Ep. 66 - Watch Trump’s Fingers
Summary
Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor both fired for weird sex stuff, Joe Scarborough accused of murder, Muslim videos, a showdown at the CFPB, there is so much news to talk about, but isn t it strange that nobody is talking about the tax reform bill passing the Budget Committee yesterday? We will analyze Donald Trump s slick fingers.
Transcript
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Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor both fired for weird sex stuff, Joe Scarborough accused of murder, Muslim videos, showdown at the CFPB, there is so much news to talk about.
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But isn't it strange that nobody is talking about the tax reform bill passing the Budget Committee yesterday?
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I wonder why that is. We will analyze Donald Trump's slick fingers.
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Then, Philip Wegman of The Washington Examiner and Paul Bois of The Daily Wire joined the panel of deplorables to discuss how we're finally winning the war on Christmas.
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A descendant of Pocahontas smacks down Elizabeth Warren and today's spate of Democrat sex scandals.
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Just a reminder, every single day now, there have been entirely new Democrat sex scandals.
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I am Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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There is so much to talk about. We will get to all of the weird sex stuff and the schadenfreude, I promise.
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But I want to talk a little bit first about Donald Trump, the prestidigitator.
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The actual story, the one that matters for public policy right now, is tax reform.
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We have been hearing for months, by the way, from never-Trump Republicans that tax reform is dead on arrival.
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The left, predictably, has been harping on how awful the proposal is, how it's only going to benefit rich people.
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It's only going to cut their taxes because, obviously, rich people are the only ones who pay taxes.
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But, actually, the bill is quite different than all that.
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Of his 31 latest tweets, three of them mentioned tax cuts.
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And, by the way, only to acknowledge that it passed the committee or to start tying the tax cuts to the good economic news.
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Seven tweets talked about how great the economy is doing.
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Three mentioned Melania, Christmas, or Melania and Christmas.
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Almost as many tweets mentioned Matt Lauer as his legislative agenda.
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Three showed videos of Muslims doing terrible things.
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That's the same number who's talking about tax cuts.
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One suggested that Joe Scarborough murdered a staffer.
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One of them told his followers to look into NBC chairman Andy Lack's past.
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If you don't know that word, that's not like Amanda's name.
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It's a word for people who have quick fingers, like a magician.
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Magic, where it's a slate of hand, that is prestidigitation.
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And then, when we're looking at that thing, something else is happening over here.
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So, of all these tweets, why is he talking about each of these?
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He's trying to tie the strong economy to his tax plan.
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He's building up his credibility on the economy.
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Then he's saying, we need this new economic agenda, this new economic legislation.
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He has been fired for apparent sexual assault in Rio de Janeiro, but apparently rampant womanizing
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He doesn't just – look, it would be great to revel in Matt Lauer going down.
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He was a jerk to President Bush when he would interview him.
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Because he's trying to discredit the left-wing attack dog media.
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He's trying to paint with a much broader brush.
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That's why he's going after NBC chairman Andy Lack.
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The NFL is a culture point that is extremely popular for Donald Trump.
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He has broad agreement across the country on this.
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His approval rating is doing a lot better than the NFL's approval rating.
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People are cutting cable because of the shenanigans and left-wing activism they see every night
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Well, they preview the war on Christmas theme, which we're already beginning to see, but I
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promise you we're going to see more of it this month.
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The Muslim videos, I think, tell a lot of the story.
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He was retweeting videos of Muslims doing awful things, attacking people and beheading a
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She's the deputy leader of Britain First, which is a right-wing group.
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This is a woman who was found guilty of a hate crime.
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They say he's retweeting far-right criminals, hate criminals, bigots, whatever.
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A simple Google search will tell you her hate crime was saying that Islam oppresses women.
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Because they don't have the First Amendment over there in the UK.
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You can be convicted of a hate crime for just saying something which is obviously true.
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A rule that says that women need to wear burlap sacks over them in Middle Eastern heat.
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Any concept we have on the West of women's rights does not apply.
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Now, free speech, though, and PC, these aren't just random issues.
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They're central issues to Donald Trump's popularity.
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Why the never-Trump right and his opponents on the left, they say he's just crazy.
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He's a madman with his finger on the nuclear codes and the other finger on Twitter.
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There's no evidence that Donald Trump hates Muslim people.
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There's no evidence in the four decades that we've known about Donald Trump.
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We've never seen these allegations of bigotry before.
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Or we're suggesting that he just became a bigot overnight, that he just became an Islamophobe overnight or something,
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and he just so happened to pick a woman that ties in directly with his anti-PC, pro-free speech agenda.
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At a certain point, either the guy just gets lucky and lucky and lucky,
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and he's absurdly lucky at multiple things at one time for 40 years,
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or he doesn't just have air blowing between his ears.
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He doesn't just have nothing going on in his head.
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He has some strategic thought and a good gut that tells him how to enact it tactically.
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I'm perfectly willing to talk about it because it's a great wing for the Republicans and for conservatives,
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and because the left-wing media doesn't watch my show,
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so I don't think I'm telling any tales out of school or pulling the veil up on this.
