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Aug. 7, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:48
Ep. 394 - Red Flags All Around

In the wake of two mass shootings that would not have been prevented by any of the gun control legislation proposed in recent years, Republicans and Democrats are coming together to endorse more gun control legislation that will not stop any future shootings. Then, conservative environmentalist Benji Backer stops by to try to turn me green! Date: 08-07-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In the wake of two mass shootings that would not have been prevented by any of the gun control legislation proposed in recent years, Republicans and Democrats are coming together to endorse, you guessed it, more gun control legislation that will not stop any future shootings.
But hey, at least the laws will infringe on our constitutional rights.
We will analyze the many red flags in red flag laws.
Then, the mainstream left keeps up its defamatory temper tantrum.
We'll look at a few examples of that, what it means for 2020, what it means for our political future.
Finally, conservative environmentalist Benji Backer stops by to try to turn me green.
Good luck, buddy.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
Red flags and green conservatives.
We've got a whole slew, the whole rainbow of politics today.
I want to start with red flag laws because, unfortunately, it seems the president, conservatives in Congress, and obviously the entirety of the far left did not watch my show yesterday.
They just didn't listen.
I hate to say I told you so, particularly on this topic, but I pointed out yesterday that...
All of the reaction, particularly on the left, to these two awful shootings over the weekend has been emotivist.
It has been grounded in raw emotion.
The slander, the temper tantrums, the political attacks that have come out of it have not been grounded in reality, have not been grounded in crime statistics, have not been grounded in legislation that actually would change anything.
It is just this raw emotional response.
And I feared, as I... I have seen my fears vindicated that conservatives in the desire to be seen as doing something would allow their emotions to run away with them and embrace gun control laws that would not have stopped the attacks and will not stop future attacks.
Turns out I was right.
You know, after the last few mass shootings, The conservatives did a pretty good job of thinking with their heads and not just thinking with their overheated emotions.
This one was different, I guess.
I don't know why, but for some reason this one has conservatives backing gun control.
So what are the gun control laws that get proposed when there are mass shootings?
They always talk about banning assault weapons, and obviously there's no such thing as an assault weapon.
All weapons are assault weapons.
The term was made up in the 1980s to confuse people who don't understand the difference between an automatic, fully automatic, assault rifle, which have been banned in this country for decades, and regular old guns where you pull the trigger once and one bullet comes out, which is true of pistols, It's true of revolvers.
It's true of the AR-15 and every other rifle in between that you can get in the open market.
So they talk about banning assault weapons.
I don't think that's really going to go anywhere.
I don't think there's an appetite for that.
We know that these so-called assault weapons are involved in very, very few shootings per year, very, very few homicides.
The vast, vast majority of homicide and suicide of gun deaths per year come from handguns.
22 times, more than 22 times the number of deaths that include rifles of any sort, including the so-called assault weapons.
So I think the assault weapons ban is dead on arrival.
Then there's the question of banning handguns, which are obviously involved in the vast majority of gun-related deaths per year.
That isn't going to happen.
Why?
Because it's unconstitutional.
They tried to ban handguns in D.C. That was overturned in the Heller decision.
You have a Second Amendment right to a gun, and if they're not going to ban handguns, then they're not going to address the problem.
The problem of gun-related deaths.
So then you get to the question of a constitutional amendment, which is what the left really wants.
What the left really wants to do is just gut the Second Amendment, take away your individual right to keep and bear arms, which we've had in this country since the very beginning, which we inherited from English law.
I don't think they're going to do that.
I don't think there's any support for that, even among many Democrats who represent red states.
Ain't going to happen.
So then we get to this legislation, which everybody is endorsing, and that is red flag laws.
Why are red flag laws popular?
Right now you've got Donald Trump saying that he supports red flag laws.
You've got Lindsey Graham saying he supports red flag laws.
He's working with Democrat Dick Blumenthal, the guy who lied about his Vietnam War service, to endorse red flag laws.
Why is this gaining support?
It's gaining support because people don't know what it is.
It kind of sounds good.
Like all of these pieces of gun control legislation, it sounds good in theory.
Yeah, if there are red flags, we don't want that guy to have a gun.
And so they're getting behind it, also because it hasn't been in the public view for a long time, so people don't know why they're so bad.
Right now, 17 states have approved some version of a red flag law.
That includes Florida, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, and California.
Before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting last year in Broward County at that high school, there were only five states that had these laws.
So red flag laws are gaining steam over the past year, and they don't work, is the trouble.
So one of the earliest states to pass a red flag law was Connecticut.
