The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 485 - Trump’s Team Goes For The Jugular

Episode Date: January 28, 2020

On the first full day of President Trump’s impeachment defense, the Trump team flips the script on House Democrats and turns the trial of Donald Trump into a national broadcast of Democrat corruption. We will examine the strategy. Then, the FBI is reportedly investigating Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar over claims that she once married her brother, which is definitely gross and possibly illegal. Then, Pete Buttigieg shows he’s not ready for primetime, and Hunter Biden somehow gets into even more trouble. If you like The Michael Knowles Show, become a member TODAY with promo code: KNOWLES and enjoy the exclusive benefits for 10% off at dailywire.com/Knowles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the first full day of President Trump's impeachment defense, the Trump team flips the script on House Democrats and turns the trial of Donald Trump into a national broadcast of Democrat corruption. We will examine the wonderful strategy. Then the FBI is reportedly investigating Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar over claims that she once married her brother, which is definitely gross and possibly illegal. Then Pete Buttigieg shows he's not ready for prime time and Hunter Biden somehow incredibly gets into even more trouble. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is the Michael Knowles show. Who boy, do we have a lot to get into today? What a roller coaster we went through yesterday on the Trump impeachment defense. Started off very slow. I was

sweating. I was nervous. I thought it was not going well at all. And then the Trump team just kicked it into high gear during prime time. We will get to all of it. We will get to the very smart strategy all around. But first, I've got to thank our friends over at Robin Hood. With Robin Hood, you can invest in stocks, you can invest in options, you can invest in ETFs right from your phone. You can even spend and earn interest on uninvested cash. And with fractional shares, you can buy stocks in any amount, including companies like Apple, Amazon, and Tesla for as little as $1. Maybe you can't afford to buy a whole bunch of shares. You can buy just parts of them. That is, with no commission fees or account minimums. So whether you're new to investing and ready to learn,

or whether you've got a ton of experience, you should join the 10 million Robin Hood users. I love Robin Hood because I'm actually financially completely illiterate. And what I love about Robin Hood is it makes it so simple for me. I don't feel like I need an advanced degree to just invest some of my money and start earning a little bit more. Go to Knowles.robinhood.com to learn more and claim your free stock. That is Knowles.com. All investments involve risk. This is not investment advice or recommendation or a solicitation of any security. Other fees may apply. Visit rbnhd.co slash fees. The free stock program is subject to certain limitations. Annual percentage yield on uninvested cash is paid by program banks and is variable.

Robin Hood Financial is not a bank. But that is still my recommendation to go check it out. There was really great stuff from the Trump team yesterday. We'll cut right to the chase and get to the highlights, then we'll work back and see how that strategy fits in overall because seen in light of the really good stuff that the Trump team gave at the end of the day, the earlier part of their impeachment defense reads not like a kind of weak open. It reads like a threat. So it really starts to kick off well when President Trump's lawyer Pam Bondi gets up there and doesn't really address all the crazy democratic claims about Trump, all of the crimes that aren't actually crimes but are still impeachable for some reason, according to the logic of the House impeachment manager. She just ignores that.

She doesn't go on defense. She doesn't spend all of her time explaining and explaining and explaining and losing. Instead, she goes on offense. She goes right at Hunter Biden. She goes right at Burisma. She goes right at Democratic corruption in the past administration. Check it out. The typical board member of these Fortune 100 companies, we know they're titans of their industry.

They're highly qualified. And as such, they're well compensated. Even so, Hunter Biden was paid significantly more. This is how well he was compensated. So Hunter Biden has paid over 83,000. a month, while the average American family of four during that time each year made less than than $54,000. And that's according to U.S. Census Bureau during that time.

And this is what's been reported about his work on the board. The Washington Post said, quote, what specific duties Hunter Biden carried out for Burisma are not fully known, end quote. She goes on to say Burisma was so corrupt that George Kent, one of the people who testified during the House impeachment investigation, said he intervened to prevent U.S. Aid from co-sponsoring an event with Burisma. It was so corrupt. So the reason this is important here is because you don't just have the Trump team on their heels. You don't just have the Trump team so far back that they can't advance their own. arguments. They're actually going for the

Democrats and putting them on the defensive. And then Senator Ted Cruz, who I've been hosting this podcast verdict with Ted Cruz with all week long, he comes and hits at home in a press gaggle in one of these breaks. Senator

Cruz went straight for Hunter Biden and put it in plain terms that everybody, including those who haven't been paying attention 24 hours a day, can understand. I'm in the entire proceeding, We have heard just at the beginning of the serious evidence of corruption involving Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company that paid Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, a million dollars a year.

