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Oct. 9, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
48:05
Ep. 231 - Did Everyone Forget The U.N. Doesn’t Matter?

Nikki Haley has resigned as UN Ambassador. Then, President Trump boofs on Kavanaugh’s critics, Google hates America, and the WaPo publishes the dumbest article on the Internet. Finally, Che Guevara is executed on This Day In History! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Nikki Haley has resigned as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, prompting tears and panic among conservatives who seem to have forgotten that the U.N. does not matter at all.
We will examine the unexpected resignation.
Then, President Trump boofs on Justice Kavanaugh's critics, Google continues to hate America, and the Washington Post publishes the dumbest article on the Internet today.
Finally, Che Guevara is executed on this wonderful day in history.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
These are some great days in history lately.
We got Columbus Day yesterday.
Che Guevara gets iced today.
That's great.
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All right, Nikki Haley has resigned.
She's out at the UN. People are rending their garments, gnashing their teeth.
I want to make two points on this.
One, Nikki Haley did an excellent job as the UN ambassador.
She's actually not officially out until after the new year, so she'll continue to do a good job, presumably.
She did an excellent job as UN ambassador.
The second point I want to make, I don't really care that she's moving on.
I don't care.
I mean, it's the UN. Have we all forgotten that the UN does not matter at all?
You know, two things can be true at once.
But let's focus on point one first.
She really did do an excellent job.
She had these great breakout moments.
Here is one right after the UN decided to censure the United States for moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Here is Nikki Haley's response.
I think it really summed up her entire tenure at the United Nations.
Unlike in some UN member countries, the United States government is answerable to its people.
As such, we have an obligation to acknowledge when our political and financial capital is being poorly spent.
We have an obligation to demand more for our investment.
And if our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our resources in more productive ways.
The United States will remember this day, in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation.
We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations.
And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.
Absolutely beautiful.
And it does remind me of that clip of Cocaine Mitch from 2013, where he says, we will remember this and the Democrats are going to regret this in the near future.
And his demon eyes open up and he's like, I'm coming for you.
And the same thing with Nikki Haley here.
She's saying, we're going to remember this when we set up a foreign aid.
We're going to remember this.
When we continue to be the lion's share contributor to the United Nations, we'll remember your ingratitude, but frankly, we don't care what you have to say.
That was beautiful, beautiful stuff from Nikki Haley.
Now, I must say, I have had some disagreements with Ambassador Haley in the past.
Really only one.
I had this one major disagreement with her.
She was speaking at a conference for Turning Point USA. This was maybe six months ago or something like that.
Maybe a little bit less.
And she spoke out against owning the libs.
This was kind of the low point, I think, in her tenure as UN ambassador.
Here is Nikki Haley.
Raise your hand if you've ever posted anything online to quote-unquote own the libs.
I know it's fun and that it can feel good.
But step back and think about what you're accomplishing when you do this.
Are you persuading anyone?
Raise your hand if you've ever done anything on the internet to own the libs.
Raise your hand if you've ever done a best-selling blank book to own the libs.
Raise your hand if most of what you think about when you wake up in the morning is how you can own the libs.
So yeah, we have a disagreement over this.
And the disagreement is mostly stylistic, but it is strategic as well.
And I actually spoke in D.C. about a week after this to give an answer to this speech.
And the idea is...
She says that you're not persuading anybody when you're owning the libs, but I think it really is persuasive when you own the libs.
I think it's very persuasive.
What is owning the libs?
Owning the libs is largely using humor and just propelling your political agenda with confidence and not getting bogged down in all of the stupid criticisms from the left.
That's what owning the libs is.
It's using humor to advance your political agenda, and it's not really caring when the left shrieks and howls and moans.
I think this is wonderful.
I think that is leadership.
I think it is persuasive.
I think the Trump administration, the Trump victory, all the way up through this Kavanaugh confirmation, it displays this perfectly.
The great strategic advantage of owning the libs.
And I think it's nice.
It makes people like us more.
If we can smile a little, have a sense of humor, laugh a little bit.
So that was an actual point of disagreement on strategy.
But it certainly didn't affect Ambassador Haley's performance at the United Nations.
And I think maybe she doesn't I don't fully appreciate yet what owning the libs can do.
It's a really lovely thing to do.
But that blind spot aside, she did a wonderful job at the UN. I'm glad she did it.
She basically nailed it, stuck the landing.
Now she's going to do something else.
That's fine.
It doesn't matter that she's leaving.
We talk a lot in politics how everybody is so reflexively outraged.
This is the big problem.
On the left and the right, we're all reflexively outraged.
We're all in the news cycle.
We're all on Twitter.
The latest thing, Addicted to Outrage, is the title of Glenn Beck's book.
This is a good example to avoid being addicted to outrage or shock or horror or hysteria.
