Ep. 38 - Donald Trump, Traditionalist, or: What I Learned In The UK
Michael has returned from the Motherland with a tweed-clad, pipe-smoking, Queen-saving realization: Donald Trump is a traditionalist. He’ll discuss the Disraeli-esc, high culture conservatism of our reality TV president. Then, investor Hal Lambert joins to discuss his new Republican-only investment fund with the stock ticker symbol MAGA. Finally, Paul Bois and Emily Butler join the Panel of Deplorables to discuss sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein and President Trump’s yuge IQ.
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I've returned from the motherland with a tweed-clad, pipe-smoking, queen-saving realization.
Donald Trump is a traditionalist.
We'll discuss the Disraeli-esque, high-culture conservatism of our reality TV president.
Then, investor Hal Lambert joins to discuss his new Republican-only investment fund with the stock ticker symbol MAGA.
Finally, Emily Butler and his eminence Paul Bois join the panel of deplorables to discuss sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein and President Trump's huge IQ.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Michael Knowles I don't know if you can tell, but I'm back from England.
I don't know if any of that gave it away.
Maybe the tweet or this absolutely ridiculous pipe.
It was very nice.
I spent some time in the motherland.
I was in London and then Oxford.
I stopped by to see the son of the supreme ruler of the multiverse, Andrew Klavan's son.
And then I was up in the Cotswolds in the countryside.
I'll have one last puff before I put this out.
Delicious.
And it gave me an interesting view on politics because I've been to the UK before very briefly.
I never really spent any time there.
And politics is different there.
Conservatism is different there.
It even threw into light some of what I couldn't quite understand about Donald Trump.
The conservatism there has something that very often we're missing, which is traditionalism.
It's the sort of conservatism that comes out of Edmund Burke who says the age of chivalry is gone.
That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded it, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
He's writing about the French Revolution there and how terrible it was even though he supported the American Revolution.
And the trouble with American conservatism is very often it is just the stuff of sophisters, economists, and calculators.
All we really talk about are how we want low taxes and small government for its own sake and not really the reasons why we want those things, what greater goods those things serve.
And it's very often grounded in what would be rationalistic ideas.
So Edmund Burke really doesn't seem to have much care for rationalism, but that's the idea that we always just stand for something.
It's just principles floating out in the breeze, but it isn't founded on any real institutions like Civil society, the church, the family, local communities, a lot of the reasons why we prefer more local and smaller government in the United States.
The place where this difference is the clearest between traditionalism and those other varieties of conservatism like libertarianism, neoconservatism, the religious right, whatever, The place where that is clearest is Oxford, the University of Oxford.
I didn't realize this.
I went to Yale.
Yale is like the Disneyland version of Oxford.
Oxford is like the real thing, and Yale is Epcot version of that.
It's a stunning place, and it has at it the weight of history.
The difference between these politics is really clear there.
And the difference between the UK and the United States.
There's no date that we can say this is the founding of the University of Oxford.
We know that there was teaching there around 1096, but it sort of sprung up a little organically.
It developed over a thousand years.
It's older than the English language in its current form, but we know that Yale was founded in 1701.
When I look at the various controversies that have hit those two places in the last few years, I'm not surprised that Oxford has weathered them better than Yale.
So at Yale, we had to rename Calhoun College.
You remember that crazy controversy?
Students screaming at their professors, yelling at them, professors being fired for offending the little snowflakey 18-year-olds who are shrieking profanities at them.
They did rename the college eventually.
At Oxford, there was a similar fit of hysteria about Cecil Rhodes, the statue of the guy for whom the Rhodes Scholarship is named because he was an imperialist and a colonialist and he dealt in Africa and all of that.
It went nowhere.
It went nowhere.
They totally let the statue stay because there's a weight of something, a weight of history that describes the conservatism of the United Kingdom and describes that place that we just don't really have, unfortunately.
In American politics, it's usually pretty easy to nail down history.
You know, which political party does which thing?
Which side in politics has which ideology?
In Britain, it's a little harder.
You can't really tell sometimes who are the conservatives.
You can't really tell who are the – is this liberal?
Is this leftist?
