Ep. 1163 - Biden Caught In Another Million Dollar Chinese Finger Trap
Episode Stats
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Summary
After Adam Schiff's appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff had to defend former Vice President Joe Biden, who has been accused of leaking classified documents to the press. Schiff has called for a special counsel to investigate the matter.
Transcript
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You know things aren't looking great for Joe Biden when he's lost Adam Schiff,
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one of the most reliably partisan hacks in the entire Democrat Party.
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But that is exactly what has happened when Adam Schiff was forced to address
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Joe Biden's classified documents scandal on TV.
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Congressman Schiff, you were on this show just after Attorney General Garland appointed a special
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counsel in the case of the Trump documents. You said it was the right move. Do you feel
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the same way about this special counsel? I do think it's the right move. The Attorney
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General has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, but the appearances of justice are
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also satisfactory to the public. And here, I don't think he had any choice but to appoint a special
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counsel. And I think that special counsel will do the proper assessment. I still would like to see
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Congress do its own assessment of and receive an assessment from the intelligence community
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of whether there was an exposure to others of these documents, whether it was harm to national
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security in the case of either set of documents with either president. But yes, I think the special
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counsel was appropriately appointed. Jonathan, if I could also, though, because my state is still
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trying to dig out from these terrible storms, I want to thank the president for making an emergency
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declaration. I love that bit at the end. John, I'd really love an opportunity to compliment Joe Biden
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so he doesn't totally hate me. John, I'd really like to curry a little bit of favor with the guy
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that I just threw under the bus so that I can hedge my bets a little bit here. But still, Schiff
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threw Biden under the bus. He not only supports the investigation into Biden's documents,
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he's even willing to say that those documents might have jeopardized national security. And Adam Schiff
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has good reason to think that they did jeopardize national security. Because it turns out that the
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Penn Biden Center, where some of the classified documents were found, was reportedly funded to the
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tune of tens of millions of dollars by anonymous Chinese communists. Some questions come up. Did the
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donors maybe get a tour of the facility? Did those anonymous Chinese donors maybe get a peek at some of
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those documents? I don't know. I'm not saying they did. Just asking questions here. Why did the Chinese
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fund the center at all? Why did they keep their names hidden? How are they even allowed to keep
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their names hidden when we know that age-old political rule, a rule that Joe Biden's career
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has made especially clear, that he who pays the piper calls the tune? I'm Michael Knowles. This is
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Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment from a video we put up over the
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How do you do it? You text Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to 989898. The Penn-Biden Center,
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that's the fake think tank that Joe Biden established after he left the vice presidency.
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It seems to have taken a lot of money from the Chinese. We don't know what the exact numbers
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are, but here's what we know. We know that between 2014 and 2019, Penn received $54.6 million from the
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Chinese. That includes $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016. So right at the time that
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Biden is leaving the vice presidency, launching this big new center initiative at Penn. Most of the
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anonymous donations came after the university announced that it would create the Penn-Biden
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Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Kind of weird. It's sort of like how after the
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Clintons left the White House and they established the Clinton Global Initiative, with the understanding
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that the Clintons were still going to be very involved in politics, maybe Hillary would become
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the president, certainly she was going to run for the president. All of a sudden, you saw a ton of
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money pouring in from foreign countries, especially Ukraine, actually. Ukraine, I think, was the largest
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single nation donor to the Clinton Global Initiative. Why is that? Do you think they were doing it just
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out of the goodness of their own heart? Do you think they were doing that because they just really
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supported NAFTA or something? I don't know, some part of the Bill Clinton presidency? No, they were
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currying favor with politicians, politicians who could possibly help them in the future. Do we think that the
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Chinese funded the center just to, I don't know, promote diplomacy and global engagement or because Joe
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Biden is such an admirable figure? No, they were currying favor with a potential player in the future. Joe
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Biden has wanted to be president since he was a little kid, and he intimated that he was going to potentially
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run again. And so, and even if he didn't, the Bidens still play a big role in Democrat politics, and the
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Chinese especially are known to do this. They just place bets on different people, and they hope that one of those
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bets pays off, as apparently it would have with, as apparently it could have with Biden, and probably as it did
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with Biden. Trump was very tough on China. Biden and the Democrats promised to be very soft on China. Biden had been
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cheering on China's rise for his whole political career. Biden said about 20 years ago, he said, you know, some
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people criticize our helping China rise to prominence on the world stage, but we believe that a rising tide lifts
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all ships. And that's why we're so glad that China entered the World Trade Organization. That's why
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we're so glad that China is now producing so many of America's goods, that we've shipped jobs overseas,
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that we're now super reliant on China, that China now buys up all of our debt. We're so happy about
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that. So Biden was obviously currying favor with the Chinese as well. The whole thing stinks to high
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heaven, and that is why politicians, even ones that are super tightly aligned with Joe Biden,
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are trying to keep a little bit of distance here, even the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.
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Do you believe that he's violated the federal law here?
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It's much too early to tell. There's a special prosecutor in each situation. I think President
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Biden has handled this correctly. He's fully cooperated with the prosecutors. When the documents
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were found, he notified archives. It's a total contrast to President Trump, who stonewalled for a
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whole year. But the point is, we now have special prosecutors for both of these situations,
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very serious people. We should let it play out. We don't have to push them in any direction or
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try to influence them. That's all I'm going to say. Let the special prosecutors do their job.
