Ep. 489 - Mayor Cheat Takes Iowa
Episode Stats
Words per minute
171.45055
Harmful content
Misogyny
10
sentences flagged
Toxicity
12
sentences flagged
Hate speech
7
sentences flagged
Summary
Mayor Pete Buttigiegiegieg declares himself the winner, even though no official votes have come in at all, and he s not polling at the top in a single state. We ll get to what this means for the Democratic Party in 2020.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Chaos ensues in the Iowa caucuses as Democrats fail to tally up the votes.
00:00:05.680
Mayor Cheet Buttigieg declares himself the winner, even though no official votes have
00:00:09.800
come in at all, and he's not polling at the top in a single state.
00:00:13.140
Actually, Bernie Sanders is polling at the top, not just in Iowa, but also in New Hampshire,
00:00:17.700
and he's running second in Nevada and South Carolina, where Joe Biden's firewall is collapsing.
00:00:22.620
We will examine how an unaccomplished communist rose to the top of the field,
00:00:26.580
why party elites are trying to steal the nomination from him again,
00:00:30.000
and how the Democratic Party fell apart. Then, the peerless and pioneering Rush Limbaugh
00:00:36.020
announces a diagnosis of advanced stage lung cancer. We will see what the reaction to his
00:00:41.280
announcement means for Rush and his enemies. Finally, a lone Democrat turns against impeachment
00:00:46.720
and rich liberal white women pay bigots to call them racist over dinner.
1.00
00:00:51.040
All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
0.96
00:01:01.000
What a night. What a night. I'm sorry if I look underslept. I was sitting in my studio until one
00:01:08.860
in the morning with Senator Ted Cruz. We were supposed to do our podcast together, and we couldn't
00:01:14.020
because the Iowa caucuses did not give us the final tally. So about one o'clock, I saunter over
00:01:20.700
to the hotel bar in D.C. just to try to find any news. There are no results whatsoever. The Democratic
00:01:26.920
Party completely bungled this. And then, and then, the best part of all, Mayor Pete the cheat
00:01:33.940
Buttigieg comes on stage and without any official votes in, declares himself the winner, vindicating
00:01:39.920
every single thing I've been saying about this guy for several months. We will get to Mayor Pete's
00:01:46.340
fake victory speech. We'll get to what this means for the party in 2020. But first, I've
00:01:51.420
got to thank our friends over at NetSuite. Let me tell you something. Iowa should have
00:01:56.940
proven this to you. Technology is not perfect, okay? If you don't know your numbers, then
00:02:04.080
you don't know your business. But the problem that growing businesses have that keeps them
00:02:09.040
from knowing their numbers, rather, is these hodgepodge business systems that don't talk
00:02:13.900
to each other. So you might have one system for accounting, another for sales, another
00:02:17.720
for inventory, and another for tallying up the votes in Iowa. And just somehow they're
00:02:21.400
not talking to each other. And it's a big inefficient mess. And it can take up way too much of your
00:02:26.980
time and too many resources. And that is going to hurt the bottom line because time is money.
00:02:31.720
Introducing NetSuite by Oracle, the business management software that handles every aspect of
00:02:37.240
your business in an easy-to-use cloud platform, giving you the visibility and control you need
00:02:42.420
to grow. With NetSuite, you save time, you save money, you save unneeded headaches. I've been part
00:02:46.840
of many growing businesses. I really, really wish that I had been able to have all my business
00:02:54.220
systems talking to each other when we started. We saved a lot of time and a lot of money. Right now,
00:02:58.580
NetSuite is offering you valuable insights with a free guide, seven key strategies to grow your profits
00:03:03.180
at NetSuite.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. NetSuite.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S to
00:03:10.680
download your free guide, seven key strategies to grow your profits. NetSuite.com slash Knowles. I
00:03:17.420
bet they wish they typed in that URL in Iowa last night because it was an absolute, an absolute
00:03:24.920
disaster. Unprecedented, really. There have been problems in Iowa the last few years. Actually,
00:03:30.660
Iowa may lose its favored position as the first in the nation voting. This was by far the worst.
00:03:38.360
What happened? The caucuses are already very, very complicated. A caucus is not like a primary
00:03:46.240
vote. When you go to vote in a poll, right, you walk in, you give them your ID in some places,
00:03:51.120
in some places you don't even have to do that. Then you go into a polling booth, you click the,
00:03:54.540
you either write in the candidate you want, you pull the lever, you leave, right? That's not what a
00:03:59.180
caucus is. In a caucus, especially the Democratic caucus, which is the most complicated, you show up
00:04:04.680
and you sit at tables and you try to persuade people to vote for the candidates you like.
00:04:09.060
Then you move to your own separate corners of the room. So maybe the Bernie guys go to the
00:04:14.360
northwest corner and the Biden guys go to the northeast corner and so on and so forth. Then
00:04:21.020
if one candidate doesn't meet the threshold of voters, let's say they don't get 15 percent of the
00:04:26.120
voters, then all those guys get freed up and they've got to go to different corners of the room
00:04:30.000
or they can remain independent and unaffiliated. It is at its best working absolutely perfectly.
00:04:36.540
It's almost impossible to understand how a caucus works. Then add on to that, that the software,
00:04:43.420
the app that was being used to report the results at each caucus location mysteriously broke down.
00:04:50.580
Whoopsy-daisy. So we have no idea who voted for whom. We still have no idea. Now, that would be
00:05:01.280
enough to say maybe something crooked is going on here. Maybe it's incompetence. Maybe there's a
00:05:08.040
conspiracy at foot, right? Now, add on to that this little fact. The company that made the app
00:05:15.960
that reports who voted for whom at the Iowa caucuses is called Shadow Incorporated.
