The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1173 - Democrats Team Up With Republicans To Spend All Your Money

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00:00:37.840 House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has just announced that in the upcoming spending fight,

00:00:42.740 any and all spending cuts to Social Security and Medicare are, quote, completely off the table.

00:00:49.820 Now, this promise poses a problem. Since 46% of federal spending comes from Social Security

00:00:58.060 Medicare and related programs, which means that if no one wants to touch those entitlements,

00:01:05.600 the federal government would have to reduce 85% of all other spending, military, education, energy,

00:01:14.240 servicing the debt, all of it in order to deal with the deficit, which is to say it becomes impossible.

00:01:20.900 Republicans used to pull their hair out over this issue of entitlement reform some 20 years ago,

00:01:28.040 back when the debt to GDP ratio was less than 60%. We came pretty close to actually reforming

00:01:34.920 entitlements a dozen or so years ago when debt to GDP was about 90%. But now we've got a debt that is

00:01:42.960 123% of GDP. In other words, we are just not going to pay it back or ever meaningfully pay it down,

00:01:53.400 especially since we accumulated all that debt back when interest rates were around zero before they

00:01:58.640 shot up in recent months, making debt much more expensive to service and pay off. But it doesn't

00:02:04.460 really matter because the U.S. is the top dog around the world. So as long as we remain dominant and our

00:02:10.780 dollar remains trustworthy, the U.S. can keep on spending money we don't have with pretty much

00:02:16.540 no consequences. We are in a new phase of our nation's history, and everybody knows it, and

00:02:22.920 nobody is even pretending otherwise anymore. Not even the Republicans, not even the conservatives.

00:02:29.020 We no longer need to worry as much about how to pay off tens of trillions of dollars of debt,

00:02:34.460 but we've only traded that problem for a tougher one. How do we remain the world's most powerful

00:02:41.620 empire forever? I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:52.500 Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Walter Sobchak, who says,

00:02:56.940 I have to click two agreements to watch some wonder Mike spit some sick truths to my ears.

00:03:02.680 Thank goodness I can just watch WAP without any warning because of its pure wholesomeness.

00:03:07.880 This is pretty weird yesterday. A number of you called my attention to it, that there was not one,

00:03:14.000 but actually there were two warnings that you had to click on before you could watch my episode,

00:03:18.620 my episode on the news of the day, my episode on the officer involved killing in Memphis,

00:03:25.320 my episode on the Paul Pelosi home invasion, my episode on, I don't know, the 2024 race.

00:03:33.400 Apparently all that was a little too much. My episode on Pfizer, maybe that was what triggered it.

00:03:38.880 I don't know. It's kind of weird though. You can go watch any manner of smut, porn, violent videos,

00:03:46.400 bizarre lies. You can watch that on YouTube, no problem, but you want to watch The Michael Knowles 0.81

00:03:51.220 show. I don't know where it's for, you're not allowed to do that. That's too bad. Even though

00:03:55.300 all we're trying to do on this show is give you a little bit of, of an antidote to some of the poison

00:04:02.280 that we see in our culture. And when you need an antidote and when you need it fast, even as supply

00:04:07.000 chains break down, you got to check out Jace Medical. Right now, go to jacemedical.com, use promo

00:04:12.000 code Knowles. If the past couple of years has taught you anything, it is that in a crisis like a global

00:04:18.580 pandemic or a natural disaster, even the basics can be hard to come by. That is why you've got

00:04:24.120 to be prepared for anything. Jace Medical is here to help. This is a brand new sponsor to the show

00:04:28.940 that I'm really, really excited about. Jace Medical helps you get a long-term supply of prescription

00:04:35.060 medication. Their mission is to empower you to be better medically prepared. A great way to start

00:04:40.820 preparing is with the Jace case. It's a pack of five different courses of antibiotics that you can

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00:04:59.040 jump on a quick call with one of their board certified physicians from there. You can ask

00:05:02.860 your physician treatment related questions on an ongoing basis. I'm going to put this really simply

00:05:07.300 for you. If China invades Taiwan, the US supply chain is going to be cut off. Okay. If any number of

00:05:13.440 crises occur in the world, you're going to be cut off. Make sure that you've got the medication that

00:05:17.640 you need. All right. We now in the Knowles household have peace of mind because of Jace case. I want you

00:05:22.400 to be prepared for anything. Go to jacemedical.com, enter code Knowles at checkout for a discount on

00:05:27.020 your order. That is jacemedical.com, promo code Knowles. Good news is we don't even need to pretend

00:05:33.020 to care about paying down our debt and dealing with our deficits anymore. Bad news is we need to remain

00:05:37.580 the dominant empire or else it's all going to collapse. You, you only don't need to worry about

00:05:43.560 your debt when you're the top dog. When you're not the top dog though, then, then consequences can come

00:05:50.860 quite suddenly, very, very gradually over time. And then quite suddenly. So the question is who's

00:05:56.360 going to run the empire? That's what a lot of people are asking right now. Donald Trump wants to

00:06:01.240 run the empire. Joe Biden wants to run the empire. And increasingly it would appear that Ron

00:06:07.080 DeSantis wants to run the empire. DeSantis is doing a great job in Florida. He's got a book coming out,

00:06:12.480 one of these politician-like books that sets the stage for a presidential campaign. He's got a ton

00:06:17.320 of support. He's surging in the polls all over the country. President Trump does not like this.

00:06:22.920 President Trump says that Ron DeSantis is a globalist. He's specifically referring to the

00:06:31.020 club for growth here. And, and he's attacking the club for growth and he's attacking Ron DeSantis and

00:06:37.720 he's attacking the candidates associated with both these guys. He says the club for growth is a

00:06:41.740 globalist group that I've been taking to the cleaners for years. We worked together for a period,

00:06:46.700 but they couldn't get away from China, Europe, Asia, and parts unknown. They know I won't play that

00:06:52.760 game. I am America first all the way. That's the only way we will make America great again.

