Ep. 1108 - Alex Jones Forced To Pay Nearly $1 Billion In Heated Court Battle
Episode Stats
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Summary
On today's show, Michael Knowles takes a look at the role of the New York Times and the Washington Post in perpetuating a false narrative about President Trump. Plus, why Tulsi Gabbard should have known she was running for president back in 2016.
Transcript
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I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about the American press.
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I'm going to tell you every single thing that you need to know about the establishment media
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in two headlines. Both from the New York Times, this one, October 10th, 2022.
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Biden, storyteller in chief, spins yarns that often unravel. President Biden has been unable
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to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity.
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Oh, shucks. This other headline, November 1st, 2020, also the New York Times.
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Dishonesty has defined the Trump presidency. The consequences could be lasting. Whether
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President Trump wins or loses on November 3rd, the very concept of public trust in an established
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set of facts necessary for the operation of a democratic society has been eroded.
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Those headlines are talking about the exact same thing. Not just similar things,
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not just things that kind of resemble each other a little bit. Exactly the same thing. Both stories
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are about the president saying things that are not true. In the case of Biden, it's kind of cute.
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You know, it's folksiness veering into folklore, as the alternate online headline of this article put
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it. In the case of Trump, it's an existential threat to the nation. It's the erosion of our democratic
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society. This is not an isolated case. This is not an exceptional example.
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This is how the entire establishment media work all the time. It's not just that they get stories
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wrong, often intentionally. It's that the entire framing of every story is designed to help the
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libs and hurt conservatives. They, like Biden, aren't folksy, yarn-spinning storytellers.
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They are paid and powerful liars and propagandists. And they've done infinitely more to erode the
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operation of our democratic society than have Donald Trump and all the other conservative
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voices put together. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Autopump, who says,
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I appreciate Tulsi Gabbard choosing to leave the Democrat Party, but a little bit of me wonders
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what took so long. It was pretty clear all the way back in the ancient history of 2020 when she was
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running for president as a Democrat that the party was going down this path. Yeah, that's true.
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Obviously, we all know that, or at least the majority of listeners to this podcast who are
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probably not ardent partisan Democrats. Yes, we've all known that for a long time. But I'm not going
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to knock Tulsi. Yeah, she should have known it in 2020. She should have known it in 2016. Okay, fine.
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She knows it now. That's good enough for me. I'm glad that she is seeing the light a lot. Other people
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are seeing the light. That's a wonderful thing. She's thinking for herself, and we need to think for
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Alex Jones has just been ordered to pay a lot of money to the parents of victims of the Sandy Hook
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shooting because he went on the air and said that the Sandy Hook shooting wasn't real,
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that it was a false flag. It didn't really happen. And he spun a yarn, you might say,
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about what that shooting really was. Alex Jones, because he got that story wrong on the air,
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now has to pay, according to a court in Connecticut, more than $950 million
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to the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. That is in addition to a ruling from a
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separate jury in Texas ordering Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million
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in punitive damages. So we are now talking about roughly $1 billion that Alex Jones, a radio host,
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known for his hyperbole and kind of eccentric, bizarre, really out there, kind of implausible
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takes sometimes. A man who rips off his shirt screaming about the frickin' frogs going gay.
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That guy, because he got a story wrong on the air, has to pay a billion dollars.
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That's a lot of money for getting something wrong on the radio, don't you think?
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But Michael, he got it really wrong. Yeah, okay.
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Okay. But Michael, it was awful what he said. Sure. Michael, it was really, really awful. Yeah,
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okay, fine. I'm not arguing. I'm not disputing that. Billion dollars for getting something wrong
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on the radio? Has there ever been a radio host ever who has not gotten something wrong on the radio?
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Even, well, probably me. I'm not sure that I've ever gotten a single thing. No, maybe even I have
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gotten somethings wrong. But Michael, it wasn't that. Okay, yeah, let's say that Alex Jones said
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he got it as wrong, as terrible. It was the worst reporting of any story ever in the whole history
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of the world. Billion dollars for getting that wrong? As far as I know, Alex Jones hasn't killed
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anybody. His storytelling on the radio didn't get anybody killed either. What kind of damages
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are we going to see paid out by the people who lied about the COVID vaccines and who got the COVID
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vaccines wrong and who said that not only would they protect you from getting the virus and transmitting
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the virus, but that they would actually, they were totally safe, totally effective. And now a bunch of
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kids are dead because of heart problems that even the CDC now admits the vaccines cause very serious
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heart problems. And the ones that don't cause heart problems cause blood clots. Do those people have
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to pay any damages? Cause that wasn't just some Texas radio host who got that story wrong. That
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was the entire establishment media and all of our elected officials, certainly on the Democrat side.
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And the president of the United States said, these are totally fine. These are totally safe.
