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Oct. 9, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show

49:11

Ep. 429 - Trump’s Got Your Impeachment Right Here

As Democrats threaten to remove President Trump from office, the White House strikes a defiant tone and tells Democrats exactly where they can put their impeachment inquiry. We examine the President’s strategy. Then, Mitt Romney continues to be Mitt Romney, AOC wants to abolish prisons, and Justin Trudeau explains blackface to a cute little girl. Date: 10-09-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	As Democrats threaten to remove President Trump from office, the White House strikes a defiant tone and tells Democrats exactly where they can put their impeachment inquiry.
	We examine the president's strategy.
	Then, Mitt Romney continues to be Mitt Romney.
	AOC wants to abolish prisons, and Justin Trudeau explains blackface to a cute little girl.
	All that and more.
	I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
	Big show today at The White House has sent one of the Trumpiest letters ever composed to congressional Democrats telling them exactly where to shove their impeachment inquiry.
	It's a really terrific letter.
	It makes a lot of valid points, so we'll get into that.
	We'll bring you the highlights.
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	Very, very Trumpy letter sent from the White House to congressional Democrats about the impeachment inquiry.
	There has been some question about whether the White House is going to let certain people testify or not testify before Congress.
	Basically, what it comes down to is, will the White House cooperate with this impeachment inquiry, or are they going to stonewall and tell the Democrats to shove it?
	Now...
	I'm not a gambling man, but if I were, I probably would have bet on the latter.
	And if I had, I would have won a lot of money because this letter puts it in no uncertain terms.
	The White House is not going to cooperate.
	The striking thing about this letter is it reads not like it was written by a White House lawyer.
	It reads like it were written by Trump himself, and so I'm sure it was written by a lawyer because there are a lot of details in it, but the language and the rhetoric and the tone obviously has been set from the very top, and that begins with President Trump.
	So the letter goes.
	Dear Madam Speaker and Mr.
	Chairman, I write on behalf of President Donald J. Trump in response to your numerous legally unsupported demands made as part of what you have labeled contrary to the Constitution of the United States and all past bipartisan precedent as an impeachment inquiry.
	As you know, you have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.
	This is an important way to begin because you might remember from past impeachments, I guess, but for most people, the only one they've lived through is Bill Clinton.
	Then they were about to impeach Richard Nixon and you probably weren't alive in the 1860s for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.
	One thing that's been very strange in the coverage of this impeachment is they keep referring to the formal impeachment inquiry, the official formal impeachment inquiry.
	And, and they're saying this in the mainstream media to give this impeachment push, this air of legal seriousness, to give it an air of being official.
	they're saying this in the mainstream media to give this impeachment push, this air of legal seriousness, to give it an air of being official.
	But what is a formal impeachment inquiry?
	What Drew Clavin said it was, is that you, you know, you put on your tiara and a nice ball gown and then you talk about impeachment.
	It's not like the house has taken a vote on anything.
	They haven't impeached the president.
	They haven't taken a vote to impeach the president.
	It's just Nancy Pelosi came out one day and said, yes, we're going to start an impeachment inquiry and we're going to give it to some committees.
	But that's not how impeachment really works.
	It's And so for right now, it's all just a bluster.
	It's all just a way to drag people from the White House in front of Congress on television during an election year because the impeachment inquiry, such as it is, is fundamentally political.
	Not legal, but political.
	And this gets to another reason why it's illegitimate.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	But that's the setup, is what the White House is saying is, what you are doing is not valid, it is not legitimate, you're not following the normal legal processes, and so we are not going to participate.
	They go on.
	For example, you've denied the president the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans.
	You've conducted your proceedings in secret.
	You've violated civil liberties and the separation of powers by threatening executive branch officials claiming that you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental constitutional rights and prerogatives.
	All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent.
	Never before in our history has the House of Representatives, under the control of either political party, taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue.
	Now, the key here is the separation of powers, because the way that the House is describing this impeachment process is they're saying, we have a right, we have a duty, As a co-equal branch of government to rein in the executive, we are going to go in there and take the executive down.
	For what?
	I don't know.
	What is it?
	Collusion with Ukraine now?
	It used to be collusion with Russia.
	Then it was Stormy Daniels.
	They're going to find something because in D.C. you could indict a ham sandwich.
	So they're going to try to find some legal basis for impeaching Trump.
	But this is obviously an impeachment in search of a crime.
	The separation of powers here matters because what people are not talking about is reigning in the Congress.
	The reason that the founders and the framers of our Constitution set up this impeachment process Is to prevent oversteps by the executive, sure, but also oversteps by the legislature.
	Because it's not as though Congress is the most important branch of government.
	It's a co-equal branch, one of three.
	This is actually why, if the president is impeached, he will go to trial in the Senate, and presiding over that trial will be the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
	Why is the Chief Justice there?
