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Nov. 11, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
49:39
Ep. 447 - Can’t Stump Trump(s)

Don Jr. destroys “The View,” even more Democrats mull a presidential run, Nikki Haley blows the whistle on WH sabotage, and surveys show conservatives and hotter and more dateable than liberals. Date: 11-11-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Donald Trump Jr.
takes no prisoners during an appearance on The View.
Meanwhile, the smart ex-administration officials stay on the Trump train and even more Democrats get ready to jump into the presidential race as the odds of the president's re-election increase.
We will examine why the Teflon don, the Teflon dons, Keep winning.
Nikki Haley blows the whistle on sabotage in President Trump's cabinet.
Surveys show conservatives are hotter and more dateable than liberals.
I've been saying it for years.
And a young MAGA hat-clad hero trolls MSNBC. All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
So much to get to.
The Don Jr. clip on The View is one of the most satisfying things I have seen on network television in my entire life.
I want to get to that.
I especially want to get to the story about how hot we all are.
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Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump Jr.
just...
It was so sweet.
I don't even know how to describe it, so I will give it no introduction other than to say The View made a very, very big mistake inviting on Donald Trump Jr.
to promote his new book, Triggered.
Here is how the interview began.
She's talking about lowering the discourse to his level, which is horrible for this country.
Even if people are working, we don't want to have a country like that.
Do you understand that?
We've all done things that we regret.
Okay, so I want it to be clear here.
They started the fight.
The View started the fight.
The way this is being portrayed in the media is that Donald Trump Jr.
came in there with guns blazing, just going out to lob bombs at the hostesses of The View.
That's not what happened.
Joy Behar started it.
And she said, look, I don't care if people are working.
I don't care if the economy is going great.
I don't care if consumer confidence is very high.
I don't care if all of that is so great.
The discourse has been lowered in this country.
Which is the greatest example of a pot calling a kettle black I have ever seen in my life.
Joy Behar, a hostess of The View.
A show that has almost single-handedly degraded discourse in America.
Truly an example of some of the worst discourse in the American public sphere.
Is hurling this insult at Trump and saying, your father has degraded discourse in America.
This shows you a key fact about Trump, which I think a lot of Trump's critics misunderstand, especially his critics on the right misunderstand this.
What we're pointing out so much of the time, what is clear so much of the time from the Trump era, is not that Donald Trump is the greatest guy that ever lived.
It's not that Donald Trump is the most eloquent guy or the greatest president.
It isn't that.
It's that Trump is better than his critics.
The lesson is that the criticisms lobbed by Trump's critics are actually more applicable to the critics themselves.
It's this total explosion of self-awareness.
Because if you are a hostess on The View, accusing somebody else of degrading discourse, you have lost the narrative.
So Joy Behar starts the attack.
She says, you've degraded our discourse.
Your father's offensive.
And Don Jr.
unloads.
We've all done things that we regret.
I mean, if we're talking about bringing a discourse down.
Joy.
You've worn blackface.
Whoopi.
I'm sorry, and don't...
You said that Roman Polanski...
It wasn't rape-rape when he raped a child.
So let's talk about...
Let's talk about this.
So you want to bring this up?
The question came up...
I did not go in blackface, please.
No, she was not in blackface.
Thank you.
Sorry.
Listen, being black, I recognize blackface.
This I can say.
Okay?
So, no, apparently she doesn't, because Whoopi Goldberg very famously was sitting and laughing at a dinner next to her then-boyfriend, Ted Danson, who was wearing actual blackface.
By the way, I'm not attacking Whoopi Goldberg or Ted Danson for this, but clearly Whoopi Goldberg has a history here with blackface, and you can't use that attack to assault blackface.
Or you can't use the attack of offensiveness to assault Donald Trump or Donald Trump Jr.
or any of them, and then meanwhile deny that your friends and your co-hosts have worn blackface and say it never happened.
It's just gaslighting.
We saw it happen.
We saw the photo of Ted Danson.
And by the way, we saw Joy Behar wearing blackface in the 1970s, and she didn't just wear it.
We didn't just see the photo.
She actually admitted to it on television.
Is that you, Joy?
Oh, you know this picture.
Joy, is that you?
Joy, is that you?
Joy, are you black?
No, I know.
It was a Halloween party.
I went as a beautiful African woman.
Oh, yes, you ain't black.
But that's my hair.
That's my hair.
That is me.
Did you have tanning lotion on, Joy?
I had makeup that was a little bit darker than my skin.
Makeup was a little bit darker.
