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Jan. 22, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:21
Ep. 284 - Oh, Is The Government Shut Down?

With all this excitement about Baby Hitler and punching teenagers, does anybody even remember that the government is shut down? Then, more mediocre presidential candidates enter the race! Finally, the culture of death in Holland on the 46th anniversary of Roe versus Wade. Date: 01-22-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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With all this excitement about baby Hitler and punching teenagers, does anybody even remember that the government is shut down?
We will analyze where the impasse stands.
Then, more mediocre presidential candidates enter the race for the Democrats.
We take a look at the case for Kamala and wonder how Kirsten Gillibrand ever got elected to the Senate in the first place.
Finally, the culture of death in Holland on the 46th anniversary of Roe vs.
Wade.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
You know, I do have to point out before we get started here, yesterday I spent virtually all of the show talking about how the mainstream media and politicians and pundits on the left and the right and parts yesterday I spent virtually all of the show talking about how the mainstream media and politicians and pundits on the left and the right and parts of the Catholic Church totally You know, I do have to point out before we get started here, yesterday I spent virtually all of the show talking about how the mainstream media and politicians and pundits on the left and the right and parts of the Catholic Church totally maligned, unfairly defamed, smeared those Covington High yesterday I spent virtually all of the show talking about how the mainstream media and politicians and pundits on
So I was talking about that for most of the show yesterday.
I then, right after the show, I went and I did an interview for EWTN, which is the Catholic News Channel.
And we were talking about the same issue.
We were talking a little bit about the March for Life.
Immediately after I finished the interview for the Catholic News Channel, I go to my computer and I am notified that my episode of my show for that day has been banned in the Holy See.
It was banned in Vatican City.
It was banned all around there.
And China.
And China.
Which, a note for the Holy See, when you find yourself on the side of China, you're probably doing something wrong, especially when it comes to free speech and matters of the church and the faith.
So I find that very amusing that my criticism, apparently, who knows, maybe it was a mistake, maybe it was a mistake from YouTube, YouTube, but apparently the one episode in which I really criticize some prominent priests and some prominent bishops and archbishops gets my show banned in the Holy See and the Vatican.
I don't know which force, if this was intentional, I don't know which forces.
in the Holy See have conspired to ban my very dangerous episode where I just lay out the facts of this event and non-traversy in Washington, D.C.
But whoever they are, I guess you're known by your friends and you're known by your adversaries.
So I get a real kick out of that.
One of the few popular podcasts hosted by a Catholic has been banned at least one episode in the Vatican City.
Very, very funny.
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So the government's shut down.
You probably don't remember that.
This is a wonderful moment in our politics where what should be the biggest story, Democrats have held this over Republicans' heads for years, if you shut down the government, the people are going to go crazy, they're going to throw you out of office.
It's proving the adage which Mitch Daniels, former governor of Indiana, said, which is you'll be amazed at how much government you won't miss.
And that's what we're seeing here.
People don't even know that this shutdown is happening.
We're talking about the Covington kids.
We're talking about baby Hitler.
Nobody notices because, frankly, at this point, it may be the strategy of the Trump administration to just keep these federal workers away forever.
These non-essential employees.
We are not missing any government.
So, what are we going to get?
Are we going to get a compromise?
Are we going to get a deal?
President Trump has offered a proposal, a deal, and the deal is pretty simple.
He's offering partial DACA relief, partial relief for the DREAMers or the illegal aliens brought here before the age of 18, in exchange for part of the border wall.
It's not amnesty for DACA. It's not the whole border wall.
It's a temporary relief, a few years where the DACA people won't get deported, for a little bit of wall funding.
And just take a guess at how the mainstream media and Democrats are treating this proposal.
Republicans are pushing for that vote on the president's so-called compromise.
That's the plan that would provide temporary protections for DREAMers in exchange for the $5.7 billion that the president has been demanding for his wall.
But Democrats say it is dead on arrival.
They will not vote for it.
They are adamant that they won't negotiate until Republicans agree to reopen the government.
And there are no signs that they're going to cave on that.
George, the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer saying, quote, it's very hard to negotiate when a gun is being held to your head.
Oh wow!
That's a big quote.
It's very hard to negotiate when a gun is being held to your head.
