Ep. 391 - Trump's Crystal Ball
Episode Stats
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180.14574
Summary
Breaking news: A$AP Rocky has been released from a Swedish jail, and is on his way back to the United States. Then, President Trump tweets about the dangers of living in Baltimore. Is Trump summoning some sort of dark, psychic force to predict the future? No, but we ll examine his simple trick for prediction. Plus, we examine why people hate the press.
Transcript
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A Manhattan art gallery owner was apparently beaten for walking down the streets of New York
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in a MAGA hat. The news networks black out the story, but they make sure to spend lots of time
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covering the possibility that Trump supporters at a Trump rally might chant, send her back.
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We examine why people hate the press. Then Elijah Cummings has his house broken into just hours
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before Trump tweets about the dangers of living in Baltimore. Is Trump summoning some sort of dark,
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psychic force to predict the future? No, but we'll examine his simple trick for prediction.
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Finally, the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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By the way, we have breaking news coming out. The American rapper A$AP Rocky, who is being held in a
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Swedish jail, has now been released. He's on his way back to the United States. President Trump just
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tweeted about it. Quote, A$AP Rocky released from prison and on his way home to the U.S.
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from Sweden. It was a rocky week. Get home A$AP. A$AP. He tweeted about this. Trump has been central
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in this story because when A$AP Rocky was first held in this jail, he had some of his pals, his
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mutual friends with the president, like Kanye West, call up Trump and say, please help get A$AP Rocky out
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out of the jail. Trump made a big issue about this behind the scenes to the Swedish government. Then
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he tweeted about it to the Swedish prime minister. Then he had a phone call with the Swedish prime
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minister. The Swedish prime minister said no. Trump didn't take no for an answer. Now A$AP Rocky is
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coming home. This is a great story all around. And because I think I can predict the future,
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or at least it seems that way, it ties in perfectly with our theme today. President Trump's crystal ball,
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why it seems like he can just predict the future. He says that Elijah Cummings and Baltimore is a
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terrible place. He says, you know, it's rat infested. It's ridden with crime. And unbeknownst to
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anybody, just hours earlier, Elijah Cummings' house had been broken into in Baltimore. What is that about?
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It all has to do with ideology. That's what it all boils down to. We'll get to that in a second. But
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package. Expressvpn.com slash Michael to learn more. Can President Trump predict the future? Does
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he have a Marianne Williamson-esque crystal ball where he summons the dark psychic forces and sees
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into the future? No, but it sometimes seems like it is. And there's a very simple reason for this.
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The reason is ideology. A great, here's a great example of it that actually doesn't directly
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involve Trump. The mainstream media. So the mainstream media, they're like the counter example.
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Trump can, looks like he can predict the future. The mainstream media can't see the present. They
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can't even see the past. They distort history. They distort what's going on in the present.
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They're totally blind to what's going on because of ideology. Here's the story. A Manhattan art
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gallery owner says that he was beaten by a bunch of thugs in the streets for wearing a MAGA hat.
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So he's got his red hat on, make America great again. Because I know the mainstream media will
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immediately assume it was a white guy, not a white guy. I don't know what his ethnicity is,
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but he certainly isn't a white guy. He's walking around Chinatown and this guy has a big
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shiner on his eye. Here's his side of the story.
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Wearing this hat, he started cursing at me. Trump hat, blah, blah, blah. And basically,
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one kid took my head and bashed it against the scaffolding pole. It all happened within
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10 seconds. I jumped out, crossed the street, and I called the cops. This is my situation right now.
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Okay. No reason not to believe this guy. He's got a pretty brutal, gory shiner on his eye and his
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cheek. His whole left side of his face is swollen up with blood. His eye is basically swollen shut.
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And I'm not surprised we've seen attacks like this before in the US. I mean, now, look, even I,
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when I go out and if I've got my MAGA hat on, I look around me because the left can be extremely
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violent. I was assaulted at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Andy Ngo actually got
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really physically hurt. People were throwing things at him, punching him. So this thing does
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happen. We've seen it happen on camera before. It looks like we're seeing it happen on camera again.
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Two law enforcement sources said that they're a little skeptical that it was a huge group of people
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doing it. They think it might've just been a one-on-one brawl and the guy declined medical
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attention on the scene. He went later to get medical attention. He was diagnosed with a bone
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fracture. So the guy's kind of broke his face up a little bit. Guess how much coverage this got
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on the network news? Boop. Zero. None. None whatsoever. And the reason I keep using this term
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allegedly, apparently, it looks like is, I don't know, I guess there's a small possibility that this
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was a hoax. I don't know what kind of hoax it would be where a guy breaks half of his face,
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but let's say it is. Compare this to an actual hoax in the case of Jussie Smollett, right? Jussie
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Smollett had exactly the opposite story that he was walking down the street and two guys in MAGA
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hats came up to him and said, hey, Empire, because someone's going to recognize Jussie Smollett on the
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street. Give me a break. He said, hey, Empire, this is MAGA country in South Central Chicago. Yeah, okay.
