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Nov. 13, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
44:39
Ep. 251 - Make Plush Toys Great Again

Democrats won the House, but Trumpy Bear wins holiday shopping season. Then, a potential Cabinet shakeup at the White House, and the majority of Democrats think Republicans are racist, sexist, and bigoted. Finally, Michelle Obama, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Mark Zuckerberg show us "oppression." Date: 11-13-2018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Democrats may have won the House, but Trumpy Bear is winning holiday shopping season.
End my heart.
We examine the historical brilliance of the latest political stocking stuffer that is making plush toys great again.
Then, a potential cabinet shakeup at the White House, a pro-Taliban Democrat belatedly wins a Senate seat in Arizona, and the majority of Democrats think Republicans are racist, sexist, and bigoted.
Finally, Michelle Obama, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Mark Zuckerberg show us the difference between real and imagined oppression.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Oh, so much to get to today.
You know, as the inventor of last year's political stocking stuffer, the blank book, Reasons to Vote for Democrats, I'm going to take all the money that I made on that and spend every single penny of it on Trumpy Bears, the greatest product, the greatest product in at least 12 months.
Before we do that, we've got to talk about one more excellent product.
That is Bowlin Branch sheets.
These all actually have presidential tie-ins.
Bowlin Branch is absolutely phenomenal.
I love them.
They have helped to save my marriage.
Especially if you fit them on that nice new mattress.
It's wonderful.
I didn't realize this when I was a bachelor, and I would spend about $5 on a set of sheets.
But it turns out that they actually have nice sheets that you can buy.
And when you want to buy premium sheets, if you go to a store, they'll cost $1,000 sometimes.
Or more.
Bowl& Branch, though, by cutting out the middleman, can get you a really, really good deal on them made from pure 100% organic cotton.
They start out super soft, and they get even softer over time.
You buy directly from them, so you're essentially paying wholesale prices.
Luxury sheets can cost up to $1,000, but you won't do that on Bowl& Branch.
That is why they have thousands of five-star reviews.
Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company are all talking about them.
Three U.S. presidents sleep on Bolin Branch sheets.
Maybe Trumpy Bear does, too.
I don't know.
Statistically, they must have a few Trumpy Bears on there.
Shipping is free.
You can try them for 30 nights.
If you don't love them, send them back for a refund, but I doubt you'll want to send them back.
There's no risk and no reason not to give them a try to get started.
Right now, my listeners, get $50 off your first set of sheets at BolinBranch.com, promo code Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Go to BolinBranch.com today for $50 off your first set of sheets.
That is B-O-L-L and Branch.com.
Promo code Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. BowlinBranch.com.
Promo code Michael.
Okay, now from that product to Trumpy Bear, the product that is sweeping the nation.
If you haven't seen the commercial, I pity you.
Check it out.
I am the Storm, the Great American Grizzly.
Introducing the original Trumpy Bear, the fearless, super plush American Grizzly.
Trumpy Bear was born June 14th, Flag Day.
Just find the secret zipper and pull out the flag blanket.
Then wrap yourself in the red, white, and blue for comfort and warmth.
Show your patriotism and proudly display Trumpy on Flag Day and on any American holiday.
Trumpy can even honor your own family heroes.
God bless America and God bless Trumpy Bear.
God bless Trumpy Bear.
Absolutely right.
Some people have wondered if this is real or not.
When I first saw the ad, I was convinced it was a joke.
It was just satire.
Oh no, 100% real.
It's produced by a company called Exceptional Products, because what other company would produce this?
It was invented by a guy named V.L. Lange.
Here's what he said when a lot of media reached out to him.
They said, this can't possibly be real.
It is.
He said, quote, this iconic bear So one thing I like about this, I don't know if this guy is saying this intentionally or not, but the joke is he's made this bare about how great Trump is, and yet what he's saying it symbolizes is that anybody, even Donald Trump, can run for president.
It is in his statement about it.
It's actually sort of an insult to President Trump.
But there is something to that.
Not that he's unqualified to be president, but that he's not the sort of presidential candidate that we are used to getting.
And Trumpy Bear is not new.
It didn't just come out this week.
I think they aired some commercials on Fox News, which is when everybody saw it.
but it has been out since last October.
And so people are enjoying the camp of it.
It's such a obviously sticky kind of a kitschy toy.
Okay.
That's great.
It actually makes a lot of historical sense though, because it's the Donald Trump teddy bear, but the teddy bear is named after another Republican president.
It's named after Teddy Roosevelt, uh, The teddy bear got its name after Teddy Roosevelt.
