The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 498 - Bloomberg Blew It

00:00:00.000 Bloomberg smacked Bernie, Warren scalped Bloomberg, and Joe Biden wrecked himself.

00:00:06.460 We will examine the highlights from the wildest 2020 Democratic debate so far,

00:00:11.280 and specifically how Mike Bloomberg fundamentally misunderstands the presidency.

00:00:16.280 Then, AOC wants billionaires to disappear, and the moralists of modernity at Slate Magazine

00:00:21.960 can't quite explain why it's wrong to sleep with your brother.

00:00:25.960 All that and more, I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Oh boy, is there a lot to get to. Mike Bloomberg finally makes the Democratic debates interesting.

00:00:41.400 Sparks flew. This was a brutal, brutal debate. We saw firsthand, because of this debate,

00:00:49.540 pretty much everything that's wrong with modernity. I mean, it was the, it was the most

00:00:53.600 broad overview of everything that's gone wrong with the Democrats, with liberalism, with leftism,

00:00:59.200 with modernity. We'll get to all that in a second. First, got to thank our friends over at Fairway

00:01:03.960 Meat Market. Oh, how I love Fairway Meat Market. Fairway is a family-owned grocery chain that has

00:01:11.080 been in business since 1938. Fairway's premium beef and all-natural pork is raised by family farmers

00:01:17.620 and hand-cut by a highly experienced team of Fairway butchers, from ribs to ribeyes, pork chops,

00:01:23.520 to beef tenderloin, all at fairwaymeatmarket.com. I love Fairway. I discovered them. I was coming back

00:01:29.960 from a long trip, and they had sent me all of this meat, and that meat is so, so good. I love it.

00:01:36.460 These guys are the real deal, and you, you're going to love them too. How would you like to get a deal

00:01:42.520 on Fairway's Heartland Package? This one I would highly recommend personally. That includes eight

00:01:48.700 eight-ounce all-natural boneless pork chops, six eight-ounce USDA choice ribeye steaks, one mouth-watering

00:01:55.420 side dish, which could be loaded baked potato, gourmet cheesy corn, or brisket baked beans.

00:02:01.440 This week, my listeners can get the Heartland Package valued at $230 for just $99.99. Go do it. Do not

00:02:09.220 miss out on this. Plus, you get free shipping when you enter Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S at checkout.

00:02:13.480 That's more than 50% off the best meat in America, plus free shipping. That's fairwaymeatmarket.com,

00:02:19.440 promo code Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, and I would personally recommend look for the Heartland Package.

00:02:25.120 All right. What a crazy debate. Everybody came out of this debate looking terrible. The radicals,

00:02:34.340 the liberals, the billionaires, the everybody looked terrible, but especially, especially Mike

00:02:40.160 Bloomberg. And this was to be expected. This started right out the door of the debate.

00:02:46.400 Mike Bloomberg shows up. Everybody is going after him and Bloomberg simply wasn't prepared. So Warren

00:02:52.400 kicked it all off by attempting, she later completed this, but she attempted to just absolutely end

00:02:58.720 Bloomberg's campaign before it began.

00:03:00.300 I'd like to talk about who we're running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads 0.99

00:03:06.740 and horse-faced lesbians. And no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor 0.99

00:03:12.180 Bloomberg. Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax

00:03:21.720 returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop and frisk.

00:03:29.740 All right. Bloomberg's team completely blew this if they did not prepare him for this question. This

00:03:35.320 was obviously going to be a big question because it's very difficult to attack Mike Bloomberg. He's

00:03:40.800 had an extremely successful career. He's a Democrat, so he holds most of the politically correct

00:03:45.620 political positions. But because he runs any large enterprise, there are these NDAs and obviously there's

00:03:52.220 always HR issues. So they're going to try to portray Mike Bloomberg, who's a very good manager of

00:03:57.780 these enterprises as some kind of sexual predator. Because what? Because he made a joke 20 years ago 0.92

00:04:02.880 or something. Bloomberg should have seen that coming. His team didn't prep him. No surprise that

00:04:06.960 the geniuses who thought that a campaign strategy was putting Bloomberg's face on a meatball on social

00:04:12.400 media, that somehow they would botch debate prep. But what's so crazy about that moment is Bloomberg

00:04:20.400 could have seen it coming because it's the exact moment that happened to Trump in his debate

00:04:25.540 four years ago. And you remember that first debate, Trump comes out there, everyone's gunning for

00:04:30.840 Trump, and they tried to hit him on the same thing. They said, you've made mean jokes about women. And 1.00

00:04:35.980 Megyn Kelly was the moderator and she said, Mr. President, or he wasn't president then, said, Mr. Trump, 0.99

00:04:41.480 you've called women fat and ugly and terrible. And instead of doing what Mike Bloomberg did, which was 0.98

00:04:46.560 wilt and don't say anything, and then you say, I'm sorry, Trump leaned right into it.

00:04:51.600 You've called women. You don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. 1.00

00:04:58.780 Your Twitter account. Only Rosie O'Donnell. 1.00

00:05:02.980 No, it wasn't.

00:05:06.220 One of the most memorable lines in presidential debates, and I remember watching it in real time

00:05:12.880 in 2016 and thinking, oh man, this guy's really got something. This guy is not going to be pushed

00:05:18.860 around. This guy understands how to play the media. And Bloomberg blew it. Now, Bloomberg couldn't have

00:05:23.820 used the exact same line. He couldn't, they couldn't have said, you, Mike Bloomberg, you've called

00:05:28.200 women horse-faced lesbians. And then Bloomberg leans in and says, only Susie in accounting. Yeah, 1.00

00:05:34.080 right. That, that obviously isn't going to work, but he could have gotten aggressive.

