The Michael Knowles Show - October 21, 2021


Ep. 869 - Would You Rather Vote For Biden Or Watch A WNBA Game?


Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

171.88768

Word count

8,194

Sentence count

567

Harmful content

Misogyny

16

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Summary

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

A new poll shows Joe Biden s approval rating dropping to a new low of 37%. Meanwhile, Republican governors and senators are looking to fill the vacuum and look to take his job in 2024. Michael Kinsley talks all about it on today s episode of The Michael Knowles Show.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 A new poll out from Quinnipiac, which tends to skew results strongly in favor of Democrats,
00:00:06.520 shows Joe Biden's approval rating dropping to a new low of 37 percent. Meanwhile, Rasmussen,
00:00:13.780 which leans slightly to the right, has found that 58 percent of voters are either not very
00:00:19.660 or not at all confident that Biden is physically and mentally up to the job of being president.
00:00:25.900 And only 38 percent of voters believe that Joe Biden is actually making decisions in the White House,
00:00:34.580 with a majority of likely voters believing that others are making decisions for him.
00:00:40.280 And while Biden blows it on the economy, on foreign policy, on everything else in between,
00:00:46.180 Republican governors and senators are looking to fill the vacuum and looking to take his job in 2024.
00:00:53.080 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:55.900 Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday from Moose Chuckle,
00:01:05.900 who says, I hope China is as impressed with our choice in military leadership
00:01:10.060 as we are with them flying a missile around the world and us not knowing about it. Yes,
00:01:15.240 I suspect right now you're alluding to Richard Levine, now who goes by Rachel Levine,
00:01:23.080 who is our nation's first female four-star admiral who is not a woman and who has never spent a day of 0.95
00:01:30.940 his life in the military. But, you know, it could almost equally apply to our actual commanders in
00:01:37.580 the field. Woke General Milley passing out critical race theory and all the rest. While we are parsing the
00:01:45.700 white supremacist intersectional hegemony, China is sending potential nuclear warheads around the
00:01:53.720 world and through low outer space. Pretty spooky stuff. You know, these bring up matters of life
00:02:01.540 and death, okay? Existential questions, which is why I think it's very important to discuss 40 days for
00:02:07.760 life. You know, a couple of days ago, the CDC made a very accidental admission. They admitted that
00:02:15.180 babies are babies even before the babies are born. This was a big mistake for them because the CDC and
00:02:24.900 the ruling class do not oppose abortion, okay? The pro-abortion movement is alive and well in this 0.72
00:02:32.120 country and they're fighting back harder than ever because there's a fair chance right now that the
00:02:37.600 Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. You're going to need to know
00:02:41.520 the arguments on how to fight back and to defend life. Well, there's a great new book from 40 Days
00:02:45.800 for Life. It's What to Say When, the complete new guide to discussing abortion. It's already been a
00:02:50.140 number one Amazon new release. It's a number two Amazon bestseller. It's on its second printing.
00:02:55.580 The book is super easy to use. Gives you which arguments work, which arguments don't work that well,
00:03:00.760 and which have convinced people on the fence, abortion supporters, even Planned Parenthood workers.
00:03:05.020 What to Say When, the complete new guide to discussing abortion. How did
00:03:07.580 change minds and convert hearts in a brave new world? It's available now. Go to Amazon or get
00:03:11.940 it directly from 40 Days for Life at 40daysforlife.com. Joe Biden is really blowing it. I am not saying
00:03:18.620 this to take a partisan shot or because I want to score one for the Republicans and smack down the
00:03:24.300 Democrats, or at least not just because of that. I'm just pointing out that on every single issue,
00:03:31.980 Joe Biden right now is failing. The only issue that he used to do pretty well on was the coronavirus.
00:03:36.480 That's why, as Afghanistan imploded, as the economy imploded, he kept just trying to bring 1.00
00:03:41.820 everyone's attention back to the coronavirus. Even that now is not really looking good for his
00:03:47.320 numbers. And the overall approval rating at 37% is really, really dismal. In the meantime, younger, 0.97
00:03:55.420 more vibrant, more conservative people are looking to take his job, and they're looking to fill that
00:04:00.860 gap. Most notably, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is addressing the supply chain crisis. This is one
00:04:08.540 of the most important economic problems that we're facing right now. He is addressing the supply chain
00:04:14.020 crisis by opening up his ports in Florida for the benefit of the entire country.
00:04:20.820 We see more empty shelves than we're used to seeing, and there's shortages of different things.
00:04:26.540 Of course, we're also seeing increased costs in terms of inflation. Year-over-year increase in
00:04:32.440 food prices so far is the highest it's been in 10 years. And of course, many commuters have been
00:04:38.680 suffering under about a 50% increase in gasoline. And so you see a lot of problems. I know they just
00:04:45.880 announced, well, in California, maybe they'll start having the port operate 24-7. Our ports operate 24-7.
00:04:52.500 But I mean, that should be happening anyways. And so we in Florida have the ability to help alleviate
00:05:00.180 these log jams and help to ameliorate the problems with the supply chain. And part of it is because
00:05:06.620 we've long been committed to reliable, modern, and accessible port facilities. Since I became governor
00:05:12.740 in 2019, we've allocated almost a billion dollars to over 70 Florida seaport projects. And these are
00:05:22.440 approaches that have made us really, really strong.
