A member of Congress takes the knee, the Cowboys try to take their knee and stand up too, and the President’s popularity surges. Is Trump laying 4-D football? Then, Erielle Davidson, Amanda Prestigiacomo, and his eminence Paul Bois join the Panel of Deplorables to discuss the cowardly Republicans who killed Obamacare repeal, the New York Times’s creepy communism obsession, and the Paris Hilton Climate Accord.
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The Cowboys try to take their knee and stand up too, and the President's popularity surges.
Is Donald Trump playing 4D football?
We will discuss the relationship between national sports and nationalism in elections around the world after Germany's shocking election Sunday with an actual journalist, Mary M. Lane.
Then, Ariel Davidson, Amanda Prestigiacomo, and his eminence, Paul Bois, join the panel of deplorables to discuss the cowardly Republicans who killed Obamacare repeal, the New York Times' creepy communism obsession, and the Paris Hilton climate accord.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
We have an actual journalist coming on this show.
Typically we try to stick strictly to fake news reporters, but we're breaking that rule for once.
We're going to have Mary Lane on.
She's written for The Washington Post, New York Times, or I'm sorry, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Associated Press, and she has a really interesting perspective on how these sports protests and football protests relate to nationalism and national elections.
But first, we have got to run down very quickly all that has happened in the NFL in just the last 24 hours.
You know, Kim Jong-un is about to fire rockets all over the world, but we need to focus on the important things like the National Football League.
So to begin, this just broke about 20 minutes ago.
Sports Illustrated is going to run a cover now that says, a nation divided, sports united.
And it's going to show all these athletes photoshopped in to be linking arms against President Trump.
Because that's why we read Sports Illustrated.
That's why we watch ESPN. Because we want to hear liberals rattle on about how much they hate Donald Trump.
Obviously, they're just moving further in this left-wing direction.
It's cost them subscribers.
It's cost ESPN subscribers.
It might destroy bundled cable, but nevertheless, they will persist.
Last night, the Dallas Cowboys joined the kneeling gesture during the national anthem.
I got a little bit of flack for this.
I wrote a piece at the Daily Wire called It's a Grand Old Flag, and in that, people said that I unfairly marred the Dallas Cowboys.
Here is a clip of what the Cowboys did last night.
She said the Cowboys players wanted to show unity, but they were very adamant about wanting to separate that message from the national anthem.
Sean?
All right, Lisa, as they take it, collectively, boos can be heard from this sellout crowd in Arizona.
Can be held over the sellout team of the Dallas Cowboys.
What you could hear there is there was massive booing when they all got down.
Even Jerry Jones, the owner, got down on one knee.
But what they did was they kneeled down before the national anthem, and then they stood up for the national anthem.
This seems to me a distinction without very much of a difference.
They are clearly participating in the protest that Colin Kaepernick began, which is a protest of this country, an assertion that the country is fundamentally oppressive toward non-whites.
And it is part of that exact same protest.
Now, they wanted to have their protest and eat it too or something like that.
They wanted to have it both ways.
I think it was too clever by half, an absolute cynical failure.
But Dave Rubin brought up this point yesterday.
With all of these teams kneeling down, what are they going to do?
Are they going to stand up in three weeks?
They say, okay, all of the racial problems in the country are over.
We can stand up now.
Of course not.
They've backed themselves into a political corner.
If the Cowboys think that this is their way of getting out of that political corner by changing the timing of the kneeling, whatever.
I think it's pathetic.
I think these people are cowards and too big for their britches.
They're paid tens of millions of dollars a year.
And they're paid to run around a field and to entertain us.
They have to run their mouths about politics, about which they know absolutely nothing.
It's totally ungrateful.
It's inexcusable.
I won't be watching.
Not that I watch a lot of football to begin with.
I'll be watching even less now.
But if it can end this nonsense, then sure, I suppose that's fine.
Sarah Sanders made a very good point, a point that a number of us have been making over here, which is that the protest doesn't make any sense.
She said yesterday, quote...
I think if this, the debate, is really for them about police brutality, then they should probably protest the officers in the field who are protecting them instead of the American flag.
Absolutely right.
It is a nonsense to protest the American flag.
The very fact of your being able to protest that American flag without prosecution...
It undermines the premises of your protest, which is that the country is fundamentally rotten and oppressive toward whichever demographics of people.
So, a good point from Sarah Sanders.
I'm glad.
We missed Scaramucci.
We were very upset when the mooch had to leave, but Sarah Sanders is doing a good job.
Maxine Waters says that Trump should be impeached over his tweets.
I don't think that requires any commentary.
