Ep. 1076 - FBI-book Suppressed The Hunter Biden Laptop
Summary
On the heels of Mark Zuckerberg's revelation that the FBI asked him to censor a story about the Hunter Biden laptop, Michael Krieger takes a deep dive into why Big Tech censored a story that could have swung the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump.
Transcript
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Of all the chicanery and shenanigans that Democrats pulled during the 2020 election,
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perhaps the most brazen and significant was Big Tech's decision to censor the Hunter Biden
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laptop story. The censorship was outrageous and dangerous in and of itself, a group of
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billionaire oligarchs deciding what could and could not be presented in the public square
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before an election. But now the story has gotten even worse, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg's revelation
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on the Joe Rogan podcast that he and Facebook and Big Tech only censored the story because the FBI
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told him to. Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us,
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some folks on our team. It was like, hey, just so you know, like you should be on high alert.
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We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that
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basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that. So just be vigilant.
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So our protocol is different from Twitter's. What Twitter did is they said, you can't share this at
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all. We didn't do that. The distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still
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allowed to share it. So you could still share it. You could still consume it.
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So when you say the distribution has decreased, how does that work?
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Basically, the ranking in newsfeed was a little bit less. So fewer people saw it than would have
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I don't know off the top of my head, but it's meaningful. But we weren't sort of as black and
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white about it as Twitter. We just kind of thought, hey, look, if the FBI, which I still view as a
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legitimate institution in this country, it's a very professional law enforcement, they come to us
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and tell us that we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously.
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So Facebook censored the story, but actually only a little bit, but actually pretty significantly,
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but actually Mark Zuckerberg doesn't remember how much. And it did so because the FBI told it to.
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Little tough to follow the contradictions and the equivocations. But at the very least,
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Zuckerberg is telling us that the FBI, the allegedly nonpartisan federal law enforcement
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agency that had been illegally attacking Donald Trump since before he even became president,
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interfered in the 2020 election to keep damaging information about the Biden family out of the
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public square. Information so damaging that 17% of Biden voters in swing states, according to one
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survey, said that they would not have voted for Biden had they known about the laptop before the
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election, would have swung the election to Trump. The deep state pressured big tech to help elect
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Democrats and kick a Republican president out of the White House. But remember, if you question our
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oligarchs, you're a threat to democracy. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Dolly Shortcake, who says,
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I'm really pissed about this. I paid all my loans off for my bachelor's degree,
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and we now have to pay for deadbeats who don't want to work or got a stupid degree.
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I've had it with this administration, just terrible. I think that's resonating for a lot of people.
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I think just as the libs think that current Hispanics who either were born in this country or
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legally immigrated to this country, that they're really in favor of illegal immigration. And it
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turns out they're not. You can just see it poll after poll. Hispanics, immigrants, and the descendants
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of immigrants who are here in this country actually hate illegal immigration. Well, it's the same thing
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here. They think that college graduates are going to love this giveaway of the free student loan
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forgiveness. In fact, I think a lot of people who took out student loans and paid them off are going
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to be much more resentful, actually, than just the regular old taxpayer who's going to have to fund
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this. Because they're going to say, I did the right thing. Why are people who were perhaps
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irresponsible or who were just friends with Democrats or who majored in something that wasn't
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going to pay off later on, why are they getting a free ride when I did the right thing? It drives you
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crazy. The Democrats, not just the Democrats, the libs. Because we're not just talking about the
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political party. We're talking about the whole kind of liberal establishment, especially in the
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bureaucracy, but through all the rest of society too. The libs reward their allies and punish their
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enemies. That's how they do politics. And it is pretty much politics 101. It is pretty much the most
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basic way of thinking about politics, going all the way back, not just to ancient Greece, but going back
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to the days of the cavemen. You reward your friends and you punish your enemies. That's how they do
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this. The way they do this is before the election, the FBI comes knocking on Facebook. They say, hey,
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listen here, listen, listen, my boss is over there in Washington DC. They sure would appreciate it if,
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look, there's going to be some information about Hunter Biden coming out. You understand? We don't want
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that to come out. You understand what I'm saying? That would be very unfortunate if that came out.
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So we're going to just, we're going to sweep that one under the rug, right? Right? There's a nice tech
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company you got here. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it. Okay, we're good. We're
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good. Okay, good. That's what they do. And what does Facebook do? First of all, Facebook is just full
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of libs and it's part of the liberal establishment anyway. So they're probably more than happy to oblige.
