Ep. 1292 - Ron DeSantis Braces For The Ramaswamy Tsunami
Episode Stats
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Summary
There s a lot of news to get to today, including major movement in the 2024 presidential race, a Democrat power grab to destroy the Supreme Court, and Mitt Romney s views on hot dogs. We ll get to all of it.
Transcript
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There's a lot of news to get to. Major movement in the 2024 presidential race,
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a Democrat power grab to destroy the Supreme Court, Mitt Romney's views on hot dogs. We will
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get to all of it. But first, a major announcement. I teased this yesterday. Today I'm prepared to
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give you the full story. If you're driving, I suggest you pull over. If you are standing up,
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you might want to sit down. Six years after its initial publication, my best-selling blank book,
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Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide, has been translated into Hungarian.
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The book will be available in bookstores throughout Hungary as early as next Tuesday. It is available
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right now for pre-order at Libri.hu. It is sadly not available on Amazon because Amazon does not
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operate in the nation of Hungary. Very excited for this launch. By the way, this is not, if you're
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watching right now instead of listening, this is not the real book. The book hasn't hit bookstores yet,
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so I had my producers tape the cover around another book, and they did an absolutely terrible job.
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So the real book will look much better than this. I'm very excited about this launch, though. I'm so
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excited that I'm going to go to Hungary. I'm going to go to Hungary for a full-on book tour next week
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to promote my blank book in its Hungarian translation. And then at the end of the week,
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I'm going to give a speech at the Matthias Korvinus Collegium Fest. That'll be next Friday. If you're in
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or around Budapest, I hope to see you there. In the three days between the publication of
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Miart i Svátsatunk a Liber Nyakokra and my speech, I hope that my national bestseller becomes an
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international bestseller. I'm relying on you to make that happen. Because six years on,
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I am confident that this book's message resonates now more than ever, not just in our own country,
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but throughout the entire world. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. Get a great meat at a
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secure price. My favorite meat in the world. 30 bucks off your order with my code Knowles. Go
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to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Knowles today. Mitt Romney has eaten a hot dog almost as breaking news as
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the Hungarian translation of my blank book. We will get to the meaning behind Mitt Romney's viral
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hot dog video. Really important stuff this Friday. You don't want to miss this kind of news.
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First, though, I guess we've got to slog through some minor details about the 2024 presidential race.
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Namely, there is a new number two candidate. Now, this doesn't mean that DeSantis is no longer number
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two. It means that he's now sharing the number two spot with another candidate. This,
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according to Kaplan poll, the Vake Ramaswamy, the Ramaswamy mommies just pushing their candidate
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up from, where did he start? Fifth or sixth place or something? He was down at almost 0%. Now,
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according to this Kaplan survey, he is tied with Ron DeSantis for second place. According to this
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survey, they're both tied at 12 points and they're well behind President Trump, who is at 48%.
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What does this mean? It's still silly season. It's a national poll. It doesn't mean a whole lot in
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terms of what's going to happen in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida. It does mean,
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though, that if you want to move in this race, you got to stop playing it safe. The Vake is the only
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candidate in the whole race from Trump to DeSantis to Pence to Chris Christie to Asa Hutchinson. The Vake
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is the only one, to Nikki Haley, to Tim Scott, there are other people in the race too. The Vake is the
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only one who is mixing it up and not playing it safe and putting himself in risk on the campaign
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trail in positions that he's taking, in campaign stunts that he's pulling, and it's paying off.
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He's the only candidate who's moving. And even if it's just one poll, even if it just kind of looks
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like he's tied nationally with DeSantis, that kind of momentum, that kind of movement is a really big
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deal. So yes, it's early on, but if he's getting this kind of positive movement early on, where is
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he going to be in two months, three months, four months? This should be a warning sign to one
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candidate in particular, Ron DeSantis. If you want to have a shot at the big job, you've got to stop
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playing it safe. This is not a message to Trump. Trump doesn't need to stop playing it safe because
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he's so far ahead of all the other candidates. So for Trump, it makes sense to just not show up to
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the Iowa town halls, not show up too much on the campaign trail, not commit to doing the Republican
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debates. Makes total sense for him. If DeSantis keeps playing it really safe and smart and cautious,
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and he's got all the best consultants, and he's got, he's hearing all the best strategy advice on
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here's, you got to bide your time. He's going to wind up like Ted Cruz. He's going to be a really good
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candidate who says many of the right things, who's scientifically precise about his campaign
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down to the minutest detail, and he's going to come in number two. Maybe, maybe not even number
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two. A major, it's like I've been trying to shake the DeSantis campaign by the shoulders here.
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Got to mix it up, guys, or you're not going to have a shot. Now, when I try to talk to other friends
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can-a-w-l-e-s. Pure Talk wireless for Americans by Americans. By the way, there's another very serious
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candidate waiting in the wings. Not even declared yet, that candidate would be Glenn Youngkin. Remember
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Glenn Youngkin? There have been two very, very impressive governors in the last couple of
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years. Ron DeSantis, of course, in Florida. Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. Glenn Youngkin wins his race
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in Virginia, which is a blue commonwealth, by running, well, initially he tries to run on just
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cutting taxes and all that business, country club kind of Republican stuff, and he was going nowhere.
