Ep. 748 - Cops Have Guns For A Reason
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
172.44038
Summary
A police officer shot and killed 16-year-old Makia Bryant in broad daylight in the back of the head with a steak knife in her hand. The charge against the cop was dismissed on appeal, and he was never charged.
Transcript
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Here we go again. Another day, another police officer shooting a violent criminal.
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Seems like you can't turn on the news anymore without seeing these sorts of stories.
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Enough is enough. It is long past time in this country that we had a national conversation
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about the discriminatory practice in many police departments to target people who are committing
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crimes. That is discrimination. We will have that conversation. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the
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Rank, they discriminate between the people committing crimes and the people not committing
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crimes. They discriminate between the people committing crimes and the people who are having
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crimes committed against them. That's discrimination. My favorite comment yesterday from Timothy Brinson,
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who says when the justice system loses its integrity, the mob can get away with anything.
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Yes, absolutely true. It's a simple point, but it's totally true. And it's this point that I think
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some people on the more libertarian right, they don't want to acknowledge sometimes, which is that
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there will be order. Order will be instituted. Either we can order our own lives and we can
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tamp down our own passions or we can, through our politics, have, have a system of justice that will
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maintain order or a bunch of roving street mobs are going to institute their own sort of order,
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but order will be maintained. And as the justice department crumbles and as liberty is confused for
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licentiousness, the mobs are ruling. That's the way it is. This was not always the case.
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ready. Go to LegacyBox.com slash Knowles. Save 40% while supplies last. The libs are defending
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the stabbing of children. They are. They are doing that to own the conservatives or to own the cops or
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to own the white people or to, I don't know. They're just doing it to push their narrative,
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but they are actually now in the position of defending teenage girls, stabbing other teenage girls
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just so that a cop won't intervene, just so they can't give the cop credit for what he did right.
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You've probably heard about this story by now if you haven't. A Columbus police officer shot 16-year-old
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Makia Bryant. Now that the Derek Chauvin trial is over, the left needs some new case to focus on to
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pretend that the country is really racist and terrible and black people are always being
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attacked and white people are the devil. So they're focusing on this case. Poor little 16-year-old
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Makia Bryant cut down in her prime by a racist, vicious cop, except for this very inconvenient
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fact that we only know about because of body camera footage, which was that as when the cop shot
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Makia Bryant, she was inches away from stabbing another girl. We've got the footage. Cop gets out of
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his car, walks up. There's some kind of altercation going on. Okay. Someone gets knocked to the ground
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and now a girl, there it is. Girl gets shot. The girl gets shot and she is inches away from stabbing
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with a steak knife, another young girl. It all, it all kind of goes into this melee when this first
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person on the side goes down. The cop is turned facing the person who goes down. Cop pulls out
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his, his gun. You've got, you've got the footage right there. This girl, Makia Bryant is wielding
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a giant knife, wraps it around on the side, is about to plunge it down into this other girl,
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is inches away from it. And then the cop rightly shoots the attacker. That is the only thing that
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he could do while still doing his job and pursuing justice. A just society would give this cop a
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medal. A just society would give this cop an award. He saved a girl's life and shot a knife wielding
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attacker. Our society is going to try to destroy him, is going to try to put him in prison, is going
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to try to ruin his family, is going to call him a racist because he shot one black girl to save
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another black girl who was about to be stabbed by the first black girl. But that makes him a racist
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somehow. That's what's going to happen here. Some people want to, they want to say, look,
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can't we just all get along? Can't we just have it both ways? Can't, look, maybe he shouldn't have
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done that, but you know, look, I guess the girl had a knife, but you know, maybe he shouldn't. It's,
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it's just a really sad thing. It's a tragedy. We'll get to the tragedy in a second because we
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have to get through some of the stupid questions surrounding this first. I kid you not, there is
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the suggestion on the left that the officer should have not shot, shot the victim, shot the perpetrator
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rather, shot to kill. He should have just shot her in the ankle or something, shot her in the wrist,
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shot her in the, shut the gun right out of her hand. This was a question posed to the police chief
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yesterday. Chief, one of the big questions that has been asked primarily on social media,
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and it may seem like a silly question that like, shouldn't people already know,
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but this is a legitimate question that a lot of people are asking is, can an officer
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shoot the leg? Can they shoot somewhere that would not result in a fatal wound, right? So a lot of people
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have said, couldn't he have just shot her in the leg so she dropped? Couldn't he have shot her in the
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arm? Something like that. Right. You know, okay, we got to pause it right there before we get to his
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because he, this cop is pretty diplomatic here, but I will not be diplomatic. This is an extremely
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dumb question. Basically what this reporter is asking, and look, I'm not even knocking on the
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reporter. The reporter is just channeling what a lot of very stupid, ignorant people on the internet
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are saying. He's basically asking, hey, um, couldn't, couldn't the cop have shot the knife
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out of the girl's hand without harming her like Clint Eastwood in the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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Couldn't the cop have had, you know, when he heard that harmonica come on,
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couldn't he have just whipped out his gun, shot the knife out. And then, you know, the girl,
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she would have looked really startled like the, like the other guy in the good, the bad,
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and the ugly. And then, but then they all kind of would have laughed about it. No one would have
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gotten hurt. Couldn't that come on. I saw it on, I saw it in the movies. That's the question. No,
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that's not, I won't, I won't even explain why you can't do that. I will allow the expert,
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the cop to explain why that is not such a great idea. One of the, uh, the difficult things with
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that is, um, when you're trying, we, we don't train to shoot the leg because that's a small
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target. We train to shoot center mass. What is available to stop that threat? There was a threat
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going on, a deadly force threat that was going on. So the officer is trained to shoot center mass,
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the largest part, part of a body that is available to them. When you try to start shooting legs or
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arms, uh, rounds miss, and then they continue on. And there are people behind that, that could be
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in danger that are not committing anything. Uh, so we try and minimize any danger to anyone else.