00:05:26.740 It made us really, really strong. It's been really, really good for the country. Now, look,
00:05:31.460 I think this is a good thing in and of itself. I think it shows strong leadership. I'm really glad
00:05:38.540 he's doing it. I think it will benefit Florida a lot, and it very likely will benefit the entire
00:05:43.100 country. All right. I have a great deal of respect for Governor DeSantis. I'm actually going to see
00:05:47.580 Governor DeSantis this coming weekend at the Claremont Institute's annual gala. They're giving
00:05:52.940 him the Statesmanship Award, and I will be emceeing that event. But beyond just what this means for
00:06:00.520 Florida and the country, to me, the most impressive thing here with regard to Ron DeSantis' clear
00:06:08.060 presidential ambitions is not even what he's doing on the ports or what he's doing on the lockdowns or
00:06:13.700 what he's doing on the virus or taxes or whatever. It's his incredible ability to navigate the news
00:06:22.080 cycles. No matter what is going on in the country, no matter what issue Biden is failing on,
00:06:28.440 Ron DeSantis is just right there showing the alternative. This is a very impressive political
00:06:35.480 skill because traditionally it's been considered that governors are in the best position to run
00:06:43.460 for president because they're in an executive role. They can show leadership. They can bring
00:06:47.900 people together. They can show a strong list of real accomplishments, whereas for congressmen or
00:06:53.220 senators or diplomats, it's a little bit harder because you're working more in teams. You're not
00:06:57.040 really an executive in most cases, and you're not really the one who can show tangible results,
00:07:03.080 at least not nearly as much as a governor can. But the problem with the governors is that the issues
00:07:07.580 are local. So yes, you can say, I did a great job for my constituents here, and I focus, I did really
00:07:13.540 well on this Florida issue, but it doesn't always play throughout the rest of the country. And what DeSantis
00:07:17.800 has done, I think uniquely among the governors, is he's got a good record of accomplishment in Florida,
00:07:24.580 but they always seem to have national implications. He even did it on the border. So forget about
00:07:30.600 coronavirus in the ports for a second. Even on the border, he said, we are going to help secure
00:07:34.880 the border here. We're going to send Floridians to go secure the border. Why? It's not as though
00:07:39.760 Mexicans are flowing into Florida. I mean, I suppose they are after a few stops along the way, 0.97
00:07:45.000 but he's doing a really good job of putting himself in the national conversation. And so it's pretty
00:07:51.660 clear that he is hoping to be president. That might be complicated if Donald Trump runs again.
00:07:57.060 In that case, probably DeSantis is the hardest hit because in a way they're kind of running in the
00:08:01.880 same lane. But for right now, it's hard to see how DeSantis could be doing a better job positioning
00:08:07.020 himself for 2024. Now, he's not the only one who wants to run in 2024. It would seem to me, I don't have
00:08:13.720 any insider information here, I'm just observing politics, that Josh Hawley, who is a senator who is
00:08:19.580 also leading the charge, especially with regard to big tech. He is apparently positioning himself in
00:08:27.140 2024 as well. And he just scored a pretty big point too in this particular case on a judicial
00:08:35.060 nominee. So there's a judge, a liberal judge, Holly Thomas, who is now serving in Los Angeles and Biden
00:08:43.240 is nominating her to serve on the court of appeals. Holly Thomas came out and stood by this idea that
00:08:53.220 boys should be allowed into the girls' bathroom and said there's no risk whatsoever and no threat 0.98
00:08:58.460 posed to girls by sending boys into the girls' bathroom. Obviously complicated by what just 0.99
00:09:03.940 happened in Loudoun County. The story that the Daily Wire broke of a ninth grade girl being raped in a
00:09:08.540 bathroom where boys were allowed to go in by a boy who sometimes wore a dress really doesn't look
00:09:13.580 good. So Josh Hawley grills her on this very topic. Do you judge, still stand by your preposterous
00:09:22.320 claim that there's no danger posed by boys in the girls' room? I have to ask you, in light of what we
00:09:28.980 are seeing in Loudoun County, there are reports about this in other places, but it's particularly troubling
00:09:34.520 in light of the recent events in Loudoun County where a boy in late May was sexually assaulted a ninth
00:09:42.620 grade girl in her school's restroom after identifying as, he identified as being gender fluid. He was
00:09:49.440 transferred to another school where a second assault occurred just earlier this year. Do you stand by
00:09:59.660 your comments in these briefs that there is no evidence of violence or crime in restrooms by allowing
00:10:09.520 biological males to use biological females' restrooms? Thank you for the question, Senator Hawley.
00:10:19.140 As I explained to Senator Grassley, in every case that I had as an advocate,
00:10:26.160 it was my duty to represent the views of my clients. So this answer goes on for several minutes
00:10:35.180 and Hawley keeps trying to get her to answer the question and she continues to stonewall and won't 0.87
00:10:40.240 answer it. She sticks to it. Hawley's question is pretty simple. You put your name on this document
00:10:47.180 saying that there's absolutely no threat by sending boys into the girls' room. And he says,
00:10:53.300 do you still stand by that in light of the evidence that that isn't true? And she goes,
00:10:57.820 I have to advocate for my clients. And as a judge, I would not necessarily be advocating. Well, okay,
00:11:04.640 but it's not just that you signed a statement saying I'm advocating for my clients. You signed a
00:11:08.120 statement saying this is true. So do you have no integrity? Are you a liar? Are you stupid? Do you
00:11:12.340 still believe this? What's the answer? And this woman, she's a good politician herself. She just 0.94
00:11:17.620 refuses to answer and she keeps talking in this really boring tone. And frankly, she masks the
00:11:25.220 radicalism of her position in this really boring procedural sort of tone. But what she's saying is,
00:11:31.660 one, yes, there's no risk posed to girls by sending men into the girls' room. Two, I don't care even if
00:11:39.280 there is. I am willing to lie strategically to accomplish my political goals. And three, I'm not
00:11:46.120 even going to give you the satisfaction of admitting what I've just implicitly suggested to
00:11:51.780 you. One mistake Hawley makes here, I hate to nitpick, but the mistake Hawley makes is he uses this
00:11:57.660 phrase, biological males. This has become popular among conservatives. They will say, he is a biological
00:12:03.760 male. As though there's some other kind of male. As though you can, he's not a biological male,
00:12:09.720 but he's a spiritual male. He's a psychological male. It's a really bad phrase. I know people say it
00:12:14.540 sometimes they're just not even thinking. People should stop using that phrase. It grants the
00:12:18.600 left's premise that there are different kinds of, I'm a biological male, but I'm a psychological
00:12:23.040 female. No, there's none of that. There's boys and girls, guys. Okay. And when we use this squishy 0.86
00:12:27.620 language, we think we're being really clever and we think we're being really scientific. Actually,
00:12:31.600 we're just being squishes and we're giving and conceding this premise that there are different
00:12:38.820 shades of male and female. And really, we're granting the premise that gender is sort of fluid.