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And then Glenn Youngkin leaned into more of the cultural issues, critical race theory in schools,
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transgender bathrooms in schools. Daily Wire broke a story on that latter issue, and that story and that
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issue may have thrown the race to Glenn Youngkin. So Youngkin's there, and inside every governor is a
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president just waiting to come out. So Youngkin's looking at it. He's reportedly meeting with some
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donors. In fact, he's meeting with Trump's former Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, hosting a meet and
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greet for Glenn Youngkin. Glenn Youngkin has no shortage of wealthy friends. He was the co-CEO of
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the Carlisle Group. I think it's the largest private equity fund in the world. They had this meet and
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greet at Wilbur Ross's Southampton, or they're having the meet and greet at Wilbur Ross's Southampton
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home. And what is Youngkin doing here? Is he declaring? No. Is he starting a super PAC? No. But
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he reportedly sent word to Trump that he's only making these moves so that he can be in the
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discussion and in contention for VP. Now, again, this is all just according to reports from the New
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York Post and some other places now. But assuming those reports are right, this is a smart move for
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Youngkin. Because if you're Glenn Youngkin, you're thinking, okay, in many ways I'm comparable to Ron
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DeSantis. Ron DeSantis is more conservative than I am. Ron DeSantis is more effective than I am.
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But Florida is also more conservative than Virginia is. So given our relative states, okay, I'm doing
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okay. But DeSantis is being just ground up in the Donald Trump meat grinder, as would any candidate.
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And so I want to put myself in a position where I could be the president, especially as Donald Trump's
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facing three indictments. He's probably going to face 30 more by the time the election comes around.
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So I want to put myself in that position. But if I want to put myself in that position without
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also getting ground up by the Trump campaign machine, then I need to directly coordinate
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with Trump and say, hey, bro, I'm not threatening you. I'm not going to run if you're running
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as much out of self-interest as out of any kind of loyalty. Don't worry, I'm on your side. In fact,
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I want to help you. In fact, I want to be your vice president. That's a smart way to play this.
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And it's something that the other candidates, I think, did not sufficiently take into account in
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this primary race. You can see Vivek is playing pretty nicely with Trump. He's reserving more of
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his criticism for the number two candidate, Ron DeSantis, and it seems to have benefited him in the polls.
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The Trump campaign is brutal. It is brutal. It will, especially if their candidate's way,
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way up right now and the candidate is running effectively as an incumbent, they're going to
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chew people up. So Glenn Youngkin, very smart, says he only wants to be VP. Of course, he has no
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designs on being president this cycle, but it's a long ways to the election. And there are a lot of
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indictments coming down the pike. We could end up in a situation, very plausibly end up in a situation
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in 2024 where the two candidates for the major parties are neither Biden nor Trump. So what is
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Youngkin doing to help himself in Virginia? Well, he just had his education department finalize a new
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rule requiring all public schools to get parental permission before cooperating with students who want
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to identify as a gender other than their biological sex. And I guess this is a win. Previously, schools
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and these pervert teachers and administrators were secretly transing the kids behind their parents'
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backs and wouldn't even tell the parents that they were calling little boys she and her and
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counseling them to identify as the opposite sex and sometimes even giving them medical advice on how to
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begin the transition process. So Virginia says, no, you can't do that. But what does the rule
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ultimately come down to? It says, hey, if an eight-year-old wants to trans himself,
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if the teachers want to trans an eight-year-old, they got to talk to the parents first.
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That's it. That's the best we can do. Glenn Youngkin says, all children in Virginia deserve
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to have a parent engaged in their life and to be treated with dignity and respect. The VDOE,
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Virginia Department of Education, updated model policies, reaffirm my administration's
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continued commitment to ensure that every parent is involved in conversations regarding their child's
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education, upbringing, and care. Okay. My goal is not for every parent to be involved in the
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conversations regarding their children's healthcare and decisions and care. My goal is to stop people
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from castrating little kids. The problem is not the procedure of the way in which little kids are
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getting transed and sterilized and mutilated. The problem is that they are getting transed and
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sterilized and mutilated. So the real answer here is not, we need to just have broader,
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more respectful conversations about how best to trans the children. The answer here is, no,
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this is completely illegal and anyone who does it goes to prison at least. That's the answer.
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Now, easy for me to say. I'm sitting here in the state of Tennessee behind a microphone. I'm not a
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governor. I'm not a senator. I get that Glenn Youngkin is in a tough spot because Virginia is
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a blue commonwealth. And so he's trying to have a more conciliatory sort of policy while still scoring
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some wins. This doesn't even bring us back to 2017 levels of insanity. Could you imagine,
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could you imagine this would be the debate? We went from not even having a public conception of
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transgenderism six, seven years ago to, well, are we going to trans the seven-year-olds or the eight-year-olds?
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That was about a year ago to now. Well, how should we trans the kids? Should the parents be involved
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at all or should it just be the teachers? We're just going to, by the end, we're going to be transing
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the newborns in 18 months if we keep this up. This was the point of my CPAC speech.
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You can't keep trying to negotiate on the terms of the field that's already been lost.
