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Nov. 16, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
46:30
Ep. 253 - Even Republicans Misunderstand Crime

Pres. Trump unveils the FIRST STEP Act, ironically as Michael Avenatti is arrested for beating a woman. We analyze the case for letting criminals off the hook. Then, Michelle Obama gaslights, Flake flakes, and Nancy Pelosi possibly loses control of her party. Date: 11-15-2018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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President Trump announced today his endorsement of the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill with bipartisan support.
Ironically, just as creepy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti, you know the male feminist, is arrested for beating a woman.
We will analyze the case for and against letting criminals like Avenatti, allegedly, off the hook.
Then Michelle Obama keeps gaslighting, Flake keeps flaking, and Nancy Pelosi possibly loses control of her own party.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
We've got our first bipartisan agreement in a very long time, which is how you know we should oppose it.
Whatever it is.
If you've got Republicans and Democrats agreeing on something, it's probably no good.
We will get to the First Step Act and break it down.
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Do that while you're listening to me explain the First Step Act to you?
So this is a big moment.
President Trump just endorsed the First Step Act.
He had Democrats and Republicans behind him.
Here is President Trump explaining it.
These members have reached a bipartisan agreement.
Did I hear the word bipartisan?
Did I hear?
Did I hear that word?
That's a nice word.
Bipartisan agreement on prison reform legislation known as the first step.
And that's what it is.
It's a first step, but it's a very big first step.
Today I'm thrilled to announce my support for this bipartisan bill that will make our community safer and give former inmates a second chance at life after they have served their time.
Okay, so I do like that he opens up.
He's joking about bipartisan.
This actually does help him in the sense that the left is trying to portray him as this very partisan, very extreme figure, when really he is willing to work with Democrats.
I think he's actually eager to.
They're just too foolish to take him up on the offer.
But what is this act?
The act is called the First Step Act.
It is the Formerly Incarcerated Re-Enter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act because congressmen love stupid acronyms.
That's why Formerly Incarcerated Re-Enter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act.
Really what it is, is rehabilitation programs for early release for criminals.
That's the whole thing.
The left is denying this.
The left is denying that this is all just about early release for criminals, but that's what it is.
Vox.com said the bill would not reform or reduce how long people are sentenced to prison for, which has been the prime target of criminal justice reformers over the past few years.
Instead, the bill focuses on rehabilitating people once they're already in prison by incentivizing them with the possibility of earlier release to partake in rehabilitation programs. .
It's not quite a contradiction that they've just made, but it might as well be.
They're saying, oh, it doesn't reduce how long people are sentenced for.
It just reduces how long they're in prison for.
Okay, that is a real distinction.
It's a real distinction in so much as there's front-end prison reform and there's back-end prison reform.
The front-end is it decides how long people are going to get a sentence for, and then the back-end is how long they actually stay there.
But the effect is exactly the same, which is criminals getting out of prison early.
That said, some conservatives are for it.
Obviously, President Trump, the Heritage Foundation, Heritage Foundation fellow John Michael Seibler is for it.
He gave a long explanation, made a conservative case for it.
So did Mike Lee.
I love Mike Lee.
I like a lot of these things.
Donald Trump, the Heritage Foundation, Mike Lee, but I'm still very skeptical.
Mike Lee opens up his piece defending it today.
And he refers to common sense sentencing reform.
Whenever I hear somebody talk about common sense blah blah blah legislation, I run away.
Because it never seems to be common sense.
They say common sense, I think they protest too much.
It's one of those mealy-mouthed words that the right and the left both use, but it makes me skeptical.
And then Mike Lee in his piece goes on.
He tells the story of a young father of two who got caught by an informant selling pot.
He sold three dime bags of pot to an informant.
While he was in possession of a gun, he got a 55-year sentence.
Notice how they try to bury certain things in here.
So it's a young father of two.
too.
Okay, that's fine.
He happened to be in possession of a gun, but he didn't shoot the gun.
He didn't grab the gun.
Okay, that's fine.
Because we all would agree that passing out three dime bags of pot is not worth spending most of your life in jail.
I think we can all agree with that.
In Los Angeles, there are billboards now for marijuana delivery services.
