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Nov. 27, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show

45:54

Ep. 258 - Did Trump Collude With The Russians?

Will Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort meet with Wikileaks? We untangle the major Mueller story. Then, a Virginia high school makes students recites the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish. Finally, vegans ruin a nice steak dinner, and a leftist mother forces her son to be transgender. Date: 11-27-18 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	The Guardian has published a bombshell report that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met personally with the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
	WikiLeaks is refuting this story in the strongest possible terms.
	They're saying that they're willing to bet $1 million and Julian Assange's head that Manafort and Assange never met.
	The trouble is, in this situation, there are a lot of liars saying a lot of things.
	We will try to untangle whether or not Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
	Then, the good news, good news, is that a Virginia high school has made students recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
	The bad news is they're making them recite it in Spanish.
	We will investigate the meaning of inclusiveness.
	Finally, vegans ruin a nice steak dinner and a mother is trying to castrate her son in the name of transgenderism.
	I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
	This is the most complicated news day that we have had in weeks.
	There is breaking news.
	For the first time, the Mueller investigation might become somewhat relevant with these charges that the Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
	You'll remember WikiLeaks is the group that released all of the Hillary emails, the DNC emails.
	This could be huge or it's a total lie.
	We will investigate what we know.
	Buckle up.
	Of course they give me the most...
	Difficult Newsday while I'm on the road from my boudoir here in Tallahassee, Florida, because I'll be giving a speech tonight.
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	Okay, let's dig into the toughest news day of the last few months.
	Very, very complicated story.
	We're going to boil it down and tell you everything you need to know.
	Right now, Bob Mueller is going after Paul Manafort.
	Paul Manafort, you'll remember, got a plea deal with the special counsel, Bob Mueller.
	Mueller is right now saying that deal is null and void, that Manafort lied to the special counsel, that his guilty plea is going to remain, but that he is not getting any special protections.
	Right now, President Trump is going after Mueller and the Mueller investigation.
	WikiLeaks is making million-dollar bets.
	What do we know so far about Paul Manafort?
	Paul Manafort right now is rotting away in prison in solitary confinement in Alexandria, Virginia.
	Paul Manafort, he's been a lobbyist for a long time.
	He's worked for major Republican politicians on major campaigns.
	He, you know, did some dodgy dealings as lobbyists are wont to do.
	And he, for a short period of time, ran the Trump campaign right around the Republican nominating convention because he was really good at whipping those delegates.
	Paul Manafort, for that crime, and obviously other charges, but basically, practically, for that crime, is now rotting away in solitary confinement in prison.
	Aren't we all safer now?
	Aren't we all safer that Paul Manafort is off the streets?
	We were talking about criminal justice reform, how we need to get people out of prisons.
	They've locked up a guy, basically, for helping Donald Trump.
	Bob Mueller right now, the special counsel, is saying that in his plea deal, Paul Manafort lied and breached the deal that he signed two months ago.
	Paul Manafort denies this in the strongest terms.
	He says he did not lie to the special counsel.
	What this means is that all of those promises that the special counsel made to Paul Manafort, that he could avoid certain prison time for certain crimes, he could avoid going to jail for certain crimes, that's gone.
	That is off the table now.
	But The way a plea deal works is you say, I'm going to plead guilty to certain crimes and you're going to give me lenient treatment.
	The trouble now is he's not going to receive any lenient treatment, but he can't withdraw his guilty plea.
	So he's already on the hook for those crimes.
	He faces 10 years in prison currently, and who knows with the addition of other charges, how much longer he's going to be in prison.
	What was the lie about?
	So what it seems to be, we're only getting little bits and pieces of this, is from this Guardian story.
	The Guardian ran it, and they are alleging that Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, multiple times over the years, starting in 2013, again in 2015, and then most importantly in 2016, just before or right around the time of the release just before or right around the time of the release of those Democrat emails that had been hacked that WikiLeaks sent out.
	which certainly changed the tenor of the presidential election.
	I don't know that I don't know.
	All these parties that are involved, Paul Manafort and WikiLeaks, are denying it.
	Now who knows?
	Paul Manafort's a lobbyist.
	Could he be a liar?
	Sure.
	Julian Assange is an anti-American spy, though he did help us out with that Hillary Clinton election.
	Could he be lying?
	Yeah, of course he could.
	But Who are the sources on the Guardian story?
	They're anonymous.
	They're anonymous.
	Manafort's calling them 100% false.
	And WikiLeaks is going really hard after this.
