Oscar winners quote Karl Marx, President Trump torches his critics, and the Democratic presidential candidates beclown themselves in Friday’s night’s debate. We will examine the politics of show business, the showbiz of politics, and why the Left can’t meme.
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.
If you like The Michael Knowles Show, become a member TODAY with promo code: KNOWLES and enjoy the exclusive benefits for 10% off at https://www.dailywire.com/Knowles
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oscar winners quote Karl Marx, President Trump torches his critics, and the Democratic presidential candidates beclown themselves in Friday night's debate.
We will examine the politics of show business and the showbiz of politics.
Also, why the left can't meme.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Oscars were last night.
You didn't watch them?
Me neither.
But we have the highlights.
We'll get to them.
And in the spirit of the Oscars, I wanted to take a moment before we get too far down the road into 2020 just to acknowledge and commemorate all those political campaigns that we have already lost this year.
This is going to be a positive campaign that seeks to bring out the very best from every single one of us.
I don't know, like, members of the press, what the f***?
She was, looking back, perhaps the worst candidate ever to run from any party in the history of this country.
Gay rights!
The president used taxpayer dollars to ask the Ukrainians to help them cheat an election.
My pronouns are she, her, and hers.
She, her, and hers.
Mine too.
You've got to get up and stand up and don't give up the fight.
I believe in reproductive justice.
Let's also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female.
How did you feel you did tonight?
Well, I didn't feel I did very good, but then I got off stage and I was told I did okay.
Girlfriend, you were so on.
Now, I appreciate the comments of my colleagues.
This is about the closest I'll probably ever have in my life to an "I am Spartacus" moment.
I'm frankly surprised that Joe Biden hasn't made the cut yet.
We will get into all of the Democratic presidential race.
First, I want to cover the actual Oscars, which were last night, which no one watched, myself included.
I simply watched the highlights.
Nobody actually watched the whole telecast.
And that actually gets to Hollywood's big problem.
The most radical political moment of the night.
There are really only three or four big moments from this Oscars.
The most radical political moment of the night came from Julia Reichert, who won the best documentary for American worker.
She decided during her speech to quote Karl Marx to the applause of the audience.
Working people have it harder and harder these days.
And we believe that things will get better when workers of the world unite.
Workers of the world unite.
First of all, that's not true.
Right now we have record low unemployment across all sectors.
We have a record high economy and we have wages rising for the first time in 10 years.
So workers are not suffering relatively in this country right now.
They're actually doing well for the first time in a long time.
Workers of the World Unite is Karl Marx's call to arms from the Communist Manifesto.
That is a direct quote of the inventor of communism.
And the point I guess she's making is that all workers will do better under communism.
But we know that that isn't the case.
Every communist...
Government on Earth has been absolute hell for workers.
It's been absolute hell, especially for workers.
Whether it's in the Soviet Union, whether it's in Cuba, whether it's in China, whether it's anywhere in the world, the workers have not only been oppressed, they've very often been slaughtered en masse.
But then the cherry on top is my favorite part of this whole moment.
American Factory was the first film produced by Barack and Michelle Obama's new production company.
Production companies hire ground productions.
So, obviously, they just give this award because Obama's attached to it, I think, as part of it, and because it has this kind of underlying communist message.
But I just want to point out, when conservatives would decry the radicalism and extremism of Barack Obama, the left and the mainstream media would tell us, oh, you're crazy, you're hysterical, you're nuts, Obama's a moderate, it's no big deal.
His first movie to win an Oscar, in the acceptance speech, they quote Karl Marx.
They quote probably the most famous line from Karl Marx.
So don't tell me the guy is a moderate, his projects are moderate.
Just ain't the case.
So that was the most radical political moment of the night.
The most bizarre political moment of the night came from Joaquin Phoenix, who also wanted to get in on the politics, and he wanted to use it to go after a very specific political issue.
He wanted to protest milk.
We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth, we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable.
And then we take her milk that's intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.
I did not see that one coming.
I did not know that milk was going to be the big new leftist hobby horse.
I will point out, Joaquin Phoenix is an environmentalist.
He does not simply want to protect the environment because it's good for human beings and we want to be good stewards of the environment.
He seems to have a much more radical view of environmentalism.
The idea that the natural environment sort of has rights, that animals have rights, that we are here to serve the natural environment.
And so the idea that we would take a cow's little baby or kill a cow's little baby is so repugnant to him.
He takes it even further.