While Joe bought, let me answer. I'll answer the question. Could you answer the question? I'll answer the question. Without interrupting me, please. You got it. Burisma paid Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, a million dollars a year. while Hunter Biden threatened Ukraine to withhold a billion dollars in aid unless and until they fired the prosecutor investigating his son. Joe Biden threatened. Joe Biden is vice president of the United States. And we just saw a video, which I would encourage every news outlet here to actually show the video of Joe Biden bragging how he told the president of Ukraine that he was going to cut off a billion dollars. going to block a billion dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor. And in Joe Biden's own words, son of a bitch, they fired the guy. This was a strategy that Senator Cruz

had previewed on our podcast earlier this week. He said, you've got to make Burisma, you've got to make the Bidens, the center of this whole thing. It worked. It was over the target. You know, I think Pam Bondi did a good job, but I think Senator Cruz did a better job. Cruz drove these reporters so crazy that at one point he actually made one of them suggest throwing his nine and 11 year old children in prison. Over over those two hours, none of the president's attorneys mentioned one single possible crime that Hunter or Joe Biden are accused of. Basically, what they said was Hunter Biden got a job. That was vice president. If that's a crime, I mean, shouldn't half of your children be in prison?

My children are 9 and 11, and I'm sorry that you want to throw a 9-year-old in prison. But at this point, my third grader plays basketball and softball at her school. So stop playing the nasty, no, no, stop playing the nasty Washington game. That's how you know that Senator Cruz is over the target. He handled it very well. But I just love it. These mainstream media hacks, these absolute liberal, propagandists. They get so angry that Senator Cruz has identified the real key in the impeachment

trial, which is not answering all this BS from the Democrats, but actually going after their whole corruption, which was at the center of the phone call to get the investigation that got us the impeachment in the first place, right? Go right back to the heart of it all. The mainstream media liberal hacks were so upset about this. They decide they're going to threaten Ted Cruz's daughters and say they should be thrown in prison. Beautiful. And Senator Cruz handled it very, very well. Wasn't just Hunter Biden either. The Trump legal team also went after the so-called whistleblower. So you had, in this case, Patrick Philbin, the deputy counsel to the president, when he was making his presentation in the impeachment trial, he decided to focus in on the so-called whistleblower.

Because I know it's so convoluted. It's been so insane how this impeachment. impeachment farce began, but let's remember, it began when President Trump had a phone call with the president of Ukraine. And in that phone call, he suggested some investigations into corruption. The allegation then the Democrats made was that President Trump was withholding military aid until Ukraine agreed to investigate corruption that involved Joe Biden. And this was a big deal because Joe Biden is running against President Trump in 2020, although increasingly it's looking like he's not going to get the nomination of his party anyway. So that's how it all began.

There was a so-called whistleblower who heard this phone call with Ukraine and made a big deal out of it, and that's how we got impeachment. So Patrick Philbin, this lawyer for the president, starts asking about this whistleblower. Who is this guy? If he's at the heart of this whole thing, why don't we know anything about him? Here's Philbin. The whistleblower, who we haven't heard that much about, who started all of this. The whistleblower, we know from the letter that the Inspector General of the intelligence community sent,

that he thought that the whistleblower had political bias. We don't know exactly what the political bias was because the inspector, General testified in the House committees in an executive session, and that transcript is still secret. It wasn't transmitted up to the House Judiciary Committee. We haven't seen it. We don't know what's in it. We don't know what he was asked and what he revealed about the whistleblower. Now, you would think that before going forward with an impeachment proceeding against the president of the United States, that you would want to find out something about the complainant that had started all of it. Because motivations, bias, reasons for wanting to bring this complaint

could be relevant. Yes, thank you. Exactly. That's right. That's right. That's what this is about. So Patrick Philbin, Pam Bondi, they are putting the Democrats on their heels. And then Philbin, by the way, he teased it up. He says, why aren't we asking questions about the whistleblower? And then he starts to go after him with details because we all have a pretty good sense of who this whistleblower is. Seems like he had connections to Joe Biden. Seems like he was leaking out of the intelligence community. And Philbin goes right for him.

Recent reports, public reports, suggest that potentially the whistleblower was an intelligence community staffer who worked with then Vice President Biden on Ukraine matters, which, if true, would suggest an even greater reason for wanting to know about potential bias or motive for the whistleblower. That's right. So he actually starts doing it. He says, we need to start asking questions. And then he asks the questions. We need to start looking into this whistleblower. Then he starts looking into the whistleblower. We need much more of this in this impeachment trial. This is actually President Trump style. This is the sort of thing that President Trump does. And we'll actually see an example of that in a little bit. But he should make sure that his whole legal team adopts this style too. It's very very, very effective. I have to admit, I was terrified when these defenses started out today. You know, Ken Starr, the famous investigator from the Clinton impeachment, he was the first person on Trump's legal team to make a presentation. And I thought, I thought it was a little weak. I thought if this is all we're going to get from the Trump legal defense, he's actually in a lot of trouble. But when you look at Ken Starr's opening arguments in the light of the later arguments, which go right after Hunter Biden, go right after the whistleblower, then you see there is actually a brilliant strategy here in Starr's opening arguments. Because as arguments, they played almost like a law school lecture. They played almost sort of philosophical taken out of context.

