Ep. 1142 - Biden Trades ＂The Merchant Of Death＂ For A Woke Lesbian Pothead
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
166.89876
Summary
A former U.S. lady basketball player whose only noteworthy activities to date have been playing a sport no one watches, protesting the star-spangled banner at that sport, and trying to sneak pot into Russia, gets to go home.
Transcript
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Until yesterday, there were at least three Americans unlawfully detained in Russia.
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Paul Wellen, a former Marine, arrested on espionage charges. Mark Fogel, a 61-year-old
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history teacher, arrested for possessing a small amount of medical marijuana.
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And Brittany Greiner, a young anti-American lady basketball player, arrested for the same crime,
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for the marijuana. Two of those people are still stuck doing hard labor in Russia.
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Brittany is an incomparable athlete, a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA.
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She endured mistreatment in a show trial in Russia with characteristic grit and incredible dignity.
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She represents the best America, best about America, just across the board, everything about her.
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The best about America, just across the board. Brittany Greiner, the lady basketball player
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whose only noteworthy activities to date have been playing a sport that no one watches,
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protesting the star-spangled banner at that sport, refusing to show up on the court for the national
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anthem, and trying to sneak pot into Russia. Brittany Greiner represents the best about America,
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best, the very best, of America, apparently. Not the history teacher, not the Marine,
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the dope-smoking, America-hating, WNBA person whose release the U.S. was so desperate to secure
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that it agreed to release the world's most notorious arms dealer back to Russia in exchange.
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I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment, yes, it is from Zach Shepard, who said,
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bit rusty when I say Speechless. All right, all right, let's get a little faster. That's pretty
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promo code Knowles for 50% off your first month. Too bad for the Marine, too bad for the history teacher,
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but the pot-smoking basketball lady who hates the Star-Spangled Banner, she gets to go home.
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Who are those people? The one who's getting the most play right now is Paul Wellen.
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He is this Marine who actually spoke with CNN by phone around this release of Brittany Griner,
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basically saying, hey, guys, hey, Biden, you mind? What gives, man?
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They've always considered me to be at a higher level than other criminals of my sort. And
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for whatever reason, I'm treated differently than another individual here from a Western country that's
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also on a charge of espionage. So even though we're both here for espionage, I'm treated much
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differently than he is. And my treatment is also much different than others held for espionage at
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other prisons. I would say that if a message could go to President Biden that, you know, this is a
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precarious situation that needs to be resolved quickly. And I would hope that he and his
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administration would do everything they could to get me home, regardless of the price they might have
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to pay at this point. So the guy is desperate. He's been in a Russian prison now for four years,
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I think it is, unlike Brittany Griner, who was there for about nine, 10 months. And he's saying,
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guys, you really got to get me out of here. And he says, I'm being treated differently than the
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other prisoners. He's here in a charge of espionage. The reaction from everybody demanding
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his release has been to laugh at this charge of espionage and say, this is totally trumped up
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nonsense from Vladimir Putin to use a political pawn to. But I actually don't know. I mean,
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maybe the guy's a spy. I think to make a stronger argument for his release, we should take seriously
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the possibility that he's a spy. He's got a military background. He went in and out of Russia a whole lot
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of times in the last few years. He apparently had contacts at the FSB, which is the Russian Security
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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
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know. There's also a lot of evidence that he was not a spy. The CIA denies that Paul Welland was a
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spy because his military record was pretty spotty. And the agency is saying nobody who had all this
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kind of terrible conduct in the military and who was demoted and had all these issues, nobody with
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that kind of a background would be hired as a spy by the CIA. I don't know. I mean, I can see why
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Russians might be under the impression that the guy's a spy. But my point is, let's say that he is a
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spy. Let's say that this guy is James freaking Bond and he's very, very high value. We just gave
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up a guy who's also extremely high value. The guy that we just gave up is known as the merchant of
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death, okay? The guy that we just gave up, Victor Boot, is the most notorious arms dealer in the world.
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Russia really, really, really wanted to secure this guy's release. And so let's say Paul Welland is the
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biggest super spy in the history of the world. Joe Biden still should have secured his release.
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We gave up a really, really big Russian asset in exchange for what? A lady basketball player who
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was opportunistically taken hostage by the Russians as a pawn because of this issue right now over the
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war in Ukraine and because the United States was putting all of these sanctions on Russia and
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because Russia wanted some leverage. Okay, I don't even like Brittany Griner, okay? But it's clear that
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her detainment had a political aspect too. Yes, she violated the laws of Russia. Yes, Russia has the
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right to its own drug laws. No, I don't really have all that much sympathy with Brittany Griner trying to
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sneak drugs into Russia. But obviously, this detainment was political. Obviously, it was pretty flimsy.