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But even if they weren't, they're feeling the force of the government, the permanent government,
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the administrative bureaucracy, the deep state. And they're saying, okay, I don't want to get on
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the wrong side of the FBI. Don't forget what Chuck Schumer said. He was in a way making fun
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of Donald Trump, but in a way he was giving a warning to everybody. In a way, I think it was
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quite sincere when he said, don't go against the intelligence community. They'll kill you nine ways
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from Sunday. They could destroy your life so easily. Just don't do it. And that's what happened here.
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That's what happened. That's the same sort of thing you're seeing on the student debt
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forgiveness. There's not much of a principle at play here. It's just a political payoff.
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The Democrats are paying off their friends and they're doing that in a very direct way.
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And then in a less direct way, they're punishing their enemies. The people who don't go to college,
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who are less likely to vote for Democrats, the people who are financially responsible and paid
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off their student loans, who are less likely to vote for Democrats. Those guys are going to now
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have to foot the bill for the people who are getting the free ride. Even among the staffers
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of the White House, RealClearPolitics' Philip Wegman just reported that one in five White House
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staffers currently has student debt. At least 30 senior White House officials have outstanding
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student loan balances. This is according to financial disclosures representing one in five of the staffers
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who are required to file the documents. And so Biden's giving a handout to his friends and he's
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punishing his enemies. And maybe Republicans should learn a little lesson from that.
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You know, Republicans, they're so eager to prove that they're really neutral and they're really
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high-minded and they're really above politics. The conservatives are so eager to do that.
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That's what the Never Trump movement was. The Never Trump movement was, listen, I don't support
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all this tribalism. I don't support these party politics. I mean, you always hear the squishes in
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almost every election. You'll have some moderate Republican who comes out and he says, look,
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I'm a Republican, but I'm going to break with my party. Country before party, which is a meaningless
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statement. You join a party because you think it'll help your country. You think it's the best thing for
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your country? So country before party is a distinction without a difference. But they do
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it because what they're really saying is, look, I'm not just going to help my friends and punish
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my enemies. No, no, I'm above it all. Frankly, I'm fairer to my enemies than to my friends. That's
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how high-minded it is. And that's how you lose. That's how you lose at politics. That's how the
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libs take over the whole culture for the past 60 years. Maybe conservatives should learn a little bit
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of a lesson from the libs. We shouldn't do things that are unjust. We shouldn't do things that are
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immoral, which the libs often do. But I think we can engage in regular, normal politics where you
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have alliances and you help out your constituents and you don't just constantly cave in to your
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opponents. The libs are not messing around. Have you ever heard of swatting? Swatting not like when
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you swat a fly, swatting like when you call a police department and you make a false claim
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about a violent incident at the home of one of your opponents or enemies in the hopes that they
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will send a SWAT team there with guns drawn to bust down the door and who knows what happens at that
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point. You ever heard of that? Marjorie Taylor Greene has heard of that because the libs have
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swatted her now twice. And this is not just Marjorie Taylor Greene claiming this. This has been
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confirmed by the police. Marjorie Taylor Greene wakes up in the middle of the night because the
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police are there with a major show of force because they get a call that there's a violent
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incident. Who knows what the call contained? This has happened to my friend Tim Poole. Tim Poole has
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been swatted now multiple times. Swatting is attempted murder. Guys, I don't think I'm being
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hyperbolic here. You are calling this in. You're saying there are guns being fired. There is a major
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violent incident so that the cops bust in the door in the middle of the night and start shooting.
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Because what happens if I wake up in the middle of the night, someone busts down my door.
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Maybe I reach for my gun. Maybe I assume naturally that there's a home invader there.
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Maybe then you get into a provocative situation with the police. The only reason to do it
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is to kill your enemies. I don't see why else. If you just want the doorbell to ring,
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you can order them a pizza. If you want them to just get in trouble, I don't know. You can
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I don't know what you could do. You could call in some lesser crime. You could say,
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I saw them jaywalking. But when you call in the SWAT team, you are calling in a hit squad to kill
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your enemies. That's how the libs are playing here. And it's not just that they've done it
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to Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's not just that they've done it to Tim Poole. They've done it
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to a number of people. You don't hear the same thing happening on the right. Furthermore,
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we're now seeing federal law enforcement being used as a tool of the left. You're seeing with the FBI
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censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. You're seeing it with the FBI busting down the doors at
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Mar-a-Lago. I think we got to get a little bit more serious about our politics here.
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Certainly, SWATing should be classified as attempted murder and prosecuted as attempted
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murder. And whoever does it should be thrown in the can for life. But I think we've got to wake up
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a little bit and see the way our politics is actually working. And the right-wingers,
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the squishes who insist that we just need to uphold the norms and traditions of the value-neutral
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public square with all the institutions that are apolitical and all that doesn't exist.
