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Aug. 19, 2020 - The Charlie Kirk Show
46:41
Democrats' DNC Disaster—LIVE Reaction to Night Two w/ Michael Knowles
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Rapid Response DNC Podcast 00:02:48
Thank you for listening to this podcast one production.
Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast One, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Hey, everybody, Michael Knowles and I. He's from the Daily Wire.
He's terrific.
One of my favorite people to talk to.
He's so smart, so, so wise.
He's got the wit of Ben Franklin and the charm of Bill Clinton, people would say.
Michael and I decided to do a late-night incident response to the Democrat National Convention, which was received very, very well.
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Michael Knowles, myself, react instantly to the Democrat Convention exclusively.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
Turning point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Hey, everybody.
Good evening.
We are here on the Charlie Kirk Show.
I guess this is some form of a rapid response DNC podcast.
I'm with my good friend Michael Knowles, and I was just, boy, I was so fired up with watching whatever that just was tonight and last night.
I texted Michael.
I said, Michael, we got to do a response for my podcast tomorrow.
And Michael heroically said, yes.
Michael, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
Instant reaction from the second night of the Bolshevik rally revolution.
Charlie, it occurs to me that what we're doing right now could just as well be the Democratic National Convention because the whole thing is basically just a glorified Zoom call at this point.
So our rapid response just hopping on the stream right now, I think pretty much is the DNC with this one exception.
There's at least a chance that we can be entertaining and inspiring at no chance from the DNC.
I think that's probably right.
So what was the highlight for you tonight?
Was it the 30-second speech from the woman in Nebraska, or I couldn't understand a word she was saying because of the mask?
Or was it AOC's glorifying 60-second speech channeling her inner Vladimir Lenin?
That I really love that.
I love the interspersed same three bars of Bruce Springsteen again and again and again and again.
It was so, so awful.
And then this whole force of someone will give this pre-recorded or pre-written out speech.
And then everyone starts to applaud in their individual Zoom boxes.
Woman in Nebraska Speech 00:05:18
Nothing about it feels genuine.
Nothing about it feels original.
It actually did remind me that before Trump, politics was so fake.
I mean, I get it that politics is showcased.
But it's just like, at least Trump gives you something live.
He gives you something real.
These guys were so pathetic.
Well, look, I mean, Trump's the ultimate showman.
And, you know, the president once told me, and I love when he said this, he said, you always want to go second.
You never want to go first.
And, you know, kind of when you're in the kind of when you're in the competition of showmanship.
And look, the Democrats last night, they had no message.
Tonight was even more scattered.
I mean, just from a production standpoint, I guess the Jill Biden speech, the Jill Biden, I kind of got that.
I think that was probably the high point of their whole convention.
Did you catch AOC's 60-second Zoom call?
You can see how much they value her in their party.
Well, you know, I love to bet AOC.
She's a pretty clever politician in that she walked this line of seconding.
I forget if she proposed or seconded Bernie's nomination.
And then obviously she's going to vote for Biden anyway, but she still gets to keep some of that progressive cred, even though obviously it's not going to have any effect.
I agree with you.
I thought that Jill Biden stuff, she was the only even remotely likable person there.
I thought that actually played pretty well.
It was the first thing in two days that played well at all.
The one thing, though, for the Democrats is they've got to stop insisting on referring to her as Dr. Jill Biden.
You know, on the view, the women on the view got so confused, they said she could be the surgeon general.
They don't realize that she's a school teacher.
I love school teachers as much as the next guy.
But this insistence actually makes Jill Biden, who's pretty likable and seems somewhat genuine, seem less likable and less genuine.
So they even managed to shoot themselves in the foot there.
So you're a smart guy.
Can you explain to me the wisdom of having Bill Clinton speak in a party that invented Me Too?
I don't have the capacity to process that one.
It's interesting because the Democratic Party is in a certain sense very conservative.
I mean, lowercase C conservative in that they don't really change.
They've had this machine now for over 100 years, and they're the longest continuously extant political party in the world.
So there are parts of it that they just can't shake from the past, one of which is Bill Clinton.
I mean, obviously the Democratic Party today has taken a sharp leftward turn since the 1990s, but Bill is still there.
You know, obviously they've got these super delegates, right?
That's an anti-democratic element of the Democratic National Committee.
But when you combine the Bill Clinton general baggage with what we found out today, there's an image of one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims giving Bill Clinton a neck massage that dropped today.
Maybe it's time to drop old Bubba from the DNC.
Well, I guess that's the new Democrat Party.
I mean, it's a little bit, it's hard to, I mean, it's such a blatant power grab, and it just goes to show that every one of the movements that they make us be held accountable for, that they will never hold their own accountable at all for that.
I mean, Andrew Cuomo today, and just one of the things that just irritated me the most about the news cycle today, Andrew Cuomo came out and he said he's writing a book on October 13th about coronavirus, the Chinese coronavirus that he called the European virus last night.
I mean, there's just been so much.
I have to give the Democrats credit.
They have created months of free campaign content in like 60-second intervals.
I didn't think it was possible to have this much opposition research done.
And by the way, it's so amazing is that these are like pre-rehearsed, pre-written speeches, and they're giving a phenomenal amount of material there.
And so Andrew Cuomo's coming out with the book on October 13th.
And he's like, oh, Donald Trump's profiting off this virus.
