The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 239 - Running To Win vs. Running Not To Lose
Episode Date: October 23, 2018The Blue Wave is reforming as a tsunami of leftist tears. Trump’s approval rating and GOP's economic score hit all-time highs. Meanwhile, Obama reappears to annoy us all. We will examine the differe...nce between running to win and running not to lose. And finally, why the Left always seems to get Christianity wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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The blue wave is reforming as a tsunami of leftist tears as Democrats fall behind in key midterm
election races. President Trump's approval rating hits an all-time high, and Republicans get the
highest score on the economy ever. Meanwhile, former community organizer Barack Obama reappears
on the campaign trail to remind us all what an absolutely insufferable, narcissistic, hypocritical
empty suit he is, all of which has the Democrats running safe and weak as the elections
approach. We will examine the difference between running to win and running not to lose.
Finally, why the left always seems to get Christianity wrong. I'm Michael Knowles and this is the
Michael Knowles show. I can't wait to get to that at the end. John Fugel saying has inspired me
to take on why the left always gets Christianity so wrong or why it willfully misrepresents it.
We got a lot of good news coming out on the midterm front. It is getting real folks. Silly season is
over. The elections are two weeks away and things are really heating up. You've got to see the side
by side of our dueling presidents, President Trump and former community organizer Obama. But first,
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Robinhood.com. Check it out. Okay. Great news for the GOP. I'm waiting for a piano to fall out of the
sky. I cannot imagine. I can't really fathom how much good news Republicans are getting as the
midterms approach. Right now, President Trump's approval rating has hit an all-time high. That's 47%. And it's
47% according to NBC Wall Street Journal polls. You know, we've seen other polls that put him on daily
presidential tracking polls from more right-leaning firms that say that he's, you know, he's doing
even better. But 47% from NBC Wall Street Journal is good. Crucially, it's better than Barack Obama's
at this point in his presidency. It's tracking. He's tracking a lot better than Barack Obama.
Now, this shouldn't make Republicans and conservatives too excited because if Barack Obama was
trending 46, 47 at this time during the second year of his presidency, don't forget, he got absolutely
clobbered in the midterms. He got destroyed in the midterms. That's the historical precedent.
But right now, the GOP has more going for them than just Donald Trump's popularity. It's helpful
because a lot of our local races now are just referenda on national figures. But also,
the GOP has the highest economic approval ratings ever, ever recorded. The GOP has a 15-point
margin on Democrats right now. It's unbelievable. I mean, it's 40-something, I think it's 48 to 23,
or something like that in terms of where voters place their trust for handling the economy,
Republicans way outperforming them.
You can tell that there's a feeling of exuberance on the right.
There still is.
It hasn't gone away yet.
So people are running hard.
The right is hard charging.
The right seems to be running these elections to win.
I don't think the left is running these elections to win.
I actually think they're just trying to keep to their historical advantage
and try to rely on that and be dependent.
It isn't working for them.
Just take a look at our two dueling presidents.
President Trump hit the campaign trail out with Ted Cruz.
He had been a little harsh to Ted Cruz during the primary elections.
Called him Lion Ted, said some mean things about him.
So a reporter asks him about this.
Here's how Donald Trump handles it.
To me, he's not Lion Ted anymore.
What is he named?
Beautiful, Ted.
Beautiful.
I go on Texas Ted.
Ted Cruz.
and I had a very, very nasty and tough campaign.
It was a very competitive.
It was a very tough campaign.
Once it ended and we got together,
and by the way, very late into the campaign, we lasted.
People were shocked.
I said, don't worry, it's only a question of time.
And then ultimately what happened?
We fought it out.
The outcome was obvious.
And we have worked together very closely.
I like him a lot.
I actually like him a lot.
And he's a very smart guy.
He loves the people of Texas, which I do.
Look at that turnaround.
Is he still lying Ted?
No, he's beautiful Ted.
What?
Yeah, I call him Texas Ted.
I thought you called him Beautiful Ted.
Yeah, I don't know what I call him.
I like him.
The point is he used to be bad and now he's good.
I also love beautiful Ted because Donald Trump is very good at these nicknames.
And Beautiful Ted, one, it's not an answer to lying Ted.
So I guess he could still be a liar, right?
He's not, it's not, now he's honest, Ted.
No, no, no.
He's saying he's beautiful, Ted,
also because Ted Cruz has many wonderful attributes.
He, I love Cruz, I did a commercial for Cruz, I voted for Cruz.
He's not, you know, Fabio.
He's not, like, going to ride in on the cover of a romance novel on a white stallion or something like that.
So I just love the image.
Oh, he's beautiful, Ted.
He's, but what Donald Trump is doing here is pretty illustrative because we talk about the politics
of personal destruction.
These are the politics,
usually taken up by Democrats,
but we've seen it from Republicans too.
It's when things are really personal
and nasty and brutal.
This is something people
are misunderstanding about Trump.
