The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1308 - This Viral Song Just Changed Everything

00:00:00.000 If you're an American conservative, it has been a huge weekend for music.

00:00:04.800 An unknown Southern folk singer became the most popular musician in the country

00:00:10.940 for railing against the liberal establishment. The Vaik Ramaswamy rapped Eminem at the Iowa

00:00:17.800 State Fair. And best music of all, Hunter Biden's business partner sang like a canary

00:00:24.620 to the point that now the DOJ has appointed a special counsel, which on the bright side

00:00:31.120 proves that Republicans were right all along. And on the downside, further protects

00:00:37.340 Joe Biden and the Democrats. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:47.800 Welcome back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. Good Ranchers,

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00:01:07.200 You remember that mother effer is not real girl, the one from the airplane? I'm sorry to say we 1.00

00:01:14.020 now know who she is, I think, probably. There's a little wrinkle to that. We'll get into it.

00:01:18.920 And I'm sorry to say she apologized. Very sad. She had nothing to apologize for. That mother effer

00:01:25.900 who was not real had a lot to apologize for. She did not. We'll get to that. First, though,

00:01:30.320 the big political news, which every other news story is distracting from, but the actual political

00:01:35.640 news that affects your political order is that the DOJ under Merrick Garland, Joe Biden's extremely

00:01:45.960 political, political, wheeling and dealing attorney general has just appointed a special counsel to

00:01:54.960 investigate Hunter Biden. On Tuesday of this week, Mr. Weiss advised me that in his judgment,

00:02:02.940 his investigation had reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel,

00:02:08.940 and he asked to be so appointed. Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances

00:02:16.420 relating to this matter, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint him

00:02:22.040 as special counsel. This appointment confirms my commitment to provide Mr. Weiss all the resources

00:02:28.680 he requests. Now, you heard that. He didn't say we have appointed a new special counsel to

00:02:34.740 investigate Hunter Biden. He said, Mr. Weiss, David Weiss, who is the US attorney who had been on the

00:02:40.420 Hunter Biden case, he has asked that he have his title changed, have his role changed to continue the

00:02:47.220 investigation. Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden for, these investigations have been going on

00:02:51.900 for years. Weiss was involved in all of the seemingly incompetent, plotting, dead end BS Hunter Biden

00:03:03.440 investigation that culminated in the attempt by prosecutors like David Weiss to get Hunter Biden a

00:03:09.840 plea deal that would have let him off the hook for all of his crimes, wouldn't have even addressed the most

00:03:15.060 serious crimes, would have given him a slap on the wrist for tax crimes, which were the evidence of the

00:03:21.460 deeper crimes, the political corruption, and would have put him in a diversion program for the gun charge so that

00:03:27.880 the gun crime would have been expunged from his record. So this is a guy, a prosecutor, who has

00:03:33.660 every step of the way tried to let the criminal off the hook. And now, now that the evidence is just so

00:03:40.660 clear, not only of Hunter Biden's personal crime, but of the corruption that it means for the Biden

00:03:46.580 family, now all of a sudden David Weiss has said, well, you know what, I can't continue this investigation

00:03:50.920 at the DOJ. All of my schemes to try to let the Bidens off the hook have been foiled. So now I need

00:03:57.060 to be an independent special counsel so that I can further screw up this investigation. On the one

00:04:05.360 hand, this is nice news in that it shows the public beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Hunter Biden

00:04:11.100 investigation is serious, that Hunter Biden's crimes are serious. The whole time, Democrats have said,

00:04:17.020 no, he didn't do anything wrong. Republicans are just distracting. This is BS, BS, BS. CNN ran

00:04:22.360 endless segments about how there was no evidence against Hunter Biden, much less against Joe.

00:04:28.460 The allegations, without evidence, mostly, that Republicans have out there.

00:04:33.900 There has been no corroboration. There's no evidence there.

00:04:37.420 I mean, you would agree we don't have, there's no evidence of that at all.

00:04:40.220 Republicans get riled up and keep making allegations that at this point have not been substantiated with

00:04:45.160 evidence. So far, there is no evidence that the evidence has come out. They don't have evidence

00:04:51.240 to show that Joe Biden did anything wrong. Comers said that repeatedly. He's like, well,

00:04:57.740 I hope we find evidence. And of course, they present that without clear evidence.

00:05:01.600 So if there was evidence that they had accumulated in their four to five year investigation,

00:05:07.560 this request to be a special counsel would have come already. It seems unlikely that they have that

00:05:14.440 kind of evidence.

