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Sept. 27, 2017 - The Michael Knowles Show
35:12
Ep. 34 - Did Trump Win Or Lose The Alabama Senate Primary?

President Trump’s endorsed candidate Luther Strange lost the Alabama Republican Senate primary last night, but he lost to the far Trumpier candidate Roy Moore. Is the Trump effect dead, or is it covfefer than ever? Then, Amber Athey, and Jacob Airey join the Panel of Deplorables to discuss George Clooney’s terrible poetry, woman drivers in Saudi Arabia, and tax reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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President Trump's endorsed candidate Luther Strange lost the Alabama Republican Senate primary last night.
But he lost to the far Trumpier candidate Roy Moore.
Is the Trump effect dead, or is it cofaffer than ever?
We'll debate.
Then, after a vast, no doubt Zuckerbergian conspiracy prevented our interview yesterday with journalist Mary Lane, we'll have her on to explain the relationship between football protests and national elections around the world.
And finally, Amber Athe and Jacob Berry will join the panel of deplorables to discuss George Clooney's terrible poetry, I will be doing a performance, Woman Drivers in Saudi Arabia, and finally, Free Money Tax Reform, baby.
I am Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
This election result is great news.
It is a little strange because I'm happy about the election.
I'm happy for President Trump, even though President Trump's guy lost.
We'll get to why in a bit.
But the long and short of it is Trump's guy lost, but sort of and not really.
Background here is that Luther Strange was appointed to replace Jeff Sessions in the U.S. Senate from Alabama after Sessions became the Attorney General.
So there was always going to be a special election.
He is technically the incumbent.
He's been there since Sessions became AG. And so he ran against this guy, Roy Moore.
Luther Strange was preferred by the establishment Republicans.
He's a conservative enough guy.
And then there's Roy Moore.
Roy Moore, Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he's the guy behind the Ten Commandments monument.
He had it built there.
He was then attacked by the ACLU, the SPLC, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, some organization like that.
And he was actually removed from office over this.
The court said that they had to remove the...
He said no.
Roy Moore just would not do it.
And so he was removed.
Then he runs again for election and he wins.
So clearly this guy has a lot of intestinal fortitude.
Trump endorsed Strange ostensibly because Strange had a better chance of winning the general.
They were worried of a Todd Akin sort of situation that happened in previous elections where you go with a very far-right guy in the primary and then he can't win in the general or he'll fizzle out or he'll fall into some faux pas.
Here is the clip of President Trump's endorsement of Luther.
We have to be loyal in life, you know?
There's something called loyalty with these faux pas.
And I might have made a mistake.
And I'll be honest.
I might have made a mistake.
Because, you know, here's a story.
If Luther doesn't win, they're not going to say, we picked up 25 points in a very short period of time.
They're going to say, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, was unable to pull his candidate.
Across the line.
It is a terrible, terrible moment for Trump.
This is total embarrassment.
I mean, these are bad people.
And by the way, both good men.
Both good men.
And you know what?
And I told Luther, I have to say this, if his opponent wins, I'm going to be here campaigning like hell for him.
But I have to say this.
And you understand this and just look at the polls.
Luther will definitely win.
Not exactly a resounding endorsement.
It's a little bit tepid.
He says he'll campaign for the winner, whoever it is.
He said he might have made a mistake.
Now, President Trump here might have seen the writing on the wall.
It looked like Strange was doing better in the polls.
Or, I'm sorry, rather, Moore was doing better in the polls.
Some of President Trump's most ardent apologists are saying that this was 4D chess, that he knew that Moore was going to win the whole time.
He endorsed Strange so that he could make nice with the establishment with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.
But really, he only did that to get tax reform out of them.
You kind of get dizzy when you think about all of that logic.
This was what Bill Mitchell suggested.
And that seems a little far-fetched for me.
Every once in a while, even dear leader can make a bad bet.
The one issue in this primary is that as of June 21st, President Trump had a great record on these special elections.
He said it was 5-0.
