While everyone is distracted with the latest drama about masks and meat shortages, lots of strange stuff is going on out of the political spotlight. From Obama era coverups to environmental overhauls, the shutdowns are starting to feel like a shell game. Then, the remaining half dozen #NeverTrumpers remind us why we got rid of them in the first place, and finally the Mailbag!
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
While everyone's distracted with the latest drama about masks and meat shortages, lots of strange stuff is going on outside of the political spotlight.
Obama-era cover-ups.
Hollywood environmental overhauls.
Making it all seem like this shutdown is more of a shell game.
Then, the last half-dozen remaining never-Trumpers on Earth conspire to take down the president.
And in so doing, they remind us why we got rid of them all in the first place.
Finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
We've got a whole lot to get to because there's a lot happening that I think we're all being distracted by other things so that we cannot pay attention to what's going on behind the scenes.
We'll get to that in a moment.
First, I have got to thank our friends over at the Books Company.
You know, moms are working way harder than usual this year without a single day off.
So, at the Books Company, that's short for bouquets, makes sense, doesn't it?
They have decided to celebrate Mother's Day all month long.
Put smiles on mom's face each month with the flower subscription and get 30% off plus free shipping.
Now is the time to do it.
You get free shipping every time.
Subscriptions are flexible, so you can pause, switch up delivery dates, or even recipients to cover all of your bases.
You don't want long-term commitment?
Well, try the gift trio for three months of Farm Fresh Blooms.
Books.
Absolutely phenomenal.
Right now, go check them out.
I love these guys.
Books.com slash Knowles.
How do you spell that?
It's like bouquet.
B-O-U-Q-S dot com slash Knowles.
Place your order today.
If you'd rather just buy one book, you can still receive 25% off at checkout by entering the promo code Knowles.
Maybe you can't give Mom a hug right now, but you can brighten her day at The Books Company.
Go check it out.
I really, really recommend these guys.
I always send flowers for Mother's Day anyway.
They've got a tremendous product, and they've got a really great deal running right now.
So check it out over at books.com slash Knowles.
That's a number.
Easy to remember.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
That's what the left tells us.
That's what Rahm Emanuel tells us.
That's what leftists have told us all the way back to Saul Alinsky and before then.
Why?
Two reasons.
The two reasons are, one, to seize on people's fear to ram through policies that people would otherwise object to.
That's the idea.
You always want to have a crisis or take advantage of a crisis or sometimes encourage a crisis so that you can get people whipped up and they're not thinking as rationally and they'll be more amenable to whatever radical policies that you want to get through.
And during times of crises, that's the time that radical policies do get through.
So that's the first one.
That's the one we all know about.
There's a second reason why the left, and I guess it's general political advice, why they never let a crisis go to waste.
The second reason is because crises are really, really good at distracting people from all the things that you don't want them to see.
So it's not just about getting people whipped up so they're all paying attention to that and you can get your policy through.
It's also about saying, let's say there's a cover-up going on or let's say there's some very complex international relations happening over here, then you put a little puppet on your hand and you say, hey everybody, look over here.
Nobody's looking at what you don't want them to see.
And I think...
And that's exactly what's happening with one of the running themes of the entire Trump era.
From day one with President Trump, they have tried to throw this guy out of office.
He was never supposed to win, right?
Remember?
Remember that?
It was going to be Hillary Clinton.
They said 99% chance Hillary was going to win.
99.9% chance.
And then what happened?
Donald Trump won.
They immediately tried to impeach him.
You heard in early 2017, Al Green, Democratic congressman, said, we've got to impeach Trump.
Not because he committed a crime, but because if they didn't impeach Trump, quote, I fear he will be re-elected.
So already they were so worried about this.
Then they try to throw him out for Russia collusion.
Remember that?
Then it came out, actually, the only people who colluded with the Russians were the Democrats when they compiled the Steele dossier.
Then it turned out the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign.
Then it turned out things actually looked a whole lot shadier in that investigation than in the Trump campaign itself.
Never mind.
They tried to get Trump for not paying his taxes.
Then it turned out he did pay his taxes.
Then they tried to get Trump for sleeping with a porn star.
Then they tried to get Trump for colluding with Ukraine, which is actually a war with Russia.
Kind of ironic.
I guess he's playing both sides, right?
None of that worked.
And there's famous political advice, if you're going to take a shot at the king, you better not miss.
Well, they missed.
So now there are investigations of all of their wrongdoing, and a lot of that is coming out right now.
A part of that is over how much Barack Obama knew about Joe Biden's dealings with Ukraine.
I know it's very complicated to keep all of these moving parts in order, but we know, we remember this from the impeachment.
This was part of the way the impeachment backfired.
We know that Joe Biden leveraged his power as the vice president and the point person on Ukraine to fire a prosecutor in Ukraine.
The prosecutor seemed to be investigating his derelict son, Hunter.
Hunter was getting paid hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for a no-show job on a Ukrainian energy board.
