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Feb. 28, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:47
Ep. 306 - The Art Of No Deal

President Trump walks away from the North Korea summit in Vietnam. Then, Nancy Pelosi hints at impeachment, Julian Castro calls for reparations, and the Democrat First Lady of Virginia passes out cotton to black students at the Governor’s Mansion. Date: 02-28-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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President Trump walks away from the North Korea summit in Vietnam.
The anti-Trump crowd assails him, but walking away actually was among the best possible outcomes.
We will discuss why.
Then, Nancy Pelosi hints at impeachment, Julian Castro calls for reparations, and the Democrat First Lady of Virginia passes out cotton to black students at the governor's mansion.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
That was not a monologue.
I was not telling jokes.
I just read a headline at the end, which is that the first lady of Virginia, whose husband just wore blackface and tried to moonwalk during his apology press conference, was passing out cotton.
To black students at the governor's mansion.
That's just terrific.
No way.
You can't really punch that up.
There's no way to make that funnier.
A lot to get to today.
We have to cover Trump walking out of this Vietnam summit with Kim Jong Un.
I think it was very good that he walked away, and a lot of people are getting this completely wrong.
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Okay.
President Trump walked out of this Vietnam summit with Kim Jong-un.
Other than the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula for not very much...
In the way of American concessions, this is probably the best way this could have turned out.
And yet for some reason President Trump's critics won't take yes for an answer.
Here's President Trump finally describing why this summit didn't work out.
They wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn't do that.
It was a very productive two days but sometimes you have to walk.
Sometimes you have to walk.
That could have been the title of today's show.
Sometimes you have to walk.
Thank goodness that President Trump knows this.
Because people are mocking him now.
On the left and the right, they're saying, I thought it was the art of the deal.
I thought you could make deals, President Trump.
Now you're walking away.
The willingness to walk away is crucial to making a deal.
And in fact, if you are not willing to walk away, as many presidents have not been willing to do...
Then you give away all of your leverage.
Then there's nothing left for you.
A lot of people are very happy that these talks broke down.
On both the left and the right, but here, of course, is CNN, Jim Acosta, walking hairdo, gloating about it.
So it's strike one in Singapore.
He didn't get a deal with Kim Jong-un.
Now it's strike two in Hanoi.
Once again, no deal to denuclearize North Korea, something that he's staked a lot of his legacy, a lot of his presidency on.
And Jim and Christiane, in the backdrop of all of this is what happened back in Washington up on Capitol Hill at the House Oversight Committee when the president's former fixer really just blasted away at his former boss, accusing him of being a liar and a cheat and a criminal basically, and so on.
And what was a bombshell hearing up on Capitol Hill, the president presumably will be asked about that as well.
Yeah, and did I tell you, and Michael Cohen, he said he's racist too, and he, Jim, you're supposed to be covering the North Korea.
Yeah, no, I know, I know, but just, you hear about Stormy Daniels?
Yeah, okay.
What a jerk.
So, President Trump walks away.
What I want to know from the critics on the right who oppose Trump walking away and from Jim Acosta and CNN and all of the people on the left mocking him, what was the alternative?
What was the alternative?
I guess one alternative is you never speak to North Korea.
You allow tensions to continue to ramp up as they have been since they killed Otto Warmbier and possibly deal with a land war on the Korean Peninsula where you're risking killing, what, 30,000, 100,000 civilians in Seoul?
I don't know.
What does that mean?
Okay, maybe you're willing to do that.
Maybe you think that's the best option.
Or...
The other alternative is the Iran nuclear deal all over again.
You're so insistent on getting a deal that you'll give away everything Say, well, we're already here.
We're at the summit.
I can't possibly walk away.
Jim Acosta will make fun of me.
So, okay, here, we'll take away all the sanctions.
North Korea will completely open you up to the international community, completely open you up to international trade, and you only have to get rid of, like, one nuclear site.
Okay, and that's a deal.
That's what Barack Obama would have done.
That's the Iran nuclear deal.
Walking away shows a position of strength because the United States doesn't need to engage in these summits.
We don't need to give away anything.
We don't need to lift sanctions on North Korea.
It's not as though the sanctions are weakening internationally.
It's not as though there's some massive international pressure to lift the sanctions.
Fine.
If they don't want to play ball, we don't need to play ball.
That's the position of strength.
A weaker president would have felt pressured into coming to a deal at any price.
So who's defending Trump?
Obviously, I am.
The usual suspects that you would expect from Trump world have been defending him.