It does not matter who the UN ambassador is.
In this administration.
It doesn't in this because the White House sets the policy.
It sets our policy toward the United Nations.
It sets our foreign policy.
So the ambassador to the United Nations needs to be a good face for America to the world.
Needs to be able to stare down the worst people in the world.
Okay, all great.
Nikki Haley did that very well.
But who's actually making the policy here?
It's guys in the White House.
It's John Bolton.
It's Mike Pompeo over at State.
It's Dunford, the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
It's James Mattis, the Defense Secretary.
Those are the guys who are actually making the policy.
The UN ambassador isn't really doing that.
The UN ambassadorship has gone back and forth from being a cabinet-level position for decades now.
It is right now a cabinet-level position.
The only reason it was in the first place is because Dwight Eisenhower really liked Henry Cabot Lodge.
And after John Kennedy beat out Henry Cabot Lodge...
I think it was 1952.
I think it was 1952.
He decided to appoint a UN ambassador and make it a cabinet-level position just so that Lodge could talk to the president, just so he wouldn't have to go through the Department of State.
But it's gone back and forth over the years.
It remained a cabinet-level position through the Reagan administration.
George Bush Sr., We're good to go.
And during Bush's tenure, we had the greatest UN ambassador in American history, John Bolton, the current National Security Advisor.
Obama made it a cabinet-level position again, and Donald Trump has maintained it as a cabinet-level position.
Interestingly, too, John Bolton, who was the UN ambassador, does not believe that this should be a cabinet-level position because it's a little awkward.
You shouldn't have two people from the same department both at cabinet-level positions, Secretary of State and the Ambassador to the United Nations.
I agree with that.
I don't think the position matters at all.
I think it's a glorified spokesman, and that's fine.
A lot of politics is being a glorified spokesman, but it doesn't mean we need to worry and say, oh gosh, everything's falling apart.
Also, I will point out, when people have left this administration...
It's either, the people they've been replaced by are either just as good or better.
Have you noticed this?
You know, McMaster goes away and we get John Bolton.
Tillerson goes away.
Tillerson was pretty good.
And then we get Mike Pompeo.
He's even better.
The people who, Reince Priebus goes away and you get John Kelly.
John Kelly's been an excellent chief of staff.
Sean Spicer goes away, you get Sarah Sanders.
I thought Sean Spicer was good, but Sarah Sanders was even better.
So I do trust President Trump on personnel matters broadly, the amoroses of the world aside.
I think he's done very well in appointing people, in putting people in good positions and being able to delegate to them.
And this was an amicable exit.
So if they stormed out and he said something mean to Haley and she said, you know, I'm running in 2020, that would be a disaster.
That really would not be great at all.
But that's not what happened.
He tweeted out, he said, my friend Nikki Haley is going to leave now, but she can always come back.
We always want her to come back.
She said that she needs a break from politics.
And fair enough, maybe she does need a break from politics.
There is a lot of speculation as to why she left, but I will, before we speculate, before we go on and try to figure out what's going to happen next, who's coming up next, why she's leaving, I do just want to leave you with a very important point from the current National Security Advisor, the former Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, as to why this is all going to be okay.
The point that I want to leave with you in this very brief presentation Is where I started.
There is no United Nations.
There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that's the United States, when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along.
The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories.
If you lost 10 stories today, it would make a bit of difference.
The United States makes the UN work when it wants it to work.
And that is exactly the way it should be because the only question, the only question for the United States is what's in our national interest.
And if you don't like that, I'm sorry, but that is the fact.
Yeah, get him!
My only question in all this is if it's possible to simultaneously serve as the National Security Advisor and the Ambassador to the United Nations.
I am running the Make John Bolton UN Ambassador Again campaign, or the M-J-B-U-N-A-G. That's not going to look as good on a hat, but that's what I want.
That would be terrific.
So to round that out, good job, Nikki Haley.
Excellent job.
Job well done.
We're going to be okay.
Now, why did she leave?
The timing is pretty weird.
Because typically, if you're going to have a personnel change, you would wait until after the midterm elections.
Look, I'm not saying this is going to throw races in Missouri or something like that.
But it is a little weird.
Politics is very volatile.
Any change can have a dynamic effect, especially a month or two before an election.
So why is she leaving now?
I'm not quite sure about that.
One would think maybe it's because she's going to run for president.
She's going to primary Trump.
This would be a very stupid idea.
I mean, this would be political suicide for her.
She took the job in the first place to shore up her bona fides among the conservative base and among Trump supporters.
During the presidential campaign, Nikki Haley was broadly never Trump.
Obviously, she served very well and ably during the administration.
I don't think she's doing that.
She said explicitly, I am not running in 2020.
I look forward to campaigning with President Trump in 2020.
I really don't think that's what's going on.
