The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1142 - Biden Trades ＂The Merchant Of Death＂ For A Woke Lesbian Pothead

00:00:00.000 Until yesterday, there were at least three Americans unlawfully detained in Russia.

00:00:05.480 Paul Wellen, a former Marine, arrested on espionage charges. Mark Fogel, a 61-year-old

00:00:11.580 history teacher, arrested for possessing a small amount of medical marijuana.

00:00:16.380 And Brittany Greiner, a young anti-American lady basketball player, arrested for the same crime, 0.79

00:00:22.560 for the marijuana. Two of those people are still stuck doing hard labor in Russia.

00:00:29.940 One gets to go home. Can you guess which one?

00:00:33.300 Brittany is an incomparable athlete, a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA.

00:00:40.720 She endured mistreatment in a show trial in Russia with characteristic grit and incredible dignity.

00:00:48.380 She represents the best America, best about America, just across the board, everything about her.

00:00:55.460 The best about America, just across the board. Brittany Greiner, the lady basketball player

00:01:00.820 whose only noteworthy activities to date have been playing a sport that no one watches,

00:01:07.900 protesting the star-spangled banner at that sport, refusing to show up on the court for the national

00:01:12.540 anthem, and trying to sneak pot into Russia. Brittany Greiner represents the best about America,

00:01:18.380 best, the very best, of America, apparently. Not the history teacher, not the Marine,

00:01:24.800 the dope-smoking, America-hating, WNBA person whose release the U.S. was so desperate to secure 1.00

00:01:31.240 that it agreed to release the world's most notorious arms dealer back to Russia in exchange.

00:01:38.020 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:39.720 Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment, yes, it is from Zach Shepard, who said,

00:01:51.140 every time Michael plugs his book Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds,

00:01:54.700 an angel gets his wings. P.S. I've read Speechless, and it is a wonderful book.

00:01:59.860 Did we? Guys, I don't, is there, are they working out the kinks in the control room?

00:02:08.040 I thought, I thought we had the ding back, and then, I don't know, maybe the ding is a little

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00:03:37.160 promo code Knowles for 50% off your first month. Too bad for the Marine, too bad for the history teacher,

00:03:44.460 but the pot-smoking basketball lady who hates the Star-Spangled Banner, she gets to go home. 1.00

00:03:49.680 Who are those people? The one who's getting the most play right now is Paul Wellen.

00:03:53.640 He is this Marine who actually spoke with CNN by phone around this release of Brittany Griner,

00:04:01.240 basically saying, hey, guys, hey, Biden, you mind? What gives, man?

00:04:06.700 They've always considered me to be at a higher level than other criminals of my sort. And

00:04:15.980 for whatever reason, I'm treated differently than another individual here from a Western country that's

00:04:27.160 also on a charge of espionage. So even though we're both here for espionage, I'm treated much

00:04:33.860 differently than he is. And my treatment is also much different than others held for espionage at

00:04:40.360 other prisons. I would say that if a message could go to President Biden that, you know, this is a

00:04:47.740 precarious situation that needs to be resolved quickly. And I would hope that he and his

00:04:54.580 administration would do everything they could to get me home, regardless of the price they might have

00:05:01.000 to pay at this point. So the guy is desperate. He's been in a Russian prison now for four years,

00:05:07.580 I think it is, unlike Brittany Griner, who was there for about nine, 10 months. And he's saying,

00:05:11.960 guys, you really got to get me out of here. And he says, I'm being treated differently than the

00:05:15.400 other prisoners. He's here in a charge of espionage. The reaction from everybody demanding

00:05:19.680 his release has been to laugh at this charge of espionage and say, this is totally trumped up

00:05:25.420 nonsense from Vladimir Putin to use a political pawn to. But I actually don't know. I mean,

00:05:30.480 maybe the guy's a spy. I think to make a stronger argument for his release, we should take seriously

00:05:36.300 the possibility that he's a spy. He's got a military background. He went in and out of Russia a whole lot

00:05:41.460 of times in the last few years. He apparently had contacts at the FSB, which is the Russian Security

00:05:47.120 Service. So let's just say for a second that he's a spy. And I'm not declaring that he is. I don't

00:05:55.360 know. There's also a lot of evidence that he was not a spy. The CIA denies that Paul Welland was a

00:05:59.820 spy because his military record was pretty spotty. And the agency is saying nobody who had all this

00:06:06.140 kind of terrible conduct in the military and who was demoted and had all these issues, nobody with

00:06:12.640 that kind of a background would be hired as a spy by the CIA. I don't know. I mean, I can see why

00:06:18.280 Russians might be under the impression that the guy's a spy. But my point is, let's say that he is a 0.95

00:06:24.360 spy. Let's say that this guy is James freaking Bond and he's very, very high value. We just gave

00:06:31.720 up a guy who's also extremely high value. The guy that we just gave up is known as the merchant of

00:06:37.680 death, okay? The guy that we just gave up, Victor Boot, is the most notorious arms dealer in the world.

00:06:43.760 Russia really, really, really wanted to secure this guy's release. And so let's say Paul Welland is the

00:06:51.420 biggest super spy in the history of the world. Joe Biden still should have secured his release.

