The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1108 - Alex Jones Forced To Pay Nearly $1 Billion In Heated Court Battle

00:00:00.000 I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about the American press.

00:00:04.080 I'm going to tell you every single thing that you need to know about the establishment media

00:00:09.120 in two headlines. Both from the New York Times, this one, October 10th, 2022.

00:00:18.000 Biden, storyteller in chief, spins yarns that often unravel. President Biden has been unable

00:00:27.360 to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity.

00:00:33.640 Oh, shucks. This other headline, November 1st, 2020, also the New York Times.

00:00:42.220 Dishonesty has defined the Trump presidency. The consequences could be lasting. Whether

00:00:49.220 President Trump wins or loses on November 3rd, the very concept of public trust in an established

00:00:56.740 set of facts necessary for the operation of a democratic society has been eroded.

00:01:07.440 Those headlines are talking about the exact same thing. Not just similar things,

00:01:16.160 not just things that kind of resemble each other a little bit. Exactly the same thing. Both stories

00:01:23.920 are about the president saying things that are not true. In the case of Biden, it's kind of cute.

00:01:30.760 You know, it's folksiness veering into folklore, as the alternate online headline of this article put

00:01:37.260 it. In the case of Trump, it's an existential threat to the nation. It's the erosion of our democratic

00:01:43.200 society. This is not an isolated case. This is not an exceptional example.

00:01:48.920 This is how the entire establishment media work all the time. It's not just that they get stories

00:01:57.100 wrong, often intentionally. It's that the entire framing of every story is designed to help the

00:02:05.260 libs and hurt conservatives. They, like Biden, aren't folksy, yarn-spinning storytellers.

00:02:13.760 They are paid and powerful liars and propagandists. And they've done infinitely more to erode the 0.68

00:02:21.760 operation of our democratic society than have Donald Trump and all the other conservative

00:02:26.280 voices put together. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:29.960 Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Autopump, who says,

00:02:41.800 I appreciate Tulsi Gabbard choosing to leave the Democrat Party, but a little bit of me wonders

00:02:46.120 what took so long. It was pretty clear all the way back in the ancient history of 2020 when she was

00:02:50.460 running for president as a Democrat that the party was going down this path. Yeah, that's true.

00:02:55.600 Obviously, we all know that, or at least the majority of listeners to this podcast who are

00:03:03.000 probably not ardent partisan Democrats. Yes, we've all known that for a long time. But I'm not going

00:03:09.100 to knock Tulsi. Yeah, she should have known it in 2020. She should have known it in 2016. Okay, fine.

00:03:14.340 She knows it now. That's good enough for me. I'm glad that she is seeing the light a lot. Other people

00:03:18.120 are seeing the light. That's a wonderful thing. She's thinking for herself, and we need to think for

00:03:22.420 ourselves, do for ourselves. When you want to fix your car for yourself, you got to check out

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00:03:31.600 Fox? I absolutely adore Rock Auto. I adore them because they've been with this show basically since

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00:04:37.360 Alex Jones has just been ordered to pay a lot of money to the parents of victims of the Sandy Hook

00:04:44.140 shooting because he went on the air and said that the Sandy Hook shooting wasn't real,

00:04:50.820 that it was a false flag. It didn't really happen. And he spun a yarn, you might say,

00:04:57.140 about what that shooting really was. Alex Jones, because he got that story wrong on the air,

00:05:03.760 now has to pay, according to a court in Connecticut, more than $950 million

00:05:11.660 to the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. That is in addition to a ruling from a

00:05:21.500 separate jury in Texas ordering Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million

00:05:29.060 in punitive damages. So we are now talking about roughly $1 billion that Alex Jones, a radio host,

00:05:38.300 known for his hyperbole and kind of eccentric, bizarre, really out there, kind of implausible

00:05:44.840 takes sometimes. A man who rips off his shirt screaming about the frickin' frogs going gay. 0.99

00:05:51.300 That guy, because he got a story wrong on the air, has to pay a billion dollars. 0.97

00:05:56.840 That's a lot of money for getting something wrong on the radio, don't you think?

00:06:01.700 But Michael, he got it really wrong. Yeah, okay.

00:06:03.620 Okay. But Michael, it was awful what he said. Sure. Michael, it was really, really awful. Yeah,

00:06:08.340 okay, fine. I'm not arguing. I'm not disputing that. Billion dollars for getting something wrong

00:06:14.920 on the radio? Has there ever been a radio host ever who has not gotten something wrong on the radio?

