Ep. 450 - Everything You Need To Know About Impeachment
Congressional Democrats call two “star witnesses” to testify in the impeachment inquiry today, Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, and Republican Jim Jordan reduced them both to a sputtering pile of mush in about 25 seconds. We will examine everything you need to know about impeachment. Then, a surprisingly sensible take on transgenderism from a notoriously senseless source: Hillary Clinton! We will analyze the Left’s gender fault lines. And finally, the Mailbag! Date: 11-14-2019
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Congressional Democrats call two star witnesses to testify in the impeachment hearing.
Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent.
Meanwhile, Republican Jim Jordan reduced them both to a sputtering pile of mush in about 25 seconds.
We will examine everything you need to know about impeachment.
Then, a surprisingly sensible take on transgenderism from a notoriously senseless source.
Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton.
Unbelievable.
We will analyze the left's gender fault lines.
Finally, the mailbag.
All that and more.
more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
By the way, I want you to know I'm considering titling my next best-selling blank book, Everything You Need to Know About Impeachment, because you don't need to know anything about impeachment because it's a complete farce.
And we found out that it was a farce today.
I guess it's not quite true.
It's worth knowing exactly what's happening in the impeachment hearing just so you can see how...
Transparently political, nakedly partisan, hacky, this whole thing is.
It has no basis in the law, no basis in the Constitution, no basis in reality whatsoever.
Who are the key figures?
The star witnesses That the Democrats called forward today that were supposed to sink President Trump.
Two guys, Ambassador Bill Taylor.
He was a soldier.
He worked as a legislative assistant for the Democratic Senator Bill Bradley.
And then he worked at the State Department under Bush and Obama.
He is key here because Ambassador Taylor, ambassador to Ukraine, Had texted the ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, and asked him, are we now saying that security assistance and White House meeting are conditioned on the investigations into Biden?
So he's the one who texted the ambassador to the EU to say, is there a quid pro quo, more or less?
Now, what's funny is we already have testimony from Sondland that there isn't a quid pro quo and that this is all just a big misunderstanding.
But anyway, that is how Ambassador Taylor fits into this.
The other guy who fits in is George Kent.
George Kent is a deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
And he is a career foreign service guy.
Now, Ambassador Taylor opens this up and if he's going to be the star witness, right?
So, So, Ambassador Taylor should come out there and just say, here it is, I've got the smoking gun, here's the evidence that President Trump engaged in some corruption, and here's how I know it, and here's what I saw and what I heard.
But he can't do that, because Ambassador Taylor didn't see or hear anything.
He has no first-hand information whatsoever.
In fact, as he pathetically revealed today in this testimony before the Democratic Council, Daniel Goldman, He can offer the impeachment inquiry absolutely nothing other than to tell them what he heard from other people.
Mr.
Groban, what I can do here for you today is tell you what I heard from people.
And in this case, it was what I heard from Ambassador Sondland.
Okay, so that was a perfectly honest statement, and at the end of that statement, I think everybody should have gone home, because he said, well, look, I'm here to testify about some rumors that I heard, and a bunch of hearsay, and so I don't know why you didn't get the people that I allegedly heard all this from, but all I can do is peddle in hearsay and rumors.
Okay, I guess we're finished here, right?
But it's the best they've got.
I mean, this is, he is the star witness because he's the best that the Democrats have, and It did not take very long for the Republican Jim Jordan, who is just terrific at ripping these guys apart in testimony, to pretty much reduce Ambassador Taylor to a pile of mealy-mouthed mush.
Let me read it one more time.
Ambassador Taylor recalls that Mr.
Morrison told Ambassador Taylor that I told Mr.
Morrison that I conveyed this message to Mr.
Yarmouk on September 1st, 2019, in connection with Vice President Pence's visit to Warsaw and a meeting with President Zelenskyy.
We got six people having four conversations in one sentence, and you just told me this is where you got your clear understanding.
Which, I mean, even though you had three opportunities with President Zelensky for him to tell you, you know what?
We're going to do these investigations to get the aid.
Didn't tell you three different times.
Never makes an announcement.
Never tweets about it.
Never does to see an interview.
Ambassador, you weren't on the call, were you?
You didn't listen on President Trump's call and President Zelensky's call?
I did not.
You've never talked with Chief of Staff Mulvaney?
I never did.
You never met the President?
That's correct.
He had three meetings again with Zelensky and it didn't come up.
And two of those they had never heard about, as far as I know.
There was no reason for it to come up.