	They say that they will bet $1 million and Julian Assange's head that Paul Manafort and Julian Assange never met.
	So where would they have met?
	Julian Assange has been seeking, he's had asylum basically, in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
	He's wanted by many governments, including the United States, for stealing their materials and releasing classified documents.
	So he's been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London now for years.
	And apparently these meetings happened in the Ecuadorian embassy.
	This raises a few questions.
	One, why would he have met with Julian Assange?
	Well, he could have met when he was helping out Viktor Yanukovych, who was the pro-Russian head of Ukraine when he was lobbying for him.
	I suppose he could have done that.
	WikiLeaks has a tight relationship with Russia.
	Why would he have met with him When he's just about to take the helm of the Trump campaign, obviously the Democrats are saying he met with him to ensure the release of these emails, to collude with the Russians, whatever you want to say.
	My question is, why are we only learning about this now?
	Why are we only learning now in 2018, almost 2019, that the head of the Trump campaign, around the time that he was named the head of the Trump campaign, walked into the Ecuadorian embassy in London, one of the most highly surveilled places in the entire world, because everyone wants to make sure that Julian Assange doesn't make a break for it.
	They've got all these eyeballs on this embassy, and he just walks in, And there's no record of Paul Manafort ever even being there.
	Paul Manafort is not a low profile guy.
	It's not like Donald Trump dug him out of obscurity.
	Paul Manafort has been a major Republican operative for decades, since the 80s at least, and maybe the 70s.
	So what are the odds that he just walks into the embassy and there's no record of it?
	The Ecuadorian embassy has no formal record of Paul Manafort ever having been there.
	Okay, now I suppose I could understand that a guy with the political pull of Paul Manafort and an embassy that would house Julian Assange maybe might be a little lax with their record keeping, might be willing to hide certain things, but how could this not leak?
	How would we not know about this until just now?
	It seems a little dodgy.
	I'm just a little bit skeptical of it.
	And it's not just because I want to defend Paul Manafort or that I want to defend Donald Trump.
	It's just the timing is a little weird and the facts are a little dodgy.
	They won't give us the sources and the Guardian is already backing off the story.
	This is the part that really makes me question it.
	So they put it up on their website this morning and then one hour later, They start to back off of it.
	So the initial headline on The Guardian was, Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy.
	The new headline, an hour later, an hour and ten minutes later, Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy, sources say...
	Okay.
	Now, John Nolte, our former colleague at The Daily Wire, great writer, his Twitter name is sources say, is Greek for fake news, because they always do that.
	The New York Times does the CNN, they say, sources say, and then they spout off whatever political nonsense is advantageous to their side.
	So that's one major change.
	Another change is the initial article read, quote, it is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed.
	The new version reads, it is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed.
	You see, there was a switch into the conditional.
	Initially, they were using very plain language.
	The new version goes into the conditional.
	Hypothetically, if he would have done this, why would he have done that?
	So the original says, but the last meaning is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor.
	The new version.
	But the last apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny.
	Now, why are they doing this?
	The Guardian is doing this to save their rear ends.
	Because now you've got Paul Manafort going after them.
	You've got Julian Assange going after them.
	They're all saying this is 100% fake news.
	And it actually goes on and on.
	In the original version of the article, they say, according to two sources, Manafort returned to the embassy in 2015.
	Now, in the new version, it says, according to the sources, Manafort returned to the embassy in 2015.
	To the sources.
	Well, why is the change?
	Are there now new sources in there?
	Are there fewer sources?
	Are the sources a little dodgier?
	I don't know.
	Initially, the article read...
	Why Manafort sought out Assange in 2013 is unclear.
	Now it says why Manafort might have sought out Assange in 2013 is unclear.
	Now all of this, this might, this would, this could, this should.
	It sounds more like they're writing hypothetical fiction now.
	If I had some ham, I could make a ham sandwich if I had some bread.
	It doesn't matter how many hypotheticals we have.
	What are the facts?
	The Guardian knew this was an explosive story.
	They should have gotten their facts dead right.
	Dot their T's and cross their I's before they publish this.
	If they're backing off of this now, it's a little doubtful to me how accurate it could be.
	Now, why would the Guardian run this?
	I don't know.
	I mean, we know that we have had some pretty dodgy characters from the whole beginning of this Russian collusion story.
	Why are we even talking about Russian collusion?
	We're talking about Russian collusion because during the presidential campaign, we know the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign.
	We know that there was the Steele dossier, that document that was used to launch investigations, which we now know was paid for, was funded by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
	You've got characters in the government working on these things, characters outside of the government working on Democrat politics.
