The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 442 - Democracy Dies In Barkness

00:00:00.000 President Trump tweets out a dog meme and the mainstream media lose their collective

00:00:05.320 minds. We will explain why fanatics never laugh and how democracy dies in barkness.

00:00:11.780 Then Real Clear Investigations uncovers the possible identity of the impeachment whistleblower.

00:00:17.480 We will examine who he is and he sure does look an awful lot like Matt Walsh.

00:00:21.780 Then we will examine why it matters. Finally, Facebook and Twitter take opposite approaches

00:00:26.600 to political advertising in 2020 and the legacy media dependent left is furious. All that and

00:00:32.760 more. I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:43.020 A side note before we begin, I have to thank the Washington Post for giving me my second dog pun

00:00:51.180 title of the week. I really couldn't have done it without you guys. Obviously we had zero bark 30

00:00:57.660 earlier in the week and now because of the Washington Post's absurd reaction to a dog

00:01:03.300 meme tweeted out by the president, we now have today's democracy dies in barkness. So thank you

00:01:08.760 again. This is media. This is journalism. That's the Washington Post. President Trump tweeted out a

00:01:16.140 meme. We're very proud of this meme here at the Daily Wire because it was our meme. It was a meme of

00:01:22.660 President Trump was putting a medal on to somebody obviously onto like it was a medal of honor

00:01:28.460 recipient. And we subbed out the guy and put in a picture of that dog who killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

00:01:36.060 and tweeted it out. So then Trump took it and he just put the words American hero all in caps.

00:01:42.640 This is very funny, right? This is not, of all the intense fury inducing things that happen in

00:01:51.880 politics today, just a nice little moment of levity to celebrate this dog that people like

00:01:56.840 and through that to celebrate the killing of the head of ISIS, right? We'll just leave it at that. 0.73

00:02:02.180 Okay. No, of course we can't leave it at that because the mainstream media have lost their minds.

00:02:07.740 This was the response from Steve Herman, Steve Herman from Voice of America. It's a left-wing

00:02:16.200 outlet. He was determined to get to the bottom of this picture because something just didn't look

00:02:20.900 right to him. He tweeted out, I've requested details from the White House on this photo.

00:02:26.280 There was no such canine event on today's president's schedule, but there is a medal of

00:02:32.660 honor ceremony set here for later today for an active duty green beret. You're going to get to

00:02:38.520 the bottom of it, Steve. You're going to find out, hold on, something about, you know, that picture of

00:02:42.660 the smiling dog with his tongue out, having a medal put on him by the president, a medal, which by the

00:02:48.000 way, has a little paw on the ribbon, just a little bronzed paw. Uh, maybe that's not a real photo.

00:02:55.780 Maybe that was photoshopped or something. Let's, let's see. The New York Times investigates it too.

00:03:01.440 New York Times headline quote, Trump tweets faked photo of hero dog getting a medal. It's not a real

00:03:09.460 photo. He didn't even hold a ceremony where he gave a dog the medal of honor. It was fake, fake news.

00:03:18.000 You see in the original photo, President Trump is seen giving the medal of honor to James C.

00:03:26.380 McLaughlin or McLoan. I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it, but this guy's like an actual

00:03:31.100 American hero. He's a great guy, won the medal of honor. So the New York Times reports in a phone

00:03:37.660 interview on Wednesday, Mr. McLaughlin, 73, who had not seen the image before, a reporter sent it to him,

00:03:43.720 said that he interpreted it as Mr. Trump recognizing the dog's heroism, the paper reports.

00:03:50.980 He certainly was not offended and laughed when he compared the two images. Thank you,

00:03:55.200 New York Times, for getting to the bottom of this, calling up the actual medal of honor recipient.

00:04:00.220 They say, excuse me, sir, excuse me, you American hero who won the medal of honor. You great

00:04:05.000 example of an American man. Do you think dog memes are funny? Uh, yes, New York Times. I,

00:04:13.180 I think dog memes are funny. Okay. Thank you very much. We've got to get this out. Oh, stop the

00:04:17.480 presses. The medal of honor recipient believes that dog memes are funny. Then for the absolute best

00:04:23.420 one, wasn't Voice of America, wasn't the New York Times. It was the Washington Post. A White House

00:04:30.980 spokesman declined to comment. McLaughlin, 73, could not be reached for comment. Jeremy Boring,

00:04:37.760 the chief operating officer at the Daily Wire dismissed, emailed questions about whether the

00:04:44.660 altered photo originated from his publication.

00:04:51.040 By the altered photo, they mean the meme. And by the meme, we're referring to that image that the

00:04:56.160 president tweeted out, which had our watermark on it. It's not, it's not like hiding the question of

00:05:02.980 whether we made the meme. We're very proud of the meme. We're very happy that the president also has a

00:05:07.540 sense of humor. It says at the bottom, at real Daily Wire. It's us. You got us. But even the way

00:05:14.840 that WAPO describes it is not true. Jeremy did not dismiss questions about whether or not we made

00:05:22.000 the meme. And I know this because I saw the email interaction. Jeremy showed it to me. Here's the

00:05:27.420 interaction. Alex Horton from the Washington Post emails Jeremy Boring, COO of the Daily Wire.

00:05:34.240 Hello, I'm with the Washington Post and wanted to get confirmation this photo originated with you.