Really?
Who's the one selling a book before the election about the virus?
Like, could you imagine if Trump even joked about something like that?
Well, you know, Cuomo, obviously, as we know, handled the coronavirus worse than any governor in America.
His policies are directly responsible for thousands, at least several thousand senior citizens being killed from the virus because he sent the sick people into nursing homes.
So he's writing this book.
It's called American Crisis, Leadership During Coronavirus, which makes me want to read Harvey Weinstein's book on relationships or Jeffrey Dahmer's book on nutrition, right?
But this actually shows you a serious point, which is that they do not care about having a relationship to reality, right?
The Democrats believe that they have such cultural hegemony, they have such control over the institutions that they can tell you that up is down and two plus two equals five.
They can tell you whatever they want and you will believe them because they control the messaging.
I mean, Cuomo, I think, sums it up better than anybody.
Well, I think it's also they really think they're that important of people.
I mean, they think that they are, they, you know, it's kind of funny.
I thought the divine right of kings was basically ended in the early 1800s, but no, it still is very much alive and well today, where these Democrats feel as if there's something so special about their capacity to govern that they rules, us, standards?
That's why we have islands.
We had a plane, Lolita Express.
Democrats New Dumb Slogan 00:02:13
They don't believe that any of the movements that they purport to believe in should actually be held as a standard against them.
So, Michael, can you walk me through at least your initial analysis of how this manifests itself politically?
I mean, I'm trying not to get too ahead of myself.
You and I have talked about this.
I think that just from, look, it's kind of when I watch a convention like this, it's almost like kind of watching The Godfather or The Matrix.
Like, nothing is a mistake, right?
It's thought over, it's poured over.
So, everything there is there for a reason.
It's either trying to compensate for a political deficit, it's trying to make up for a deficiency, it's trying to make something, it's actually trying to get votes that they wouldn't otherwise have.
So, it's very much scripted.
So, when I see the incredible overindulgence in black identity politics, number one, then also trying to get former Republicans to speak, I interpret this, love your thoughts on this, that they have both a base problem and also a persuadable middle problem, that the Democrats are trying to solve two problems simultaneously that actually might be self-defeating and also might be so incongruent because they're trying to blend leftism and liberalism together.
What have you learned from this?
Outside of, of course, all the nonsense, the radicalism, as you look into the hood underneath the Democrat Party going in November, what are you gathering that might be a little below the surface?
So, something that no one else has talked about yet is I haven't seen this anywhere on Twitter or anything during the debate.
They've got a new dumb slogan.
Every so often, the Democrats come up with a new dumb slogan and it lasts for five minutes.
You know, Bush lied, people died, that sort of thing.
The new dumb slogan is good trouble.
Just two words, good trouble.
And they opened up tonight by referring to John Lewis, you know, the civil rights icon who recently passed away, as he got into good trouble, meaning he broke some laws, but it was actually for the ultimate good and it was in defense of the natural law or something like that.
The reason they are doing this is because they have to defend, they have to make some excuse for the BLM rioters and terrorists who are burning down the country and killing people.
And so, the only way that they can do that, they have to acknowledge that there is some trouble here.
But what they are basically trying to say is, yes, they're breaking all these laws and harming people and burning down the whole country, but it's for the good.
It's actually a good thing.
And so you shouldn't be afraid of it and you shouldn't look down on it.
That's so Machine Rebellion.
Good Trouble Political Strategy 00:15:50
Yeah.
It is.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
And the second part, which is kind of connected, is this other stupid expression.
It's the slogan of the Biden campaign, which is build back better.
And there's no, you know, obviously they have to rebuild because they just tore down the whole country and you've got shattered pieces of George Washington statues all over the place.
So you've got to build back.
But the trouble is, what can they get Trump on?
You'll notice the only issue they hit Trump on tonight was that Trump tried to overturn Obamacare or to rescind parts of Obamacare or to abolish it, but he didn't succeed.
Remember, John McCain put his thumb down and so it didn't work.
So the only thing they can hit him on is a hypothetical.
It's something that he tried to do, but didn't.
And the one question I would have, I don't know if you heard this anywhere of the last two nights.
Did anyone give an affirmative, positive reason for what Joe Biden, what Joe Biden would do if he is elected and why we should vote for Joe Biden?
Not because Trump is bad, but because of Joe Biden?
I didn't hear one.
No, and you won't, because their entire political strategy, and this is more and more clear, and this was, you and I hypothesized this over the summer, is that they want to turn this into a House of Commons vote of no confidence, like Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher style, that they actually want to destroy the electoral system of binary choices.
And they want to make it like this person's so bad.
Therefore, if you manifest any or harbor any sort of discontent towards this person, therefore go show up in record numbers to go vote for the senal guy.
That, and look, I mean this without any, like without trying to, you know, trivialize mental decline.
But when you're running for the presidency, I think it's pretty much fair game.
He has so much effort just to make a sentence.
I mean, even when he was accepting the nomination, he stood up so awkwardly in some form of a library and all of his grandkids came out around him.
I think there was five, but I think he actually has seven.
And I didn't see Hunter.
I think I saw Hunter once.
Yeah, I think it was five or seven or his wife or his sister.
He wasn't really sure.
And it just looked like he was in such laborious pain.
