The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 61 - Kill The Elephants, Or Else They’ll Die

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00:00:37.640 Should President Trump overturn a stupid Obama-era rule banning big game hunters from keeping trophies like elephant tusks? 1.00

00:00:45.400 As someone with years of experience seeing pink elephants, I will explain why we need to kill the animals or else they'll die. 0.99

00:00:51.620 Then, Owen Benjamin and Paul Bois join the panel of deplorables to talk lascivious leftists at the New York Times and President Covfefe's latest poetry.

00:01:01.720 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:03.680 Oh, we've got a lot to talk about.

00:01:13.080 People are really misunderstanding this Trump-era rule on big game trophies. 0.99

00:01:17.640 There is just more sex, sex, sex.

00:01:20.160 That's all that's in the news cycle now. 0.95

00:01:22.420 And shock, you'll be surprised.

00:01:23.900 It's all Democrats committing all the crimes.

00:01:26.320 But before we get to any of that, we have to get to something at the heart of all of this, which is capitalism.

00:01:32.420 Capitalism, we're going to talk a lot about that today.

00:01:34.620 And one thing I really like about capitalism is it allows me to keep the lights on here and Marshall employed and Covfefe in my cup because we have a sponsor.

00:01:43.600 We have a sponsor of the show.

00:01:44.580 And this sponsor is very near and dear to my heart.

00:01:47.700 This is a special one.

00:01:49.700 It brings a tear to my eye.

00:01:51.080 It brings back wistful memories of childhood.

00:01:53.760 This sponsor is Mrs. Fields Cookies.

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00:04:30.540 Now we have to get, you know, this gives you nice images of childhood, and that's really nice.

00:04:35.400 Now we have to get back into the news and think about dead elephants.

00:04:38.040 Just less pleasant.

00:04:39.360 That's not as nice.

00:04:40.400 But in any case, President Trump is walking back his administration's decision to end a three-year-old Obama-era regulation banning big-game hunting trophies from Africa

00:04:51.000 after a bunch of people who don't know anything about big-game hunting or conservation complained on Twitter.

00:04:56.680 Even Republicans, even conservatives are getting in on this because people don't seem to understand the rationale behind big-game hunting and trophies.

00:05:05.780 Here, Uncle Jimbo explains.

00:05:08.160 Now, we only kill animals to, quote, thin out their numbers.

00:05:11.600 If we don't hunt, then these animals will grow too big a number and they won't have enough food. 0.94

00:05:15.800 So you see, we have to kill animals or else they'll die.

00:05:19.540 There it is. 1.00

00:05:20.060 That's simple enough. 1.00

00:05:20.700 We have to kill the animals or else they will die. 1.00

00:05:24.380 That's very, very simple. 1.00

00:05:25.960 And, you know, it's comedic, right?

00:05:27.820 It's so counterintuitive that hunting the animals will actually increase their numbers and lead to more conservation.

00:05:34.060 But just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it isn't true.

00:05:37.600 Shallows are clear, right? 0.99

00:05:39.240 And so the Atlantic summed up stupid coverage of this this weekend. 0.99

00:05:43.040 They wrote, quote, 0.99

00:05:44.340 If you were an elephant, you might be puzzling over human behavior this week.

00:05:49.340 Well, I'm not an elephant.

00:05:50.140 Also, elephants don't puzzle, you know, because they're animals.

00:05:52.900 But this is how they think, right?

00:05:55.300 If I were the animal, if animals were like people, they go further.

00:05:59.060 They say, if elephants are recognized as illegal persons, a term the U.S. courts have granted to corporations, well, and New Zealand has given to a river and it's been extended to yada, yada, yada, it would be more difficult to hunt them at all, let alone import their body parts.

00:06:16.040 Right.

00:06:16.360 So it is true.

00:06:18.200 Let me try to explain this to the Atlantic, how an elephant might not be a person, but corporations are people.

00:06:24.100 Corporations are groups of people.

00:06:26.480 They're not groups of animals.

00:06:28.420 They're not buildings.

00:06:29.760 They're not newspapers.

00:06:30.920 They're groups of people working in corporation with one another.

00:06:35.180 And you don't surrender your rights, your constitutional rights, just because you work with other people.

00:06:40.120 That's why, famously, Mitt Romney, he was pilloried for this, but it nevertheless is the case.

00:06:45.280 Corporations are people.

00:06:46.400 What else are they?

00:06:47.200 They aren't gates.

00:06:48.520 They aren't unicorns.

00:06:49.700 They aren't buildings.

00:06:50.660 They're people.

00:06:51.240 They're groups of people working together.

00:06:53.220 Now, here's a statistic.

00:06:54.900 30,000 elephants a year are killed by poachers.

00:06:59.400 When we're talking about big game hunting and giving out licenses, we're talking about a handful of these things per year.

00:07:04.840 We're not talking about the 30,000 that are killed because their tusks are so valuable that starving people in Africa who want to make a profit decide to kill them, and they sell an ounce of it, and they make a year's salary.

00:07:16.160 According to a 2005 paper in the Journal of International Wildlife Law, legalization of white rhinoceros hunting in South Africa motivated private landowners to reintroduce the species onto their lands.

00:07:28.920 So we're not just talking about preserves that are held by the public or held by the government or whatever.

00:07:35.520 We're talking about incentives.

00:07:37.460 So when this became legal, landowners realized, oh, interesting.

00:07:43.740 If we bring some of those things on here that are worth a ton of money and we allow people to hunt for them, then we will make money too.

00:07:50.720 As a result, there was an increase in white rhinos from fewer than 100 individual rhinos to more than 11,000.