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I'm actually going to mandate that you get these, get these shots, even though kids are at very,
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very low risk from the virus. And oh yeah, okay. If you get heart problems and you die, oopsie daisy.
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I'm going to deny that at first. And then I'm going to admit that that happened,
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but say it's not a big deal. Are they going to have, what are they going to pay? I don't think
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they're going to pay a billion dollars or a million dollars or $1. I don't think they're
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going to pay jack diddly squat. And so I don't call, call me callous, but I just,
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I just think that paying a billion dollars out for getting something wrong on the radio when you're
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a right winger, even an eccentric right winger, seems a little bit crazy when the left that lies about
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everything that lies in a much more persuasive and serious way about much more urgent matters for
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the vast majority of people, they don't ever pay a price at all. That seems wrong to me. That seems
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kind of backwards to me. I think they ought to pay. I think the billion dollars that Alex Jones is
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supposed to pay, I think we need at least a 100, a 1,000, a 100,000 times that payout from the libs
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who lie constantly in much more consequential lies. On that vaccine point, by the way,
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Dr. Paul Offit is a voting member of the FDA panel that approves the vaccines. He's just blowing the
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whistle now on the oversight or lack thereof for the vaccine approval process.
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Do the benefits of this vaccine outweigh the rest? I didn't see the benefits. We really need much
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better data, I think, before we move forward on this. And I can only hope that it's coming because
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I feel very strongly about my no vote there. In fact, the only reason I voted no was because
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hell no was not a choice. And it just surprised me that we were willing to go forward with this with
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such scant evidence of benefit. I think the phrase that I used was uncomfortably scant.
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So you just sort of felt like the fix was in a little bit here. Maybe that's not the right phrase,
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but it was something that they wanted. And I felt like we were being led here with a critical lack
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of information. Right now, they're saying that we should trust mouse data. And I don't think that
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should ever be true. I don't think you should ever ask tens of millions of people to get a vaccine
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based on mouse data. And there's no public data on that yet. What's more, for these fall booster
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shots, the FDA is not consulting with Dr. Offit and the rest of the Independent Vaccine Advisory
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Committee. And there you have it. There you have it. We've known this from the very beginning. And
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actually, the people who were talking about this at the very beginning of the COVID vaccines,
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we were all called conspiracy theorists and kooks and anti-science. Turns out we were completely right.
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We were completely right. And so you talk about even someone like Alex Jones,
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who is an entertainer on the radio. And sure, he's gotten something super duper wrong. Sure,
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yeah, of course. His record overall on every story he's ever talked about, including the gay frogs,
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by the way, which he was completely right about. He was actually modest about because the water in
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the water in Connecticut, I'm sorry, the chemicals in the water in Connecticut were turning the frogs
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hermaphroditic, not gay. They were transing them, not turning them gay. Alex Jones's overall record
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is definitely better than CNN's record. Definitely better than the Washington Post's record.
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Definitely better than New York Times's record. There's no question about that.
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I don't see any of them paying out a billion dollars. You might say, well, their lies are not
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as hurtful as Alex Jones's. I don't know. Measure hurtfulness for me, please. I can tell you their
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lies are much more consequential. Kids are dead because of their lies. Kids are dead of myocarditis
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because of their lies. Okay? And a lot of other problems too. So I just don't buy that stuff.
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And when they're not putting the fix in, as Dr. Offit is saying, when they are not sacrificing
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safety and caution and prudence and self-government for a little extra profit and a little more political
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control, what are they doing? When they're not jabbing the kids full of shots that in most cases
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they really, there's no argument that they need them at all. They are transing the kids. And we've
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been blowing the whistle on this for a long time. And now we've got some data here that actually show
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the consequences of a years long campaign to trans the kids. You've got a 582% increase in quote,
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gender nonconforming kids in one of the largest counties in one of the most important states in
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the country. Montgomery County Schools. This is the largest county in Maryland. Maryland is obviously
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right there by the beltway, right there at the very heart of our nation's capital. Montgomery County
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Schools are reporting a 582% increase in gender nonconforming students in two years. Pretty
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wild. You can see this report here from the Daily Caller. They've gathered this data. This is a near
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sevenfold increase from 2019 to 2022. What are the odds? What are the odds? How do you explain that?
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Well, could be, it could be that there's something in the water, I guess. Could be. It could be that this
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is a social contagion that is spreading, which is obviously what it is. Either way, though, this
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really blows up the Democrats' narrative because the Democrats and the libs broadly on the sexual
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revolution have for years said, look, people are born this way. Sexual orientation is immutable. It's
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from birth. Who would choose this? You can't have any conversion therapy. Social forces have no effect
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effect on your sexual orientation. Well, if that's the case, then how is this increasing so much?
