The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 68 - The Consensus Is Always Wrong

Episode Date: December 4, 2017

Remember how President Trump could never pass tax reform in his first year? Turns out that was all fake news. We’ll analyze the Senate tax bill and what it means for the future. Then Laura Barron Lopez from the Washington Examiner and Amanda Prestigiacomo from the Daily Wire join the Panel of Deplorables to discuss Trump’s late endorsement of Roy Moore, the FBI indictment of Mike Flynn, and the Person of the Year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do you remember how President Trump could never pass tax reform in his first year? Much like the prediction that he would never deregulate, never nominate an originalist justice to the Supreme Court, never pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, never renegotiate trade deals with our partners overseas, never annihilate ISIS within 11 months, never help to defund Planned Parenthood, never fight abortion at home and overseas, never defeat Hillary Clinton, never even win the Republican nomination in 2016? Do you remember that? Turns out that that was all fake news. we will analyze the Senate tax bill and what it means for the future of the country and the administration. Then Laura Barron Lopez from the Washington Examiner and Amanda Presta Giacomo from the Daily Wire,

joined the panel of deplorables to discuss Trump's late endorsement of Roy Moore, his re-endorsement, the FBI indictment of Mike Flynn, and the person of the year. I know who it should be. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is the Michael Knowles Show. What a weekend. I'm celebrating with a little cofefecane, a little candy cofefecane. It was, I wish we had a show on Friday that we could have done it, but it was nice. We've had a few days to mull over all, I guess it happened on Saturday anyway.

We've had a few days to mull over this excellent tax reform. And you know, I am old enough to remember when tax reform was a total impossibility. A pipe dream by Trump cultists who couldn't wake up and smell the coffee or the cofefe and realize that President Trump is incompetent leftist or an incompetent leftist. Let's roll the predictions of the consensus class. The tax bill is not going to get passed. I know you're talking about it before. Zero percent chance of this being passed.

Wait, wait. Zero? There's 99%. Or tax reform because they're going to need a win. Well, it's dead, but maybe not dead and buried. Fear the tax reform is dead. Will there be tax cuts? And if the companies really were trying to advocate for tax cuts,

it wouldn't have been better to stay at the president's side. Maybe that's a sign, Stephen Moore, that tax cuts might not happen too. Hmm. Form is dead. Real true tax reform. It's just tax cuts. And can this, can this isolated president get that agenda through? If they can't pass this tax reform. And so far we've seen President Trump giving pep talks and photo ops, but we haven't seen anything come out of it. Yeah, it turns out none of that was true. None of that at all was true. It wasn't true because the consensus view is almost always wrong. This is a hard thing to realize. We think the consensus view is right. Everyone thinks that all the smart people think it's therefore must be right. But that isn't true. Forget about Galileo and Copernicus. Consider just the regular sports, economic, political predictions we see every night on television. Consider the scientific consensus on overpopulation 30 years ago and on food shortages that never happened. On global cooling. Then when that didn't happen, global warming, and then when those predictions didn't work out on climate change. Consider the electoral consensus. Smart money's on Jeb to win the primary, but Hillary, she'll certainly win the general. The fact that the consensus is wrong is how people make money in the story. stock market. You're making in the stock market. You're making a bet that the consensus is

baked into the price and that it's incorrect that you know better. We're seeing this play out time and again with Trump. The next time somebody condescends and patronizes, calls you crazy for thinking that perhaps Donald Trump has a couple of brain cells to rub together, that he's perhaps an effective leader. Remind them of this fact. Now let's get on to the tax bill itself. First, from my wardrobe today, I have to thank Owen Brennan and Justin Folk, who are the guys. They're the guys doing the Dennis Prager and Adam Carolla movie No Safe Spaces, which is a lot of fun. It's going to be great when it comes out. They gave me this shirt. It says, keep calm and cut taxes. Keep calm and cut taxes. And both sides of that are important. It's, you know, it's playing

on the old British slogan, keep calm and carry on, you know. Both sides are important. The left is losing its collective mind over tax reform. Larry Summers is claiming, I kid you not, that 10,000 people will die because of reforming taxes. Talking heads have compared allowing people to keep more of their own money to rape. Comedian Patton Oswald wrote, quote, is there any going back after this tax bill scam to America? Does it matter now if Trump is impeached? There's no America now, not the one we knew.