00:07:57.380 Even while only a limited number were killed as trophies.

00:08:00.860 Well, how does this work?

00:08:02.260 It's because conservation is expensive.

00:08:04.700 So you remember this.

00:08:05.580 A couple years ago in May 2015, a Texan legally shot a critically endangered black rhino in Namibia.

00:08:13.680 So there's this species of black rhino.

00:08:15.780 They're critically endangered.

00:08:16.900 This guy goes over there and shoots one.

00:08:18.600 He bought a license for $350,000.

00:08:22.200 That was money generated from the hunt.

00:08:24.080 It was a totally managed hunt.

00:08:25.180 And that money was reinvested in conservation, maintaining habitats, maintaining environments, keeping people around to stop the poachers.

00:08:33.700 And the key here isn't even the money per se.

00:08:35.480 Obviously, in Namibia, $350,000 goes a long way.

00:08:38.160 It goes farther than it does in Los Angeles or New York.

00:08:40.740 But that isn't it.

00:08:41.480 It's about the system of incentives.

00:08:43.340 Just like capitalism as we describe it.

00:08:47.000 And I don't even like to use that term.

00:08:48.660 It's a term that was invented by socialists to pillory free markets.

00:08:52.900 But freedom, economic freedom, free markets protected by the rule of law and people making sure there's a level playing field.

00:08:59.620 It's not just about all of the wealth it produces, though it does.

00:09:02.860 The reason it produces that wealth is because all of the incentives are aligned.

00:09:06.460 So if we're just talking about conservation and only basing it on altruism, there's a limit to human altruism.

00:09:12.600 But there isn't a limit to humans looking after their own interests and hopefully producing good along the way, meaning property, meaning prosperity, meaning jobs for people, meaning wealth to invest in the environment.

00:09:24.940 We'll talk about this a little bit more on Thursday when we get to Thanksgiving.

00:09:27.840 But the pilgrims learned this lesson very hard after a couple of years.

00:09:30.740 Incentives are important here.

00:09:32.780 So, for instance, when this big game hunting is illegal, when trophies can be taken home, then there's more of an incentive to have wild land and less farmland.

00:09:42.940 So it keeps the wild wild.

00:09:44.720 Why is this?

00:09:45.600 Well, if landowners can make more money, either the government or private landowners can make more money from selling licenses and letting people hunt these beautiful animals than they can from farming, then they're going to do that, right?

00:09:57.580 But if they start farming, then they're going to cut down all of the grazing habitats anyway.

00:10:01.880 So controlled, legalized hunting has also been beneficial for Zimbabwe's elephants.

00:10:07.660 Now, this is the big issue.

00:10:09.040 People love elephants.

00:10:10.040 I love elephants.

00:10:10.760 It's the symbol of my dear political party.

00:10:13.520 I wear elephant designs and things like that for just that reason.

00:10:17.260 There are those weird videos of elephants painting that are very terrifying.

00:10:21.100 You know, they're clearly, they exhibit some intelligence.

00:10:23.000 So they say, well, if we allow these trophies, then, you know, then the elephants are going to be endangered and all of their tusks are going to be taken and sold for the ivory.

00:10:33.860 But trophy hunting has doubled the area of that country under wildlife management relative to the 13% in state protected areas.

00:10:42.440 Why is that?

00:10:42.920 Because there's an incentive for wild areas to remain wild.

00:10:46.120 As a result, the area of suitable land available to elephants and other wildlife has increased.

00:10:52.940 And by the way, we're not talking about post-hunt sales.

00:10:55.260 So we're not saying, well, there will be more and there will be a freer market in trading in these things.

00:11:00.100 So poachers are just going to go out and get them and sell them.

00:11:02.420 First of all, they're already doing that.

00:11:04.520 Poaching is the problem.

00:11:05.880 These big game hunters are statistically insignificant when we're talking about big game elephants, rhinoceros is being killed.

00:11:12.580 But we're not even talking about post-hunt sales.

00:11:14.220 We're talking about trophies.

00:11:15.200 So you have to hunt it, you have to get it, you have to bring it home.

00:11:18.260 You can't buy it from a poacher.

00:11:19.440 It doesn't change that market whatsoever.

00:11:21.400 Now, talking just about rhinos, two rhinos per day were killed in Africa in 2012, well over 700 rhinos.

00:11:30.920 South Africa alone, 461 rhinos were killed in just the first half of 2013.

00:11:36.080 South Africa is a major area for this.

00:11:38.620 So we know that that's the problem.

00:11:40.120 The problem isn't Eric Trump going and hunting or some dentist from America or a guy who purchases a very expensive permit to go to conservation efforts.

00:11:48.980 It's difficult for lefties to consider these things beyond the graphic.

00:11:54.360 Even some conservatives have fallen into this.

00:11:56.520 I saw a lot of famous right-wing celebrities.

00:12:00.000 I won't name them because they're allies and they're usually right, but they were wrong about this, saying this is awful.

00:12:05.320 Donald Trump, you have to get rid of this.

00:12:06.960 This is so terrible.

00:12:08.300 But, you know, shallows are clear, folks.

00:12:10.960 Very often, you know, you see the picture, you see the poor little rhinoceros or the animals or the cheetahs, and you say, we shouldn't do that.

00:12:17.680 But your gut, emotional, visceral reaction is not necessarily the way to protect these animals.

00:12:23.480 It isn't enough to say, not that one.

00:12:25.160 Oh, look, we saved Cecil.

00:12:26.700 Isn't that okay?

00:12:27.400 Don't worry.