One theory is that she's going to I also don't really believe that.
I suppose that's more likely, but I don't really believe that whatsoever because, one, why would Lindsey Graham ever want that job?
Lindsey Graham is living his best life now.
Cocaine Lindsey.
Lindsey Grahambo unleashed in the Senate, just excoriating his fellow members.
So I don't think he's going to do that.
Why would he leave that relative job security for the apparent difficulties of working as President Trump's Attorney General?
Don't really buy it.
And also, why would Nikki Haley want to be in the Senate?
She seems to really enjoy executive roles.
Governor of South Carolina, ambassador to the UN, has her little fiefdom there at the UN. So I don't really buy that one either.
Maybe it's the Kavanaugh stuff.
This is, I don't know if it's likely, but it's at least plausible.
The timing is so weird she waited until just after Judge Kavanaugh was confirmed, and then she decided she's out.
Does this have something to do with I am woman, hear me roar, solidarity?
Again, I don't really buy this because...
Again, the majority of Americans wanted Kavanaugh confirmed after that FBI investigation.
Certainly the majority of conservatives, Christine Ford's allegations have fallen apart.
The other ones have fallen apart too.
So I don't know what stand she's making.
It could be politics that are a little too clever by half, which is resigning, announcing your resignation right at this time, right after Kavanaugh, and then not running immediately.
And so later on, you can either say, I resigned because of Kavanaugh, or you can say, I didn't resign because of Kavanaugh.
And either way, you get the benefit of the doubt.
I suppose that's possible.
In any case, that would allow her to go and just hang out at home and chill on the sidelines.
She's got a son.
She's worked very hard.
It's very hard working in these administrations.
And do I think this is normal turnover?
Not quite.
The timing's too weird for that.
But she might have other ambitions that she doesn't need to jump on right now.
The final possibility is that she's just being sidelined.
And this, I think, is probably the most likely.
You've got some very big personalities in the foreign policy room.
You know, Mattis, John Bolton, certainly, Pompeo.
These are big personalities who have distinct points of view on certain crucial matters.
They tend to butt up against Nikki Haley, particularly on Russia and, you know, America's greater and lesser geopolitical threats.
So perhaps it's just that her views are being sidelined.
Part of the UN ambassador role is to advise the president.
If you've got a guy like John Bolton in the room, who's a former UN ambassador and has a very well thought out and determined foreign policy plan, maybe there's just no place for her there.
I don't know.
It could be that.
But again, I don't really care.
She did a good job.
The circumstances of her exit don't change that she did a good job.
The UN continues not to matter whatsoever.
It should be abolished, demolished, and turned into waterfront condominiums on the east side of Manhattan.
It's fine.
Who cares?
Good work, Nikki.
We're going to keep on telling the rest of the international community of the worst people on earth, Iran, you know, Iran, China, Russia.
We're going to continue to tell them where they can stuff it.
And this does bring up the question of who will replace Ambassador Haley.
Unfortunately, I don't think you can serve simultaneously as NSA and Ambassador to the United Nations, which means probably...
We're going to have to reach somewhere else in the diplomatic corps or from some political supporter.
One name that has been floated now is Richard Grenell.
He is the ambassador to Germany.
He seems like a fairly likely candidate.
He has a few things going for him.
He spent eight years as a spokesman and as a political appointee to the United Nations.
That is the longest tenure of any U.S. appointee to the U.N. in history.
He's also very close with John Bolton.
We know John Bolton has the ear of the president and John Bolton's former UN ambassador.
So it might be him.
He sounds like a pretty good guy.
Anybody who can get up there and tell the United Nations and the international community where to stuff it is good by me.
Nikki Haley did a good job at that.
I wish the next person a lot of luck and I wish Nikki Haley luck in whatever she's going to do next.
I would like to spike the football one more time with regard to Kavanaugh.
I know we haven't done it enough, have we?
I've been doing it for like a week and a half now.
I just want to...
Yep, still delicious, so we're going to spike it again.
Here is President Trump in a very unconventional and extraordinary press conference on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.
I would like to begin tonight's proceeding differently than perhaps any other event of such magnitude.
On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure.
Those who step forward to serve our country deserve a fair and dignified evaluation.
Not a campaign of political and personal destruction based on lies and deception.
What happened to the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency, and due process.
Our country, a man or a woman, must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Bingo.
Absolutely right.
You know, a lesser man, a weaker president, would go out there and say, oh, I feel really bad for the accusers.
And, well, we'll just see.
Actually, I think what a lot of presidents would have done is withdrawn the nomination.
Probably.
And, oh, well, I don't know.
But this guy has a moral clarity.
He really does.
I know how insane that sounds.
I know how unexpected that sounds.
He has a moral clarity.
A gut-level moral clarity.
Look at the Columbus Day thing yesterday.
