Ep. 1172 - Tyre Nichols And The Black Faces Of White Supremacy
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
177.92784
Summary
Tyree Nichols, an unarmed black man pulled over in a regular traffic stop by five white police officers in Memphis Tennessee, has reignited the perennial debate over race and policing. Now, this case is different from the other prominent officer-involved killings that had preceded it: In that not only was the deceased person black, but all of the officers involved in his death were also black. And it all took place in a city that is 65% black.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
The killing of Tyree Nichols, an unarmed black man pulled over in a regular traffic stop
00:00:05.120
by five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, has reignited the perennial debate over race
00:00:11.300
and policing. Now, this case is different from the other prominent officer-involved killings
00:00:17.680
that had preceded it, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, in that not only was
00:00:23.200
the deceased person black, but all of the officers involved in his death were also black. And it all
00:00:31.840
took place in Memphis, a city that is 65% black. Nevertheless, former Congressman Democrat Mondaire
00:00:40.960
Jones warns people not to be distracted by those facts. If you think, Jones wrote, the Memphis police
00:00:49.540
officers had to be white in order to exhibit anti-blackness, you need to take that AP
00:00:55.940
African American studies course Ron DeSantis just banned. Yes, everyone involved was black,
00:01:04.720
but they were still motivated by anti-blackness, which is just another woke buzz term meaning
00:01:11.500
white supremacy, as viral libs have rushed to point out on social media.
00:01:16.060
I've got a message today for some white people. If we have white people listening, paying attention,
00:01:22.920
I wouldn't mind if you would do this with me. We rub our chests, we find our heartbeat,
00:01:36.520
White supremacy did this. I'm talking about Tyree Nichols.
00:01:41.460
Police didn't do this. The Memphis Police Department didn't do this. White supremacy did this.
00:01:55.700
The cops have been arrested. They're presumed innocent until proven guilty,
00:02:00.520
even though the video evidence that we have is pretty damning. But by the standard of the left,
00:02:05.880
viral nobodies and prominent politicians alike, even if the cops are convicted,
00:02:10.740
it wasn't really the cops' fault. According to many on the left, the responsibility for Tyree
00:02:17.780
Nichols' killing, and really for all the evils in the world, lies with white people and their
00:02:24.040
alleged system of white supremacy, even when the white people are nowhere in sight.
00:02:30.520
I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:02:32.000
Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment on Friday is from Frank S., who says,
00:02:43.720
I like how that Pfizer executive had to tell the 911 dispatcher that there were five white men around
00:02:49.400
him. This wasn't shown in Michael's video, after he committed multiple felonies of assault and robbery.
00:02:55.100
I guess I didn't catch that part in the video, but I'm not surprised at all.
00:03:01.800
The guy just, he's smashing equipment. He's taking swings at people. He's trying to tackle James
00:03:06.040
O'Keefe. He says, wait, hold on a second. I can play the victim card. These guys are
00:03:09.800
not letting me attack them. These guys, they're threatening me by being there while I attack them.
00:03:16.400
I might hurt my fist on their face. You know, when you want to have conversations with your
00:03:22.080
friends over the phone that are much more coherent than that, you got to check out PureTalk.
00:03:26.100
Right now, go to puretalk.com. Enter promo code Knowles. If one of your goals this year is to do
00:03:30.680
business with companies who share your beliefs, then you got to check out PureTalk. PureTalk is the
00:03:35.160
antidote to woke wireless companies. It is proudly veteran-owned, employs a U.S.-based customer service
00:03:40.420
team, and absolutely refuses to spend money on fake news networks. Not to mention,
00:03:45.220
PureTalk service is fantastic. They are one of the largest networks in the country.
00:03:49.900
You can get blazing fast data, talk, and text for as low as $30 a month. It's probably half of what
00:03:54.780
you're paying Verizon, ATT, or T-Mobile. Switch over to PureTalk in as little as 10 minutes while
00:03:59.740
keeping your phone and your phone number. Your first month is guaranteed risk-free. Try it. If
00:04:04.800
you're not completely happy with the service, you will get your money back. This year, make it a goal
00:04:09.800
to support companies that support you. Go to puretalk.com. Enter promo code Knowles,
00:04:14.040
K-N-W-L-E-S, to save 50% on your first month. That is puretalk.com. Promo code Knowles,
00:04:19.000
K-N-W-L-E-S. PureTalk is, quite simply, simply smarter wireless.
00:04:25.540
The video of that white liberal lady saying that even though all the cops involved in the killing
00:04:32.940
of Tyree Nichols are black, even though Memphis is a black city, even though white people were
00:04:36.660
nowhere to be seen, she says, beat your chest. Beat your chest, white people. This is our fault.
00:04:41.940
This shows you a point that I've made for years now, which is that racism, white supremacy,
00:04:48.500
all these terms are just synonyms in our modern culture for evil. So it's always got to be white
00:04:56.660
people's fault. The ultimate sin is racism and by racism, specifically racism from white people,
00:05:05.760
white supremacy, white nationalism, whatever you want to call it.
00:05:08.360
And what she is doing is expressing a weird modern lib version of the true and traditional
00:05:15.020
doctrine of original sin. She's even beating her breast. In Christianity, what we do is we beat
00:05:21.680
our breasts and we say, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. The understanding of original sin is that
00:05:29.200
we in our sins have killed Christ. We have slain Christ because Christ is incarnate to die for
00:05:38.020
mankind, to redeem mankind from his sins because we all sinned in Adam. When Adam first took that
00:05:42.240
bite of the apple and lost his paradise and sin and death pervaded the world. So we, in a very real
00:05:46.940
sense, are responsible for killing Jesus. You might say, well, we weren't walking around first century
00:05:51.580
Palestine. Doesn't matter. We, because of our fallen humanity, which is not just some weird thing that
00:05:56.840
we're imagining. It is an observable fact. This is a fallen world and we all sin. So that part,
00:06:02.500
totally observable, obviously true. The understanding is that we are born with that.
