling apart. He's really, he's not just losing steam in the polls.

00:25:36.120 He's not just losing steam on television. He's not just losing steam in the donation department,

00:25:42.300 in the finance department. Other candidates are gaining from this. Elizabeth Warren obviously has 1.00

00:25:47.480 become more or less the front runner in the race, but there's another candidate who's really

00:25:50.940 gaining on, on Biden. That's Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg just a couple of weeks ago was

00:25:57.300 nowhere to be seen. He was way back by the bottom of the pack. Now a Suffolk University and USA Today

00:26:03.480 poll has Mayor Pete in third place in Iowa. That is, uh, five points off of Joe Biden's first place

00:26:13.100 lead at 18%. And that is four behind Elizabeth Warren's position at 17%. Bernie Sanders is actually

00:26:22.760 fourth in Iowa, according to this poll at 9%. Now that's not the end of it because there's another

00:26:32.040 poll from ISU and civics showing Buttigieg in second place. It's 20%. 20% of people in Iowa saying

00:26:40.940 that Pete Buttigieg is their first choice in the Iowa caucus. But Buttigieg was right behind Warren

00:26:47.040 at 28%, Sanders at 18%, Biden at 12%. Iowa is really going to matter because all these national polls,

00:26:56.300 all of this horse race is going to change the minute you actually have people going to the ballots.

00:27:01.620 The only polls that matter are on election day. So you've got Iowa first in the nation. Iowa goes in.

00:27:11.960 There are democratic strategists and Biden appointees, Biden advisors who are speaking off the record,

00:27:18.920 but it is being reported, who are nervous about a third or fourth place finish in Iowa.

00:27:25.080 Joe Biden's entire campaign has premised on electability. The minute that Joe Biden

00:27:29.540 turns up third or fourth in Iowa, I mean, frankly, even second, his campaign is very likely finished.

00:27:37.400 It's not even finished before then. But even that, those aren't the only numbers. Buttigieg,

00:27:42.740 Warren, and Bernie Sanders are also leading the pack in cash on hand. Cash on hand right now,

00:27:49.560 all three of them had over 20 million. Sanders has the most cash on hand, 33.7 million. After that,

00:27:56.080 is Warren at 25.7. After that is Buttigieg at 23.3. Biden, do you know how much cash on hand he has?

00:28:02.960 8.9 million. Absolutely brutal. Way back in the bottom of the pack. He's got

00:28:10.320 well less than half of the cash on hand that Buttigieg has. Nearly a third.

00:28:15.200 Really bad news for Biden because Biden is also burning cash at a very fast rate. It's not

00:28:21.580 sustainable. So Buttigieg, who is kind of going around in the wind. Initially, he was the moderate

00:28:28.200 candidate. Then he ran to the left. Now he sees that as Biden falls apart, his lane is going to

00:28:32.960 be the moderate lane. So he's going moderate again. He is shooting up through the roof.

00:28:37.920 What this means is there's not a whole lot of room for Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris, 0.99

00:28:42.080 she bragged on TV recently. She said, I'm a top tier candidate. She's not. She could have been a

00:28:48.000 top tier candidate. She's approached top tier candidacy, but she just hasn't. Now she's getting

00:28:52.940 desperate. So she's playing the last card she's got. She's playing the race and gender card. 0.88

00:28:58.760 I have also started to perhaps be more candid talking about what I describe and what I believe

00:29:07.760 to be the elephant in the room about my campaign. What is that? Electability.

00:29:12.080 What do you mean? Electability. You know, essentially,

00:29:14.800 is America ready for a woman and a woman of color to be president of the United States? 1.00

00:29:20.020 America was ready for a black man to be president of the United States.

00:29:23.200 And this conversation happened for him. There is a lack of ability or a difficult, 0.55

00:29:29.000 a difficulty in imagining that someone who we have never seen can do a job that has been done,

00:29:37.640 you know, 45 times by someone who is not that person. 0.99

00:29:41.640 This is so pathetic. 0.99

00:29:45.260 She has nothing left. So she's playing this cheap argument. There's nothing to the argument. 1.00

00:29:51.760 America has already elected a black president twice. America nearly elected a woman president 0.99

00:29:58.240 last time. The female candidate got more votes than the male candidate. She just never heard of

00:30:02.740 Wisconsin and couldn't point it out on a map. So she lost the presidency.

