Nancy Pelosi appears to whip sufficient votes for impeachment, Warren gets hip on Instagram, and a judge rules that a mother who now identifies as a man cannot be deemed her child’s father. Finally the Mailbag! Date: 09-26-2019
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As Nancy Pelosi appears to whip sufficient votes for impeachment, the so-called whistleblower complaint that launched the whole impeachment circus is released, revealing definitively what we suspected all along.
The Democrats have nothing.
We will examine all that nothing.
Then, new polls shake up the 2020 race, Elizabeth Warren gets hip on Instagram, and a judge rules that a mother who now identifies as a man cannot be deemed her child's father.
Buzzfeed is outraged.
We will try to understand what that sentence even means.
Finally, the mailbag.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
A mother who identifies as a man.
I don't know.
We'll get to it.
We'll get to all of that.
It's going to take me a whole show just to figure out what that means.
First, we've got to get to this whistleblower complaint.
Here it is.
This is the impeachment.
We got the transcript of that dread phone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian President Zelensky yesterday, and we read it.
And I don't know if it was the most perfect phone call ever made, as President Trump said it was, but it's certainly...
Gave no grounds for impeachment, but now we have the real deal, because unfortunately that flopped and the media and the Democrats were upset.
So now we have the whistleblower complaint that got us the transcript of the call, that got us the impeachment inquiry, that's going to get President Trump thrown out of office, and Hillary still can win the 2016, I don't know.
Here is the transcript.
I'll just read a few little passages from it, and you can let the bombshells just settle in.
Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff, I am reporting an urgent concern.
That line is in quotes, and it's in quotes because the whistleblower is using this in a specific legal way, but I really like reading it because I'm reading it just sarcastically, like, Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff, I'm reporting an urgent concern in accordance with the procedures.
I think the sarcastic way is much more accurate given the context.
This letter is unclassified when separated from the attachment.
Over the past four months, more than half a dozen US officials have informed me of various facts related to the effort of the president using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 election.
This is important.
Because the allegation is Trump is using his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in 2020.
Now we know from the phone call yesterday what he's actually doing is using his office to get the Ukrainians to investigate interference in the 2016 election.
Which was while he was running for president, but it was actually while Barack Obama was president.
So even that language from the very first sentences is actually completely backwards.
But what you hear from this first bullet point is, more than half a dozen US officials have informed me.
So what that means is he doesn't have direct knowledge of any of these phone calls or any of these incidents.
He's just heard it from someone else and then he writes this very meticulously crafted legal letter to try to spur an impeachment inquiry.
He then admits that in the second bullet point.
I was not a direct witness to most of the events described.
However, I found my colleagues accounts of these events to be credible because in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent to one another.
What a beautiful soup of words.
What a beautifully crafted mixture of euphemisms.
I was not a direct witness, so it means I actually haven't seen any of this stuff happen.
But I find the accounts that I am relating credible.
Well, of course you find them credible.
You're relating them.
Listen, I find them credible because I'm relating them, is more or less what he's saying.
Then he says, because multiple officials recounted, not facts, not the exact same facts at the exact same time, different people, we don't even know who the officials are, recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another.
What is a fact pattern?
Fact pattern is different than a fact.
We'll try to see what that means.
I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute, quote, a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or executive order.
That, quote, does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.
Again, it's in the quotes because he's trying to spur legal processes out of this, but it makes a lot more sense if you just read it sarcastically.
I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute a serious, Okay, then it goes on and he outlines a lot of things we already know about from that transcript.
This is the new information.
This is the only new information that we're getting from the whistleblower complaint.
In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple US officials that senior White House officials had intervened to lock down, in quotes, all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced, as is customary by the White House Situation Room.
This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.
It's interesting to read the whistleblower complaint after you've read the transcript of the call because we read the call.
There is no gravity in the call.
It's pretty clear.
