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March 19, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
46:17
Ep. 316 - Is AOC An Actress?

Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an actress? That’s the new conspiracy theory that’s floating around, and it’s entirely correct, but not for the reasons many think. We will investigate who’s pulling AOC’s marionette strings. Then, Beto beats our expectations, Kirsten Gillibrand doesn’t, and the kids are not all right. Date: 03-19-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an actress?
That's the new conspiracy theory floating around the internet, and it's entirely correct, but not for the reasons that many think.
We will investigate who is really pulling AOC's marionette strings.
Then, Beto beats our expectations, Kirsten Gillibrand doesn't, and the kids are not all right.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
All right.
First of all, I want to thank everybody for the birthday wishes.
Yesterday was my birthday.
A lot of people sent over very nice things, so thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Just for you, I refrained from indulging in true birthday debauchery so that I would not be speaking in cursive on today's show and actually able to talk about this because there is a great conspiracy theory going around the internet that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an actress and This is a particularly great conspiracy theory because it's true, although people are drawing the wrong conclusions from it.
It is true, but we'll explain how it's true first.
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Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an actress?
This is a theory that cropped up from a YouTube account called Mr. Reagan.
And this guy goes through AOC's history, and he makes the claim that she's not really some motivated movement politician.
She was cast in a casting call from a group called the Justice Democrats that, They plucked this girl out of obscurity and she is now just a mouthpiece.
She's a sort of Charlie McCarthy doll or a little marionette and the strings are being pulled by a group called the Justice Democrats.
And he presents a lot of evidence for this theory including AOC speaking about it herself and the group, the Justice Democrats, speaking about it themselves.
There's a great video.
It's like 20 minutes long.
Here's just a small clip of that to show you what he's talking And at Flats, we became friends with one of the bartenders, who we call Sandy.
You all know her as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But in the early days she was just serving us margaritas and listening to us talk.
Back in 2016, we put out a call for nominations.
We got over 10,000 nominations.
Out of those 10,000 nominations, we found Alexandria.
My brother told me that he had sent my nomination in the summer, but I was like, literally working out of a restaurant and I was like, there's no way.
Well, people that make $19,999 a year or less, so people that make $20,000 a year or less, make up right around 40% of Americans, right?
40% of Americans make less than $20,000.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like 60 million people make less than $20,000 a year.
200 million Americans make less than $20,000 a year.
That's 40% of this country.
40% of Americans make less than $20,000.
That's 40% of this country.
These guys are coaching her.
They're scripting everything she says.
You notice when she goes off script because she suddenly starts babbling incomprehensibly.
This is true.
Then it goes on.
It shows that video of her.
She goes off script and she says, I'm the boss.
I'm the boss.
You've got to run.
Catch me outside.
How about that?
And she obviously goes off script.
A lot of other similarities, too.
You see the founders of the Justice Democrats talking years and years ago about how we need to mobilize to fight climate change as if it were World War II. Then she, AOC speaking to Ta-Nehisi Coates, says exactly the same thing, almost verbatim.
Now what's funny is she keeps getting the lines somewhat wrong.
So how many people are in the country?
320 million, something like that?
She says in this country, 200 million people.
Make less than 20,000.
That's 40% of the country.
So hold on, 200 over 320, carry the 7, multiply.
No, that's not 40%.
It's much higher.
But she gets these details wrong, but she is repeating the narrative.
And so then she'll say things like, it doesn't matter if you're factually correct as long as you are morally correct.
Things like that.
Obviously she has a relationship.
She admits it herself early on.
She says, yeah, my brother submitted my nomination to this group, this political action committee.
And I remember this.
From the moment that she beat Joe Crowley when she won that primary in New York, this story came out that she was working as an obscure bartender and her brother submitted her to a group to run for Congress and the group liked her and thought she was a good choice.
This is irrefutable.
This we know is the case.
The question is, is she an actress?
There's no question that she's ignorant.
We know that she's ignorant.
We know that she reads talking points, usually poorly.
And when she goes off script, she sounds even less intelligent and educated than when she's on script.
We know that she was recruited by the Justice Democrats.
That's just a fact.