I'm sorry, I'm feeling real despair this morning. I'm sure he is. Leftist blogger Bill Palmer shrieked, quote, millions of Americans died tonight. Now, you might not have seen that on the news because it didn't happen, you know? But they died, quote, so did the careers of every one of those. psychotic, drooling animals in the Republican Party who voted for it.

This was mass murder. Keep calm. Keep calm. Sh, it's okay. Shh. Baby, baby, it's okay. Letting people keep more of their own money is not mass murder. It's going to be fine. Actually, ironically, my taxes are going to increase, which is unfortunate, especially

if this grad student tax goes through. I'm going to get hit. It's a double whammy on the state and local and the grad student tax because my fiancee is getting a PhD. But it is far better for the country and for economic growth. Actually, Democrats always accuse Republicans of being greedy and selfish on taxes. But guess what? If mine increase, that's because I do decently well in a city and state with absurd taxation.

For a long time, California and L.A. have gotten a free pass on federal income taxes while the rest of the country subsidizes their insane tax rates. The Republican tax reform realigns those incentives to be both fairer, more federalist, to be more pro-growth. So I might pay a bit more, but I'll live. And on the whole, this law is great for liberty and for the economy. The only people this law is terrible for are Democrat politicians who are doing their best to obstruct a pro-growth, pro-liberty agenda because they know it's going to kill their election chances in 2018 and 2020. Lindsey Graham laid it out pretty frankly.

He said Republicans have to do this. If Republicans cannot come together and unite on reforming the tax code, lowering rates and reforming the code, they might as well fold up as a party, which does make some sense. If you can't convince a bunch of Republicans to cut taxes, there isn't a Republican Party anymore. So what does the bill actually do? The bill lowers and simplifies income tax rates, doubles the standard deduction, doubles the child tax credit. It preserves the adoption tax credit, which is good. It's a good bit of pro-life wiggling in the federal government.

Median income family of four sees a reduction of $2,200 per year, so Democrats are going to shriek, that it's only the rich who benefit from this. First of all, half the country doesn't pay any taxes, so the rich probably should benefit from this. But the median income earner with a family of four gets over $2,000 per year in a tax deduction, which is a great thing. More importantly, it lowers the corporate tax rate to 20%. This does matter. People are going to try to convince you that it doesn't matter because some gigantic companies keep a lot of cash overseas and they pay very little in taxes, but a lot of businesses in this country do pay taxes, especially in sectors like energy, finance, retail, Home Depot pays a very high effective tax rate, cable companies, waste

management, fast food. There are a lot of areas of American industry that do pay taxes. This is going to bolster them. It also repeals the Obamacare mandate. This is one of the best parts. It's great. Maybe we can get some money from corporations overseas. Maybe we can stimulate job growth.

But this bill repeals the Obamacareare. mandate, the federal penalty that requires Americans for the first time ever to purchase a good from a private company. Totally antithetical to American liberty. Now that it's passed the difficult hurdle, which is the Senate, it seems likely to end up in the final bill. This is great news. Now, for the sort of bad news, the Senate tax plan is predicted to increase the U.S. deficit by $1 trillion to $1.4 trillion over the next decade. I say this sort of bad news, because this is from the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation. These sorts of predictions are usually off. They're usually hyperbolic.