	So much of it seemed contrived and so much of it seemed faulty.
	How do we know whether the Guardian article is real or not?
	How do we know whether the sources are reliable or not?
	The whole Russia investigation is based on misinformation and faulty stories.
	Just remember that Steele dossier, the beginning of all of this.
	The, you know, it had the urine tape, the alleged urine tape was written about in this.
	So, foreign policy analysts went over, there was a long spread in Newsweek, of all places, that showed a number of inconsistencies in that Steele dossier, just to go over a few of them.
	The Steele dossier alleged the Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting, and assisting Trump for at least five years.
	That claim seems the most preposterous.
	Who five years ago would have thought that Donald Trump would become president?
	He's a guy who'd been bloviating about possibly running for president since the 80s.
	Nobody took it seriously.
	He never did it.
	He had other interests.
	The political analysts didn't take it seriously.
	So that must mean that Vladimir Putin is a psychic.
	He could read Trump's mind and knew he was going to run and knew that the American people would elect him.
	That part, just not credible at all.
	Another claim in the Steele dossier, quote, so far Trump has declined serious sweetheart real estate business deals offered to him in Russia.
	We know this isn't true because we know he was going after sweetheart real estate deals in Russia.
	They can't have it both ways.
	The left can't have it that Donald Trump is corrupt and he's using his influence to try to get sweetheart deals and to further enrich himself, and that he hasn't done that at all.
	We know that after the Miss Universe pageant in Russia, he was meeting with Russians to try to get deals.
	We know that he tried in 2013 to get a Trump hotel in Russia, so we know that that part of the Steele dossier is false.
	It goes on, it says, quote, he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on Democratic and other rivals.
	Okay, so these things all sound plausible until you scratch just below the surface.
	If he's regularly receiving a flow of intelligence during the campaign, why didn't he use any of it?
	During the campaign, his main tools were saying mean things about illegal aliens, wearing cheap hats, and calling Hillary crooked.
	All of which I support.
	I'm all for that.
	But he didn't leak any shocking information.
	There's no evidence that he got any flows of intelligence.
	What else?
	Obviously, there was the alleged urine tape, which we don't believe because Donald Trump is a germ freak.
	He's an apparent germaphobe.
	And also, if he knew that they had some video like that on him, don't you think he might have considered not running for president?
	Isn't that just a ticking time bomb?
	Yeah, of course.
	Now...
	It goes on further in the Steele dossier.
	They say that there's another dossier of compromising material on Hillary Clinton that was collected by the Russian intelligence services over many years, but it was not distributed abroad, including to Donald Trump.
	Okay, also totally believable.
	Hillary Clinton mishandled federal records.
	We know she was regularly communicating on unsecured devices.
	She had her own private email server at home.
	Okay, I totally believe that they're collecting intel on her, But that line in the Steele dossier contradicts the earlier line.
	On the first hand we're being told that Donald Trump is regularly receiving intelligence on all of his Democrat opponents like Hillary.
	Then we're being told he hasn't received intelligence on Hillary.
	That's a contradiction just within the Steele dossier.
	Which is it?
	We're then told later in the Steele dossier, the dossier is controlled by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Putin's orders.
	Why on earth would a spokesman be the one to handle the dossier on Hillary Clinton?
	I've worked as a spokesman for politicians.
	I've worked as a press secretary.
	That isn't the sort of thing that you do.
	When you're a press secretary, you smile on camera and you communicate to the public what the politician is thinking or doing.
	When you're a spy, that's when you control dossiers and you control surveillance on other people.
	Also, it was pointed out by Russian speakers when the Steele dossier came out that the syntax in many places doesn't look like it was written by a native English speaker.
	It might have been written by a Russian.
	And finally, we're told that in the Steele dossier, quote, the existence of a Russian dossier or compromise on Hillary Clinton is confirmed by source B and was collected by Department K of the FSB for many years.
	Now, if you or I are reading that, It would be gibberish to us, right?
	It would be like reading Russian or reading Greek or something.
	We just don't know.
	But what foreign policy analysts have pointed out is that that department, Directorate K, does not do intelligence on foreign leaders.
	There are other departments that do that.
	SVR, FOPSI, other departments that you or I have never heard of.
	But Directorate K doesn't do that.
	So how did all of this get in there?
	One of the suggestions is that the Steele dossier My question, the reason I just went through all of that Steele dossier stuff, is...
	How do we know that's not what's happening with this Guardian article?
