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Aug. 22, 2017 - The Michael Knowles Show
41:01
Ep. 14 - Safe-Space Foreclosures: Colleges Pay Price For Coddling

Campus hotbeds of snowflake appeasement see enrollment collapse. Michael analyzing the costs of coddling students. Plus, Roaming Millennial, Allie Stuckey, and Antonia Okafor join the Panel of Deplorables to talk Trump's Afghanistan strategy, hostile work environments, and Steve Mnuchin's rich wife. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Two years after Mizzou caved to random student protests and demands for its president to resign, the university is reporting a 35% drop in enrollment and other huge consequences.
We'll analyze the costs of coddling.
Plus, roaming millennial Antonia Okafor and conservative millennial Ali Stuckey on an all-woman panel of deplorables to talk Afghanistan, the health effects of a mean boss on employee health, and Steve Mnuchin's rich wife.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
So we all remember the Mizzou protests of 2015.
They actually were that far, far ago, 2015, 2016.
And the student body president, Peyton Head, started this all because he posted on Facebook about an incident that happened to him.
He was walking down the street apparently and some guys in the back of a pickup truck yelled a racial slur at him.
He posts this on Facebook.
All hell breaks loose.
There are massive protests all over the campus.
Five days later, by the way, the Chancellor of Mizzou apologized.
He addressed this incident specifically.
He said it's totally unacceptable.
Doesn't matter.
The protests have already started.
I think five days after that, or a week after that, another student, Jonathan Butler, decided to go on a hunger strike.
And then students were insisting that the president resign, send a formal letter acknowledging his white male privilege.
Ultimately, the chancellor had to resign.
And ironically, one of the reasons for the hunger strike was also that graduate students had some issue with their health insurance that was caused by Obamacare.
So instead of protesting the government, which I'm sure all of them supported, they decided to protest their own university.
But the straw that broke the camel's back is that the football team stopped practicing.
The football team brings in all the money to Mizzou.
So at that point, the president apologizes.
That's not enough.
The chancellor of the university apologizes.
The university just implodes because of a Facebook post and these students protesting.
We're not really quite sure what.
A variety of incidents of bias and prejudice or what have you.
Now, the most famous incident of this, of course, was the professor Melissa Click.
Some student journalists showed up to one of the protests, and this professor, this little professor, comes out of nowhere and starts yelling at them, tells them to leave.
I think actually we have the video.
Hi, Media.
Can I talk to you?
No, you need to get out.
You need to get out.
No, I don't.
You need to get out.
I actually don't.
All right.
Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?
I need some muscle over here.
Back up if you're with the media!
You need to back up!
You need to back up!
Respect the students back up!
I am a student.
They have asked you to respect their space.
Move back!
Okay, well then we will just block you.
You need to stab your body here now!
Students, can you tell him how much you want to go?
You don't have a right to take our photos.
No!
No! No!
Go!
Now, I understand why you're confused, you see, because today all we hear about is how important reporters are, how attacks on journalism are threatening our democracy.
The Washington Post says democracy dies in darkness.
I understand your confusion.
The difference is that now a Republican is president.
You see, when a Republican is president, then the news media are the most important people in the country.
They speak truth to power.
They hold people accountable.
But this is very different than when Democrats are in the White House.
When Democrats are in the White House, reporters need to go away and professors call in muscle to beat them up and get them out of student protests.
So eventually, eventually, Melissa Click, this professor, was fired.
And finally, it actually took a while to get her fired.
And then she did an interview a little bit later.
Now, was she remorseful?
Were you appalled by your behavior when you watched the video?
I was embarrassed by my behavior.
I believe it doesn't represent who I am as a person.
It doesn't represent the good I was doing there that day.
And, you know, certainly I wish I could do it over again.
He introduced himself only as media and came at me with a camera.
That's a camera, not a weapon.
Sure.
But it also wasn't a big camera.
It could have been a phone-sized camera.
It wasn't a, again, didn't say professional journalist to me.
Is calling for muscle out here respectful?
It was a mistake.
I never, ever meant that as a call for violence.
It's just one of those things that was said in a heated moment.
Yeah, I didn't think that bring some muscle over here was a call for violence.
When are muscles ever associated with violence?
And I also love in her apology, in her quasi-almost apology, she says that the trouble with the video was it doesn't represent the good that I was doing.
You people just don't understand the good.
And the reason she kicked the reporter out, it's not because he's a reporter.