	Is the Chief Justice there because he has really nice robes and he looks really good and he can smile on camera?
	No, he's there because he represents a co-equal branch of government.
	And he is there to prevent legislative supremacy.
	So, the other day I was filling in for Ben's radio show and we had Alan Dershowitz on.
	He gives a great explanation of this in a number of columns you can check out.
	You've got these three co-equal branches of government.
	What this White House is saying is, of course the White House needs to be restrained.
	Of course the White House isn't the supreme branch of government, but so too does the legislature, and the legislature is overstepping their constitutional bounds.
	Then he gets to the heart of the matter.
	He says, put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the president they have freely chosen.
	That's right.
	How do we know that that's right?
	Because they've been clamoring for impeachment since before President Trump even took office, and they keep changing the reasons.
	Initially, they were going to impeach him for colluding with Russia.
	Now, there's no crime called collusion, but they were going to try to find some crime and say that he was a traitor to his country and he was working on behalf of Moscow.
	Then we had a two and a half year, $30 million investigation into that, and they didn't find anything.
	He was exonerated.
	He did not collude with Russia or conspire or break any laws with Russia.
	So then they wanted to go after him for campaign finance rule.
	They wanted to remove him from office because he ostensibly paid a porn star a while ago.
	They couldn't get him on that.
	Now they're going after him because he said something in a phone call with Ukraine, even though we read the transcript and he didn't break any laws in the transcript.
	Obviously, no matter what you think of Trump, no matter if you think he's the worst president in the world, you think he should be removed from office.
	You think the Congress should do whatever it takes to get him out of there.
	Legally speaking, constitutionally speaking, there is no basis for impeachment.
	Thank you.
	And that means that if there's no legal basis for impeachment, then the only explanation is they're trying to overturn the 2016 election, which they've been trying to do for three years.
	The letter is very long.
	It's like eight or nine pages.
	So I'll just give you a couple highlights.
	Page two.
	For these reasons, President Trump and his administration reject your baseless unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process.
	Your unprecedented actions have left the president with no choice.
	That's the theme that keeps coming back.
	The president has no choice.
	And this is what sounds very Trumpian, because you hear him say this sort of stuff all the time.
	He goes, look, I have no choice, okay?
	Look, what do you want me to do?
	I have no choice.
	So obviously he had some role in drafting this.
	And then they list for another six pages or so all of the reasons in pretty serious language.
	I mean, it reads like a polemic, but...
	The White House lawyer here does list a number of legal reasons why they're not going to participate.
	And then he concludes, for the foregoing reasons the president cannot allow your constitutionally illegitimate proceedings to distract him and those in the executive branch from their work on behalf of the American people, we hope that in light of the many deficiencies we have identified in your proceedings, you will abandon the current invalid efforts to pursue an impeachment inquiry and join the president in focusing on the many important goals that matter to the American people.
	Sincerely, Pat Cipollone, counsel to the president.
	This is a good letter.
	This is a good tack for the White House to take.
	The reason that this impeachment is invalid is because it is purely political.
	And there are many people who suggest that impeachment may be purely political.
	There are people in the House of Representatives who say the basis for impeachment is whatever the House wants it to be.
	The House can impeach the president for any reason whatsoever.
	That is not true.
	The Constitution is very clear.
	The President may be impeached for treason, for bribery, and for other high crimes and misdemeanors.
	Not just for the whims of the house.
	You know, I think what this takes part of is a little bit of our relativistic culture.
	You know, we have this culture now, you see it on campuses, you see it in intersectionality, you see it all over the place, which more or less denies objective reality and says reality is what I want it to be.
	And so, did the president commit a high crime and misdemeanor?
	well, if I say he did, then he did.
	But that isn't true.
	There is a basis for impeachment that must be an objective reality.
	It's not merely political.
	It also has a legal component.
	The president has not violated the law in an impeachable way.
	And so the impeachment inquiry is invalid.
	To say nothing about the procedural errors that the Democrats are making and to say nothing of the highly politicized manner of the proceedings, which is merely meant to give them political fodder for an election year.
	You're saying it's absolutely right for the White House not to comply.
	Now the Democrats are saying that the White House not complying with the impeachment inquiry is actually a basis for impeachment itself.
	That also is not true.
	The Democrats are going to keep it up.
	It's nakedly partisan.
	It has no basis in legal reality.
	And I think the president is making the right move.
	He doesn't win at all by...
	He doesn't win at all by dignifying this impeachment inquiry with his participation.
	And so maybe it'll hurt him because maybe this is going to garner them more votes to impeach him in the House.
	I think politically that's actually a good thing for him.
	I think it shows people that his opponents are desperate, mostly Democrats, but some Republicans too.
	Now, this brings us to the language.
