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May 9, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
46:54
Ep. 346 - The High Price Of Free Stuff

Joe Biden made waves yesterday by promising free healthcare for illegal aliens. But Joe is just trying to keep up with the rest of the 2020 Democratic pack, which is promising free everything for everybody. We will analyze the high price of free stuff. Then, the Mailbag! Date: 5-09-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Joe Biden made waves yesterday by promising free health care for illegal aliens.
But Joe is just trying to keep up with the rest of the 2020 Democratic PAC, which is promising free everything for everybody.
We will analyze the high price of free stuff.
Then the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
Old Uncle Joe is at it again, the most tried and true trick in the Democratic playbook, promised to give a bunch of free stuff to everybody to buy their votes.
He's just trying to keep up with everybody else.
We will analyze his plan and how it fits in with the free stuff primary.
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All right, Joe Biden, he's feeling good.
He's got, I believe, at the latest measure, a 32-point lead over the next strongest Democrat in the race, Bernie Sanders.
And so now he's going back to that old tried-and-true Democrat playbook, promise everything for free to everybody.
How's he going to do it?
free healthcare for illegal aliens. - It's been undocumented immigrants who are in this country, and are law abiding should be entitled to federal benefits, Medicare, Medicaid for example. - Look, I think that anyone who is in a situation where they're in need of healthcare, I think that anyone who is in a situation where they're in need of healthcare, regardless of whether they're documented or undocumented, we have an obligation to That's why I think we need more clinics around the country.
And this idea that undocumented, and by the way, a significant portion of undocumented folks in this country are there because they've overstayed their visas.
It's not people breaking down gates coming across the border.
And so, look, the biggest thing we've got to do in this is just tone down the rhetoric.
We know why it's happening.
It's to create fear and concern.
Why are your job in tough shape?
Because of that.
And then he describes in very graphic, unflattering terms that other, the immigrant.
So, Rambling Joe made about five points, or he started and tried to make about five points, and he didn't make any of them.
Maybe this is where President Trump is going with his Sleepy Joe nickname.
I thought that wasn't a great nickname, but the image that President Trump is trying to give is that Joe Biden is tired, he's exhausted, he's senile, he's doddering, he's just a little out of it.
And that is the feeling that you get from that answer.
So just to begin, Joe Biden is talking about how we blame illegal immigrants for taking our jobs.
Nobody is blaming anyone for taking their job right now because unemployment is at a 49-year low.
There are many, many, many more jobs to be filled in this country than people who are looking to fill them.
So nobody's blaming anybody about taking anybody's job.
This is a big difference.
I understand why Joe Biden got confused here, because the unemployment rate during the Obama-Biden years was 9%, upwards of 10%.
That unemployment rate actually didn't drop below 9% until 2011, almost until the end of the first term.
But right now, employment is doing well.
The question of illegal immigration is not primarily one of employment.
There are many other factors here, factors that pertain to our social services, factors that pertain to our culture, factors that pertain to the rule of law.
Now, Joe Biden does make a cogent point.
A nearly cogent point.
He says, most illegal aliens are visa overstays.
Now, this would have been a cogent point about two years ago.
Right now, though, that isn't probably true.
Right now, we have about 3,000 illegal aliens per day pouring over the border with Mexico.
So, how many visa overstays do we have?
On average, we have about 700,000 visa overstays per year.
But if we have a million illegal aliens coming in, if you annualize the number of people who are coming in per day, you actually have more people crossing the southern border illegally.
But let's say that Joe Biden's point were true.
Let's say that the majority of illegal aliens in this country didn't cross the southern border, but they were visa overstays.
So what?
Is that supposed to be comforting?
Don't worry.
Our completely porous immigration system that makes a mockery of the rule of law and American citizenship, don't worry.
It's people taking airplanes, not crossing the Rio Grande.
How is that supposed to make me feel better?
It still means that our federal legislators have failed at a basic task.
They've failed to enforce our national borders, the things that make up our nation, the things that define our nation.
Not very comforting.
Now, on a broader point, Joe Biden is right.
He's right not just about the future, he's right about now.