They passed red flag laws in 1999, and obviously one of the deadliest mass shootings at a school happened 13 years later at Sandy Hook.
Now, what do red flag laws do?
They say that if there are red flags in a person's history, you know, their behavior, what they're writing, they're getting in trouble at school, they're posting things on the Internet.
It's pretty nebulous.
Then you can bring that kid before a judge and the judge can deem him incapable of holding a gun and take away his constitutional right to own a gun.
In certain states, the parents can haul their kids or family members can haul their crazy uncle, you know, before the judge and say he shouldn't have his constitutional right to own a gun.
And the judge can say, okay, that's fine.
And then this is regularly brought back up and this lack of a constitutional right can be extended basically in perpetuity.
Why is this so bad?
I'm not against taking guns away from crazy people.
I don't think crazy people should be able to get guns, and we do have a problem in this country of crazy people getting guns.
But it should be very, very, very difficult to take away someone's right to have a gun.
Why?
Because the right to own a gun is not the same as the right to drive a car.
Driving a car is a privilege.
Owning a gun is your civil right.
It is your Second Amendment right.
It is right there in the Constitution.
So how should we make it such that you can take away guns from crazy people?
We'll get to that in a second.
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So I think we should be able to take guns away from crazy people.
Totally believe that.
Red flag laws are not the way to do it.
It should not be the same as taking away someone's right to drive a car.
You know, if you get too many speeding tickets, they can take away your driver's license because you don't have a civil right to a driver's license.
You don't have a constitutional right to drive a car.
So it's easier to take away that right.
Guns are different.
You have a civil right to a gun.
So if we're going to take away people's civil rights, you got to go for it.
You got to really go for it.
You should basically not be able to take away someone's right to own a gun unless you are willing to throw them in a padded room and lock the door, put them in a straitjacket, take away their right to vote, take away their right to live on their own, take away their right to work and be a part of polite society on their own.
I think we should be able to do that.
This ties in with the mental health aspect of all of these mass shootings.
We don't have a system in this country anymore to lock up crazy people who are a danger to themselves and a danger to others.
We should have that.
It was very well-intentioned when we got rid of the insane asylums.
We got rid of them in large part because of the development of psychiatric drugs whereby people would take them and they would stop being crazy.
They would get even.
They would be able to behave in normal society.
Trouble is that once they got out of the asylums, they stopped taking the drugs.
They wind up on the street.
They wind up a danger to themselves and to others.
We went way too far in that direction.
Many of the pioneers of closing down the asylums now regret it because we let way too many people out.
We need to make it easier in this country to involuntarily commit people.
When you involuntarily commit people, you are taking away their civil rights.
But this is not an infringement on their liberty because when you are insane, you are not capable of liberty.
You need to be sane in order to access your freedom.
Otherwise, you become a slave to passions and into lunacy.
What the left wants to do, though, they don't want to go all that way.
They don't want to follow those ideas to their logical conclusions because they don't really view guns as a civil right.
They don't really view your second amendment rights as a core civil right.
They view it as this unfortunate vestigial part of the constitution and they want to get rid of it.
And so they're going to chip away at it slowly and consistently.
Don't let them do that.
And, and conservatives shouldn't fall for this, whether it's the president, whether it's senators, whether it's your rank and file conservative.
You want to do something?
Do something.
Do something to fix the shootings.
Do something, even if it won't stop the shootings.
Do something like pass red flag laws, which did not stop the shootings in the states where those laws were passed.
Fine.
Don't stop halfway, though.
Don't let them have their cake and eat it too.
If you want to take away people's civil rights, take away their civil rights, but don't lie to me and only take away the civil rights you want to take away, but not all of the others.
That doesn't make any sense.
It's pretty dangerous.
It's unconstitutional.
If you want to take away people's civil rights, make a serious argument for it.
They're not going to do it, though, because there aren't serious arguments to be made here.
The left is not making serious arguments.
They're having a temper tantrum.
You saw this over the past few days.
We talked about it yesterday.
It's still going on.
Here on MSNBC is MSNBC host Nicole Wallace making her big argument about white supremacy and the threat it poses to the country.
Her big argument is that President Trump is talking about exterminating Latinos.
Here she is.
Certainly, the last Republican president fought for, sought, and it's not ideal, but had 44% of the Latino vote.
It was so politically powerful inside the last Republican administration.
President Obama used the power of the presidency to try to pass comprehensive immigration reform with the Latino community, Latino leaders at the table.
You don't have a president, as you said, talking about exterminating Latinos.
Do you have that president?
Is that the president you've got?
Could you show me that clip?
