Ep. 85 - The Art Of The Deal： A Play-By-Play
Summary
The King of Reality TV just gave us one of his best episodes yet. We will break down the DACA meeting scene by scene, line by line. Then, Allie Stuckey, Bradley Devlin, and Jacob Airy join the panel of deplorables to discuss Trump s path to firing half of the EPA staff by the end of his first term, absurd judicial overreach, and Warren Buffett s warning on Bitcoin.
Transcript
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The king of reality TV just gave us one of his best episodes yet.
00:00:04.860
We will break down the DACA meeting scene by scene, line by line,
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Then, Allie Stuckey, Bradley Devlin, and Jacob Airy join the panel of deplorables
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to discuss Trump's path to firing half of the EPA staff by the end of his first term,
00:00:21.960
absurd judicial overreach, and Warren Buffett's warning on Bitcoin.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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What an incredible meeting yesterday at the White House.
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So for those of you who didn't see it, Donald Trump invited up congressional leaders,
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Senate leaders, and House leaders from both parties, cameras on.
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He invited the press in the whole time, sitting around the table,
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to talk about DACA and to talk about immigration.
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This is his signature issue, and this is a very contentious issue,
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and it has been a contentious issue for almost a century now.
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And Donald Trump invited everyone in to do this.
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Now, that does make him the most transparent administration in recent history.
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He'll go on and speak to them at length, without scripts.
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He's transparent in part because there have been so many leaks also coming from the White House.
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But contrary to what people predicted, that he would be an autocrat, that he would be a tyrannical,
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He pioneered a genre where people invite cameramen into their homes,
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into their most private moments, into their bedrooms, and let them film him all the time.
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He couldn't be anything but transparent because that is his strength.
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Playing to his strength, inviting cameras into his private life is something he's been doing since the 1980s.
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So of course he's going to bring it into his White House and into his presidency.
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And unfortunately for some of the politicians in our room who are not used to that kind of scrutiny
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and that kind of clarity and transparency, doesn't totally play well for them.
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Barack Obama held at one sort of similar meeting during his push for health care, for Obamacare.
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...know that geography does not dictate what kind of health care they would receive.
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Let me just make this point, John, because we're not campaigning anymore.
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That's probably why he didn't make it a regular feature of his presidency
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and why he presided over one of the least transparent administrations in American history.
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He can't help but be this crass, mean politician because all Barack Obama knows from his entire life is politics.
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He, all he ever did was write about himself and why he should be elected president
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before he actually was elected to Illinois State Senate and then the Senate for five seconds and then the presidency.
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He knows how to entertain and he has been a businessman for his entire adult life.
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So it just allows him to interact with people and to interact with the cameras much better.
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Well, thank you very much, everyone, for being here.
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I'm thrilled to be with a distinguished group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers from both the House and the Senate.
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We're here today to advance bipartisan immigration reform that serves the needs of the American families, workers, and taxpayers.
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I've been hearing about it for years, long before I decided to go into this particular line of work.
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We have a lot of good people in this room, a lot of people that have a great spirit for taking care of people we represent, we all represent.
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So you have Barack Obama in a similar sort of meeting, and he says, well, John, the campaign's over.
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And Donald Trump opens up in a completely different tone, the opposite tone.
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It's been around long before I was around as president.
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And so, you know, we're going to take on this together.
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The border security agents, the ICE agents, we have to give them the equipment they need.
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And this really does include a very strong amount of different things for border security.
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I think everybody in the room would agree to that.
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But I think everyone agrees we have to have border security.
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This is a verbal tick, particularly of New Yorkers.
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But it's really fun and transparent and effective.
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My stepbrother and I, you know, in New York, we would do this to each other all the time and say,
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What you do by saying, look, we all agree on this.
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You're making people assume a premise that they might otherwise not take.
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Donald Trump does this all the time, by the way.
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He blows past premises and gets you to negotiating on his own terms.
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So the most famous example is the central campaign promise.
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We're going to build the wall and Mexico will pay for it.
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Before Donald Trump, building a wall across the southern border of the United States was a very controversial position.