00:06:08.260
And so we carry a real fault and we continue to sin in our thoughts and in our words and what we do and
00:06:12.440
what we fail to do. Now, the liberals, intuiting this fact of human nature, reject all of the stuff
00:06:20.780
that goes with it. The liberals reject that God exists often. They reject that we need a savior
00:06:28.260
who comes outside of us. They reject everything about our traditional culture and the religion
00:06:35.720
that animates our traditional culture. But they realize that these facts still exist. And so they
00:06:39.860
just have to transmute them into some weird new leftist religion. And so what they do is they
00:06:44.700
transmute that into a literal beating of the chest over white supremacy, which is not the cause of it.
00:06:51.520
Very often you will hear people say, the original sin in America is slavery or at a broader level,
00:06:57.220
the original sin of America is racism. That isn't true. All that stuff is bad. There's plenty of bad
00:07:04.840
stuff that happens in America and other places around the world. But the original sin of America is
00:07:10.180
original sin. And when you try to translate that into some weird modern religion where you get rid
00:07:15.840
of God and you get rid of all the stuff that undergirds it, you end up sounding like wackos,
00:07:20.780
like that liberal lady on TikTok and like Mondaire Jones. White supremacy did not cause this killing.
00:07:28.200
We don't really know the crucial fact here, which is what happened before the video came on.
00:07:35.640
There's video footage now, body cam footage, dash cam footage has been released. Officers to Darius
00:07:42.560
Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmett Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith have all been charged with
00:07:49.700
two counts of official misconduct, one count of official oppression, second degree murder,
00:07:55.180
obviously the biggest one there, aggravated assault act in concert, and two counts of aggravated
00:08:01.240
kidnapping. The video footage looks very, very bad. There is one question that remains, which is,
00:08:09.420
why did they pull this guy over? They say that they pulled him over for reckless driving.
00:08:15.120
The head of police in Memphis says that we don't have evidence of that yet. So we don't know. Really,
00:08:20.820
the cameras kind of click on as this is happening. So you don't really see the earliest parts of this
00:08:27.000
encounter. Then Tyree Nichols resists arrest and runs away. And then they get him and they basically
00:08:33.620
just beat this guy to death. He doesn't die on the scene. They don't get a medical attention. He dies
00:08:37.580
later at the hospital. It's really damning stuff. It's hard to imagine these guys are going to get
00:08:42.980
off the hook for it. But in this country, people are innocent until proven guilty. So we'll see if
00:08:48.180
anything comes out on trial as to why they pulled him over in the first place, why this escalated
00:08:53.240
so quickly. One theory that is going around right now, a very politically incorrect theory,
00:08:59.220
is that these cops were hired with lowered standards. So this is a theory, a law enforcement
00:09:03.920
official, Karen Parmar says, according to a source within the Memphis PD, the five officers charged were
00:09:10.580
not hired through the usual PD hiring process. City leaders felt the existing process was too strict
00:09:16.200
and kept certain people from getting jobs at the department. City leaders began their own hiring
00:09:21.260
process and then pushed new hires into the agency, bypassing the testing procedures in place at the
00:09:26.000
department. We know that this sort of thing happens. There was a big lawsuit about this in New Haven
00:09:32.760
some years ago because first responder exams, allegedly there weren't enough people of certain
00:09:39.300
demographics. There wasn't enough diversity in the department. And so they lowered the standards.
00:09:44.500
And it happens, whether it happened here, it remains to be seen, but it is being reported by
00:09:48.880
multiple outlets. And this is one of the weaknesses with democracy. This is one of the weaknesses that
00:09:56.060
founding fathers wrote about, framers wrote about, that political thinkers have recognized throughout
00:10:01.200
history, which is that if a regime becomes too democratic, you have a leveling. And so it's not that
00:10:07.980
everybody is raised up to the highest levels of excellence, but rather that everybody becomes sort of
00:10:12.640
handicapped. Like Kurt Vonnegut writes about in Harrison Bergeron, or like we see today, just a lowering
00:10:18.100
of standards. Okay, not enough people that we want to get into certain schools are getting into certain
00:10:23.380
schools. So we're just going to get rid of the SAT. We're going to get rid of the ACT. We're going to
00:10:27.980
lower the entry exams to become a cop or to become a firefighter. Not enough women are in the military.
00:10:33.720
We want more women in the military. Let's lower the physical requirements to get into the military.
00:10:37.780
And so it becomes a lowering to the lowest common denominator. And you see this in the writing of
00:10:44.540
our founding fathers. That's why they did not give us a democracy. That's why they write so disparagingly
00:10:48.500
about democracy. It's why they didn't even give us quite a republic or just a representative democracy
00:10:55.800
in that the American form of government really includes aspects of all three types of government.
00:11:01.880
There are three types of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. And according to the
00:11:08.500
ancient writer Polybius, those are the three good versions of that government. It's not that
00:11:13.400
only one of those is good. The other two are terrible. All three can be good, but they have
00:11:17.200
a corrupted version too. The corruption of monarchy is tyranny. The corruption of aristocracy
00:11:21.400
is oligarchy. The corruption of democracy is mob rule. And he views this as a kind of cycle of
00:11:28.560
regimes that is constantly going to evolve. So what the American founders and framers tried to do
00:11:33.080
is establish a regime that includes aspects of all of them. You have a monarchical element in the
00:11:39.060
strong executive and the president. You have an aristocratic element, certainly in the Senate,
00:11:43.400
and elsewhere in the government, a representation for the landed classes, especially when there were
00:11:48.120
more stringent voting requirements. And it was just a more of an aristocratic kind of a society.
00:11:53.440
And then obviously a very strong democratic representation too. Is that what happened here?