00:06:57.020 Ron DeSantis, who I made governor in both the primary and the general, is also a globalist

00:07:03.580 and so are his donors. Jeb Low Energy Bush was next to him last week. Check past.

00:07:11.580 So now you can tell there's a little bit of a logical issue in this attack on Ron DeSantis,

00:07:18.640 which is, he says, Ron DeSantis, who I made governor, who I, who I got through both the

00:07:28.620 primary and the general, is a globalist. So you say, well, if he's, if he's a good governor,

00:07:34.420 then you can, you should take credit for him. If he's a bad governor and he's a globalist,

00:07:37.960 you probably don't want to take credit for him, but it doesn't matter. Trump is throwing the

00:07:40.620 kitchen sink at Ron DeSantis. And I think it's a smart move. I know that a lot of Republicans are very

00:07:48.380 upset. Certainly people who are already signed up on the DeSantis train, they're very upset at Trump

00:07:51.960 for this. Even a lot of Trump supporters say, why man, come on, the race isn't for, or the election

00:07:57.180 rather, isn't for another couple of years, almost two years. Why are you going after DeSantis? He's

00:08:02.640 one of the most popular Republicans in the country. He has to go after DeSantis because DeSantis has a

00:08:07.480 lot of momentum on his side and he's gaining a lot of support. And so if Trump wants to beat DeSantis,

00:08:13.560 he's got to attack DeSantis. Do I think that this is the most persuasive attack I've ever

00:08:19.200 read in my life? No, not exactly. I don't, I don't think that this is changing a whole lot

00:08:24.240 of minds on Ron DeSantis, but it's the opening salvo in what Trump is preparing to be a long

00:08:30.520 primary campaign against Ron DeSantis. Now, what even some people who like Trump are saying is this

00:08:38.240 is a bad strategy because you're attacking Ron DeSantis on an area where he is very strong and

00:08:44.240 you are very weak. Stop going after Ron DeSantis specifically. You don't even see it too much in

00:08:50.140 this particular attack, but you've seen it more broadly in Trump's salvos against Ron DeSantis.

00:08:56.460 He'll say, well, DeSantis shut down Florida. DeSantis wasn't that great on COVID. DeSantis wasn't,

00:09:01.620 he's not all the things he says that he is. And they're saying, this is really dumb. You should 0.99

00:09:06.980 attack DeSantis where he's weak, not where he's strong. DeSantis is really strong on COVID. Trump

00:09:11.460 is relatively weaker on COVID. Why would, this is not just craziness, okay? This is not just Trump

00:09:17.480 shooting from the hip and following a gut impulse that's wrong. There is a good argument for this

00:09:23.520 strategy. This is the Karl Rove strategy. So most people just intuitively believe you should attack

00:09:30.180 your opponent where they are weak and you should, you should not, not attack your opponent in an area

00:09:36.160 where you yourself are weak. Rove said, no, it's the opposite. Attack your opponent's strengths.

00:09:41.280 You don't need to attack their weaknesses. Their weaknesses are manifest. Attack your opponent's

00:09:45.660 strengths. Turn your opponent's strengths into a problem for them. This was most clearly done in

00:09:51.440 2004 when Bush was running against John Kerry. The Iraq war was a big issue in the 2004 race.

00:09:57.400 John Kerry was a military veteran, a decorated one, even though John Kerry's behavior after the war was

00:10:04.080 shameful. And George Bush did not really have all that much military service. So the common sense

00:10:10.320 said, don't attack John Kerry on the military. But that's what the Republicans did. Specifically,

00:10:15.140 the swift boat veterans for truth attacked Kerry, said his service was a bunch of BS. He was a

00:10:20.400 grandstander, a showboater, a ribbon collector. And it worked. The strategy did work. So you might hate

00:10:27.360 Trump. You might love Trump. You might love DeSantis. You might hate DeSantis. I don't care.

00:10:30.180 My thought, though, is, one, Trump's strategy makes a lot of sense. DeSantis's strategy is very

00:10:36.720 smart, too. DeSantis is just not responding to any of this. He's going to continue to govern in

00:10:40.900 Florida. That's exactly what he should be doing. And for the people who say, well, why do they have

00:10:45.880 to attack each other? Because this is politics. Why does Trump have to do this? Because this is

00:10:52.340 politics. Well, it shouldn't be like this. Well, it is like this. It is always like this. This is what

00:10:58.060 politics is. If jockeying for power annoys you rather than amuses you, why are you paying so

00:11:07.620 much attention to politics? Go watch baseball. I don't know. Although baseball can be very intense,

00:11:14.740 too. I don't know. Go to an art gallery. If watching ambitious men jockey to gain power and

00:11:23.440 attack one another in the process drives you crazy and makes your blood boil, then stop being

00:11:29.620 involved in politics. You're not going to like it. That's all politics is. We like to think that

00:11:35.580 those men, once they attain power, will govern in a just way for the common good and do all these

00:11:40.400 higher-minded things. But the actual process of attaining power is this. This is it. This is all

00:11:45.360 it is. DeSantis is doing exactly what he should be doing. Trump is also doing exactly what he should

00:11:53.220 be doing. And we'll see how the primary process shakes out. Speaking of political jobs, a story

00:11:59.860 came out a few days ago. We didn't have time to get to it before. Out of the RNC, the Republican

00:12:04.840 National Committee, Ronna McDaniel was reelected. There was a race that came on between Ronna McDaniel, 1.00

00:12:10.600 who's run the GOP for a dozen years, and Harmeet Dillon, who was a favorite of some more conservative

00:12:16.940 people probably than support Ronna McDaniel. Though it broke down, it was a little bit confusing,

00:12:22.620 because Trump backed McDaniel, DeSantis backed Harmeet Dillon. So you've got conservatives in both

00:12:28.940 camps. You've got some squishes in both camps, too. McDaniel won. As I knew would happen, I did have

00:12:36.480 some people come up to me behind the scenes, ask me what I thought. I don't think I even maybe talked

00:12:41.180 about this on the air, so I don't know that I get full Nolstradamus credit for this prediction.

