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Feb. 10, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show

50:16

Ep. 697 - The Fake Impeachment Trial

A lawyer goes viral for appearing at a legal proceeding as a cat, Democrats and squish Republicans waste time in D.C., and Big Business throws a prominent black woman out of work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	In Texas this week, a civil forfeiture hearing took a wrong turn when the county attorney, Rod Ponton, accidentally left a cat filter on his Zoom.
	So all of the parties privy to this forfeiture hearing zoomed into the call, and you see a judge, and you see people wearing suits, and then there's this one county attorney who would appear to be a big, fluffy cat.
	And the older gentlemen who were on this call tried to figure out how to proceed with the hearing despite the presence of the giant cat.
	I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings.
	You might want to take a look.
	Can you hear me, Judge?
	I can hear you.
	I think it's a filter.
	It is, and I don't know how to remove it.
	I've got my assistant here.
	She's trying to, but I'm prepared to go forward with it.
	I'm here live.
	I'm not a cat.
	I can see that.
	I believe you, Mr.
	Attorney, that you are not a cat.
	Though that is certainly the sort of thing a cat would say if you were trying to crash a civil forfeiture hearing.
	The thing about that legal hearing is that it was still much more serious and productive than the fake impeachment trial that's going on in Washington, D.C. right now.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	My favorite comment yesterday was from Frosted Ice Pharaoh, who says that PETA has informed us all that the debate for GOAT, G-O-A-T, athlete, is anti-animal.
	Secretariat is the undisputed greatest athlete of all time.
	True, there was some debate with Seabiscuit, but certainly it is not Tom Brady.
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	Six Republican senators.
	Six Republican senators voted with the Democrats to continue this farce, this fake impeachment trial of the ex-president in Washington, D.C. You had, generally speaking, all the Republicans were against it because it's a sham and it's unconstitutional.
	Generally speaking, you had all the Democrats for it because it's a sham and it's unconstitutional, which the Democrats tend to enjoy.
	And then you had these six squish, useless Republicans.
	Their names are Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
	People are losers.
	I don't know how else to put it.
	You know, I try not to use that kind of blunt language all the time.
	I don't usually do my impression of Don Rickles or Donald Trump for that matter.
	But there's no other way to put it.
	These guys are just losers.
	They may be illiterate.
	I'm not sure.
	I thought Mitt Romney was an intelligent guy.
	He founded Bain Capital.
	That's pretty impressive.
	Ben Sasse, I think, has a Ph.D. But it would appear that they can't read.
	They certainly can't read the plain text of the Constitution, which makes it very clear.
	Even if you had no other historical or political sense or knowledge, Surely you could read the Constitution, which shows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this proceeding is preposterous.
	Let's get into the Constitution.
	We've alluded to it many times as we've been talking about this sham impeachment hearing, but let's just get to the plain text.
	Where does impeachment come from?
	The kind of impeachment we're talking of the President of the United States comes from two sections of the Constitution.
	Article 2, Section 4 reads, The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
	Donald Trump is on trial right now, sort of, in D.C. Donald Trump is neither the president, nor the vice president, nor any civil officer of the United States.
	As such, he cannot be removed from office.
	Notice, I don't even need to get into how preposterous it is that they are, what are they accusing him of?
	Treason?
	What's the argument?
	They don't have any argument.
	Bribery?
	No.
	They sort of tried that one.
	That didn't quite work.
	High crimes and misdemeanor.
	What's the crime?
	I'm not even getting into that.
	I'm just saying it's a purely technical matter.
	The guy doesn't meet the criteria.
	But then it's even clearer when you get into Article 1, Section 3, which reads, The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.
	Okay, that's working out, right?
	Because the Senate is holding whatever this trial is.
	It goes on, though.
	When sitting for that purpose, they, the Senate, shall be on oath or affirmation.
	When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.
	Actually, I want to pause right there, just to underscore the point.
	The President of the United States is not being tried.
	So, therefore, this is not a constitutional impeachment trial.
	Furthermore, the chief justice of the Supreme Court is not presiding.
	Some random Democrat senator is presiding.
	Therefore, this does not meet the constitutional criteria of an impeachment trial.
	The article goes on.
	without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present, judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to, this is very important, shall not extend further than to removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, shall not extend further than to removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office It goes on.
	Thank you.
	So there can be some additional consequences, but beyond that, the only consequence that you can have for this trial is removal from office and, not removal from office or, removal from office and the prohibition that you can't run for office again.
	The one tangible thing that the Democrats think they can try to get here is they can prevent Trump from running for president again because they're so confident that he did poorly in 2020, right?
	That's why, that's why they're holding this unprecedented sham impeachment trial, right?
	It's because they're so confident that they're so much more popular.
