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Sept. 4, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
51:41
Ep. 211 - Get Woke, Go Broke

Hollywood writes America out of the moon landing, and Nike turns Colin Kaepernick into a real-life Al Bundy. Then, Steve Bannon is disinvited from the New Yorker conference, Democrats scrape the bottom of the barrel for 2020, politicians politicize John McCain’s funeral. Finally, I explain Sarah Silverman’s own joke to her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hollywood writes America out of the moon landing.
Nike turns Colin Kaepernick into real-life Al Bundy.
And lefties learn the most important business lesson of the Trump era.
Get woke, go broke.
Then Steve Bannon is disinvited from the New Yorker conference.
Oh, no.
Democrats scrape the bottom of the barrel for 2020.
Politicians politicize John McCain's funeral.
And I explain Sarah Silverman's own joke to her.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
You've probably noticed something really horrible.
I was so excited to get here today.
There is so much to talk about that I forgot my Rachel Maddow glasses.
I can't find them.
I don't know where they are.
This obviously is the source of my power.
I can now no longer read Donald Trump's tax returns and find out that he really paid taxes.
I can't spread fake news quite as easily as I once did.
So I don't know.
We're going to be flying by the seat of our pants today.
But hopefully they turn up and I get all of my powers back.
Before we get to a lot of news, because we've got a lot to talk about, and the left is learning a wonderful lesson, get woke, go broke, filling up my Tumblr by the second.
Before we get to that, I want to thank a sponsor.
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Okay, let's get into this today.
Now that we've got the cell phone squared away, we're mourning the loss of my Rachel Maddow glasses.
Let's mourn the loss of leftist companies' money.
Ha ha ha!
Because they are learning this hard lesson.
Repeat after me.
Get woke.
Go broke.
The first guy that's learning about this is the CEO of Nike right now.
Because you might have heard Ryan Gosling angered half of the country over the weekend by writing the American flag out of the moon landing and defending that decision.
So...
I think he thought that he had the best way to offend Americans over the weekend, and then Nike turned to him and said, Ryan, hold my Gatorade, because they decided to make the new face of Nike, the new image that they are going to put on all of their advertising.
Colin Kaepernick, the guy who disrespects and protests the American flag, the symbol of the country itself.
The quote that they're using on this stupid image of Kaepernick's head says, believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.
Here's how people are reacting.
I'm going to enjoy.
Hell, I might buy some Adidas.
Hmm.
You know how many other sneakers there are to buy, to choose from?
You're going to go ahead, you're going to go ahead and say, hey, buy them our shoes.
We stand with people who kneel for the national anthem.
Well, sorry Nike, I've been buying you for the past 20 plus years.
Not anymore.
For those of you who are just listening, I think you got the gist of it.
You could probably hear the little sweatshop produced shoes crackling in the background.
This guy's burning his set of sneakers.
And this is really hard for me because I don't know that I've ever even considered wearing running shoes out in public.
I'm not a big exercise guy, as you might have discovered.
But let me tell you something.
If Nike produced penny loafers, they would have lost one customer today, baby.
They would be out of it.
They don't make that, unfortunately.
But I still now, anytime I do buy athletic gear, not using Nike.
I think this is true of half the country.
The statement is obviously ridiculous.
Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.
Conservatives get this wrong sometimes because we, too, focus on the form and not the content.
So you can believe in something.
Mao believed in something.
Stalin believed in something.
Hitler believed in something.
All of the worst ideologues in history have believed in something.
They've just believed in bad things.
David Duke believes in something, right?
Louis Farrakhan believes in something.
So you believe in something, but the question is, what are you believing in?
And what Colin Kaepernick believes in is that he hates the United States.
He hates this country.
I want to spell this out.
I've been tweeting about this, and the left doesn't seem to understand this.
Colin Kaepernick is protesting the United States itself, the country itself.
How do I deduce this?
Well, Colin Kaepernick is protesting the national anthem, which is the Star Spangled Banner, which is the American flag, which is a symbol of the country itself.
The flag represents the country.
The Star Spangled Banner represents the country.
Now, people will say, well, he doesn't say he's...
He's protesting the flag.
That's not true, by the way.
He does say that he's protesting the flag.
He said, I will not stand up for a flag of a country that oppresses black people, or whatever the change du jour is.
So he actually does say that he's protesting the flag.
But even if he didn't, even if he stands there, he's kneeling, he's not going to stand up for the American flag, and he says, I'm really protesting mint chocolate chip ice cream.
No, you don't understand.
I'm protesting mint chocolate chip ice cream.
You say, no, but no, you're not.
You might be saying that.
You might think that that's what you're protesting, but you're not.
Because what you are protesting, in a demonstrable way, in a verifiable way, I can look at the video, you are protesting the Star Spangled Banner, which is the flag which represents the country.
That's what he's doing.
And this guy, I don't think we should defend this guy at all.
Because some of the conservatives get this wrong too.
They'll say, well, I defend his right to protest.
Sure, I don't know that anybody disagrees with that.
They'll say, the flag stands, in part, for the right to protest, and therefore I support his protest.
