The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1303 - Elon Protects Conservatives & Megan Rapinoe Kills USA Soccer

00:00:00.000 Elon Musk is once again putting his money where our mouths are.

00:00:04.400 Elon has just announced that for the first time in the history of big tech,

00:00:07.840 quote, if you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something

00:00:14.820 on this platform, we will fund your legal bill. No limit. Please let us know.

00:00:21.960 The tweet or Z or X post or whatever, I don't know, whatever they're calling it now,

00:00:27.240 doesn't matter, came in response to reports that a NASCAR driver was suspended by his league

00:00:33.140 for liking a meme that referenced George Floyd. We'll get to that story in just a moment.

00:00:42.680 Elon's offer is welcome regardless of this particular story that caused it because Elon

00:00:48.840 is proving a hugely important point about free speech that the right has largely missed.

00:00:54.360 The right misunderstands a lot about free speech. For at least a couple decades now,

00:00:58.660 the right has defended free speech in the abstract without getting into the nitty gritty of substance.

00:01:04.420 What exactly it is that we want to say? We pretended to be neutral and this was always foolish because

00:01:10.680 all societies have standards and free speech in the abstract means nothing to people who have

00:01:14.680 nothing to say. But Elon here is proving another important point, which is that free speech in the

00:01:21.620 abstract, any kind of speech standard really, means nothing to people who have no power to enforce it.

00:01:29.380 So we bleat on and on about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the free marketplace of ideas.

00:01:35.780 And then the left censors us. And then we whine some more. And then what happens? The left censors us

00:01:43.280 some more because the libs have the power to do it. This is why Elon is so great and revolutionary for the

00:01:50.500 right. He doesn't just pull out his pocket Constitution and explain how, you know, what

00:01:56.360 Google is doing is actually very wrong. Because if you look here in paragraph three, Elon puts up

00:02:01.640 $44 billion and a lot more to come, it would seem, to make sure that conservatives at least have a shot

00:02:08.220 at saying the true normal things that we want to say, both in principle and in practice without losing

00:02:17.040 our livelihoods for it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:27.420 Welcome back to the show. Megan Rapinoe, who is the soccer lady, she doomed her team, 1.00

00:02:32.760 the U.S. women's soccer team, to lose the big game for the big thing. I don't know. I've never

00:02:36.880 watched a soccer game in my life. And all red-blooded American patriots are cheering the loss of the U.S.

00:02:41.860 women's team. So we'll get to why that is in just a second. Because it's a little odd,

00:02:44.900 isn't it? Patriots cheering the loss of the U.S. team. It's a paradox, but it does make sense.

00:02:50.700 We'll get into it in a second. First, I want to turn to another sport, NASCAR, where a guy got

00:02:55.080 canceled for liking a meme. This guy, it's Noah Gragson. He was suspended from the league by the

00:03:04.040 Legacy Motor Club and NASCAR because he appeared to like a meme that made a little bit of a joke

00:03:13.000 about George Floyd. So he's out and he's already owned up to it. He's posted his public apology

00:03:23.180 for the Stalin show trial to beg forgiveness. I'm disappointed in myself, he says, for my lack of

00:03:28.800 attention and actions on social media. I understand the severity of this situation. I love and appreciate

00:03:34.980 everyone. I try to treat everyone equally, no matter who they are. I messed up plain and simple.

00:03:38.940 Please don't kill me. It's like a North Korean prisoner begging for clemency. It's very, very sad.

00:03:46.440 And it shows you an important distinction that a lot of the squishy conservatives haven't gotten.

00:03:54.400 It's the distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. This word authoritarian,

00:04:01.220 which I think should probably be crossed out of the English language because the way it's used in

00:04:05.360 America doesn't mean anything anymore. But the word authoritarian, I guess it would refer to a

00:04:10.900 government like, I don't know, Franco's Spain, I guess, would be authoritarian. Today, the Libs say

00:04:17.020 that Hungary, Orbán's Hungary is authoritarian, which I was just over there, it's not. It's absolutely

00:04:22.940 preposterous to call that place authoritarian. It is illiberal though. So, okay, what does it mean?

00:04:28.440 What are the Libs meaning when they say it's authoritarian? They mean that the government

00:04:34.600 has clear standards, clear limits in certain well-defined areas of law and society. So let's

00:04:43.900 say, hey, no pride parades, no weird curricula in the schools, no degenerate behavior on the streets,

00:04:53.380 but what you want to do in your private life, we're not going to pay much attention to.

00:05:00.560 That's what they say. They say, look, our government, our society, it's not going to be a liberal society.

00:05:04.820 It's not going to be a progressive society. It's going to be a Christian society. Christianity is 0.99

00:05:09.480 going to animate our public life. But the government will say this openly. They'll say, we're not talking

00:05:15.260 about people's individual faith. You can pursue your individual faith as you see fit. We're not going

00:05:21.460 to send in the purity police into your bedroom and into your living room to enforce your religious 0.99

00:05:27.680 behaviors. We're just saying as a political matter, the Christian view, the Christian morality, that's

00:05:32.580 what's going to define our culture. The same thing John Adams said at the founding of America.