00:05:25.180
If you were to write a Hollywood script about stealing the Iowa caucuses and you had to pick
00:05:30.300
a company name for who stole the Iowa caucuses and you chose Shadow Incorporated, Hollywood producers
00:05:35.680
would tell you, nah, that's too on the nose. That's too obvious. You got to be a little more subtle than
00:05:39.840
that. So you've got Shadow Incorporated makes this dodgy app that doesn't work. Shadow Incorporated
00:05:46.460
is staffed by the veterans of Hillary Clinton's campaign. What is Hillary's nickname? Crooked
00:05:52.920
Hillary. One of the most corrupt figures in American politics. It gets better. The company that owns
1.00
00:05:58.640
Shadow Incorporated is an even more mysteriously named acronym. That's the name of it. Acronym. It's the
00:06:06.880
most vague, enigmatic, mysterious name you could think of. And then here's this little juicy tidbit
00:06:14.160
at the end. The campaigns of Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden, the two establishment types trailing in
00:06:22.460
Iowa in recent weeks, both made payments to Shadow Incorporated. They have used Shadow Incorporated,
00:06:31.680
the company that made the app to count the votes, as a vendor for their campaigns. They've paid them
00:06:36.420
according to reports today. Really, really dodgy. And then the piece de resistance, the cherry on top
00:06:47.740
of the crooked Sunday. Mayor Pete Buttigieg just declared himself the winner last night. No votes
00:06:56.380
were in. No evidence that he won at all. No evidence he got a single vote. All the polls in recent days
00:07:03.580
showed he wasn't winning in Iowa. And yet he just goes up there and declares himself the winner. Here's Mayor
00:07:11.320
Pete in his own words. What a night. Because tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality.
00:07:23.380
We have to stop right there. What does that mean? An impossible hope became an undeniable reality.
00:07:38.700
What? Those are just words mashed together that don't mean anything that Mayor Pete says like they
00:07:46.760
have a lot of meaning. An impossible hope. What is the impossible hope? Is to win the Iowa caucuses?
00:07:53.220
It's not an impossible hope. Somebody wins the Iowa caucuses every single year.
00:07:57.900
It's not impossible. Someone's going to win it. Then a bunch of people are going to lose,
00:08:00.980
but someone's going to win it. That's not an impossible hope. What's the undeniable reality?
00:08:05.440
That Pete Buttigieg won? That is the most deniable statement you can make because we don't have any votes
00:08:12.520
in yet. An undeniable reality. I have been saying this about Pete Buttigieg for months since the
00:08:18.100
beginning of his campaign. He is the worst of these candidates. He is slimy. He is unctuous. He is
00:08:23.960
dishonest. He is smarmy. He is sanctimonious. He is my least favorite candidate. I would take Bernie
1.00
00:08:31.560
Sanders over Pete Buttigieg. I would take Elizabeth Warren over Pete Buttigieg. I would take Julian
00:08:37.640
Castro on abortion rights for men over Pete Buttigieg because the guy is just so dishonest. He made a
00:08:44.660
really big miscalculation last night trying to pretend with no evidence that he won Iowa. He goes on
00:08:51.600
to explain how he is about to stroll into New Hampshire victorious. So we don't know all the results,
00:08:59.700
but we know by the time it's all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation.
00:09:09.500
Because, by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.
00:09:28.680
By all indications, we are going into New Hampshire victorious. That isn't true. By no
00:09:41.560
indications is he going into New Hampshire victorious. Not one. Not one vote.
00:09:50.000
This was a major miscalculation. Some people are saying it was politically brilliant.
00:09:54.460
They're saying it's politically brilliant because no one's really paying that close attention to the
00:09:57.800
Iowa caucuses. And the only headline they're going to see is Buttigieg is the winner. Buttigieg says
00:10:03.360
he's the winner. And so it's going to give him the illusion of winning, even though very likely he
00:10:07.820
came in, what, third or fourth place? Who knows? I mean, who knows? We don't have the numbers, but
00:10:11.340
there's no evidence that he came in first. So they're saying, look, he's just going to fake it
00:10:16.400
till he makes it. And that's going to send him into New Hampshire looking good. It's a mistake.
00:10:21.240
It's a big mistake because people actually are paying attention to the Democratic Iowa caucuses.
00:10:28.800
Namely, the primary voters. And by the way, primary voters pay a lot more attention to politics than
00:10:33.600
general election voters. Your general election voters are your kind of normal people. It's about
00:10:37.500
half the country who shows up to general elections and they pay a little bit of attention. And so maybe
00:10:42.020
you could pull one over on them. Primary voters actually care. They care a lot more. They're more
00:10:47.700
tuned into to the party politics, especially in this field where there's so many different candidates,
00:10:53.880
especially in Iowa, especially in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, these early states.
00:10:57.800
That are going to really matter and probably decide who gets the nomination.
00:11:02.480
Pete Buttigieg went into Iowa. According to the imperceptive, right? Not according to me. I've
00:11:09.740
always known that guy's a snake. But according to the people who were not perceiving it, he was
00:11:14.740
hopeful. He was young. He was earnest. He was a guy you could trust. He's just telling it like it is,
00:11:22.380
right? Happy old Mayor Pete. American is apple pie. He's leaving Iowa looking like a loser and a liar and
00:11:32.440
a crook. It's the only way to describe it. If you really won, then you can wait for the votes to be
1.00
00:11:39.280
counted. If you really won, right? If you're most likely Bernie Sanders, judging by all of the polls
00:11:45.160
going into this thing, you can wait for the voice of the voters to be heard. If you are really
00:11:54.440
earnest and honest and up and coming and hopeful, and we're going to turn a new page in America and
00:11:58.660
unite everybody, then you don't need to steal a state. You don't need to pretend. Now, his victory
00:12:06.240
speech is calling attention to the fact that he's apparently got some financial relationship
00:12:12.000
with the app company that mysteriously broke that was supposed to count the votes. It just
00:12:15.920
doesn't look good. And Buttigieg is too undefined a candidate to risk that. One of Trump's big
00:12:23.960
advantages in 2016 is everybody knew who he was. He had basically 100% name recognition. Everyone
00:12:29.300
watched him on network television for 10 years. Everybody watched him on the tabloids and in real
00:12:35.520
estate and in pop culture for 30 years before that. Nobody knows Mayor Pete. He's the mayor of a small
00:12:40.720
town. So every new data point that defines him is going to really, really matter. And he's now
00:12:49.560
allowing himself to be defined as a slippery guy, unctuous, oily, maybe crooked. Maybe he's got a
00:12:55.420
weird financial relationship with the app. Maybe he's trying to cheat the voters out of their nominee.