The growth prediction at the root here is just 0.8% economic growth. We have plenty of reason to suspect that this is way too low. Third quarter, U.S. economic growth is already beating expectations. So Trump's first year, these numbers came out just a little while ago, already exceeded expectations. For the first time in a decade, actual economic growth has exceeded maximum potential economic growth. So economists are predicting stronger wage and price increases because the economy. is operating beyond its potential. This is great news for the Federal Reserve, which is worried for years about sluggish inflation. Still, even granting all of that, even granting that probably

these numbers are off, the tax cuts might exacerbate the deficit. And that's not a good thing. So what can we do about that? President Trump has already signaled what he intends to do. I know you don't want this welfare reform. Does anybody want welfare reform? And infrastructure. But well, well, welfare reform, I see it, and I've talked to people. I know people, they work three jobs, and they live next to somebody who doesn't work at all. And the person who's not working at all and has no intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than the person that's working his and her ass off. And it's not going to happen.

Not going to happen. So we're going to go into welfare reform. Unless Billy doesn't want it, Billy, am I okay in saying they speak for you? He said yes. Not exactly Reagan-esque diction, but hey, that's okay. We'll take what we can get. Rubio and Ryan, among others, are also saying the same thing. But what does this mean?

By welfare reform, Trump, he isn't just talking about Obamacones or whatever. You know, they, very often they'll, they would say Trump isn't going to deal with entitlements. But what he's doing, he's so brilliant. He's tying entitlement reform. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, which are the main drivers of our national debt and deficits. He's tying that to welfare reform. So the image of the welfare queen and the Obama phone. He's painting a picture of the cause of our economic woes and the cause of our long-term problems

that we can digest and get behind. We can picture the problem of welfare. And it's accurate, by the way. It's not a lie. These problems are welfare. It's welfare that the government has forced us to pay into for years. But it is a welfare system. So instead of typically thinking of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, we can't envision this.

It doesn't mean anything. All that really sounds like to us is that rich people want to take away things that we've paid into for a long time. He's pointing out that this is essentially a welfare regime, and we need to reform that for our long-term prosperity. Now, it has long been common knowledge, consensus knowledge, you might say, that Trump would never touch entitlements. He said so himself, but Donald Trump says a lot of things.

And what does he mean by that? Well, let's see what everyone's telling us. Trump has said he will not touch those. Well, you have to be very careful about words like not touching. Does it mean I won't cut them? I won't cut them for current retirees. Nobody would suggest cutting social security benefits for current retirees. But I think doing what President Reagan did in 1983, gradually reducing the future benefits,

spread out over a number of years and after a long delay, but gradually reducing it by changing the age of retirement. Now, Feldstein makes a great point here. Everyone's saying he won't touch entitlements, he won't touch entitlements, but what do you mean by touch? That is the wiggle room. That's the wiggle room that he's given himself. Gerald F. Sieb observed in the Wall Street Journal today, quote, It's clear that Mr. Trump's barbs directed at senior members of his own party, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Paul Ryan,

they don't get in the way of the GOP uniting for something really important. The idea that Republicans can repeat that feat in 2018 on health and infrastructure doesn't seem so far fetched. If the past is any indication, I am not so sure that he'll never touch entitlements. I'm not sure of anything. He seems to have managed to repeal the major pillar of Obamacare while simultaneously reforming our tax cuts. The only thing I'm willing to conclude for sure about this administration is we should never say never when it comes to Trump. With that, let's bring on our panel. We have Amanda Presta Giacomo from The Daily Wire and Laura Baron Lopez from the Washington Examiner.

Laura, thank you for coming on, your first time on the panel of deplorables. What is the final bill going to look like? Well, as you alluded to, they have to go to conference. And so that's something that they're hoping to wrap up by the end of the year. and it looks like they are going to be able to do that. You know, in the House and Senate bill, there were some compromises worked out in order to get people like Susan Collins and others on.

Collins wanted to see the compromise that was in the House bill when it came to Salt, the state and local tax deductions included in the Senate. So you're going to be seeing them work things out like that when it goes to conference. But honestly, I don't really see anything stopping it at this point. It's unbelievable, because if you'd asked me, I don't, by the way, I don't mean to harp on the consensus view and say they're all idiots and I knew better.