Depending on how you count it, it's actually probably 4-1.
But he had huge wins.
Karen Handel beat Democrat Golden Boy John Ossoff in Georgia.
Ralph Norman beat Democrat Archie Parnell in South Carolina.
So this race upsets that record a little bit.
But I'm not so sure that it actually does.
Here is Roy Moore's victory speech.
I've talked to Mr.
Strange, who is...
Recognized that I won and that he would work with me.
I've talked to Senator Lee, Senator Rand Paul, and Senator Cruz.
And various others that are important in our government.
Together we can make America great.
We can support the president.
Don't let anybody in the press think that because he supported my opponent that I do not support him and support his agenda.
As long as it's constitutional As long as it advances our society, our culture, our country, I will be supportive.
As long as it's constitutional.
But we have to return the knowledge of God and the Constitution of the United States to the United States Congress.
So if this is a loss for President Trump's agenda, what does victory look like?
This is pretty good.
If Luther Strange, if Trump's endorsed candidate had won, he wouldn't have given as resounding and supportive a speech as that.
It's really excellent.
If you're one like me, I like a little bit of a schizophrenic view of the world.
I like a semiotic view of the world, a symbolic one.
You have guys like Donald Trump.
You have the name Trump.
Trump wins this election.
Then you have someone like Luther Strange, okay, and Roy Moore, more covfefe, more Trump, more aggression in the culture war, fighting issues that people really care about, saying absolutely not.
We won't move this monument of the Ten Commandments.
We're going to stand our ground and defend the culture that's made our country so great.
The great news about this is it backs up Ann Coulter's thesis.
Ann Coulter wrote a book called In Trump We Trust, E Pluribus Awesome because Ann has the best titles, the best words, doesn't she, folks?
It's an excellent title.
And the book is actually really good.
It seems a little bit like a frivolous title.
The book makes a good point.
Her entire thesis is everyone thinks the mainstream consensus view is that people only follow Trump because he has a cult of personality.
They love his personality.
They love his little jokes.
And we're all sort of mindlessly following him because he amuses us and makes us giggle.
And it has nothing to do with issues.
She says that isn't true.
People are following Trump despite his personality because he's a fighter.
He's fighting the culture war.
The only personality trait that really we admire in him is his intestinal fortitude.
And really it's about these issues.
He's talking to issues that neither party has talked to in a long time.
And that the American people care about.
Issues like immigration, issues like patriotism, cultural issues.
And, you know, we've been burnt by a lot of so-called conservative politicians who make nice with the left and don't pursue our agenda.
People in the establishment in D.C., Nan Hayworth was on, former congresswoman from New York, and we talked about this.
We know a lot of those people down there, and they hold the base of the Republican Party in greater disdain than they do the Democrats, than they do their nominal opponents on the Democratic side.
So if that is the case, then that means that people won't just blindly follow President Trump off a cliff or follow him if he pivots to the left or something.
They'll hold him accountable.
President Trump came down there.
He said, vote for this guy.
They said, no, we're going to vote for the other guy because he's more like the agenda that we elected you to fulfill.
Really good news.
Really good news out of there and not bad for Trump either.
I think it's just fine that he endorsed a candidate.
It didn't work out.
Now he gets to work with a guy who likes him and the Republican agenda even more.
With that, maybe I am just being too hopeful, possibly optimistic here.
Let's bring on our panel of deplorables.
We have Amber Athey from The Daily Caller and Jacob Aire from The Daily Wire.
So many daily publications.
In one word, answers.
Is Moore's win good or bad?
Amber?
Good.
Jacob?
Good.
Excellent.
We all agree.
Why do we even have this panel?
We're like the opposite of Crossfire.
You know, Crossfire is like wah, wah, wah.
Us is just like, is Trump great or is Trump the greatest?
Amber, why did President Trump endorse Luther?
There's actually a report that came out of Breitbart yesterday that said this was all Jared Kushner's idea.
