The U.S. Senate passes a two trillion dollar coronavirus relief package after days of last-minute debate. We will examine the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then, more good news on the scientific front of the pandemic, more fury from the mainstream media, and a major #MeToo allegation against Joe Biden. We will analyze the evidence and the accuser.
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
The U.S. Senate passes a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package after days of fiery debate.
We will examine the good, the bad, and the ugly.
There's a lot of all three.
Then, more good news on the scientific front of the pandemic, more fury from the mainstream media, and a major Me Too allegation against, drumroll please, sleepy Joe Biden.
We will analyze the evidence and the accuser.
Then, finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Oh boy, if I look tired, I am.
The reason I am is because I was up all night last night with Senator Ted Cruz, who came straight from the Capitol to our studio in Washington, D.C. He showed up there after midnight, East Coast time.
that was the moment we even started to work on the podcast because we did an episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz for all of the minutiae and details and goings on of how this thing was negotiated.
You can head over and check out that podcast.
We're going to get to what is in the bill and what it means for the scientific front, for the political front, for the economic front, because I think, look, the thing is a huge bill, $2 trillion, largest stimulus or relief package, whichever you prefer that we've ever had in American history.
Some people are saying it's the worst abomination that has ever passed in the United States.
Some people are saying it's all dandy.
As with any bill like this, there is a lot that's good, there is a lot that's bad, and there is a lot that is downright ugly.
So we'll get into all of that, but first...
I've got to thank our friends over at Rock Auto.
You know how much I love Rock Auto.
Rock Auto is a family-run business.
They have been selling auto parts online for over 20 years, which is the entire history of online.
There hasn't been a whole lot more online than that, and they've been just wonderful.
The thing I like about them is I don't know that much about cars.
is when I show up to a brick and mortar, they, first of all, they never have the car parts that I need.
The people at brick and mortar then log on.
They probably go to Rock Auto.
They get the parts and then they upcharge me a lot.
Rock Auto's catalog is so simple to navigate.
Even I can do it.
You can find whatever parts you're looking for in a few easy clicks.
The other thing I like is they're, they don't have any gimmicks.
Okay.
They just always have reliably low prices.
I really trust these guys.
I mean, here's an example.
The Delphi FG1456 fuel pump assembly for a 2005-2010 Honda Odyssey is $359.99 at Advance, a big chain store.
It's only $216.79 at rockauto.com.
Just one example.
Go to rockauto.com right now.
See all the parts available for your car or truck.
Write Knolls in their How Did You Hear About Us box so that they will know that I sent you.
What is in this bill?
Well, I think the first question you gotta ask is, why did it take so damn long to pass?
Okay, we were supposed to get a vote on this coronavirus relief package Saturday or Sunday over the weekend.
Here we are, it's now Thursday, and we just got it in the middle of the night last night.
So what happened?
I don't know.
An absolute fantasy.
You know, it was a really cynical, cheap way to play the whole negotiation.
Republicans, to their credit, did not play it that way.
They actually focused everything on the coronavirus.
Democrats did not do that.
So that took a while to iron out.
Luckily, Nancy Pelosi got absolutely hammered in the press for trying to do this.
So she dropped most of what she was after.
Then the bill was slated for a vote two days ago, but it hit a last-minute snag because Senator Lindsey Graham, among others, actually including Senator Cruz, pointed out that there was an error in the bill.
I mean, it was just a bad incentive.
I don't know if it was put there intentionally.
I don't think it was.
I think it was simply stupidity.
It turned out that the bill actually incentivized people not to go back to work.
Here's Lindsey Graham explaining it.
If you're a nurse, aid, making $15 or $16 an hour, you're on the front lines here.
A lot of doctors' offices are going to have to roll back because elective surgery is no longer a source of income for a bunch of doctors.
So, you're going to have all these well-trained nurses that are going to make $24 an hour on unemployment.
You're literally incentivizing taking people out of the workforce At a time when we need critical infrastructure supplied with workers.
So that's a big problem.
In the bill, the legislation gives an extra $600 per week in unemployment for up to four months.
So, that's very, very generous.
I mean, compared to, say, if you just look at Texas, for example.
Texas, you can make up to around $550 per month in unemployment.
If you add $600 to that, that's more than a 100% raise.
But then the trouble is, let's say you get paid $15 an hour for your job, all of a sudden you're making $25, maybe $28 an hour for your job.
You have no reason to go back to work to make the $15 an hour.
It'd be much better for you to stay on unemployment for the four months that you can get it.
You make significantly more money, but that will drag the economy.
The whole point of this relief package is to keep the economy going, to prevent a collapse.
So if you have an incentive in there that tells people, don't go back to work, you can actually make more money sitting on your couch, that's not going to be...