00:12:44.800 But I did predict it. And people said, ah, Michael, we've got to back Harmeet. We're going to throw all

00:12:49.580 of our support behind Harmeet. I said, well, you're free to do that. I like Harmeet Dillon very much.

00:12:53.320 I said, but if you wanted me to place a bet right now, my bet is Ronna McDaniel holds on.

00:12:59.440 These people looked at me shocked. They said, oh, what? What are you talking about? All the support is for

00:13:04.380 Harmeet Dillon. I said, no, people on Twitter like Harmeet Dillon. And I'm sure many people at the RNC

00:13:10.100 privately like Harmeet Dillon, too. But Ronna McDaniel will hold on to power. If you are surprised

00:13:15.700 by the re-election of Ronna McDaniel, 111 votes to Harmeet's 53, and then Mike Lindell got four votes,

00:13:21.360 if you're surprised by that, you haven't been paying terribly close attention to the Republican Party.

00:13:28.380 The way that the party committees work, the way that elections work broadly,

00:13:31.780 does not correspond often, if ever at all, to what people in certain political bubbles are

00:13:39.520 talking about on Twitter. That's not how it works. Some people are very, very upset about this. They

00:13:43.760 say, no, we can't. That's terrible. Ronna didn't do a good job. Now she's still running things. This

00:13:49.220 is terrible. I don't really care who runs the RNC. I like Ronna. I like Harmeet. I like Mike Lindell,

00:13:55.500 for that matter. I don't really care all that much. It's not a great job to have. It involves

00:14:01.180 a lot of really granular kinds of decisions. And most importantly of all, any significant

00:14:08.820 improvement to the Republican Party or to US politics is going to come from outside of the

00:14:14.340 party committee. I'm not looking to the RNC to solve our political problems. That's not what

00:14:19.520 the committee was built for. That's not what the committee does. I don't think that's what the

00:14:23.360 committee can do. Donald Trump didn't win in 2016 by convincing the RNC to support him.

00:14:28.860 Donald Trump engaged in a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. And then the RNC sort of got on

00:14:34.640 board. So, okay, whoever runs the committee, fine, whatever. The real significant improvement,

00:14:40.020 it ain't coming from some party committee in Washington, D.C. Speaking of employment,

00:14:46.660 a Google executive was fired for not being inclusive enough. Because this Google executive,

00:14:55.300 you see, he engaged in a terrible crime. He favored good employees over underperforming

00:15:02.200 employees. His Google exec was fairly high ranking. He was allegedly sexually harassed by his boss

00:15:10.120 and then fired for failing to be inclusive, according to a lawsuit filed in New York federal court.

00:15:17.780 He fired Ryan Olihan as managing director of food, beverage, and restaurants,

00:15:22.920 telling him it was because he was not inclusive enough. What did he do? Google's employee

00:15:29.760 investigations team explained that this guy had shown favoritism toward high performers,

00:15:34.720 which it considered non-inclusive, and commented on employees' walking pace and hustle,

00:15:39.800 which it considered ableist. If you've ever worked in a restaurant, I've worked in restaurants,

00:15:45.880 you know, it's a kind of intense environment, especially if you're working in the kitchen.

00:15:48.900 But waiters, too. You've got to move. You've got to move fast. So if you say, hey,

00:15:52.960 move quickly. Let's go. Put a little hop in your step. That's very ableist.

00:15:58.180 And the real issue was, apparently, this guy didn't discriminate against white people enough.

00:16:06.480 In February of 2022, Adam Stewart, who's VP of Google's Consumer Government and Entertainment

00:16:10.780 Division, told Olihan that there were, quote, obviously too many white guys in the division.

00:16:16.320 And then in July, Stewart and the company's HR department, quote, encouraged Olihan to terminate

00:16:23.260 the employment of a male member of his team and replace him with a female hire because it wasn't

00:16:28.760 inclusive enough. Unless you fire the white guys and unless you discriminate against white people 0.97

00:16:34.400 and against men, you're not being inclusive enough. And why? Why is this? Olihan says he's just 0.98

00:16:42.920 picking the best people for the job. He doesn't care about race. He doesn't care about sex. He's

00:16:47.520 just hiring the best people for the job. And he's favoring high performers and promoting them.

00:16:51.500 Google says, yeah, maybe you are, but that's a problem.

00:16:53.660 If the argument is that non-whites cannot compete on merit, then the only solution 0.96

00:17:04.860 is conscious active discrimination against whites. If the argument is that women can't compete with men 0.90

00:17:14.620 on the merit in these jobs, then the only solution is active discrimination against men.

00:17:20.880 That is the only solution. You see this in major lawsuits right now that will determine the fate of

00:17:29.800 affirmative action, quote, unquote, in college. What's affirmative action in college? It's saying

00:17:35.480 that students of certain racial backgrounds cannot compete against students of other racial backgrounds

00:17:43.640 on the merit. And so you've got to actively discriminate against the students of the more

00:17:50.840 successful racial backgrounds. And what does this mean in practice? You know, the lawsuit never would

00:17:55.580 have gone anywhere if this were simply about discriminating against white people. You're not

00:17:58.920 allowed to complain about that. You're not allowed to object to that at all in our culture. The reason

00:18:02.720 that it's gone anywhere with the universities is because Asians got lumped in with the white people

00:18:07.560 too. That was one of the real flaws of the affirmative action regime. If they had just 0.82

00:18:11.460 limited it to white people, it wouldn't matter. It is legal and culturally accepted and frankly,

00:18:17.160 culturally encouraged to attack white people and slander white people and discriminate against 0.94

00:18:21.800 them in our culture. The mistake they made was lumping in Asians. And so the lawsuits in this regard 0.94

