The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. I've missed you all terribly. Since I've been gone,

00:00:06.840 the most controversial man on the internet was arrested for sex trafficking and apparently

00:00:11.600 the more serious crime of mocking Greta Thunberg. A pope and the single most important theologian

00:00:16.980 of the last century died. A newly elected Republican congressman got caught pretending

00:00:22.140 to be an educated gay Jewish banker when none of those things were true. And the head of NASA

00:00:27.820 says that China might be on the verge of conquering the moon.

00:00:32.460 We have no time to waste. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:42.600 Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment from the yes or no game with my friend Spencer

00:00:47.760 Klavan, which we released while we were away between Christmas and New Year, is from the

00:00:51.860 writer's lens who says, this was really good, gents. Really enjoyed the questions and the reasons

00:00:55.520 behind the answers. I think this game is perfect for holiday get-togethers, lol. Yes, many people

00:01:01.660 actually wrote in because a handful of you lucky people were able to get the physical copy of the

00:01:08.260 yes or no game, the official patented Michael Knowles Show, yes or no game, from the Daily Wire

00:01:13.680 merch store. Unfortunately, though, the Daily Wire only ordered about a thousand of these things.

00:01:18.240 So only a thousand people were able to get the game before Christmas. Many of you played it with

00:01:22.960 your families and wrote in and sent me all sorts of information about it and said you liked it a lot.

00:01:27.140 Right now, you can pre-order the yes or no game. We've got the new and improved, brand new edition

00:01:32.160 of the yes or no game. We've ordered, I don't know, many more thousands of copies of this game.

00:01:37.180 It is going to sell out, though. I'm 100% convinced of that. So if you want your own copy of the game,

00:01:42.100 make sure you pre-order right now before they are gone, okay? It's a very valuable asset. Another

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00:02:52.940 Where to begin? Where to, do we begin with Andrew Tate? Do we begin with the Pope? Do we begin with

00:03:02.100 the Chinese about to conquer the moon? No. Do you know where I want to begin with George Santos?

00:03:09.040 I'm not saying it's the most important story, but it's the one that tickles me the most.

00:03:13.480 George Santos, the newly elected Republican congressman who has been caught telling some lies,

00:03:21.080 embellishing his resume just a little bit to the point where we don't know if anything about this

00:03:26.520 guy's biography is true or not. George Santos claimed that he is Jewish, that a family name of

00:03:35.740 his is Zabrowski, but that he didn't carry that family name on because after the Second World War,

00:03:41.180 the family wanted to hide that they were Jewish. He claimed that he worked for Goldman Sachs.

00:03:45.920 And not only that he worked for Goldman Sachs, but he actually went to Anthony Scaramucci's SALT

00:03:49.820 conference, a financial conference, and criticized Goldman Sachs while he was working for them.

00:03:55.020 He claims that he is a graduate of Baruch College, NYU, that he attended Horace Mann School,

00:04:00.980 which is a very elite prep school in New York. He claims that he is gay. And then it turns out

00:04:09.260 maybe none of that is true. And when I say maybe none of that is true, I mean even the gay part might

00:04:16.720 not be true because it turns out that this guy was married to a woman less than two weeks before he

00:04:26.980 launched his first congressional campaign in 2020. How this is only coming out now, I don't really

00:04:33.120 know. I thought Maggie Haberman actually had a pretty good observation on this, which is that

00:04:36.440 this is in many ways a story about the collapse of local news, that national news is not paying

00:04:42.720 attention to every congressional race. And so you only find out about this stuff after the guys get

00:04:46.580 elected. They should have figured out that none of this was true. He eventually came to admit that

00:04:51.900 he's not Jewish, but that he said he was Jew-ish, meaning he, you know, had a little bit of Jewish

00:04:58.220 heritage in his family line. And well, he didn't really work for Goldman Sachs, but he kind of worked

00:05:03.720 for a company that, I don't know, had a bank account or something. So, you know, it's kind of like working

00:05:08.320 for Goldman Sachs. And the education stuff was just completely made up. I mean, there's no record of

00:05:12.660 any of this stuff. I can't go that hard against George Santos because I think, look, maybe he's

00:05:24.880 got some Jewish blood back in his family line. I don't know, maybe he does. Maybe there was a

00:05:28.780 Jewish milkman somewhere in Latin America or wherever the Santoses are from. But whether he's

00:05:36.060 Jewish or not, he's not one 1,024th Native American, right? He didn't. George Santos hasn't

00:05:43.440 based his entire career on pretending to be an ethnicity that he is not. Unlike, say,

00:05:50.300 U.S. Senator, former Democrat presidential candidate, Elizabeth Warren. George Santos lied

00:05:55.800 about his education. That's true. Certainly wouldn't be the first politician to do it. In fact,

00:06:01.240 the sitting Democrat president of the United States, Joe Biden, had to drop out of the

00:06:05.980 1988 presidential race specifically for lying about his education.

00:06:11.200 What law school did you attend and where did you place in that class? And the other question is,

00:06:16.600 could you quickly, I think we also- I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do,

00:06:21.380 I suspect. I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my class to have a

00:06:27.900 full academic scholarship. In the first year in law school, I decided I didn't want to be in law

00:06:32.240 school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class, and then decided I wanted to stay,

00:06:36.800 went back to law school, and in fact ended up in the top half of my class. I won the international

00:06:41.580 moot court competition. I was the outstanding student in the political science department at

00:06:46.400 the end of my year. I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and 165 credits,

00:06:50.880 only need 123 credits, and I'd be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours if you'd like,

00:06:56.020 Frank. None of that was true. Not one single thing there was true. The only claim that Joe Biden made

00:07:03.660 where he continues to maintain that it was true, but there's no evidence that it was,

00:07:07.860 is that he won the mock trial competition. But there's no evidence of that. He didn't graduate in

00:07:12.740 the top half of his class. He didn't graduate with three degrees. He wasn't the political science

00:07:15.920 student of the year. None of that. He didn't have an academic scholarship, a full academic right.