And I think the underlying logic here was that he was trying to play nice with Mitch McConnell after Do you think it was a mistake for President Trump to endorse Luther?
Well, with the way that it turned out, no, because Moore won anyway, and he still looks like he played nice with McConnell, so he kind of gets the best of both worlds here.
I will say, though, his playing nice with McConnell kind of irritates me.
I don't want him to play nice with McConnell.
Yeah.
Jacob, Moore's defeated opponent, Luther Strange, is warning that Moore will be the new Todd Akin.
He's referring to these whacked-out candidates, you know, who...
Actually, Todd Akin, he made some very stupid rhetorical mistakes, and it cost him...
It cost Republicans a good seat in the Senate.
But, you know, these guys give the media anything, and they'll pounce and jump on a stupid statement.
Is that the case here?
Is he going to be Todd Akin?
Or has the weakening of the media even made that logically and politically unlikely?
No and yes.
What a bold statement, Jacob.
I love bold statements on this show.
No and yes.
Well, I say no because Todd Akin, he was a relatively unknown person who just kind of came in on the wave of the Tea Party movement.
He took advantage of it.
He really wasn't a Tea Party candidate.
Roy Moore, on the other hand, he's been in documentaries.
He's been interviewed, especially with his time as a judge.
People know who he is.
They're like, we like Roy Moore.
I think that this is really good for Trump because I do think Roy Moore will be good for his agenda.
I agree with Amber.
I should say I agree with you.
I think that Trump was just endorsing Strange just to go, oh yeah, see, I'm going to play nice with McConnell.
And if you remember, he said, I didn't have to go to dinner with Strange's family.
That was amazing.
Not exactly a glowing endorsement to say, I came down to campaign for you, but I don't want to eat with you.
Yeah, I want to get out of there as soon as possible.
Amber, Bill Mitchell and some of the other I think that's a little bit too far into it.
I think this is more about Listening to his son-in-law, and he's done other things at the bequest of Jared Kushner that didn't quite pan out either, firing Comey, for example.
So I think 40 Chess is a little bit too far, and especially considering a lot of Trump's aides did go to try to help Strange.
He wouldn't have put this much time and effort into trying to get Strange elected if this were just a secret kind of Chess moved to actually get more.
I think they're really going a little too far with that guess and giving Trump maybe a bit too much credit.
And speaking of the family, speaking of Jared Kushner, I look around the president's inner circle right now and I don't see a whole lot of conservative Republicans.
A lot of those people, Bannon, Gorka, have been pushed out.
They're not there anymore.
But for some reason, Jared Kushner is still hanging around.
Is there a worry that President Trump will be pulled to the left by these non-conservative voices?
Or will he get the message from last night's election?
I think there's definitely a concern, especially when you look at these reports that say General Kelly is hiding reports from President Trump, specifically the ones from conservative outlets that are criticizing some of the things like working with the Democrats on DACA and these moves to the left that he's been getting from Kushner and Kelly without Bannon and Gorka.
So I think that's definitely a concern.
And if Trump doesn't know that the conservative base is rallying against him on these issues, he can't correct himself.
And do you think, also we'll go around with you and Jacob, do you think that Ann Coulter is right?
Is Trump's base focused on the issues more than his personality?
Would they leave him if he doesn't do what they want?
Yeah, my parents are proud Trump supporters.
And my mom actually read what Ann Coulter had to say about that.
And she said, she just summed up exactly how I feel about Trump in one sentence.
It's never been about his personality.
It's always been about the issues that he talks about.
And so she feels like the personality is something that she can deal with as long as he's getting his agenda through.
So I think Colter has hit the nail on the head.
I think it's half and half.
I think there are 50% of Republicans who supported his agenda, and those people will go along with Ann Coulter.
But I do think there is sort of a cult of personality that follows him along.
We definitely see that with his more hardcore supporters.
So I think it's a 50-50 thing.
You'll see 50 stay with him no matter what, and then another 50% that'll leave because they worry about the issue.