We know that she relies on the Justice Democrats for content.
The content is...
Virtually identical between what they put out, what they put out since the 2016 race was over, and what they're still putting out.
We know that she works closely with them.
How do we know that she works closely with them?
Well, her top aides include the founders of the Justice Democrats, including one guy, Saikot Chagrabarty.
There was that scandal that just came out last week that AOC is fighting.
Funneling money, a million dollars, into these shady groups and shady LLCs, which is ironic because, of course, the far-left Democrats, just like AOC, including AOC, are running on transparency, on getting soft money out of politics.
Meanwhile, we find out she's taking campaign contributions and paying them to the tune of a million dollars to consulting companies.
What do the consulting companies do?
Oh, they consult.
It's just a way of taking that money and just funneling it into other left-wing causes and hiding how the money is being used.
So we know that this is true.
She's got Justice Democrats on her staff.
Would she be in Congress without them?
No, she would still be slinging drinks in Union Square.
There is no way that this woman would be in Congress without them.
She admits as much.
She wasn't going to run until they backed her and said, we're going to put you in Congress.
So the question is, is she an actress or a politician?
And the answer is, what's the difference?
I don't mean that in a glib way.
Politics is show business for ugly people is the old line.
I mean this very sincerely.
What is the difference between an actress and a politician?
Especially a member of Congress.
She is an actress, but it doesn't make her much different from any other member of Congress.
First of all, politics and acting are very similar.
There is a negative side of this for bad politicians and bad actors.
This means that they lie all the time, they're narcissistic, they just want to be the center of attention, all of those sorts of things.
That's the negative version for bad politicians and bad actors.
For good politicians and good actors, though, this means two things.
It means, one, you are concerned with the truth.
So, for good politicians, they are concerned with truth.
Political truth, cultural truth, and religious truth.
They are concerned with pursuing the truth.
They're concerned with pursuing the good.
They're concerned with pursuing policies that will help people, policies that are both efficient and that are moral and that are politically justified, right?
They are concerned with political philosophy.
They're not ignorant.
They don't rely on people to just give them all of their talking points, but they actually are interested themselves.
I think of people like Edmund Burke.
Edmund Burke, the great Irish statesman, was the founder of what we would call modern conservative thought.
And he wasn't just sitting in a room writing philosophy all day.
He was active.
He was in politics.
He was an elected official.
And he was one of the great philosophers of his age, really one of the great political philosophers of any age.
He had both of those things and a profound concern for truth.
Same thing with actors.
The good actors, real actors, are not faking it.
They're not pretending.
They're not just reciting lines.
They are living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
So they're taking imaginary circumstances, the circumstances of the set, of the time period, of the character, of all of these things, and they are living truthfully as people in those circumstances would live.
The other reason that politics and show business are very similar is because both politicians and actors when they're really good have to love people.
That you cannot be a misanthrope if you want to be a good actor or a good politician.
If you hate people, you are going to be so bad at politics, especially elected politics.
All politics is, is going to the Lions Club and the VFW Hall and the PTA, showing up and going to spaghetti dinners and talking to people.
And meeting strangers and hearing what they have to say and caring what they have to say.
If you don't like meeting people, you don't care about what other people have to say, you don't like boots on the ground, you know, marching through small towns and campaigning and shaking hands and pressing the flesh.
If you don't like that, you're going to hate politics.
Get another job.
There are way easier ways to make money.
The same thing with actors.
If you hate people, get a new job.
Because if you're an actor, the thing you have to be most concerned with, most interested in, is people.
And not that you hate them or you...
If you try to play a character, if you try to play a villain...
And you hate that villain and you're going in and you're just going to do the really bad guy.
You're going to give a bad performance.
You have to, in some way, like the character that you're playing.
You have to be on your character's side.
You have to be interested in what makes people tick.
You craft characters.
You like the way that human nature works on people and the way that circumstances work on human nature.
Those are what make up a good politician and a good actor.
Now, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is neither of those.
She might be effective.
She might be popular.
But she's not good in a moral sense.
She's not doing the good in politics.
She's not doing the good as a performer.
Still, doesn't make her very different than many congressmen.
