The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 Our short national sartorial nightmare is over as the U.S. Senate officially and unanimously votes

00:00:06.680 to make John Fetterman get dressed before coming to work at the supposedly greatest

00:00:13.020 deliberative body in the world. A bipartisan resolution titled the

00:00:17.880 Show Our Respect to the Senate Act, the Shorts Act, S-H-O. It was somewhat labored,

00:00:26.840 but they call it the Shorts Act. It was put forward by Democrat Joe Manchin and sort of

00:00:32.560 Republican Mitt Romney requiring that male senators wear a, quote, coat tie and slacks or other long

00:00:38.900 pants on the Senate floor or else risk removal by the sergeant at arms. The Shorts Act is the most

00:00:46.840 productive legislative work that the U.S. Senate has done this term. The senators can't figure out

00:00:53.060 how to fix the border crisis or revive the economy or even fund the government, but they have finally

00:00:59.800 now at least figured out how to dress themselves, which is a good start. I'm Michael Knowles. This

00:01:07.140 Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. We have a blazing headline today that AI sex chatbots

00:01:32.140 are ruining a generation of men. We'll get to why and how that is in a second. First, though, speaking of

00:01:36.080 the Senate, we have some breaking news right now, which is that Senator Dianne Feinstein has died.

00:01:42.560 Dianne Feinstein was up there in years. People have called on her to retire in recent years. I have

00:01:50.140 not. Dianne Feinstein was a big Democrat, certainly. I've always kind of liked her. I have said for months

00:01:57.960 now I did not want her to retire at all. I actually was endorsing her for about three more terms because

00:02:02.440 she's much better than anything else we were going to get out of California. She had a many decades

00:02:08.920 long political career. There were some infamous moments along the way that conservatives had a lot

00:02:15.920 of fun with, like when Senator Feinstein grilled Amy Coney Barrett over whether or not the dogma lived

00:02:23.080 loudly within her. And so there were these moments, as there are for every politician, where people

00:02:28.660 would always just focus on them. But broadly speaking, they come a lot worse than Dianne

00:02:34.120 Feinstein. As far as Democrat senators go, Dianne Feinstein was really one of my favorites.

00:02:39.400 And I love that she stuck it out until the end and refused to retire or resign, even as many members

00:02:46.060 of her own party were trying to force her to. And so certainly pray for the repose of her soul and

00:02:51.480 pray for whoever comes next in California, who almost certainly will be much, much worse than

00:02:57.480 Dianne Feinstein. The politically significant aspect of her death is this. Look, Dianne, she lived a good

00:03:04.900 long life. It's not as though she was cut down in her prime in her 20s. She lived a good long life,

00:03:10.220 a very respectable career as a U.S. senator. But what it means for us is that we have a

00:03:18.820 gerontocracy. I'm not even saying that's a terrible thing, but our country is run by very

00:03:23.820 aged people, people who are older even than usual in the Senate. You know, the word Senate comes from

00:03:29.900 Cenex, which means old man. But even still, by historical standards, we have an aged group of

00:03:34.920 people running the country. And that means that at any moment, they could die. Not wishing ill on

00:03:41.260 any of these people, but Mitch McConnell is up there in years. Schumer's up there in years. Joe

00:03:45.820 Biden, obviously, up there in years. Even Donald Trump, he seems a lot more vigorous than the rest

00:03:49.380 of them, but he's no spring chicken. And so the advantage of having older people running the show is

00:03:57.160 that they do have more wisdom, we hope. They've certainly had more experience. I'm not one of these

00:04:03.340 people who's totally opposed to old guys running things, but it does open you up to the potential

00:04:08.380 of real chaos if someone happens to die. It is entirely possible that the incumbent president,

00:04:19.320 as he seeks re-election, might not make it for health reasons. And in that case, what will happen?

