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July 8, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
48:52
Ep. 377 - Soccer Is A Symptom Of American Decline

The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, which two years ago was beaten 5-2 by a team of boys under the age of 15, won the World Cup or something. Then, President Trump parades tanks through D.C., a 2020 Democrat may drop out of the race, and Pelosi snipes at AOC. Date: 07-08-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, which two years ago was beaten 5-2 by a team of boys under the age of 15, has won the World Cup or something.
We will analyze what the rise of soccer means for American politics.
Then, President Trump parades tanks through D.C., a 2020 Democrat may be dropping out of the race, and Nancy Pelosi snipes at AOC. All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
So much to get to today.
The world of sports has been rocked by the women's national team and Megan Rapinoe.
But as you know, listen, I'm employed by The Daily Wire.
My show is hosted on The Daily Wire.
When we want to get to great sports coverage, we have to turn to our sister network, Daily Wire 2, and our Daily Wire 2 sports correspondent, Jeremy the Verified God King Boring.
Yowza, Michael!
Now with Verified.
Bold but not old.
Enormous news, Michael, from the world of sports ball.
As for the second time in a row, America has proven conclusively that our team is greater than all of the women's soccer teams in the world.
And by our team, I mean the FC Dallas Under-15 Boys Academy.
A squad of 15-year-old and younger lads not quite athletic enough to play football or baseball or even basketball, but who are nevertheless better than the America's national women's team, who in turn is better than all the other women's national teams from all the other nations who let women play sports ball.
This, Michael, despite the overwhelming pay disparity between the female players, who reportedly picked up a quarter of a million dollars each for the last game they won, and the scarcely pubescent male players, whose only compensation for their victory was getting to skip third period for the game and having a shot at the fourth hottest girls in school, those not quite hot enough to date the high school football or baseball or even basketball players.
Nevertheless, as no average teenage male was yet allowed in the twice-a-year global tournament known as the FIFA Women's World Cup, America's women's national team emerged victorious in a competition handily defeating Holland, a nation literally filled with Dutch.
They won by a score, Michael, of 2-0.
The pride of America celebrated their win by trampling the flag of the nation they were being paid to represent, doing a cute little girl dance, and bitching incessantly about how they aren't paid the same as men to do the exact same job.
Completely missing the point that their job is not in fact to kick a sports ball, but to generate revenue in the form of ticket sales, merchandise, and TV licensing rights, which they do not do.
International media was quick to provide context for the women's nagging by pointing out that men and women are exactly the same.
Because men are famous for nagging.
The media also completely ignored the fact that the Men's World Cup generates a literal order of magnitude more money than the women's sport because, and I swear I'm not making this up, Michael, there is a sport people care less about than men's soccer.
The media did stick at the President Donald Trump, however, reporting on how a group of young people calling themselves Americans, despite clear on-camera evidence that they were watching girls play soccer in public in France, were cursing the U.S. President after Team USA's win.
Donald Trump is reported to have responded by saying, I'm going to be president for life.
And then drinking from a Daily Wire leftist tears hot or cold tumbler available to annual subscribers at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
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But Michael, as if that's not enough information about a sport neither one of us knows anything about, there's more.
America's national men's team also competed in a soccer match this weekend, the Gold Cup, which I can only assume is an even bigger deal than the World Cup since it's gold.
They lost, however, to America's southern neighbor, Mexico, proving yet again that this is a pathetic non-sport game of chance that in no way represents national greatness and that we should in fact build the wall on our southern border immediately to keep our male soccer players in this country where they can't humiliate us abroad by losing a child's game to a near third world narco state.
Build the wall, Michael.
Build the wall.
Build the wall.
Yowza!
Jeremy, wasn't the Gold Cup played in Chicago?
How the hell would I know, Michael?
I'm just a Daily Wire 2 sports correspondent.
You know, Jeremy, just fabulous coverage as always.
I can't wait until the World Cup happens again next year and we can do it all again.
You know, I have to admit that this was a subpar performance on my part, Michael, which I think is appropriate for a subpar sport.
It turns out there's just not that much funny to say about the Women's World Cup.
You know, I mean, if there were, I think you would have found it.
But unfortunately, you, along with the rest of the world, could find no humor in that sport.
Yowza!
Great coverage, as always, from Jeremy, the now verified God King Boring.
Now I know that Jeremy actually is Jeremy.
