On Wednesday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles talks about the moment at the recent Democratic Party presidential primary debate when Pete Buttigieg destroys Beto O’Rourke for his stance on guns. Video and partial transcript below:
Beto O’Rourke [is] trying to play into that left lane. Beto’s campaign is falling apart, [and] there is pretty much no reason he should be at this debate anymore. And so he’s he’s been trying to signal that he’s as left as they come over the past few months. This is after a career where he played himself off mostly as a moderate in Congress — and so he obviously doesn’t believe in anything — but he felt leftism was going to bring him all the way. It looks like that’s not going to work.
So one last try, he’s going to say that we’re going to undermine the Second Amendment. He’s going to take away all your guns, going to go door-to-door, take them all away.
COOPER: How exactly are you going to force people to give up their weapons? You don’t even know who has those weapons.
O’ROURKE: Look, we’re gonna make sure that the priority is saving the lives of our fellow Americans. I think almost everyone on this stage agrees that it’s not right, and as president, would seek to ban the sale of AR-15s and AK-47s. Those are weapons of war. They were designed to kill people effectively [and] efficiently on a battlefield.
COOPER: To be clear, exactly how are you going to take away weapons from people who do not want to give them up and you don’t know where they are?
O’ROURKE: If someone does not turn in an AR-15 or an AK-47 — one of these weapons of war — or brings [it] out in public and brandishes it in an attempt to intimidate, as we saw when we were at Kent State recently, then that weapon will be taken from them. If they persist, there will be other consequences from law enforcement.
Other consequences, so we’re going for it. I’m Beto! Hell yeah, we’re going to take your AR-15! We’re going door to door. We’re gonna get the cops to come and steal all your guns and completely undermine the Constitution.
One thing that really bothers me — his was probably the highlight of the night, in terms of Orwellian language — every aspect of this gun debate is dishonest. So there’s no such thing as a mandatory buyback. The government didn’t sell you your gun in the first place, so it’s not going to buy it back from you. I guess you could try to buy guns from people if you’re the government, but if it’s a mandatory buyback, then you ain’t buying it. It’s not like it’s a free exchange where money is changing hands. It’s the government confiscating your weapons. Mandatory buyback, it’s absolutely outrageous.
Same thing with weapons of war. All weapons are weapons of war … all of firearm technology advances because of war, because of armed conflict. That is the impetus for improving firearm technology, that’s been true since the dawn of time and will remain true in the future.
And then the other one is assault weapon. All weapons are assault weapons. All weapons are assault weapons, they are designed to assault you. If a weapon is not designed to assault you, it’s not a weapon. Like this leftist tears tumbler is not a weapon because it’s not meant to assault you — it’s meant to receive the leftist tears after you have been assaulted by facts and logic. So that language just goes on and on throughout the entire debate. Beto is running on it, it’s not going anywhere, he probably won’t even be at the next debate.
Pete Buttigieg, however, sees Bernie’s going far, hard left, Beto’s going hard left, [and] Liz Warren doesn’t know exactly where she wants to be. So Buttigieg sees an opening. At the early part of this primary, he was doing pretty well. He was getting some press because he was the reasonable one. He was at least pretending to be a Christian, he was at least pretending to be moderate. He was at least pretending to be a good ol’ boy from the Midwest. And so Buttigieg takes on Beto O’Rourke head-on, and pretty much wipes the floor with him on the question of guns.
O’ROURKE: Let’s follow their inspiration and lead, and not be limited by the polls and the consultants and the focus groups … we have time to do what’s right there.
BUTTIGIEG: The problem isn’t the polls, the problem is the policy. And I don’t need lessons from you on courage, political or personal. Everyone on this stage is determined to get something done. Everyone on this stage recognizes — or at least I thought we did — the problem is not other Democrats who don’t agree with your particular idea of how to handle this. The problem is the National Rifle Association, and their enablers in Congress, and we should be united in taking the fight to them.
Poor Beto, you can see it in his eyes. He just thinks, oh man, I totally walked into that. He’s saying we need the courage to steal people’s guns and undermine the Constitution, and there’s Pete Buttigieg, who comes in — he’s one of two people on that stage who’s ever served in the military — saying I don’t need lessons from you about courage. Totally wipes the floor with him.
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