Hey, control room, show me that clip where Trump talks about exterminating Latinos.
Do we have it?
Oh, we don't have it, because obviously that's never happened.
That is a fever dream inside the ridiculous fantasies of this MSNBC host.
So she had to walk this back.
Even MSNBC has a certain level of shame, I guess.
And this is her walking it back.
Quote, I misspoke about Trump calling for an extermination of Latinos.
My mistake was unintentional, and I'm sorry.
Trump's constant assault on people of color and his use of the word invasion to describe the flow of immigrants is intentional and constant.
Okay, so it's obviously not an apology at all.
She, in the second part, says, Trump is a really bad guy and he uses the term invasion to describe an invasion of people.
Not people of color, by the way.
We're talking about illegal aliens who actually are invading the country because they're foreign nationals.
But I love this first part.
I misspoke about Trump calling for an extermination of Latinos.
My mistake was unintentional and I'm sorry.
How many times have you accidentally accused someone of genocide?
Is that a regular thing that people do?
Sorry, I... You know, it's like a Freudian slip where you say one thing, but you mean your mother, and then you accuse her of genocide.
No, that's not how it works.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
She's not sorry for it, and she's not apologizing for it.
That's MSNBC for you.
But maybe we should expect that of MSNBC. I mean, that is a hysterical channel where the furthest left numbskulls go on to spread their lies.
We should not be able to expect that from presidential candidates and U.S. senators, and yet that's what we got.
So Cory Booker, Senator Spartacus, spewing tears of rage, needs to try to get his poll numbers up.
And so he's accusing the president of being a white supremacist, a white nationalist, a white bigot, or whatever, you know, whatever the term du jour is to malign your political opponents.
Now, a while ago, Cory Booker was asked on CNN, About this white supremacy question.
He said, President Trump needs to call out white supremacy.
He needs to condemn white supremacy.
So what does President Trump do?
He condemns white supremacy.
They asked Cory Booker about this.
Is that good enough?
Of course it is not good enough.
Senator Spartacus himself.
And for him to fail even to condemn Nazis or even to talk about white supremacy as a problem in this country, to me that is being complicit in the violence that is happening.
Senator, another thing that the president said in his remarks today, I'll read it to you.
He said, Do you welcome that acknowledgement?
No.
No, of course I don't.
Because what Cory Booker wants is for President Trump to be a Nazi.
Because that's his narrative.
That's the story he's telling.
And it doesn't matter that President Trump consistently, it seems like every few weeks for the past three years, says, I condemn racism.
Racism is evil.
Hatred warps the soul.
It gnaws away at the soul.
It's awful.
We're Americans.
We share the same blood of patriotism.
We're going on and on and on.
I mean, we could spend a whole show playing those clips.
But in Cory Booker's mind, Trump is a neo-Nazi, so that when Trump says things that contradict that narrative, he hates it.
He doesn't welcome that.
He doesn't really want Trump to condemn it at all.
Pretty pathetic, but you know, look, Cory Booker is a desperate presidential candidate who is going nowhere.
He's not going to be president.
We have the brother of another presidential candidate, Joaquin Castro, who's the brother of Julian Castro.
Joaquin Castro is a sitting congressman, and he took it a step further.
He's not just running his mouth with these stupid fantasies and these stupid smears.
He's actually going out and nearly doxing his own constituents.
This was a tweet.
Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump.
The owner of Bill Miller Barbecue, the owner of Historic Pearl, realtor Phyllis Browning, etc.
Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as invaders.
Where to begin?
First of all, it just is not true what he said.
They're not labeling Hispanic immigrants as invaders.
They're labeling foreign nationals who illegally cross into our country as invaders, which they are just by definition.
Not Hispanic immigrants.
They're not immigrants.
They're foreign nationals.
They're illegal aliens.
They are invaders.
But look at what he's doing.
Because this is really ramping it up.
It's not just defaming the president.
It's not just hurling a totally vile, unfair attack.
It's not just being a hypocrite, on the one hand calling for the president to condemn white supremacy, then the next minute saying you don't welcome his condemning white supremacy.
What this is doing now is threatening regular old American citizens, threatening your own constituents.
What what He's intimidating people into not donating to Republicans.
By threatening to not quite dox them.
He doesn't quite release their personal information.
I mean, just by revealing their identities from that massive national platform, surely their personal information is now going to get out.
This is the age of the internet.
Everybody's personal information is everywhere.
So if you just call attention to somebody from such a big stage as that, that information is going to get out.
Functionally, it is the same as doxing.
But what a vile, disgusting thing to do.
And the Democrats are not backing down.
