President Trump responded to Iranian attacks on U.S. servicemen and diplomats last Thursday by splattering Iran’s top military official all over the Baghdad airport. We will examine the brilliant geopolitical strategy behind the droning, and we will attempt to explain why the Left is so upset over the death of the world’s most notorious terrorist. Then, speaking of killing it, Ricky Gervais absolutely slays at the Golden Globes, a new poll shows Republicans’ dilemma looking ahead to 2024, and the movie 1917 highlights a major problem with our culture.
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President Trump responded to Iranian attacks on US servicemen and diplomats last Thursday by splattering Iran's top military official all over the Baghdad airport.
We will examine the brilliant geopolitical strategy behind the droning, and we will attempt to explain why the left is so upset over the death of the world's most notorious terrorist.
Then, speaking of killing it, Ricky Gervais absolutely slays at the Golden Globes.
A new poll shows Republicans' dilemma looking ahead to 2024.
And the movie 1917, Big Golden Globe's winner, highlights a major problem with our culture.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
We begin with the prospect of World War III.
We finish by going all the way back to World War I.
How's that for symmetry?
We will get to all of that and more.
But first, I've got to thank our friends over at Liquid IV.
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President Trump ordered a strike that killed Iranians' top military official.
We actually have here at the Michael Knowles Show exclusive footage of President Trump ordering the drone attack that killed Qasem Soleimani.
What?
They got the shipment.
What?
They got the whole shipment.
I want that son of a bitch dead.
I want him dead.
What am I alone in this world?
Did I ask you what you're trying to do?
Did I ask you what you're trying to do?
I want you to get this fuck where he breathes.
I want you to find this Nancy boy, Elliot Ness.
I want him dead.
I want his family dead.
I want his house burnt to the ground.
I want to go to the middle of the night.
I want to piss on his asses.
Wow.
Harrowing footage.
I'm really glad that the Daily Wire's investigative journalists could get in there and so that we can bring that kind of investigation to you.
This was a great attack.
This was a really great retaliation.
There is some disagreement over this, especially on the left, but even in small slivers of the isolationist right, this was a fantastic decision by President Trump.
On the foreign policy front, it's probably the best move he's made yet, though he's had other really great moves that were unconventional, unexpected, unpredicted.
Every objection to this, every objection to this is wrong.
Rarely are decisions so clearly right in foreign policy, and this is one of them.
And I hate it that Trump is being criticized for it because he made a great call.
What was so great about the killing of Qasem Soleimani?
You need two things in foreign affairs.
Probably the two most important advantages that you can have in international relations are unpredictability and deterrence.
And in one fell swoop, President Trump reinstituted both of those in U.S. policy abroad.
This attack was absolutely perfect in its asymmetry.
Don't forget, Iran has been attacking us, certainly for the entire Trump administration, and back into the Obama administration, and back into the Bush administration.
This has been going on for decades.
And just in the Trump administration, Iran shoots down a US drone.
You remember that?
Just a few months ago.
Trump does not respond.
Trump called off an attack, reportedly, because he realized that a number of people were going to die, and he felt that it was not worth it to kill those people or to risk escalating some kind of conflict over a drone, even though it was a very expensive drone.
Then, Iran launches an attack on Saudi oil fields.
That was back in September.
President Trump does not respond.
He is not conducting a foreign policy that is this exactly symmetrical tit for tat.
Not how it's going to happen.
Then Iran kills an American contractor in Iraq and attacks the U.S. embassy in Baghdad to try to create a Benghazi situation for President Trump.
And when Iran does that, Trump kills their commander-in-chief.
Two seconds.
Just done.
That kind of asymmetry is exactly what you want in a coherent foreign policy.
Soleimani was huge.
Now he's just sort of paint on the walls of the Baghdad airport, but he was huge.
Soleimani was so big that I knew who he was before we killed him.
I don't know a whole lot of Iranian officials, okay?
Most people don't.
And yet, we had heard of this guy because he was so important and probably the most notorious terrorist in the world.
Certainly the most notorious terrorist since al-Baghdadi was killed.
In some ways, Soleimani was worse, though, because Soleimani was a terrorist.
He was directing terrorist operations.
He was guiding...
