Two weirdos had a viral meltdown in Central Park, and now one of their lives is ruined. Then, for the first time ever, Twitter “fact-checks” President Trump on voter fraud, and for the seven-zillionth time, what Trump said turns out to be true, and the “fact-check” turns out to be a lie. The mainstream media get caught in more coronavirus hypocrisy, and in Washington State gunshot victims get added to the COVID death toll.
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
Two weirdos had a viral meltdown in Central Park, and now one of their lives is ruined.
Then, for the first time ever, Twitter fact-checks President Trump on voter fraud, and for the seven-zillionth time, what Trump said turns out to be true, and the fact-check turns out to be a lie.
The mainstream media get caught in more coronavirus hypocrisy, and in Washington state, gunshot victims get added to the COVID death toll.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
You saw the video.
There was no way to miss the video going around the internet yesterday.
If you did miss it, we will play it for you.
It was this interaction in Central Park between the woman who was walking her dog and the guy who starts filming her, and then the woman has a meltdown, but the guy also kind of has a meltdown.
Both of these people are being called Karens.
You know the term Karen?
Initially it meant a middle-aged white woman who's very nosy and tells you your business and gets involved in your affairs.
Now it transcends race and sex.
It refers basically to everybody.
Which of the Karens was in the right?
Which of them was in the wrong?
We will get to that in one second because I think most people are getting this completely wrong.
And I was pretty shocked and appalled by that video.
But first, I've got to thank our friends over at Ring.
You know...
It's very hard to even remember what life was like before Ring.
Ring is so terrific.
We are home more than usual these days and it's still hard to keep a close eye on things.
More deliveries mean more boxes left unattended and more opportunities for packages to go missing.
A lot can happen outside our front doors and we are not always free to check on things in person.
With Ring, you can keep your home safe no matter where you are.
You can be at home.
You can be at the office.
You can be on vacation.
You can be anywhere.
You can check in on it.
Ring is on a mission to make neighborhoods safer.
Their home security products are designed to give you peace of mind around the clock.
You know, I give Ring out as a housewarming gift to friends of mine.
Unfortunately, there was one friend of mine that I had not yet given Ring to.
Guess what happened to him the other day?
He got his laptop stolen right out of his apartment.
I should have given him Ring earlier, and I'm certainly telling him to go get it now.
Get a special offer on the Ring Welcome Kit when you go to ring.com slash Knowles.
The Welcome Kit includes 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.
That's ring.com slash Knowles.
I'll set the scene for you in Central Park.
There's a woman walking her dog.
There is a man who is bird watching.
But he's really people watching because he starts getting involved in this woman's business.
I will refer to her as Ms.
Karen.
I will refer to him as Mr.
Karen.
So Ms.
Karen is walking her dog and she's got the dog without a leash.
So Mr.
Karen decides to get very nosy and tell Ms.
Karen to put a leash on her dog.
Ms.
Karen then says she doesn't want to put the leash on her dog.
So Mr.
Karen decides Like a creep says, okay, well then I'm going to do something that you're not going to like very much.
Reaches into his bag, pulls out doggy treats.
Doggy treats that this guy only had so that he could lure other people's dogs away because he was so irritated when the dogs didn't have leashes.
So Mr.
Karen pulls out doggy treats to lure Ms.
Karen's dog away.
And I think the exact words that Mr.
Karen said, according to him, were, I'm going to do what I'm going to do and you're not going to like it.
Which is a pretty weird thing to say when you're isolated with somebody in a park, especially if you're a man and she's a woman.
Then Ms.
Karen loses her mind.
I have caught you up.
We have set the scene.
Now take a listen to what ensues.
Would you please stop?
Sir, I'm asking you to stop.
Please don't come close to me.
Sir, I'm asking you to stop recording me.
Please don't come close to me.
Please take your phone off.
Please don't come close to me.
Then I'm taking a picture of calling the cops.
Please, please call the cops.
Please call the cops.
I'm gonna tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life.
Please tell them whatever you like.
Excuse me.
I'm sorry, I'm in a ramble and there is a man, African American, he has a bicycle helmet.
He's recording me and threatening me and my dog.
There is an African-American man.
I am in Central Park.
He is recording me and threatening myself and my dog.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you either.
I'm being threatened by a man in the ramble.
Please send the cops immediately.
I'm in Central Park in the ramble.
I don't know.
Thank you.
Okay, so obviously this woman behaving absolutely hysterically.
But the guy was behaving hysterically, too.
They are both Karen.
This is Mr.
and Ms.