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Many people opposed it, even within the Republican Party.
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Donald Trump didn't say, I'm going to build a wall and that's my strong point.
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He said, of course we're going to build the wall.
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The question is just who's going to pay for it, and he's going to make an apparently ridiculous claim of who's going to pay for it.
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So the whole conversation became about who would pay for the wall.
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They just swallowed that they're going to build the wall, a whole cloth.
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I'm not sure I can speak for everybody, but a lot of the people in this room want to see chain migration ended.
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And we have a recent case along the West Side Highway having to do with chain migration, where a man ran over, killed eight people, and many people injured badly.
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And then you look at the chain and all the people that came in because of him.
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I just call it lottery, where countries come in and they put names in a hopper.
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Common sense means they're not giving you their best names.
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They're giving you people that they don't want.
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And where they do it by hand, where they put the hand in a bowl, probably what's in their hand are the worst of the worst.
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And then he opens up and immediately ties the issue of the border wall and the Dreamer or DACA people,
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these people who were brought into the United States before they were fully grown adults.
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A radical Muslim terrorist attack that happened just last year.
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I mean, really gross stuff, but things that create a very vivid picture in your mind.
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And he says, some people call it the visa lottery.
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And by the way, there's no difference here, right?
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He's not actually making any categorical distinction or substantive difference between the two.
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He just knows that the language of visa lottery, you kind of your eyes glaze over what's a visa exactly.
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I know it has to do with immigration and travel.
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But for most Americans, they just, okay, I guess.
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But he says it's the lottery, like when you go buy a lottery ticket.
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And so he's got this image of your hand reaching into the bowl.
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And, ah, yes, Juan Lopez Gonzalez, he's going to come in now and reaching into the bowl because that is absurd.
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And the lottery system, as it currently stands, is absurd.
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Listen, all of these images are floating around in your mind.
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Then he turns the cameras on the people in the room.
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We also, as you know, it was passed in 2006, a essentially similar thing, a fence, a very substantial fence was passed.
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But unfortunately, I don't know, they never got it done.
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But he points out, he says, you know, you already voted for this.
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He starts calling them out because he says, look, this isn't me just being crazy and you're all dealing with me being crazy.
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And as a matter of fact, speaking of that, isn't it a little curious who's sitting right next to him?
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We're all honored to be part of this conversation.
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He said, we're going to end DACA and I'll replace it.
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He's the assistant Democrat leader, the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate.
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But to his right, he's got the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate.
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And by the way, on his other side is Steny Hoyer, another Democrat, the Democrat minority whip,
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one of the highest ranking Democrats in Congress.
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We're expecting, yeah, show him, shove it right in his eye, shove a fork in his eye, the resistance.
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And then he says, oh, thank you for inviting us here.
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Maybe the government is being run differently than the mainstream media are telling us.
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And what they get out of it is that they look like they have a seat at the table.
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And they're going to have to show him some respect in return if they don't want to get booted out of the room like Chuck and Nancy.
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So let's turn to the other side and talk to Steny Hoyer.
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In my view, we can pass the protection in the, what I understand your position is, procedurally, it was not done correctly.
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You then, as Dick has said, challenged us, pass it correctly.
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You now have the Democrat House whip basically admitting that Barack Obama violated the law.
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It wasn't Barack Obama didn't do this correctly.
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If these points, these talking points were agreed upon by these three men ahead of time, clearly some terms were agreed upon for these opening remarks.
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That in itself is a significant deal, saying we'll give you this.
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We'll give you this public showing if you give us this public showing.
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It's not like they went in there and ad-libbed it.
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The question is, what did they each know about where it was going to go?
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You'll see at some points in the conversation, the conversation gets sidetracked.
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So Trump, in his typically subtle way, didn't want anybody to miss the point that the Democrat to his left just made.
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And interestingly, when you say that, President Obama, when he signed the executive order, actually said he doesn't have the right to do this.
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And so you do have to go through Congress, and you do have to make it permanent.
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Just in case you missed that, we wouldn't want you to miss that.
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We wouldn't want anybody to miss what he just said.