So the Democrats are saying they won't negotiate until Trump reopens the government.
Which is to say, they won't negotiate until Trump gives them everything they want and he gets nothing in return, rather.
They won't negotiate until Donald Trump gives up the entire negotiation.
And the mainstream media are applauding them for this.
You know, it would be pretty interesting to see how this would be covered if it were a Democrat president and the Republicans were the ones in the Congress who were refusing to come to the table or deal with any negotiations.
What President Trump offered is a totally fair proposal.
If anything, it's got people on the right very upset because they don't want any even partial amnesty for DACA. Now, the more moderate Democrats, the more reasonable Democrats, are the ones who are saying, hmm, possibly we should take this deal, possibly we should reopen the government, then we can actually try to negotiate around the edges, try to expand protections for DACA, whatever.
But the Democrats are being held hostage by a radical base.
And don't just take my word for it.
Take the word of a well-known Democrat, major former news anchorman, Tom Brokaw.
It's a very troubling time.
I think the Democrats are as much to blame right now as the Republicans are.
They've got control of the House, but they're mostly just, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not going to do what you want to do.
I haven't seen a grand plan.
And you've got the young people running through the halls who are the new members of Congress who are conducting pep rallies every day instead of getting together with the more moderate people or the people from The people from the Midwest who have won in Ohio and Wisconsin and Minnesota, where they need to win again if they're going to get control.
But they're being driven hard by the left.
So Tom Brokaw going pretty hard after specifically Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and all of these other freshman members of Congress who are holding their party hostage.
And I think he's got this right.
Tom Brokaw as a more old guard Democrat.
But look, he is a left winger.
He was the anchor of NBC News.
He is the guy.
He is the mainstream media.
And even he is pointing this out.
It's a tough spot for Pelosi.
Why would Pelosi take a deal when she's got to fight her base, which is rather radical, and they're the ones who go out and donate money.
They're the ones who go out and hand out palm cards.
They're the ones who matter when it comes to primary elections.
They're the base and the majority of Americans who do want a deal.
They're not answerable to that.
Even President Trump isn't really answerable.
But the way you see it right now, President Trump has offered a compromise.
Democrats have offered no compromise.
I mean, when they say, we will not negotiate until you reopen the government, the entire fight is over whether and how to reopen the government.
So they're just saying, we will not compromise.
For even Tom Brokaw, to point that out, is pretty illuminating.
Ann Coulter, of course, takes exactly the opposite approach.
Ann Coulter tweeted out, quote, 100 miles of border wall in exchange for amnestying millions of illegals.
So if we grant citizenship to a billion foreigners, maybe we can finally get a full border wall.
Because Ann, who previously had written E Pluribus Awesome in Trump We Trust, has been disillusioned with the administration and is very upset now because she thinks President Trump is going to cave on this.
And it's a serious fear.
But when conservatives are debating, is this a good proposal from President Trump or a bad proposal?
Is it a good deal or a bad deal?
Temporary relief for DACA in exchange for part of the border wall.
It actually seems like a pretty good deal, only in so much as the Dreamers, so-called, already have de facto amnesty.
At the moment, what they have is they're not being deported.
They're not really even being used as a political bargaining chip because they're the most sympathetic of the group of illegal aliens.
So all President Trump is saying in this deal is, okay, we'll put off deporting them a few more years in exchange for part of the border wall.
It gives both sides the ability to walk away, which is really what needs to happen for this government to reopen.
The other thing that needs to happen for the government to reopen is for people to care about the shutdown.
And I think ultimately that's why this shutdown is now on its, what, 32nd day or 33rd day longest shutdown in American history.
People don't feel it.
And so if they don't feel it, then President Trump gets to rally his base, Nancy Pelosi gets to rally her base, and there's no reason to reopen it.
I think broadly so far, this is still a win for Republicans.
The longer that this is drawn on, it's true that President Trump took a slight hit in popularity, but the wall has gotten much more popular.
And government has seemed much less necessary.
All of this bloated federal government has seemed a lot less necessary during the shutdown.
So I guess keep it up.
As long as President Trump doesn't offer a final fix of amnesty, as long as he doesn't say, in exchange for part of the wall, we will give these...
