Yesterday, white supremacist Hitler-loving neo-Nazis wearing Make America Great Again hats and toting fully semi-automatic double-barreled AR-47 assault rifles descended on the Virginia statehouse to take over the government and establish a Prussian ethnostate in the fevered imagination of the mainstream media. In reality, law-abiding gun owners of all colors and backgrounds showed up on Lobby Day to defend their constitutionally protected civil rights, and there was no violence whatsoever, and they cleaned up after themselves when they left. We will examine how Virginia gun owners shot down the leftist narrative on our Second Amendment rights. Then, AOC has the dumbest conversation I’ve ever heard with leftist journalist Ta Nehisi Coates, Trump’s impeachment trial kicks off, and some great news for the pro-life cause ahead of the March for Life.
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Yesterday, white supremacist, Hitler-loving neo-Nazis wearing Make America Great Again hats and toting fully semi-automatic double-barreled AR-47 assault rifles descended on the Virginia Statehouse to take over the government and establish a Prussian ethnostate in the fevered imagination of the mainstream media.
In reality, law-abiding gun owners of all colors and backgrounds showed up on Lobby Day to defend their constitutionally protected civil rights.
And there was no violence whatsoever, and they cleaned up after themselves when they left.
We will examine how Virginia gun owners shot down the leftist narrative on our Second Amendment rights.
Then, AOC has the single dumbest conversation I've ever heard with leftist journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.
President Trump's impeachment trial kicks off, and some great news for the pro-life cause ahead of the March for Life.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
So much to get to.
Yesterday was a very, very scary day for the mainstream media.
It was not a scary day for anybody else.
It was a totally normal day, and there was a wonderful demonstration for some of our basic civil rights that took place in Virginia.
But for the mainstream media, it was a terrifying day, presumably because their fellow Americans were demonstrating on behalf of their own civil rights.
There was a pro-Second Amendment rally yesterday in Virginia.
Thousands and thousands of people were there.
The left told us, politicians on the left, elected federal politicians and state politicians and the mainstream media, told us that the rally was going to include white supremacists and domestic terrorists.
We needed a state of emergency in Virginia.
They were going to come to the Commonwealth of Virginia...
And cause violence and mayhem.
Here is a quick montage put together by newsbusters of the terror ahead of this Second Amendment rally.
Right now, thousands of gun rights activists, white nationalists, militia groups all swarming the Virginia state capitol.
There are a lot of people nervous about what's going to happen.
Authorities in Richmond are on high alert.
It could be a tense day.
Polarization, what may happen in Virginia.
Several hate groups.
Supposedly some white nationalists.
White nationalists.
White nationalists.
White nationalist groups.
White supremacists.
White extremists.
This entire rally stands in opposition to the meaning of this day.
Virginia on the edge.
How concerned are you that there might be some people in this crowd that may want to get violent?
There's certainly a lot of concern here.
Raising fears of a dangerous confrontation.
It could be violence.
There is real concern there about what the intention is behind this.
A lot of concern about the potential For violence that sparked violence, tensions high in Virginia may cause violence there.
Northam clearly trying to avoid another Charlottesville.
In Charlottesville.
Could see a repeat of what we saw in 2017 in Charlottesville.
Similar to what we saw in Charlottesville.
Worrying about a repeat of Charlottesville.
Horrible 2017 Charlottesville disaster.
You look at what happened in Charlottesville.
The two sides clashed in Charlottesville.
Men walk through the Capitol in Virginia carrying weapons of war.
Many demonstrators are in fact heavily armed.
Heavily, heavily armed.
Heavily armed.
Look at the gear.
What is this all about?
Militia groups.
Armed militia.
These militia groups.
Far-right militia.
Militia.
Militia groups.
Far-right extremists.
Extremists.
Extremists.
That is not a fraction of the hysterical coverage that we saw Before this rally in Virginia.
That is not a small fraction of it.
Okay?
And they told us tensions, high alert.
Obviously CNN was on high alert.
Obviously there were a lot of tensions in the newsrooms over at the New York Times and CNN. But how did the rally actually turn out?
We cut back to a very disappointed CNN. Look, those threats which caused the governor to call for a state of emergency have simply not emerged.
The police very clear in saying that they have not had a single arrest during this rally.
