Ep. 24 - Is The Swamp Swallowing Trump? w/ fmr. Congresswoman Nan Hayworth
Former Congresswoman Nan Hayworth discusses Steve Bannon's interview, whether the Swamp will swallow Trump, and disloyal Republicans. Then, Jacob Airey and Emily Butler join the Panel of Deplorables to debate the worst mistake in modern political history, the Pope's claim that DACA repeal is not pro-life, and Miss America's opinion on Russia collusion. Plus, a final thought on the 16th anniversary of 9/11.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Emily Butler and Jacob Berry will join the panel of deplorables to talk about the biggest mistake in modern political history, Pope Francis' implied admonition that pro-lifers must support DACA, and Miss America's opinion on Russian collusion.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
And before we do any of that, we have a sponsor.
Marshall, we got a sponsor.
We finally did it.
This is great.
We're going to possibly be able to keep the lights on on more than just selling Leftist Tears tumblers.
So this was Providence.
This was the perfect first sponsor for our show.
We talk all the time on the show about how nobody knows anything about history.
That's why all the hysterical people on the left are talking.
They always compare Trump to Hitler or the Third Reich or fall of Rome.
It's because no one ever knows anything about history other than the fall of Rome and the Third Reich.
Well, luckily, there is a great new podcast.
I really like this podcast.
I've listened to it so far.
You've got to go check out the first episode.
It's called Tides of History.
It's a new podcast from Wondery.
And the podcast is from PhD historian Patrick Wyman, who happens also to be an MMA analyst.
And he answers all of these two periods that constructed our modern world, antiquity, so the classical era, the fall of Rome, and the beginning of modernity, 1350 to 1650, the period where we see the West building on all that we have from classical antiquity and creating the modern world, creating nation states.
Where does capitalism come from?
Why did all of these governments organize in roughly the same way around roughly the same period?
Why do we have states to begin with?
How did modern trade routes get started?
How did globalization start?
What periods of globalization have already happened?
We're seeing a new period happening now, but when have they happened before and why?
And what happens when you privatize militaries?
Sounds spooky.
You'll have to listen to find out.
All of these questions can be traced back to the period of time during the Renaissance and just before the Enlightenment.
So what Patrick does, it's so good.
He takes what could be really dry history.
I remember I was a history major and you always hear that history is just one fact after another.
He takes what could be really dry, boring history and he weaves it into really engaging narratives.
I listen to it when I'm driving and it's a great way.
It's really hard to take the time to read books.
You know, I only get an hour or two to read a day, but I drive a lot.
I'm in Los Angeles.
If you commute, you can listen to it.
And it's just like injecting your brain with history knowledge.
And so not only can you impress people at cocktail parties, but you'll also be able to understand your own civilization, your own moment in politics.
It will make you realize that perhaps not everything is falling apart.
Or if it is all falling apart, why is it?
And where are the historical backgrounds for that?
So what you should do is you've got to Google it right now.
Tides of History.
Go and Google it.
It's on Apple Podcasts.
It's on Google Play.
It's on Stitcher.
All of the podcast sites.
So look it up right now.
Tides of History.
It's with Patrick Wyman.
I think you're really going to like it.
And tweet me and let me know what you think about it because I've really enjoyed listening to it so far.
And go over there so we can keep these lights on.
Come on, guys.
Okay, we had some explosive political news over the weekend, and that was Steve Bannon's interview with Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes.
If you missed it for some reason, if you were hiding under a rock, here is just a clip of it to get the gist of it.
The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election.
That's a brutal fact we have to face.
The Republican establishment?
The Republican establishment wants to nullify the 2016 election?
Trying to nullify the 2016 election.
Absolutely.
Who?
I think Mitch McConnell and to a degree Paul Ryan.
They do not want Donald Trump's populist, economic, nationalist agenda To be implemented.
It's very obvious.
It's obvious as night follows day.
Give me a story that illustrates that.
Well, Mitch McConnell, when we first met him, he said, I think, in one of the first meetings in Trump Tower with the president, as we're wrapping up, he basically says, I don't want to hear any more of this Drain the Swamp talk.
They do not support the president's program.