00:18:26.520 have said, wait a second, why are you discriminating against Asians in many cases who come from difficult

00:18:32.840 backgrounds, immigrants, don't have a lot of money, didn't have a lot of opportunities. Why are you 1.00

00:18:37.380 docking their points on the SAT or why are you docking their points in the overall metric to admit

00:18:42.260 students to college and then giving an artificial boost to black and Hispanic students? Why are you, 0.91

00:18:50.720 why on earth would you do that? And no one can really give an answer, but that's, but it has to be that

00:18:55.580 way. This is the logic of it. Either people are going to compete on the merit or you are going to

00:19:05.320 actively discriminate against people. And it's interesting that this lawsuit is coming up right

00:19:11.060 now as the Supreme Court. We are waiting for them to strike down affirmative action or to uphold

00:19:15.580 affirmative action. That is going to have a lot to say, not just about this case of a Google executive

00:19:20.000 who was not inclusive enough because he was not exclusive enough. He was not inclusive enough

00:19:25.280 because he didn't fire enough white guys. It's not only going to have something to say about the fate of

00:19:30.380 that case. It's going to have something to say about the future of the country. Do we have a

00:19:35.860 caste system or not? Do we have favored groups or not? And therefore disfavored groups or not?

00:19:42.380 Speaking of the job market, Maryland lawmakers are proposing increasing the weekend by 50%.

00:19:50.120 That's right. They're proposing a four day work week. This legislation would provide state tax credits

00:19:57.500 as high as three quarters of a million dollars per year for businesses that reduce at least 30

00:20:01.740 employees from a 40 hour work week to a 32 hour work week without a reduction in pay or benefits.

00:20:09.640 Now, of course, the businesses might be able to do this in the short term because they're just

00:20:13.600 getting the pay and benefits from the government and then they can just pass that along.

00:20:17.940 Why do people want a four day work week? Well, one, because we all want to just sit on the couch

00:20:22.120 an extra day. That sounds very pleasant. Or even spend more time with our families or catch up on

00:20:27.340 reading or fix up the house. But the argument from the business side is that the four day work

00:20:32.860 week framework gives employees a better work life balance and actually makes them more productive.

00:20:40.100 Some 45% of workers cite lackluster flexibility when discussing why they left previous jobs.

00:20:45.340 Roughly 48% mentioned child care difficulties, according to a survey from Pew Research. And this

00:20:51.380 international study concluded that revenues increased 8% for companies involved with the

00:20:57.760 experiment. So they reduced the work week by one day. Revenue increases by 8%. Now, this is just one

00:21:03.180 study. Perhaps there will be others to back this up. But I can totally empathize, not only sympathize,

00:21:10.360 but empathize with the workers who say, look, I don't have enough flexibility. I'm not seeing my

00:21:13.900 kids enough. This is really tough, especially now that we have an economy where both parents are 1.00

00:21:19.820 expected to work. It's very, very difficult in this economy to raise a family on a single income.

00:21:25.760 So daddy's got to go work. Mommy's got to go work. And then who's taking care of the kids? 1.00

00:21:30.180 Then you've got to try to arrange, do I get it? Maybe I can get an extra half day off here every

00:21:34.020 so often. But really what you've got to do is just take all the money we're making at the widget

00:21:37.720 factory and go pay some other woman to raise our kids. We don't really want to do that. Can we go on 1.00

00:21:41.100 vacation? Do we have any flexibility at all? So the Maryland lawmakers are proposing this

00:21:47.280 radical idea of the four-day workweek. I have a more radical idea. I know you're going to hear

00:21:54.280 the arch-capitalist libertarian type people who say, no, we shouldn't reduce the workweek at all.

00:22:00.400 We should work seven days a week and we should let the market sort it all out. No, I'm not arguing

00:22:04.120 that. I'm all for reducing the workweek for some people. What if, follow me here, we reduce

00:22:12.220 the workweek of mothers dramatically. What if we reduce it down to like nothing, down to from five 0.99

00:22:21.140 days, not just to four days, maybe to like zero to one days. And then we balance that. I know we're

00:22:27.280 going to need balance in the economy. We balance that out by having the fathers and the husbands 1.00

00:22:31.940 work even harder. So you've got a situation where you've got the moms can stay home and raise the kids 1.00

00:22:38.560 and you reduce the number of people in the labor force because now you're removing up to half of

00:22:45.300 the labor force. And so therefore the wages are going to increase for the other half that remains

00:22:50.180 in the labor force. And in so doing, you're much more likely to have a country in which a family can

00:22:58.200 support itself on a single income. And then the children get to see mommy and they don't just need

00:23:04.660 mommy to go work for some Mr. McGillicuddy at the widget factory so that mommy can put her money 1.00

00:23:09.160 into a bank account and then daddy can pay some other woman to raise the kids. What if then, 1.00

00:23:13.020 what if you actually had in that case a complementarity between the roles in the family

00:23:17.780 and you had the children spending time with their mothers and the father going out and bringing home

00:23:21.620 the bacon? Wouldn't that be so radical and weird? That's such a crazy idea. I wonder, maybe I'll call

00:23:26.680 up the Maryland lawmakers because they're onto something here. All these people doing all these

00:23:32.360 studies and the lab coats and they're onto something here. But maybe our answer is, maybe we've got more

00:23:40.200 evidence for this than even for the four-day work week because this is the way the world worked

00:23:44.480 until very, very recently. Really until the World War. So the Second World War when the men were all 0.94

00:23:51.260 overseas, women started to enter into the labor force. And then companies really enjoyed women entering

00:23:56.660 the labor force because contrary to the gender pay gap or whatever nonsense you hear about that, 1.00

00:24:00.260 the companies love to hire women because the more people you have in the labor force, the more it 1.00

00:24:04.620 drives down the cost of labor. And this has been a big boon to GDP. This has been a big boon to