	How do we know that we're not getting more Russian misinformation?
	The Russians have dealt in misinformation forever, for eternity, and obviously during the Cold War that was their specialty.
	How do we know that that's not what we're getting here?
	What does Bob Mueller know?
	Is this really what he knows?
	Or is there something else that we haven't heard of yet?
	Is this being cooked up by bad actors?
	Look, I'm not saying I'm going to believe Paul Manafort just because he says so.
	I'm not saying I'm going to believe Julian Assange just because he says so.
	I'm not saying that I'm just going to believe Donald Trump just because he says so.
	Or likewise, Bob Mueller or Peter Strzok or any of the other people working on the Mueller investigation.
	But we've got to parse this out.
	We've got a lot of people with a lot of interests here trying to cover up a lot of different things.
	So which is it?
	I don't know.
	That Mueller is not only pressuring Paul Manafort, we know that he's pressuring Jerome Corsi.
	You might know Jerome Corsi.
	I've followed him for a number of years.
	He's a conservative writer, kind of a conspiracy theorist type.
	He says a lot of kooky things, so some people completely write him off.
	It's worth noting, the guy does have a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard, so you can't write him off entirely.
	He is a guy who is...
	Who has at least studied political science, political philosophy at serious places.
	Jerome Corsi now expects to be indicted and he has apparently rejected a plea deal.
	Just a few weeks ago, Jerome Corsi went on television and he said, Mueller is going to indict me soon.
	Here's Jerome Corsi.
	I got served a subpoena on August 28th at my home.
	Two FBI agents show up unannounced and I did not talk to the FBI. Of course, my wife was pretty startled and We began a series of discussions with them that have gone on for two months.
	And at the end of that two months, even though I did everything I could to cooperate, the entire negotiations and discussions have just blown up.
	And now I fully anticipate that in the next few days I will be indicted By Mueller for some form or other of giving false information to the special counsel or to one or the other grand jury or however they want to do the indictment.
	But I'm going to be criminally charged.
	Well, he predicted it, and it sure looks like things are going that way.
	Now we've learned that Jerome Corsi, who, you know, he's a conservative media type.
	He's written some books.
	I think he was on Infowars when he was going a little further out.
	So he's selling vitamins, you know, and talking about the gay frogs.
	No, I don't think he was.
	I think Alex Jones was doing that.
	He now expects to be criminally charged and he's rejected a plea deal.
	Now what is the plea deal about?
	What is he going to be charged with?
	Throughout this entire Mueller investigation, they haven't gotten anybody for any actual crime whatsoever.
	They haven't gotten anybody for any actual crime related to working with Russians or getting information or spying on Hillary or whatever.
	They haven't gotten them for that.
	They've only gotten them for procedural crimes.
	For lying to the FBI or perjuring themselves or not telling the whole truth.
	And of course, the old line in D.C. is you could indict a ham sandwich, especially on a procedural sort of crime.
	So what is the perjury?
	Did he perjure himself?
	The issue with Jerome Corsi is Jerome Corsi predicted that WikiLeaks had John Podesta's emails a week before they were released.
	He predicted that they had them and then a week later WikiLeaks releases them and now Mueller is looking and saying, how did you know that?
	Jerome Corsi is saying it was a lucky guess.
	Obviously, Mueller thinks that he was tipped off by somebody, that he was in contact with somebody at WikiLeaks.
	Who knows?
	Was it a lucky guess?
	I don't know.
	It's hard to imagine that.
	It's not totally out of the realm of possibility, because John Podesta was running Hillary Clinton's campaign, so I suppose it's...
	I'm not saying it's 100% not true, but that's not even the question.
	The question on perjury is, did he intentionally, willfully lie to the investigators, Did he just leave something out?
	Did he omit something?
	Mueller is now pressuring Jerome Corsi to plead guilty to one count of perjury.
	And how will this relate?
	I don't know.
	This could relate to WikiLeaks.
	This could relate to Roger Stone, who said that he had had information from WikiLeaks and then later said he didn't have direct information.
	It was through an intermediary.
	Who knows?
	Corsi is sticking to his story that he forgot certain things but did not willfully lie to the investigators.
	I almost am tempted to believe him here.
	Because if he enters into a plea deal and says, "I lied on one count and maybe it could be reduced or maybe this or I could be pardoned or I won't be in jail very long or whatever," that seems preferable to them throwing the book at Corsi.
	But what Jerome Corsi is saying is, "I would rather rot away in prison than cop to something that I did not do.