But when you look at them in context, they were a threat to Democrats. that in a second first. I got to thank our friends over at Daniels. You know how much I love Daniels. How you carry your personal items can make you look prepared, adult, mature, like you know what you're doing, or like a slav. Are you still carrying around some old college backpack when you go to work? You show up at your job and it's like your mother packed your backpack for you? If so, grow up kids. Come on. I'm sorry. I know this is tough love. But, But you need it. Get a briefcase. And when you get a briefcase, there's only one choice. Daniels. Daniels, based in New York City, makes leather briefcases for the modern professional. They're just

magnificent. I've had a lot of really nice briefcases in my life. I've gotten him as hand-me-downs and gifts and stuff. Daniels is my favorite by far. They have a really, really high-quality, durable Italian leather briefcases. There is no nicer leather than Italian leather. It's so beautiful. The size is perfect. It's simple. It's not flashy. It's just got really, really elegant design. I simply love mine. This week, my listeners can get $50 off their Daniels briefcase at DanielsnYC.com by using the promo code Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Get it now. I cannot recommend this more highly. 50 bucks off one of their leather briefcases, plus free shipping, free returns, and free exchanges. If you don't like it, you're going to love it. Daniels-N-Y-C-C-com, promo code Michael, M-C-H-A-E-L for $50 off a

handcrafted high quality leather briefcase with free shipping. You can start looking like a professional today. Do it. So I was terrified when it started out. Then I realized Ken Starr knows what he's doing. I should have known it in the first place, but it was a really subtle but effective argument. So Ken Starr begins and he points out there's no crimes. Trump didn't commit any crimes. The articles of if impeachment don't even say that he committed crimes, then he gets to the danger of this impeachment. He even describes the time that we're living in as the age of impeachment. Here he is. The Senate is being called to sit as the High Court of Impeachment all too frequently.

Indeed, we're living in what I think can aptly be described as the age of impeachment. In the House, resolution after resolution, month after month, has called for the President's impeachment. How did we get here? Get here at home in the world's longest standing constitutional republic, instead of a once-and-a-century phenomenon, which it had been, presidential impeachment has become a weapon. a weapon to be wielded against one's political opponent. Absolutely right. A great point. A great point. The left is accusing Ken Starr of hypocrisy. Because he says, how did we get to this point where we're living in the age of impeachment?

And what the left is saying is, we got here because of you. You're the guy who impeached Clinton. So it's your fault. How dare you? What rank hypocrisy? It's not hypocrisy. it's experience. Ken Starr is speaking with some credibility here. He's saying, look, I was involved in the Clinton impeachment. I was brought in as this investigator. But now we're doing this so regularly. It's become merely a political tool.

It's not being used in the way that the founders and framers of our Constitution wanted it to. So what's happening here is it's reopening some of the impeachment trial, some of the impeachment of Bill Clinton. It's reminding people of the impeachment of Bill Clinton. If that was all they were doing, it would be very stupid strategy because it would be just restoking those resentments, getting Democrats to remember how much they hated the Clinton impeachment, getting them more ready to go after Trump and this impeachment.

But that's not what it was doing. What this opening did was get all of that out of the way and set the stage of these constant impeachments as a real danger to the republic, because we're now just going to be living in a system where the Congress throws out whatever president it doesn't like. That's not the system that our founders wanted. But that's the system we're getting into now. Ken Starr says that would be a very bad thing.

In fact, he goes so far as to say that impeachment is hell. Like war, impeachment is hell. Or at least presidential impeachment is hell. Those of us who live through the Clinton impeachment, including members of this body, full well understand that a presidential impeachment is tantamount to domestic war. I'll be thankfully protected by our beloved First Amendment, a war of words and a war of ideas. But it's filled with acrimony and it divides the country like nothing else. those of us who lives through the Clinton impeachment understand that in a deep and personal way.