Trump gets nasty,
he's boorish, he's brutal,
he's savage in his attacks,
but it's actually not
the politics of personal destruction.
If it were the politics
of personal destruction,
he would take it more seriously.
But he doesn't take it that seriously.
He's going, he says,
he's a liar,
cruises a lie.
or he holds up his byability, he lies, lies, lies, lies.
And then now Cruz is fine.
He's come around and he says, yeah, look, it was a tough campaign.
What do you want me to say?
During tough campaigns, I say tough things.
And now he's good.
I like him.
Vote for him.
It's very clear.
He's saying, that's just about politics.
It's just politics.
Don't worry.
This is not what you're getting from Barack Obama.
It's not what you're getting from any other politicians, really.
You know, really, these guys take it personally.
They stick with it.
Barack Obama has hit the campaign trail again to remind us all how extraordinarily annoying he is.
He's theoretically stumping for a Nevada senatorial candidate Jackie Rosen.
He's really just stumping for himself.
Here's a quick clip in case you missed it, which you did.
First of all, I want you guys to give it up.
You guys go ahead and take a seat.
I got a lot to say.
First of all, I have to say that I miss you too.
I do.
I'm not alone in saying I enjoy coming to Las Vegas.
I was backstage.
Fortunately, there were no cameras going
when I was jamming.
That I want...
I want...
I'm here.
I can remember in my lifetime,
and that includes when I was on the ballot.
When I walked into office 10 years ago,
I do think it's interesting,
I just hope people kind of notice.
Folks like me, by the time I left office,
and that's what I handed off to the next guy.
Now I'd like to bring up George Harrison.
All through the night, I'm even
mine, I'm in mine, I'm in mine, even those tears. I'm in mine, I'm in mine, I'm in mine, I'm
me, me, mine, I'm me, me. He just does, this clip goes on for two and a half minutes. I played you
like 20 seconds of it. He just, it's all about me, me, me, and just, oh, good grief, get over
yourself. It reminds me that he's more narcissistic than Donald Trump. And the thing about
Barack Obama is he was a BS artist par excellence, but he would always keep that serious face.
and I think people really don't like that.
You know, Donald Trump is also a BS or, you know, from New York, but he's honest about it.
He says, oh, yeah, I called him a liar.
Yeah, that was because I didn't like him then, but now I like him, so he's not, he's beautiful now.
He's Texas Ted.
Vote for him.
That's not what Obama does.
Obama has to believe the lie because it's about him.
He can't admit that he's just engaging in politics.
It's so much more unctuous.
It's so much more disgusting when they do it.
He also doesn't talk about Rosen.
He talks about I'm Me Mine, and he's rehashing all these old, when I was, when I was president, when we, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, but he's fighting old fights and he's, he is gaslighting Republic.
Please go to every single state, Barack Obama, go to every state, go to every congressional district, and remind us why we threw you and your entire party out of office.
He's even rehashing these scandals of his administration and projecting them onto Trump and denying that he ever did them.
Here he is.
It is not a democratic or a Republican idea that we are not supposed to pressure the Attorney General or the FBI to use the criminal justice system to try to punish political opponents.
That's not how America works.
That's how some tin pot dictatorship works.
That's not supposed to be America.
That's not supposed to be America.
I mean, that's how my tin pot dictatorship worked.
That's how when I used the IRS to target my opponents, he used the,
these agencies to target his political opponents.
First of all, we know that his executive agencies
were spying on the Donald Trump campaign,
and we're getting more and more information about that day by day.
We also know that he selectively prosecuted his critics.
He sent Dinesh Tussuza to live with criminals for months and months
because he made an extra donation to a friend of his in New York
who was never going to win.
He broke a law that shouldn't be a law in the first place,
and a law that is virtually never prosecuted,
or a crime rather, that is virtually never prosecuted,
and Obama's administration threw the book at him to send a message.
Why? Because Dinesh DeSuzza made a movie critical of Donald Trump.
How about the IRS?
I was a member of an organization that was targeted by the IRS.
He used his IRS, his tax agency,
to intimidate his critics on the right,
to intimidate the Tea Party, to intimidate Tea Party organizations.
And he's doing that political role.
voice. I can't stand that voice that I think we're all so sick of it. Donald Trump smashed that
with his guttural screaming, you know, Twitter voice. He has smashed that political voice. You hear
him. And it's just so fake. It's so artificial. And this guy is such a failure. His administration
failed. It failed on everything. And then President Trump took office. Well, first the Republicans
took control of the House and Senate. Then Trump took office and everything got better.
and that's just what happened.
And now he's bitter, he's trying to reclaim a legacy.
I actually forgot about him.
I kid you not.
I had not thought about this guy, and I don't know how long,
because his legacy doesn't matter.
It's been dismantled.
He systematically lost the entire country for his political party,
probably a thousand seats around the country.
And now he's coming back stumping.
Good on him.
Please don't do it.
It's this hypocritical sanctimony that people are so sick of.
And he won't admit.
