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June 25, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show

48:33

Ep. 371 - Student Loan Forgiveness Is Welfare For The Rich

Bernie proposes a taxpayer bailout for all student loans in the U.S., Iran keeps provoking us to war, and that crazy lady accusing Trump of rape says more crazy things on television. Finally, the WH names a new Press Secretary—who isn't me. Date: 06-25-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Bernie Sanders proposes a taxpayer bailout for all student loans in the United States.
	But what the left won't admit is that student loan forgiveness is nothing but welfare for the rich.
	We will analyze the numbers.
	Then, Iran keeps provoking us to war.
	Will President Trump take the bait?
	That crazy lady who's accusing Trump of rape says more crazy things on television.
	And the White House names a new press secretary, who isn't me.
	That's okay, though.
	I'm not.
	I was just actually cutting some onions before this.
	That's great, great news.
	All that and more.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is the Michael Knowles Show.
	Great news.
	I almost couldn't do the show today, but no, it's okay.
	We'll analyze who she is a little bit later.
	She actually does seem to be a very good candidate for it, though.
	A lot of big shoes to fill after Sarah Sanders.
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	We're going to be talking about loans a whole lot today because Bernie Sanders has a new plan to cancel all of the student loan debt in the country.
	Not just some of it, not just for people who can't pay it, not just for poor people, not just for people who don't get a job.
	$1.6 trillion of student loans currently owed by 45 million people.
	40 million of whom are college graduates, about 40, 41 million who are college graduates, about 4 million of whom are dropouts.
	So they're really having trouble paying their loans.
	This is the most radical proposal we've seen yet.
	And they've all been talking about this for a while.
	The Democratic candidates have been building up to this.
	So previously, Bernie had proposed making community colleges and four-year public colleges tuition-free for people who make less than $125,000 per year.
	So that's a lot of money.
	You know, $125,000, that would cover a lot of people.
	Still, not nearly as radical as this.
	Elizabeth Warren had taken it a step further and talked about forgiving student loan debt.
	What her proposal would have done was giving all Americans who have student loans up to $50,000.
	Even that is nowhere near what we're seeing now from Bernie Sanders.
	Some people have student loans upwards of $200,000 or more.
	Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, all the Senate Democrats running for president, they endorse something called the Debt-Free College Act.
	Still not even close to this.
	This would wipe out all of the student loan debt currently owed in the country.
	Would do nothing for the people who already paid off their student loans.
	Ostensibly, it wouldn't do anything for the people who are about to take out student loans For the people who currently have them, it would wipe them away.
	Democrats love this idea.
	Here's AOC embracing it at her own press conference because the sun can't rise in the morning without AOC holding a press conference and she is totally owning this issue.
	I will be completely honest.
	I will disclose my personal stake in this fight because I have student loans too.
	And I think it's so funny.
	A year ago, I was waiting tables in a restaurant and it was literally easier for me to become the youngest woman in American history elected to Congress than it is to pay off my student loan debt.
	So that should tell you everything about the state of our economy and the state of quality of life for working people.
	It doesn't.
	It doesn't tell you about the state of our economy or the state of the quality of life of working people.
	It tells you about the state of education.
	Of education nationally and specifically about AOC's education.
	She got a very expensive education.
	She went to a college called Boston University.
	It's a private college.
	It costs today about $70,000 per year to go there.
	And that education wasn't worth it.
	I'm not saying Boston University is never worth it.
	I'm saying AOC didn't get a whole lot out of it.
	It's funny, she majored in economics.
	She knows nothing about economics.
	But if she went there hoping that it would help get her a job, she took out $200,000.
	I don't know how much she took out in student loans, but she could have taken up $200,000.
	She did not learn enough in that university to pay it off with the job she got after college.
	Because the job she got after college, she said she was waiting tables.
	She was a bartender.
	So either because of what she studied or how she applied it or what she learned from it, Her education did not translate into lots of money afterward.
	Now, being a bartender is a fine job.
	Some of my favorite people are bartenders.
	But it's not a fine job if you've got $200,000 in student debt.
	You don't need to go to college to be a bartender.
	You're not really supposed to get a liberal education to get a job anyway.
	The purpose of a liberal education is education for itself.
	You only study things like literature, history...
	Mathematics, things that don't have direct applicability.
	It's not pre-professional training.
	It's the arts of liberty.
	It's the arts to understand your liberty and to understand your role as a free citizen and to understand your own civilization.
	So it's fine to be a bartender, but if you're saddling yourself with $200,000 of debt and you think that that's going to get you a very high-paying job afterward, then being a bartender isn't going to cut it.
	Now, she says it's so crazy.
	She did something so much harder.
	She became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
	That's so much harder than being a bartender.
	No, it isn't.
	No, it isn't.
