All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 21, 2017 - The Michael Knowles Show
36:31
Ep. 13 - ‘Peace Through Violence’: Antifa And The ‘Alt-Left’

Violent left-wing Antifa thugs assault police and right-wingers in Boston as 40,000 protesters surrounded fifty or so free speech demonstrators. Plus, Antonia Okafor, Amanda Prestigiacomo, and Jacob Airey join the Panel of Deplorables to talk killer robots, anti-Trump stunts on campus, and President Trump’s disbanding of a global warming advisory panel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
On Saturday, violent left-wing Antifa thugs assaulted police and right-wingers in Boston as 40,000 protesters surrounded 50 or so free speech demonstrators.
We'll discuss where the real threat to liberty lies.
Plus, Antonia Okafor, Amanda Prestigiacomo, and Jacob Airy joined the panel of deplorables to talk killer robots, anti-Trump stunts on campus, and President Trump's disbanding of a global warming advisory panel, MAGA MAGA MAGA.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
So today is an all violence show.
We're going to be talking about Antifa.
We've got Antonia Okafor, sharpshooter extraordinaire.
And so I figured in that spirit, I would show you just a little clip of my weekend.
I was visiting a friend of mine in Arizona, and I think this 18 seconds sums up the entire weekend.
The Michael Knoll Show.
Here we go.
And three, two.
Oh, wow.
There we are.
Well, hopefully the rest of the clips are able to play.
Maybe we'll send that out a little later.
But anyway, I got to shoot a lot of guns this weekend.
Arizona's a great state full of guns and freedom and America.
So now we spent a lot of time last week talking about right-wing violence.
We talked to a Charlottesville attendee.
We analyzed the alt-right.
And what that means with relation to conservatism and to the right wing.
So today we have to talk about Antifa.
Because over the weekend, there was this very small free speech demonstration in Boston on Saturday.
By all accounts, there were not neo-Nazis there.
There were not white supremacists there.
One of the organizers is a man named Shiva.
And not very many white nationalists are named Shiva.
This was a really small contained protest.
And then there were 40,000, by some counts, counter protesters there.
Typically, Antifa, which is short for anti-fascist, but which is ironic because these lefties take on fascistic tactics, were throwing urine at the police and rocks and basically being criminal thugs.
And I think this is the group that President Trump was alluding to last week in his much pilloried moral equivalence between the Looney Tunes on the right and the Looney Tunes on the left.
He said that the alt-right is behind these attacks, and he linked that same group to those who perpetrated the attack in Charlottesville.
Well, I don't know.
I can't tell you.
I'm sure Senator McCain must know what he's talking about.
But when you say the alt-right, Define alt-right to me.
You define it.
Go ahead.
No, define it for me.
Come on, let's go.
Senator McCain defined them as the same group.
Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at them?
Excuse me.
What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right?
Do they have any semblance of guilt?
Now I see why President Trump used this term, the alt-left.
It's because he speaks in very graphic, very visual terms, and he wants to draw a comparison between these violent people on the right, the handful of violent people that we saw in Charlottesville, And between these violent people that we see on the left, at every single event, at Berkeley, at a Milo Yiannopoulos speech, at an Ann Coulter speech, I've been with Ben Shapiro at CSULA when Antifa people are beating people up and not letting attendees go into the auditorium.
So he wants to draw this comparison, and so he's using the same word, alt-right and alt-left.
But as a concept, it doesn't really make sense.
Because on the right, when we say there's the alt-right, we're saying it's an alternative to mainstream conservatism.
Traditionally, there are a lot of groups that fall under the right.
There are libertarians, there's the religious right.
There are the neoconservatives.
There are the traditionalist conservatives and the paleocons.
And I guess these 50 or 60 lunatic Nazis would identify themselves on the right as well.
But on the left, especially recently, it's basically monolithic.
So there used to be the progressives and the blue dogs, the more conservative Democrats, the more conservative lefties.
Those blue dogs have been run out of town.
So we're just talking about different extremes of progressivism.
I don't know that it makes a lot of sense to call it an alternative.
It just seems to give the lefties, who are willing to use violence to suppress speech, an out by saying, oh, that's not us.
That's the alternative that President Trump is acknowledging.
