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Feb. 9, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show

51:24

Ep. 696 - National Games

Athletes vie for the title of G.O.A.T., Mitt Romney proposes an entitlement program many conservatives love, and even a Democrat senator admits the impeachment trial may not be legit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	As Tom Brady put on his seventh Super Bowl ring, many people began calling him the greatest athlete of all time.
	But some feminists dispute that claim.
	They argue that Serena Williams, the tennis player, has won more championships.
	And therefore, she is the greatest athlete of all time.
	Now, I think it's ridiculous to compare male and female athletes to one another.
	But even just looking at the female athletes, have these people never heard of Caitlyn Jenner?
	Caitlyn's amazing.
	Not only did she win the decathlon, but she even beat all the men doing it.
	We'll get into all sorts of national games.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is the Michael and Old Show.
	Welcome back to the show.
	My favorite comment yesterday from Trey Best, who says the fact that Liz Cheney says that the fact that Trump was impeached in a bipartisan fashion is just her saying the fact that I voted for it is the reason that we should now listen to her.
	Yes, this is basically true.
	Liz Cheney comes out and she says, look, the impeachment of Trump, it was bipartisan.
	And you say, well, hold on.
	It seemed like it was like 211 Republicans voted I don't know if that's bipartisan.
	That doesn't seem right to me.
	I don't buy that.
	But that is her argument.
	Because I am working with the Democrats, therefore, we should all work with the Democrats.
	Because I am more liberal, therefore, we should all be more liberal.
	And unfortunately for now, it seems to have worked.
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	Did I say something wrong with regard to Serena Williams and Caitlyn Jenner?
	What did I say that was wrong?
	Because I have been told time and time and time again, I was just told this by the ACLU, we'll get to it in a moment, that trans women are women.
	I've just been told by the Biden administration that trans women, you know, who maybe they look like men, maybe they have a bit of a husky voice, maybe they've got an Adam's apple and other male appendages, Very pronounced, you know, I won't get into it.
	However, they're women.
	That's what I've been told.
	So, if that is the case, then Caitlyn Jenner is the greatest female athlete of all time.
	Serena Williams couldn't beat all the men in the decathlon.
	There's no chance.
	Now, The left believes, they say that they believe, that men can become women, right?
	That trans women are women.
	But none of them believe that we should call Caitlyn Jenner the greatest athlete of all time.
	And by the way, you might say, this is one objection I've heard, but only from knuckle-dragging conservatives.
	They say, well, no, no, no.
	Caitlyn Jenner didn't win the decathlon.
	Bruce Jenner won the decathlon.
	But now Bruce Jenner no longer exists, and Bruce Jenner is Caitlyn Jenner.
	No, that's not what they believe.
	Go read the Wikipedia page.
	Read the Arthur Ashe Courage Award description that Caitlyn Jenner won.
	They believe, the left and the transgender ideologues believe, that Bruce Jenner never really existed.
	Bruce was always Caitlyn.
	He was always a woman trapped in a man's body, and therefore those accomplishments go to Bruce.
	Now, the reason I bring this up at all is a Democratic congressman, very radical guy from New York, Jamal Bowman, Come again?
	Number two is the big issue here.
	I won't take issue with Muhammad Ali or even Tiger Woods at the moment, but I will take issue with Serena Williams.
	She's obviously not the greatest athlete of all time because men are better athletes than women.
	Doesn't mean that women's tennis can't be an interesting thing to watch, especially when Serena Williams is screaming at the referees, but just to say that the men are stronger, they're faster, they're bigger than women.
	This is just a fact.
	We know that this is the case because Serena Williams herself In the late 1990s, had a battle of the sexes where she said she thought she could beat a man who was ranked outside the top 200.
	So, very famously, a player named Karsten Brosh, who was ranked, I think, 203 or 208, decided he would play Serena Williams.
	Before their match, he prepared by playing a round of golf, smoking a bunch of cigarettes, and tossing back a few adult beverages.
	He then beat He actually played back-to-back games with both Williams sisters.
	He beat one of them 6-1.
	He beat the next one 6-2.
	It's just a fact of biology.
	Men are better at sports.
	We're not allowed to say this, though.
	Even though now we're having these debates about the transgender games, and you have even many feminists coming out and saying...
	Wait a second.
	These men who now identify as women have an unfair advantage.
	Well, the ACLU is here to tell you that's completely fake.
	There is no advantage whatsoever.
	This is the ACLU of South Dakota, apparently not the cleverest ACLU chapter.
	They have an article out debunking the myths fueling anti-trans legislation.
	This is because South Dakota lawmakers are trying to ban men from playing in women's sports.
	So...
	They have these myths that they're busting and these facts.
	Myth.
	The participation of trans athletes hurts cis women.
	Fact.
	Including trans athletes will benefit everyone.
	Okay.
	Well, what's the argument for that?
	It's kind of interesting, too, in this article.