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00:13:56.540 off. Speaking of women, a WNBA team has won the championship. What is the WNBA team? I don't
00:14:06.740 really know. There was a championship, apparently. Did you watch it? No, you didn't. Not a single
00:14:11.400 person listening to this show right now watched the WNBA championship or probably even knew that
00:14:16.940 it was going on. I don't think anyone did in the country. Maybe some of the basketball players
00:14:23.000 themselves knew, but I'm not even convinced of that. So one of the teams won because I guess one
00:14:27.400 of the teams has to win and they hold a championship parade in Chicago. The championship parade, I forget
00:14:37.980 if I printed out. No, unfortunately I didn't. There was a headline. It said, Chicago turns out for the
00:14:43.240 WNBA championship parade. And there's big buses here and double deckers and people standing on top 0.62
00:14:50.260 waving to the adoring fans, except there was nobody there in the streets to greet them.
00:14:56.340 So you can see there's multiple buses, all stream.
00:15:04.300 You can hear the sirens behind them.
00:15:07.780 And then you just hear it. It's so sad. It's so sad. You hear it. So the streets are empty. I mean,
00:15:16.300 there are a couple of people like bicycling alongside them. There are a bunch of cops
00:15:21.040 trailing them, giving them a bit of a motorcade, but there's almost not a single person out in the
00:15:28.340 street for the parade because no one cares because it's the WNBA and no one even knew it was on.
00:15:34.420 This is sad. This is sadder than not having a parade. Okay. I'm not, I don't begrudge the ladies 0.99
00:15:41.060 their victory. I don't, I'm not interested in it. I don't, you know, there are a lot of sports. I
00:15:46.980 don't watch the curling championships. Okay. I don't watch the, you know, international shuffleboard
00:15:53.180 world series or anything. I don't know either. Just, I don't pay attention to a lot of these
00:15:56.840 things and certainly not to the WNBA. But what's so sad here is broader than just the WNBA.
00:16:03.860 Okay. It's the problem with pride culture. It's the problem with the I'm awesome kind of culture.
00:16:11.940 I saw, oh, this was so sad. I saw someone that I went to school with. I was just scrolling through
00:16:17.100 Instagram and I saw she posted this picture and, and underneath she wrote, I'm so proud of this
00:16:24.400 person. I love this person so much. This person's doing such a great job and I'm really proud of her.
00:16:28.660 And it was a photo of herself. It was a photo. And I thought, this is really sad, but it's a common
00:16:38.060 occurrence these days. It's the self-love, self-care kind of culture where you, you basically just
00:16:44.660 worship the self. And the fact is, if you have to say it, you probably don't think it, right? This is,
00:16:52.760 I mean, now we have whole months for pride and for celebrating oneself, but this is quite the
00:17:00.840 opposite of the traditional understanding in our Christian civilization, which is rather than saying,
00:17:05.820 I'm awesome. I'm the best. I'm perfect. Just the way I am. We say, I'm a miserable sinner. Please
00:17:10.480 have mercy on me. I'm broken. I'm, I've failed. I have sinned in my thoughts and in my words and what
00:17:16.820 I have done and what I've failed to do through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous
00:17:21.220 fault. That that's the traditional understanding. And ironically, or perhaps unexpectedly,
00:17:26.400 that view of yourself will make you feel much better about yourself and about the world.
00:17:32.060 One, because it's true. We are all broken. The imagination of man's heart is evil from the
00:17:36.460 beginning. The things we want to do, we don't do. And the things we don't want to do, we do. We are
00:17:40.340 sinful and we are in need of salvation. But two, there is salvation. We actually can find it,
00:17:46.840 but we're not going to find it in ourselves, all right? We're not going to perfect ourselves purely
00:17:52.020 of our own work. It's just not going to happen. The pride culture, I think, ultimately is just 1.00
00:17:59.760 masking a deep sorrow and a deep sort of despair. Because if you are going to rely on yourself to
00:18:06.480 perfect your own life or to perfect the world, you are going to be extremely disappointed.