He's just stoned.
cold about it. Oh yeah, the DOJ.
It's people shouldn't misuse
the executive agencies.
But what about, well, no, they shouldn't.
Yeah, they shouldn't. It's outrageous.
You know, talk about tin pot dictatorship.
First of all, what happened to, what happened
to civility? Remember,
they're always calling for civility when
they're not, you know, throwing rocks
through Republican congressman's offices, or harassing
Mitch McConnell at dinner, or harassing
people at their houses, or where their children should sleep.
They're always talking about civility then.
He called our president, our sitting president, a tin pot dictator.
And he was always awful this way.
His attacks on Bush, I felt, were out of bounds.
His attacks on Trump are certainly out of bounds to call him a tin pot dictator.
And ironic, because Barack Obama behaved in an authoritarian autocratic way, much more so than
his predecessors, and ironically, much more so than President Trump.
We've been told Trump is going to be an autocrat or a retirement.
It just hasn't happened.
And if anything, he has ceded power back to where it belongs.
Before we get into more of this and more of the Democrat midterm advantage,
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Text.
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C-O-V-E-F-E to 47-47.
47. That's the only way to get a free pillow. Do it right now. Co-fefefe, C-O-V-F-E-E to 47-47-47-47. What is it? C-O-V-F-E-E-F-E-E to 47-47. So with all of this, you've got the dueling presidents. President Trump goes out in Texas. He's holding a rally. You've got a thousand people sleeping overnight to get in. Barack Obama holds a rally. Many fewer people, not nearly as big. Orders of magnitude less big than the Trump rally. What does that tell us? I don't know. You know, you know,
President Trump is the sitting president. He's a much better showman than Barack Obama.
We know the historic midterm advantage
is pronounced. Barack Obama in 2010
lost 63 seats to the Republicans. That was in his
first midterm after his election. Bill Clinton lost
54 in 1994 to the Republicans.
That isn't nothing. You know, Democrats only need 24
seats to retake the House. Certainly history shows that they could do that. And yet, and yet,
this is an uncommon election. It's an uncommon president. It's certainly uncommon times. Economically speaking,
we have virtually no joblessness. The economy is screaming right now. The thing that you also got
to remember is that, what was it? Two years ago, almost to the day, the New York Times predicted
with 92% certainty that former future president Hillary Clinton would be elected.
92 Hillary, 8% Donald Trump. What happened? It was a Trump blowout. It was a Trump blowout in the election.
So these things can change. The one reason that I obviously some of these candidates, because they've gotten angry and they've gotten mad and they've gotten stupid, certain races that Democrats should have won are now almost certainly going to go to Republicans. I'm thinking especially of Heidi Hype camp up in North Dakota.
But the reason I suspect Democrats don't really believe that they've got this huge.
huge advantage right now is they're not talking like they're running to win. They're talking like
they're just trying to keep whatever advantage they have and just play it really, really safe. And that's
not how you win. Here's Nancy Pelosi explaining this to CNN. If the election were held today,
the Democrats would handily win the House. I could only speak in the present tense because you
never know in another couple of weeks. Look how she's hedging. I mean, they learned a lesson after
2016. You remember, New York Times predicted 92% Hillary would win. The New York Times had to apologize
because they got that election so wrong. They actually had to apologize to their readers.
Nancy Pelosi isn't making predictions because she wants to hedge her bets. I mean, this,
by all political patterns, this should be a blowout for Democrats, but it's not looking like a blowout
for Democrats. Also, I'm not convinced if the elections were held today that the Democrats would
win. I suspect if the elections were held today, Republicans might hold control of the House.
We'll see. She's on the trail right now. I mean, she is the leader of the House Democrats and she's
not using winning rhetoric. There are these two differences. When you're playing to win,
you are going hard. You are breaking things. You are, you don't want to come in second. You don't have
anything to lose. You have everything to gain. The great example of this is the Trump 2016 campaign.
He was breaking all sorts of taboos.
He was running hard on immigration, which conservatives had been mealy-mouthed on.
He was running hard on issues of foreign policy, on issues of foreign trade, things that seemed
a little taboo, and he was going after them.
He was going after political correctness, and he wasn't speaking in a politically correct way.
The example of playing not to lose, the idea of just playing as safe as you possibly can,
is Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney's, well, listen, do, do, do, and I, and he's talking in all these long,
things that are very boring and he's constantly apologizing. He won't go after the moderator.
Do you remember, Candy Crowley lied. The debate moderator, Candy Crowley, lied during the Romney Obama
debate. Interrupted the debate, lied on behalf of Barack Obama to millions of people watching.
And what did Romney do? He said, well, I, but, and Obama's laughing. He's sitting there,
go on. Go on, Candy, go on, governor. And she's in there, and just lying. And, you know, if Donald Trump
had been there, can you imagine what would have happened?
He would have blown the roof off the building if she had tried to do something like that.
That's the difference.
And, you know, playing not to lose is not a great strategy.
