The Michael Knowles Show - December 04, 2017


Ep. 68 - The Consensus Is Always Wrong


Episode Stats


Length

39 minutes

Words per minute

191.4362

Word count

7,508

Sentence count

633

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Tax reform is dead, but maybe not for the reason you thought it would be. Is it because the consensus is wrong, or is it because Trump is crazy? Or is there something else going on here?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:37.740 Do you remember how President Trump could never pass tax reform in his first year?
00:00:41.880 Much like the prediction that he would never deregulate, never nominate an originalist justice to the Supreme Court,
00:00:47.500 never pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, never renegotiate trade deals with our partners overseas,
00:00:52.100 never annihilate ISIS within 11 months, never help to defund Planned Parenthood,
00:00:55.880 never fight abortion at home and overseas, never defeat Hillary Clinton,
00:00:59.280 never even win the Republican nomination in 2016.
00:01:02.200 Do you remember that?
00:01:02.940 Turns out that that was all fake news.
00:01:05.320 We will analyze the Senate tax bill and what it means for the future of the country and the administration.
00:01:10.720 Then Laura Barron-Lopez from the Washington Examiner
00:01:13.260 and Amanda Presta-Giacomo from the Daily Wire join the panel of deplorables 0.79
00:01:17.100 to discuss Trump's late endorsement of Roy Moore, his re-endorsement,
00:01:21.380 the FBI indictment of Mike Flynn, and the person of the year.
00:01:24.980 I know who it should be.
00:01:26.320 I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:28.720 What a weekend.
00:01:37.240 I'm celebrating with a little covfefe cane, a little candy covfefe cane.
00:01:41.360 It was, I wish we had a show on Friday that we could have done it, but it was nice.
00:01:46.640 We've had a few days to mull over all, I guess it happened on Saturday anyway.
00:01:50.960 We've had a few days to mull over this excellent tax reform.
00:01:53.560 And you know, I am old enough to remember when tax reform was a total impossibility.
00:01:58.180 A pipe dream by Trump cultists who couldn't wake up and smell the coffee or the covfefe
00:02:01.840 and realize that President Trump is incompetent leftist or an incompetent leftist.
00:02:06.940 Let's roll the predictions of the consensus class.
00:02:10.460 The tax bill is not going to get passed.
00:02:13.720 I know you were talking about it before.
00:02:15.620 Zero percent chance of this being passed.
00:02:17.780 Wait, wait, wait.
00:02:18.840 Zero?
00:02:19.540 There's 99 percent.
00:02:20.760 For tax reform, because they're going to need a win.
00:02:23.880 Well, it's dead, but maybe not dead and buried.
00:02:26.820 Fear that tax reform is dead.
00:02:28.720 Will there be tax cuts?
00:02:30.360 And if the companies really were trying to advocate for tax cuts,
00:02:33.860 it wouldn't have been better to stay at the president's side.
00:02:36.320 Maybe that's a sign, Stephen Moore, that tax cuts might not happen, too.
00:02:40.660 Reform is dead.
00:02:41.540 Real, true tax reform.
00:02:42.800 If it's just tax cuts, then can this isolated president get that agenda through?
00:02:47.120 If they can't pass this tax reform, and so far we've seen President Trump giving pep talks
00:02:52.240 and photo ops, but we haven't seen anything come out of it.
00:02:55.940 Yeah, it turns out none of that was true.
00:02:57.640 None of that at all was true.
00:02:59.420 It wasn't true because the consensus view is almost always wrong.
00:03:03.380 This is a hard thing to realize.
00:03:04.980 We think the consensus view is right.
00:03:06.300 Everyone thinks that all the smart people think it, so therefore it must be right.
00:03:09.280 But that isn't true.
00:03:10.260 Forget about Galileo and Copernicus.
00:03:12.300 Consider just the regular sports, economic, political predictions we see every night on television.
00:03:17.120 Consider the scientific consensus on overpopulation 30 years ago, and on food shortages that never happened,
00:03:22.700 on global cooling, then when that didn't happen, global warming, and then when those predictions
00:03:27.520 didn't work out on climate change.
00:03:29.340 Consider the electoral consensus.
00:03:31.240 Smart money's on Jeb to win the primary, but Hillary, she'll certainly win the general. 1.00
00:03:35.100 The fact that the consensus is wrong is how people make money in the stock market.
00:03:39.680 You're making, in the stock market, you're making a bet that the consensus is baked into
00:03:43.840 the price and that it's incorrect, that you know better.
00:03:46.880 We're seeing this play out time and again with Trump.
00:03:49.800 The next time somebody condescends and patronizes, calls you crazy for thinking that perhaps
00:03:54.520 Donald Trump has a couple of brain cells to rub together, that he's perhaps an effective
00:03:58.920 leader, remind them of this fact.
00:04:00.920 Now, let's get on to the tax bill itself.
00:04:03.060 First, from my wardrobe today, I have to thank Owen Brennan and Justin Folk, who are the guys,
00:04:08.300 they're the guys doing the Dennis Prager and Adam Carolla movie, No Safe Spaces, which is a lot of fun.
00:04:13.080 It's going to be great when it comes out.
00:04:14.480 They gave me this shirt.
00:04:16.080 It says, keep calm and cut taxes.
00:04:18.540 Keep calm and cut taxes.
00:04:20.360 And both sides of that are important.