	They put the fact first, because they want you to read that top line, so it looks...
	It's very confusing, because it seems that they're...
	It says that we're going to debunk these things, and they say, debunking, including trans athletes, will benefit everyone.
	It sounds like it's kind of actually the opposite article than it is.
	Again, more evidence that they're not the brightest bulbs in the pack there.
	Because their evidence is, many who oppose the inclusion of trans athletes erroneously claim that allowing trans athletes to compete will harm cisgender women.
	This divide and conquer tactic gets it exactly wrong.
	Excluding women who are trans hurts all women.
	It invites gender policing that could subject any woman to invasive tests or accusations of being too masculine or too good at their sport to be a real woman.
	Further, this myth reinforces stereotypes that those who identify as women are weak and in need of protection, and then it kind of follows that down a little bit, too.
	Now, they're kind of highlighting all of these talking points, these left-wing talking points, but They never address the actual claim, which is that the trans athletes are stronger, faster, bigger, right?
	And therefore, they'll beat the women.
	They never address that anywhere in the debunking aspect.
	Another one.
	Fact.
	Trans athletes do not have an unfair advantage in sports.
	This is answering the myth, according to the ACLU, that trans athletes' physiological characteristics provide an unfair advantage over cis athletes.
	Now listen to their evidence here.
	Women and girls who are trans face discrimination and violence that makes it difficult to remain in school.
	According to the U.S. trans survey, 22% of trans women who were perceived as trans in school were harassed so badly they had to leave school because of it.
	Another 10% were kicked out of school.
	The idea that women and girls have an advantage because they are trans ignores the actual condition of their lives.
	That's not what we're talking about.
	Nobody is saying...
	The myth they're debunking is not that men who identify as women aren't bullied.
	The myth they're debunking, allegedly, is that the men are physically stronger.
	They don't even begin to address that.
	The rest of the article goes on in exactly the same way.
	It's very, very strange to me that anybody could possibly believe this ideology.
	You know, a couple of years ago, when this really was cropping up, I had a speaking tour, and one of the speeches on the tour was Men Are Not Women, and other uncomfortable truths, and I was physically attacked because I gave this speech.
	And at the time, it didn't make sense, but it's starting to make sense to me.
	It's starting to make sense.
	Because the problem is, well, one, you have to not believe your own lying eyes, right, to believe that, like, Billy, you know, who now goes by Bethany, is not physically stronger than an actual woman.
	But the other reason is because these two aspects of leftist ideology contradict one another.
	On the one hand, the LG part of LGBT, we're told...
	You are born with certain sexual orientations and attractions.
	You can't change them, right?
	I'm born this way.
	No one would choose to be born this way.
	That was what they said in the 90s.
	Now they don't really say that anymore.
	But, you know, because sex and sexual orientation is immutable, therefore we ought to tolerate sort of homosexual attractions and relationships.
	Okay, makes perfect sense to me.
	But then at the same time they say, also there's no such thing as sex.
	There's no such thing as gender.
	Everything's changeable.
	Nothing is immutable.
	And men can actually become women.
	Well, that doesn't make any sense.
	If there's no such thing as immutable sex, innate sex, then there is no such thing as L or G. Andrew Sullivan, a gay guy, wrote an essay about this just a few years ago.
	How on earth will we resolve this problem?
	A lot of conservatives say that the transgender activism is going to sort of finally awaken many leftists to the incoherence of some of their ideology.
	I don't think so anymore.
	I don't think that's true.
	Because I was recently rereading George Orwell.
	And George Orwell describes this process exactly.
	He says at the heart of the regime, the dystopian regime that he's describing, is doublethink.
	And what doublethink is, is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time.
	Right.
	Western philosophy, going all the way back to dear old Uncle Aristotle, is based on the idea that you can't do that.
	Or rather that a thing cannot be what it is and not what it is at the same time.
	Non-contradiction.
	But double-think in the dystopian regime of George Orwell is this idea that actually a thing can be one thing and it's opposite.
	Or and something different at the same time.
	And This is how they maintain power.
	Because what we are told by Orwell is that if you have double think, if you're holding two contradictory ideas at the same time, then you are unwilling and unable to think very deeply about a lot of ideas.
	I think that is what the left is banking on.
	I don't think that...
	This contradiction is a bug of political correctness or of leftism.
	I think it's a feature of I think it is a way to undermine our confidence in reason, to undermine our confidence in objective truth.
	This is what the left has been pushing for a long time.
	Do you remember when the Smithsonian Institution put out a flyer about a year or so ago saying that rational thought and objective reality is a characteristic of whiteness and we need to get rid of it?
	Sort of an offensive flyer that they put out.
	But it's all part and parcel of the same The same ideology.
	I'm no longer confident that leftism, political correctness, wokeism, whatever you want to call it, is going to undo itself on its own contradictions.
	Because the contradictions are the point.
	We're still dealing in the realm of logic, but what these kind of ideologies are doing is trying to undermine our confidence in reason and logic.