Illegal aliens, dreamers, we will give them permanent residency or amnesty or citizenship or whatever.
As long as he's short of that, the other added benefit is that he's showing the country that he's the negotiator and these guys are being intransigent.
Now we've got to get to speaking of intransigent Democrats, the 2020 nominees.
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I've got breaking, shocking news.
Kamala Harris is running for president.
We knew it was going to happen.
Here's the opener.
Truth.
Justice.
Decency.
Equality.
Freedom.
Democracy.
These aren't just words.
They're the values we as Americans cherish.
And they're all on the line now.
The future of our country depends on you and millions of others lifting our voices to fight for our American values.
That's why I'm running for President of the United States.
I'm running to lift those voices, to bring our voices together.
So please join me in Oakland on Sunday, January 27th, and go to kamalaharris.org to join our campaign.
Let's do this together.
Let's claim our future for ourselves, for our children, and for our country.
I'll see you in Oakland.
Wow, I just really got all that groove.
I feel like I'm in my mood mix just listening to that fun opener.
So it's kind of a boring, typical political platitudes.
But you do get a sense of the mood.
Peggy Noonan had a good column in the Wall Street Journal recently where she said, running for president now is not about ideas, it's not about proposals, it's about mood.
It's not even so much personality, it's mood.
What kind of mood are you in?
And so this is a fairly slick video.
Nothing really new here.
The Intercept had an interesting question, which is now percolating, which is the problem for Kamala Harris is whether or not a prosecutor can become the president or at least the Democrat nominee in the age of Black Lives Matter.
Brianna Gray had written that piece.
Because Kamala Harris, unfortunately for her, has a record.
She made her career as a prosecutor.
It's why all this cool, hip, my mood mix stuff is probably going to fall flat, is it's not that authentic.
She's a lawyer.
She's a prosecutor.
Obviously a pretty successful prosecutor.
She became a Attorney General of California, then Senator, and now she's running for President.
She was pretty tough, pretty tough on crime.
But in an age where even Republicans are running away from being tough on crime, in an age where President Trump is bragging about how he's letting a lot of criminals out of prison, is a prosecutor really going to work to...
nation.
I'm not so sure about that.
And so this is a real problem for her.
And I think she recognizes that it's a real problem.
So what she's doing is she's totally running in the direction of identity politics.
She's been doing this for a long time, but she's really honed in on it.
So when did she release her announcement?
Martin Luther King Day.
She's identifying herself.
In that video, the mood mix video, she talked about how she's from Oakland, about how she was a young black woman and that's why songs about young black women really inspired her.
She said that her favorite song is from Funkadelic and she's really playing into the mood of these identity politics.
This is a real trouble for her though, because we're in an age of 4K video.
We're in an age of Instagram Live.
We're in an age of filming our dental cleanings.
We're in an age where it's very difficult to hide your genuine self.
This is sort of an advantage for the public.
You know, when Franklin Roosevelt was president, most people didn't realize he was in a wheelchair because the press covered it up.
The press would cover up for JFK's marital infidelities.
They'd cover up for LBJ's many marital infidelities.
There was a huge distance.
Even President Reagan, not infidelities, but President Reagan was a scripted president.
He would write all his lines out really carefully.
He was an actor.
He was really polished.
There was a distance between the candidate, the president, and the people.
That is gone.
We've elected a reality TV star president.
And really, Barack Obama was the first one to advance this because he was the first president of the social media age.
Donald Trump has blown it up.
The press secretary, Sarah Sanders, doesn't need to give press conferences because President Trump is tweeting all the time.
He was joking about this.
He said, I told Sarah she doesn't need to go out there to the podium because you'll all lie about her anyway.
And what's the difference?
We're communicating to the American people.
And it's true.
He is.
He's communicating himself through Twitter.
And in this age of constant contact, of high-definition video, I don't know that Kamala Harris can portray herself as this fun, mood mix, you know, introductory video dancing candidate who's a mood, who's a mood of identity, and hide her record.
I mean, she was a prosecutor when you're an unknown entity, such as Barack Obama was, really, before he ran for president.
When people don't know a lot about you, they can throw their hopes and dreams on you.
When you're a known entity, especially when you're in a field of probably 20 Democrat candidates, they are going to dig up every single case that she ever worked on.