Actual full-on terrorism, but he also had a role in a nation-state, which is Iran.
This is what makes Iran so dangerous in the world, is they funnel terrorism, right?
They're the number one state sponsors of terror, but they're also a nation-state.
They've had, for now 40, 50 years, one foot in the world order, one foot outside of the world order.
That's why they're so destabilizing.
This sends an important message, not just to Iran, not just to our adversaries in the Middle East.
It sends an important message to North Korea.
It sends an important message to China.
It says we're going to back up our tough talk with action.
And you're never going to be able to guess when that will happen.
Because you could shoot down our very expensive drone.
Maybe we don't do anything.
You can burn down a Saudi oil field.
Maybe we won't do anything.
You can take a British ship hostage.
Maybe we won't do anything.
You can attack our embassy.
Maybe we'll kill your top military official.
And you'll have no idea when that will happen.
You have to back up tough talk with action sometimes.
That's how you keep credibility.
So Trump tweeted at Iran after the embassy attack.
He tweeted at them and said, cut it out, guys.
We're pretty serious here.
And the Ayatollah responded.
Ayatollah Khamenei said, there's nothing you can do.
There is nothing you can do.
And that's been Iran's strategy since the revolution.
That's been Iran's strategy since the 70s.
Play both sides of the world order.
Keep one foot in, one foot out.
Have the threat of global terrorism.
Have the threat of gaining nuclear weapons.
and the whole rest of the world will back off, including the United States, the most powerful country in the history of the world.
This is why it's so important not to let Iran get nuclear weapons, is because these guys do not play by the rules.
They don't play by any semblance of the rules.
And so the Ayatollah says, you can't do anything.
Trump says, yeah, we're going to do something.
There are a number of objections to President Trump's action, They are all wrong.
So let's begin.
Let's just go very quickly through all the objections.
First one is Trump is moving us closer to war with Iran.
This is an objection that has some currency on both the left and the right.
Tucker Carlson on Fox News is voicing this objection.
Bernie Sanders on the left voicing the exact same objection.
Here's Bernie.
Yesterday, President Trump ordered the assassination.
of a top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Iraq along with the leader of an Iraqi militia.
This is a dangerous escalation that brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East which could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars And lead to even more death, more conflict, more displacement in that already highly volatile region of the world.
Tucker Carlson said almost exactly the same thing on Fox.
And I really like Tucker, but both he and Bernie are wrong here.
They're not just wrong that this will bring us closer to war with Iran.
They're exactly wrong.
Because this kind of response, if anything, is greatly reducing the prospect of war with Iran.
How is that possible?
Ronald Reagan knew how this was possible, which is that you get peace through strength.
You get peace through deterrence.
You get peace by the credible threat of violence.
That is the way you, you don't get peace by rolling over.
Okay, in just the past few weeks, Iran has killed the American contractor, attacked our embassy in Baghdad.
The guy that we just killed, Soleimani, is responsible for the deaths of over 600 American servicemen.
They took our sailors hostage under Obama.
Iran started this.
In war, your enemies get a say.
You don't get to determine whether you're at war.
In part, you get to determine it.
I mean, you get to determine your response.
But your enemies who attack you get a say.
And Iran has been attacking us for years now.
So the question is, what is more likely to bring us closer to war?
Rolling over and letting them do whatever they want and kill as many American servicemen as they want?
Or responding, sometimes, asymmetrically, unpredictably, to those attacks.
Obviously, it is the latter.
Trump understands this.
Ronald Reagan understood this.
There is no choice between peace and war.
Only between fight and surrender.
And a national policy of strength is much more likely to deter future violence than a national policy of weakness and isolation.
Ronald Reagan, in his most famous speech perhaps ever, The Time for Choosing speech, put it in precisely those terms.
Now let's set the record straight.
There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace, and you can have it in the next second.
Surrender.
Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement.
And this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face, that their policy of accommodation is appeasement.
And it gives no choice between peace and war.
Only between fight or surrender.
What Trump has done is exactly Reagan-esque.
You know, there are not perfect parallels between Trump and Reagan.
They're their own men.
They behave very differently.
They speak very differently.
And yet, it seems so clear, time and again, that Trump is learning from Reagan.
He's emulating Reagan.