00:07:21.280 He was there on financial aid because his family didn't have a lot of money. But none of that was

00:07:27.880 true. Okay, he completely made that up. The guy's the sitting president. So I can't get all that angry

00:07:33.080 at George Santos. He's clearly a weird guy. He's clearly not to be trusted. He's clearly just a lying

00:07:40.300 politician like so many of them are. But he doesn't seem to be especially a lying politician,

00:07:47.360 certainly no more so than Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. To me, what this story is about is not

00:07:51.880 about this unbelievable, unprecedented, crazy congressman. No, they're all, not all of them,

00:07:57.440 but many of them are extremely nuts. And it's not about even the collapse of local news that that

00:08:03.580 plays part of it. This is a story about what confers prestige in the United States.

00:08:10.880 This is a guy who probably is not Jewish and who is pretending to be Jewish. Because although we are

00:08:19.760 told that in America, the way to have privilege and the way to gain prestige is to be a white man,

00:08:28.320 that isn't actually true. That is why white people regularly pretend to be members of aggrieved

00:08:36.060 racial minority groups. That's why Rachel Dolezal pretends to be black. That's why that

00:08:40.900 white Jewish NYU professor pretends to be black. That is why George Santos is pretending to be

00:08:47.380 Jewish. He probably couldn't claim to be black, but he can claim to be a member of a different racial

00:08:53.120 minority. George Santos may or may not be a gay guy. I don't know. He might be sexually

00:08:58.060 attracted to men. He may not be. I don't know. But what we are told in our society is that if

00:09:03.800 you're straight, you've got it all going on for you. You've got all the privilege you've got. And

00:09:08.300 if you're a gay guy, you're a member of an aggrieved, terrible minority group. Yeah, except it's the

00:09:14.240 people who can claim membership in those aggrieved victim groups. Those are the people who have the

00:09:19.180 actual privilege in the United States. I was explaining this story to some friends and family

00:09:24.280 members of mine and said, wait, the guy pretended to be Jewish? Hold on. You're telling me the guy

00:09:28.920 embellished the fact that he's gay? Yes. Because those things confer status. And the groups that

00:09:38.680 you don't want to be a part of, the groups that are actually ostracized in our culture are the

00:09:44.060 straight people and the white people and the Christians. And it's exactly the inverse of what

00:09:50.520 the libs tell us that it is. Speaking of prestige, the top G, Andrew Tate, has been arrested in

00:09:58.880 Romania. Who is Andrew Tate? I don't really know. I have watched some videos from the man because my

00:10:06.060 producers forced me to. And they said, Michael, we want your reaction to this guy. He's taken over

00:10:10.800 the internet. He became the most Googled man in the world. He's clearly pretty wealthy. He claims to be

00:10:17.000 a trillionaire. I don't think he's really a trillionaire. But he claims to be wealthy.

00:10:21.980 And he's gotten a lot of attention because he says things that are sometimes very right-wing.

00:10:28.460 I don't really think of him as a conservative or a total right-winger. But he says certain things

00:10:34.840 that clearly upset the liberal establishment. And so he's been arrested in Romania for sex trafficking.

00:10:42.480 And he got arrested, by the way, right after he got into a Twitter fight with Greta Thunberg.

00:10:48.120 I think that was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. Forget sex trafficking. Forget

00:10:52.360 tax fraud. Forget whatever they're going to throw at him. You are not allowed to criticize St. Greta of

00:10:57.680 the Blessed Sailboat. If you do that, you will be destroyed by our liberal establishment. So he's

00:11:03.620 arrested. The prosecutors have alleged that Andrew Tate and his brother are suspects in an organized

00:11:10.580 crime ring that sexually exploited at least six women who were allegedly recruited, housed, and forced

00:11:16.100 into performing porn videos for sale online. Now, I know that the authorities are corrupt and the system

00:11:27.200 is set up to destroy anybody who in any way criticizes the liberal establishment. And you can

00:11:33.280 indict a ham sandwich and all of that. But what was the guy doing in Romania? Why did this guy,

00:11:41.760 he lived there. Okay, why did he move to Romania in recent years? Which is kind of a corrupt country

00:11:48.700 that's known for sex trafficking and all sorts of nefarious activities. Well, I get that the

00:11:54.560 authorities are corrupt and the system's designed to destroy anybody who questions a liberal establishment

00:11:58.460 and you're going to die to ham sandwich. But hasn't the guy admitted on camera many, many times to

00:12:04.480 running an OnlyFans agency and to being a pimp, to just put it really bluntly? Isn't that a lot of

00:12:11.540 his career is actually bragging about being a pimp? And so he brags about being a pimp and then he gets

00:12:17.720 arrested for being a pimp. Doesn't, isn't that, I'm not, I understand that the pimps and the hustlers

00:12:28.440 and the sex traffickers on the left, they don't get arrested. They get to continue their criminal

00:12:35.420 activities for decades and decades. Jeffrey Epstein gets to live on his island. And even after he is

00:12:41.540 arrested, he gets a sweetheart deal at the Palm Beach fake prison. Yeah, I know I get, I get, I'm

00:12:46.660 not denying that there's some double standard, but the guy's a pimp, right? Is the guy a pimp?

