Ep. 109 - What Do Conservatives Want In The Age Of Trump? ft. Mike Franc
What should conservatives want in the age of Trump? We will discuss with the great Mike Franc, research fellow and Director of D.C. programs at the Hoover Institution, former policy director and counsel for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and from 1997 to 2013 VP of government relations for the Heritage Foundation, where he managed all of the think-tank’s outreach with Capitol Hill and the White House. Then, Democrats use traumatized kids as human shields to infringe upon our civil rights, a Catholic’s take on Billy Graham, and the greatest Olympian since Orsippus.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fun as it is to talk about how Michael Moore colluded with the Russians, or how Joy Reid colluded with the Russians, or how Barack Obama actually colluded with the Russians, at some point we should probably talk about actual public policy and what sort of policy conservatives should try to wring out of the Trump administration while we've still got control of the House and the Senate.
We will discuss with the great Mike Frank, research fellow and director of DC programs at the Hoover Institution, former policy director and counsel for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and from 1997 to 2013, VP of Government Relations for the Heritage Foundation, where he managed all of the think tanks outreach with Capitol Hill and the White House.
Mike has also served as communications director for former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and enrolls at the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Mike's appointment by Majority Leader McCarthy was widely hailed as a win for conservatives and a sign that the GOP leadership would stop being so squishy, which is something we all frequently hope for.
That's a very, very good thing.
In other news, after we speak to Mike, we will discuss Democrats taking a page out of the Hamas handbook and using traumatized children as human shields to deflect criticism and smooth their paths for incoherent gut-grabbing legislation.
A Catholic's take on Billy Graham, the late Billy Graham, and the greatest Olympian since Orsippus.
I am Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
We have got to get to Mike very quickly, but one thing I will say, one thing with Mike Frank, one of the great people in DC, one of the few great people in DC perhaps, is he's served many roles in his career.
And a lot of us serve many roles in our careers these days because it ain't the 40s anymore and you're not going to work at the plant for 60 years and get a pension.
So what you need to do is make sure that you have a lot of new skills.
And that brings me to a wonderful sponsor that helps keep the lights on here and doesn't make me use my other skills for when we inevitably get fired, is Skillshare.
Skillshare is a wonderful sponsor and a great program.
Skillshare is an online learning platform with over 18,000 classes in design, business, technology, and more.
I really like Skillshare because you can take classes right from your home.
I am a millennial.
I refuse to go anywhere to do anything.
I am fused with all of my sitting devices.
You can take classes from your home or from your office in graphic design, social media marketing, illustration, mobile photography.
You name it, they've got it.
I'm looking at one on time management.
So it's not just these things where you have to learn about, you know, this specific program or you want to learn how to do spreadsheets.
You can really do anything.
They have a huge array of classes, over 18,000 classes available.
So whether you're trying to deepen your professional skill set, and look, if you're listening to my show or watching my show, you probably need to deepen your Professional skill set.
Just a safe bet.
Or are you trying to start a side hustle?
Because it's 2018 and people need to have a wide variety of skills.
Maybe you just want to explore a new passion.
Skillshare is there to help you keep learning and thriving.
I really like using this in part because when I go home, I can either turn on the television and just stare at some mindless nonsense from Hollywood and just kind of look slack-jawed, you know, just like this.
We're just hours and hours and hours.
Or I can do something with my time, the precious moments that the good Lord has given us, and actually improve myself and improve my prospects in the world.
Skillshare is very good for that.
Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for my listeners.
You will get two months of Skillshare.
For just 99 cents.
That is basically free.
You would be very foolish not to take advantage of this offer.
Skillshare is offering Michael and all show listeners two months of unlimited access to over 18,000 classes for just 99 cents.
So it's not going to be one of those things where you pay your 99 cents and you get in the system and then they say, okay, you can take these three classes on Indonesian cooking and anything else you have to pay a lot of money for.
This is unlimited.
Over 18,000 classes.
To sign up, go to Skillshare.com slash Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Again, go to Skillshare.com slash Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Now, if you work for Starbucks, if by any chance you work for a coffee house or anything around L.A., I know that there are very creative ways to spell Michael.
You might spell it with like a K or seven Qs or something like that.
It is M-I-C-H-A-E-L to start your two months now.
That is Skillshare.com slash Michael.
Michael.
Okay.
Speaking of Michaels, let's get to Mike Frank.
Mike, thank you for being here.
Doing very well.
Last time I saw you, we were in sunny Palm Beach doing a panel on the future of conservatism with a couple hecklers in the audience calling us weasels.
And now we are such impressive weasels, I hope, that we can now talk about the future of conservatism under President Trump and in this new era moving forward.
So my first question to you, how is President Trump doing on policy?
In three levels, compared to what we expected from him, compared to what we could have expected from other Republican presidents if somehow Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz won Michigan or Pennsylvania, and compared to what we expected from former future President Hillary Clinton.
Well, in the last point, unmitigated success, if you do that comparison.
On the second point, I think that there's sort of two tribes in Washington right now, the Republican tribe, the Democratic tribe.
Trump sort of did a hostile takeover in some ways of the Republican tribe, and he's stuck with them.