You know, Teddy Roosevelt, fairly manly guy, a lot of machismo.
He would go out hunting.
And in 1902, he was on a hunt with his buddies, and he didn't get a bear.
They were out hunting black bears, I believe.
And they found a bear, but Teddy wasn't around to grab it.
So these guys went and they beat up the bear.
They clubbed it.
They tied it to a tree.
And then they said, OK, Mr.
Roosevelt, you can go out and shoot the bear now.
But he said, oh, that's not very sportsmanlike if I just have a bear tied up to a tree and then I shoot it in the head.
He did say, however, that because the bear was injured, they should put it out of its misery, but that he wasn't going to do it.
And so it created this scene that then was drawn out in a lot of political cartoons in newspapers around the country, which I think the first one was by Clifford Berryman in the Washington Post.
And it's this cartoon of Teddy Roosevelt walking away I'm not going to shoot this bear.
I suppose it depends on how you look at the cartoon.
Either it's he saying, I'm not going to do it.
You do my dirty work for me.
Or he's having some mercy on this old bear, which is actually what he was doing.
There were multiple versions of this cartoon produced.
Over time, the bear got cuter and cuter and cuddlier and cuddlier.
Then this businessman...
I came out and he said he'd already made a couple toy bears and he'd called them Teddy's Bears and he put them on for sale in his store.
They became extremely popular.
The White House actually gave him permission to use the name Teddy's Bears and so he sells the teddy bears It then creates a toy company out of it.
It becomes hugely popular.
It's still popular today.
A few things I really like about this.
One, it shows Republican compassion.
Two, it's about another Republican president.
And three, it involves colluding with the Russians, which is a little historical tidbit that I think people are not appreciating out of this.
So a lot of people on the left and the right are not understanding the marketing of Trumpy Bear.
What they're seeing is a ridiculous thing.
You know, Ben yesterday tweeted out his It was two circles perfectly lined up over one another.
And it said it was a Venn diagram of people who bought Michael Knowles' book and people who were going to buy Trumpy Bear.
It's just a perfect circle, you know, which led me to decide that I'm going to create a plush Ben Shapiro bear called Grumpy Bear.
But that's neither here nor there.
So, you know, I think what Ben is seeing, obviously, is that there's this sort of exuberance, this sort of giddiness about it.
Absolutely right.
It's sort of like the Make America Great Again hat.
The Make America Great Again hat, it's not that it's this sleek, stylish hat.
It's actually sort of the opposite of stylish.
It's a hat that looks like it was made in the early 1990s.
Big block letters.
Nothing subtle about it.
Kind of a golf course hat.
You know, not any kind of special design.
But there's just something about it that is so bold, that's so, in a sense, manly, that you've got to buy it.
Even back when I didn't like Donald Trump, the candidate, when I was going to vote for Ted Cruz, I still bought the hat.
I love the hat.
It's the same thing.
I'm obviously going to get a Trumpy bear.
Because Trump, in many ways, is like Teddy Roosevelt, this boisterous, larger-than-life figure.
Teddy Roosevelt was a war hero.
He was maybe a little more extreme than Trump in that Roosevelt just started random wars and was always agitating for wars to make the country manlier.
But still, giant personalities, people who constantly were talking about the strenuous life and going out there and making a lot of money and working hard.
Okay, so we got all of that.
And that final aspect is...
With Trump and Roosevelt, you get this.
Carry a big stick.
Always have the credible threat of force.
And always be negotiating from a position of strength.
But be merciful, too.
That's the other important point here.
You know, Teddy's got that black bear up against a tree all tied up.
He could kill him, and he says, no, I'm not going to shoot him.
I don't want it.
That's not sportsmanlike.
Donald Trump has China up against a wall on trade.
He says, no, we're not going to have a trade war.
I want to get to no tariffs.
There is something to be said for negotiating from a position of strength.
Ronald Reagan said it.
He said, you get peace through strength.
And we know that President Trump has taken lines from Reagan before.
Make America Great Again is a Reagan line.
He learns from these great figures of Republican history.
And I hope that this is another example of that.
And I can't wait for all of my stockings to be stuffed with Trumpy bears this coming Christmas.
Speaking of the Trump administration, the real Trump administration, not the bear Trump administration, We may be heading for a shakeup at the White House.
Now, I always temper these because the mainstream media get this wrong constantly, but according to reports from multiple sources, I think stemming from the Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen may be on her way out.
We've heard this before, but there has been a huge rise in illegal immigration over the past year.
That said, there's been a huge increase in arrests as well, but it seems that the president may not be pleased with her performance.
She is the third Department of Homeland Security secretary in just two years.