Joe Biden was threatening to withhold U.S. aid if the prosecutor didn't get fired.
It looked very nefarious.
But we're not allowed to hear anything about that, right?
So the Republicans are investigating and investigating.
This requires getting some documents from Barack Obama.
Obama has just come out himself and said he doesn't want to turn over the documents.
I've got a letter here.
It was just obtained by BuzzFeed News from the office of Barack and Michelle Obama.
This is to the Archivist of the United States.
And this letter is being written by Anita Breckenridge, records representative to President Obama.
She says...
President Obama has consistently supported the nonpartisan administration of presidential records and the commitment to transparency core of NARA's mission.
However, the current request is not a proper use of the limited NARA exceptions.
It arises out of efforts by some actively supported by Russia to shift the blame for Russian interference in 2016 to Ukraine.
So they go right back to the script that got disproven.
It was disproven by the Mueller report, but they go right back to the same script.
Russia, Russia, Russia.
Oh, they're colluding with the Russians.
That's why we can't show you all the crooked activities we've been up to.
The request for early release of presidential records in order to give credence to a Russian disinformation campaign is without precedent.
Then they complain about that a little bit more.
This use of the special access process serves no legitimate purpose.
It does not outweigh or justify infringing confidentiality interests.
Nevertheless, then she says they're willing to along with it, but they're trying to delegitimize this from the beginning.
Why are they fighting so hard, rather, not to let these records out?
Well, Senator Rand Paul thinks that he has the answer.
There's been rumors for quite a while that people within the Obama administration knew about the corruption problems with Hunter Biden, that they warned the vice president and maybe even the president about it.
I think that there could be a smoking gun, that there's actually a record of some of these complaints that were going on at the time.
There have been some articles written quoting unnamed sources saying that they were Listen to that.
Rumors Obama knew, right?
Obama himself knew about Joe Biden's shady dealings in the Ukraine.
A lot of people have been suggesting this for a while, but no one knew yet.
Now it would appear that there's possibly some documented evidence of this.
Might be a smoking gun, right?
Joe Biden basically admitted this two days ago.
Do you remember in the clip we played on this show two days ago, two or three days ago, Joe Biden was explaining why he doesn't want his own documents opened up.
And he said, don't worry about Tara Reid, it's not about the personnel decisions.
But I had conversations with the president about a particular issue.
Here's Joe Biden's own words.
Why not do it for both sets of records?
Because the material in the University of Delaware has no personnel files, but it does have a lot of confidential conversations that I had with the president about a particular issue, that I had with the heads of state of other places, that that would not be something that would be revealed while I was in public office or while I was seeking public office.
A particular issue.
What's that particular issue?
Right?
He's not saying I had general conversations.
It's about a particular issue.
Something tells me that particular issue might involve the terms Burisma or Ukraine or Hunter.
He had conversations with the president and with heads of state.
I mean, Joe Biden, you've got to give him credit.
He doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut.
But we could have gotten basically the same information from Rand Paul or from Barack Obama himself.
This would be, I mean, even with the mainstream media totally covering for the Democrats, they wouldn't be able to help but cover this.
If we were not in the midst of a pandemic.
I'm not suggesting the reason that we have a shutdown is to cover for Obama, but it is convenient and surely political actors, including allies of Barack Obama, are taking advantage of the situation.
Speaking of the international sphere, though, other weird stuff going on.
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who was reportedly on the verge of making, quote, very significant findings in the fight against the coronavirus, He was murdered over the weekend inside his home.
Neighbors said that he and his wife kept to himself, a very quiet guy, and yet he was found murdered, and the person who they think murdered him then left and killed himself in a car right down the street.
Very odd.
Now, we know.
The doctor, by the way, is Dr.
Bing Liu, 37.
He's from China.
He was shot multiple times, and they believe he was shot by another man, Hao Gu, 46, who lived in Pittsburgh.
He may have been from China himself.
Then he got in his car 100 yards away and killed himself.
I wonder what that's about.
I guess it could be a coincidence.
But it doesn't feel like a coincidence.
It feels like maybe there's something else going on here.
We know that China has covered up this whole epidemic from the very beginning.
The Chinese government said initially it had no idea what was happening.
The Chinese government said initially the virus has no connection to the market.
The Chinese government says originally the World Health Organization says originally no, don't look over there.
Now all of a sudden as people are investigating this all of a sudden people go dead.
People turn up dead.
If we were not so concerned about the masks and the craziness surrounding that maybe we pay a little bit more attention.
Maybe this is giving cover for some people who are Interfering in international politics in ways we couldn't possibly even speculate on.
It's not just them, though.
It's not just this international sphere.
It's not just Barack Obama.
It goes all the way to the mainstream media.
It goes all the way to Hollywood.
There are big changes that could possibly happen in this country.
And they might happen without us even knowing what hit us if we don't pay closer attention.
We'll get to Chris Cuomo in a second.
