Ep. 1124 - Trump VsĀ DeSantis
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Summary
Election Day has officially given way to Groundhog Day. That s right, because Maricopa County officials have told reporters that we won t know the results in two of the most pivotal races in the country, the Senate race in Arizona and the governor's race in Virginia, until next week.
Transcript
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Election Day has officially given way to Groundhog Day. That's right, because Maricopa County
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officials have told reporters that we likely won't have results in two of the most pivotal
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races in the country, the Senate seat in Arizona and the governorship of Arizona, until next week.
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Now, initially, we were supposed to know the results on Tuesday. That's Election Day.
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Then they couldn't do that. Some machines were breaking. Some people, they couldn't count so
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fast. So then they said Friday. You'll know the results on Friday. Now, it looks like it's going
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to be even later than that. Presumably, the delay is being caused by supply chain issues in the
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delivery of new ballots for Democrat Katie Hobbs. I'm joking. I'm joking. YouTube, I'm joking. Is
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that a joke? I don't know. The delay, though, means that America remains a laughingstock.
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If any other nation on Earth took this long to tabulate its votes, the U.S. State Department
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would be investigating that nation for subverting democracy. Here in the United States, however,
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they tell us, no, that's business as usual. That's just the way elections work now.
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And if President Trump's latest attack on Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin is any indication,
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we will be well into the 2024 presidential race before we know how the 2022 midterms finally shook
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out. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Jack Straw, who says the only
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surprising thing about Trudeau's appearance on that drag show is that he wasn't in drag. I know
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that's true. That's going to be the next step, obviously, because, you know, people always have
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to one up one another when it comes to these kind of religious political rituals. And we know Justin
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Trudeau likes costumes already. So if he can wear a black face, he can wear a woman face. And maybe
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that'll be for his next election. Maybe that'll be when he runs for U.N. Secretary General or
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Good Ranchers, American meat delivered. 2024 is on. NBC News is reporting that Donald Trump is in fact
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going to announce that he's running for president on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago. I spoke yesterday to a
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former senior Trump official and a man who's still friends with President Trump. He says it is etched
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in stone. Donald Trump is running. It's not a fake out. Still could be a fake out, but everyone around
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Trump seems to think this guy is running for president. How do we know that it seems that he's
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running for president? Well, because he's attacking his rivals. I was going to read his attack on Ron
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DeSantis first. He's got another attack on Ron DeSantis. First though, I got to get, he's got one
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on Glenn Youngkin. So Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, Trump tweets out this morning.
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Young kin, two words. Now that's an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn't it? In Virginia,
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couldn't have won without me. I endorsed him, did a very big Trump rally for him telephonically.
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What? Got MAGA to vote for him, or he couldn't have come close to winning. But he knows that and
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admits it. Besides, having a hard time with the Dems in Virginia. But he'll get it done.
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So this actually isn't just completely random. This is in response to people in Youngkin world
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saying that Trump actually was going to be a drag on them. And they were hoping that he wouldn't
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come to a rally. And they feared that if he did a rally, that would actually throw the race.
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And so Trump has to come out. He says, I did a big rally for him telephonically.
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What amazing diction. A big rally on the telephone. And besides, he'll get it done though. No big deal.
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And then that opening. Young kin. That's an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn't it?
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You have to admit, that is an interesting take. That is, in fact, an interesting take.
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And then, of course, Trump is reserving most of his ire for Ron DeSantis. So he's been attacking
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DeSantis now since just before the midterms, calling him Ron DeSanctimonious. Then he went back
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to endorsing Ron DeSantis for re-election. Then he attacks Ron DeSantis immediately thereafter.
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And now he's just unloaded on him. This is the statement. He released it again
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on Truth Social, then sent it out as a press release. Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th
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president of the US. News Corp, which is Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and the no longer great
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New York Post, bring back call, is all in for Governor Ron DeSantis, an average Republican
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governor with great public relations who didn't have to close up his state, but did, unlike other
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Republican governors whose overall numbers for a Republican were just average, middle of the pack,
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including COVID, and who has the advantage of sunshine, where, when I yell, by the way,
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it's because it's in all caps, where people from badly run states up north would go to no matter
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who the governor was, just like I did. Ron came to me in desperate shape in 2017. He was politically
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dead, losing in a landslide to a very good agriculture commissioner, Adam Putnam, who was loaded up with
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cash and great poll numbers. Ron had low approval, bad polls, and no money. But he said, if I would
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endorse him, he could win. I didn't know Adam, so I said, let's give it a shot, Ron. When I endorsed
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him, it was as though, to use a bad term, a nuclear weapon went off. Years later, they were the exact
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words that Adam Putnam used in describing Ron's endorsement. He said, I went from having it made with
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no competition to immediately getting absolutely clobbered after your endorsement. I then got Ron by the
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star of the Democrat Party, Andrew Gillum, who was later revealed to be a crackhead by having two
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massive rallies with tens of thousands of people at each one. I also fixed his campaign, which had
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completely fallen apart. I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum. But after the race, when votes were
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being stolen by the corrupt election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down 10,000 votes
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a day, along with now Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the US attorneys, and the ballot theft
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immediately ended just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. How long does
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this tweet thread go? I stopped his election from being stolen, and now Rhonda Sanctimonious is
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playing games. The fake news asks him if he's going to run if President Trump runs, and he says,
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I'm only focused on the governor's race. I'm not looking into the future. Well, in terms of loyalty
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and class, that's really not the right answer. This is just like 2015 and 2016, a media assault,
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collusion, when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn't have been nicer or
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more supportive. The Wall Street Journal loved low energy Jeb Bush and a succession of other people as
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they rapidly disappeared from sight, finally falling in line with me after I easily knocked
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them out one by one. We're in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us,
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MAGA, but ultimately we will win, put America first, and make America great again.