Some people on the right, it's sort of a mixed reaction broadly on the right.
He's also getting praise from some pretty strange sources.
He's getting praise from Joe Scarborough, who the president loves to mock and who Joe Scarborough doesn't seem to feel any love lost with President Trump.
And even Joe Scarborough admits, this is probably the right thing.
I would just say, at least for me personally, that seems like the best of all circumstances, where the president continues to communicate with a country that we were close to war with a year ago, that most foreign policy experts gave us a 50-50 chance of having a land war in the Korean Peninsula a year ago,
and talked but didn't give away anything, which was the great fear, especially after the Cohen testimony yesterday, which we're going to get to in one moment.
That's right.
The issue here is sometimes you've got to walk away.
And Joe Scarborough, like a broken clock twice a day, sort of gets it right.
His guest right afterwards says, yep, sometimes you've got to walk away.
Even beyond the mainstream media, you've got Susan Rice, who is a left-wing foreign policy expert, you know, served for Barack Obama.
She was his flack.
She was the sacrificial lamb who was sent out after Benghazi to lie for the administration.
It really tarred her career.
But even Susan Rice, who loves every opportunity to criticize Trump, Looks at the situation and says, yeah, this was the right thing to do.
I want to note for people that you wrote the other day in the New York Times of the widespread fear that President Trump would give away too much, be too desperate for a deal.
Did he make the right move in walking away?
Yes, he did.
For the United States to have agreed to lift all sanctions in the absence of real and complete denuclearization would have been a tremendous mistake.
Of course.
Of course.
And that's not just the opinion of left-wingers like Susan Rice.
That's the opinion of right-wingers like the advisors to the president, like John Bolton, like the president himself, like me.
This is just common sense.
Actually, the criticism of President Trump with regard to North Korea is that he's been too credulous.
He's been too gullible.
Oh, he'll let this strongman, chubby little dictator push him around.
He'll believe him.
We have no reason to believe Kim Jong-un.
And so the fear going into this summit was that among people who think the president is an idiot, I'm not among those people, they said, oh...
Kim Jong-un is going to razzle dazzle him.
He's going to promise him the world in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
Trump's going to lift the sanctions.
And guess what's going to happen?
Kim Jong-un isn't going to denuclearize.
And then it's the end of the world.
Then you've got no leverage whatsoever on North Korea.
And then this shows that the president is not overly credulous, is not gullible with regard to Kim Jong-un or North Korea.
He was looking to achieve something, but not at any cost.
That's a very reasonable position to be in.
What is the cost?
This is what I want to know from the critics on the right and the left who are mocking him or upset that he walked away from this summit.
What What did we lose?
Well, we walked around with a strong man.
We elevated a strong man to meet with the president.
Okay.
Like, whatever.
Fine.
Okay.
We wanted something, which is the denuclearization of Korea.
We wanted to end a conflict that has gone on now for 70 years.
And one thing that we were willing to wager for that, one offering, was that he could take some pictures with President Trump.
Okay, fine.
Nothing really ventured, nothing really gained, but nothing really ventured, nothing really lost.
It was a good shot.
I'm glad that President Trump had the political courage to take a risk here, albeit a small risk, and then that he had the political prudence and judgment to walk away when it looked like Kim Jong-un was trying to pull a fast one.
Now, the one quote, this is the quote that people are assailing Trump for.
And this doesn't sound good.
I totally agree.
When you listen to it, you think, ugh, did he have to?
I wish he didn't have to say that.
This is the line that all of the mainstream media are going to be playing for the next 48 hours.
Those prisons are rough.
They're rough places.
He tells me that he didn't know about it, and I will take him at his word.
Talking about the killing of Otto Warmbier, that American student who was killed by North Korea, came back and he was brain dead.
He died shortly thereafter.
He says, well, he's asked, did Kim Jong-un know about this?
Did Kim Jong-un do this?
And he says, look, those prisons are terrible.
Kim Jong-un says he didn't know about it, so I guess I'll take him at his word.
Yeah, I get it.
I get it.
What you want him to do is go out there and say, this jerk, he killed an American student!
And then, like John Wayne, Trump is going to pull a gun out of his jacket and shoot Kim Jong-un on the side.
That would feel really good.
But that is not reality.
That is not what's going to happen.
By the way, for what Trump said here...
Factually, it's probably true.
I don't think that Kim Jong-un ordered the killing of Otto Warmbier because he had nothing to gain and a lot to lose from it.