	Because impeachment is a political matter, it's a legal matter, but it also affects the culture.
	And this is a news story I had to get to because it is changing not our spoken language or our written language, it's changing our emoji language.
	The singer Lizzo, she's that pop singer who had the giant inflatable derriere at the MTV Video Music Awards.
	She sent out a tweet a couple weeks ago.
	Which is fundamentally changing the use of what's called the sexy peach emoji.
	So there's an emoji which is a peach.
	And because the peach has a little divot in it, it has been interpreted to be a sexy derriere that is also a peach.
	This is one way that language changes.
	Now, the sexy peach is also being used to represent impeachment because Lizzo tweeted out, I am peach emoji, M-E-N-T, impeachment.
	But then it gets even more complicated because the peach is peach colored.
	The peach has also become a symbol of President Trump and used specifically by his critics because they think that he is an ass.
	There is so much there.
	This is what the Washington Post writes, because it must have been a slow news day.
	Quote, is that they're kind of following the same patterns that words do.
	So they'll pick up new meetings the same way that words will, said Benjamin Weissman, a lecturer at Anselaer Polytechnic Institute, who has studied the way that our brains interpret emojis.
	Unicode, the group that maintains character software standards, considers notable metaphorical references or symbolism in its selection criteria for the new emoji.
	I bring this up because the way that the left changes culture is by changing language.
	This is why they're fighting over the pronouns.
	This is why they are constantly forcing you to use politically correct language.
	So you've always got to use a different euphemism for whatever victim group they want to discuss.
	That you've always got to use a different euphemism.
	And if you don't use that, you're ostracized and you're unpersoned.
	This is now even infecting the emojis.
	This is even infecting the sexy peaches.
	This is where the culture matters.
	When we're talking about impeachment, there are a lot of conservative lawyers who don't like the letter that the White House sent to House Democrats.
	They say, oh, it's unseemly.
	It's not as formal as other letters should be.
	It's not right.
	You can't neatly delineate between politics and culture and religion.
	As Andrew Breitbart said, politics is downstream of culture.
	Culture is downstream of religion because cult and culture are related terms.
	What a culture worships defines that culture.
	You can't delineate.
	This impeachment matter is going to be as much a cultural matter as it is a political matter and it's probably not going to be at all a legal matter because it's going to be decided largely in the court of public opinion.
	This is where our language matters.
	The more that we normalize language about the president, the more that we normalize the way that we speak to one another in this degraded way, the more that we normalize sexy, Trumpy peaches, that is going to change the way we view things.
	Just consider how you look at the peach emoji.
	What do you see when you look at the peach emoji?
	Normal, good people see a peach, a piece of fruit.
	Deviant people see a derriere.
	And politically twisted leftist deviant people see a derriere, which is also the president.
	They might not even know that it's a peach.
	Very important to keep all of these things in mind when we're considering politics.
	Not just our language.
	Not just our politics.
	Not just our language.
	Even our colloquial language.
	Even our vulgar language.
	Even the way that we are discussing the politics.
	Because there's no way to neatly delineate between all of these things.
	You see this, speaking of...
	You see this in Mitt Romney.
	This is a breaking news story.
	Mitt Romney is still Mitt Romney.
	Mitt Romney continues to be Mitt Romney.
	Vanity Fair is reporting that it looks like Mitt Romney is not going to run against President Trump in a GOP primary.
	him down.
	This is from Vanity Fair.
	According to people close to Romney, he's firmly decided against primarying Trump, an enterprise he believes to be a sure loser given Trump's enduring GOP support.
	Romney has also told people that as an unsuccessful two-time presidential candidate, he's the wrong person to take on Trump.
	Instead, a Romney advisor told me, Romney believes he has more potential power as a senator who will decide Trump's fate in an impeachment trial.
	He could have tremendous influence in the impeachment process as the lone voice of conscience in the Republican caucus, the advisor said.
	In recent days, Romney's been reaching out privately to key players in the Republican resistance.
	According to a person briefed on the conversations, Romney is the one guy who could bring along Susan Collins, Gary Gardner, Ben Sasse.
	Romney is the pressure point in the impeachment process.
	That's why the things he's saying are freaking Republicans out.
	Now, by the way, this is obviously coming from Romney himself.
	Through an intermediary, sure, but it's obviously coming from Romney.
	Whenever you see an advisor briefed on the matter who reached out privately because he couldn't talk, that's obviously coming from Romney.
	This drives me crazy because we all make fun of Trump.
	All of us do, even the conservatives.
	Even when we use the peach emoji and call him a derrier.
	Even when some of us clutch our pearls, we say, I hate the way he talks.
	Oh, he's so awful.
	I'm so much better than him.
	He's such a bad person.
	Look at Mitt Romney.
	Donald Trump on the surface looks like a bad guy.
	He's been married multiple times.
