The popular drug deal terminal and homeless shelter Burger King has a new marketing campaign. The Home of the Whopper no longer boasts about its bigger beef. Now the fast food giant is relying on leftist politics to sell hamburgers. We’ll analyze their latest ad and what it means for the culture. Then, Benji Backer tries to convince me that conservatives should care about the environment. Finally, Jacob Airey joins the Panel of Deplorable to talk about that sexual deviant Barney the Dinosaur, illegal aliens screaming at Chuck Schumer and for some reason not being arrested and deported, and why half the country wants to investigate the FBI.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Popular homeless shelter and drug deal parking lot, Burger King, has a new marketing campaign.
The home of the Whopper no longer boasts about its bigger beef, the bigger the burger, the bigger the burger, the burger's bigger at Burger King.
No, now the fast food giant is relying on leftist politics to sell hamburgers.
We'll analyze their latest ad and what it means for the culture.
Then, Benji Backer tries to convince me that conservatives should care about the environment.
Finally, Jacob Airey joins the panel of Deplorable to talk about that sexual deviant Barney the Dinosaur, illegal aliens screaming at Chuck Schumer, and for some reason not being arrested and deported, and why half the country wants to investigate the FBI.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Before we get into Burger King and the culture, get ready.
On Tuesday, January 30th, our president will speak to the nation in his second State of the Union Address, a very exciting event, and you should watch it with us here at The Daily Wire.
It starts at 8 p.m.
Eastern, 5 p.m.
Pacific.
We will be hanging out with you for the whole time leading up to, during, and after the address.
We'll be there for every wild hand gesture, every off-teleprompter remark, and, of course, the hilarious and ridiculous rebuttal from Democrats.
Catch live streams at dailywire.com, Daily Wire Facebook, or Daily Wire YouTube to spend the evening with Ben, Drew Klavan, Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, and me as we comment on the address and relentlessly mock our government and our political leaders.
We'll also be joined by special guests at various points in the evening, so tune in to find out who will drop by.
Again, that's next Tuesday, January 30th, 8 p.m.
Eastern, 5 p.m.
Pacific.
Follow us on Facebook and YouTube and get notified when we go live so we can spend every absolutely forgettable moment together.
It's a party you will not want to miss.
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Slash covfefe.
Okay, let's get right into this.
Today I want to talk about politics infecting every aspect of our culture.
What it says about the millennial generation, what it says about our culture, what it says about the new slew of woke corporations.
Here is Burger King's latest hamburger ad.
Got a number one.
Hey, how are you doing?
Do you know what number 98, what's going on with it?
Number 98, uh...
You got the Whopper?
Yeah.
So you got the slow access Whopper Pass?
Wait.
It's on the menu right there with the fast, medium, and slow.
Slow MBPS, fast MBPS, or hyper-fast MBPS. MBPS, of course, standing for making burgers per second.
So if we got a lot for now, we have to pay $26?
Well, that's how you get it fast.
That's the highest priority.
This is like a lane system?
It's gonna be like 15, yeah, fast lane, slow lane.
So maybe like 15, 20 minutes.
What are you talking about?
Burger King Corporation believes that they can sell more and make more money selling chicken sandwiches and chicken fries, so now they're slowing down the access to the Whopper.
Were you given an option of a chicken sandwich?
I don't want a chicken sandwich.
I probably want a Whopper.
You get the point, right?
Isn't that clever?
Isn't that clever?
By the way, they wouldn't make any more money doing this.
They'd go out of business.
They are trying to make more money, though.
That's why they have this ad.
What's sort of strange about this hamburger ad, you'll notice, is that it doesn't at any point try to sell hamburgers.
Instead, it sells smug, glib attitudes toward political issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with its business or its product or really even its customers.
It's trying to use government regulation of the internet, so-called net neutrality, to make hamburgers more appealing.
That is horrifying.
This is what Burger King ads used to look like in the good old days.
This is the vanishing American.
The vanishing American hamburger.
It's been getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
Well, Burger King is out to save the hamburger.
With the Whopper.
A hamburger so big, it takes an extra big toasted bun just to hold it.
And we top that with pickles, and chopped onions, and fresh tomatoes, and crisp lettuce.
The Whopper.
The king-sized burger you only get at Burger King.
