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May 1, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show

46:26

Ep. 341 - Venezuela Is Bernie and AOC's Utopia

Venezuela descends into further chaos as people starve and tanks crush protesters. Then, Democrat senators try and fail to grill Attorney General William Barr over the Mueller report. Finally, academics in Britain declare pedophilia “normal and natural." Date: 05-01-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Venezuela descends into further chaos as people starve and tanks crush protesters.
	But socialists in the United States, like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, refuse to admit that Venezuela is their utopia, the logical conclusion of their awful ideas.
	We will examine how socialism ruined that country and others.
	Democrat senators try and fail to grill Attorney General William Barr over the Mueller report.
	We'll check in on that.
	Finally, academics in Great Britain declare pedophilia normal and natural.
	I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
	This is going to be a very abnormal and unnatural show discussing all of those things.
	We'll get to them in a second.
	First, there's a lot of things in life that aren't right, that aren't normal, that aren't natural.
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	Other things that are abnormal and unnatural are happening in Venezuela right now.
	This clip just came out yesterday, rightly horrified the world.
	A tank, a government tank, pulled out onto the street and crushed starving protesters in Venezuela.
	A military truck rammed into a group of protesters in Caracas.
	Just one of several violent clashes between security forces and thousands of anti-government protesters.
	This has been going on for weeks and weeks and months and months now.
	Why is it going on?
	Because of socialism.
	This is socialism.
	The tanks running over the protesters is socialism.
	This is the logical conclusion of socialism.
	It was ever thus.
	This is the conclusion of what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are offering.
	Not tomorrow, not the next week, not the week after that.
	Luckily, America has a strong culture and economic and political heritage of freedom.
	So it's not as though Bernie Sanders would get elected and then the next day you'd have tanks running over people in the street.
	But given enough time and given enough success at implementing the agenda that they are proposing, the tanks crushing the people in the streets is the logical conclusion.
	What does socialism look like?
	Looks like violent clashes in the streets in Venezuela.
	Looks like the opposition leader down there, Juan Guaido, calling on the military to overturn the government there, the Maduro regime.
	It looks like CNN now being taken off of the airwaves by the government, which is proof positive that every storm cloud has a silver lining.
	Not everything is bad down there, but most things are very bad.
	Doctors have injured, or rather are treating 50 injured people right now, just from those clashes yesterday.
	That includes a woman who was shot in the abdomen.
	There's gunfire, obviously the tanks.
	Amnesty International is reporting systemic oppression throughout that country, and for a long time now, extrajudicial executions.
	So the Maduro regime will go in in the middle of the night, will drag people out who they think are a threat to their political stability or to their political power.
	They will take them out and they will kill them without any law, without any trial, without any due process.
	Just kill them.
	One third of Venezuelans are estimated, according to Amnesty International, to eat one meal per day.
	Many Venezuelans go multiple days without eating.
	In fact, there were interviews among the Miami Herald and other newspapers that talked to some of these Venezuelans and they will say they will just wait with hundreds and hundreds of people in bread lines at their churches to hope to get one meal every couple days.
	Bread lines.
	That's socialism for you.
	Inflation as a result of the government not cutting spending, of the government printing money, of the government over-promising and under-delivering.
	Inflation in Venezuela.
	Do you know how high it's gone?
	Right now, I think inflation...
	Well, in the 1980s, I think inflation in Venezuela hit about 80%.
	That's very high.
	80% inflation is a big deal.
	Those were the good old days compared to now.
	Right now, inflation is about 1.3 million percent in Venezuela.
	The currency is worth nothing.
	In January, inflation rose up to about 2.7 million percent.
	That's the conclusion of socialism.
	How did this happen?
	People forget now, because we have short historical memories, we forget that Venezuela was a very rich country.
	For most of the 20th century, Venezuela was the richest country in South America.
	Now, it had periods of economic difficulties.
	In the 1980s, there was a huge spike in inflation.
	Not huge compared to today, but still it was significant.
	Why did those happen?