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And that hasn't existed for many years. And burying our heads in the sand and really wishing
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that we could go back to a time in the past, which probably never existed in the first place,
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when politics wasn't really politics. That's not going to help anything at all.
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code NOLSPODCAST. Speaking of murderers, John Fetterman, the socialist Democrat candidate for
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Senate from Pennsylvania, is really awful. He's just really, everything about him is just bad.
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And pretty much everything, he's probably one of the worst candidates out there right now that the
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Libs are running. And somehow he keeps getting worse. John Fetterman was asked if there were one
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thing that he could change in society, what would it be? His answer, he would let murderers out of
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prison. If you had a magic wand and you could wave it and fix one thing, what would it be?
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Life without parole in Pennsylvania. We could save billions in revenue long term. We could save
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thousands of lives and not make anyone less safe. And also expunge as many permanent records of people
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that have been living their best lives and have been paying well beyond when they should have for
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a charge that they caught, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago.
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What's the, if you had a magic wand, it's not even if you had to deal in practical politics. If you had
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a magic wand, what's the one thing you would change about society? Would you solve world hunger? No.
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Would you cure childhood leukemia? I don't know. Would you, all the horrible diseases, all the good
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things that happen to bad people? No. You would let murderers out of prison. So says John Fetterman.
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Because he says, look, these guys who committed murder, some of them have been in prison for 10
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years already. Come on, that's way, that's way past the amount of time that they've paid their debt
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to society. This is as radical as it gets. I really, really don't want that guy to enter the
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United States Senate. Unfortunately, the Republican candidate, Dr. Oz, is not running a very good campaign
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right now. Hope they turn that around. Because this guy, we talk about how AOC is so radical. We talk
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about how Raphael Warnock is so radical. They are. They're pretty radical compared to,
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I don't know, even 10 years ago in American politics. This guy makes those people look
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like Ronald Reagan. He's got just kind of a weird look to him. He's just something weird about the
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eyes. And he's never held a job in his life. And he's been on his parents, forget his parents'
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cell phone plan. He's been getting 50 G's a year from them to support his lifestyle. And he's just,
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not good, not good. No bueno. Pretty weird stuff. Speaking of terrible crimes,
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the Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. has just admitted to something that the
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libs were telling us was a crazy right-wing conspiracy theory. And we're learning this
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thanks to one of the great journalistic outlets out there, libs of TikTok. For a while now,
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the conservatives have said, we've just been right about everything. We've said that if we allow
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weird sexual revolution stuff, pretty soon they're going to be doing it on kids.
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And the libs said, that's a slippery slope. And we said, yeah, maybe, but we're slipping down it,
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so it's going to happen. Obviously, that did happen. We said if we tolerate the weird sex change,
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gender surgery stuff, pretty soon they're going to be doing it on kids. We were told that's a crazy
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conspiracy theory. Turns out that was true. Then it was reported just a couple of weeks ago that
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there are hospitals who are performing transgender surgeries, like surgically removing the womb from
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little girls. We were told that's crazy. It's a conspiracy theory. You're misinterpreting and
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it's not true. Move along, move along. So libs of TikTok called up the Children's National Hospital
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in Washington, D.C. and just asked them. They said, hey, do you perform hysterectomies on 16-year-old
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girls and even younger? Here's what they said. Hi, I was calling because I'm looking for information
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about the gender-affirming hysterectomies that you guys offer.
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Am I in the right place? Okay. Yes. This is the clinic. Did you want to make an appointment?
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So they would do it for that age? Yes. Okay, great. Is it a common procedure that you guys do for
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that age? Yes. We have all different type of age groups that comes in for that. For the hysterectomy?
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Yes, ma'am. Okay. Just out of curiosity, do you know, like, what's the youngest age you would do it on?