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Wow, that was a long one. That was a long one. There was a lot in there.
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Wow. People are furious about this. People are furious about these attacks, especially this one,
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because this is just a full-on guns-blazing attack. He's doubling down on the Rhonda Sanctimonious
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nickname. He's saying that he used federal law enforcement to go in and help in the election,
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which kind of might put him in a precarious position if the Dems do decide to indict him.
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But in any case, people are furious about this, and they're saying, why? Why, Trump? Why do you
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have to be like this? Why? We've got a good Republican governor. He just won re-election.
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It's two years out from the general. Why? Why are you attacking Rhonda Sanctimonious? Why?
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Guys, guys, if these sorts of antics are the sort of thing that infuriate you, rather than sort of
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amuse you, you've got to find some other way to spend your time than to focus on national politics.
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The question that people are asking right now, they're pulling their hair out, they're saying,
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why is the Republican frontrunner in 2024, according to the polls, attacking his most
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impressive and threatening rival? Why? It just doesn't make any sense. Of course it makes sense.
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Are you serious? Of course, of course this is happening. But, well, okay, yeah, I mean,
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I guess it makes sense in the polls, and I guess it makes sense in the, you know, but come on,
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why does it have to be like this? It shouldn't be like this. Okay, but it is like this. This is
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politics. This is exactly what politics is, all right? And people are accusing me of defending
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Donald Trump. They're saying, Michael, you know, I'm like the only conservative pundit in America at
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this point who isn't going around passing out yard signs for Ron DeSantis. And I like Ron DeSantis.
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I love Ron DeSantis. I think the guy's a great governor. But I'm the only, I think I might be the
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last pundit in America on the conservative side who is not just, you know, lambasting Trump
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constantly and all in for picking a nominee for the 2024 presidential race two years out from the
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race. We haven't even finished counting in the midterm elections. And I think, guys, good grief.
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Let the process play out. You're telling me that I'm defending Donald Trump. When I observe that
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the sun shines, am I defending the sun? When I observe that the rain falls, am I defending the
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rain? Donald Trump is going to fight to win the presidency again. That is a fact. It is very,
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very silly. It is a waste of your time and your blood pressure and your precious life that you have
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that is finite to pull your hair out and rend your garments over that fact. That is happening.
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Now, you don't need to enjoy that. You don't need to be thrilled about that. But you really should
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accept that. That is happening. And no amount of yelling or whining or begging or pleading is going
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to stop that. There's nothing that you can do. There's nothing that any of the other potential
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2024 Republican candidates can do. Donald Trump is going to do what Donald Trump wants to do.
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Okay? And many of us have really liked Donald Trump and have really appreciated a lot of his
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policies and really got a kick out of his campaigns. We cannot pretend that we don't know this. We
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cannot pretend that we don't know who this guy is. I don't think we can even pretend that we're not
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sort of amused by it, at least on some level. I certainly am. It's just a fact. Okay? And in
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politics, we deal with reality. We don't, you don't live in the pie in the sky in my ideal world.
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No, this is reality. Okay? So we're in it. Why is the 2024 race starting? Because it is. Well,
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why is Trump attacking his rivals? Because that's what happens in primaries. It's happening,
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guys. Okay? You can either, you can either scream and cry and, you know, give yourself a coronary over
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it. Or you can just sort of take it as it comes and laugh at the things that are kind of funny
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and wait to see how it should. Fight for your guys, of course. Fight for what you want.
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But we got to wait to see how it shakes out. This is going to be two years of this. All right? Don't,
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don't let it drive you crazy in the year of our Lord 2022. All right? Now, we're going to talk to
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for 50% off your first month. Speaking of vicious political attacks, a man in the United Kingdom
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has just launched a terrible physical assault on the king of England, King Charles III. But because
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the man who attacked him is very polite, like all British people, he didn't attack him with a gun,
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he didn't attack him with a knife, he didn't punch him. He threw some eggs at him. You can see in the
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clip, it's on BBC. This actually gives me a lot of respect for King Charles. The guy throws an egg,
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and Charles, this just extraordinarily dignified, stuffy old British man, just kind of gently looks
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to his side as the egg falls. Doesn't blink, doesn't move, doesn't flinch at all. And the guy
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keeps throwing eggs at him. Terrible arm, by the way. Doesn't hit him once. But Charles, he doesn't
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duck. This wasn't like George Bush with the shoe in Iraq, where he's kind of ducking the shoes.
