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Aug. 22, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
45:08
Ep. 402 - What Ever Happened To AOC?
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I never thought I'd ask this, but here it goes.
Where is AOC? The socialist congresswoman from Westchester has disappeared faster than a Clinton enemy on suicide watch.
We will examine where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went and what it means for the Democratic Party.
Then, President Trump gets promoted from president to chosen one.
We will examine the difference between humility and modesty.
Gillette gets woke and goes broke.
We look at what it means for corporations and politicians.
Finally, the mailbag.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
I can't believe I'm asking it, but where is AOC?
I never thought I would say that question.
You don't know what you've got till it's gone.
AOC, she's gone.
Where is she?
For two years, AOC has been the dominant personality in the news.
Second only, I guess, to President Trump.
And in certain news cycles, she's dominated the news even more than President Trump.
Then, three weeks ago, she fired her chief of staff, a guy named Saikat Chagrabarty, and now she has vanished from the face of the earth.
At least, she's vanished from Twitter and from the news headlines.
This fuels a conspiracy theory that has been going on since March.
I say conspiracy theory, by the way, now in quotes because...
Now we know that the fluoride in the water might be hurting people.
We know that the frogs actually are turning gay.
We're supposed to believe that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself on Suicide Watch.
So I think we're all Alex Jones at this point, and the conspiracy theory is just our reality.
This particular so-called conspiracy theory was put forward back in March by a guy named Mr.
Reagan, who has a popular YouTube channel.
And the theory is that AOC is not really a conviction politician who's now in Congress.
She's an actress who was cast by progressive Democrats to play a congressional candidate.
Then she won, and now she's sort of acting out the role of a congresswoman.
Here is the theory from Mr. Reagan.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not really the congresswoman of New York's 14th congressional district.
She is essentially an actress.
She's merely playing the part I know this sounds crazy, but bear with me.
In 2017, a group called the Justice Democrats held auditions for potential congressional candidates that they would run on their platform for various congressional seats throughout the country.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's brother Gabriel submitted her for the role.
Now, I didn't have to go digging for evidence for this because they freely admit it.
They brag about it.
Back in 2016, we put out a call for nominations.
We got over 10,000 nominations.
Out of those 10,000 nominations, we found Alexandria.
My brother told me that he had sent my nomination in the summer, but I was, like, literally working out of a restaurant.
And I was like, there's no way.
So this tells you, not just the conspiracy theory, but what's happened over the last three weeks.
This tells you a lot about AOC and the left-wing media, the left generally, the way that they treat conspiracy theories and the real conspiracy.
What does it mean for AOC and the Democrats?
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NetSuite.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Now, this conspiracy theory, so-called, about AOC for Mr.
Reagan, is really not much of a conspiracy theory.
What does it say?
It says the Justice Democrats, a radical left-wing progressive group, recruited candidates to run.
We know that happens.
They admit that.
We know that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's brother sent in her tape, nominated her to be cast by this organization.
We know that's true.
AOC told us it was true.
We know that the Justice Democrats picked her because they ran her campaign.
We know that they ran her campaign because then she nominated and appointed the head of the Justice Democrats, the co-founder of it, Sykat Chagrabarty, to be her chief of staff.
It later came out, by the way, that this guy, Sykat Chagrabarty, had embezzled nearly a million dollars from the campaign and funneled it to his own businesses for his own uses.
But then the way that we know that the so-called conspiracy theory is true, that basically these progressive operatives found an empty-headed bartender and turned her into a congresswoman and filled her with their ideas.
The way we know that that is very likely true is when she fired the head of the Justice Democrats as her chief of staff, she disappeared.
The magic was gone because apparently he was the brains behind the operation.
I... Don't even think I can get through that without laughing a little bit because I said the brains behind AOC, which is a contradiction in terms.
But she really did have a great deal of cleverness, a real savvy for the media.
That appears to have disappeared immediately when that guy was fired.
So what can we learn?
Most importantly, it kind of puts the kibosh on conspiracies and conspiracy theories.
And this is important for a week that we've learned that fluoride in the water hurts people.
