The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 391 - Trump's Crystal Ball

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

A man in NYC gets beaten for wearing a MAGA hat, Elijah Cummings has his house broken into just hours before Trump tweets about the dangers of living in Baltimore, and finally the Mailbag! Date: 08-02...-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 A Manhattan art gallery owner was apparently beaten for walking down the streets of New York in a MAGA hat. The news networks black out the story, but they make sure to spend lots of time covering the possibility that Trump supporters at a Trump rally might chant, send her back. We examine why people hate the press. Then Elijah Cummings has his house broken into just hours before Trump tweets about the dangers of living in Baltimore. Is Trump summoning some sort of dark, psychic force to predict the future? No. But we'll again. examine his simple trick for prediction. Finally, the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is the Michael Knowles show.
Starting point is 00:00:42 By the way, we have breaking news coming out. The American rapper A-Sapp Rocky, who is being held in a Swedish jail, has now been released. He's on his way back to the United States. President Trump just tweeted about it, quote, ASAP Rocky released from prison and on his way home to the U.S. from Sweden. It was a rocky week. Get home ASAP.
Starting point is 00:01:02 ASAP. He tweeted about this. Trump has been central. in this story because when ASAP Rocky was first held in this jail, he had some of his pals, his mutual friends with the president, like Kanye West, call up Trump and say, please help get ASAP Rocky out of the jail. Trump made a big issue about this behind the scenes to the Swedish government. Then he tweeted about it to the Swedish prime minister. Then he had a phone call with the Swedish prime minister. Swedish prime minister said no, Trump didn't take no for an answer.
Starting point is 00:01:31 Now ASAP Rocky is coming home. This is a great story all around. And because I think, think I can predict the future, or at least it seems that way, it ties in perfectly with our theme today. President Trump's crystal ball, why it seems like he can just predict the future. He says that Elijah Cummings and Baltimore is a terrible place. He says, you know, it's rat infested, it's ridden with crime. And unbeknownst to anybody, just hours earlier, Elijah Cummings' house had been broken into in Baltimore. What is that about? It all has to do with ideology.
Starting point is 00:02:10 That's what it all boils down to. We'll get to that in a second. But first, I have got to thank my friends over at ExpressVPN. You know me. I'm on the internet all the time. I'm not just browsing. I'm literally on the internet. It's practically where I live.
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Starting point is 00:03:48 Does he have a Marianne Williamson-esque crystal ball where he summons the dark psychic forces and sees into the future? No, but it sometimes seems like it is. And there's a very simple reason for this. The reason is ideology. Here's a great example of it that actually doesn't directly involve Trump.
Starting point is 00:04:05 The mainstream media. So the mainstream media, they're like the counter example. Trump can look like he can predict the future. The mainstream media can't see the present. They can't even see the past. They distort history. They distort what's going on in the present.
Starting point is 00:04:19 They're totally blind to what's going on because of ideology. Here's the story. A Manhattan art gallery owner says that he was beaten by a bunch of thugs in the streets for wearing a MAGA hat. So he's got his red hat on, make America great again. Because I know the mainstream media will immediately assume it was a white guy. Not a white guy. I don't know what his ethnicity is. He certainly isn't a white guy.
Starting point is 00:04:41 He's walking around Chinatown, and this guy has a big shiner on his eye. Here's his side of the story. If you're wearing this hat, he started cursing at me, you know, Trump had, blah, blah, blah. And basically, one kid took my head and bashed against the scaffolding pole. It all happened within 10 seconds. It jumped out across the street, and then called the cops. This is my situation right now. Okay. No reason not to believe this guy. He's got a pretty brutal, gory shiner on his eye and his cheek.
Starting point is 00:05:20 His whole left side of his face is swollen up with blood. His eye is basically swollen shut. And I'm not surprised. We've seen attacks like this before in the U.S. I mean, now, look, even I, when I go out and if I've got my MAGA hat on, I look around me because the left can be extremely violent. I was assaulted at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Andy Noe actually got really physically hurt. People were throwing things at and punching him. So this thing does happen. We've seen it happen on camera before. It looks like we're seeing it happen on camera again.
Starting point is 00:05:54 Two law enforcement sources said they're a little skeptical that it was a huge group of people doing it. They think it might have just been a one-on-one brawl and the guy declined medical attention on the scene. He went later to get medical attention. he was diagnosed with a bone fracture. So the guy's kind of broke his face up a little bit. Guess how much coverage this got on the network news? Zero, none. None whatsoever.