He stole Reagan's campaign theme, Make America Great Again.
Reagan's theme was, let's make America great again.
And Trump, in his Trumpian way, dropped the let's.
It just becomes an imperative command, make America great again.
But in so many ways, Trump is learning from Reagan, and nowhere is that clearer than right here.
There are a number of other objections, including, and this is the one that is probably the stupidest, the objection that if you have never served in the military, if you are a civilian, then you cannot support the policy of responding to Iranian attacks.
We will get to why that one is so dumb and why the left puts it forward all the time.
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All right, so a few more objections to this policy.
The first objection, or the second objection rather, that the previous policy of appeasement was working so well.
That the policy of laying off Iran, give them pallets of cash, thank them for returning our sailors that they take hostage, give them the path to a nuclear weapon, never do anything to upset the Iranians.
We sure wouldn't want this ridiculous country in the Middle East that was taken through violent revolution in the 70s.
We wouldn't want them to be angry at us, please.
So was that policy working very well?
No, not at all.
They're attacking us everywhere.
They're the largest state sponsor of terror.
They are killing our servicemen.
Hundreds of them at a clip.
Obviously that policy, not very good.
Perhaps we should try a new policy.
So much of the Trump era was basically saying, hey...
Those policies under Obama, many of the policies under Bush, they weren't working that well.
Let's try something different.
Well, now we're trying something different, and I suspect it's going to work a lot better.
Then there is the objection.
You hear this mostly from the left, occasionally from isolationists on the right.
You hear, if you've never served in the military, if you are a civilian, then you cannot support responding to Iran's acts of war.
Say, yeah, if you're going to support responding asymmetrically occasionally to Iran's acts of war, you need to go on a list.
If you're a civilian, you can't have an opinion on foreign policy.
That is obviously extremely stupid.
Why?
Well, for one, our founding fathers thought that argument was very stupid.
That's why they gave civilians control of foreign policy.
Our Constitution gives civilians control of foreign policy and it gives civilians control of the military.
So you can reject the argument Right off the bat.
But why does the left make this argument?
Does the left make this argument because they're so supportive of our troops?
I don't think so.
I remember the Iraq war.
I remember the way the left spoke during the Iraq war.
I don't believe that it's because of their great support for the United States military and funding of our military and growing our military.
I don't think it's that.
The real reason they do it is because civilians account for 99% of the population.
We live at a time right now in America where 1% serve in the military.
So, when you say that if you are a civilian, you cannot have an opinion on foreign policy, you immediately shut up 99% of the population, which is what the left has been trying to do since the beginning.
And they don't even really mean it.
They don't even really mean that you can't have an opinion on this response by killing Soleimani if you've never served in the military.
What they really mean is, you can't support it.
You're not allowed to support Trump.
You're not allowed to disagree with us, the left, if you are a civilian.
99% of the population not allowed to disagree with us.
That is obviously absurd.
And then the final objection, people say that Trump is starting a war with Iran to help him politically.
First of all, he didn't start anything with Iran.
Iran started this.
They started this years ago and they've been ramping up their attacks.
But moreover, there is no reason to think that some prolonged conflict with Iran would help Trump politically.
Americans are tired of war.
Specifically, we're tired of war in the Middle East.
So I don't know why you would think that this would help him politically.
Except that it is, right?
His approval numbers are increasing.
Since this strike, his approval numbers have been going up.
Why is that?
Is that because...
Americans want a conflict with Iran?
No, not at all.
It's in spite of that.
I think the real reason that his numbers are improving...
The left is responding in a ridiculous and absurd way.
The left is defending Soleimani.
They're literally defending Soleimani.
The left is extraordinarily upset over the killing of the world's top terrorist.
I couldn't possibly wish, as a right-winger, as a conservative, I could not possibly wish For a better response from the left to this killing.
When will the left get the memo that defending terrorists who kill over 600 American servicemen is not a great electoral strategy?
I don't think they're getting that memo because they have Trump derangement syndrome.
The left is defending Soleimani.
I kid you not.
The mainstream media kicked it off.
The Washington Post referred to Soleimani In their coverage of his killing as, quote, a revered military leader.
revered military leader.
This is only slightly better than when Trump killed the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the Washington Post referred to him as an austere religious scholar, world's most notorious terrorist.
