The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 503 - Who Bought Pete Buttigieg？

00:00:00.000 After a week showing in Nevada and a complete flop in South Carolina,

00:00:05.100 smarmy radical and alleged rat Pete Buttigieg is dropping out of the presidential race,

00:00:09.940 vindicating President Trump's prophecy that Alfred E. Newman cannot be president of the

00:00:14.500 United States. We will examine who bought off Mayor Pete. Then Bloomberg finally makes it

00:00:20.240 to a ballot as we look forward to Super Tuesday. A drag queen twerks for a toddler and President 1.00

00:00:25.900 Trump kills it at CPAC. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles 0.98

00:00:29.700 Show. So much has happened in the last 24 hours that I actually forgot that CPAC was like 24 hours

00:00:42.600 before that. And I was at CPAC in Washington, D.C. I was there doing a live verdict show with Senator

00:00:49.260 Cruz and with RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. So I want to get to that and give a little behind the

00:00:54.720 scenes look at CPAC and why it made me feel really, really good about 2020. But first we got to cover

00:01:00.060 the biggest news, which is that Pete Buttigieg has dropped out of the race. This was such great news

00:01:10.720 when I got on my plane. I get on my plane, I'm leaving D.C. and I think, I don't know what's

00:01:15.820 going on. What's really, what's the interesting thing that's happening right now? Boom, Pete Buttigieg.

00:01:19.620 But it wasn't just a blessing. It wasn't just great news. It was also sort of a curse. It was

00:01:24.420 a blessing in the sense that Buttigieg was the oiliest, most deceptive, dishonest, smarmiest 0.91

00:01:32.600 candidate in the race. He was by far my least favorite candidate in the entire democratic field.

00:01:37.320 So I'm glad that the most culturally radical smarmy dude is not going to be the president.

00:01:43.520 But it's also kind of a curse. It's also kind of sad because what it means is that a significant

00:01:48.320 alleged moderate, self-styled moderate candidate is not going to stay in and duke this thing

00:01:54.420 out all the way to the convention. I wanted to see a pure democratic brawl all the way. 0.99

00:01:59.320 And Buttigieg dropping out means that the allegedly moderate side of the party is going to start

00:02:05.960 coalescing. I say allegedly, he's not really a moderate, but he was presenting himself as

00:02:10.280 a moderate. And so he was competing directly with guys like Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, and

00:02:16.600 against the Bernie vote. The surface level reason for why Pete Buttigieg got out is that Joe Biden

00:02:23.220 absolutely destroyed him in South Carolina. That was the other huge news. So much has happened since

00:02:29.000 I last spoke to you. So you had the South Carolina primary. Joe Biden did so much better than anybody

00:02:36.180 thought he was going to do. He actually vindicated his firewall strategy of doing poorly in the first

00:02:43.120 states and then coming back roaring in South Carolina. And so it totally took away Buttigieg's

00:02:48.760 momentum. Don't forget the first state to go vote, the Iowa caucuses, Pete Buttigieg wins Iowa.

00:02:57.820 Sort of. We know he won Iowa because he announced that he won Iowa before any of the votes were in.

00:03:02.020 So it seemed a little bit dodgy, a little skeptical of how those votes came in. It was a complete disaster

00:03:06.360 on the vote count, but he, he won the most delegates. He tied for the popular vote with Bernie and Joe

00:03:13.940 Biden came in fourth. Then Buttigieg remained strong going into New Hampshire. So he pretty much tied

00:03:21.480 Bernie in New Hampshire. He won the same number of delegates as Bernie, uh, out there. Then you got

00:03:27.960 Nevada. He slipped in Nevada. So Nevada was the first state where you start to get some minority 1.00

00:03:36.240 candidates or some minority voters rather. And he came in third. He came in behind Bernie and behind

00:03:41.760 Joe Biden. Bernie in Nevada got 46.8% of the vote. So major, major showing almost half the voters came

00:03:48.540 out and voted for Bernie. He got 24 delegates out of that. Joe Biden in second place, but distant second,

00:03:53.780 20.2% of the vote and nine delegates. Buttigieg had a pathetic 14.3% and three delegates. Then he got

00:04:01.920 completely wrecked in South Carolina. So the way to think about the South Carolina primaries, it's kind of

00:04:08.420 the flip of the Nevada caucuses. Nevada caucuses, Bernie comes out, gets almost half the vote. Joe Biden

00:04:15.960 distant second. South Carolina was the opposite of that. Joe Biden gets almost half the vote and Bernie Sanders

00:04:21.100 comes in a distant second, but South Carolina matters more because it's got many more black 1.00

00:04:25.920 voters. Black voters, very important to the democratic coalition. And it's just got more

00:04:29.800 delegates. It's a bigger state. It matters more for the nomination in that state. And this is what

00:04:36.480 really put the nail in the coffin of Buttigieg having a long track here. It was Biden at 48.4%

00:04:42.000 getting 35 delegates. Bernie at 19.9% getting 13 delegates. Tom Steyer at 11.3%, still zero delegates,

00:04:52.380 but you're getting beaten by Tom Steyer. You need to get out of the race. And then Pete Buttigieg

00:04:56.900 at 8.2%, zero delegates. So Tom Steyer already dropped out. We will miss him. He was really,

00:05:05.040 really fun to watch on the debate stage. He would always wear a kind of silly tartan tie like it was