00:06:23.840 Even, well, probably me. I'm not sure that I've ever gotten a single thing. No, maybe even I have

00:06:27.700 gotten somethings wrong. But Michael, it wasn't that. Okay, yeah, let's say that Alex Jones said

00:06:32.260 he got it as wrong, as terrible. It was the worst reporting of any story ever in the whole history

00:06:38.160 of the world. Billion dollars for getting that wrong? As far as I know, Alex Jones hasn't killed

00:06:43.780 anybody. His storytelling on the radio didn't get anybody killed either. What kind of damages

00:06:53.120 are we going to see paid out by the people who lied about the COVID vaccines and who got the COVID

00:06:59.420 vaccines wrong and who said that not only would they protect you from getting the virus and transmitting

00:07:04.420 the virus, but that they would actually, they were totally safe, totally effective. And now a bunch of

00:07:09.340 kids are dead because of heart problems that even the CDC now admits the vaccines cause very serious

00:07:14.920 heart problems. And the ones that don't cause heart problems cause blood clots. Do those people have

00:07:21.380 to pay any damages? Cause that wasn't just some Texas radio host who got that story wrong. That

00:07:26.820 was the entire establishment media and all of our elected officials, certainly on the Democrat side.

00:07:31.900 And the president of the United States said, these are totally fine. These are totally safe.

00:07:35.560 I'm actually going to mandate that you get these, get these shots, even though kids are at very,

00:07:40.480 very low risk from the virus. And oh yeah, okay. If you get heart problems and you die, oopsie daisy.

00:07:45.940 I'm going to deny that at first. And then I'm going to admit that that happened,

00:07:49.400 but say it's not a big deal. Are they going to have, what are they going to pay? I don't think

00:07:53.920 they're going to pay a billion dollars or a million dollars or $1. I don't think they're

00:07:58.440 going to pay jack diddly squat. And so I don't call, call me callous, but I just,

00:08:04.620 I just think that paying a billion dollars out for getting something wrong on the radio when you're

00:08:11.640 a right winger, even an eccentric right winger, seems a little bit crazy when the left that lies about

00:08:18.760 everything that lies in a much more persuasive and serious way about much more urgent matters for

00:08:25.920 the vast majority of people, they don't ever pay a price at all. That seems wrong to me. That seems

00:08:33.040 kind of backwards to me. I think they ought to pay. I think the billion dollars that Alex Jones is

00:08:39.020 supposed to pay, I think we need at least a 100, a 1,000, a 100,000 times that payout from the libs

00:08:45.660 who lie constantly in much more consequential lies. On that vaccine point, by the way,

00:08:53.780 Dr. Paul Offit is a voting member of the FDA panel that approves the vaccines. He's just blowing the

00:09:00.540 whistle now on the oversight or lack thereof for the vaccine approval process.

00:09:07.100 Do the benefits of this vaccine outweigh the rest? I didn't see the benefits. We really need much

00:09:12.280 better data, I think, before we move forward on this. And I can only hope that it's coming because

00:09:17.460 I feel very strongly about my no vote there. In fact, the only reason I voted no was because

00:09:23.140 hell no was not a choice. And it just surprised me that we were willing to go forward with this with

00:09:29.860 such scant evidence of benefit. I think the phrase that I used was uncomfortably scant.

00:09:36.080 So you just sort of felt like the fix was in a little bit here. Maybe that's not the right phrase,

00:09:40.340 but it was something that they wanted. And I felt like we were being led here with a critical lack

00:09:47.660 of information. Right now, they're saying that we should trust mouse data. And I don't think that

00:09:51.620 should ever be true. I don't think you should ever ask tens of millions of people to get a vaccine

00:09:55.960 based on mouse data. And there's no public data on that yet. What's more, for these fall booster

00:10:01.340 shots, the FDA is not consulting with Dr. Offit and the rest of the Independent Vaccine Advisory

00:10:07.060 Committee. And there you have it. There you have it. We've known this from the very beginning. And

00:10:12.820 actually, the people who were talking about this at the very beginning of the COVID vaccines,

00:10:16.980 we were all called conspiracy theorists and kooks and anti-science. Turns out we were completely right.

00:10:22.460 We were completely right. And so you talk about even someone like Alex Jones,

00:10:26.960 who is an entertainer on the radio. And sure, he's gotten something super duper wrong. Sure,

00:10:33.320 yeah, of course. His record overall on every story he's ever talked about, including the gay frogs, 0.99

00:10:40.000 by the way, which he was completely right about. He was actually modest about because the water in

00:10:43.840 the water in Connecticut, I'm sorry, the chemicals in the water in Connecticut were turning the frogs

00:10:48.620 hermaphroditic, not gay. They were transing them, not turning them gay. Alex Jones's overall record 0.54

00:10:55.100 is definitely better than CNN's record. Definitely better than the Washington Post's record.