New York Times reporter then decided to one up the Washington Post by, in the wake of Soleimani's killing, posting a video of him reciting poetry.
How is that news?
How is it news that the world's worst terrorist who just got iced once read a poem That's not news at all.
What it shows is that they have sympathy for this guy, and they have antipathy for the American president.
It'd be like on VE Day in 1945, at the end of World War II in Europe in 1945, the big story being pushed by the New York Times on 1945 Twitter is Hitler's paintings.
Look at what a great artist he was.
Look at, he's revered.
Look at, revered German leader.
Killed in a bunker.
Look at his wonderful paintings.
I mean, that's basically the immediate response to the killing of Soleimani.
Not just the media, though.
You've got Colin Kaepernick, who I guess at this point is just a member of the media.
It's not like he's a professional athlete or anything.
He tweeted out, quote, America has always sanctioned and besieged black and brown bodies, both at home and abroad.
America militarism is the weapon wielded by American imperialism to enforce its policing and plundering of the non-white world.
So what Colin Kaepernick is doing here is making common cause with Soleimani.
He doesn't see himself and Soleimani as different because he's some schmucky, dumb...
A football player, former football player, and Soleimani is a murdering terrorist.
No, he sees them as similar because they have a similar skin color.
That's what he's saying.
He's saying America is sanctioning and besieging black and brown bodies, both at home and abroad.
It's the same thing.
The horrible oppression that I, Colin Kaepernick, have felt.
I, multi-millionaire Colin Kaepernick, who's made more money since I... I protested the American flag in the NFL than I ever made actually playing football.
That kind of oppression that I feel is exactly the same kind of oppression that poor old Qasem Soleimani felt.
Obviously a very, very stupid idea.
This is what ideology does to your brain.
This is what racial identity politics does to your brain.
is it causes you to make common cause with terrorists.
Wasn't just a Kaepernick though.
AOC was so angry.
She was so upset.
She accused Trump of war crimes for killing a terrorist.
By the way, just again, I want to reiterate, I make this point every so often, every time this objection comes up.
Killing terrorists, it's not a war crime.
It's not a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Torturing terrorists is not a violation of the Geneva Convention.
If anything, it is a support of the Geneva Convention.
The Geneva Convention protections, all of the kind of protections we have for lawful combatants in war, explicitly exclude terrorists.
Why?
Because the whole purpose of the Geneva Convention is to protect civilians in time of war.
But terrorists don't protect civilians.
They target civilians.
Guys like Soleimani, who play both sides of it, the nation state side, the lawful combatant, uniformed soldier in a time of war side, and the funding terrorism everywhere side, are targeting civilians.
And so if you extend those kind of protections to people who target civilians, you undermine the entire purpose of those protections.
I would not expect AOC to know that, and she doesn't, so I know she watches this show, listens to this show.
Now you understand.
Ilhan Omar, same thing.
She was outraged.
That's the word that Ilhan Omar used to describe the killing of the world's top terrorist.
And then by far the craziest one, Rose McGowan.
Who is an actress, I take it.
She became very popular during the Me Too movement as one of the Me Too victims.
She tweeted out with a bizarre gif of the Iranian flag that had a couple emojis on it.
She tweeted out, quote, Dear Iran, the USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people.
52% of us humbly apologize.
We want peace with your nation.
We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime.
We do not know how to escape.
Please do not kill us.
Hashtag Soleimani.
This is what the left believes.
Okay, this is what the left believes.
They're upset when you disrespect the flag of Iran, of the mullahs in Iran, and they celebrate when you disrespect the flag of the United States of America during NFL games.
She believes, this is what the left believes, that 52% of Americans apologize to Iran, which just killed American citizens, just killed American contractors, just killed American servicemen, tried to attack our embassy.
That 52, the majority of Americans, support Iran and oppose Donald Trump.
That's what they believe.
Rose McGowan has since apologized.
But I think it was just...
I hate to question her motives.
I suspect she still believes those things.
I think it was an apology of convenience.
The Trump derangement syndrome is so bad, the left is now defending Iranian terrorists who've killed hundreds of Americans.
This has almost become comical, all right?
Trump has done this for years now.