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Definitely, guys, for sure. And it turns out the story totally fell apart. He paid his two
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trainers to come and beat him up. They were two Nigerian white supremacists, I guess.
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And it was just total nonsense and he didn't have any actual injuries.
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The mainstream media, the network news covered that story breathlessly. So the total fake story
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gets weeks of coverage. The apparently, from all we know, from all we can see, real story of an attack
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from leftists on a Trump supporter, no network news coverage at all. Why is that? It's because
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the fake story fit their fake ideological narrative and the real story didn't fit their narrative.
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And because the real story didn't fit their narrative, they didn't cover it because they
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privilege their ideology over the reality of what is in front of them. If you went to the mainstream
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media and left-wing politicians and you said, hey, what are you going to believe?
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The leftist narrative, the story that has been circulating all around the mainstream press for
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the last two weeks, or your own lion eyes, what are you going to believe? What is right in front of
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you or the stories that you've all been telling each other? You know that they would pick the stories.
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They privilege their ideology over reality. Nowhere is this clearer than in the transgender debate.
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I mean, the transgender debate, which affects very few people in a physical and psychological way,
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has become this dominant major political story. A very prominent TV host might lose his job
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because he said that we shouldn't pump three-year-olds full of hormones and mutilate their bodies.
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We'll get to that story by the end of the show, but I bring it up now to point out
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between the ideology of transgenderism and the physical reality of, obviously, this man is a man,
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obviously, this woman is a woman. The left is choosing the ideology, the fantasy, the delusion,
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the narrative. So instead of covering the actual attack that happened, the networks were covering
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the possibility that Trump supporters might chant, send her back at the rally last night. So Trump was
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holding this rally last night. NBC goes out. They ask the president, what will happen if your supporters
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chant, send her back? No evidence that it's going to happen. Trump disavowed it after the last time,
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the first time that it happened. There's no evidence of that, but that's the story they're
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Mr. President, in Cincinnati, at your rally tonight, are you prepared to tell your supporters to stop if they
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begin chanting something problematic? I don't know what's going to happen. I can tell you this.
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I'm going to Cincinnati. The arena is a very large one, and we've sold it out. We could sell it out
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probably 10 times from what I hear. The applications for seats, as you know, never had an empty seat.
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The applications are very big. I have no idea. We have a great group of people. They love our country.
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They love the job we're doing. There it is, right? It's all hypothetical. Will this happen tonight?
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What will you do if this does happen? What would it be like if this were to happen? They're not
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covering a real story. They covered the real story last time at that one rally where some people
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briefly chanted, send her back, send her back. They covered it the next day. Trump said, I didn't
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like it. I wish they didn't do it. I don't think it's a good thing. I hope they don't do it again.
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So, perfectly legitimate for them to cover it then. Great response from Trump. That's it.
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Now they're covering a hypothetical story to President Trump, and they keep hammering it.
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They keep asking, well, do you have a message? What are you going to say to them? What do you
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think? And Trump has an excellent answer here. Do you have a message for them now, like before they
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go in? I do have a message. My message is for the people I'm going to. So we had over 100,000
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applications for whatever the size of the, I think it's a 14,000 seat arena, but we're
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way over 100 and I think 122,000 applications for those seats. You know what my message is?
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I love them. And I think they love me. I actually think they love me.
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Nailed it. Totally nailed it. That's the answer. I love, that's my message for them. I love them.
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This is the difference in the campaign. This is actually the Marianne Williams in principle.
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Marianne talking about love and the battlefield of love. She actually gets this. Love is an
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important part of politics. Love really is the basis of politics. Love of country, love of your
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community, love of your family, love of your extended national family. That's the basis of
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politics. Love of your ancestors, love of your children, love of your traditions, love of what's
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going to come in a few generations. This sums up different approaches of the left and the right
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to politics. You know, the left leaps to condemn. The left would always just, I condemn this. I
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disavow this. I hate this. I hate the past. I hate the future. I hate the present. I hate George
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Washington. I hate America. I hate all of it. I condemn everything. I want to tear down statues.
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The right doesn't leap to condemn. The right wants to improve. We all want to improve. Obviously,
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there are plenty of imperfect things. This is an imperfect world. You want to improve, but you
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want to start it from a place of love. You can see this in the academy, in the universities.
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The universities are a crystal ball. They're the future of the country. You look at the university
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20 years from now, that's what you're going to get as your country. And the universities did this
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in the 1970s. It's really coming to fruition now. They began indoctrinating students in curricula of
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critical theory, is what it's called. What Harold Bloom, the literary critic, called it is
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the school of resentment. So the prior approach to reading a piece of literature or looking at some
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text is you come from it loving it. You enjoy it. You want to learn from it. You want to gain
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wisdom from it. You want it to maybe entertain you, maybe edify you, maybe enlighten you. But that's
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the act of reading is, comes from that place of love. It's an enjoyment. It's a pleasure.