	Joe Biden, most popular guy ever elected, right?
	Probably not.
	Their actions would, would seem to undermine that contention.
	But furthermore, there cannot be that consequence here because the consequence of impeachment is removal from office and the prohibition from running again.
	They can't remove him from office because he's not in office.
	They can't do any of those things because he's not the president.
	That's why they can't hold a legitimate impeachment trial.
	And these people, these six Republican losers, I've just had it with them.
	I always try to say, well, you know, Susan Collins, she's in a tight spot.
	Murkowski, oh, Romney did this one, like, sort of semi-okay thing maybe once.
	I don't know.
	He's a good family man.
	That's what you always say about politicians that you can't say anything nice about.
	You say he's a good family man.
	Ben Sasse, I say, I don't know, I guess he's sort of, he says conservative things sometimes, but then he doesn't act in a conservative manner.
	But I'm at my wit's end.
	If these guys can't read the text of the Constitution, stand up for something that actually matters, then what's the point of them?
	I guess the point of them is this category that we've been talking about on the show a lot, which is they are court jester conservatives.
	They exist To do a little soft shoe, do a little dance, kind of pretend to say some conservative things, and then ultimately to legitimize the liberal regime.
	Their job is ultimately to lose.
	I was thinking, you know, forget these guys can't read the Constitution.
	Even if they could read the Constitution, they clearly don't understand politics.
	Democrats would never do this sort of thing because it's politically masochistic.
	It's not based on any principle.
	It's just so, so wrong.
	So I thought, these guys just don't understand the politics.
	Then I thought, you know, maybe they do understand the politics.
	Maybe they do understand the politics and they're just not on our side.
	That's even worse, isn't it?
	Either way, this really should be the end of their political careers.
	I guess it probably won't be, but it certainly should be.
	You know, sometimes politics is relatively friendly.
	Relatively, that's the key word here is relatively.
	Sometimes it's truly vicious.
	We're much closer to the latter end of things at the moment.
	Anderson Cooper sums this up on CNN. When Anderson Cooper was talking about, you know, unity and healing and how we need to be inclusive and tolerant and everything, we can't otherize people as he compares basically every Republican to the worst sort of killers, genocidal maniacs, most vicious people in the history of the world.
	You know, part of it, I think, just based on what you were just saying, where it comes to mind, the idea of otherizing people is something I think we saw a lot of over the last four years.
	I mean, it's something we've seen a lot over the last decades.
	But it's so easy to otherize people, to make people other than, other than American, other than patriotic, other than human, you know.
	And we've seen it in Bosnia, we've seen it in Rwanda, where radio was telling people that, you know, Hutus were telling the radio listeners that Tutsi were cockroaches, you know, getting them ginned up for genocide.
	And you see it in these videos where people who claim they are patriots are in the face of a police officer calling him, you know, as we're seeing it right there.
	Yeah, gosh, could you imagine if the left ever said anything mean to or about the police?
	You know, like all of 2020?
	No, but that, forget about that.
	We're just talking about the Republicans for a moment here because, you see, we don't want to otherize Republicans.
	We don't want to other...
	The Republicans are otherizing people.
	You know those awful, vicious, deplorable, irredeemable Republicans?
	Those neo-Nazi...
	They are otherizing people.
	You know those Republicans who are just like the genocidal regime in Rwanda?
	You know them?
	Those people, they have nothing redeeming about them and we need to ostracize them from the country?
	They're so evil and terrible?
	They're otherizing people, you see.
	And it's very bad to otherize people.
	Why, if you otherize people, you'd be like those Republican cockroaches who need to be rooted out.
	Pull them out of the country, darn it.
	Does Anderson Cooper not know what he's saying?
	He probably knows what he's saying.
	He probably knows how ironic what he's saying is.
	But he doesn't care.
	He's just, he's otherizing people, right?
	He's projecting in the way the left always projects.
	And these snakes, these snake Republicans, I'm talking about the real snake Republicans.
	I'm otherizing Mitt Romney and company.
	They're joining in an unconstitutional proceeding aimed at not just Donald Trump, but aimed at all the rest of us.
	Not good.
	Not good.
	You know, you can't trust these people.
	You know, people I can't trust.
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	While the Democratic Party is comparing most Republicans, virtually all Republicans, to genocidal dictators, to neo-Nazis, to all sorts of terrible things, These six Republicans, the sort of Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse types, these guys, Murkowski, Collins, they're joining with the Democrats.
	We should strongly consider kicking them out of the Republican Party.
	This is a different matter than Liz Cheney.
	I want to be very specific here.
	Liz Cheney did something that I think was extremely stupid and I disagree with, and I wish that the Republican Party did not include Trump.
	I wish Liz Cheney would come over to the conservative way of thinking.