Yeah, you're actually right.
The flag does, in part, stand for the right to protest.
That's why it's so idiotic to protest it, because it's a self-defeating protest.
If that is true, if the flag stands, in part, for the right to protest, then you're protesting the right to protest.
So what are you left with?
You're undercutting your own demonstration.
As Chesterton said, there's a thought that stops thought.
That's the only thought that ought to be stopped.
But beyond this, for the people who think that Colin Kaepernick is really just this high-minded racial justice activist who's really seeing something that we're not all seeing, beyond the statistics, he's really seeing a De jure or de facto policy of discrimination against black people by the police department.
If that's really what's happening.
First of all, why isn't he protesting police departments?
Why is he protesting the flag?
But also, why does he make all of his other statements?
Why does he wear t-shirts of Fidel Castro?
Why does he make openly anti-American statements?
The left is trying to turn this guy into some civil rights hero.
That's not what he is.
He's what the communists would call a useful idiot.
Here's Colin Kaepernick defending Fidel Castro.
So it's good to have an open mind about Fidel Castro and his oppression.
I'm not talking about Fidel Castro and his oppression.
I'm talking about Malcolm X and what he's done for people.
One thing that Fidel Castro did do is they have the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their He also did something that we do not do here.
He broke up families.
He took over a country without any, you know, justice and without any elections.
We do break up families here.
That's what mass incarceration is.
That was the foundation of slavery, so our country has been based on that, as well as the genocide of Native Americans.
Are you equating the breaking up of Cuban families with people going to jail in the United States of America?
I'm equating the breaking up of families with breaking up of families.
Wow.
Amazing.
That is amazing.
That is really amazing.
Because this guy's adult.
I mean, I'm not saying that he's the main issue here.
But he's adult who is being used by seriously bad people and defending seriously bad things like Fidel Castro.
None of what he said is true, by the way.
I've been to Cuba.
I don't think Colin Kaepernick has been to Cuba.
I've been to Cuba.
I've talked to the Cuban people.
The propaganda that comes out of the Castro slave regime is that they have the greatest education system.
They have the greatest healthcare system.
It isn't true.
I was talking to a Cuban.
He said, there's the hospital.
There's the famous hospital in Havana.
I said, oh, so anybody can go in there and it's universal healthcare?
I said, yeah, anybody can go in there.
There won't be any medicine.
You can't get any surgery done, but you can go in.
Yeah, everybody can go in.
And when you do go in, you've got to bring your own toilet paper.
You've got to bring your own tools.
You've got to bring your own instruments.
And really what happens is people just purchase healthcare on the black market there.
It's slavery.
He says the Castros don't break up families.
By imprisoning our criminals, we're a slave country.
Fidel Castro imprisoned a whole nation, a whole country, for decade upon decade.
This is the kind of stuff Colin Kaepernick stands up for.
This has nothing to do with police brutality in the United States.
This has everything to do with his...
It's actually communist idiocy.
It's actual defense, demonstrable, verifiable, there it is, I'm not creating something out of thin air, defending communist thugs.
This is an anti-American ideology, and it's an anti-American ideology that fuels that protest.
Before we get any further, because I've got to check the time so that we don't run out of time today, let me thank Movement.
You know Movement, MVMT. We don't got time for vowels.
Movement is a company founded by those two college dropouts.
They started a watch company.
It's grown like crazy.
They've sold almost 2 million watches in over 160 countries around the world.
They are revolutionizing fashion on the belief that style shouldn't break the bank.
I love watches.
I've worn a watch since I was 8 years old.
I've always gone shopping for really good watches.
I've always wanted to get a decent deal, too.
If you want to do a department store, you've got this movement watch.
This one is from the Revolver collection, which is their coolest collection.
This would cost $400 or $500.
Movement cuts out the middleman.
I will tell you, every time I go...
Specifically to the bank, but I've noticed this at other places too, but literally every single time I go to the bank, people compliment me on this watch.
Other places I go to, though, parties, at bars, I get compliments on this watch all the time.
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You've got to go out and buy it so that they send me more freebies.
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And they've got an expanding collection.
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So that's Colin Kaepernick.
The issue here, though, isn't just Colin Kaepernick, because some guy who is at the end of his football career and now has to become a shoe salesman, that's the real-life story of Al Bundy, as many people on the internet were pointing out.
This is also terrible business.
So I woke up this morning.
This was trending all day yesterday.
Nike, hashtag just do it, hashtag boycott Nike, said this isn't good.
I've noticed that when the left...
When the left takes over businesses, those businesses go down, their profit margins shrink, and they start to lose money.
This is exactly what happened.
By the time I woke up this morning, Nike was down $4 billion in market capitalization.
This is all because of Colin Kaepernick.
And it's been fluctuating all day, between $3 and $4 billion.
They're down.
This is not just a regular fluctuation in their trading.
This is a direct response to Kaepernick, and it is a significant drop of 3% in the value of their company.
This is true across businesses.
I really don't understand why the left keeps doubling down on this, or rather why businesses keep doubling down on the left.
It is costing the money left and right.