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If you're just, then it has to be biological. There's got to be some kind of chromosomal issue,
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right? There's got to be something in the womb, except that babies aren't babies in the womb. So that
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kind of, that kind of messes up their narrative there as well. So it messes up their abortion narrative.
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It messes up their gay rights narrative. Now it's messing up the transgender narrative. 582% increase.
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Why is that? Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that educators are teaching
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little kids all the way down to kindergarten that boys can be girls and girls can be boys? No,
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that's crazy. That's a crazy conspiracy theory. That's not happening. And it is happening and it's
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good, by the way. And, but it's not transing the kids. It's not causing anyone to question their sex
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or gender or change it, except it is, it's a 582% increase, except that's a crazy conspiracy theory,
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except it's happening and it's true. Are you dizzy yet? I can't, it's very hard to track any of that.
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Democrats' success in transing the kids, Democrats' success in their political agenda
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has undermined a lot of their narratives. Their narratives on born this way, their narratives on
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sex and gender are totally different. Sex and gender are the same. Homosexual rights is that
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they're boys and they're girls and some boys like boys and some girls like girls. But then their
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narrative on transgenderism is that actually there's no such thing as girls and boys and boys can be
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girls and girls can be boys. None of the narratives make sense, okay? It's just power. And I guess this
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takes me back to Alex Jones. It takes me back to the New York Times, right? Joe Biden lies. That's so
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cute and great and wonderful. Donald Trump lies. It's going to completely destroy the republic.
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The arguments don't matter. The narratives don't matter. The arguments don't matter. The facts
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really don't matter to them. It's all framing. It's all narrative. And it's why I can't stand up on
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the rooftops and condemn Alex Jones or any of the other celebrities that the left turns on because
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they in any way question the right-wing narrative. I haven't talked about Kanye's tweet. Kanye sends
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some fairly eccentric tweets every now and again. And I haven't made a big deal about it, even though
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the left is insisting. You have to disavow Kanye. You always have to disavow Kanye. What Kanye said
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and what Kanye is being accused of is absolutely nothing compared to the things that Ilhan Omar has
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said, that Louis Farrakhan has said, that Barack Obama's former pastor said, and Barack Obama's
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former pastor with connections to all that same kind of movement and connections to Farrakhan and all
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the rest of it. And that all gets completely written off. Obama actually smiles next to Louis Farrakhan.
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And celebrities from Hollywood take pictures next to Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton. That's all
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completely fine. Then Kanye West says something that is one one-thousandth as harsh and severe and
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bigoted as any of those people. And we're told we have to disavow this guy. Why? It has absolutely
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nothing to do with Kanye West's comments. It has everything to do with the fact that Kanye West now is
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more right-wing in many of his views. He's pro-life. He's pro-family. He's pro-public Christianity.
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And so that's why they go after him. It has nothing to do with the facts that they're pretending to go
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after him for. They're going after Alex Jones not because he got the Sandy Hook story wrong.
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That has nothing to do with it. They're going after Alex Jones because they hate Alex Jones,
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because Alex Jones is right-wing and he's popular. And so they've been deplatforming that guy,
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censoring that guy for years. And they found this one issue, which is a really good issue to go after
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him for. And they're making him pay a billion dollars for getting a story wrong on the air.
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That's what it's about. And that's why I can't, it's not, I have no desire to defend any of these
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comments or any of these reports or stories or anything in the abstract. It's just that the game
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is so obviously rigged. Read the New York Times headlines. It's so disingenuous. It's in such bad
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faith that I see absolutely no obligation to entertain it. And actually, I think it's probably wrong to
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entertain their game and play their game because it further ensconces them in power. And it's not in any
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way, in good faith. And because they're transing the kids and that's bad. It's really weird and bad
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to trans the kids. Speaking of Democrats' weird obsession with our children, Kamala Harris is
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claiming your children. Hide your kids, hide your wife, but especially hide your kids from Kamala
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Harris. She's claiming them as her own. I mean, truly, when you, you know, when you see our kids
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and I truly believe that they are our children, they are the children of our country, of our
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communities. I mean, our future is really bright if we, if we prioritize them and therefore prioritize
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the climate crisis and the need to address it. Our children, our kids, and they are our kids and
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they're our kids and they're my kids and they're mine. And so what Kamala Harris is insinuating here
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very heavily is that she has a right to dictate how your kids are raised. And it's the same thing
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that Hillary Clinton's been saying for a long time when she uses the phrase, it takes a village.