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Trump spent most of yesterday on Capitol Hill bullying Republican senators into voting for the GOP tax reform in the Budget Committee.
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According to a Senate source for The Hill, Trump went after Ron Johnson by name.
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He told him to stop blocking it and to work out his concerns with the rest of the conference.
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He told him he would have a chance to offer amendments, and he should stop being an impediment.
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Trump also leaned on Bob Corker and James Langford,
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both of whom are Republicans that threatened to vote against the bill in committee.
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Senate GOP Whip John Corrin said it was Trump's strong-arming that gave the bill, quote,
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It gave this bill that everyone has been predicting on both sides of the aisle.
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Last month, Trump also met with the entire Senate GOP caucus to get them on the same page on tax reform.
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Now, to analyze all of this prestidigitation and the tax reform bill and the likelihood that it passes,
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We have Paul Cardinal Bois from The Daily Wire,
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and we're lucky to be joined by Philip Wegman from The Washington Examiner.
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Look how much realer, by the way, how much more serious Philip's background looks than Paul's,
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who it appears is coming from St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.
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Are we going to get tax reform, and if so, when?
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Certainly the president hopes that it's going to happen ahead of Christmas.
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I don't know if that's actually going to get done.
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Sometimes it sounds a little bit like wishful thinking.
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He had that productive meeting with Republicans earlier on.
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But if you start taking a look at some of the objections, I mean, the whip count is getting pretty ugly.
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You've got Collins, who objects to the individual mandate.
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You've got Ron Johnson that you just mentioned, and then also Lankford and some others.
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And then, you know, I have no idea what John McCain thinks about, you know, regular order.
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And Republicans just, they can only lose two votes.
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I don't know what John McCain thinks about regular order.
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I don't quite know what he thinks about these tax cuts.
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But I do know what he thinks about Donald Trump and what he thinks about his legacy.
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And then I want to talk about the Trumpiness of it all.
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I mean, it really is all up in the air right now.
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I mean, the biggest problem that we have going on right now is mainly just the GOP just getting it all together.
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I sincerely hope that we were going to get health care reform and the GOP didn't deliver that.
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So it's really just, I mean, can they all come together right now?
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And this is the coming together is a question because the I think the most cogent argument from the never Trump right, the persistently never Trump right is, well, Donald Trump engages in these crazy excesses, you know, like accusing Joe Scarborough of murder on Twitter or something or implying that Joe Scarborough had some hand in the staffer's death.
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And therefore, if we Republicans, if we conservatives enjoy the successes, and there have been many successes of this administration, both culturally and politically as real matters of government, if we enjoy those or if we encourage those or if we vote for him, then we own Trump.
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We'll have to answer for them and we'll look really bad or something.
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We won't be able to preen as much as we would like to preen.
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Do you think that if we encourage Trump to end his presidency, that we're going to have to face some awful reckoning in the future?
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I mean, the president is the president because he won the election.
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But guys like Lindsey Graham, who were adamantly opposed to the president earlier on, they're coming around.
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I mean, Lindsey Graham's as establishment as you can get, but he's even willing to work with the president.
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Because I think a lot of these guys know that the White House isn't the only thing up for grabs.
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They're also going to lose their majorities if they don't deliver something.
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There's that fear of what are we going to do with Donald Trump?
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What's he going to do to our party and our identity?
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But I think in the moment, at least on tax reform, I think these guys are willing to put away some of that bickering and focus on the bill itself.
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And I do think there is an aspect of Trump which is just that he is a character.
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We talked yesterday about how there's no need to have the Jersey Shore or reality television when Donald Trump, the king of reality TV, has made reality into reality TV.
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And I think Camille Paglia said that she would vote for him because he's a carnival barker and she likes that.
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And there is something, it seems to me, that he doesn't pretend to be a regular Republican.
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He doesn't even really pretend to represent the mainstream of conservative movement or of the Republican Party.
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Mr. Bois, do you think that his caricature and the caricature that he plays up for the cameras and for Twitter, do you think that that will inoculate conservatives?
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Or should we be terribly worried about our own image and constantly looking in the mirror and saying, well, who cares if we get all these great things accomplished for the country?
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I think that kind of pearl clutching regarding President Trump really is going to do nobody any favors.
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And that was part of, I think, every voter's just worry throughout the election.
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And the issue that they had to struggle with internally was, by going in with President Trump, am I going to be destroying myself in the future?
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But I think we all got to man up and just be like, all right, we're in this.
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I mean, we are in an existential threat, you know, culturally.
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So I say, you know, get rid of that fear, dive in.
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And, you know, on terms of, like, what Trump has been successful at and his excesses and should we be more worried about his excesses,
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I think we got to really define, like, what we want Trump really to be successful in.
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I really do not believe that we elected Trump for anything legislatively.
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I think we strictly elected him so he can be the guy when Colin Kaepernick is being a complete jerk to all of us and spitting on the flag.