00:04:22.540 It's, you know, it's playing on the old British slogan, keep calm and carry on, you know.
00:04:26.120 Both sides are important.
00:04:27.260 The left is losing its collective mind over tax reform.
00:04:30.740 Larry Summers is claiming, I kid you not, that 10,000 people will die because of reforming taxes.
00:04:37.580 Talking heads have compared allowing people to keep more of their own money to rape.
00:04:40.960 Comedian Patton Oswalt wrote, quote,
00:04:43.280 Is there any going back after this tax bill scam to America?
00:04:47.920 Does it matter now if Trump is impeached?
00:04:50.200 There's no America now.
00:04:52.000 Not the one we knew.
00:04:53.660 I'm sorry.
00:04:54.380 I'm feeling real despair this morning.
00:04:56.120 I mean, I'm sure he is.
00:04:57.680 Leftist blogger Bill Palmer shrieked, quote,
00:04:59.780 Millions of Americans died tonight.
00:05:02.360 They died.
00:05:02.720 Now, you might not have seen that on the news because it didn't happen, you know.
00:05:05.100 But they died, quote,
00:05:06.640 So did the careers of every one of those psychotic, drooling animals in the Republican Party who voted for it.
00:05:12.800 This was mass murder.
00:05:15.040 Keep calm.
00:05:15.860 Keep calm.
00:05:17.020 Shh.
00:05:17.240 It's okay.
00:05:17.820 Shh.
00:05:18.060 Baby, baby, it's okay.
00:05:19.920 Letting people keep more of their own money is not mass murder.
00:05:23.180 It's going to be fine.
00:05:24.720 I mean, actually, ironically, my taxes are going to increase, which is unfortunate, especially if this grad student tax goes through.
00:05:31.060 I'm going to get hit.
00:05:31.780 It's a double whammy on the state and local and the grad student tax because my fiance is getting a Ph.D.
00:05:36.460 But it is far better for the country and for economic growth.
00:05:39.260 Actually, Democrats always accuse Republicans of being greedy and selfish on taxes.
00:05:45.120 But guess what?
00:05:45.740 If mine increase, that's because I do decently well in a city and state with absurd taxation.
00:05:51.860 For a long time, California and L.A. have gotten a free pass on federal income taxes while the rest of the country subsidizes their insane tax rates.
00:05:59.720 The Republican tax reform realigns those incentives to be both fairer, more federalist, to be more pro-growth.
00:06:07.180 So I might pay a bit more, but I'll live.
00:06:09.080 And on the whole, this law is great for liberty and for the economy.
00:06:11.920 The only people this law is terrible for are Democrat politicians who are doing their best to obstruct a pro-growth, pro-liberty agenda because they know it's going to kill their election chances in 2018 and 2020.
00:06:23.440 Lindsey Graham laid it out pretty frankly.
00:06:25.460 He said Republicans have to do this.
00:06:27.800 If Republicans cannot come together and unite on reforming the tax code, lowering rates and reforming the code, they might as well fold up as a party, which does make some sense.
00:06:37.920 If you can't convince a bunch of Republicans to cut taxes, there isn't a Republican party anymore.
00:06:43.380 So what does the bill actually do?
00:06:44.980 The bill lowers and simplifies income tax rates, doubles the standard deduction, doubles the child tax credit.
00:06:51.680 It preserves the adoption tax credit, which is good.
00:06:54.240 It's a good bit of pro-life wiggling in the federal government.
00:06:58.680 Median income family of four sees a reduction of $2,200 per year.
00:07:03.620 So Democrats are going to shriek that it's only the rich who benefit from this. 0.93
00:07:07.460 First of all, half the country doesn't pay any taxes, so the rich probably should benefit from this.
00:07:11.340 But the median income earner with a family of four gets over $2,000 per year in tax deduction, which is a great thing.
00:07:20.880 More importantly, it lowers the corporate tax rate to 20%.
00:07:24.500 This does matter.
00:07:25.960 People are going to try to convince you that it doesn't matter because some gigantic companies keep a lot of cash overseas and they pay very little in taxes.
00:07:33.460 But a lot of businesses in this country do pay taxes, especially in sectors like energy, finance, retail.
00:07:39.540 Home Depot pays a very high effective tax rate.
00:07:42.240 Cable companies, waste management, fast food.
00:07:44.480 There are a lot of areas of American industry that do pay taxes.
00:07:48.820 This is going to bolster them.
00:07:50.420 It also repeals the Obamacare mandate.
00:07:52.620 This is one of the best parts.
00:07:53.920 It's great.
00:07:54.420 Maybe we can get some money from corporations overseas.
00:07:57.240 Maybe we can stimulate job growth.
00:07:59.560 But this bill repeals the Obamacare mandate, the federal penalty that requires Americans, for the first time ever, to purchase a good from a private company.
00:08:08.320 Totally antithetical to American liberty.
00:08:10.120 Now that it's passed the difficult hurdle, which is the Senate, it seems likely to end up in the final bill.
00:08:15.140 This is great news.
00:08:16.860 Now, for the sort of bad news.
00:08:18.640 The Senate tax plan is predicted to increase the U.S. deficit by $1 trillion to $1.4 trillion over the next decade.
00:08:26.600 I say the sort of bad news because this is from the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation.
00:08:31.120 These sorts of predictions are usually off.
00:08:33.660 They're usually hyperbolic.
