President Trump has officially been acquitted in the Senate’s farce impeachment trial. But not before snake-in-the-grass Mitt Romney gets in one last snip before being relegated to ignominy and obscurity. We will compare sanctimonious backstabbers with serious and successful conservatives.
Check out The Cold War: What We Saw, a new podcast written and presented by Bill Whittle at https://www.dailywire.com/coldwar. In Part 1 we peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the Terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership.
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President Trump has officially been acquitted in the Senate's farce impeachment trial.
But not before snake in the grass Mitt Romney gets in one last little nip before being relegated to ignominy and obscurity.
We will compare sanctimonious backstabbers with serious and successful conservatives.
Then, the Trump administration leaks a draft Finally, Andrew Yang reminds us why the left, no matter how eccentric, should never be trusted.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
This is the way impeachment ends not with a bang, but a whimper.
It's over.
The president has been acquitted.
We all knew that that was going to happen, and now it happened.
Now it's over, and we can move on.
But before it was over, at that very last moment, Mitt freaking Romney had to get in one last little jab at the president.
So there were two charges against the president.
There was the charge of abuse of power and then obstruction of Congress.
There was no charge of any crime.
The House Democrats were considering a third charge of bribery, which would be the only impeachable offense.
They dropped that because they didn't have evidence.
On the charge of abuse of power, The final vote was 52 to 48.
52 to acquit the president, 48 to convict him.
On the charge of obstruction of Congress, the final vote was 53 to 47.
Now, there are 535 members of Congress.
There are 435 members in the House.
There are 100 members in the Senate.
The reason that those two votes were different is because Mitt Romney voted to convict the president on abuse of power.
And Mitt Romney did that because Mitt Romney hates Trump.
Here is Romney's reasoning.
The Constitution established the vehicle of impeachment that has occupied both houses of our Congress these many days.
We have labored to faithfully execute our responsibilities to it.
We have arrived at different judgments, but I hope we respect each other's good faith.
The allegations made in the articles of impeachment are very serious.
As a senator juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice.
I am profoundly religious.
My faith is at the heart of who I am.
I take an oath before God as enormously consequential.
I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the president, the leader of my own party, Would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced.
I was not wrong.
The most difficult decision that Saint Mitt would ever face, the principled conservative, the true conservative, not like that fraud, Donald Trump.
Why did Mitt Romney do this?
The reason this matters, this one vote matters, obviously it's not going to determine whether or not the president gets acquitted.
But the reason that it matters is it means that the Democrats can now say that this was a bipartisan impeachment.
In the House, when the House passed the articles of impeachment, no Republicans voted for it because there weren't any snakes in the grass like Mitt Romney.
So it was all the Democrats voting for impeachment and Democrats and Republicans voting against impeachment in the House.
Then you get to the Senate and it was a completely party line vote.
The conservative Democrats didn't come over and the squishy Republicans didn't go over to the other side.
With the exception of that sanctimonious snake in the grass, Mitt Romney.
In 2012, I had the distinction of working on the campaigns of two of Mitt Romney's primary challengers.
I have been calling Mitt Romney a snake in the grass for a very long time, and I've never felt prouder of that intuition and decision.
We will get to the principled Mitt Romney, dating all the way back to the 90s, because film and the internet are forever.
We will get to this wonderful, maybe the most conservative executive order that any president has ever issued or leaked to possibly issue.
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That is stamps.com and then click the little microphone and you enter Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. The principled Mitt Romney, he had to vote for these bogus charges of impeachment that no other Republican bought at all because they were ridiculous, they were historic.
The Democrats couldn't even charge the president with a crime, couldn't even charge him with an impeachable offense.
But the lone Republican Conservative Mitt Romney realized how important it was to convict.
He didn't.
It has nothing to do with principles at all.
Mitt Romney just hates Trump.
He hates Trump because Trump became the president and Romney didn't become the president because he was a flawed candidate.
Mitt Romney has flip-flopped and sold his principles at every single turn in his political career, which is fine.
Politicians do that.
I actually give them a lot of grace on it.