One, because I don't think it works very well, especially now in our age of 4K televisions and social media, authenticity is really, really important.
Also, I don't think she can really rely on these advantages right now.
I don't really see that advantage playing out in the races where people are really drilling down.
And since Brett Kavanaugh, all of the momentum has been with the Republicans.
So what are they running on now?
All they're running on is rhetoric and civility.
Rhetoric and civility.
This is ironic.
There's a Democrat congressional candidate in Pennsylvania.
He was having a debate in a synagogue with Scott, or rather with GOP congressman,
Brian Fitzpatrick.
And this guy, Scott Wallace, told the Republican congressman to F off in the sanctuary of a synagogue.
But he said, oh, no, but civility.
and civility, rhetoric, civility, rhetoric.
They can't even run on civility.
They actually can't run on civility.
Do you remember, here is Jim Acosta trying to pretend that the Republicans are the violent ones.
I have to tell you, Don, when the president made that joke about Greg Gianforte assaulting Ben Jacobs,
I looked over to the crowd.
There was one gentleman, a Trump supporter in the crowd, who was doing pro wrestling moves,
doing body slam type gestures in the crowd.
So the crowd was obviously eating this stuff up.
And people wonder whether or not there's a cause and effect, whether or not the president's rhetoric, you know,
plant seeds of violence in his own supporters and his own crowds.
You don't need the president's rhetoric to plant seeds of violence.
You don't see seeds of violence in the conservative side.
You see two presumably left-wing vandals throwing a gigantic rock through a GOP congressional leader Kevin McCarthy's office window.
That just happened.
That story just broke.
You saw that hysterical man baby screeching at Mitch McConnell in the restaurant.
Well, get out of the country.
Get out of the home.
Please stop it.
You see Maxine Waters calling on Democrats.
She's an elected Democrat calling on her supporters to assault, harass Republicans in the street at restaurants where they live where their children sleep.
Eric Holder did the same thing.
Hillary Clinton did the same thing.
Jim Acosta doesn't talk about that, though, does he?
So they can't even run on civility.
They can't even run on that.
And so they're running vaguely on rhetoric.
They're basically just running against the tweets.
They're running because they don't like Trump.
and I'm telling you, I have been on campaigns that have tried to run against the other guy.
I've been on campaigns that have just offered a negative vision.
They don't go anywhere.
They don't win.
Even if the candidate's better than the other guy, they don't win.
You have to offer a positive message.
You can ding them too.
You can go negative.
You can hit people.
But you have to offer them something.
If you're just running against the other guy, the other guy is going to win because the show is about him.
Everybody is talking about him.
No press is bad press.
If you just run it because he's a bad guy, who are you?
Why should I give you my vote?
You're always, you're just voting for him.
So they're making a huge mistake there.
The rhetoric thing is the last refuge of desperate politicians.
It's playing it safe.
It's playing not to lose.
Say, Nancy Pelosi, why should we elect you and the Democrats to take control of the Congress?
Well, because you have to, historically speaking, we're expecting you to.
and I'm sorry you asked that question.
That's her answer. She doesn't have an answer.
Because if you give an answer, you're taking a risk.
If you give an answer, you have to stand for something.
But she doesn't want to.
I think, you know, Mitt Romney tried to run the 2012 campaign
on not being Barack Obama.
He was trying to run it on.
Obama's economy is bad.
I'm the other guy.
Elect me.
Doesn't work.
You've got to run for something.
They're not doing that.
Even these minor Democrat candidates,
these Democrat candidates that we haven't been talking about
are terrible on their rhetoric.
If you want to talk rhetoric,
the Georgia gubernatorial candidate for the Democrats,
Stacey Abrams,
they're just about to have a debate down there.
They released a photo today
of her burning the Georgia state flag.
They got a photo of her.
I think she was in college
and she's burning the Georgia state flag.
And what is this with the Democrats now
of candidates running against their states?
You saw this with Kirsten Cinema in Arizona.
She's running, all those videos popped over for saying,
yeah, I hate Arizona.
Man, I hope your states don't turn out like Arizona.
And that's why I want to represent you, Arizona in the U.S. Senate.
Not a great campaign.
So, I don't know.
I mean, a Democrat political operative should take these candidates aside and shake them a little bit.
Because we couldn't ask for more.
It's like when you get a gubernatorial candidate running who burned the state flag and you got a photo of it,
it's like she might as well take out a gun and start shooting apple pies and the American flag.
I mean, it's insane.
And they didn't learn their lesson.
This flag issue really matters.
People are very offended by this.
This is why people don't watch the NFL anymore.
This was a major issue.
Another one, by the way, that President Kofifei got right, which is, it seems like a trivial issue to the people who are, you know, the people who are telling you to stop caring are the ones who say it's a trivial issue.
Well, if it's a trivial issue, why do you care so much?
Stop doing it.
Well, if it's a trivial, it's not.
It's a really important issue.
And so it's really hitting her.
And then she comes out with this wasn't 20 years ago, this wasn't 25 years ago.