Even Trump's hardest, other than the most hardened critics, virtually everyone has said there's really nothing in that phone call.
There's certainly nothing you could impeach him over.
But he's trying to build this up as this big grave matter.
What does it mean for White House officials to lock down the records from the call?
The call is already classified.
It's a phone call between the president and the president of Ukraine.
He goes on, he says, White House officials told me that they were directed by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to cabinet-level officials.
Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.
One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.
So what is the actual allegation?
That's a lot of words.
The actual allegation is they got the transcript of this call between the two presidents and they didn't put it on the server that they usually use.
They put it on a different server.
Nowhere does he suggest this is illegal.
We know that the phone calls between heads of state are sensitive just by definition.
We don't know whether or not this happened, by the way.
Notice the language.
They were directed to put it on this different server, not another.
Directed by whom, for what purpose did it actually happen?
We have no answers to that.
All we have is the call itself.
Obviously, it wasn't that secure.
They released the thing to the public yesterday, and we read it.
So even that, this is supposed to be the most important new information here.
Doesn't really tell us anything.
Then he goes on and complains about Rudy Giuliani and why is Giuliani in on these calls.
We learned yesterday that it was Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, who brought up Giuliani in the first place.
It wasn't Trump bringing up Giuliani.
If it were Trump bringing up Giuliani, you might see him trying to push some interactions to his campaign lawyer, but it wasn't Trump who brought it up.
It was Zelensky.
Which, I don't know, maybe suggests Zelensky was being improper on the phone call, but not President Trump.
Then we'll get to the three bullet points at the end.
The big smoking gun, here it is, here's my complaint.
We'll get to that in one second, but first I've got to thank our friends, our wonderful sponsors at Ancestry.
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Final three bullet points on the whistleblower complaint.
On 13 June, the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he would accept damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign government.
Hold on.
In the whistleblower complaint, you're talking about an interview the president did on national television?
That's not a...
We know that.
That's not anything you need a secret, super-duper deep state spy to tell you about.
It was on TV. It is true.
People don't watch network news as much anymore, but we already knew that.
By the way, everybody would accept damaging information on their political rival from anybody, so get off your high horse.
The second one.
On June 21st, Mr.
Giuliani tweeted, New president of Ukraine is still silent on the investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 and alleged Biden bribery of Poroshenko.
Time for leadership at...
And investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Clinton people.
Now this would be really super-duper incriminating if we hadn't just spent three years with Democrats clamoring to get...
An investigation of Russia's interference in the election.
And moreover, this is so damning for this whistleblower complaint, we found out that in May of 2018, Senate Democrats sent a letter to Ukraine demanding that they investigate President Trump.
So you've got an official letter from sitting Democrats who sent that to Ukraine, and he's upset about a tweet from Giuliani who says, hey, Ukraine should investigate the Bidens and all the corruption that was going on there and their interference in 2016.
If that's a big deal, the tweet, then the letter the Senate Democrats sent is much more damning, much more egregious.
Where's the whistleblower complaint on that?
Nowhere.
And then finally, in mid-July, I learned of a sudden change of policy with respect to U.S. assistance for Ukraine, seeing closure for additional information.
What was the change?
Change was Obama didn't give Ukraine a whole lot of help and then he gave them some help.
Trump gave them some help, and then he called on NATO allies and other people in the region to pay more, which has been consistent since the 2016 election, since 2015 when he started running.
And then we give some aid to Ukraine.
That's it.
That's the whistleblower complaint, and it's nothing.
So, it doesn't matter that it's nothing.
The Democrats are moving toward impeachment.
The problem here is this is not sufficient for impeachment, this whistleblower complaint.
The bigger problem is it looks like a setup.
It looks like Russia hoax 2.0.
They have so little actual information here, so little in the whistleblower complaint or in the phone call, that Adam Schiff, the ironically named chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the House, this is the most ironic posting in history, I think, Has to go out on television, on C-SPAN, and actually invent a different conversation.