I didn't know. I didn't make predictions that were really different than all of this. I just withheld my immediate judgment because this was a guarantee just a month or two ago that we could never get tax reform, even more recently than that. And then it happens now to get even more excited to really gear the Coffefe meter up to 11. Amanda, is there any shot that we get entitlement reform? I mean, we might. like you said, I'm not going to put anything past Trump. I know that he said he would not touch these things during the campaign.

But who knows? I mean, his main platform was immigration. We haven't seen too much going on there. I mean, we've seen a crackdown with ICE and, you know, border patrol and stuff like that. But we haven't seen, you know, him exactly sticking to the script. I mean, if you look at Ann Coulter's Twitter feed right now, you know, she'll tell you that the border wall there's zero construction, but we're going, you know, but we have tax reforms. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure he might touch it.

Conservatives would be obviously on board for that. I don't think the populace base is totally 100% behind that. That's not their main concern. But I wouldn't put it past him to touch it. Anne Coulter's Twitter feed is the evidence of this. You're exactly right. Because Trump zigzags. He's zigzagged so you can't really pin him down.

This is the cofefefei, by the way. He puts out so much cofefefe all the time that by the time you catch up. up to the one crazy thing he's doing over here, he's on to something else. And this isn't just the personal stuff and the language or whatever. Even though he does throw salty language in, even in the pitch for entitlement reform in Missouri that we just watched, he throws in bad words and things. But by the time he's over here, then he's moving on to the border wall or he's moving on to entitlement reform. It's hard to keep up with that, and it's really hard to make predictions. Predictions only work when you can model normal times and normal experiences. And that's

why maybe the polls were all right during the age of Romney, but we're not, we are not in normal times. Now, before we get on, we have so much more to talk about, the real person of the year, and the first little bad news we'll talk about with Mr. Mike Flynn and what that means for the administration. But first, you can probably tell you, looking in my eyes, you can see how excited I am, I'm just sucking on this candy cane to keep me awake for the sugar. I have not slept in days. I've been so excited about tax reform. But when you are ready to sleep, it's very important.

I'm going to crash after this. I'm probably going to get my customary 14 hours of sleep. Sleep is very important. You spend a third of your life doing it. I spend about two thirds of my life doing it. And there are a ton of online mattress retailers popping up these days. I have moved around a bunch in my 20s from college to New York to L.A. I've always bought a new mattress.

I don't move it with me. It's expensive. Mattress shopping is terrible. I hate it more than even regular shopping. So as a millennial, I don't want to spend a ton of money. I want to get the best deal possible for the quality. And I never want to leave my chair. I want to stay glued to it.

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You'll get $50 towards your custom mattress. Helixleep.com slash noles, $50 off your order. helixsleep.com slash knolls. All right. Even the thought of sleeping on one of those lovely helix beds has gotten me kind of tired. But don't forget our third episode of the conversation is coming up on Tuesday, December 12th at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific, featuring the one and the only, the boss man himself, the slayer of lefty snowflakes, Ben Shapiro. Subscribe today to be a part of the conversation.

You can ask Ben live questions. He will answer everyone that they have time for. And they're coming in basically in order. So sign up right now and you can talk to Ben. I know half my Twitter feed is just people trying to talk to Ben. So you can subscribe today and you'll be able to do it. It will stream live on the Daily Wire Facebook page and the Daily Wire YouTube channel. You can all watch it for free, but only subscribers can ask the questions.

Log into our website, DailyWire.com. Head over to the conversation page to watch the live stream. And then you can just type right into the DailyWire chat box. answer all of your questions, all of the life-changing questions in the order they come in. Subscribe to get your questions in by Tuesday, December 12th, 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific. Now, the trouble is this. Not only do you get that. That would be enough of a sell, I think. But if you subscribe right now, the trouble is this. If you're not subscribed, you can't continue to watch the show. Thank you to everyone who does subscribe. You keep the lights on and cofefe and my cup.