Groovy.
Take the tribe to Burger King.
Home of the Whopper.
The burgers are bigger at Burger King.
The bigger the burger, the better the burger.
The burgers are bigger at Burger King.
The bigger the burger, the better the burger.
The burgers are bigger at Burger King.
That ad was so effective because it actually sold hamburgers.
That ad was so effective that I was born 20 years after that ad played, and I know it.
I remember it.
I think a lot of people remember it, too.
But these days, they don't talk about the vanishing American, and you have an American Indian looking all perplexed at the tiny little hamburger patty.
These days, advertisements instead prattle on about obscure federal regulations.
Of course, Burger King does not actually care about net neutrality.
It didn't make any public statement in 2015 when the FCC imposed rules to regulate the Internet.
Burger King does not currently lobby for government regulation of the Internet on Capitol Hill or at the FCC. CMO of Burger King, Fernando Machado, said, We believe the Internet should be like Burger King restaurants, a place that doesn't prioritize and welcomes everyone.
That is why we created this experiment to call attention to the potential effects of net neutrality.
That isn't true.
They did it to call attention to their hamburgers.
It was exactly the opposite of what he just said.
But it worked.
The mainstream media loved it.
The Verge had a headline.
Burger King made a surprisingly good ad about net neutrality.
Reuters.
Burger King tweaks U.S. regulator in new net neutrality advertisement.
Entrepreneur.
You want fries with that?
Burger King explains net neutrality in less than three minutes.
Fast company.
Burger King uses the Whopper to teach a valuable lesson on net neutrality.
Marketing land.
Burger King Whopper explains net neutrality is a repeal in new ad, Adweek.
Burger King deviously explains net neutrality by making people wait longer for Whoppers.
The thing is, it didn't deviously explain net neutrality.
The explanation had all the subtlety of a hand grenade or a Trump tweet, but I repeat myself, it was not devious.
What it did deviously was pretend to agitate for net neutrality.
First of all, the analogy is total nonsense.
We did a whole episode on net neutrality.
A lot of people still don't understand it.
There was an incredible infographic sent around by a Democrat candidate for Senate, Ro Khanna, a pro-net neutrality Democrat running for Congress from Silicon Valley.
This tells the whole story.
So last November, Ro Khanna, this Democrat pro-net neutrality in the heart of tech land, Posted an infographic on the internet comparing the cost of the internet with government regulations, commonly called net neutrality, and without government regulations, no net neutrality.
With the regulations, he showed you could get video, email, gaming, and social media all for one price, $54.99 per month.
Without the regulations, he warned voters you would have to pay different prices for each.
So that could be $17.99 per month for video, $8.99 a month for email, $14.99 for gaming, $12.99 for social media, and you could opt out of certain platforms and pay a little bit less, so maybe you only pay for Netflix video but not YouTube video, so it'd be cheaper than all video, so on and so forth.
The trouble with Ro Khanna's argument here is that the net neutrality version without the customer choice cost $54.99 a month, and the no net neutrality version, the deregulated one, cost $54.96 a month.
So it's actually three cents cheaper.
He made the exact opposite point that he was trying to make.
You know, the argument for government regulation of the Internet made the case against a government regulation of the Internet.
Not very smart, Ro Khanna.
So, you'll notice, by the way, that I'm stumbling on my words a little bit here, that I keep saying government regulation of the Internet instead of net neutrality.
That's because net neutrality is a meaningless euphemism that is bandied about by the left to sugarcoat the reality of it, which is giving the government more control over the Internet, making the Internet less free, taking away consumer choice, both as to how they use the Internet and as to how they pay for the Internet.
But this is what the left always does.
They rely on these euphemisms, these subtle little lies that most people think are not worth fighting about, so they just use them.
And in so doing that, they can see the whole premises.
So I'm not going to do that.
It's tedious to use precise language, but it's also the most effective way to shut down their ridiculous arguments.
C'est la vie.
That's how it goes.
Anyway, back to net neutrality.
Why is a fast food burger company suddenly agitating on behalf of rules governing consumer choice on the internet a month and a half after the regulations were repealed and two and a half years after the rules were instituted to begin with?
A fast food burger company Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of internet regulation.
It's because of a sad and tedious fact about our culture.