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If we have to use our firearm, when you pull out a firearm in real life, that is not a video game.
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When you pull out a, you're not playing around. It's not, here's a warning. Someone, I actually saw
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someone say on Twitter, why couldn't he fire a warning shot into the air? Like he's a Mexican
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gangster. Oh, you know, because I don't know if you're aware of this. Bullets, when they go up,
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eventually because of gravity, they come back down. And if you're just shooting into the air,
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when they come back down, it might not work out too well for you or for an innocent bystander.
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Why couldn't he just shot her in the leg? One, she's moving like crazy. Two, actually, I'm sorry.
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The first consideration here is she's got a knife inches from this girl's body. She's got a knife
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coming down very quickly on this girl's body. So shooting her in the leg, probably not a smart
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idea, even if it did work. Second leg, very, very small area moving very rapidly. You've got lots of
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people around. You don't need bullets spraying everywhere. When you pull out a weapon and you shoot
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that weapon at somebody, you are shooting to kill that person. That's just the way it works.
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That's what guns do. That's what guns are for. And by the way, cops have guns for a reason.
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Cops have guns to stop bad guys from doing bad things like this girl who was trying to stab.
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And by the way, when you're stabbing, you're not, you're not just playing games either.
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When you pull a knife out and you stab somebody, you are trying to kill that person.
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And this cop saved that girl from getting killed by that other girl. That's a good thing.
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That's a good thing. Or in our very degraded culture, race-obsessed culture, cynical culture,
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it's an act of racism. And I'm not saying it's just some kook nut idiot on the internet.
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This is what is being pushed without any evidence, actually in the face of all the evidence,
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by the White House. Jen Psaki mouthing off on a subject about which she knows nothing
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to gain political advantage by smearing people as racists.
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The killing of 16-year-old Michaela Bryant by the Columbus police is tragic. She was a child.
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We're thinking of her friends and family and the communities that are hurting and grieving her loss.
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We know that police violence disproportionately impacts Black and Latino people in communities,
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and that Black women and girls, like Black men and boys, experience higher rates of police violence.
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We also know that there are particular vulnerabilities that children in foster care,
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like Micaiah, face. And her death came, as you noted, just as America was hopeful of a step forward
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after the traumatic and exhausting trial of Derek Chauvin and the verdict that was reached.
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So our focus is on working to address systemic racism and implicit bias head-on, and of course,
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to passing laws and legislation that will put much-needed reforms into place at police departments
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Implicit bias. It's racism. It's... What am I basing that on? Nothing.
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Well, probably what? The, the victim, the person who was about to be stabbed, was that a white person?
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No. Okay. It wasn't a white person. Ah, it's too bad. That would have made my argument easier.
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Well, whatever. It's just, it's racism. You know, everything's racism. It's implicit too.
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So if the fact that I can't point to it proves how, you know, super duper implicit and racist it is.
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She was 16 years old. She was, she was a child, 16 years old. The same Democratic Party that tells
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us that 16-year-olds are adults and should vote also tells us 16, they're just children. They
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don't know anything. They can't do anything. The same Democratic Party that tells us that a
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three-year-old can choose to mutilate himself and castrate himself and take cross-sex hormones
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because he knows his, that he's really a girl, even if he's a boy. And the adults can't tell him
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nothing because he knows and he's got the freedom to choose. Also tells us that a 16-year-old wielding
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a knife, trying to kill somebody was, you know, just a, just a child. Come on. You can't do that.
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Come on, man. By the way, even if she was just a child, if that child is trying to kill another child
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and you've got less than a second to intervene, either you're going to let the one child die or
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you're going to kill the child trying to kill the other child, you've still got to do it. You've
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still got to use that force. That's a tough world. That's a real tragedy. Split second decisions. By
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You get all the parts that you need for your car or truck. Then you can write Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S
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in there. How did you hear about us box? So they know that we sent you. The shooting of Micaiah
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Bryant is a tragedy. That is what we are being told. In a sense, it is. I'll tell you how it's not and then
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I'll tell you how it is. The reason it's not a tragedy is because it is good when people who
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are trying to stab other people are shot. That's a good thing. Because those people who are trying
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to stab and very likely kill other people are committing a very heinous act. And when they are
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prevented from doing that by a bullet, that's a good thing. I know that's a hard saying. It's hard
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to understand. It's hard to look down this fallen world right as it is and say that it is good to
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kill people before they can murder other people as they are trying to murder other people. It's hard
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because we don't want to say it's not, it's awful to shoot anybody. But when we're talking about
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gradations here, when we're talking about difficult choices, it's better to kill the criminal
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than to let the criminal kill an innocent person. It is positively good, a good decision to do that.