And this tells us something about our politics.
You're going to hear Democrats and critics of the administration harping on the generic ballot.
Oh no, the generic ballot looks really bad for the midterms.
Oh no, the generic ballot looks really bad for 2020.
The numbers that we're seeing coming out of Nike, the numbers that we're seeing coming out of other businesses who embrace the left, are telling us a lot more than the generic opinion polls from political analysts.
They're telling us a lot more.
And we can see it with this Ryan Gosling movie, The First Man, directed by Damien Chazelle.
Is that how you pronounce his name?
Damien Chazelle?
I don't know.
He's the guy who did La La Land.
And now they've done this movie called The First Man, which is about...
The moon landing.
And the moment where Neil Armstrong touches down, they cut out the planting of the American flag in the moon.
Ryan Gosling gave his explanation of this.
He said, quote, I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement, and that's how we chose to view it.
I also think Neil was extremely humble, as were many of these astronauts.
And time and time again, he deferred the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible.
So Ryan Gosling here speaking for Neil Armstrong, who most certainly would have called himself an American and was a proud American.
Buzz Aldrin is ripping this movie for not showing the American flag, ripping this political talking point.
I think I've actually figured out why Ryan Gosling is spouting this sort of stupidity.
This was in a little-watched aspect of a Jimmy Kimmel interview.
That's why nobody watched it, obviously, because it was part of a Jimmy Kimmel interview.
But here, Ryan Gosling explains the only plausible explanation for his defense of not including the flag.
But it's this thing that kind of sends you like, you know...
Asked up her tea kettle for like, you know, like they would only do it for maybe 20 minutes at a time or something, but in the movie, because we had to get a lot of shots, I was in it for like six to eight hours.
For real?
Were they going?
Yeah, so I started to sort of smell a rat up here, you know.
What do you mean?
Well, like that I was, something was wrong, like I was that and getting banged around in the capsules and hitting my head that something might be wrong.
What was wrong?
What?
Well, I knew something was wrong when I called.
I went home one night and I called Ava and I was just hell-bent on this idea that there were people in donut stores all around the world, you know, trying to charm their way into getting free donuts.
And what did Ava say to that?
She was so patient and listening and, you know, and then she was saying, you know, I think you might have, you know, drain damage.
And I was like, no.
No, there's donut charmers everywhere, and it's a problem, and no one's doing anything about it.
This really happened?
Yeah, and she was like, I've been saying you have brain damage as a joke, but I think you might have brain damage.
You know, you should go to the hospital.
Did you go to the hospital?
Yes.
You did?
Yeah.
And what'd they say?
That I had a minor concussion.
That explains it.
That's the only way to explain this defense.
And all of that is to say, I don't really care what actors think, generally speaking.
It doesn't really matter to me.
If Ryan Gosling thinks that This wasn't an American achievement.
who cares?
What matters is that the movie lies about history.
It revises history.
And it says this wasn't an American achievement.
This is a human achievement.
And Jeremy Boring, the God King, and you know, the sports correspondent from our sister network, Daily Wire 2, he wrote a great piece about this over the weekend where he explained that sure, it's a human achievement.
America is the human achievement.
All of the great achievements of the last 200 years have come from the United States.
They've come from the United States because the United States itself is a magnificent human achievement.
An achievement of freedom, of the body politic, of the way that free markets and free ideas and free thought and the Anglo-American inheritance of free politics has allowed unbelievable developments in science, even art, even the art that Ryan Gosling is allowed to take part in.
That's certainly true.
It's a human achievement, but it's a human achievement done by particular humans in a particular time by a particular country, and that's America.
They want to wash over that.
But when you abstract beyond what actually happened, when you try to create this generic Abstraction.
You lose all of the things that actually happened.
And the issue here is the audience.
Because actors, I say this, I've acted before in indie movies and plays and things like that.
I say this in all humility.
Actors are often not the brightest people in the world.
My old acting teacher, one of the great acting teachers, he's been around for 70 years probably at this point teaching.
He would say that actors have to become gullible fools.
You have to become a gullible fool.
That's not a knock on actors.
It's because you need to be so receptive to imaginary circumstances and live truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
So we don't expect our actors to be able to lecture on aspects of history or philosophy or whatever.
The classic image you have is of the sort of dumb actor.
There were plenty of smart actors, by the way.
I know a lot of them out here.
I won't name them.
James Woods is so out there on Twitter.
He's very smart.
He went to MIT, I think.
I won't name the other smart actors I know because they'll probably lose their careers by virtue of having any association with me.
But James Woods has already lost his agent, so that's fine.
But the trouble here is the audience because about half the country is going to eat this up.
About half the country believes what Ryan Gosling is saying right now.
And look, fortunately, probably half the country doesn't believe that, which is why I can't imagine this movie is going to do very well.
It's certainly not going to hit its expectations.
There are going to be a lot of people so turned off by this that Go Broke is almost certainly going to affect them as well.
But even then, what if their thought is, because one of the explanations for this is that they want to be able to sell it overseas.
They don't want to offend the foreign markets by making this about planting an American flag.
