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Dec. 11, 2020 - The Michael Knowles Show
49:58
Ep. 662 - Don’t Mess With Texas

More than 100 House Republicans back a Texas lawsuit to decertify the presidential election, the Trump administration moves to break up Facebook, and the CDC reports suspiciously low flu numbers during peak season. 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

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106 House Republicans have joined the Texas lawsuit, which has also been joined by 17 other states and the President of the United States, to reverse the certification on the 2020 presidential election.
We are getting down to the wire.
The electors will vote within days.
Is there time?
There is hope.
There is momentum.
But is there time?
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment from yesterday from Ramesses, who says, if women who voted for Trump are no longer women, does that mean that Trump won the trans vote too?
That's a great point.
It would be the same thing for black people, right?
Biden famously said, if you don't vote for me, you ain't black.
So the black guys who voted for Trump, and there were many of them, Trump made inroads among the black vote, those guys are not black, therefore they're transracial, like Rachel Dole is also.
Trump is making huge inroads here.
This is one of the issues with leftist identity politics is you only count among the aggrieved victim group if you do exactly what the left says.
So it is always an incoherent sort of ideology, but when you add the trans to the mix of it, it becomes impossible even to fathom.
Big news today is 106 House Republicans are joining this lawsuit.
So we've discussed the various legal challenges to the 2020 election, and I thought some were better challenges than others.
I I thought that Pennsylvania challenge was stronger because Pennsylvania obviously violated their state constitution with their election practices.
This case is a little more unusual in that you have one state suing other states over the state's election practices because there was clear evidence of crooked election practices going on in those states.
Well, how does Texas have the right to do that?
Because, obviously, if other states are cheating at the presidential election, that will change who the president is going to be.
or if that does change who the president is, then that obviously will affect Texas as well.
We haven't seen a lawsuit like this before.
Also, why does it go to the Supreme Court?
Because when states sue other states, then the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction there.
As a legal matter, seems like it's more of a long shot.
As a political matter, though, there's a ton of support.
When you've got now 18 states and the president and 106 House Republicans, there's a lot of political pressure on the court, even if there's less legal pressure, rather.
We will know very shortly.
It may happen while this show is on, because the Supreme Court is going to decide, I believe, today.
Some House Republicans are not joining that lawsuit.
Chip Roy is one of them, and I don't want to attack Chip Roy, because I think Chip Roy actually has pretty good reasoning here.
I do support the legal challenge.
I do support the Texas lawsuit and the House Republicans who are supporting it and the other states as well and the president.
But I think Chip Roy makes a good point.
What he says is, today, a number of my colleagues will be filing an amicus brief in support of...
By the way, there's some...
There's some disagreement over how to pronounce amicus or amicus.
I, being a swarthy person from the continent and Italy, prefer amicus, but do as you wish.
In support of the lawsuit filed by the state of Texas regarding the election results of several other states, respectfully, I will not join because I believe the case itself represents a dangerous violation of federalism and sets a precedent to have one state asking federal courts to police the voting procedures of other states.
This to me seems like a pretty legit reason to not join this lawsuit because you know the result of this, if the election were to go the other way, is you'd have liberal states suing conservative states for perfectly legitimate voting practices like requiring a voter ID. And while I'm more than willing to have the battle on the standards themselves,
while I'm more than willing to say it is good to have laws that require voter ID, it is bad to have crooked election officials in Georgia illegally counting their votes to the wee hours of the morning after they send poll workers home, I'm totally willing to have that debate.
But this would be unprecedented.
This would be something that we haven't seen before and probably in In the short and medium term, it would not work out very well in our favor.
So I understand that.
I'm still willing to take the risk.
I'm still willing to back the Texas lawsuit.
But I don't, this is not an issue where I want to castigate Republicans who are uneasy about it, because I don't think it's just a matter of the hardliners and the squishes in terms of supporting this particular lawsuit.
And as a legal matter, I just don't see it happening.
If the Supreme Court wasn't willing to hear the strong case, I'm not sure they're willing to hear this case, which is just not quite as strong.
Some people disagree, however.
Country star John Rich is now betting $10,000 that the Supreme Court will intervene and hand the 2020 presidential election to Donald Trump.
Ten grand.
That's pretty good.
I mean, I like the fervor.
I like the encouragement.
I like the support.
I don't want us to give up or concede one single thing until the electors vote.
I probably would not put $10,000 up there.