00:05:40.380 And if it did, that you digitally removed Medal of Honor recipient James McLaughlin and replaced him

00:05:44.400 with a dog. Then Jeremy responded to the Washington Post. Alex, on the record, you've got to be effing

00:05:52.080 joking. He spells it out. I can't because this is a family show. You've got to be effing joking.

00:05:58.320 Please quote me on that. Thanks, Jeremy. Jeremy Boring, COO of Daily Wire.

00:06:06.740 The easiest way to tell a fanatic is that they lack a sense of humor.

00:06:14.600 That's, that's why this matters. The easiest way. Look, this was a fun moment. Daily Wire tweeted

00:06:22.000 out this meme. It's a pretty funny meme. The president laughed at it. He tweeted it out too.

00:06:26.580 All the rancor in Washington. Maybe we could all just come together and have a little laugh.

00:06:32.760 The internet was made for dog memes. I guess maybe the Washington Post, they're sort of cat people

00:06:38.420 perhaps, but the internet was made for memes of silly looking animals. We can all come together 0.98

00:06:43.940 and beyond that, we can enjoy this, this critical defeat of ISIS. That would be nice, right?

00:06:50.980 The left can't do that. And the left is no, it's no longer that leftist politicians are leading the

00:06:59.280 media. Now, in many ways, the media are leading the leftist politicians, but all of them taken

00:07:03.000 together, the way you can tell they're fanatics, the way you can tell they've lost the narrative

00:07:08.700 is that they've lost their sense of humor. The left has become so fanatical in its hatred of

00:07:16.080 conservatives that they can't even laugh at a dog meme. In order to laugh, you need to have a sense

00:07:24.320 of humor. In order to have a sense of humor, you need to have a sense of proportion. You need to have

00:07:30.160 a sense of balance. You know, we could talk for hours about what makes something funny and there is

00:07:34.720 nothing, I assure you, there's nothing more hilarious than listening to somebody explain a joke,

00:07:38.520 but part of humor is incongruity. You see a really, really tall, thin guy next to a really,

00:07:47.000 really short, fat guy. Just that image alone is very funny. Why is it funny? Because of the

00:07:52.320 incongruity. How do you perceive incongruity? If you have a sense of proportion. You recognize that

00:07:57.880 those two proportions are way out of the norm and so that gets you to laugh. Frankly, the president

00:08:05.420 tweeting out a dog meme and the left losing its collective mind is very funny. It's funny to us.

00:08:11.300 The left is being funny. They just don't know they're being funny. Fanatics are not able to do

00:08:17.780 that. This is a problem, not just about one dog meme. It represents the left's biggest challenge

00:08:24.300 here. It represents, I think, why they're a little bit in trouble for 2020. We'll get to that in a

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00:10:19.540 So, the left has lost its sense of humor because the left has lost its sense of proportion.

00:10:27.380 This is true, not just in the press, not just in the mainstream media. It's true also in our

00:10:32.220 government. We've got some new information out about the so-called whistleblower, about the latest

00:10:37.320 attempt to overturn the 2016 presidential election and impeach President Trump. Real clear investigations

00:10:43.440 believes it has identified the whistleblower. This is a great contrast. You have Washington Post,

00:10:51.940 Democracy Dies in Barkness, talking about how they've got to get to the bottom of who made a dog

00:10:56.960 meme. And then you've got real clear investigations, which actually is going to show us something about

00:11:01.020 this whistleblower. They believe that the whistleblower is Matt Walsh. No, I'm joking. It's not Matt

00:11:08.240 Walsh, but the guy who they think it is looks a lot like Matt Walsh. You know, I knew Walsh was a

00:11:13.380 little lukewarm on the president. Didn't know he would overturn the election. This is what real

00:11:18.880 clear investigations believes. They believe it's a 33-year-old named Charamella, Eric Charamella.

00:11:25.620 He's a registered Democrat holdover from the Obama White House. He worked before that with Vice

00:11:30.200 President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan. Vocal critic of Donald Trump, he helped

00:11:35.400 initiate the Russia collusion investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

00:11:42.240 Charamella left the NSC. He was on the National Security Council. He left that in mid-2017. Why did

00:11:48.160 he leave? Because there were concerns that he was leaking to the media. That would appear to be

00:11:53.060 justified now. He then returned. After he leaves the White House, he returns to the CIA in Langley,

00:11:57.840 Virginia. He's accused of working against Trump and of leaking against Trump. So this is according to

00:12:03.980 officials on the NSC who were speaking on the condition of anonymity while discussing intelligence

00:12:09.600 matters. What else do we know about this guy? This guy actually was at Yale right around the same time

00:12:15.440 I was. He graduated in 2008. I got there in 2008. That tells me a lot about this guy because I knew a

00:12:24.320 whole lot of activist Democrats who thought that they were kings of the world, who went and immediately

00:12:29.540 started working in the swamp after college. And it, it shows you the real stakes of this impeachment.