00:08:34.900 The growth prediction at the root here is just 0.8% economic growth.
00:08:40.120 We have plenty of reason to suspect that this is way too low.
00:08:42.900 Third quarter, U.S. economic growth is already beating expectations.
00:08:46.680 So Trump's first year, these numbers came out just a little while ago, already exceeded expectations.
00:08:51.300 For the first time in a decade, actual economic growth has exceeded maximum potential economic growth.
00:08:56.460 So economists are predicting stronger wage and price increases because the economy is operating beyond its potential.
00:09:02.180 This is great news for the Federal Reserve, which has worried for years about sluggish inflation.
00:09:07.060 Still, even granting all of that, even granting that probably these numbers are off, the tax cuts might exacerbate the deficit.
00:09:15.420 And that's not a good thing.
00:09:16.520 So what can we do about that?
00:09:18.260 President Trump has already signaled what he intends to do.
00:09:20.460 I know you don't want this welfare reform.
00:09:25.280 Does anybody want welfare reform?
00:09:29.780 And infrastructure.
00:09:32.300 But welfare reform, I see it.
00:09:34.380 And I've talked to people.
00:09:36.620 I know people, they work three jobs.
00:09:39.880 And they live next to somebody who doesn't work at all.
00:09:42.160 And the person who's not working at all and has no intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than the person that's working his and her ass off.
00:09:54.960 And it's not going to happen.
00:09:56.520 Not going to happen.
00:10:01.220 So we're going to go into welfare reform, unless Billy doesn't want it.
00:10:07.200 Billy, am I okay in saying that I speak for you?
00:10:09.800 He said yes.
00:10:10.440 Not exactly Reagan-esque diction, but hey, that's okay.
00:10:14.060 We'll take what we can get.
00:10:15.140 Rubio and Ryan, among others, are also saying the same thing.
00:10:18.180 But what does this mean?
00:10:19.500 By welfare reform, Trump, he isn't just talking about Obamacare, Obamaphones or whatever.
00:10:24.440 You know, they, very often they would say Trump isn't going to deal with entitlements.
00:10:31.500 But what he's doing, he's so brilliant, he's tying entitlement reform, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, which are the main drivers of our national debt and deficits.
00:10:39.900 He's tying that to welfare reform.
00:10:42.420 So the image of the welfare queen and the Obamaphone. 0.52
00:10:45.380 He's painting a picture of the cause of our economic woes and the cause of our long-term problems that we can digest and get behind.
00:10:53.760 We can picture the problem of welfare.
00:10:56.340 And it's accurate, by the way.
00:10:57.520 It's not a lie.
00:10:58.100 These problems are welfare.
00:10:59.560 There, albeit, it's welfare that the government has forced us to pay into for years.
00:11:03.620 But it is a welfare system.
00:11:05.520 So instead of typically thinking of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, we can't envision this.
00:11:09.500 It doesn't mean anything.
00:11:10.440 All that really sounds like to us is that rich people want to take away things that we've paid into for a long time.
00:11:15.760 He's pointing out that this is essentially a welfare regime.
00:11:19.340 And we need to reform that for our long-term prosperity.
00:11:22.480 Now, it has long been common knowledge, consensus knowledge, you might say, that Trump would never touch entitlements.
00:11:29.700 He's said so himself.
00:11:31.280 But Donald Trump says a lot of things.
00:11:33.500 And what does he mean by that?
00:11:35.620 Well, let's see what everyone's telling us.
00:11:37.820 Trump has said he will not touch those.
00:11:39.440 Well, you have to be very careful about words like not touching.
00:11:45.960 Does it mean I won't cut them?
00:11:48.220 I won't cut them for current retirees?
00:11:50.780 Nobody would suggest cutting Social Security benefits for current retirees.
00:11:56.560 But I think doing what President Reagan did in 1983, gradually reducing the future benefits, spread out over a number of years and after a long delay, but gradually reducing it by changing the age of retirement.
00:12:15.620 Now, Feldstein makes a great point here.
00:12:18.820 Everyone's saying he won't touch entitlements, he won't touch entitlements.
00:12:21.480 But what do you mean by touch?
00:12:23.220 That is the wiggle room.
00:12:24.720 That's the wiggle room that he's given himself.
00:12:26.560 Gerald F. Sieb observed in the Wall Street Journal today, quote,
00:12:29.940 It's clear that Mr. Trump's barbs directed at senior members of his own party, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Paul Ryan, they don't get in the way of the GOP uniting for something really important.
00:12:42.640 The idea that Republicans can repeat that feat in 2018 on health and infrastructure doesn't seem so far-fetched.
00:12:48.600 If the past is any indication, I am not so sure that he'll never touch entitlements.
00:12:53.020 I'm not sure of anything.
00:12:53.820 He seems to have managed to repeal the major pillar of Obamacare while simultaneously reforming our tax code.
00:12:59.620 The only thing I'm willing to conclude for sure about this administration is we should never say never when it comes to Trump.
00:13:05.320 With that, let's bring on our panel. 0.88
00:13:07.600 We have Amanda Prestigiacomo from The Daily Wire and Laura Baron-Lopez from The Washington Examiner.
00:13:12.920 Laura, thank you for coming on.
00:13:15.000 Your first time on the panel of deplorables.
00:13:17.180 Thanks for having me.
00:13:18.020 What is the final bill going to look like?
00:13:20.260 Well, as you alluded to, they have to go to conference.