00:05:38.460 Okay. If this is going to be the line of attack on brash New York billionaires, which is that they

00:05:42.560 make off color jokes, he could have leaned into it and gone on the attack and been even more brash and 0.98

00:05:47.300 said, you know, Elizabeth, you're one of the most notorious liars in the country. You lied about 0.99

00:05:51.720 your DNA for decades and took jobs away from native Americans. You lied about where your kids go to 0.98

00:05:56.160 school. You lied about being fired for being pregnant. So excuse me, if I don't take you 1.00

00:06:03.160 seriously, I'm, I shouldn't be surprised that you would lie about me too. If he just leaned in and made

00:06:08.360 it an attack, I think people would have stood up and loved him for it. You know, nobody wants this

00:06:14.300 awful lying, dishonest woman to Hector, some guy who's had a very successful career in business. 0.98

00:06:21.680 That doesn't look good to most Americans, but if she's going to be able to push him around, then she's 1.00

00:06:27.120 going to win the exchange, which is exactly what happened. On the issues, not the style necessarily,

00:06:33.940 but the issues, Bloomberg was actually pretty good. I mean, this was by far the best he did all night.

00:06:39.060 He got some pretty good zingers in at Bernie Sanders and Bernie was really going after him for

00:06:45.220 being a billionaire. And you remember Bernie Sanders used to go after the millionaires and

00:06:50.000 billionaires, but then Bernie made over a million dollars. So all of a sudden the millionaires were

00:06:54.640 okay. And it was only the billionaires. I mean, Bernie Sanders, a total fraud and Mike Bloomberg

00:06:59.680 called him out for it. He had one of the great lines of the night. He said, what a great country we live

00:07:04.280 in, that the most famous socialist in the country is a millionaire with three houses.

00:07:10.440 What a wonderful country we have. The best known socialists in the country happens to be a

00:07:15.620 millionaire with three houses. What'd I miss here? Well, you'll miss that I work in Washington,

00:07:21.480 house one. That's the first problem. Live in Burlington, house two. That's good. And like

00:07:25.700 thousands of other Vermonters, I do have a summer camp. Forgive me for that. Where is your home?

00:07:30.440 Which tax, which tax haven do you have your home? New York City. Thank you very much.

00:07:35.400 And I pay all my taxes. Oh my gosh. Absolutely a devastating response because

00:07:41.180 Bernie is an obvious fraud. Okay. He is a multimillionaire, right? He's got all these houses 0.98

00:07:48.200 and yet he's claims to be a man of the people and a socialist. This is a guy who's

00:07:52.360 hasn't done any productive work in his entire life. He was a vagrant who got kicked off of a commune.

00:08:00.140 Then he realized that his best chance at success was working in government. And then he did that

00:08:04.480 for the rest of his life. And then he whined and complained. He didn't even accomplish anything there

00:08:07.700 in, in government itself. So Bloomberg goes out, he goes, yeah, Bernie, you're a complete fraud and 0.98

00:08:13.660 you're a millionaire and you have multiple houses. And Bernie had no answer for that. Bernie said, 0.79

00:08:18.500 okay, well, yeah, I work in Washington. Uh, and Bloomberg, you got that New York, that dry just hits.

00:08:24.320 He goes, yeah, that's the first problem. He goes, and, and Bloomberg didn't have an answer or

00:08:28.800 Bernie rather didn't have an answer for his third home because it's a summer home.

00:08:33.100 He goes, well, I have a summer home. Like, you know, so many Americans do so many Americans have

00:08:37.460 summer homes. Well, it's news to me. I guess I got to become one of those so many Americans

00:08:42.620 because I sure would love a summer home. So he really gets that zing in there. And even then he

00:08:47.180 tries to deflect it by hitting Bloomberg on having a tax haven, but Bloomberg doesn't live in a tax haven.

00:08:51.860 He lives in New York and pays extremely high taxes. So that was a great line.

00:08:55.300 A speaking of taxes, there was a wonderful exchange where Bernie said, you know, the

00:09:00.620 billionaires pay lower taxes than the middle class, which is simply not true. But Bloomberg

00:09:06.960 actually got a great line of attack and he leans in and he says, Bernie, who writes the tax code?

00:09:13.760 Right. Bloomberg just runs a business. Bernie Sanders is a Senator. It's the, it's the politicians

00:09:20.120 who write the tax code. Right. So then Bernie tries to flip. He says the billionaires write that. I mean,

00:09:24.460 the politicians at the behest of the billionaires write the tax code. So Bernie's admitting that the

00:09:29.840 politicians are all bought off. But then the, the punchline was Bloomberg leans in there. He says,

00:09:35.660 Bernie, most billionaires are Democrats. And they are. It's true. I think of the 10 richest people in,

00:09:41.500 in the country, seven of them are Democrats. There are two billionaires in the democratic

00:09:46.760 presidential primary right now, Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. All the most famous billionaires we can

00:09:54.400 think of. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, right? They all are leaning left. Mike Bloomberg.

00:09:59.880 They all lean left. They're virtually all Democrats. So these were all great, really good hits. Then

00:10:06.040 Bloomberg moves on from those good zingers and shows the radicalism of the democratic party because

00:10:12.600 he says, look guys, we're not going to destroy capitalism. We're not going to all of a sudden

00:10:18.560 become communist. Communism doesn't work. And do you know what happened? When Bloomberg said

00:10:23.580 communism doesn't work, he got booed by the audience and by the other candidates.

00:10:29.940 I can't think of a ways that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get reelected than listening to

00:10:34.580 this conversation. It's ridiculous. We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that. 0.99

00:10:42.320 Other countries tried that. It was called communism and it just didn't work.

00:10:45.540 Oh, hold on a sec. You're going to go after communism now? Hold on. I don't know about that,

00:10:52.220 guys. You see Elizabeth Warren, it like pains her when he says communism just didn't work. She goes,

00:10:57.320 well, hold on. You look at Bernie. It looks like he's about to collapse. What do you mean communism

00:11:01.280 doesn't work? So it's a wild moment because five years ago, even five, five, six years ago,

00:11:09.580 if you had told me that a democratic debate would mention communism and an attack on communism would

00:11:16.180 get booed, I'd say, nah, that's crazy. That's too radical even for them. I mean, consider the fact

00:11:21.400 just in the Bloomberg questioning, the Democrats went wild for an attack over a sex joke,

00:11:29.860 but they booed an attack on communism. Liz Warren goes after Bloomberg because he made a joke about women 1.00

00:11:38.420 like once and wild applause. And then Bloomberg said, hey guys, I think communism is bad and

00:11:45.800 boos from the audience and from the other candidates. But Bloomberg was not deterred. He tripled down on

00:11:50.220 economic freedom. They were good issue points, but then he totally blew it in the end. We'll get to

00:11:55.800 that in a second. First, got to thank our friends over at Tecova's, Tecova's cowboy boots. They're

00:12:01.840 handmade. They have high quality full grain leathers by world-class boot makers, and they just look

00:12:08.300 great. They look really, really cool. Even a city slicker like me can wear Tecova's, and I know you

00:12:14.320 can too. They're just a really beautiful product. And my favorite part of it is they are built to be

00:12:19.600 comfortable right out of the box, all right? I'm not exactly wrangling cattle over here in the middle

00:12:24.440 of Los Angeles. Sometimes it kind of feels that way when you're sitting in LA traffic.