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But now notice how reasonable Donald Trump sounds as he's making that point, as he's saying Barack Obama's a dirty criminal liar.
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That Michael Wolff book, that tabloid trash, has alleged that Donald Trump is a screaming baby.
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Not only is he calm, he's conducting this discussion like an adult, like he's the adult in the room.
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We also know, by the way, a little sidebar, we know that the claim about Trump being impulsive, reckless, emotional, we know that isn't true because of Steve Bannon, because of how Donald Trump treated Steve Bannon.
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Bannon was making a lot of shaky comments, negative comments, leaking things to Donald Trump since the moment he was fired, even before he was fired.
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He said, okay, we're not going to play around just yet.
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It was only after Bannon lost Alabama, incredibly, a Herculean task and achievement for a Republican to lose Alabama.
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So he's at his lowest point professionally, and he calls Trump and his family traitors.
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But all of this President Bannon, Trump doesn't know anything, he's just a vessel for my movement, he let that slide.
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He played very nicely while Bannon was still relatively loyal, and then he pounced.
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That wasn't just emotional one night he got angry and tweeted at Bannon.
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So that, you can have one or the other, but you can't have both criticisms simultaneously of Donald Trump.
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Okay, Mr. Conciliator, let's get some people on the record, okay?
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This room would agree to that also, but we'll do it in steps.
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And most people agree with that, I think, Rick.
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Even you said, let's do this, and then we go phase two.
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I say, look, this is, and as you said, as you have already said, we need to do this, and we're going to have to negotiate and do this.
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He's even mediating between people within their own parties.
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So now that the stage is set, let's start talking about the legislative solution itself.
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Well, I think a good starting point would be Bob Goodlack, who has done a bill, and I understand you're ready to submit it.
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And you're going to take that, and you'll submit, and they'll negotiate in Congress or the House.
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And then it goes to the Senate, and they'll negotiate, both Republican and Democrat.
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Now, if anyone has an idea different from that, but I think starting in the House might be good.
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I would like to add the words merit into any bill that's submitted, because I think we should have merit-based immigration like they have in Canada, like they have in Australia.
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So we have people coming in that have a great track record as opposed to what we're doing now, to be honest with you.
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Oh, I don't know. That seems like a good solution.
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Hey, guys, just off the top of my head, I'm just spitballing here.
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How about we start with the Republican plan for immigration in DACA?
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Obviously, we're going to start with good lad's bill.
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And what Trump does is he immediately appears to break with it.
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So he's sort of playing that, oh, I don't know, just came to my top of my head.
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But, you know, by the way, before we do it, we're going to have to add merit.
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All of these conversations have already happened.
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It's the performance of reality for the cameras.
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Gee, who would be good at performing reality on television?
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He says, does anybody else have a bill to start with?
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You're always saying that we're not listening to you and you're being shut out.
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Hey, Johnny, Sally, do you want to add something?
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Because when you go on CNN later, you're going to say that we shut you up.
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Now it is much more difficult when the cameras are on you and you actually have to legislate.
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So now we get to precisely what Donald Trump wants the public to take away from this meeting.
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You know, one of the reasons I'm here, Chuck, so importantly is exactly that.
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I mean, normally you wouldn't have a president coming to this meeting.
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Normally, frankly, you'd have Democrats, Republicans, and maybe nothing would get done.
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You know, our system lends itself to not getting things done.
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And I hear so much about earmarks, the old earmark system,
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how there was a great friendliness when you had earmarks.
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But, of course, they had other problems with earmarks.
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But maybe all of you should start thinking about going back to a form of earmarks.
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This system really lends itself to not getting along.
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And they hate the Republicans and they hate the Democrats.
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you can say what you want about certain presidents and others
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where they all talk about they went out to dinner at night
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And maybe we should think about it and we have to put better controls
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I think Donald Trump is the first president in history
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to publicly campaign on earmarks, that we need more earmarks.
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an earmark is pork barrel spending is what they call it, right?
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And it says, well, if you come over on this piece of legislation for me,
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and then we can both benefit and get re-elected, right?