But the trouble about Romney is he's just so damn sanctimonious about it.
Let's take a little trip down memory line to the principled Mitt Romney running for Senate against Ted Kennedy in the 90s.
He's asked about the legacy of Ronald Reagan, that other actual true conservative.
And what does Romney say?
Does he say, I'm inheriting the mantle of Ronald Reagan?
No.
He says, I was not a conservative during Reagan-Bush.
I was an independent during Reagan-Bush.
Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush.
I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.
No, I don't want to return to that.
Are you kidding me?
I'm a principled conservative.
I don't want to go back to the policies of Ronald Reagan.
How about on other issues?
Get past just a politician like Ronald Reagan.
How about on issues like, say, abortion?
Here's Mitt Romney, true conservative, capital T, capital C, trademark over the E, back in the day.
I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country.
I have since the time that my mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a US Senate candidate.
I believe that since Roe v.
Wade has been the law for 20 years, that we should sustain and support it.
And I sustain and support that law and the right of a woman to make that choice.
That's Mitt Romney.
He supports the right of women to make that choice.
I'll point out, Donald Trump held the same position on abortion back in the late 90s, back when President Trump was considering running for the Reform Party nomination.
What's the difference here?
Donald Trump was asked about his flip-flop on it, and he said, yeah, I changed my mind.
I used to have this opinion, then I realized I was wrong and I changed my mind.
Trump, for all of his flaws, doesn't get sanctimonious.
If anything, he plays the sanctimony down a little bit.
He doesn't pretend to be very pious and very principled all the time.
He just says, yeah, I changed my mind.
I didn't know a whole lot about the issue.
Now I've learned about it.
Mitt Romney, who cast the lone Republican vote against President Trump, he didn't always publicly hate President Trump.
Actually, back when he ran in 2012...
He welcomed President Trump's endorsement.
Here's just a little clip.
There are some things that you just can't imagine happening in your life.
This is one of them.
Being in Donald Trump's magnificent hotel and having his endorsement is a delight.
I'm so honored and pleased to have his endorsement.
And of course, I'm looking for the endorsement of the people of Nevada.
Donald Trump has shown an extraordinary ability to understand how our economy works to create jobs for the American people.
He's done it here in Nevada.
He's done it across the country.
He understands that our economy is facing threats from abroad.
He's one of the few people who stood up and said, you know what, China has been cheating.
They've taken jobs from Americans.
They haven't played fair.
We have to have a president who will stand up to cheaters.
I spent my life in the private sector, not quite as successful as this guy, but successful nonetheless, sufficiently successful to understand what it takes to get America to be the most attractive place in the world for innovators, entrepreneurs, and business and job creators.
So I want to say thank you to Donald Trump for his endorsement.
It means a great deal to me to have the endorsement of Mr.
Trump and people across this country who care about the future of America.
It means a great deal to get Donald Trump's endorsement.
It means a great deal to him.
It's such an honor.
Because Donald Trump has done a whole lot better in business than Mitt Romney, not my words, Mitt's.
Because Donald Trump, beyond his business success, has a keen understanding of our economic problems.
He has a keen understanding of our foreign policy.
This was no ordinary endorsement when Trump agrees to endorse Romney.
Romney gets up there and gives a full-throated endorsement right back of Donald Trump.
Because Romney was getting something for it at the time.
Because Romney was personally benefiting from it.
So he just said words.
But then later on, not what, three, four years later, he contradicted every single one of those words.
Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud.
His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.
His domestic policies would lead to recession.
His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe.
He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president.
And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.
His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who work for them.
He inherited his business.
He didn't create it.
And whatever happened to Trump Airlines?
How about Trump University?
And then there's Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks and Trump Mortgage.
A business genius he is not.
Well, he's more successful in business than you, Mitt.
That's according to your own words from three years earlier.
So what does that make you?
If Trump isn't a business genius, then are you a business dunce?
No, you're just disingenuous.
It's an amazing speech that he gave during the 2016 election.
Because it's not just that he says, hey, I really don't like this guy.
I think he's bad news.