And President Zelensky never made an announcement.
This is what I can't believe.
And you're their star witness.
You're their first witness.
You're the guy.
You're the guy based on this.
Based on...
I mean, I've seen...
I've seen church prayer chains that are easier to understand than this.
Oh, devastating.
Devastating.
And I actually don't even really mean to attack William Taylor here, the ambassador.
He's being dragged before this committee.
I don't think he's exactly eager to do it.
He doesn't come out of this thing looking all that great.
He looks like he has nothing to say because he does have nothing to say.
Jim Jordan gets to the heart of it.
You weren't on the call.
You have no firsthand knowledge of anything.
You don't know anything about the quid pro quo.
And actually you've never even met Donald Trump in your whole life.
Is that right?
Yes, that's right.
But you heard about it from a guy who was at a coffee shop on the phone with another guy who read a newspaper about a third guy that none of it really strikes anybody as the bombshell testimony that we were all waiting for because there's nothing to offer.
So Jim Jordan puts it all into stark light.
And what the Democrats are hoping for here is that you won't watch these clips.
You won't listen to reports about this.
You won't read any of the testimony.
You'll just hear the cloud of impeachment.
And you'll just assume that because the fancy people on TV who wear suits and neckties are telling you with a very straight face that the president has to be removed, that you will come to agree with that as well.
The That's what they're banking on.
It doesn't matter as far as they're concerned if these guys have nothing to say.
It's just got to be the illusion of having something to say.
And Jim Jordan is not going to allow that cloud of vagueness to persist.
He's going to cut to the issue and he does finish the job in this exchange.
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So Jim Jordan cuts through all the vagueness that the left is banking on in this impeachment stuff, gets to the heart of the matter.
And then while he's interrogating Ambassador Taylor, he finishes the job.
Ambassador Taylor recalls that Mr.
Morrison told...
Now, again, this is I hereby swear and affirm from Gordon Sondland.
Ambassador Taylor recalls that Mr.
Morrison told Ambassador Taylor that I told Mr.
Morrison that I conveyed this message to Mr.
Yarmouk on September 1st.
This all happens, by the way.
This all happens, by the way, in Warsaw, where Vice President Pence meets with President Zelensky.
And guess what?
They didn't talk about any linkage either.
Time of the gentleman's expired.
So they didn't talk about it, right?
This is the issue.
Even though the left is making all of these insinuations and trying to become psychics and read the motives of the president, there's no hard evidence of certainly of any crime.
There's no hard evidence of any abuse of power.
There's no hard evidence of any quid pro quo.
Not only is there not evidence of an impeachable offense, they can't even find hard evidence of maladministration, which is not impeachable, and you can read that in the Federalist Papers.
But they can't even find evidence of that.
It's all a bunch of nothing.
Then, again, while talking to the Democratic Council, Daniel Goldman, Daniel Goldman trying to get anything, trying to give some clip that the Democrats can use in this impeachment inquiry, William Taylor admits that there's no quid pro quo.
Ambassador Sondland says to call him after you wrote that.
Did you, in fact, call him?
I did.
And what did he say to you?
He said that I was wrong about President Trump's intent, that there was no quid pro quo.
But did he say anything after that?
What?
Hmm.
Can you change your answer, please, Ambassador?
I'm going to give you one more opportunity, Ambassador, to just completely change your answer because it really throws them off.
So this whole reason that Taylor is here, Taylor is the guy who sends the text to Sondland saying, are you telling me there's a quid pro quo going on here?
And Sondland says, call me, because obviously there was some confusion.
And what the Democrats were hoping is that Taylor would say, and then we found out that this dirty crook Trump was selling out the country and investigating his political rivals in exchange for funding.
But what does Taylor say instead?
He says, yeah, I called Sondland, and Sondland told me that I was misunderstanding this, and there's no quid pro quo.
And then this Democratic counsel's jaw just dropped, and he was very, very upset.
Taylor, in his initial read of the situation, was wrong.
That's what it comes down to, and he even admits it himself.
Ambassador Taylor, the gentleman asked if you could be wrong.
Were you wrong when you said you had a clear understanding that President Zelensky had to commit to an investigation of Biden's before the aide got released, and the aide got released and he didn't commit to an investigation?
Mr.
I was not wrong about what I told you, which is what I heard.
That's all I've said.
I've told you what I heard.
And that's the point.
What you heard did not happen.
It didn't happen.
It did not happen.
This is the key.
You see, at first he starts to try to defend himself and say, no, I wasn't wrong.
