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May 10, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
53:53
Ep. 154 - Barack and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

The winning won’t stop. Can’t stop, won’t stop. Following up on shredding the Iran nuclear deal and freeing American hostages held in North Korea, the Trump admin captured five of the top commanders of ISIS. Plus, we’re winning the culture bigly. Then, James O’Keefe talks about his latest sting to take down teacher unions! Finally, the Mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The winning won't stop.
Can't stop, won't stop.
Following up on shredding the Iran nuclear deal and freeing American hostages in North Korea, the Trump administration has captured five of the top commanders of ISIS. Plus, we're winning the culture bigly.
Then, James O'Keefe talks about his latest sting to take down the teacher unions.
Finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Oh, hello there.
Hello.
Sorry, I was just catching up on a little light reading.
This would be reasons to vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide.
And it's a little, it's so bright.
The future is so bright that not only do I have to wear shades, I have to wear my Make America Great Again hat.
That's how good this week is.
It's, you know, we have so much to get to today.
I'll leave it on.
That's fine.
We have so much to get to today, so I'm going to have to go through it very quickly because we're also going to be talking to James O'Keefe about a phenomenal sting operation.
Basically, you know, all of the journalists in America have stopped doing their job, and so conservative people with video cameras have become the only real journalists.
We'll talk to James about that really groundbreaking stuff.
You thought it was over.
You thought it was all over, didn't you?
This week.
You thought, okay, we've shredded the Iran nuclear deal.
We've returned American hostages from North Korea.
We've practically destroyed Barack Obama's legacy.
That's enough.
That's enough for one week, right?
That's enough?
No, it isn't enough.
Because there's one aspect of Barack Obama's foreign policy legacy that is still sort of standing, and that would be ISIS. I'm sorry, what's that?
I'm trying to finish the show.
You see, ISIS is...
What?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Five top leaders of ISIS have been captured in a U.S.-Iraqi coalition.
Plus Alwan Al-Ithawi, a top aide to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
This week is like, they should have saved this for the week before the midterm elections because it's almost too perfect how these stories have just fallen.
So the United States has virtually decapitated ISIS as the cherry on top of Barack Obama's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.
For comment, let's turn to former President Barack Obama.
I did not believe this is happening!
I'm literally about to kill myself and I'm not kidding!
You better fix this right now!
I literally am gonna die!
I need an ambulance!
I know.
I'm sorry, Mr.
President.
I'm sorry.
Let's talk to all about this.
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Okay, the winning won't stop.
We just spoke with the former President Barack Obama.
It's been a banner week for Republicans and a brutal one for Democrats.
Brutal politically and culturally.
So we're going to run through it as quickly as we can before we get to James.
Barack Obama created the conditions that led to ISIS taking over Iraq and Syria.
Barack Obama then failed to fight ISIS and And Barack Obama then called ISIS the JV team in 2014 to try to downplay it.
It's not a big deal.
Let me hear it.
Let me get some sand and bury my head in it.
Here is the exact quote from the former president.
President Obama speaking out about America's deadliest enemies, his choice of words getting a lot of attention.
In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, he compares groups linked to al-Qaeda to an amateur basketball team.
Quote, the analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a JV team, meaning junior varsity team, puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant, end quote.
That's Barack Obama.
Wants to pretend that he's not referring to ISIS. I had to take the hat off because I rely on my hair for about four inches of my height.
You know, I got some kind of poofy hair, so we had to lose the hat, but it's still living within me.
The covfefe is within you.
So Obama tried to say, oh no, I wasn't calling ISIS JV. Oh no, no.
Even PolitiFact, even left-leaning PolitiFact, says absolutely he was referring to ISIS. Then Barack Obama starts to call that group ISIS ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant, that whole region.
And the reason that they did that, the reason the entire Obama administration called it ISIL when everybody else referred to it as ISIS, is because ISIS... We're good to go.
Barack Obama made empty threats in Syria.
His foreign policy was utterly bungled, utterly weak.
He wouldn't enforce red lines.
And Syria fell to ISIS. So even the word ISIS might as well be called the Islamic State of all of Barack Obama's failures.
So they couldn't do that.
They had to try to change the name.
but a rose by any other name and an Islamic militant group by any other name is just as deadly and just as, uh, uh, must, must be taken care of just as much.
So that, that JV team that Barack Obama referred to, they didn't do anything right.
They're not Kobe Bryant.
They didn't, except they killed 38 Europeans at a Tunisian resort.
They bombed Turkey, killed 33.
Tunisia again killed 24 foreign tourists, crashed a Russian flight, killed 224 people on that, bombed Ankara, bombed Beirut, slaughtered 130 in Paris, slaughtered 86 in Nice, killed 12 in Berlin, bombed the Manchester arena in the UK.
That's not even a fraction of the attacks that ISIS has caused.
But Obama says, no, it's JV. It's JV. Hey, don't look.
Hey, don't look over there.
Don't believe your lion eyes.
Don't.
No, no, no.
They're not.
They're not a threat.
So the Obama administration did very, very little to stop them.
Then in comes Donald Trump.
And the other Republican candidates campaigned on this, probably Donald Trump more than anybody.
He campaigned on utterly destroying ISIS. Then when he became president, he empowered the military to do it.