Okay, so I wore dark makeup to go in a costume as a black person, but that's not blackface.
Because it's only blackface when conservatives do it.
Even though I can't think of a time that conservatives have done it, because Justin Trudeau's not a conservative, Ralph Northam's not a conservative, Ted Danson's not a conservative, Joy Behar's not a conservative.
I could go on and on.
And Billy Crystal's not a conservative one.
He dressed like Sammy Davis Jr.
I mean, we would spend the whole show talking about left-wingers wearing blackface.
And I'm not even attacking them for that.
I'm pointing out the gaslighting.
Because Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar say blackface is terrible.
You can't wear it.
I never wore it.
I've never approved of anybody wearing it.
Yes, you did.
You did.
So maybe before you start throwing stones at Donald Trump for how offensive he is, maybe just take a look at, before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.
So Don Jr.
flips the script down.
This is a key of the Trump era, is that flipping the script.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
If the left is going to attack us in a way that some deem unfair, Trump is going to attack them in that way.
He's not going to unilaterally disarm, and apparently this trait applies not just to the father, but also to the son.
You've broken this piece of ice because I guess this is the fight you wanted.
It's not the fight I want.
Yeah, it is.
But if we're talking about character, if we're talking about these things...
Are you questioning my character?
I'm not questioning your character.
I'm talking about you're questioning my father's character.
I'm sorry, I didn't question anybody.
I simply said that when you're talking about your father's taking more heat than anybody else, that it's not so.
Instead...
As a president?
Yes, as a president.
That's ridiculous.
So, she says, this is the fight you wanted, Don Jr.
No, it's not.
They started the fight.
This is what the left always does to us.
They say, you started it.
You want the fight.
You're bringing it.
No, we don't.
You know, when we go to college campuses, some of us conservatives who go give speeches at college campuses, the left, which becomes often actually physically violent, becomes almost always disruptive.
Accuse us of starting the fight.
We're not starting the fight.
We're giving lectures at college campuses.
That's what college campuses are for.
We're exchanging different ideas on college campuses.
That's what college campuses are for.
The people who are causing the disruption, the people lobbying the attacks, the people who are becoming sometimes violent, they're the ones who are starting and they're gaslighting us.
And for so long, conservatives were cowered by this kind of behavior.
We'd say, oh gosh, they're calling us They're saying we're starting the fight on TV. We don't want to seem...
Because the TV is stacked against us, so they're going to make us look bad, and we don't want to look bad, and we're trying to appeal to the people that the TV appeals to, so we're just going to back down and let the left run roughshod over the culture.
Not just on TV, but in the movies.
Not just in the movies, but on college campuses.
And the thing that people love so much about Trump...
Even more than the mean tweets.
Even more than some of the policy successes, frankly.
Is that he's fighting back.
This is a trait that, after Trump is gone, Trump is a unique figure in American politics.
Once he's gone, you're not going to have candidates like him anymore.
He's one of a kind, okay?
An American original.
But we can at least learn this one lesson from Trump, which is just, don't take it.
Don't lie down and take it.
Even when you're invited into the lion's den on The View...
Don't just lie there and take it.
They start the fight, you finish the fight.
Don Jr.
then goes nuclear at the end of this.
He's prompted by a question from Abby Huntsman, whom I love.
By the way, when I am criticizing hosts on The View, just assume that I'm not criticizing Abby Huntsman, who is a friend of mine for a while, and I like her very much.
However, my friendship with Abby does not excuse the other women on The View, like Joy Behar, who are just absolutely destroying public discourse.
So Abby, though, Abby pushes back on Don Jr.
and says...
Your father is imperiling the whistleblower.
Your father is not following the norms on the whistleblower.
And it's important that we protect whistleblowers.
And whistleblowers are great.
And if you ever reveal the identity of a whistleblower or otherwise punish a whistleblower for blowing the whistle, you're really being a bad whistleblowing sort of person.
Don Jr.
flips the script even there.
I'm outraged because I care about diplomacy in this country.
I care about how we protect the people when they see a wrongdoing, that they go through the proper political channels, and they are protected for doing that.
So you can see that whatever outlet released it.
Abby, but let's not kill ourselves.
The name has been out there for five days.
It doesn't make it right to release the name.
But, Abby, you guys, ABC is right now.
Chasing down a whistleblower about all of the Epstein stuff because those stories were killed.
So, if we're going to have the conversation about the outrage about whistleblowers, you work with CBS, though.
You work with CBS to out a whistleblower who came up with a story that's very shady.