But then Jim Jordan comes out and he shows that he was wrong.
So the, the question here is, did Trump engage in the quid pro quo?
Were you wrong when you said, said, well, I wasn't wrong in relaying what I heard second or third hand.
And Jordan says, but that's not the point.
The point is, were you wrong about the thing itself?
And we actually know that he was wrong about the thing itself.
Why do we know that he was wrong about the quid pro quo itself?
Because it didn't happen.
The quid pro quo was supposed to be that Donald Trump is going to withhold military aid to Ukraine until the Ukraine investigates Joe and Hunter Biden.
But Ukraine has not investigated Joe and Hunter Biden, and Trump did release the military aid.
So there was no quid pro quo.
By definition, he was wrong.
And so Taylor doesn't want to just totally come out and admit that he was wrong, even though he's nailed here.
So he starts to change the narrative, tries to change what they're talking about in the first place.
Jim Jordan doesn't let him do it.
You used clear language, clear understanding and commitment, and those two things didn't happen, so you had to be wrong.
Mr.
Jordan, the other thing that went on when that assistance was on hold is we shook the confidence of a close partner in our reliability.
And that...
That's not what this proceeding is about, Ambassador Taylor.
That's not what this whole thing started on.
The time of the gentleman has expired.
Ambassador Taylor, did you want to finish your answer?
No, that's good, Mr.
Chairman.
Yeah, you don't want to finish his answer.
And that omission is an admission that the guy got it wrong because when Jordan nails him, then Taylor all of a sudden says, well, what was happening was we were risking our alliance with Ukraine and we were making our ally feel a little bit uneasy.
And say, hold on, wait a second, what are you talking about?
We're here today to determine if an impeachable offense was committed by withholding aid to Ukraine.
If there was a quid pro quo even.
And you're just saying that there's no evidence of that at all.
So now you want to turn the tables and say this is about if we're making Ukraine feel uneasy?
Not only is that not an impeachable offense, not only is that not, there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not what anybody here suggests that they're talking about.
You know that the left is on the ropes here because they're constantly trying to move the goalposts.
And fortunately, we've got some pretty good guys up there on the Hill who are not allowing that to happen.
How about George Kent?
George Kent, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
Kent actually admits Well, he's speaking to the Republican Representative Stefanik, that the investigation, rather, that is being requested here into corruption in Ukraine and the 2016 election, and even the Bidens, is perfectly legitimate.
So, for the millions of Americans viewing, the first investigation against the owner of Burisma was under President Obama's administration.
That's correct.
And broadly, this is very important, you testified in your deposition that when the State Department evaluates foreign assistance, it is appropriate for them to look at levels of corruption in countries.
That's correct.
And lastly, you also testified that...
And this is your quote.
Issues of corruption have been part of high-level dialogue between U.S. leaders and Ukrainian leaders, regardless of who is the U.S. leader and who is the Ukrainian leader.
And that is a normal issue of diplomatic discussion at the highest level, end quote.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
End quote.
Devastating.
because even if Trump did the worst possible things that Democrats can imagine that he did, there's nothing unusual about that.
There's nothing uncommon about that.
There's a lot of precedent for it.
It's a part of statecraft and it's certainly not impeachable.
We'll get to what this means.
Well, we'll get to Trump's response.
We'll get to the whistleblower on the whistleblower, how the mainstream media is handling it and what it means going into 2020.
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How did we get to this whole impeachment inquiry?
We got to this impeachment inquiry because of a whistleblower, the so-called whistleblower.
I mentioned this yesterday, but I want to just touch on it a little bit more today.
This whistleblower is, according to Real Clear Investigations, a young CIA analyst in 30, 31.
He's a Yale grad.
He actually left Yale right when I got there, so I didn't know him, but I knew a lot of people who know him.
And he worked for Joe Biden.
He worked on Ukraine issues for Joe Biden.
He worked for John Brennan.
He's the deep state.
I mean, he's what you would call the deep state.
And he filed this complaint, which was an absurd complaint, largely just based on public statements the president had made and based on rumors that he had heard, just like we heard from Ambassador Taylor.
And this, he worked with Adam Schiff's office to coordinate this whole, this whole hoax, this whole joke, this whole circus.
And now he's trying to remain anonymous.
And Schiff is lying and pretending that he doesn't know the identity of the whistleblower.
The whistleblower has to be called to testify.
I can't wait for this guy to be called to testify.