00:05:10.020 Christmas dinner. He would always try to be really nice to all the other candidates and all the other

00:05:13.660 candidates were always jerks to him. I'm sorry to see him go, but no one really cared because he never 0.98

00:05:19.600 had a shot at winning the nomination. Buttigieg is different. Buttigieg actually had, I don't,

00:05:27.240 I don't know that he was going to win the nomination, but he could have done some damage. He could have

00:05:30.480 really made the race much tenser moving forward. The question for Pete was always, can he win

00:05:38.120 minority votes? And he had two things going against him. One is the obvious one, which is his sexual

00:05:44.640 preferences. Polling showed that his sexual preferences did not play well with the minority

00:05:50.080 voters in the Democratic presidential primary. So, I mean, you, you remember this is a story that's

00:05:56.420 gone on for a long time, goes all the way back to Prop 8 during the gay marriage debate.

00:06:00.380 So the question was, could Pete Buttigieg win over those voters? He didn't do a very good job at it.

00:06:05.180 I think he won something like 3% of the black vote in South Carolina. He also had baggage on 0.99

00:06:12.720 racial issues from South Bend. So he's mayor of Indiana, or mayor of Indiana, mayor of South Bend,

00:06:17.960 Indiana, small town. And he had some racial issues at his police department, allegations of police

00:06:23.420 brutality. Buttigieg did not handle that in the most politic way. So he never seemed really to overcome

00:06:31.240 that. And you saw his trouble with minority voters a little bit in Nevada, and then you,

00:06:35.580 you really saw it in South Carolina. Now that doesn't answer the question of why he got out.

00:06:42.560 That's only the surface level. It, that explains why it sort of makes sense that he's not going to

00:06:47.460 win the nomination. So, you know, eventually he's going to have to get out. But people who run for

00:06:53.320 president of the United States do not do things out of the goodness of their heart generally when it

00:06:58.120 comes to electoral politics. Okay. He could have stayed in this race a long time, made a lot more

00:07:03.740 trouble, maybe gotten some leverage, but he didn't. He chose to get out before Super Tuesday. Super

00:07:10.560 Tuesday is the big, the big contest that's coming up. So many states are going to be voting tomorrow.

00:07:16.460 So he gets out right before then. Why is it? Who bought off Pete Buttigieg? We'll analyze

00:07:23.440 three theories because there are two big ones that are going around. I have a third one that

00:07:28.860 I think actually makes more sense. First, I've got to thank our friends over at Bambi. When running a

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00:08:40.040 So we've got this, these three theories.

00:08:47.080 He obviously did not choose to get out because, you know, he just thought it was good for the party and

00:08:52.320 yeah, sure. I raised all this money and I gave up a year and a half of my life and I had plans to

00:08:57.420 take on the most ambitious job in the world, but you know, I'm just going to give it up.

00:09:00.800 Well, that's okay. It's better if I just give it up. No, I don't think so.

00:09:06.180 He could have racked up more delegates. He could have had a stronger hand to play at the

00:09:09.780 DNC if, if we get to a contested convention. So someone offered him something. Someone could

00:09:16.900 have offered him something pretty big. We don't know. Could have even been vice president.

00:09:22.100 Maybe. I'm not saying it's definitely vice president. I'm just saying he had a pretty,

00:09:26.660 he had, he had to have been offered something pretty good to get out now.

00:09:31.340 Now the VP play is possible because Pete Buttigieg made so much of his candidacy about how terrible

00:09:38.080 Mike Pence is over his alleged homophobia. So Mayor Pete realized the way to give himself a national

00:09:44.820 profile and win cred in the democratic party was to pretend that he was an oppressed homosexual who 0.78

00:09:49.940 was always, you know, persecuted for his sexual preferences. And the governor of Indiana, 0.75

00:09:56.220 while Pete Buttigieg is mayor of South Bend was Mike Pence, who's a Christian. So it was an easy 0.92

00:10:01.280 scapegoat to say, Mike Pence is a horrible homophobe. He's, he's persecuting me. Grant, 0.99

00:10:07.080 grant you, Pete Buttigieg and Mike Pence have always had a very nice relationship. Mike Pence has

00:10:11.860 been very flattering to him in public. He's called him personally to help out, but didn't matter.

00:10:16.220 Buttigieg realized that's how he was going to frame it. So Buttigieg has a pretty strong hand to play

00:10:20.040 here as a potential VP nominee because he can say, I will show up to the VP debate and I will debate 0.96

00:10:25.980 that troglodyte, knuckle dragging, retrograde, homophobe Mike Pence. And that could play very 0.89

00:10:33.420 well to the democratic base who are the only people who are going to watch the VP debate,

00:10:38.120 but it probably wouldn't hurt the ticket generally among people who maybe don't want LGBTQ politics

00:10:44.320 to be at the forefront because very few people in the mainstream watch the VP debate. So there's a

00:10:49.320 chance it could have been the VP. If it's VP or something like it, and that's very much possible.

00:10:56.680 The question is, was it Bernie or Biden, right? A lot of people right now are saying that Bernie

00:11:01.040 is the one who offered Pete Buttigieg some big position in the administration.