And we'll see.
There are new public opinion polls out.
She might not be turning in a great performance anyway.
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So...
We should also be explicit about our terms.
When I say good and bad in this case, in the case of good actors and good politicians, I'm speaking in a moral sense.
The ones who are doing good work, the ones who are putting on good performances, the ones who are doing good art, and the ones who are doing good politics.
There's another sense of that, which is, are they effective at it?
Are they popular?
Can they win an election?
Plenty of...
Unartistic, bad actors get big roles and are very, very famous.
Plenty of badly motivated, ignorant, uneducated politicians have made it very, very far in our politics.
Look no further than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
However, the performance aspect of all this is basically universal.
Most congressmen are glorified press secretaries.
That's basically all they are.
It's actually, in terms of their day, everything they do all day, which is raise money, maybe go out and vote, possibly co-sponsor legislation every so often, probably the most important thing they can do is go on television, which is why you see a lot of congressmen go on TV all the time.
It's because that is an opportunity to get ideas out there, either the ideas that they've come up with or the ideas that their think tanks have come up with or the ideas that their backers or donors or whatever have come up with.
And so in a purely Performance-based sense, in the sense of just how effectively someone is getting their name out there, AOC is very good at that.
I mean, that is why there's so much crossover between show business and politics.
Obviously, Ronald Reagan, obviously Donald Trump, Sonny Bono, Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fred Thompson.
I mean, the list goes on and on and on of Actors and performers turned politicians.
So the question is, how is AOC doing at this?
And there is a huge contingent now that is saying that AOC is finished.
Why?
Because she's got killer favorables.
Very dramatically dropping favorable ratings and increasing unfavorable ratings.
So since September, her unfavorables are up 15 points.
Her favorables, by the way, are also up 7 points.
That's the part of this that people are leaving out.
But overall, the net effect of that is 7 minus 15.
Her net favorables are down 8%.
Now, why are both favorables and unfavorables increasing at the same time?
It's because now everybody knows about her.
Her name recognition is also way, way up 21 points.
So as more and more people hear about her, some people start to like her, some people start to dislike her.
More people are starting to dislike her than to like her.
So who is she down with?
Who is her popularity dropping among?
It's dropping among adults, Republicans, independents, men, women, whites, and every age group.
It's mostly dropping with older people, then with middle-aged people, and then the least of all with young people, but it's dropping across the board.
Okay, not good news for AOC, except her favorability rating is increasing among only two demographic groups.
It's increasing among Democrats, and it's increasing among non-whites.
So is this such a bad thing for AOC? Who is her constituency?
Her constituency is not 85-year-old adult Republican men.
Her constituency really isn't any of those people that her favorables are down with.
Her constituency is Democrats and non-whites.
She has played to far-left liberal Democrat policies, and as a matter of cynical politics, she has played to racial identity.
This is what it's all about for her.
That's her bet.
That's what she's been betting on since November.
Really since before November.
And it has worked.
She's pandering to the far left of the Democrat Party.
She's pandering on racial politics to non-whites.
It's worked on both counts.
Frankly, that seems like a positive for AOC. This proves the political maxim, proven true again and again.
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
The idea that there's no such thing as bad press.
AOC almost exclusively gets bad press, including from left-wing outlets.
Why?
Because she doesn't know anything.
She's blithely ignorant.
She's proudly ignorant.
And she's always on TV. She's always getting her face out there.
And the gamble that you have to take is, is it better to get some negative attention or to get no attention at all?
And we know this to be the case.
Getting your name out there is a win if you're a member of Congress.
This is why the congressmen are going on TV all the time.
This is why they're doing whatever they can to try to attract attention.
There's 400 of them.
There's no way that they're going to be able to get attention in a media landscape such as ours unless they go out there and put on a huge show, which is what she does.
So I think overall, I'm actually going to break with both the left and the right.
I mean, they're looking at numbers right now.
AOC is currently less popular in her home state of New York, true blue New York, than Donald Trump is.
Donald Trump is doing better in terms of approval ratings than AOC is in New York.
Okay, that's a bad headline for her.
First of all, Donald Trump is a New York figure.