00:04:26.480 This is something I've said as the flip side of our gerontocracy for a long time, which is the longer

00:04:31.080 this goes on. The longer that the boomers and the silent generation hold on to power,

00:04:35.960 the more radical the transformation will be when the younger generation takes over. Because the

00:04:40.280 younger generation, as always, views things a little bit differently than the older generation do.

00:04:46.040 And we have had a period of relative stability in the way that we view our own political order and

00:04:51.820 in our rhetoric, because it's been the same people running the show for 50 years. But that is an

00:04:57.280 illusion. That is going to go away the moment that these people go away. So the Senate will

00:05:04.760 continue on, at least now they've figured out how to dress themselves. And John Fetterman will have to

00:05:09.540 put on a suit for work. Speaking of men at work, I didn't get to it yesterday, but I do want to touch

00:05:13.740 on this. While the undercard was debating at the Reagan Library for the Republican primary

00:05:19.120 nomination battle, Donald Trump went to Michigan to rally with striking auto workers. Here was his message.

00:05:27.280 Crooked Joe and his payday with the Biden family. They raked in millions and millions of dollars. You see

00:05:34.260 what's going on. The news doesn't really report it. Very little news reports it. But it was the men and

00:05:40.000 women who got every single day. They got up and came back home with grease in their hands. And they were the

00:05:46.780 ones that paid the price. They paid a big, big price. The only time Joe Biden has ever gotten his hands dirty is

00:05:52.900 when he's taking cash from foreign countries, which is quite often, actually. It's quite often.

00:05:58.440 It's a good line. It's the only time Joe's ever gotten his hands dirty. Okay. What do we take away

00:06:03.420 from this speech? The speech went well. It was a good, as far as rallies go, it was good.

00:06:08.540 I don't think it made a ton of news. I don't know that it distracted too much attention from the GOP

00:06:14.580 undercard debate. But I don't know that that many people watched the GOP undercard debate. And I don't

00:06:18.260 think that that debate really moved the needle for anyone. People performed basically as expected.

00:06:23.460 Some people underperformed. I felt Nikki hurt herself. I felt Tim Scott kind of hurt himself.

00:06:30.160 DeSantis did well as expected. Vivek did basically as well as expected. So I don't think it really

00:06:37.000 moved the needle. So what do we conclude from the Trump event? We conclude that he is running in the

00:06:41.860 general election already. This rally was focused on Joe Biden. Crooked Joe, the only time he's ever

00:06:48.140 gotten his hands dirty when he's taking money. So he is focused. He is behaving as though the primary

00:06:55.500 were already over. And the primary is not already over. But every indication would suggest that Donald

00:07:00.980 Trump is going to be the nominee. The national polls, the state polls, the number of committed

00:07:07.200 delegates in, for instance, the Iowa caucuses, the relative lack of change for the polls over time.

00:07:12.540 So it's probably smart for Trump to focus on the general election. But he's still going to have

00:07:18.460 this primary. And as we have seen today, anything can happen. Speaking of presidential candidates,

00:07:28.780 though, and one of those crazy things that could happen, Gavin Newsom, as he prepares for his debate

00:07:35.400 with Ron DeSantis, the undercard of the potential presidential nominees, Gavin Newsom was asked a

00:07:41.740 question about trans issues. And he gave a masterclass in how Democrats should handle this question.

00:07:47.320 Why should parents not know if their kids are transitioning at school?

00:07:52.440 It's a hell of a thing. You're talking about about 1% of the population. Climate change,

00:07:56.800 its impact, 100% of the population wasn't even brought up. And we're talking about trans issues.

00:08:01.040 Here in California, this is an issue for you. This is a front and center issue.

00:08:05.880 This is a front and center issue. It's the great, it's the great, this is one of the greatest

00:08:11.240 distractions. And it's classic. 1% of the population in the United States, these kids just want to live.

00:08:18.900 These kids just want to live. And we're having a debate about trans issues at the Reagan Library.

00:08:25.100 Governor Bateman. Sorry, Governor Newsom. He lies. He wheels and deals and he's slick and he's cynical

00:08:41.040 and he's all those terrible things. But damn, if he isn't good at politics, that was a great answer.