I knew a lot of these guys, a lot of guys who like this whistleblower, if the guy is who everyone seems to think he is, We're young, over-credentialed, these guys who, you know, went through Yale, went right into the federal bureaucracy, and think that they have the right to govern this country however they see fit.
Voting be damned.
Presidential elections be damned.
There are the benevolent betters, the self-appointed elites, In the federal bureaucracy who are going to outlast anybody who's elected, and it's so unjust, and it's so un-American.
That guy's got to testify.
A little bit of justice, though, is that there's now a whistleblower on the whistleblower.
According to Fox News' Greg Rhee, a second whistleblower has filed a complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General because the original whistleblower Eric Charamella allegedly, quote, may have violated federal law by indirectly soliciting more than a quarter million dollars from mostly anonymous sources via a GoFundMe page.
So he may have violated federal law by cashing in on the whistleblowing.
The whole thing gets tawdrier day after day.
First, we were told by the mainstream media, of course, that this was a totally honorable, wonderful whistleblower.
Then we find out, wait a second, he's a career...
Bureaucrat.
Wait a second.
He worked for Joe Biden.
Wait a second.
He worked for Joe Biden on Ukraine policy.
Wait a second.
He worked for all these guys who have been trying to take out Trump and who are political rivals to Trump.
And the intelligence community inspector general said there were three clear pieces of evidence that he would have an arguable political opposition to the president.
That he would have an arguable political motivation.
Just total BS like the whole thing.
President Trump, in his characteristically subtle reticent, nuanced way responded to the impeachment inquiry and he cut right to the heart of the matter.
What's going on now is the single greatest scam in the history of American politics.
The Democrats want to take away your guns.
They want to take away your health care.
They want to take away your vote.
They want to take away your freedom.
They want to take away your judges.
They want to take away everything.
We can never let this happen.
We're fighting to drain the swamp, and that's exactly what I'm doing.
And you see why we have to do it.
Because our country is at stake like never before.
It's all very simple.
They're trying to stop me because I'm fighting for you, and I'll never let that happen.
Yeah, pretty much sums it up.
I can't find a single flaw in what the president just said.
That's what it's about.
I would not believe it, you know, if he were making some claims or covering something up, or if he were really...
But he's not.
He's just...
I'm saying it very basically how it is.
The Democrats are trying to overturn that election and stop him because they oppose him politically.
And they're trying to use impeachment as a tool.
They've been trying to do it since before he took office.
They're trying to use impeachment as the way to do that.
They're getting a lot of help from the mainstream media.
There's an incredible new analysis out which shows just what we are up against.
It's just a bad idea.
I know even some conservatives think that we ought to use impeachment more than we do.
I don't think that at all.
I think impeachment should almost never be used historically.
It has rarely been used, never for something as frivolous as this, and it poses a real threat to the country.
Then we'll get to, shockingly, how Hillary Clinton has something sensible to say and the mailbag.
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So Trump says this is all total BS. Cuts to the heart of the matter.
How is the mainstream media covering it?
Well, here's how CBS News is covering it.
And there we have it.
Day one of the first public hearings in terms of impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump are now in the history books.
Some devastating testimony today from two of America's most respected diplomats who have served both Republican and Democratic presidents.
Yeah, it was devastating testimony for the Democrats.
It was devastating testimony for them.
But this is what they do.
I told you at the top of the show, what they're going to do is, regardless of how bad the impeachment inquiry goes and the proceedings go for Democrats, and you heard it, you heard it with your own two ears, it's going very badly for them.
But it doesn't matter.
Because the fancy people in the suits and ties will go on television and tell you it's all really, really bad for the president.
And they'll use it to overturn the election.
And at the very least, because they're not going to be able to throw him out of office, they're going to use it to hamper him in 2020.
There's a Newsbusters analysis, Media Research Center, which does Newsbusters.com.
Media Research Center did a study of the network news.
We're talking about ABC, CBS, and NBC. Evening newscasts since 2017.
What they found...
Is that the news shows cover Trump with negative spin 96% of the time.
How do they calculate that?
The way they do it is they take all explicitly evaluative statements about Trump or his administration from reporters or anchors or nonpartisan sources.
So we're not talking about when the talking heads come on, the pundits and the commentators and they have their own perspective.
We're talking about the people who are supposed to be objective.
And they then take out the partisan sources, they take out all the neutral statements, and they just look at evaluative statements.
96% of them are negative, and it's all about impeachment.
They're dedicating more than three-fifths of all administration news coverage on the networks to this impeachment nonsense.