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What the school of resentment does is you totally flip that on its head. So instead of opening up,
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I don't know, I'll use an example actually from that literary critic, Harold Bloom. Instead of opening
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up Walt Whitman, great American poet, kind of the American poet, one of them, you open up
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leaves of grass and you say, what can I learn from Walt Whitman? What does this poem tell me about
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America? Instead, you open it up and you say, how is this guy a racist? How is this guy a sexist? How
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much better am I than this guy? I hate this guy. How wrong was he? That's the school of resentment.
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Harold Bloom actually one time in an interview, I believe with the Paris Review,
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said that a graduate student came into his class and said, we just had an American studies lecture
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for two hours about how Walt Whitman is a racist. That is the different approach. You can approach it
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from love or you can approach it from resentment. The left approaches from resentment. And I think
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that's fueling a lot of the backlash against elites in the media and elites in politics. And what it's
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really fueling is President Trump's crystal ball. What it's really fueling is President Trump's
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uncanny ability to predict things. He's not predicting anything. It's just that the resentful
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left is getting it all wrong. The ideological left is getting it all wrong. We'll see how that plays
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out. We'll see what that means, by the way, for international politics. First, I've got to thank our
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00:16:03.520
This is what is fueling a lot of the resentment against the elites of both parties and the media,
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et cetera. It's this feeling that they hate the American people. You know, my friend Elena Plott
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over at the Atlantic just has a piece out today and she was covering this Trump rally and she said,
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the big takeaway is these Americans don't want to be called racist all the time. They don't want to
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be called deplorable. They don't want to be called irredeemable. They're not racist. You know,
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she interviews one grandmother who said, she goes, look, I have 10 grandkids. Two of them are black.
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One of them's biracial. One of them's this, one's that. You know, I don't, I'm not a racist. I just
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like my country. I love my country and I don't, I don't want to be smeared all the time by people
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in office and people who are in the media. Perfectly fair point. But the, the, because the left,
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because the media really are filled with this resentment at the people of this country, at the
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country itself, at the history of this country, at the institutions in this country, they have to
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cover the hypothetical mean chant over the actual attack on a Trump supporter. They have to cover
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it. They, they, they would much rather cover that because that confirms their narrative that America's
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really xenophobic, nativist, bigoted, awful, terrible place. They would much rather cover that
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than an attack on a Trump supporter. What is the, what is the story of the attack on the Trump
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supporter show? Now maybe the conservatives aren't fascists. Maybe the conservatives aren't hopelessly
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racist. Maybe actually they've been misrepresented by the media. Maybe they just want to, as the hat
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says, make America great again. Maybe there's a little violence from the left. Maybe the left is
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fueled by violence. Maybe some Trump supporters are being attacked. Maybe everybody needs to calm down
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a little bit. Maybe people need to stop portraying Trump as Hitler. That can't be the case because they have
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their narrative in their head. So instead it's all the hypothetical, hypothetical. Trump is the force of
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darkness. He's evil. He's wicked. And the leftists are going to bring us out of that awful, awful America
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that we all know into that new utopia. They're going to, as President Obama used to say, fundamentally
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transform America. And why do they have to fundamentally transform it? Because America's
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rotten to the core. And so you've got to fundamentally transform it if you want to have
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a good country. Look, politics is a contact sport. Okay. And conservatives were very hard on Obama.
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I'm not saying they were, were not hard on Obama, but there is something different in the quality of
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the left's attacks on Trump and Trump supporters than there was in the attacks on conservatives,
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from conservatives toward Obama. Listen to how Morning Joe describes President Trump at his rally.
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He actually reminded me, you see the Austin Powers movies? Oh yeah. Did you see the Austin Powers?
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Oh yeah. Yeah. He sort of reminded me at times like a fat bastard. At times he was like looking at the
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audience who made the character. It's a character. Yeah. It's a character in Austin Powers and he's
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sniffing and he's looking around. He's like, thank you. I thought he was going to say, get into my
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stomach at one point. Um, this is a guy he is, as David Brooks said this morning in the New York
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Times, this is a guy is a force. Uh, and the only way the Democrats are going to beat him
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is with an equal force. The thing that the last night's rally showed, and it was a great,
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I think, I think it was a, uh, a great comparison with what the Democrats were doing. It showed that
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here was a guy that strutted across the stage. He, he was at being, he was being a demagogue.
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I would say Mussolini-like, uh, just, just picking at racial resentments constantly.
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He's a fat bastard, racist, fascist Mussolini. That's what he is. According to the very serious,
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very reasonable and very civil voices who wear suits and ties over at MSNBC. That's what he is.