The fact that we would drink water A cow's milk is morally repugnant to him.
This is a guy who is on stage at the Oscars where people are endorsing abortion.
I don't want to beat a dead horse here, or beat a dead cow, or drink the dead cow's milk.
I just want to point out the absolute incoherence of being an environmentalist who cares about animal rights, of worrying about the little baby calf, of not eating veal, of being so afraid of causing harm to an animal that you won't drink a glass of milk.
But then endorsing killing a million babies a year in the United States alone doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
It comes from a place of sentimentality because we think of the little cow's face and we try not to think of the baby's face.
But maybe we should think of the baby's face and probably that would cause those Hollywood people to shut up for a little bit.
We will get to the lamest political moment of the night, which I think actually probably was my favorite.
And then we will get to Brad Pitt.
But first, I've got to thank our friends over at Ashford University.
Ashford University's online bachelor's and master's degree programs allow you to learn at your own pace.
Ashford University's six-week long courses allow you to take one course at a time and you're still considered a full-time student.
You know how much I push education on this show?
I think that part of the reason why bad actors have totally wrecked our culture is because they've kept us very uneducated.
Well, look, we need to shake up the educational establishment.
Ashford is doing just that.
doing just that.
The SAT, the GRE, the GMAT, other standardized test scores are not required for enrolling at Ashford University.
Ashford University is fully accredited by WASC Senior College and University Commission.
There are a lot of problems with American higher education.
We talk all the time about how we've got to change up this model.
The current model is not working.
Well, one way to change it up is to go check out Ashford.
Get on the road to earning your degree and making your dream job a reality.
Enroll now by going to ashford.edu slash noels, K-N-A-W-L-E-S.
That's ashford.edu slash noels, K-N-A-W-L-E-S to start your degree today.
ashford.edu slash.
So...
We've got communist proclamations from the Oscar stage.
Then we've got an impassioned plea not to drink milk.
And then we have the lamest political moment of the night, which came from, I am told, Sigourney Weaver, Brie Larson, and Gal Gadot.
I did not recognize any of these people.
Apparently they play superheroes in some movie.
But that was the point.
They wanted to make sure...
That their audience knew when they got on stage that really they're not the only superheroes, that really all women are superheroes.
We also wanted to stand here together and say that all women are superheroes.
Wow, okay, all right, all women are superheroes.
How about Betsy DeVos?
Betsy DeVos is a woman.
Is Betsy DeVos...
The Secretary of Education, is she a superhero?
Because I think she's just terrific.
But the left is always telling me that Betsy DeVos is Hitler.
So, is she a superhero?
Actually, speaking of Hitler...
What about Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress?
Is Eva Braun a superhero?
Because Eva Braun is a woman, and I am told that all women are superheroes.
So I guess by that definition, Eva Braun is a superhero.
What kind of psycho gets on an Oscar stage and calls Eva Braun a superhero?
The reality, of course, is that women are not superheroes.
Women are women.
And men are men.
And this kind of saccharine nonsense is...
How do people applaud for this stuff?
I mean, it's the same kind of saccharine nonsense that has them applauding for workers of the world unite.
These are just completely empty platitudes that, if taken to their logical conclusions, have pretty bad implications for society.
But you just hear, women are superheroes.
What if a guy got up there saying, you know, men are superheroes.
Men do some cool stuff.
Of course, there would be no applause for that.
But for some reason, we indulge it, and it's so condescending.
It's so condescending to say to women, like, oh, yes, you're a superhero.
It's the sort of thing you say to a three-year-old.
The three-year-old comes out and says, I'm Superman.
You're like, yes, you are, Johnny.
You are Superman.
We're indulging these overgrown actresses, adult, ostensibly adult actresses.
We're indulging them like they're three-year-old children.
There's nothing particularly feminist about that or particularly respectful.
Then you get to the dumbest political moment of the night.
That came from Brad Pitt.
Thank you to the Academy for this honor of honors.
They told me I only have 45 seconds up here, which is 45 seconds more than the Senate gave John Bolton this week.
I'm thinking maybe Quentin does a movie about it In the end, the adults do the right thing.
What?
What are the odds that Brad Pitt knows who John Bolton is?
He might know that John Bolton is that guy with the mustache.
What are the odds that Brad Pitt...
Who knows that John Bolton was the National Security Advisor?
Forget knows what he worked on while he was National Security Advisor.
What are the odds that he knows that John Bolton was the UN Ambassador?
What are the odds that he knows anything about what he's talking about?