And the only way that this is working is because the entire Democrat trajectory, their whole arc over the last couple of years, is they really believe that they can defeat an incumbent based purely on dissatisfaction towards that incumbent, not for the replacement, right?
And this is a very risky strategy.
It's extremely risky.
I mean, it's really hard to beat an incumbent.
We just have to be very clear about this.
It's really hard to beat an incumbent president.
And absent third-party support, like H.W. Bush had against him for Bill Clinton in 92, it hasn't happened.
The last time an incumbent lost was 1992, and that was after the Republicans were in power for nearly 12 years.
And so, look, there is no reason to vote for Joe Biden.
And actually, I want to get your thoughts on this, though.
I don't think, I think that the Democrats are really playing a dangerous game here.
I think they're going to have a lot of the young people that you and I talk about in college camp talk to on college campuses, right?
That are radically driven.
I don't know if they're going to show up.
I really don't.
I'm not convinced that this kind of enthusiastic underbelly of the Democrat Party that has been really reliable for the last couple of elections, you and I know this population really well.
First of all, the campuses are closed.
So ballot harvesting is taken off the table.
Secondly, I'm not convinced that they're going to be motivated.
When I look at this, where do you interpret like that average college socialist that you and I have to re-educate, or at least, you know, stop telling them to be so bitter or arrogant?
Do you think they're going to show up in big numbers?
And how is that?
How is that exactly going to play out?
No, they're not going to show up in part because they're not on campus, right?
So, you know, I think a part of the Democrats' strategy has been to continue this lockdown, even when there is no medical or scientific reason to continue the lockdown, but it's to keep the economy depressed, keep society depressed, keep everyone agitated, and enforce this mail-in ballot issue nationwide.
But one negative side effect for them is the campuses are closed, so they can't rally all of the students.
Nobody, nobody is excited about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Not one person in the country, including Joe Biden.
Maybe Kamala Harris is, but that's about it.
You know, I think she was a bad choice for him.
She was so unpopular.
She got out of that race very early.
Nobody is a grassroots Kamala supporter.
And so I think the hardened, you know, the far activist socialist wing of the Democratic Party, they're not going to be motivated.
And the moderate wing, if such as it is, it's still pretty radical, but relatively, it's moderate.
Are they really excited by Joe?
So far, we've only seen Joe speak for about 60 seconds at a time, and he doesn't do a great job with that.
Do we really think this guy's going to be able to hold his own in a long address in a presidential debate?
Or heaven forfend if he made it to the oval?
I don't think so.
Every time I see Joe Biden speak, he does the stoic glaze really well, the kind of where he looks off into the distance.
I say, either he's doing his best Maoist kind of caricature, or he's just incredibly confused at what's happening around him, just to kind of look into the distance, kind of gazing.
He's either like, yeah, it might be a little mixture of both.
And so, so, Michael, what is so as we look at the rest of the week, if you were trying to analyze exactly what the Republicans need to do next week, what do Republicans need to do, right?
So we have 40, we've now had two days of this circus.
And by the way, for those that missed it, Pocahontas, I thought this was parody, by the way.
I thought that this is so Orwellian.
I don't know if you saw this or not.
I didn't believe it.
I did not believe it.
I had to triple fact check it.
I said, there's no way this is true.
The Native American coalition call or whatever, the Zoom call.
Michael, you break the news.
I can't even say it.
The Native American coalition call as a featured guest speaker had who.
Featured guest speaker, Liawatha herself, Pocahontas, Elizabeth, because she's what coming in hot.
I think she's what, one, maybe she is one 1,024th Native American, which, you know, in today's Democratic Party, I guess that qualifies you.
It's unbelievable.
It seems like such an unforced error, but the whole DNC seems like an unforced error.
I mean, this is my question for you, Charlie.
You know, you've got a tremendous amount of political organizing experience.
When you're putting on an event, you want the event to excite people.
You want it to rally people.
A party convention is supposed to rally the base, get everybody excited, present a coherent message to the public generally.
It seems to me that this infomercial of a DNC has not accomplished any of that.
I mean, I would not be surprised if Biden's numbers actually go down after the convention, even though the whole reason they hold convention, so the numbers go up.
Well, and here's the open secret here, Michael, and here's the takeaway.
They don't have a Democrat party.
They don't.
They're actually far more factionalized.
They do not have a continuity of philosophy.
This is a corporate transactional ruling class that has forcibly connected themselves to five or six single issue voters.
Environment, guns, women's, take the money from the rich, and I hate America, right?
And then you kind of have this corporate governing class that controls them.
This isn't a party.
In fact, and I don't say this, I don't see it.
I don't say this lightly, trust me, because I'm extremely critical of Republicans, like very much so, when they don't do what they're supposed to do.
But the Republicans are in a much better place, much better place.
And it's almost manifesting itself very similar to the 1984 Republican Party.
Now, I'm not saying the election will be similar.
I'm not.
But the Republican Party was so unified against Soviet communism.
I don't know.
It might win Minnesota.
It might be the one state that Ronald Reagan has won.
But the thing in 84 that was so interesting, Michael, is that the Republicans played nice with each other, like the gun people played nice to the pro-life people who played nice with the fiscal conservative people, all because there was kind of this agreement that Soviet communism must be crushed and Reagan's doing a great job of that.