First, though, I've got to thank our friends over at Ring.
You know, safety now is more important than ever, I say.
But...
It's very hard to keep a close eye on things, right?
More deliveries mean more boxes left unattended, more opportunities for packages to go missing.
A lot of stuff can happen out your front door.
And we're not always free to check on things in person.
With Ring, you can keep your home safe no matter where you are.
So let's say maybe you're an essential worker.
You're at the office.
You're at work.
You can check in very easily.
Or if you're in your home, you can check in from the front door.
Obviously, people are a little on edge right now.
So, a very important time.
I love Ring.
I trust these guys.
I give Ring to my friends.
You can get a special offer on a Ring welcome kit right now when you go to ring.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. The welcome kit includes the Ring Video Doorbell 3 and Chime Pro.
It's all you need to start building custom security for your home today.
Go to ring.com slash Knowles, ring.com slash Knowles.
By the way, I think I've given you this update on the possum.
So I give this out to my friend as a welcome gift, right?
This is before the shutdown, before you had to be worried about all these kinds of people.
She thought a burglar was breaking and it turned out to be a possum.
The little possum had a possum baby.
The little possum had a second possum baby.
That's the lighter side of things.
Or you can catch a burglar before they break in.
Either way, go check it out.
Very important tool to have.
So, it's not just happening on the international front.
It's not just happening at the office of Barack Obama.
Those are two things, though, to pay very close attention to.
Chris Cuomo of CNN, Andy Cuomo's brother, Fredo of the Cuomo family, he made his impassioned plea a couple nights ago to the American people to not lift the lockdowns.
This is as people are sick of the lockdowns.
The medical science was bogus.
The models were dead wrong.
There's no evidence the lockdowns are saving any lives or even have saved any lives.
And Chris Cuomo begs people in this very emotional, weird plea.
I want to just play you the last few moments of this plea because I think it's a bad harbinger of things to come while we're all not paying attention.
We know we can't do nothing forever.
But think about what you are so anxious to get back to in terms of normal and what you're going to lose that we've gained in this pandemic.
Okay?
Think about it.
Be careful what you wish for.
The time with family.
The time together.
The time leading more simply.
The time thinking about where to go and where not.
Those pictures of what we see in Venice of clearer water and clearer skies that they're showing us all over the world.
I know we can't do nothing forever.
But we can think about how to be together better.
I love how he starts it.
He says, we can't do nothing forever.
But, it's like, yeah, duh, we can't do nothing forever.
And yet he seems to make this argument, but, you know, we can do nothing for a long time.
He says, think about what we will lose if we go back to work.
I don't know, our poverty and loneliness?
I guess we'll lose that.
I'm fine losing that.
We're not going to be able to watch CNN all day?
Actually, ironically, I will have to watch more CNN because I'll be going to the airport more often.
He says, careful what you wish for.
It sounds like a threat to me.
And then finally, this weird line at the end, think how to be together better.
It's so bizarre.
It seems like the guy's on drugs or something.
It's such hippy-dippy kind of talk.
But he is making a point.
He has a point.
And a lot of people in all the areas that the left has infected have been trying to make this point.
What does it mean, think about how to be together better?
What that really means is think about how to improve our politics.
We are together.
Politics is how people can live together and get along together.
How to do it better.
And I think there is a major...
Once in a lifetime, once in a century, political shift that the left in this country is pushing for through the coronavirus pandemic.
You even see it, you know, forget New York and the CNN for a moment, go all the way out to California.
Governor Newsom has been one of the true dictators, true arbitrary wielders of power in all of this.
Governor Newsom says, okay, we're going to reopen a little bit, but not that much, and I'm going to target my political opponents in Orange County.
But we're only going to open some businesses.
And then he makes this broad political statement about our progress.
And I think he's talking about more than coronavirus.
We're not going back to normal.
It's back to a new normal with adaptations and modifications until we get to immunity, until we get to a vaccine.
Yuba and Sutter counties are allowing dine-in restaurants, hair salons are open, and the Yuba-Sutter Mall plans to open tomorrow.
You've said counties can go deeper into Phase 2 ahead of the state, but can they go into Phase 3, which includes things like hair salons?
If not, then will these now open to businesses need to close?
Yes, they're making a big mistake.
They're putting their public at risk.
They're putting our progress at risk.
We've been clear about that, well aware of those examples.
These are exceptions.
These are real exceptions.
The overwhelming majority of Californians are Are playing by the rules, doing the right thing.
We're not going back to normal, he says.
It's a new normal with adaptations and modifications until we get to immunity in a vaccine.
There's no vaccine on the horizon.
You think a vaccine is going to come in two weeks?
No.
No evidence will get one in a year.
No evidence will get it within two years.
No evidence will get one at all.
Sometimes you just don't make a vaccine, right?
Until we get a vaccine.
That's like saying tomorrow, tomorrow is always a day away.
No going back to normal until we get immunity.
It's a way for them to buy time.