00:12:38.720 Nobody elected Eric Charamella to be president. Nobody elected this 33 year old guy who's worked

00:12:45.280 in the bureaucracy and the intelligence community. People did elect Donald Trump, but this guy

00:12:50.900 reportedly, allegedly Eric Charamella, but whoever the whistleblower is, this guy believes that he knows

00:12:58.040 better than the American people. This guy believes that he has the right to elect whatever president

00:13:04.360 he wants. 330 million Americans be damned. Charamella, while he is out there going out to 0.99

00:13:13.420 try to uncover this, you know, Ukrainian collusion story, right before he goes and, and files the

00:13:21.060 complaint, he seeks guidance, guidance, quote unquote, from Adam Schiff. Why Adam Schiff? Why would he,

00:13:27.480 why does he have this cozy relationship with Democrats? Charamella worked with the DNC. He

00:13:32.120 worked with the DNC operative who dug up dirt on Trump during the 2016 election. He actually invited

00:13:36.720 her to the White House for meetings. That's according to former White House colleagues. This operative,

00:13:43.240 Alexandra Chalupa, is a Ukrainian American who tried to help Hillary Clinton. They led an effort to link 0.99

00:13:49.080 the Republican campaign, the Trump campaign to the Russian government. Another former coworker says he

00:13:55.000 knows her, he had her in the White House. This is what we're about to see. So what we're seeing

00:14:03.380 right now is the impeachment, the Ukrainian, the phone call. We don't really know what that's about.

00:14:07.820 I have said for a long time, impeachment is a defensive measure to exonerate Democrats early

00:14:16.480 or to mitigate the disaster of the upcoming investigations from the DOJ and from John Durham.

00:14:21.980 The investigations into what they did in the 2016 election. They're not giving up on this.

00:14:30.460 They will not give up. They won't admit that they lost. Bill Clinton on TV admitted that Hillary

00:14:37.140 Clinton might run for president again. She may or may not ever run for anything, 0.99

00:14:42.900 but I can't legally run for president again. So Bill Clinton, listen, the trouble with believing

00:14:48.700 Bill Clinton, of course, is he's occasionally been dishonest on national television before.

00:14:53.580 Now, listen, I'm telling you the truth here. I, I did not have, well, you know, you know how it

00:14:59.580 finishes. But he did have relations with those women and I don't think Hillary Clinton's going to run 1.00

00:15:05.220 again, but he's leaving the door open. He's leaving the door open as did her senior advisor,

00:15:10.940 Philip Raines, as did her campaign staff when they were talking to the New York Times.

00:15:17.820 Even now, after all of these years, Hillary's not willing to give up on the 2016 election. Neither 0.54

00:15:24.220 was this whistleblower. Neither are the people who insist that they know better than the American

00:15:30.800 people. All a cause for concern because I think the way the mainstream media portray this,

00:15:39.360 you have president Trump, this rogue, this monster, this guy who's going to institute world war three

00:15:43.940 and he's being held back and reined in by the good, glorious, hardworking men and women 0.64

00:15:50.280 of the intelligence community, the CIA or the bureaucracy or the state department. And thank

00:15:56.480 goodness for those guys, right? No. If real clear investigations is right, then the, the American

00:16:02.980 people who elected president Trump are being told to sit down and shut up by some 33 year old schmuck 0.98

00:16:09.160 from Yale who thinks he knows better than not just the American people, but the founding fathers 0.97

00:16:15.900 and the great institutions of our country, which have set up a method for electing the president.

00:16:21.200 Apparently this guy was involved in the first attempt to take Trump out because he knows better

00:16:26.280 he's masters of the universe in Washington DC, Hillary Clinton, all these years later, still

00:16:31.520 considering running, still going out there. You know, this takes us into other 2020 news because

00:16:42.140 we got bad news for Joe Biden. His polls are still falling. Democrats are still a little bit weak.

00:16:49.000 Actually there was that one poll out of the, uh, Boston Herald for New Hampshire. It showed that

00:16:55.620 you've got basically Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders rather all

00:17:00.980 tied in New Hampshire. But if Michelle Obama gets into the race, all of a sudden she's got 26%. 0.99

00:17:08.060 Liz Warren has 20. Biden and Bernie have 15%. Race totally changes. They want Michelle Obama,

00:17:15.060 except they don't really because everyone likes these candidates who are not in the race. In theory,

00:17:19.360 the minute they get in, their poll numbers drop. Just to remind you of this, Michelle Obama was going 1.00

00:17:24.020 out. She was answering a question at a Q and a, and she reminded us why she was so unlikable in 1.00

00:17:31.280 the white house in the first place. People doubted us coming through. Are you printed a material? Can

00:17:36.860 you really make the grade? Can you cut it? What do you do in those instances? All you can do is put

00:17:42.000 your head down and do the work and let the work, your truth speak for yourself. I can't make people

00:17:48.080 not afraid of not afraid of black people. I don't know what's going on. I can't explain what's

00:17:53.100 happening in your head. But maybe if I show up every day as a human, a good human doing wonderful

00:17:59.840 things, loving my family, loving your kids, taking care of things that I care about, maybe just maybe

00:18:07.060 that work will pick away at the scabs of your discrimination. And maybe that slowly will unravel it.