Joaquin Castro is actually doubling down when called out about this on MSNBC. My post was actually a lament.
If you look at my language, I said that it's sad that these folks, many of whom are prominent business owners in San Antonio, a city that's about 65% Hispanic, their customers, the people that have made them wealthy, their employees, the people that have worked for them for years, many of those folks are Hispanic, and they're giving their money to a guy who's running ads talking about Hispanics invading this country.
So it was a lament about all of us go to the restaurants these people own, the businesses that they own.
We patronize these places and they're giving this money, their money to this guy who's taking their money and using it to buy Facebook ads, talking about how Hispanics are invading this country.
And that there is a cost to that.
We saw the cost to that in El Paso over the weekend, that people died.
It's so disgusting what he's doing, you see?
The left always does this.
This guy doxed his own constituents, effectively.
He at least exposed them, shamed them, and threatened them, his own constituents.
And then, when he gets called out on this, he portrays himself as the victim.
Oh, no, I wasn't shaming them.
I wasn't threatening them.
I wasn't threatening all the other people who were going to donate to Republicans.
I was lamenting.
I was just lamenting.
It's so sad.
Gosh, I hope no one laments.
Joaquin Castro's home address.
They'd be lamenting it.
They'd be lamenting where Joaquin Castro...
I hope no one laments like Maxine Waters and says we should go to our political opponents where they live.
We should mob them in the streets.
We should go where their children sleep.
It's a lament.
Okay, you're crying, Joaquin.
It's a lament.
Okay.
And to lie about it, to lie.
He's saying that Republicans are calling Hispanics invaders.
Not true.
He's calling people who invade our country invaders, which they are.
So disgusting.
What a disgusting man he is.
What a really vile, awful person.
You know, for the other clips, for the other guys, you know, Nicole Wallace or even Cory Booker, those attacks are dishonest.
They're corrupt and they're creepy and they're wrong.
But that attack from Joaquin Castro is so direct because it's on civilians.
It's on his own constituents.
It's like what the mob does.
It's what the gangsters do.
It's really awful.
It demands a response from Republicans.
It demands that we engage in some of these dirty tactics, too.
Hate to do it, but it demands that response.
What he's doing is a vile attack on his own constituents.
He should be censured for it.
He should be removed from Congress.
He should be ashamed of himself.
Other attacks, though, have been even more esoteric.
This is where you go from the realm of tragedy to the realm of force.
You had the former FBI director of counterintelligence.
Come on to MSNBC and he wasn't talking about, he wasn't just totally making up these normal lies of calling Hispanics invaders and calling Trump a white supremacist.
He found the hidden esoteric message.
So you thought, here's what you thought.
You thought that President Trump was condemning white nationalism and white supremacy.
You thought that he said we're going to lower the flag to half-mast because of these tragedies.
But what this guy saw, what this MSNBC former counterintelligence FBI guy saw, was the secret, hidden, esoteric Nazism in President Trump's remarks.
Take a listen.
We have to understand the adversary and the threat we're dealing with.
And if we don't understand how they think, we'll never understand how to counter them.
So it's little things and language and messaging that matters.
The president said that we will fly our flags at half-mast.
Until August 8th.
That's 8-8.
Now, I'm not going to imply that he did this deliberately, but I am using it as an example of the ignorance of the adversary that's being demonstrated by the White House.
The numbers 8-8 are very significant in neo-Nazi and white supremacy movement.
Why?
The letter H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
And to them, the numbers 8-8 together stand for Heil Hitler.
So we're going to be raising the flag back up at dusk on 8-8.
No one's thinking about this.
The only true statement he said there is no one's thinking about this.
It's the only relevant statement he made.
See, President Trump, he's lowering the flags to half-mast, but only to put forward his secret, hidden, esoteric Hitler message.
Nowhere, by the way, in this coverage, you'll notice, do people talk about the other mass shooting.
There was one mass shooting in El Paso that was undertaken by an eco-fascist, a radical environmentalist who also was a racial bigot, and they've pinned that one on the right.
They're not talking about the shooter in Ohio who was an avowed Elizabeth Warren supporter.
How about Joaquin Castro publishes all the names of Elizabeth Warren's donors?
Why didn't he do that?
Those people are donating to the same person endorsed by the mass shooter in Ohio.
Those people are donating to someone who inspired a mass shooter in Ohio.
How about they published the list of the names of Media Matters supporters?
Look, the guy was reposting a ton of Media Matters tweets.
So, Media Matters is inspiring mass shooters, right?
Let's publish their supporters.
Let's publish the people who have ever said anything positive about Antifa.