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And next thing you know, we're all cheering and we feel like we got ourselves a culture of cheerleader.
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We feel like we can go out there and we can stick it to the people who are telling us what to do and what to say.
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And that he has been 100 percent successful and we should not be worried.
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I half agree with you, but I must say I am compelled by Ann Coulter's argument that we elected this guy for issues.
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He was talking about issues that other people weren't talking about.
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He was talking to a group of voters that both parties ignored.
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And he, sure, I like when he calls out Colin Kaepernick as much as the next guy.
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Everything else is just accounting, you might say.
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That said, there have been great policy victories.
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We've seen them, obviously, on the courts up to Neil Gorsuch.
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We've seen them in massive deregulation, in trying to rein in these awful, godless, headless, unaccountable executive agencies.
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We've seen it in social policy, like the Mexico City rule, like abortion.
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And so, yeah, certainly the culture is maybe the key aspect of Trump.
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And it just, I really wouldn't want to see all of that go away.
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I wouldn't want to turn my back on that just because I'm uncomfortable with him making hilarious and probably a little excessive claims about Joe Scarborough or whatever.
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And we have much more to talk about, by the way, speaking of the culture.
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We have much more to talk about on the war on Christmas.
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We have to talk about all of the weird Democrat sex stuff.
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And we have to dance on Matt Lauer's professional grave because what would this show be without a little schadenfreude?
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But if you don't subscribe to The Daily Wire, I'm sorry.
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They even help us get serious journalists like Philip.
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But you can't see that unless you go to DailyWire.com right now.
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But look, all that's just accounting, folks, isn't it?
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Because what you could get is the cultural touchstone here, the leftist tears tumbler.
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As I think nobody will be left in Hollywood other than Kevin Sorbo, maybe, and nobody will
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be left in the media except probably Ben Shapiro.
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So when all of those leftist tears start flowing and everyone is drowning in them, make sure
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that you have a vessel so that you don't drown.
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You can keep them hot or cold, always salty and delicious.
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I love the war on Christmas almost as much as I love Christmas.
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I especially love winning the war on Christmas.
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President Trump promised repeatedly throughout the campaign that we would turn the yuletide
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Melania has hung mistletoe all around the White House.
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President Trump, unlike his predecessor, has sent out a Christmas card.
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Barack Obama's 2016 White House Christmas card did not mention the word Christmas.
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The White House Social Secretary, Desiree Rogers, even says that Obama wanted to ban the
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creche, the nativity scene, from the East Room of the White House, although tradition
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eventually won out because that would be egregious.
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President Trump's card says Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, which makes sense because
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those are the only two major holidays this season.
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There is Hanukkah, of course, which is an ancient Jewish holiday, but it has always been relatively
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minor and remains relatively minor outside of the United States.
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It's taken on greater currency in the U.S. because two reform rabbis in Cincinnati decided
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to reinvent the Festival of Lights as a Jewish answer to Christmas during the late 19th century.
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Everybody celebrates a basically a more Jewish version of Christmas there.
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There's also Kwanzaa, a completely contrived socialist pseudo-holiday invented in the late
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1960s by a criminal and L.A. City College professor of Africana Studies named Milana Karenga,
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who was convicted in 1971 of imprisoning women while sexually assaulting them, while he whipped
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them with electrical cords, branded their faces, poured detergent down their throats, and hit
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them on the head with toasters. Approximately 0.2% of the world celebrated Kwanzaa as of 2012.
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Now, to top it all off, here is a clip from the last journalist in America, comedian Stephen
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The prophet Muhammad is a very wise prophet. He taught many people how to live. He had
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a wife called Aisha. He lived in Saudi Arabia. The message that he gave to the people is pray
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to Allah. He is the only God, and he gave the holy corn.
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I think, you know, I think that clip got cut off. The first question was, who is Jesus Christ?
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And Alexa says, he's a fictional character. He's a fictional character created, I don't
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know when, I guess, in the first century. Paul Cardinal Blois, let's start this with you.
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Is there a war on Christmas, and should we be fighting it?
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There's been a war on Christmas going on in this country all the way going back to the
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1960s, believe it or not. Yeah, I know we all love the Charlie Brown Christmas, and that
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famous scene where Linus reads from Luke's Gospel. CBS and the producers on that show
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did not want that in there. I mean, they fought tooth and nail to try and get it out. Eventually,
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of course, Charles Schultz, being a religious man, he won out in the end, and thank you for
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Plus, you've got to see what Charlie Rose did to Lucy.
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This is, people haven't been talking about this. Investigate it, folks. That's not nice.
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And in 1992, you know, Frosty, we all remember Frosty the Snowman. Frosty Returns completely
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and totally eliminated all references to Christmas. It was basically just this Soviet commissar-approved
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version of Frosty the Snowman. There was no reference of Christmas, no reference of Santa.
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It was all this environmentalist message about the importance of snow. It was bizarre, and that
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was in 1992, and ever since then, I mean, we just had storefronts saying happy holidays.