Gotta love Maxine Waters.
And then a Congressional Black Caucus member has decided to take the knee.
Here is Sheila Jackson Lee.
And you cannot abridge without law and regulation.
And there is no regulation that says that these young men cannot stand against the dishonoring of their mothers by you calling them fire the son of a bee.
You tell me which of those children's mothers are a son of a B. That is racism.
You cannot deny it.
You cannot run for it.
And I kneel in honor of them.
If anybody could quite make out what the point was that Sheila Jackson Lee had to say, please write in and let me know.
This is the same woman who compared the Tea Party to the KKK in 2010.
She has nothing of value to add to this country or to the federal government, and she is funny to watch though.
She did make one small point, which is that there's no rule that says that they can't take a knee during the national anthem.
I'm not sure about that.
There are regulations in the league governing what they can dance to in the end zone.
I recommend the lyrics to a song that would be great for them to dance to called "It's a Grand Old Flag, It's a High-Flying Flag, and Forever in Peace May She Wave, The Emblem of the Land I Love, The Home of the Free and the Brave." I'm not sure that they'll learn that anytime soon.
But anyway, there is now a bipartisan effort underway to strip the NFL of taxpayer funding for stadiums.
This bill was co-sponsored by Cory Booker, a Democrat, and James Lankford, a Republican, in June.
It is now gaining steam, obviously, under very different circumstances, and it's gaining steam on Capitol Hill.
Probably people like Cory Booker will pull out of that now that there is this partisan anti-Trump racial tinge to it, but we'll see what happens.
That is all the background.
Now we have, if I can ever get my earpiece to work properly, with that we have to bring in our excellent panel of deplorables.
We have a wonderful one today.
We have Ariel Davidson from the Hoover Institution, Amanda Presto Giacomo from the Daily Wire, and his eminence, Paul Bois.
So very quickly, I don't want to harp on the NFL too much, but just going around the horn here, Ariel, do you agree with President Trump's handling of this cultural issue, and is he playing 4D football?
It's a tough question.
It's hard to always predict what's going on in the mind of President Trump.
Certainly true.
Right?
I will say this.
I've had a few people ask me this now, and I'll try to keep it short and sweet.
And I always direct people to this article that Matthew Bentley put out in Weekly Standard.
I think it was earlier this morning.
And I thought it was really a wonderful piece written by a Marine veteran.
And he said that We should try to approach some level of understanding, perhaps, with both the people who are frustrated by those who are kneeling and for those who are kneeling.
My one critique would be that I don't really know what the kneelers want, what the ultimate objective will be after this is done.
Are they going to continue to kneel for three to four weeks?
Are they going to kneel indefinitely?
So my question would be, you know, whenever we see any sort of activism, there's usually a primary objective at the end of that activism.
Not on the left.
It's perpetual revolution, Ariel.
No, I know that.
I know that.
And Stacey on the right this morning did a radio show in St.
Louis, and she's a great, wonderful political commentator.
If you don't listen to her, I recommend it.
But she sort of commented, she said, you know, I'm really curious what they want at the end of this protesting.
Is there a final objective that they're They're working towards.
In which case, let's talk about that.
But I think the lack of sort of having a clear-cut objective is what's most troubling to me.
Because, you know, I don't have a problem with protests.
That's the American, you know, that's our fine art in America.
America.
We protest like no one else can protest because we have wonderful laws that protect us and allow us to do that.
So I'm fine with people protesting.
I just want to know, what are you protesting?
If you're not protesting the flag, why are you kneeling during it?
There are two questions here.
There's the meta-political question, which is, do I think it should be outlawed?
Of course not.
In that sense, I'm fine with it.
I like our constitutional protections.
But then there's the real political question.
Is it a good protest or is it a bad protest?
Does it help America?
Does it hurt America?
Is it truthful or is it false?
And I think it's absolute nonsense.
Amanda, is he playing 4D football?
And should he be?
Well, I think, so I think President Trump is doing this kind of for personal reasons.
He's just trying to rally his base.
Absolutely, yeah.
And, you know, healthcare is a disaster tax reform, again, on the back burner.
So, that being said, this was the easiest trap in the world.
I mean, this is clearly...
I don't typically say this about President Trump, but this is clearly 4D chess or football, as you said.
4D football, yeah.
I think it makes it rugby.
I'm not sure.
I don't know a lot of sports.
Right.
This was the easiest trap in the world.
I mean, he's getting his enemies to kneel during the playing of our national anthem.
I mean, this is not railing just the base.
This is railing...