I'm going to ask one question.
I'm going to ask one question.
This is not CBS. No, but you work with them.
That broke this morning.
Can we stick to what she asked in the question?
Just because if we start getting off our fingers...
No, no, no.
Because...
So, you see what Whoopi does in there.
She jumps in the minute that Don Jr.
answers Abby's point.
Whoopi says, no, no, no, we're not talking about the Epstein whistleblower.
We're not talking about the people at ABC News who leaked video to James O'Keefe of our own hosts talking about how ABC News killed the Epstein story.
We're not talking about that kind of whistleblower.
We're only talking about the kind of whistleblower that hurts Trump.
You can't talk about...
She says, you've got to stay on topic.
Don Jr.
is staying on topic.
He's saying, hold on a second.
You're casting aspersions on my father for what?
For saying that he has a right to face his accuser?
All in the name of the whistleblower?
Meanwhile, your network that we are currently on is chasing down whistleblowers for pointing out actually corrupt behavior from this network.
So corrupt...
That they're actually, ABC is working with CBS to chase down this guy who leaked the footage of a host telling the truth about how ABC News killed the story about Jeffrey Epstein, who, by the way, did not kill himself.
Just, that's sort of a sidebar.
He flips the script entirely.
We should learn this lesson all the time.
Do not accept the left's premises.
I was having a debate in Nashville at Politicon with Clay Aiken.
I was supposed to be having a debate with the Democrat Chris Hahn, but it ended up becoming a debate with the moderator, Clay Aiken.
And what Clay Aiken kept trying to do was get me to say the exact words that he wanted me to say.
By which he would get me to accept his premises and look bad.
So one thing he tried to get me to do is he tried to push the same kind of hoax about the Charlottesville rally that the mainstream media pushed, which is that Donald Trump defended neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville.
So he wanted me to say that there aren't...
There weren't very fine people on both sides.
Not very fine people on both sides of the debate over taking down historical monuments.
But specifically the people who chanted, Jews will not replace us.
He wanted me to defend people chanting, Jews will not replace us.
And I said, Clay, what a stupid question.
What a ridiculous question.
Nazis are bad.
I think we all agree.
But he couldn't leave it there.
Because the question he was asking me was more or less, Hey Michael, when did you stop beating your wife?
Any way you answer that question, you look bad.
This is what the left always does.
Flip that script.
Do not accept the premises.
You don't owe them an answer.
Don Jr.
doesn't owe an answer on whistleblowers to The View on ABC. ABC owes an answer on whistleblowers to us.
Don Jr.
doesn't owe an answer on degrading American discourse to Joy Behar.
Joy Behar owes an answer on degrading American discourse to us.
Don't accept the premises.
Don't accept this ridiculous idea that you owe people.
You owe people on the left.
Some kind of answer on, I don't know, little children.
For a while they were saying that the Trump administration was imprisoning children, which isn't true.
These parents were sending their children across the border illegally in violation of the law, and they obviously were being detained and held in custody.
You don't owe an answer to the left on that.
The left kills a million babies a year.
The left is now supporting injecting little children with hormones.
You don't owe an answer to them.
Don Jr.
proved it.
I love it.
I think that's a key lesson of the Trump era.
You can see how dishonest the people are.
The website PolitiFact is actually now...
Lying about a video that we all saw with our own eyes.
We'll get to that in a second.
We'll get to what that means both for the administration in 2020 and for the Democrats running for president because there's a lot of news on both fronts.
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I'll just show you how dishonest these people are and why Don Jr.
needs to go in there and go nuclear.
PolitiFact sent out this tweet, quote, a Trump ad said Democratic presidential candidates, quote, support giving illegal immigrants free health care at our expense.
We rated that mostly false.
Now a Florida GOP leader made a similar statement.
It's still mostly false.
So what PolitiFact, an organization that pretends that it exists to fact check politicians, not biased at all, not partisan at all.
In reality, it's just a leftist website, but they pretend to be neutral.
They pretend to be objective.
They say that the statement that Democratic presidential candidates support giving illegal immigrants free healthcare at our expense is mostly false.
But we have the video.
We have the video from NBC News, from the Democratic presidential debate, where the moderator asks, do you support giving healthcare to illegal aliens?
And not just one, not just two, every single candidate's hand went up.
Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.
So, every hand goes up there.
How does PolitiFact justify their mostly false rating?
They say that the moderator's question did not specify if the healthcare was free.
But it did.
It actually did.
She said, would your government plan provide health care for illegal immigrants?