	Being a bartender is much harder than being a congressman.
	It requires much more in terms of social intelligence.
	It probably requires a higher IQ. The job of being a congressman offers an inflated salary and a much higher future earnings potential.
	For mediocrities.
	Most people who are in Congress are not terribly intelligent.
	They're not terribly serious people.
	They're just glad-handing grifters who make a bunch of money on taxpayer dollar and then they leave and they become lobbyists and they make even more money.
	There are some good people in Congress.
	I have some friends in Congress.
	I like Dan Crenshaw.
	He's a terrific guy.
	Super smart.
	Loves his country.
	Most people in Congress are not Dan Crenshaw.
	So, I'm not at all surprised.
	AOC graduates college.
	She hasn't learned anything.
	She's saddled herself with debt for what is basically a worthless degree.
	And she realizes, gosh, in the private sector, I'm never going to make anything.
	I'm not going to make any money out here.
	And I'm going to just be waiting tables or being a bartender for the rest of my life and never be able to pay off this debt.
	But I can run for Congress.
	This is the path forward for mediocrities coast to coast.
	This is a very ironic proposal, though, because what the left doesn't want to admit is that student loan forgiveness is not a way to help out poor people.
	It's not a way to help out the oppressed underclass.
	Student loan forgiveness is welfare for the rich.
	As always, it's the left pretending that they're sticking up for the little guy when really they are sticking up for the elites.
	Bernie and AOC say this is going to help the average, the working American.
	The average working American doesn't have a college degree.
	One-third of Americans graduate from college.
	Two-thirds of Americans don't graduate from college.
	Americans who do graduate from college, statistically speaking, can expect to make a lot more money.
	The median American college graduate makes about 75% more per year than the median American who only has a high school diploma.
	You do get a payoff.
	If you go to college, statistically speaking, the median person who goes to college is going to make significantly more money.
	That comes with a cost.
	You have to pay the tuition.
	You have to pay off your student loans.
	It's not as though Bernie Sanders and AOC are like paying off these people's student loans out of charity.
	The taxpayers are paying.
	So you now have a system being proposed by Bernie and AOC where the majority of Americans who make comparatively less money than college graduates will be paying off the reckless financial decisions, will be bailing out the minority of Americans who choose to go to college and get that education, who will statistically make significantly more money than the majority over the course of their lives.
	This is a bailout from the comparatively poor to the comparatively rich.
	Now, the left is trying to avoid this criticism.
	Bernie has not acknowledged it.
	AOC has not acknowledged it.
	Ilhan Omar, to her credit, has sort of alluded to this issue that it's the minority of people who are going to college in the first place who are graduating from college.
	It's people who have much higher future earnings potential than people who don't go to college.
	Why not?
	Is the rest of America going to bail them out for something that's going to make them more money in the long run?
	Ilhan Omar sort of alludes to this.
	They are the debt generation.
	Many of them, played by the rules, follow the advice of our parents, our leaders, and gotten education.
	We are told going to college opens a world of opportunity, but far too many, it's accompanied by a world of anxiety, stress, and never-ending debt.
	We are told by some politicians that this debt is our fault.
	That if we want to achieve the American dream, we have to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps.
	Well, we're here today to say student debt is not the result of bad choices or behavior.
	It is the result of a system that tells the students to get an education and go to college in order to have a stable life, but then does not provide the resources to afford that education.
	You see that?
	They're not the elites.
	They're not the ones who are going to make more money.
	They're the victims.
	They were tricked into it by their parents, by society.
	They're victims.
	They have this debt.
	It's not their choices.
	It's not their benefit.
	It's not their...
	Future, likely elite lifestyle.
	No, no.
	They're the real victims.
	And the majority of Americans who don't have a college degree, who they're now telling to bail out the minority who will, it's incumbent on them because they haven't had such awful oppression as the people who spent four years at very expensive private colleges.
	Totally outrageous.
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	Ilhan Omar does not want to take responsibility for her financial decisions, so she's blaming everybody.
	She's saying, obviously this is the sort of basic aspect of leftism.
	She's blaming people for her problems, right?
	My parents made me go to college.
	My society made me go to college.
	Everybody made me go to college.
	Not me.
	The loan companies tricked me into taking out loans and go, whatever.
	The other aspect of leftism here is they want to get something with no cost.
	And with no risk.
	It's true.
	You can take out $100,000 in loans, go to college, graduate, not having learned anything, not having studied very hard, not having been appropriate for college.
	Maybe there was a better path for you, but you did go to college.
	Now you got a lot of debt and you're not making a lot of money.
	That's risk.
	Life involves risk.
	You don't have perfect security.
	Little babies have perfect security.
	And even little babies, frankly, don't have perfect security.
	Certainly grown adults don't.
	You've got to take some responsibility.
	And there's cost.