So it's legal in many states, but it's still illegal as a federal matter.
So we would all agree with that.
However, One, if you're the father of two, don't sell drugs.
Don't be a drug dealer.
Just my first guess.
Two, if you're the father of two who's selling drugs to make his money, don't carry a gun.
That sounds pretty stupid.
Don't do that either.
That said, still, maybe he shouldn't go to jail for 55 years.
Fine by me.
Reform that law.
Reform the mandatory minimum for selling three dime bags of pot at the federal level.
Fine by me.
No issue.
But that's not really what the First Step Act is about.
One of the issues, he brings up that it's a father of two, I think, because one of the real issues with What's imprisoning people is it can wreak havoc on families.
Obviously, if you're in prison for 50 years, you can't raise your kids, you can't be with your wife.
A lot of conservative wonks have pointed out that each year behind bar increases the likelihood of divorce.
Okay, that's not a good statistic.
We're pro-family as conservatives.
We don't want that.
However, what they forget to tell you is that very few inmates are married.
So even in 2002, which was the closest study I could find on this, only 16% of inmates were married.
And I can only imagine that that number has decreased in the last 16 years.
And a lot of evidence suggests that it is.
So the better point I think that conservatives could make if they want to support the First Step Act is specifically on black families.
Because black men account for 6% of the country.
They account for 38% of prison inmates.
That's true at the state level.
That's true at the federal level.
So obviously there's a hugely disproportionate number of black men committing crime and then being sentenced to prison for crime.
This obviously reduces the availability of those men for marriage.
And it's been suggested in some quarters that this has caused the breakup of the black family.
There are other causes of that too.
But marriage has declined immensely among black Americans from the 1960s to the present.
The rates of marriage in the 1960s for blacks was 61%.
Today it's 32%.
So it's almost cut in half.
Now, what are some causes of that?
Maybe prison, maybe...
Welfare, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested, maybe.
The reason I think it's probably much more cultural and has much more to do with government programs, like welfare dependency, which incentivizes breaking up the family, is that there's been a major marriage decline among white people, too.
So among whites, marriage has declined from 74% to 56% during that exact time.
Not as greatly as the black family has been broken up, but still a pretty huge chunk.
One of the major Republicans campaigning against the First Step Act is Tom Cotton, excellent congressman.
Tom Cotton has now apparently, this is all just being reported by various sources, has been lobbying various law enforcement groups to drop their support of the measure.
Apparently, it was his campaigning that was responsible for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association from dropping their endorsement for it.
And what Tom Cotton says, he goes out pretty boldly, and I 100% agree with him on this.
The problem in America is not over-incarceration.
You hear this from the left, you hear it from libertarians, you hear it from conservatives.
They say, oh, we over-incarcerate.
There are too many inmates in our prisons.
No, the problem in America is under-incarceration.
We don't catch enough of our criminals.
Law enforcement in this country identifies 19% of the perpetrators of property crime.
81% of people who perpetrate property crime just walk free.
They are never even identified.
This is maybe lucky for them.
It's very merciful to the criminals.
But for the people who have their property destroyed or stolen, it's not merciful at all.
They're being wronged, and that's injustice.
How about violent crime?
Law enforcement identifies only 40% of violent criminals in America.
So fewer than 50%.
Violent criminals get identified and are even brought up for criminal justice in the first place.
53% get away.
That is way, way too much.
So what are some good things about this bill?
I would say the good thing about it is that it's not terribly extensive.
It still keeps people in prison for a while.
Jared Kushner identifies why conservatives supporting this is wrongheaded.
Jared Kushner said, quote, Thank you.
The biggest thing we want to do is really define what the purpose of a prison is.
Is the purpose to punish?
Is the purpose to warehouse?
Or is the purpose to rehabilitate?
We will get to that in a second.
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So Jared Kushner is saying about criminal justice reform.
Apparently he's one of the big people pushing this in the White House.
He's saying, what is the purpose?
Is the purpose of prison to punish?
Or is it to rehabilitate?
And I think Jared is very smart.
I think he's a very capable guy.
And he is falling into a classic misunderstanding.
The purpose of criminal justice is justice.
It is to punish people who have committed crimes.
If the purpose is not to punish them, then there's no reason to have them there in the first place.