I know.
Listen, I read my tweets.
I get the email.
I know that some conservatives like soccer.
But you shouldn't.
Hear me out.
I'm not saying just hear me out beyond the jokes, beyond the Daily Wire 2 sports coverage.
Hear me out as to why soccer actually is anti-American.
Because even if soccer theoretically could be a good sport, and I'm willing to grant that theoretically there's some universe in which soccer could be sort of a watchable sport, in practice, soccer is anti-American.
How much more evidence of it do you need?
Just from this last version of it, this last run through the Women's World Cup, the captain of the American women's team repeatedly, consistently disrespected the flag.
Then one of the players, Ali Long, dropped the flag on the ground so that she could dance around and mug for the cameras.
Then a bunch of American soccer fans started chanting F Trump after the victory on Fox News.
Here they are.
Guess what?
History has just been made, Arthel.
We are here in a sport.
We are here in a sport.
We were going to out.
We were looking at with the tank there.
But in that game, canceled by the officials because they were worried about security measures.
So the American fans here, they came in from that location over to the sports bar.
And it's been a great, crazy time here watching history being made.
That's how the Americans were celebrating their national team's victory abroad.
And regardless of your political party, regardless of what sports you like, you wouldn't see that kind of thing in baseball or football or basketball.
But that's not all they said.
We'll get to what they said in a second.
We'll get to the key difference between soccer and other sports.
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So you had these American, quote-unquote, soccer fans in France, and they were cheering F Trump, F Trump.
I don't care who the president is.
I don't care what political party you're in.
You don't do that.
At a sports game, where theoretically, at least, you're supposed to be supporting your country.
The sports have always been patriotic.
That's what sports are in part for.
And this is especially true when you're overseas.
But that's not all that they said.
Here's what some of these fans were telling to reporters after the Americans won.
We look up to these athletes, and it's definitely a risk being in a political stance.
I mean, they alienate some fans, but whether it's Rapinoe, whether it's NBA stars like LeBron or Steph Curry, I mean, it's got to come from the population.
And hopefully in 2020, there will be a different story.
Because right now, I'm very embarrassed.
It's time for people in our country to self-made all these lies.
And it's really depressing that there are those that are so uneducated that they'll believe everything he says.
You hear that?
This guy hates his president.
He hates the people who voted for the president.
He hates half of his country.
I don't care if it's Obama.
I don't care if it's Trump.
You don't hear at a baseball game F Trump or F Obama.
You don't hear F Trump.
You shouldn't, at least.
But it's soccer you do.
Why has this so consistently gone wrong?
Why is it that left-wingers, in particular, like that guy, why do they love soccer in particular?
The problem is in soccer itself.
Just hear me out.
A few reasons.
One, because individual achievement matters very little in soccer.
Very little in soccer actually happens.
It's not a terribly interesting game, but that's not even the point.
I'm willing to grant that baseball is not always the most enthralling game.
I mean, if you're paying attention to what's happening, it is, but it can be slow, and soccer is very slow, too.
But at least in baseball, there are breakout performances.
Individual achievement is paramount.
In soccer, there are very few breakout performances.
There are very few goals.
Very often, soccer games will end in ties.
For people who don't like to see individual achievement, for people who want us all to be in it together and not to make anyone special and know everyone gets a participation trophy, soccer is much more welcoming to that point of view.
Why else does the left like soccer so much?
Because soccer is foreign.
Now, this is largely why the left loves it, because it's a favorite sport of people who study abroad and then they come home with a fake accent.
It's a favorite sport of people who, when they're overseas, they say, I'm embarrassed to be American, like that guy.
They say, oh, I'm from New York.
I'm from D.C. I'm from L.A., but I'm not American.
They really like soccer, and this was true.
It's less true now, but it was certainly true five or ten years ago.
They love soccer precisely because it's not American, because it's A foreign sport that we've slowly adopted in recent years, and that's one thing they really like about it.
But even beyond it being foreign of origin, I mean, there are plenty of foreign origin things that we like and we make American.
The reason the left loves soccer is because it's about internationalism.
It's a sport that anybody can play.
I mean, in the technical aspects of the sport, it's pretty lowest common denominator.
You need a ball and you need two goals, and that's it.
You need a dirt patch or a grass patch or an open field.
Everyone can play it.
This is why it's an internationally popular game.