00:11:01.380 Definitely better than New York Times's record. There's no question about that.

00:11:06.220 I don't see any of them paying out a billion dollars. You might say, well, their lies are not

00:11:12.040 as hurtful as Alex Jones's. I don't know. Measure hurtfulness for me, please. I can tell you their

00:11:17.020 lies are much more consequential. Kids are dead because of their lies. Kids are dead of myocarditis 0.96

00:11:23.140 because of their lies. Okay? And a lot of other problems too. So I just don't buy that stuff.

00:11:30.060 And when they're not putting the fix in, as Dr. Offit is saying, when they are not sacrificing

00:11:37.860 safety and caution and prudence and self-government for a little extra profit and a little more political

00:11:46.520 control, what are they doing? When they're not jabbing the kids full of shots that in most cases

00:11:51.420 they really, there's no argument that they need them at all. They are transing the kids. And we've 0.94

00:11:56.820 been blowing the whistle on this for a long time. And now we've got some data here that actually show

00:12:04.480 the consequences of a years long campaign to trans the kids. You've got a 582% increase in quote,

00:12:11.320 gender nonconforming kids in one of the largest counties in one of the most important states in

00:12:16.360 the country. Montgomery County Schools. This is the largest county in Maryland. Maryland is obviously

00:12:27.860 right there by the beltway, right there at the very heart of our nation's capital. Montgomery County

00:12:34.820 Schools are reporting a 582% increase in gender nonconforming students in two years. Pretty 0.99

00:12:41.300 wild. You can see this report here from the Daily Caller. They've gathered this data. This is a near

00:12:47.580 sevenfold increase from 2019 to 2022. What are the odds? What are the odds? How do you explain that?

00:12:59.380 Well, could be, it could be that there's something in the water, I guess. Could be. It could be that this

00:13:07.900 is a social contagion that is spreading, which is obviously what it is. Either way, though, this

00:13:13.260 really blows up the Democrats' narrative because the Democrats and the libs broadly on the sexual

00:13:18.980 revolution have for years said, look, people are born this way. Sexual orientation is immutable. It's

00:13:24.660 from birth. Who would choose this? You can't have any conversion therapy. Social forces have no effect

00:13:30.160 effect on your sexual orientation. Well, if that's the case, then how is this increasing so much?

00:13:40.620 If you're just, then it has to be biological. There's got to be some kind of chromosomal issue,

00:13:44.540 right? There's got to be something in the womb, except that babies aren't babies in the womb. So that

00:13:48.840 kind of, that kind of messes up their narrative there as well. So it messes up their abortion narrative.

00:13:53.240 It messes up their gay rights narrative. Now it's messing up the transgender narrative. 582% increase. 1.00

00:13:58.580 Why is that? Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that educators are teaching

00:14:03.040 little kids all the way down to kindergarten that boys can be girls and girls can be boys? No,

00:14:06.900 that's crazy. That's a crazy conspiracy theory. That's not happening. And it is happening and it's

00:14:11.040 good, by the way. And, but it's not transing the kids. It's not causing anyone to question their sex

00:14:16.660 or gender or change it, except it is, it's a 582% increase, except that's a crazy conspiracy theory,

00:14:22.040 except it's happening and it's true. Are you dizzy yet? I can't, it's very hard to track any of that.

00:14:28.580 Democrats' success in transing the kids, Democrats' success in their political agenda

00:14:35.900 has undermined a lot of their narratives. Their narratives on born this way, their narratives on

00:14:41.500 sex and gender are totally different. Sex and gender are the same. Homosexual rights is that 1.00

00:14:50.200 they're boys and they're girls and some boys like boys and some girls like girls. But then their

00:14:53.960 narrative on transgenderism is that actually there's no such thing as girls and boys and boys can be

00:14:58.140 girls and girls can be boys. None of the narratives make sense, okay? It's just power. And I guess this

00:15:05.360 takes me back to Alex Jones. It takes me back to the New York Times, right? Joe Biden lies. That's so

00:15:12.080 cute and great and wonderful. Donald Trump lies. It's going to completely destroy the republic. 0.62

00:15:16.600 The arguments don't matter. The narratives don't matter. The arguments don't matter. The facts

00:15:22.280 really don't matter to them. It's all framing. It's all narrative. And it's why I can't stand up on

00:15:29.120 the rooftops and condemn Alex Jones or any of the other celebrities that the left turns on because