He says illegal aliens should have access to medical care.
They do.
They have free medical care.
We currently provide medical care to illegal aliens at hospitals.
If you show up at a hospital, regardless of your immigration status, regardless of your citizenship, regardless of whatever, you will be treated.
As well we should.
The left wants to portray conservatives as these heartless people who want illegal aliens to die in the street like we're Mr.
Burns, you know, counting our dollar bills and not caring about anybody else.
What are you talking about?
We're the most generous country in the world.
And yes, we want people who are here to have medical care.
We don't want people to be turned away because they don't have enough money or because they're not citizens.
What sort of society would we be if we did that?
The area when it gets complicated is that Democrats are pushing for socialist health care now.
So it's not just you show up last ditch, you show up to the emergency room and we take care of you because we're a good country.
Now it's socialist medicine, a much bigger system, a much more expensive system, and a system with much less patient choice.
So let's see how quickly that gets out of hand.
Already you hear Joe Biden say, listen, we can't just provide free socialist health care for American citizens.
We've got to provide it for the 20 million illegal aliens in the country.
Yeah, well, that gets pretty expensive.
The country only has, what, 300, 320 million people?
You increase that by 10, 20 million people, that's significant.
And then once you grant the premise that the government won't just subsidize health care, Won't just pay for a little bit of healthcare like Medicare, but will actually run the healthcare system.
What is the limiting principle that is going to rein in costs and rein in services?
This is why the government shouldn't negotiate with public sector unions.
This is why public sector unions don't make any sense, because you have the government negotiating with itself.
You have the government negotiating with the people who make donations to politicians and the people who go and vote for politicians and who then work for the government, so there's no incentive to rein in costs.
Same thing with socialist health care.
If what you're dealing in is votes, if the thing that you are most covetous of is votes, then you are going to try to buy off as many of those as possible.
And by the way, once Democrats take power, once you get a Democrat president with a Democrat Senate and a Democrat House, you are going to see mass amnesty for illegal aliens.
Why?
Because they'll legalize instantly 10 million votes.
We know statistically...
Recent immigrants, legal and illegal, from Latin America, which is where the vast majority of these immigrants that we're talking about, DREAMers and crossing the southern border, are from, they overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
They are eight times as likely, in some cases, to identify with Democrats as with Republicans.
And this doesn't go away after one generation.
This persists throughout multiple generations.
And so Joe Biden is using an old tried-and-true trick.
He's saying, yeah, we're going to give a lot of free stuff away to everybody.
The taxpayers aren't going to attack me for it because they're just not paying enough attention and we're going to overwhelm them and we're going to turn California blue and we're going to turn Texas blue.
And then I'm going to pander to this group of people that I'm about to make legal.
This is more evidence of what this election is turning into, which is the Democrats' free stuff election.
It's the free stuff primary.
I could use another term that's a little saltier, but free stuff is what it is.
It's what it all boils down to.
Democrats are currently promising a whole host of free programs.
Not just the typical, hey, vote for me and I'll give you a little something extra.
We're talking about radically transforming our system of government and our economy.
We'll go through those programs in a second.
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That's pretty good.
That's close to free, but what the Democrats are offering is the free stuff primary.
So first they're offering free child care.
Parents should no longer take care of their children.
The government is going to come in and take care of your children.
We don't want parents, you know, instilling any of those crazy ideas like religion and traditional values in their kids.
No, we need the government to come in and raise your kids for you.
So Elizabeth Warren is now calling for free child care.
Childcare, by the way, can sometimes cost about as much as college tuition.
In the state of Massachusetts right now, where Liz Warren is from, well, I guess she's from some Indian tribe somewhere on the Great Plains, but where she's currently living in Massachusetts, sometimes childcare can cost up to $34,000 per year to enroll both an infant and a toddler in daycare.
Now, Massachusetts is particularly expensive, but it's not the only expensive place for childcare.
I'm from New York.
Childcare is extremely expensive.
California, childcare is extremely expensive.
So, if we're now going to offer this as a new entitlement program to everybody in the country, how much money is that going to cost?
How much is that going to cost you and your taxes?
