The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 528 - Flatten The Narrative

00:00:00.000 Now that the United States has flattened the curve, President Trump is flattening the narrative

00:00:04.960 at a White House briefing that not only brutalized the press, but also prepared the way for a

00:00:10.520 reopening of our country. We will examine the grand strategy behind owning the libs. Then,

00:00:17.160 a new study out of Israel suggests the global economic shutdown was completely pointless.

00:00:22.660 Bernie Sanders endorses Joe Biden, and Joe's lead in the polls evaporates.

00:00:26.880 All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 The Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:00.000 I want to point out about yesterday's White House press conference, which President Trump

00:01:05.760 has been doing every single day. They've almost all been extraordinarily entertaining, just

00:01:10.720 really excellent TV. But one thing I want to point out about yesterday's, which was the

00:01:15.400 most entertaining of all of them, is that the entertainment value was not just there to make

00:01:23.060 us laugh. I think that President Trump structured this press conference to achieve a grand strategy

00:01:29.880 for his reelection campaign in 2020. And it also happened to be absolutely freaking hilarious.

00:01:37.400 So President Trump gives the usual introduction, then he answers some questions. And rather, before he

00:01:42.740 gets to the questions, he tees up a video. He's got the media all in the room. He says, you know,

00:01:48.940 I want to tee up this little video just to give you an overview of the past few weeks. And he tees up

00:01:55.920 the video. The video is of the media getting the coronavirus totally wrong.

00:02:02.480 In February, Nancy Pelosi said we should come to Chinatown. This is late February. Come to

00:02:09.980 Chinatown. We think it's very safe. Come here. Let's all have the big parade, Chinatown parade,

00:02:17.820 probably referring to San Francisco. And that's it. But I took this action early. And

00:02:24.840 so the story in the New York Times was a total fake. It's a fake newspaper. And they write fake

00:02:30.420 stories. And someday, hopefully in five years when I'm not here, those papers are all going out of

00:02:36.160 business because nobody's going to want to read them. But now they like them because they write

00:02:39.520 about me. Now, with that, I have a couple of interesting. We have a few clips that we're just

00:02:45.880 going to put up. We could turn the lights a little bit lower. I think you'll find them interesting.

00:02:49.080 Okay. That's the setting the stage, right? He's saying, I think you're going to like this. You're

00:02:54.060 going to enjoy it. So you already know, given the way he's introducing this video, that this is going

00:02:58.480 to be pretty savage, right? He's making fun of Nancy Pelosi for telling people in the early days of the

00:03:02.800 pandemic to come to Chinatown. He's going straight after the New York Times. Trump has changed his tone

00:03:09.000 day by day in the press briefing. Some days, very staid, very presidential, very bipartisan,

00:03:15.640 saying nice thing about Democrats, saying nice things even about the media.

00:03:19.880 That wasn't yesterday. Yesterday was a major tonal shift. He comes out, he goes,

00:03:24.920 the New York Times is a fake piece of trash newspaper. Nancy Pelosi is completely wrong. 0.99

00:03:29.520 She's a joke. She imperiled lives. And hey, check out my video. So he tees it up.

00:03:34.760 Here's the video itself.

00:03:37.300 People should be more concerned right now with the flu in this country.

00:03:40.380 A lot of people are concerned about the coronavirus because they're hearing a lot of news about it right

00:03:43.760 now. But the reality is comparing it to the flu, for example, it's not even close to being

00:03:48.900 at that stage.

00:03:49.700 It goes on and on on the media. But I think you get the gist. Look at how he's flipping

00:03:55.820 this because what the media are accusing Trump of doing is not taking the coronavirus seriously

00:04:03.260 of comparing it to the flu, for instance, which, by the way, might be a fair comparison.

00:04:07.560 We'll get to that a little bit later in the show.

00:04:08.960 But regardless of whether or not it is a fair comparison, that's not what Trump cares about

00:04:12.880 here. What Trump cares about here is showing that the media were very recently doing the

00:04:18.980 exact same thing that they are accusing him of doing. This is what he manages to do all

00:04:24.740 the time. He did this all throughout 2016. It's not even that he would defend himself

00:04:30.620 against the attacks from his opponents in the Republican primary or in the media.

00:04:34.720 He didn't have to do that. All he would have to do is show that his opponents and his critics

00:04:40.660 are no better than he is. So you remember this very clearly with Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush accuses

00:04:47.480 Donald Trump of being immature in 2016, of being childish, of not being composed, of not

00:04:53.100 being an adult. And then Donald Trump on the debate stage gets, he triggers Jeb Bush.

00:05:00.420 Jeb Bush starts getting all angry and he gets really fired up. And he goes, how was that,

00:05:04.420 Donald? Was that high energy enough? And Donald goes, yeah, that was high energy.

00:05:07.460 And he puts his hand out for a low five. And then Jeb, like the kid on the playground who

00:05:12.720 finally got the attention of the bully and, you know, the bully didn't give him a swirly.

00:05:18.120 Jeb got so excited that he kind of jumps up a little bit and smacks Trump's hand, totally

00:05:22.520 destroys Jeb Bush's argument that Jeb is the mature person. Jeb is going to behave like the

00:05:27.700 adult in the room because he was behaving in just as giddy and childish a way as Donald 0.81

00:05:31.840 Trump. That's what he's doing here to the media. He's done this again and again. I mean,

00:05:36.260 do you remember when Hillary Clinton was saying that if you contest the results of the 2016

00:05:42.000 election, you're a threat to democracy? What does Trump get her to do? Contest the results 1.00

00:05:46.160 of the 2016 election. So that's what's happening here. The press are just watching themselves.