That's actually going to be very counterproductive.
So the Republicans pointed this out.
Democrats didn't care.
Because you've got to remember, we'll see later in the show more evidence of this, the Democrats don't want the economy to recover.
An economy that recovers hurts them in November.
So they're trying to drag this thing out as long as possible.
All the new scientific studies that have come out and scientific analyses that show that coronavirus may in fact be much, much less dire and much less deadly than we previously thought.
We went through those studies yesterday from Stanford, analysis from Yale, analysis from Oxford.
we went through all of that.
They're hiding that.
The left doesn't want to report on it because they want the economic crisis to go on.
So the bad news is the Republicans lost when it came to that unemployment provision.
That's too bad.
That's just a dumb provision of the bill.
It is going to hamper the economy.
We're spending $2 trillion on this thing.
And frankly, we might end up spending more.
But if you're spending $2 trillion, you want the thing to help the unemployment situation.
You want it to help the economy.
That is going to hurt it.
That's too bad.
That's one of the bad portions of the bill.
A bill gives $100 billion to hospitals.
That's probably a good idea.
You know, you still want to prepare as though this is a...
Very, very, very serious epidemic.
You want to prepare for the worst case scenario.
You just don't want to destroy the economy while you do it.
So $100 billion to hospitals makes sense to me.
$58 billion to airlines.
None of us wants to give credit to airlines, but we do need air travel.
The airlines are absolutely hemorrhaging money right now.
This was agreed to by both parties.
It just seems like the sort of thing you have to do.
It's unfortunate, but you probably have to do it.
It includes a tax credit for retaining your workforce.
So businesses, if they don't fire their workforce during the shutdown, they will get a major tax credit.
I think it's up to about $5,000 per employee.
Great idea.
What we want to incentivize here is not simply businesses remaining profitable, or if they're not going to remain profitable, at least keeping cash.
What we want to incentivize is them not firing their workforce.
This is a great way to do it.
Very smart portion of the bill.
$150 billion to state and local government.
This is probably going to be wasteful.
This is something the Democrats were asking for and Republicans more or less caved.
Now, there is a federalism argument here, which is that most of the epidemic relief is going to come from the states and the local governments.
It's not going to come from the federal level, so you can empower the states to use that money.
Yeah, okay.
What are they going to really use the money for?
Probably they're going to fritter it away.
That's too bad.
If I were writing the bill, that would have been significantly lower.
$10.5 billion to the Pentagon.
The Pentagon always gets money in these bills.
That's just the way it works.
And that's fine.
I mean, this epidemic is, in many ways, a national security issue.
So, whatever.
Drop in the bucket when you're talking about $2 trillion.
$24 billion for farmers and ranchers.
That's fine.
I mean, obviously, they're getting disrupted because of this total shutdown.
$24 billion to food stamps and child nutrition.
Food stamps is a very abused program.
However, in the shutdown, one big issue has been that schools very often are providing the only nutrition that children are getting per day.
And that's unfortunate.
And parents should be held to account for that.
And if you can't feed your kid one meal a day or two meals a day, you should not be able to have a child.
You know, you should have to answer for that.
That's criminal because I think a lot of the time it's, you know, we're not talking about Jean Valjean and Les Mis, you know, people living on the street trying to steal a loaf of bread.
Very often it's about poor economic choices and not prioritizing feeding one's children over other spending habits and relying on the government to do that for you.
Nevertheless, you probably had to include it in there.
And then the most important provision is $500 billion to industries.
These $500 billion Fortunately, it comes in the form of loans, so it's not simply a $500 billion handout.
Now, if the industries and the businesses meet certain criteria, then they will have those loans forgiven, criteria like, for instance, not firing your workforce.
There are also a lot of shackles put on the businesses, so they can't just buy back a lot of stock.
They can't just use this $500 billion loan to line their own pockets.
I'm pretty fine with that.
I think actually that's the best part of the bill.
That's the part Republicans were really pushing for and the Democrats were pushing against.
And then there's maybe the most controversial part of the bill, which I'll get to in one second.
First, I've got to thank our friends, though, at ExpressVPN.
ExpressVPN is the VPN I trust.
That's it.
I have it on my computer.
I got it on my phone.
I don't want to go online without it.
Why?
Because if you're listening to this program, something tells me You listen to some pretty shady things on the internet.
Maybe you go to some websites that, you know, are not totally acceptable in society.
You click that incognito window.
You know what I'm talking about.
You type in DailyWire.com.
You're not allowed to do that these days.
It's so politically incorrect.
Make sure you have ExpressVPN.
It works on everything.
It protects your information.
It protects your online browsing identity.
Just do it, man.