00:12:52.600 I don't know. That's, that's kind of what it seemed like to me. Now, when you want to get your

00:12:57.740 life in order, I would strongly recommend you check out the Bible in a Year podcast with Father

00:13:02.480 Mike Schmitz. Right now, go to ascensionpress.com slash Knowles. If you're somebody who's always

00:13:07.760 wanted to read and understand the Bible, but you're not sure where to start, then check out

00:13:12.080 the Bible in a Year podcast from Ascension. The Bible in a Year podcast is currently the most popular

00:13:18.200 religion podcast in the United States. Millions of people have listened to it and twice it's hit the

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00:13:29.940 in 365 daily episodes, providing helpful commentary, reflection, and prayer along the way. This is the

00:13:36.700 only podcast that I regularly listen to. I absolutely adore this podcast and have been listening to it for

00:13:42.640 a little more than a year now, actually, because you can take it at your own pace too. What better way

00:13:46.220 to start the new year? You can find the Bible in a Year podcast with Father Mike Schmitz for free

00:13:50.200 in your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. Plus, you can follow along with a special reading plan

00:13:54.980 to help you better understand the story. Unlike any other Bible podcast, Bible in a Year follows a

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00:14:05.120 the story. Get that reading plan at ascensionpress.com slash Knowles. If you want to start reading and,

00:14:10.360 more importantly, understanding the Bible this year, go to ascensionpress.com slash Knowles

00:14:15.040 to download the reading plan for free. That's ascensionpress.com slash Knowles

00:14:18.640 to download the reading plan for free. The story that we're being told about the Andrew Tate

00:14:23.720 arrest is obviously silly. Part of the story was that Andrew Tate gets into this Twitter fight

00:14:30.360 with Greta Thunberg, where he's bragging about how he's got all these cars and they spew all of this

00:14:34.960 terrible poison into the atmosphere. And then Greta responded in this kind of childish way. And then,

00:14:41.660 but then when Andrew Tate released a response to that, he had a takeout pizza box.

00:14:47.160 And the authorities were able to locate him by looking at the address on the takeout pizza box.

00:14:54.000 And that was obviously bogus. That was clearly a lie because we know that the authorities have

00:15:01.760 been tracking Andrew Tate. If you seriously believe that Andrew Tate has not been surveilled

00:15:06.800 by intelligence agencies for the past many months, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

00:15:12.380 This is the most talked about guy in the world. He's got this kind of weird, shady business life.

00:15:20.780 He's suddenly making lots of money. Obviously, the authorities knew where this guy was. And then

00:15:24.780 the pizza box thing was just the excuse to go in and get him. Is it fair that they went after him

00:15:32.180 when they don't prosecute their own pimps and hustlers and human traffickers? No. But I said this in my

00:15:38.940 very first video that I did that when I didn't know anything about Andrew Tate and they put the

00:15:43.100 clips of him in front of me. And I said, well, he's saying many things that are at least somewhat

00:15:50.060 true, some things that are entirely true. And he's clearly got the right, his heart is almost in the

00:15:55.860 right place. He's trying for something. He's questioning the liberal establishment. He's beginning

00:16:01.140 to grapple with the fact that maybe God does exist. Maybe there is a moral order,

00:16:05.400 but I don't quite understand it yet. But the guy's a pimp and he's got to stop pimping. Okay.

00:16:11.400 It's not, it is not based to live your life like a street hustling degenerate. Okay. It's not,

00:16:20.460 it's not, it's not based and conservative and trad and all of that to run an OnlyFans agency. It's not

00:16:27.980 based and trad and conservative to be in your thirties and not even looking to getting married.

00:16:35.400 Or looking to, if you're not going to get married, looking to joining the priesthood or

00:16:39.420 consecrating your singlehood. It's, but bragging about how many women you sleep with and driving

00:16:45.680 your Bugattis around, that's not, you play stupid games, you're going to win stupid prizes. Okay.

00:16:51.660 That's all I'm saying. If you go on air and you, and you question the liberal establishment and you

00:16:57.360 attack the powers that be, and then you brag about committing things that, committing actions that

00:17:03.580 can be prosecuted. Don't be surprised when you get prosecuted. Okay. Just a basic rule of politics.

00:17:10.820 It's true that your enemies, if they have sufficient power, can get you on anything.

00:17:14.660 Don't give them an opening. Okay. Not the wisest thing to do. Speaking of weird sex stuff,

00:17:21.200 terrible story out of Texas. This is a story that we've been tracking, I guess for years at this point,

00:17:27.600 the story of Jeffrey Younger. You've probably heard about Jeffrey Younger is this father who is trying

00:17:33.840 to save his son from being castrated and transed by his lunatic ex-wife. Jeffrey Younger, he's in

00:17:40.540 Texas. We've followed this story pretty closely. And the Texas Supreme Court has just ruled against

00:17:46.780 Jeffrey Younger preventing the chemical castration of his son.

00:17:51.500 So this means now that Younger's ex-wife can take their son to California to have him,

00:17:59.620 quote unquote, medically transitioned. This mother is a complete looney tune,

00:18:04.300 obviously doing very, very evil things. She's a pediatrician. Jeff Younger has accused this woman

00:18:10.240 of using their children to help advertise her inclusive gender affirming practice. So surprise,

00:18:16.120 surprise, this woman's job is to trans the kids. And she decides one day that her son is really,

00:18:21.260 a girl. And when their son first started saying this, Jeff Younger pulled out his phone. He said,

00:18:27.940 I want to document this for the future when this becomes inevitably a legal matter. Son,

00:18:34.060 why do you think you're a girl? You're a boy, right?

00:18:38.320 No. I'm a girl.

00:18:40.900 Who told you you're a girl?