If you haven't, go there right now. You get me. You get the conversation thing. Get the Andrew Cliven show. You get Ben. I don't know if you've noticed the weather around you since we've gotten tax reform, but I am up to my ears in leftist tears. They are pouring out everywhere. I hope you haven't logged on to Facebook or Twitter because they are seeping out there. You'll fry your whole computer. Get the only vessel that will allow you to hold all of those tasty, salty, leftist tears, hot or cold. The Leftist Tears Tumblr.

Go to the DailyWire.com right now for an annual membership. It's $10 a month, $100 for an annual membership. If you get the ladder, you get the leftist. just here's Tumblr, dailywire.com. After all of that great news, we'll be right back. You know the holiday season is upon us. You know Christmas shopping has landed because that was just like 10 minutes of telling you all the great stuff that you have to get right now. But now we've got to bring it down a little bit.

I know we're having such a great cofefe day. I got the mistletoe sitting right behind me if anybody gets any ideas who isn't named Marshall. President Trump has re-endorsed, endorsed again, beleaguered Alabama's Senate candidate Roy Moore. He said, quote, Democrats' refusal to give even one vote for massive tax cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, border wall, military pro-life, VA, judges, Second Amendment, and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi Schumer puppet. He went on. 280 characters were not enough. Quote, putting Pelosi Schumer liberal puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders.

and so much more. Look at your 401k since the election. Good point. Highest stock market ever, jobs are roaring back. Where's the lie? I don't know. Amanda, should Trump have re-endorsedmore like this? Was this the right call? Normal presidents would probably not do this. They would probably at the least not say anything. That's a safe thing to do. If not come out and denounce that. But President Trump is not a normal president. So for him coming out, I mean, I guess I was a little surprised, even though I shouldn't have been. And as you noticed, he didn't see anything about the accusations. He was just like, it doesn't matter if we need to push this agenda forward.

And I think that kind of, I mean, this is a really gross thing all around. But if you look at what's happened on the left, I mean, we had Al Franken. He's still, you know, in office, they're going to have a nice investigation. So that kind of watered down these allegations as well. Kanye hasn't stepped down, even though Pelosi told him to. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So this, this Me Too movement has kind of been watered down a little bit. The people of Alabama, I think it was 71 percent, don't even believe the accusations because there's such a distrust with media for good reason. That's not to say these accusations are not true. I'm just saying that's kind of the consensus in Alabama. That's always right. So I don't think it particularly hurts Trump, but it is a bold move for him to come out and say this. I think any other Republican president would not touch it at the very least. But that is not President Trump. That is not Donald Trump. Now, Laura, you're a real journalist, so you deal in numbers, and I deal in Cofafe. So I'd like to know, how close is more? Can he win? Did he need President Trump's re-endorsement to win?

I don't think he needed Trump's endorsement. He is ticking back up in the polls after Doug Jones. We saw him take the lead a little bit when this was first in the new cycle and dominating the new cycle. But as you said, you know, with the Franken and the Conyers allegations, that kind of was a little bit of a gift to more. I would like to say, though, that I think there's a pretty big distinction between someone who has been accused of molesting children and Franken, who has been accused of sexual harassment. There's another difference, too, by the way, which is that all of the Roy Moore accusations, and I'm not saying they're not credible, they seem perfectly credible, but all of those happened 40 years. years ago and those photos of Al Franken are from within the last 10 years of him getting hands in with the troops. Yeah, I don't think though that them happening 40 years ago makes them any less relevant or makes them any less important. I mean, as we know, women don't come forward when these things happen. I mean, these women were children. There was 14-year-old, you know, 13-year-old.