00:11:57.480
We don't know. It's going to go to trial. But regardless, even in this case where the facts are so
00:12:03.640
clear, was there a white person in sight? It doesn't look like it. Very, very few, if any. Nevertheless,
00:12:09.180
you are going to see the popular press just absurdly try to blame this on the usual old
00:12:16.940
culprit white supremacy. The reason they're going to do that is because that phrase is simply a byword
00:12:21.700
for evil and the fallen nature of man in modern America. Now, this is not to let the cops off the
00:12:30.660
hook here. Conservatives are generally strong defenders of cops. I'm a strong defender of cops.
00:12:36.540
I'm especially a strong defender of cops in Memphis. I don't know how many of you have ever been to
00:12:40.480
Memphis. Memphis is a very dangerous place. Memphis is one of two places in this country
00:12:44.880
that I have ever been jumped or very nearly jumped. The other was on the Jersey shore where I used to
00:12:50.100
vacation a lot as a kid. The other one was in Memphis. I was in Memphis for one night back in,
00:12:54.680
I want to say this is, that was probably 10 years ago, more than that probably at this point.
00:12:59.020
And I was stopping off in Memphis with a buddy of mine. We went to Beale Street, which is the main drag,
00:13:05.300
had some drinks, had a couple of Coca-Colas, listened to some music. We were walking back.
00:13:09.260
We were probably two blocks off of Beale Street. We kind of stood out like a sore thumb smoking
00:13:14.360
cigars. I was probably wearing some silly colored polo shirt. But we're walking and we see some guy,
00:13:18.240
it looked like he was either breaking into a car or he looked like he was up to no good.
00:13:21.640
And we hear, hey fellas, I don't want to talk to this guy. We walk in the other direction.
00:13:26.820
He starts walking. He goes, fellas, fellas. He starts walking after us. We start walking faster. He starts
00:13:31.060
walking faster. We run. He starts running after us finally. And we had cigars,
00:13:34.840
so we didn't want to just go inside. But we see a hotel. So we get in front of the hotel. There's
00:13:38.780
obviously a huge camera right there. We're right in front of the opening and closing doors.
00:13:42.940
And this guy stops running right outside the frame of the camera. He can see the camera too. He's a
00:13:48.880
little bit further up. He goes, hey guys, you want to come over here? He said, no. He goes, oh,
00:13:55.980
can you give me some money? He said, no. He goes, oh. He goes, can you pray for me? He said, yes.
00:14:04.960
Yes, we can pray for you. Absolutely. And I kid you not. He goes, can you pray for me over here?
00:14:11.640
He's still trying so desperately. Hey, come on over here so I can jump you and steal your money.
00:14:15.380
This was two blocks off Beale Street, the main part of Memphis, okay? So I don't think Memphis
00:14:20.660
is going to be served by taking cops off the streets. I think probably Memphis needs many more
00:14:25.540
cops on the streets. But you still need training. You still need high standards. And you still need
00:14:31.820
justice served. I mean, you can't allow just roving gangs of untrained cops to go around
00:14:38.900
terrorizing people. We'll see what happens. I'm probably the only commentator in all of America
00:14:44.160
who thinks that we should wait to see what comes out at trial before totally forming our opinions.
00:14:49.240
But facts certainly don't look good. And then the cops really don't look good in San Francisco.
00:14:52.560
So you remember the Paul Pelosi break-in? Nancy Pelosi's out of town. 9-1-1 call at the Pelosi
00:14:58.840
residence in San Francisco. Cops come. Paul Pelosi's, according to the reports, in his boxers.
00:15:05.900
And then there's this guy who, I guess, broke in. But Paul Pelosi doesn't seem concerned. And
00:15:10.200
then according to reports, Paul Pelosi said that he knew the guy, referred to him as a friend,
00:15:14.880
that Paul Pelosi didn't rush to the cops when they got there. And then finally, the guy attacked
00:15:21.560
Paul Pelosi with a hammer. But all sorts of theories based on the press reports. Well,
00:15:25.140
now we got the video footage. The cops show up to the door. It's unclear who opens the door.
00:15:41.460
And then the guy just attacks Paul Pelosi with a hammer.
00:15:48.340
So it's a little bit weird here. You don't, we don't really know who opens the door. It's
00:15:51.940
Paul Pelosi. They're standing somewhat still. He's got a drink. I mean, it could be just
00:15:56.420
a glass of water in one hand. And then his arm is being held by this, this invader in
00:16:00.220
the other hand. The invader then has the hammer in the other hand. And they're all just standing
00:16:03.500
there. And the cops go, hey, what's going on here? So your first thought is, why didn't
00:16:08.900
the cops tackle this guy? This guy's holding a hammer. He's holding a hammer while holding
00:16:15.920
Paul Pelosi, the husband of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. And the cops
00:16:20.240
are just waiting. They're like, hey, what's going on? Hey, man, drop the hammer. Drop
00:16:23.100
the hammer. The guy's got a hammer. He's got the husband of the Speaker of the House.
00:16:25.840
I bet you jump on him. I bet you shoot him. I bet you do something. You're just standing
00:16:29.160
there. And then they wait. And then the guy just slowly takes the hammer out and smacks
00:16:32.580
Paul Pelosi on the head. So that's bad enough. It's weird, though, because there are still
00:16:37.240
questions. Why doesn't Paul Pelosi seem more nervous? Why doesn't, who opened the door?
00:16:43.720
What, do these guys know each other? What, what is this? Do the cops not know that this
00:16:47.460
is Paul Pelosi? But then we get the 911 call and things become much clearer.
00:16:52.600
This is San Francisco police. Do you need help?
00:16:54.880
Oh, well, there's a gentleman here just waiting for my wife to come back. Nancy Pelosi.
00:17:03.460
Okay, do you need police fire or medical for anything?
00:17:07.800
Uh, I don't think so. I don't think so. I've got a problem, but he thinks it was his suit.