00:24:09.600 corporations. This has been disastrous though for the American family, which is why workers are 1.00

00:24:14.540 complaining about all these problems right now. But you can fix these problems. You don't need to

00:24:17.740 reinvent the wheel. You can go back to a more traditional way of living. Speaking of men and women, 0.90

00:24:23.620 Dylan Mulvaney. I covered Dylan Mulvaney, not on this show exactly, but I did a long video that

00:24:31.840 ended up going pretty viral on YouTube about who Dylan Mulvaney is, how this obscure Broadway performer

00:24:39.460 ended up pretending to become a woman and then sitting down interviewing the president of the United

00:24:44.380 States in a very short period of time. And I gave my take on Mulvaney that he's not just a troll. 0.71

00:24:51.020 He's not just making fun of transgenderism, even though he's prancing around and performing this 0.97

00:24:58.860 ridiculous caricature of a woman saying, you know, it's my first day as a woman. I've cried three 0.96

00:25:04.280 times today. Oh, which is frankly somewhat accurate. Part of his performance is quite a caricature,

00:25:10.160 but women do cry a lot. Okay. And it's just in my experience, I've known many women in my life,

00:25:15.000 but a lot of his performance is an over-the-top caricature. And so some people thought,

00:25:20.120 oh, he's just a troll. He's just making fun of the whole thing. No, I don't. My argument was that

00:25:24.920 this is an actor who's been trained in the modern style of acting, who is indulging the worst

00:25:31.520 and most dangerous impulses of that style of acting, which actually goes back even before

00:25:37.060 the group theater, even before the Strasburg Method, it goes back to the Russian Moscow art

00:25:41.200 theater director Stanislavski, and it goes back to Freud. And so it has ripple effects in our culture

00:25:46.840 far beyond the theater. And it would seem that I am right because Dylan Mulvaney has undergone a

00:25:52.500 facial feminization surgery to carve up his face to make him look marginally more like a woman.

00:25:59.420 So Dylan Mulvaney comes out in this bizarre kind of ballet costume,

00:26:11.960 not looking much more like a woman. His face looks a bit like Caitlyn Jenner,

00:26:19.460 because I assume, sorry, Bruce Jenner, after he revealed himself as Caitlyn,

00:26:22.800 because I assume they all follow the same guidelines, but he doesn't, he doesn't look like him.

00:26:35.460 That's a wrap on face reveal. Oh my gosh. Hi, I missed you. You know,

00:26:40.840 I have a flair for the dramatics, but it's so good, right? I'm so happy. And it's still me.

00:26:46.640 It's just a little bit softer of aversion. And I just hope that all trans and non-binary people can

00:26:52.960 get the gender affirming resources that they need, because this is life changing and sometimes

00:26:58.760 life saving. So thank you so much for supporting me. And we've got so much to catch up on. I love you.

00:27:07.780 This was Dylan Mulvaney's face reveal. In a sane and healthy culture, Dylan Mulvaney's

00:27:14.040 reveal would have been him in a straight jacket in a padded cell receiving the psychological help

00:27:19.920 that he needs. The reveal would be that this guy is going to go away for a little while. He's going

00:27:26.440 to get some help. Then maybe he'll come back when he realizes he's not a woman. But our society is no 1.00

00:27:31.160 longer sane or healthy really in any way. So the society now celebrates this delusion. Whatever it is,

00:27:39.840 he's not faking it. People don't get the bones in their face chopped up because they're faking it.

00:27:46.220 People don't get other things chopped off. I don't know if he's done that yet or not. Don't really

00:27:49.780 want to know either. They don't do that because they're faking it. This is a real delusion. And it's,

00:27:57.080 it goes a lot deeper than

00:27:58.720 just some people following some deviant desires. This is exploding as a phenomenon. It is a social

00:28:06.800 contagion. It might be because they're turning the fricking frogs gay with chemicals in the water. 0.99

00:28:11.200 More likely though, I think it's, it's a social phenomenon. And it's because all the rest of us 0.97

00:28:15.520 are indulging it with a straight face. If, if we as a society just said, nope, this is nuts. You have

00:28:20.700 no right to do any of this. You have no right to call yourself a woman. You, if you do, if you refer 0.97

00:28:25.700 to yourself as she and her, we are going to ostracize you for that. And we're going to, or there will be

00:28:32.540 consequences in your professional and educational life. And we're just not going to tolerate that at

00:28:37.240 all. If we, if we were a little less live and let live, man, then Dylan Mulvaney would live a much

00:28:42.860 better life. Because the consequences of our live and let live, who knows, man, maybe your good is my

00:28:48.900 bad. Maybe your yuck is my yum. Maybe your man is my woman. You know what I'm saying, man? Are, are

00:28:53.660 the consequences of that radical skepticism are now that this man is chopping up his face and engaging

00:29:02.300 even more destructive behavior that is not going to end well. Speaking of transgenderism, major, big 1.00

00:29:10.680 first, really, really big first. The first openly transgender figure skater has just appeared at the

00:29:21.080 European figure skating championships in Espoo, Finland. This is Minna Maria Antikainen, a Finnish skater

00:29:31.280 who's an older man, dressed up as a woman, skating around, not, not the most gracefully, but he's sort

00:29:41.880 of skating and lit and then he falls down. And then he falls on the ice and he can't stand up.

00:29:51.080 And so then the Finnish people with the flag come out and try to help him stand up. And then,

00:29:59.980 and the craziest part of this whole display is that we're not allowed to acknowledge it. I mean,

00:30:08.220 on this show we do, but in the culture, you're not, if you, if you're sitting there in that audience,

00:30:14.760 I, you can't hear it on any of the clips that I've seen and I'm sure you couldn't hear it in the,

00:30:19.920 in the audience. You're not allowed to say, oh, this is weird. This is funny. This is obviously

00:30:25.400 absurd. No, we all have to just sit there and pretend, oh yes, she's so beautiful. These poor

00:30:31.320 little girls who were on the track teams with all the confused men or on the Penn swimming team with

00:30:36.140 that hulk of a man who took all their trophies. And then what do the girls have to do? On camera, 0.97

00:30:42.060 they have to smile. They have to plaster a smile. They say, this is really great. She is so beautiful.