00:05:52.880 He says, look at this video. And it's just a mirror, basically, up in the front of the room

00:05:57.180 to show the press who they are. Then the video moves on to its second stage,

00:06:01.400 which is no longer going after the press with their own words.

00:06:04.320 It's showing how Trump took the virus seriously.

00:06:13.740 Well, we've asked them to accelerate whatever they're doing in terms of a vaccine.

00:06:17.740 We will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.

00:06:23.860 To unleash the full power of the federal government in this effort today, I am officially declaring a

00:06:28.800 national emergency.

00:06:30.920 So you see here what Trump is doing. He's saying, you're accusing me of not taking it seriously.

00:06:36.720 Look at all the clips of me taking it seriously. Now, to be fair, were there also clips of President

00:06:41.900 Trump saying that the media were being alarmist early on? Yes. Again, that doesn't matter.

00:06:47.900 The media has this very narrow narrative that they have been constructing, which totally ignores their 0.86

00:06:54.520 own behavior, their own hypocrisy. So President Trump is constructing a parallel narrative. So he

00:07:02.500 hits the media. He then hits how great a job he's doing. And then he goes on to the governors praising

00:07:09.240 Trump. And the brilliance of this three-part video strategy is not even in the video. We've all seen

00:07:15.900 these clips before. It's that he knew exactly how it would trigger the media. And it turned out he was

00:07:21.320 right. We'll get to that in a second. First, I have got to thank all of our sponsors who are sticking

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00:08:41.020 Raycon wireless earbuds. Buyraycon.com slash Knowles. All right. He tees it up, shows the media

00:08:48.860 their own words. Then he shows the media his own words. And the third part, the piece de resistance

00:08:55.660 is he shows the media, the democratic governors who are praising him. So the New York Times can't

00:09:03.720 say anything nice about him. CNN can't say anything nice about him. The supposedly objective

00:09:07.620 journalists, but Trump's own political adversaries are going to be more fair to him than the allegedly

00:09:15.000 objective press. Here's the third part. His team is on it. They've been responsive late at night,

00:09:21.660 early in the morning. And they've thus far been doing everything that they can do. And I want to

00:09:28.600 say thank you. And I want to say that I appreciate it. He returns calls. He reaches out. He's been

00:09:35.400 proactive. We got that mercy ship down here in Los Angeles. That was directly because he sent it down

00:09:41.760 here. Okay. This I think is unprecedented in the history of press briefings. First of all,

00:09:48.380 the fact that president Trump holds his own press briefings every single day is also unprecedented.

00:09:53.560 I mean, the guy is obviously playing to his strengths because he's so good on camera. He's so

00:09:58.580 good at communicating. But to be this brazen, to be this bold is, there's obviously something going on

00:10:08.820 underneath this strategy. It's not merely a troll. And we'll get to what that is in a second. 0.73

00:10:14.220 But president Trump gives you this ice cream sundae, right? This three part ice cream sundae.

00:10:20.100 Just in case that wasn't going to send the media into a tizzy, he gives them a little cherry on top

00:10:27.340 of the sundae. And that little, that little cherry on top is that he quotes one of their own reporters,

00:10:34.640 not just any reporter, perhaps one of the most partisan reporters, Maggie Haberman. Hillary Clinton

00:10:40.600 said that Maggie Haberman's her favorite reporter because she would always cover Hillary in a positive

00:10:44.940 light. Trump adds this little bit of Maggie Haberman having to admit that Trump is doing a good job. 0.96

00:10:53.020 So now you've got an actual member of the press, a far left one, contradicting the press coverage that

00:11:01.040 we've been seeing for the past two weeks on president Trump. And that was the straw that broke the camel's

00:11:06.300 back. As there were more cases and it was clear that it was spreading out of China where it originated,

00:11:12.600 the president took this move that he was widely criticized for by Democrats and even some

00:11:18.680 Republicans at the time, which was he halted a number of flights from China into the U.S.

00:11:25.740 The idea was to halt the spread of the disease, keep transmissions to a minimum.

00:11:30.780 He was accused of xenophobia. He was accused of making a racist move.

00:11:35.480 At the end of the day, it was probably effective.

00:11:40.240 It was probably effective. Maggie Haberman at the New York Times, they could not believe it.

00:11:47.880 It was so brazen. It was so brutal. They tried their best to flip it on him,

00:11:57.140 but they were so defeated. They were so taken, taken aback by this that they couldn't do it.

00:12:02.320 The best move to try to flip this on Trump came from John Carl over at ABC,

00:12:07.380 who Trump has been humiliating in these press conferences. And John Carl took the one angle

00:12:12.520 he could see, which is he said that it looked like a campaign ad. And he wanted to find out

00:12:18.500 who made the ad because maybe Trump was using White House resources inappropriately for campaign

00:12:25.000 activities because that was a campaign ad that he just forced all of the mainstream media to play for

00:12:29.640 him for free on their networks. And Trump, like he was waiting for it. He was waiting for that little

00:12:35.100 toss up, knocks it out of the park. And he says, wait a second. You think that me playing your own

00:12:42.020 ridiculous words is a campaign ad? What does that say about you? 0.99

00:12:46.920 I've never seen a video like that played in this room. It looks a bit like a campaign ad. Who produced

00:12:53.520 that video for you?