00:17:17.280
No, no, no. This, this gentleman just, uh, came out of the house, uh, and he wants to
00:17:22.880
wait here for my wife to come home. And so, uh, anyway, he told me to put the phone down.
00:17:31.380
No, I don't know who he is. He, he, uh, uh, he has this, he told me, he said, he told me
00:17:36.840
not to, uh, he told me not to do anything. Anyway, this, this gentleman says that, uh, he
00:17:42.440
thinks everything ought to, you know, he told me to put the phone down and, uh, just do what
00:17:53.360
I, I don't know. I, what's that? I'm a friend of theirs.
00:17:57.480
Yeah, I, I, um, he says he's a friend, but as I said, I've never.
00:18:03.540
No, no, ma'am. He's telling me I'm being very leading, so I, I gotta stop talking to you,
00:18:09.620
Okay, you sure I can stay on the phone with you just to make sure everything's okay?
00:18:13.700
No, he, well, he must make it the hell off the phone.
00:18:21.800
So this goes, that's just a brief snippet of it. The, the, the call goes on and the longer
00:18:28.520
the call goes on, the angrier one becomes at the incompetence of this dispatcher. He goes,
00:18:35.560
hey, I'm here. There's a guy in my house. I don't know him. He says he's going to wait for
00:18:39.740
my wife, Nancy Pelosi. Um, she goes, oh yeah, okay. Do you need emergency services or no?
00:18:45.460
Okay. And I, later on she goes, okay, well call back if you need anything. He's going,
00:18:48.600
no, I don't. What do you, no, why are, and you, you realize that Paul Pelosi is telegraphing as
00:18:55.440
clearly as he possibly can that they need to send someone immediately. And this incompetent
00:19:00.980
dispatcher is ready to hang up the phone. He says, no, no, no, don't hang. What are you? And,
00:19:05.600
and you can hear the guy. The guy comes in, he says, hey, I'm a friend. Oh, I don't,
00:19:10.660
I don't know him, but he says that he's a friend of ours and, and she almost hangs up. So
00:19:14.260
this dispels the conspiracy theories. The conspiracy theories were Paul Pelosi knew the guy.
00:19:23.000
They, one conspiracy theory was that they were gay lovers. The, uh, there were all sorts of
00:19:27.800
theories floating around the internet. And the, the reason that theories were floating around the
00:19:34.220
internet is not because right wingers are insane. The reason the theories were floating around the
00:19:41.740
internet is because that was the information that was reported. The information that was reported
00:19:46.100
was that this guy, that Paul Pelosi referred to this guy as a friend, that the police on another one
00:19:52.580
of the dispatcher transcripts says that, that this guy was a friend of Pelosi, that Pelosi was cool and
00:19:59.600
calm and collected, didn't rush to the police, had a drink in his hand, had his pants off.
00:20:06.180
All of the leaks before this information came out suggested that these guys had some kind of a
00:20:12.800
relationship. So then the question is, who released the information? Who was behind the leaks? And the
00:20:19.580
answer is it was only, it was the cops. The cops are the only ones that had, and the political
00:20:24.580
leadership of the cops. They're the only ones that had the tapes. So you had, on the one hand, you had
00:20:30.860
the, the left wing theory that this was a right winger, a Trump Republican. He's obviously not. He was
00:20:36.340
a nudist with a gay pride flag at one of the compounds that he was living at. He's an illegal alien. He's
00:20:41.720
obviously completely insane. So that theory goes out the window. Then you had the, the right wing
00:20:47.020
theory on the fringes that this guy was, I don't know, a gay lover or something like that. But that one
00:20:53.560
goes out. And so you had the left and the right bickering with each other when really what is
00:20:57.360
revealed by the 911 tape is, this was the cops covering up for their incompetence. Very, very
00:21:05.140
bad week for cops in this country. Now what's the solution to that? There are really only two
00:21:10.820
solutions, I think. Listening to this kind of incompetence, and then especially looking at the
00:21:15.800
outrage that people see from, from the police involved killing of Tyree Nichols. Either you can just
00:21:22.000
disband the police, either the libs were right, abolish the police, these guys are, or fund the
00:21:28.640
police much better, train them much better, exclude people from the force who are not up to the job,
00:21:34.400
fire that dispatcher, fire the cops who improperly responded to the Pelosi call, and just, or train them,
00:21:43.340
or just get, get much better policing. I think the answer is obviously the latter. It can't be the
00:21:50.780
former, because contrary to what the libs and the sort of anarcho-libertarian kind of right-wing libs
00:21:56.760
would have you believe, the civil government exists to protect law and order. We need, we need law and
00:22:02.680
order. We need a civil authority to have a flourishing society, because we're not just free-floating atoms
00:22:07.560
left to do what we want. We'll all build up our own private armies. That's not real. That's never
00:22:11.260
happened anywhere. That's a utopian fantasy. What, what we need is law and order. And so if that's the
00:22:18.580
basis of a society, then we need good, strong police departments with good training and high
00:22:25.020
standards and legal protections for the cops, so they don't have their lives ruined by political
00:22:29.520
correctness if they are involved in a justified police-involved killing, which very often what
00:22:34.800
happens now is police are involved in a justified killing, a justified shooting, and then they go to
00:22:39.520
prison, and then, or they get their lives ruined in some other way. They lose their careers, they lose
00:22:44.360
their pensions. And so a lot of good people, a lot of good, competent people say, why would I ever want
00:22:49.120
to be a cop? There's no political defense of me. It's a dangerous job, and I could lose my life if I
00:22:55.520
trespass against the virtues of political, the vices of political correctness. So then, then you end up in
00:23:01.440
a bad situation. You end up in a very bad personnel situation. The smart politicians, though, are trying to
00:23:08.180
beef up police and law and order the right way. One such politician, a man who's getting a lot of
00:23:13.700
headlines right now because he's very obviously running for president in 2024, that would be Ron DeSantis.