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He's a fat bastard, right? Imagine, imagine if a conservative on television, on Fox News
00:20:16.460
had made fun of Barack Obama's appearance. I don't know if Obama wasn't fat, but I don't know,
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made fun of his appearance in some way. Could you imagine the outcry? First of all,
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they'd be fired immediately, whichever commentator said that. Imagine, look, there was one time at a,
00:20:32.460
at a rodeo in 2013 when a rodeo clown wore a mask of Obama and kind of danced around out there in
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the rodeo. He was instantly fired. Why? I still couldn't tell you. I don't know. You just weren't
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really allowed to make fun of Obama. Cause anytime you said anything about Obama, you were called a
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racist and a bigot, even though it didn't have any basis in reality. This we've talked in the last
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week and a half or two weeks, we've talked a lot about fantasy versus reality. Okay. And this is
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where, this is where you see in the media's awful behavior and the left's awful behavior, you see why
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it appears that Donald Trump can predict the future because the fantasy is, the fantasy is that America
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is a terrible place populated by bigots and fascists that has only ever wrought evil in the world.
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In reality, the opposite is true. America is the most tolerant, the most equitable, the most just,
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the most prosperous, the most free country in history. That's not sentiment. That's not just
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my preference and love of America speaking. It's just a fact.
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Multi-ethnic, multi-ideological, all sorts of people, multi-religious, all together,
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we've become the biggest economy in the world. The only superpower left on earth.
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We've more or less still got self-government, more or less still are a republic, more or less still
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encourage freedom, personal freedom, freedom of property, freedom of movement.
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The reality is that America, like all countries is imperfect, but it's a great place and, and
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Americans are great people and that's something to feel good about. So that's something to love
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about it. And that is why Trump keeps getting stuff right. Because he's not blinded by this
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ridiculous ideology of the left that tells them to believe their own narrative over their lion eyes.
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Frankly, he's not even blinded by the various ideologies that have cropped up on the right. I
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mean, this was the big argument against him in 2016 is that he's not ideologically conservative.
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I don't know that he's philosophically conservative. I doubt that he's ever read Edmund Burke or Michael
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Oakshot or Russell Kirk. He hasn't been steeped in the conservative movement. He didn't spend
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all of the nineties and two thousands going to lunches at the various think tanks in Washington,
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DC. He just sees what's in front of him. He can just see it. And that's why he tends to get things
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right. It's not that complicated. It's not 25 degree chess. He just has his eyes open and he's
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looking in front of him. And all of these other fools, some to the right of him, most of them to
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the left, are just totally blinded. They've got the blinders of their ideology and the blinders of
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their narrative on. And so they can't see what's right in front of them. So some people think he's
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Nostradamus. He's not. He just isn't blinding himself. And this cuts two ways, by the way.
00:23:28.940
There's a mostly good side to this. There is some downside. There is some unpleasantness
00:23:33.600
that comes from his lack of a sort of philosophical or ideological formation.
00:23:40.180
So the good side is it looks like he can predict the future. You saw this in Baltimore, right? He
00:23:45.820
points out how awful Baltimore is. Not that it's intrinsically awful, but it's been just destroyed
00:23:53.040
by political corruption, Democrat-led corruption in that city. It's been neglected. They've gone
00:23:58.840
through, what, three mayors in two years or something. And so Trump makes these comments.
00:24:04.040
And then a few days later, it comes out that Congressman Elijah Cummings, who was the object
00:24:11.100
of Trump's ire there, he's the Baltimore congressman, had his house broken into. And his house wasn't
00:24:17.180
broken into because Trump talked about him. His house had been broken into hours before Trump talked
00:24:22.560
about him. The Baltimore PD came out and said this burglary took place at 3.40 a.m. on Saturday.
00:24:29.200
Just hours later, Trump tweets about it. Is it because Trump is Nostradamus? No. It's because
00:24:34.700
everyone knows how rundown Baltimore is, and they're all just now pretending it isn't because Trump
00:24:39.020
talked about how it is rundown. Elijah Cummings himself used the same language to talk about Baltimore
00:24:47.420
I left my community of Baltimore, a drug-infested area, where a lot of the drugs that we're talking
00:24:54.720
about today have already taken the lives of so many children. The same children that I watched
00:25:04.040
14 or 15 years ago as they grew up, now walking around like zombies. This is only 40 miles away
00:25:13.560
from here. So Sanders, Bernie Sanders used the same language about Baltimore. Mayor of Baltimore,
00:25:19.340
Catherine Pugh used the same language. Congressman from Baltimore, Elijah Cummings used the same
00:25:23.480
language. Now, President Trump uses the same language. And so the left has to oppose him,
00:25:30.040
but Trump got it right. Because guess what? They were all right about Baltimore. If you predict
00:25:34.120
that somebody is going to get their house broken into in Baltimore, you're probably going to be right.
00:25:38.020
Right? This is not, it's, it's a crime ridden city. So yeah, obviously you're going to be right.
00:25:44.280
So, and this is the, this is the politically beneficial side for Trump not really having
00:25:48.560
much ideology. I mean, the other, ASAP Rocky is another example. The more ideological or
00:25:54.120
philosophically formed presidents might say, well, we need to let the justice system play out there in
00:25:58.740
Sweden. We can't use the bully pulpit of the United States to pressure a prime minister in Sweden
00:26:03.160
to release ASAP Rocky. And Trump just says, yeah, okay, forget about all that. Hey, Sweden,
00:26:08.020
let my guy go, let him go right now or there's going to be hell to pay. Guess what happens?