Even – I was joking with Andrew Klavan about this in – England, even the socialists seem sort of conservative.
They have – because as he says, whatever the British do, they're living in the past.
So even if they're socialist, if they're communist, whatever, there's just a certain breeding into their culture that they can't seem to overcome.
Even the socialism in England, which is very bad and not good for society – Even that is better than the socialism in Italy or France.
It just is a little more orderly.
It's a little less lazy or what have you.
Now with Trump, political ideology has become a little murkier and a little less clear as well over here.
There are questions.
Is he a populist?
Is he a conservative?
Is he a secret Nazi Russian KGB Manchurian candidate?
All of the above, perhaps.
From my vantage last week in the motherland, perhaps the defining feature of President Trump's political vision came into view.
His respect for American institutions and tradition.
His traditionalism.
Among all the calls to topple Columbus statues and rename Columbus Day, Trump signed a proclamation on Monday that said, quote, The permanent arrival of Europeans to the Americas was a transformative event that undeniably and fundamentally changed the course of human history and set the stage for the development of our great nation.
Therefore, on Columbus Day, not Indigenous Peoples Day, Columbus Day, we honor the skilled navigator and man of faith whose courageous feet brought together continents and has inspired countless others to pursue their dreams and convictions even in the face of extreme doubt and tremendous adversity.
So this seems like a minor point.
The tradition of Columbus Day, who we're honoring, what day it is, whatever.
But to Trump, it's quite important because it's about respect and an understanding, an absorption, a living through the institutions that have made our country great and not merely platitudes and simple words and phrases and ideas that do it.
He's weighed in vigorously on the issue of NFL players.
Not respecting traditions like standing for the national anthem and saluting the flag.
Even his economic policy of skepticism toward big government and big business alike, of grand charitable gestures by billionaires that look a lot like Donald J. Trump, has echoes of the distributism that was embraced by the 20th century traditionalists like G.K. Chesterton and T.S. Eliot, among others.
Speaking of Eliot, even Trump's constant use of highly modern media like reality TV and Twitter to propagate support for traditional institutions Reminds one of Eliot's use of modernism to attack modernism, rather.
And yes, I think that is the first time that Donald Trump has ever been compared to T.S. Eliot.
President Trump's take on patriotism might have been written by Benjamin Disraeli, the British traditionalist and prime minister who pioneered one-nation conservatism.
And One Nation Conservatism posits that societies develop organically, that members within those societies have obligations toward each other.
It emphasizes the pragmatism that reality requires and insists that patriotic devotion, among other impulses, compel the fortunate to take care of the less fortunate.
When one part of America hurts, we all hurt.
And when one citizen suffers an injustice, we all suffer together.
Loyalty to our nation demands loyalty to one another.
Love for America requires love for all of its people.
When we open our hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry and no tolerance for hate.
Make America Great Again is a beautiful phrase.
It's why Reagan used it in the first place.
The Make America Great Again, it's simple, the language is Saxon, it's curt, it's evocative.
It's called a populist appeal by the common knowledge of the political commentariat, but what have they ever known?
The phrase isn't actually that populist.
The phrase isn't, do whatever you want in America.
The phrase isn't, make America work for you, you, you, you, me, me, me.
The phrase is, make America great again.
It's a call to make use of the strong institutions inherited by this country and developed in this country to sustain the life of a country whose organic growth has produced the most just, most charitable, most free nation in the history of the world.
And speaking of MAGA, speaking of Make America Great Again, we got to bring on Hal Lambert.
We have the investor Hal Lambert on today of Point Bridge Capital.
Hal has created an ETF, an exchange-traded fund, for investing exclusively in companies that back Republicans.
It's ticker symbol, why it's MAGA, of course, M-A-G-A. Hal, thank you for coming on.
Thank you for having me, Michael.
So first question, I guess this is kind of a gimme, but I got to ask, how did you come up with the idea for a MAGA ETF, a Republican-only ETF? Well, you know, it sounds simple, but it actually wasn't.
It's never been done before, so clearly it wasn't too simple.
But I've been in the investment business for about 20 years managing money.
I've been involved in politics for the last decade.
I've helped a couple of different Republican presidential campaigns.