What does Donald Trump know about Christopher Columbus?
Probably not very much.
But he knows what counts.
He knows what matters.
He was a great man who discovered America, and he was a good guy, and he's been unfairly maligned by leftist, revisionist, activist historians, and we should celebrate him.
And to oppose Christopher Columbus is to oppose our own civilization, and it's anti-American, and that's what all of that stuff is about.
He knows that, and he knows that he should support Columbus.
On this, what does he know about what happened 36 years ago?
Not very much.
But what does Donald Trump know about BS? Everything.
He knows a lot about it.
You know, you don't BS a BSer.
I think that's the line.
Donald Trump knows that.
He can smell it.
When Christine Ford's storyline was changing, she was contradicting herself.
She was being exposed for lies that she had said.
Key details that have not only been changed, but changed in such a way that they were unfalsifiable.
President Trump, a lot of Republicans and conservatives said, Oh, well, I don't know.
And I believe.
And please, I don't know.
Don't make me answer.
And what did President Trump do?
He said, yeah, that story keeps changing.
No, but we're sticking by Brett.
And you should all apologize to Brett.
Absolutely right.
That is a moral clarity.
And he should have done exactly what he did at that press conference.
And say, I would like to apologize on behalf of the country for what happened to you, Brett, and what happened to your family.
Totally right.
How does he have this moral clarity is what I want to know.
This is a guy who's worked...
In pretty mucky industries, you know, network television, reality TV, construction in New York, casinos, beauty pageants, politics, pretty gross stuff.
So how does he have this kind of moral clarity?
He doesn't have it on everything.
You know, he's been a little liberal when it comes to the ladies, for instance.
But where it counts, and especially where it counts in his role as president, he's got it.
I think of it as akin to the ability to skim a book.
This is an important skill to learn when you go to college, especially if you're taking a lot of classes or graduate-level classes.
You're going to have an amount of reading that is not possible to complete, especially if you want to go out and go to Beach Week 2019 and just go boothing and throwing ice cubes at bars.
You're not going to have time to read it all.
So one of the skills that you have to learn is how to power skim.
You need to be able to skim for the information because you're going to be tested on the information.
You're going to be tested on what matters.
You have to be able to, like, scan hundreds and hundreds of pages per week or sometimes, you know, 200 pages or 300 pages in a day and pluck out the information that matters.
I think that's how President Trump sees the world.
I think he's constantly consuming information.
They're always saying that he just sits in his room and watches Fox and Friends all morning.
Yeah, maybe he does.
And he's consuming all of that information, filtering out the nonsense, and identifying what really matters.
He's able to do that time and time again on key policy matters, on moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, on how to deal with ISIS, on how to deal with North Korea, on how to deal with trade in China, How to renegotiate NAFTA. He's been able to identify things where we say, oh, President Trump, he's not an ideological conservative.
He's never read Edmund Burke or Michael Oakeshott or Russell Kirk or whatever.
He's never read these books.
Sure, maybe he hasn't.
I know he's read Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide.
I know that for a fact because he blurbed it.
I don't know if he's read those other books, but he's able to identify what matters, the practical things that matters.
That's a wonderful quality in a president.
Because, you know, I bet Barack Obama has read all those books.
In fact, I'm almost certain of it.
He's read all of those books and he's learned nothing from them.
President Trump watches Fox and Friends and he learns so much more than Barack Obama ever learned.
That's fine.
Fine by me.
I really appreciate that.
You know, some people on the right also, but certainly on the left, they criticize Trump.
They criticize Kavanaugh because they say, oh, well, he's not behaving the way I want him to.
Oh, we accused Kavanaugh of being a rapist.
And then he got emotional.
Oh, he shouldn't do that.
You know...
By the way, that Sicilian expression means, I don't care.
Some people think it means a more vulgar thing.
It means, I don't care.
Antonin Scalia spelled that out very well before his death.
But that's what I say to them.
That's what I say.
For those of you who are listening, I'm scratching my four fingers underneath my chin.
Who cares?
And how dare you?
Who are you to say?
Because Barack Obama sips his chablis with the pinky out.
He has all of the information and he knows nothing.
President Trump, I don't know.
He just manages to pluck out these things and have some moral clarity.
It's really refreshing.
Speaking of Brett Kavanaugh, before we get off this point, there has been a cash surge for Democrats after the Kavanaugh nomination.
That's the headline, at least.
Actually, both parties have raised money on this.
But there's been a cash surge, according to all of the mainstream media.
And one in particular stands out.
Kamala Harris sent out one fundraising email for Heidi Heitkamp, who is an imperiled Democrat running for Senate.
And with that one email, she raised $400,000.
It was an anti-Kavanaugh email.
She raised $400,000 for Heitkamp.