00:12:54.380 That was done by a group in the office and it was done just by, we just put some clips together.

00:12:58.840 I could give you, I'll bet you I have over a hundred more clips, even better than them. They

00:13:04.380 were just pieced together over the last two hours. That was just, oh, we have far better than that.

00:13:09.200 That's nothing compared to some of them.

00:13:10.580 This was produced here in the White House.

00:13:12.140 Yeah, this was done by Dan and a group of people and they just put it together in a period of probably

00:13:17.040 less than two hours.

00:13:18.180 Why did you feel needed to do that?

00:13:19.380 Because we're getting fake news and I like to have it corrected.

00:13:22.960 How did John Carl not notice the flaw in his own question? He's so, he goes, why did you feel the

00:13:28.960 need to do that? To do what, John? What did he do? He just played your own words back to you.

00:13:34.960 Why did you feel the need to, to show our reporting? As if he is now admitting their reporting is so bad,

00:13:44.320 so unfair, so humiliating for them that merely playing it back on a television is an attack

00:13:55.220 on the media. Quoting the media is now an attack on the media. And I agree it is because the media

00:14:00.600 have humiliated themselves. And that was the trap that Trump set and it totally worked. It wasn't

00:14:05.860 just him. It wasn't just him. The former New York Times editor, Howell Raines fell for exactly the

00:14:11.660 same thing. Here's Howell Raines talking on MSNBC about it.

00:14:15.160 I think this is one of the most astonishing acts of disinformation we've seen from a White House

00:14:21.880 since the Vietnam era and the five o'clock follies of Lyndon Johnson's administration.

00:14:28.040 The news today, and this is one of those days as a journalist, when you have to put on your

00:14:32.860 analytical hat and hack your way through what's really happening. What really happened today is that

00:14:38.860 some smart, serious governors, Governor Newsom on the West coast, Governor Cuomo and Governor

00:14:44.860 O'Meara on the East coast took action to prevent the president from making a thunderous blunder

00:14:52.520 that would further endanger the health of the American people.

00:14:57.280 This was dangerous disinformation. What happened today, what matters is not what we saw at the press

00:15:03.020 briefing. It's not our own words. It's this other stuff that happened about the governors.

00:15:08.860 So if the, the Trump press briefing was dangerous disinformation, and if the centerpiece of the

00:15:18.960 Trump press briefing was just playing the reporter's own words back to them, it would seem to follow

00:15:26.080 that the mainstream media reporting is dangerous disinformation. He falls into it too. Not just him.

00:15:36.100 Okay. The question is who melted down here? The, the, the narrative right now that the media are

00:15:43.780 trying to spin is that Trump had a meltdown. And seriously, this was trending on Twitter. They say

00:15:48.480 Trump had a meltdown. You just saw it. Does he look like he had a meltdown? No, he just played a video

00:15:52.500 of these people speaking. And then the press had a meltdown because the left is always projecting.

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00:17:01.680 to save 25%. Who really melted down? That's the question. Now, the media are reporting this as a

00:17:11.840 Trump meltdown. Here's Jim Acosta, Jim Acosta-ing all over this story. I have to tell you, that is the

00:17:19.520 biggest meltdown I have ever seen from a president of the United States in my career. I don't think

00:17:24.540 a reasonable person could watch what we just saw over the last hour and conclude that the

00:17:30.280 president is in control. He sounds like he is out of control. He sounds like he's totally out of

00:17:34.780 control because he played our own words back to us. Okay. You saw, you saw how Trump reacted.

00:17:39.640 Compare that to John Carl, who looked like he was going to cry. He looked so crestfallen and upset.

00:17:47.740 And Jim Acosta obviously seems pretty upset on that clip. Trump didn't just shred the reporters

00:17:52.400 with their own words. He pointedly, when they were trying, they were just kept trying to attack

00:17:57.460 him from different angles. He just doesn't care anymore. Okay. There's, there's no more veneer.

00:18:01.560 There's no more pretend that he's going to play nicely with them. He's not doing it. Here is Trump

00:18:07.380 ripping apart a CBS reporter. All I'm saying is this. How do you close down the greatest economy in the

00:18:13.380 history of the world? When on January 17th, you have no cases and no death. When on January 21st,

00:18:22.000 you have one case and no death. One case. Think of that. Now we're supposed to close down the country,

00:18:27.140 but here's what happened. When on January 31st, I instituted the ban, Joe Biden went crazy. He said,

00:18:35.200 you don't need the ban. He didn't go crazy. Like he just, he didn't even know what the hell the ban

00:18:39.620 was, but he, so he didn't go crazy. But he did say, he did call me xenophobic. Wait a minute.

00:18:45.080 He called me xenophobic. He called me a racist because he has since apologized. And he said,

00:18:51.760 I did the right thing. So when you say, why didn't you this? Every Democrat thought I made a mistake

00:18:57.820 when I did it, I saved tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives by a minute.

00:19:02.500 That you bought. The argument is that you bought yourself some time and you didn't use it to

00:19:05.840 prepare hospitals. You didn't use it to ramp up testing. Right now, you're so, you're so

00:19:10.640 disgraceful. It's so disgraceful the way you say that. So disgraceful. Absolutely. Who could 0.93

00:19:15.680 disagree with that? The media, it was just an all out brawl. Okay. The media were getting their

00:19:20.260 hits in. Trump was getting his hits in. CNN ran four crazy chyrons in five minutes. One said angry

00:19:26.000 Trump turns briefing into propaganda session. Next one, Trump refuses to acknowledge any mistakes.

