Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor, Joe Scarborough accused of murder, Muslim videos, showdown at the CFPB—so much news to talk about! Isn’t it strange that nobody is talking about the tax reform bill passing the Budget Committee yesterday? We’ll analyze Trump’s slick fingers. Then, Philip Wegmann and Paul Bois join the Panel of Deplorables to discuss how we’re finally winning the War on Christmas, a descendant of Pocahontas smacking down Elizabeth Warren, and today’s spate of Democrat sex scandals.
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Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor both fired for weird sex stuff.
Joe Scarborough accused of murder.
Muslim videos.
Showdown at the CFPB. There is so much news to talk about.
But isn't it strange that nobody is talking about the tax reform bill passing the Budget Committee yesterday?
I wonder why that is.
We will analyze Donald Trump's slick fingers.
Then, Philip Wegman of The Washington Examiner and Paul Bois of The Daily Wire join the panel of deplorables to discuss how we're finally winning the war on Christmas.
A descendant of Pocahontas smacks down Elizabeth Warren and today's spate of Democrat sex scandals.
Just a reminder, every single day now, there have been entirely new Democrat sex scandals.
I am Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
There is so much to talk about.
We will get to all of the weird sex stuff and the schadenfreude, I promise.
But I want to talk a little bit first about Donald Trump, the prestidigitator.
The prestidigitator.
He's got slick fingers.
The actual story, the one that matters for public policy right now, is tax reform.
We've been hearing for months, by the way, from never-Trump Republicans that tax reform is dead on arrival.
It's impossible.
We're not going to get it.
The left, predictably, has been harping on how awful the proposal is, how it's only going to benefit rich people.
It's only going to cut their taxes because, obviously, rich people are the only ones who pay taxes.
But actually, the bill is quite different than all that.
Trump has been relatively mum on tax reform.
He talks about it here and there.
Why is that?
Of his 31 latest tweets, three of them mentioned tax cuts.
And by the way, only to acknowledge that it passed the committee or to start tying the tax cuts to the good economic news.
Seven tweets talked about how great the economy is doing.
One tweet mentioned the NFL. Three mentioned Melania, Christmas, or Melania and Christmas.
Two of them mentioned Matt Lauer.
Almost as many tweets mentioned Matt Lauer as his legislative agenda.
Three showed videos of Muslims doing terrible things.
That's the same number as talking about tax cuts.
Three talked about fake news.
One suggested that Joe Scarborough murdered a staffer.
One of them told his followers to look into NBC chairman Andy Lack's past.
Why is Trump tweeting about these things?
It's because he's a prestidigitator.
If you don't know that word, that's not like Amanda's name.
Prestidigiacomo.
It's prestidigitator.
It's a word for people who have quick fingers, like a magician.
Magic, where it's a slate of hand, that is prestidigitation.
Look over here.
Look over there.
What's that?
And then, when we're looking at that thing, something else is happening over here.
So, of all these tweets, why is he talking about each of these?
The economy is obvious.
He's trying to tie the strong economy to his tax plan.
He talks about how great the economy is doing, how great the economy is doing.
He's building up his credibility on the economy.
Then he's saying, we need this new economic agenda, this new economic legislation.
Why Matt Lauer?
Matt Lauer is the biggest news of the day.
He has been fired for apparent sexual assault in Rio de Janeiro, but apparently rampant womanizing sexual harassment at NBC. But he doesn't just leave it at Look, it would be great to revel in Matt Lauer going down.
That guy is a jerk.
He's a left-wing hack.
He was a jerk to President Bush when he would interview him.
But he's not doing that.
Trump isn't just leaving it in schadenfreude.
He's tying it to Joe Scarborough.
Why?
Because he's trying to discredit the left-wing attack dog media.
He's trying to paint with a much broader brush.
That's why he's going after NBC chairman Andy Lack.
Now, why is he tweeting about the NFL? The NFL is a culture point that is extremely popular for Donald Trump.
He has broad agreement across the country on this.
His approval rating is doing a lot better than the NFL's approval rating.
People are cutting cable because of the shenanigans and left-wing activism they see every night at the NFL. And why the Christmas tweets?
Well, they preview the war on Christmas theme, which we're already beginning to see, but I promise you we're going to see more of it this month.
Why the Muslim videos?
The Muslim videos, I think, tell a lot of the story.
He was retweeting videos of Muslims doing awful things, attacking people and beheading a statue of the Virgin Mary.
And they were all posted by Jada Franzen.
She's the deputy leader of Britain First, which is a right wing group.
And this woman, who is she?
He doesn't follow her on Twitter, right?
He only follows 45 people on Twitter.
Why tweet her?
This is a woman who was found guilty of a hate crime.
So the left is freaking out about this.
They say he's retweeting far-right criminals, hate criminals, bigots, whatever.