He routed ISIS out of its geographic stronghold last year.
Now he's basically decapitated ISIS. It's interesting that they're reporting on the five ISIS commanders that we've captured.
You know, Obama liked to just drone them out of the sky because it's relatively risk-free, but it's much better to capture them so that you can get intelligence out of them.
Nevertheless, it's much more politically risky because if one of your servicemen is shot or killed, it carries political risk.
So Obama went for the easy way out, and the Trump administration has gone in and captured five of these people.
But the number is actually six.
Because we also captured a top aide to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. So why is the five number important here?
You might recall that Barack Obama released the Taliban five, I think they were called, right?
These five Islamic militants.
He just released them out of Gitmo for no reason at all.
He just released them so that he could try to close down Guantanamo Bay.
Very dangerous people who can be back on the battlefield.
He released five Muslim terrorists...
Donald Trump captures five Muslim terrorists.
But really it's six.
Because the United States and Iraq captured a top aide.
Then he used that top aide to lure out five of his little buddies, among whom were the head of a major ISIS territory and the head of ISIS internal security.
So much for internal security.
Guess that guy wasn't so good at his job.
He's like the Barack Obama of internal security organizations, right?
He just didn't quite do it right.
Didn't live up to his job.
This is the classic dichotomy we've seen in the last year and a half.
Barack Obama says something can't be done.
Barack Obama's administration can't do it.
Donald Trump completely does it within a year and a half.
Speaking of places where Obama failed and Trump succeeded, last night Donald Trump showed up to greet the hostages that his administration freed from North Korea.
Here's President Trump and the hostages.
Incredible people.
And the fact that we were able to get them out so soon was really a tribute to a lot of things, including a certain process that's taking place right now.
And that process is very important.
So we will see what happens.
We have a meeting scheduled in a very short period of time.
You'll be hearing about it soon.
We have the location set.
And we will see if we can do something that people did not think was going to happen for many, many years.
And a lot of bad things could have happened in between.
So I just want to say this is a special night for these three really great people.
And congratulations on being in this country.
Thank you.
Congratulations on being in this country, because being in this country is a great, great thing, and the people who have been deprived of that know that, even if Americans, particularly, who wear those pink hats and screech and shout, even if they don't fully appreciate it.
President Trump says that really bad things could have happened.
I think what he's referring to is Hillary Clinton could have been elected president, and then we wouldn't be seeing these hostages home.
Very low probability that we would have.
Something I noticed, but I forgot to note yesterday, This happened at 2 a.m.
Donald Trump met them at 2 a.m.
when they got off their airplane.
And he wrote about this.
He tweeted, I'm going to be there at 2 a.m.
I'm going to show up at 2 a.m.
He's all full of energy at 2 a.m.
Donald Trump is a media manipulator.
He knows what he's doing in the media.
This is not to say he's metternique and playing 25-dimensional chess, but he really knows what he's doing in the media.
This 2 a.m.
thing is a snub at Hillary Clinton, because for years Hillary Clinton said, who do you want to answer the phone at 3 a.m.?
Who do you want?
That's me.
I'm going to answer the phone at 3 a.m., right?
Of course, when she was called at 3 a.m.
in Benghazi and when she lost the election, she didn't pick up.
But what Donald Trump is saying is, 2 a.m., 2 a.m., middle of the night happened, I'm here.
The hostages have all thanked Donald Trump.
Imagine, imagine that you are, one of these hostages was held for a pretty long time.
Some of the other ones are more recently, 2017 and afterward.
One of the hostages, Kim Dong-chul, was arrested in October 2015, sentenced to 10 years of hard labor.
Imagine.
Just imagine this.
You are Kim Dongshul.
You've been in a North Korean prison since 2015.
Then some guy named Mike Pompeo shows up, and he says, you're coming back to America.
You've been in prison now for three years, and this guy, Mike, who are you?
Mike Pompeo.
Oh, I'm the CIA director.
Oh, okay.
Who's the president?
Who's the president who got me freed of this prison?
Donald Trump.
It would send me, his head must have exploded.
What do you say?
I'm clearly, I died in prison.
I clearly am in a fantasy land right now.
Unbelievable.
We will get to what this means for Barack Obama in just one second.
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Barack Obama actually admitted that his administration is terrible on hostages.
You have to realize, right now, all the mainstream media wants to do is cover up, cover up, cover up all of the terrible Obama administration and how good Donald Trump's been.
Fortunately, we have tape.
Barack Obama said, quote, It is true that there have been times where our government, regardless of good intentions, has let them down, meaning prisoners overseas and hostages.
I promise them that we can do better.
But you didn't do better, Barack.
You didn't do better.
Donald Trump did better.
You made a mess.
He cleaned it up.
We've talked about Iran.
There's much more to talk about with Iran.
We'll have to save that for next week.
Before we get to James, I just want to mention one little bit on the culture.
A word on the culture right now.
So maybe you're familiar with the website ClickHole.com.
ClickHole is one of these sites like The Onion.
It's a satire site of the news and all that.
It's like The Onion of BuzzFeed.
It's one of these internet satire sites, right?
This is a barometer of the culture.
ClickHole has launched a new website called ResistanceHole, and some of the headlines on it are, Mr.