It's hell. It's like war. It divides the country and we are in the age of impeachment. But do we have to be? That's the question that Ken Starr is leaving on the table. Do we have to be? Because there's a little bit of a cause and effect here, right? It is true. that impeachment divides the country, but impeachment also comes only during periods of great division. So the first impeachment we had was of President Andrew Johnson. That was in 1868. Now, did the impeachment of Andrew Johnson caused the division in the country? No, we had just come out of the Civil War. I mean, it was the greatest division you could possibly have, and the impeachment was a result of that division. Next impeachment we have, or near impeachment we have of Richard Nixon, was in 1974. Richard Nixon divide the country? No, the country was terribly divided on the heels of the 1960s

and the rise of radical leftism in the Cold War. Next impeachment we have, 1998. That's the impeachment of Bill Clinton, who perjured himself and had his law license suspended because of what he did. We're pretty divided in the 90s, too. I mean, the 90s was that prime era of political correctness. The parties were really starting to separate. They were really starting to dig into what they believed. And then now we have another impeachment in 2019. So this is getting faster and faster. Are we divided as a country because Trump got impeached?

No, Trump got impeached because we're divided as a country. But it does further divide the country. I think that's why you're seeing it speed up. Now, this was a great way for the Trump legal team to stave off some criticism. stave off criticism that they didn't want to hear witnesses, that they were just trying to dodge impeachment, that they were using Ken Storr as a lawyer in the first place. They addressed all of the criticisms that could be thrown at them. And they also sent a threat. They sent a message here, which was, if you want this fight, Democrats, if you're going to try to remove a duly elected

president for total BS, then we're going to do it to you. Because impeachment is hell. Impeachment is like war. Impeachment divides the country and we're not going to give it up without a fight. If you want this hell, we will engage in that hell with you. You see it on the on the micro scale when it comes to the witnesses, right? The Democrats have all they want is to call former national security advisor John Bolton to testify because they think John Bolton's got dirt on Trump. And the threat here I think was you call John Bolton. We call Hunter Biden. You really want to play this game? You want to talk to John Bolton so bad? That's fine. We'll drag Joe Biden's degenerate corrupt son in front of national television on the Senate and have him spout off all that corrupt things he's done with other corrupt people from the Obama administration. You really want that? On the macro level, the threat implied here was, you remove our guy from office over BS. Guess what we're going to do the first chance we get. The first chance. There's a Democrat in office and a Republican Congress and hopefully a Republican Senate, that guy's gone,

not because it's right, but because that's the political situation that you Democrats have forced us into because you have shredded the Constitution and we have to live in the new political reality because we can't unilaterally disarm. That's the threat that's being implied here. And it did a whole lot to turn around the perception of President Trump's defense. This is the first day that Trump gets to defend himself, right? You had a whole week of Democrat accusations from the House impeachment managers. Now he defends himself. I think they did a very good job. And I think the strengths of these lawyers balanced each other out very, very well. Because they were coming into this today with a big leak. There was this big leak to the New York Times from former National Security Advisor John Bolton's forthcoming memoir that said that Trump tied military aid in Ukraine.

to the investigation of Joe Biden, which, by the way, would be perfectly fine if it did, but it created a whole lot of headlines here, right? So that's what they were going into. And as a result of that leaked to the New York Times, obviously highly coordinated to maximize damage to President Trump's impeachment trial, to try to extend this thing so that Democrats can go on a fishing expedition because Democrats have come up empty so far. Three years later, they got nothing. And it had its intended effect because the squishy Republican senators like Mitt Romney came out and said, yeah, we want to hear more witnesses. To be fair, in John Bolton's defense,

this is not John Bolton's fault. Look, he put it in the book. Maybe he should have waited to publish the book. Maybe the publisher is trying to juice book sales. But John Bolton ran this by the White House. He sent a copy of this to the White House. this is on the squishy senators, chief among them, Mitt Romney. And Mitt Romney is now suggesting that he will vote to hear more witnesses to drag this impeachment trial out into the foreseeable future.

Here he is. It's increasingly apparent that it would be important to hear from John Bolton. I, of course, will make a final decision on witnesses after we've heard from not only the prosecution but also the defense. but I think at this stage it's pretty fair to say that John Bolton has a relevant testimony. I think it's increasingly likely that other Republicans will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton. Oh, Mitt Romney. Why do you have to be Mitt Romney? I said this yesterday.

I said, I'm going to be here doing the verdict with Ted Cruz podcast as long as we see impeachment going. And so my chances of returning home to Los Angeles rested on Mitt Romney not being a jerk, so I might as well start looking for apartments now. Looks like I was right. Susan Collins, another squishy senator. She's in Maine. She's also signaling that she's in favor of witnesses. Susan Collins is up for reelection this year and she already has Trump support. Maine went three electoral votes out of four for Hillary Clinton in 2016. So it's a very delicate situation for Susan Collins. Probably she has to vote for more witnesses. Then you've got another squishy senator, Lisa Murkowski, in Alaska. Lisa Murkowski is not up for re-election until 2022, so she can do whatever she wants. And I think probably she would prefer to call witnesses. It's probably the safer move for a moderate senator like her. Lamar Alexander from Tennessee, another moderate.