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Now, how is it a tragedy? It's a tragedy because this girl, Micaiah Bryant, did a very bad thing.
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And it's, it's, it's actually sad to watch people face the consequences for their bad actions.
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And because I'm sure this girl had a tough life. I think she was in foster care.
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She obviously did not have a good family. She obviously was not raised right. She obviously
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was not educated. She obviously was not prevented from making bad, evil choices.
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Where we all have that inclination. We all have that broken human nature. Some of us have better
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support systems than others. So that, that is genuinely tragic. I don't want to, I, I, I know
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that conservatives in pushing back on the leftist narrative here, sometimes we go a little too far.
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No, this girl had bad circumstances and she made evil decisions and it is actually sad. Even criminals,
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even, even the worst criminals, it is sad, tragic to watch them go down that path because it doesn't
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have to happen. It's not inevitable. Contrary to the left's fatalist narrative that everyone other
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than straight white men is just a passive figure there. Only straight white men, according to the
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left, are fully human with intellect and will who can, are in control of their lives. Everyone else,
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according to that ideology, is just some passive figure who has moved around at the whims of straight
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white men. That's not true. That's not true. The girl had, has free will, had free will. Girl had
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some intellect. The girl could have used that the right way. She used it the wrong way. Now as a,
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as a direct consequence of her actions, she is dead. Yup. That's, that's a sad fact of this world.
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And the officer totally did the right thing and he should be commended for what he did and he should
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be given an award. LeBron James disagrees with that. The mob is already coming after,
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after this police officer. The mob being led by this zillionaire athlete idiot, LeBron James,
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who tweeted out his picture and said, all caps, you're next with a, with a, an hourglass. And it says,
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hashtag accountability. Accountability is the new word that the left is using instead of justice
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because what the left is calling for is not justice because justice is an objective, eternal
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thing that we perceive and try to pursue in our lives. Accountability is totally a social fact.
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Accountability is just responsiveness, responsibility. It's just, it's just what I demand from you. Well,
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that then you are accountable to me, but it's not based on anything objective or eternal.
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I actually think that's the distinction at the heart here between accountability and justice.
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So he's saying, yeah, we're coming for you, cop, hero cop who did the right thing and saved a life.
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We're coming for you. LeBron James deleted that tweet. That's good. Glad he recognized he was wrong,
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but then he sent out this tweet afterward and he just talked about, you know, it's the being used for
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bad things might in the racism, but I'm sick of it. It's awful. It's terrible. Nobody. No,
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no, you don't get it. You don't get it, LeBron. You don't get that it was absolutely right and just
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for that cop to shoot Micaiah Bryant. I don't think he could have behaved any more appropriately
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because he, it's not like he, she runs out of the house and he just starts shooting.
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He waited until the knife was inches from the other girl and then he shot her. That's a good,
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you should, LeBron James, not when you apologize, when you take that tweet down,
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not only should you apologize for that tweet, you should thank that cop for doing his job
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and for pursuing justice. And you should say, I, LeBron James, a total dummy was wrong. I,
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I leapt to a conclusion that was not right. Thank you, sir, for pursuing justice. You think that's
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going to happen? I don't think so because LeBron's a victim. Don't you know, LeBron James can't leave
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his house without being hunted down by racist white people. Is that so? LeBron, he's, he is this poor
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aggrieved man who lives in a world of white privilege. I do not want to be lectured by LeBron
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James on privilege. I, you almost can't blame LeBron here for the same reason that you feel bad for
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criminals. You also feel bad for totally benighted, ignorant idiots like LeBron James,
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because I think he genuinely believes this stuff flies in the face of objective reality flies in the
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face of everything we see. I think LeBron James really does believe that he's a victim, that he
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has legitimate grievance, that this country, a black man can't make it in this country.
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LeBron, he thinks this from his, I imagine golden palace that he's on, from his throne that he's
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sitting on in his zillion dollar house, one of the most beloved for whatever reason and wealthy and
00:21:17.180
famous people in the country. Can't make it though because of the color of his skin, right?
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He believes, and I'm not, I'm not being facetious when I say I sort of feel bad for his deep ignorance.
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He has been raised in a culture that increasingly teaches people this sort of thing.
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LeBron's a little too old to have been totally educated this way, but younger people are educated
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this way. This is what they are told. This is what you're taught by critical race theory, for instance,
00:21:51.700
which is very much in the news these days. Critical race theory is a derivation of critical theory,
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which is part of this radical cultural upheaval that began a hundred years ago or more, and that
00:22:02.320
has flowered into political correctness and wokeism and cancel culture. I explain this history at length
00:22:08.720
in my book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now for pre-order. You can get it
00:22:12.800
right now. The critical race theory part, it's just part and parcel of it, but what it tells you is
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you can't make, this is a hopelessly racist, bigoted, terrible country, and you can't make it,
00:22:24.860
so you got to hate the system and tear it down. What are we going to do about that? Well, Oklahoma
00:22:30.440
state senators are finally figuring it out, much more so, I mean, they're really leading on this issue
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compared to so many of the squishes around the country in the Republican Party.