It's an open secret on Capitol Hill.
Everybody in this city knows it.
And so, therefore, now that you're out of the White House, you're going to war with him.
Absolutely.
The main question I had after watching this interview, you can watch the whole thing, it's about an hour long, is how Charlie Rose got his job.
He just comes off so poorly and uninformed and like a left-wing hack.
But this is CBS News, so perhaps it was ever thus.
To comment on the swamp, I bring on now, I have the great privilege of bringing on my friend of a very long time, the first female physician ever elected to Congress.
She represented New York's 19th Congressional District until we got gerrymandered out and a few extra cities were added in, my friend Dr.
Nan Hayworth.
Nan, thank you for coming on.
Big fan of yours, sir.
And I was able to win that election for the sake of all the people we think so much about.
Thanks to you.
You were an incredibly potent force for us.
And everybody who knows you is not surprised to hear that.
So thank you.
Thank you, Nan.
And someday on the show, maybe I'll start telling some stories about all the lawsuit threats and the ex-rock stars and everything else that came out of that campaign because it was the most fun thing pretty much in the history of politics.
You were just brilliant.
I just tagged along.
Yeah.
You are too humble, Nan.
We must get into the politics of what Bannon is talking about here.
He is accusing D.C. of being an institutional place.
He's saying the office of the speaker is an institution.
The office of the leader is an institution.
There are forces like lobbyists and think tanks and donors and this and that.
And this, that, and the other thing that are controlling Washington, D.C. Now, you were elected on a Tea Party wave.
You represented a very important district.
You were on the Financial Services Committee.
You were, I believe, a deputy whip.
I was one of the freshman whips.
You were one of the freshman whips.
Is he right?
Are these guys the swamp monsters?
And if not, where is the swamp?
How do we drain it?
Well, Michael, in some ways, the swamp is, in a sense, the swamp is ourselves.
I'll accept you from that company, but...
No, you make a great point.
One of the many lessons I learned when I was in Congress was that we look to our electeds to...
Change things, but they will not be able to change anything unless they have the support of their constituents.
And most of these, especially on the long term public servants, quite honestly, or those who should be public servants, long term electeds are there because they have managed to satisfy their constituents.
So if we want really to change, we have to look to ourselves as Americans and say we have to understand what we ask all these people to do when we send them to Washington.
We have to understand the Framers' brilliant design for the federal government, the limitations of the federal government, and how far we have exceeded them.
And unless we do that, we are not going to get change for the better, and we're not going to get change that makes...
The people who are seeking change happy with what happens.
You are making an obvious point that nobody in this populist climate will make, which is that we are the swamp monster.
David Mayhew became a famed political scientist for making the incredible observation that members of Congress are primarily motivated by re-election, and they will do what their constituents tell them to do, what their constituents ask them to do, and then their constituents will complain when they do it.
Depending on what happens.
That's right.
Look, if their constituents understand when they say we need to cut budgets and they then understand that when we say that, that means we're going to have to cut some things that you like, then we could have a rational conversation about these things.
But most of the time, that's not what's happening.
Everybody wants somebody else's ox to be gored.
That's exactly right.
And that's a big part of the problem.
And that's not to say, by the way, that I have enormous sympathy for the Predicament, if you will, in which Senator McConnell in particular finds himself.
I am actually quite angry that he doesn't move to do the one thing that the president has urged so strongly that I think has to be done if we are actually to pass a legislative package, a legislative agenda that achieves something approaching the populist goals that the president espoused.
And that is to put more Americans back to work, to make it possible for employers and businesses and small businesses to work better, to reduce the cost of labor in this country.
And that means – and the president has made some progress with that as much as he can make from the executive branch in reducing regulations.
And he has done some things for which he deserves praise.
But that's not going to happen unless they break the filibuster.
We're not going to get that package of reforms.
I totally agree.
We have to break it.
I don't dislike the idea of a filibuster, but the way that it's been abused by Democrats for so long, and the way that the government has been abused by Democrats, it seems to me a natural step, and it's surprising that McConnell won't do it.
Well, they like their prerogative and they worry about being in the minority again.
And that's what looms over their heads.