I think he's bad for the Republican Party.
He's bad for the office of the president.
He doesn't just say that.
That would be at least defensible.
It's an election campaign.
People say a lot of things.
He goes through his past endorsement of Donald Trump point by point and says the opposite of everything he said then.
Three, four years earlier, he said, Donald Trump is a great businessman, a better businessman than me.
Then he says Donald Trump is a business failure.
He knows nothing about business.
He's a fraud.
Three years, four years earlier, he said, Donald Trump knows how to deal with China, knows how to deal with our foreign adversaries.
Four years later, what's he say?
Donald Trump's foreign policy would be a disaster.
Four years earlier, he says Donald Trump's economic policies are wonderful.
He has a keen understanding of the economy.
Four years later, Donald Trump's economic policies would lead to recession.
Point by point by point.
So he was either lying then, In 2012, or he was lying in 2016, or somewhere in that three or four year period, everything wonderful about Donald Trump that Mitt Romney had praised completely fell apart.
Which one was it?
Which do you think?
Romney has done this his entire career.
So he goes after Trump, he lambasts him in the 2016 election, but then that's not the end of the story.
Mitt Romney then goes back And thanks the president.
Embraces the president's support when he was running for senator in Utah just a couple years ago.
He tweeted out, quote, Well, if he's a fraud, if he's a disaster, if he's a con man, why the hell would you welcome his support?
You welcome the support of con men who would destroy our country?
Who would lead us into foreign chaos?
Whose economic policies would lead to recession?
Who's defrauded people for his whole career?
You welcome the support of that kind of man?
Of course he does.
Because Trump was popular.
Trump won the election.
And Romney is just a glad-handing politician.
Okay, fine.
Politicians...
Politics makes strange bedfellows.
I understand that.
The problem here is with Mitt's sanctimony.
You know, I saw this in 2012.
I just knew it.
The guy was an empty suit.
That's fine.
There are a lot of politicians who are empty suits.
But then don't stand up there and pretend to be the standard bearer of conservatism.
To pretend to be purer than the newly driven snow.
Mitt Romney certainly does not get that.
And his vote was pure vindictiveness.
Because it doesn't matter to history.
Look, the president's going to be acquitted.
It has nothing to do with the arguments.
The House impeachment managers did not make a single argument that the president committed an impeachable offense.
Not one.
They didn't even try.
It matters because he had to get that last nip.
The only thing that Mitt Romney had the power to do was to try to make it look as though this was a bipartisan impeachment process.
535 members of Congress, one Republican, that one Republican was the one who voted for this.
And I don't think it was out of principles, I think it was out of petty personal animosity.
But that's fine, 'cause we're just moving right along And there was a news report last night that President Trump is considering issuing an executive order that no one's really going to talk about.
It's actually only being discussed in architectural blogs.
But it is maybe the most important executive order of my lifetime that we will ever see.
We'll get to that in a second.
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This executive order that President Trump is considering is called the Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again executive order.
We've got Make America Great Again.
Now we've got Make America Beautiful Again.
Now who cares about federal buildings?
I do.
I care a lot.
I have been in Washington, D.C. for three weeks now filming the Verdict podcast with Ted Cruz.
And it's wonderful.
I love being in Washington because...
In certain areas of D.C., the architecture is really beautiful.
You walk by the White House.
You walk by Treasury.
You walk by all of these beautiful classical buildings.
And you say, wow, this is grand.
I feel good about my country.
I like seeing beautiful things.
And then parts of D.C., you walk by some of the buildings that were built in the 60s, 70s, 80s.
And they're hideous.
They're just ugly buildings.
Some built in that brutalist style of architecture, which is just ugly.
President Trump...
Is considering passing an executive order mandating a return to classical architectural style for federal buildings.
He wants to stop wasting your taxpayer money on ugly buildings.
And I could not be more pleased about it.
So the draft of the executive order is, the classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style for new and upgraded federal buildings.
It suggests that we should have buildings that remind us of the classical models of democratic Athens and republican Rome.
And we had this for the early buildings in Washington, D.C., and then a bunch of lunatics decided to make everything ugly in the 60s and 70s.