One of the reasons I would not is because the left believes they've won it.
The left is now totally convinced.
The strongest evidence I've seen of this yet from the Daily Beast is Daily Beast writes, the seeds of Hunter Biden's current legal woes were found on his laptop.
December 9th, 2020, the Daily Beast is breaking the story about Hunter Biden's laptop, which had incriminating information about his business practices and personal habits.
That story broke in October.
But a lot of people didn't hear about that story breaking in October because the left-wing media and big tech, most especially, covered it up.
They actively suppressed the story.
They wouldn't let you share the story.
They wouldn't let you send the story in a private message.
They knew the story would damage Biden.
There was a media research center poll that showed that Biden gained something like 14 points because people didn't know about the Hunter Biden story, the story of the Biden family corruption.
14% of people who voted for Biden, according to this one poll, said that they would not have voted for Biden had they known that.
And now the left, these cynics and psychopaths, will look you right in the face and say, wow, can you imagine this?
Can you imagine?
Look, Hunter Biden has legal troubles.
Quote, Evidence of a money laundering probe into Hunter Biden was apparent in the markings on a series of documents that were made public, but went largely unnoticed in the days leading up to the November election.
Why did it go largely unnoticed?
Because you can't claim ignorance.
You can't claim that you wanted to research it more.
You were actively suppressing this information.
Now you think that the election is so beyond decided that you can come out with this information.
Why leak it now?
Some people think it's to damage Biden because people want to help Kamala Harris a little bit more.
But regardless, I don't think you even need to go that far.
They're doing it because they think they've already got it wrapped up.
And frankly, they very well may.
This is what Trump has been up against the whole time.
He's been up against, obviously, the Democratic Party, obviously the bureaucracy, the media, Hollywood, big technology.
That whole blob has been actively conspiring against them.
You can't, you can't say it's just an accident after reading the Daily Beast article.
That is an active conspiracy.
There is some good news though.
If Biden is going to be named the president, the Trump administration is going full pedal to the metal in these final days, including attempting to break up Facebook.
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The Trump administration is moving to break up Facebook.
Excellent news.
The federal government and 48 attorneys general filed twin lawsuits against Facebook on Wednesday, seeking to potentially break up the big tech giant and restrict future business practices.
The Federal Trade Commission is here.
Attorneys general from 46 states plus D.C. plus Guam are challenging.
Specifically, the way they're challenging this is Facebook's acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and 2014.
In 2014, they acquired WhatsApp.
These lawsuits are trying to force Facebook to notify the federal government of any acquisitions worth $10 million or more.
They're not just pursuing Section 230 the way that Facebook and other big tech giants have abused a special legal protection that they have from a 1990s era internet law, though they should do that too.
They're not just pursuing fraud the way that Facebook and big tech have been able to get a critical mass in the public square.
They're also going after them with antitrust.
They're also going after them for acquiring companies in a way that's illegal.
This is good news.
Glad to see there's a little bipartisan support here.
We need to do it.
The only conservative and really more of a libertarian argument against going after Facebook, and I think it's weak even on libertarian grounds, but the only argument is, well, if you allow the government to police Facebook, then the left might start censoring you.
Like they're already doing.
Through Facebook.
If the risk is...
So right now, here's the plus side.
Here's the pros for breaking up Facebook.
Facebook is censoring us, and they probably threw a presidential election to the left by actively suppressing very relevant, serious news that even the left is now admitting is serious because it won't affect their electoral prospects.
So the pros are we can stop those people from throwing elections to the left.
And the con is, by empowering the government to do this, and it's power they already have, The left might censor us and suppress us and tilt elections in their favor.
So there's no risk whatsoever.
All the reason to do it.
And I applaud the Trump administration for doing that.
And I hope we can get that going quickly.
There is another great thing that the president has done.
This is a little more controversial, but it happened last night.
I just want to touch on it because it's been trending all over the internet.
The Trump administration is speeding up executions of people who have been on death row, some of them for 20 years or more.
And they're speeding them up because Joe Biden wants to let all these criminals off the hook.
Last night, they killed this guy, Brandon Bernard.
Brandon Bernard was convicted in the year 2000 of abducting and robbing two youth pastors who had offered him a ride, who had actually done him a favor.
Robbed them, stuffed them in a trunk, drove all around for hours, sold their wedding rings and things like that, tried to pawn off all their goods.