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John McCain turned the Republican and conservative opinion against this
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He turned a lot of Republicans against earmarks
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So he knew that if he was going to run against spending,
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he couldn't run against the actual drivers of the debt and deficit,
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big entitlement programs, big federal programs.
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John McCain is one of the biggest hawks in the United States Senate.
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So he had to run against the only other little spending,
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The irony is, though, that pork barrel spending,
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those earmarks, really didn't constitute even a blip on the federal budget.
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That was a little slush here and there to make votes easier.
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But all of the drivers are those federal programs that John McCain supports.
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It distracted Republicans for a couple election cycles.
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The earmarks are nothing compared to the big challenges,
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which are federal regulation, massive federal program spending,
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and then entitlement spending, which actually drives our deficits.
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So Trump, here then, Trump negotiates negotiation itself.
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There are some things that you're proposing that are going to be very controversial
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You're going to say, listen, we can't agree here.
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Mr. President, comprehensive means comprehensive.
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If you want to go there, it's okay, because you're not that far away.
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Mr. President, many of the things that are mentioned
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ought to be a part of the negotiations regarding comprehensive immigration reform.
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If you want to take it this step further, you may, I'm going to have to rely on you.
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You may complicate it, and you may delay DACA somewhat.
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So, if you just missed that, he pits the Democrat congressional leaders against one another
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with the entire American public watching and the entire press corps filming the whole thing.
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So, he says, oh, you want comprehensive immigration reform?
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Sure, we all want that, but that may delay DACA.
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You know that thing that we're all here talking about that you insisted we talk about?
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Well, we may delay DACA, and there's that threat.
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So, you have, then on the other side, Dick Durbin, the Democrat Dick Durbin says,
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no, no, no, we're not talking about comprehensive.
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And it's great, because it makes them look like they're squabbling.
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This is one of the biggest wins for the Republicans in the meeting.
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It gave Democrats the opportunity to humiliate themselves.
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If you look at the latest DEA, if you're worried about drugs, look at the latest DEA report.
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More drugs come through the ports of entry than in between ports.
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But we're not even talking about ports of entry, number one.
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I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, ports, let's finish this.
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And some of us have been working this longer than some other folks.
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Number one, if you look at the 11 or 12 million undocumented aliens, which is a second phase,
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So, you can put the most beautiful wall out there.
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It's not going to stop them there, because they'll either come by plane, boat, or vehicle itself.
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So, the other thing is, the other thing that we've got to look at, the wall itself, Mr. President,
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if you talk to your Border Patrol chief or the former Border Patrol chiefs, I've asked them,
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And it is just our own Border Patrol chiefs that have said that.
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And he has to say, because he's a politician, so he can't say, oh, well, I didn't know that.
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You just said something that is demonstrably false, and then you were contradicted.
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That's not even all of the stupid platitudes and talking points that this guy dropped.
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Quellar said, he said, we're playing defense on the one-yard line with border security.
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Look how Mexico stopped immigration on their southern border.
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Trump points out they didn't stop immigration on their border.
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We stopped immigration on their border because overall illegal immigration has dropped since
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No one's immigrating to Mexico because Mexico is a nice place.
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Mexico is a terrible country, and it's not enjoyable to live in.
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People are going through Mexico to get to the United States, which is Mecca, right?
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It's just this heavenly, lovely place that everybody in the hemisphere wants to go to.
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He's been letting them just smack each other around the whole meeting.
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George W. Bush, a great man, but not great at this.
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You know, Donald Trump invites them all to come in in front of the cameras, and then he
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smacks them down himself, and he allows them to hit each other.
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Contrary to popular media reporting, he has a grasp of the issues.
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At one point, when Kevin Brady and Dianne Feinstein start fighting, McCarthy sums up
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what they want, and Trump adds another, ending the lottery system.
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He appears at least as impressive, and actually more impressive than all of those people.
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I say more impressive only because they seem stiff.
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A lot of the people in that room, like Queller, or Henry Queller is a good example, or Steny
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They go a little off balance, and we can see that.
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The mainstream media cannot convincingly lie about what we see with our own eyes.