00:06:55.780 We gave up a really, really big Russian asset in exchange for what? A lady basketball player who 1.00

00:07:04.180 was opportunistically taken hostage by the Russians as a pawn because of this issue right now over the

00:07:12.420 war in Ukraine and because the United States was putting all of these sanctions on Russia and

00:07:18.860 because Russia wanted some leverage. Okay, I don't even like Brittany Griner, okay? But it's clear that

00:07:24.860 her detainment had a political aspect too. Yes, she violated the laws of Russia. Yes, Russia has the

00:07:30.080 right to its own drug laws. No, I don't really have all that much sympathy with Brittany Griner trying to 1.00

00:07:34.140 sneak drugs into Russia. But obviously, this detainment was political. Obviously, it was pretty flimsy.

00:07:39.000 And so what kind of deal does Joe Biden make? The deal he makes is we will give you a very,

00:07:45.360 very, very high value asset that has done very, very, very bad things and it can be very valuable

00:07:50.260 to Russia in exchange for this lady basketball player. But you can keep our Marine, you can keep 0.97

00:07:55.940 our history teacher. It's just on its face, even if you believe all of the Russian charges against these

00:08:02.060 two Americans who remain detained. It's just a terrible, terrible deal. The guy they got is

00:08:08.920 cartoonishly villainous. Take a listen. This was from a 60 Minutes interview over who Victor Boot is.

00:08:17.920 Victor Boot, in my eyes, is one of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth.

00:08:25.200 On the face of the earth.

00:08:26.440 Without a doubt.

00:08:27.140 Mike Braun, the former chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,

00:08:32.820 told us Boot first exploded on the scene in war-torn West Africa in the late 1980s.

00:08:39.900 Elevating bloody conflicts from machetes and single-shot rifles to...

00:08:44.240 AK-47s. Not by the thousands, but by the tens of thousands. 0.87

00:08:48.520 So he weaponizes civil war in Africa.

00:08:50.760 He transformed these young, adolescent warriors into insidious, mindless, maniacally-driven

00:09:00.060 killing machines that operated with assembly line efficiencies.

00:09:03.900 Now 43, Boot from the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan, is a mystery man who reportedly served in the

00:09:10.780 Soviet Air Force and Intelligence Service. The U.S. has indicted him on four terror-related

00:09:16.040 charges, including conspiracy to kill Americans.

00:09:19.120 So not a great guy. You know, kind of a bad ombre. And they make this trade. Why did the

00:09:25.500 White House make this trade? We all know why. The White House made this trade because Brittany 1.00

00:09:30.400 Greiner is a liberal black lesbian. That's why. And in fact, the White House basically admitted as 0.97

00:09:36.780 much. In the big announcement, you had Corrine Jean-Pierre talking about how important this is,

00:09:42.260 not only for all Americans, but especially for the LGBT LMNOP community. And it's so,

00:09:49.600 so important that we get this lady back. And Biden's always gonna cut any deal that he could

00:09:54.400 to get her back. Not because of any particular national interest in bringing this lady back over

00:10:00.880 other detained Americans, but because it looks really good to the Democrat base and because it's

00:10:05.620 very, very politically correct. And the important part here is that Vladimir Putin knew that.

00:10:11.160 The Russians knew that too. You would not have seen this kind of a deal, this kind of a weak,

00:10:16.540 weak deal under Donald Trump. But Putin knew that they would get it under Joe Biden because

00:10:22.040 the Russians have always been very good at understanding the fault lines in American politics

00:10:27.100 on race, on sex, on everything. And so they knew that they would get it. And they just ripped us

00:10:35.300 off, okay? If it had been, okay, we release the arms dealer and they release Brittany Greiner and 0.97

00:10:44.360 Paul Wellen or and Paul Wellen and Mark Fogel or something like that, that would have been one thing.

00:10:51.880 But that's not what we got. Not what we got at all. And so we had the handoff here. And the funniest

00:10:56.440 part about the handoff is you get the two planes landing in Abu Dhabi and you get the guys walking

00:11:03.560 up with Victor Boot and you get the, actually just one guy walking up with Victor Boot. I mean,

00:11:08.880 he's a pretty tough hombre. He can handle himself. Then you get multiple guys walking up with Brittany

00:11:12.580 Greiner. And then there's sort of shaking hands there on the tarmac you see with the guy. And then

00:11:18.260 there's a film cut. So you see Victor Boot, he shakes hands with one of his handlers, shakes hands with

00:11:23.700 another handler. And then he kind of leans. And then there's this cut. And it occurred to me,

00:11:28.960 they cut the footage of when Brittany Greiner shakes hands with the notorious Russian arms dealer known

00:11:38.180 as the Merchant of Death. They said, that really messes up our image here. That's really gonna play

00:11:45.060 into conservatives' hands. If they already don't have a particularly high opinion of this lady, 1.00

00:11:49.620 because the only thing she's known for is getting detained by the Russians and disrespecting 0.99

00:11:55.800 America. And then you lean in his ears shaking hands with a guy known as the Merchant of Death.

00:12:00.540 So even that, they bungle it. It's just an absolute embarrassment. Another embarrassment

00:12:06.600 for Joe Biden and for the United States. Very, very frustrating.