I think you're 50% right, because I do agree there's obviously a personality component here, but the personality component is the courage and the fortitude in the face of these massive left-wing institutions that are opposing him.
I think we're all slack-jawed that he's been able to stay on the bull so long, you know, as he keeps trying to buck him off.
But, all right, we have to move on from Dear Leader, but I do hope that...
Hank Hulter's theory is correct.
And also to that point, I remember one time I was talking to Mitch Daniels when he was governor of Indiana, and I asked, how are you such a good governor?
He was the best governor in the country.
And he said, well, I treat my citizens and my constituents like they're adults, and most politicians treat them like they're children.
I think...
The constituents of this country, the citizens of this country are adults.
We're not just mesmerized by glitzy colors and a lot of the elite commentators and analysts and politicians on this issue.
They think that it's a nation of dummies.
It's not a nation of dummies.
They're adults.
They know about their own citizenship.
They know about their own country.
And you ought to give them a little credit sometimes.
Okay, but there is one guy who's a dummy, and we shouldn't give him any credit, and that is George Clooney.
This is too good.
He has written a poem in support of the ingrate football players who are disrespecting their country.
And because I loved it so much, I will perform a portion of that poem for you right now.
Are we ready?
Can we get some snaps, Marshall?
Can I get some snaps?
Thank you.
I pray for my country.
I pray that we can find more that unites us than divides us.
I pray that our nation's leaders want to do the same.
And it's like ten more praise, yada, yada, yada, I pray, pray, pray.
And when I pray, I kneel.
Wow, wow, wow, wow.
Not quite Wordsworth.
Not John Keats, that George Clooney.
Amber, which is worse, the poetic diction or the political philosophy?
I'm gonna pull a Jacob here and say both.
They're both equally bad.
Alright, I won't knock you for it because you're absolutely right.
Yes.
I think the worst part though was that this was actually published in the Daily Beast and they had this big exclusive banner.
They were so excited that George Clooney had written this poem for them, which just shows how silly they are too.
But the poem is so bad.
It reminds you of something that you would write in elementary school, like an acrostic poem.
And I kind of feel bad for his wife, Amal, because she's supposedly this brilliant human rights lawyer, and now I feel like Clooney's kind of like her pet dog that she just pats on the head and is like, oh, George, you're so cute!
You know, we all have written bad poetry.
I don't know about you, Amber, but young men, angsty young artistic men, sometimes you write a little poetry.
You read good poetry and then you think, I can do that, and then you write it and you realize you can't.
Nevertheless, I don't think I've ever read any poetry of a 12-year-old that's quite so silly and frivolous as this, mainly because it totally misrepresents the point.
He's trying to draw a parallel between taking the knee and praying to God for unity.
That is explicitly not what taking the knee here is about.
Colin Kaepernick, who started the whole gesture, said he's taking his knee because of the oppression of blacks in the United States, the alleged police brutality, the widespread alleged epidemic of racist cops shooting unarmed innocent black suspects.
And he's disrespecting the country for that.
He's saying the country is innately, inherently racist and oppressive.
It has nothing to do with praying.
It isn't praying to God.
And even here, when you kneel down, that's supposed to be the sign of respect.
But you can kneel to God, but when you're talking about a country, you stand.
You stand at attention and you put your hand over your heart.
The symbol of respect and the symbol of disrespect are totally inverted.
But Clooney, I don't know that he's doing it on purpose.
I think he just doesn't quite get it because someone didn't write his lines for him.
Jacob, are George Clooney and the Hollywood establishment he represents just cynical Democrat hacks?
Or do they actually think that their random smattering of words and phrases constitute some coherent political point?
I think they're just bitter.
They're bitter that they lost.
And by the way, isn't George Clooney an atheist?
It seems like he promotes atheism in every movie he's ever starred in.
You know, it's interesting.
I did look that up.
I think he says he's a Catholic.
He was raised Catholic.
And then he also said, though, whatever anyone believes is fine as long as it doesn't hurt anybody.