Drumpf, your newest nightmare is a website called ResistanceHole.
And the whole site is parodying the left-wing resistance, the anti-Trump crowd on the left.
They're ridiculing them because those people are ridiculous.
One of these articles goes, for too long, Mr.
President, you've been destroying our country from the inside out with your lies and your treasons and most shameful of all, your rude tweets.
It's perfectly understanding that the left and part of the pearl-clutching right is they're getting all worked up over these little tweets, over these little social faux pas.
Look, if this were a conservative website that we're doing it, I'd say it's funny satire, but not a big deal.
This is a totally mainstream satire website.
Look, we've seen Kanye West shift the culture massively, the pop culture massively, in an openness to free thought, in an openness to the Republican president.
We've seen the effect of that on public polling, major moves in opinion polling.
But this is the mainstream satire.
Cracking.
And finally saying, look, those people in the pink hats are ridiculous.
We have to make fun of them.
Another headline on the website.
Game over, Trump.
An ancient order of Franciscan monks has released a 13th century tapestry depicting Donald Trump colluding with the Russians.
That's funny because the left has become insane with this Russia conspiracy theory.
They've been running with it forever, and now it is ridiculous.
You're seeing the culture crack.
This is a really, really good move.
This is as important as any story you're reading in politics this week because politics is downstream of culture, and this is a harbinger of good things to come.
You know, they have another one, too.
They have one making fun of the right, too.
It's called Patriot Hole.
But there are always websites making fun of the right.
That there is now a basically left-wing publication mocking the left.
That's phenomenal.
That is great, great news.
We're joined now by James O'Keefe.
I spoke with James a couple days ago about this incredible video of his.
Here's the latest sting operation from Project Veritas.
Great journalists who go and expose left-wing organizations when the mainstream media won't do it.
but here is his part of his latest video.
I got people who want drugs and she five times was fired and I got her job back five times.
But it's my job.
It's almost like being a priest.
It's my job to protect.
Listen, if you hit the kid, you hit the kid.
It is what it is.
He needs to not tell a soul about this.
Nobody.
If nobody brings it up from school, I don't say boo.
So after a certain point, the cameras are erased.
Exactly.
That's why I would never want to bring it up.
The longer we wait, the longer there's no camera.
If you go to the Hamilton Board of Education and report this, they're going to call the police and they're going to call parents and all that.
We don't do that.
We don't do that here.
I'm here to defend even the worst people.
But I don't want them coming here with a bunch of lies.
I need to know the truth so that we can bend the truth.
So that we can bend the truth.
That's a president of a teacher association, of a teacher union in New Jersey.
Let's cut now to my interview with James O'Keefe.
He's a leader on this sort of interview, this sort of undercover journalism.
Really cool stuff.
Let's go to James.
James, thank you for being here.
Great to be with you.
So James, by sheer coincidence or perhaps divine providence, we are recording this interview on Teacher Appreciation Day.
And this is a beautiful irony because the teachers unions do not appreciate you very much right now.
We know the Hamilton Teachers Education Association president, David Perry, says that his job is to bend the truth to defend the worst people from allegations of physical abuse, verbal threats against students.
He admits to lying.
He admits to violating state law and school policy.
And we only know this because your outfit, Project Veritas, did an undercover investigation to expose these corrupt leeches on society.
James, my first question, do you have cojones made of steel or titanium?
How do you have the guts to go up against some pretty bad hombres like this?
And what sort of backlash do you get when you release your investigations?
How much time do you have?
I talk about this ad nauseum in my book, American Pravda, but I mean, there's two types of courage to fight a war.
As von Klausowitz argued, there is the physical courage to sort of, you know, Walk up the hill with a bayonet and then there's moral courage.
And it's not me as much as it is my team, our brave cadre of undercover journalists who spent a lot of time in the field exposing these crooks and fraudsters.
But this is an unbelievable and truly extraordinary series of events.
Two teachers union presidents have been suspended.
The Democrat governor of New Jersey and the Democrat president of the state Senate of New Jersey have both praised me and Project Veritas.
I am not making that up.
Two Democrats have praised Project Veritas, you heard that right, calling for bipartisan legislative hearings over situations in these tapes where the president of these unions, Kathleen Valencia, was the other person.
She was actually talking about an actual incident, not my undercover hypothetical, an actual incident.
Where they actually protected a teacher who had sex with a teenage girl student, and she said, we protected their pension.
Nobody went to jail.
David Perry said he protected shoplifters, drug-abusing teachers.
He said, it's my job to defend the worst of the worst.
And yes, this is sort of the Abu Ghraib of the great society, that for so long, this organization has never been challenged.
Its power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And if you question, if you take one penny, if you even dare to hold them accountable, you hate the children.
So what you have is a you have a system that has resisted any accountability and has become systemically corrupt.
And don't take my word for it.
Dave Perry, who's been suspended, president of the Trenton area teachers union in New Jersey, there says that that is my job to defend the worst of the worst.
And it just gets I mean, I can't make this up.
We just got a restraining order over overturned against us in the state of Michigan.
Randy, an hour ago, this is breaking news.
Randy Weingarten, head of the AFT, that's the American Federation of Teachers in Michigan, has now been overruled by a federal judge.