And no less than Peter Beinart, the left-wing commentator, and the New York Times admit this as much.
A New York Times reporter at Charlottesville said, quote, Notice she said the hard left, not the alt left, not something different, but just the logical extreme of the left.
Seemed as hate-filled as the alt right.
I saw club-wielding Antifa beating white nationalists being let out of the park.
Peter Beinart, broken clocks are right two times a day, said in a recent Atlantic piece on left-wing violence, quote, Antifa's violent tactics have elicited substantial support from the mainstream left.
In the Trump era, the violent leftist movement is growing like never before, from Middlebury to Berkeley to Portland.
The use of violence to deny Trump supporters their political rights is on the rise, especially among young people.
And among other left-wing organizations, this is being heralded and they're really being cheerleaders.
The leftist magazine The Nation argued, It is to realize that it is not well combated or contained by standard liberal appeals to reason, which is why the radical left offers, quote, practical and serious responses in this political moment, the nation all but effectively endorsing violence at these rallies.
They said that the Antifa attack on white nationalist Richard Spencer was kinetic beauty.
Slate ran an approving article, which would play a little music as Richard Spencer was being punched in the head.
And the Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau said, quote, I don't care how many different songs you set Richard Spencer being punched to, I'll laugh at every one.
But now, nobody supports Nazis.
There are so few of these people.
Meanwhile, the left owns the culture.
CNN ran an article.
They've had to change the headline over the weekend.
They ran an article with the headline, quote, Activists seek peace through violence.
Well, I guess that excuses it, doesn't it?
They're just seeking peace through violence.
Absurd Orwellian newspeak.
But, of course, the mainstream left is trying to cover for these guys.
Now, Antifa, you know, it refers to anti-fascists.
It comes from these European groups in the 20s and 30s that were reds that would fight fascists in the street.
Back then, by the way, it Organized around the principle of triple oppression.
So racism, classism, and sexism were the three organizing principles.
We see this same concept today on the mainstream left, which is called intersectionality.
The idea that different groups are being oppressed for different reasons and they all need to unite together to fight the man or to fight the establishment.
I came to the U.S. in the 90s with a bunch of kids who liked punk music, basically, and they were Anarchists or communists or what have you.
They wear masks because they're cowards.
They don't want their names and identities to be revealed.
And here is an Antifa group right today explaining to CNN what they do.
Antifa is any group that's willing to stand up against fascists by any means necessary.
By any means necessary, they say, can mean outing a white nationalist at their work or to their neighbors.
Or, as we've seen recently, violence, fires, property damage, hand-to-hand combat at protests across the country.
Explain to me the reasoning behind fighting.
You have to make it so unpalatable to be doing white supremacist organizing that they no longer want to do that.
And historically, that's what's worked.
You have to put your body in the way, and you have to make it speak in a language that they understand, and sometimes that is violence.
What about people who will say that it is their right to free speech, even if it's hate speech?
We do think that communities have the right to step in and say, no, this is not acceptable in our community.
We will not stand for this.
At least they're honest.
At least these guys are honest, because that is the point.
Free speech exists.
The First Amendment exists not to protect popular speech.
You wouldn't need an amendment.
You wouldn't need a right to protect popular speech.
It exists to protect unpopular speech and even odious, hateful speech.
These guys say absolutely not.
And this is what the mainstream left wants to do.
Now, these guys say we're only targeting Nazis, we're only targeting white supremacists.
I think anybody who voted for Mitt Romney they would probably consider a white supremacist.
They define these terms very broadly, and they're not just attacking Richard Spencer, they're attacking...
Ben Shapiro.
They're attacking Milo Yiannopoulos.
They're attacking Ann Coulter.
They're attacking people who give speeches at colleges.
They're attacking social scientists like Charles Murray, who was on the losing end of violence from these people when he gave a speech.
You know, when they're not being violent, they're trying to suppress speech through the standard mechanisms of government.
So the left has been campaigning for years to overturn the Citizens United decision.
Because it grants too much political speech to people who might oppose them.
I mean, that decision actually centered around a movie that was critical of Hillary Clinton.
We see this in speech codes at Google last week, at Mozilla, the CEO of Mozilla being kicked out for holding a politically incorrect point of view.
We see it at professors at universities being fired simply for defending free speech.