	Well, one, Venezuela is largely dependent on oil prices, so fluctuations in oil prices do affect the country.
	Also because when all that oil money started pouring in, politicians and the government decided they could start buying off votes through socialism.
	Now, at a certain point in the 1990s, you saw GDP declining.
	You saw inflation increasing.
	Then when the governments would decide to cut back on socialism, start liberalizing the economies, start allowing more free markets in, all of a sudden you saw GDP start to increase again.
	You saw inflation start to curb again.
	You saw wages even rise.
	Then Hugo Chavez took over.
	The socialist politician Hugo Chavez campaigned and took power officially in 1999.
	I'm actually old enough to remember when this happened, and I remember all the left-wingers loved Hugo Chavez.
	It was on the American media all the time.
	I've been a newshound since I was like two years old, and I remember Hugo Chavez was the big hope of all the leftists.
	It was always on the mainstream media.
	That guy, Sean Penn, the famous actor, loved Hugo Chavez.
	Go down there.
	All of these people, so happy.
	Socialism has come to Venezuela.
	Hugo Chavez died in 2013.
	As the economy collapsed, as finally that poison ran its course, now you see the results.
	This is the result of Hugo Chavez.
	This is the result of socialism.
	Why?
	How did it happen?
	So Chavez, when he came to power in 1999, relied on these massive oil revenues that he was getting to increase public spending and buy votes.
	So he would take all of this money and then he would buy foreign food, It's not as though he was cultivating new industries or cultivating the economy.
	He would just use it to buy foreign food and then subsidize that food for the people.
	So he's basically buying off the people with cheap food.
	Then, as a result of this plan, the foreign debt of Venezuela quadrupled just under Chavez's reign.
	So debt is mounting.
	The economy is beginning to falter.
	What does Chavez do?
	Does he cut back public spending?
	No, of course not.
	Does he curb socialism?
	No, of course not.
	What he does is he seizes even more political power.
	So at this point, the only way, like any Ponzi scheme, the only way to keep this going is to take more and more stuff.
	So Hugo Chavez decided to nationalize companies and farms and factories.
	Now, nationalized is a really fancy leftist term that means steal.
	So his regime stole whole companies, whole farms from people, whole factories.
	As a result of this, by the way, ExxonMobil and CanocoPhillips left the country of Venezuela.
	So now you've got international capital is pulling out because they can't be in this unstable region where this thug government is just going to steal your property.
	So they start pulling out.
	The economy continues to falter.
	So what does Chavez do?
	Does he pull back on socialism?
	Of course not.
	He seizes even more political power.
	In 2012, not long before he died, he outlawed private gun ownership all throughout Venezuela.
	Let me tell you something.
	If those people who are being crushed by tanks right now had private gun ownership, they would not be being crushed by tanks because they would be shooting the military and the cops and the thugs who are oppressing them and who are attacking them and who are killing them extrajudicially.
	Now, this brings us to 2013.
	Chavez dies.
	Maduro, his hand-picked successor, takes power.
	At this point, I actually almost feel bad for Maduro because the poison of socialism had run its course, so there was very little that he could do.
	The bill for all that free stuff that Hugo Chavez was giving out finally came due.
	And at the same time, a drop in oil prices meant that the government couldn't even keep up the pretense of solvency.
	The jig was up.
	So...
	The one thing Maduro could have done is he could have gradually cut spending.
	He could have shown that he was gradually willing to respect property rights.
	He was eager for foreign investment.
	He was going to deal responsibly with his government.
	And then maybe more money would have come in.
	Is that what he did?
	No, of course not, because he's a socialist.
	So instead what he did is he just started printing money.
	I love when politicians think they can just print more money.
	This has never worked in all of history.
	It's not even really a short-term solution because the minute you start doing it, everybody begins to distrust your government, distrust your economy, and very, very quickly you get hyperinflation, which is exactly what happened.
	The hyperinflation triggered this revolution because the money was worthless, and that revolution triggered the violent crackdown that you see from the government, that you see from tanks rolling over citizens in Venezuela.