He actually just imagines what President Trump could have said in the fantasy world of Adam Schiff, and he relates that as though it were fact.
Here he is.
And what is the president's response?
Well, it reads like a classic organized crime shakedown.
Shorn of its rambling character, and in not so many words, this is...
The essence of what the President communicates.
We've been very good to your country.
Very good.
No other country has done as much as we have.
But you know what?
I don't see much reciprocity here.
I hear what you want.
I have a favor I want from you, though.
And I'm going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good.
I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent.
Understand lots of it.
On this and on that, I'm going to put you in touch with people, not just any people.
I'm going to put you in touch with Attorney General of the United States, my Attorney General, Bill Barr.
He's got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him.
And I'm going to put you in touch with Rudy.
You're going to love him, trust me.
You know what I'm asking, and so I'm only going to say this a few more times, in a few more ways.
And by the way, don't call me again.
I'll call you when you've done what I asked.
None of that happened.
Trump didn't say any of that.
You can read the transcript that came out yesterday that is completely fictional.
Adam Schiff just made that up in his head and then said it out loud as though that was what Trump said.
And he's doing that because...
What Trump said doesn't implicate him in any crimes.
What Trump said is not impeachable.
The fact that Adam Schiff has to do this tells you everything you need to know.
They've got nothing.
If they had something, they would read what they have.
But they have nothing, so they have to read what Adam Schiff makes up.
Nevertheless, the majority in the House is now backing some form of impeachment.
The devil's in the details here, though, and new polls show this could be absolutely impossible.
It's dangerous.
It could be disastrous for Democrats and could be very good news for the President.
But you've got to see how it plays.
Very interesting new results and new information coming out of polls today.
Not even polls on the candidates, polls on issues.
We'll get to that in a second.
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All right.
The majority in the House now backs some form of impeachment.
A majority of the House backs some form of impeachment.
There's the devil in the details.
So they've got the number.
They needed 218 votes in the House.
They got all the Democrats, and they got one vote.
Republican, in quotes, Justin Amash, who is a libertarian who's liberal on a lot of issues and hates Donald Trump, they've all agreed to support impeachment in some form.
But in some form doesn't mean they're going to vote for impeachment.
It might mean they want an investigation that could lead to impeachment.
It might mean they want to open an impeachment inquiry but not actually vote for impeachment.
So it's a lot weaker than the headlines are showing you.
We could have predicted all of this.
This was predicted, actually.
Alan Lichtman, who was the political scientist who has accurately predicted every presidential election since 1984, he was one of the few guys to come out in 2016 and say, Trump is going to win this thing.
And he predicted Trump was going to win, and he predicted that Trump would be impeached.
And at the time, people didn't believe either of those.
They never thought impeachment would be an option because Trump wouldn't be in the White House.
And he was right.
And then he also suggested Trump would be impeached.
And it looks like his predictions are coming true.
My prediction of a Donald Trump victory was based upon a scientific method studying all American elections going back to 1860.
My prediction of a Donald Trump impeachment, of course, could not be based on a mathematical model because there haven't been enough examples of impeachment in U.S. history.
But my prediction of a Donald Trump impeachment in my book, The Case for Impeachment, was based on a deep study of The history of impeachment, the basis for impeachment, Donald Trump's record as a businessman, and Donald Trump's record during the first two or three months of his administration.
That was enough to point me towards what seemed to be an inevitable end to the presidency in the first term.
What he said certainly could be interpreted as being correct, especially if they do finally go forward with impeachment.
It depends what you mean by end, though.
I mean, this is an inevitable end of the first term, or I'm sorry, an inevitable end in the first term, but is it the inevitable end of the presidency overall?
Looks like he was right on impeachment.
But when you look at other polls, you look at other surveys, you show it's not as clear-cut on what this means for Trump because the problem is, according to recent surveys, the majority of Americans oppose impeachment.
