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July 14, 2020 - The Michael Knowles Show
49:57
Ep. 579 - Holding Us Hostage

California locks down again, teacher unions demand socialism, and AOC excuses violent criminals. Ben's new book "How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps" is coming out July 21st. Get your signed copy here => https://utm.io/uGvC 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 This podcast is sponsored by Blinksale, the revolutionary invoicing software for contractors and small businesses. Spend less time billing and more time making bank with Blinksale! Free trial here => https://bit.ly/2Vy6LN8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now the Democrats have stopped encouraging race riots and other mass gatherings that are convenient for their political agenda.
Well, you know, we still got three months to a presidential election, so they are locking down again.
That is what is happening in my own state here of California.
The science has not changed, but the politics has.
Here is our American psycho governor, Governor Newsom, announcing in perfect gibberish the reason for the new lockdown.
Based on the trend lines, based on the data, based on the science, to modify our stay-at-home order subsequently, meaning not on open economy or off shutdown, but a dimmer switch looking at conditions throughout the nation's most populous state as they present themselves, as those trend lines become points of concern before they invariably become headlines.
It's a consequence of increase in positivity rate, increase in hospitalizations and ICUs, based upon the predicate, this foundation that we laid on utilizing a dimmer switch.
On the predicate of the dimmer switch, of the trend lines and the data and the science and the...
Have you ever heard more gobbledygook in your life?
Have you ever heard a politician trying to pretend that he's not talking about politics in a more ridiculous manner?
I mean, that basically describes the entire left's approach to our political regime at this point.
But he's trying to put onto science that which remains in the realm of politics.
And he doesn't do a very convincing job of it because the science hasn't changed at all.
His convenient political actions have, he finally gets to the meat of the lockdown.
What is going to happen?
Today we are announcing additional statewide actions as it relates to our stay-at-home order here in the state of California.
We are now effectively, rather effective today, requiring all counties to close their Indoor Act There are indoor operations in the following sectors.
Restaurants, wineries, tasting rooms, movie theaters, family entertainment centers, zoos and museums, card rooms, and the shuttering of all bars.
This is in every county in the state of California.
So that's in every county he chooses some arbitrary industries to shut down.
But then, the devil's in the details, in some counties that are on the official monitoring list, it's going to be much more onerous.
He's going to be shutting down businesses much more intensely.
He's going to be shutting down houses of worship.
And it turns out that those select counties are most of the counties in California, more than 50% of them, which hold more than 80% of the California residents.
Let me be clear.
There is no scientific argument for locking down again.
This is strictly political.
Our opponents say that we don't get science.
I think they don't get the politics.
Their leaders get the politics.
The followers do not.
They don't get the politics.
They don't get the science either.
We'll get into both.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
So that sophisticated virus that knows to only infect the conservative gatherings but not infect the leftist gatherings.
Well, now they don't have any leftist mass gatherings because the riots are over.
So everybody's got to lock down again.
It's such a brilliant virus.
There's a big battle going on.
A big battle going on over, in particular, reopening the schools.
The outcome of that battle, we talked about yesterday, how it's in the little things that the rot begins.
That will dictate a lot of what we see for the next three, four months until the presidential election.
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There's going to be this big issue, the big fight, even as the Democratic states are trying to lock down again and some squishy Republicans follow them.
The big battle is going to be over the schools because whether or not we reopen the schools is going to dictate a fair bit about our economy.
It's going to dictate how much government spending is going to have to be injected back into the economy because for a lot of parents, they need the schools to look after their kids.
They rely on it.
So even if some schools like in New York, for instance, they say they're going to reopen maybe a couple of days a week, but then keep the kids home a few days a week.
That's not going to work for parents.
And parents in New York, by the way, work.
You have to work.
It's a very expensive city.
So what is going to happen?
People are going to be forced out of work even longer.
And it would seem to me that is what the object is of this second lockdown.
So we talked to the medical scientists.
We talked to the doctors.
Is it safe to reopen the schools?
Clearly the mainstream media want that answer to be no.
And yet on MSNBC they asked a number of doctors and they got a scientifically correct but politically inconvenient answer.
Would you let your kids go back to school?
I will.
My kids are looking forward to it.
Yes.
Period.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
As much as I can.
Without a hesitation.
Without a hesitation, yes.
I have no concerns about sending my child to school in the fall.
I would let my kids go back to school.
Dr.
John Torres, NBC News.
They all said yes.