00:13:00.080
Maybe they're trying to cheat Bernie Sanders, which is what happened in 2016. By all indications,
00:13:06.540
we're going to New Hampshire victorious. There's no indication because we don't know what
00:13:09.560
happened in Iowa. To sum it up, CNN, to their credit, summed up better than any other network,
00:13:16.080
any other outlet, what the Iowa caucuses looked like last night when one of the precinct captains,
00:13:20.780
one of the guys who's got to call a hotline now to report the votes, is on the phone with CNN's
00:13:26.460
Wolf Blitzer. And he's trying to handle both of these at the same time. And it all falls apart.
00:13:30.620
We'll get to that in a second. First, I've got to thank our friends over at Liquid IV. You know,
00:13:35.620
I love Liquid IV. Energy drinks, super-duper sugary drinks, pounding coffee all day long,
00:13:43.180
that can lead to a crash after the initial spike. You don't want that. If you want to have some more
00:13:48.260
energy, it's really nice to hydrate yourself. And Liquid IV is a hydration multiplier. You know how
00:13:54.260
much I love it. Liquid IV's energy multiplier tastes great. Tastes just like their lemon-lime
00:13:59.980
flavor. That one's my favorite. You mix it in the water and you drink it. The energy multiplier gives
00:14:05.620
a stained energy boost with no crash. Premium matcha and green energy blend tastes delicious
00:14:11.480
and provides a lasting energy boost throughout the day. So you're not going to crash, right? The
00:14:16.500
fatigue-fighting boost that you would get from a couple of cups of coffee, you can get that
00:14:21.560
without the crash. It's really, really good. You know, I love Liquid IV because it's great if you
00:14:27.000
want to hydrate and you're an athlete. If you're not an athlete like me, maybe you just go out to the
00:14:31.460
cigar bar and have a couple too many Coca-Colas, maybe it's good to have Liquid IV there as well.
00:14:36.600
I just love it. I haven't slept in probably two weeks while I've been in Washington, D.C. Liquid
00:14:41.760
IV can give you that sustained energy without the crash. Get 25% off when you go to liquidiv.com
00:14:47.980
and use code Knowles at checkout. K-N-O-W-L-E-S. You know that I use Liquid IV. You know that I rely on it.
00:14:54.620
You should check it out too. 25% off anything you order on Liquid IV's website. Liquidiv.com.
00:15:01.500
Enter promo code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to save 25% and get better hydration and energy. Liquidiv.com,
00:15:07.600
promo code Knowles. Don't wait. Start fueling your adventures today. You're going to need that Liquid
00:15:13.800
IV energy boost when we're waiting up for the next three weeks to get the results from the Iowa
00:15:17.740
caucuses. So just to give you a sense, if you weren't waiting up all night, CNN has one of the
00:15:24.020
precinct captains on the phone. The precinct captain is also on the phone with the hotline
00:15:29.020
that had to spring up to try to report the vote tally after this weird app went down.
00:15:36.400
They tried to, I think, promote an app to report the results. The app, by all accounts, just like
00:15:43.880
doesn't work. So we've been recommended to call into the hotline and the hotline has not been
00:15:51.140
responsive. Have you gotten any explanation, Sean? Sean, have you gotten any explanation
00:16:01.440
No, I have not. No. I'm just waiting on hold and doing my best to report the results from
00:16:08.780
What are you hearing? I know you're listening to a conversation from the Iowa Democratic Party.
00:16:13.480
This is a real coincidence, Wolf. I just got off hold just now. So I've got to get off
00:16:27.260
All right. Go ahead and report the results. Can we listen in as you report them, Sean?
00:16:32.580
Okay. Hi. Hello? They hung up on me. They hung up on me. Okay. I've got to get back in
00:16:45.180
It's so frustrating indeed. Sean, we're going to stay in close touch.
00:16:49.240
She hung up. They hung up. He was waiting on the phone for an hour to try to report these
00:16:54.780
results. And they hung up and we got to hear it on national television. This was the most
00:17:00.100
honest and news-breaking broadcast I've ever seen on CNN. So kudos to them.
00:17:05.280
This is a big deal for Iowa because Iowa is the first in the nation state to start choosing
00:17:12.500
these presidential candidates. It's hard to imagine that they keep that after this year.
00:17:16.560
This was just such a bungle. And it very well might be incompetence. However, because the Democratic
00:17:23.780
Party has this long record of corruption, the Democratic Party has this long record of ignoring
00:17:30.080
the will of their own voters and having party elites choose the nominee because the Democratic
00:17:34.480
Party has a very recent history of rigging the election in favor of Hillary Clinton instead of
00:17:41.340
Bernie Sanders. This thing looks crooked, whether it is or not. Bernie Sanders was going into Iowa at the
00:17:49.080
top of the heap. In many ways, the Democratic Party has been refashioned in the mold of Bernie Sanders.
00:17:56.000
And the voters have been pulling for him in many of these early states. He's got a huge lead in New
00:18:00.200
Hampshire. And the fact that the tally went down, that nobody knows what's going on, the fact that
00:18:07.680
there are some reports of financial relationships between Biden and Buttigieg and the app company,
00:18:12.540
it just stinks to high heaven. And if you thought that the Bernie bros were incensed before and they
00:18:18.060
sensed corruption before, just wait until they move on to New Hampshire. Joe Biden, meanwhile,
00:18:22.820
is completely falling apart, even if the Iowa vote doesn't end his candidacy. And there's a lot of
00:18:30.500
evidence that the Biden team thought that they were going to do very poorly in Iowa. They're trying to
00:18:35.240
tamp down expectations all day. In New Hampshire, they might fall apart. Joe Biden just did an interview
00:18:40.960
with Savannah Guthrie on NBC. And even NBC, even the mainstream media, even Savannah Guthrie,
00:18:48.720
pushed Joe Biden to answer any questions about his son Hunter and the clearly corrupt relationship
00:18:56.320
between Hunter and the Ukraine and possibly the corrupt relationship between Joe Biden and Ukraine.