00:08:46.480 If you have the completely untenable position that a man can be a woman,

00:08:52.200 and you take that to its logical conclusion, and you say that it should be the policy of the

00:08:58.020 government to trans little kids, to sterilize little kids and put them on cross-sex hormones

00:09:03.300 and mutilate their bodies, and you need to defend that completely indefensible policy and position,

00:09:10.480 that is the best way to do it. And he does it with enthusiasm. He does it with glee.

00:09:18.380 Look, he doesn't back away from the question. He doesn't seem to be on his heels.

00:09:21.520 Well, no, look, what I really mean, actually, look, come on, guys. He's 1% of the population.

00:09:26.840 This is ridiculous. These kids want to live. They want to live. And climate change is going

00:09:31.360 to kill us all. Oh, come on. You kidding me? Hugh, do you ever listen to Huey Lewis in the news?

00:09:40.500 Try getting a reservation at Dorsey and now, President Trump.

00:09:44.120 People underestimate Newsom at their own peril. This guy, I'm not saying he's going to be the

00:09:53.640 Democrat nominee because I think Joe Biden is going to hold on as long as he can.

00:09:58.320 But sometimes desiring to hold on is not good enough. I mean, Joe is not in charge of his

00:10:04.560 faculties. And as we see, anything can happen. If Governor Newsom, and I fled him, I fled New

00:10:11.600 Mussolini's failed hell state of California, okay? I've seen this guy's policies very close.

00:10:18.480 If this guy is the Democrat nominee, I don't care if you've got Donald Trump, who I think is a

00:10:23.300 singular political talent. I know some people think he's less talented. I think he's pretty

00:10:26.860 impressive. But if it's Donald Trump going up against Newsom, if it's Ron DeSantis going up

00:10:31.220 against Newsom, Ron DeSantis has a billion times better record as governor of Florida than Newsom has

00:10:35.660 as governor of California. I don't care if it's any of those guys. I don't care if it's Vivek.

00:10:38.920 I don't care who the Republican nominee is. That guy will be tough to beat. That guy will be a lot

00:10:46.220 tougher to beat than people are suggesting. He's just pure riz, okay? The guy has got riz.

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00:12:03.640 Governor Newsom, man, for all his many sins, he is teeming with Riz. And speaking of Riz from

00:12:09.840 Democrat politicians, do you guys know, maybe some of you are not familiar with Gen Z lingo.

00:12:15.440 I'm a hip-hop and cool cat, so I know how the kids talk these days. It's short for charisma,

00:12:20.000 okay? That's what we say when we're hanging out at, you know, the sock hop, smoking cigs behind the

00:12:24.660 gym. Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of State for Joe Biden, just showed off some of his Riz when he

00:12:33.320 played a set of Hoochie Coochie Man on a left-handed Fender Stratocaster at the Global Music Diplomacy

00:12:39.960 Initiative.

00:13:09.960 I want to hate it. I want to hate it. I'm waiting. When I saw this thumbnail load up,

00:13:37.620 I thought, oh man, here comes the cringe. Gird your loins. Hold on for dear, comes the cringe.

00:13:43.960 And then he started playing, and he's surprisingly good. It's not Jeff Beck, you know? He's not

00:13:50.400 Jimi Hendrix. He's not Muddy Waters. But his rhythm playing was basically fine. It's kind of

00:13:56.700 cool that he's playing a left-handed Strat. His pitch and tone as a singer, surprisingly good. It's

00:14:01.860 hard for white guys to sing songs that have basically only ever been performed by black guys

00:14:08.280 or only ever been persuasively performed by black guys. And he did it pretty well. I was actually

00:14:14.240 pretty impressed. Today is my day of saying nice things about Democrats. I'm saying that Dianne

00:14:20.600 Feinstein was not the worst U.S. Senator by a long shot. I'm saying that Governor Bateman over there in

00:14:26.220 California might be a stone-cold psychopath who feeds stray cats to ATMs, but he's a political

00:14:31.740 talent. And I'm going to say Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, a pretty good little guitarist.