But they're saying we're going to have a new normal.
And the left always talks about a new normal.
Obama, that's all you heard during the Obama administration.
This is the new normal.
Get used to it.
And the American people said, we don't like this new normal.
We want to get rid of you and go back to our old normal.
But that's what the left wants.
New norms of living.
He says, the counties that are opening up, they're making a big mistake.
They are putting their public at risk.
They are putting our progress at risk.
There's the key.
You hear that?
I guess he's directly talking about the progress on coronavirus, but I think there's something bigger at play.
They're putting our progress, with a capital P, at risk.
These are exceptions.
The overwhelming majority of Californians are playing by the rules and doing the right thing, meaning doing what I tell them to do, a threat of arrest or worse.
That's what the left is always saying.
They're always saying we're putting their progress at risk.
Anytime you elect a candidate that they don't like, they say, oh, you're turning back the clock.
You're killing people.
I mean, you remember when we all died from net neutrality repeal?
That was a million years ago, it seems like, in the early part of the Trump era.
They said, if we repeal these net neutrality regulations, people will die.
If we cut taxes a little bit, people will die.
It's going backward, killing our progress.
That's the exact same kind of language they're using here, except this lockdown, this unprecedented lockdown, is giving political cover for far more monumental changes than net neutrality repeal.
How do I know it?
Again, you don't have to take my word for it.
This is not some crazy, kooky conspiracy theory.
Hollywood leftists are telling us this very thesis themselves.
There were a bunch of Hollywood stars who just signed a letter calling for basically a complete overhaul of our entire society.
Not just our society, but societies around the world.
True A-list of empty-headed Hollywood leftists.
Robert De Niro, Madonna, Cate Blanchett, Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, Juliette Binoche, I don't know who that is, Ralph Fiennes, Eva Green, Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, and Joaquin Phoenix.
This is the letter that they wrote.
This is more radical than the Communist Manifesto.
Listen to this.
The ongoing ecological catastrophe is a meta-crisis.
The massive extinction of life on Earth is no longer in doubt.
Is that so?
Are you sure?
Sure, I guess in the long run we're all dead.
John Maynard Keynes said that, but I don't think we're on the verge of an imminent mass extinction of all life on Earth.
They go on.
All indicators point to a direct existential threat.
No, just you people do, and you don't know anything you're talking about.
And even if the scientists were pointing to that, which they're not, the scientists are wrong about everything.
The fact that they're not pointing to a mass extinction actually has me more worried that there will be a mass extinction because, did I mention, the scientists are always wrong.
They go on.
Unlike a pandemic, however severe, a global ecological collapse will have immeasurable consequences.
We therefore solemnly call upon leaders and all of us as citizens to leave behind the unsustainable logic that still prevails And to undertake a profound overhaul of our goals, values, and economies.
For these reasons, along with increasing social inequalities, we believe it is unthinkable to go back to normal.
The exact same language that Gavin Newsom is using.
The exact same sort of language that we're hearing from everyone on the left.
We're hearing from Chris Cuomo.
This is pretty big.
And two things are happening at once.
The thing that you're not seeing is all the cover-ups of all the past leftist indiscretions.
Forget for a moment China, obviously, trying to cover up their guilt in the pandemic.
Even the former Obama guys trying to cover up their spying on the Trump campaign, trying to cover up everything they did with Joe Biden and Burisma in Ukraine, everything they very likely knew about.
They're using this massive transformational event as cover so that no one remembers what they did.
Don't forget the left is always rewriting history.
But then at the same time, what they're beginning to let us in on is the evidence that they are calling for a massive fundamental transformation.
Joe Biden used that phrase.
Barack Obama used that very phrase.
Fundamental transformation.
Do you want a fundamental transformation?
I don't think I do.
What does this all mean?
Does this mean that the coronavirus is all a hoax cooked up by Bill Gates and the Illuminati?
No, I don't think so.
I don't think so.
What do I know?
I'm not a member of the Illuminati.
They didn't let me in.
But I don't think that.
I don't think you have to believe that this pandemic and this shutdown are all some grand conspiracy cooked up by people in a room.
I think what we all have to admit, though, is that leftists are taking advantage of this.
Whoever is at fault, I mean China's at fault, but forget all the steps in the first place.
The left is very clearly taking advantage of this.
Their steps have not proven effective to slowing the virus or saving lives, but they are proving increasingly effective at pushing the same kind of transformational change they've wanted for a hundred years.
I think we're talking about something much bigger than a pandemic here.
We're talking about a religious shift The religion is environmentalism.
The scientists are the high priests.
The media stars are the evangelists here.
That is the kind of framework that all of this is in.
But it would change the economy.
It would change the way we live.
It would change the way that we get around.
It would change the way we have air travel.
It would change everything.
We're seeing what it feels like to have those things changed right now.
And the left is pushing ahead and saying, this could be the new normal.
Don't give it up.
What are you rushing back to?
We can't go back.