	But what Liz Cheney did was justifiable.
	Liz Cheney, a member of the House, Republican leadership too, but a member of the House, voted to impeach The then-sitting duly elected President Donald Trump, even though he was a member of her own party, even though there was no good argument for impeachment, she voted her conscience.
	Her conscience might be faulty, but she voted her conscience.
	That was a legitimate vote.
	The vote that the House took before Trump left office was arguably a legitimate impeachment vote.
	So I don't think Liz Cheney should be kicked out of the Republican Party.
	She probably should be removed from leadership because she doesn't represent, I think, most Republicans, certainly not the base.
	But she shouldn't be kicked out of the party.
	What these senators are doing, Sass, Romney, Murkowski, all of them, they're doing something very different.
	They are engaging in an anti-constitutional charade that is upending American political norms that is illegal and That is vicious, that is politically deaf, and that is constitutionally illiterate.
	They should not remain in the Republican Party.
	There's a reason that these people are getting censure votes.
	It's not just because the kooky, crazy base doesn't understand the brilliant moderation and Madisonian temperament of these people.
	It's because they're wrong.
	They've betrayed their party.
	They've betrayed the Constitution.
	And they're just bad politicians, and they're losers, and I don't see what benefit they bring to the party or to the country.
	I think I've made my position on these people clear enough.
	These guys, these snakes in the grass, are towing the White House line on impeachment.
	Frankly, they're going further than the White House.
	You know, Jen Psaki is asked, our favorite press secretary right now, because she's the only press secretary, Jen Psaki is asked about the White House's opinion on the quote-unquote impeachment trial.
	She won't even go out on a limb and say, oh, it's definitely constitutional or it's this or it's that.
	She's being actually fairly circumspect in her answers.
	The quote-unquote Republican senators, six of them, are much further to the left on this question even than the White House.
	Listen to her answer on the constitutionality of the trial.
	Does he see it as constitutional?
	I don't think that's for me or us to opine on.
	Obviously, he said that the process should proceed, and it's doing exactly that.
	It's not for us to opine on.
	Of course, it is for you to opine on.
	You are one of the three branches of government, and impeachment directly involves the White House, right?
	Who gets tried?
	During normal impeachment trials, the president gets tried.
	We're in this kind of weird world, this bizarro world, where a private citizen is being tried at a Senate impeachment trial.
	But ordinarily, this would involve the White House.
	So surely you have a reason to opine on it.
	The reason she doesn't want to opine is because this is constitutionally absurd.
	And the logical next step is going to be, whenever the Republicans have the House, they don't even need to have the Senate, especially if they did have the Senate, what would be the logical next step is to just impeach some ex-Democrat president.
	Barack Obama did many, many dodgier things than Donald Trump.
	Barack Obama committed what I think are actual impeachable offenses.
	We'd have to get a little more in the detail on what happened during the 2016 election when Barack Obama's administration spied on his political rival, Donald Trump.
	Seems wrong to me.
	Seems like an abuse of power to me.
	Seems criminal to me.
	Or when Barack Obama used his IRS to target his political opponents.
	Seems criminal to me.
	Or when, or when, or when.
	Many such examples.
	So good, I can't wait.
	I can't wait till Republicans get the House and we can impeach Barack Obama.
	Well, no, Michael, you understand.
	Trump was impeached by the House when he was still in office, but he's being tried after he left office.
	Okay, well, that's a subtle distinction that's not going to matter in the future because it's completely disingenuous.
	But fine, okay, we'll wait until we can impeach the Democrat president while he's sitting and then we'll try him after he's left office.
	Fine.
	Fine.
	Obviously, the White House doesn't want this sort of thing.
	They don't want Joe Biden to be tried however many years from now.
	So Jen Psaki's not going to give a direct answer.
	She's just going to speak in broad tones because they like the fact of the impeachment trial, but they don't want to go on the record saying they support it.
	So what do they talk about?
	They go back to sort of platitudes about incendiary rhetoric.
	As millions of people tune in to watch this trial, presumably throughout the week, they're going to see the former president's lawyers argue, based on the briefs that they have filed, that some Democrats have used incendiary rhetoric.
	They are going to point to Representative Maxine Waters, for example, who in 2018 Call on supporters at a rally to confront and at one point harass Trump officials over their support of the child separation policy, the zero tolerance policy.
	That's something that Cedric Richmond said she had a constitutional right to express those views.
	So how does the White House view that as any different?
	Look, the president is, Joe Biden is the president.
	He's not a pundit.
	He's not going to opine on the back and forth arguments, nor is he watching them that are taking place in the Senate.
	So that was a very good question from the reporter, actually.
	Occasionally you get a good question in these White House briefings.
	And Jen Psaki obviously has no answer.
	Has no answer.