If she is kicked out before her first year is even up, then, you know, there will be four in two years.
That is a lot.
It probably shows one The mismanagement of the Department of Homeland Security, it's kind of a hodgepodge agency that was created after September 11th and it includes facets of a couple of other agencies and it's never really seemed to gain a sure footing.
And the other aspect is how difficult it is to enforce our immigration law.
Because that's what President Trump is upset about.
That was the campaign promise.
And the question is, why are so many people still coming into the country?
Why are we seeing record-high illegal immigration into the country?
The highest month on record was last month.
Why can't we build the wall?
What is taking so long?
So he seems to be getting tired of her.
The other aspect of her getting kicked out, that for people watching the tea leaves is a little worrisome, is that she's a John Kelly girl.
So, Kirsten Nielsen was the previous White House Principal Deputy Chief of Staff under John Kelly.
So, she was working right under John Kelly.
Reports are saying that John Kelly is fighting for her to remain at DHS, and yet there are other reports coming in, which we've heard now for months and months and months, that John Kelly is on his way out, that he's going to be kicked out.
And this is not just what we're hearing from CNN and the Washington Post.
I've heard this from sources in the White House, outside the White House.
Who knows what they're trying to do?
Are they trying to sow discord?
Are they trying to spread misinformation?
Are they sending out leaks specifically at the behest of the people who can make the decisions?
What's going on?
I'm not sure, but I actually will defend the media on this one.
I've been hearing the same things too, and yet...
Here we are, how much later, and John Kelly still is in the job.
And it seems that John Kelly has done a pretty good job as chief of staff.
He brought order to that administration.
Let's not forget how chaotic it was before he came in there.
He brought order to it and...
So I hope he's not gone.
If he's gone, c'est la vie.
But let's hope that this Kirsten Nielsen move is not indicative of that because it's perfectly normal.
Listen, after midterm elections, it's perfectly normal for there to be an exit at the White House.
Also, when President Trump has replaced people, I think virtually all of them he's replaced with people who are better at the job than the previous people.
That's not to denigrate Sean Spicer or anything.
He was very good at his job.
But Sarah Sanders is excellent at that job as well.
So John Bolton obviously was a huge upgrade in National Security Advisor.
So I'm not despairing.
But that said, I think John Kelly's done a great job.
And so I hope that they don't boot him out of there.
The rumor, by the way, has been that Trump is looking to replace John Kelly with Nick Ayers.
He is the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence.
Again, this is all court intrigue.
This is all gossip.
And having heard it from people at 1600 Pennsylvania and from people in the media as well, I just don't really believe it.
I don't think there's a ton of credibility to these anymore.
But we'll see what happens.
There has been a lot of talk about Nielsen leaving now.
And if it's going to happen, it's going to happen right now after the midterm elections.
Speaking of the midterm elections, they're still going on.
Did you know that?
I know that you thought that they were last Tuesday.
They're still going on.
They're going to be going on for another couple of years, probably.
We're going to have midterm elections, the 2018 midterm elections, during the 2022 midterm elections.
In Arizona, Republican Martha McSally Has just conceded to socialist pro-Taliban lunatic Kyrsten Sinema.
When I say pro-Taliban lunatic, I'm not just being hyperbolic.
She suggested after September 11th that it would be fine for Americans to go fight for the Taliban.
That's who just beat Martha McSally, who I believe is the first female pilot to fly in combat.
The first American female pilot to fly in combat.
All around incredible, great patriotic American.
Just lost to Kyrsten Sinema.
So how did McSally take it?
Well, you know, I mean, we've seen what's happened in Florida, what's happened in Georgia.
All these Democrats demanding recounts, unconceding races, saying they're going to fight tooth and nail.
What does McSally do?
She gracefully and politely concedes.
Hey everybody, I just called Kyrsten Sinema and congratulated her on becoming Arizona's first female senator after a hard-fought battle.
I wish her all success as she represents Arizona in the Senate.
And I also want to say thank you to everybody who supported me in this campaign, my staff and volunteers and everybody who voted for me.
I'm so grateful for you as my wingman and my wingwomen in this journey.
We sure wish it came out with a different result, but I'm so thankful for you.
As I traveled around this state, I was so inspired by the many people that I met, and I am convinced Arizona is the best state in the country, and our best days are still yet to come, and I'm going to continue to pray for our success.
Thank you so much.
She is convinced that Arizona is the best state in the country.
Okay, so that's graceful, beautiful, hopeful, talking about, you know, how great her constituents are.
Okay, now let's compare that to the woman who actually won the race.