In other words, there aren't a lot of people who will cross over anymore from one tribe to the other, as it may have been 30, 40, 50 years ago.
And as a result, the kind of people he's been appointing to the agencies, the kind of judges he's nominating to the federal courts, folks who've been nominated to the independent agencies, all those kind of appointments have been drawn fairly, I'd say, 80 to 90 percent from the same pool of people that any of the other, what, 15 or 16 candidates who were vying for the Republican nomination, who would have been drawing from them as well.
So it's a Whether it's Pruitt at EPA, whether it's the kind of cabinet officials he's named across the board, probably Jim Mattis, those kinds of individuals, not to mention Justice Gorsuch, are straight from the core Republican playbook as far as who should be running what agencies and the kind of policies they've been implementing.
And the kind of advice they've been giving to lawmakers on Capitol Hill are very much in line with that.
And I think, to the extent that he's exceeded my expectations, it's largely been in that area where he's deregulated quite a bit.
The tax bill, about as good as one could expect, given the kind of Political cross-pressures you get on class warfare issues and so on.
It was an extraordinarily pro-growth corporate reform in a lot of different ways.
On the individual side, it was a mixed bag, but unbalanced.
It did some pretty good things, which we can talk about.
So he succeeded my expectations in that regard.
Do you think, because you bring up this great point of tribalism, One of my fears with President Trump, I think a lot of people's fears, was that he would make a deal with Democrats, he would compromise, his true blue New Yorkerism would come out, and he'd be wheeling and dealing with Chuck Schumer.
Is it the case that now because he picked a team and because the other side has dug in their heels so much that actually partisan tribalism is preventing Donald Trump from moderating or losing his conservative credibility?
You know, that's one way to look at it.
I think there have been a couple of instances so far where the president has offered things to Senator Schumer, to Minority Leader Pelosi, and they just haven't been able to say yes, even though I think privately They probably were inclined to want to say, hey, we can get 30, 40, or 50 percent of what we're looking for here.
Let's cut a deal.
Their base is so uniformly hostile toward President Trump that they have not allowed their leaders on Capitol Hill to cut these deals with them.
So, in some ways, their kind of unmitigated hostility toward President Trump has forced The Republican tribe to gather together, sort of circle the wagons and say, what can we get done with our own numbers?
And one of the things, for example, that has happened is we're seeing more and more erosion of the supermajority standards in the U.S. Senate in ways that will facilitate more judicial nominations of people Trump will put forward in a few years ahead.
So, yeah, you know, sometimes you have to be able to say, take yes for an answer when you're demanding something.
That's right.
And they haven't been doing that.
I figured when he offered to legalize 1.8 million illegal aliens that the Democrats have been harping on for years, I thought they might take yes for an answer, but their base won't allow them.
And it is funny when people harp on about the swamp.
In many ways, the swamp, c'est moi.
You know, people could look in the mirror.
And the politicians are just doing what their constituents demand of them.
What do you think, looking forward, what do you think the president's policy goals from now until 2020?
And perhaps a different question, what should be the president's policy goals from now until the re-election?
What do you think they should be?
Well, he's made a good down payment on tax reform.
I would suggest that If there's a second phase of tax reform, in a nutshell, it would relate to the fact that it's not discussed a lot, but the percentage of tax filers who currently itemize, and this will be the last year for this, is something like a little over a quarter, I believe, 30% range.
Some estimates have the number of people who will itemize, meaning they actually take deductions, they care about the mortgage interest deduction, the state and local deduction, charitable deductions.
That percent is likely to come in below 10% nationwide and probably below 5% in a lot of states.
So what that really means politically is that a lot of politicians will go back home and find that almost nobody cares anymore about those big here to four, you know, third rail aspects of the tax code.
If that's true, then phase two of tax reform could actually be very ambitious and say, look, we're going to further reduce rates.
We're going to further broaden the base by limiting or getting rid of entirely some of these other deductions.
We're going to increase the standard deduction even more.
And we're basically going to get several steps closer to supply-side flat tax nirvana.
That's one.
Two, people don't really appreciate the extent to which the administrative Meaning the agencies that interpret federal law and create regulations and regulatory obligations on the part of individuals and businesses and all kinds of entities.
The extent to which that side of government has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few decades.
In fact, we're on a trajectory where it won't be that much longer before the total estimated annual cost of regulations is going to be greater than how much the IRS brings in in tax revenue.
So, if you think of taxes as being an easy area to kind of quantify and think about and get angry about, well, regulations ought to Generate some of the same juices, negatively speaking, when people start to get their hands around that.
It's a harder thing to illustrate because it's more hidden in a way than taxes are.
But I think reforming the administrative state has a lot of good proposals along those lines.
That's item number two on my agenda.
And there's a lot of ways in which the executive branch can give away, give back some of the authority as it's glommed onto itself.
It's also an unnatural act for a branch of our government.
To willingly and voluntarily concede authority and power.
Trump seems to be inclined to do that.
A lot of his appointees are inclined to do that.
So fingers crossed that this might actually be number two, a big item on the agenda.
And the third thing, and this is on the domestic side too, Really is entitlements.
And people your age, Mike, you're going to be paying for my retirement.