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Do you support the fact that a special counsel is overseeing this matter now?
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Yes, I do. And in fact, you know, when they first, the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago and they said,
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well, what are you going to say about this? I said, it's premature to comment. And I've said it here.
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So I've been consistent about it. In both cases, you have prosecutors, special prosecutors. I support
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both of them. Let them do their job. I think that's all that should be said. The politicians shouldn't
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be buzzing around. The politicians shouldn't be buzzing around giving their opinion. This is the
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first time in Chuck Schumer's entire career that he has not wanted to buzz around giving his opinion.
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The old line was that the most dangerous place in the state of New York was the space between Chuck
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Schumer and a TV camera. And yet now he clams up. Now he gets all reticent to talk about it.
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Listen, I don't, I think the president, he's done a great job, but I support the special counsel.
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Do you think he violated the law? Well, I don't know. It's too early to tell. So he's keeping
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a safe distance here. Even as he's trying to flack for Biden, it's not persuasive.
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The best he tried to do here to defend Biden is he said, what Biden's done is totally right. He's
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followed all the procedures he should follow. It's all hunky-dory. But if that's true, then why is
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Chuck Schumer happy that a special prosecutor has been appointed? If it's all fine and Biden followed the
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letter of the law perfectly and there's nothing to criticize him for, then why is he happy that it's
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being investigated by the special counsel? Doesn't quite add up. What is Schumer doing? He's hedging
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his bets. He's saying, look, Biden is too weak now for me to go out and completely defend him.
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But he's not weak enough that he's definitely done and I can pile on him and completely ditch him.
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So he's straddling the fence, as is Ilhan Omar.
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Well, one, I'm glad that there is a special prosecutor that's been appointed to investigate
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this. You are glad that there is a special prosecutor. Tell me why.
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Because anytime there is a deviance in regards to security protocols that should be taken serious,
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it should be investigated. What I find interesting is that Republicans who have defended Trump after he
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literally stole classified documents, refused to turn them over, lied about having them,
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made up some story about how he declassified them, had to have his house raided in order for those
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documents to be found, are now only interested in investigating Biden, who has cooperated, who his
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own staff and former staff have themselves turned these documents in. So you have to understand,
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right? Republicans aren't really interested in upholding the law, in following security protocols.
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What they're interested in is playing a political game.
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Just playing those political games, those nasty Republicans. Yeah. Is it a political game?
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In part, it is. In part, it's a political game, of course. But it's Ilhan Omar and Chuck Schumer playing
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the exact same political game. And when all the Democrats made a big hullabaloo about Trump's documents,
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which he had the right to declassify, that was much more of a political game than what
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the Republicans are doing now to Joe Biden. Because when Joe Biden took these documents out
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of the White House, he did not have the right to do that. He did not have the right to declassify
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those documents. Trump did. That's a major difference. But of course, they're playing political games.
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And the real political game that the Democrats are playing is with themselves. So they're playing the
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game, which is they're going to straddle the fence and do everything they can to leave themselves in
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open. If Biden does go down, they think it's serious enough that it could hurt him. But he's
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not totally weak now. The only person who is reliably defending Joe Biden is Corrine Jean-Pierre,
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is his paid spokesman. And what's very telling about this classified documents case is that
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the way that the White House press secretary is defending Joe Biden is by just not talking about it.
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She's just stonewalling on the question. So Biden has no defense here. Trump had,
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I think, a legitimate defense. I mean, I'm very persuaded by his defense. Some Republicans are
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less persuaded by it, which is that he's president. He can declassify the documents in his own head.
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I think that's totally convincing as far as I'm concerned. Biden doesn't have that. And so the
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best that the Democrats can do is hedge and seesaw and keep their mouths shut. Go mum and stop buzzing
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around. Even someone like Chuck Schumer, who hasn't stopped speaking since the mid-1990s.
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Now, speaking of Joe Biden, Joe Biden, he makes some pretty weird claims and he's not the most
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reliable guy. And he's been one of the most notorious liars in American politics since at
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least the 1980s. And we got another doozy. The other doozy is that Joe Biden, who tells us that he's a
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devout Catholic and he campaigns on being a devout Catholic, actually grew up in a black Protestant
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church. And let's say one thing to rest. I may be a practicing Catholic. I used to go to 730 mass
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every morning in high school and then on college before I went to the black church.
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Not a joke. Andy knows this. Not a joke. I went to the black church. He made these comments at
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Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia for Martin Luther King Day. And Biden claims,
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he says he went to daily mass. And then every day he went to that black church. I assume he went
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with his friend Corn Pop. Corn Pop actually passed the collection basket around. Joe Biden,
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he wore big colorful hats. You know, come on, man. Listen here, Jack. That's the truth.