They are also using secret sources, because if they used real sources, they would be shown to be liars.
So out of 172 news reports, the Strong majority of them, 59%, 59% relied on unnamed sources for their so-called facts about impeachment.
It's BS. It's totally bogus.
And they are counting on this vagueness on people's eyes glossing over to put it past the American people.
Impeachment is a terrible idea.
We've used it now four times, threatened it.
Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.
Nobody has ever been removed from office as president through impeachment.
Johnson was acquitted.
Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.
Bill Clinton was acquitted.
Now we get to Donald Trump.
I think it's a very good thing in this country that no president has ever been removed explicitly through the process of impeachment.
What that does, what the impeachment process does, is reduces the role of the executive, which is a co-equal branch of government, and it makes it subservient to the legislature, kind of like what we have in the United Kingdom, a parliamentary-style government.
The founding fathers of this country, in their wisdom, did not give us that sort of government, because that sort of government is chaotic and And less representative of the American people and far more radical and far less conservative.
We need those checks and balances.
And you should not be able to throw out a president just because you dislike him politically.
Even if there's evidence of some sort of crime, there's a very high threshold.
You're not going to ever impeach the president over a parking ticket or for jaywalking.
It's got to really be a political crime.
It's got to be a high crime misdemeanor.
But what we're seeing here...
You heard the clips yourselves.
What we're seeing here is Democrats trying to overturn this presidency on nothing.
That must be resisted.
That's, by the way, the only reason you have to pay attention to this It's not because it is particularly illuminating.
It's not.
It's a bunch of hacks, hack Democrats trying to throw out the president.
But you've got to pay attention because you are going to be lied to by the mainstream media about this.
And it could be really damaging and set a really dangerous precedent.
Shockingly, this is unbelievable, Hillary Clinton said something almost sensible.
Hillary Clinton was asked on her pre-campaign tour, I'm sorry, I mean her book tour with her daughter, about whether women have concerns about transgenderism.
And she said, yes, there is...
A legitimate concern.
There's a legitimate concern that women should have.
This is all relatively new.
People are still trying to find the language for it, trying to sort it out.
I think in the right mindset this can be understood, but it's going to take some time.
Fair point.
She says there is a legitimate concern about women's lived experience and the importance of recognizing that and also the importance of recognizing self-identification.
So she's saying, look guys, maybe pump the brakes, maybe slow down a little bit here.
That is very important because in the very shallow way that this is being discussed, what the radical leftists want you to believe is that The people who accept the unbelievably radical, incoherent, and brand new idea that a man can become a woman just because, just by thinking so, that those are the good guys.
Those guys are fighting for freedom and equality and justice.
And that anybody else who believes otherwise, including people like Hillary Clinton, are on the wrong side of history.
They're unjust people.
They're keeping freedom away from people.
That is absurd.
We need to pump the brakes on that.
We need some checks and balances in that sort of discourse.
And it brings me, right before we get to the mailbag, it brings me to one of the wildest things I saw on Twitter all day.
Worth mentioning.
It was a hashtag which said, hashtag thanksbirthcontrol.
I'm sure there are a lot of young men out there who have tweeted that hashtag thanksbirthcontrol.
But this was actually women who were tweeting thanksbirthcontrol.
And here's what they said.
One woman, we're going to block out their names because I don't want to embarrass them.
I just want to point out how absurd their ideas are.
One woman tweeted out, I love the freedom to plan if or when to get pregnant.
Right now, my choice is fur babies, meaning like dogs and cats.
Real babies, maybe later.
Thanks, birth control.
Another woman, different woman.
Thanks, birth control, for leaving plenty of room in my life for all the fur babies.
Because honestly, that's all I'm ready for, and that's okay.
The fur babies.
We'll get back to the fur babies in a second.
Another woman tweets out, I love my IUD form of birth control.
More and more each and every day.
I'm grateful that birth control has given me the gift of freedom.
And then Hillary Clinton jumped on it.
She said, reproductive freedom requires access to affordable contraception and it's under attack.
If birth control has changed your life, take a moment today to say it out loud.
Hashtag thanks, birth control.
The ladies protest too much, me thinks.
I don't mean to make fun of these women.
I think there's a lot of loneliness and anxiety and stress and incoherence in the culture right now.
And it's convinced people that they can't have children, that they shouldn't have children.
to say nothing of the other effects of birth control.
It's convinced them that what's empowering to women is not to settle down and make a commitment with a man who's making a commitment to her and have a life together of mutual respect and growing love day after day.