So I don't know.
He's probably just as confused as we are.
That could be.
I honestly think they're just bitter, and it's just like the new American Horror Story, the new season of that, The Cult, where they're making Trump supporters look like they're cultists and that they're sociopaths who want to devour everyone.
It's just more bitterness from the same old left-wing Hollywood elite.
All right.
Well, we have a lot more to get to.
We have to talk about The most feminist advancement in a very long time.
Women can now drive in Saudi Arabia.
We have to talk about tax reform.
And finally, we'll get a very interesting perspective on football protests and national politics.
This is the only place I've ever heard this perspective from Mary Lane, a journalist, Wall Street Journal, previously New York Times, AP, author.
But you can't get any of that.
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The Saudi royal family has announced that by royal decree, women will now be allowed to drive beginning next year.
Jacob, the last conservative bastion is being wiped away by the forces of modernity.
Is this the end of the right?
I don't know about the right, but it's definitely a breakdown of Islamic rule over women.
I honestly think that everyone is praising this like it's some sort of breakthrough.
Hello, Saudi Arabia still violates women's rights all around.
They still have to go out with their burqas and their hijabs.
They can't be seen without a male companion.
I mean, this...
That's just common sense, I think.
Exactly.
That's not...
Well, you bring up a good point, Jacob.
There are some things that Saudi women still can't do.
They cannot marry, divorce, travel, open a bank account, get a job, or have elective surgery without permission from male guardians.
Or vote.
They cannot mix freely with men.
They cannot appear in public without wearing a full-length black abaya.
They cannot conduct certain business without a male sponsor.
They cannot retain custody of their children in a divorce.
They cannot apply for a national ID or passport without the permission of a male guardian.
They cannot eat at restaurants that don't have a separate family section.
They cannot testify equally in court.
The testimony of one man equals that of two women.
And they cannot receive an equal inheritance.
So just a handful of things that they can't quite do.
Amber, why don't the pussy hats go and protest over there?
Okay.
Well, besides the fact that they would be jailed and probably murdered...
Stop making a case for Saudi...
No, I'm kidding.
That's not nice.
Oh, that's terrible.
That's not nice.
I didn't mean that.
But Amber, that is the real question.
American feminists are complaining because of a mythical wage gap which has been disputed and dispelled even by Barack Obama's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So why all the angst over here?
Well, these feminists completely leave the Islamic world and Saudi Arabia in particular off the hook.
You're exactly right.
And the problem is if they went over there to protest those types of things, it would be tantamount to admitting that the U.S. isn't as oppressive as they make it out to be.
I actually read an article in Cosmo, which is basically the bane of my existence yesterday.
But the article was about this new word called he-peating.
And it's about when men...
What's the word?
It's called he-peating.
So repeating, but with he in the front.
And this is when apparently men...
Take women's ideas in the workplace and repeat them and then get credit.
You know, that's so funny, Amber, because I was reading an article the other day in Cosmo, this little magazine, and I discovered a new word.
The word is called he-peating, which is apparently when men just repeat whatever women say and pass it off as their own idea.
Isn't that interesting?
Well, congratulations on now joining the next Women's March.
I like this idea of he-peating.
It's the new mansplaining, yeah.
But it just shows how silly modern feminism is in the United States that they're worried about made-up things like he-peating and mansplaining while women in Saudi Arabia just got the right to drive and still lack so many other rights.
And many of these feminist organizations are in bed with people like Linda Sarsour who openly call for Sharia law and jihad.
So for them to talk about wanting to You know, free women is just so hypocritical while they ignore the plight of women in the Middle East.
And, you know, you make the good point that if they went over to Saudi Arabia, they'd be arrested and murdered or jailed or something, but they would never go over to Saudi Arabia because that would dispute and do away with their intersectional hierarchy of victimhood at which I'm sorry,
this was in Jonathan Rauch's book about free speech.
He said that this began with the Salman Rushdie affair.
That was the moment when we had to deal with...