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00:13:40.800 Even a Democrat senator, by the way, is admitting that this is a disaster. And I'm not even talking

00:13:45.740 about Joe Manchin, who's a moderate Democrat, or Kyrsten Sinema, who sometimes helps out the

00:13:50.620 Republicans. Bob Menendez, who is a real dem. He's a real big lib. Bob Menendez, Democrat senator from

00:13:58.520 New Jersey, he said, this should be a moment of deep reflection for the United States government to

00:14:02.200 recognize. We have a serious problem with hostage-taking of Americans. The Russians and 1.00

00:14:06.340 other regimes that take American citizens hostage cannot pretend that there is an equivalence

00:14:10.420 between the Brittany Griners in the world and people like Victor Boot, the so-called merchant 0.82

00:14:14.300 of death. Nothing could be further from the truth. We cannot ignore that releasing Boot back into the

00:14:19.420 world is a deeply disturbing decision. Why is it disturbing? Well, Bob Menendez explains, we must stop

00:14:25.920 inviting dictatorial and rogue regimes to use Americans overseas as bargaining chips. And we must try to do

00:14:31.960 better at encouraging American citizens against traveling to places like Russia, where they are 0.77

00:14:35.940 primary targets for this type of unlawful detention. Yeah, of course. That's true. American citizens do

00:14:42.940 need to exercise a little bit of caution and prudence. I remember in my early 20s, I was going to take a

00:14:47.340 trip with a couple friends of mine. And we, well, we did end up taking a trip around the Middle East and

00:14:51.680 going to different places. But one of the places we wanted to go to was the island of Socotra, which is

00:14:55.820 between Yemen and Somalia. And we wanted to go because it's a really cool-looking place. And apparently,

00:15:01.560 St. Thomas shipwrecked there. And it just seemed like it would be fun to go travel there. And a

00:15:07.940 friend of mine who is a military guy, he said, this big hulking dude, he goes, Michael, do not go to

00:15:15.080 Socotra. And I said, why not? I can handle myself. Why can't I go to Socotra? And he says, because you

00:15:23.140 will just be a walking bag of money. Every person there, every Somali pirate, every bad, desperate 0.99

00:15:31.700 hombre is going to look at you and recognize you are valuable. Because if they take you hostage,

00:15:35.860 then they can get a lot of money out of the United States. So do not go there. Okay, that's fair.

00:15:41.200 And this is true in a lot of places around the world. And one thing that the United States

00:15:46.600 historically has tried to do to reduce that risk for Americans traveling abroad is that we have a

00:15:52.900 policy of not negotiating with terrorists and not encouraging and incentivizing rogue regimes to

00:16:00.900 take Americans hostage. It's not that I really don't like Brittany Griner and that's why we shouldn't

00:16:06.180 have made this deal. It's that this deal, one, is deeply unfair to the other Americans who have done

00:16:12.980 a lot more to serve their country than Brittany Griner ever has, who are still being detained.

00:16:17.020 But also, this endangers all Americans abroad. If all of these regimes now around the world see

00:16:26.060 that we've got weakness in the White House and that they can get their most prized assets freed

00:16:33.560 from the United States if they just take an American hostage and ransom that American, 0.57

00:16:37.180 then you're going to see more of that behavior. This is what happens. Weakness on the world stage

00:16:42.280 invites aggression from our enemies. And it's just really, really pathetic. 0.99

00:16:49.660 If we'd gotten a better deal, it would be one thing. But it's just such absolute capitulation, 0.98

00:16:54.960 awful, awful stuff, capitulating to such bad people around the world. Speaking of bad people,

00:17:00.900 the people who used to run Twitter are in some hot water because Twitter Files Part 2 was just

00:17:05.580 published. Barry Weiss is the person who published it. You saw the first part come out from the

00:17:10.280 journalist Matt Taibbi, new one from Barry Weiss. The type of journalist that Elon Musk is hiring to

00:17:16.560 go through this is an interesting choice. They are liberal journalists who have some problems with

00:17:23.980 the liberal left. They're not conservative journalists that he's giving it to, but he's giving

00:17:29.460 it to the liberal, what used to be called the intellectual dark web type kind of people.

00:17:35.180 You know, the, I'm a liberal, but I'm not a leftist. You know, I'm that sort of thing. But they are

00:17:40.360 still libs. I mean, they are still on the left. They just are sick of this corrupt establishment and

00:17:46.920 all the extreme radicalism that we've seen in recent years. So Barry Weiss goes through it.

00:17:51.440 She does a bang up job. She says, the new Twitter Files investigation reveals that teams of Twitter

00:17:57.060 employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility

00:18:02.520 of entire accounts and even trending topics, which is bad enough. But then they also do this all in

00:18:09.260 secret without informing any users. This is an important release, not because it tells us that

00:18:16.520 Twitter was shadow banning and blacklisting people. We already knew that. But it's proving it.

00:18:24.080 Just like with the first Twitter Files release, the main takeaway here is not some big news item that we

00:18:30.260 didn't know about before. The main takeaway here is we're not crazy. We are not crazy. And the things

00:18:36.420 that we suspected were happening for years actually were happening. And the people who were running

00:18:41.300 Twitter and their propagandists in the mainstream media were lying to us. The people who run Twitter

00:18:49.540 who told us this wasn't happening, they weren't just getting it wrong. They weren't just incompetent.

00:18:53.600 It wasn't just a mistake. They were actively lying to us. They were deceiving us. So who did they get?

00:19:01.500 Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, very serious Stanford scientist who from the early days

00:19:07.720 of COVID argued that the lockdowns were harmful and that they would ultimately harm children.