Those threats came from you.
You did it.
You, the mainstream media, you created the tension.
You tried to provoke a violent incident in Charlottesville, and it didn't work because the people who were demonstrating were not neo-Nazis.
They were not white supremacists.
They were not white extremists.
That's a new term.
I hadn't heard that one before.
How can you be extremely white?
Like, Scandinavian?
That makes you extremely white?
All of these new terms to try to gin up, in particular, racial division and racial hatred, and it just didn't happen.
None of it happened.
Because, generally speaking, Second Amendment advocates are...
Very concerned with obeying the law.
I mean, they're basing their gun rights enthusiasm on the Constitution.
That's where we get our right to keep and bear arms.
CNN had an incredible headline.
The CNN headline read, Virginia gun rights rally concludes peacefully despite earlier fears of extremist violence.
That's just the headline.
Whose fears?
Their fears.
Those are the only people who had the fears.
They go on in the story.
A large gun rights rally in Virginia's state capitol unfolded peacefully Monday despite earlier fears of the kind of violence that took place in nearby Charlottesville three years ago.
We'll hold it there.
What on earth would link a lobby day demonstration in favor of a basic civil right to Charlottesville?
Charlottesville, an event that took place, as they say, three years ago, completely unrelated, completely different groups, completely different point.
Even the rosiest take of the Charlottesville event was that they were there, or some people were there, to protest the taking down of historical statues.
The event that took place on lobby day was to demonstrate in support of our Second Amendment rights.
Have no connection whatsoever.
But the left is so desperate to gin up racial hatred that they have to draw a comparison between completely unrelated events.
It could be like Charlottesville three years ago.
Security was tight as gun rights advocates descended on Richmond for Lobby Day to oppose legislation that would restrict access to firearms in the state.
The Commonwealth braced for the potential of extremist and white nationalist groups to disrupt the peaceful demonstrations.
Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency last week to ban open and concealed firearms and other weapons from the state capitol grounds.
The crowd, however, was peaceful with no immediate reports of arrests or violence.
Surprise, surprise.
The whole demonstration had nothing whatsoever to do with race.
And actually, one citizen journalist approached one of the many black...
We'll get to that in a second.
We will get to what this means for us, for the media, and looking ahead into 2020.
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So the event in Virginia had nothing whatsoever to do with race.
And one citizen journalist approaches one of the black demonstrators there, and he asked him, he said, I heard all these media reports that this was a white supremacist rally.
So are you, sir, a black man, a white supremacist?
Here's his answer.
Are you a white supremacist?
Yeah.
Am I a white supremacist?
I was told there'd be white supremacists.
This ain't me, I got dreams.
Oh, wow, you really are black-faced.
No.
United, we stand.
That's right, brother.
Yes, sir.
United, we stand.
But they mad because there wasn't no civil unrest.
Now they going to be mad because there wasn't no fighting.
Now they going to be mad because there nobody get locked up.
They going to be mad because all the officers is at peace.
They going to be mad because there ain't nobody out here fighting.
They not finna turn our law enforcement officers against us just cause y'all on some nonsense.
I love this guy.
Obviously, he's speaking very casually here, but there's a lot of insight in what he's saying.
He's saying they're going to be really mad that there's not violence here.
They're going to be really mad that there's not division here.
They're going to be really mad that there's not hatred here.
That's what they've been trying to gin up all week.
But united we stand.
And what are we standing united behind?
Our constitution.
Our shared culture.
Our shared country.
Because we're all fellow countrymen here.
Really beautiful stuff.
I love it.
He says, we don't even need weapons.
We don't need them right here.
But we got them.
And that's kind of the point.
We don't need weapons.
I don't pack a gun every place I go and I'm like armed to the hilt all the time.
No.
The reason that I don't feel that I have to be is because we do have the right to keep and bear arms.
The very fact that the individual in America has the right to keep and bear arms is a wonderful protection against tyranny.
It's a wonderful protection of our life and our liberty and our property and the loved ones around us.
Because we have that right, we don't need to be so worried about it all the time.
We just have to protect that freedom.
The media were mad.
They were mad.
They went mad not even just in the sense that they were angry.
They went mad in the sense that they went insane.