In 1962, the federal government issued the guiding principles for federal architecture.
And what the guiding principles said was that, quote, an official style must be avoided.
Design must flow from the architectural profession to the government and not vice versa.
So whatever artists want to make of our federal buildings, that's what they should be able to make.
Now, of course, that doesn't make sense because the federal government is hiring the artists.
But what the order more or less said was federal buildings should look hip and modern and avant-garde and hideous.
So the draft document uses these words, dignity, enterprise, vigor, stability, and declares officially that brutalist and deconstructivist styles of architecture, those just ugly styles from the 70s, quote, fail to satisfy these requirements and shall not be used.
I love this.
You know, the great Roger Scruton, who just died recently, but he was maybe the greatest living conservative philosopher.
He didn't spend all his time talking about tax policy or certain political issues.
He talked about beauty.
Edmund Burke, who was the first modern conservative philosopher, he was an aesthetic philosopher.
He was a philosopher of beauty.
Roger Scruton said that the way to make people want to conserve their culture and their country is to give them beautiful places to live in.
A great example of this is when you get into New York.
If you get into New York on the east side, you enter Grand Central Station.
It's grand.
It's big.
It's built in the Beaux-Arts style of architecture.
Ornamented, grand.
You walk in there and you feel like a king.
On the other side of town, on the west side, you get into the new Penn Station, which is underground.
It's cramped.
It's ugly.
There's nothing ornate or beautiful about it.
There's nothing clean or classical about it.
It's just gross.
And you enter New York at Penn feeling like a rat.
Those are the differences.
It actually matters.
I mean, I think conservatives were so pragmatic sometimes that we just care about lowering our taxes, getting to keep our guns, and moving on with our lives.
But when we look around us, that affects how we feel.
Our environment affects how we feel, how we behave, how we feel about ourselves and about our country.
There's a reason people come from all over the country to look at those big, beautiful buildings in Washington, D.C. They don't go over to those ugly, brutalist office buildings, do they?
What this shows me, it relates to the point on Mitt Romney, is that Donald Trump gets it.
Whether he drafted this or he told some guy to draft this or he merely hired the guy who drafted this.
In the White House, there is an understanding or an intuition of a real depth of conservatism here that technocrat liberals like Mitt Romney just do not possess, are not capable of possessing.
I would say, other than saving all those babies, which President Trump's policies have done, he's been the most pro-life president we've ever had, and every one of those human lives that's saved Those innocent lives that are saved because of those policies are worth more than every building in the world.
But other than that work, this could be the most important thing that the president does.
By making America beautiful again, it changes our perspective on how we look at it.
There's a relationship between the good, the true, and the beautiful.
I so, so strongly encourage President Trump to come out with his executive order.
You know I never ask anything of you.
Write your congressman.
I mean, this is so important.
It's so out of the box.
No other conservative politician in my lifetime has suggested anything like it.
And it really, really matters because beauty matters.
And I guess Trump would be the guy to do this because Trump's a real estate developer.
That's what he spent his whole career doing.
And frankly, if that is all we get out of the Trump administration, if he doesn't even build the wall, but he just builds beautiful buildings in Washington, D.C., that would be a major, major win.
We've got to get to Andrew Yang reminding us not to trust the left even when they're kind of funny and eccentric.
But first, back in July of last year, I told you about this show, Apollo 11, what we saw.
The host, our pal Bill Whittle, took you back in time to what it was like to live through the space age and one of the greatest endeavors of mankind, the moon landing.
Now, Bill has hosted a new season of that show.
The new season is the Cold War, what we saw.
If you are highfalutin and scholarly and academic, I'm sure you'll love it.
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Now, if you are my age or around my age, you were not but a glint in your father's eye when these events were happening.
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They've already released two episodes of this 12-part series, so you already have some to catch up on.
Head on over there.
Perfect time to listen as the 2020 election starts to heat up and we can see where the left has gone.
Completely wacko.
So make sure right now to go to dailywire.com slash coldwar and start listening to this incredibly important story.
dailywire.com slash coldwar.