	So for the median and everyone else, you're going to make a lot of money after you graduate from college.
	That doesn't just come for free.
	Not just because you're so pretty.
	Not just because you're so privileged and wonderful and beautiful.
	People are going to give this to you for free.
	You incur that cost and then you get a reward for that in the long run.
	According to a new survey that just came out, two-thirds of employees in America are reporting having regrets when it comes to their degrees.
	They wish they didn't get it, according to a pay scale survey of about 250,000 respondents this past spring.
	They have regrets because...
	I don't think they have regrets because they don't want to make the extra money, which statistically they are.
	They are making significantly more money than if they hadn't gone to college.
	They regret that they have to pay for it.
	Sorry, buddy, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
	If you want something in this life, you've got to pay for it.
	So, the other question on this is why are we only going to pay off student loans?
	If the minority of people are...
	Why are we privileging them?
	Also, are we going to reimburse people who already paid off their loans?
	Or are we going to give a bonus to people who were able to get scholarships to college so they didn't need as much in student loans or any student loans?
	Are we going to give anything to the majority of Americans who don't have student loans?
	Why not car forgiveness?
	Why not car loan forgiveness?
	The average car payment in America is significantly higher than the average student loan payment.
	And way more people have car payments than have student loan payments.
	How about mortgage payments?
	Are we going to do that?
	Now, the left would say, this is the Democrat response, they say, college helps the economy.
	It's sort of a common good, because the more educated people you have, the more they're going to make a lot of money, and that wealth is going to trickle down.
	Ironically, they're making a sort of trickle-down argument from the left.
	Say, it's a common good, there's going to be more businesses, it's helpful to the community when people get educated.
	Okay, car ownership helps the economy, too.
	Car ownership helps the economy way more than most college degrees.
	Car driving also should be encouraged by society.
	It's how people get to work.
	It's how people pick up the kids from school.
	It's how they keep the economy moving.
	If we pay off student debt, why aren't we going to pay off car loan debt?
	If we pay off student and car loan debt, why aren't we going to pay off mortgage debt?
	People need a place to live, don't they?
	People need a place to live way more than they need to study lesbian dance therapy at Palookaville University, don't they?
	If we're going to pay off all those debts, certainly we should pay off homeowner debt.
	Now, what is debt?
	People also don't know what debt is.
	Why do people have debt?
	People have debt because they are borrowing against their future earnings.
	You need some money today.
	The money today is more valuable than waiting and having the money in 20 years.
	So you're going to pay a little bit of an interest rate on that because there's time value of money.
	And You're going to use that money now.
	It's going to help you.
	It's going to propel you, ideally.
	And that's how modern economies work.
	If you know that you're going to make 75% more per year by going to college, then you're definitely going to borrow the money now because you're going to have 60 years of earning all that more money.
	You're going to pay it off.
	It's going to be a good deal.
	That allows for economic growth.
	But if there's never any consequence to debt, then the system of credit is going to collapse.
	Because no one's going to have faith in the system, right?
	The way that credit works is you have to have people believe that there's going to be a consequence to not paying it off.
	Otherwise, why would anyone pay off their debts?
	If we forgive $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, why would anyone ever again make a student loan payment?
	It actually wouldn't be fair for them to do it.
	It already wouldn't be fair for the people who paid off their debt.
	So why would they ever make that?
	We're just going to have to bail out student loans all the time.
	If we forgive all the student loans, we are creating a federal entitlement to free college and free private college for that matter.
	But once the government gets involved, I guess it becomes a public college.
	No one will pay off their debts.
	The big question politicians need to solve here is not...
	Why?
	Not all of the oppression, not all of the victimhood, not all the terrible reasons why people went to college.
	They need to figure out why is college so expensive.
	Why is it?
	It's because the federal government guarantees loans.
	So it's a blank check to colleges to raise their tuition, which has skyrocketed over the last 20-25 years.
	Why else?
	Because more students are going.
	So you're flooding the market.
	You're telling people they need to get a college degree.
	And so the colleges have the opportunity to just raise the prices.
	In 2016, nearly 70% of high school graduates enrolled in college.
	A lot of those people are not going to graduate.
	For a lot of them, it was a terrible idea to enroll in college.
	Very expensive mistake.
	But 70% almost.
	In the 1940s, do you know how many people got a college degree?
	Five percent.
	Four or five percent.
	Even in the 1950s, five, six percent of people.
	So now we got 70 percent of people going to college.
	Back in the 40s and 50s, we had like five percent.
	Do we really think that people today are much better educated than our grandparents were?
	No, of course not.
	If anything, we're less educated today.
	We have more degrees, we're more credentialed, but we're less educated.
	In the 1950s, universities required knowledge of Latin as a prerequisite.
	Do you know Latin?
	How's your Latin?