I think probably what happened is they took in Otto Warmbier, they tortured him endlessly, And they tortured him a little too much and something went wrong.
And then the kid went brain dead.
We still don't know exactly why or how he went brain dead.
Why or how his torture and his incarceration killed him.
And then I think the North Korean regime was terrified.
I mean, I think they really wanted to rough him up and use him as leverage.
A guy who's dead or dying is not much leverage.
They didn't really extract any concessions from it.
So just as a technical matter, maybe he's right.
But what people are really criticizing him for is that he didn't just assail Kim Jong-un for the North Korean killing of Otto Warmbier.
Now, Kim Jong-un says, I didn't know.
Yeah, maybe he didn't.
I don't think he ordered the killing.
Sure, maybe he didn't know.
Maybe some guard took it too far.
Yeah, okay.
Now, is that awful?
Yes.
Does that make an American's blood boil?
Yes.
Does it make us want to go to war?
Yes.
Here is where you see that Donald Trump is the exact opposite of Barack Obama.
We'll explain how in a minute.
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This controversy over President Trump's answer to the question about Otto Warmbier, he says, well, Kim Jong-un says he didn't know.
I guess I'll take him at his word.
Even though those prisons are really tough.
Those prisons are really tough, so maybe that explains it.
He's being assailed on both sides for that.
What this shows is that Trump is the opposite of Obama.
Barack Obama talked real tough.
Oh, he said the prettiest words, didn't he?
And then he gave away the form.
That was the series.
Oh, red lines.
We're talking tough on the mullahs.
And then take anything you want.
Flying airplanes full of American cash to drop off with the Iranian mullahs.
Thanking Iran for taking our sailors hostage.
Anything to get those sailors back.
Give away everything.
All concessions.
Concessions to Syria.
Concessions to everybody.
But he would talk tough.
He'd give good speeches, wouldn't he?
And President Trump doesn't talk tough on Kim Jong-un.
He talks like he's negotiating.
He says, well, Kim Jong-un, he's a smart guy.
Yeah, he's a smart guy.
Yeah, well, he says he didn't know about his state's killing of Otto Warmbier.
I guess I'll take him at his word.
Okay, so he talks really nice.
He talks in a flattering way.
But then he doesn't give away anything.
Which of those two guys do you want to lead your country?
The one who tells you every pretty little thing you want to hear and then sells out your country from underneath you?
Or the guy who's willing to make rhetorical concessions but never make any hard concessions, any tangible concessions?
Obviously, you want the latter.
Walking away reminds me of Reykjavik.
It reminds me of Ronald Reagan, 1986.
Reagan is there with Gorbachev.
They're talking about denuclearization.
At one point, they're talking about complete denuclearization.
And these talks are going exceedingly well between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
And then, at the very end, Gorbachev says, okay, you've got to get rid of the strategic defense initiative.
This was the initiative that was criticized by Reagan's detractors as Star Wars.
You're going to be able to shoot missiles out of the sky, all this brand new radical technology.
Technology that at the time we didn't even have.
And Reagan said, how dare you?
How could you do this?
And he walked right out, furious, walked right out of the summit.
Listen to how Trump's detractors are talking about this summit and wonder how would they have talked about Reykjavik.
Say, oh, they should have known ahead of time what the terms were.
What a complete failure of Trump's negotiating.
What a complete failure of planning.
What a complete failure of our credulity with regard to North Korea.
Oh, how embarrassing.
We legitimized this slave master tyrant by appearing with him as an American president.
Oh, what a total catastrophe.
What dunces in the White House.
That's what they're saying about President Trump's summit with Kim Jong-un.
Which of those lines could you not apply to Reagan at Reykjavik?
You could apply all of the same lines.
And what happened as a result of Reykjavik?
One year later, we got a nuclear treaty with the Soviet Union.
Reykjavik was 86.
We got a treaty in 87.
Am I saying that's what's going to happen in North Korea?
No.
No, I'm hopeful, but I'm not optimistic.
There's a distinction there.
I hope that it works out.
I think it's possible that it will work out.
But Kim Jong-un is no Mikhail Gorbachev.
Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan.
These are different times, different circumstances, different relationship.
But the summit itself, the principle itself of walking out of a summit without a deal, that's exactly the same.
1986, 2019.
And the arguments for walking away are way stronger than the arguments for giving away the farm.
This is short of the complete denuclearization of North Korea for no American concession.
This is the best outcome we possibly could have gotten from President Trump here.
So, I guess nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Good job, President Trump, in not selling out the country.