He's been in New York forever.
He is a New York staple.
And so that plays into it a little bit too.
But also, maybe AOC or AOC's handlers, the people pulling the marionette strings, maybe they know a thing or two.
Maybe they know a thing or two on how to oust a long-term incumbent like Joe Crowley in a primary.
Maybe they know a thing or two on how to get a congressman to be on television, be the center of political discourse constantly.
Maybe they know a thing or two about which demographic groups they can afford to lose and which they can...
Stand to benefit from if they lose those groups.
It seems like the strategy is working.
And even today, very few people are picking up on that.
But she seems to be doing very well.
I mean, she's caught in this major financial scandal now, basically getting no press.
They're still just...
I mean, this is what they accused Donald Trump of doing.
They accused Donald Trump of having some nefarious dealings.
Russian collusion, let's say.
No evidence of Russian collusion, of course, but that's what they accuse him of.
That's what they want to talk about.
And then Donald Trump sends out a tweet about how much he doesn't like John McCain.
Or he sends out a tweet about how Kellyanne Conway's husband is a total loser, which he did today.
And then everyone talks about that, and no one talks about the scandal or the collusion or whatever.
And they say, Trump is distracting us.
AOC is doing that for real.
There is a scandal.
We know what the scandal is.
She funneled a million bucks to her cronies and her handlers during her campaign.
Nobody talks about it because she says ridiculous things about the environment.
And she puts out proposals to abolish automobiles.
And she puts out proposals to knock down every building in the country.
And she says it's going to cost $93 trillion, and the way we're going to pay for it is abolish the entire energy industry and print money from the Federal Reserve.
And people say, this is crazy, this is crazy.
They don't focus on the actual scandal.
Something tells me that The conspiracy theory is true.
AOC is an effective mouthpiece.
But look, political operators, political thinkers, political activists, have always needed effective mouthpieces.
And very often, effective mouthpieces are not the smartest people in the world.
So they've got that.
But something tells me that her handlers are pretty sharp.
That guy, Chakrabarty, is that his name?
What is his actual name?
Yes, Saikot Chakrabarty.
He's a Harvard graduate.
Not always a recommendation of somebody, not always a testament to someone's intelligence, especially these days, but he seems like a sharp guy.
He was a big guy in the Bernie Sanders campaign.
He's a major person pulling the strings here.
Maybe they know what they're doing.
And we'll have to see what the next step is for them.
Obviously, they can't let the favorables fall too much among everybody else.
But right now, it seems like they're walking a tightrope and doing it pretty well.
Another candidate who's performing a lot better than I think a lot of us thought he would is Beto O'Rourke.
Beto O'Rourke.
Robert Francis.
I'm Pedro Knowles.
He's Beto O'Rourke.
He rolls out his campaign.
A lot of people said the campaign rollout didn't work.
He seems like he's a privileged white guy.
He's kind of awkward.
He's moving his hand up and down a lot.
He doesn't seem to have much of a coherent message.
He's trying to play both sides of the Democrat Party, the centrists, and the far left.
And then he wouldn't release his 24-hour fundraising numbers.
And so the whole news media, even the left, said, see, it's all fake, it's all astroturf.
He's not going to raise any money.
Then a day later, total fake-out.
He releases his fundraising numbers.
He sets records.
$6.1 million in 24 hours.
Previously, we had been talking about how Bernie Sanders broke all these records.
He was raising, what did he raise?
$5.9 million?
Beto beat him.
He beat out Bernie.
It means Beto is a good campaigner.
He's also rich, something very few people talk about.
He's worth $9 million himself.
His wife is the heiress to a multi-billion dollar fortune.
This guy is loaded.
This guy has money coming out of his ears.
And that always helps in campaigns.
It always helps when you can self-fund.
Look at the current president of the United States.
He's a better campaigner than many of us expected.
Now, why are people saying he had a bad rollout?
Well, because he seems just like such a creep.
He's such a weird, creepy, feminist guy.
He's that weirdo that you would never let your girlfriend near in college.
He skateboards around Whataburger parking lots.
He moves his hand up and down like a parody of the 1940s.