Then as they were begging for mercy and begging for their lives and reading the Bible, his buddies, this whole group of guys, shot them to death, but the woman actually didn't die yet, and then Brandon Bernard set the car on fire and she burned alive.
That guy has to be executed by the state.
If criminal justice has any meaning at all, that guy's got to be executed.
There was a last minute call, including from people on the right, to give him a pardon or delay his execution.
That is a bad idea.
I think some people have the wrong impression that I am bloodthirsty for the death penalty.
I'm eager.
I love the death penalty.
I'm so thrilled when the death penalty happens.
I do, in a sense, I guess I love the death penalty.
I love it in that I know that the state must exact justice.
That is the role of a state.
But I don't get giddy, you know, when criminals are killed.
That's not the issue.
I am pleased when justice is done because justice must be done in this system.
I have no personal ill will toward this guy, Brandon Bernard.
Apparently, he turned his life around while in prison, you know, and kind of death row really did something for him.
And it really changed his mind.
And I don't know his religious thinking by the end of his life, but he really did turn around.
That's not an argument against the death penalty.
That's an argument for the death penalty.
Because the death penalty obviously is retributive.
The death penalty is obviously deterrent.
And apparently the death penalty is rehabilitative too.
Because this guy, facing his own mortality, turned his life around.
That's very good.
And so the appropriate response to this sort of thing is not to say that vicious, awful, terrible people Who commit awful, vicious, terrible crimes like monsters should get off the hook.
That's not the answer.
That's extraordinarily unjust.
And there is a role for mercy in a civil society.
But there is not a role to have no justice whatsoever.
That would be a perversion of society.
So that's not the response.
And the response is also not, yeah, go get it.
I'm so glad you're being killed.
The response is, the guy committed this crime, and certain particular heinous crimes must meet with the ultimate penalty, and we should pray for his soul.
It's a good thing.
It's a good thing for everybody involved.
A materialist culture doesn't quite understand that, but that is a good thing.
There's a guy that's going to be executed today, hopefully, we all hope, because there's probably going to be another push to get him off the hook too.
He sexually abused his two-year-old daughter and then tortured her and killed her because she knocked over her training potty.
That guy obviously has to die.
By the way, I don't think there's evidence that he has had any particular change of heart.
I think he remains unrepentant.
I could be wrong about that.
It doesn't really matter either way.
That guy must be executed quickly, and we should pray that God have mercy on his soul.
Capital punishment is pro-life.
A society has the right to defend itself.
Simple as that.
A society has the right to exact justice.
That is pro-life.
It's a fact that people exact justice and sometimes even engage in war for peace.
The purpose of these things is peace.
And sometimes they get a little bit off.
But we are getting, on the domestic front, we're finally restoring a bit of justice to the system.
And then on the foreign policy front, which has been so bellicose in America, so warmongering for a long time, especially under Barack Obama...
That we now have a little peace abroad.
President Trump has another huge peace deal in the Middle East.
Who would have guessed that Trump would bring peace to the Middle East?
It's really big and nobody's covering it in the mainstream media.
And it helps me sleep well at night.
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You can also call 800-651-1148 and use promo code DAILYWIRE. Trump, great peace deal between Israel and Morocco.
They've agreed to full diplomatic relations.
This is a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East.
This is a total rebuke of the democratic establishment foreign policy.
We were told by John Kerry, he said, you will not get peace in the Middle East unless you deal with the Palestinian problem in Israel.
He said, I promise you, there's no way.
It's not possible.
Guess what?
Guess what?
President Trump ignored the so-called Palestinian problem.
He went directly to the other Arab nations and brokered peace between them and Israel.
How many times now?
I've lost count at how many peace deals.
In a just world, President Trump would receive the Nobel Peace Prize several times over.
But he won't because the Nobel Peace Prize is a joke.
As is Time Person of the Year, by the way, which just went to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
They now have the distinction of sharing an award that Hitler received.
That's not fair.
We've all received the Time Person of the Year, if you count 2006.
But these awards are frivolous.
Because the disconnect, all you have to do is read the Daily Beast.
The disconnect between the way that the liberal establishment reports and recognizes things and the reality of what's actually being done.
Is vast.
Andrew Cuomo, the deadliest governor with regard to COVID, just won the Teddy Kennedy Award for leadership.
I kid you not the Ted, which is actually pretty fitting.
I wonder if Andrew Cuomo's victims will receive the Mary Jo Kopechny Award for covered up political scandals.