Next thing you're giving away for free is free college.
Bernie is now offering free community college and four-year public universities for families earning less than $125,000 per year.
Elizabeth Warren, Liawatha, is doing him one better.
She's saying forget about free community college and free university.
A four-year public college.
She's saying that regardless of where you go to college, the federal government will pay off up to $50,000 worth of loans for any graduate earning less than $100,000 a year.
What did you earn in your first job out of college?
Unless you were working at an investment bank or in consulting, something tells me your first job out of college, you weren't making $100,000 a year.
I certainly wasn't.
Now Liz Warren is going in and essentially saying to every single college graduate, hey, we'll give you $50,000 for free.
Sure hope you vote for me.
And she has to be more radical than Bernie because she's polling a lot lower than Bernie.
And as we have been predicting for months, this primary is just to see who can be the farthest left candidate, who can be the most extreme radical candidate, who can give away the most stuff for free.
So then Kamala Harris comes in, Cory Booker comes in, Kirsten Gillibrand, all in the Senate, they co-sponsor the Debt-Free College Act.
They always tell you about the free part.
They always tell you how some people are going to get stuff for free.
They don't tell you about who's going to pay for it.
You can't get something from nothing.
You have to get something from somewhere.
So somebody is going to pay for that, and that's going to be me and you.
To their credit, I hate to be Nice to the guy because he's a huge jerk, but Pete Buttigieg actually has come out against this idea.
Amy Klobuchar also has come out against this.
There's at least some modicum of almost sensibility going on in the Democrat primary.
Only those two guys, only on that one issue.
Next thing they're going to give away, they're giving away daycare.
They're giving away college.
Now they'll just go for broke.
They'll just give away free money.
So the entire Democrat field right now is offering free money to everybody.
Other than John Hickenlooper, John who?
John who?
The guy who's never going to win the Democrat nomination?
Yeah, that guy.
And Tulsi Gabbard, Congresswoman from Hawaii, I think.
Other than them, the entire Democratic field has endorsed a universal basic income for Americans.
And not just a universal basic income in some great philosophical way.
They're endorsing a universal basic income for Americans who are, quote, unable or unwilling to work.
I understand the philosophical and the policy argument for a robust social safety net, even for a universal basic income, to people who really can't provide for themselves.
What they all support is the UBI for people who are unwilling to work.
And how have they all endorsed it?
They've all endorsed it in the Green New Deal.
So if you bring this up to them, they'll say, no, I was supporting that environmental legislation.
Well, the environmental aspects of the Green New Deal are actually a relatively small portion of the law.
The much more significant portions of the law are completely upending our healthcare system, fully socialist healthcare, redistribution of wealth, and yes, a universal basic income for all Americans.
So that's the free money part.
But believe it or not, the free money part isn't even the most radical.
Historically speaking, there are now Democrats who are supporting reparations for the great, great, great, great grandchildren of black slaves in the United States.
Just a cash payment, a transfer of wealth from who?
Maybe from the great, great, great, great grandchildren of slaveholders?
But there weren't that many slaveholders, and who knows where their descendants are?
Is it going to be a transfer from just white people?
I don't know.
One of the earliest slave owners in the Americas was black.
Are they going to decide it based on race or gender or lineage or immigration status?
I don't know.
Probably they'll just take it from the federal government.
They'll take it from all of our taxes.
Now, lest you think that reparations for slavery is some radical, crazy, fringe idea, do you know which Democrats in the 2020 field are endorsing reparations?
All of them.
Every single one.
Beto O'Rourke was sort of a holdout and now he's endorsed it too.
Every single Democrat running for president has endorsed reparations for slavery.
So now, childcare, college, free money, free money, but only if you're black, so free extra money, but only if you're the descendant of African slaves.
Then there's free housing.
What are you going to do with all that money?
You gotta store it all somewhere, so the government's gonna give you a free house.
Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris, all offering mortgage assistance to people.
Direct payments, mortgage assistance, free housing.
And then, the most important one of all, the great fever dream of the left for the last hundred years.
Free healthcare.
They've wanted a federal healthcare entitlement for all Americans for 100 years.