00:18:12.240 Humility would have been much better and much more attractive if these women had said, you know, 0.99
00:18:17.860 okay, we played this game, but no one cares. That's fine. But maybe you keep watching. We did
00:18:21.200 it for ourselves. We did it for the excellence of the sport. Humility is much more attractive than
00:18:26.480 pride. This is something we used to know. Now we somehow have forgotten that pride goes before
00:18:31.320 destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Speaking of women in the workplace, 1.00
00:18:35.160 Nicole Hannah-Jones was just invited and then disinvited from a school for a speaking event. 0.92
00:18:43.360 And I suspect a lot of conservatives are going to get this issue wrong. This issue is almost a setup
00:18:50.300 for conservatives because conservatives in recent years have complained about cancel culture and
00:18:55.560 complained about censorship and specifically complained about this at schools and for lecture
00:19:01.720 opportunities, right? So this story is just going to expose conservatives as hypocrites, right? If we
00:19:09.180 don't think that Nicole Hannah-Jones, who created the fictional 1619 project, who lied about American 0.97
00:19:15.420 history, who is really an unfortunate character on the American pseudo-academic scene, if we don't
00:19:25.140 think that she should lecture, well, then we're hypocrites on free speech and cancel culture, aren't we? No, 0.99
00:19:30.560 I don't think so. But we do need to correct some of our language. The whole point of my book,
00:19:35.740 Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, was to correct the way we're talking about free
00:19:40.640 speech because these issues of wokeism and political correctness, they're not just a battle between free
00:19:45.620 speech and censorship. It's not just the procedural, formal aspect of whether or not someone can speak
00:19:52.920 or not. There's the substantive aspect, which is what are they saying? Okay, first of all,
00:19:58.420 Nicole Hannah-Jones was invited to the Middlesex School in Concord. This is not a college. This is
00:20:05.980 not a graduate program. This is a high school. And there's a big difference between high schools and
00:20:11.320 colleges. Colleges have, to some degree, and universities have, to some degree, the idea of
00:20:18.380 a free marketplace of ideas. The idea that unconventional lectures may be tolerated and may
00:20:24.540 be beneficial. High schools, and certainly middle schools, and certainly elementary schools, are not
00:20:29.620 quite that. The purpose of those places is to give you the basics so that you can begin to think in
00:20:35.440 this higher way. So I think it is certainly appropriate at the high school level to cancel
00:20:40.840 this fabulous from speaking, and very possibly at the college level as well. Okay, there are different
00:20:47.660 types of speakers here and different types of speeches. And we have to also, I think, rethink the
00:20:53.160 purpose of college education, university education. Moving beyond even the high school and Nicole
00:20:57.880 Hannah-Jones thing for a second. Is the purpose of going to a university to just hear a bunch of 1.00
00:21:04.240 random different views, and the weirder the view, the better, and the more weird views you hear,
00:21:09.940 the smarter you're going to be? Or is the purpose of a college education to learn correct things,
00:21:16.660 to learn true things, to steep yourself in the good, the true, and the beautiful, to be not merely
00:21:24.580 critical in your thinking, but constructive in your thinking, and actually build up a proper education,
00:21:29.320 and control your base passions, and see the world in a way that is more or less accurate,
00:21:34.340 more accurate than when you went in? I have clearly set up the question in such a way that I'm showing
00:21:39.100 you. I think it's the latter. I don't think that just anybody should be allowed to speak at a
00:21:44.420 university. Nobody does. Do you really, do you really think that some neo-Nazi should be able to
00:21:49.140 speak at a university? Maybe you do. Maybe there are some free speech extremists who say,
00:21:56.480 I absolutely believe that a neo-Nazi should speak at a university. Okay. Do you think that,
00:22:01.680 I don't know, a serial killer? Do you think a deranged, lunatic serial killer should be permitted
00:22:09.460 to speak at a university? No, you don't, right? I don't think that you do. Why? Because you would
00:22:16.300 say that a student would not benefit from hearing the, the, the ravings of some deranged, lunatic,
00:22:21.980 serial killer, right? But, but isn't that cancel culture? Isn't that censorship? Students benefit
00:22:28.140 from hearing all sorts of kooky ideas. No, they benefit from hearing true things. And, and I'm not
00:22:33.280 calling Nicole Hannah-Jones a deranged, lunatic, serial killer. Okay. But I am pointing out that like a
00:22:38.100 deranged, lunatic, serial killer, Nicole Hannah-Jones doesn't really have anything valuable
00:22:42.220 to say because the only thing that Nicole Hannah-Jones is known for is a lie. It's a thesis 0.60
00:22:47.480 that the American revolution was fought to preserve slavery. There is no evidence for that. There is a
00:22:53.340 lot of evidence to the contrary. Actual academic historians shot down this thesis, including the
00:22:58.480 academic historians who are on the far left, who actually are great, very sympathetic to Nicole
00:23:02.320 Hannah-Jones. So the only thing that's going to come out of this woman speaking at a university 0.99
00:23:07.320 is filling students' heads with lies. And I think we need to regain on the right the spinal fortitude
00:23:15.620 to say, no, we don't think that the purpose of university education is to fill kids' heads with
00:23:21.360 lies, right? They're getting enough of that already on gender theory and these crazy racial theories. 1.00
00:23:25.760 Wait until you hear what's going on out of MIT. That's not, that's not the purpose of an education.
00:23:32.760 I think we need to move beyond a fun line, but it's a little bit of a shallow line we've said in
00:23:39.060 certain years, recent years, that we just need more and more speech at universities and no one
00:23:45.440 should ever be canceled and everyone should be permitted to speak. And, oh, Colombia is going
00:23:49.360 to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Yeah, great. That's awesome. Terrific. More speech,
00:23:54.340 the better. No. We need to be discerning. We need to recognize we have judgment. We have moral
00:23:58.880 conscience. We have faculties of reason. We can tell the difference between true and false and
00:24:02.280 right and wrong. And we're going to stand by that. We're going to stand on the side of true and good
00:24:06.940 and against wrong and false and evil. Then today is going to be talking about how Dave Chappelle
00:24:12.720 is funny. He's funny and you got to deal with that and it's too bad. Go check that out. Also,
00:24:19.000 you can subscribe and start listening to Morning Wire on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:24:24.100 You can leave a five-star review if you like what you hear. We will be right back with a lot more.