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I'm mixing some metaphors here. But you've already been pushed so far back on the field. And then
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you've been pushed back, I don't know, 20 yards and you're trying to regain six inches. You got to
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cut that out. The only kind of policy that will matter at all is if you come out and say, hey,
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we're going to eradicate transgenderism from public life entirely. That's the only way to do it.
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That's what the left does. We would be doing it on the side of justice and morality and sanity.
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The left does it on the side of insanity and immorality and injustice.
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You think the left cares about, well, a conciliatory meeting in the middle? No.
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Even as they've lost elections, even as they've lost Virginia on the transgender issue, they say,
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okay, yeah, whatever. We kind of lost one election. We're just going to keep pushing.
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Yeah, we want the teachers to be able in their sole discretion to trans seven-year-olds.
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What are you going to do about it? They don't care about moderation. They don't care about
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seeming reasonable and conciliatory. They just care about winning. So we've got to do that too.
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Maybe it's the best he can do in Virginia. But what about those governors in the red states?
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Got to push a lot further. We got to go a lot. We got to say, no, actually, forget about the
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six-year-olds getting trans. 26-year-olds can't get trans. 36-year-olds can't get trans. Doctors
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who engage in these surgeries go to prison. Doctors who engage in these kinds of mutilations
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at the very least lose their licenses and they should flee the state. They should be afraid to
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show their faces in public for fear of ostracism, okay? Now, DeSantis in Florida, he's going further
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than Glenn Youngkin. And the political circumstances in Florida allow him to do that. So again, I am
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grading a little bit on a curve here. But DeSantis is playing great with what he's got available to
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him. DeSantis just ordered his state board of administration to investigate the assets of
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Transheiser Bush that Florida has invested in. So they say, this is DeSantis, as sales of AB InBev
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products, and for those of you who are unaware, AB InBev is the official corporate name of the
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company, much better known as Transheiser Bush. As sales of AB InBev products within the U.S.
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continue to precipitously decline, reports are now emerging that large American mainstays like Costco
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will be pulling Bud Light from the shelves. Clearly, the board's mismanagement, as well as its failure
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to remediate the problem and repair its relationship with millions of disaffected American
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customers, has led to this impasse and will continue to financially harm the SBA and other
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shareholders. So he's really smart about what he's saying here. He's not just saying, we need to punish
00:16:01.320
Transheiser Bush because Bud Light went woke. He's saying, well, aw shucks, aw shucks.
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Transheiser Bush went woke, and now the stock price is collapsing and the profits are collapsing.
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And so it's my responsibility as someone with the fiduciary interest of Floridians, you know,
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on my shoulders. We've got to pull out. We've got to stop supporting, just to protect ourselves.
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Now, the effect of this, of course, is going to be the same, and it's going to be the same knock
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that the libs and the squishes make, especially the squishes make on Ron DeSantis, which is,
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he's wielding the government to punish the people who he thinks are doing bad things.
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But he's not, he's such a hypocrite. He's not wielding the government to punish the people
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who are doing good things. That's true. That's right. It's called politics. It's called statecraft.
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It's called conserving anything at all. Right. You should not treat good and bad as the same.
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You should not treat true and false as the same. You should not treat beautiful and ugly as the same.
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They're different. And we need to use our judgment and our prudence and our wisdom in statecraft
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to discern between the two. Because if you treat them the same, you're going to get a decaying,
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degrading country. And ultimately, you're going to get a very bad country that thrives or decays
00:17:30.780
on falsehood and that lives amid ugliness. Really good stuff from DeSantis. It's bold. It's in the
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right direction. Strongly, strongly encourage other Republicans to follow suit. Speaking of power
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plays, Maisie Hirono, one of the more frequently mocked members of the United States Senate.
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Maisie is a Democrat senator. She is insisting that if the Supreme Court does not adopt the code
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of ethics that she wants it to adopt, then she and her fellow senators are going to force one on the
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Supreme Court. First of all, let's understand that the United States Supreme Court does not
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have a code of ethics, the kind of code of ethics that applies to all other federal judges.
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So the highest court in the land should set a standard, should set the highest standard. They
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do not. And so this is a bill that would do that. But what will it do? It will establish a procedure for
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investigating ethical violations. It will make much clearer recusal requirements. And the third is to
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give the court time to adopt the code of ethics. And if they do not, then one will be provided to them.
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How exactly? Senator, how exactly do you plan to then enforce those guidelines?
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Some of the guidelines will be done through the commission that is established by the judicial
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conference. And so there are judicial conference procedures for investigating these kinds of things.
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Good on the CNN guy. Good on the CNN guy for asking the obvious question here.
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What Maisie Hirono is suggesting sounds kind of nice if you don't know anything about politics and
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haven't thought about this issue for more than two seconds. She goes, it's crazy that the Supreme Court
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doesn't have a code of ethics. Now, first of all, the Supreme Court obviously has quite a code of ethics.
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It's not written down on a sheet of paper necessarily, but the Supreme Court has all sorts of traditions and
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ethical standards that it abides by, and they're very, very high. But it doesn't have a written down
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formal code of ethics. That's true. Why might that be? Because it's the highest court in the land.