	Because this is the political aspect that drives me crazy about these snake-in-the-grass fake Republicans at the fake impeachment trial.
	At least, I'll say nominal Republicans.
	They are registered Republicans.
	They're members of the party for now.
	They seem very eager to attack the president.
	For actually calling for peaceful political demonstrations, but then one of them turned violent for a few hours.
	They don't seem particularly interested in holding Democratic politicians' feet to the fire when they actually called for political violence against Republicans.
	Maxine Waters, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Kamala Harris, not only supporting the violence, but actually bailing the violent rioters out of prison, out of jail, rather, These Republicans are basically nowhere to be found.
	Mitt Romney marched with BLM, right?
	BLM spends much of 2020 burning the country to the ground, ripping down our statues, setting businesses on fire, setting government buildings on fire, and there's Mitt Romney, principled Mitt Romney, marching with them.
	An explicitly Marxist organization, the founders of it, saying, we are Marxists.
	Recently, Patrice Cullors, who is one of the founders of BLM, came out and she said, look, there's been a lot of misinformation.
	People are saying, I'm a Marxist.
	Well, I am.
	She actually did a video saying, yeah, I am.
	You got me.
	An organization that says they exist to undermine the Western-prescribed nuclear family.
	They finally nuked that from their About Us page, but it was up for a very, very long time.
	You can still find it in the Internet archives.
	Mitt Romney marches with them, but he's got to stand on principle because Trump said that there might have been election irregularities.
	You know what?
	I'm even willing to grant maybe his rhetoric was a little bit Trumpian, you know, it was a little hyperbolic perhaps.
	But he was calling attention to something.
	There were many, many, many irregularities.
	In some cases in the election, there was an outright violation of the state constitution in the way the election was held.
	So, I'm not even defending the Trump rhetoric.
	All I'm pointing out is the rank hypocrisy from these so-called principled conservatives who give the left a pass for doing much, much, much worse sort of stuff and take every opportunity to jump at the Republicans.
	There's a lot of...
	A lot of hypocrisy here.
	You know, the New York Times, I'll bring it back to the New York Times.
	New York Times recently fired one of their writers.
	I think he was a science writer because years ago he said the N-word.
	You know, if I say the N-word right now, even just to give you context for it, I'll probably be sent to the gulag.
	So I'm just saying the N-word, right?
	He said the N-word, but he actually said the word.
	Just in context to say, well, if you say this word, what does that mean?
	He was fired for saying that in a private conversation years ago.
	New York Times says we have a zero-tolerance policy on the N-word.
	Never going to say.
	This is the executive editor, Dean Beckett, managing editor, Joe Kahn.
	But it turns out, Hannah Nicole Jones, who's the head of the anti-American 1619 Project, she has said the N-word publicly.
	Now, we've been told, the New York Times says, doesn't matter the context, if you ever utter the N-word, let's say you're reading Huck Finn out loud, if you ever say you can't work at the New York Times, Do you think they're going to fire Hannah Nicole Jones?
	No.
	They have a sort of hierarchy, and certain people get to say certain things, certain people don't.
	New York Times, by the way, is a sort of amusing exercise.
	Just, if you look up that word on the New York Times archive, the New York Times were using that left and right until quite recently, actually.
	But now, now there's a special rule.
	The rule only applies to some people, though, of course.
	That's how it works at the Times and on the left, broadly.
	Matt Walsh is going to be getting more into this fake impeachment trial.
	He's going to be getting into the left-wing conspiracy theorists who are, I kid you not, I did see this.
	I'm interested to hear Matt's take on it because I only saw the headlines.
	They're trying to make the Cracker Barrel logo into a racist dog whistle.
	Cracker Barrel, you know, like that great down-home country store and restaurant?
	Yeah, they're trying to make that into a, there's a secret subliminal racist dog whistle.
	You know, the left seems to be the only people who hear these dog whistles.
	So doesn't that mean, therefore, that the left are...
	I don't...
	Doesn't make them cats.
	Doesn't make them cats.
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	the fun.
	We'll be right back with a lot more.
	Racial politics seeping into everything these days, creating lots of hypocrisy at the New York Times, now possibly affecting Cracker Barrel, absolutely contrived non-traversy there.
	And of course, affecting Aunt Jemima.
	up.
	Pour Aunt Jemima.
	Pour one out.
	Pour out some syrup for our dearly departed Aunt Jemima, who you'll recall during the George Floyd riots, for some reason, everyone decided that we could no longer tolerate a beloved syrup icon any longer.
	So Aunt Jemima got the boot.
	You can no longer see her face.
	I didn't realize that they're getting rid of her face, her character.
	They're also getting rid of the name.
	And it's very stupid and kind of amusing how they did this, but it does have political implications.