This stunt from Burger King was exactly that, right?
It was a marketing gimmick, and it was geared toward a specific demographic, millennials.
For years, millennials have been turning away from fast food, leaving chains like Burger King or McDonald's or whatever scrambling.
According to a 2014 survey by Brand Keys, baby boomers are reporting an 18% drop in fast food visits and an 11% drop among Gen Xers.
The worst news is from millennials.
Millennials are expected to replace baby boomers as the nation's largest consumer buying group within just two years, by 2020.
And millennials hate fast food.
I don't.
I love fast food.
It's one of my guilty pleasures.
Also stogies and booze and fatty Italian meats and yada yada yada.
Also fast food.
I really like it.
That said, most of my fellow millennials hate it.
According to the 2014 survey, 89% of millennials prefer fast casual chains like Chipotle, even if those places cost more.
Which is absolutely insane.
Arby's, Wendy's, McDonald's are about 7 million times better than Chipotle or whatever frou-frou rice and beans faux-sophisticant millennials are willing to pay for.
Also, they don't give you Ebola.
Do you remember?
Didn't Chipotle give everybody Ebola a few years ago?
Or E. coli or one of those things?
Yeah.
So, fast casual places like Chipotle usually aren't even more expensive than fast food places.
It's the same thing.
You see this...
You see the same thing on the coasts and in the country.
It's people who prefer Dunkin' Donuts to Starbucks because Starbucks is supposedly too fancy or expensive.
And Dunkin' Donuts, that's for the American Joe.
But the two places cost the same amount of money, actually.
So Starbucks just makes stronger coffee and has, you know, 12-year-olds drinking milkshakes and a bunch of wannabe screenwriters on laptops and stuff.
Dunkin' Donuts has more construction workers and donuts and things.
They cost the same.
So Robert Pasikoff, the founder and president of Brand Keys, which did that survey, he agrees that the price doesn't actually matter.
He explains you don't build brands or loyalty on the basis of price.
That only works for commodities.
So facing an existential threat from millennials not eating in their restaurants, not able to manipulate them on the basis of price or really even food.
You know, it's going to take a lot to turn a place that has boasted for 50 years, the bigger the burger, the better the burger, the burger is bigger at Burger King into some artisanal bespoke salad restaurant.
So they tried to make the king look like a Brooklyn hipster with the big beard and the jewelry and the curls and everything.
I'm not sure that worked either.
So they have one tool at their disposal that sadly says a lot about our culture and in particular the culture of millennials.
They can virtue signal and sloganeer on politics.
Sociologist Richard Florida explained, advertisers used to wonder how a spot would play in Peoria.
Now they wonder how it'll play in Brooklyn.
Rob Biaco, a creative executive at a major ad agency, he admitted the same thing.
Marketers are increasingly relying on woke issue ads to target millennials.
In a phrase, he says, creatives are trying to make their toilet paper save the world.
Even though sometimes a Pringle is just a Pringle.
But for millennials, a Pringle can never just be a Pringle.
Everything has become politicized and activist.
Obviously, mainstream journalism, that was the first to go.
The universities, now even the NFL, even Pepsi, even Burger King.
It's a sad state of affairs.
It says a lot about our culture.
C.S. Lewis put it well.
He said,"...a sick society must think much about politics as a sick man must think about his digestion.
To ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for one as for the other.
But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind, if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else, then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease." Our society is without question sick, and so we have to think a lot about politics.
But we're only thinking about politics so that we can think about culture and art and philosophy and building things and eternal questions and our nature and our Creator, among other things.
But advertisers have rightly determined that millennials are obsessed with politics, shallow politics at that, not as a means but as an end.
And I think it's because they're using politics as a stand-in for something else.
They're trying to place all of their identity and all of their hopes in politics.
St.
Augustine wrote about this.
He said, Pascal put it in other words.
There was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace.
This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object, in other words, by God himself.
Speaking of false religion and millennial obsessions, we have to bring on Benji to talk about environmentalism.
But before we bring Benji on, we have to talk about my boudoir.
We've got to talk about my betting baby.
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Okay.
Let's bring on Benji.
Benji Backer is the founder of the American Conservative Coalition.
He has been a conservative activist, I think, since he was in the womb.