He's retiring from the Senate. He doesn't care. He's got nothing to lose. He has no reason not to do what he wants. he's got no reason to try to preserve his legacy, the safe choice for him, probably to call witnesses. So right now, if nothing changes, it's looking like we might get witnesses and we might get a longer impeachment trial. It is going to be up to these guys, these four senators. Maybe some others could be swayed too.

So today, Trump's big defense day, Trump offered a very strong defense right out the gate. It was strong. It was strong because it was an offense. Started out by setting the stage, then he went for the jugular. It should all be offense from here on. It should all be Hunter Biden and Burisma and the whistleblower. It should be all pressure on Democrats. Ronald Reagan used to say, when you're explaining, you're losing.

So when you're defending yourself, when you're on your heels, you're losing. Queen Elizabeth has a phrase that she's reportedly fond of saying, which is never complain, never explain. You're always pushing what you want forward. Trump team did that today. Trump does this strategy personally. He actually just did it with regard to Ilhan Omar, who may have married her brother. Yuck, we'll get to that in a second. We'll get to why Pete Buttigieg is just absolutely blowing it and he's not ready for prime time.

And we will get to Hunter Biden somehow getting into even more trouble. And if this impeachment defense from President Trump keeps going the way it's going, he's going to be in even more trouble soon. Before we get to that, I want to talk about the pro-life cause. While the pro-abortion activists shout their abortions on national television and refer to pre-borne. babies as parasites, pro-lifers have fought back. All of us at the Daily Wire have spoken out in defensive life. Last year, Ben Shapiro addressed a crowd of 100,000 at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. And you know what happened as a result of that? Our advertisers were targeted by left-wing media operatives. We lost a lot of revenue as a result. They were trying to shut us down and shut us up.

This is a constant battle to protect pro-life advocacy from the forces pushing abortion. Live action has experienced the same thing. Live action is one of the most important voices in the pro-life movement. I personally support live action, and you should too. They have helped to expose Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics for the horrific crimes, crimes rather, that they commit. Pro-abortion activists have targeted live action and censored them on social media platforms when they don't succeed in kicking them off altogether. And that's why our DailyWire.com members are so important. Your membership helps keep our cameras on and our microphones turned up, even when the left is pressuring our sponsors. You keep our pro-life message from being canceled. And from now until January 1st, a portion of any DailyWire.com membership will be donated to live action with promo code, live action, easy enough to remember. So join DailyWire.com

and make your pro-life voice heard. Head on over to DailyWire.com. We'll be right back with a lot more. Never explain. Always be pushing your agenda. Always be pushing the stories that you want to see. Trump knows this implicitly, right? That's how he's been a tabloid star, a media manipulator for 40 years now. I mean, since the 80s, really since the late 70s. You're seeing this in a particular news story right now, which involves Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, one of AOC's squad. There have been stories going around since 2016, 2017, that Ilhan Omar married her brother. Now, it's not quite as gross as it seems, I guess. The allegation is not that she married her brother because she fell in love with him,

but that she married her brother to commit immigration fraud, to get some kind of immigration advantage. We don't know if that's true. We don't know what sort of advantage it would be. That has just been the allegation, and it's come from multiple sources. And the question is, why is nobody investigating this? Well, it seems someone now is investigating it. two FBI agents held an hours-long meeting in Minnesota back in October with a concerned party,

whoever that is, handing over a bunch of documents regarding Ilhan Omar's 2009 marriage to Ahmed nor Saeed Elmi, regarding whether or not she married her brother. So people are investigating this now. This is according to multiple sources. President Trump was asked about it. and instead of playing defense and playing it safe and playing it cautious, he decided to blare that headline all over the world. Here he is.

Well, there's a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it. I hear she was married to her brother. You're asking me a question about it. I don't know, but I'm sure that somebody would be looking at that. I love this. Look, a lot of people are talking about the fact that Ilhan Omar married her brother. I like that he phrases it as the fact that Ilhan Omar marries her brother.

But we don't know. I don't know anything about that. I don't know anything about the very fact that Ilhan Omar married her brother, which many people are talking about. Trump does this all the time. I mean, it is one of the most often used rhetorical strategies he has, but it's very effective. Because all you hear from this, because he repeats it multiple times is Ilhan Omar married her brother, the fact that Ilhan Omar married her brother. By the way, we don't know that it's a fact yet. There's just a lot of evidence for it, and it's pretty weird that no one's investigated it.