	This is not the first time this has happened in a socialist government.
	This always happens in socialist governments.
	This always happened in the Soviet Union.
	It happened, obviously, in North Korea.
	It happened in other Latin American socialist governments.
	It happened in China.
	It happened in all of these places.
	This is socialism.
	And here's the scary number.
	According to Gallup polling, the majority of young Americans support socialism.
	They look favorably on socialism.
	And according to that same poll...
	Only 45% of young Americans look favorably on capitalism, which is to say private property, which is to say the free exchange of goods and services.
	Young America is far more socialist than capitalist.
	The good news is a lot of polls show that young Americans can't define socialism.
	That's a good thing.
	But why do they identify as socialist?
	Why do they look upon it favorably?
	It's because politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are openly peddling this poisonous ideology.
	And what they say is, our idea of socialism, it's like Iceland.
	It's like Denmark.
	It's like Sweden.
	It's not like Venezuela.
	No, no, no.
	Don't look at Venezuela.
	Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
	No, no.
	Look over here at the Nordic countries.
	That is simply a lie.
	We will explain why it's a lie in a second.
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	Bernie, AOC, they want to tell you that the socialism that they're pushing is like the Nordic countries.
	It's not like Venezuela.
	Not a lie.
	The Nordic countries have relatively free economies.
	They have no minimum wage.
	None of those countries has a minimum wage.
	Sweden has a universal school choice.
	They have a far more free market approach to education than even the United States has.
	Iceland has a freer economy than the United States, according to the Heritage Foundation Index for Economic Freedom.
	If AOC wants to be more like Iceland, then she ought to support freeing up the economy, not increased socialism.
	The Danish Prime Minister, former Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen, puts the point very clearly.
	He says, quote, Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy.
	Denmark is a market economy.
	But what AOC and Bernie Sanders are pushing is a socialist planned economy.
	And you know, it's so disingenuous if you hear Bernie Sanders or AOC talk about this.
	Bernie Sanders didn't have his honeymoon in Denmark.
	He didn't go on his honeymoon to Iceland.
	He went on his honeymoon in 1988, the day after he got married, to the Soviet Union.
	In fact, I'm sorry to say, we have video of this, of Bernie Sanders shirtless, drinking vodka, singing commie songs with the Ruskies in the Soviet Union in 1988.
	And on this highway, this land was made for you and me.
	I'm going to rewrite it.
	I'm going to do a version of it, which is, This land is my land.
	This land is my land.
	This land's not your land.
	This land is my land.
	That's going to be the song that I sing at the southern border.
	But that'll be for a later show.
	Don't worry about that now.
	Bernie Sanders was so enthralled with the Soviet Union, with Soviet communism, the most repressive regime on earth, one of the most repressive regimes in the history of the world, that he took his honeymoon there.
	Didn't want to go to Scandinavia.
	Wanted to go there.
	Worse even than Venezuela.
	And, just to remind you that he's not pushing policies that would bring us to Iceland, he's pushing the policies of Latin America.
	Around that same time, three years earlier, 1985, Bernie Sanders was defending socialist breadlines in Latin America.
	You know, it's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food.
	That's a good thing.
	In other countries, people don't line up for food.
	The rich get the food and the poor starve to death.
	Bread lines are a good thing.
	Bread lines are a good thing.
	In a lot of countries, the rich get food and the poor starve to death.
	Right.
	In socialist countries, that's what happens.
	That's what's happening in Venezuela right now.
	And if they don't starve to death, they get run over by tanks.
	That doesn't happen in the United States.
	Nobody starves to death in the United States.
	The biggest problem afflicting the poor in the United States is obesity.
	The problem among the poor in the United States is that they're eating too much.
	That's not what happens in socialist countries.
	They starve to death while the rich and the well-connected and the cronies all benefit.
	Make no mistake, the policies that they are pushing are, They're not just leading us to the road, on the road to Venezuela.
	They are even radical by that standard.