00:11:06.440 Why would Bernie do this? Bernie is still leading in the delegate count. Bernie is still the front

00:11:12.320 runner in the democratic nomination. Even though Joe Biden blew him out of the water in South Carolina,

00:11:16.140 Bernie is still up overall. One reason that Bernie might've offered Pete something is because Pete

00:11:22.620 would balance the ticket, right? Bernie is this hardcore radical socialist. Pete Buttigieg is

00:11:27.320 pretending to be a moderate. So if you're just looking at it, it looks like a balanced ticket,

00:11:30.960 but actually Pete Buttigieg is a pretty radical guy whose father is the founding member of a major

00:11:38.540 communist academic institution. And Pete Buttigieg wrote a very flattering, wonderful paper about how

00:11:43.480 great Bernie Sanders is in high school. So there's underneath the service, a real radicalism there.

00:11:49.060 It would look in some ways like a unity ticket. You think of Reagan Bush in 1980, right? Reagan

00:11:55.660 represented the conservatives on the right and George HW Bush represented the Rockefeller Republicans,

00:12:02.260 the liberal Republicans, what we would call today the rhinos. And they fought this really tough primary

00:12:07.280 and people forget George HW Bush who became Reagan's vice president actually was the one

00:12:13.540 who invented the term voodoo economics to criticize Ronald Reagan's economic policies. So they have

00:12:19.220 this really tough campaign and then they come together. It's a unity ticket. You get the whole party

00:12:22.900 going together. Uh, I don't think it's really that right now. If it were Biden, if it were Biden who

00:12:30.940 offered Pete Buttigieg something, then you're getting two self-styled moderates, which doesn't expand the

00:12:36.800 base. But I still don't think it's that. I think this race is fundamentally different than something

00:12:44.140 like 1980, you know, Reagan and Bush, because the two front runners in this race are extremely old.

00:12:53.380 Ronald Reagan was, was an old candidate at his time too. And the two serious candidates in the

00:13:00.760 democratic race right now, Bloomberg, Biden and Bernie, and actually the third, maybe serious

00:13:06.460 candidate Bloomberg are all almost 10 years older than Ronald Reagan was in 1980. So you've got

00:13:13.960 these really, really old candidates. Bernie Sanders had a heart attack on the campaign trail. Joe Biden

00:13:18.300 can barely finish an English sentence. The VP actually matters here. And so the trouble is if

00:13:23.760 you have a unity type ticket, let's say it's, uh, it's Bernie Sanders, right? As the radical. And then

00:13:30.420 Pete Buttigieg is the moderate. The Bernie supporters don't really like Pete Buttigieg that much.

00:13:35.680 The Pete Buttigieg supporters don't really like Bernie Sanders that much.

00:13:40.680 Are the, are the Bernie Sanders supporters really going to show up and say, all right, we're going

00:13:44.840 to vote for this ticket. Even though in five minutes, we might end up with a Buttigieg presidency,

00:13:49.300 which is the least preferable outcome that we could possibly hope for. I don't think so. Same thing on

00:13:54.900 the other side, you know, with Joe Biden, let's say Joe Biden picks some crazy radical for his vice

00:13:59.680 presidential pick. Is that really going to, is that really going to drag the Bernie or the Biden

00:14:06.220 voters out there? I don't think so because they're going to be just as nervous with the VP as they

00:14:11.080 would be if Bernie Sanders were the nominee. So it does seem more likely that whatever the offer was,

00:14:19.260 the offer didn't come from Bernie. That it would have come from the same segment of the Democratic

00:14:26.460 Party. And so for Pete, who's presenting himself as a moderate, that means it's more likely that it

00:14:31.400 came from Biden. But there is a third option. We'll get to that third option in a second. First,

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00:15:54.440 before we move on to the third option, which I think is kind of interesting for why Buttigieg got

00:15:58.360 out and who bought him off. Right now, Joe Biden, who is 77 years old, is the youngest man running for

00:16:07.640 president in the Democratic Party. The youngest candidate, 77. Bernie Sanders, 78. Right now,

00:16:17.060 President Donald Trump, who is 73 years old, who is the oldest man ever elected president for the

00:16:23.760 first time, 73-year-old President Trump is now the youngest man running for president, period.

00:16:30.840 These baby boomers just will not give it up. They won't do it. Really odd election. We've never seen 1.00

00:16:39.940 anything like that before. And I think it's going to have a real effect on the other side of the

00:16:46.440 ticket, on vice president, on who the cabinet is going to be. Now, conventional wisdom is saying

00:16:53.300 it's either Bernie or Biden who would offer something to Pete. There is a third possibility

00:16:57.140 on who is paying Pete to get out of the race. And that's Mike Bloomberg, especially Mike Bloomberg.

00:17:04.120 The guy has all the money in the world. Bloomberg is the wild card. He's been the wild card in this

00:17:09.860 race for months now. Mike Bloomberg has not been on any ballots yet. He just, he decided to run too

00:17:16.260 late. So he wasn't in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, but he has been blanketing the airwaves.