	The Aunt Jemima pancake syrup is now called the Pearl Milling Company syrup.
	And there's no lady on it anywhere.
	There's no person.
	It's just kind of a building.
	They call it Pearl Milling Company syrup.
	And it's lame.
	It's like the Mitt Romney of pancake syrups.
	Now, this is ironic, of course, because in the name of racial justice...
	These white liberals, mostly white liberals, have taken a job away from a black woman, namely to be the spokesman of Aunt Jemima.
	Now, of course, Aunt Jemima was a fictional character, but Aunt Jemima was portrayed by a very famous model, Nancy Green.
	She portrayed Aunt Jemima at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
	She was one of the first black corporate models in the United States.
	That's a great accomplishment, isn't it?
	Well, that accomplishment is now being stripped from this black lady in the name of racial justice for black people.
	Now, part of the reason for this is, they say, sure, Nancy Green, good for her, she was the model, but she was participating in A minstrel act.
	You'll see the character Aunt Jemima, she's not all well and good.
	She's actually a sort of old stock character from those racist minstrel shows.
	And therefore, sure, you know, she had this accomplishment, but we got to wipe it away because minstrelsy is racist.
	Now, the further irony that a lot of people don't know here is that the minstrel character, Aunt Jemima, was created by Billy Kersanz, a black guy, a black comedian who participated in the minstrel shows in the 1870s, a very, very well-known black comedian.
	He created the character, Old Aunt Jemima.
	So, in the name of woke Racial equality, pro-black, I don't know.
	You're taking away a beloved black character portrayed by a famous black woman invented by a famous and beloved black man so that you can replace all of that with a building in the Pearl Milling Company.
	The political aspect to this, well, first of all, There's just a general political aspect in that they're pushing for racial equality, but they're undermining various racial accomplishments.
	But the other political aspect is, I think undergirding a lot of this is the belief that particularity is wrong.
	Particularity is wrong.
	Sort of abstraction, generalization is good.
	Because when you get into details, when you get into particularity, things get a little weird.
	Things get a little more complicated.
	You especially see this with our history.
	So for the left, they say, yeah, all the old people that founded America and developed the country, bad.
	Because, you know, America was racist.
	I guess that's the go-to term.
	It's just now a synonym for bad.
	Everything is racist now, right?
	right?
	You know, cracker barrels racist for some reason, cracker barrel.
	And the term could be racist against white people, right?
	Because cracker is a derogatory term for whites, but it's not just, it just refers to a barrel that crackers were put in.
	But everything now is called racist if you want to get rid of it.
	So you say, okay, all those old people in the past and the bad old timey days, they were really bad.
	We got to get rid of them.
	But then you get into the specifics.
	You say, what about George Washington?
	Gosh, that guy seems pretty noble, honorable.
	Thomas Jefferson, a complex guy, you know, no question, had some faults, as do we all, but, you know, also a very, very great man.
	All these sorts of people.
	Billy Kersanz, the guy who invented Aunt Jemima.
	Gosh, how was he?
	He was participating in this minstrelsy, which is bad, you know, by, it's one of the most prominent forms of American theater, right?
	I mean, it's an actual American contribution to the theater.
	It's got all, it's very problematic, as we say now, but, you know, it did It did happen.
	It actually has a role in theater history and had black performers and black writers involved in it, but we're not allowed to say that anymore.
	We're not allowed to get into the specifics.
	You've got to erase Billy Crescens.
	You've got to erase Nancy Green.
	You've got to erase Aunt Jemima just as surely as you've got to erase George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln.
	All for the abstraction.
	This kind of Perfect world that doesn't in any way partake of human nature.
	It's a big difference between the left and the right.
	You know, if you think about what they did in the French Revolution, the French Revolution took away, they come in, they take away all local affections.
	They take away all old neighborhoods, all old towns, all old loyalties and rituals.
	And they replace them with just a perfectly geometric country.
	They're just going to divide the country up in this perfect geometric way.
	They're going to redo the whole calendar in this perfect geometric way.
	They're going to take away all religious affections and make them all about the abstractions to reason, something like that.
	And what does that do?
	The theory is, once you take away details, local affections, particularity, specificity, then people are going to transfer the loyalties they had to those sorts of things to the broader, kind of contrived national or international group.
	But that's just not what happens.
	People don't have loyalty or affection to the United Nations, right?
	Nobody goes out and waves the United Nations flag at a sports game or something.
	What you do, you undermine the local affections, the local loyalties, the local feeling of duty, but you don't replace it with anything.
	You just get people who are sort of uprooted, who just have no, who feel transigent, who feel no bonds to anything.
	This actually ties into the Super Bowl.
	It does.
	In the same political manner, you know.
	This Super Bowl was the lowest watched Super Bowl in over a decade.
