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Aug. 22, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
51:57
Ep. 205 - Are You Not Entertained?

Drama unfolds as Manafort and Cohen fall within minutes. Will Trump survive? Then, Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips stops by to discuss the Left's latest attempt to ruin his life and your religious liberty. The MSM loses interest in Mollie Tibbets—wonder why. And finally, what Trump can learn from Clinton on This Day In History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Admitted liar Michael Cohen has turned on his former client Donald Trump in an attempt to avoid prison time for his crimes.
Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis, who previously represented disbarred criminal ex-president Bill Clinton, is promising to take down the duly elected president by helping the investigation of Bob Mueller, the lawless special counsel What drama!
What television?
Did you expect anything less from the star of reality TV? We will analyze what the Cohen plea really means, how it's likely to shake out legally, and what it means politically.
Then, as if that weren't enough, masterpiece cake shop baker Jack Phillips will stop by to discuss the left's latest attempt to ruin his life and destroy all of our religious freedom.
The mainstream media have suddenly lost interest in Molly Tibbetts.
Hmm, wonder why?
What changed?
Hmm?
And, finally, what Republicans can learn from Bill Clinton on this day in history.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show Can we fit anything else in today?
I feel like there's not enough to talk about.
Has anything happened in the last 24 hours?
No.
Before we get to it, there is so much to get to.
And I've got to tell you, this is one of these examples, this is one of these rare occasions where I agree with Ben's analysis on this almost exactly, almost to a point I agree with his analysis, the difference being that...
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So, what do we got today?
We've got the Manafort verdict.
We've got Michael Cohen.
Within minutes, Michael Cohen pleads guilty.
The president under fire.
Talks of impeachment.
Talks of putting off Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the court.
Talks of a sex scandal taking down the presidency.
Russell Crowe, take it away. - Are you not entertained?
Are you not entertained?
Is this not why you are here?
That's why I'm here.
That is why I'm here, Russell.
Are you not entertained?
Is this not what you signed up for when you elected a reality TV star to become president?
Of course.
Of course.
The way this played out is unbelievable.
It's the most dramatic presidency, maybe ever.
Probably the most dramatic presidential scene since the Ford Theater.
Just consider the coincidence, or the providence, or who knows, of Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for Donald Trump.
Being found guilty of some charges, not all of his charges.
And then just minutes later, Michael Cohen, the president's former personal lawyer, pleads guilty to certain crimes.
In many cases, the same crimes.
There's a lot to dissect here.
So I want to get through all the specifics of it.
Then I want to zoom out and analyze what really will be the legal and political effects of this.
Because I think sometimes when people are doing analysis, they get so lost in the weeds, they miss the bigger picture.
In the weeds, things don't look good for the president.
In the bigger picture, things look very good for the president.
Let's get into the specifics first, and then we're going to bring on Jack Phillips.
So, Paul Manafort, found guilty for what?
Tax fraud, bank fraud in Virginia.
Tax fraud and bank fraud.
And what the prosecution kept bringing up is all his nice suits.
And he spent money frivolously and whatever.
But that's what they got him on.
Tax fraud and bank fraud.
Minutes later, Michael Cohen.
What's he found guilty of?
Or what does he admit guilt to?
Tax fraud, bank fraud.
And campaign finance.
Campaign finance violations.
So, two of the three, the exact same thing as Paul Manafort.
Tax fraud, bank fraud.
Now, consider how the media are treating these two guys.
Because they pled guilty to basically the same things.
Cohen, or they were found guilty and pled guilty to basically the same things.
Cohen actually pled guilt to another crime, which is campaign finance violations.
How do they treat them?
Manafort is a vicious, horrible monster.
Cohen, all of a sudden, people are getting a strange new respect for Michael Cohen, aren't they?
He's free.
He's liberated.
He's going to take down the president.
No, he's a crook.
He's a crook.
If Manafort's a crook, he's a crook.
The difference is that the left thinks that Cohen's testimony is going to hurt Trump and Manafort isn't because Manafort took it like a man and Michael Cohen is a dirty little rat.
But we'll see.
We'll see what effect that has.
So, okay, what did Cohen plead guilty to?
Cohen pled guilty to tax fraud, five counts of it between 2012 and 2016.
He made false statements to a bank a couple years ago, unlawful campaign contribution 2016, excessive campaign contribution 2016.
And that's what the media are focusing on.
Before we get into the specifics too much on these guys, I do want to point out campaign finance laws are mostly nonsense and anti-constitutional.
These laws that say you can only contribute so much to a candidate, you can only spend money this way, you can only spend money that way.
Those laws limit your political speech.
They limit your freedom of speech.
Money is speech in politics.
The poster that you're holding up in politics is a political expression.
It's a manifestation of your free speech, and that poster ain't free.
It costs money to buy the markers and to buy the poster board and to hold it up there.
It costs money.
It costs time.
Same thing with campaign commercials.
Same thing with flyers.
Same thing with websites.
Same thing with buses.
Same thing with all of that.
This political speech costs money because we live in a real world and campaigns are tangible things.
Campaign finance laws, mostly nonsense, mostly arbitrary.
Many of them have been struck down by the Supreme Court.