Very low.
He says he was 45 seconds more than John Bolton got in the Senate.
Huh?
What are the odds that Brad Pitt knows that it was the Democratic House, not the Republican Senate, That decided not to call John Bolton to testify.
The Democratic House, when they were calling 17, 18 witnesses, all to help the Democrats' case, not a single one to help the Republicans' case, they wanted to call John Bolton.
The White House said no, so they followed normal procedure, took it to the courts, and then the Democrats withdrew their request.
Because they just wanted to go along and impeach the president, get the vote over with, move on to the Senate.
Because they knew it was all kabuki theater.
Because they knew that John Bolton didn't have nothing.
Because they know they didn't have nothing on Trump.
And they just wanted to get it over with so that they could tell their rube base that they had actually impeached the president.
What are the odds that Brad Pitt knows that?
Brad Pitt doesn't know that because he's part of the rube base.
We will get to what this means for Hollywood in a second.
Because I think Brad Pitt's speech in particular tells you a lot about it first.
I want to talk about good art.
I want to talk about paint your life.
If you want to give a truly meaningful gift, you've got to try paintyourlife.com.
Actually, give the gift to yourself.
I think about this all the time in my apartment, in my office.
I like having paintings on the wall.
I like having artwork on the wall.
Paint Your Life is an incredible way to do this.
So you get a true painting done by hand.
My Paint Your Life is an oil painting, absolutely beautiful by a world-class artist.
It's not some trick.
It's not just made by a computer and you think it's a painting.
It's a real painting done by hand.
You upload a photo of yourself or your family or your dog or a favorite place that you like, and the artist will paint this.
They will work with you every step of the way until every detail is perfect, so you'll be getting different proofs, and there's no risk.
If you don't love the final painting, your money is refunded.
I did not believe that this would work.
I didn't think you could get really high-quality art this way, so I order it for my stepbrother's wedding.
It comes back absolutely beautiful.
I'm working with these guys again.
It makes a wonderful Valentine's Day gift, fellas, coming up, or birthday, or anniversary, or just on a Tuesday.
Right now is a limited time offer.
You get 30% off your painting.
You will not regret this.
Go right now and check it out.
It is an unbelievable product.
30% off, free shipping.
To get this offer, text the word Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L, to 64,000.
That's M-I-C-H-A-E-L to 64,000.
M-I-C-H-A-E-L. To $64,000.
All right.
The trouble with Brad Pitt's speech.
The trouble with all these speeches.
I like Brad Pitt.
I thought he did a great job in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
I was hoping he would win the Oscar for it.
He did a really good job.
I like watching him perform.
That speech made me like him less.
Because it made me respect him less.
It's not even that I disagreed with what he was saying.
He didn't say anything in particular.
It was what children do when children want to have a political conversation with adults is they just sort of insinuate things.
John Bolton didn't speak.
Okay, do you know why he didn't speak?
It's bad that he didn't speak.
Yeah, okay, why would that be bad?
The adults should do something about it.
Brad, do you even know what you think you're talking about?
No, not really.
Right, because you're a movie star.
We want you to be a movie star.
We don't want you to insinuate that you sort of understand kind of what the political issue is about.
The speech makes us like him less, not even because of the content or the political content, but because it just degrades him.
My conclusion from all of this is they need to stop televising the Oscars.
They have to.
For the Oscars' own sake, for Hollywood's own sake, they have to stop televising it.
The whole point of the Oscars is to get us to like the movies more.
But in reality, the Oscars make people hate the movies.
The movies sometimes make us like the movies.
The Oscars always make us like the movies less these days.
Without the Oscars, if the Oscars were not televised...
The movies and the movie stars would be much, much more popular.
So I think they should keep having the Oscars.
I think it should be like any other trade awards show, any other industry awards show.
They go to some convention center, and there are no cameras whatsoever, and they give out awards to each other for who had the best direction, who had the best...
And then there aren't really quite as many popular political considerations because they're not going to get blowback for hashtag Oscars to mail, hashtag Oscars to this, hashtag Oscars to that.
It's an actual industry awards show where all the artists vote on each other's work and there's no cameras and there's no showboating.
If they do that for enough years, they will remember what the point of this awards show is, which is to celebrate movies and to bring the best work up and to not run your mouth about John Bolton.
Performers used to know this.
Take a look at, this is a clip of Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll, in the 1970s, right?
Very heated political moment.
You got all the craziness of the late 1960s, the early 70s heating up Vietnam, and Elvis is asked a political question.