00:18:42.500 Mommy.

00:18:43.940 When did she tell you you were a girl?

00:18:46.200 Because I love girls.

00:18:48.400 Oh, I see. So mommy told you you're a girl?

00:18:50.700 You know, I was divorced a few years ago. When my child hit his third birthday,

00:19:01.320 and this happened during the divorce, hit his third birthday, he started telling me that he was

00:19:06.140 a girl. And I immediately pulled out my video and videotaped him and asked him,

00:19:13.380 why do you think you're a girl? You can see this video at SaveJames.com. It's the first time I heard

00:19:18.060 about this. What happened was all of his authority figures, right? His mom, his sisters, his older

00:19:24.220 sisters, his teacher, the policeman at school, the librarian, the principals, the lunch lady,

00:19:30.380 all of his authority figures were telling him he was a girl. And I was the only one.

00:19:34.540 And me and his priest were the only one telling him that he was a boy. And he really just didn't

00:19:39.280 believe me. Absolutely heartbreaking story. Your heart breaks for this dad, Jeff Younger. Your

00:19:44.620 heart breaks, obviously, for the kid. It's difficult not to be filled with a righteous anger

00:19:49.780 at this horrible mother who is castrating her kid. Everyone is viewing this as a story about

00:19:56.140 transgenderism, the new gender ideology, or as a story about grooming, or sure, it's all of those

00:20:01.980 things. Fundamentally, this is a story about divorce. When did all of this start to happen?

00:20:09.640 When did the kid first say that he's a girl? When did the mother first start moving to mess up his

00:20:14.860 genitals and his hormones? You heard Jeff Younger say it. It said it was during the divorce. Right

00:20:20.080 during the divorce, coincidentally, the kid starts to go kind of crazy, or the mother drives the kid

00:20:25.260 crazy. Many such cases, that's what happens. Why is the kid in this terrible state that he's in?

00:20:31.680 Because Jeff Younger has no say over his kid's life, because they're divorced, and because our

00:20:37.300 current divorce regime allows crazy mothers to leave whenever they want to. Again, I don't know

00:20:42.780 the details of their divorce, maybe. He instigated, I don't know, but when divorce happens, the fathers

00:20:48.760 have very little say in the raising of their kids. A lot of times, conservatives, when we fight

00:20:56.620 political battles, we just want to treat symptoms. We want to treat the immediate problem that we're

00:21:01.320 looking at right now. In this case, it's so clear. You want to treat the transgenderism.

00:21:05.060 We've got to stop the transgenderism. We've got to stop the grooming of kids. Yeah, that's the

00:21:08.540 immediate problem. But the cause of that problem, the sickness that is driving it, especially in this

00:21:15.320 case, is divorce, is the breakdown of the family, is the fact that even conservatives now will not

00:21:23.660 acknowledge that men and women are different, and they have different roles, and they are complementary

00:21:28.320 one another. That's what marriage is. Marriage, as the bedrock political institution, is predicated on

00:21:38.260 the fact that men and women are different and complementary to one another. But there are many

00:21:43.020 so-called conservatives today who accept the absurd notion of gay marriage, and they do it because they

00:21:50.060 have gay friends, and they don't want to seem mean, and they don't want to seem phobic. But put all of

00:21:53.900 that aside, I don't think it's mean or phobic or anything like that to acknowledge that marriage

00:21:58.500 can only have one meaning, which is the perpetual union of a man and a woman for the good of the

00:22:05.340 spouses and the sake of the generation and education of children, if we are to accept that men and women

00:22:09.820 are really different. The second we lose that, the second we stop defending marriage, the second,

00:22:15.800 forget about the gay marriage redefinition thing for a second. The second that we grant no-fault

00:22:20.700 divorce, the second that we grant that marriage is just, I don't know, a consensual temporary union

00:22:25.660 of two people while they titillate one another, and then once the thrill is gone, they leave and

00:22:30.060 move on. Children be damned, family be damned. The second that we admit that, and many conservatives

00:22:35.040 admit that, many conservatives have no problem with lax divorce laws. Many conservatives have no

00:22:40.220 problem redefining marriage. Many conservatives have no problem with transgenderism. As long as you're

00:22:44.400 18, as long as you make the decision to chop off your genitals, well, if we're going to grant that,

00:22:49.360 then even the conservatives are not going to admit there's a difference between men and women.

00:22:53.360 And then they're certainly not going to admit that there's a difference in the roles of men and

00:22:57.660 women. They're certainly not going to admit that men have a leadership role. Husbands have a leadership

00:23:02.380 role within the marriage to be the head of one's own household. And so the problem is just going to

00:23:06.940 fester. And we can whine until we're blue in the face about transgenderism and the child abuse,

00:23:11.840 but you're not going to address the root causes of it. So then what are we even talking about?

00:23:15.480 It's a sad story. And there are going to be many, many more sad stories just like this

00:23:20.840 if we don't get serious about what is allowing these things to happen. We should not be distracted

00:23:29.060 by the crazy consequences of the political regime that we're living under. We got to get down to the

00:23:34.660 problem. When did all this stuff start cropping up? Why did it start cropping up? It is a consequence

00:23:39.600 of the sexual revolution. It's a consequence of the 1960s. And a lot of Republicans and conservatives are,

00:23:45.260 okay, with that. It's why I can't really totally defend Andrew Tate, because Andrew Tate loves the

00:23:50.600 sexual revolution. Andrew Tate has profited. He's made millions and millions of dollars off of the

00:23:54.380 sexual revolution. Okay, I guess you can buy some more Bugattis, but you're not going to conserve

00:24:02.440 anything of our traditional culture. You're not going to stand up for civilization if you're doing