This happened at my own dear old Yale.
So, whereas these Looney Tunes on the right are expressing a lot of ideas that are totally antithetical to mainstream conservatism, on the left we're seeing the logical extremes of this thought.
Here's another clip, clip seven.
We need to start giving f***ing money.
White people, give your f***ing money, your f***ing house, your f***ing property.
We need it f***ing all.
You need to reparate black and indigenous people right now.
Pay the f*** up.
It ain't just your f***ing time, it's your f***ing money, and your f***ing life is now devoted to social change.
We need to start killing people.
First off, we need to start killing the White House.
The White House must die.
The White House, your f***ing White House, your f***ing president, they must go!
F*** the White House.
F*** the White House.
We would say this is a total crazy extreme.
We don't hear anybody defending these people, but we do.
Here is a perfectly well-dressed, articulate Dartmouth College professor defending the Antifa movement.
You seem to be a very small minority here who is defending the idea of violence, considering that somebody died in Charlottesville.
Why do you defend confronting in a violent way?
Well, first, I would contest the notion that I'm that small of a minority.
I think that a lot of people recognize that when pushed, self-defense is a legitimate response to white supremacy and neo-Nazi violence.
And, you know, we've tried ignoring neo-Nazis in the past.
We've seen how that turned out in the 20s and 30s.
And the lesson of history is you need to take it with the utmost seriousness before it's too late.
We've seen the millions of deaths that have come from not taking it seriously enough.
And we can see that really the way that white supremacy grows, the way that neo-Nazism grows, is by becoming legitimate, becoming established, becoming everyday, family-friendly, wear khakis instead of hoods.
And the way to stop that is what people did in Boston, what people did in Charlottesville.
Pull the emergency brake and say, you can't make this normal.
Richard.
The key word here is violence.
Listen to how insidious this is, how he's redefining violence.
Now, Antifa didn't organize in response to Charlottesville.
They've been around a lot longer than Charlottesville, but they're not reacting to physical violence.
They're reacting to a redefinition of speech as violence.
So they're saying, not only does speech Call people to violence.
Or not only does speech create an environment that is more conducive to violence, what they're saying is that speech is literally violence.
And we see this at all levels on universities, all the way up through corporate America and through the government.
There are such things as microaggressions.
The reason they define speech this way is because by calling it aggression, it justifies an aggressive and violent response.
We saw this even with Richard Spencer.
I am no fan of Richard Spencer.
I think what he does is destructive to the right and to the country.
But here's what they did to him when he was just speaking to a cameraman.
- What? - It's Pepe's become kind of a symbol.
- No! - No! - Total coward comes up with his hood on with a mask over his face and sucker punches this guy while he's talking and giving an interview.
And it's so easy to say, well, I can't shed too many tears for some Nazi getting punched in the head.
But these guys malign everybody on the right as Nazis.
Here's them talking to a guy who has defended our country.
He's a military veteran.
Listen to how they speak to him.
Let's get to the end of the day.
I think they might be a Nazi.
Woo!
What do you guys think you are here, Jack?
What do you believe in?
Why do you think this is so important to him?
I feel like the English came back.
Uh, I'm sorry.
The city was founded on Liberty!
What are you doing?!
And do you think that this is gonna be- That's probably why this military veteran defended our country in Afghanistan,
is so that criminal, lefty, hippie-looking thugs could call him a Nazi and shout him down while he's defending free speech.
Absolutely unbelievable.
And props to the editing team for getting every single one of those.
And amazing.
I mean, I don't know how they got all of those obscenities out of that, because the way these people speak is every third word I think it's the only word they know, because to write well is to think clearly, and they can do neither.
With that, we have to bring on our panel.
We're very lucky today.
We have Antonia Okafor, Amanda Prestigiacomo, and Jacob Berry, even Jacob Berry.
Antonia, President Trump was pilloried for appearing to draw an equivalence between these two groups, the Nazis, the neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and Antifa.
Is that defensible?
Are they two sides of the same coin, or is one side worse?
Yeah, well, I think, personally, I do think that they are on the same playing field.
Why?
And actually, I think Antifa's worse in the fact that legitimate sources like CNN are saying that it's okay, you know, peace through violence.
I mean, who says that?