Your predecessors might have done that.
Wish we could have gotten a deal.
Eh.
This is my feeling on all of the news this week.
Michael Cohen, bombshell, bombshell, eh.
The North Korean summit walks away, eh, pretty good, okay, fine, whatever.
Now, on the other side of the aisle, Nancy Pelosi is outlining her priorities.
This actually has not really been covered by any major news outlets, or it's been very undercovered.
Nancy Pelosi, speaking at Howard University, outlines the Democrats' plan For the new Congress, now that they have control of the House of Representatives.
And it really reveals that Nancy Pelosi is a very masterful political manipulator.
And she lists her top nine, and then she says, number ten, ooh, that's going to be a little surprise.
Ooh, you're going to have to be ready for that.
Here she is.
So, I have this one card that says, we have one through ten for the people...
One is clean up government.
Two is the infrastructure bill.
Three is prescription drugs, lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Four is the Voting Rights Act.
Five is the Equality Act, which is to end discrimination against the LGBTQ community.
Six is the DREAM Act to protect our DREAMers.
Seven is paycheck fares, equal pay for equal work, building on President Obama's work.
Eight is today, H.R. 8, House Resolution 8, bipartisan background checks.
Nine will be a climate bill.
And then we have ten reserved for something special.
You have to be ready.
Ten reserved for something special.
You have to be ready.
Okay, people are wondering, what could she be talking about?
Because if you listen to the first nine, she basically covers all the bases, all the leftist bases.
The one policy that she's missing within there is Medicare for All, this socialist, totally socialist medicine.
But I don't think that's missing.
I don't think that's what she's referring to because she does talk about lowering prescription drug prices.
So if she were going to push for Medicare for All, socialist medicine, she would just include it in there.
It would be redundant for her to have both of those.
The other thing that you notice about those first nine is they're actually all plausible.
What Nancy Pelosi is signaling is she doesn't just want to obstruct.
She doesn't just want to slow down Trump's agenda.
She doesn't just want to pass or hold a lot of meaningless votes that will certainly get stopped in the Senate, certainly get vetoed.
It seems that she's trying to work with the president.
Maybe she's learned something from the last couple of years.
She wants an infrastructure bill.
Trump could get behind that.
She wants a clean-up government bill.
Yeah, Trump could probably get behind that.
She wants an LGBTQ equality act.
You think that's a little further left?
Don't forget President Trump touted himself as the most pro-LGBT Republican presidential nominee in history.
You've got equal pay for equal work.
This kind of sounds like it makes sense.
It sounds like a feel-good bill.
This pandering to women bill.
It's based on the premise that women only get 75 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
It's not true at all.
But you could see some Senate Republicans Maybe liking this.
Maybe Susan Collins.
These kind of lefty Republicans.
Susan Collins likes it.
Maybe Lisa Murkowski likes it.
Maybe Ivanka Trump in the White House who has made...
Quite a point of talking about women's issues and really buying the left-wing premises on a lot of those issues.
Maybe she, okay, maybe that kind of works out.
Lowering prescription drug prices.
You could see President Trump getting behind that would play to his base.
Okay, so it's all basically plausible.
Medicare for all is not plausible.
Socialist medicine, that is not a winner.
President Trump ran in no small part on overturning Obamacare.
That's not going to be it.
What she's obviously implying is impeachment.
That's the only thing she could be...
She says, we're reserving number 10 for something special.
Well, is all of that legislation that she just named not special?
The climate bill, LGBT, women's bill, this bill, that bill.
Yeah, what she's saying is we're reserving it for something that's more special.
Ordinary legislation being passed by Congress, that's not special.
That's just what Congress does.
Impeachment is special.
Only Congress can do that.
It's a rare occurrence that that happens.
That's something special.
And then she says, we've just got to be ready.
Well, you don't have to be ready for all those other bills?
No, because all of that legislation, they can go in.
That's their agenda for the new Congress.
Impeachment will hinge on the Mueller report.
Impeachment will hinge on all of the testimony that they're going to call Michael Cohen, they're going to call Eric Trump, they're going to call Don Jr., they're going to call all these people to testify.
It's going to hinge on the endless investigations that Adam Schiff is launching.
That's why you've got to be ready.
And why doesn't she name it?
She doesn't name it because right now impeachment is a loser issue.
The majority of Americans, by a significant margin, do not want President Trump impeached.
Nancy Pelosi has previously suggested that she wouldn't impeach Trump.