00:24:07.660 that. And frankly, the Republican establishment, the rhino conservative squishy establishment,

00:24:13.360 we're basically all Andrew Tate in this situation. We've traded our patrimony and our civilization

00:24:19.560 for some fancy Bugattis and some fun with loose women on the side. Not great stuff, okay? Not great

00:24:25.800 stuff at all. I don't know about you, but it seemed like the Christmas season came and went this year,

00:24:30.160 didn't it? One minute, he's sitting there around the tree opening presents. The next, it's time to take

00:24:35.800 the tree down. Although on that point, I got to tell you folks, I know people have taken their

00:24:40.180 decorations down. It is still Christmas. Christmas is not one day. Christmas is 12 days. That's why

00:24:46.800 there's a song called The 12 Days of Christmas, okay? So if you took your decorations down, put them

00:24:51.280 back up. You have three more days. With the holiday season coming to a close, many of you have already

00:24:57.040 taken advantage of our 30% off Christmas membership sale. But if you have not done so yet, this is your

00:25:03.100 last chance. Get 30% off new Daily Wire Plus annual memberships and gift memberships when you go to

00:25:09.140 dailywire.com slash Knowles, K-N-N-W-L-E-S. Between what is a woman, the greatest lie ever sold, the force

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00:25:40.340 Speaking of transgenderism, the trans bathroom issue is almost certainly going to be headed to the

00:25:48.700 Supreme Court. This is a story not a lot of people have talked about, but the 11th Circuit Court of

00:25:54.600 Appeals just held up in a 7-4 decision that the St. John's County School Board policy barring girls

00:26:02.740 who identify as boys from using the high school boys' restroom does not violate the student's

00:26:09.840 constitutional right to equal protection or Title IX, which is Title IX is the federal civil rights law

00:26:15.800 that bars discrimination based on sex, which the Supreme Court has already said covers sexual

00:26:20.300 orientation and gender identity. So they've already squished into the transgender camp on that. But the

00:26:25.060 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision differs on the substance from a decision two years ago by the

00:26:33.400 Fourth Circuit, which struck down a similar policy in Virginia. So what that means is you've now got a

00:26:40.300 disagreement among the circuits. And disagreement among the circuits is when you get a case to go

00:26:46.040 up to the Supreme Court. So it seems very likely to me that the Supreme Court not only will be presented

00:26:51.240 with this case, but will have to accept this case. And so that means that you will finally get

00:26:57.900 a clear national decision on the transgender bathroom issue, which has been brewing now for what,

00:27:05.740 eight or nine years? I mean, this has been going on since the Obama administration. You saw this first

00:27:11.760 push to let boys into the girls' room. And then Obama, then there were laws in North Carolina to

00:27:18.080 stop the boys from going into the girls' room. Then Obama couldn't handle that. He said, nope, we're

00:27:22.120 going to, dog nabbit, we're going to let those boys go into the girls' room. And so they made a federal

00:27:27.560 policy. They used the Department of Education to try to force boys into the girls' room. You saw a big

00:27:34.120 political battle for years about this. Now it could possibly be resolved. Some people are not

00:27:41.640 going to be happy about that. You're going to have the extreme libertarian types say, well, the

00:27:48.600 government should have no say over this. Come on, the government, we need to get big government out

00:27:53.620 of our bathrooms. And if a school district wants boys to go into the girls' bathrooms, well, that's

00:27:57.760 the school district's decision. And you, or the really extreme libertarians would say, use whatever

00:28:01.680 bathroom you want. You're fully autonomous. Do whatever you want with your own body. Then you're

00:28:07.100 going to see people who are a little bit more conservative. They're going to say, well, I don't

00:28:12.060 want boys in the girls' bathroom, but I don't want the federal government making this decision. I want

00:28:16.040 it to be left to the states. You saw a similar argument with regard to abortion and marriage, by the

00:28:24.120 way. There are some people who believe that we shouldn't ban abortion nationally. We should just

00:28:29.940 leave it to the states. That's the kind of middle ground conservative libertarian position. Or with

00:28:34.880 marriage. Well, we shouldn't have a national marriage definition. We should just leave it to

00:28:38.300 the states. If Massachusetts wants to redefine marriage to effectively abolish what marriage is,

00:28:43.600 that's their right to do so. And if Texas and Tennessee want to keep the traditional definition

00:28:47.900 of marriage, well, that's their right to do so too. And I just don't think that works.

00:28:52.560 I think on a lot of issues that does work. Okay, I totally support subsidiarity. I think federalism can

00:28:59.280 be a wonderful thing. And on all sorts of issues, maybe some gun laws, maybe even drug laws in some

00:29:05.440 cases. There's all sorts of cases in which the decision should be made at the most local level

00:29:12.520 possible. But when we get down to really fundamental stuff, like what is a man? What is a woman?

00:29:20.820 I don't think you can leave that up to the states. Antonin Scalia made this point, actually, on

00:29:25.060 the question of gay marriage. He said, I don't think you can just leave it up to the states,

00:29:29.580 because what happens then when a married couple of two men leave Massachusetts and they move to

00:29:34.940 Tennessee? Is their marriage, quote unquote, going to be recognized or not? You need, on certain really

00:29:40.220 basic things, you need to come to some conclusions if society is going to do anything at all.

00:29:48.060 The principle of subsidiarity, the principle of federalism, is that you always want questions to

00:29:53.380 be answered at the most local level possible? Well, you can't answer questions of what is a man,

00:29:58.040 what is a woman, what is marriage, and really basic stuff at the county level, okay, or at the

00:30:02.820 township level. Certain things really do have to be answered at the tippy top level. That's why we

00:30:08.980 have a federal government. That's why we have a national capital. So I think we can win this battle.