CNN apparently.
Al Jazeera apparently.
So I think it's really worse because it's basically going to become a thing where, just like the Dartmouth professor, where he's saying it's khakis instead of hoodies.
Well, same thing on Antifa's side, where they basically are legitimizing this and making it a normal site for someone to harass and harm someone because they think they're a racist or a sexist and misogynist.
I mean, it's getting really bad.
So the fact of the matter is, I could be considered a racist, sexist, misogynist.
Well, you are.
That's separate.
That's separate with you, Antony.
But I see in general somebody like you, of course.
Absolutely.
So yeah, I think it is legitimate.
I don't think what President Trump said was far off.
I think people are just blowing it out of proportion.
People were hurt on both sides.
If people want to see violence, look at UC Berkeley and what happened there.
I mean, and those weren't even White supremacists there who were hurt from Antifa.
At Berkeley, we saw people setting things on fire, breaking windows, hurling water bottles full of urine, throwing rocks, macing people.
And you're right.
I don't know anybody who was defending these Nazis in Charlottesville or these white supremacists, but we have every single person on the left defending Antifa.
We have the major institutions, CNN, The mainstream news outlets.
Unbelievable.
Jacob, the media finally are beginning to cover Antifa.
They've been silent about them the whole time.
They've been wreaking havoc on political rallies.
Is it because of President Trump?
Is it because he called out the alt-left in that speech?
Is it 4-D chess on the part of the president?
Or would they have been covering this anyway?
No, I think, because you saw whenever they were assaulting speakers at college campuses, at Berkeley and so on, radio silence from the mainstream media.
I'm sorry, I can't hear Jacob.
uh uh trump calling out the alt-left specifically i think that uh they uh that the mainstream media would not have covered this at all had trump said nothing because even chris como he sent out that tweet comparing antifa to the the veterans who stormed normandy what was he thinking why would you even suggest that there is absolutely no comparison whatsoever Absolutely.
I do not think the veterans who stormed Normandy, I don't think the men who took the cliffs looked like that sorry John Lennon lookalike.
And notice our veterans, they don't wear masks.
They proudly show who they are.
These Antifa cowards, they wear hoods and handkerchiefs to cover up their faces.
Absolutely.
Now Amanda, we all agree we've got to oppose Antifa.
Can we oppose these guys, these criminals, without making common cause with Nazis?
Is there any way to do it without aligning ourselves with these other people that we also want to have nothing to do with?
Yeah, that's such a ridiculous line from the left.
They're saying that if you call it Antifa, you're condoning neo-Nazis, which is absurd.
You know, the media and Democrats are basically off the hook when it comes to Antifa, which is really disturbing.
Anyone, you know, even semi-associated with the right is being asked to condemn them every five seconds over and over and over repeatedly.
That's why Antifa is such a big threat, because nobody's being asked to condemn them, and they're kind of condoning this behavior, like those CNN pieces, which is in other major outlets where they're basically condoning the violence.
And like you said before, this has been happening for a long time.
This has been happening on college campuses, and they've said nothing until President Trump called them by name.
I think he should have called them by name in his first statement.
But still, because he called them by name, finally the media are being forced to cover them.
And the coverage is honestly really weak.
Why don't we tell CNN to disavow?
They always say, in politics, if you're defending, you're losing.
You have to always be on offense.
And Republicans all the time have to disavow these miniature...
Vanishingly small minorities of groups who say hateful things that they've never met before.
Why doesn't the New York Times have to disavow Antifa?
Or a Democratic politician, just one.
Can they disavow them?
Honestly, I haven't seen hardly anyone disavow this on the left, but every Republican has come out against these 20...
By the way, the neo-Nazis, that was a national rally in Charlottesville.
They had 200 people.
There's like a ton of these guys.
Antifa's at every college campus.
They're everywhere, and yet we can just condone that and not be asked to condemn them.
It's ridiculous.
But the left love that.
They just find one or two little Nazis, one incident, and all of a sudden all of the right is associated with them.
Meanwhile, these awful events at colleges and elsewhere have been going on for two years, and the media absolutely mumm.
But that's what they are, that darn mainstream media.
Okay, we have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Now, what we would love for you to do is come on over to thedailywire.com, and then you can watch the rest of this excellent panel of deplorables there.