00:05:15.660 So before we move on to why this is actually bad for Republicans and a pretty crafty move

00:05:19.780 by Biden and the Democrats, just, I don't want to gloss over the fact that all of those people

00:05:24.840 were completely dead wrong. Every single person you just heard, the CNN anchors, the CNN guests,

00:05:30.880 the former prosecutors, the special legal analysts, all just completely wrong. The Republicans

00:05:36.480 write the whole time. Your dumb hillbilly hick, Uncle Jimbo, in the middle of the mountain 1.00

00:05:41.740 somewhere said, you know, these Bidons are corrupt. That guy, totally right, completely vindicated, 1.00

00:05:47.480 has much better legal insight than all of the geniuses in the neckties on CNN. Now, probably what

00:05:53.860 they were doing was not just being ignorant and naive. They probably were doing what the corporate 0.98

00:05:59.560 media always do, which is cover up for the liberal establishment, truth be damned. But they were wrong

00:06:04.360 by their own standards. The appointment of the special counsel proves that there is a lot of

00:06:09.060 evidence. There is a there there, and they're going to investigate it. The reason this is bad,

00:06:13.240 though, for the conservatives is, one, look who the special counsel is. The guy who has bungled this

00:06:21.600 investigation and actively, intentionally tried to undermine the case against Hunter Biden is now the

00:06:28.800 guy in charge as special counsel, not just as US attorney. He's the last person in America who should

00:06:34.720 be in charge of it if you actually wanted to get to the bottom of something, if you actually wanted to

00:06:38.020 punish Hunter Biden. But of course they don't. One of the reasons that they've appointed the special

00:06:43.620 counsel is to give themselves a little bit of distance. So they can pretend, it's not true,

00:06:48.820 but they can pretend that actually Merrick Garland and Joe Biden, they really don't have anything to do

00:06:53.860 with this now. We want to make sure there's no semblance of impropriety. The other reason they're

00:06:57.820 doing this is because it's going to make it a lot easier for Weiss and his office and the DOJ to resist

00:07:03.680 congressional subpoenas. Now that the Republicans in Congress are finally digging into this stuff,

00:07:08.600 now that Jim Jordan and the Judiciary Committee and all of these Republican investigators are

00:07:13.580 interviewing Devin Archer, Hunter Biden's former business partner, are hearing stories of Joe

00:07:18.260 Biden's significant involvement in all of these crooked business deals. Now that that evidence is

00:07:23.560 coming out, the DOJ comes in, and whether this will be successful or not is at least trying to

00:07:28.060 throw a roadblock up there to stop the Republicans from being able to talk to the people who intentionally

00:07:35.380 screwed up that investigation. They're just going to stonewall and stonewall and stonewall. 0.73

00:07:41.060 The election is only a year and a half, less than a year and a half away now, the 2024 election.

00:07:45.120 So they're just going to try to drag this thing out until nobody cares anymore, of course.

00:07:49.680 At least though we can take the tiny victory. We were right. We were right the whole time.

00:07:54.760 And being right, proving that there's a double standard is not going to do anything. That and

00:08:00.540 a buck fifty will get Republicans a cup of coffee. But it is a reminder, I think, the next time that

00:08:05.640 the Democrats try to throw some BS legal argument at us, that some Midwestern granny is a terrorist and 0.99

00:08:13.260 needs to be thrown in solitary confinement, that Donald Trump, because he gave a speech, is an

00:08:17.060 insurrectionist and a threat to democracy and can't be on the ballot. Whatever BS they throw at us 0.64

00:08:21.500 that sometimes convinces the libs and the squishes and the center-right people who want to get along,

00:08:26.280 this should be a reminder. The whole thing is completely fixed. The whole thing is completely

00:08:30.460 rigged. We are not playing by the same set of rules here. And if we lie down in the name of

00:08:35.680 principles or something, we are conceding the country unjustly to people who have absolutely no 1.00

00:08:44.500 respect for the rule of law whatsoever. And that's not very good. And that's going to screw up all sorts of

00:08:48.240 things. Our system of justice, our economy, and when both of those things are wonky, you're going

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00:09:53.540 text Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, to 989898. Speaking of incompetence at the FBI, the FBI executed a 5'6",

00:10:02.880 300-pound, 75-year-old practical invalid over the weekend. This is a really, really sad story.

00:10:12.680 There's a guy in Utah. I guess the news broke sometime on Friday. 75-year-old man who had posted

00:10:20.420 some threats against Joe Biden on his personal Facebook page that had very few connections

00:10:26.400 was executed by the FBI. How did it happen? Well, there was a SWAT team that showed up.

00:10:34.580 There were agents who showed up. There were gunshots. The only video that we really have of it

00:10:41.440 shows a massive show of force very, very early in the morning against this guy. And what the FBI is

00:10:48.120 saying is that, well, he was resisting, and so they had to take him out. They left his body out just

00:10:53.740 bloodied, covered with just a bloody sheet for a long time. Why did they do it? Because he did post

00:10:59.820 threats. He said, I'm going to go out here when Joe Biden comes to town. I'm going to bring my gun

00:11:04.020 out. I'm going to show up there. I'm going to put a bullet in his head. He was saying all sorts of

00:11:07.600 terrible things. Did the FBI really believe this guy was a threat? Well, maybe they didn't know that

00:11:13.560 he was so overweight. Maybe they didn't know that he was so elderly. Maybe they didn't know that he

00:11:18.520 had trouble walking. If you talk to his neighbors, his neighbors say the guy could barely walk around.