But what's empowering to women is to sleep with a hundred men and basically be used and use other people and then slave away in some corporate office in New York.
And that's the only way that you're going to have a fulfilling life.
And that's obviously a lie.
I'm not I mean, perhaps people find gratification in all sorts of different ways, but on the whole, the data seem to suggest that those kinds of ideas have made women miserable, not just relative to men, but in absolute terms as well since the sexual revolution, since birth control started.
But I want to point out this perverse idea of freedom.
What the second fur baby lady said was, thank you birth control for leaving room in my life for my fur babies, not because that's all I want or desire, but because honestly that's all I'm ready for.
And then you see the other people, Hillary and that other woman, talking about how birth control is giving you freedom.
It's not giving you freedom.
If you are a grown-up and you're not ready to have a baby and the only thing you can really imagine taking care of is a cat, then you're not free.
What this requires is a deeper understanding of what freedom is.
Freedom requires discipline.
Freedom requires that your will is not a slave to your appetites.
A wise man once said that he who sins is a slave to sin.
Which savior of all mankind said that?
I forget.
It was a guy a long time ago said, he who sins is a slave to sin.
The lie that we are told is that when we give into our appetites, that is our freedom.
The freedom to pursue our desires and appetites to no end.
To eat a lot of food and do a lot of drugs and sleep around a lot and drink too much and whatever.
But that actually is not freedom because then those appetites dominate even our will.
They dominate even our own maturity.
And we're not capable of very basic things that everybody was capable of until recently because we have become slaves to those desires.
And this is true, obviously, throughout the sexual revolution, but this is true in so much of our culture, which is given into a cultural decadence.
And we think of that as a way of liberating ourselves And we find that when we've thrown off the yoke, the chains of traditional morality, we have ensnared ourselves in a far, far more difficult and devastating slavery.
Just a little observation about a very, very stupid hashtag.
Let's get to the mailbag first.
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You know, it occurs to me that that sort of freedom idea Applies to impeachment as well, because the appetite, especially of the left, is to throw President Trump out of office and not wait for the next presidential election and not win it fair and square, just throw him out and force that desire on the country.
They think this is liberating.
It's not liberating, because what you have to do in the process is undermine those great structures of government, the separation of powers, the contemplative nature of our republic, and the reliability of our elections.
You've got to throw all of that away.
In the name of freedom, what you're doing is taking away the basic political freedoms that we've all enjoyed and that have allowed us to thrive.
It's a real trick.
I mean, it's a trick that the devil plays, which is why Jesus talks about this in the Gospels, because we think that we are pursuing our own freedom that way, and actually it's being stolen away from us.
First question from Trent.
Hi, Michael.
Like you, I took a friend for some money at the Trump victory in 2016.
He gave me three to two odds.
My question is, would it be wise to double down?
I'm curious if Ben would be willing to place a second wager with you again.
Thanks.
Three to two is pretty good.
I got four to one from my pal, Mr.
Ben Shapiro, and I've got the check right in the back on my set there.
I took him for 400 bucks in 2016 because President Trump won, and I think you should absolutely double down now, and you don't even need to be given odds.
You could take even odds on this.
Because President Trump, if the election were held today, would win 57 states.
Anything could happen, of course, and the Democrats haven't picked a candidate yet.
The field is looking very weak.
That's why Bloomberg and Hillary are looking at trying to jump back in.
As of right now, I would say Trump's re-election chances look pretty good.
But next November is a long, long way away.
Next question from Leah.
I just recently watched Divine Plan, a documentary about the alliance of Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan against communism.
It basically showed both these men believed in God and his divine plan to defeat that evil.
I was wondering what your thoughts were on this idea.
Thanks.
Yes, Ronald Reagan's faith is something that has not been talked or written about very much.
He wrote a really beautiful poem called Life when he was only 17 years old about providence, more or less, and about Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.
It's a really profound poem and it shows a probing mind even at that young age.
After he was shot, he said very clearly, wrote in his diary that he knew he had to dedicate his life to God.
He is one of the most faithful men in public life that we've seen in recent years.
What people get wrong when they look back, especially conservatives, when they look back at the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union is they think of defeating communism in primarily economic terms.
But it wasn't primarily about economics.
It was primarily spiritual.
Winston Churchill, who Ronald Reagan quoted in his Time for Choosing speech against communism, said, when great forces are on the move in the world, we learn that we're spirits, not animals.