It's only $10 a month, $100 a year.
You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show.
Better than all of that, you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
This Leftist Tears Tumbler is the greatest tumbler I've ever owned because just regular old tumblers or regular old mugs, they don't keep my Leftist Tears chilled and delicious.
But this, this will keep your Leftist Tears hot or cold, always salty.
So go over right now, dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
Okay, we've got to get into other news, but still speaking of violence, inventor Elon Musk is leading a group of 116 specialists from 26 countries to call for a global ban on killer robots. inventor Elon Musk is leading a group of 116 specialists So, Amanda, the sun has disappeared from the sky.
Nazis and communists are fighting in the streets.
Killer robots are on the horizon.
Is the end nigh?
Yeah, there's so much hysteria.
I don't know a ton about these killer robots, and that's kind of the thing.
I don't think anybody knows a ton about this.
It's kind of reminiscent of global warming a little bit, like the hysteria around it, so then they can kind of do whatever they want.
So basically, I just hate everything about this story.
I hate technology.
I hate that there are things we don't really know about, and that we're just creating things without thinking of repercussions.
And then I also hate that there's this globalist agenda to some big We're good to
go.
That it's inevitable that every country is going to get a nuke.
You can't keep a lid on this technology.
It seems like we're trying to do the same thing.
And, by the way, we've done a pretty good job with nuclear non-proliferation, given how long it's been since the technology was invented.
Are these killer robots inevitable, or can we stop the technology before the Terminator begins?
Well, the irony is a lot of these tech moguls, they would be the guys who would actually create these killer robots.
So I think that every year, like at least once or twice a year, one of these tech CEOs comes out and they say it.
I honestly think it's a distraction.
They just come out when everything's high pressure, when the left is going crazy or whatever.
They come out, because most of them are on the left, they come out and they complain about a robot apocalypse.
Then all of a sudden the headlines are, Elon Musk warns of robot apocalypse. - So you think it's a distraction?
I totally think it's a distraction.
Wow.
I love the conspiracies coming out of Jake and Eric.
Could be, though.
I wouldn't put it past them.
Antonia, you are the weapons expert on the panel today.
Now, is it safer for us to try to get rid of these weapons or have a global ban, or would it be safer to have responsible actors all have them so that we don't use them against each other?
In a phrase, should we say, more killer robots, less crime?
Mm-hmm.
Are you trying to get me to say that weapon-free zones are a good thing?
The gun activists will never be okay with that.
You know what?
It's just the reality of it.
And, I mean, the same thing, like, reality that gun owners are going to keep their guns.
Americans are going to keep their guns.
There's going to be weapons and guns.
So at least be on the right side of it and make sure that the ones who shouldn't be having guns Weapons don't.
So I think it kind of goes with everything.
I kind of think also it's funny, you know, me being a gun rights activist with Antifa, bringing it back, of course, that these same people are the people who probably would be against me having a firearm or any weapon of any kind.
But it's okay for them, or being able to do it because peace through violence is okay, as long as it's not with violence.
Of course, and they're going to defend you, Ant.
You don't need to be able to defend yourself.
They've got you covered.
Just let them handle it.
What could possibly go wrong?
Absolutely.
That was exactly what, so I wrote a New York Times piece on that, and that is what almost every person of the New York Times audience would say.
It's like, you don't even need a gun.
Why do you even?
And then they're like, you know what?
Antifa is great.
Antifa is so great.
But you really don't need a gun.
On college campuses, Antifa is there, but you really don't need a gun.
Not a hint of cognitive dissonance at all.
Absolutely not.
We will empower you by allowing you to empower us.
I don't know how they can resolve that, but speaking of college campuses, a group of Liberty University alumni are symbolically giving back their diplomas because they're upset that the university president, Jerry Falwell Jr., supports President Trump.
Now, Antonia, you can't actually give back a degree, so when these kids apply for jobs, they'll still have their BA, they'll have everything.
Is there...
Any substance to this grandstanding?
Is there anything at all that they're doing?
Or is it just like on Facebook, they're just virtue signaling?
Well, when I heard that, first of all, I was like, who are these Liberty University graduates?
Do they know they went to Liberty University?
I mean, the type who made his nomination announcement.