What was her hate crime?
A simple Google search will tell you her hate crime was saying that Islam oppresses women.
That was the crime.
Because they don't have the First Amendment over there in the UK. They don't have freedom of speech.
You can be convicted of a hate crime for just saying something which is obviously true.
Obviously, Sharia law isn't good for women.
A rule that says that women need to wear burlap sacks over them in Middle Eastern heat, that can't possibly be good for women.
Any concept we have on the West of women's rights does not apply.
Now, free speech, though, and PC, these aren't just random issues.
They're central issues to Donald Trump's popularity.
And this is where the claim breaks down.
Why the Never Trump right and his opponents on the left, they say, he's just crazy.
He's just tweeting whatever.
There's no rhyme or reason to it.
He's a madman with his finger on the nuclear codes and the other finger on Twitter.
There's no evidence that Donald Trump hates Muslim people.
There's no evidence.
In the four decades that we've known about Donald Trump, we've never seen these allegations of bigotry before.
Clearly, it has to serve a strategic purpose.
Or we're suggesting that he just became a bigot overnight, that he just became an Islamophobe overnight or something, and he just so happened to pick a woman that ties in directly with his anti-PC, pro-free speech agenda.
It doesn't work.
At a certain point, Either the guy just gets lucky and lucky and lucky, and he's absurdly lucky at multiple things at one time for 40 years, or he doesn't just have air blowing between his ears.
He doesn't just have nothing going on in his head.
He has some strategic thought and a good gut that tells him how to enact it tactically.
So what is he not tweeting about?
This is the actual story.
I'm perfectly willing to talk about it because it's a great wing for the Republicans and for conservatives.
And because the left-wing media doesn't watch my show, so I don't think I'm telling any tales out of school or pulling the veil up on this.
He isn't talking about tax reform.
But what was he doing yesterday?
Trump spent most of yesterday on Capitol Hill bullying Republican senators into voting for the GOP tax reform in the Budget Committee.
According to a Senate source for The Hill, Trump went after Ron Johnson by name.
Quote, this is in The Hill.
He told him to stop blocking it and to work out his concerns with the rest of the conference.
He told him he would have a chance to offer amendments and he should stop being an impediment.
Trump also leaned on Bob Corker and James Langford, both of whom are Republicans that threatened to vote against the bill in committee.
Senate GOP Whip John Corrin said it was Trump's strong-arming that gave the bill, quote, a shot of adrenaline.
That gave this bill that everyone has been predicting on both sides of the aisle.
It's going nowhere.
It's going to die in committee.
Not so.
Gave it some momentum.
Last month, Trump also met with the entire Senate GOP caucus to get them on the same page on tax reform.
Now, to analyze all of this prestidigitation and the tax reform bill and the likelihood that it passes, we bring on our panel of deplorables.
We have Paul Cardinal Bois from The Daily Wire, and we're lucky to be joined by Philip Wegman from The Washington Examiner.
Look how much realer, by the way, how much more serious Philip's background looks than Paul's, who it appears is coming from St.
Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.
So, gentlemen, thank you for being here.
I really appreciate it.
I want to get to this tax reform.
Philip...
Are we going to get it?
You're a serious journalist.
You have sources.
You're paying attention in DC. Are we going to get tax reform and if so, when?
Certainly the president hopes that it's going to happen ahead of Christmas.
I don't know if that's actually going to get done.
Sometimes it sounds a little bit like wishful thinking.
He had that productive meeting with Republicans earlier on.
But if you start taking a look at some of the objections, I mean, the whip count is getting pretty ugly.
You've got Collins who objects to the individual mandate.
You've got Ron Johnson that you just mentioned, and then also Lankford and some others.
And then You know, I have no idea what John McCain thinks about, you know, regular order.
He's voted against tax cuts twice before.
And Republicans just, they can only lose two votes.
So the whip count is really ugly.
This one's going to come down to the wire.
It's certainly going to come down to the wire.
I don't know what John McCain thinks about regular order.
I don't quite know what he thinks about these tax cuts.
But I do know what he thinks about Donald Trump and what he thinks about his legacy.
And that does not look good for us.
Mr.
Bois, make me happier.
Lighten me up.
Are we going to get tax cuts?
And then I want to talk about the Trumpiness of it all.
But first, do you think we're going to get it?
I mean, it really is all up in the air right now.
The biggest problem that we have going on right now is mainly just the GOP just getting it all together.
I sincerely hope that we're going to get health care reform and the GOP didn't deliver that.
So it's really just, I mean, can they all come together right now?
As of right now, I'm not seeing that.
The coming together is a question because I think the most cogent argument from the never-Trump right, the persistently never-Trump right, is while Donald Trump engages in these crazy excesses, like accusing Joe Scarborough of murder on Twitter.
We're implying that Joe Scarborough had some hand in this staffer's death.