00:24:28.880 Speaking of cancel culture, at MIT, a movement is underway to cancel a lecturer.
00:24:48.720 Here's the background. MIT invited a professor to lecture. This professor, his name is Dorian
00:24:57.320 Abbott. He's a scientist. He has criticized affirmative action. I have criticized affirmative
00:25:05.340 action. You have criticized affirmative action. Everybody with two brain cells to rub together
00:25:10.060 has criticized affirmative action, which gives black people and Hispanic people an advantage in
00:25:15.440 university admissions and employment and disadvantages white people and Asian people. So anyone who thinks
00:25:21.860 we ought to treat people fairly regardless of their race would criticize affirmative action
00:25:26.000 as this guy did. And now he's being criticized for it and people are demanding that he no longer
00:25:32.740 lecture. So I'm going to focus in, this is from the New York Times, I'm going to focus in
00:25:36.880 on one professor who is not even at MIT. She's at Williams College. This professor is very upset that
00:25:46.320 Professor Abbott was invited to lecture. Her name is Phoebe A. Cohen. She's a geosciences professor and
00:25:54.640 department chair at Williams. And she doesn't want this guy to lecture at MIT. She doesn't want anyone
00:26:02.100 who's ever criticized affirmative action to be able to speak at a college campus. Now the New York
00:26:08.740 Times, to their credit, when interviewing this, this cancel culture professor said, well, hold on,
00:26:15.480 don't you think that the, the cure for this guy's bad ideas would just be to debate him? You know,
00:26:22.820 come on, Professor Phoebe, why don't you just debate him or, you know, have people present an
00:26:27.460 alternative point of view? And Phoebe Cohen, the Williams professor said, no, she said, quote,
00:26:32.940 this idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in
00:26:40.600 which white men dominated. So this is not the own that she thinks it is, you know, because what she's
00:26:49.520 saying is intellectual debate and rigor unfairly advantage white guys. If you have a system that is based on
00:27:01.440 intellect and debate and logic and rigor, white guys will have an unfair advantage because they are much
00:27:08.760 better at intellectual argumentation and they are more able, better able to deal with rigorous debate than
00:27:17.000 women and black people and Asians, I guess, and Hispanic and just anybody else. Okay, David Duke.
00:27:22.900 All right. Whoa, calm down there, Richard Spencer. This, this lady is just saying that white, white
00:27:29.260 guys are smart and, and competent and logical and all the other people are just big dummies. And so they
00:27:35.000 can't do it. And so because they can't keep up in a debate, we've got to just silence the white guys
00:27:40.200 before they can get their point of view out. Sounds pretty racist to me or sexist or whatever
00:27:46.860 ism-ist word you want to use. But this is, I think, a popular view on, on the left, but it's worth, 0.67
00:27:56.300 it's worth taking them at their, at their word that this is really what they believe. Okay. Because
00:28:02.160 we have two, two options here. Choose which way you want to go, Western civilization. You can either
00:28:09.920 go down the road of intellectual debate and rigor and proving that some things are good and true
00:28:17.000 and beautiful and arguing against things that are ugly and false and, and hideous and wrong. Or
00:28:26.520 you can take reason and logic out of our politics and then we become grunting bands of baboons clubbing
00:28:34.700 each other over the head, right? That's it. When Aristotle says man is the political animal, when Aristotle
00:28:39.140 says that the thing that, that distinguishes man from the beasts is that we have speech, right? And
00:28:45.060 we can actually reason with one another and persuade one another. He's distinguishing us from
00:28:48.780 animals in this regard. We will either have civilization and speech and debate and rigor, or we will be
00:28:55.980 animals clubbing each other over the head and whoever has the stronger interest will win. That's really
00:29:02.700 what this has come down to. And it, and it, it does remind us that we do need limits here. Okay. This is why we
00:29:07.720 have a political system. This is why we have limits imposed by our constitution, by our political
00:29:12.280 tradition, because we don't want to live like that. Okay. We do not want to live in the world of Phoebe 0.95
00:29:18.600 Cohen. We want to live in a civilized world of intellectual debate and rigor, which I think
00:29:24.600 is not only limited to white guys. I, I bet non, non white guys, non men, non white people, I think 0.87
00:29:33.560 actually they can, they can deal with it too. Speaking of the New York times, the New York times, I just want
00:29:40.120 to give you a beautifully clear example of the fake news coming out of the New York times. They have this
00:29:45.660 podcast, the daily. It's hosted by Michael, welcome. And it's the whole, the whole point of the daily is to get a lot
00:29:54.560 of radical leftism into a really soft spoken kind of moderate sounding podcast. Welcome to the New York
00:30:03.480 times, the daily. My name is Michael, ba, ba, ba, ba. And today the Republicans are bad and the Democrats
00:30:09.960 are good and I'm ba, ba, ba, ba, and goodbye. This is, and so here's just a flat out lie that was in the
00:30:17.040 episode title of the New York times, the daily quote, how a single Senator derailed Biden's climate
00:30:24.560 plan. Wow. Oh my goodness. A single Senator did that? Gosh, I didn't even know in the Senate that
00:30:31.740 a single Senator could, I guess the way that a single Senator could have derailed a plan would
00:30:36.620 be through, uh, the filibuster, right? And maybe he just filibustered for so many hours and hours and
00:30:42.040 hours that Biden, did he just give up on it? No, usually the way the filibuster works is the guy
00:30:45.740 who's speaking ad nauseum. Eventually he stops and then they kind of move on. So is that what
00:30:49.760 happened? No. Okay. Let me see what, what exactly happened here? Cause I've, I see a headline in the
00:30:54.400 New York times paper. It says Biden's climate plan stymied by one Senator. So what, hmm,
00:31:00.340 what happened? Oh, Joe Manchin. Okay. Joe Manchin is the Senator and he, he stopped it. How did he stop
00:31:07.580 it though? I, it doesn't even really say, is it, there was only one guy. Oh no, wait, wait a second.