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He just stands there, and the eggs keep flying, and Charles just keeps, you know, sort of,
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hello, hello, you're shaking hands in the line. It's very, very dignified. And it's good. It really
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makes me think, one, Charles is a lot manlier and more virile than I think people, including myself,
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would have given him credit for. But two, that's dignity. And you know, American politics,
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politics, not very dignified. Whatever else you want to say about American politics,
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it is not conducive to dignity. And it would be nice to have a little bit of dignity.
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Just a little, little smidge of it, as much as we can possibly have in this kind of eccentric
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country of ours. When you look at Charles doing that, you think that's, that's quite nice. I actually
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rather, I rather like that. I wish that we had people who would stand up straight, not flinch,
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you know, and kind of keep on, keep on keeping on. Keep a stiff upper lip, as the British have.
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Now, for the man who egged King Charles, this man's punishment is, I'm not joking, he's a 23-year-old
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man, Patrick Thelwell. His punishment is that he can, he can no longer carry eggs in public.
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Just like that, one of life's simple joys taken away from him. That's right. No longer can he carry
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eggs in public. But otherwise, he's basically off the hook. It's fine. No big deal.
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In this case, really, you would have to say the punishment fits the crime. You throw eggs at the
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king, you lose your egg privileges. That's very good. One of the problems in the American justice
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system right now is that the punishments don't seem to fit the crime. If you are a BLM rioter,
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and you threaten people's lives, and you loot, and you steal, and you pillage, and you burn,
00:16:48.960
and you throw Molotov cocktails, you don't get punished at all. You get maybe a little slap
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on the wrist if that Kamala Harris bails you out of jail. And then you go right back into the street,
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do the same thing. You get encouragement, actually, for your crimes from the libs.
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But if you're a conservative who, let's say, shows up to the Capitol Rotunda on the day that
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they're certifying the election, and you have a horn hat on, and maybe you take some selfies with
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a lectern in the rotunda, and maybe, I don't know, you crack a Coors Light at the Capitol,
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you'll be thrown in solitary confinement. Your life will be ruined. The feds will go after you with
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everything they've got. Forget about January 6th for a second. If you have the audacity to say that
00:17:32.160
you don't want your kid to be transgendered in the third grade, you will be called a domestic
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terrorist. You will be investigated by the federal government. You'll be called a fascistic threat to
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our sacred democracy. It's a place where in neither case, for the left or for the right,
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the punishments don't fit the crimes. The leftists need to be punished much more harshly,
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and the conservatives currently are being punished far too harshly.
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Though there is a case here that just came out, and no one's really reporting on this,
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but I think they should. Speaking of people connected to Prince Andrew, quite a segue.
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One of Jeffrey Epstein's associates was accused of doing all the creepy sex stuff with the underage
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girls, and he was accused by the main accuser, Virginia Giuffre. He, the whole time, maintained
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his innocence. He denied he had anything to do it, and nobody believed him. I believed him, actually,
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and I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I know him personally, and I just thought he was
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telling the truth. That would be Alan Dershowitz, the famed Harvard law professor. Alan Dershowitz
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was, and to say Epstein associate is really actually overstating it. He was Epstein's lawyer,
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and every man is entitled to a defense in this country, and Alan Dershowitz has defended some
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of the worst people on earth. That's his job. That's his role in the justice system. He defended
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OJ, and so he defended Jeffrey Epstein. He said, I wish I never met Jeffrey Epstein,
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but every man's entitled to a defense, and I was his attorney, and I don't regret it. I don't regret
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being his attorney, but when he was accused of doing weird sex stuff with Virginia Giuffre,
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he said, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I have never engaged in sexual misconduct.
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You know, for all my other sins, that's not something I've ever done. This woman is mistaken.
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It's not true. She maintained that it was true. Well, just this week, she dropped her lawsuit.
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She dropped it. She dropped the allegations against Alan Dershowitz. She said, I have long
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believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the
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time. It was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has, from the
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beginning, consistently denied these allegations. I now recognize I may have made a mistake in
00:19:50.360
identifying Mr. Dershowitz. This litigation has been very stressful and burdensome for me and my
00:19:55.160
family, and we believe it is time to bring it to an end and move on with our lives.
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Now, some people who are more cynical or skeptical, they'll look at this and say,
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ah, but Dershowitz just paid her off. But Dershowitz says he did not pay her off.
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He says that no money has been exchanged here. She is dropping the allegations. And then Dershowitz says,
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as I've said from the beginning, I never had sex with Ms. Jufri. I have nevertheless come to believe
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that at the time she accused me, she believed what she said. Ms. Jufri is to be commended for
00:20:27.640
her courage in now stating publicly that she may have been mistaken about me. She suffered much at
00:20:31.880
the hands of Jeffrey Epstein. And so now Alan Dershowitz is dropping his allegations that David
00:20:41.940
Boyce engaged in an extortion plot and in supporting perjury. It was this whole complex thing.
00:20:48.940
They were all just dropping him. Now, I thought if anybody didn't do it, who was connected to
00:20:55.440
Jeffrey Epstein, it was Alan Dershowitz. Not because he's not a man, not because he doesn't have red
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blood, but because that guy is just so buttoned up. That guy is just so smart. He's so disciplined.