And so they're not going to put it in there.
That is a good argument for nationalism.
If we are so dislodged from our bonds of loyalty to our own country, this wonderful country of ours, the greatest country in the history of the world, the most prosperous, the most generous, the most charitable country in the history of the world.
If we're so divorced from our bonds of loyalty to that country because we want to make a buck in China, that is a good argument for nationalism.
That's actually an argument against unfettered free trade.
There is something really that's lost by this.
We're going to be talking to the political philosopher Yoram Hazoni, I believe, next week about his new book, The Virtues of Nationalism.
But this is a good argument for that.
We saw this in 2006 with that Superman movie when they replaced Truth, Justice, and the American Way with Truth, Justice, and all that other stuff.
That's so horribly offensive.
But it's going to affect this movie.
Mark my words.
Get woke, go broke.
This has happened for every company that's touched it.
Facebook and Twitter, for the first time ever this year, Facebook saw a decline in its daily usership.
For the first time, Twitter saw a massive decline in its monthly usership.
Why is that?
All of those numbers coincided with the mass decline Censorship and denigration of conservatives, suppression of conservative ideas on those platforms.
When you start picking a side, when you start alienating half of the country, you're going to lose money.
That's no coincidence.
Same thing happened with the NFL. It happened with a lot of other people before I... Before we list all of the examples of getting woke and going broke, I'll tell you how to not go broke in this age of ours, and that is by developing your skills on Skillshare.
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Other places that have learned to get woke, go broke, are the NFL. The NFL's ratings were down 8% in 2016.
In 2017, they were down an additional 10%.
I wonder why.
Gee, I wonder why.
This corresponds exactly to the timing of the Colin Kaepernick protest.
And Nike apparently saw that and they said, wow, the NFL has managed to turn off virtually all of their audience by promoting this guy.
We should get him to be our spokesman.
Oh, that's great.
We're making too much money.
We've got to start hemorrhaging money.
How about the Oscars?
When the Oscars became this political left-wing gab fest, last year the Oscars ratings were down 19%.
They were down 19% over the previous year, which was a nine-year low.
How about CNN's ratings?
Is anybody watching CNN? No.
CNN is down 25% now year over year in prime time.
And you've got to remember, they're on in every airport in the world.
If you took out the airports, I think they would have negative ratings.
I don't know how that works, technically, but I think there would be fewer than zero people watching them.
This even affects Marvel comic books.
DC finally overtook Marvel comic books in sales.
This was largely attributed by analysts to Marvel taking a turn for the social justice warriors.
This is a really bad idea, and it has a lot to do With our politics as well.
We can learn a lot.
These lefties are going to be telling you, look at the polls.
It's awful for Republicans.
Stay home, Republicans.
You're going to lose.
Trump's bad.
It's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Look at the real polls, which are all of those numbers, because those polls are very reactive.
They're very reactive to markets and to real people.
It's still socially unacceptable in many quarters to say that you support Donald Trump.
It's unacceptable in many workplaces, certainly on the campuses, in a lot of aspects of our society.
So people are just not going to say it.
But I'm telling you, this guy has not lost votes.
He's only gained votes.
And you're seeing this reflected in markets, and you're seeing it in our politics.
So today we had an early hearing for Brett Kavanaugh to be confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Look at how the Democrats behaved themselves.
Here's Chuck Grassley, the Republican, trying to hold these confirmation hearings.
Good morning. - I welcome everyone to this confirmation hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve as Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Mr.
Chairman, I'd like to be recognized to ask a question before we proceed.
The committee received just last night, less than 15 hours ago, 42,000 pages of documents that we have not had an opportunity to review or read or analyze.
You're out of order.
I'll proceed.
We cannot possibly move forward, Mr.
Chairman.
I extend a very warm welcome to Judge Kavanaugh to his wife, Ashley.
They're two daughters.
Mr.
Chairman, I agree with my colleague, Senator Harris.
Mr.
Chairman, we received 42,000 documents that we haven't been able to review last night, and we believe this hearing should be postponed.
I know this is an exciting day for all of you here, and you're rightly proud of the judge.
Mr.
Chairman, if we cannot be recognized, I move to adjourn.
Mr.
Mr. Chairman, I move to adjourn.
...directly from Judge Kevin Ryan later this afternoon.
I move...
Mr. Chairman, I move to adjourn.
Mr. Chairman...
Petulant little children.
Chuck Grassley handled himself so well here by not even acknowledging their childish outbursts, their neuralgic little outbursts here.
It says a lot about this party.
They have no political recourse to this nomination because the American people voted them out resoundingly, in large part because of these Supreme Court seats.
They have nothing to offer.
They have no points to say.
And so they're going to interrupt.
They have no respect for rules.
They have no respect for decorum.
And they're just going to say, but I don't like it.
I'm going to...
You say, listen, you have to conduct yourself like an adult.
If you're not going to conduct yourself like an adult, you're going to be ignored.
All of them.
Mr.
Chairman, I move to adjourn.
Well, all right.
You can move...
Go move whatever you want.