It's because she didn't know if he was a total hack.
She didn't have a big CBS camera with Whether it were ABC or New York Times, so she wasn't sure that they would give favorable coverage to the protest.
It could have been one of those dreadful right-wing journalists.
So, what is the result of all of this?
At Mizzou, this is just being reported today because Mizzou is a public university, so they have to report these things.
Freshman enrollment is down 35%.
This is a massive drop.
Overall enrollment down 2,000.
This is the lowest enrollment since 1999.
Unbelievable.
Seven dorms at Mizzou have been taken out of service.
Seven dormitory buildings.
No longer in service because they don't have people to fill them up.
They've laid off 100 staff.
They're going to cut 300 more through attrition and through retirement.
They've already cut library staff, although I assume that nobody at that university is using a library anymore.
They cut 50 workers last year already in maintenance and grounds crew.
And it turns out that letting the lunatics run the asylum is not the best idea.
And this isn't only at Mizzou.
This has happened all over the country.
Sadly, this happened at my university, Yale, as well.
In 2015, a campus organization sent out an email detailing which Halloween costumes the students could wear and which they couldn't wear.
So then a separate professor sent an email out clarifying and saying, you know, perhaps it's the case that Yale students are adult enough to choose their own clothing, to choose their own Halloween costumes.
This also set off an insane reaction on campus, and it prompted this response famously.
Other people have rights too, not just- Walk away.
Walk away.
Walk away.
It doesn't deserve to be listened to.
To create an unsafe behavior for all- Stay quiet!
For all Sillman schools.
Do you understand that?
As your position as master, it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Sillman.
You have not done that.
By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master.
Do you understand that?
No, I don't agree with that.
Then why the f**k did you accept the position?
Who the f**k hired you?
I have a different vision than you.
You should step down!
If that is what you think about being a master, you should step down!
It is not about creating an intellectual space!
It is not!
Do you understand that?
It's about creating a home here!
You are not doing that!
You're supposed to be our advocate!
You should be a fit, Ben Lasse, when you hear Afroko say that she didn't know how to create a safe place for her freshman exfilment!
How do you explain that?
These freshmen come here, they think this is what Yale is?
Do you hear that?
They're gonna leave, they're gonna transfer because you are a poor steward of the community!
Oh, that is so painful to watch.
I remember the first time I saw that, Michael, and it's a scar.
It is unbelievable.
There's also this irony to it, which is she says, who the F hired you?
And it turns out her name is Gerilyn Luther.
She was on the committee that appointed him to that position.
So she hired him, which is really great.
Absolutely unbelievable.
It's not about creating an intellectual space on campus.
It's about making me feel comfortable and safe and God knows what else.
So what did the Yale administration do?
Surely that student was expelled.
Surely her friends were expelled.
Surely they burned her dorm to the ground, right?
No.
They pushed those professors out of their jobs.
Those professors are no longer at Yale.
The administration did nothing to support them.
And some of the students who were seen protesting there received awards at graduation.
So Yale is the only Ivy League school this year to report an increased acceptance rate.
Now, unlike Mizzou, Yale doesn't need to disclose its records, so we don't really know what's hidden in there.
But it's the only one of these universities to report that it increased the number of students that it took in this year.
One wonders if part of the reason for that is they didn't know how many people would say no.
Very often, if you apply to Yale, you're also applying to Harvard or Princeton or Dartmouth or whatever.
And it seems to me perfectly reasonable that they increased that rate because they thought that there would be a backlash to this.
And if we knew what their records were, I think probably we would see that.
I was back at Yale a couple months ago.
Every student, regardless of political affiliation, all of the alumni, they were disgusted by what was going on and the failure of the administration.
Now, not all universities are like this.
There is a magical university in Indiana called Purdue, and the former governor there, Mitch Daniels, He's the president of Purdue.
There was some of this craziness that happened on campus around the time that this was happening at Mizzou and at Yale.
And he invited the social justice club of students into his office.
They said to him specifically, this is not a negotiation.
Here are our demands.
His response to them was, you're right about one thing.
This is not a negotiation.
He essentially told these kids to sit down and shut up and do their schoolwork and try to graduate.
After he took that strong stance, you never heard from these kids again.
UChicago is another great school.
In their letter to freshman students, in their letter to incoming students, they took this on.
They preempted this whole issue.
Quote,"...our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces." Where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.