00:14:37.680 You know, he's got a decent pitch on him too. And I really like that. I like it when politicians,

00:14:44.500 when political leaders have hobbies, when they have other interests. When they don't,

00:14:49.620 then I just assume they are pure psychopathy, that they are just absolute 100% grade A sociopathy.

00:14:58.240 Whereas if like Churchill, if they paint, you know, if like Blinken, if they play guitar and sing

00:15:03.740 Muddy Waters, I don't know. If they have other interests, it makes me think that they are at

00:15:08.500 least somewhat human and they are not merely focused on the acquisition of power for no other

00:15:15.640 purpose than wielding it. Now, speaking of hobbies, turning from good edifying hobbies to dubious

00:15:21.760 hobbies, there's a story out in The Hill. It says, AI girlfriends are ruining an entire generation of

00:15:29.780 men. It's by Liberty Vittert. And I didn't even know what this meant. You know, I'm hip and I'm young

00:15:36.920 and I'm cool and I talk to the kids and I got Riz and I smoke cigs behind the gym and I'm, you know,

00:15:41.360 go to the sock hop and everything. But I didn't even know what this meant. And what I learned from

00:15:47.540 this column is that there are apps. There are apps that simulate girlfriends and they've got a lot of

00:15:57.460 users, like a shocking number of users. In fact, there's one gal who she's an influencer. She's a

00:16:02.840 real human being. She made an AI bot of herself named Karen and got 1,000 paying users in less

00:16:10.960 than a week and a wait list of more than 15,000 people. So it's generating millions and millions

00:16:17.080 of dollars. And a lot of people, many more people want to use it than even are able to use it right

00:16:22.520 now. And it's not just like they're logging in and, you know, it's just some rote computer program.

00:16:28.100 The AI learns what your desires are and then tailors its messages to your desires. Mostly

00:16:35.380 sexual, one would assume, but maybe some of your other inclinations and interests as well.

00:16:41.260 The AI learns from all this to assuage the silent epidemic of loneliness that is hitting this

00:16:45.580 generation of young men, according to Vittert. More than 60% of young men ages 18 to 30 are single

00:16:52.160 that's brutal. One in five men report not having a single close friend. And that number has

00:17:07.720 quadrupled in the last 30 years. And I know it, man. I see it. This is so much more than just about

00:17:17.940 sex. This is about people not having friends, people not being able to go out and have a drink

00:17:23.820 with somebody or a cigar with somebody, or I guess that's mostly what I do with my friends, but go out

00:17:28.120 and, you know, play a game of pool or just chat or it's, it's increasingly rare to have friends these

00:17:35.260 days. And people who don't have friends, I mean, loneliness is such a painful experience.

00:17:39.200 They think that they're the only ones. Obviously, if you're lonely, you feel lonely, you feel isolated,

00:17:43.360 but this is a widespread social problem. Huge number of people who have no close relationships,

00:17:53.040 especially with a girl. The amount of social engagement with friends has dropped by 20 hours

00:18:00.840 per month over the COVID lockdowns. So you say five hours per week. It's still decreasing. And so

00:18:10.480 this professor, Liberty Vittert says that America desperately needs people to have more babies,

00:18:15.000 but all signs are pointing toward fewer relationships, fewer marriages, and fewer

00:18:18.840 babies. And people are going to mock this. To me, the saddest part is, is the crisis faced by so many

00:18:25.240 people of not having any close friends, which is not just a personal problem. Maybe it's that,

00:18:29.700 you know, you're, you've got to work on your personality and your virtue and all those things a

00:18:33.480 little bit, but you can't say it's just a personal problem. If it's widespread throughout the whole

00:18:36.900 society, then it's a political problem. And we need some cultural and political campaign to fix it

00:18:43.460 because the issue was caused by cultural and political factors as well. That's why it affects

00:18:48.180 so many people. And this is especially true when it comes to romances that could lead to marriage,

00:18:55.680 that could lead to babies, none of which we're getting right now. People are going to mock this

00:18:58.760 and they're going to say, you freak, you weirdo pervert. You'd rather have a relationship with a chatbot

00:19:04.860 sitting in your mother's basement or by yourself, getting, getting weird sexual messages from a

00:19:11.220 computer than go out there and have a girlfriend. What a weirdo, what a freak you are.