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Most important takeaway, as the mainstream media breathlessly reports the admitted lies
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in that tabloid book, the meeting makes Trump look less scary to the American people.
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It was one of his great achievements in the 1990s with his first memoir.
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You know, he released this memoir, Dreams from My Father, during that explosion of memoirs
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There was this fever pitch, the diving bell on the butterfly, the kiss.
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All these memoirs in the 1990s of just regular people.
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And he said, yeah, I did coke, and I ate dogs in Indonesia, and I did this and that and this and that.
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But a real masterstroke, by the end of that book, you're not afraid of Barack Obama.
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So he did that in memoir form in the 1990s during that explosion.
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He brings in his strength, his preferred medium, reality TV, and it makes him less scary by the
00:25:09.540
But before we get to the panel, let's talk about looking good on camera.
00:25:13.720
So one way, if you want to look good on camera, I'll tell you, you need a good shave.
00:25:19.360
You need to, you know, you've got to pamper yourself a little bit, clean your hair, wash
00:25:23.820
Now, Dollar Shave Club is an amazing opportunity.
00:25:30.120
And you know now, when you go to stores, they'll have like the 75-blade razor that costs a gazillion
00:25:36.920
dollars, and you know, they just keep adding all these blades to make it seem like a better
00:25:42.540
So Dollar Shave Club is like the perfect razor.
00:25:47.180
And it's really good, especially when you use it with Dr. Carver's Shave Butter.
00:25:53.820
And there are even more Dollar Shave Club products that you can add to your routine.
00:26:00.140
You just get shavers in the mail, razors in the mail.
00:26:06.500
I'm using old blades in the old days, you know, old blades from three years ago.
00:26:14.200
But now Dollar Shave Club has a lot more products.
00:26:16.480
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00:26:20.880
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00:26:28.620
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00:26:35.400
No more annoying trips to the store, going up and down the aisles.
00:26:41.320
You have to stand in line for three hours at my local drugstore.
00:26:45.800
So I use Dollar Shave Club for all of those things.
00:26:52.400
I don't even know if I can say this on the air.
00:26:55.160
You know, bathroom things were a little personal.
00:26:56.820
But, you know, sometimes, you know, in Europe they use bidets to clean themselves after they use the facilities.
00:27:13.020
And now is a great time to give Dollar Shave Club a try.
00:27:15.660
You can get your first month of their best razor, along with travel-sized versions of shave butter, body cleanser, and, yes, even that little cleanser for your derriere, for just $5.
00:27:31.460
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00:27:45.040
Get yours for just $5 exclusively at DollarShaveClub.com slash C-O-V-F-E-F-E.
00:28:03.980
You're going to have to pay $10 for that, Marshall.
00:28:09.480
We have got today Bradley Devlin, Jacob Airy, and most exciting of all, Allie Stuckey.
00:28:24.200
I'm excited for you to show me the podcast ropes.
00:28:29.420
You know, some people ask me for advice on how to publish a book.
00:28:36.920
Really just take a lot of Covfefe, and it will help you in your podcasting skills.
00:28:47.680
I'll be doing two shorter videos a week, and then every two and a half weeks, there will
00:28:55.300
be a longer form video, and it'll be a variety of different things, and then it'll be a weekly
00:29:01.640
So I'm not up to the level that you are of a daily podcast.
00:29:07.200
You know, spreading fake news, not everyone can do it, but it's God's work.
00:29:16.920
But it'll all launch by the end of the month, so I'm very excited about it.
00:29:23.080
This actually might get me to subscribe to CRTV.
00:29:26.120
I've, you know, I don't use, I use Crowder's mug as an ashtray when I smoke cigars, so I
00:29:32.980
But now that you're there, I'm much more compelled to do it.
00:29:41.680
Well, both of you together, I guess that's a pretty good argument to do it, despite Nake
00:29:49.200
Okay, well, listen, I know that you all on Facebook and YouTube want to hear from the
00:29:54.360
We have to talk about this stupid judge in the middle of San Francisco ruling against
00:29:58.580
DACA and preventing Donald Trump from executing his office, because we've elected him to do
00:30:04.640
We're going to talk about Bitcoin in a little bit.