And he is a wonderful college kid.
But he's going to try to convince me that conservatives should care about the environment.
He's spoken at CPAC. I'm sure you've seen him elsewhere as well.
Benji, let's get right into it.
Why should conservatives care about the environment?
Michael, great to be here.
There's a few reasons.
First of all, it has immense economic impact.
If the environment's doing well, the economy's doing well, and that's just the truth.
Another reason for conservatives to really care about the environment is that it's the number one issue that millennials think about when they go to the voting booth.
Some polls showed it as number two, but either way, it's a really important issue for the youth demographic When they go to the polls, and the truth of the matter is, Republicans haven't done an amazing job making it a priority over the past 10 or 15 years.
Why is that, by the way?
I'm sorry, before we go on, because I agree with you.
I see that talking to millennials.
They really care about the environment, and they're always worried about global warming and things like that.
Why?
Why is this the number one issue for millennials?
Does that reflect some kind of agenda in our schooling?
Or is there some more legitimate reason as to why we're so concerned about it?
Yeah, I think part of it is in the schooling.
Obviously, we get taught about climate change and other environmental issues from a young age.
That being said, I just think that young people have an inclination to change environmental policy because they can see environmental changes happening, no matter if it's caused by manmade climate change or not.
They see that environmental changes have benefits if it's done the right way, and they also know about the economic impacts of being pro-environmental, especially if you're a conservative who knows environmental policy, you know that being pro-environmental can have immense economic And so I think all those together have kind of made it a priority.
You know, obviously the schools have pushed climate change into a lot of people's minds, and so that's probably the first and foremost, but there are other reasons as well.
Absolutely.
And do you see any distinction here?
Because I do think these schools have kind of made radicals out of conservatives like me, where all I want to do is throw those little six-pack can plastic things onto schools of dolphins because of how ridiculous the left is with its pro-environmental agenda.
Do you see a distinction between environmentalism and conservationism?
I do, and I think that they should be the same thing.
I just think that the left has pushed it so far to the left that people have gotten turned off by the environment, and as a result, conservatives have kind of dropped the subject.
And so I think both sides are at fault that it's gone so far to the left, and we've gotten to this huge divide where the right goes so far to say, okay, let's drill on national parks, let's You know, not even care about the environment at all.
And then the left has gone as far to say, you have to bike to work, otherwise the world's going to blow up.
Obviously that's an exaggeration, but that's kind of how it seems sometimes with the left.
What we try to do at the American Conservation Coalition is put it more in the middle, where you talk about some of the economic impacts, you talk about some of the things that private people can do, private businesses can do, local governments can do.
It's not all big government, and I think big government has turned away a lot of conservatives as well.
It's just been turned into this thing where you expect the government to handle every environmental problem.
That's not how it used to be.
Republicans used to embrace these things on a local level.
Sure.
There used to be...
I think before the environmental conversation became so hysterical with Al Gore suggesting that if we don't do exactly what he wants, the world is going to end, and then the world doesn't end and he has even less credibility.
Before that, conservatives were more open to it.
But the distinction I see between conservationism and environmentalism is that environmentalism posits that little animals and deer somehow have rights to...
That need to be protected.
They have the right to not be shot or the right to, I don't know, free healthcare or something.
And conservationism says that we have to preserve the animals so that we can keep on shooting them.
You know, basically that we need to conserve our natural environments because it's very beautiful.
And we enjoy seeing these nice animals and looking at beautiful parks.
But for the conservationist, it seems to me, it's all about the human.
The human is ultimately what matters in this relationship between the human and the environment.
And for the environmentalists, I wonder if it's a sort of pagan worshipping of an environment, a kind of anti-humanist environment.
A point of view that puts the little delta smelt in California above human beings.
For some reason we pour a huge percentage of our fresh water to feed these little anchovies in California rather than using them to water golf courses so that we can, you know, have a better time on the weekends or something.
Is there anything in that messaging where you think the environmental movement could get a little bit more focused on human beings and a little less concerned about sardines?
Yeah, actually, so the first thing I'll say is that I think everything's related.
You know, if you look at the study of science or just the environment in general, everything has an effect on one another.
But the fact of the matter is that conservationists are the best environmental stewards out there.