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What she's really saying is I have the right to raise your kids. It's the same thing when the,
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when the Biden rather, well, that was a Freudian slip. When the Biden administration says that
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parents who are questioning the kind of nonsense their kids are being taught in schools, that they're
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akin to domestic terrorists. That's what they're saying. They're saying we have a right to raise your
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kids. When you have left-wing activists saying we're going to go in and take queer children,
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whatever that means, out of their families and away from their homes and put them into queer
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homes. You remember that story from a couple of weeks ago? All this kinds of stuff. When the,
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when the school guidance counselors are hiding the fact from parents that children are identifying as
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transgender and all the rest of it, in some cases, even recommending that they go on different
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sex-changing drugs. I mean, all, what all of this is about is parents, you have no right to raise your
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kids. We have the, we, the liberal establishment have the right to do everything. And there's three takes
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here. There's the lib take, which is the children are our children collectively, and we're going to do
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what we want to do. And by our, by the way, they mean the liberal oligarchy that runs the country. Then
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there's the libertarian take, which is the state has no right to raise our children. My children have
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nothing to do with the state. My children are mine and that's that. And then there's the conservative
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take, which is actually kind of a blend of the liberal take and the libertarian take. Because while
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the conservative takes as the families have a particular claim to our own children, it also
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acknowledges the social realities and the political realities that liberal take takes into account,
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which is that we live in a society. And actually it really does take a village to raise a child
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because children are not just formed in some silo by their mother and their father and maybe their
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brother in a home, but they're, they're, they are educated. They are brought up by the whole of
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society, by their neighbors, by their cousins, by the environment in which they live, by the schools
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that they go to, by the businesses that they frequent, by good old Mr. McGillicuddy down at the butcher shop
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and by the churches that they go to and by what their society celebrates and exalts.
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And that's all part of it. Okay. Statecraft really is soul craft is what the conservatives understand.
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And so I think the conservative view is the best of all worlds because it protects the rights of
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parents to raise our kids. But it, it also is not completely impotent like the libertarian view.
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It's not just, it's not completely giving up the, the political power that sometimes the people give
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us, which is the essence of self-government. The conservative view says, yeah, we have to protect
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the rights of families to raise kids and we need to protect the political environment so that these
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poor kids aren't preyed on and perverted all the time. We got to kick the drag queens out of the
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schools and we got to kick these weirdos out, these guidance counselors who are trying to trans the
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kids. And we got to pass laws against abortion so that we can protect other kids. And we've got to
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encourage a society that wants to do good stuff and avoid bad stuff instead of what we have today,
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which is the complete inversion of that, that we have a political right and obligation to create
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a good flourishing society because that's, what's going to raise kids because our kids actually are
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a collective responsibility in the sense that the kids are the future of the country. And this country
00:21:46.760
is mine as much as it is yours. And I want to live in a good country. I don't think there's anything
00:21:52.440
crazy about that. I think that's the sane, rational, conservative point of view. You know,
00:21:56.160
back in June of 2020, Candace Owens took to social media to question the narrative about George Floyd.
00:22:01.340
She took a barrage of insults as a result. Celebrities insulted her. GoFundMe deplatformed
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her. As the attacks ramped up, Daily Wire Plus gave her a platform to speak out without fear of
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being silenced and supported her investigation into Black Lives Matter. That organization raised
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$80 million through fundraising, but no one ever asked where the money went. Until right now.
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Candace Owens reveals the truth in her new documentary, The Greatest Lie Ever Sold,
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now streaming exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. Because of our members, we are able to create a
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Now, speaking of our liberal establishment, speaking of Kamala Harris, I think Kamala Harris
00:23:28.100
is probably the strongest argument for all of us to keep Joe Biden in power as long as possible.
00:23:34.280
You know, we would all want to impeach Joe Biden except for Kamala. Whenever I hear Kamala speak,
00:23:38.300
I say, Joe, Joe, we're pulling for you, Joe. Come on, stick around, please. And that's damning
00:23:44.660
with faint praise because Joe Biden just looks so weak. He just looks like such a failure. You know,
00:23:50.680
he has been claiming for months now that the United States is not in a recession. We're not headed for
00:23:56.760
a recession. Now you'll notice he's starting to shift his language even ahead of the midterms.
00:24:01.640
And he's saying, look, yeah, it's not, don't worry about recession. Maybe just,
00:24:05.120
maybe just a little tiny recession. Should the American people prepare for a recession?
00:24:10.380
No. Look, they've been saying this now how every, every six months they say this. Every six months
00:24:15.720
they look down the next six months and see what's going to happen. It hadn't happened yet. It hadn't,
00:24:20.600
there has, there is no, there's no guarantee that they're going to be, I don't think there will be
00:24:26.460
a recession. If it is, it'll be a very slight recession. That is, we'll move down slightly.
00:24:31.280
Right. So just for the record, we are currently in a recession and no politically correct leftist
00:24:38.020
Orwellian wordsmithing is going to change that. We are in a recession. The definition of a recession
00:24:42.700
is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. That is what the economists agree is the meaning of
00:24:49.840
a recession. That's what Biden's economists said is the meaning of a recession before for political
00:24:55.280
convenience. They tried to change their opinion when we were in a recession, but that's what it is.