00:13:23.640 And so that's something that they're hoping to wrap up by the end of the year.
00:13:27.540 And it looks like they are going to be able to do that.
00:13:29.760 You know, in the House and Senate bill, there were some compromises worked out in order to get people like Susan Collins and others on.
00:13:37.820 Collins wanted to see the compromise that was in the House bill when it came to SALT, the state and local tax deductions included in the Senate.
00:13:46.600 So you're going to be seeing them work things out like that when it goes to conference.
00:13:51.960 But honestly, I don't really see anything stopping it at this point.
00:13:56.200 It's unbelievable because if you'd asked me, I don't, by the way, I don't mean to harp on the consensus view and say they're all idiots and I knew better.
00:14:02.720 I didn't know.
00:14:03.600 I didn't make predictions that were really different than all of this.
00:14:05.860 I just withheld my immediate judgment because this was a guarantee just a month or two ago that we could never get tax reform, even more recently than that.
00:14:14.780 And then it happens now to get even more excited, to really gear the covfefe meter up to 11.
00:14:21.160 Amanda, is there any shot that we get entitlement reform?
00:14:24.380 I mean, we might.
00:14:25.920 Like you said, I'm not going to put anything past Trump.
00:14:28.320 I know that he said he would not touch these things during the campaign.
00:14:32.820 But who knows?
00:14:34.340 I mean, his main platform was immigration.
00:14:36.760 We haven't seen too much going on there.
00:14:38.560 I mean, we've seen a crackdown with ICE and, you know, Border Patrol and stuff like that.
00:14:42.300 But we haven't seen, you know, him exactly sticking to the script.
00:14:46.000 I mean, if you look at Ann Coulter's Twitter feed right now, you know, she'll tell you that the border wall, there's zero construction.
00:14:50.160 But we're going, you know, but we have tax reform.
00:14:52.980 So I'm not sure.
00:14:54.800 I'm not sure he might touch it.
00:14:56.520 It's conservatives would be obviously on board for that.
00:14:58.900 I don't think the populist base is totally on, you know, 100 percent behind that.
00:15:04.340 That's not their main concern.
00:15:05.940 But I wouldn't put it past him to touch it.
00:15:08.740 Ann Coulter's Twitter feed is the evidence of this.
00:15:10.920 You're exactly right.
00:15:11.820 Because Trump zigzags.
00:15:13.780 He zigzags so you can't really pin him down. 1.00
00:15:16.700 He puts out – this is the covfefe, by the way.
00:15:18.780 He puts out so much covfefe all the time that by the time you catch up to the one crazy thing he's doing over here, he's on to something else.
00:15:26.140 And this isn't just the personal stuff and the language or whatever.
00:15:30.400 Even though he does throw salty language in, even in the pitch for entitlement reform in Missouri that we just watched, he throws in bad words and things.
00:15:38.860 But by the time he's over here, then he's moving on to the border wall or he's moving on to entitlement reform.
00:15:43.960 It's hard to keep up with that.
00:15:46.640 And it's really hard to make predictions.
00:15:48.420 Predictions only work when you can model normal times and normal experiences.
00:15:53.540 And that's why maybe the polls were all right during the age of Romney, but we are not in normal times.
00:15:59.920 Now, before we get on, we have so much more to talk about.
00:16:03.820 The real person of the year and the first little bad news we'll talk about with Mr. Mike Flynn and what that means for the administration.
00:16:09.800 But first, you can probably tell, you're looking in my eyes, you can see how excited I am.
00:16:14.160 I'm just sucking on this candy cane to keep me awake for the sugar.
00:16:17.460 I have not slept in days.
00:16:19.000 I've been so excited about tax reform.
00:16:21.020 But when you are ready to sleep, it's very important.
00:16:25.000 I'm going to crash after this.
00:16:26.040 I'm probably going to get my customary 14 hours of sleep.
00:16:28.500 Sleep is very important.
00:16:29.420 You spend a third of your life doing it.
00:16:31.400 I spend about two-thirds of my life doing it.
00:16:33.180 And there are a ton of online mattress retailers popping up these days.
00:16:36.540 I have moved around a bunch in my 20s from college to New York to L.A.
00:16:41.460 I've always bought a new mattress.
00:16:43.740 I don't move it with me.
00:16:44.480 It's expensive.
00:16:45.400 Mattress shopping is terrible.
00:16:47.340 I hate it more than even regular shopping.
00:16:50.020 So as a millennial, I don't want to spend a ton of money.
00:16:53.380 I want to get the best deal possible for the quality.
00:16:56.520 And I never want to leave my chair.
00:16:58.460 I want to stay glued to it.
00:16:59.740 So all of these online mattress solutions, they'll give you a one-size-fits-all answer for a better sleep.
00:17:05.880 But guess what?
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00:18:48.200 All right.
00:18:48.740 Even the thought of sleeping on one of those lovely Helix beds has gotten me kind of tired.
00:18:52.400 But don't forget, our third episode of The Conversation is coming up on Tuesday, December 12th at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific,
00:19:00.040 featuring the one and the only, the boss man himself, the slayer of lefty snowflakes, Ben Shapiro.
00:19:08.080 Subscribe today to be a part of The Conversation.
00:19:10.220 You can ask Ben live questions.
00:19:11.800 He will answer every one that they have time for.
00:19:15.100 They're coming in basically in order.