They're calling it Medicare for All.
It's not Medicare for All.
It doesn't resemble Medicare very much at all.
Medicare is a federal-funded healthcare program.
So you have your own doctor, you're using private programs, private clinics, private insurance, whatever, and the government is paying for it.
Medicare for All...
Medicare for All would be single-payer, run-down, just between you and the government.
The government is deciding prices.
The government is deciding quality of care.
The government is deciding who gets what.
We've seen how terrible this can go in the United Kingdom.
There were those two poor little babies, Charlie Gard and baby Alfie.
These two babies had illnesses.
Their parents wanted to take them out of the hospitals and get them treatment elsewhere.
And the government-run hospitals said, no, your baby belongs to us.
The Pope asked, he said, please, bring the babies here to the hospitals at the Vatican.
And the UK healthcare system said, no, the babies belong to us.
President Trump said, bring the babies to the United States.
What did the UK government say?
No, the babies belong to us.
Because the government, big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything that you have.
And so...
All of these presidential candidates for the Democrats are promising free health care and Medicare for all.
Why are they using the phrase Medicare for all?
It's because Medicare is very popular among old people.
Senior citizens really like Medicare.
And so they're trying to use that phrase to sell it to everybody.
But it is just a lie.
It would take over one-sixth of the economy, take away choice, and put very serious and every day, daily, life and death decisions in the hands of the government.
Now, ironically, sometimes I think the Democrats are just trolling us.
Sometimes I think they're in on the joke and they just want to see us react.
Ironically, you saw they want to give you child care, free money, reparations, housing, college, medical insurance.
They want to give you all of that.
The only thing under their proposals that you don't get for free is your own money.
You know, people say, well, Joe, how you gonna do all this?
Well, guess what?
First thing I do is gonna repeal this Trump tax cut.
Well, not a joke.
So Joe Biden, you gotta love him.
Sometimes he's accidentally honest.
He gives away the whole game here.
All of this free stuff that Democrats are promising isn't about generosity or charity.
It's about control.
He's saying, I'm going to give you all this free stuff.
I'm going to give you this free thing and this free thing and this free thing.
And people ask me how I'm going to pay for all that free stuff.
And I tell them, I'm going to take away more of your money.
Wait a minute.
Oh, whoops.
Did I say that?
Yeah, I'm going to give you all this free stuff.
Here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to give you a ton of free stuff, and then I'm going to rob you, and I'm going to take all your money away.
Aren't I really generous?
Don't you want to vote for me?
It shows you that the left, it's like that controlling parent, that controlling parent you have.
You know, maybe it's a really nice mother or grandmother, I guess could be a father.
They send you money.
You go off.
You're living on your own.
And they send you money.
They write you a check.
Hey, go buy yourself something nice.
Hey, I'll pay for part of your apartment.
I live in LA where every single person is financially dependent on their parents because none of them make any money or really work at all.
And so, say, I'll pay part of your rent.
I'll pay your car payment.
I'll pay your car insurance.
But you know, I sure would like it if you'd come home for this holiday.
You're not going to come home?
I mean, come on, we're doing all that nice stuff for you, and you're not going to do me a little favor?
I never ask for anything.
Come on.
I pay your rent.
You've got to, come on.
I did you a favor.
You're going to come and listen to me now.
It's about control.
People can give money away in charity and in love, and they can also give money away so they get some control over how you behave, and that's what the left is doing.
Let's say, for instance, I don't think the numbers work for Joe Biden, namely because just the Green New Deal costs $93 trillion, and you're not going to be able to pay off $93 trillion by repealing President Trump's modest tax cuts from 2018.
But let's say the numbers did work.
Let's say the magical Democrat math did work.
And so the government is going to pay for everything that they're promising you for free by taking away exactly that same amount in your taxes.
Why do we want the government to do that at all?
If it's a wash, if Joe Biden is saying, I'm going to just pay for it by taking away your money in taxes, wouldn't you rather have the choice?
Wouldn't you rather pay for your own college and your own housing and your own health care and your own child care?
Wouldn't you rather pay?
It's going to cost you the same amount of money.