Starting point is 00:06:21 And the reason I keep using this term allegedly, apparently, it looks like, is, I don't know, I guess there's a small possibility that this was a hoax. I don't know what kind of hoax it would be where a guy breaks half of his face, but let's say it is. Compare this to an actual hoax in the case of Jesse Smollett. Right? Jesse Smolett had exactly the opposite story that he was walking down the street and two guys in MAGA hats came up to him and said, hey, Empire, because someone's going to recognize Jesse Smolett on the street. Give me a break. Said, hey, Empire, this is MAGA country in South Central Chicago. Yeah, okay, definitely, guys, for sure. And it turns out the story totally fell apart. He paid his two trainers to come and beat him up. They were two Nigerian white supremacists, I guess. And it was just total nonsense and he didn't have any actual injuries.
Starting point is 00:07:08 The mainstream media, the network news, covered that story breathlessly. So the total fake story gets weeks of coverage. The apparently, from all we know, from all we can see, real story of an attack from leftists on a Trump supporter, no network news coverage at all. Why is that? It's because the fake story fit their fake ideological narrative. and the real story didn't fit their narrative. And because the real story didn't fit their narrative, they didn't cover it.
Starting point is 00:07:44 Because they privilege their ideology over the reality of what is in front of them. If you went to the mainstream media and left-wing politicians and you said, hey, what are you going to believe? The leftist narrative, the story that has been circulating all around the mainstream press for the last two weeks, or your own lion eyes. What are you going to believe? What is right in front of you or the stories that you've all been telling each other, you know that they would pick the stories.
Starting point is 00:08:17 They privilege their ideology over reality. Nowhere is this clearer than in the transgender debate. I mean, the transgender debate, which affects very few people in a physical and psychological way, has become this dominant major political story. A very prominent TV host might lose his job because he said that we shouldn't, pump three-year-olds full of hormones and mutilate their bodies. We'll get to that story
Starting point is 00:08:40 by the end of the show, but I bring it up now to point out between the ideology of transgenderism and the physical reality of, obviously this man is a man, obviously this woman is a woman, the left is choosing the ideology, the fantasy, the delusion, the narrative. So instead of covering the actual attack that happened, the networks were covering the possibility of the possibility that Trump supporters might chant send her back at the rally last night. So Trump was holding this rally last night. NBC goes out. They ask the president, what will happen if your supporters chant sent her back? No evidence that it's going to happen. Trump disavowed it after the last time, the first time that it happened. There's no evidence of that. But that's the story they're covering.
Starting point is 00:09:28 Here's NBC. Here's Trump's response. Mr. President in Cincinnati at your rally tonight, are you prepared to tell your supporters to stop if they begin chanting something problematic i don't know what's going to happen i can tell you this i'm going to cincinnati the arena is a very large one and we've sold it out we could sell it out probably ten times from what i hear the uh... the applications for seats as you know that had an empty seat
Starting point is 00:09:55 the applications are very big i have no idea we have a great group of people they love our country they love the job we're doing there it is right it's all it's all hypothetical will this happen tonight? What will you do if this does happen? What would it be like if this were to happen? They're not covering a real story.
Starting point is 00:10:15 They covered the real story last time at that one rally where some people briefly chanted, send her back, send her back. They covered it the next day. Trump said, I didn't like it. I wish they didn't do it. I don't think it's a good thing. I hope they don't do it again. So perfectly legitimate for them to cover it then.
Starting point is 00:10:30 Great response from Trump. That's it. Now they're covering a hypothetical story. to President Trump. And they keep hammering it. They keep asking, well, do you have a message? What are you going to say to them? What do you think?
Starting point is 00:10:42 And Trump has an excellent answer here. I do have a message. My message is for the people I'm going to. So we had over 100,000 applications for whatever the size of the year. I think it's a 14,000 seat arena. But we're way over 100 and I think 122,000 applications for those seats. You know what my message is? I love them.
Starting point is 00:11:08 And I think they love. I actually think they love me. Nailed it. Totally nailed it. That's the answer. I love. That's my message for them. I love them. This is the difference in the campaign. This is actually the Marianne Williams and principle. Marianne talking about love and the battlefield of love. She actually gets this. Love is an important part of politics. Love really is the basis of politics. Love of country. love of your community, love of your family, love of your extended national family. That's the basis of politics. Love of your ancestors.
Starting point is 00:11:46 Love of your children. Love of your traditions. Love of what's going to come in a few generations. This sums up different approaches of the left and the right to politics. You know, the left leaps to condemn. The left would always just condemn this. I condemn this. I disavow this.