That is pretty impressive, but you've got to compare that with another number that came out of this whole Kavanaugh thing, which is that the more the Kavanaugh thing dragged on, the further behind Heidi Heitkamp fell.
So I think now she's like 12 points behind or something like that.
But she was able to raise all that money.
What does that mean?
It means that a small number of lefties have been whipped up into a frenzy and are giving money even as the candidate is losing support overall.
What is that about?
Why are these small number of lefties getting whipped up into such a frenzy and giving so much money?
It's because the left treats politics like religion.
This is a form of tithing for leftists.
Giving money to Heidi Heitkamp is a form of tithing.
It may be a form of indulgence.
You hear them on the left all the time talk about white privilege and male privilege.
I think it's an indulgence to make good For your sin of being a straight white guy who knows that he's a guy or whatever aspect of that you might possess by giving to some imperiled Democrat running for Senate.
I see it as religion.
And Hillary Clinton, my third cousin-in-law once removed, I always forget which one she is, third or fourth cousin-in-law once removed, she...
Is underscoring this.
She says, she just came out and said, you can't be civil with a party that opposes everything that you stand for.
That you stand for.
It's always, you know, rationalists in politics.
They're always standing.
I'm standing for this.
They're not doing anything.
They stand.
And Hillary's standing.
But consider what she said.
You can't be civil with these people because they oppose everything that we stand for.
Is the Democratic Party everything that Hillary Clinton stands for?
Yes, actually.
Yes, it is.
But that's very sad.
Because I don't think conservatives treat politics as everything that we stand for.
I certainly don't.
I mean, I work in politics.
I love politics.
I read a lot about politics.
But when I think about what I mostly read about religion, when I'm reading books at night, before bed, or in the morning, I'm usually reading theology, philosophy, history.
I'm not really reading about politics per se.
I don't go to crazy screaming marches and rallies and wear some genitalia-themed hat on my head on the weekends.
I don't do that at all.
I go to a cigar bar.
It's I think that's much more true of conservatives.
Conservatives have other things going on, but for the left, they treat it like religion.
So, in this case, it's true.
If you were to...
To treat politics like religion.
And if you're a member of the opposite party, it's like you're an infidel.
You're a jihadi.
There's a crusade that's being waged against you or that you are waging against them.
It's pretty pathetic.
And speaking of religious leftism, you see this all the way at Google.
Google used to have the saying, don't be evil.
And then they dropped that saying about six months ago, presumably because their new one is just be evil.
Don't be evil.
Well, now they're being evil.
They are coming out really strongly in an anti-American fashion.
We'll get into that in one second, but before we do, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, and you have to stick around, because we are going to dismantle the dumbest article on the internet today, which happens to be about us, about the Daily Wire, and about Pod Save America.
It is so, so, so...
Stupid.
We will get to that in a bit.
And then on this day in history, Che Guevara is executed.
Gotta go to dailywires.com.
Why?
Because you get me.
You get the Andrew Klavan show.
You get the Ben Shapiro show.
You get to ask questions in the mailbag.
You get to ask questions in the conversation.
That'll be coming up soon.
None of that matters.
You know what matters.
I mean, really, I'm preaching to the choir right now.
Because if you don't have your Leftist Tears Tumblr right now, you're already drowned.
And I'm sorry.
May the good Lord have mercy on your soul because you are floating somewhere after that Kavanaugh confirmation.
For the rest of you, get another Leftist Tears Tumblr.
I don't know what to tell you.
You could use two or three these days.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
You know, I really want to talk about this Google being evil story.
But more than that, I want to talk about how stupid the Washington Post is today.
So we're going to have to save the Google story for tomorrow.
Sorry.
Sometimes we don't get to things.
It's an important story.
We'll get to it.
But this...
You know I like to focus on the dumbest article on the internet on any given day.
This one takes the cake.
I woke up to this one and...
And lucky me, it was about us.
It was about Ben, particularly, and about the Daily Wire, and about those Obama flunkies at Pod Save America.
And I want to go through this in depth.
I want to take a deep dive into this stupid article by a guy named Dan Zak, because I think it shows you what the fake news is.
I want to analyze this line by line, because it's going to show you why...
The Washington Post is fake news.
Why they're liars.
Why you can't trust that stupid rag, Pravda on the Potomac, the Washington Post.
Because it's so insidious.
It's actually a little bit subtle.
You might miss it if you're not taken through it.
So it's about us, and it's about these Pod Save America guys.
If you don't remember the Pod Save America guys, here's just a little refresher of their serious political commentary.
Tell us what the f*** is going on.
What the f*** is going on?
Really, they're super serious guys.
I mean, they're so serious they wear t-shirts on Chelsea Handler's show.
They're so serious, you know, they use the F-word.
Because they're, like, really serious.
They really mean it.
You know, that's how you know.
When people use the F-word a lot, that's how you can...