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I'm not sure, but I have seen younger kids. And I'm not, you know, either, I'm not allowed to say
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that, but I have seen younger kids, like, younger than your child. The gender-affirming hysterectomy
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surgery? Yes. Okay. Okay. I really appreciate your help. Right from the horse's mouth. And you can't
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even say, listening to that, oh, well, that receptionist, she didn't, she didn't understand
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the question. No, the conversation was very, very clear. And the receptionist even knew that she
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wasn't supposed to say what she was saying. She goes, you know, there's HIPAA laws, and, you know,
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I probably shouldn't be admitting this. But she thought she was talking to a new customer. So she
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was trying to entice the customer to come in, the customer being a pervert parent who was going to
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rip her kid's womb out. And she says, yeah, no, we've had, we do this. We rip out the wombs of 16-year-old
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girls to make them pretend that they're boys and get them on a lifelong regimen of expensive drugs
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and mutilations. Yeah, yeah, we do that. Actually, we do it for kids who are younger. Actually, we do
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it for kids who are a lot younger. Yeah. Yeah, that's what we do. All of which is to say,
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there is no argument for supporting the libs in any way. There is no argument for voting for a
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Democrat. There is no argument for never Trump. There is no argument for, for rewarding your
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enemies and punishing your friends and your allies. There's no argument for that. If there ever was,
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that's gone now. No principled argument, no dignified David Frenchy in response.
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No Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney. Well, look, I think actually there's a lot we can work with these
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Democrats on. There's not. They're ripping out the wombs of little young teenage girls. There's not.
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And they already were supporting killing hundreds of thousands of babies a year. And they sick federal
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law enforcement on you, on your enemies. And anybody who squishes to these people, let him be
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anathema. Okay, I don't know how else to put it. There's, we're so past that. We're so past, oh, well,
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you know, look, reasonable people can disagree on whether to rip the wombs out of little girls.
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They can't. They can't. And the libs don't want to reconcile. The libs don't want to meet in the
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middle. The libs don't want to concede anything. They want to sick the SWAT team and the FBI on you.
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And look, hey, if you answer that door at two in the morning with your gun drawn and something bad
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happens, oh, well, that's too bad. At least then we can take your kids and trans them.
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Okay, that'd be really important. And then we'll have more political power, us libs. And then we can
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do the most important thing if we had a magic wand in society, which would be to let all the murderers
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out. Do you think there's any meeting in the middle with that kind of worldview? I don't.
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I don't think so at all. They're not even really making arguments for it, by the way. They're not
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making arguments for any of the things they're doing right now. They're not even making arguments
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for the student debt relief. Okay, Corrine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary,
00:20:57.580
was just asked, hey, I know that you're giving this handout to your friends, and I know you're punishing
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your enemies. But can you make any even attempt at a facade of a reasoned argument as to why
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this is a good thing for society? Here's her answer.
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The HEROES Act hinges on student debt cancellation being tied to the pandemic and that being a national
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emergency. But the administration argued in court that the pandemic is over at the southern border
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to lift Title 42. It's so over that the government's going to stop buying vaccines in the fall and
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shift to the private sector. So how is this a national emergency? How's COVID a national
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emergency when it comes to student debt? So it's a very good question, and I'm glad you asked it.
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Look, we use the HEROES Act because there are going to be some people, when we lift the pause,
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that's still going to suffer. They're still going to have a little bit of a hard time.
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And so that's one of the reasons that we made this decision. Because as we're lifting up the pause,
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yes, you know, some folks may, having not to pay for two years has been helpful to them,
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and we're able to save, and we're able, are probably going to be able to pay those monthly
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payments. But there's going to be some folks who are going to have a hard time.
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Because of the economy? Because they're just in a different bracket, right? It's just because
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they've probably had a hard time before. Okay, did you catch that at the end? At the beginning,
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she said, we're using this act, the HEROES Act, which says that in times of national emergency and
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really wars, the president can forgive debts. And so we're using that now, and we're saying the
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emergency was COVID. And so then this reporter says, well, hold on, that's one, that doesn't
00:22:49.460
really count. And two, that's not happening right now. And three, how did that emergency stop these
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kids from being able to, or these adults now from paying back their student debts?
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And what does Karine Jean-Pierre say? She says, oh, no, you're right. It wasn't some emergency.
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It wasn't COVID. It wasn't any of that. Yeah, they're just in a lower income bracket right now,
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or they don't have enough wealth right now. And yeah, they were actually probably having
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trouble long before COVID. So it's not an emergency. So it has nothing to do with the
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HEROES Act. So there's no legal basis for this whatsoever. But they're going to do it anyway,
00:23:20.160
because they want to reward their friends and punish their enemies. Because they're going to
00:23:24.280
engage in politics 101, which the conservatives refuse to do. Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
00:23:30.780
No. Sounds like in a world with so many downsides, we really need to get upside.
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Right now, download the free Upside app. Use code TMKS. From cringing at the pump to getting an eye-popping
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on your first purchase of $10 or more using promo code TMKS. Speaking of not making arguments,
00:25:05.400
speaking of the libs just whining and crying and instituting their own tyranny of will,
00:25:11.000
there is an event called the Podcast Movement. I had vaguely heard of it, but I don't really know
00:25:16.160
very much about it. It's some conference where podcasters go and have booths and talk to one another.