00:12:28.820 You don't need to break them in. They're just comfortable immediately. You can wear them to the

00:12:33.560 office. You can wear them at home. You can wear them on the town. They've got tons of timeless

00:12:37.500 styles. They're designed to be fashionable 50 years from now, just as fashionable as they are

00:12:42.780 today. And because Tecova's cuts out the middleman, they sell direct to you with a great price. Do what

00:12:47.060 I did. Get yourself a pair of Tecova's cowboy boots today at tecova's.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.

00:12:53.940 That is T-E-C-O-V-A-S dot com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, tecova's.com slash Knowles.

00:13:01.340 So Bloomberg triples down on this, right? He is not going to get rid of economic freedom. He's not

00:13:09.740 going to get rid of capitalism. He's asked at one point by a moderator. This is pretty amazing.

00:13:16.920 Do you think that you should have made all that money that you made? Because I love when people

00:13:22.280 feel they're entitled to everybody else's stuff. And that's somehow virtuous, that the vice of envy

00:13:27.320 is now somehow a virtue on the left. But that's the question that's asked. Do you think

00:13:31.900 you should have made all that money? And Bloomberg says, you're damn right, I should have.

00:13:36.700 Mayor Bloomberg, should you exist? I can't speak for all billionaires. All I know is I've been very

00:13:41.960 lucky, made a lot of money, and I'm giving it all away to make this country better. And a good chunk

00:13:46.680 of it goes to the Democratic Party as well. Is it too much? Have you earned too much money?

00:13:52.380 Has it been an obscene amount of money? Should you have earned that much money?

00:13:55.960 Yes. I worked very hard for it. And I'm giving it away.

00:14:02.300 Great answer. I love too. Bloomberg has to catch it. He's like, by the way, I am using a lot of my

00:14:07.520 money to bribe the Democratic Party. Don't forget, it's not just that I'm making it and stimulating

00:14:12.380 the economy and donating to charity. I'm also bribing your party. So, you know, that's okay. That's the

00:14:17.580 only reason I'm in the debate right now is because I made a $300,000 donation to the Democrats

00:14:21.760 right before I got in the race. So just want to let you know, I'm using my money wisely.

00:14:26.540 Obviously, a little, a little grift and cronyism going on here in the Democrats, but he makes a

00:14:33.020 very good point. He goes, I worked very hard and I'm giving all my money away. Think about how much

00:14:37.640 money Mike Bloomberg gives to charity. He's one of the most philanthropic men in the country.

00:14:42.900 How much money do you give to charity? How much money does Chuck Todd give to charity? How much

00:14:47.120 money do any of the Democrats on stage? Bernie Sanders, oh my God, I don't know that guy ever gave

00:14:51.320 to charity. It's a pretty, pretty low amount according to his tax returns. So I like that

00:14:56.640 he tripled down on that. I thought Bloomberg made some good issue points. His style was not

00:15:02.680 terribly effective. I got a kick out of it as a New Yorker, but wasn't very effective.

00:15:06.600 Overall, the debate was a loser for Bloomberg. It was a, it was a big loser. And the reason is he 0.99

00:15:14.660 didn't accomplish the one thing that he was supposed to accomplish at this debate. He didn't

00:15:20.540 connect with voters. He did. That's the, why else would he have shown up to this debate? He was

00:15:25.680 already buying the primaries. His, his numbers were surging, even though he had never appeared on a

00:15:30.500 stage, right? He was just buying a ton of airtime, spent like half a billion dollars or something.

00:15:36.980 Why show up and open yourself up to all of these attacks, which he got? The only reason to do it

00:15:41.380 is to connect with voters, to show you're not afraid, to show that you got something here.

00:15:47.720 He didn't do that. If anything, he distanced himself from voters. Nowhere is that clearer than in his

00:15:54.760 response to a challenge, one of these dumb political challenges. They say, are you going to release 0.97

00:15:58.940 your tax returns? Now, I don't think politicians are obligated to release their tax returns. And

00:16:05.320 actually in the post-Trump era, I don't know that they will be required to, but it's one of these old

00:16:09.700 lines and they especially use it against businessmen because the tax returns of politicians are very

00:16:14.180 easy because they don't work in the productive economy. Whereas the tax returns of businessmen are

00:16:18.880 very complicated. And so there's a lot to pick apart and use in attack ads. And Bloomberg says, look,

00:16:24.140 okay, I'll release my tax returns, but I'm a billionaire with businesses all around the world.

00:16:29.780 It's not so easy. But he gave an answer that seemed pretty condescending and a little offensive

00:16:36.680 to the regular old American voter.

00:16:38.520 Your campaign has said that you would eventually release your tax records when it comes to transparency,

00:16:44.520 but people are already voting now. Why should democratic voters have to wait?

00:16:48.260 It just takes us a long time. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I make a lot of money and we do

00:16:56.660 business all around the world and we are preparing it. The number of pages will probably be thousands

00:17:02.280 of pages. I can't go to TurboTax. I got to tell you, I actually really liked this line. I thought it

00:17:08.300 was pretty funny because it's such an obvious point. It's like, look, guys, I, I know you think that

00:17:15.000 releasing my taxes is like, I click print on my computer, but I'm Michael Bloomberg. Okay. I have

00:17:21.300 got a ton of business interests everywhere. This will be thousands of pages long. And yeah, you can't,

00:17:26.920 you can't go to TurboTax, right? You can't walk to H&R Block and have them prepare your taxes.