They're really super-duper serious.
So there are these guys.
I think they're about 16, 18, and 19.
All Obama alumni from that failed White House.
And...
But they're so self-congratulatory.
This is the thing about the left.
You know, the left likes to have the appearance of the thing, but they don't want to have the essence of the thing.
That's like these guys.
The main one, I forget his name, but the good-looking one, he looks...
Jon Favreau is his name.
Not the actor, but the political guy, Jon Favreau.
He looks like he should play a White House aide in the West Wing.
Like, he's the guy who would play a White House aide in the West Wing.
Unfortunately, he's not the guy who should be...
A West Wing aide, because he doesn't know anything, and obviously the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.
He worked for a failed administration, and he himself was a flunky of that failed administration that no longer has any legacy.
But he looks the part, and that's always the left.
They always look the part.
And he looks like he's 12 years old.
I don't know how old he is.
I'm probably younger than he is, but I look about 10 years older than he does.
Yeah.
So anyway, okay, let's get to the article.
The title, The Battle in Your Earbuds, The Bros of Political Podcasting, and Their Quest to Reinvent Punditry by Dan Zak.
Dan Zak, a fake news reporter.
Okay, so it begins.
Los Angeles.
In a drab office building across from a used car lot in the San Fernando Valley, the host of the nation's most popular conservative podcast, Ben Shapiro, was preparing to interpret reality for his listeners.
Let's begin there.
Drab office building.
Drab office building.
Would you call that drab?
I don't know.
I have multiple tuxedos hanging in my wardrobe right now.
We have a 4,000 cigar humidor replete with the greatest cigars on earth.
Full bar.
It's pretty posh, man, is what I'm telling you.
It's pretty posh.
So, drab.
Okay, that's what she says.
She says it's across from a used car lot.
It is...
I don't want to give away our location.
It's across the street from like a...
How would you call these cars used?
It would be like calling a 1940 Patek Philippe watch a used watch.
Those are the kind of cars.
LA is a car culture.
There are places that sell very, very nice, classic, beautiful, vintage cars here.
That's one way of describing it.
Or, if you're a dishonest hack at the Washington Post, you say it's a used car lot.
Okay, that's how they begin.
It goes on.
These are one of those days where you think, maybe I should have gone to Wall Street, joked Ben Shapiro, glaring at a torrent of tweets on his laptop in a cramped, windowless studio.
Just listen to how they said the cramped windowless studio.
Virtually every studio is windowless.
The reason for that is that you need to soundproof studios, especially when you're doing podcast and radio, you dummy.
But I don't think he's dumb.
I think he's trying to be insulting, and he's using something that is a truism.
Yes, virtually all studios are windowless.
Some of the big ones at Fox, you know, they kind of deal with it and they have these big, thick windows.
But, you know, virtually every other studio is windowless.
Okay.
This news cycle is, and it cuts to another quote, the wildest thing since Trump winning, said Jon Favreau.
The former speechwriter for Barack Obama was just a few miles away from Shapiro in an airy, sunlit Hollywood office as he, too, processed the day's news into analysis and talking points.
For his own podcast listeners on the liberal end of the spectrum.
So when Shapiro does it, he's interpreting reality.
When Favreau, or whichever one that was, does it, he's giving analysis.
And the airy, ooh, the sunlit airy office.
He says it's in Hollywood.
So obviously they're comparing the San Fernando Valley, that's supposed to be bad and mucky, to Hollywood.
As someone who lives out here, all of the studios, all the major studios, Disney, ABC... They're in the San Fernando Valley.
That's where the studios are.
Hollywood is where homeless people are.
That is what they say.
Oh, it's airy.
It's sunlit.
Okay.
Moving.
Moving right along.
How much time?
I could go on this all day.
So then the article continues.
Of the crooked media guys, Ben Shapiro says.
Now, I just want to point something out.
Whenever the Washington Post is talking about Pod Save America and all those people, they refer to them as the crooked media guys.
But when Washington Post is talking about us, they only refer to Ben Shapiro.
Now, the Daily Wire, not to toot our own horn here...
We get a lot of views.
We get a lot of listens.
Pretty big shows.
Even from the broom closet here, we get a good amount of views.
Certainly, Andrew Klavan does.
The website does very well.
The Daily Wire is, I mean, Daily Wire is, I think, one of the biggest publishers on Facebook, if not the biggest in its space.
Okay, so you got that, and then, but they say, no, no, no, there's no such thing as that.
It's just Ben Shapiro.
But the Crooked Media guys, quick, really quick, name me three Crooked Media guys.
I couldn't do it.
I didn't even know the one guy, Jon Favreau.
I can remember him because it's the name of an actor.
That's why I can remember him.
Actually, just that fact alone tells you everything you need to know about the Washington Post's take here.