Thank you very much.
Right.
You're welcome.
I didn't volunteer to do that, but you're welcome.
That's exactly right.
But those numbers keep getting worse and worse.
And basically what it amounts to is that the promises that the government has made to Americans of all ages, especially those from about age 45, 50 and older, Are well in excess of the ability we will have in the future to pay that, so that the gap measures in the tens of trillions, and it's going to come home, those chickens will come home to roost at some point, and it's going to be sooner rather than later, and that's something, the sooner you address that, The better off we'll all be in the end.
And of course, politically, it's very hard, so long as there are organizations that want to run ads showing Paul Ryan throwing a senior citizen in a wheelchair off a cliff.
As long as the politicians want to avoid those kinds of ads, they'll find excuses not to confront this frontally.
But I think that's probably the next big thing we have to do beyond regulatory reform and further tax reform.
And if that's going to be more than anything else, it has to be bipartisan.
Of course.
And that, you know, on the first point with the administrative state, I was able to meet Antonin Scalia a couple of times in college.
And he, we asked him what the greatest threat to liberty was.
And he said, the greatest threat to liberty in the United States is the administrative state.
These unaccountable, headless, godless bureaucracies that don't have to be responsive to the American people.
And we even asked him, we said, well, what about states' rights?
What about federalism?
What about this?
He said, why are you asking me about federalism?
I'm a fed.
I have absolutely no incentive to reduce the power of the federal government.
Just as you say, there is, I suppose, some hope with a wrecking ball like Donald Trump that he doesn't particularly care about the accumulation of power in the executive, despite all of the warnings that he would be a tyrant or an authoritarian or something.
He does seem willing to just knock it all to rubble, and that'd be very good.
On entitlement reform...
This is an issue I've worried about for a long time because I don't want to pay for your retirement.
I understand that.
I intend to live for a very long time.
Right.
So you'll be paying for me for a long time to come.
Decades and decades.
It's always seemed to me like generational theft.
Like the baby boomer generation spending money that they don't have that we're going to have to pay back.
It's considered the third rail of politics.
No one's willing to touch it.
Any Republican who does try to touch it is immediately demagogued.
Paul Ryan probably leading the way.
Mitch Daniels gave a speech at CPAC a few years ago where he said we're facing a new red menace, this one consisting of ink.
What is the likelihood?
Going into the campaign, President Trump said that he wouldn't touch Social Security, wouldn't touch entitlements.
But President Trump says a lot of things on the campaign trail.
What do you think the odds are that in this administration or soon thereafter, we actually get entitlement reform, whether that's means testing, whether that's raising the age, whether that's changing the benefit in some way?
20 years ago, the stars seemed to have been in alignment to do just that.
There was a bipartisan commission created for Medicare.
There were all kinds of serious proposals on both sides of the political spectrum that were trying to help design methods to solve that.
And then Monica Lewinsky showed up on the scene, and both sides went to their respective corners, and all those reform impulses went away in a nanosecond.
So, The point being that you kind of need to have the right moment arise and need to have a few people out there who can transcend the partisan divide and say, this is something we have to do as a country, and it's going to require some give and take on both sides.
Now, the thing about entitlements, frankly, You can do it in a couple of different ways.
You can reduce the benefits for the people who are eligible, you can increase the revenue that's supposed to come in to fund it, or you can do some kind of combination of the two.
Well, the problem here, for the people on the political left, is that you can only do so much on the tax side before you really start to eat into the seed corn for future prosperity.
Almost all of the reforms would have to be on reforming the amount of benefits that go out, the terms and conditions under which they go out, and not in creating some kind of unsustainable, debilitating increase in the tax burden.
So, in a way, if you're on the right, you're about 90 to 95 percent.
Going to get reforms that will reduce future government outlays in ways that will hopefully protect the core purpose behind these entitlements, basically to prevent older folks from going into really ugly forms of poverty without bankrupting everybody along the way.
That makes perfect sense.
Do you anticipate that being at all likely in this administration?
Well, not in the short term at all, frankly.
But I do think you have to be on the lookout for politicians who can speak that language and might show up on the scene and say, you know, I'm going to maybe offend some of my colleagues in my party caucuses and go out there and start forming alliances with people on the other side.
And frankly, there aren't a lot of them.
Now, the ones that have shown up that I thought might That role tend to go into a partisan core very quickly, given the nature of Congress these days.
But it's gonna have to happen, and it's gonna have to happen sooner rather than later.
You know, it's funny, on that point of throwing granny off the cliff, a friend of mine and I, who were on the draft Mitch Daniels campaign in 2012, we aired a TV ad shortly thereafter where it was the same as the Democrats' ad where Paul Ryan throws granny off a cliff, except it was Nancy Pelosi throwing, or Barack Obama or somebody, throwing a baby in a stroller off a cliff.
But of course, Democrats don't have a huge problem with that.
So it didn't catch on, unfortunately.
But also younger people historically have not been as motivated to defend their side of that argument.
It's always been people my age and older who the organizations out there could scare into some kind of active involvement.
Communicating to their member of Congress saying, you know, keep the government's hands off my Medicare or Social Security, right?