He trolled the Democrats into opposing the American flag and mourning for terrorists.
Ted Cruz right now in the Senate is introducing a resolution to praise the Soleimani mission, Why is he doing this?
It should be obvious.
100% of senators should support this resolution.
But they won't.
He's putting them in a very tight bind because by praising the mission, they have to support Donald Trump.
And they hate Trump so much that they're going to defend Soleimani.
That aside, all of that aside, this was a really great move.
Puts Iran in a terrible position.
Now Iran is going to retaliate.
But how can they?
How are they going to really be able to retaliate?
They've already been attacking us steadily for years and increasingly.
And they obviously wanted to ramp this up during an election year.
There were going to be more attacks.
Soleimani was planning more attacks, reportedly.
So, how are they going to respond now?
Previously, they knew that the U.S. wasn't going to do anything because we were so afraid of any further conflict with Iran.
Then Trump kills their top military official.
So how are they going to respond?
Maybe they'll attack Israel.
Maybe they'll try to attack an American base.
If they plan anything really big, though, they're in a position now where The US could glass their country, practically.
I mean, they could glass the political leadership of the country, the mullahs.
Trump tweeted this out.
He said, Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American and badly wounded many others, not to mention all the people he'd killed over his lifetime.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago, some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture, and those targets and Iran itself, all caps, classic Trump, will be hit very fast and very hard.
The USA wants no more threats.
Why do I trust this guy to conduct foreign policy?
Well, as of today, he's the only president not to start a war since 1988.
Trump shares equality with Reagan, which is talking tough.
They talk tough differently, but they both talk tough.
Ronald Reagan was asked his theory on the Cold War.
After decades of detente, Ronald Reagan said, here's my theory on the Cold War.
We win, they lose.
Ronald Reagan one time was doing a mic test on the radio, and he said, I've just signed a law that will permanently abolish the Soviet Union.
The bombing begins in five minutes.
This was a joke, but it went on high alert.
All right, Ronald Reagan talked tough.
They called him a cowboy.
He knew, Trump knows, that the way to prevent war is to be unpredictable and credible in the use of force.
Trump just did it.
My hat goes off to him.
But Soleimani was not the most brutal attack of the weekend.
Not by a long shot.
Actually, even more brutal than Trump's droning of Qasem Soleimani were Ricky Gervais' attacks on Hollywood at the Golden Globes.
They were absolutely magnificent.
We will get to them in just a second.
Then we will get to what all of this means for 2024.
Not just 2020, but looking ahead to 2024.
And finally, we go all the way from World War III to World War I. To discuss 1917, one big at the Golden Globes, and it expresses something very broken in our culture.
We'll get to all that in a bit, but first, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
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Far more cold-blooded, far more brutal than the killing of Soleimani were Ricky Gervais' far more brutal than the killing of Soleimani were Ricky Gervais' attacks on Hollywood last night at the Golden The Golden Globes opening up awards season here in Hollywood.
Awards season is so irrelevant these days that I didn't even know it was happening.
I forgot.
I forgot.
I have worked professionally in show business.
I live in Hollywood.
I am right here at the center of it.
And I forgot that it was going on.
I didn't know until yesterday.
When someone said, oh, you know the Golden Globes is on?
I said, oh, really?
Okay, who cares?
No, probably not.
So Ricky Gervais gets up there.
He's hosted this a number of times in the past.
He said this would be his last time hosting.
And Ricky Gervais didn't care.
He went for the necks of Hollywood.
And he, wow, I just realized the pun there because he opened up the night with an Epstein joke.
So that pun was not intended.
But all of Ricky Gervais' attacks were intended.
He said, I don't care.
I'm leaving nothing on the table.
And I think his monologue was pretty much the only shot that the awards season has to relate in any way to the American people, It was great, and it was great at the expense of the audience in the room, the Hollywood stars, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
He opens the night with a joke about Jeffrey Epstein.
Spoiler alert, season two is on the way, so in the end he obviously didn't kill himself.
Just like Jeffrey Epstein.
Shut up!
I know he's your friend, but I don't care.
You had to make your own way here in your own plane, didn't you?
Oh my gosh, what a great one-two.
He opens up with the Jeffrey Epstein joke, right?