	Just the Green New Deal.
	Just the Green New Deal.
	One policy that they're pushing, co-sponsors, AOC wrote it herself, is a full government takeover of huge swaths of the economy.
	All of the healthcare system.
	Radical socialist healthcare regime.
	Then an outlawing of about 90% of the American energy industry.
	Then a federal job guarantee program.
	You get rid of parts of the welfare state and now you just have to work for the government.
	Then an outlawing of planes, trains, and automobiles.
	So you don't get to keep your car.
	Then an outlawing of your home.
	An outlawing of all of the current buildings in the United States.
	Because according to the Green New Deal, which Bernie co-sponsors, which AOC wrote, we need to knock down every building in the country and rebuild it within 10 years as we eliminate 90% of the American energy industry.
	You can't even keep your own home.
	That's the kind of takeover that we're talking about.
	That's what they're pushing.
	That's not Denmark.
	That's not Iceland.
	That's not Sweden.
	That is Venezuela that's worse than Venezuela.
	America's a richer country.
	America's a bigger country.
	America has better institutions.
	America has a longer tradition of liberty.
	Okay.
	Venezuela was a rich country.
	Venezuela was a prosperous country.
	It was the most prosperous country in the region.
	And eventually, steadily, gradually, socialism ruined it.
	Now there are tanks crushing citizens in the street.
	Why does the left get away with this?
	How do we let the left get away with this?
	Part of why we've got to call out Bernie Sanders and AOC here is that the American left never apologized for its support of the Soviet Union.
	You had reporters in the New York Times and other newspapers saying, In the early days of the Soviet Union saying, I've seen the future and it works.
	You had reporters in those early days denying the Holodome War, denying famines caused by Stalin, denying all of the atrocities being committed by Stalin, lying about it because they were so committed to the communist cause.
	In fact, the conservative movement, as we know it, was founded because of those early reports about the Soviet Union.
	When you had American newspapers publishing about the Soviet Union, I've seen the future and it works, you then had William F. Buckley Jr.
	start the flagship conservative newspaper, National Review, or magazine rather, with, in the first issue, with the thesis, a conservative is one who stands athwart history yelling stop.
	The communists see the future and it works.
	And the conservatives are there saying, stop.
	It doesn't work.
	It's not going to work.
	It's evil even if it did work.
	But what does it mean to even work?
	Let's say that socialism actually did work, which it doesn't.
	Let's say socialism created a lot of economic prosperity and everybody had a lot of material goods.
	But it robbed you of all of your liberty.
	It robbed you of all of your institutions, your civic institutions.
	It exerted so much power of the federal government over you that your way of life, your culture, your traditions were totally crushed.
	Who cares how materially prosperous you are?
	Even if socialism worked it would be evil.
	But it also doesn't work.
	It also leads to widespread misery.
	The American left can't admit that.
	They never apologized for the Soviet Union.
	They never apologized for their support of Fidel Castro.
	Oh, the left loved Fidel Castro.
	They brought him to the United Nations in New York.
	Oh, they sometimes wear his face on t-shirts.
	They wear Che Guevara's face on t-shirts even today.
	Never apologized for that.
	These people enslaved an entire country in Cuba.
	And American liberals wear their faces on shirts like they're Disney characters.
	They never apologized for their support of Hugo Chavez.
	Go talk to Sean Penn.
	Go talk to all the Hollywood leftists who loved Hugo Chavez.
	Go talk to all the activists who loved Hugo Chavez.
	No apology.
	They can't ever admit the logical conclusion of their ideas.
	It's happened time and time again.
	Soviet Union, China...
	Cuba, all around Latin America, now Venezuela.
	No, no, that was wrong socialism.
	That was fake socialism.
	Next time it will work.
	Just give it one more try.
	No more tries.
	Certainly not in the United States.
	Speaking of incoherent leftism and a good way to smack it down, we can switch gears over to Attorney General William Barr testifying on the Hill today before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
	He's being called to testify over the Mueller report.