No, they don't talk about that because that's not politically convenient to them.
They need to pretend that white supremacy, white supremacist terrorism, is the biggest problem in the whole country.
There were two shootings over the weekend.
Half of those shootings were from radical leftists.
That's not part of the conversation.
Tucker Carlson came out and he unambiguously, in his typical Tucker way, came out against the hysteria in blunt terms.
He pointed out there were two attacks.
One of them was from leftists.
No one's talking about that.
He observed that this whole issue of white supremacist terror is being totally, singularly harped on by the media to exploit dead Americans for political ends, and he called BS. But the whole thing is a lie.
If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns or problems this country faces, where would white supremacy be on the list?
Right up there with Russia, probably.
It's actually not a real problem in America.
The combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country would be able to fit inside a college football stadium?
I mean, seriously.
This is a country where the average person is getting poorer, where the suicide rate is spiking.
White supremacy, that's the problem.
This is a hoax.
Just like the Russia hoax.
It's a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.
That's exactly what's going on.
Now the left, the typical people on the left like Media Matters, who you'll remember is an organization regularly posted about by the mass shooter in Ohio, Media Matters, just reminding you of that.
Media Matters is going after Tucker trying to take away his show.
For saying that the singular focus on white supremacy is the biggest problem in America is a hoax.
Well, just look at the numbers.
The Guardian out of the UK published an article just a few days ago showing the number of how many people have been killed worldwide over the last eight years in white nationalist linked attacks.
Worldwide.
Not just in the United States.
Last eight years.
How many people do you think?
I'll give you one guess.
What are you going to say?
10,000?
5,000?
3,000?
2,000?
175 people.
Awful.
Every one of those deaths is a tragedy.
But that's the number.
Those are the data.
175 people.
Less than 22 people per year worldwide killed in white nationalist-linked attacks, according to The Guardian.
In 2016, there were 45,000 suicides in the United States alone.
On average, 22 per year people killed in white nationalist linked attacks worldwide.
Just one year, 45,000 people killed themselves in the United States alone.
33,000 annual deaths related to guns in the United States.
Each year, between 8,000 and 9,000 gang-related homicides just in the United States.
Obviously, what Tucker is saying is empirically true.
But the mainstream media are only focusing on that one thing.
Media Matters, which I'll remind you, was posted regularly by the Ohio Mass Shooter.
Just wanted to remind you of that.
Media Matters going after Tucker Carlson.
Why?
Because Tucker's a white supremacist?
Of course not.
He's not a white supremacist.
Going after Tucker because he's a white nationalist?
Of course not.
He's not a white nationalist.
They're going after Tucker because Tucker has a big show.
And Tucker's got a big platform and a lot of people listen to him.
They're going to go after all of us.
They already are going after us.
They go after Ben Shapiro and call him a neo-Nazi.
The guy wears a yarmulke every day.
Orthodox Jew.
Doesn't matter to them.
They use this absolutely outrageous, unfair attack to lump in all right-wingers with an eco-fascist who shot up a mall in El Paso, Texas because he had some political positions that might The El Paso shooter said explicitly, I was not inspired to do this by Donald Trump.
I held these views long before Donald Trump.
The same group, they lump all of us in.
They don't acknowledge that they...
We're retweeted by the shooter in Ohio.
The same people.
So despicable.
So shameless.
That's the present left.
The future left gets even more farcical.
We'll take a little visit down to the Democratic Socialists of America Convention in just a little bit.
But first, we're going to bring on our pal, the conservative environmentalist Benji Backer.
We are going to talk about trade and show.
We've got a whole lot to do.
We've got to take a break, though.
You are almost out of time to purchase tickets to our backstage live show on August 21st at the Incredible Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California.
Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire God King, Jeremy Boring, Andrew Klavan, and myself will be chopping up the winners and losers of politics and pop culture.
Best of all, We'll be answering your questions from the audience.
Tickets are available at dailywire.com slash backstage, and there are still a few VIP tickets available.
Not many, though.
They are really running out, so make sure if you want to get that VIP ticket package, you've got to go do it ASAP. That includes premium seating, photos and meet and greets with each of us, and a special gift from Ben, among other things.
They are selling fast.
Head over to dailywire.com slash backstage.
Get yours today.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back with a whole lot more.
All right.
We are joined now by our pal Benji Backer, president of the American Conservation Coalition.
We talked about red flag laws at the top of the show.
We are going to talk about green conservatives at the bottom of the show, and maybe Benji will turn me into an environmentalist.
I don't think it's going to happen, but hope springs eternal in the human breast.