Pretty clearly, this new morning consult poll came out.
It's not exactly a hard conservative poll or anything.
They've got a good record.
If anything, they skew a little bit left.
Poll conducted after the news of the Ukraine phone call broke.
So this is not like new information has changed anything.
This is after the Ukraine news broke.
Support for impeachment is actually down over that week from 37%.
Now it's down a bit.
Nearly half of respondents, 49%, said Congress should not begin impeachment proceedings, which is also down very slightly.
It's only down one point.
But it's not as though it's 4951.
The 49, I don't know the number who give the other answer, but it's significantly lower.
49%, less than half Americans, say Congress should not begin impeachment proceedings.
But it's right there.
It's right on the cusp.
Is that what you want?
Even though it's less than 50%, sure.
Do you really want to go into impeachment with that number?
Especially looking even at Democrats.
Democrats support impeachment.
By a 66 to 17 margin.
66% for, 17% against.
That means that not even two-thirds of Democrats support impeachment.
But you need two-thirds in the Senate to actually convict on impeachment.
So even if the Senate were comprised, there were no Republicans whatsoever in the Senate.
No Republicans in the country.
It's all Democrats.
Even then, if the House impeached and it went to the Senate and it was all Democrats, they would not convict the President.
Not a good sign for Democrats going into impeachment.
Republicans have 5% for impeachment, 89% against impeachment.
Independents have 33% for impeachment, 45% against impeachment.
The only group that supports impeachment...
The only age group is 18 to 29-year-olds who don't know very much.
The top three demographics have majorities opposed to impeachment.
Even Nancy Pelosi, not that long ago, during the Clinton impeachment proceedings, gave an impassioned speech against this sort of political railroading and against impeachment.
Here she is.
Today, the Republican majority is not judging the President with fairness, but impeaching him with a vengeance.
In the investigation of the President, fundamental principles which Americans hold dear Privacy, fairness, checks and balances have been seriously violated.
And why?
Because we are here today because the Republicans in the House are paralyzed with hatred of President Clinton, and until the Republicans free themselves of this hatred, our country will suffer.
I rise to oppose these unfair motions which call for the removal of the President of the United States from office.
The Independent Council knew that the President was exonerated with Travelgate, Whitewater and Filegate.
This was not fair.
Indeed, it is the responsibility of any prosecutor to immediately release information that is exculpatory.
Okay, that was Pelosi then.
Wow, impassioned.
I bet I could give that same speech when we're talking about the Trump impeachment.
Ah, except here's Pelosi just a couple days ago.
Therefore, today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.
I'm directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella.
Madam Speaker, never before has President been convicted by the Senate.
What has this accomplished?
Okay, so a little bit of a flip-flop, you might say.
And Pelosi in the 90s was probably a little closer to being correct, at least if you're judging it by being in touch with the American people.
The problem that the Democrats have is Pelosi is catering to AOC and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley and the whole squad.
And the squad doesn't represent America, doesn't even really represent the Democratic Party very well.
At least at this point, at least as they're looking at presidential politics.
So the leadership is out of touch with the American people, not just on impeachment, but even on their broader issue.
This was actually, to me, more interesting from the morning consult poll.
They have a new poll out on the issues, the top priorities for American voters going in to 2020.
The top issues, according to this poll, are the economy, that's 19%, healthcare, 16%, national security, 8%, gun policy, 8%, seniors issues, 8%.
Only after those top five issues do you get climate change at 7% tied with immigration at 7%.
This is very interesting, and it tells you something about the Democrats and the Republicans.
The Democrats need to move off of climate change as their top issue.
When they launched the 2020 race, it was all about climate change.
It was all about the Green New Deal.
It was all about completely changing the global economy, $93 trillion in federal spending.
That's what they were talking about.
This is the definitive issue.
The American people don't like that.
It wasn't serving them very well and it's, it's way down there in the list of priorities.