That would have been enough.
But Hollywood can't laugh about Jeffrey Epstein.
They didn't laugh.
They kind of stayed a little quiet.
They kind of groaned.
Which set up Gervais for the actual punchline of his joke, which is, oh, shut up.
I know you're all friends with the guy.
Because they are.
They are all friends with the guy.
And they're all friends with all the Me Too perpetrators.
And they're friends with all of these sex criminals.
And they pretend that they're not.
And they clutch their pearls.
And they pretend to be so nice and wonderful and high and mighty.
He says, yeah, you had to take your own plane here tonight, didn't you?
That one finally got delayed.
It's so awkward.
It was so brutal.
And the attacks only got harsher from there.
He went after every single person in that room for hypocrisy.
And at many points, you could pretty much hear a pin drop.
A superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China.
So, well, you say you're woke, but the companies you work for, I mean, unbelievable.
Apple, Amazon, Disney.
If Isis started a streaming service, you'd call your agent, wouldn't you?
So, if you do win an award tonight...
Don't use it as a platform to make a political speech, right?
You're in no position to lecture the public about anything.
You know nothing about the real world.
Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.
So, if you win, right, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God, and...
That little bit that we had to bleep out there at the end is where Ricky Gervais told people where they could go after they had received their award.
It was a wonderful spectacle.
It was great.
Ricky Gervais is an international treasure.
Why?
Because he showed the gap between Hollywood and the American people.
He showed the gap between the Hollywood foreign press, the international press, the big makers of culture, and the consumers of culture.
And you can't deny that gap because these awards shows have been tanking in the ratings for years now, every single year.
them.
Hollywood cannot even laugh at an Epstein joke.
A joke about an international sex trafficking criminal, pedophile, everything about the guy.
They can't laugh at it.
Because they knew him, because they were friends with him.
They don't understand.
Now, The more interesting level of analysis here is whether or not Ricky Gervais was brave to do this set.
And the conventional wisdom is it was so brave of Ricky Gervais to do this set in front of Hollywood.
Now, in many ways it was because this will hurt his employment prospects in Hollywood.
He was telling these people that they're degenerates to their face, right?
It was absolutely hilarious.
And in that way, it was courageous to do it.
But in another sense...
It wasn't brave at all, because Ricky Gervais knew, because he's a funny comedian, he knew that the audience would love this, that they would lap this up, that they would say, finally, Ricky Gervais, this guy is so good.
This guy gets us.
He deserves credit because it really will irritate his employers, but this will make him so much more popular among the audience.
The only reason that any person is talking about the Golden Globes today is because Ricky Gervais had this great killer set.
And looking ahead on the political scene to 2020, it shows you how absolutely worthless celebrity endorsements are.
The left, they're always shocked.
They say, oh, Hillary Clinton got all the endorsements of Hollywood.
All these big-time movie stars and TV stars.
How did she lose?
John Kerry got all the big endorsements.
Bruce Springsteen.
Puff Daddy.
All these guys.
How did they lose?
Because none of us like Hollywood.
We don't like these people.
For the ones that are good performers, and there are still good performers in Hollywood, even if they're left-wing lunatics, we like watching them perform, and then we want them to shut up.
Because we don't care what they think about politics.
A couple of them have interesting thoughts about politics.
A couple of them are very intelligent and actually know what they're talking about.
James Woods is a good example.
James Woods, great Hollywood star, terrific actor, also very, very intelligent man.
But most actors are not intelligent.
Some are, some are not.
Ronald Reagan, pretty intelligent guy, obviously won the Cold War, knew something about politics.
Most do not.
And so for most of them, most of these absolutely empty-headed celebrities, we want them to go out there and perform.
We like them when they do that.
We don't like them when they yammer on about politics and use the opportunity of accepting golden statues to harangue all of us about how awful we are and how virtuous and wonderful they are.
We don't like it.
Celebrities, nevertheless, ignored the advice.
Michelle Williams, in particular, goes out there.
Michelle Williams accepts the Golden Globe, and she uses the opportunity in a follow-up to Patricia Arquette a few years ago at the Oscars to make a statement about women voting.
But it was a very unclear statement.
She said, women need to vote in their self-interest, whatever that means.