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Listen, you dog-faced pony soldier. Yeah. I grew up in a black church. I was good friends with Martin
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Luther King. Yeah, you know it. No, me and Frederick Douglass. Yeah, we used to go to the pool together,
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swim laps with Corn Pop. He said I had hairy legs. Come on, Jack. Come on, man. I don't think
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anybody believes what Biden is saying. But the most notable part of the story to me
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is that any way you slice it, Joe Biden reveals himself as dishonest. Because if he lied about going
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to the black church all the time as a kid, which is probably the case, then he's a liar. But even that
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first part, when he says, listen, I'm a practicing Catholic, what non-Catholics might not know is that
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Catholics are not permitted to participate in the religious ceremonies of other religions and other
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denominations. So if you're a practicing Catholic and you go and you are regularly attending a
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Protestant church and participating in those activities, that's actually considered a sin in
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the Catholic church. You're supposed to confess that sin when you go to confession. You would
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not really be able to call yourself with a straight face, a practicing Catholic, if you are
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regularly and willfully violating that requirement of the church. But of course, going to a Protestant
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church would be the very least of Joe Biden's infractions against his faith. Joe Biden is giddy about
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abortion. He not only supports abortion, which is utterly impermissible for a Catholic politician,
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but he supports funding abortion. Joe Biden supports radically redefining marriage. This is not a
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permissible thing to do if you're a Catholic politician. He supports all sorts of things that run contrary to
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the faith. So I mentioned this not really to say anything about Catholicism, but to say something about Joe
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Biden. Any way you cut this story, he's either, he's a liar. He's not a practicing Catholic and he probably
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didn't go to this church and you can't believe a word that this guy says. And so when you get back to a
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scandal like the classified document scandal, this is why nobody believes his excuses. Oh yeah, Jack.
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Yeah, I just, we forgot to take those documents. Yeah, that's too bad, Jack. That's why they ended up there
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at the, at the Penn Biden center. Well, what about the documents in your garage? Oh, come on there,
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fat. Don't, don't do me like that. Yeah, it's next to my Corvette. It's cool. It's all safe, man.
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What about the other documents? What about this? What about that? He just doesn't have
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any credibility at all. This is a man who's lied about his professional career, his beliefs,
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his accomplishments, his involvement in the civil rights movement. That's another one that keeps coming
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up. He's a guy who lies about everything. He'd lie to you about what he had for breakfast in the
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morning. And he would even lie about a matter as consequential as his faith. Now, speaking of
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politics and the Catholic church, I have seen something that you have not seen yet, but you're
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going to want to see it because it's very, very cool. This is an interview that Ben did, our very
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own Ben Shapiro did with Frank Pavone. Frank Pavone, a very, very well-known Catholic priest, the head of
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Priests for Life, who was recently shockingly laicized by the Vatican. Another word for that
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is defrocked. They say you're no longer allowed to be a priest. And it's a kind of a complex thing
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because the sacrament of holy orders makes an indelible mark on someone's soul. So there's a
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question, can you even really ultimately laicize somebody? Well, the church has said we're taking
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away your faculties to be a priest, to confer sacraments, to present yourself as a priest.
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For what? It's a little unclear. No one really seems to know exactly why Pavone was laicized.
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So he just went on Ben Shapiro's Sunday special, and he made a really, really important point
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about his pro-life advocacy. How do you make the case to people that would say that Catholic
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doctrine or religious doctrine, it allows for a variety of opinions in terms of how you vote. So,
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okay, sure, the Republican Party is pro-life. Sure, the Republican Party opposes same-sex marriage.
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But the Democratic Party is more for social justice matters. It's more for economic redistribution.
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How do you privilege one idea over another idea, and how does that mesh with Catholic doctrine? How
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can you draw such a clear dividing line between how people should vote? Shouldn't you just sort of
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speak to broad principles, and then whatever people do in the privacy of the voting booth is what
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they choose to do based on the dictates of conscience?
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The relationship between the issues needs to be looked at. Nobody in the pro-life community says
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abortion is the only issue. What we say is that the right to live is the foundation of every issue.
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If an issue is an issue in the first place, it's because it somehow impacts human life.
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Why are we concerned about poverty? Well, people have a right to food, clothing, and shelter. Why?
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Because they have a right to live. Why am I concerned about unemployment? Well,
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people have a right to make a living. Why? Because they have a right to live. Protection from
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terrorism. You can go down the list, and it's like, okay, the value of life is obviously at the
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core of every issue. Such an important point that conservatives don't make nearly as much as we
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should. Life is not merely one issue among many. Life is the foundational right. If we are to have
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any rights at all, we have to have the right from life on which all of the other rights rely.
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Declaration of Independence says we have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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Life is obviously the most important. If any of those are rights, life has to be the most important
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because you can't have liberty without life. You can't pursue happiness if you don't have life.
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And so when someone like Joe Biden comes out and he says, well, listen, I'm practicing Catholic,
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but I don't believe in the right to life. Well, you're saying, okay, I don't believe in any rights
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at all then. I don't believe in the most basic right of all of them. And so there's been some
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speculation. Again, we don't know why Pavone was laicized. I want to call him Father Pavone. I guess
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I'm not supposed to call him Father Pavone anymore. It feels kind of weird to call him Mr. Pavone.
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But in any case, he was laicized, some speculate, because of his pro-life advocacy and because he
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was perhaps disobedient to his bishops and other people who may or may not have told him to calm down
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with all the pro-life stuff. Again, I don't know. This has not been a transparent matter.