NBC News reporter Ben Collins, he ended up, to his credit, deleting a completely baseless tweet alleging that the demonstration was a white supremacist rally.
Here's what he said.
Reporters covering tomorrow's white nationalist rally in Virginia, I'm absolutely begging you, verify information before you send it out tomorrow.
Even if it's a very sensational rumor you heard from a cop, don't become a hero in neo-Nazi propaganda circles with made-up stuff.
Now, I love this tweet.
This tweet, to me, sums up the entire mainstream media, which is a sanctimonious, sneering sort of advice to fellow Americans, and in this case, fellow elites.
Proving the point that he thinks he's making and proving the point with him as the butt of the joke.
He's like, I'm begging you.
Do not tweet out baseless information and completely made-up stuff tomorrow at the neo-Nazi Hitler-lover rally.
Buddy, it's a Second Amendment rally.
You did it.
You're the one doing it.
Not just him, at least to his credit, Ben Collins deleted the tweet, but the whole rest of the mainstream media did too.
Another NBC News correspondent, Gabe Gutierrez, Tweeted out a video of the rally, and what he wrote next to the video was, chants of, we will not comply from gun rights protesters in Richmond.
So I said, okay, well, fair enough.
I mean, if someone tries to take away my basic constitutional rights, I certainly won't comply with that.
But let's just see, because I don't believe a word that these people say anymore, let's just see what they're actually chanting.
And I clicked the play button, and this is what I heard.
See if you can make it out.
All right, I didn't hear a whole lot of, "We will not comply" there.
What I heard was the Pledge of Allegiance.
But I'm not surprised that the mainstream media couldn't recognize the Pledge of Allegiance.
I assume they haven't heard it and certainly haven't said it in many, many years.
That was the tip of the iceberg, okay?
Only the mainstream media were surprised that the event yesterday went off very well.
Because the mainstream media believe that only nuts own guns.
They think it's only lunatics who own guns.
But think about this.
In a standoff, in a peaceful demonstration between people defending the Constitution and lawless legislators trying to run roughshod over people's basic civil rights, which group do you think is more likely to behave lawlessly?
The ones defending the Constitution or the ones trying to shred the Constitution?
Obviously, the Second Amendment defenders are the ones who are going to behave lawlessly.
According to the law, they're the ones who are going to behave appropriately.
And it's going to be the lawless legislators.
It doesn't matter if they were elected to office and they can write laws.
They can behave lawlessly, often more lawlessly, than the rest of us.
They're the ones who are going to try to gin up a bunch of division and tension.
So, what was the rally about?
Just very quickly, we'll get through what these guys were protesting.
Because the gun laws being proposed in Virginia are absolutely different.
Absolutely terrible and unconstitutional.
We'll get to that in a second.
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Okay, the gun laws in Virginia are horrible.
Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
Three bills passed the state senate on Thursday.
One bill is to limit the number of guns you can purchase.
So you can only buy one handgun per month.
Now you might say, who needs more than one handgun per month?
I don't know.
I can think of situations where you would need to buy more than one handgun within a month.
But the question is, why are we limiting people's basic civil rights?
Maybe there's an argument to be made, okay?
Maybe, I haven't heard it yet, but maybe there is an argument to be made.
However, and this is the theme here, if you were going to take away somebody's basic, fundamental, constitutionally protected civil rights, There needs to be a really, really high threshold in that argument, and they have not made one in Virginia.
They want universal background checks on gun sales.
This is really a way to prevent people from passing guns along to their kids.
So who would object to universal background checks?
Nobody.
The devil's in the details, though.
The question is, am I not going to be able to pass along my antique Civil War rifle to my kids or something after I got it from my father and from his father and on and on?
No.
Then there is a new rule allowing localities to ban guns in some public areas.
Again, you can have that argument, but the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right guaranteed by the Constitution.
So if you're going to deprive people of their fundamental civil rights, you better have a pretty good argument for it.
And those that just passed the Statehouse, those are the most defensible of all of them.
The rest of these regulations are draconian and outright unconstitutional.
So one is a red flag law.
This would allow authorities to temporarily take guns away from anyone deemed by law enforcement to be a danger to themselves or to others.
Now, I don't have a problem with depriving certain people of...
rights that they would otherwise be entitled to if they pose a direct threat to themselves or to others.