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I just don't think he would have opened himself up to something like that for all of the other
00:21:09.460
considerations as well. This raises a question here. Why is it, why is it that we don't know
00:21:19.620
who actually did it? Why is, I mean, I guess we can strongly suspect that Prince Andrew did because
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they settled for reportedly millions of pounds out of court. But why is it that, okay, Dershowitz was
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all in the headlines, but now his accuser says, now I think I was mistaken. Why is it that we don't
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have that little black book? Why is it, why is it that Ghislaine Maxwell, she's getting some slap
00:21:46.880
on the wrist and as part of her prosecution, we don't know who was with Epstein. We know that this
00:21:53.960
guy, we know he paled around with some of the richest, most powerful people on planet earth.
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But why is it that none of the people who did have sex with the underage girls, why is it that they
00:22:03.620
haven't been held to account? Why is it that we don't even have their names for certain?
00:22:07.640
This is the sort of environment in which someone like Trump really thrives. And there's a little
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bit of an irony here because Trump did know Jeffrey Epstein because Epstein was a member of his club.
00:22:21.120
But there has been no serious allegation that Donald Trump went to creepy petto island or that he slept
00:22:27.100
with any of these girls. Trust me, if there were any evidence of it, the Democrats would have been
00:22:30.700
running with this for six years. It doesn't exist. Bill Clinton took dozens of flights with Jeffrey
00:22:36.160
Epstein on the Lolita Express. You don't see any of those same kind of allegations about Donald Trump,
00:22:41.060
nothing. But this is the sort of environment in which someone like a Trump will flourish. And it's
00:22:46.640
even now, as I think he's burning a lot of political capital with people who would otherwise
00:22:51.940
support him in these attacks on Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin and everyone else, this is still an
00:22:56.940
advantage that Donald Trump has that the other guys don't. Glenn Youngkin and especially Ron
00:23:02.200
DeSantis, they are incredibly good, skilled politicians who are doing really excellent
00:23:09.680
things and who I think have a good, clear political vision and who have a lot of political courage and
00:23:13.240
a lot of political competence and all the rest of it. But the distinguishing feature here is Donald
00:23:17.840
Trump, even still, even after serving a term as president, is not viewed as a politician. He did not
00:23:23.720
work in politics. All the other guys who potentially could run are politicians and they've been
00:23:28.780
politicians and that's their profession and good for them. I think politics actually can be a perfectly
00:23:33.420
dignified profession if one does it the right way. Maybe that's a rare case, but it certainly can be.
00:23:40.200
But this is still something that Donald Trump has. And so the more corrupt, the more insane,
00:23:45.940
the more nefarious that the political establishment seems, the better Donald Trump looks. And even now,
00:23:52.740
even after everything that he has been through, even after the bloom might be off the rose a little
00:23:57.820
bit, that is still going to be something that gives him a real shot in 2024, okay? For some people,
00:24:05.400
it's going to keep them up at night. For some people, it's going to give them a lot of stress.
00:24:08.820
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00:25:29.680
Speaking of children, Eric Swalwell, the former future president, the man who would have been
00:25:37.500
president if he wasn't one of the first people to drop out of the 2020 Democratic primary,
00:25:41.460
Eric Swalwell, who infamously seems to have slept with a Chinese spy. Eric Swalwell thinks it's insane
00:25:50.920
that you want to have a say over your kid's education. Eric Swalwell tweeted out yesterday,
00:25:57.020
this was in response to Tim Scott, Republican senator, saying that we're putting parents back
00:26:02.260
in charge of their kid's education. He says, please tell me what I'm missing here. What are we doing
00:26:06.500
next? Putting patients in charge of their own surgeries? Clients in charge of their own trials?
00:26:12.640
When did we stop trusting experts? Period. By the way, he didn't have a question mark at the end of
00:26:17.020
that question, just a period. That's from expert Eric Swalwell. This is so stupid. So just in point
00:26:25.340
of fact, patients are generally in charge of their own medical care. They go out and they hire a doctor.
00:26:32.560
They go out and they find, they consult and they get different opinions. And then they say, okay,
00:26:36.360
maybe I'll have this surgery. Maybe I'll have this procedure. And clients generally are in charge of
00:26:41.800
their own legal representation. They hire a lawyer or they represent themselves, but they're the ones
00:26:47.500
ultimately in charge. But this is what they think of you. This is what they think. They think that not
00:26:55.460
only do you not have the right to your right to keep and bear arms, not only do you not have the
00:27:00.660
right to free speech, not only do you not have the right to make your views known in the public
00:27:07.360
square, you don't even have a right to raise your kids. Education means raising up, means leading out,
00:27:18.720
means it's not just reading, writing, and arithmetic. It's the whole process of forming a person,
00:27:26.440
of leading them. That comes from the root for leading. And what Eric Swalwell is saying is you
00:27:34.020
don't have the right to any say in that. We do. I do. I, Eric Swalwell, who doesn't know how to use
00:27:40.600
question marks, I, Eric Swalwell, am going to educate your children. Tell me what I'm missing here.
00:27:46.580
If you don't have the right, some right, to educate your children, you don't have any rights.