	That I'm not, I did not lie.
	I'm not going to say that I lied just because Bob Mueller wants me to.
	I'm not going to spout a storyline.
	That the special counsel is trying to build if it's not true.
	And that is where Donald Trump comes in.
	Because you see this building over time.
	Bernard Carrick, the former police commissioner in New York, suggested this in some tweets yesterday.
	Some on the right are now saying that the special counsel has a storyline.
	They have a narrative of Trump collusion and nefarious activities that they are going to build and they are going to force people to say that it's true even if it's not true.
	Donald Trump tweeted out in his typical subdued way, quote, the phony witch hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other.
	Wait until it comes out how horribly and viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them, refusing to lie.
	Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue.
	The fake news media builds Bob Mueller up as a saint, when in actuality he's the exact opposite.
	He's doing tremendous damage to our criminal justice system, where he is only looking at one side and not the other.
	Heroes will come of this, and it won't be Mueller and his terrible gang of angry Democrats.
	It goes on.
	Don't worry.
	It's not.
	This is a three tweet tweet.
	He goes on.
	He says, look at their past.
	Look where they come from.
	The now 30 million dollar witch hunt continues and they've got nothing but ruined lives.
	Where is the server?
	Where is the Hillary email server?
	Good point.
	Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and Justice Department.
	He makes a good point.
	Donald Trump makes a good point.
	Where are the investigations into Hillary?
	Where is the prosecution?
	Where are the investigations into Democrats?
	Why was the Mueller investigation stacked with so many anti-Trump, never Trump operatives?
	Why was it stacked with somebody, Peter Strzok, who said in a text message to his lover, I will use the force of the FBI to prevent Donald Trump from being president?
	Why?
	That is a little weird.
	It's a little weird that it's dragged on like this, and they've got nothing thus far.
	They've come up with nothing.
	So what are we to make with all of it?
	We know that Paul Manafort's dodgy.
	We know that WikiLeaks is dodgy.
	We know that the FBI officials who were involved in the Mueller investigation are dodgy.
	The investigation itself is dodgy, and Donald Trump, love him to death, but, you know, he occasionally can be a little bit dodgy.
	Or he can dodge questions.
	I'll massage that.
	We know that there are a lot of people here and we can't take any of them at their word.
	That's fine.
	Put not your trust in princes.
	I don't put my faith in princes.
	But just pull out of the details.
	I wanted to give you the details here because you're going to hear narratives being spun on constantly.
	You're going to hear all of these things...
	In the mainstream media.
	And because you don't know that, they're expecting you not to know the details so that they can spin their yarn.
	But you need to know the details to know that, hmm, that's not true.
	Oh, that's not true.
	But now that you know the details, zoom out.
	What are we looking at?
	We're looking at Paul Manafort, a political operative, is rotting away in solitary confinement.
	And the question I've got to ask you is, would he be there if Donald Trump were not elected president?
	If he had never worked for Donald Trump?
	Would he be there?
	Let's say he were just lobbying for Ukraine, doing his activities, you know, kind of being a Republican operative.
	Would he be...
	I know, I know he's in jail for other crimes.
	I know it's tax evasion or this or that.
	Right.
	Would he be in prison if he had not committed the unforgivable sin of helping Donald Trump become president?
	Of course not.
	Bill Clinton commits perjury.
	He commits perjury while he's president, gets off scot-free, no problem.
	Hillary Clinton improperly handles federal records.
	She then destroys those federal records.
	Why?
	Because she was accepting bribes while she was in office.
	Tens of millions of dollars from the Saudi government to use just one foreign regime that's in the news.
	Selling our uranium to Russian interests.
	Approving the sale in exchange for, apparently, some money.
	What happens to her?
	That's no problem.
	But Paul Manafort has the audacity to work for Trump.
	He's going to rot in prison.
	What crime is Donald Trump being accused of?
	Can you name one crime?
	No, of course not.
	They accuse him of collusion because they don't have a crime that they can name.
	And collusion is not a crime.
	There is no law against collusion.
	And by the way, if there were a law against collusion, Hillary Clinton would be culpable of it.
	This whole thing was kicked off by a Steele dossier that was funded by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
	They were the Where did the information from the Steele dossier come from?
	It came from the Russians.
	It had to come from the Russians.
	They're the only ones with the information.
	So we know for a fact that Hillary Clinton paid with her money through various intermediaries, but from the campaign and the DNC, paid for this information, colluded with the Russians, did exactly what Donald Trump is being accused of doing.
	Why is there no investigation into her?