Andrew Yang.
Andrew Yang has come out and reminded us Andrew Yang said something that was true and important and interesting in this debate over big tech censorship.
A key question is whether big tech companies are publishers or platforms.
So if they're publishers, then they need to be held responsible for the content that goes out on their platform.
And they can curate and they can censor, but they also have to be responsible for copyright infringement, intellectual property.
If they're a platform, if they're just neutral, then they can't be censoring people.
They can't be completely curating and censoring their content.
Andrew Yang came out on the right side of that question.
He said, But then he came to the completely wrong conclusion.
Here's Andrew Yang.
If they're watching, especially Mark Zuckerberg, what do you say to him right now?
Say, Mark, your company is contributing to the disintegration of our democracy.
If you're an American and a patriot and you care about the country your kids will inherit, then you need to have Facebook step up and say there will not be untrue political ads on your platform.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.
So Yang is acknowledging that Facebook is behaving as a publisher.
But his solution to that is to make Facebook behave even more like a publisher and kick off all the people who disagree presumably with Andrew Yang.
What is an untrue political post?
There are a lot of debates in politics.
Politics actually is debate, and we have a self-governing republic, so that's the definition of our politics, is that we disagree about things, and politics takes place in the debates between those different ideas.
If you're going to just kick the quote-unquote untrue political ideas off of Facebook, you are censoring half the country.
You are stifling that debate.
You are undermining the great American democracy that Andrew Yank says he's trying to defend.
And this is the way that all liberals seem to go when they follow their ideas to their logical conclusions.
Whether they are...
Establishment liberals like Joe Biden, or wacky socialist liberals like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, or techno-futurist liberals like Andrew Yang.
It all seems to converge on this point of liberalism being the only valid viewpoint.
And any viewpoint that contradicts liberalism has got to be gotten rid of.
They all do it.
So there are two different degrees, and Andrew Yang is now showing his cards.
He goes on.
You said they're going to make them.
What do you mean by make, Mr.
Yang?
Well, my first preference is to sit down with a major organization like Facebook and say, hey, do the right thing.
But if they don't want to do the right thing, then we have a legislature for a reason.
We should just pass a law saying Facebook should not have verifiably false political advertisements on their platform.
And if they do, then they should pay a penalty accordingly.
Verifiably false political advertising.
What is verifiably false political advertising?
If I come out and say, we need to lower taxes or the economy is not going to grow, is that verifiably false?
A lot of liberals would say it's verifiably false and they'll pull up a ton of statistics and a ton of studies to show that what I said is verifiably false.
What if a liberal comes out and says, we need to raise taxes because that'll be really good for the economy.
Is that verifiably false?
Yeah, damn right it is.
I could pull out a lot of statistics and a lot of studies on that too.
Then we could debate it and argue about it.
Once we get past the statistics, we'll get down to first principles and the actual philosophical debate that we're having.
What Andrew Yang wants to do is kick one of those points of view off of Facebook.
And I suspect it's not going to be his point of view that he's kicking off.
It's probably going to be something closer to my point of view.
Listen to the way he talks about it, how cavalier he is.
How would you deal with this, Mr.
Yang?
Look, I would sit down Mark Zuckerberg and I'd say, hey, buster, I know you operate a private business.
I know you're trying to foster the new public square, but I need you to shut up my political opponents.
All right, be a good guy.
Do me a favor, okay?
And then if he doesn't do him the favor, he's going to force him through the federal government.
That's the way liberalism ends.
You know, during this 2020 campaign, conservatives have variously flirted with different candidates.
So some people got a real kick out of Andrew Yang.
I actually got a real kick out of Andrew Yang.
Some people got a kick out of Tulsi Gabbard because Tulsi went after Hillary Clinton.
Now she's suing Hillary Clinton.
There are other reasons that people would flirt with Tulsi Gabbard.
All right, she's a very interesting candidate.
But let's not be mistaken here.
I mean, Conservatives sometimes we're a little gullible, we're a little naive, we go along with candidates, we're dazzled by polish.