00:26:11.780
Within a week or two, they let the guy go. That's the plus side of not having that philosophical
00:26:16.320
foundation. There is an ugly side to it. There is genuinely an ugly side. We'll get to that in a
00:26:22.320
second. First, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. Then we'll get to the mailbag too,
00:26:27.040
by the way. So go over to dailywire.com. 10 bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me,
00:26:31.940
you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Walsh show. You get,
00:26:35.100
gosh, you get so much. You get another kingdom. You get to ask questions in the mailbag. You get
00:26:40.060
backstage. You get the leftist tears tumbler. This is really good. This is a nice accompaniment to
00:26:50.500
Trump's crystal ball because when you have those leftist tears, you can predict how things are
00:26:55.540
going to go. It opens your mind, man. It's like some Marianne Williamson secret potion. I mean,
00:27:01.400
it really opens your mind to the field of love. Make sure you go over there, get those leftist
00:27:05.880
tears. We'll be right back with a lot more. Here's the ugly side to not having that philosophical
00:27:22.100
and, or, or even perhaps ideological formation. Here's the, uh, the, the ugly side to just kind
00:27:28.800
of seeing what's in front of you. President Trump just tweeted out, not an hour ago, quote,
00:27:33.600
Kim Jong-un in North Korea tested three short range missiles over the last number of days.
00:27:38.060
These missile tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement, nor was there discussion
00:27:43.480
of short range missiles when we shook hands. There may be a UN violation, but chairman Kim does not
00:27:50.260
want to disappoint me with a violation of trust. There is far too much for North Korea to gain.
00:27:55.060
The potential as a country under Kim Jong-un's leadership is unlimited. Also, there is far
00:28:00.240
too much to lose. I may be wrong, but I believe that chairman Kim has a great and beautiful vision
00:28:04.900
for his country and only the United States with me as president can make that vision come true.
00:28:10.200
He will do the right thing because he is far too smart not to, and he does not want to disappoint
00:28:14.980
his friend, President Trump. Where do I begin? Obviously, most of this tweet, objectively speaking,
00:28:27.580
is not true. I don't think Kim Jong-un has a beautiful vision for his country. I don't,
00:28:34.320
he actually is probably pretty smart. He's been able to hold power in that country pretty well,
00:28:37.820
even though he got power very young. So I guess he is pretty smart. I don't think he cares really
00:28:42.380
about the friendship with Donald Trump. He may not want to disappoint Trump because he fears
00:28:46.840
nuclear missiles landing in North Korea. But what is this about? It's actually about the exact same
00:28:55.560
thing. It's about seeing what's in front of you. President Trump is looking in front of him and he's
00:29:01.620
seeing an ongoing negotiation with North Korea to get them to denuclearize. And he's saying, okay,
00:29:08.240
what can I do today that will make it more likely for Kim to denuclearize? Kim shot off a few short
00:29:13.340
range missiles. What can I do? Can I scream and yell about it? Is that going to help the negotiation?
00:29:19.260
Can I not say anything about it? Is that going to help the negotiation? Or can I try to flatter Kim?
00:29:24.780
Flatter and kind of threaten Kim. Is that going to help the negotiation? That's what this is about.
00:29:31.860
Trump concluded, rightly or wrongly, that it was the latter course, that by flattering,
00:29:36.260
by reminding Kim that they've got a good thing going on and that Trump is the only one who's
00:29:41.600
given Kim an opening, that that is going to help the negotiation. He has one good point here.
00:29:48.740
The one good point is what C.S. Lewis writes about in Screwtape Letters, which is that you can only act
00:29:54.420
in the present. In the Screwtape Letters, which is this book, you know, it's a series of letters
00:30:00.040
written from one demon to his nephew about destroying a human soul. And the advice that the demon gives to
00:30:08.400
his nephew is always get people thinking about the future and always get people thinking about the
00:30:14.860
past. Don't let them think about the present because the present is the only place where you
00:30:19.640
can actually act. It's the only place where you can make moral decisions. And it's a really good
00:30:24.680
insight. People, they harp so much on the future. We're not owed the future. The future is not,
00:30:28.820
the future that we envision almost certainly will not be what the future really looks like.
00:30:33.060
And we can't change the past. And people are mired in regret or they're mired in
00:30:37.280
optimism for the future or daydreaming about the future or preparing to be disappointed about the
00:30:44.700
future. Only in the present can you act, which is true. That's an important aspect. So
00:30:51.040
President Trump is saying, we're in the present. I don't care what this is going to look like in
00:30:55.620
history. I don't care what this means for the future. I'm just trying to move the ball down
00:31:00.080
the field. However, this tactic strikes our ears as absolutely egregious because it's untrue. I mean,
00:31:07.600
you know, Kim Jong-un is like one of the worst people on the face of the earth, maybe one of the
00:31:11.800
worst people in history. So ideally, what we would like is for you to be able to act in the present
00:31:17.540
without this kind of flattery, without this kind of dishonesty, and without this kind of wishful
00:31:21.840
thinking about Kim. This is the first time since Reagan that we've seen anything resembling this
00:31:28.640
sort of behavior. And as always, Trump turns it up to 11. So with Reagan, you saw major overtures
00:31:33.960
to the dictator of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev, who himself positioned himself as a reformer.