00:31:14.280 It's not, no, it's Joe Manchin and all the Republicans. So it wasn't just one Senator who
00:31:20.880 stymied the plan. It was, um, 51 senators stymied the plan. That's, oh, that's the majority of
00:31:29.180 senators. So let me, I'm just going to rewrite those headlines from, from the New York times and
00:31:34.960 the daily. Um, majority of senators stop Biden's climate plan, but that doesn't sound as good,
00:31:41.440 right? That sounds like government is operating as it should, which is the people go out and they
00:31:46.120 elect their senators. And then depending on the votes that each side has, uh, you either move
00:31:51.800 ahead with legislation or against it. And most senators representing most people here opposed
00:32:00.480 the plan, but the New York times can't tolerate that. So they simply lie. It's an, it's a, it's a,
00:32:08.340 it's a little subtle thing because yes, Manchin is playing a role here. He's a Democrat, but he's
00:32:11.860 a moderate Democrat. He's not a radical left Democrat. So he's, he is playing this decisive
00:32:15.740 role. But the, the way the New York times talks about it, it's as if only Democrats matter in the
00:32:21.440 Senate. It's, it's only Democrats, right? The Republicans, they're, they're not even really
00:32:25.400 legitimate. There are, there are insurrectionists. They're a threat to our democracy. The real,
00:32:29.160 all that really matters is the Democrats. Well, despite the whining of the New York times,
00:32:34.240 uh, Manchin seems to be holding relatively firm beyond the climate plan, uh, which is clear
00:32:40.540 enough, right? Joe Manchin represents a coal state. So if you have a big climate plan, that's
00:32:45.440 going to get rid of coal, Joe Manchin can't possibly vote for that. That would be a betrayal
00:32:48.700 of his constituents. But Joe Biden is broadly going to have to pull back on his spending plan.
00:32:53.940 You, you know, in this three and a half trillion dollar budget, Joe Biden put in a ton of radical
00:32:58.980 stuff. Now it is being reported. He might have to cut back on tuition-free community college,
00:33:05.660 a path to permanent legal status for illegal aliens. Uh, the clean energy plan is part of this.
00:33:15.320 Uh, however, uh, they, they might try to keep in paid family leave, child tax credits, and free,
00:33:22.360 uh, preschool, although they might scale that back as well. So this is, this is overall,
00:33:28.460 a, uh, a win, a relative win. Given that the Democrats have basically unified government right
00:33:34.000 now, they have the house, they have the Senate, and they have the White House. The fact that we
00:33:39.340 can get rid of some of the worst aspects of this budget is a win. And it's important to look at this
00:33:45.520 because it's easy to believe these days that the oligarchy, the ruling class, which increasingly
00:33:52.700 looks not really like our democracy, but looks like their oligarchy, it's not omnipotent. It can't,
00:33:58.460 just do whatever it wants to do. We sometimes think, uh, between the deep state and the Fauci's
00:34:03.840 and the Dems and the Libs, they just do whatever they want. Big tech and the media, they can do
00:34:08.360 whatever they want and we have no say whatsoever. Well, no, we do still have a little bit of a say.
00:34:12.480 Okay. They seem really, really powerful and they make themselves appear more powerful than they are.
00:34:21.620 But, uh, actually we still have a fair bit of power here. And, and if we exercise it,
00:34:25.820 I think we do still have a fighting chance. You're seeing this, especially throughout corporate
00:34:31.360 America. In and out burger, in and out burger from my former state of California is standing up
00:34:41.740 against big government. So the government there is trying to mandate that customers in order to go
00:34:49.240 buy their cheeseburger need to have the Fauci ouchie. And plenty of people don't want the
00:34:54.960 Fauci ouchie and for good reason. They might object to the fact that it's made with, in development and
00:35:01.660 in some cases production with fetal stem cells. They might not like the fact that, uh, people have
00:35:07.000 died from the vaccine, including from blood clots. That's why they paused the Johnson and Johnson
00:35:10.900 vaccine. Uh, that people have contracted nerve damage. That people have, uh, contracted myocarditis
00:35:15.960 and pericarditis. One study out of UC Davis said that young men, certain young men might face greater
00:35:21.920 risk from the, from the vaccine than from the virus itself. There are plenty of reasons not to get the
00:35:26.200 vaccine. And so in and out says we are, this is a great line. We refuse to become the vaccination
00:35:33.340 police for any government. We fiercely disagree with any government dictate that forces a private
00:35:39.040 company to discriminate against customers who choose to patronize their business. This is a clear
00:35:43.220 government overreach. They believe it is quote, unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe to force our
00:35:47.820 restaurant associates to segregate customers into those who may be served and those who may not,
00:35:52.940 whether based on the documentation they carry or any other reason. Damn right. Damn right, baby. I love
00:36:00.260 it. This is good stuff. All right. And it's, you're not just seeing it within and out. You're seeing it
00:36:05.240 also, uh, at the, the level of corporations dealing with their employees. So it's not just dealing with
00:36:11.420 customers, but it's dealing with the employees too. Southwest Airlines had major, uh, flight delays.