00:19:01.260
Joe Biden not only refuses to answer, he snaps at the host.
00:19:05.500
Has it occurred to you that there's a certain irony here that here the president is accused of and is
00:19:10.000
acknowledged wanting to get information about your son Hunter and his dealings with Ukraine.
00:19:15.520
And this process of impeachment has ensured that everyone knows about Hunter's dealings with Ukraine.
00:19:21.040
That's a good thing. And no one's found anything wrong with his dealings with Ukraine,
00:19:24.640
except they say it sets a bad image. Well, do you agree that it sets a bad image?
00:19:28.720
And my son said that. Do you think it was wrong for him
00:19:31.520
to take that position knowing that it was really because that company wanted access to you?
00:19:37.920
Well, that's not true. You're saying things you do not know what you're talking about. No one said
00:19:42.320
that. Who said that? Who said that? Don't you think that it's just one of those things where
00:19:47.600
people think, well, that seems kind of sleazy? Why would he have that job if not for his who his
00:19:53.760
father was? Because he's a very bright guy. I guess the question I'm kind of asking is,
00:19:58.400
was it right? His appearance. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he said he regretted having done it.
00:20:02.880
Yeah. Speak for himself. He's a grown man. You're going to predict a win tomorrow night?
00:20:08.880
I don't predict wins because I'm superstitious, but I predict we'll do very well.
00:20:13.040
You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know. You don't know that there was a
00:20:17.040
crooked relationship between Hunter and Ukraine. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Hunter Biden is a degenerate
00:20:25.280
who got kicked out of the Navy for doing drugs, who has destroyed his personal life, who gets in
0.98
00:20:32.960
bar fights, who drunk drives everywhere, who has basically no professional credential. And he was
00:20:38.060
being paid a million dollars a year to sit on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while his daddy
00:20:44.460
was the vice president of the United States and the point man on Ukraine. Hunter Biden was being
00:20:51.700
paid about three times or more than three times what board members of Exxon Mobil get paid to sit
00:20:58.960
on the board of this crooked company. The company is so crooked that just before Hunter Biden was invited
00:21:04.060
to join the board, the government of the United Kingdom froze their assets because they suspected such
00:21:12.240
corruption. There are many reasons to ask this question. Joe Biden needs to give an answer. He would do
00:21:19.760
much better to just admit that it was wrong and move on. You know, back when the media were backing
00:21:23.700
Joe Biden, back when the establishment press was behind his candidacy, then it made sense for Joe
00:21:29.520
Biden to ignore these questions and to obfuscate and to try to distract people. But now the media have
00:21:37.260
turned on him. The media have turned on him because he's an extraordinarily weak candidate whose eyeballs
00:21:42.380
explode on debate stages and whose teeth fall out of his mouth and who starts talking about corn pop and
00:21:47.340
kids rubbing his legs and who can't finish an English sentence. I hate to put it that bluntly, but that's
00:21:54.240
where it is. He's simply passed his sell by date. And so the media have turned on him. The party elites
00:21:58.720
have turned on him. I was speaking with Senator Ted Cruz on our show Verdict the other night, and he said
00:22:03.780
that one of his biggest takeaways from the impeachment trial was how the Democratic Party elites had given
00:22:08.460
up on Joe Biden. That's why the House Democrats threw him under the bus during impeachment is because they
00:22:13.440
just felt Biden didn't have it anymore. So everybody's turned on him. They don't think he's got what it
00:22:18.900
takes to win. Now he's got to get aggressive. Now he's got to confront these problems head on. He's not
00:22:24.220
going to have a media apparatus that's carrying water for him anymore. The current strategy for the Biden
00:22:29.860
campaign is to lose slowly. It's just to lose as slowly as you can and then hope that somehow you
00:22:35.540
haven't lost enough that you lose the nomination. It's kind of the Romney strategy in 2012. It's just
00:22:42.840
weak sauce, and it's not going to last very long, especially when you've got a highly motivated base
00:22:48.320
for Bernie Sanders. They're still doing everything they can to steal this from Bernie.
00:22:55.600
Not just Mayor Cheat, not just old Joe Biden, not just the Democratic establishment, but even the
00:23:03.020
press. There was a poll that came out just before the Iowa caucuses, Des Moines Register poll. This was
00:23:08.580
the Des Moines Register final poll before the Iowa caucuses, and they wouldn't release it. Why wouldn't
00:23:16.380
they release the numbers? We finally got them. The numbers finally leaked. The numbers were Joe Biden
00:23:22.920
down all the way at 13 percent, Mayor Cheat Buttigieg 16 percent, Elizabeth Warren 18 percent, and Bernie
00:23:30.860
Sanders in the lead at 22 percent. They didn't like that. They didn't like that poll going into the Iowa
00:23:37.900
caucuses. This poll was conducted with CNN and Seltzer and Company. Seltzer and Company was the
00:23:43.560
pollster in charge here. According to FiveThirtyEight, according to really top pollsters, they had an A-plus
00:23:49.580
rating, okay? This was no minor polling company. Now, the excuse was that some respondent to the poll
00:23:55.980
didn't see one of the names, and so better to just get rid of the poll. Again, after all these
00:24:03.060
coincidences, it's really hard to believe that, and even if I can believe that because I do think
00:24:08.160
that the Democratic Party leadership is incompetent, it's going to be very hard for the supporters of
00:24:13.300
Bernie Sanders to believe that, whoops, they made a mistake that hurt Bernie. Whoops, they made another
00:24:17.720
mistake that hurt Bernie. Whoopsie-daisy, whoopsie-daisy. Oh, yeah, and all of 2016, that was a big mistake
00:24:23.320
that hurt Bernie. They're just not going to believe it, and if they keep this up, if they don't give Bernie
00:24:29.460
his due, you're going to see a fight at the Democratic National Convention, the likes of
00:24:35.040
which we haven't seen probably since the 1960s. We've got so much more to get to, including the
00:24:41.340
shifting gears from the Democrats over to the right wing. Really, really sad news from the peerless
00:24:47.560
Rush Limbaugh. We will get to that in a second. We will get to why the left just loves humanity and
00:24:54.920
hates humans, and we will get to one little bit of hope from a Senate Democrat, but first,
00:25:02.180
I'm going to thank our friends over at ZipRecruiter. Cafe Altura's COO, Dylan Miskiewicz,
00:25:09.900
experienced how challenging hiring can be after unsuccessfully searching for a director of coffee
00:25:15.340
for his organic coffee company. Over the past two weeks, I could have probably taken the job of
00:25:19.840
director of coffee, but Dylan didn't call me. Then Dylan switched to ZipRecruiter and saw an
00:25:25.660
immediate difference. You can, too, by signing up for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles,
00:25:31.700
K-N-A-W-L-E-S. ZipRecruiter does not depend on candidates finding you. That's what a lot of other
00:25:36.260
hiring apps and websites do. It's like throwing spaghetti at the wall. That's not ZipRecruiter.