Starting point is 00:12:04 I hate this. I hate the past. I hate the future. I hate the present. I hate George Washington. I hate America. I hate all of it. I condemn everything. I want to tear down statues. The right doesn't leap to condemn. The right wants to improve. We all want to improve. Obviously, there are plenty of imperfect things. This is an imperfect world. You want to improve, but you want to start it from a place of love. You can see this in the academy in the universities. The universities are a crystal ball. They're the future of the country. You look at the university 20 years from now, that's what you're going to get is your country.
Starting point is 00:12:35 And the universities did this in the 1970s. It's really coming to fruition now. They began indoctrinating students in curricula of critical theory is what it's called. What Harold Bloom, the literary critic, called it, is the school of resentment. So the prior approach to reading a piece of literature or looking at some text is you come from it, loving it. You enjoy it. you want to learn from it, you want to gain wisdom from it, you want it to maybe entertain you, maybe edify you, maybe enlighten you.
Starting point is 00:13:12 But the act of reading comes from that place of love. It's an enjoyment. It's a pleasure. What the School of Resentment does is you totally flip that on its head. So instead of opening up, I don't know, I'll use an example actually from that literary critic, Harold Bloom. Instead of opening up Walt Whitman, Great America. poet, kind of the American poet, one of them, you open up leaves of grass and you say, what can I learn from Walt Whitman? What does this poem tell me about America? Instead, you open it up
Starting point is 00:13:44 and you say, how is this guy a racist? How is this guy a sexist? How much better am I than this guy? I hate this guy. How wrong was he? That's the school of resentment. Harold Bloom actually one time in an interview, I believe, with the Paris Review, said that a graduate student came into his class and said, we just had an American studies lecture for two hours about how Walt Whitman is a racist. That is the different approach. You can approach it from love or you can approach it from resentment. The left approaches from resentment. And I think that's fueling a lot of the backlash against elites in the media and elites in politics. And what it's really fueling is President Trump's crystal ball. What it's really fueling is President Trump's uncamp's uncanation.
Starting point is 00:14:29 any ability to predict things. He's not predicting anything. It's just that the resentful left is getting it all wrong. The ideological left is getting it all wrong. We'll see how that plays out. We'll see what that means, by the way, for international politics. First, I've got to thank our friends over at Quick and Loans. Support for the Michael Knowles show comes from our friends at Rocket Mortgage by Quick and Loans. Finding the right house is not easy. I live in Los Angeles. It's impossible to find the right house here because the minute you do, you realize it costs $7 trillion dollars and they're going to add a heap of property tax. It's just awful here. The good thing is that once I do find that home of my dreams, I know that the mortgage process is going to be made
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Starting point is 00:15:47 to get it done. Get started online at RocketMortgage.com slash Knowles, KNAW, LAS, Equal Housing Lender, licensed from all 50 states, NMLS, ConsumerAXIS.com, number 3030, Rocket Mortgage by Quicken loans, push button, get mortgage. This is what is fueling a lot of the resentment against the elites of both parties and the media, et cetera. It's this feeling that they hate the American people. You know, my friend Elena Plott over at the Atlantic just has a piece out today. And she was covering this Trump rally. And she said, the big takeaway is, these Americans don't want to be called racist all the time. They don't want to be called deplorical. They don't want to be called irredeemable.
Starting point is 00:16:31 They're not racist. She interviews one grandmother who says, she goes, look, I have 10 grandkids. Two of them are black. One of them is biracial. One of them's this. One's that. I'm not a racist. I just like my country.
Starting point is 00:16:43 I love my country and I don't want to be smeared all the time by people in office and people who are in the media. Perfectly fair point. But because the left, because the media really are filled with this resentment at the people of this country. at the country itself, at the history of this country, at the institutions in this country, they have to cover the hypothetical mean chant over the actual attack on a Trump supporter. They have to cover it.
Starting point is 00:17:15 They would much rather cover that because that confirms their narrative that America's really xenophobic, nativist, bigoted, awful, terrible place. They would much rather cover that than an attack on a Trump supporter. What is the story of the attack on the Trump supporter show? Maybe the conservatives aren't fascists. Maybe the conservatives aren't hopelessly racist. Maybe actually they've been misrepresented by the media. Maybe they just want to, as the hat says, make America great again.
Starting point is 00:17:49 Maybe there's a little violence from the left. Maybe the left is fueled by violence. Maybe some Trump supporters are being attacked. Maybe everybody needs to calm down a little bit. Maybe people need to stop portraying Trump as Hitler. That can't be the case because they have their narrative in their head. So instead, it's all the hypothetical. Hypothetical.
Starting point is 00:18:10 Trump is the force of darkness. He's evil. He's wicked. And the leftists are going to bring us out of that awful, awful America that we all know into that new utopia. They're going to, as President Obama used to say, fundamentally transform American. Why do they have to fundamentally transform it? Because America's rotten to the core. And so you've got to fundamentally transform.