00:19:13.260 Twitter put him on a trends blacklist. So at the outbreak of COVID, when it was really important to

00:19:20.800 get as much information out there as we could to try to take on the virus, one of the credential lab 0.99

00:19:28.320 coat wearing experts who was much more correct about COVID than Dr. Fauci or anybody else, he was

00:19:34.660 blacklisted. That information was suppressed. It is not going too far to say people's lives were

00:19:41.760 upended and ruined and people died because of this, because this information was not allowed to be put

00:19:49.120 out there because it was suppressed by political actors. Then, of course, a lot of conservatives

00:19:53.640 were blackballed. Charlie Kirk was put on a do not amplify list. Dan Bongino was put on a search

00:20:01.660 blacklist. So with Charlie, Charlie is absolutely great at Twitter and his tweets would have a huge 0.91

00:20:08.480 amount of reach. Just the way he writes them, his personality, he's just great at it. And so eventually

00:20:12.660 they said, okay, we're just going to suppress his tweets. Dan Bongino, who's got a huge reach,

00:20:16.300 you couldn't even look him up. You search for Dan Bongino, he wouldn't even pop up.

00:20:21.000 And then here's the key. In 2018, Vijaya Gaddy, who was the head of legal policy and trust at Twitter,

00:20:27.580 she's the one who made the call to ban Donald Trump when Jack Dorsey was out of the office.

00:20:33.260 She said that the duly elected sitting president of the United States can't have a voice in the public

00:20:37.700 where Vijaya Gaddy said, we do not shadow ban. And we certainly don't shadow ban based on political

00:20:47.420 viewpoints or ideology. That was co-signed by Kayvon Baikpour, who is the head of Twitter product.

00:20:54.840 So these are two people at the very highest level of Twitter who said in writing, we do not shadow

00:21:00.020 ban and we certainly don't shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.

00:21:04.180 We should have known then, those of us who didn't know, I suppose most of us did know,

00:21:10.360 but everyone should have known then, oh, they do shadow ban. When you say, we don't do this,

00:21:14.940 and we definitely don't do it in this specific way, then you are acknowledging, well, maybe we

00:21:19.500 kind of do that first part a little bit. No, we don't shadow ban, and we definitely don't do it on

00:21:23.260 political viewpoints. Well, it turns out they did. They shadow banned, they specifically shadow banned

00:21:30.180 based on political viewpoints. And at the very highest level, there was a team to shadow ban,

00:21:37.460 but then there was a team above the team to shadow ban. And who was on the team above the team to

00:21:42.420 shadow ban? Vijaya Gaddy and Jack Dorsey. They were the ones making the highest level decisions on who

00:21:48.940 to shadow ban, a practice that they lied about and said did not occur. They called it visibility

00:21:54.280 filtering. Visibility filtering is just a euphemism, obviously, for shadow banning.

00:21:59.820 And apparently Twitter uses this quite a lot. According to one of the Twitter engineers that

00:22:05.300 Barry Weiss spoke with, quote, we control visibility quite a bit, and we control the amplification of

00:22:11.640 your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much that we do. So next level stuff,

00:22:19.160 an outright lie from Twitter. And the thing is, to quote George W. Bush, fool me once, shame on you.

00:22:29.680 Fool me twice. The point is, you're not going to fool me again. Words of wisdom, words to live by.

00:22:39.700 When the liberals clutch their pearls and they say, oh, it's so terrible. These right-wingers,

00:22:46.580 they're taking trust away from our institutions and our democracy. They don't trust the big tech

00:22:56.920 oligarchs. They don't trust the bureaucrats in Washington. They don't trust our elections. They 1.00

00:23:05.360 don't trust our scientists in the lab coats. They're so terrible. Well, why don't we trust them?

00:23:12.780 It's not our fault that we don't trust those people. It's your fault. It's their fault.

00:23:19.480 We don't trust the medical establishment because of Dr. Fauci, because he lied to us. We don't trust

00:23:25.900 the big tech oligarchs who control the public square, because they lied to us. We don't trust

00:23:31.840 the people who are running the elections in 2020 and 2022, for that matter, in certain places,

00:23:36.880 because they lie to us. They upend all the rules. Then they gaslight us. Then they relieve themselves

00:23:43.500 on our legs. They tell us that it's raining. They're the ones who did it. You libs. You libs are

00:23:50.200 the ones who did it. I'm not going to shed one tear. I'm not going to make one single apology

00:23:56.180 for not having faith in the institutions that you control. We're not the ones who destroyed our

00:24:03.620 sacred democracy. You are. You're the ones. We are responding in the only rational and prudent way

00:24:08.380 that we possibly can. Do not believe these people. Oh, the media. Oh my goodness. How did I forget

00:24:12.900 the media? They don't trust the real news, the real journalists and the neckties and the New York

00:24:19.500 Times. I know I sound like I'm doing an Arlo Guthrie song. And the New York Times and the Washington

00:24:24.380 Post and the CNN. Right. We don't trust any of them. They're complete liars. They have no credibility

00:24:31.260 whatsoever. If I see a headline in the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post, and I see a

00:24:36.380 headline on frogsturninggaynews.biz.co.uk, I am going to believe the latter. The latter has more 0.80

00:24:44.300 credibility. If I see Dr. Fauci telling me something about medical science, and I see an

00:24:49.320 African witch doctor wearing a big headdress doing a rain dance telling me something about 1.00

00:24:53.460 medical science, I'm going to trust the latter. He has much more credibility, okay? Especially when 0.90

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00:25:51.760 Be an adult. Go to epicwill.com. Use promo code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to save 10% on Epic Will's

00:25:58.060 Complete Will Package. That is epicwill.com. Promo code K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Barry Weiss doing great

00:26:07.300 work uncovering that story. Speaking of courageous women, the sister of the supreme leader of Iran,

00:26:13.080 I did it again. I'm an American. I should pronounce it Iran. Obama is in my head. I'll try it again.