Kirsten Sinema, take it away.
As we see in this very quote that the states are the laboratories of democracy, and in my state, Arizona, is clearly the meth lab of democracy.
Yeah.
And I cannot take credit for that line.
Someone at The Daily Show wrote it, but I'm happy to steal it and use it all the time.
So, one says Arizona is just a great, wonderful place and all the people are terrific.
So they don't vote for that woman.
They vote for the woman who calls Arizona the meth lab of democracy.
This is pretty troubling.
And it's troubling for a few reasons.
One, how did Sinema win?
Was there voter fraud?
Maybe.
Voter fraud happens all around the country.
Absolutely could be.
We've seen videos in this midterm elections of poll workers saying that illegal aliens are encouraged to vote.
We've got the video.
You can't deny it.
Don't tell me to disbelieve my own lying eyes.
We've seen people say it.
We've seen in Florida, Democrat operatives have just discovered random boxes of provisional ballots that only vote for Democrat candidates who are in trouble.
Okay, so could there be voter fraud?
Yeah, absolutely.
There are plenty of people who are registered to vote in two different states, registered to vote where they shouldn't be registered to vote, where they don't live.
I guess it could be that.
Or, I'd actually be happier if it were caused by voter fraud.
Perhaps the more troubling thing is that Arizona is tilting Democrat.
It's a red state.
It's been a red state.
I don't think it's been represented by a Democrat in the Senate for 30 years.
Now, however, if you look at just the number of registered Democrats and Republicans, it's almost equal.
Republicans still have a very, very slight advantage, but it's almost equal now.
And this is a real worrying trend because it seems that the more and more Democrats who are in that state, the more likely it is that you're going to lose good patriotic candidates like Martha McSally, you know, first female pilot to fly in combat, and you're going to get someone who literally is supporting the Taliban.
Even John McCain, I mean, say what you will about his politics, which were basically awful.
But the guy was an American hero.
He did fight for his country.
He was patriotic to the end.
And now to have that state represented by a woman who calls Arizona the Met Lab of Democracy, begs for the rest of the country not to turn into Arizona, and then talks about how great the Taliban is.
That is very sad.
That's very troubling.
Hopefully it's just Arizona.
I mean, you know, it seems that Kyrsten Sinema's election has proved Kyrsten Sinema's statements about Arizona true.
Hopefully this doesn't hold true for the rest of the country.
And look, there are particulars of races.
I mean, certain candidates campaign harder, have a better ground game, have better organizing.
But it's too bad because you had a great candidate in McSally and now she is over.
Now, broadly speaking, why would...
Even Democrats, even partisan Democrats, vote for a Taliban apologist over a war hero.
Well, there is a new study out today from Axios SurveyMonkey which might give the answer, which is that 61% of Democrats believe that Republicans are racist, sexist, and bigoted.
61%.
First of all, kudos to you 39% of Democrats who don't think that.
Thank you for being adults.
Good job.
But 61%, the majority, a strong majority of Democrats, believe that Republicans are racist, sexist, and bigoted.
Compared to Republicans, even now, at the pitch of the battle, as hot as it is, only 31% of Republicans believe that Democrats are racist, sexist, and bigoted.
And so you've got less than, or you've got about half, roughly half the number of Republicans as Democrats believe that their opponents are racist, sexist, and bigoted.
According to this study, one third of Americans say that they would be disappointed if a close family member married someone with different political views.
A third of Americans.
I was wondering about this because I thought, you know, someday, hopefully, when it's the day of my daughter's wedding, I'm sitting up like Don Corleone in my office, granting favors to people, and some lefty comes in and he's going to marry my daughter.
Would I be a little disappointed?
I don't know.
It depends on the guy.
I know good left-wingers.
I'm friends with a number of left-wingers.
Probably the majority of my friends are left-wing just by virtue of the places that I've lived.
So it depends on the person.
If it were a Democrat who believes that all Republicans are racist, sexist bigots, I probably wouldn't like that guy.
But if it's a little bit more of a sane Democrat, I guess that would be fine.
But a third of Americans now say they would be troubled by that.
The most interesting part of this survey is on the question of evil.
Because I actually understand the one-third answer.
I actually understand why a third of Americans would be troubled if a family member married someone of the other political party.
If you're in a situation where the majority of Democrats believe that Republicans are racist, sexist, and bigoted, then you're basically saying that they're evil.
Because in America, that's the worst thing you can call somebody is a racist.
And to say that you want to discriminate against people on the basis of their skin, you want to be unfair to people, you want to keep people down, you want to oppress people based on immutable characteristics like race and sex, that's pretty wicked.