Wonderful defense of the academy out of University of Chicago, of intellectual freedom there, and we haven't heard a peep from them since.
Turns out when the adults stand up to these kids, they sit down and listen.
Now, as long as these elite universities are going to cave to students...
I think they're going to expect more damage to their bottom line, just like we can see at Mizzou and we can infer from Yale.
And we're going to see a next generation of allegedly educated Americans who look like this.
Take your Congress to the United States.
Stop talking to us like...
Why are you talking to us like children?
I can't.
I love that video so much.
It's so awful, but I love it so much.
Okay, with that, we have to bring on our panel...
I am so lucky today.
I've been asking for this since the show started, and we finally have an all-woman panel of deplorables.
We have roaming millennial, conservative millennial Allie Stuckey, and Antonia Okafor.
How wonderful.
Now, we were all in college relatively recently.
Allie, what is the best strategy to stop all of the nonsense on campus?
Okay, I'm so sorry, but I have not heard anything that we've talked about for the past three minutes, and so I'm still going to need, like, a little more context.
I have no idea what this conversation has been so far.
That's fair enough.
You know, I've been here for the last three minutes, and I still don't really know what's causing all of it.
We're talking about the craziness on college campuses, the triggly puffs.
Craziness on college campuses.
Yeah.
And how we know that the universities that have been successful are the ones that have put their foot down and stopped these kids from wreaking havoc.
So why aren't the other universities, like Yale and Mizzou, why don't they have adults step up, even just to protect their own jobs?
Well, I think it's the scariness that identity politics presents because it's not really become about what's logical, what's right, what's wrong anymore.
It used to just kind of be a given that if you were in a position of authority, you get to dictate what a student does or does not do.
But now our identities are so tied to these ideas of being tolerant or being empathetic or compassionate, all of these words that liberals have completely monopolized.
That we're almost scared to assert any kind of definition of right or wrong because everything's relative, everything is subjective, and it just creates this kind of atmosphere and environment of anarchy, and that's exactly what we're seeing at places like Mizzou, at Yale, at Harvard, when there is no truth.
Everyone lives in this post-truth world, and you see the behavior follow suit, unfortunately.
Absolutely.
And there's also this identity issue of the professor and the student.
Those used to be identities that you would have on campus.
And as a student, your professor was your better.
But now there is a notion that we have these other intersectional identities that give some kid the right to shriek profanities at her professor.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
And you're right, the idea of authority has even been blurred.
Every line of identity has been blurred, whether you're talking about gender roles or politics, but especially this idea of authority.
And it used to be that questioning authority was a good thing, somewhere where you could go to a college and you would be intellectually challenged.
But now, instead of going into a classroom and expecting to be intellectually challenged by a professor, you are intellectually coddled.
And so not only are we skewing this idea of authority when it comes to administration being able to tell us what's right or what's wrong, but also when we walk into a classroom as a liberal millennial, we expect to be able to tell our professors what they should be able to tell us.
The students are the ones who now dictate, okay, this is what I want to hear, this is what I want to learn.
If you say anything outside of what I already believe, I'm going to protest and cry about it.
Right, the teachers are learning from their students.
The teachers are there just to learn from these students.
I agree with these blurring identities.
Even just these glasses have dramatically blurred the difference in identity between me and Rachel Maddow.
Antonia, you are a campus carry activist.
So if these kids are incapable of choosing their own Halloween costumes without bursting into tears and throwing temper tantrums, isn't that the best argument yet to keep guns out of their hands?
I can't tell you how many times I, you know, I was covering campus issues, campus reform, I was a campus reform correspondent with Leadership Institute before the campus carry activists, and it's really hard to know what's going on on college campuses and then at the same time say, well, they're not children, they're adults, and just they can actually take care of themselves.
Now, I will say, though, the people who are going to actually have a gun on campus are They're not these, you know, liberal snowflakes.
I'm going to say that.
They're most likely not going to have a gun.
They don't want a gun and they don't want me to have a gun either.
So I will differentiate between those two because most of the time it's someone who's responsible, who can take someone else's opinion and accept it and not use their firearm to handle the situation like these professors believe is going to happen.
It has not happened yet.
So yeah, with that whole conversation, I think it comes down to being an adult.
Obviously, we're taking these people because they think that just because they are intellectually mature enough, they're also emotionally mature enough.
I think that needs to be a part of the equation when they're accepting people.