Wouldn't you rather?
It's actually going to cost you less money to do it yourself because there's not that government overhead and waste, fraud, and abuse.
But if it's going to be a wash, if somebody's got to pay in the end, if the bill eventually comes due, you would want the money yourself.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Look, I hate the modern health care system.
It's awful.
It's impossible to make appointments.
The costs are very hidden.
Unless you have something like an HSA, you basically never see the prices of doctor visits and tests and things like that.
Even so, And even though our system is very expensive, you will never believe how expensive healthcare gets when it's free.
You will never believe how expensive childcare gets when it's free.
You will never believe how expensive healthcare gets.
How much schooling, tuition, housing, UBI, money, reparations.
It's so much more expensive when the left wing tells us that it's all free.
That's the primary that we're dealing with right now.
And then there's poor Eric Swalwell.
He didn't get the message that everyone moved on to free stuff, so he is still stuck on the Mueller report.
He's a little bit slow.
But I guess I'm a little bit slow then, too, because Eric Swalwell is me, and I am Eric Swalwell, and you are me, and I am the walrus.
We'll get to that in a second, plus the mailbag.
But first, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
I'm here right now at the Missouri State Capitol.
We were previously in this beautiful office of State Senator Eric Burleson, a tremendous guy.
He's been so hospitable today.
And then the minute I went to broadcast this podcast, the entire Internet in the Capitol went down.
So I'm now in the bunker here broadcasting from Missouri.
He got to speak here today on the importance of liberal education and free speech on campuses.
I'm going to be going to Philly tomorrow to go to my friend Matt Walsh's pro-life rally at that Planned Parenthood there in Philly.
If that punk state representative Brian Sims wants to show up and take on somebody his own size, he's more than welcome to do that, but he's a I'm a coward who would rather stalk little underage girls and elderly women, so I expect I won't see him.
Maybe I'll see you out there tomorrow if you're in Philly.
Come on out to the rally.
It should be a good time.
We got a lot more with the mailbag.
Go to dailywire.com, subscribe, $10 a month, $100 for an annual membership.
You get all the shows, you get everything, you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr, and you're going to need it tomorrow.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
He didn't get the message that it's all just about free stuff.
So now he's focusing on the Mueller report still.
He tweeted out, one of the stupidest tweets I've ever read.
And do you realize what that says?
Do you know how many thousands of stupid tweets I read every single day?
It's practically my job.
And yet this one ranks, at least in the top ten.
This is what he wrote, quote, Remember that time Pearl Harbor was bombed and FDR called the Emperor of Japan?
Or the time the Twin Towers were struck and Bush ringed Osama bin Laden?
Ringed?
I don't, whatever.
No, I don't either.
So why did Donald Trump call Putin after the Mueller report was released?
Hashtag Commander in Cheat.
Before I begin to take this tweet apart, I would just like to personally apologize for the tweet.
Because, unfortunately, I am Eric Swalwell, and you are Eric Swalwell, and we are the Walrus Goo Goo Goo Joob, and therefore we all wrote that tweet.
But if I weren't Eric Swalwell, I would be able to eviscerate it.
Because how stupid.
First of all, just as a general rule, don't compare anything to 9-11.
It astounds me that politicians still make this extraordinarily basic mistake.
When has a politician ever compared anything to 9-11 and it turned out well for him?
Ever?
No.
No, never once.
Because on September 11th, 3,000 American civilians were killed by terrorists who hijacked airplanes.
And in the Mueller report, a special counsel discovered that the President of the United States didn't collude with Russia.
That's why they're different.
You see, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, kamikaze Japanese pilots took out our fleet in Hawaii, killed lots of American servicemen.
And in the Mueller report, A lawyer figured out that Donald Trump didn't collude with the Russians.
I could see how you'd get confused, but they're actually different things.
What Eric Swalwell is doing here, because he's kind of invested all his eggs in this basket of Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
And so even though the Mueller report very clearly says that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians, it exonerates him on charges of criminal conspiracy or committing any crime with the Russians, nevertheless, he's got to double down on it.
And in this way, he's pretty smart.
This shows you the narrative.