Go move right on out of this place, man, because we're going to confirm Brett Kavanaugh.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
They've got nothing.
And this is what they're going to run on.
I mean, the reason they did this today is because they want to get good footage for their TV commercials when they're in their own elections.
and Kamala Harris, who started all of that off, wants to get good footage for her presidential commercials.
This is not going to play well.
This doesn't look good.
People don't really like this.
It's sort of like the psychology of lines.
People don't mind how long a line is until people start breaking the rules and then everybody gets very anxious.
It's the same thing with politics.
People don't mind when they're out of power.
As long as everyone's playing by the rules because they know there's a way for them to get back in power.
But when they start breaking the rules like this, when they start trying to undercut the rules, shouting over people, having no sense of decorum, it's chaos.
People hate that.
People on the left and the right will hate that.
Voters will not like that.
So good.
I hope you air this all over television.
I hope you got your clips today, guys, because it really doesn't look good.
Speaking of being petulant little children, Steve Bannon was invited to headline the New Yorker conference.
You know that magazine that nobody's read for 30 years?
The one with the cartoons that nobody understands?
The cartoons that are just dry to the point of not being a joke.
So he was invited to headline this conference.
And then there was this massive pushback by Judd Apatow.
And Patton Oswalt, you know the great minds of our generation, Judd Apatow and Patton Oswalt, they both said, we're going to pull out of this if Steve Bannon is invited to come.
And you know, I'm going to pull out of it too.
I wasn't invited, but I'm going to pull out of it too.
They're going to pull out, like petulant children.
I think when finally the editor of The New Yorker said, okay, we're going to disinvite him now, okay?
And then they all said, oh good, and they said, I'm so relieved.
I'm so relieved.
And of course they're relieved.
Heaven forfend you hear a political opinion that you disagree with.
Heaven for Fend.
Because what they're saying about Steve Bannon is that he's a Nazi.
And look, I don't know Steve Bannon.
I've never met Steve Bannon.
Some of my friends really don't like Steve Bannon.
I'm more than willing to take their word for it on his interpersonal relationships.
The guy's not a Nazi.
There's no evidence that he's a Nazi.
There's no evidence of that.
But they just throw that around and they call Steve Bannon a Nazi and they call everybody else a Nazi.
They call Ben a Nazi.
They call him an Orthodox Jewish Nazi.
They bandy this about.
Look, Steve Bannon, there are many criticisms that one can make of Steve Bannon.
Like, for instance, how he lost a Republican seat in Alabama.
How do you do that?
But This guy is very important.
He was very important in the 2016 election.
He was a chief advisor to the president.
This guy could shed a lot of light on this moment in politics.
He is a perfect guest to headline a conference that's about ideas.
But they don't care about ideas.
They want to shut out any idea that they disagree with.
They would be horrified.
They'll start shaking and crying if they hear an idea that they disagree with.
Malcolm Gladwell The guy who wrote those books like Blink.
What was the other?
Outliers.
He wrote these very popular books.
He tweeted about this.
He said, quote, This is a very good point.
And they're all, everyone is coming and they're now piling on Malcolm Gladwell.
This is a good point.
It's okay.
Ideas that you disagree with won't hurt you.
By the way, even they say, well, it's racism and that's different.
It's actually not really different.
You should read ideas that are that bad.
You should read ideas that you really, really disagree with.
That you really, really, really disagree with.
It's important to do that.
The only reason that you wouldn't expose yourself to those ideas is because you're not confident in your own ideas.
Because you're afraid that you'll become a Nazi if you read a book by a Nazi.
No.
If you're confident in your own ideas, then you'll see why the Nazi was wrong, and it will shed light on how the Nazi thinks.
But they don't care about any of that.
Chelsea Clinton tweeted at you.
She said, quote, Chelsea Clinton.
Daughter of Bill Clinton, who recently sat on stage on a dais at Aretha Franklin's funeral with Louis Farrakhan, who regularly talks about how we've got to get rid of all those satanic Jews, who regularly invades against the Jews, the head of the Nation of Islam.
What about that bigotry?
She didn't tweet about that when her father was doing that, did she?
Talk about hate.
They talk about hate, hate, hate.
The Democrats are always projecting.
And so they're always projecting their own feelings onto someone else.
They're saying, Bannon is hateful.
He's hateful.
And that's why we got to get him out and he can't speak anywhere.
Who's the hateful one here?
Who's the hateful one?
Seems like, isn't there a little irony here?
Seems like you might be the hateful one here.
But it's that politics that is so, so despicable.
It's so disgusting.
People don't like it.
There are a lot of people who legitimately are liberals, who were on the left, who voted for a lot of Democrats, who won't vote for it now, who won't vote for Democrats now, because they don't like that.
We don't like this chaos.
We like a little bit of order.
We like a little bit of reason.
We like facts, and facts don't care about your feelings.
I mean, this is true of liberals, too.
And those are the polls that matter.
I mean, these are the things that matter in this election.
We're told Trump is never, ever going to win.
He can't win.
Republicans are going to get totally blown out of the world.
They're going to lose the Senate.
Look at the polls that matter though.