If the purpose is just to rehabilitate, then how can we only do it against criminals?
There are plenty of people who need a lot of rehabilitation.
I could probably use a little rehabilitation in my life.
Why is it that we only apply it to criminals?
We only apply it to criminals because the primary purpose of criminal justice is to punish criminals.
It is retribution for crimes.
So I totally understand how if you lose sight of that, if you lose sight of the value of punishing criminals, you would absolutely before all let the prisoners out, put them into lovely little daycare facilities where they can learn to be nice and sing kumbaya.
That's fine.
But as Adam Smith pointed out, mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
This certainly applies at the level of our government and of a criminal justice system.
And by the way, the more that you introduce these kind of programs, which give preferential treatment to some people who try it out, not other people.
And at one level, but not another level, you are increasing the injustice.
So to Mike Lee's point.
If some poor guy was selling drugs when he shouldn't have been, he had a gun, maybe he shouldn't have had a gun on him, maybe he shouldn't go to jail for 55 years because of that.
That's fine if you want to reduce it to 10 years or 5 years or, I don't know, 3 years.
Do whatever you want or you want to legalize pot.
Again, that's fine if you want to vote on it, make that a law.
But...
As a matter for federal inmates, give them this ticket out of jail.
It seems crazy.
The other good thing about this is it only affects federal inmates and the majority of inmates are in state prisons.
But still, we should not let this creep into our conservative conversation too much because it is totally missing sight of the purpose of prison.
Speaking of people who might go to prison, Michael Avenatti.
I don't know if you've seen this today.
Kind of a sad story.
It's ironic.
So there's a little schadenfreude for the creepy porn lawyer.
He's been arrested for beating a woman.
Obviously, feel horrible for the woman if these allegations are true.
That's a terrible thing.
The only good thing out of it is that Michael Avenatti is getting what's his.
Because Michael Avenatti, this guy, has shamelessly portrayed himself as a women's advocate.
He said he's a women's advocate his whole life.
What did I tell you?
What did I tell you about male feminists?
I just gave a speech on this the other night in How to Be a Man When You Look Like a Maddow.
Male feminists are the creepiest people on the face of the earth.
If a male feminist comes walking around your daughter, run in the other directions.
Pick him up.
Throw him into the next town.
Do not let him around your daughter.
They're very creepy.
How many feminist galas did Harvey Weinstein go to?
I think a lot.
How many feminist galas was he smiling with Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey at?
I think a lot.
He's still a big creep.
And we know Avenatti's a creep, but now he might beat women as well.
Avenatti, for his part, is vehemently denying the charges.
Here he is.
First of all, I want to thank the hardworking men and women of the LAPD for their professionalism and their work today.
They had no option in light of the allegations.
Secondly, I have never struck a woman.
I never will strike a woman.
I have been an advocate for women's rights my entire career, and I'm going to continue to be an advocate.
I am not going to be intimidated from stopping what I am doing.
I am a father to two beautiful, smart, I would never disrespect them by touching a woman inappropriately or striking a woman.
I am looking forward to a full investigation, at which point I am confident that I will be fully exonerated.
I also want to thank everyone for their support that has reached out.
You know my character, you know me as a man, and I appreciate it.
Thank you.
My character.
Oh, Michael Avenatti's character.
Everybody knows Michael Avenatti's character, don't they?
He's a creepy porn lawyer.
That's his character, who exploits women to try to advance his own would-be political career, which has just gone up in flames.
Stormy Daniels says she might find a new lawyer.
She says if the charges are true, she's going to dump him and find a new lawyer.
Not even good enough for Stormy Daniels' Michael Avenatti character.
We know his character is that he dug up a bunch of fake accusers also to propel his own political career, for which he is, by the way, being criminally investigated now.
That's great.
He said he also won't be intimidated.
Do you realize what he's saying by that?
When he says, I won't be intimidated, what he is implying is that this is a false charge.
Now, I don't know how good your memory is.
A few weeks ago, Michael Avenatti was leading the chorus of saying, we need to believe all women.
We need to believe Julie Swetnick.
We need to believe known liars.
Because women can't lie.
Women never lie.