We have known for a while now that the fricking frogs are turning gay.
They're actually turning transgender and, and this AOC incident.
What this shows is that yes, there are puppet masters for puppets.
AOC may very well be a Charlie McCarthy doll, a little marionette who's getting her puppet strings pulled by more intelligent and more ideologically formed left-wingers like Sykatch Agrabarty and the Justice Democrats.
However, once the puppets get into power, they have the power.
So the Justice Democrats, they were the puppet masters.
They were running the whole show.
And AOC was just there like, blah, blah, blah, Green New Deal, blah, blah, blah.
And she was just parroting whatever they wanted her to say.
But now she's the Congresswoman.
And now she is in control.
And now she can fire the Justice Democrats.
And it might hurt her.
It might be a bad political decision.
But she now has the control.
The puppet has become the puppet master.
And I say it might be a bad political decision.
It might be a brilliant political decision.
Because she had all that heat on her.
I mean, she was saying a lot of things, getting a lot of attention, dominating the conversation.
But if she wasn't doing what she wanted to do, if it wasn't serving her political interests, then it was absolutely right to fire them.
There might have come a point when the political interests of the Justice Democrats and the political interests of AOC diverge.
And at that point, she's going to look out for number one.
The second thing that this shows is that the leftist media is just completely dishonest.
And in the leftist media, I'm including the so-called fact checkers.
Snopes.com, the fact checker, had an article that said, quote, Is Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an actress playing a congresswoman?
False.
This is totally false.
And what's so dishonest about that is, I guess that that line could be false.
Is she an actress playing a congresswoman?
Technically, by definition, that's false because she is now a congresswoman.
But if the point of that article is supposed to be, was she simply cast in this role by Justice Democrats who ran everything that she was doing up until very recently?
And that is obviously true.
She has admitted that that's true.
The Justice Democrats have admitted that that's true.
We've all seen it with our own eyes.
But the media just can't give you that reality.
It doesn't go along with their narrative.
So they put out an article that is 99.9% a lie in order to serve their narrative.
And then the third thing that this shows, this is the most difficult part.
The left is, the left is much harder to defeat than just one or two politicians.
We think, you know, you see AOC or Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib or somebody like that.
And you think, I really don't like that person.
If I just get them out of Congress, then the country will be better.
When it comes to the left, they don't really matter that much, those individual people.
The left and the right have different approaches to politics and we have different political apparatuses.
If you take out one of the right-wing political stars, you have seriously damaged the right.
If you take out a left-wing political star, you haven't.
Because the left operates in a much more institutional way than the right does.
The right is much more individually focused.
We have our star politicians.
Obviously, we have Trump, for instance.
We have our star media figures.
Then we have a handful of think tanks, and that's it.
That's our political apparatus in the country.
It's pretty much just these individual personalities.
For the left, it's much more institutionalized.
They have some star politicians, that's true.
They actually don't have very many star media figures.
They don't have a Rush Limbaugh.
They don't have a Sean Hannity.
They don't have a Tucker Carlson.
They have a few smaller media figures on MSNBC, like Rachel Maddow, for instance.
That's my second job, obviously, is I put my Warby Parker glasses on at Goda over to MSNBC because I need a second income.
But their ratings are very low over there at MSNBC.
And the same thing is true on, they don't really have radio, They tried to do left-wing talk radio.
It totally failed.
What they have instead of media stars is they have media, quote-unquote, watchdog, media operative groups whose purpose is not to put out their own content but to get the right-wing content fired because we rely on media personalities on the right.
And so they have groups like Media Matters and others whose whole job it is to watch our shows and then try to get us fired and try to get our advertisers boycotted.
So they've got that.
Then they've also got the countless astroturf operative organizations, such as the Justice Democrats.
Because AOC can rise and fall, but the Justice Democrats are going to stick around.
The individual politicians can rise and fall, but the George Soros Open Society Foundation network that funds all of these left-wing astroturf groups, they're not grassroots groups, they're not organic, they are astroturfed in from above, Those are going to stick around.
And those are much more difficult to defeat.
That is a different approach to politics.