00:12:27.860 Everything's fine now.

00:12:28.960 Cecil isn't the issue.

00:12:30.100 The issue is 30,000 animals being killed every year.

00:12:33.000 The issue is, or poachers, because these trophies have value to them.

00:12:38.460 And the challenge is to stop being emotional, to stop saying, well, as long as we don't see any more pictures, that's all well and good.

00:12:46.520 You have to think beyond the pictures and think about creating incentives and systems that will actually protect those animals.

00:12:52.040 So as a result, I hope that President Trump thinks about this thoughtfully and doesn't simply listen to all of the people on Twitter, because people on Twitter very often don't know a thing.

00:13:03.040 Let's bring on our panel to debate this.

00:13:05.760 We are blessed today.

00:13:07.220 We have his eminence, Paul Cardinal Bois, and excellent comedian, Owen Benjamin.

00:13:13.540 Thank you both for being here.

00:13:15.560 What's up, guys?

00:13:16.080 Owen, thank you for your first appearance on the panel of deplorables.

00:13:19.200 I appreciate it. 0.83

00:13:20.560 Before we get into the news, there is so much sex in the news. 0.87

00:13:23.380 The news is just all sex, basically, and then a little bit of Twitter. 0.73

00:13:26.440 Before we get into that, I want to keep talking about this elephant thing a little bit.

00:13:30.840 Am I totally crazy here?

00:13:32.160 Am I just like the arch conservative who is contrarian about everything, including poor suffering elephants and rhinos?

00:13:40.420 Owen, should Donald Trump reverse this three-year-old Obama-era rule banning the importation of these trophies?

00:13:49.640 No, because if you care about the animals, you know that the conservation comes from the money that hunters spend on the animals.

00:14:00.820 My uncle hunts in Africa three times a year.

00:14:04.260 And when you allow trophy hunting, that will pay for the conservation efforts to get rid of poachers.

00:14:11.860 Well, that's the issue. 0.84

00:14:13.480 And I think the issue is we don't want to talk about the poachers because we only want to talk about the mean, wealthy, white Americans who go over and shoot. 0.94

00:14:21.080 Mr. Bois, you're a Shiite Catholic.

00:14:24.460 Is there any, you know, Pope Francis has been very forceful about saying that we need to protect the environment and global warming is a big issue.

00:14:31.960 And, you know, we need to protect deer, sister earth.

00:14:35.720 Is there a Catholic or Christian or religious argument for not shooting these animals and thereby saving them?

00:14:42.220 Well, for me, when it comes to, I mean, I certainly have a philosophical and theological bent.

00:14:48.380 I mean, when it comes to hunting, I would say, I mean, if you plan on eating the animal, then go ahead and hunt it.

00:14:56.000 Come to the trophy hunting.

00:14:57.360 I mean, I'm not very privy towards that.

00:14:59.500 I mean, I haven't fully seen the full theological and moral explorations of it.

00:15:06.660 Because we can, because we have dominion over the earth and the sea.

00:15:08.980 Well, yeah, I mean, in terms of just killing an animal just for fun and for sport and just to display it on your wall.

00:15:16.300 I mean, that's not necessarily something that I myself am, you know, fully gung-ho about.

00:15:22.420 But at the same time.

00:15:23.600 Typical hippie claptrap from Paul Bois.

00:15:25.860 I'm sorry I cut you off.

00:15:26.760 As you laid out in your piece, I certainly think that when it comes to big game hunting like this, I see no reason to issue a full stated ban on it.

00:15:36.480 I think if we didn't, it would just succumb to poaching.

00:15:39.120 And I actually think more animals would die as a result of it.

00:15:42.520 I think the bigger thing to talk about here is, and Matt Walsh laid this out on the Daily Wire, is the left's obsession and I would call it animal worship of crying about elephants and lions being killed as we're slaughtering unborn children here in the United States.

00:16:03.420 And that's really just the total irony of all of this, is that the left, you know, throws up in arms over a couple of elephants or rhinos.

00:16:12.380 I mean, Cecile Richards, this is the irony over the weekend.

00:16:15.820 Cecile Richards, while Al Franken is getting accused of sexual harassment, she doesn't say anything about him, but she's, you know, lamenting about Trump lifting the ban on big game hunting in Africa.

00:16:26.940 She's completely unaware of the fact that her organization's killing 350,000 unborn children a year. 1.00

00:16:34.060 So that's the real big debate in all of this.

00:16:37.600 The best is that combination of these lefties, the vegan socialist who says we need to protect every single organism except for innocent human babies and says that we should have no free markets whatsoever except in trading baby parts from Planned Parenthood.

00:16:51.220 There are some contradictions, one seems, or one seems to think at the heart of their thesis.

00:16:57.380 Now, Owen, your family hunts.

00:16:59.940 Teddy Roosevelt, personally, former president, went and bagged like 500 of these big game in Africa.

00:17:06.300 Has America gone soft?

00:17:08.440 Why has the attitude toward hunting changed so much?

00:17:11.340 Well, and to go off your other point, it's all ironic, because if you like elephants, you save elephants with these laws that let hunters hunt them.

00:17:24.540 That's the irony.

00:17:25.480 It's not even about saving elephants, because if you want to save elephants, you would charge hunters an exuberant amount of money to go shoot one and bring home tusks, because then that money pays for the protection of the animal.

00:17:37.060 So if you're looking for a net gain in elephant population, you will support hunting.

00:17:42.940 I live in a state park, and I live in the Adirondack Mountains in New York.

00:17:46.920 And so the best conservation method is charging people to see something beautiful, because then that'll pay for people to protect it.