And therefore, if we Republicans, if we conservatives, enjoy the successes, and there have been many successes of this administration, both culturally and politically as real matters of government, if we enjoy those or if we encourage those or if we vote for him, then we own Trump.
We own his excesses.
We'll have to answer for them and we'll look really bad or something.
We won't be able to preen as much as we would like to preen.
Philip, do you think that's true?
Do you think that if we encourage Trump to end his presidency that we're going to have to face some awful reckoning in the future?
I think the reckoning already took place.
I mean, the president is the president because he won the election, but guys like Lindsey Graham, who were adamantly opposed to the president earlier on, they're coming around.
I mean, Lindsey Graham's as establishment as you can get, but he's even willing to work with the president because I think a lot of these guys know the White House isn't the only thing up for grabs.
They're also Going to lose their majorities if they don't deliver something.
So yeah, there's that long game.
There's that fear of what are we going to do with Donald Trump?
What's he going to do to our party and our identity?
But I think in the moment, at least on tax reform, I think these guys are willing to put away some of that bickering and focus on the bill itself.
And I do think there's an aspect of Trump which is just that he is a character.
He's a one of a kind.
He's an American original.
We talked yesterday about how there's no need to have the Jersey Shore or reality television when Donald Trump, the king of reality TV, has made reality into reality TV. He's the best show in town.
He is the best show in town.
And I think Camille Paglia said that she would vote for him because he's a carnival barker and she likes that.
And there is something, it seems to me, that he doesn't pretend to be a regular Republican.
He doesn't even really pretend to represent the mainstream of conservative movement or of the Republican Party.
He's his own self.
Mr.
Mr. Bois, do you think that his caricature and the caricature that he plays up for the cameras and for Twitter, do you think that that will inoculate conservatives?
Or should we be terribly worried about our own image and constantly looking in the mirror and saying, well, who cares if we get all these great things accomplished for the country?
How will I look when it's all over?
I think that kind of pearl clutching regarding President Trump really is going to do nobody any favors.
And that was part of, I think, every voter's worry throughout the election and the issue that they had to struggle with internally was, By going in with President Trump, am I going to, you know, be destroying myself in the future?
But I think we all got to man up and just be like, all right, we're in this.
I mean, we are in an existential threat, you know, culturally.
So I say, you know, get rid of that fear, dive in.
And, you know, in terms of, like, what Trump has been successful at and his excesses, and should we be more worried about his excesses, I think we got to really define, like, what we want Trump I really do not believe that we elected Trump for anything legislatively.
I think we strictly elected him so he can be the guy.
When Colin Kaepernick is being a complete jerk to all of us and spitting on the flag, he just says, throw that SOB out, and next thing you know, we're all cheering, and we feel like we got ourselves a cultural cheerleader, and then we're emboldened, and we feel like we can go out there and we can stick it to the people who are telling us what to do and what to say, and that's why we elected him.
And with that, he has been 100% successful, and we should not be worried.
I half agree with you, but I must say I am compelled by Ann Coulter's argument that we elected this guy for issues.
He was talking about issues that other people weren't talking about.
He was talking to a group of voters that both parties ignored.
And he, sure, I like when he calls out Colin Kaepernick as much as the next guy.
That's very important.
Politics follows culture.
The culture is key here.
It's related.
Cult is related to culture.
It's related to what we worship.
And certainly that's the case.
Everything else is just accounting, you might say.
That said, there have been great policy victories.
We've seen them obviously on the courts, up to Neil Gorsuch.
We've seen them in massive deregulation, in trying to rein in these awful, godless, headless, unaccountable executive agencies.
We've seen it in foreign policy.
We've seen it in social policy, like the Mexico City rule, like abortion.
Yeah, certainly the culture is maybe the key aspect of Trump, but he's given us a lot of policy victories.
I really wouldn't want to see all of that go away.
I wouldn't want to turn my back on that just because I'm uncomfortable with him making hilarious and probably a little excessive claims about Joe Scarborough or whatever.
I love that show.
I love the prestidigitation.
And we have much more to talk about, by the way.
Speaking of the culture, we have much more to talk about on the war on Christmas.
We have to talk about all of the weird Democrat sex stuff, and we have to dance on Matt Lauer's professional grave, because what would this show be without a little schadenfreude?
It is fun.
We should do it.
He's been a jerk to the right for a long time.
But if you don't subscribe to The Daily Wire...
I'm sorry.
You can't see it.
We appreciate all of our current subscribers.
They help us keep the lights on.
They help us keep Covfefe in my cup.
They even help us get serious journalists like Philip.
This is like a first over here.
We usually just have the Covfefe panel, but we've got serious analysis going on.
But you can't see that unless you go to dailywire.com right now.
What do you get?
You get me.
You get the Andrew Klavan Show.