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And so what kind of deal does Joe Biden make? The deal he makes is we will give you a very,
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very, very high value asset that has done very, very, very bad things and it can be very valuable
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to Russia in exchange for this lady basketball player. But you can keep our Marine, you can keep
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our history teacher. It's just on its face, even if you believe all of the Russian charges against these
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two Americans who remain detained. It's just a terrible, terrible deal. The guy they got is
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cartoonishly villainous. Take a listen. This was from a 60 Minutes interview over who Victor Boot is.
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Victor Boot, in my eyes, is one of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth.
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Mike Braun, the former chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,
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told us Boot first exploded on the scene in war-torn West Africa in the late 1980s.
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Elevating bloody conflicts from machetes and single-shot rifles to...
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AK-47s. Not by the thousands, but by the tens of thousands.
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He transformed these young, adolescent warriors into insidious, mindless, maniacally-driven
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killing machines that operated with assembly line efficiencies.
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Now 43, Boot from the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan, is a mystery man who reportedly served in the
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Soviet Air Force and Intelligence Service. The U.S. has indicted him on four terror-related
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charges, including conspiracy to kill Americans.
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So not a great guy. You know, kind of a bad ombre. And they make this trade. Why did the
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White House make this trade? We all know why. The White House made this trade because Brittany
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Greiner is a liberal black lesbian. That's why. And in fact, the White House basically admitted as
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much. In the big announcement, you had Corrine Jean-Pierre talking about how important this is,
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not only for all Americans, but especially for the LGBT LMNOP community. And it's so,
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so important that we get this lady back. And Biden's always gonna cut any deal that he could
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to get her back. Not because of any particular national interest in bringing this lady back over
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other detained Americans, but because it looks really good to the Democrat base and because it's
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very, very politically correct. And the important part here is that Vladimir Putin knew that.
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The Russians knew that too. You would not have seen this kind of a deal, this kind of a weak,
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weak deal under Donald Trump. But Putin knew that they would get it under Joe Biden because
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the Russians have always been very good at understanding the fault lines in American politics
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on race, on sex, on everything. And so they knew that they would get it. And they just ripped us
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off, okay? If it had been, okay, we release the arms dealer and they release Brittany Greiner and
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Paul Wellen or and Paul Wellen and Mark Fogel or something like that, that would have been one thing.
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But that's not what we got. Not what we got at all. And so we had the handoff here. And the funniest
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part about the handoff is you get the two planes landing in Abu Dhabi and you get the guys walking
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up with Victor Boot and you get the, actually just one guy walking up with Victor Boot. I mean,
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he's a pretty tough hombre. He can handle himself. Then you get multiple guys walking up with Brittany
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Greiner. And then there's sort of shaking hands there on the tarmac you see with the guy. And then
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there's a film cut. So you see Victor Boot, he shakes hands with one of his handlers, shakes hands with
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another handler. And then he kind of leans. And then there's this cut. And it occurred to me,
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they cut the footage of when Brittany Greiner shakes hands with the notorious Russian arms dealer known
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as the Merchant of Death. They said, that really messes up our image here. That's really gonna play
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into conservatives' hands. If they already don't have a particularly high opinion of this lady,
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because the only thing she's known for is getting detained by the Russians and disrespecting
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America. And then you lean in his ears shaking hands with a guy known as the Merchant of Death.
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So even that, they bungle it. It's just an absolute embarrassment. Another embarrassment
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for Joe Biden and for the United States. Very, very frustrating.