	Which makes me just want to get out of Dodge.
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	Speaking of leftist doublethink, Jen Psaki, our favorite White House press secretary of the Biden administration, the only White House press secretary of the Biden administration, is facing some tough questions.
	Only from one reporter, Peter Doocy, who's clearly a little more right-leaning.
	Joe Biden promised before the election that he would not destroy union jobs.
	Then his policies have already destroyed a lot of union jobs.
	Joe Biden promises, don't worry, you're going to get better jobs.
	You're going to get green jobs.
	You're going to get super-duper jobs sometime in the future.
	Peter Doocy asks Jen Psaki to explain just when those jobs are going to show up.
	Fossil fuel industry workers, whether it's pipeline workers or construction workers, who are either out of work or will soon be out of work because of a Biden EO, when it is and where it is that they can go for their green job.
	Well, I'd certainly welcome you to present your data of all the thousands and thousands of people who won't be getting a green job.
	Maybe next time you're here, you can present that.
	You said that they would be getting green jobs, so I'm just asking when that happened.
	Richard Trumka, who is a friend, longtime friend of Joe Biden, says about that day one Keystone EO, he says, I wish he, the President, had paired that more carefully with the thing that he did second by saying, here's where we are creating the jobs.
	So there's partial evidence from Richard Trumka.
	Well, you didn't include all of his interview.
	Would you like to include the rest?
	So, how about this?
	The Laborers International Union of North America said the Keystone Decision will cost 1,000 existing union jobs and 10,000 projected construction jobs.
	Well, what Mr.
	Trump also indicated in the same interview was that President Biden has proposed a climate plan with transformative investments and infrastructure.
	Okay, there's a whole lot there.
	There's no answer.
	At no point does she answer the question.
	But there is a whole lot there to dissect.
	Because Peter Doocy asks the simple question...
	Biden is costing people, costing these sort of workers at least 10,000, 11,000 jobs, probably more.
	When are they going to get the jobs that are going to replace them?
	And Jen Psaki gives this glib answer because she's just known for her glibness, for sort of brushing it off, dismissing things.
	Oh yeah, Space Force, yeah, it's the air flight of the future, ha ha ha.
	No, we're asking you serious questions.
	So the question is, when are they going to get their jobs?
	She says, well, if you want to prove to me that they're not going to get their jobs, maybe you can do that next time.
	Peter Doocy says, that's not at all what I asked.
	The premise of my question is not that they're never going to get the jobs.
	I'm asking you, the person responsible for communicating this policy, when they will get the jobs that you have already promised.
	He says, you know, even the head of Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, the biggest labor union in America, He is saying, you know, where's the jobs?
	Now, then she, because she at least remembers the Trump quote, she says, well, did you finish the quote?
	He says, yeah, you know, the jobs haven't materialized.
	She goes, no, but the rest of the quote, Peter, is that he knows that Joe Biden has a plan.
	And so at the end of all of that, we've got, how long was that answer, that back and forth, that whole exchange?
	We have no answer.
	The starting point of the question was, Joe Biden says he has a plan, but when is that plan going to materialize?
	The ending point after all that little back and forth debate is he has a plan.
	What's the plan?
	When's it going to happen?
	This was not a conversation.
	This is like just a blather masquerading as conversation.
	So Doocy, to his credit, pushes it one more time.
	He tries to get an answer out of Jen Psaki.
	There are people living paycheck to paycheck.
	There are now people out of jobs once the Keystone pipeline stopped construction.
	It's been 12 days since Gina McCarthy and John Kerry were here, and it's been 19 days since that EO. So what are these people who need money now?
	When do they get their green jobs?
	Well, the president and many Democrats and Republicans in Congress believe that investment in infrastructure, building infrastructure that's in our national interests, and that boosts the U.S. economy, creates good-paying union jobs here in America, and advances our climate and clean energy goals are something that we can certainly work on doing together.
	And he has every plan to share more about his details of that plan in the weeks ahead.
	Oh, good.
	He's got a plan to announce the plan.
	And look, infrastructure.
	Infrastructure?
	What?
	What are you talking about?
	You're just saying words.
	It's a very specific question.
	Where are these union energy jobs?
	What's going to happen with them?
	You know, plans, strategies, plans.
	No answer.
	This is in part because Jen Psaki is actually worse at her job than her predecessors, and probably Joe Biden should have picked TJ Ducklow, his communications guy from the campaign trail.
	I don't just say this because we bear a passing resemblance to one another, but Psaki's really, really given weak sauce here.
	But it's not entirely Psaki's fault.
	The Biden administration also has no answer.
	Now, Speaking of paychecks and policy, something very strange has happened over the past few days.
	Mitt Romney has proposed legislation.
	First of all, very few senators actually propose any legislation anymore.
	Mitt Romney has done it.
	And in a way, the legislation is quite conservative and it does have to do with how to get paychecks to people who need it right now.