Benji, thank you so much for being here.
Hey, it's great to be here.
Benji, you are that rare breed of individual.
You are the environmentalist conservative.
How many of there are you?
You're like the only one.
That's just not true.
I think I would say most conservatives are environmentalists.
It's actually really interesting.
I go and I speak to conservative groups all the time and what they say, I always ask before I get into the speech, who here considers himself an environmentalist?
And almost every single person raises their hands.
And then I say, who considers themselves an environmentalist in today's terms?
Not a single one raises their hands.
That's the problem here.
The environmental movement has become so politicized that every conservative doesn't feel like they can be a part of the discussion, even though they care about the environment just as much or even more than their leftist counterparts.
And I think it's a problem for two reasons.
One, you have one side dominating the conversation as a result.
And on the flip side, you have conservatives that don't propose policy solutions that aren't engaged as much as the left, even though they care just as much.
Right.
I think that's a totally fair distinction.
And do conservatives care about the environment?
Of course we should.
It's right there in the word conserve.
And I've always considered myself at least a supporter of conservation.
But I now think with this modern environmentalist movement, there is a difference between the environmentalists and the conservationists.
The conservationists wanting to preserve nature and its beauty.
We love it so much.
And environmentalists who, you know, they hug trees.
They think that animals have rights.
They seem almost to want to serve the environment rather than to conserve it so that it can serve us.
But what is the relationship?
Because I think we can all get on board with conservation.
What is the relationship between that and global warming, which you see everybody talking about around the world?
We're told that we're either all going to die in 14 months or 35 years or 100 months or two years ago, and there seems to be so much alarmism around it that conservatives reflexively pull away from that E-word, environmentalism.
Yeah, that's so true.
And I actually, as a millennial, and actually I think I'm Gen Z technically, I started wearing a watch recently because I'm like, if we only have 14 months to live, I might as well start counting down the days, right?
But no, that is the problem, is that it's become so politicized because of climate change, and we're told that we have to change our entire lives to fix the problem of global warming or climate change.
But what's funny about that is that the science doesn't even say that.
If you look at what the UN and every other kind of organization, nonprofit or government agency that's put together climate data says, none of them say that we only have 12 months, 12 years, 15 years to fix this problem.
They say that it's a global problem, that we have time to fix it and it's not going to ruin our lives overnight.
Does that mean that we should ignore it?
No.
But that also doesn't mean that we have to like basically walk to school every day and walk to work every day like we are told we have to do.
But it's been used as a tool of the left.
What we work on is, it doesn't really matter if you believe in climate change or not, because at the end of the day, reduced emissions are good for everybody.
No one wants pollutants in the air clogging up the atmosphere with smog or whatever the pollutants are.
So it's good for everyone to reduce emissions.
So no matter if you're a climate skeptic, a climate alarmist, or anything in between, there is an incentive to reduce emissions.
And so I personally believe in climate change.
I don't believe that it's going to end the world in 12 years or that we have only 12 years to fix it.
But regardless of where you are on the issue, there is an incentive to reduce emissions.
But isn't there a cost to it?
I mean, we're constantly told we have these sweeping laws to reduce emissions from automobiles that put new regulations on cars.
That's why we get all these kind of light, modern cars that aren't gas guzzlers, aren't those cool cars from the 70s.
This is a little bit of a hobby horse of mine.
And, you know, there's obviously a cost to the economy.
There are a lot of proposals like cap and trade, for example, and others that would weigh on business, would weigh on the economy.
So if we're not certain that it's going to kill us all, if we're not certain what the effect of these policies is going to be, I mean,
you saw those reports out of the Paris Climate Accord that even if everyone signed on, it would only reduce the global mean temperature at a fraction of a degree over 100 years.
Then what is the end goal?
Because the whole issue just seems so blurry to me.
No one can tell me what it's going to look like if we do nothing.
No one can tell me what the cost of the emissions is going to be.
Specifically, what do we want?
So on the first part of that, it is not impossible to reduce emissions without growing the size of government because you even look at clean energy today.
And like Texas is number two in wind power in the country, which most people don't know because they think Texas is just the devil's state if they're an environmentalist, probably.
But at the end of the day, it's becoming cheaper and more cost efficient to use nuclear, wind, you know, hydro and solar, which are clean energy sources.
And so that's taking emissions out of the air.
And it's actually more cost effective.
So you've got companies across the country that are switching to 100 percent clean energy.
And they're reducing their emissions as a company because it's cheaper and because it helps the environment at the same time.
So those two things don't have to, the economy and the environment don't have to conflict, despite what the left says.
They definitely do not have to.
