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June 17, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show

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Ep. 366 - Harvard Sucks

Harvard Sucks. Date: 06-17-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Harvard has rescinded its admission of well-known conservative activist Kyle Kashuv over leaked chats of lewd jokes that he and his friends made when they were 16 years old.
	We will examine what this means for the American University and how conservatives can fight back.
	Then...
	President Trump endorses a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.
	And almost all of the conservative commentators instantly condemned the idea as anti-American.
	I will explain the case for the amendment because I am not most conservative commentators.
	Finally, 2020 Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg plays the gay card perfectly.
	All that and more.
	I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
	First and foremost, the news, I guess it's not news, but the obvious fact that Harvard sucks.
	We'll get to that in a second.
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	Harvard sucks.
	Harvard has just rescinded its acceptance of Kyle Kashuv.
	You know Kyle.
	Kyle's a friend of the show.
	He's come on here once or twice.
	Kyle, he was working for TPUSA, the conservative activist organization around the country.
	And they've rescinded their admission of Kashuv.
	Now, Kashuv didn't just get admitted to Harvard because he's a celebrity.
	Some other people who also became celebrities from that Parkland school shooting had pretty low grades, and they got into very good schools because they became celebrities.
	Not true of Kyle.
	Kyle earned his way in there.
	He got a 1550 on his SAT, which is almost perfect.
	He has a 3.9 GPA in high school.
	Again, almost perfect.
	He worked really hard.
	He's a very sharp kid.
	I mean, I've known him a little bit for at least a year now, and I can tell you, he's super smart.
	He would do very well at Harvard.
	So he gets admitted.
	This is a big deal.
	It can be a life-changing event for a young teenager.
	If you get into an elite university, it means you can have access to certain networks.
	You can go get certain high-paying jobs.
	It means a lot.
	It's not nothing.
	And then at the end of May...
	One of Kyle's political opponents posted an old Google document in which Kyle and some of his friends were saying the most outrageous things they possibly could.
	So they were using the N-word in jokes.
	They were using all sorts of profanity.
	They were saying things, F me in the A. Just saying the most grotesque and outrageous things you can possibly say.
	As a result of this, Harvard has rescinded his admission.
	Because he made outrageous comments privately with his friends in a little chat box when he was 16 years old.
	So the question that Harvard needs to ask now is, does this mean that any student who has ever said anything outrageous or offensive at the age of 16 will lose his admission?
	How many students were admitted to Harvard, do you think, who didn't say something outrageous or offensive at the age of 16?
	Any?
	None?
	None.
	None is the answer.
	Not one single student who was admitted to Harvard has never said something mean or outrageous or offensive or racial or sexist or whatever in their lives.
	Not one.
	Now, is Harvard going to investigate all of their other students and figure out what they said in their GChats when they were 16 years old?
	I assume Kyle Kashuk isn't the only student matriculating into Harvard class of 2023 who had the internet when he was a kid.
	I assume he's not the only one who had Google Documents and GChats and Facebook Messenger and all those things.
	I think if we're going to analyze Kyle's 16-year-old GChats, maybe we should analyze every other student at that university.
	How many matriculating Harvard students?
	Have ever said the N-word even once, even as a joke?
	Because that's what this is about.
	This is what the left is saying.
	He said the N-word.
	He said all that other stuff, but he said the N-word, so he has to have his life ruined and be kicked out of school.
	How many students in that class have said the N-word even once, even as a joke?
	Almost all of them.
	That's how many.
	Even once.
	Even one time.
	Maybe you were quoting somebody.
	Maybe you were saying it ironically.
	Maybe you were saying it to reclaim the word for yourself or for your friend or whatever.
	Even one time.
	Have you ever said that word even once?
	Yes, you have.
	Did you read Huck Finn?
	Did you say it out loud?
	Every single one of them.
	Are they going to be kicked out of Harvard?
	No.
	How many matriculating Harvard students have ever said, F me up the A? If that's a problem, Harvard's going to have a homophobia case on their hands.
	Any of the other bad words?
	100% of these kids did that.
	So forget the kids for a second.
	How about the Harvard Admissions Committee?
	Because these aren't just the kids going into Harvard.
	These are the gatekeepers.
	These are the people who are deciding who gets to go in, who gets to be part of this diverse and inclusive community.