And I think that in a weird way, Donald Trump has now become the anti-leftist domestic equivalent of that, where the Republicans have far more of a unified movement or party.
Now, we still have the corporate Republican types, but they're following.
They are not leading the party, make no mistake.
They follow kind of the energy behind.
The Democrats don't really have a party.
They don't.
And that's why you have to see them.
They have to continue to almost remind you, like not to turn off the TV, like it's some sort of like Stockholm syndrome.
Remember, we're for environmental justice, racial justice.
I mean, like, how many justices are there?
I mean, the Vermont thing, they had this guy that looked like he was, you know, he lives in the northern hills of Vermont in some commune, like he just stumbled into civil society in the last couple of weeks.
Now, remember, everybody, racial justice, environmental justice, food, what are the other justices we believe in?
Don't turn off the TV because we're actually really radical.
And so I think that's a very, so if I were to do political organizing and I were trying to, which I do, and I would just take a diagnosis of this, it's an incredibly unhealthy party.
Yeah.
And I think you bring up such a good point on all the ever-multiplying types of justice.
The reason they have to do that is because they don't believe in justice, justice, singular, just one kind of justice, right?
And they don't believe in school, it means to the end.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, if you were, if you say, I believe in justice, what you're saying is I believe in an objective standard of virtue.
I believe that there is a certain type of behavior that we have to live up to.
I believe that there ought to be punishment if you violate that kind of behavior, that kind of moral standard.
The left doesn't believe that.
I mean, what they believe is you do you, I'm going to do me.
There's no objective truth.
There's your truth and there's my truth.
You know, if it feels good, do it.
Don't yuck my yum.
You can use all of these various expressions to say, we don't believe in justice.
But they have to fill that in.
They want to keep that rhetoric so they have it in all these ever-multiplying areas.
They don't believe in virtues.
They have all these ever-multiplying values.
If I had one recommendation for the RNC, which I've been suggesting now from my platform for a little while, it's you have to do a live convention.
I know it's probably impossible.
I know Charlotte kicked them out.
I know Jacksonville kicked them out.
I know everyone's worried about the China virus.
I know whatever.
You know, Fauci says it's going to kill all of us, except actually, he doesn't.
He actually says it's probably fine to go outside and go do whatever you want.
You have to do it live.
This Zoom meeting convention thing is pathetic.
It is giving in to the leftist premise that we all need to stay home and we need to mail in our ballots so that the left can steal this election.
If even the exalted Dr. Fauci, peace be upon him, says that we can show up to the ballot box and we can go out, we can do things, you know, wear the mask or whatever, say, stay a few feet away, fine.
If even Fauci is saying that, then there's no argument, right?
Even the public health professionals are saying it.
You need some sort of a live convention.
I think that if the president zooms this in, this is going to be a big wasted opportunity.
Yeah, I'm not sure the technical part of that might be too late.
I agree that generally a live convention.
However, some of the speakers they've already announced, I like the direction this is heading, Michael.
This is a cultural conservative convention.
I got to give the Trump campaign and the convention a lot of credit.
This could have been a typical technocratic corporate wing Republican party where they're, you know, like the Romney convention.
I'll never forget it.
At the Romney convention, I was there.
It was one of my first experiences eight years ago politically, right?
And I had to barter my way in.
And I remember like one of the signs they had there.
This is just the biggest difference between the Romney Party and the Trump Party.
Was yes, we did build it.
And I was like, man, that is really good for like the 400 CEOs that are there.
But like, like the coal miners, like, what did I build?
You know, and then Trump has like, make America great again.
I'm like, that is a message that's going to win.
I mean, Romney's message was very much to a very few, and I love job creators.
You and I both do.
I think it's great.
I think that we should encourage entrepreneurship.
It's also, it's a small percentage of the American population if we're very serious about it.
Right.
And so, additionally, Michael, so the point that you were making about the convention and what I was trying to title together, you have Abby Johnson, who is the Planned Parenthood whistleblower who's speaking, Nick Sandman, and the McCloskeys.
That's a great opening shot.
And the Democrats are going to go after all of them because these are cultural figures.
Like, I'm sure you're going to hear from the senators.
You're going to hear from the cabinet people.
You're going to hear from the Grinnells.
You're going to hear from the people that have been really good to Donald Trump.
However, this is a cultural election, wouldn't you agree?
This is not about high taxes, low taxes, all that's important.
I think that's where we actually think that's less effective at this moment in our country's history.
Totally.
You know, first of all, you take it back to kind of the OG conservative political philosopher in modern times, Edmund Burke.
He said, you know, you basically have to focus on the culture.
We don't want these sophisticated economists and calculators.
What do we do?
We immediately come all these eggheads from the Romney Party.
No, we need some culture.
Abby is obviously great, Abby Johnson.
I think the McCloskeys are going to be great.
You know, there was a rumor that the McCloskeys were Democrats and pro-BLM.
And I had Mark McCloskey on radio, and we asked him, we said, you know, they're saying you're a Democrat.
He said, how dare you?
I'm a lifelong Republican.
Are you kidding me?
I totally reject what these guys are saying.
And then, and then, frankly, to me, the most important one is Nick Sandman.
Nick Sandman was that kid at the time, I think he was 17 or something.
Now, that was a couple years ago, who was just minding his own business, was at a pro-life rally, was standing on the mall, had the MAGA hat on.