And beyond that, the highest expression of soccer is not the individual game between New York and Boston or between American cities or American states.
The highest expression of soccer is what we just saw at the international level, at the World Cup.
And so In this way, it's a little bit like the opposite of baseball.
You know, in baseball, we have the World Series, and the World Series doesn't really involve anyone else from the rest of the world.
You get a couple teams in Canada, maybe, but that's it.
The World Series is just America because the U.S. says we're the most important thing in the world, and we're going to limit the World Series just to American teams because those are the only teams that matter.
Plus, you know, like the Blue Jays or something.
But with soccer, soccer presents the United States as just one nation among many.
It's like the UN of sports.
The UN is a ridiculous concept.
It's the concept that all nations get a seat at the table and we're all basically equal.
But that's never been true in the history of the world.
Not all nations are equal.
Not all nations are equally important.
Not all nations are equally just.
The United States is the leader of the world.
That's how our sports portray us traditionally.
But the left loves soccer because soccer is an equalizing sport.
Sure, there's Spain, there's Kenya, there's some country I've never heard of, and there's the United States.
And we're all basically equal.
The baseball version is right.
The United States is not just one nation among many.
We are essentially different from every other nation.
Our unique founding, our unique history, our unique development makes us incomparable.
We are actually a different nation.
This is what American exceptionalism is.
It's not just American chauvinism.
It's not just saying we're the best all the time.
Sometimes it says that, but that's not exclusively what it is.
What American exceptionalism is is It means that America is exceptional.
It's an exception to the rule of nations.
Now, I understand that many people, many conservatives even, played soccer as a kid.
Maybe they played soccer in college or something.
I don't mean this as a personal attack on you.
I did plenty of things in college that I'm not proud of.
Maybe we'll do an episode on that one day.
Maybe not.
It's a family program.
But you should not let your nostalgia for playing something as a kid or your feelings for it Get in the way of the facts about this sport.
Because one of the biggest issues, I mean maybe this is what it really gets down to, is that soccer, as far as sports go, is soft and simple.
It's certainly softer and it's certainly simpler than other sports, both mentally and physically.
And a nation's sports reflect that nation.
We've been talking now for a couple of weeks about how sports are patriotic activities.
This has been true since ancient Greece.
The nation's games reflect something about the nation.
And this is the fear.
I actually think I have some objectivity on this because I don't care about sports at all.
I don't have a personal dog in this fight.
I like baseball well enough.
You know, I'm a Yankee fan, but I don't watch every game of the season.
I mean, if I'm in the cigar bar and the game is on, I'll watch it.
I'll watch the postseason or when games start to really matter.
But even that I'm not totally enthralled with.
And I think my disinterest in sports actually gives me some objectivity here and some perspective.
More than if someone is a diehard fan of some team or some sport.
I think that sometimes skews their perspective.
Just consider, historically speaking, which sports have been the most popular in the US and what eras those sports were popular in.
What those eras looked like for the country.
Look at boxing.
Boxing is mentally and physically exhausting.
Boxing may be the noblest sport.
It is really a beautiful sport to watch.
It is fully human.
It is really gritty.
It's just the extreme of mental strategy and agility and, of course, physical endurance.
When was boxing popular in the United States?
The popularity of boxing in the U.S. peaked between the 1920s and the 1950s.
That was right at the time that we were back-to-back World War champs.
That was right at the time that American industry was exploding.
That was right at the time that we were coming to dominate the world.
We were an advancing nation, and our games and the games that we preferred were reflecting that toughness, that grit, those smarts, but that just total manliness.
Then what sport came after that to become America's favorite national pastime?
That was baseball.
Baseball is also mentally and physically demanding.
Not quite in the same way as boxing, though.
They're very different sports.
What's mentally exhausting about boxing is you're gauging the other guy.
You're seeing what he's going to do.
You've got to be really light on your feet, so your brain is telling your body where to go, what to hold, how to strike.
In baseball, there's a zillion rules.
There's the infield fly rule.
There are a million different plays.
We're tracking statistics all the time in baseball.
Now, it's also physically demanding.
Again, not in the same way you're not getting punched in the face unless you're batting against Roger Clemens or something, but you've got a lot of precision that's required of you.
It takes a keen physical precision to pitch the ball properly, to know which pitch to throw, to figure out what sign you're getting from the catcher, to get it right in the strike zone, or maybe not.