Andrew Cuomo, didn't he win an Emmy?
He was nominated for an Emmy?
No, he is.
He's receiving an honorary Emmy.
Andrew Cuomo, the deadliest governor on COVID. That divergence is so great.
The way that these things are being presented to you and the reality of them is so great.
The liberal left calling for unity and healing.
Joe Biden saying the Democrats want unity and healing.
Well, that woman from Michigan, that state representative Cynthia Johnson, who yesterday called for the murder of Trump supporters, She has more.
She's doubling down.
She wants to clarify her comments.
Listen to this deranged rant.
All you soldiers, soldiers of Christ, soldiers against racism, soldiers against misogyny, soldiers against domestic violence and domestic terrorism, soldiers against Rise!
It's time for you to rise.
Soldiers!
Soldiers for Christ.
Soldiers against racism.
Soldiers against misogyny.
Soldiers for Black and brown people who are being mistreated.
Rise!
Rise!
So, on first glance, this woman is obviously a deranged lunatic.
This elected Democrat is obviously deranged.
But, there is a point to her deranged rant.
Yesterday, she had this video that said, Trump supporters, you better watch out.
You better watch where you go.
Soldiers, you know what to do.
You know what to do.
Take care of them.
Be in order.
Kill these guys.
That's what she's saying.
She's saying murder Trump supporters.
And then she got in trouble for that, and then she was stripped of her committee assignments.
And she does this new video.
She says, soldiers, for Christ...
And peace and stuff.
And racism.
And anti-racism.
And, you know, being good.
And good soldiers who do things peacefully.
You know, if that's what that woman meant in her first video, when she called on Trump supporters to watch their backs and said, soldiers, you know what to do.
We've had enough.
We've had enough.
I think she would have clarified that.
I think she would have specified that she was talking about soldiers for Christ and peace and Anti-racism and all that.
I don't think that's what she was talking about.
I think she got caught calling for widespread violence against Trump supporters and now she was trying to wiggle her way out of it the same way a little kid who's got his hand in the cookie jar is trying to convince you that he's not taking a cookie.
But obviously, that's not what she was talking about.
Even if it were, even if this second rant represents her true views, she's obviously completely out of her mind and should be removed, certainly removed from the Michigan Statehouse and probably investigated and prosecuted for inciting violence against Trump supporters.
Johnson is not the only security risk among Democratic politicians.
You know, Eric Swalwell had a lot of fun with some Chinese spies, it would appear.
I'll leave that vague.
I don't know what kind of fun, but he seems to have had a lot of fun.
We don't know how much, how intimate it was, but we know they were connected, okay?
This makes him a security risk.
He's obviously got to be kicked off the Intel committee.
He probably should be kicked out of the House of Representatives.
Nancy Pelosi was asked about this.
She's going to defend the man who spent a whole lot of time with a Chinese spy.
Well, I don't have any concern about Mr.
Swalwell.
There are those in the Congress who believe, and I am among them, that we should be seeing what influence the Chinese.
I've been fighting them, as you know, for over 30 years.
I do think that it's unfortunate that Mr.
McCarthy is trying to make an issue of this when his leader, we all found out at the same time, The Republican leadership and that several members had been approached.
But you know what he's trying to do?
He's trying to deflect attention from the fact that he has QAnon in his delegation over there.
QAnon?
Hold on.
Hold on.
One of your Democratic members had a years-long financial and personal and maybe a little very personal relationship with a Chinese spy, a known Chinese spy.
And that guy is sitting on the Intelligence Committee.
And that's not a big deal.
That's actually, that's just a distraction from something on the Internet.
That no one would even have heard of had the left not made a big issue out of it.
The compromised security risk blackmail asset who did lots of weird stuff with a Chinese spy on the intel committee.
No big deal.
But a thing on some message boards somewhere on the internet.
Very, very big deal.
You have to laugh at it.
Because it's so brazen.
It's so disrespectful.
And there's something very sad about that, too, which is the left is convinced they've won.
And so they don't even need to try anymore.
They don't even need to pretend.
They can sure, yeah, read about Hunter Biden.
Yeah, oh, yes, well, well slept with the Chinese spy, allegedly.
Okay, what, you know, fine, whatever.
Yeah, it's not a big deal.
Nothing to see here.
Move along, move along.
Because they feel they've won.
We'll find out if they've won with this Texas lawsuit.