	They're the most powerful people in the whole equation.
	Do you think any people on the Harvard Admissions Committee, when they were 20 or 15, 16 or 10 years old, do you think any of them said the N-word even once, even as a joke?
	I think they probably did.
	Do you think any of them said some other racial?
	Let's say they didn't say the animal.
	Let's say they said some other racial slur.
	They said guido or guinea or mick or something like that.
	Slurs for Irish and Italian people.
	Do you think they ever said that once, one time?
	Honky, slur for white people.
	Cracker, slur for white people.
	Do you think they ever said that?
	Once?
	Even one time?
	Yes, they all did it.
	All of them did it.
	Sure would be a shame if the Dean of Admissions, William R. Fitzsimmons, sure would be a shame if it turned out that that guy had said some offensive things in his past when he was 16 and then we dug them up.
	How many of those people could stand?
	How many of those people?
	None, of course.
	None of them could.
	The real irony here is that there is no evidence whatsoever that Kyle harbors any sort of actual racial bigotry.
	I made this point on Twitter, and all of a sudden the lefties came.
	They said, of course there's evidence.
	It's in the texts.
	We see the G-chats.
	He used the N-word.
	Right.
	I know he did.
	I saw he said it.
	They did it like 20 times in all capitals.
	N-word, N-word, N-word, N-word, N-word.
	But there's no evidence that he actually harbors racial bias or resentment or bigotry because in that same exact sentence he said, F me up the A. So what do you think is more likely?
	Do you think it's more likely that these chats reflect what Kyle really thinks and what he really feels deep in his core and therefore Kyle is secretly gay or Do you think that it was just a 16-year-old kid saying the most outrageous things he possibly could for shock value, as all 16-year-old kids do?
	It was the latter.
	And you've done similar things, and so has everybody else.
	Now, there is a big irony here, because while there is no evidence that Kyle Cash has any racial bigotry in his body at all, there is a lot of evidence that the Harvard Admissions Office Harbors a lot of racial bigotry.
	There is a major lawsuit right now from Asian Americans who observe that Harvard unfairly discriminates against Asian applicants.
	We know that this happens.
	This is not some conspiracy theory or something.
	The dean of admissions himself has testified that Harvard docs Asian applicants 250 points on their SAT. So if you apply to Harvard and you're a black student, there is a lower bar for you According to the admissions office.
	Because the admissions office apparently thinks that black applicants can't compete or something like that.
	Because they're racial bigots.
	If you are an Asian applicant to Harvard, there is a disadvantage.
	So if you're an Asian applicant, you have to score higher on your SAT to be considered at the same level as students of other races.
	There's no other word for that than racial bigotry.
	You can use whatever euphemism you want.
	Affirmative action or...
	Progress or whatever, whatever you from social justice, it's race discrimination.
	That's what Harvard does.
	That's not some G-chat from when you were 16 years old.
	That's the current policy in the admissions office at Harvard.
	So what happened?
	Kyle apologized right away when these texts came out.
	This was a mistake.
	He shouldn't have done it.
	He should have privately apologized to anybody that he offended, any of his friends who were offended, or any people that he knew that he had offended.
	Of course, I suspect none of them were actually offended by Kyle because he was just saying shocking, outrageous things.
	Did Kyle have to apologize to his gay friends as well for saying, F me up the A? I don't know.
	I don't remember that being a big issue.
	Kyle Kashif does not owe a public apology to anybody for saying the stupid sort of things that kids say.
	He doesn't owe a public apology to one single person.
	This is the difference.
	Obviously, people should grow.
	They should have humility.
	They should realize that when you're a kid, you act immature, and then you grow up and you act in a mature way.
	So we don't want to say he should be proud of what he said.
	No, of course not.
	What he said was stupid.
	It's what 16-year-olds say.
	And if he privately offended anybody, okay, deal with that.
	He doesn't owe anybody a public apology for being a stupid kid.
	It's ridiculous.
	He should not have bought into the leftist premise that he owed the public an apology.
	He didn't.
	I think it made it worse.
	Some conservatives now are attacking him from another angle.
	They're attacking him for wanting to go to Harvard in the first place.
	This is a fairly compelling argument because I don't care for Harvard and I'm pretty disenchanted with all of higher education at the moment.