Was there 13? I thought it was 14, 16 and 17. It was probably 14-16. But the point still stands that they were underage. And this is my question, though, do you not think that it, obviously those allegations, whether they're credible or not, just that they're made, should cause some reflection. But does it not say something about Roy Moore's character, that he hasn't had any accusations within 40 years? If he were some kind of creepy sex guy, then what we, even if we conclude that, we could say he seems to have reformed himself for four decades. That, I think that says, something about his character today. I would say that you can't really say that someone has reformed themselves when they aren't even admitting any wrongdoing. And I think that all of the accusations are credible. And there have been multiple women that have come out over the course of his career.

And maybe you could say that no one came forward because at some point he got married. And he has been married to Kayla since then. Apparently faithfully. Apparently. But again, that doesn't mean that he has reformed when he's there in the church saying that you know, he didn't do this and he is saying that he knows the right way and his way is God's way when he can't even admit any wrongdoing. I'm sorry, but I really don't think that there's any reform there. I mean, and then another difference is that Franken has admitted wrongdoing.

Now, Conyers, of course, is also denying all the allegations, but you aren't seeing Democratic leaders do what Trump did, and Democratic leaders are saying you need to step down and you should step down now. Yeah, maybe it took them a week to say that. It took them 20 years after Bill Clinton to say that. It took them a lot more. We're going to weak. Yeah, and the left is starting to reckon with that. Bill Clinton also was, you know, went through an entire trial. I mean, if we're going to get into all this.

The left, he went through a trial because Republicans made it. Yes, at the time. But you are also seeing left wing or left wing groups as well as senators come forward and wanting to go back to that. I mean, it was kind of crazy. Gillibrand, when Gillibrand, yes, there is probably some political motivation behind her doing that. but she did come forward and say that Clinton should have resigned if we go back to it now. It is certainly convenient now.

Yes. I mean, I wouldn't say it's necessarily convenient for certain outside groups that weren't around then. And they're coming forward saying that, yes, the left should reckon with what Bill Clinton did. But again, if we are going to talk about everything, which I think that we should, then we also should talk about the fact that Trump himself was accused by 16 women. So this is something that is a really big topic in D.C., right? now, it's something that isn't going to go away. And I think you're going to see a lot more name, people being named in Congress on both sides of the aisle. And it's something that Congress

needs to handle, and they should probably handle it as expeditiously as they possibly can't. You know, I will say, I did notice those left-wing groups didn't come forward in October or November of 2016. I noticed they waited a few months until the Clintons were no longer viable. But it's true. They're dealing with it now. And you make this great point about the reckoning with Roy Moore, which is, I think it's certainly evidence that if those allegations are true, for decades of good behavior and of not doing creepy, weird sex stuff, is evidence of reform. But he's the guy out there on this pedestal saying that I'm the candidate of Christian virtues, and he hasn't acknowledged that these accusations are true. He hasn't apologized. He hasn't done a lot

of things that one would hope a Christian would do if the accusations are credible. But of course, there are a ton of political calculations that go into all of this. That is the bit that makes Roy Moore look a little slick and a little oily, even if he's been a good guy for 40 years, that he can't admit it is a little tough to reckon with, for sure. And even beside that, it's not all cofefefe news today. Bob Mueller has indicted former Trump advisor, Mike Flynn, for lying to the FBI. Now, Andy McCarthy thinks this is evidence that Mueller doesn't have anything on Trump. He thinks that if Mueller had something on Trump, he would have gotten Mike Flynn to plead guilty to a crime related to Russia conspiracy.

And that way it's the evidence of the crime, and then that way they can get the big dog who ordered him. But he didn't do that. He just pled guilty to a procedural crime. Mark Levin thinks the same thing. He says that there's nothing to this Russia conspiracy issue and collusion. Laura, does Mueller have anything on Trump? Well, I think that none of us can really say that we know if Mueller has anything on Trump. but I will say that I don't necessarily agree with that assessment that you just mentioned.