There's a lot here.
I mean, you've got briefings for the court from 17 states, the president, 106 House Republicans, obviously the state of Texas.
It's a lot.
It's hard to get reading done in our fast-paced world.
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They're not even trying anymore.
Speaking of misdirections from our political leaders, the CDC has some curious information out.
We're in the peak of flu season right now.
This is the beginning of peak flu season.
And yet, according to the CDC, seasonal influenza activity in the United States remains lower than usual for this time of year.
Flu activity is unusually low at this time, but may increase in the coming months.
What's the model look like?
I mean, can we see some charts and numbers?
No, we can't actually.
Because flu hospitalizations are so low that the CDC can't even model them.
Huh.
That's weird.
Because we're in the midst of this, the worst, most terrible pandemic that's ever afflicted mankind, right?
According to the left, coronavirus.
And...
There's been some question about some of these numbers that have come out about coronavirus.
And flu, during peak flu season, almost doesn't exist.
Now, why is that?
What the left will tell you is the reason, there's a very clear reason why flu numbers are so low.
Because we're wearing the masks, and the masks totally work, you know that, and we're social distancing, and the measures that we've put into place, the measures under President Trump, have been working very, very well.
Oh, wait a second.
Uh-oh.
There's the problem.
Because while the left makes that argument that the reason flu numbers are so low is because all these measures that have been put into place for nine months have worked very well, the left is simultaneously making the argument that Trump has completely botched those measures.
That the way that the masks and the lockdowns and the treatments have been implemented have been haphazard and they haven't worked.
And people haven't even been abiding by the guidelines.
And that's why coronavirus numbers are spiking.
Because those measures haven't worked.
So which is it?
You can't have both.
You can't have both.
The very low number of flu hospitalizations, so low that you can't even model it, has to force the left to give up one of those two arguments.
They're not going to because they don't care anymore because they don't feel that they have to answer to anybody because they think they've locked up at least the next four years.
But it does show you how disingenuous they're being.
It does show you how unreliable the scientists and the experts and the data are on this.
Doesn't make a lot of sense, and you don't need a lab coat, and you don't need all the degrees that Dr.
Fauci has to know that.
You just need common sense.
Meanwhile, the left is still using all of these scientists and experts to shut down the things we most cherish and some of our most basic civil rights.
And they're doing it in the name of science and To mask the political arguments that they're making.
Best version of this the other day, and this guy knows a thing or two about masking himself, is Ralph Northam in Virginia.
Governor of Virginia is attacking people who go to church.
And he's saying that people shouldn't go to church.
You got to stay home.
You can probably go to a BLM rally.
You can probably go loot the local store in the name of justice.
You can probably go to a politically correct funeral, but not the funeral of your grandmother.
And you certainly can't go to church.
Well, here's Northam's argument.
He said, Wow, wow, wow, wow.
This is obviously not a scientific statement he's making.
It's a theological statement and it's a very stupid one.
I'll just speak as a Catholic here.
We need church buildings.
We need to go into the confessional.
We need to receive the blessed sacrament because ours is an incarnational faith.
We need to gather together.
Let's say you're not Catholic.
Let's say you are the least Catholic Protestant in the world.
Certainly you would agree we all have to gather together.
Ralph Northam says, no you don't.
Just pray in your own mind.
That's it.
That's all you have to do.
This is a theological problem that began really in earnest under the Obama administration because Obama started to popularize this phrase freedom of worship rather than freedom of religion.
Freedom of religion implies that there's a much broader public aspect to it.
And we have religious freedom in this country.
I don't just have the freedom to think what I want in my head, which is, by the way, even that is increasingly under attack.
But I have the freedom to enact my religion.
Religion and faith have a shape.
They look like something.
They look like public practices.
They look like public rituals.
They look like public monuments, for that matter.
They look like church buildings.
They look like people gathering together.
And that freedom of worship that changes us.
No, you're allowed to...
Believe whatever you want in the privacy of your own little mind, but there's no public sense to that.
Always among the modern left, science is invoked as this category outside of politics.
Look, we can have our religious disputes, we can have our political disputes, but let's put politics aside.
My friend Nan Hayworth yesterday pointed out that when someone tells you, let's put politics aside, you better have your politics ready to go, because they are about to inundate you in a deluge of politics, and they're going to pretend it's not politics.
And the way they've been doing it for at least nine months now is they've been saying, well, it's science.