00:17:57.420 That's right.

00:17:58.200 The free market incentive model is the only way to protect anything.

00:18:02.280 If you're relying on people's goodwill and saying, oh, just donate and whatever, you know, that might not be the most reliable, but you know people are going to want to see beautiful things, and you need to align incentives so that that works.

00:18:15.160 Absolutely right.

00:18:15.900 But it gets to that point.

00:18:16.720 It isn't about saving the elephants.

00:18:18.180 It isn't about saving the rhinoceros.

00:18:19.740 It's about feeling good about ourselves.

00:18:21.600 It's just about performing virtue so that when we go to cocktail parties, we say, oh, did you see that awful, what Trump did with the licenses?

00:18:31.160 Oh, yes, well, that was just terrible, wasn't it?

00:18:33.220 And they do it on the sex stuff, too.

00:18:35.260 This brings us to one of the finest stories today.

00:18:37.940 The insufferable New York Times White House correspondent, Glenn Thrush, has said of sexual harassment allegations against fellow journalist Mark Halperin, quote,

00:18:47.420 young people who come into a newsroom deserve to be taught our trade, given our support, and enlisted in our calling, not betrayed by little men who believe they're bigger than the mission.

00:18:59.520 You know, the mission of the New York Times to spread fake news, one assumes, but maybe he thinks there's a different mission.

00:19:03.980 Now, it turns out, he's completely full of it, and there are allegations against him.

00:19:08.780 One woman writes, five years ago when Thrush and I were colleagues at Politico, I was in the same bar as Ocasio's friend, perhaps the same booth.

00:19:17.060 He caught me off guard, put his hand on my thigh, started kissing me.

00:19:20.860 He pressured one woman who went into a cab crying, apparently.

00:19:24.160 Three young women who were interviewed, including this woman who writes about her experience in the cab,

00:19:29.240 described a range of similar experiences from unwanted groping and kissing to wet kisses out of nowhere to hazy sexual encounters that played out under the influence of alcohol.

00:19:40.920 And they all explained that they were scared, violated, ashamed, weirded out.

00:19:45.480 And the woman who wrote this piece said, I wasn't, am angry.

00:19:49.040 Then it turns out, Thrush, when the women would turn down his advances, he would disparage them in the newsroom and try to hurt their careers.

00:19:56.460 He has now been suspended, which is quite nice.

00:19:58.760 Al Franken is also in more trouble.

00:20:00.280 He's accused of copping a feel during photos at the state park.

00:20:04.540 He basically denied this.

00:20:05.900 He said, I take thousands of photos at the state fair, surrounded by hundreds of people.

00:20:09.520 I don't remember taking that picture.

00:20:11.220 I feel badly if the woman came away feeling disrespected. 0.92

00:20:14.820 Now, the woman and her husband, they say, I was upset.

00:20:18.000 I wasn't happy in the least.

00:20:19.420 He was already gone.

00:20:20.260 I wasn't going to confront him, but I was in shock.

00:20:22.280 That's a Democrat senator.

00:20:23.380 She said she feels gross, wanted to wash it off of her.

00:20:26.840 The best, I think, of all of these is a writer on the HBO show, Girls. 0.63

00:20:31.260 Marie Miller has been accused of rape by an actress.

00:20:34.600 That's a serious allegation.

00:20:36.240 So what did Lena Dunham do, the creator of Girls? 1.00

00:20:39.840 She called the self-identified rape victim a liar. 0.51

00:20:43.700 That's what Lena Dunham, feminist Lenny Letter, that's what she said, quote, 1.00

00:20:48.540 one of the 3% of rapes misreported every year.

00:20:51.780 That's it.

00:20:52.540 How do we know?

00:20:53.180 Because we shouldn't believe the victims.

00:20:55.240 She tweeted in August, however, quote,

00:20:57.200 things women do lie about, what they ate for lunch. 1.00

00:21:00.120 Things women don't lie about, rape. 1.00

00:21:02.660 Seems she's changed her mind because it's now affecting her show and her friend.

00:21:07.000 Now, I want to get into this.

00:21:10.560 There is so much here to talk about.

00:21:12.660 But before we can talk about all the weird sexual deviancy of the Democratic Party,

00:21:16.920 I have to say goodbye to you, dear Facebook and YouTube.

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00:21:21.920 Appreciate it.

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00:21:26.020 To those of you who don't, go over to thedailywire.com right now.

00:21:29.860 Now, what do you get?

00:21:30.640 We've been talking about capitalism all day.

00:21:32.340 You get all those ads that are on the website.

00:21:34.020 They go away.

00:21:34.840 You get me.

00:21:35.520 You get the Andrew Clayman Show.

00:21:36.580 You get the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:21:37.580 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:40.040 You get this.

00:21:40.960 And this is really important.

00:21:42.220 This is really important now that Glenn Thrush has been suspended at the New York Times.

00:21:45.600 Now that Lena Dunham is on defense with sexual assault. 1.00

00:21:48.520 You need this Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:21:50.900 It's going to save your life.

00:21:52.140 It's going to save the life of you and your family.

00:21:54.620 Because otherwise, you never know when a flood is going to strike.

00:21:57.260 If you don't have homeowner's insurance, it could destroy your house.

00:22:00.320 Just get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:22:01.900 That's insurance enough, I think, from floods.

00:22:04.460 It will keep your Leftist Tears hot or cold, always salty and delicious.

00:22:08.340 Go to dailywire.com right now.

00:22:09.960 We'll be right back.