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But what Pavone is saying is, I can't pipe down about this. This is a fundamental issue. There was
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one report that Pavone had refused to give absolution to unrepentant Democrats.
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And this was a big headline. Sounds really shocking. The sacrament of confession is where Catholics go
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and they confess their sins and the priest deriving from Christ's conferring of the right to loose and
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to bind. Christ says, here is the power to forgive sins. What sins you forgive are forgiven and what
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sins you retain are retained. And so what Pavone is saying is, I'm not going to, I cannot absolve someone
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of their sins if they're not repentant. And the report was, again, I haven't heard him say this,
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but the report was that in some cases he wouldn't give absolution to people who say, vote for a
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Democrat, vote for some radically pro-abortion politician, and don't repent of that.
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Well, fair enough, it seems to me. If you're sorry, if you say, look, I supported abortion in
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the past and that was wrong and I'm sorry, please, I'm asking God's forgiveness, then you receive God's
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forgiveness. But if you don't, if you say, yeah, I support baby killing politicians and, yeah, I think
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it's totally great to support legal abortion and even taxpayer funded abortion. Okay, give me
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absolution. Pavone's saying, I can't do that because you're not repentant. A lot of the opposition to
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Pavone is he's too political. He's getting too involved in politics. Okay. I don't even really
00:22:02.580
know what that means. Yes, we don't want to see priests just chumming it up with one candidate or
00:22:10.400
some other candidate or something. We want our priests to be doing something different than our
00:22:14.060
politicians are doing. Sure. Okay. I see all of that, but we're supposed to pretend now that our
00:22:18.680
spiritual leaders have to remain neutral. There's no neutrality. We're in a spiritual war. And what,
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we're supposed to pretend that the guy who's running to save the babies and the guy who's
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running to kill the babies, that we're going to not have a preference between those two things.
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We're not going to tell our flock who to go to. I'm not a priest. I don't have a flock,
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but we're not, priests are not supposed to do that. Give me a break. That's completely insane.
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It's ahistorical. It's completely incoherent. And I really hope it all works out with, with
00:22:48.360
Pavone, with Frank Pavone. I hope it would be, it's a real shame to see what's happened. And it
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would be good to see him brought back into the priesthood at some future date. I hope,
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especially if, if they only booted him out for, for being too pro-life. It would be nice if they
00:23:03.440
could kind of work it out, you know, and have him get back to his overall excellent work.
00:23:08.300
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this story, I meant to get to this a few days ago. Glad I got to it now. It's kind of grisly
00:23:47.240
and really, really stupid. The story, here it is on Daily Wire. Man googled how to dispose of 115
00:23:57.280
pound woman's body. Now his 115 pound wife is missing. This is, you almost want to laugh at the
00:24:06.360
headline, except you realize someone's been killed. You know, some guy murdered his wife here, it would
00:24:10.180
seem. And it's a guy from Massachusetts who looked up how to dispose of this particular kind of body.
00:24:16.760
And then his wife was supposed to take a ride share to the airport in Boston for New Year's Day.
00:24:22.940
There's no record. She took the ride share. She never boarded the plane. And then she was reported
00:24:28.580
missing by her workplace and her husband. And then when law enforcement searched the guy's computer,
00:24:33.260
it says, how do you dispose of a 115 pound woman's body? Not really sad story. Not the brightest
00:24:39.720
criminal in the world, it would seem. I guess he's innocent until proven guilty, but not looking good.
00:24:44.200
Not looking good for the husband. The reason I bring up the story is not because it's of this
00:24:49.600
local crime story, odd as it is, but it's because of what it tells us about one of the biggest issues
00:24:57.120
in our politics, which is the surveillance state. We are increasingly living in a surveillance state,
00:25:03.340
and that has been increasing for decades now. It's been increasing in the government sphere. You think
00:25:08.580
of the NSA, formerly known as No Such Agency, which is just processing countless reams of all of our
00:25:15.400
data constantly. But then you think of it in the private sphere as well. You think of private
00:25:19.600
companies that now have access to what we search on the internet, private companies that have access
00:25:24.080
to who we call, private companies that have access to cameras inside of our homes. It's just everywhere
00:25:28.620
now. On our TVs, our TVs very often have cameras. Our cars are spying on us to corporations.
00:25:33.860
So we're living in this total surveillance state. And our first reaction to that is that this is very
00:25:40.920
bad. And it is bad because it's giving bad people undue power. It's giving frequently very bad actors
00:25:49.380
leverage over us and control over our lives. There is a silver lining, though. You know,
00:25:54.840
on this show, I try to have a little silver lining. I don't really get angry and pull my hair out and
00:25:58.380
say the world is ending all that much. I try to look for the hope here because I think that's a
00:26:03.040
theological fact and a requirement of our lives. So here's the silver lining.
00:26:08.920
The surveillance state can keep you on the straight and narrow. It can. People don't want
00:26:15.700
to hear it, but it's true. If you knew, I mean, this is how a lot of those anti-porn apps work.