00:25:42.900
ZipRecruiter finds the candidates for you. Its technology identifies people with the right experience
00:25:47.140
and invites them to apply to your job. You just get qualified candidates faster.
00:25:53.220
We've tried to hire people in LA. It can be very, very difficult. ZipRecruiter makes it so much
00:25:59.120
easier. They go out and do the work for you. ZipRecruiter is simply the smartest way to hire.
1.00
00:26:03.340
See why ZipRecruiter is effective for businesses of all sizes. Try ZipRecruiter for free at our web
00:26:09.280
address, ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S. That is ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles.
00:26:17.140
Moving on from chaos in Iowa to really, really sad news from the golden EIB microphone and the
00:26:25.880
peerless Rush Limbaugh, who has talent on loan from God and does his job with half his brain tied behind
00:26:31.360
his back. Rush Limbaugh announced yesterday on his show that he has been diagnosed with advanced lung
00:26:39.660
cancer. This news was so big that, you know, over the past two weeks that we've been working all kind
00:26:45.160
of crazy hours and I've been up in the middle of the night recording the show with Senator Cruz and
00:26:49.240
working and doing this show during the day. And so I try to get any bit of sleep I can. I was getting
00:26:53.780
an hour of sleep yesterday. I had just laid down and sweet little Elisa wakes me up because this news
00:26:59.780
was so shocking. And the news was the great Rush Limbaugh has this very, very serious illness.
00:27:06.580
Everybody's praying for Rush. Rush is praying for Rush. And we'll get to actually the significance of
00:27:14.820
that in a second. I want to get to the reaction first. CNN tweets out, CNN Breaking News tweets out,
00:27:23.660
quote, Rush Limbaugh, the most prominent political radio host in the U.S., says he's been diagnosed with
00:27:29.080
an advanced stage of lung cancer. Here are just a handful of replies. And these are not the worst
00:27:34.920
replies. These are not a few fringy replies. This is indicative of most of the replies to that tweet
00:27:41.200
from random Twitter accounts. Quote, who knew racism was a carcinogen? Hell has his seat warmed up.
00:27:50.980
Oh, karma is good. Love this. He had it coming. I'd tell him thoughts and prayers, but Rush has been
00:27:57.000
rendered deaf by years of opiate abuse, rotting from the inside, as many have suspected.
00:28:04.200
Wasn't even just random accounts that were spewing this bile at Rush. Reza Aslan, a CNN contributor,
00:28:11.280
sometimes CNN contributor, tweeted out, ask yourself this simple question. Is the world a better place
00:28:16.000
or a worse place with Rush Limbaugh in it? Tariq Nasheed, who's another blue checkmark leftist on
00:28:20.880
Twitter, tweeted out a gif of a guy dancing in celebration because Rush Limbaugh was diagnosed
00:28:28.100
with cancer. Not one of these people has ever listened to Rush's show. No one. They've listened
00:28:35.360
to one or two minutes that were taken out of context and posted on left-wing hate sites like
00:28:41.600
Media Matters, but they've never listened to the show. Not a single one of them. Even what they're
00:28:46.080
saying is incoherent. Who knew racism was a carcinogen? When has Rush Limbaugh ever said
00:28:52.280
anything racist? Actually, on the Rush Limbaugh program, the only other guy that anybody knows of
00:28:58.120
is Bo Snurdley, his producer, who's black. Not a lot of evidence that he's a racist. Hell has his
00:29:03.840
seat warmed up. This from people who very likely don't believe in heaven or hell. Oh, karma is good.
00:29:08.400
Love this. He had it coming. He had it. Why did he have it coming? Because he said hateful things
00:29:12.560
according to you. Well, did he say anything as hateful as that? He had it coming. I'd tell him
00:29:18.120
thoughts and prayers, but Rush has been rendered deaf by years of opiate abuse. So making fun of a
00:29:22.720
guy for being deaf, he actually does have hearing difficulty as a cochlear implant. And because he
00:29:27.580
did, he did suffer from opiate abuse. He was addicted to opiates. And yet these are people who
00:29:33.000
would accuse you of ableism if you ever made a comment about somebody who had a disability like Rush,
00:29:38.640
who would accuse you of being a monster if you mocked somebody for struggling with drug addiction.
00:29:46.080
And yet they do both. They do both to Rush. Rotting from the inside, as many have suspected.
00:29:51.360
Who's really rotting from the inside? Probably the people who are sending out those tweets.
00:29:57.360
None of them has ever listened to Rush. That's why they can say these things. But why does the left
00:30:01.580
hate Rush? They hate him in particular. We will examine why. And we'll examine a really hopeful
00:30:08.740
note from Rush in his masterful statement on the diagnosis. First, it feels like we're halfway
00:30:15.400
through 2020. It feels sort of like we're three quarters of the way through 2020. But the truth is,
00:30:20.260
we have not even gotten started. The election is just heating up. And because we know that you need
00:30:26.660
to stay up to date, we're giving you 20% off all new memberships. That is 20% off all new memberships
00:30:32.060
when using promo code DW2020. Members get our articles ad-free. Access to all of our live
00:30:38.240
broadcasts and show library. The full three hours of the Ben Shapiro show. Select bonus content. Access
00:30:43.540
to the mailbag. And now our new all-access tier gets you into live online Q&A discussions like the one
00:30:49.820
that we are hosting tonight after Backstage State of the Union. We will be streaming at 8.30 p.m.