This was just on this campaign.
Listen to Georgia governor candidate, Stacey Abram, talking about who her voter coalition is going to be.
But the thing of it is, the blue wave is African American.
It's white, it's Latino, it's Asian Pacific Islander.
It is disabled.
It is differently able.
It is LGBTQ.
It is law enforcement.
Yes.
It is veterans.
Yes.
It is made up of those who've been told that they are not worthy of being here.
Yes.
It is comprised of those who are documented and undocumented.
Yes.
Yeah.
Wait, wait, wait, what was the last one?
You know, LGBT.
No, yeah, no, after that one.
Documented people.
No, no, before that one.
You're saying that your electoral blue wave is comprising illegal aliens.
You know that thing that we've been accusing you guys of doing for decades now?
And you say it's ridiculous and insane.
Your Georgia governor candidate just admitted it.
Yeah, we're going to round up all those illegal aliens, all the ones that Trump hasn't deported,
and we're going to get them to illegally vote for us and put them in the government.
Yeah.
Yeah, is that great?
Yeah.
I mean, those guys, they would applaud for anything in her campaign office.
But it's really incredible.
A Freudian slip, I think, where you say one thing and mean your mother,
because she's probably caught herself here and said, oh, no, I misspoke or something. That's what they really mean. And voter fraud is an issue. Don't let anybody tell you it isn't an issue. There's a great book out by Eric Eggers on this called Fraud, which you should read all the ways that the left tries to steal elections. So I don't know what this is. Is this ignorance or is this ignorance or is this both? Either way, you've got a major Democrat candidate running on some combination of ignorance and lawlessness. No surprise. And they're projecting.
I noticed this at Politicon.
You know, all the time at Politicon, you would see these left-wing guys.
I was on this one panel with a couple left-wingers, and they would interrupt us, the right-winger, when we were speaking.
They would constantly interrupt, mock, you know, cut in, interject.
And then the minute that you question something that they were saying, they would say, don't interrupt.
Stop interrupting.
We need to be civil.
But you were just the whole, no, no, no, now we got to be, come on.
Come on, we got to be civil.
They project and they gaslight.
I mean, it really is gaslighting.
When I saw Barack Obama, I started to get a little PTSD almost, a little P-PTSD, political
post-traumatic stress disorder.
It's not one that really, like, affects your emotions.
You're just kind of like, gross, gosh, can we move on from that?
I thought that era was over.
And when Barack Obama says that they're politicizing government agencies, you just think,
you did it.
and he looks at you stone cold gas lights.
No, I didn't.
No, I didn't.
No, we didn't.
Who are you going to believe?
Me or your lion eyes?
Who are you going to believe?
Here, Dick Durbin is doing exactly this.
Dick Durbin, a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Here's Dick Durbin talking to Chuck Todd.
Why don't you go after Republican leaders the way Republicans go after Democratic leaders?
I don't think it's a message that really carries the day.
voters are listening for both political parties to say something other than a political squabbles underway in Washington.
Is that right, Dick Durbin?
Is that they don't want personal attacks?
They don't want political squabbles in Washington.
Dick Durbin helped lead the character assassination into Brett Kavanaugh.
Judiciary Committee Senate Democrat helped lead it.
He was a leading voice, unprecedented character assassination, petty, disgusting.
baseless slander.
And he's going there, he says,
we got to stop attacking people.
You know, we got to stop these petty squabbles.
It's so,
this is actually the only thing that they do
that genuinely infuriates me.
Because I hate it, you know,
don't boof on my leg and tell me it's windy.
Don't do it, man.
Don't tell me it's raining, you know.
I understand they have stupid policy ideas.
They have some confusion about first principle.
Whatever.
That's fine.
I get it.
I get the.
ignorance. I even get the lawlessness. It's just that look in me in the eyes. It's so disrespectful
when they do this. And I think voters do it too. They're living in a fantasy right now. They're
living in a fantasy that they're conning people anymore. It isn't happen. Talk about living in a
delusion. Hillary Clinton was at an event. She was introduced as, you know, former Secretary of State
and as the real president. Look at how she reacts.
second who needs no introduction
is former secretary of state
and presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton
the real president
she has become
that meme of herself
the one where she's in a straight jacket
kind of looking old wild-eyed
and she says I'm the president
I'm the real president
and the guards say oh yeah sure you are Hillary
no come with us come with us
that's what she's become they say
you know she's the real president
Now, a normal, civilized, sane person who actually cares about our republic would say, no, I'm not.
I'm not the real president.
I lost the election.
I wish I didn't lose, but I lost.
I'm not the president.
What does Hillary Clinton do to say?
She's the real president.
She goes, ah, ha ha ha, yeah, she takes off on her, you know, broomstick.
This is a fantasy world they're living in, and voters don't reward fantasies.
They don't, not for long.
You know, to quote George W. Bush, fool me once. Shame on you.
Fool me twice. The point is you're not going to fool me again.