00:26:24.200
I think it was Matt Fradd, a really great podcaster, was talking about this, that you get,
00:26:28.060
if you want to quit porn, if you have an addiction to porn, you get some of these apps and services
00:26:32.080
that basically, whenever you look at a porn website, it just emails whoever you tell it to
00:26:36.740
email. So it can be a buddy, it can be your wife, it can be, you know. And so it's a voluntary kind
00:26:42.100
of surveillance. But if you know, voluntary or not, if you know that every single thing that you type
00:26:46.440
into your computer is going to be seen by somebody else, you're probably not going to go to that
00:26:51.580
naughty website that you want to go to. Now, you might, if you're living in China, say, and you know
00:26:57.240
all your searches are going to be seen by the government, you're also probably not going to
00:27:00.060
Google things like democracy, or how to lead a political revolution, or things like that.
00:27:05.020
But even just in our personal lives, if we know that somebody is watching, we're probably going
00:27:11.120
to be a little better behaved. If you see a camera in a store, you're probably going to be a little
00:27:16.520
loath to rob that store, unless you're in San Francisco where it's just a complete free-for-all.
00:27:19.820
If you are in your home even, or in your workplace, surveillance can make you behave a little bit
00:27:28.200
better. The reason that this is happening now is, one, there's been the technological advances in
00:27:36.420
surveillance. But there's a cultural reason, too. And it gets back to one of these statements that
00:27:40.400
John Adams said in the early days of our country. He said, a statement frequently quoted by
00:27:45.380
conservatives, that the country is built for a moral and religious people. It's not fit for the
00:27:49.240
government of any other kind of people. That the American expression of political liberty and
00:27:54.620
relative privacy is built for people who are going to control themselves and rein in their basest
00:28:01.560
passions. The country is built for people who believe that God is watching them at all times,
00:28:08.960
and they better not step too far out of line. As that belief has declined in the United States,
00:28:16.540
you have seen an increase in other kinds of surveillance. Police surveillance, in private
00:28:26.660
surveillance, in surveillance by your teachers, and your professors, and your bosses, and everybody
00:28:32.580
else. As people don't fear God watching us, we are going to need Big Brother to watch us. This is
00:28:40.340
something I've said always as an addendum to the John Adams quote about the moral and religious people,
00:28:46.420
which is, there will be order. There must be order and peace in society. That is what government does,
00:28:58.260
is to maintain that. That is what political communities are largely for.
00:29:01.760
However, if people will not order their own lives, someone is going to come in and order our lives
00:29:08.740
for us. But there will, don't mistake it. The people that control the country, the powers that be,
00:29:16.860
will not allow things to spiral out of control. Even when those powers are we the people, even when
00:29:21.300
it's us in representative assemblies. If our government really were still to work as the bill
00:29:24.920
up on Capitol Hill and all the rest of it, we would not allow anarchism. You're seeing this in some of
00:29:30.900
the blue cities where crime has gotten completely out of control. People are stepping up and saying,
00:29:34.300
we don't want this stuff anymore. Okay, impose some control. Now, speaking of Big Brother and the
00:29:40.220
nanny state, there's a story that seems a little bit murky, and the government is trying to kind of
00:29:47.360
deny this. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has threatened to take away your gas stove. Of all the
00:29:55.740
problems facing the country, completely open border, potential world war breaking out in
00:30:00.760
Eastern Europe, you've got the biggest drug epidemic ever in American history, declining life
00:30:06.780
expectancy. All of these problems, the government is really focused on what matters, which is keeping
00:30:13.560
you from using a gas stove to make your eggs in the morning. Yeah, you've got to use an electric
00:30:18.220
stove now. That was the threat from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. This came out, people pushed
00:30:25.000
back against it. Even some Democrats came out. Joe Manchin was interviewed about this. He said,
00:30:28.020
this is insane. Nobody wants, stop trying to ban gas stoves, you weirdos. That's fine. So then the
00:30:34.200
government came out and said, no, we're not actually threatening to ban the gas stoves. Here is the
00:30:38.920
Consumer Product Safety Commissioner threatening this just back in December. I think we need to be
00:30:45.040
talking about regulating gas stoves, whether that's drastically improving emissions or banning gas
00:30:50.540
stoves entirely. And I think we ought to keep that possibility of a ban in mind as you follow along,
00:30:56.080
because it's a powerful tool in our toolbox. It's a real possibility here.
00:31:00.960
No, thanks. No, thank you. How did this guy, one, if you cook at all, you know, gas stoves are just
00:31:08.820
much nicer to cook on. If you have the privilege of having a gas stove, I've had electric and I've
00:31:12.120
had gas at different times. Gas is way, way better. But how did this guy muster the gumption to say,
00:31:19.300
yeah, we're getting, we're taking your stove away. Yeah, why? Because I said so. Because I, some petty
00:31:25.000
bureaucrat said so. Because we have a culture now where we have infantilized ourselves and we've given
00:31:35.100
up so much of our right and our spines and in some cases other body parts, thanks to the transgender
00:31:41.300
movement. We've given this away. We no longer have a clear vision of virtue and our rights and our place
00:31:48.500
in society. We can't even defend, many people in this country can't even defend the most basic right
00:31:52.740
in the society. And as we give those things away, then the people who are going to impose the order
00:32:00.280
that we previously would have, fearing God, are going to be petty bureaucrats like the guy who's
00:32:04.980
trying to take your stove. Despite the lackluster economy, maybe, maybe because of it, I don't know.