Look at what the left is doing.
What votes have the Republicans lost?
What votes did they have in 2016 that they've lost in 2018?
I don't see a whole lot.
And the news keeps getting better.
We've got to go pretty soon.
But the news just keeps getting better.
Right now, another news report out today, manufacturing index is at a 14-year high.
It's at a 14-year high.
We've got illegal aliens are getting off of welfare in huge numbers.
It's down 20% in certain states, 600,000 people off of the dole because of President Trump actually enforcing immigration law.
Things are going very well, and the economy is going very well.
Consumer confidence at an all-time high, and manufacturing at this 14-year high.
This is really good news.
Good stuff.
14, 18 year highs.
Really good stuff.
And it's what really makes me not believe the polls.
And it's what really makes me not believe the new book by Bob Woodward.
There's a new book out by Bob Woodward which is saying that all of Trump's staff says he's crazy and he's an idiot and he's a lunatic and he doesn't know what he's doing and it's just chaos at the White House.
Okay, I kind of like Bob Woodward.
He's a good journalist.
But what am I going to believe?
Am I going to believe what I see happening in the country and the world around me?
Or am I going to read the gossip from ex-staffers that talked to Bob Woodward?
What am I going to believe?
All I know is that manufacturing is at a 14-year high, consumer confidence 18-year high, unemployment is at, in some sectors, all-time lows, stock markets at all-time highs.
What am I supposed to conclude from that?
If chaos is what leads to that, bring on the chaos.
If crazy tweets is what leads to that, bring on the crazy tweets.
Bring it on, man.
Because we all love the gossip, and Ivanka said this, and John Kelly said this, and he said this.
Okay, who cares?
I don't care about any of that.
I care about what's happening in the country and the world.
And what's happening is very good stuff.
And that's what the American people care about.
That's why poll after poll show, they don't care about the Russia investigation.
They don't care about Bob Mueller.
They care about what's happening in their country.
Economically, politically, and culturally.
But they care about what's happening in their country that they can see.
And what we're seeing is good stuff.
So we've got to get to what this means for the elections.
We've got two decrepit old Democrats who are declaring, or all but declaring, that they're going to run for office.
Before we do that, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
I'm sorry.
I don't want to do it, but I have to.
We still have a lot to get to.
I want to talk about John McCain's funeral, politicians politicizing the funeral.
I also want to explain Sarah Silverman's joke to her because she doesn't seem to understand it.
She tweeted at me that she doesn't seem to understand it.
So I'll explain it to her.
Before all that, though, you're going to want to get the Leftist Tears Tumblr before Nike's stock falls even more.
Because then you're not going to be able to contain it.
You're not going to be able to swim to safety if you don't have the Leftist Tears Tumblr to contain all of that.
So go to dailywire.com right now.
Get the Colin Kaepernick edition.
Believe in something, even if it means drinking all the Leftist Tears.
Believe in something.
Just do it.
Just go to dailywire.com.
Just do it.
We'll be right back.
So what does this mean for politics?
We see the left imploding.
We see companies that embrace the left imploding.
We see all of the economic and political indicators in the country going up and up and up and up for Republicans.
So what does this mean?
It means, and I don't want to jinx this by even saying it out loud.
It means that in 2020, the Democrat nominee might be It might be John Kerry.
Okay, I'll say it.
I hope I didn't just jinx it.
For comment, because John Kerry has suggested as much as he might run, for comment, we turn now to former Secretary of State John Kerry.
Snooze and dream.
Dream and snooze.
The pleasures are unlimited.
Well, I hope if he's elected president that he'll just snooze and dream and dream and snooze.
There he is.
John Kerry Howell III. Ah, monkey!
Teresa Riri, bring me my Chablis, Riri.
John Kerry might actually run for president.
He was asked about this in an interview, and he said, well...
Well, well, monkey, I'm not thinking about 2020 right now.
I'm just thinking about electing people in 2018, which is what people say when they're running in 2020.
It does seem that he's very interested in it.
He's said before that he got close enough that he should run again.
He didn't get close enough, by the way.
George W. Bush decisively won his election against John Kerry, but that is neither here nor there.
If only he runs.
President Trump says the same thing.
He tweeted out, oh, I should only be so lucky to run against John Kerry.
John Kerry is the most out-of-touch candidate, second only, perhaps, to the other woman who is now certainly going to run for president.
Elizabeth Liawatha Warren.
Elizabeth Warren.
The way we know that she's running for president now is she's sending out this PR blitz.
In just the last week, you might have seen this, the Boston Globe ran a headline, quote, Ethnicity not a factor in Elizabeth Warren's rise in law.
First of all, why is that news?
Second of all, that isn't true.
We know that it was because she put it on her application and we know that Native Americans have an advantage in hiring.
They have an ethnic advantage in hiring because of affirmative action policies.
So that just isn't true.
Other stories have been planted too.
It wasn't a factor.
It wasn't a factor.
But it was a factor.
And this woman is so...
She's so unlikable.
She's so shrill and unlikable.
But the reason that's going to dog her, the reason I think that's a fatal blow to her candidacy for president, is it just shows how utterly inauthentic she is.