And I think that the fact that Flynn only pled guilty to one charge is a sign that he's cooperating with the investigation and that there's some dealings going on. And so the reason he was only charged with one count was because Mueller is working with him to get a bigger fish. That's certainly the consensus view. That's certainly the consensus view, but why that charge? Because given the fact that we have seen Mueller be very calculating, if you aren't going to cooperate with him, then maybe he will charge you with more counts if he has the evidence. If someone is going to cooperate and he thinks that there is someone bigger who committed a far more treasonous crime or some other thing that he wants, thread that he wants to pursue and someone is cooperating with him, then he's going to work out a plea deal with that. But the mainstream media, they had to walk back all of their reporting on this.

They said that it seemed that Flynn was ordered by Jared Kushner to conspire with Russian to call Russia. What we then learned is he called members of the United Nations, including Russia, and said, don't vote to destroy Israel. Don't vote to condemn Israel in this particular resolution. I just wonder if it is this plea deal, which seems to be the consensus view, then why didn't Flynn get him to plea guilty to a crime, to any crime that would help him further the case that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Why would he just get him on this little procedural, and I don't mean to say lying to the FBI is not a big deal, but it was a procedural crime. It was a crime that was caused by the investigation itself.

Amanda. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. No, that's kind of the point here that McCarthy at National Review was making is that that's not how it works. And he was a former prosecutor. That's not how this would work. He would get him on something bigger if he had it. You know, he wouldn't just go after committing, you know, lying to the FBI. So that's kind of the point here is that this is all he has. And it looks like, I mean, as of now, we have no evidence of collusion, which is not even a crime. This is the only thing we have is that he lied to the FBI.

I mean, what Flynn did is he reached out to Russian, you know, Russians after President Trump was elected. So when he was the president elected, and he was president elected, and he was part of the incoming administration. That's nothing. Again, we just, we have more of nothing coming up. There's no collusion. There's no nothing. More and more, as this progresses, looks like a witch hunt. I hate to use that term, but that's exactly what it looks like. Unless we have something soon, I mean, I don't see anything. If someone can tell me one piece of Russian collusion, which again, it's not a crime, I'd love to hear it, but we have nothing thus far. The only thing we have is Flynn lying to the FBI, which is not small potatoes. I'm not saying that.

but where is the crime? Like I just, I don't see anything. You know, it is a witch hunt, certainly, but sometimes there are witches. Laura, do you have any thoughts on who might fall? If Mueller does have something? Do you have any thoughts on where this could lead? Or do you agree with Amanda that basically we're seeing the last throes of a witch hunt?

I don't think we're seeing the last throws of a witch hunt. I think that this could go all the way to the present, not necessarily on a collusion, which again is not. illegal to be discussing things with foreign states. When you're an incoming administration, of course. When you're an incoming administration, yes. But we saw his tweet this weekend, which, of course, you have to take every tweet that comes from the president with the grain of salt because it could not be true.

That's the state that we're living in right now. But Trump's tweet pretty much says that he knew that Flynn committed a crime when he fired Comey. And if that timeline plays out, and if that timeline is accurate and Trump did know that Flynn had lied to the FBI when he fired Comey, then that is pretty strong evidence of an attempt to obstruct justice. And so that is where Mueller will be able to get him if that is something that he is looking at. And now I would say that the president has opened himself up to more scrutiny. Of course, the lawyer did say, hey, I penn that tweet. That being said, we've never heard the lawyers say that before. And so again, either way, this is something that Mueller has to be looking

at more now, given that Trump threw this outfit. Certainly. And you can always indict a ham sandwich. So there is, like, it is very difficult. I don't mean that glibly. It is difficult for these investigations to conclude without getting somebody for something. But the question is, are we going to continue to hear insinuations of so-called Russia collusion? Or are we, are they basically going to bring this down to some procedural crime and we'll get Scooter Libby Part 2 or something. I don't know. The tweets could get him in trouble. That is the cost of all the great communication that you get out of Twitter, bypassing the mainstream media going direct to the American people. The cost of that is you open yourself up to a lot of on the record statements and your claims

back checked. Yeah, and just one thing. I know Ben Shapiro talked about this earlier, even that, even, let's say, because of that tweet, let's say Trump, that was from Trump. Even that would possibly not be obstruction of justice. Ben Superior said he was looking at all the statutes, and that wouldn't be obstruction of justice because the investigation is still going on. He can fire Comey for whatever reason he wants. And we still have this special counselor. Nothing happened there.