A bunch of black supremacists yelled a bunch of crazy stuff at him.
And then this Native American lunatic started banging a drum in his face.
The kid actually showed great restraint, got smeared by the media.
And I think having him speak there shows what Trump has exposed.
It'll be his longest-lasting legacy.
He's exposed that the media are just absolute cretins, that the media are nothing but staffers for the Democratic Party and more broadly for the liberal establishment.
So to have him here, that is going to be a finger in the face of CNN, of the Washington Post, and broadly speaking, what do we call them?
The opposition party.
That's exactly right.
And so the Sandman, and that opening, you know, triumphant, right?
Let's try it the real triumphant.
Let's get rid of that Roman triumphant.
Screw that.
This is the new triumph.
The Abby Johnson pro-life, McCloskey Second Amendment, Sandman cultural, fighting the fake news activist media.
It's going to be a completely different type of convention.
And I can already tell you how they're going to portray this.
They're going to say RNC goes to the base, to the radical elements of the part.
And that is a very, that is a disproven strategy for the activist media.
Because basically, look, you and I both know this entire election is going to come down to three states, basically, and like 22 counties.
And in those 22 counties, they actually don't like it when a 17-year-old wears a MAGA hat and has some lunatic bang a drum in his face.
And then he gets blamed for it.
That's not a winning message.
I mean, in northern Wisconsin, they are a pro-life part of the country.
And so when they hear Abby Johnson communicate to it, I think what I'm really pleased about, what the Republicans are doing next week, what the Democrats have not done a good job of at all, is the Republicans actually take next week as a teaching moment to persuade people on core cultural issues.
Like Abby Johnson, that would not be a typical pick where she's actually going to make more people pro-life by the end of next week than the beginning of the week.
The Democrats are like, screw persuasion.
Let's just try to just play it easy, plays it safe, and then say, virus every like 25 seconds, virus, like virus, like don't leave your home, right?
And then go where, you know, go do what we're told.
And I think that there's a risk in that because I think that what the Trump campaign is believing, and I, this is totally true, is that it's not as monolithic as you might think.
There's a lot of people that are still trying to land the plane, if you were, on how they're going to vote.
You know, I've knocked over on 100,000 doors for candidates, and I'll ever forget some of these people I knock on the door of.
Make Or Break For Republic 00:14:32
There's one guy in particular.
I gave him a piece of literature.
This was like six or eight years ago when I was just getting started and I was knocking on doors.
And he's like, yeah, I'm going to go put this in the box.
I'm like, what do you mean, the box?
He's like, oh, yeah, I have a box where I put all political literature and I read it the night before.
And then I make my decision.
I'm like, that's how you make it.
It's like Christmas.
It's like, there are some people that are still very much indecisive, right?
They hear things.
They're just kind of vacillating or they're disinterested.
And so thematically, Michael, what do you want the Republicans to hit?
And where do you think the Democrats have missed the mark so terribly?
If you were even to put your Democrat hat on and you're like, if I were the Democrats, I would have done this.
So the Democrats are very afraid that they've been exposed as hating their own country.
I think it's pretty clear they genuinely hate their own country.
You heard years ago with Obama saying he wants to fundamentally transform America.
You generally don't want to fundamentally transform things that you love.
You saw the flag protest, which started out with Colin Kaepernick, and now you've got mainstream Democratic politicians cheering on the desecration of the American flag.
And so you had Andrew Cuomo during yesterday's part of the DNC.
He said, look, America, it's a great country.
We've always been a great country.
We're rah-rah for the red, white, white, and blue, right?
It was the most patriotic speech you ever heard.
Let's not forget this, the same Andrew Cuomo six months ago said, America was never great.
We're not going to make America great again.
America was never great.
Those are his exact words.
You see this with all the rest.
They've titled this, We the People, to Harken Back to the Constitution.
They want to pretend that they're a constitutional party.
They're not.
Trump has a great advantage here, which is that the left gave up the American flag, right?
It's like they gave up hot dogs and apple pie, too.
They gave it up because they'd become so radicalized.
Trump should own that.
We're now the pro-America party.
That's the theme.
It brings itself out in a lot of different ways.
Pro-America in that we don't want to kill babies.
Pro-America in that we don't want our children to have their lives ruined on television because of a leftist media.
We're the pro-America party because we want to be able to protect our property and exercise our Second Amendment rights.
So I love all of that.
And I think the key here is even beyond the kind of ideological theme is the entertainment factor.
Donald Trump is a showman.
Donald Trump knows that you got to keep it interesting, keep it entertaining.
You don't want to bore people to death.
There's nothing patriotic or sophisticated about boring people to death.
And I just think, as you said, Charlie, you put it very well.
The Democrats have played the DNC so safe.
It's been preposterous and so boring.
The numbers, the ratings are way down.
I think Trump knows better than that.
And I hope that all the Republicans follow suit.
Man, them going after Harvey Weinstein has not been good for the production value of the Democrat National Convention.
Let me tell you, it's a good thing he's in jail, did some bad things, but has not been good for them.
I mean, you'd think they'd be able to find a Scorsese or somebody, right?
I mean, find somebody in their Rolodex.
You would think.
I don't know.
I also want to, I'm going to dive in.
I'm going to raise your Edmund Burke with a Thomas Paine.
Of course, they wrote back and forth each other.