00:30:47.340 We love being on her team. And then privately, of course, when they're speaking to journalists and

00:30:53.440 they can remain anonymous, they say, this is terrible. We don't want some guy getting naked

00:30:56.200 in our locker room and taking our trophies and taking our scholarships. And this is deeply unjust.

00:31:00.100 But then when the cameras come out, they say, ah, well, this is, you are beautiful. Caitlin and

00:31:06.380 Dylan, though, I don't know what Dylan's new lady name is going to be. I guess Dylan's kind of

00:31:10.260 androgynous. You are beautiful. Mina Maria finished. You're the greatest skater I've ever seen.

00:31:16.040 You're a regular Tonya Harding. In totalitarian countries, one of the things that we marvel at 0.89

00:31:26.980 is that the people are forced to perform lies all the time. When Kim Jong-il died and you had major

00:31:35.500 parades all throughout North Korea to honor the death of the great leader,

00:31:40.120 you saw all those cameras in all these North Koreans. Perhaps some were moved seriously by 0.85

00:31:47.000 sympathy. I kind of doubt a lot of it, though. For many of them, they were performing it because

00:31:50.340 there were guns pointed at them. And they knew that if they didn't cry enough over the death of

00:31:55.060 dear leader, they could be tortured. They could be killed. Their family could be killed. 0.91

00:32:01.440 Everybody has to lie. This is true in Stalin's Russia, in the Soviet Union. This is true in China. 0.98

00:32:09.640 And this is now true in the West. We are forced to lie too because our government is increasingly

00:32:17.760 totalitarian. It's a total state. It comprises everything. If you in your HR meeting don't

00:32:27.880 affirm that some hulking, hairy dude wearing a dress in stilettos and with lipstick smeared on

00:32:33.680 his face is actually a beautiful woman, you could be fired. And you probably will be fired. 0.85

00:32:38.980 And once you're fired for that, you're going to have a hard time getting more employment.

00:32:43.020 And you're going to be a pariah in your society. We say, terrible when North Korea does that.

00:32:48.180 Terrible. And so the good thing we live in America, the land of the free and the home of

00:32:53.160 totalitarian delusion every day, more and more so. But love is love, right? Love is love. You do you.

00:33:02.860 Trans women are women. Everybody's whatever they want to be. If love is love, then I got a question

00:33:09.440 about a story that just came out. A story out of ABC News. A couple of hosts for Good Morning America

00:33:15.980 3 were just fired because they had an affair. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes. I've never watched this show.

00:33:23.900 I didn't know there was such a thing as Good Morning America 3. But they were hosts of it and they just

00:33:29.400 got fired because they were both married and then they had a consensual affair and then this came to

00:33:35.320 light. And it's not as though one person accused the other of sexual harassment or anything like that.

00:33:39.220 They were both married, but they had a consensual affair and now they're canned.

00:33:47.320 Why is that wrong? I know why it's wrong. Because marriage is an indissoluble bond between a husband

00:33:56.720 and a wife for the good of the spouses and the sake of the generation and education of children.

00:34:01.660 I know that it's wrong because spouses take a vow before God and before the political community

00:34:06.440 to remain with one another through thick and thin, good times and bad, sickness and health.

00:34:13.940 And that's wrong to break. But that's not what the modern culture believes. The modern culture

00:34:19.180 believes that marriage is nothing but a kind of meaningless sheet of paper and we can leave our

00:34:24.580 spouses for whatever reason we want and that's called a no-fault divorce. And there's nothing wrong

00:34:29.820 with polyamory, polygamy, whatever. There's nothing wrong with any of these arrangements.

00:34:34.060 Love is love. Love is love. That's the whole argument for redefining marriage is that the

00:34:42.080 affection between two men and the affection between two women is the same as marriage,

00:34:48.660 the affection and then institution that that desire leads toward in the institution of marriage.

00:34:57.860 That's all the same. Okay, well if love is love, if all shades of love and affection are exactly the

00:35:03.600 same, why don't they get to have their, there was consensual. Yeah, it wasn't so nice to their

00:35:09.160 spouses, but so what? We don't, we don't really give much credence to marriage vows anymore.

00:35:16.180 Why is this wrong? Because if, if we know that this is wrong, then what we're really saying is

00:35:22.340 that TJ Holmes and Amy Robach should have repressed their romantic desire for each other. They should

00:35:28.360 have denied the love that they felt for one another. They should have pushed it way, way deep down

00:35:33.500 because they had other obligations, because the moral order demanded more of them than that they

00:35:39.180 follow their love for one another to its physical conclusion. But if that's the case, then,

00:35:46.920 then isn't that, then isn't that just the case? Then isn't that just how it is? And shouldn't we apply

00:35:51.840 that to all other, all sorts of other manner of love as well? No, a little bit confusing. Love is

00:35:59.100 love except for Amy, Amy Robach and TJ Holmes. They don't get to have their love, but all sorts of

00:36:05.240 other people, all sorts of weird polyamorous people with three guys and two women and a billy goat.

00:36:09.980 That's fine. That's love. That's wonderful. How dare you judge that? But Amy Robach and TJ Holmes get

00:36:15.140 fired for a consensual affair. That's really weird. It's also really weird because Amy Robach,

00:36:20.420 I actually had forgotten this until producer Danny reminded me of this today. Amy Robach,

00:36:26.240 you may have heard of her because she was caught on a hidden mic discussing how she wanted to pursue

00:36:33.980 the Jeffrey Epstein story at ABC and the producers and the executives shut her down. And she knew that

00:36:40.080 Jeffrey Epstein was a real story and she knew that this involved a lot of corruption. She wanted to

00:36:45.580 run the story and the higher ups at the network said, nope, don't talk about that.