And of course, the kids who are going to be bringing guns and who are going to be responsible enough to have a concealed carry permit are probably not these kids having temper tantrums over their chicken fingers.
But perhaps, you know, people always say, is there any responsible gun control legislation that you would...
Support.
And absolutely, I would support making sure those kids don't get guns.
I don't want any of those kids to have guns.
Everyone else, fine by me.
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We will be right back.
Last night, President Trump gave a bombshell speech Luckily, he was not blinded from looking at the eclipse yesterday, which is such a wonderful Trumpian move.
They tell you don't look at the eclipse.
He just stares right at it, stares down that fake news media.
Totally fine.
Didn't go blind.
So he gives this speech last night to announce his new strategy in Afghanistan.
Let's play it.
The American people are weary of war without victory.
Nowhere is this more evident than with the war in Afghanistan.
My original instinct was to pull out.
And historically, I like following my instincts.
But all my life, I've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk In the Oval Office, the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable.
We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities.
Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on.
Now, Breitbart, under the new leadership, the new old leadership of recently departed White House strategist Steve Bannon, is hammering Trump for this.
They're blaming this on McMaster.
They're saying that this is more similar to Barack Obama's strategy than to some new plan.
Roaming, is this the beginning of the long-awaited left-wing turn for President Trump?
Well, this is something that I actually feel really conflicted about.
So I'm very much not a neoconservative.
I don't believe that we should be exporting democracy.
I don't believe that we should be nation building.
And that's something that President Trump campaigned against.
And, you know, to be fair, that is something that he said that we weren't going to be doing in this speech, right?
He said this is not going to be nation building.
However, sounds a lot like nation building, which is just hard because, you know, if you actually listen to what the generals are saying, and obviously they should know best about the situation, they don't want to Immediate and full with all.
And, you know, we see, looking at ISIS, what happens when the U.S. kind of leaves and creates a power vacuum.
I think what we don't want right now is to take a really bad situation and create, you know, ISIS part two.
So, I mean, it's hard because I feel like right now everyone is criticizing Trump, right?
The left, the right.
There's this weird I totally understand that.
And I agree.
I'm not criticizing him for this just yet.
I'm not sure that this isn't a good idea.
Ali, is anybody on the right happy with this strategy?
Is there anybody out there who's supportive of it?
I think there are a couple things that, at least as a part of this speech, there are some conservatives that are satisfied with.
This is including myself.
One, that he was strategically shrewd.
He didn't talk about the number of troops.
He mentioned victory four times.
He only talked about one strategy that could lead us to victory, and that is being a little bit harder on Pakistan, which I did appreciate.
And then I also appreciated that for really for maybe the first time that he owned that he has evolved in a position from the time from before he took office until now that he realized that being in the open office making decisions is a little bit different than making decisions on Twitter from the outside.
I really appreciated that kind of peek into his humility.
And it made me feel like whether you agree with his decision or not, that he did very strategically and very deliberately think about the best strategy going forward.
And something else that I appreciated about this that I think other conservatives appreciate too, I know Paul Ryan said it in his town hall, that we don't want all of this work for the past 16 years that we've done in Afghanistan to be completely in vain.
I don't know exactly what the catastrophic results would be if we completely pulled out.
That kind of seems like the easiest or the best thing to do right now.
However, we don't want to forsake the goal that we had when we went in in the first place.
We don't want it all to be for naught.
So I appreciated those parts of it, whether or not you agree with the strategy.
And that's a great observation about him changing his mind and kind of admitting to it.
He's obviously changed his mind before, but this is the first time he said, I looked at this a little more closely and my views on this have changed.
I suppose that's a change from Barack Obama.
And also he hasn't offered timetables.
And a big sign that says terrorists come in in two and a half months because he won't let them know when we're going to pull our troops out.
But you raise a good question.
What is the point here?
Antonia, we've been in Afghanistan for 150,000 years.
What is the end of this war?
What does victory look like?
I think that's the whole problem here is that People never knew what the end looks like.
Barack Obama, when he decided, okay, let's pull out, well, most people didn't like the idea that our actual military had some semblance of foreign policy.
They didn't see that in history working out.
And then also strategically, that didn't work out anyways, because we see what happened in Iraq, that didn't work out well.
People like ISIS just took that place when we left.
So, or when a foreign country left.
So, I think it's that people are upset with that, but more on the libertarian side, I think a lot of libertarians are upset just because that was the one thing with Donald Trump that they could, you know, get behind.
