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Jan. 10, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show

45:38

Ep. 85 - The Art Of The Deal: A Play-By-Play

The King of Reality TV just gave us one of his best episodes yet. We’ll break down the DACA meeting scene by scene, line by line. Then Allie Stuckey, Bradley Devlin, and Jacob Airey join the Panel of Deplorables to discuss Trump’s path to firing half of the EPA staff by the end of his first term, absurd judicial overreach, and Warren Buffett’s warning on Bitcoin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	The king of reality TV just gave us one of his best episodes yet.
	We will break down the DACA meeting, scene by scene, line by line, Democrat humiliation by Democrat humiliation.
	Then, Ali Stuckey, Bradley Devlin, and Jacob Airy join the panel of deplorables to discuss Trump's path to firing half of the EPA staff by the end of his first term, absurd judicial overreach, and Warren Buffett's warning on Bitcoin.
	I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
	What an incredible meeting yesterday at the White House.
	So for those of you who didn't see it, Donald Trump invited up congressional leaders, Senate leaders and House leaders from both parties, cameras on.
	He invited the press in the whole time, sitting around the table to talk about DACA and to talk about immigration.
	This is his signature issue and this is a very contentious issue and it has been a contentious issue for almost a century now and Donald Trump invited everyone in to do this.
	That does make him the most transparent administration in recent history.
	He's been very open with the press.
	He'll go on and speak to them at length without scripts.
	He's transparent in part because there have been so many leaks also coming from the White House.
	But contrary to what people predicted, that he would be an autocrat, that he would be tyrannical, he hasn't been.
	He's been very open.
	And of course he is.
	We always should have predicted this.
	He pioneered reality television.
	He pioneered a genre where people invite cameramen into their homes, into their most private moments, into their bedrooms, and let them film him all the time.
	Of course he's going to be transparent.
	He couldn't be anything but transparent because that is his strength.
	Playing to his strength, inviting cameras into his private life is something he's been doing since the 1980s.
	So of course he's going to bring it I know that geography does not dictate what kind of health care they would receive.
	I thank you, Mr.
	President.
	Let me just make this point, John, because we're not campaigning anymore.
	The election's over.
	I'm reminded of that every day.
	A total botch.
	I mean, absolutely awful.
	That's probably why he didn't make it a regular feature of his presidency, and why he presided over one of the least transparent administrations in American history.
	He's there.
	He can't help but be this crass, mean politician, because all Barack Obama knows from his entire life is politics.
	He...
	All he ever did was write about himself and why he should be elected president before he actually was elected to Illinois State Senate and then the Senate for five seconds and then the presidency.
	So he has to get those barbs.
	All he knows is that little political attack.
	Donald Trump knows much more than that.
	He knows how to entertain and he has been a businessman for his entire adult life.
	So it just allows him to interact with people and to interact with the cameras much better.
	Here is Trump.
	Here's how he opens.
	Well, thank you very much, everyone, for being here.
	I'm thrilled to be with a distinguished group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers from both the House and the Senate.
	We have something in common.
	We'd like to see this get done.
	And you know what this means.
	We're here today to advance bipartisan Immigration reform that serves the needs of the American families, workers, and taxpayers.
	It's DACA. We've been talking about DACA for a long time.
	I've been hearing about it for years, long before I decided to go into this particular line of work.
	And maybe we can do something.
	We have a lot of good people in this room, a lot of people that have a great spirit for taking care of people we represent, we all represent.
	So you have Barack Obama in a similar sort of meeting, and he says, well, John, the campaign's over.
	Wah, wah, wah.
	I'm the president.
	Wah, wah, wah.
	And Donald Trump opens up in a completely different tone, the opposite tone.
	He says, we have a lot of good people here.
	This problem has preceded me.
	It's been around long before I was around as president.
	And so, you know, we're going to take on this together.
	I didn't ask to take this.
	I didn't create the problem.
	But now I'm in this line of work.
	We're going to do it.
	So what are the priorities?
	The border security agents, the ICE agents, we have to give them the equipment they need.
	We have to close loopholes.
	And this really does include a very strong amount of different things for border security.
	I think everybody in the room would agree to that.
	I think that it's a question of amounts.
	But I think everyone agrees we have to have border security.
	I don't think there'd be anybody that says no.
	Everybody agrees, right?
	We totally agree on that.
	This is a verbal tick particularly of New Yorkers, but it's really fun and transparent and effective.
	My stepbrother and I, you know, in New York, we would do this to each other all the time and say, hey, so I can have some of your whiskey?
	Yeah, oh, hey, I can have your cigar.
	What you do by saying, look, we all agree on this.
	We're really just debating about this.
	You're assuming the premise.
	You're making people assume a premise that they might otherwise not take.
	Donald Trump does this all the time, by the way.
	He blows past premises and gets you to negotiating on his own terms.
	So the most famous example is the central campaign promise, we're going to build the wall and Mexico will pay for it.
	That's the great example.
	Before Donald Trump...
	Building a wall across the southern border of the United States was a very controversial position.
	Many people opposed it, even within the Republican Party.
	Donald Trump didn't say, I'm going to build a wall, and that's my strong point.