Karen.
I think they should get married.
They should live unhappily ever after.
Everyone is focusing on how wrong this woman was.
And they're calling her all sorts of things.
She's a racist.
She's terrible.
She's got to have her life ruined.
And no one's focusing on what a weirdo, creepy dude this guy is.
This guy, Mr.
Karen, is much more in the wrong than this lady, Ms.
Karen.
Much more in the wrong.
Men should not behave like that.
Men should not go up to women in the middle of parks and start chatting with them if they don't want to be chatted with and, you know, stick around there if they don't want to be stuck around with and then start feeding treats to their dogs that you're trying to lure away, treats that you only have to lure people's dogs stick around there if they don't want to be stuck around with and then start feeding That's weird behavior.
People shouldn't do that.
Also, men should not humiliate women.
They should not humiliate women privately.
They should not humiliate women publicly by filming them and putting that video all over the internet and then subsequently, or consequently rather, ruining her life.
That's not very chivalrous behavior.
That is the behavior of a society that has lost the sense of manliness and gentlemanliness.
And then let's not forget, most of all, he started it.
This guy started it because he had to start Karen-ing around her business and making a big fuss because she didn't have her dog on a leash in the park.
Okay?
Now, what people are trying to do, what race hustling, mostly white liberal social justice warriors are trying to do, is make this a whole racial issue.
I guarantee you, if the case was flipped, and this woman was walking around, and this guy didn't have his dog on a leash, they would be making a big deal about that.
They would be saying, oh, it's not a big deal to have your dog on a leash.
This is obviously a very opportunistic case for people to push a leftist narrative.
It's the same narrative that we see constantly, you know, all over the political left.
The New York Times is pushing this precise narrative.
Listen to this.
They describe him, Mr. Cooper, 57, a Harvard graduate who works in communications.
Is hearing that he's a Harvard graduate supposed to make me think he's a more respectable fellow?
That is not the way to convince somebody that this guy is respectable.
I don't think so.
He's long been a prominent birder in the city and is on the board of the New York City Audubon Society.
A prominent birder?
What is a prominent birder?
Oh yes, Mr.
Cooper, that well-known birder.
Oh yes, I see him birding about.
What is birding?
I guess he looks at birds.
That's what that means.
He's a bird watcher.
There are no prominent bird watchers.
Here's what they're saying.
Mr.
Cooper, who 35 years ago went to a college in Boston, looks at birds and enjoys looking at birds.
Okay, fine.
Maybe he's a...
An otherwise nice guy.
He doesn't seem like a nice guy from this video, but sure.
Then the New York Times admits what he did.
This is directly from the New York Times, quoting Mr.
Cooper.
Look, if you're going to do what you want, I'm going to do what I want, but you're not going to like it, he told her, before he pulled out the treats and began filming, according to his post.
Mr.
Cooper then produced dog treats and said, he said, I pull out the dog treats I carry for just such intransigence, he wrote.
He's admitting he carries the treats to get weird with other people's dogs.
That's when I started video recording with my iPhone and when her inner Karen fully emerged and took a dark turn, he said, using the name that has become slang for an entitled white woman.
So first of all, the people who are trying to make this a racial thing should at least admit off the top, this guy is using a racist term.
The New York Times is calling it a racist term.
Now, it would appear that the word Karen has transcended race and sex, mostly because of this guy.
But from the very beginning, if they're saying that this woman is a racist, surely this guy is a racist too.
He's using the term that the Times admits is racist.
What's the end result?
She loses her job and she loses her dog.
I'm not joking.
She got fired from her investment management firm and they took her dog away.
For what?
Because she had this hysterical meltdown in the park?
Because some hysterical guy goaded her into it?
And now she's being smeared as a racist.
Is this woman a racist?
I don't know.
Maybe she is.
But from the video, I can't conclude that she's a racist.
Why?
The two pieces of evidence that this woman is a racist are that she behaved hysterically on the phone with the cops and that she noted several times that he is an African-American man.
Well, We're good to go.
When she called the cops, she was already behaving hysterically, so that was not performative.
And the implication here is that she was performing this hysteria for the cops because she wanted to get the cops there to kill the man.
Because, you know, there's an epidemic in America of racist cops killing innocent black men.
Which is not true.
There are incidents that are sensationalized that try to craft this narrative that there is an epidemic of racist cops slaughtering innocent black men.
But that isn't the case.
The reason that the stories become so sensational when they happen is precisely because they are so rare.
It is very easy to be emotionally manipulated, particularly by the mainstream media on issues like this, but the statistics do not bear it out.