00:30:07.340
We're also going to talk about Donald Trump just burning the government to the ground and
00:30:13.360
But you don't get that unless you subscribe to DailyWire.com.
00:30:28.260
Because that meeting, that DACA meeting that we all just walked through and analyzed, we're
00:30:35.060
And when that wall goes up, it's actually going to make the floods of leftist tears even worse,
00:30:38.900
because there's going to be nowhere for the tears to go.
00:30:40.840
They can't go down and flood Mexico and Central and South America.
00:30:44.360
They're going to be stuck here, and you are going to want to protect yourself and protect
00:30:51.780
OK, so this San Francisco district judge, William Alsop, a Clinton appointee, has temporarily
00:31:13.920
What is the judicial argument for blocking the end of a totally unconstitutional immigration
00:31:23.660
I have had a great time on winter break watching all this conservative policy go through.
00:31:28.280
It's been a great turn of events from Twitter trolling to actual policy.
00:31:33.080
You don't need one or the other, you know, I think, but they both go very well together.
00:31:40.560
Anyway, the legalities behind the injunction to end the DACA rescinding from the Trump administration.
00:31:48.360
If you actually read, I was reading some of the excerpts from his 49-page ruling, this
00:31:54.620
argument looks exactly like the argument a conservative judge would make when Obama was
00:31:59.600
pushing through DACA using prosecutorial discretion back in 2012.
00:32:06.800
And so it says that Alsop said in the injunction, plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to
00:32:12.800
succeed on the merits of their claim that rescission was arbitrary and capricious.
00:32:18.720
The Obama administration was awfully arbitrary and capricious when deciding that they weren't
00:32:22.860
going to uphold the rule of law and give amnesty to all these DACA recipients who can
00:32:31.180
That was practically the Obama campaign slogan.
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The judge went on to say that the injunction was appropriate because our country has a strong
00:32:42.440
interest in the uniform application of immigration law and policy.
00:32:50.780
You cannot say that you want to have the uniform application of immigration law and policy
00:32:54.320
because if that was the case, you'd be on the Ann Coulter train and say, deport all of
00:33:00.640
Well, this brings up a problem really because the law contradicts all of these regulations
00:33:06.640
So I do see a certain argument saying, well, we made this promise.
00:33:12.020
And even though that itself contradicts law, violating that would pose other legal problems.
00:33:18.480
Jacob, is this a problem with the judiciary or with the regulatory state?
00:33:24.860
It's a problem that the executive branch was basically Congress gave this power to President
00:33:32.180
Obama, even when the Republicans were in charge.
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Obama would say, oh, I'm going to write out an executive order.
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But then on the flip side, when Trump actually says, hey, I'm going to give this power back
00:33:45.180
to Congress, a judge can say, no, you can't give that power back to Congress.
00:33:52.640
I don't think that the San Francisco federal judge even has the authority to do this.
00:33:58.240
So if I was President Trump, of course, this is probably very unwise advice, but I'd
00:34:05.600
Now you have to enforce it because it's completely an illegal, it's a completely an illegal ruling.
00:34:13.100
He has no basis for this, and it makes no sense as far as the Constitution goes.
00:34:24.400
Ali, lest we become all talk and no action, to quote a great man, how do we combat this
00:34:34.120
And I think Senator Cornyn actually said it best.
00:34:37.220
He said, it's absolutely ridiculous to think that Obama can create something that President
00:34:46.220
And what I think is interesting about this as well is that this judge, and I think previous
00:34:50.680
judges, but this judge I know is using Trump's recent tweets to try to psychoanalyze his motive
00:35:00.220
So Trump tweeted not too long ago that he basically wants the dreamers to stay, that
00:35:04.940
all of these well-accomplished dreamers that have contributed so much to society, are we
00:35:11.320
Which was kind of amazing when he tweeted that.
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And so this judge is basically saying, look, the president really wants them to stay.
00:35:19.480
The only reason he's trying to rescind this is for the illegality.