I've read the Mueller report.
Well, I've read 200 pages of it.
I've read the important pages.
Some of you very likely have read the Mueller report.
We know that the special counsel and the attorney general exonerate President Trump on the charge of colluding with the Russians.
And yet, I bet if you polled the American people today, I bet most of them think Trump colluded with the Russians.
Because that's the power of the narrative.
And so now, the Democrats are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
They're stuck between the reality.
They were really hoping for this Mueller report to convict Trump of being some KGB spy.
Turns out that isn't what happened, and so now you've got all the people they misled calling for impeachment, but then broadly you've got the American people who really don't want impeachment, and Nancy Pelosi has to answer out of both sides of her mouth.
And I have said the president is goading us into, wants to goad us into impeachment because that he knows, as do I, that that's not a good thing for the Congress.
Well, maybe he knows that, but he knows that I think that.
Let's put it that way.
He knows that I think that.
But the point is, is that every single day Whether it's obstruction, obstruction, obstruction, obstruction of having people come to the table with facts, ignoring subpoenas, and every single day the president is making a case.
He's becoming self-impeachable in terms of some of the things that he is doing.
Self-impeachable?
What is self-impeachable?
He's impeaching himself?
I don't...
She's just so lost here.
I mean, she's so lost.
She's doing something that politicians have to do, which is just babble senselessly, give an answer that isn't an answer.
Sometimes when you ask a politician a tough question, they don't have an answer, they'll say, listen, I think it's very, very important, and I mean this very seriously and sincerely, it's very important that we look into that.
So they don't want to actually do anything, but they have to seem like they care.
And so Nancy Pelosi here, she's talking like she's really serious, but she knows she can't impeach him.
Why?
Because Americans don't want to impeach Trump.
The latest polling shows only 29% of Americans want to impeach Trump.
However, the majority of Democrats still want to impeach Trump.
And she needs to hold a fractious House caucus together, so when she's asked this question, she can only babble nonsense.
It reminds me of when you're in class and the teacher asks you, hey, what do you think of this chapter of the book?
And you haven't read the book, and so you just start saying mealy-mouthed nothing.
She goes, well, if you're asking me about impeachment, I mean, really, I could impeach, I guess.
Or, I mean, really, when you really think about it, he's sort of self-impeaching himself, I think.
Right.
Is that right?
Can I go to the bathroom, please?
So, what is the Democrats' message going into this election?
They're giving two answers simultaneously.
Did Donald Trump commit a crime or not?
Swalwell is saying he did.
The Mueller report says he didn't.
Now, if he did commit a crime, what crime did he commit?
The Mueller report says he didn't collude with the Russians.
Collusion isn't even a crime.
Now, if he did commit a crime, whatever magical crime they're going to come up with, Then why won't Nancy Pelosi impeach him?
If they caught the President committing a crime, they should impeach him.
The Democrats have the House.
If they're not going to impeach him, then why do they keep pushing the narrative that he committed a crime?
It just makes them look impotent or incompetent.
It makes them look weak.
If he didn't commit a crime and they're not going to impeach him, then what is wrong with Donald Trump?
The economy's great.
You got peace abroad.
Things are going really well.
Wages are rising for the first time in a long time.
Now, $27.77 an hour is the average wage.
You've got way more job openings than people to fill them.
So, what's the argument against Trump?
What is your argument?
Now, there is an argument against Trump.
Everything is going great, and yet Trump's approval is just between 46% and 50%.
Rasmussen puts him at 50.
It's a right-leaning firm.
Gallup puts him at 46.
But even according to Gallup, Donald Trump is doing better than Barack Obama at the same point in his presidency.
So, Trump's poll numbers are better than Obama's poll numbers.
However, you've got to remember, the Obama years were terrible.
They were awful on the economy.
You had 10% unemployment.
Things were dreadful during the Obama years.
Right now, everything is going great.
I mean, not only do I not remember when things were going so well in this country during my lifetime, I don't remember when things were going this well economically and as a matter of foreign affairs, ever.
This may be, when you just look at the economy and foreign policy, this may be the best time in the history of the United States.