However, I am very strongly opposed to taking away a person's basic civil rights in one case, but not into others.
I think the threshold needs to be very, very high.
So for instance, if you really believe that somebody is an imminent threat to themselves or to others, they got a couple of screws loose and They are a danger to society.
Okay, that's fine.
Then you ought to be able to have that person committed to an institution.
Then you ought to be able to deprive that person of their voting rights.
Then you ought to be able to deprive that person of certain legal rights to control their own affairs.
You ought to be able to apply the same standard you're applying to the Second Amendment to all of the other civil rights.
Because I think very often what's going to happen here...
Is law enforcement is going to say, yeah, you're a threat to yourself or others, so we're going to take away your Second Amendment rights.
I mean, you're fine.
You can still vote.
You can still live on your own.
You can still drive a car.
You can still do whatever you want.
But just the gun.
The gun is going to be the real issue.
Well, no, of course not.
If a person is too much of a threat to have their basic gun rights included in the Constitution, then certainly they shouldn't be able to drive.
Driving is a privilege.
You apply to get a driver's license from your state, and you don't have any right to a driver's license.
You do have a right to keep and bear arms.
So again, I'm fully admitting that certain people are not in full enough possession of their faculties to access all of their rights.
This would include children.
This would include people who are deranged.
This would include people who are highly criminal.
Of course, people have their rights deprived all the time through their own actions or their inability to control themselves.
However, the threshold has to be very, very high.
Another one is new rules about reporting lost or stolen firearms.
Again, this is a way just to take people's guns away.
Increased penalties for recklessly leaving loaded, unsecured firearms near children.
Yeah, you shouldn't be able to leave loaded, unsecured firearms near children.
Certainly not.
Could that law be abused?
Yeah, probably.
Ban on anyone subject to a final protective order from possessing firearms and then...
And then the pièce de résistance, the one that the left is always going for, a ban on assault rifles.
Now, assault rifles have more or less been banned in this country for decades.
When people say assault rifles, they're referring to guns like the AR-15, the most popular gun in America, which are not assault rifles in the sense that they're not fully automatic, and that's the image that comes to mind when people talk about it.
But in another sense, all firearms are assault weapons.
They're all assault weapons.
The point of a firearm is to assault somebody.
They're not comforting.
I mean, they're not there to make you feel really pleasant.
They're not there to massage your temples when you've got a headache.
They're there to shoot people.
So, yeah, they commit assaults.
Now, obviously, you want people who are responsible, who follow the law, who are good, mature people, to possess firearms.
That's the premise of the Second Amendment.
But to say, okay, you can have all the pleasant firearms that don't hurt anybody but not the assault ones is completely disingenuous.
The reason they use that euphemism is simply to confuse people, and the reason they go after the AR-15 is it's pretty much the most popular gun in America.
They chose to do this on Martin Luther King Day.
AOC was very upset that they chose Martin Luther King Day, and we'll get to how wrong she is in a second.
We'll get to the dumbest conversation I've ever listened to.
The mainstream media shrieked that the reason they chose Martin Luther King Day was because the people protesting were racist bigots.
They hate black people.
Now, actually the reason they chose it is because there's this long-standing tradition called Lobby Day in Virginia.
But the coincidence of Martin Luther King Day is actually an important one.
Martin Luther King was a civil rights activist.
He's probably the most famous civil rights activist in modern American history.
Guns are a civil right.
The right to keep and bear arms.
That is a basic civil right protected by our Constitution.
Listen to how shocked AOC is.
Listen to how shocked the leftist journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates are by the fact that this took place on Martin Luther King Day.
You know, another thing that I've been really thinking and sitting with today is that there's this gun rights protest that's happening down in Richmond.
On MLK Day.
On MLK Day.
Yeah, damn right it's on MLK Day.
Why do we celebrate MLK Day?
We celebrate MLK Day because of his work on civil rights.
And so if you're going to have a civil rights protest in America, I guess it makes a whole lot of sense to do that.
We will get to this extraordinarily dumb speaking event between AOC and Tom Easycoats.
And then we will get to impeachment because that's beginning, obviously, today.
The impeachment trial in the Senate is starting today.