Provide.
The word provide.
It's giving.
It's bringing it.
It's giving it to them.
It is actual.
Even their BS trying Clintonian sort of twisting the words doesn't work.
It's just an out and out lie.
That's from PolitiFact.
No credibility.
The View?
No credibility.
All of these mainstream outlets just do not command our respect.
And it makes you think a little differently about the president, who's usually the object of their ire.
Even in the administration, you know, we had been told All the really smart people, all the fancy people who wear jackets and ties and live in the beltway, they said, look, Trump might be terrible.
I'm talking even about right-wingers.
They'll say, Trump might be terrible, but at least we have responsible people in the administration.
Good, serious, responsible people defending the rule of law, defending our institutions and our norms.
People like, I don't know, Rex Tillerson, former Secretary of State.
People like John Kelly, former Chief of Staff.
They're the good guys.
They're the one defending our norms and our Constitution.
Trump is the one destroying it.
Except now, in a new book, in a new interview, Nikki Haley is saying that it was actually guys like Tillerson and Kelly who were undermining our norms, undermining our institutions, undermining our Constitution.
Nikki Haley writes in her new book, quote, Kelly and Tillerson confided in me.
That when they resisted the president, they were not being insubordinate.
They were trying to save the country.
Here's Nikki Haley.
Secretary of State Tillerson went on to tell you the reason he resisted the president's decisions was because if he didn't, people would die.
Do you memorialize that conversation?
It definitely happened?
It absolutely happened.
And instead of saying that to me, they should have been saying that to the president, not asking me to join them on their sidebar plan.
It should have been, go tell the president what your differences are and quit if you don't like what he's doing.
But to undermine a president...
Is really a very dangerous thing.
And it goes against the Constitution.
And it goes against what the American people want.
And it was offensive.
That's right.
That's absolutely right.
And this is where I come, this is where I begin when I'm evaluating something that the President has done.
I do not begin from the position that Trump is always right and I love everything he's doing.
Whether that's on policy, whether that's on executive action, whether that's on his behavior.
That's actually not where I begin.
And I do have some policy problems with the president.
For instance, I didn't like the First Step Act.
I thought that was a mistake.
I felt that health care could have been handled a little differently.
So there are some policy differences.
However, where I begin is from a position of assuming the best of the president And maybe the corruption of the mainstream media.
Why do I assume that?
Because that's exactly the opposite of the script that I'm being told by the mainstream media.
And I've just been fooled one too many times.
The media have told us that Trump colluded with Russia to overturn the 2016 election.
That he should be impeached for his tax problems.
That he's a racist and a bigot and a Nazi and a terrible person.
And they've been lying the whole time.
And so I just approach these questions...
Not even with treating these guys differently.
I won't even say that I treat, I begin assuming Trump is really great and the media are really terrible.
I just begin with a little skepticism about those claims.
And I give a little bit of grace to the president because it's the opposite of what we're getting.
And usually that appears to be the right way to go.
You can even see this with the ex-Trump administration officials who have done well.
The ones who have done well, the ones who have positioned themselves well, are the ones who don't throw him under the bus, like Nikki Haley, or, in this case, like Jeff Sessions.
So Jeff Sessions, former Attorney General, who actually did sort of get done wrong by the President.
I mean, he was the subject of many mean tweets from the President that could have...
Jeff Sessions has not come out and criticized the President.
Now he's running for his old Senate seat.
What's interesting about this is not that Sessions wants to run for Senate.
I thought for months that he would run for Senate.
What's interesting about this is that Sessions is running for Senate.
Not against the president, but on the president's record.
Here is the opening ad of his would-be campaign.
The opening ad doesn't even talk totally about his record.
It talks about the president's record.
He airs the ad and then he talks about it to Tucker Carlson.
When I left President Trump's cabinet, did I write a tell-all book?
No.
Did I go on CNN and attack the president?
Nope.
Have I said a cross word about our president?
Not one time.
And I'll tell you why.
First, that would be dishonorable.
I was there to serve his agenda, not mine.
Second, the president's doing a great job for America and Alabama, and he has my strong support.
He has your strong support.
Do you have his strong support?
Well, I hope so.
I think he will respect my work.
I was there for the Trump agenda every day I was in the Senate, no doubt about it.
I was the first Republican, first senator to endorse him.
Yes.
We pushed his immigration agenda, his trade agenda, and began to work to a more realistic foreign policy.
I love this answer.
The president has my support.
Okay, well, do you have the president's support?
He goes, I hope I do.