No senator wants to give up a filibuster.
But the problem is the Constitution allows the Senate to create its own rules.
True.
But the filibuster is not constitutionally required, mandated.
Yeah, I don't remember that provision of the Constitution, right?
Precisely.
Now, it's also said, and people will say in praise of the filibuster or in justification, well, you know, the Senate is supposed to be a great deliberative body, to which I respond, absolutely.
And guess what?
Over most of the 20th century and into the 21st, we have asked the federal government to do vastly more than its original portfolio, so that we were never meant by the framers to be waiting for Since the 17th Amendment,
since the popular election of senators, it appears that the deliberation of that body, or the deliberative nature of it, has been dramatically weakened.
Well, we have expanded.
My biggest concern, as it was for many in the last election, was the composition of the Supreme Court.
And Justice Scalia's death was a blow.
I mean, it was like a punch to the gut.
So that also, of course, emphasizes to all of us what can happen when our side is in the minority.
And we like to have that filibuster power, if you will, to, you know, forestall events that we would find difficult.
Troubling, like the elevation of a Supreme Court justice whose opinion, particularly on the Commerce Clause, was different from Justice Scalia's, as would have been the case had McConnell not used the filibuster, right, to block the nomination.
But he had to break the filibuster to elevate Justice Gorsuch.
And at this point, this is like football in two ways.
Number one, Chuck Schumer's like Lucy.
He, you You know, he issues the sanctimonious twaddle about how, of course, now we have to compromise.
He intones, you know, yes, he's so serious.
Then he lifts up that ball.
He has no intention, right?
He's going to keep moving that football.
And Mitch McConnell's Charlie Brown.
But the other way it's like football is that we have to say at this point, you know what?
We've got to play this quarter because we may not have a game after this.
And if they don't break the filibuster on cloture on legislation, they're never going to reach a package that will have enough...
It's fiscally conservative reforms that we really do need, and I'm a partisan in that way.
Damn it, we need Republicans to pass this thing.
I don't want to exclude Democrats, but I don't want them to obstruct.
We're never going to get there unless they break the filibuster on legislation.
And to mix metaphors as much as we possibly can, you bring up a point that I really admire you for.
I really admire the way you've conducted yourself.
From this last presidential election onward, which is that you have to play the hand you're dealt.
You have to play the cards in front of you.
Politics is not about imagining how lovely it would be if something else had happened or if we lived in a different universe where Donald Trump were polite and nice and behaved himself at cocktail parties or that Jim Gilmore were the nominee of the Republican Party.
You have dealt in reality.
Or Mitch Daniels.
Or Mitch Daniels.
I mean, you and I, you turned me on to Mitch Daniels.
We spent a long time trying to get that guy to run.
But, you know, I've spent long enough imagining what it would be like to have that guy run for office.
And you supported Donald Trump.
I did.
Perhaps the most intelligent and educated member of your class in Congress and possibly in D.C., period.
You know, I really admire this because you come from circles that would be considered educated, elite, intelligent.
Socially refined.
And you put your political goals and the political good of the country before your own image and your own sense of associating with a man who many consider uncouth.
Well, and I know, Mike, we've talked about it, but President Trump represented to me by far the better alternative for all of us.
And he is someone who has acknowledged the advice and counsel of people like Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore and Art Laffer and David Malpass, all of whom have the best ideas on how to move us forward in terms all of whom have the best ideas on how to move us forward I know they're not the only voices the president has heard, but I know this quite firmly.
Hillary Clinton would have given them no credence.
And if it's a matter of aesthetics, the president is blunt, he's forthright, and he sometimes says things that others might, with justification, find objectionable for one or another reason.
But we don't elect a president based on aesthetics.
And look at how he has performed with FEMA, with all the people whom he and his administration put into place to manage these two back-to-back enormous natural disasters.
Thank you.
is a man who understands far more than he's given credit for.
And you know, Michael, I have run out of patience with, and you and I both know the elites of which we speak.
You're exactly right, the Ivy League elites in particular.
And I'm on the Princeton University Politics Department Advisory Council.
I think Yale is going to rescind my diploma.