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Oklahoma state senators have introduced a bill to ban critical race theory from public schools and
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universities. This would prohibit teachers and administrators and other staff from teaching
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that one race or sex is inherently superior to another, not allowed to do that anymore,
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that an individual by virtue of his race or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive,
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whether consciously or unconsciously. That is being taught as gospel truth in boardrooms and
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universities and schools right now. That will be banned. An individual should be discriminated
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against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex. Yep,
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that's being taught. Members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others
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without respect to race or sex. That is being taught. An individual's moral character is necessarily
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determined by his or her race or sex. That is being taught. And all this stuff would be banned.
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This has to be banned. I've said before, there were three positions on this poison in the
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classroom. There's the position where you support it and you say, yeah, we want all this leftist
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stuff. That's great. Let's go along with it. That's terrific. Then there's the position of,
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well, it shouldn't be mandatory, but it can be taught if the schools want it to be taught.
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And then there's the conservative position. No, academic freedom is a hoax to use the term of
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William F. Buckley Jr. This is a farce, just a trick of political correctness that the left has used
00:24:05.180
to destroy our culture. Education is necessarily limited, exclusive, coercive. We're going to teach
00:24:13.780
some things. We're not going to teach other things. We're going to bring some things into
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the classroom. We're going to ban other things from the classroom. And one of the things we're
00:24:21.620
going to ban is this poison, this trash, critical race theory, not going to allow it in. And you know
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what, teachers, if you do teach this, you'll be punished. Maybe you'll be fired for it.
00:24:33.420
But Michael, what about freedom? Yeah, what about freedom? This undermines freedom, this thing.
00:24:39.020
There is a thought that stops thought, and that is a thought that ought to be stopped.
00:24:43.940
The position of critical race theory is that objective reality is an illusion. Our faculties of
00:24:51.280
reason are fake and the country's evil and deeply unjust and all its institutions, including the
00:24:56.780
educational ones. If you allow that idea to fester, you undermine the whole thing. You undermine our
00:25:03.200
conception of liberty. You undermine the whole country. Got to get rid of it. Got to kick it out.
00:25:07.640
Got to get a lot tougher. Ben, we'll be talking about Mr. LeBron James today, his cop-hating America.
00:25:15.080
Go check out his show later on and then get ready for Candace's show. Got a great Candace Owens show
00:25:20.700
coming up on Friday. If you're not already a member, you're missing out on Candace,
00:25:25.640
the newest talk show here by Candace Owens. This week's episode is a major truth bomb as Candace
00:25:31.260
dives right into the Derek Chauvin trial verdict and gives her breakdown on George Floyd's death.
00:25:36.700
It's certain to be very politically correct. You do not want to miss this week's special guest,
00:25:41.080
also Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is the largest MMA organization
00:25:45.520
in the world. Show streams on Fridays at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central, only, only at Daily
00:25:50.540
Wire dot com. You can also get 25% off a new membership with code Candace. Head on over
00:25:55.160
to Daily Wire. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:26:09.660
We're going to need tough, serious people in our politics to bring our country back from
00:26:14.280
the brink. And we may be getting one. Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need.
00:26:21.280
That would be Mark McCloskey. You'll remember Mark McCloskey and his wife holding those. He had the,
00:26:28.220
it looked like an AR-15. She had that little James Bond gun. And when BLM started storming up and breaking
00:26:35.080
their property, they did not roll over. They did not lie down. They did not say, please take whatever
00:26:39.760
you want because of your claims of historical grievance. And no, they pulled out their guns
00:26:44.220
and pointed that at them and said, get off my property. Get off my lawn. I said, get off my
00:26:48.760
lawn now. So they also did this while wearing their like great Brooks Brothers, you know,
00:26:53.720
pink polo shirt, white chinos, or, you know, khaki colored chinos. Anyway, I was hoping that either
00:27:02.140
the McCloskeys would become magazine cover models for the cover of the new J Press catalog or that
00:27:09.740
they would get involved in politics. Looks like it's going to be the latter. By the way, I spoke to
00:27:14.780
Mark McCloskey right when all this happened, because there was a rumor that he's a Democrat or something
00:27:18.600
and supported BLM. He said, that's just not true. He does not do that. He gave like 50 bucks once to his
00:27:24.140
Democrat buddy who was running for dog catcher or something, but he's a lifelong conservative Republican.
00:27:28.600
So he is considering running for U.S. Senate in Missouri. My hot take on this, I don't really know
00:27:35.780
very much about Mark McCloskey. I don't know anything really about the other candidates for Senate.
00:27:40.820
But my, my first gut really analytical reaction is awesome. Super cool. Great. Love that. Love,
00:27:51.320
I'm really glad he's running for Senate. I don't, I don't know about his political philosophy.
00:27:57.380
I don't know his, his intricate ideas about entitlement reform or something like that.
00:28:05.660
I don't, I don't know about his personal history. Here's what I do know. That guy stood up to BLM when
00:28:13.920
it counted. When, when it was getting real, when it was on the line, when a violent, angry mob came to
00:28:21.920
destroy his property and threaten him and his wife, he stood up to them and he faced legal threats
00:28:28.500
because of that. Didn't care. Faced physical threats, obviously because of that. Didn't care.
00:28:33.020
He stood up to defend not just his property, not just his life, but to defend what is right to stand
00:28:40.880
up for justice. That gives him, I think, a real, real advantage in the race. All the jokes about how
00:28:48.040
great they looked, you know, in the polos and the guns and everything that actual, those images did
00:28:52.980
represent something. They weren't just memes. They actually represented a stance for justice.