00:05:38.520 Totalitarian is different. Totalitarian does not have very highly defined, narrow limits in which

00:05:46.280 the government is saying, okay, this is going to be our standard. In totalitarian societies,

00:05:50.760 it's everything. It's everything. Such that if you sitting on your couch accidentally linger too

00:05:59.160 long on a meme, on your private little app, on your phone, and you, maybe you laugh a little too

00:06:03.920 hard at it, you're going to be canceled. You're going to lose your livelihood. Maybe you'll be

00:06:07.480 prosecuted. You'll be ostracized. You're out. Big, big difference. And the irony of it is that in our

00:06:14.760 liberal Western societies, all the big lib societies of Europe and the United States, we're told this is

00:06:21.200 freedom. Oh, we live in free. You can do whatever you want. We're not like those authoritarian societies

00:06:27.760 out there in Eastern Europe. The authoritarian societies even further east. No, no, sir. We're liberal.

00:06:34.680 People are much freer in supposedly authoritarian regimes than they are in the liberal West very often,

00:06:42.880 because the liberal West, ironically, is totalitarian. Now, when you want to preserve a

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00:08:11.720 K-N-W-L-E-S, to 98, 98, 98. Speaking of debate and the free marketplace of ideas,

00:08:18.600 Governor Gavin Newsom over there in California, Gamora by the Sea, has challenged Florida Governor

00:08:25.140 Ron DeSantis to a debate. And Ron DeSantis accepts the challenge.

00:08:30.200 You heard Gavin make the offer. Your answer is?

00:08:35.260 Absolutely. I'm game. Let's get it done. Just tell me when and where. We'll do it. And here's

00:08:41.060 the thing, Sean. I mean, in one respect, the debate between California and Florida, you know,

00:08:47.760 has already been had, as you suggest. People have been voting on that. They've been voting on it with

00:08:52.300 their feet. They have fled California in record numbers. Florida has been the number one state for

00:08:57.820 net in-migration. We have the number one ranked economy, number one now in education, crime rate 0.82

00:09:03.240 at a 50-year low. But in another sense, this is the debate for the future of our country, because you

00:09:09.360 have people like Joe Biden. They would love to see the Californication of the United States. Biden may

00:09:15.880 not even be the nominee. You could have Gavin Newsom. You could have Kamala Harris. And I think

00:09:22.320 if we go down that direction, that's going to accelerate American decline. We can't see

00:09:28.300 America decline anymore. We need to reverse American decline. 0.89

00:09:32.020 There we go. Here's the pitch. And it's going to be a good debate. And he's right. DeSantis is

00:09:36.780 totally right. The debate between Florida and California has already been had. And the way you

00:09:41.080 can tell who won the debate is which way the U-Hauls are moving. The U-Hauls are leaving California.

00:09:45.180 They're going to Florida. Okay. So this is a great idea. I think it would be instructive

00:09:51.660 to a lot of people to see the difference between good government and bad government,

00:09:56.040 smart policies, bad policies, great. The downside of this for DeSantis is it suggests that he is not

00:10:04.280 focusing on beating Trump for the nomination. Because if he were focused on beating Trump for

00:10:10.880 the nomination, he would just be debating Trump all the time and focusing on trying to get Trump to

00:10:14.700 debate DeSantis and the rest of the 2024 primary field. This debate between

00:10:21.660 DeSantis and Newsom feels a little bit like the second tier debate. It feels a little bit like

00:10:27.600 the Cruz versus Bernie Sanders socialism debate that happened just after the 2016 election,

00:10:33.620 which is very instructive. You've got Cruz, who's got very clearly defined political views.

00:10:38.540 And you've got Sanders, who's obviously the biggest socialist in the country.

00:10:43.320 And they're going to have the debate out. That's a very instructive debate. But it doesn't feel like

00:10:47.380 the stakes are very high here. Because as of now, Joe Biden is the Democrat nominee for president.

00:10:52.200 And frankly, as of now, Trump is the Republican nominee for president. And this doesn't help DeSantis

00:10:58.120 look like he's on the cusp of dislodging Trump. Now, on the other hand, this is smart in that because

00:11:04.920 of age and prosecutions, there is a significant chance that Biden is not the Democrat nominee and

00:11:12.580 that Trump is not the Republican nominee. So in that case, there will be clear front runners in

00:11:17.700 the shadow race. But it does seem as though by accepting this debate, DeSantis is accepting his 0.60

00:11:26.360 second tier candidate status and then putting all of his chips on second tier. Okay, yeah,

00:11:32.360 we're not looking like we're going to dislodge Trump anytime soon. But I'm going to cement my place

00:11:36.840 as the clear and away number two choice should something happen to Trump. Now, Newsom, for his

00:11:43.480 part, is apparently furious that DeSantis accepted the debate. So he made all these stipulations.

00:11:50.060 DeSantis agreed to pretty much all of them. And even on some ridiculous ones, you know,

00:11:55.200 DeSantis wants to put the debate on, or rather, Newsom wants to put the debate way, way into the

00:11:59.120 future. DeSantis wants it to be relatively soon. But he says, okay, I'll accept the earliest date

00:12:03.520 that Newsom has to offer, except basically the format, the moderator. Newsom has all these

00:12:09.300 stipulations that DeSantis is trying to accommodate. And then Newsom comes back and he says, what a

00:12:15.200 joke. This is according to a Newsom spokesman. DeSantis' counterproposal is littered with crutches

00:12:20.780 to hide his insecurity and ineptitude, swapping opening statements with a hype video, cutting down

00:12:26.320 the time he needs to be on stage, adding cheat notes in a cheering section. Okay, that's pretty unfair.