You get the Ben Shapiro Show.
No ads on the website.
Blah, blah, blah.
But look, all that's just accounting, folks, isn't it?
Because what you could get is the cultural touchstone here, the leftist tears tumbler.
As I think nobody will be left in Hollywood other than Kevin Sorbo, maybe, and nobody will be left in the media except probably Ben Shapiro.
So when all of those leftist tears start flowing and everyone is drowning in them, make sure that you have a vessel so that you don't drown.
You can keep them hot or cold, always salty and delicious.
Go to thedailywire.com right now.
Right now, we'll be right back.
Let's get to the war on Christmas.
I love the war on Christmas almost as much as I love Christmas.
I especially love winning the war on Christmas.
President Trump promised repeatedly throughout the campaign that we would turn the Yuletide in the war on Christmas.
See what I did?
He's doing just that.
Melania has hung mistletoe all around the White House.
Hubba hubba.
President Trump, unlike his predecessor, has sent out a Christmas card.
Things are looking up.
You know, leftists mock the war on Christmas.
They say it's imaginary.
Barack Obama's 2016 White House Christmas card did not mention the word Christmas.
Not once.
It says, Happy Holidays.
The White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers even says that Obama wanted to ban the creche, the nativity scene, from the East Room of the White House, although tradition eventually won out because that would be egregious.
President Trump's card says Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, which makes sense because those are the only two major holidays this season.
I say major.
There is Hanukkah, of course, which is an ancient Jewish holiday, but it has always been relatively minor and remains relatively minor outside of the United States.
It's taken on greater currency in the U.S. because two reform rabbis in Cincinnati decided to reinvent the Festival of Lights as a Jewish answer to Christmas during the late 19th century.
That's all nice.
I'm from Westchester.
Everybody celebrates basically a more Jewish version of Christmas there.
More power to them.
There's also Kwanzaa, a completely contrived socialist pseudo-holiday invented in the late 1960s by a criminal and L.A. City College professor of Africana Studies named Milana Karenga, who was convicted in 1971 of imprisoning women while sexually assaulting them while he whipped them with electrical cords, branded their faces, poured detergent down their throats, and hit them on the head with toasters.
Approximately...
0.2% of the world celebrated Kwanzaa as of 2012.
Now, to top it all off, here is a clip from the last journalist in America, comedian Stephen Colbert.
Stephen Crowder.
Okay, Alexa, who is the Lord Jesus Christ?
Jesus Christ is a fictional character.
Alexa, who is the Prophet Muhammad?
The prophet Muhammad is a very wise prophet.
He taught many people how to live.
He had a wife called Aisha.
He lived in Saudi Arabia.
The message that he gave to the people is pray to Allah.
He is the only God, and he gave the holy corn.
I think, you know, I think that clip got cut off.
The first question was, who is Jesus Christ?
And Alexa says, he's a fictional character.
He's a fictional character created, I don't know when, I guess in the first century.
Um...
Paul Cardinal Blanc, let's start this with you.
Is there a war on Christmas, and should we be fighting it?
Of course there's a war on Christmas, Michael.
I knew you'd say that.
I knew it.
There's been a war on Christmas going on in this country all the way going back to the 1960s, believe it or not.
I know we all love Charlie Brown Christmas and that famous scene where Linus reads from Luke's Gospel.
CBS and the producers on that show did not want that in there.
I mean, they fought tooth and nail to try and get it out.
Eventually, of course, Charles Schultz, being a religious man, he won out in the end, and thank you for that.
Plus, you've got to see what Charlie Rose did to Lucy.
People haven't been talking about this.
Investigate it, folks.
That's not a nice joke.
Go on.
And in 1992, you know, Frosty, we all remember Frosty the Snowman, Frosty Returns completely and totally eliminated all references to Christmas.
It was basically just this Soviet commissar approved We're good to go.
They always said Merry Christmas.
They always said Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings.
So, you know, we're in it, and President Trump is delivering on that.
He's making Christmas great again.
And I loved Melania's designs for the Christmas decorations in the White House this year.
I know leftists on Twitter are giving her hell for it, and they're just saying all kinds of wicked things about it.
But I think it's great.
I think we have a lot to be celebrating about this year.
You could just say that sentence full stop.
I love Melania.
I love Melania.
That woman is all grace and class.
She has been fabulous.
She is a great first lady.
So, Philip, are the lefties being disingenuous when they claim that there's no war on Christmas or that the war on Christmas doesn't matter?
Because the war on Christmas sure seems to matter to them.
They're the aggressors in this.
They're the ones trying to change the tradition.
Is it disingenuous?
Do they really know the stakes?
What are the stakes?
Yeah.
Well, I think conservatives definitely fall for it when they go with the war on Christmas narrative.