If it wasn't for hunters and fishers, we'd have overpopulation.
The life cycle wouldn't happen between all the different animals and plants.
And so when the environmental left goes after hunters and fishers, they just don't realize that they're imperative and so vital Two, keeping our environment going.
It's a matter of understanding the life process and how they all have to work together.
It's not just punishing humans.
There needs to be a cycle that goes around.
And I think that the environmental left needs to realize that.
On the right, people need to realize that at the same time, animals, plants, places of land, those all matter as well.
And if you do it the right way, which conservationists tend to do, hunters and fishers tend to be conservatives and really care about the environment, It can have immense economic benefits.
I mean, you look at hunting and fishing and how much it adds to the US economy.
You look at clean energy and how much that adds to the US economy with jobs and revenue.
I mean, there's so many ways to reap the benefits of these positive environmental impacts.
How do you think the Trump administration is doing on environmental matters?
We've loved seeing Scott Pruitt deregulating, firing, I think, half of the EPA. Not so much for whatever impact that would have on the environment.
We haven't seen much of one.
But because he's slashing these awful bureaucrats who think that they can run our lives better than we can.
Does Trump get a passing grade so far from green conservatives like you guys?
Or does he have work to do?
I think he has a little bit of work to do.
The administration itself actually has been pretty good, in my opinion.
There's been a lot of good things that have been done.
Ryan Zinke just did a hunting and shooting sports conservation council, which is very imperative to the future environmental success of the country.
Actually, Congress, a lot of Republicans, have put forward some really good legislation to help de-backlog the national parks for funding.
They've put together a few acts As well, Rex Tillerson has actually done some good things as well on the environment.
There's 33 Republicans on the Climate Solutions Caucus who kind of basically say that needs to be a priority.
Those are congressmen and women from all walks of the conservative aisle.
So I think that that's really key.
I think Donald Trump needs to make it a focus of his to focus on the environment.
Otherwise, one, he's not going to be able to get the youth vote as easily in 2020.
But additionally, I think that With him as president, conservatives have an opportunity to show that it's not big government that can solve these problems.
It's private businesses, it's local areas, it's state governments and local governments, and just citizens in general that can do the right thing.
So making it a priority I think is going to be important for him, and I think that it'll be something that conservatives can kind of prove that they can lead on if he makes it a priority.
And that's such a nice point at the end.
If the environmentalist left, or more likely the conservationist right, made the point that we need to protect our environment ourselves at a very local level.
I'm starting with the man in the mirror.
I'm asking him to make a change.
And municipal governments, local governments, private organizations, conservation organizations, or corporations, that would be a much easier Easier way to do it.
That'd be a much easier way to build consensus on the issue rather than saying we're going to staff up some crazy federal bureaucracy, sign on to absurd international agreements, take more of your tax money, fund more private jets to Brussels or Davos or whatever.
Yeah.
Whatever Al Gore thinks he's going to do to save the world this time.
If it became a little bit more focused on a local level and on how it relates to your own life, I think it's a great way to build consensus on it, and I wish you luck on that regard.
Anything that will shut up Al Gore and get him out of the room is good for me.
Benji, will you stick around for the panel?
Can you stick around another maybe 15 minutes?
Sure.
Sounds great.
All right.
I love it.
We have got to bring on our panel to talk about some news.
And by our panel, I mean our Jacob.
Our Jacob Harry will join us.
But before that, listen.
Marshall is a tyrant.
You know this.
He's a sadist and a tyrant.
We have so much to talk about.
We've got Barney the Dinosaur running tantric sex rings.
We've got to talk about illegal aliens.
And we've got to talk about investigating the FBI. But if you're on Facebook or YouTube, I'm sorry, Buster.
You've got to go over to DailyWire.com.
If you're already there, thank you very much.
You keep the lights on.
You keep covfefe in my cup.
You keep my bedding very nice with bowl and bran sheets.
But if you don't go over there already, you've got to do it.
What will you get?
Well, you'll get me.
You'll get the Andrew Klavan show.
You'll get the Ben Shapiro show.
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Gentlemen, thank you for being here.
Barney the dinosaur now runs a tantric sex ring.
Isn't that just the perfect symbol for our generation?
What in childhood was soft, cushioned, saccharine, shallow, has grown up to become a sexually decadent trans reptile.