00:23:19.280
Ron DeSantis is getting tougher on crime down in Florida. DeSantis is strengthening Florida's bail laws by
00:23:26.460
limiting who is eligible for release prior to first appearance. This is good because in places like New York
00:23:32.560
and elsewhere around the country, these criminals get brought in, they get arrested, then they're released
00:23:40.280
on zero dollars bail or bond, very low financial requirements to get out. They go out and they
00:23:47.820
commit more crimes. You especially saw this during the George Floyd riots. So he's doing that. They'll
00:23:52.460
petition the Florida Supreme Court to establish a uniform bond schedule. They will toughen penalties for
00:23:59.660
sex criminals. They'll require law enforcement to report missing persons to the national system,
00:24:05.860
dedicate $5 million to continue to fund the police and especially drug forces. And then here's one,
00:24:15.300
require convicted child rapists to serve at least life in prison and explore options to make them
00:24:20.080
eligible for the death penalty. So getting very tough on crime. In principle, I agree with all of
00:24:23.780
this stuff. One little wrinkle I would say is I don't know that it is smart to execute people for
00:24:31.980
rape. And the reason for that is not because they don't deserve it. The reason for that is not because
00:24:35.960
I think we should go soft on rapists or anything like that. But it's a pure political calculation,
00:24:42.780
which is if the punishment for rape is the same as the punishment for murder, then there is no
00:24:50.760
incentive for rapists not to murder their victims. And so this would be an example where I think people's
00:24:55.920
passions and desires and sense for justice could outweigh their prudence. And they'll say, well,
00:25:00.980
who cares? I think we should just have capital punishment for everybody. Okay. But if you do
00:25:04.960
that, then you might imprudently end up in a situation where someone who's a rapist is going
00:25:11.700
to kill his victim. Because if he kills his victim, then she'll certainly be silent. And if he gets
00:25:18.200
caught, well, it's going to be the same punishment either way. So other than that, I think they'll try
00:25:23.240
to work that out. But obviously, DeSantis is moving in the right direction here, which is get tougher on
00:25:28.780
crime. These things come in waves. And the left and the right at various times are more pro-cop or
00:25:35.500
less pro-cop. The left, which out of one side of its mouth talks about how we need to abolish the
00:25:39.880
police, out of the other side of its mouth says that we need to trust the FBI and essentially let
00:25:43.660
the FBI run the government. So, okay, we don't like local law enforcement, but we do like federal law
00:25:48.880
enforcement. The conservatives at various times are very much more for law and order than sometimes
00:25:53.900
they feel a little more libertarian. And they say, we need to protect our civil liberties and
00:25:57.420
reduce the number of cops and reduce the number of criminal offenses that the cops could even
00:26:01.620
enforce. But generally speaking, conservatives should be pro-cop. We should just, rather than
00:26:08.480
try to have some lame ideological solution where we write it on the back of a napkin and say, these
00:26:13.420
are the five bullet points that are going to create the perfect society. Rather than say, we've either
00:26:17.100
got to abolish the cops or unleash a paramilitary on our nation. I think the smarter solution is,
00:26:24.780
how can we just, how can we improve policing? How can we, we fund them, give them more money,
00:26:30.740
beef them up a little bit, but have higher requirements. So you weed out some of the bad
00:26:34.240
cops. How do we, how do we work in an imperfect world in real institutions without just trying to
00:26:40.400
blow the whole thing up as revolutionaries on the left and the right have sought to do since time
00:26:44.940
immemorial? Speaking of presidential candidates, President Trump, the only declared, or I think he's the
00:26:52.120
only declared, did Mike Pence officially say he's running or he just said he's probably going to run?
00:26:55.620
Nikki Haley just said she's probably going to run. Joe Biden has now declared that he's running,
00:26:59.920
but he's obviously not campaigning yet. Trump is running. He's declared, he's hit.
00:27:04.740
New Hampshire and South Carolina, here is the campaign message from New Hampshire.
00:27:09.920
When I announced, I just want to put my cards on the table. I, you know, we're playing that very big
00:27:15.080
game right now, the biggest game of all, because it involves the country and the survival of the
00:27:19.980
United States of America. But when I, when I put the cards on and then I said, all right, let's go.
00:27:26.440
They said, he's not campaigning. This is like about a month ago when I announced, well, I said,
00:27:33.180
you know, I got two years. They said, he's not doing rallies. He's not campaigning. Maybe he's lost
00:27:40.460
that step. We didn't, I'm more angry now and I'm more committed now than I ever was.
00:27:44.980
Okay. So Trump is acknowledging the criticism of his campaign and his campaign loss.
00:27:53.700
And it would seem that he's reacting to it too, because he starts now doing events,
00:27:58.280
but he didn't do a big rally. This was an event really for locals and the Republican leadership
00:28:04.020
in New Hampshire. And then he says this line, I'm angrier now than I've ever been before.
00:28:10.840
But the way he says it, he doesn't seem angry, nor necessarily should he seem angry.
00:28:17.800
Trump running in 2024 is a very different thing than Trump running in 2016. He's a different person.
00:28:24.140
He's got different experience. He brings a different ethos to the whole, to the whole matter. But you,
00:28:28.280
you can, the only thing you can really tell, I think, I agree with Trump. He's got two years.
00:28:33.120
I agree that a lot of the criticism of his campaign is BS. I agree that it's mostly just people on the
00:28:38.420
left and the right who hate his guts. And the people on the left are trying to stop him from
00:28:41.800
running. And the people on the right who are attacking him now, probably in most cases are
00:28:46.260
people who hated him in 2016 also. So all of that is true. But I think it is fair to say he doesn't
00:28:53.560
seem to have the same fire. He doesn't seem to have the same focus. When he came down that escalator in
00:28:58.000
2015, he said, the illegal aliens, they're rapists and they're murderers. They're being sent across.