The McCain-Feingold campaign finance law was famously struck down in the Citizens United decision.
And it doesn't make any sense to have these laws because people are going to spend money on politics.
Big politics attracts big money.
Surprisingly, not as much money as you would think.
You'd think these presidential campaigns are so consequential they'd cost $5 billion, $7 billion.
No way.
Far less than that.
But if there's a limit, let's say there's a federal limit of $5,000 you can spend on a candidate, Those candidates' backers are still going to spend money on them.
They're just going to find other ways to spend it.
They're going to spend it in super PACs.
That's been one consequence of recent years.
They're going to spend it in little back channels.
They're going to use straw donations.
They're going to have family members donate money, even though it's really just their own personal money.
This is how they got Dinesh D'Souza.
Dinesh D'Souza had to go to the slammer and hang out with murderers and rapists because he funneled some money to his friend Wendy Long, who was never going to win a race ever.
Anyway, so I think those laws in general are ridiculous.
That said, they are the laws, so it's very easy for prosecutors to get you on campaign finance.
The laws are very obscure, and if you violate them in any way, they can really nail you.
Now, what we know from Michael Cohen is that there's no cooperation deal.
What does that mean?
What does it mean?
He's apparently not cooperating with investigators and prosecutors, but then Lanny Davis comes out, Michael Cohen's lawyer, and says he has info for Mueller and he really wants to give the info for Mueller.
Here's Lanny Davis.
I can tell you that Mr.
Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows, not just about the obvious The possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election,
which the Trump Tower meeting was all about, but also knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr.
Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.
And we know he publicly cheered it on, but did he also have private information?
Hold on there.
I'm a little confused.
So Lanny Davis is saying, we've got all this info, Mr.
Mueller.
Come on, I know you want it.
We have info.
We can answer the question, did Trump cheer on the hacking and the Russians finding information from those hacked servers?
Did he cheer it on?
And then Lanny Davis admits he said, well, yeah, I mean, we know he did because he did it publicly.
Yeah.
So what do I need you for?
What are you going to give me?
This is the great thing about Donald Trump.
And this is actually what distinguishes him from other politicians who have been, you know, maybe a little fast and loose with their mouths and fast and loose with other aspects of their lives.
Like Bill Clinton, as an example, is Clinton would always kind of pretend.
He would always try to be too clever by half.
With Donald Trump, he just tells you.
He said, yeah, hey, if you find those Clinton emails, Russia, give them to me.
I want to see them.
We all want to know where they went.
He's sort of a guileless figure in that way.
He's an honest broker in that regard.
He said, this is what I want.
I'm a straight talker.
I'm a straight shooter.
And I speak like a New Yorker.
So there's a little bit of a difference there.
And look, he's obviously begging, right?
I mean, they're begging, please, give us some special care.
Please, please, we want to help you out.
We want to help you out.
And of course, Lanny Davis We know that Michael Cohen is a liar.
He's an admitted liar.
The events of yesterday show us that he's a liar, but he's got to spin it and turn this guy, who's basically a dodgy, kind of crooked New York lawyer, into this saint, this martyr for the truth.
Here's Lanny talking about truth to power.
But in one very important respect, Michael is relieved.
He's a good man with a good heart that I've discovered.
But he's relieved and liberated is the word I would say to your audience.
Because now he has no shadow hanging over him.
The uncertainty is gone.
He has stepped up to the line, and he has admitted what he did wrong, but he is now liberated to tell the truth, everything about Donald Trump that he knows.
That led him to approach someone like me, who he knows politically doesn't share anything with President Trump.
And from this point on, you're going to see liberated Michael Cohen speaking truth to power.
He's relieved and liberated.
Is that right?
We are living in such an Orwellian time.
He's relieved and liberated.
Of course not.
He's terrified for his life.
He's terrified for his property and for his family and his career and his possessions.
And he's not speaking truth to power.
The power is this bureaucracy.
The power is this conflict.
He's a constant machine and campaign to undo the 2016 election.
And he got crushed by them.
Speaking truth to power, are you kidding me?
He got crushed by the politicized arm of the federal government.
That's what he's speaking.
He's not liberated at all.
He's not liberated.
He's now, they're hostage, basically.
And by the way, this whole thing.
So, we've got two stories now.
Michael Cohen is saying, according to Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen is saying...
You know, Michael realizes that Trump is a danger to the country.
He's finally realized he's ready.
It's his patriotic duty to come out and stop the Trump presidency, even though for the last two years he said that Trump is great and he basically watched over the Trump ascendance.
So that's the one story.
And then the other story is Michael Cohen is worried about the feds crushing his family.
You can't have both.
You can't have both of those stories.
You cannot hold them simultaneously.
Either he's realized, oh shucks, it doesn't matter what happens to me or my family.
I'm going to speak truth to power and stop the Trump presidency.
Or you realize that the Trump presidency, which you helped to facilitate...
Is now coming under attack by even greater powers than the president.
And you want to save yourself and your family from being crushed.
It's obviously the latter.
So he doesn't think that he's getting a pardon, I guess.
I don't think that Michael Cohen is going to get a pardon.
So now he's got to go into the other direction.