	Why are they dogging these Republicans?
	I don't know.
	It seems that there's a lot else at stake.
	What is this really about?
	Is this about the Donald Trump campaign?
	No way.
	It stinks to high heaven.
	We will have to get to more of that, but we can't get to it now because we've got vegans to talk about and how vegans ruin everything.
	We've got this awful woman who is ruining her child's life by trying to castrate him.
	And tonight, you should come out to Florida State University.
	I'm going to be at FSU tonight at 6 p.m.
	Eastern for the latest stop on my Yafko Fefe on Campus tour.
	Snowflakes, obviously, will be melting everywhere, so get your tumblers ready.
	We will be discussing why I'm on the wrong side of history class.
	It should be a lot of fun.
	It will cause a lot of consequences.
	Maybe the professors will come out and protest me this time.
	Maybe the gender studies sociology professors will come out and march on my speech.
	We'll see.
	We'll see what happens.
	Show up tonight.
	It's going to be a lot of fun.
	6 p.m.
	Eastern at FSU. If you are on DailyWire.com, thank you very much.
	You help keep the lights on, even in this hotel room.
	You keep Covfefe in my cup.
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	Now, enough about all of this international espionage, you know, presidential advisors going to jail, major you know, presidential advisors going to jail, major powers, enough of that.
	That doesn't matter.
	What we need to talk about is how vegans ruin everything.
	They ruin everything.
	There was a video, there were some nice British people just trying to enjoy a steak meal, maybe some delicious veal, some, you know, nice little delicious baby, baby, baby veal, and a bunch of vegans stormed in and hilariously tried to ruin their dinner.
	Here they are.
	It's not food, it's violent!
	It's not food, it's violent. it's violent.
	There's no excuse for delicious foie gras on cheeseburgers.
	There's no substitute, is what you mean.
	There's nothing so delicious.
	I want out a friend of mine, a member of Congress, who I was talking about this issue one time with that person, and I said, did you ever see that movie Meat from the 1970s?
	And this person turned to me and said, oh yeah, I saw this whole movie about how awful the meat industry is.
	I'm going to go.
	house.
	Couldn't wait, licking my chops in the movie theater.
	So these lunatics were coming in there.
	And the reason I bring it up, obviously, you know, these vegetarian types are always a little excitable, but the reason I bring it up is to show the moral idiocy and the moral mistakes that can come when you hone in on one very minor aspect of the human life and you make an idol but the reason I bring it up is to show the That can come when you hone in on one very minor aspect of the human life and you make an idol out of that.
	You make that your god.
	You turn into a moral idiot.
	You make a lot of errors.
	This group was called Direct Action Everywhere.
	I guess they're going in everywhere.
	Better not come to my steakhouse.
	They go into this steakhouse in Britain, and the normal patrons, who were just trying to enjoy their meal, you couldn't see it in the video, but later on they start mooing.
	You know, food, it's not food, it's murder, it's violence.
	And you just hear the patrons go, moo, moo.
	So that was pretty funny.
	But veganism is on the rise, and it's on the rise because this country is morally very confused.
	Right now, there is one survey that showed that since 2014, so we're talking the last four years, veganism has increased in the United States by 500%.
	I didn't believe this.
	Until I recently was having lunch with some friends of mine.
	And they're vegan.
	And they brought me to a vegan restaurant.
	And I paid $30 for a mushroom.
	And I was very angry.
	And I ate beet ketchup.
	And not real ketchup.
	I guess for some reason real ketchup is not good enough for vegans.
	So it's made of beets.
	And it's not ketchup.
	And it doesn't taste anything like ketchup.
	So this is a moral idiocy.
	I don't mean that my friends are moral idiots, but in this regard, they're missing the forest for the trees.
	This is emblematic, I find, of a lot of vegans, maybe all the vegans, seem to care more about animals than people.
	We talked about this last week.
	How many vegans do you know who are pro-life?
	Probably not many.
	I know a lot of vegans who are pro-abortion, pro-choice, and yet they freak out if you eat an oyster.
	And the oysters matter.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	Plenty of immoral people can be vegetarians.
	Hitler was a vegetarian and Hitler loved dogs.
	I don't use this just as an example.
	Hitler drank water and Hillary Clinton drinks water and therefore she's terrible.
	But I am pointing out Hitler, who is rightly considered one of the most evil figures in history, certainly in modern history, did have this moral stance of being a vegetarian and he loved animals.
	Some people are shocked by this.
	They say, oh my gosh, it's so strange.