I was involved with Ted Cruz's campaign.
Before that, Governor Perry.
In fact, I ran a super PAC for Ted Cruz.
So very involved in politics for a number of years.
And being in the investment field, I noticed a lot of people were, you know, upset about what's going on and they've been boycotting products, right, and services.
And at the same time, they didn't realize that they actually own those products or services.
They own those companies and their mutual funds.
And so they're boycotting it on the one hand and then they're losing money on the other.
Right.
And, you know, Starbucks is a perfect example.
A lot of people were boycotting Starbucks.
The stock was going lower.
They might have been losing money and not realizing it.
So I kind of started thinking, how do I tap into that and enable people to both You know, with their money and with their buying power, make choices.
And there wasn't a choice in the market.
There's never been a politically-based ETF before.
And that's kind of how the idea started.
That's an interesting point, too, because I had just considered it as a reaction to the left constantly politicizing every aspect of our culture, every business, they're going to do this, they're going to do that.
But it also makes sense if you are boycotting a business, you probably don't want to be owning it in your...
You don't want to be hurting yourself, slapping your nose to spite your face.
Do you worry that this ETF and maybe others that will follow your example, do you worry that that will further politicize the culture, or is it an appropriate response to a culture that the left insists already on politicizing?
No, I think it's a very appropriate response to the culture in general.
And I think it's a good investment decision as well.
So, you know, you mentioned it being pro.
It is pro.
So you're wanting to support companies that are supportive of Republican candidates.
And we may be upset with Republicans, and many of us are.
But unfortunately, it's a binary choice, right?
So you've got a Democrat or Republican.
Who do you want to be investing with that's supporting the candidates?
Do you want the ones that are supporting heavily Democratic candidates or Republican ones?
So that's an option.
And that's the real question, too, because someone like me, who's slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, I probably would take a lower return if it meant that I got to slap Schultz across the face or something.
But is there going to be any conflict between the returns you're getting and your politics?
Is it the case that Republican supporting companies actually are the ones that throw off the great returns, or are you sacrificing a return to make a political statement?
Yeah, I don't think you're sacrificing return.
So what I did was I took the S&P 500 and I screened it for the political contributions of the PACs and the employees of those companies.
And I took the top 150 companies in the S&P. So the S&P is already a pretty exclusive club.
So you've got a great number of companies.
It's 150 stocks.
They're heavily supported.
They're great stocks.
You've got a lot of defense companies like General Dynamics, Lockheed, Boeing.
You've got a lot of financials.
There's some surprise companies in here.
Goldman Sachs has always been thought of as a big Democratic company.
Well, actually, in 2010, they switched and they became a heavily Republican-supporting company.
So there's some very good stocks in this portfolio.
I don't think there's a sacrifice being Well, you know, I did not realize that because I just had it in my head that Goldman and a lot of major corporations, certainly a lot of Wall Streeters, are backing Democrats.
They back the establishment.
So basically this fund would be like Hobby Lobby or something.
But you're saying actually a lot of these companies that we think are left-wing are trending toward Republican donations.
Correct.
You can watch what they say or you can watch what they're doing with their money.
And I'm looking at what they're doing with their dollars.
And they may come out and say one thing, but they're doing something else with their dollars.
And at the end of the day, money matters in politics.
And when you're talking about lots and lots of money, this is a lot of money that's being contributed.
It's affecting election outcomes.
Go ahead.
You're absolutely right.
There are a lot of election outcomes that can be swayed by all of this.
But the elections themselves, the campaigns themselves, are even less clear in the world of Donald Trump because we see him sniping at Bob Corker today, little Bob Corker.
We see him fighting with Republicans, fights very often that he hasn't picked, fights that they're picking.
But will there be any implications for the MAGA fund?
If there's a split, if there's a rift between the GOP and Donald Trump, will that be taken into account in the fund itself?
I don't think that it will affect things, because at the end of the day, they're going to have to work with President Trump.
And what he's doing when he's talking about Bob Corker is, hey, this is a guy who's not necessarily supportive of some of the things that President Trump won on.
And so what's interesting about what President Trump's been able to do is, You know, he's gone after the NFL. It's pretty interesting to think about it.