I mean, it was for a reason.
Let's just say that.
It's kind of like with Baylor University when, you know, atheists go to Baylor and I see them.
And I'm just like, you really can't complain.
I mean- Did you read the brochure?
Yeah.
If you hate Baptists, I don't think you should be going there.
Same with Liberty.
If you hate anything on the conservative side, on the right side, and you think your school president is not going to be okay with the president who's a Republican.
I mean, the same thing that you said, Michael.
Yes, what a great gesture that you gave back your diploma.
But then when you go and interview for Antifa Boston, Yeah, sure, you can tell them that you're okay with that.
But then you still have your BA on the side just in case, you know, you decide that's not going to work out.
You just log into monster.com, you type in Antifa Boston.
I hope they're hiring.
That's why I got here, Michael.
It's a tough job market, you know.
Amanda, on Antonia's point, why did these kids go to Liberty?
Why did they apply?
How did they get in?
This is supposed to be all Christian, all conservative.
Is there just now no hope for colleges at all?
Or is there something in the college experience right now that just forces people into becoming leftist drones?
Yeah, I think it's the latter.
I mean, this is so funny.
I mean, they're upset that colleges are too conservative.
It's just a crazy thought, just generally speaking, that, you know, the problem in college is that it's too conservative.
I know Liberty University is obviously Christian and conservative, so they knew that going in.
But it's just all silly.
It's just peak virtue signaling.
They're handing back a piece of paper.
That's literally what they're doing.
They're not handing back their degree.
They're not doing anything.
This is like the equivalent of, you know, those 10 people that CNN covered because it was so big that spelled out resistance on the beach with sticks.
Like, this doesn't do anything.
I don't understand...
What this does.
And there are no stakes to it.
It's one thing to give back something of value, to lose something of value for your beliefs.
These guys, they're not out there protesting like the civil rights movement or other civil rights movements with their faces wide in the open, repercussions readily available, being arrested for civil disobedience.
These guys are wearing masks.
They're covering their faces.
They're running away.
Why are they all such cowards?
Well, My...
I think they just weren't hit as children, honestly.
They just needed a beating when they were younger.
These kids never got that.
You can tell just how they act.
That's the Fleck is Talk school of parenting where you get smacked with the wooden spoon.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's how I was raised.
When I hear him talk, I feel like we were raised in the same household.
No, I mean, they're just spoiled little brats who don't put anything on the line.
I mean, like you said, they cover their face.
They send back a piece of paper that...
It has nothing connected to their actual degree.
I mean, it's just all virtue signaling.
And by the way, in Boston, there were no neo-Nazis, so who were they fighting?
Right.
They're fighting a phantom.
They were fighting against free speech?
That's right.
Well, they're fighting this phantom.
That they want to be able to paint over all of the right, but really, as you said, a national protest in Charlottesville, organized for months, attracts what, a couple hundred of these idiots?
Jacob, that was clearly the incident.
Obviously a lot of these responses have come out of President Trump's response to Charlottesville.
He's had to dissolve a couple of his advisory panels.
And what is it about that response to Charlottesville that has elicited what is, without a doubt, the strongest reaction of his presidency?
I honestly think it was his tone.
I mean, he came out, we're going to grab the bull by the horns, right?
And I honestly think the mainstream media doesn't know what to do about this.
I mean, they're already against him.
They think of him as a traitor of the left.
And so they're already out against him, and they are just going crazy.
It's crazy that he is just saying, look, this is how it is.
This is what I believe.
Whether he is correct or not, that doesn't matter.
They're just going to keep slamming him and they're just going to keep reacting.
It's just putting pressure on these advisory boards.
So they saw an opening with the scariest word in the language, Nazi.
They saw an opening and they pounced on it.
It's always the boogeyman.
They always find some sort of boogeyman and this time it's Nazis.
And it's not entirely a boogeyman.
There were a couple hundred people down there.
One of them did kill a woman and hit some others.
Well, I mean in the context of how the mainstream media is reporting it.
Of course.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, we need some good news.
It's all been killer robots and Antifa and Nazis.
We need some good news and we got it.
President Trump has disbanded a federal global warming advisory board.
Now, Amanda, is this evidence that President Trump might stay the course even as Steve Bannon leaves the White House?