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00:20:45.540 After all of that great news, we'll be right back.
00:20:48.000 You know the holiday season is upon us.
00:21:00.540 You know Christmas shopping has landed because that was just like 10 minutes of telling you all the great stuff that you have to get right now.
00:21:07.920 But now we've got to bring it down a little bit.
00:21:09.920 I know we're having such a great covfefe day.
00:21:11.680 I've got the mistletoe sitting right behind me if anybody gets any ideas who isn't named Marshall.
00:21:17.580 President Trump has re-endorsed, endorsed again, beleaguered Alabama's Senate candidate Roy Moore.
00:21:23.540 He said, quote,
00:21:24.840 Democrats' refusal to give even one vote for massive tax cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama.
00:21:31.460 We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, border wall, military pro-life, VA, judges, Second Amendment, and more.
00:21:38.140 No to Jones, a Pelosi-Schumer puppet.
00:21:40.940 He went on.
00:21:42.200 280 characters were not enough.
00:21:44.700 Quote,
00:21:45.220 Putting Pelosi-Schumer liberal puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders, and so much more.
00:21:55.380 Look at your 401ks since the election.
00:21:57.640 Good point.
00:21:58.440 Highest stock market ever.
00:22:00.160 Jobs are roaring back.
00:22:02.420 Where's the lie?
00:22:03.040 I don't know.
00:22:03.700 Amanda, should Trump have re-endorsed more like this?
00:22:06.780 Was this the right call?
00:22:07.540 Normal presidents would probably not do this.
00:22:12.640 They would probably at the least not say anything.
00:22:16.280 That's a safe thing to do.
00:22:17.160 If not come out and denounce that.
00:22:18.740 But President Trump is not a normal president.
00:22:21.680 So for him coming out, I mean, I guess I was a little surprised even though I shouldn't have been.
00:22:26.200 And as you notice, he didn't say anything about the accusations.
00:22:29.240 He was just like, it doesn't matter.
00:22:31.540 We need to push this agenda forward.
00:22:33.560 And I think that kind of, I mean, this is a really gross thing all around.
00:22:37.460 But if you look at what's happened on the left, I mean, we had Al Franken.
00:22:40.520 He's still, you know, in office.
00:22:42.080 They're going to have a nice investigation.
00:22:43.480 So that kind of watered down these allegations as well.
00:22:46.640 Conures hasn't stepped down, even though Pelosi told him to.
00:22:50.040 Exactly.
00:22:50.940 Yeah.
00:22:51.480 So this this Me Too movement has kind of been watered down a little bit.
00:22:55.700 The people of Alabama, I think it was 71 percent, don't even believe the accusations because there's such a distrust with media for good reason.
00:23:03.520 That's not to say these accusations are not true.
00:23:05.300 I'm just saying that's kind of the consensus in Alabama.
00:23:08.560 That's always right.
00:23:10.080 So I don't think it particularly hurts Trump, but it is a bold move for him to come out and say this.
00:23:15.700 I think a any other Republican president would not touch it at the very least.
00:23:20.600 But that is not President Trump.
00:23:22.340 That is not Donald Trump.
00:23:23.540 Now, Laura, you're a real journalist, so you deal in numbers and I deal in covfefe.
00:23:27.540 So I'd like to know how close is Moore?
00:23:30.320 Can he win?
00:23:31.000 Did he need President Trump's reendorsement to win?
00:23:34.400 I don't think he needed Trump's endorsement.
00:23:37.060 He he is ticking back up in the polls after Doug Jones.
00:23:40.760 We saw him take the lead a little bit when this was first in the new cycle and and dominating the new cycle.
00:23:48.400 But as you said, you know, with the Franken and the Conyers allegations, that kind of was a little bit of a gift to Moore.
00:23:55.680 I would like to say, though, that I think there's a pretty big distinction between someone who has been accused of molesting children and Franken,
00:24:05.540 who has been accused of sexual harassment and Conyers, who's been accused of sexual harassment.
00:24:11.740 And there's another difference, too, by the way, which is that all of the Roy Moore accusations.
00:24:16.020 And I'm not saying they're not credible.
00:24:17.420 They seem perfectly credible.
00:24:18.840 But all of those happened 40 years ago.
00:24:20.680 And those photos of Al Franken are from within the last 10 years of him getting hands.
00:24:25.280 Yeah, I don't think, though, that them happening 40 years ago makes them any less relevant or makes them any less important.
00:24:32.180 I mean, as we know, women don't come forward when these things happen. 1.00
00:24:35.780 I mean, these women were children. 1.00
00:24:37.400 There was 14 year old, you know, 13 year old.
00:24:40.540 Was there 13?
00:24:41.420 I thought it was 14, 16 and 17.
00:24:43.440 Well, it was probably 14, 16.
00:24:45.560 But the point still stands that they were underage.
00:24:48.720 And this is my question, though.
00:24:50.600 Do you not think that it obviously those allegations, whether whether they're credible or not, just that they're made, should cause some reflection.
00:24:59.140 But does it not say something that about Roy Moore's character that he hasn't had any accusations within 40 years?
00:25:06.420 If he were some kind of creepy sex guy, then what we even if we conclude that we could say he seems to have reformed himself for four decades.
00:25:17.200 That I think that says something about his character today.
00:25:21.040 I would say that you can't really say that someone has reformed themselves when they aren't even admitting any wrongdoing.