But it's not about me.
That's the subtext of what Jeff Sessions is saying.
He goes, I hope I have the president's support, but my support for the president is not simply some kind of calculation to get him to help me.
It's not a quid pro quo, if you will.
My support of the president is...
For what the president is doing.
Because not only is it not about me, it's not even really about Trump.
It's about what Trump is doing.
This is an important lesson for all of us.
When people want to assail the administration, go after them on what they're doing.
I mean, look, we can have a disagreement about something like the First Step Act, for instance.
But don't go after them for yourself.
It's not about you.
Look, if you're serving the president as chief of staff like John Kelly or secretary of state like Rex Tillerson, if you disagree with the president's agenda, then don't take the job.
There's no shame in that.
If the president asks you to serve and you say, look, I disagree with what you want to do, so I'm not going to serve.
Okay, fair enough.
The worst thing you could do is go in there and then undermine your own boss and sabotage your own job.
That's making it all about you.
And a lot of people are doing that these days in politics.
Not just people working in the administration, but senators and congressmen and even pundits and rank-and-file voters.
They're making it about them.
What is this commentary going to do for me or say about me?
What is this time I serve in the administration going to do and say for me, me, me?
What does this vote say about me?
And how will it reflect on me?
It's not about you.
That's so much of the problem that we're seeing in the country.
It's not about you.
We're living at a time of intense political narcissism, egotism, and pride.
Pride.
We have a whole month that celebrates pride.
We have a whole internet structure now that exists to gratify each of us individually, to accumulate likes, to accumulate views, to sort of worship at the altar of the self.
Each and every one of us is the 2006 time person of the year because that year it was you.
And we need to push back against this and say, hold on, I'm willing to subdue and restrain my ego and even my own desires to To accomplish something outside of myself, to accomplish something for the country.
That was the Jeff Sessions argument.
That's the Jeff Sessions argument going into the Senate race, and I think that's absolutely terrific.
Now, It's not just conservatives.
It's not just wishful thinking, I think, that is saying that Trump's looking pretty good compared to his critics.
I'm always aware of that.
I understand, look, I'm a conservative.
I vote Republican.
I don't want to just get trapped in a little bubble.
But I don't think it's just us.
I don't think it's just us who thinks Trump is looking good right now.
I think the Democrats are terrified that Trump is looking good right now.
That's why even in a field that had over 20 candidates or 25 candidates, there are more Democratic candidates about to jump in the race because they do not believe That any of those jokers on the stage are going to beat Donald Trump next November.
We will get into which candidates are running and which eternal candidate still will not be able to give it up.
I'm talking about the person who totally didn't kill Jeffrey Epstein.
Or I'm just because he killed himself.
So obviously I'm not.
Or did he not?
Maybe he didn't kill himself.
We'll get to all of that in a second, but first I've got to say about Facebook and YouTube.
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So head on over to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
We may have a new candidate in the Democratic race.
I can't say we officially have a new candidate yet because there has not been a formal announcement.
But this candidate has officially filed paperwork to run in at least the Alabama primary because there was a campaign deadline.
And so this candidate got in there early before that deadline was over.
I'm not speaking about Hillary Clinton.
We'll get to her in a second.
I'm speaking about what obviously the Democrats want.
In 2019, intersectional Democrats, populism, socialism, obviously what the Democrats are clamoring for is one of the richest men in the world, a billionaire from New York, Michael Bloomberg.
Mike Bloomberg...
He's been signaling, not just for weeks and months, but years that he wants to run for president.
He's been signaling that he wants to run for president since the year 2000, and he's never quite done it.
Why not?
Because Mike Bloomberg, who, look, I lived in New York when Mike Bloomberg was mayor.
Mike Bloomberg ran for mayor of New York as a Republican.
No one really thought he was a Republican, but he figured he'd have the easiest time running as a Republican.
He runs, he wins, he then quickly became an independent, then eventually he registers as a Democrat.
So what are Mike Bloomberg's politics?
Mike Bloomberg is what It's often referred to as the fiscal conservative social liberal.
And I think even those terms are a little silly.
What is it to be a fiscal conservative?
The history of conservative philosophy encompasses many economic ideas.
What does it mean to be a social liberal?
What it basically means is that Mike Bloomberg is a greedy Democrat.
That's what it means to be a fiscal conservative social liberal.
It means I want...
To redefine marriage, I want to have policies that kill babies.
I want to support legal infanticide.
I want people to do whatever they want.
I don't care that much about the culture.
It doesn't interest me.