This story has been going on for over a year, right?
ESPN has been pumping this.
By the way, ESPN is owned by Disney.
Disney is one of the top three contributors of the Democratic Party.
Of course.
So just kind of think about it from that perspective.
But Trump's gone after what's happening in the NFL while everybody else was silent.
This has gone on for a year.
Finally, he stood up and said, you know what, we're not going to put up with this.
Part of what you said earlier in your monologue I thought was great.
You know, we're different than England.
People here, the Republicans here, a lot of times seem to be scared of the media.
And Donald Trump's not scared of the media and he's going to go out and say what he thinks.
And a lot of the times he's right.
He's saying what everybody else is thinking and other people are afraid to say.
And the best part is if you go out and you try to appease the media and you try to get them to like you and say, I'm a conservative, but I'm not that kind of conservative.
I'm not that kind of Republican.
It's never enough.
It's never enough for them.
And Donald Trump has totally ignored that common sense.
The common conception that we need to coddle up to the media.
And he's won every time.
I don't think it's ever blown up in his face.
No, and he's winning big in this battle.
Because at the end of the day, the American people are on his side.
They're on the side of people standing for the flag.
They're on the side of standing for the anthem.
Absolutely.
And people ought to be invested in companies that are supportive.
I mean, the left is not for this.
The left is fine with people sitting.
They're fine with the athletes.
They want to come out and talk about free speech.
That's right.
They don't have free speech.
I mean they can't wear a certain button on their uniform.
They can't wear anything to honor the victims and heroes of 9-11, and that's all fine.
But then when they're disrespecting the flag, then it's a matter of free speech.
Absolutely absurd.
Well, Hal, I wish you the best of luck.
I think I probably would violate a thousand rules and regulations by speaking too much about the fund itself, but I do love the idea of it.
I think it is a great idea in a great way, like Donald Trump, who is attacking the culture and he's a cultural warrior.
I think it's a great way to just keep pushing and pushing and bringing this fight onto their level and into their field and be playing offense.
Well, I appreciate it.
And people can find me.
I'm on Twitter at MAGAindex.
And as well, they can go to investpolitically.com and look at what's on the website.
So either one of those, they can learn about it.
But you can buy this.
This ETF is traded everywhere.
Anyone that has a brokerage account can buy it.
The ticker is MAGA. And just call up your broker.
Or if you trade online, you can go online and buy it.
And it's as easy as that.
Excellent.
All right.
Got to go follow Hal on Twitter.
I know, of course, many of our listeners are just survivalists up in the hills of Montana who put every 100% of their portfolio into rations and ammo for the apocalypse.
But, you know, maybe consider diversifying your portfolio.
Hal, thank you for being here.
I'm sure we'll have you back and talk again.
Thank you.
Okay, now we have to bring on our panel of deplorables.
We have an excellent panel of deplorables today.
We have not only the birthday girl herself, Emily Butler, we have his eminence, his royal eminence, Paul Bois.
But I've got some bad news for you.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you are not a subscriber to The Daily Wire, you will not be able to see them.
We can't talk about little Bob Corker together.
We won't be able to talk about Harvey Weinstein, who's accused of raping all of Hollywood and more.
Unfortunately, you can't do that unless you go over to dailywire.com right now.
Thank you to everyone who has subscribed.
You help us keep the lights on.
You help me afford three-piece tweed suits just for your amusement, just so that Marshall can have a little chuckle all day.
So thank you very much for that.
You'll get me.
You'll get the Andrew Klavan Show.
You'll get the Ben Shapiro Show.
You'll get no ads on the website.
I know.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Wait a minute!
Here it is.
Talk about institutions and traditions.
There is no tradition, I think, that I cherish more than every morning drinking delicious leftist tears to give me strength like spinach for Popeye.
And the only vessel that you should ever use to gulp down those tasty, tasty tears is the leftist tears tumbler.
It's made out of crushed up little Steven Crowder mugs, so it's really been hardened and you won't have any leaks.
You can have your leftist tears hot, cold, always salty and delicious.
Go over to dailywire.com right now, and we will be right back.
All right, on that point, Emily, I want first your take on this political investing idea.