Women, 18 to 118, when it is time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest.
It's what men have been doing for years.
It's what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them.
Don't forget, we are the largest voting body in this country.
Let's make it look more like us.
The world looks like men.
Not from my vantage, because most people on Earth are women, so it looks like women, I guess.
What does that mean?
That doesn't mean anything.
And she knows it doesn't mean...
She's kind of working through the incoherence as she's giving the speech.
So she says, women are the largest voting bloc in this country.
So how come they're not...
How come they're not voting for far-leftist policies?
They need to vote in their own interest.
That's why.
They are voting in their own interest.
How condescending.
How offensive to say that women are just too stupid, except for Hollywood celebrities.
The average American woman, according to Michelle Williams, is a complete idiot.
But the average Hollywood celebrity is really smart.
That's the only way that you can explain why the average American woman doesn't vote the way that the average Hollywood celebrity wants them to vote.
But she's not really talking about women.
She's talking about Hollywood liberals.
It's the same thing Colin Kaepernick's doing when he makes Common Cause with terrorists.
Colin Kaepernick is saying in his tweet that black and brown people need to have solidarity with Iranian terrorists.
That that's the real solidarity.
But he isn't talking about black or brown voting identity groups.
He's talking about radical leftist voting identity groups.
Same thing here.
Michelle Williams is not talking about the group solidarity of women.
She's talking about the group solidarity of Hollywood liberals.
And she's pretending that that means women.
This was a veering and bizarre speech.
You don't really know what she's talking about when it comes to this women's self-interest issue until you realize that she's talking about abortion in particular.
And what's so perverse about this is that as Michelle Williams gives a speech that comes to just be a big full-throated endorsement of abortion, she's pregnant while she gives it.
I'm grateful for the acknowledgement of the choices I've made, and I'm also grateful to have lived at a moment in our society where choice exists, because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice.
I've tried my very best to live a life of my own making, not just a series of events that happened to me, but one that I could stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over, sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise, but one that I had carved with my own hand, sometimes careful and precise, but one that I had carved with my own hand, and I wouldn't have been able to do this without employing a Okay.
I suspect what this means is that she has had an abortion.
That's what she said.
She said, I couldn't have the career that I want, and I couldn't be really famous and rich if I hadn't killed my child.
Maybe that's true.
Maybe she would be less rich and less famous if she had not killed her child.
What makes this so heartbreaking, what makes this so bizarre to the audience, is that she's currently pregnant.
And so...
On the one hand, she's saying we need to support abortion.
We need to support killing babies.
I'm not going to kill my precious baby, but all you poor people should kill your babies because you're not rich and famous yet.
And then you kill your babies and you get rich and famous.
You sacrifice your children on the altar of career and money and mammon.
And then you become rich and famous.
And then you don't have to kill your babies anymore.
Then you can keep them.
That's what she's saying.
Right?
She's saying rich people don't have to.
Poor people should do that.
That's very incoherent.
Why is it okay to kill some babies, but not other babies?
Why is it okay to kill your baby sometimes, but not other times?
It's not.
And it's why the speech doesn't make any sense, and she just keeps going back to bumper stickers, like a woman's right to choose, my choice, I make my own decisions.
Bumper stickers are always wrong, right?
These kind of slogans that are distillations of ideology are always wrong.
And this is a prime example of that.
But it's pretty horrifying when you see the reality of it.
And that's why Ricky Gervais was so successful last night.
When you present to the American people pregnant Michelle Williams talking about how it's really important to kill your baby if you want to get money and fame.
And Ricky Gervais, who's saying you people are degenerates, guess which one the American people are going to go for?
Obviously, Ricky Gervais.
Now, back to politics in just our last few minutes here.
We've talked about the 2020 Democrats enough.
There's no real frontrunner here.
Bernie Sanders is bringing in the most money at the moment.
Liz Warren is totally losing momentum.
A new poll out from Trump.
Hill-Harris-X polling shows that Liz Warren has now dropped down to be tied with Mike Bloomberg at 11% nationally.
That is pathetic.
She was the frontrunner just recently.
Buttigieg is sort of surging, but he's only popular among white yuppies on the coasts, so that's probably not going to take him very far.
And Joe Biden can't remember his own name, so things are not looking great on the Democratic side.