	Not great.
	How's my Latin?
	Terrible.
	High schools taught Latin because of this requirement.
	Today, even top universities don't require Latin.
	Some universities don't even offer Latin.
	In the 1950s, education made sense.
	Getting a good education always makes sense, but I'm saying the education that was being offered actually was coherent.
	It was based around a common curriculum.
	It was based around the Western canon.
	It was based around our civilization.
	So you'd read the ancients through the Middle Ages through modernity.
	You would understand how Aristotle and Homer relate to Thucydides relate to the Bible, relate to Dante, then relate to Boccaccio, relate to Shakespeare, then how all of those people relate to the moderns, how they relate to Thomas Aquinas.
	So Thomas Aquinas takes Aristotle and he makes him Christian.
	And then you get to Machiavelli and modernity.
	Then you get to Hobbes and Rousseau and T.S. Eliot and it makes sense.
	You have a picture of how ideas have progressed, how we got to where we are.
	It used to make sense in and of itself.
	Now it doesn't.
	Now you just pick random subjects.
	Okay, I'm going to take modern French film and I'm going to take math for English majors.
	And that's supposed to be an education, but it's not.
	And that's what almost everyone has now.
	Education also used to make sense for students.
	So if you wanted an elite education, you got a liberal education.
	If you wanted to be an electrician, you apprenticed under an electrician or you got a trade education.
	If you wanted to be an entrepreneur, sometimes you got a liberal education.
	Sometimes you didn't get any education.
	You just started building things.
	You just started doing stuff right out of high school, if you even finished high school.
	Now, education doesn't make sense for students.
	The problem is not that the cost is too high or that people have too much debt or that it's too hard to get in or whatever.
	The problem is that we have devalued education.
	By saying that everyone needs to go and that the government will basically create an entitlement to it, we have devalued it.
	Personally, I paid very little for college because I got a lot of scholarships.
	I know the guy who had the named scholarship who then I received his scholarship.
	I got to meet him.
	I went to the opera with him.
	Great guy.
	That creates a feeling of gratitude.
	That creates a debt.
	I understand that even though I didn't have to pay a lot for college, barely had to pay anything, I know that it wasn't free.
	Somebody worked very hard to allow me to go.
	That creates some responsibility.
	If the government is just going to forgive all the debts, there's no feeling of gratitude.
	That creates an entitlement.
	It creates a feeling of entitlement of all of these AOC and Ilhan Omar, these bratty little girls who are saying, I want something for free.
	Wah, wah, wah.
	It's not my fault that I have to pay something for the great benefits that I've had.
	That's what it creates.
	Free college only exacerbates the problem.
	We need to make it clear, once again, that not everyone needs the same schooling.
	Because when everybody has the same government-run schooling, then you have a lot of schooling, you don't have a whole lot of education.
	Unfortunately, the problem seems to be getting worse, and you see that lack of education every time AOC opens your mouth.
	Moving on from the 2020 race, we have to talk about war, because Iran keeps threatening us with war.
	And this is creating a lot of consternation in the White House and on the right, especially.
	So what is Iran doing?
	Iran looks like they set a couple of oil tankers on fire last week.
	Looks like they shot a missile at one.
	They also then shot down our $130 million drone, which is very frustrating.
	No Americans killed, but...
	$130 million is a lot of money.
	So the question is, are we going to war with Iran?
	It looked like the United States was going to launch some strikes on Iranian targets, and President Trump called it off at the last minute, according to White House reports, which he alluded to.
	Why did he say he doesn't want to go to war?
	Why did he call off the strikes?
	Because he said it's not worth killing people for a drone.
	Which is an amazing statement from the president.
	They call this guy Hitler.
	They call him an authoritarian warmonger.
	He's like the most peaceful president I've ever seen, certainly in my lifetime.
	They call him bloodthirsty.
	I think he's certainly the most peaceful president since Ronald Reagan.
	He heard that about 150 people would be killed in Iran if they struck those targets.
	And he said, no, I'm not going to do that for a drone.
	I'm not going to kill those people.
	It's not their fault.
	You know, Barack Obama loved invading Muslim countries.
	They said if I voted for John McCain, then we'd go to war with another Muslim country.
	And obviously that was correct because I voted for McCain and we went to war with more Muslim countries.
	George W. Bush responded to 9-11 by invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
	Bill Clinton bombed a medicine factory in Sudan.
	Just to get Lewinsky out of the news.
	That's how little it took for Bill Clinton to go to war.
	Bush 41 obviously led the Gulf War.
	Ronald Reagan actually was also fairly dovish.
	He didn't really like going to war very much.
	A lot of similarities with Trump.
	Ronald Reagan sent forces into Lebanon and then you had the Beirut bombing and over 200 Americans were killed and he pulled those forces out pretty quick.