Then some great news for the pro-life cause ahead of the March for Life.
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Okay.
We've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
So...
Don't go anywhere because we've got a lot more to get to.
The dumbest conversation I've ever heard from AOC, then this whole impeachment farce, then some great news for the pro-life cause, and a whole lot more than that.
And by the way, today we're going to be launching a second show that I'll be having over at PragerU called The Book Club.
The first episode is out now, so go check that out at PragerU.com.
March for Life is coming up.
I'm in Washington, D.C. right now.
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The pro-life cause, very, very important.
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We'll be right back with a lot more.
So I just listened to the dumbest conversation I ever heard.
It was between AOC and the leftist journalist, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The reason I bring this to you is not because I want to just slowly kill each and every one of your brain cells.
It's because the conversation shows us something.
One thing I love about AOC is she shows you what the left really is taken to its logical conclusion.
It shows you the hypocrisy and it shows you just the utter emptiness of leftist ideology.
So AOC begins With the grand claim that people shouldn't have a lot of money.
They shouldn't have a billion dollars.
And really, you can never make a billion dollars because the only way that someone gets a billion dollars is by taking it from someone else.
I specifically does, you know, I'm Joe Billionaire.
I made widgets.
I sold those widgets.
I made billions of dollars, you know.
Yeah.
Selling those widgets, making those widgets.
Therefore, those billions of dollars are mine.
Why am I the enemy of health care?
Well, you didn't make those widgets, did you?
Because you employed thousands of people and paid them less than a living wage to make those widgets for you.
That's one of those statements, like so many leftist statements, that if you're not thinking at all, sounds like it means something, but it actually has no semantic content.
It has no meaning in the statement.
She said, you never make a billion dollars.
You take a billion dollars because you hire people to do a job.
But when you hire people to do a job, you're not taking from them.
You're not stealing from them.
It's actually the opposite.
You're giving them your money because you think that their skill, their service, their labor is more valuable than the money that you are giving them.
And they think, because they're engaging in this free exchange, they think that your money is more valuable than the labor that they are giving you.
And so they exchange their labor for your money and everybody wins.
How do I know that both sides feel this way?
Why?
Because both sides engage in the transaction.
Here's another example.
I mean, because taken to the logical extreme, what she's saying is that if you ever hire anybody to do a job, then you aren't doing anything.
You're not producing anything.
Let's say I write a book with words this time.
I don't write a blank book.
I write a real book.
Let's say I do a blank book even.
It could be a blank book.
I come up with the idea.
Maybe I write a little bit.
I come up with the design.
Then I send that out and I hire a publisher to print it.
The publisher hires some tree company to cut down the trees, make the paper.
The publisher hires some delivery people to go deliver it to bookstores.
Then obviously the bookstores have the money.
They have employees.
The bookstores sell the books to somebody else who needed a car to drive there.
And you can see the effects of this throughout the economy.
My doing even a blank book will involve so many people to make that book happen.
And if I write a book with words, then you're going to have to hire people to make the ink.
That's going to be a whole other avenue of people who have helped to make that happen.
Does that mean I didn't write a book?
Does that mean I didn't produce anything?
No, it means that I've worked together with other people in an economy, in a society, to produce a product.
The employee who's hired at the widget company, as Ta-Nehisi Coates says, did that employee make the, I don't know, call it 50 grand a year?
Did they make 50 grand a year?
Surely they needed other people to make that money.
They didn't come up with the idea for the widget.
They didn't build the structures of the business.
Presumably there will be people down the line of them who they rely on to make that job happen.
Does anybody make anything?
No.
This is the logical conclusion of Barack Obama saying when he was president that you didn't build that, you didn't build your own business, which was basically the economic motto of his presidency.
Then AOC turns it up a little bit more.
So she denies that anybody can engage in an economy voluntarily.
Then she says that people are literally dying because of commerce.
You made that money off the backs of undocumented people.
You made that money off of the backs of black and brown people being paid under a living wage.
You made that money off of the backs of single mothers.
And all of these people who are literally dying because they can't afford to live.
If they're literally dying because they can't afford to live, then presumably you're doing them a favor.
You're saving them by giving them a job, right?
You're giving them money, so you're saving them.
Now, what does AOC know about my business?