00:11:22.740 He barely went anywhere. He was involved in his church, but that was pretty much it. He'd go from

00:11:27.120 his house to his church, and he could barely walk the distance from his car into the church.

00:11:31.900 So did the FBI just not know that? No, the FBI did know that because the FBI had actually had two

00:11:36.660 encounters with this guy. So they knew exactly what he was like. Why didn't the FBI just pick him up

00:11:42.200 when he was getting out of his car, walking maybe to the grocery store, or walking maybe to church,

00:11:47.080 or why? The FBI had been surveilling this guy for months. If they thought that he was really a

00:11:52.460 threat to Joe Biden, why didn't they arrest him when there would have been less of a chance for a

00:11:58.440 violent confrontation? The only conclusion that I can draw is either the FBI is just absolutely,

00:12:05.640 completely incompetent. To a degree, not just what we joke about government incompetence,

00:12:11.380 all those government bureaucrats, they don't know what they're doing. I mean, like, doesn't know the

00:12:14.260 first thing about law enforcement. Or this was a political decision to go in there and show those

00:12:21.140 damn right-wingers what for. Make an example out of this 300-pound short guy who was 75 years old, 0.99

00:12:27.900 who could barely move. I take threats very seriously. I'm not dismissing the fact that this

00:12:35.200 guy posted on his Facebook page threats against the president. As somebody who has received a threat or

00:12:41.860 two before, I'm always very happy when law enforcement takes those threats seriously.

00:12:47.880 The problem is, law enforcement very rarely takes those threats seriously when they're against

00:12:52.900 conservatives. When prominent conservatives get death threats, I won't even name names, I won't even

00:13:01.740 name examples, because frankly, when you get too specific on some of these examples, they can put

00:13:07.060 people at even greater risk. But I've been around it enough to know very often law enforcement won't

00:13:14.640 do a damn thing. And everybody knows at the public level, law enforcement will get the most prominent

00:13:20.480 criminals off the hook. BLM burns the country down for eight months. They get off with a little slap

00:13:26.080 on the wrist. The Midwestern granny shows up to the Capitol Rotunda. They throw her in solitary and 1.00

00:13:31.700 they don't let her out. And that's exactly what's going on here, as far as I'm concerned.

00:13:35.760 Unless some shocking new evidence comes out, I just don't see how anybody could conclude that

00:13:42.580 this would be the best way to pick this guy up. The guy was so immobile that even if he had actually

00:13:48.880 been planning to go on the day that Joe Biden showed up to Utah, drive the 40 minutes to go to

00:13:55.960 where Joe Biden was, get out and try to shoot him or something, the FBI could have probably walked

00:14:01.500 alongside him and picked him up. There was so much time. They were obviously watching him the whole

00:14:06.980 time. Did they really have to go in and kill him? No, it's not. That's not even the safest way to pick

00:14:14.880 him up. Because if they're saying that this actually was a violent, dangerous standoff, then the agents

00:14:20.620 were in far greater trouble trying to arrest him at his house. They could have just picked him up

00:14:24.640 walking from his car. They didn't do it though. I don't want to Monday morning quarterback this

00:14:29.340 thing. But when the FBI gets caught spying on Catholic churches because they think that Catholics

00:14:36.200 are a grave terror threat to America, lying about spying on Catholic churches, getting caught lying 0.83

00:14:41.860 about spying on Catholic churches. They once said it was a single field office. Turns out it was a

00:14:46.480 nationwide program involving multiple field offices. When the FBI shows up to fathers of seven pro-life

00:14:52.240 advocates and arrests them in front of their kids and traumatizes them for opposing abortion.

00:14:56.800 Meanwhile, they celebrate the infanticidal maniacs. Give them prizes. Give them special

00:15:02.220 days and parades and celebrations. You know something's very, very corrupt. When the FBI spies on the

00:15:09.140 Donald Trump campaign because the Donald Trump campaign is advocating for popular conservative

00:15:15.020 messages. Meanwhile, the FBI is coordinating with the Clinton campaign and the Democrats. That's

00:15:20.300 evidence of real corruption. When the FBI, not just the FBI in this case, when the DOJ at the higher

00:15:26.020 level goes in and systematically, consistently tries to let Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, that's what

00:15:34.460 they're really protecting here. When they let the Bidens off the hook for flagrant crimes that we've seen

00:15:40.240 with our own eyes, the messages, the pictures, the videos, all of it. And then doubles down when they

00:15:46.680 get caught and they say, okay, we're going to put it in the special counsel investigation over here and

00:15:49.920 don't worry. Nothing to see. Move along, move along. Nothing to see here. Then when the FBI goes in and

00:15:55.500 executes some elderly obese man in Utah who, according to all of his neighbors and according

00:16:01.860 to common sense, didn't pose an actual threat to anyone. He was mouthing off on Facebook, I'm not

00:16:06.220 excusing threats. But if you're using prudence, which is the highest political virtue, you recognize

00:16:14.280 this guy didn't pose a threat to anybody. I don't know what conclusion I can draw other than yet

00:16:19.900 again, the FBI and the Biden administration and the liberal establishment wanted to make an example

00:16:27.060 and let every conservative know in this country, you better keep your mouth shut. 1.00

00:16:31.580 Forget about the Democrats who get to go out and maraud and rape and kill and murder. They get to 1.00

00:16:36.880 do whatever they want. If you so much as mouth off on Facebook, we're going to come to your home.