	He talks in a vulgar way.
	He doesn't seem ideologically moored necessarily.
	He is mean.
	He can be cruel.
	He can send nasty tweets.
	President Trump, rather, has much more political integrity than Mitt Romney.
	Mitt Romney, we're told, he's such a good man.
	He's a devout Mormon.
	His hair looks really nice.
	He is a good family man who's only been married one time.
	He speaks in a really soft way.
	Mitt Romney, politically, is a snake.
	He is a serpent.
	I have known this for years.
	I've worked on campaigns against Mitt Romney on multiple occasions.
	Just to remind you of who Mitt Romney is, true conservative, conscience of the Republican Party, so much better than Trump, true conservative, capital T, capital C, trademark, over the E. Here's just a little recap of Mitt Romney's political career.
	So when asked, will I preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, I make an unequivocal answer, yes.
	I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard.
	I will not change any provisions of Massachusetts' pro- Choice laws.
	Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush.
	I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.
	My positions don't talk about things that you suggest they talk about.
	I hated Reagan.
	I hate Reagan and I love abortion and I hate babies.
	But I'm a real conservative, but I'm not that kind of conservative.
	And actually, when I run for president later on in 2012 and 2008, I'm going to say that I'm really pro-life and that I really love Ronald Reagan and I'm severely conservative.
	I will say whatever you want to elect me, please.
	I'm Mitt Romney, true conservative, man of integrity, man of virtue.
	I'm so much better than Trump.
	No, he's not.
	He's just more dishonest.
	At least Trump, when Trump changes his mind or changes his position, he's just completely open about it.
	He just comes, in 2000 he said he was very, very pro-choice and he said, yeah, then something happened to me and I changed my mind and now he's one of the most pro-life presidents we've ever had.
	President Trump, he criticized Reagan in some ways in the 80s.
	He continues to criticize Reagan today.
	He's very open about his views.
	He's kept more of his campaign promises according to the Heritage Foundation than virtually any president we've had, certainly in recent memory.
	This is a cause for political humility because I see it.
	I understand why we...
	Look down on a guy like Trump.
	I understand why we feel morally superior.
	I understand why we would, in some ways, prefer the veneer of Mitt Romney, that facade of respectability.
	But when it comes down to brass tacks, when it comes down to actually what these guys are doing and how these guys are holding the office, sometimes reality is a little different than we think it is.
	And what we've seen with a guy like Trump and a guy like Reagan is, despite their being mocked as idiots and degraded and all these things, they have more integrity, they have more dignity in the office.
	Who is Mitt Romney?
	Who on earth is Mitt Romney?
	Twice failed presidential candidate, guy who's held every position on every single issue, guy who threw Ronald Reagan under the bus, guy who campaigned for abortion for years and years and years.
	Who is that guy to tell me what conservatism is?
	Who is that guy to tell me what dignity in the office is?
	Nobody.
	Who are these House Democrats to tell us about preserving our institutions and preserving co-equal branches of government?
	They've been trying to overturn the presidential election for three years.
	They are not owed an explanation.
	What they are owed, what they deserve, is exactly that letter that the White House sent them.
	And Mitt Romney could deserve the same sort of answer, and if they have trouble with it, if they have the audacity to claim that Trump is diminishing the office or degrading the office, he should turn right around and show them his peach emoji.
	Now, moving on from President Trump and the White House and the impeachment inquiry, AOC has given us another gift.
	AOC has given us more honesty on the left's position on crime and law and order.
	And that is, AOC has come out, you've seen them all, all of the Democrats have kind of Inch toward this position of we need to let more people out of prison.
	We need to reduce sentences for crimes.
	We need to decriminalize things like doing drugs and defecating on the street and crossing into our country illegally.
	And they've slowly edged toward this.
	Now AOC has just come straight out and said, we need to abolish prisons.
	She wrote, quote, Mass incarceration is our American reality.
	It is a system whose logic evolved from the same lineage as Jim Crow, American apartheid, and slavery.
	To end it, we have to change.
	That means we need to have a real conversation about decarceration and prison abolition in this country.
	This is an offensive statement on its face because she is literally equating innocent black people with criminals, which is something that racial bigots do because racial bigots look around and they see black people and they see criminals.
	And what AOC is doing is exactly the same thing even though she thinks she's being really woke and pandering to racial identity politics.
	Mass incarceration is our American reality.
	It's a system whose logic evolved from the same lineage as Jim Crow.
	It's not.
	Mass incarceration, also known as putting criminals in prison, is a system that existed long before Jim Crow, long before American slavery.
	It has always existed in civilization because people are safer when you throw the criminals in prison.
	And guess what happened?
	When we started to really take crime more seriously in the early 90s, rates of violent crime plummeted.
	And nobody could understand this.
	The New York Times ran a headline that said...