00:30:56.100
Eastern, 5.30 Pacific. We will bring you President Trump's speech live with our analysis and answer
00:31:01.500
all of your questions in an exclusive online Q&A over at dailywire.com slash discussions. Again,
00:31:07.140
that's promo code DW2020 for 20% off. Join today and stay informed on all things 2020. Head on over
00:31:13.640
to dailywire.com. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:31:26.100
Why does the left hate Rush Limbaugh so much? There's a game called Cards Against Humanity. It's a very
00:31:35.360
stupid game that millennials pretend is kind of funny, but it's not even really a game. It's just
1.00
00:31:41.560
there are sort of grotesque things written on cards, which are kind of funny or amusing the first one or
00:31:47.320
two times that you read them. But then they're not really funny afterward because we've all heard the
00:31:51.260
jokes and they're kind of just non sequiturs. So anyway, one of the grotesqueries on the cards
00:31:55.880
is Rush Limbaugh's soft profanity body. And it's kind of like Mad Libs, but for millennials who don't
00:32:07.640
know how to play poker. And Rush gets singled out, even in that. Rush gets singled out all the time.
00:32:15.380
They don't really go after the other radio guys or the other podcasters. It's just Rush. And that's
00:32:22.040
because Rush is the king. The left hates Rush because he's effective. He invented the whole
00:32:29.580
genre of talk radio. He's so good at it. He was the first conservative to beat the mainstream media.
00:32:37.780
He did it by inventing a new medium. He did it by being funny. He's just very entertaining.
00:32:44.440
And he did it by telling the truth. He is by far the most insightful political analyst on radio.
00:32:54.160
I'm friends with some of the other ones and they're great too. But Rush is number one. There is no number
00:32:59.100
two. And they hated him for it. They hated him for getting around the mainstream media. They hated
00:33:05.840
him for being effective. If he weren't effective, they wouldn't waste their time on him. Now, lots of
00:33:12.580
people are wishing ill on Rush. On the left, right, and a little bit of these random Twitter people,
00:33:18.560
but even some prominent leftists. Many conservatives are insisting that he'll beat this. They're saying,
00:33:25.100
you'll beat this Rush. Don't you worry. You'll recover. You'll be back in shape in no time.
00:33:29.940
I hope so. I don't know that. I'm not sure that he'll beat it forever. I mean, everybody dies
00:33:38.060
eventually. We're praying for him. We hope that he'll beat it. But no one here gets out alive. I
00:33:43.880
don't think the thing to focus on is even whether Rush can prolong his career two years or five years
00:33:49.940
or 10 years. I think the thing to focus on is that Rush has already accomplished in his life more than
00:33:55.520
virtually anybody, right? Other than a handful of people throughout history, he's accomplished
00:33:59.420
a lot more. And the thing to focus on is what he talked about in his statement announcing this. Rush,
00:34:07.020
fortunately, has a long view of life, not merely confined to the 70 or 80 years that we get while
00:34:12.780
we're here, but the longer view, the eternity view. He said he doesn't talk about it much,
00:34:18.700
but he did mention it in his announcement. He mentioned his relationship with God.
00:34:23.120
I've had so much support from family and friends during this that it's been tremendous. And I told
00:34:34.660
the staff today that I have a deeply personal relationship with God that I do not proselytize
00:34:42.860
about. But I do. And I have been working that relationship tremendously, which I do regularly
00:34:55.100
anyway, but I've been focused on it intensely for the past couple of weeks.
00:35:00.440
That's a beautiful statement. Life is a preparation for death. Rush seems to take that seriously.
00:35:09.340
People who are religious, I can speak as a Catholic, we take that seriously. Life is a
00:35:15.720
preparation for death. How long do you get on earth? If you're lucky, 70, 80 years?
00:35:20.500
By the scale of eternity, that's nothing. That's the blink of an eye.
00:35:26.500
Obviously, we should pray for Rush. I hope he's around for another 20 or 30 years. The guy is so
00:35:32.880
We don't need to be quite as worried about Rush. We should be far more worried about the people
00:35:39.320
wishing ill upon him. I don't mean that in some kind of cliche way or sentimentally or though these
00:35:45.220
people have problems. Imagine how twisted you've got to be inside. How tense your guts have to be.
00:35:54.620
How perverse your soul has to be to say the kind of things that Reza Aslan or Tariq Nishid or any of
00:36:01.840
those Twitter accounts said about another human being wishing death upon somebody, wishing suffering,
00:36:06.960
celebrating somebody's cancer diagnosis. You got to be so messed up inside. Your life has got to be
00:36:11.940
in misery. And if you take the long view of life, then it doesn't look like it's going to get any
00:36:16.540
better once we've shuffled off this mortal coil, does it? Rush could use our prayers. The people
00:36:22.400
cheering on Rush's illness could use our prayers more. Rush actually in the same broadcast talked
00:36:28.700
about the other side of this, not just the sorrow or the grief or the anger or the resentment. He
00:36:35.800
talked about joy. He mentioned it on his show. He mentioned an article that just came out by left
00:36:41.040
wing reporter Ryan Lizza. And the cancer diagnosis, the reaction to his cancer diagnosis on the left
00:36:48.540
really drives this point home. The article by Ryan Lizetz in Politico said the unexpected joy
00:36:55.880
at a Trump rally in Iowa. On the cusp of beating two articles of impeachment, the president's fans
00:37:02.480
were in a celebratory mood. Meanwhile, somewhere there was a democratic race taking place.