It's completely worth it.
If you're like me and you believe your online activity is your business, secure yourself by visiting ExpressVPN.com slash Michael today.
E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Michael.
You get an extra three months free.
ExpressVPN today.
What is it?
Slash Michael.
M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Go over there right now.
It's like the cost of an expensive cup of coffee.
You know, like one per month.
You're talking about, what do you mean, you pay like around seven bucks a month.
Absolutely worth it.
Go do it.
okay.
The most controversial part of this, as far as I'm concerned, is the $1,200 check that's going out to some Americans.
Not all Americans, but some Americans.
If you make more than $100,000 a year, you're not going to get a check.
And if you make more than $75,000 a year, the check starts to get phased out.
This part I'm least jazzed about.
The reason I'm least jazzed about it is not because people don't need money.
People do need money, but it'd be much better for those people to be able to keep their job than to just get a one-time $1,200 check from the government, right?
And so you could have put those resources into making sure that we protect those jobs.
$1,200 check, by the way, very likely not going to do much to stimulate the economy.
There's more or less an economic consensus about that.
And the downside of it is it gets people habituated to this idea of universal basic income, which is a horrible, anti-human, very bad, no good, dumb, Andrew Yang idea.
So, So, don't care for that all that much.
However, it was certainly going to go in there.
That was being pushed by Republicans and Democrats, and in the grand scope of this bill.
Not the biggest issue.
This is fundamentally different from TARP or the Obama era stimulus because those stimulus packages were reacting to companies.
They were bailing out companies who in many ways had dug their own grave.
In this case, people didn't dig their own grave.
They didn't cause this problem.
They had, you know, we're just told because of a Chinese epidemic that they couldn't do business anymore.
This brings us a step closer to getting out of this China-inflicted economic disaster.
No.
Do I think it was necessary?
Yes.
Is it the least bad option?
No.
Yeah, very possibly.
Very possibly it is.
And the thing we're all dealing with, even as we complain about it, is the fact that the coronavirus has a cost.
So it's getting us, I think, a step closer to getting out of the economic disaster.
It's also getting us closer to getting out of the China-inflicted medical disaster.
The stimulus itself might not be getting us out of that medical disaster, but we are apparently getting closer to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
We noticed this from...
You know, major scientific experts.
We went through some studies yesterday.
And now Dr.
Deborah Birx, who is one of the top people on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, is saying that the numbers that we're all hearing in the mainstream media are frightening.
They're probably overhyped.
And the science is actually much more hopeful.
The numbers that have been put out there are actually very frightening to people.
But I can tell you, if you go back and look at Wuhan and Hubei and all of these provinces, when they talk about 60,000 people being infected, even if you said, oh right, well there's asymptomatics and all of that, so you get to 600,000 people out of 80 million.
That is nowhere close to the numbers that you see people putting out there.
I think it has frightened the American people.
I think on a model that you just run full out, you can get to those numbers if you have zero controls and you do nothing.
And we know that every American is doing something.
Right.
This is so important.
Even if you don't trust China's numbers, Deborah Birx there is saying, okay, let's say it's an order of magnitude more in terms of infections.
That's still not a huge percentage in that area.
You know, a lot of the hysteria came from that Imperial College study out of the United Kingdom.
People concluded in the United States that two million Americans could die.
I mean, I suppose...
It's possible, but increasingly the analysis shows that might have been very hyped.
And what Deborah Birx is saying there is maybe you can get to those numbers on your computer models if nobody changes any of their behavior, if nobody even starts washing their hands a little bit more.
But everybody has radically changed their behavior.
So there would seem to be some place between don't even wash your hands and destroy the global economy and lock everything down and don't leave your apartment— That would be a happy medium that would mitigate the risk significantly and also acknowledge the reality of how we all get on in the world.
So, that's what the science shows.
However, there is this reaction on the left that hasn't kept up with the science.
So what the left keeps saying is, "We need to listen to the scientists.
We need to listen to the analysis." And yet, when you get new analysis out of Yale, Stanford, Oxford, Deborah Birx updating people, calling out the mainstream media for hyping this thing.
When you get all of that new information, the left doesn't change their tune.
Here is Andrew Cuomo, furious at the president for declaring that he hopes to be done with all of this and get the economy going again by Easter because of the science.
Easter Sunday, and you'll have packed churches all over our country.
I think it would be a beautiful time.
Based on what?
No expert backed him up on the Easter call.
Not one piece of science, not one projection.
Sorry, I'm very sorry.
I have to make an apology here.
To Andy Cuomo, I'm sorry for confusing you with your brother Chris Cuomo, the Fredo of the Cuomo family.
I'm sorry that I confused the far superior Cuomo, damning with faint praise, but still with the Fredo of the family.