There's already stories that are percolating of how she fought to keep an innocent man in jail.
In the age of criminal justice reform, in the age of Me Too, I'm not sure that that is going to work really well.
But...
She's certainly not the worst candidate.
Speaking of highly mediocre candidates, Kirsten Gillibrand continues to humiliate herself, and this time it came at the hands of none other than Jake Tapper.
You said Trump's immigration positions are racist.
That's the word you use, racist.
Now, as you know, you were more conservative early on in your career on immigration.
CNN's K-Files out with a new report this week on your 2008 campaign website and a mailer sent from your congressional office back then, a long time ago, but still in your public life.
Take a look.
You said you were a, quote, firm opponent of giving, quote, Amnesty to illegal aliens, unquote.
You said English should be, quote, the official language of the United States.
You called for expediting deportation of undocumented immigrants.
Now, I know you have very different positions today, but let me ask you, if Trump's immigration positions are racist, were they racist when you held some of those positions as well?
They certainly weren't empathetic, and they were not kind, and I did not think about suffering in other people's lives.
Oh my gosh, that is so brutal.
That is so brutal.
I mean, Jake Tapper does this every once in a while.
He's usually very frustrating, and he's a left winger and all that.
Every once in a while, though, you've got to give him credit.
He does come swinging around and plays fair, at least briefly.
And so he asks this question, you know, Senator Gillibrand, do you still beat your wife?
And she stammers.
She has no answer.
And this is the problem of Kirsten Gillibrand.
If it's a problem for Kamala Harris, it's much worse for Kirsten Gillibrand.
She stands for nothing.
She means nothing.
She is Hillary without the charisma and utter mediocrity.
It is a question as to how she ever became a senator in New York in the first place.
It's probably because New York politics are very smoke-filled room.
They're decided by a corrupt cabal of people.
It all takes place on the state level up in Albany, which is in the middle of nowhere and has a lot of We should prioritize citizens over non-citizens.
Now, her party has run far to the left, and because she's still just nothing, she's got to run to wherever the heat is, and she's got to become something that she isn't.
Jake Tapper wouldn't let her get away with it.
Other people aren't letting her get away with it either, and the 20 other Democrats who are going to be running for president are certainly going to skewer this poor woman.
She even got skewered on ABC's This Week trying to run so far to the left.
Senator, lastly, I want to get your reaction to the BuzzFeed report suggesting President Trump instructed his former attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower Moscow deal.
The special counsel's office disputed that report.
What was your reaction and did Democrats seize on that report too quickly?
The report is highly concerning, Martha.
It just shows more evidence that perhaps this president did obstruct justice.
It shows that...
Even though the special counsel disputes it?
Martha, it raises a question in my mind that is very serious.
And so what we need is Mueller to be able to finish his investigation.
And one of the things that I'm most concerned about is that Senator McConnell will not let a bipartisan bill come to the Senate floor to allow us to protect that investigation, to make sure he cannot be fired prematurely.
And the law says he can only be fired for cause.
And so what our bill does is it goes to a judge.
So a judge can make an in-camera decision about whether this was done properly and preserve all the evidence.
So we have to protect the Mueller investigation.
We need the facts.
And so this just shows how urgent that investigation is.
Okay.
Thanks very much for joining us this morning, Senator.
Thank you, Martha.
Oh, it's so awkward to watch because this was the moment in English class when the teacher asks, you know, what did you think about the book?
What did you think about chapter four?
And then, you know, you didn't read the chapter.
And so you say, well, you know, and you just spout all these vagaries.
And she said, what?
What are you...
You're talking about a different book.
That character is not in the book.
And then you just start spinning.
And another thing is I had a bagel for breakfast this morning.
And anyway, thank you so much for asking me the question.
Thank you so, so awkward and cringe-inducing.
Because now she's saying that a totally discredited report from BuzzFeed is evidence that we have to attack Donald Trump.
I don't know.
What is it evidence of?
It doesn't mean anything.
The BuzzFeed hit job was so egregiously wrong that the special counsel, which famously does not speak to the press, issued its first statement in a year to say it wasn't true.
What is she talking about?
Just a total mediocrity.