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And the CNN guy raises this question. He says, well, who's going to hold them accountable to the code of
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ethics? And Maisie Hirono's answer is very dangerous here. And this whole movement by the
00:19:59.960
Senate Democrats to hold the Supreme Court to a code of ethics, that is just jargony, euphemistic
00:20:05.180
gobbledygook to allow for a Senate takeover of the Supreme Court, to allow for the takeover of one
00:20:12.900
branch of government by another branch of government. Because her answer is, well, who's going to hold
00:20:17.740
them to it? We will. We are going to decide what cases the judges are allowed to participate in.
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And when we say that, what do we mean? We mean we're going to make Clarence Thomas recuse himself.
00:20:31.680
We're going to make Amy Barrett recuse herself. We're going to make the conservatives recuse
00:20:35.580
themselves. And we're going to hold them accountable. That's not how the Constitution works.
00:20:39.640
That's not how the branches of government work. This is something that the Senate has no right to do.
00:20:44.740
And if the Senate were able to steal this kind of a power, it would be, I say without exaggeration,
00:20:51.280
probably the biggest threat to our system of government in at least half a century, maybe more.
00:20:58.860
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Michael Biesenthal, 4259, who says,
00:22:26.460
Marjorie Taylor Greene must have been spending too much time with Michael's producers to have found
00:22:29.780
such obscene material. It's so true. This crew, these producers, we're going to call them the
00:22:35.080
weird sex stuff team over here. I would say that's a full third of my show many days. Not today,
00:22:40.420
actually, because today we're talking about important things like the Hungarian translation
00:22:45.440
of my blank book and the 2024 presidential race and Mitt Romney eating a hot dog. I guess that's the
00:22:49.580
most scintillating thing of the day, which we will get to. But I don't want to move on too quickly
00:22:54.240
from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has to be able to rule itself. The Supreme Court has to have
00:23:05.700
a lot of authority. Just as the Supreme Court doesn't go in and totally dominate the U.S. Senate,
00:23:11.640
so too the Senate can't go in and totally dominate the Supreme Court. We have a system of checks and
00:23:19.480
balances and a separation of powers for a reason. The reason that we have that is to try to stop
00:23:25.560
the natural decay of the cycle of regimes. And this is a problem that has been recognized since
00:23:32.040
the old ancient Greeks, people like Polybius, the Greek historian of the Romans, who observed
00:23:39.780
that regimes naturally decay. So if you have a monarchy, it's naturally going to decay into something
00:23:47.300
else. If you have an oligarchy, it's natural. An aristocracy is naturally going to decay into
00:23:50.460
something else. If you have a democracy, it's naturally going to decay into something else.
00:23:54.040
And you're going to be stuck in this cycle forever and ever and ever. And so the classical
00:23:57.160
conception of a mixed regime endeavors to stop or at the very least slow down that decay and cycle
00:24:06.260
of regimes. And the American founding fathers tried to do a similar thing. When they established the
00:24:10.260
government with an executive and a legislature and a judiciary that were separated and had checks
00:24:18.160
and balances on one another, the point of that was to give us a more stable regime. And what they
00:24:23.200
were trying to do, you see in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, you see in the writings of a lot
00:24:28.180
of great statesmen and a lot of great thinkers throughout history. They're saying, okay, if we have
00:24:32.900
not just a monarchy or an aristocracy or a democracy, but if we have elements of all of those things,
00:24:38.320
in the United States, the executive is kind of like a monarchy. It's got elements and aspects
00:24:45.280
of a monarchy. The Senate, as well as other elements of our constitution, are kind of like
00:24:50.820
an aristocracy. And obviously the representation of the people is significantly like a democracy.
00:24:57.640
Well, if you have them all at once, maybe you can slow down that decay. And we have been just trying,
00:25:04.800
we've been dead set ever since on destroying that system. The election of senators would be
00:25:12.480
one of the things that upends the regime. The Senate trying to dominate the Supreme Court,
00:25:18.580
same thing. They want to do it though because they have, the libs have no particular care for
00:25:24.740
the stability of our regime. In fact, they don't really like the way our regime was set up to begin
00:25:29.140
with. And they want to make it much more conducive to their exercise of power, even if it destabilizes
00:25:36.020
the whole country. Now we got to get to Mitt Romney eating a hot dog. Really important stuff.
00:25:41.740
Speaking of the Senate, Mitt Romney posted this video a few days ago. It has gone viral.