So you've got the report from The Straight Reporter, then it cuts back to the anchor on MSNBC looking furious.
They all said yes, they will send their kids back to school and let the economy reopen and possibly re-elect the orange man.
That is terrible.
The left relies on science when it's convenient for them, when the experts back them up, and then they ignore science when it's not convenient.
We obviously see this on the science of sex.
They don't care a lot about science when they're talking about 56 imaginary genders.
They don't care a lot about science when they pretend that babies are not really people.
But they try to rely on science when some of the public health experts give them what they want politically.
So politically speaking, not the public health experts, politically, they're trying to shut down the schools.
The teachers union in Los Angeles shows you how political this has gotten.
So the union is demanding.
You know, the teachers unions have caused so much trouble throughout this country, but especially in places like New York and California.
Well, in Los Angeles, the teachers union is demanding, before they agree to allow the schools to reopen, they're demanding that all students...
Must be tested for COVID-19 in the weeks prior to returning to school.
Okay, fine, whatever.
I guess we're okay with that, right?
That seems relatively reasonable.
Next one.
All students must take weekly COVID-19 tests.
Seems kind of like overkill.
But, okay, fine.
It's still at least focused on the virus.
These teachers are a little bit wacky, but we already knew that.
Okay, fine.
Let's say we give in to that one.
Then the students must wear door-to-door mandatory face masks at all times.
Well, that's not going to work.
First of all, that's absurd that you think that school kids are going to sit on a bus with that stupid mask on.
Second of all, what are they going to do?
They're going to eat in the cafeteria?
They're going to have their mask on and slip it through underneath the mask?
I don't think so.
Or at recess, they're going to do that?
Or at all?
No, that's not going to happen.
But even that third request, I see, or demand rather, the teachers aren't requesting, But I see how it relates to the virus.
But they have other demands.
The union does not want to reopen the schools from the virus until there is a moratorium on charter schools, so good schools that threaten their cushy jobs and their educational failures and give kids a better education, The teachers' union doesn't want to reopen schools until the police are defunded.
Why?
I don't know.
What does that have to do with coronavirus?
Absolutely nothing.
They don't want to reopen the schools until they have Medicare for All.
So these freaking teachers are not allowing their students to be educated, probably ever, judging by the demands they're making, but they're not even allowing the facade of education, the schools, to reopen until we have socialist medicine.
They don't want to reopen the schools until we have a wealth tax.
So not just an income tax, not just raising taxes on the money you earn, but actually just going into your bank account, stealing the money that you've already paid taxes on.
And until there is a federal bailout for, I don't know, I guess for everybody, for California, for Los Angeles, for the schools.
That's not about the virus.
They are using the virus.
They are exploiting the virus.
Whatever threat the virus poses, which would appear to have been dramatically overhyped, they are using that to push for a radical agenda, the likes of which we have rarely seen in this country.
This gets to a point that I wish the left and I wish many conservatives could get through their skulls.
There is no scientific basis for a second lockdown.
What was the lockdown for?
The lockdown was 15 days to slow the spread.
How long has it been now?
We're at something like 130 days.
Why did we want to slow the spread so that we didn't overwhelm the hospital system?
We never did.
We never came close.
Not even in New York.
Not even in Los Angeles.
Nowhere.
The predictions were not correct.
The models were not correct.
The curve was flattened.
But people are still going to get it.
Now that they transferred that from flatten the curve to find a cure.
But now it seems we have found a cure.
Dr.
Fauci said this just a while ago.
But the vaccine at the rosiest predictions is going to be 70% effective.
And at the rosiest predictions, 70% of people are going to get it.
Which means we won't get herd immunity.
Which means all of this was for nothing.
We won't have a cure.
People will still have to get it.
We will still have to go outside.
There is no way that a lockdown is going to stop the virus.
The virus is going to be what the virus is going to be.
Actually, the fact of the second lockdown is showing us how futile it is to try to completely eradicate this thing.
It's not going away.
It's going to keep coming back.
The only purpose that this could serve is political.
We have done every single thing possible to fix the problem medically.
Actually, our establishment, our public health and political establishment, has done many things to try to prolong the problem medically.
For one reason, or in one example of this, by suppressing hydroxychloroquine, which was an early treatment for the virus that President Trump touted, that then you saw some fraudulent papers published talking about how hydroxychloroquine was really dangerous and it hastened to death.
Now, of course, those papers got retracted, but nobody reads the retractions.
They only read the headlines, which the mainstream media push.