And yet she'll be running.
And so you look around the field and you think, gosh, Kamala Harris is relatively good compared to her.
Joe Biden is probably going to run.
Who knows, though?
He hasn't been tested in a little while.
Fedor is a fine candidate, I guess, but he's a straight white man, ostensibly, in an intersectional race.
Bernie is 100 years old.
And you start looking, and they're all weak candidates.
But there is one candidate that the Democrats agree they want to see run for president.
One candidate, so strong, so powerful, so compelling, that 74% of Democrats want her to be their nominee for president.
Do you know who that person is?
We will get to why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is actually offering the American people something that they want.
We will get to the heart of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's legitimate appeal in just a second.
But first, it's almost time for our next episode of The Conversation.
Tonight, at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific, Drew will be taking all of your questions, every query that has burned in your hearts, and he will answer them live on air.
Plus, Elisha.
Plus, Elisha Krauss will be there, too.
As always, this episode will be free for everyone to watch on Facebook and YouTube, but only subscribers can ask the questions.
Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by Andrew Klavan tonight at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific, and join the conversation.
If you're on Facebook and YouTube, go to dailywire.com.
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I'm getting banned in Vatican City.
I can't take this, okay?
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Probably a fatwa will come next.
I can't be out there on these public channels anymore.
Man, give us $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership.
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We'll be right back with a lot more.
A new Axios Survey Monkey poll shows that 74% would vote for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
This is very, very terrifying.
I don't think that's 74% of Democrats.
I don't think that's 74% of the country.
Highly doubt that.
But she has a legitimate appeal, and she is legitimately showing us something about politics.
And some conservatives don't want to admit it because she's very ignorant and doesn't speak like a terribly educated or serious person.
But she is offering something real.
First of all, she's pretty good at politics.
I think she's basically only ever done politics.
She's been an activist.
I guess she was briefly a bartender, and she was just always...
Trying to run for office, and then she became a very young congresswoman.
Here is just the sort of example, though, of her natural aptitude for politics.
What would you say to some of those people who have concerns about antisemitism within the Women's March group?
Absolutely.
Well, first of all, I think that right now, in this moment, in the United States, we have to center this conversation.
I think that concerns of antisemitism with the current administration and the White House are absolutely valid, and we need to make sure that we are I think right now, as it pertains to today, it's so important to recognize why all of these women are coming together.
And the reason all of these people are coming together is to make sure that the rights of women are protected and advanced.
Okay, so you'll notice she didn't answer the question.
The question was, what do you have to say about the anti-Semitism in the Women's March?
And she said, yes, we do need to talk about anti-Semitism in the Trump administration.
And women are coming together in solidarity.
That's what she said.
But she did it either because she's...
Shallow minded or because she's a shrewd politician, and I think it's both, but it leans on the latter, is she doesn't want to answer this question about the Women's March, which is highly anti-Semitic.
What does it benefit her?
How does she advance by answering that reporter's question?
It's an old rule of politics.
Don't answer the question you're asked.
Answer the question you want to ask.
Or you want to be asked.
And so she says, yes, we do need to talk about anti-Semitism in the Trump administration.
Which is, by the way, patently absurd.
They named a train station in Israel after Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has been a great friend to the Jewish people.
Many presidents have promised to move our U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
They've all flopped on it, except for Donald Trump, who actually did it.
His senior advisor is an Orthodox Jew.
His daughter converted to Judaism.
His grandchild is Jewish.
It's just insane to suggest that he's anti-Semitic.
But it doesn't matter.
She says it convincingly.
She knows how to pivot, and she knows how to do it shamelessly.
So she's got the political chops.
Doesn't mean that she's smart.
It doesn't mean that she's educated.
She's neither of those things.
But she is shrewd, and she's got good political chops.
So what is she selling?
She's selling radicalism and chaos.
I think that the part of it that is generational is that...
Millennials and people and, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we're like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change.
And your biggest issue is, your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it?
And like, this is the war.
This is our World War II. You know, climate change actually is our World War II. That is correct.
She is right.
Generations all face their own problems.
So the greatest generation, as it's called, rightly so in modern history...
Their challenge was World War II. Then the baby boomers, their challenge was the destruction of the culture, which they helped to advance.