And yet Trump's numbers are only 46 to 50%.
Now, in part, this is due to a country that is very politically divided and that has been increasingly politically divided over the last several decades.
That's not Donald Trump's fault.
That's been building for a long time.
Also part of this is many people find Trump personally repulsive.
I don't.
I like Donald Trump.
I'm from New York.
I get a kick out of the guy.
But many people find Donald Trump personally repulsive.
And I get it.
I get why.
Barack Obama had the opposite problem.
Many people found Obama personally likable, but they hated his policies.
I didn't.
I didn't find him personally likable at all, and I also hated his policies.
But with Trump, people love his policies, and many of them don't like him personally.
So this is the question that Democrats in the Free Stuff primary have to ask.
If their only chance is to make 2020 about personality, are people really going to trade prosperity for personality?
Are they going to really trade their own hard-earned money and their own economic freedom for free stuff that costs more money than the stuff they're getting?
If people would trade all that prosperity for personality, then the question is which personality is going to beat Trump?
Kamala Harris?
No.
Cory Booker?
No.
Buttigieg?
Maybe.
Biden?
Maybe.
But if it really comes down to personality, Are you going to be able to beat the king of reality TV? Seems unlikely.
Let's get to the mailbag before we've got to go.
We're always running late.
From Timothy.
Hey, Michael.
If you were to have a chance to sit and talk with the more prominent members of the Inklings, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, etc., and could ask them one question, what would it be?
One question.
I'd probably ask them how heaven is.
Because all those guys are definitely in heaven, right?
Those guys were so important.
I mean, I love them all.
I don't like fantasy stuff, but I still like Tolkien as a person, as a thinker.
I think that would be my question.
What is heaven like?
And I don't mean that in a glib way.
I want to know their thoughts on theology and God and religion.
They...
They all know the answer now, so that's probably what I would ask them.
That's what I ask them every night that I read their books.
I'm basically asking that question.
What's heaven like?
From Michael.
Michael, would you be in favor of runoff elections so that third parties actually have a shot at election?
No.
I hate third parties.
I hate them.
Yes, I know.
The Republican Party's awful.
I know.
The Democrat Party's awful.
Third parties are worse.
They can be spoilers.
If there is a runoff, you've got these little parties that come up and spring out of nowhere and you get an organized group of activists and they make a big dent.
I like bigger institutions.
I like slower institutions.
I'm a conservative.
I want evolution, not revolution.
I want slow and gradual change.
There are some radical changes that I would make tomorrow.
If I were king.
Or that I would at least want to make.
But even those radical changes that I want, I would be cautious about.
And I would make them slowly.
And those big parties do have real institutional heft and inertia to them.
And they do have some coherence.
Especially these days.
In the old days, the parties didn't line up exactly with political ideologies.
Didn't line up with leftism or with conservative thought.
Now, much more so they do.
The Republican Party more or less represents a conservative view of the world.
I know it's imperfect, but all human institutions are imperfect, and so it more or less represents conservative thought.
The Democratic Party, also imperfect, also corrupt, also all those things, basically represents the left-wing view of the world.
Those are coherent views.
There are a lot of little parties that would represent incoherent views.
There would probably be a party of social liberal fiscal conservatives.
I'm sure that party would spring up.
And there are a lot of people who would call themselves socially liberal fiscally conservative.
But that ideology doesn't make any sense.
I get that people have those preferences.
I would have called myself that at different times, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I like that there is clarity between the two parties, and I like that, especially these days, they're having an honest fight.
From Arun, Dear Dr.
Covfefe, I very much enjoyed your take on tariffs.
Along the same lines, what do you think of Tucker's idea of banning self-driving trucks?
Should we ban certain economic shifts if the resulting cultural damage, in this case mass unemployment, would be too much to bear?
I'm not a Luddite.
So I don't take an idolatrous view of free trade.
I think there are negative consequences of free trade, particularly to culture, particularly of questions of mass migration, particularly in questions of surrendering some of your national sovereignty.
Because necessarily, when you engage in free trade in the 21st century, that usually doesn't mean bilateral trade deals.