Maybe the right needs to become a little bit more institutional.
You know, the left learned this lesson 50 years ago.
They took on what they called the long march through the institutions.
So they've hollowed out the universities, most notably.
They've hollowed out the news media.
They've hollowed out Hollywood.
Wasn't always that way.
Hollywood used to make good movies.
Wasn't always making radical leftist movies.
It's It's basically just the last 50 years or so that they really went hardcore.
And the advantage to that strategy, it's not as glamorous, it's not as sexy, it takes a long time.
But then you've got it.
If you've got Hollywood, then you've got the biggest cultural microphone.
If you've got the universities, then you are shaping the minds of the entire next generation.
The right needs to move into that.
It's good to have our stars.
It's good to have our Trump.
But we have got to establish that institutional presence or else we are at the mercy of, and we're at the whims of fortune, and we're at the mercy of the left, and we're at the whims of the left.
So AOC might come back.
I hope she does.
I miss her.
I do.
I miss her.
I miss reading about her.
I miss the stupid things she would say that we could then all make fun of.
But there's going to be another AOC because the organization that put AOC in power ain't going away.
The New York Times admitted this.
The New York Times had a headline back in February that said, I'm paraphrasing the headline, but it was something to the effect of the Justice Democrats helped AOC get elected.
They've already got their eyes on other candidates.
There's going to be another AOC that pops up and we've got to be able to match that strategy.
Now, enough about Congress, enough about the Democrats.
We've got to talk about our own star politician, President Trump, who just got promoted to the King of Israel.
Which is, by the way, this is being totally...
Obviously, misconstrued by the left intentionally.
But even some conservatives are whining and crying and clutching their pearls.
We'll get to what was bad about Trump's comments.
We'll get to what that actually means.
And we'll put it into context of modesty and humility.
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ring.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Speaking of feeling safe, I feel so much safer now that our president is not only the duly elected president of the United States, but he is the king of Israel and apparently the chosen one, brought to bring balance to the force.
That is because of a story that came out from a radio talk show host that President Trump then, of course, retweeted because he couldn't help himself.
And this whole hubbub, we'll talk about the hubbub, but the main takeaway from it, I find, that people always misunderstand is Is the difference between humility and modesty.
The difference between false modesty, which we have a lot of in this culture, and true humility, which we don't have a lot of.
So, yesterday, King of Israel, Second Coming, and Antichrist were trending on Twitter.
This was not because we were in the end times.
It's because President Trump tweeted something, which to the left is the end times.
So they can't tell the difference between those two.
Trump tweeted out a compliment from the radio host Wayne Allen Root, in which Root praised President Trump in a really, some might say hyperbolic way, and alluded to him as the king of Israel and the second coming of God.
Here is Wayne Allen Root.
Don't forget, I don't know, if you haven't watched the show, I happen to be Jewish by birth, and 75% of all Jews vote Democrat, and they don't like Trump, and this is the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America.
Trump's the best president for Israel in the history of the world, and the Jewish people love him like he is the king of Israel.
They love him like he is the second coming of God.
And in America, American Jews don't like him.
Okay.
So there's one big issue, before we get to the theological issues, before we get even to the political issues, there is just one thing he said that doesn't strike very strongly, which is, The Jews can't think that Trump is the second coming of God because the Jews don't think the first coming of God has happened yet.
So just from a very technical semantic point, it cannot be the case that they think of Trump as the second coming.
The political point that this guy is trying to make is correct.
Israel really likes Trump.
This is undeniable.
Israel named an entire town after President Trump and Israel also named an important train station after President Trump.
President Trump moved the embassy finally in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
This has been U.S. policy for over 20 years, and Trump was the first president with the guts to actually do it.
Bibi Netanyahu, prime minister, basically campaigned on how he was friends with President Trump.
Trump has been better for Israel than any president in U.S. history, and his daughter is a convert to Judaism, and her husband, her Jewish husband, is a senior advisor to the president.
So he is a good president for Jews and a good president for Israel.
Now, the theological point somehow managed to offend both Jews and Christians.
It offended Protestants and Catholics.