And this question of pardons is kind of interesting because it shows you the differing behavior of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.
But listen to Lanny Davis spin this stuff about a presidential pardon.
Here he is on NPR. What conversations, if any, has your client had with the president or his legal team or have you had on his behalf about a presidential pardon?
I don't know.
I know that Mr.
Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the Oval Office, and he has flatly authorized me to say under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr.
Trump, who uses the pardon power in a way that no president in American history has ever used a pardon to relieve people of guilt who committed crimes, who are political cronies of his, like the sheriff in Arizona who defied a court like the sheriff in Arizona who defied a court order, was clearly guilty and was given a pardon.
Lanny, for those of you.
I'm sorry, for those of you who aren't watching, I just had to pick my jaw up off the floor for what Lanny Davis is saying.
And for those of you, particularly the millennial viewers who are not familiar with Lanny Davis, Lanny Davis was the special counsel and advisor to Bill Clinton, the president who more than anybody, maybe in American history, abused his pardon power.
On just one day, January 20, 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned 140 people, In his final hours.
Why did he pardon them?
Because he suddenly woke up to their innocence, to their great virtue?
No, it was political payback for cronies.
That's what he did.
To have Lanny Davis there with a straight face, just sitting there with NPR, yeah, it's the presidential pardon power.
And you know, Michael Cohen would never accept a presidential pardon.
I don't think that's a worry.
I don't think he needs to worry about that presidential pardon, buddy.
Ha ha!
By the way, he would accept it.
Just spoiler alert.
He would accept a presidential pardon.
Unbelievable.
And this gets to the Clinton of all of this.
The fact that you have Lanny Davis here, Lanny Davis, the special counsel, the spokesman for Bill Clinton, during his sex scandal, during those threats of impeachment, during that abuse of presidential pardons, is this beautiful, divine, divine This providential moment where we're seeing basically 1998 in reverse.
But we're going to talk about why that could be a very, very good thing for President Trump and for the Republicans.
The lessons to be learned there.
Before we get to the political ramifications, before we get to whether this is the end of the Trump presidency, or if it's only the beginning, who knows, I want to bring on a special guest who is here all the way from Colorado.
We have Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop, and Jack Phillips, we have your attorney, Jim Campbell, who's here as well.
And the reason that you have an attorney, because not all cake shop owners and bakers have to retain attorneys for years and years on end, is because the left and the coercive power of the state has tried to ruin your life.
Why is that?
Well, it happened on this time.
On the very day that the United States Supreme Court granted our case to hear it.
That's right.
Just for some background on this, you said that you didn't want to participate in a gay wedding ceremony by constructing a cake for it.
And so this case, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission tries to crush you.
You fight it all the way up.
You actually stand pretty firm, despite it hurting your business, despite all of this.
It goes to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court agrees to hear your case, and then another case comes up.
What is this second issue?
So the very day that the Supreme Court agreed to hear our case, we got a phone call from a lawyer in Colorado asking me to create a custom cake that was pink on the inside and blue on the outside to celebrate a gender transition.
And while we told this customer we'd be glad to create any other thing that we normally do or sell anything else in the shop, that was just a message with a cake that we couldn't create.
And so they said, well, we're going to sue you out of existence.
So they filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
I have to ask, these two cases bring up a real question.
Are you the only baker in the state of Colorado?
How come everybody is coming to you to bake their cakes that you don't agree with, you don't want to participate in the ceremony because of your religious views?
Right.
No, there's another bakery actually in the parking lot across this way and another really fine cake shop just across the street that way.
So, three of them within a block.
You've got to be kidding me.
I actually didn't know that aspect.
There are multiple cakes, and presumably they would participate in a gay marriage ceremony or whatever.
One of them I know advertises in gay magazines and gay media.
Man, you must make the best cakes in the world.
I have no doubt that you do.
There is a cake shop, a block or two away from you, that advertises in gay media.
And yet, the people who want you to participate in a gay wedding or to participate in a gender celebration, whatever, they go to you instead.
Why is that?
Why are they going to you?
I believe that it's targeting the state of Colorado.
They know that the state of Colorado will back them up.
They're doubling down on us and trying to come after us again.
This is the strangest thing.
I don't really understand this because one thing I've noticed is they never go to Muslim bakers.
You never notice that?
They don't go to Muslim bakers.
They don't go to Orthodox Jewish bakers.
They go to Christian bakers.
And there seems to be this aura of anti-Christianity in the popular culture.
When did that start?
Where does that come from and why is it reaching such a fever pitch?
I don't know, but in my case, with the first case that went to the United States Supreme Court, the Supreme Court told the Civil Rights Commission that they were being hostile to my faith, that they can't do that, and that they were not treating me equal with other bakers who had gone through the same thing with different...
Well, it's one, you have to sort of be happy that the state of Colorado was so sloppy in all of this.
I mean, they made their anti-Christian bias so apparent that the Supreme Court couldn't deny it.
This is so clear that you have this.
I have to tell you, I've seen this in the popular media.
I've read headlines about your case.
Many of the headlines, if not most of them, are lying about the basic facts of your case.
They're saying that you refuse to serve gay customers.
I deal with that every day.