	I want to be a little more nuanced about my view of Mitt Romney's legislation because some conservatives are furious at it.
	Some very conservative people are thrilled about it.
	What the legislation does is it's called the Family Security Act.
	is it's called the Family Security Act.
	And what it proposes to do is basically pay people to have kids.
	And what it proposes to do is basically pay people to have kids.
	It's not quite that simple, but the Family Security Act would provide a $350 per month check to families with a child under the age of six and a $250 per month check to families with a child under the age of 17.
	So it goes down a little bit as they get older.
	In total, a family could receive up to $4,200 per year per child under the age of six and $3,000 per year per child older than six but younger than 17.
	Payments could start up to four months before the baby is due.
	So a lot of conservatives are very afraid of this.
	One, because it comes from Mitt Romney and we're all skeptical.
	This is the man who invented Obamacare.
	But also because this involves direct payments.
	So you're telling me you're going to have the federal government just start cutting checks to people?
	Some conservatives, especially more social conservatives, who don't care as much about the market stuff, are thrilled about this.
	They say, good.
	Finally, we've got a serious policy.
	Conservatives are going to get serious about promoting families.
	I think the reality of this policy is somewhere in the middle.
	You know how much I hate being in the middle?
	I think if you stand in the middle of the road, you're going to get hit by a truck.
	But I don't think we should jump onto board with this policy right away, but I also don't think we should dismiss it out of hand.
	The good things about this policy are that it would encourage people to have babies.
	We need to do that.
	We have a dying population in this country, and a lot of our problems stem from that.
	Or...
	It's a little bit of a chicken and the egg, because a lot of our social problems are causing the decline in birth rates, but the decline in birth rates are causing a lot of other public policy problems, like the need for mass migration, just to keep the economy afloat, those sorts of things.
	This sort of policy has been tried before, notably in Hungary, Orban.
	The leader there in Hungary has tried this.
	He's gone even further, though.
	He's offered people...
	There's massive loans just to have kids, and then if they have more than three kids, they don't even have to pay back the loan.
	In a way, I kind of prefer that policy to this policy.
	There are some pitfalls here, though.
	One, Mitt Romney says that this policy is going to be deficit neutral because we're going to fix up some other welfare programs, and therefore you're not going to have to pay an extra penny for it.
	That's just not how these programs tend to work.
	Generally speaking, you end up spending a lot more money, but you don't make the cuts that you need to make.
	But the other issue here is Hungary and the United States are different countries.
	Hungary is a much more conservative country in many ways than the United States.
	Here in the United States, I can see this opening up a whole slew of problems.
	Namely, who gets the credit?
	In Hungary, you've got to be married.
	There's a very specific definition of marriage in Hungary.
	It's a much more socially cohesive sort of country than the United States is at the moment.
	Here, could a policy like this encourage out-of-wedlock births?
	Encourage people basically not to get married?
	Could this encourage single mothers to just have children on their own by going to a sperm bank or something like that?
	Would this policy be applied the same way to a traditional marriage as it would to, say, a monogamous same-sex couple or, let's say, a throuple or, let's say, a commune?
	I don't know.
	I mean, I'm being a little outlandish here just to show the point that our very definition of family and marriage is completely in flux.
	It's hotly debated.
	So a Family Security Act is going to have to Answer that question first.
	You could see this exacerbating certain social questions as well.
	And then there's also this problem of getting people hooked on the government.
	Which is a very real problem.
	I'm not a free market purist in the sense that I don't think free markets are the be-all and end-all of politics.
	I think they're a wonderful instrument for human flourishing and for other great things in politics.
	But you do risk something here of getting people hooked on the government and hooked on what would be an early version of UBI, universal basic income, which is very, very bad and inhuman sort of policy.
	So All of that to say, believe it or not, I'm actually kind of interested in this thing Mitt Romney is saying, but we need to be very, very careful here.
	We need to sort out the details, and we can't assume anything on the cultural level.
	And we need to be very wary of getting us hooked on these kind of economic programs that can funnel in a lot of bad cultural stuff as well.
	You know, Matt Walsh is going to be talking about all sorts of matters of family, culture, from a very right-wing perspective.
	So make sure to check that out live at 1.30 Eastern, only at dailywire.com.
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	We'll be right back with a lot more.
	We should take Mitt Romney's pro-family bill series.
	We really should.
	But we have to work out the kinks.
	I think there are a lot of potential pitfalls right now.
	And, you know, if you pass a flawed bill with this kind of an ambition, you could really shoot yourself in the foot.
	So, you know, take it seriously, but we gotta really debate the details here.
	A vote that we don't really need to debate too much that I really want us to take immediately comes to us from Tom Cotton.
	Senator Tom Cotton wants Democrats to go on the record on the question of court packing.
	Mr.
	President, last year in certain fringe quarters of the Democratic Party, it seemed popular to call for packing the Supreme Court, for expanding the number of justices on the court because you don't like their political rulings.