It really, really brought people together.
But Obviously, the Jews don't think he's the second coming because they're waiting on the first coming still.
They don't realize that it already happened.
And also, much as we, now speaking from the Christian perspective, much as we conservative Catholics and Protestants love President Trump, Comparing him to Christ is a bridge too far.
Even for me, it's a bridge too far.
You know, we like comparing him to Cyrus or David or Samson.
I personally see Trump as a sort of Samson figure in the Bible.
Christ comparisons, still quite frowned upon.
Not great.
Somehow manages to offend Jews and Christians.
King of Israel is fine.
King of Jews, not fine.
King of Israel is great, though.
I really like this idea because President Trump is about to become the konungur of Greenland.
That's the old Norse word for king.
Konungur, that's what he's going to be after the shock and awe campaign where we finally take Greenland back.
So I like the king of Israel idea.
But I want to put this in context.
If Barack Obama had done this, if he had retweeted some radio host saying all these things about him, we would have totally freaked out about it because...
We all suspected Barack Obama was the Antichrist or close to it.
And we would have freaked out about it.
That's not evidence of hypocrisy.
Politics is about context.
Politics is about circumstance.
Politics does not live in some total abstraction in the air.
Politics is about what's really happening in real time to real people.
The difference here is that Barack Obama actually thought he was the chosen one.
He really did.
He actually said that his election would be the moment that the planet began to heal.
He said that the sea levels would begin to reduce, like he's Moses parting the Red Sea.
He talked about calming the oceans.
He really thought he was the chosen one.
Trump is joking.
He is.
There is evidence that he's joking.
Here's the evidence.
After this whole blow-up, Trump was asked a completely unrelated question about his China trade war, and he joked about the whole hubbub of King of Israel and everything by alluding to himself, completely out of context, as the chosen one.
Over the last five or six years, China's made $500 billion.
$500 billion.
Ripped it out of the United States.
And not only that, if you take a look, intellectual property theft, add that to it and add a lot of other things to it.
So somebody, excuse me, somebody had to do it.
I am the chosen one.
Somebody had to do it.
So I'm taking on China.
I'm taking on China on trade.
And you know what?
We're winning.
I love this guy.
This is the evidence that he knows it's a joke because he immediately makes a joke about it.
If Donald Trump really believed what the radio host was saying, if he really believed that he's the king of Israel, that's second coming of God, or he's perceived as the second coming of God and the chosen one, then he would treat that seriously instead of immediately making a joke about it.
Because he's talking about the China trade war.
And by the way, he's right about the China trade war.
Politicians and presidents of both parties kicked that can down the road for 18 years.
After China entered the WTO, the World Trade Organization, in 2001, the troubles really began in earnest.
They were illegally devaluing their currency.
They were illegally subsidizing steel and aluminum.
They were illegally stealing our property.
They were illegally forcing American businesses to work with local banks, which was really just a secret tax.
They were illegally spying on us.
They were doing all sorts of stuff, challenging our interests in the region.
And we did nothing because we got so hooked on cheap electronics that we didn't want to stop that They were stealing our jobs, and not just in the regular flow of goods and services from country to country.
They were stealing our jobs by cheating on trade.
And this was acknowledged by both parties, President Trump and Chuck Schumer.
Chuck Schumer even recently said, President Trump, don't go...
Weak with China because someone has to take it on.
So he's saying, I'm the guy.
I'm the guy.
The buck got passed to me.
I'm going to take it on.
Why?
Because I'm the chosen one.
Yeah, that's why.
And he's looking up at the sky, right?
He's joking about it.
This is the difference between humility and false modesty.
Trump has an ego.
Nobody is denying that.
He puts his name on all the buildings.
Anyone who's in politics or anyone who's in TV has an ego.
But at least he's got a sense of humor about it.
He talked about how he doesn't drink a little while ago.
He said, I think I'm the only president who's never had a beer.
That's actually my only good quality.
Could you imagine if I had a beer?
If I were a drunk, I'd be the worst.
That's what he's joking.
He says, my only good quality is I don't have a drink.
He's self-aware.