Here's his answer.
Mr.
Presley, on the subject of this service, what is your opinion of war protesters and would you today refuse to be drafted?
Honey, I just seem to keep my own personal views about that to myself.
I'm just an entertainer and I... I'd rather not say.
Do you think other entertainers should keep their views to themselves, too?
No.
See, even, right, they say, hey, Mr.
Presley, what are your political views?
He was like, I'm just an entertainer.
I don't want to lose half my audience, and I'm obviously not qualified to talk about politics.
I'm a guy who wears a jumpsuit who does karate chops and sings beautiful, beautiful songs, so I just don't spend my time thinking about Vietnam.
I'd keep my views to myself.
She goes, oh, yeah?
Do you think other people should keep their views to themselves?
He goes, I don't even want to answer that.
Nope.
Whatever.
Move on.
Ask me about Jailhouse Rock or something.
Performers used to know this.
Dolly Parton still doesn't give her views on politics, right?
She's of that old school.
That all kind of changed in the 70s, and it really was led in many ways by the Oscars.
They've got to go back to it.
It's killing the Oscars, it's killing the movies, and it's killing me because I have to watch even part of this awards show, and that's unfortunate.
Now, there was a great show that took place over the past few days.
That would be the Trump press conference celebrating his exoneration.
So, President Trump holds a press conference at the White House right after his official acquittal In the impeachment trial.
Trump said this was not a press conference.
This was a celebration.
Now, conservatives are completely split on this.
Some loved that he spiked the football.
Some hated that he did take it too far.
They said it was an unnecessary presser.
It was an unnecessary escalation of things.
I think both sides are completely missing the point here.
To begin, the press conference started out great.
This is really not a news conference.
It's not a speech.
It's not anything.
It's just we're sort of, it's a celebration because we have something that just worked out.
I mean, it worked out.
We went through hell unfairly, did nothing wrong, did nothing wrong.
I've done things wrong in my life, I will admit.
Not purposely, but I've done things wrong.
But this is what the end result is.
You can take that home, honey.
Maybe we'll frame it.
It's the only good headline I've ever had in the Washington Post.
So it starts out very funny, even sort of self-effacing, right?
He says, look, I've done a few things wrong, okay?
I'm willing to admit it.
A full-on narcissist can't admit that he's ever done anything wrong.
He says, look, I've done a few things wrong, okay, all right?
Look, I've never gotten a good headline in the Washington Post.
It's funny.
It's victorious.
It's triumphant.
It does great.
Then it got even better when President Trump started going after his adversaries like Mitt Romney.
And then you have some that used religion as a crutch.
They never used it before.
An article written today, never heard him use it before.
But today, you know, it's one of those things.
But, you know, it's a failed presidential candidate, so things can happen when you fail so badly running for president.
But Josh Hawley, I want to thank you.
You were right from the beginning.
Man, did I make a good choice.
Thank you.
It's just great.
He won't even say Romney's name, right?
He just goes, yeah, some people were a little tough on us, but they failed.
They failed so badly.
So badly.
Hey, alright, I made a great choice.
And he just moves on.
Again, it's great.
It's got this balance.
It's got this sense of humor.
He is spiking the football.
He's giving you what you want.
He's pummeling that principalist hack, Mitt Romney.
But he's still got this levity to it.
Then he took it Slightly too far.
We'll get to that in a second.
First, I've got to thank our friends over at Lightstream.
Please, please, please take care of your credit card debt.
I've had too many friends and family who have gotten in a very bad position because they don't deal with their credit card debt.
It is time to consolidate Your credit card debt into just one payment at a lower fixed rate so that you can start saving money.
And that's very easy with a credit card consolidation loan from Lightstream.
Rates are as low as 5.95% APR with auto pay.
It's much lower than the national average interest rates on credit cards.
That can be over 20% APR. You're just throwing money away.
Get a loan from $5,000 to $100,000 with absolutely no fees.
Here's one customer's testimonial.
He goes, quote, I applied for this loan after hearing an ad on the radio.
Ever the skeptic, I decided to check it out anyway.
I was amazed how easy the process was and had the money in my bank account within two days.
I would recommend this company to everyone.
It's so important.
And you could just be hemorrhaging money right now unnecessarily.
Don't do it.
Just for my listeners, apply now to get a special interest rate discount and save even more.
The only way to get this discount is go to lightstream.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, L-I-G-H-T-S-T-R-E-A-M.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S.