00:30:15.600 I do think the Supreme Court reads public opinion surveys. I think the Supreme Court follows the

00:30:22.800 election returns. I think it's very, very clear that the vast majority of Americans

00:30:27.620 oppose this transgender nonsense, especially as it pertains to kids.

00:30:34.540 I think so. I don't know. Neil Gorsuch has been really kind of squishy on this issue, but I think we

00:30:40.480 could do it. Republicans just need to cut out the you-do-you kind of claptrap, okay?

00:30:45.740 Oren McIntyre, one of my favorite tweeters, has a line. He articulates a well-established principle,

00:30:52.680 and he articulates it pretty clearly. He has said that the side that wants to win is always going

00:30:59.860 to defeat the side that just wants to be left alone. Really important principle for politics.

00:31:05.400 The side that wants to win is always going to defeat the side that just wants to be left alone.

00:31:11.280 We should win this decision. It is absolutely unacceptable to let boys use the girls' bathroom,

00:31:17.220 especially in high schools. The Daily Wire broke the story that probably threw Virginia to the

00:31:23.460 Republicans in the election of Glenn Youngkin, which is that Loudoun County schools, because of

00:31:28.300 their stupid bathroom policy, allowed boys to go into the girls' bathroom, and a girl was raped by a boy

00:31:33.400 in the girls' bathroom. And then the superintendent of the school covered it up because it was clear

00:31:39.240 that this policy enabled this kind of behavior, covered it up, moved the kid to another school.

00:31:43.340 What happened? The kid did the same damn thing at the other school. This is unacceptable. It leads to

00:31:49.580 terrible practical outcomes, and it is just anthropologically absurd that boys can really

00:31:55.720 be girls and girls can really be boys. We need to just say no to this, and we need to stand firm on

00:32:01.840 that, and we have to have the courage to wield the force of our political order to say no. Just say no.

00:32:08.680 Other governments are doing it. Even the Swiss are doing it. Is there any nicer country than the Swiss?

00:32:14.320 These guys are so go along to get along, they remain neutral in every single war, and the Swiss

00:32:19.200 government has just rejected transgender ideology. The Swiss Federal Council just said, in response to

00:32:26.140 two proposals from parliament, quote, the binary gender model is still strongly anchored in Swiss

00:32:34.280 society. The social preconditions for the introduction of a third gender or for a general

00:32:39.360 waiver of the gender entry in the civil registry currently are not there. The government has to

00:32:48.120 weigh in on certain things. If even the Swiss can do it, we should be able to do it too.

00:32:53.360 France, you know, for goodness sakes, the French, this was last summer, I think, Emmanuel Macron,

00:32:59.600 leader of France, came out and he said, wokeism is an American export, and we don't want it. This

00:33:07.640 wokeism, this political correctness, this is France, this is a pretty lib society. They say, but this woke

00:33:13.120 thing, all this crazy, we don't do that here. That's foreign. That's something that the American

00:33:18.020 society is exporting around the world, and I think he was right about that.

00:33:21.860 You know, the silver lining in the storm cloud of all this transgenderism is, I think that it is

00:33:27.800 reminding Republicans and conservatives who have gone real squishy and become real relativists

00:33:33.500 in recent years, who have unfortunately accepted the worst premises of the Enlightenment and of the

00:33:44.400 last 300 years, 300, 400 years in philosophical history to ultimately conclude that we really can't

00:33:51.560 really know anything at all, and what is good, and what is bad, and what is true and what is false, and

00:33:55.560 maybe one man's good is another man's bad, and you do you, and I, we can't, you know, all of this

00:34:01.040 silly nonsense. What the transgender issue, I think is showing Republicans is, there are some absolutes.

00:34:10.980 There are some things that we can know. It's not all just relativism, throw your hands up in the air,

00:34:17.540 give everyone maximal individual autonomy, because we can't really conclude anything at all.

00:34:22.140 Uncertain things we actually can know, okay? Like when you start chopping off kids' genitals,

00:34:26.220 we know that's bad, and we can say it, and we can stand up for it, and we have to stand up for that,

00:34:31.740 which brings me to, speaking of the development of thought and attacking the tyranny of subjectivism,

00:34:37.560 and trying to reestablish absolute truths in a confused world, Pope Benedict. Pope Benedict died

00:34:44.560 at the ripe old age of 95 over the Christmas break, and Pope Benedict, a Marlborough man, by the way,

00:34:54.460 so of all the many aspects of his legacy that are going to be debated in the coming years and

00:35:00.580 decades, I'm just waiting for Philip Morris to put out a bargaining campaign, because Pope Benedict

00:35:05.520 lived for a very long time, and he famously liked to smoke a cigarette every now and again,

00:35:09.400 but that was the least important aspect of Pope Benedict's legacy. It is entirely possible that I

00:35:16.320 would not be Catholic today if not for Pope Benedict, specifically because Pope Benedict

00:35:21.440 re-permitted the traditional Latin Mass after decades and decades of official suppression from

00:35:29.360 the Vatican. And the Latin Mass, the traditional Latin Mass, which is almost 2,000 years old,

00:35:34.460 which is about a lot more than just the use of Latin in the liturgy, but it's about the entire

00:35:39.840 focus and orientation of the liturgy. The traditional Latin Mass, everybody is focused at the altar. The

00:35:46.700 priest is facing the altar. He's not facing the people. It's oriented toward God, the true object

00:35:52.140 of worship. It's much more solemn. It's much more reverent. Pope Benedict re-permitted that, and it was

00:36:03.340 the Latin Mass, the smells and the bells and the mystery and the reverence and the elevation that

00:36:09.560 helped me in my reversion to the church. But he did so much more than that. He offered the

00:36:16.480 Regensburg Address, I think it's probably the most important speech of the 21st century,

00:36:20.500 in which he attacked the tyranny of subjectivism, in which he attacked this ridiculous idea in our

00:36:26.460 modern society that we can't really know anything at all, in which he, I think, completely gutted

00:36:32.540 the pretenses of scientism and the idea that we can't really know anything other than what exists

00:36:40.120 in the physical world. So, so important. And it was really important that Pope Benedict did this,

00:36:45.700 because this is an aspect of his legacy that not a lot of people are talking about. But we think of

00:36:50.380 Pope Benedict as a conservative, much more conservative than the current Pope, Pope Francis.