	Now the Democrats are calling on Attorney General Barr to resign.
	What's the big takeaway here?
	The big takeaway is since the Mueller report was released, Democrats have nothing.
	They've got nothing.
	They bet the farm on this Russia collusion thing.
	Two years, more than two years, they bet everything on it.
	And it didn't happen.
	It didn't pan out.
	You had Eric Swalwell, presidential candidate, saying, Trump is a traitor.
	We know that he colluded with the Russians.
	Didn't happen.
	And so now what are they doing?
	They're grasping at straws.
	Now they want to impeach William Barr for some reason, the new attorney general, so that I guess we'll get a new attorney general and then they'll want to impeach him too.
	The other big takeaway from this hearing today is that it's all theater.
	It is all theater.
	This is why I didn't lead with this story.
	If you tune into CNN right now, this is the biggest story on the top of the page and you've got to pay attention.
	It doesn't really matter.
	In terms of the Department of Justice, in terms of the Russia investigation, in terms of the Trump administration, it doesn't really matter.
	What it matters for is to show you the desperation of Democrats in the Senate.
	It's a story that people are talking about, but it's a story that matters only in so much as it's a bunch of hot air.
	It's important as political theater.
	We have the Mueller report.
	You can read the report.
	I've read the relevant sections of it, probably 150, 200 pages of it.
	That's enough.
	That's all you need to read.
	You can see.
	No collusion.
	No obstruction.
	The report left open the question of obstruction.
	Most legal scholars, and certainly the legal scholars that we talk to, Alan Dershowitz, those kind of people, say even leaving open the question of obstruction was pretty absurd.
	Even the framework of obstruction that Bob Mueller was working with is pretty absurd.
	But regardless, it's up to the Department of Justice to determine whether or not obstruction occurred.
	The Attorney General says it didn't occur.
	The Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, who is certainly no conservative Republican, he said no obstruction occurred.
	No indictments, no nothing.
	So now we're arguing over the summaries and the press reports and the phone calls and the leaks and the this.
	Why are we arguing over any of that?
	We have the report itself.
	You can read the report.
	The report exonerates President Trump.
	But they just can't let it go because they bet their whole two years on it.
	So now they're trying to rehash anything around the edges of the report.
	So the left needs a new boogeyman.
	Filling that role, we now have Attorney General William Barr.
	They want him to be impeached, and they say he lied to Congress.
	That's the basis for them calling for his impeachment.
	Okay, let's take them at their word.
	They're saying he lied to Congress.
	What did he lie about?
	They're saying that the last time he appeared before Congress, he lied when he was asked the question of whether or not Bob Mueller agrees with his conclusions about the Mueller report.
	And here was William Barr's answer.
	Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?
	I don't know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusions.
	Okay, he's asked the question, does Bob Mueller support your conclusions?
	What William Barr, I think, wanted to say is, I don't care if Bob Mueller supports my conclusions.
	Bob Mueller is not the Attorney General, and I am.
	What he says is, I don't know if he supports the conclusions.
	Now, the Democrats are saying that was a lie.
	What is their evidence that that was a lie?
	A letter from Bob Mueller to William Barr leaked.
	Coincidentally, by the way, it leaked the night before...
	William Barr testifies before the Senate.
	What a coincidence.
	That's so strange.
	I wonder who could have leaked that letter that was written by the Mueller team.
	Two people have that letter.
	Mueller and Barr.
	I don't think Barr leaked it.
	So somebody associated with Bob Mueller leaked that letter.
	Okay.
	They're saying this is evidence that William Barr lied to Congress.
	But what does the letter actually say?
	Does the letter show that Mueller thinks that Barr's conclusions were wrong, or he disagrees, or he agrees, or that Barr lied to Congress.
	We'll read the actual letter in a second.
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	We're about to get into some of that Democrat questioning of William Barr.
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	We'll be right back.
	What does the letter actually say?
	Democrats think that this letter from Mueller to Barr is evidence that Barr lied to Congress and that Mueller does not agree with Barr's conclusion.