00:25:47.460
Well, as you all know, today is National Hot Dog Day. And perhaps you also know that hot dog is my
00:25:53.940
favorite meat. I love hot dogs. I love them in buns. I love them outside of buns. I love them
00:26:00.620
with baked beans. I just like hot dogs. It's the best meat there is without question. So to all of
00:26:06.740
you who like me are celebrating National Hot Dog Day, congratulations to you. And may there be many,
00:26:13.300
many more hot dogs served in our wonderful land. Did you catch it? If you were listening,
00:26:19.500
you didn't catch it. I know he sounds a little stilted. It has a little bit the aspect of how do you
00:26:23.920
do fellow humans. He's wearing a hat that's got a hot dog on it. He's walking around with the hot
00:26:28.780
dog. It's a little awkward, but kind of charming and endearing, actually, by the standard of Mitt
00:26:33.640
Romney. Did you catch the problem, though? There's always something with this guy. And here's the
00:26:38.540
problem. Ketchup. He's got ketchup on the hot dog. Of course he does. Of course Mitt Romney puts ketchup
00:26:47.220
on the hot dog. I don't want to read too much into Mitt Romney's hot dog. Tells you a lot about his
00:26:52.840
politics, though. No person over the age of 18, really no person over the age of 14 or 15, should
00:26:59.960
ever put ketchup on a hot dog. It is sugary sweet. It destroys the delicious taste and flavor and
00:27:08.020
complexities of the hot dog. A hot dog is meant to be enjoyed with chopped onions or relish. I'm not a big
00:27:16.040
relish guy, but some people like it. Sauerkraut. I need sauerkraut on a hot dog. Mustard, but not
00:27:22.960
ketchup. Ketchup is for little children. And this reflects Mitt Romney's politics. Mitt Romney's
00:27:30.460
politics are for little children. Mitt Romney's politics are for people who don't want to play in
00:27:34.840
the big leagues. Mitt Romney's politics are so doe-eyed, naive, innocent, or perhaps cynical.
00:27:47.960
Mitt Romney is the kind of Republican who either always allows himself to get duped or concedes from
00:27:56.080
the very beginning. What major political fight has Mitt Romney ever won for the conservatives?
00:28:01.920
None. He invented Obamacare. That was unfortunate. He was run roughshod over in the race against Obama,
00:28:11.580
and he spent the last seven or eight years attacking Republicans consistently and undermining
00:28:16.240
conservative priorities. Maybe that's because he really believes what he says. And I give him the
00:28:23.100
benefit of the doubt. Maybe when he says, we just need to meet in the middle and be really
00:28:25.700
conciliatory and come on, ha ha, work across the aisle, ha ha ha. Or maybe it's because he just
00:28:30.820
thinks there's no viable path for conservative policies, or maybe he's just a liberal himself.
00:28:34.760
But either way, when it comes to conservative fighting, he behaves like a child, and apparently
00:28:41.500
he eats like one too. Speaking of mastication, before we get into the mailbag, another video from a
00:28:53.100
chewed on a child. And if you're not watching this, if you're just hearing it, I don't know how I can
00:29:10.980
describe it to you. I can't overstate how weird this is. He leans in, and it's not just a little
00:29:17.260
nuzzling with the child. I actually think that's kind of cute. I know people say that everything Joe
00:29:21.260
Biden does is really creepy, and some of the things he does. But I don't know, playing around,
00:29:24.520
making goofy faces at a child, I think that's kind of cute. But he leans in and just starts
00:29:28.340
chewing on the child. And then he leans in and makes a goofy face, and then he smells her hair
00:29:35.900
again. He does the hair smell thing that's got him in so much political trouble. And my takeaway from
00:29:41.920
this is not, as some more eccentric or energetic right-wingers might say, that he's a pedophile or
00:29:50.900
something like that. My takeaway here is, the guy is in cognitive decline. Because even if his
00:29:58.080
mastication on the child and the hair smelling is totally innocent, it's a huge political loser for
00:30:05.300
him. And he is constantly criticized for it, and it's completely unnecessary. And yet he keeps doing it.
00:30:11.240
And why does he do it? I assume it's because he is obviously in the throes of cognitive decline.
00:30:16.320
And the thing that we haven't talked about too much on the right, we've all been making fun of
00:30:19.960
how Joe Biden is a couple fries short of a happy meal. But Joe Biden is not the sharpest tool in
00:30:27.120
this yet, and it seems to be getting worse. If you've ever experienced cognitive decline with a
00:30:32.180
loved one, a family member, someone like that, you know it's not just a gradual thing.
00:30:37.780
It starts out kind of slow, and then it gets dramatically worse. Cognitive decline at a
00:30:46.460
certain age really accelerates. And we've seen it really accelerate with Biden. And just think,
00:30:52.900
even though they keep Biden broadly out of the public sight, even though he doesn't give a lot
00:30:56.400
of speeches or rallies or campaign or anything like that, this guy has a lot of pressure on him.
00:31:02.060
He does have to be in public a considerable amount. That pressure is, on the one hand,
00:31:08.500
might keep him a little bit with his wits about him because at least his mind will be stimulated.
00:31:12.400
But that's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of stress at that age. Biden could decline rapidly.
00:31:20.240
We keep saying on the Republican side, oh, it's a long way until the election. Right. That cuts both
00:31:24.200
ways. It's a long way until the election. If this is where we are with Joe Biden now,
00:31:28.300
if we've seen this kind of a decline from 2020 to 2023, is this guy going to be able to walk around
00:31:34.580
the campaign trail in 2024? Or is Gavin Newsom going to be waiting in the wings? I've got some
00:31:40.940
fantastic news, by the way. Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to take a stroll
00:31:46.540
through the Capitol on? January 6th, the worst day in the history of this or any republic.
00:31:56.960
Have you maybe wondered what it's like to take a walk on the surface of the sun?