00:17:21.360 He has so far spent, conservative estimate says he spent $410 million on just TV ads. That's just

00:17:31.180 television. He's also running ads on like every single video on YouTube. He's running ads on my

00:17:36.740 show. I go on my show. I spend the whole time criticizing him. And then I look because YouTube

00:17:42.200 is the one who figures out all these ads. It's not like we get a say in that. I look and there's a Mike

00:17:46.320 Bloomberg ad on my show. And then the ad is over and then I go right back to criticizing him. That's

00:17:51.080 how much this guy is spending on advertising. His campaign before Super Tuesday, before tomorrow

00:17:57.760 has 2,400 events planned in 30 states. And it's not even just the money he spent this cycle. In 2018,

00:18:09.440 Mike Bloomberg promised to spend $80 million buying house seats for Democrats. And do you know how much

00:18:16.780 he actually spent? He spent $100 million. He actually blew past his estimate and he

00:18:21.000 bought the Democrats those seats so he could buy off all the politicians so he could get some goodwill

00:18:25.800 so he could get the Democratic Party to change the rules to let him into the debate. They didn't do

00:18:29.460 that for the other candidates. They did it for him. He made direct donations to the party. Bloomberg even

00:18:33.800 admitted this at the last debate on CBS News. All of the new Democrats that came in and put Nancy

00:18:40.260 Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this president. I bought, I got them.

00:18:46.900 Okay. He goes, I like how he caught it. He goes, I bought, I got, I got that. I helped to do that. I,

00:18:55.380 you meant to say bought and you did buy it. He did buy it. Bloomberg could potentially do a lot more

00:19:02.360 for Pete Buttigieg than either Bernie or Biden, right? If, if it's Bernie or Biden who say,

00:19:09.700 if you get out now before Super Tuesday, you let the vote consolidate, I'll give you VP. I'll give

00:19:15.160 you secretary of state. I'll give you ambassador to whatever, right? Well, the only way Pete gets that

00:19:22.460 favor then, the only way Pete gets to cash that in is if the candidate who offered it to him first wins

00:19:28.640 the nomination, then beats Donald Trump and wins the white house. Those two things have to happen.

00:19:34.780 Otherwise, Pete gave up his presidential campaign for nothing. With Bloomberg, it's not quite like

00:19:40.840 that. If Bloomberg was the one who said, Hey Pete, get out of the race. I want to consolidate the

00:19:45.860 moderates before Super Tuesday. I'll give you VP. I'll give you a secretary of state. I'll give you

00:19:50.860 whatever. If, if Bloomberg somehow miraculously does win the nomination and the presidency,

00:19:58.640 then Pete Buttigieg gets the political favor. But let's say he doesn't, let's say he loses at any

00:20:02.660 point along the way. He could also say, Hey Pete, by the way, if I lose, I'll buy you a Senate seat.

00:20:07.980 We know that he buys political offices. He did it to the tune of a hundred million last year and he

00:20:12.400 admitted it or two years ago, he admitted it during a debate. So he could always say, Hey, listen,

00:20:16.580 Pete, I've got infinite money. Bloomberg's net worth, I think is upwards of $60 billion with a B.

00:20:22.720 He's one of the richest men in the world. So he could say, look, he could even say,

00:20:26.880 let's say Biden wins the nomination. Let's say Biden wins the presidency. Bloomberg could just go

00:20:30.880 in and say, Hey Joe, I'm going to donate, uh, you know, $200 million to your campaign or to some

00:20:35.820 super PAC. Give Pete Buttigieg a spot. He can do that too. You know, the $60 billion goes a long way.

00:20:42.580 So the timing works to Bloomberg's advantage on Super Tuesday, but it also works to Biden's

00:20:49.180 advantage. You could even make an argument. It works to Bernie Sanders's advantage. So I'm not

00:20:53.740 saying Bloomberg was the one to do it. I don't know. We simply don't know. I mean, it's, uh,

00:20:58.920 the only thing we do know is that Pete certainly got something for this decision. And if that wasn't

00:21:04.120 dramatic enough to happen yesterday, looking tomorrow, you've got Super Tuesday. Just very

00:21:10.100 quickly. I, I know we throw around the term Super Tuesday a lot. I think a lot of people don't know

00:21:14.500 exactly what it means, exactly how important it is. Super Tuesday is, is really when this nomination

00:21:22.880 process is going to come together. So you had four States so far, right? Iowa, New Hampshire,

00:21:28.660 Nevada, South Carolina. Those were weeks apart. Tomorrow, simultaneously, you're going to get

00:21:35.520 Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina,

00:21:41.700 Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia. They all have primaries tomorrow.

00:21:47.480 Even American Samoa has its caucuses. Now I don't, they don't, they don't get to vote in the general

00:21:52.380 election, but still, you know, they even throw American Samoa in there. 1,357 of the 3,979

00:21:58.820 pledged delegates that will be awarded, will be awarded on Super Tuesday. 34% of all pledged

00:22:07.400 delegates. Now I say pledged delegates because that's, there's an, in the democratic primaries,

00:22:12.560 there is another type of delegate called a superdelegate. Superdelegates are just party

00:22:17.140 elites. They are completely unaccountable to voters. Republicans don't have them. It's sort of

00:22:22.040 ironic that the party called the Democratic Party has the least democratic process to nominate their

00:22:26.860 candidate. So there are going to be 70, 775 superdelegates on top of that. Superdelegates

00:22:32.180 are going to make up 16% of the people who are going to choose who the nominee is. And then the

00:22:38.100 rest are going to come from those pledged delegates. And we're going to get over a third of the pledged

00:22:41.700 delegates tomorrow. Going into Super Tuesday, Bernie is in the lead. So you got Bernie in the lead.