They don't reward fantasies. They can sit there and Hillary can say, I'm the real president.
And Chuck Schumer can say, I'm the real majority leader.
And they can say that all day. It isn't true. It doesn't make it so.
Even if the Democrats retake the House, even if they get their historical advantage,
they need to grapple with reality if they want to rebuild this a party.
This is a mission of mercy.
I'm giving them free advice.
President Trump radically reshaped politics.
He really did.
At least the political media,
at least political communication.
He went in and he grappled with reality.
Part of that is admitting that you're wrong in the moment.
Not that you were wrong 30 years ago,
but now you got it right.
Admitting that you were wrong in the moment.
Donald Trump did this.
And it actually irked a lot of conservatives
because he said, oh, you were wrong about this trade deal.
You were wrong about this war.
wrong about this. It was pretty radical. It actually was a real shaking up. And voters rewarded that.
They rewarded a guy speaking bluntly and speaking directly and not trying to just make excuses for things
that haven't worked out. The Democrats won't do that. They haven't done that. What they're starting to do
is they're conveniently admitting that they were wrong about certain things. So they'll say,
oh, well, yeah, the Clintons, maybe they weren't that great when it's only convenient for them.
I will give you the answer
as to how the Democrats can rebuild
but first you've got to go to
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This is to prepare for the blue wave.
The blue tsunami.
You know, we have the leftist-years Tumblr.
It's always getting blue waves.
They're always blue ripples.
salty blue ripples going through it.
And as what we were told was going to be
the Democrat takeover of the entire government,
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if anything at all, get yours now
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Don't come, you're going to drown.
Go to Dailywire.com. We'll be right back.
They've got to grapple with reality.
They've got to admit that they are wrong right now.
What they're doing is this fake posturing.
today in the Washington Coast by Richard Cohen. He wrote this piece. He said, I thought Juanita
Broderick wasn't credible. I was wrong. Okay, Juanita Broder. You know Juanita Broderick. We had her on the show.
She says that Bill Clinton raped her. I've talked to her. I read her book. If you want to talk about
credibility, this woman's got it. She's got people at the time that she told about this.
Her story has never changed. Even NBC News admits her story has never changed. She just seems
credible. She doesn't seem kooky. She hasn't
lied publicly about major things.
She did
only one time. The only
sort of hole in her story
is she once said under oath that it didn't
happen when she wanted it to go away.
Then once the story leaked, she admitted it happened.
But that's the only thing close to it. She's never
changed her story since. But Democrats
wouldn't talk about her. Wouldn't accept it.
Now, all of a sudden,
we've got Cohen saying, oh, yeah, maybe I
believe her now. He says, quote,
I remember refusing to deal with Broderick's
allegation because I simply chose to believe Clinton was not a rapist. Clinton, after all,
was one of us. College-educated, modern, urbane, and not some hooded monster preying on strangers.
Men like that do not rape. My position has proved naive. Violence can be in the sexual repertoire of any man.
Sure. He goes on, I am no longer certain that Clinton did not rape Juanita Broderick.
Well, good job. Good job, Mr. Cohen and Washington Post. Now that the Clinton,
Clintons are not only politically useless to you, to the party and to the left more broadly,
but actually now that the Clintons are a liability, now you're willing to stand up and say,
oh yeah, maybe that guy did it. After decades of flying cover for these people, after just
two years ago trying to put this man back in the White House and put this woman in the Oval
Office, the woman who smeared all of Clinton's accusers and victims as bimboes. After just doing that,
wasn't 20 years ago that you did that. That was two years ago that you all were doing that.
Now you say, oh, you know, I'm starting to believe her. Oh, great. Congratulations. Let's throw
him a party. Wow. Now you must be super serious. No way. No way, Buster. I hear these things all the time.
People will ask, how can we unite the country? How can we be civil? How can we come together and
unite and agree on this and this and this? They got to come to the table. The left has to come to
the table. We don't kick their speakers out of college campuses. We don't scream at them. We don't
even call them racist, even though many of their policies, in fact, are quite racist. We don't call them
evil. We don't call them wicked. We don't throw rocks into their houses. We don't harass them in
public. You've got to come to the table, guys. And if you're going to offer something, which is now a
political convenience for you from actions that happened 25 years ago, give me a break. Put up or shut
up. And don't, don't boof on my leg and tell me it's windy, you know, don't lie to my face.
Don't gaslight me. Give me something real. Until then, I don't believe it. It's just not
believable. You know, speaking of Politicon, I got to meet John Fugel Sang there, and I rather
liked John Fugel Sang. He's this lefty actor comedian guy, but he seems like kind of a nice
guy. He's dead wrong about many things. And this gave me the privilege or misfortune of coming
across John Fugel Sangs
take down viral
Occupy Democrats
video about how
Republicans are fake Christians.
They're not real Christians
because Jesus was a left-wing
hippie, don't you know?
And it occurs to me
that the left always gets Christianity
wrong, always misrepresents Christianity.