	It had fewer than 100 million viewers, even though the game itself, I guess, was kind of boring.
	But, you know, Tom Brady gets his seventh ring.
	That's pretty impressive, especially with the new team.
	So, CBS, Viacom are saying, yeah, it was fewer than 100 million viewers.
	So, you know, that's no good.
	You've got to figure out how to turn this around.
	What's responsible for it?
	Partially, it's the people are unplugging.
	You know, I don't pay for cable.
	I don't think I've ever signed up to get cable, you know, in my entire adult life.
	Just stream things.
	And so part of it is the legacy media.
	They're losing a lot of ground.
	Virtually no millennial that I know or Zoomer that I know has cable or pays for cable.
	So part of it's the technological aspect.
	Part of it too, though, is as that goes away, as the common TV, as the common slate of movies, as that all goes away, people are returning to affinity groups.
	You know, the odds that I would watch the Super Bowl are pretty low anyway.
	I'm just not the biggest football guy in the world.
	But maybe, you know, in the old days when we were all watching the same things, maybe I'd go to a Super Bowl party or at least I'd get to gamble and smoke a cigar or something.
	But now I'm less interested in that because people are breaking up into different interest groups.
	The internet is helping to do that, right?
	You can spend a lot of time in your own echo chamber.
	And we speak of this in a bad way, but the good way is...
	You get to spend a lot of time in your own interests, right?
	I'm not interested in most of what is on network television, so I just ignore it.
	I just don't watch it.
	I'm not interested in most of what's on cable television either.
	So I'll go on the internet and I get to watch exactly what I want.
	I get to read exactly what I want.
	That's sort of nice.
	In a way, this is a return to normal.
	In the mid-20th century, even a little earlier than that, mass media just took the whole nation's attention and drew it in on itself.
	And we talk about those halcyon days when we could rely on objective journalists like Walter Cronkite or something, but...
	That was probably the single greatest tool of liberalism in America, right?
	I mean, Walter Cronkite, Mr.
	Tell-It-Like-It-Is, Mr.
	Objective, the guy was a world federalist.
	The guy was a radical left-winger.
	And he hit it sort of well, but then every so often he loses the Vietnam War.
	You know, every so often it really comes out.
	In fact, much of what conservatives have tried to do over the past 20, 30 years is try to break up that lock on our attention that the liberal establishment had.
	Before you had this kind of mass media, especially television in the 20th century, you had more local affinities.
	You know, there was a much bigger difference between, I don't know, Alabama and New York.
	Much greater difference in how people lived, what people were interested in, the way society was structured.
	Before, you had television kind of homogenize the whole culture.
	This isn't just happening in the United States.
	This happened in Italy.
	The construction of a national culture there was brought about largely by television.
	You see the loss of a lot of Italian dialects, specific customs, when they got more of a national identity.
	Now, it seems after that homogenization, we're all kind of breaking up again.
	But we're not breaking up down to little geographic areas.
	Alabama and New York are actually pretty similar now.
	I've traveled all over this country.
	I've traveled to probably most of this country, you know, when you think of major cities and states.
	The country is a lot more similar than it is different, and I'm not sure that that was true 100 years ago.
	Now we're breaking up into affinity groups again, but they're virtual.
	They're digital.
	You might have a handful of people who have a shared interest in New York, Alabama, Alaska, and Timbuktu.
	And they're sharing experience together.
	They're sharing a way to view the world, a sort of emotional process.
	They're sharing art.
	They're sharing culture.
	They might be living next to people who have a completely different culture and sharing it around the globalized world.
	That is going to happen, and it's going to pose a serious problem for politics.
	You know, we've had various political orders in the world over the millennia, and just as the rise of sort of the peace of Westphalia, the end of the religious wars, the creation of the nation state, created a certain world order, presumably this huge social upheaval, That has occurred digitally and through the internet.
	That is going to create some other kind of order.
	It's going to change the order a little bit.
	Is it globalism or is it a focus on particularism?
	Right now you're seeing both actually at the same time being pushed.
	And a lot of our political debates come down to that sort of thing.
	You know, one affinity group that we're seeing is among American politically minded people, right?
	Everything has become politicized in the sense that everything has taken on a partisan character.
	This is a large topic of my book that's coming out soon, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, which you can pre-order right now wherever you order your books.
	But it focuses in on the rise of political correctness from 1920 to 2020.
	Because political correctness grew for a lot longer than a lot of people think it did.
	People became aware of it in the 80s and 90s.
	Really, it predates it.
	It was a very intentional sort of strategy.
	And one of the aspects of this that occurred really in the 70s through the Radical feminists.
	It was to politicize everything.
	The personal had to become the political.
	The most intimate choices and interactions had to become political choices.