Does she know that I'm not paying people a living wage?
Does she know that I'm targeting black and brown people and single mothers?
No, of course not.
She's just saying words.
She's just making total grand assumptions about other people's businesses.
And she's beginning with the premise that people are entitled to other people's stuff.
People are entitled to other people's money.
Do you know what the real minimum wage is?
She's complaining about a living wage.
The real minimum wage is zero dollars.
Because I don't owe you a job.
And AOC doesn't really think that we owe each other jobs.
You know why?
Because AOC then would have started a business, right?
AOC would be just as on the hook as everybody else is.
Has AOC ever created a single job in her life?
Of course not.
How much does she give to charity?
I don't know.
If I were gambling, man, I'd guess probably less than Jeff Bezos does.
What has she done?
I mean, the left is so good at this.
The left does this all the time.
They're really good at criticizing everybody else, pointing out the flaws and the shortcomings of everybody else, or pointing out how other people could do even more, which is always true.
You could always do more.
But they're never able to turn that lens around on themselves, analyze themselves under the microscope, hold themselves to the same standards to which they're holding other people.
You know, they criticize a guy like Jeff Bezos, super-duper wealthy guy.
Because he's only giving a million dollars at a clip to charity.
When was the last time you gave a million dollars to charity?
When was the last time AOC did anything for anyone?
Then she comes to the conclusion of her argument.
No one ever makes a billion dollars.
You take a billion dollars.
Wow.
Snaps.
Snaps all around.
This is like, if I were in a freshman slam poetry meet, man, I would really feel the feels right now.
AOC gets to her conclusion.
It's just as silly as her premise.
But there is a little bit of honesty, right?
When she gets to the end, she's talking about taking.
She's talking about an assertion of the will.
Then she gets to the heart of her philosophy, which is not Which is not based on principles.
It's not based on any kind of coherent argument.
It's about power.
And she puts it in exactly those terms.
To be ethical, if you're a billionaire today, the thing that you need to do is give up control and power.
So I don't want your money as much as we want your power.
The people, not me, that's going to get cut and clipped.
Okay, obviously she's a very confused young lady who hasn't thought very much about important questions.
But there were many contradictions in what she just said, and yet she accidentally gave up her whole point.
She said, to be ethical, you need to give up control and power.
And then in the very same breath she said, we want your power.
So what she is admitting here is that her own system is unethical.
If to be ethical you need to give up power, and she wants power, then she is unethical.
But her system of politics isn't based on ethics at all.
It's not based on reasoned argument at all.
It's just about taking power.
It's just about self-interest.
Her system presumes that the only way that I can have more is if you have less.
And that extends to the nature of politics.
Then she says, we want, but I don't, I'm not saying we want the power, I'm saying the people want the power, but not me, even though I'm, I guess I'm a person.
Is she saying she's not a person?
Of course she's one of the people.
But more specifically, she's the one who wants the power.
She's not giving the power to some guy who's working a low-wage job in the middle of Queens.
She's taking it for herself, through her instrument of power, which is the state.
There are many more problems with what she's saying because she is not a systematic thinker, let's put it that way.
But...
It suffices to leave it there.
This is all about power.
And frankly, that's what the broader news story of this week and probably next week is as well, which is President Trump's impeachment trial.
Nearly as dumb as AOC's conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates is the impeachment trial of President Trump, which is kicking off today.
He has been impeached, the president.
Now it is going to trial.
There are all sorts of numbers going around out there over whether people want the president to be removed or not.
I strongly suspect that they do not want him to be removed.
So, the Republicans control the Senate.
There is no indication at all that any Senate Republicans are going to turn on Trump, so he is going to be acquitted.
He will not be removed from office.
This is the cost of a partisan impeachment.
This impeachment, unlike the others in American history, was not a bipartisan impeachment.
There were no Republicans who voted to impeach the President in the House.
There were Democrats who refused to impeach the President.
So it was bipartisan in terms of letting him stay in office, but it was strictly partisan in terms of the vote to remove him.
So when you have a strictly partisan impeachment, guess what happens?
You're going to have a strictly partisan trial, especially when they don't have any legal basis for impeaching him.
So the question that remains for this trial is whether or not they're going to call witnesses.