00:25:25.600 And I think that all of the accusations are credible.
00:25:28.300 And there have been multiple women that have come out over the course of his career.
00:25:32.280 And maybe you could say that no one came forward because at some point he got married and he has been married to Kayla since then.
00:25:40.120 Apparently, faithfully.
00:25:42.340 Apparently.
00:25:43.180 But again, that doesn't mean that he has reformed when he's there in the church saying that, you know, he didn't do this.
00:25:50.460 And he is saying that he knows the right way and his way is God's way when he can't even admit any wrongdoing.
00:25:56.940 I'm sorry, but I really don't think that there's any reform there.
00:25:59.260 I mean, and then another difference is that Franken has admitted wrongdoing.
00:26:03.520 Now, Conyers, of course, is also denying all the allegations.
00:26:06.080 But you aren't seeing Democratic leaders do what Trump did.
00:26:09.200 And Democratic leaders are saying you need to step down and you should step down now.
00:26:13.100 Yeah, maybe it took them a week to say that.
00:26:15.220 It took them 20 years after Bill Clinton to say that.
00:26:17.680 It took them a lot more than a week.
00:26:18.940 Yeah, and the left is starting to reckon with that.
00:26:21.260 Bill Clinton also was, you know, went through an entire trial.
00:26:25.500 I mean, if we're going to get into all of this.
00:26:27.460 He went through a trial because Republicans made him.
00:26:31.420 Yes, at the time.
00:26:32.580 But you are also seeing left wing or left wing groups as well as senators come forward and wanting to go back to that.
00:26:41.180 I mean, it was convenient now.
00:26:43.260 Gillibrand, when Gillibrand.
00:26:44.740 Yes, there is probably some political motivation behind her doing that. 0.99
00:26:48.160 But she did come forward and say that Clinton should have resigned if we go back to it now.
00:26:52.700 It is certainly convenient now.
00:26:54.700 Yes, I mean, I wouldn't say it's necessarily convenient for certain outside groups that weren't around then.
00:26:59.980 And they're coming forward saying that, yes, the left should reckon with what Bill Clinton did.
00:27:05.000 But again, if we are going to talk about everything, which I think that we should, then we also should talk about the fact that Trump himself was accused by 16 women.
00:27:13.540 So this is something that is a really big topic in D.C. right now.
00:27:18.740 It's something that isn't going to go away.
00:27:20.580 And I think you're going to see a lot more people being named in Congress on both sides of the aisle.
00:27:26.440 And it's something that Congress needs to handle.
00:27:28.700 And they should probably handle it as expeditiously as they possibly can.
00:27:31.620 You know, I will say I did notice those left-wing groups didn't come forward in October or November of 2016.
00:27:38.300 I noticed they waited a few months until the Clintons were no longer viable. 0.99
00:27:41.820 But it's true.
00:27:42.340 They're dealing with it now.
00:27:43.200 And you make this great point about the reckoning with Roy Moore, which is I think it's certainly evidence that if those allegations are true,
00:27:51.640 for decades of good behavior and of not doing creepy, weird sex stuff, is evidence of reform.
00:27:57.620 But he's the guy out there on this pedestal saying that I'm the candidate of Christian virtues.
00:28:03.680 And he hasn't acknowledged that these accusations are true.
00:28:08.160 He hasn't apologized.
00:28:09.080 He hasn't done a lot of things that one would hope a Christian would do if the accusations are credible. 1.00
00:28:17.120 But, of course, there are a ton of political calculations that go into all of this.
00:28:21.500 That is the bit that makes Roy Moore look a little slick and a little oily, even if he's been a good guy for 40 years.
00:28:28.880 That he can't admit it is a little tough to reckon with, for sure.
00:28:33.100 And even beside that, it's not all covefe news today.
00:28:36.720 Bob Mueller has indicted former Trump advisor Mike Flynn for lying to the FBI.
00:28:41.700 Now, Andy McCarthy thinks this is evidence that Mueller doesn't have anything on Trump.
00:28:44.860 He thinks that if Mueller had something on Trump, he would have gotten Mike Flynn to plead guilty to a crime related to Russia conspiracy.
00:28:52.480 And that way it's the evidence of the crime.
00:28:54.200 And then that way they can get the big dog who ordered him.
00:28:56.280 But he didn't do that.
00:28:57.060 He just pled guilty to a procedural crime.
00:29:00.320 Mark Levin thinks the same thing.
00:29:02.460 He says that there's nothing to this Russia conspiracy issue and collusion.
00:29:07.160 Well, I think that none of us can really say that we know if Mueller has anything on Trump.
00:29:14.980 But I will say that I don't necessarily agree with that assessment that you just mentioned.
00:29:20.720 And I think that the fact that Flynn only pled guilty to one charge is a sign that he's cooperating with the investigation
00:29:32.300 and that there's some dealings going on.
00:29:35.880 And so the reason he was only charged with one count was because Mueller is working with him to get a bigger fish.
00:29:42.620 That's certainly the consensus view.
00:29:44.460 That's certainly the consensus view.
00:29:46.340 But why that charge?
00:29:47.120 I think that it isn't necessarily off because given the fact that...
00:29:50.720 We have seen Mueller be very calculating.
00:29:53.980 If you aren't going to cooperate with him, then maybe he will charge you with more counts if he has the evidence.