This goes all the way back to Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney may be the most persistent, vindictive, petty opponent of the president in the whole country.
In many ways more than Hillary Clinton.
Mitt Romney was our Republican nominee for president eight years ago.
Now, I knew that was a bad idea.
That's why I worked for two of his opponents.
But the GOP nominated that guy.
That's how duped we were.
We should not allow ourselves to be duped over and over again.
We've got a really nice period of conservative governance.
Not perfect.
There are certain things that I don't agree with that the Trump administration has done.
That jailbreak bill, prison reform that he keeps touting, I don't like that.
I think it's a bad idea.
I think it's bad policy.
Might be smart retail politics, but it drives me nuts.
A few other things he's done that I just don't really like, but on the whole, This has been the most conservative administration in modern times.
For a hundred years or more.
That's a pretty good thing.
I think we should encourage those victories, especially on something as profound and conservative and esoteric and out of left field as making buildings beautiful again.
Something as simple as that.
We need to encourage that kind of governance.
We need to be very wary of these political wolves in sheep's clothing, whether that be the kind of eccentric liberal on the Andrew Yang side of things, or whether that be the former GOP nominee for president, Mitt Romney.
We have got to get to the mailbag.
But first, it feels like 2020 has been going on forever.
Like it's almost over, right?
Truth is, we're just getting started.
The race for president is heating up now.
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We'll be right back with the mailbag.
Jumping right in because I always save the mailbag for very last and we don't get through enough questions.
So I'm going to burn through this mailbag.
From Christopher.
Dear Michael, why do leftists think that President Trump is trying to destroy the Constitution?
All I see is the left trying to squash free speech, cancel history, take away gun rights, and install more government control.
I'm very well aware of Trump derangement syndrome, but I just can't see why they think our President is against the Constitution.
Thanks for all you dudes.
Yes, this is puzzling to a lot of people that Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats, whose often explicit stated purpose is to undermine our Constitution, why they're now wrapping themselves in the Constitution as they fight President Trump, who himself is defending the Constitution.
The reason is, the left is not actually talking about the Constitution.
When the left says they want to defend the Constitution, they're just using the Constitution as a synonym for good stuff that I like.
It's the same thing when the left talks about Christianity.
Very often they'll make disingenuous arguments.
Atheists, secular leftists, will make these disingenuous arguments about how Conservative Christians are failing to live up to Christianity.
But the leftist atheists don't know anything about Christianity.
And they don't respect Christianity.
And they don't believe it at all.
They just use it as a synonym for something good to show your own hypocrisy.
It's the same way when liberals call conservatives racists without any evidence that they're racists or racially bigoted.
It doesn't matter.
They don't have any evidence of it.
They're just using racist as a synonym for bad.
I'll never forget there is this left-wing commentator who went on David Webb's radio show and called him, said that he had white privilege, implied that he was a racist.
And this was a problem.
I guess the liberal caller had never googled David Webb because David Webb is a black man.
But it didn't matter.
Obviously she had no evidence that he was some kind of bigot.
She just used it to mean bad.
It's a very imprecise way to use language.
It's dishonest, but that's what they mean.
There's a kind of silver lining here, which is that at least Sometimes, the left is using terms like the Constitution as a good thing.
I'd rather them say the Constitution is a good thing, even if they don't believe it, than openly come out and say that they hate the Constitution.
Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.
However, it is dishonest.
They're not talking about the Constitution.
They're not talking about Christianity.
They're not talking about the things they're talking about.
It's a vague good versus bad, and really what it all comes down to is the self.
They rewrite the Constitution to mean whatever I want.
They rewrite Christianity to mean whatever I want.
It's a religion of the self and it all comes down to pride.
From Elliot.
Hi, Michael.
I'm a big fan.
Thank you.
My question is about reading.
Is there a difference in benefit between reading a physical book, using a Kindle, reading on a computer, or using a book on tape audiobook?
Some recommend audiobooks because you can play it at one and a half speed and absorb the most information.
I have a hunch that a physical book is best since that's been tried and true for thousands of years.
Any thoughts?