And we are releasing part three tomorrow morning.
This is incredible work because with regard to these teachers unions in particular, it's this awful confluence of factors.
Samuel Gomper is great champion of labor.
FDR, a communist by my lights, you know, is certainly a champion of labor.
Both of these men said that it would be absurd to have government unions, to have public sector unions, because it's totally different than a private sector union.
You have the government negotiating with itself, so there's no incentive to balance each other out.
There's no incentive to keep costs down or to root out the bad people.
You're it's the government just negotiating with the government.
When you add to that with the teachers union case that you have these children that you can demagogue, that you can say, if you oppose us, you hate the kids.
Just as you say, you have this huge opportunity for corruption.
Oh, what forced you, what made you set your sights on this teacher union?
And with all of the events that have transpired since your investigation, do you think we're turning a corner with teachers unions in this country and with public sector unions broadly?
I think we're experiencing a great awakening, as they say, on social media.
I think people are waking up.
People are getting woke, however you want to say it.
I think things are happening.
Kanye certainly is.
Kanye is saying that.
I think people are seeing the—I mean, St.
Augustine said, the truth is like a lie, and you just sort of let it out.
I believe in video because I don't think words matter anymore.
I think if I did what Ronan Farrow did and Jane Meyer and I wrote an article with sources, no one would believe me.
They'd call me a criminal.
They'd call me a liar.
People would dismiss it.
We have them on videotape.
And even the, I mean, this is truly extraordinary.
In New Jersey, which is, I mean, these are no right-wingers.
The president of the state Senate, Sweeney is his name, said that giving the public employee unions, and remember, these guys are supposed to, they're in bed with the public employee unions.
Sweeney says, letting the NJEA, that's the Education Association there in New Jersey, investigate itself as like the Fox guarding the hen house.
His words, not mine.
So the power of cinema verite, that is, and I hope your program plays some of these bits because they're just unbelievable.
They're actually talking about bending the truth.
If you hit the kid, you hit the kid.
It looks like out of a Sopranos episode, the sorts of things these guys are saying.
I mean, it's so powerful and it's so manifestly damning and hashtag MeToo movement, especially in light of these Attorney General of New York resigning, and there's more coming, and now they're issuing restraining orders.
They're issuing restraining orders against me from releasing.
You can't make this stuff up.
I mean, have you ever heard of an organization issuing a restraining order against a journalist?
Well, you pose a real threat, James.
CNN doesn't pose a threat, but you do.
I know.
And I know that we're hated.
I know they write a lot of nasty things about us.
I know that my Wikipedia page has like 500 citations, you know, that I'm a criminal and a hoaxer.
But at the end of the day, in the final analysis, these two presidents of the teachers unions have been suspended.
And the governor of New Jersey is calling for hearings.
And Randy Weingarten is very scared of what we're going to release tomorrow.
Because tomorrow, and now I can say this because the judge has lifted the restraining order, Tomorrow we have the documents.
That's right.
We have the documents from their filing cabinets.
And we're going to release them tomorrow.
We never sign a non-disclosure agreement.
We broke no laws.
We've got many lawyers at Project Veritas.
We pay a lot of money for all these lawyers.
We broke no laws.
We have video.
We have sources.
We have documents.
We have undercover footage inside of the office.
And it will break tomorrow morning at 7 a.m., 8 a.m.
Eastern Time.
We will break that video that Randy Warren did not want you to see.
And I think to answer your question, I think we're experiencing a great awakening.
I think people are waking up.
I think people are realizing that this is what happens when you have a media.
And it's criminal.
What the media is doing in this country.
Not reporting on sacred cows because they like the idea of them.
I assume you're talking about Hillary.
That's the sacred cow you're talking about.
Many sacred cows.
Absolutely.
Well, you bring up this point about video versus print.
And it's true.
If you went out and, first of all, if you tried to sell He's one of the lefties.
He's one of them.
They'll let him in, even if he's going after Harvey Weinstein.
He's got plenty of left cred.
He had a show on MSNBC. He's from show business.
His father probably is Frank Sinatra, if we're all being honest.
But, you know, he comes from that world.
And you do not.
They'll blackball you there.
So what you do, you put out the video.
You put out video that is undeniable.
Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
You've got the video right there.
And what do they say?
They say, oh, that's deceptively edited.
That's the euphemism they use.
They say, oh, don't believe your lying eyes.
That's deceptively edited.
Well, Sor, when you put words together in a magazine article, they're actually selectively edited together.
That's right.
It's hyperbole.
How do you tell a story without putting together concepts and words?
Video is different.
Video is a time slice of reality.
In fact, the Perry video is 20 minutes long of like a 25-minute interview.
We only cut out the bathroom break and getting out of the car.
And even if we didn't make a single cut, they'd still say, but he came, he went back into the office.
They'll always make up some obfuscation attempt.
But in the final analysis, these people have been suspended.
And I think that's the power.
Video transfixes in a way that words don't.
And the power of the truth is it doesn't need to be explained.
What we do is we expose the great lies, the great And there's a thousand people investigating the National Rifle Association and nobody looking into the public employee unions with trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities with child abuse.
And if you're a mathematician out there, so we didn't visit every office.