So it was believe all women until they accused Michael Avenatti.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
What a jerk.
So what are the charges?
TMZ, this is according to TMZ, a woman filed a felony domestic violence report concerning Michael Avenatti.
She showed up with a face, quote, swollen and bruised with red marks on both cheeks.
This incident allegedly occurred on Tuesday, but the confrontation that everybody's talking about was on Wednesday.
This was when a woman was on a sidewalk with her cell phone, with sunglasses on to cover her face because she'd apparently been beaten.
She was sobbing and screaming into the phone, quote, I can't believe you did this to me, I'm going to get a restraining order against you.
This is when, all of a sudden, Michael Avenatti bursts into the scene, and Avenatti shows up yelling, she hit me first, and then he added, this is BS, this is effing BS. This is when she hit me first.
That was his excuse.
We'll go into the legitimacy of that excuse in just a second.
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So this is Michael Avenatti's excuse.
Apparently.
Well, we don't know exactly what happened, but according to witnesses, he storms in where the woman is and he says, she hit me first.
This is BS. This is effing BS. Just some advice.
I know he went to law school.
I never went to law school.
But a little bit of advice.
Don't start justifying the action that you then deny that you did.
That's a bad idea.
When you start explaining why you hit her and then deny that you hit her, that doesn't look good.
Just come and say, I didn't do anything.
If you say, she hit me first, it's like little kids.
It's actually like little kids.
Why'd you hit your brother?
He hit me first.
You shouldn't have hit him.
No, I didn't hit him.
But you just said he hit you first, of course.
Now, of course...
Michael Avenatti is already being investigated.
He was turned over for criminal investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee for all of those fake Kavanaugh allegations he came up.
Some are saying that his political career is falling apart.
I mentioned that earlier.
That's the talk.
It's on fire.
I think this guarantees he's going to be the 2020 nominee.
If you're going to be the Democrat nominee for president, don't you basically have to be under criminal investigation at this point?
Don't you have to be just a dirty, rotten, crooked criminal?
This is really going to help him.
Unless Hillary gets in the race again, then it's going to be a head-to-head To see who can be the most disreputable presidential candidate in history.
Speaking of people who want to run for the presidency, Michelle Obama is back in action.
It's unclear if Michelle Obama wants to be the president or if she wants to be Oprah.
Maureen Callahan had a great piece in the New York Post today that said she was either going to become president or a self-help guru.
That's what all of this becoming is about.
I'm becoming.
It's all that kind of pseudo-spiritual...
In either case, she's making this book tour go around and she keeps putting her foot in her mouth.
Here's Michelle Obama.
You know, this is also sort of an interesting thing when people would say that taxpayers are paying for that.
And the truth is, yes, you know, you don't pay rent and you don't pay for staff, but every thing, every dish, every...
They would count the number of peanuts that you'd eat and charge it back.
No.
So you'd get a bill at the end of it.
It's not a, you know, it's not an, oh, we live in a White House, y'all.
You know?
I mean, this is not a complaint.
It's just something that people don't understand.
Yeah.
Okay, so she's saying she's not complaining, right?
She's not complaining about it.
But she obviously is.
I'm just explaining this to everybody.
The reason that people don't know about this is because we've never, ever heard a first lady complain about this before.
That the president and the first lady have to pay for their own meals, that they don't just get that for free.
This is the first time we've ever heard this.
I suppose she's better than Hillary Clinton, though, because the reason that we might be able to infer that the president and the first lady have to pay for certain things is that when the Clintons left the White House, they stole the furniture.
They literally packed up furniture on the moving truck and took it with them.
They had to give it back because it was theft.
You're not allowed to take everything.
But the thing that's really...
I mean, there was a silly comment from Michelle Obama, but she's selling these tickets for thousands of dollars a seat.
So she's got to give a little juice and she's got to give a little...
Okay, fine.
That's whatever.
When she came on later...
She said in this conversation, quote, The first part of what she said is true.
I don't know why she's finally claiming it.
I wish she had claimed it earlier.
It is true.
Her story is a quintessential American story.
She's a black woman.
She grew up working class.
Her parents didn't get to finish college, and she became the first lady of the United States.
She went to law school.
She was a lawyer.
She became the first lady.