Let's stay in this...
Isolated misery forever.
That's not the life that I want, but that's a clear choice, and we happen to be in an election year.
We will get to a little bit more in just one moment.
First, I've got to thank our friends over at...
Which friends do I get to thank?
Rock Auto!
I love Rock Auto.
Rock Auto makes...
Shopping for car parts so easy with the increasing number of makes, right?
Fiat, Ikea, different models, the Pacifica, the XT5, the ABCD, I don't know the model names.
It's now impossible to stock all the parts that you need in a traditional chain storefront.
Why endure the often pointless and seemingly intimidating questioning?
Why wait?
Well, wait while the guy at the counter just goes online, probably to Rock Auto, orders the part, and then just charges you twice as much.
Doesn't make any sense at all.
Chain stores have different price tiers for the professional mechanics and the do-it-yourselfers.
RockAuto.com does not.
The thing I love about Rock Auto?
Family run.
It's been around for a long time, for basically as long as the internet's been around.
It has every part you need.
And even for me, someone who is completely ignorant when it comes to these kind of questions about cars, I don't know a single thing about cars or trucks, even I can navigate their catalog.
Go right now.
It's family business, amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need.
You can go to rockauto.com.
And then the most important thing, by the way, Is when you go to rockauto.com and you see all the parts available for your car or truck, write Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, in their How Did You Hear About Us box, so that they know that we sent you.
So, as the left is trying to radically change our politics, they're gaslighting us on it.
We see this with the mask order.
CNN is kind of letting the mask slip a little bit, actually.
Pun very much intended.
They came out with an article yesterday called...
The psychology behind why some people won't wear masks.
Look at that word, psychology.
It's not why people won't wear masks.
It's not the rational reasons why people have political disagreements.
It's not the reason why some people are interpreting the scientific evidence to realize that there's not a huge threat when you're out in a wide open space and you're a young person and you don't have other comorbidities, right?
Uh-uh.
It's the psychology behind why some people don't.
This goes back to what liberals were saying in the middle of the 20th century about conservatives.
They said that conservatism was just a series of irritable mental gestures that That sought to give the impression of real thought, but it was just irritable mental gestures.
And that's what they're saying here.
CNN is interviewing a bunch of doctors, a bunch of physicians, to tell us when we can reopen.
They're interviewing a bunch of psychologists to try to explain why people have different political points of view.
As though people don't have their own faculties of reason.
As if...
If you voted for anybody who's not a leftist, if you in any way disagree with leftist policies, then you've got to have something wrong with your psychology.
Never mind, by the way, that the left was telling us, these very doctors were telling us three weeks ago not to wear masks.
The Surgeon General, three exclamation points, don't wear masks.
Then two seconds later they say, you have to wear masks.
Forget that.
That would be part of my reason why I don't think I need to wear a mask all the time.
But, no.
It's the psychology.
Something's got to be wrong in your head.
This can all be explained by the dictatorship of science, history, politics.
It's all a matter of science.
Put the guys in the white lab coats in charge.
They all coincidentally happen to be leftists.
And then let them run your lives for you.
Very pathetic.
And some people who don't get the stakes here are the five remaining never-Trumpers in America.
There aren't that many.
There used to be a lot of never-Trumpers.
Now there are like two people left in a basement somewhere.
They've come out with an ad.
It's called Mourning in America, and it just shows they don't get what's going on.
There's mourning in America.
Today, more than 60,000 Americans have died from a deadly virus Donald Trump ignored.
With the economy in shambles, more than 26 million Americans are out of work.
The worst economy in decades.
Trump bailed out Wall Street, but not Main Street.
This afternoon, millions of Americans will apply for unemployment.
And with their savings run out, many are giving up hope.
Millions worry that a loved one won't survive COVID-19.
There's mourning in America.
And under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is weaker and sicker and poorer.
And now, Americans are asking, if we have another four years like this, Will there even be an America?
Paid for by The Lincoln Project, which is responsible for the content of this advertising.
Morning in America.
You get it?
M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. You get it?
It's really clever, huh?
Because it's like the...
In the 1980s, in 84, Reagan had an ad called Morning in America, with the sun shining, and they're doing Morning in America.
You get it?
You get it?
It's a pun.
Never mind how offensive this ad is, and the idea of the upside-down American flag.
Really, that's an inappropriate use of that image.
Not that these guys know anything about what's appropriate or reverent.
But it's also just so lame.
What a lame ad.
I mean, first of all, it's made for TV, which has been dead for 10 years now.
Second of all, It's this stale imagery and the deep, booming voice on the voiceover.
Donald Trump is bad.
That's right.
This ad paid for by people against Donald Trump.
He's bad.
It's just, like, so lame.
Make a meme or something, man.
You know, this is 2020 already.
It shows us that, obviously, they don't get it.
This group of people are all...
Well, President Trump can tell you himself.
His words, not mine.
They're a bunch of losers.