	They say, who cares?
	Who cares if you go to Harvard?
	Harvard's stupid.
	Forget about Harvard.
	What they say is conservatives talk a good game about the universities being worthless and pointless and just a worthless credential.
	But then all of them go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford.
	They all go to those top schools.
	Right.
	Right.
	What those conservative critics are missing is the actual point here.
	The reason that the anti-conservative bias of schools like Harvard matters is because a Harvard degree does matter.
	And that's what this is, by the way.
	This is an excuse.
	This has nothing to do with the N-word.
	It has nothing to do with G-chats when you were 16.
	This is just an excuse for Kyle's political opponents to get Harvard to kick him out for being a conservative.
	That's all this is about.
	This is about nothing else.
	And the reason that that anti-conservative bias of these institutions matters is that having that degree from Harvard matters.
	It means you will make more money or you're able to make more money.
	You have a better chance of getting into a better graduate school or a law school or a medical school.
	You get access to better alumni networks, old boys club.
	You just get advantages from this.
	Even if you don't learn anything, by the way.
	Even if you have a kind of paltry education there, you will still get access to a terrific network.
	Because Harvard is the oldest university in America.
	Now, this problem for Kyle is, there's no problem that he wanted to go to Harvard.
	There's no problem that he apologized and said, please, Harvard, please take me back.
	Don't do this to me.
	It's actually incumbent on us as conservatives to keep the heat up on these universities.
	We'll explain how in a second, but first...
	There are a lot of things in life that aren't right.
	There are a lot of things in life that aren't right, like kicking a kid out of college because he said something stupid when he was 16.
	Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
	A lot of things in life that are not right.
	We look around and today, in this day and age, up is down.
	Black is white.
	2 plus 2 equals 7.
	A lot of things don't seem right in the culture.
	One of the things that doesn't seem right, especially, is paying too much for your phone bill.
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	We shouldn't blame Kyle for wanting to go to Harvard or for trying to salvage his Harvard admission.
	We should keep up the intensity here.
	I mean, conservatives should stop letting the left run through all of our institutions.
	This is what they do.
	They take over our universities.
	They take over Hollywood.
	They take over the mainstream media.
	The left never gives an inch on any of these.
	So why should we?
	Why should we say, oh, forget about Harvard?
	No way.
	Harvard's a valuable commodity.
	A Harvard degree is a valuable thing.
	We shouldn't surrender it to the left.
	So how do we fight back?
	First of all, we should dig up every single thing that this dean of admissions has ever written or published.
	Everything.
	You know, the advantage of believing in grace and repentance in politics is that I'll face up to anything that I've ever said.
	Anything I've said on this show or on tweets or in columns or whatever, I will face up to anything that I have said.
	And in some cases, I'll say, oh yeah, that was stupid.
	I don't agree with that anymore.
	In some cases I'll say, well, yeah, I don't know, maybe I'll stand by that a little bit.
	In some cases I'll say, oh, I changed my mind.
	I'm perfectly willing to do that because I believe in a society that has grace and repentance and in which people mature.
	By the impossible standards that Harvard is now setting, no man can possibly stand.
	No one, not a single person.
	There's a line in The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare.
	The line is, in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.
	We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.
	If all you're focusing on is justice, or I guess in this case, social justice, none of us will see salvation.
	We will be totally destroyed because we all fall and sin and do stupid things when we're 16.
	Now, ironically, the only way that we can show the need for mercy here is to hold Harvard to their own impossible standards.
	We should dig up as much as we can on whatever the Dean of Admissions, William R. Fitzsimmons, ever put in his G-chats when he was 16 years old.
	He's a little older than that, so maybe we'll have to look up columns that he wrote when he was a kid.
	Maybe we'll have to look up correspondence that he's had as he's been an adult.
	Because something tells me, he has not had a perfect 100% If Harwood were smart, they would let Kyle in.
	Because this is going to increase a lot of pressure.
	We should keep the pressure up on this Harvard race discrimination case.
	We should keep this up very, very hard.
	The Supreme Court and the other courts watch the poll numbers.
	They watch what's going on in the news.
	This is how the left has won a lot of victories at the Supreme Court.
	We should keep that up as well.
	We'll keep following this story.
	We don't want to let Kyle hang out to dry here.