00:25:22.240
And since we here at The Daily Wire are one of the largest podcast companies in the world,
00:25:27.740
I think we're number six or number five or something like that, obviously we had a booth
00:25:31.920
at this event. And what do you know, the founding editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire,
00:25:40.300
first show on our network, Ben Shapiro, shows up to the podcast movement. Makes sense. One of the
00:25:46.300
most prominent podcasters in the world would show up to the podcast movement at The Daily Wire booth
00:25:51.000
because The Daily Wire is one of the biggest podcast companies. This, this was a really big
00:25:56.580
deal. The podcast movement tweeted out their heartfelt apology for allowing one of the most prominent
00:26:03.700
podcasters in the world to show up. Take a listen.
00:26:09.280
Ben Shapiro briefly visited the PM22 Expo. Though he was not registered or expected,
00:26:15.240
we take full responsibility for the harm done by his presence.
00:26:25.800
We agreed to sell The Daily Wire a first-time booth based on the company's large presence
00:26:30.460
in podcasting. The weight of that decision is now painfully clear.
00:26:42.180
During event planning, the dangerous nature of the company's messaging was overlooked.
00:26:46.300
Those of you who called this unacceptable are right. Podcast movement has made mistakes.
00:26:57.800
The pain caused by this one will always stick with us.
00:27:03.640
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'm excited about it.
00:27:05.900
That's great. Thank you so much for your support.
00:27:21.920
The podcast movement is begging for forgiveness.
00:27:25.520
They say, those of you who called it unacceptable are right.
00:27:27.620
In nine wonderful years growing and celebrating this medium, we've made mistakes.
00:27:30.920
The pain caused by this one will always stick with us.
00:27:39.060
Please, if you have any questions, we're here to talk.
00:27:47.080
I don't think that these tweets cover the irreparable harm done by Ben's appearance.
00:27:57.580
The irony, of course, here about the podcast movement, which is some two-bit conference.
00:28:04.740
Of them attacking Ben and the Daily Wire is that we are the podcast movement.
00:28:13.280
It's us, the guys who are actually some of the biggest podcasters in the world.
00:28:19.260
I think, what are we, number five or number six on the charts?
00:28:31.900
And by the way, the big podcasters skew disproportionately to the right, or at least anti-leftist.
00:28:37.460
Joe Rogan's not on the right, but he's not a leftist, that's for sure.
00:28:41.000
However, this company obviously skews to the right.
00:28:45.660
The reason for that is that the people for years had been prevented from accessing conservative information because of the left-wing gatekeepers in the institutions of the media.
00:28:55.920
And then podcasting comes around, and podcasting is a pirate ship.
00:29:00.080
Another guy who skews at least a little bit to the right, who's not a leftist, he was the pioneer of podcasting.
00:29:09.960
They hate that the conservatives are able to get their message out there in a relatively freer platform.
00:29:15.140
So they're doing everything they can to shut it down.
00:29:17.760
And they make themselves look ridiculous because they're afraid of Ben Shapiro, who is a relatively moderate center-right voice, as mainstream as they possibly come in America.
00:29:26.540
The least intimidating person on earth, who's just a sort of very polite guy, who is standing around generously giving of his time to take photos and say hey to people and leave.
00:29:40.440
It's as though the guy showed up with an Uzi or something like that.
00:29:45.340
Speaking of gathering people together, this is my favorite story of the week.
00:29:57.260
Shia LaBeouf, who's had some problems, who, like a lot of actors, has been kind of eccentric and explored lots of different things.
00:30:05.600
He was doing a movie about Padre Pio, who's a great Catholic saint.
00:30:10.100
And my favorite part is the reason why Shia LaBeouf converted to Catholicism.
00:30:18.200
The Holy Spirit would probably be reason number one.
00:30:20.780
Reason number two, because of the traditional Latin mass.
00:30:30.900
Because it feels like they're not selling me a car.
00:30:33.480
And when I go to some mass with the guitars and stuff, and I'm from, you know, Santa Inez, right?
00:30:42.500
And there's a lot of, like, what feels like they're trying to sell me on an idea.
00:30:47.480
I was always an agnostic, even when I was a Sam Harris, TED Talk, you know, Christopher Hitchens guy, which is who I was before I fell in.
00:30:55.240
But it, I always had a belief, but I never had, like, a connection.
00:31:02.800
Latin mass gave me something where I felt connected, which took me out of belief into connection.