00:12:31.500 DeSantis did propose a video statement for each candidate rather than an opening statement. So,

00:12:37.380 okay, maybe they cave on that. Cutting down the time they need to be on stage. Well, okay,

00:12:40.780 they can set the time, whether it's an hour, whether it's three hours, you're going to get

00:12:43.820 the point. They're both going to show up. And then adding cheat notes. It's perfectly ordinary

00:12:47.700 to have notes on stage, but okay, maybe they lose that one too. And a cheering section. Well,

00:12:51.900 the cheering section proposed by the DeSantis campaign was that there'd be a live audience

00:12:55.240 and the audience be split 50-50. So it's not just that, yeah, you're going to flood the

00:13:00.740 audience with DeSantis supporters. Newsom can get his own supporters too. The reason that Newsom hates

00:13:05.200 that is because DeSantis has a clearly defined base within the GOP that would prefer DeSantis

00:13:12.160 over Trump. Obviously, it's not the majority of the GOP right now where DeSantis would be the

00:13:16.960 front runner, but there is a strong core of DeSantis supporters, at least enough to fill an

00:13:21.020 auditorium. For Newsom, it's not quite the case because Newsom is technically not running for president

00:13:26.680 yet. And he's not being all that aggressive against Biden. So his base is a little unclear

00:13:33.080 if he can really tap into those kinds of people. The other thing here that's good news for DeSantis

00:13:37.380 is it shows Newsom thinks that DeSantis will be relatively strong in a debate. So it was a big

00:13:45.420 bluff. DeSantis comes out of this looking really good if Newsom will not debate. Although if the debate

00:13:52.180 does happen, ironically, I think it will probably diminish DeSantis as a candidate because it's

00:13:58.080 going to show that this guy's running for number two. Now, DeSantis doesn't want to run for number

00:14:02.880 two, so he's getting more aggressive against Trump. According to a report from the New York Times,

00:14:08.060 while DeSantis was just addressing a campaign event in Iowa, he came out finally and answered pretty

00:14:14.800 clearly his view of what happened in the 2020 election. And his view is the election was not stolen.

00:14:19.880 And DeSantis, along with a number of other GOP candidates, have kind of been dancing around

00:14:25.180 this question because they don't want to irritate the base, but they also don't want to give Trump

00:14:29.640 credit, but they also don't want to look like conspiracy theorists or whatever. So here's what

00:14:35.540 DeSantis said. He said that the theories that were put out following the 2020 election did not prove to

00:14:45.060 be true. And he said, it was not an election that was conducted the way I think that we want to,

00:14:50.820 but that's different than saying Maduro stole votes or something like that. Those theories,

00:14:55.240 you know, proved to be unsubstantiated. Okay. What's that mean? It means he's saying the election

00:15:03.960 wasn't stolen. It wasn't even all that rigged. He's saying, well, it wasn't conducted the way we want

00:15:08.540 it to be conducted, but that's, that's pretty mild language here. He's not, he's not even now saying

00:15:15.020 it was a rigged election against Trump. And the reason that he's coming out and saying that is

00:15:20.540 because if he says the election was rigged against Trump or the election was stolen

00:15:25.300 by the Democrats from Trump, then it would seem that he should endorse Trump and say, yeah,

00:15:34.460 Trump actually won. So the chief argument against Trump's nomination, which is that he can't win

00:15:41.040 the election, that argument goes away. Maybe they could say at least, well, he, he won if it were a

00:15:46.680 fair and square race, but they managed to steal it from him and I won't let them steal it from me.

00:15:50.800 But when you're talking about a candidate, DeSantis, just like all the other candidates,

00:15:56.080 doesn't control the elections in Pennsylvania, in Arizona, in Georgia, in Michigan.

00:16:01.120 And neither did Trump when he was president. So it, that's kind of, you can't really blame him

00:16:06.120 for that. Then if you say, well, he really won fair and square, the argument for I, I'm much more

00:16:11.040 electable than that guy is goes out the window. So he can't say that, but he also can't come out and

00:16:16.980 say, you know, it was complete BS. Trump is full of it. The election was totally fine. He lost fair

00:16:21.860 and square because if he does that, he's going to irritate a large part of the Trump base. And a lot of

00:16:26.680 people are just not going to believe it. I don't know people who really believe that election was

00:16:31.100 fair and square. And yes, I know there's shenanigans in every election, but there are

00:16:36.620 shenanigans and there's shenanigans. Okay. There's shenanigans in that sometimes the unions bust some

00:16:41.380 people out of district to vote more than once. And there's shenanigans like we're going to

00:16:45.500 completely remake the electoral system to have widespread mail-in ballots in all the places

00:16:49.340 that really count. We're going to take days and weeks to count the ballots and we're going to violate

00:16:52.960 the state constitution in some cases. And we're going to have pipes burst in the middle of the night.

00:16:56.220 That's a, that's a different level of shenanigans. Okay. So different that I think it's probably

00:17:00.040 different, not only in degree, but in kind. So what's he going to do? DeSantis is in this

00:17:05.800 impossible spot. And I'm not saying he's doing anything wrong or unwise as a candidate. It's

00:17:10.140 just, this was always the problem built in for a strong Republican governor running against Trump

00:17:16.360 this time. The deck is just so politically stacked against a challenger. And part of the reason

00:17:22.260 that nobody wanted to hear when I was saying it is that this is not like an ordinary open primary.