Starting point is 00:18:30 transform it if you want to have a good country. Look, politics is a contact sport, okay? And conservatives were very hard on Obama. I'm not saying they were not hard on Obama. But there is something different in the quality of the left's attacks on Trump and Trump supporters than there was in the attacks from conservatives toward Obama. Listen to how Morning Joe describes President Trump at his rally. He actually reminded me, you see the Austin Powers movies?
Starting point is 00:19:00 Oh, yeah. Did you see the Austin Powers? Oh, yeah. He sort of reminded me at times like a fat bastard. At times he was like looking at the audience. He made the character. It's a character. It's a character in Austin Powers.
Starting point is 00:19:12 And he's sniffing and he's looking around. He's like, thank you. I thought he was going to say, get into my stomach at one point. This is a guy. He is, as David Brooks said this morning in the New York Times, this is a guy is a force. And the only way the Democrats are going to beat him is with an equal force. The thing that last night's rally showed, and it was a great, I think it was a great comparison
Starting point is 00:19:38 with what the Democrats were doing. It showed that here was a guy that strutted across the stage. He was being a demagogue, I would say Mussolini-like, just picking at racial resentments constantly. He's a fat bastard, racist, fascist, Mussolini. That's what he is, according to the very serious, very reasonable, and very civil voices who wear suits and ties over at MSNBC. That's what he is. He's a fat bastard, right? Imagine, imagine if a conservative on television, on Fox News had made fun of Barack Obama's appearance. I don't know if Obama wasn't fat, but I don't know, made fun of his appearance in some way.
Starting point is 00:20:25 Could you imagine the outcry? First of all, they'd be fired immediately, whichever commentator said that. Imagine, look, there was one time at a rodeo in 2013 when a rodeo clown wore a mask of Obama and kind of danced around out there in the rodeo. He was instantly fired. Why? I still couldn't tell you. I don't know. You just weren't really allowed to make fun of Obama.
Starting point is 00:20:47 Because anytime you said anything about Obama, you were called a racist and a bigot, even though it didn't have any basis in reality. We've talked, in the last week and a half or two weeks, we've talked a lot about fantasy versus reality. Okay, and this is where you see in the media's awful behavior, in the left's awful behavior, you see why it appears that Donald Trump can predict the future. Because the fantasy is, the fantasy is that America is a terrible place populated by bigots and fascists that has only ever wrought evil in the world. In reality, the opposite is true. America is the most tolerant, the most equitable, the most just, the most prosperous.
Starting point is 00:21:30 the most free country in history. That's not sentiment. That's not just my preference and love of America speaking. It's just a fact. Multi-ethnic, multi-ideological, all sorts of people, multi-religious, all together. We've become the biggest economy in the world, the only superpower left on Earth. We've more or less still got self-government, more or less still are a republic, more or less still encourage. freedom, personal freedom, freedom of property, freedom of movement.
Starting point is 00:22:06 The reality is that America, like all countries, is imperfect. But it's a great place. And Americans are great people. And that's something to feel good about. So that's something to love about it. And that is why Trump keeps getting stuff right. Because he's not blinded by this ridiculous ideology of the left that tells them to believe their own narrative over their lion eyes.
Starting point is 00:22:30 frankly, he's not even blinded by the various ideologies that have cropped up on the right. I mean, this was the big argument against him in 2016 is that he's not ideologically conservative. I don't know that he's philosophically conservative. I doubt that he's ever read Edmund Burke or Michael Oakshot or Russell Kirk. He hasn't been steeped in the conservative movement. He didn't spend all of the 90s and 2000s going to lunches at the various think tanks in Washington, D.C. He just sees what's in front of him. He can just see it.
Starting point is 00:23:02 And that's why he tends to get things right. It's not that complicated. It's not 25 degree chess. He just has his eyes open and he's looking in front of him. And all of these other fools, some to the right of him, most of them to the left, are just totally blinded. They've got the blinders of their ideology and the blinders of their narrative on. And so they can't see what's right in front of them.
Starting point is 00:23:22 So some people think he's an Ostradamus. He's not. He just isn't blinding himself. And this cuts two ways, by the way. There's a mostly good side to this. There is some downside. There is some unpleasantness that comes from his lack of a sort of philosophical or ideological formation. So the good side is it looks like he can predict the future. You saw this in Baltimore, right? He points out how awful Baltimore he is. Not that it's intrinsically awful, but it's been just destroyed by political corruption. Democrat led corruption in that city. It's been neglected. They've gone through, what, three mayors in two years or something.