	Moving on to a different story, but another one actually that involves the Supreme Court.
	Over the weekend, President Trump has endorsed a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning.
	This has always been a big, touchy issue.
	This new constitutional amendment has been suggested by Representatives Steve Womack of Arkansas and Steve Daines of Montana, Senator Steve Daines.
	And so they put this idea out.
	Right now it's legal to burn an American flag.
	This was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1989 in a case called Texas v.
	Johnson.
	And the court found that burning an American flag is protected speech under the First Amendment.
	What this constitutional amendment would do is specifically ban the burning of the American flag.
	President Trump tweeted out, he said, all in for Senator Steve Daines as he proposes an amendment for a strong ban on burning our American flag.
	A real no-brainer.
	Every pundit in the country, immediately when Trump said this, left, right, and center, came out and said, this is a terrible idea.
	It's un-American.
	It's indefensible.
	We have to burn flags.
	We must let people burn flags.
	There's no argument on the other side.
	Actually, there is.
	There's a very good argument for this constitutional amendment.
	We'll make that in just a second.
	What is the argument for flag burning?
	What is the argument to protect the right of people to burn the flag?
	Every one of these pundits invoked Antonin Scalia, who put it very well.
	He said this.
	I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag.
	However, we have a First Amendment which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged.
	And it is addressed in particular to speech critical of the government.
	I mean, that was the main kind of speech that tyrants would seek to suppress.
	Burning the flag is a form of expression.
	Speech doesn't just mean written words or oral words.
	It could be semaphore.
	Burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea.
	I hate the government.
	The government is unjust, whatever.
	Listen to the argument.
	He's made this argument many times.
	He said, look, if I were king, this is another life.
	I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly.
	He said, if I were king, I would throw in prison every scruffy, bearded, sandal-wearing weirdo who burns the American flag, but I am not the king.
	So all the left and the What sort of liberal conservatives heard here is, we have a First Amendment that protects the right to burn the flag, and so therefore it's a good thing that we can protect the right to burn the flag.
	That's not what Scalia said.
	He said, if I were in charge, I would prohibit burning the American flag.
	I was actually, I was covering a rally, a revolutionary communist rally, just a week or two ago, and they burned American flags there.
	I'd never seen an American flag burned.
	It's a horrific sight.
	It is, you don't know what it's like until you see it in person.
	So Scalia makes the argument, he says, actually he makes the argument in the Supreme Court case.
	In 1989, Texas v.
	Johnson, he joins some liberals, he broke from some conservatives, and he says that the First Amendment protects the right to burn the flag.
	And I agree with him.
	He's totally right with that.
	Justice Brennan wrote the argument for the court there defending flag burning.
	He wrote, If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
	We have not recognized an exception to this principle even where our flag has been involved.
	We are tempted to say, and this is where they go too far, we are tempted to say, in fact, that the flag's deservedly cherished place in our community will be strengthened, not weakened, by our holding today.
	Our decision is a reaffirmation of the principles of freedom and inclusiveness that the flag best reflects, and of the conviction that our toleration of criticism, such as Johnson's, is a sign and source of our strength.
	So, see, really, flag-burning is our strength, or whatever...
	Ridiculous line they have.
	Okay, so that's a cut and dry argument.
	That's a cut and dry argument for allowing flag burning.
	What's the argument against flag burning, even from the First Amendment perspective?
	Justice Rehnquist and White and O'Connor...
	And Rehnquist wrote the dissent.
	He said, quote, So he's saying there's a unique place right here for the flag.
	And then he goes on and he...
	I love this line about the importance of history here rather than just all doctrine.
	And he gives the history of the place of the American flag in American history.
	He then says...
	The flag symbolizes the nation in peace as well as in war.
	In 1931, Congress declared the Star Spangled Banner to be our national anthem.
	No other American symbol has been as universally honored as the flag.
	So even you think our national anthem is the flag.
	What is a flag?
	A flag is a symbol of the country.
	That's all it is.
	It's not a piece of cloth.
	It's a symbol of the whole country.
	And as such, our flag is such a symbol of our country that our national anthem itself is the flag.
	It is the Star Spangled Banner.
	It's a symbol, but it's not merely a symbol.
	It is a symbol of the nation which precedes the Constitution.