	So what is President Trump going to do?
	His supporters don't want to go to war with Iran, generally.
	But there is sort of a split here.
	There's a split in the conservative mind on this.
	On the one hand, we say, Iran is awful.
	They're a terrible government.
	They're ruining the world order.
	I don't care about them at all.
	Blow up the whole country.
	That's one idea.
	The other one is...
	I don't care about Iran.
	I don't care about Iran at all.
	I don't want to send American soldiers to fight because it doesn't seem to really affect me.
	That's the other idea.
	They're both kind of views of going to war that have a kind of machismo to them.
	They have a conservatism to them.
	But we're debating now which one to do.
	What is President Trump going to do?
	He finally made his announcement yesterday.
	Sanctions imposed through the executive order that I'm about to sign...
	We'll deny the Supreme Leader and the Supreme Leader's office and those closely affiliated with him and the office access to key financial resources and support.
	The assets of Ayatollah Khomeini and his office will not be spared from the sanctions.
	Okay, so I have to stop it right there because the left was attacking Trump yesterday.
	They were all making fun of him because he referred to the Ayatollah Khomeini who died in 1989.
	What a total idiot.
	What a nincompoop.
	He talked about Ayatollah Khomeini like Ayatollah Khomeini is still alive.
	So I asked a few of these people on Twitter.
	I said, okay, yeah, Ayatollah Khomeini is dead.
	What's the new guy's name?
	None of them knew, because they don't know anything.
	They make these jokes, like guffawing buffoons, but they don't know the punchline.
	The new guy's name is Ayatollah Kamenei.
	Okay, so he mispronounced the name.
	It's pretty close.
	It's not like he confused him with John Smith or something.
	It's Kamenei and Kamenei.
	Give me a break.
	He's reading it on the paper.
	He goes, I don't know.
	That's not like the biggest deal in the world.
	He goes on to the actual meat of what he's talking about.
	These measures represent a strong and proportionate response to Iran's increasingly provocative actions.
	We will continue to increase pressure on Tehran until the regime abandons its dangerous activities and aspirations, including the pursuit of nuclear weapons, increased enrichment of uranium, Development of ballistic missiles, engagement and support for terrorism, fueling of foreign conflicts, and belligerent acts directed against the United States and its allies.
	Okay, so he's talking tough.
	He's getting tough as a diplomatic measure, but he isn't saying the bombs are going to fly in five minutes.
	What is going on with Iran?
	The friend of the show, foreign policy expert Mike Durant, has an interesting take on this.
	We'll get to it in a second.
	Then we'll get to that crazy lady who's accusing Trump of rape.
	And a whole lot more.
	But first, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
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	You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Walsh show, you get to ask questions in the mailbag, which is coming up on Thursday.
	Get them in.
	You get to ask questions backstage, you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
	Mmm.
	Oh yes, that's very good.
	Yeah, that sounds like...
	It sounds like we're not going to forgive your $1.6 trillion in loans.
	If they think that payouts, $1.6 trillion payouts for the minority of Americans who are these elite, effete, generally left-wingers, that's going to rally people to go vote for them in 2020.
	Probably not a great look.
	Head over to dailywire.com.
	We'll be back with a lot more.
	Okay, what's Iran really up to?
	Mike Duran, one of my go-to guys when it comes to especially Iran policy, he has a piece out at Mosaic Magazine and it's the most coherent and compelling argument I've heard yet.
	The title of the article is, What Iran is Really Up To?
	And then the subheader is, desperate to preserve the nuclear deal, Iran, with the help of its Western friends, is creating just enough turmoil to make America, and not it, appear eager for war.
	And that seems to be about right.
	So what's going on?
	All of the American allies in Europe and the G20 nations They're all fearful, we're told, because Donald Trump is a populist.
	And he's upsetting the established order of decaying liberalism.
	They're afraid, in Europe, they're afraid of their own right-wing populism.
	And so, specifically on the Europeans, Khamenei wants to scare them about the threat of war with Iran.
	And they want to scare them about the threat to the international order.
	And then...
	This is what Mike Duran thinks.
	They're going to offer a multilateral diplomatic way to avoid that war.
	And do you know what that way is?
	It's the Iran deal.
	The Iran deal that President Trump campaigned against and ripped up when he got into office.
	So it turns out we never fully pulled out of the Iran deal.
	We ripped up most of it, but we crucially are still issuing waivers to our European allies to allow them to cooperate with Iran on certain projects that are permitted under the deal.
	So we didn't totally pull out of it.
	And What this means is, it actually does give us a little bit of leverage.
	So, one of the arguments against pulling out of the Iran deal is it takes away our leverage.
	We actually still have a little bit of leverage.
	President Trump could reinstate all sanctions, every punishment against Iran, with the snap of his fingers.