00:16:41.440 You could be elderly. You could be out of shape. You could be in terrible health. We will execute you.

00:16:46.200 We'll leave you out for people to see that, to learn from that example. Really, really sad and 0.99

00:16:53.740 unnecessary stuff. This is happening all around the world though. I've mentioned that the phenomenon of

00:17:01.140 conservative populism, which we'll get to in a second, the biggest trending news story of the

00:17:04.600 whole weekend was this folk singer who came out of nowhere with this cri de coeur about how corrupt

00:17:10.260 our political order is. This is happening all over the world. The anti-Trump people in America,

00:17:18.000 on the right and the left, they think that Trump is just a weirdo and he's kind of funny and he's a 0.92

00:17:22.580 carnival barker and he's tricked people into supporting him. They don't recognize that 0.90

00:17:27.560 the reason that he got so much support is not just because he has a funny personality,

00:17:32.920 but because he was advocating a different political vision than the Republicans had been advocating for

00:17:39.760 the entirety of my lifetime. He came out and he questioned GOP orthodoxy on trade, not just the

00:17:45.340 squishes on trade, but even the so-called movement conservatives. He questioned GOP policies on

00:17:51.020 immigration, not just the squishes, but the movement conservatives on and on and on. He was uncouth and

00:17:57.980 so they supported him in the same way that the Brits supported Brexit, in the same way that the Italians

00:18:02.460 supported Maloney, in the same way that the Hungarians support Viktor Orban, in the same way that the

00:18:06.180 Spaniards support the Vox party. And in Germany right now, there's a far right political party called

00:18:11.340 Alternative for Deutschland, the AFD, which is gaining support. According to latest polls, the Alternative for

00:18:19.860 Germany, Alternative for Deutschland has 21% in the polls. And don't forget, this is a system where

00:18:25.400 there are lots of different parties, so that's a pretty significant number. And now the German

00:18:30.680 president, Franz Volta Steinmeier, warned in a speech that they might just ban the party

00:18:36.920 to save democracy. To save democracy in Germany, the president of Germany is considering banning,

00:18:45.840 outlawing, one of the most popular parties. And the party that in terms of political momentum probably

00:18:52.180 is the single most popular. If you look at the direction of support. Democracy. To save democracy,

00:19:00.480 the liberals in America want to do the same thing. They want to throw the leader of the opposition into

00:19:04.100 prison. The president of the United States is trying to imprison the leader of the opposition

00:19:09.200 to do the American version of the exact same thing they're trying to do in Germany.

00:19:16.240 And Germany has a history of banning political parties. America doesn't really have that history

00:19:20.280 so much, but they're going to do that. Because why? Because the people, the democracy,

00:19:29.040 is rejecting liberalism. The Alternative for Deutschland, you know they're real crime. It's not

00:19:34.740 that they, they're racist, they're sexist, they're thisist, they're thatist, whatever the liberals

00:19:39.220 say. The AFD came out and said the European Union is a failed project. They're arguing for a federation

00:19:46.020 of European nations, a new economic and interest community for Europe that preserves the sovereignty

00:19:51.000 of member states. That's the threat. They're threatening the liberal hegemony there. And even if all the

00:19:57.920 people want to do that, even if the full democracy is saying we reject liberalism, the liberals are

00:20:02.280 going to come in and in the name of democracy say we've got to stop the people from getting what

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00:21:30.940 the people are recognizing that the problem is not just the Democrats, the liberals, though everywhere

00:21:37.460 in other than one country, other than in Hungary, which is a little advanced in terms of the conservative

00:21:44.020 populist uprising. In every other country in the West, people are realizing that the problem is not

00:21:51.020 just the liberal party, which is the dominant political party throughout the whole civilization,

00:21:55.300 and the problem is not just the conservative political party, which is the junior partner in

00:21:59.980 the liberal project, but that maybe the problem is the whole system. Maybe this whole system that we

00:22:05.900 call the uniparty here in America, or the liberal establishment, or whatever, that the semblance of political

00:22:13.740 opposition, the semblance of the representation of diverse voices that, in fact, castigates a large part,

00:22:22.840 if not the majority of the people, as deplorable, irredeemable, not worth hearing. They should just

00:22:27.680 go off and die somewhere. Let small-town America die. Tell these people to learn to code. Tell them to 1.00

00:22:33.260 shut up. They're insurrectionists. They need to be put in prison. They need to be banned on social media. 1.00