00:32:11.280
The Daily Wire is thriving. And not only that, we are hiring. We are looking for an experienced
00:32:19.160
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sounds like you, then head on over to dailywire.com slash careers for more info and to apply. That is
00:32:58.300
dailywire.com slash careers today. I am so happy that at the Daily Wire now, with all the zillions of
00:33:08.080
dollars that is coming through this company as people flee the woke corporations, and they want
00:33:12.120
to help fight back and build our own culture, and we've got all this cool stuff, we're making movies,
00:33:16.440
and we're making products. We have finally acquired a piece of technology from the 1970s or earlier that
00:33:23.760
will allow us to take live calls on this show, which I'd love, because my favorite part of the show
00:33:28.440
is when I get to talk to you in person. So, we've got some calls here set up. Let's see, who do we have?
00:33:36.780
We've got Daisy from Chicago. Daisy, you are on the air.
00:33:46.540
Wonderful. So, I've been listening to your show for about a year now, and I wanted to press you on
00:33:52.260
something. You've alluded in the past that you think people shouldn't be allowed to cross-dress
00:33:58.900
in public. To me, and I suspect to pretty much everyone, there's a difference between a giant,
00:34:04.920
burly dude in a pink miniskirt and stilettos than, say, a woman wearing a suit, or even a man
00:34:11.120
wearing a woman's cardigan or women's skinny jeans. Technically, that all qualifies as cross-dressing,
00:34:16.220
but clearly, it's not all as disruptive to society. So, my question is, do you really think
00:34:21.320
it should be illegal or just discouraged? And if you think it should be illegal, how would you
00:34:27.000
define cross-dressing? How would that be enforced?
00:34:30.780
Really, really good question, Daisy. I think that in the case of skinny jeans, skinny jeans should be
00:34:36.720
illegal, not for cross-dressing, just because they're a hideous offense against style. But that's a
00:34:42.100
question, I guess, for another time. You make a great point, which is that the line between
00:34:47.960
cross-dressing and avant-garde fashion can be a little bit blurry. I suppose that's true.
00:34:55.120
Nevertheless, we can kind of know it when we see it, I think. I go back to Justice Potter Stewart,
00:35:00.900
who was asked to define obscenity. We have laws still in this country against obscenity. We have
00:35:05.360
our whole nation's history. And the line between pornography and art can be a little bit blurry
00:35:12.300
in the way that you're describing fashion. Nevertheless, Justice Stewart said, I may not
00:35:18.360
be able to give you a perfectly precise description and definition of the difference,
00:35:24.360
but we know it when we see it. And I think that's true. So, you know, this would involve a prudential
00:35:29.500
judgment call on the part of the authorities, but so does all law enforcement. You know,
00:35:34.500
even the most ardent positivist who believes that the letter of the law is exactly what should govern
00:35:39.220
us wouldn't argue that there is no judgment, personal judgment, that's involved in handing
00:35:44.620
out court decisions and in enforcing the law. So we're going to have that anyway. Politics is a
00:35:49.680
human endeavor. And so I trust that as people can distinguish between art and obscenity in 99% of
00:35:55.260
cases, we probably could in the case of cross-dressing. And then I would err on the side of caution.
00:35:59.580
Obviously, you want to err on the side of not being too overbearing. But I think right now,
00:36:04.800
we're erring on completely the other side. We're just throwing our standards and norms completely
00:36:08.960
out the window. And we're pretending that there's some constitutional right for a weirdo to cross-dress
00:36:13.620
and jiggle around for kids at the library. Is your objection to this idea of, well, not of passing
00:36:22.380
new cross-dressing laws, but really just bringing back old ones? I mean, we had laws against cross-dressing,
00:36:26.520
including in San Francisco, for a lot of our country's history. Is your objection that people
00:36:33.580
have a right to cross-dress the stilettos and the feather bow and all the rest of it? Or is your
00:36:39.900
objection that it's just, as a practical matter, it would be too hard to enforce?
00:36:44.740
Yeah, it's not so much as I think people have a right. It just seems like if we tried to bring in
00:36:53.940
some sort of cross-dressing laws, it would be probably too, it wouldn't be practical.
00:36:59.340
Yeah, fair enough. I mean, because your objection, at least, is not based on, I think, what a lot of
00:37:06.200
people mistakenly hold as this extreme individualism that says we have the right to do whatever we
00:37:12.680
want or something. I mean, that is nowhere found in America's history or form of government. So your
00:37:17.620
objection is really just that you don't trust the government to get this done because they're
00:37:21.340
basically incompetent. And I share, I think, your suspicion of the government. However,
00:37:27.820
we do have to have laws. And so we do, the government, incompetent as it is, we do rely
00:37:32.240
on the government to maintain order and to execute justice. And so in this case, a lot of the reason
00:37:37.280
people write it off is they say, well, it's sort of a trivial issue. Who cares if some weirdo wants
00:37:41.180
to wear a miniskirt and walk around New York City? And I'm sympathetic to that argument. It's just,
00:37:47.360
my answer to it is, who cares? The libs care. You know, the left has really, really been pushing
00:37:53.440
this. They put a lot of time and energy and money into normalizing this kind of stuff. And I think
00:37:58.260
they're doing it because they recognize that cultural issues really do matter. You know,
00:38:03.100
it's not just fights over the tax rate that affect politics, but it's these little cultural things
00:38:09.480
that if you're able to change the way people dress, the way people view men and women,
00:38:14.420
the way people are educated, the way the culture talks about its own citizens. If you're able to
00:38:21.980
change all of that in a kind of subtle way, then without passing a single law or only minor kind of
00:38:28.580
regulations, you have ultimately changed the culture. And so I'm skeptical of the government.