Subject to credit approval, rate includes 0.50% auto pay discount.
Terms and conditions apply and offers are subject to change without notice. Visit lightstream.com slash Knowles for more information.
So, starts out well at this Trump press conference, gets even better when he starts to hammer Then he takes it slightly too far.
We've been going through this now for over three years.
It was evil.
It was corrupt.
It was dirty cops.
It was leakers and liars.
We first went through Russia, Russia, Russia.
It was all...
Adam Schiff is a vicious, horrible person.
Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person.
But now we have that gorgeous word.
I never thought a word would sound so good.
It's called total acquittal.
Okay, first of all, total acquittal is two words.
Alright, you see that's Joy Behar playing it on The View, and then she gets that dig in at the end.
There are two conservative reactions to this, two distinct ones.
The first one says that it's great, it's hilarious, they love it, they like that he says that naughty word, they like that he's getting really personal.
Then the other conservative reaction is, I hate it, it's terrible, he shouldn't do this, why is he doing this?
It's the only thing he does that I don't like in his official capacity as president.
You know, a little bill or a little law here and there.
But otherwise, I think he's doing an excellent job, and I hate it.
Makes my skin crawl when he swears in public.
I think it is degrading, okay?
I hate that he had to give this press conference.
I wish he didn't have to give this press conference.
I wish...
That we were living in a time where the president could have given that amazing State of the Union address and then walked off glorious into the sunset back to the White House and just gotten down to business and not had to give this press conference that was a little meaner and a little more reality TV and a little tougher.
We don't live in that time.
We live in a very, very corrupt time and a degraded time.
And President Trump had to give this press conference.
And what's even worse, he had to take it too far.
He had to.
Because he had to get all these liberals like Joy Behar on The View to tell their audience that he was acquitted.
If Trump just went out there, first of all, if he had just left it at the State of the Union...
We wouldn't have heard a thing about it.
And a lot of the country, which isn't paying very close attention to politics, would probably not even know that he got acquitted.
They would just hear, he was impeached, he was impeached, right?
That's all the Democrats are saying.
So if he just left it at the State of the Union, wouldn't do him any good.
There'd be a lot of misinformation out there.
Now, if he had given this press conference, but it just said, look, I won, I was acquitted, no big deal, Romney's a jerk, we're moving on.
Even if he had just done that, it wouldn't have worked.
There would have been nothing about that clip that the left would have had to play.
It's because he took it too far and did things that I hate, like swear in public and get really, really nasty and personal.
And did you hear what he said?
He goes, that one word that I love, that one word, total acquittal.
Now, that's not one word.
Did President Trump know that that's not one word?
I suspect he did.
I suspect the billionaire who's been a real estate developer genius, who is married to the supermodel who became president on its first try, and who was the king of reality TV, I suspect he knows that total acquittal is more than one word, that it's two words.
Okay?
But by saying that, and giving his opponents an opening to attack him, The clip gets played.
When you say, this is BS, the clip gets played.
And when the clip gets played on the view, what happens?
Joy Behar says, total acquittal.
It's not total acquittal.
Total acquittal is two words.
They play his words.
And that reaches a whole lot of people.
A lot more people than those of us who are paying a lot of attention.
It's frustrating, but this is a tactic.
And by the way, this is not some conspiracy, like I'm reading 4D chess into Trump.
He has done this since the early 80s.
He has done this.
He has ginned up a sort of negative headline That he then rides to get his message out.
He did it in the New York tabloids.
He did it on network television.
And he's doing it now in the political press as president.
All right, this is the most consistent tactic he's used in his whole career.
And I wish we didn't have to use it, but we do.
And so you got to defend these kind of press conferences.
You have to.
It's the only coherent way to say, well, you could say, I love what Trump does, but I hate how he does it.
Okay, well, how else are you going to do it?
Get Mitt Romney, Pierre Delecto over there?
Guess what?
He doesn't win.
And even if he did win, he'd probably be spineless about it.
Comes with the territory.
It's an unfortunate reality, but politics is about reality.
Okay.
We've got a lot to get to.
We've got to get to that democratic debate.
We've got...
There's a whole lot more to get to.
It feels like we're already halfway through 2020.
We actually haven't even gotten started.
The election's heating up.
We know you need to stay up to date.
So we're giving you 20% off all memberships.
That is 20% off when using promo code DW2020.
What do members get?