What that usually means is you're engaging in These massive international, supranational organizations, the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the European Union, whatever.
And when you engage in those free trade systems and organizations, you, by definition, give away some of your national sovereignty to a group that is not accountable to your people.
So I'm very aware of those risks, and that's why I think there are plenty of good reasons to institute tariffs on certain instances.
I don't think this is the case for banning self-driving trucks.
I question the premise that self-driving trucks would cause mass unemployment.
Right now we have a booming economy.
We have something like a million more jobs open than we can fill.
So I don't think we're going to have mass unemployment as a result of technological innovation.
However, it is true, technological innovation changes culture.
There is a downside even to your iPhone.
There is.
Now, I'm skeptical that you can predict the negatives of certain technological changes.
I'm skeptical that anyone can predict the future.
But it is certainly the case that massive rampant technological change, particularly when it is married to globalization, mass migration, Free trade organizations.
When it's married to all of this, this can have massive cultural change.
And if a people wants to defend its culture against even technological innovation, they should.
The trouble now for us in the West is we don't believe in our culture anymore.
We don't defend our culture.
We don't participate in our cultural institutions.
So it might be a moot point, because I don't think that anybody is going to trade their iPhone for another extra couple nights at the Lions Club.
I don't think anybody wants to go back in time, nor should they go back in time.
But I don't think people are more protective of their culture than they are of their stuff.
And that's a cultural problem in and of itself.
From John.
Hey Michael, I recently had a friend tell me they did not keep the baby when she was younger.
It has been close to 10 years since and she still suffers from her past actions.
She still cries about this and you can tell it weighs on her.
I'm not sure what I can say as she is looking to me for comfort.
Any thoughts or self-help books that might help her with her struggles?
Thanks for your help.
I will tell you to tell your friend what an ex-mobster turned born-again Catholic told me one time in New York.
Paul was a murderer.
Even St.
Paul was a murderer.
People do very bad things, and abortion is a very bad thing.
And then they can have a change of heart.
They can repent.
What does repent mean?
It comes from the word metanoia.
It means to change your mind.
You change your mind about something.
At the time, maybe you didn't think abortion was a serious issue.
Now you realize it is.
Life goes on, and you shouldn't wallow in self-pity and wallow in regret and wallow in the past.
You can't go back to the past.
The devil wants you to go wallow in the past and wallow in self-pity.
There's nothing good about doing that.
You made a bad decision.
In some cases, a very bad decision.
What are you doing now?
Now you move on.
You're sorry for it.
You pray for that baby.
You move on with your life and you live a good life.
Paul was a murderer.
What if Paul just decided, after he saw Christ on the road to Damascus, he says, oh, but I can't spread the Christian religion.
I can't become one of the greatest evangelists in all of history because I killed people.
I could never do anything.
We wouldn't have Christianity today if that were the case.
Paul was a murderer.
People don't commit unique sins.
Sin pervades the entire world.
And even that suffering that she's experiencing right now doesn't have a moral quality.
Suffering isn't evil.
It's your reaction to suffering that determines if you're going to respond in a good or a bad way.
From Ivan.
Dear Pedro Knowles.
No, now I'm Eric Swalwell.
I used to be Pedro, now I'm Eric Swalwell.
Dear, I'll change that, Eric Swalwell.
Since you are of Italian descent, what do you think of Benito Mussolini and how much distance Italy has put between itself and the days of the fascist kingdom of Italy?
Italian politics is always terrible.
So how much distance do they put?
They have total distance.
Because all of their politicians are awful.
It's always been awful.
This has been true since ancient times.
Dante in the Divine Comedy refers to Italy as a slave.
It refers to Italy as a whore.
We've had something like 45 governments in Italy since World War II. It's just completely unstable.
Italian politics is always awful, and if tradition is any predictor of the future, it's going to remain absolutely awful.
Alright, we've got a lot more to get to, but unfortunately we're out of time.
That's our show.
I'm going to Philly tomorrow, so maybe I'll see you there.
Otherwise, I'll see you on Monday.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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.
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.
And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Democrats in the Judiciary Committee hold the Attorney General in contempt and declare a constitutional crisis.
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