	He could completely end the Iran deal.
	And this is the worst case scenario for Iran.
	So what Iran wants to do is present President Trump as the enemy of a rules-based international order.
	This is very hilarious because Iran, since the Iranian revolution, has been the chief international opponent of the international order.
	They're worse than North Korea in this regard because at least North Korea doesn't pretend to be a part of the international order and system.
	Iran does.
	Iran puts one foot in the international order.
	And they show up and they give their speeches at Columbia University and the UN.
	They wear suits and ties or whatever version of that they wear.
	They try to pretend to be serious participants in the international world order.
	Then they fund terrorism all around the world.
	They're the chief exporter of terrorism.
	They undermine the international order left and right.
	One foot in, one foot out.
	So Iran announces, in keeping with how they behave, they announce on June 17th that their nuclear stockpiles are about to exceed the limit of the Iran deal.
	But the Iran deal is over, right?
	Now, why did they announce that on June 17th?
	Well, just in time for the G20 summit, right around the corner.
	So, Mike Duran writes, quote, Iran's policy of strategic pressure, then, is made up of three separate but interlocking lines of effort.
	A struggle to gain relief from the oil and banking sanctions, a campaign to tarnish Trump as an agent of chaos, and an initiative aimed at keeping its nuclear waivers in place.
	Among these, the third is by far the most urgent.
	To understand why, we need to examine the function of the waivers and why they are exceptionally valuable to Ali Khamenei.
	So this is all about the Iran deal, all about getting those waivers to keep building up their nuclear program.
	So Shinzo Abe, the Japanese leader, went over to Iran this past month.
	And right around the time he was there, Iran blew up a partially Japanese-owned oil tanker.
	They said this doesn't make any sense.
	They're trying to threaten everyone else and scare them about President Trump's role in the international order.
	So, according to reports, President Trump sent a message with Shinzo Abe for Ayatollah Khamenei, and Khamenei responded to Abe and said, I have no message for Trump.
	I have no message at all.
	I'm not going to dignify him with a response.
	But, of course, he's sending a message to Trump.
	He's sending the message with missiles.
	He's trying to get, and more importantly, he's sending a message to Europe.
	What does this show us?
	It shows us, one, Obama got bungled Iran completely.
	Obama assumed wrongly that he could diplomatically stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
	Can't be done.
	That is not going to happen ever.
	And Obama tried it and it didn't work and other people have tried it too.
	You can only stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with force.
	That's the hard reality.
	Now, as Mike Duran says, it doesn't necessarily mean war, though it very possibly could mean war, but ultimately you will need coercion.
	You will need coercive measures that are not just people singing kumbaya.
	Ironically, what does this mean?
	An eternal rule of statecraft is that if you want to avoid war, you need to be totally ready to go to war.
	If you want to avoid war, you need to be able to credibly threaten going to war.
	And that is the line that President Trump is walking now.
	So people are saying he's sending mixed messages.
	He is an anti-war candidate, and John Bolton is his national security advisor.
	John Bolton has been an Iran hawk his entire life.
	On the one hand, he says, I don't want war.
	On the other hand, We're good to go.
	Against Iran, the very thing that Iran is trying to use against America, which is that President Trump is a madman.
	You can't predict what he's going to do.
	I genuinely can't predict what he's going to do on Iran.
	Neither can Kamene.
	So, what Trump is saying is, you can't predict what I'm going to do.
	Cut it out and don't make a nuclear weapon.
	Because we will go to war.
	We will force you not to have that nuclear weapon.
	What Khamenei is saying is, look at that madman over in America.
	We need the Iran nuclear deal.
	We need to force America back into this deal, because he's a madman who'll blow up the whole world order.
	That's the standoff right now.
	It's over the question of, how mad is Donald Trump?
	And which side is he going to come down on when that charade is over?
	I have no prediction because his strategy is working.
	Speaking of mad people and crazy people, a couple days ago...
	You know there was, a few days ago now, there was that woman, E. Jean Carroll, the New York advice columnist, who accused Trump of raping her 23 years ago in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.
	And we saw that interview that she did with Alison Camerata, and it was really weird, and it wasn't terribly credible.
	And the story was falling apart.
	So...
	She did another interview.
	She did an interview on MSNBC, and she was discussing what she should have done in that moment, what was going through her mind, what she could have changed about that moment.
	You know, not going in, not being raped by Donald Trump, not coming out with this before 23 years later.
	Do you know what she says she would have done if she could change anything about the event?
	While Donald Trump was in the room with her, about to rape her, she would have asked for his tax returns.
	So I just, Lawrence, I wish I had said, I wish, I said, I'll tell you my age if you show me your tax returns.
	Yeah, it would have been helpful.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, that's a little odd, isn't it?
	So she has these lines.
	She keeps evading the question and saying all these crazy things.