00:22:10.620 I actually wasn't sure on this story if the Democrats are just being cynical and deceptive 0.99

00:22:28.680 or if really they're ignorant. 0.98

00:22:30.620 You know, Lena Dunham here is making me think it's the former. 0.94

00:22:35.500 Mr. Bois, do they have any credibility on this issue? 1.00

00:22:38.300 Is it stupidity or is it malice? 1.00

00:22:40.580 I'm going to go with malice here. 1.00

00:22:42.920 How did I know?

00:22:43.520 Especially with Lena Dunham.

00:22:45.500 I don't necessarily know Lena Dunham's full relationship to this particular situation.

00:22:53.500 But my guess is that the second one of the people in her circles was accused of rape, she immediately 0.96

00:23:02.520 said, OK, that's going to reflect badly on me.

00:23:04.220 I have to immediately get out there and see if I can do enough damage control and discredit

00:23:09.580 this accuser fast enough.

00:23:11.800 And hopefully it will go away.

00:23:14.120 But I think she quickly realized that that was a very, very bad move.

00:23:18.100 And now she's she's swung it the other way.

00:23:20.340 If you notice what she said in her apology, she didn't even just come out and say, you

00:23:24.140 know, I made a mistake.

00:23:25.720 I reacted too badly.

00:23:28.020 You know, I was just harsh.

00:23:29.060 You know, I know this person and I was just trying to be a good friend or something.

00:23:33.140 She she comes out and she immediately says, oh, as a true feminist, we need to make sure 1.00

00:23:38.840 that like every single time a woman comes forward, they are automatically believed, automatically

00:23:44.120 believed.

00:23:44.760 So essentially, she takes it from completely discrediting a rape victim to saying that

00:23:50.700 no matter what, we should believe anybody that comes forward with rape.

00:23:54.000 So just create a precedent.

00:23:55.040 So just create a false allegation and and somebody innocent could penitently die.

00:23:59.700 So, yeah, I think somebody innocent could potentially have their lives ruined.

00:24:04.240 So I'm going to call Malice.

00:24:05.620 So it's a nice little dance that she does because she she gets to defend her friend and 1.00

00:24:10.220 defend her show and call this woman a liar. 1.00

00:24:12.480 And then once that passes, she does a little little Lena Dunham two step and now says, oh,

00:24:16.520 but actually, we should do exactly the opposite of why I did what I did.

00:24:19.220 And I have credibility to tell you that because I am the voice of feminism. 0.99

00:24:22.640 I'm the voice of my generation.

00:24:24.120 And it's it is this total.

00:24:27.200 This is the essence of the left.

00:24:28.820 They want the appearance of the thing, but they don't want the essence of the thing.

00:24:31.420 They want the appearance of taking sexual assault very seriously.

00:24:35.140 But then they'll support Bill Clinton.

00:24:37.280 They'll support Al Franken.

00:24:38.280 They'll support their showrunner, their their writer on their show who is accused of rape.

00:24:43.420 They'll support anybody because that's that's just the thing itself.

00:24:46.900 What really matters is the appearance.

00:24:49.360 You know, it's not the thing.

00:24:50.640 It's it's that greater truth that their complete lie that they're promoting is is supposedly getting at. 0.99

00:24:56.860 Now, to be devil's advocate here, oh, and politicians have always been dogs. 0.99

00:25:02.260 They've always cheated on their wives. 1.00

00:25:03.660 They've been sort of the scum of the earth. 0.99

00:25:06.120 Madison and Federalist 51 basically explains Congress as a place to put all of the sociopaths so that they can counter each other and keep one another busy and not destroy the entire country. 0.97

00:25:17.440 So knowing all of that, should we really force people like Franken to resign for doing what politicians have always done?

00:25:23.500 Well, I think just to add on your on your last point, I think the left is the first to stand up for something and then the first to sit down.

00:25:32.160 I mean, I know why these people and Lena Dunham is the product of what happens when you give a comedian fame based on pushing a political agenda and not being funny.

00:25:43.500 What they do is they go for applause, not laughter.

00:25:45.880 And then when they ask themselves, what is the right answer?

00:25:49.420 It's not it's not to do with ethics.

00:25:50.860 It has to do with what will give me more applause.

00:25:53.300 And in one minute, it's saying everybody who claims rape is a victim.

00:25:57.720 The next minute you have to say the opposite.

00:26:00.180 But in their mind, it's just about power acquisition, not about living a principled life.

00:26:04.340 So they will change constantly. 0.70

00:26:06.680 And the male feminists are just like, don't fall asleep around a male feminist if you're a woman, because they're so self-hating. 1.00

00:26:14.300 And you can't possibly trust them. 0.80

00:26:15.880 And thank you so much. 0.98

00:26:16.960 I do think male feminists are the creepiest people on planet Earth. 1.00

00:26:21.060 I never let my daughter near any of them. 0.99

00:26:23.220 They are.

00:26:23.480 This has been your observation, too.

00:26:25.060 And obviously, there are a lot of scandals to that effect hitting comedy specifically right now.

00:26:29.120 Yeah.

00:26:29.340 And like I lost my agent and got I lost a gig at a college because I said three year olds can't be transgendered because there was some it's just getting absurd.

00:26:39.360 It's like the onion wouldn't be able to do this.

00:26:41.200 Marshall, did you put a bigot on my show?

00:26:43.160 Are you telling me that you I can't believe you would book such a sick, vicious month? 0.98

00:26:48.140 So you you go.

00:26:49.040 OK, oh, and you're trying to tell me that little toddlers can't decide that they are the other gender and then completely destroy their bodies with drugs. 0.61

00:26:57.460 Right.