And what Fredo just said is simply not true.
Right?
I just recited to you the scientists we've read in the last few days who have stated explicitly that fears of coronavirus, the panic of coronavirus, is overblown.
Including a Nobel laureate.
Including people from all those fancy schools with all those fancy degrees and all those fancy professorships.
You know, those two Stanford scientists we read yesterday said that the mortality rate might be orders of magnitude lower than what is being projected and reported in the press.
Oxford study says the same thing.
But apparently Dr.
Chris Cuomo, Professor Chris Cuomo, knows so much more about the science, capital S with a trademark over the E, than the actual scientists do.
This is typical of the left.
They invoke science as though it were a deity.
They're giving homage, they're worshipping the science, but that doesn't have a lot to do with the academic analysis.
It has a whole lot to do with the kind of invention of science as merely affirming their own prejudiced and preconceived notions.
Chris Cuomo goes on.
I'm not sure the president knows Easter's theme.
It's rebirth and renewal.
But assuming he does...
Why would he invite the opposite of rebirth and renewal?
Fact, more than 100 Americans died from coronavirus today.
More than 700 total.
The virus is accelerating.
So with those as the facts, give me one reason.
It would be safe or smart or effective to reopen during the period of most cases.
Fact, he says, 100 people died of coronavirus in one day.
Another fact, 100 people died in car accidents on the very same day and every single day.
When you just state these facts completely out of context, they don't tell us much about the thing we're discussing.
Chris Cuomo says that the virus is accelerating.
Is that true, or is diagnosis just accelerating?
The big complaint from the left is that testing has not been available.
Now testing is more widely available.
Of course diagnosis is going to increase.
But are we sure that the diagnosis increasing is because of the virus itself accelerating?
I think actually the models we've looked at around the world suggests probably that isn't true.
When you see spikes in flu-related, pneumonia-related illnesses and deaths...
Even a couple of months ago.
Do we think that has no relationship to the virus?
We really think the virus just dropped out of thin air on March 1st or something at the end of February?
Probably not.
I don't think so.
Chris Cuomo says that it is a fact that Easter Day will be especially bad for coronavirus.
That's not a scientific fact.
That is the prediction of a TV political pundit and the Fredo of the Cuomo family.
Not a fact.
The most troubling aspect of this, for me, is the left using science, capital S, TM over the E, as an excuse to avoid political debate.
You see this exemplified by a writer named Molly Jong Fast, who I love using her tweets and things as examples because she's just so...
Out there.
I don't mean that as an insult.
I mean, she's out there giving the opinion of the left.
She's kind of honest or guileless about it.
So she tweets out, OMG, I would kill for a presser with only doctors and scientists.
Hashtag doctors only press conferences.
She doesn't want Trump or the coronavirus task force to give press conferences, just the scientists and the doctors.
First of all, But beyond that,
I don't want my policy dictated by scientific tyrants.
I didn't elect Dr.
Fauci.
I like Dr.
Fauci, but I didn't elect the guy.
I don't want him to have total control over our response to the coronavirus epidemic.
I didn't elect these scientific experts.
We have politics in this country so that we can discuss and debate different priorities.
Politics is not a clean-cut science.
It's not like there's always a clear answer.
It's about weighing different priorities, taking into account in our country the opinions of the American people, viewing things not just through a lens of completely stopping a virus, which is not possible, but also by balancing our liberties, also by balancing what is likely to occur, also by balancing the economy. also by balancing what is likely to occur, also by So I certainly don't want that.
The left, you know, scratch a leftist and you get a tyrant underneath.
And I think that's what we're seeing here.
But ironically, in this case, the tyrants that they want to put up are increasingly disagreeing with them.
We've got a lot more to get to.
We've got to go to Trump calling out the fake news in a beautiful way.
We've got to get to how the coronavirus is a gendered crisis, but not in the way that the left thinks it is.
And then we've got to get to Joe Biden's Me Too moment.
First, however, I've got to thank our friends over at...
Beard Supply.
Oh, yeah, man.
If you are sitting at home and you are giving the old quarantine beard a shot, you probably know it's not as easy as it looks.
For me, I'm really hoping Beard Supply can help me grow a beard.
I can grow a beard except for right here.
And so I got this one little patch and I look like I'm a 15-year-old boy.
Beards can dry out.
They can get itchy.
They can look dumb.
Beard Supply helps keep your beard healthy, itch-free, soft and smelling great.
More than 10,000 beards agree.
Beard supply products are the best out there.
Can 10,000 beards be wrong?
I don't think so.
Here's what Jacob's Beard says.
Jacob's Beard says, Chuck Norris added me to his list of worthy opponents after I used Beard Supply.