00:22:47.600 You got Joe saved his campaign. His campaign was dead, right? It was figuratively and literally

00:22:53.720 dead. He comes on in, wins, wins big in South Carolina. And now you got these two old guys who 0.88

00:23:00.940 are, who are competing for the nomination. We're going to see if Mike Bloomberg can buy the nomination

00:23:05.400 tomorrow. It's going to be a real test of how far money can go in politics. Mike Bloomberg has all the

00:23:11.060 money. He is totally committed to this race. He is for all of his flaws as a candidate. And there,

00:23:16.080 there are many flaws. Donald Trump talks about some of those flaws at CPAC and we'll give you a

00:23:20.800 little glimpse into it. But for all of his flaws, you know, the guy did win three terms as mayor of

00:23:25.280 New York. New York, one of the most important cities in the world. He did manage to do that.

00:23:30.760 He, he does have a political skill. So we're going to see how far he can take it. Judging from the

00:23:37.920 outside, I think President Trump may actually be slightly worried about Bloomberg. I don't think

00:23:44.020 that Trump is worried that he's going to lose to Bloomberg. I don't think anybody in his right

00:23:47.920 mind thinks it's likely that Trump could lose to Mike Bloomberg. Okay. But you've got to be worried

00:23:54.020 about just about everything in politics because anything can happen. And I think Trump sees a

00:24:00.420 much bigger threat in a guy like Mike Bloomberg than he does in somebody like Bernie Sanders. And I say

00:24:05.060 this because Trump keeps tweeting about Bloomberg. I mean, he just, even yesterday, there's all these

00:24:11.300 tweets coming out about mini Mike. He should get out. It's so pathetic. It's, he's a terrible mayor.

00:24:16.920 He was awful in New York. I just think if, you know, Trump isn't sending these tweets out about

00:24:22.020 Tulsi Gabbard. Trump isn't sending these tweets out about Tom Steyer or whoever, right? He's, he's sending

00:24:32.060 them out about specific candidates. And look, if the outcome of that is that we get more of the

00:24:41.060 hilarious standup routines that Trump has been doing about Mike Bloomberg, that's fine by me,

00:24:45.600 but it also means conservative voters should keep an eye on Mike Bloomberg. We did get one of those

00:24:50.100 great standup routines at CPAC. I was at CPAC in DC and I, you know, I was, I was there on Saturday.

00:24:58.040 No, I was there on Friday and he was there on Saturday. So I missed the president. Unfortunately,

00:25:03.740 I was doing the event with Senator Cruz and RNC chair, Ronna McDaniel. I, I almost missed my event

00:25:12.760 with Senator Cruz because the secret service was so intense about vice president Mike Pence being

00:25:18.680 there. I literally, the RNC chairwoman had to come down the stairs personally, bring me up to get on

00:25:24.240 stage. Otherwise I was going to miss it. So I wasn't able to make it to president Trump's event because

00:25:29.060 the security obviously was even tougher for the president. I had to watch the president from afar

00:25:34.960 and it was absolutely magnificent. It was fabulous. I can tell you the energy in the room on the days

00:25:42.640 that I was at CPAC was really, really high. Young, it was really young, people super excited. And then

00:25:48.780 the president got there and people lost their minds. They loved it. He walks out on stage. The first

00:25:54.140 thing he does, he walks out and he hugs the American flag. He walks, he's hugging the American

00:26:00.560 flag. He, he gives it a little kiss on the stars and stripes and he's mouthing. He doesn't have the

00:26:06.740 microphone on at this point, but he's mouthing. He says, I love you, baby. Oh, how I love you. It's

00:26:11.820 just terrific. It was classic vintage, excellent Trump. And then he gets on stage and he just starts

00:26:19.940 making fun of Mike Bloomberg. But, uh, she was really mean to mini Mike. I'll tell you the way

00:26:26.800 she treated him. He didn't know what hit him. He's going, Oh, get me off of this stage.

00:26:34.040 Get me off. Get me off of this stage. 1.00

00:26:37.220 So when you hear the cheers is when, when president Trump just, uh, crouches down and

00:26:48.100 lowers himself with a completely straight face so that, you know, his chin is barely above the

00:26:52.480 podium to do a better, uh, mini Mike Bloomberg impression. It was great. It just reminds you

00:26:58.380 what a tremendous showman this guy is. This guy's got audiences wrapped around his little

00:27:03.120 finger for 40 years. It was just a great performance from Trump. The crowd was so revved

00:27:08.960 up and that matters. Okay. People make fun of Trump for talking about the crowds, the crowd

00:27:14.000 enthusiasm and the crowd sizes. Electoral politics is about big crowds. Okay. And it's about the

00:27:21.920 enthusiasm from big crowds. When you look at the democratic primaries, turnout is down, especially

00:27:28.320 in those early States. We were told turnout's supposed to be way up. Oh, Democrats are going

00:27:34.180 to do so great this time because everyone hates Trump and all those voters who stayed home in 2016

00:27:39.320 are going to come out. Well, just to use New Hampshire as an example, turnout was down from

00:27:44.960 2016. More people were excited about 2016 in the democratic field than they are about this year.

00:27:50.280 Turnout among young voters who were supposed to be the big saviors of the democratic party,

00:27:53.640 right? They're the ones who are going to finally correct things and throw Trump out of office

00:27:58.640 because they hate him so much. Turnout among Democrats, among millennial Democrats is down.

00:28:03.660 Gen Z Democrats, it's down. Excitement is really, really going to matter. And it would seem, 0.50

00:28:10.640 I can tell you firsthand on the CPAC side, I can tell you objectively just looking at turnout.