00:19:31.100 Next one, Trump uses task force briefing to try and rewrite history and coronavirus response.

00:19:34.840 Next one, Trump melts down an angry response to reports he ignored virus warnings.

00:19:40.300 What's this all about? What's this about? This is not just about Trump trying to move on from the

00:19:51.340 coronavirus news cycle. It's not just him signaling that he wants to move on. This is how Trump moves

00:19:59.960 on from the coronavirus news cycle. We got reports yesterday that Trump, he wants to try to start

00:20:06.320 reopening by May 1st, which he should. He should frankly do it sooner if he can. He's not going to

00:20:12.420 win if he keeps defending himself. He's done an excellent job on the coronavirus response. The media

00:20:17.640 are dishonest hacks and they're going to attack him for, as we just saw, opposite reasons because

00:20:22.960 he didn't do enough or because he did too much. They're going to go after him either way. It's

00:20:25.800 going to be unfair. That's not a battle he can win. So he's got to move on now. And the way that

00:20:30.260 he's going to move on is not by asking nicely to move on. The way he's going to move on is by playing

00:20:36.540 what is essentially a campaign ad during the White House briefing, even though the campaign ad is just

00:20:41.420 the mainstream media's own words. He's going to force their hand. That's what he did yesterday. And he's

00:20:47.440 forcing them to get back to 2020 coverage. And you know what? Credit where credit's due. You don't need

00:20:52.880 to just take my word for it here. The jackals over at Media Matters finally caught on to how much this

00:20:58.420 foolish press is helping President Trump. So my friend over there, Jason Campbell, who is, you know, Media 0.91

00:21:05.180 Matters is this left-wing operative group. But unlike other left-wing operative groups, instead of trying to

00:21:09.780 get politicians fired, they try to get media people fired. And there's no version of this on the right.

00:21:15.640 It's only on the left because they hate that conservatives can communicate. They can't refute

00:21:19.920 the arguments that we're making, so they just try to silence us. And so anyway, the one guy who's

00:21:23.960 assigned to me and some of the other Daily Wire people, Jason Campbell, who I actually sort of get

00:21:28.360 a kick out of, he recognized the strategy here, right? So he tweets out, not that networks should ever

00:21:35.980 have been broadcasting these Trump rallies, clothed as press briefings. But if they're now going to run

00:21:40.820 campaign ads for free on their airtime, they clearly have learned nothing from 2016.

00:21:49.280 That's true, right? Trump is always using the media to get free publicity. I think he got something like

00:21:56.440 $2 billion worth of free press in 2016. Campbell sent out another tweet. He was responding to someone who

00:22:01.960 said, they can keep putting all the sassy chyrons on screen they want. It doesn't matter. What matters

00:22:06.440 is when the networks stop airing the briefing and start covering it. And Campbell responded to that

00:22:10.500 over at Media Matters. And he said, this is just dawning on the networks now. They had to air a

00:22:14.760 campaign ad for free to realize these are propaganda sessions. So I give Campbell and Media Matters credit

00:22:21.400 for recognizing how Trump is manipulating the press's own hackery to work against them. There is a little

00:22:27.420 irony here though, because Media Matters watches my show every single day and then takes out some of

00:22:35.200 the best clips from my show and posts them themselves with little snarky comments. And they

00:22:42.240 think that the little snarky comments are going to matter more than the exposure that Media Matters is

00:22:46.400 giving to my show and the other shows here at the Daily Wire, but that they are doing exactly what

00:22:51.800 they're criticizing the media of doing for Trump. So anyway, I just want to thank Media Matters for doing

00:22:55.940 that. You're astute in your observation. You're definitely helping us to spread our show. So

00:23:00.460 thank you very much and keep up the good work. It was not just Trump who was owning the press

00:23:06.340 yesterday and having a good time doing it. Okay. Everyone was getting in on this. It's not just a

00:23:10.900 single zinger, right? This was clearly a well thought out strategy. This is what you're going to

00:23:15.860 see moving into the future. Even Dr. Fauci got in on the fun. Dr. Fauci is a pretty buttoned up guy,

00:23:22.540 but even he went after the press because the press have been trying to sow division and get Dr.

00:23:26.940 Fauci fired and get Trump pitted against Fauci. So Fauci was asked basically, please, Dr. Fauci,

00:23:35.880 please disagree with President Trump and Trump wouldn't, or Fauci rather wouldn't do it. He

00:23:40.400 ended up backing the president. We had been talking before any meetings that we had about the pros and

00:23:47.340 cons, the effectiveness or not of strong mitigations. So discussions were going on mostly among the

00:23:54.020 medical people about what that would mean. The first and only time that Dr. Birx and I went in

00:24:02.780 and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a, quote, shutdown in the sense of

00:24:11.320 not really shutdown, but to really have strong mitigation. We discussed it. Obviously, there

00:24:16.900 would be concern by some that in fact that might have some negative consequences. Nonetheless,

00:24:24.060 the president listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation. The next second time that I

00:24:31.900 went with Dr. Birx into the president and said, 15 days are not enough. We need to go 30 days.

