Ep. 2031 - Bill Maher Goes OFF On Rising Socialists, May Vote Republican

**Michael Knowles** (0:00)
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Voters headed to the ballot box yesterday for primaries in Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, Virginia, and Washington to choose between radical DSA socialists and ordinary center of the party Democrats. And the problem is, today, there is basically no difference. We will get into the candidates and the results. Then the Cambridge City Council votes to restore supposedly racist gunshot detectors after black racial activists got another black man killed. And Politico reports that the GOP has a Groyper problem. But there's more beneath the surface. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show. My pals at the Oxford Union have gone viral for a recent debate starring Tommy Robinson, an anti-Islam activist. The clip has a Muslim student at Oxford making a joke about how Tommy would be ripped apart and killed by the angry Muslim mob outside, if not for the rules and decorum and privileges afforded by the Oxford Union. And the right is apoplectic over this. They're missing some key details of what's going on, so we'll get there in a moment. First though, the elections. This is pretty wild. This is a live issue right now because we're now at Banana Republic, so we can't conduct elections in a single day. Now it takes days and weeks sometimes to finish our elections. But really tight races all throughout the country over these candidates, especially in the Democrat primary, that's what really matters. You have the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, really on the rise, huge faction of the Democrat Party, now more popular than elected members of Congress among rank-and-file Democrat voters. And so this was the story of the election is, will the centrist, moderate, mainstream Democrats be able to fend off the insurrection from the Socialist wing of the Democrat Party? But that framing just totally misses what's actually going on. So one of the key congressmen who is being targeted here is this guy, Sri Thanedar. Sri Thanedar.
Last time I checked it, right before the show went live, they were really in a neck-and-neck race, still counting the votes. It's probably going to drag on for a little while, though. I'll ask the producers to give me an update if they finally make a call.
The official story of this election is that the Socialist challenger, Donovan McKinney, is trying to unseat this two-term congressman, the more establishment Democrat, Sri Thanedar, for this Detroit area seat. Sri has been in Congress for two terms now. The way that you, in this audience, the creme de la creme over here, it just right-wingers generally might have experienced Sri Thanedar actually involves me. It was when I was on Piers Morgan's show, what was it, eight or nine months ago, we were debating the Insurrection Act, some of the ICE protests and the deportations. And this congressman, Thanedar, came on and he said, this is an authoritarian, tyrannical power grab by Donald Trump, and he has no right to do this, and this is terrible. This is when Trump was threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act. And I asked the congressman a simple question about it that he could not answer.

**Piers Morgan** (3:55)
There is this raging argument now about whether it is constitutional to do what Trump is rolling out in places like Chicago.

**Sri Thanedar** (4:02)
It's unconstitutional. The solution is to empower the local law enforcement.

**Michael Knowles** (4:07)
Congressman, are you familiar with the Insurrection Act?

**Sri Thanedar** (4:10)
Yes, I am.

**Michael Knowles** (4:12)
So what do you think that's for? You said that this was illegal for the federal government to send National Guard into cities and states. What do you think the Insurrection Act is for?

**Piers Morgan** (4:22)
Congressman, do you actually know what the Insurrection Act says?

**Sri Thanedar** (4:27)
Well, look, what we saw happen in January 6 in the Congress. That's insurrection.

**Piers Morgan** (4:34)
Are you familiar with what the Insurrection Act allows? Yes, I am.

**Sri Thanedar** (4:37)
But look, this president has used all kinds of excuses to break the law. This president has used…

**Michael Knowles** (4:43)
No, no, but that is the law. So what is the law, Congressman? You say you're familiar with the Insurrection Act, but you don't seem to be able to describe what it does. What do you think the Insurrection Act does?

**Sri Thanedar** (4:51)
Look, look, the issue here is that we need our cities safe.

**Michael Knowles** (4:55)
We need our cities safe. The real issue is January 6th. What? This is a pretty simple question for a federal legislator, especially one who is spouting off on whether or not Trump has the right to invoke the Insurrection Act. He says, this is illegal, this is wrong, you can't do this. And you say, well, what do you think the Insurrection Act is for? He doesn't know, he's not familiar with the relevant piece of federal legislation as a federal legislator. And the craziest part, that exchange goes on for like five minutes. I don't have time to get into the whole thing. He never comes up with an answer, spoiler alert. The craziest thing about it is, in this election, Shri Thanedar is the moderate choice. That's the moderate choice. This is a guy who wants to, who has openly supported abolishing ICE, impeaching Trump over nothing, supports socialist medicine, Medicare for all, as they call it, but single payer socialist medicine. The Green New Deal was at $90 trillion.