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Even a Democrat senator, by the way, is admitting that this is a disaster. And I'm not even talking
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about Joe Manchin, who's a moderate Democrat, or Kyrsten Sinema, who sometimes helps out the
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Republicans. Bob Menendez, who is a real dem. He's a real big lib. Bob Menendez, Democrat senator from
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New Jersey, he said, this should be a moment of deep reflection for the United States government to
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recognize. We have a serious problem with hostage-taking of Americans. The Russians and
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other regimes that take American citizens hostage cannot pretend that there is an equivalence
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between the Brittany Griners in the world and people like Victor Boot, the so-called merchant
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of death. Nothing could be further from the truth. We cannot ignore that releasing Boot back into the
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world is a deeply disturbing decision. Why is it disturbing? Well, Bob Menendez explains, we must stop
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inviting dictatorial and rogue regimes to use Americans overseas as bargaining chips. And we must try to do
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better at encouraging American citizens against traveling to places like Russia, where they are
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primary targets for this type of unlawful detention. Yeah, of course. That's true. American citizens do
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need to exercise a little bit of caution and prudence. I remember in my early 20s, I was going to take a
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trip with a couple friends of mine. And we, well, we did end up taking a trip around the Middle East and
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going to different places. But one of the places we wanted to go to was the island of Socotra, which is
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between Yemen and Somalia. And we wanted to go because it's a really cool-looking place. And apparently,
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St. Thomas shipwrecked there. And it just seemed like it would be fun to go travel there. And a
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friend of mine who is a military guy, he said, this big hulking dude, he goes, Michael, do not go to
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Socotra. And I said, why not? I can handle myself. Why can't I go to Socotra? And he says, because you
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will just be a walking bag of money. Every person there, every Somali pirate, every bad, desperate
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hombre is going to look at you and recognize you are valuable. Because if they take you hostage,
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then they can get a lot of money out of the United States. So do not go there. Okay, that's fair.
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And this is true in a lot of places around the world. And one thing that the United States
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historically has tried to do to reduce that risk for Americans traveling abroad is that we have a
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policy of not negotiating with terrorists and not encouraging and incentivizing rogue regimes to
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take Americans hostage. It's not that I really don't like Brittany Griner and that's why we shouldn't
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have made this deal. It's that this deal, one, is deeply unfair to the other Americans who have done
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a lot more to serve their country than Brittany Griner ever has, who are still being detained.
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But also, this endangers all Americans abroad. If all of these regimes now around the world see
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that we've got weakness in the White House and that they can get their most prized assets freed
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from the United States if they just take an American hostage and ransom that American,
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then you're going to see more of that behavior. This is what happens. Weakness on the world stage
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invites aggression from our enemies. And it's just really, really pathetic.
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If we'd gotten a better deal, it would be one thing. But it's just such absolute capitulation,
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awful, awful stuff, capitulating to such bad people around the world. Speaking of bad people,
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the people who used to run Twitter are in some hot water because Twitter Files Part 2 was just
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published. Barry Weiss is the person who published it. You saw the first part come out from the
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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
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the liberal left. They're not conservative journalists that he's giving it to, but he's giving
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it to the liberal, what used to be called the intellectual dark web type kind of people.
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You know, the, I'm a liberal, but I'm not a leftist. You know, I'm that sort of thing. But they are
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still libs. I mean, they are still on the left. They just are sick of this corrupt establishment and
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all the extreme radicalism that we've seen in recent years. So Barry Weiss goes through it.
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She does a bang up job. She says, the new Twitter Files investigation reveals that teams of Twitter
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employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility
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of entire accounts and even trending topics, which is bad enough. But then they also do this all in
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secret without informing any users. This is an important release, not because it tells us that
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Twitter was shadow banning and blacklisting people. We already knew that. But it's proving it.
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Just like with the first Twitter Files release, the main takeaway here is not some big news item that we
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didn't know about before. The main takeaway here is we're not crazy. We are not crazy. And the things
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that we suspected were happening for years actually were happening. And the people who were running
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Twitter and their propagandists in the mainstream media were lying to us. The people who run Twitter
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who told us this wasn't happening, they weren't just getting it wrong. They weren't just incompetent.
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It wasn't just a mistake. They were actively lying to us. They were deceiving us. So who did they get?
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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.
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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
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coat wearing experts who was much more correct about COVID than Dr. Fauci or anybody else, he was
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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
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blacklist. So with Charlie, Charlie is absolutely great at Twitter and his tweets would have a huge
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,
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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,
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she's the one who made the call to ban Donald Trump when Jack Dorsey was out of the office.
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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.
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So these are two people at the very highest level of Twitter who said in writing, we do not shadow
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ban and we certainly don't shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.
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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.
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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
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
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
00:24:53.460
medical science, I'm going to trust the latter. He has much more credibility, okay? Especially when
00:24:58.240
we're talking about matters of life and death. And you will die someday, and that's why you need a
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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
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
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.
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
00:27:41.640
pointing out that liberal modernity, taken to its extremes, transing kids, redefining marriage,
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
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
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
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
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
00:29:23.780
and stop you from reproducing and hook you on drugs and outsource your jobs and open your borders and
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,
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.
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,
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,
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,
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and a host of other Daily Wire Plus content. We are looking for highly creative people who possess
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strong technical knowledge of the video editing process, at least two years of previous professional
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video experience, and this is required for this opportunity. So be sure to have your reel or work
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samples prepared as they are required for consideration for this position. This is based in Nashville.
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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
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
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
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,