And that tends to work much more politically than does the alternative of getting younger people motivated.
In fact, most young people, when polled, don't think they're going to get anything anyway.
So there's an irony.
Sort of cynical and realistic about that, right?
Yeah.
Now, in terms of bridging the gap and all of this, being able to really operate in this D.C. mode, you've been in D.C. for a while.
You've been very successful in D.C. You've accomplished a lot of things at all of these conservative institutions.
I've been here a long time.
Let's put it that way.
You've been here a long time.
Success?
I don't know.
You've got your finger on the pulse, at least.
How is DC warming up to President Trump?
There were reports that he was having trouble staffing early on because the lifers and the experts were wary of his administration.
I know a number of people who were wary of his administration.
Is the swamp finally embracing the Donald?
No.
They're not.
But what I do think is that there are some alliances that are forming that are kind of unavoidable in a way.
I mean, going into an election cycle like we're about to now, members of Congress who might have had An instinct early on to keep a distance from Trump are thinking, well, I'm going to need a united front on this.
And frankly, when you see polling numbers and approval ratings start to turn around a little bit, that gives a lot of politicians who otherwise have weak knees a sense of, okay, maybe I can throw my lot in with this guy and rally my base.
Because really what's going to happen probably in this election is The base that's anti-Trump will be inundated with appeals to get out to vote, to convert their friends and neighbors and so on to vote as well.
And so it's going to become a base election in many ways.
If you look at the electorate and the way it's distributed by congressional districts and so on, if you can motivate your base and if you're Trump, that means you can win a lot of districts across the country.
I think he won about 240 or so in the last election, lost about I think 23 to Secretary Clinton, and he won 12 districts that have Democrats in them.
So there were 23 currently sitting Republican districts that went for Clinton, 13 or so that went for Trump.
If you can basically rally those areas of the country together, the Republicans can hold on to a House majority, slim as it might be.
And the numbers in the Senate side suggest There's quite a few red states that have Democratic incumbents up, as we all know.
And, you know, if these numbers start to solidify, if the tax bill law becomes more popular than it has been, and it's gotten more popular than it was.
It has grown in popularity, at least.
Sure.
I mean, when it was passed and voted on, most people were being told, this is a tax increase.
So they said, when asked by a pollster, do you like it or not like it?
Oh, this is a tax increase.
I'm against it.
Now they're starting to find out that it's leading to some reduction in their tax burden, but it's also leading their employers to say, look, we have more revenue coming in because of lower rates on corporate profits, and we have other kinds of immediate expenses we can do when we invest in equipment and so on.
So we're going to expand our factory floor production.
We're going to hire more workers.
We're going to get raises, put more money into 401k plans and retirement accounts.
Hey, this bill's pretty good.
It's not what I was told it was going to be.
So I think only 24% of Americans on the day that it was signed into law thought they were getting a tax cut.
And we all know that number, according to some estimates, is as high as 80%.
So as more and more people realize that their initial expectation was off, And they're going to be pleasantly surprised.
When you create a very low bar in general for a politician, it's easy to exceed it than if the bar is very high.
By the way, that's, I think, a theme for the Democrats and Trump.
They define him to be basically a fascist racist who has all these horrible personal characters.
And an idiot.
So not just a fascist or a racist, but also completely incompetent.
And mentally unstable.
So if he exceeds any of those or some of those...
Well, it's funny.
I remember Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both did a forum, and they talked about one of the political advantages they had is that they both played a little bit dumber than their mark.
And Bill Clinton played like a real nice guy.
Hey, I feel your pain.
And George Bush, he played a little dumber than his mark, and it helped them.
And clearly, in the eyes of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party, Donald Trump has raised this to a high art form.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, so he's, if he continues where he is, I think the last, I saw a poll with the Rasmussen, 48% approval.
You know, that's Rasmussen is generally in the general ballpark of the other polls.
So if Trump maintains a high 40s, even, approval rating, that's about where Obama was for a long part of his eight years.
You never know.
I mean, if they're concentrated in certain 48 percent nationwide, it might translate into 55 or 60 percent in certain key competitive congressional seats.
Well, if you have a pretty good approval rating above water in those places...
He might sustain and retain a lot of seeds for his party base.
Now, how do you think, looking at these first 13 months, because something that has bothered me a little bit about the Trump critics on the right is that I think they're missing the forest for the trees, and they're focused on how he sips his Chardonnay rather than tax reform or rather than regulatory reform or whatever.
In these first 13 months, how do you think Donald Trump's administration compares with past Republican administrations, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, part of Clinton, I guess, depending on how you look at it.
There is one thing I'll say that I don't like about the way the president operates, which is a lot of Americans, and I'll give you some examples of, you know, my mom happens to be in a nursing home, and most of the people who work there are these wonderful, hardworking folks from Sierra Leone and Ghana and Ethiopia and countries like that.
And they're very polite, but when we talk about this, and President Trump in particular, they say, you know, I want a president who's more presidential.
I want someone I can look up to and admire and be inspired by.
And they're not getting that out of President Trump.
And I think that's a problem in a lot of ways, because there is a kind of psychological side to what a president is supposed to do.