I've got my penthouse up here.
I can live whatever life I want, and you ruffians on the ground can fend for yourselves.
But, at the very least, I want to keep more of my money.
Greedy Democrats.
That's what it is.
And this is not...
A popular position.
If you live on the coasts, if you ever go to elite institutions, if you ever go around those nice cocktail parties in Washington, D.C. or New York or San Francisco or Los Angeles, you will very often hear people say, oh gosh, look, we need to get over this abortion stuff.
We need to legalize abortion, forget about any laws that in any way touch upon what could Reasonably be construed as traditional morality.
But, look, I'm reasonable.
I just want to lower taxes.
If you could have a candidate who wanted to lower taxes and liberalize all of our social policy, he would win the whole country.
He'd get 90% of the vote.
This is what all the coastal people think.
This is what all the graduates of fancy colleges think.
And they're completely wrong.
We know they're completely wrong because there have been polls about this.
The people who identify as fiscal conservative social liberal, the people who are Mike Bloomberg in their politics, constitute about 4.5% of the voting population.
4.5%.
Nobody.
Nobody wants that.
And the fancy people on the coasts who graduated from Harvard don't understand how that's possible.
They say the reason that people don't identify as fiscal conservatives and social liberals is because they're just not educated enough.
No, that's not the problem.
The reason that people don't identify as fiscal conservatives and social liberals is it doesn't make any sense.
Conservative thought has an internal logic to it.
If you defend tradition, if you defend our institutions...
If you defend property rights in the United States, if you defend these things, they all sort of go together.
On the flip side, if you are a radical, if you hate our institutions, if you hate our system of government, if you hate our system of property rights, if you think it's all rotten to the core, there is a sort of internal coherence of leftism.
What does not make sense is taking the simplest, most tempting, most alluring, and most self-serving parts of each and smashing them together.
Well, I'm a complete degenerate on morality, but I'm also greedy.
Let's put those together.
That doesn't make sense.
It's alluring and it's attractive, but it doesn't make any sense.
Which is why I'm still skeptical that Bloomberg will actually throw his hat in the race.
Not because he doesn't want it, not even because he's cowardly, but because he's got very good pollsters, he sees the numbers, and it's probably not going to work out very well for him.
I mean, just to give you an example of the kind of moral blindness of people like Mike Bloomberg...
Listen to an interview he gave just this year, I believe, with Margaret Hoover of the new version of Firing Line in which Mike Bloomberg explicitly defends the communist government of China.
The United States currently accounts for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
China accounts for roughly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.
How do we, even if we get to net zero, and we're doing our part, how do you account and how do you get China, India, and the other countries to be good partners?
China is doing a lot.
India is doing some.
But I think that China is doing a lot.
Yes, they're still building a bunch of coal-fired power plants.
And they're still burning coal.
Yes, they are.
But they are now moving plants away from the cities.
The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public.
When the public says, I can't breathe the air, Xi Jinping is not a dictator.
He has to satisfy his constituents, or he's not going to survive.
He's not a dictator?
No, he has a constituency to answer to.
He doesn't have a vote.
He doesn't have a democracy.
He's not held accountable by voters.
That doesn't mean he can survive if his advisers gave him...
Is they check on him just a revolution?
You're not going to have a revolution.
No government survives without the will of the majority of its people.
What?
So what Mike Bloomberg says is, look, the dictator of China, he's not really a dictator.
He's accountable to his people.
Margaret Hoover says, how is he accountable?
He doesn't have any elections.
He doesn't have any serious democratic mechanisms.
So are you saying that the only way he's accountable is because there will be a revolution?
And then Bloomberg admits, he says, oh, there's not going to be a revolution.
Oh no, that guy's got an iron fist.
No way are you going to get a revolution in China.
So then he's a dictator.
But Mike Bloomberg doesn't want to say he's a dictator because all Mike Bloomberg is concerned with in this discussion is that we keep that economic growth going, we keep boosting that GDP, and we keep getting those cheap Chinese goods, and we keep getting China to buy up our debt,
and we keep getting China to be part of this and we keep getting China to be part of this kind of liberal vision of one world market with ever increasing global governance where national ties, bonds of loyalty don't really exist at all, and countries don't stand for anything other than the relentless pursuit of economic growth.
By the way, I love economic growth.
I think it's a great thing.
I think Irving Kristol was largely right when he said that the three pillars of modern conservatism, and it's ironic because people who use the term neoconservatism as a disparaging insult are usually defining conservatism along the very same lines as the neoconservative Irving Kristol.