00:28:59.280
Very few people are willing to do that in Washington. Gives him, gives him a very good
00:29:05.040
advantage. Speaking of some people who actually do stand up for tough things in Washington,
00:29:09.800
there are few and far between. Senator Ted Cruz, my co-host on verdict. Senator Cruz absolutely nailed
00:29:18.840
this issue of election fraud and the double standards and this massive left-wing power grab.
00:29:26.300
He had Stacey Abrams, the fake governor of Georgia, who refused to admit that she lost the
00:29:32.520
governor race, pretended that she won the race, never faced any adverse consequences from that. Even
00:29:38.120
though now we're told if you ever question an election, you're going to be deplatformed and
00:29:41.160
ostracized and censored. If you're a Republican, if you're a Democrat, you have to question the
00:29:45.960
elections that you lose. Ted Cruz had Stacey Abrams right in front of her. He said, hey, just once and
00:29:51.460
for all, do you admit you lost the election? Ms. Abrams, it's been over two years and you still refuse to
00:30:00.060
concede that you lost the race for governor in Georgia in 2018. You have said that, quote, you do not
00:30:06.060
concede that the process was proper and that, quote, they stole it from the voters of Georgia.
00:30:12.300
Yes or no, today, do you still maintain that the 2018 Georgia election was stolen?
00:30:19.680
As I have always said, I acknowledged at the very beginning that Brian Kemp won under the rules that
00:30:28.180
were in place. What I object to are rules that permitted thousands of Georgia voters to be denied
00:30:34.340
their participation in this election, to have their votes cast out.
00:30:38.260
Ms. Abrams, I'm going to ask you to please answer the question I asked, which is, do you,
00:30:43.560
yes or no, do you still maintain the 2018 election was stolen? That's your language.
00:30:49.580
My full language was that it was stolen from the voters of Georgia.
00:30:53.860
Okay, so there's the answer. Who else would it be stolen from? Who would an election be stolen from?
00:30:59.860
When you cheat in an election, you are ultimately stealing the vote of, of the voters. So she's
00:31:04.900
saying, yes, I maintain that. I maintain that the 2018, I maintain this without any evidence that the
00:31:11.980
2018 election was stolen from me and that Brian Kemp is illegitimate. Therefore, right? I mean,
00:31:19.000
I think that's the, that's the implication. If you were to say that same thing about the 2020
00:31:25.580
presidential election, you would be kicked off of the internet and you might be investigated by the
00:31:31.600
FBI and you might be called an insurrectionist and un-American. But if you say that about the 2018
00:31:37.980
Georgia governor's election, which, which had far, far fewer irregularities, far less evidence in Georgia
00:31:46.580
2018 that anything weird was going on. If you said that about Georgia, you'd be celebrated. You'd be,
00:31:52.740
you'd be Stacey Abrams herself. So she makes this argument, you know, it's really, it was racism and
00:32:00.840
it, black votes were suppressed. So Senator Cruz is Senator Cruz. People forget he's a very good
00:32:08.480
prosecutor. He's argued cases before the Supreme court. That was his old job before he got into the
00:32:12.900
Senate. He comes with the receipts and he just shreds her stupid argument. Do you know in Georgia,
00:32:22.360
whether the percentage of, of African-American Georgians who are registered to vote and who
00:32:26.660
turned out to vote, is it higher or lower than the national average?
00:32:32.140
It is higher than the national average because Georgia is one of the largest
00:32:35.500
states with an African-American population. But that's not tied to the size of the population.
00:32:41.020
The percentage of black Georgians who are registered to vote in 2018 is 64.7%. That compares to 60.2%
00:32:48.320
as the national average. The percentage of Georgians who voted in 2018, the election you claim was
00:32:53.100
stolen from you was 56.3%. That's higher than the national average of 48%. Let me ask you this,
00:32:59.940
Ms. Abrams. In 2018, do you know which demographic group in Georgia had the highest registration
00:33:08.200
I have a guess, but I will defer to you for the answer.
00:33:13.540
The answer is African-Americans had the highest registration and the highest turnout despite your
00:33:18.480
claiming that the election was stolen and there was somehow voter suppression.
00:33:22.540
I can't tell if Stacey Abrams is dull or dishonest. This may be not, maybe isn't an either or sort of
00:33:29.640
situation because Cruz says, Hey, do you know, you know what state did very, very well. It was like a real
00:33:37.300
leader in, in terms of the percentage of black voters who actually registered turned out to vote.
00:33:43.240
And she said, well, uh, yes, Georgia, that's true. Uh, yeah, we were good at that with the black
00:33:47.460
voters, but only because Georgia has a really big black population. You see the problem there?
00:33:53.740
The percent, the percentage of black voters in Georgia that are registered or voting has nothing
00:34:01.560
to do with the size of the population. It's a percentage. It's, it's okay. Whatever the population is,
00:34:06.500
this is the proportion of them that were registered and went out to vote.
00:34:11.120
And so Cruz points that out. He says, well, are you serious right now? Are you kidding me?