Are you the guy who turned away the gay couple?
No, I welcome, I serve everybody who comes to my shop, even the two men who sued me that time and the person who's suing me this time.
I just don't create every cake with every message that people ask me to create.
Which makes perfect sense.
Anybody who is in any sort of creative field has to have creative agency over what they do.
People don't get to come in here and tell me what I'm going to do my show on and tell me what I'm going to say.
They don't get to tell dancers what sort of dance they have to do and if they don't do the dance they're going to get sued out of existence.
You don't tell an actor you have to do this role or you're going to get sued out of existence.
I saw this on Vox.com.
Anytime you see a headline on Vox.com, just assume the opposite.
Just assume whatever the opposite is.
It said that first you turned away gay customers, now you're turning away transgender customers.
Again, I welcome everybody who comes to my shop.
I don't care what their sexual orientation is or their gender or identity is.
It's the message of the cake that they asked me to create.
The thing I think that's most admirable about your entire saga, which has now gone on, what, six years or something?
Six years now.
Is your cojones, for lack of a better word.
Pardon my Spanish.
Pardon my French-Spanish.
But a lot of people, I think, would have just laid down.
They would have said, I don't want to spend years of my life fighting this.
I bake cakes.
I'm a small business owner.
I don't want to take this to the Supreme Court.
You've stood firm.
Despite national and international media pressure trying to shut you down, how have you managed to do that?
My faith is strong, and this time we're forced to file a lawsuit against the state of Colorado, hoping that that will deter them coming after me for every whim that they choose.
Wow.
You know, I also wonder sometimes, we see the left's tactics.
They're so...
They're tyrannical.
They're targeting you.
They're saying, no, I'm not going to go to that bakery a block away.
I'm going to go to you and force you to violate your conscience.
I'm going to make you do it, and you're going to do it.
The right doesn't do that.
You don't see an evangelical Christian walking into a gay bakery and saying, I want you to bake me a cake that says marriage is a solemn union between a man and a woman.
We never see that.
Should the right start adopting those tactics?
I mean, what is it about the political left at this moment where they just demand that you toe that line?
I don't know.
We're not going to toe the line.
That's why we're forced into this lawsuit and why we'll do the best that we can to uphold our rights.
And it's so...
I just love the dignity of that, too, which is...
I think they want to make you out in media as being this...
as a Nazi, basically.
I mean, you know, everyone who's slightly to the right of Vladimir Lenin now is a Nazi.
That's what they all say.
But you're just so simply spoken about...
These are my views.
This is my faith.
I'm not going to violate it.
This is what I do.
And I'm not going to lay down for you.
Did you see this?
I know you didn't because nobody watches the Jimmy Kimmel show, but maybe you saw a clip of it afterward.
Jimmy Kimmel did a whole segment on you about what a terrible guy you are.
I haven't seen it.
I heard reference to it, so I really can't comment on it.
Well, the whole premise of the clip, he's doing his thing, which is to almost tell a joke, but then make a political statement, and then his audience doesn't laugh, but they clap.
That's kind of their new cheat.
But his whole premise is that you...
You hate gay people.
You hate transgender people.
And the reason is because you are gay.
Because you are in a creative profession.
So that makes you gay.
And I'm always amazed by this turn from the lefties, which is there's nothing more wonderful than gay culture.
We all have to embrace and participate in every aspect and every changing aspect of gay culture.
And if you don't, you're gay.
And that's an insult.
Ha ha ha.
That's an insult.
It doesn't.
It seems so contradictory.
Right.
Do you have hope for religious freedom in America moving forward?
You got this win at the court.
What do you think 10, 20 years down the line?
The Supreme Court ruled, like I said, that the commission was hostile to my faith.
They can't do that.
The United States Supreme Court upheld religious freedom, I think, really clearly on this.
And so I have a lot of hope for it.
A lot of support, people coming in.
And, yeah, it gives me hope for that.
Because your case gives me hope, too.
Okay.
You've become a sort of central figure in these elections.
Probably unwittingly.
It's not like you're running for federal office or something.
But you've demonstrated the power of the courts and how much the left has perverted the courts over so many years.
And you've made these federal judgeships a major issue in these elections.
Do you think that that will be a major issue in 2018, 2020?
I think it should be.
There's a lot of power in the courts, and I'm glad to see that they ruled correctly this time.
Once this is all said and done, you'll have been tied up in court so far six years, and there's no end in sight.
They're going to keep going after you.
What does your business look like after the left has tried to gut every aspect of it?
Well, the commission did require me to start making cakes for same-sex weddings a few years ago.
But rather than do that, since I'm in the wedding business, we had to give up our wedding business, which was 40% of our income at the time.
So I had 10 employees.
It was down to four.
Right now, with the news, it's crazy and we're really busy.
But a year from now, we'll see how that pans out.
But they did take away a good deal of our income.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, it was such a targeting.
They say you can't participate in weddings anymore.
Sorry.
Do you only do local work?
How can people support you?
Look, I know it myself.
I read the headlines and I think, how can I support this guy?
How can people go out there and support your legal cause, support your business?
You gave me a shirt.
I don't have the shirt on.
It's the shirt that you're wearing.