Would you ever invest in companies or in a fund strictly for their political views?
Well, I think that question comes down to two questions, which is one, can I afford to do so?
And two, what kind of a political statement do I want to make?
So on the first question, probably not.
Of course.
Panel of deplorables doesn't pay that well.
Not so much, no.
So I might have to pick up a second job or two or three just to be able to put my money into the stock market.
But when facing with the kind of political statement I want to make, I'm kind of intrigued by it.
Having the ability to decide specifically politically where your money is going.
I mean, we talk about actually putting money into politics and things like that.
I think, as Mr.
Lambert said previously, all spending is political.
When you turn on the TV and you watch ESPN, you're paying money to Disney, which is paying money to Democrats.
Every single choice we make influences the money in our politics.
And I personally would like to put my money behind My representatives I believe in, companies that believe in my representatives.
And to be honest, I really think that people on the left, the Hillary Clinton supporters, the Bernie Sanders supporters, probably don't even know enough about money to be investing in the stock market themselves.
They're socialists, so their money should come from the government.
That's right.
Well, it just comes from the sky.
It falls down from the sky.
Even though they also think there's a limited amount of it, and it's a pie, and the rich guy got that way by stealing the poor guy, they have a complicated economics, I've learned.
It's true.
Absolutely right.
Well, yeah, I agree with that.
Mr. Bois, is this similar to boycotting shops that you don't like and stores that you don't like?
Should we put our money where our political mouth is?
We run our mouths all day.
Should we put our money there?
Or should we invest in the most liberal companies if they make money?
Very often they don't.
But assuming for the hypothetical, they do make money.
Should we just invest in them, put our money wherever we're going to get the best return, and then use all that money we make to support right-wing candidates when they run for office?
Look, I wish we could just live in a culture right now where we could put our money wherever we want.
We could go to whatever store we want.
We can invest wherever we want.
I mean, I want that culture.
That's why I'm in this fight.
But unfortunately, we're not in that culture.
We are in, I think, what is rightly described as a cold civil war where certain institutions that have a lot of power and a lot of money use that power and use that money for very nefarious ends.
And a lot of it is to curtail freedoms.
A lot of it is to attack Christianity and create an entirely new America where none of those values have any place in it.
So absolutely, I fully support Christianity.
this portfolio and fully support using your money in whatever way you can to support conservatives and not give it to liberals.
Typical Paul Bois optimism.
Everything's always rosy to you, isn't it?
Okay, we have to move on to Harvey Weinstein raping all of Hollywood.
The New Yorker has published a bombshell report.
They've said that three women have accused Hollywood super producer and Democrat mega donor of rape.
There have been a ton of other women who have accused him of sexual assault and of sexual harassment, including celebrities, including Mira Sorvino, Rosanna Arquette.
Paul Bois, you've lived in Hollywood a long time.
Do you believe this report?
Is it possible that such a super Hollywood producer and Democrat megadonor could really be a dirty, rotten lowlife?
No, Michael.
As Harvey Weinstein said, Hollywood's the best moral compass.
There's no sexual harassment in this industry.
Come on.
I mean, in all seriousness, yes, I do believe the report, and I see no reason not to believe it.
One thing that's quite striking is that all of them fit this pattern.
It's always Harvey Weinstein.
He invites some young, good-looking actress up into his hotel room.
His staff is always there, so they're comfortable at first, and then he asks them to leave, and then once they're gone, he takes off his clothes and does something really perverted and creepy.
So yes, I fully believe the report, and I think the man is...
Getting his comeuppance and his downfall is long overdue.
This should have happened way back in the 1990s, but you know what?
It's very unfortunate that it took this long to get out.
This is another reason why British traditionalism gets it right.
These three-piece suits are very difficult to get off.
They really restrain the baser impulses of mankind.
If I were Harvey, I can barely unbutton this if I'm looking in a mirror and taking 10 minutes.
It's a profound statement and a sartorial statement to say that perhaps we ought to have some moral foundations and traditional institutions to rein in the debauched impulses of Hollywood's elite.
Emily, how did he get away with this for so long?
You know, Michael, it's a real puzzler.
It's a head-scratcher.
In an industry full of dirtbags, how one dirtbag just managed to get away.