Just to give you a little sense of whether or not it's true, here's just a glimpse at the timeline of her marital life. So, 1982, Ilhan Omar is born in Somalia. She comes to Minneapolis with her family in 1997. Then, five years later, when Ilhan Omar is 19 years old, she marries a guy named Ahmed Hirsi, who is 22, in her faith tradition, but not legally. so they're not legally married. 2008, so six years after they get married in the faith tradition, Omar and Hirsi have two kids, and they divorce in their faith tradition.

One year later, Ilhan Omar, 26 years old at this point, marries Ahmed Nore Saeed Elmi, who's only 23 years old, three years younger. Then two years after that, Ilhan Omar and Elmere, end their relationship, divorce in their faith tradition, and do not legally get divorced until 2017. So this is pretty weird, right? Ilhan Omar marries a guy, but not legally. Then they have two kids. Then six years later, all of a sudden, they separate. But they were never legally married,

so they don't get legally divorced. Then a year later, she marries this random guy, and then two years later, they divorce in their faith tradition. But for some reason, they stay legally married. for another six years. But then in 2012, so one year after Omar and Elmi separate, but they still don't get divorced for a lot of years, Omar and Hirsey get back together, and they have a third child together.

For the next few years, Ilhan Omar is filing joint tax returns with this guy, Hirsey, but she's still legally married to this other guy, Elmi. Then Omar becomes a big public figure and things start to get a little dicey. 2016, she's elected to the Minnesota House. 2017, she legally divorces Elmi, who is possibly her brother.

We don't know who the guy is. And then in 2018, she legally marries Hirsi, the father of her three children, who she's been with for a very, very long time, and then she's elected to Congress. Nothing about this timeline makes sense. And it does seem to be very possible that it's a case of immigration fraud.

This needs to be investigated. This needs to be investigated. In particular, because she's a rising star in the Democratic Party, and she has absolutely odious political views, and she referred to the September 11th attacks as some people did something, and she giggled well talking about al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. And she just, her views are just simply disgusting and repugnant. So on a political angle, we should really go after this lady.

that's just politics though we go after everybody on the left in politics as a matter of the law seems like this merits an investigation more generally conservatives need to be on the offensive we need to put the Democrats on their toes the best

defense is a good offense now the Trump the Trump team is doing a good job of this I hope they keep it up because it's a good start President Trump almost certainly won't be removed from office the odds of that are extremely low, but this could drag on for weeks and weeks and weeks, and who knows what that will

mean for 2020. In politics, anything happens. And speaking of 2020 and speaking of blowing it, Pete Buttigieg is absolutely collapsing in his campaign. He was once the bright young star. He was the one surging. He had all the momentum. That momentum has kind of cratered at this point. Bernie Sanders is at the top of the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, multiple polls. Pete Buttigieg appears to be deflating, just like Elizabeth Warren. It just seems like he's not ready for prime time. A great example of this. He was asked in a town hall the other night by a pro-life Democrat if he would welcome her into the party.

And he danced around the question and he wouldn't give a straight answer. And he basically said, yeah, no, of course we can agree to disagree as long as you agree with me. And this woman who asked the question wouldn't let him get away with it. She said, this Democratic Party platform specifically excludes pro-life Democrats like me. Would you represent a Democratic Party that makes room and includes pro-lifers like me? Or are you going to just absolutely exclude my views on abortion? My views as a woman. My views as somebody who thinks we should protect life.

And Pete Buttigieg says, absolutely, you're out of the party. The Democratic platform contains language that basically says that we don't belong. We have no part in the party because it says abortion should be legal up to nine months. The government should pay for it. And there's nothing that says that people have a diversity of views on this issue should be included in the party. In 1996 and several years after that, there was a language in the Democratic platform that said that we understand that people have very differing views on this issue. But we are a big tent party that includes everybody.

And so therefore, we welcome you, people like me, into the party so we can work on issues that we agree on. So my question was, would you be open to language like that in the Democratic platform that really did say that our party is diverse and inclusive and we want everybody? Well, I support the position of my party that this kind of medical care needs to be available to everyone. And I support the Roe versus Wade framework that holds that early in pregnancy there are very few restrictions. And late in pregnancy, there are very few exceptions. And again, the best I can offer is that we may disagree on that very important issue. And hopefully, we will be able to partner on other issues.