00:18:16.320 That's all we have because we can't do it for them because they're broken. Their brokenness

00:18:23.560 and how they see us is a reflection of their brokenness. And you can't fix that. All you can

00:18:29.640 do is the work. This is why Michelle Obama is a bad presidential candidate. This is why these polls 0.63

00:18:35.840 saying that she's going to get the nomination if she jumps in are just not true is people, people don't

00:18:40.320 really remember this, but she has the same problem as Hillary Clinton, which is she's bitter. She 1.00

00:18:46.380 doesn't like her fellow Americans. I mean, listen to this. This is the woman, the first black first 0.98

00:18:51.900 lady of the United States, wife to the first black president of the United States, elected not just

00:18:56.200 once but twice. All these years later talking about how Americans hate black people, how people 0.94

00:19:03.000 just hate black people and she doesn't get what she deserves and she's better than them and they're 1.00

00:19:08.440 broken, but she's not broken. Look, everybody's got original sin, but not Michelle Obama. No, she 1.00

00:19:14.820 is pure as the driven snow. Michelle Obama, so much better than all of us and how awful these Americans 0.99

00:19:20.900 are to, to what, to elect her husband twice. Same thing, you know, in, in 2008 when her husband got

00:19:27.660 elected, she very famously went on, on TV and said that the election of her husband was the first time

00:19:34.900 in her life that she was proud of her country. Let me tell you something. For the first time in my

00:19:40.880 adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country and not just because Barack has done well, but because

00:19:49.740 I think people are hungry for change. It's that bitterness. It's that entitlement. It's that total

00:19:57.040 lack of gratitude. It's that total lack of proportion. Same thing with Hillary. Hillary's had a lovely career. 1.00

00:20:03.900 The American people have been very good to the Clintons and it's the same thing. You owe me this.

00:20:08.760 I deserve to be president. I'm so angry. Michelle Obama, her husband gets elected president. She

00:20:14.920 doesn't say, wow, what a great country this is. Gosh, you know, maybe I was wrong about not being

00:20:20.020 proud of this country for my entire life because, you know, we, they just elected my husband. What a

00:20:24.920 great country. And my big knock on the country is that it's hopelessly bigoted, but then obviously it's

00:20:29.260 not because we just elected a black guy president. No, she doesn't say that. The left can't change 0.98

00:20:35.600 the narrative when new facts emerge. The left, when, when circumstances change that should delight

00:20:43.020 them, that give delight, that give surprise, that give a little bit of wonder, they can't accept that.

00:20:48.980 They can't have a good laugh and say, gosh, how lovely is that? So Michelle Obama says,

00:20:54.020 this is the first time in my life that I'm proud of my country. Doesn't not, didn't look happy when

00:21:01.040 she says it. Same thing. They elect her husband. They elect her husband a second time. America has

00:21:04.740 been very good to her. Gave her a bestselling book. She says, look, this country, they hate,

00:21:09.340 hates black people. People in this country, so many people hate black people and I didn't get what I 0.99

00:21:15.180 deserved and people were hard on me and my life is so terrible. But the woman went to Princeton. Then she 0.91

00:21:21.140 married this politician who goes on to become president. Then she gets a bestselling book. Michelle Obama

00:21:28.720 is one of the 0.0000000001% of luckiest, most privileged people in the history of the world. And still

00:21:42.040 she complains. Same with Hillary Clinton. Same exact thing. They can't change the narrative. Doesn't matter. 0.94

00:21:48.960 They could elect Michelle Obama president. They could elect Hillary Clinton president. 0.59

00:21:53.840 It'd still be bitter. It's that fanatic attitude. Now on the 2020 front, by the way, regardless of

00:22:00.940 whether those two get into the race, there is some breaking news out of Twitter, major move, which

00:22:04.620 shows that Twitter is going to ban all political advertising in 2020. And this is significant because

00:22:11.340 it's the opposite approach that Facebook is taking. Facebook is going to allow virtually all political

00:22:17.020 advertising. Now what the left wants to do is they want there to be political advertising,

00:22:22.900 but they only want it to advertise for left-wing candidates. So AOC with just last week was begging

00:22:28.960 Mark Zuckerberg, sort of browbeating him saying, why on earth are you going to elect conservatives

00:22:35.080 post advertising on Facebook? Why are you going to be in the way AOC couched this, which she said,

00:22:42.080 those conservatives are lying about us. You can't allow lies in political advertising. You need to

00:22:46.780 fact check the conservatives. And by the way, you can only partner up with left-wing fact checkers,

00:22:51.720 but you can't partner up with organizations like the Daily Caller. I mean, she was AOC during this,

00:22:57.140 in the same exact breath was saying, you need to fact check conservatives and all the fact checkers

00:23:01.720 have to be liberals. What they want is only political advertising for me, but not for thee.

00:23:11.360 Twitter is taking this opposite approach and they're saying no political advertising at all. It

00:23:14.760 doesn't matter as much for Twitter because their advertising tools aren't that good and political

00:23:20.100 ads make up only a small portion of their revenue. But I think Facebook has the better policy here. I

00:23:27.660 think we would be a better country if we adopted the Facebook policy, which is say whatever you want.

00:23:35.420 Make your argument. Have speech. Let's not forget in a self-governing republic, speech is politics.

00:23:42.240 Politics is speech. Go for it. It's yours. And if you make a bad argument, if you tell a lie,

00:23:49.560 you're going to be called out for it. What all of this shows is that the left does not feel

00:23:57.500 confident heading into this election cycle. Hillary Clinton does not believe that any of

00:24:03.880 the candidates out there are going to beat Trump. She thinks she's a better candidate than those

00:24:08.720 candidates out there. The Democratic primary voters, at least in New Hampshire, don't believe

00:24:13.060 that any of those candidates out there are going to beat Trump. That's why they're asking Michelle

00:24:16.760 Obama to jump into the race. AOC does not believe that they can win this battle on the merits.

00:24:23.060 That's why she's trying to get conservatives kicked off of Facebook. Twitter knows that the 0.99

00:24:29.400 left is going to be out of their mind anytime they let a conservative advertise anywhere, anytime they

00:24:34.900 let Trump advertise anywhere. So Twitter is just throwing up their hands. Jack Dorsey is saying,

00:24:38.620 please leave me out of this entirely.