Articles ad free access to our live broadcasts and show library, the full three hours of the Ben Shapiro show, select bonus content, the mailbag, and now election inside op-eds Plus, our new all-access tier gets you into live online Q&A discussions with me, Ben, Drew, Matt Walsh, plus our site's writers, even special guests.
You ask, we answer.
The Leftist Years Tumblr fills right up.
Download the Daily Wire app, a member exclusive so you can get push notifications straight to your phone.
That's promo code DW2020 for 20% off.
Join today and stay informed on all things 2020.
DailyWire.com.
We'll be right back with a lot more.
The Democratic Debate.
Did you even know there was a Democratic debate?
You probably didn't know the Oscars were last night.
You probably did see that from press conference, and I'm certain you didn't watch the Democratic debate on Friday night.
But I did, because I'm a masochist.
So this debate goes on.
This is right after the debacle in Iowa.
They're heading into New Hampshire.
We still don't know who the winner is, by the way.
They're saying now it's Buttigieg.
It's pretty dodgy.
We don't know for sure who the winner is.
This was a devastating debate.
For Democrats.
And the Democrats knew it would be a devastating debate, and that's why they buried it on a Friday night when even fewer people than usual would be watching it.
It was devastating for a few reasons.
The most important one is it exposed how radical all of the Democrats are.
Bernie Sanders remains the Democratic frontrunner.
He very likely won Iowa, even though officially they're probably going to give it to Buttigieg, but it looks probably like he got more votes.
He's at the top of all the polls in New Hampshire.
He's doing well everywhere.
The Democratic frontrunner denounced the entire country from top to bottom, quote, as hopelessly racist.
Here's Bernie.
We have a racist society from top to bottom impacting health care, housing, criminal justice, education, you name it.
And clearly this is an issue that must be dealt with.
But in terms of criminal justice, what we have got to do is understand the system is broken, is racist.
We invest in our young people in jobs and education, not more jails and incarceration.
We end the war on drugs, which has disproportionately impacted African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans.
We end private prisons and detention centers in America.
So what's interesting about Bernie and all of the Democrats when they talk about racial issues is they always immediately go to drugs and crime.
It's as though when you ask them about any kind of racial issue, you say, what are you going to do for the black community?
What are you going to do for the Latino community?
They say, yeah, we're going to give them lighter sentences for all their crimes, and we're going to give them more drugs to take.
That actually is racist from top to bottom.
If the first thing you think of when you think of black people is drugs and crime, like Bernie Sanders, that's not a great look.
He still said, even though he exhibited this kind of bigotry himself, he said that the whole country is racist, top to bottom.
You can't chalk that kind of thing up just to one crazy socialist, okay?
Because you could say, this is what a lot of people are trying to say, Bernie's at the top of the heap, sure, he might be the front runner, but he doesn't represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party.
Except he does.
What this debate showed us in particular was that Bernie Sanders has remade the Democratic Party in his own image.
One of the moderators asked all of the candidates, they said, do any of you feel uncomfortable With nominating an open socialist for president, not a single one raised their hand.
Is anyone else on the stage concerned about having a democratic socialist at the top of the democratic ticket?
I'm not.
Senator Klobuchar?
Okay, and then, so you see at the very end, so no one raises their hand.
Then at the end, Amy kind of puts her hand up and puts it back down.
So it's a little unclear.
Is she uncomfortable with being a socialist, or is she just trying to answer the question?
Then Bernie raises his hand and goes, I'm not uncomfortable with that at all, because Bernie is the open socialist.
All of them, every single one of them, just gave their assent to socialism.
And Joe Biden was saying a little while ago, he said, look, if we nominate Bernie, or this was at least attributed to Biden and people around him, if we nominate Bernie, then the Republicans are going to hang this socialist label around our necks and we don't want that socialist label.
Well, then you probably should have objected when you were asked that question.
Because as of now, every single major Democratic candidate for president has just said that they're fine with a socialist being their nominee.
They're fine being represented by a socialist.
Then you see how this trickles down the whole campaign.
We knew that Bernie was a socialist.
We knew Elizabeth Warren was going to become a radical.
She became a Joe Biden is all the way in,
even on an issue as personal and controversial as abortion.
I am aware of what you said, which is why I'm asking, would you do it differently now?
Would there be a litmus test on abortion?
Yes, look, here's the deal.
A litmus test on abortion relates to a fundamental value in the Constitution.
A woman does have a right to choose.
I would, in fact, if they rule it to be unconstitutional, I will send to the United States Congress, and it will pass, I believe, a bill that, excuse me, legislates Roe v.