That's it.
That's our generation, baby.
The actor who played Barney the Dinosaur for 10 years, David Joyner, has since 2004 run a tantric sex business where he treats about 30 clients whom he refers to as goddesses.
Let's take a look at some footage from that new business.
I love you.
You love me.
Emily, with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, won't you say you love me too?
Yuck.
There's a lot of continuity there, at least.
He's clearly formed a career himself.
So, okay, I don't really want to talk about Barney.
I do want to talk about sex.
There are not great numbers on this, but there are lots of cultural indicators that millennials are both less monogamous and that they have less sex.
One study showed millennials having significantly less sex than Gen Xers.
That said, millennials watch a ton of porn.
Pornhub.com, which is just one porn site, reported an audience that watched 4.4 billion, with a B, hours of pornography in 2015, with 60% of its audience comprising millennials.
Jacob, what does all of this say about millennials, hooked on porn, bizarrely open attitudes towards sex, and yet not having very much of it?
To me it shows that they're buying the feminist narrative about what sex means.
Because as far as third wave feminists are concerned, women are just, they see sex the same way as men.
But that's not true.
But the feminists keep pushing these oddly male values, right?
The whole point of becoming an adult is you want to temper yourself and you want to be married.
I just celebrated four years with my own wife.
Congratulations, she's clearly a saint.
Yes, and a perfect 10, whereas I'm a 4.
But anyway, the whole point of this is they want cheap gratification and even amazing television shows like that, they push that onto our millennial culture, where sex is just a cheap thrill that you get.
Oh, and maybe it's a little extra special if you're married to the person, but not really.
And I think the millennials have just bought into this.
Yeah, you would think that people might grow up after a while.
I frequently say there's a time and a place for everything, and that place is college, but you kind of got to move on.
Benji, you're a college kid.
Now, obviously, college is a little different thing, so don't necessarily think that your current environment reflects the real world, but do you foresee the situation getting any better for millennials, or is our culture going to just keep all of these trends right on track?
Yeah, I think it's kind of on track to keep going.
I think there's a couple of reasons.
One, you've got the super religious folks who kind of push their views on their kids or whoever, and it kind of pushes people away from those types of beliefs.
And then you've got the feminists who really...
I think that accommodation is going to force it into the near future unless some things change.
I think you hit it right on the nail on the head when you talked about the instant gratification.
I think millennials are really looking for that.
It's something that they've kind of been trained to do.
I mean, I look for instant gratification in almost anything.
You're kind of expecting it as a millennial because you've got phones, you've got everything kind of right at your fingertips.
It's made it a little bit harder to kind of have that same patience as other generations have.
And then I think the media and both sides from the far religious right to the far feminist left, I think that they both play a big role in kind of how millennials are being shaped right now.
That's true.
I don't disagree with your observation.
I do wonder, though, if there is some reason to hope.
Only from my own personal experience on this show, every question I get in that mailbag is about some aspect of tradition or about Christianity or about returning to religion.
And often they're from millennials and they're from people who were raised without any serious engagement with the eternal questions and the eternal questions about human nature and our relation to our Creator and how we got here and how the world got here.
And I don't know, I guess it could be a bubble, but I just see it a little bit.
I've always lived in pretty liberal places on the coasts and at universities.
And I do wonder if the smartest people in the world right now are talking about God and the future generations are talking about what was lost I don't know.
We'll be less turned off than the children of the feminists if we haven't hit a snag in the road.
I hope so.
But that's just, that's my wishful thinking, man.
Let's move on to something much funnier.
A bunch of illegal aliens descended on Chuck Schumer's home last night, chanting, If Chuck won't let us dream, we won't let him sleep.
Here it is.
Chuck won't let us dream, we won't let him sleep.
If Chuck won't let us dream, we won't let him sleep.
So, first thing, no one's stopping you from dreaming.
This is the trouble with euphemisms, right?
But also, those people look like they're 30.
I thought the dreamers were these cute little six-year-olds who didn't do anything wrong and they're really nice.
Those are just adults.
Those are adults who haven't figured out their own legal status and their own immigration situation.
Why don't we just round these people up and deport them?
They're clearly in violation of the law.
They're boasting about being in violation of the law.