So now what the Democrats are doing is moving toward healthcare.
Even the president on immigration.
I mean, you've got climate change and immigration ranking at the same number.
Trump used to talk about the wall and immigration and border security all the time.
You'll notice he's stopped talking about it as much.
Even as we've gotten great news on the border, we're finally getting the wall built.
We're finally getting money freed up to build the wall.
And it's only, and now at that moment, this moment of success on the issue, he's being a little quieter about it.
Why?
Because he's seeing these same numbers and he knows that's not what's going to win in 2020, at least according to the polls.
He's going to focus more on the economy.
And we're seeing that happen in real time.
So the president really is talking more about the economy, less about immigration.
And Liz Warren really is talking about Less about the environment and the Green New Deal.
And she's moving much more toward health care because she thinks that's a winning issue for her.
She actually just released, Liz Warren released, Get Your Cringe Ready.
Just put your face into a cringe right now and lock it there so it won't have too much shock when you listen to this.
She just released a new Instagram video trying to look hip and cool.
You know, the definition of Liz Warren.
And it's all about health care.
She did it with one of the personalities from the show Queer Eye.
It was a very, very entertaining personality.
They're talking about healthcare, but it reveals some real weaknesses for Liz Warren.
Here she is.
Hello?
Hello, Jonathan?
It's Elizabeth Warren.
How are you?
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm good.
I'm having such a crazy day.
I know, but I wanted to give you a call just to say thank you.
I'm glad we're going to be in this fight together side by side.
I love the endorsement and for all the right reasons.
Thank you so much.
Um, well, you know, I have to tell you what I realized it was when, um, it was at the last debates and I was like, this health insurance industry is a racket.
It felt right.
It did!
And that's why we gotta do it.
Because it is right.
Healthcare is a basic human right.
And we fight for basic human rights.
Not just for some of us, for all of us.
I'm so excited to be shoulder to shoulder with you two.
I can't believe you called.
We're gonna do this.
We're gonna do this.
Let me know how it can be of service.
I really want to help.
We're gonna do it together.
Alright, so it goes on from there.
It's so awkward.
It's so cringy.
But I have to say, I really like this guy as just a media personality.
He's great on camera.
He's very, very funny.
It's quite a contrast with her, because she is stiff as a board.
I mean, it is so funny.
You have this guy who is a professional entertainer, and he's a huge personality, and he's really funny.
And then you have her, and she's trying to be cool with him, and it just doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
And this is the real issue here, is it just keeps her so awkward looking.
I mean, I guess the video at first, what it highlights, it's actually a few problems.
It highlights that at this time, what Elizabeth Warren needs to do, if she's really going to be the frontrunner, is show how she relates to racial minorities, blue-collar workers, middle America, and moderates.
This guy, Jonathan Van Ness, while a very entertaining figure on television...
It doesn't quite speak to those groups exactly.
I don't want to make assumptions here.
Okay, I know these days you can be whatever race you want and whatever orientation you want and gender and probably occupation too.
I'm just saying, if you're trying to appeal to middle America, that's probably not the guy to be cutting videos with.
That is going to be Liz Warren's challenge.
If she really wants to take Biden out, she's got to show that she appeals to more people than just the audience for Queer Eye, who are mostly on the coasts and who are mostly white and who are mostly already with her and not with Joe Biden anyway.
And then you've got the problem that she's so stiff.
If she gets on stage with Donald Trump, there's going to be a Liz Warren shaped hole in the wall because he's going to blow her off the stage.
It reminds us of that video, that horrific video she shot Where she was sipping the first beer she's ever had in her life, I'm pretty sure.
But she wanted to make it look cool and make her seem hip like AOC and Beto O'Rourke.
So she shot a video sipping a beer and interacting with her husband like she'd never met the guy before.
Just to refresh your memory, here she is.
There we go.
I'm glad for everybody who's joining this video.