00:19:16.920 But I, I see why this is tempting. In fact, the professor says it too. He says, this is a way to

00:19:23.880 assuage the loneliness epidemic. So you're feeling lonely. Then you start using weirdo tools like this.

00:19:30.620 And then it, it seems like a little bandaid on the problem of loneliness because you're getting the

00:19:35.260 simulacrum of a relationship, but you know, it's not real. So then you become even more lonely,

00:19:40.400 even more isolated, even more encouraged in your weird sexual desires. And, and the problem only

00:19:45.020 compounds on itself. It snowballs. And I see why it's tempting too. If you, if you have a real

00:19:51.580 girlfriend, she can tell you, no, if you have a real girlfriend, she's a human being who you have to

00:19:55.640 respect. It's not just about the satisfaction of your own desires as weird as they come.

00:20:01.720 I, I, I get why men in Japan notably, but even in the United States would turn to porn rather than

00:20:09.300 have a girlfriend. I get why they would turn to these weird sex robots instead of having a girlfriend.

00:20:15.020 In a way, one could more directly satisfy their apparent desires and selfish longings

00:20:23.580 with one of these things that isn't actually human, that doesn't really have a soul or consciousness

00:20:27.440 over a human being totally. And so if you're an atheist, if you're a materialist, if you think

00:20:34.760 that this world is just kind of stuff and that our, our consciousness, our, our sense of longing and

00:20:40.500 love and desire and dreams, that's all just an illusion caused by misfiring little electrical

00:20:45.360 impulses in our brains. Then there is no argument against this. There is no materialist,

00:20:52.760 secular argument against the weirdo porn AI chat robots. There isn't one. And there are many

00:21:01.160 arguments for using them in a culture that's extremely lonely at a time when the highest and

00:21:08.120 only moral maxim is if it feels good, do it. And the more people indulge those impulses as they are,

00:21:14.760 the worse the society and the individuals are going to get. But in a world without God,

00:21:20.860 there's no argument against it. There's no way to stop the psychological, social, and

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00:23:53.100 today. My favorite comment yesterday is from Matthew Smith hyphen CP3HU. What a strange name who says,

00:24:03.060 what I want to see is how states are going to hold an honest and fair election. I I'm with you. I'm

00:24:09.540 with you. Uh, you know, I like a number of the candidates who are running for the presidential

00:24:14.440 nomination. I like Trump. I really like Trump. As you know, I like Ron DeSantis. I think he's a great

00:24:19.820 governor. I like Vivek Ramaswamy. He's a friend of mine. He's a very impressive guy. Obviously I love

00:24:25.680 Doug Burgum, the future emperor of the country. Once, once we move into full Caesarism and the

00:24:32.680 Burgum, Burgum momentum takes off, then he's going to run the whole country. But you know,

00:24:36.620 a number of the candidates I really, really like it. It does seem likely to me that Trump is going

00:24:42.260 to be the nominee. And if you like the other candidates more, sorry, you know, and could

00:24:46.740 something change? Of course, anything could change. Maybe DeSantis pulls a rabbit out of his hat and wins

00:24:51.000 the nomination. Maybe Vivek surges up and, and becomes the nominee. I'm not saying it's not

00:24:55.220 possible. Just seems to me since the polls essentially haven't changed in 14 months and

00:25:00.220 because Trump is essentially running as an incumbent, uh, it just seems to me very likely that he'll be

00:25:06.340 the nominee. So I'm just not as focused over the sniping of the individual campaigns at each other.