I saw a project, a thing called the Lincoln Project, and I would have them change the name to the Losers Project.
Because if you take a look at Schmidt, it's George Conway, the guy is, Kellyanne must have done a big number, or it's George Conway and some other people, Weaver.
Every one of them are either defeated or they lost by themselves.
But it's a group of major losers.
They're Republican losers.
And if they would really think about it, I have 252 beautiful, brand-new, conservative, wonderful judges.
Two Supreme Court judges that are great.
We produced the greatest economy in history until a month and a half ago, when we got hit by the virus, so we had to close it down.
And we'll do it again.
We've rebuilt our military.
We've done things that nobody has been able to do.
I've gotten the greatest tax cuts in history, in the history of our country, the biggest tax cuts.
The Democrats want to raise your taxes.
I've gotten regulation cuts, the biggest in the history of our country, no matter how long a president served.
With all of that, I guess they don't like me.
But let me just tell you, these are losers from day one.
Yeah, so, you know, President Trump doesn't mince words here.
They have lost a lot of campaigns.
I mean, they've lost campaigns for John McCain, for John Kasich, for Mitt Romney.
They're not the varsity squad when it comes to political consultants.
So they've missed the time.
They've missed the shift.
They're also missing what's happening in politics right now.
And that is my big fear here.
I fear that people are missing what's going on.
I think a lot of people are waking up.
The ones who understood what the Trump election meant, even if you don't love Trump, even if you don't like the way he talks...
What it meant that you had this guy who had kind of different policy prescriptions, who kind of talked a little differently, acted a little differently, vanquished the House of Clinton, shook things up.
The fact that that guy won really meant something.
It meant we've moved into a new kind of politics, or we're moving in that direction.
Now there is a fundamental transformation that is underway, or that the left wants there to be underway.
And we can either go along with it and wake up one day and realize we lost our whole country and our whole culture, or we can push back.
I, as you might have noticed, suggest the latter.
Alright, we've got to get to the mailbag first, though.
I have got to thank our friends over at, oh yeah, that's right, you!
I've got to thank you!
And I want to tell you about Daily Wire's newest, most exclusive membership tier, the All Access Insider.
The All Access Insider Membership Tier is our premium level of membership.
This is like the jewel-encrusted, diamond-encrusted...
Leftist tiers Tumblr goblet of membership levels.
The All Access members get the benefits of our other membership tiers, including an ad-free website experience, access to all of our live broadcasts and show library, access to the show's mailbags, and the three full hours of the Ben Shapiro show, all along with dedicated editorials from Ben Shapiro.
Then you get the Q&As and the discussion, and you get the All Access show, where we get to interact.
And...
You get the Irreplaceable Leftist Tears Tumblr.
I am going to be joining you on the All Access show tonight.
That'll be at 8 p.m.
Eastern, 5 p.m.
Pacific.
I call it a show.
It's not even really a show.
It's just kind of hanging out.
So be there.
Be there.
Be square.
Ben will be doing it tomorrow, so go check that out.
DailyWire.com slash subscribe to join Daily Wire's All Access Club with a new membership or with an upgrade, and you will get 10% off with coupon code Knowles.
It's my gift to you.
DailyWire.com slash subscribe.
We'll be right back with The Mailbag.
All right, let's get to some mailbag.
First question from Andrew.
Hey Michael, has feminism been beneficial for society?
Even first wave feminism?
You anticipated that I would say no, so you followed up with a question in your question, even first wave feminism.
Good thinking.
If not, has it been the primary cause of deteriorating the nuclear family and women themselves?
Thanks, love your show and all that you do.
Feminism has been very bad.
It's been bad for women, primarily.
It's been bad for men.
It's been bad for children.
It's been bad for society.
It's been bad for everybody.
Now, you ask about first-wave feminism, and this is a clever trick that feminism plays, I guess, where they divide it up into waves.
You never know quite what wave you're in.
Are we in the fourth wave or the third wave?
I don't know.
It's all kind of the same problem.
You know, the third wave, that's when you start to think of, like, the blue-haired women who are screeching and, you know, who are redefining gender.
But actually, some of them don't want to redefine gender, and it's very, very complicated.
Whereas when you think of the first wave, you think of the suffragettes or something like that.
And that's obviously much more respectable and sort of normal than the blue-haired bra-burners.
But the problem is feminism itself.
You could refer to social scientific data here that show that women have become less happy in both relative terms to men and absolute terms for every year that feminism has gained steam.
You could point to all that kind of anecdotal data, but the real problem is philosophical.
Feminism misunderstands Human nature.
It misunderstands humanity itself.
One thing that feminists and liberals try to do is they say, hey buddy, do you know what feminism means?
It just means that you want equal rights for women.
You just think women are...
And so if you object to that, you're a jerk.
And if you agree with that, then you're a feminist.
I don't think so.
Our civilization, Christian civilization, has believed in the spiritual equality of women from the beginning.
It goes back even before Christian civilization.
It goes back to the Old Testament.