I don't know how I stand with them anymore, but it's nice that they haven't totally kicked you out of the association.
Since last October, but we did have a raft of work that we did, and then it was kind of done for a while.
But you know what?
And I enjoyed it.
I appreciate it.
And I think, you know, there's some terrific people working there, including our chairman.
But at our meeting in October 16, before the election, we had a discussion after formal business was concluded about for whom we would vote for president.
And again, I'm not the only Republican on this committee, but I was certainly the only one who said, well, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump.
You were the only one.
You were the only, even among Republicans.
Michael, far and away.
I mean, I was assailed.
Well, Michael, as you know, those whom we brush, if you will, whom we give the designation establishment, Republicans, have at least as much disdain or had at least as much disdain for the prospective Trump voter as did Democrats.
Absolutely right.
That's absolutely right.
And certainly at least as much disdain for Donald Trump as they do for Hillary Clinton.
Oh, absolutely.
Well, so many of them voted for Hillary Clinton.
And I thought, you know, number one, I saw no moral divide between these two candidates.
You know, I didn't think that that really was a valid set of considerations at all for a lot of different reasons.
You don't think that Hillary is some example of moral purity and virtue and nobility?
You know, when Secretary Clinton was first lady and was designated by her husband, then President Clinton, to manage health care, I, as a woman and as a professional and as someone who's had many blessings in this country and understands that it's generations of women before me who helped make that happen, but I was insulted.
Because I thought, this is exactly the wrong message to set.
That because you were married to the president, you know, now you are endowed with the power to reshape the nation's health care?
Who elected you?
No one.
That's absolutely right.
And so switching gears just a little bit.
It is the anniversary of 9/11.
You and I are both New Yorkers.
I was a kid when it happened.
How should we think about our nation, our nation's response to that terrorist attack, our nation's response to catastrophes in general, 16 years later?
Well, Michael, it does, as you know.
These unimaginably horrible events do lift the soul in showing us the best of what our nation represents.
In the response to, not only in the immediate time, the incredible courage of the New York police and fire departments, you know, New York's bravest, New York's finest.
I mean, nothing can compare to what they did.
Not only...
During the attacks, but in the aftermath.
But the Wall Street Journal made a superb point a couple of weeks ago, and they had their editorial board had an editorial.
I think it was called Disasters and the Wealth of Nations.
And they were referring in the immediate instance to Hurricane Harvey.
We will get through this.
And the reason we'll get through this and the reason we will rebuild is in no small part, not only due to the American spirit, which we celebrate, But also due to the fact that we are blessed to be within the world's and history's greatest economic engine of prosperity ever known.
And that is not a random occurrence.
It's not a coincidence.
No, exactly.
It is by design.
The design of our Constitution, the most humane and empowering document ever created.
And unless we can...
Fully appreciate when calmer moments come and we can think beyond the events at hand and beyond the immediate need for recovery, as we do now for Irma, but as we did after September 11th.
Unless we think beyond that to understand that we have to empower those who are most productive, empower our workers, not have a federal government that imposes unreasonable burdens, to have elected officials who can be modest enough to recognize that it is not they who are the heroes.
It is not they who are supposed to distribute largesse to a needy public, but it is in fact their constituents who must be empowered to have the dignity of working and producing for themselves in their society.
And earning and reaping the rewards of their work.
Exactly.
They don't.
Right now we have a federal government that is confiscatory and predatory in whatever they claim to deliver in terms of benefits.
People like Charles Schumer, who want to set themselves up as our heroes because they demand that the federal government do everything for us as much as possible.
You know, that is actually weakening us and taking away resources and making us inefficient and ineffective and dependent.
So we create wealth by putting Americans to work and letting them do the rest.
That's a wonderful moral case relating the spirit of America, the engines of growth that have made America, and our resilience, almost our anti-fragility, to borrow a phrase from Nicholas Taleb, in the face of catastrophe, in the face of natural disaster and terrorist attacks.
There is something about the American spirit and the American system, the American way of life, that is under attack.
And it's under attack by...
The left wing in America.
From within, exactly.
And some of it, Michael, as you know, is actually, it is facilitated by prosperity.