	He said, of course we're going to build the wall.
	The question is just who's going to pay for it.
	And he's going to make an apparently ridiculous claim of who's going to pay for it.
	So the whole conversation became about who would pay for the wall.
	They just swallowed that they're going to build the wall whole cloth.
	Now, what else will be in the final agreement?
	I'm not sure I can speak for everybody, but a lot of the people in this room want to see chain migration ended.
	And we have a recent case along the West Side Highway having to do with chain migration, where a man ran over, killed eight people, and many people injured badly, loss of arms, loss of legs.
	Horrible thing happened.
	And then you look at the chain and all the people that came in because of him.
	Terrible situation.
	And the others canceled the lottery program.
	They call it visa lottery.
	I just call it lottery.
	Where countries come in and they put names in a hopper.
	They're not giving you their best names.
	Common sense means they're not giving you their best names.
	They're giving you people that they don't want.
	And then we take them out of the lottery.
	And when they do it by hand, when they put the hand in a bowl, Like probably what's in their hand are the worst of the worst.
	Notice the graphic, vivid language.
	He opens up, so he's been so nice, we have a lot of great people in the room.
	And then he opens up and immediately ties the issue of the border wall and the Dreamer or DACA people, these people who were brought into the United States Before they were fully grown adults, he ties it to a terrorist attack in New York, a radical Muslim terrorist attack that happened just last year.
	And he's talking about body parts flying away.
	I mean, really gross stuff, but things that create a very vivid picture in your mind.
	He then moves on to the lottery, and he says, some people call it the visa lottery, I call it the lottery.
	And by the way, there's no difference here, right?
	He's not actually making any categorical distinction or substantive difference between the two.
	He just knows that the language of visa lottery, you kind of, your eyes glaze over, what's a visa exactly?
	I know it has to do with immigration and travel, but for most Americans, they just, okay, I guess.
	But he says it's the lottery, like when you go buy a lottery ticket.
	So he's got this image of your hand reaching into the bowl and, ah yes, Juan Lopez Gonzalez, he's going to come in now and reaching into the bowl because that is absurd.
	And the lottery system as it currently stands is absurd.
	And he's drawing that comparison.
	All of these images are floating around in your mind.
	So that's how he frames the discussion.
	Then he turns the cameras on the people in the room.
	We also, as you know, it was passed in 2006, a essentially similar thing, a fence, a very substantial fence was passed, but unfortunately, I don't know, they never got it done.
	But they need it.
	That's the beginning of that line.
	Politicians are all talk.
	Donald Trump is a man of action.
	All talk, no action politicians, and then Donald Trump.
	But he points out, he says, you know, you already voted for this.
	You already voted for this.
	A lot of Democrats already voted for that.
	He starts calling them out because he says, look, this isn't me just being crazy and you're all dealing with me being crazy.
	What you have done is what I am now executing.
	You talked a lot about it.
	Now we're going to make it happen.
	That's why we brought you here.
	And as a matter of fact, speaking of that, isn't it a little curious who's sitting right next to him?
	Dick, perhaps you'd like to say a few words?
	Well, thanks, Mr.
	President, for inviting us.
	We're all honored to be part of this conversation.
	September the 5th, you challenged us.
	You challenged Congress.
	You said we're going to end DACA, but now replace it.
	As of today, we've not done that.
	Dick Durbin is sitting right next to him.
	He's the assistant Democrat leader, the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate.
	It's not Chuck Schumer, by the way.
	It's not the leader.
	It's the assistant.
	It's a guy.
	Trump is reigning supreme here.
	But to his right, he's got the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate.
	And by the way, on his other side is Steny Hoyer, another Democrat, the Democrat minority whip, one of the highest ranking Democrats in Congress.
	But it isn't Chuck and Nancy.
	It's not Nancy Pelosi.
	They lost their chance.
	These are guys that we can make a deal with.
	And listen to how respectful they are to him.
	It isn't the resistance.
	We're expecting, yeah, show him, shove it right in his eye, shove a fork in his eye, the resistance.
	And then he says, oh, thank you for inviting us here.
	Oh, we didn't expect this.
	Maybe the government is being run differently than the mainstream media are telling us.
	Democrats can't back away here.
	They can't back away.
	They're framed exactly on either side of him.
	They are part of this.
	And what they get out of it is that they look like they have a seat at the table.
	They get some credibility.
	They're not just screaming little children.
	Donald Trump is showing them some respect, and they're going to have to show him some respect in return if they don't want to get booted out of the room like Chuck and Nancy.
	So let's turn to the other side and talk to Steny Hoyer.
	In my view, we can pass the protection in the, what I understand your position is, procedurally it was not done correctly.
	You then, as Dick has said, challenged us, pass it correctly.
	That's incredible.
	You now have the Democrat House whip basically admitting that Barack Obama violated the law.
	He's saying this wasn't done correctly.
	That Barack Obama didn't do this correctly, now we have to do it correctly.
	I wonder if this was scripted.
	If these points, these talking points were agreed upon by these three men ahead of time.
	Clearly some terms were agreed upon for these opening remarks.
	That in itself is a significant deal.
	saying, "We'll give you this.