	And this is the key here.
	This is the conservative argument for this constitutional amendment, which I think is a perfectly fine idea.
	We'll get to that in a second.
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	We'll be right back.
	So the argument that the conservatives, Rehnquist at least, is making in the Texas Rehnquist at least, is making in the Texas feature Johnson case is that the flag is not just some regular idea.
	It's not just some symbol.
	It's a special symbol and therefore it supersedes the First Amendment.
	So he says Congress and the states have enacted many laws regulating the use of the flag and how the flag can be used since at least 1907.
	And Therefore, it's not just merely a symbol.
	He says, So, that's his argument.
	He says, this is super special.
	It overrides the First Amendment.
	I don't agree with that.
	I agree with Scalia in this case and some of the liberals that the First Amendment permits the burning of the American flag.
	It is clearly expressive speech.
	It is clearly political speech.
	It's clearly protected by the First Amendment.
	However, if there is a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning...
	I agree.
	There's no problem.
	It doesn't make it unconstitutional.
	It makes it explicitly constitutional.
	And I don't see any reason not to do that.
	Have we gone so far in this direction that now we're celebrating the right to burn the flag?
	There's no good being accomplished by burning the flag.
	By the way, it's not as though plenty of countries don't have laws against burning the flag.
	Plenty of perfectly fine countries.
	Flag burning right now today is illegal in Argentina, Austria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Serbia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and Uruguay at least.
	All those countries, some of them not terribly developed, some of them very developed, some of them quite westernized, some quite liberal.
	They all have laws against flag burning.
	Do you know what country doesn't have any laws against flag burning?
	Canada.
	Who do you want to be more like?
	Croatia, Finland, France, India, Japan, Israel, or Canada?
	I don't want to be like Canada.
	There are actually some countries in Denmark and Norway, it is illegal to burn their own national flag, but it is illegal to burn other national flags, which is like exactly the opposite of what, if you're going to have this kind of, that sort of silly law, I mean, invert it, guys.
	What are you doing?
	This is a perfectly common idea.
	Why are there laws against flag burning?
	Because burning a flag is heinous.
	It is a heinous act of national and cultural suicide.
	I am perfectly fine with a constitutional amendment banning flag burning.
	I think that is a perfectly okay thing to do.
	It is, by definition, not unconstitutional.
	And why am I okay with it?
	Because the nation comes before the constitution.
	You can have a country without a constitution.
	There have been many countries without constitutions.
	The vast majority of countries in the history of the world have not had a constitution.
	Our country, our own country from 1620 up until the late 18th century didn't have a constitution.
	For most of England's history, it didn't have a constitution.
	You can have a country without a constitution.
	You can't have a constitution without a country.
	A constitution without a country doesn't mean anything.
	By that I mean the nation is the basis of the constitution.
	Our First Amendment, which we all cherish, does not exist without America.
	And the flag is a symbol of America.
	The flag is not a symbol of the First Amendment.
	Though, if it were, it would be just as incoherent to burn the flag as it already is.
	Let's say that the flag were a symbol of the First Amendment.
	And you say, see, I have the right to burn this flag because of my First Amendment.
	And this flag actually represents my First Amendment.
	And then you set the flag on fire.
	What did you do?
	You just set on fire your own First Amendment right.
	You destroyed your right to burn the flag by burning the flag in the first place.
	Well, it's even more the case that because the flag represents the country, without this country, You don't get your right to your First Amendment.
	You don't get your right to free speech.
	The reason that kneeling for the national anthem, disrespecting the national anthem, disrespecting the flag is so stupid, it's so profoundly stupid, is that without the country, you don't have that right in the first place.
	Without that flag, without what that flag represents, which is America, you have no First Amendment, you have no freedom of speech, you don't get to burn the flag.
	There's this line that G.K. Chesterton used.
	He said, there is a thought that stops thought, and that is the only thought that ought to be stopped.
	That's what I'm seeing here in the flag.
	When you burn the flag, what you are burning is the country.
	Not only everything the country stands for, but everything the country is.
	Everything about the country that gives way to all of the things that you like about it, the First Amendment and this civil liberty and this economic prosperity, you're burning it all up.
	It is totally incoherent.
	It doesn't make any sense.