Our own principles.
Salman Rushdie wrote the satanic verses.
He had a fatwa put on his head.
The Islamic world tried to murder him for it and is still trying to murder him for it.
And the Western world, which previously believed in liberal values and free speech, we buckled.
We said, well, it wasn't nice of us or nice of Salman Rushdie to upset the people over in the Muslim world.
And hey, They have a culture, and we have a culture, and we have free speech, and they throw people off buildings.
But, you know, who are we to judge?
Who are we to judge?
And it's really paternalistic.
Ironically, it's much more paternalistic for these pussy-hat-clad women in America to say, we're going to fight for even more money in the United States, more money than men make.
But, oh, those women in Saudi Arabia, they're different.
They're just a different sort of breed.
And, well, good luck, ladies.
Absolutely absurd.
Now we have to talk about money.
Forget about all that stuff.
Donald Trump is pushing, finally, tax reform.
He has a four-point plan.
It's very exciting.
To simplify the tax code, to lower middle-class taxes, to cut the corporate tax rate, the marginal tax rate and the effective tax rate, and to repatriate trillions of dollars in profits that are currently being stored overseas because we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
People dispute that, by the way.
They say our corporate tax rate is over 39%.
And they say, well, that's the marginal rate, but that's not the actual rate that businesses pay when they pay their income taxes, or their business taxes, rather.
But we still have the highest effective corporate tax rate in the world as well.
By some estimates, it's 20%, by some it's up to 26%.
So it's true, it's not as high as 39%, but it's still the highest in the world.
If we lowered it, it would boost the economy.
Amber, There is one issue in this tax plan, which is that President Trump wants to raise the rate on high income earners.
Is this a good idea and why does he want to do it?
No, I don't think it's a good idea.
And I'll get to that in a second.
I think he wants to do this because it's part of his, again, trying to misguidedly reach across the aisle and make a deal with Democrats.
And I think here's why it's so misguided.
First of all, there are already so many Democrats who support a lot of the tax reform efforts, including lowering the corporate tax rate, including lowering taxes on middle class citizens.
For Trump to then give away the fact that he's also going to raise taxes on the upper class is the opposite of the art of the deal.
That's giving Democrats basically everything that they want.
Why are we throwing away the leverage?
Exactly.
Yeah, that's exactly the point.
It's the same exact thing that he did with DACA. I think raising the tax on the highest income bracket is definitely a little bit backwards considering those people already shoulder most of the burden of But Amber, you would certainly agree that they don't pay their fair share.
They pay much more than their fair share.
They pay actually all of the taxes in the country, but it isn't their fair share.
Well, yeah, that's the Democratic argument.
Of course, these people also take a lot of their money and put it into businesses and hiring people for jobs and investing in various startups and Small businesses, but yeah, they don't pay their fair share.
I remember in college they had an Occupy movement in New Haven, and so we went there to Occupy Occupy one day, and there was some whiny guy yelling about finance or Wall Street or something.
And we asked him, we said, what does Wall Street do?
He said, well, yeah, they invest money.
He said, okay.
How do they invest money?
I say, well, they invest money in companies.
I say, okay.
So what do those companies do?
Well, they invest that money into capital or labor.
Yeah, okay.
And what does that do?
Well, yeah, it grows companies and creates jobs.
We took him through the entire – I think people have this idea that corporations are high – But that's me.
Yeah.
They think that these high net worth individuals are going in their backyard and burying money.
If they put the money in the bank or if they put the money in the market or they invest it in companies, it's in the economy.
It's creating capital for the economy and it's spurring growth.
But – Don't ask the left to give you too many points on economics.
All they do is they buy that Piketty book, the New Communist Manifesto, Capital, and they don't read it.
They just put it on their shelves in Virtue Signal.
Jacob, it is upsetting this trying to raise the rate on the highest quintile of earners who already pay most of the taxes anyway, but are we even gonna get tax reform?