Now, our challenge is imaginary.
That's our challenge.
We have imaginary challenges.
And we have imaginary challenges that are really driving us crazy.
The millennials are the most depressed, anxious, stressed out, suicidal generation in recent history.
25% of American college students, according to an ASU study, suffer PTSD from the 2016 election.
Clinically high levels of stress.
Based on imaginary things.
It's not based on real things.
Materially, as a matter of peace, as a matter of foreign and domestic policy, we've never really been doing any better than we are now.
But in our imagination, things are really bad.
So what she's saying is that in 12 years, the world is going to end because of...
The snow monster, or the sun monster, or climate change, or whatever.
Nobody suggests this.
There's no evidence of this, of course, at all.
And let's just take a little bet.
I'm pretty good at bets.
I got $400 from Ben over there.
I would like to bet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the same amount that Ben and I bet, $400, that in 2031, the world will not have ended.
Okay?
Alexandria, I know you watch this show.
Do you take the bet?
Just tweet me, let me know.
$400.
You say the world's going to end in 12 years.
I say the world will not end in 12 years.
Do you take the bet?
I bet she won't take that bet.
Because what she's offering is this radicalism.
What she's offering is this chaos.
And the sneaky little truth is that that's what people want.
Specifically what people want is a sense of purpose.
And this is something that other forms of government and other cultures are much better at instilling than our post-modern democratic culture, liberal culture.
In our culture, All that we can talk about is freedom or equality.
Okay, I like those things.
I like spiritual equality and I like freedom, ordered liberty.
But there's not a sense of purpose.
This has always been the critique of liberal society, is that you don't have a sense of purpose.
It just leads to a society of consumption or it leads to a society of decadence or it leads to, okay, fine.
And what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is saying is, vote for me and we will save the world, which is on the brink of destruction and which will not exist in 12 years unless you take up this great crusade, this great cause and vote for me.
That's what she's saying and that's compelling.
Because everybody wants purpose.
But in particular, in a culture which is decadent, which is liberal...
People need to feel that there's some meaning to their lives.
Especially now, our culture is so materialistic.
We just think, oh well, people are born, life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Then we turn to worm food and we die and it all doesn't mean anything at all.
And she's saying, you can save the world if you vote for me.
That's compelling.
People want that.
People also want to frame politics in moral language, as she does.
But do you think it is moral for individuals to, for instance, do we live in a moral world that allows for billionaires?
Is that a moral outcome in and of itself?
No, it's not.
It's not.
And I think it's important to say that I don't think that necessarily means that all billionaires are immoral.
It is not to say that someone like Bill Gates, for example, or Warren Buffet are immoral people.
I do not believe that.
First of all, it is to say that.
If having a billion dollars is immoral, then people who have a billion dollars are immoral people.
The reason she's qualifying her statement is she wants all that good, good billionaire money for when she runs for president.
So she hates billionaires to a point.
But also, what a stupid conversation.
The fact that people on the left think Ta-Nehisi Coates is...
Not just that they think he's a great mind.
The fact that they think that he's even a middling mind is just astounding, and it shows you that we're living in the dark ages.
But you're having this conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I think if I went over to Ben's house and I watched his children say goo-goo-ga-ga to one another, I'd probably learn more.
But they're having this conversation.
He says, you know, is it moral to have billionaires?
She goes, no, it's not.
What does that mean?
She's saying that allowing people to prosper and keep their own property is immoral.
So therefore what she's saying is that stealing other people's property is moral.
It's not just moral, that's the moral corrective to the immorality of keeping your own property and to the immorality of prospering.
It's obviously insane, but it's framing a debate in moral language, which until recently, Republicans and conservatives have failed to do.
We talk about reforming the debt.
We should reform the entitlement state.
We should take care of our debt.
We should take care of our deficits.
This is a very important issue.
But you're not going to do that by...
Having policy wonks tell you about how much money they're going to save you on your retirement plan.
That's not compelling to anybody.
But Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking in moral terms and doing it in the cynical way, which is to vilify a whole group of people, and doing it also in a cynical way because she's substituting immorality for morality is pretty bad.
But it's at least compelling and it's at least giving people what they want.
The other thing people want is courage.