00:27:56.460
Okay. Now, that's not to say that you have the sole right to educate your children. This,
00:28:01.700
I think, is where conservatives go a little too far. This is where actually Hillary makes a point,
00:28:07.340
at least in the title she chose for one of her books, even though she is perverting and misusing
00:28:11.960
the aphorism that she is borrowing. It does, in fact, take a village to raise a child.
00:28:17.880
Children are not only educated by mommy and daddy. Children inevitably are educated by their community.
00:28:23.560
That's just what happens. Kids are just sponges. They take in everything. If something's on the TV,
00:28:27.960
that's going to be educating your kids. If they're hearing something from their friends in the
00:28:32.420
neighborhood, that's going to educate the kids. If they're paying any attention whatsoever in school,
00:28:38.300
that's going to educate your kids. Kids are just sucking in information and behaviors and a moral
00:28:45.200
view and a whole perspective on the world. All right. And so we need to defend our right as parents
00:28:51.880
to have some choice in the matter. But that's not enough. We actually have to go further and wield
00:28:57.180
political power, as people like Glenn Youngkin and especially Ron DeSantis have done,
00:29:01.000
wield that political power to force a certain type of education on the political community.
00:29:10.060
We have to force it. We have to coerce it. I know that conservatives sometimes are afraid of using
00:29:14.060
those words, but all education is coercive. That's what education is. When the teacher says,
00:29:21.120
Johnny, do your homework or you get a bad grade. Johnny, repeat after me. The American Revolution
00:29:27.920
began in 1776. That's a fact. You have to repeat that fact. And if you don't repeat that fact,
00:29:32.220
then you're going to get detention. Education is coercive. It has to be. And it's paradoxical
00:29:39.800
because the purpose of education is to liberate oneself from the base passions and from our sort of
00:29:45.520
slavishness that we're born into in this world of sin and death and to bring our base appetites
00:29:53.000
under lying and into accord with our rational will. And to, this is why we call it the liberal arts,
00:30:01.560
right? To make sense of our freedom and to use it in a way that is edifying and not debasing
00:30:06.300
and not licentious. So that's the purpose of it. But in order to do that, we have to be coerced.
00:30:12.560
And there's only so much time in a classroom and there are only so many days in the school year.
00:30:17.020
And so you've got to make choices about what to teach. Every minute that you're teaching Maya
00:30:20.920
Kababi, genderqueer, you are not teaching Shakespeare or civics or the Bible. I guess
00:30:26.900
we're not allowed to teach the Bible anymore or anything else that would be edifying. And so you've
00:30:31.660
got to say, no Maya Kababi, no genderqueer, no critical race theory. We are banning that from
00:30:37.360
the classroom. We are wielding the power of the state to coerce that out of the classroom.
00:30:41.200
Yes to Shakespeare and math and science and true history and all the rest of it. We have to do that.
00:30:52.080
In our private lives, yes, in our political lives as well. The Republicans who get that are the ones
00:30:56.080
who are going to be successful. Speaking of young people, NBC has sounded the alarm, you see.
00:31:05.700
There's this new show, New Amsterdam. I'm not going to play through the whole clip of this,
00:31:11.960
but it's this whole long intro to this sort of medical drama of all these doctors running through
00:31:16.960
the hallways. And they look up and they say, they see the news and they're all terrified and
00:31:21.840
they're worried. And these men especially, they're so worried and they're so scared and they're so,
00:31:25.400
no, no. And what is it? At the very end of this trailer, they're looking up on TV and it says,
00:31:31.400
Roe v. Wade is overruled. It's so creepy. It's especially creepy when it's men who do this sort
00:31:38.300
of thing. And it's so silly because you say half the country is pro-life. The TV networks don't want
00:31:45.260
to get half the country to watch their show. But that is educational. That is, people watch that.
00:31:52.240
I was probably more comprehensively educated by NBC must-see TV when I was a kid than I was in my
00:32:00.160
public school. All right. So we need to wield some control. You know, when Carrie Lake the other
00:32:07.540
day, I hope she becomes the governor of Arizona. We've got to see if Katie Hobbs is able to import
00:32:12.240
enough ballots, you know, in time by next week to see who wins that race. But Carrie Lake,
00:32:17.840
she said, when she was lambasting the media one time, she said, we're going to reform the media.
00:32:24.120
And all of the squishes, they said, oh my gosh, that sounds so authoritarian. That's so,
00:32:28.360
oh, it's not authoritarian to insist on standards and to insist on truth and to insist on a coherent,
00:32:35.340
edifying, good view of the world. That's not authoritarian. Okay. The media
00:32:40.820
educates. All right. It all plays a role together. The very fact that conservatives in recent years
00:32:48.840
have drawn this clear distinction between the public and the private, you know, the government and the
00:32:53.900
private sector and the politics and the culture as though those two things weren't virtually
00:32:58.360
synonymous. No, there's just totally separate and politics bad and we can't do anything in
00:33:02.640
politics, but culture, that's where we do everything. The fact that we drew these silly
00:33:08.680
distinctions and then conceded virtually everything because of some misguided pretense
00:33:16.900
of libertarian virtue or something. That's why we lost. And the candidates who really
00:33:23.200
rise to the fore in recent years, they have been the ones who are willing to wield political power.