You know, that he was going to finally leave, we were going to stop the nation building.
I mean, I also think that there's a lot of criticism still with him saying that it's not nation building, that it's You know, it's eliminating terrorists.
I think a lot of libertarians are still believe that's still nation building.
So I think with the conservatarians, the young generation that tend to lean more libertarian, especially on this issue, he's going to have a hard time in the future.
It's going to be brought up when he is running for president again.
Of course, and much like his predecessor who ran against war, it's a little more complicated with Barack Obama because he decided that Iraq was a bad war and Afghanistan was a good war for some reason.
But much like his predecessor who ran against war, it seems that President Trump, when he looks at geopolitics, is understanding that we need to have a military presence in more places than he would perhaps prefer.
Roaming, is this just more Obama?
Are we getting Barack Obama's third term in foreign policy?
Well, I certainly hope not.
And like Ali mentioned, the fact that he is keeping some things that are more strategic private, you know, not announcing to our enemies, hey, BT Dubs, if you just sit tight until this date, we'll be gone so you can, you know, kind of do whatever you want.
I think that is an improvement.
However, you know, whether it's Obama or Bush, I think The US, in terms of its military presence right now, hasn't been able to kick the urge to engage in nation building.
And what's funny is that if we look at places like Europe, post-World War II, or even South Korea, there are success stories of nation building.
It can be done, but the thing is, it takes decades.
It's not a four-year thing, it's not a six-year thing.
As we've seen in Afghanistan, it's not even a 16-year thing.
So I think Trump, when he's looking at this, he really needs to ask himself, How long does he think the American people need to be committed to supporting Afghanistan?
I mean, obviously Obama thought longer.
Like he said before, for some reason, Iraq, that was to be decided to pull out.
But that's something that the president actually needs to ask himself because, I mean, if he doesn't end it now, there's a very small chance the next president is going to end it if we look at what's happened for the past 16 years.
And they don't even have oil.
That's the worst part.
We can't even take the oil.
Sad.
So a new survey out of RAND is showing that two-thirds of U.S. workers experience mismatch between their desired working environment and their actual working environment.
The U.K. found that a supportive boss can cut down the amount of hostile workplace interactions by half.
Now this reminded me of an appearance I made on the Ben Shapiro show.
Can we play that?
$400 for Michael Mills.
I gave him 4 to 1 odds for $100.
And I'm going to write here in the data line for ignoring data.
And then I'm going to just hand this over to you.
We'll take a picture for the cameras.
That's really incredible.
There we go.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
No!
I've been wondering why my health has been feeling like that.
I've got to talk to Ben about that.
Maybe I'll go to a doctor.
Now, it occurs to me that all of us spend most of our work days talking into a camera, but that means probably that we have no expertise on this issue at all, and that has never stopped us at the Michael Knowles Show from pontificating about something.
So, Allie, is work getting harder or are workers getting softer?
Okay, that's a great question, but let me tell you the part of this article that bothered me the most, and maybe you're going to get to this, so I'm sorry if I'm jumping the gun.
I defer to you, in all things.
The part of the article that bothered me the most was that it looked at, okay, is it better to be in a job where you're not happy or this unhealthy work environment, or is it better to be totally unemployed?
And to answer...
I think it's that the worker is getting softer because the argument that they made is that it's not necessarily worse to have no job.
That you might be psychologically better off not having a job and living off your welfare check than actually making money for yourself.
That is so sad to me that that is our highest priority that people are psychologically content and happy and that they're not challenged at all whether they have a job or not.
That they're actually almost encouraging unemployment for your well-being rather than making a living.
That's where our priorities are as a society and that makes me really sad.
And they're not the first people to do this.
People have been talking, a lot of tech giants are talking about this, but even conservatives like Charles Murray are talking about in our new economy where we'll have more wealth generated by fewer people, maybe we need a universal basic income where people stay home and they get paid by the government not to work.
Antonia, is this an argument for the universal basic income?
Because I noticed that I can't sit around and drink martinis here and watch reruns of All in the Family, but I can do that when I'm not working.
Is that a good argument?
Oh yeah.
I still remember when I interned in the Senate in 2014 and one of the committee hearings, they were like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad Obamacare is happening now.
We only have to work 30 days a week.
That mom who's been wanting to start that knitting business or something can finally do that now.
She can finally do that because at 40, it was just too much for her.