00:22:37.960 The people are recognizing that system might be the problem, which is why a man that nobody had

00:22:46.320 heard of until three days ago, Oliver Anthony, just went viral and now has the number one song in

00:22:51.800 America, top of the charts in the country. The song is called The Rich Men, North of Richmond. This song

00:23:00.440 is such a phenomenon. We have to play at least a good chunk of it on the show, because what's most

00:23:09.180 interesting about this phenomenon is not the song. Everybody's saying, oh, this is the greatest song

00:23:14.500 in recent memory, and this guy's a musical genius. The story is more politically interesting than just

00:23:24.700 that. Take it away. 0.99

00:23:26.440 I've been selling my soul, working all day, overtime hours for bulls*** pay, so I can sit out here and waste my 0.97

00:23:37.700 life away, drag back home and drown my troubles away. It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to for people 0.98

00:23:47.500 like me. People like you wish I could just wake up and it not be true. But it is, oh, it is, living in the 0.90

00:23:58.880 new world with an old soul. These rich men, North of Richmond, Lord knows it all. Just want to have

00:24:11.260 total control.

00:24:12.740 So the first thing that strikes me, this guy is a genuine musical talent. His voice is, is

00:24:19.820 captivating. He reminds me of Levon Helm. Levon Helm, who is the drummer in the bands, you know,

00:24:28.120 old end of Nazareth was feeling bad. He's got this, this way of wailing while he sings that is,

00:24:34.960 sounds raw. It sounds authentic. It's a little dangerous. It's not, this is not a classically

00:24:43.400 trained singer, obviously. He's really good and his pitch is good and he's playing a dobro guitar

00:24:47.340 and the whole thing just, he even looks a little bit like Levon Helm. He's got that red beard and

00:24:51.900 he's, he's singing a song about how he's selling his soul. He feels like he's losing his soul and he's

00:25:00.820 working for basically no pay and he's drinking his troubles away. And the other thing that's,

00:25:07.200 that's raw about this song is that don't, I'm not knocking the guy at all. I think this is a

00:25:14.560 wonderful story and it's a good song, but the, the lyrics could be tuned up. You know, he's rhyming

00:25:20.020 away with away. He's rhyming rich, rich men and Richmond, which is not, those don't actually

00:25:26.820 rhyme. The, the lyrics are a little bit confused here because is this a, is this a neo-Confederate

00:25:34.520 anthem as the liberals are calling it? Richmond is the capital of the Confederacy. So is that what

00:25:39.220 he's talking about? Those damn Northerners coming in here and bringing their reconstruction or something? 1.00

00:25:44.460 He's, he's wailing about this 200 years later, 150 years later. No, I don't think so. I think he's 1.00

00:25:49.320 probably referring to Washington DC as the rich men north of Richmond and they want to have total

00:25:54.580 control. So they want to have total control, but is the problem that he's, that he's not making his

00:26:00.820 money? Is the problem that he's being forced to sell his soul or being encouraged to sell his soul?

00:26:07.260 Is it, is it a, a substance question, the substantive nature of the political order,

00:26:12.880 or is it a procedural aspect? Just that these men want total control, but we don't want them to have

00:26:17.800 control. We're not saying how people should live, but we are saying that those guys north of Richmond

00:26:22.260 shouldn't do it. It's, it's a little bit confused. So I don't think that what is making this song go

00:26:28.020 viral is necessarily the lyrical content of it. You'll, you'll see why in just a second. Keep going.

00:26:35.240 I want to know what you think. I want to know what you do. And they don't think you know,

00:26:41.440 but I know that you do. Cause your dollar ain't shit. And it's taxed to no end. 1.00

00:26:47.160 Cause the rich men, cause the rich men.

00:26:52.480 See, put a, put a pause there. This is lyrically what's interesting to me too, is you hear some real

00:26:59.240 populist complaints? I'm selling, I'm selling my soul. I'm not, this is, this is not the sort of

00:27:06.680 thing that Mitt Romney would complain about. This is not the sort of thing John McCain would complain

00:27:10.140 about. Oh yeah, this new liberal economy is making us sell our souls. No. And the, we're not making

00:27:16.200 enough money. Okay. That's a populist complaint. And inflation is really bad. The dollar ain't worth

00:27:22.000 SHIT. That's a populist complaint. And it's taxed to no end. That high taxes is not exactly a populist 1.00

00:27:31.000 complaint. That's more of a, an establishment, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John McCain kind of complaint.

00:27:37.380 And the fact is virtually all the taxes in America are paid by the rich anyway. So it's,

00:27:41.640 it is the rich men in Richmond. Well, maybe not them because they're corrupt government apparatchiks

00:27:45.500 in Washington DC, but it is the wealthy generally who are paying virtually all of the taxes in America.

00:27:51.740 So that, that's a little bit of a just standard GOP complaint, you know, and, but the rest is

00:27:59.480 populist. And the whole, the whole vibe of the song is this calling out, literally calling out from

00:28:07.660 the woods in the middle of nowhere. Keep going.