00:31:08.200
Belief kept me, you know, I had belief because that's the rational, logical, it's not logical or rational to be atheist.
00:31:15.840
If you really go deep enough, you get to the Big Bang, and then you're screwed again.
00:31:19.380
You know, you have to account for it somehow, which puts you in a belief situation.
00:31:22.960
But too much of that logic and too much of that rationale takes me out of feeling, which takes me out of connection.
00:31:29.620
So he's describing it at the end in this kind of actor-y way, which is this immersive experience he's had at the traditional Latin mass.
00:31:44.520
Because I feel like they're not trying to sell me a car.
00:31:47.540
The mass that existed for most of the last 2,000 years until 1970 when a bunch of boomer libs decided to destroy the liturgy, not just the boomers.
00:32:00.180
When that happened, and then they instituted all the weird guitar churches and all that kind of stuff, it drove people away.
00:32:09.060
It drove countless laity away because they feel like all of a sudden they're just being sold something.
00:32:16.640
You know, the priest is no longer facing the altar and we're all facing it together.
00:32:19.800
But the priest is facing you and he's doing a little soft shoe and he's telling yuckety-yuck jokes.
00:32:25.120
But you go to church to get out of everything being all about you.
00:32:29.360
Everything's all about you for your whole week probably.
00:32:31.340
You go to church to experience something different outside of yourself, outside of the world.
00:32:42.160
He says, I feel like I'm let in on a secret, like I'm part of something, like I'm really witnessing a miracle take place.
00:32:48.240
And it's not just a show to entertain me or to please me.
00:32:54.260
Like, probably it's the liberal kind of church reformers who are going to be the hardest hit.
00:33:00.740
Because it turns out the youths don't want squishiness and electric guitars.
00:33:06.640
They want smells and bells and a glimpse of heaven.
00:33:14.280
Is it ironic to make an ad for an ad-free viewing experience?
00:33:19.540
That's exactly the type of experience that you will get when you subscribe to Daily Wire+.
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This is our growing hub for all things Daily Wire, where you will find shows and podcasts like this one and movies and bonus content.
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00:33:45.780
Now, finally, we've reached my absolute favorite time of the week when we get to the mailbag sponsored by Pure Talk.
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Without further ado, let's get to the voicemail bag.
00:34:14.020
First, does the Daily Wire have a tip hotline for newsworthy tips?
00:34:17.400
And second, congratulations on your new baby boy.
00:34:21.580
My wife and I just had our first child a month ago or so.
00:34:24.760
Question is, where do you go for your vaccine info?
00:34:27.480
We have already been denied service at a pediatrician for not giving our newborn the Hep B shot.
00:34:32.360
I said she doesn't live in a brothel, which I'm sure didn't help.
00:34:38.300
I'm not anti-vax, but 72 shots before our daughter is four seems ridiculous.
00:34:43.020
Does the Daily Wire have a resource page we can turn to?
00:34:54.860
I'm in the hospital, certainly with my first kid.
00:34:58.400
They say, okay, we're going to give your kid a thousand shots.
00:35:07.000
And obviously, we've got to give your kid the shot for Hepatitis B.
00:35:14.360
Do you think that my kid is going to go shoot up heroin on Skid Row?
00:35:18.180
Do you think my kid is about to go find some hookers, you know, before he nurses and goes
00:35:27.860
The closest thing to an answer they had was, well, sometimes the husband cheats on the wife,
00:35:36.840
And then the wife gets Hepatitis B and she doesn't know it and then passes it to the
00:35:44.520
That's really, I assure you, none of that happened.
00:35:48.940
So, no, you're not going to give my kid that shot.
00:35:51.340
And really what it is, I think, is the public health people knowing, okay, we've got these
00:35:56.760
We want to pump them full of everything that we possibly can because on a macro scale,
00:36:01.240
maybe that will slow down the spread of certain viruses and also because there's regulatory
00:36:05.640
capture by the big pharma agencies, which want to, big pharma companies that want to
00:36:09.860
So, okay, because of all of that, we're going to pump your kid full of a bunch of stuff.
00:36:13.220
You say, you say the thing that all the conservatives have to say now, which is, look, I'm not an
00:36:19.400
But don't you think it's kind of weird that like the COVID vaccines don't really do the thing
00:36:23.500
And look, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but it is kind of weird how like there's a vaccine
00:36:27.520
court that, you know, gives out a compensation for vaccine injuries that was specially established
00:36:33.320
And look, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but I'm open to certain vaccine shots.