	Now, obviously, all Republicans oppose such a radical idea, yet many Democratic politicians, to include Joe Biden, to include a few senators in this chamber tonight, contorted themselves to avoid taking a position on this issue, twisting themselves into pretzels on the campaign trail to simply say, we ought not pack the Supreme Court because we don't like their rulings.
	So I offer a simple amendment, an amendment that is backed by famous liberals like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that we should not pack the Supreme Court.
	Now, I understand the Democrats are going to raise a point of order, saying this is not germane, yet more contortions to avoid taking a simple stance on this issue.
	So I would invite my Democratic colleagues who have said they don't want to pack the court, simply waive this point of order.
	And let's have an up or down vote on one of the most fundamental tenets of the rule of law, that you do not pack the courts because you don't like the way they rule.
	I yield back my time and I encourage your support.
	So, if you're wondering why Tom Cotton is bringing up this vote on whether or not to pack the Supreme Court, seemingly at random, it's because, without going too much into detail, this was part of a very complicated Senate process, whereby the Democrats get a lot of things that they want,
	but it opens up the floor to all sorts of amendments, and because the Republicans are not in power right now, all they can do is force Democrats to take votes they don't want to take, and so a lot of Republicans were doing this, and This is the vote that Tom Cotton was pushing for.
	This is very important to know whether or not the Democrats are going to pack the Supreme Court because we were promised before the election, promised by Joe Manchin, we were promised by Joe Biden.
	You know, leaks that came out of the Biden campaign.
	Oh, Joe's not interested in that.
	Joe doesn't want that kind of radical policy.
	He wants unity and healing.
	Remember that?
	Unity and healing.
	Joe Manchin, no, we're not going to pack the court.
	Don't worry.
	Don't worry about us.
	Well, since Joe Biden got into office, he has signed off on the most radical executive orders he could have.
	There has been no moderation.
	There has been no unity and healing.
	Joe Biden then institutes a commission to study reform to the Supreme Court.
	All of which is a way to slowly, slowly, patiently, gradually try to pack the court.
	This is what Democrats do.
	They're much better at it than Republicans.
	Democrats play a much longer game and by slow walking things and going gradually and gradually and building consensus, what do they do?
	They radically overturn so many of our institutions and rituals and so much of the old order.
	Obviously, they're not going to get this vote, but we do need to keep the pressure up on them.
	We really need to get these guys on the record because the whole point of having this commission is to start the process now so that by the time they do pack the court, no one's going to remember it, no one's going to pay attention.
	Much better to get them on the record.
	Speaking of trials, by the way, we have this impeachment trial this week.
	I'm going to be flying actually to D.C. to participate in this.
	Not to participate, I'm not going to be, you know, presenting any evidence or voting or anything like that.
	But we will be there, we're going to be covering it with verdict.
	Which, you'll recall, my podcast with Senator Cruz actually began last year during the last impeachment trial.
	But now, a year later, it's deja vu all over again.
	Groundhog Day again.
	And they're impeaching Trump.
	Except maybe they're not.
	Maybe they're not.
	Because there was an impeachment vote in the House, goes to a trial, but Trump's no longer president.
	So, is it an impeachment trial or is it not?
	Republicans have been arguing this is unconstitutional, doesn't meet the constitutional standards for impeachment.
	So far, Democrats have kept a unified front.
	But Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, on one of the Sunday shows, on Chris Wallace's show, actually had to admit that maybe this trial is not constitutionally legit.
	I think we have a constitutional responsibility to hold this trial.
	And I think you laid this out for Senator Paul.
	There is clear precedent for the Senate moving forward on an impeachment trial once being sent articles, even after an official has left office.
	And so, you know, my analysis here sort of begins and ends with what is my constitutional responsibility.
	I don't think our job ends just because the president has left office, in part because Impeachment comes not only with a provision to remove an official from office, but to disqualify them for future office.
	So there is still a consequence to President Trump if convicted.
	Okay, so Chris Murphy gets all the Democrat talking points out at the top, right?
	Yes, we have a responsibility to hold the trial.
	The House impeached, we have a responsibility.
	We have to do it.
	The impeachment provision of the Constitution includes not just removing a president from office, but also preventing him from running for office in the future.
	You can tell how confident Democrats are that Trump is unpopular, that they are desperately, after he's out of office, trying to prevent him from running again.
	Probably because they think that no one would vote for him, right?
	Yeah?
	Is that why?
	Not so sure about that.
	What he's saying here, by the way, is hotly debated, and I just don't think it's true.
	What the impeachment provision of the Constitution says is you will remove and prevent from running for office in the future.
	But you can't remove him from office.
	So if you can't remove him from office, you're not fulfilling the impeachment provision.
	So it's not legit.
	So you can't prevent him from running for office in the future.
	The Senate can't just start taking votes and saying, hey, yeah, we don't like the cut of Johnny's jib.
	He can never run for president.