00:17:31.340 A very funny line, but it's, it seems a little sneering too, right? So it's funny, like for a standup

00:17:38.280 and it's funny if you have a connection to voters, it's fine. I think Trump could have gotten away with

00:17:44.220 that line because Trump has this connection to voters. You have the real sense that Trump really

00:17:48.720 likes his voters. He really likes his supporters. He really likes his countrymen, right? You don't

00:17:54.040 get that sense with Bloomberg. And so with Bloomberg, it just emphasizes, it underlines the, the major

00:18:01.760 weakness of his campaign, which is that he seems like this elitist who doesn't like people, who

00:18:05.740 doesn't care about people, who doesn't, doesn't want to be listening to their concerns. So I'm,

00:18:10.940 I can't go to TurboTax like you little people, like you peasants. I'm Michael Bloomberg. So he

00:18:16.600 took a line that could have been pretty funny and, and just blew it because of his attitude.

00:18:22.820 Then he blew it worst of all. This was the moment nobody is talking about this,

00:18:27.140 but I actually think it was the worst moment of the entire debate for Bloomberg. And I, I didn't see

00:18:33.660 anybody really mention it on Twitter. In his closing statement, Mike Bloomberg finally makes the case

00:18:40.480 for why you should elect him. And he revealed that he fundamentally misunderstands the American

00:18:47.440 presidency. He said his big case for why you should elect him is that the presidency is a

00:18:53.740 management job and he's a good manager. This is a management job and John Donald Trump's not a

00:19:01.960 manager. This is a job where you have to build teams. He doesn't have a team. So he goes and makes

00:19:06.960 decisions without knowing what's going on at the implications of what he does. We cannot run the

00:19:11.880 railroad this way. This is so wrong. This is so incorrect. The presidency is not a management job

00:19:21.800 primarily. Obviously there's a little bit of managing going on. I guess there's a little bit

00:19:25.720 of managing that goes on in most jobs, but the presidency is not primarily a management job.

00:19:31.180 And it just reveals why nobody really supports what Bloomberg thinks. Not the left, not the right,

00:19:38.640 probably not even the center. Mike Bloomberg is a neoliberal technocrat. That would be the precise

00:19:45.840 term for him. He looks at all the political problems of the world and he doesn't think of them in terms

00:19:50.900 of great ideas or philosophy or the theological basis of those ideas or what moves and stirs the human

00:19:57.880 soul. He thinks about them from the perspective of getting a little more efficiency out of the

00:20:03.960 market, of just putting a few experts in there. And if they're smart enough, if they got more gray 0.98

00:20:08.640 matter, like Bloomberg said the other day, then they'll be able to get a little more money out of

00:20:12.760 the economy and then everybody will go along because we've got this perfect technical vision

00:20:18.500 of the world. And that's not how the world works. But that's, that's how Mike Bloomberg's always

00:20:22.880 thought of politics. When Mike Bloomberg ran for mayor of New York, he said, we can't have

00:20:27.220 more than two terms for mayor. Then he becomes mayor. He says, all right, we're going to add a

00:20:30.600 third term. Why? Because I'm the expert. I'm Mike Bloomberg. I can do whatever I want. Rules don't

00:20:34.920 apply to me. Then he gets the third term and he takes away the third term for everybody else.

00:20:40.120 He finally gets booted out of power in New York. And do you know what his, the next job was that he

00:20:45.240 wanted? It wasn't president right away. He considered becoming mayor of London. There was a real push for

00:20:52.420 Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York to become the mayor of London. That's so weird,

00:20:56.340 right? He's not English. He didn't live in England. Why would he be, because to Mike Bloomberg

00:21:00.460 running these cities, it's all the same. It's all cookie cutter. You just have to get the right

00:21:04.720 technical systems in place and, you know, build teams and have, have good retreats and then

00:21:09.900 implement these good PowerPoint strategies and models. And then the, the, the city will run the

00:21:17.100 right way. And it has nothing to do with the ideas that lead politics. It has nothing to do

00:21:24.120 with actually accomplishing something in politics beyond efficiency. It has nothing to do with the

00:21:30.800 people, right? To Mike Bloomberg. Yeah. Okay. New Yorkers, Englishmen, Londoners, whoever, any,

00:21:39.420 you can substitute any people. It doesn't matter. But of course, people are the most important thing

00:21:43.160 in politics. Politics is how we people all get along in society. And Bloomberg just,

00:21:49.580 just fundamentally doesn't get it. Our framers did not think that the presidency was a management

00:21:56.080 job. Our, our founders and framers thought that the presidency was the spirited part of the

00:22:01.780 government. This is where some people on the right get it wrong too. Some people on the right say,

00:22:05.380 ah, the president, he's just a regular bureaucrat, just like anybody else. No, he isn't. The government,

00:22:10.540 the presidency rather, as the framers intended, is not just some random bean counter. He's not just some

00:22:16.320 random bureaucrat. He's the spirit, the embodiment of the spirit of the government. When the framers

00:22:21.720 set up our government, it's in three parts, right? The judiciary, the legislature, and the executive.

00:22:26.240 Those three parts are designed to correspond to the three parts of the human soul. They're designed to

00:22:32.500 correspond in the judiciary that corresponds to the logical part of the soul. The legislature responds to

00:22:38.660 the emotional part of the soul and the executive responds to the spirited part of the soul. In Greek,

00:22:44.640 it would be the logos, the pathos, and the ethos. I mean, it's the, it's the three divisions of the

00:22:49.940 soul, the three divisions of government. They work very well, but it's about the soul. It's about people.