00:35:24.940
And it is not what this judge is trying to say, is that it is not the executive branch's
00:35:29.820
role to say whether something is illegal or not.
00:35:32.900
It is the Supreme Court's role, which I think is completely hypocritical.
00:35:36.580
Because if this guy, if this judge was so concerned with legality, illegality, something being
00:35:42.400
constitutional, he would have raised similar concerns when Obama was passing this in the
00:35:49.640
And I think that's funny, and that's a trend that we see kind of across the board.
00:35:53.100
And I just realized that I'm not really answering your question.
00:35:56.900
An interesting point is that an interesting trend that we're seeing with all these judges
00:36:02.640
that are pushing back on Trump's attempt at immigration reform is that they all of the
00:36:11.940
They all of the sudden care about legality and following the rule of law.
00:36:16.420
They all of a sudden have all of these concerns about keeping our democratic system in line
00:36:21.180
when they never had those concerns, when they agreed with the policies that Obama was unilaterally
00:36:30.920
So I think that point alone just shows that this is a completely partisan move that, like
00:36:37.920
And there are two lines of attack here as well.
00:36:40.540
So obviously one is nominating originalists to the court, people who, and textualists to
00:36:45.860
the court, people who believe that words have meaning, constitution has a meaning, and the
00:36:51.000
words of laws have meanings that we cannot just interpret willy-nilly however we'd like.
00:36:57.020
The other is to reduce the size of the regulatory state so that we defer less to them on the
00:37:02.860
execution of their own policies, so that the courts defer less to them over democratically
00:37:11.460
The Washington Examiner yesterday reported that Donald Trump's EPA is on track to cut 47%
00:37:23.980
That's just through attrition, losing people regularly.
00:37:27.300
We're talking about losing 7,000 or 8,000 people at the EPA.
00:37:31.980
Even Ronald Reagan, the greatest American president of his century, at least, did not reduce the
00:37:38.460
Allie, will Trump reduce the size and scope of the federal government finally?
00:37:44.700
And Scott Pruitt was saying that the reason for this, like you said, it's through retirement
00:37:48.400
and through just shrinking the agency in general.
00:37:52.100
The reason for this is because they want to go back to the basics when it comes to these
00:38:00.120
I mean, I think that there is a very careful balance of trying to protect the environment
00:38:04.780
through common sense regulations, perhaps, and not seeing it in the way of job creation.
00:38:10.340
And we know that that's a top priority of this president and the administration.
00:38:14.780
And this agency hasn't been as small as it's supposed to be.
00:38:18.220
I think it's around 14,000 since Ronald Reagan was president, which is pretty incredible, especially
00:38:23.880
for all of the people that keep on saying that Trump's a Democrat, Trump's not a conservative.
00:38:30.260
But if you look at his track record, especially with diminishing the scope of the government,
00:38:34.660
I mean, he's one of the most, if not the most, conservative president that we've had
00:38:50.880
Why have past Republican presidents not reduced the size of the government?
00:38:54.780
I honestly think it's because of laziness outside of-
00:39:00.600
Well, Ronald Reagan, he had a Democrat Congress.
00:39:03.840
And so in that case, it was the Congress being combative.
00:39:10.620
I mean, we saw certainly when President George W. Bush was in power, he had a Republican Congress
00:39:21.640
And of course, with President Bush, we had the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan,
00:39:28.780
So I honestly think it's not some sort of malicious thing, but I just think, oh, well,
00:39:34.220
shrinking the EPA, will that really affect my numbers?
00:39:41.280
I mean, we don't- you don't exactly need Congress to fire people within your own branch of the
00:39:49.560
I once got to talk to Antonin Scalia, and we asked about states' rights.
00:39:54.580
They've been dead since the 17th Amendment and the direct election of senators.
00:39:58.160
What, are you going to look to me to protect states' rights?
00:40:03.800
And there is an aspect of a president coming into office and saying, you know, it is sure
00:40:08.440
helpful if I've got all of these big agencies there so that I can wield my own power for
00:40:15.220
But it's- it's much harder to say we're just going to cut people.
00:40:19.660
We're going to not replace people after they retire.