00:28:09.380 Put a pause there. So this is probably intentional to, to be a contradiction or to maybe to seem like

00:28:38.240 a paradox, but I don't think it is a paradox. I think it's just a contradiction. He's saying

00:28:41.020 people in the street don't have any food, but, but the obese are milking welfare. 0.78

00:28:46.680 People don't really go hungry in America.

00:28:51.180 The, the, the knock on the American political order is that the poor are obese and they're not

00:28:57.100 just obese because they're milking welfare. You could complain about welfare. Again, that's not

00:29:00.300 totally a populist complaint. That's a little bit more of the Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan kind of stuff.

00:29:07.760 And people don't really starve. The problem is that the poor in America are obese because,

00:29:12.300 because of the culture problems, because we've, we've sold our political soul because we don't have

00:29:19.620 really community or political love anymore because marriages have fallen apart because we've got

00:29:24.320 rampant drug abuse and addiction because we've got people who are despondent. Don't think they have a

00:29:28.580 future because their money is not worth anything and they can't get any good jobs. And so it's,

00:29:32.800 it's all kind of jumbled up. It's a, it's a stew of lamenting about the political order.

00:29:41.000 Keep going. We got a little bit more of the song.

00:29:42.580 Well God, if you're five foot three and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of

00:29:50.460 fudge rounds. Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground because all this damn country does 0.99

00:29:57.120 is keep on kicking them down. Lord, it's a damn shame. What the world's gotten to people like me, 1.00

00:30:07.400 people like you wish I could just wake up and it not be true. But it is, oh it is.

00:30:15.680 Put a pause in. So this is, this is where the song really sings. This is where the song really takes

00:30:20.820 off. When he's saying, when you're five foot two and you're 300 pounds, then welfare shouldn't be

00:30:25.880 paying for your box of fudge rounds. And it's so unfair because you got ordinary men who are being 1.00

00:30:31.280 responsible, who are trying to take care of themselves. And they're putting themselves six

00:30:34.500 feet in the ground because they're dying deaths of despair. And it's a damn shame because no one's 0.91

00:30:38.840 looking out for people like me and people like you, backbone of America. No one's looking out for us. 0.92

00:30:44.300 And it's a damn shame. And I wish it weren't this way, but it is. And that, that's where it really 0.95

00:30:49.040 sings. Cause it's not this happy go lucky BS beltway establishment, astroturf conservative

00:30:57.140 movement, which says everything's really great. We've got iPhones and cheap Chinese products.

00:31:01.340 We need to stop complaining and recognize what a special, wonderful political order this is.

00:31:05.800 He's saying, no, there are really structural problems. And maybe we do have cheap crap from 0.98

00:31:09.580 China and maybe GDP has been ticking up, but life expectancy is going down. So clearly something's 0.96

00:31:15.720 rotten here. That's a beautiful complaint. And he's saying, and it's a damn shame and it shouldn't

00:31:21.460 be this way, but it is, but it is very different from the bubble gum appeal to the Southern man 0.91

00:31:32.380 movement, conservative kind of music. This is not your average country song. Okay. Very different.

00:31:40.140 And the political analogy would be in 2016, you've got a, you've got a bunch of GOP candidates and they

00:31:47.740 all have the same, roughly the same kinds of complaints. This immigration, illegal immigration 0.98

00:31:53.140 is out of control. They never complain about legal immigration, which is the lion's share of 0.67

00:31:56.220 immigration. They say this illegal immigration is out of control and there are some economic

00:32:01.300 problems, but look, we're still the greatest, most prosperous, most wonderful country on earth.

00:32:05.980 And it's always just, we don't have any real problems and everything here is great,

00:32:08.880 but we just got to work around the edges a little bit. We've got some problems to fix.

00:32:11.920 And then Trump comes in and he goes, nah, man, this is all going to hell in a handbasket. This

00:32:15.240 is completely screwed up. We are, we are going to become one of those SHIT whole countries pretty 1.00

00:32:20.400 soon if we keep it up. And we're, we've got chaos and destruction in our streets and I'm going 1.00

00:32:25.660 to turn it around and make America great again. And what all the chattering consultant geniuses 1.00

00:32:30.620 at the time said was, this is too dark. Oh, this is too dark and divisive. What was the title

00:32:37.500 of Trump's campaign book? Every other campaign book is standing up for standing. The courage

00:32:43.420 to stand in freedom and liberty and happiness and freedom and courage and the future and the

00:32:51.060 sunshine by Senator so-and-so running for some office or whatever. And then Trump's book was

00:32:56.820 crippled America. And this song is, this, this is the anthem of crippled America. This is not your 0.98

00:33:03.660 usual. We're going to put a boot up your derriere because this is America and we bleed red, white, 1.00

00:33:08.620 and blue all day. I mean, there's a place for those songs. This isn't those songs. This isn't 0.98

00:33:12.240 even a country song. This is a folk song. And for the people who are criticizing this guy and say,

00:33:17.520 well, he just shouldn't be political. He is coming out of a very long line of American folk music.