	We'll give you this public showing if you give us this public showing.
	It's not like they went in there and ad-libbed it.
	They had all of this scripted out.
	The question is, what did they each know about where it was going to go?
	You'll see at some points in the conversation, the conversation gets sidetracked.
	This meeting goes off the rails a little bit.
	They pull it back in.
	But a lot of it is pre-scripted.
	So Trump, in his typically subtle way, didn't want anybody to miss the point that the Democrat to his left just made.
	I agree with him on that issue.
	And interestingly, when you say that President Obama, when he signed the executive order, actually said he doesn't have the right to do this.
	And so you do have to go through Congress and you do have to make it permanent.
	Just in case you missed that.
	We wouldn't want you to miss that.
	We don't want anybody to miss what he just said.
	Now, notice how reasonable Donald Trump sounds as he's making that point, as he's saying Barack Obama's a dirty criminal liar.
	Notice how reasonable.
	That Michael Wolff book, that tabloid trash, has alleged that Donald Trump is a screaming baby.
	He's all emotion.
	He's all reactive.
	Totally impulsive.
	He can barely form a sentence.
	We're not seeing that here.
	Not only is he calm, he's conducting this discussion like an adult, like he's the adult in the room.
	He's even being conciliatory.
	We also know, by the way, a little sidebar, we know that the claim about Trump being impulsive, reckless, emotional, we know that isn't true because of Steve Bannon, because of how Donald Trump treated Steve Bannon.
	Bannon was making a lot of...
	Shaky comments, negative comments, leaking things to Donald Trump since the moment he was fired, even before he was fired.
	But Donald Trump held his fire.
	He said, okay, we're not going to play around just yet.
	It was only after Bannon lost Alabama incredibly, a Herculean task and achievement for a Republican to lose Alabama.
	So he's at his lowest point professionally, and he calls Trump and his family traitors.
	Then he drops the hammer.
	But all of this President Bannon, Trump doesn't know anything, he's just a vessel for my movement, he let that slide.
	He played very nicely while Bannon was still relatively loyal, and then he pounced.
	But that was planned out.
	That wasn't just emotional one night he got angry and tweeted at Bannon.
	So that, you can have one or the other, but you can't have both criticisms simultaneously of Donald Trump.
	Okay, Mr.
	Conciliator, let's get some people on the record, okay?
	This room would agree to that also, but we'll do it in steps.
	And most people agree with that, I think, Dick.
	We'll do it in steps.
	Even you say, let's do this, and then we go phase two.
	Kevin, what would you like to say?
	He's like a parent mediating between children.
	We've been told that he's the child.
	Dealing with him is like dealing with a child.
	But that's not what we're saying.
	I say, look, this is, and as you said, as you have already said, we need to do this and we're going to have to negotiate and do this.
	But he's the one there right in the middle.
	He's even mediating between people within their own parties.
	So now that the stage is set, let's start talking about the legislative solution itself.
	Well, I think a good starting point would be Bob Goodlack, who has done a bill, and I understand you're ready to submit it, and you're going to take that, and you'll submit, and they'll negotiate in Congress or the House, and then it goes to the Senate, and they'll negotiate, both Republican and Democrat, but it could be a good way of starting.
	Now, if anyone has an idea different from that, but I think starting in the House might be good.
	You're ready?
	I think you're ready to go.
	I would like to add the words merit Into any bill that's submitted, because I think we should have merit-based immigration like they have in Canada, like they have in Australia.
	So we have people coming in that have a great track record as opposed to what we're doing now, to be honest with you.
	Oh, I don't know.
	That seems like a good solution.
	Hey, guys, just off the top of my head, I'm just spitballing here.
	How about we start with the Republican plan for immigration and DACA? How about we do that?
	Obviously, we're going to start with Goodlatts' bill.
	And what Trump does is he immediately appears to break with it.
	So he's sort of playing that, oh, I don't know, just came to the top of my head.
	But, you know, by the way, before we do it, we're going to have to add merit.
	All of these conversations have already happened.
	This is totally performed for the cameras.
	It's the performance of reality for the cameras.
	Gee, who would be good at performing reality on television?
	His name escapes me.
	Of course.
	So nobody's going to disagree with that.
	But did you catch his other line?
	He says, does anybody else have a bill to start with?
	Does anybody else?
	Does anybody else have another idea?
	The cameras are on.
	Here's your chance.
	You're always complaining.
	You're always saying that we're not listening to you and you're being shut out.
	What's your plan?
	Do you have any plans?
	And the Democrats are dead silent.
	And throughout the meeting, Trump does this.
	Hey, Johnny, Sally, do you want to add something?
	Do you want to speak?
	Because when you go on CNN later, you're going to say that we shut you up, so here's your chance.
	Speak up if you have anything.
	Absolutely not.
	It's easy to shriek resist and resist on CNN, but now it's much harder.
	Now it is much more difficult when the cameras are on you and you actually have to legislate.
	So now we get to precisely what Donald Trump wants the public to take away from this meeting.
	He gets things done.
	He is not an all-talk, no-action politician.
	He does things.
	Take it away.
	Thank you very well said.
	You know, one of the reasons I'm here, Chuck, so importantly, is exactly that.