It goes back to the very first chapters of Genesis, where Eve is pulled from Adam's rib.
This image is very important.
If Eve were pulled from Adam's head, then Eve would be above Adam.
If Eve were pulled from Adam's foot, she would be below Adam.
But Eve is pulled from the rib, right there, smack dab in the middle, representing a spiritual equality.
So, of course, men and women are spiritually equal.
But equal also has this connotation, especially these days, of being the same.
And men and women are not the same, which you would know if you've ever talked to a man or a woman.
They're very different.
Men and women complement each other.
And they obviously physically are different, temperamentally often they're different.
So what feminism tries to do is take this equality, which we've always believed in, And turn it from a complementary equality into an identical equality.
That men are exactly the same as women.
And that's obviously not true.
That's made women miserable.
It's made society coarser.
It's denied the fundamental nature of men.
It also buys into a lot of other kind of liberal premises that we don't have time to get into now.
But it's just wrong.
And so when you say, are you a feminist?
Are you not a feminist?
Is feminism good?
Is feminism bad?
It's just wrong.
It's incorrect in what it says about men and women and human nature.
And so it's probably not a very useful thing to use to guide society.
from Alex: "Hi Michael.
I heard you mention that you were brought to the Catholic faith by way of Protestantism.
Can you describe what in particular convinced you that the Protestant view of Scripture was insufficient or errant in that conversion?
I feel a draw toward Catholicism which from what I can tell comes from a desire for shared community with them that I'm missing out on.
However, the Catholic view of Scripture has some worrisome points for me, specifically the ongoing sacrifice to Christ, Christ presented in the sacraments as opposed to final justification on the cross.
What are your thoughts on this?
There are seven questions in there.
I'll try to run through them quickly.
I can assuage your fears about this idea of the continual, ongoing sacrifice of Christ in the Mass.
The Mass is a memorial sacrifice.
It's the highest form of prayer.
But that doesn't mean that Christ is being crucified.
Every single Mass, as though Christ's crucifixion was not sufficient.
Christ's crucifixion was a one-time event that was sufficient for salvation.
Now, the memorial sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharist, the real presence of Christ, all of that is true.
A sacrifice does not always need to involve a killing.
You see in Hosea, you see in the Psalms, sacrifices of rejoicing, sacrifices of prayer.
It doesn't always have to involve killing something.
To discuss what the Mass means and the Eucharist means would take a very long time.
But that's a little introduction.
You could find more at a resource called Catholic Answers, perhaps.
If you Google around there, I think you'll get some more answers on that to assuage your worries.
In terms of how I came to Catholicism through Protestantism, it was a Protestant, my good friend, a megachurch Protestant, who kind of brought me over and convinced me that God exists in the first place.
Now, the end of this story, though, by the way, is that That Palabine is joining the Catholic Church, so he kind of went the same way that I did.
I suppose there are a few things here.
One, I believe that Christ gives Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever Peter binds on Earth will be bound in Heaven.
Whatever he looses on Earth will be loosed in Heaven.
I think Peter is Peter, the rock on which Christ builds the Church.
I think he breathes on Peter and the Apostles and their followers.
Rather, they're successors, and they receive the Holy Spirit, and they have the power to forgive sins, and whose sins they forgive are forgiven, and whose sins they retain are retained.
You see the institution of confession, of the sacrament of reconciliation.
You see the institution of the Eucharist in the Last Supper.
You see all of these things there.
Then there's the historical claim.
We can trace the popes all the way back to Peter, and then to Linus, and then all the way up to Francis.
There is a historical continuity here.
And then there's this fact that you do have to grapple with if you're attracted to Protestantism as I was, which is why there was basically one church For 1,500 years, I guess the Eastern Church split off, but not in the same way.
I think of that as sort of like the two lungs of Christianity.
The Protestant Revolution was a much firmer break.
And so, you've got to ask why everyone basically agreed for 1,500 years, and then why everyone split off from there.
And in particular, you have to ask why the views of Martin Luther and John Calvin and Zwingli and the Protestant reformers On very, what you would call, Catholic issues, like the perpetual virginity of Mary, for instance, things like the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, their views are so much more similar to Catholic views today than to the views of their supposed followers in the Protestant denominations.
And, of course, where authority ultimately comes from, and why there are 30,000 Protestant denominations, and which one is right, and who you can refer to, and maybe what the advance of all those various denominations has to do with the rise of our modern era.
I gave you about 10 answers there.
I don't know if any of them got to it in particular, but those are some of the reasons that led me ultimately to the Catholic Church, and probably I wouldn't have gotten there if not for the Protestant churches, too.
So, that's a good thing, but, you know, one has to keep thinking about these issues.
From Joshua, what are your thoughts on eliminating the payroll taxes for the remainder of the year in lieu of continued payments to the American people?
Yeah, cancel them forever.
Forget the end of the year.
Get rid of them.
That works for me.