00:24:58.780
So we are in a recession, but even going along with Joe's lie for a second, oh, I'm sorry,
00:25:04.420
just his folksy yarn spinning story tales or whatever. Even going along with his lies for a
00:25:10.340
second, notice the shift, even in the interview, we're not headed for a recession. And when we are,
00:25:17.320
it'll be a small recession. We're not transing the kids and it's good that we are.
00:25:21.880
We're not, the border's not open and it's great that we're welcoming all these people in.
00:25:28.360
We're not, we're not at war with Russia and we need to stand firm in the war with Russia.
00:25:34.080
We're not in a recession and it's just a slight recession. You know, if Joe Biden is saying
00:25:37.880
that okay, maybe now we're headed for a slight recession. We, we're headed for the great depression.
00:25:43.000
If you, I don't mean to laugh about it, but you're going to laugh or cry. That's what he's,
00:25:47.880
that's what he's saying. That's bad. That is really bad. If the president of the United States
00:25:53.180
is admitting this before the midterm elections, you know, I hope you have a diversified portfolio.
00:26:01.980
That's what, that's all I'm saying. And I hope you're stuck, stucking up on food and gas for the
00:26:06.340
winter because clearly Joe Biden is trying to manage expectations here. And he at least is
00:26:12.220
anticipating that things are going to get very, very bad. Speaking of our financial system,
00:26:18.540
some good news coming out of South Carolina, South Carolina state treasurer Curtis Loftus
00:26:22.840
has announced that he will pull the state's remaining $200 million in upholdings in asset
00:26:28.940
management company BlackRock by the end of the year. So this has been a movement. It's been really
00:26:35.480
popularized by my friend Vivek Ramaswamy, but it's, it's gone around to all of these state
00:26:42.060
treasurers because you've got three big asset management companies that are basically controlling
00:26:51.040
the marketplace, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. And what these companies are doing is
00:26:56.320
they're using their intense trillions and trillions of dollars of leverage to force the companies under
00:27:02.800
their control to start pushing wokeness. I first really got woke to this myself when I heard that
00:27:11.320
Cracker Barrel was going to be offering a vegetarian sausage. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:27:18.360
Not one vegetarian has ever walked into a Cracker Barrel. Not one, not once. That has never happened.
00:27:26.120
So if Cracker Barrel is offering vegetarian sausage, it is not because of a demand of the customers.
00:27:31.920
It is because someone is putting a gun to their head and saying, offer the vegetarian sausage.
00:27:35.560
And then I looked, I said, who are the major investors in, in Cracker Barrel? And I, and of
00:27:41.060
course it's these guys, it's people like BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard. So I said, okay,
00:27:45.200
they're pushing it. What are they pushing? They're pushing the ESG agenda, environment,
00:27:49.520
environmental social governance policies, which just means push leftism in the companies. And then the
00:27:55.300
companies wanting to keep their investors happy say, okay, fine. How are the asset managers able to do
00:28:00.600
that? Where did they get their money from? Well, in many cases, they get their money from state
00:28:04.800
pensions. They get their money from these huge financial institutions, including government
00:28:08.800
institutions, including the states. So if you want to really strike a blow at wokeness, yeah,
00:28:13.440
hold some rallies outside. That's good. Yeah, you know, have a really good political campaign,
00:28:18.700
social media campaign, have it come up with a good slogan. But really what you got to do is defund the
00:28:23.420
wokeness. How do you defund the wokeness? Well, you wield that political power that you get on happy
00:28:28.740
occasions when you get a state treasurer in a state to pull that money out of the companies that are
00:28:33.220
pushing it. And that is actually what is happening right now. You heard similar announcements from
00:28:37.160
Louisiana. We need to gut these companies. A lot of politics comes down to cold, hard cash, okay?
00:28:45.640
You know, politics is made up of a lot of BS. There's a lot of BS posturing and lying and sloganeering
00:28:53.280
and propaganda. I mean, that's just all Biden does, right? He's just a sort of empty suit,
00:28:58.300
empty-headed parrot of his party's propaganda and he blows where the wind blows. Well, BS
00:29:04.360
talks. No, I'm sorry. BS walks. I got a little confused there. I had a Biden moment.