00:25:13.760 And every time, you know, there's a bad clip of Trump or a bad clip of DeSantis or a bad clip of

00:25:18.940 Vivek or some oppo comes up somewhere. I'm not even that interested in reporting on the news of

00:25:24.120 it because I just don't think it's really consequential. I don't think any of it really

00:25:27.160 moves the needle. What I am focused on is no matter who the nominee is, can that person beat

00:25:33.940 a Democrat? And part of that is going to be personality and popularity. And part of that is

00:25:39.740 going to be, are the Democrats going to rig the election? I'm fairly confident that the election

00:25:48.140 was fairly rigged in 2020. Okay. And I'm fairly confident of that because the Democrats admitted

00:25:53.300 it and that they changed all the rules in some cases in contravention of the state constitution,

00:25:57.600 as in the case of Pennsylvania, they did that. Was it significant enough to flip the election?

00:26:03.480 I don't know. Maybe, maybe it was. So if Trump is the nominee again, what's to stop them from doing

00:26:10.520 that again? This is the argument made by the DeSantis camp and some of the other campaigns. And it's a

00:26:15.960 good argument. But, but then my response to that argument is, well, what's to stop them from stealing

00:26:19.980 it from you? You know, we're talking about a structural political issue here that Republicans

00:26:25.000 need to get serious about or else all of these debates, not just the one at the Reagan library,

00:26:30.120 but all of these debates in the primary are abstract and theoretical and not going to amount

00:26:37.120 to much if the Democrats rig the whole system to give them an insurmountable advantage.

00:26:42.080 Okay. Speaking of dubious apps, you guys remember threads? Do you remember Facebook threads?

00:26:54.000 It's not as though I'm saying, hey, do you remember MySpace? Hey, do you remember LiveJournal?

00:26:58.840 Hey, do you remember AOL Instant Messenger? Apps from years and decades ago.

00:27:03.560 Facebook rolled out threads, which was going to be its Twitter alternative like two months ago or

00:27:11.100 something. And now I hadn't even remembered it until I was on my Instagram account and I saw some

00:27:18.800 link to it. I said, oh, right, there's a thread, there's that thing. That didn't, that completely

00:27:23.760 flamed out. CNBC is reporting that upon the launch of Facebook threads, it looked like it posed a real

00:27:30.600 chance of, of being a formidable competitor to Twitter. And then it just collapsed.

00:27:38.520 The forecast predicts a U.S. user base of 23.7 million people for threads in 2023. That is

00:27:47.840 significantly less than half of the 56.1 million anticipated U.S. users of X, formerly known as

00:27:55.520 Twitter. And Twitter was always the smallest of the big social media sites. So compared to Facebook,

00:28:01.280 Instagram, and TikTok, it's relatively small because Facebook has 177.9 million users.

00:28:06.640 Instagram has 135.2 million. And TikTok has 102.3 million. Threads just completely collapsed.

00:28:15.920 Less than half of Twitter not even registering in the conversation. My takeaway from this is it was,

00:28:22.420 in fact, smart of Elon to buy Twitter. At the time, he bought it for $44 billion.

00:28:29.380 People said, this is a big waste of money. Look, maybe the company will still go bankrupt. It has

00:28:34.380 financial problems. But if the point was for Elon to have control over one of the big platforms in

00:28:40.200 our public square to actually get messages out there, it was smart to buy Twitter. All the libs said,

00:28:45.760 if Elon buys Twitter, we're going to get off Twitter. We're going to stop using it.

00:28:48.500 It's going to collapse. We're all going to go someplace else. And they don't. They don't. And

00:28:53.380 they never do. They never go to Truth Social. They never go to Parler. They never go to Gab.

00:28:57.920 They never go to Threads. It's no knock on any of those platforms. But these platforms have a lot

00:29:05.860 more staying power and inertia than they have previously been given credit for. A lot of people

00:29:11.020 said, well, look, you remember MySpace, and then MySpace went away. So some new company will do it.