We visited a very tiny fraction of them.
And we caught two presidents of the teachers union talking about covering up child abuse.
Well, just do basic confidence interval.
Do basic statistics.
How many hundreds of presidents of the teachers unions out there covered up child abuse?
And that's why I don't think they're going to attack us anymore.
I think you're actually going to see, and mark my words, because tomorrow is our next video, you are actually going to see people change their minds on the issue.
I wouldn't be surprised because your work has quite a large effect.
And that point, you know, with the NRA, the NRA exists to protect my constitutionally protected civil rights, to defend those civil rights.
And they have all the dogs going after them.
The entire mainstream media apparatus are going after them.
Meanwhile, the teachers' unions are what should be an illegal entity.
An entity that even FDR, as left-wing and consequential president as FDR, said should never exist.
And those guys are absolutely burglarizing our wallets.
They're bankrupting our future.
And they get off scot-free.
You've done a lot of these investigations.
And they've turned the corner on a lot of issues.
You've gone after Planned Parenthood.
You've gone after ACORN. If you had to pick some of your favorite or the most consequential or the ones you're happiest you went after, the best enemies you could have, what do you think they would be?
Well, Churchill said that if you're making enemies, it means you've stood for something.
I think that the...
To address that part of it, I think, as Rush Limbaugh has said, to be hated is a difficult thing for people to get over.
But I think in this day and age, to be hated is a sign of respect and a sign of success.
And those are two very good cigar-smoking conservative men, too.
Both of them.
They both share that in common.
But I think that's one of the things that people always ask us at Project Veritas is, oh, my God, you know, you go through so much despised from the mainstream media.
People hate you so much.
And I would say that that's the toughest thing to psychological get used to.
That is to is to be hated for exposing reality.
I would say the thing we're most proud of is probably the investigation we did.
I would say the two ones that we're most proud of here, the recent one on Twitter exposing shadow banning and getting Twitter lobbyists grilled before Congress about them shadow banning people.
I think that's a big deal because I think the social media companies have become the big trusts of the early 20th, early 20th century.
The new the new trusts are the social media companies.
And if they have the power to censor and shadow ban, as their people said into our hidden camera, what you see in here, then they can literally augment reality.
They can affect...
This program is being broadcast on social media right now.
And if they can shadow ban that, and by the way...
It might not be being broadcast right now.
They are doing that.
I need visual confirmation.
Again, if I just put out anonymous sources, no one would believe me.
They would call me a liar.
I don't have the power that Ronan Farrow has in the culture.
I have to get visual confirmation.
I have to get verbal.
I have to get the people's lips in the camera saying they're doing it.
We'll do it.
That's the first.
The second thing that we're most proud of is the video on Bob Creamer that Trump cited in the presidential debates talking about inciting violence at Trump rallies with all the Mueller stuff going on.
We actually have Hillary Clinton's operatives on hidden camera.
Remember that one?
They were saying We incite violence at Trump rallies.
We commit voter fraud.
The videos were mentioned in the debates in front of 75 million people.
It prompted Bob Kramer to resign.
Scott Fulval was fired.
And they're suing me.
But in any just world, in any just world, in a system of equal justice under the law, Bob Mueller would be investigating that because they admit to laundering money from the Clinton campaign through a series of subcontractors to make it look like Trump people are violent.
And the Russia stuff has no evidence and they're still going.
So we live in a very unjust world.
Premise number one, where the only way we can break through or rock beat scissors is through the power of video and mobilizing a free people bypassing the mainstream media while facing lawsuits and incarceration.
It's truly an extraordinary series of events, but we will win.
We will win because we have them and we have the truth on our side and we're releasing part three of our Teachers Union expose tomorrow morning, which Randy Weingarten did not want you to see.
And you're doing journalism.
That's the basic point of it.
You're doing journalism in the real scheme of things, in the way that these roles are supposed to go.
Reporters are supposed to be rats.
They're supposed to go in and get the stories that they're hard to find and you got to go undercover and you're, you're exposing those stories.
CNN doesn't do that.
A recent survey from the media research center shows that over the last three months, 45% of network news, TV coverage of Donald Trump has been about policies or issues.
A full 65% have been about porn stars and expensive tables at the EPA. And 91% of that coverage total has been negative.
91% of the evaluative comments, just commentary about that.
But where is the investigation?
Where is the actual work of journalism?
It's happening because you're doing it.
You and very few other people.
Do you have any hope for the future of journalism in the United States?
Do you think that this edifice of CNN, ABC, Washington Post, that that is going to crack basically the Democrat communications firms that pretend to be news outlets?
Do you think that that will crack and that real journalism will come back up?
As a serious force in American politics?
Or is it just going to be you and a video camera and a few other people trying to get stories out that the mainstream media are going to keep covering up?
I have a lot of hope.
In fact, I spend every day of my life fighting cynicism and hopelessness that pervades our country when I speak in front of audiences, when I recruit people.
There is a lot of hope, but people need to understand something very clearly.
This requires a tremendous amount of moral courage to do this sort of thing.
I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here.
I've got a team of dozens of people that surround me that are very selfless.
They don't have a byline.
They're out there in the field.
They're like germs.
They're everywhere.