It takes a lot of precision to bat.
You've got a 90-mile-an-hour fastball coming at you.
It takes a lot of physical precision.
Same thing with fielding.
You've got to know exactly, regardless of what happens, if this guy goes there, I'm going to throw it here.
If that guy's going to be the cutoff, but he starts to run from third, I've got to throw it home.
It's very precise and complex.
This was the most popular sport among Americans from 1948 to 1960, according to various surveys.
This was at precisely the moment after the Second World War that we were constructing the world order.
This was at precisely the moment that we were managing the entire world.
And we were also staving off Soviet communism.
This is as independence movements are happening, nationalist movements are happening around the world.
We were managing new nations, entering the system of nation-states, managing independence, nurturing these movements, protecting them sometimes from excesses and from threats.
Highly precise time in America.
Highly technical time.
But still physically demanding.
Then what happened after the 1960s?
According to all the surveys, the top sport in America became football.
Football is highly strategic.
Football also requires brute force.
Since 1972, I think it is, football has been ranked the top American sport.
And what do we see in our national policy at that time?
We see a policy of more or less brute force.
We see a more imperial foreign policy.
I think it was a justified foreign policy in that we were staving off Soviet expansionism.
But it was a foreign policy certainly that was less nuanced than we saw in the early 20th century or in the 19th century.
Forget about the foreign field.
In domestic politics, you had a domestic politics of brute force.
All of a sudden, you had violent clashes on the streets.
People are assassinating presidents.
People are holding professors hostage at Cornell University.
You had the left with its new mantra, the personal is the political, the obliteration of this important and Nuanced, but highly important distinction between the personal realm of personal relationships and behavior and the public realm of politics.
Before that, there was a sort of genteel time.
When you could be friends with someone who had a different political point of view.
Ever since the 60s and 70s, that has become less and less popular because the left has embraced that idea that the political is personal and political differences have to lead to personal differences.
That's the era of identity politics.
That's the era of a less reasoned politics.
Now we have soccer on the rise.
What does that say about the country?
It says that now, in 2019, the U.S. likes things that are simple, that are safe, and that are foreign.
The country doesn't like itself as much, doesn't like its own traditions as much.
We see this reflected in a ton of public polling.
The percentage of Americans now who say they're extremely proud to be Americans is plummeting.
And among Democrats and the left who disproportionately like soccer, that number is at 22 percent who say they're extremely proud to be Americans.
They don't like it.
We had the last Democrat president, Barack Obama.
He didn't say, I want America to live up to her ideals.
That's not how he launched his campaign.
In 2008, he said, I want to fundamentally transform America.
He liked things that are different than the American tradition.
You've got to obliterate some of the American traditions in order to fundamentally transform it.
That is not a good sign.
And it actually has very little to do whether you personally like soccer or you grew up playing soccer.
And I'm not sure, really, that you can change very much of it.
I mean, people are going to like whatever sport they're going to like, but it does reflect something about the country.
I mean, now, there are a lot of people who don't even want to look at boxing.
There are a lot of people who say it's barbaric.
It's too awful to people's heads or something.
Even football.
We need to put more padding on them.
Even baseball.
We need to make baseball.
We need to change baseball.
We need to add the instant replay.
We need to change aspects of the game.
That tells you something about where we are.
Now, what's interesting at this moment is at the same time that you have the rise of soccer, you also have the rise of UFC, which is brutal.
I mean, that's boxing without any of the rules.
It's a much more brute force activity.
I think what that shows you is when you've got two very different sports, both on the rise at the same time, you're seeing a polarization of the country.
And this is reflected in our politics.
It's reflected in electoral patterns and public opinion surveys.
The conservatives are getting more conservative.
The leftists are getting more left wing.
And the nation is coming apart.
And when a nation doesn't have a shared sports, when we can't all share together in our sports...
That too reflects something about the nation, which is that we don't have very much that we can share at all.
When you've got the captain of the American national team, the women's soccer team, who's supposed to be representing the nation on a foreign field, when you have her viciously criticizing the American president, And worse than that, protesting the American flag, the symbol of the country itself, you've lost something.
If you can't even agree that you like the country, we don't have very much in common anymore.
That's a great fear.
And it's why this is actually why conservatives hate soccer.
I know that some conservatives might like soccer, but it's because I think they like it in a personal way.