00:26:57.660 And I was arguing with someone on Twitter, this guy, Jesse Thorne, who has like a pretty big following blue checkmark, that whole thing.

00:27:04.560 But I and I was getting the sense that I had to back down on this.

00:27:08.900 And I'm like, I'll die on this hill.

00:27:11.380 Yeah.

00:27:11.620 We're not going to pump a kid full of hormones. 1.00

00:27:14.680 Like, what's wrong with you guys?

00:27:15.680 Like, I'll I'll like go down the lazy river on a couple of these things because I don't.

00:27:20.560 You want to have a career?

00:27:21.460 Not when it comes.

00:27:23.000 Right.

00:27:23.460 But then I was like, I'll get another job if I have to agree to basically turning a kid into a eunuch.

00:27:29.660 And I got rid of the castrati in the early 20th century. 1.00

00:27:32.940 And now they're making a swing back.

00:27:34.740 They were gone for 100 years.

00:27:36.040 Now we're doing it to kids again.

00:27:37.460 Yeah, and I think with stuff like Franken, I think a lot of the nation wants their head.

00:27:44.360 They want them to resign because you're right. 0.85

00:27:47.040 Like like like that old quote that you were talking about, how Washington's full of sociopaths and these people are just a snake pit, you know. 0.99

00:27:53.780 But at the same time, when you have someone that's promoting such false virtue, you you want to see them burn when you realize that they're hypocrites. 0.98

00:28:04.700 I think that I think that making a mistake like train wrecks are a lot more forgivable than hypocrites. 0.98

00:28:11.420 And I think dudes like Franken have been so outspoken about how cis white males are the devil and, you know, American capitalism and America as a nation is somehow bad. 0.99

00:28:22.600 And we should bow down to, you know, these elements of socialism and Marxism that I think when when they're revealed to be just slimy perverts, 0.97

00:28:31.460 we just want them to look at their own mirror and say, sorry, which they never will.

00:28:36.900 So they just have to go.

00:28:38.240 Yeah, totally fair point.

00:28:40.040 And the sliminess of male feminists and soy boys and all of that is really frustrating. 0.96

00:28:45.220 I love to your distinction between the comedians who are going out and can actually get laughs and the ones who need to supplement their laughs with applause.

00:28:53.640 Like I want my favorite comedian, my favorite living comedian is Norm MacDonald, and I see him whenever I can.

00:28:59.660 He's so he's so good.

00:29:01.140 His book is so good.

00:29:02.340 And he man, when he's all good, when he plays live, every word, every syllable out of his mouth is designed to move you closer to a laugh.

00:29:12.400 He describes comedy like that's it.

00:29:14.160 Comedy is to make a noise out of your audience.

00:29:16.400 And he's also brilliant.

00:29:18.180 He makes great points.

00:29:19.100 But it's all about the comedy.

00:29:21.080 Do you think it's because some of these comedians just aren't that talented?

00:29:24.500 So they're cheating.

00:29:25.580 Or do you think something about that culture of comedy and entertainment is making is incentivizing all this virtue signaling?

00:29:32.140 I think it's the culture.

00:29:32.960 I think that like there's some comedians that I've watched be pretty good turned into absolute garbage like Trevor Noah, his first hour special.

00:29:42.500 There's some funny stuff in it. 0.86

00:29:43.660 And now he's literally a propagandist like there's no laughter.

00:29:48.600 And Jon Stewart, you know, I don't agree with the politics, but he would make me laugh because at least he's being a comedian.

00:29:54.940 That's why I made that video.

00:29:56.440 Why I hate the left on YouTube.

00:29:57.780 If you guys want to check it out, it makes a distinction between just liberals, how I always thought they were, you know, just bigger government and then leftists, which I now think so many more liberals are becoming,

00:30:11.360 which is just this postmodernist nothing matters and promoting just this weird self-hate of our country and culture.

00:30:19.980 And I think that really good comics a lot of times get blackballed from Hollywood because laughter terrifies authoritarians and people that are trying to get rid of individual autonomy.

00:30:32.660 That is a tremendously good point.

00:30:35.600 And it hadn't occurred to me that that's what's so scary about comedy as a political weapon and as a weapon in the culture.

00:30:44.040 It's kryptonite.

00:30:45.020 Like I'll do a video in Corpus Christi, all Hispanic, and do a joke that one of these leftists would say makes me racist. 0.96

00:30:52.180 And you'll watch like rednecks and Mexicans just dying laughing together. 1.00

00:30:56.920 And that terrifies people that are trying to put us into demographic voting pools because it shows that their entire premise is flawed, that we are individuals and we aren't defined by race, gender, all that stuff.

00:31:09.300 And, and, and when I do male, female jokes and you see women buckled over laughing, it's a lot harder to, to say that I'm a sexist for saying there are differences between men and women.

00:31:20.560 Right.

00:31:20.980 And so.

00:31:21.800 Because they know it's true.

00:31:22.840 They're, they're obviously laughing.

00:31:23.900 They're laughing because it's true. 0.71

00:31:25.580 Exactly.

00:31:26.200 And then when you watch someone like Colbert also make that transition of being funny in that character to now being almost like a, um, a weird preacher, you know, like that, that moment with Comey when he's like Trump fires Comey.

00:31:38.960 And they applaud.

00:31:39.960 And then he's like, but wait, no, we don't want that.

00:31:43.800 And then they applaud the next point.

00:31:45.220 It's like, no one even knows what they believe.

00:31:47.720 Stephen Colbert is an even more obtuse Dick Cavett, which is an achievement, but it is insufferable to watch.