	So now you can buy the conservative running shoes or the liberal running shoes.
	You can buy the conservative coffee or the liberal coffee.
	This is true now of pillows.
	So you know there's Mike Lindell who has advertised on this show before.
	Who makes a fabulous product.
	MyPillow is advertised on a lot of conservative networks.
	He has MyPillow.
	Now David Hogg, who became a sort of celebrity after the Parkland shooting, and he formed all these various groups and stumped for a lot of candidates and, you know, made himself sort of a sensation.
	He's founding a rival pillow company.
	Now, there's some question as to whether or not they're actually going to do the pillow company because they say, yes, we're going to start this pillow company.
	He's teamed up with an internet troll whose name I think is William Legate or Legate.
	And so I don't know if it's real or if it's just kind of a publicity stunt.
	They were asking, you know, basically how to do it.
	How do you make a pillow company?
	So I don't know that it's really going to happen.
	But even the idea that this is a story shows you something about the state of our culture.
	So you have my pillow on the right.
	And some people are calling David Hogg's company Mao Pillow on the left.
	It's not a bad idea.
	You might have some copyright issues in China, but China doesn't care about copyrights anyway, so, you know, go for it.
	How much further does that go?
	Will this affect every single product?
	Will the quality of the product matter?
	You know, Mike Lindell, he's not paying me to say this right now, right?
	He didn't buy any ads on the show today.
	The man makes a great pillow.
	Say what you will, you might hate his politics.
	The man makes a magnificent pillow.
	Will, uh, Mr.
	Hogg make a good pillow?
	I don't know.
	Maybe.
	Will it matter?
	I don't know.
	I don't know that it will.
	Or will people's affinity for these political issues overcome it?
	You know, Mike Lindell, uh, He's an eccentric character in public life.
	He's always made himself out to me.
	He goes on the commercials.
	He goes on media a lot.
	But when that coronavirus really kicked up earlier in 2020, Mike Lindell went in.
	He said, I'm converting some factories for making sheets and pillowcases.
	I'm going to make masks.
	And I have some of Mike Lindell's masks, and they're excellent masks.
	They're the most breathable, comfortable masks that I have.
	I don't even know if he sold them.
	I think he may have just donated them or something.
	That was a long time ago.
	That was back in March.
	And April.
	In May and June, we're told, okay, you know, the masks, you got to wear them, but it's only 15 days to slow the spread.
	Now we're coming up on a year of this.
	Presumably, we should be done with the masks, right?
	The vaccine is out there.
	It's been going on a long time.
	I never wear the mask.
	I've been fine all year.
	Knock on wood, you know.
	We're now being told that the masks are going to have to endure much, much longer.
	Dr.
	Fauci, the exalted Dr.
	Fauci, who famously told us not to wear masks, that it's stupid to wear masks, there's no reason during an outbreak to wear masks, only gives you false sense of security.
	Then he told us you have to wear the masks.
	Then he didn't wear the masks himself.
	He wore them on camera, but then when he thought he was off camera, he didn't wear them.
	Even when he was around people.
	Even people not in his household.
	Then Dr.
	Fauci said it's stupid to wear multiple masks.
	Then Dr.
	Fauci said, you have to wear multiple masks.
	It's a very good idea to wear multiple masks, right?
	He said, there's no data.
	There's no evidence to show that the multiple masks work.
	Then he said, well, it's common sense.
	Then he goes back and forth and back and forth.
	Fauci now says, we're going to need to wear masks until the end of this year.
	If we can get, and I have used this as an estimate, it's not definitive, that if we can get 70 to 85 percent of our population vaccinated and get to what we would hope would be to a degree of herd immunity, which really is an umbrella or a veil of protection against the community, Where the level of virus is so low, it's not a threat at all, then at that point you could start thinking in terms of not having to have a uniform wearing of masks.
	But we're certainly not near there yet.
	When do I think that would occur?
	You know, it's very difficult to predict, Brett, but if everything falls into the right place and we get this under control, it is conceivable that you might be able to pull back a bit on some of the public health measures as we get into the late fall of this year.
	But there's no guarantee of that because if we don't get the overwhelming majority of the population vaccinated, there's still going to be a considerable amount of virus in the community.
	And as long as that's the case, Brett, people are going to have to wear masks.
	Dr.
	Fauci in March of 2020.
	Masks are very stupid.
	No one should wear them.
	They give you a false sense of security.
	Do not wear the masks.
	There is no reason now to be wearing the masks.
	15 days to slow the spread.
	It'll all be fine.
	360 days later.
	You have to wear the masks at least for another year, and there's no guarantee you'll probably have to wear it until the end of your life.
	It's the science, it's the data, it's common sense.
	I'm not going to wear the mask.