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As you've noted, I mean, throughout all eight years of Barack Obama's presidency, I don't
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think his Christmas cards said Merry Christmas. They always said happy holidays or season's
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greetings. So, you know, we're in it, and President Trump is delivering on that. He's making Christmas
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great again, and I loved Melania. I love Melania's designs for the Christmas decorations in the White
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House this year. I know leftists on Twitter are giving her hell for it, and they're just saying
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all kinds of wicked things about it, but I think it's great. I think we have a lot to be celebrating
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You could just say that sentence full stop. I love Melania. I love Melania. That woman is all grace
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and class. She has been fabulous. She is a great first lady. So, Philip, are the lefties
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being disingenuous when they claim that there's no war on Christmas or that the war on Christmas
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doesn't matter? Because the war on Christmas sure seems to matter to them. They're the aggressors
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in this. They're the ones trying to change the tradition. Is it disingenuous? Do they really
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Well, I think conservatives definitely fall for it when they go with the war on Christmas
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narrative. We've seen all the ridiculous arguments over Starbucks cups and, you know, some teenager
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who's bagging our groceries being told that he has to say happy holidays or Merry Christmas.
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Look, I think that the solution here is that, you know, for conservatives, freedom is the solution
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here. If you want to say Merry Christmas, go ahead and do that. But don't throw a fit because,
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you know, your barista said happy holidays instead. I get that there are some people who are
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trying to change the culture and, you know, erase the, you know, the nativity. But I don't think
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that works. I think they just look really silly. And so, yeah, absolutely. The White House looks
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beautiful. I'm glad there's a nativity scene back in there. But the only present that's really going
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to matter when Trump moves out of the White House, you know, either in three years or seven years,
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when he moves out, the only thing that's going to matter is whether or not he got tax reform done,
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whether or not he got health care through. So, yeah, I mean, I never stopped saying Merry Christmas.
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Neither did my family. And back home in Indiana, I mean, everybody said it at basically every store.
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So I think it's overblown. And we all do ourselves a disservice when we get into, I think, what is kind
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of a petty fight. But Indiana is a great state. It's one of the finest states in this union. They
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elected Mitch Daniels, for goodness sakes. Indiana might not be representative of the whole country.
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And I will say, it isn't just baristas who don't say Merry Christmas. In my experience,
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baristas do say Merry Christmas. It's the guys at the top. It's Howard Schultz. It's the guys who are
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running Starbucks. It's the guys who are running these corporations who say happy holidays, who say
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season's greetings. But why are they saying it? I get it. There are a lot of people on the right who say
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it doesn't matter. Who cares? It's just a word. But culture matters. Politics is downstream.
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Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Culture matters. But I don't think the culture that we want to impose
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is one where we go to, you know, the CEO of Starbucks and say, you better say Merry Christmas,
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buddy, or we're going to go get our legal addictive stimulants somewhere else. I think you just,
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you'd go to Dunkin' Donuts or you'd go to Starbucks because you like their coffee, not because you like
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their social conservatism. I mean, I like, for instance, I love, I love Chick-fil-A, but I love
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Chick-fil-A not, you know, because of the social conservative positions they take. I love Chick-fil-A
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because it's good chicken at an affordable price. I mean, isn't that what we should be trying to do
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as consumers? I don't know, though. I mean, I certainly agree in I don't go to Starbucks because
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of their politics. Obviously, I would never go there, and yet I still do all the time. But I do like,
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I do like Chick-fil-A because it's a nice, wholesome company that closes on Sunday. In-N-Out
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Burger is fine. I know this is going to be heresy to people watching in California. It's fine. It makes
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an okay burger. But one thing I like about them is they treat their employees well. Their employees
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always smile. They even have Bible verses, I think, on the bottom of the cups. There is more to it.
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This has been the critique all through the election on the left and the right. There's a critique going on
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right now of neoliberalism, of materialism, of saying that all that really matters is how big
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GDP gets. And there is a value to liberty per se. There is a value to culture per se. And there is a
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value to calling it like it is. There are not other major holidays this season, major holidays,
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Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it's a cliche, but it's a true one. Politics is downstream from
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culture. But the way that you get a winning culture that is going to affect positive politics
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is not by beating someone over the head. I think what happens is you say, yeah, they're not saying
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Merry Christmas. So what? And then you go have a better, more attractive culture and win people over
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that way instead of trying to get some godless, you know, Fortune 500 CEO to say words he doesn't
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really want to say because he's going to get made fun of at some cocktail hour later on.
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But I think he ought to do it. I think you're absolutely right. This is a more attractive
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culture. The culture that sees the world correctly and calls it like we sees it and doesn't just deal
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in silly, politically correct euphemisms. That's more attractive and it should be more attractive to
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the dollars. And Howard Schultz better come around on that, pal. I actually think that's mostly
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contrived controversy because they do put little Christmas lights on their cups. But certainly in
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other places, it's not. Barack Obama made the choice to not put the word Christmas on his
00:25:21.300
Christmas card. And by the way, I think the reason it's, I agree with most of your premises,
00:25:26.500
but I don't exactly agree with the conclusion because I think the war on Christmas is a winning
00:25:30.280
issue for us. It's a winning cultural issue. Most people in the United States understand that
00:25:34.900
Christmas is the holiday this season, at least here. And that's what we ought to call it like.