00:31:53.580 And that at the comedy in politics, this does make me think about the exuberance behind the, the Trump election, the Trump campaign and the movement it spawned.

00:32:04.080 I just could go through three of my favorite tweets from the weekend and maybe we can talk about the poetic diction of those.

00:32:11.340 The first one from, uh, from El Presidente, President Covfefe, quote, Marshawn Lynch of the NFL's Oakland Raiders stands for the Mexican anthem and sits down to booze for our national anthem.

00:32:22.320 Great disrespect next time NFL should suspend him for remainder of season attendance and ratings way down.

00:32:30.120 I also love that they've expanded the up to 280 characters on Twitter.

00:32:34.600 We're getting a lot more Covfefe.

00:32:35.800 He goes on, he says, now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LeVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal.

00:32:47.400 I should have left them in jail. 0.98

00:32:49.300 And then my favorite, this came over the weekend, crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst and biggest loser of all time. 1.00

00:32:56.500 She just can't stop, which is so good for the Republican Party. 0.99

00:33:00.720 Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years. 1.00

00:33:04.660 It's just absolutely, absolutely brilliant.

00:33:09.140 It's also filling a void.

00:33:10.680 Oh, sorry, go ahead.

00:33:11.480 I want to end this on a high note.

00:33:13.320 I want to end this, Owen, with you explaining to me why this is great.

00:33:16.560 But before that, I do want to check in with Paul Cardinal Bois.

00:33:19.440 Is there anything undignified about this sort of humor?

00:33:23.900 One word, Michael.

00:33:25.600 Nope.

00:33:27.400 Oh, good.

00:33:28.280 All right, great.

00:33:28.980 And here's why, you know, this is one of the greatest things about me being a Catholic.

00:33:33.480 And, you know, the thing is, well, the best is the heaven, I guess.

00:33:36.920 Yeah.

00:33:37.080 But after that second.

00:33:38.340 But one of the, I mean, I guess, reliefs about being a Catholic in this modern age is that, you know what?

00:33:42.860 The presidency is not my papacy.

00:33:45.400 And therefore, I don't look at it as this, like, perfectly, like, clean place where the president always has to be this just, like, perfect, bright, shining example of everything that is wonderful and decent.

00:33:58.560 And, you know, because what a lot of Never Trumpers will say is that, you know, if people in the culture are acting badly and acting wrong, objectively wrong, the president should just shut up and let them do it and run all over us.

00:34:12.160 And I say, no.

00:34:13.200 I say, absolutely not. 0.99

00:34:14.740 These UCLA players go to a foreign country, they steal, and then they could end up in jail in China for 10 years, and then their dad is going to be a jerk about it on national news. 0.97

00:34:25.480 They say, absolutely, do it, you know, good on President Trump for that, good on President Trump for blasting NFL, for kneeling before the national anthem. 0.97

00:34:33.880 I absolutely say, go out, do it, you know.

00:34:36.180 I mean, that's why we elected him.

00:34:37.500 So I'm totally on board with him.

00:34:39.160 It is great.

00:34:39.920 Your traitorous dual allegiance to your king in Rome does give you a pretty good perspective on this civil religion. 0.97

00:34:48.000 People love civic religion.

00:34:49.700 They treat the president like he's a divine monarch or like he's a divine figure.

00:34:55.140 But, no, he's just a politician, and we can laugh at them.

00:34:58.720 Owen, is Donald Trump the funniest president in the history of the United States?

00:35:02.700 He's definitely up there.

00:35:04.020 I mean, and I think that he—

00:35:05.480 Millard Fillmore was hilarious, I'll give you that, but Trump is pretty good, too. 0.66

00:35:09.280 I mean, Taft was funny, but it was usually just physical comedy from being fat. 0.82

00:35:13.100 Yeah.

00:35:13.840 Like the bathtub splits or something, yeah.

00:35:16.720 Lincoln was a prop comic.

00:35:18.160 That hat was just total shtick.

00:35:19.580 Yeah, it is.

00:35:21.260 Carrot top came in the vein of Abraham Lincoln.

00:35:24.640 It's the first time that statement's ever been uttered.

00:35:27.020 Do you find this comedy—I mean, it's really entertaining.

00:35:31.700 Is Donald Trump using it intentionally?

00:35:34.360 Does he understand how effective his language is?

00:35:37.480 It seems to me he does.

00:35:39.000 And why can't the left get it?

00:35:40.980 Why is the left so weak and so vulnerable to this form of right-wing humor?

00:35:46.960 Well, I think he's feeling—like, as a businessman, he's filling a niche that has just been so unnaturally vacated, which is just men. 0.97

00:35:57.320 Like, I think in this world of how, you know, men are just seen as toxic and manspreading and mansplaining and, you know, we have to hire women for jobs, even if a man's smarter. 0.94

00:36:07.440 Like, men are just like, I want someone to talk like a man talks and scold people when they do something stupid and not have to act like everything everyone does that isn't male is just brilliant when it isn't.

00:36:20.340 And I think that Trump's just clear language is very, very refreshing to a lot of people and a lot of people that don't want to admit it either. 0.89

00:36:28.440 I mean, I have liberal friends that—I've watched them see Trump say something, and they instinctively laugh.

00:36:35.960 And that's why laughter is so terrifying to authoritarians, because, like, I look at them like, you know that's funny. 0.89

00:36:41.760 And you know that, like, Hillary is crooked. 1.00

00:36:44.860 And now that Donna Brazile's book's out, showing that it's even worse than a lot of people thought, you know, just to have this guy just speak very plainly and not demonize, especially white males, you know, white working white males. 0.98

00:36:59.420 The worst of the worst. The villains of history, right.