You don't know it, but they're recording waste, fraud, and abuse, and they're going to make you the unwilling internet celebrity if you're doing something wrong.
But I think, you know, I've been incarcerated.
I've been jailed.
I've been sued.
I've got 15 lawsuits against me right now.
I've had the restraining order against me in the state of Michigan, which allows the media to go, O'Keefe has a restraining order against him in federal court, and then the journalists go, oh, that's controversial.
They create this This this nexus of controversy and they pollute the airwaves.
And it's not that these journalists are are bad people.
I wouldn't even say many of them are bad journalists.
I think they're part of a system supported propaganda function that does what Noam Chomsky calls manufacturer's consent.
And it's not just because it's political, it's economic.
They're not going to disrupt the apple cart, upset the people in the intelligence agencies and in the deep state and in government and the people who control, at least they think control the decision making authority in these government agencies.
Another quick example is a lot of people were afraid to report our abuses inside the Hillary Clinton campaign that led to resignations because they were afraid that when Hillary was elected, she would regulate them when she was inevitably elected, when she was inevitably or invariably.
This was like a natural thing that was going to happen.
They were afraid.
This is back in October of 2016, that when she was elected, that she was going to retaliate.
And that's the banana republic.
And my point to you is that the hope comes in the moral courage.
The hope comes in that that David versus Goliath in the courtroom or in the court of public opinion says, I don't care if you brand me with a scarlet letter.
Go ahead and jail me.
Go ahead.
Make my day.
Shut me down.
Put me in jail.
Hold me in contempt of court because I'm going to release this video tomorrow morning.
And the more that we do that, in other words, the more that we double down instead of back down, as corny as that might sound, we will win.
The problem is, and you're not going to like hearing this, A lot of people in the conservative movement are to blame.
You have to grow a pair and you have to stand behind the people who are fighting.
And the moment you condemn Someone who is.
They will jump over that like white on rice.
That's exactly right.
This is a point I try to make on this show pretty frequently, is that it's very easy to sit and talk or whatever and tweet and have opinions.
But when people are out there, when your own guys are out there fighting, they're on your team, they're fighting for your political goals, you've got to give them cover.
We're political partisans here.
We're doing something.
Fighting for the truth.
Right.
Fighting for the truth.
I was attacked because I didn't condemn Alex Jones the other day by someone on Twitter.
And I was advised by people smarter than me to me to don't even engage people.
But here's the thing.
The rules of engagement are changed.
The reason I don't condemn people is because I know how they're going to play that.
They're going to create a headline.
They're going to cause angst and division.
We're fighting an asymmetrical war for truth here.
And the rules of engagement are different.
And if you want to do...
Enter the arena.
See what it's like to go out in the field and do journalism and see what it's like to have the establishment attack you.
You have to have the backs of people who are out in the arena, as Teddy Roosevelt would say it.
Don't condemn them.
Don't criticize them.
Support it.
And have the courage to stand behind those who do.
And they ask, when people ask, they'll say, what do you have?
Alex Jones is a good example because he's, you know, frequently shirtless and yelling about things.
And they say, what do you say?
Say something mean about Alex Jones.
I said, well, I care about Alex Jones.
What are you asking me for?
Are there not bigger issues in the country?
Have you not watched any James O'Keefe videos?
I would much rather talk about teachers union presidents that are talking about violating laws and defending teachers who abuse students than what a radio host says someday on his radio show.
Get your priorities in order.
Absolutely right.
And I gotta say, on that Banana Republic point, you're absolutely right.
CNN actually said, they did a commercial where they said, we are a banana, or something like that.
I didn't get it quite right, but they are.
They are a banana, and you're doing real journalism, and I can't wait to see the new video.
It's just really, keep up the great work.
I'll let you go back to toppling the left-wing edifice, but it's really good stuff, and I can't wait to see the new video.
Stay tuned.
Tomorrow morning comes out and you'll see it all over the internet.
Thanks, James.
Thanks.
James O'Keefe coming to us from that hidden Project Veritas bunker somewhere in the hills of Pakistan or something like that.
So we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
We're running too late already as it is.
We have a lot of mailbag to get to, so let's get to it.
Oh, do you hear that?
Oh, it's like bells chiming, birds singing.
It's almost time for the next episode of The Conversation featuring me, little old Michael Knowles.
On Tuesday, May 15th at 5.30 Eastern, 2.30 Pacific, I will be taking all of your questions, easing your anxiety, answering you live on air.
Every query that is burned in your heart will be resolved.
Best of all, it's an extra hour-long dose of little old me.
I promise I will not be wearing pants.
Even if it looks like I'm wearing pants, they'll have added that in post-production.
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She's a lovely gal.
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We've got a lot of mailbag questions.
Stay tuned.
We'll be right back.
I have five minutes to answer these questions.
So you know what?
We're going to go.
Okay, we're going to start now.
Here we go.
James.
Hey, Michael.
Do you believe the New Deal and its Keynesian economics extended the Great Depression or helped end it more quickly?
That's a great question.
It extended the depression.
It extended the depression.
That's it.
Very few people would seriously argue otherwise anymore.
Very few people.
It quite clearly extended the Great Depression.
FDR prolonged this awful depression, and people who are not economists have taken very inaccurate conclusions from that experience.