	Try to follow that.
	Here's what the letter actually says.
	From Special Counsel Bob Mueller, the summary letter the department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24th did not fully capture concern, capture the concern, the context of Again,
	to begin, who cares what Bob Mueller thinks?
	What matters is, is the Attorney General accurately relating the report?
	But who cares what Mueller thinks about the context or how many press conferences Barr should do?
	Bill Barr does not answer to Bob Mueller.
	The Special Counsel is not the Attorney General.
	The Attorney General does not report to the Special Counsel.
	The Special Counsel reports the To the DOJ, to the Attorney General, ultimately.
	The only question that matters here is the accuracy of the context or the summaries or whatever.
	Now, the question is ambiguous, right?
	The letter says that Bill Barr's letter did not fully capture the context, who cares, the nature, maybe that matters, and the substance, definitely maybe that matters, of the office's work and conclusions. definitely maybe that matters, of the office's work and conclusions.
	Three things, context, nature, substance.
	If Bill Barr didn't provide the context that Bob Mueller wanted, it doesn't matter.
	If Bill Barr inaccurately presented or relayed the nature of the investigation and conclusions, maybe that does matter.
	What does Mueller mean by nature here?
	He's talking about the facts, right?
	Or is he talking about some ambiguous term?
	And the substance, this is the one that really might matter.
	If he is accusing William Barr of misrepresenting the substance of his conclusions, that's a very serious criticism.
	But did Mueller, is that what Mueller means?
	Mueller's using pretty ambiguous terminology here.
	Well, Bill Barr was asked this question today.
	He gives a very straight answer.
	I offered Bob Mueller the opportunity to review that letter before it went out, and he declined.
	Um...
	On Thursday morning, I received, it probably was received at the department Wednesday night or evening, but on Thursday morning, I received a letter from Bob, the letter that's just been put into the record.
	And I called Bob and...
	I said, what's the issue here?
	And I asked him if he was suggesting that the March 24th letter was inaccurate.
	And he said no, but that the press reporting had been inaccurate.
	And that the press was reading too much into it.
	And I asked him specifically what his concern was.
	And he said that his concern focused on his explanation of why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction.
	And he wanted more put out on that issue.
	He argued for putting out summaries of each volume, the executive summaries that had been written by his office.
	And if not that, then other material that focused on the issue of why he didn't reach the obstruction question.
	But he was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report.
	There it is.
	Bill Barr gets the letter from Bob Mueller saying that Bill Barr's letter to Congress did not fully capture the And so Bob Barr,
	Bill Barr, Bill and Bob, Billy Bob, Billy Bob Thornton, Bill Barr calls Bob Mueller and says, listen to Barr's very precise language, are you suggesting that my letter to Congress did not accurately portray what was in your report?
	Are you suggesting that I was inaccurate in how I talked to Congress?
	And Mueller said, no, no, no, I'm not suggesting you were inaccurate.
	I'm suggesting that I want you to release more context, more summaries, more executive summaries of the report.
	Because in the Mueller report, you have about 400 pages, 380, something like that.
	And before each volume, two volumes, you have an executive summary.
	Now, the executive summary was very helpful when that report was released, and I had to go on TV in about 10 minutes, and so I had to quickly scan the executive summary.
	But clearly, what Bob Mueller wanted was for William Barr to release that executive summary right away.
	And William Barr says, no, I'm not going to release multiple summaries, especially staggered over time, that are going to confuse people.
	Now, it's not...
	Bob Mueller's call on what summaries and how many press conferences and how many press interviews he wants to give.
	It seems from the leaking of Bob Mueller's letter that he or somebody on his team is pretty familiar with talking to the press.
	But what William Barr said is, no, we're not going to do that.
	And here's his reasoning why.
	I told Bob that I was not interested in putting out summaries, and I wasn't going to put out the report piecemeal.
	I wanted to get the whole report out.
	And I thought summaries by very definition, regardless of who prepared them, would be under-inclusive.