She learned the lesson of Bill Clinton.
She saw what happened when you overreach Trump.
When you try to impeach a president who's basically popular, whose policies are basically popular, doesn't look good, doesn't benefit the...
In the 90s, didn't benefit the Republicans in the House.
And she's worried it won't benefit the Democrats in the House now in 2019.
So why does she bring it up at all?
Well, because her agenda is plausible.
And she's signaling to Donald Trump...
I am going to not play as an obstructionist.
I'm going to play as someone trying to work with you.
And if you do not work with me, if you do not come to the table, then I've got impeachment in my pocket.
What she's signaling is she's politically smart.
We all know this.
She's been in power a very long time.
There was a little threat to her power when the Democrats retook the Congress.
Some threats.
Some people said they were going to run for House leadership against her.
What did Nancy say?
She said, come on in.
The water is warm.
Chomp, chomp, chomp.
She's a shark.
She's saying, you know, I'm not going to impeach you yet.
I'm not going to talk about it yet because it's unpopular right now.
But the minute I get the opportunity, oh boy, that's going to be real special.
I guess we'll just have to wait.
Democratic presidential candidates have other policy priorities, including reparations for slavery.
We'll get to that in one second.
Then, of course, we have the mailbag coming up.
But first, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
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You get me, you get the Andrew Klaben show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Mount Wall show, you get to ask questions in the mailbag coming up.
You get to ask questions backstage.
We're doing a lot of those these days.
You get another kingdom.
You get this.
You get...
Mmm.
You get the profound sadness of Nancy Pelosi that she cannot yet impeach the president.
And it tastes very good.
It's a little...
It's more of a vintage.
We'll put it that way.
It's been around Congress a very long time.
But you've got those leftist tears right now.
Make sure you get the tumbler.
Immediately.
Because as the Cohen testimony falls apart, as President Trump doesn't give away the farm to North Korea, you are going to need it lest you drown.
Come back and we'll be right back in just one minute.
Julian Castro is running his campaign not on plausible policy priorities, but on reparations for slavery that ended over 150 years ago.
Here is Castro on MSNBC, of course, giving out his new, brand new policy proposal.
I have long believed that this country should resolve It's original sin of slavery and that one of the ways we should consider doing that is through reparations for people who are the descendants of slaves.
It is interesting to me that under our Constitution and otherwise that we compensate people if we take their property.
Shouldn't we compensate people if they were property, sanctioned by the state?
Yes, perhaps you should give something to those people who were property.
Those people who were property have been dead for a hundred years.
At least, right?
They've all been dead for a hundred years.
Of course.
So what is he doing?
Julian Castro is talking about reparations because he's nobody in a crowded field of people who are mediocre or slightly better than mediocre.
And he's far less than mediocre.
So he has to stand out.
It shows you that the Democrats are going to be running to the left.
Now, if he felt that the space, if he felt the way that he could make his mark in the primary was to moderate a little bit against the Green New Deal, against outlawing planes, trains, and automobiles, against knocking down every building in the country, if he felt it was to moderate, he would moderate.
He's another, I mean, he's a politician.
That's all he is.
He's not some grand visionary who's a real conviction politician.
He's a guy who wants to be president.
He was the HUD secretary.
That's his great qualification.
He sees reparations for slavery as the best path forward.
He's probably right.
Gets him on MSNBC, gets him on this show, gets him on a little bit more attention in a field that doesn't care about giving him attention.
And it's worth pointing out, it's not that he's more radical than his fellow Democrats.
It's not that he's more radical than Nancy Pelosi.
He's just reckless.
He's just playing this game where he has got to get attention.
He has got to go where the base is, and this is where the base is.
Look, if Nancy Pelosi felt that she could survive politically as Speaker of the House by talking about this sort of stuff, she'd be talking about it too.
The whole party has moved very left-wing.
But some people are a little more honest than others, and you're going to see that honesty tick up during the entire campaign.
Speaking of, before we get to the mailbag today, I just have to bring up this story.
Speaking of honesty...
No Democrats have ever been more honest than the governor and the first lady of Virginia.
Governor Northam, you'll remember, came out and said that he was perfectly fine killing babies after they had been born sitting on the doctor's table.
This is the logical conclusion of the Democrats' abortion stance.
Andy Cuomo is fairly honest about this.
Other Democrats who used to say that they supported safe, legal, and rare abortion were being dishonest.
Now they're honest.
When they talk about their...
A sanctimonious, holier-than-thou stance on race.