He's getting skewered on late night comedy.
Here's Jimmy Fallon sending up Beto O'Rourke.
And now a message from Beto O'Rourke.
Hi, I'm Beto O'Rourke, and I'm excited.
That's it.
I'm just excited.
Oh yeah, I'm also running for President of the United States.
I love the United States.
And I love running.
In fact, I literally just ran eight miles to get here.
Folks often say to me, we don't know much about you, Beto.
We know you ran against Ted Cruz in Texas.
We know you're hot.
And then usually the hot thing comes up again.
But who's the real Beto O'Rourke?
Well, I'm sort of like if a compassionate head nod turned into a person.
Because the truth is, I care.
I care so much.
When I eat salads, I thank every individual leaf for its sacrifice.
When I donate blood, I don't let them stop until the last possible second.
Gah!
This country's great!
Anyway, the question I get most is, can you actually beat Donald Trump?
And the answer is, heck yeah!
I was born to do this.
I'm like if your friend's hot dad had the energy of a golden retriever.
Thanks, Evelyn.
God, I feel so passionate right now.
I love America.
I love democracy.
I love air.
Yeah!
The whole sketch is pretty good.
Fallon goes on like this for a while.
And then at the end of it, he says something to the effect of, and hey, are there people who have better policy proposals than me?
Yeah!
And it kind of cuts out from there.
And so it is a send-up.
I mean, he's definitely making fun of Beto O'Rourke.
However, this is another instance of no press is bad press, and the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Because when you look at that send-up, Sure, they're making fun of Beto.
What are they making fun of him for?
He's really enthusiastic.
Okay, is that a bad thing?
He's got a lot of energy.
Okay, is that a bad thing?
He's really positive.
Is that a bad thing?
He donates blood.
Is that a bad thing?
He's a little airy.
He's more enthusiastic than he is a policy wonk.
Okay.
When was the last time we had a policy wonk president?
Bill Clinton, I guess, was the last.
I mean, is that?
Okay.
George W. Bush wasn't a policy wonk.
Barack Obama's not a policy wonk.
Donald Trump's not a policy wonk.
Who cares?
So they ding him a little bit for not having really firm policies, but they're basically making him into a really nice, happy, excited, enthusiastic guy who wants to serve.
That's the best possible way you could possibly be mocked.
That's a win.
That's a win on a rollout.
Now, I still have my doubts about the Beto campaign.
Because he is weird and creepy.
And he is nothing.
He's trying to do Obama over again.
And you can't do Obama over again.
However, the one thing we have to focus on, the one thing we can't forget, he came within three points of turning Texas blue.
Well, he was running against Ted Cruz, who's a flawed candidate.
True.
He was running against Ted Cruz, who had a very famous spat with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump didn't support him that much.
Sure.
Donald Trump would mop the floor with Beto.
Yeah, I think that's true.
Still, he came within three points of turning Texas blue.
And the question is not, can Beto turn Texas blue?
The question is, can Beto convince Democrats that there's a chance that he can turn Texas blue?
Duh, totally.
That's why they donated all that money to him, $80 million in 2018.
That's why he got so close in 2018.
And if he can convince Democrats that he could possibly turn Texas blue, then he is saying to them, I can possibly bring 38 electoral votes that were guaranteed red.
I will end the election in one state.
That promise covers a multitude of sins.
That is a real possibility.
And so all of Beto being really excited, being like a golden retriever, okay, it doesn't seem to hurt him that much.
Certain candidates are not having as successful a rollout.
We'll get to that in a second.
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We'll be right back with a lot more.
So what is Beto's appeal?
Why is he having a better rollout than some people thought he was?
He's appealing to the lowest common denominator.
That's what he's doing.
He is...
Just pandering.
And that's the way that politics is moving, especially on the left.
Not exclusively on the left, but especially on the left.
He was actually at a campaign stop in Iowa, and he said he just wants to be a vessel for people's ideas.
He wants the voters to mold him into the candidate that they want.
Can you imagine that?
He basically goes up there and says, "Hey guys, I stand for nothing.
I am nobody.
I have no core beliefs.