Science says you shouldn't go to church and you don't have to to practice your faith.
No, I don't think science says that at all.
You know what I want to do?
I want you to keep your science in the privacy of your own home.
Capital S and the trademark over the E, and all the ways you manipulate the word science.
I want you to keep that in the privacy of your home, okay?
You do not need to come out in public to practice your science, Governor Northam.
You can go and hide yourself at home, and I'm going to keep practicing my religion, as should we all.
That will be something, at least, as we have so much uncertainty going into this next year, that will be something that we can enjoy.
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We'll be right back with the mailbag.
First question from Bryson.
Hey, Michael.
Do you think pastors should...
Oh, this is funny timing on this question.
Do you think pastors should defy lockdown orders and open their churches?
My dad is a pastor in Canada, and he is following the rules and leaving the church closed.
His reasons are, one, this is temporary.
Two, churches are not being discriminated against.
All of Manitoba is shut down with the exception of essential businesses.
Three, a $5,000 fine.
Four, bad publicity.
What are your thoughts?
Yes, open all the churches immediately.
Period.
Simple as that.
I think that there is a world in which it is legitimate for churches to shut down for some period of time for certain reasons.
This is not one of those reasons.
This is not that time.
What are your dad's arguments?
This is temporary.
Is it?
Is it temporary?
On March 16th, I was told 15 days to slow the spread.
March 15th.
So by, what is it?
Oh, it's December.
And Joe Biden's promising that it's going to go on for another hundred days if he's sworn in on January 20th.
So it's not temporary.
This is going to be temporary forever.
Two, churches are not being discriminated against.
They are.
They are.
Because you're saying all of Manitoba shut down with the exception of essential businesses.
So hold on a second.
I'll just use the example of the United States because I'm more familiar with the way that's playing out here.
In the United States, in California, certain marijuana dispensaries were considered essential, but churches closed.
Certain liquor stores, certain restaurants considered essential, but churches closed.
Essential refers to whatever standard your society has.
And in our very liberal, secular, materialist society, Frivolous things are considered essential, and church is considered non-essential.
I don't think that's true.
I think church is the most essential institution there is.
I think not only the country, but the whole civilization will go to hell in a handbasket if you close the churches for too long.
And I don't care if you've got to close the head shop or you've got to close the liquor store.
And I really like liquor too, but I don't care.
Because that's not the most important institution.
So the church is being discriminated against.
They're just pretending it's not because they're using the skies of science.
$5,000 fine.
Yeah, that's too bad.
Maybe you don't have the money, then you can't open up.
But if you can, I'd open up.
Four, bad publicity.
Bad publicity for whom?
That would be very good publicity if I were reading that story.
I would consider that to be a very good and brave thing.
It's only bad publicity if the people who you're appealing to are squishes and have the wrong ideas.
Open up.
From Benjamin.
Hi, Michael.
Long-time listener to the show, my question is this.
Over the past four years, the Israeli government has tied itself more and more to the Republican Party, completely alienating the Democrats in the House and Senate.
Do you think this will have an effect on the Biden administration's foreign policy, assuming, of course, Biden becomes president, specifically regarding the Iran deal and future peace deals between Arab countries and Israel, even not outright, but behind the scenes hurting Israel?
Thank you for all the amazing content.
Hashtag Michael Knowles is international.
Thank you, Benjamin.
Yes, it will.
It will affect that.
And yes, you're right, Israel has tied itself more to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party.
I don't think this is Israel's fault.
I don't think this is the Republican Party's fault.
I don't think Israel left the Democratic Party.
I think the Democratic Party left Israel.
I think all of the aggression came from the Democrats as they cozied up to radicals who don't think that Israel has a right to exist.
Bibi Nanyahu is a smart guy.
He's tried to play nice and he's tried to play well with people and notably Barack Obama completely turned on him and on Israel, threw Israel under the bus, notably with the Iran deal, but other measures as well.
And so Israel did the only thing it could do, which was turn more to the Republican party.
And they've done a great job doing that.
And now there's going to be some effect of that.
I don't think that could have been avoided though.
I don't think there was any smarter way for Israel to play it.
They played the hand that was dealt to them and Trump has dealt justly with them and Obama dealt unjustly with them.
And you're going to have more radical leftists going after Israel if Joe Biden becomes president.
And I don't think that any amount of sucking up or appeasement would convince them otherwise.
From then, Hey Michael, I love your show.