So there's that first part.
Gone.
What about the second one?
She kept noting that he's an African-American man.
Again, maybe she's a racist.
Maybe she's not a racist.
Maybe the definition of racism keeps changing because the left exploits it so much.
I mean, now we're told that only certain races can be racist, but other races can't be racist.
I'm not joking.
That's what the left tells you.
So, again, I don't even know what definition we're working with anymore.
But let's just look at that piece of evidence.
She keeps saying on the phone he's an African-American man.
She also notes that he's wearing a bike helmet.
Right?
When you call...
If you are going to call and make a police report, which was a ridiculous thing for this woman to do in this case, but...
Both of these people were behaving in a ridiculous manner.
So she calls and makes a police report.
When you make a police report, you describe the person that you're making the police report on.
Right?
You don't say, well, he's wearing a blue shirt.
Okay, can you tell us anything else about him?
No, I'm not allowed to say anything else about him, because if I do, I'll be smeared as a racist and lose my job.
So she mentions his race.
She also mentions that he's wearing a bicycle helmet.
Is she a cyclophobe?
Does she have a deep seated hatred of bicycles or something like that?
I don't know.
Why did she include that detail?
That would seem to be evidence to me that she's including descriptors so that hopefully the police can come and arrest this man for the high crime of being a weirdo with dog treats.
Conservatives need to stop playing into this nonsense.
They have to.
Both of these people behaved badly.
Both of them behaved in a shameful way, an embarrassing way.
Now, only Mr.
Karen filmed Ms.
Karen and ruined her life, but they both behaved in a silly way.
The woman, apparently, according to reports, is a liberal.
So I don't exactly have a political dog in this fight.
But I'm just so offended by this guy's behavior.
It's so unchivalrous.
It's so unmanly.
It's just ugly behavior.
And I think some conservatives want to prove that they're not racists to the left.
Which, by the way, is not possible.
Because the left doesn't care whether you're a racist or not.
They just want to smear you.
You know who's going to know if you're a racist or not?
You.
Do you hate people of other races?
And do you judge them unfairly based on their race?
No?
Okay, good.
You're not a racist.
Good.
Don't worry.
Doesn't matter what the left says about you.
If you know it, it's good enough.
Okay?
Defending this creep does not make you Rosa Parks.
All right?
Ruining this woman's life does not make you Martin Luther King.
Does anyone really believe that this woman should have her life ruined over this thing?
Because she was walking her dog and some creep tried to lure the dog away and then filmed her and humiliated her nationally?
No.
Nobody thinks that.
I don't think the guy, this weirdo birdwatcher, should have his life ruined either.
I don't think either of these people should have their lives ruined.
I think they should both take a good long think, sit down, have a good long stew session on how their lives came to this point, and maybe what's wrong with the way they see the world.
But I don't think either of them should have their lives ruined for this.
A society that gets pleasure...
Out of ruining people's lives like this for ideological fantasies is sick and ugly.
I tweeted out, I said, hey, Twitter mob, do you all feel good now that you ruined this woman's life?
And a lot of people responded, mostly white liberals.
It's always the white liberals that tends to be the first wave of meanness and nastiness when it comes to this kind of ideology.
But, you know, other people too.
Some people responded and said, yeah, I feel great.
I feel awesome.
I feel so happy that this woman's life is ruined.
That is a sick and ugly society, and we should not want any part of that sort of thing.
They're not the only Karens in New York, though.
Mr.
and Ms.
Karen, who will go and live unhappily ever after, are not the only ones.
There was a big Karen session in Staten Island.
We'll get to that in one second.
First, though, I've got to thank our friends over at the You know, having a good HR department is the key to running a great company.
When running a business, HR issues can kill you.
With Bambi, however, you can change HR from your biggest liability to your biggest strength.
Your dedicated HR manager is available by phone, email, or real-time chat.
From onboarding to terminations, they customize your policies to fit your business.
And help you manage your employees day to day.
You know how much?
Do you know how much for?
$99 a month.
That is practically nothing.
Month to month, no hidden fees.
Cancel anytime.
You didn't start your business because you wanted to spend time on HR compliance.
Let Bambi help.
Get your free HR audit today.
Go to Bambi.com slash Michael right now to schedule your free HR audit.
That is Bambi.com slash Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. That is spelled BAM to the B-E-E dot com slash Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Solve your HR problems today.
We're moving from Central Park.
We're moving all the way down Manhattan Island.
We are now crossing over the water, getting into Staten Island, the forgotten borough in New York, in a grocery store.