00:29:11.980
BS walks and money talks. And so this is a great use of state power. Again, you know,
00:29:20.120
there are three views on this. The liberal view is use the political powers in any capricious,
00:29:26.680
arbitrary way to push your own radical agenda. The libertarian view is that politics needs to
00:29:31.520
remain totally neutral and we should never push our substantive views ever into the public and it's
00:29:35.320
all just a complete free marketplace of ideas and everything's totally neutral. And then there's the
00:29:40.320
conservative view, which is, no, we actually need to wield our political power to have a good country
00:29:45.160
and not have a bad country. And the conservative view, I think, melds the best parts or the best
00:29:51.000
observations of the liberal view and the libertarian view. Because it says, no, politics actually is
00:29:56.980
substantive. It's a moral playground. You inevitably have to legislate morality. That's just what the law
00:30:01.720
is. And so instead of the libs who want to advance evil and suppress good, we're going to do the
00:30:06.780
opposite of that. But it also respects the views of the libertarians, which is that people have a right
00:30:11.200
to a return on their investment and that markets should not be just completely destroyed in order to
00:30:17.840
manipulate them for political ends. And we shouldn't just completely disregard our fiduciary
00:30:23.120
responsibility to shareholders. And so what these state treasurers are saying, this is what Curtis
00:30:26.780
Loftus, the South Carolina state treasurer is saying, and Louisiana and other GOP treasurers around
00:30:32.360
the country. They're saying, you BlackRock, you State Street, you Vanguard are betraying your fiduciary
00:30:38.120
responsibilities to your shareholders because you're not putting profits first. You're not maximizing
00:30:44.120
profits to your shareholders. You are actually damaging profits to push this woke agenda.
00:30:51.100
So what you're actually doing is when you force Cracker Barrel to have the vegetarian sausage,
00:30:56.620
which again, I don't have a transcript of a phone call or anything where BlackRock calls up
00:31:01.160
Cracker Barrel and says, push the veggie sausage. But it's hard to figure out any other reason they
00:31:05.240
have the veggie sausage. What they're actually doing is damaging profits because not one person ever will
00:31:10.540
order the veggie sausage at Cracker Barrel. And so the conservative view, at least right now, the
00:31:15.380
conservative tactic on this, is melding the kind of best versions of the liberal view and the libertarian
00:31:21.040
view. And by the way, it's working. It's working to attack these soulless asset managers. I say soulless,
00:31:28.600
BlackRock right now. BlackRock right now has been referring to the potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan
00:31:35.500
Taiwan as a reunification. They said BlackRock has been, has quote, highlighted for the past year
00:31:47.100
the investment risk should China take steps to accelerate reunification with Taiwan. So first of
00:31:55.320
all, they're referring to a military invasion as reunification. They're already accepting the claim
00:32:02.880
that Taiwan belongs to China, which is something that the United States has certainly not admitted.
00:32:09.120
We haven't conceded that. That's not the foreign policy of the United States. We have accepted
00:32:13.500
something called the one China policy, which is very vague, but it does not deny that Taiwan has
00:32:20.720
its own rights as a sovereign political entity, as at least a semi-sovereign political entity.
00:32:25.960
But then the other thing that BlackRock's doing here is they're just taking it as a fait accompli
00:32:29.320
that Taiwan is going to become fully part of China. And so they're saying it's going to accelerate this
00:32:36.500
trend. Why are they doing that? Because they're making a bet on China, right? They're saying China's
00:32:43.000
a serious country. China's economy is going in the right direction. China's society is on a stronger
00:32:49.120
track than American society is. And so these guys are taking the side of China. And I just see no reason
00:32:55.240
to outsource our political power like that to BlackRock or State Street or Vanguard or anyone
00:33:01.600
like that. Our elite are betraying our country. There is always going to be an elite. So while I
00:33:11.620
am very sympathetic to the populists, I guess I'm on the side of the populists. I'm on the side of the
00:33:16.180
people. I'd rather be governed by the first hundred people in the Boston phone book than by the faculty
00:33:19.980
of Harvard College, as William F. Buckley Jr. said. While I'm strongly on the side of the people
00:33:25.680
here in the battle between liberalism and democracy, I'm on the side of democracy.
00:33:31.020
But we have to acknowledge there is an elite. And the problem that we're facing right now is not
00:33:36.280
that there is an elite. There is always an elite. The problem that we're facing right now
00:33:39.940
is that the elite is very, very bad. Our elite in this country, and there's always going to be one,
00:33:50.900
our elite are supposed to put the common good of the American people before their own selfish
00:33:58.140
interests. And they're not doing that. Kanye West just made a very, very good point.