It shows what a total fraud she is.
When you look at Liz Warren, she is the whitest woman to ever walk the face of the earth.
She is whiter than Thurston Howell III, John Kerry.
I mean, she is so, and she cynically played on affirmative action.
And she's cynically playing on policies that she supports.
So there's even the fraud and the inauthenticity of the support for those policies.
Because she gamed the system to get an advantage the minute she could.
You know, it's all words, words, words, talk, talk, talk with her.
And it's so divorced from reality.
So, I mean, if those are the two candidates, I hope so.
If we get Kamala Harris, great, just shouting down like a deranged maniac, shouting down Chuck Grassley in what's supposed to be an orderly Senate hearing.
I hope so.
Cory Booker can't control any of his emotions.
Cory Booker, tears of rage, totally off the deep end.
This is why you'll hear the left and the anti-Trump right, they'll say, but the generic ballot.
We're really down on the generic ballot.
There is no generic candidate.
There's no generic race for president.
The closest we came was Mitt Romney, and they even managed to turn him into some monstrous, vicious, dog-abusing, gay boy, hair-cutting criminal.
I don't know.
There is no generic candidate.
It's only people.
You only run against people.
Sometimes the anti-Trump right will say, well, Trump didn't win the election.
Hillary lost the election.
Sure.
Hillary lost and therefore Trump won.
And Trump won and therefore Hillary lost.
You run against real people.
Presidential elections are not abstractions.
They're not a theory.
They happen in real time with real people.
So the question is, right now, and look, the 2020 nominee for the Democrats could be someone that we haven't heard from yet.
Probably will be someone we haven't heard from yet.
But if it's the people we have heard from, who's going to beat Donald Trump?
John Kerry?
Is John Kerry?
Teresa, I really want to beat Donnie.
I have to beat him.
I'm down in the polls, Riri.
Is he really going to beat Donald Trump?
How about Joe Biden?
This guy, this creepy guy who's on video, undeniably on video, is creeping on all these young girls smelling their hair.
Is that guy going to do it?
A guy who was run out of the presidential race 30 years ago because he's a plagiarist?
Is that guy going to beat him?
Joe Biden is the least sincere person in America.
He plays an authentic guy on TV, but he isn't one.
Is that guy really going to win a contest of authenticity with Donald Trump?
How about Kamala Harris?
Is she going to beat him?
How about Liz Warren, Liawatha, Focahontas?
Is she going to beat him?
How about Cory Booker?
Weeping tears of rage as Donald Trump gobbles up his leftist tears.
Who's going to beat him?
These are all particular races.
Nothing is generic.
If we were in generic times, we wouldn't have Donald Trump as the president.
We're in real particular times.
I've got to go pretty soon, so I do want to say a few words about John McCain's funeral, because that was wall-to-wall coverage for the last few days.
The issue with this funeral, I'll give some personal thoughts on this.
The issue is, in 20 years, everyone's going to feel foolish about this funeral.
That's the really sad part.
Because John McCain made great sacrifices, he served his country, and his funeral was made small by politicians.
Here's Barack Obama using John McCain's funeral to swipe at Trump.
John believed in honest argument and hearing other views.
He understood that if we get in the habit of bending the truth to suit political expediency or party orthodoxy, our democracy will not work.
That's why he was willing to buck his own party at times, occasionally work across the aisle on campaign finance reform and immigration reform.
That's why he championed a free and independent press as vital to our democratic debate.
And the fact that it earned him some good coverage didn't hurt either.
You see, look at what he's focusing on.
Immigration reform.
The press.
See, that's why McCain is good because he didn't want to enforce immigration law and he wanted to change immigration law to allow more people to come in and to give amnesty to illegal aliens here and because he really liked the press.
Notice that.
He's using all of these swipes at Donald Trump.
The reason John McCain was good to Barack Obama is because he would go against his own party.
You know, the Republican Party, that wicked party that's in office right now.
And he actually kind of It shows his hand, which is that it got him good headlines.
That is true.
It did get him good headlines by the press, which is the communications wing of the Democrat Party.
Barack Obama goes on.
John understood, as JFK understood, as Ronald Reagan understood, that part of what makes our country great is that our membership is based not on our bloodlines, Not on what we look like, what our last names are.
It's not based on where our parents or grandparents came from or how recently they arrived.
But on adherence to a common creed.
Or how recently they arrived.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Looking at you, Donald.
Hmm.
It's so shallow.
And now, I want to play Meghan McCain's clip because it is being played all over the world.
This was the defining moment of the funeral.
I give Meghan McCain a pass because her father died, so I'll preface it with that.
But I do want to talk about what she said because people can learn some lessons from it.
Here's Meghan McCain.
We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness.
The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.
The America of John McCain is generous and welcoming and bold.
She is resourceful and confident and secure.
She meets her responsibilities.
She speaks quietly because she is strong.
America does not boast because she has no need to.
The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.
There is the line.
There is the line.
This whole final invading against Donald Trump.
The reason this was a bad idea, and again, I give Megan a pass because her father died, but I speak a little bit from experience.