That can inspire and elevate and make people, you know, better and more hardworking and more proud of their country.
In some ways, all this discord, I think it's in the way of that.
And I wish, like a lot of other people, he would turn off the Twitter account and focus on being more inspiring and being a leader in a more traditional sense.
And that just may be, you know, my age speaking here, but I kind of wonder, like, how...
How can you ultimately convert people to things that I think are better policies and better outcomes for Americans?
If your style is getting in the way of having that conversation with somebody and opening up their eyes and their hearts and their souls to a better path forward to prosperity, elevating your family and your kids and giving them a shot at a good future, all those things sometimes require the non-policy stuff, the evangelical, inspirational side of being a president.
That's my big complaint.
I totally see that complaint.
I'm a big defender of the Twitter.
I love the Twitter.
Not because I like the style, per se.
I'm not defending that.
But I think that the mainstream media have become so viciously corrupt in a way that we didn't even see during the Bush years or even during the Clinton years.
They've become so viciously partisan, particularly the Washington Post and CNN and the New York Times, that I wonder if we just need this wrecking ball and And I long for the days of Ronald Reagan and mourning in America and this genteel, more dignified conservatism.
But I wonder if before we can get that again, we need this bulldog who speaks like he's from a construction site to go in and smack CNN around.
Maybe I'm putting lipstick on a pig, but I get a real joy out of it because Barack Obama in so many ways looked like a president.
He in so many ways sounded like one.
He went on TV with Chris Wallace.
He said, We are not abusing our powers.
Chris, full stop, I assure you.
I even have to question myself, because now we know for a fact he was lying through his teeth, but he was such a good actor that I still don't know whether to trust the reality, my lying eyes, or what he's telling me.
And I wonder if there's something about just the fact of what Donald Trump is doing.
This gets to my real question here, which is, Is it fair to call Donald Trump a man who speaks brashly, and he's from New York, and he's donated to Nancy Pelosi, and he didn't come up through the Bill Buckley School of Conservative Education.
Is it fair to call him a conservative?
I wouldn't call him a conservative.
I think a lot of what he's doing is situational ethics, in a sense, and he is aligning with his tribe, as we talked about at the beginning of this.
If he had sensed that there was an opening in the Democratic field, when he came down that escalator that day, he might have been announcing that he'd run as a Democrat.
I don't get the sense that he's had any firm ideological groundings for his life.
I grew up in New York City.
Trump's always been background noise in my life ever since he fixed the Ingalls Rink in Central Park when I was, I think, in high school, you know.
And so he's done some effective things and so on, but I would not call him a principal conservative.
And my earlier point, Mike, is I think that we need, someone needs to do the inspirational side of things.
And, you know, maybe it's not the president, maybe it's someone else, but I don't think you can leave that vacuum out there and expect that young people who are just coming in and being exposed to politics for the first time are going to be able to kind of latch on to an idea and a way of expressing but I don't think you can leave that vacuum out there and expect that young When I was coming into this part of my life, It was late 1970s.
New York City was really failing, and I started reading and learning about alternatives to the kind of policies that we were being told were just the new normal.
And you had to get used to crime.
It was okay that the Bronx was burning because that's the way things are.
Stagflation.
It's the new normal.
People started offering different ideas and this guy named Ronald Reagan came along and a lot of people inspired by him, like a Jack Kemp and so on, were out there offering an alternative vision that to me was very inspiring and I know to a lot of my peers the same way.
Who's doing that right now with, you know, for younger people and who are thinking or people who just become citizens who are open to these ideas and can be really easily converted into being principled and lifelong conservatives?
I think that's missing and I kind of wish it weren't the case.
I do see that because when I go to the Reagan Library, which I do frequently, I cannot get through that library without shedding a tear.
It's so unbelievably inspiring to do that.
And I wonder about the Trump Library, what that experience will be like.
And the one thing that gives me great comfort is I know that Democrats won't be able to get through it without shedding a tear, and those are different kinds of tears.
I suppose it's a pleasure for 2018 because this Twitter aspect I think the reason Donald Trump has been so effective on Twitter is that he's so authentic on Twitter.
You get this feeling that you are getting this guy's gut reaction.
And I actually know it's fairly authentic because when he tweeted my blank book, when he endorsed my blank book, it wasn't some grand plan by the White House.
He tweeted it as I was on television.
He saw it happening on television, tweeted a couple things from it.
I know it was happening in real time.
That's why it's so nice.
And you even see this with movie stars now.
Movie stars used to be so removed from the public, but now the movie stars, they're in your face, they're yelling at you on Instagram and doing all this political stuff, and it is a little more shallow.
It is a little too tangible, a little too real.
There's nothing where you're really looking up at the big screen anymore.
I wonder if this is just a fact of the culture in 2018.
I wonder if Donald Trump in this way...
I've wondered, too, I like to read a lot of history, you know, and I'm wondering when the histories of Donald J. Trump are being written in the future, and they're being sourced by some renowned historian at a major university, are they going to be all citing to Twitter?
They're not going to be citing to diaries or letters written, you know?
Formal documents, whatever.
None of that's going to be available.
It's going to all be whatever the Twitter feed generated.