00:29:14.500 That's not how it works anymore. In those early days of the internet and the new media,

00:29:19.160 things were a little more tempestuous than they were. They've really settled down, though.

00:29:23.820 And the institutions, especially Google, especially Facebook, and to a much lesser degree, Twitter,

00:29:29.860 they control the public square. This is why it was so dangerous when the big tech platforms censored

00:29:35.900 the Hunter Biden laptop story, including from private messages. Because in a republic,

00:29:41.900 such as we are supposed to be, if you control speech, you control the whole political order,

00:29:47.500 because the way we govern ourselves is supposedly by persuading one another and deliberating.

00:29:51.960 The Senate is called the greatest deliberative body in the world. We speak to one another,

00:29:55.300 we make speeches, we make arguments, and then we persuade enough people to get some things done.

00:29:59.780 If you control speech in the public square, you control effectively the whole political order.

00:30:04.880 And that's what these unaccountable billionaires in Silicon Valley had been doing, all for the left.

00:30:11.060 Twitter comes in. Well, Elon comes into Twitter and just shifts it and makes it more amenable

00:30:16.320 to conservatives. And it worked, and it had staying power. Conservatives in recent years

00:30:21.860 have been eager to flee the old institutions. They said, the old institutions are so hollowed out,

00:30:28.480 so desiccated. Screw it. Let the libs have them. We're going to build our own institutions.

00:30:32.980 It's good to start building our own institutions. Obviously, that's what we're trying to do here

00:30:36.260 at the Daily Wire. But that is not enough. We should not cede the institutions to the left.

00:30:42.300 That's how we lost the universities. And the libs went in and hollowed out those universities and made

00:30:47.600 them zombies of what they once were. But they still have some prestige. They still have some influence.

00:30:53.220 If we want to get back to any state of normal in the United States, we've got to fight over those.

00:31:00.860 We've got to have hostile takeovers, re-takeovers of those institutions. We need Elon Musk and people

00:31:08.260 like Elon Musk—I guess there aren't very many because he's the richest man in the world—to go

00:31:11.780 in and put their money where our mouths are and take those institutions and kick out the bad guys

00:31:17.000 and turn them a little bit more in the right direction and start wielding them for our interests,

00:31:22.120 which happen to be more in line with justice and virtue and a flourishing society.

00:31:26.300 Don't give them up. Don't concede them. Don't say, well, you're going to have them. It's all lost.

00:31:31.500 Tactical retreats can be fine. Sometimes you've got to tactically retreat from Harvard to Hillsdale

00:31:36.260 to get your troops back up. But that's only to mount another attack on Harvard and go in and take

00:31:41.420 it. Sometimes you need to tactically retreat from California to Texas or California to Tennessee,

00:31:45.360 but not to say we don't care what happens in California anymore, only so that you can get your

00:31:50.460 forces strong enough again to go back there and fight those battles in California and throughout

00:31:56.240 the United States so that we have a flourishing society. Sometimes the best defense is a good

00:32:01.180 offense. Speaking of building institutions, there's a report out from 60 Minutes. The U.S. has dumped

00:32:08.140 $25 billion into non-military foreign aid for Ukraine. So while we're now hearing that our military

00:32:15.160 servicemen in the United States will work and not be paid in the event of a government shutdown,

00:32:20.820 shop owners in Ukraine are still going to keep getting checks from me and you.

00:32:26.560 Checks, not for arms, not for guns, not for tanks, just to keep the lights on, keep baking bread,

00:32:33.600 keep selling products, keep the hotels open. Non-military aid. In addition to the $43 billion

00:32:39.960 in military aid, we've dumped nearly $25 billion into non-military aid. And the right is aghast over

00:32:45.960 this and shocked and horrified. I'm not shocked at all. This is what empires do. We are an empire.