A good study came out in 2004 from UCLA economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian, and it showed that the New Deal stymied economic recovery for seven full years.
Ohanian, who is the vice chairman of UCLA's econ department, wrote, quote, Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10 to 15 year economic slump.
We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum it up with ill-conceived stimulus policies.
So what they conclude here is that anti-competition and pro-labor measures that FDR pushed that went into effect in June 1933 are the most responsible for extending the Great Depression.
FDR believed that the depression was caused by competition.
Because competition lowers prices sometimes, sometimes it lowers wages, other times it doesn't.
So he allowed businesses to collude, basically.
He promised that there would not be antitrust threats here.
He caved into wage demand, so wages rose a full 25% above market value.
In 11 key industries after the New Deal, wages were 25% higher than otherwise would have been.
And unemployment was also 25% higher than it would have been.
Prices across 19 industries were artificially high.
Same figure, about 25%, 23% higher than they would have been.
Demand had stalled and gross national product dropped around the same amount, about 27% below where it should have been.
When you start tinkering in the economy, especially on those huge levels, you're going to have terrible effects.
Another extraordinarily slow recovery occurred under Barack Obama's watch when he decided to tinker with one-sixth of the economy to waste gazillions of dollars on stimulus policies that didn't do anything.
Yet, those who do not learn from the past are bound to repeat it.
Hopefully, we can start learning from the past.
I see an awakening happening in the United States, led by Donald Trump and Kanye West and everybody in the middle.
So, maybe we'll finally learn from the past.
From Ben.
Shapiro, how does it feel?
I know you get a lot of religious questions.
Hopefully you can read this one.
If you could give someone dead or alive truth serum, who would it be?
I'd give Ben truth serum to see if he really meant it.
Because if he really meant it, if Ben actually is giving compliments on my show, or giving me praise, we'll know that the apocalypse is happening.
We will know, forget peace in Korea, nuclear Iran, all of these big crazy things.
If Ben starts complimenting my show, that is the greatest evidence.
The rapture is coming.
Make your peace with your creator.
Next question from Evan.
Dear Michael, historian extraordinaire and thorn in the side of one Ben Shapiro, I'm from Pennsylvania and in school I had a decent amount of Pennsylvania history.
Do you think that the founder of PA, William Penn, would today be considered one of these trust fund leftist kids that want socialism or would he be boxed into another category?
I only bring this up because of his great experiment of creating a perfect society in the awful city of Philadelphia.
Blesses on your nuptials, Evan.
Yeah, Philly certainly isn't the city of brotherly love.
I was just there.
It's not the perfect society.
So, look, obviously William Penn was a pacifist Quaker and actually was, I think, the first person to propose a version of the European Union.
So his thinking had some problems.
He didn't have the right idea about many things.
But...
I don't want to lump him in with all the crazy lefty trust fund kids that we see on campuses today.
He's writing in the 16th century, 17th century rather.
He grew up under Oliver Cromwell.
King Charles I was beheaded when Penn was a child.
He lived through smallpox, through a plague epidemic.
He lived through the Great Fire of 1666.
His circumstances shaped him.
And I don't really mind so much people who embrace bad ideas the first time around.
When there are all these awful things happening, society is shifting in such massive, massive ways as it was in the 17th century.
And so they try out some new idea or they're brought towards some new idea.
I mind people who insist on embracing bad ideas after they've been shown to fail.
I don't really even mind people who embraced Marx when Marx was writing shortly thereafter.
People try out new ideas when they're in fashion.
I mind the people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts today because we've seen the horrors and misery and destruction that those political and economic systems have wrought.
If you, in the face of all of that evidence, are going to wear your Che Guevara t-shirt, Then you deserve shame and you should reconsider your choices.
But for those guys the first time around, you know, I think we can have a little historical sympathy or empathy for them.
And I always hate looking back and criticizing the people who helped create our society.
I find it's like spitting on the shoulders of giants.
You know, we're standing on the shoulders of giants and we think we're flying.
We're not flying.
Even if we can see a little further than them.
So I don't want to be ungrateful toward them.
Next question from Norman.
Norman Sr.
Where is this?
Rising political star Knowles.
Thank you very much.
Today I heard Ben Shapiro express an erroneous view that you are uniquely poised to rebut as a Catholic.
In his interview with Jordan Peterson, Ben asserted that the Enlightenment was opposed to tribalism because Enlightenment thinkers are individualists rather than collectivists.
You and I know that the Enlightenment and the Reformation before it, which broke away from the universal church, actually contributed to a resurgence of tribalism in the form of nationalism.
Some Enlightenment thinkers became individualists or rationalists, as you call them.
Others became collectivists.
Do you think Ben Shapiro really believes his tidy historical dichotomy, or is he promoting it because he thinks it is politically useful for conservatives to think this way?
I don't know why Ben is suggesting that.
I thought it was a good interview.
And actually, as I see it, both views are correct, both what Ben said and the legitimate critiques that you've made of that.
As Ben said, the Enlightenment does consider itself opposed to tribalism.
It does pose itself as an opposition to tribalism, as a universalism.
It's basically saying we're going to transcend so much and have these universal principles that we can all access, particularly through our reason, this raising up of reason or rationalism.