You know, I think the bigger question is really, How at this point in his career did he finally come crumbling down?
And that's an aspect of it I'd actually like to explore more.
You know, like Bill Cosby.
How these people finally get brought down because this is not isolated.
I mean, you have to be...
You're so powerful and you're at such a level where Gwyneth Paltrow is afraid to speak out against you, Angelina Jolie, all these other actresses who are fearful for, you know, their careers, fearful for any sort of semblance of a life that they've built already, you know, in the brink of that span of time of whatever Harvey Weinstein wants to do with them.
Or what Bill Cosby wants to do with people.
It's a question to me of how these things actually break and how finally the truth gets out and how the mighty actually topple.
Because this is not, again, this is not isolated.
There are hundreds of other people in this industry just like him, and he's one of the biggest, the baddest, the toughest, the meanest.
Like, he is the one who has the most accomplices who can just shut everyone down.
And the bravery that it takes to persevere in the face of that.
I mean, now the writers of the New York Times are getting slapped with a lawsuit like we knew they would.
And to have that bravery to confront that and say, you know, no, we're going to push back on this because Rape, sexual assault, so many of these things come down to a he said, she said.
It's a very ugly crime.
It's a very nasty crime.
And it's also something that's very incredibly difficult to prove.
It's hard to prove.
It's very difficult to prove.
I mean, you can be with somebody an entire night.
Like, I can be with my husband.
We're having a great evening.
We love each other.
Like, there's nothing there that sets up.
But in that moment between two people where some person says, no, stop that, and the other person doesn't stop, That's something that really comes down to he said or she said.
And especially when the other person is the biggest guy in this town.
For people who don't know who Harvey Weinstein is, perhaps his influence is waning now.
Clearly this seems to be his downfall.
This guy was the king.
I mean, he was the biggest guy out here.
Obviously, these women are saying that he hurt their careers when they rebuffed his advances.
And it's hard to see how that isn't true.
Sorvino clearly had a decline in her career.
And for this town, I've never mattered enough in Hollywood to really see this too closely or anything like that.
But a number of my friends have had this happen to them.
I've heard the stories and I've been at some parties where some shady-looking characters are praying, where they're speaking to young girls and surrounding themselves with young women.
It's not even an open secret in this town.
It is the currency of this town.
Mr.
Bois, how did this guy get found out?
How did he fall apart now?
Why now?
Well, I think the reason why now is, like you said, his power really is on the decline.
If this were five years ago or ten years ago, I don't think this would have come out.
I mean, there are reports right now circulating about how there were photos taken by reporters in the early 2000s of him putting another reporter in a headlock and calling another reporter the C-word, and that never got out because so many people in Hollywood media were on his payroll.
Hollywood Reporter, Variety.
I mean, they would literally buy up articles written by journalists and buy them up and, you know, option the rights for them.
You know, they'd be having deals with Harvey Weinstein about getting their article turned into a movie or them writing a screenplay.
So this guy owns so much of Hollywood.
And His power was on the decline.
And I would not be surprised.
This is, of course, my more conspiratorial leanings.
Well, we like to encourage that on the show, of course.
So please throw out whatever baseless accusations you have.
I liken this to...
I mean, I don't know if anybody out there is watching the show Narcos right now.
But I liken this to basically the Cali cartel.
It's so good.
The Cali cartel taking out Pablo Escobar.
Someone, one of his enemies in Hollywood, a power broker somewhere...
Gave the green light, and it trickled down, and now it's winding up on the New York Times.
I really find it hard to believe that this was just, you know, two wily reporters, and they uncovered it, and now the truth is out there, and he's getting his justice.
I don't think so, because like Emily said, there's so many people in this industry...
He was too protected.
He was too good.
Yeah, who do this kind of garbage, and it's just coming out now because...
Somebody wanted to take him out and clean up where he left off and take his investors and take his pipeline of influence.
That's what I think.
Well, moving now to Washington, D.C., which is Hollywood for ugly people, we have to discuss this Donald Trump, little Bob Corker spat.
He's back to bickering with his fellow Republicans.
Bob Corker, who's the Republican, nominally Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he worries that Donald Trump will start World War III. Donald Trump responded with...