It's great to hear from you.
Hold on a sec.
I'm going to get me a beer.
Hey, my husband Bruce is now in here.
You want a beer?
I'll pass on a beer for now.
You sure?
Okay, stay on.
So this is my sweetie.
Hello.
He's the best.
And I'm crazy.
I love you too.
Thank you for being here.
Pleasure.
I'm glad you're here.
Enjoy your beer.
It's so awkward.
She's talking to her husband like she just met him.
He's my sweetie.
I love him.
Beep boop.
Beep beep boop.
Hey, my husband's just here.
Do you want a beer?
Beer is what we human beings drink.
Would you like one of those?
No, no, I don't want a beer, Liz Warren.
Oh, okay.
I'm glad you're here.
It's his home.
Where else would he be?
Do you people live together?
Is this all a charade?
Anyway, she's gotten a little bit better with the stiffness between then and the Queer Eye video, but she's got a long way to go.
We know this about Liz Warren.
She does get better.
She does learn things, but she does have a long way to go, especially when you're dealing with Mr.
Personality, President Trump.
We have to get to the most absurd BuzzFeed article I've ever seen.
They sent out a tweet last night that said a trans man in the UK who gave birth and then sued to be recognized as the father has lost his case.
Good luck making sense of that.
We'll try to make sense of that because we're going to be giving a speech tonight to kick off my YAF College speaking tour.
Tonight is the first stop on this year's tour.
It's a free event, so come on out 7 p.m.
to the Friends of USC Library Lecture Hall.
The topic of the speech is men are not women and other uncomfortable truths.
And it's bound to be a fun one.
I will be talking about similar things to BuzzFeed.
And we're going to be talking about the overall theme of this speaking tour, which is cancel culture.
It's become very prominent.
Some of us have noticed it even just this week.
And reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.
But cancel culture is very real.
And cancel culture, a lot of people don't understand it, how it relates to political correctness, how it relates to the truth.
But we are going to be moving on with that speaking tour.
Try to stop us.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
Also great news.
We just announced it yesterday.
I'm going to be launching a new show.
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We'll be right back with the craziest BuzzFeed article ever and the mailbag.
So BuzzFeed sent out this tweet last night.
I kid you not.
I opened it up and I couldn't quite...
It said...
Quote, a trans man in the UK who gave birth and then sued to be recognized as the father has lost his case.
So if you were just reading that quickly, it was a man gave birth.
I guess that is newsworthy.
I guess that should be a headline.
But the man is not recognized as the father, according to this judge.
And you try to figure out if someone could translate that sentence into English.
Because then the headline says, a high court judge has ruled that mother no longer means woman.
So hold on.
A trans man is not who gave birth.
Oh, okay, now I get it.
A trans man, what they mean is a woman who now identifies as a man, but who is a woman.
So the woman gave birth to a child, and the judge refuses to let her be deemed the father.
Okay, that makes sense, because she's not the father, she's the mother.
Okay, that makes sense.
I get that part.
But then the headline says, a high court judge has ruled that mother no longer means woman.
That seems like the opposite of what the tweet said.
Those two sentences seem to contradict each other.
Until you realize that what BuzzFeed is implying in the headline...
Is the outrage that the judge refuses to call this mother the father.
The judge is calling the mother the mother and BuzzFeed is outraged because they don't think that this woman is a woman any longer.
They think that this woman is now a man because she identifies as a man.
Very confusing.
Freddie McConnell thought that for him to become a father, the hardest fight would be personal, medical, first to transition into the man he knew himself to be, then to cease testosterone treatment so that he could conceive, and finally to give birth when right to his marrow he felt male.
To give birth even though he felt male.
He stopped the hormone treatment.
But he isn't male.
He isn't he.
He is she, but you see how insidious this pronoun issue is.
If you read that, even if you have total clarity of thought, if you constantly see he, him, father, father, you just naturally take that for what it means, which is that he is a he.