	I mean, normally you wouldn't have a president coming to this meeting.
	Normally, frankly, you'd have Democrats, Republicans, and maybe nothing would get done.
	You know, our system lends itself to not getting things done.
	And I hear so much about earmarks, the old earmark system, how there was a great friendliness when you had earmarks.
	But of course, they had other problems with earmarks.
	But maybe all of you should start thinking about going back to a form of earmarks, because this system...
	This system...
	Well, you should do it.
	And I'm there with you, because this system really lends itself to not getting along.
	It lends itself to hostility and anger, and they hate the Republicans, and they hate the Democrats.
	And, you know, in the old days of earmarks, you can say what you want about Certain presidents and others where they all talk about they went out to dinner at night and they all got along and they passed bills.
	That was an earmarked system.
	And maybe we should think about it and we have to put better controls because it got a little bit out of hand, but maybe that brings people together.
	I love it.
	I think Donald Trump is the first president in history to publicly campaign on earmarks, that we need more earmarks.
	The reason this sounds a little strange, an earmark is pork barrel spending is what they call it, right?
	And it says, well, if you come over on this piece of legislation for me, I'll give you, I'll vote for the post office in your district and then we can both benefit and get re-elected, right?
	John McCain turned the Republican and conservative opinion against this when he ran for president.
	He turned a lot of Republicans against earmarks because, for one precise reason, because John McCain is a big government, spend a lot of money Republican.
	He's a liberal Republican.
	So he knew that if he was going to run against spending, he couldn't run against the actual drivers of the debt and deficit, which are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, big entitlement programs, big federal programs.
	He couldn't run against military spending.
	John McCain is one of the biggest hawks in the United States Senate.
	So we had to run against the only other little spending, which is pork barrel spending.
	The irony is, though, that pork barrel spending, those earmarks, really didn't constitute even a blip on the federal budget.
	That was a little slush here and there to make votes easier.
	But all of the drivers of those federal programs that John McCain supports.
	So it was a big distraction.
	It distracted Republicans for a couple election cycles.
	But we shouldn't be distracted by that.
	The earmarks are nothing compared to the big challenges, which are federal regulation, massive federal program spending, and then entitlement spending, which actually drives our deficits.
	So Trump, here then, Trump negotiates negotiation itself.
	This is pretty masterful.
	There are some things that you're proposing that are going to be very controversial and will be an impediment to agreement.
	But you're going to negotiate those things.
	You're going to sit down.
	You're going to say, listen, we can't agree here.
	We'll give you half of that.
	You're going to negotiate those things.
	Comprehensive means comprehensive.
	No, we're not talking about comprehensive.
	Now we're talking about...
	No, we are.
	We are talking about comprehensive.
	If you want to go there, it's okay, because you're not that far away.
	Mr.
	President, many of the things that are mentioned So, if you just missed that, he pits the Democrat congressional leaders against one another with the entire American public watching and the entire press corps filming the whole thing.
	So he says, oh, you want comprehensive immigration reform?
	Is that where this conversation is going?
	Sure, we all want that, but that may delay DACA.
	You know that thing that we're all here talking about that you insisted we talk about?
	Well, we may delay DACA.
	And there's that threat.
	And it's not a fire and fury threat.
	It's legitimately a subtle threat.
	So you have then on the other side, the Democrat Dick Durbin says, "No, no, no, we're not talking about comprehensive.
	We're talking about DACA.
	Shut up, Steny.
	Stay focused." And it's great because it makes them look like they're squabbling.
	They don't have their act together.
	They don't have their agenda together.
	Trump splits them.
	So he's putting a wedge between them.
	Great job.
	This is one of the biggest wins for the Republicans in the meeting.
	It gave Democrats the opportunity to humiliate themselves.
	Here is Democrat Henry Quellar.
	If you look at the latest DEA, if you're worried about drugs, look at the latest DEA report.
	More drugs come through the ports of entry than in between ports.
	But we're not even talking about ports of entry, number one.
	I'm just saying, I'm just saying, let's finish this.
	And some of us have been working this longer than some other folks.
	Number one, if you look at the 11 or 12 million undocumented aliens, which is a second phase, 40% of them came through visa overstay.
	So you can put the most beautiful wall out there.
	It's not going to stop them there, because they'll either come by plane, boat, or vehicle itself.
	That's in our bill, too.
	Yeah, and I know.
	So the other thing is, the other thing that we've got to look at, the wall itself, Mr.
	President, if you talk to your Border Patrol chief or the former Border Patrol chiefs, I've asked them, how much time does the wall buy you?
	They'll say a couple minutes or a few seconds.
	It is just our own border patrol chiefs that have said that.
	They tell mine.
	But -- Not the ones I selected.
	Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Not the ones I selected.
	They say without the wall -- All right.
	Smackdown, Smackdown, Smackdown.
	He brings up a point, nope, not true.
	Brings up another point, nope, sorry, also not true.
	And he has to say, because he's a politician, so he can't say, oh, well, I didn't know that.
	He says, oh, yeah, I know.
	No, you didn't know.
	You just contradicted the point.
	You just said something that is demonstrably false, and then you were contradicted.