00:15:36.280 they in any way question the right-wing narrative. I haven't talked about Kanye's tweet. Kanye sends

00:15:41.700 some fairly eccentric tweets every now and again. And I haven't made a big deal about it, even though

00:15:45.600 the left is insisting. You have to disavow Kanye. You always have to disavow Kanye. What Kanye said

00:15:50.740 and what Kanye is being accused of is absolutely nothing compared to the things that Ilhan Omar has

00:15:58.040 said, that Louis Farrakhan has said, that Barack Obama's former pastor said, and Barack Obama's

00:16:02.380 former pastor with connections to all that same kind of movement and connections to Farrakhan and all

00:16:07.620 the rest of it. And that all gets completely written off. Obama actually smiles next to Louis Farrakhan.

00:16:12.100 And celebrities from Hollywood take pictures next to Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton. That's all

00:16:17.420 completely fine. Then Kanye West says something that is one one-thousandth as harsh and severe and

00:16:24.420 bigoted as any of those people. And we're told we have to disavow this guy. Why? It has absolutely

00:16:28.440 nothing to do with Kanye West's comments. It has everything to do with the fact that Kanye West now is

00:16:33.120 more right-wing in many of his views. He's pro-life. He's pro-family. He's pro-public Christianity.

00:16:40.820 And so that's why they go after him. It has nothing to do with the facts that they're pretending to go

00:16:46.460 after him for. They're going after Alex Jones not because he got the Sandy Hook story wrong.

00:16:50.380 That has nothing to do with it. They're going after Alex Jones because they hate Alex Jones,

00:16:54.900 because Alex Jones is right-wing and he's popular. And so they've been deplatforming that guy,

00:17:00.560 censoring that guy for years. And they found this one issue, which is a really good issue to go after

00:17:05.460 him for. And they're making him pay a billion dollars for getting a story wrong on the air.

00:17:08.420 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

00:17:14.200 comments or any of these reports or stories or anything in the abstract. It's just that the game

00:17:19.400 is so obviously rigged. Read the New York Times headlines. It's so disingenuous. It's in such bad

00:17:24.840 faith that I see absolutely no obligation to entertain it. And actually, I think it's probably wrong to

00:17:31.780 entertain their game and play their game because it further ensconces them in power. And it's not in any

00:17:35.880 way, in good faith. And because they're transing the kids and that's bad. It's really weird and bad 1.00

00:17:41.100 to trans the kids. Speaking of Democrats' weird obsession with our children, Kamala Harris is 1.00

00:17:47.700 claiming your children. Hide your kids, hide your wife, but especially hide your kids from Kamala 1.00

00:17:53.020 Harris. She's claiming them as her own. I mean, truly, when you, you know, when you see our kids

00:18:00.460 and I truly believe that they are our children, they are the children of our country, of our

00:18:05.280 communities. I mean, our future is really bright if we, if we prioritize them and therefore prioritize

00:18:14.140 the climate crisis and the need to address it. Our children, our kids, and they are our kids and

00:18:20.280 they're our kids and they're my kids and they're mine. And so what Kamala Harris is insinuating here 1.00

00:18:26.600 very heavily is that she has a right to dictate how your kids are raised. And it's the same thing 1.00

00:18:32.620 that Hillary Clinton's been saying for a long time when she uses the phrase, it takes a village. 0.97

00:18:36.600 What she's really saying is I have the right to raise your kids. It's the same thing when the,

00:18:40.260 when the Biden rather, well, that was a Freudian slip. When the Biden administration says that

00:18:44.940 parents who are questioning the kind of nonsense their kids are being taught in schools, that they're 0.58

00:18:49.700 akin to domestic terrorists. That's what they're saying. They're saying we have a right to raise your 0.91

00:18:53.480 kids. When you have left-wing activists saying we're going to go in and take queer children,

00:19:01.080 whatever that means, out of their families and away from their homes and put them into queer 1.00

00:19:05.120 homes. You remember that story from a couple of weeks ago? All this kinds of stuff. When the,

00:19:08.800 when the school guidance counselors are hiding the fact from parents that children are identifying as

00:19:14.280 transgender and all the rest of it, in some cases, even recommending that they go on different

00:19:20.280 sex-changing drugs. I mean, all, what all of this is about is parents, you have no right to raise your

00:19:25.180 kids. We have the, we, the liberal establishment have the right to do everything. And there's three takes

00:19:31.240 here. There's the lib take, which is the children are our children collectively, and we're going to do