Underproductive stuff if your goal is to slow down the virus, give the public back its confidence and reopen.
But they don't want to do that.
They don't want to reopen.
They want to keep you locked down until November.
Other countries are opening up again.
Do you know why?
Because they don't have a presidential election in November and their establishment is not willing to ruin people's lives, prevent people from being with their loved ones while they die, prevent people from having jobs, prevent people from having a livelihood just to kick out their political opponent.
What we are saying here is that the lockdown is not scientific.
It's entirely political.
The left accuses us of not understanding the science.
Well, I've just described the science.
I've described the science, I think, better than most of the scientific experts because the scientific experts have been completely wrong the whole time.
And even a layman like we conservatives is able to predict it better, to see it better.
Regular old Joe on the street.
We found one.
we'll play that in just a moment, has a better record on this virus than the media scientific political establishment.
It's not that the right does not understand the science here It's that the left, at least the followers, the rank and file, don't understand the politics.
They don't understand how the left has perverted science for the last 50 years at least, really for the last 150 years.
To push their political agenda.
Because politics, you know, is when we all just talk and debate things and, you know, you've got eternal questions.
Justice and mercy.
Well, how are we going to resolve those two things?
We're going to talk to our fellow citizens and debate them.
What the left pretends is that there is a clear science of politics and what they want is what they should get.
Don't you guys think it's a little coincidental that the way to solve the coronavirus problem as a matter of public policy is exactly the way to solve the global warming problem?
Massive redistribution of wealth, massive federal subsidies, massive jobs program, constricting the rights of people.
Isn't that a little weird?
You would expect two issues that are so different, a Chinese virus and the polar ice caps melting or the ozone layer being depleted.
You would expect those problems to have different solutions.
And yet for the left, it's always the same one.
Different verse, same as the first.
This is it.
You need to stand against this.
This is the political fight of your age.
And you might like to soothe yourself into thinking that it's, oh, it's just about the science.
It's not.
This is about politics.
We will look back on this in a number of years and realize the political consequence of this.
And for those of us who call ourselves conservatives or who call ourselves old school liberals, you know, who just want to go back to normal, this is the time to take a stand.
If you don't take a stand now, you're very likely not going to have the opportunity.
Because the effect of this is not just on the economy, It's not just on the election.
People are dying out there.
The crime surges are through the roof.
People are getting killed in the streets, and our Democratic leaders are gaslighting us.
They're pretending it's not even happening.
AOC is the most egregious offender.
We'll get to that in a second.
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When we look around at the very tangible effects of this thing, of this lockdown and the fake science behind the lockdown, behind the second lockdown, obviously, Obviously, there is carnage out there.
We just had the country on fire for a few weeks, and now, because there's less in the way of policing, they've defunded the police, police are walking off the job because they're being targeted by the civil authorities, crime is shooting through the roof.
Well, AOC is not too worried about that.
Even in New York, where the bullets are flying, she's saying, oh, it's not, don't worry about the violent crime.
These are crimes of necessity.
So why is this uptick in crime happening?
Well, let's think about it.
Do we think this has to do with the fact that there's record unemployment in the United States right now?
The fact that people are at a level of economic desperation that we have not seen since the Great Recession.
Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent.
And so they go out and they need to feed their child and they don't have money.
So you maybe have to, they're put in a position where they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry that night.
That's what it is.
This is Jean Valjean.
This is Les Miserables just trying to get a loaf of bread to feed their kids.
Is that what's going on?
No, I don't think so.
As Caitlin Flanagan pointed out on Twitter, the uptick in crime isn't stealing a loaf of bread.
It's 11 dead New Yorkers just over the weekend.
They were not killing the bread store owners so they could grab the bread.
This is sick, violent crime.
So people pointed this out.
These are not crimes of necessity.
These are crimes of violent thug criminals.
And AOC's response is, That AOC is a fraud who did not grow up in the Bronx like she pretends to.
She grew up in the wealthier town next to my already wealthy town in Westchester, at that time one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.
She is not Jenny from the block.
She grew up in beautiful Yorktown Heights where deer are prancing through the hills.
She went to a very good high school and a very expensive private college.
She does not know what this growing up in poverty and you're forced to steal a loaf of bread is like.
Nowhere near it.
Total fraud.
Just like the whole rest of the left, which talks about this stuff.
The premise here is that The cause of crime is not the evil that is lurking in man's heart, all of man's heart because we're fallen creatures.