	And we'd have sort of a series of different debates and public discord over each tranche of information that went out.
	And I wanted to get everything out at once.
	And we should start working on that.
	Pretty sound reasoning.
	And by the way, it turns out that Barr was right.
	Barr's argument is, if you release these things piecemeal and different summaries, it's going to be endlessly ripped apart, argued about.
	There's going to be a lot of controversy.
	Better to just give Congress the quick view of things and then release the report when we can.
	And by the way, the only reason Barr had to send that letter to Congress in the first place, which obviously then came out to the public, Was because William Barr asked Bob Mueller to send him over a report with the grand jury sections highlighted so that it would be much easier for the Department of Justice to then go in and redact those areas because you're not allowed to release that grand jury information.
	There are multiple aspects of this report that you legally cannot release to the public.
	So he said, listen, when you've got the grand jury information, just highlight it so that it makes it easier for us to go through it.
	Mueller sends over a 400-page report without any of those annotations on it.
	And so William Barr can't just release the report.
	He can't just say, okay, well, I did a quick half-hour pass.
	There you go.
	Here's 400 pages, everybody.
	He had to go through it very meticulously as a matter of law.
	However, because he had the report, he also wanted to be transparent, and he knew that the media and the public were very interested in this report.
	So rather than wait weeks and weeks and open himself up to accusations that he was changing the report, he was doctoring it, he wouldn't let it be released.
	released.
	He sent out a four-page letter to Congress to keep them apprised of what was going on, especially in their oversight role.
	And then he released the report as quickly as possible.
	We have the report.
	You can read the report.
	You can see whether the letter was accurate or inaccurate.
	It was accurate.
	Now, this raises the question, how was the Mueller letter to Barr released to the press?
	Seems pretty clear to me that the Mueller team is a little leakier than we We were told through the whole investigation, Mueller never leaks, Mueller never leaks.
	It certainly appeared that way, but now I'm beginning to question that.
	And when Chuck Grassley, the Republican senator, was questioning William Barr, Barr raised this point specifically.
	What are you doing to investigate unauthorized media contacts by the department and FBI officials during the Russian investigation?
	We have multiple criminal leak investigations underway.
	Multiple criminal leak investigations underway, as it should be.
	All of this is theater.
	You can see the report.
	You can read the report.
	So now the Democrats, because they have nothing on the actual question, try to vilify Barr.
	Trouble for them, this is the best part of watching this hearing this morning, is that William Barr is much smarter than all of these people combined.
	Here is Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse trying to take a shot at Barr.
	In the entirety of your previous career in the Department of Justice, including as Attorney General, have you ever referred to authorized department investigative activities?
	I'm not asking for private conversation.
	I'm not going to abjure the use of the word spying.
	I think, you know, my first job was in CIA, and I don't think the word spying has any pejorative connotation at all.
	To me, the question is always whether or not it's authorized and adequately predicated, spying.
	I think spying is a good English word that in fact doesn't have synonyms because it is the broadest word incorporating really all forms of covert intelligence collection.
	So I'm not going to back off the word spying, except I will say, I'm not suggesting any pejorative, and I use it frequently as the media.
	Oh, it's just devastating.
	It's so bad.
	And obviously it's bad because William Barr uses very technical language here.
	He uses sophisticated language.
	He says, I'm not going to abjure the term spying because I don't think it carries a pejorative.
	But then he even makes the point clearer for the media and everyone who's watching.
	He says, I think spying is a good English word.
	It has no synonyms because it's the broadest word you can use.
	And this was a masterstroke.
	Nobody is picking up on this.
	But this was a masterstroke for more reasons than one.
	The whole debate over the last two years about Russiagate and the investigation and the counterintelligence investigation and the criminal and all this has surrounded the question of the deep state.
	It has surrounded the question of spying.
	And what the Democrats have been saying is the deep state, the spying was totally justified.
	All the FISA surveillance totally justified.
	And what the Republicans have been saying is this was an abuse.
	The spying was bad.
	Spying is awful.