	Crime rate, uh, prisons, prison rates increase despite crime rate falling, despite as though there were a contradiction between those things.
	Now, you ever think that maybe the crime rate is falling because we are throwing all of the criminals in prison?
	Of course.
	But what they are calling for now is not just give amnesty to this group of illegal aliens.
	It's not just decriminalize using this drug.
	It's not just let certain people defecate on the streets and cities.
	What they are calling for at the logical end of their arguments Is abolishing criminal justice altogether, and it makes perfect sense because they don't understand criminal justice.
	We will examine why.
	Then we'll get to a national day of prayer and fasting and why the left is furious over it, of course.
	We will get to why Americans aren't making any friends.
	And, most importantly, we will get to the funniest video on the internet today.
	Thank you, Justin Trudeau.
	But first, I have got to tell you, believe me, I know you've been promised a lot and you've been burned before, but I've never lied to you.
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	By the way, another Kingdom fans, the finale season is underway.
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	Episodes one and two dropped last week.
	This Monday, episode three will drop.
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	Who writes this stuff?
	It's a really, really great season.
	You've got to check it out.
	I've obviously been involved in this since the very beginning.
	This is my favorite season yet.
	It is really profound.
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	It's a beautiful thing.
	We talk about how conservatives need to get into the culture.
	We need to take on the culture.
	Drew Klavan is pretty much the only guy who's doing that.
	He's certainly one of the only ones.
	And it's really great.
	So please check it out.
	Go on over there.
	It's available on dailywire.com, iTunes, and YouTube.
	So make sure to check those out before you embark on this new journey.
	Head on over to dailywire.com.
	We've got a whole lot more coming up.
	up.
	Don't go anywhere.
	If you are a leftist and you start with the premises that they're starting with, then you must conclude that we need to abolish prisons.
	What do I mean by that?
	What the left believes, what they've been telling us, is that our prison system is really just a veneer for slavery and Jim Crow.
	Now, if that's true, obviously you need to abolish prisons.
	What the left is also telling us, though, is something about their view of criminal justice, which is, they think that criminal justice is merely about rehabilitation.
	They don't think it's about deterrence and they don't think it's about justice.
	They think it's about rehabilitation.
	Just making people better because we can always reform everybody.
	And if someone's committing crimes and if someone's failed and if someone's crossed into a country illegally and if someone's dealing drugs or defecating on the street, it's not their fault.
	They have no moral agency.
	It is society's fault.
	And because it's society's fault, you can't punish people for committing those crimes.
	You just need to rehabilitate them.
	Now, in the true understanding of criminal justice, there are three reasons for it.
	Deterrence, you want to deter other people from committing crimes.
	Rehabilitation, that's certainly one reason.
	You want a correctional center.
	You want to reform and correct people.
	And also, and most importantly, retribution.
	Justice itself.
	Because when someone commits a crime, that crime demands punishment.
	Simply for committing the crime.
	Even if it doesn't deter anybody.
	Even if it doesn't rehabilitate anybody.
	This is why we need the death penalty.
	Because certain crimes demand certain punishments, demand justice itself.
	But the left has lost sight of all of that.
	Why?
	Why does the left think that if you commit a crime, it's not your fault?
	Why does the left think it's got to be society's fault?
	Because the left fundamentally denies free will.
	Why does the left fundamentally deny free will?
	Because they deny so much of metaphysical reality, at least on the surface.
	They think...
	That we are the same as unborn babies, which is that we're a clump of cells.
	Their arguments for abortion actually make sense if you start with their premises, which is there's no God, there's no moral order, there's no metaphysical universe, love, joy, affection, hope.
	They're all just illusions.
	They're not real.
	They're just little fantasies we tell ourselves to help us get through this hellish facade of existence that we call life, which is really nothing more than random atoms bumping up together and every choice we think we have is false and really what we do is just predetermined from the very beginning of the universe.
	Most leftists you talk to won't explain it in those terms because they're not following their ideas to their logical conclusions, but if you do that, If you do follow their ideas, then you end up in this world where nobody can be held responsible for the crimes that they commit, and all the systems that we think are systems of justice are really just lies, they're just illusions, pretending to be justice, and therefore we need to abolish them.
	I give AOC a lot of credit.
	AOC is being honest.
	She's showing people the logical, or I guess you would call it illogical, ends of those arguments.
	That's very helpful for people who have a conservative point of view.
	It's the same thing on abortion.
	When the Democrats were holding Hillary Clinton's view on abortion, safe, legal, and rare, which never made any sense, they could at least pretend to bring people along who didn't want to kill all the babies.
	Now they can't.
	Now they shout their abortion.
	Now they love abortion.
	They're all for abortion.
	Same thing with open borders.
	When it used to be that the Democrats just supported amnesty for certain groups of people, More moderates, more independents could go along.