00:32:01.020
You're in luck because my guest on Michael And this week has firsthand experience with at least
00:32:05.820
one of those things, though he claims firsthand experience with both. This would be the first
00:32:09.700
long-form sit-down interview that Jacob Chansley, the QAnon shaman, has given since being released
00:32:15.520
from jail. You know the Horn Hat guy from January 6th. Check out this teaser.
00:32:20.120
You were in solitary confinement for 10 and a half months.
00:32:24.840
I experienced some miraculous things in solitary. I'm freaking out. I'm in a cell. I'm freaking out.
00:32:30.640
I'm like, what the hell? And I had a Bible in my hand. I said, I need you to speak with me.
00:32:34.240
So I closed my eyes, I opened the Bible, I point to a random verse, and the verse was,
00:32:38.480
I am yours and you are mine. I have redeemed you and called you by name, O Jacob.
00:32:50.380
What is a shaman? What is a woman? What really happened on January 6th? Find out in this hippie,
00:32:58.000
trippy interview out now. The big tech approved version of this episode is on YouTube.
00:33:03.840
But if you want to catch the uncensored version, the full version, you've got to get that exclusively
00:33:08.720
on Twitter at M Knowles Show and at Daily Wire Plus. The mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk.
00:33:16.260
Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. Get 50%, 5-0% off your first month. Take it away.
00:33:23.100
Hey, Michael. My name's Natalia. And as you can probably tell by my accent, I am not an American,
00:33:28.000
but I am an Australian. And I listen to your show every single day without fail. I absolutely love it.
00:33:32.940
My question is just in regards to university and how best to navigate it. I am a conservative
00:33:38.360
Christian woman and I'm currently studying to be an ancient history high school teacher.
00:33:43.200
I'm struggling at the moment because I'm finding that my professors require me to write
00:33:47.520
woke papers and woke content that I don't believe in. Generally speaking, I am an A plus student and
00:33:53.240
get really good grades, but I'm struggling lately because I don't know whether to stick by my values
00:33:57.940
and write papers I believe in or to give in to my professors and write work content that I don't
00:34:02.560
believe in just to get a good grade. I know it sounds like a cowardice question, but I genuinely am
00:34:07.500
struggling. So I'd love any advice that you might have. Thank you so much. Love the show.
00:34:13.420
Thank you so much. That's one. I'm so pleased to hear we've got listeners down in Australia. I've
00:34:17.520
heard this for some years now. Makes me think we need an Australian translation of reasons to vote
00:34:21.640
for Democrats too. It's a good question. And you're thinking that I'm going to give you
00:34:27.680
one of two answers. There's the answer which I really disagree with, which is essentially,
00:34:32.780
oh, just lie, keep your head down, pretend to be a lib, get the degree, and then later on you can
00:34:37.200
have integrity in your work, which will not happen. Integrity, honesty, it's something you have to
00:34:43.600
practice. It's not something that you're just suddenly going to start doing later on in life when
00:34:48.820
the stakes are much higher than they are at university, when you've got a mortgage to pay,
00:34:52.220
when you've got a job to keep. So I'm not going to tell you that. Likewise, though, I'm not going to
00:34:56.400
give you the other answer, which is you should just be totally open and flamboyant at all times
00:35:01.720
about your views, come what may, because then you possibly could flunk out and then you don't get
00:35:06.300
the degree and then you don't get to do your job. And then to quote Mitch McConnell on the subject of
00:35:10.900
elections, the winners get to go make laws and the losers go home. I'm not going to tell you that
00:35:15.080
either. I'm going to give you an answer that a diplomat friend once gave me. And he described it as
00:35:21.980
the difference between diplomacy and flattery. And here's the difference. The flatterer lies. The
00:35:30.020
flatterer is dishonest and will say really nice things about the person that he wants to impress,
00:35:35.180
regardless of whether or not they're true, simply to ingratiate himself to that person. And that's wrong
00:35:40.060
and that's a sin. The diplomat, however, will say the good things that he can say about the person
00:35:50.840
that he is speaking with. And he will say them truthfully and he might omit other truthful things
00:35:58.460
that would be a little harsher, but he will highlight the good in order to have a good relationship with
00:36:05.540
this person and then perhaps to have even more influence later down the road. It's a subtle
00:36:10.540
distinction, but it's clear enough. Don't lie, but you don't need to be wearing the MAGA hat or a horn
00:36:17.080
hat or something at the water cooler every day or in your classroom. This is why, and I say this often,
00:36:23.280
I probably say it two or three times a week, we are called to be wise as serpents and innocent as
00:36:27.860
doves. And I think that distinction might help you. Your job in navigating these treacherous waters
00:36:33.960
is to be a diplomat, not a flatterer, not a kamikaze, a diplomat. And if you're ever really
00:36:43.540
put in a position where they say, well, hey, renounce what you believe, lie, don't say, don't tell the
00:36:49.420
truth. Well, then the die is cast and you have an obligation to the truth. But there's a lot of
00:36:56.720
maneuvering. There's a lot of cleverness you're going to have in the meantime. Next question.