00:26:20.600 The sister of the supreme leader of Iran, of the Ayatollah, has come out against her brother and

00:26:27.820 against the regime. She said, I think it is appropriate now to declare that I oppose my

00:26:31.480 brother's actions and I express my sympathy with all mothers in mourning the crimes of the Islamic 1.00

00:26:35.460 Republic regime from the time of Khomeini, the first guy after the Iranian revolution,

00:26:41.940 Iranian revolution, to the current era of the despotic caliphate of Ali Khomeini.

00:26:46.600 She writes this in the letter. I don't bring up the story to say anything about Iranian politics.

00:26:53.680 I don't really care that much. I mean, I care in that I care. I hope that people live good,

00:26:57.920 flourishing lives, but I don't have any particular interest in Iran. And I'm going to get in trouble 1.00

00:27:04.980 for this take, and Media Matters is probably already clipping it out as we speak. I bring it up because

00:27:09.980 the success of the mullahs in Iran actually should give some encouragement to US conservatives.

00:27:19.880 The success of the Taliban in Afghanistan should give some encouragement to American conservatives. 1.00

00:27:27.540 And I don't mean, hear me clearly. I am not saying we want Sharia law in the United States.

00:27:34.100 I am not condoning the actions and the laws of the mullahs or of the Taliban in Afghanistan. I am simply 0.83

00:27:41.640 pointing out that liberal modernity, taken to its extremes, transing kids, redefining marriage, 0.96

00:27:54.760 killing the babies, destroying our culture, the consequences of liberal modernity are not inevitable.

00:28:04.100 And those two countries, for all of their sins, for all of their many problems,

00:28:10.020 have proven that, okay? Just take it in that very narrow sense. Before the Taliban took over

00:28:17.320 in Afghanistan, it looked, the nation looked like a Western country. Women were wearing miniskirts 1.00

00:28:24.180 walking down the street. It looked like liberalism and secularism and modernity were inevitable there.

00:28:29.760 Before the Iranian revolution, Iran looked like it was on the same path as all the other modern Western 0.81

00:28:36.720 countries. I'll say it for the thousandth time. I don't want the mullahs to come in in America or 1.00

00:28:45.640 the Taliban or anything like that. But that wouldn't happen because the reason that a conservative

00:28:52.000 backlash in Iran and Afghanistan looked like a Muslim caliphate is because those are Muslim countries

00:28:58.840 with a long Muslim tradition. A conservative backlash in America would look very, very different 0.98

00:29:03.820 because America is a Christian country, okay? But there could be a conservative revival.

00:29:13.680 That's all I'm saying. All I'm saying is liberal modernity, which we are told by the crooked

00:29:20.160 establishment that wants to kill your babies and trans your kids and ruin your marriage 0.99

00:29:23.780 and stop you from reproducing and hook you on drugs and outsource your jobs and open your borders and 1.00

00:29:29.700 destroy your whole country. Those people have put us into a trance and made us believe liberal

00:29:36.440 modernity is inevitable. We're just all zombie walking. There's no way to preserve any of your

00:29:41.060 traditions or anything like that. That's not true. Those regimes that threw out liberal modernity and

00:29:48.060 other parts of the world, despite all of the pressure, including from the global superpower,

00:29:53.740 have remained basically in place for many decades now, half a century now. And maybe America could

00:30:03.240 do it too. Maybe we could do it the right way. I'm not saying we start implementing Burka laws, 1.00

00:30:11.440 okay? But we could enforce traditional American laws against obscenity. We could stop killing all the

00:30:17.640 babies. We could stop chopping off kids' genitals. We could get back to normal. It is possible. 1.00

00:30:24.480 Don't believe the liberal elites who want to discourage you and who want to pretend that they

00:30:30.640 are inevitable. They are not inevitable. They try to make their numbers and their power seem much

00:30:38.680 larger than they actually are. Speaking of foreign relations, there's a story that very few

00:30:45.560 conservative commentators have reported on. But it matters because it tells you a lot about our

00:30:51.420 foreign policy right now. The UK has now decided to import American gas. And that's good news, right?

00:30:59.200 We're happy when American energy does well. But the story is a little quirky because the UK also decided

00:31:04.460 to ban its own gas. So the UK will not produce its own natural gas. It won't frack itself.

00:31:12.680 But it still wants natural gas, so it will import it from the United States. And people are calling

00:31:18.200 this very expensive hypocrisy. But that's what's happening. And you're seeing a broader move

00:31:23.120 throughout Europe to turn back toward American energy. Well, what had been supplying their energy

00:31:30.740 before? Previously, their energy was coming from themselves in the relatively distant past now,

00:31:36.760 or from Russia. Russia was supplying a lot of Europe's energy. And as a result of the Ukraine war,

00:31:44.540 and as a result of the sanctions, more specifically, that we've all put on Russia,

00:31:49.400 Europe is having to turn back to America for its energy. This is why the United States has a stake

00:31:57.600 in prolonging the Ukraine war. It serves the US national interest to turn Europe away from Russia,

00:32:05.280 and Europe turns to Russia because Russia's very, very close. And Russia funded a lot of

00:32:12.320 environmentalist groups to go in and convince Europe to stop producing its own energy,

00:32:16.620 suddenly go to Russia. But then Russia invades Ukraine. The United States decides this is a

00:32:20.080 good opportunity to put a bunch of sanctions on Russia and turn Europe back to the United States.