	And I think it is perfectly reasonable to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting that.
	It's a grand old flag.
	It's a high-flying flag.
	And forever in peace may she wave.
	And I'm perfectly happy to answer any conservative who has become so obsessed with this idea of liberalism without any limits on it that they're, for some reason, celebrating the right to burn a flag.
	I agree.
	Look, I agree with all of the arguments from the First Amendment.
	I agree.
	Today, it is perfectly legal and constitutional to burn a flag.
	But if you pass a constitutional amendment, it's all good.
	And by the way, if we could start passing more constitutional amendments, it would show that our country really is alive.
	We really do have some control over our government.
	Antonin Scalia, the one that they all keep invoking, he said before he died that the one regret he has about the Constitution is that it's not easier to make amendments.
	So, that's a great idea.
	It's as good as an amendment as I've ever seen.
	I want to turn, also speaking of wrapping yourself in the flag in American history, I have to turn to the 2020 race and Pete Buttigieg.
	Because Pete Buttigieg, this guy is such a slick, smart politician.
	Pete Buttigieg was doing an interview and he's putting out material from Axios on HBO, which is helping all the 2020 candidates.
	He was asked...
	If it's going to matter that he's gay, how that's going to affect him and what that means for American history, his answer was perfect.
	Republicans claim that John Kerry was a traitor in Vietnam, that Barack Obama was a Muslim.
	If you were to win the nomination, they'll say, you're too young, too liberal, too gay to be commander in chief.
	You are young, you are liberal, you are gay.
	How will you respond?
	I'll respond by explaining where I want to lead this country.
	People will elect the person who will make the best president.
	And we have had excellent presidents who have been young.
	We have had excellent presidents who have been liberal.
	I would imagine we've probably had excellent presidents who were gay, we just didn't know which ones.
	You believe that we've had a gay commander-in-chief?
	I mean, statistically, it's almost certain.
	And, like, in your reading of history, like, do you believe you know who they were?
	My gaydar doesn't even work that well in the present, let alone retroactively.
	But one can only assume that's the case.
	My first reaction watching him was one word.
	It was, uh, what?
	What do you mean, statistically, almost certainly, we've had gay presidents?
	You can't name the gay presidents, but you're certain that we've had them.
	You don't know which ones, but statistically, what does that mean?
	So just that word statistically, what he's doing is he's cloaking his ideology in this guise of science.
	This is what the left always does because they worship at the altar of science.
	So they say, yes.
	I'm not telling you historically there were gay presidents, but scientifically there have to have been.
	Can you name them?
	Well, no, of course not.
	What statistics are you talking about?
	What are the statistics on gay presidents?
	There aren't any statistics on gay presidents.
	There's no statistical textbook or some data set on gay presidents.
	You're just making that up.
	But Pete Buttigieg, because he knows his base, is using this scientific language to make it seem perfectly normal.
	And he does it in this very monotone way.
	He goes, yeah, well, of course.
	Hey, I'm just perfectly reasonable.
	What he said is a pretty radical thing.
	He said, we've definitely had gay presidents.
	That's news to me.
	I don't remember gay presidents.
	So this is the first lesson.
	It's just being very matter-of-fact and dress up your language and science.
	He also won't get specific.
	Very, very smart.
	Because when he says, we've almost certainly had gay presidents, what's he referring to?
	The most obvious answer is James Buchanan.
	This is the president that everybody always says he's the gay one.
	He's guaranteed to be the gay president.
	He was the 15th president of the United States.
	He was a Democrat.
	He was disastrous.
	And some people say that he was gay.
	He led to the panic of 1857.
	He presided over bleeding Kansas, a horrific early, early stage, an event in what would lead to the Civil War.
	He presided over secession, and he presided over the beginning of that war.
	Now, the reason they say that Buchanan was gay is because he's our only bachelor president.
	So it's the same reason, you know, people say that Lindsey Graham is gay because he never got married.
	They say the same thing about James Buchanan.
	He's the only president who was a bachelor.
	He did have a romantic encounter with a woman when he was younger, but then that was the only woman he ever showed any interest in.
	He also had a close relationship with William Rufus King, who was this politician, and he was sometimes referred to in Washington circles as Miss Nancy or Aunt Fancy.
	These were terms for a feminine man, sort of like the 19th century version of being a little light in the loafers.