Most of America, a majority of Americans who think that's disrespectful and disgusting to basically spit on the graves of those people who fought for your freedom to do that.
Like you said, of course you can.
Is it politically advantageous?
Does it make any sense?
Is it disrespectful?
Should you do it?
So, President Trump, this is a big win on his part.
And I don't also, I know Rush Limbaugh was mentioning this today, people kind of overlook the cultural war, but it's so important to politics.
Everything else is just accounting, Amanda.
Everything that isn't cultural is just accounting.
Exactly.
So, this was actually It's a little, you know, it's divisive, sure, but it's kind of a war that needs to be fought, and they walked right into President Trump's trap, so a smart move by him.
Your Eminence, Mr.
Bly, I know that you think it's 4-D-Chess, so we have to move on to more news.
Nominally Republican Senator Susan Collins has given the final nail in the coffin for Obamacare repeal after other nominally Republican senators, John McCain and Rand Paul, also vowed to keep in place the law they promised for eight years to repeal.
Paul Bois, we constantly attack Collins and McCain for stabbing their party in the back, but we seem to let Rand Paul off the hook.
What's up with that?
Well, because Rand Paul, he dresses it up in the my principles rhetoric.
And...
You know, Susan Collins and John McCain, they do it for political reasons.
They do it so they can look nice to the mainstream media and yada, yada, yada.
But Rand Paul, he's just doing it because he's Mr.
Ideologically Motivated and I'm standing for my principles.
And frankly, it's narcissistic and we should call it out every bit as much as John McCain and Susan Collins.
It's getting ridiculous at this point.
It is navel-gazing.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Grow up, Rand Paul.
It is navel-gazing.
You know, there's this excellent essay, which I frequently recommend, Rationalism and Politics, by Michael Oakeshott.
And in it, he says, the rationalist, the ideologue, ideologues like Rand Paul, they're always standing for something.
They're never really doing anything, but they're standing, you know, and then they stand.
Their legs probably get tired because of all this standing.
Well, thanks for your principles, Rand Paul.
It's gotten us absolutely nothing.
Good job.
You've accomplished nothing.
Go home.
Ariel, Collins seems to have voted against this because her state is poor and because Obamacare expanded Medicaid.
If that is the case, if we can get poor states hooked on this with the dependence to the federal government, then is there ever any hope to repeal entitlements?
I mean, that was Milton Friedman's point, right?
I think we might have brought this up in the past where there's nothing more permanent than a temporary entitlement program.
So that sort of, you know, that speaks to how hard it is to roll back something once you give it away or once you start giving in to people's demands.
You know, I think I'm on board, again, going back to the Rand Paul notion, I'm on board with that we I'm happy to be critical of Rand Paul because even though he's sticking to his quote unquote principles, at this point it's sort of like we can take what we can get and this would have been a step in the right direction.
In terms of Susan Collins, I think we just have a bunch of people In the GOP, who are what I call spineless jellyfish, they run on a certain platform and they're unwilling to pull the trigger when it comes to actually enacting what they've run on.
I was one of the people that sort of I called Susan Collins' office multiple times during various votes, and so I have no shame in doing so.
I think that she's been sort of an embarrassment for the GOP. She's not a reliable vote when it comes to conservative principles.
And same thing with McCain as well.
I think I sort of categorize them as GOP sellouts.
Does that mean I think they're bad people?
No.
But I think when it comes to—that's one thing that bothers me, especially on Twitter.
People say, oh, you can't criticize these politicians because they really are good people.
I'm like, yeah, that's fine.
But I'm criticizing their policies.
I think their policies suck.
Yeah, I don't care if they're good people.
And it must be nice for Rand Paul.
It must be nice to be able to stand on the sidelines and pretend at moral superiority while real men go out and do the things that you're too afraid to do and actually risk their political careers to accomplish the thing that they've been promising for eight years.
Must be real nice for Rand Paul.
What a principled guy.
Love your principles, Rand Paul.
Amanda, is it worth primarying these rhinos and running them all out of Congress?
Or is a liberal Republican better than no Republican at all?
Liberal Republicans have gotten us nowhere.
So if we can primary them and we can kind of use, if President Trump can maintain his base, you know, and he can kind of push for these people to be primaried, these liberal Republicans, then, you know, I would say go for it.
Because as we saw during the election, President Trump spent, you know, no money and he still won.
He just used social media.
That populist base, there is something to it.
I know people don't like to admit that, but there is something to that.
So if you can get President Trump behind it and you can get this populist base who voted for Trump for his principles, not just necessarily for the man, maybe we could see some change in that regard.