Wade adjusted by Casey.
Oh, man, he just went the whole way.
I mean, he used to say people can have difference of opinion on abortion.
I don't support taxpayer funding of abortion.
Then a few months ago, he started to support taxpayer funding of abortion.
Now he's saying it would be a litmus test for a judge.
If you don't support abortion, you're out.
You're out of the running.
We're not allowed to have litmus tests, but apparently the left is allowed to have litmus tests.
And then the worst.
So Bernie, we always knew, was a wacko.
Warren is collapsing.
Biden is now a radical and can barely form an English sentence.
Then you get to the worst candidate.
My least favorite in the entire race.
Pete Buttigieg.
Pete Buttigieg.
He is the worst.
I know he seems like kind of a nice guy.
I know you think, oh, that guy, he couldn't have cheated and stolen Iowa.
Oh, that guy, he couldn't be a radical.
He is the single worst candidate.
And he didn't do very well in this debate.
Especially when he was asked about racial issues.
He was asked why Black people in the town that he's the mayor of, South Bend, Indiana, why they were getting incarcerated and arrested at a higher rate than white people.
And he totally flubbed the answer.
How do you explain the increase in black arrests in South Bend under your leadership for marijuana possession?
And again, the overall rate was lower.
No, there was an increase.
The year before you were in office, it was lower.
Once you became in office in 2012, that number went up.
In 2018, the last number a year that we have a record for, that number was still up.
Drag him.
That's right.
Go get him.
You know it.
I don't even know who that moderator is.
But good job.
Good job nailing him on it.
Because Pete Buttigieg, more than any other candidate, is duplicitous, two-faced, insincere, will lie directly to your face.
He's better at it than Joe Biden, even.
Probably Joe Biden's lost a little bit with age.
Bernie Sanders doesn't really lie to your face.
He's actually pretty honest with you.
And Elizabeth Warren is incompetent at it.
But Pete Buttigieg will lie to your face.
He will relieve himself on your leg and tell you that it is raining.
And she was having none of it.
He said, look, the arrest rate went down while I was mayor.
She's like, no, it didn't.
We have the numbers.
The numbers don't lie.
You lie, Pete Buttigieg, but the numbers don't.
So she pushes him on it.
Let's hear her push him on it again.
And then his answer could not have been worse.
His answer was worse than Bernie, who just comes out and asks him about racial issues and he just starts talking about crime.
Pete Buttigieg's answer was even more to the point.
Once you became in office in 2012, that number went up.
In 2018, the last number a year that we have a record for, that number was still up.
And one of the strategies that our community adopted was to target when there were cases where there was gun violence and gang violence, which was slaughtering so many in our community, burying teenagers, disproportionately black teenagers.
We adopted a strategy that said that drug enforcement would be targeted in cases where there was a connection to the most violent group or gang connected to a murder.
These things are all connected, but that's the point.
These things are all connected.
This was one of those moments where Buttigieg tells you what he really feels.
Because he does feel that these things are all connected.
Did you listen to the logical line in his answer?
They say, okay, why were black people arrested at a higher rate for drugs under your mayorship?
And he said, no, they weren't.
And she said, no, actually they were.
We have the numbers.
They were arrested in higher numbers at a higher rate when you were mayor.
Why is that?
And he said, well, we prioritized arresting violent people.
So, Pete Buttigieg's answer as to why more black people were arrested for the same crime when he was mayor is because the black people are just more violent.
And that's his answer.
This is a sort of answer where if you put him behind a veil, right?
If you were just listening to this on the radio, you kind of mixed up the voices a little bit.
That could have been an answer given by one of these white racialist guys.
Now, I'm not accusing Pete Buttigieg of being a white racialist.
I'm accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy on racial issues.
Because these answers, if these answers were given by a Republican or a conservative, this would be top of the news for weeks and weeks and weeks.
But the Democrats have no answer on racial issues.
They have no account for their own history on racial issues.
And they don't want the public to see these candidates.
It's just like the Oscars.
The more you see the movie stars, the more the movie stars come into your own living room, the less you like them.
And it's the more these candidates talk, the less you like them.
That's why they're burying this debate on Friday nights.
Buttigieg did not do terribly well at this debate.
The worst thing, look, Buttigieg is rising to the top now because he's trying to get the moderate lane from Joe Biden.
So there's a world in which this thing comes down to Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg.
Pete Buttigieg is nothing.