00:37:08.500
I had not been to a Trump rally since the 2016 campaign. And the first thing I noticed Thursday
00:37:13.300
night when Donald Trump and Mike Pence spoke at Drake University in Des Moines was how much more
00:37:17.840
joyous the event was for his supporters than what I remember from four years ago. In 2016, perhaps
00:37:23.740
because Republicans were out of power and Trump was running purely against the system, his crowds
00:37:28.000
often had an undertone of anger that bordered on menacing. But with Trump in power presiding over peace
00:37:32.960
and prosperity on the cusp of beating two articles of impeachment and dominating the news when it should
00:37:37.520
be the Democratic candidates moment to shine, his fans seemed in a celebratory mood. He is surprised
00:37:46.180
by the joy at the Trump rally. Now, he says that the Trump rallies are totally different now than they
00:37:51.640
were in 2016. I don't think they are. I think maybe Ryan Lizza and some leftists are looking at it
00:37:59.340
differently now than in 2016. In 2016, they said it was menacing, terrifying, horrifying. Oh, no,
00:38:06.360
a Republican might be elected president, right? It's terrible because we were told in 2016 that if Trump
00:38:10.860
got elected president, the sky would fall. I mean, literally, the sky would fall because global
00:38:15.240
warming would kill us all. We would have an economic collapse. We'd start World War III. We'd be at war
00:38:21.180
with North Korea. We'd have Russia would take over our country. I mean, all this kind of craziness.
0.98
00:38:27.000
And then Trump got elected. And what, three, four years later, everything's great. Everything's great.
00:38:32.800
It's awesome. The economy is good. We've got peace abroad. They told us that Trump had started World
00:38:38.240
War III. Well, I guess we won World War III when we took out the top terrorists in the world,
00:38:42.640
the leader of ISIS, the top Iranian terrorist, another leader of ISIS just this past week. I mean,
00:38:48.020
it's just, things are good. And so Ryan Lizza now can look at the Trump rally without this
00:38:55.900
hysterical fear that the left was ginning up in 2016. And he says, oh, look, those guys are happy.
00:39:02.660
Those guys are joyful, even. Huh. I haven't seen that before because the left doesn't really seem to have
00:39:08.180
a lot of joy. They seem to be pretty bitter, pretty angry, pretty crooked in Iowa.
00:39:18.080
Joy is an important thing in politics. C.S. Lewis defined joy as not a feeling or an emotion like
00:39:24.420
happiness. Happiness is fleeting, right? You're not going to be happy forever. But joy is something
00:39:28.640
greater and deeper and more enduring. It's sort of like an unanswered question. The pursuit of that
00:39:35.340
would be would be similar to joy. And I think conservatives just tend to have that in politics
00:39:40.920
a lot more. Part of that is because we don't expect politics to solve all of our problems. We
00:39:45.400
actually know that politics won't solve all of our problems. We don't think that you can perfect
00:39:49.000
human nature. We recognize humans are all broken and flawed and that's just the way it is. And we're
00:39:54.220
going to we're going to try to fit our politics to reality rather than try to perfect human nature
00:40:00.280
because those utopian schemes to perfect human nature have led to some of the worst atrocities
00:40:04.240
in history. There's a feeling of gratitude. Hey, look, we were on the brink. We almost had
00:40:09.200
President Hillary. Oh, heaven forfend. And now we don't. And we got this kind of funny guy in the
00:40:13.260
Oval Office and he tweets weird stuff sometimes and that's kind of entertaining. And also the economy's
00:40:18.260
great and everything seems to be fine. That's when you approach politics from gratitude. That's when
00:40:24.960
you approach politics from levity. You know, Chesterton said that the angels can fly because they can take
00:40:29.200
themselves lightly. The left can't take itself lightly. The left can't even turn down the
00:40:35.440
partisan rancor for five seconds when a guy that they don't like listening to gets diagnosed with
00:40:42.780
cancer. They have to celebrate that. For what? For what? Does that make you a better person? Does
00:40:49.740
that make you flourish more? Does that make you thrive? Does that make you happy? I don't think so. I don't
00:40:53.960
think so. And that joy that Ryan Lizza and some left-wingers are seeing at Trump rallies, maybe
00:40:59.280
that's an evidence that something has gone wrong in their own worldview. Maybe there's something
00:41:05.140
lacking in their own political ideology. Maybe rather than looking down on those people at Trump
00:41:10.300
rallies, like the CNN anchors the other day who laughed at them, mocked them, those idiots,
1.00
00:41:14.280
those rubes, they can't spell, they can't read maps. Rather than that, maybe they ought to try to learn
1.00
00:41:20.120
a thing or two from the guys at the Trump rallies because the guys at the Trump rallies, on the one
00:41:25.120
hand, seem to know how to win elections a little bit better than the left-wingers. And they seem to
00:41:30.140
know how to live life a little more joyfully, more gratifyingly. Speaking of the left learning from the
00:41:35.500
right, there is a glimmer of hope from Senate Democrats. Just one, actually. Senate Democrat,
00:41:41.660
Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin, West Virginia, obviously comes from a conservative constituency.
00:41:46.380
Joe Manchin is considering voting against the impeachment and removal of President Trump.
00:41:53.840
He would be the lone Democrat to do it. Here's why. He said, quote,
00:41:57.040
Never before in the history of our republic has there been a purely partisan impeachment vote of
00:42:01.380
a president. Totally true. Removing this president at this time would not only further divide our deeply
00:42:07.860
divided nation, but also further poison our already toxic political atmosphere. I see no path to the 67
1.00
00:42:14.220
votes that would be required to remove President Trump. However, I do believe a bipartisan majority
00:42:20.180
of this body would vote to censure President Trump. In other words, pass a resolution saying he's a no
00:42:25.440
good bad boy, but not remove him from office. A censure, he says, would allow this body to unite across
00:42:31.520
party lines. Joe Manchin doesn't want to vote to remove the president because he's afraid it's going
00:42:36.400
to cost him his re-election in West Virginia. He is right, though. This is the first purely partisan
00:42:42.620
impeachment we've ever had. Purely partisan impeachments are a very bad idea. It's not
00:42:49.460
designed to work that way. The president is not supposed to be removed just because another party
00:42:53.700
won another branch of government. It's supposed to be bipartisan. That's why it requires 67 votes in
00:42:58.440
the Senate to do it. That's why we've never had a partisan impeachment before. I agree with Manchin
00:43:04.480
that if Nancy Pelosi, instead of pushing for impeachment, had pushed for censure just to say that
00:43:08.920
Trump is a no good guy, they could have gotten some Republican votes. Definitely in the House,
00:43:13.700
maybe in the Senate, too. They're not going to do that, though. They're going to vote now on whether
00:43:18.560
to acquit the president or whether to remove him from office. And Joe Manchin has to make a choice.