00:28:18.280 The excitement right now is for the Republicans. It's for Trump. We will get to maybe

00:28:23.640 why that is. One really creepy, freaky story from the latest in leftist woke politics is a video

00:28:31.380 that went viral of a half-naked drag queen twerking in front of a little toddler at her birthday party

00:28:37.240 and the toddler looks all freaked out and all the parents all around her are cheering it on. How funny,

00:28:44.400 how wonderful. Love is love, I guess. Birthdays are birthdays, I don't know. We will examine how the

00:28:51.700 left got to that point and why it's really playing very well for the conservatives. First,

00:28:54.860 I got to say about Facebook and YouTube and I got to tell you that our pal, Andrew Klavan,

00:29:00.900 has released the second entry in the Another Kingdom trilogy and that book is The Nightmare Feast.

00:29:07.780 You know, Drew and I started this three years ago. We started as a narrative podcast and it jumped and

00:29:13.420 became one of the top arts podcasts of the year. We got both additional seasons out of it.

00:29:18.180 Drew is releasing that as a book you got to get. It's about Austin Lively, once just an out of luck

00:29:22.920 Hollywood screenwriter, now a chosen hero caught between two worlds and dual quests in both Los

00:29:28.680 Angeles, California, and the magical medieval world of Galeana. It is a tremendous work. I had

00:29:35.300 the privilege of narrating it on the podcast and the audio book. I think it's an enduring work. I think

00:29:40.900 it's so powerful. It gets to so much of what we talk about on the sort of critical level on this

00:29:47.560 show. You get the artistic and literary version on Another Kingdom. So go out, buy that book. It's

00:29:52.940 going to be a lot of fun. We got Super Tuesday coming up tomorrow. Daily Wire is going to be with

00:29:56.700 you all night. We're going to be there the whole time on Daily Wire backstage. We want to hear from

00:30:01.000 you. Tell us who you think will win the Democratic nomination by texting either Biden, Bernie, Bloomberg,

00:30:09.460 or Warren to 83400. 83400. Text who you think is going to win the nomination. And on Tuesday night

00:30:19.760 during our Daily Wire backstage, we will analyze the results live. So it's Bernie, Biden, Bloomberg,

00:30:25.340 or Warren. Text it to 83400. And we will analyze the results on Daily Wire backstage tomorrow.

00:30:33.400 Super Tuesday. Super Tuesday is going to be a big day. We should probably call it Super Socialist 0.65

00:30:37.680 Tuesday because the Democrats are currently poised to nominate an actual socialist to go up against

00:30:43.500 President Trump. So we are offering 25% off all Daily Wire membership plans when you use the coupon

00:30:49.680 code NEVERSOCIALIST. Go on over, check it out, dailywire.com slash subscribe. We'll be right back.

00:30:55.340 All right. Why is excitement so high up on the conservative side? Why are so many people

00:31:16.720 being driven away from the left? Well, it might have something to do with their creepy, weird sex 0.99

00:31:21.480 stuff that they keep forcing on children. Video goes viral, goes on TikTok, and then it made the

00:31:27.540 rounds everywhere else. By the way, TikTok, I think, is just where the worst things in the world

00:31:32.620 happen. There's another video going around TikTok of, it's a new campaign of women who are pregnant.

00:31:38.560 They're showing off their pregnant bellies. And then the next scene, they go to an abortion clinic 0.83

00:31:42.200 and get an abortion. And the videos actually look pretty real. I think they might be real.

00:31:45.300 So that's the worst thing on TikTok. And then the second worst thing that we've seen is this

00:31:49.880 creepy drag queen crawling up to a toddler at what appears to be her birthday party. And the guy is 0.95

00:31:56.420 kind of dancing around and all the parents, they think this is so fun. This is so wonderful and

00:32:00.280 cool. Isn't it great? We're so progressive. We're so hip. And the little girl looks just like

00:32:04.840 horrified. It's like, what on earth am I looking at? Why am I here? Why are you doing this to me?

00:32:11.880 Could you, like, it's everything about this is wrong. The drag queen is then touching the little girl. 0.99

00:32:19.600 Drag queen, not wearing a ton of clothing, by the way. There are some people who describe

00:32:26.360 this sort of thing, even on the right, even conservatives, they describe these sort of

00:32:31.500 scenes. They say, oh, it's a blessing of liberty. Isn't it great? We live in a country, you can do

00:32:35.820 whatever you want. We can never use the government to come in and stop this sort of thing. That's not

00:32:40.780 our place. It's un-American. There's nothing more American than tolerating this sort of child abuse

00:32:46.480 that George Washington would be so happy right now looking at this TikTok. James Madison would

00:32:51.020 be so thrilled watching this video go viral on Twitter. That's just complete BS. Okay. And

00:33:00.340 I get why the left is pushing this stuff, but what really bugs me are the people who are allegedly on

00:33:05.800 the right who are tolerating it. We need to stop this. We should use the arm of the state to stop this.

00:33:13.420 Okay. We have to stop the, to stop this radical sexual grooming that's going on for young people

00:33:21.360 pushed by the political arm of the cultural left. We have always had laws against this kind of stuff

00:33:29.920 in America. The argument that it's un-American to have laws against this kind of stuff is just not

00:33:34.820 true. We have always had laws and we currently have laws that limit people's sexual expression.