00:34:05.900
Not the point that, not the thing that everyone's talking about with Kanye, that as I said, I just
00:34:11.980
see no reason really to address it because I think the whole debate has become so disingenuous and it's
00:34:16.960
being pushed in very bad faith by people who have said and who have applauded statements far more
00:34:21.740
egregious than what Kanye West said, but by people like Louis Farrakhan and others. But Kanye West made
00:34:27.860
a different good point. This was on the Kardashians and using the Kardashians as a symbol of how the
00:34:42.740
You know, there's some responsibilities that I still feel needs to be taken by the entire family,
00:34:51.080
right, about the way we present ourselves. Everything that we do, we need to present ourselves
00:34:56.340
with the highest level of nobility. When we're in a position of influence like we are, we have to say,
00:35:01.460
do we want our children to do this? And not just our children, everyone's children, because we're
00:35:08.340
being used as an influence to everyone's children to sell the product that gives us, that affords us
00:35:15.080
the houses that we put the 800 million security guards in front of. So knowing that to whom is given,
00:35:22.360
much is required, much is required, I also require that.
00:35:28.380
To those who are given lots and lots of things, there is much that is expected in terms of your
00:35:37.320
responsibility to your people. This, of course, this was the common understanding of what an elite is
00:35:44.480
until very, very recently. And the left has abandoned that. The left has totally denies the
00:35:51.340
moral order and says that they're just going to push their own interests and their own selfish
00:35:56.700
interests above all others. The right has kind of abandoned this too, though. The right has largely,
00:36:02.500
until very recently, abandoned the language of the common good, of the responsibility of the elite
00:36:08.960
to their common man. The right embraced an idea that sort of greed is good, and I'm in it for me,
00:36:15.840
and just do whatever you want just for yourself. And if you're not in the elite, well, just pull
00:36:20.320
yourself up by your bootstraps and get a job, stupid. And yeah, of course, we want people to be
00:36:25.560
self-sufficient. We want them to be able to feed themselves and be strong on their own. But if you
00:36:32.760
are in the elite and you don't have any acknowledgement of your responsibility to the
00:36:39.160
society, which has afforded you so much, then you can't have a country and you can't have a society
00:36:47.460
because it's just so preposterous to believe that you individually are 100% entirely responsible
00:36:58.540
for your success in life. That is not possible. The libs want to pretend that you're 0% responsible
00:37:04.060
for your success in life, which is absurd. But it's also absurd to say that you're 100%
00:37:08.400
responsible for your success in life. You have been given many blessings. Your very life is a
00:37:13.240
grace and a blessing, okay? And some people are born to a mother and father who love each other in
00:37:18.660
marriage. That's a great privilege. Some people are born in nice neighborhoods. Some people are born
00:37:22.740
with a little bit of money. Some people are born with privileges. Everybody is born with some kind
00:37:27.120
of a privilege, right? And some are given a greater abundance of privileges than others. And there's
00:37:31.860
nothing liberal or leftist about admitting that. That's just called reality. And it's actually a
00:37:36.440
deeply conservative point of view. And that's the point of view that Kanye West is expressing in that
00:37:41.420
interview. The idea of a pure meritocracy is not a conservative idea. That is a very liberal idea
00:37:50.420
that pretends that we're all just individuals completely divorced from society. But that's not true.
00:37:54.840
What we, it's again, you're just seeing, it's the three points of view. There's the liberal view,
00:38:00.580
the libertarian view, and the conservative view, which I think takes the best observations of the
00:38:04.600
liberal view and the libertarian view here. But we do have a responsibility here. The idea of a pure
00:38:09.560
meritocracy does not get rid of the elite. That's one of the biggest lies that we've been told in recent
00:38:13.980
decades. Well, you know, it's very wrong and hierarchical and old-timey and old-fashioned
00:38:20.780
to have an elite. So what we're going to do is we're going to have a pure meritocracy, and that's
00:38:24.240
going to get rid of the elite. No, it's not going to get rid of the elite. It's going to replace the
00:38:27.760
old WASP elite with a new elite. The difference is that the new elite feels absolutely no obligations
00:38:33.360
to help their fellow man. They're not doing any of the philanthropic good or a much smaller portion
00:38:37.860
than the old elite would. But we do have to have a responsibility. It gets right back to that point
00:38:43.160
on raising our children. Yeah, families have the primary responsibility and right for children.
00:38:49.340
But we all have a political interest in children because it's our society. And so if our kids are
00:38:53.340
all raised to be transgender Satan worshipers who are, you know, screaming and babbling and chopping
00:38:59.740
off parts of their body, we're going to live in a crappy society. And that's your problem just as much
00:39:03.580
as it's my problem. So we have a social and political right and responsibility to make sure
00:39:09.000
the kids aren't completely screwed up by the weirdos in the schools who are doing that now.
00:39:14.740
Speaking of undignified behavior and speaking of the libs desecrating things, really, really
00:39:20.460
disturbing video. A lib was filming herself desecrating a memorial to Ashley Babbitt. Ashley Babbitt was
00:39:29.280
the right winger who went into the Capitol on January 6th and was shot to death by a cop.
00:39:36.560
I guess nobody wants it here, right? Nobody wants this s**t.