00:31:40.420
And they'd go over there. I mean, at the Reykjavik summit, Reagan and Gorbachev were talking about
00:31:44.600
abolishing all nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Reagan's advisors are saying, what are you doing? Stop,
00:31:48.880
don't talk about that. But you saw a similar kind of impulse from Reagan. Reagan was working in the
00:31:55.120
present. When that summit broke down, according to sources in the room, Reagan said to Gorbachev,
00:32:01.600
how could you do this to me? Very personal. You know, this is a personal relationship here.
00:32:07.040
Trump is trying to establish that personal relationship. It's ugly to us. We don't want
00:32:13.220
our president to have a personal relationship with Kim Jong-un because Kim Jong-un is one of the worst
00:32:17.160
people on earth. Will this pay off? I don't know. I don't think it's high risk for the reputation of
00:32:23.240
the United States. I think whoever the next president is can do whatever he wants and change
00:32:26.460
that relationship. It's very high risk for Trump. I mean, he'll look like a real schmuck if nothing
00:32:31.860
happens on this Korea thing. It's high risk to his reputation. But he's willing to do it because he
00:32:37.220
lives in the present. That is the advantage of his not being very ideological. And that is the
00:32:42.880
sometimes ugly and unpleasant disadvantage of his not being ideological. But that's what it is. And
00:32:48.460
that's why it looks like he can read into the future. I really wanted to get to this Mario Lopez
00:32:53.900
story. This Mario Lopez story, the guy from Extra and Access Hollywood. He came out and said that we
00:33:02.920
shouldn't, we'll just get to it. We'll narrow the mailbag down. I can't let this go. This story is so
00:33:08.540
important. Here's Mario Lopez on the Candace Owens show talking about transgender children. So
00:33:15.820
transgender three-year-olds. I'm never one to tell anyone how to parent their kids, obviously. And I
00:33:21.220
think if you come from a place- Maybe you should, though, because you seem to be doing something
00:33:23.840
right. Well, thanks. You know, and I always say if you come from a place of love, you know, you really
00:33:27.420
can't go wrong. But at the same time, my God, if you're three years old and you're saying you're
00:33:31.120
feeling a certain way or you think you're a boy or a girl, whatever the case may be,
00:33:35.780
I just think it's dangerous as a parent to make that determination then, okay, well,
00:33:42.040
then you're going to be a boy or a girl, whatever the case may be. And it's sort of alarming. And
00:33:47.240
my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on. You don't know anything about sexuality yet.
00:33:51.820
You're just a kid. Right. That is the most obvious and simple and restrained and moderate statement
00:33:59.860
that you could possibly make on the subject. This is, well, I just think it's sort of like a little
00:34:04.540
dangerous, you know, to mutilate your three-year-old child's genitals and put them on puberty-blocking
00:34:09.720
hormones and shoot them full of chemicals that will fundamentally change their biochemistry.
00:34:14.800
I just think maybe it's not a great idea. I just think maybe three-year-olds don't fully understand
00:34:20.500
their sexuality. Three-year-olds, you sick perverts. Three-year-olds, they're doing this.
00:34:25.980
And Mario Lopez says, you know, hey, maybe we shouldn't sexualize three-year-olds.
00:34:31.720
Yes. Most moderate statement in the world. Guess what? They're trying to fire him now.
00:34:37.700
So big meetings at NBC, I guess it is, to try to get him to lose his show.
00:34:43.560
He issued an apology. It's really pathetic, but I guess, look, he's got a lot of kids,
00:34:48.280
got to raise his family, don't want to lose all his money. Here's what Mario Lopez then said later,
00:34:52.760
quote, the comments I made were ignorant and insensitive. And now I have a deeper understanding
00:34:57.400
of how hurtful they were. I have been and always will be an ardent supporter of the LGBTQ community.
00:35:05.740
I'm going to use this opportunity to better educate myself. Moving forward, I will be more
00:35:10.300
informed and more thoughtful. Oh my gosh, this guy, this guy. Look, he had to do it. I'm sure he didn't
00:35:18.540
write a word of that. I assume his agents at CAA or WME or wherever he's represented,
00:35:23.580
all his lawyers probably wrote that up. Well, what trash, I mean, what a trash statement
00:35:28.100
and what a trash culture that would pillory him for this. And they're still probably going to
00:35:33.160
make him lose his show because the left is vindictive. They don't forgive. He shouldn't
00:35:37.240
have backed down from this. From a moral standpoint, he shouldn't have backed down. But just from a
00:35:42.300
practical standpoint, it's never enough. Appeasement doesn't work with these sick leftists.
00:35:47.500
These sick perverts are abusing children and are shooting them full of chemicals at age three
00:35:54.160
and sexualizing them and changing their body chemistry and mutilating their bodies. They're
00:35:59.100
sick perverts who should be locked up for life at least. And that's how we should talk about it.