And I think that's one reason that President Reagan said so cogently that we cannot take our great democracy for granted.
We must fight for it with every generation.
Freedom is never one generation away from extinction.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I mean, we see it happening on college campuses.
You know, your alma mater and mine, and they are not isolated, alas, have actually instituted measures that actively suppress speech.
That's right.
They don't preach what they practice.
They don't preach the mechanisms in their lifestyles or in their professional lives that have allowed them to become what they are.
are absolutely right.
Nan, on that note, I've taken up way too much of your time.
It was so good to have you here.
What an excellent message to leave on this anniversary.
But there's so much more I want to talk to you about.
I want to talk to you about Trump making deals with Schumer and Pelosi.
I want to talk to you about all those things, but we don't have time, so we'll just have to bring you back.
Well, I'll just have to come back and all you have to do is ask.
All right.
Thank you, Nan.
Ladies and gentlemen, Nan Hayworth, the first female physician ever elected to Congress.
With that, we have got to bring on our panel of deplorables.
Nan could never be on the panel of deplorables because there's nothing deplorable about her other than that she voted for Donald Trump.
So right now we're very lucky to have Jacob Airy and Emily Butler.
So let's talk a little bit more, but let's go right back to the politics.
We've had all of the uplifting stuff from Congresswoman Nan Hayworth, so let's go back into Steve Bannon, perhaps not as uplifting.
I want to know, Emily, does Bannon have any clout?
Or, you know, is he speaking for the Trump administration, or is he just some jilted ex-employee?
I don't think that Bannon ever actually speaks for anyone other than Bannon.
Bannon is out for himself.
Bannon is a strategist at heart.
He's speaking to an audience and maybe that audience isn't exactly apparent when you're watching him on, you know, CBS or 60 Minutes.
There is always a hierarchy that's at play and With Bannon, especially at this point in his career, he has a new objective to think about.
You know, he reached his objective to get into the White House.
That objective has been fulfilled and subsequently tossed aside.
So he has a new objective that he needs to fulfill.
He has a new prerogative and a new order that he needs to establish.
So...
I would say there's a man trying to regain relevancy is the first step towards rebuilding his agenda, much less an employee going rogue.
On that note, however, I do think that as Trump's administration winds down or if there's a new opportunity for Bannon to squeeze in there, he's probably not going to hold back on some negative comments from the administration.
Maybe not on Trump personally, but there will definitely be an opportunity that he will seize.
But what's his angle here?
I mean, why is he going on 60 minutes?
Why is he going into the heart of stupidity and lazy leftism with Charlie Rose?
I mean, I'm not Steve Bannon, but if I was Steve Bannon, I'd be thinking about what the plan is to get back to the top of your empire.
He's been totally wiped out.
He's been sort of dishonored.
Sidelined.
Yeah, sidelined by being kicked out of the administration.
So you have to think about what I need to do to rebuild.
And the first step to that is getting as wide an audience as possible while it's relevant, while people still want to hear from you, both the left and the right.
You see the same thing with Hillary Clinton all the time, just giving interview upon interview on how she feels about her loss.
You know, Trump.
Bannon is capitalizing on exactly the same thing.
He wants to speak out while he's still relevant and while he's going back to Breitbart.
And then if there's an opportunity to catch any leftist mainstream media in a hypocrisy, in a crosshairs, he can seize on that.
He can fight back on that with everything in his jaws and come out looking even better as he returns to restore himself as The captain, the leader, the head of Breitbart.
Charlie Rose is a hack, but he does have a network television platform.
CBS is usually the first channel people see when you turn on your TV. Yeah, I guess that's it.
Just grab the platform.
Jacob, in that interview, Bannon says that the original sin of the administration was making a deal with the establishment Republicans, playing nice with them.
Is he right?
And isn't there a fair question, how would they govern without establishment Republicans?
Well, I think it depends on what he means by establishment Republicans because some people are lumping in I should say real conservatives in with the establishment Republicans.
So I don't know if that is who Bannon is referring to, but I think Trump is a dealmaker, right?
That's what he always bragged about.
I'll make the deals.
I'll make the best deals.