Take a look at this. We'll go through it point by point.
I thought, wouldn't it be
great if we could find a way to get
Jesus of Nazareth to come back and run
for president on the GOP ticket.
They can't pick a front runner anyway.
So wouldn't the GOP love to get behind a guy who was a peaceful, radical, nonviolent revolutionary,
who hung around with lepers, hookers, hookers, and criminals, who never spoke English,
was not an American citizen, a man who was anti-capitalism, anti-wealth, anti-public prayer.
Yes, he was, Matthew 65, anti-death penalty, but never once remotely anti-gay, didn't mention
abortion, didn't mention premarital sex, a man who never justified torture, who never called the
poor lazy, who never asked a leper for a co-pay, who never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest
Nazarenes, and it was a long-haired, brown-skinned, that's in revelations, homeless Middle Eastern
Jew. Of course, that's only if you believe what's actually in the Bible. Boom! Fugel saying
out! Boom! Mike drop! Got you Christians. Got you 2,000 years of the Catholic Church. Boom! Except it just
isn't true. So let's go through point by point. He starts out, he says,
says Jesus was a peaceful, radical, non-violent revolutionary. He's probably referring to turning the
other cheek. Jesus says to turn the other cheek when somebody slaps you and offends you.
What we see there is a personal humility and a spiritual defiance. When somebody offends you,
you will not let them control you, you will not let them degrade you, and you will not retaliate
in some irate revenge. You will have personal humility and spiritual defiance. He is not
talking about pacifism in a national sense. He was living in an occupied country. The idea of
abandoning one's right to self-defense, one's national right to self-defense or one's political
right to self-defense would have never even entered the political lexicon of the times.
He also told his apostles to sell their cloaks and to buy a sword in only certain
places. When you're like John Fugel saying and you just point to certain places of the gospel,
you can twist it and pervert it
and make it look like
you're looking at the Bible into a shallow well
and all you see is your own reflection in him.
But when you look in other places,
Jesus says, sell your cloak and buy a sword.
Jesus also says that he comes not to bring peace,
but a sword.
How about being a radical?
You know, Jesus is radical in salvation, absolutely.
But he's not radical in religion.
He explicitly says he's not radical in religion.
He says, I have not come to abolish the law.
I have come to fulfill the law, that we will not change one jot or tittle until the end of the ages.
Okay.
Then Fuglesang says, you know, Jesus hung around lepers and hookers and criminals.
Absolutely right.
You're right.
Jesus never once condemned individuals as deplorable and irredeemable.
Great point.
What he did was save them.
He also told them to sin no more.
So he hung around all of these people, but he didn't indulge in sin.
He didn't say, oh, you're perfect just the way that you are.
stay exactly the same and keep on sinning.
He tells people what they sin.
He doesn't condemn them for it.
He saves them, but he tells them to sin no more.
He never spoke English and he's not an American citizen.
That's true.
He was a citizen of his own country that was controlled by the Romans.
And actually, Jesus was born in Bethlehem because his mother was on the road to go register with the government.
That is a point that I think Mr. Fugel sang missed, and it seems like the opposite of the point that he was trying to make.
But you're right.
He didn't speak English and was not an American citizen,
which I don't think anybody has ever suggested.
Everybody knows he was Italian anyway, right?
That's not true?
Fuglesang says that he was anti-capitalism and anti-wealth.
Jesus doesn't talk very much about capitalism.
One reason for that is that modern capitalism didn't develop for 1900 years
after the incarnation of Christ.
He's not anti-wealth, though.
He's not anti-wealth.
People mistake this all the time.
Money is not the root of all evil.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
Being possessed by wealth, being possessed by your own possessions, that is evil.
That is a danger.
That will make it harder to get into heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
Absolutely.
But he doesn't tell everybody that he meets to sell all of their possessions.
He tells certain people who are possessed by their possessions.
Some other people, he says, go out and buy something.
Go out, go to that fish and, you know, go pull a coin out of a fish.
And this also brings me to one of my favorite parables,
the parable of the talents, also the parable of the hedge fund manager,
which is when the master goes out and he gives three servants some money.
And then he goes away and he comes back after a time.
And the one servant turned his money into a lot of money.
He invested it.
He got a good return on his investment.
The second servant made a little bit of money.
You know, he got a decent return.
And the third servant buried it underground because he was afraid of the master
and didn't want to risk losing the money.
And what did the master do?
He took the wealth from the poor servant,
the unprofitable servant,
and gave it to the rich servant.
Because for he who has much, more will be given.
And from he who has little,
even that little which he has will be taken away.
And then the master casts the unprofitable servant
into hell where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I am not suggesting that this is a diatribe on modern economics.
I'm just pointing out that John Fugel
saying is misreading the Bible and selectively quoting it to suit his own political purposes.
He says that Jesus is anti-public prayer. This is because Christ in the gospel says, do not be as the
hypocrites making a show of yourself and praying for the applause of men. Go into your closet when
you pray. Go into the closet of your closet and hide yourself and pray to God. Sure, that's all true.