Another example of men behaving abominably to women.
It's funny, everyone thinks that this story is about race, these kind of Karen stories.
It's not about race.
Frankly, it's much more about sex than it is about race, because some woman doesn't wear a mask.
And the Staten Islanders in this supermarket lose their minds, start screaming obscenities to kick this person out of the supermarket.
Get out!
Yeah, grown ass woman acts like a dirty kid.
What do you think?
That's normal behavior.
That's a normal society, right?
Somebody walks in to a supermarket, does not have a mask on.
You know that thing that we all did up until three months ago?
Doesn't have a mask on.
You know the thing that we were told not to wear because they don't do anything?
Actually, because it would hurt the healthcare workers, they said, if we wore masks.
Someone does that.
And...
It would be as though this guy walked in totally naked, screaming obscenities, firing off pistols.
That's the kind of reaction that he got.
I actually couldn't tell from the video if it was a he or a she.
Regardless, whoever the person is.
I think it was a she.
It looked like a woman, but who can tell with these kind of things.
Regardless, this is the kind of reaction that that person gets.
Something has gone a little bit off in society.
People are a little bit too on edge.
And it's not just the pandemic.
I don't think that this epidemic really helps people in how on edge they are, but I think we were already on edge.
I think that the phenomenon of the Twitter mob, the phenomenon of the gotcha video, the phenomenon of I'm going to ruin this person's life because they said something that I don't like, that is indicative of a deeper edginess in the culture.
We're just really angry at each other.
We just really, we just want...
We just want to get some revenge for something, for I don't know what, because we've got a chip on our shoulder because people are very miserable.
I'm sure that these two things are connected.
There have been a lot of social scientific surveys in recent years that show that people are really miserable.
They're lonely.
They're angry.
Their lives haven't panned out the way that they think that they should.
And I think a big cause of that is because of the disconnect because...
Between ideology and reality.
The ideological vision that we've all been sold that nothing really matters.
There's no God.
There's no love.
There's no joy.
There's no nobility.
There's no point in serving our country or each other.
It's all just a farce.
We're all going to turn to worm food in the end.
We need to just pursue our pleasure ruthlessly and live for ourselves.
That's the thing we've been told on the left and the right.
And the reality that all of those things will make us miserable.
I think that's the disconnect.
That's got us all a little bit on edge.
Well, guess what?
I don't think that you will feel any better by taking that sort of anger out on other people.
The only way you will feel any better is if you look in at yourself, take a gander in the mirror, and fix your own life.
The masks also are just really dumb.
Okay?
They're dumb.
I'm not saying they don't work sometimes.
I'm not saying there's not a place for masks.
I'm not saying that in all circumstances you shouldn't wear masks.
But the masks generally are dumb, and nobody seriously believes that they are going to save them.
Least of all, the mainstream media, the news media, who are telling people to wear them.
How do I know this?
Because MSNBC sent a reporter out into the field to shame people for not wearing masks, but the segment didn't go that well when one of the people that the reporter was shaming decided to point out that the cameraman himself was not wearing a mask.
Are the people there just not worried about it, Cal?
Are they not worried about their own personal safety?
I haven't met anybody who is.
I met some folks actually from Lake Geneva who lived in the area.
They were staying a few miles outside of town where I were.
And they said they're worried about it.
They're worried about that second spike.
They're worried about folks coming in from Chicago.
But they'll quickly add at the same time, this is a place that relies on that business.
I think people here want a little bit more funding when it comes to these programs so that they could stay closed.
But again, I think people felt like the Supreme Court made the decision here in Wisconsin that it was time to open up.
But you can see here, just around, nobody's wearing them.
Nobody's...
There you go, including the camera.
Yeah.
Katie?
Striking images.
Cal Perry.
They just can't.
They don't.
I guess these reporters never took an improv class.
So they've got their narrative, right?
Here's the narrative.
Masks are really important and helpful.
And these irresponsible people, probably Trump voters, if you ask me, they're not wearing masks.
So they're the bad people.
And we need to shame them on national television.
Maybe they'll lose their job.
Maybe they'll lose their dogs.
I don't know.
But they're really bad people.
And then one of the really bad people points out, he goes, hey, hey, buddy.
If masks are so important, why is your cameraman not wearing one?
And the reporter doesn't know how to respond to that because he's just got his narrative.
He doesn't know how to improvise when he gets thrown off his obviously fictitious script.
So he goes, yeah, and including the cameraman.
Okay.
Yep.
Just completely undercut my argument.
Yep.