And I imagine someone somewhere is capturing and saving all the official presidential documents when it's a private Twitter account.
I don't know what the legalities are of this, but someone's collecting it.
And that's what the historians will be working off of.
3.23 in the morning on February 21st, 2018.
Here's what the president tweeted.
It's going to be a different kind of history.
That's for sure.
You know, Ronald Reagan had all of those great love letters that have been uncovered that he wrote to Nancy.
Could you imagine we were just, hey, Nancy, you up?
Question mark.
Smiley emoji.
That basically is going to be, well, that says a lot about the culture now, but you know, We only get one day at a time, and if we've gotten this first good year out of Trump, even as a matter of situation, I suppose hope springs eternal in the human breast, and maybe we can wring a little bit more liberty out of this great nation before it finally smolders into eternity.
Well, if you think about it, contrast Trump to Reagan in a way, Trump's coming in as president with an infrastructure of like-minded generally, meaning party, Republican right-of-center thinking, The conservative movement was very much a new and developing thing, and there was some converts to it who may not have really understood the details.
But President Reagan was pretty much leading a parade that was forming behind him anew, whereas Trump's coming in and inheriting a very well-developed and deep movement.
But what it lacks right now, like I said earlier, is the inspiration and the kind of appeal to people that will cause realignments and conversions to occur.
Sure, I see that.
And well, you know, listen, we're only in the first year.
Maybe we'll get a little more out of it.
At least I'm grateful for what we've gotten so far.
And maybe we can hope that during the Trump Presidential Library, by the end of it, we'll get two kinds of tiers.
I think that's what we're all hoping for.
Where will the Trump Presidential Library be located?
Mar-a-Lago, baby.
We're going to fly back down to Palm Beach to go visit.
Mike, thank you so much for being here.
We've got to hop out.
Mike Frank, we've got to bring you back because you are the expert on all of these things.
Thank you very much.
Now we have got to get on to the news, but before we do that, I've got to tell you about a couple of things.
Now look, you might be looking at me and saying, Michael, you got these horrible bags under your eyes.
Why is that?
Well, it's because I didn't get my requisite 20 hours of sleep last night.
You know how I could have gotten my requisite 20 hours of sleep?
If I had left the cigar bar a little sooner.
And if I paid more attention to Helix Sleep, this wonderful new company.
Look, I've moved around a lot from New York to Connecticut, California.
And I always sell my mattress, and I've got to go buy a new mattress, and it's just awful to try to find it.
It's one of the most frustrating experiences, especially because I have to leave my couch, which is not something I like to do as a millennial.
Helix Sleep right now offers you something that no one else does.
There are a lot of online mattress retailers popping up these days.
That's good, at least you can stay on your couch.
But they all have this one size fits all solution to a better sleep.
Well, guess what?
One size does not fit all.
Helix Sleep offers something that doesn't exist anywhere else.
A mattress personalized to your unique preferences and sleeping style that will not set you back thousands of dollars.
Go to helixsleep.com/knolls, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
Take their simple two to three minute sleep quiz I don't do anything on earth that takes more than five minutes.
This show is the only thing I do that takes more than five minutes.
So go there.
It'll be very quick and painless.
They will build you then a custom mattress that will be the best thing you've ever slept on.
For couples, they even personalize each side of the mattress.
I'm hoping they send me a wedding gift, you know, when sweet little Lisa and I get married.
Because, as you all know, I always prefer a firm mattress.
Elise's preference is a mattress that I'm not on.
Maybe Helix Sleep will be able to create that.
Everyone from GQ to Cosmo to the New York Times are talking about Helix Sleep.
And once you try it out, you will know why.
Your mattress arrives direct to your door in a week.
Shipping is completely free.
Try it for 100 nights.
If you don't love it, they'll pick it up and refund it in full.
There's no reason not to do it.
If, you know, you, like future me, are sleeping on a curb somewhere, at least you get 100 nights on a great mattress.
So there's no reason not to try and no risk for trying it.
Go to HelixSleep.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S right now.
You will get $50 towards your custom mattress.
HelixSleep.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, for $50 off your order.
Don't say I never did anything for you.
HelixSleep.com slash Knowles.
Okay, we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
I said goodbye to YouTube a long time ago, but I'll say goodbye to Facebook.
If you are on TheDailyWire.com right now, thank you.
You help keep the lights on and covfefe in my mug.
If you are not, please go there.
It is $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership.
What do you get?
Me, The Andrew Klavan Show, The Ben Shapiro Show, The Conversation.
Next time, starring the big boss, Ben Shapiro himself.
You get no ads on the website.
All that's great.
Blah, blah, blah.
They're going to start construction of the Donald Trump Presidential Library very soon.
When you go, you will drown by the final exhibit unless you have the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
This is the only way that you're going to be able to see it.
It is going to be huge.
It is going to be beautiful.
It is going to be a big, beautiful presidential library, but unfortunately it will flood and all be for naught if you don't have your Leftist Tears Tumblr, the only FDA-approved We have so much more to talk about.
The Florida kids who are being pimped out by the left-wing press and the Democratic Party, the great Billy Graham, and more.