He only speaks in platitudes when he's not accidentally making these racial comments.
Here's just an example.
This is the typical Buttigieg answer on virtually any topic from the same debate.
We cannot solve the problems before us by looking back.
We have to be ready to turn the page and change our politics before it's too late.
And I'm seeing everywhere I go, not just fellow Democrats, but a striking number of independents and what I like to call future former Republicans ready to join in that historic American majority to turn the page.
What did he just say?
Try now.
Just get a pen and paper.
Write down in one sentence what he actually said that means anything.
He said, we can't go forward if we're going back.
We have to come together.
And we need people who disagreed with us to agree with us.
And we need to do those things together, you know.
It's like the universe, man.
It's sort of like we're all one.
He said nothing.
He just uses words and he says enough of them together that it makes it seem like he's saying something.
And that's the Democratic field in a nutshell.
They're just saying nothing, nothing that people want to hear at least.
One candidate who's jumping up the polls was not there.
That candidate is Mike Bloomberg.
He bought his way into the next debate, but he wasn't able to buy his way into this debate.
And so he sent the whole debate sending out terrible memes.
And I want to show you, it's a tale of two memes to show you why.
We often hear that the left can't meme.
The left doesn't know how to use newfangled internet speak to convey the ideas that they want to convey.
The right happens to be very good at memes.
Most of the memes on the internet come from the right.
Why is that?
Mike Bloomberg shows us.
So during this debate, he's not invited.
He sends out this meme.
I will narrate it.
It's a meme of Donald Trump.
And he says, this is Donald Trump's recent speech.
And in the meme he says, lie, lie, lie, unfair, lie, lie.
And in the meme is a little gingerbread cookie, gingerbread man, who's catching on fire and smoking.
And he's just kind of jumping around the screen and it's a little gingerbread man.
And it doesn't make any sense.
It's completely random.
And it's getting a lot of scorn and mockery on the internet by people who can meme.
Okay, that's the Bloomberg meme.
Compare that to the Trump meme that he just put out.
Trump meme.
This was put out by the White House social media director and then Trump retweeted it.
It said, select all the squares with the president.
Like those little security measures that you get when you go on different websites, right?
And you have to pick all the squares with the crosswalk or with the traffic light.
And it's a photo of Donald Trump standing next to Mitt Romney.
You select all the squares with Trump in it and then obviously you don't select the squares with Romney in it.
That's a funny meme.
Got decent play.
It's funny.
Why is it funny?
Because it means something.
It's clever.
It's a little mean.
It's not direct.
It's not just right out there telling you exactly what it means.
It's depicting what it means.
It has some art to it.
You have to use your mind a little bit.
But the message is clear once you appreciate what the work is telling you.
Why can't the left meme?
It's because of what Mike Bloomberg thinks.
Bloomberg's team thinks that memes are just random things.
You just throw a bunch of random stuff together and then at the end of all that random stuff that's funny and that's going to make you look cool and hip or something.
That's not what a meme does.
The definition of a meme is not its lack of meaning.
It's that it is full of meaning.
Right?
The reason that the left thinks it's all this random nonsense is because the left doesn't get what we're saying.
There are studies to back this up.
John Haidt did a study a number of years ago, showed that the right understands the left pretty well, but the left doesn't understand the right.
They don't know what we think.
They don't know how we view the world.
And so to them, when we convey our worldview in these kind of silly images online, it just looks like random nonsense to them.
But it's not random nonsense.
It's actually conveying something that they simply can't understand.
So then they try to recreate that by creating random nonsense and we mock them because that's not memeing.
That is...
There's much more to say on this topic, but in a nutshell, that's why the left cannot meme.
There is much, much more to get to, but we are simply out of time.
So we can chew on that.
We can ponder that.
We can think of all these memes tonight.
Maybe send them out, tweet them at me.
I'm very bored all day, so please send me memes.
Then we will get to so much more tomorrow.
AOC is out with something that explains another big flaw of the left, but you'll just have to wait until then.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies.
Director, Mike Joyner.
Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.
Supervising Producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
Technical Producer, Austin Stevens.
Assistant Director, Pavel Widowski.
Editor and Associate Producer, Danny D'Amico.
Audio Mixer, Robin Fenderson.
Hair and Makeup, Jesua Olvera.
Production Assistants, McKenna Waters and Ryan Love.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
On The Matt Wall Show, we're not just discussing politics.
We're talking culture, faith, family, all of the things that are really important to you.