You have to remind Democrats, you're the party of the KKK. You're the party of slavery.
You are the party of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
And what does Ralph Northam do?
He wears blackface in what is now a very famous photograph.
He tries to moonwalk during an apology press conference about that.
His wife said, don't moonwalk.
That's not a good look.
Don't do a Michael Jackson impression at a blackface apology conference.
And then what comes out today?
The First Lady passed out cotton to black students in the governor's mansion.
Okay.
I mean, great.
Thank you.
Thank you for being honest.
Now, the reason I bring this up, look, maybe she was bringing them around and saying, look, they used to pick cotton right here at our estate.
Here you go.
Fine.
That's a reasonable read.
That's a charitable read of what she was doing.
I don't know that she's some vicious racist.
Maybe she is, but I'm not willing to conclude that.
What I want to ask is what would happen if all of this had occurred to a Republican governor?
Well, we know.
CNN initially reported that Ralph Northam's a Republican.
They switched his political party.
They were so embarrassed.
Now they don't mention his political party at all.
And what...
Really strikes me about this is just the media reaction to it.
How would they have given the GOP a charitable read of this?
They've said, look, maybe it wasn't.
No, they would have run them out of town on a rail, but this is how they treat the Virginia First Lady.
You know, guys, when I saw this story, it made me kind of sad because I just think she's just giving a tour.
She's just trying to put history in context.
And it all depends on how she delivered it.
I wasn't there.
But if she said, can you imagine being this person or can you imagine a little black child what this was like?
I don't believe that that was her intention.
I was there at the mansion and met them both.
She was very lovely.
She was even talking about the history of the of the house.
Yeah.
I always called you last night when I saw this story, too.
I do think it's important, and I applaud the First Lady for actually saying, look, this is where slaves worked here in the governor's mansion in the past.
And put things in context.
Yes, and actually picking cotton was extremely back-breaking work.
Yes.
And I think that's the point.
Again, we weren't there, but I can't imagine that she would have been that insensitive to this young person who was there.
It made me sad.
I think we are so quick to jump on things now.
Everybody's super and hypersensitive when it comes to racial issues in particular.
It does appear to have been well-intentioned.
I think so, too.
Yeah.
Come on.
Obviously.
No, I think it was even better intentioned than you do.
No, I think it was better intentioned.
No, of course.
We have to...
We're so quick to jump on people.
We're so...
Mark Meadows is a racist!
We're so...
No, no.
We're just so quick to jump on...
Donald Trump is Hitler!
And we just need to stop being so quick to jump on people.
Donald Trump is a white supremacist!
That's what they are.
I actually...
The point...
There is a broader point to take away from this that all of us could learn, which is that it is a fact of human nature that we judge others by their actions, and we judge ourselves by our intentions.
We judge others when we don't like them, we judge them by their worst possible read of what they did, and we always judge ourselves by the best possible read of what we wanted to do.
Yeah, that's a great point to take away.
But how oblivious...
Not to apply it to themselves.
They just yesterday were calling the whole House GOP racist because they read the testimony of a black Trump employee who said he's not racist.
Rashida Tlaib, the Democrat Congresswoman, said that Republicans were racist for using a black woman as a prop.
And the Republicans said, you just called a black woman a prop!
She's not a prop!
She had testimony!
Relevant testimony!
That double standard is amazing.
If they could listen to their own point and actually take it, it would be a good point.
But of course they can't.
Alright, let's get to the mailbag.
Running late as usual, but I want to get through as many as we can.
First question from Andrew.
Hello, I was wondering how you feel about the belief that God views all sin equally.
Thank you, Andrew.
I don't agree with it because it isn't true.
You can look at James 2.10.
James 2.10 says, quote, For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
This is the line, usually by people who say, God views all sin equally.
To say God views all sin equally is to say that all sin is equal.
God doesn't view something incorrectly.
God is the truth, and so if God views it some way, that is the way that it is.
So the question is, is all sin equal?
Is stealing a pack of gum from the store the same thing as killing a pregnant woman and beheading her and doing all sorts of horrific things?
Are those exactly equal sins?
The answer, of course, is no.
We know this intuitively, we know this philosophically, and we know this from Scripture.
In 1 John 5.17, it says, quote, All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal.
So it's just right there in scripture that says, yes, all wrongdoing is sin, but not all sins are created equal.
Not all sins are equal.
Some sin is mortal and some sin is venial.
This is a distinction that has been held most notably by the Catholic Church, but I suppose other denominations as well.
St.