00:36:48.720 So that adds another layer to this where I think, huh, it's so, so weird how people who transgress

00:36:55.900 the powerful liberal elites, people, people who contradict them or who get on the wrong side of

00:37:02.240 them, they end up in a sex scandal and their career goes away and then they bury them. Not all that long

00:37:08.600 after they raise these problems. Really weird. Not obviously what they did is terribly wrong and they

00:37:13.280 should repent of it and go to confession and try to make up with their spouses and try to keep their

00:37:17.060 families together. There's a lot more to this story though. It seems like there's a lot more to this

00:37:21.700 story, both as a cultural matter and even as a particular political matter with regard to Mr.

00:37:28.720 Epstein, who may or probably did not kill himself, then meets the eye. Listen up folks. We have been

00:37:35.660 running a massive 40% off sale for annual memberships. It's ending soon. Do not miss the chance to celebrate

00:37:40.780 one of the greatest moments in Daily Wire history with one of the greatest offers. That is 40% off

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00:37:49.320 vaccine mandate. We won. Celebrate this victory by joining the winning team. And remember, this is

00:37:54.020 your last chance to get 40% off your new annual membership at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Sale

00:37:59.020 ends soon, so head to dailywire.com slash subscribe today. Today is Tuesday. Today is taking your calls

00:38:06.740 Tuesday. That is my new favorite segment because we have finally gotten technology from the 1970s at

00:38:14.860 the Daily Wire and I can take your calls right now. So let's turn to Luca in North Carolina. Luca,

00:38:25.200 you are on the air. Hi, Michael. So I'm in college and I'm taking this really great class called How to

00:38:33.280 Rule the World with this, like, One in a Million, like, Young, Genius, like, very conservative

00:38:39.220 professor. And we read Xenophon's account of Cyrus's life. And, you know, on all accounts, I think Cyrus

00:38:47.280 was a very good leader, except for some, you know, things near the end of his reign. But my question is

00:38:52.520 for you, the desire to, like, rule the world, that ambitious, like, drive that a lot of people and, like,

00:38:59.160 necessarily leaders have, do you think that that's, like, a fundamentally un-Christian desire?

00:39:04.520 No, I don't think that it's necessarily an un-Christian desire. I think it can be a perfectly

00:39:10.220 Christian desire within its just limits. I mean, as with all government, there's a good version and 0.82

00:39:16.280 a bad version. So I mentioned this on the show yesterday, Polybius's theory of anicyclosis,

00:39:21.760 the cycle of regimes, that you have three good versions of government, monarchy, aristocracy,

00:39:26.420 and democracy. And then you've got their corrupted bad versions, which is tyranny,

00:39:31.920 oligarchy, and mob rule, respectively. And what's the difference? The difference is that the good

00:39:37.360 versions of government are versions in which the rulers rule for the common good. So you can have

00:39:42.820 a monarch who rules for the common good. There have been plenty of good monarchs throughout history.

00:39:46.580 You can have an aristocracy that rules for the common good. And you can have democracies that rule

00:39:51.040 for the common good. But in the corrupted versions, the rulers, be they a single individual,

00:39:55.000 a group of people, or the people at large, are the ones who rule not for the common good,

00:39:59.880 but for their own selfish interests. So you think of this in the American context,

00:40:03.920 that warning that the republic is going to collapse when people realize that they can bribe

00:40:09.020 the people with their own money. And then demagogues rise up, and this creates a big problem.

00:40:14.860 So we need government. Government is given to us by God for our own good.

00:40:19.700 We need government to execute justice and to preserve law, order, and peace, which are good

00:40:25.580 things. And the civil authority has ultimately the sword to execute punishment, even capital

00:40:31.140 punishment, and does not bear that sword in vain. This is a fallen world. The prince of this world

00:40:36.720 is the devil. So we don't want to think that we can save ourselves and create a kind of paradise

00:40:44.180 on earth through civil government. That is not going to happen. And if that is the impulse

00:40:49.580 to take over the world, then that's not very good. But if we want to rule the world

00:40:55.000 and thereby maintain some degree of peace and justice and allow people to flourish,

00:41:02.320 then that can be a wonderful thing. I know that this is going to sound a little jarring to people

00:41:07.180 who have been raised on the kind of conservative mottos that government is always bad and no government

00:41:13.180 is best and we should never pursue politics whatsoever. All the shallow libertarian, quasi-anarchist

00:41:20.820 maxims that have become popular in the last 30 or so years. But that's not true. We shouldn't

00:41:26.240 just focus on procedure to the exclusion of substance. We shouldn't just focus on form to

00:41:31.360 the exclusion of substance. The question is not, is it good to wield political power or not wield

00:41:37.140 political power? The question is, what are you wielding the political power in service of? Really,

00:41:43.780 really good question. Let's turn to Matthew from Louisiana. Matthew, you're on the air.

00:41:51.240 Hey, Michael. I have a question about a recent post from Thomas Massey on Twitter regarding Project

00:41:58.180 Veritas. And we always kind of discuss and debate what is the public square and what should be allowed

00:42:03.780 in it. And I guess unless Project Veritas and uncovering the idea that Pfizer may potentially

00:42:11.000 be mutating viruses was somehow illegally gained, I'm curious your thoughts on using the terms of

00:42:20.080 service, if you will, on something like YouTube to potentially restrict the uploading of otherwise

00:42:26.840 legal videos when that's kind of their business is uploading videos. And just your thoughts on,

00:42:32.540 you know, how we may be able to challenge things and truly open up the public square for debate and

00:42:39.020 discussion. So I appreciate your thoughts. Really good question. I actually had my own

00:42:44.140 video yesterday censored by YouTube. So, you know, I put this show out on, it goes out on terrestrial

00:42:49.760 radio all over the country, goes out on the podcast feed, goes out on Daily Wire Plus, which is where

00:42:55.100 we have the mostly way, and really we can say whatever we want. But sometimes on YouTube in particular,

00:43:00.540 and Facebook, they will censor us, they'll put warnings up. And I had two warnings on my video

00:43:04.960 yesterday. I don't really know why I did talk about Project Veritas and Pfizer, so it might have

00:43:09.880 had something to do with that. The short answer to your question is Google and its subsidiary, YouTube,

00:43:16.320 they have no right to censor this information. They have no right as a private company, well,

00:43:21.700 if you don't like it, build your own YouTube. Nope, I don't buy that for one second. If I don't like it,

00:43:26.320 I'm going to wield my political power that I have as a citizen in a self-governing republic to stop

00:43:30.740 these people from taking important matters of public interest out of the public square.