00:38:33.700
I just think it's a fight that we have to engage in. We got to go to war with the army that we got.
00:38:37.840
Really, really good question though, Daisy. Thank you for calling in. Okay,
00:38:42.020
let's turn now to Erin in the great Commonwealth of Virginia. Hello, Erin.
00:38:52.580
So I just wanted to let you know, I'm also an Italian Catholic, so I love listening to your show.
00:38:58.520
But my question is about working in the public school system. So I currently work at an elementary
00:39:03.580
school that's really conservative and I'm lucky, but I'm finishing my degree in hopes of being a middle
00:39:08.900
school math teacher. So I'm wondering what advice you have for how to work in the public school system
00:39:15.400
and not agree with or support their woke agenda.
00:39:20.700
I would recommend that you be wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove. And depending on where you
00:39:26.260
are, you know, if you're in Virginia, there's a good shot that you're going to be in a pretty
00:39:29.980
pre-lib school system. If you were in Tennessee or Texas, your odds of being in a conservative school
00:39:36.140
system would be a lot higher. I'm not necessarily suggesting that you retreat from that fight,
00:39:40.960
but I would recommend, one, you know what you think and you know what your lines are and you
00:39:48.420
know, okay, maybe you'll keep your mouth shut when in the teacher's break room, they're talking about
00:39:55.500
how terrible Trump is or whatever. And you say, okay, this is not worth my time to pick this fight.
00:39:59.740
But you are going to speak up when they tell you you've got to refer to one of your 12-year-old
00:40:05.360
male students as she. So that's a line I'm not going to cross. If I were a teacher, that would
00:40:10.460
be a line that I would not cross. I would not allow the school to force me to lie and to lie
00:40:15.600
about an issue that is fundamental to human nature and a lie that will really end up damaging the poor
00:40:22.500
students who are being exposed to it. So I'd know what your lines are. And then I would recommend
00:40:26.660
having a backup plan is the other thing. Because you know that you're going into the lion's den
00:40:31.960
if you're working in a woke public school these days. And I think it's admirable that you're
00:40:36.220
going in anyway. And I think education is obviously a very important thing. I remain close with many
00:40:40.400
of my teachers. In fact, I keep up with my kindergarten teacher. So I think that's a
00:40:44.860
wonderful thing. And you could be a real lifeline for conservatives and sane people and Sicilians and
00:40:49.960
Catholics at the school. So that's all wonderful. But you ought to have a backup plan because you're
00:40:54.740
going in knowing that you face greater risk to your employment than the other people who are
00:41:01.200
going in there. And so you should go in with your eyes wide open and not be caught unawares when the
00:41:08.280
libs try to tar and feather you for saying that boys are boys and girls are girls. Best of luck.
00:41:14.380
I hope you do wonderful things and subvert all of the wokeness in whichever school you end up in.
00:41:21.460
Okay, let's turn now to Ozzy Ought. It's an interesting name from Minnesota. Am I pronouncing
00:41:28.620
that correctly, Ozzy Ought? Hi, Michael. No, it's not. It took my husband three years to
00:41:34.740
pronounce my name. How do I do it? Asiat. Asiat. Asiat.
00:41:43.380
Yeah, that's right. All right, I'll keep trying. It might take me three years, but that's okay.
00:41:46.280
How can I help you? Yeah, so I'm a huge fan. I was like, I can't believe you picked up my call.
00:41:52.540
Anyway, my husband and I, yeah, and you always put my stories on your stories when I tag you on
00:42:00.280
Instagram. So thank you for that too. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks for tagging me. I'm really glad
00:42:05.420
I picked up. I'm certainly glad one of the producers picked up the phone. So what's going on in
00:42:10.280
Minnesota? Yeah. Oh, it's really cold. And I really hate it because I was born in Southern Russia and
00:42:17.940
I hate cold. And that's what my question is about. So my husband and I are looking at moving from
00:42:24.700
Minnesota to Tennessee. We are both young entrepreneurs and want to hear your thoughts
00:42:29.760
about people and life in Tennessee. So what do you like the most about living there?
00:42:35.160
Asiat, you should move yesterday. You should not even wait till we finish this call. You can keep
00:42:42.900
me on the line. You can hang up now if you want, but just come to Tennessee. It is so great. I just
00:42:47.280
went back and visited my old friends in LA because I still do a show out there with PragerU called The
00:42:52.660
Book Club. And so I go out a few times a year and we film episodes of The Book Club. And I like it.