00:33:27.380 He shouldn't be political. You know, he should, we should just get back to the old days of folk music,

00:33:31.040 like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, for that matter.

00:33:35.740 And I don't know, Joni Mitchell and all these, all these people. Joan Baez.

00:33:43.700 They're always political songs and they're always fairly urgent contemporary political songs.

00:33:49.420 The reason that this is so fascinating that he took off is he's the first one of them to be

00:33:56.140 conservative. Woody Guthrie, communist. Pete Seeger, communist. Bob Dylan was a big lib. He's oddly

00:34:02.840 kind of conservative and more so over the years, but he's considered a big lib. He's the people who

00:34:08.640 really love Bob Dylan tend to be hippies. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie,

00:34:14.900 all the, all the popular folk singers in America. Actually, Arlo Guthrie got a little bit conservative

00:34:19.440 too, though he kind of, he kind of went back to being a liberal. They're all big libs. And the

00:34:25.340 fact that you've now got a guy playing, this could be a Woody Guthrie song, but he's a conservative.

00:34:31.140 What that tells you is, truly, for the first time in my life, conservatism is the popular

00:34:39.280 counterculture. Liberalism is not only the political establishment, as it has been for a long time,

00:34:46.960 but now everybody knows it. This is, the Woody Guthrie's of today are that guy. And that means

00:34:58.160 that the political playbook for conservatives has got to change. And finally, we can start,

00:35:05.360 we can stop telling ourselves these fairy tales that we have for 50 years. Oh, we're the real

00:35:11.020 cool kids. We finally are the real cool kids. The evidence is this kind of a song, the fact that when

00:35:16.480 conservative movies do squeak through, they do extremely well. The fact that when conservative

00:35:21.420 politicians do squeak through, they tend to do extremely well. And they pose such a threat to the

00:35:26.440 liberal political order that the liberal political order starts changing all of the election rules right

00:35:30.740 before the elections, starts rigging the elections, and starts trying to throw the candidates into

00:35:35.220 prison. Not just here in America, though they're obviously doing that, but around the entire West.

00:35:39.920 That is an insurgent culture that shows that the people, after a long enough time, have finally woken up.

00:35:48.660 Are you planning to send your kid off to college this year? Condolences. Now, I've been on a lot of

00:35:53.560 college campuses, go to at least, I don't know, a dozen, sometimes maybe upwards of 20 per year.

00:36:00.620 Remember, I've seen firsthand how liberal ideology has infiltrated and polluted these universities.

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00:36:36.580 today. My favorite comment yesterday is from, or on Friday, rather, is from CarsonianTheGreat4672,

00:36:46.340 who says, Michael, if there was a movement to reinstitute the kingdom of the two Sicilies today,

00:36:50.820 would you support it? I certainly would if I was given at least one of the Sicilies. If I could be

00:36:57.820 the Archduke Grand Viscount of, and I don't even care which Sicily, then it has my full support.

00:37:06.040 Speaking of conservatives making music, you know, I really like Vivek Ramaswamy. He's a pal of mine.

00:37:15.140 We go back to college together. I think he's one of the most exciting candidates in the GOP race.

00:37:21.040 I like a lot of what he's saying and calling for and the way he's shaking it up. I have to formally

00:37:27.580 disavow my friend Vivek. I have to, because I have a line. Okay, my line, it's not how you feel about

00:37:37.100 immigration. My line is not how you feel about tariffs or something. My line is, if you embrace

00:37:44.820 hip hop, if you embrace, I can't, I just can't, I can't bring myself to accept that. And Vivek did

00:37:55.160 embrace hip hop. He wasn't, he could have gotten on the stage at the Iowa State Fair and started humming

00:38:00.080 along to the Brandenburg Concertos. He could have gotten there and pulled out a kazoo and started

00:38:06.020 humming for your release, but he didn't. He rapped Eminem.

00:38:11.660 Oh, crap. 1.00

00:38:12.880 Oh, crap. 1.00

00:38:12.900 Oh, crap. 1.00

00:38:13.480 Oh, crap. 1.00

00:38:13.860 He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out. He's joking how. Everybody's joking now. 1.00

00:38:19.500 The clock's run out. Time's up. Oh, the plow snap back to reality.

00:38:24.140 Up there goes gravity. Up there goes gravity.

00:38:26.860 So, he's so mad, but he won't get up daddy.

00:38:29.480 He won't, he won't act it. He knows he's so mad.

00:38:32.180 It was a pretty convincing rendition.

00:38:36.620 I'm not the biggest Eminem fan in the world, so I don't know how it's supposed to sound, but

00:38:39.800 I am impressed and horrified that Vivek knows all of the words, and I am dismayed that the

00:38:50.180 audience appeared to like it. So, I just formally, for once and for all, disavow my friend.