	And so there were rumors, I guess, that he was a gay guy or he at least surrounded himself with gay guys or at least that he was a confirmed bachelor.
	So that's one.
	Now, of course, I don't think Pete Buttigieg wants to claim him.
	One, because it's so presumptuous.
	That becomes the story.
	Buttigieg calls James Buchanan gay, and that leads Buttigieg all the way from the news cycle that he wants.
	The other one is he was a horrific president and a Democrat, so Buttigieg probably doesn't want to draw any comparisons between himself and the guy who started the Civil War.
	The next president that they sometimes call gay is actually the next president, is Abraham Lincoln, and the gay Republican group is called the Log Cabin Republicans because Abe Lincoln was born in a log cabin, and they sort of tip their hat to this story that he was gay and and they sort of tip their hat to this story There's no evidence that Abe Lincoln was gay.
	When he was a young man, he shared a bed briefly with another guy.
	This was common at the time because people didn't have a lot of money and so they would sleep in the same bed together.
	I've slept in plenty of beds with dudes.
	Maybe I'm giving too much information.
	But I think everybody has.
	You know, if you go, you're like on a road trip and there's only one bed, you've got to share the room.
	Or, I mean, that sort of thing happens all the time.
	That's what happened with Abraham Lincoln.
	And...
	And I don't know, maybe he thinks there have been other gay presidents.
	Who knows?
	I couldn't possibly say, you know.
	But...
	Who knows?
	But my second reaction to this was that this was brilliant.
	I mean, this was absolutely a brilliant way to handle it.
	Why?
	Because the question to Buttigieg was...
	Are you too young?
	Are you too liberal?
	Are you too gay to be president?
	And so, what the kind of stupid leftist would answer is, well, we should have a young president.
	It's about damn time we have a young president.
	Well, it's about damn time we have a liberal president.
	It's about damn time we have a gay president.
	That's the stupid leftist reaction, where you claim victimhood and you say, I've been oppressed, and okay, that's the knee-jerk reaction of our age.
	The smarter reaction is, oh, we have a long tradition in America of liberal presidents.
	A long tradition of young presidents.
	A long tradition of gay presidents.
	What are you talking about?
	We know for a fact we haven't had any gay presidents.
	We don't know the sexual desires of every single president, but none of them behaved in a gay way or had a gay husband or something.
	We just know we didn't.
	But he says it with a straight face because the way to change America, the way to push your innovative, progressive platform is not to set yourself up in opposition to America.
	It's to pretend that America has secretly been this way all the time and you're just bringing out the best in America.
	Oh yes, the presidents have always been gay.
	Like, okay, alright.
	It was really brilliant.
	I mean, this is what the civil rights movement did.
	They said, I mean, the reason we talk about Martin Luther King is because Martin Luther King didn't say America's an awful, racist, terrible, irredeemable place, like Malcolm X did.
	He said America needs to live up to her creed.
	America needs to live up to her traditions.
	And that got everyone to buy into it.
	Same thing with women's suffrage and the women's rights movement.
	This has been all a part of America.
	We just haven't lived up to it yet.
	And now we're going to live up to our greed.
	And that's what Pete Buttigieg is going to do.
	This guy is dangerous for Republicans.
	I mean, he is a sharp politician.
	I initially wrote off a small-town mayor from South Bend who is the mayor of 100,000 people or something.
	Not ready to be president, but he's really good, and one of his pitches, especially if he's pitching himself for vice president, is that it'll be great to watch him go up against Mike Pence, who the left has completely unfairly painted as some sort of anti-gay bigot or something like that.
	Really sharp guy.
	He's playing everything right, and I suspect he's going to keep rising up in the polls.
	One thing I have to get to before we go is this little clip from Donald Trump's interview with George Stephanopoulos, which just leaked out today.
	It was kind of some of the extra footage there.
	And it shows an interaction that is actually very telling about Donald Trump.
	So Trump is talking to Stephanopoulos.
	He's giving an answer.
	And then his budget, or rather his former budget director and now his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, coughs in the background.
	And Trump stops the footage, stops the cameras, says, we got to reset because he was coughing.
	Listen to this.
	At some point, I hope they get it.
	You're going to turn it over?
	No, at some point, I might.