00:33:28.900
And I promise you, whoever gets that nomination in 2024, whether it's DeSantis, whether it's Trump,
00:33:35.440
whether it's Youngkin, whether it's someone that we haven't even heard of yet, because don't forget
00:33:39.720
folks, it's two years out before you pull all your hair out. The candidate that's going to
00:33:44.760
rise is going to be the candidate who says, yes, if you give me political power, I will
00:33:51.340
wield it. You know, there's a great show out on Daily Wire right now. It is called On Marriage,
00:33:57.120
the exclusive three-part series from Jordan Peterson. It's on Daily Wire Plus. I think every
00:34:02.100
single day I'm truly blessed by God to have a wonderful wife and two little kids with marriage
00:34:07.120
rates at an all-time low in the United States and a birth rate that is continuing to fall.
00:34:10.740
Everyone needs to watch Jordan's show, especially young people. Statistics are also showing that
00:34:15.500
young people are getting married much later in life, less frequently too. Now, our audience is
00:34:20.860
not filled with Peter Pan's, but just in case there's a few stragglers who are late to marriage
00:34:24.280
and family, consider this a pleasant kick in the teeth. Stop being selfish. For those of you married
00:34:30.080
folks who've let time and work and outside forces get in the way, Jordan will also show you how to
00:34:34.240
navigate through those moments and get back to that romantic fun adventure you had at the beginning.
00:34:38.580
Daily Wire Plus members can watch all three episodes of Jordan Peterson's On Marriage today.
00:34:42.760
If you're not a member, go to dailywire.com slash Knowles and join today. Remember,
00:34:47.240
your membership really helps us prevent the total collapse of society as we know it. If that's not
00:34:52.080
an inducement to join, I don't know what is. Finally, we have arrived at my absolute favorite
00:34:58.620
time of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag. Our mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk.
00:35:03.960
Go to puretalk.com, select a plan, enter promo code Knowles to get 50% off your first month.
00:35:10.260
First question up in the voicemail bag. Take it away.
00:35:13.520
Hi, Michael. I recently had a very negative interaction with one of my friends about abortion.
00:35:19.460
We argued about it and we kind of haven't talked to each other since. She made all the classic
00:35:24.840
arguments about how women should be in control of their own bodies and how women will die if they
00:35:31.620
don't get abortions and women are going to get thrown in jail for miscarriages, all the classic
00:35:36.300
arguments. And I tried to go on with a scientific argument. Even though I'm a Christian, I know she
00:35:42.600
would immediately dismiss my arguments outright if I used a religious argument. What I wanted to ask
00:35:49.880
was, what would you say to someone like that? And how could someone who is a Christian argue with
00:35:56.500
someone who is not a Christian about this issue? Love the show. Thanks.
00:36:01.380
Great question. I break with many of my other conservatives here. A lot of conservatives say,
00:36:06.540
well, I'm just going to make a secular argument. I'm going to make a rationalist argument for such and
00:36:11.800
such issue because that's more likely to persuade the libs. I just don't think that's possible.
00:36:18.260
You can't make really any argument that is coherent and logical by taking God out of it. God is the
00:36:29.160
logos. Christ is the divine logic of the universe. In the beginning was the logos and the logos was
00:36:36.960
with God and the logos was God. And so you're not going to make sense if you take God out of it.
00:36:45.240
You can't make a secular argument against abortion that is ultimately convincing.
00:36:51.120
Because what's the argument? The argument against abortion is that human life has value and therefore
00:36:59.320
we shouldn't kill innocent human life. Why does human life have value? Human life has value because
00:37:06.280
man is made in the image and likeness of God. And because, even furthermore, because God so loves the
00:37:14.740
world and God so loves us that he gave his only begotten son such that those who believed in him
00:37:19.160
might not perish but have everlasting life. And he sent his son to suffer and die on a cross and
00:37:23.900
to be resurrected on the third day and to redeem mankind. So that's it. That's why. And you can try
00:37:30.780
to beat around the bush and say, well, you know, because of human rights. Okay, why do humans have
00:37:35.200
rights? Well, you know, because, I don't know, because the UN told me so. I don't know. Why do humans have
00:37:40.980
rights? Humans have rights because there's a natural law? Well, because we're made in the image
00:37:48.020
of likeness of God and because there is a natural law. Well, who gives us the natural law? God gives
00:37:51.600
us the natural law. And the fact that there is a natural law means that we can deduce certain facts
00:37:56.420
about the world, certain moral realities, without necessarily turning to scripture and revelation.
00:38:03.200
But you're not going to do it by denying God. It's just not possible. It's a fool's errand. And so I
00:38:09.460
would just confront it head on. I don't think you need to accept the ridiculous and false premises of
00:38:14.380
the left. Well, okay, let's accept your premise that God doesn't exist and we're all just a bunch
00:38:18.780
of meat puppets and we're going to take a dirt nap someday and turn to worm food. Granted all of that,
00:38:23.200
here's why abortion's wrong. Well, granted all of that, abortion's not wrong because nothing's wrong
00:38:27.220
because nothing means anything. So no, stick with your premises and convince your friend of reality.