00:25:41.380
And we ought to celebrate it in precise words. On this point, we have to get to the value of
00:25:50.820
language and the value of culture because where do words really matter? Yesterday, Elizabeth Warren
00:25:56.780
claimed that Pocahontas, the word Pocahontas is a racial slur because President Trump called that
00:26:04.000
ridiculous fraud and that lying, cynical shell of a woman, the humorless woman, scolding woman. He
00:26:11.500
called her Pocahontas. Now an actual descendant of Pocahontas, Debbie White of Pareko, is firing
00:26:17.240
back saying, quote, I know that he uses Pocahontas sometimes with Elizabeth Warren. He said, well,
00:26:23.260
does that offend you when I use that? And I told him, no, it doesn't offend me. If Pocahontas were
00:26:27.100
alive today, she would be very proud of President Trump. Does it get any better than this?
00:26:33.820
Mr. Bois, we are seeing a lot of old Democrat playbooks go up in flames. Their once tried and
00:26:40.160
true strategies of weaponizing ever more specific minority categories just isn't working that well.
00:26:46.720
Are we seeing even that strategy fall apart? Will that not, will that be a tenable strategy in the
00:26:51.560
future? Yeah, this is great, Michael. It really is great to just see the fact that they cannot do
00:26:57.060
the whole, well, you're a racist playbook anymore. And the reason why they're not able to do it,
00:27:03.300
and this is another reason why I think we elected President Trump, is because when he says Pocahontas,
00:27:08.780
he doesn't apologize. He doesn't go, oh, I'm sorry. I know that's offensive to some people. He just
00:27:14.400
says it. Let it out there. Everybody debates amongst themselves. And Elizabeth Warren looks like a
00:27:18.800
complete idiot. And it's great. And it's over. And it just goes to show you that the second you
00:27:25.220
you stop showing that fear that they try to put in you by saying we're going to slander you as a
00:27:29.740
racist, the second you stop showing that they lose. And I think it's wonderful to see that it's going
00:27:34.660
up in flames. Philip, are they going to double down on all of the hyphenated grievance? Or are they
00:27:40.920
going to learn that? I agree that I think it's a good thing that this politics of this politically
00:27:47.760
correct politics is going by the wayside. I think that's one of the benefits that we're
00:27:51.580
getting with Donald Trump. But for goodness sake, we didn't elect him just so that we could say
00:27:55.900
Merry Christmas and Pocahontas. Like he promised big things. That's why I did. Why did you elect him?
00:28:00.220
Wait, that wasn't it? I like the Pocahontas thing. That's pretty much my vote.
00:28:04.940
So I think that this is ridiculous that anyone is outraged that the president is comparing a senator
00:28:12.660
from Massachusetts to a beloved award-winning Disney princess. Like the idea that we're so upset
00:28:19.800
about that just blows my mind. Yeah. But so, I mean, so here's what's interesting though about this
00:28:25.140
though, is, is, you know, Elizabeth Warren isn't answering for the fact that she made up Native
00:28:31.240
American heritage. She's not having to apologize for the fact that she campaigned on that in 2012,
00:28:35.720
that she talked to her fellow faculty at Harvard about that when she was there. Instead,
00:28:40.600
the only thing that Elizabeth Warren is doing right now, she's counting her money on her way
00:28:44.500
to the bank. I mean, what president Trump did by calling her Pocahontas is he outraged a lot of
00:28:51.280
liberals, a lot of progressives. And that outrage is probably going to, you know, move them to donate
00:28:57.620
for, for Warren. And we saw this, she was out fundraising off of the Pocahontas jab less than 12
00:29:04.820
hours after it happened. So really, if we're being honest, I think that Elizabeth Warren should thank the
00:29:09.340
president because he just, uh, he helped her fill her coffers for her campaign war chest.
00:29:13.480
I wonder though, I wonder because now she is irrevocably tied to this deception. She,
00:29:18.540
why are we talking, this is an old story. The story has been around for years and years.
00:29:22.340
Somehow it's the top trend on Twitter now that Liz Warren pretended to be Native American,
00:29:26.840
submitted recipes to a Native American cookbook, pow, wow, chow. We're still talking about it. And I
00:29:32.620
don't know. She raised money off of it, but you know who else raised money off of insults? Marco Rubio,
00:29:37.460
Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush. And if you ask low energy Jeb and lion Ted and little Marco and
00:29:44.460
yada, yada, yada, those, when, when Trump brands you with a, with a proper title, with a title that's
00:29:52.180
somewhat plausible, it tends to stick. He tried a few with Hillary. He tried a low stamina or no
00:29:57.780
stamina Hillary. That one didn't really work because the woman clearly does have stamina,
00:30:01.740
but crooked Hillary. It's just, it just sticky. It sticks to her like glue. I don't know. I'm happy
00:30:07.620
for Liz Warren if she made a few bucks off of it, if she, if she was able to garner a little bit of
00:30:11.260
wampum from Trump's insult. But I think that that is a sticky insult that talks about her deception.