00:36:55.800 But Pope Benedict started out as a liberal. Pope Benedict was one of the framers of the Second

00:37:00.780 Vatican Council, which was the most liberal event in the history of the Catholic Church. Okay? He's one

00:37:06.740 of the people who, he was one of the theologians who framed the council. Okay? And he reminds me a

00:37:12.960 lot, actually, of Wordsworth, of the poet William Wordsworth, who started out as a liberal and became

00:37:20.320 a conservative. You know, all of these romantic poets started out, they were all in thrall of the

00:37:25.760 French Revolution. And it was just, in that age, to be young, it was bliss. And they were all just

00:37:30.600 so gung-ho about this liberal revolution. And then most of them died young. But Wordsworth lived to

00:37:37.300 the age of 80, I believe. And he became much more conservative because he saw the fruits of that

00:37:41.340 liberal revolution play out. And I think you can see a similar path in the life of Pope Benedict.

00:37:47.560 Pope Benedict, an absolute genius. I mean, just the most brilliant theologian and prominent theologian

00:37:54.120 of his age. And I think you see, after the Second Vatican Council and this liberalization within the

00:38:03.760 church, you see Benedict then trying to constrain that, trying to limit that. And then in recent years,

00:38:11.720 he's written about the spirit of the 1960s and how poisonous it was for the civilization and how it had

00:38:19.160 effects within the church. But it was also caused in part by the church and by cracks and fissures

00:38:24.760 within the church. And his legacy will be debated and significant for decades, if not centuries. But

00:38:32.140 would encourage everybody, Catholic or not, maybe just say a prayer for Pope Benedict, a very,

00:38:39.320 very important figure. And one of those who, even if he had been much more liberal in his youth,

00:38:45.660 has helped to point the way back toward a more sensible, sane, conservative, Christian civilization.

00:38:54.480 And that, I suspect, will be his legacy. You know, we've got the voice mailbag coming up on Friday

00:39:03.060 brought to us by Pure Talk. So make sure you get your voice mailbag questions in. Very, very simple.

00:39:09.340 You just go to the Michael Knowles Show page there over under the watch section of the Daily Wire website.

00:39:14.100 Click on the mailbag. You record your voice mailbag on your phone or on your computer. Keep it under a

00:39:20.420 minute, please. I don't need your whole life story. All right. We want to be able to put it on the air.

00:39:23.180 You attach that audio file, mail it in. We will be able to take your questions on Friday.

00:39:30.260 Speaking of Supreme Pontiffs, real and imagined, a wonderful way to start the new year.

00:39:38.000 Remember, for the first time in 40 years, Dr. Fauci is no longer in the government.

00:39:51.920 Dr. Fauci is gone. We just breathe a sigh of relief. His last day of public service was December 30th.

00:40:01.200 He recently sat down with the New York Times for an interview. So here he goes. This is after half

00:40:09.220 a century, Fauci prepares for life after government. And I love that. This is the first line of the

00:40:14.100 article. The walls in Dr. Anthony S. Fauci's home office are adorned with portraits of him,

00:40:21.800 drawn and painted by some of his many fans. The most striking one is by the singer Joan Baez. The two

00:40:27.320 of them, he said, had become pretty good friends over the years. Tells you everything you need to

00:40:33.140 know about Anthony Fauci. The walls of his home office are covered in pictures of himself.

00:40:44.260 This is quite a stark contrast with the late Pope Benedict. For many modern people, Dr. Fauci

00:40:52.840 is the Pope. And certainly for the two and a half years of the height of the COVID hysteria,

00:40:59.840 Dr. Fauci had more, not only scientific, but spiritual authority than anybody else on earth.

00:41:06.300 He really was the secular Pope. Okay? And you see this huge contrast. Pope Benedict,

00:41:14.260 one of the most humble men in public life ever, certainly of our lifetimes. Dr. Fauci,

00:41:21.680 one of the most prideful men ever. He said, I am science. I am the representative of science.

00:41:29.400 Okay? Whatever I decree is the truth. Dr. Fauci never admitted he was wrong about anything. Even

00:41:36.260 when he got caught in the lies, even when he admitted the lies, he didn't want to acknowledge

00:41:39.960 that there was anything wrong about that. And it is no coincidence, no mere coincidence at least,

00:41:47.760 that Dr. Fauci's life's work has been about just inculcating this dictatorship of scientism.

00:41:58.380 That if something can't be looked at under a microscope, it's not real. It has no authority.

00:42:03.540 Dr. Fauci says, because I am the scientist, I don't have political views.

00:42:09.480 He actually said this. I'm slightly paraphrasing. I don't have political views that I make public.

00:42:14.300 I just talk about the science. I just talk about what works. But what does that mean? If you're

00:42:19.980 advocating for political lockdowns, if you're advocating for mass vaccinations and even coerced

00:42:26.780 vaccinations in some cases, that involves all sorts of philosophical, epistemological, ontological,

00:42:35.900 theological premises that he's not acknowledging.