I don't think any conservatives like soccer ideologically, but that's why sometimes it requires someone who doesn't care for sports generally to look in and say, what do the sports tell us about the country?
This is not a good sign.
But this is the good news.
All hope is not lost because President Trump had his tank-filled Fourth of July parade, and it was a great success.
Here is President Trump giving the introduction to his really quite excellent speech from the parade.
The First Lady and I wish each and every one of you a happy Independence Day on this truly historic 4th of July.
Today we come together as one nation with this very special salute to America.
We celebrate our history, our people, and the heroes who proudly defend our flag, the brave men and women of the United States military, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marines, and very soon the Space Force.
I want you to know that we're going to be back on the moon very soon, and someday soon, we will plant the American flag on Mars.
It's happening, Gene.
It's happening.
Americans love our freedom, and no one will ever take it away from us.
We love our freedom.
We love being an underdog.
We like seeing all the odds against us, and we say, you're not going to take it away.
That's what Independence Day is all about.
You know, people call Trump a narcissist, and obviously he puts his name on everything.
He brags a lot.
This was the least narcissistic political speech, presidential speech certainly, that I've seen in recent memory.
This speech was actually all about America, about what makes America America, about how to make America great again.
And It wasn't only about the past.
It wasn't only about nostalgia.
They say nostalgia is history after a few drinks.
It was about really engaging with our past.
While the left wants to erase our past, Trump was really engaging with it because our past tells us about our future.
The way that we understand our past, the way that we relate to our past, is going to tell us how we're going to move our country into the future.
He gets to that with a great show of strength.
Which we'll get to in a second, but first I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
And really, really awful news coming out of the Democratic 2020 primary.
It seems that one of our favorite candidates may already be dropping out of the race.
We will celebrate that candidate's wonderful and hilarious contributions to 2020.
Then we will get to the snipe fight between AOC and Nancy Pelosi.
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We'll be right back.
So after talking about what makes America America, President Trump then moves into a show of American strength, celebrating what President Trump then moves into a show of American strength, celebrating what the The tanks aren't just blunt force.
They represent our military.
They're a symbol of our military and a tool of our military, and all the great men and women who fight for our liberties and our political traditions and our way of life so that we don't have to, so that we can continue to have it.
And he did it beautifully.
...is our incredible airmen today who wield the most powerful weapon systems...
on the planet Earth.
For over 65 years, no enemy Air Force has managed to kill a single American soldier because the skies belong to the United States of America.
No enemy has attacked our people without being met by a roar of thunder and the awesome might of those who bid farewell to Earth and soar into the wild blue yonder.
Thank you.
Beautiful.
I mean, when was the last time you heard that phrase?
Off we go into the wild blue yonder.
It's like something you might have heard 20 years ago, but politicians don't talk about it anymore.
And Trump did.
And it serves a real strategic purpose.
What it is is a defiance of those who would do us harm.
This is why this wasn't a gratuitous parade.
I mean, this was why it wasn't even just a sort of nationally indulgent parade.
We're sending a message.
Don't mess with us.
This is why FDR had tanks at his inauguration.
It's why Eisenhower had tanks.
It's why JFK had a big fat nuclear weapon, big fat missile on his tanks at his inauguration.
Because we want to tell people that we are prepared for war.
Every lesson of history tells us that the way to ensure peace is to prepare for war.
And this seems ironic, but weakness invites aggression.
If you don't show that you are ready to turn the aggressor nation into pure glass, then you are inviting their aggression.
We don't want to use them.
President Trump has been basically the most peaceful president in my lifetime.
I think he was certainly the most peaceful president of my lifetime.
But why is it?
It's because in part, he's built up the American military.
He's unpredictable on the foreign front.
And so the would-be aggressors don't want to aggress too much.
But it's not just about the tanks.
The tanks, the strength, are great historical feats.
Show us the relationship between our past and our future.
Here's President Trump.
As long as we stay true to our course, as long as we remember our great history, as long as we never, ever stop fighting for a better future, then there will be nothing that America can not do.
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
This was Reagan-esque.
I mean, this was a speech you could easily hear coming out of Reagan's mouth.
Trump is not exactly like Reagan.
He's like the 2019 reality TV version of Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan came from a more genteel time.
But this speech was Reagan-esque and it was about the future.
That's what the left doesn't understand.
When you talk about the past...