We've seen all the ridiculous arguments over Starbucks cups and, you know, some teenager who's bagging our groceries being told he has to say happy holidays or Merry Christmas.
Look, I think that the solution here is that, you know, for conservatives, freedom is the solution here.
If you want to say Merry Christmas, go ahead and do that.
But don't throw a fit because your barista said happy holidays instead.
I get that there are some people who are trying to change the culture and erase the nativity.
But I don't think that works.
I think they just look really silly.
And so, yeah, absolutely.
The White House looks beautiful.
I'm glad there's a nativity scene back in there.
But the only present that's really going to matter when Trump moves out of the White House, either in three years or seven years, When he moves out, the only thing that's going to matter is whether or not he got tax reform done, whether or not he got healthcare through.
So, yeah, I mean, I never stopped saying Merry Christmas.
Neither did my family and back home in Indiana.
I mean, everybody said it at basically every store.
So I think it's overblown and we all do ourselves a disservice when we get into, I think, what is kind of a petty fight.
But Indiana is a great state.
It's one of the finest states in this union.
They elected Mitch Daniels, for goodness sakes.
Indiana might not be representative of the whole country.
And I will say, it isn't just baristas who don't say Merry Christmas.
In my experience, baristas do say Merry Christmas.
It's the guys at the top.
It's Howard Schultz.
It's the guys who are running Starbucks.
It's the guys who are running these corporations who say happy holidays, who say season's greetings.
But why are they saying it?
There are a lot of people on the right who say it doesn't matter.
Who cares?
It's just a word.
But Culture matters.
Politics is downstream culture.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Culture matters.
But I don't think the culture that we want to impose is one where we go to the CEO of Starbucks and say, you better say Merry Christmas, buddy, or we're going to go get our legal addictive stimulants somewhere else.
I think you'd go to Dunkin' Donuts or you'd go to Starbucks because you like their coffee, not because you like their social conservatism.
I love Chick-fil-A, but I love Chick-fil-A not because of the social conservative positions they take.
I love Chick-fil-A because it's good chicken at an affordable price.
Isn't that what we should be trying to do as consumers?
I don't know.
No, though.
I mean, I certainly agree in I don't go to Starbucks because of their politics.
Obviously, I would never go there, and yet I still do all the time.
But I do like Chick-fil-A because it's a nice, wholesome company that closes on Sunday.
In-N-Out Burger is fine.
I know this is going to be heresy to people watching in California.
It's fine.
It makes an okay burger.
But one thing I like about them is they treat their employees well.
Their employees always smile.
They even have Bible verses, I think, on the bottom of the cups.
There is more to it.
This has been the critique all through the election on the left and the right.
There's a critique going on right now of neoliberalism, of materialism, of saying that all that really matters is how big GDP gets.
And there is a value to liberty per se, there is a value to culture per se, and there is a value to calling it like it is.
There are not other major holidays this season, major holidays, other than Christmas and New Year's.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I mean, it's a cliche, but it's a true one.
Politics is downstream from culture, but the way that you get a winning culture that is going to affect positive politics is not by beating someone over the head.
I think what happens is you say, yeah, they're not saying Merry Christmas, so what?
And then you go have a better, more attractive culture and win people over that way instead of trying to get some I think you're absolutely right.
This is a more attractive culture.
The culture that sees the world correctly and calls it like we sees it and doesn't just deal in silly, politically correct euphemisms, that's more attractive, and it should be more attractive to the dollars.
And Howard Schultz better come around on that, pal.
I actually think that's mostly a contrived controversy because they do put little Christmas lights on their cups.
But certainly in other places it's not.
Barack Obama made the choice to not put the word Christmas on his Christmas card.
And by the way, I think the reason it's – I agree with most of your premises, but I don't exactly agree with the conclusion because I think the war on Christmas is a winning issue for us.
It's a winning cultural issue.
Most people in the United States understand that Christmas is the holiday this season, at least here.
And that's what we ought to call it like.
And we ought to celebrate it in precise words.
On this point, we have to get to the value of language and the value of culture.
Because where do words really matter?
Yesterday, Elizabeth Warren claimed...
That Pocahontas, the word Pocahontas, is a racial slur because President Trump called that ridiculous fraud and that lying, cynical shell of a woman, the humorless woman, scolding woman, he called her Pocahontas.
Now an actual descendant of Pocahontas, Debbie White of Pareko, is firing back saying, quote, I know that he uses Pocahontas sometimes with Elizabeth Warren.
He said, well, does that offend you when I use that?
And I told him, no, it doesn't offend me.
If Pocahontas were alive today, she would be very proud of President Trump.
Does it get any better than this?
Mr.
Bois, we're seeing a lot of old Democrat playbooks go up in flames.
Their once tried and true strategies of weaponizing ever more specific minority categories just isn't working that well.
Are we seeing even that strategy fall apart?