And so for him to say, oh, it's the original sin to deal with the establishment Republicans, the GOP is the party in power.
Who else is he going to make a deal with?
I know he's chiming in about making a deal with Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, but if he wants to move his fiscal policy And everything that has to do with immigration, he has to deal with the establishment Republicans because the Democrats aren't going to help him.
So I don't really think it's fair to call it the original sin of the administration.
Oh, fair enough.
There's the religious ruling from Pastor Jacob Erie.
Former Pastor.
Former Pastor Jacob Berry.
Unlike Paul Bois, who's the future Pope.
We now have got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Now, I know you all want to keep listening.
You want to talk to the panel of deplorables.
You want to hear about Pope Francis and illegal immigrants and Miss America.
And a final thought about 9-11.
But the only way that you can do that is go to dailywire.com.
Right now, it's $10 a month, $100 a year.
You get me.
You get the Andrew Klavan Show.
You get the Ben Shapiro Show.
Forget all that.
What is that worth?
A nickel?
A dime?
But you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
This, I would pay at least the cost of 100 Steve Crowder mugs to get this Leftist Tears Tumblr.
It is the finest vessel for your Leftist Tears known to man.
You can have them hot or cold.
They'll always be salty and delicious.
And it will never rust from the salt of those Leftist Tears.
So go over there right now, dailywire.com, and we'll be right back.
Pope Francis suggested today that pro-lifers must support Obama's executive amnesty, saying, the President of the United States presents himself as pro-life, and if he is a good pro-lifer, he understands that family is the cradle of life and its unity must be protected.
He added, I think this law comes not from Parliament but from the executive.
If that is so, I am hopeful that it will be rethought.
Emily, you're a Catholic.
What is a good conservative Catholic to do with left-wing popes?
Probably the same thing that any good patriot needed to do under President Obama, which is just kind of hold your tongue, take the doctrine as it comes, and Wait for a new pope.
We have had bad popes before.
This isn't a new thing.
Sometimes the Lord sends us bad popes to let us know that the pope is only infallible when he's not fallible.
And I'm not even saying he's a bad pope, but he does weigh in a lot on matters of domestic American politics, which seem not to have very much to do with scripture.
So the number one priority of the Catholic Church is the salvation of souls.
In that doctrine, It does say that the Pope is quote-unquote infallible.
That goes back to Catholic doctrine.
Well, he's infallible when he speaks ex cathedra, right?
He's on matters of doctrine.
This does not have anything to do with personal opinions on climate change.
It doesn't have personal opinions on immigration.
Those things that he says are sort of unique to this Pope himself.
We're not necessarily, as Catholics, obligated to heed or obey anything that he says from his personal lectern.
When it comes down to doctrine, he's still very Pope-like.
You've seen him rile up the left.
He's very Pope-ish, you know.
He's kind of Pope-ish.
You see him come back to sort of irritating the leftists with reiterating his stances, the Catholic stances on abortion, transgenderism.
These are things that Um, are still Catholic doctrine.
He said of gay marriage too, he said when it was up for a vote in Argentina, that this is not a mere political issue, but it is quote, a machination of the father of lies that seeks to deceive and confuse the children of God.
Does not sound like a Democrat in that statement.
No.
And, um, I think I recall a long time ago where he tried to personally sort of, um, Make gay marriage or gay relationships not a sin and kind of got slapped back down by the church from that and then came out and sort of backtracked that statement that he made.
It's always difficult because we have this lens of the mainstream media.
So the Pope says something and he might be making some political point.
It might be a small point.
And then the Huffington Post blows it up like, you know, the Pope doesn't believe in Jesus anymore.
And you say, well, I didn't see that anywhere in his statement.
Yeah.
Jacob, whatever happened to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's?
Saint Paul writes, quote, Whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
And that would seem to be the case for the immigration laws of the United States.
Is the Pope contradicting Catholic teaching by denouncing the enforcement of a perfectly legitimate law?
I don't necessarily think so.
You fear hell.
You don't want to be struck down on the spot.
Sure.
Fair enough.
I don't think that.
I think what Paul is saying that you can have a personal opinion.