The cause of crime is society.
There's something broken in the system.
And it all boils down, by the way, to money.
So if you just inject a little bit more money into certain communities, if you just give some people money, they will not commit crimes.
All of our experience of human history contradicts this very stupid idea and this very stupid understanding of human nature.
But that's her belief, and frankly, she's getting a lot of support these days from the activists who have been burning down the country, who also share that premise.
They are avowed, trained Marxists.
She's getting that given to her.
She's getting that support from leftist Democratic politicians, people sitting in Congress, her colleagues in Congress, major Democratic candidates.
And she's even getting it from some squishy Republicans who want to go along with all of this so that no one criticizes them or calls them dumb or says that they don't understand the science that they themselves have absolutely no credibility on whatsoever.
The science, by the way, which contradicts itself almost every single day.
And then they pretend that they never issued any other guidance.
The Republicans are giving in.
Conservatives are giving in here.
You know, fortunately, Trump has held pretty strong on this whole thing, for now.
But they're just wearing us down, wearing us down, wearing us down.
And because I think sometimes we ourselves don't understand the politics.
Luckily, Kayleigh McEnany does.
You know, there are a few really well-placed people here, and Kayleigh McEnany is just incredibly good at her job.
So, White House Press Secretary comes out.
She is asked questions about this...
AOC point on crimes of necessity.
She doesn't give it one moment's acceptance.
She smacks it down.
We know that in Los Angeles when they announced they would be defunding their police department by 150 million, they basically immediately after saw a 250% increase in homicides.
When you have people out there like Representative Ilhan Omar saying we have to completely dismantle the police and police are cancer, this is not how we should be talking about our heroes.
It's not.
Listen to her words there.
She refers to our police officers, the people who protect us as heroes.
This is what you've got to do.
I would say there are probably three categories here.
The first one is the left, which says that cops are racist, bigoted killers.
Then there's Kayleigh McEnany calling them heroes.
And then there are the damn squishes.
Not worth...
Anything.
Who come out there and they say, well, look, I think there are a lot of bad police and the police need to be reformed, but some of them are good and they're trying to play both sides.
And it doesn't work.
You're not seeing clearly.
If you stand in the middle of the road, you're going to get hit by a truck.
There is no evidence at a national level that the police need to be seriously reformed.
We've gone through the numbers.
How many unarmed black men were killed by cops last year?
And by the way, unarmed doesn't mean not dangerous.
Unarmed does not mean that the killing wasn't justified.
Do you know how many?
9,990?
No.
Nine.
Nine.
Single digits.
And how many of those killings were justified?
You can go through them one by one.
Many of them were justified killings for the guys attacking the cops.
She realizes that this battle has to be fought on clear terms.
You see it in the question of the lockdowns.
Well, maybe it can't hurt to shut down the economy again without really having an objective in mind because we can't cure the virus and we're not going to totally stop its spread and we're not going to get herd immunity.
But let's just shut down because people really seem to want us to shut down and I don't want to be called dumb or hateful or accused of killing granny.
And I know that they changed their tune and they said it was perfectly fine to gather in large groups when they were tearing down George Washington, But hey, look, that's just the left.
Hey guys, let's just meet in the middle.
Let's come on.
Let's have it.
There's no meeting in the middle on this.
There's no meeting.
This is the battle.
So, pick a side.
Or don't.
Remain neutral.
But history doesn't look very kindly on those who remain neutral during times of great moral questions.
Then Kayleigh McEnany, because she is so good at this, realizes that you can't just talk generally.
You can't just talk about why AOC's point is abstractly wrong.
She hones in on the daughters, the families of these cops who have been killed in the line of work after being vilified by the left and deprived of their own protection from the civil authority.
This weekend in New York, you see a one-year-old killed in his stroller.
His name was DeVell Gardner Jr.
And that one-year-old will be in our prayers.
Not only that, you see officers Garza and Chavez.
And to your question about how we should talk about the police and defund the police, a movement the president stands against, the two officers ambushed this weekend.
One of them, Officer Chavez's daughter, wrote a very touching tribute online.
She said, You are an amazing man, and anyone who ever came across you knew that.
I'm going to miss you so much.
You died doing what you love most.
You died a hero.
And those touching words were written by Savannah Chavez.
And I know she received vile and outrageous comments online that were absolutely atrocious for a touching sentiment to her dad.
I want Savannah to know your dad is a hero.