	There are very specific criteria that need to be followed here.
	So after Chris Murphy gets out his kind of bogus argument and all the Democratic talking points, he's pressed further and further and further, and he does have to admit, hmm, maybe this isn't quite so constitutional as we've been pretending it is.
	I will admit that this is, of course, a matter of first impression.
	And so I don't think the case that Senator Paul is making here is a ridiculous one.
	I come to a different judgment.
	I think that that clause that gives Congress the responsibility to deny an official future office requires us to take this step, even though the president has left office.
	Listen to those caveats.
	He says the case that Rand Paul is making, which is the case that all of us conservatives have been making, which is that this is not a constitutional impeachment trial.
	Yeah, okay, it's not ridiculous.
	And then the other caveat right at the top is, well, look, this is just a matter of first impression.
	First impression, Chris?
	We've been talking about this for weeks and weeks and months and months.
	And you impeached the guy last year.
	Presumably, you've thought about the question of impeachment before.
	Why would you say this is a matter of first impression?
	Because you know that the argument you're making is bogus.
	And you want to give yourself a little bit of an out.
	Fair enough.
	I mean, I'm glad you're at least admitting that much.
	It's more than most Democrats will do.
	Lindsey Graham, I think, described very well what this impeachment is really going to amount to, which is that it's a farce, it's a partisan exercise, and it ain't going nowhere.
	Well, it's not a crime.
	I mean, the House is impeaching him under the theory that his speech created a riot.
	When you look at the facts, many people had already planned to attack the Capitol before he ever spoke.
	Well, the trial memorandum from the House impeachment managers actually lays out a pattern of behavior.
	They say it wasn't just the speech.
	They say this was cultivated over time.
	Yeah.
	Well, here's what I would say, that if you believe he committed a crime, he can be prosecuted like any other citizen.
	Impeachment is a political process.
	We've never impeached a president once they're out of office.
	I think this is a very bad idea.
	45 plus Republicans are going to vote early on that it's unconstitutional.
	It's not a question of how the trial ends.
	It's a question of when it ends.
	Republicans are going to view this as an unconstitutional exercise.
	And the only question is, will they call witnesses?
	How long does the trial take?
	But the outcome is really not in doubt.
	Okay, I broadly agree with Lindsey Graham here.
	He actually kind of undercut his own argument a little bit, though.
	And maybe he was just speaking loosely.
	I could see some different ways to interpret that.
	But at the beginning, right, he says, what Trump did is not a crime.
	Now, This is an answer to the question.
	Look, Trump incited an insurrection, therefore, you know, you've got to impeach him, right?
	And what Lindsey Graham says is, no.
	No.
	Lindsey Graham has said, I think, Trump acted rashly.
	I don't think he should have.
	He was irresponsible in his language.
	He shouldn't have said what he said.
	But you can criticize the president for the things he said between the election and January 6th.
	And still conclude, as I think you have to conclude, he didn't commit any crime.
	What crime did he commit?
	First of all, he didn't incite an insurrection.
	He said before, during, and after the riot, don't be violent, be peaceful.
	Much more than you can say about Democrats during the BLM riots.
	But what crime did he commit?
	So when Lindsey Graham at the end of that says, look, impeachment's a political process, well, yes and no.
	It's a political process, but it does have a legal aspect, too.
	Namely, you need to commit a high crime or misdemeanor, and then the political process takes over from there.
	I don't even know what crime they could accuse Trump of committing.
	He didn't commit a crime.
	That's the legal aspect.
	Then you move on to the political question.
	There's no way, politically, the guy's going to get convicted.
	Unless something dramatically changes, some new shocking evidence comes out between now and the end of the impeachment trial, quote unquote impeachment trial, you've already got 45 senators on the record saying they're not going to vote to convict.
	So it's just a farce.
	So much for unity and healing.
	Why are they going forward with this?
	Because all we can talk about is Trump.
	One, the Democrats are genuinely afraid of Trump.
	Two, the establishment needs to have Trump.
	They love Trump.
	They need Trump to kick around.
	They need Trump as this embodiment of evil that they can go after.
	Even Joe Biden is still talking about Trump.
	They're so afraid of Trump.
	They're so fascinated by Trump that Joe Biden was just asked on CBS whether or not he will extend to Trump the courtesy extended to all former presidents in the modern era to receive intelligence briefings.
	Joe Biden, he doesn't think that's such a good idea.
	Should former President Trump still receive intelligence briefings?
	I think not.
	Why not?
	Because of his erratic behavior unrelated to the insurrection.
	I mean, you've called him an existential threat.
	You've called him dangerous.
	You've called him reckless.
	Yeah, I have.
	And I believe it.
	What's your worst fear if he continues to get these intelligence briefings?
	I'd rather not speculate out loud.
	I just think that there is no need for him to have that intelligence briefing.
	What value is giving him an intelligence briefing?
	What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?
	So, this could be said of any former president, right?
	Bill Clinton could slip and say something.