00:19:39.640 what we want to do. And by our, by the way, they mean the liberal oligarchy that runs the country. Then

00:19:45.080 there's the libertarian take, which is the state has no right to raise our children. My children have

00:19:49.940 nothing to do with the state. My children are mine and that's that. And then there's the conservative

00:19:53.440 take, which is actually kind of a blend of the liberal take and the libertarian take. Because while

00:20:00.240 the conservative takes as the families have a particular claim to our own children, it also

00:20:07.820 acknowledges the social realities and the political realities that liberal take takes into account,

00:20:13.180 which is that we live in a society. And actually it really does take a village to raise a child

00:20:17.880 because children are not just formed in some silo by their mother and their father and maybe their

00:20:24.060 brother in a home, but they're, they're, they are educated. They are brought up by the whole of

00:20:28.080 society, by their neighbors, by their cousins, by the environment in which they live, by the schools

00:20:33.460 that they go to, by the businesses that they frequent, by good old Mr. McGillicuddy down at the butcher shop

00:20:38.360 and by the churches that they go to and by what their society celebrates and exalts.

00:20:43.120 And that's all part of it. Okay. Statecraft really is soul craft is what the conservatives understand.

00:20:48.440 And so I think the conservative view is the best of all worlds because it protects the rights of

00:20:54.160 parents to raise our kids. But it, it also is not completely impotent like the libertarian view.

00:20:59.540 It's not just, it's not completely giving up the, the political power that sometimes the people give

00:21:05.860 us, which is the essence of self-government. The conservative view says, yeah, we have to protect

00:21:10.600 the rights of families to raise kids and we need to protect the political environment so that these

00:21:14.960 poor kids aren't preyed on and perverted all the time. We got to kick the drag queens out of the 1.00

00:21:19.080 schools and we got to kick these weirdos out, these guidance counselors who are trying to trans the 1.00

00:21:23.900 kids. And we got to pass laws against abortion so that we can protect other kids. And we've got to

00:21:28.520 encourage a society that wants to do good stuff and avoid bad stuff instead of what we have today,

00:21:34.180 which is the complete inversion of that, that we have a political right and obligation to create

00:21:39.060 a good flourishing society because that's, what's going to raise kids because our kids actually are

00:21:42.720 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 1.00

00:22:07.080 her. As the attacks ramped up, Daily Wire Plus gave her a platform to speak out without fear of

00:22:12.400 being silenced and supported her investigation into Black Lives Matter. That organization raised

00:22:18.080 $80 million through fundraising, but no one ever asked where the money went. Until right now.

00:22:23.660 Candace Owens reveals the truth in her new documentary, The Greatest Lie Ever Sold,

00:22:28.040 now streaming exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. Because of our members, we are able to create a

00:22:32.840 thriving alternative platform and pursue the truth wherever it leads. Daily Wire Plus members defeated

00:22:38.320 the vaccine mandates in the Supreme Court. Daily Wire Plus members helped us uncover the Loudoun

00:22:42.960 County sexual assault cover-up. Daily Wire Plus members empowered Matt Walsh to expose,

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00:22:59.780 fines for misinformation. Remember, we are speaking for you and fighting for your beliefs too. Free speech

00:23:06.300 is our weapon here. And with the left's iron grip on culture in the mainstream media,

00:23:11.320 someone had to step up and fill that void. So you go check out that movie. It's a great movie.

00:23:19.680 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, 0.94

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. 1.00

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. 0.85

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, 1.00

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 0.66

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 0.95

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

00:34:39.800 elite ought to behave. Take a listen. 0.75

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 1.00

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 0.91

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 1.00

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 1.00

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. 1.00

00:39:42.280 T china. 1.00

00:39:52.620 F**k Ashley babbitt. F**k Ashley babbitt. 1.00

00:40:04.620 B****. That's what you get. Nobody wants your f**king birthday celebrated on the f**king Capitol, 1.00

00:40:10.700 you dumb bitch. You think these cops want to celebrate your honor? You tried to kill them, 1.00

00:40:17.840 you fuck. Fuck you, Mickey. I would like to remind you of something that you may not have 1.00

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, 0.96

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, 0.73

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. 0.73

00:43:54.720 Sure. I think a lot of people would agree with that. Okay. Did she deserve to be shot and killed 0.99

00:44:01.100 and then have her memorials desecrated and called all those terrible things? Do you really think? 0.90

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, 1.00

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.

00:45:10.360 Thank you.

00:45:30.440 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - October 13, 2022

Ep. 1108 - Alex Jones Forced To Pay Nearly $1 Billion In Heated Court Battle

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