From David, hey Michael, I'm doing research on homelessness in the U.S. and the best way to fix it.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of what I can find, especially from Houston, where I live, is that government-provided affordable housing is the answer to all of our problems.
Hmm, I don't know about that.
And how Houston is evidence of that.
What are your thoughts, especially living in LA, which is just one big homeless camp at this point?
And can you point me to any good research on the subject?
What actions could local government take to prevent or stop homelessness?
Thank you so much.
So, getting back to Christianity, the poor will always be with you.
You're not going to cure homelessness, ever.
That's not possible.
That's a utopian liberal pipe dream that's not going to happen.
You can reduce it a little bit.
You can deal with it more effectively.
But I don't think just giving everybody a bunch of free houses is the way to do that.
I think when you look at who is on the street, disproportionately, overwhelmingly, you're talking about drug addicts and the mentally ill who have been left behind by society.
Those people have been left behind, one, because we don't enforce our laws strictly enough.
Two, because we closed down the mental asylums and we made it virtually impossible to commit somebody to an asylum against their will.
And the reason for that was we had the development of a lot of psychiatric drugs that could help people and so they wouldn't have to stay in the asylums anymore.
Trouble is, once they got out of the asylum, they stopped taking the drugs.
And so, all of a sudden, you're right back at square one.
We should make it easier to commit people.
We should rebuild some of those asylums.
It would be much better for people to be getting treatment there than living on the street.
We should make it easier to force people into drug rehab and we should arrest people who are criminals because there is no right to living on public lands on the street.
It's not good for anybody.
It harms the individuals who do it and it harms society.
From Nick.
How much are you selling the painting of the moped for?
Thanks.
So one of my hobbies that I've developed during quarantine is that I've taken up painting.
I consider myself a modern-day Caravaggio, if Caravaggio were like a finger painter.
And so I have made a few masterpieces, obviously.
And I guess the only thing I can say to you is, what are you willing to pay?
Let's start the bidding.
Let me know.
From Danny.
Dear Michael, if Joe Biden dies before the election, who becomes the nominee?
That's morbid.
Not implausible, but morbid.
Also, if the Democratic Party decides they no longer want to back Biden, can someone else receive the nomination during the DNC? Who do you think that might be?
Thanks.
Yeah, so if...
That's kind of a sad thing to contemplate.
I love Joe Biden.
I hope that he is always the Democratic nominee for president, and I think that the Republican administrations will last for 2,000 years.
Joe Biden, if he were not able to be the nominee...
Then that would open up the convention.
You know, Bernie Sanders still has a lot of delegates.
So the delegates that Joe Biden...
Don't forget, they haven't actually nominated Joe Biden yet.
So the delegates that Joe Biden has, they would go to somebody else.
You'd see a floor fight.
Bernie Sanders would make a strong claim to it because they robbed him in 2016 and he got pretty far this time, too.
If the party decides they want to throw Biden out, they can do that.
You know, they say they can't, but look, they're canceling all of these primaries or postponing them.
Talk about never let a crisis go to waste.
Talk about keeping everyone distracted while a lot of weird stuff's going on behind the scenes.
What happened to these primaries?
What's going on with these delegates?
They're postponing now the Democratic National Convention.
It could be anybody's game.
And if you saw a candidate like Michelle Obama or somebody else jump in there, or even her dreadfulness Hillary Clinton...
I wouldn't be totally surprised because Biden just doesn't really seem to have it.
Alright, one last question from Marcus.
Dear Covfefe, I like that.
That's one of my older nicknames.
I need your help understanding how all these states and local governments are getting away with violating our rights.
I look at the 14th Amendment, and it says no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, and property.
I hear you talk about this too on your shows, yet nothing is being done.
How can the states, take our lame Governor Newsom as an example, tell business owners they cannot be open?
Isn't that depriving them of liberty?
Yes and no.
The states have police power during pandemics, during times of war.
They always have.
This was not thought to be unconstitutional, though if you took a very narrow reading, I suppose maybe it could be.
The broader lesson here is, we are not governed by the Constitution.
Put that fiction away with the tooth fairy and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
We are not governed by a piece of paper.
To quote Antonin Scalia, there is not a living Constitution.
The Constitution is dead.
And it's not only dead in the textual sense, it is dead in so much as the way that it governs us is through the institutions that it established.
Scalia would talk about this all the time.
He'd say, stop reading the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights doesn't do anything for you.
The Constitution sets up institutions which protect your rights.
But the piece of paper itself does not.
And the real lived Constitution that we are governed by is very different than the one that's on the parchment paper.
I wish we were governed by the parchment paper, but no society ever has been governed by a sheet of paper.
It's always Enacted, enfleshed, institutionalized in these institutions that govern us.
And the left has infected those institutions and turned them against maybe the purposes for which they were set up.
There's a big power grab going on right now.
It's very important that in subtle, maybe even slightly humorous acts of defiance, we tell them that we're not going to take it.
That's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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.