That's pretty bad stuff.
So if you think that the other person is evil, probably you don't want your little sister to marry that guy.
However, look at the breakdown, the question of evil, because it asked Democrats and Republicans, do you think the other side is evil?
So 61% of Democrats say that GOP and Republicans are racist, sexist, bigoted, but only 21% of them say that they're evil.
As for Republicans, 31% of Republicans think that Democrats are racist, sexist, bigoted, but 23% of them think that they're evil.
So you've got 31% and 23%.
That means that you've got 8% of Republicans who don't seem to think that being racist, sexist, and bigoted is evil, compared to 40% of Democrats who don't believe that being racist, sexist, and bigoted is evil.
That number is actually pretty interesting.
You've got 40%.
Of Democrats who are so quick to throw around those words, racist, sexist, thisist, thatist, but they don't really think it's evil.
They're just using it.
They use it like water.
They just, I don't like you.
You're a meanie.
And it shows how unseriously they take those questions, how unseriously they take issues of racial discrimination, sexual assault.
They don't take it seriously at all.
They bandied about like nothing.
Quite interesting, though, how much more seriously, how much more evil Right now, we're coming off of a midterm election.
We've got a strong president who is actually implementing a conservative agenda.
And so tensions on both sides are pretty high.
Both people are really turning the rhetoric up.
But For the majority of Democrats to say that sort of thing about Republicans shows you what a difficult place we are right now.
It also shows you what a fantasy they are living in.
What a total fantasy.
In what country, in what country that offers affirmative action programs for universities, for private schools, for the job market, in what country that is constantly boasting wonderful diversity,
that dedicates a month to black history, dedicates days to these great civil rights leaders, that is constantly talking about this, that just elected the first black president twice, elected him twice in a row, How on earth is that country half full of just dirty, rotten, bigot racists?
How is that?
You know, more than half the country voted for Barack Obama.
So how is that possible?
It's obviously absurd, but they're living in this fantasy, and nowhere is this fantasy clearer than when you talk to really rich celebrity Democrats.
This Jada Pinkett Smith, who is Will Smith's wife, she just did this program called The Racial Divide Between Women: Red Table Talk.
What, you don't watch it all the time?
This isn't your regular viewing?
You go straight from the Daily Wire shows to go watch Red Table Talk?
I don't know.
She did this program, it was going around social media, and she talked about how much, first of all, she talked about how much she doesn't like blonde white women, that she just has a prejudice against them.
I guess kudos to her for being honest.
She should rectify that prejudice because it isn't very nice.
But she says she doesn't like blonde white women.
Okay.
But then what she said, the most incredible thing that she says is about her own unfathomable oppression.
Mrs.
Smith, take it away.
Specifically in regards to my relationship with white women, the thing that really breaks my heart is that White women understand what it feels to be oppressed.
Because of their sex.
Exactly.
Because of their sex.
What it feels to be ostracized or not being treated as an equal.
What she's talking about, though, in this interview is her oppression.
Oh, she's so oppressed.
She doesn't understand.
You know, white women are oppressed, too.
We're all oppressed by the big, bad, I don't know...
White, straight, male who thinks he's a male of English descent, probably not even Irish because they got sort of oppressed, and this and that.
Obviously absurd hierarchies.
Jada Pinkett Smith is worth $300 million.
She's worth $300 million.
That is approximately $300 million more than I am worth.
I don't know.
Why am I checking my watch for that?
I don't have my net worth written on my wrist.
That is absurd.
But she has to call herself...
A victim.
She has to call herself oppressed.
Why is that?
Why do these women?
They all do it.
They do it in politics.
They do it in Hollywood.
They do it at even levels of business.
On the left, they do it because what they want is the one thing that their money just can't buy, which is victimhood.
Victimhood has a social currency now.
It's why everybody is saying that there's some aggrieved minority, if not a racial minority, if they're not pretending to be one 1,024th Native American, then they will claim to be a sexual minority, or they will claim to have been abused at rates that are much higher than statistically it is possible for people to have been abused.
They will do this because victimhood carries a social currency in our very sick culture.
You think about Trumpy Bear, you think about Teddy Roosevelt, These are cultures that are promoting strength, that reward strength, that say, you're not a victim, go out there, be strong.
But we're in a very broken culture now, it's especially clear on the left, where the more of a victim you can claim to be, the higher up the totem pole you sit, the better place that you can be.
And a lot of celebrities are doing this.
Even Michelle Obama herself is doing this.
Here is Michelle Obama.
She's been doing this book tour for her book, Becoming.
Here is Michelle Obama's take on her terrible oppression.