It's always hard to challenge an incumbent, but it's possible.
I voted for the covfefe.
I didn't vote for the principles or the man.
It's a minor point.
Okay, listen, I know that you all want to keep hearing about the New York Times' crazy communist obsession, the new Paris Hilton climate accord, and my final thought on President Trump's role in all of this.
But, guys, you've got to go to thedailywire.com and subscribe.
Thank you to all of the current subscribers who allow us to keep the lights on in here.
If we get more subscribers, I'll get an earpiece that works and we'll be able to make the Skype function too.
So if you go over there right now, you'll get me.
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I know you're yawning while I say this.
But wake up, buddy.
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The New York Times is continuing its creepy obsession with communism.
The former newspaper of record tweeted yesterday, quote, As our pal Ben Shapiro recalls today in the Daily Wire, other New York Times headlines in just the past few months include, quote, Quote, socialism's future.
Maybe it's past.
And finally, quote, why women had better sex under socialism.
That is not a joke.
That's an actual New York Times headline.
Amanda, two questions.
Do women have better sex under socialism?
And has the communist revolution taught you to dream big?
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, once you're out of the breadline and once you defend off starvation, I heard the sex is fantastic.
I'm going to take your word for it, but that's what I hear.
And then also, actually, you know, once you have so many abortions, forced abortions by the government, you'll become, you know, sterile, you'll be infertile, and then you can just have as much sex as you want, and, you know, there'll be no consequences at all.
So it could be great.
Yeah, it's a utopia you're painting.
Ariel, socialism is an old-failed-dead philosophy.
Why is it being trotted out as fresh and fun 134 years after the death of Karl Marx?
Right.
So I say this as I focus on Soviet politics in college.
That was like my main forte.
I will say this, that I think the left is having some, they need to engage in some sort of apology because one of the main attack lines of the conservative movement is that, hey, you know what, the left end of the spectrum, they're the ones that are responsible for communism.
Absolutely and factually true.
However, now the left, in order to undermine this talking point, has to paint communism with some sort of rosy lens.
So they've accepted that somehow they're associated with communism now, because you have Bernie Sanders, quasi-communist, who ran for public office.
So they've accepted that communism is part of one branch of their party, but now they need to engage in some sort of apology tour or at least whitewash it in some way in order to make it an easier pill to swallow.
I think this plan is going to backfire tremendously because there are millions and millions of people who have died under communist regimes that are sort of I mean, there's no better argument against communism than its existence.
So with that being said, I think this is sort of the left's attempt to try to whitewash a part of their history that they don't want to own.
But the fact is they own it.
They have to own it.
and communism will continue to be the biggest argument against any sort of leftist utopia. - And the left has been doing this forever.
The New York Times' Walter Durante famously said, we've seen the future and it works about the Soviet Union.
He denied that there were famines there.
I mean, he was an absolute shill and propagandist for them.
But Mr. Bois, your eminence Paul Bois, Andrew Klavan says that the New York Times is a former newspaper.
He says that because it was a revered institution and now the left has hollowed it out and destroyed it, made it a zombie.
Now, we've seen the left do this in a lot of other great institutions.
They've done it to my dear old Yale.
They've done it to corporate America.
They've done it to the mainline Protestant churches.
It is also said that nostalgia is history after a few drinks.
Were these institutions ever really great, or are we just being sentimental and nostalgic?
Well, I mean, yes.
I mean, you went through a lot of institutions there.
You went through corporate America, mainline Protestantism.
When it comes to the news media, I mean, not so much.
I think if you really look at the history of it, like you just said, you spoke about Walter Durante.
Also in the 1950s, there was Operation Mockingbird that was uncovered in the 1970s that showed the Dozens, hundreds of journalists across the country were also in bed with the CIA. And we also have that famous moment during the Vietnam War when Walter Cronkite, after the Tet Offensive, said the war is unwinnable even though we were winning hand over fist.
You had Fox's Ezra Klein creating an entire listserv called Journalist to help Barack Obama and hurt John McCain.
I'm sorry, can you repeat that again?
We've got, yes, we had Vox's.
Ezra Klein created an entire listserv called Journo List to hurt John McCain and to help Barack Obama.
Oh, yeah.
It was, of course, that.
I mean, so it's been prevalent for decades now.
Fair enough.
We need to move on to much more important issues, global issues, like the brand new Paris Climate Accord, the Paris Hilton Climate Accord.
She has solved the so-called climate crisis.
She tweeted out yesterday, quote, This is Earth.
It's hot.
Don't pollute.