Starting point is 00:24:00 and so Trump makes these comments and then a few days later it comes out that Congressman Elijah Cummings who was the object of Trump's ire there he's the Baltimore congressman had his house broken into and his house wasn't broken into because Trump talked about him
Starting point is 00:24:19 his house had been broken into hours before Trump talked about him the Baltimore PD came out and said this burglary took place at 3.40 a.m. on Saturday just hours later Trump tweets about it. Is it because Trump has no Stradamus? No, it's because everyone knows how run-down Baltimore is, and they're all just now pretending it isn't because Trump talked about how it is run down.
Starting point is 00:24:41 Elijah Cummings himself used the same language to talk about Baltimore 20 years ago in 1999. Here he is. I left my community of Baltimore, a drug-infested area, where a lot of the drugs that we're talking about today have already taken the lives of so many children. the same children that I watched 14 or 15 years ago as they grew up, now walking around like zombies. This is only 40 miles away from here. So Bernie Sanders used the same language about Baltimore. Mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pew used the same language. Congressman from Baltimore, Elijah Cummings, used the same language.
Starting point is 00:25:24 Now, President Trump uses the same language. And so the left has to oppose him. But Trump got it right. Because guess what? They were all right about Baltimore. If you predict that somebody is going to get their house broken into in Baltimore, you're probably going to be right. This is not, it's a crime-ridden city. So, yeah, obviously, you're going to be right. So, and this is the politically beneficial side for Trump not really having much ideology. I mean, the other, ASAP Rocky is another example. The more ideological or philosophically formed presidents might say, well, we need to let the justice system play out there in Sweden. We can't, you. use the bully pulpit of the United States to pressure a prime minister in Sweden to release ASAP rocket. Trump just says, yeah, okay, forget about all that. Hey, Sweden, let my guy go. Let him go right now or there's going to be hell to pay. Guess what happens? Within a week or two, they let the guy go. That's the plus side of not having that philosophical foundation. There is an ugly side to it. There is genuinely an ugly side. We'll get to that in a second. First, I've got to say goodbye
Starting point is 00:26:24 to Facebook and YouTube. Then we'll get to the mailbag too, by the way. So go over to dailywire.com. a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me. You get the Andrew Claiband show. You get the Ben Shapiro show. You get the Matt Wall Show. You get, gosh, you get so much. You get another kingdom. You get test questions in the mailbag. You get backstage. You get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. This is, this is really good. This is a nice accompaniment to Trump's Crystal Ball, because when you have those leftist tears, you just, you can predict how things are going to go. It just, it opens your mind, man. It's like some Marianne Williamson's secret potion. I mean, it really opens your mind to the field of love. Make sure you go over there. Get those leftist tears. We'll be right back with a lot more.
Starting point is 00:27:18 Here's the ugly side to not having that philosophical or even perhaps ideological formation. Here's the ugly side to just kind of seeing what's in front of you. President Trump just tweeted out not an hour ago, quote, Kim Jong-un in North Korea tested three short-range missiles over the last number of days. These missile tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement, nor was their discussion of short-range missiles when we shook hands. There may be a UN violation, but Chairman Kim does not want to disappoint me with a violation of trust. There is far too much for North Korea to gain. The potential as a country under Kim Jong-un's leadership is unlimited. Also, there is far too much to lose. I may be wrong, but I believe that Chairman Kim has a great
Starting point is 00:28:03 and beautiful vision for his country. And only the United States, with me as president, can make that vision come true. He will do the right thing because he is far too smart not to. And he does not want to disappoint his friend, President Trump. Where do I begin? Obviously, most of this tweet, objectively speaking, is not true.
Starting point is 00:28:29 I don't think Kim Jong-un has a beautiful vision for his country. I don't. He actually is probably pretty small. He's been able to hold power in that country pretty well, even though he got power very young. So I guess he is pretty smart. I don't think he cares really about the friendship with Donald Trump. He may not want to disappoint Trump because he fears nuclear missiles landing in North Korea. But what is this about?
Starting point is 00:28:52 It's actually about the exact same thing. It's about seeing what's in front of you. President Trump is looking in front of him, and he's seeing an ongoing negotiation with North Korea. to get them to denuclearize. And he's saying, okay, what can I do today that will make it more likely for Kim to denuclearize? Kim shot off a few short-range missiles. What can I do?
Starting point is 00:29:15 Can I scream and yell about it? Is that going to help the negotiation? Can I not say anything about it? Is that going to help a negotiation? Or can I try to flatter Kim? Flatter and kind of threatened Kim? Is that going to help the negotiation? That's what this is about.