Typical Trumpian subtlety and said that Corker begged for his endorsement and Trump said no and that's why Corker won't run for re-election next time.
Corker then said the White House is an adult daycare center and someone didn't show up for work today.
Trump then gave him a lovely moniker, little Bob Corker, kind of like Lil Marco but with two D's in it, little.
Mr.
Bois, Trump is being called irresponsible and immature and reckless here.
But is he the one who started all these spats?
I mean, look, I never defend Trump's rhetoric in these situations, but— I always defend Trump's rhetoric, but we'll get to that later.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
But in all of these situations, he's never attacking innocent people.
Like, Bob Corker is stepping into the wrong here, and he's lambasting the president in an interview with The New York Times.
When he's on his way out, it's just cowardly, and he's not even that conservative in the first place.
So, honestly, no, I never like President Trump's rhetoric, but at the same time, Bob Corker's not innocent, and he's walking into it, and he should know better.
That's true.
The rhetoric always sounds a little harsh or a little childish or whatever.
It doesn't have the effect of a Reagan speech or Winston Churchill speech, let's say, to put it diplomatically.
But are we defending Bob Corker now?
I mean, this guy has an F report card from conservative review on his votes as a senator.
Should we really be defending this guy or is Donald Trump the guy we ought to be defending?
Oh no, we should be defending Trump.
We absolutely should be on Trump's side.
At the end of the day, I mean, look, it's a scale of moral imperatives right now.
I mean, yes, it's not right that Trump is saying this kind of thing, is calling someone little, but the moral imperative right now of preserving what we're trying to do versus bury an existential threat is right now much more important than just a personal feud between Trump and Corker.
And by Corker giving ammunition like that...
It's harming.
It's damaging.
And the real thing is, if Donald Trump calling a liberal Republican squishy senator by some childish name, if that's what's going to help us get a conservative agenda passed, if it's going to help us get tax reform, if it's going to help us get whatever, and that's up for debate, then do it, man.
Call him little.
Maybe he is a little guy.
Emily, birthday girl, butler, would it be better for Trump to refrain from using the nicknames or isn't that why we're here?
Are you not entertained?
Is that not why you have come?
I'm so pleased with season two of the Trump administration.
Season two of The Gold House.
I tune in nightly.
I mean, it's just fantastic.
But I, you know, I'm so torn on things like this.
Like, I like Trump for his rhetoric.
I voted for him because of his rhetoric, because people everywhere, especially people on the left, needed to see that rhetoric wasn't going to topple a country.
The way that everything was going with Hillary Clinton, the way that she was talking, the way that she's echoed, everything in her book, which still just echoes that we're tearing this country apart.
And you can always tell the people who are actually tearing the country apart when they say that this country will not be torn apart if we unite against the people we're politically divided against.
Those evil 40 million Americans.
You know, I mean, it's ridiculous.
Like, the things that he says are ridiculous, and I, you know, if I were on his advisory board, I'd say, don't even respond to this guy.
He's not worth it.
He's not worth the time.
People didn't know who he was before.
People don't care.
You're only making yourself look immature, as we all know that he's doing.
But when it comes down to it, there's nothing harmful that he's doing.
It's pedantic.
It's childish.
There's nothing harmful about this.
I don't necessarily see where there's anything helpful about this.
I don't necessarily see where it's going to get a conservative agenda pushed through because he doesn't really have the media on his side to go like digging in through Bob Corker's past.
That's kind of what the conservative media helps to do.
Right.
And there is too, you know, Tillerson, there's this rumor that Tillerson called Donald Trump a moron.
The mainstream media, that's every single question they're asking.
What do you think?
Tillerson called you a moron.
What do you say?
And he answered with his little joke and he said, well, I guess we'll have to get the IQ tests out.
I guess we'll have to do that.
He does always, he always hits them back.
He's very often making jokes.
And listen, I compared him to T.S. Eliot earlier in that show.
I do not regret it at all.
I think he has a similar traditionalism.
And they both use very evocative language to defend Western civilization.
There it is, Donald Trump, T.S. Eliot.
Okay, panel of deplorables, thank you for being here.