Yes, I have many thoughts on this because I read a ton of physical books and audiobooks and ebooks.
It totally depends on the book.
I have found biographies are great on audiobook.
They're also good if you physically read it, but you can follow them on audiobook.
Novels are not always great on audiobook.
Some are, some aren't.
Some poetry, you've got to read in the physical book.
You've got to see how it's laid out on the page.
But other poetry, I think of the foundational poems of our civilization, the Iliad and the Odyssey, ancient Greek poems, I much prefer them on audiobook because actually that's how they were meant to be consumed.
They were meant to be performed and heard.
The plays of Shakespeare, you can read them.
Maybe that's helpful, but really they're meant to be seen in the theater.
It totally depends on the particular work that you're talking about.
And so I wouldn't have a hard and fast rule for all texts.
That's usually an unsuccessful way to approach art.
I would do it text by text and try the way that makes the most sense for that particular work.
From Nick.
Dear renowned and austere religious podcaster, who is the most overrated American political figure?
Bonus question, who was the worst American president?
Barack Obama.
There's a little bit of a recent history bias.
We always think that the guy who came before is the worst, and that's just because we've recently experienced it.
And then with time, they tend to look a little bit better.
All of that is true except for Barack Obama.
He actually is the worst president, I think, in American history, and I think that history will not be very kind to him.
He's also the most overrated.
The only skill that he had going into the 2008 presidential election was that people said he gave good speeches.
He didn't have any other accomplishment.
He wasn't a great business leader, wasn't a great academic, wasn't some great lawyer.
His only credential was that he was a community organizer, whatever that means.
He's just a kind of political activist.
And he was in the Illinois State Senate, and he barely showed up to vote there.
And then he was in the U.S. Senate for two and a half seconds.
Then he ran for president.
And so the only reason that people really gave for him being this great political figure is that he gave good speeches.
But he didn't really give very good speeches.
The speech that made him famous was a speech at the Democratic National Convention where he said, there is no such thing as a red American, a blue America, black American, a white American.
There's the United States of America, which is perfectly true.
I agree with the statement.
But that's not exactly soaring rhetoric.
It's not exactly Abraham Lincoln.
It's not exactly Pericles, is it?
No.
It's just common sense that he said.
And frankly, that was one of the best speeches he gave.
He gave another good speech when he lost.
I think it was when he lost New Hampshire.
That was a pretty good speech.
I mean, that goes in the top Obama speeches.
The rest of them were not very impressive.
They were meandering.
They apologized for the country.
He stuttered.
They were kind of boring.
It's an irony.
He's considered this great orator, and the The reality doesn't really back that up.
So even on the one skill he allegedly had going in to the presidency, it just doesn't hold up.
Very overrated and a very bad president.
From Ryan.
Hi, Michael.
We ended 2019 with a debate over internet porn that split the right around the question of the level of government involvement in the culture.
You came out strongly against the libertarian-minded right-wingers and supported the idea of a government that engages the culture to promote the good.
My question is the ultimate and most important question within the debate.
Can the market alone provide us with enough libs to own, or does the government have a duty and responsibility to provide us with them as well.
Thank you.
Wow, that is a profound question.
I did not see it going in that direction.
Does the government have a role in providing us libs to own, or will the market naturally provide enough libs to own?
The market will provide libs to own.
This is an area where markets are really, really efficient.
The government cannot get involved in owning the libs because of the 13th Amendment.
We're not allowed to own people, obviously.
According to the government.
But the libs are a sort of special case because they offer themselves to be owned so often.
And there is no shortage of supply here.
You saw this most especially this week from the House Democrats at the State of the Union where Nancy Pelosi was just sitting up there muttering to herself because the president had driven her so crazy.
And you saw this in the impeachment trial.
Where all the Democrat libs and that one Republican lib, Mitt Romney, just got totally, totally owned.
I mean, there were so many that even one of the Republicans became a lib and got owned.
The market is doing very well here.
We need to reduce regulation and allow the invisible hand to allow us to keep drinking from that leftist years tumbler.
From John.
I know you have an appreciation for several modern movies.