All I've ever done in my entire life is be in the government." I was on the El Paso City Council, then in Congress.
All I am is raw ambition.
I was born to be in it, man.
I just want to be in it.
Yeah, all I care about is power and attention and getting my ego stroked.
So just tell me what to think and then I'll think it and it's no big deal.
Okay, cool.
Is that the deal?
It's pure pandering.
But that's what all of the Democrat politicians are doing right now, other than Howard Schultz.
Howard Schultz is the one guy going up to Democrats and saying, you're wrong, don't do this, don't embrace socialism.
And how is he being rewarded for that?
He is not even a consideration in the 2020 race so far.
Here is Kirsten Gillibrand, perfect mediocrity, doing exactly the same sort of pandering.
And the difference here...
Is that she's a terrible politician.
Camille Paglia says that she's a perfect mediocrity of a candidate.
And she is.
I mean, she is nothing.
I was thinking the other night.
I was talking with some friends.
I said, why is she even running?
Because why not?
I guess just to raise her name recognition for next time or something.
Or maybe run for vice president because every candidate is saying they have to pick a female VP. Right.
Beto O'Rourke said that would be his preference.
They all say they sort of need a female vice president.
Okay, maybe that's it.
Here is her pathetic pandering.
Immigration is not a security issue.
issue.
It is an economic and a humanitarian and a family issue.
There is no such thing as an illegal human.
You're right.
Well, yeah, there's no such thing as an illegal human.
Are there criminals, though?
There is no such thing as a criminal.
How about the guy in New Zealand?
Is he a criminal?
The guy who shot up that mosque?
Is that guy a criminal?
We should ask Kirsten Gillibrand this.
Something tells me she would say yes.
So you say, okay, so then there are people who commit illegal acts and they're criminals and they need to be punished for their illegal acts.
We're at least granting that as a category.
Yeah, yeah, I guess we grant that.
Okay, so then, for instance, people who invade a foreign country, who cross the border illegally, unvetted, come in, use welfare services, commit crimes, federal crimes at higher rates, who do all of those things, who break our laws, some of our most fundamental laws.
Are they criminals?
Well, uh, but man, it may.
Okay, so then they're illegal aliens.
That's not a term of derision.
That's not a slur.
That's not an insult.
That is the most clinical term you can possibly use.
Dreamer?
Is that a more precise term?
I have dreams all the time.
Undocumented worker?
I was an undocumented worker when I was 14 at the Subway sandwich store.
Illegal immigrant?
They're not even really immigrants.
Immigrant sort of assumes that the country is taking you in.
We're not...
Acquiescing to take them in.
They're illegal aliens.
They're foreign nationals here in this country illegally, and they're supposed to not be.
They're supposed to be gone.
They're supposed to be deported.
That's a precise term.
Nobody, no person is illegal.
Beep, beep, boop.
Beep, plug into talking point program.
No person is beep, beep, beep, boop.
Obviously, this is ridiculous pandering.
And to say that it's not a national security issue, let me ask Kirsten Gillibrand a question.
How come every other country on earth considers immigration a national security issue?
Why do they have armed guards along their borders?
Why do they have very robust systems for customs and border protection?
Why do they build walls?
Why does every other country on earth do that except for us?
Is it that every other country on earth is wrong and is viewing the issue in a wrong way?
Or are we viewing it?
Are you viewing it in the wrong way?
Of course it's a national security issue.
If you can't determine who comes in and out of your country, what security do you have?
Why do we have guys with guns on the border?
Why does everyone else have guys with guns on the border?
Because it's a security issue.
We know that people are taking in a ton of drugs every year.
We have a major opioid crisis.
The average life expectancy in the U.S. is decreasing two years in a row.
That's not a security issue.
Of course it is.
So it's pure pandering.
She doesn't do it as effectively.
Beto's a lot better at this.
She needs to learn to skateboard or something.
But they're not the only ones pandering.
Now we have Elizabeth Warren pledging to get rid of the Electoral College.
The Electoral College, this is a big issue for Democrats now.
Why?
Because Democrats want pure democracy.
They want mob rule.
How do they want to push this?