	We shouldn't have people spying on each other.
	And the premise here of the White House, Sheldon Whitehouse's question, the premise is that the spying is bad.
	So Sheldon Whitehouse, without even realizing it, is accepting the conservative premise.
	Yeah, of course it's bad to spy on your political opponents.
	Yeah, of course.
	Of course.
	If there was spying, it's really bad.
	That's why we can't use the word spy.
	That's why we've got to make up some new word.
	And we have to get rid of the word spying.
	What Barr is pointing out here is that the Democrat, Sheldon Whitehouse, is accepting the Republican premise.
	He's saying, Senator Whitehouse, you're using the word spying as though it's a bad thing.
	I used to work at the CIA. Our government spies all the time.
	Spying is neither good nor bad.
	Spying is a totally morally neutral term.
	The question is whether the spying was legal, legitimate, appropriate, or whether it was inappropriate, whether it was an abuse of power.
	Sheldon Whitehouse gives up the whole game here.
	He's saying, oh, yeah, of course this spying is bad.
	No, no.
	I'm not using the word spying in a bad way.
	You're using it in a bad way.
	Why?
	Because you know that the spying that took place, you know that the FISA warrants from the Trump campaign, based on nothing, based on Democrat-funded Steele dossiers and Russian disinformation, you know that that spying was bad.
	You know that it carries a pejorative connotation.
	It's a subtle point.
	It's not going to be widely appreciated, but that point is going to matter in the coming weeks.
	So he fails.
	He fails to take down Barr.
	Dianne Feinstein also tries to take her shot at Barr.
	You still have a situation where a president essentially tries to change the lawyer's account in order to prevent further criticism of himself.
	Well, that's not a crime.
	And she just sort of stammers after that.
	She goes, uh-uh.
	She's got nothing.
	There's an interesting point on language here as well, which is, you hear the Democrats trying to use all of this confusing, jargony terminology, trying to imply that certain activities, like the relationship with the lawyers and the clients, this is somehow nefarious.
	And then Bill Barr comes in very clearly.
	He goes, that's not a crime.
	What crime are you alleging?
	I wish Bill Barr had been around two years ago.
	Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
	There's no evidence that he did.
	Even if he did, collusion is not a crime.
	There's no crime of collusion.
	Bill Barr is just the absolute BS destroyer.
	He just decimates it with that totally blasé look on his face.
	He looks like a bored bulldog.
	He does remind me in many ways of Scalia.
	When you would see Scalia rip apart bad arguments, he would do it with this kind of Blase.
	Oh, well, the problem with your argument is it's completely wrong.
	That's what Bill Barr is doing here.
	And they have no answer.
	You can see Dianne Feinstein just stammer.
	What's the real reason at the end of all of this circus that Democrats want Barr out right now?
	What's the real reason?
	He's a bulldog.
	Now, maybe they're just desperate.
	They're grasping at straws.
	They need a new boogeyman.
	Sure.
	I think there's a more material reason, too.
	And it's William Barr's answer to this question from Lindsey Graham.
	Do you share my concerns about the FISA warrant process?
	Yes.
	Do you share my concerns about the counterintelligence investigation, how it was opened and why it was opened?
	Yes.
	Do you share my concerns that the professional, lack of professionalism in the Clinton email investigation is something we should all look at?
	Yes.
	Yes, indeed.
	The investigators become the investigated, and the real injustice that took place over the last two years might soon be exposed, because you've got this bulldog, this highly intelligent, highly professional, highly trained bulldog, now turning the tables on the entire Russia narrative.
	So much more to get to.
	We'll have to do it tomorrow.
	So much to look forward to.
	Get your mailbag questions in.
	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 Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
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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.
	Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
	You know, Vladimir Putin may be a world-class Al Capone, but he's done us a big favor.
	In Venezuela, he's putting on a video exhibition about why socialism is bad, why gun rights are good, and why Donald Trump and his team of foreign policy tough guys may be the men of the hour.
	I'm Andrew Klavan.

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