00:30:07.920 America is perfectly ready for people on the basis of race or sex. They're just not ready for Kamala 0.99

00:30:13.680 Harris because she's a terrible candidate. And she's a spineless politician who's not only 1.00

00:30:18.340 personally bad on the campaign trail, but is completely unaware of what she stands for. 0.95

00:30:23.140 Regularly lies about seemingly trivial aspects of her biography. And she can't get the Democratic

00:30:29.460 nomination because she spent years throwing people in prison. That's why they're ready for black people. 1.00

00:30:35.860 They're ready for women. They're just not ready for Kamala Harris because nobody wants her to be 1.00

00:30:40.340 president. That's it. That's what it's all about. She was a really good candidate on paper. And then 0.77

00:30:48.660 she opened her mouth and she's a bad candidate in person. And she's coming to grips with this reality

00:30:54.300 that is going to leave her, uh, without really much of a lane, you know, right. We're still seeing

00:31:02.260 the lanes shape out. So Buddha judge, he could become a leftist by the end of the campaign.

00:31:06.180 Again, he doesn't stand for very much. He blows in the wind. Same thing with Liz Warren. Is she going

00:31:10.420 to go for Biden's voters? She's going to go for Bernie's voters. Is she going to be the hardcore class 0.98

00:31:13.920 warrior? Is she going to be the moderate Harvard professor? But both of them have some real

00:31:19.680 political skills. Kamala Harris doesn't quite have that yet. And so she's falling apart. This is, uh, 1.00

00:31:26.620 not yet a totally ossified three-way race. People have said the race is over. It's going to be Warren.

00:31:32.520 The race is over. It's going to be, it's not, it's not. We don't know who it's going to be because 0.98

00:31:37.540 Democrats are dissatisfied with the choices. By the way, if Kamala Harris is saying America isn't

00:31:43.700 ready for a black woman president, Kamala, you're not running in the general election yet. You're not 0.99

00:31:47.900 trying to convince America. You're trying to convince Democrats. So what you're really saying

00:31:50.560 is Democrats are not ready for a black woman president. Now, I don't think that's true, 0.56

00:31:54.860 but that's the argument she's not making. That's the, that would be the honest argument,

00:31:58.720 but she can't even make that because she's just playing a cheap race hustling, sex hustling 1.00

00:32:03.460 political trick. Another note on all of this, on this disingenuous sort of politics at Politicon 0.52

00:32:12.460 over the weekend, the idea of Politicon is you're going to get both sides together and they're

00:32:16.740 going to talk to each other. So you've got these people on the left, you got these people

00:32:20.280 on the right. And I'm all for that. I'm happy to talk to just about anybody and we can have

00:32:25.340 an honest debate and I'm not going to, it doesn't mean I'm going to be really sweet and nice and

00:32:29.660 conciliatory and give up whole premises. I'm not going to do that, but I'll at least try to have

00:32:34.720 a nice sense of humor about it and be amiable and polite about it. The left can't do it.

00:32:41.600 The left doesn't know how to do it. They pay a lot of lip service to it. But then when it comes

00:32:46.640 down to brass tacks, they really seem not to like half of their countrymen. One of the

00:32:51.400 best events of the weekend, unfortunately I wasn't able to go, was James Comey, former FBI director,

00:32:59.380 universally reviled man, absolutely pompous and a creature of the swamp in Washington and so

00:33:06.760 unbelievably self-important and really violated norms and laws in his efforts to get Hillary Clinton

00:33:14.440 elected president, which ended up backfiring and probably helped Donald Trump even more.

00:33:19.040 James Comey, he comes out and he says, look, we have a lot in common. We've got to come together.

00:33:23.340 It's this really conciliatory sort of tone that he strikes.

00:33:26.680 We have something in common. And I said it when I sat here with the first question you asked,

00:33:31.460 we have a set of values that are at the core of this country that hold this place together.

00:33:35.460 I try to explain to kids something that most of you know, we shouldn't exist.

00:33:39.440 We don't have the normal human glue that holds this country together. We don't have common

00:33:43.900 ancestry, common language, common faith. We have nothing in common except a set of values.

00:33:50.000 That's the glue in the United States of America that holds Republicans, Democrats and independents

00:33:54.540 together.

00:33:55.680 Well, that's not quite true. I like what he's trying to do here. He's trying to say we need to come

00:34:00.760 together and like each other more. And the only thing we have in common is a set of values. That was

00:34:06.740 once true. We did used to share in many ways, a set of values and we shared some fundamental

00:34:12.760 institutions and we shared a culture. That's not really true anymore. When you have major

00:34:18.060 entertainers, major sports figures, major leftist politicians actually disrespecting the American

00:34:24.140 flag itself, we don't have shared values. We don't. The most basic value we could share is a love

00:34:32.800 of country and a respect for our country. And we don't share that anymore. It's not just some

00:34:37.800 fringy people now who are protesting the American flag. It's millionaire athletes on national

00:34:42.920 television being applauded by rank and file leftists and being applauded by leftist politicians