	That's not even all of the stupid platitudes and talking points that this guy dropped.
	Quellar said, he said, we're playing defense on the one yard line with border security.
	Look how Mexico stopped immigration on their southern border.
	Trump points out they didn't stop immigration on their border.
	We stopped immigration on their border because overall illegal immigration has dropped since Donald Trump was elected president.
	So obviously the people who are, no one's immigrating to Mexico because Mexico is a nice place.
	Mexico is a terrible country and it's not enjoyable to live in.
	People are going through Mexico to get to the United States, which is Mecca, right?
	It's just this heavenly, lovely place that everybody in the hemisphere wants to go to.
	So Trump points that out.
	And this is a rare interjection for him.
	He's been letting them just smack each other around the whole meeting.
	George W. Bush, a great man, but not great at this.
	He never answered their stupid talking points.
	You know, Donald Trump invites them all to come in in front of the cameras, and then he smacks them down himself, and he allows them to hit each other.
	A few major takeaways here.
	One, Trump has a grasp of issues.
	Contrary to popular media reporting, he has a grasp of the issues.
	At one point, when Kevin Brady and Dianne Feinstein start fighting, McCarthy sums up what they want, and Trump adds another, ending the lottery system.
	It makes Democrats put up or shut up.
	It involves them in the government.
	So much for the resistance, right?
	They're flanking him left and right.
	He appears at least as impressive and actually more impressive than all of those people.
	I say more impressive only because they seem stiff.
	A lot of the people in that room, like Queller, Henry Queller is a good example, or Steny Hoyer, or Dick Durbin, they're fighting.
	They go a little off balance, and we can see that.
	The mainstream media cannot convincingly lie about what we see with our own eyes.
	Most important takeaway, as the mainstream media breathlessly reports the admitted lies in that tabloid book, The meeting makes Trump look less scary to the American people.
	Barack Obama did this.
	It was one of his great achievements in the 1990s with his first memoir.
	He released this memoir, Dreams from My Father, during that explosion of memoirs by not famous people.
	There was this fever pitch, the diving bell on the butterfly, the kiss.
	All these memoirs in the 1990s of just regular people.
	And Barack Obama released it.
	And he said, yeah, I did coke and I ate dogs in Indonesia and I did this and that and this and that.
	My father was a bigamist and everything.
	But a real masterstroke, by the end of that book, you're not afraid of Barack Obama.
	He isn't scary.
	So he did that in memoir form in the 1990s during that explosion.
	Donald Trump does it with reality television.
	He brings in his strength, his preferred medium, reality TV, and it makes him less scary by the end of that meeting.
	Okay, let's bring on our panel.
	But before we get to the panel, let's talk about looking good on camera.
	One way, if you want to look good on camera, I'll tell you, you need a good shave.
	You need to, you know, you've got to pamper yourself a little bit, clean your hair, wash your face, and shave.
	Now, Dollar Shave Club is an amazing opportunity.
	Their razors are excellent.
	And you know now, when you go to stores, they'll have this 75-blade razor that costs a gazillion dollars, and they just keep adding all these blades to make it seem like a better shave.
	That's really all they can add in the product.
	So a Dollar Shave Club is like the perfect razor.
	And it's really good, especially when you use it with Dr.
	Carver's Shave Butter.
	So I am not going to give up my membership.
	And there are even more Dollar Shave Club products that you can add to your routine.
	So these guys started out as this great thing.
	You just get...
	Shavers in the mail, razors in the mail.
	You don't need to think about it.
	I never run out to the store.
	I'm using old blades in the old days.
	You know, old blades from three years ago.
	Don't do that.
	Just don't think about it.
	You'll get them in the mail.
	They're on time.
	But now Dollar Shave Club has a lot more products.
	They have products for your hair, face, skin, shower.
	They have everything you need.
	I do not go to drugstores or pharmacies and just get it mailed to you.
	It's much, much easier.
	It's a 21st century, folks.
	Take advantage of our technology.
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	No more annoying trips to the store, going up and down the aisles.
	Is it on aisle seven?
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	You have to stand in line for three hours at my local drug store, I won't say the name of it.
	So, I use Dollar Shave Club for all of those things.
	Razors, body cleanser, hair gel.
	They even have a new product.
	I don't even know if I can say this on the air.
	It's a little personal.
	You know, bathroom things are a little personal.
	But, you know, in Europe they use bidets to clean themselves after they use the facilities.
	Dollar Shave Club makes that even easier.
	It's much more American.
	It gets delivered to you.
	It's worth it.
	Let's be clean, everybody.
	It's really good.
	Mails right to your door.
	So they have you covered head to toe.
	And now's a great time to give Dollar Shave Club a try.
	You can get your first month of their best razor along with travel size versions of shave butter, body cleanser, and yes, even that little cleanser for your derriere for just $5.
	So just do it.
	I mean, it's practically free.
	Go there right now.
	After that, the replacement cart was shipped for just a few bucks a month.
	It will save you time.
	It will save you money.
	It is a no-brainer.
	And that first order is practically free.
	It is the Dollar Shave Club starter set.
	Get yours for just $5 exclusively at dollarshaveclub.com slash C-O-V-F-E-F-E. Dollar Shave Club dot com slash Covfefe.