Paul tells Christians in Rome to keep the faith, quote, otherwise you too will be cut off.
And then we know that we all stumble in many ways also from scripture.
How do we make sense of all of it?
We all stumble in many ways.
You should keep the faith, otherwise you too will be cut off.
So there were some ways in which we stumble that will cut us off, and some ways that won't.
All wrongdoing is sin, but there is a sin which is not mortal.
So how is it then also the case that whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it?
Because you have violated the law.
Think of the law as a leftist here's tumbler.
Now, this is not a perfect analogy because the Leftist Tears Tumblr is indestructible.
So you can't possibly break it.
But let's say, let's say in some crazy world, I were drinking out of my Tumblr and I broke off just the little cap of the Tumblr.
Just came off, you know, just this little slider right here.
Okay.
I broke the Tumblr.
Even though I only broke that little bit, I broke the tumbler.
The tumbler is the law.
If you break a little piece of the law, you have broken the law.
Certainly that's true.
This does not mean that all sin is equal.
This is why the New Testament goes to great lengths in many places to explain why not all sin is equal in explicit terms.
This is why our Lord, this is why Christ in the Gospels describes different gradations of punishment in Luke and Matthew.
There are different gradations of punishment because sins are not...
All equal.
This is another example.
This happens quite a lot.
I get this in the mailbag sometimes.
They say, Without an interpretive scheme,
without context, without knowing what the words mean, without understanding how some words can refer to one thing, and that can modify another statement that has elaborated on that point.
When you just look at that one line, it is like looking into a deep, dark well and seeing only your reflection on the surface of the water.
All shallows are clear.
Next question from Jonathan.
Hello.
Back in the day, did you ever get yourself in a situation in which you go and try to ask a girl out on a date or try to give her a rose, but then she tells you she has a boyfriend?
Oh, yeah.
I usually would wait until the boyfriend was out of town before I would go do that, but sometimes I'd get my timing a little wrong.
Yes, yeah, that's happened.
That's too bad.
Sometimes that isn't true.
Sometimes the girl is just trying to let you down gently, in which case maybe you should be grateful that she was so cordial.
Or, you know, you can try to, you know, try to be a little more charming, possibly.
But there is a real code here, man.
You shouldn't steal a guy's girl, at least if it's a friend of yours.
I guess if he's a real jerk, you know, open season, do what you gotta do.
But, yeah, that happens, you know.
It's just, that's the way it is.
Listen, if a girl is so beautiful and lovely that she's got your attention, she's probably got the attention of a lot of other guys, too.
You've got to go in there and win her over.
From Elias, Knowles, if you were on your deathbed and you had to hear one last song before you fade out, what would it be?
Thanks, love the show, Elias.
This is a very tough question.
Assuming I didn't have a whole lot of time left, I would probably pick a song from the 1920s called Trees, which was based on a poem written by Joyce Kilmer.
And the poem is...
I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.
Something, something, something, something, it goes on and on and on.
Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.
And it's a lovely, simple little poem.
And the music is just this lovely music, very 1920s, and nice, and sort of the last gasp of...
Elevated music.
I'd probably do that one.
Or there's another song that I love by the Mills Brothers called Smoke Rings.
Where do they go?
These smoke rings I blow each night.
Where do they go?
These circles are blue and white.
And it's a song about watching...
These gasps, watching your breath, watching the smoke rings fade away into the sky of blue and wondering what that means, talking about the ephemeral nature of this world and wondering about the next.
Probably those two.
I think that song is from the 20s too, 20s or 30s.
Next question from Joshua.
Hey, Michael, I asked Ben the same question.
Do you think socialism's rise in popularity is the free market's way of telling us that capitalism isn't working for a lot of Americans?
Thanks, Michael.
Keep up the great work, Josh.
No, I think it's the way of telling us that our education system isn't working for a lot of Americans.
Because, of course, there are legitimate criticisms of free markets that are divorced from any sense of morality or virtue or religiosity.
There's plenty of good criticisms, but those aren't the criticisms that we're really seeing.
What we're seeing is just simply ignorance, blithe ignorance.
Ocasio-Cortez, the spokesman for socialism, said that the reason that the unemployment rate is low is because people have two jobs.
That's just not how the unemployment rate works.
Ocasio-Cortez is assailing tax incentives to bring jobs to a city because she thinks that they're just spending the money.
Three billion dollars is just sitting around in a pile somewhere.
She doesn't understand what a tax incentive is.
This is not a failure of markets.