It's hard to imagine succeeding at a higher level than that.
However, she finishes it.
She says, how dare someone tell me I don't love my country?
The reason why we've suggested that Michelle Obama doesn't love her country is because she told us herself.
Here's Michelle Obama in 2008.
I don't think we've seen that.
But what we've learned over this year is that Hope is making a comeback.
It is making a comeback, and let me tell you something.
For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm proud of my country.
And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.
First time in my adult life, I've been proud of my country.
She says it.
And then she has the audacity to go out and say, how dare you suggest that I don't love my country?
We're suggesting it because you say it.
It's this constant gaslighting.
It actually reminds me.
Do you remember that time that Ben Shapiro was on Piers Morgan?
And they were debating gun control.
And Piers tried to use this tactic, too, to deflect from something he'd done.
He said, how dare you?
Here's the clip.
is you tend to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don't seem to care enough about the dead kids.
If they cared more about the dead kids, they would agree with you on policy.
I think we can have a rational political conversation about balancing rights and risks and rewards of all of these different policies, but I don't think that what we need to do is demonize people on the other side as being unfeeling about what happened in Sandy Hook.
How dare you accuse me of standing on the graves of children that died there?
How dare you?
I've seen you do it repeatedly, Piers.
Like I say, how dare you?
I mean, you can keep saying that, but you've done it repeatedly.
How dare you?
How dare you?
The election of my husband is the first time in my adult life I've ever been proud of my country.
Well, Piers, you said that that's the first time in your adult life you've been proud of your country.
How dare you?
How dare you suggest that I said what I said?
How dare I? I saw you say it.
This is one of the things that's so frustrating about Michelle Obama.
If she would have just apologized, we would have forgiven her.
If she would have just said, wow, that was a terrible statement.
I'm sorry.
It isn't true.
I spoke out of...
I don't know.
I mean, it's actually a hard statement to explain.
It's such a specific statement that she's never been proud of her country.
But if she said, you know, I have been consumed in this ideological anger against America, and I realize now I'm one of the luckiest people in the history of the world, and only in this country could that ever happen, and what a terrific country this is, and I'm really, really sorry.
I might have meant it when I said it, but I've realized how stupid and awful that statement was.
If she had said that, we would have forgiven her, but she hasn't.
She's just denying that she ever said it.
Absolutely outrageous.
We have a lot more to get to that we're not going to because I want to get to mailbag today.
So just remember, if right now you are out in Michigan, I'm still in Michigan, come on out to the University of Michigan tonight at 7 p.m.
for the latest stop on my YAF Covfefe on Campus tour.
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We've got the mailbag coming up.
Coming up, we'll be right back.
We have a lot to get through.
From Elliot.
Dear Professor Covfefe, with one of the most pro-America and assimilation-based immigration administrations we've had in ages, do you think there is any chance that English will be made the official language of the country rather than just leaving it to the states?
I hope so.
I sure hope they do.
English should and must become the official language of the United States.
I have nothing against other languages.
I rather like other languages.
I speak other languages and I encourage you to learn other languages too.
However, the left has brought us to the place where we must have an official language because we have so little that unites us anymore in the country.
Because of the multiculturalism of the left, because the left insists on not assimilating anybody into the American culture and denigrating American culture, we have very little that unites us.
Including our language.
I mean, it's a sort of old, stodgy complaint to hear somebody angered by the phrase, press one for English.
But it is an outrage that I have to press one for English.
We are in America.
If you had a little thing that said, you know, press one for Spanish, maybe at the end, or hidden, okay, that's fine.
There are a lot of people in this country who don't speak English, but they should.
They should learn it.
They should be made to learn it.
They should ideally learn it before they get here.
But if they don't do that, they should learn it immediately upon getting You know, half of my family came on the Mayflower.
The other half came on a sardine boat for all intents and purposes.
They came over from Italy and they took great pains to learn English.
They refused even to speak Italian in the household because they wanted to become Americans.
And people in this country who have come from other places, Central America or South America, should behave in exactly the same way.
And they shouldn't speak Spanish in the home or they shouldn't speak it very much.
They should learn English.
This is true of immigrants from East Asia.
This is true of immigrants from all over the place.
Learn English.