I have no credibility whatsoever.
I'm a hack.
I'm a liar on television.
Back to you, Katie.
And Katie goes, yep, that's right.
Pretty crazy images out there.
Next time we'll have to make sure that all those people telling the truth are kept far from the camera.
They don't, neither of those journalists react to the reality of Which is that even MSNBC doesn't think these masks matter that much at all.
It's just fake.
It's just a performance.
It's every bit the performance that those two people on MSNBC were putting on.
That's not me saying that.
That's them saying that, right?
They're the ones not wearing the mask.
All I can do is observe.
And what I am observing is the very people telling us that the masks matter...
Are the people not wearing masks?
You saw this in the White House briefing the other day.
The reporter, very, I think it was, who was it?
It was one of the CNN reporters, wearing a mask for all the questions on camera.
The minute she thought the cameras went off, she takes the mask off.
She doesn't think the mask matters.
It's just a political cudgel.
It's just a way to signal her virtue to all of her followers and to make Trump look like a mean, terrible, bad guy.
The masks don't look that good.
Joe Biden wore a mask.
Didn't go well.
Mayor Garcetti wore a mask in the middle of an empty baseball stadium.
Didn't go that well.
And the Surgeon General told us not to wear masks right before he told us we had to wear masks.
We'll get to all that in one second.
There is a whole lot more to get to, especially, frankly, probably the biggest story of the day, which is that Twitter is now fact-checking Trump, even though Twitter's wrong and Trump is right.
We'll get to that in one second.
First, I've got to thank our friends over at EBSleep.
You know it's very important to get enough sleep every night, but maybe you have a little bit of trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.
Well, then it's time to try Ebb.
Ebb is the first and only wearable drug-free solution that targets the root cause of sleeplessness, which is your racing thoughts.
Ebb is clinically validated, and four out of five users report falling asleep faster and improving overall sleep quality.
Ebb Sleep is a wearable solution that fits over the forehead and gently and precisely cools the forehead to reduce those racing thoughts, to allow people who suffer from sleeplessness to drift more comfortably into a deeper and more restorative sleep.
It's a pretty amazing product.
You put on this headband and it just sends this cooling stuff right around you.
I tried it out.
I've never felt anything like it.
And it's amazing.
It's so simple in a way, but you've never felt it before, which is that just that cooling feeling on your head, and Eb does it really, really perfectly, will just...
Dull those thoughts.
Help you get to sleep.
Ab sleep understands the uncertainty you may be experiencing at this time.
They want to help.
Our listeners right now can get $25 off your order by using promo code NOLS and save.
Continue to try Ab risk-free for 60 nights and confirm it's the solution you've been looking for at tryab.com slash NOLS. Let us help you get the sleep you need and remove the risk from your purchase.
T-R-Y-E-B-B dot com slash NOLS. Tryab.com slash NOLS. Use the promo code NOLS to save.
Order today with everything going on.
Get the sleep you need and deserve.
So, Biden wears a mask.
He put a mask on.
He went out in public.
He looked like Bane from Batman.
He looked like a really lame, unintimidating, doddering Bane from Batman.
This is why Trump doesn't wear the mask.
Statesmen cannot wear the masks.
I know, but what if the masks help?
Okay, yeah, maybe the masks do help.
Then even if that were true, the president needs to situate himself in such a way that he doesn't have to wear the mask.
Because just as a matter of optics, as a matter of images, and images matter a whole lot in politics, the masks don't look good.
And frankly, Biden looked good compared to Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, who was giving an address in the middle of Dodger Stadium.
This is a completely empty baseball stadium.
Mayor Garcetti is standing in the center of the completely empty baseball stadium with a mask on.
What does he think is going to happen?
Does he think somebody is going to send a heat-seeking guided coronavirus missile right at him and so he's going to have the mask and the mask is going to protect him?
No.
It's obviously signaling his virtue in a very ridiculous way.
I'm noticing a pattern here.
I'm noticing a theme.
People signaling their virtue and making themselves look ridiculous in the meantime.
Let us not forget.
The Surgeon General.
Surgeon General of the United States, February 29th.
Seriously, people, stop buying masks, all caps, exclamation point.
They are not, all caps, effective in preventing general public from catching coronavirus.
But if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk.
This original tweet didn't make any sense in the first place, because what he's saying is, stop buying masks.
They're not effective at helping you, but they are effective at helping other people.
Why is that?
How's that?
Is there something different about me?
Is it that when you graduate from medical school, all of a sudden, your immune system completely changes?
No, I don't think so.