And I honestly think the Pope's words don't affect our policy.
So I think it's okay for the Pope to have a personal opinion.
I just want to know where his opinions are on the encroaching socialism and secularization of Europe.
As opposed to this one law in the United States.
And often people misquote the render to Caesar what is Caesar's.
The question that is asked of Christ is, is it a sin to pay taxes to Caesar?
And so he says, render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is to God.
He was saying, no, it is not a sin to pay your taxes.
Because there were certain, shall we say, pious groups back then who were teaching that.
And Jesus was saying that's not the case.
I think it's a sin to pay your taxes.
I try never to do it.
I try to avoid it as much as possible.
You know, the Catholic Church is not the only venerable institution that is speaking less than infallibly about American politics.
This has even infected the Miss America pageant 2018.
We don't have the clip.
I thought we had the clip of it.
But there One of the questions that was asked of Miss America was, what do you think about the Trump collusion narrative?
Did Donald Trump collude with Russia to win the election?
And how so?
And when will he get caught?
Jacob, why does the left have to make every good thing boring?
They've ruined colleges.
They have made sex boring.
Now they're going after hot chicks in bikinis.
Why can't we have nice things?
It's exactly what you said.
They cannot leave it alone.
Oh my gosh.
I just want to see, I don't care what she thinks about the Russia collusion conspiracy theory, because that's all it is, a conspiracy theory.
I know Maxine Waters, she likes to talk about the Kremlin clan, and she likes to go all over the place and saying the internet's trying to kill her.
This is where the left is getting their information.
Leave Miss America alone.
You know, Emily, you bring up a great point because this is a conspiracy theory at this point.
Emily, does the left really believe that anyone cares what Miss America thinks about these crazy Democrat conspiracy theories?
Or is this just about coercing every aspect of the culture to recite and toe the line on leftist orthodoxy?
Well...
As, like, a member of the United States, and as, like, a member of the human race, I think it's important that, like, all of humanity have their voices heard.
So I think that, of course...
It's important to hear what we say, especially as an American beauty pageant contestant, I'm really pretty.
You know, that was more intelligent and coherent than the question that was asked of Miss America, so kudos to you on that.
I think, if I can answer seriously, I think that probably the people who care the most about what the Miss America pageant contestants have to say is the contestants themselves.
Clearly, you know, when you're talking about all these questions that have been posed to them, the political nature of the questions, and you can hear how they want the question to be answered.
So when you're a pageant contestant, you're standing up on the stage, all you care about is, like, winning this crown, right?
So you're going to reiterate back anything that they're going to ask you exactly how you think they want the question answered.
So when you look back at it, there's not really, like, Anything that they're saying that's real or that like they actually care about or they're believing in.
It's about continuing on this narrative about something they probably haven't even researched.
Absolutely right.
And by the way, I'm really upset.
The only reason that I wanted to talk about Miss America today was to be able to watch them on the screen during this.
And we don't have the clip, so it's absolutely pointless as far as I'm concerned.
Okay, panel of deplorables, Emily Butler and Jacob Berry, thank you for being here.
We'll have you back.
Now, it's the 16th anniversary of September 11th, and so we haven't talked about it very much.
And I think I would like to talk about that in my final thoughts.
thought, so I'll put on my smart glasses.
It's the 16th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks.
My 6th grade math teacher broke the news to us in suburban New York.
My mother saw the towers fall with her own eyes, and from Harlem she made it onto one of the last trains out of the city.
Some of my classmates' parents didn't make it out of the city, not that day and not ever.
After the second plane struck, Father George Rutler ran from Midtown to the Twin Towers to offer wartime absolution to the firemen rushing into the buildings.
The first confirmed death on that day was a Catholic priest named Michael Judge.
Next to the towers in St.
Peter's Church, the first Catholic parish in New York, Father Rutler met firemen who carried Father Judge's body and recalled, quote, They put his body in front of the altar.
It was very moving.
There is a picture of the crucifixion over the altar.
I remember blood coming down the altar steps.
I shall always remember that scene.
The image evokes St.
Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Sixteen years ago, President George Bush put it in his own words, and I'll leave you with that.
The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness.