Because if we still had a common culture that united us, we can't even agree on the American flag anymore.
We can't even, half the country is protesting the flag at this point.
But if we had a common culture, a common entertainment culture, a common religious culture, a common broad values culture, that would be one thing.
But we don't.
So we at least need to be united by that.
I hope we get it through.
I'm skeptical that we will.
I don't.
I think that's probably a bridge too far.
Maybe they'll build the wall first.
But I really hope that they do.
From Mario.
Hi, Michael.
Wanted to ask your thoughts and insights regarding the early church and the raging debate, then, of the nature of Jesus Christ.
Eventually, the church decided on the Holy Trinity.
However, I also think some of the other ideas are interesting and perhaps equally valid.
Can you discuss your views?
So what Mario's talking about is that in the early days of Christianity, there were heresies that cropped up rather quickly, within a century or two centuries, and they had various perspectives on the nature of God and And the nature of Jesus and the nature of the Holy Spirit.
They might be interesting ideas.
They can't be equally valid.
The reason they can't be equally valid is their contradictory ideas.
If one idea says that Christ is God and the other idea says that Christ is not God, then they can't be equally valid.
He either is God or he is not God.
The reason that I believe in the Trinity is because I see it throughout Scripture.
John 1 says, In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, Christ, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
So we know that Christ is God.
Christ says that He is God at various points in the Scripture.
We know that the Holy Spirit is God as well.
St.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, The Spirit teaches everything, even the depths of God.
For what person knows a man's thoughts except the Spirit of the man which is in him?
So also, So we now know that God is God, God the Father is God, God the Son, Christ is God, and God the Spirit, the Holy Spirit is God.
All three of these are God.
Yet in the early church, there was some disagreement about this.
There were various heresies.
Arianism, that's the heresy of Arius, who very famously got punched in the face by Santa Claus at the Council of Nicaea.
Arianism, that heresy, denied the divinity of Christ.
There was another very early heresy called Marcionism.
Marcionism embraced the god of the New Testament, but detested the god of the Old Testament and rejected the god of the Old Testament as somehow different.
There's Albigensianism, which came centuries later.
This was a Manichaean dualist heresy that despised the material world.
There are a lot of heresies.
And there are many, many more heresies than that.
My main conclusion from all of this, and I advise you to take this under consideration as well, is that the church fathers were extraordinarily smart spiritual people, and they got it right.
All of those various councils, the councils that came up with the Nicene Creed, speaking of the Council of Nicaea, or the councils that compiled the Bible, they really got it right.
They knew what to put in and what to leave out.
These are the smartest men in history, and they weren't bumbling idiots.
We, from our modernist perspective, I think look down on them as old people who wore various robes and didn't have iPhones, so they couldn't have been smart.
These were extremely intelligent, wise people, and they got it right, and they've got it right about the Trinity, too.
From Amber.
Hello, Mr.
Knowles.
I was listening to Maxine Waters talking about most likely becoming the head of House Financial Services Committee and proud that she's the first black woman to do so.
If the left states that gender is fluid, a choice, then why all of the celebrating of the first openly LGBTQ plus woman in Congress, the first Muslim woman in Congress, the youngest female in Congress, etc.
you make an excellent point.
Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
This is why transgenderism and identity politics more broadly has destroyed feminism because you can have transgenderism or you can have feminism, but you can't have both.
Either gender and sex is innate It's essential.
It defines our identity.
You can metaphysically be one while not physically being the other.
It's so important that you will mutilate yourself to more closely resemble the other gender, or everything's the same.
Or everything's exactly the same and gender doesn't matter at all.
Either it matters intensely, and in that case, either it's natural, it can't be changed, or it can be changed.
It doesn't matter at all.
It's not natural.
These ideologies eat each other up, which is why it's pretty funny.
I think if I'm ever elected to Congress, I'm going to identify as the first black, gay, Muslim leader of the Financial Services Committee.
In fact, I might even identify that way now.
Why am I not?
Who are you to tell me?
The heck are you to tell me that I'm not the head of the House Financial Services Committee?
Check your privilege, okay?
Amber?
All right?
From Aaron.
Michael, how can I get a liberal girl talking about her values in a non-politically charged way?