But be sure to come back and visit us.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
This is really despicable, what's being done with these Florida students.
It is so awful.
These Florida students are being manipulated by the mainstream media and Democrat activists to push a gun control agenda, a completely nonsensical gun control agenda that would not have prevented this shooting or others.
There are now walkouts that are being staged.
These kids are being thrown on TV constantly.
And by TV, I mean CNN. I'm not talking about actual news channels.
I'm talking about CNN. Nonsensical proposals is considered hateful and it looks like you're attacking kids.
It's so despicable and disgusting what the Democrats are doing here.
But look, if someone's going to enter the public sphere and inject himself into a public conversation...
We have to grapple with that.
We have to respond to that.
We have to talk about that.
Even if he's a high school senior, even if he's being exploited by adults around him, like his parents and like the politicians who are pimping him out who should know a lot better.
Without any further ado, here is Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School Senior David Hogg.
People are going to keep saying, oh, this is just another shooting.
It's never going to happen to me.
But what happens is when you don't take action, things like this eventually will happen to you.
And that's not acceptable.
And that's why I call on people to stand up.
Talk to the congressman.
Talk to people.
And don't stop fighting because children will continue to die if we don't take a stand now.
What we really need is action because we can say, yes, we're going to do all these things, thoughts and prayers.
What we need more than that is action.
Please.
This is the 18th one this year.
That isn't true.
This isn't the 18th one this year.
This isn't even the 5th.
Even if you're just judging by a gun accidentally going off near a school, I don't even think it's the 5th.
They're pretending now that the United States is the only Western country with mass shootings.
It has the most mass shootings in any Western country.
The United States isn't even in the top 10 of Western countries with mass shootings.
So everything this kid is saying just isn't true.
But then the political implications of what he's saying, that we need to do something, and if you're not doing something, then you're somehow endangering the lives of children or endangering American lives, is a lie and it's a calumny.
It's just not, it's so awful to even say that.
Because Oprah tweeted this out today.
She said, we have to do something, enough.
The implication being, if you oppose whatever gun-grabbing laws they want to pass, you're a monster or you don't care about human subjects.
What law?
What law do you want?
I asked Oprah this.
I would ask this kid this, but I just feel so bad that he's being pimped out by the irresponsible adults around him.
There isn't a law that could be passed short of banning guns, I suppose.
And even then, that wouldn't work.
There isn't a law that could be passed that would prevent this shooting or shootings like it.
There just isn't one.
There were more guns than people in this country.
So even repealing the Second Amendment isn't practical.
Even repealing the Second Amendment, repealing the right to keep guns like they did in Australia, didn't result in all the guns going away.
Only a third of people surrendered their guns.
Not even most people surrendered their guns.
In this country, there are more guns than people.
That wouldn't happen.
What about any of the slew of gun control laws proposed by Democrats in 10 years?
Even the left-wing Washington Post admits they wouldn't have prevented these shootings.
It's really disingenuous.
And we shouldn't say, oh, that's nice.
Oh, you mean well.
They don't mean well.
They don't mean well.
They're pushing lie after lie on television.
They're exploiting children on television.
And they're impugning the character and the motives of half of their countrymen.
And they're trying to remove a civil right that is basic to the American country.
That is basic to our Constitution.
There was great debate over whether it should even be included in the Bill of Rights because it should be taken for granted.
It was so obvious that people in this country, in a free country, Have the right to defend themselves.
Have the right to arm themselves.
Really, really despicable.
And all of the adults around these kids should feel deep, deep shame and reconsider what they're doing because this isn't going to age well.
This is not going to age well in 10 years or 20 years.
It's really awful.
I'm surprised even by Democrats at how low they've fallen with this regard.
Okay, now we've got to get to a much happier story.
The greatest Olympian since Orsippus is upon us.
The single greatest Olympian.
I don't like the Olympics.
I don't watch them.
I don't care about them.
I think usually it's just an excuse for NBC to say mean things about the country.
But one woman is making the Olympic Games great again.
Here she is.
Dropping in, trying to get into this right wall for a nice, just up to the top of the wall, going for these grabs, the safety grab you'll see there, and opting for another, just cruising up to the top of the wall, showing the judges she can make it down this half-pipe clean.
With the alley-oop spin down at the bottom, to the left, and then a nice...
If you weren't watching because you don't subscribe, that was Elizabeth Swaney, who's a 33-year-old Harvard graduate, not doing any tricks.
Just kind of going back and forth on her skis, not doing anything.
She made it to the Olympics by exploiting a loophole in Hungary.
She's an American, but her grandfather was Hungarian or something.
So she registered in Hungary, competed in World Cup events, which were the qualifying events for the Olympics.
And she regularly finished in the top 30 in Hungary, but only because there weren't 30 competitors or because a couple of girls would crash along the way.
So if she just didn't crash, she would not end up dead last and she would make it.
I love this.
I also love the commentators trying to take this seriously, where it's like a child just going up and down, you know, but not falling over.
This is American ingenuity at its finest.
This is trolling at its finest.
I really, really appreciate it.
You know, she actually, this Sweeney, gave an interview on NBC in which she seemed to take her mediocre athleticism quite seriously, which I was shocked to see.