00:34:14.920
No. Let me explain to you what a percentage is, Stacey Abrams. And then she wises up. Then he goes on
00:34:21.320
and he says, Hey, do you know this? Do you know that? Do you know this? And eventually she says, I
00:34:26.400
defer to your expertise as well. She should as well. She should. It took, how long did it,
00:34:33.480
it took one minute to shred the whole argument over the voter suppression of the black people in
00:34:39.020
Georgia in 2018 took less than one minute for Ted Cruz. He's a sharp guy. Maybe it would take two
00:34:44.440
minutes for other people, but you could do it. You just look at the numbers. Meanwhile, when you talk
00:34:51.860
about irregularities in 2020, you had in the case of Pennsylvania, election officials
00:34:56.560
explicitly, obviously violating the state constitution when it comes to the use of
00:35:02.960
widespread mail-in ballots. But no, we're not allowed to talk about that. The issue here is
00:35:09.480
that it doesn't really come down to an argument. Stacey Abrams realized she's, she's at least sharp
00:35:14.820
enough to realize, Oh gosh, I'm about to get wrecked by Ted Cruz. Okay. I'll pull up. I'll try to push
00:35:19.560
back a little. Then I will humiliate myself by appearing not to understand what a percentage
00:35:24.160
is. And then I will, I'll just lay back and let Cruz do it because ultimately it doesn't really
00:35:29.760
matter. It doesn't matter how persuasive that argument is. It doesn't matter how thoroughly
00:35:36.600
Stacey Abrams's point is debunked. I think what the left is interested in right now is not logical
00:35:45.220
argument and persuading or being persuaded. I think they're interested in the use of power,
00:35:51.520
attaining political power, wielding that political power and pushing one's will absent
00:35:56.320
one's intellect or the rigor of one's logic. That's what this is really about.
00:36:03.020
So you got problems in the legislature, problems in the executive, and then into judiciary. I want to
00:36:08.060
turn to LA. LA right now is ordering the city to offer homeless people housing by the fall.
00:36:19.160
There's a lot of homeless people, a lot of bums and derelicts on the streets of Los Angeles,
00:36:24.120
especially Skid Row. It's like a third world country. And it's amazing too, because you'll be
00:36:28.500
in downtown LA and you'll be in some areas that are kind of nice. They're actually pretty impressive,
00:36:32.280
lots of money there. Then you make a wrong turn and you are in, you're surrounded by hundreds and
00:36:37.220
hundreds of bums and drug addicts and criminals and lunatics and derelicts. And you think, how on
00:36:45.360
earth is this taking place, one, in the United States, and two, in what is considered to be a
00:36:49.940
major city in the United States? So the judge, US District Judge David Carter, has outlined the
00:36:58.260
problems of homelessness here. And he says it's all about racism. Now his premise here is wrong,
00:37:04.120
but his policy conclusion, I think actually might have some point. He says, quote,
00:37:10.820
through redlining, containment, eminent domain, exclusionary zoning, and gentrification
00:37:15.720
designed to segregate and disenfranchise communities of color, the city and county of Los Angeles
00:37:22.140
created a legacy of entrenched structural racism. As shown most clearly in the present crisis of
00:37:27.980
homelessness, the effects of structural racism continue to threaten the lives of people of color
00:37:32.480
in Los Angeles. Very offensive thing he's saying. He's saying, yeah, if you're black, you're just
00:37:37.120
going to live on the streets on Skid Row. Because you're black and you can't do anything. And no white
00:37:42.420
people live on the streets of Skid Row and no black people have mansions. No black people have even
00:37:47.420
homes. Black people can't make it. Like LeBron James, he's living on Skid Row, right? Because of
00:37:52.660
structural racism. You know, a real irony here too is, do you know who famously spent several days
00:37:59.480
getting into violent altercations over crack cocaine sales on Skid Row? Do you know who did
00:38:05.620
that? Hunter Biden. Very famously, during one of his more than week-long benders in Los Angeles,
00:38:13.160
winds up on Skid Row getting into fistfights and haggling over the price of crack. Hunter Biden,
00:38:20.700
last I checked, not a person of color. Not, I don't think so. I don't know. Corn pop, maybe. But
00:38:29.980
Joe Biden, or Hunter Biden, rather, I don't think so. I don't, it's not a racial thing. I don't think
00:38:36.720
that structural racism forced these, forced the drug addicts to take all the drugs, forced the
00:38:44.000
lunatics to live on the street, forced the criminals to commit crime. I don't think structural
00:38:48.940
racism caused any of that. I think the brokenness of man and then the evil choices that man makes and
00:38:56.600
then the erosion of one's own discipline and free will because of those evil choices and because of
00:39:03.500
the habit of vice, I think that's what caused it. But I will say, I do think that the city of Los
00:39:12.780
Angeles should house these people. I do. I actually do. It is a dysfunctional act for people
00:39:17.660
to live on the street. It should not be tolerated. And what LA wants to pretend, what a lot of liberals
00:39:23.780
want to pretend is that we got rid of the insane asylums in the 60s and 70s because we didn't,
00:39:29.880
it was wrong. It was taking away people's freedom to put these lunatics in insane asylums.
00:39:35.560
They're so much more free now that they're living in squalor on the street. No, they're not.
00:39:38.880
The reason they're not free is because they're not in command of their intellect and their will.
00:39:44.780
So now, so they're living in filth on the street in danger of physical violence all the time.