It's been my experience that when people don't know they are talking about politics, they proclaim different values than they would if they were addressing a specific issue.
Believing in individual rights, for instance.
Thanks a lot.
That's a very good point.
People very often do not preach what they in fact practice.
The first thing you got to do is charm her.
This is good advice generally when talking to women.
You know, be attractive, be charming.
Don't come at it like you're going to have a political debate or something.
You want to hear from her.
You want to get her ideas.
You want and kind of maybe hit her from, don't literally, don't be Michael Avenatti.
Don't literally hit her, but hit her rhetorically from different angles where she might not be as familiar.
And ask simple but pointed questions.
I actually think specificity here is pretty helpful.
You could talk, don't talk about something that is, you know, so in the news, so Donald Trump is tweeting about it, for instance.
But you could ask pretty pointed questions about, I don't know, you see a cute little baby on a stroller.
You say, wow, gosh, isn't that baby so cute?
Oh my God, look at that cute little baby.
Oh my goodness gracious.
He's only two months old.
Wow.
Just think, two and a half months ago, he was inside you.
Wow, look at that.
And you could murder it.
I mean, don't end it on that.
But point in the direction of the logical conclusions and the logical extremes of arguments.
And if you do it in a way that is conversational, not combative, not debating, then it might just start turning some gears in the old noggin.
And you don't even need to harp on it.
You don't need to resolve an issue there.
Just plant the seeds.
This is true, by the way, not just of talking to girls, but it's true of talking to people generally.
And ultimately, over time, people might come to that conclusion.
It's very hard to convince somebody that From Matthew.
Yo, Mikey!
Yo, Matty!
What's up?
What do you think of a maximum wage and or maximum capital and property ownership?
I have a sibling who keeps proposing that billionaires shouldn't legally be allowed to exist.
Terrible idea.
What do you think?
I love billionaires.
I love billionaires.
I've known a handful of billionaires just through my meanderings in politics.
They're wonderful.
Billionaires have always been very good to me.
I've never gotten a job from a poor person.
I gotta tell you, billionaires have been a lot better to me professionally than poor people have.
Nothing against poor people.
They've just never given me a job.
Have they ever given you a job?
Have they ever given your brother a job?
I don't think so.
Why doesn't he like billionaires?
They employ you.
They don't take money away from you.
They just make more money on their own.
Productive work doesn't take money away from someone else.
It increases the total wealth of the world.
So they made their money.
That's fine.
Why are you so angry at them?
They're giving you jobs.
They donate a lot to charity.
They seem to do good work.
It's because socialism is just an ideology of envy.
Winston Churchill said, quote, socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.
Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
If you're looking at those billionaires and you're all angry, maybe you should look at yourself and think, how can I become a billionaire?
Maybe I'd like to be a billionaire, too.
Or at least a hundred millionaire, you know?
At least, you know, shoot for the stars, you'll land on the moon.
What is that expression?
That never made a lot of sense anyway.
But that's what you've got to look at.
Look at the envy.
Envy is not a very good quality.
From Samantha.
Mr.
Knowles, this is the question we've all been waiting for.
What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
I don't really care for ice cream.
I know that's the least popular thing I've ever said.
I don't care for it.
I never reach for it.
It doesn't do a lot for me.
I have sensitive teeth.
I've got to watch my waistline.
No, thank you.
The one that I can't resist is a chocolate-malted milkshake.
That is actually my favorite dessert.
That is the one that I will always go for.
But ice cream out of a container?
No, thank you.
If I have to, coffee is fine, but it doesn't do a lot for me.
From Nicholas.
To the Catholic cigar smoker of the Daily Wire.
I like cigars.
You offer me ice cream or a cigar.
I'll go for the cigar.
To the Catholic cigar smoker of the Daily Wire.
As a cigar and pipe smoker, I would like to know what you were smoking in the election special.
Also, why do conservatives smoke cigars and pipes significantly more than anyone else?
For a third question, have you considered pipe smoking?
An excellent question.
This was a little...
Easter egg in the election special.
I was smoking a cigar.
I won't say the specific...
Brand name of the cigar, but it was a cigar that was made exclusively for Canada.