00:42:39.180 Why does this man have the right to force his opinion on everybody else? Why does this man think

00:42:47.000 that his scientific observations therefore lead to the conclusion that we need to lock down the

00:42:53.180 economy, for instance? All of these philosophical premises that he says, well, you just have to accept

00:42:59.560 all of them because I am the science. He doesn't even acknowledge that they exist. That is scientism.

00:43:04.880 Okay? So much of Benedict's work was opposed to that. It was about knocking down scientism.

00:43:13.140 Benedict actually, I guess this was right when he became Pope, though it's only been released now.

00:43:18.440 He released a spiritual testament. It's worth reading the whole thing. But here's the final part.

00:43:24.280 Benedict wrote, stand firm in the faith. Do not be confused. Often it seems as if science,

00:43:29.200 on the one hand, the natural sciences, on the other, historical research,

00:43:32.840 especially the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, has irrefutable insights to offer that are contrary

00:43:39.340 to the Catholic faith. So what he's saying is present-day science, where people are studying

00:43:43.760 chemicals today, and historical science, where you look to the past and you look at aspects of,

00:43:50.660 I don't know, theory of evolution or geology or whatever. But it's all about science. He says,

00:43:56.540 I have witnessed from times long past the changes in natural science and have seen how apparent

00:44:03.700 certainties against the faith vanished, proving themselves not to be science, but philosophical

00:44:09.000 interpretations only apparently belonging to science. Just as, moreover, it is in dialogue with

00:44:14.360 the natural sciences that faith has learned to understand the limits of the scope of its affirmations

00:44:19.240 and thus its own specificity for 60 years now. I have accompanied the path of theology,

00:44:23.640 especially biblical studies, and have seen seemingly unshakable theses collapse with the changing

00:44:30.040 generations, which turned out to be mere hypotheses. The liberal generation, the existentialist generation,

00:44:37.980 the Marxist generation. I have seen and see how out of the tangle of hypotheses, the reasonableness of

00:44:44.520 faith has emerged and is emerging anew. Jesus Christ is truly the way, the truth, and the life.

00:44:50.960 And the church, in all her shortcomings, is truly his body. Absolutely beautiful. Eloquent as ever.

00:45:00.960 Benedict, not only a brilliant thinker, but also a very good writer. Often those two things go hand in

00:45:06.260 hand. Whose legacy is going to look better 10 years from now? 50 years from now? 200 years from now?

00:45:16.320 Dr. Fauci or Pope Benedict? We know. We can already look at it with the distance of five days.

00:45:25.440 Fauci's legacy looks preposterous. The claims that he made based on his authority of science

00:45:32.860 have collapsed. Going back to the 80s, the guy bungled AIDS. He bungled everything, and especially

00:45:40.280 COVID. Pope Benedict, in his humility, in fettering his reason, his very high capacity for reason,

00:45:51.180 to substantial things, to eternal truths, to the weight of the magisterium, to the gospel of Jesus

00:45:58.780 Christ, to things that have endured and will endure forever. Benedict's legacy will come out much

00:46:07.020 stronger. That's what he's saying. He's saying, I've seen it. You hear this all the time when people

00:46:11.320 say, well, the science is clear about global warming. Science is so clear, we've got to upend

00:46:17.440 the whole society. We need a great reset of society, completely upend the economy and the political

00:46:21.260 order, because the science is so clear. But the science that is so clear today about global warming

00:46:28.300 was so clear 50 years ago about global cooling. And that's not just a talking point from the right

00:46:34.300 that wants to deny climate change. This was written about not only in popular magazines and newspapers,

00:46:39.560 but in scientific journals from some of the most esteemed scientists in the world. I write about

00:46:44.440 this at length. There's a chapter about this in my book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling

00:46:48.380 Minds, available now for order. I'm glad we still have the bell, even in the new year.

00:46:54.540 Benedict is saying, I've seen this happen. And he can see it happen in part because he just lived to be

00:47:01.600 a very ripe old age, okay? 95 years old. And you see this throughout history. What's that old line?

00:47:07.740 They say, if you're not a liberal by the time you're 17, you have no heart. If you're not a

00:47:11.040 conservative by the time you're 30, you have no brain, okay? People tend to become more conservative

00:47:15.920 over time. And especially when that conservatism is grounded in something real. Not the shallow,

00:47:22.640 non-theistic conservatism of, you know, go out and make money and you do you and drive some Bugattis,

00:47:28.920 but real deep conservatism where we're conserving human nature, where we're conserving the very

00:47:34.980 best in our society and civilization. That is going to give you a much stronger perspective

00:47:40.120 as well. Speaking of scientific certainties, NASA is warning that China is about to conquer the moon.

00:47:47.820 We don't have time to get to it today. That'll be my little teaser for tomorrow. Get ready for the

00:47:53.500 Chinese to conquer the moon. We will delve that scientific certainty tomorrow. We don't have time

00:48:00.720 because right now we are going to speak with Harmeet Dillon, who is challenging RNC Chairman

00:48:06.220 Ronna McDaniel for the leadership of the Republican National Committee. This is a, we've been a little

00:48:13.360 bit philosophical today. We've been a little bit far afield because, you know, look, it's Christmas

00:48:18.460 time. All right. We're still, we're still thinking about eternal things, but we're going to get into

00:48:22.000 the nitty gritty of politics right now. That's on the member block. You do not want to miss it.

00:48:26.240 If you are not a member, click the link in the description and join us.

Ep. 1153 - Andrew Tate Arrested After Fight With Greta Thunberg

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