00:38:57.060 It's very charming. It is very, if I can take my own prejudices out of it,

00:39:02.340 it is very charming to see a candidate get up there and do that. And even if you don't like Eminem,

00:39:06.460 and even if you think that's, it's a little too performative or something like that,

00:39:09.700 this is why this guy is rising in the polls is because he is taking risks all the time. All sorts

00:39:19.680 of risks. He's risking his money on the campaign. I think he made a, like a, an eight figure donation

00:39:27.560 to his own political campaign. He is going out there taking unpopular stances sometimes that

00:39:35.180 then become popular stances. He's debating abortion advocates on the campaign trail.

00:39:41.420 He's getting in the scrum everywhere. He, he's going, giving speeches in support of, uh, Trump,

00:39:48.280 even though he's sometimes going after Trump and distinguishing himself from Trump, but he's,

00:39:52.560 he's supporting Trump on the indictment stuff, but then he'll go after him and he'll go after other

00:39:56.880 candidates and he's just mixing it up, man. And the only way that you even have a chance

00:40:03.900 of becoming the GOP nominee in 2024 is if you take risks and the other candidates are not doing that.

00:40:12.080 The, the also Rams who are at single digits right now, they're obviously not taking risks. And even

00:40:18.460 governor DeSantis, who's, who is in the best position to take Trump out. I don't blame him

00:40:24.560 as the candidate so much as I blame the campaign. They're not taking the risks that they need.

00:40:31.140 And maybe that's on the candidate too. And sure, the buck stops at the candidate. They've got to start

00:40:35.080 taking, I'm not saying Ron DeSantis needs to get up and wrap Eminem. Please don't wrap Eminem.

00:40:38.540 And nobody in America should wrap Eminem, but

00:40:41.260 the other GOP candidates could learn from Vivek right now. It is not possible to win this race

00:40:50.140 in a safe way. You're either going to, you're going to take a big risk and it's either going

00:40:55.120 to pay off and you're going to jump from number seventh in the race to number three or maybe even

00:40:59.360 number two, or you're going to flame out. That's a big risk. It had that gone a different way.

00:41:04.140 Had he messed up the words a little bit or had someone heckled him, he would have looked

00:41:07.200 completely humiliated. It actually would have hurt, but he took the risk. And more importantly,

00:41:13.100 they're taking risks on policy and they're taking risks on places they're going to visit.

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00:41:53.840 delivered. Meanwhile, Trump shows up to the Iowa fair and is warmly welcomed by the crowd. There was a

00:42:00.700 clip that was going viral there. People seemed to love him. Four more years, four more years, you see it.

00:42:09.420 Now, the anti-Trump people will say, well, they weren't all there for Trump and some people were there

00:42:13.940 for other candidates. But it doesn't really matter, guys, because every single poll, with the exception

00:42:22.180 of Reuters, every single presidential poll right now shows the majority of Republicans supporting

00:42:27.260 Trump, greater than 50 percent. And Reuters is a thing at 47 percent. And so people sometimes accuse

00:42:35.860 me of flacking for Trump. I'm really not. I'm really not, guys. I'm describing the state of the race

00:42:45.640 right now. And objectively describing the state of the race might sound like flacking for Trump

00:42:53.500 because he is completely dominating the race and the momentum is with him. So I don't think that if

00:43:02.420 you want to, if you support another candidate and you want to win this race, don't shoot the messenger

00:43:06.540 man. You've got to ask yourself, why is Trump dominating? I feel that most of my take on the

00:43:12.060 2024 has been, hey, Donald Trump is absolutely crushing right now. Here's why I think he's doing

00:43:17.460 that. And then the supporters, mostly of DeSantis, but of other candidates too, will say, well, he

00:43:22.740 shouldn't be dominating. I'll say, yeah, maybe, maybe, I don't know, whatever. But he is. So here's

00:43:28.940 why I think. Stop saying that he's dominating. Guys, he just is. That is just a fact. And if you

00:43:35.100 want to have even a snowball's chance in hell at taking Trump out, then you need to at least begin

00:43:41.520 to understand why it is that he still has support instead of just sneering at that support and

00:43:48.800 sneering at his supporters. That's what the GOP candidates, all the other candidates did in 2016.

00:43:56.100 That's what Hillary Clinton did in 2016. People still don't quite get it. Now, I've got a little

00:44:03.400 tease for you, okay? And the tease is that that, that mother effer isn't real girl has just come 0.86

00:44:13.740 out. She's, she's said who she is. She's issued an apology. I know, look, I teased it at the top of

00:44:20.580 the show today. This is going to be an extended tease because we're going to have to get to this

00:44:24.340 tomorrow. I'm sorry. We have to. There's no, there's no more time. We've got to get to the member

00:44:29.080 block right now, okay? The rest of the show continues now. You don't want to miss it. Become a member.

00:44:33.020 Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 14, 2023

Ep. 1308 - This Viral Song Just Changed Everything

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