	Think about all of the irresponsible activities that Bill Clinton has been engaging in since he left office.
	I'm not just talking about going house to house, you know, along with the milkman in Chappaqua.
	I'm also talking about all of his foreign affairs.
	You don't think Bill Clinton, who's a little loose with his behavior, you don't think that's a threat?
	Remember what they said about George Bush, how terrible George Bush was?
	He was a war criminal.
	The Democrats were talking about that for years and years.
	George Bush still gets his intelligence briefings.
	What is it with Trump?
	She asks him, Joe, what's your big fear here?
	He says, I'd rather not speculate.
	It's very clear.
	It's very clear what his fear is.
	He's afraid that Trump is going to run again against him or against, you know, whoever will be running in 2024.
	And they fear that Trump could do very well.
	And the key attack on Joe Biden during the campaign is that he was crooked.
	He had corrupt dealings in China, in Ukraine, through his son's shell companies.
	And I have no doubt that Joe Biden is very afraid that Trump is going to receive information that could in some way pertain to that.
	We know that the intelligence agencies had information about Hunter Biden's activities.
	We know a lot of people had information on Hunter Biden's activities.
	And perhaps Joe Biden's activities there too.
	So he won't speculate.
	I wonder why.
	Maybe we can speculate why he won't speculate.
	Either way, not a great way to have unity and healing.
	You know, speaking of unity and healing, there's an article.
	I don't want to spend too much time on it, but it's the craziest column I've read in a long time.
	And I just read the ACLU column debunking transgender myths today.
	This column was in the LA Times called, What Can You Do About the Trumpites Next Door?
	Where some woman says that she's a big lib, but she has these Trump-supporting neighbors, and they plowed her driveway.
	And that's a very nice thing to do, isn't it?
	And so she was thinking, well, I'm grateful to them for doing this, but I still hate them because they're Trump supporters.
	Then she compared the Trump supporters to Hezbollah, which, quote, also gives things away for free.
	She then compared her neighbors to Louis Farrakhan, who runs the Nation of Islam.
	She then compared her Trump-supporting neighbors who play out her driveway to the Nazis, who were sometimes said to be very polite.
	Nazis can be polite, too.
	And so she still hates her neighbors, but she's willing to get her driveway plowed.
	We've said this time and time again on this show.
	The only way we get unity and healing is if the left wants to have unity and healing.
	Your opponent in politics and war, your opponent gets a say.
	And they do not want unity and healing right now, it would seem.
	And so we're at a stalemate.
	We can't force it.
	We can't force it.
	We just have to deal in the realities that we are living in, no matter how much squishy Republicans want to suck up to Democrats.
	It's going to be up to Democrats to come and try to unify the country, too.
	Right now, they have no desire to do that.
	You know, I was recently rereading Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and one of the great, great conservative works of all time.
	Edmund Burke credited with founding modern conservatism.
	And Burke's attack on France, there are many attacks he makes on France, but one of them is that the revolutionaries there...
	They destroyed all the old traditions.
	They destroyed all the old laws.
	They destroyed even the old neighborhoods, the old way to sort of, the geography to divvy up the whole country.
	He says, the French revolutionaries treated their own country in the way that other nations have treated conquered lands.
	The French revolutionaries treated their own people In the way that prior warmongers, prior conquerors would have treated subjugated peoples.
	But they did it to themselves, this act of masochism, this act of sort of national suicide.
	Hard not to see the parallels to the modern left, which deplores our nation's traditions, deplores our nation's history, hates our nation's founding fathers, tears down statues of the great men who built this country, and also deplores the American people themselves.
	I use deplore intentionally.
	That's the word that Hillary Clinton used to refer to half of her countrymen.
	Deplorable.
	Irredeemable.
	Even when we plow their snow out of their driveways, they call us Nazis.
	On the pages of the LA Times, this isn't even some fringe lady.
	I mean, they're behaving like fringe people, but this is a very mainstream person writing in the LA Times.
	Saying, yeah, thanks for plowing my driveway, but you're still a Nazi.
	Bad state.
	Bad state for the country.
	And in that sort of situation, reconciliation, coming together, meeting in the middle, probably not a great plan.
	If you've got two people who, you know, they both love their country.
	One has one vision for the country.
	One has another vision for the country.
	But they both really love the country.
	They both wave the American flag.
	Coming together, meeting in the middle, that might not be the worst idea.
	But when you've got one person who loves the country, one person who hates the country, Meeting in the middle is a very, very bad idea.
	You actually can't meet in the middle.
	There is no middle there.
	There can be no neutrality between you like your country or you hate your country.
	What, you just feel indifferent about your country?
	Not how politics works.
	Politics does not work on indifference.
	The one way, I try when I can to have a little unity and healing, you know, obviously not on matters of the kind of substantive policy or supporting these politicians, but I actually, I will, just in that spirit, trying, hoping beyond hope to bring our country together.