Irving Kristol said the three pillars are religion, economic growth, and nationalism.
And what Mike Bloomberg is saying is, yeah, forget that religious stuff, forget that nationalist stuff, forget all that kind of cultural and social stuff.
It's just about economic growth.
Look, if you have enough economic growth, the dictators will be accountable to the people.
And this was the line we were told for decades.
And then Margaret Hoover asked the question, wait, it doesn't look like he's accountable to the people.
And Bloomberg more or less admits, yeah, well, he's not really that accountable.
But look at the economic growth.
That is not going to sell.
It's not going to play in Peoria, not because the voters are so uneducated, but because the worldview doesn't make sense and because it is repugnant.
Now, speaking of repugnance, we might have another candidate in the race.
Our favorite perennial candidate who spent a lot of time in St.
Petersburg when she felt it was time for a change, Hillary Clinton.
Was speaking at a New York Times event, and it's a live event, and she's asked if she's running again.
And of course, she can't say no, because she's trying to figure out the easiest way to jump back into this race.
Final question, what would it take you to run?
I'm sorry?
To run?
To run.
You know, I have always been a very, very slow runner.
And, you know, I am embarrassingly slow.
I've tried to run races, and I am so far behind that I start to walk acting like that was what the plan was all the time.
So...
I don't know that I'm going to take up competitive running right now, but I think you're asking about something else, aren't you?
Well, there's been some teasing and some hinting that maybe you're sitting off to the wings here waiting for some moment.
I think I would have been a really good president.
I think I could have done a really good job.
job.
I think the last election was deeply flawed and that there were so many unprecedented problems in that election that it's almost hard to make sense of.
But, you know, I'm out here traveling around with my daughter, and she's still nursing her newest baby, so we've got our, you know, I've got my grandson with me, and, you know, life is pretty good.
Life is pretty good and I'm totally not thinking about running for president or anything.
That's why I keep sending my senior advisor on television to float the idea that I could run for president.
She's so bad at this.
It reminds me when, when her answer on this, are you running?
What?
What?
Like running?
Like running a race?
It reminds me of that time she was asked why she wiped her email server when the federal government was asking for those records and she just totally bleach-bitted the thing.
And she gave the same answer where she was trying to be cute and it totally fell flat.
That's all I can say.
Did you try to wipe the whole server?
I have no idea.
That's why we turned it over.
You said you were in charge of it.
You were the official in charge.
Did you wipe the server?
What, like with a cloth or something?
I don't know.
You don't know how it works digitally.
Did you try to wipe the whole server?
I don't know how it works digitally at all.
You did not try.
Ed, I know you want to make a point, and I can just repeat what I have said.
What, what?
Did we wipe it?
What, what?
With a cloth or something?
I don't know.
I don't know nothing.
I don't know nothing.
It's Hillary Clinton's answer.
Same thing on running, because she does want to run again.
The point I saw in all of this, though, is obviously the Democrats feel that the field is weak, even though the field has just about every candidate out there.
What is it?
20, 25 candidates when they began.
They feel that it's weak.
And for all their bluster about impeachment and Trump's going to go and he's a dead man walking, they don't think that.
And that's why other candidates are thinking about getting into this race.
They think that Joe Biden is a totally weak frontrunner who's probably not going to get the nomination.
They think Liz Warren is way too radical to...
Win a general election.
They feel the same thing about Bernie.
Plus, with Bernie, you also have the age issue.
They think that he's falling apart.
And then on the maybe more substantive matter, the ethical matter of the norms and the trust in our institutions, let's not forget Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election said that people who don't accept the results of elections are a threat to our democracy.
Meanwhile, now we're three years after the election, and in that very same clip, she's not accepting the results of that election.
She says there were so many problems with it.
It was unprecedented.
It boggles the mind what happened.
The implication here being that it was an illegitimate election, and she wants a redo.
That's what they want.
And that's what the president is up against.
And that's the stakes of the election.
That's the stakes of the political moment that we're in.
The answer to this is not to gloss over all the flaws of our own side.
We certainly shouldn't do that.
But we should be willing to see with clarity the absolute rank corruption and desiccation that we're up against.
And then we have to make A choice.
And the choice to me seems pretty clear.
And the choice is not just a political choice.
It can be a romantic choice as well.
This is my favorite story out today.
There is a new study out.
By the dating app Lumen, which shows that conservatives are much better at dating than liberals.
This company found that right-wingers are more direct than their left-wing counterparts.