00:37:00.520
Hi, Michael. It's Chuck Meister. I recently had a college friend, an Indian guy, show some interest
00:37:06.620
in Catholicism. And before you ask, unfortunately, it wasn't Arun. He was raised Hindu and felt the
00:37:12.060
services here were just a bit of a show. He tried going to some non-denominational church and said,
00:37:16.820
I quote, the services felt like a cake made entirely of icing. When he was raised in India,
00:37:21.400
he went to Catholic grade school and high school. So he's always had a reverence for the church.
00:37:25.160
I've already told him to read the introduction to the catechism and John 3, 16. But what do you
00:37:29.840
think would be the most convincing argument for a Hindu looking to convert to Catholicism,
00:37:34.620
aside from watching the Michael Knowles show? Love the show. Thanks.
00:37:38.020
That's a good way to do it. You know, I love the Hindus, love Indians. A disproportionate number of
00:37:46.120
my close friends have been Indian. And one of my very best friends is Hindu. And then, of course,
00:37:50.840
one of the great listeners to this show, Arun, is also an Indian and a Hindu. And I would, of course,
00:37:55.960
like all of them to convert to Christianity. How do you convince a Hindu? I love what he says when
00:38:01.840
he says, I went to some modern lib kind of megachurch liturgy, and it seemed like a case
00:38:07.340
made entirely of icing. Another way that this is described is that the Catholic view is first the
00:38:14.340
fast, then the feast. And the modern kind of eccentric view is first the feast, then the
00:38:20.440
hangover. So I would lean into that. If that appeals to him, I would recommend that he check
00:38:26.200
out a traditional Latin mass because a traditional Latin mass has smells and bells. I visited India.
00:38:33.180
I visited Varanasi, which is probably the spiritual capital of India. It's the oldest contigiously
00:38:39.960
inhabited city in the world. All sorts of religious rituals that go back many thousands of years.
00:38:47.160
Temples to Jupiter. I mean, really wild, wild stuff. And so perhaps the ornate nature of the
00:38:55.580
traditional liturgy and its sheer weight of history, the fact that it's existed for 2,000 years and in
00:39:04.340
its present traditional liturgical form for very least 500 years and really significantly much
00:39:10.280
longer than that, that might appeal to him. The fact that there is complexity to it is important.
00:39:17.080
My priest in New York, wonderful man, pointed out that a lot of modern people, when they're looking
00:39:22.240
for modern religion, they say, I just want it to be really clear. They'll say, why do you people pray
00:39:27.680
to saints or something? I don't know. Why do you engage in these ornate and elaborate liturgies?
00:39:32.320
Why do you partake of the sacraments? Why do you do this, that, and the other? It's not clear.
00:39:36.560
Why isn't it just really simple and clear? And my priest points out, shallows are clear.
00:39:43.020
Shallows are clear. Deep waters are murky. They're darker. There's more to it. You can't
00:39:49.040
take it all in at once. Shallow thinking is very clear. Shallow religion is very, very clear.
00:39:54.640
And so Hinduism, which is a pagan type of religion, is extraordinarily complex. It doesn't really have a
00:40:00.620
theology to it, but it's got an extraordinarily complex type of mythology, which can take you
00:40:06.940
somewhere. It can point you in, broadly speaking, perhaps the right direction. So then when you apply
00:40:14.820
the rigors of theology and accept complexity and ornateness and the humility of not grasping it all
00:40:23.100
at once, that might appeal to him. Okay, next question. Hey, Michael. So seeing as science is
00:40:28.740
indeed fake, Clavin had a creation scientist on recently and reminded me of the fact that while
00:40:34.580
some of the current scientific battles that we're fighting, like abortion, climate change, vaccines,
00:40:38.760
and transgenderism are all worthy of fighting and winning, I think we're giving up one of the most
00:40:43.260
important scientific debates. And we gave it up a long time ago to the libs, namely that humans did not
00:40:49.180
fall from other creatures. We are created specifically by God in his image. Another piece
00:40:53.900
that I feel is pretty widely accepted by conservatives is that the earth is billions and billions of years
00:40:58.280
old, despite some pretty compelling fossil evidence to the contrary, as well as the problem of death
00:41:03.060
prior to the fall of man. I think this is an area that is really important that we seeded long ago
00:41:09.820
and the court cases in the mid-20th century around education really helped drive that home.
00:41:14.640
Many of these problems we face now, in my opinion, stem from us giving up this debate. So from your
00:41:18.820
perspective, curious on your take of the historical atom and the age of the earth, if you think it
00:41:23.740
could be 10 or 11,000 years old, it's a pretty based take, if you ask me. Really good question. And I know
00:41:29.780
there are a lot of modern conservatives who want to sidestep it because they fear that if they at all
00:41:34.660
question whatever the prevailing orthodoxy on evolution is du jour, because it changes considerably
00:41:42.060
since the time of Darwin seems to change year by year. But if they question whatever the fashionable view
00:41:47.300
is today, then they'll be called hicks or rubes or idiots or something like that. If they question
00:41:52.260
how old the universe is, the cosmos is, the earth is, even though, again, science changes that number
00:41:59.040
pretty regularly. But if we question it, then, you know, we're a big bunch of hick-rubes idiots.
00:42:04.920
So they don't want to engage in that. But it's a serious debate. And so how must one think about it?