00:24:39.500 Obviously, there were people who had a problem with that because of the potential secondary effects.

00:24:46.480 Nonetheless, at that time, the president went with the health recommendations and we extended it

00:24:52.840 another 30 days. So Fauci is saying Trump did what we asked him to do. Trump listened to the advice of

00:24:59.160 the medical professionals. I got no problem with Trump. Stop trying to sow discord. The press wouldn't

00:25:05.520 leave it at that though. The press actually asked Dr. Fauci if he was being honest or if Trump had

00:25:12.920 just bullied him into backing him. They asked him, Dr. Fauci, are you voluntarily saying all of these

00:25:18.860 things? And the disgust with which Dr. Fauci regards the media became so clear because what an

00:25:25.640 offensive question. Say, yeah, but are you telling the truth? Yeah, but are you lying? Yeah, but are you

00:25:30.000 being bullied? Yeah, but are you weak? He looks at them. He goes, excuse me, everything I do, I do

00:25:35.860 voluntarily. Are you doing this voluntarily? No, I'm doing it. Everything I do is voluntarily. Please

00:25:43.040 don't even imply that. Please don't even imply that. What an offensive way. By the way, if the

00:25:48.380 press are trying to ingratiate themselves to Dr. Fauci and turn Fauci against Trump, not doing a good job

00:25:52.880 of it. This was one of the most glorious press conferences in American history. However, it was

00:25:59.020 not without its flaws. There was one bit in here that Trump got an aspect of our governmental system

00:26:06.080 factually incorrect. He seemed in the clip to misunderstand federalism and he said it's not

00:26:11.420 up to the states on whether or not they want to reopen. Actually, the president has total control.

00:26:16.940 Just to clarify your understanding of your authority vis-a-vis governors, just be very specific. For

00:26:24.400 instance, if a governor issued a state home, when you say my authority, the president's authority, not mine,

00:26:30.580 because it's not me. This is when somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total

00:26:36.960 and that's the way it's got to be. Your authority is total. It's total. It's total. And the governors know

00:26:42.220 that. The governors know that. No, you have a couple of bans of, excuse me, excuse me. You have

00:26:47.380 a couple. Could you rescind that order? You have a couple of bans of, of Democrat governors, but they

00:26:53.760 will agree to it. They will agree to it. But the authority of the president of the United States

00:26:58.820 having to do with the subject we're talking about is total. Now that last bit is important. He's not

00:27:04.440 saying the president has total power, like he's a dictator. He's saying that on this subject, the

00:27:10.380 president has total power, which is also not true by the way, the, the states do have a considerable

00:27:16.040 authority on how to reopen. Federal government has a little bit of authority there too, but sure. Okay.

00:27:21.220 President Trump is misrepresenting federalism here. Everybody, everybody and their mother pounced on

00:27:27.540 Trump for this. You know, you heard the, the same chorus that you always hear from the squishy

00:27:34.160 Republican crowd. They said, what would you have said if Barack Obama had said this? Let's be fair

00:27:42.120 here because Donald Trump said this and you're going to mostly give him a pass. You'll maybe say

00:27:46.640 he was wrong, but then not harp on it too much. But if Trump had said this, you would have, or if

00:27:51.140 Obama rather had said this, you would have harped on it a lot. They think this is some sort of profound

00:27:54.900 question. This, this profound insight that we treat radical leftists differently than we treat

00:28:02.320 conservatives. They think this exposes some kind of hypocrisy. It's actually quite simple. We would

00:28:09.140 have reacted differently to Barack Obama because Barack Obama was Barack Obama and Donald Trump is

00:28:14.540 Donald Trump. Why do we think that ideology doesn't matter here? Okay. If we've got a president who's

00:28:22.320 done a very good job, who's got a good track record, who we can rely on at least to a considerable degree

00:28:27.960 to advance conservative priorities and steward the government in a good way.

00:28:34.220 What maniac would not give him a little bit more grace than the guy who's a radical leftist, who

00:28:39.380 has an apparent antipathy for the country, who says he wants to fundamentally transform the country,

00:28:45.200 who lies through his teeth when it comes to matters of public policy. Like if you can,

00:28:49.340 if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, who regards half of his countrymen as bitter clingers,

00:28:54.160 who he holds in contempt. Yeah, of course we're going to treat Trump a little bit better than that.

00:29:00.400 That's perfectly natural and it's perfectly reasonable to do that. So did Trump get the

00:29:04.560 point on federalism a little bit off? Yeah, sure he did. Is it going to spoil my day? No.

00:29:10.400 I'm glad that he knows now that, you know, he's, the states have a little bit more authority, but okay,

00:29:14.500 whatever, move on. Other than that, it was an excellent press conference and it achieved the goal

00:29:21.060 of moving past coronavirus. And there are a lot of reasons I think that we should probably move past

00:29:26.780 coronavirus in the near future. One of those is given by a legendary conservative figure, Bill

00:29:32.060 Bennett. Bill Bennett was the education secretary under Ronald Reagan. He's been a long time on the

00:29:37.520 conservative scene. Bill Bennett is now bringing back this argument that perhaps the coronavirus is

00:29:45.920 not like Ebola so much as it's like the seasonal flu. Maybe it's not going to kill 2 million people

00:29:53.200 like we were told initially. Maybe it's actually going to kill closer to maybe 60,000 people is the

00:29:57.700 current estimate. Now, what's funny about this is this is the argument that the press was making in

00:30:03.040 the early days of the pandemic, that now they're criticizing Trump for making in the early days of

00:30:06.860 the pandemic, that now President Trump is not making, but increasingly looks plausible. How do we make

00:30:11.540 sense of all of that? We'll get to Bill Bennett. We'll get to a new study out of Israel, which is

00:30:15.480 backing up what Bill Bennett is saying, at least about reopening the economy. Then we'll get to the

00:30:19.480 big endorsement, Bernie Sanders' caves, like he always does, because Bernie is a loser. We'll get to 1.00

00:30:25.480 that. We'll get to Biden's evaporated lead. But first, oh, do I have a deal for you? I love this deal.