On a scale of zero to some, how many f*** do you give?
I think it's, um, zero.
That's what I thought.
Funny answer.
Pretty sad that we're in this culture now where a network late-night host uses that word to a member of Congress on television, and everyone's applauding and hooting and hollering.
That's kind of sad for the culture.
I'm all for speaking like a sailor in various specific circumstances.
That's not the circumstance that debases our culture and our government.
Nevertheless, that's what she's saying.
She's learned this from Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the king of this.
He says, I don't care.
I'm going to build the wall ten feet higher.
I'm going to make you pay.
Listen, you.
Listen, mother effer, whatever.
It's that attitude which people want.
Some people who were never Trump criticize this attitude.
I don't criticize it.
People genuinely want it.
We want to see some political courage.
We don't want spineless cowards like Mitt Romney to go around and be mealy-mouthed and speak out of both sides of their mouth and then stab his supporters in the back.
They don't want that.
They don't want people who are disloyal to a cause or to their constituents.
They want courage and they want people to stick up for them and fight for them.
And, and she's doing that.
She offers that to a number of people.
So I'm not surprised at all.
And because she has the political chops to get some media attention, I'm not surprised that 74% of Democrats would vote for her for president.
I think she, Obviously, some of this is name identification, so a lot of people don't recognize the name Kirsten Gillibrand, but they certainly recognize Alexandria's name.
I assume a lot of this is going to fade away.
over the next six years before Alexandria is old enough to run for president.
But for right now, she's offering something that people want.
And I think President Trump offers that as well.
And all the other conservative politicians need to figure out how to offer that too, because Trump ain't going to stick around forever, especially if the mainstream media and Bob Mueller get their way.
So we've got to figure out how to emulate both of them.
And And while emulating the form of them, bring the content, which is real moral discourse, real policy solutions, real ways to reform our government, and real ways to reawaken an American spirit, which is lagging.
All of those statistics about millennials remain true.
They're depressed, they're anxious, they're stressed, and they're suicidal.
That's a cultural malaise.
That's a spiritual malaise.
And we need to figure out a way to re-excite We have also got to talk about some breaking news.
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, has decided to lift a temporary injunction against the transgender ban from the military.
So I know that wording is a little complicated.
You know, the Trump administration...
I'll even rewind a little further.
For all of human history, men who think that they're women have not been allowed to serve in the American military because they have a pretty significant mental disorder and it creates some troubles on the battlefield.
So Barack Obama, toward the end of his administration, decided to change that and say that men who think they're women can serve in the military.
This This creates some morale issues.
President Trump came in and said, no, we're going to reverse that.
America did very well until three years ago.
They did just fine without allowing people who are confused about their gender to serve in the military.
So we're just going to go back to the thing we've done for all but the last three years.
And people lost their minds.
There were court orders, injunctions.
They stopped it.
What the Supreme Court today did in a 5-4 decision, write down the expected lines.
the five conservatives against the four liberals said that the Pentagon could prevent people who are confused about their sex from serving in the military.
This makes perfect sense.
This is very good.
Obviously, transgenderism is a mental disorder.
This affects only a handful of service members.
It doesn't affect a lot of them.
But the principle affects a lot more people.
If it were just about a handful of people, then you could always say, leave it to the discretion of their commanding officers or whatever and make the decisions on a per-person basis.
But because the left has made this a national issue, they've done that because they're trying to push through a whole slew of premises.
Premises including whether men and women are different, whether there's a legitimate sexual difference between men and women, whether there's a legitimate difference between marriage and various new definitions of marriage.
They're trying to attack the nature of objective truth and, of course, they're trying to attack the tradition.
Is there an objective reality?
And further, do we have a right to govern ourselves?
If we elect a commander-in-chief and he says people with a certain mental condition are not to be serving in the armed forces, are we allowed to do that?
Or are a bunch of leftist bureaucrats going to come in and tell us no?
That is a real serious question.
I also have to bring this up.
Unfortunately, we're not going to get to some other things today, but we'll get to it tomorrow.
Those Covington kids, I talked to them.
I talked about that yesterday.
All of the mainstream media, the politicians, the church, everybody who condemned those kids wrongly, defamed them.
New evidence came out.
Most of them didn't apologize.