	Now they can't because they're saying, we need open borders for everyone, we need to decriminalize border crossings.
	When the Democrats would just protest Certain wars or protest certain American institutions.
	They could bring along moderates and centrists and independents.
	Now that they're protesting the American flag itself, they can't do that.
	They can't bring it along.
	I love this kind of honesty from AOC. And you even see it on the gender issue.
	When the sexual revolution just said, listen, you can sleep with whoever you want.
	That brought a lot of people along for obvious reasons.
	Then when the sexual revolution said...
	Homosexuality should be mainstreamed within society.
	A lot of independents and moderates said, yeah, okay, that's fine, no big deal.
	Then when the sexual revolution said there are 56 genders and there's no such thing as man and woman and guys with beards wearing a dress should be able to use the little girl's changing room, that was a step too far.
	It was the logical conclusion of the premises that the left has held for 50 years.
	But the center and the moderates and the independents couldn't see that.
	Now they can.
	It's a great thing for conservatives.
	You see it not just in their antipathy toward justice.
	You see it in the left's antipathy toward prayer and toward God himself.
	Just today.
	Or I think the day of prayer is going to be tomorrow.
	This was announced last week.
	Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee declared a day of prayer and fasting.
	This should be the least controversial thing that a governor ever does.
	This should just be something nice that everybody can get behind.
	Here is Governor Lee announcing it.
	Hey, everybody.
	I want to share something with you that I've had on my heart these nine months since I've become the governor.
	You know, everywhere that Maria and I travel across this great state, we're met with countless numbers of people that come up to me and say, Governor, we're praying for you and for Maria and for your family.
	I want you to know that we deeply appreciate those prayers because we know that God hears them.
	We know that prayer accomplishes much.
	Prayer strengthens our families and it strengthens our communities, strengthens our relationship with our neighbors, it strengthens our relationship with God himself.
	So because of that, we have decided to proclaim an official day of prayer and fasting for our state on October 10th of this year.
	On that day, Maria and I will take the day to offer prayers of healing, prayers for forgiveness, prayers of thanksgiving, and prayers of hope for our state and for the 6.7 million who call Tennessee home.
	We invite all Tennesseans to join with us in their homes, in their communities, in their places of worship, to fast and to pray for God's favor and blessing on the people of Tennessee.
	Very nice.
	What a wonderful day.
	The left is furious.
	And they're furious specifically because they say this is unconstitutional.
	This is not in keeping with America's traditions.
	We have a separation of church and state.
	The founders are rolling over in their graves because you are declaring a day of prayer.
	Of course, these people who are criticizing the governor don't know their history because the founders had no problem with days of prayer.
	How do I know this?
	Because they declared days of prayer, not just in a state, but on the national level too.
	What's the day of prayer?
	We're coming up on it.
	It's called Thanksgiving.
	George Washington, founder of our country, father of our country, first and greatest president we've ever had, declared a national day of prayer on Thanksgiving.
	We still have that day of prayer on Thanksgiving.
	It's called Thanksgiving.
	They had no problem with this.
	And what is misunderstood is that when the First Amendment says that there will not be an established church in the United States, what the founders are saying is we will not choose between different religious views.
	We won't choose the Methodists over the Presbyterians.
	We won't choose the Anglicans over the Catholics.
	I mean, certainly they would have chosen the Anglicans over the Catholics, but that's another matter.
	They're saying we're not going to choose between religions, but That doesn't mean that you were going to have an atheist government.
	They didn't have an atheist government.
	We didn't have an atheist government until like five minutes ago.
	And even then the secular left hasn't been that successful in getting rid of religion.
	Now, what the left will tell you about that is, sure, okay, we acknowledge the founders and some of the early Americans.
	They were very religious, but they were wrong, and it was bad, and it was just a kind of holdover from those old dark days when people used to worship a man in the sky.
	And now we are so smart.
	We know so much better.
	We, the people who allow...
	Our fellow citizens to defecate on the street and do drugs everywhere and we think that there are 56 genders.
	We're so much smarter than those idiots like George Washington and John Adams and James Madison and Benjamin Franklin.
	We're so much smarter than them because we know about the 58 genders.
	Did I say 56 before?
	Now it's 58.
	And so because we're so much smarter, we know that what the founders really meant secretly, deep down, not in their writings, but deep in their hearts, is that...
	There needs to be a complete eradication of religion in America.
	And even that argument isn't true by the left's own standards.
	Because we have lots of days about morality in the United States.
	Lots of days about ethics.
	Lot of days about metaphysical ideas.
	They're just different religious concepts.
	So, for instance, we're in October right now.
	October is LGBT History Month in the United States.
	I know you thought that's a little weird.
	I thought we just had LGBT month and that's in June and that's called Pride Month, which used to be Pride Day.