00:29:03.420
We need to build a big wall and deport all these people who are invading our country.
00:29:08.300
Love it or hate it, that's a clear message. We're getting screwed on trade deals. We're
00:29:11.880
going to stick it to China. We're going to completely upend America's trade policy.
00:29:15.340
Love it or hate it, that is a very clear message. It distinguished him from the others in the crowd.
00:29:20.240
Now, just by virtue of the fact that he was already the president, it's going to be harder
00:29:24.100
to distinguish himself from the rest of the party. He recreated the party after his own image.
00:29:29.100
So I think he's going to have to try something different. He then hit South Carolina,
00:29:33.240
and announced a big leadership team. And he got a big endorsement from that state senator,
00:29:38.200
Lindsey Graham. There's one thing I want to talk to you about. How many, how many times have you heard
00:29:46.760
we like Trump policies, but we want somebody new? There are no Trump policies without Donald Trump.
00:29:55.860
I was there. You know why $400 billion was given by NATO nations? Because he asked,
00:30:04.020
and they were afraid to say no. Every president, since I've been up there, has asked NATO to give
00:30:10.020
more money, but they gave more money when he asked. People talk about China. You did something about
00:30:17.820
China. They finally paid. Everybody's been talking about China. You made them pay. You know why Mexico
00:30:25.100
said yes to you? Because she scared the hell out of them by taking on China. We live in a dangerous
00:30:31.200
world right now. The good news for the Republican Party, there are many, many talented people for years
00:30:37.740
to come. But there is only one Donald Trump. And I say this sincerely. You can talk about his policies,
00:30:48.220
but you could not do what he did. This is the message that Trump has to drive home.
00:30:55.100
And it's funny that it's coming from Lindsey Graham, because Lindsey Graham is considered
00:30:58.060
kind of a squish, and they call him Lindsey Graham-nesty and all sorts of things.
00:31:01.420
And Graham was very opposed to Trump in 2016. He obviously ran against him. Then he became much
00:31:06.560
more supportive of Donald Trump. And I don't care if you love Lindsey Graham or you hate Lindsey
00:31:11.220
Graham. One, Lindsey Graham is a great trial lawyer, and he's very good at getting himself
00:31:15.300
reelected. And he's just a very talented politician, even if you think he's a big squish lib.
00:31:20.120
And so the fact that Lindsey Graham is putting his money on Donald Trump does tell you a little
00:31:25.940
something about a political calculation. Lindsey Graham feels that the political wind is still
00:31:30.220
blowing in the direction of Donald Trump. And Lindsey Graham has hit on the campaign message
00:31:36.100
that Trump needs, which is, there is no Trumpism without Trump. The DeSantis campaign message is,
00:31:44.620
there is Trumpism without Trump. I am the better version of Trump. I am more disciplined. I am better
00:31:50.420
educated. I am better able to make deals. I'm less polarizing. I'm whatever. The whole list
00:31:57.200
of Ron DeSantis' campaign pitch, it essentially boils down to, I am Trump, but better. And so
00:32:04.520
Trump's campaign message has to be, there is no better Trump. I'm Trump. I'm unique. I'm an American
00:32:11.100
original. There's nobody like me. There's a lot of imitators out there, but I'm the only one who can do
00:32:15.740
it. And even if we both have the same policies, I can get it done. There's more to politics than just
00:32:22.780
policy on a sheet of paper. I can get it done. Now, what DeSantis' argument is going to be,
00:32:29.280
actually, I got it done better than you did. And then Trump's argument is going to be, you could
00:32:34.420
never have done any of that without me. One, you wouldn't have gotten elected without me. But two,
00:32:38.140
if I didn't give you political cover from the national level, you wouldn't have been able to do
00:32:41.380
a good job as governor. And that's going to be the battle. But if the issue, it just comes down to
00:32:47.120
issues. I don't know that Trump is going to win. Because the party and the smart politicians in the
00:32:52.960
party have taken a page out of Trump's book and adopted his positions on issues. Positions that
00:32:59.680
seven, eight years ago would not have been acceptable on immigration, on trade, on the
00:33:04.740
involvement of the government in the daily lives of Americans. That would not have been on forward
00:33:08.900
policy for that matter. So the only way that Trump can distinguish himself is by saying,
00:33:13.640
I'm the one who can do it. I do it in a different way. The fact that I am polarizing,
00:33:18.640
the fact that I am brash, the fact that I am unpredictable, the fact that I'm not totally
00:33:24.100
educated in this politician university kind of way, that is my plus. It's not a negative.
00:33:31.420
That's my plus. And that's the message that Lindsey Graham has honed in on. And I think it's a very
00:33:37.040
strong one. If he can make a persuasive case for that thesis, the nomination probably is still his
00:33:43.540
don't forget. We're talking about, especially Ron DeSantis, because he's just so impressive in
00:33:47.340
Florida. You're seeing DeSantis' numbers shoot up out of nowhere, up to a pretty respectable number.
00:33:55.440
Now, what is he now? He's at 30% or something, even higher. But Trump is still way up.
00:34:02.460
The primary contest remains Trump's to lose. But he's got some big weaknesses, especially when it
00:34:08.860
comes to COVID, which we'll get to in one second. First though, if you're a parent,
00:34:12.440
you know that the radical left has infiltrated every aspect of your kids' lives, from academia
00:34:16.960
to medicine to children's programming. They're pushing a woke agenda at every turn and doing
00:34:21.640
everything they can to capture their hearts and minds. If you're a parent, then it is deeply,
00:34:26.020
deeply concerning. You may feel powerless to stop the onslaught. But the good news is that many are
00:34:30.860
finding a way to fight back. That is why I'm excited to tell you about a brand new book published
00:34:34.720
by DW Books, written by Bethany Mandel and Carol Markowitz. It's called
00:34:39.160
Stolen Youth, How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.