00:36:05.120
There's no end to this. This is gender ideology. And we, conservatives want to talk about this for
00:36:12.780
the actual small, very small number of people who suffer from a psychological condition where
00:36:17.360
they're confused about their biological sex. And we just want to be really nice and compassionate.
00:36:21.400
Some people even want to indulge that delusion because it's sort of easier and seems polite.
00:36:26.420
It's not about them. It actually isn't. The left isn't making this an issue because of them.
00:36:30.960
The left is making this an issue because it is a radical power grab. It is not just a grab for
00:36:38.080
political control or economic control or even cultural control. It is a power grab for
00:36:42.140
ontological control. The control, the power to redefine reality itself. And these guys are
00:36:49.800
vicious and vindictive. It's coming to a big tech platform near you. They are going to try to pass
00:36:55.040
policies whereby if you call a man a man and that man thinks he's a woman, you will be kicked off.
00:37:01.720
You will be censored. If you say that a parent shouldn't pump their poor little kid full of
00:37:08.340
hormones and mutilate their body, that you are some sort of bigot. It is, it is so perverse.
00:37:16.000
It is so sick and disgusting. And there's no middle ground. There's no moderate. I know
00:37:21.780
conservatives want to be conciliatory. I know Mario Lopez wants to keep his job. Sometimes the rubber
00:37:28.880
meets the road, guys. You know, sometimes there's just a bridge too far. And this, it's not about
00:37:34.040
some sexual confusion in a small number of people. This is about a full on onslaught attempt to
00:37:41.660
redefine reality. And if conservatives don't stand for this, we don't stand for anything.
00:37:45.640
Let's get to the mailbag in our remaining five or six minutes. From Eli. Hey, Michael,
00:37:50.700
I love your show. Thank you. Do you think it's possible to be a conservative and an atheist?
00:37:55.420
Yes, I do think it's possible. I was a conservative and an atheist for about 10 years,
00:38:03.380
varying degrees of conservative, libertarian or this or that. I just don't think it's possible to
00:38:08.880
be really coherently conservative and an atheist because politics is downstream of culture and
00:38:16.100
culture is downstream of religion. And that which we are conserving is Christian civilization.
00:38:20.180
So I don't think that makes a whole lot of sense. The one, just as a practical matter,
00:38:26.760
I think the way it breaks down is, I think if you are a hardcore evangelical atheist,
00:38:33.320
I think if you're the sort of atheist who probably has a neckbeard and like thinks that Richard Dawkins
00:38:40.020
is a really smart philosopher and theologian and, you know, you read a couple Christopher Hitchens
00:38:45.500
columns once and you think you know anything. If you're the sort of person who refers to the
00:38:49.960
Bible as a series of fairy tales, if you, I don't think then really you can be a conservative
00:38:54.020
because conservatives need to have a respect and a reverence for our tradition. Conservatives need
00:39:01.220
to have a sense of the sacred, you know, even look, our national monuments in the United States,
00:39:06.100
in Washington DC, I was just there last week. They're not just statues of Washington. They're not
00:39:11.180
just a statue of, of Lincoln. They are full on religious temples. The Washington monument is an
00:39:17.240
Egyptian religious obelisk. The, the Lincoln memorial is a Greco-Roman temple, right? With,
00:39:24.320
with Lincoln there as Zeus sitting in a chair. That is, the reason that we do that is because
00:39:31.800
nations need to have a sense of the sacred. If you want to conserve something, you need to have a
00:39:35.520
sense of the sacred. So if you are a sort of amiable atheist, if you're the kind of guy who has a
00:39:41.720
respect for religious traditions, but you just can't bring yourself to believe, which by the way,
00:39:45.780
I think is like most of the culture right now, I think of course you can be a conservative and I
00:39:50.680
think you're going to be on your way to maybe not being an atheist anymore. But if you're that
00:39:54.960
kind of hardcore, it's just, it's all completely wrong and bogus and everyone who ever lived before
00:40:00.720
me is an idiot and I'm much smarter than Thomas Aquinas or Aristotle or somebody, if you believe
00:40:05.720
that, I just, I don't think you could ever have the humility or, or at the present, you couldn't have
00:40:10.960
the humility to, to be a conservative because the left is defined by pride and, and conservative
00:40:17.260
thought is defined by humility. From Blake, can you name all the Democrat candidates without linking?
00:40:25.380
There is a dopey and sleepy and Eric Swalwell and Donner and Cupid and Blitzen. I don't, I don't think
00:40:31.900
I could. I, I, frankly, I don't think the other candidates could as well. During the last debate,
00:40:37.400
there was a guy named Steve Bullock from Montana. I guess that guy's running for president.