Of the Crooked Media guys, Ben Shapiro says, I disagree with everything they say, but I think they're good at what they do.
Fair enough.
I mean, if what they do is spout idiocy to their frivolous audience, then I think they're very good at what they do.
I think they're superb at what they do.
But a very charitable take from Ben.
Told that a visiting journalist is seeing Shapiro first, Tommy Vieter, I guess he's one of the other guys, says, Please tell baby Steve Bannon I say hello.
So...
Look, I'm all for making insults.
Obviously, I've just been insulting these guys the whole time.
But they should be good insults.
So if they're calling Ben Shapiro baby Steve Bannon...
Do they not even Google Ben and Steve Bannon and hate each other?
That's like the worst nickname you could give to him.
The right is much better at nicknames in the era of Trump to begin with, but it's not a good insult because it doesn't have anything to do with reality.
There are a lot of names that you could call Ben.
I'm not going to do that because I want to keep my job for the next two weeks, but that isn't one of them.
It goes on.
Fans wearing friend of the pod t-shirts crowd the front rows at live events with the crooked guys who are greeted like rock stars instead of the political nerds that they are.
On liberal college campuses, lonely conservatives draw strength from YouTube clips of Shapiro dismantling progressive arguments like a hunter field dressing an elk.
Are you kidding me?
So what does he say?
They say, fans wearing friends of the pod crowd the front rows of live events with the crooked guys who are greeted like rock stars.
Oh, you mean live events like when we pack that 4,000 seat house in Dallas for the Ben Shapiro live show?
You mean live events?
Or no, maybe when we did the same thing in Arizona the next night.
Is that what you're...
Oh, no, they don't mention those live events.
Instead of talking about our massive sold-out live events, what they do is they say that lonely conservatives on campuses are in their bedrooms, you know, in the dark downloading Shapiro videos on YouTube.
Are you...
Every time Ben goes to a school, the city shuts down.
It's so popular.
He shut down Berkeley, California.
$600,000 of security was needed for all of the people that came out.
You dishonest hacks.
But then also it goes on.
It says, you know, the guys at Crooked, they're greeted like rock stars instead of the political nerds that they are.
To be a nerd, you have to be smart and educated.
That does not describe our compatriots over there or our opposite of compatriots at Crooked Media.
Their show...
Look, say what you will about Ben.
He talks very fast.
When you listen to his show, you get a lot of information.
When you listen to Pod Save America, you get a lot of whiny profanity.
That's what you get.
if you want some whiny profanity from guys who dress in really tight jeans and wear t-shirts in public and think that that's acceptable, then you go to Pod Save America.
If you want information and commentary and analysis, you go to the Daily Wire.
That's how it works.
So, okay, it goes on.
On his show, Shapiro reads ads from This is the best one.
On his show, Shapiro reads ads from a sponsor that sells a three-month emergency food supply, plus seed packets for when things finally go south.
Pod Save America shills for a company that delivers fresh ingredients to your doorstep so that you can cook yourself a single healthy meal.
Lentils and quinoa dressed in tahini, perhaps, as the world burns.
So what they're saying is, Ben has some survivalist advertisers, and the Pod Save America has Blue Apron.
We also have Blue Apron!
We have the same sponsor!
You dishonest hacks!
I virtually only eat Blue Apron because they sponsor all of our shows.
You freaking hacks!
Really what you're saying is...
Like, if you were to write that honestly, you'd say Ben and, you know, Daily Wire and Pod Save America both have Blue Apron, but Daily Wire has more advertisers because they're better shows.
Okay, yeah, great.
Cool.
I'm glad we have more advertisers.
It goes on.
Shapiro's headquarters has the look of a think tank and the feel of a refurbished doctor's office.
A reproduction of Washington crossing the Delaware hangs in the waiting area.
An issue of Cigar Aficionado sits on the coffee table.
Yes, the cigar aficionado sits on the coffee table to exemplify the experience of sitting next to your 4,000 cigar humidor in your beautiful several lounges that you have in your studio.
You hacks.
So that goes on.
About 55 employees work for him under the banner of forward publishing, producing his Daily Wire website, and three other podcasts, all hosted by conservative men.
We won't even...
We won't even dare to mention Andrew Clavin and Knowles and Walsh.
No, those men.
Okay.
I would just like to point out, first of all, Pod Save America.
We know that podcast.
Name any other crooked media podcast.
Quick.
Do it really quick.
Can't do it?
Okay.
I actually can because I've listened to them a couple times.
One is from John Lovett.
It's called Love It or Leave It, I think.
That's it.
That's the only other one I can name.
Apparently they have like 10 podcasts that not a soul listens to other than Pod Save America.
But they're all hosted by men.
A couple of the little podcasts have a female host.
But like, I am telling you, not a soul listens to these things.
How many people work at Crooked Media?
Like 10 people?