	No, it makes perfect sense to me.
	He didn't really like humans very much, but he certainly liked animals.
	He mistook what matters in the order of life and in the natural order.
	These vegans believe that a little chicken is more morally valuable than a human baby.
	Why is this?
	This leads even to certain questions.
	I hope that we get for the vegan movement what we have gotten from LGBT and feminism and transgenderism.
	That is an essential conflict that starts to hit them.
	Because in feminism you have the deconstruction of gender, the breaking down of the gender categories, ultimately this leads to the denial that gender exists at all, this leads to transgenderism, and ultimately the undercutting of feminism.
	I wonder if we'll see the same thing with veganism, because what we're told by veganism It's not just enough not to eat meat.
	Or not just enough not to eat baby seals and dolphins or something.
	Or not just enough not to eat cows.
	But you can't even eat animal products.
	You can't eat fish.
	You can't eat milk.
	You can't eat cheese.
	You can't eat eggs.
	You can't eat things that come from animals.
	Why?
	Because...
	Then the animals have to produce them and they're suffering and it isn't good and it encourages more farming of animals.
	Okay, so that's taken it to another extreme.
	There was an article in the Huffington Post recently which said that vegans are not allowed to eat oysters.
	What's an oyster?
	An oyster is just a little bit of goop that you put some sauce on sometimes and slurp down at a bar while you're having a martini.
	That's what an oyster is.
	It doesn't have a nervous system.
	It in almost no way resembles an animal.
	So some vegans have said, well, it doesn't even have a central nervous system.
	It doesn't really matter.
	Now vegans are saying you can't eat that either.
	It feels pain in its own way.
	There's no scientific basis for this.
	Oysters, of course, don't feel pain.
	But what they're saying is, how dare you be so presumptuous as to impose your categories of pain on the little oyster?
	This is exactly what happened with the transgender movement and feminism.
	They said, On humanity.
	Don't you dare suggest that men can't have a uterus.
	Some men have a uterus, to quote Planned Parenthood.
	So it's the same thing.
	You're seeing this in veganism.
	How dare you impose your Western science on the oyster?
	The oyster might feel pain, we just don't know.
	Well, where does that end?
	Does that just end with oysters?
	What about scallops?
	Okay, maybe scallops too, or mussels or clams.
	What about a carrot?
	A carrot doesn't feel pain.
	A carrot's not conscious.
	Yeah, right.
	An oyster's not conscious.
	Certainly not conscious.
	Not sentient.
	Are you kidding me?
	What about a Venus flytrap?
	Those are plants, right?
	But the plant closes its little flaps and eats flies.
	It's a carnivorous plant.
	Can we eat the Venus flytrap?
	Is that not sentient?
	It reacts to external stimuli.
	It reacts to them, but many plants react to external stimuli.
	It's reactive.
	Who are you to say that it doesn't feel pain?
	Where does this end?
	Why are you imposing your category and saying that animals' lives matter, but plants' lives don't matter?
	Now, it will get to this point.
	There will be people who do this.
	They won't last very long because they'll starve to death.
	But at a certain point, we have to consume things that live.
	We can't just eat rocks.
	This is what the devil tempted Christ to do in the wilderness.
	He said, turn that rock into bread.
	He said, I'm not going to do that.
	That's a fantasy.
	That's ridiculous.
	So, where is that going to go from there?
	Obviously, they're going to be following that idea to its logical conclusion.
	But the premises themselves are not...
	The idea that we should exalt the oyster over the human being.
	Humans are more important.
	We have more dignity.
	We are conscious.
	We have dominion over the land and over the sea.
	That is the reality of it.
	And the denial of that reality by the vegan movement and vegetarianism Is plausible at a little bit.
	It's plausible when you eat less red meat.
	It's plausible even when you give up cheese, like a dummy.
	I don't know why you would ever give up cheese.
	But when you take it to its logical conclusion, it's not plausible, and that's fine by me.
	They're going to look even more ridiculous than they do when they interrupt those Brits eating mutton, or whatever British people eat in steakhouses.
	In a school in Virginia, in Fairfax, There is some good news.
	I was so excited when I saw this story today.
	The news was that the school is making the students read the Pledge of Allegiance.
	Oh, that's good.
	I'm very pleased to see that.
	In a lot of places now, you don't have to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
	When I grew up, you said the Pledge of Allegiance.
	Now, even at events, I go to dinner as you recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
	Now, people don't really have to do it.
	So that's a good sign.
	The bad sign is the school is having them recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish.