Now, they already had witnesses, right?
You might say, why would they call more witnesses?
We just had an investigation.
We just had testimony.
We had the vote to impeach.
So let's move on and do that.
Okay.
That is what the American people seem to want to do, too.
Most polls show that the American people want to keep the president in office.
Until...
A very convenient poll from CNN, which just came out right before the impeachment trial, showed that 51% of Americans want Trump removed from office, showed that 69% of Americans want witnesses called at the trial, including nearly half of Republicans.
Numbers are obviously way off from every other poll on the subject, but let's take them at face value.
Let's give CNN the benefit of the doubt for no reason whatsoever.
What do these numbers mean?
I think what they mean is not what the mainstream media thinks they mean.
The mainstream media thinks it means that the American people have finally turned on Trump, and we're going to kick him out, and now this way Hillary's going to be president again somehow, and we're going to live in a leftist utopia.
Something to that effect.
What the mainstream media think is this is evidence of a public opinion change, and now people want Trump out.
I think what it means is that nobody's paying attention anymore.
I think nobody's paying attention at all.
They're not thinking through the consequences.
It doesn't matter.
I don't think anybody cares.
So you get a question in a poll like, hey, should there be witnesses at the impeachment trial?
And I suspect people think, yeah, I guess there are witnesses at a trial.
I mean, what is this about?
Yeah, okay, do that.
But when you get down to brass tacks, do we really believe that the president ought to be removed, that he's committed some impeachable offense?
I just don't see it.
So what are the arguments for and against?
Democrats are desperate for anything, right?
Even remotely impeachable.
That's why they want to call more witnesses.
They didn't get it the first time.
They didn't get it when it was in the House.
They're just saying, please, if we have a hundred more witnesses, maybe one of them will give us something that's impeachable.
Why would Republicans want witnesses?
Well, Republicans want the process to seem fair, and it just seems like witnesses should be present at trials, doesn't it?
What does Pelosi want?
Pelosi wants to seem like she's giving her base their money's worth before they inevitably acquit the president.
What about Republicans?
Maybe they want witnesses because they want to drag out this impeachment trial, because impeachment's been very good for Trump's approval numbers.
All right, from the beginning of impeachment till now, Trump's numbers have gone up, the Democrats have gone down.
Plus, you could get Hunter Biden up there on the stand, and that would be absolutely freaking hilarious, because that guy's a total degenerate, and he will expose more corruption from his father.
However, however, what's the argument against witnesses?
This is politics.
It's still politics.
Anything can happen in politics.
And I think what the White House is looking at now is they say, it's like a game of poker.
They're up.
They're way up.
This impeachment thing could not have worked out better for them than it has.
And I think what the White House and maybe Mitch McConnell are thinking is, you've got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run.
And they maybe want to just cash out their money and say, this has been a big win, let's take it and head into 2020.
Moving on is the key here.
Because in the 90s, during the Clinton impeachment, there was an organization founded called MoveOn.org.
It's one of the most prominent left-wing organizations.
And what people don't remember is that MoveOn referred to the Clinton impeachment.
They said, it's time to move on.
Nobody cares anymore.
Let's go.
Let's keep this going for the American people.
Now everybody's changing their mind, right?
Democrats who were against Clinton's impeachment are now for Trump's impeachment and vice versa for Republicans.
This is the problem with a long career in politics.
Eventually you're going to look like a hypocrite.
You don't need to, but very often you will.
How can you avoid that?
How can you avoid the trouble that Democrats and Republicans are now in?
Avoid sweeping abstractions and generalizations about politics.
Admit that politics is politics.
There is interest here, okay?
It's just different when it's your guy or the other guy, and we can all be honest about that, and at least then we're not being insincere.
And have a little bit of a sense of humor about it.
The Media Research Center, again, you know, the guys who do newsbusters, they dug up the mainstream media reaction to the suggestion of calling more witnesses during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, and you're going to be shocked to find out that it was a little different than their reaction in the Trump impeachment.
No issue has been a sham.
It shouldn't have gotten this far.
The House acted improperly in passing it on to the Senate.
Why is your party dragging this thing out?
Why is this happening?
Why go through all this business about witnesses?
Do we really need more witnesses?
It's going to add months to this thing.