I can't wait to wear that around L.A. I'm going to get tomatoes thrown at me.
But it's such a great statement for a great company.
How can people help you out?
Well, we have shirts and mugs, and when things calm down, we ship brownies and cookies.
That's helpful.
But, yeah, prayer for us.
Supporting the Alliance Defending Freedom, the attorneys that are representing us, that's always good too because they're not just fighting for me, they're fighting for all of us.
That's right, and I love ADF. Before I let you guys go, I do want to talk a little bit just about the legal work that you guys have been doing.
You do great legal work in defense of religious liberty in many cases, but obviously this one's been going on for six years.
What's your view on the future of religious liberty and why is it so under attack today?
Well, we're optimistic.
I mean, what we've seen is the recent win in Jack's case.
And the recent win in Jack's case made it clear that the government can't be hostile to people of faith.
We also won other cases last term that made it clear that the government can't force, for instance, pro-life pregnancy centers to speak messages that are against their conscience.
So we think that the court is on a hot streak in protecting not only freedom of speech, but also freedom of religion.
And we think that that can only, we're hopeful that will only continue.
That's right, because I think a lot of lefties, I talk to a lot of lefties, I'm from New York, I live in LA, you know, and they legitimately believe that religious freedom is just a euphemism for bigotry and animus.
I actually think they earnestly believe that.
I don't think that's an excuse.
And it's because they don't take religion seriously and they don't understand that other people do take religion seriously.
This court has been terrific on the issue of religious liberty.
That's why the left is going after it so badly.
It's why they're trying to stop Brett Kavanaugh's nomination.
But this case has shown that that's not inevitable.
Are there other cases around the country where we can look around and just see like, oh yes, religious freedom is making a comeback?
Well, I think one thing, I'd specifically point to the case we just went in Jack's, regarding Jack's decision.
What the Colorado agency said there was they compared Jack's beliefs to bigotry.
And so that's the exact talking point you just referenced.
And when the court looked at it, they said that kind of a statement from a government official, that in and of itself is problematic.
So what it's basically done is taken the left's talking point on religious freedom, this religious freedom is just code for bigotry, and they've said the government has no business saying that, has no business taking that position, has no business marginalizing people of faith.
So I think that's a very important thing to emphasize.
That is a great point.
It's always a good political line.
It's always helpful politically when you can use your opponent's words to twist them into pretzels.
And they're so good at doing it that you couldn't have asked for a better opponent in that way.
But it's really wonderful.
I really appreciate you guys.
And God bless.
Good luck and all the rest.
And I hope you keep getting victories because it's not just a victory for Masterpiece Cake Shop.
It's a victory for every American who appreciates religious liberty.
Thanks so much for being here, guys.
Thank you.
I'll let you go.
I know you've got important work to talk about, and I've got to talk about the political circus.
Before we get to all of this, we're going to talk about the political ramifications of all of the news out today.
We're also going to talk about how CNN doesn't have any views.
We're going to talk about this Molly Tibbetts case.
Why, for example, it's fallen out of the news.
Gee, I wonder.
And I do want to get to this day in history and actually say a few nice words about Bill Clinton.
Before I can do that, I have got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
If you go over to dailywire.com, thank you.
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Okay.
What are the political ramifications of all of this?
You know, we couldn't get away from Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort that easily.
What are the political ramifications?
Well, it doesn't look great in the short term, does it?
Especially if you're watching CNN. You've got a real case now for impeachment.
Not that the Democrats needed it.
They were running on impeachment anyway long before this.
But you've got sort of almost the beginnings of a legal case.
They're going to be all focused on this.
It's going to drown it out in the media.
Let's look at one of the preeminent lefties, one of the most famous lefties in the world for the past many decades, and get to see what he thinks about it.
Mr.
Professor Chomsky, take it away.
Take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections.
Did the Russians interfere in our elections?
An issue of overwhelming concern in the media.
I mean, in most of the world...
That's almost a joke.
First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts ways in the balance as compared with what another state does openly, brazenly, and with enormous support.
He's talking about Israel there because he doesn't like Israel very much.
But he makes a salient point, which is that throughout the rest of the world, this is considered a joke for some obvious reasons, which is that everybody's always trying to interfere in everybody's elections.
And for the other reason that this issue of Russian alleged interference doesn't really affect our lives at all.
Doesn't affect American politics.
Probably didn't affect the election in any way.
In so much as it affected the election, it's because it convinced Americans not to vote for the Democrat.
Because it exposed just how awful the Democrats are.
So, do people care?
Is Professor Chomsky right?
Well, he's only right about a few things in this world, but this happens to be one of them.
All of the polling shows That nobody cares about this.
All of the polling, not just by right-wing firms, but people rank this basically dead last on their questions of public policy and public affairs.
Doesn't matter.
Consider CNN. CNN covers the Russia non-scandal, I think about 25 hours a day, roughly 8 days per week.
And year over year, CNN's viewership is down 24% total day, and it's down 23% in prime time.
Year over year.
This week over this week last year.
Nobody watches this.
Actually, and there's some great statistics, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel both do better in prime time than CNN News does.
The cable news network, the Clinton News Network.