00:37:01.460 Right, the villains of history, exactly.

00:37:03.840 There is—oh, sorry, go ahead.

00:37:06.580 No, you go ahead.

00:37:07.580 There is this reason that Crooked stuck to her.

00:37:10.440 I love that Crooked Hillary thing. 1.00

00:37:12.160 People laugh at it.

00:37:13.060 He had tried a few others.

00:37:14.240 He tried no stamina Hillary or this or that.

00:37:17.120 But the reason Crooked stuck to her is because it's true.

00:37:20.220 The reason his comedy works, the reason comedy in general works, is when it's true.

00:37:25.240 When it's pointing out something and, you know, people always say, well, he's saying what we're all thinking.

00:37:29.880 Or it's funny because it's true.

00:37:32.060 I love—it made me think—you know, I published this blank book at the beginning of the year.

00:37:35.880 By the way, Black Friday is coming up.

00:37:37.600 The most important gift to give to all of your Democrat friends and relatives is the presidentially endorsed number one international best-selling political dome, Reasons to Vote for Democrats, A Comprehensive Guide, which is completely blank, of course.

00:37:51.280 And all the reactions I got from Democrats, a number of magazines called Esquire called and left-wing magazines, and they said, that's not funny.

00:38:01.000 Wah, wah, wah.

00:38:01.760 It reminded me of that meme on the internet of Sandra Fluke, the total Democrat contrivance who had the sacramental view of birth control.

00:38:10.080 And she would say, that's not funny.

00:38:12.560 You know, and her arms were crossed. 0.99

00:38:13.760 That reminds me of them, but can the left reclaim humor at all, or is it lost?

00:38:20.300 They're done with that.

00:38:22.220 Because it's—it's just—they're so not set in reality.

00:38:26.780 And comedy has to be set in reality.

00:38:28.700 That's what makes it special, where you say something and you make people laugh because they're like, that is true.

00:38:35.340 And if you time it properly, it's like music, you know?

00:38:37.520 And the left is so just diluted at this point that—like, the Overton window just went off the cliff.

00:38:45.280 Right, right.

00:38:46.380 So there's just no—there's no more comedy coming from those guys.

00:38:51.260 You know, there's no Stalingrad funny bone.

00:38:53.640 Because there's no objective space.

00:38:56.100 There's no common space where, you know, obviously if comedy is the kryptonite to the totalitarians, they are the totalitarians.

00:39:04.340 So, you know, they're probably not going to put it out.

00:39:06.720 But there's no point because their vision of the world is so distorted.

00:39:11.340 It has become so warped.

00:39:13.400 And the thing that you got knocked for, you lost your representation because you said that toddlers shouldn't have hormones injected into them to make them eunuchs. 0.76

00:39:23.560 They think that that would be—that's the appropriate, that's a socially just and progressive thing to do.

00:39:29.720 It shows that their vision of the world is so distorted.

00:39:32.000 It's—that's the perfect encapsulation of it.

00:39:36.140 And so you can't be funny.

00:39:37.440 You got to be real if you're going to be funny.

00:39:39.280 That's what—that's what makes people laugh.

00:39:41.640 All right, guys.

00:39:42.040 Yeah, they walk—all right, cool.

00:39:43.200 Sorry, one more.

00:39:44.100 Final word.

00:39:44.580 Oh, no.

00:39:45.040 I could just talk about comedy theory all day.

00:39:46.860 So you got to cut me off at some point.

00:39:48.860 All right.

00:39:49.120 I got to cut you off and we'll bring you back on to talk about it.

00:39:51.260 Because we are in a moment of conservative cultural exuberance and comedy.

00:39:55.980 And we should—we should enjoy it because for a long time the left tried to dominate that realm.

00:40:01.840 And now they're just—to quote Sandra Fluke, they're not funny.

00:40:04.800 Wait, wait, wait.

00:40:05.540 Okay, guys.

00:40:06.140 Thank you for being here.

00:40:06.880 Comedian Owen Benjamin.

00:40:08.140 Paul Cardinal Bois, his eminence himself.

00:40:11.160 That is our show today.

00:40:12.480 Get ready.

00:40:12.900 I've got a fun Thanksgiving show coming up.

00:40:14.520 So you can send in all your questions about why the lefties are completely wrong about Thanksgiving.

00:40:19.440 And I'll try to fit them in.

00:40:20.840 And make sure you listen to Another Kingdom, my show with Andrew Klavan.

00:40:24.060 It's Andrew Klavan's latest story, a narrative about a 30-year-old Hollywood schlub who walks through a portal into another kingdom.

00:40:31.180 And he's the murder suspect with ogres and daggers and damsels.

00:40:34.900 And it's got a gazillion views.

00:40:36.680 If you could help us get even more, leave a review and subscribe and send it to your friends,

00:40:40.920 we might force it down Hollywood's throat, and that would give me great, great pleasure.

00:40:46.020 Until tomorrow, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:40:47.700 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:48.940 Come back tomorrow.

00:40:49.840 We'll do it all again.

00:40:56.440 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson.

00:40:59.520 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:41:01.600 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:41:03.560 Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.

00:41:05.840 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:41:08.440 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:41:10.060 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:41:12.800 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:41:15.300 And our associate producer is Bailey Lynn.

00:41:17.720 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:41:21.140 Copyright Forward Publishing 2017.

The Michael Knowles Show - November 20, 2017

Ep. 61 - Kill The Elephants, Or Else They’ll Die

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