Didn't make sense in the first place.
But don't forget, the experts in the lab coats, the political authorities, right?
The top guy told us, don't buy masks.
February 29th.
Then, May 23rd, quote, As our communities reopen, wearing a face covering is something we all can and should do to protect each other.
So no matter how you're spending Memorial Day weekend, wear a face mask covering when out in public.
Comment with a selfie and encourage others to do so too.
Which one do we believe?
Well, you would say we got to believe the most recent one because that's the newest one based on the science.
Science hasn't changed.
The science...
I know you think...
Well, you don't think.
If you're listening to this show, you probably have a decent grasp on this.
But many people think that science is like something that changes with total precision day by day.
Now we know.
Everything that ever came before today was wrong, but now we know for certain the eternal scientific truths of the universe.
That's not how it works.
They're going to change their mind on masks again.
They're going to change their mind on a whole lot of things again.
You cannot simultaneously say that we can export, outsource all of our politics to the scientific lab coat experts because they are so invariably correct, and also they contradict themselves on a daily basis.
You can't have those at the same time.
Perhaps the more reasonable thing to do would be take the advice of scientific experts and other sorts of advisors, take that advice, and then Engage in the process of politics, which is what we're all doing, in self-government, debating what kind of society we want to live in, what kind of risks we want to assume, how we want to get along together.
That's probably what I would do.
That's how politics is really supposed to be engaged in.
But people are trying to cut that off left and right, including at Twitter, which is now trying to cut off the political process by declaring, unprecedented, declaring that President Trump is wrong.
And ironically, they're saying he's wrong about things that he's actually right about and they're wrong about.
We'll get to that in a second first, though.
I've got to tell you about Backstage, which is happening 4 p.m.
Pacific, 7 p.m.
Eastern.
That's coming up tonight, so get excited for that.
Also, don't forget, you get one Tumblr, that's pretty good.
What if I told you you can get two Tumblrs?
That's right.
Some great news, the Double Tumblr is back, but it's only available for our most exclusive membership tier, which is All Access.
The All Access membership tier is our premier level of membership.
You know, you get the Q&As, you get exclusive editorials, you get bonus hours at Ben's show, you get an ad-free website, you get everything.
Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join All Access.
Get 15% off with coupon code NOLS, K-N-W-L-E-S, right now.
That is dailywire.com slash subscribe.
See you there.
there.
We'll be right back.
This is a big deal.
President Trump is being fact-checked on Twitter.
But as you know, fact-checking is a relatively recent political phenomenon.
I mean, actual fact-checking has been going on for a long time.
But this journalistic phenomenon of fact-checking is probably at this point about 10 years old.
And what fact-checks really mean is they are left-wing opinion columns that That pretend that they are objectively, indisputably true, and so that's the fact check that refutes right-wing opinion columns, or opinion pieces.
You see this in the Washington Post.
They never call it the counterpoint.
They never call it the left-wing point.
They always call it the fact check, even though the fact check is nothing more than a left-wing piece.
So they're doing this now on Twitter.
President Trump sends out a tweet.
It says, quote, There is no way, zero, that mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent.
The governor of California is sending ballots to millions of people.
Anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one.
That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how and for whom to vote.
This will be a rigged election.
No way.
So what Trump has just made is not, he hasn't even made a statement about what is currently happening or what has happened in the past, primarily.
He's making a statement predicting what will happen in the future if there is an unprecedented policy that people are trying to push as the unprecedented response to the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic, right?
There would be no way, if we're talking about mail-in voting across the country, there would be no way to gauge How that works out because it's never happened before.
We've never had something of that scale.
So he makes this prediction.
Twitter decides to ding him with a fact check.
And it's just a little blurb underneath.
It says, get the real facts.
Get the facts about mail-in ballots with an exclamation point.
You've got to pay attention to this.
Then you click on it and it says, Trump makes unsubstantiated claims.
And, you know, this is basically they're saying this is BS. Don't believe it.
Except, and something tells me that the White House just has to know about this.
They have to time these things because they know how the news is going to play out.
The very same day that Trump makes this point that there will be voter fraud, Which there will be, having to do with mail-in ballots.
We get a story out of West Virginia.
Thomas Cooper, mail carrier in Pendleton County, was charged yesterday in a criminal complaint with attempted election fraud, according to U.S. Attorney Bill Powell.
Cooper, 47 years old, is charged with attempt to defraud the residents of West Virginia of a fair election.