00:42:11.820
I suppose I just don't think about it very often. Because science is fake and because
00:42:16.480
virtually every claim ever made by modern science after the scientific revolution is false,
00:42:22.840
then, or has been proven false at some point, I just don't worry about it too much. And I accept
00:42:27.820
the nice advances in technology with caution because very often those advances in technology
00:42:34.300
have all sorts of externalities that cause all sorts of problems in the world. So I approach even
00:42:38.000
even that, even the very best products of the scientific revolution, I approach them
00:42:43.100
with some caution and trepidation. I reject the worldview that has come out of the scientific
00:42:49.440
revolution, which is that all that really matters about reality is fundamentally physical. I just,
00:42:55.100
that's not true. That's obviously not true. So I reject that. And then in terms of the age of the
00:43:02.120
world or anything, it just doesn't affect my life in any way. It doesn't affect, forget even my
00:43:08.300
personal life, it doesn't affect my thinking and the way I think about other things all that much.
00:43:12.700
I consider Genesis to be the most insightful account of the creation. And so if in some physical way,
00:43:23.360
the physical history of the world is somehow different or, I don't know, distinguished in some way from
00:43:34.200
that account, I don't really care because the story in just a handful of chapters that I see in Genesis
00:43:39.020
most clearly to me accounts for how the world really works. The one thing I would insist upon,
00:43:46.240
I would not insist upon the earth being, I don't know, 10,000 years old or something. I would not insist upon
00:43:50.920
this type of evolution or that type of evolution or no type of evolution. The one thing I would insist
00:43:56.220
upon though is a real Adam and Eve. I think human beings must descend from a real Adam and Eve,
00:44:03.780
from a common ancestor. This is called monogenism. And Pope Pius XII insisted upon this in
00:44:09.260
Omani Generis. We have to do that or else our understanding even of human nature falls apart.
00:44:17.820
And, okay, so let's say that our understanding of human nature is wrong. Well, I don't know what
00:44:22.440
vision of human nature would replace it. The libs who would replace it don't have much of an answer
00:44:27.200
to that. And they don't really have much evidence that we don't descend from a common ancestor. They
00:44:31.180
don't really have any evidence at all of that. So that is the part where I think one really must
00:44:37.000
insist for one's faith. Okay, next question. Hello, Mr. Knowles. It is your favorite bass player once again.
00:44:43.740
Slap My Bass coming at you with a music question of all things. So recently I just joined a church band
00:44:50.740
playing bass, of course. And my question to you is, how do you feel about contemporary music
00:44:58.140
performing in churches? For example, guitars and basses, as opposed to the traditional pipe organ
00:45:05.780
that would proclaim the hymns? Or if they are using some sort of New Age hymns that you would find
00:45:13.900
on something like a Worship Together compilation that you would get from Time Life magazine.
00:45:19.920
I'm curious about what your thoughts are. Thanks for your time once again.
00:45:23.400
I love the bass. I know you're an excellent bassist. I don't think that stuff belongs in
00:45:29.600
church. I don't think that Brahms belongs at a rock concert. And I don't think that the modern
00:45:36.800
pop bubblegum music, or even worse, the highly percussive music, belongs in church. Because music
00:45:44.500
is really important, as Plato points out. It bypasses the reason. It speaks most directly to our souls.
00:45:51.120
And it can shape our souls. This is why if you get out of a car and you've been listening to rap
00:45:56.780
music and some kind of gangsta, hideous rap, your mind's going to be in a worse place. Your whole
00:46:01.100
self is going to be in a worse place. And the same thing is true in church. This is why I'll go even
00:46:06.320
further. I'm skeptical of polyphony in church. You know, I'm more a fan of monophony, meaning
00:46:13.200
plain chant. Gregorian chant, I think, is much more conducive to worship. The early Christians,
00:46:21.120
throughout the Middle Ages, preferred Gregorian chant, not because they hadn't discovered harmony.
00:46:29.960
Pre-Christian worship music, pre-Christian liturgical music, was much more ornate than the kind of music
00:46:37.360
you saw from the early church up through the Middle Ages and in some traditional parishes today.
00:46:42.160
The Christians stripped it down a little bit and brought it into that unison chanting for a reason
00:46:51.140
because it focuses the mind and it actually takes personality out of it. When the gospel is chanted
00:46:57.460
rather than read, that's not a way to show off your singing skills if you're a priest. That's a way to
00:47:02.020
take the personality out of it so you don't have some ham actor yucking it up there on the altar,
00:47:07.140
but you've just got the word of God coming to you in this beautiful way that speaks directly into
00:47:12.100
your soul. And so I would just be careful of it, especially with percussion. It can rile you up.
00:47:15.960
It riles up the base passions and it can take your mind and soul off the worship of God as it ought to
00:47:21.420
be done properly and reverently. All right, the rest of the show continues now. On that harsh note,
00:47:26.900
on that footloose note, no rock music. You know why the Baptists refuse to drink? Because they know
00:47:32.620
that drinking can lead to dancing. That's right. Become a member right now. Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S
00:47:37.380
at checkout for two months free on all annual plans and go to Libri.hu and get your copy of
00:47:42.620
Miert Asfatzatzunk a Liber Nyakokra. We'll see you at the member block.