	She then says it wasn't rape.
	So she's saying, before she was referring to this as rape, and this was her rape in there.
	Now she's avoided those direct questions when she's done these interviews.
	Now she's saying it wasn't rape.
	And she explains why it wasn't rape in an interview on CNN with Anderson Cooper.
	It did not last long.
	And that's why I don't use the word you just used.
	I use the word fight.
	You don't use the word rape?
	Sexual violence is in every country, in every strata of society, and I just feel that so many women are undergoing sexual violence.
	Mine was short.
	I got out.
	I'm happy now.
	I'm moving on.
	And I think of all the women who are enduring constant sexual violence.
	So this one instant, this one, what, three minutes in this little dressing room, I just say it's a fight.
	That way I'm not the victim.
	Okay, hold it there for just a second.
	She says she's not using the word rape because she doesn't want to offend less fortunate women who are raped.
	That doesn't make any sense.
	Just because you are relatively better off than someone else doesn't mean that a crime can't be committed against you.
	When a rich guy gets burglarized, he doesn't refuse to call the police or say he wasn't burglarized because poor people are also burglarized.
	So when women experience rape but they're sort of relatively wealthier or better known or better off, it's still rape.
	It's not not rape because some poor woman also can be raped.
	Now, the reason she's not trying not to use the term rape, I suspect, is because she wasn't raped by Donald Trump because her story is completely falling apart.
	But the interview then takes the craziest turn of all when she tells people When she tells Anderson Cooper that another reason that she won't refer to the event that took place as rape is because rape is sexy.
	You don't feel like a victim.
	I was not thrown on the ground and ravished.
	The word rape carries so many sexual connotations.
	This was not sexual.
	It hurt.
	It just...
	I think most people think of rape as a violent assault.
	I think most people think of rape as being sexy.
	Let's take a short break.
	Think of the fantasies.
	We've got to take a quick break.
	If you can stick around, we'll talk more on the other side.
	You're fascinating to talk to.
	Oh, man.
	That does not look great.
	We'll take a quick break.
	Please, please cut the cameras.
	So now this woman has no credibility.
	The left is saying, well, forget about her, but think of all the other women who have accused Trump.
	We're told a lot of women have accused Trump.
	I haven't seen a lot of them, but we're told that all these women accused Trump of rape.
	Even on the right, even David French said this.
	He said, look, when this first came out and he believed her, before he saw the video, I suspect, he said, look at this.
	We have to come to grips with the fact that President Trump is very likely a rapist.
	No, we don't.
	Well, they're credible accusations.
	Are they credible?
	Is that woman credible?
	If all the women are as credible as that woman, then none of the accusations are credible at all.
	Then there's no reason to believe them.
	This is the same line the left always uses.
	They say, well, you know, forget about this particular claim.
	You know, whenever their hysterical claims get disproven by the facts, they say, well, forget about this one instance.
	Okay, maybe that one wasn't true, but it gets to a greater truth.
	Okay, if it gets to a greater truth, show me the actual examples of it.
	Well, no, we can't show you these.
	But just know, five million women accuse Trump of rape.
	So, look, one of them has to be right, right?
	One of them has to be telling the truth.
	No, they could all be lying.
	Or you could, actually, more likely, you could be lying even in your presentation of that narrative.
	This woman is the most prolific, she's the most prominent woman so far to come out and accuse President Trump of raping her.
	Her story has no credibility.
	Now, this is about the narrative.
	This is about the left pushing their narrative and us trying to refute it with facts.
	We have a new person who's going to be doing that from the White House.
	Unfortunately, it's not going to be me.
	It's okay.
	I'm not crying.
	No big deal.
	I'm not crying.
	Melania's spokesman, Stephanie Grisham, is going to be the new White House press secretary.
	We, we don't know a ton about her.
	You know, she, she worked for a lot of Arizona politicians, worked on the Romney campaigns, coordinated press for the Pope's visit to Philly, and she was a press aide to the Trump campaign.
	She has a great reputation, doesn't seem to have a lot of dirt on her.
	The one claim they're, they're throwing at her is that she violated the Hatch Act, which prevents people in government from, from using their government offices for political and campaign purposes.
	And the one violation they say she made is she used the phrase make America great again from her official account.
	So I guess you're not allowed to say make America great again now if you work for the government.
	Tells you a lot about our government.
	She seems pretty good.
	Seems like a solid candidate.
	It's the most thankless job in D.C., Very big shoes to fill after Sarah Sanders, who was just terrific in that role.
	I just mentioned this, and I give my condolences to her for getting the toughest job in D.C., because what we are battling right now, the battle that we're in, is a battle of language.
	And the press secretary plays a tremendous role in this.
	You know, actually bringing it all together, getting back to school, the issue of education, college and high school.