His police department should never be defunded because most of our police officers are good, hardworking men and women and heroes, much like Savannah's dad.
We'll be praying for you, Savannah.
I love that clarification there at the end.
She goes, I want you to know, unless it wasn't clear what I was saying before, I want you to know your dad is a hero.
The difference between political campaigns, election years, tough political times, and, oh, I don't know, lunch around the academy, is in the latter.
When you're just kind of spitballing and discussing political ideas, there can be a whole lot of nuance, a whole lot of complexity, a lot of, well, yeah, give and take, sure.
When you're in a political campaign, you've got to be clear about what you think and what your objectives are.
Because you need to follow up these ideas with action.
And a lot of people in this country believe that this lockdown is just the result of an academic discussion of science.
It's not.
The science is not leading the politics.
The politics is leading the science because this is an election year.
So speak clearly.
Know what this is about.
This is not the time to bat around ideas and see what happens.
This has stark consequences, and it will have very stark consequences for our country.
Every day that this second lockdown goes on, Joe Biden's chances of getting elected increase substantially.
Every day that that guy, who can't string two words together, is allowed to sit in his basement rather than campaign, his chances of winning increase.
Every day that kids are not sent back to school, and their parents very likely are not able to go back to work, Joe Biden's chances of winning increase substantially.
Every day that a Republican politician puts on a mask needlessly in public, Joe Biden's chances of winning increase substantially because you buy into his premises.
It's amazing that the right is so bad at politics.
It's amazing that they don't understand what's happening to them.
Maybe it's because the right is a little less deceptive about the whole thing because we actually tell people what we think and sometimes those views are not popular in the moment, but we tell them what we think anyway.
We don't speak in the sort of mealy-mouthed language that you get from somebody like Joe Biden who wants to play all sides all the time.
But this is the battle.
And we should at least speak clearly about what is really going on as a matter of that campaign.
We will get to the good news on the virus that is not being reported.
Because you're hearing a lot of bad news, but all the bad news is just a cover for all the very good news.
We'll get to that in one second.
First, though, I've got to thank you.
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We'll be right back with a lot more.
Let's delve in for just a moment into the actual science of the coronavirus.
We hear cases skyrocketing.
We hear a lot of silly arguments for the lockdowns.
What about the deaths?
You notice they don't talk about the deaths too much.
They only talk about the diagnoses because obviously we're testing more and more people are going into the hospital and perhaps more people are coming down with it, but the death rate is lower than we thought.
New York City, once the epicenter of coronavirus, on Sunday reported for the first time in months since the beginning of this epidemic, reported no deaths from coronavirus.
Zero deaths.
Zero.
Now they tell us, don't get excited, don't get happy, it's going to get much worse, be afraid, be very afraid, stay in your home.
But just think about that.
If you were just to close your eyes, listen to the mainstream media talking about coronavirus, particularly in New York, which was the hardest hit.
Would you imagine that the reality of that is that on Saturday and being reported Sunday, not one single person in the city died from the virus, particularly given how lax they are in the way that they are classifying these deaths?
That if you die with coronavirus, you're said to have died of coronavirus.
You could be 97 years old and die of pneumonia, but you would be put down as dying from coronavirus.
Some people have been shot, actually shot with guns, but they have been classified as coronavirus deaths, and not one in New York on Saturday.
That is very good news, but you can't celebrate that good news.
You've just got to focus on any bad news, and if there's no bad news, you've got to make it up.
Another example here in California, people are not allowed to attend church services indoors.
That's what Governor Newsom just said.
You're allowed to vandalize churches, but you're not allowed to attend church services and actually worship God.
Isn't that a little weird?
We've seen some of the attacks on the churches.
We know there was the attack on that famous church, St.
John's in Washington.
Cops really did nothing to stop that.
They were told to stand down.
But this is happening all over the place.
Churches in California, New York, Massachusetts, Florida, all being attacked, all being set ablaze, all being vandalized.
Major damage they suffered.
Some were historic churches, too.
A man in Florida drove his vehicle into the Queen of Peace Catholic Church as it was preparing for morning mass on Saturday, then poured gasoline in the foyer, and then set the building on fire.
Before he drove off.
In LA, the historic San Gabriel Church, which has almost been around for a quarter of a millennium, was targeted in an arson attack.
Someone tried to set it on fire.
In Boston, a statue of the Virgin Mary was set on fire and desecrated.
Another statue of the Virgin Mary was desecrated on Sunday in New York City.
This stuff is going on all over the place.