	What is that, Marshall?
	Dollar Shave Club slash Covfefe.
	Dollar Shave Club dot com slash Covfefe.
	Why do we keep him around?
	You're going to have to pay $10 for that, Marshall.
	Everyone else is just $5.
	Okay, let's bring on the panel.
	We have got today Bradley Devlin, Jacob Airy, and most exciting of all, Allie Stuckey.
	Everybody, thank you for being here.
	Allie, congratulations, by the way.
	I know that you now have a show on CRTV. Yes, I do.
	I do.
	I'm very excited.
	I'm excited for you to show me the podcast ropes.
	That's all neat.
	I don't know anything about it.
	You know, some people ask me for advice on how to publish a book.
	I don't know anything about books.
	I wrote a book without any words.
	This one, I guess, this has some more words.
	Really just take a lot of covfefe and it will help you in your podcasting skills.
	What's the show going to look like?
	Perfect.
	Well, I'm not exactly sure yet.
	We can decide here.
	Yes, exactly.
	I'll be doing two shorter videos a week and then every two and a half weeks there will be a longer form video and it'll be a variety of different things and then it'll be a weekly podcast so I'm not up to the level That you are of a daily podcast.
	It'll be a weekly podcast.
	You know, spreading fake news, not everyone can do it, but it's God's work.
	Some of us are called to spread the covfefe.
	Right, and I am not, I suppose.
	But it'll all launch by the end of the month, so I'm very excited about it.
	That is good.
	This actually might get me to subscribe to CRTV. I've, you know, I don't use, I use Crowder's mug as an ashtray when I smoke cigars, so I wasn't going to do it for that, obviously, but now that you're there, I'm much more compelled to do it.
	And roaming, that's right, roaming millennials getting a show too.
	All right, well, both of you together, I guess that's a pretty good argument to do it, despite Nakei Jared and Crowder being over there too.
	Okay, well, listen, I know that you all on Facebook and YouTube want to hear from the panel.
	We have to talk about this stupid judge in the middle of San Francisco ruling against DACA and preventing Donald Trump from executing his office because we've elected him to do that.
	There are a lot of other things.
	We're going to talk about Bitcoin in a little bit.
	We're also going to talk about Donald Trump just burning the government to the ground and firing all these useless bureaucrats.
	But you don't get that unless you subscribe to DailyWire.com.
	If you subscribe, what do you get?
	Well, you get me.
	You get the Andrew Klavan Show.
	You get the Ben Shapiro Show.
	All of that is well and good.
	But forget about it.
	What you really need is this.
	Because that meeting, that DACA meeting that we all just walked through and analyzed...
	We're going to get that wall, folks.
	And when that wall goes up, it's actually going to make the floods of leftist tears even worse, because there's going to be nowhere for the tears to go.
	They can't go down and flood Mexico and Central and South America.
	They're going to be stuck here, and you are going to want to protect yourself and protect your family with the leftist tears tumbler.
	So go to dailywire.com right now.
	Okay, so this San Francisco district judge, William Alsup, a Clinton appointee, has temporarily blocked President Trump from phasing out DACA. Bradley, what is this about?
	What is the judicial argument for blocking the end of a totally unconstitutional immigration power grab?
	Well, first, thanks for having me on, Michael.
	I have had a great time on winter break watching all this conservative policy go through.
	It's been a great turn of events from Twitter trolling to actual policy.
	It's fantastic.
	You don't need one or the other.
	I think they both go very well together.
	We can have both.
	We've been getting both.
	It's been great seeing Bannon implode.
	Anyway, the legalities behind the injunction to end the DACA rescinding from the Trump administration.
	If you actually read – I was reading some of the excerpts from his 49-page ruling.
	This argument looks exactly like the argument a conservative judge would make when Obama was pushing through DACA using prosecutorial discretion back in 2012.
	And so it says that Alice said in the injunction, plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims.
	Hmm, that's interesting.
	The Obama administration was awfully arbitrary and capricious when deciding that they weren't going to uphold the rule of law and give amnesty to all these DACA recipients who can now work, have papers, and receive welfare.
	That was practically the Obama campaign slogan.
	Obama 2012, arbitrary and capricious.
	Right.
	The judge went on to say that the injunction was appropriate because our country has a strong interest in the uniform application of immigration law and policy.
	Oh my gosh.
	Are you kidding?
	This is insane.
	You cannot say that you want to have the uniform application of immigration law and policy, because if that was the case, you'd be on the Ann Coulter train and say, deport all of them, it doesn't matter.
	Right.
	The law is clear.
	The law is clear, folks.
	Well, this brings up a problem, really, because the law contradicts all of these regulations that came out of the executive.
	So I do see a certain argument saying, well, we made this promise, we made this executive regulation, and even though that itself contradicts Violating that would pose other legal problems.
	Jacob, is this a problem with the judiciary or with the regulatory state?
	Both.
	It's a problem that the executive branch was, basically Congress gave this power to President Obama, even when the Republicans were in charge.
	Right.
	Obama would say, oh, I'm going to write out an executive order, and the Republicans just went, okay.