They push this by basically obliterating civics education in this country so that people mistakenly believe that the United States is a democracy.
We are not a democracy.
We've never been a democracy.
The Founding Fathers feared democracy tremendously.
That's why they set up the Electoral College.
The Electoral College It's a very good institution.
Now, some people ask.
They say, look, I don't understand why we have the Electoral College.
Let's just get rid of it.
Right, that's the problem.
You are the last person who should have any say over our government if you say, I don't know why this exists.
Let's get rid of it.
This is Chesterton's fence.
Only when you can tell me the purpose of the Electoral College, why it exists, what it has done throughout history, why it has persisted, only then am I willing to even have a conversation with you about whether or not we should get rid of the Electoral College.
Here's one example of how great the Electoral College is.
This is one, anytime someone brings up this stupid idea to you, answer them with this.
The Electoral College is responsible for ending slavery.
Without the Electoral College, we would not have ended slavery when we did.
Why is that?
Because in the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln did not win the popular vote.
Abraham Lincoln not only didn't get the popular vote, he didn't get 40% of the popular vote.
He got a little less than 40% of the popular vote.
But he won in the Electoral College.
Then we had a Civil War, and then slavery was abolished five years later.
That's pretty good.
That's a good record.
Now why?
Why does the Electoral College function this way?
Why?
Because the Electoral College functions as a safety measure for direct democracy, for mob rule.
Why is pure democracy supposed to be a good thing?
Because it prevents tyranny?
Pure mob rule is the worst tyranny I've ever heard of.
At least when you talk about actual tyrants, actual dictators, actual bad monarchs.
At least there's a chance those people were educated.
At least there's a chance they have some higher sense.
At least there's a chance they have some practice at governing.
The mob, what is the mob?
The mob is given away to its passions.
We say facts don't care about your feelings.
Mobs are pure feeling.
The lynch mob is pure feeling.
And that's what direct democracy very frequently turns into, is a lynch mob.
And that's what they're calling for because they want to be able to play on the passions of voters.
They want to play on their emotions.
That's why they always want greater direct election.
Direct election of senators.
Direct election of the president.
Nancy Pelosi is calling for this.
She wants to expand democracy so much, not just to get rid of the electoral college.
She wants to lower the voting age now to 16.
I myself...
Personally, I'm not speaking for my caucus.
I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 60.
I think it's really important to capture kids when they're in high school, when they're interested in all of this, when they're learning about government to be able to vote.
That is not necessary.
In other words, some of the priorities in this bill are about transparency and openness and accessibility and the rest.
That's a subject of debate.
But my view is that I would welcome that.
First of all, she is speaking for her caucus.
She said, look, it's just my view.
I'm not speaking for all.
Of course the Democrats want to lower the age to 16.
That's their children.
It's their constituency.
If we lower the voting age to 16, Democrats would win many, many, many more elections.
And listen to what she says, her language.
It's important that we capture these.
Whoops, did I say that?
That's what she means.
They want to capture them when they're still being indoctrinated in public school.
While they're still there being told only one side of the story, while they're still uneducated, she wants to grab them and get them voting Democrat.
Because once you start voting a certain way, you're more likely to stick around that way.
The question for Nancy Pelosi is, why 16?
Why stop there?
Why not 15?
Why not 15?
15-year-olds are in high school.
Are 15-year-olds really stupider and less educated than 16-year-olds?
No.
Why not 14?
14-year-olds are in high school.
If this is about rights, if this is about the right to vote, if this is about representation, more representation, this is about capturing kids even, why not lower it to 14?
Unless the vote is about something else, unless our electoral system is about something else, this is where we put the cart before the horse.
This is where the tail wags the dog.
There is nothing intrinsically wonderful about voting.
There's nothing about the act of voting that is so intrinsically good and virtuous and moral and terrific.
Voting, suffrage, our electoral system, is a mechanism...
For good governance.
And that has a lot of moral qualities to it.
But voting itself, who cares?
The purpose of voting is to have a good government.
The purpose of our government is not to make more people vote.
And Democrats seem to be saying that these days.
Oh, we need to extend suffrage to everybody, to two-year-olds.