00:24:44.920 Trump dominated social media in 2016. Conservatives are much better at social media than the left.

00:24:49.840 This is not just some empty boast. This is true across organic social media and paid social media.

00:24:58.320 Trump was the only one taking YouTube and Facebook seriously. Wasn't Russians. It wasn't 0.96

00:25:02.720 Macedonian click farms. It was actual strategies from the two campaigns. Trump beat Hillary on

00:25:08.420 social media. That's all it is. Why is the right so much better at social media and new media than

00:25:14.580 the left? Because the left relies on the legacy old media. The left has for decades. The old media has

00:25:22.580 been the great protector and gatekeeper for the left and they've kicked out right-wingers and they've

00:25:27.600 framed the narrative so in opposition to right-wingers. So the left has gotten lazy and complacent with the

00:25:33.820 legacy media. Now the legacy media are being virtually totally rejected. We just realized we're, we're

00:25:44.820 shutting out the mainstream media because the mainstream media have no credibility. You know,

00:25:50.260 the, the lack of credibility from the mainstream media allowed the growth of social. Then the growth

00:25:54.400 of social pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the mainstream media because we were able to get

00:25:58.360 some true information finally for once. A mainstream media that takes dog memes seriously is not a

00:26:05.120 mainstream media that can command our respect. And so you're seeing all of these angles intersect.

00:26:13.840 Trump tweets a dog meme, which triggers the mainstream media, which makes us all laugh at the

00:26:19.580 mainstream media, more reliant on the new media, which terrifies the left and the Democrats who call for

00:26:24.900 censorship on the new media. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. This is going to

00:26:30.720 get a lot more intense before it gets any lighter. And so much of the 2020 election is going to hinge

00:26:37.920 around that question of the relationship between the new media and the old media of whether the new

00:26:44.780 media are going to kick out the right, just like the old media did. As long as you're hearing talk of

00:26:51.100 candidate Michelle, candidate Hillary, you know that the Democrats, frankly, as long as you're hearing

00:26:56.080 talk of impeachment and whistleblowers and trying to overturn the 2016 election, even as we're heading

00:27:01.880 into the 2020 election, what that tells you is the left does not feel confident and they shouldn't feel

00:27:07.340 confident because they have lost the narrative. They have lost their sense of humor. They've lost their

00:27:12.140 sense of proportion and people out here living in reality are going to have a good laugh at them.

00:27:17.120 And they're going to go with the guys who are basing their campaigns in the truth, in reality,

00:27:23.980 in what we can see with our own eyes. They're going to vote for the guys who show the American

00:27:29.620 people a little bit of respect and don't keep throwing their finger up at them. Don't keep trying

00:27:35.940 to overturn their elections. Don't turn around to them and say, F you, F this, I've got the microphone.

00:27:40.920 And on that point, I was at Politicon over the, over the last weekend. And if you didn't catch the

00:27:47.600 debate, I, I strongly encourage that you do because it was extraordinarily fun for me to be up there.

00:27:53.740 And it shows you how desperate the left is to maintain their monopoly on information. I'm not

00:28:01.700 talking about Chris Hahn, who I was debating. Chris Hahn is the Fox News Democrat who theoretically was my

00:28:08.220 sparring partner here. Chris was fine. We had a nice exchange. The actual sparring partner in the

00:28:15.440 debate was Clay Aiken, who was supposed to be the moderator. And Clay, he's like a stand-in for the

00:28:20.420 mainstream media because he is obviously a very left-wing Democrat. He ran for office as a Democrat,

00:28:25.900 but he comes out there and pretends to be objective. And within a few moments, just completely loses his

00:28:31.760 mind, starts swearing at people. We actually summed it up. If you haven't caught the debate,

00:28:36.140 we summed it up in a very short episode of it's always sunny in Philadelphia, which we're calling

00:28:42.760 Clay Aiken controls the debate.

00:28:45.360 I'm asking the question. So hold on a second. Hold on a second. I'm asking the questions.

00:28:50.020 All right. Feel free to try to control it, but you won't get there.

00:28:55.440 I want to know what can be done. I'm not one of them. I'm asking you what can be done about climate

00:29:01.620 change. I'm pretty ignorant about the whole argument myself, I'll admit. I'm asking you,

00:29:05.580 what should we do? Unless you want to cede the ground to Democrats to be the ones who come up

00:29:10.860 with ideas, are people who are marching and shouting Jews will not replace us, are they good 0.99

00:29:15.320 people? It's a yes or no question. Yes or no. No, it's a yes or no question. Are people who are

00:29:20.440 marching shouting Jews will not replace us, are they good people? Can you say yes or no to this? Are you 0.99

00:29:24.660 capable of that? I don't need to answer a question because I'm not on the stage. No, I did not ask you if

00:29:28.860 Nazis were bad. And I understand those are big words. People who don't like Jews, people who are

00:29:32.180 Nazis are bad people. That's not what I asked you. I've answered this five times. No, you haven't. 0.99

00:29:37.080 You're rewording. I think we'll be able to find that I didn't. You're rewording. I feel so bad for

00:29:40.380 you. I feel so badly for you. It's very easy to play a victim. You can boo all you want to. I don't

00:29:47.160 give a half a f***ing s***. I asked a yes or no question. Does President Trump lie? Yes or no? 0.99

00:29:53.400 Before you start, since clearly the audience thinks I'm biased, we're going to let them ask some

00:29:58.800 questions too. Well, I may be a hack, but I've got a f***ing microphone. 0.93

00:30:04.520 That's what the left is doing to us. That's what the mainstream media are doing to us right now. And 0.95

00:30:09.560 I don't think that's a position of strength. I think that is great news for us and we can smile

00:30:17.200 and have a good laugh and have a sense of humor. And we're not just laughing at dog memes, folks.