Nickelodeon and Investigation Discovery do better all day.
Nickelodeon does better all day than the cable news network.
So the question then is, could this hurt Trump anyway?
Even if we don't care, we don't watch it, the Russia thing is not a big issue.
Could it hurt Trump?
Would his administration politically, legally?
Yeah, of course it could.
Of course it could.
Anything can happen in politics.
I had a lot of lefties, some old friends, writing to me yesterday.
They say, ha ha, yes, we're going to take down Trump.
This must be a really bad day for you, huh?
And I thought there are two scenarios here.
There are two ways this turns out.
The best case scenario is that President Trump survives this scandal just like he survives every other scandal where they said they're going to get Trump.
That's the best case scenario.
The absolute worst case scenario is that he is impeached and removed from office, and then we get President Pence.
Then we're going to get as many cakes as we want, and a lot of religious freedom, and a conservative president.
That's the worst case scenario.
That's a pretty good worst case scenario.
And by the way, he's not going to be removed from office.
It's virtually impossible that he's removed from office.
Certainly in the short term.
In the long term, who knows?
In the long term, anything could happen.
But how would this hurt Trump?
Let's look at a few lessons of history.
One way to compare this is the John Edwards scandal.
Do you remember John Edwards?
He's the most just generic person.
I think he's made of putty or clay, and he's just got that perfectly coiffed hair.
And that hair became a big issue in the election because his expensive haircuts were one of the bits of evidence that he was funneling campaign money to pay off a mistress.
So he ran for president in 2008.
In the case of John Edwards, this came to light finally in 2012.
He was brought to trial for it.
The case of Edwards was much worse.
He spent well over a million dollars funneling money to his mistress to cover all of this up during the campaign.
President Trump is accused of funneling a few hundred thousand dollars, which I think President Trump, like, that's what he pays for breakfast.
I think he goes down to Trump Tower and then throws a few hundred thousand dollars down there.
So as a matter of dollars, dollars and cents, Edwards was worse.
Edwards got indicted in that case on six felony counts, and he got off.
He completely got off.
Indicted on six felony counts, was found not guilty on one count, and a mistrial was declared on all of the others.
So even Edwards got off.
It is much, much harder to get the sitting president of the United States than it is to get an ex-senator.
It's much harder.
And even John Edwards, one of the least sympathetic figures in American politics, even that guy got off on every count.
On every single count.
Years after he was in office and he was just a lowly senator.
Now, how does Donald Trump, how does this really affect him?
The Democrats are going to run on impeachment.
Let's say that the Democrats win the House, which historically speaking, they should win the House, but because everything is going very, very well because the Trump administration has governed in a terrific manner, if they do win the House, then they need a simple majority to impeach.
And maybe they'll do that.
Although you kind of wonder, some of those red state Democrats, they might not be so eager to impeach.
But they're saying that they're eager to impeach, and let's say they do it.
When you get to the Senate, you need 67 votes to convict in the Senate.
Is that going to happen?
Is anybody predicting that the Democrats are going to win 67 seats in the Senate?
Is anybody really predicting that the Democrats are going to win the Senate?
I don't know.
I suppose it's possible, but they're not going to win 67 seats.
It sure doesn't look like it, at least not in 2018.
So you need 67 to convict.
Is that going to happen?
Probably not.
So here's where the good news comes in.
All of this might redound to President Trump's benefit.
I know this seems insane.
That now you've got Cohen, you've got the drama, you've got Cohen pleads guilty and Manafort, drama, drama.
Okay.
Well, I'm old enough to remember 1998.
I'm old enough to remember politics in the 90s.
I was born in 1990, and yet I was such a political fiend as a five-year-old.
I was paying attention to all of these things.
I was.
I remember George H.W. Bush.
I remember, you know, my grandpa would teach me, Read my lips, no new taxes.
And then Bush raised taxes, of course.
And I remember campaigning in my first-rate classroom for Bob Dole.
I remember clearly all of the Clinton scandals, all of the Clinton impeachment.
I really couldn't stand Bill Clinton.
And neither could the entire Republican Party.
But there are so many lessons to get out of that Clinton scandal.
Because you've got to remember, there were investigations going back to 1994, 1996, 1998.
They never got Clinton.
They never got Clinton.
It seemed like a little bit of an overreach.
I do want to get to that in a second.
I want to get to this day in history, what we can learn from him.
Before that, though, let's just clear up a little bit of news because this is too much not to talk about.
Have you heard about Molly Tibbetts?
Molly Tibbetts, that poor girl, college student, she went missing.
They just found her body.
This was major news for weeks and weeks.
When they found this poor girl's body, it was the biggest news story on Google News, Apple News, and then they found out who the killer was.
They thought, is the killer a boyfriend or a this or a local this or that?
They found out the killer was Is an illegal alien.
He was the guy who led them to the body, and he's now the main suspect.
This is how cable news reacted.
The Republican Party is actually not working on behalf of the American people.
They are working on behalf of Donald Trump.
And he's been able to bully them into their silence.
And I don't think that today changes much, unfortunately.
I'm sure we'll hear what he has to say about this at his rally.
But Fox News is talking about, you know, a girl in Iowa and not this, right?