00:17:28.900 Trump is running effectively as the incumbent because it's the first time since 1888 that we've

00:17:36.160 seen a former president run for a non-consecutive second term. And on top of that, Republican voters

00:17:42.640 care deeply about election integrity. So does Ron DeSantis. That's why after the 2020 election,

00:17:47.800 Ron DeSantis changed all those election rules to tighten it up because he saw what the Democrats did in

00:17:51.900 2020. So DeSantis signed into law widespread restrictions on absentee ballots, on mail-in

00:17:57.940 voting, limitations on the use of those ballot drop boxes, which were obviously rife with fraud.

00:18:02.600 And he increased the identity requirements. So you might say, well, that's good news. That means

00:18:06.660 DeSantis knows how to run the election. Yes, it does. But it also shows that he knows,

00:18:11.240 just like the rest of the GOP knows, that the Democrats rigged the thing in 2020. Well,

00:18:15.120 if the Democrats rigged the thing in 2020, then there's a shot that Trump isn't quite so unelectable,

00:18:19.480 as they're all saying, which seems to imply that people ought to rally around Trump. So it's this

00:18:24.460 perfect knot. There's really no move here that, forget DeSantis, that any of the candidates can

00:18:31.360 make against Trump that is going to, that's going to be a clean victory. Either way, you're going to

00:18:37.080 be irritating some large part of the GOP base. And by the way, all these prosecutions, now the big

00:18:43.600 prosecutions that they're talking about, all stem directly or indirectly from January 6th.

00:18:49.280 Well, what happened on January 6th? We have a new novel theory of January 6th from Al Sharpton on MSNBC.

00:18:56.020 One day, our children's children will read American history. And can you imagine our reading that

00:19:03.020 James Madison or Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government so they could stay in power? That's

00:19:09.920 what we're looking at. We're looking at American history. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine

00:19:15.900 if Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government? Like if he did it by writing,

00:19:23.600 I don't know, like a declaration, let's say, where he declared, we're not going to recognize your

00:19:29.100 government anymore. You know, let's say they had some other kind of, they didn't have a government

00:19:33.500 that we have now. Let's say they had, I don't know, let's say they had like a king or something,

00:19:35.980 right? And he wrote and said, we're, I'm going to overthrow your government. I'm not going to be

00:19:40.180 dependent on you guys anymore. I'm going to declare myself to be independent. Could you imagine that?

00:19:45.400 And if they wrote up like a whole new constitution, let's say, for this new government, and then like

00:19:50.860 imagine if Thomas Jefferson then became a president in that new government after they overthrew the old

00:19:55.740 one. Could you imagine? So we're, I love it when the libs accidentally make our points for us,

00:20:03.740 when they accidentally admit that their arguments aren't as strong as they say that they are.

00:20:08.380 This is not just a problem though, for the Trump insurrectionist MAGA coup d'etat people. And it's

00:20:15.300 not even just a problem for the BLM insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the government for eight

00:20:19.180 months. This is a problem for our understanding of American history. Because we're told it's absolutely

00:20:27.040 the worst, January 6th is the worst thing ever because you're not ever allowed to rebel against your

00:20:30.760 government. Because this is America, a country that was founded in a very famous, probably the

00:20:36.320 most famous ever rebellion against a government. How do we make sense of that? We'll get to that

00:20:42.360 one second. When you want to make sense of a whole lot of questions in the country though,

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00:21:48.840 The greatest interview show on the internet, Yes or No, is back with an all-new episode. This

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00:22:46.540 and order yes or no today. Could you imagine if Thomas Jefferson overthrew the government? Yeah,

00:22:53.840 can't imagine that. So how do we make sense of that? How does the left make sense of its pearl

00:22:58.780 clutching over January 6th when our country was founded on a major revolution that took many, many

00:23:05.060 lives because the colonists in America felt that taxes were a little too high? How do you make sense

00:23:11.180 of that? And vice versa? How do the conservatives get all in a tizzy about BLM burning the country for

00:23:17.600 eight months when our country was founded in a violent revolution? Not quite so violent and

00:23:25.460 unreasonable as the French Revolution, but a revolution nonetheless. It's a hard question.

00:23:32.020 It's a really hard not, especially for conservatives. I think the solution here, though,

00:23:36.080 is to ground American patriotism in a deeper context. For the last, I don't know, 20, 30,

00:23:45.040 40 years in American politics, we've had almost an exclusive focus on the right on the American

00:23:51.960 founding era of the 1770s, 1780s, 1790s. That was considered to be the true essence of America.

00:23:59.860 That hasn't always been the way that we viewed ourselves in this country,

00:24:02.980 history. But that's what's happened in recent decades. And I don't think we need to throw that

00:24:07.760 out. A ton of great men in that founding era, wonderful events. I've got two ancestors of mine

00:24:13.680 fought in that revolution, John and Simon Knowles, fought a battle of Bunker Hill. John died from his

00:24:19.320 wounds at Bunker Hill. Simon went on to Valley Forge, went on to White Plains, fought with Washington.