00:29:57.900 If someone is going to cooperate and he thinks that there is someone bigger who committed a far more treasonous crime
00:30:03.000 or some other thread that he wants to pursue and someone is cooperating with him,
00:30:10.940 then he's going to work out a plea deal with that.
00:30:13.260 But the mainstream media, they had to walk out back all of their reporting on this.
00:30:17.060 They said that it seemed that Flynn was ordered by Jared Kushner to conspire with Russia and to call Russia.
00:30:25.020 What we then learned is he called members of the United Nations, including Russia, and said,
00:30:30.320 don't vote to destroy Israel.
00:30:32.740 Don't vote to condemn Israel in this particular resolution.
00:30:37.080 I just wonder, if it is this plea deal, which seems to be the consensus view,
00:30:42.240 then why didn't Flynn get him to plea guilty to a crime, to any crime,
00:30:46.780 that would help him further the case that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia?
00:30:50.940 Why would he just get him on this little procedural...
00:30:53.580 And I don't mean to say lying to the FBI is not a big deal, but it was a procedural crime.
00:30:58.780 It was a crime that was caused by the investigation itself.
00:31:01.200 Amanda, sorry, go ahead.
00:31:05.200 Yeah, no, that's kind of the point here that McCarthy at National Review was making,
00:31:10.020 is that that's not how it works.
00:31:11.400 I mean, he was a former prosecutor.
00:31:13.340 That's not how this would work.
00:31:15.060 He would get him on something bigger if he had it.
00:31:19.240 You know, he wouldn't just go after committing, you know, lying to the FBI.
00:31:22.800 So that's kind of the point here, is that this is all he has.
00:31:26.500 And it looks like, I mean, as of now, we have no evidence of collusion, which is not even a crime.
00:31:31.720 This is the only thing we have, is that he lied to the FBI.
00:31:34.960 I mean, what Flynn did is he reached out to Russians after President Trump was elected.
00:31:41.800 So when he was the president-elect and he was part of the incoming administration, that's nothing.
00:31:46.640 Again, we just, we have more of nothing coming up.
00:31:49.880 There's no collusion.
00:31:50.880 There's no nothing.
00:31:51.520 More and more, as this progresses, looks like a witch hunt.
00:31:54.400 I hate to use that term, but that's exactly what it looks like.
00:31:57.220 Unless we have something soon.
00:31:58.840 I mean, I don't see anything.
00:32:00.700 If someone can tell me one piece of Russian collusion, which again, it's not a crime, I'd love to hear it.
00:32:04.880 But we have nothing thus far.
00:32:06.480 The only thing we have is Flynn lying to the FBI, which is not small potatoes.
00:32:10.880 I'm not saying that.
00:32:11.600 But where is the crime?
00:32:13.620 Like, I just, I don't see anything.
00:32:15.100 You know, it is a witch hunt, certainly.
00:32:16.520 But sometimes there are witches. 1.00
00:32:18.920 Laura, do you have any thoughts on who might fall if Mueller does have something?
00:32:24.100 Do you have any thoughts on where this could lead?
00:32:26.080 Or do you agree with Amanda that basically we're seeing the last throes of a witch hunt?
00:32:31.840 I don't think we're seeing the last throes of a witch hunt.
00:32:34.340 I think that this could go all the way to the present, not necessarily on a collusion, which again, is not illegal to be discussing things with foreign states.
00:32:45.560 When you're an incoming administration, of course.
00:32:47.500 When you're an incoming administration, yes.
00:32:48.920 But we saw his tweet this weekend, which, of course, you have to take every tweet that comes from the president with the grain of salt, because it could not be true.
00:32:59.440 That's the state that we're living in right now.
00:33:01.880 But Trump's tweet pretty much says that he knew that Flynn committed a crime when he fired Comey.
00:33:10.800 And if that timeline plays out, and if that timeline is accurate, and Trump did know that Flynn had lied to the FBI when he fired Comey, then that is pretty strong evidence of an attempt to obstruct justice.
00:33:23.580 And so that is where Mueller will be able to get him, if that is something that he is looking at.
00:33:29.080 And now I would say that the president has opened himself up to more scrutiny.
00:33:33.040 Of course, the lawyer did say, hey, I penned that tweet.
00:33:37.320 That being said, we've never heard the lawyer say that before.
00:33:41.700 And so, again, either way, this is something that Mueller has to be looking at more now, given that Trump threw this out there.
00:33:49.320 Certainly.
00:33:49.720 And you can always indict a ham sandwich.
00:33:51.760 So it is very difficult.
00:33:53.480 I don't mean that glibly.
00:33:54.620 It is difficult for these investigations to conclude without getting somebody for something.
00:33:59.140 But the question is, are we going to continue to hear insinuations of so-called Russia collusion, or are they basically going to bring this down to some procedural crime and we'll get Scooter Libby Part 2 or something?
00:34:14.720 I don't know.
00:34:15.500 The tweets could get him in trouble.
00:34:17.840 That is the cost of all the great communication that you get out of Twitter, bypassing the mainstream media, going direct to the American people.
00:34:26.240 The cost of that is you open yourself up to a lot of on-the-record statements and your claims will be fact-checked.
00:34:33.940 Yeah.
00:34:34.200 And just one thing, I know Ben Shapiro talked about this earlier.
00:34:36.800 Even that, even let's say, because of that tweet, let's say Trump, that was from Trump, even that would possibly not be obstruction of justice.