00:33:40.760 We currently today, 2020, we have laws against adultery, adultery, not weird child pedophilia,

00:33:50.780 grooming, drag queens twerking on kids. No, I'm just adultery. We have laws against that in 19 states 1.00

00:33:56.940 in America until the middle of the 20th century, until the sexual revolution, we had laws in most

00:34:03.260 states against adultery, fornication, cohabitation, shacking up, living with your, your significant

00:34:11.280 other before marriage. Okay. So it is simply historically false to say that to support a law

00:34:19.900 against these kinds of things is un-American. Now, please do not misunderstand me, especially for the,

00:34:26.600 for the hacks over at Media Matters who are about to clip this out.

00:34:29.320 I am not saying that, uh, we now need to go out tomorrow and pass laws against shacking up.

00:34:35.340 Okay. I don't, I don't think very many people would support that kind of a law in the United

00:34:38.740 States today, but I bet that a lot of people would support a law banning drag queen strip shows from 1.00

00:34:47.700 preschools. Drag queen story hour is like actually moving into public schools now. Okay. Gender theory 1.00

00:34:55.760 is moving into preschools. There was a preschool teacher in Brooklyn who just came out the other

00:35:00.680 day. He said, my curriculum is forcing me to teach little kids that they can be whatever sex they

00:35:05.320 want. And they're not really boys and they're not really girls and they can be whatever they want to

00:35:08.580 be. We should stop that. The same type of regulation that put that into the curriculum should take that 0.91

00:35:16.420 out of the curriculum. The same kind of legal framework that is permitting these kind of weird

00:35:21.540 drag queen twerking strip shows to go on in front of children should be used to take that away from 0.98

00:35:27.500 children. Okay. Conservatives need to stop defending this insanity with anti-historical arguments about

00:35:34.340 American liberty. Because by the way, they're not, they're not persuasive arguments to the majority of

00:35:38.720 the American people. I mean, the way the left would kind of caricature the conservatives, they'll say,

00:35:43.060 oh, you want to ban everything. You want to ban people from kissing before marriage. You want to ban

00:35:47.420 people from cohabitation? No, we're not talking about any of that. We're talking about stopping

00:35:54.420 drag queen twerk shows on preschoolers. And when you, when you put it in those terms, when you explain

00:36:00.340 what's actually going on, what people are actually talking about, I bet 97% of Americans would support

00:36:08.020 that position. The people who are supporting this kind of sick stuff is a very, very small sliver of a

00:36:16.140 minority of the radical left. Okay. The public opinion, I very much believe is on the side of

00:36:23.540 don't have drag queens twerk in children's faces. So conservatives, for some reason, we just want to 1.00

00:36:30.460 keep seeding the ground, seeding the ground. We're so uncomfortable using political power in this way.

00:36:35.320 In fact, that's why conservatives always like to say that politics is downstream of culture.

00:36:39.140 It's true in many ways, but that's not a freebie card to stop conservatives from engaging in politics.

00:36:46.420 All right. Conservatives kind of using that easy way out are why we've lost so much cultural ground

00:36:52.600 over the past 60 years, and we should stop doing it. You know, they, they accuse us of

00:36:59.600 using religion to stop progress, using our religion to stop all the wonderful things that the left wants

00:37:07.820 to do. The left has a religion too. I mean, this, this kind of crazy stuff of, uh, that you see in

00:37:13.800 that TikTok video that has a religious underpinning. I mean, the very basic religious argument there is

00:37:20.580 that your body is not really emblematic of who you are. That's the, that's the fundamental religious

00:37:27.580 premise of gender theory is that I am not really my body. So I might look like a man. I might have all

00:37:33.300 the parts of a man. I might have a deep voice and an Adam's apple, but actually secretly deep down

00:37:39.940 somewhere, I'm really a woman. And therefore my body is evil because it's working against who I

00:37:46.040 really am. And I need to change my body to be more in line with who I am. That is a religious concept.

00:37:50.720 It's actually an ancient, uh, religious heresy called Gnosticism, Gnostic dualism. And these dumb 0.99

00:37:57.080 religious ideas crop up time and time again in history, most especially when people believe 0.99

00:38:02.980 they're not being religious at all. AOC proved this just the other day. AOC said that if you make

00:38:07.820 an argument from religious Liberty, you're, you're really just using a cynical talking point to cover

00:38:15.640 up your own bigotry. It's very difficult to sit here and listen to arguments in the long history

00:38:26.480 of this country of using scripture and weaponizing and abusing scripture to justify bigotry. White 0.68

00:38:36.160 supremacists have done it. Those who justified slavery did it. Those who fought against integration did it.

00:38:43.640 And we're seeing it today. So most of what she's saying is not true, or it's got some kernel of

00:38:51.380 truth. Cause like some guy used some stupid argument from some weird sect that perverted the gospel. 0.99

00:38:57.940 Uh, what she's failing to point out is that the entire abolition movement was run by Christians. 1.00

00:39:03.540 The, all of it came from Christians. Uh, the Catholic church, right? The old, the oldest Christian 1.00

00:39:09.100 organization ever, uh, has always opposed chattel slavery. They don't talk about that. They don't

00:39:13.980 talk about how the church was the great defender of native Americans, for instance, when, when

00:39:20.380 Europeans first discovered, uh, North and South America. Doesn't talk about any of that stuff,

00:39:25.700 but I don't even really care. I don't want to get into her dumb arguments. I actually want to give 0.99