Terrible answer, regardless of your views of abortion, absolutely terrible answer. And a terrible look. You know, the Democratic Party is always... projecting. So they always, because they're so obsessed with race, they call everyone else racists. And because they're so obsessed with sex, they call everybody else sexists. They have a problem in this election cycle, which is that they've already kicked out all of the racial minority candidates. So now it's just a bunch of white people. Not a good look. Makes them look pretty hypocritical on racial issues. They've got another issue here, which just from a visual

perspective is not a great look for Democrats, you've got this guy, Pete Buttigieg, telling this woman who's a Democrat that she's no longer welcome in the party because she opposes abortion. But the Democrat's whole argument on abortion is that in order to support women, you have to be pro-abortion, that all women love abortion, that women's rights are now actually just a synonym for abortion according to the modern left. And yet, here's this woman, right, who says, actually, Mayor Pete, I know that you think you're going to speak for all the women, but I'm a woman and I oppose abortion. So that's okay, right?

And he says, absolutely not. You're out of the party. You are not in my party. You do not speak for women. I speak for women. Me, Pete Buttigieg, not you, a woman. Just a dumb answer. He should have known better than that.

He's a pretty slick young politician, but it's just. Just a reminder, he's not ready for prime time. And he's not ready on the sexual issues. He's not really ready either in terms of relating to ordinary people. He just doesn't have it. So very few politicians actually watch sports, but a lot of them try to talk about sports disingenuously because they think that that's a good way to relate to the common man. And so Pete Buttigieg was asked about the death of Kobe Bryant, that tragic helicopter crash. and Pete Buttigieg said, oh, well, you know, it was just so well.

He'll be remembered for what he did on the field as well as what he did off the field. Because apparently Pete Buttigieg doesn't realize Kobe Bryant plays basketball, which is not played on a field. Here he is. There are millions of people, not just in Los Angeles, but around the world right now, mourning because they were inspired by what he did on the field, what he meant off the field. Okay. So either Pete Buttigieg doesn't know that Kobe Bryant played basketball.

And I got to at least hope that Buttigieg knows that Kobe played basketball. Or he just doesn't know anything about basketball because he thinks it's played on a field rather than a court. You got to know these things, okay? Or you got to not pretend to know these things. You got to not pretend. I mean, the pandering is just so tedious when it comes to Buttigieg. We don't know who this guy is. He's a completely new figure on the national scene, and the mask is slipping a little bit.

He's changing his views. He's a radical one day. He's a moderate the other day. He's the every man one day. He's this elite moralist who's going to preach to you on the other day. He just doesn't know who he is. He's just not ready for prime time. And that actually gets to a story coming out from Washington Post and ABC News.

There's a new poll that was released on Monday, released yesterday. found that President Trump is now in a better position against nearly every 2020 Democratic competitor as a result of impeachment and the impeachment trial now and possibly the impeachment vote. So the conclusion that all of these political analysts are reaching

is that impeachment has been good for Trump and that's why Trump is doing better against all the Democrats now, which may well be true. I think probably impeachment has been good for Trump. but the part that all of the political analysts are ignoring is the Democratic candidates themselves because the other thing that's happened in the past few months

other than the impeachment trial is that we've gotten to see a lot more of these Democratic candidates and I strongly suspect the more we see of these candidates the less we like them the less everybody likes them the less the Democratic primary voters like them They seem, the Democratic primary voters seem pretty demoralized. You see this from guys like Van Jones, Democratic analyst, who says, gosh, the people who show up to these debates are not ready to beat Donald Trump.

You know, the more we see of Buttigieg, the worse his numbers get. The same is true of Warren. The same is true of Joe Biden, even. Even Joe Biden. Joe Biden's been around forever. I mean, he's been in politics for 50 years. But Joe Biden hasn't really. been in the arena since 2008. He ran for president in 2008. He got knocked around a bunch. Then he got a

really soft, easy job under Obama. He was the vice president. Vice president is not a controversial position to be in. So his approval numbers went up. And then he didn't run in 2016. So his approval numbers didn't get a hit. We forgot who Joe Biden was. And ever since he's been out on the campaign trail, his numbers keep dipping. The only person that this isn't true of is Bernie Sanders. Because Bernie was in the spotlight last time. He was in the arena in 2016. He's probably the toughest of these candidates, and that's probably why his numbers are going up in Iowa and New Hampshire. Turning gears from people who are approaching 80 years old, we need to go back down to the youth of the Democratic Party and the youth of the left. There was a tweet that was sent out from David Hogg, the most prominent of the teen gun control activists.