	This is a pretty bad idea.
	So they started doing it.
	They did this for, I think, one day, and the parents were so rightly outraged by it that the principal came in and canceled it.
	Now, one mother who supported it said, quote, They had a native Spanish speaker read it Tuesday.
	End of school day, Tuesday afternoon, the principal comes on and says he was sorry.
	He's sorry.
	He didn't want to be offensive.
	They canceled the program.
	It was my understanding it would be Spanish, French, and German.
	I think there's 80 or 90 different languages at this school, and I thought that would be a cool thing.
	Okay, first of all, lady, there aren't 80 languages at your school.
	Certainly there aren't 80 being taught and there aren't 80 being spoken.
	They're trying to count little nothing dialects or something, and I think they're just making that up.
	So there aren't 80 or 90 different languages.
	And also, stop pretending that this is about French and German.
	They didn't decide to institute the reading of the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish so that we could practice our French or our German.
	That did not happen at all.
	And the school admits as much.
	The school said...
	That they were trying to promote engagement and inclusion.
	Quote, this is a statement from the school.
	How about all those German immigrants who finally made it over to recognize their diversity?
	Of course not.
	This is about Spanish.
	And we've seen this trend for years.
	Now when you call up customer service, they say press 1 for English.
	Or press 1 for Spanish or whatever.
	Because it has not been encouraged for people to assimilate into the United States.
	This is a big problem.
	So they say, okay, we're going to say the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish.
	Why?
	The United States is not a Spanish country.
	The United States does not speak Spanish.
	The Declaration of Independence was not written in Spanish.
	The Constitution was not written in Spanish.
	Our founding fathers didn't speak Spanish.
	I'm all for learning different languages.
	I speak multiple languages.
	I like it.
	I read the Italian newspaper frequently.
	Yeah, I'm all for it.
	I don't think we should recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Italian.
	The point of the Pledge of Allegiance is to come together as a country and say, I respect this country.
	I pledge my allegiance to this country.
	We are one nation, indivisible.
	What these people want to do is divide it.
	And it's because of such a perverse sense of inclusion.
	This is what another person said, another mother.
	Quote, It's inclusive.
	It's making them proud of their heritage and their ethnicity.
	So I was surprised that instead of continuing it, there was a nixing and an apology.
	Didn't seem right to me.
	It's not inclusive.
	It's exclusive.
	When you have people who come—people come to this country to be Americans, or they should, and if they don't want to be Americans, they shouldn't come.
	So they come to this country to escape whatever awful place they were living in before, and they make it here.
	We should encourage them to be Americans.
	We should not exclude them or make them different or make them other by encouraging them to speak the language that we don't speak here.
	That's a very bad idea.
	It's making them proud of their heritage and their ethnicity.
	It's fine to take some enjoyment in your heritage.
	I do that.
	I'm Italian, so I wear a crucifix.
	I'm a Catholic, and I wear a crucifix.
	And I'm Italian, so I wear a gold chain.
	It's nice to enjoy that.
	I eat a lot of monogoth and a lot of cannoli and things like that.
	Okay, that's great.
	But I'm not proud.
	I don't walk around saying, I'm an Italian.
	I don't walk around waving the Italian flag.
	Of course not.
	I'm an American.
	I'm as American as apple pie.
	A little swarthy apple pie, but a little burnt, a little crispy apple pie.
	And that's how people who come to this country should be brought in, too.
	You shouldn't be exactly proud of your heritage and ethnicity.
	You left that.
	You left that behind to come to America.
	What translation, I wonder, of the pledge were they using in Spanish?
	Which version?
	They don't have a translation because the pledge is written to pledge allegiance to the United States.
	A really bad idea.
	Not good for the immigrants who come here.
	If they're encouraged not to learn English very well or to speak Spanish, it will hurt them in their careers, certainly.
	And it will make them other, it will make them a second class.
	And we're here to be Americans.
	If you can't pledge allegiance, Under one language, then you're not pledging allegiance to your country at all.
	Okay, that's our show.
	I have got to go give this speech in FSU. It's going to be a lot of fun.
	If you're in Tallahassee, come on out.
	The topic, we'll be talking a little bit about American history, a lot about it tonight.
	We'll have to get to this awful mother in Texas who's forcing her son to be pretending to be a woman who is trying to castrate him.
	This woman obviously should be in jail or in a mental institution.
	We'll get to that tomorrow.
	In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	I'll see you tomorrow.
	The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Semia Villareal.
	Executive producer, Jeremy 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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