00:30:22.340 We're laughing at Clay Aiken. We're laughing at that whole mainstream media apparatus. We've got to get to

00:30:27.940 the mailbag. We'll get to that in a second, but first I'm going to say goodbye to Facebook and

00:30:31.560 YouTube. Head on over to dailywire.com. 10 bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me,

00:30:38.500 you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Walsh show,

00:30:41.660 you get to ask questions in the mailbag. That's coming right up. You get another kingdom, the last

00:30:46.580 season, the best season. So go check that out. And you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. Very,

00:30:52.000 very important. As the New York Times and the Washington Post do their hard investigative work

00:30:59.160 to figure out the origin of dog memes, you and I can sit there and lap up those salty tears.

00:31:04.000 dailywire.com. We'll be right back with the mailbag.

00:31:05.880 All right, we're back. Let's get through as much of the mailbag as we possibly can from Heather.

00:31:22.600 How do we reconcile our moral obligation as Christians to care for the widow, the orphans, 0.61

00:31:27.760 the poor with the desire to not have our tax dollars funding inadequate and abused social

00:31:33.880 programs? Thanks. The way that we do that is that we care for the widow and the orphans and the poor.

00:31:42.560 We don't just give our money to the government. Giving your, what the left has done,

00:31:49.420 if pretty effectively actually, is convinced you that giving your money to the government

00:31:54.440 is the same thing as caring for the widow, the orphans, and the poor. But it's not.

00:31:59.560 It's extraordinarily inefficient. It, most of that money, much if not most of that money is just

00:32:08.180 eaten up by the Washington bureaucracy. Some of it will go toward programs that will then be

00:32:13.800 directed toward the poor that very often harm the very people that they were intended to help.

00:32:18.520 This is the premise of the Moynihan Report. This is what turned so many liberals into conservatives

00:32:22.540 in the late 20th centuries. They realized that those federal welfare programs actually ended up

00:32:29.500 harming the people they were intended to help. Charity and taxation are very different things

00:32:35.160 because there's also a moral, a moral interaction here. I think Dinesh D'Souza summed this up.

00:32:40.920 He said, if I'm walking down the street and I see a, a bum lying on the street, I'm eating a sandwich

00:32:47.860 and he says, Hey, can I have that sandwich? I'm hungry. If I give him that sandwich,

00:32:53.320 there's a moral interaction here. He's asking for some help. He's asking for charity. I give him

00:33:00.200 that charity. He is grateful for that charity. I have engaged in an act of charity. That's a moral

00:33:05.900 exchange. If however, I'm walking down the street with my sandwich and the bum says, Hey, gimme, gimme. 0.98

00:33:12.100 And then Barack Obama rides up on a white horse with a pistol pointed at my head and he says,

00:33:16.240 give him the sandwich. That is not a moral exchange at all. I resent the beggar and

00:33:24.660 Barack Obama for stealing my food. The beggar feels entitled to my food. He doesn't feel gratitude. 0.92

00:33:30.880 He feels entitled to it because Obama said it's his right. And Obama has done nothing other than

00:33:34.960 threaten me with a gun. That's not a moral exchange at all, but that's what taxation looks like. So

00:33:40.220 engage in charity and try to get the government's hands out of your pockets. From Evan, dear skinny boy,

00:33:46.640 is it all right for parents to enforce a candy tax upon their young children who go trick-or-treating?

00:33:52.520 I think this act will help create children

00:33:54.660 who believe that taxation is theft. I would love to hear your thoughts. I think that's a really good

00:34:01.180 way to get your children to hate you. I don't know if it's a great way to teach them about taxation.

00:34:06.660 Let the kids have Halloween. This used to always bug me when I was a kid. When I would go out,

00:34:14.740 I'd go trick-or-treating and then some house would give us an apple. I don't want an apple.

00:34:20.440 Halloween is not for apples. Halloween is for candy. Halloween is so that little kids can glut

00:34:25.560 themselves on candy because it's a day of a little bit of mischief and we live in a very rich country and

00:34:32.180 candy is delicious and kids like candy. No raisins, no apples, no lessons. This is the other

00:34:38.660 one. You'd go out trick-or-treating and for some of my friends, their parents would like take their

00:34:44.180 candy and they'd inspect it for razor blades because some suburban mother saw some news report 1.00

00:34:52.060 from some fake journalist that there was this epidemic of weirdos giving, putting razor blades

00:34:57.280 into kids candy. That doesn't happen. How many times has that happened in history? Like three

00:35:02.140 times? Don't do that. The kids get Halloween. They should be able to go out trick-or-treating.