	But at some point, I hope they get it, because it's a fantastic financial statement.
	It's a fantastic financial statement.
	And let's do that over.
	He's coughing in the middle of my answer.
	Yeah, okay.
	I don't like that, you know?
	Your chief of staff.
	If you're going to cough, please leave the room.
	I'll come over here.
	Just to change the shot.
	Sorry.
	Okay, do you want to do that a little differently then?
	Yeah, we just changed the angle.
	Yep.
	Thank you.
	So, at some point, So at some point, I look forward to, frankly, I'd like to have people see my financial statement because it's phenomenal.
	No, it's not up to me.
	It's up to lawyers.
	It's up to everything else.
	But they're asking for things that they should never be asking for, that they've never asked another president for.
	They want to go through every deal that I've ever done.
	What they're doing is a disgrace.
	They're trying to do step, step, step.
	They want to keep it going as long as possible.
	To try and demean and hurt as much as possible so they can possibly win the presidential election.
	This is a very telling exchange and it, I hope, puts to rest one of the stupidest takes on Donald Trump, which is that he's this completely undisciplined, wacko lunatic who doesn't know what's going on and he shoots from the hip and he's only just belching various emotions all the time.
	No, this guy knows how to work a camera.
	This is a pretty calculated guy.
	How do I know that?
	Because he's giving this answer that he wants to give to Stephanopoulos.
	And he hears a cough in the room.
	And Trump's a showbiz guy.
	He had 15 seasons of a network show, hit network show.
	And he knows that that sound is going to ruin that clip and they're not going to be able to use it.
	So he says, alright, stop.
	You can't cough on set.
	What are you doing?
	Get out of here if you're going to cough on set.
	He says, okay.
	He's like, alright, let's reset it.
	Maybe we'll do it a little differently.
	He's talking like a guy either who's in a movie or at least who's doing a non-fiction TV show.
	Reset.
	And then the guys reset, and then the camera guy screws up, and he moves, and Trump catches that again, and he resets.
	He's like, alright guys, here we go.
	Then they do it, and he resets, and then Trump gives the message that he wants to the American people.
	And he gives it as though it's right off the cuff.
	He gives it like he's in a reality TV show.
	And look!
	And this!
	And that!
	It's not like he's giving this perfectly scripted monologue.
	But he is letting you know, you the American people, the people who watch ABC News, which is a lot more people than watch cable news or Fox News.
	He's telling them what he wants them to hear.
	This is a disciplined guy.
	This is a guy with situational awareness.
	And this is a guy who knows how to communicate.
	No accidents.
	No accidents here.
	People are still going to pretend that he's this total buffoon who just accidentally has succeeded at the highest levels of everything he's ever tried.
	But this was more revealing than the Billy Bush tape, which was a guy engaging in locker room talk when he thought he was off camera.
	This is much more telling about how Trump's brain works and how he views politics and the Oval Office and imagery and how he views mass communications.
	That's our show.
	Oh, I should point out, by the way, Sarah Sanders is stepping down as press secretary.
	story.
	And some people have suggested that maybe she should be replaced by me.
	I don't know who's been suggesting this.
	Someone pointed out that my new Twitter handle is potential White House Press Secretary Michael Knowles.
	That's a total coincidence.
	That's an old nickname that I had in high school.
	It's just a thing.
	But, you know, it's funny that they've suggested it.
	I do think, you know, if my country called on me, I would certainly serve.
	And my experience of dealing with shrieking leftists on campuses around the country has prepared me to deal with Jim Acosta.
	You know.
	I'll keep you posted.
	You know when the phone rings.
	That's our show.
	Come back tomorrow in the meantime.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	So 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.
	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.
	Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, some Republicans are once again trying to ban flag burning because this is something we have to do every few years, it seems.
	But is flag burning a form of speech?
	Is it protected speech?
	Is it covered by the First Amendment?
	I say yes, obviously, on all three counts, but we'll take a look at that subject and talk about it.
	Also, we'll look at a very powerful yet heartbreaking and tragic video of an incident that transpired outside of an abortion clinic recently.
	And finally, Taylor Swift has a new song out.
	It is incredibly boring, yet obnoxious at the same time.
	And that is an impressive combination, which Taylor Swift seems to have perfected, I should say.

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