Uh, This is based on the fact that in April, the clerk of Pendleton County received a 2020 primary election COVID-19 mail-in absentee requests from eight voters, on which the voters' party ballot request appeared to have been altered.
So they see, they get a bunch of these ballots where it looks like something changed, and now it turns out that this mail carrier, Thomas Cooper, was trying to commit election fraud.
Just one guy on just one day that happens to be the day that President Trump tweets this and Twitter fact checks it.
Sure looks like Trump's claims are substantiated to me.
And don't forget, we're just talking about election fraud having to do with the mail system.
There are other types of election fraud too.
Non-citizens voting, lack of voter ID, people voting multiple times, busing in from other counties and other states.
All this sort of stuff has happened.
Okay?
All this sort of stuff happens regularly.
We have many cases, well over a thousand documented cases in recent years.
But even if we didn't, this is kind of the problem with voter fraud is, you don't get a lot of documents on what actually happens.
So we do have a lot of evidence that it's happened, and presumably the problem is much, much larger than that.
This is a big issue, that Twitter is fact-checking Trump.
Because Twitter and Facebook and Google, right, and all these places, Have a monopoly over the flow of information on the internet.
I'm not saying they have a monopoly over information per se, meaning there are still conservatives who are on Twitter, right?
Trump is still on Twitter, so he can say his point of view.
But they have a monopoly over the flow of the information because whenever Trump gives his point of view, they can smack a fact check here and say, nope, really, that's not true.
Even if it is true.
That's a very bad situation.
We should not permit these decidedly left-wing big tech monopolists to control our flow of information and our elections.
We haven't allowed that to happen in other ways that we communicate.
We shouldn't allow it to happen here.
You know I'm as skeptical of the government as anybody, but I am more skeptical of big tech, because at least the government has some slight accountability to me.
And there is no reason in the name of, I don't know, in the name of any kind of slogan, the free market, that we need to allow...
Twitter and Google and Facebook to control our elections.
You wouldn't even make a free market argument for that.
But some people have suggested that sort of thing.
No.
No way, Buster.
I'm not letting some Silicon Valley weirdos control my politics because of some misguided interpretation of a principle that I actually hold.
Speaking of misinformation, turning to Washington State, not too far from Silicon Valley, We're now looking at the coronavirus death tally.
And, you know, certain things are a little bit wrong.
Like, for instance, the New York Times yesterday published this piece with virtually all of the victims of coronavirus.
And you look down the list, and you see the sixth name on the list did not die from coronavirus.
He was murdered and left in the woods in New Jersey.
Okay, well, that's not coronavirus.
I wonder how many other issues there are here.
Well, we got one out of Washington State.
Washington State's Department of Health has now confirmed that among the coronavirus death tally, they've included people who died from other causes, including gunshot injuries, which means I guess the virus is now picking up guns and we should all really be afraid.
That certainly would terrify me if this Chinese virus decided to arm itself.
The Freedom Foundation, which uncovered this, reported in remarks made during a telephone briefing that DOH officials acknowledged knowingly including, knowingly including, multiple deaths caused by gunshot wounds in the state's COVID-19 fatality account.
A reporter asked the Washington governor and failed presidential candidate Jay Inslee about it, and Jay went on the defensive.
What sort of criteria are being used to mark these fatalities?
Well, it's from the official documents, the best information we have from the local health officials.
That's the best information we have.
I'm not sure the relevance of what that group...
I guess they're saying that that would make it 887 dead.
That's okay.
And we should not act responsibly if there's only 887 people instead of a thousand people.
I'm not sure I understand that logic.
I don't think anybody does understand it who knows any of these families who've lost a loved one.
So I don't think that's a particularly persuasive argument, even if it was true.
Yeah, that's not a persuasive argument because that's not the argument that anybody's making.
That's the straw man that you're making because you got caught lying.
He's saying, what?
So people are saying because we got the numbers wrong pretty significantly by double-digit percentages that, what, that we shouldn't take the virus seriously?
I don't think that's a good argument.
Yeah, of course that's not a good argument.
That's why nobody's making that argument.
We're just pointing out that you got the numbers wrong.
And you got them very wrong.
And you did something extraordinarily dumb, which is include gunshot victims as coronavirus deaths.
And it's making us question your credibility on everything else having to do with this virus.
Also because you guys have been wrong about this from day one.
You've been wrong about the models.
You've been wrong about the predictions.
You've been wrong about the efficacy of masks.
You've been wrong about putting sick people into nursing homes.
You've just been wrong about everything, basically.
So, yeah, we question your credibility here.
And, of course, Jay Inslee goes on the defensive.