00:24:23.660 I like it. And we have civic associations in America, like the Sons of the American Revolution,

00:24:28.580 Sons of the Revolution in New York and other states that preserve that. And you can't

00:24:32.880 have a country that is in any way conservative if you just totally diss your forebears. But I think

00:24:39.200 that the way that we can do it is by deepening that context and saying, well, America didn't

00:24:42.860 just begin at a thin air in 1776 or 1775. It began, it started, the American identity was forged in the

00:24:49.860 French and Indian War, which came 20 years before that. The American identity was formed much longer,

00:24:56.040 actually. It was about 140 years before that, 150 years before that, at Plymouth Rock with the

00:25:01.100 Mayflower, with the Pilgrims, with the Puritan colonists in Massachusetts, with the negotiations

00:25:08.620 and wars with the Indians, with the arrival of new settlers, with the settling of the South,

00:25:17.400 with, well, and in the 19th century, and in part of the 20th century. I think you've got to deepen

00:25:22.720 that. You go even further back. America didn't just pop out of thin air, as I know a lot of liberals

00:25:27.400 want to say. There's a context that goes back to the old country. You know, we were founded as a

00:25:33.060 Christian nation. Well, where'd that Christianity come from? It came from a particular perspective

00:25:36.640 of Christianity that came out of the Puritans at Leiden, who had left England. They were

00:25:41.940 nonconformists there. Where did that tradition come from? Well, it came out of England. Where did

00:25:46.940 that tradition come from? You know, Britain was a Roman territory. There are deeper wellsprings here.

00:25:53.420 Same goes when we think about the American people. Same goes when we think about our geography and our

00:25:58.120 place, what makes us unique. A country is not just an idea floating in outer space. A country is not

00:26:03.660 just some piece of parchment called the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Those documents

00:26:09.260 are terrific, all well and good. I'm not dissing the documents at all. But a country is more than

00:26:13.360 that. A country is flesh and blood and lived traditions and beliefs and a connection throughout the

00:26:18.100 generations. That's going to be the way that we get around the Al Sharpton trap so that we don't

00:26:22.240 sound quite so incoherent as he does on MSNBC. Now, speaking of patriotism, I am thrilled that the

00:26:28.300 U.S. Women's National Soccer Team lost their match and are not going to the next big match. I guess it's

00:26:34.420 for the World Cup is what comes next. I'm thrilled. And I'm thrilled that the final kick of the career

00:26:39.940 of Megan Rapinoe, one of the most odiously unpatriotic anti-American athletes ever to wear an

00:26:46.940 American jersey, ended with her missing the kick. I'm thrilled about that. And I'm thrilled that she

00:26:52.520 ended her career whining on camera. Yeah, I thought we played really well. I thought we played really

00:26:59.380 well. I'm so happy for us that we went out like that. Can you put a pause there, please? Hold on,

00:27:05.120 before we, we'll keep going for a second. But this is just such a liberal woman thing. This is such a 1.00

00:27:13.080 liberal white lady thing where she says, I'm so proud of us. We did so well. We were, we're so

00:27:19.720 good. We're just so, we're the best ever. I'm so proud that we lost. I'm so proud that I totally blew

00:27:26.340 it at the end. Why? Why are you, it's okay. You don't need to be beating yourself up over it. You

00:27:30.640 don't need to be flagellating yourself, but you lost lady. Don't be proud of that. You didn't play

00:27:34.860 that well. That's the problem. If you'd played better, you would have won the game and gone on. I think,

00:27:38.980 man, growing up in the 90s, I'm watching the New York Yankees. Paul O'Neill, heart and soul of the

00:27:45.280 New York Yankees in the 90s. This has got one of the great baseball players of his era. Paul O'Neill,

00:27:49.600 if he would, let's say, you know, fly ball to the outfield and he only got one RBI instead of two

00:27:56.340 RBIs there, you know, and he, he didn't, you know, the guy catches the ball, whatever. Paul O'Neill

00:28:01.440 would rip the telephone out of the dugout wall. He would knock over the Gatorade cooler. He'd scream and

00:28:07.020 yell and throw his bat on there. He just, he was so furious. He took any loss or failure of

00:28:13.160 performance so personally. And this lady who completely blows it and loses it for the team, 1.00

00:28:17.920 I'm so proud. We're so great. We deserve 10 parades. Please give us trophies. And okay.

00:28:25.000 All right. Rant over. Keep going. Mrs. Rapinoe, Ms. Rapinoe.

00:28:28.020 Playing the way that we did and, you know, having a ton of joy on the ball.

00:28:31.400 So, um, I mean, this is like a sick joke for me personally. I'm just like, this is dark

00:28:37.460 comedy. I missed a penalty. Um, this is the, the balance to the beautiful side of the game.

00:28:44.200 I think it can be cruel and, um, just not our day, but yeah, I, I still just feel really grateful

00:28:53.560 and joyful and, you know, I know it's the end and that's sad, but, um, you know, to know that this

00:29:00.920 is really the only time I've been in, in one of these, um, this early, um, you know, says so much

00:29:07.020 about how much, how much success I've been able to have and, um, just how much I've loved playing for

00:29:14.200 this team and playing for this country. And, um, yeah, it's been an honor.

00:29:18.520 Okay. There we go. So then she cracks. I'm really proud. We did great. I'm awesome. I'm

00:29:22.760 the greatest ever. I'm so, but I blew it. It's so dark. Why did I blow it? I know you did. You

00:29:28.440 did. It's the first step is the first step in grieving is, is acknowledging reality. Okay.

00:29:36.540 Why am I so happy that this lady lost? Isn't that unpatriotic of me? Cause it's the U S women's 1.00

00:29:43.960 soccer team. Isn't that unpatriotic? Well, it would be, except the team is very unpatriotic.