He's still a law student at Harvard.
Right.
First year.
First year.
You're going to be his mentor.
Yeah.
He comes blowing into town, a little bit famous already, late for the first meeting.
Late.
Late.
I was like, is he trifling?
The black man's going to be late on the first day?
You weren't overly impressed in the beginning.
I wasn't.
I have my suspicions when a bunch of white folks fawn all over a black man.
Because I sort of think, okay, he can talk straight.
So they think he's wonderful.
Did you catch that?
She says, I have my suspicions when a bunch of white people are fawning all over a black man.
Because of all the racism.
Didn't Michelle Obama go to Princeton or something?
I'm almost positive she went to Princeton.
She was working at a good law firm.
She's a first lady of the United States married to a future president.
She's got a book deal.
She's one of the most powerful women on the face of the earth, but she sees racism everywhere.
She was doing this yesterday in her interview, too.
She was blaming racism for any criticism of her, of her husband, of her husband's presidency.
It was all racism because people weren't ready to accept a black man in the Oval Office.
People were more than ready to accept a black man in the Oval Office.
I know Republicans, moderate Republicans, but nevertheless Republicans, who voted for Obama just to have the experience of voting for the first black president.
I know multiple people who did that because they wanted to be a part of that.
They didn't want there to be a racial barrier to the presidency.
And so they were even willing to stomach a lousy, awful president like Barack Obama if it meant that you could get the first black president.
So obviously blaming racism for constantly harping on race, talking about race, that's fine.
Something we've learned in these interviews that is also going very unreported is that in order to conceive their daughters, the Obamas used in vitro fertilization.
And the reason I said, look, a lot of people use in vitro fertilization is, I have pals of mine who were conceived that way.
So it's a fairly mainstream procedure now.
But what's interesting is that the right wing has criticized Barack Obama, rightly, for a great many things.
But they haven't brought this one up because IVF is not mentioned a lot in pro-life circles.
Pro-life focuses on how awful abortion is and how many babies are killed each year.
But they seem to overlook that in vitro fertilization also destroys human lives, new human lives that are conceived.
In vitro freezes them indefinitely or kills them or implants them and then when they're not wanted, aborts them.
A lot of people don't know about this.
I think Catholics focus on this one a bit more, but a lot of other people in the pro-life movement do not, and they should.
If you remember, a number of years ago, there was that woman, Nadia Suleiman, who did in vitro fertilization.
She couldn't get pregnant, so they implanted eight little I suppose that's one good way to do IVF, but in almost 100% of cases, it results in the death of an embryo, of an individual human life.
And it's because it's so expensive to do it that you need to create multiple embryos, or I suppose beget multiple embryos, just to have a chance for one or two of them to take.
You know, I was trying to wonder if this makes Barack Obama the most pro-abortion president in American history because he was running on it.
The way he was talking on the campaign trail, he gave full-throated support to abortion, a ton of taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood.
He was Very, very left-wing on abortion.
He opposed bans on partial birth abortion.
He's about as pro-abortion as you can get.
Now I figured, you know, I don't know, John F. Kennedy was pretty loose with the women back in the day, pretty debauched.
There were always some tales that came out that he asked women to get abortions.
I don't know about this.
But almost certainly the IVF procedure involves taking a new human life and ending it.
And I wonder if the pro-life circles are going to start talking about it, if conservatives are going to bring that up, or if they're going to give it a pass because it's a little murky for some people on the pro-life issue because IVF is used to create new human lives, but it's so morally...
It's dubious because it also results in ending human lives.
We have a lot more to talk about.
Facebook seems to have fired an executive for supporting Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz completely identified this, and he totally called it, and we should have known it at the time.
Also, there are other prominent conservatives who are getting abused.
It's no longer just politicians who are being attacked in public.
It's commentators, too, and we know exactly why that is.
Also, tonight at 7 p.m., You'll notice I'm not in my broom closet or in the cave in Tora Bora anymore.
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I will be speaking tonight at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, the latest stop on my YAF tour.
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We've talked about a lot of topics so far.
We've talked about the simple joys of being right.
We've talked about how to write nothing and sell 100,000 copies.
We've defended owning the libs.
Tonight, I think, is the most urgent.
Tonight we're going to talk about how to be a man when you look like a Maddow.
Some people have told me.
I'll get into it tonight.
I'll get into it.
I don't see the resemblance myself, but we'll get into it anyway.
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Swill up those sweet, sweet Leftist Ears tumblers.
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According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has fired an executive explicitly for supporting Donald Facebook has fired an executive explicitly for supporting Donald Trump.