He knows how he comes off.
He quotes a guy calling him the second coming because it's funny.
And then he jokes about it because it's funny.
Trump has no false modesty.
I don't think he has any modesty whatsoever.
I'm not saying he's got any modesty.
But he does exhibit pretty regularly a certain humility.
Conservatives generally have humility by definition.
You need a humility to be a conservative because to be a conservative is to acknowledge that human nature is broken.
It's fallen.
It's imperfect and imperfectible.
And that means there's a limit to what politics can accomplish.
The left doesn't have that false modesty.
Or the left, rather, doesn't have that humility.
What they do have is false modesty.
Barack Obama was all false modesty.
The guy had no humility.
He never did any self-effacing jokes.
He never could take a joke.
He never could doubt his own abilities or the possibilities of politics.
He was heading toward utopia.
He was going to make the sea levels reduce.
He wasn't joking about it.
He really thought that.
We are the ones we've been waiting for.
This religious language presenting himself as the Messiah.
This is true pride.
This is people who can't laugh at themselves.
Beware people who cannot laugh at themselves.
G.K. Chesterton said this.
He said, the angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.
Not that they always take themselves lightly, but they can.
Beware people who can't tell a self-effacing joke or take a self-effacing joke.
That is pride.
The difference here is key.
And that difference can even make the king of Israel humble.
Speaking of laughing, we have to get to this stupid Gillette ad.
I mean, there's so much more to get to, but we have got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Head on over to Daily Wire.
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We've got to talk about Gillette getting woke and going broke, then we've got to get to the mailbag.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
Gillette got woke about seven months ago.
Seven months ago, Gillette launched an ad against toxic masculinity.
Gillette, a razor company for men, that's what they do.
They sell ads to men, decided to launch an ad about how terrible men are.
Here's just a little snippet of it.
What I actually think she's trying to say.
Making the same old excuses.
No!
Boys will be boys.
But something finally changed.
So you may have a conversation about this ad in your workplace or among your friends today.
It's certainly getting a lot of attention online.
It's an ad from Gillette, just out.
So this ad goes on and talks, boys will be boys, how awful men are, how terrible they are grabbing women.
They're so awful.
And then Gillette got woke and now the men are going to be better, be the best a man can be, be better.
And it had all the PC stuff in it.
Like, for instance, all the bad guys in the beginning, virtually all of them are white guys.
And then after, once you get to the good guys, virtually all the good guys are not white guys.
And they're just totally leaning in to the politics of race and the politics of gender and the politics of leftism.
They didn't just stop there.
They followed with an ad about fat acceptance.
And then they followed with an ad about a guy teaching his daughter to shave her face after she decided to pretend to be a man.
Here's the Gillette transgender ad.
Growing up, I was always trying to figure out what kind of man I wanted to become, and I'm still trying to figure out what kind of man that I want to become.
I always knew I was different.
I didn't know that there was a term for the type of person that I was.
I went into my transition just wanting to be happy.
I'm glad I am at the point where I'm able to shave.
South, south, north, north, east, west, never in a hurry.
Right.
Okay, so this is about as woke as you can get, where a company that sells men's razors is now telling girls to shave to think that they're boys.
Gillette has decided now to change course seven months later.
They have, quote, decided to shift the spotlight from social issues to local heroes.
Why is that?
It's basically saying, we've decided to shift the focus 180 degrees from what we've been doing, which is failing, to what we had been doing before that and what we should be doing again.
Why?
Because there's information out that Gillette's parent company, Procter& Gamble, took an $8 billion write-down for the brand since that ad aired.
$8 billion with a B. Because they've alienated their whole customer base.
This is their problem.
And there's an important lesson here to be learned, not just for corporations, but for politicians and for all of us.
Some companies survived going woke.
Nike went woke.
But they decided that their whole base was basically going to be people who are open to racial politics, particularly in urban areas, particularly people who are leftist.
And that seemed to work well enough for them with Colin Kaepernick.
Same is not true of Gillette or other companies.
Same is not true of politicians.
You don't win by insulting your supporters.
Democrats have learned this lesson for 50 years now.