Starting point is 00:29:31 Trump concluded, rightly or wrongly, that it was the latter course that by flattering, by reminding Kim that they've got a good thing going on and that Trump is the only one who's given Kim an opening, that that is going to help the negotiation. He has one good point here. The one good point is what C.S. Lewis writes about in screw tape letters,
Starting point is 00:29:52 which is that you can only act in the present. In the screw tape letters, which is this book, you know, it's a series of letters written from one demon to his nephew about destroying a human soul. and the advice that the demon gives to his nephew is, always get people thinking about the future and always get people thinking about the past. Don't let them think about the present,
Starting point is 00:30:17 because the present is the only place where you can actually act. It's the only place where you can make moral decisions. And it's a really good insight. People, they harp so much on the future. We're not owed the future. The future is not, the future that we envision almost certainly will not be what the future really looks like. and we can't change the past.
Starting point is 00:30:34 And people are mired in regret or they're mired in optimism for the future or daydreaming about the future or preparing to be disappointed about the future. Only in the present can you act, which is true. That's an important aspect. So President Trump is saying we're in the present. I don't care what this is going to look like in history. I don't care what this means for the future. I'm just trying to move the ball down the field.
Starting point is 00:31:00 However, this tactic strikes our ears as absolutely egregious because it's untrue. I mean, you know, Kim Jong-un is like one of the worst people on the face of the earth, maybe one of the worst people in history. So ideally, what we would like is for you to be able to act in the present without this kind of flattery, without this kind of dishonesty and without this kind of wishful thinking about Kim. This is the first time since Reagan that we've seen anything resembling this sort of behavior. And as always, Trump turns it up to 11.
Starting point is 00:31:31 So with Reagan, you saw major overtures to the dictator of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev, who himself positioned himself as a reformer. And they'd go over there. I mean, at the Reykjavik summit, Reagan and Gorbachev were talking about abolishing all nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Reagan's advisors are saying, what are you doing? Stop. Don't talk about that. But you saw a similar kind of impulse from Reagan.
Starting point is 00:31:54 Reagan was working in the present. when that summit broke down, according to sources in the room, Reagan said to Gorbachev, how could you do this to me? Very personal. You know, this is a personal relationship here. Trump is trying to establish that personal relationship. It's ugly to us. We don't want our president to have a personal relationship with Kim Jong-un because Kim Jong-un is one of the worst people on earth. Will this pay off? I don't know. I don't think it's high risk for the reputation of the United States. I think whoever the next president is can do whatever he wants and change that relationship. It's very high risk for Trump. I mean, it's, he'll look like a real schmuck if nothing happens on this
Starting point is 00:32:32 Korea thing. It's high risk to his reputation. But he's willing to do it because he lives in the present. That is the advantage of his not being very ideological. And that is the sometimes ugly and unpleasant disadvantage of his not being ideological. But that's what it is. And that's why it looks like he can read into the future. I really wanted to get to this Mario Lopjean. story. This Maria Lopez story, the guy from Extra and Access Hollywood, he came out and said that we shouldn't, we'll just get to it. We'll narrow the mailbag down. I can't let this go. This story is so important. Here's Mario Lopez on the Candace Owens show talking about transgender children, so transgender three-year-olds. I'm never one to tell anyone how to parent their kids,
Starting point is 00:33:20 obviously. And I think if you come from a place. Maybe you should, though, because you seem to be doing something right. Thanks. You know, and I would say if you come from a place of love, you know, you really can't go wrong, but at the same time, my God, if you're three years old and you're saying you're feeling a certain way, you're, you're, you think you're a boy, or a girl, whatever the case may be, I just think it's dangerous as a parent
Starting point is 00:33:39 to make that determination then, okay, well, then you're going to be a boy or a girl, whatever the case may be. And it's sort of alarming, and my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on. You don't know anything about sexuality yet. You're just a kid. Right.
Starting point is 00:33:53 That is the most obvious and simple and restrained and moderate statement that you could possibly make on the subject. I just think it's sort of like a little dangerous, you know, to mutilate your three-year-old child's genitals and put them on puberty-blocking hormones and shoot them full of chemicals that will fundamentally change their biochemistry. I just think maybe it's not a great idea. I just think maybe three-year-olds don't fully understand their sexuality. three-year-olds, you sick perverts. Three-year-olds, they're doing this. And Mario Lopez says, you know, hey, maybe we shouldn't
Starting point is 00:34:29 sexualize three-year-olds. Most moderate statement in the world. Guess what? They're trying to fire him now. So, big meetings at NBC, I guess it is, to try to get him to lose his show. He issued an apology. It's really pathetic, but I guess, look,
Starting point is 00:34:47 he's got a lot of kids, got to raise his family, don't want to lose all his money. Here's what Mario Lopez then said later, quote, the comments I made were ignorant and insensitive, and now I have a deeper understanding of how hurtful they were. I have been and always will be an ardent supporter of the LGBTQ community. I'm going to use this opportunity to better educate myself moving forward. I will be more informed and more thoughtful. Oh my gosh. This guy, this guy. Look, he had to do it. I'm sure he didn't write a word of that. I assume his agents at CAA.