00:32:24.880 All of this to say, what you are seeing in politics, and especially in international politics,

00:32:33.920 is usually a lot of propaganda. It's usually surface-level stuff. The debates that we have

00:32:40.560 on the surface of these issues very often are not what is motivating US policy. How did America just

00:32:46.720 overnight decide that Ukraine was the most important country in the world and the greatest democracy

00:32:53.500 ever in history? How did that happen? Just a few years ago, the Democrats were impeaching Donald

00:33:02.720 Trump for colluding with the Ukrainians. Just a few years ago, we were told that Ukraine was this

00:33:07.980 horribly corrupt country, and it was all terrible. And so how did that change overnight, such that

00:33:11.860 everybody posted the Ukraine flag immediately? Because it serves the US interest, and it serves

00:33:18.320 not just the woke people, it serves deep, much more entrenched interests. And it brings me around

00:33:22.840 to this final point here, which is, we have been told for months now that Russia is a genocidal,

00:33:30.320 awful, evil terrorist regime, and we have to do everything we can to stop Russia from getting weapons, 0.94

00:33:35.560 from using those weapons on the poor Ukrainian people. We just released the biggest Russian arms

00:33:44.320 dealer in the world while Russia is occupying Ukraine. Doesn't that seem like, wait, hold on.

00:33:51.620 You were just telling me, Democrats, that we've got to cut off Russia's supply of arms. We've got to

00:33:56.600 harm, we can't allow any military Russian assets to be anywhere around the world. And also, okay, 0.85

00:34:01.580 we're going to trade the worst arms dealer on earth for this basketball player, because it'll give

00:34:06.320 Joe Biden a nice little headline. It's amazing how quickly people's opinions can turn.

00:34:13.160 The Daily Wire's post-production team, by the way, is expanding and is in need of new,

00:34:16.820 talented video editors to help with the ever-increasing volume of Daily Wire Plus content.

00:34:22.080 Our video editors work on a variety of content, including our daily podcasts,

00:34:26.320 long-form interviews, and original YouTube videos, as well as shows like

00:34:31.100 this one, The Michael Knowles Show, Ben Shapiro's debunked series from Jordan Peterson,

00:34:35.720 and a host of other Daily Wire Plus content. We are looking for highly creative people who possess

00:34:40.220 strong technical knowledge of the video editing process, at least two years of previous professional

00:34:45.680 video experience, and this is required for this opportunity. So be sure to have your reel or work

00:34:52.860 samples prepared as they are required for consideration for this position. This is based in Nashville.

00:34:57.400 For details and to apply, visit dailywire.com slash Knowles and click on careers. That is

00:35:03.680 dailywire.com slash Knowles today. Now, finally, we get to my favorite time of the week, the mailbag

00:35:09.720 sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com, select a plan, and enter code Knowles to get 50% off your

00:35:16.040 first month. Before we get to the mailbag, there is one clip I really wanted to get to in the show.

00:35:21.180 This just popped up last night, and I don't even want to introduce, it is Al Pacino from the Video Game

00:35:30.680 Awards. Please join me in welcoming to the Game Awards, Al Pacino.

00:35:36.020 So cool. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Hello, everyone.

00:35:53.100 It's really good to see you here. This is an experience for me.

00:35:59.720 It goes on. We don't have time to play the whole thing. The whole appearance by Al Pacino,

00:36:29.700 you know, at the Video Game Awards for some reason, is just a true delight. I bring it up

00:36:33.600 for no reason in particular other than it delighted and amused me. And sometimes people

00:36:37.960 say that I bear a passing resemblance to Al Pacino in The Godfather. So I am just pleased

00:36:44.520 that Pacino and I share another thing in common, which is that we often have trouble reading the

00:36:48.980 teleprompter. I, I, okay, I think, I think it's time to get to the mailbag.

00:36:55.800 Let's go. First question. Mr. Knowles, it's your favorite resident bass player and hopefully a

00:37:03.080 candidate for your show's stinger coming at you again with another question. As a metal musician,

00:37:10.020 I wanted to get your perspective on your thoughts of satanic imagery in music. Now, as a heavy metal

00:37:19.820 musician, it is a huge proponent in a lot of it, but looking behind the scenes at the artists and

00:37:26.660 the bands themselves, they do not advocate for satanic imagery. Most of them are actually Catholic.

00:37:33.700 The only genre of metal that actually is a proponent to practicing satanism is black metal,

00:37:40.960 but others like thrash metal or death metal. They don't actually believe in practices of satan

00:37:48.880 or anything of that matter. Any insight would be fantastic. Shout out to Ben Davies.

00:37:56.700 Coincidentally, a Catholic buddy of mine is a metal musician. So I believe you. I believe you in that

00:38:03.480 I'm sure that most metal musicians don't worship the devil and many of them are probably perfectly

00:38:10.920 sincere Christians. There is a problem with metal though as a genre. And it's really a problem of

00:38:17.000 rock and roll and hip hop and metal would be an extreme version of this, which is that the music

00:38:24.000 itself, forget about the lyrics, forget about the symbolism, just the music itself is problematic

00:38:29.280 because as Plato tells us, music more than any other art form is able to stir and shape the soul.