	There was an amazing exchange in Scotland, just happened, that highlights this battle of language that we're in.
	There was a student who was kicked out of class because he said that there are only two genders.
	There are only two sexes.
	And his teacher said, no, there are more than two sexes.
	And the kid said, no, they're not.
	You can't.
	That isn't true.
	And you can't make me say that something that's not true is true.
	He got kicked out of class for it.
	Then he secretly recorded his conversation with the teacher who was yelling at him for it.
	This tells you everything you need to know.
	All the way in Scotland tells you everything you need to know about what's coming this way in the United States if we don't stop it.
	Good title to your opinion.
	If I am, then why would you kick me out of class?
	It's not very inclusive of opinion.
	Could I take my sentence, please?
	It's not very inclusive.
	No, I'm sorry, what you were saying was not very inclusive.
	And this is an inclusive school.
	Yeah, how is what I was saying?
	Because I was saying that what's wrong with the website is that there are more than one gender in this country.
	Well, that's your opinion.
	That is my opinion, and that is an opinion which is acceptable in the school.
	I'm afraid yours, which you're saying that there's no such thing as anyone other than male or female, is not inclusive.
	Scientifically, there are just two genders.
	I get it.
	You are choosing to make an issue of this, because I said, are you really going to go?
	That was your opportunity to keep quiet.
	You made the issue with it on the website.
	You said, oh, this website doesn't have more than two genders.
	You were clearly given an opportunity not to pursue it.
	You chose to do so.
	You chose to do so.
	Yes, that's the key question.
	You chose to do so.
	I think it's silly to have anything other than two genders.
	Okay.
	Anything else is a personal opinion.
	Could you please keep that opinion to your own house?
	Thank you.
	Not in the school.
	So you get to put your opinion out in class and my opinion has to stay inside my house.
	I am not putting my opinion out.
	I am stating what is national school authority policy.
	Okay?
	Well, it's not scientific whatsoever.
	Not every policy is scientific Murray.
	Not every policy is scientific Murray.
	When you've got to choose between scientific reality and politically correct ideological dogma, Murray, you've got to pick the politically correct ideological dogma.
	Forget reality.
	I mean, this is what George Orwell predicted.
	He said, there will be no true or false.
	There will be no history.
	There will be no facts.
	There will just be the eternal present where whatever the party says is right.
	Murray, the party says that two plus two doesn't equal four.
	So two plus two does not equal four.
	Keep your opinion to yourself.
	You hear what he said to him.
	He said, you had the opportunity to keep quiet.
	And the kid says, right, but you're telling me that there's more than two sexes.
	I know there aren't, so I just said there are two sexes.
	He says, you brought this on yourself, Marie.
	It's not that we tried to teach you something that is obviously not true.
	You brought it on yourself because you could have shut up.
	You had the opportunity to shut up, and because you didn't shut up, you brought your own punishment on yourself.
	You were able not to pursue this, but you pursued the truth, and now we're going to punish you.
	He says, keep your own opinion to your own house.
	I almost feel bad for this teacher.
	I mean, not really, because he is the instrument of the most obvious example of tyranny that I've seen in modern politics.
	He is the instrument of that.
	But he says, you keep your opinion about reality in your own house.
	I can't state basic facts in a school.
	It's like that scene out of Dr.
	Strangelove.
	There's no fighting here, gentlemen.
	This is the war room.
	There is no education here, Murray.
	This is a schoolhouse.
	And so the kid says, well, it just seems crazy to say there's more than two sexes when there aren't.
	Well, that's your opinion.
	Keep your opinion at your house.
	And the kid says, well, you're going to teach me your opinion.
	And he says the most telling thing.
	He says, that's not necessarily my opinion, but that is what the authorities have told us to say.
	He says, well, what the authorities have told you to say isn't true.
	He uses the word scientific, but the word science just means knowledge.
	It isn't true knowledge.
	It isn't true.
	And the teacher says, policy isn't always scientific.
	It isn't always true.
	And you'll go along with it.
	We will use the coercive power of the state to make you believe lies and state lies.
	And if you ever say the truth, we're going to use the power of the state to punish you.
	Now, the Democratic Party and the left wants a full government takeover of our education system.
	The government, big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.
	They call it loan forgiveness.
	We're going to forgive your loans.
	That means that they are going to control 100% the education system in this country, not just the public universities, the private ones too.
	The mechanism by which students go to these universities, the money, the payment, is now going to be controlled by the government.
	And I wonder what that education system is going to look like.
	I wonder if that's going to help the education system or if it's going to hurt it.
	Something tells me it's going to look a lot like this classroom.
	That's our show.
	Come back tomorrow for a lot more.
	In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	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, Joe Biden comes under attack again, Bernie offers free college, and Pete Buttigieg is falling apart.

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