You shouldn't be like the hypocrites. This doesn't mean that you can't pray in public. In fact,
Jesus prays in public many times through the gospel narratives.
one wonders if John Fugel saying has read them or if he's just misrepresenting them.
And then he says he's anti-death penalty.
I assure you, Jesus is not anti-death penalty.
The death penalty was the mechanism of salvation.
Jesus came in the world to suffer the death penalty
and on that cross conquered death and redeemed mankind.
This is the central joy of the world.
The happy fall redeemed in the resurrection of Christ.
He later foretold Peter's death on the cross.
He also said, render to Caesar, what is Caesar?
And we have St. Paul writing extensively about how the civil government has the authority of the sword.
It has the authority of capital punishment in scripture, which is inerrant.
This has been affirmed time and time again by the greatest doctors of the church for 2,000 years,
and John Fugel saying has no idea what he's talking about.
Not scripturally, not theologically, and not as a matter of the writings of the doctors of the church.
church. Then Fugel Sank says that Jesus was never anti-gay. Yeah, sure, who is anti-gay?
Point to someone who's anti-gay.
Muslim terrorists who throw gay guys off of buildings in the Middle East, they would be anti-gay.
I think that counts as anti-gay. Christ, he comes, he hangs around with sinners. He redeems
mankind. Now, what I think John Fugel-Sang probably is attacking Republicans for is defending
marriage, defending traditional marriage against redefinition,
to include same-sex unions.
You know, Christ speaks explicitly on very few pressing,
tangible issues in the Gospels.
There are few things where he speaks explicitly, clearly.
And one of those things is marriage.
He says it very clearly.
Man and woman were created.
They are meant to leave their families, come together,
and become one flesh.
And what God has joined, no man can separate.
He defines marriage perfectly.
And there's nothing hateful or un-Christian
about the way that Christ defines it.
then a fugel saying says
he doesn't mention abortion or pre-marital sex
he does
he actually does do that he says
whosoever shall offend one of these little ones
it would be better for that man to have a millstone
hung around his neck and for him to be cast
into the sea and throughout the gospels
throughout the Bible rather
we hear a god talking about
knowing people before they were even
formed in the womb knowing about them
before they were born before they were formed in the womb
St. Paul writes about this
about being called by grace while he was being formed in the womb.
This is throughout scripture.
And just in case Mr. Fugel as saying says,
well, Jesus didn't say that thing from the Old Testament directly.
Jesus is God.
The Trinity, I certainly am incapable of explaining the Trinity here or elsewhere,
but God is three persons in one divine unity.
So he who, as it says in the gospel, as Christ says,
He who has seen me has seen the Father.
Then he says he never justified torture.
Torture justifies us. The torture of the cross justifies we human beings and redeems us and saves us.
He gets it entirely backwards. Who would justify torture? He uses the cross to justify us.
He then says that Christ never called the poor lazy. Nobody calls the poor lazy. Nobody does.
Some people on the right call lazy people lazy. They certainly do that or they call timid people timid or scared people scared.
Absolutely. So does Christ. Christ was offended when the Gospels couldn't say.
stay awake while he was praying in the garden.
He's constantly speaking of endurance.
He's saying you have to endure until the end.
Can't be lazy. Don't be lazy.
Christ speaks against laziness
countless times. And again,
he casts that poor, unprofitable
servant into the fire where there
is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Fugel Sang says that Christ never asked
a leper for a copay. Right.
Christ also never demanded that
Caesar render unto lepers the labor
of others. He certainly never
suggested that anywhere, and neither did
the apostles, neither have the church fathers. It's absurd, and it's ridiculous to make a shallow
political point from that. He says that Christ never fought for tax cuts. That's true, but Christ
paid the minimum tax. He paid the minimum tax he possibly could. He was asked to try to entrap him.
They said, will you pay the tax? And he said, whose name is it on the coin? Render to Caesar,
what Caesar's? Render to God, what is God? Plucks the tax out of a fish. And he also didn't
fight for tax hikes. And finally, he said that he was homeless. Christ was never homeless.
Christ was in this world to save mankind, but his kingdom is of another world.
And we are not homeless, we're pilgrims, and that distinction makes all the difference.
And it really tells me a lot of how the left, like John Fugel saying, misunderstand Christianity
and misrepresented constantly.
And there's this irony.
They're always telling us, you know, Christianity is a bunch of fables and old toll tales told to shepherds
thousands of years ago.
And also, you get it wrong, and here's what it really means, and I knew everything about it.
And Jesus was a great guy. Which one is it, guys? Pick a lane. But the Democrats can't pick a lane.
We've got a lot more to talk about, but I'm running too late. So we'll get to it tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. I'll see you tomorrow.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Sennia Villa Real, executive producer Jeremy Borey, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
edited by Jim Nickel. Audio is mixed by Mike Coramina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knoll Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production. Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.