00:39:49.760
That's not better than living in an insane asylum. There were two types of housing that
00:39:56.120
the city of Los Angeles should provide to these bums on Skid Row. Insane asylums, which should be
00:40:03.960
rebuilt. It would be an act of compassion to rebuild the insane asylums and take people living
00:40:08.580
in filth on the street and put them into places that are probably not going to be very nice, but
00:40:13.360
it's going to be better than living on the street. And this is, this is a difficult fallen world. And if
00:40:18.840
we can make a little improvement here, we should. They should either put them in insane asylums
00:40:23.480
or prisons. It's a dysfunctional act to live on the street. A lot of these people, they're drug addicts.
00:40:30.720
Okay. That should be against, that should be against the law where it's not. It is against
00:40:35.480
the law in very many places. We should not have people strung out on meth and PCP and crack like
00:40:40.980
Hunter Biden running around the streets, threatening the public order, put them in jail. It's a good
00:40:47.180
place for them. And then who else? Just loafers and the indigent? Probably got to arrest them too.
00:40:53.960
Because you're not, you don't have a claim. You're not allowed to live on the sidewalk.
00:40:58.260
It's not good for you. It's not good for society. It's not civilized. Yes, I sort of agree with this
00:41:05.280
judge for all sorts of different reasons. I agree with this judge. How's the homeless put them in
00:41:11.140
jails or institutions? Absolutely. The political order is changing rapidly.
00:41:20.900
You are seeing a realignment. You are seeing some people who were liberals and moderates
00:41:28.080
who would, would have called themselves Democrats or on the left. They're, they're watching the left
00:41:34.160
right now undermine our system of government, call for the abolition of cops, march through the streets,
00:41:40.680
burning down private businesses and houses and government buildings. And they're looking at that
00:41:44.280
and they're saying, I can't, can't do that. I'm out. They're seeing the left push transgender
00:41:49.760
ideology on kids, castrate little children. And they're saying, I'm out. They're seeing the left
00:41:54.480
defending a girl who was trying to stab another girl just to own the cops or whatever. And they're
00:42:01.120
saying, I'm not part of this. You've seen that. You saw a lot of people move over to the Trump camp
00:42:09.500
who were previously not engaged in politics or who are not Republicans. You were also seeing
00:42:13.940
former Republicans who were liberal squishes, leave the party.
00:42:20.340
I'm referring of course to most famously, I guess, Bill Kristol, who was a major, major Republican figure
00:42:26.780
who then left the Republican party and now supports Democrats and works in Democrat activism
00:42:32.600
because he doesn't like the new direction of the Republican party.
00:42:35.840
You had the, the remaining never Trump contingent. Very, there aren't very many of the never Trumpers
00:42:42.580
that were left in 2020, but people like David French, for instance, or I think Jonah, Jonah
00:42:48.200
Goldberg is still never Trump who they don't like. I'm not even personally attacking them. I'm just
00:42:53.720
saying they don't like where the Republican party is going. So they're leaving and they will either
00:42:57.980
totally check out or in some cases will actively support Democrats, will actively vote for Joe Biden.
00:43:04.060
And then there's George W. Bush, who was our last Republican president before Donald Trump.
00:43:12.420
And George W. Bush was, I think, a little upset at the way Trump treated his brother, Jeb.
00:43:17.240
And I suspect he did not vote for Donald Trump. He did not attend the RNC. And now he's coming out
00:43:27.920
and really markedly criticizing the GOP. He went on NBC News where his daughter works and he was pushing
00:43:33.680
his new book, which is an art collection. I actually have one of President Bush's art,
00:43:37.960
art collections. It's like a coffee table book of, of veterans. It's pretty impressive for a,
00:43:43.200
for an amateur, a relatively recent painter. So he's got a new one about immigrants and he was
00:43:47.780
plugging the book and he took the opportunity to attack the GOP. If you were to describe the
00:43:54.900
Republican party as you see it today, how would you describe it?
00:43:58.780
Uh, I would describe it as isolationist, protectionist, and to a certain extent,
00:44:04.880
nativist. Hmm. And he disappointed. Well, it's not exactly my vision, but you know what? I'm just
00:44:11.300
an old guy. They put out the pasture. So just a simple painter, the simple painter.
00:44:16.280
So even if you don't like what George Bush is saying here, and I obviously have
00:44:20.560
great disagreements, you do remember how likable this guy is. You do. And I think it's sort of
00:44:26.380
genuine. I actually have, I really do have a soft spot for George W. Bush, even though I don't like
00:44:31.020
the direction that he took the Republican party. I'm very glad that his brand of conservatism is over.
00:44:37.560
One can, one can have an honest disagreement here and just say, yeah, Hey, you might be a nice guy,
00:44:42.300
but your vision of the party, that's, that's over. That's the past. It's good that that's over.
00:44:47.820
We're moving in a stronger, more conservative direction. Is the GOP isolationist now? I don't
00:44:54.140
believe that. I think we're more skeptical of Wilsonian adventurism and creating Madisonian
00:44:59.760
democracies in the Middle East. But I don't, I think it's unfair to call that isolationist.