This tweet has gone viral and I read it because it shows so much about the modern left. This is the tweet. This is a tweet for the founders of the gun violence prevention movement started centuries ago by almost entirely black, brown, and indigenous LGBTQ women and non-binary people that never got on the news or in most history. books. We may not know all your names, but thank you. I actually want to defend David Hogg for a moment, but obviously that statement is ridiculous. First of all, I don't think, he's talking about getting on the news. I don't think TV news existed centuries ago. I'm not sure how he would know that the founders of the gun violence prevention movement were almost entirely black, brown, and indigenous LGBTQ women and non-binary people. That seems like a really, really niche group of people to

start the gun violence prevention movement, particularly considering the fact that most early gun control was actually specifically anti-black and that all of the great civil rights leaders from emancipation onward made a big point to arm themselves because they were the victims of systemic oppression. Never mind all of that. Obviously, it's an absurd tweet. But I want to defend David Hogg because of how absurd this tweet is. First of all, he's a freshman in college and he doesn't know anything about anything. Freshmen in college don't know anything. Imagine if you were a celebrity when you were 18 years old. This is why teenagers should not be celebrities. Child stars tend not to turn out terribly well. Teenagers should not be celebrities. It

is not good for them. It's not good for anybody else. Also, in David Hogg's defense, David Hogg is a freshman at Harvard. He got accepted into Harvard because of his activism. He may have learned this nonsense in a classroom at Harvard. He'd be much more likely to learn this stuff in a classroom at Harvard than he would at a community college. Because the halls of elite universities have become totally radicalized. Maybe not totally. Maybe that's extreme.

But nearly totally. I mean, incredibly radicalized. and turned into tools of political ideology. The Academy is so hopelessly ideological now that facts are often abandoned in favor of political fantasies, like the idea that the gun violence prevention movement, whatever that is,

was started by black indigenous LGBT, non-binary people of color in the 18th century. I mean, crazy. But that's not David Hogg's fault, not entirely at least. When teenagers do and say stupid things, they're just doing what teenagers do. That's pretty much the definition of a teenager is doing and saying stupid things.

The real problem here is the teachers who teach them this nonsense in the first place, the fact that really now the inmates are running the asylum. Speaking of people who are behaving badly, Hunter Biden is now in even more trouble. The New York Post just caught Hunter Biden and his pregnant wife, Melissa, tooling around Beverly Hills in $130,000. Porsche. This was after they finished their $90 brunch at a restaurant owned by Chef Jean-George, celebrity chef. And this is before they were returning to their $3.8 million Hollywood Hills mansion that they're paying $12,000 per month for. All while Hunter Biden is refusing to pay child support

to an ex-girlfriend of his for another kid he just had out of wedlock. I don't even mean to beat up on Hunter Biden. He is certainly a degenerate, but he seems like a very troubled guy, and I have no interest in beating up on him. I'll go after his father. I don't really care about going after him. But imagine if this were Don Jr.

Imagine if this were any Republican. Imagine the headlines. Imagine the politicians talking about it. And that's how the left wins. The left wins because they never play defense. They always play offense. They are always, they'll defend every absurd thing they ever say. They will double down on every absurd thing.

They will accuse you of things that you've never done. They'll pluck them out of thin air. The Russia conspiracy, tax evasion, this Ukraine hoax. They'll just pluck impeach. They're actually now impeaching the president without a crime. Two articles of impeachment, zero crimes in them. But they don't care because the left is always on offense. and we play it safe.

We have a great economy. I mean, record high economy, record low unemployment. Record peace abroad, the fact that we just, according to the left, waged World War III and then I guess one World War III in the killing of Soleimani with Iran retaliating in a weak way. It ended that conflict. Amazing stuff. We've gotten China to concede on trade deals. It's been so good that the 2020 election should be a blowout.

And yet it's close. And the only reason it's close is because the left is always playing offense and we're always playing it safe. We are right now in 2020 looking at a race where the incumbent, very successful president is running against an old communist, a radical liar, a small town mayor, and an empty suit whose teeth literally fall out of his mouth during debates. And it's close. It's close because we don't get aggressive. and the Trump team today has signaled that they're going to get aggressive in this impeachment. We should extend that strategy all the way through 2020, all the way through the way through the way that we wage politics. All right, that's our show.

We've got a lot more to get to, but hey, we're out of time. Come back to the Michael Knowles show tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. See you then. If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show,

the Andrew Claven Show, and the Matt Walsh Show. The Michael Nulls Show is produced by Ben Davies, director, Mike Joyner, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, supervising producers, Mathis Glover, and Robert Sterling, technical producer Austin Stevens, Assistant Director Pavel Wadowski, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Robin Fenderson, hair and makeup, Jesua Olvera. Production Assistance, McKenna Waters, and Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020. Hey, everyone, it's Andrew Claven, host of the Andrew Claven show.

There's a new, utterly astonishing, bombshell of a devastating revelation in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump for whatever the hell they're accusing him of this time. How many times did they think they're going to pull this? this stuff off and fool us. How stupid do they think we are? We'll find out on the Andrew Claven Show. I'm Andrew Clayland.