00:38:37.900 It's able to bypass the rational faculties. When we're listening to music, we are just sort of swept

00:38:42.900 away. It can totally change our moods and we will not really be all that conscious of it. And this is

00:38:49.620 why back when our civilization was more serious, we took music much more seriously. We make fun of

00:38:57.180 footloose now. And you know, these puritanical people who are getting upset about kids dancing

00:39:02.940 around to some rock and roll or something. But it's a, it is a serious question if you acknowledge

00:39:07.160 that music can shape the soul, which musicians more than anybody would acknowledge. So this is why

00:39:13.760 traditionally the music that was encouraged in our civilization was music that was melodic and

00:39:22.840 eventually harmonic as well. But percussion is something that people have always been a little

00:39:30.360 more wary of because percussion just cuts right to the core. It moves your body. You know, when you're

00:39:36.900 at the club, you know, and you're having your, your vodka soda or whatever, and then you're listening

00:39:42.200 to dubstep and then that beat finally drops. Right. And you're, you just, your body starts convulsing and

00:39:50.680 you're not, you're not intending to do that. That's just sort of what happens. So in metal,

00:39:56.300 it's a very percussive genre of music. You get those drums, you're just going constantly,

00:40:00.580 you get that basses, even, you know, keeping that beat going in you. And so that can shape your soul

00:40:04.800 and that can take you away from your rational faculties. And so you've just, I'm just saying,

00:40:09.080 bro, you got to be a little bit careful. Next question. Hi, Michael. Arun here with another

00:40:13.440 question about scientific philosophy. I just got done listening to your speech. Science is fake.

00:40:18.580 And as both a scientist and a loyal Michael Knowles fan, I endorse it completely. Now,

00:40:23.920 my understanding is that you claim science is a set of physical models, which are meant to offer

00:40:31.040 us predictive power over nature, and which may help us predict the motion of the planets,

00:40:37.380 GPS clocks, and whatnot. But it does not necessarily represent the underlying nature of reality.

00:40:44.020 But you also alluded, I think correctly, to the scientific process whereby new models will

00:40:50.840 offer iterative improvements over old models. Example, Einsteinian relativity versus Newtonian

00:40:56.880 mechanics. Does this entire process not rely on a fundamental assumption that there is an

00:41:03.480 objective reality which exists apart from our subjective interpretations of reality, and that these

00:41:10.620 new models are meant to converge on the truth, thereby prohibiting us from abandoning the idea of

00:41:17.980 objective reality altogether? Yes. Excellent, excellent question and observation, Arun. That is the idea.

00:41:26.140 And that's why people like Bacon, people like Newton especially, people like those early scientists

00:41:32.180 tended to be deeply, deeply Christian. I mean, you think of Isaac Newton. He spent the last decades of his

00:41:39.700 life more or less ignoring science and interpreting scripture. So yes, I'm not saying that the scientific

00:41:48.560 endeavor and scientific worldview from the beginning are hostile to fundamental metaphysical truths or

00:41:55.640 religion or anything like that. The problem with the scientific worldview, though, is in focusing

00:42:01.180 exclusively on the physical, it inevitably makes an idol out of the physical world. In focusing on

00:42:08.080 phenomena and matter, it makes an idol out of that. And it is very easy to believe, as a result of the

00:42:15.720 scientific representations that we are all so dazzled with these days, that the fundamental part of reality

00:42:21.640 is physical. This is why you hear people say, well, yes, Michael, man has a special relationship in the

00:42:28.500 cosmos, but literally, the Earth revolves around the sun. Or, look, the basic objective facts are,

00:42:36.680 or you'll even, you often hear this on the debate over transgenderism. What is a woman? What is a man?

00:42:43.100 Look, a woman is her chromosomes, okay? That is what is objectively true. That's a fact. That's why we're 1.00

00:42:50.720 all talking about facts, right? But yeah, it's true that a woman has X chromosomes, generally speaking, but

00:42:58.080 that's not all a woman is. And that's, the physical is not the fundamental fact. Matter is not the 1.00

00:43:04.140 fundamental fact of reality. Form is much more fundamental than matter is. The metaphysical,

00:43:08.720 my soul is much more fundamental than my body is, and the two are intertwined. So you're right about

00:43:15.460 the process of science in principle and in theory, but the problem is this is a fallen world.

00:43:20.620 And so we naturally fall prey to the idols that we make. And the scientific idols ultimately do

00:43:28.240 tend toward a materialist worldview. Even if the earliest scientists, the guys who kicked off the

00:43:34.980 scientific revolution, would have found that bizarre. Next question.

00:43:38.840 Hey, Michael. This is Marissa. I've got a question about reading people and reading their intentions.