00:30:32.660 This maybe is my favorite deal we've ever run. So when you become a Daily Wire, Insider Plus,

00:30:37.880 or All Access member, usually you get one Leftist Tears Tumblr. That's pretty good,

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00:30:49.080 one Tumblr. You get two Tumblrs. I like how straightforward it is. Sometimes deals, promos,

00:30:57.500 they're kind of complicated. You get this and that. No, this is very simple. You like one,

00:31:01.000 one is good. Well, guess what? Two is better. It's going to be great. By the way, we've got a

00:31:04.540 surprise for current subscribers coming too. So hold out for that. But if you are not subscribing

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00:31:20.940 coupon code Knowles. Get the rarest of all beverage vessels times two. We'll be right back.

00:31:34.540 So Bill Bennett, Ronald Reagan's education secretary, legendary conservative figure.

00:31:44.400 He's going back to the initial comparison for this coronavirus, which was to the seasonal flu.

00:31:51.460 Obviously that comparison would not have made a lot of sense if we were talking about 2 million

00:31:54.860 Americans dead or 4 million or 6 million Americans dead or however many they said it was going to be.

00:31:59.140 Wouldn't have made sense if we were talking about 250,000 Americans dead, but the current models are

00:32:03.060 now projecting about 60,000. And so that is within the range of the seasonal flu. Here's Bill Bennett.

00:32:09.300 What are we missing about this virus? We see the numbers, 22,000 dead, how many cases,

00:32:15.820 but you took a step back and what did you find? Yeah, let's take a step back. The estimates now from

00:32:21.440 the University of Washington, which is the model everybody's been going on, even though it's been

00:32:25.300 wrong most of the time by a lot overstating it is now they say 60,000 people will die.

00:32:31.680 61,000 is what we lost to the flu in 2017 and 2018. The flu. Now we all regret the loss of 61,000

00:32:41.260 people. If that's what it turns out to be, I'm going to tell you, I think it's going to be less

00:32:44.940 and salute all those who are working on the front lines on this, the hospital workers, the nurses,

00:32:49.780 the doctors, et cetera, and the generosity of the American people. But if you look at those numbers

00:32:55.080 and see the comparable, we're going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu. For this,

00:33:01.820 we scared the hell out of the American people. We lost 17 million jobs. We put a major dent in the

00:33:07.920 economy. We closed down the schools. You heard Dr. Oz say we probably didn't have to do that.

00:33:12.780 Shut down the churches and so on. You know, this was not and is not a pandemic,

00:33:18.720 but we do have panic and pandemonium as a result of the hype of this. And it's really unfortunate.

00:33:25.220 Look at the facts. I love that Bill Bennett has the courage to say this because increasingly this

00:33:31.400 comparison looks tenable. Now, is this the flu? No, it's different. It's more contagious.

00:33:36.320 It's new, right? We don't know about this. It just came out of China.

00:33:40.920 It was covered up by the Chinese government, so it became more virulent and was able to spread more

00:33:45.420 without us taking precautions. So sure, it's a little bit different. But if you look at the

00:33:49.000 current projected deaths, it's very similar. But you're not allowed to make that comparison

00:33:52.600 anymore because the left is using the tactic that it always uses when it can't win the argument

00:33:57.140 is it just browbeats you. It emotionally manipulates you into not making the obvious argument.

00:34:05.460 So it goes a little bit something like this. You say, huh, 60,000 deaths. Well, that's,

00:34:10.940 that's kind of like the flu. I guess the coronavirus is, is a little bit similar to the flu.

00:34:14.300 And yet we reacted to it so much differently. And then the left will do this. They'll say,

00:34:19.080 are you comparing this to the flu? Are you, are you seriously, do you have the gall, the temerity,

00:34:25.600 the stupidity to compare this to the flu? And by the time they're done intimidating you, 1.00

00:34:31.040 you think, oh gosh, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Am I wrong? Yeah, no, no, I'm not. I'm not

00:34:35.140 doing that. I'm not. But wait a second. Yeah. Why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I? Because the

00:34:39.520 comparison wouldn't make sense if your alarmist numbers turned out to be correct.

00:34:45.380 But they didn't turn out to be correct. Actually, the numbers that we suspected were true the whole

00:34:51.600 time from the very beginning that you screamed and yelled at us for, those numbers are turning

00:34:55.980 out to be correct. So yes, I am making that comparison. Thank you very much. And it would,

00:35:02.160 it would appear that that comparison, while imperfect, because all comparisons are imperfect,

00:35:05.840 that comparison seems to carry a lot of weight. Now, there's one argument that the left puts

00:35:10.840 forward to shut this down. They say, you can't compare it to the flu because the only reason

00:35:19.240 the numbers are so low, the current projected death numbers, is because we shut down the global economy.