Now, you and I know in reality the Enlightenment just wrought a lot of new tribalisms.
It wrought a lot of nationalism and communism, even individualism, all of the isms.
Not all of the Enlightenments are made equal.
The Enlightenment in Scotland was much better than the Enlightenment in France with all the guillotines.
I think a case in point here is on why the Enlightenment broadly isn't so great or why it's solving problems in not the right way or ultimately why it failed.
You can see it in the 20th century moral philosophers Robert Nozick and John Rawls.
So Nozick Let's call him the broadly conservative point of view.
Speaking broadly, Nozick defines justice from a position of inalienable rights, defending inalienable rights.
Rawls defines justice from a position of equality with respect to needs.
So we hear the kind of lefty positions here, and lefties do tend to like Rawls a lot.
These appear to be opposing positions, don't they?
The inalienable rights or the equality with respect to needs.
They appear to be opposing.
Really, they're drawing from the exact same confused premises.
So Nozick traces entitlement to all legitimate acts of original acquisition.
Even though there's no such thing as...
There's no evidence for original legitimate acquisition in the history of the world.
Is the United States acquired legitimately or did we take it from some Indians?
And did those Indians take it from other Indians?
And did they...
You know, where do we really see these...
Perfectly pristine, legitimate acts of acquisition.
Rawls, for his part, traces equality in respect to needs to what any rational person would choose for society if he were behind a veil of ignorance and couldn't decide his own position in society.
So this is, you hear people talk about, this is the main thing people hear about with John Rawls, is the veil of ignorance.
If I could construct a society and say, okay, I don't know which position I'm going to have, I would want one that's quite equitable.
In reality, even though we're looking at this as the right and the left, these are two sides of the same coin.
Both of these pretend that we come into the world as atomized individuals without any community or duty or conception of the good for man.
That is a product of the Enlightenment.
That comes to us from the Enlightenment, and it's just wrong.
Now, why did the Enlightenment do this?
The Enlightenment is trying to recover something that is being lost in modernity.
And is being lost from the moment of the Protestant Revolution, most particularly.
It's trying to recreate ancient conceptions of virtues.
The unified moral authority that was in the church before it cracked up.
And it's trying to do that by other means.
It's trying to recover.
Martin Luther rejected Aristotle.
rejected this classical moral framework and ethical framework.
So it's trying to recover it by other means.
How do we get the good without God?
How do we get this ethical framework?
How do we get this Christendom without the things that made it Christendom?
And it failed.
So sometimes you hear that people, when you go so far left, you end up right.
And when you end up so far right, you end up left.
When you end up so far...
So far left, you become a communist, sort of authoritarian, sort of monarchist, who knows, right?
And you're kind of floating between these things.
This is where it comes from, because the Enlightenment as a project, I think, failed.
The question is, what do we do now?
How do we pick up the pieces?
There was a book that we passed around here a few months ago that's really, really good on this, After Virtue by Alistair McIntyre, and it tries to deal with this problem of you have a cracked moral framework.
What are you supposed to do?
Okay, do we have any time for one more?
We've got to get out of here.
We got time for one more?
Okay, we're going to do one more.
Okay, Mr.
Knowles from Justin.
I recently found out my girlfriend is pro-abortion.
She's neck deep in a four-year social science degree, so maybe this shouldn't surprise me, but she's a Christian.
Every time we argue about a moral issue, she says that all sin is equal and no one is to judge.
What would your rebuttal to this be?
I don't want to stone women who get an abortion.
I just want it to stop.
Yeah, good idea.
Sincerely, Justin.
Okay, so to begin, I've heard this before too.
All sin is exactly the same, so don't criticize me for supporting killing a bunch of little babies.
All sin is not equal.
It is not equal.
We hear this from John.
John writes...
St.
John writes, quote, All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal.
So just from that line alone, we know that not all sin is made equal.
Not all sin is mortal.
All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal.
Therefore, there are different types of sin.
St.
Paul writes about this.
St.
Paul says that there is the possibility of losing salvation, of being cut off, and therefore we must remain in Christ lest salvation be lost.
And we know from James that not all sin causes salvation to be lost.
Even though salvation can be lost, James writes, quote, we all stumble in many ways.
If we all stumble in many ways, not all sin is mortal.
Not all sin causes salvation to be lost.
There are different kinds of sin.
So, there are two points here.
One is, sin is bad.
All sin is very, very, very bad.
Now, On the flip side, we don't want to downplay how bad all sin is.
We don't want to downplay lusting in your heart.
On the other flip side, we don't want to downplay the seriousness of certain sins like abortion.
So to say, oh, we all sin, abortion, you know, it's the same thing as stealing a pack of bubble gum and, you know, who can judge, you know, really?
That is a way to ignore the moral seriousness of abortion.
So I think it's a clever, crafty little way to try to get out of it, but it just isn't true.
It's not supported by the scripture, it's certainly not supported by sacred tradition, and it's not supported by our own moral reasoning.
Okay, on that note, I've got to get out of here.
We're running way, way late.
Thank you for being here.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Have a good weekend.
Try to survive all the covfefe.
Don't OD on it.
And I'll see you on Monday.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Jim Nickel.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
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