And tomorrow morning, we know he'll wake up and tweet and sort of, you know, besmirch the reputation of Michael Cohen and all the people around him.
A girl in Iowa.
A girl in Iowa.
And Fox News, right?
They're the only ones talking about Molly Tibbetts.
Oh no, it was every single news agency in the country and internationally was talking about this missing girl, was talking about Molly Tibbetts.
All of these channels, NBC, CBS, the Associated Press, Google News, Apple News, everybody was talking about it until it became clear that the killer is an illegal alien.
And then the only person talking about it was Fox News.
Then the only outlet talking about it was Fox News.
So she's trying to use this as an example of Fox News being dishonest.
Fox News is the only honest cable news network.
It's the only honest one of the whole bunch.
Just some girl in Iowa.
Why were you talking about her before?
Oh, because it's a compelling story and this poor girl got murdered, but now it cuts against your political narrative because an illegal alien is the one who did it.
Look, CBS ran the headline and said, GOP seizing Molly Tibbetts' murder as political issue.
We're not seizing it as a political issue.
It's been a major news story for a long time now.
We're just following it to its logical conclusion, and you're all abandoning it as a political issue.
The Democrats are always projecting.
They found out it's Christian Bahina Rivera, 24-year-old illegal alien.
The CNN coverage this morning of the killer, they found the killer, they bring him in.
CNN coverage doesn't even acknowledge that he's an illegal alien.
Listen to Chief Liawatha being asked about this on CNN, on the Clinton News Network.
Listen to how she spins it.
I want to get one last question in here because it is a story, a very important story in the news.
It has to do with Molly Tibbetts, the young woman in Iowa who was murdered.
Her body believed to be found yesterday.
A person has been charged with it.
This person is an undocumented immigrant.
Mike Pence and the president have suggested the immigration laws need to be stronger so that people like this man who was accused of this murder were not in the country.
Your reaction?
I'm so sorry for the family here, and I know this is hard, not only for the family, but for the people in her community, the people throughout Iowa.
But one of the things we have to remember is we need an immigration system that is effective, that focuses on where real problems are.
Last month, I went down to the border, and I saw where children had been taken away from their homes.
Did you catch that in there?
You might have missed it because she's gotten really good at hiding it.
She said, oh, this must be so hard.
Oh, this must be really tough for the family.
Oh, my heart goes out to the family.
But...
She actually shortened her but.
She didn't want us to hear it.
But buts negate sentences in politics.
That's how politics works.
You say, oh, look, I really, really don't want to raise your taxes.
Look, raising taxes is terrible.
I don't want to raise taxes, but we're going to raise your taxes a lot.
Look, I know you want to keep your doctor.
You'll totally get to keep your doctor, but no, you won't.
It's an outrage.
It's an outrage.
This woman, Liawatha, goes out on there.
She's got her talking points.
She wants to say, yeah, it's really terrible that this illegal alien killed this girl, but we shouldn't have any immigration reform.
She's saying we need immigration reform.
No, you don't want it.
We're trying to reform immigration.
We want to enforce the laws and get people out of the country who shouldn't be in the country.
Get criminal aliens out of the country.
Liz Warren doesn't want any of that.
She's campaigning against that pretty vociferously.
But this is a real issue.
I think people like Liz Warren, like Laya Watha, they don't realize that illegal alien crime has a real effect on people.
And in many states, illegal aliens are much, much more likely to commit crimes, to be members of gangs, to bring drugs and crime over.
President Trump was exactly right when he pointed that out.
And I think she just denies it because she doesn't see it.
She doesn't see even the effect on the welfare system.
Immigrant-led households, legal and illegal, and certainly illegal aliens, access public services.
They can access public services.
Immigrant-led households are much more likely to be on welfare, some form of welfare.
And we'll talk about Welfare with regard to President Clinton and President Trump in a second.
They're more likely to be on it.
It doesn't matter to Liz Warren.
Who cares?
Liz Warren's a rich Native American lady.
She's a rich white Native American lady.
And so it doesn't affect her, but it does affect people.
Who pay taxes.
It does affect people who are relying on smaller amounts of income, who have lower margins than Liz Warren, who care about the future fiscal solvency of the country.
Liz Warren is...
A lady of a certain age and younger generations are going to have to deal with fiscal insolvency.
We're going to have to deal with the entitlement state.
These things have effects that she isn't noticing.
And they just spin it and spin it.
Who cares if it works in reality?
Does it work in practice?
Or does it work in theory, rather?
That's what they're all saying.
And it's ridiculous.
It won't serve them well in the 2018 or 2020 elections.
And this brings us to the real election question, which is this day in history.
Then I'll let you go.
But we do have to I'll finish this up because this is the big takeaway, I think, for Republicans.
You know, I agree with Ben's analysis almost entirely on how this looks legally and how this looks politically, but I'm much more hopeful, I think, because...
It worked out very well for Bill Clinton.
It doesn't seem that the threat of this taking down Trump is that high.
If you look at Edwards, if you look at Clinton, I get it.
There's hypocrisy all around, but I don't think they can get him.
1996, on this day in history, providential perhaps.
Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act.