That's not a good look.
She sounded maybe a little bit entitled, like an entitled oblivious millennial from Harvard, but I repeat myself.
So I don't know how seriously she takes herself.
But then I thought, well, maybe she's just doing a perfect troll.
You know, like when I did the blank book, I went on TV and kept a straight face.
But that was like an amateur hour compared to this woman because she's going on the news and saying, I am a real athlete.
I'm a great athlete.
So I'm going to choose to view the situation that way.
Great control, great stuff, and a wonderful way to mock the Olympic Games and show the rest of the world that even our most mediocre countrymen still contribute more to the international community than the entire rest of the world.
Great stuff.
Okay, and then in sadder news, but hopefully he's up in heaven, Billy Graham is dead at age 99.
If somehow you don't know who Billy Graham is, here is Billy preaching to 120,000 people at Wembley Stadium in the UK in 1954.
I believe that we stand on the verge of a historic moment that could have an unparalleled and unprecedented impact in a world that is confused and Perplexed and frustrated at this hour.
And I'm convinced of one thing, that during the past few weeks we have seen an easing of world tension.
And I believe that one of the contributing factors to the easing of world tension and the prospects of an era of peace is the great spiritual awakening that we believe is taking place in many parts of the world.
Billy Graham.
So some people wrongly believe that Billy was the first televangelist.
There are a million that follow.
Now there's the guy who smiles all the time and, you know, people are on TV all the time.
But he was one of the first, but he wasn't the first televangelist.
The first televangelist was this guy, a Catholic by the name of Fulton Sheen.
So we say to them, listen to this statement.
I will tell you later who said it, but we address it to the Soviets.
If any nation whatsoever is detained by force within the boundaries of a certain state, and if that nation, contrary to its expressed desire, is not given the right to determine the form of its state life by free voting and completely free from the presence of troops,
Of the annexing or stronger state and without any pressure, then the incorporation of that nation by the stronger state is annexation, it is seizure by force, it is violence.
Who said this?
Nikolai Lenin.
Then Soviets under God follow it.
Free these people.
That's the first thing that we have to solve in the world.
Then our other problems will be solved.
No other problem will be solved until we liberate them.
Fulton Sheen, that's a little bit more my speed because it's this Catholic clergyman giving the tear-down-this-wall speech decades before Ronald Reagan did.
I really like that, just railing against the Soviets.
But I like Billy Graham, too.
So I was trying to think of...
What Catholics should think about Billy Graham, because obviously his theology was a little bit wonky, not quite there from our perspective.
But I do generally like the guy.
He was fairly anti-Catholic and a Democrat until the Richard Nixon presidency, but eventually he came around on both points.
As St.
John Vianney said, not all the saints started well, but they all ended well.
You can see that in Billy Graham's evolution on those issues.
Upon Pope John Paul II's death, Saint John Paul II's death, Billy Graham called John Paul the most influential voice for morality and peace in a hundred years.
He said, quote, I have a very strange feeling of loss.
I almost feel as though one of my family members is gone.
I loved him very much and had the opportunity of discussing so many things with him, and we wrote each other several times during the years.
He was impossible not to like Billy Graham.
A lot of my Catholic friends really liked him.
An old family friend of mine, truly a saint, more Catholic than the Pope, would go to confession about 150 times a day and very Catholic, all of Catholic schooling.
He loved watching Billy Graham.
And this is true of a lot of Catholics that I know.
He loved seeing him on television.
Everyone agreed that his belief was sincere.
He was a sincere man.
Billy Graham was cautious of politics, saying of political involvement from the pulpit, quote, You know, I think in a way that has to be up to the individual as he feels led of the Lord.
A lot of things that I commented on years ago would not have been of the Lord, I'm sure.
But I think you have some, like communism or segregation, on which I think you have a responsibility to speak out.
Billy Graham was wonderful on these issues.
He personally desegregated audiences.
He said there is no room for segregation at the foot of the cross.
An incredible line.
It's ultimately where all the handful of racists on the right or the alt-right types go so wrong.
Because they seem blissfully ignorant that the animating force of the civilization they pretend to defend is one in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free neither male nor female but all are one in Christ Jesus.
So what do we make of Billy Graham?
Especially if you're Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or something.
Protestants can lead people to higher grounds.
They can lead people to the Lord, and they can lead people to what I think is a more grounded theology and a more sober theology, because it happened for me.
I was an atheist for a long time, and many of the people, almost uniformly the people who led me back to the church, were Protestants.
And some of those people now are also Catholic.
But it was a lot of Protestants, I think, especially in America.
They can be a little bit of a gateway drug.
And so I think it would be very uncharitable for Catholics to say mean things about Billy Graham.
You know, the Lord uses people in a lot of ways, and to the extent that Billy Graham did that, to the extent that he led people back to God or led people back to the Church, and he no doubt did that for a lot, a lot of people, that contribution is an incalculable worth.
That is an incalculably valuable contribution to the world, and...
And I hope that Billy Graham is resting in peace.
Okay, that's our show.
Make sure to get your mailbag questions in.
We have a lot to talk about tomorrow.
Get them all in.
Until then, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.