They've constantly alienated more and more of their base.
That's why they've actually got to import new voters in the form of illegal immigration to the tune of a million a year.
It's because they're alienating the base of Americans.
Conservatives do this often, too.
Conservatives, many conservatives that I've seen, hate their own supporters.
And they are uncomfortable with their supporters, at least, or at least they look down on their supporters.
These are the people I call conservative, but not that kind of conservatives.
I'm a conservative.
They're willing to admit I'm a conservative, but I'm not that kind.
I'm not the kind that's bad.
Please love me, New York Times.
Love me.
I hate Trump.
I hate his tweets.
No, help me.
Oh, no, please.
I'm clutching my pearls.
I'm almost going to choke my pearls around my neck.
These are people.
We're uncomfortable with their own base.
We've seen this in some presidential campaigns.
It's not a winning strategy.
You don't win that way.
It's not good to do it.
It's not moral to do it.
It's not nice.
It's not compassionate.
And politically, it's pretty stupid.
Gillette is learning that lesson, and hopefully many other conservatives will learn that lesson as well.
Let's get to the mailbag before we've got to go.
First question from Evan.
Dear Michael, I need an answer to a very controversial question that only you can answer.
What is the best place to get pizza in New York City?
And what are your favorite topics?
I know that your answer will get another hit piece on you from Media Matters.
Thanks, Evan.
There is a correct answer to this.
It's a correct answer that very few people know.
The answer is Cafe Al Mercato in the meat market by Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.
That is the best pizza in New York.
It's a little out of the way.
If you're in Manhattan, look, you get pizza, pretty good pizza just about anywhere in New York.
You want the best pizza.
Go to Arthur Avenue in the meat market.
Cafe Al Mercato.
They have great pizza.
They got broccoli rabe on it.
It's very good.
For normal pizza that's not as good, my favorite toppings all the time, sausage and onions.
A little sweet, a little salty.
It's by far the best pizza.
This is not just my subjective preference.
This is objectively true.
Next question from Drew.
I have a student who just received a scholarship to Yale to play football, and he's a religious conservative.
What advice would you give him to prepare him for being in that environment?
He should join an organization called the Tory party, which is one of the constituent parties of the Yale political union.
Join the Tory party.
He'll have a great time.
Actually, one of my good friends from the Tory party got recruited to Yale to play football.
He was a very religious conservative, and he joined the Tory party.
He's one of the smartest guys I met there.
Do that.
Yale is a great place to be if you're a religious conservative.
Because there are like four people there who are religious conservatives.
But it exposes you to the best arguments from the other side.
The atheists and the leftists and all of that.
You get all these arguments coming in and you really get to hone your beliefs.
You get to figure out what you think.
And I know I'm a member of the Tory party, an alumnus of it.
And that organization in particular really helped me to hone what I... Think and talk to other conservatives and figure out, discard some old ideas, get some other ideas.
I went into Yale as a somewhat conservative atheist and I left believing that God exists and far more conservative.
So I would take advantage of that opportunity.
Embrace the culture battle.
Embrace the fact that everyone is opposed to what you think.
That can really be a great advantage.
From Emma.
I'm 30 years old and I've decided that it's finally time to come out to my high school friends.
You're going to tell them you're a lesbian, right?
No!
You're going to tell them that you're a conservative.
She goes on, quote, Do you have any suggestions or words of advice on how to approach this?
Yes.
Be confident and be funny.
Bigger, faster, funnier.
Good advice in show business, good advice in politics.
When you tell your friends that you're a conservative, let's say you're all sitting around and they say, oh, this Trump, he's so awful.
He's going to buy Greenland.
He wants to buy Greenland.
He's so awful.
He's so terrible.
That's so stupid.
That's so bad.
There are two ways that you can respond to that if you want to let people know that you kind of like Trump and you are a conservative.
You can either take this kind of timid, nice, moderate Mitt Romney approach and say, well, you know, I don't think it's a totally bad idea.
I mean, look, I don't really like his tweets that much.
He's bad.
I really don't like him.
And they're going to crush you.