00:45:05.320
Is it protectionist? Well, I think we're a little, we're a little skeptical of total free trade,
00:45:11.900
where all of our trading partners cheat and they violate WTO treaties and they get an advantage
00:45:18.480
and they illegally subsidize their steel and aluminum to use the, and they illegally
00:45:22.620
inflate their currency in China. And we have to play by a different set of rules. I don't,
00:45:28.620
that doesn't even seem very free to me. So yeah, we're skeptical of that. Nativist,
00:45:33.020
what does that word even mean? We think that the government of the United States should
00:45:37.640
protect the citizens of the United States more than foreigners. Yeah, duh. That's what every
00:45:42.520
country should do. It's not a racial thing. There are a lot of native Americans. I'm a native
00:45:46.960
American. LeBron James is a native American. A lot of people born in this country, all different
00:45:53.880
sorts of races and backgrounds. But we take in millions and millions of people every year,
00:45:59.340
more than any other country in the world by a country mile. And we have something like,
00:46:05.240
I think 51 million immigrants or something living in the country right now. It's a lot. And if you're
00:46:09.380
not going to assimilate people, that, that really does threaten the integrity of your culture and
00:46:13.460
your country. Not saying it's because we hate the Mexicans or something. It's just, you can't,
00:46:17.660
if you have a totally open border, you don't have a country anymore. Is that nativist? No,
00:46:21.860
come on, give me a break. And now President Bush, very, very upset and worried about Afghanistan
00:46:27.520
because Joe Biden has an, Trump started it and now Biden is concluding it saying,
00:46:32.480
we're going to pull out of Afghanistan. George Bush doesn't like that very much.
00:46:35.940
My first reaction was, wow, these girls are going to have real trouble with the Taliban.
00:46:41.260
And a lot of gains have been made. And, uh, and so I'm deeply concerned about the plight of women
00:46:47.580
and girls in, in, in, in that country. I think we should have held off on that decision. Well,
00:46:51.660
I think we'll see. I mean, the time will tell. I, I, I think the administration hopes that the
00:46:57.140
girls are going to be okay through diplomacy. Uh, we'll find out. All I know is the Taliban,
00:47:02.080
man, when they had the run of the place, they were brutal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, do you,
00:47:07.100
can you believe it's been 20 years since we went in there? Uh, you know, uh, we went into Korea in 52.
00:47:13.760
Yeah. We went into Germany in 42 or 44. Yeah. So, yeah, no, I mean, yeah, 20 years. I guess
00:47:22.860
you're going to say, can you believe that offers you were in there first 20 years ago? Yeah. Time
00:47:28.760
flies. Time flies. And so all I wish George Bush has an honest position here, which is that we
00:47:34.580
should stay in Afghanistan forever, I guess. But because there's not a certain point you leave
00:47:39.500
and then guess who's coming back? The, these tribal warriors and the Taliban. So the girls are
00:47:44.040
going to be in just as bad a position, whether we leave today or we leave in a hundred years,
00:47:47.580
you're not going to root that out. You're not going to totally transform Afghanistan,
00:47:52.180
which is a very ancient place into some, into fifth Avenue or something. But I just wish he
00:47:58.820
were honest about it and say, look, my, my vision is an American global empire. And I support that on
00:48:06.300
the basis of a sort of abstract liberalism and following in the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson say.
00:48:12.040
And so, yeah, we're never going to leave and we're going to invade more countries and we're going to
00:48:14.680
make them more like us. And that's the way it's going to be. But that argument wouldn't work.
00:48:20.480
It obviously isn't going to work. And I don't even think they'd admit it. Let's not forget the
00:48:23.180
Bushes have never been particularly conservative. George Jeb called illegal immigration an act of
00:48:29.460
love. George W called himself a compassionate conservative as opposed to what? The heartless
00:48:33.640
conservatives. George H.W. Bush said he wanted a kinder, gentler nation. Nancy Reagan famously asked
00:48:38.720
kinder and gentler than whom? Meaning Reagan, you know, the more conservative guy. And Prescott Bush,
00:48:44.680
helped to found Planned Parenthood. Okay. So it's not, I have a piece on this at the Daily Wire too.
00:48:50.620
So it's not, not even an attack on the Bushes. Just saying they represent the liberal wing of the
00:48:54.720
Republican party. Now we're moving back to a more conservative part of the Republican party.
00:48:59.800
Bushes have represented the liberal wing of that party since 1952 at least.
00:49:03.420
And now we're moving in a more conservative direction. That's a good thing. And it's going
00:49:09.980
to, you're going to hear a lot of heartstrings and a lot of narratives and a lot of, of
00:49:14.720
unpersuasive arguments. We ought to keep our eyes on justice. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the
00:49:26.860
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
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word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple
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00:49:47.940
The Michael Knowles show is produced by Ben Davies. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Our
00:49:53.220
technical director is Austin Stevens. Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
00:49:58.940
Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky. Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico. Audio mixer,
00:50:05.200
Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup by Nika Geneva. And production coordinator, McKenna Waters.
00:50:11.100
The Michael Knowles show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
00:50:15.340
Today on the Ben Shapiro show, the media lie about systemic police racism. The White House,
00:50:20.120
the media, and LeBron James target a police officer for shooting a black teenager who was
00:50:24.120
trying to stab another black teenager. And the Biden administration cracks down on police
00:50:28.580
departments. So everything is going great. That's today on the Ben Shapiro show. Give it a listen.