00:22:54.560 It's about great forces that move us, not just making, uh, some plastic goods a little bit cheaper

00:23:00.340 and markets a little bit more efficient. That's why Bloomberg doesn't get it. And that's why very

00:23:04.620 likely, even beyond all the other attacks on him all night, that is why very likely he's not going

00:23:09.400 anywhere. The other candidates are all jokers too. We've got to get to, uh, AOC, by the way,

00:23:14.360 being the, the, uh, future of the democratic party. And we've got to get to why slate magazine

00:23:20.200 doesn't understand that a sister should not have sex with her brother. We'll get to all of that. 0.96

00:23:25.140 Plus the mailbag first got to thank our friends over at rock auto. I love rock auto. You know,

00:23:31.520 I love rock auto. I love it because it's a family business. I also love it because it's so much better

00:23:36.760 than all those chains to, you know, chain stores have different price tiers for professional

00:23:41.840 mechanics and do it yourselfers. Rock auto.com doesn't even require membership or an account

00:23:47.580 login. I love that because when my car breaks down, I go to the chain store, I go to the physical

00:23:53.280 shop, right? And all they, they never have the part. They just go online and they order the part

00:23:58.500 probably from rock auto. And then they charge me a huge markup and I don't know. And it's very opaque

00:24:02.500 and it's very hard to see what's going on. Not with rock auto. Rock auto gives you fair prices

00:24:06.720 all the time. Everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps, motor oil,

00:24:11.860 and even new carpet. Whatever car, whatever truck it's for, you can get everything in a few easy

00:24:16.740 clicks. Even I can understand the website. Go to rockauto.com right now. See all the parts available

00:24:23.620 for your car or truck. Write Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S in their how did you hear about us box. 0.52

00:24:29.880 And then they will know that we sent you rockauto.com. Okay. All the other candidates, uh,

00:24:35.380 were jokers. That's no surprise at all. Um, the winner was Bernie. Bernie won. Warren did pretty

00:24:41.320 well too, but that's only because the moderators refused to go after her weaknesses. Moderators 1.00

00:24:47.060 have gone after every other candidate. They haven't gone after Warren. They've gone after

00:24:51.220 Buttigieg on race. They've gone after Sanders on his alleged statement that women can't be president.

00:24:55.940 You went after, they went after Bloomberg, obviously on everything. Uh, they went after Amy for

00:25:00.100 forgetting the name of a foreign leader, but they don't go after Warren. Why?

00:25:06.020 Warren is the most, is the weakest of the candidates. She lied about being a native American 0.99

00:25:10.060 for her whole career. Probably took a job away from an actual native American. She's lily white. 1.00

00:25:15.940 Then lied about her kid's school. Then lied about getting fired for, for being pregnant. Then just 1.00

00:25:20.100 lies, lies, lies, but they won't go after her. And I think the reason they won't go after her

00:25:23.860 for the Indian thing is because it looks like a Trump attack. It's an attack that Trump has now

00:25:29.860 totally owned. They don't want to be accused of playing into a Trump attack. They don't want to be

00:25:33.660 accused of being harsh on women. They don't want to be accused of any of that. So they,

00:25:37.620 uh, they just go, they go easy on her. And even with all of that, she's still not doing very well

00:25:41.780 in the polls. All radical candidates on that stage last night with, with maybe the sort of

00:25:48.640 exception of Mike Bloomberg who got clobbered. What this shows us is that someone like AOC who

00:25:55.640 the DNC chairman, Tom Perez said last year, two years ago was the future of the democratic party.

00:26:00.900 It shows that she's not just some strange outlier or some exception. She really,

00:26:06.280 really is the future of that party. While all the candidates were debating on stage with Bloomberg,

00:26:11.280 AOC went on the view to actually serve up one of the questions from the debate.

00:26:19.280 AOC went on the view. One of the questions from the debate from Chuck Todd was,

00:26:22.680 Hey, Mike Bloomberg, should you exist? That was from AOC who said explicitly on the view,

00:26:27.660 billionaires, right? There are fellow countrymen, citizens of America should not exist.

00:26:33.780 Here's the thing is that if you, if the amount of money that you have can force the DNC to change

00:26:39.740 their rules, but the DNC would not change their rules for Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris,

00:26:45.200 that is a, that is an actualization of power. And we all know how I feel about billionaires. I don't

00:26:51.800 think that in a place where 60% of Americans can't even, you know, make more than $40,000 a year,

00:26:59.180 that the presence of a billionaire who largely makes their money off of businesses underpaying

00:27:03.880 their workers like Walmart, like Amazon, like so on should exist. Billionaires should not exist.

00:27:10.660 They shouldn't exist. Now, when you couple that with what we're hearing from the rest of the

00:27:15.920 Democrats, the activists in the field, guys like one of Bernie Sanders' current campaign workers,

00:27:21.800 who said that after the revolution, they're going to line up all the bourgeois and send them to the

00:27:27.960 gulag. They're going to line them up on the wall and kill them. That's like actually what a campaign 1.00

00:27:31.360 worker for Bernie said. And you hear this kind of language, it gets you a little worried because

00:27:35.760 every radical socialist communist regime in history has, has had to liquidate classes of

00:27:41.940 people. Liquidate is another word for murder. They've had to purge people. They've had to crack

00:27:46.860 a few eggs to make an omelet. So that kind of language is, is not great. And you're hearing

00:27:51.860 it from the young, fresh face of the party, AOC. Not a good sign, not a good sign for the country.

00:27:59.960 The one glimmer of hope, however, is that AOC is a hypocrite. And AOC revealed that in the same 0.97

00:28:08.020 interview with The View, because she castigated all those rich men. And yet, right now she's

00:28:13.800 campaigning for a rich man. Our entire political system

00:28:17.500 revolves, frankly, around rich men. And rich men are not the center of my universe. Working families

00:28:25.960 are. Yeah, okay, AOC. Well, what's interesting is AOC, the reason she hasn't been doing her job

00:28:31.920 lately is because she's on the campaign trail for Bernie Sanders, who is a very rich man.

00:28:39.800 He's an old rich man. That's like three strikes against him. So that is a lie. I mean, what she's,

00:28:45.260 what she's trying to say, oh, men, rich men, they're not the center of my universe. Working

00:28:48.940 families are. AOC doesn't answer the phone in her district office for those working families, 1.00

00:28:53.320 but she does spend a lot of time on the campaign trail for, for Bernie Sanders. That's a little

00:28:59.240 glimmer of hope. Uh, however, if we've, uh, if, if the best hope we've got is Democrats hypocrisy, 0.88

00:29:06.780 I mean, that's something we can rely on, but it doesn't say very much about the Democratic Party.

00:29:10.820 Um, before we get to the mailbag, I've got to talk about the grossest, the grossest article.