Will that be a tenable strategy in the future?
No.
Yeah, this is great, Michael.
It really is great to just see the fact that they cannot do the whole, well, you're a racist playbook anymore.
And the reason why they're not able to do it, and this is another reason why I think we elected President Trump, is because when he says Pocahontas, he doesn't apologize.
He doesn't go, oh, I'm sorry.
I know that's offensive to some people.
He just says it.
Let it out there.
Everybody debates amongst themselves.
And Elizabeth Warren looks like a complete idiot.
And it's great.
And it's over.
And it just goes to show you that the second you stop showing that fear that they try to put in you by saying, we're going to slander you as a racist, the second you stop showing that, they lose.
And I think it's wonderful to see that it's going up in flames.
Philip, are they going to double down on all of the hyphenated grievance?
Or are they going to learn the lesson?
I agree that I think it's a good thing that this politically correct politics is going by the wayside.
I think that's one of the benefits that we're getting with Donald Trump.
But for goodness sake, we didn't elect him just so that we could say Merry Christmas and Pocahontas.
That's what I did.
Why did you elect him?
Wait, that wasn't it?
I liked the Pocahontas thing.
That's pretty much my vote.
I think that this is ridiculous that anyone is outraged that the president is comparing a senator from Massachusetts to a beloved, award-winning Disney princess.
The idea that we're so upset about that just blows my mind.
Yeah, so here's what's interesting about this, though.
Elizabeth Warren isn't answering for the fact that she made up Native American heritage.
She's not having to apologize for the fact that she campaigned on that in 2012, that she talked to her fellow faculty at Harvard about that when she was there.
Instead, the only thing that Elizabeth Warren is doing right now is she's counting her money on her way to the bank.
I mean, what President Trump did by calling her Pocahontas is he outraged a lot of liberals, a lot of progressives.
And that outrage is probably going to move them to donate for Warren.
And we saw this.
She was out fundraising off of the Pocahontas jab less than 12 hours after it happened.
So really, if we're being honest, I think that Elizabeth Warren should thank the president because he just, he helped her fill her coffers for her campaign.
I wonder, because now she is irrevocably tied to this deception.
Why are we talking?
This is an old story.
The story's been around for years and years.
Somehow it's the top trend on Twitter now that Liz Warren pretended to be Native American, submitted recipes to a Native American cookbook, Pow Wow Chow.
We're still talking about it.
And I don't know.
She raised money off of it.
But you know who else raised money off of insults?
Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush.
Yeah.
And if you ask low-energy Jeb and Lion Ted and Little Marco and yada, yada, yada, those – when Trump brands you with a proper title, with a title that's somewhat plausible, it tends to stick.
He tried a few with Hillary.
He tried low stamina or no stamina Hillary.
That one didn't really work because the woman clearly does have stamina.
But crooked Hillary, it's just – It's just sticky.
It sticks to her like glue.
I don't know.
I'm happy for Liz Warren if she made a few bucks off of it, if she was able to garner a little bit of wampum from Trump's insult.
But I think that that is a sticky insult that talks about her deception.
And speaking of deceptive Democrats, I think we have to close on the weird sex stuff.
We've beaten around the bush too long.
We have to get into today's version of the Democrat sex scandals.
Matt Lauer is out today.
At the Today Show, which he's been at for, I think, 17 years, maybe 20 years, after accusations that he sexually assaulted a staffer during the Rio Olympics, here is a now highly ironic clip of Lauer interrogating Bill O'Reilly over his own harassment allegations.
You were probably the last guy in the world that they wanted to fire because you were the guy that the ratings and the revenues were built on.
You carried that network on your shoulders.
for a lot of years.
So doesn't it seem safe to assume that the people at Fox News were given a piece of information or given some evidence That simply made it impossible for you to stay on at Fox News.
That's a false assumption.
There were a lot of other business things in play at that time and still today that 21st Century was involved with.
And it was a business decision that they made.
But there isn't any...
But you don't let your number one guy go unless you have information that you think makes him...
That's not true.
That's not true, huh?
Well, where there's smoke, there's fire.
I don't know.
We don't know that much about Matt Lauer.
These are brand new accusations.
How could we...
Oh, wait a minute.
Here's Katie Couric.
You co-hosted the Today Show with Matt Lauer for 15 years.
What is Matt's most annoying habit?
He pinches me on the ass a lot.
Wow!
I wouldn't have a problem with that.
Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.
Katie Couric did not leave a bit.
I should mention...
Yikes, that can't be good.
She worked with him for a very long time.
Also, Garrison Keillor, who is the longtime former host of Prairie Home Companion, which pseudo-sophisticates insist is clever, but I just don't see it.
He also is out because of improper sexual behavior.