00:42:56.560
I go back. I see some of my friends. Most of my friends have fled at this point, but there's still some
00:43:00.880
there. And I miss the nice weather. That's not something that you will miss in Minnesota. Minnesota
00:43:05.240
certainly does not have nice weather. But I do miss certain things. My restaurant, my cigar bar,
00:43:10.400
my this, my that. But I am so happy that I made the move because what you get out of going to a red
00:43:17.220
state is not only you get to save a lot of money on taxes, not only do you get more normal people
00:43:23.620
generally around you, not only do you frequently get your dollar going a lot further than they do
00:43:30.980
in some of these blue metropolises, but you get the standard back to a sane place. Any place you
00:43:39.100
move to, you move to Tennessee, there's plenty of libs in Tennessee. But the center of gravity there,
00:43:44.720
the political center of gravity is not nearly as far over to the left. If you're living in a place
00:43:49.960
like California, the dividing line between right and left is, do you trans the kids at four or do
00:43:55.160
you wait to trans the kids at seven? I mean, that's how far left it is. I say this with almost
00:44:00.240
no exaggeration. Whereas in Tennessee, even the Democrats are still relatively normal. And that
00:44:07.720
grounding in, look, we don't want everyone to just believe precisely exactly the same thing and to
00:44:13.360
just behave like automatons. We want there to be diversity and spice to life, but you want it to be
00:44:18.380
within normal constraints. Society is not a crazy jungle where everybody says and does whatever
00:44:24.260
they want and we're basically all just barking at each other. We want society to be a manicured
00:44:29.660
garden, okay? And so when you move to a place like Tennessee, which I just adore, the boundaries
00:44:35.460
of discourse and behavior are just more normal. People are just way more normal here. So I hope I've
00:44:42.380
convinced you, Asiat, I hope to find you at some restaurant in Tennessee eating delicious fried
00:44:47.480
chicken and enjoying the good weather. Lovely to speak to you. I think I can take one more
00:44:53.700
question. Let's turn to Sam from California, from my old state. Hello, Sam.
00:45:05.940
Well, I'm the CEO and founder of a new Christian free speech social network called Acts 29 or
00:45:14.060
Acts 29 dot online. And I'm an ex-Facebook intelligence analyst. And the reason why I'm
00:45:21.200
calling is because we were recently deplatformed from using our ad account on Facebook.
00:45:31.660
Well, uh, you know, we started off, uh, not, you know, we were always conservative, but we started
00:45:40.440
off, you know, very light on the political side. But the moment we started talking about
00:45:45.500
our, our country's in grave danger from the communist elements, uh, our ad accounts started
00:45:51.820
getting all wonky on us and they, uh, declined our ad account seven times in the last week.
00:45:57.880
Hmm. You know, I, I had heard that Facebook was going to make a move to, to suppress political
00:46:04.740
content. And of course the argument that Facebook made is we're going to suppress political content
00:46:08.780
across the board. Usually when, when social media companies say that, what that really means is
00:46:13.460
they're going to suppress the conservatives and maybe they'll give occasionally a little,
00:46:16.500
a little smack on the knuckles to Democrats. But, but this is almost never enforced equally. And so
00:46:21.700
I'm not, not terribly surprised. You say you're an ex-Facebook intelligence analyst.
00:46:26.320
Uh, do you, do you have any inside thoughts on, on exactly why you're being shut down?
00:46:34.120
Um, I believe that it's because they don't want a Christian free speech social network.
00:46:40.280
You know, a lot of the employees, uh, at these tech companies, they double as, uh, political
00:46:47.240
activists and you see political activism more and more in the workplace. And I believe in the last
00:46:53.000
three years, you know, it's kind of converged into this amount of amalgam of, you know, communism
00:47:00.940
within social, either socialism or communism in the workplace. Right. You know, it's funny to use
00:47:07.600
those terms because, you know, it's, I almost feel bad for the communists calling these people
00:47:13.840
commies. You know, Stalin was a very evil guy, but at least he was kind of manly, you know, at least
00:47:19.960
he recognized that men and women are different. These guys, they want to take your property.
00:47:25.420
They want to take your rights away. And, but they're somehow even kookier. They some, they
00:47:29.320
somehow believe even more fantastical things. Uh, so, well, I wish you the best of luck. I'm,
00:47:34.040
I'm not surprised. Facebook did show its hand by saying we're going to suppress political content,
00:47:38.020
but the only way that we're going to, to do very much about this at this point, now that,
00:47:43.000
now that the big tech companies have achieved critical mass through fraud, in many cases,
00:47:47.400
saying that you'll, you're signing up for one service when in fact, they're going to provide
00:47:50.660
you a different kind of a service and, and by exploiting legal loopholes that give them
00:47:54.220
protections, they've now got a critical mass. And so you're, you're not going to succeed by
00:47:58.940
just going out there and building your own Facebook. We're going to succeed by wielding
00:48:02.360
the political order. But the really important point here is that in a political order, in self
00:48:09.100
government, in a Republic, if a private or semi-private entity controls the public square,
00:48:14.780
they control the whole political order. And you and I in America, we still have rights
00:48:18.980
to come out there and, and wield our political power and say, no, we're not going to give away
00:48:24.420
the public square. We're not going to give away the country to woke wackos in Silicon Valley.
00:48:29.060
Thank you for calling in. That's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.