	I will sort of defend Joe Biden in a very, very limited way, in a very specific way.
	Joe Biden just did this interview on COVID, and he's being attacked for apparently engaging in sexism.
	Take a listen to what he said.
	See if you consider this sexist.
	Well, are you a freshman at the university?
	No, no.
	You look like a freshman.
	No.
	Well, thank you.
	No, thank you for what you're doing.
	It really matters.
	As I said to the doc a few moments ago, Dr.
	Chris.
	So Joe Biden, he's talking to this nurse and he says, are you a freshman at the university?
	You look like a freshman.
	A number of commentators, actually especially conservatives, are calling this exchange sexist.
	I think that's pushing it.
	You know, I think what happened here is that Joe Biden told a woman that she looks young.
	And she giggled and said, thank you.
	He paid her a compliment.
	Wasn't licentious.
	I don't think Joe was trying to pick the woman up.
	I think he's an old guy.
	And he told a woman that she looks young, which is a nice thing to do.
	It's nice when men compliment women.
	It's a good thing.
	It's kind of nice when women compliment men, too.
	The complementarity of the sexes is actually a really nice thing.
	It's been at the center of civilization for a very long time.
	If Joe Biden had been sort of licentious or something like that about it, then maybe you could make a case.
	But he wasn't.
	He was just saying.
	To say that this is sexist, I guess in a very basic way, it's sexist.
	Because it's saying men and women are different.
	Men and women.
	Men can compliment women.
	Women compliment men.
	Men talk to women a little bit differently than women talk to men.
	Maybe men use sort of vulgar, crass language with other men at the bar, but they don't use that kind of language with women.
	Yeah, men and women are different.
	Isn't that how we started the show?
	Men and women are different.
	Isn't that a central cultural issue of our time?
	What the left is saying, actually going back to the Feminists, even now we're talking about gender ideology, but going back to feminism too, the premise there is that there is no significant difference between men and women.
	Yeah, maybe a couple of appendages look a little different, but you know, basically there's no significant difference.
	That's the leftist view.
	The conservative view is men and women are different.
	Men are from Mars.
	Women are from Venus.
	And, you know, the difference between men and women is that it's actually a beautiful thing.
	It's really nice.
	Something we ought to respect.
	Something we ought to take delight in.
	It's one of the joys of life.
	But Joe Biden here, unwittingly, just because he's an old guy and he was paying a compliment, was demonstrating that.
	I don't want to attack him for it.
	I think it's sort of a nice thing.
	He's also just a sort of back slapper politician, right?
	That's what he does.
	What Joe Biden does is, hey, you're looking great.
	I love that baby.
	Vote for me.
	I'm old Joe from Scranton.
	Another ridiculous thing that people And from another politician who's sort of a nice guy and has an everyman appeal is Ron DeSantis.
	Ron DeSantis was watching the Super Bowl and he was not wearing a mask.
	And so Ron DeSantis, there was some chatter about this.
	He goes up to a reporter afterward and he says, you're going to ask me why I wasn't wearing a mask.
	The reporter says, yes.
	He says, I wasn't wearing a mask because how the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on?
	Got to drink a beer while I'm watching my team win.
	So, sorry, that's the way it goes.
	Similar kind of back-slappy vibe.
	I really liked that answer.
	Very practical, very prudent.
	Of course, that's the case.
	Ron DeSantis is clearly eyeing the White House for 2024.
	I'm getting strong Christie 2012 vibes from him.
	You know, if you compare a guy to Chris Christie, people now feel offended.
	But Christie in 2012 was actually a very strong candidate.
	And this idea was a state politician.
	He was good.
	He was tough.
	He was practical.
	He said it like it is.
	You know, he's not going to talk in political gobbledygook.
	Ron DeSantis would seem to be running in that lane right now.
	Very practical kind of stuff.
	You see the pie-in-the-sky kind of abstract politics that we've seen on the right for a long time, that has gone away, I think.
	I don't think that's the future of the Republican Party.
	I think the future of the Republican Party is going to be calling out basic truths running against political correctness in the same way that Trump did, in the same way that Christie did, same way that Ron DeSantis seems to be doing so.
	It's going to be talking directly to the practical concerns of people in the way that Romney, I think, is actually trying to do.
	That's going to be the future.
	You couldn't name more different politicians than all of those guys, but they're all seeing that's kind of the way forward.
	There's something very, very conservative about that, saying basic truths, talking to the needs of people and being prudent.
	Now, is that going to sell for us, winning forward?
	We'll have to get prudent about how elections are conducted and have integrity, too.
	But that could be a vision for a political future.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	See you tomorrow.
	See you tomorrow.
	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.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
	Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
	Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky.
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	Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
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	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
	A mother confesses that she has intentionally traumatized her young children over COVID. A school system in Maryland hopes to make its students safer by defunding the school resource officers.
	And the mayor of Tampa pledges to hunt down anyone who celebrated the Super Bowl without a mask.

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