As Emily Zanotti pointed out, Paris has now accomplished more in three sentences than Al Gore has done in the last 20 years.
Ariel, is Paris' summary of the issue really more frivolous than that of most other global warming activists?
Or is it just more honest?
Is it more honestly frivolous?
I think maybe it's more honestly frivolous because she's not citing a potentially shaky study.
So in that sense, she's actually credited her argument a bit because she's not citing something that hasn't been at least, you know, That hasn't been perpetrated as truth when it has very shaky evidence.
So I commend her on that front.
You know, I think it's funny to me that we have sort of celebrities entering the ring as, you know, quasi-experts.
You have Jimmy Kimmel on healthcare, and now you have Paris Hilton on climate.
You know, I'm really curious to see what celebrity is going to step up to the plate and become sort of the quote-unquote voice of reason.
I think we're trending towards a somewhat...
It's a dangerous time in terms of who we look to for advice.
I think what's most alarming, even going back to the Jimmy Kimmel thing, was that he had been fed talking points by Chuck Schumer.
So I'm curious to see who's going to start feeding Paris Hilton talking points in order to spread her message far and wide.
But it is very simplistic, and it's not too pushy, so I'm not going to rag on her too much.
I can get behind not polluting.
I don't want to see garbage all over the street.
I can do that.
I guess the left makes me so reactionary.
I just want to, like, pour vats of oil on little baby seals and stuff.
Right.
They do this to me.
Why do they make me do this?
Amanda, something tells me that Paris does not lose much sleep over the climate.
Now, I'm curious, for what percentage of climate alarmists are they genuinely concerned and worried about global warming?
And for what percentage of them is this just a social signaling mechanism?
I think there's a healthy majority who see this as a money-making scam, I think, and, you know, for prominence.
If you look at Al Gore, I mean, he has the beachfront home.
Why?
Aren't the sea levels going to eat everything up?
He'll float.
He'll just keep floating.
Yeah, but I also would not put, what's her name, Paris Hilton in this category, because I actually admire Paris Hilton.
I mean, she has done...
I've never seen anyone do so little to get so much money and fame, so I'm actually, I admire her.
You're on the Michael Knowles show, Amanda.
Paris Hilton is amazing.
Aside from Michael Knowles, no one has done less to get more.
That is true.
I do take personal inspiration from her, but she's amazing.
I mean, she's pretty.
She got famous for being famous.
She got rich for being rich.
God bless her.
That's the American dream.
She voted Trump.
And she voted for Trump.
Mr.
Bois, your eminence, in many ways, Paris' summary is more reasonable than Al Gore's.
Many climate activists seem to worship the earth.
To refute the man as the measure of all things, is Paris Hilton the voice of reason?
I mean, hey, she just says don't pollute.
Okay.
All right.
I won't pollute.
I mean, in a sense, I mean, Paris really boils it all down to their essence.
It's just like, it's hot.
Don't pollute.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
That's fine.
I guess I'll try.
I'll use the blue bin or whatever.
Fair enough.
Panel, what a reasonable discussion we've had today.
Thank you for being here.
A rare, reasonable discussion.
Ariel Davidson from the Hoover Institution.
Amanda Presto Giacomo from the Daily Wire and his eminence, Paul Bois.
Now that brings me to my smart glasses and the final thought.
The president's critics on the left and right are lambasting him for wading into the NFL's disrespect for the star-spangled banner.
They say the protest isn't a big deal, that it's not worth the president's attention.
As a rule, nobody has ever honestly insisted that, quote, it isn't a big deal.
Whenever they say that, you can bet it's a big deal.
The flag is a symbol of the country, and it is perfectly within the scope of the president's rhetorical responsibilities to stand up against those who attack the country itself.
But, his critics insist, it isn't seemly for a president to wade into these cultural issues.
The country, they say, has never been wealthier, never more economically prosperous.
But that's precisely the point.
The country's troubles at this moment are not primarily economic, they're cultural.
America did not elect Donald Trump because he offered the most free market tax policies.
He didn't.
We did not elect Donald Trump because he promised to finally address entitlement reform and right the country's fiscal ship.
He explicitly did not promise that.
We elected Donald Trump because he is a singular cultural figure who echoed not just the words of Ronald Reagan, but the wish of patriots horrified to see Barack Obama apologize for the greatest, freest, most charitable nation in the history of the world who hoped to make America great again.
The culture is rightly at the fore of most Americans' minds, and we elected a culture warrior to beat back the destructive, anti-American barbarians to restore a culture of gratitude for the country that has given us and the rest of the world so much and asked so little in return, now more than ever, despite the constant negative press.