00:34:48.720 disrespecting the flag. If we don't share the flag, we don't share very much at all in the way of

00:34:54.100 values. We also don't share many political values. That's why we have a right and a left in this

00:35:00.040 country. That's why we have two political parties. The political parties are not separated based on

00:35:05.760 geography, really. They're not, or primarily at least, they're not separated based on race,

00:35:11.860 primarily. They're not separated based on sex, primarily. They're not separated based on the

00:35:16.260 kind of clothing you wear, primarily. They're separated on ideas. The right supports our founding

00:35:24.680 principles. The right supports conserving this American tradition. The right supports,

00:35:30.560 in America, limited government. The right supports protecting the political liberties that we've

00:35:37.160 inherited in our traditions. And the left opposes that. The left wants to rip that down. The left

00:35:44.240 wants progress. So the left supports broadly on the economic front, socialism, on the cultural front,

00:35:51.200 a tearing down of our cultural traditions. And those are differences. That's fine. Phyllis Schlafly,

00:35:58.020 when the conservative movement was beginning, said that we need a choice, not an echo. So we have a

00:36:03.000 choice between those things. We don't share all that much in the way of values. Would that we at least

00:36:10.380 shared a love of country, a respect for the country, a respect for our countrymen, and a reverence for

00:36:17.580 our history, and the great men and women who went before us, who gave us this wonderful country of

00:36:22.560 ours? We used to share that. We don't really share that anymore. I mean, we can't even tolerate that

00:36:29.220 sometimes the other guy wins the presidential election. Because in the same breath where James

00:36:34.000 Comey says, we all share this together, we're all one, kumbaya, break out the bongos. In the same 0.98

00:36:39.300 breath, he says that if Trump is re-elected, he's going to move to New Zealand.

00:36:43.580 What if he wins again? Will you still believe that? I will be from my new home in New Zealand.

00:36:50.760 I will. But I, I, I still will believe in America. So it's a joke. He's telling a joke. He's not going

00:36:59.820 to really move to New Zealand. But in that joke, there's a lot of truth. There is a lot of truth

00:37:05.240 there because James Comey throughout the 2016 campaign with a lot of his friends in the FBI

00:37:12.980 and the DOJ and the bureaucracy interfered in our presidential election, tried to stack the deck

00:37:20.400 in favor of Hillary Clinton. Really, we're not willing to let the American people make their

00:37:25.340 own choice. And they've been trying to overturn that election ever since through absolutely lawless

00:37:31.940 behavior. So look, we can joke and say, I'm going to move out of the country if the other guy wins.

00:37:37.820 James Comey is actually worked to undermine our institutions of government, to undermine faith

00:37:44.160 in our institutions, faith in our Republic, faith in the legitimacy of our elections. That's a very bad

00:37:49.540 thing. And that's what the left does. They say, kumbaya, let's all come together. Let's be really

00:37:53.800 tolerant of one another. Let's really love one another, except for those awful conservative, racist, 0.97

00:37:58.380 racist, fascist, bigot, terrible people. They are not deserving of anything, but are scorn and 1.00

00:38:04.960 derision. They're deplorable and they're irredeemable. We've got to send them out of the 0.98

00:38:08.800 country. It's not how you come together. I actually would prefer the opposite of what James Comey

00:38:16.800 is proposing. What James Comey wants is a lot of soft words and nice, smiley, saccharine rhetoric

00:38:24.920 to pretend there aren't real philosophical and ideological differences in this country while at

00:38:32.040 the same time he maligns half of his countrymen. I want the opposite. I want to be very honest about

00:38:37.440 the divisions we have in this country. I want to be crystal clear. I want extremely clear rhetoric that

00:38:44.680 shows the different choices that we have in elections. And at the same time, I want us to share

00:38:49.260 some love of our countrymen and a basic respect for our countrymen and a basic love and respect for our

00:38:54.640 country itself. That's kind of the opposite. It's not that sweet, soft, saccharine language,

00:39:02.420 but it's much more respectful because honesty is respectful because the truth is respectful.

00:39:08.960 I think James Comey in many ways is, is pretty exemplary of the left. You see this in a,

00:39:15.540 in an article that was published in USA Today, it's the dumbest article on the internet today, 0.98

00:39:19.680 which is really saying something. It's a defense of the same lawlessness. It's a defense of the same 0.97

00:39:26.240 kind of saccharine politics. It's a defense of the same nebulous kind of politics that so much of the

00:39:32.820 Trump era is about destroying. So much of the Trump era about making things more clear.

00:39:37.280 This article defends the lawlessness of impeachment in explicit terms. It says,

00:39:45.220 you don't have to break a law to be impeached. Trump's defenders need a better argument.