Having eulogized a parent myself, the feelings in that moment are so intense.
The apparent crisis, the urgency, the shock, even, you know, and obviously people knew that John McCain was going to die, but When it actually happens, the shock is so intense that it distorts your perspective.
And it distorts your perspective of the significance of the moment and the importance of outside circumstances to the moment and all of those things.
And you really have to be careful because you don't want to let the...
The craziness of the moment, the shock, the hurt, the pain of the moment, cause you to say things that are a little off tone.
Because John McCain's life is bigger than one presidency.
I hope it's bigger than one presidency.
I hope John McCain's life doesn't just boil down to a guy who was elected president in 2016.
I think it has more to it than that.
But by politicizing this funeral, it shrinks the life of John McCain.
And it politicizes it into a moment that won't really matter.
Because the fact is we were told time and again that if Donald Trump were elected, the sky would fall.
And it didn't fall.
He's been a good president.
The country has thrived under his leadership.
Will it be a historic presidency?
Perhaps it will.
Or perhaps it won't be.
Perhaps there will be a bigger presidency that comes afterward.
And the circumstances of the daily politics are not going to matter when we think about the life of John McCain.
But when we look back at the funeral of John McCain, it's going to be all about Trump, and that's a very strange thing.
I say this with great compassion for Meghan McCain.
I know what it feels like, but I think we can all take something from that, which is that this guy's life, John McCain's life, is bigger than the president, than the current president.
It's bigger than that.
It should be bigger than that, and we should remember him.
For things that don't have to do with daily politics.
Before we go, I just have to make fun of Sarah Silverman.
Sarah Silverman, I've been tweeting with her all morning because she doesn't understand her own joke.
Here is Sarah Silverman's promo for her show, I Love You America.
I will send you to hell for eternity if you murder, steal, do guy-on-guy butt sex.
Wait, what?
What?
That's true?
You really put people in hell for eternity if they put their penis in an anus.
Mm-hmm.
Are you serious?
I cannot believe that you...
Sarah, take a chill pill.
I'm kidding.
I created gay people.
Oh.
Phew.
Ah, you got me.
You're a real son of a gun, God.
Ah, call me all up.
Okay, Allah.
Oh, Allah.
Oh, Allah.
Well, well, well.
Hey, everyone frantically typing emails about how I'm once again disrespecting the Christian God.
Guess what, motherfuckers?
So I tweeted to Sarah Silverman.
I said, wow, that was really funny.
Now do it for Muslims.
Now do that joke for Muslims.
And she responded.
Sarah said, ha, you didn't watch the clip because at the end, I'm really talking to Allah.
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha.
I said, right, right.
So I'd like to explain Sarah Silverman's joke to her.
There are two parts of this joke.
The first part opens up and you're talking to God.
You're not talking to Allah.
You're talking to God.
Hey, God!
And you're talking about the moral law.
And he says, don't kill, don't steal, and don't commit sodomy.
And you say, what?
That's crazy!
And then he's like, yeah, I was just kidding about that one.
Ha ha ha.
So that's the first joke.
That's a joke about Christianity.
Then it turns at the end and he says, and my name's Allah.
And the second part of that joke is...
A joke that, ostensibly, you are always making a joke about the Muslim God, and therefore the Christian mother effers who are frantically typing emails should stuff it.
There are two jokes.
One is about the moral law to God that you're talking to, and the second part is a joke the object of which is the Christian people who are offended by your first joke.
And you say, haha, joke's on you, mother effers.
I was really talking about the God of Islam.
But you weren't really talking about the God of Islam.
That's the turn of the joke.
Okay, so the object of that joke are Christians, right?
My challenge to Sarah Silverman is now do a joke where the object of ridicule is Muslims.
Do that one.
The guys at Charlie Hebdo did that.
Danish cartoonists did that.
And they paid with their lives.
So you won't do that, will you?
And she actually responded.
She admitted this.
She said, yes, you're right.
The object of ridicule here is the Christians.
And the reason I'm doing that is because America is a Christian country.
It's mostly Christian.
And so I punch up.
I don't punch down.
Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the entire world.
Don't take my word for it.
The study and study from various centers, including Pew Research and University of Notre Dame, have shown this.
It's the most persecuted religious group in the world.
They're beheaded in Libya.
They are crucified in Syria.
They are mutilated in Indonesia.
They are the most persecuted religious group in the world.
Most of that persecution, a lot of that persecution, comes at the hands of Muslim terrorists.
So what does punching up really mean?
What is punching up?
Let's see if she has the guts to do a joke, the object of which is Muslims.
I don't think she will, which is why it's wah-wah-wah, typical boring comedy.
Does she know that Michelle Wolfe got canceled, by the way?
Someone should tell her before Sarah Silverman gets a rude awakening.
Okay, that's our show for today.
We've got a lot more coming up, so be sure to tune back in tomorrow.
Man, that long weekend really messes you up.
There's too much to cover.
Plus, we're going to have some good guests coming up, too.
So, 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 Semia Villareal.
Executive producer, Jeremy Bory.
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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