00:36:41.460
I'm fairly skeptical of them because I'm fairly skeptical of the public health establishment
00:36:44.860
because they've just lied to us for two and a half years.
00:36:47.040
And if they lied to us about COVID and they lied to us about the COVID shots and they lied
00:36:50.180
to us about the masks and they, what else have they lied to us about?
00:36:54.040
Or even if it hasn't been an intentional lie, what else have they gotten wrong?
00:36:58.000
When I was a kid, I got my vaccines, most of them at least.
00:37:03.000
But the numbers that are being given to little babies now are so much higher.
00:37:10.220
Why would I engage in any medical intervention that is not necessary?
00:37:15.360
Especially if the potential benefit is very small and there is risk to any medical intervention.
00:37:21.300
So I wouldn't feel bad about your skepticism on a lot of vaccines.
00:37:26.920
It's mostly just my wife kind of Googles things.
00:37:31.460
And some sources are more credible than others.
00:37:33.940
Usually peer-reviewed scientific studies are more credible than others.
00:37:39.120
And I think you should not be ashamed of your skepticism.
00:37:44.440
So recently I've had the weirdest phenomena, which is that I will be walking my dog and my baby, my baby son, who is super cute.
00:37:56.900
And people will comment on how cute the dog is and, like, not even acknowledge my son.
00:38:08.500
And I've noticed there are, like, two types of people.
00:38:10.740
There are people who acknowledge your dog and there are people who acknowledge your human child.
00:38:16.400
And this also kind of goes hand in hand with me noticing recently that there are a lot of people who are walking their dogs in strollers, like, as though it's a child that they're pushing around.
00:38:27.900
Just wonder if this is, like, a larger trend or maybe just something in my area.
00:38:46.380
I'm not saying you should be mean to your dog or not get a dog or not have affection for your dog.
00:38:53.340
It's not a rational soul like a human being has, but a dog has a soul proper to its nature.
00:38:59.820
And if you treat the dog as a kid, you're only going to end up unhappy.
00:39:05.400
You should, if you can and so desire, you should have a kid.
00:39:09.500
If you can't, a lot of people can't have kids, and you really want a kid, you should consider adopting a kid.
00:39:15.240
And if you don't want any of those things, but you want a dog, you can have a dog.
00:39:27.000
You know something has gone wrong in society where we just, we coddle the little puppies,
00:39:33.540
and we sort of stop on the street and say, well, how cute that little puppy is.
00:39:37.220
And then we ignore the kids when we don't kill them in the first place.
00:39:40.900
Yeah, something's going really, really wrong there.
00:39:46.000
Michael, I think you know a question I'm going to ask you because I bet you've been bombarded with this question.
00:39:51.400
Why did you have to bring the Little League into politics the way you did?
00:39:56.080
I mean, when I was 12 years old, if I hit somebody in the head with a baseball, I would be traumatized.
00:40:09.820
And for another kid to come up, the team, like from the other team to come up and maybe give me a hug or let me know it was okay.
00:40:16.800
As a kid where you're immature and you're still learning about life, I'm down for it.
00:40:22.900
I just want to know, do you want to take back anything you said about that incident?
00:40:30.600
Even though I know that what you said, the principle about being tough applies to politics for sure.
00:40:35.880
Just want to give you an opportunity to either defend yourself or to explain yourself a little bit more.
00:40:48.300
For those who missed it a week or two ago on the show, I played this clip that had gone viral of the Little League World Series.
00:40:54.040
And the pitcher kid beamed the batter in the head.
00:41:04.480
And then the first baseman walks over to the pitcher and gives him a hug.
00:41:08.340
And I said, man, I bet these are such good kids.
00:41:16.320
I hope these kids go out and get an ice cream cone after the game.
00:41:31.200
And so you're making the point, yeah, sure, we've got to be tough in politics.
00:41:34.160
But we shouldn't, come on, we shouldn't be tough on the Little League field.
00:41:36.980
No, actually, that's the point of Little League.
00:41:38.980
That's the point of introducing kids to sports.
00:41:41.520
That's the point of education, is to model the right behavior for them and teach them the appropriate times for behavior.
00:41:49.160
And so, yeah, if the pitcher had knocked the kid down and he were taken out on a stretcher, maybe that's a different circumstance.
00:41:56.460
Kid got right up, dusted himself off, took first base.
00:41:59.760
The pitcher was still a little shaken up about it.
00:42:03.680
But the purpose of these sports is to teach kids how to work through these kinds of things.
00:42:17.840
And how to be competitive when you're supposed to be competitive.