00:43:26.100
If he had the political courage to vote against the removal of the president, and maybe if he convinced
00:43:32.100
one or two of his Senate colleagues from more conservative states, Kyrsten Sinema or maybe Doug
00:43:36.940
Jones, Democrats in conservative states, you might have a chance of kind of bridging that divide and
00:43:43.540
turning down the partisan rancor. It's probably unlikely, but Joe Manchin could do a lot. So he
00:43:50.480
should take his own advice and try to do it. Before we go, I have to get to this. This story is just too
00:43:56.620
good not to get to. There are groups of white women, white liberal women, who are paying $2,500
1.00
00:44:07.120
to confront their own racism and privilege by inviting two activists, Regina Jackson and Syrah
00:44:16.680
Rao. Syrah Rao in particular has expressed absolute contempt for white people on Twitter. They're inviting
1.00
00:44:23.540
these two activists to come over to these dinner parties called Race to Dinner and yell at them for
1.00
00:44:28.880
being racist and bigoted. $2,500. I would do it for $2,000. If these women want to invite me over to
1.00
00:44:37.240
their homes for me to call them bigots, I would gladly do that. And I would charge significantly less
00:44:44.100
than Jackson and Rao. I hope they do that. Obviously, this is insane. This is a silly thing. I mean,
00:44:52.380
talk about the height of privilege, too. If the whole point of this dinner is so that you can
00:44:57.020
confront your privilege, then gathering all your wealthy white women friends and paying a ton of
1.00
00:45:02.080
money to basically be entertained, to have a show put on at dinner is probably not the best way
00:45:07.860
to get rid of your privilege. But beyond just making fun of these women, I want to point out that it
0.94
00:45:13.160
expresses a natural urge, a natural longing. It is a religious longing, actually, because these women
00:45:20.320
are racist in some way. I'm using racist in the way that it's used colloquially today, which is
00:45:26.000
bad. Racist has become a synonym for bad or evil or wicked. That's why people will call Rush Limbaugh
00:45:32.580
a racist. I don't think he's ever made a racially bigoted comment in his life. But what they're really
00:45:36.360
saying is, you're bad. You're immoral. I don't like you. Or they do it all the time to conservatives
1.00
00:45:41.340
who have no evidence whatsoever of any kind of racial hatred. But they'll say, you're racist
00:45:45.280
as a synonym for bad. And these women are bad because no one's good but God, because we all recognize
1.00
00:45:50.240
that we sin and all fall short of the glory of God all the time, right? That's it. What they're
00:45:54.640
acknowledging with these dinners is original sin. And they're trying to gussy it up and make it seem
00:45:59.520
like it's some novel concept that progressives discovered. No, we've always known about original
00:46:03.560
sin. We've always known the human nature is broken. Actually, that's the insight that
00:46:07.360
conservatives have that liberals just can't seem to grasp or not grasp fully. You know,
00:46:14.020
in traditional Catholic practices, what you would do is instead of paying a couple of random
00:46:19.500
huckster activists to come over to your home for almost three grand and yell at you, you would show
00:46:25.020
up to church and strike your breast and say, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. My fault,
0.86
00:46:31.220
my fault, my most grievous fault. You would go to confession. If you were in the Da Vinci Code,
00:46:35.500
you'd smack yourself on the back with the discipline, right? You recognize that you have
00:46:40.760
sinned and you need to do some penance for that sin. This is true across all religions,
00:46:45.480
including the religion of liberalism, including the religion of leftism. Everybody's got to serve
00:46:50.860
somebody, okay? The lie that secularism or liberalism is somehow irreligious or not religious,
00:46:58.140
it's just not true. It's simply a different religion. And so on Rush Limbaugh's point about
00:47:05.320
joy, Ryan Liz's point about joy, right? On how we confront questions of life and death and grief
00:47:10.860
and sadness and questions of how we organize ourselves and questions of running the damned
0.97
00:47:15.820
Iowa caucus, you're going to have a worldview. The question is what worldview are you going to have?
0.95
00:47:23.740
Are you going to have one of transparency, of dealing with reality, of taking the long view,
00:47:30.000
of recognizing your own faults and taking responsibility for them? Or are you going to
00:47:34.700
blame it on somebody else? Are you going to force your problems on somebody else? Are you
00:47:38.320
going to allow yourself to rot from the inside? Those are the questions. That's what's being
00:47:43.400
debated right now. And we're using political language to do it. But really, as Cardinal Manning said,
00:47:47.780
at bottom, all human conflict is theological. They're debating that out. And if those debates go as well
00:47:53.940
as the Iowa caucuses, I don't think that they're going to come to any saving conclusions anytime
00:47:59.240
soon. But we can hope. Let's see. I'll be back tonight on Verdict with Ted Cruz, the number one
00:48:05.220
podcast for a full week in the United States. And I'll be back here on my show tomorrow. I'm Michael
00:48:12.320
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
00:48:23.380
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends
00:48:27.780
to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
00:48:33.780
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,
00:48:38.420
The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies.
00:48:44.380
Director, Mike Joyner. Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.
00:48:50.800
Supervising Producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling. Technical Producer, Austin Stevens.
00:48:56.560
Assistant Director, Pavel Widowski. Editor and Associate Producer, Danny D'Amico. Audio Mixer,
00:49:02.840
Robin Fenderson. Hair and Makeup, Jesua Olvera. Production Assistants, McKenna Waters and
00:49:08.300
Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
00:49:13.480
If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the
00:49:17.960
insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to The Ben Shapiro Show. We'll get a whole lot