A lot of the Republicans who were there in the beginning have left the White House.
Is this hopefully a sign of hope for the future?
Yeah, I think it's a great sign.
I mean, Trump has governed pretty conservatively.
I mean, I know he says things that the media pounce on.
But he's not, I mean, he's pretty mainstream conservative, and then he'll take things a step even further right than most presidents like this and disband this dumb climate advisory board that would implement some really harmful agenda policy.
So, yeah, I think it's a great step, and I love this kind of stuff from Trump.
This will keep me on Team Trump, even if the media go hysterical over things he says.
And then one other point about what Jacob was saying last time, how the media have just overreacted to President Trump's statement.
If you look at Mitt Romney, what he said about Antifa, he basically said that they were fine, like this was a fine group.
And that just, again, shows that the media is not accustomed to a Republican actually speaking out and speaking truth and saying things that are unpopular but true.
That's right.
They love Republicans who lose.
They're always, in retrospect, they're always very, oh, they were great men, those Republicans, who in no way threaten my political agenda.
Now, that is the worry about this political agenda.
Is that President Trump is going to make some Arnold Schwarzenegger pivot to the left?
That's basically what Steve Bannon is saying is going to happen now.
Jacob, or rather, Antonio, I'd like to hear from you first on this.
What do you think?
Is he about to pivot to the left?
Or is Steve Bannon just upset that he left the White House?
Oh, yeah, I don't...
To be honest, though, as a conservative, I just don't think...
I mean, everybody who's not conservative, who's not a true conservative, really, especially since they're mostly populist, they already have a lot of authoritarian in them.
So I could disagree anyways with a lot of his policies and what he would implement.
So I probably think he's already going to the left anyways.
It was always going to happen.
You thought it was basically built into his campaign.
Yeah, it's already happening.
That's the type of thing.
But, I mean, like, again, the conservatives didn't win the White House.
Populists did.
So we get the morsels, you know, the crumbs that we can get.
Fair enough.
You say, well, it isn't Hillary.
We get a little deregulation.
At least we don't get new regulation.
Take what we can get, but don't put our faith in princes.
Jacob?
Why would President Trump choose to do this now?
There's all this craziness going on.
Did President Trump disband this panel, this advisory board, because of the news cycle, because the news cycle has been so against him?
Or is he just holding course and doing it to poke a finger in the media's eye?
I could see either one of those being true.
I actually think it's a little bit of both.
President Trump, when he backed out of the Paris Climate Accords, he destroyed their religion.
Scientism and environmentalism has replaced faith for the left, and I honestly think that he was planning to do this, and he thought, hey, this is a perfect time.
I'm getting all this bad publicity because of my speech for what happened with Charlottesville, so I'm going to do this right now, and it'll change the headlines away, and I'll just be able to go back.
Because really, climate change, it's indefensible.
I mean, there's some points that are accurate about it or whatever.
I agree.
I think it is indefensible that Al Gore would choose to heat up this earth.
It's really, really reckless of him to do that.
Yes, with all that Al Jazeera money.
So I do see that.
It's not that President Trump is trying to change the headline to get a decent headline.
He's just trying to get the media mad about something else.
And that's what he's good at.
It's like the Pied Piper.
He plays it and they follow right along.
4-D chess endorsed by Jacob Aery.
Okay, panel, it's been very nice to have you.
Antonio Okafor, Amanda Presto Giacomo, and Jacob Aery.
Now it is time.
time, I have to put on my smart glasses because it's time for the final thought.
President Trump's drawing of moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and Antifa thugs seemed tone deaf at the time because it miscalculated the enormity of the offenses.
Antifa maced people, hurled rocks at them, beat protesters, sure, but a neo-Nazi killed a woman with his car.
Of course, both sides are odious.
Yet while Republicans and conservatives at all levels, from the grassroots to the White House, swiftly condemned the criminals and kooks on their side, Democrats have kept virtually mum on Antifa.
Because while neo-Nazism and white nationalism remain a fringe element on the right, A vanishingly small alternative to everybody else.
Leftist violence to suppress speech is widespread and even encouraged by cheerleaders not on some fringe alt-left, but right square in the mainstream.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Come back tomorrow.
We'll do it all again.
▲
Export Selection