But at the same time, what we need to do is in the United States, we lead the globe on pretty much every issue within history.
And so if you look at what we can do on climate change and reducing emissions, we can use an all the above energy approach And figure out new technology and innovation.
There's this thing called carbon capture, which takes carbon out of the atmosphere and reuses it for products, which is really, really cool.
And those are the types of things that we can give to other nations like China and India.
If we switch to wind and solar overnight, like the Green New Deal wants us to do, none of those countries would be able to do that.
And you're right, it would just be a shot in the dark.
But if we do something in the United States, like we're already doing, leading the world in emissions reductions, if we continue doing that, and we're able to We're good to go.
We do lead the world, and we also lead the world in protecting the environment.
You know, we pulled out of that Paris Climate Accord, and then the report came out that in 2017, we actually led those signatories in reducing carbon emissions, while the signatories to it not only didn't lower their emissions, they actually increased their carbon emissions.
So do we need these big, multinational, you know...
Virtue signaling accords to fix the environment?
Or is this more of a local thing, starting with the man in the mirror, just saying, we're going to implement this technology because we want to protect our lovely, beautiful environment?
I think the latter.
And what people don't understand oftentimes within this community is that every country is in a different place.
China's in a different place than we are.
Europe is in a different place than we are.
You can't create a multinational agreement and just put everybody into the same box.
It's like common core on steroids.
So what it comes down to is the opportunity for us as a country to show what we can do with what we have and showcase that to other countries.
And we're already doing that.
Like you mentioned, seven out of the last 10 years, we have led the world in emissions reductions.
We haven't done that because of a Paris Accords.
We haven't done that because of a carbon tax.
We haven't done that because of cap and trade.
We've done that because of innovation and technology.
Does that mean we're done and that we should stop caring about the environment and that we don't have work to do?
No, it doesn't mean any of that.
But it shows that we're on the right track.
And it also shows that when you take an approach where you're looking at your own government and your own economy first, and you look at how you can improve to that, that is the best way to go forward on every environmental protection.
And that's why state parks, for example, are way better managed than national parks.
When you get it lowered down, as we know as limited government conservatives, it oftentimes is a lot better.
And that's the same thing on the environment.
A multinational agreement is way less effective than the United States doing its own actions.
State actions are even more efficient.
That's just how it goes within the environmental community.
But again, that's just something that's not talked about.
Yeah, that's an absolutely correct point.
Speaking of that issue being talked about, where can people find you?
Yeah, so we are a non-profit focused on these issues trying to build the grassroots of the environmental community within the conservative community.
It's acc.eco.
So instead of.com, it's.eco, acc.eco.
And if you're conservative or libertarian or moderate who cares about the environment, we're the home for you.
I like that.
ACC.ECO. I want a.ECO website.
That seems very cool.
MichaelKnowles.ECO. MichaelKnowles.ECO. I wanted to stand for economics, though, baby.
Give me all that sweet, sweet money.
You can make it whenever you want.
And then I guess I could be a green Republican, too.
Benji, thank you so much for being here, man.
We've got to let you go.
But check it out.
ACC.ECO. I also follow you on Twitter.
Always love your tweets.
So check them out there.
Benji Backer.
Benji, we'll talk to you soon.
Appreciate it.
Thanks.
Alright.
Speaking of China, by the way, before we get to these wacky socialists in America, I do want to point out, we mentioned the escalating trade war with China yesterday.
CNN has a headline today, which shockingly is correct, and I know...
Look, a broken clock twice a day is right.
CNN points out today that China has a $1.1 trillion weapon in trade right now that they may or may not use.
I hope they don't use it, but they very well might.
And that $1.1 trillion weapon is they buy up our debt.
And so they buy up all of our debt.
They are America's biggest creditor.
So in theory, if China wanted to, They could trigger a panic in bond markets by dumping some of their U.S. Treasuries that they have.
I mention this just to remind people that trade is a much bigger issue than partisans and ideologues on both sides are trying to make it out to be.
There's some people who say, free trade all the time, no argument for tariffs, no argument to keep manufacturing in your own country.
And then there are some people on the other side who have been saying for years and years, we only need economic protection.
We've got to keep our jobs here.
We don't need to trade with the rest of the world.
I think, unfortunately, the primary camp is the larger one.
But it's much more complicated than that.
If tariffs are always evil, why does everybody have them?
If a trade war with China is just invariably terrible, Are there other costs?
Why would China buy up all of our debt?
Why does China want all of this manufacturing?
Why does China devalue its currency to increase their trade surplus?