Starting point is 00:35:21 or WME or wherever he's represented. All his lawyers probably wrote that up. What trash. I mean, what a trash statement and what a trash culture that would pillory him for this. And they're still probably going to make him lose his show because the left is vindictive. They don't forgive.
Starting point is 00:35:36 He shouldn't have backed down from this. From a moral standpoint, he shouldn't have backed down. But just from a practical standpoint, it's never enough. Appeasement doesn't work with these sick leftists. These sick perverts are abusing children and are shooting them full of chemicals at age three and sexualizing them and changing their body chemistry and mutilating their bodies. They're sick perverts who should be locked up for life at
Starting point is 00:36:01 least. And that's how we should talk about it. There's no end to this. This is gender ideology. And we, conservatives want to talk about this for the actual, very small number of people who suffer from a psychological condition where they're confused about their biological sex. and we just want to be really nice and compassionate. Some people even want to indulge that delusion because it's sort of easier and seems polite. It's not about them. It actually isn't.
Starting point is 00:36:28 The left isn't making this an issue because of them. The left is making this an issue because it is a radical power grab. It is not just a grab for political control or economic control or even cultural control. It is a power grab for ontological control. The control, the power to redefine reality itself. and these guys are vicious and vindictive.
Starting point is 00:36:51 It's coming to a big tech platform near you. They are going to try to pass policies whereby if you call a man a man and that man thinks he's a woman, you will be kicked off, you will be censored. If you say that a parent shouldn't pump their poor little kid full of hormones and mutilate their body,
Starting point is 00:37:10 that you are some sort of bigot. It is so perverse. It is so sick and disgusting. and there's no middle ground, there's no moderate. I know conservatives want to be conciliatory. I know Mario Lopez wants to keep his job. Sometimes the rubber meets the road, guys. Sometimes there's just a bridge too far.
Starting point is 00:37:32 And it's not about some sexual confusion in a small number of people. This is about a full-on, onslaught attempt to redefine reality. If conservatives don't stand for this, we don't stand for anything. Let's get to the mailbag in our remaining five or six. minutes. From Eli, Hey Michael, I love your show. Thank you. Do you think it's possible to be a conservative and an atheist?
Starting point is 00:37:56 Yes, I do think it's possible. I was a conservative and an atheist for about 10 years, varying degrees of conservative, libertarian, or this or that. I just don't think it's possible to be really coherently conservative and
Starting point is 00:38:12 an atheist because politics is downstream of culture and culture is downstream of religion. And that which we are conserving is Christian civilization. So I don't think that makes a whole lot of sense. The one, just as a practical matter, I think the way it breaks down is, I think if you are a hardcore evangelical atheist, I think if you're the sort of atheist who probably has a neck beard and thinks that Richard Dawkins is a really smart philosopher and theologian, and, you know, you read a couple Christopher Hitchens columns once and you think you know anything,
Starting point is 00:38:47 if you're the sort of person who refers to the Bible as a series of fairy tales. I don't think then really you can be a conservative because conservatives need to have a respect and a reverence for our tradition. Conservatives need to have a sense of the sacred. Even look, our national monuments in the United States in Washington, D.C., I was just there last week. They're not just statues of Washington. They're not just a statue of Lincoln.
Starting point is 00:39:12 They are full-on religious temples. The Washington Monument is an identity. Egyptian religious obelisk, the Lincoln Memorial, is a Greco-Roman temple, right, with Lincoln there as Zeus sitting in a chair. That is, the reason that we do that is because nations need to have a sense of the sacred. If you want to conserve something, you need to have a sense of the sacred. So if you are a sort of amiable atheist, if you're the kind of guy who has a respect for religious traditions, but you just can't bring yourself to believe, which by the way, I think is like most of the culture right now. I think, of course, you can be a conservative, and I think you're going to be on
Starting point is 00:39:51 your way to maybe not being an atheist anymore. But if you're that kind of hardcore, it's all completely wrong and bogus, and everyone who ever lived before me is an idiot, and I'm much smarter than Thomas Aquinas or Aristotle or somebody, if you believe that, I just, I don't think you could ever have the humility, or at the present, you couldn't have the humility to be a conservative, because the left is defined by pride and conservative thought is defined by humility. From Blake, can you name all the Democrat candidates without linking? There is dopey and sleepy and Eric Swalwell and Donner and Cupid and Blitzin. I don't think I could.