You know, we're not that kind of mealy-mouthed, saying one thing and meaning another, and slippery and unctuous and oily.
We tell people what we think.
That's what gets us in trouble on campus and at our jobs and on television and in politics.
The company found that they clearly state, conservatives clearly state to potential lovers what they're looking for in terms of life and romance, and that they also value family and friendships more highly than liberals do.
And they have a smaller and more intimate group of friends.
They're closer, whereas liberals tend to thrive in larger social groups where they don't really know anybody.
Conservatives have friends and intimates, and liberals have acquaintances.
The liberals, the advantage they found for the liberals in this study is that liberals are more carefree and more fun-loving than conservatives.
So, you know, when liberals do get a date, it gets a little bit weirder, I guess.
But for the conservatives, they care much more about these relationships.
They're more direct.
Why is this?
It seems to me it's the same issue we keep going back to and going back to.
Conservatives, at our best, in our worldview, in our philosophy, look away from ourselves.
We look at the world.
We find great awe in the world.
I forget if it was Chesterton or Lewis who said, I think it was Chesterton, who said, we're dying, our culture is in trouble, not from lack of wonders, but from lack of wonder.
There are so many wonders in the world.
People are so beautiful, so interesting and wonderful to talk to people.
But what we're suffering from is a lack of curiosity, a lack of awe from ourselves to even be interested in those other people.
It's the same kind of view of the sexual revolution.
You know, if you look at the consequences of the sexual revolution, ubiquitous high-speed internet pornography, hookup culture, all of the hookup culture is ubiquitous now, too, and many people have experienced that, especially in college.
But when you look at the consequences of that, it's all essentially about the self.
It's about me.
Widespread abortion on demand.
Abortion itself is all about you.
Me, me, me.
At no regard whatsoever for the other person who is killed as a result of this.
All of it.
The consequences of this for children.
An awful case in Texas where the mother wants to inject her son with hormones and block him from going through puberty because she really wants him to be a daughter.
It's all about the self.
And that is corrosive.
It makes people unhappy.
It makes them bad dating partners.
And it's why conservatives do better in the dating scene.
But it turns out that's not the last thing they discovered.
What we've also discovered is that conservatives are hotter than liberals.
Science proves it, according to these studies.
A person's looks apparently affect their politics, and beautiful people lean more toward conservative beliefs, according to a study published by two professors in the Midwest.
If you control for socioeconomic status, you find that more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republicans.
This makes sense, too.
It's not just a joke.
I mean, I kind of joke about it a little bit sometimes, that conservatives are hotter than liberals.
But it does make sense because conservatives tend to be more at peace in the world.
Not that they're always happier, but they're more at peace.
They're more understanding of reality and the reality of suffering and the brokenness of human nature.
And we're not constantly chasing utopias.
And we're not constantly falling apart and focusing on our suffering and on ourselves as the center of the universe.
Because we know that isn't true.
We're more at peace in the world and I'm not surprised that people who have some physical advantages also are more at peace as well.
Just a little nugget to tuck away in there next time you're arguing with your left-wing friends.
Before we go, I have to thank a couple of heroes.
One is a cultural hero, a kid on MSNBC who was asked why he supports Trump, and he gave the best answer I've ever heard.
Every of you told me you voted for the president in 2016.
You're supporters of his.
Why do you like him so much?
And what policies stand out to you that you support?
Well, I would say mainly just the no-nonsense policies, and especially since Jeffrey actually didn't kill himself.
That's awesome, yeah.
That's totally perfect.
I'll wait and see it.
Turning back to Alabama, you guys want to tell me a little bit about the Senate race?
I notice you have your buttons on here.
What are you looking here for in that?
Yeah, so what do you support Trump?
Oh, I just think the policies are really good, especially because Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
Total cultural hero, well done.
Also, we have to thank our very literal heroes today, our veterans.
We should thank veterans every day, but at least we have a day for this.
The day originally was Armistice Day, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.
And then this became a 1954 Veterans Day.
There's some confusion.
People treat Memorial Day and Veterans Day as the same holidays.
They're not Memorial Days for our servicemen who have fallen and made the ultimate sacrifice.
Veterans Day is for the veterans that we see all around us.
Unfortunately, I think it's something like just 1% of Americans have any connection really to the military, serve in the military.
And so I think that's a great thing.
And so it's harder and harder to find them.
But when you do find them today, thank them for their service.
Thank them for defending this wonderful country that we have, keeping us all safe and defending the liberties that we all enjoy.
And I certainly thank all of the veterans who listen to this show.
That's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
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