00:35:06.860 They should get a lot of candy. They don't need to learn lessons about taxation. The way to teach

00:35:11.340 your kids to be good American citizens is to raise them well, to respect you, to like you,

00:35:19.660 to take your ideas seriously. And I promise you, if you take their candy away from them,

00:35:24.040 they will not respect you. They will not like you. I fear they will become huge reactionary

00:35:29.340 liberals. From Al, if the UN and NATO and the G7 don't work, how can freedom-minded countries get

00:35:36.800 together or is that a thing of the past? Thanks. Get together for what? What are we going to get

00:35:45.860 together for? Are we just going to go out and play golf? What, this is the question when we talk about

00:35:50.380 NATO, for instance, what is the purpose of NATO? NATO was formed in the mid-20th century to protect

00:35:58.300 Western European countries and American allies broadly who support freedom and oppose communism

00:36:06.260 to protect them from the Soviet Union. NATO is an institution built for the Cold War. The Cold War 0.63

00:36:14.400 is over. The Cold War has been over since 1990. So now what? What are we doing? I'm not saying we

00:36:23.880 need to disband NATO tomorrow, but we need to at least know what the purpose of it is. What's the

00:36:28.460 purpose of the UN? Is that to protect freedom-loving countries? No, the vast majority of member states

00:36:32.520 of the UN are the worst people on earth. The UN lets all sorts of terrible people in. There's no such 0.91

00:36:40.260 thing as the United Nations though. What is the United Nations? We all come together, paid for by

00:36:45.660 the United States on really nice real estate in Manhattan, and then all the worst people on earth

00:36:50.700 lecture America on how terrible we are, and we pay for that too, and then we send them home. 0.65

00:36:55.520 That doesn't accomplish anything. To quote John Bolton, there is no such thing as the United Nations.

00:37:01.660 It doesn't matter. We could build the building 20 stories taller. There still would be no such thing

00:37:06.080 as the United Nations. There is the international community. There are the nations of the world,

00:37:13.260 and there is the national interest of the United States. When those things intersect,

00:37:20.860 I am more than happy to work with every nation on earth. But when those don't intersect,

00:37:28.620 then what are we doing? Charles de Gaulle said that nations don't have friends, they have interests.

00:37:35.420 This seems cold-blooded to some people, but it's not. It's just true. Nations are not exactly like 0.86

00:37:43.080 people. We have relationships, we have alliances, but nations have interests over time.

00:37:50.540 Same thing. What is the G7? What is the point of the G7? What we should do is support our allies

00:37:56.060 and pursue our interests and be smart about it and not imprison ourselves into a foreign policy that

00:38:05.380 made sense 100 years ago, but doesn't make sense today. That's the purpose. I mean, the purpose of

00:38:10.800 all of these institutions is to advance national interests. If there's no national interest to

00:38:14.640 advance, I don't think we need to pay a whole lot of attention to those organizations.

00:38:19.340 From anonymous, I go to law school at Georgetown University Law Center. Now I see why you wanted

00:38:26.480 to remain anonymous. You can't out yourself for listening to this show or to anything to the

00:38:32.040 right of Hillary Clinton. I go to law school at Georgetown University Law Center, just received

00:38:36.100 an email telling me that I will be paying a reparations fee next fall to establish a fund

00:38:42.580 to support our descendants. I knew nothing of this before coming there. How is this reconcilable

00:38:50.880 with Title IX? What action would you recommend? Thanks. That is really bizarre. I had not heard

00:38:57.640 anything about that, but I'm not surprised that universities would put in a reparations fee

00:39:02.580 or any other manner of social justice tax applied unfairly to benefit certain students. If I were you,

00:39:10.940 I would not pay it. And if they yell at you about it, which I don't think they will do,

00:39:16.660 I think they'll just let it go. If they go after you for it, I would just tell them very politely

00:39:23.620 that you're here to be educated and you're here to learn about the law and you're not here to engage

00:39:28.640 in any sort of social justice left-wing activism. And if they kick you out for that, well, I don't

00:39:33.900 know, go to Antonin Scalia School of Law or something like that. This is especially important for law

00:39:40.920 school because as a lawyer, your integrity is so essential to the job. Who you are, the decisions

00:39:50.100 you make in your life is so essential. It's a little different than a kid who's just trying to

00:39:54.120 squeeze through an undergraduate class so he keeps his head down a little bit.

00:39:57.800 If you're a lawyer, then you are participating in the legal community. You might run for office.

00:40:02.080 You are presenting yourself as in your work life, relying upon your integrity. So I would not

00:40:11.760 compromise that in law school because if you compromise in law school, you're going to

00:40:15.460 compromise the rest of your career. There are plenty of lawyers who compromise their integrity,

00:40:18.920 but you don't want to be one of them. From Dylan, dear charismatic conqueror,

00:40:23.660 I watched your double debate at Politicon in which you debated the liberal Chris Hahn and the

00:40:29.000 moderator whose identity is irrelevant. I was wondering how you were able to stay composed,

00:40:34.180 be charming and charismatic while also staying on topic. Go on, stop it. I know, go, what do you

00:40:42.480 really think? Thank you for the question and the compliment. The, I did get a few versions of this

00:40:49.640 question over the past week, most of which just said, when you've got these two liberals screaming in

00:40:55.360 your face, how can you not get angry? Why would I get angry? People get angry when they know they're

00:41:02.180 losing the argument. I mean, there is, there is a place for righteous anger. If someone goes up and

00:41:07.140 calls your wife fat and calls your son stupid, then I guess you can punch him in the face. But 1.00

00:41:11.760 most of the time, if you're having a political debate, if you're having a debate about something

00:41:17.540 objective, you know, outside of yourself, something that isn't really personal,

00:41:21.740 if you have a good argument, if you're confident in your argument, then you don't need to yell and