00:34:45.460
In Stolen Youth, they share testimonies from parents who are just witnessing now how far
00:34:51.280
an out-of-control agenda is corrupting our morals, okay? And one that was exacerbated during the
00:34:57.840
pandemic. This is an absolute must-read for parents who want to understand how we got here,
00:35:02.420
what we're up against, how to go on the offensive, and how to save our kids.
00:35:05.800
Stolen Youth, How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation comes out March
00:35:10.680
7th. But if you click on the Amazon link in the description, you can pre-order your copy
00:35:15.360
today. Go do it. Pre-order the copy of that book. Senator Ron Johnson
00:35:22.460
is standing up for the vaccine injured. He says, the vaccine injured deserve to be seen, heard,
00:35:30.320
and believed. And then he tags a news agency. He says, are you aware of the COVID-19 vaccine
00:35:36.160
injuries in the aviation industry? My letter highlights five of these severe adverse events
00:35:42.240
experienced by pilots and an air traffic controller. So you got Ron Johnson has this letter that he's put
00:35:49.640
out. And it's now being reported in a number of places, including the Epoch Times, of pilots specifically,
00:35:57.200
who all had to get the stupid Fauci ouchy, and many of whom have suffered adverse events now.
00:36:05.100
He says, quote, it remains unclear what, if anything, the FAA has done as it relates to these
00:36:09.200
individuals' experiences, or if it is actively monitoring COVID-19 adverse effects in the
00:36:13.600
aviation industry. As of January 13th, VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System,
00:36:18.800
recorded more than one and a half million adverse effects and 33,746 deaths associated with the
00:36:26.180
COVID-19 vaccines. And I think a lot of people hear that number from VAERS and they say, oh, well,
00:36:32.700
VAERS is unverified. And so that number is actually probably overblown. No, it's the opposite.
00:36:40.480
Time and time again, we see evidence that VAERS actually drastically under-reports
00:36:46.580
vaccine injuries. Think about this. Do you know anyone in your life who has suffered a vaccine
00:36:54.780
injury? Or do you know someone who knows someone who's suffered a vaccine injury? Most people, I
00:36:59.940
think, do. I certainly do. And I think most people know someone or know someone who knows someone who
00:37:06.560
suffered a vaccine injury. Then ask yourself, did that person file a report with the Vaccine Adverse
00:37:12.320
events reporting system? Usually not. Most people will not do. Or even you might say, well, I got,
00:37:19.800
my kid got this vaccine and then things started to seem a little weird. Or yeah, I started to have
00:37:23.960
these, I don't know, kind of shortness of breath or heart problems or this or that. But I'm not going
00:37:28.920
to, I don't know, I don't want to seem like a crazy person. So VAERS under-reports that. How many
00:37:33.120
people actually died from this vaccine? VAERS says 33,746. I bet that number is much, much higher.
00:37:41.580
In addition, a Department of Defense whistleblower provided Ron Johnson's office with data, quote,
00:37:45.960
showing an increase in disease and injuries in pilots across the DOD in years 2020 to 2022
00:37:51.520
compared to years 2016 to 2019. Now there will be debate. You'll hear the libs say, well, no,
00:38:00.100
the adverse effects were caused by the virus, not by the vaccine. No, no, it was just the virus.
00:38:06.880
The virus was everywhere. It's caused by the virus, not the vaccine. That merits some study because
00:38:12.640
what little evidence is available now doesn't seem to suggest that. And furthermore, the fact that we're
00:38:18.680
not even allowed to raise that question tells you, I think, everything you need to know. The fact that
00:38:23.520
if you raise that question, you can, in many circumstances, be kicked off of social media.
00:38:30.100
You will be looked on as, as a, as an idiot. You'll, you'll be called a misinformer. You'll,
00:38:36.940
you'll be accused of, of committing something tantamount to murder because you're spreading
00:38:42.920
health misinformation. And then to tie it back to the political 2024 question, this is Trump's
00:38:48.900
biggest weakness. And this is, I suspect, where DeSantis and any other challenges are going to hit
00:38:53.760
Trump the hardest, is they're going to say, you promoted this vaccine. This vaccine was bad news.
00:39:00.920
And so what Trump is going to do, and you're already starting to see this, is Trump is going
00:39:04.400
to start to hit DeSantis there. He's going to say, what do you do? You promoted the vaccine too.
00:39:09.280
And you locked down too. Don't pretend that you didn't lock down. You locked down for months.
00:39:13.100
And you're already seeing Trump start to make that attack. So even now, 2024, this will be
00:39:19.060
four years after COVID-19. I strongly suspect that much of the Republican primary is going to come
00:39:28.300
down to COVID. We are still processing the COVID lockdowns. And we think we've moved on because we
00:39:34.620
don't wear the stupid hankies anymore over our face. And even the people who formerly took,
00:39:39.100
were very afraid of COVID and who promoted the vaccines and who even most of those people,
00:39:45.800
virtually all of those people on the right, have come back to reality and said, okay, actually,
00:39:49.920
yeah, that was crazy. We shouldn't have given up our rights. We shouldn't have locked down.
00:39:52.800
Shouldn't have worn the stupid hanky. Shouldn't have taken the vouchee-ouchee. Okay, all right,
00:39:56.840
fine. But just because the people on the right now broadly agree on what we should have done,
00:40:05.220
it doesn't mean that we're past it. That was a national trauma. People died
00:40:08.920
alone. People were not allowed to say goodbye to their loved ones. Kids were taken out of school.