00:43:35.640 Google controls 90% of the flow of information around the internet. If you control the public

00:43:40.500 squares, particularly in a republic, you control the whole political order. And I, as a citizen,

00:43:44.720 have something to say about that. And I want to bring the full force of the state down to stop

00:43:49.960 them from doing it. There's a further issue with Google and YouTube, which is that they are kind

00:43:56.220 of arms of the government. Yes, they're kind of private companies, but there was a lot of government

00:44:00.660 money that went into building Google. They work very, very closely with the government. And so

00:44:04.860 I don't think that they're protected as some kind of private company. I think when they violate our

00:44:08.440 free speech, in many cases, that is a violation of the First Amendment. You saw this, especially in

00:44:13.760 the Twitter files, where it came to light, thanks to Elon Musk, that the FBI and the DOJ were

00:44:18.200 pressuring Twitter to censor information. Okay, now it's no longer just Twitter as a private

00:44:22.880 corporation censoring information, and you have no recourse to First Amendment protections.

00:44:27.940 Now it's the government using Twitter as a proxy. And that's very often what happens,

00:44:32.060 and I suspect that's what's happening here with Google. I say bring the full weight of the state

00:44:37.140 down on them. Let's see. Let's turn to Kyle in North Carolina. Hello, Kyle.

00:44:48.200 Well, my question is, how do you balance completely avoiding near occasions of sin and the chance to

00:44:58.120 improve in your own virtue? Great question. Really good question. There's a good book on this topic by

00:45:04.600 Dom Lorenzo Scupoli. It's a book that's about 500 years old called The Spiritual Combat. And the answer

00:45:10.520 is that it depends on the sin and it depends on you. So your question is, I think the premise here is

00:45:19.900 that if you want to improve in virtue, then you need to be able to look your sin in the face very

00:45:24.980 often and be able to resist it. So if you want to get over your alcohol problem, it's not enough to

00:45:30.940 just throw out all the alcohol in your home. You also need to be able to be in a restaurant where

00:45:34.640 there is alcohol and not feel so tempted that you got to go grab it. Okay. That's true of most sins.

00:45:41.760 And the way to deal with that is prudently and in such a way that, okay, maybe if you're a booze

00:45:49.140 hound, you got all the booze out of your house for now and you haven't had a drink in months. And then

00:45:53.840 now you're at a party and there's a bar on the other side of the room. And you're not going to go

00:45:57.660 near the bar, but it's all the way on the other side of the room. And then maybe you can be in a place

00:46:01.880 where there's more alcohol and more people are drinking. And you can do that gradually and you've

00:46:06.120 got to test your own limits. There is one sin that this is not true of. According to Dom Lorenzo

00:46:11.160 Schuppoli in The Spiritual Combat, that would be the sin of lust. That's the one where spiritual

00:46:16.600 writers have written about this for many, many eons. You just have to run. You're not going to

00:46:22.100 confront it. Okay. Only Christ can confront the Antichrist, period. With certain sins and temptations,

00:46:28.500 we can tolerate being around them a little bit more depending on your susceptibility to them.

00:46:32.780 With lust, because sex is so central to human nature, when you are finding yourself tempted

00:46:39.280 by lust, you just have to run. You have to run in the opposite direction. So there's no world in

00:46:45.040 which you get to the point where you can, I don't know, go to a strip club or something.

00:46:49.660 Or you're going to walk around that red light district in that town you're in. Or you're going

00:46:53.120 to go to, if we're not talking about that extreme, or you go to a bar on women's night at the bar and

00:47:01.180 you're surrounded by these single women. You're not going to get to a place where you're going to 1.00

00:47:06.600 improve in virtue by resisting that. You're more likely to destroy your life. As Andrew Klavan points

00:47:13.220 out, every man is two drinks and a wink away from destroying his own life. So I would flee from that

00:47:19.240 fast as you can. Okay, we got more calls that I want to get to. And then we got important stories

00:47:23.180 that Mr. Davies says I haven't covered. We're going to do that on the member block. If you are

00:47:26.720 not a Daily Wire member, what is wrong with you? Head on over. Dailywire.com slash Knowles. Use

00:47:32.140 promo code Knowles at checkout. You get two months free on all annual plans, and I will get to chat with

00:47:36.740 you in the member block.

00:47:49.240 Do you have time to get to?

00:47:50.260 Go, go, go, go.

00:47:54.760 Go, go.

00:47:55.760 Go, go, go, go.

00:47:57.220 Go, go, go, go.

00:47:58.760 Go, go, go.

00:47:59.380 Go, go, go.

00:47:59.820 Go, go.

00:48:01.780 Go, go, go, go, go.

00:48:03.980 Go, go, go.

00:48:04.780 Go, go.

00:48:05.260 Go, go, go, go, go.

00:48:08.080 Go, go, go, go.

00:48:10.360 Go, God go.

00:48:10.420 Go, go, go.

00:48:11.460 Go, go, go, go.

00:48:14.220 go, go.

The Michael Knowles Show - January 31, 2023

Ep. 1173 - Democrats Team Up With Republicans To Spend All Your Money

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