00:35:26.520 So it's crazy. If we'd listened to you, we would have gotten 2 million people dead. But because we

00:35:31.080 listen to me, now the numbers are going down. And ironically, you think this vindicates your stupid 1.00

00:35:36.980 idea. But really, it vindicates us, the alarmists, who shut down without precedent the global economy 1.00

00:35:44.080 over a virus that we knew very little about. That argument does not hold up. It doesn't hold up

00:35:51.200 for a couple reasons. One, because at least in the recent models, which were projecting 100,000,

00:35:58.540 200,000 deaths, at least in those recent models, they were already factoring in social distancing.

00:36:05.040 They were already factoring in shutting down the economy. They were factoring on all the things that

00:36:09.580 we were doing and they're still wrong. But even beyond that, there is evidence coming out more day

00:36:16.180 by day that the lockdown didn't do anything. Most recently, we're seeing this from Israel,

00:36:24.340 not just Israel the country, Israel the person. The Israeli professor and public intellectual,

00:36:30.420 Isaac Ben Israel, has just looked at some studies on this. He has concluded that in countries where

00:36:38.660 they took closure steps, shutdown steps like Italy, and in countries that have not taken closure steps

00:36:45.080 like Taiwan or Singapore, the trend of the disease is almost exactly the same. What he found is

00:36:51.700 there is an increase, in some cases a significant increase in the number of cases, until the fourth

00:36:57.200 to sixth week. And then immediately after that, there is moderation for a couple weeks or a few weeks

00:37:03.360 until the eighth week. And then it declines and disappears. What's different about what this Israeli 1.00

00:37:11.560 intellectual, Professor Isaac Ben Israel, is looking at and the models that we based our policy on

00:37:17.460 is that Isaac Ben Israel is looking at the real hard data, not just the prediction models.

00:37:24.120 And the real hard data are showing that perhaps the lockdowns didn't achieve very much at all. He says,

00:37:31.400 this is happening both in countries that have closed down like us and in those that have not closed down

00:37:35.960 until today like Sweden. Every country, no matter its response, the decline and rise occur according to

00:37:42.140 the same timeline. It's clear to us how the epidemic is starting and what is causing the increase.

00:37:47.960 What is causing the moderation is unclear, which means there is a world, and I'm not saying this is

00:37:54.140 certainly the case, but there is evidence that we shut down this global economy. We threw 16 million

00:38:01.700 Americans out of work for three weeks, just in three weeks, not for three weeks. They're going to be out of work 0.65

00:38:06.060 a lot longer than that. And when we get the unemployment numbers this Thursday, there are

00:38:11.440 going to be a lot more people unemployed, a lot of lives ruined, a lot of people going back to drug

00:38:16.900 addiction, a lot of people who will commit suicide because that always happens in economic downturns.

00:38:22.420 There'll be a lot of negative consequences from this, possibly for nothing based on no evidence.

00:38:31.800 The mainstream media and the leftist politicians who did this are going to have a lot to answer

00:38:35.960 for. And I think President Trump is recognizing this now. And I think that's why he is signaling

00:38:40.480 that we've got to move on past this. We've got to get out and get the economy going as fast as

00:38:48.460 possible. Because by the way, we're running out of time. Every day this drags on, it's going to be

00:38:52.480 that much harder to restart the economy. And that could cost Trump the election in November. And maybe

00:38:57.760 the media and the left had that in their mind the whole damn time. Speaking of the election in

00:39:03.680 November, we now have a presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden. And Bernie

00:39:08.860 Sanders, loser as he ever was, is admitting defeat. And for all his purported radicalism 0.99

00:39:17.020 is endorsing the establishment nominee, Joe Biden.

00:39:21.200 Today, I am asking all Americans, I'm asking every Democrat, I'm asking every independent,

00:39:27.640 I'm asking a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy,

00:39:34.600 which I endorse.

00:39:35.820 Hold on. What was that sound that just came out of Joe? Did you hear that? And I'm asking them

00:39:42.040 to support your candidacy.

00:39:43.820 What was that sound? Was that supposed to express surprise? What is he surprised about?

00:39:50.200 Surely he's not surprised that Bernie is endorsing his campaign. That's the whole reason they were on

00:39:55.020 that live stream. That's what they've been negotiating for weeks. That couldn't have been

00:39:58.840 the surprise. Maybe for Joe Biden, the surprise was that he's running for president at all.

00:40:03.320 It's got to be an unpleasant surprise. Oh, I got to do that still. Oh no, that's terrible. I just want

00:40:09.300 to, I just want to sit and watch my stories on the television. Bernie then finishes his endorsement.

00:40:15.180 To make certain that we defeat somebody who I believe, and I'm speaking just for myself now,

00:40:23.380 is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country.

00:40:28.180 Okay. You get it. You get it. Bernie is going to endorse him. We knew this was going to happen.

00:40:33.980 Bernie always rolls over. Bernie doesn't want to be a leader. Bernie doesn't want to be the nominee.

00:40:39.660 Bernie doesn't want to be a front runner. Bernie doesn't want to be the president.

00:40:41.740 That would require doing something. And Bernie has never effected very much public policy at all.