The ones that we didn't kill, we're going to make them vote.
And they're all going to vote for Democrats.
Why?
Maybe the purpose of voting is a little different.
Maybe there are moral hazards to having 15-year-olds vote or 12-year-olds vote.
Maybe that's not a great idea.
And this is ultimately a sort of selfishness.
I mean, this is what a self-obsessed age gets to, which is, it's all about me, me, me.
It's all about me voting.
I want to get the little sticker that says, I voted, and yeah, and a voter die, and it's me, me, me.
Look how great I am.
I'm going to take a picture.
No, it's not about you.
If I were told today that we could have a much better government if I didn't vote, I would not vote.
I would never vote again.
Now, if I were told we would get a worse government if I don't, then I'll vote.
Okay, then I want to vote.
But I don't actually care about the act itself for me.
Let's not forget, with this specific example, that kids are idiots.
Here is a prime example from Down Under.
A lot of things happen when people are getting attacked in their own...
First of all, totally Australian move, TAM, where the kid, if you couldn't see it, this teenage kid, goes up to an Australian senator with his camera goes up to an Australian senator with his camera out and an egg in his hand and smacks the egg on the senator's face.
And the senator turns around.
It's being reported that he punched the kid in the face, which he actually didn't.
He slapped the kid on the face, as the kid deserves.
If that kid's parents had slapped him in the face, he wouldn't behave like that.
And then the kid gets tackled to the ground, which of course he should.
This is a senator.
This is a major politician.
Some kid goes up and physically assaults him.
Yeah, that kid's going to have some trouble.
And by the way, for people defending the kid, because the senator made controversial comments, for those defending the kid, the kid didn't just go up.
There were a lot of news cameras.
The kid didn't just go up and take an egg and throw it at him.
Before the kid picked up the egg, he picked up his cell phone.
What the kid was trying to do was get Insta-famous.
So he goes up, he takes the cell phone, he's going to have a really good Insta-post.
And then he hits the senator with the egg.
Now, in America, because we're sort of more put-together, polite people here, the version of this that we just saw was Dianne Feinstein telling off those kids who were trying to tell her how to do her job.
The Australian version, obviously, is you smack somebody in the face because Australia was founded as a penal colony and they're, you know, they're a little more aggressive down there.
You see this with Russell Crowe, you see this with Mel Gibson, you see a lot of Australian people, very famously.
The actual takeaway from this is not, did the bodyguards react too strongly to the kid?
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, I don't know.
The reaction is, well, the senator made offensive remarks about the shooting in New Zealand.
Yeah, I guess, sure.
The actual takeaway from this act itself is, Kids are kids.
Kids do stupid things.
Kids are not mature.
This is a truism.
They're immature.
They're juvenile.
They're kids.
We don't want our country run by little kids.
We basically already have it.
They're just overgrown little kids.
We don't need to make that problem worse.
But the issue of pandering is going to get worse.
This is the natural temptation of democracy.
This is what happens as democracy expands, is you get more and more pandering, more and more pandering to the lowest common denominator.
And that accelerates on itself, because the more pandering you get, the broader you make democracy.
So you start abolishing good institutions, the electoral college.
You start saying, we need to lower the voting age to 16.
Pretty soon it'll be lower the voting age to 14.
That is a really difficult aspect of democracy.
The way to fight that is to reinstate civics education.
To say it, proclaim it from the rooftops.
We are not a democracy.
We are a democratic republic.
We have a constitution.
We have traditional institutions that are safeguards against this sort of mob rule.
All simple government is bad.
All shallows are clear.
We need to...
Really, really shout that from the rooftops because they've got the megaphone.
They've got the bullhorn.
They are trying to promote this, not just through 2020, not just through one election, but through so many future elections.
And the...
The combination with the association between this issue and the education scandal that we were talking about last week is very clear.
When we lose the liberal arts, when we lose education, we lose our capacity for freedom.
We're watching it play out in real time.
Got a lot more to get to.
We'll do it tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
show.
I'll see you then.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
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Edited by Danny D'Amico.
Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.
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The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, Beto-mania hits new heights as the man discovers that he has no actual policies.
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