If you say that, because that approach is the I'm a conservative but not that kind of conservative approach.
You're timid, you don't seem confident in your views, you're a little too earnest, you're a little too serious.
It's very off-putting, and it's going to have them pounce on you.
The alternative to that is...
I think Trump's hilarious.
I think we should totally take Greenland.
There's no reason that Denmark, that little tiny country all the ways away, gets to own Greenland.
I think we should take it.
We should build a giant Trump Tower on Greenland.
We should make it a launching site for not only our trade, but for our military.
I'm all for it.
Make America Greenland again.
And if you take that approach...
It's hard for them to respond because you're clobbering them.
You're putting them on the defensive.
And the best defense is a good offense.
Also, you're funny.
And it's hard to argue with funny.
It shows that you're confident.
You're not taking yourself so super seriously.
And you'll probably get them to laugh because humor cuts through a lot of BS, especially the BS world of leftist politics.
I would go bold and I would be funny about it.
It's actually kind of the way that guys should approach girls.
You can either approach girl kind of creepy and timid and weird and earnest.
I really like you, and please, here's a bunch of flowers.
Do you like me?
Or you can kind of joke about it and say, hey, you're really cute.
Let's go get a drink tonight.
What?
What was that?
Oh, I think you're cute, and therefore, I would like to get a drink with you tonight.
Would you like to go get a drink?
It's kind of funny.
It's light.
It's not making a big deal out of it.
That's what I would do in politics and romance.
And, you know, look, in these days, I find politics very romantic anyway.
And conservatives are much more romantic in their politics than the left, which is eggheads and doer and upset all the time.
Go for that.
Be a bold conservative.
From Surreal, Mr.
Knowles, I'm a Democrat and love your show.
Thank you.
That's very kind.
My mother is a Democrat as well and grew up in the 40s and 50s, and she said she experienced racism then, and she makes it clear it is not what we are experiencing now.
I don't think President Trump and others are racist, but the media say that he is.
Has the definition of racism changed?
Well, the left has not only tried to change the definition of racism, they've tried to change the definition of all sorts of words.
They've changed the definition of justice to not justice.
It used to be justice, getting what you deserve without favor.
Now we have their version of justice, social justice, economic justice, reproductive justice.
But broadly, all their new definitions of justice means getting what you don't deserve because you are favored.
That's the inversion of political correctness.
I mean, the politically correct left has redefined man to mean not a man.
Now, man means woman.
Woman means man.
Totally backwards.
And they've done this with racism as well.
So they'll say, if a white person doesn't discriminate against black people, he is a racist.
Even though he's the opposite of a racist, they say because he is white, he is by definition a racist.
This has been written about in academic literature from the left.
And yet they'll say if a black person despises white people just on the basis of their skin, call them the white devils, that person is not a racist.
Even though he holds racially bigoted views, he can't be a racist because he is black.
Because black people are somehow, I guess they're incapable of, of the same kind of things that we would expect of other people.
That's the racially bigoted view of the left.
It's exactly flipping that word.
I'm not surprised.
I mean, I'm glad to hear that I've got at least one Democrat listener to the show, but I'm not surprised.
I suspect there are actually a lot of Democrat listeners to the show.
Why?
Not because we agree on everything.
We probably don't agree on everything.
But because this approach from the left...
Of demonizing half of your countrymen as deplorable and irredeemable and saying that people who are not bigots are bigots and people who are bigots are not bigots and saying that up is down and left is right and men are women is so offensive to people because you're just being lied to.
You're being told by the left, and increasingly because the left took over the Democratic Party, by the Democratic Party, you're being told, don't believe your eyes.
Believe what I'm telling you.
Don't believe what you see yourself.
Don't think for yourself.
Just repeat what I say.
And I think it's turned off a lot of people.
I think it helped get President Trump elected.
And I think it's the reason that a fair number of Democrats and centrists and left-wingers listen to conservative shows, because at least we're talking about the issues and trying to work them out as best we can, not just regurgitating BS, inverted, politically correct lies.
From Joshua.
Michael, I know you've mentioned you were in acting, and with that line of work, you must be able to memorize many lines for your performance.