00:43:43.980 I'm not the greatest with this. I feel like I've trusted the wrong people or befriended the wrong

00:43:48.500 people because I couldn't initially tell that they had bad intentions or were just trying to kind of

00:43:53.440 use me for things like that. And you strike me as the kind of guy who's very perceptive. So I would

00:43:58.520 love to hear any tips or things, advice you might have to better read people and better understand

00:44:03.760 them. Thanks. Really good question. Working in politics and show business, actually acting too,

00:44:12.760 would be, would be another thing that gives one, some insight into this. They, they impart very few

00:44:18.280 hard skills. Working in politics doesn't teach you how to do all that much. Doesn't teach you how to

00:44:23.820 be an engineer. Doesn't teach you how to bake a cake. Doesn't teach you how to build a house. Doesn't,

00:44:28.480 but it does teach you how to read people. Actually, if you've ever taken an acting class or worked in

00:44:34.780 acting or theater or anything like that, that imparts very virtually no hard skills. It does impart the

00:44:41.240 skill though of, of reading people. You have to, I mean, politics is about bringing people together.

00:44:48.860 Politics is about figuring out how people tick, what motivates them and how we can all live

00:44:54.620 together. And then acting is about figuring out characters and building characters. And so if you

00:45:01.060 do either or both of those things, well, you have to be able to read people and know a little something

00:45:05.080 about people. But it's not a science in that I can't give you, here are three tips. Here's how to

00:45:11.900 read people. And this is what you should do in your life. It is, it is much more an art than a science

00:45:17.160 because people are not just little mechanistic computers that can be hacked. That's what the libs

00:45:22.000 believe. That's what the great reset people believe. That's what our, our ruling class believes. But

00:45:27.220 that's not actually how people work. People are a mysterious thing. And so my advice to you, if you

00:45:32.480 want to get better at reading people, you have to spend more time around people. You have to look deeply

00:45:37.780 into people. And you can do this with technical learning and you can do this with practical

00:45:42.200 learning. So the technical learning, how do you get to know people and what motivates them? You

00:45:46.500 should read the Russian novelists. You should read Shakespeare. You should read Victorian novels.

00:45:51.440 You should, you can read and engage in the sort of art that is focused on the inner life of people.

00:45:58.920 And then in a practical matter, you, you need to be around a lot of people and you need to go to

00:46:03.380 social events and all different sorts of social events. You should go, go to the bar. You should go to

00:46:07.400 the book club. You should, you should go to church. You should spend time in real community, not in

00:46:12.900 virtual community, not, not just online, not just texting people, but in real life. Because the way

00:46:19.600 to read people is not just, he said this, or he believes this. He's a liberal, so he's going to do

00:46:26.880 this. Or he says that he works this job. And so I mean, no, it's so much more subtle. It's little

00:46:33.240 tells. It's how they move their face. It's where they look when they're talking to you. It's, it's

00:46:38.080 when you're, when you're at a cocktail party with somebody and you're having a conversation and he's

00:46:42.720 looking over your shoulder to see if someone more important walked into the room. It's all these

00:46:45.900 very, very subtle things that you're going to pick up. And then like a, like a soldier clearing a room,

00:46:53.640 you know, like a, like a cop going in and apprehending a bad guy, like anyone who needs to perform in a,

00:47:00.740 a split second. You're just going to read things in a way that is subconscious. You're just going to

00:47:09.000 go in and you're going to have a gut feeling. And that's why people in, especially in politics will

00:47:13.140 say, oh, I just got my gut. You know, I just, I just go on my gut. Well, that's why, because you've,

00:47:17.740 you've trained your gut over a long period of time. Next question. Hi, Michael. My question is

00:47:22.320 regarding your Italian heritage. Would you ever consider living in or spending time raising your 0.99

00:47:28.400 kids in Italy or do you love America too much to leave? Also, what is your favorite Italian dish

00:47:33.900 to eat? Do you have any recipes that were passed down in your family? Anyways, love the show. Thanks.

00:47:39.500 Love, Ashley. Thank you, Ashley. Very, very good questions. Very important questions. I would,

00:47:45.480 I would live in Italy for some short period of time. I would not move to Italy. I would never leave

00:47:50.540 my country. I would not be an expat. One, I really love my country, but two, it's right to love one's

00:47:56.680 country. You know, I actually think it's proper to love one's country and to be a part of one's

00:48:01.320 country. And I think one's identity comes not just from one's individual desires and inclinations,

00:48:06.640 but from one's place in community. Because man is fundamentally a political animal. Man is a social

00:48:11.860 animal. We are not fundamentally individuals. That's, I take the Aristotelian view of what man is and

00:48:19.180 what defines man. Not the liberal view, for instance. In terms of my favorite pasta dish,

00:48:26.300 I don't know. My favorite Italian dish, probably veal saltimboca, or my real favorite dish is sweet

00:48:32.600 little Elisa's homemade lasagna with the fresh pasta with the bechamel meat sauce. It's just

00:48:39.760 absolutely magnificent. A recipe, there are many recipes passed down in my family. Last night,

00:48:45.280 by the way, we just had fresh gnocchi. Fresh, delicious ricotta gnocchi was just,

00:48:48.620 absolutely delightful with meatballs. So that would be my favorite, sweet little Elisa's

00:48:54.540 lasagna. We have many more mailbag questions to get to, but you're going to have to do it on

00:48:59.020 the member block, okay? And this is Friday. This is Fake Headline Friday. I need your help

00:49:03.660 to help me beat Ben Davies. He has given me four real headlines, one fake headline. I need you

00:49:12.440 to help me get this headline correct. So head on over right now. If you're not a member,

00:49:16.980 click the link in the description and join us.

The Michael Knowles Show - December 09, 2022

Ep. 1142 - Biden Trades ＂The Merchant Of Death＂ For A Woke Lesbian Pothead

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