00:38:32.240
Don't pretend that the most important foundations of everything that exists just doesn't matter,
00:38:42.620
Hello, Smokey Mike. This is Julia, your number one fangirl. I have no idea who that guy from last
00:38:48.640
week is, but I'm your actual number one fan. So anyways, a little bit of background before I ask
00:38:54.320
my question. One of my friends who happens to be a fan of yours has been really making fun of me
00:38:59.400
because I like to read young adult fiction. I like to watch the old Pixar movies like Monsters,
00:39:05.960
Inc. I really just find them entertaining and I know that there's not going to be anything weird
00:39:10.340
or gross in them. So I was just wondering, is it okay for me to like these things and to admire them
00:39:19.540
and kind of be entertained by them in moderation? Or do you think that's me kind of regressing like
00:39:26.180
the weirdos who get adult happy meals and the women who are bawling their brains out all emotionally
00:39:31.760
invested in some kid's movie? Love to hear your thoughts. Have a nice day.
00:39:38.760
Julia, it is wonderful to hear from you. I am so glad for those listening. I know my self-described
00:39:46.160
number one fan. And so I say this in a spirit of great love and respect. It is regressing. It is.
00:39:55.660
There was a great quote I was reading last night in a book by Owen Barfield, one of the sort of
00:40:01.000
forgotten inklings who C.S. Lewis described as I think his most important friend and I think the man
00:40:06.760
who helped convert him to Christianity. And he said, after adolescence, the only alternative to maturity
00:40:13.920
is puerility. That after you age out of the demo that Pixar movies are made for, after that,
00:40:28.020
your only alternatives, your only choices are to kind of grow up and do the adult things
00:40:34.520
or to regress and to seem not childlike as children do, but childish. Now that said,
00:40:40.780
I've seen some Pixar movies in recent years. Okay, they're charming. They're wonderful movies.
00:40:46.620
But the context in which I've seen them is that I've seen them with my children. And so this is
00:40:54.400
one of the little hacks. If you have nostalgia, as all of us do, for things from our childhood,
00:41:00.760
and they make you feel comforted, and they're very nice, and they bring up fond memories for you,
00:41:06.540
you can go back to them. You can relive them in a certain way. But the way to do that is through
00:41:13.160
your own children and really with your own children. If you do it by yourself, that's no
00:41:19.800
bueno. That's odd. But if you do it with your children, then it's a wonderful thing. Or if you
00:41:27.200
don't have kids yet, which you don't, then it could be with your nephews or your nieces or,
00:41:32.560
I don't know, the youth group that you lead or something like that. So I'm not saying that you
00:41:35.680
have to completely shut those things out from your life, but you have to
00:41:38.760
have an appropriate relation to those things. You know, let's say someone really enjoyed 10th grade.
00:41:46.560
You know, I don't know. They just really, 10th grade for them was great, and they loved going
00:41:49.620
to homecoming, and they liked, I don't know, whatever, the pep rallies. Well, when you're 25,
00:41:56.300
you can't go back to 10th grade. You can become a high school teacher, and in a way then,
00:42:01.440
you get to, you know, be reminded of that nostalgia and live some of those things again.
00:42:06.940
But you're in a new position, you have new responsibilities, and you have a new
00:42:09.680
vantage. So that's the way I would recommend it, because after adolescence, the only alternative
00:42:15.080
to maturity is puerility. Next question. Hey, Michael. I got very excited when you started
00:42:21.940
playing Dominic the Donkey the other day. I am an Italian from Connecticut, so I play that song
00:42:27.700
year-round, but I agree with you generally that Christmas music should be reserved for
00:42:32.040
close to Christmas. I lean towards December 1st. Anyways, my question is regarding kind of
00:42:38.700
environmentalism. Now, I adopted your wording of the sun monster, and, you know, all of their
00:42:43.940
predictions are incorrect about climate change and global warming and polar bears dying, but
00:42:48.760
I do, when I drive around mostly blue inner cities, see trash everywhere, and I think there is a
00:42:56.140
difference between, you know, pollution and environmentalism and the climate change alarmism.
00:43:02.540
So I was wondering if there's a way that conservatives could balance the two where we actually care about
00:43:07.480
the earth, but also, you know, shoo away climate change as being ridiculous. I'd love to hear your
00:43:14.820
take. Thanks, Mike. Love the show. Absolutely. Absolutely. There are two big mistakes that people
00:43:21.860
can make here, and they're sort of in the opposite direction. One is to worship at the altar of the sun
00:43:26.080
monster and to fall into all the radical environmentalism and to destroy civilization in
00:43:33.060
this attempt to, you know, make Mother Earth happy. But the opposite error is to worship at the altar of
00:43:41.160
capitalism and say that nothing matters other than ticking GDP up a little bit and getting some more
00:43:46.260
greenbacks in your pocket. Both of those are stupid, reductive, materialist sorts of errors.
00:43:55.240
Really, what we want is a good society, and a good society needs a strong economy, and a good society
00:44:03.300
needs a nice place. We need to have a nice place to live, and you don't want trash everywhere.