This is after he campaigned on and on and on.
He said, we must end welfare as we have come to know it.
Milwaukee.
This was the, you know, he was constantly repeating this.
It drove a number of his Democrat allies nuts.
We must end welfare as we've come to know it.
And President Clinton's welfare reform was an excellent law and it worked.
It kills me to compliment the Clintons, but this was really good.
It made immigrants ineligible for welfare for five years.
It posed a lifetime ban on food stamps for drug felons.
It reformed the welfare system.
It got people off the rolls.
The effect of this was it saved the federal government a lot of money and the caseload fell by 60%.
60% of people got off of welfare because of welfare reform.
Turns out they didn't need it.
The economy was doing very well.
There are so many similarities between right now and the mid to late 90s that it's one of these moments where you kind of wonder if the good lord is like...
He says, Michael, Michael, shh, pay attention.
And then other times he's like, you stupid idiots, why aren't you paying attention?
You know, he's smacking us in the face.
I think this might be one of them.
I think Lanny Davis is the key to that.
First of all, this is about Clintons, because it's trying to undo the 2016 election where the Clintons lost.
And then you've got the Clintons lawyer now on exactly the other side, arguing exactly the other things.
What does this tell us?
In 1994, you had the investigations beginning into Bill Clinton's sexual degeneracy.
So you had him, you know, they're investigating the Paula Jones sexual harassment.
Then all of a sudden you've got...
Investigations over Monica Lewinsky.
Special Counsel is appointed.
Ken Starr.
Independent Counsel, rather.
It becomes this wide-ranging investigation.
It's covering Travelgate.
It's covering Whitewater.
It's covering the sex stuff.
It's covering all of these things.
A lot of similarities to how wide-ranging other Special Counsel investigations can be.
Then you had the President lying.
Now there's an allegation that President Trump has lied.
But at least he hasn't lied under oath.
Bill Clinton, it was much worse because he lied under oath.
And he still got off.
Bill Clinton still got off, even lying under oath, because it was a step too far.
The American people didn't want President Clinton impeached.
What's the evidence of that?
Well, in the 1998 election, when impeachment is hot on the table, it's underway, the investigations are going on, Newt Gingrich was positive that this was going to get the GOP 30 seats in the House.
What happened?
The GOP lost seats in the House and the Senate.
Gingrich had to resign.
He was so shocked and ashamed that it had exactly the negative effect.
In 2000, same thing.
The GOP lost seats in both the House and the Senate.
We eked out the election down in Florida, thank you to the hanging chads, but we lost seats in the House and the Senate elections.
It hurt Bill Clinton legally in the headlines or whatever, but it helped him politically in the long run because people don't want the president impeached.
With all of this drama, people say, Donald Trump, stop tweeting.
Stop creating drama.
Stop creating drama.
The whole reason we elected the guy is for drama.
Are you not entertained?
Is this not why you are here?
We elected this guy for drama.
To serve policy purposes, by the way.
Because when people get along, go along to get along, and they're really nice, things don't get done.
When people are dramatic, things get done.
And we've seen a lot of great stuff come out of this presidency.
The drama, I think, is helpful here.
Because when people look at this...
Are they looking at and saying, Michael Cohen and this fraud and this, and he talked to him and da-ba-da-ba-da?
No.
What they're saying, and all of the public policy, or all of the public polling shows this, is, we don't care about Russia.
Stop.
Why are you talking about Russia?
What is Bob Mueller doing?
Why is, oh, Trump had sex with porn stars?
Yeah, he's bragged about that.
Of course he had sex with porn stars.
The economy is doing well.
We have peace abroad.
We have families united in Korea.
We have hostages coming back from Korea.
We've got our allies pitching into NATO. We've got better trade deals being negotiated.
We have record high employment, record low joblessness.
The economy is doing better than ever.
Why the hell are you talking to me about Russia and porn stars?
What are you doing?
I think that is what people are seeing.
And I think there was a similar effect in the 90s.
Republicans got it so wrong.
The evidence of that is the polls.
They were certain this would help them.
They were certain it was going to clinch elections for them.
And they lost.
They lost elections.
Looks very similar to today.
The Democrats are certain they've got him.
This is it.
Oh, baby.
House, here we come.
Senate, here we come.
2020, here we come.
We've got the same players.
We've got the same country.
We've got the same people.
Will Donald Trump survive?
He's a fighter.
He's more of a political fighter than a lot of politicians we've seen recently.
And if history is showing us anything, if past is precedent here, I would put my money on Donald Trump.
Worst case scenario, we get President Pence.
Not the worst thing in the world, but I would put my money on President Trump.
I think there's a lot to hope for.
They're going to make this all about Michael Cohen.
They're going to make this all about Paul Manafort, but I think it is a lot of noise.
It's going to be kind of painful.
It's going to be kind of awkward.
It's going to be legally troublesome.
It's going to be politically worrisome.
But if I had to put money down, I would still put money down on us surviving this.
Thank you, President Clinton.
Alright, that's our show.
I've got to get out of here.
I'm sure we'll have another 50,000 news stories that we have to cover today, so we'll probably go late tomorrow too.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'll see you tomorrow.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal.
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