We should stop this.
This bogus inflated case.
And get on with business of governance.
Will these people just get down to business and leave this impeachment thing alone?
It's going to be an enormous distraction to the White House and all kinds of issues that the Congress ought to be considering.
There's a long line of the people's business that seems to have been put aside and apparently is going to be put aside for weeks if not months now.
We begin tonight with the voice of the people.
The visitor who got up and shouted, God Almighty, take the vote and get it over with.
It goes on and on and on and on and on and on.
And you could listen to it for another five years probably.
And now they're all singing the opposite tune.
So now it's Republicans who want to move on.
It's Democrats who want to stall.
I think in the interest of both parties, frankly, Probably they should move on.
I think it's hurting Democrats' numbers the longer this drags out.
And I think it's distracting Republicans and making us a little too complacent about 2020 the longer we drag this out.
And obviously President Trump wants to accomplish more of his agenda.
So we've all made up our minds.
It's just mindless screaming and a partisan impeachment doesn't matter.
Anyway, before we go, I've got to talk about some great news for the pro-life cause.
Really, really great news ahead of the March for Life.
It's great news in a scary news story.
Scientists who have been researching the question of fetal pain, like the pain that pre-born babies feel, have concluded that it is no longer likely that babies can't feel pain before 24 weeks.
That was the former consensus view.
Now they're saying that babies could feel pain possibly as early as 13 weeks, which is, you know, at that point is where a lot of abortions are happening.
You're almost cutting the amount of time in half now.
These are not activists.
These are not pro-life activists.
These are just British scientists.
One of them is actually an abortion-supportive British pain expert, pro-choice, who used to think there was no chances that pre-born babies could feel pain that early, and now says that that assumption is likely incorrect.
And they've just written in the very influential Journal of Medical Ethics that this new evidence that is so compelling that to carry on with abortions up until 24 weeks, despite that new evidence, quote, flirts with moral recklessness because of the pain question.
Now, it really shouldn't matter whether pre-born babies can feel pain or not.
Is the ability to feel pain now the arbiter of the value of life?
Do you have dignity in your life because you can feel pain?
Well, what if you take an anesthetic?
What if you take a couple painkillers?
Then is it moral for me to kill you?
No, of course not.
Feeling pain is just an evidence, okay?
It's an evidence of the baby's humanity, which we already know because it's a baby.
Whether or not someone can feel pain should have no bearing whatsoever on whether or not you're allowed to kill that person.
We make the argument for life logically.
We make very strong philosophical arguments to not kill babies.
It's unbelievable that we have to make these arguments.
It should be so obvious.
should be self-evident.
All of the arguments are on the side of life.
There is no coherent philosophical argument for killing babies.
Now to the tune of a million a year in this country, there is no argument.
The logic, the reason, the facts, totally on the side of life.
And yet the arguments are not enough.
One must paint a picture.
That's the point of the March for Life.
The March for Life is not a philosophical debate, right?
It's not a dry academic paper and then there's a symposium and we all read each other's papers.
It's a demonstration to show the support for the cause of life because you need to show it.
The reason that it matters that 13-week old pre-born babies can feel pain is because we have the image then in our minds of this cute little baby feeling pain while it's being ripped apart by these psychos in the abortion industry.
That's the problem.
I mean, that's what it does to us.
It evokes so much more out of us than just the arguments.
Going all the way back to the first story today, we can have constitutional arguments over the individual right to keep and bear arms all day long.
But part of the reason why we need to go demonstrate is to show people what it means.
We need to shoot down that leftist narrative, the The leftist narrative that people who want to keep their civil rights are maniacs and bigots and nuts and violent and chaotic.
And really, what do they do?
They show up.
They're orderly.
They've got every single race, every color and shade of people there.
And they behave very well.
There's no violence.
And they clean up after themselves when they leave.
It's the same thing.
In politics, it is not merely enough to make the argument.
You You certainly have to make the argument.
That's the prerequisite.
And you need to live it out.
All value in this life is enfleshed.
We've got to put it into our bodies.
We have to put it into action.
And that's what we saw this week in Virginia.
That's what we're going to see this coming week for life here in Washington, D.C. And it's going to be a beautiful thing.
That's our show.
Come back tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'll see you then.
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