They're rubbing our faces in it.
Look, keeping Chuck Schumer up at night is almost enough for me to offer them full amnesty.
But on a larger point, it's so disrespectful of American law, of the American government, of a country that has been so good to these people, giving them free education, handouts, healthcare.
Why don't we just round up all of the rabble-rousing ones and send them back to whatever godforsaken country they fled from in the first place?
I don't know.
I think that we should look at it in stages, just to round everyone up.
They'll just come right back.
I think, first off, we've got to get the border secured, and then we can say, okay, is this person worth giving a citizenship test, or is this person a criminal deviant that we should send back?
Either way, it's going to be a struggle as far as policy goes, especially as long as the media keep giving them headlines, you know, these children.
That's right, the 30 or 40-year-old children.
And on that best and brightest point, the data that we have, what the mainstream media would have you believe is it's all six-year-olds with seven degrees from MIT who are really grateful and love their country and they're just the most all-around apple pie people in the world.
But the data we have is that 25% of them are illiterate, half of them don't speak English.
In demonstrations like these, we see deep ingratitude and entitlement from a country that's been very good to them.
Benji, if Schumer won't give Trump the wall and an end to chain migration, will we just let DACA expire and start shipping these people home?
Who is going to blink first?
Well, I'll answer that question in a different way.
I think that conservatives need to embrace the dreamers who are here and doing good things.
Now, there are people who are here doing bad things, but that can be said about any population.
The fact of the matter is that a lot of these dreamers had no control over whether or not they got here, and they're just trying to live their lives in peace.
And I don't think that that protesting group It kind of showcases what the entire population is like.
So that being said, there is a population like the people who are protesting Chuck Schumer, which I think that you made a really interesting point talking about how Chuck Schumer is kind of the biggest advocate of these folks.
And, you know, when Black Lives Matter or the Dreamers I think that's unfortunate because there are a lot of good dreamers here who didn't have a choice to come here and should be given the opportunity to succeed And be successful, and it's not their fault that they're here.
So I think that conservatives need to differentiate, and this is something that a Republican congresswoman said the other day, was that you have to differentiate between the dreamers, who could be very good people who had no intention of coming here whatsoever and are just trying to live their lives, and the illegal aliens who are crossing the border.
I think that there's an important distinction there, and you shouldn't lump them in on both.
I worry that it's a distinction without a difference because they use this term, they use the most loaded term imaginable, dreamer.
What on earth does dreaming have to do with the essence of this issue, which is illegal aliens, resident illegal people, uh, What does that have to do?
They seem to be ossified in time, as Victor Davis Hanson wrote eloquently a couple days ago.
So we're talking about a group of people from only this period to this period who were brought over below the age of 18.
Now some of these people are almost 40 years old.
As I had mentioned earlier, half of them don't speak English, a quarter of them are illiterate.
Does the category of the dreamer, as the Democrats call it, I will not use that terminology because it's such a...
Deceptive, insidious euphemism.
But of this category of people, the DACA people, the Democrats admitted this in a memorandum two weeks ago that they're relying on these people for their electoral strategy because they know that if they're granted amnesty, they will trend overwhelmingly to vote for Democrats.
So should Republicans embrace a group of people who don't share a lot of As a category, don't hold together very coherently and who don't appear to have any advantages over other immigrant groups or other immigrant groups from Latin America who have come here legally and who are going to legalize a million new Democrat voters.
I just don't see what the advantage is for the Republican Party to say, yes, we need to grant amnesty to them.
The vast majority of the country doesn't want to give them amnesty and 56% of Democrats don't even want to give them amnesty.
I think this is a total game being played by Democrats.
They're trying to fool us.
And I wouldn't do it at all.
I'm more than happy to keep people in the country who will benefit the country and who really are little children or really don't have any means to support themselves.
But some 40-year-old who's out there screaming at Chuck Schumer because we haven't given him enough, absolutely not.
Send those people back, especially.
And this is the most important thing.
If they're going to vote for Democrats, if the so-called, if the DACA people will agree to vote for Republicans for 25 consecutive elections, give them blanket amnesty.
I'm all in.
I think we've reached a grand compromise.
If I may, though, I think the Republicans, just speaking as a conservative, have really dropped the ball on outreach to Latina families because We're good to go.