00:29:18.440 This was in Slate. It was a letter written into Slate Magazine. It's called,

00:29:22.700 My Wife Wants Us to Have Sex with Her Brother. Not just that she wants to have sex with her brother, 1.00

00:29:26.580 but she wants them both to. Here's the letter. Dear, how to do it. My wife and I have been in 0.99

00:29:32.940 an open marriage for five years. So they're cheating on each other. They sleep with other

00:29:36.220 people. On the whole, our relationship has been uncommonly open and supportive. Definitely

00:29:42.060 uncommonly open. We both strive to encourage one another to explore and even playfully push the

00:29:47.140 limits romantically and sexually. For as long as I've known her, my wife has been interested in

00:29:51.580 incest role play. Okay. While it isn't my cup of tea exactly, I've been willing and happy to support

00:29:57.780 her in her exploration of this kind of fantasy and role play. Often she will have me dress up as her

00:30:02.560 father, wear his cologne, et cetera, while she will wear her high school clothes. Okay. Recently though,

00:30:11.220 things have started to move in an uncomfortable direction. Recently, not before that, all that other

00:30:15.760 stuff was comfortable. Wearing your dad's cologne, totally normal, but now it's moving in an

00:30:19.900 uncomfortable direction. My wife is very close with her older brother who is also bi, bisexual,

00:30:25.400 and with whom we often speak very openly about sex and sexuality. A few nights ago and after a few

00:30:29.920 drinks, my wife got to talking fairly explicitly about some of the family role playing that she and

00:30:34.380 I are into. And her brother, who I thought would be kind of horrified, was not only entirely supportive,

00:30:39.740 but vaguely expressed interest in exploring this kink with us. Exploring this kink, by the way,

00:30:44.560 is a euphemism for having sex. When I got, when we got home, I expected my wife to make it clear 0.99

00:30:49.840 that her brother ever joining us in the bedroom was entirely off the table, but instead she seemed

00:30:53.920 to think it was a really good idea. In principle, I don't have a problem with this idea. I've got to

00:31:01.440 pause here for a second. If in principle you don't have a problem with you and your wife having sex with 0.98

00:31:08.520 her brother, you probably don't have very many principles. You're probably not a very principled

00:31:15.660 person. If that is in principle, you don't have a problem. Uh, my wife and I have also enjoyed group

00:31:21.420 sex, orgies, and so that isn't the problem either. I'm just worried about how this could affect my

00:31:27.260 relationship with my brother-in-law. Is there a way for me to make this happen without it getting

00:31:30.800 weird? It's weird. It's weird, buddy. Uh, Slate doesn't have much of an answer to it. The, the

00:31:39.700 advice columnist to respond says, well, look, if you're worried about how it's going to affect your

00:31:44.280 relationship with your brother, then, then don't do it basically, right? That's all it says. Doesn't,

00:31:48.260 doesn't explain in principle why this is a bad idea. So you'll notice what he says, right? He says,

00:31:54.380 I'm kind of uncomfortable with this. This is a little weird. And then he refers to the family

00:31:58.200 role-playing that he and she are into, but he just said, he's not really into it. He's just doing it

00:32:02.580 to humor her, right? He said, it's not my cup of tea, but then he says, I'm into it. So he's obviously

00:32:06.380 not the manliest man in the world. He's obviously getting pushed around quite, quite a lot here.

00:32:14.720 All of the reasoning for why not to sleep with your wife's brother is very, um,

00:32:23.580 it's just very subjective. It's very well, if it'll affect your relationship, well, if it'll make

00:32:27.900 family dinners awkward, well, if it'll make family dinners sexual, well, if it, you know,

00:32:33.120 okay, it might just situationally, it might not work out great. The reason not to have sex with

00:32:40.880 your wife and her brother at the same time is because it's wrong. It is morally wrong. It is 0.97

00:32:48.620 objectively wrong, wicked, not just a little bit creepy. It's actually wrong to do it. It's a violation of

00:32:57.540 the moral order on top of all the other gross aspects of it. But we're not allowed to say that

00:33:02.260 anymore because we're not allowed to say in this modern cult, sexually liberated culture of anything

00:33:07.220 goes and if it feels good, do it. We're not allowed to say that certain sexual acts are intrinsically

00:33:12.460 disordered. This gets to the big debate that's been going on on the right for months now. It started

00:33:19.560 with the porn thing. Should we regulate porn? And you had the kind of libertarian leaning people on

00:33:24.320 the right say, no way. If it doesn't hurt anybody, it doesn't matter. If it feels good, do it. And

00:33:28.900 then you had the conservatives say, no, this is pretty bad. It's an epidemic. It's causing huge

00:33:33.720 rises in ED. It's causing men to become perverted. It's a big problem in the country and we don't want

00:33:39.100 perverts running our country. There is no, there is no violation of the moral order that doesn't affect

00:33:50.180 anybody, right? There is no victimless crime as they say. All crimes have victims. Even if you're

00:33:55.700 the victim and the effects on other people are difficult to measure, but they can be measured.

00:34:01.020 Like for instance, if I become a drug addict and kill myself, God forbid, you could say that's a

00:34:05.720 victimless crime in that it's only affecting me. But of course it affects many more people than you.

00:34:09.440 It affects your family. It affects your friends. It affects your community. That, that is just what

00:34:14.000 happens with these violations of the moral order. You see it in, uh, in Utah right now. Utah just,

00:34:20.060 uh, passed a bill to legalize polygamy. Polygamy, much, much more understandable than, uh, having sex

00:34:28.000 with your wife and a brother at the same time, but still a violation of, uh, of our social and sexual

00:34:33.700 mores today. In the, if it feels good, do it culture. Why is polygamy wrong? By, by the logic of

00:34:40.840 Obergefell, the decision that redefined marriage to include monogamous same-sex unions, by the logic

00:34:46.320 of that Supreme Court decision, which discovered somewhere in the constitution, a right to intimacy,

00:34:51.220 not sure where that was, it's between the articles, I think, by the logic of it,

00:34:56.060 why should marriage not be redefined again to include polygamy? Love is love. If it feels good,

00:35:02.900 do it. It's not hurting anybody. It's a victimless crime, right? And yet we all know, yeah, there's

00:35:07.000 something wrong about that. There's something right there. We all know there's something wrong

00:35:10.780 about sleeping with your wife and her brother at the same time, but we've convinced ourselves in

00:35:17.200 this very narrow, rationalistic way, this shallow way that we cannot take seriously moral discussion,

00:35:25.000 moral disagreement. It all just has to be about us. Well, it doesn't really hurt me. It doesn't

00:35:29.460 really affect me. That's not a mature moral discussion. It's not the discussion that our

00:35:33.200 framers had. It's not the discussion that any of our ancestors had who built this great

00:35:36.980 civilization. And if we don't start having that discussion again, we're not going to have the

00:35:40.580 civilization for very long. Okay. We got to get to the mailbag running late as usual. I want to bring

00:35:45.220 your attention to a possibly overlooked, but a highly valued Daily Wire membership tier.