00:30:18.420
And speaking of deceptive Democrats, I think we have to close on the weird sex stuff. We've,
00:30:25.300
we've beaten around the bush too long. We have to get into the today's version of the Democrat sex
00:30:29.940
scandals. Matt Lauer is out at today at the today show, which he's been at for, I think 17 years,
00:30:35.300
maybe 20 years after accusations that he sexually assaulted a staffer during the Rio Olympics.
00:30:40.580
Here is a now highly ironic clip of Lauer interrogating Bill O'Reilly over his own harassment
00:30:45.620
allegations. You were probably the last guy in the world that they wanted to fire because you were the
00:30:51.660
guy that the ratings and the revenues were built on. You carried that network on your shoulders for a
00:30:58.940
lot of years. So doesn't it seem safe to assume that the people at Fox News were given a piece
00:31:04.300
of information or given some evidence that simply made it impossible for you to stay on at Fox News?
00:31:11.420
That's a false assumption. There are a lot of other business things in play at that time and still
00:31:16.280
today that 21st century was involved with. And it was a business decision that they made.
00:31:22.180
But there isn't any. But you don't let your number one guy go unless you have information that you think
00:31:29.380
makes him. That's not true. That's that's not true, huh? Well, where there's smoke, there's fire.
00:31:35.160
I don't know. We don't know that much about Matt Lauer. These are brand new accusations. How could we?
00:31:40.260
Oh, wait a minute. Here's Katie Couric. You co-hosted the Today Show with Matt Lauer for 15 years.
00:31:45.080
What is Matt's most annoying habit? Hmm. He pinches me on the ass a lot. Wow. I wouldn't have a problem
00:31:54.140
with that. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Katie Couric did not leave a bit. I should mention.
00:32:00.500
Yikes. That can't be good. She worked with him for a very long time. Also, Garrison Keillor,
00:32:05.340
who is the longtime former host of Prairie Home Companion, which pseudo-sophisticates insist is
00:32:10.760
clever, but I just don't see it. He also is out because of improper sexual behavior. With regard
00:32:16.080
to Matt Lauer, just couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. I tell you, it's really it's it's hard
00:32:21.380
not to indulge the schadenfreude here because all of these guys who are preening over women's rights
00:32:27.560
and the Republican War on women and assaulting, assailing not just women, but also Republican
00:32:32.780
politicians for these issues are now going down. I'm a little worried about the moral hazards in this
00:32:38.780
environment. Philip, you're in the news biz. You're in the news biz down in Swampland.
00:32:43.740
Is there is it going to take down the whole industry? Is is this pendulum going to swing too
00:32:49.320
far or are we just going to take down the rapists? And that's a good thing. I mean, I'm starting to
00:32:54.320
think that if I keep my hands to myself and I just go to work every day, that somehow I'll magically
00:32:59.540
make it to the top because there won't be anybody left. I mean, for crying out loud, we've seen so many
00:33:04.480
we've seen so many sex scandals and it's really dispiriting at this point. I mean,
00:33:09.480
it's a new person every single day, it seems like even every hour. And, you know, maybe maybe I'm
00:33:17.100
unusual or something. But, you know, some of these things that these guys are accused of,
00:33:21.540
you know, none of my friends that I hang out with, like we don't have a locker room talk. And we
00:33:28.720
certainly I don't know of anyone, any decent fellow who, you know, would engage in this sort
00:33:34.440
of stuff. It's not that hard to keep your hands to yourself. It really, really isn't that. All
00:33:39.560
right. Well, I hope that there's not a clip of you coming up, you know, like Matt Lauer yelling at
00:33:43.060
Bill O'Reilly. No, I don't think so. I've heard no allegations about Philip, but Paul Bois, this
00:33:47.460
brings up the question of the schadenfreude. Should Republicans bask in this? This is great. I mean,
00:33:53.840
jerks like Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein. There isn't enough time left in the
00:33:59.260
show to go through all of these giant Democrat mouthpieces, these big gas bags who have hypocritically
00:34:05.000
talked about women's issues for a long time. But should Republicans jump on this? Or are they just
00:34:11.200
opening themselves up to getting caught? Not in some cases, obviously, these guys raped women or
00:34:16.960
sexually assaulted them. But how far will that spectrum, that blurring between winking at your
00:34:23.420
secretary and raping somebody? How blurry will that get? And tactically speaking, do Republicans
00:34:29.620
open themselves up to a lot of unwanted spotlight if they harp on this too much?
00:34:36.900
Well, Michael, I don't like creeps wherever they come from. I don't care if they're Democrats. I happen
00:34:45.380
to think that the Democrat way of life allows for the flourishing of creeps and creates a culture in
00:34:54.680
which the lines get so blurred and men are just so lost and they're just completely and totally
00:35:04.720
feeding their appetites. But there are a lot of feet under the bathroom stalls and Denny Haster.