They are hard-working people who have good work ethics, and they can and will benefit society.
So I think that if the Dreamers or DACA recipients, as you call them, if they were to change and switch sides and say, hey, we're not going to vote for Democrats, we're going to vote for Republicans, and we're going to show you how we can be a benefit to American society, I think that they could see a turnaround as far as that goes.
I think that Republicans need to be better at messaging to that particular community.
Sure, they work hard and go to church, so hopefully it won't be hard to get them to agree to vote for Republicans for 25 consecutive elections.
Benji, did you have a final point on this?
Yeah, and first of all, I don't know if it's even a political issue, and I don't really care if they vote Democrat or Republican.
To me, it's a human issue.
To me, it's not political at all.
Politics is the affairs of men.
Politics, as Aristotle defines it, it's how men interact with one another in cities.
To me, I care more about these people's lives than I care about who they vote for, but I think it's up to Republicans to reach these people through our ideologies that can click with their personalities.
And I think that that's incredibly key, and I think it's an important point that was just made, that Republicans need to do a better job of reaching out to these folks and not making the differentiation between dreamers and illegal aliens, and also lumping all the people who You know, all the dreamers into the category of the protesters outside Chuck Schumer's house, I also just don't think that that's fair.
So, I think that there's a few key distinctions to be made there.
Sure.
They're all illegal aliens.
There's no distinction between a dreamer and an illegal alien.
But you're right.
Some of the illegal aliens are wonderful people who are patriotic and like America and work hard and go to church.
And we should keep those people, especially if they vote Republican.
And some people are awful and they're gangsters and they commit crime and they're a net drag on the population and they won't assimilate and they won't learn to read English and they won't learn to speak English.
And to lump those people in with good patriotic People who came here through no choice of their own and who love their country and are dedicated to it, that we shouldn't lump those two people together.
I absolutely agree.
I agree.
On the final point here, speaking of our government and how we the people relate to it, a new poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports shows that half of likely U.S. voters believe a special prosecutor should be named to investigate whether senior FBI officials handled the investigation of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Benji,
do we need to investigate the FBI? That's right.
And, you know, all those text messages went missing.
There is a lot of strange stuff going on at the Bureau.
Jacob, are we at the point now where we have to investigate the FBI, either as a defensive measure, if the FBI really has been politicized by Democrats, or just to rout out corruption generally in the federal government?
I think it's kind of ridiculous.
So we have this Russia collusion investigation going on, and so now we're going to have another investigation to investigate whether that investigation is okay.
How about, no, we just end all the investigations and that if there is corruption within the FBI, let's fire those people.
And if they are treasonous, let's bring them up for treason.
That is what we're supposed to do.
All these investigations, all they do, all they do is create more red tape and they waste more time.
No, enough is enough.
Let's end all these useless investigations and let's root out corruption where it is.
Because it's not fair to malign all of the FBI. There are fantastic agents.
There are great agents of the FBI. Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely.
And so we need to be, so if there is corruption within the agency, which there could be, there could be corruption anywhere where there's a little bit of power, then let's root it out.
But as far as an investigation into the investigation of this investigation, no, that's absolutely ridiculous.
But I will say, yes, we should investigate Hillary.
That's the only one to keep going.
And you know, you make this point.
I'm sick of all the investigations, too, on principle.
But if we are in a position now where a lot of evidence shows that all of the investigations into Donald Trump were intended at the highest levels of the FBI to subvert a democratic process, to subvert this presidential election,
to undo it, to weaken this president, to weaken the choice of the American people, Then I think we might have to just flex our muscles on that and make sure that we aren't being taken for a ride by our self-appointed benevolent bettors in D.C. who think they can run the country better than we can ourselves.
Gentlemen, this has been a lovely discussion.
This is one of my favorite panels we've had in a while.
And I never say that about all-male panels.
I have never once said that.
If we don't have Allie or Roaming or Cassie or whoever, I don't believe it at all.
But this has been great to have you both here.
Thank you very much.
Benji Backer and Jacob Airy will have to have you back again.
That is our show.
Get your mailbag questions in so that we can, you know, just change all of our lives together in the mailbag tomorrow.
And until then, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Come back tomorrow.
We'll do it all again.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