00:29:52.380 I know that's a paradox, but a paradox is not just, uh, an incoherence or a contradiction.

00:29:57.840 It's an apparent contradiction that can reveal a deeper truth when you work it out. And, and

00:30:02.880 when you work it out here, you see that the team that is supposed to represent the United States

00:30:10.820 consistently undermines the United States, protests, the national anthem, the star spangled banner,

00:30:17.520 the symbol of the whole country is actively anti-patriotic. And so it is, you cannot say

00:30:25.920 that patriotism requires us to applaud the people who are deeply unpatriotic. You, that would

00:30:34.200 undermine it. It reminds me of a line from Chesterton. Chesterton said, there is a thought

00:30:40.280 that stops thought. And that is the only thought that ought to be stopped. There is, there is a

00:30:47.100 patriotism that undermines patriotism and that kind of pseudo patriotism really ought to be stopped.

00:30:53.380 As far as I'm concerned, the U S women's soccer team could just be abolished, cancel it. I don't

00:30:59.580 know. Maybe there are some patriotic people on the team. It's too bad that the loudest mouth on the

00:31:03.440 team, Megan Rapinoe has so consistently attacked our country, but just abolish it. What is the point of 0.85

00:31:09.780 the U S women's soccer team? It's not to kick a ball around. It's not to make Megan Rapinoe feel 1.00

00:31:13.460 good. It's to represent the United States, to bring glory to our country. That's the point of

00:31:18.040 the team. So if they're, if they're actively undermining that, then they have no purpose.

00:31:23.540 And if the salt loses its savor, then it's good for nothing and ought to be trodden underfoot.

00:31:28.560 Okay. Maybe now that this lady's gone and can go off into the sunset, maybe the team will remember

00:31:34.500 what their job is and they can salute the flag and stop being so deeply unpatriotic. But until

00:31:40.180 then get rid of it. I mean, there's a big, big political problem because you've got huge swaths

00:31:45.060 of America that hate the country and that hate traditional notions of patriotism. And in as much

00:31:51.900 as they love the country, they love the country because they say the country stands for, I don't

00:31:56.720 know, LGBT rights. That's, that's the deepest meaning of America. Who, people who really believe 0.99

00:32:03.420 that the rainbow flag is our national standard or ought to be, who would be much more likely to

00:32:08.560 salute the rainbow flag than to salute the American flag. Then you got the other more than half of the 0.84

00:32:13.220 country that still believes in the red, white, and blue, and doesn't believe in all the craziness

00:32:16.680 that Rapinoe and the libs do. But that's a big problem because if you don't have shared beliefs,

00:32:25.640 if you don't have shared sacred objects, if you don't have shared language, if you don't have

00:32:31.020 shared behavior, if you don't have any shared culture, then you don't have a country. It doesn't

00:32:34.520 matter which team is representing your country. You don't have one to be represented in the first

00:32:40.220 place. So on this point of patriotism, I've had this question in recent days, which is

00:32:44.120 why some people on the right have exalted a British pimp. Why parts of the Christian conservative

00:32:58.140 American right have exalted a British Muslim pimp who seduced women and played with their emotions 0.99

00:33:07.440 to turn them into prostitutes so that he could steal most of the money. How that became, I'm talking, 0.98

00:33:13.640 of course, of Andrew Tate. And so my friend Zuby tweets out. Well, it got me thinking about this.

00:33:19.140 My friend Zuby tweets out. Andrew Tate has positively impacted the lives of millions of young men

00:33:25.600 objectively. If you can do better, then do better. I am doing my best with my platform,

00:33:30.720 talents, and influence. The pearl clutching and finger wagging is tedious and disingenuous.

00:33:34.640 I guess my question to Zuby's declaration here is, has he? Has Andrew Tate positively impacted the

00:33:46.260 lives of millions of young men? How? Has he told them to, you know, go out and make some money or

00:33:53.980 something? Go work hard? They say that Andrew Tate has moved on. I don't know much about Andrew Tate's

00:34:00.660 biography. They say, oh, no, it was years ago, 10 years ago he was a pimp, but now he doesn't. Now,

00:34:05.540 from what I've seen, the evidence is he's been pimping until pretty recently. They say, well,

00:34:11.040 the charges in Romania have nothing to do with him being a big pimp and seducing these women and 0.96

00:34:15.820 selling their flesh. And I say, well, I don't know. It looks to me like the charges have quite a lot to

00:34:20.120 do with that. But let's say even he was doing this until a few years ago, two years ago, I don't know,

00:34:25.860 whenever it was. But then he converted. He said, I'm done with this. I repent. This was wrong. Okay,

00:34:32.080 well, then maybe like chill for a little while. You know, if you've been doing something that is

00:34:37.200 egregiously evil and scandalous and very destructive to people, not just people's bodies, but souls 0.98

00:34:43.620 for years and years and years, and you've enriched yourself on that, then maybe you ought to take a

00:34:47.980 moment, process your supposedly major change of heart, maybe make some reparation, try to make some

00:34:54.480 reparation with some of those ill-gotten gains, and then maybe come back in a few years and explain

00:34:59.600 how you've seen the light. I haven't seen Andrew Tate do any of that.