	But then on the flip side, when Trump actually says, hey, I'm going to give this power back to Congress, a judge can say, no, you can't give that power back to Congress.
	What?
	What universe are we living in?
	I don't think that the San Francisco federal judge even has the authority to do this.
	So, if I was President Trump, of course, this is probably very unwise advice, but I'd be like, okay, you made this ruling, now you have to enforce it.
	Because it's completely an illegal, it's a completely illegal ruling.
	He has no basis for this, and it makes no sense as far as the Constitution goes.
	And it'll be overturned.
	I'm not worried about it.
	He's making some stupid point.
	And this is what gets to it.
	Ali, lest we become all talk and no action, to quote a great man, how do we combat this sort of absurd judicial overreach?
	Well, it is absolutely absurd.
	And I think Senator Cornyn actually said it best.
	He said it's absolutely ridiculous to think that Obama can create something that President Trump can't uncreate.
	That's just not how it works.
	And what I think is interesting about this as well is that this judge, and I think previous judges, but this judge I know is using Trump's recent tweets to try to psychoanalyze his motive behind rescinding this.
	So Trump tweeted not too long ago that he basically wants the dreamers to stay, that all of these well accomplished dreamers that have contributed so much to society, are we really going to deport them?
	Which was kind of amazing when he tweeted that, but he did.
	And so this judge is basically saying, look, the president really wants them to stay.
	The only thing that he is trying, the only reason he's trying to rescind this is for the illegality.
	And it is not what this judge is trying to say, is that it is not the executive branch's role to say whether something is illegal or not.
	It is the Supreme Court's role, which I think is completely hypocritical, because if this guy, if this judge was so concerned with legality, illegality, something being constitutional, he would have raised similar concerns when Obama was passing this in the first place.
	Exactly what Bradley was saying.
	And I think that's funny, and that's a trend that we see kind of across the board.
	And I just realized that I'm not really answering your question.
	I'm just talking a lot.
	Oh, that's okay.
	I'm just gazing longingly.
	An interesting trend that we're seeing with all these judges that are pushing back on Trump's attempt at immigration reform.
	Is that they all of the sudden care about constitutionality.
	They all of the sudden care about legality and following the rule of law.
	They all of the sudden have all of these concerns about keeping our democratic system in line when they never had those concerns when they agreed with the policies.
	That Obama was unilaterally pushing through completely unconstitutionally.
	So I think that point alone just shows that this is a completely partisan move that, like you said, I think will be overturned.
	Absolutely.
	And there are two lines of attack here as well.
	So obviously one is nominating originalists to the court.
	People who, and textualists to the court, people who believe that words have meaning, Constitution has a meaning, and the words of laws have meanings that we cannot just interpret willy-nilly however we'd like.
	That's one track.
	The other is to reduce the size of the regulatory state so that we defer less to them on the execution of their own policies, so that the courts defer less to them over democratically enacted laws, and that takes me into the next news story.
	The Washington Examiner yesterday reported that Donald Trump's EPA is on track to cut 47% of the EPA staff by the end of his first term.
	That's just through retirement.
	That's just through attrition, losing people regularly.
	We're talking about losing 7,000 or 8,000 people at the EPA. Even Ronald Reagan, the greatest American president of his century, at least, did not reduce the size of the government.
	Ali, will Trump reduce the size and scope?
	of the federal government, finally.
	Yeah, I think so.
	And Scott Pruitt was saying that the reason for this, like you said, it's through retirement and through just shrinking the agency in general.
	The reason for this is because they want to go back to the basics when it comes to these regulations and protecting the environment.
	I mean, I think that there is a very careful balance of trying to protect the environment through common sense regulations, perhaps, and not standing in the way of job creation.
	And we know that that's a top priority of this president and the administration.
	And this agency hasn't been as small as it's supposed to be.
	I think it's around 14,000 since Ronald Reagan Yeah.
	One of the most, if not the most, conservative presidents that we've had in decades.
	Right.
	Absolutely right.
	And I was surprised, too.
	I fell for that.
	Donald Trump is a lifelong New Yorker.
	He won't really cut the government.
	But we're seeing unbelievable cuts.
	And this does lead to a question, Jacob.
	Why have past Republican presidents not reduced the size of the government?
	I honestly think it's because of laziness outside of...
	Don't you call Ronald Reagan lazy?
	How dare you?
	Well, Ronald Reagan, he had a Democrat Congress, and so in that case it was the Congress being combative.
	But I honestly think that's what it is.
	I mean, we saw...
	Certainly when President George W. Bush was in power, he had a Republican Congress for a while, and he didn't shrink the EPA. And I really think that that's what it is.
	You get distracted.
	And of course, you know, with President Bush, we had the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, which grew the government to some extent.
	So I honestly think it's not some sort of malicious thing, but I just think, oh, well, shrinking the EPA, will that really affect my numbers?
	Eh, probably not, so I'm just going to let it be.
	And there is a question.
	I mean, we don't, you don't exactly need Congress to fire people within your own branch of the government, but there is a, you know, these guys are feds.
	I once got to talk to Antonin Scalia, and we asked about states' rights.
	He said, states' rights are dead.