00:39:50.480 It's, it's defending, it says, look, impeachment doesn't have clear criteria. It's whatever we want

00:39:55.380 it to be. They go on. The founders made clear that an impeachable or convictable offense need not be a

00:40:02.420 crime. Hamilton said it applied to the misconduct of public men. The tactics some Republicans are

00:40:09.900 using to defend President Donald Trump against being impeached or indicted by the House and

00:40:13.900 convicted or removed from office by the Senate include confusing the public about what these

00:40:18.480 terms mean. One thrust is to suggest that for a president to be impeached, he must have committed

00:40:23.240 a crime. Not all crimes are impeachable offenses and not all impeachable offenses are crimes.

00:40:27.820 An abuse of power occurs when a president reaches beyond the understood limits of his, on his

00:40:32.580 governing or violates the constitutional requirement that the president take care that the laws be

00:40:37.820 faithfully executed. The whole point in all that ridiculous mixture of words, that word salad there,

00:40:46.480 what the author in USA Today is saying is that the president can be impeached for maladministration,

00:40:53.080 for doing a bad job at, at his job, for not executing the laws in a way that is expedient

00:41:01.160 or the way that we would like him to. The founders and framers of our constitution explicitly rejected

00:41:08.160 this argument. The entire premise of this article is untrue. You don't need to take my word for it.

00:41:16.560 You can read about it in Federalist 65, which specifically takes up the question of impeachment.

00:41:21.660 You can read about it in the debates between George Mason and Thomas Jefferson and Alexander

00:41:27.420 Hamilton and James Madison. George Mason, for instance, wanted to make impeachment much easier,

00:41:33.120 wanted to be able to impeach the president for maladministration, for not being that good at his

00:41:37.220 job. The founders who won this debate said the president needs to commit treason or bribery or other

00:41:46.940 crimes and misdemeanors. A crime is essential here. And the reason for that is because we don't want to

00:41:55.000 make the executive branch subject to the Congress. We don't want congressional supremacy like what we

00:42:03.780 now see in the United Kingdom. We want three separate co-equal branches of government. That is how the

00:42:11.020 United States will function best. That is how it has functioned best. The left wants to gloss over

00:42:17.100 that, wants to completely confuse the issue and make the question of impeachment in the founders' minds

00:42:23.860 the opposite of what it really is. We need to get rid of that ambiguity. We need to make things

00:42:33.800 crystal clear. We need a basic love of our country and respect for our founders and not to pretend

00:42:41.220 it's the opposite of what it is. You know, there was, this seems sort of unrelated, but it's an

00:42:45.900 unbelievable video going around and I think it does tie in. There was a rapper named YG. Who is YG? I have

00:42:52.300 no idea, nor do I especially care. This rapper YG was on stage and he invites some guy up on stage and he

00:42:59.040 says, hey, I asked you if you like Trump or not and you said you didn't know. So I want you to say

00:43:03.280 right now, F Donald Trump, F the president of the United States and the fan that he brought up on

00:43:09.260 stage, had a lot of guts and a lot of clarity.

00:43:12.260 I spotted you out in the crowd. I asked you if you F Donald Trump, you said you don't know.

00:43:31.260 So since you don't know, I need you to make up your mind tonight. I need you to say your name. I want you to state your name because I know your mama, your daddy, your grandmama, your grandfather is watching.

00:43:41.180 I want you to state your name and yell out, F Donald Trump. No, you won't. Get his ass out of here. Get him by his name.

00:43:50.180 F the father is.

00:43:53.200 You won't say F the president of the United States. Imagine, by the way, imagine if this were a country music

00:43:59.120 concert and the country music star calls up some fan out of the audience and says, hey,

00:44:05.440 I want you to, I asked you if you like Barack Obama and you said you didn't know. I want you to say right now on stage, F Barack Obama. Could you imagine the headlines that that would get? Of course, it'd be insane.

00:44:15.260 But you don't get that with the left. We're beginning to see that clarity. So much of the Trump era is about this clarity. No more nebulous missions. No more, we don't know what our interest is here. No more nebulous kind of politics. We don't know what the left and the right think. No more nebulous government administrators.

00:44:35.380 That ambiguity is going to persist for a long time, but we're beginning to see in stark light the real differences in this country, the real interests that we have outside the country and the real differences within them. Those differences, that clarity does not reflect very well for the left. Maybe that's why the right is picking up this strategy in the first place. That's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. I'll see you tomorrow.

00:45:05.380 I'll see you tomorrow.

00:45:35.380 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:46:00.740 If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to The Ben Shapiro Show. We'll get a whole lot of that and much more. See you there.

The Michael Knowles Show - October 29, 2019

Ep. 440 - Zero Bark Thirty

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