That's fine.
No one seems to stop that.
And yet Governor Newsom, very worried.
I mean, other governors and mayors too, very worried about people actually going in and praying.
Certainly there's no science to that, but there's no political reasoning either.
If you want to maintain order, if you want people to behave, if you want to live in a normal, nice society.
But they don't want that.
They don't want that.
What the left in this country wants is chaos and mayhem and destruction, economic and social and political, until November 3rd.
And then it's all going to change.
Mark my words.
If Biden wins, heaven forfend, that's all over.
Frankly, even if Trump wins, they're going to be so deflated that it will start to trail off too.
But certainly, certainly if Biden wins.
Think about how backwards this is.
You can set a church on fire, but you can't go pray.
You can walk up to somebody's home with guns, threaten their lives and their property.
That's totally fine.
You're a peaceful protester.
But if you, the homeowner, take out your own gun to defend your property, you will be arrested and indicted.
That's what the McCloskeys in St. Louis believe is about to happen.
They have heard rumors around town that they are about to be indicted and, and other political figures in St. Louis have suggested that as well.
You know, there's a lot of misinformation on the McCloskeys too.
We were told that the McCloskeys, the St. Louis gun couple are actually Democrats.
They're actually supporters of Black Lives Matter.
I spoke with Mr.
McCloskey, and he said that that, like so much else, during the riots and the mayhem and the lockdowns and the virus, all of which, by the way, are very, very related, that as well was fake news.
You know, I want to set the record straight on one thing.
I've been reading a lot of reports about me on the media, some of whom have accused me of being a Democrat, and I have donated money to various candidates, particularly ones who are personal friends of mine over the years, but I've been a lifelong Republican.
Another thing I'd like to clear up is that the media reports me as being a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, and I am certainly not.
Black Lives Matter, to my understanding, is a Marxist organization opposed to everything I stand for and everything I hold near and dear.
I do stand for equal justice for all under the law, but that's got nothing to do with this terrorist organization known as Black Lives Matter.
Love that guy.
One, because he's correcting all that fake news.
Two, because he defended his property.
But three, because he's just a guy, right?
He's not a super-duper expert.
He's not an elected official.
He's not a man in a jacket and a tie on the mainstream media.
He's not wearing any jacket and tie.
He was wearing a pink polo and white chinos.
Just a regular guy who is speaking more common sense on what is going on right now than most other people that we look to for guidance, that we look to for leadership.
This is happening all around us.
I, for one, I've had enough of Dr.
Fauci.
I've had enough of all the super-duper scientific experts, and I've especially had enough of Dr.
Fauci.
Dr.
Fauci has been wrong since the beginning, which is fine.
People get things wrong.
I'm not attributing malice to the guy.
However, he, more than anyone in this country, has been vociferous in locking down everything.
Put your foot on the accelerator.
Don't take your foot off the accelerator.
Destroy the economy for what?
15 days to slow the spread.
How many days ago was that?
115 days ago?
130 days ago?
Maybe longer?
I've had enough of that.
There's no argument left.
Dr.
Fauci, we played it on the show yesterday, who said don't wear masks at the height of the virus.
He said wearing masks is ridiculous.
It's stupid.
Don't do it.
Now we all have to wear masks.
I've just had enough.
I'm not saying he's a bad guy, but he's been wrong.
He's been worse than wrong.
His advice has damaged the country.
Enough of him.
Fortunately, it seems the president might also agree with my assessment of the exalted Dr.
Fauci, peace be upon him.
He tweeted out a few tweets over the weekend that were, oh, I think these tweets actually just came out yesterday.
Even better, more urgent.
It's more likely to continue now.
That were pretty critical of Fauci, not by name, but by association.
Trump retweeted, everyone is lying, the CDC, media, Democrats, our doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust.
I think it's all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election.
I'm sick of it.
That's true.
Another post that Trump retweeted, so much evidence, yes, scientific evidence that schools should open this fall.
It's worldwide and it's overwhelming, but no, yep, also true.
And the final one Trump retweeted, said, So based on Dr.
Fauci and the Democrats, I will need an ID card to go shopping, but not to vote.
You see that last one, the one that actually names Fauci, it's not explicitly a criticism.
It's a question, but it's a question that is absurd.
It's a question that in itself is a criticism.
You're telling me, I need an ID to go buy a carton of milk, but I don't need one to exercise my most important right as a citizen to choose my own leaders.
That's good.