You don't have to just leave it in the past.
You can use it to show a way to our future.
And listen to how that speech ended.
You know, you have two ostensibly patriotic events.
The U.S. women's national soccer team winning the World Cup and this Fourth of July parade.
They're both supposed to be patriotic celebrations.
And at one, you hear, USA, USA. That's at the Trump parade, at the Fourth of July parade.
At the other one, you hear F Trump, F Trump.
I'm embarrassed to be an American.
That's patriotism that's been perverted.
It's the opposite of patriotism.
And this 4th of July parade was a huge success.
I hope we do it every year because the reason the left opposed it a lot, by the way, is that there were these two studies that came out about seven or eight years ago, one out of Harvard, the other, I forget where.
And the Harvard one showed that if you attend 4th of July parades as a kid, you are much more likely to vote Republican later in your life.
There's something about having a memory, a nostalgia, a childhood delight of love for your country that makes you more conservative.
If you love your country more, you're going to be more conservative.
If you don't like your country, then you're going to want to fundamentally transform it, like Barack Obama said.
There was another study that showed that even just looking at the American flag, a single exposure made you more likely to identify as a conservative, and the effects lasted for eight months.
Which is why, from a tactical point of view, it's why Colin Kaepernick doesn't want the Betsy Ross flag on the shoes.
It's why the left is now trying to turn the symbol of our country into a hate symbol, because they want to portray American history, American character, the American essence as something hateful and awful and bigoted and terrible that we have to totally do away with and transform so that we can have their utopian solutions.
That's the difference.
You've got to pick a side.
You've got to pick the side of your country.
And seemingly trivial things, like sneakers or a flag waving or a parade or the sports you like or whatever, the team you support, these things seem trivial, but they make up the culture.
And what we know from Andrew Breitbart, the patron saint of Hollywood conservatives, is that politics comes from the culture.
It's downstream of culture.
And if we have a culture that hates the country, we're going to have a politics that hates the country, too, that undoes so much of what we love about this country.
Now, we've got really bad news on the political front, turning to the 2020 race.
This may be a breaking story.
It might be happening right now.
There are news reports that Eric Swalwell may be dropping out of the race.
And this is especially disappointing because Eric Swalwell assures me that he is me and he is you.
And he is everybody, so it means we all dropped out of the race.
350 million people dropping out of a race is going to seriously narrow it down.
300, what is it?
320, 330 million, something like that.
It's going to really narrow it down, though.
The press release that came out was Swalwell to hold news conference Monday campaign headquarters.
2020 Democratic presidential candidate, Congressman Eric Swalwell, will hold a news conference Monday.
He just canceled a campaign swing through New Hampshire.
He's currently not even registering on the real clear politics polling average of the top 20 Democratic candidates.
He was one of my favorite 2020 Democrats, not only because he was me, but because...
He's more a parody of a presidential candidate than an actual candidate.
You know, he launched his campaign on television threatening to use nuclear weapons against lawful gun owners.
He then stole the line from that failed Delaware Senate candidate, Christine O'Donnell, who was an accused witch who made her campaign slogan, I'm you.
That's what Swalwell stole.
Before he goes, which inevitably he will do, here's just a quick trip down memory lane with Eric Swalwell.
I will be bold without the bold.
I've listened to some of my colleagues, Mr.
Glover, tell you how much they like your movies.
And I have to say, we didn't come here to talk about your movies.
We came here to talk about your activism.
I like your activism.
I also like your movies, but I want to give you a chance because I haven't heard the other side other than tell you that they like their movies.
That they like your movies?
That they want to hear what you have to say on this important issue?
The economy is not the unemployment rate.
Donald Trump was bold, but a lot of what he was bold about was just bullshit.
And the economy is not the stock market.
It's you.
I've got just under $100,000 in student loan debt today.
Go big.
Be bold.
Do good.
When I'm not changing diapers, I'm changing Washington.
Most of the time, the diapers smell better.
A white guy who doesn't see other identities or understand other experiences should not be president.
I do.
And, you know, where there would be gaps in my knowledge or my experience, I will pass the mic to people, you know, who do have that experience.
It seems the time to pass the mic has come.
I hope the reports are not true.
Maybe he'll linger on another few weeks.
But in any case, Eric Swalwell, we hardly knew ye.
The question now is whether the race will narrow very quickly.