My question is, what methods do you use to remember a vast amount of lines for your performances, or are you one of those people that can remember almost anything after reading it once?
Thanks for everything you do in the Daily Wire group.
There are different ways to memorize.
If you want to memorize something and have it in your head for the next hour, You can train yourself to do that.
I can do that, for instance.
I can look at a sheet of paper pretty much just once and have it memorized for the next hour, and then I'm going to forget it.
If you want to memorize something and have it with you for 10 years or 20 years, I mean, there are monologues, poems, Shakespeare, Dante, all these sort of things that I memorized when I was 16 years old that I can still remember word perfectly.
And the reason is because that technique, if you really want to get something memorized...
Is you have to say it out loud.
And you have to not just read it in your head and try to remember it.
Say it out loud and use your muscles in an exaggerated way.
So if I were trying to memorize, I don't know...
A Robert Frost poem.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler long I stood, on and on and on.
I wouldn't just even say it like that.
I would make my mouth really big and I would use all my muscles and say, two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could, on and on.
And the reason I would do that is because of muscle memory.
So when you memorize in that way, You kind of remember how your mouth moves.
You kind of remember how your speech is physically, and it helps you to remember the lines.
This is important advice, not just in memorizing a script or a speech or a presentation.
It's important advice for life because what it tells you is the importance of habit.
We think of virtue as doing one good thing one time.
That's not what virtue is.
Virtue is a habit.
You train in it.
It's a discipline.
If you practice the virtues long enough, they become habitual.
And vice long enough, that becomes habitual too.
And then it becomes addiction.
The same is true of virtue.
So you've got to put it into your body.
It's true of politics.
You can't just think about politics.
You can't just pontificate and talk about your imaginary abstract world.
You've got to do it.
You've got to be in the fight.
You've got to have the strenuous life.
You've got to actually put it in your body.
We're in the real world.
We're not just floating brains in the abstract.
We've got real bodies.
We're living in time and space.
And you have to do.
You have to act.
All right, one more question, then we're at.
Michael, happy 400th show.
Another 400 more.
Your mouth to God's ears.
My question relates to politics in the workplace.
Lately, my company has been pushing for all employees to go to a climate change march.
For obvious reasons, this sounds like a terrible idea.
I'm extremely worried about getting fired for being conservative and have been tight-lipped about other issues at work.
Besides showing up to the march with I hate AOC signs, how would you handle the situation?
Obviously, in my current line of work, I'm pretty open about my political views.
But I have been an actor, as we just talked about in the last question.
I've worked in other places where I've been a little quieter about my political views because if you open up about your political views, you don't work.
And that's, look, that's a choice you can make.
I've made that choice now.
But if you want to work in something and you know that your political views are going to get you fired for it, sometimes you need to be a little bit cleverer about it.
I certainly would not go to the march.
I wouldn't violate your beliefs and your views and your vision of morality.
However, you don't need to walk in and have like two AR-15s in your hand and say like, woohoo, America, baby, I love Trump.
You don't need to do that.
You can be a little cleverer.
You can be a little sly about it.
What I would do is make some plans on the day of that climate march.
And then when they say, you're going to come to the climate march?
You say, oh, I already have plans.
I gotta go to my sister's lunch or whatever.
Whatever plans you make.
That way you're not lying.
You're not violating your moral principles.
And you live to fight another day at your job.
And then when the time comes for you to really make that difference, you'll be able to do it.
As long as you make sure you don't violate your beliefs and you stay true and you keep integrity.
Alright, that's our show.
We have another show tomorrow because we skipped the show yesterday.
So in the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you then.
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
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The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz, director Mike Joyner, executive producer Jeremy Boring, our senior producer is Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover, technical producer Austin Stevens, editor Danny D'Amico, our audio mixer is Mike Coromina, hair and makeup by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan, The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey everyone, I'm Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
It's summertime, the living is easy, and the news is slow, which means it's a great time to stop, look around, and see if we can tell the difference between what's really happening in our country and what the media wants us to believe is happening.
Those are not at all the same things.
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