00:36:17.480 They pretended it was because of the weather, but it was obviously because of an employee walkout
00:36:20.800 or sick out. Well, they're walking back their vaccine mandate as well. Southwest Airlines will
00:36:25.920 not place unvaccinated staff on unpaid leave while they await exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine. So
00:36:32.560 initially Southwest said that if the, the airline employees are not vaccinated by December 8th,
00:36:40.300 they're going to be cut off from their pay. They're going to be placed on unpaid leave.
00:36:44.280 And now what they're saying is quote, this is a change from what was previously communicated.
00:36:48.540 Initially we communicated that these employees would be put on unpaid leave and that is no longer
00:36:52.000 the case. So it's a tail between their legs. They're admitting they're not going to do this anymore.
00:36:56.480 Good stuff. Really good stuff. Why do I like this so much? One of the reasons I like this so much
00:37:02.340 is not because as some libertarians are saying, you know, my body, my choice. I don't,
00:37:06.900 I don't believe my body, my choice. I don't think it's true with abortion. I actually don't even
00:37:10.520 think it's true with vaccinations. Generally, there are mandated vaccines in American history.
00:37:16.240 The Supreme court has upheld the legitimacy of this. George Washington did it to the continental
00:37:19.800 army. And I actually don't think you own your own body. I'm not a libertarian or a libertine. I don't
00:37:25.320 think I chose to come into this world. I hope I don't choose to come out of this world. And I think
00:37:28.780 I have responsibilities and, and duties to my community and to my God. And I can't just do
00:37:34.820 whatever I want with my own body. So I'm not a lib in this regard, but I want to get into the
00:37:39.620 specifics here of this vaccine. The way Joe Biden instituted this vaccine mandate, which he had
00:37:45.240 initially admitted, he didn't really have the authority to do was he went around this roundabout
00:37:50.700 way. And he said, I'm not mandating it exactly, but I am saying that the occupational safety and
00:37:57.080 health administration needs to mandate that certain companies with more than a hundred employees
00:38:01.840 needs to mandate that the businesses enforce the mandate. And if they don't, we're going to try to
00:38:07.760 bankrupt them with fines. I think Joe Biden knows this is almost certainly going to be struck down
00:38:12.840 in court that he doesn't really have the authority to do this. And he's just hoping he can pressure
00:38:16.860 everyone to get the Fauci ouchie before the courts realize that this is not legal. So, okay, what's good
00:38:24.160 for the goose is good for the gander. If Joe Biden is going to play this silly, cynical game,
00:38:29.800 I think the companies should too. And I think the people should, and I think the employees,
00:38:34.240 and I think the customers should pressure the companies who are unfortunately squeezed in the
00:38:38.580 middle here to pressure the government not to do this sort of thing. What is good for the goose
00:38:43.720 is good for the gander. The people and the employees still have a lot of power, especially amid our current
00:38:50.480 contrived labor shortage. The ruling class is not happy that people are pushing back against these
00:38:58.800 mandates. They don't like that. They don't like it when people tell them no. And you're seeing this
00:39:03.900 especially in crooked machine political towns such as Chicago. So Lori Lightfoot, who is as close to a 1.00
00:39:12.300 mobster as any mayor currently in office, Lori Lightfoot is mandating that the cops all take the 1.00
00:39:21.900 Fauci ouchie in Chicago. Chicago is basically a third world country. The rates of violent crime in
00:39:27.300 Chicago are through the roof. And so Lori Lightfoot is demanding that cops stay on the job, but they've
00:39:36.820 got to take the Fauci ouchie. So some cops are saying, no, you know, I think I'm going to quit.
00:39:39.800 If you're going to make me take the Fauci ouchie, I think I'm just not going to do it. I was just in
00:39:43.560 Chicago. I was briefly at O'Hare airport. I spoke to some cops there and they were saying they're
00:39:47.740 looking at 40 to 50% of cops just quitting or retiring early or just leaving the job because they
00:39:53.540 don't want to deal with this. So what does Lori Lightfoot say? Is this people exercising their
00:39:58.660 freedom of choice? Is this people, you know, just exercising their moral conscience and doing the
00:40:03.060 responsible thing? No. No, she calls it an insurrection. We believe that the FOP leadership
00:40:09.500 is trying to foment an illegal work stop it to strike, pure and simple. We've laid that out in
00:40:14.560 the materials and we're not just, we're not having that. The contract is clear and it's been known for a
00:40:19.720 long time. The police unions are not authorized to strike. It's in their collective bargaining
00:40:24.720 agreement. It's a matter of state law. What we've seen from the fraternal order of police and
00:40:29.880 particularly the leadership is a lot of misinformation, a lot of half-truths and frankly,
00:40:34.160 flat-out lies in order to induce an insurrection. And we're not having that.
00:40:39.440 It's an insurrection. Right. Right. I forgot. It's an insurrection. Anything the Democrats don't
00:40:45.020 like is an insurrection. Anything they do like is a wonderful defense of our democracy. So when,
00:40:51.880 for instance, radical leftists at the encouragement of Democrat politicians up to and including Kamala
00:40:58.760 Harris and staffers for Joe Biden, when they, you know, set courthouses on fire and attack police
00:41:06.680 buildings and kill dozens of people and steal a bunch of sneakers during the BLM riots of 2020,
00:41:12.640 that's a defense of our democracy. Kamala Harris will bail them out of jail 1.00
00:41:16.860 because of how much they're defending our democracy. But when the horn guy dances in the
00:41:21.680 Capitol, that's an insurrection. When leftists torch Chicago and loot and steal and kill and pillage
00:41:31.500 and burn, that's a defense of our democracy. That's a wonderful thing. When cops don't want to inject
00:41:37.980 themselves with an experimental drug. And so they very peaceably just decide to retire.