Is this a way to bring on people like Susan Collins, or are the Rhino Republicans going to shut it down and prevent even that legislative victory? - You know, I honestly not sure I think that if the Republicans don't bring this forward, this only, again, makes Trump look good.
And if the anti-Trump Republicans, if they want to make Trump look bad, they need to actually pass some of his law so he can sign it, and then they can blame him if it causes a problem.
But instead, they won't even let his stuff come up, including tax reform.
And so I'm not sure if this will solve, like Obamacare repeal and replace will, or is, but I have a feeling that some of the rhino Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski...
And don't let Rand Paul off the hook.
We talked about this yesterday.
I am so sick and tired of letting Rand Paul off the hook by pretending that he has principles.
Thanks a lot for your principles that killed Obamacare.
Great principles, buddy.
Thank you for enshrining Obamacare.
What a moral, upright guy.
Well, in Rand Paul's case though, the Republicans, you know how they always say don't let the perfect get in the way of the good?
The Republicans promised perfect in the case of Obamacare.
They didn't promise good, they promised perfect.
So what?
Repeal Obamacare.
I don't care.
I don't care what they promised.
I don't care what Rand Paul wants.
I don't care how he looks at himself in the mirror.
Repeal Obamacare and give me tax reform.
Okay, well then just repeal it.
Stop offering all these ridiculous other laws.
Just repeal it.
Yeah, okay.
I mean, we're delving a little bit into Obamacare here.
We're talking about a sixth of the economy.
I don't think that the onus here is for the entire U.S. Senate and the White House to do what Rand Paul wants to do.
I think he's got to deal in reality.
And I don't think it's the Republican Party and the White House who is not dealing in reality here.
I think it's the people who are letting the perfect get in the way of the good.
But they promised perfect.
Who cares?
When you let the perfect get in the way of the good, you get the worst is what really happens.
Okay.
Amber, one last question.
The Washington Post ran a headline.
The middle class doesn't want a tax cut.
Now, this is objectively false.
I want a tax cut.
Four Pinocchios.
Give me money.
Let me keep my money.
Actually, don't give me money.
Let me keep my money.
I want to give less of my money to you.
So this does get to an actual point.
The Washington Post doesn't know that they're making this point, but they do get to this point.
Are economic issues really at the forefront of America's mind?
Are we really just concerned about tax cuts?
Or is the cultural battle where Americans are really pouring in their heart and their soul and their political efforts?
I think it's a little bit of both.
I think tax cuts are really important to Americans.
As a poor journalist, I will lead the charge on that.
I definitely want to keep more of my money.
I know a lot of people, especially blue-collar workers, voted for Trump because they were hoping to see more money in their paychecks.
Economics is routinely listed as the number one concern for voters in elections, so that's still really important.
That being said, I think Trump is actually the one who has made people care more about these cultural issues because he's been raising them so often.
I think this entire week the only thing that I've heard about are the NFL national anthem protests, and that's on cable news in conservative circles and everywhere.
That's like the number one issue right now.
And then, of course, there's The issue of immigration.
So it's a little bit of both.
And I think the culture wars are coming directly out of Trump's rhetoric and the issues that he's choosing to push.
And it's because he can win on a lot of these issues.
But isn't that the point?
He can win on these issues.
So is it Trump who's pushing them?
Is it Trump who is the source of this cultural concern in the country?
Or is he just the vessel?
Did he just realize that this is what the Americans care about right now?
And is he the symptom rather than the cause?
Yeah, it's a good question.
And it's probably, again, a little bit of both, not to sound like too much of a cop-out.
Got to sound like Jacob.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead, Amber.
No, it's fine.
I was just saying people definitely care about the issues, but I don't think that those were necessarily things that they were voting on until they became raised in the election by Trump.
Absolutely right.
Okay, panel, thank you for being here.
Amber Athey from The Daily Caller, Jacob Airey from The Daily Wire, me from my daily show.
Thank you both.
Great panel today.
That's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Come back on Thursday.
That's our last show is tomorrow.
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