Wow, that is one excited and aggressive sounding beard, isn't it?
Head on over to Beard Supply.
It's offering Michael Knowles Show listeners 25% off right now.
Beardsupply.com.
Use promo code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. That is Beardsupply.com.
Use promo code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. It is now transparent that the left wants this crisis to go on regardless of what economists suggest and regardless of what the medical experts suggest.
So the Washington Post just sends out this new piece.
It's titled, Trump is spreading false hope for a virus cure, and that's not the only damage.
This is an editorial put out by the editorial board, not by scientists.
By the editorial board, which says that the drug that's now being touted, not just by Trump, but also by Andy Cuomo, by a lot of people, hydroxychloroquine, has shown promise in terms of mitigating the virus.
And yet they're saying it's false hope, there's no cure, stop it, don't go away.
And they actually talk about how it's been shown to be somewhat effective.
And more effective than anything else we've looked at.
But they don't want that answer.
It kind of reminds me how in the New York Times, they ran this op-ed the other day from Dr.
Katz from Yale saying, this is all being overhyped.
And then the editorial board comes out and says, no, no, it's not.
Panic.
Be worried.
Be alarmed.
So you've got the scientists saying, not a huge deal.
Then you've got the journalists who, I use that term loosely, they're just left-wing political operatives out to get Donald Trump and every other Republican.
They're the ones saying, no, you should panic.
No, you should worry.
President Trump has had enough of this.
He was giving another one of his daily pressers one of the greatest things to come out of this coronavirus pandemic, and he called them out as fake news.
Is this Easter timeline based on your political interests?
What do you mean by election success?
You tweeted, you said that the media wants the country to remain closed to hurt your office being reelected.
No, the media would like to see me do poorly in the election.
So lawmakers and economists on both sides of the aisle have said that reopening the country by Easter is not a good idea.
What is that plan based on?
Just so you understand.
Are you ready?
I think there are certain people that would like it not to open so quickly.
I think there are certain people that would like it to do financially poorly because they think that would be very good as far as defeating me at the polls.
I don't know if that's so, but I do think it's so that there are people in your profession that would like that to happen.
I think it's very clear that there are people in your profession that write fake news.
You do.
She does.
There are people in your profession that write fake news.
They would love to see me for whatever reason, because we've done one hell of a job.
Nobody's done the job that we've done.
And it's lucky that you have this group here right now for this problem, or you wouldn't even have a country left.
Bingo, baby, there it is.
Some people in that profession are writing fake news.
Not everybody, but some people certainly are.
A great example of this, the Washington Post, I kid you not, ran an article going after...
A random guy on Twitter, first suggesting that maybe we shouldn't panic and maybe we shouldn't destroy the economy.
I kid you not.
Here's the tweet.
Scott McMillan, a 56-year-old lawyer, tweeted that it's more vital to revive the economy than to save people who are not productive, like the elderly and infirm.
So I called his parents.
Great crack reporting, guys.
Wow.
Democracy dies in darkness.
The Washington Post is so pissed off that this pandemic is not going to completely destroy the world and we're not going to shut down the global economy for six months that they are now finding random people on Twitter.
This guy, Scott McMillan, had 400 Twitter followers.
Not 400,000, 400.
And then found his parents' phone number and called them to tattletale on their son.
And guess what?
The parents said they agreed.
That's the best part of it all.
The parents told the Washington Post, yeah, maybe we shouldn't destroy the global economy based on these numbers that, you know, some people are going to become ill with the virus because people get ill with viruses all the time.
You don't freak out about the other viruses, but this one is politically convenient.
So anyway, a great example.
Very embarrassing for the Washington Post, even that they would run it.
I mean, you'd think that they would come to their senses and some self-awareness, but self-awareness is just simply not a trait among the left.
So...
This is also a gendered crisis, is it not?
This is what we're being told by the political left, specifically by an Australian senator, Maureen Faruqi.
This Australian senator is very upset.
Now, she's right in that there is a gender component to the coronavirus, but it's not exactly the one that she says it is.
Let's not forget that COVID-19 is a gendered crisis.
Nurses, nurse aides, teachers, child carers and early childhood educators, aged care workers and cleaners are mostly women.
They are on the front line of this public health crisis and carry a disproportionate risk of being exposed to the virus.
Let's also not forget that not all homes are safe places.
Quarantine or self-isolation at home will put women and children at risk.
Women's advocates and domestic violence experts are warning us that domestic abuse increases during times of crisis.
And I'm terribly worried that these warnings have not been heeded by this government that has long resisted adequate funding for the needed resources and refugees.
Okay, so what she's saying is just not true.
The vast majority of coronavirus patients are men.