I put my knitting business off for years.
Exactly.
Everyone knows that's so 90s.
There's no profits in that.
The margins are so slim.
So, exactly.
I mean, that's the whole point is that people are rewarding those who don't work.
I think it's hard because we see people like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who, if you look at their history, they actually left school and used that free time in order to be able to start their businesses.
I mean, that's great if you went to Harvard or, you know, Michael, if you went to Yale.
I mean, you can write books where you don't actually have to write them.
Luckily, I was able to leave before all the triggly puff and the shrieking happened.
So if that were going on, I probably would have left too.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Yeah, we'll see.
I have a feeling that's not what would happen.
But you and your, like I said before, your Ivy League privilege, unless you have that Ivy League privilege, then you should be working and working full-time and stop lowering the hours as if it's going to help anything.
It's not.
If you don't have an idea by now, it's probably not going to go into fruition.
I remember this.
Sounds like you're trying to oppress the proletariat there.
I don't know about that.
Oh, I think I'm fine.
That's Antonia's full-time job is just oppressing the proletariat.
But this does remind me, during the Obamacare debates, one of the arguments, I think Nancy Pelosi said this, that now you've always wanted to go be a poet, but you have to do your job to get health insurance, and now you can finally be a poet.
And she must have forgotten that All poetry now is terrible, and most people are certainly terrible poets.
It brings up this interesting question.
From the earliest human civilizations until about five minutes ago, work was considered to be central to the human condition.
God makes Adam work in the Garden of Eden, and now are we viewing work differently as a society?
Roaming, what do you think?
Well, actually, before I started YouTube, I was doing a lot of work in human resources management and strategic leadership.
So this is actually something I have many, many opinions about.
And if you look at a bunch of surveys, like you said, RAND does some, SHRM also does some.
Millennials look for way different things than previous generations did, right?
I mean, millennials have a much higher standard in terms of work-life balance.
They're also less technically loyal to companies, right?
There's a lot more turnover.
Millennials aren't going to stay in the same company.
I have no loyalty to the Daily Wire.
Not one bit.
I send out my resumes every day.
Right?
We're in it for ourselves.
We'll take whichever job has the most benefits and the least working hours.
And I think this is...
Kind of a testament to capitalism, the fact that this is even possible due to, you know, different skills and labor sources.
But at the same time, it has made us, especially us millennials, very lazy.
And, you know, with this talk, like you said, about universal basic income, that's actually one of the worst ideas I've ever heard.
Turning all money into Play-Doh is as bad of an idea in my head.
Those are equally crazy things.
That's true.
It reminds me, during breaks from college or vacation from work or something, for the first two or three days, I'll feel great.
I'll drink my little martini and watch my own family reruns, and I feel good.
My body feels good.
By the third to fifth day, I have melded with the couch.
I have become part leather and part cushion.
And I can't move.
I'm on the brink of death.
There has to be something good for man about working.
I think that's why it's talked about in Genesis.
But I don't know.
When I am working, I'd like to be doing something else.
A terrible conflict in the heart of man.
Speaking of people who've worked a lot and made a lot of money, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, his wife, the Scottish actress Louise Linton, has gotten into Instagram fights recently over her glamorous lifestyle.
And this is causing trouble for Steve.
I, for one, am shocked, of course, that an ex-Goldman Sachs, now Treasury Secretary's rich, gorgeous actress wife, might be out of touch with the American people.
But she wrote on Instagram, quote, Do you think the U.S. government paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?
La la la.
Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband, either as an individual earner in taxes or in self-sacrifice to your country?
I'm pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day trip than you did.
This was in response to some woman taking issue with her traveling on a plane for some business trip with her husband.
Allie, does she have a point?
Okay, well, I did not like, I don't like period people bragging about their various possessions or their wealth on social media.
That's just a personal preference, especially when you hashtag all of your designers.
Like, I would love for, like, a common person like me to do that.
Like, hashtag Target, hashtag Walmart.
Hashtag old baby.
Yeah.
Yeah, hashtag the Navy, hashtag Gap to see what people say.
So was this braggadocious?
Absolutely.
Was it kind of inappropriate and tactless for the wife of a government employee?
Yes.
But she does have a point.
Does the government pay for their personal trips?
No.
Does the government pay for their work trips?
Yes.
This wasn't a day trip.
This wasn't a vacation.
This was part of work, and yes, we do pay for that.