If trade deficits and trade surpluses don't matter, why has China made such a concerted effort to exacerbate that trade deficit?
Obviously, this is much more complicated.
It involves a lot more than cheap Chinese goods.
We all want cheap goods.
We all, as consumers, want cheap goods.
But there is more to life.
There is more to the economy.
There is more to politics than consumerism.
So, I don't think...
Just to remind you a little bit of the timeline here.
China has been, since 2001, since it entered the World Trade Organization, they have been breaking the law.
They have been illegally subsidizing their steel and aluminum.
They've been stealing our intellectual property.
They've been levying hidden taxes on U.S. companies by forcing those companies to work with local banks there that add no value.
They just simply take money.
It's just an extortion racket.
They have been spying on us, putting spyware in our technology.
And they've been illegally manipulating their currency to exacerbate that trade deficit and to keep the exports flowing out of China.
We now responded to that under President Trump, first time we've gotten serious on it in a long time, by levying tariffs and then just this week by the Treasury Department labeling China a currency manipulator.
Now we're going to see what China's going to do for that.
Are they going to back down or are they going to go really hard?
Are they going to, say, sell off their U.S. Treasuries?
I don't think the sell-off of U.S. Treasuries is going to happen because it would undermine China's desire to attract foreign investment, but All of this is to say we are in a trade war that has been a long time coming.
It is not avoidable.
It is not just the stupidity of President Trump or the inability of President Trump to understand the wonders of free trade.
We don't currently have a legal free trade relationship with China.
This has been building for almost two decades.
Trump is finally doing something about it.
We should gear up.
We should buckle up because it has to happen for the long-term health of the United States.
Speaking of crazy socialists, not just in China, but in the United States, you know, you look around at the present left, the candidates running for president and the people on television, and you think, gosh, this is pretty bad.
Because I am both an optimist and a pessimist, I want to tell everybody who thinks things couldn't get any worse, oh, yes, they can.
Looking at our universities, looking at the young activists, looking at the democratic socialists of America, things are going to get a whole lot wackier.
Just take a little glimpse at the grievances that the DSA is having at their national convention.
Quick point of privilege once again, James Jackson, Sacramento DSA, he, him.
I have already asked people to be mindful of the chatter of their comrades who are sensitive to sensory overload, and that goes double for the heckling and the hissing.
It is also triggering to my anxiety.
Like, be comradely isn't just for, like, you know, let's keep things civil or whatever.
It's so that people aren't going to get triggered and so that it doesn't affect their performance as a delegate, okay?
Your need to express yourself is important, but your need to express yourself should not trump or over, like...
I can't wait until that guy's a congressman.
Congressman Trigger, the Democrat representing, I don't know, probably AOC's district in about 10 or 20 years.
There are going to be a lot of rules, too.
I mean, they could barely even get started with all the triggering comments because of all the rules.
Just a little glimpse of some of the regulations the DSA imposes on their own conference.
We have quiet rooms that are available.
There's a range of options of these, right?
One thing to note there, please don't go into that space with anything that's like an aggressive scent, for instance, right?
First and foremost, use the proper doors.
Don't try and exit through these or any other sort of like fun shortcuts you see.
You have to have your credentials at all times.
There are right-wing infiltrators who are trying to get in here and generally try to be chill, right?
Take a deep breath.
Don't feel better before you say anything.
Please don't tweet photos of your credentials.
If you have friends here that you would like to be here and they don't have credentials, don't let them in.
Don't make exceptions for those people.
Don't really talk to anybody who doesn't have a credential, especially if they claim to be from the press.
Please do not talk to anybody who identifies themselves as a member of the press.
Don't talk to cops.
Don't talk to MAGA. Don't talk to cops if there are cops there for any reason at all, right?
If you do see someone talking to cops, let the marshals know.
Okay.
Did you get all that?
Did you get all the things you cannot do?
You can't do it.
That's going to be the Democratic Socialists of America.
You can't do that.
That's going to be their campaign slogan.
Get used to it, folks.
I mean, we should enjoy the glory days of right now when they're just trying to take away our cars and our airplanes and our cows and our houses because these guys, AOC is moderate compared to the future Democratic Socialists of America.
Gear up for the end of our politics.
Okay, that's our show.
We got a lot more to get to, but we'll do it tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you then.
See you then.
hair and makeup by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, as we rush headlong into social unrest and worse, there are people who seem to be trying to speed up the process.
We'll discuss that.
Also, a white supremacist attacked me for opposing white supremacy, and so I will respond to that stupid bigot today.
And feminists are concerned that women don't talk enough.
Is that really a problem in this culture of ours?
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