In fact, I love all the Daily Wire shows.
I've listened for a while and I find it interesting that you all have different beliefs in religion.
How often does religion come up with the other hosts of the Daily Wire?
And do you usually end agreeing or disagreeing?
Thanks.
It comes up all the time.
It is all we talk about.
Even when we start talking about other things, we end up talking about religion.
Here you've got Ben is an Orthodox Jew.
I'm a Catholic.
Matt Walsh is a Catholic.
Drew is an Anglican.
I guess you'd like sort of an Anglo-Catholic, but he's definitively on the Protestant side of that.
He's, you know, Church of England-ish.
Jeremy is a Protestant, as he likes to describe.
He is as Protestant as they come.
So, sort of non-denominational Protestant.
And we always...
And we usually end up disagreeing, though we find areas of agreement and then we find areas of disagreement.
Because, as Cardinal Manning pointed out, all human conflict is ultimately theological.
All of our debates about coronavirus, they are theological.
Because they're really debates about the lockdowns and the lockdowns are really debates about what we value in society and the way that we view the human person and the way we view life.
So those boil down to theological debates.
The problem is...
But notably, the left has lost the theological and philosophical sophistication to have those debates, so they don't even know that they're having them when they are.
But we talk about it all the time.
Ultimately, it's sort of the only thing worth talking about.
And when we're having sort of cultural discussions, which are lovely, and political discussions, and discussions about the food even...
Very often, that will refer in some sometimes hidden way to a theological grounding.
From Cheryl, hello from the Lone Star State.
Do you believe that some companies and stores will require proof of vaccine?
Trying to remain practical and believe this is not to be a possibility in America, however, do you believe all COVID-related mandates will end as the vaccine will be available in Texas soon?
Just want your opinion on whether proof of vaccine or wearing masks forever is or is not a possibility.
Love the work you do at Daily Wire.
Thank you.
It's a distinct possibility.
It's not just a possibility.
It's already happening in the United Kingdom.
Wales is already implementing measures that are leaning in this direction.
And the United States certainly could.
I don't think it's inevitable that it happens in the United States.
But I think we need to push back on it very, very hard.
I fully intend to do that.
And I think everyone else should as well.
The one that's going to be really tricky is going to be travel.
If you can't get on an airplane without proof of the vaccine, that's going to be very difficult because for some people, their jobs, for my job, I have to get on airplanes.
There isn't time to take a train or to drive places.
And look, maybe you'll have trains implementing this kind of policy too.
Who knows?
It's certainly possible people have not only advocated it, but it is happening elsewhere in the world.
And that's a very bad idea, and I don't want to go along with it.
And I know Texas has a rebellious spirit, as we're seeing play out at the court right now.
So I suggest you not go along with those sorts of...
Commercial and governmental mandates either.
It's not saying don't get the vaccine.
I think there are good arguments to get the vaccine, but don't go along with any of those mandates.
From Zach.
Michael, one of the key things I've learned since listening to The Daily Wire is the importance of words and defining terms in discussions.
I was wondering if you could help me clarify the following to be more effective.
When are the proper times to use liberal, progressive, libertarian, and conservative?
Should classical liberal be a separate category or political ideology from the others?
I wish there was a simple right or left spectrum, but I believe there are more nuances to consider.
Thank you for all you do and putting covfefe in my coffee.
The first thing I would recommend you do is get specific about what you're talking about.
I mean, I think that's kind of the premise of your question anyway.
But even beyond these labels, sometimes these labels are not particularly helpful.
Because when I say libertarian, And when somebody else is libertarian, we might be referring to different things.
And we might both have a point, but I think it helps to get even more granular than that.
What issue are we talking about?
What stance are we talking about?
How will this work in reality?
One great thing about conservatives is that we're not metaphysical, abstract people all the time with our heads in the hair and never looking down to planet Earth.
We want to know how things work in practice, with prudence.
Those are not bad.
They're bad words to the ideologues, but they're not bad words to us.
So just broadly, liberalism refers to the political philosophies that developed largely in the 17th and 18th centuries.
This then splits off and there's a sort of right liberalism, which now we usually call libertarianism, although there is a left libertarianism too.
And then there's a left liberalism which develops in the late 19th and early 20th centuries into progressivism.
Progressivism is...
In some ways, a natural outgrowth of liberalism because it's a rationalist political ideology that says basically we need to get rid of the sort of robust political debate that we have.