So it's a gendered crisis in that it is affecting men more.
But the left can't handle that because men, they're not victims.
Men can never be victims.
Only women can be victims.
The Atlantic ran a piece.
The coronavirus is a disaster for feminism.
Pandemics affect men and women differently.
Purely as a physical illness, the coronavirus appears to affect women less severely.
So at least they admit that purely as a viral medical physical illness, but as a spiritual illness, right?
They go on.
In the past few days, the conversation about the pandemic has broadened.
Yeah, it's broadened because all your facts are falling apart.
So now you've got to broaden it into politics.
The coronavirus smashes up the bargain that so many dual earner couples have made in the developed world.
We can both work because someone else is looking after our children.
Instead, couples will decide which one of them takes the hit.
What a disgusting thing to write.
They're saying like, yeah, the promise of the developed world is that none of us has to raise our children anymore.
We can just pay people to do that for us.
But now, one of us is going to have to take the hit.
Of actually interacting with our child.
Oh, woe is me.
How awful.
Shows you how perverse these guys are looking at it.
By the way, we're just getting some breaking news.
It's coming out of the UK. We've been talking about how the scientific hysteria is now breaking down.
So much of it was based on the Imperial College study.
There's now another expert coming out We're good to go.
No, of course not.
We should take it seriously.
We should do everything we can.
Take precautionary measures.
Wash our hands.
Wash our face.
Social distance.
Don't kiss people in the middle of the street.
But does it mean that the evidence shows we should shut down the global economy?
I don't think so, Buster.
Before we get to Mailbag, I've got to get to one quick story.
Oh boy, is this one exciting.
This is Joe Biden.
Speaking of women.
Speaking of a gendered crisis.
Joe Biden has a serious Me Too allegation against him.
Tara Reade.
Has apparently been trying to tell her story since this altercation in 1993 of Joe Biden me-tooing her.
Now, for some reason, we haven't heard about it until right now.
Here is Tara Reid explaining it.
He just said, hey, come here, Tara.
And then I handed him the thing and he greeted me.
He remembered my name.
And then we were alone and it was the strangest thing.
There was no, like, exchange, really.
He just had me...
Up against the wall.
And I was wearing like a skirt and, you know, business skirt, but I wasn't wearing stockings.
It was kind of a hot day that day.
And I was wearing heels.
And I remember my legs had been hurting from the marble, you know, of the Capitol, like walking.
And so I remember that kind of stuff.
I remember like I was wearing a blouse and he just had me up against the wall.
And the wall was cold.
And I remember he...
It happened all at once.
The gym bag...
I don't know where it went.
I handed it to him.
It was gone.
And then his hands were on me and underneath my clothes.
And, um...
Yeah.
And then he went...
He went down my skirt, but then up inside.
And he...
Uh...
Penetrated me with his fingers.
Whoa, man, that's a whole lot more than shoulder massages.
That's much more than we've heard from Biden before.
You know, this woman...
She came out a little while ago and said that Biden put his hands on her shoulders and ran his fingers up and down her neck.
She did that last spring after Lucy Flores, another political opponent of Joe Biden's, came out and said basically the same thing.
I definitely believe that sort of thing happened.
But only now we're hearing he actually just went down and got very aggressive with her.
She concludes her story.
I remember him saying first, like, as he was doing it, do you want to go somewhere else?
And then him saying to me, when I pulled away, he got finished doing what he was doing, and I kind of was pulled back, and he said, come on, man.
I heard you liked me.
Yeah.
It's that phrase stayed with me because I kept thinking what I might have said.
And I can't remember exactly if he said I thought or if I heard, but it's like he implied that I had done this.
Like, I don't know.
Well, look, the phrase, come on, man, is a classic Bidenism.
We hear him say that all the time.
Come on, man.
Hey, come on, man.
So, serious allegation.
Do I believe her?
No.
Not saying it couldn't have happened, but I need more evidence before I'm willing to say that this actually happened.
Why do I feel skeptical about her account?
It's been a really long time and we've never heard anything about this.
We've never heard similar accounts.
We've heard that Joe Biden gets creepy with the shoulder massages and the hair smelling, but we've never heard this kind of thing, right?
He's not considered a womanizer in D.C. He doesn't have the reputation of Bill Clinton.
The expose seems too contrived.
She came out a year ago and said that he gave her shoulder massages and then that didn't work to take him down, so now she's trying a new story.
Okay, it just seems a little contrived.
Maybe it happened, but evidence doesn't seem to back that up.
And then the other problem is she does seem like a genuine nut.
So there's a Medium article that she wrote.
She's since deleted it, but it's been circulating, where she says she left politics because America was too anti-Russia, and she loves Russia.
And she said, I love Russia with all my heart.