Obviously, 320 million people dropping out, that's a big deal.
But the question is, of the 25 or however many are still in it, will it narrow very quickly or will people hang around for a long time?
In 2016, Scott Walker got out very early and virtually no one else did.
So Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor, he was a leading candidate.
The Koch brothers loved him.
I mean, he was a serious candidate, very good governor.
And His logic for getting out of that race early was that all of the people who weren't going to win it needed to get out to deny Trump the nomination, because Trump had this divide and conquer strategy, and he was going to get a plurality of votes in all these different states and then win the nomination.
So my question for the Democrats is, how did that work out?
Scott Walker dropped out.
Nobody else dropped out.
The thing Walker was trying to prevent ultimately happened.
Nobody is motivated by altruism in presidential politics.
Nobody, ever.
It doesn't work.
If Swalwell can't qualify for the debates, then I guess it makes sense for him to get out because his campaign at that point is essentially over.
There's no way for him to raise any money, have a breakout moment.
It's done.
But for candidates who do qualify for the debates, they should stay in it as long as possible.
As a kind of broader thing for the whole Democratic Party, it would be better for the party if 22 of them dropped out right now.
But for the individual candidates, it's not better for any one of them to drop out right now.
And because people are not motivated by altruism, Kamala Harris is not motivated by helping Joe Biden get the nomination.
There's really no reason for them to do it.
No upside to getting out, no clear frontrunner, lots of opportunity for publicity and self-promotion, which is all that half of them are in it for anyway.
Speaking of useless candidates, Presidential campaigns that are only being used for shameless self-promotion, President Trump may get a primary opponent, or if not a primary opponent, a general election opponent who was at least a Republican.
This is Congressman Justin Amash, who announced last Thursday that he's leaving the GOP. Amash is the congressman who called for Trump's impeachment, so the Democrats all of a sudden have a strange new respect for him.
He's not really a Republican anyway.
I mean, now he's officially not a Republican, but he never really was.
He was a libertarian who realizes that now he has no future in the GOP. And so he's leaving.
And what do we do in American politics when you fail?
You fail upwards and you run for president.
So he's been signaling for a while he might run.
And with Jake Tapper over the weekend, he's not ruling it out.
What about the possibility of your running for president as a libertarian or under some other ticket?
I asked you about that four or five months ago and you didn't rule it out.
Is it possible you would run for president?
I still wouldn't rule anything like that out.
I believe that I have to use my skills, my public influence, where it serves the country best.
And I believe I have to defend the Constitution in whichever way works best.
And if that means doing something else, then I do that.
But I feel confident about running my district.
I feel a close tie to my community.
I care a lot about my community.
I want to represent them in Congress.
When do you think you'll make a decision about a possible presidential run?
Well, it's something people talk about all the time.
It's not something that's right on my radar right now, so I couldn't tell you.
Okay, so Justin Amash possibly getting into the presidential race is about as consequential as Eric Swalwell possibly getting out of the presidential race.
It just does nothing.
It means nothing.
And I actually kind of like Some of Justin Amash's positions.
I actually like many of Justin Amash's positions.
He's pro-life.
Good.
He's anti-spending.
Good.
He's a deregulator.
Good.
Good on healthcare.
Okay, I like all of those things.
He's also bad on a lot of issues.
He's bad on the military.
He wants a weaker military.
He wants to defund it.
He's bad on congressional redistricting.
He wants to set up some independent commission to deal with districting.
Which is obviously just empowering bureaucrats and taking away our ability for self-governance.
Naive at best and profoundly harmful at worst.
He's weak on border security, very weak on border security.
He's weak on drugs.
He's completely weak on marriage.
He has no idea about anything in the cultural arena.
And he's a bit weak on other social issues as well.
Justin Amash is a libertarian.
He's not a conservative.
This is really not about Donald Trump.
Trump was the straw that broke the camel's back for him because he personally really doesn't like Donald Trump.
But this is an issue more broadly.
Over the past several decades, the GOP has become a home for both conservatives and libertarians.
Conservatives and libertarians have a lot in common, but they are different views of the world.
And particularly, the GOP is a home for conservatives.
The conservatives have far more influence than the libertarians, as well they should.
If Justin Amash doesn't like that, he's welcome to leave, as he's doing right now.
But he should realize a slim, slim minority of Americans agree with Justin Amashism.