00:35:10.620
And there are a lot of weird sex stuff on the Republican side too, right? Sure, sure, sure.
00:35:13.920
Yeah. The point that I'm saying is I think that that culture breeds that a little bit more.
00:35:19.660
But if you're a creep and you're a Republican, I want you gone. I mean, anybody that's in a position
00:35:26.380
of power and is preying on women and can't keep their hands on themselves, can't keep their eyes
00:35:33.440
on their own wives and can't keep and just are harassing women or making their lives miserable,
00:35:39.200
then yeah, I want you gone. So I say just let the fire burn. We absolutely, absolutely need to make
00:35:46.540
sure that we are not engaging in a witch hunt. And that is when someone brings forth an allegation,
00:35:52.560
we take it seriously and we investigate and we find the evidence to support it,
00:35:58.800
but we don't just automatically believe them. And for the most part, I think we've done a pretty
00:36:05.080
decent job at doing that right now. Some cases I do think have just have been just sort of witch
00:36:11.980
hunt scenarios, just bringing forth things from like 20 years ago. And I, and you find out and it's
00:36:17.740
like, okay, I mean, is this really a pattern in this person's life? But other things I think
00:36:22.160
it's, it's been appropriate. And I think we're having an important watershed moment in our
00:36:26.080
culture right now. But there's a distinction between the media figures that are going down,
00:36:29.080
Matt Lauer, Keillor, all these guys, and the political figures. Al Franken has been accused
00:36:34.840
of being a sexual creep and John Conyers. Virtually every politician I've ever met is a sexual creep,
00:36:40.600
so I'm not surprised by any of these. I'm actually surprised by the hubbub around all of it. But it
00:36:46.080
doesn't look like those guys are going to be forced to step down. Why is that? Perfectly
00:36:49.820
understandable. Politics is about more than just the personal activities of the people who hold it.
00:36:56.200
And as Federalist 51 points out, the Congress exists to put all of the wacko sociopaths into
00:37:01.220
one room so they can fight each other and not destroy our country. Now, Philip, in the case of
00:37:06.660
Roy Moore, for instance, he's accused of some pretty weird stuff at least 40 years ago, and, you know,
00:37:11.800
going after young teenagers and the like. That said, his opponent in that Alabama Senate race
00:37:18.520
believes in abortion up until, I believe, the fourth trimester. I believe he is post-birth
00:37:23.520
abortion. I'm not sure about the specifics of it. Should we really write off Roy Moore,
00:37:29.040
as Mr. Bois suggests, because maybe he's a sexual creep? I don't mean to put words in your mouth.
00:37:34.040
Generally speaking, if you're from Alabama, I mean, and you're an evangelical voter,
00:37:39.240
your choices are pretty stark. You either vote for someone who you think is a baby killer. You either
00:37:44.540
vote for Doug Jones because you find Roy Moore so unpalatable, or you vote for someone who's been
00:37:51.380
accused of being a pedophile, right? So there aren't good options.
00:37:54.920
Not quite a pedophile. I actually mean to draw this distinction, because they're saying he's a
00:37:59.100
child molester, and I'm not defending his going after, like, 14-year-old girls, allegedly,
00:38:04.960
but that is the difference, right? These girls are saying they were very developed. There is a
00:38:09.920
categorical difference between a guy going after a teenager in the 1970s and a guy going after a
00:38:16.360
six-year-old. I'm not saying either of them are superior. I think both are bad.
00:38:19.900
Yeah, I'm not saying they're not bad, but they are different. Democrats are harping on it like
00:38:24.160
Roy Moore was going after and molesting toddlers. That isn't the accusation. The accusation, he was
00:38:29.140
extremely creepy with young teenagers when he shouldn't have, and in some cases in criminal ways,
00:38:36.020
but that is a distinction. That said, the opponent wants to kill a lot of babies.
00:38:42.460
Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. If Doug Jones was not so radical, if we had a sort of,
00:38:50.420
you know, if we had Joe Manchin down in Alabama, I think that he would absolutely destroy Doug Jones
00:38:56.960
if he was just kind of moderate, middle of the road. But he has become such a radical,
00:39:01.860
specifically on the issue of abortion, that I don't think you're going to have a lot of,
00:39:06.360
you know, sort of marginally Republican voters down there be able to stomach that position and
00:39:13.680
vote for him. So I think, yeah, I think Roy Moore, my thought is that he just might pull this out.
00:39:21.100
Yeah, it certainly looks that way. I'm beginning to think that because you can't really trust the
00:39:27.000
polls with something this charged. It's kind of like Trump. It's so socially unacceptable. It's so
00:39:32.920
socially taboo to suggest that you would vote for Roy Moore because you think protecting a lot of
00:39:39.180
babies is more important than possibly credible accusations from four decades ago. Mr. Bois.