Something's going on in time and space and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.
That's what it was about.
And when you look at the evil empire, as Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union...
And you look at its indictment for its atheism, its anti-Christianity, the economic issues flow naturally from that, the protection of property rights and the natural law.
But if you just try to make it an economic issue, it just simply doesn't make as much sense.
Next question from Johnny.
My question springs from America's greatest quid pro quo.
The Democratic delivery of American taxpayer dollars to illegal aliens.
Do you think John Roberts will squeal like a pig and side on the Mexican government's request to continue DACA as an American policy, or will he side with the law?
This is a very colorful way to ask this, but the question is, will the Supreme Court overturn DACA? I think there's a very good chance that they will.
President Trump seems to think there's a good chance that they will, so he's sending out tweets basically saying that he won't just deport everybody en masse if they do overturn DACA. He's trying to encourage them to do that, and he's smart to do it because the court has become incredibly politicized in recent years.
Particularly by John Roberts, actually, who was a Republican appointee, even though he doesn't behave like that when push comes to shove.
The Supreme Court watches the news and they watch the election returns, and so I think there's a good chance.
I'm cautiously hopeful.
From Alex, my question is, if self-marriage is now a thing, Then what do you think self-divorce will look like?
People now are marrying themselves, so what will it look like when they get divorced?
Very, very ugly.
That's what I think it will look like.
No, I think actually it's a sort of profound question put in funny terms because I think this obsession with the self inevitably...
Ends in divorce.
Self-marriage inevitably ends in divorce because a man wrapped up in himself makes a small package indeed and we are not sufficient unto ourselves and we will come to hate ourselves if we think that we are just the be-all and end-all.
We have to ground our identity not just in our paltry little selves but in God himself, in the ultimate good, in the I am that I am.
That's the essence of being.
It's the only place where you will find satisfaction in your identity.
From Kate, given the additional temptations and many fans infatuation with celebrities, do you think there is an inherent risk in a married person being in the entertainment spotlight?
Did you and sweet little Elisa have any talks about this?
Thanks.
Well, I guess if you're putting me on the Z list or, you know, bottom of the list of celebrities, Then, where are all my groupies?
That's what I want to know.
Bring on the groupies, man!
All I ever get are these really nicely dressed young Republican types who ask very articulate questions and go to church.
So, come on, this is not what I was promised.
I do think that there is this intrinsic risk of any sort of celebrity.
And I don't just mean in entertainment or politics or anything like that.
Everybody now on social media can become his own celebrity if he tries hard enough.
And It's why you really need to know who you are and what you think before it happened.
I feel really bad for child stars and I feel really bad for young people, even in their early 20s, who become minor celebrities before they know what they think and who they are and when they're still immature.
It does not end very well and you can easily give in to temptations if you don't have a very good reason not to.
So I think it's...
A major, major temptation, and it's simply not...
Unfortunately, many people who are attracted to the limelight are a little unstable, as you may have noticed.
And so that's always going to be that way.
But if you do not know who you are, if you are not grounded in some kind of transcendent moral order, I would recommend you refrain from getting too much of that spotlight.
From Benjamin, who's a better Catholic, you or Matt Walsh?
This has been a heated debate among these skinny boys and Matt Pack followers.
Thanks.
You know, Catholicism is so defined in many ways by the guilt, the Catholic guilt that people feel so.
So I guess the best Catholic would be the one who feels like the worst.
And so in all of my humility, I would have to say that I am a far, far worse Catholic than Matt Walsh.
See if you can figure that one out.
From Todd.
Hey, Brookhouse Knowles, what are you still doing in California if Florida is good enough for President Covfefe?
Why isn't it good enough for you?
Would love to see you out here.
Thanks.
I love Florida.
It's a super great place.
But when I leave California, I'm going to the greatest city in America, Mobile, Alabama.
It's pretty close, right nearby.
Maybe I'll come by and visit.
From Rafi.
You recently rejected the idea of the ideal person as being alone and one with nature.
Isn't this a fundamental rejection of John Locke and other enlightenment political theory?
John Locke is invoked by the left, libertarians, and many on the right as well.
Shouldn't you be more explicit about your rejection of Locke and what your political theory is based on?
I thought I had been very explicit.
I am certainly not a Lockean.
I mean, to reduce these men to just one idea or one book is kind of silly, and there are many contributions that John Locke made which I like very much, but I do not ground my political philosophy in the philosophy of John Locke.