00:41:42.640 That's an insurrection. The Democrats are going to do, they already are doing to the word insurrection,
00:41:49.120 what they did to the word racist. The word racist doesn't mean anything anymore. It may once have
00:41:54.440 meant something it no longer does. If I think of the word racist, I, I guess what I think of is that
00:42:02.060 you hate someone on the basis of their race. That's what I would say. It's not, I don't think
00:42:08.880 it's just that you have preconceptions or judgments of people on the basis of race.
00:42:13.880 Everybody does that. Hey, think of an Italian guy. Think of an Italian guy right now. What are you
00:42:18.860 thinking of? You're thinking of a guy with a mustache who says, Hey, it's a me. And you're thinking of
00:42:22.400 pizza and you're thinking of a loud argument with his family at Christmas. And you think, I don't know,
00:42:26.740 you're thinking of, you have certain ideas. Hey, think of an Irishman. You're going to have some 1.00
00:42:32.220 preconceptions of what an Irishman is. You're probably picturing a little leprechaun right now 0.99
00:42:35.500 with a pint of Guinness or something and saying, Hey, they all be after me looking charms, right?
00:42:39.600 That's, that would be a preconception. But I don't think that's racist. Hey, picture a Chinese guy.
00:42:46.380 What you're going to pick, at least you are picturing what he looks like. Well, is that a pre,
00:42:49.540 is that a prejudgment, a prejudice, a preconception? Well, sure. I don't think it's racist.
00:42:53.720 If you say, I hate black people, I guess that, I guess that would, that would be racist, right? Or I
00:42:58.620 hate the Irish or something like that. I hate white people. That certainly is racist, but the left tells
00:43:03.180 us that's not racist. And now we're told that anytime you say anything positive or negative or neutral
00:43:11.720 about a protected group, you are a racist. And anytime you say anything vicious or hateful about
00:43:21.260 a non-protected group, like white people or Asian people, that's, you're totally, that's totally 0.99
00:43:27.340 fine. That's not a big deal. So the word doesn't mean anything. An insurrection right now, I don't
00:43:32.700 think means anything. If BLM defends our democracy and the horn guy is an insurrectionist, then if cops
00:43:40.260 just not taking an experimental drug is an insurrection, then insurrection doesn't mean anything
00:43:45.240 anymore. And it means you really ought to reconsider some of what you thought about. January 6th,
00:43:51.520 January, the worst attack in American history. Wasn't the Senate building like bombed in,
00:44:02.620 within the last five decades? I seem to recall that. I remember reading that there, there have been
00:44:06.700 multiple attacks actually in the last century that led to a lot of destruction on various Senate and
00:44:14.020 house buildings. But January's the horn guy, the podium, they took Pelosi's lectern. Okay,
00:44:22.920 it's not good. It's not good to steal somebody's lectern. It's not good to steal sneakers. It's not
00:44:28.540 good to steal Gucci handbags. It's not good to torch the country coast to coast. So one of them is our
00:44:33.300 democracy though, and it's really good. And the other is an insurrection. I don't think so. I don't
00:44:38.780 think so. Speaking of actual insurrections and coup d'etat, Christopher Steele, you remember him?
00:44:45.340 He was the tool who gave the Democrats an excuse to spy on the Trump campaign by cooking up a
00:44:51.840 completely bogus report about how Donald Trump was urinated on by hookers in Moscow. So Christopher
00:44:59.000 Steele just went on George Stephanopoulos' show on ABC, George Stephanopoulos, a former communications
00:45:03.800 director for Bill Clinton, a Democrat propagandist. And Steele defended his dossier. And Stephanopoulos
00:45:11.620 gave some pushback. He said, no, but come on, some things were false, right? He gave at least
00:45:15.720 the appearance of some pushback. And Steele goes, no, it was credible reporting. We knew some of it
00:45:21.420 was right. We suspected some of it may never be provable, but I've got a great track record. And
00:45:25.460 the idea that I would fabricate this document or information is absolutely anathema. I wouldn't be a
00:45:30.680 successful businessman if that were my practice. And he's hoping that you don't pay attention here
00:45:36.900 because of course he would be. His job was not to provide true information or true opposition
00:45:42.900 research into Donald Trump. His job was to use his credential, he's a lifelong spook, to use his
00:45:48.100 credential to give Democrats a justification to spy on the Trump campaign. And he did his job very,
00:45:53.940 very well. And it was a BS report, but he did it. And the ruling class spied on the Trump campaign.
00:45:59.300 And by some fluke, he actually managed, Trump actually managed to win. But the ruling class
00:46:07.560 remains unrepentant. They do not care. And we've got to stop falling for their traps,
00:46:14.900 whether it's on the January 6th or the isms or the this or the that, or listen to Fauci one more time
00:46:21.460 or we got to just tune that stuff out. Okay. I think we still have the chance to fight back and
00:46:27.220 rebuild our country, but we've got to get serious and start doing it ourselves. We've got to start
00:46:31.500 winning elections and using political power. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
00:46:35.260 See you tomorrow.
00:46:35.600 If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
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00:47:02.240 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring. Our
00:47:07.300 technical director is Austin Stevens, supervising producer Mathis Glover, production manager Pavel
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00:47:24.700 production, copyright Daily Wire 2021. Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Netflix employees walk out to
00:47:30.820 protest Dave Chappelle's special and the media gush over them. Plus, the Biden administration says
00:47:35.100 they've got vaccines for your five-year-old, but your kid will still need to mask. That's today on
00:47:39.260 The Ben Shapiro Show. Give it a listen.