00:44:07.020
So that's what we want. Of course, we want to be stewards of our environment for us, because we
00:44:13.880
are tending this garden of creation. We don't want to be sacrificing ourselves on the altar of the
00:44:21.460
delta smelt or something like that. So yeah, it's very easy to do that. That is conservative. I mean,
00:44:28.160
to conserve nature. The first conservationists were conservative. There's nothing conservative
00:44:33.180
about trashing your community so that you can add a few more zeros to your bank account.
00:44:40.420
But there's also nothing conservative about destroying civilization so that the delta smelt
00:44:47.380
can swim a little bit more. As always, prudence and moderation and recognizing where things are in
00:44:53.180
their proper place, that we do not exist to serve the natural environment, but the natural environment
00:44:57.260
is here for us, and we are to be stewards of that. Next question.
00:45:02.660
Hey, Michael. Name's John. Big fan of the show. Listen every day. I have a question. I'm a Bible-believing
00:45:09.080
Christian. Not a Catholic, but a Christian. I hope you can forgive me and welcome me in, but
00:45:14.440
we talk a lot about God-given rights, on the right especially. We really like to cite those as a means for
00:45:22.160
policy and whatever else that follows. But I'm just struggling with the idea of what are God-given
00:45:29.220
rights. Where do they come from? Where do we learn where they are? It's obviously not a very effective
00:45:34.660
argument to use against someone who doesn't believe in God. But aside from that, I don't see anywhere in
00:45:41.100
the Bible that it says God gives you these rights, and if someone violates them, this happens. Maybe I'm
00:45:45.920
missing it. Maybe it's interpretation-based. But I just wanted to hear about your thoughts on that. I think
00:45:51.380
it's a very interesting conversation that nobody seems to have, despite everybody always citing
00:45:55.400
human rights when they want to get things done a certain way. Thanks a lot.
00:45:59.520
Certainly is very interesting. You'll notice that I don't use that language very much. It is true.
00:46:05.380
Many, probably most conservative public figures prattle on and on and on about God-given rights
00:46:11.560
left and right. And the libs talk about human rights left and right because they don't believe in God.
00:46:16.520
But I don't really use that language because that language comes largely out of the enlightenment
00:46:24.540
and comes largely out of the early days of liberalism. And you say, you know, things that
00:46:31.220
are called God-given rights, I don't really see them popping up in the Bible or in the Christian
00:46:35.420
tradition, and that's true. I asked, or I, I forget if it was me or a friend of mine, got to see,
00:46:41.700
we both got to see Scalia when we were students. And one of us asked Scalia, do you believe in natural
00:46:49.280
rights? So important to, certainly at that time, the way that conservatives were talking about the
00:46:54.320
country. Do you believe in natural rights? And he said, I believe in the natural law.
00:47:00.740
Because the idea of politics from the perspective of rights, whether they be positive rights or negative
00:47:08.320
rights, human rights or God-given rights. But the whole idea of politics from the perspective of
00:47:12.740
rights is a liberal idea. It's not a very conservative idea. The conservative perspective
00:47:17.480
is politics from the perspective of duty and obligation and tradition and wisdom and justice
00:47:25.000
and prudence. And so I think it would be much more, and I agree with you also, just as a practical
00:47:30.140
matter, those phrases are not particularly persuasive. We can go on and on all day and say,
00:47:37.780
well, I've got a God-given right to free speech, whatever that means. I don't even know really
00:47:42.600
what that means. Or the libs can say, I've got a human right to, I don't know, chop off all my
00:47:49.440
genitals and make you pay for it and dye my hair purple and do whatever. But that doesn't really
00:47:53.840
persuade anybody. The natural law, however, is different because the natural law from which we
00:47:59.180
derive a concept of natural rights, but the natural law is just the moral reality that we can perceive
00:48:06.960
through the use of our natural reason and our moral conscience. And that is much more persuasive
00:48:12.980
because people know that it's wrong to commit murder. Wherever you go, doesn't matter if they've
00:48:16.640
read the Bible, people just know it's wrong to commit murder. We know that certain behaviors are
00:48:22.860
just wrong. We have a kind of wisdom of repugnance. We have a moral conscience with which we are
00:48:29.000
mercifully endowed. And so I think that perspective is going to be much more persuasive. Now, the rest of
00:48:34.740
the show continues now. Before we go, I want to thank all of our listeners who've served. This
00:48:40.120
is Veterans Day. I frankly think Daily Wire should have Veterans Day off, except I still probably
00:48:45.920
wouldn't take it off because I would want to join all of you. But really, thank you so much for your
00:48:50.940
service. I know many listeners to this show have served. Lots of my friends here in this building
00:48:54.940
have served. Lots of members of my family have served in the military. So thank you very much
00:48:58.600
for putting your money where our mouths are and going out and actually standing up for our country
00:49:05.660
and exercising courage, which is not just a virtue but the prerequisite for all of the other
00:49:09.820
virtues. So thank you very much. Have a good Veterans Day. Light up a stogie for me. I will
00:49:13.660
certainly light one up for you. If I see any of you around town tonight, I would be very happy to buy
00:49:19.000
you a drink and a smoke. The rest of the show continues now. You don't want to miss it, okay, because this
00:49:23.700
is Fake Headline Friday. If you're not a member, click the link in the description and join us.