00:35:50.200 That is the reader's pass. A reader's pass gets you the articles ad-free, including Ben Shapiro's op-eds,

00:35:56.300 which are exclusive for Daily Wire members only. You also get access to our mobile app to read all of

00:36:01.240 our stories and receive push notifications for breaking news and special content. Perfect when

00:36:06.220 you want to stay up to date on the go. This membership tier is already a bargain at three

00:36:10.920 bucks a month. But if you are still a little doubtful, if you're not a billionaire like Mike

00:36:15.560 Bloomberg or a millionaire like Bernie Sanders, listen to this offer right now. You get one month

00:36:19.800 for 99 cents. 99 cents. That's mobile ad-free access to all of the Daily Wire news, exclusive op-eds

00:36:25.260 from Ben Shapiro, and breaking news and updates on our mobile app, all for the low price of $1.

00:36:30.580 So go check it out. You will not be disappointed. DailyWire.com. We'll be right back with the mailbag.

00:36:47.760 Right back with the mailbag. Dear Master of Covfefe, and resident papist of the Daily Wire,

00:36:53.440 I am a conservative and a Christian, and I believe in the differences of the sexes and that God made

00:36:58.160 us to be different and to suit different roles. I don't accept the nonsense put forward by the left

00:37:03.140 that gender is separate from sex. However, I experience gender dysphoria. I know that this 0.96

00:37:08.780 is a psychological problem and that I need to solve it. But any therapist I approach will only

00:37:13.340 give me affirmation therapy, and I'm ashamed to approach my family, friends, or religious leaders.

00:37:18.700 And so I come to you, a social and political commentator who I only know on the internet.

00:37:22.700 What would you advise I do? Sincerely, and may God bless you and yours.

00:37:28.380 Okay. I'm very sorry to hear that you're going through that. It's a very tough affliction,

00:37:33.880 particularly because we don't know exactly how to treat it. First of all, I would correct you a

00:37:38.860 little bit here when you say, you've got to solve it. It'd be nice if you could solve it. It'd be nice

00:37:45.480 if you could get rid of it. But that's not the way that afflictions always work. Sometimes we just

00:37:50.580 kind of bear suffering, and suffering sanctifies us spiritually, but it also shapes our character.

00:37:57.100 It also deepens our understanding of the world. Everybody suffers. So you are not alone in

00:38:01.380 suffering, though you do have this particular affliction. You also have this problem, which is

00:38:08.120 we live in a really dumb society right now where any psychologist you go to is not going to give you 0.97

00:38:12.340 good psychological advice. So here is my advice. First of all, a little bit of encouragement. 0.98

00:38:17.200 I don't know how old you are, but when this gender dysphoria occurs, especially in young people,

00:38:24.640 statistically, for the majority of people, it will go away over time.

00:38:29.800 Huge, I mean, 80 to 90% of teenagers who experience gender dysphoria, it just kind of goes away. So

00:38:35.980 that bit of advice could just be try to bear it out and hope that it goes away because statistically,

00:38:42.700 it very possibly will. The next thing you should do, you say you're afraid to talk to your family

00:38:48.160 about it. I don't know your family situation. That might be totally justified. You don't want

00:38:52.960 to talk to therapists because a lot of them are quacks. Totally true. You're afraid of talking to 1.00

00:38:58.320 your religious leaders. I don't know who your religious leaders are. What I would recommend is

00:39:02.420 you talk to my religious leaders, and that's because the Catholic Church has a nuanced view of

00:39:08.140 this. They've been dealing with, they've been thinking, you know, the Catholic Church, as with

00:39:12.380 most things, has been thinking about it for 2,000 years. So there, there is a kind of nuanced view,

00:39:16.340 and I think you would probably get pretty good balanced advice, even on what sort of psychologists

00:39:22.220 to go seek out. So I would recommend you talk to a Catholic priest about it. Even if you are not

00:39:28.460 Catholic yourself, I just think you're more likely, and with various other Protestant denominations,

00:39:33.620 it might be more hit or miss, just because there's so many different doctrines that are out there.

00:39:38.020 You know, I don't, I don't want to send you to the, the wrong people, even if there, there could

00:39:42.780 be some good ones out there as well. I would do that, and then I would do your best, on, actually,

00:39:47.840 on the Catholic point, I would recommend finding a Catholic psychologist, or at least, I say Catholic 0.97

00:39:52.620 psychologist because Catholic psychologists will accept the natural law, so they won't push some wacky

00:39:57.580 gender Gnostic ideology on you. But if you find any psychologist who recognizes the natural law,

00:40:05.720 then I think you'll be in a good place. In the meantime, what you should do is not lose heart,

00:40:13.200 be encouraged, everybody is suffering, you've got this particular affliction. There are people out

00:40:18.820 there who you can speak to about this. There are people who are living with gender dysphoria,

00:40:23.360 who are, or who regret going through sex affirmation surgery. So I interviewed one of

00:40:30.960 them, I know I forget his name, Peter something, when I was guest hosting Ben's radio show. I know

00:40:34.860 Walt Heyer talks about this a lot. He's another person who has gone back and he regretted his surgery.

00:40:41.320 Those, those kind of voices are out there as well. And I would recommend, just given my own

00:40:48.500 knowledge of these religious leaders, I would recommend talking to a priest about it. And just

00:40:53.440 seeing, even if they don't give you religious advice that you like, if they can lead you to

00:40:57.400 psychological advice, because there, there are resources out there. And best of luck. I will pray

00:41:01.620 for you, my friend. From Grant. Hi, Michael. I find a choir member in the church extremely attractive,

00:41:06.780 and she seems exceptionally sweet and genuine. I want to ask her out, but have no idea how to approach

00:41:12.020 that. Any tips on asking her out? What could my opening line be? I've never talked to her before,

00:41:17.280 but she has noticed me a couple of times. I'm extremely nervous and don't want to botch this.