00:41:28.860 name call and become all sort of angry. The left has lost the sense of this. One, because they've

00:41:35.280 lost the argument and two, because of a change that happened in the 1960s. In the 1960s, the left

00:41:40.980 decided that the personal is the political. This became a major slogan of the feminist movement and 0.99

00:41:47.360 it was adopted by other left-wingers as well. What that means is that we need to eradicate the

00:41:53.780 traditional difference in our republic between the public and the private. But free government,

00:42:00.480 self-government, relies upon this distinction between the public and the private. Meaning,

00:42:07.300 I've got my family life, I have my personal endeavors, and then I put on my suit and I

00:42:13.800 finish up my tie, and I go out, and I do the business of the people. And those are different

00:42:19.860 things. And so, while you might have some personal animosity towards somebody, you let that go in

00:42:25.540 public. Or, vice versa, when you, if you have a public relationship with somebody, you have a

00:42:32.880 different relationship in private. That vanished with the left. The left made the personal the

00:42:38.720 political, to the great detriment of self-government. I don't take these things personally. I've worked

00:42:43.940 as an actor. I've worked in politics. That's a blood sport. So, you just take the hits and,

00:42:50.380 and you move on. If you're, if you're taking these things personally, if you're really getting heated,

00:42:55.640 maybe it's because you don't quite understand what you're saying, and you don't quite understand

00:43:00.820 what the other guys say. From Jasmine, recently you said rap was the devil's music. I couldn't quite

00:43:06.540 tell if that was in jest or a true opinion of yours. Much of the rap genre is excreble, 0.95

00:43:11.920 but there is a lot of good Christian rap. Many of the artists in the clip you played were Christian

00:43:17.420 rappers. Was that intentional or not? Thanks. I don't remember the clip. I'm not sure I even

00:43:22.280 pulled it myself. Rap is terrible. It's just awful. And it almost certainly is the devil's music,

00:43:27.660 but God makes a habit of confounding the devil's plans as he did in Kanye West's recent album,

00:43:34.060 which is very, very good. I have almost never found a rap song that I liked. There have been a

00:43:42.040 couple, I guess. I've found, I will say I've found more rap songs that I like than contemporary

00:43:47.720 Christian songs that I like. I consider those contemporary Christian songs to just be absolutely

00:43:52.260 awful, saccharine, twaddle, ridiculous, insipid, terrible, terrible music, which is why I was so 0.99

00:44:01.680 surprised by Kanye's album because I felt Kanye's album actually took religion seriously. It took 0.99

00:44:08.100 the human condition seriously, more seriously than most. If you like these modern songs though,

00:44:13.480 I hope you're not offended. I don't like most popular music. It's just really decayed. It's

00:44:20.340 really awful. This is actually kind of my feeling about liturgy, my feeling about church services,

00:44:25.720 my feeling about the mass. I don't like the modern ones with the acoustic guitars and the sappy

00:44:31.820 seventies hymns that weren't even cool 40 years ago because they're not beautiful. They're not that

00:44:38.380 beautiful at least. Classical liturgy, traditional worship services are much more beautiful.

00:44:48.040 The typical response to this is, oh Michael, you old fuddy-duddy, come on. The people are

00:44:54.420 listening to the popular music. Yeah, I know that. I know that more people listen to Miley Cyrus than

00:45:00.120 listen to Bach, for instance. Bach is more beautiful than Miley Cyrus. And therefore, when I'm

00:45:10.540 engaging in worship, when I'm in a liturgy or I'm in the mass, I want the beautiful thing. I want the

00:45:17.460 beautiful thing in all facets of life. That does require a little bit of cultivation and understanding.

00:45:23.480 It's much harder to understand what Bach is doing than what Miley Cyrus is doing.

00:45:27.980 But that's some of the work that we have to do in the culture. And so when we win the culture,

00:45:33.640 it doesn't just mean that we need to have the best memes, that we need to have the funniest jokes. I

00:45:38.000 mean, that's important too. It also means that we need to work on elevating the culture from this

00:45:42.400 degraded level of pop and kitsch. We need to work on elevating that and elevating our understanding.

00:45:48.440 It will make us all chill out a lot more. It will reduce anxiety, reduce stress, reduce people

00:45:53.460 screaming at you in political debates. It will make you understand much better what everybody is

00:45:57.960 saying. And it will make you feel just at least a touch of that awe and wonder for that which is

00:46:04.860 beautiful. Because that which is beautiful is connected to that which is good and that which is

00:46:08.860 true. That's how you win the culture. You also win the culture with funny dog memes. That's

00:46:13.940 our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you Monday.

00:46:16.760 If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.

00:46:27.760 And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends

00:46:32.160 to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

00:46:38.160 Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,

00:46:42.800 The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.

00:46:45.260 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkiewicz and directed by Mike Joyner.

00:46:50.240 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer

00:46:55.120 is Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.

00:47:01.640 Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:47:07.420 And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:47:12.380 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:47:14.160 On The Matt Walsh Show, we're not just discussing politics. We're talking culture, faith, family,

00:47:20.460 all of the things that are really important to you. So come join the conversation.

00:47:23.980 We'll see you next time.

00:47:32.080 We'll see you next time.

00:47:32.620 We'll see you next time.

00:47:41.960 Bye.

00:47:42.660 Bye.

00:47:44.200 Bye.

00:47:44.940 Bye.

The Michael Knowles Show - October 31, 2019

Ep. 442 - Democracy Dies In Barkness

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