Starting point is 00:40:33 Frankly, I don't think the other candidates could as well during the last debate. There was a guy named Steve Bullock from Montana. I guess that guy's running for president. There's another guy, John Delaney. I guess he's running for... What I'm doing, my favorite of the free edible candidates, his name is Tim Ryan, and he's just like just the most pitiable...
Starting point is 00:40:52 He's just obviously not going anywhere. I'm referring to all the candidates that I've never heard of as Tim Ryan, and it just really limits the field down, so you only need to remember about seven names and just call everyone else Tim Ryan. That's what I would recommend for you going forward, because it's not worth memorizing all of those names
Starting point is 00:41:11 when most of them are going to be gone, the next debate. From Texas Fan. Why isn't anyone talking about how Marianne Williamson has led many people astray with her promotion of the heretical course and miracles? Funny, you should ask, Texas Fan, I did that just yesterday. I think these mailback questions
Starting point is 00:41:27 came in yesterday. So check out my episode yesterday on dark psychic Democrats to get a better take on that. From Mandy. Hey Michael. As a woman of faith who has spent her entire marriage trying to start a family, there is something I have really been struggling to understand. Why do you think God allows so many women to conceive children who are just going to abort them?
Starting point is 00:41:50 And I suspect the other side of that is why are so many women not able to conceive or not able to conceive at the time that they want to conceive? What you're really asking is a very basic problem, which is why does God permit evil to exist? And the answer is because of the fall of man, because God gave man free will and man chose to disobey God's will and to follow his own will in contravention of God's desires and therefore sin pervaded the world and death pervaded the world and evil
Starting point is 00:42:27 has a foothold in this world and the devil is the prince of this world and so the question you asked over why all these women can conceive just to abort the kids and why women who don't want to abort the kids can't conceive and I mean it's the same question as why does a three-year-old get leukemia. It's the same question as why, why do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad things happen at all? Obviously, we don't have time to go into the full topic of theodicy or the problem of evil. Good book on it is C.S. Lewis, the problem of pain. Or Lewis, again, a grief observed. And those are just really good kind of lay books that you can introduce you to
Starting point is 00:43:06 the question, and there are more advanced books on it. But the simple answer, the Christian answer, is what we say at Easter, which is, if this is the greatest possible world, which I suspect it is, then what it means is that a world in which there is no free will is not as good as a world in which there is free will and incarnation and atonement and the resurrection. So it seems to me if we didn't have free will, if we didn't genuinely have the ability to deny God and therefore allow sin and death to pervade the world, then what world would it be? You wouldn't even be conscious.
Starting point is 00:43:46 I mean, it would just be a robot world. It would be like a computer simulation or something. But you do have free will. Freedom is a wonderful thing. And what you say on Easter is you celebrate the fall of man in a way. You say, oh, great, oh, happy fault that gave to us, that won for us so great and glorious a redeemer. oh happy fault
Starting point is 00:44:10 O felix culpa We fell We disobeyed God That's awful But it won for us So great and glory as a redeemer in the resurrection That is the way to think of it
Starting point is 00:44:22 It doesn't deny the reality of suffering It's But it is a comfort Comfort meaning it gives you strength And allows you to see the glory up ahead Last question from GRVM What is the origin of Ben Shapiro Constantly ripping on you?
Starting point is 00:44:40 That's a great question. And you'll have to tune into this week's Sunday special. Going to be the greatest Sunday special in the history of the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special because it's going to feature little old me. So tune in then, and I think we'll get the story of it there. All right, that's our show. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
Starting point is 00:44:56 This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you on Monday. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz, director, Mike Joyner, executive producer Jeremy Boring. Our senior producer is Jonathan Hay. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. technical producer Austin Stevens. Editor Danny Domeko.
Starting point is 00:45:19 Our audio mixer is Mike Coramina. Hair and makeup by Jesua Olvera. Production Assistant Nick Sheehan. The Michael Knoll Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019. Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to hit on some of the stories we missed this past week, starting with Mario Lopez.
Starting point is 00:45:36 He said, as you may have heard, that three-year-olds can't choose their own gender, but he since almost immediately cowardly apologized for that. So we'll discuss the need in our culture for not just sanity, but also courage, which is so sorely lacking. Also, is it racist for robots to be white? CNN has posed that very important question. And finally, scientists are trying to create human monkey hybrids. We'll talk about the many moral problems with something like that today over on the Matt Wall Show.

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