I can't understand the xenophobia that's come from my own American government.
Quote, President Putin scares the power elite in America because he's a compassionate, caring, visionary leader.
Look, whatever you think about-- Vladimir Putin.
Compassionate is probably not one of the words that I would use, right?
The ex-KGB thug who murders journalists.
Not compassionate.
Maybe you can say he's a typical Russian leader or he's a strong Russian leader, but I don't know about compassion.
That's pretty weird.
President Putin has higher approval ratings in America than the American president.
I don't know if that's true.
President Putin is beloved by Russia and he's not going anywhere.
Okay, so...
To President Putin, I say, keep your eyes to the beautiful future and maybe, just maybe, America will come to see Russia as I do.
Okay, this is just one example.
One thing that we know about the girl is she pushes Russian propaganda and loves Vladimir Putin.
So it just makes me think she's not totally all there with it.
Who knows?
We don't really know anything else about the gal.
But from all the evidence we see here, I won't take this claim terribly seriously, except for this reason.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Joe Biden during the Brett Kavanaugh thing, by the way, the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh were much less serious and much less credible than the allegations against Joe Biden.
All right, at least we know Joe Biden gets creepy with people and massages their shoulders and smells them and stuff.
Brett Kavanaugh, no evidence he ever did any of that.
During Kavanaugh, Biden says, what should happen is the woman should be given the benefit of the doubt and not be, you know, abused again by the system.
I hope that they understand what courage it takes for someone to come forward and relive what they believe happened to them and let them state it, but treat her with respect.
Okay, buddy, well, it looks like we're going to do that to you too, because if we're going to completely destroy due process rights and we're going to allow political adversaries to come and destroy people with uncredible allegations, then...
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
We will get to the mailbag.
We're typically running late.
First, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
You know we launched the All Access show, All Access Live.
We're coming to you every day during this quarantine.
Be sure to go sign up at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
You get so much content.
That show is only for All Access members.
Right now we're opening up to all of our members.
So head on over there if you're enjoying it.
Upgrade your membership.
Dailywire.com slash subscribe.
We'll be right back.
I am going to burn through these questions because we only have limited time and I want to answer as many as possible.
First one from Matt.
Dear austere religious podcaster and lord of Covfefe, your comment about Italy not having a functioning government since Octavian caused me to reflect on Rome's first emperor.
Was Octavian a tyrant or a father to the Romans in the same vein as Washington or Lincoln?
Keep up the great work.
Came for Ben, stayed for Michael.
A great question.
Octavian, or Caesar Augustus, is one of the most interesting historical figures that has ever lived.
By far the greatest leader of Rome.
And now you're asking to compare him to Washington or Lincoln.
That's very difficult because Octavian kind of shows us that Rome is moving away from a Republican form of government into an imperial form of government.
Whereas Washington or Lincoln were strong advocates of a Republican form of government.
So in that way, not similar at all.
But Octavian was a really terrific ruler.
People talk about the end of the Roman Republic and how everything went downhill.
Don't forget you had centuries of peace and prosperity after Rome became an empire.
For a while it was pretty good.
And then it fell apart.
And there's also the interesting historical coincidence with Caesar Augustus or Octavian.
Which is that he lives a kind of parallel life to Christ at the time of Christ.
So Christ is called the Prince of Peace, right?
His father is an adopted father, Joseph, because his true father is God.
He's called the Son of God.
He institutes peace on earth.
Caesar Augustus, also an adopted child, is called the son of the divine because they viewed Caesar Augustus as, in a way, divine.
He also instituted an era of peace called the Pax Romana, and it happened at the same time.
You can call that coincidence.
I think, probably, it's a little closer to Providence.
From Annie, quick question.
On the lockdowns episode you did with Jeremy, you mentioned your go-to drink when you're sick is a hot toddy.
You know it.
Do you have a favorite recipe you can share?
I did a search and discovered there are many variations of what would seem to be a simple classic concoction.
Thanks in advance.
Yes, my recipe is very simple, very basic.
Hot water, lemon, honey, Weller's bourbon.
Okay, that's it.
Some people put tea, some people use other kind of whiskeys.
I like Weller, and I like...
My lemon, which is good.
Those two things kill the disease.
And hot water and honey.
That's it.
That's all you want.
From Nick.
Dear Michael, if you were only allowed one item from the store before being locked in under house arrest, what one item would you grab?
Thanks.
Eggs.
Duh.
You don't really need toilet paper.
You don't need a lifetime supply of toilet paper.
If you're stuck at home, maybe you've got a really nice palatial home and you've got a bidet.
You've got a shower, you've got other pieces of paper.
You'll be fine without that.
Do you need water?
No, you've got a sink.