There's just nobody.
There's no clear candidate.
There's no clear frontrunner.
However, it's also important to point out, other than Donald Trump, there's nobody really on the Republican side either.
There's a new poll out from SurveyMonkey and Axios about the 2024 field.
It's way too early to predict what's going to happen in 2024.
But what the poll tells us is something important about right now.
The poll shows that among the top contenders in 2024, among Republicans being polled, Are the Trump family.
Don Jr.
and Ivanka Trump.
You got Pence at 40%.
He's leading, especially with older voters.
Don Jr.
is the clear choice among younger voters and he's got 29% overall.
Then Nikki Haley at 26%.
Then Ivanka Trump at 16%.
Then Rubio and Pompeo.
What this tells us is that the GOP wants an heir to Trump and to Trumpism.
They don't want to go back to the way that he used to be.
They like Trump.
Trump has 95% approval in the GOP right now.
So they want an heir to Trump.
There is no clear heir to Trump.
And so they are literally choosing the heir to Trump, which is Donald Trump Jr.
Nothing against Don Jr.
or Ivanka.
They seem like very nice people.
But they have not had a political life outside of being a Trump.
So you can't really judge them on the merits of their own political life.
We don't really know what they believe or what they would do.
The reason that they're so high in the polls right now is because the GOP needs an heir to Trump, and it does not appear that there is one just yet, a political heir.
And so that's going to have to be a major priority of conservatives over the next four years.
years.
Assuming President Trump gets reelected, they're going to have to figure out who comes next, who fits the mold of Trump.
That's an open question right now.
Finally, before we go, there was a big surprise last night at the Golden Globes beyond the Ricky Gervais stuff, which was that the movie 1917 won Best Drama.
1917 is this very long movie about World War I.
I saw it over the weekend.
It's not a very good movie, but it is worth seeing.
Which I think explains the weird Rotten Tomatoes reviews.
The movie's got 90% critics review, 95% audience review.
So very, very high.
And yet, it's not a good movie.
And yet, I still liked seeing it.
What does that mean?
It was directed, co-written, and produced by Sam Mendes.
Stars George McKay, who gave a superb performance in it.
The problem with the movie is it's not really about anything.
I can't tell you what it's about.
I sat through two hours at least of the movie.
I don't know what the story is.
The movie is more a video game than a movie.
It's got these beautiful shots.
It's got these amazing moments.
You follow this guy like you would follow the protagonist in a video game, and you pretty much never leave him.
It's well acted.
It's mostly enjoyable, pretty much enjoyable the whole time, but it's not a movie.
It doesn't really have a purpose beyond showing how skillfully produced it was.
It doesn't say anything.
It doesn't really convey any meaning.
And keeps your attention because it's kind of like moving through a video game, but there's no narrative.
This is a major problem in the culture.
Not just for the movies.
The movies which have pretty much lost their purpose and have become entirely self-referential.
Think about the rise of Quentin Tarantino who only makes movies about movies.
Think about all these awards shows which are just about the movie industry, which are just about how wonderful everyone in movies is.
It doesn't convey a narrative.
We have lost the narrative as a culture.
We've lost the ability to understand narrative.
We've lost faith in narrative.
We've lost faith in the idea that life really does have meaning, that there really is a purpose to things.
There really is a purpose to our own lives.
The idiom that you would use is, we've lost the narrative.
It's no surprise that 1917 won an award.
I sort of thought that it might, even though it's not a great movie.
It's not a surprise that we're confused over whether this is good or not, what it means.
We're very confused as a culture.
The key is going to be retaking the narrative, reclaiming a sense of objective reality, reclaiming a sense of purpose.
That is a cultural problem.
That is a political problem.
It looks like right now the political side is leading things.
These people, not just in the United States, but around the Western world, reclaiming their purpose, reclaiming their meaning as nations.
The culture is now going to have to follow suit.
It's a little bit of an inversion of that Andrew Breitbart idea that politics is downstream of culture.
But of course, the line between the two is pretty blurry.
They go back and forth pretty often.
The culture is going to have to follow suit.
Hopefully, they get the message from Ricky Gervais and all the rest of us.
And they do that because we need to reclaim the narrative.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
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