My question is, are there any modern music artists that you particularly enjoy?
Any pop music artists or songs that you like?
Thanks.
Yes.
Very obscure.
In many ways, you might not expect this from me because I'm just, you know, I listen mostly to classical music and old music.
I love Stomp Cat.
I love Marion Hill.
I love Sam Shwee.
Those are pretty modern artists that I like.
But that's it.
Other than that, all classical.
From Jacob.
I see a real contempt from both sides for their opponents.
I'm not sure the problem will do anything but worsen.
I'd love to hear your view on this issue.
I do see a lot of rancor and polarization, but I don't think it's equal on both sides.
I think that the left...
Broadly, seems to despise the right.
Hillary Clinton admitted this in 2016.
She called the right deplorable and irredeemable.
And they have doubled down on that.
And they call us racists and awful and terrible.
And, I mean, you remember there was some kid from Covington High School showed up on the National Mall wearing a Make America Great Again hat, minding his own business, starts getting verbal abuse from adults, a black supremacist, and some Native American activist banging a drum in his face.
And the mainstream media pilloried the kid, said that he had the most punchable face he ever saw.
So I think the left really doesn't like the right very much, and I think the right is bewildered by this.
I don't think they have a genuine disdain or contempt for our left-wing friends.
We can't unilaterally disarm.
We've got to keep fighting that cultural fight, and maybe we'd all like to get along, but in war and in politics, your opponent, your adversary, gets a say in that.
Now, I do think there will be some pushback.
There will be a swing back in the other direction.
A lot of that will come down to the 2020 election.
If the left is rewarded for its radical contemptuous behavior, then we'll get more of it.
If the left is totally smacked down, very likely they'll change course.
Final question from Jeffrey.
My family is likely plagued by demons or cursed.
Wow, this is a pretty heavy one to end on.
Okay, he goes on.
I weep to say so, but I am related to people who have done some frankly terrifying things to other family members.
I am not one of those people.
But sometimes I have urges to commit violence upon both my family and those around me.
I've had these thoughts since I was a child.
I've never told anyone of these thoughts because I'm worried of how others would think of me.
I am a deeply faithful Christian, but I sometimes doubt that I'm truly saved of these thoughts that plagued me.
Am I truly saved if such dark thoughts invade my mind at times, even if I never will act on them?
If not, what should I do to redeem myself?
All right.
Well, You should immediately go see two people.
You should go see a psychologist and a Catholic priest.
Why?
Because I think a lot of people, if you talk to secular people with this problem, they will dismiss out of hand that there's any such thing as demonic obsession or spiritual malignance or malevolence.
They'll say, oh no, that's all just made up fantasy stuff.
You've just got some psychological problem, so only deal with it that way.
Now, if you deal with some people who are religiously eccentric or zealous, they might say, oh, psychology is a bunch of bunk.
This is all spiritual.
So go just deal with the spiritual part.
The reality is that the human person is both spirit, soul, and body.
And I don't know which it is in your case, and you don't know which it is, and that's why you need professional help.
So I would go and first try to make sure that this is not just a psychological problem that you can work out through therapy or through some other intervention.
Then you should speak to a Catholic priest.
I say Catholic priest because the Catholics have a long track record here, so even if you were not Catholic yourself, they've got a long track record thinking about these kind of spiritual questions, and I think that would be helpful to you, and you'd probably get the most information that way, because there is more between heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
And also modern medical science has advanced to a point that you hopefully will be able to diagnose these things.
You're not going to diagnose them, though, by keeping them to yourself or even just talking to me.
You'll have to talk to people who are expert in that question.
So I wish you the best of luck and have courage, both physical courage and spiritual courage.
All right, that's our show.
I am coming back to La La Land, flying back to the West Coast.
You should check out the latest episode of my podcast with Senator Ted Cruz, Verdict, to hear about the future of that podcast.
And in the meantime, I will see you on Monday.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
Well, with Iowa, the State of the Union now Trump's acquittal, the Democrats have had their worst week since Appomattox.
We will mock them and hear the lamentations of their women.