If I had to pick one sort of modern political philosopher to point to that explains my ideas, I would point to Edmund Burke, who is the founder of what would be considered conservative political philosophy in the modern era.
And Edmund Burke said that John Locke's Second Treatise of Government is one of the worst books that was ever written.
John Locke, the reason that I reject his sort of description of the origins of humanity is because they're simply not true.
They have no basis in reality.
And we could go on and talk about that for a very long time.
But primarily what I find insufficient about that sort of ideology, which is liberalism or classical liberalism, is that it's so overly focused on contracts and consent and these kind of clinical exchanges between people is that it's so overly focused on contracts and consent and these kind of clinical exchanges between people I know that these days a lot of people like to use the term classical liberal as a synonym for conservative, but I certainly don't do that.
I wouldn't call myself a liberal or a classical liberal.
I'm a conservative to describe my politics.
A big distinction here would be John Locke and his followers looking at politics primarily through a lens of rights, whereas I look at politics, like Edmund Burke would and like conservatives tend to, primarily through the lens of duty and bonds of affection and bonds of loyalty and love.
Those are Wildly divergent views.
When I was a young man, I flirted with classical liberalism, but I would encourage people to look beyond just the two or three writers from the Enlightenment and look for more profound depths of political philosophy.
From Brian, what do you think of the French Revolution and would you like to see France return to being a constitutional monarchy a la the Bourbon Restoration?
Funny, we were just talking about Edmund Burke.
I think pretty much what Edmund Burke thought about the French Revolution, which is that it's one of the worst events in the history of the world, and gave us so many of the horrors that we see in modernity today.
Now, is that going to be undone by reinstating some kind of monarch?
I'm not totally convinced of that.
I think France might be kind of far gone, and Attempts to reclaim the glories of the past, like in England, for instance, have not worked out very well.
The tradition doesn't tell us that we can just go back and pick one moment in history and return to that without consequence.
Tradition is an unbroken sort of thing, and so we're going to have to pull the best of what we can from our own tradition, from ourselves, to try to correct this rotten modernity that's given us a whole lot of money and wrecked us in many ways spiritually.
Last question from Joseph.
Hello, Michael.
I was an atheist for a long time.
Now I would like to reconnect with God.
I was very interested in Catholicism.
I am very interested in Catholicism.
And I was wondering, since you're Catholic, if you could make an argument for Catholicism over Protestantism.
Thank you.
Sure, I would be happy to.
You've probably heard many of the other arguments about the historicity of the institution of the Catholic Church and of the unbroken line of succession from Peter through all the popes.
And you've probably heard arguments about Over many of the objections that our Protestant friends make.
So I'm really not going to focus on that.
And I'd like to focus on an argument that really convinced me because I came back from atheism through many Protestant philosophers.
I really bear no ill will toward Protestant philosophers and people who are exploring those ideas.
However, I did land on Catholicism, and I think a lot of it comes to the nature of symbol.
So one big difference between Protestants and Catholics is Catholics believe that the host, the communion wafer, the Eucharist, is the literal body and blood of Christ.
And Protestants, I'm painting with broad brush, but generally speaking, don't believe that.
They believe that it's just a symbol.
And of course, the Eucharist is a symbol.
But what is a symbol?
I mean, what is the nature of symbol when we're talking about Christ?
The incarnation is a symbol.
The incarnate Christ, when the second person of the Trinity takes on flesh and blood, that is a symbol.
But he is still the divine logic of the universe.
He's fully man and fully God.
When we use the word literal as, say, the opposite of symbol, what do we mean?
Literal refers to letters, and what are letters?
Letters are symbols.
What I'm saying is that there is a relationship here between the symbol and the symbolized.
The symbol, you know, what we're talking about, the word, for instance, and the symbolized, that which the word signifies.
And that relationship in Christ, in the church, becomes united.
And mankind needs that regular connection between the physical world and the metaphysical world, between the world of symbols and the world of the symbolized.
He needs that regularly, which we get in the sacraments and we get most clearly in the blessed sacrament of the Eucharist.
It is that combination of not just abstracting and rationalizing everything away from what it means, but uniting it together in the real person of Christ, whose flesh is true food and whose blood is true drink, That is, I think, for people who are atheists and who are exploring religion, that is a concept that I suspect you would find quite interesting.
That's a concept that I think you might find illuminating.
And for people who are on faith journeys, wherever you are on that faith journey, I think that is a real beauty and a beauty that will lead you to a greater understanding of goodness and And that's what we're all after anyway.
Okay, that's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you next week.
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