So it's still proceeding. So even that, worst case scenario, would not, technically not be obstruction of justice. I haven't personally looked at those statutes. I'm just taking this from Ben Shapiro, who is who is a lawyer and said, looked at them. So, uh, Ben is not exactly the most pro-Trump guy in the world. He's not wearing MAGA had every day. So I do take it pretty significantly if he's pointing that out. Well, this does get to the most important question in the news today. Forget Flynn, forget taxes and the economy and everything. Time magazine has its short list of person of the year.

Now that list includes the dreamers, quote unquote. You know, the dreamers. The dreamers, you know, that's the euphemism of the year. A little rocket man, Kim, Kim, Jung-Un, anti-American dumb dumb Colin Kaepernick, Kaepernick, the hashtag Me Too movement, Bob Mueller, and others. Amanda, Laura, who is the person of the year, regardless of whether or not they are on Times list? Laura, we'll start with you. Oh, my gosh, I don't even want to. Who could possibly be named Times Person of the Year? Well, the question is who should be the person of the year and who is Time going to name?

I assume those are very different questions. They are. I think that time may try to go with something broader. So I think that given everything that's being discussed across the country right now, I could see them going with me too. Yeah, I kind of agree. That's a big movement that, you know, the sexual harassment, assault, reckoning that the U.S. is happening is not going to go away. And it really did become a big force this year. So I would maybe say that that's where they're going to. And it has, of all of the slackivist campaigns, and we get a new one every single day, it does appear that hashtag Me Too has overtaken, hashtag Take a Knee for the virtue signaling. So that is the one we're talking about. That might get it. Amanda, who do you think? Yeah, I think they're going to choose the Me Too campaign. But, I mean, if we didn't know Time

Magazine was left wing before, I mean, these, I mean, the Dreamers, Robert Mueller, I mean, Jeff Beezos, like, anyone who Donald Trump doesn't like is like on this list. But I think they're going to go with the Me Too campaign, which is not a person, which is kind of weird. And who should it be? I don't know. Trump, I'll just say Trump. It obviously should. There's no question.

I mean, this is what happens when you get a showman and a showrunner and a reality TV megastar to be your president is, at least for the first year, he's the guy, right? He is the guy. When was the last time you had a meal? As desperately as you tried for Trump not to come up, someone had to bring up whatever tweet he's, sent out. I don't know. It was like the 90s was the last time I talked. I didn't talk about that guy. Outrageous. Yeah, I think that's probably true. Although, if they do go with the dreamers, you could always have the compliment to that would be the nightmares of all the voters who made Donald Trump, the president. I'm sure they would give it to the nightmare for 2017.

But pretty cofefefe on our end. Thank you both for being here. Laura Baron Lopez from the Washington Examiner. Great to have you. We'll have to have you back. And Amanda Presti Giacomo from the Daily Wire, excellent as always to have you. That's our show. I was yapping so much during the show. I only had a little bit of my candy cane to celebrate the beginning of Advent. We will be back as long as this mistletoe doesn't get me arrested for the hashtag me-toothing. And if that doesn't happen, if the Hollywood crumbling doesn't affect my studio too, we will be back here tomorrow. I am Michael Knowles. It's the Michael Knowles Show. Come back tomorrow. We'll do it all again. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson.

Executive producer Jeremy Boring. Senior producer Jonathan Hay. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Our technical producer is Austin Stevens. edited by Alex Zingaro. Audio is mixed by Mike Coramina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Noles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production. Copyright Forward Publishing 2017.