A very slim minority of Americans are even vaguely libertarian.
You know, the kind of fiscal, conservative, social, liberal idea.
Polls put it somewhere around 4%.
No political party can cater to that group and remain viable.
I've had billionaires tell me that the GOP should become socially liberal and fiscally conservative and would win every election.
At all of the elite universities and elite parties and in groups like that, people always love this.
They sound fiscally conservative, but socially liberal.
I don't care anything about the culture.
I don't really care about the moral law, but I want to keep more of my money.
And they think, because they're in a bubble, that this is a way forward.
They think this is the majority of America that believes in this.
Nobody does.
It's only elite people.
It's only these self-appointed elite people who feel this way.
So, Justin Amash has made his principled decision.
That's fine.
Now, Amash and his principles will fade into political obscurity.
What this shows us is that the big challenge to Trump is no challenge at all.
Remember, they said Kasich was going to run against Trump.
That's never going to happen.
Nobody cares.
Doesn't matter.
Barely makes the news on CNN. There is relatively little division among the GOP, but there is lots of division among Democrats.
And we saw this over the weekend with AOC and Pelosi sniping at each other.
AOC tweeted out, quote, People's lives are getting bargained.
And for what?
So this is a shot right at Democrat congressional leadership, right at Pelosi.
What does Pelosi say?
All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn't have any following.
They're four people, and that's how many votes they got.
She's talking about the fresh faces.
She's talking about Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, AOC. That's who she's alluding to here.
And she says they didn't get a lot of votes.
And you're right.
What you're seeing is this breakdown of the Democratic Party, which is a consequence of their moral universe.
In the fantasy moral universe of the left, national borders are wrong.
America is evil.
The flag is a symbol of oppression rather than freedom.
Men are evil, except when men are women, because gender is a social construct.
And all races are wonderful, except white people who are really bad, except race is also a social construct.
And all sexual preferences are to be celebrated.
Except for heterosexuality, which doesn't even exist in the first place, and babies should be murdered after they've been born.
That's the fantasy moral universe.
Democrats have had a fantasy moral universe for decades.
It's not AOC's fault.
JFK would quote George Bernard Shaw's play and say, I dream things that never were and ask why not.
What he forgets to mention is this is the voice of the serpent tempting Eve in the garden.
The line he's quoting from that Shaw play is about the Garden of Eden.
It's called Back to Methuselah.
It's a perverse moral idea.
And the trouble for the Democrats is no one in reality actually believes that stuff.
They only believe it on Twitter, the fantasy world.
Twitter is not real life, I'm telling you.
They've bought their own fantasies.
AOC got old.
Do you know how many votes AOC got?
To ensure that she would get elected to Congress?
She got 14,000 votes.
In the district, how many registered voters are there?
Something like a quarter of a million?
She only got 14,000 because she was in this primary.
No one was voting in the primary.
A small number of people put her in.
Once she got the Democrat nomination, she was guaranteed to win the general.
She has no actual constituency, but she has 4.7 million Twitter followers.
So she has no hard political leverage.
She has lots of social media clout.
That is what we're seeing happen here.
The world of hardcore, real-time politics and the world of virtual politics and virtue signaling.
We're seeing that play out at the presidential level.
And currently, as you look at the policy positions of every one of those candidates, the hard-left fantasy world is winning on all of these issues.
Healthcare for illegal aliens.
Tax the world into oblivion.
$93 trillion spending.
The sun monster is the biggest threat.
The virtual fantasy world is winning.
Bad news for Democrats.
Pelosi sees it.
But unfortunately, I think for the Democrats, their primary voters do not.
Works for me.
We've got a lot more to get to, but we'll have to do it tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
See you tomorrow.
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, the U.S. women's team won the World Cup, as maybe you heard.
Now they're saying they deserve equal pay, that they're underpaid, they're paid less than the men, they should get equal pay.
Well, that's actually an extremely absurd claim, and I'll talk about why.
And in fact, if you look at the stats, the stats show that women's team, women's soccer players in this country, are overpaid.
Overpaid.
And I'll explain why.
Also, the media invented another controversy, another outrage, an invented outrage to try to make conservatives look stupid.
This one has to do with the Little Mermaid, of all things.
And finally, if we have the right to an attorney, which we do, then why don't we have the right to a doctor?
Seems like if you have the right to one, you should have the right to the other.
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