You know, a lot of times people say about Trump, take away the Twitter, take away the phones, just let all of his advisors run things.
I think he's been getting some bad advice.
I don't have a whole lot of respect for many of his advisors.
I have respect for some of his advisors who have been encouraging his good instincts, but the ones who have been forcing him to waffle on this thing, to change his initial instincts on his handling of the lockdown, to give the left their premises, to seriously threaten his chance at re-election, I don't have a lot of respect for them.
I think Trump has had good instincts.
I think Trump is much more in tune with regular old everyday Americans than his sophisticated advisors are who haven't left Washington, D.C. in several decades.
And I think that Trump's got to follow those instincts.
There was a guy who, there was a video going around the internet of a guy who used rough language.
He talked to, you know, that sort of thing we would want to emulate necessarily.
But I think what he was expressing is what a lot of us are feeling right now, which is he was just shopping, minding his own business.
And in some stores now, it's not enough that you have to wear the mask and, I don't know, perform all these weird rituals.
You actually have to walk following arrows through the store.
So let's say you're walking, you know, you're, you walk past the, the pasta aisle and you get into the bread aisle, but then you realize, oh wait, I forgot.
I need some spaghetti.
So you turn around, you walk back three feet, they scream at you.
They get so crazy.
All of these people who are on such an hysterical edge from the coronavirus alarmism.
So this woman decides to start filming this guy for Imagine that, walking up to a stranger and just filming them for no reason.
And this guy goes off.
He reminds us why, increasingly it seems, the laymen are wiser than the experts.
Take a picture of me.
Does that make you feel better?
Why don't you get a life, ladies?
Dude, I have a life.
And they're going around taking pictures of people?
Yes, because of what you're doing.
Can you not follow the lions on the floor?
Keep your mouth running.
The governor, the mayor is asking us all to wear a mask.
And look at you, not wearing a mask.
I wear a mask to protect myself.
Political, it's unbelievable.
Now you have accosted me in this store.
It's not a law that I got to wear a mask.
And if you're gonna keep this up, maybe we'll get the police department in here.
Hey mom, would you call 911 then?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh God, another one.
You people are like monkeys falling out of a tree.
No, you're the monkey that has it.
Hey, I'll tell you what.
Dragging those knuckles that you've not evolved.
Okay, how's that grab you?
Ever heard of Duranism?
Evolution?
Evolved, mister.
Why don't you burn something down?
Why don't you go back to where you were?
Why don't you turn a monument down or something?
You must be the one who's- Are you burning crosses?
Are you burning crosses?
People are idiots.
Great interaction.
Absolutely terrific.
It illustrates so much of what we're seeing now, which is this guy is minding his own business, buying something in a store, not accosting anybody, and some lunatic woman, two actually, start filming him.
Because he's not performing the very specific political rituals that we've been told for the past few weeks we have to perform.
But a few weeks ago, those same people who tell us we have to perform them told us we shouldn't perform, namely wearing the masks, walking in the right directions.
And when he says, lady, you're acting crazy.
This is not normal behavior to go up to people and start filming them because they're not shopping for groceries in exactly the way that you want.
This is crazy stuff.
What does she say?
She goes, you don't know science!
You probably don't believe in evolution!
You probably don't listen to the exalted Dr.
Fauci!
She lobs a political attack that is cloaked as science, and that is what I presume this woman is of the left.
I presume she's a Democrat.
This is what her national political leaders are doing all the time.
And yet there is more wisdom in this layman's gut than in all of the pseudoscientific knowledge and credentials of that crazy lady of the left.
Think about this.
There was a story that came up a week or two ago, though it hasn't come up recently because it didn't support the left-wing narrative.
It was about a 24-year-old black man who was found hanging from a tree in Southern California.
And the LA Sheriff's Office said that this guy died from suicide, and all of the BLM rioters, the leadership, suggested that this was a lynching.
BLM, the self-described Marxists of BLM and the crazed leftists who support them are convinced that lynchings happen in the U.S. all the time.
It's practically 1875 Alabama or South Carolina right now.
In Southern California or all around the country.
There are all these lynchings.
Any normal person who saw that story realized this guy died by suicide.
Didn't worry about it.
But they pushed and they pushed and they pushed.
Now we found out they finally admitted it yesterday.
There was no foul play.
It was a suicide.
Well...
What else do we know about this guy's history?
We know he had a history of mental illness.
We know that there were prior reports of suicidal ideation.