00:41:21.140 Thank you for any advice. Yes, I do have advice. How about you open with a compliment? This is now

00:41:28.020 in our kind of ironic culture. We, the idea of complimenting somebody is unthinkable, but how

00:41:35.800 about you try that? A real compliment, not flattery. People hate flattery, but actually, you know,

00:41:40.700 hey, that was a lovely cantata you sang. Oh, I really love this hymn. Good choice. Those sort of

00:41:46.960 things, right? And make it genuine. Oh, lovely dress. I mean, you know, it could be as simple

00:41:51.860 as that. And probably because men don't understand how to talk to women very much anymore.

00:41:59.780 She will like that, especially if she's been noticing you. That's, she's probably looking

00:42:03.680 for an opportunity to talk to you as well. And then you can start a conversation. And if you

00:42:08.000 open with a compliment, it allows you to take the conversation somewhere that has some mutual

00:42:13.480 interest. So if you say, oh, I really loved how you sang, how great thou art, that hymn

00:42:19.720 that you were singing. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I love how great thou art. Yeah, it's

00:42:22.660 really good. And then you can start talking about hymns and then you'll have some common

00:42:25.820 interest there. I assume if you're both in the church choir and then you can bring it

00:42:29.180 to the place where I'm sure you want to bring it to, which is, oh, wow, we, we certainly

00:42:32.600 should discuss this further. Do you want to get a drink after, after choir practice or you

00:42:36.620 want to go to dinner after you want to grab a coffee or something? That's where I would

00:42:40.280 begin. People always ask, how do I pick up a girl? And, uh, the answer is so simple

00:42:46.240 that people overlook it, which is be genuinely interested in them. Be curious about what they

00:42:52.220 have to say, like them. They want to be around them. And, uh, I think you'll probably have

00:42:57.240 a good shot because it sounds to me like she's interested as well. Okay. From John, dear

00:43:01.940 Dr. Covfefe slash Mr. Swalwell. Thank you for using both of my names. Winner of the Iowa

00:43:06.400 caucus. Good. Thank you for using my title. Given Trump has been using the pardon power,

00:43:10.200 this week, I decided to refresh myself on the reasons for the pardon power and find

00:43:14.740 myself unsatisfied by James Madison's rationale that the executive has the power to check the

00:43:19.520 criminal justice system when it goes awry. It seems to be generally abused by presidents.

00:43:24.100 Trump has used it relatively sparingly. Uh, if you had your druthers, would you erase the

00:43:29.320 pardon power altogether? Huge fan of the show and your literary work. Thank you very much.

00:43:32.760 I would not. I love the pardon power. I think it's great. I think the founders and framers

00:43:36.700 were smart to put it in the constitution because it humanizes the government. And after all,

00:43:44.260 what is our government? It's our fellow humans governing us. So obviously we are a nation of

00:43:48.420 laws, not a nation of men. We have this justice, but justice without love, justice without mercy

00:43:53.180 is tyranny. It's brittle. It will crack. And so you need a little safety valve in there. And

00:43:59.100 that safety valve is the pardon power. I love that the executive, the spirited part of our

00:44:03.180 government has the ability to do that. Some presidents abuse it. Bill Clinton abused it.

00:44:07.960 Barack Obama certainly abused it as well. But, uh, I don't think Trump is abusing it. And I'm,

00:44:14.020 I would rather run the risk of presidents pardoning too many people than not have that ability

00:44:19.440 at all. All right. That is our show. We've got a lot more to get to, but you know, of course

00:44:24.680 we don't have time. We run out of time every single week. Tune back in on Monday in the meantime,

00:44:30.500 by the way, I should announce, uh, I'm going to fly out next week to Washington DC because Senator

00:44:36.120 Ted Cruz and I will be doing a live verdict podcast at CPAC this year. So if you're going

00:44:41.920 to be at CPAC, uh, we hope to see you there in the room. If not, you know, go on out there.

00:44:46.400 Maybe we'll see you there and, uh, I'll see you on the East coast. In the meantime,

00:44:50.120 I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show.

00:44:58.000 If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.

00:45:03.100 And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends

00:45:07.600 to subscribe. We're available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

00:45:13.580 Also be sure to check out the other daily wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro show,

00:45:18.260 the Andrew Klavan show, and the Matt Walsh show. The Michael Knowles show is produced by Ben Davies

00:45:23.860 and directed by Mike Joyner, executive producer, Jeremy Boren, supervising producers, Mathis Glover

00:45:30.360 and Robert Sterling, technical producer, Austin Stevens, assistant director, Pavel Widowski,

00:45:36.600 editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico, audio mixer, Robin Fenderson, hair and makeup,

00:45:43.060 Nika Geneva, production assistant, Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles show is a daily wire

00:45:48.100 production. Copyright daily wire 2020. Hey everyone. It's Andrew Klavan, host of the

00:45:52.880 Andrew Klavan show. Mike Bloomberg fell short at the debate last night after Pocahontas drew

00:45:58.160 her tomahawk and cut him down to size. We'll talk about that and other cheap height jokes 1.00

00:46:02.260 on the Andrew Klavan show.

00:46:03.480 Did you know that over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. grocery stores is imported? That's why I buy

00:46:11.600 all my meat from GoodRanchers.com instead. Good Ranchers products are 100% born, raised and harvested

00:46:17.440 right here in the USA from local family farms. Plus, there's no antibiotics ever, no added hormones

00:46:23.080 and no seed oils. Just one simple ingredient. That's meat. Best of all, Good Ranchers delivers

00:46:28.280 straight to your door for added convenience. So lock in a secure supply of American meat today.

00:46:33.020 Subscribe now at GoodRanchers.com and get free meat for life and $40 off with code DailyWire.

00:46:37.860 That's $40 off and free meat for life with code DailyWire. Good Ranchers, American meat delivered.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 20, 2020

Ep. 498 - Bloomberg Blew It

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript