The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1254 - DeSantis Declares, Trump Trolls

00:00:00.000 Governor Ron DeSantis has officially entered the 2024 GOP presidential race.

00:00:05.740 The announcement was by most measures a success. It garnered lots of attention.

00:00:11.400 It raised a bunch of money. And even the tech glitches can be spun in a positive way.

00:00:16.960 The announcement broke the internet sort of thing. We'll get to all of that. First though,

00:00:22.060 I want to get to Trump's response, which was to post a parody video of Ron DeSantis hanging out

00:00:29.840 with George Soros, Klaus Schwab, the FBI, Adolf Hitler, and the devil himself.

00:00:37.860 Hi, everyone. Welcome to our Ron DeSantis Twitter space.

00:00:40.800 Hello. Is my microphone working correctly?

00:00:43.460 Pretty decent fake AI voices.

00:00:46.300 Can you hear me?

00:00:47.160 We can all hear you, George. Can you just hold on for a second?

00:00:49.600 Elon, the host. Dick Cheney's there.

00:00:51.800 Okay, so how are we going to take out Trump, you guys?

00:00:55.300 Guys from the FBI, this is not a private call. This is a public Twitter space.

00:00:59.220 Everyone can listen in.

00:01:02.120 Damn it.

00:01:03.080 Everyone just shut the hell up so I can make my announcement, okay?

00:01:06.060 You go, girl.

00:01:07.160 Wait, the devil is gay?

00:01:08.860 So what? Everyone in this call is gay. 0.60

00:01:10.860 I happen to know every single one of you has a secret.

00:01:14.920 It goes on from there. I think you generally get the idea.

00:01:20.180 I do not know if the 2024 primary is going to be the nastiest in history, as some people have suggested.

00:01:27.780 But I am pleased to report that it is currently on track to be the funniest.

00:01:33.480 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:35.240 Welcome back to the show. This episode is brought to you by my friends over at Good Ranchers.

00:01:46.140 Get great meat at a secure price and save 20% off site-wide with my code Knowles.

00:01:51.720 Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, today.

00:01:57.020 Okay. Rosie O'Donnell, of all people, speaking of Trump politics,

00:02:02.480 Rosie O'Donnell, of all people, has become a voice of reason on the issue of transgenderism.

00:02:06.400 We'll get to that in a little bit.

00:02:07.260 First, though, I want to touch a little bit more on this DeSantis announcement.

00:02:11.560 DeSantis did it in this call, this Twitter spaces with Elon Musk.

00:02:16.840 And there were some tech glitches, and it was a little bit flat.

00:02:20.920 If I had to be critical of the announcement, I would say there wasn't a ton of energy.

00:02:27.740 It obviously just lacked the enthusiasm that a live event could generate.

00:02:32.300 That said, it's not a total knock on DeSantis.

00:02:35.240 President Trump's announcement for his 2024 campaign also was kind of flat.

00:02:40.100 Tim Scott's recent announcement, the microphone broke.

00:02:43.000 I'm not convinced that presidential campaign announcements really matter at all.

00:02:47.500 Do you remember any of them?

00:02:48.860 I vaguely remember Obama's.

00:02:52.500 Reagan, 1980, I kind of remember at the Statue of Liberty.

00:02:58.300 Nobody really remembers these things.

00:03:00.320 It doesn't really matter.

00:03:01.220 The question is, can they go the distance?

00:03:03.080 There was a deeply, perhaps pregnant, meaningful moment during the Twitter spaces where,

00:03:09.580 as people poured in and it started to glitch a little bit, the screen said,

00:03:14.920 preparing to launch.

00:03:17.140 And that's the question.

00:03:18.080 Ron DeSantis has been preparing to launch his campaign for a very long time now, for years.

00:03:23.800 Everyone has known that he's going to run for president.

00:03:26.360 There's been a lot of hype.

00:03:27.780 There's been hype from conservatives.

00:03:29.100 There's been hype from establishmentarians.

00:03:30.720 There's been hype from anti-Trumpers.

00:03:32.500 There's even been hype from people who are pro-Trump or who were pro-Trump but don't think he can win in 2024.

00:03:38.000 So there's a lot of hype.

00:03:38.860 There's a lot of expectations from a lot of different people.

00:03:40.920 And some of those expectations are going to be contradictory.

00:03:43.780 So we've seen a lot of preparation to launch.

00:03:46.540 Now what matters is how does the campaign do now that it is out in the open?

00:03:51.720 Can DeSantis withstand the Trump meat grinder?

00:03:56.560 Donald Trump seemed like a pig just rolling around in the happiest, most wonderful mud and muck.

00:04:05.280 This is a family show, so I'll clean up the language. 1.00

00:04:07.940 That you could imagine yesterday, as DeSantis is doing the launch, he's just cracking jokes.

00:04:12.560 And he's posting videos of Klaus Schwab and Hitler and the devil.

00:04:17.020 And he is posting all sorts of little truth social one-liners.

00:04:23.920 One of them was, quote, Tim Scott's presidential launch, even with the broken microphone.

00:04:31.020 Don't pay the contractor, Tim, was by far the best presidential launch of the week.

00:04:36.700 Rob's was a catastrophe.

00:04:39.820 And there's a lot, just from a pure comedy composition perspective, there is so much there.

00:04:45.960 So he says, oh, yeah, Tim Scott's was the best of the week.

00:04:48.520 First of all, Tim Scott's presidential announcement was obviously the only other one of the week.

00:04:52.400 He starts mentioning that Tim Scott's microphone cut out and then gives him advice not to pay his campaign contractor.

00:04:57.600 But then the funniest part is he refers to Ron DeSantis, someone who everyone knows, we all know what his name is, as Rob.

00:05:04.360 And this is a tactic that is used by men when they're trying to pick up a girl.

00:05:10.160 And maybe that girl has a boyfriend, and maybe that girl is seeing somebody. 0.99

00:05:13.560 And you go up and you say, oh, yeah, hey, Sheila.

00:05:16.500 Yeah, oh, man, looking nice today.

00:05:18.900 Yeah, we should get a drink sometime.

00:05:21.660 Hey, how's Mark doing?

00:05:23.500 And Sheila will hear this and say, oh, actually, you know, my boyfriend's name is Matt.

00:05:29.940 And you say, oh, yeah, whatever.

00:05:32.120 And then you move on, right?

00:05:33.160 It's a way to belittle somebody and to disrespect somebody.

00:05:36.380 And Trump is doing it in this extremely officious way.

00:05:39.280 Yeah, rob DeSantis.

00:05:41.060 And there's a play on words because he's going to accuse DeSantis of robbing the nomination or trying to rob the nomination from Trump or robbing his mannerisms or personality or something like that.

00:05:50.880 So DeSantis' announcement came off pretty much as expected.

00:05:54.980 Trump's reaction certainly came off as expected.

00:05:58.760 What do we make of that?

00:05:59.880 All in all, it's pretty good for DeSantis.

00:06:01.700 There's one weak spot right now which is on foreign policy.

00:06:05.340 DeSantis, after the Twitter space, went on Trey Gowdy's show on Fox News and DeSantis explained what his views are vis-a-vis Ukraine.

00:06:19.220 Or maybe he didn't quite explain those views.

00:06:22.500 You wore the uniform.

00:06:24.220 If you are elected president, you may be the first one in a while to have worn the uniform.

00:06:29.620 How would you address the ongoing war in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine on day one of a Ron DeSantis presidency?

00:06:38.020 Well, first, I think what we need to do as a veteran is recognize that our military has become politicized.

00:06:44.520 You talk about gender ideology.

00:06:46.780 You talk about things like global warming that they're somehow concerned.

00:06:50.160 And that's not the military that I served in.

00:06:52.240 We need to return our military to focusing on commitment, focusing on the core values and the core mission.

00:07:00.640 That would be something that I could take care of on day one.

00:07:03.700 There'll be a new sheriff in town as commander-in-chief.

00:07:06.500 And I think you'll see recruiting start to get back to where it needs to be because people don't want to join a woke military.

00:07:12.840 And I think it's been really, really problematic.

00:07:15.020 Look, in terms of what's going on over in Eastern Europe, you know, I'd like to see a settlement of this.

00:07:20.340 I do not want to see a wider war.

00:07:22.760 I think it's completely unknowable what it will look like in January of 2025.

00:07:28.200 But I would not want to see the United States with our troops get enmeshed in a war in Russia or in Ukraine.

00:07:36.120 It's a hard question on a hard topic that most voters don't generally base their presidential decisions on.

00:07:45.460 Most voters are basing their decisions on domestic policy.

00:07:49.040 And so Governor DeSantis here is trying to pivot the question from this thorny issue of Ukraine, which splits the GOP, onto this issue of wokeness in the military.

00:07:59.940 But wokeness in the military obviously has nothing to do with the policy of the president vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine and this war that's now been expanding for over a year.

00:08:09.460 A war that's really been expanding for more like eight or nine years at this point.

00:08:14.760 I think DeSantis has to get a clearer answer on this.

00:08:20.440 This issue, if the war continues on the trajectory that it's on, this could come to play a large role in the presidential campaign.

00:08:29.340 And so he's going to need, I think, clearer views here.

00:08:32.640 Trump, whether you love him or you hate him, has relatively clear views on these things.

00:08:38.180 And they upset a lot of settled GOP orthodoxy.

00:08:41.040 DeSantis has done a very, very good job in the state of Florida.

00:08:43.900 But as any governor who's ever run for president knows deep down, these individual states don't have a foreign policy.

00:08:51.280 So I think he's got to come up with an answer there.

00:08:53.740 And while he says, I don't want a wider war, I want to come to a settlement, that's good.

00:09:00.480 That's the right direction.

00:09:01.580 But the question is, how are you going to do that?

00:09:04.560 What are these specific issues that you are going to focus on?

00:09:08.340 And furthermore, even to the way he answered the question, can he be agile?

00:09:13.240 Can he be dexterous?

00:09:15.440 Can he, when he doesn't want to answer a question, can he pivot in a way that's a little more subtle?

00:09:20.320 Can he turn the question to something he does want to answer?

00:09:22.540 Can he throw in a joke?

00:09:23.800 Can he throw in a barb?

00:09:24.580 Can he be fast on his feet?

00:09:26.180 Whatever you want to say about Trump, whether you love him or you hate him, the guy is one of the best showmen of our age.

00:09:31.720 The guy knows how to command a stage and to command a camera.

00:09:35.880 DeSantis just doesn't come from that background.

00:09:37.680 He's had a very different life.

00:09:39.780 And so if he's going to take Trump on, that's going to have to be something that he works on.

00:09:44.720 Ron DeSantis could have the absolute best policy of any governor in the history of the United States.

00:09:50.640 But he's now going to have to go toe-to-toe with a very persuasive, funny showbiz guy.

00:09:58.900 And so that's going to have to be the area that he and his team really focus on.

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00:11:45.140 Speaking of dodging questions, Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary,

00:11:48.700 was asked a question about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,

00:11:52.920 which is this rabidly anti-Christian, particularly anti-Catholic drag queen troupe that is being

00:11:59.480 honored by the L.A. Dodgers.

00:12:01.520 More like L. Gay Dodgers, if you ask me. 1.00

00:12:05.460 Tip your waitress.

00:12:06.900 She was asked this question because the president is at least nominally Catholic.

00:12:10.520 Here's her answer.

00:12:11.760 This is one that's really caught the eye of a lot of Catholics and Christians,

00:12:15.340 and frankly, they're hurt by this.

00:12:17.400 The L.A. Dodgers are honoring a group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence during a Pride night game next month.

00:12:24.700 The Archdiocese of L.A., Catholic leaders there, say the group mocks the Catholic faith

00:12:29.780 and women religious who serve the poor and sick 0.99

00:12:32.320 and is asking all Catholics to stand against bigotry and hate in any form.

00:12:37.320 The president is Catholic, we all know.

00:12:39.000 What is his reaction to this story, please?

00:12:40.460 Look, I appreciate the question, Owen.

00:12:41.880 I'm just not going to get into the middle of who a sports team is going to honor or should honor or should not honor.

00:12:50.380 That's just not something that I'm going to get in the middle of.

00:12:52.680 The president has made it very important to him, religious freedom.

00:12:56.540 He's issued statements in the past saying all people of all religions should be treated with equal dignity and respect.

00:13:03.480 I know what you just said there, you kind of want to stay out of it,

00:13:07.620 but isn't this a prime example of something like that?

00:13:10.640 I'm just not going to get in the middle of who a sports team decides to honor or not honor.

00:13:15.700 That is not, just not going to get in the middle of that.

00:13:17.500 But appreciate the question.

00:13:19.100 Oh yeah, I'm not going to get in the middle of that.

00:13:20.980 We, listen, we, from political office, we're not going to get involved with what sports teams are doing, right?

00:13:27.820 As if the entire Democratic Party didn't weigh in on the NFL kneeling, white supremacy fiasco of 2016, 2017.

00:13:39.420 As if Joe Biden could ever keep his mouth shut on any of these cultural issues.

00:13:45.380 As if the White House didn't invite Dylan Mulvaney to come do an interview with him.

00:13:50.480 Give me a break.

00:13:51.180 What are you talking about?

00:13:52.000 The White House is always involved in these things.

00:13:54.940 He just doesn't want to comment on this because it's indefensible.

00:13:58.380 And yet he knows that his side is on the side of the anti-Christian drag queens. 0.83

00:14:04.160 And so he doesn't want to put himself in a bad position where he's going to have to overtly and publicly disavow his faith in order to side with them.

00:14:11.500 But he also doesn't want to defend the faith because he knows where his bread is buttered, at least in this world.

00:14:17.880 It's with the anti-Christians. 0.98

00:14:20.120 So they keep their mouths shut.

00:14:22.060 Okay.

00:14:23.720 It is increasingly clear that we are facing an assault on Christianity and on all traditional views of society and morality and religion. 0.95

00:14:33.500 And even for people who don't consider themselves Christian, you probably cherish a lot of the fruits of Christian civilization.

00:14:41.720 And now all of that is under assault.

00:14:43.980 So when you ask me, which candidate do I want to back in 2024?

00:14:48.260 Is it Trump?

00:14:48.820 Is it DeSantis?

00:14:49.940 Is it Chris Christie?

00:14:50.920 Don't count Chris Christie yet.

00:14:52.140 Is it Vivek Ramaswamy?

00:14:53.600 Is it Nikki?

00:14:54.500 Is it this?

00:14:54.880 Is it I want to back the candidate that can see the assault on religion that is going on right now, the sacrilege that is going on right now, that will not merely chip away at popular piety, but will fundamentally undermine all of the most important aspects of our society.

00:15:20.880 Because religion is not just some fun little hobby that people have in society or they don't.

00:15:27.640 Religion is what animates the whole society.

00:15:30.480 And so if you live in a culture that publicly mocks religion, then you're not going to have a very flourishing society.

00:15:39.740 So which candidate am I going to go for?

00:15:41.980 I'd like the candidate who can credibly propose to stop that all-out assault.

00:15:48.740 What a ridiculous line from the White House.

00:15:50.300 Oh, it's just some little sports team thing.

00:15:52.520 Right.

00:15:52.860 Sports is public.

00:15:54.780 This is the team of the city, the L.A. Dodgers.

00:15:59.560 Public sports have always had a patriotic component.

00:16:03.080 They tell us a lot about what our culture believes, what our political order is going to be.

00:16:07.900 Of course we've got to be involved.

00:16:09.460 If sports weren't political, the L.A. Dodgers wouldn't be honoring a sacrilegious drag troupe. 1.00

00:16:15.880 Of course it's political.

00:16:17.260 And you're going to keep your mouth shut because the politics is going in your direction and you don't want to upset that.

00:16:22.760 I want a Republican presidential candidate who's willing to upset that.

00:16:26.860 Some Republicans are doing this sort of thing.

00:16:28.520 In Montana, they just banned drag queen story hour.

00:16:31.240 One of the biggest fights on the right among movement conservatives and conservative intellectuals and the activist class, not necessarily the rank and file card carrying Republican voter, but the people who are setting the agenda for what the party believes.

00:16:47.420 One of the biggest fights six, seven years ago was over drag queen story hour. 1.00

00:16:51.980 And you had the liberal Republicans like David French, who's now just become a liberal.

00:16:55.660 Now he's a columnist for the New York Times.

00:16:57.780 David French said drag queen story hour is a blessing of liberty.

00:17:00.600 Our constitution gives us that beautiful right to jiggle around in stilettos for kids in the library or whatever.

00:17:06.960 And then you had the conservative conservatives who came out and said, no, there's no right to drag queen story hour. 0.99

00:17:12.520 If James Madison ever thought this were in the constitution, he'd be rolling over in his grave.

00:17:16.400 That's obviously not real.

00:17:17.840 And that was a big battle.

00:17:20.160 Well, if we have freedom of speech, we need to have weirdo guys jiggling around for children.

00:17:25.720 No, that's actually not what freedom of speech is.

00:17:28.240 Freedom of speech involves all sorts of limits and taboos and standards.

00:17:31.380 And we're not going to do that.

00:17:32.300 Okay, well, Montana is saying the conservatives won.

00:17:35.740 We're going to ban drag queen story hour. 0.82

00:17:37.800 Governor Greg Gianforte signed HB 359.

00:17:42.260 Over half the state ledge co-sponsored the bill.

00:17:44.380 It bars minors from attending sexually oriented shows.

00:17:48.640 Says a school or library that receives any form of funding from the state may not allow a sexually oriented performance

00:17:57.620 or drag story hour on its premises during regular operating hours or at any school-sanctioned extracurricular activity.

00:18:04.820 Goes on.

00:18:05.600 There can be punishments, obviously, against the people who violate this.

00:18:10.060 And then the legislator behind the law came out and was totally clear.

00:18:14.580 Even if the law weren't totally clear, and it's pretty precise.

00:18:18.040 He says there is no such thing as a family-friendly drag show, which is, of course, true. 1.00

00:18:23.520 And everybody knew that until a few years ago.

00:18:27.420 You want to go see a drag show, go into this seedy part of town with the red lights and the dodgy characters. 1.00

00:18:33.200 Go to Greenwich Village or something if you're in New York.

00:18:35.580 But don't go to Coney Island.

00:18:37.060 But you're not going to do that at an elementary school.

00:18:39.840 And you're not going to do that at a library.

00:18:43.080 That's great news.

00:18:44.000 Keep it up, Montana.

00:18:45.060 Some Republicans are squishing on this, though.

00:18:46.900 On even more urgent issues than the Drag Story Hour, Louisiana, the home state of my maternal grandfather.

00:18:56.620 I've got some Louisiana in me.

00:18:58.240 I'm very sad to say that one of my family heritage states just blocked a bill to outlaw transing the kids.

00:19:06.340 And it wasn't a Democrat who blocked the bill.

00:19:08.980 It was a Republican.

00:19:10.060 This Republican state senator, Fred Mills, just joined Democrats in a five to four vote.

00:19:18.180 So it's the decisive vote on the Health and Welfare Committee to block the advancement of a bill that would have banned using cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgery to alter a minor's appearance in an attempt to validate a minor's perception of his sex if the minor's perception is inconsistent with his sex.

00:19:33.620 With Republicans like Fred Mills, who needs Democrats, I know that Fred Mills' office, his phone number is available online on the Louisiana state government website.

00:19:43.820 I would strongly encourage concerned Louisianans and Senator Mills' constituents to call his office and express your view in, of course, a polite and just way that it is unacceptable to defend transing the kids. 0.69

00:19:59.520 What kind of a psycho does that? 0.99

00:20:01.140 What kind of a sick person does that? 0.99

00:20:05.540 The answer to that question would probably be a Democrat or a liberal.

00:20:09.080 But in this case, Fred Mills is a Republican.

00:20:11.720 And with Republicans like this, truly, there is no need for Democrats.

00:20:15.320 This Republican primary is going to be a clarifying experience.

00:20:18.940 That's why I'm generally pro-primary, is because it forces candidates to take clearer positions on these sorts of issues.

00:20:27.120 And some issues we can be a little conciliatory on.

00:20:31.520 Some issues have to be very, very clear.

00:20:33.860 Any Republican that defends transing the kids is a far-left, radical, liberal, and should be given no quarter. 0.89

00:20:46.940 Should not receive a single Republican vote ever.

00:20:49.580 Should not receive a single penny from any conservative.

00:20:52.240 And his government office should receive lots of phone calls from concerned constituents.

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00:22:25.160 Seems as if fewer and fewer of us are on the same page when it comes to the fundamentals these days.

00:22:29.960 And this is obviously a huge problem when it comes to our relationship to each other and our relationship to God.

00:22:35.540 It's not a new phenomenon.

00:22:36.720 The consequences of this disunity date all the way back to the time of Moses.

00:22:41.760 Just listen to what Jordan Peterson has to say about it in Exodus.

00:22:45.160 There's an irony here that for all the insistence upon equality, the very foundation for that equality in Western culture, the idea that human beings are made in the imago dei, in the image of God, has been lost, of course.

00:23:04.880 So it's almost as if because of the erosion of this foundation, the drive for equality is stressed all the more.

00:23:15.140 That's exactly what Nietzsche claimed would happen when he wrote, particularly in Beyond Good and Evil.

00:23:22.440 He said that would be an inevitable consequence.

00:23:25.940 Jordan is joined by a roundtable of big thinkers from different backgrounds who explore one of the most important books in the Bible.

00:23:32.380 It is engrossing.

00:23:33.940 All episodes of Exodus are now available exclusively for Daily Wire Plus members.

00:23:37.580 If you have not seen it, start at the beginning because it's well worth your time.

00:23:41.440 Dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch Exodus.

00:23:45.140 We are winning on the trans issue.

00:23:51.400 And so any Republican who goes squishy not only has zero backbone and maybe is missing some other anatomical features as far as I'm concerned, but also just has no idea what time it is, does not have any clear perception of where politics is in this country.

00:24:09.560 Look at what's going on at Target.

00:24:10.740 Target, look at Target, the Target CEO had recently come out to defend the Pride Month displays, which include bathing suits meant for tucking, women's bathing suits meant for men so that they could tuck the features that are male so they could look more like women, even though there are bathing suits already that are fine for men to tuck.

00:24:30.840 They're called men's bathing suits.

00:24:34.060 Target CEO defends the LGBTQ plus friendly displays for little kids even.

00:24:40.740 And he says that these products are not only good for business, they're the right thing for society.

00:24:48.260 The right thing for society.

00:24:52.080 Target CEO Brian Cornell.

00:24:55.720 Okay.

00:24:57.700 Target needs the Bud Light treatment.

00:25:00.220 Nobody expected that this Bud Light boycott would be as successful as it is.

00:25:04.200 Bud Light has lost more than $15 billion in market cap.

00:25:07.420 This has been going on for so much longer than anybody thought it would.

00:25:12.880 No one expected it.

00:25:15.280 Target needs that too.

00:25:18.000 Sometimes it's very difficult to launch a boycott.

00:25:22.740 Certain companies really have dominance and it's hard to do it.

00:25:26.460 But other companies, even when they have the premier product in the category, Bud Light was the most popular beer in America.

00:25:32.740 Other companies are susceptible to boycotting.

00:25:37.120 Bud Light obviously was.

00:25:39.880 Target obviously is.

00:25:41.040 There are other options to Target.

00:25:42.740 There's Walmart.

00:25:43.880 There is Costco.

00:25:45.340 I assume Jeremy's going to have his own gigantic superstore pretty soon too.

00:25:48.920 Come visit Jeremy's 20,000 foot retail shop.

00:25:54.780 There are options.

00:25:55.940 It's too bad.

00:25:56.720 I like Target well enough.

00:25:58.800 I don't love it, but they've got a decent selection of Spindrift.

00:26:01.220 I'm a millennial.

00:26:01.920 I like flavored seltzer.

00:26:02.800 Okay, I'm going to have to give that up.

00:26:04.240 That's a sacrifice that I'm going to have to make.

00:26:08.740 In other generations, people have been asked to make sacrifices like get on a ship and go over to Normandy and be strafed on the beach.

00:26:15.240 Okay, we're being asked to make the sacrifice of, hey, maybe drive a little bit further across town.

00:26:20.300 Hey, maybe you're going to have to pick up your cup of coffee before you get into the shop instead of in the shop.

00:26:26.300 Like Target has the little coffee shops.

00:26:27.880 Hey, maybe you're going to have to trade out your Target card for a Walmart card.

00:26:31.940 Okay, Target is doubling down on pushing kids into radical sexual ideologies and transing people. 0.93

00:26:41.000 Can't let them get away with that.

00:26:44.620 Target right now is actually following the Bud Light playbook almost to a T, which is they're doubling down on the radical sex ideology.

00:26:52.700 Then they're kind of backing away a little bit, but then they're doubling down again.

00:26:56.260 They need that BL treatment baby. 1.00

00:26:58.680 We've got to think bigger.

00:26:59.980 We've got to expand our imagination.

00:27:01.500 One of the Republicans who's doing this right now, Jim Banks.

00:27:05.320 Jim Banks is doing a phenomenal job because Jim Banks wants to enshrine maybe my favorite executive order from President Trump.

00:27:15.180 And that would be the Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again executive order.

00:27:21.380 There are going to be some people, some utilitarian economists, sophisters, and calculators out there who look at this.

00:27:28.740 They say, with all the problems we have in this country, you're going to focus on making buildings beautiful again?

00:27:34.500 Yes.

00:27:35.540 We got immigration problems. 0.97

00:27:37.600 We got abortion.

00:27:38.560 We got trans and the kids.

00:27:39.880 We got World War III.

00:27:41.080 You're going to focus on making buildings beautiful?

00:27:42.740 Yes, you have to.

00:27:46.820 Conservatives are pretty good at talking about the difference between true and false.

00:27:50.220 Conservatives are getting better at talking about the difference between good and evil.

00:27:53.840 We got to move on to that third transcendental, beauty.

00:27:56.500 We need to be able to identify the difference between beauty and ugliness.

00:27:59.940 A civilization that has beautiful buildings, that is in a beautiful place, is going to have higher spirits.

00:28:05.600 It's going to see the truth more clearly.

00:28:07.420 It's going to behave in a more civilized way.

00:28:09.020 It's going to be a better civilization by almost any measure.

00:28:13.440 A civilization that lives like rats, that's going to be a civilization that's going to behave like rats.

00:28:19.420 Okay?

00:28:22.200 Sometimes the ugly buildings are a symptom of a corrupted culture, but also those ugly buildings will further corrupt the culture.

00:28:30.600 You can't neatly separate those things.

00:28:32.520 Sometimes people say politics is downstream of culture.

00:28:36.260 You could also say culture is downstream of politics.

00:28:38.780 You can't neatly separate these things.

00:28:41.380 Okay?

00:28:42.880 And this fight, this beautifying federal civic architecture act, if signed into law, would mandate that, quote,

00:28:51.780 classical architecture and the historic humanistic architecture, including Gothic, Romanesque, Pueblo revival, Spanish colonial, and other Mediterranean styles of architecture historically rooted in various regions of America, be preferred for new federal office design.

00:29:04.020 So this is a better law, even than the Trump executive order, in that it's more specific on which kinds of architectural styles are appropriate for different parts of the country and the different geographies in which they're situated.

00:29:16.420 It's a little more precise.

00:29:17.920 This is great.

00:29:20.020 And the other reason that this is really important is that this kind of a law is going to highlight a major split on the right.

00:29:27.080 And it's not only going to highlight that split on the right because you've got some of the Republicans who are just the business Republicans, just the money Republicans.

00:29:34.320 They're the Republicans who, they're sophisters, economists, and calculators, to quote Edmund Burke.

00:29:38.900 They're the ones who don't really pay attention to the deeper things in life.

00:29:42.600 They just want to make some money.

00:29:44.000 And then you've got the cultural conservatives, the social conservatives, the traditional conservatives, who realize that life is about more than money.

00:29:51.580 But it even gets down to the question of what kind of architecture do we want.

00:29:54.820 This gets to a fundamental split on the right because it's the plot of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

00:29:59.760 The plot of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is that the bad guys want there to be classical, beautiful architecture in the city.

00:30:07.460 And the ostensible hero of the story, Howard Rourke, wants ugly modernist architecture.

00:30:14.580 And oddly enough, some conservatives, at least in the 1980s, really liked Ayn Rand.

00:30:19.680 They were very pro-Ayn Rand, even though Ayn Rand is a modernist, materialist, atheist writer.

00:30:26.160 Because she didn't like the communists, the right embraced her to some degree.

00:30:30.560 That's going to be a split.

00:30:31.760 What do we want?

00:30:32.600 There was always schizophrenia.

00:30:34.620 For the past 30 years, there's been schizophrenia on the right at Republican fundraisers, which is the first part of the speech would say, we need to preserve traditional values.

00:30:43.460 We need to preserve the historic American nation.

00:30:45.360 We need to conserve the family.

00:30:47.300 We need to build up those institutions that have served us well for hundreds of years.

00:30:50.660 And we need creative destruction.

00:30:54.740 We need to tear everything down.

00:30:55.960 We need to innovate.

00:30:56.820 We need modernity.

00:30:57.760 We need the future.

00:30:58.740 We need to tear up the past.

00:31:00.920 Forget that old stupid past.

00:31:02.120 We're going to build gigantic skyscrapers and rocket ships.

00:31:04.620 Okay.

00:31:06.120 There's a little contradiction there.

00:31:08.340 I'm not saying we need to freeze ourselves in amber.

00:31:10.220 That's not possible.

00:31:12.000 But as we move inevitably into the future, are we going to do so by preserving what is best in our civilization?

00:31:18.460 Are we going to do so with humility?

00:31:20.660 Are we going to do so with caution, slowing down a little bit, evolution, not revolution?

00:31:26.320 Or are we going to adopt the perspective that is essentially the perspective of the liberals and say, ah, yeah, that old stuff, that's dumb.

00:31:32.200 That's bad.

00:31:32.620 Who needs all that?

00:31:33.520 Forget we're in the new age.

00:31:34.840 Steel, glass, big, giant, flat, modernist buildings.

00:31:39.260 That's what we want.

00:31:40.140 Which is it?

00:31:40.700 There has been a split on the right.

00:31:43.300 And Jim Banks is right.

00:31:44.600 And Ayn Rand is wrong.

00:31:45.460 And we should totally defend beauty because there are eternal principles of beauty.

00:31:50.660 Ayn Rand's argument in The Fountainhead is that circumstances are the chief determinants of what is beautiful.

00:32:00.900 So gothic architecture or classical architecture, that won't look good in the modern age because today we're more adept at working with steel and metal.

00:32:12.200 And because we're in modernity, we've just got to build big, boring, ugly skyscrapers or something like that.

00:32:17.300 We just have to.

00:32:18.000 So it's a very progressive idea of beauty.

00:32:23.280 But the conservative, the traditional idea of beauty is, no, some things are just beautiful.

00:32:28.120 Some things are just beautiful and some things aren't.

00:32:30.060 And try as you might, you can try for years and years and years to make mutilation and minimalism and degradation.

00:32:41.560 You can try to make that beautiful, but it never will be beautiful.

00:32:44.260 Because beauty is not merely in the eye of the beholder, but it's an objective reality that we can perceive and that we can reason about and we can deduce things about and we can know.

00:32:52.920 Okay?

00:32:53.120 Very different perspectives.

00:32:55.620 All of that contained in this one little bill about federal buildings from Jim Banks.

00:33:01.480 But he gets it and the rest of the right should too.

00:33:04.100 There are good signs on this front, okay?

00:33:08.360 Bills like the Make Buildings Beautiful Again Act, these are the subtle aspects of politics.

00:33:15.220 It's not the big headline, shiny lights, immigration bad, cut taxes, win the war. 0.91

00:33:22.320 It's not like that.

00:33:23.260 It's a little bit more subtle.

00:33:25.980 But the way that the left has overtaken our culture has been in a subtle way.

00:33:30.600 The way that the serpent in the Garden of Eden fooled Adam and Eve, it was in a subtle way.

00:33:34.680 It was the subtle creature.

00:33:36.260 And that's what the libs do. 1.00

00:33:38.020 Conservatives are finally waking up to that.

00:33:40.640 What's probably the subtlest way that the libs have been able to overtake our culture? 1.00

00:33:46.340 By taking over education.

00:33:47.700 Because for a long time, conservatives didn't really think of education as a political fight.

00:33:53.460 Said, oh, you know, who cares?

00:33:54.780 Those woke snowflakes wait until they get into the real world.

00:33:58.680 It won't matter what happened in schools.

00:34:00.360 Well, what happened?

00:34:01.140 Those woke snowflakes got into the real world.

00:34:02.840 They changed the real world, of course.

00:34:04.420 Because a classroom is like a crystal ball.

00:34:06.180 And if a student is raised from K through 12, now people go to preschool.

00:34:12.440 And now they go to pre-preschool.

00:34:13.800 So let's say from age three through age not just 18, but then into college, which people increasingly were going to.

00:34:21.880 And then maybe master's degrees.

00:34:23.100 And then maybe PhDs.

00:34:25.100 You get all that time for the libs to form the mind and the soul of America's youth.

00:34:32.660 People are going to end up huge libs.

00:34:34.760 They're not even going to be aware of it.

00:34:35.780 This is how the so-called conservatives have ended up so liberal and adopted so many liberal premises totally unawares.

00:34:41.120 Because they've just been steeped in that, like a teabag in a pot of hot water for 20 years of their lives.

00:34:49.300 So there's some good news on this front, which is that college enrollment is down.

00:34:55.140 College enrollment is down again, even three years after the lockdowns that really gave a sucker punch to college in America.

00:35:01.680 Public four-year institutions saw a 0.8% enrollment decline as of the spring of 2023.

00:35:08.540 2022, that decline was 1.2%.

00:35:11.140 It was a lot bigger than the decline, 0.3% in 2021, 0.2% in 2020.

00:35:16.280 So for years now, you're seeing a pretty steady decline.

00:35:20.520 Private four-year colleges witnessed a 1.0% decrease in 2023, following 1.2%, following 0.4%, following 0.6%.

00:35:29.940 So colleges slowly but surely decreasing.

00:35:33.520 This is a great thing.

00:35:36.000 Not everybody needs to go to college.

00:35:37.660 Not everybody should go to college.

00:35:39.600 The insistence that everybody has to go to the exact same kind of college and education has led to a dramatic decline in the standards within those colleges,

00:35:47.020 such that even the students who are a little more inclined to go to college can't get the college education that they previously could.

00:35:52.860 So it benefits absolutely nobody.

00:35:55.700 It harms society as a whole.

00:36:00.200 Now we're turning that around.

00:36:01.680 The Libs waged what they called a long march through the institutions.

00:36:04.960 This is a long march through the institutions to take over the colleges and the universities especially,

00:36:10.700 but also lower education and also the nonprofit education, all the rest of it.

00:36:17.020 They did that for decades and decades and decades, and they transformed education in the United States.

00:36:21.620 What conservatives can do now is lead a long march out.

00:36:28.440 Or a long march not just out.

00:36:29.980 We're not just fleeing from something.

00:36:32.020 We have a long march to build new institutions.

00:36:34.140 There are conservative colleges that have been built up, thinking of places like Hillsdale, thinking of places like Ave Maria, Franciscan Liberty.

00:36:42.980 Thinking of these, Thomas Aquinas College, these institutions that, some of which are relatively new, at least in their present iterations.

00:36:52.960 And they say, hey, maybe you want to go to Harvard or Yale or Princeton, but those places aren't what they used to be.

00:37:00.460 Come over here.

00:37:01.400 You'll get a real classical education, a liberal education, properly liberal meaning to help you make sense of your freedom.

00:37:07.500 Come on over here.

00:37:08.260 My friend Spencer Clavin has pointed out, he says, he thinks that we will get to a point in society where wise people will recognize a Hillsdale education as being more impressive than a Harvard education.

00:37:19.780 And every year since he made that prediction, it seems to be more and more true.

00:37:24.900 That's what we've got to do.

00:37:25.540 That's what The Daily Wire is about.

00:37:27.100 We're building a new institution.

00:37:28.700 We don't need to put up with stupid Hollywood.

00:37:30.300 We don't need to put up with the corporate establishment news media, even the right-wing establishment news media are left-wing.

00:37:38.820 They embrace radical leftist ideology.

00:37:40.480 They embrace transgenderism, for goodness sakes.

00:37:42.200 We don't need to put up with that.

00:37:44.000 Our argument is, if you build it, they will come.

00:37:47.640 We're not beholden to Bud Light anymore.

00:37:49.340 We're not beholden to Target anymore.

00:37:51.000 We're not beholden to Harvard anymore.

00:37:52.860 We're not beholden to any of it.

00:37:54.700 That's our bet.

00:37:55.480 Certain people are putting a lot of money down on that, and it seems like it is paying off.

00:38:01.460 It seems like people are leaving those old institutions.

00:38:03.660 Where are they going to go?

00:38:04.200 They're going to go somewhere.

00:38:06.320 Why can't they come to the places that we are building?

00:38:09.620 This Monday, we are releasing a new episode of Yes or No.

00:38:14.340 Speaking of our political order, it will feature former White House press secretary, no, not Jen Psaki, the one and only Sean Spicer.

00:38:20.700 It was great sitting down to discuss very spicy topics with Mr. Spicer.

00:38:26.440 Check out this teaser.

00:38:28.260 White hate is now more widely accepted than the 2020 election results.

00:38:36.100 Oh, this is a gimme.

00:38:37.400 Oh, that's, well, hold on, I mean.

00:38:50.700 We'll be right back.

00:39:20.680 We're getting it back.

00:39:21.940 We're going to order many, many thousands of more copies of it, and you know what's going to happen?

00:39:25.800 I bet it's going to sell out again.

00:39:27.500 So make sure you get your pre-order in right now.

00:39:30.220 Do not regret missing it again.

00:39:32.180 DailyWire.com slash shop.

00:39:33.560 Bring the fun home.

00:39:34.340 Host your very own spectacle of titillating topics.

00:39:37.560 Head on over to my YouTube channel on Monday to wind down from your Memorial Day festivities.

00:39:42.520 Go to DailyWire.com slash shop to secure your game today.

00:39:48.840 My favorite comment yesterday is from Jim Lubke.

00:39:53.900 He says, if God doesn't smite America this Pride Month, he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.

00:40:00.200 And that's a quote apparently from my pal Seamus Coughlin.

00:40:02.800 Yes, that's a fair point.

00:40:04.560 Even in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, what people are doing to children now, what people are stating about objective reality and human nature, they weren't going that far.

00:40:18.620 Fair point from Mr. Coughlin.

00:40:20.520 Okay, and on that very topic, I didn't think I would see this day.

00:40:27.940 Rosie O'Donnell has become a voice of reason on the gender madness. 1.00

00:40:33.720 Tell me that her stuffed animals were non-binary. 1.00

00:40:38.020 I'm like, here we go.

00:40:40.020 Here we go.

00:40:41.400 And I said, okay, well, what does that mean?

00:40:43.260 She goes, they don't feel like a boy and they don't feel like a girl.

00:40:45.620 I said, well, that's fantastic.

00:40:47.220 Do you know what's funny is that I'm a girl who people used to call a tomboy because I liked all the boy stuff when I was little.

00:40:53.440 And you know what's weird?

00:40:54.380 I still do really like the boy stuff.

00:40:56.660 I like football.

00:40:57.580 I like riding a motorcycle.

00:40:59.360 I like to do a lot of stuff that boys traditionally like to do.

00:41:02.820 But you know what else?

00:41:04.060 Never was confused about thinking if I was a boy or a girl.

00:41:07.120 Always knew I was a girl and loved being a girl.

00:41:09.700 So you can be a girl and feel any way you want or you can figure out what it is.

00:41:14.200 And I'm like rambling and rambling.

00:41:16.540 And she said, are you done?

00:41:17.980 Are you done?

00:41:20.420 This was Rosie O'Donnell's daughter was saying, I don't know if I feel like a girl or a boy.

00:41:25.200 And Rosie making this point saying, you can be a girl and still like the boy stuff.

00:41:32.220 Of course, had Rosie O'Donnell been a child today, depending on her parents and her community, they almost certainly would have tried to trance her.

00:41:39.820 But she says, no, I'm not a boy.

00:41:40.820 I'm a girl.

00:41:41.360 I'm a girl who has a sexual desire for other girls.

00:41:45.200 I'm a girl who likes to ride motorcycles.

00:41:47.260 I'm a girl who likes to watch football.

00:41:48.280 But I'm a girl because you can't change that.

00:41:52.180 And even the people who think that you can change that, that if you're a girl but you like football, you're a boy and you need to chop your body up, they know that they're not identical with boys.

00:42:01.660 Even the really pro-trans people, they know that there's a difference.

00:42:04.460 They know that there are, in some ways, at least, they're like the sex that they appear to be and are.

00:42:13.160 So Rosie is just giving a different perspective here. 0.92

00:42:16.800 And Rosie is more right than most people on this issue.

00:42:21.160 It's not even quite so simple as Rosie is making it, though.

00:42:24.940 There's some people who are saying, being a girl is purely about biology.

00:42:31.780 X chromosomes in a uterus. 0.87

00:42:33.740 And then there are other people who are saying, being a girl has nothing to do with biology.

00:42:38.180 It has to do with whether you have pretty dresses and Barbie dolls.

00:42:43.560 And the first group of people, they'll say, no, actually, it has nothing to do with whether you like Barbie dolls.

00:42:48.320 You can not like Barbie dolls.

00:42:49.860 You can wear blue jeans.

00:42:51.540 And neither side is totally right.

00:42:55.280 I was at the TPUSA Pastors Conference yesterday.

00:42:58.380 I am not a pastor, but I was speaking to a group of pastors there.

00:43:02.580 And a young woman came up to me.

00:43:05.900 And she said, Michael, what is a woman?

00:43:09.520 We never seem to get an answer to that.

00:43:12.520 It's a great question, and the liberals can't answer it.

00:43:15.260 But we don't really seem to get a precise answer on the right either.

00:43:17.920 Sometimes people will say, oh, it's an adult female. 0.89

00:43:21.220 Okay, sure, but what does that mean?

00:43:24.600 And sometimes people will say X chromosomes.

00:43:26.520 But, okay, what does that mean?

00:43:27.760 Sometimes people will say the Barbie dolls and the dresses.

00:43:30.220 And so what is it?

00:43:32.580 And one answer that I like to give is that a woman is sugar, spice, and everything nice. 1.00

00:43:36.420 I think that's much more precise than any of the other answers that people give.

00:43:42.560 Being a girl is about a lot of different things.

00:43:47.360 And where Rosie goes a little bit wrong, actually, is she says, you can like whatever you want and do whatever you want and still be a girl.

00:43:53.040 Well, yeah, maybe.

00:43:54.780 But actually, if you're a girl, you are called to do certain things.

00:43:58.420 You actually do have certain, a certain kind of purpose.

00:44:04.460 You actually do have certain behaviors that are implied by your biology, by yourself.

00:44:10.520 And I know that's not popular to say these days, but it's true. 1.00

00:44:14.420 And if you're a man, you have certain obligations and duties, too.

00:44:17.680 And you can act like a man.

00:44:20.200 A woman is not just her body. 1.00

00:44:23.360 A woman is at least her body. 1.00

00:44:25.660 But she's not just her body. 0.88

00:44:27.600 There's more to being a woman than that. 0.87

00:44:29.240 So Rosie's on the right track.

00:44:30.200 But there's more to say.

00:44:32.720 Now, speaking as we must and as we will for the next, I was going to say 30 days.

00:44:39.860 It's probably going to be the next 30 years about transgenderism. 0.99

00:44:42.420 Another company has gone super duper gay. 0.97

00:44:45.780 Not just Bud Light.

00:44:46.780 Not just Ford.

00:44:48.060 Not just what was the company?

00:44:49.780 What was the earlier company today?

00:44:51.240 Target.

00:44:51.580 Even that very finest, most cherished brand of suburban white girls in the mid-2000s, 0.98

00:45:01.740 North Face, has gone trans. 0.97

00:45:05.140 Hi, it's me, Patagonia, a real-life homosexual.

00:45:08.980 And today, I'm here with the North Face.

00:45:10.820 We are here to invite you to come out in nature with us.

00:45:16.180 Wow, this is nice.

00:45:17.660 We like to call this little tour the Summer of Pride.

00:45:22.020 This tour has everything.

00:45:24.500 Hiking, community, art, lesbians, lesbians making art.

00:45:29.020 Last year, we gay-sah-shayed across the nation and celebrated pride across the nation with hundreds

00:45:34.680 of you across the nation.

00:45:36.900 This year, we're back, back, back again with two new stops.

00:45:40.200 Atlanta, GA.

00:45:41.660 Why?

00:45:42.460 Because you're there.

00:45:43.800 In Salt Lake City, we're coming for you.

00:45:46.260 Howdy, can we go?

00:45:47.880 Of course.

00:45:49.060 This year, all these fabulous speakers will be coming from inside this TV to a nature

00:45:53.960 near you.

00:45:54.780 So come outside and celebrate the beautiful LGHG TV community.

00:46:03.500 That's pretty gay. 0.97

00:46:05.660 So there's no way this is real, is it?

00:46:08.100 This can't be real.

00:46:09.000 The fact that I don't know, I guess, tells you a lot about where our culture is.

00:46:15.780 This is a very highly produced ad, though.

00:46:19.460 And the guy who's dressed up like a girl, he has a mustache. 0.53

00:46:23.660 I love that last line there.

00:46:25.120 It gets to what we're talking about with Jim Banks.

00:46:26.980 He says, we've got to celebrate this beautiful community.

00:46:30.660 And this is what animates so much of the LGBT activism, is an inversion of beauty. 1.00

00:46:42.400 That it's not really about a man dressing up like a woman.

00:46:46.000 And it's not really like a woman dressing up like a man.

00:46:48.780 It's about people who have, every person has some beauty to them, because we're made in

00:46:55.960 the image and likeness of God.

00:46:57.440 It's about people taking whatever beauty that they have in them, that they could cultivate,

00:47:01.440 that they could accentuate, that they could simply allow to exist, and trying to suppress

00:47:09.200 that, and to distort that, and to pervert that.

00:47:11.860 That's what it's about.

00:47:13.300 It's about highlighting the most grotesque images that one possibly can.

00:47:20.320 We've been talking about porn a lot this week, because I did that interview with the

00:47:23.560 porn expert, and this is one of the characteristics of pornography, is that it just becomes more

00:47:32.440 and more grotesque, to the point that something doesn't even appear like pornography.

00:47:36.120 I was forced by my producers to do a video of ASMR, which involved people eating foods and

00:47:43.240 making disgusting sounds.

00:47:45.460 And there's a pornographic aspect to all that, even though it's so perverse that it's hard

00:47:51.320 to even see how it in any way could relate to sensuality.

00:47:55.140 But that's what happens.

00:47:55.940 That's what happens with grotesquerie.

00:47:57.800 And we're living in a culture that is highlighting the grotesque, that calls a urinal on a wall,

00:48:03.420 or on a floor, a work of art, that calls the most intentionally revolting things beautiful,

00:48:14.360 and does so in order to force us to lie and to sever our relationship, to sever the tether

00:48:21.500 that we have to reality and to the truth, to deny that such an objective thing could exist at all.

00:48:29.340 I've never owned a North Face.

00:48:30.980 I didn't have enough money growing up in the suburbs.

00:48:33.040 I was not a white girl.

00:48:34.140 I remain not a white girl.

00:48:37.420 Tip of the iceberg.

00:48:39.100 It's going to be so many brands this year.

00:48:41.380 We'll see if any of them hold back now that they recognize that conservatives are actually willing

00:48:46.220 to fight them on it, to stop giving them their money.

00:48:50.540 Pride Month 2023 will be a very important test of our political order,

00:48:54.340 probably more so even than the 2024 presidential primary.

00:48:57.360 Okay, today is Trailer Thursday.

00:49:01.920 Is it?

00:49:02.320 I don't know.

00:49:02.580 We've got to come up with some better names.

00:49:04.100 Ben Davies tells me that the Padre Pio movie that had been teased some months ago with Shia LaBeouf,

00:49:10.420 who apparently converted to Catholicism during the process of portraying this character

00:49:15.340 because of the traditional Latin mass.

00:49:17.460 Well, apparently the movie got distribution.

00:49:19.380 The trailer is out.

00:49:20.260 I have not seen it yet, so we'll take a look at that in the member block.

00:49:22.660 The rest of the show continues now.

00:49:24.120 You do not want to miss it.

00:49:25.280 Become a member.

00:49:25.780 Use code NOLSK, N-W-L-E-S, at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:49:30.500 We'll be right back.

The Michael Knowles Show - May 25, 2023

Ep. 1254 - DeSantis Declares, Trump Trolls

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