00:40:04.620
B****. That's what you get. Nobody wants your f**king birthday celebrated on the f**king Capitol,
00:40:10.700
you dumb bitch. You think these cops want to celebrate your honor? You tried to kill them,
00:40:17.840
you fuck. Fuck you, Mickey. I would like to remind you of something that you may not have
00:40:24.500
even known. I think even, certainly the libs don't know this, and even many conservatives
00:40:29.560
don't know this. The only people who were killed on January 6th were Trump supporters.
00:40:37.700
And there were some people who, you know, they had heart attacks and things like that. So I don't
00:40:44.640
know that you really count that as part of January 6th. I mean, people have heart attacks every single
00:40:47.860
day. The only people who died, period, in January 6th were Trump supporters. And the only person
00:40:55.420
who was killed in political violence was a Trump supporter named Ashley Babbitt.
00:41:00.920
The narrative in the media is that the Trump supporters killed, murdered police officers.
00:41:06.840
That didn't happen. That was completely made up. And the New York Times even had to admit that.
00:41:11.920
The narrative in the media is that it was the Trump supporters who were so violent,
00:41:16.100
threatening everyone's lives. They almost raped and killed AOC. That's what she told us,
00:41:18.980
even though AOC was in a different building. It wasn't even in the place where the Capitol
00:41:24.200
riot was happening. The only person who was killed in that political violence was Ashley Babbitt.
00:41:30.700
And her little memorial there, her small, modest little memorial was just desecrated,
00:41:37.880
mocked, derided, stomped, property destroyed by the libs.
00:41:44.400
That is the power of this. That is the power. If anyone, even so much as looked with a skeptical glance
00:41:54.940
at one of the many murals of George Floyd that was constructed, that were constructed after
00:42:02.580
the BLM summer of love that killed dozens of people and burned half the country down,
00:42:08.740
that person would be canceled, would be ostracized, would be called the worst person in the world.
00:42:14.800
This lady is applauded. Yeah, that shows you, Ashley Babbitt. It's just so, so disingenuous.
00:42:22.900
And it's why I can't, it's why I can never get into the Trump criticism. It's why I can never get,
00:42:29.280
oh, Trump, he's really bad. You know, you got to hand it to the left. They're right. I mean,
00:42:32.500
Trump, he's just so, they're not, the left doesn't go after Trump because he said Mika Brzezinski's
00:42:43.660
ugly or whatever he tweeted. The left doesn't go after Trump because he had a phone, some one of
00:42:50.320
his guys had a phone call with some guy from Russia, or I don't even remember what the story was, or he,
00:42:56.260
Trump called Ukraine and it hasn't, it's nothing. They find excuses to destroy people who question
00:43:08.020
their agenda and who threaten their power. That's what the libs do. And so it's why I can't,
00:43:15.620
I can't get so riled up. Even when, let's say Donald Trump says something terrible. Let's say
00:43:21.480
Kanye West says something terrible. Let's say Alex Jones says something terrible. Yeah, they've all
00:43:24.960
said terrible things. Sure. Oh, sure. Okay. The left has said many worse things. The left has done many
00:43:31.900
worse things without any consequences whatsoever. And furthermore, the libs are not going after these
00:43:37.860
guys because they said those things. The left is already going after those guys and they use any
00:43:42.160
excuse they can to destroy them. And then the retaliation for whatever they do is so disproportionate.
00:43:50.880
You could say Ashley Babbitt should not have gone into the Capitol on January 6th.
00:43:54.720
Sure. I think a lot of people would agree with that. Okay. Did she deserve to be shot and killed
00:44:01.100
and then have her memorials desecrated and called all those terrible things? Do you really think?
00:44:05.280
Alex Jones shouldn't have said what he said. Yeah, sure. Of course. It was wrong. It was
00:44:08.640
terrible. It was awful. It's immoral. He should go to confession. He should, he should apologize.
00:44:11.460
Okay, sure. Yeah, fine. Billion dollars. Donald Trump shouldn't have tweeted the things he tweeted.
00:44:19.300
Yeah. Okay. Should he have had his, should he have been spied on by the federal government and then had
00:44:24.620
his home raided and then had his presidency completely under? Of course not. It's just so
00:44:30.620
insane. It's so completely ridiculous and disingenuous. And I just think once you see it,
00:44:39.460
once you see Biden lies, isn't that cute? Donald Trump lies. It's going to destroy the whole country.
00:44:46.740
We have to get rid of this guy. Once you see that, at least for me, I can't unsee that and I can't play
00:44:52.700
their game. And I don't think you should either. Now, speaking of Kanye, I will be discussing
00:44:59.440
Kanye on the member block with my friend, Spencer Klavan. The rest of the show is continuing now.
00:45:05.820
You don't want to miss it. If you're not a member, click the link in the description and join us.