With regard to Matt Lauer, just couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
I tell you, it's really, it's hard not to indulge the schadenfreude here because all of these guys who are preening over women's rights and the Republican war on women and assaulting, assailing not just women but also Republican politicians for these issues are now going down.
I'm a little worried about the moral hazards in this environment.
Philip, you're in the news biz.
You're in the news biz down in Swampland.
Is it going to take down the whole industry?
Is this pendulum going to swing too far?
Or are we just going to take down the rapists?
And that's a good thing.
I mean, I'm starting to think that if I keep my hands to myself and I just go to work every day, that somehow I'll magically make it to the top because there won't be anybody left.
I mean, for crying out loud, we've seen so many sex scandals, and it's really dispiriting at this point.
I mean, it's a new person every single day, it seems like, even every hour.
And, you know, maybe I'm unusual or something, but, you know, some of these things that these guys are accused of, you know, None of my friends that I hang out with, we don't have locker room chalk, and we certainly, I don't know of anyone, any decent fellow who would engage in this sort of stuff.
It's not that hard to keep your hands to yourself.
It really isn't.
All right.
Well, I hope that there's not a clip of you coming up, you know, like Matt Lauer yelling at Bill O'Reilly.
No, I don't think so.
I've heard no allegations about Philip.
But, Paul Bois, this brings up the question of the schadenfreude.
Should Republicans bask in this?
This is great.
I mean, jerks like Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein.
There isn't enough time left in the show to go through all of these giant Democrat mouthpieces, these big gas bags who have hypocritically talked about women's issues for a long time.
But should Republicans jump on this?
Or are they just opening themselves up to getting caught?
Not in some cases, obviously, these guys raped women or sexually assaulted them.
But how far will that spectrum, that blurring between winking at your secretary and raping somebody, how blurry will that get?
And tactically speaking, do Republicans open themselves up to a lot of unwanted spotlight if they harp on this too much?
Well, Michael, I don't like creeps wherever they come from.
I don't care if they're Democrats.
I happen to think that the Democrat way of life allows for the flourishing of creeps and creates a culture in which the lines get so blurred and men are just so lost and they're just completely and totally feeding their appetites.
But there are a lot of, like, feet under the bathroom stalls and Denny Haster, and there are a lot of weird sex stuff on the Republican side too, right?
Sure, sure, sure, yeah.
The point that I'm saying is I think that that culture breeds that a little bit more, but if you're a creep and you're a Republican, I want you gone.
I mean, anybody that's...
If someone gets in a position of power and is preying on women and can't keep their hands on themselves, can't keep their eyes on their own wives and just are harassing women or making their lives miserable, then yeah, I want you gone.
So I say just let the fire burn.
We absolutely, absolutely need to make sure that we are not engaging in a witch hunt, and that is when someone brings forth an allegation, we take it.
Seriously, and we investigate, and we find the evidence to support it, but we don't just automatically believe them.
And for the most part, I think we've done a pretty decent job at doing that right now.
Some cases, I do think, have been just sort of witch hunt scenarios, just bringing forth things from like 20 years ago, and you find out, and it's like, okay, I mean, is this really a pattern in this person's life?
But other things, I think...
it's been appropriate, and I think we're having an important watershed moment in our culture right now.
But there's a distinction between the media figures that are going down, Matt Lauer, Keillor, all these guys, and the political figures.
Al Franken has been accused of being a sexual creep, and John Conyers.
Virtually every politician I've ever met is a sexual creep, so I'm not I'm actually surprised by the hubbub around all of it.
But it doesn't look like those guys are going to be forced to step down.
Why is that?
Perfectly understandable.
Politics is about more than just the personal activities of the people who hold it.
And as Federalist 51 points out, the Congress exists to put all of the wacko sociopaths into one room so they can fight each other and not destroy our country.
Now, Philip...
In the case of Roy Moore, for instance, he's accused of some pretty weird stuff at least 40 years ago, going after young teenagers and the like.
That said, his opponent in that Alabama Senate race believes in abortion up until, I believe, the fourth trimester.
I believe he is post-birth abortion.
I'm not sure about the specifics of it.
Should we really write off Roy Moore, as Mr.
Bois suggests, because maybe he's a sexual creep?
I don't mean to put words in your mouth.
Generally speaking...
If you're from Alabama, I mean, and you're an evangelical voter, your choices are pretty stark.
You either vote for someone who you think is a baby killer, you either vote for Doug Jones because you find Roy Moore so unpalatable, or you vote for someone who's been accused of being a pedophile, right?
So there aren't good options.
Not quite a pedophile.
I actually mean to draw this distinction.
Because they're saying he's a child molester.
And I'm not defending his going after, like, 14-year-old girls, allegedly.
But that is the difference, right?
These girls are saying they were very developed.
There is a categorical difference between a guy going after a teenager in the 1970s and a guy going after a 6-year-old.
I'm not saying either of them are superior.