And Mark Zuckerberg might have lied about it in a testimony to the Senate.
So the guy is Palmer Luckey.
He's the co-founder of Oculus.
You know Oculus is that virtual reality system, which is pretty cool.
It's the one where you...
Feel like you're on the top of a building and you feel like you're falling off and it's cool.
They haven't really perfected the technology yet, but once they get the graphics to be a little bit better, people are just going to plug into the Matrix forever.
Actually, the real thing is, between the sex dolls and once they get virtual porn set up, the human race actually will die out within, I think, about six months.
I don't think there's any hope at that point.
As you've heard, there are sex doll brothels now cropping up all over the world.
So the human race is not long for this world.
And basically, this guy is the cause of it.
But nevertheless, he's a conservative.
He's a Trump supporter.
His name is Palmer Luckey.
He donated...
$10,000 to an anti-Hillary Clinton organization during the 2016 election.
This became public.
This became a huge deal at Facebook.
Six months later, he was out of the company.
This is the co-founder of Oculus, purchased by Facebook.
Major guy, rising star in Silicon Valley.
He was out after six months after this came out.
At the, around the time of his firing, rather, Mark Zuckerberg had to testify about this and just watch how masterfully Ted Cruz pulls what now seems to be a lie out of Mark Zuckerberg.
Do you know the political orientation of those 15 to 20,000 people engaged in content review?
No, Senator.
We do not generally ask people about their political orientation when they're joining the company.
So, as CEO, have you ever made hiring or firing decisions based on political positions or what candidates they supported?
No.
Why was Palmer Luckey fired?
That is a specific personnel matter that seems like it would be inappropriate.
You just made a specific representation that you didn't make decisions based on political views.
Well, I can commit that it was not because of a political view.
What a master.
Some people forget, because Cruz is an elected official now, they forget that he's unbelievably intelligent, that he is wickedly smart, one of the great lawyers of our age.
And you see what he did there.
He was talking about the news curators on Facebook, the ones who were boosting left-wing causes and deleting right-wing causes.
And this became a little bit of a scandal.
So he gets in there, and he's got Zuckerberg going down that train, and he says, do Do you know what the political views are of those people?
So Zuckerberg thinks that he's going down.
He says, absolutely not.
I never ask people their political views.
He goes, okay.
So as CEO, you've never made a hiring or firing decision based on that?
Zuckerberg at this point has to know that something's up because he's just got diverted.
And he says, well, no, I haven't because of what I just said before.
It's like, right, then how come you fired that guy for being a Trump supporter?
And it was just this beautiful knockout punch.
At the time, I remember watching and thinking, who is Palmer Luckey?
What is Cruz doing?
What does this matter?
Because it didn't matter then.
It matters now that we have it on tape.
This guy, Mark Zuckerberg, lying through his teeth.
So he says, well, I won't comment on a personnel matter.
I won't make a specific statement on a personnel matter.
And then Cruz just comes and clobbers him, kicks him while he's down.
He says, you just made a specific comment on a personnel matter.
You just made a very specific statement.
He says, okay, well, I commit.
What bizarre language from Mark Zuckerberg.
I commit...
I commit.
Are you stating it?
Are you swearing it?
Are you saying it?
Are you admitting it?
Are you conceding?
You commit.
When you commit a statement, I don't, is obviously Weasley language because Zuckerberg knew that he got caught.
So, and he's being caught now by the Wall Street Journal.
Internal emails have shown that the upper echelons of Facebook, including Mark Zuckerberg, were talking about Palmer Luckey's political donation.
They were terrified of it.
They were angry about it.
And they tried to, they pressured him to change his public views.
And then they fired him.
There was one woman, the engineering director, Srinivas Narayanan, said, quote, this was in one of these emails, multiple women have literally teared up in front of me in the last few days after Palmer Luckey donated money to an anti-Hillary group.
Well, if multiple women have literally teared up in front of you, then I guess we should fire the inventor of Oculus.
For his political views.
Because, oh, because, no, I know, you think he has the right to his own political opinions and he shouldn't be fired for them and he has freedom of speech and he can donate to whatever candidates he wants.
No, no, no.
Because multiple women literally teared up in front of Srinivas Narayanan, so he should be deprived of his essential rights as a citizen in the United States.
That's the kind of logic going on at Facebook right now.
And then afterward, Mark Zuckerberg pressured Lucky Palmer to endorse Gary Johnson.
Why?
I mean, what person on earth?
I couldn't tell you.
But the trouble is, Lucky Palmer loved Donald Trump.
He was a longtime supporter of Donald Trump.