We need to ignore the eternal laws of the universe.
We need to move into the world of evolution and progress and Darwin and recognize that human nature can change and we need to take politics away from the people and give it to the scientific experts.
So you're seeing that play out as well.
Whereas the libertarians, modern libertarians, kind of take the older liberalism, which you might call classical liberalism, and then they've just read too much Ayn Rand or something.
And, you know, they watched a lot of Milton Friedman videos.
And so they...
It is still distinct from classical liberalism in the way that it's practiced in the United States, but it tends to be a little more right-wing.
But it's still, all of those sorts of ideologies have, I think, an incorrect view of human nature, the human person.
they all seem to posit that the individual is the basic building block of society.
Whereas conservatives disagree with that.
Conservatives tend to believe that the family is the basic building block of society.
Liberals of all sorts, the right ones, the left ones, the libertarians, the progressives, they tend to believe that we ought to look at politics primarily through a lens of rights.
I think that we, and conservatives think that we should look at politics primarily through a lens of duty, loyalty, gratitude, obligation, prudence, providence.
Taking the inherited wisdom of the past and taking it seriously.
But I say that even the left and right versions of liberalism, call it progressivism, libertarianism, whatever, they take the individual, and then on the left, they take all those individuals and bunch them up together, and you have collectivist politics, and on the right-wing version of liberalism, they just keep the individual together.
So, you know, it's sort of classic idea of it's all just about me and I'll do whatever I want.
I can exert my will however I want and pursue my appetites and you can't say nothing about it.
And then you see in the idea of bunching up individuals into the collective, that's where you get actually the word fascism comes from the idea of the fashy.
You bundle up all these sticks together and then you've got the nation.
You get obviously communism from that.
You get socialism from that.
And then you get the atomized individuals too.
And I just think all of those kind of miss the mark and that's why we ought to all be conservatives.
From Tim.
I'll take one more.
If Biden is elected, can we not sue the DNC for putting up a candidate who knowingly had a condition that would keep him from finishing his term?
Can the Senate do something?
Thanks.
No.
We can't.
We can't.
I hate to tell you that, but we can't.
As I think we've all learned over the past several weeks, if we didn't know it before, elections are extraordinarily messy.
I keep going back to Lyndon Johnson, who stole the 1948 Senate seat in Texas, and by the time people really figured it out, he was already dead.
He'd already been senator, vice president, president, and already transformed the country.
There were irregularities and outright crimes in certain places, in certain key states, that may well have changed the results in those states.
I really have no doubt about that.
I have no doubt that machine-run Democrat cities did lots of illegal things.
The trouble is there's a process.
And so the states are going to certify those votes.
They're probably going to send electors.
The electors are going to vote.
So that's kind of the left-wing argument.
Or the pro-Biden argument.
That's the process.
Ha ha, sorry.
Even if there was election fraud, it doesn't matter.
He's the president.
Now the right-wing version is, okay, yeah, okay, you're going to have your shenanigans.
Well, we're going to fight this in court tooth and nail.
And we're going to We're going to challenge the Pennsylvania Constitution on the basis of the Constitution.
We're going to have Texas sue other states.
We're going to have other states join in and the president and 106 House members.
And then the left yells, this is unconstitutional, this is unfair, this is fraudulent, this is terrible.
No, I don't think.
I think it's great.
I think it's fabulous.
I think it would be absolutely terrific.
If the Supreme Court would weigh in and say, okay, Texas, you got it.
Trump's the president.
I think that would be terrific and perfectly legitimate and perfectly constitutional.
The court has signaled probably it's not going to do that.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast.
But both of those views, the pro-Biden view and the pro-Trump view, will culminate in the reality of the messiness of elections that the electors are going to vote.
And whoever they vote for Is going to be the president.
And it doesn't really even matter quite how they got there.
That is the process.
And we can be thrilled about it, and the left can be screaming about it, or the left can be thrilled about it, and we can be screaming about it.
But it doesn't change the fact that that is the process.
And we're going to know a whole lot more about that, maybe momentarily.
So we'll just have to wait to discuss it until Monday.
Have a good weekend.
I'm Michael Knowles.
Knowles.
That's the Michael Knowles Show.
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You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.
I think there are enough of those already out there.
We talk about culture because culture drives politics and it drives everything else.
So my main focuses are life, family, faith.
Those are fundamental and that's what this show is about.
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