And I actually think they had more in common than we give them credit for.
You and I could do a podcast about this.
I think they get miscategorized as being like the beginning of left and right in America.
When in reality, I actually think that where things have come, that the divergence are actually much closer together.
Anyway, so Thomas Paine had a great quote.
He said, the greater the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Going into September, I just love a good rebellion.
Maybe it's the Scott and me.
So I see both.
I love Edmund Burke, but I also love Thomas Payne.
Without Thomas Payne, we don't have America, but he was kind of revolution shopping, to be honest.
He was just like continent.
No, he was a revolution shopper.
He's like, all right, we got the American one done.
French, you're up next.
And Burke was like, not all revolutions are created equal, right?
So what does Trump have to do to win outside of the convention?
What are you seeing?
What are you hearing?
Talk to our audience about things.
I mean, you have a huge audience.
You have a huge platform.
I know we kind of touched on this a little bit, but more broadly, and obviously you're a huge Trump supporter.
What does he have to do to win?
Because this is a conflict likes to which we've never imagined.
The triumph will be glorious if we win.
What does he have to do to be able to win?
So I think, you know, just broad messaging, obviously, rah-rah, hug the American flag.
He's been doing that for years.
He's got to be very clear in the COVID messaging because Democrats are basically just running on COVID.
And I think there have been some missteps, particularly a couple months ago by the Trump campaign.
You know, sometimes a wrong decision is better than indecision.
And if you stand in the middle of the road, you're going to get hit by a bus.
And I could give you any other number of sort of colloquialisms to explain this, but you've really got to be clear on messaging.
Trump has been so clear on so much messaging that, you know, I think this would be the exception.
And he's got to pick a side here.
And I think what we've got to remember is that this election is not just Republicans versus Democrats.
I don't think people like Republicans that much.
And I don't think the Democratic Party is even the primary issue.
What this election is, is the conservative, now you call it the kind of Trump movement, the pro-America movement versus the liberal establishment, which includes the Democratic Party.
It includes the media.
It includes the administrative state, the bureaucracy, this titanic 2.6 million member bureaucracy that effectively writes our laws for us and that is unaccountable to us.
And they don't care what we have to say and we can't vote them out of office.
And I think a lot of the Trump movement was from this frustration that it doesn't matter.
Republicans win, Democrats win, but we get more and more open borders.
We get more and more bad trade deals.
We get more and more of this kind of creeping liberal revolution.
And what Trump did was he empowered people and said, no, not yet.
And he had to fight the Democrats.
He had to fight his own party too.
And so I think a lot of that message, the message could be summed up in that meme he tweeted the other day, which was a picture of him.
It said, they're not after me.
They're after you.
And I just happen to be in the way.
I think that's got to be the line.
You've got to hit even the beautiful, vaunted public health experts and any other bureaucrat in Washington who thinks that they can run your life and keep you out of your church and keep you out of your school and keep you out of your job and out of your life.
I think this election's got to be a big middle finger to them.
And it's got to be a message that we can empower the people, even still, even in this second term.
I think if Trump runs on that, he'll have a great message.
And then related to that is he's got to make sure that this universal nationwide mail-in voting doesn't happen.
That's related, by the way, to the bureaucracy that is going to administer that.
That is how the left is going to try to steal this election.
And it should be quashed any way possible, any legal way possible.
Can you dive deeper into that?
We actually just, we're getting a ton of questions.
Freedom at charliekirk.com.
Whoever we select, you get a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine.
I'll send it to you.
Rebecca from Vermont, I'll send you a MAGA doctrine because you just said this.
What do you think about mail-in voting?
What can we do to stop it?
Tell us why it's bad.
Basically, is her question.
Can you dive deeper into that, Michael?
Because some Republicans are not fighting on this issue.
Why is this something that we have to draw the line?
I'm with you.
I think this is a make or break issue for the Republic.
And if we do not really get serious about voter integrity, we're done.
Tell us.
So I'll give you a very, very simple answer on this or a simple example.
A news affiliate out of Philly just did an experiment with the mail-in ballots.
They made 100 dummy mail-in ballots.
They put them in a mailbox.
It was going to be sent to a P.O. box right down the street.
It took after four days, most of them had not come in.
After seven days, there were still ballots that hadn't come in.
They got two birthday cards in the mailbox.
Don't know how.
They lost three ballots.
Three ballots, 3%.
Do you think 3% can swing an election?
I think it can.
I think it would have swung basically every major election we can think of in our lifetimes.
Plus, you've added to that 80 to 100 million people are expected to use mail-in ballots this year.
You're talking about a huge number of voters.
And then beyond that, those were ballots that were just lost by the regular incompetence of the mail service.
Do you think during such a consequential election that there won't be a little bit more pressure?
There won't be a little bit more shenanigans.
I mean, we've seen voter fraud.
There was a big case out of New Jersey that just happened a few weeks ago.
But then even consider this, the postal workers union endorses candidates.
Consider this.
The post office, our wonderful, vaunted post office that nobody really seemed to like very much until it became a political issue two days ago.
They are part of a bureaucracy, right?
I'll give you an example.
My grandmother sent me a birthday present.
You know, it was like, I don't know, 20, 50 bucks or something in a card a couple of years ago.
When I get the card, it was opened.
I don't know.
The money came out, by the way.