Supported for years.
Loved the art of the deal.
He's one of the few people that's ever read the art of the deal.
He said it inspired him to become an entrepreneur.
So he just loved this guy.
And he was forced, essentially, to disavow him by his employer under threat of being fired.
He got fired anyway.
That's the kind of abuse that's going on of conservatives.
At companies around this country.
And it's now infecting not just these top CEOs.
It's affecting other executives.
It's not just affecting politicians at their homes, at restaurants.
It's also affecting commentators, writers, talking heads.
There's that great girl, Kat Timph, who's at National Review, I think, and Fox News as well.
She was just run out, berated at a Brooklyn bar.
Some woman was threatening her at a Brooklyn bar over the weekend.
Why Kat Temp would ever degrade herself to go to a bar in Brooklyn, I have no idea, but she decided to do that for some reason.
And so she ended up getting chased out of the bar for fear of a confrontation.
Here's Kat Temp.
Despite the progress that seemed to be made on a very popular late night comedy show, the fact of the matter is divisions are still real.
You experienced it yourself, right?
Yeah.
Over the weekend, I was at a bar and a girl started, she realized I worked at Fox News, started screaming at me, telling me to get out.
I tried to move to a different area of the bar.
She kept screaming at me, telling me to get out.
What did I say that you had a problem with?
Or maybe I thought it was one of my views that was so offensive.
She said it doesn't matter.
I don't think she knew a single thing that I ever said on TV. She just knew where I worked.
And that was enough for me to be run out of the bar.
Really?
Did you walk out yourself rather than just keep it going?
Or what happened?
I was afraid she was going to hit me or throw a drink on me.
She was super belligerent.
Like I said, I tried to move to a different area of the bar, but the yelling continued.
So I didn't really see it as I had a choice.
Man, oh man.
Sorry to hear that, Kat.
I have left bars in Brooklyn for far less than that, so I can sympathize.
But, you know, this is a relatively petite young woman who's getting screamed at by some belligerent woman who has guys standing around her and the guys won't step in.
The guys won't step in to protect this girl who's scared, which is awful in and of itself.
We'll be talking about that tonight in our talk on manliness and feminism at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
But...
The scary thing for us is that now this has gone down to the commentators and the talking heads.
It's not just Cat Temp.
It happened to Brian Kilmeade.
It's happened to Candace Owens.
It's happened to Charlie Kirk.
Obviously, it's happened to Tucker Carlson on multiple occasions.
His daughter has been screamed at, had horrible things said to her about her father.
Someone tried to kick in and invade Tucker Carlson's house, kicked in his door.
His wife had to hide in a closet because she was so afraid of the invaders.
What do commentators and writers and pundits, what do they do?
They use their language to convey some thought about politics.
Their job is free speech.
The medium of their job is free speech.
And this is what the left is so horrified by.
It's what they're so, so terrified of.
What is free speech?
That's why they kick conservatives off of campuses when they get invited there.
It's why they deny conservative professors tenure when they can.
It's why they try to always boycott and get right-wingers kicked off of television or off of radio.
How many boycotts have there been against Rush Limbaugh?
Media Matters basically exists to shut down Rush Limbaugh.
What are they so afraid of?
Why are they so afraid of free speech?
How many times did those kids from Broward County, Florida, David Hogg and them, try to get Laura Ingraham kicked off of television?
For what?
Why?
What are you so afraid of?
They're not watching the show.
The kids aren't.
Why are you so afraid that Laura Ingraham gets to say what she thinks about the world?
They're very afraid because they know that they will lose in the battle of ideas.
They don't have an argument.
They don't even have the beginning of an argument.
They don't have the questions that you have to ask to begin to formulate an argument.
All they have is passion.
Angry, passion, emotive, personal politics.
The other guy's a racist, a bigot, sexist, evil.
I hate him.
That's all that they've got going for them right now.
And so they have to cut down free speech.
But it's really scary.
Not just for Brian Kilmeade or Charlie Kirk.
They can take care of themselves.
But because of what it says about the left's approach to discourse in this country.
Political violence of all kinds is...
Basically, unfathomably bad.
But one can imagine why a person would be angry and assail and assault a politician who is actually making laws, who is actually governing the country.
I can wrap my head around that.
What I can't wrap my head around is why you, rather than refuting what somebody has to say, Would go out there and shut them up and silence them and attack them?
It's because you have nothing that you can say to refute in the first place.
If you do have something to refute those things that I'm saying, stop by the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater tonight, and we can talk about it, and then I'll be back at Michigan State tomorrow night.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'll see you later. - The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia 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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