But he is not a he.
It is a she.
She is a she.
She is the mother.
Because only mothers can give birth and only women can be mothers.
BuzzFeed goes on.
This ruling, the ruling which makes perfect sense, the ruling says a mother is not a father.
Simple enough.
We're now getting confused on the question a man is not a woman.
But at least we're saying a mother is not a father.
Of course that's true.
It's like saying 2 plus 2 equals 4.
It's like saying the sky is blue.
BuzzFeed takes great issue with this.
They say the ruling has implications for almost anyone.
According to the judgment...
Mother is no longer a gendered term.
Mother, therefore, does not equal woman.
Actually, though, the ruling is the exact opposite of that.
Mother is a gendered term.
Mother exclusively equals woman, according to both this judge's ruling and reality.
But what BuzzFeed is doing is saying that gender is no longer a gendered term.
What BuzzFeed is saying is that gender and sex are completely different from one another, and sex is reality, and gender is whatever we want reality to be.
Then they say a mother is a person who gives birth regardless of whether she has a genetic link to the child.
For instance, if the eggs are from another woman.
Right.
This is raising another issue of bioethics, whether a child has a right to his own mother.
Then a father is also not necessarily gender specific.
Actually the ruling is exactly the opposite of that.
And transgender people may now only be recognized in their acquired gender until they have children.
What that's really saying is, transgender people, they're saying, we as a society will pretend that men who are confused about their sex are women.
And vice versa.
We will pretend that until reality reasserts itself and biology reasserts itself.
And we see that the man, allegedly, actually is a woman because only women can give birth.
And at that point, we have to stop lying.
And BuzzFeed is very upset about that.
The transgender man, so the mother, this woman says, it is bigger than us.
I will carry on fighting because this is threatening to set things back for LGBT people, as well as for society, gender, and how families are created.
This slams the brakes on progress in a way that should scare people.
I don't think...
This ruling scares people.
I think this ruling gives people a little consolation that we have not just completely lost our minds as a society and that we have not just completely disregarded reality.
Nobody benefits from living in lies.
Not men who think they're women, not women who think they're men, not anybody else in the culture, not the 99 point...
99.85% of people who are not confused about their biological sex.
Nobody benefits from lies.
There is nothing compassionate about lies.
We pretend these days that lies are comforting.
They're not.
Comfort means to give strength.
Forte.
Forte.
Strength.
Giving somebody with strength You don't give people strength by lying to them or by treating them like they're second class citizens and indulging in their fantasies, treating them like little children.
No, that's not comfort.
That is, if anything, bigotry.
That is demeaning, that is condescending, that is degrading.
We shouldn't do it as a society, not only because...
We don't want to live in madness and lies and we want to live in reality.
But because we have respect for our fellow human beings, even our fellow human beings are who are suffering and who are confused.
We should not indulge that.
We should help them and treat them like we would want to be treated ourselves.
Let's get to the mailbag.
Sorry that went on a little late, but I couldn't get past that story.
I needed to work it through in my own head even just to understand it.
First question from Robert.
Do you think the media will treat the Republican presidential candidate of 2024 better or worse than Trump?
Exactly the same.
People forget, people have a short memory.
They did this all to Bush and Bush was a moderate guy and he's not really even that conservative.
They called Bush Hitler.
They did all of these things.
If anything, our politics is getting more polarized now, actually having nothing to do with Trump.
It was a little bit It was happening for a long time before that.
Largely because of the media.
And I don't want to just blame the media because we are the media in a sense.
We demand the media that we're getting.
We demand the politicians that we're getting and the political discourse we're getting.
So just as a matter of time, they'll probably treat the candidate worse.
But anyone who thinks this is simply about Trump is deluding themselves.
This is the way the left treats anybody who contradicts their lies.
Riley, after a four-month hiring process...
I finally get to start my first full-time post-graduate job next week.