Money wasn't there when I got it.
How many people have the same story?
I know many of my friends have had the same story.
That's why they don't trust sending cash in the mail.
People tell you don't send cash in the mail.
How much more valuable is your ballot than a $20 bill or a $50 bill?
This is your participation in American democracy, and it is at risk of being stolen.
The way to stop that is to, ironically, I can't believe I'm saying this, listen to Fauci.
Fauci says there is zero health risk to showing up at the ballot box where we have appropriate ballot security measures.
Anybody who is discouraging you from showing up to that ballot box is trying to steal the election.
Yes.
And if they can show up in the streets to protest in-person voting, then they can go vote.
I mean, that's probably one of the greatest cell phones that we've ever seen.
I mean, they have people, they have thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
And from an epidemiological standpoint, it is the wokest virus we've ever seen in our life, where if you happen to be protesting something that is righteous enough, somehow it will not infect you.
However, we're starting to look at infection numbers and we look across the Sunbelt, they're going down.
And this is something that is ever-changing, obviously.
But the president is actually going to be able to, I think, be able to pivot towards a very uncomfortable position for Joe Biden here, where he can be like, look, things a couple months ago, the numbers weren't great, but now look where the numbers are.
And so I really agree with you that the more kind of in-person rallies, he did one today in Arizona, did two yesterday in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
And if Trump can visit Wisconsin, why can't Joe Biden visit Wisconsin?
Like, that's probably a pretty, you know, respectable question.
And so I think, look, you're exactly right with the mail and voting is because when the Democrats want something this bad, the question should be, why do they want it this bad?
Do they really care about the disenfranchised and they really care about the least of these?
Of course they don't.
I mean, and this is something, when you understand the left, everything that motivates them is a pursuit of power.
There is no benevolence.
There is no generosity.
There is no looking out for the innocent.
There is no trying to help the least of these.
It's how do I get myself to be the most important person in perpetual political power for the longest personal time I possibly can and try to build an infrastructure so I can turn myself into some form of a Roman emperor.
And anything besides that gets in the way.
We have another question here, Michael.
I'd love to get your thoughts in just the couple minutes we have remaining, but we're crushing it.
We have like 5,000 live viewers right now.
So thanks for hanging around.
Big tech censorship.
Is this a threat?
How do we deal with it?
And what is your opinion of it?
Obviously, we're doing this right now on a tech platform.
Just as you were bragging about what a great job we're doing, you actually cut out a little bit on the questions.
What was the question?
It's hilarious.
I was asking about big tech censorship.
So that is hilarious.
That's all I have to say.
Go ahead.
It's really, it's really, really bad.
My show is regularly being dinged, being taken down.
Threats are being made about my show.
I won't go into too many of the specifics yet because we're trying to deal with this in as clever a way as we can.
Big tech across the platforms, every single one, is trying not just to take you down for some copyright thing or you played a little piece of a song or you showed it.
They're trying to take you down for things you're saying.
If you're making political arguments, if you're making observations, if you're reading scientific studies, they're trying to take you down.
We saw this the other day with those doctors who were talking about how for their patients, hydroxychloroquine worked very well in treating coronavirus.
Those videos were taken down.
People who posted those videos were told that they would not be permitted to continue to have their Facebook pages.
This has always been about the election.
The reason for that is, I mean, this is just kind of a little behind the scenes in the tech world.
Trump did very well on tech in 2016, not even just organically.
I mean, his campaign actually just did a better job on these platforms than the Hillary campaign did.
They got a lot of pushback for this.
They got a lot of flag for this.
And so they told them, okay, it's not going to happen again.
Google had a, just days after the election, you know, in that kind of afterwards, it was their first big meeting with all the heads of Google in the room.
They said this nationalism, this rise of populism, we can't let this happen again.
And they're trying to make sure that that's the case.
The one thing I can promise you is that from now until November 3rd, the censorship is going to get much worse.
And I think a lot of conservatives finally are waking up to this fact.
They used to say, well, Twitter's a private company.
Well, Google's a private company.
That's sort of true.
But there are a lot of other legal issues at play here.
And more broadly, do we want a politics where we, the people, still have an authentic political voice?
Or do we want a political rule in which three oligarchs in Silicon Valley control the entire flow of information around the internet?
What can get out there?
That is not a Madisonian federalist constitutional American system.
That is a deep abuse.
That's a deep perversion.
And I think those guys at big tech need to go down.
Well, yeah, look, and this is an uncomfortable conversation for people to have, but you and I love liberty, right?
And we love to be able to speak freely.
What happens when a company becomes more powerful than your government?
What's the playbook for that?
And the playbook should be: we should protect liberty.
That's the answer.
It doesn't matter if it's a group of 25,000 Silicon Valley socialists or if it's 250,000 people at the Department of Energy.
It doesn't matter.
The question is whether or not liberty is being violated.
And it's very rare that a private company gets that threshold.
It's incredibly rare, but it's there and it's here right now.
Michael, how can people learn more about what you're doing and follow you?
Biden Debate Prediction 00:03:30
And then I have one final question for you.
And thank you for sticking around for some extra time.
But we're the only conservative live stream in town right now.
So it seems we're doing quite well.
How could people follow you and learn more about what you're doing?
So until tech kicks me off, you can find me on Twitter, Michael J. Knowles.