10 people listen to these podcasts.
All of the other ones are hosted by liberal men.
So they say, oh, those other ones are hosted by conservative men.
Yeah, theirs are hosted by liberal men.
Men, maybe I'm stretching it a little bit.
Maybe men, I'm stretching the definition a little bit.
It goes on.
Whereas the crooked podcasts are playful, pondering conversations, Shapiro lectures sternly with sermons that paint the world as black and white, good versus evil.
His prevailing on-air tone is one of scorn and disgust.
Could we get a clip of Pod Save America, please?
Literally the most important election of our lifetime.
Ever.
More than a presidential election at this point.
This is like the last call for democracy.
That's what we said on the last call.
Because here's how the Supreme Court thing shakes out.
This is the end.
This is the last call for America, for democracy.
That was one of the few clips I could find where he doesn't use profanity to articulate the points that he isn't making.
So he's saying, oh, you know, Shapiro's doom and gloom, but Pod Save America, they're all happy-go-lucky, except for when they say that democracy is ending.
This is the most important thing.
It's all falling apart.
We're all going to hell in a handbasket.
Give me a break.
Also, you know, Ben is a fairly serious guy, but he does like...
Bernie Sanders' impressions, his giggles halfway through a lot of his shows.
I was with him on election night in 2016.
We just sat there, the rest of us in silence, because he was giggling for like 40 seconds when Trump won, because he used the phrase, President Trump.
Okay, it goes on.
It's working for him, meaning Ben.
His podcast was number eight overall for August.
Pod Save America, while the second most downloaded new show on Apple Podcasts in 2017, didn't rank in the top 20 that month.
Let me interpret that for you.
Let me translate that for you.
Ben's show is super popular and one of the biggest in the country, and Pod Save America isn't.
That's how that sentence, if this were an honest article, that's what that sentence would have read.
But unfortunately, it's not an honest article.
So they say, how do they phrase it?
The Pod Save America, while the second most downloaded news show on Apple Podcasts in 2017, while we're citing irrelevant statistics, what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
What is that?
You know, Pod Save America, while the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow in 2017 didn't rank in the top 20 that month.
Yeah, right, it didn't.
Right.
It's not that popular.
Exactly.
And we're much more popular.
Cool.
I bet you give the stats for the other shows, too, by the way.
Compare the other shows at The Daily Wire to the other shows at Crooked Media.
I have a feeling that The Washington Post will be surprised.
They actually won't be surprised.
They know the answer to that.
They're just trying to be dishonest.
Really pathetic, but really fun to go through anyway.
Thanks a lot, Washington Post, for exposing yourself for the lying hacks that you are.
I hope you're watching my...
I know you're watching my show.
I know you're watching Dan Zak, or what's his name?
Is it Dan Zak?
Dan Zak, right, yeah.
Okay, Dan Zak.
Dan Zak, Jon Favreau.
I'm learning a lot of new names today.
Okay, we've got five seconds left, so I'm just going to wrap up with this really quickly.
Che Guevara was killed on this day in history.
Normally, I would skip it since we're running this late, but I don't want to skip such a wonderful occasion as this.
In 1967, U.S.-backed Bolivian forces captured the Cuban communist revolutionary Che Guevara, and he executed him.
Then they cut off his hands as proof that they killed him, and then they buried him in an unmarked grave.
Unfortunately, this treatment was a little too nice for Guevara.
This was a little better than Guevara deserved, but whatever, that's what happened, and then he was dead.
Che Guevara, he's the guy who's on the t-shirts that lefty useful idiots wear to apologize for slavery and communism.
He was born as a rich kid in Argentina.
His family had a lot of money.
He was born in 1928.
He met Fidel Castro in the 1950s and overthrew the Cuban government and turned that island into a slave state.
That destroyed the lives of countless people over 50, 60, 70 years.
He's also a psychopath and an idiot, Che Guevara.
I got to see some of his journals when I was in Cuba last year.
They do not reflect a great mind.
But on the psychopathy, he wrote in his diary...
The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for Utimio, so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a 32mm pistol in the right side of the brain with exit orifice in the right temporal.
He gasped a little while and then he was dead.
He really liked to go into that detail, didn't he?
Because he was a psychopath.
It's estimated that he killed hundreds of unarmed civilians during his life.
He enslaved an entire island, and now useful idiots wear his face on a t-shirt.
But we got him.
1967.
On this day in history, a beautiful day to celebrate.
That's our show.
Come back tomorrow.
Oh, I'm going to be hosting that radio show again on KTTH today, so I'll be on the air for three hours.
I think that subscribers will get to watch that on the websites.
That'll be fun.
If you want three more hours, a little old me.
Otherwise, you can listen if you're in the Pacific Northwest, KTTH 770.
And if I don't see you there, I'll see you tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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