Congratulations!
What advice do you have for a guy who's beginning a career?
I've worked part-time jobs since age 13, so I'm no stranger to work, but this is my first big kid job.
That's kind of like me.
I was working since I was about 14 and kind of part-time jobs during school, things like that.
The advice I would give to you We have this trouble these days because so many people go to college, so many people get a very expensive education, so many people are taught that Grunt work is not for you.
You're about to start your big kid job.
You're about to start your career.
You're no longer the one who's got to vacuum the floor.
You're no longer the one who has to do grunt work.
Yes, you do.
You do.
I've seen this.
I've been in a lot of rooms with a lot of very powerful people, and the one thing I notice is that the people at the top have no pride about this stuff.
They have no...
They might have an ego, but they've also got a certain humility, which you find in the work.
I have seen people at the very top of their game vacuum their own hair after a haircut.
I have seen, that's a real example, or offered a vacuum their own hair for a haircut.
You've got to do that.
That is where respect comes from.
You won't be respected by only saying, this is my job, this is what I do.
Here's your job.
I don't know what career you're in.
I don't know what line of work.
Your job is to make your boss happy.
And your job is to work hard and give your best.
Do that, you will go far.
Don't do that, you'll be stymied.
From Samuel.
Dear Michael, is it wrong to be excited for the impeachment proceedings?
I get the argument that it's divisive, but I feel as if the division is already there, so I can't help but to feel excited that Democrats are basically just handing over the election to Trump now.
That's my read on it.
I think it's a great thing.
We just went through those numbers today.
The American people oppose impeachment.
They are...
Sick of the hoaxes.
If the Democrats had not pulled the Russia hoax, and now they've pulled impeachment, if they'd kept their powder dry and gone for impeachment, it might work better for them.
I don't think it's going to work very well at all.
I think the people are furious that Democrats and bureaucrats keep trying to overturn the 2016 election and silence their voice and stop them from controlling their own country.
And I think nobody cares at all about Any phone calls with Ukraine?
And we actually read the phone call and there didn't seem to be anything bad on it anyway.
It's a major loser for Democrats.
It might be a win for Pelosi because it will allow her to keep control of her own caucus.
So she'll get a personal win there.
But for Democrats broadly, it's a big mistake.
Trump should welcome it.
I think Christmas came early for him.
From Catherine.
I'm in my 30s and I find myself struggling with the idea of social media and whether it overall has a positive or negative effect on What are your thoughts as a millennial and how social media affects our society?
Well, I wouldn't be able to do what I do without social media.
I wouldn't be able to have my job and my career and I wouldn't be able to communicate with people and stay in touch with people across continents and across oceans.
And so I like it in that regard.
But It's just more of communication.
So, communication is not a totally positive thing.
It's not totally a negative thing.
I mean, the negative side is you get social media swarms and social media mobs that come up and try to twist anything you said.
Maybe you said something 20 years ago that was wrong.
Maybe you said something true right now that contradicts political correctness and exposes a vindictive left.
And either way, by the way, you're going to get a social media mob that comes after you that is vicious, that goes after your family, that sends you death threats.
I mean, it's just horrific.
It tries to ruin you.
That's just more communication.
I've got a pretty thick skin about it, so I like it.
But I think it's idle chatter to say, is it good or bad?
Should we have it?
Should we not?
It is a fact of life now.
It ain't going anywhere.
And we need to get used to it and figure out how to adapt and figure out how to try to make it a little better.
Final question from Tommy.
What do you think of the White House announcing that there will be no more daily press briefings?
It's fine by me.
Let me tell you one thing, if I had gotten that job, we'd be having multiple press briefings every single day.
But since I don't, that's fine.
Enough of it.
Alright, that's our show.
Maybe I'll see you tonight at USC to kick off our college speaking tour.
Can't stop, won't stop.
Men are not women and other uncomfortable truths.
Thank you very much.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you later.
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