Do you need booze?
Well, hopefully.
You're stocked up already.
Same thing with stogies.
What you do need, though, is eggs, because with eggs, you can make breakfast, obviously.
You can make fresh pasta.
You can make bread.
Everybody's already got flour and stuff in their home, so just what you need is the eggs.
That's what people should be buying the stores out of.
From Vanessa.
Dear Michael, where the hell is the UN? All we hear is how important it is to have a strong United Nations, but when it comes time to do anything like that, it seems like the USA is the only one to bear the burden.
Have you done any investigation into where the UN is now?
Like, what are they doing and should the establishment continue?
Thanks.
Where is the UN? The simple answer to that question is it's on the future site of the Trump luxury condominiums on the east side of New York overlooking the East River.
Yeah, the United Nations is an almost entirely useless institution.
What you've got to remember is, as John Bolton famously said, there is no such thing as the United Nations.
There is the interest of the United States, and there is the international community.
Sometimes those two things intersect, in which case the United Nations can be a fine vessel to mediate that.
But when those things don't intersect, it doesn't matter.
I mean, the UN just doesn't do anything.
Very often what it does is give a platform for the worst people on Earth to come and lecture us about how awful we are.
And that's ridiculous.
And probably we shouldn't pay for that anymore.
In so much as the UN allows us to build some consensus to do what we were already going to do anyway, I suppose that's fine.
But that sure is an expensive way to do it.
From Tyler, to the excellent Michael Knowles, the man with the greatest hair and my spirit animal.
I'm getting married, hopefully without delays from Wuflu, in May, and my fiancé is Catholic and I'm Methodist.
After attending multiple Masses, pre-Cana classes, and listening to your show, I felt more of a connection with the Catholic religion.
My question is, what is the process to convert, and how long is this process?
Thank you for all that you do.
Well, Tyler, congratulations.
I'm very pleased to hear that...
You're getting married and that you're interested in coming back to the church and swimming across the Tiber, as we say.
The process is actually very straightforward.
You can enlist in something called RCIA classes.
This is the Rite of Christian Initiation and you'll Learn everything that you need to learn.
You know, it's not just like you're jumping in without any knowledge of what it is.
Really great classes.
I've got friends of mine who have converted from Judaism, taken the RCIA classes, who've converted from Evangelical Christianity or other Protestant groups.
They've all gotten a lot.
Even if you already know a ton about Christianity, which, if you're interested like this, you probably do, still a really great refresher and might show you things you haven't heard before.
So I'd get into RCIA. There are several steps in the process.
You can become a full-on Catholic by next Easter.
Or maybe even sooner, depending on your diocese.
From Claire, Michael, how do you define if an extremist group or regime is right-wing or left-wing?
It seems that most belief systems this extreme don't even remotely resemble either mainstream view, so I never know how it is decided whether a group is right-wing or left-wing.
Thanks.
Well, when you get to the fringes and the extremes, it does get a little bit complicated.
I mean, the classic example of this is the Nazis.
Are the Nazis right wing?
In a way they are.
Some conservatives want to say they have nothing to do with the right wing.
No, they do have something to do with the right wing.
They are a little more interested in history.
They're a little more interested in tradition.
They're a little more interested in...
I don't know, monarchy or kind of like perverted version of monarchy, which tends to be historically more of a right-wing preference.
So in that way, I guess they're right-wing.
They're also very left-wing in the sense that Nazism, National Socialism, well, for one, is a form of socialism, but it's also very modernist.
I mean, it was very secular.
It was actually very anti-Christian, anti-religious.
All of that is very left-wing.
In many ways, it was pagan.
Paganism was adopted by many members, high-ranking Nazis.
So, in that way, it's very left-wing.
It's very hard to classify it.
The trouble is that even our concept of right and left comes from the French Revolution.
People who sat on the right side were royalists, more favorable toward the established order, and people who were on the left side were more radical.
And so, that moment, the French Revolution, was such a radical moment in many ways at the beginning of our modern era.
Doesn't totally correspond to all of those modern movements.
I'm a conservative, but I despise so much of political modernism that, you know, to put it into a modernist framework would be so antithetical to anything that I like.
So you've got to speak about it precisely.
To say it's totally left-wing or totally right-wing very often misses the point.
All right, we've got so many more questions, but we just don't have time.
I'm sorry.
I've tried to bring you everything that I possibly can because so much is happening in our politics, in our biology, in our medical field, and in our economy.
So that's the update for now.
Of course, this is changing by the moment, so perhaps on Monday everything will be completely different again and we will get into it then.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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 and directed by Mike Joyner.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
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, Nika Geneva.
Production Assistant, Ryan Love.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to The Ben Shapiro Show.