00:35:06.680 So what does Zuby mean? I don't know. Admittedly, I don't know Andrew Tate. I don't think he's the

00:35:10.680 worst guy in the world, but he's a degenerate. For everything I've seen about this guy is that he's 0.96

00:35:16.900 a total degenerate. And if he's repented, great, but I haven't, you got to like take a pause there,

00:35:24.760 man. So what is, what is it that he's done? Obviously, Zuby's not saying it's good that he's

00:35:29.900 a big pimp, that that's helped women's lives. So what is it? And then it got, I think it got to

00:35:35.340 the point that I understood, which is Andrew Tate is an internet self-help guru. And he's not just one

00:35:44.120 who dispenses good advice for free. He charges people or has charged people to be part of his

00:35:48.740 fake kind of academy. He says, give me a bunch of money and I'll teach you how to be a big player.

00:35:53.800 And, you know, I'll teach you how to be really rich and powerful and pick up women and all this 0.99

00:35:58.360 stuff. So he's at best, I think, an internet self-help guru scam artist, which is not much

00:36:06.680 better than being a pimp. And as a public matter, it's probably worse. This is the, and it's not just

00:36:13.100 Andrew Tate. I know I'm beating up on Andrew Tate here. There are so many of these guys and so many

00:36:18.320 of these online gurus, scammy artist type people are either useless. They might sincerely believe 0.94

00:36:24.240 they're helping, but they're not, or they're frauds. They're just deceiving people to get

00:36:27.960 money to pretend they're selling. But it's, this stuff is always snake oil. And the reason it's always

00:36:32.540 snake oil is there is, there is one way to improve yourself. And the way to improve yourself,

00:36:39.720 there's a natural component and a supernatural component. The natural component is to practice

00:36:44.760 virtues and to stop practicing vice. And the supernatural component is to accept the grace

00:36:49.580 of God and your Lord and Savior who took on flesh and dwelt among us. That's it. That's the,

00:36:55.220 the only self-help book you will ever need is the Bible and the books that have come out of the Bible

00:37:01.800 and the religious tradition that compiled the Bible and remains the bride of Christ, the living God.

00:37:11.520 That's it. That's the self-help. And all these other guys who try to do it, who try to divorce

00:37:15.820 God from goodness, who try to divorce religion and morality from self-improvement, they're always

00:37:24.380 going to leave you high and dry. This is why it is the, I mean, my, my most miserable friends in New

00:37:29.800 York and LA are the ones who have read the most self-help books. I just don't see it, man. How

00:37:35.480 does that positively impact the lives of millions of people? I don't see. It's kind of weird. Now,

00:37:41.840 are you planning to send your kid off to college this year? Listen, I've been on many campuses.

00:37:47.720 I've seen firsthand how woke ideology has infiltrated and polluted these once great universities. Give

00:37:52.020 your kids a fighting chance by sending them off with Jeremy's Razors. Right now, get up to 20%

00:37:56.620 off select razor and men's care bundles like the shampoo, body wash, and conditioner, all paraben

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00:38:07.780 blades and a flip back trimmer that will groom his face, not his worldview. Help your son escape academia's

00:38:13.720 leftist indoctrination by more than just a close shave. Go to jeremysrazors.com for major deals and give

00:38:19.880 Jeremy's back to college bundles a full ride today. My favorite comment on Friday is from

00:38:25.560 Skyhawk4526. She says, I'm trying to figure out which is more absurd, Nia Khalifa trying to give

00:38:31.400 women marriage advice or Antony Blinken lecturing the world about the wrongfulness of political

00:38:36.360 prisoners. Great point. You're referring, of course, to the world's two oldest professions,

00:38:41.020 which Ronald Reagan pointed out bear a striking similarity to the two of them, politics and

00:38:46.340 prostitution. I don't know if I had to spell it out for you. You know, sometimes it's confusing

00:38:53.140 to figure out which is which. Speaking of weird sex stuff, former Democrat mayor was just caught

00:38:59.380 with child pornography. This is Patrick Wojohn. He's the Democrat ex-mayor of College Park, Maryland. 0.98

00:39:06.400 He pled guilty to 140 counts of child porn possession and distribution in a deal that stipulates the

00:39:12.420 former politician serve. Three decades in prison. I could very easily make jokes about the Democrats

00:39:21.340 all being pedos and how I could point out that maybe this is more pronounced on the left and I 0.96

00:39:28.640 suspect it is. But I don't want to be a hack, okay? So I'm going to observe, yes, sometimes right-wingers

00:39:36.560 get caught in weird sex stuff, including in this, which is about as egregious as it could possibly be. 0.86

00:39:41.340 Child pornography, child exploitation. And it's not just the atheists. Sometimes it's religious people. 1.00

00:39:46.680 And it's not just the politicians. Sometimes it's, I don't know, people throughout all of society.

00:39:53.440 Okay, it's very pervasive. My main takeaway from this issue is I strongly suspect that this

00:40:01.500 problem is much more widespread than people want to admit. And I had that hunch, so I just googled it.