00:39:47.360
Well, to just jump off that point a second ago, you know, I think that we were talking a second ago
00:39:53.780
about how important it is to really weigh these allegations. And with the Washington Post, I mean,
00:39:58.440
look, I've harped on them before for these tiny little micro scoops about Russia that don't really
00:40:02.880
end up being things. I think in the past, they've definitely overblown some stories. But on this one,
00:40:08.180
they crossed to their T's, they dotted their I's. And then, you know, we saw with the James O'Keefe
00:40:13.120
video that they're not just willing to listen to anyone who says that 20 years ago, Roy Moore,
00:40:19.500
you know, was trying to go after them. Instead, I think that they really did good journalism. And
00:40:25.240
I'm, you know, I'm with Mr. Qua here. I mean, human nature is universal and their creepiness is
00:40:33.200
bipartisan. So I don't care whether they're on the left or the right. I don't think they have any
00:40:37.140
place leading our country. Mr. Bois, are you going to put your money where your mouth is and say we
00:40:41.400
shouldn't support Roy Moore? Well, I did not say that in my statement. What we are,
00:40:51.560
when the allegations first broke on Moore, and I was emphatic at the time, and I said that I do
00:40:57.360
think he should step down. I think we should replace him with somebody who is more palatable.
00:41:03.140
That has not happened. And so we are in a very, very difficult position. And I think the right
00:41:09.660
position has been what Trump and Sean Hannity has said, look, the people of Alabama are going to
00:41:14.740
have to decide this for themselves. I certainly, if I were an, I wouldn't vote for Doug Jones,
00:41:21.820
or nor I may probably just not vote at all. I know that some people may just look at that as a
00:41:28.460
cowardly position. Yes, they might, Mr. Bois. They might think just that. I do think that there are
00:41:33.540
just certain, certain moral lines that I'm just unwilling to cross. And yeah, I really just cannot
00:41:40.520
bring myself to just to vote for someone who could be incredibly accused of molesting a 14-year-old
00:41:46.380
girl. It's just... Even if it opens the way for a guy who supports 75th trimester abortions to become
00:41:51.520
a senator? I think the answer is why, I mean, if Moore is being credibly accused, and if he is guilty of these
00:41:57.000
things, and if he really does care about the country, then why didn't you step down when we could have
00:42:01.620
replaced somebody instead of being a narcissist and, you know, trying to stay in? That's what I
00:42:05.880
would say to that. But now we're just stuck in this very, very difficult position. So it's kind of
00:42:10.560
like, yeah, it really sucks. I have a very hard time saying like, yeah, I want Roy Moore to win,
00:42:16.960
but at the same time, I really do not want a pro-abortionist zealot in the Senate. It's a tough
00:42:23.820
situation. It's one of those things that it's going to come down to the wire. You know, if ifs and buts
00:42:28.280
candy and nuts, we would all have a Merry Christmas. Philip, last word. I think, you know,
00:42:33.320
for being pragmatic here, even if Doug Jones wins, I don't see how he, you know, tips the needle in
00:42:39.320
favor of the pro-choice position. They've already won a lot of those battles, but they're not going
00:42:44.080
to win anymore when you have Trump in the White House. Pragmatically, though, we're talking about
00:42:48.620
Roy Moore as if he's some sort of Republican stalwart. He's not going to march, you know, lockstep with
00:42:55.160
guys like Ted Cruz or Mike Lee. We don't know what he's going to do. The only thing that we can say
00:43:00.640
for certain is that Democrats are going to hang him around the neck of Republicans like a big old
00:43:04.920
millstone. And every time Republicans try to push forward some social issue, they're going to be
00:43:10.320
like, not so fast. Roy Moore still caucuses with you guys. Yeah, certainly that that's the big fear.
00:43:17.280
And they'll they'll use it to fundraise and they'll use it to harangue Republicans.
00:43:20.820
And it's a it is a difficult calculation. It's a real it's not an easy one. But we don't live in
00:43:26.600
solely ethereal worlds. We live in time and space. And that's the trouble with politics is it isn't
00:43:32.220
just a rationalist intellectual exercise. We have to make usually we have to pick one of two crappy
00:43:38.040
options. And that's that's what makes politics so frustrating and so fun. And I've had a lot of fun
00:43:44.340
talking to you. So, Philip, thank you for being here. Philip Wegman from the Washington Examiner.
00:43:48.540
Paul Cardinal Bois from The Daily Wire and from St. Peter's, I believe, if I can see that background
00:43:54.880
well. That's our whole show today. Get your mailbag questions in. I think we have 750 million because
00:44:00.720
we didn't do them last week on Thanksgiving. So get them in. I will change your life, hopefully,
00:44:04.720
for the better tomorrow. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. Tune in tomorrow.
00:44:09.500
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior
00:44:20.560
producer, Jonathan Hay. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Our technical producer is Austin
00:44:26.220
Stevens. Edited by Alex Zingaro. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
00:44:33.680
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production. Copyright Forward Publishing 2017.