	Well, apparently LGBT now gets two different months.
	And actually, if they're going to get a month, October is the better month because at least it's explicitly about LGBT and not about Pride, which is the queen of all sins and the deadliest of the seven deadly sins.
	So, putting that aside, we now have two months for broadly LGBT issues.
	Barack Obama declared...
	LGBT History Month in 2009 to encourage openness and education about LGBT history.
	There's National Coming Out Day, that's on October 11th.
	There's Intersex Awareness Day, that's October 26th.
	There's Asexual Awareness Day, October 22nd to 28th.
	Half the month is all these different awareness days.
	Those aren't national holidays yet.
	But LGBT Month was declared a National History Month by the last president.
	That is enforcing a moral order.
	That isn't enforcing a religious perspective.
	It's just not traditional religion.
	It's the new leftist religion.
	I mean, when you get down to the T in LGBT, now you're really in the realm of religion because the T is actually a Gnostic version of the soul.
	The T says that physically, in this world, I'm a man.
	But deep, deep down, not on the physical level, but on the metaphysical level, I'm a woman.
	In my true self, I'm a woman.
	And by the true self, what they mean is the soul.
	They just don't have the language to talk about the soul.
	And what their premise is, is that the body and the soul are fundamentally divided and actually at odds with one another, which is a very old religious concept.
	It's called Gnostic dualism.
	It's a heresy that Christianity did away with a long time ago.
	Those are religious views.
	We are going to have religious views.
	We have secular saints in this country.
	We celebrate saint days.
	Martin Luther King Day.
	Martin Luther King has become a secular saint.
	Or the various history months.
	Black history month.
	It's not actually about black history.
	It's about a leftist interpretation of black history.
	Women's history month.
	Not about women's history.
	It's about a leftist interpretation of women's history.
	Now LGBT month.
	We have a full liturgical calendar, just like the Catholic Church has.
	Except in this country, it has become a leftist secular liturgical calendar.
	And...
	What is being brought up by national days of prayer and fasting, other than the obvious, which is prayer and fasting are good things, what is being brought up in the political issue is, given that we are going to recognize as a society and as a political body certain religious ideas and concepts and observations, which ones are they going to be?
	That's the debate that's being had right now.
	The left wants to pretend there's no such thing as that debate, but there certainly is.
	Speaking of the fruits of religion and the fruits of society, there's a new study out that shows that the average American hasn't made a single new friend in the past five years.
	This is a very sad study.
	Hasn't made a single new friend.
	Part of this is the breakdown, largely it's a breakdown of religious institutions because people don't even go to church anymore, which at least you would see people at church.
	Then, downstream of that, there's the cultural breakdown.
	People don't go join bowling leagues.
	They don't go to the symphony.
	They don't go out anymore.
	They just kind of sit on their phones or they stream Netflix at home.
	And then part of this is a political breakdown because the left in this country thinks that the other half of the country is deplorable and irredeemable, as Hillary Clinton said.
	This was a survey of 2,000 Americans.
	It was commissioned by Evite, and it asked why Americans are struggling with new friendships.
	A little over two in five people said they have trouble making friends because they're shy and introverted.
	So they just can't come out of their shell.
	Other people said, about 30% of people said it was commitments to family.
	28% of people said they didn't have hobbies that helped them make friends, and 21% said moving to a new city.
	45% of people said they would go out of their way to make new friends if they knew how to.
	So this is sad.
	It also brings up an ancient idea.
	It brings up an idea from Aristotle, which is what is friendship?
	I think part of the reason people are struggling making friends is we don't know what friendship is anymore.
	And in part, we've been confused by the sexual revolution because we're told anytime you have intimacy to anybody, it's erotic and has a sexual tone to it, which is simply not the case.
	What these Americans are talking about here and they can't find friends are two of the three kinds of friendship that Aristotle described.
	Those two are friendships of utility, like, you know, your work colleagues or your business partners, you can kind of help each other.
	Then there's friendships of pleasure.
	That's kind of what you have when you're a kid or when you're in college.
	You're on the same sports team or you like the same hobby, and so you become friends because you share the same pleasure together.
	And then there is the deepest and best form of friendship, which is friendship of virtue, friendship of the good.
	Friendship grounded because that friend represents the virtues.
	And you stand together, not as lovers looking at each other, but as friends, true friends, standing next to one another, looking at the good, looking at the same thing.
	That last version of friendship is the rarest one.
	If you have one of those in your life, you're extraordinarily lucky, and if you have multiple of those, you're blessed beyond imagination.
	I think the reason that Americans are struggling making friends is we don't know what friendship is, and ultimately we don't know what friendship is because we've lost a sense of what the good is.
	We've lost a sense of what virtue is, and without that, Without an understanding of that deepest form of friendship, even forms of friendship that are based on utility or pleasure, even those fall away.