You can find me on Parlor at Michael J. Knowles.
You can find me, I guess Parlor is probably not going to kick me off.
You can find me on Facebook at the Michael Knowles show.
Same thing on YouTube.
You can get that on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Stitcher.
I don't know, probably MySpace, Live Journal.
I don't know.
I've got a lot of stuff out there.
You can find most of those links at michaeljknowles.com.
And then pretty soon, Charlie, people are going to see me talking to you on the PragerU Book Club.
We don't have a release date yet, but people will see that soon.
We're going to be doing Thomas Paine, Common Sense.
I think we're doing that, right?
Are we doing?
I got to check with them.
We were thrown around like five or six books.
The trouble, as you know, Charlie, because you're like an autodidact, you've always got some book going, is you could do any number of books.
So we'll like spin the wheel, do a roulette wheel and figure out which one we're doing.
Yeah, as long as we don't do the phenomenology of spirit by Hegel, I think we'll be just fine.
We're not doing Hegel.
We're not doing Engel.
We're not doing Kant.
We'll do something a little bit more condemned.
Yeah, no, no categorical imperative.
Last question here, Michael.
Do you think that Joe Biden will debate Donald Trump?
It's a very difficult question because there's no reason for Joe Biden to debate Donald Trump if he can get away with it.
The one reason he has to is because he'll look like a coward.
It'll be so obvious.
We're all talking about how he's in decline.
If you ask me right now, put money, yes or no, will he debate?
I think he will debate in part because early voting, mail-in voting, is going to happen before even the first debate, which was a complete mistake.
I mean, I don't know how I don't know how we got into that situation, but that's a big misstep.
So I think he could do it.
I think they'll try to drag their feet.
I think they'll try to make it an online debate or a Zoom debate, which won't be a debate at all.
And President Trump should not participate in that.
It's got to be a live debate.
It's got to be in person.
Trump will eat him for lunch.
Biden, they'll probably slow walk it.
I mean, they'll probably drag their feet on it and say, well, we couldn't come to terms and coronavirus or whatever.
But the one thing, so I'll put my money on there will be a debate.
But the one thing I know for sure is there is no world in which a debate helps Joe Biden.
And so I think they're going to be pretty crafty in trying to get out of it.
What do you think?
You know, I see no reason why he should, but I think he's going to be forced into.
I think that political orthodoxy and tradition is actually going to put him into it.
But I think that if he was actually channeling his inter-leftist, which is to upend all tradition of the pursuit of power, why do it?
I think that I and I think that I think his actual stubbornness is going to do it.
And I think that it's going to be a downfall for him.
And I think that president, there's going to be a moment that if they debate, first, they're going to try to do it through a Zoom call.
The president should offer to send Maureen One, wherever he is, to do it at the White House.
I've already recommended this publicly and privately.
And there will be a moment when Joe Biden just has a mental collapse.
And at that moment, Trump has to not destroy the innocent and instead just kind of look at him.
He has to have a Ronald Reagan line and say, I think we all know what that means.
And like something like really soft but strong, right?
He's got to, I, I, this is my own opinion.
It can't be like, you're a total disaster.
Like, and I don't think he would.
I'm not suggesting, but it's tempting, right?
But Joe Biden's going to forget a name or stutter or do something.
And Trump's, you know, President Trump should say, I think we all know who's more equipped to run the country.
Save Your Country Now 00:02:25
Like, boom.
Like, there was this bit that when Trump was asked a while ago, he said, Do you think that Joe Biden's too old to be president?
He had this very quick response.
It was where he goes, Joe, too old.
I don't know about too old.
Here's what I know.
I'm young.
I'm young.
I'm a young, vibrant man.
Joe, I don't know about him.
I mean, it's that sort of light touch.
I think I totally agree with you.
I think that would clobber him.
And he is the best on his feet.
We underestimate how good Trump is on his feet.
Like, you'll be in jail.
Like, I mean, incredible, right?
I mean, I think that won him millions of votes across the country.
It's like, if someone's that savage, I know.
Only wrote, like, that changed the trajectory of American politics forever.
Or my favorite Jeb Bush.
He's like, Jeb used to be next to me.
He kept moving all the way down on the stage.
I know.
You could do Trump debate lines like all night.
You could do a whole episode.
Oh, no, that's right.
I know, exactly.
And I mean, look, he's a master marketer marketer.
In a lot of ways, the Biden campaign strategies to try to keep that in a bottle.
It's not actually going to happen.
In fact, what was that?
What's the phrase I keep using for you, Michael?
I'm going to give you attribution.
Things happen gradually, then suddenly.
That's the line.
Which I took from President.
He took from Hemingway, I think.
But it's an important line.
And you called it, what was it, two months ago, probably we were talking about this.
And that's the key.
And I think we cautiously, I say that might be what we're seeing here.
Yeah.
Michael, you're awesome.
Everybody, email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Make sure you guys subscribe to our YouTube channel right now.
Hit that button and make sure it is subscribed so that big tech can't censor you or censor us.
Michael, thank you guys so much.
Everyone, check out his page and make sure you're subscribed to the Charlie Kirk Show and Apple podcast.
Thanks so much, Michael.
We'll see you soon, man.
All right.
Thanks, Charlie.
See you next time.
You bet.
What a great conversation that was with the great Michael Knowles.
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