00:40:08.160 I said, what is the prevalence of child pornography? One of the first results that come up is from a

00:40:14.360 group called the Demand Project. Here's what it says. Child porn is one of the fastest growing crimes

00:40:18.700 in the U.S. Nationally, there's a 2,500% increase in arrests in the past 10 years. That's according to

00:40:24.280 the FBI. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reviewed 17.3 million images and videos

00:40:32.580 of child porn. That is four times more. It's an insane number. But for our purposes, what matters

00:40:38.620 is it's four times more than they reviewed in 2007. So in the span of four years, you get four times more

00:40:46.120 child porn. What psychologists have learned, apparently, is that when someone becomes addicted

00:40:52.660 to child pornography, they progress to younger and younger children in more sadistic and extreme

00:40:58.880 cases of this stuff. Which, of course, makes sense, because that's how all pornography works, because that's

00:41:04.660 how all addiction works. You start out with a little puff on the devil's lettuce, and pretty soon you're smoking

00:41:10.480 the hunter rocks out of a glass tube on Skid Row. You either break addictions and bad habits, or they get

00:41:21.040 more and more extreme. 2006, this is all according to the Demand Project. I assume there are many other

00:41:27.400 sources on this. It's literally the first thing I clicked on. 2006, U.S. attorneys handled 82.8% more

00:41:32.780 child porn cases than they had in 1994. Huge increase, obviously. An estimated 50,000 people in the United States

00:41:41.460 are believed to, quote, be consistently trading illegal images involving children at any one time. At any one time,

00:41:48.180 50,000 people consistently dealing in this stuff. And furthermore, 63% of teens said they know how to hide what

00:41:55.280 they do online from their parents. So a lot more, those are just the bullet points that jumped out at me. Which

00:41:59.660 tells me, yes, this guy, this Democrat mayor of College Park, man, he has got into some dark stuff

00:42:07.240 and doesn't exonerate him in any way. But I don't want to especially knock him because this is also

00:42:14.900 obviously a political problem. It's not just the cultural, well, we've got to route the bad guys

00:42:19.560 out. There's obviously a political problem here. How do you explain those numbers increasing?

00:42:23.980 We've talked about this with other ideologies that we're not allowed to mention on big tech,

00:42:27.600 certain identity ideologies that have exploded in recent years, three times the rate of identification

00:42:34.300 with certain sexual ideologies in recent years. You say, okay, well, that can't just be an individual

00:42:40.180 problem. That can't even just be an environmental problem unless there's something in the water

00:42:45.960 turning the frickin' frogs gay. That's obviously got to be a pervasive cultural and political problem. 0.98

00:42:51.680 It's a technological problem. Why did the numbers spike from the 90s to the 2000s? Do you think it has

00:42:57.340 something to do with the internet coming around? Yeah, obviously. How could you fix this then?

00:43:03.720 You could shame these people. Yeah, good. You could, I don't know. I don't know how you shame

00:43:09.900 them more. It's already the most shameful thing you could possibly imagine. I think you need to

00:43:13.740 regulate this stuff. And you say, well, the child pornography is already regulated. Yeah,

00:43:18.200 but the internet largely isn't and pornography generally isn't at all. It's not regulated at all.

00:43:23.140 The American people have tried to regulate it on multiple occasions, Republicans and Democrats.

00:43:27.280 Child Online Protection Act and the Communications Decency Act in the 90s and early 2000s

00:43:31.760 passed with majorities and signed into law by a Democrat president. Then liberal judges shoot it

00:43:37.480 down. So now you've got to the point where the porn stuff is basically unregulated.

00:43:43.920 Well, if you only focus on this most egregious, horrific version of porn,

00:43:49.660 you're probably not going to catch it. The numbers are going to keep growing. If you, however,

00:43:54.360 cut off the main supply of people who get into the funnel, where eventually I guess it could lead to

00:43:58.960 this stuff, I think you're going to have much more success. And what's going to be required there

00:44:03.500 is a less liberal view of porn and speech even. I don't think obscenity is speech. But you're going to

00:44:11.900 have to have a more illiberal view and say, no, you're just not allowed to look at this stuff.

00:44:15.400 And it's going to choke off the industry. And big porn is terrified of this. This is why big porn

00:44:20.980 just, we'll get to the story tomorrow. This is going to be my little tease for tomorrow.

00:44:23.880 Big porn, Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek just cut off Arkansas. This is just the latest

00:44:29.660 state to be cut off from this porn website because Arkansas insists on verifying people's ages.

00:44:36.200 And big porn is so afraid of age verification that they would rather shut off their service in that

00:44:41.220 state than comply with the law. What does that tell you? It tells you they're trying to hook

00:44:45.300 people when they're very young, just like any drug peddler on the street. And they know that

00:44:49.740 children, that minors are very important to the way the whole business operates.

00:44:53.440 So you're not going to, you're not going to, this is my somewhat vindication of Andrew Tate,

00:44:58.240 or not really, I'm just trying to be a little softer on him. You're not going to stop this

00:45:01.380 problem by just going after the random mayor in College Park, Maryland. You're not going to stop

00:45:05.140 this problem by getting some low level webcam pimp like Andrew Tate. You're going to stop this

00:45:09.060 problem by arresting and imprisoning the CEO of MindGeek, the owners of the biggest porn

00:45:14.560 companies in the world and shutting off the service. That's how you're going to get serious

00:45:18.300 about it. As long as we don't do that, as long as we pretend there's some civil right

00:45:21.820 to look at smut or something, the problem is only going to get worse. And those numbers are

00:45:26.160 going to continue to explode by multiples and orders of magnitude. And today, my friends,

00:45:31.220 is Music Monday. Rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member.

00:45:34.900 Use code Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:45:44.560 Rebekah

The Michael Knowles Show - August 07, 2023

Ep. 1303 - Elon Protects Conservatives & Megan Rapinoe Kills USA Soccer

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