	We're going to have to try to recapture that if we want to get along, not just as a body politic, but get along with each other personally in society.
	Speaking of the opposite of virtue, I have to get, before we go, to Justin Trudeau.
	Because Justin Trudeau has the greatest video on the entire internet that has been going around.
	It's Justin Trudeau sitting in a little classroom with little tiny kids and a couple of very cute young black girls walk up to Prime Minister Trudeau and they ask him why on so many occasions he wore blackface and his answer is just perfect.
	Do you want to stand up and ask a question?
	What did you paint your face for?
	Ooh.
	It was something I shouldn't have done, because it hurt people.
	It's not something that you should do, and that is something that I learned.
	I didn't know it back then, but I know it now.
	And I'm sorry I hurt people.
	Did you paste your note in your hands, Bill?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	It's the wrong thing to do.
	Oh my gosh.
	It's so, it's so cringe inducing.
	It's just, what I love about this is, is Trudeau ever the politician doesn't even answer the girl's question.
	The question is, why did you paint your face black?
	And the fact that he doesn't answer the question tells you that the left still doesn't get it.
	Because the question is, why did you paint your face black?
	The answer is, oh, because I thought it would be funny.
	I thought it'd be funny.
	I was going to an Arabian Nights party, so I dressed up like an Arabian guy.
	And that's funny because I'm the whitest Canadian ever there was, whiter than the newly driven snow.
	And so the fact that I would dress up like an Arabian prince is funny because it's incongruous and it's unexpected.
	Hey, why did you dress up like, I forget, it was some singer.
	Oh, it was the guy who sang Dayo, Dayo, Daylight Come and Me Want to Go Home.
	Why did you dress up like that?
	Because I'm this white, dorky Canadian guy and I thought it would be funny if I dressed up like Harry Belafonte.
	That's why.
	And the kids, I think, would have understood that.
	And he could have said, I didn't mean any insult by it.
	I didn't mean to degrade black people.
	I don't think I did that.
	Certainly, that's not my intention.
	It's not like the girls are angry.
	It's not like they're coming up to him like white liberals would come up to him.
	You know, white liberals come up to him and they'll say like, I'm really offended on behalf of black people.
	And they'll pretend to be really offended because they don't have a lot to do in their lives and they're searching for meaning.
	These little black girls aren't offended.
	They're just kind of curious.
	Why did you dress up like such a Like a weirdo.
	Why are you...
	Why did you behave like that?
	It's kind of funny.
	Because the follow-up question is, did you paint your hands and your nose black?
	Like, that's even...
	And he answers, it was really...
	I hurt people.
	No, you didn't hurt anybody.
	You hurt white liberals who were pretending to be offended.
	And you...
	But you didn't even hurt them that badly because they're not going to hold your feet to the fire and actually make you resign like they would do to a conservative.
	This is...
	It's all about the white...
	I love...
	Everything about this video is just so perfect because...
	I'm beginning to think, if I ever get radicalized, if I ever become some radical political ideology, obviously I'm not going to be on the alt-right.
	I'm going to be whatever the alt-right is where you don't like white liberals.
	I'm going to be on that for whatever, I don't know what you would call that, but the one where you want to deport all the white liberals, send them to Liberia or something, that's what I am going to be.
	Because...
	This interaction is perfect, and it shows you how society should handle these things.
	Hey, Justin Trudeau, why did you do that stupid and weird thing a while ago?
	Oh, I don't know, because I was a young guy, and I'm a little stupid and a little weird.
	Okay, that's funny.
	Ha ha ha.
	You can just move on.
	But they can't do that.
	They don't get jokes.
	They don't get grace.
	They don't get polite society.
	And speaking of jokes, I'll leave you on this note.
	Because we're about to impeach Trump for no reason whatsoever.
	I guess we're going to relitigate the 2016 election.
	We're going to overturn it, and Hillary Clinton is going to be the president.
	Turns out, we have video evidence from a recent interview on PBS NewsHour.
	She already thinks that she is the president.
	He's either lying or delusional or both.
	There was no subpoena, as he says in a tweet this morning.
	So maybe there does need to be a rematch.
	I mean, obviously, I can beat him again.
	I can beat him again.
	She won.
	Walking through the woods of Chappaqua.
	I'm the president.
	I'm the president.
	All of the people from the sanitarium are running trying to Hillary, get back in your straitjacket.
	That is our show.
	And that, by the way, by the way, they're trying to overturn the 2016 election.
	That could have been our national destiny.
	That could have been our president.
	And we avoided that.
	Absolutely wonderful.
	And President Trump is showing his peach emoji to everybody.
	Who can help but laugh?
	Not just at Hillary.
	Not just at Trudeau.
	Who could not help but laugh at all of that?
	That's our show.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	I will see you tomorrow.
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