00:39:30.500 her a little bit of credit. You know, she's making an argument that Pete Buttigieg made last night in

00:39:37.360 his concession speech. The argument was, he said almost the same line. He said it a little more

00:39:42.500 articulately than she did, but he said, people use the term, uh, religious liberty to, uh, to just try

00:39:51.520 to get their own views across. They're trying, they're not actually talking about liberty and everybody

00:39:56.980 gets the same kind of stuff. They're talking about how we need a specific kind of religious view in

00:40:02.960 this country, right? They, they kind of have a point, not on the bigotry stuff. I mean, that's

00:40:08.540 just dumb, but they have a point on religious liberty. We have a terrific tradition of religious 0.98

00:40:15.860 liberty in America, but religious liberty should not be confused with religious neutrality. We have,

00:40:23.520 we've had religious liberty for a very long time. You can practice your religions.

00:40:26.980 But all states have a religious foundation, right? The United States, we hold these truths to be

00:40:33.740 self-evident that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their creator with certain

00:40:36.560 unalienable rights. The premise of our country is that there is a creator and the creator looks a

00:40:41.840 certain way and has a certain character. Maybe we don't all agree on the exact specifics, but

00:40:46.720 that means that America has a religious premise. And if you believe, don't believe in a creator,

00:40:55.460 then you don't really buy into that religious premise. If you believe in two or three creators,

00:40:59.960 then you also don't buy into that religious premise. Doesn't mean you can't get on and have

00:41:03.460 a good life and thrive in America, but you, we can't pretend that America doesn't have a religious

00:41:09.000 underpinning. The entire system of natural rights that we base our country on comes from the natural

00:41:15.900 law. Natural law has a religious tradition. We should stop pretending that there is religious

00:41:24.300 neutrality. We must have a religious premise because political questions rely on cultural

00:41:28.980 foundations. Cultural foundations come from religious foundations. Cult and culture derive

00:41:33.520 from the same word. What a culture worships will define that culture. So you've got to pick

00:41:39.620 which kind of basis you want. Do you want what we've always had in America, which is a Christian 1.00

00:41:46.380 basis for the country that is very tolerant of people's views, that allows people to have their

00:41:53.700 religious life and their spiritual life and how they want to live it most of the time and almost

00:41:59.380 always. Do you want that kind of view that's traditional, respects man, comes from natural rights,

00:42:05.960 or do you want the religious view that says that men are really women and babies are not really 0.99

00:42:11.420 babies and we should kill a million babies a year and we should have drag queens twerk in front of 1.00

00:42:15.980 children's faces. Those all rest on religious propositions and they disagree with one another. 1.00

00:42:22.880 The Christian view says babies are babies and you shouldn't kill a million of them a year

00:42:27.100 and adult men should not rub their, their private areas that should remain very, very private off of

00:42:35.780 TikTok out of the public view in front of children. You got to pick one, okay? And we, we again should

00:42:42.240 not pretend that there's some neutrality here. There isn't, and I don't feel neutral about any of it.

00:42:50.100 Speaking of neutrality, before we go, I just have to, I have to mark a very special occasion,

00:42:56.360 a very special anniversary. Net neutrality killed us all two years ago and I just want to mark that

00:43:04.540 occasion because we all died. There was a change from the federal agency on a certain internet

00:43:11.060 regulation. The left assured us it would kill all of us and so we've all been dead for two years and I

00:43:16.480 just want to, to take a moment to commemorate that. CNN's front page, 2017. Net neutrality is the end of

00:43:22.880 the internet as we know it. Sandra Fluke, who is a left-wing abortion activist and birth control 1.00

00:43:30.380 contraception activist. She said that repealing the regulation, the net neutrality would kill 1.00

00:43:37.000 access to abortion information. GLAAD insisted, GLAAD is a sort of LGBT organization, insisted that

00:43:47.500 repealing net neutrality would be an attack on the LGBTQ community. I don't know how that is exactly. I

00:43:53.720 don't know what the relation is between a sort of minor internet regulation and people's sexual

00:43:58.380 preferences but there you have it. GQ said that it would repeal the internet forever.

00:44:04.220 The ACLU said it would create a two-tier internet and Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat from my own

00:44:10.220 state of California, said that without net neutrality we would, we would all be sent a bill for how much

00:44:17.500 video, how many emails we sent, how many games we played, how many social media posts we made on the

00:44:21.920 internet. Every tweet it would cost us like two dollars and of course none of that happened whatsoever.

00:44:27.760 This gets into a lot of media and left-wing generated hysterias. They never have to admit

00:44:34.320 that they were wrong. I think that we're in the midst of one of those hysterias right now.

00:44:39.420 The markets are reacting to the coronavirus in a way that is, you know, plunging the global economy

00:44:45.700 into correction territory and it doesn't seem to be based on very good scientific information but

00:44:50.920 because the left never has to admit that they're wrong, they keep getting away with it again and again.

00:44:55.980 We're out of time today so we'll have to get back into why they should not get away with it this time

00:45:01.460 tomorrow and get ready for Super Tuesday because we'll see you all night. In the meantime, I'm Michael

00:45:05.560 Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you then.

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00:45:23.780 We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure

00:45:29.600 to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The

00:45:35.280 Matt Wall Show. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies and directed by Mike Joyner. Executive

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The Michael Knowles Show - March 02, 2020

Ep. 503 - Who Bought Pete Buttigieg？

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