	There are certain instances in which I have to wear the mask, for instance, when I get on an airplane.
	You cannot get on an airplane unless you wear the mask.
	I am making a prudential calculation that it's better for me to get on the airplane, to go do a political event, to go talk about how none of us should listen to Fauci anymore.
	I think that that is more valuable than taking the stand to not wear the masks on the airplane, so I'm making that prudential calculation.
	But generally speaking, I don't wear the masks.
	I never wear the masks.
	I'm aware that I could get the virus.
	I take a lot of risks in my life.
	I don't think I'm totally never going to face any consequences from anything.
	I also think I could walk outside and get struck by a baby grand piano falling from the roof somewhere.
	So I recognize there are many, many risks I take.
	However, I think...
	Given what we know about the mortality rate from this virus, you know, upper 90s, some say over 99%, we've heard 97%, we've heard over 99% from various studies, I'm willing to take my chances.
	We just got a very encouraging story out of France.
	The oldest woman in Europe, The oldest living woman in Europe.
	Her name is Sister Andrée.
	She is a French nun.
	She is 116 years old.
	She is turning 117 tomorrow.
	She has just beaten COVID. She had COVID at age 116.
	She is living at the Sainte-Catherine-Laboré retirement home in Toulon in southern France.
	She had it.
	She beat it.
	I wonder if she wears a mask.
	The mask has become a sort of secular mantilla.
	It's a religious veil for the religion of liberalism.
	I think Sister Andre wears an actual veil for true religion.
	Great on her.
	What a wonderful story.
	Does this mean that nobody can get the virus?
	No.
	Does this mean no one can die from the virus?
	No.
	But these stories do give you another perspective.
	And actually, Sister Andre, forget about beating the virus.
	I mean, that's wonderful.
	It is the case that you rarely meet an unhealthy 116-year-old.
	If you make it that far, you've probably got pretty good genes.
	You're probably pretty healthy.
	Or it could be a miracle.
	And if anyone's going to have access to miracles, if anyone's going to know a thing or two about miracles, it would be a nun.
	But even more inspiring is her take on the whole situation, which I think all of us who are masking and cowering at home and refusing to live our lives and canceling Thanksgiving and Christmas and not seeing our loved ones, we could learn a thing or two.
	She said, when she got the virus, she said, no, I wasn't scared because I wasn't scared to die.
	I'm happy to be with you, but I would wish to be somewhere else.
	Join my big brother and my grandfather and my grandmother.
	She actually said a couple of years ago when she turned 115, she said, I hope the good Lord takes me this year.
	She wouldn't kill herself, obviously.
	That would be a sin.
	But she said, I've done life, and I don't think this is the end.
	I don't think we're just going to take a dirt nap and turn to worm food.
	I think there is something beyond.
	I think there's a wonderful eternal reward awaiting the faithful, and I want to go to that.
	William F. Buckley Jr.
	said this at the end of his life.
	He said, he was asked by Charlie Rose or something.
	He said, I'm done.
	I'm tired of life.
	I wouldn't off myself because it would cause great pain to my friends and family.
	But I'm tired of it.
	I don't, I think there's something else.
	And I think there is something else.
	But we appear to be stuck in a rut politically.
	We're obviously stuck in a rut because all we're talking about is Donald Trump.
	I was told.
	I was reliably informed Donald Trump is no longer the president.
	So why are we trying him for impeachment?
	Why is he the only person we're talking about?
	Why is the media still so focused on him?
	We can't move past it.
	It's like Groundhog Day.
	We're just stuck and stuck and stuck.
	Why are we stuck in these COVID lockdowns?
	We slowed the spread.
	We flattened the curve.
	We found a cure.
	Why are we being told this is going to go on for another year?
	More than another year.
	Who knows?
	Why are we stuck in this rut?
	Spiritually, I think.
	You know, religion comes down to cultural questions.
	Culture comes down to religious questions at the base.
	Why are we stuck here?
	Because I think a lot of people think this is all there is.
	And when you have that misordered understanding, that fundamentally flawed vision of the world, then there's really nowhere...
	If you feel there's nowhere for your soul to go, there's nowhere for you to go, right?
	There's nowhere for your society to go.
	There's nowhere for your politics to go.
	There's no clear aim.
	There doesn't seem to be any real purpose.
	So you get just a bunch of farce.
	You get a bunch of silly, fake Republicans doing things they shouldn't be doing.
	You get a silly, frivolous society doing things it shouldn't be doing.
	Got to reorder our priorities.
	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.
	Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico.
	Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
	Hair and makeup by Nika Geneva.
	And production coordinator, McKenna Waters.
	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
	The Senate trial of Donald Trump continues, Joe Biden plans to raise the minimum wage, and insane leftists spread a conspiracy theory about Cracker Barrel.

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