00:40:13.200
It seriously damaged their education and their socialization. The good news about taking kids
00:40:20.180
out of school is that it prevented them from learning a bunch of insane nonsense from their
00:40:25.420
woke teachers. That was a good thing. It prevented their socialization in the sense that it stopped
00:40:29.660
them from becoming socialists more quickly. But it did seriously harm them. The fact that kids
00:40:34.100
weren't allowed to see their friends seriously harmed their development, destroyed our economy,
00:40:38.860
destroyed small businesses, was the largest transfer of wealth in recorded history from
00:40:42.420
the lower classes to the upper classes. It was a major transfer of our political rights
00:40:46.800
away from communities and away from American citizens toward unelected,
00:40:54.380
unaccountable bureaucrats who hate our guts. We've still got to grapple with that.
00:40:59.480
And if you think we're just going to move on, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
00:41:05.100
Speaking of COVID, you know, the COVID, or rather the Pfizer video that I referenced earlier in my
00:41:17.040
favorite comment of the day has created quite a splash. That Pfizer executive who thought he was
00:41:21.600
out on a date with a man, and then the man turned out to be a honeypot plant. And James O'Keefe walks in
00:41:27.640
and says, hey, we got you on video admitting that Pfizer is performing gain-of-function research
00:41:31.440
and directed evolution research to beef up viruses. And then the kid just loses his mind. I say kid,
00:41:37.940
he's a young man. He's, I think, 31. In fact, I know he's in his early 30s because a classmate of
00:41:44.840
mine from college reminded me, I went to college with that guy, that Pfizer guy that was caught on
00:41:50.120
tape by Project Veritas. He was one year below me in college. And his face is familiar. I didn't know
00:41:55.800
him personally. Some of my friends knew him personally. And once I heard that, I said,
00:42:00.660
oh, this all makes sense. This guy is behaving exactly as you would expect a modern liberal
00:42:09.100
Yalie to behave. He's ruthlessly ambitious. He's a liar. His first excuse was, I'm a liar. I'm literally
00:42:19.340
a liar. I was lying about that. He's engaged in fairly nefarious activities that he is justifying
00:42:29.740
according to his own liberal mores, totally divorced from traditional morality. He's on a gay date at,
00:42:37.980
so Yale University is the gayest university in the Western Hemisphere, probably in the entire world.
00:42:42.660
And he really melts down when he's told no. When a conservative, and he's probably met a handful
00:42:53.420
of conservatives in his entire life, pushes back and says, hey, we're not going to let you do that.
00:42:58.560
We're going to expose you for engaging in gain-of-function research, which is very,
00:43:02.300
very dangerous, possibly illegal, and certainly immoral, and we're just not going to let you do it.
00:43:08.360
And he just loses, starts throwing the iPads, starts running around, tries to play the race
00:43:13.160
card, apparently, according to that commenter earlier. Just a complete meltdown. Pfizer's
00:43:17.760
finally responded. Pfizer finally said, allegations have recently been made
00:43:22.740
related to gain-of-function and directed evolution research at Pfizer, and the company would like to
00:43:27.100
set the record straight. In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine,
00:43:31.640
Pfizer has not conducted gain-of-function or directed evolution research.
00:43:38.360
I don't really believe that. I'm going to parse that sentence. Because maybe the sentence is true,
00:43:43.960
but I don't think that the implication is true. In the ongoing development of the COVID-19 vaccine,
00:43:53.900
Pfizer has not conducted gain-of-function or directed evolution research. So has not done it does not
00:43:59.580
necessarily contradict what the guy said in the video. Because the Pfizer executive in the video
00:44:03.920
was stating more that Pfizer is looking into doing this, that they think that this would be a way to
00:44:10.700
get ahead of vaccine development. So it doesn't necessarily mean that they have already engaged
00:44:18.060
in this kind of research. It could be that they simply plan to engage in that. And it would make
00:44:21.440
sense that the guy in the Pfizer video would know that because he's apparently a worldwide director
00:44:27.940
for mRNA research at Pfizer has not conducted gain-of-function or directed evolution research.
00:44:35.120
Has Pfizer already conducted that kind of search outside of the ongoing development of the COVID-19
00:44:42.460
vaccine? Because they're very specific there. They say, in the development of this vaccine,
00:44:46.220
we don't engage in gain-of-function. Well, have you elsewhere? And are you planning to
00:44:52.460
for the COVID-19 vaccine? And why did it take you damn near a week to come up with this excuse?
00:45:00.640
At least several days. Why did it take you so long to say no? Do you trust these people? I don't trust
00:45:05.940
these people at all. That's why you're seeing a big flip right now. The right used to be the side
00:45:14.440
that believed all the scientists. And the left used to be the side that was anti-vax and anti-Monsanto
00:45:21.520
and anti-corporate food and anti all that stuff. That has completely flipped. That has flipped in
00:45:26.140
large part because of COVID. When I say that our politics today is largely a reaction to, not the
00:45:33.580
virus, but a reaction to what the virus and the subsequent political reaction exposed about our
00:45:40.200
political system. I mean, to the point that now all the crunchy granola hippie people, they're on the
00:45:44.760
right. They're not on the left. All the anti-vaxxers, they're on the right. They're not on the left.
00:45:49.140
Even if those people don't quite know it yet, all the anti-seed oil kind of memes and cultural
00:45:58.200
bubblings up that you're seeing, it's on the right. It's not on the left. And the shill for the people
00:46:02.420
in the lab coats, in the big executive office towers, trying to stick your arm full of poison
00:46:07.140
and trying to pour poison down your gullet, trying to give you weird Frankenstein lab-grown meat,
00:46:13.080
which we'll get to tomorrow. Don't have time to get to that today.
00:46:15.240
Okay, those people are on the left, and we do not want what they are selling.
00:46:20.740
Today is Music Monday. The rest of the show continues now. Mr. Davies and the producing team
00:46:24.740
has some really profound music for me to analyze because you know I am a cultural maven.
00:46:31.620
I am the hip-hop, pippity-pop kind of music man over here. You don't want to miss it. Become a
00:46:36.900
member and use code Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. We'll see you over there.