00:40:21.640
And at least for this first year, for these first 12 months, we have seen historic cuts
00:40:30.720
Let's move on, finally, in our- in our last minutes.
00:40:33.680
Let's move on to something that- that is unrelated, I suppose, to Donald Trump.
00:40:42.260
I know a lot of conservatives and Republicans, they've gotten very into cryptocurrencies.
00:40:48.440
People invested 35 cents in Bitcoin 10 years ago, and they're now gazillionaires.
00:40:54.660
But Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, is now saying that cryptocurrencies are headed
00:41:02.080
The Bitcoin surge is now much, much larger than even the tulip bubble in Holland.
00:41:10.160
I've been referring to them as digital beanie babies.
00:41:17.040
Are people of your generation, people at college campuses, young conservatives, are
00:41:24.560
And are they- are they afraid of losing all of their money?
00:41:29.100
I mean, my friend just became a miner the other day.
00:41:31.580
My buddy is the chairman of the blockchain at Berkeley Club.
00:41:35.740
And we've been talking for a long time about- about Bitcoin, because I'm really struggling
00:41:39.800
Because when we're- we're learning about money in classic economics classes, there's two types
00:41:43.420
There's fiat money, which its value is determined by government institutions that back it.
00:41:48.160
And then there's commodity money, which means that that money or exchange piece holds intrinsic
00:41:53.260
value and can be used and therefore is worth something.
00:42:00.740
The only thing that this thing applies to in classical economics is a supply and demand
00:42:05.900
It derives its value from people being willing to supply it and people demanding it.
00:42:11.160
And so that's seriously problematic when we're talking about money, because Bitcoin rapidly
00:42:15.820
appreciates when there's a good article about it, when consumer demand goes up, but then
00:42:21.260
drastically drops when they can't maintain that hype.
00:42:24.080
And when you can't maintain that hype, that money's not going through a money multiplier
00:42:28.340
We're not going to have cryptocurrency-based societies in the future.
00:42:40.400
And look, I like going to casinos as much as the next guy.
00:42:44.840
But it isn't, you know, one kind of wacky conservative investment I made is I bought a
00:42:54.820
So I've only been referring to that as coin coin, this newfangled thing where you get a
00:43:01.160
Allie, are cryptocurrencies, are they just a fad and they're going to go bust?
00:43:05.260
I hope so, because that means that I don't actually have to understand it.
00:43:08.860
I think that Bradley did a very good job of explaining why this is so confusing to me.
00:43:14.420
I mean, God just did not create my brain to understand cryptocurrency.
00:43:20.180
And if Warren Buffett says that it's a fad that I don't need to pay attention to, that
00:43:26.920
Maybe I do understand it a lot more than other people do.
00:43:29.840
And that's why I don't want to spend any time thinking about it.
00:43:32.540
Not only did he say that he wants nothing to do with it.
00:43:38.080
He himself said, I don't understand this thing.
00:43:41.800
When Warren Buffett says, I don't understand this thing, so I'm not sure of it.
00:43:45.920
Only stable audiences don't understand cryptocurrency.
00:43:51.280
We're going to find out Donald Trump has just stores and stores, hard drives and servers
00:44:04.520
Make sure to tune into Another Kingdom, by the way.
00:44:06.800
So Another Kingdom is back after the Christmas break.
00:44:09.880
And Hollywood, I don't want to tell tales out of school.
00:44:13.160
Andrew Klavan talked about this on his show the other day.
00:44:15.700
Hollywood, which saw the immense popularity of this podcast, the narrative podcast I'm doing
00:44:22.120
It's got, I think, 1,600 five-star reviews now.
00:44:29.540
They called us in to pitch this for television.
00:44:36.760
We found out one of the production companies now is part of the resistance or something
00:44:50.640
Because the bigger that this project has gotten, the more Hollywood wants to put its
00:44:56.980
finger in its ears and say, la, la, la, la, la.
00:45:11.220
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson, executive producer Jeremy Boring,
00:45:22.300
senior producer Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover.
00:45:26.440
Our technical producer is Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro.
00:45:35.460
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.