I mean, I kind of like that she claps back a little bit, even though I didn't like her original post.
Yeah, I can see that.
Antonia, as a public official, and that is the difference that Ali's talking about, the public life and the private life, but as a public official, does Steve Mnuchin need to rein his wife in and rein his family in, or should we say that criticizing politicians' family members is off-limits and kind of stupid?
Well, first, I want to, you know, address this, that Allie has triggered me twice today.
First of all, she is wearing hoop earrings.
Second of all, she does use clapback.
I'm so sorry.
All right, let's get her arrested by the appropriation police.
I didn't even thank you for bringing that to my attention, Antonia.
Disgusting.
Awesome.
Thank you, Allie.
We'll discuss this later on Twitter.
And I will get black Twitter on you.
I will get black Twitter on you.
No!
No, they're just not starting to like me.
No, they hate me, so it's okay.
Basically, it's the same thing.
I saw that, the Instagram post.
And I just think it really just shows the core of where, unfortunately, where our society is going in America, where we are so, it's so easy for us to go and attack someone because they have money.
Like, I actually disagree with Ali.
I am okay with someone bragging.
Why?
It's because it's social media.
I mean, everyone literally is a narcissist.
That's what it's made for, right?
There to show how amazing I am or people are so if she feels like she's amazing because she's just dropping those like you know that thousand or thousand please thousands on her for me is and is that how you say it I don't know I don't have that bag but all of those great designers okay that's something for people to aspire to I love it when she's like oh what about those people in Africa Okay,
let me talk to my mom, who's African, who's Nigerian, and she's going to be like, yeah, that's the reason why I came to America, so I could aspire to be like that person.
Yeah, that's why I moved somewhere, changed my life.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The American dream, I mean, I think that still exists.
So that's what I see when I hear stuff like that.
Just why don't you look at it as something to aspire to?
To get out of...
My parents didn't come to America to be mediocre.
That's the whole thing.
My family did.
They did explicitly aspire to mediocrity.
Probably the exception, not the rule, but different strokes for different folks.
Roaming the top 1% of income earners Pay 50% of federal income taxes.
The top 20% of income earners pay 85% of income taxes.
And that's a little bit what this woman was talking about, how she pays much more in taxes than the woman who's criticizing her.
Should Americans lay off the class envy and just be happy that we don't have to pay a much higher tax burden because the rich pay all the taxes?
Definitely.
And don't get me wrong, I thought her original post was not very humble, not very vehemently.
But, you know, that woman's comment, I did think it kind of crossed the line, right?
I mean, like, I think her name is Louise mentioned, they're independently wealthy, right?
They haven't gained their wealth through this government job.
Her expensive housing was not paid for by taxpayers, so I don't really think it's anybody's business.
That being said, I think, overall, this story's kind of been hyped up, but really it's just women being catty on Instagram, which is nothing big.
That's the only reason I log on to Instagram is to watch women be catty with one another.
But you're right.
It isn't like the Clintons.
You know, this is Steve Mnuchin made his money as a banker and as a film producer.
Louise, his wife, is a Scottish film actress.
So it's not like they were just trading in government favors to make all of their money.
I think she handled it very poorly, but she's absolutely right.
She doesn't have to account to these strangers on the internet for her wardrobe that she's purchased with her own money or Her husband's own money.
I don't know about that.
Yeah, something tells me the latter.
But sure, yeah.
There are a couple now.
Man and woman have joined together to make one flesh.
You do you, Louise.
That's what we say on our panel.
Okay, I've got to say goodbye to the first and hopefully eternal all-female panel of deplorables.
We have Antonia Okafor, conservative millennial Ali Stuckey, and roaming millennial.
Now it is time for my smart glasses and the final thought.
College students have always acted like idiots since first causing trouble in 11th century Bologna.
Even medieval university students were criticized for drunken debauchery and gambling and chasing women of ill repute and ignoring their studies.
And oh god, those bright college days.
I loved them so much.
The difference then, of course, and even until the past few years, is that university administrators used to stop the kiddies from pursuing their worst impulses.
There used to be adults in the room.
Unfortunately today, the generation that broke American academia in the 1960s are now running the show.
The lunatics are running the asylum, and once great institutions of learning will continue to garner lower and lower returns, and the students that attend them will garner lower and lower returns until the adults reemerge to firmly defend order and rigor on campus.
With that, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Come back tomorrow.
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