We know he had disclosed a plan to kill himself prior to his death, all according to the sheriff's commander, Chris Marks, at a news conference.
We know that he purchased from a local Dollar Tree a red rope consistent with the one used in the hanging.
Very sad story that this guy killed himself.
There was never any evidence whatsoever that it was a lynching.
But the left insists on pushing that narrative.
Why?
So that it could further divide people, so that it could encourage the riots, which the scientific establishment was more than happy to encourage, because it was advancing their political agenda.
You remember that letter?
They sent out the letter.
It was over a thousand public health scientists, public health experts, quote-unquote.
And they said that if you protest the lockdowns, that's bad.
It's going to kill people.
And if you protest for BLM or any other leftist cause, that's good.
That'll actually suppress the spread of the virus.
Ridiculous.
Now that those riots have abated, now that they're trying to push up the lockdowns again, they're also back to this idea that Donald Trump is a Nazi.
The most ridiculous article on the internet all of yesterday from USA Today was a fact check over whether the Trump campaign selling a t-shirt with Nazi imagery.
Now, why do they call it Nazi imagery?
Because the Trump campaign was selling a t-shirt with an eagle on it.
You know an eagle?
Like a symbol of America?
Very well-known symbol of America?
Well, they said this is Nazi imagery.
Because the Nazis also had an eagle as one of their symbols.
So they did the fact check.
And the fact check originally said...
This was true.
If you use an eagle, you are a Nazi.
Just like they tried to redefine the OK sign, or the game where you put the OK sign out and then you get punched in the arm if you look at it.
Remember they tried to define that as a Nazi symbol.
They tried to redefine milk as a Nazi symbol.
They defined frogs as a Nazi symbol.
Everything's a Nazi symbol.
Now including bald eagles.
They've since updated it with an editor's note.
Story's been updated to reflect further reporting and analysis.
And the rating has been changed to inconclusive.
It's not inconclusive.
It's false.
If you use a bald eagle in American political imagery, that's not a Nazi symbol.
That's an American symbol.
And it has been for a long time.
But you see, it's to reflect further reporting and analysis.
There's no further analysis.
They just got called out on their B.S., There's no further scientific analysis that is causing democratic political leaders to do whatever they want arbitrarily and defend it with the gobbledygook of scientific speech.
You know, we got some good news out of Florida, too, on the science.
There's a guy, Alex Berenson, has done a great job covering the science of coronavirus.
You know, if you just read the headlines about Florida, you would think the entire state is on death's door right now.
You might say the entire state's on death's door because it's a little bit of an older population.
People tend to go there to retire.
But specifically because of the coronavirus, frankly, you would think because of that older population, they would have been absolutely decimated.
Well, you know, there's 70,000 new cases, positive tests, for the virus.
Do you know how many people are now in the hospital because of those 70,000 new cases?
70,000 in the whole state.
130 people have gone to the hospital for that.
Not 1,300.
Not 130,000.
130 more patients in ICU beds statewide last week because of the virus.
45 deaths in one day in a state of 20 million people.
If we could have a nice, polite, civilized, calm, scientific discussion of the virus, I'm sure it would be very interesting.
It's a novel virus.
We haven't seen this one before.
It's similar to other viruses we've had.
It's acting in ways that are kind of interesting, ways that confound the models, ways we might not have predicted.
If we could have that conversation, I'm sure that would be interesting in an academic sort of way.
But that's not the conversation that anybody is having.
The only conversation that people are having right now is political.
The leftist leaders understand that.
Perhaps the rank and file do not, but the leaders do.
And unfortunately, the right, many people on the right, too many people on the right, don't understand just how political it is.
Time is running out, folks.
We are living here in time and space.
Statues are toppling down in time and space.
The economy is stagnating in time and space.
And that presidential election is getting closer and closer and closer.
Campaigns are about giving a clear message, giving people a clear choice.
And if the right, if the right falls into this trap, you know, Trump actually gave us an option.
Trump was different than the other candidates in 2016.
Trump shook things up.
He stood tall.
He stood differently.
One problem with Republicans, they always squish to the left.
Trump gave us that choice.
But, if he keeps getting bad advice, if he squishes, if he doesn't give us a choice, if he keeps moving over, if he grants their premises, then...
In this extraordinary election year, we are going to get wiped out by a political strategy, and we're not even going to know it's political until it's too late.
Pick your choice.
Don't stand in the middle of the road.
That's our show.
We've got a lot more to get to.
We'll have to do it tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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