I think both are bad.
Yeah, I'm not saying they're not bad, but they are different.
Democrats are harping on it like Roy Moore was going after and molesting toddlers.
That isn't the accusation.
The accusation, he was extremely creepy with young teenagers when he shouldn't have, and in some cases in criminal ways.
But that is a distinction.
That said, the opponent wants to kill a lot of babies.
Yeah, you're absolutely right about that.
If Doug Jones was not so radical, if we had a sort of, you know, if we had Joe Manchin down in Alabama, I think that he would absolutely destroy Doug Jones if he was just kind of moderate, middle of the road.
But he has become such a radical, specifically on the issue of abortion, that I don't think you're going to have a lot of, you know, Sort of marginally Republican voters down there be able to stomach that position and vote for him.
So I think Roy Moore, my thought is that he just might pull this out.
Yeah, it certainly looks that way.
I'm beginning to think that because you can't really trust the polls with something this charged.
It's kind of like Trump.
It's so socially unacceptable.
It's so socially taboo to suggest that you would vote for Roy Moore because you think protecting a lot of babies is more important than possibly credible accusations from four decades ago.
Mr.
Bois.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Go ahead, Philip.
Well, to just jump off that point a second ago, you know, I think that we were talking a second ago about how important it is to really weigh these allegations.
And with the Washington Post, I mean, look, I've harped on them before for these tiny little micro scoops about Russia that don't really end up being things.
I think in the past they've definitely overblown some stories, but on this one they crossed their T's, they dotted their I's, and then we saw with the James O'Keefe video that they're not just willing to listen to anyone who says that 20 years ago Roy Moore You know, I was trying to go after them.
Instead, I think that they really did good journalism.
And I'm, you know, I'm with Mr.
Kwa here.
I mean, human nature is universal, and their creepiness is bipartisan.
So I don't care whether they're on the left or the right.
I don't think they have any place leading our country.
Mm-hmm.
Mr.
Boy, are you going to put your money where your mouth is and say we shouldn't support Roy Moore?
Well, I did not say that in my statement.
When the allegations first broke on Moore and I was emphatic at the time and I said that I do think he should step down and I think we should replace him with somebody who is more palatable, Well, that has not happened.
And so we are in a very, very difficult position.
And I think the right position has been what Trump and Sean Hannity have said.
Look, the people of Alabama are going to have to decide this for themselves.
I certainly, if I were, I wouldn't vote for Doug Jones, nor I may probably just not vote at all.
I know that some people may just look at that as a cowardly position.
Yes, they might, Mr.
Boyd.
They might think just that.
I do think that there are just certain moral lines that I'm just unwilling to cross.
Yeah, I really just cannot bring myself to vote for someone who could be incredibly accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl.
Even if it opens the way for a guy who supports 75th trimester abortions to become a senator?
I think the answer is why—I mean, if Moore is being credibly accused, and if he is guilty of these things, and if he really does care about the country, then why didn't you step down when we could have replaced somebody instead of being a narcissist and, you know, trying to stay in?
That's what I would say to that.
But now we're just stuck in this very, very difficult position.
So it's kind of like— Yeah, it really sucks.
I have a very hard time saying, like, yeah, I want Roy Moore to win, but at the same time, I really do not want a pro-abortionist zealot in the Senate.
It's a tough situation.
It's one of those things that it's going to come down to the wire.
You know, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we would all have a Merry Christmas.
Philip, last word.
I think, you know, for being pragmatic here, even if Doug Jones wins, I don't see how he tips the needle in favor of the pro-choice position.
They've already won a lot of those battles, but they're not going to win anymore when you have Trump in the White House.
Pragmatically, though, we're talking about Roy Moore as if he's some sort of Republican stalwart.
He's not going to march lockstep with guys like Ted Cruz or Mike Lee.
We don't know what he's going to do.
The only thing that we can say for certain is that Democrats are going to hang him around the neck of Republicans like a big old millstone.
And every time Republicans try to push forward some social issue, they're going to be like, ah, not so fast.
Roy Moore still caucuses with you guys.
Yeah, certainly that's the big fear, and they'll use it to fundraise, and they'll use it to harangue Republicans, and it is a difficult calculation.
It's not an easy one, but we don't live in solely ethereal worlds.
We live in time and space, and that's the trouble with politics, is it isn't just a rationalist intellectual exercise.
we have to make usually we have to pick one of two crappy options and that's that's what makes politics so frustrating and so fun and i've had a lot of fun talking to you so philip thank you for being here philip wegman from the washington xaminer paul cardinal bois from the daily wire and from saint peter's i believe if i can see that background well that's our whole show today get your mailbag questions in i think we have 750 million because we didn't do them last week on Thanksgiving.
So get them in.
I will change your life, hopefully, for the better tomorrow.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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