00:40:43.240
There's another guy, John Delaney. I guess he's running for president. What I'm doing,
00:40:46.920
my favorite of the three edible candidates, his name is Tim Ryan and he's just like, just the
00:40:51.480
most pitiable, he's just obviously not going anywhere. I'm referring to all the candidates
00:40:56.820
that I've never heard of as Tim Ryan and it just really limits the field down. So you only need to
00:41:01.680
remember about seven names and just call everyone else Tim Ryan. That's, that's what I would
00:41:05.540
recommend, uh, for, for you going forward because it's not worth memorizing all of those names when
00:41:12.160
most of them are going to be gone by the next debate. From Texas fan, why isn't anyone talking
00:41:17.780
about how Marianne Williamson has led many people astray with her promotion of the heretical course
00:41:22.180
in miracles? Funny you should ask Texas fan. I did that just yesterday. I think these mailbag
00:41:27.040
questions came in yesterday. Uh, so check out my episode yesterday on dark psychic Democrats to
00:41:31.960
get a better take on that for Mandy. Hey, Michael, as a woman of faith who has spent her entire
00:41:38.540
marriage trying to start a family, there is something I have really been struggling to
00:41:42.860
understand. Why do you think God allows so many women to conceive children who are just going to
00:41:48.500
abort them? And I suspect the other side of that is why, why are so many women not able to conceive
00:41:55.000
or not able to conceive at the time that they want to conceive? What you're really asking is a very,
00:42:01.740
very basic problem, which is why does God permit evil to exist? And the answer is because of the
00:42:09.160
fall of man, because God gave man free will and man chose to disobey God's will and to, to follow
00:42:17.400
his own will in contravention of God's desires. And therefore sin pervaded the world and death pervaded
00:42:25.540
the world and evil as a foothold in this world. And the devil is the prince of this world. And so
00:42:31.680
the question you asked over why all these women can conceive just to abort the kids and why women
00:42:36.980
who don't want to abort the kids can't conceive. And I mean, it's the same question as why does a
00:42:42.520
three-year-old get leukemia? It's the same question as why, why do bad things happen to good people?
00:42:48.500
Why do bad things happen at all? Obviously we don't have time to go into the full topic of
00:42:54.960
theodicy or the problem of evil. Good book on it is C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain or Lewis,
00:43:01.400
again, A Grief Observed. And those are just really good kind of lay books that can introduce you to
00:43:06.880
the question and there are more advanced books on it. But the, the simple answer, the Christian answer
00:43:12.200
is what we say at Easter, which is, if this is the greatest possible world, which I suspect it is,
00:43:19.920
then what it means is that a world in which there is no free will is not as good as a world in which
00:43:27.500
there is free will and incarnation and atonement and the resurrection. So it seems to me if we didn't
00:43:35.720
have free will, if we didn't genuinely have the ability to deny God and therefore allow sin and death
00:43:41.520
to pervade the world, then we, what world would it be? You wouldn't even be conscious. I mean,
00:43:46.900
it would just be a robot world. It would be like a computer simulation or something. But you do have
00:43:53.300
free will. Freedom is a wonderful thing. And what you say on Easter is you, you celebrate the fall of
00:43:59.100
man in a way. You say, oh great, oh happy fault that gave to us, that won for us so great and glorious
00:44:07.400
a redeemer. Oh happy fault. Oh felix culpa. We fell. We disobeyed God. That's awful. But it won for us
00:44:17.700
so great and glorious a redeemer in the resurrection. That is the way to think of it. It doesn't deny the
00:44:23.340
reality of suffering. It's, but it is a comfort. Comfort meaning it gives you strength and allows
00:44:30.060
you to see the glory up ahead. Last question from GRVM. What is the origin of Ben Shapiro constantly
00:44:38.960
ripping on you? That's a great question. And you'll have to tune into this week's Sunday special.
00:44:45.720
Going to be the greatest Sunday special in the history of the Ben Shapiro show Sunday special
00:44:49.440
because it's going to feature little old me. So tune in then. And I think we'll get the story of
00:44:54.480
it there. All right. That's our show. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael
00:44:57.340
Knowles show. See you on Monday. The Michael Knowles show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz,
00:45:07.440
director, Mike Joyner, executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Our senior producer is Jonathan Hay,
00:45:13.280
supervising producer, Mathis Glover, technical producer, Austin Stevens, editor, Danny D'Amico.
00:45:19.080
Our audio mixer is Mike Coromina, hair and makeup by Jesua Olvera, production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
00:45:25.360
The Michael Knowles show is a daily wire production, copyright daily wire, 2019.
00:45:29.700
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall show today, we're going to hit on some of the stories we missed,
00:45:33.580
uh, this past week, starting with Mario Lopez. He said, uh, as you may have heard that three-year-olds
00:45:38.080
can't choose their own gender and, but he since almost immediately cowardly apologized for that.
00:45:44.220
So we'll discuss the need in our culture for not just sanity, but also courage, which is,
00:45:49.700
which is so sorely lacking. Also, is it racist for robots to be white? CNN has posed that very
00:45:57.300
important question. And finally, scientists are trying to create human monkey hybrids. We'll talk
00:46:02.880
about the many moral problems with something like that today over on the Matt Wall show.