00:34:45.180 Ben Shapiro said he was looking at all the statutes and that wouldn't be obstruction of justice because the investigation is still going on.
00:34:51.460 He can fire Comey for whatever reason he wants.
00:34:53.200 And we still have the special counsel, nothing happened there.
00:34:56.260 So it's still proceeding.
00:34:57.760 So even that, worst-case scenario, would technically not be obstruction of justice.
00:35:02.140 I haven't personally looked at those statutes.
00:35:03.700 I'm just taking this from Ben Shapiro, who is a lawyer, and said he looked at them.
00:35:08.380 And Ben is not exactly the most pro-Trump guy in the world.
00:35:11.920 He's not wearing a MAGA hat every day.
00:35:13.460 So I do take it pretty significantly if he's pointing that out.
00:35:16.980 Well, this does get to the most important question in the news today.
00:35:20.520 Forget Flynn, forget taxes and the economy and everything.
00:35:24.200 Time magazine has its short list of person of the year.
00:35:28.560 Now, that list includes the dreamers, quote-unquote.
00:35:31.600 You know, the dreamers.
00:35:33.240 The dreamers, you know.
00:35:34.580 That's the euphemism of the year.
00:35:36.260 Little Rocket Man, Kim Jong-un.
00:35:38.160 Anti-American Dum Dum, Colin Kaepernick.
00:35:40.860 The Hashtag Me Too movement, Bob Mueller, and others.
00:35:44.160 Amanda, Laura, who is the person of the year, regardless of whether or not they are on time's list?
00:35:50.960 Laura, we'll start with you. 0.98
00:35:52.520 Oh, my gosh.
00:35:53.340 I don't even want to.
00:35:55.800 Who could possibly be named time's person of the year?
00:35:59.960 Well, the question is, who should be the person of the year, and who is time going to name?
00:36:04.540 I assume those are very different questions.
00:36:06.880 They are.
00:36:07.260 I think that time may try to go with something broader.
00:36:11.740 So I think that given everything that's being discussed across the country right now, I could see them going with Me Too.
00:36:19.280 Yeah, I kind of agree.
00:36:20.240 That's a big movement.
00:36:21.500 That, you know, the sexual harassment, assault, reckoning that the U.S. is happening is not going to go away.
00:36:29.760 And it really did become a big force this year.
00:36:32.840 So I would maybe say that that's where they're going to go.
00:36:36.460 And it has, of all of the slacktivist campaigns, and we get a new one every single day, it does appear that hashtag Me Too has overtaken hashtag Take a Knee for the virtue signaling.
00:36:47.300 So that is the one we're talking about that might get it.
00:36:49.960 Amanda, who do you think? 1.00
00:36:51.320 Yeah, I think they're going to choose the Me Too campaign.
00:36:53.780 But, I mean, if we didn't know Time Magazine was left-wing before, I mean, the Dreamers, Robert Mueller, I mean, Jeff Bezos, like, anyone who Donald Trump doesn't like is, like, on this list.
00:37:06.420 But I think they're going to go with the Me Too campaign, which is not a person, which is kind of weird.
00:37:11.740 And who should it be?
00:37:13.500 I don't know.
00:37:14.120 Trump.
00:37:14.440 I'll just say Trump just because.
00:37:15.340 It obviously should be.
00:37:16.420 There's no question.
00:37:17.380 I mean, this is what happens when you get a showman and a showrunner and a reality TV megastar to be your president.
00:37:24.340 The president is, at least for the first year, he's the guy, right?
00:37:27.520 He is the guy.
00:37:28.620 When was the last time you had a meal where, as desperately as you tried for Trump not to come up, someone had to bring up whatever tweet he sent out?
00:37:36.860 It just, I don't know, it was like the 90s was the last time I didn't talk about that guy?
00:37:41.720 Outrageous.
00:37:42.540 Yeah, I think that's probably true.
00:37:44.000 Although, if they do go with the Dreamers, you could always have the compliment to that would be the nightmarers of all the voters who made Donald Trump the president. 0.87
00:37:52.620 I'm sure they would give it to the nightmare for 2017.
00:37:56.840 True, true.
00:37:57.580 But pretty covfefe on our end.
00:37:58.960 Thank you both for being here.
00:38:01.100 Laura Baron-Lopez from the Washington Examiner.
00:38:03.140 Great to have you.
00:38:03.760 We'll have to have you back.
00:38:04.780 And Amanda Prestigiacomo from the Daily Wire.
00:38:07.080 Excellent, as always, to have you.
00:38:09.060 That's our show.
00:38:10.120 I was yapping so much during that show.
00:38:12.100 I only had a little bit of my candy cane to celebrate the beginning of Advent.
00:38:16.000 We will be back as long as this mistletoe doesn't get me arrested for, you know, the hashtag MeToo thing.
00:38:21.720 And if that doesn't happen, if the Hollywood crumbling doesn't affect my studio, too, we will be back here tomorrow.
00:38:29.940 I am Michael Knowles.
00:38:30.740 This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:38:31.780 Come back tomorrow.
00:38:32.560 We'll do it all again.
00:38:33.100 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover.
00:38:48.220 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro.
00:38:52.900 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
00:38:55.160 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
00:38:57.320 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
00:39:01.100 Copyright Forward Publishing 2017.
00:39:03.020 Clear Marcis Coop.
00:39:08.740 See you next time.
00:39:10.020 See you next time.
00:39:11.100 .