And the reason I did that is because I'm still waiting for Lena Dunham and all of the left-wingers from the last election who promised that they were going to move to Canada to move to Canada.
And they haven't done it, so I smoked a cigar made exclusively for Canada just to celebrate.
And you're the first person to ask.
Maybe we'll all go to Canada and get more because these kind of cigars can basically only be bought when you go up to Canada.
If you know what I'm talking about, a little contraband from south of the border.
Okay, from Jacob.
We've got time for probably one or two more.
Howdy, Michael.
What advice do you have for us libertarians that are seeing that the Republicans held control of the presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives for a full two years, but still have not reformed welfare, balanced the budget, eliminated any governmental departments, or repealed Obamacare?
Sincerely, Jake.
Great point.
It's really frustrating.
I've been advocating for entitlement reform for a very long time.
I think that's a very important issue.
Only way to get our debt and deficits under control.
And yet it hasn't happened.
I'll point out that Ronald Reagan never shrinked the size of the government.
He didn't shrink the budget.
We hoped he would.
It was the real one failure of the Reagan administration.
President Trump does not appear to be interested in shrinking the size of the federal budget.
Maybe shrinking the rate of growth.
That would be nice.
He's cut down the budgets of cabinet departments.
That's a great start.
He's deregulated significantly.
He's reduced the size of various aspects of the federal government.
But has this reduced overall spending?
No, absolutely not.
It's probably not going to happen.
I hope that we can get some kind of entitlement reform through.
Now that we've lost the House, I think you can kiss that goodbye.
This is too bad.
You know, libertarians...
Have a strange relationship to this administration because Trump is speaking in some ways like a populist and a protectionist, all things that libertarians tend to oppose.
And yet he's stated that his ultimate goal is the elimination of tariffs.
It's the elimination of barriers to trade which libertarians should like.
Libertarians are going to get a lot out of this administration, but it's not a libertarian administration.
It will not be a libertarian administration.
And even administrations that seemed more favorably inclined to that way, like Reagan's, Michael, I am applying to medical school and trying to keep very high grades, but I cannot stand listening to my professor pass off her opinions as facts in a general education class.
She claims that Trump abides by the same nationalism as Hitler and that patriotism is the opposite of nationalism.
How do I approach the debate without jeopardizing my grade?
Thanks.
Love the show.
You want my honest answer?
This doesn't sound great.
Keep your mouth shut.
That's the answer.
I don't know...
What do you want out of this?
All I know from your question is that you really want to go to medical school.
If you really want to go to medical school and you think that this woman is going to hurt your grades and...
Prevent you in some way from going to medical school.
Then just keep your mouth shut.
What is to be gained by opening your mouth?
You might be able to change the minds of some of your classmates, but you could do that outside of class too.
You can just talk to them, be on the debate club, whatever.
Do conservative activism.
Are you going to change the professor's mind?
Sounds like she's a little far gone for that, so I don't know that that's likely.
And if you want to change your mind, you could do it after you're out of her class and she can't affect your grades.
I have never hid my views, or rarely.
I suppose a couple movies and plays that I've been in, I've been very quiet.
And sometimes, tactically, you have to be quiet.
I've never hid my views.
When someone asks me, I've never lied about them.
And I don't think you should lie about your views either.
But you don't need to go around parading them all the time if it's going to seriously hinder your life.
You've got to be innocent as a dove and wise as a serpent.
And you should maintain that.
You've got to be a little bit the lion and a little bit the fox, to use Machiavelli's phrase.
You've got to be, I don't know any other animals that we can use.
You need to be a pelican and a swan.
I don't think that means anything.
But you've got to have a little forbizia.
You've got to have a little awareness and astuteness when you go about these things.
Because it's a real minefield.
If you want to go out there and be totally blunt about your views, go for it.
I've frequently done that in my life.
But it will cost you.
If you're willing to bear that cost, go for it.
But if not, maybe be a little astute and live to fight another day.
Okay, that's our show.
If you're at the University of Michigan, come on by tonight.
I can't wait to see you.
If not, I'm sure you can catch it on the internet at some point.
I'm sure we'll have it up there someday.
In the meantime, have a good weekend.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
show.
I'll see you on Monday.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Jim Nickel.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
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