Covington Catholic School had to cancel school today.
One journalist for INE Entertainment, Erica Briss, has been fired for saying that he wanted to kill the kids.
He said, quote, I don't know what it says about me, but I've truly lost the ability to articulate the hysterical rage, nausea, and heartache this makes me feel.
I just want these people to die.
Simple as that.
Every single one of them and their parents.
That guy at least got fired.
What about the others?
What about the others?
When are the other journalists going to be fired?
When are the other politicians going to be thrown out of office?
When is the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Covington and Father James Martin and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz and Bishop Foyce and all of those people, when are they going to apologize?
When are they going to have consequences?
This reminds me of the Catholic Church scandal.
The sex scandal comes out.
There were cover-ups.
There were this and this.
Oh, there's going to be a reckoning.
And when is it?
Rarely do you see a bishop resign.
Rarely do you see consequences.
It's outrageous.
This is literally the same issue in that we're talking about child abuse.
We're talking about that in the Catholic Church cover-up.
We're talking about that here with journalists, mostly vast majority left-wing journalists, smearing and defaming kids, ruining their lives.
When are they going to face consequences?
All those celebrities who tweeted things about them, doxing them, Kathy Griffin, when are they going to face consequences?
When is the diocese going to do it?
I don't know.
I hope soon.
A lawyer named Robert Barnes has offered to represent the kids, to sue the outlets that defamed them, specifically Maggie Haberman at the New York Times, who was calling for the kids to be expelled.
There need to be consequences here.
I wrote a piece today, a column at foxnews.com.
And it was outlining how the Covington thing happened, what it says about our culture, and who's at fault.
And someone wrote in to me and said, Michael, you're beating a dead horse.
This was a left winger.
Move on, move on.
It's okay.
It doesn't matter.
Move on, move on.
I bet the left wants us to move on.
I bet the left, they tried their character assassination hit job.
It failed because thankfully someone else took a video and proved them wrong.
And now they say, okay, it's old news.
It's the Bill Clinton playbook.
Oh, it's old news.
No, move on, move on.
No, we're not going to move on.
We're not going to move on until somebody faces consequences.
I hope these kids sue the New York Times.
I hope they get a lot of money from the New York Times.
I hope they sue the individual journalists who defamed them, who intentionally deceived the public and assassinated these kids' characters.
I hope they sue them into the ground.
That would be a wonderful thing.
And we're going to bring this up.
Not all the time, but every once in a while.
We're going to bring this up until they face consequences.
Because they won't stop.
The left is saying now, there's a photo of the kids 10 years ago at this school wearing blackface.
That was going around the internet.
It's not true.
Alumni of the school are saying they did this at all of the various games.
They were different colors.
So one was black out, one was blue out, and they were all dressed in blue.
The other was another color.
And they all wore these, which of course makes sense.
You would expect if there were 20 people at a high school wearing blackface, it probably would have made the news.
Don't you think?
Isn't that a little weird?
Isn't that a little convenient?
They're going to go.
They're all ready.
I'll tell you what's going to happen next.
The vultures in the media are going to go through all of these kids' backgrounds.
They're going to try to assassinate their character.
And all of this, all of it is beside the point.
Did some kids at this school wear blackface 10 years ago?
It looks like they didn't.
But it's all beside the point.
The point is, did the kids harass the Indian guy?
Did the Indian guy and the black Israelites harass the kids?
That's the only point.
And they lost on their major point.
They were exposed as liars.
So now they're trying...
The next step is going to happen is they're going to find that one of these kids said something racist ten years ago or something, or sexist or whatever, on Facebook.
And then they're going to go after him for that.
Then they're going to find out one of the kids made a pass at a girl at a party six years ago.
And that's going to be a new skit.
See how bad, how awful these kids are?
It's all beside the point.
Was the mainstream media narrative correct?
Or did the mainstream media defame these kids?
They defamed them.
They should pay for it.
They should pay for it dearly.
Got a lot more to get to, but too bad.
We'll do it tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'll see you then.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Danny D'Amico.
Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.
Production assistant Nick Sheehan.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, our journalistic firefighters get down to the crucial business of investigating high school students.
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez says the world will end in 12 years.
And Democrats play the 2020 game.
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