00:40:48.960 Bernie has never led anything in particular other than a protest movement. That's why when he was a

00:40:56.000 young man, he was always part of these fringe political parties. He didn't seem to have much

00:41:00.140 interest in really winning. He just wanted to be a gadfly. And then he's been a gadfly his whole

00:41:04.420 career. And now he's endorsing Joe Biden. The only reason I mentioned this is because of one

00:41:09.100 particular irony, which is that Bernie Sanders has endorsed Joe Biden for president before Barack

00:41:15.860 Obama has. Bernie Sanders, the radical socialist who ran against Joe Biden, has endorsed him before

00:41:22.440 Joe Biden's old boss, who he served under faithfully as vice president for two terms. Barack Obama.

00:41:29.540 Obama just, I don't know, he just might not believe in Joe. Who would? That Bernie endorsement might not

00:41:35.180 mean very much because Bernie's own spokesman will not endorse Joe Biden. The idea is that if Bernie

00:41:41.600 endorses Biden, then all the Bernie bros are going to come over and the party's going to unify and

00:41:46.200 that'll be all well and good. Maybe not because if Bernie can't get his own spokesman to come over,

00:41:53.820 how's he going to get all those other crazy Bernie bros? His spokesman, Brianna Joy Gray says,

00:41:59.180 with the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who's an incredible human being and genuine inspiration,

00:42:03.340 I don't endorse Joe Biden. I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like Medicare

00:42:08.780 for all, canceling all student debt and a wealth tax. Biden supports none of those.

00:42:16.280 Ouch. Ouch. Pretty sad. Bernie Sanders likely already has regrets, okay? Because I think probably

00:42:25.100 Bernie doesn't want to endorse him, but he doesn't want to be blamed for losing. And what does he really

00:42:28.420 care? He's just going to go back to the Senate. You could see in the endorsement video, Joe Biden

00:42:34.440 starts running off on tangents that don't make any sense. And you can look, if you look deeply in

00:42:40.240 Bernie's eyes, you say, oh gosh, what have I done? At one point in this endorsement, Joe Biden says,

00:42:46.520 it's so imperative that he wins because he needs to create a path to citizenship for citizens.

00:42:52.100 We're going to finally achieve comprehensive immigration reform as well. Put millions of

00:42:57.100 citizens on a pathway to citizenship, including so many who are on the front lines right now.

00:43:03.020 You can see Bernie Sanders just, yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. Oh, what did he say?

00:43:07.940 Oh, well, we're in it now. Okay. And he plasters a smile on his face. Very sad situation for the

00:43:15.040 Democratic Party because they don't think that Joe is going to win. And the polls are showing that too.

00:43:18.620 So right now there's a Fox News poll out of registered voters showed that Joe Biden's lead

00:43:24.380 over Trump is gone. Joe Biden just a week ago had an almost 10 point lead over President Trump

00:43:32.600 nationally. Now that's gone. Okay. Now they are tied. They both have 42% support and another 16%

00:43:42.020 say they would vote for a third party candidate or are undecided. What changed in that

00:43:48.540 time? Trump has shown leadership on the coronavirus. It didn't have the effect

00:43:54.360 that Democrats were hoping, right? What Democrats were hoping was that the coronavirus would destroy

00:43:59.660 the economy, throw people out of work. I mean, Bill Maher talked about this openly. He said,

00:44:03.840 we need a recession because a recession will kick Trump out of office and it'd be better for millions

00:44:08.920 of people to lose their jobs than for Trump to get reelected. So Democrats were openly campaigning

00:44:13.360 for this or the media were openly campaigning for this. They finally got it, but it didn't have the

00:44:17.860 effect that they wanted because President Trump took control of the narrative. If he had just

00:44:22.560 stayed in the Oval Office, closed off from everybody and the media were running rampant,

00:44:26.800 then it might've had that effect, but he's not. Trump is holding his own press conferences.

00:44:31.300 Now he's not just holding the press conferences, answering questions about coronavirus. He's dictating

00:44:36.120 the news of the day every single day. He's showing leadership. I think the leadership thing helped

00:44:42.360 on those polls. He also is showing that he's ready to turn this around. Okay. And a down economy

00:44:50.040 four or five months before the election is not a huge deal if he can get that economy going again

00:44:58.700 in time for November. And I think that's what he's signaling. I think Joe Biden knows that. I think

00:45:03.680 nobody wants Joe Biden to lead in a crisis and they're seeing that moment slip from Joe, just like

00:45:08.700 so many things are slipping from Joe these days. That is one way to pummel the narrative. Now what,

00:45:14.540 what we all have to make sure happens is now that we're pummeling that mainstream media,

00:45:20.260 that leftist narrative, now that it's into oblivion, we've got to move forward. That's

00:45:24.080 what President Trump's got to see. He's making some signals that he's going to do that, but a lot

00:45:29.320 is going to matter in the next two weeks. We'll see if they can turn it around. We don't have any more

00:45:34.060 time today, but we will get back into it tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:45:37.160 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:46:07.160 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies and directed by Mike Joyner.

00:46:12.620 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:46:18.340 Technical producer, Austin Stevens. Assistant director, Pavel Widowski. Editor and associate

00:46:23.980 producer, Danny D'Amico. Audio mixer, Robin Fenderson. Hair and makeup, Nika Geneva. Production

00:46:31.060 assistant, Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:46:37.160 Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. Donald Trump set fire

00:46:42.140 to the news media. Ooh, they burn so good. We'll enjoy it on The Andrew Klavan Show. I'm Andrew Klavan.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 14, 2020

Ep. 528 - Flatten The Narrative

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