	They've been dead since the 17th Amendment and the direct election of senators.
	What, are you going to look to me to protect states' rights?
	I'm a Fed.
	I work for the federal government.
	And there is an aspect of a president coming into office and saying, you know, it is sure helpful if I've got all of these big agencies there so that I can wield my own power for perfectly good policy, let's say.
	But it's much harder to say we're just going to cut people.
	We're going to fire.
	We're going to not replace people after they retire.
	And at least for this first year, these first 12 months, we have seen historic cuts in the federal government.
	And we can only hope that they continue.
	Let's move on, finally, in our last minutes.
	Let's move on to something that is unrelated, I suppose, to Donald Trump.
	But I've resisted running this story.
	I know a lot of conservatives and Republicans, they've gotten very into cryptocurrencies.
	They've gotten into Bitcoin.
	People invested 35 cents in Bitcoin 10 years ago, and they're now gazillionaires.
	They're now richer than Warren Buffett.
	But Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, is now saying that cryptocurrencies are headed for trouble, that it won't end well.
	Surge is now much, much larger than even the tulip bubble in Holland.
	I've been referring to them as digital beanie babies.
	Bradley, you're a youth.
	You're a young kid.
	Are people of your generation, people at college campuses, young conservatives, are they investing in cryptocurrencies and are they afraid of losing all of their money?
	They're obsessed.
	I mean, my friend just became a miner the other day.
	My buddy is the Chairman of the Blockchain at Berkeley Club.
	And we've been talking for a long time about Bitcoin because I'm really struggling to understand it because when we're learning about money in classic economics classes, there's two types of money.
	There's fiat money, which its value is determined by government institutions that back it.
	And then there's commodity money, which means that that money or exchange piece holds intrinsic value and can be used and therefore is worth something.
	Bitcoin is none of those things.
	It's neither fiat nor commodity money.
	The only thing that this thing applies to in classical economics is a supply and demand graph.
	It derives its value from people being willing to supply it and people demanding it.
	And so that's seriously problematic when we're talking about money because Bitcoin rapidly appreciates when there's a good article about it, when consumer demand goes up, but then drastically drops when they can't maintain that hype.
	And when you can't maintain that hype, that money's not going through a money multiplier system.
	We're not going to have cryptocurrency-based societies in the future.
	It's foolish to think otherwise.
	Of course, it isn't a currency.
	It doesn't meet any criteria of currencies.
	And it also isn't even an asset.
	It is just speculation.
	And look, I like going to casinos as much as the next guy.
	So if you've made money gambling, good on you.
	But it isn't.
	One kind of wacky conservative investment I made is I bought a bunch of rhodium, which is a precious metal.
	I have a bar of rhodium.
	And I made 100% return last year.
	So I've only been referring to that as coin coin.
	This newfangled thing where you get a physical asset that you can invest in.
	Ali, are cryptocurrencies, are they just a fad and they're going to go bust?
	I hope so, because that means that I don't actually have to understand it.
	I think that Bradley did a very good job of explaining why this is so confusing to me.
	I mean, God just did not create my brain to understand cryptocurrency.
	Therefore, I want nothing to do with it.
	And if Warren Buffett says that it's a fad that I don't need to pay attention to, that means that I'm in good company.
	Maybe I do understand it a lot more than other people do, and that's why I don't want to spend any time thinking about it.
	You're in good company.
	Yeah, not only did he say that he wants nothing to do with it, he himself said, I don't understand this thing.
	When Warren Buffet says, I don't understand this thing, so I'm not for sure of it.
	It's a genius thing.
	It's because we're stable.
	Only stable choices don't understand cryptocurrency.
	I guarantee you our president doesn't either.
	We're going to find out Donald Trump has just stores and stores, hard drives and servers full of Bitcoin.
	That's stable genius.
	All right, panel, that's all our time.
	Thank you for being here.
	Excellent to have all of you today.
	That's our entire show.
	Make sure to tune into Another Kingdom, by the way.
	So Another Kingdom is back after the Christmas break.
	And Hollywood...
	I don't want to tell tales out of school.
	Andrew Klavan talked about this on his show the other day.
	Hollywood, which saw the immense popularity of this podcast, the narrative podcast I'm doing with Andrew Klavan, they saw it.
	It's got, I think, 1,600 five-star reviews now.
	It's got a lot of downloads.
	Very, very popular.
	Always charting on iTunes.
	They called us in to pitch this for television.
	And then I think they Googled Andrew Klavan.
	And then they were all cold meetings.
	We found out one of the production companies now is part of the resistance or something like that.
	It is really crazy.
	So please shove it down their throats.
	Please send another kingdom to your friends.
	Write a review.
	Tweet it.
	Post it.
	Get it out there.
	Subscribe.
	The bigger that this project has gotten, the more Hollywood wants to put its finger in its ears and say, la, la, la, la, la.
	We won't have any conservative art here.
	No, la, la, la.
	Look at my lapel pin in my black clothing.
	La, la, la.
	So please help us shove it down their throats.
	We really appreciate that.
	Get your mailbag questions in for Thursday.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	show.
	See you tomorrow.
	The Michael Knowles show is produced by Marshall Benson.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
	Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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