This is a failure of education.
Now...
I don't think that's the same reason why some people are questioning certain trade deals.
That's very different.
The move of especially millennials towards socialism, that is born out of ignorance, historical and economic ignorance.
The move of some people toward questioning open borders on questions of migration or trade, toward questioning maybe why we should protect certain industries if our trading partners are also protecting industries, if we're looking at certain trade protections because our trading partners are stealing our if we're looking at certain trade protections because our trading partners are stealing our intellectual property and violating WTO treaties, World Trade Organization treaties, and And if you haven't caught on, I'm talking about China.
That, I think, is much more legitimate.
That's not coming out of an ignorance.
That's coming out of the failures of an economic regime that is not perfectly free markets.
Obviously, it's not perfectly free markets because the main criticism is that our trading partners are not playing by the rules.
That's totally legitimate, but those are completely different questions.
And coincidentally, or not coincidentally, you're seeing this ignorant run towards socialism on the left, and you're seeing a very wise and serious questioning of our trade policies on the right.
From Alone, Would You Be Anti-Abortion for Trans Women?
Alone.
You know, this is going to be a rare example of me being conciliatory, reaching across the aisle, finding middle ground.
I think we should get rid of all abortion for people with uteruses.
But for people who don't have uteruses, I would be willing to say they can have all the abortions they want.
And no restrictions whatsoever.
No parental consent.
I'm actually willing to have the federal government subsidize all abortions for people who don't have uteruses.
Don't say I'm not willing to make a deal.
deal.
Don't say I'm not willing to compromise.
From Devin.
Hi, Michael.
Do you think the U.S. should make English the official language of the country?
Should it be left to the states?
Always enjoy listening.
Thanks, Devin.
Yes, we should make it the official language of the country.
Why?
Because there's very little that unifies us anymore as a country.
Because a radical, individualist, atomistic philosophy has taken hold.
We don't have much of a common culture.
We don't have a common religion.
We don't have common cultural experiences.
Basically, the last thing we have is the language.
And the left wants to get rid of that too.
And also because language shapes our consciousness.
Language shapes how we think.
Language is the stuff of our consciousness.
Languages are different, and that's why cultures are different.
It's why they think differently.
It's why they view the world differently.
It's why Eskimos have 500 words for snow.
I don't think that's actually true, but the principle actually is what they're alluding to here, which is that certain languages emphasize certain things, certain ways of viewing the world, and we should have a unified language.
Last question from Matthew.
Hello, all-knowing Knowles.
I'm from Long Island.
I'm one of the only conservatives in my group of friends.
My friends and I have had relatively the same upbringing, schooling, environmental stimuli, but they're leftists and I'm not.
I know this is multifactorial, but what is your take on why people lean left or right politically?
Kind regards, Matt.
I think there is a little bit of a disposition here.
There is such a thing as a conservative disposition, but people who have a conservative disposition can be politically left-wing.
This is sort of the elites, the limousine liberal is sort of conservative in their disposition.
They get married, they invest their money, they're very wise in their own personal conduct, but they preach these radical politics.
So there is a little dispositional thing.
I don't really think it affects people's political views very much.
and Being a contrarian helps because you're always willing to consider other ideas.
And I do think the only other dispositional aspect is openness.
A humility.
Are you humble enough to think, maybe I don't know everything about the world.
Maybe someone else has something that I can learn.
And when you grow up in a left-wing place like you and I did in New York, if you have any intellectual humility and if you have any openness...
Then you're naturally going to be left-wing.
Because that's just everyone around you is left-wing.
But if you're a little humble, if you're a little curious, if you're open to new ideas, then you will be convinced by conservative arguments because they're better than leftist arguments.
And if your friends are not intellectually curious or have any humility or anything, then they're not going to be.
I think that's the big difference.
Okay, that's our show.
We have a lot more to get to, but sad.
Come back next week.
We'll see you all on Monday.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
Production assistant Nick Sheehan.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to talk about the Cohen hearing yesterday.
The left went fishing for anything they could find to damage Trump, and they basically came up empty.
But they're going to keep trying.
They won't give up until they find a way to rid themselves of President Trump.
They are setting a very dangerous, potentially catastrophic precedent here.
With their approach to Trump.
And I want to talk about that.
Also, a Democratic presidential candidate is being accused by some of her former staff members of being an abusive, tyrannical boss.
But her feminist offenders are saying, well, she's only being criticized for that because she's a woman.
It's just sexism, they say.
Well, that I think is absurd.
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