He fights this straw man.
Then he attacks the people who are...
Who did the actual research, who did the investigation, and who had their suspicions confirmed by the Department of Health, right?
So the Washington State Department of Health is confirming that this mistake happened.
And Jay Inslee writes it all off as a crazy conspiracy theory.
The conspiracy theories that are fanning people's efforts to go out and do what this group did and argue that 887 dead is just not something to be worried about...
It's really disappointing to me.
I've heard people say things that are from a different planet, and it's very unfortunate that Some folks in public life have fanned the flames of misinformation in that regard because it's dangerous.
It's dangerous to people's health.
I have no reason to doubt the fatality numbers that we're using in the state of Washington right now.
The problem is you got some people out there who are fanning these conspiracy claims from the planet Pluto.
And it's just disgusting what they're trying to say of all these crazy deep state malarkey who kind of suggest that this is not a problem in our state.
I find that hard to accept with the number of dead in our state.
So that's a problem, and I hope it gets resolved.
So nothing he just said is true.
Not one single thing.
Where's the fact check?
Hey, Twitter!
Twitter, where's your fact check on this demagogue and liar Jay Inslee?
He said that people think that 887 dead is nothing to worry about.
Nobody said that.
Not a single person has said that.
Jay Inslee is the only guy who said that.
Nobody thinks that 887 dead is not something to worry about.
We think that you, Jay Inslee, are something to worry about because you've lied about this and you've gotten everything wrong and then you're smearing your constituents who showed that you got something wrong as some kind of crazy conspiracy theorists.
Your own Department of Health admitted that the so-called conspiracy theorists were right and that you were wrong.
But there's no humility here.
And this is something you've got to pay close attention to this around the country.
None of these politicians are going to admit that they got this wrong.
They can't do it.
They are dispositionally incapable of that kind of humility, of that kind of self-awareness.
Narcissism is a professional risk of politics, and at the high levels, it's nearly a requirement.
They're not going to admit they got it wrong.
They're going to double down, and they're going to get nasty, and they're going to get vindictive, and they're going to try to ruin people's lives, and they're going to try to smear all of their critics as conspiracy theorists, even when the state health departments admit that the conspiracy theorists were correct.
This is what the left does all the time.
You see it on Wikipedia now.
Over the past couple of years, one thing that they've managed to do is, for a huge number of prominent conservatives, they've included this phrase conspiracy theorist.
On their Wikipedia page.
They never put conspiracy theorists on James Comey's Wikipedia page after James Comey said that there might be a Moscow prostitute urine tape with Donald Trump in it based on nothing.
That's conspiracy theory.
They never put a conspiracy theory mark on any of the left-wing journalists' Facebook pages.
Jake Tapper, Jim Acosta, any of them.
Who peddled the Russia lie and hoax for three years.
They never do that.
But they will put conspiracy theorists on right-wingers just to convince people not to listen to them.
That's why they're going to put fact checks when President Trump says things which actually are true.
So-called fact checks.
It's just a way to signal don't believe this person.
Don't listen to this person.
It's going to get very vindictive.
The only way that we're going to be able to get back to anything even resembling normal society as we once knew it in the way back ago days of three or four months ago is by pushing fearlessly, not afraid of what they're going to call us, not afraid of the consequences, which can be dire.
Not afraid of the digital consequences, which can be dire.
They won't just change your wiki.
They won't just fact check your Twitter.
They'll put videos of you all over the internet just like that creepy Karen in Central Park did to Ms.
Karen in Central Park, right?
That is the kind of vitriol that we're talking about.
We are in an election year.
This is all geared toward the election.
The ridiculous responses from governors...
The day-by-day, more ridiculous responses of governors on lockdowns that no longer have a scientific justification, the fact-checks from Twitter, the rhetoric, the vicious rhetoric coming from guys like Jay Inslee about citizen groups that are trying to correct the record.
The focus on certain highly charged, emotionally manipulative incidents in this country to divide people on issues like race and sex, it is all geared toward November.
That is only going to get more intense.
Don't let them fool you.
Don't let them whip you up into that frenzy.
Do not become either of those two crazy people in Central Park and don't get pleasure out of ruining people's lives.
That's the trap.
That's the trick.
Don't let them dupe you.
All right, that's our show.
Got a lot more to get to.
We'll do it tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies 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.
Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
Social media, the same jackasses who turned us into a nation of Karens to make themselves rich, now think they should be able to censor and fact-check the President of the United States.
I don't think so, and I'll talk about it on The Andrew Klavan Show.