00:42:20.840
And how to be sportsmanly when the game is over.
00:42:26.280
And the problem here is not that the kid who got beamed with the baseball was nice to the other kid.
00:42:39.300
You might say, oh, that was very nice of you, Johnny.
00:42:43.340
The place for that is at the ice cream parlor or the soda fountain after the game.
00:42:49.480
I'm a big fan of the show and everything going on at Daily Wire.
00:42:53.240
I watched your interview with Yuram Hazoni and the book Conservatism, A Rediscovery.
00:42:58.900
I decided to pick it up and read it and thought it was really insightful.
00:43:02.520
But I was wondering where you fall on the dichotomy that he set up between the hyper-rationalist view from the Enlightenment
00:43:09.220
and what Yuram posited as the more conservative historical empiricist view.
00:43:14.340
And I'd never really heard of historical empiricism.
00:43:18.100
So, that's kind of why I'm asking you about this.
00:43:21.060
Do you think that our ability to reason and know all these universal truths is all that we need?
00:43:27.300
I think our liberal elites would agree with that.
00:43:29.240
But I think maybe even a lot of people on the right might before hearing about historical empiricism.
00:43:35.500
Or would you agree with Yuram that the conservative perspective is more based on tradition and knowledge that's inherited through the ages?
00:43:51.560
I think you can reconcile the two with Christianity.
00:43:55.120
I think Christianity uniquely reconciles the two.
00:43:58.340
In part because the divine logic of the universe, Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity, is incarnate and becomes man.
00:44:08.920
And the gospel is a journalistic account of things that actually happened in time and place.
00:44:15.820
So, right there, you're reconciling not just rationalism, you're reconciling reason himself with historical empiricism.
00:44:24.780
But you refer to the Enlightenment as this kind of beginning of rationalism in politics.
00:44:29.340
And that's fair depending on how you want to use that word rationalism.
00:44:33.300
But, yes, the Enlightenment was wrong about pretty much everything.
00:44:36.460
The Enlightenment should not be called the Enlightenment.
00:44:40.580
The Enlightenment, if anything, represents a move away from Christian civilization.
00:44:45.460
But to try to preserve the good stuff from Christian civilization while taking God out of it.
00:44:51.600
And the early Enlightenment thinkers were not so overt in their atheism and secularism.
00:44:55.500
But the logical conclusion of the systems that they devised, I think, is atheism and secularism.
00:45:00.900
Now, there is a pre-Enlightenment kind of rationalism.
00:45:03.960
You think of the scholastics in the Middle Ages.
00:45:05.940
You think of St. Thomas Aquinas would be a great example of that.
00:45:08.920
And Thomas Aquinas is right, again, about pretty much everything.
00:45:13.260
But that's different because that's a rationalism that is centered around God.
00:45:18.640
Much different than a rationalism centered around a vacuum in which God should be.
00:45:26.180
So, yeah, if you're going to try to reason from a world without God, you're going to go off the deep end.
00:45:32.060
If you reason from a world with God and the natural law, then you're going to be a little bit better off.
00:45:38.140
And all of that is conditioned with a little bit of epistemological humility, with a little bit of a kind of recognition that we're not going to recreate the world anew through our own unfettered reason.
00:45:51.320
That our brains are not just the simplest way to do this.
00:45:55.160
But actually, there is a wisdom of the ages that inherited wisdom, prejudice in the really proper meaning of that term, is good.
00:46:04.760
And we should defer a little bit to the wisdom of the ages.
00:46:08.140
And tradition and have a stable, good, flourishing society where the best stuff has survived.
00:46:15.960
But the kind of rationalism of a world without God, that's going to drive you off a deep end.
00:46:23.380
All right, before we get to the member block, I do want to get to one question that was written in the regular old mailbag, not just the voice mailbag.
00:46:32.360
Michael, you discuss and call out rhinos frequently.
00:46:44.560
The reason there's no such thing as a dino is there's...
00:46:48.200
The reason there are rhinos is because there is an incentive for the squishy Republicans to suck up to the liberal establishment because they get all sorts of goodies from it.
00:46:58.820
So you get the Republicans there, but the pressure of the media and academia and the corporations and the bureaucracy and all that pressure gets to them and then they squish.
00:47:07.820
There's no similar incentive or pressure on the Democrats to move to the right.
00:47:16.000
You get one or two somewhat moderate Democrats left in America, Joe Manchin and sort of Kyrsten Sinema.
00:47:29.640
The rest of the show is continuing now and you do not want to miss it.
00:47:32.940
If you are not a member, click the link in the description and join us.
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