00:32:51.860 The war in Ukraine is an imperial war between the United States and Russia, two large powers,

00:32:59.320 formerly both great powers. Now, Russia's considerably degraded, but still two relatively

00:33:04.180 great powers fighting over territory that the East and the West have fought over for a long time.

00:33:09.500 And what empires do is not merely supply bullets and guns and things, but they wield their resources

00:33:17.980 and their power to keep the whole country afloat. That's what happens. We are inevitably going to

00:33:22.980 throw our power around. And to pretend that we're not going to do that anymore is to ignore reality

00:33:27.960 and to continue to see these institutions to the left. The question that we should be asking is not,

00:33:33.920 should we throw our weight around? Should we have influence in the world? Should we

00:33:36.840 be the great powerful country that we are? The question is, what are we going to use that power

00:33:41.000 for? Are we going to use it to hoist pride flags in Kandahar? Or are we going to use it to spread

00:33:48.340 truth, justice in the American way, to expand the founding example of the United States, to be a

00:33:54.920 shining city on a hill, to be a model of Christian charity? We are going to impose or at least impel the

00:34:04.480 adoption of our values around the world. We can put our heads in the sand and pretend that's not the

00:34:08.840 case and let the left just have fun doing it. Or we can get into the nitty gritty and say, what values

00:34:14.180 are we going to share? Is it going to be the American flag? Is it going to be the cross of

00:34:21.880 Christ and Christendom? Or is it going to be the rainbow flag? What's it going to be? It's going to be

00:34:27.460 something. Now there's a story. I'm just going to tease this. There's a story out there,

00:34:31.760 big blaring headline on Drudge Report. Will there be a late entrant into the GOP primary race?

00:34:41.260 And you know who it was going to be before you even clicked the headline. There's scuttlebutt.

00:34:47.220 There's talk out of Virginia that Glenn Youngkin could be a last minute entry into the GOP race.

00:34:53.880 To which I say, well, I'm out of time. That'll be my tease. We'll have to talk more about it

00:34:59.580 on Monday. You know, when Dr. Jordan Peterson made the decision to join DailyWare Plus,

00:35:05.200 it was a major win for those who champion intellectual debate. With one year of unparalleled

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00:35:39.260 like Logos and Literacy, Jordan's groundbreaking series on the book of Exodus. That's only the

00:35:42.860 beginning. I have not even mentioned his Beyond Order lecture series. Well, I guess now I just did

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00:36:00.700 will fuel your thirst for knowledge and inspire personal growth like never before. Go to

00:36:04.520 dailywire.com slash subscribe to become a member today. Finally, finally, I've arrived at my favorite

00:36:12.240 time of the week, which is when I get to hear from you in the mailbag. This mailbag is sponsored by

00:36:16.260 Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, to save an additional 50% off your first month.

00:36:21.580 Hey, Dirty Mike. Mr. Reality here. I had a question for you about Trump's poll numbers,

00:36:27.400 specifically from that ABC poll that you talked about on your show on Monday. The ABC polling has

00:36:32.800 a history of being wildly wrong. Specifically in 2016, a few weeks before the election, they had

00:36:38.320 Hillary Clinton up double digits over Trump, and we know how that turned out. So my question for you

00:36:43.140 is, given that the mainstream media clearly wants Trump to be the nominee, either for their ratings or

00:36:49.700 because they think he'll be easier for Biden to beat, and given their history of faking polls,

00:36:54.600 which we all know is true, my question is, do you think it could be an effort by the mainstream

00:36:59.420 media to help Trump get elected to make fake polls showing that he is electable? Ben's talked about

00:37:05.500 the underlying numbers on some of these polls that show him winning huge support from Black voters,

00:37:10.380 which is unheard of in Republican circles, for example. Do you think the polls could be fake

00:37:16.700 to take out the DeSantis argument, or do you think they're real this time? Thanks. And if you do think

00:37:20.700 they're real, why? Thanks. Certainly could be an example of the media wanting Trump to be the

00:37:26.700 nominee. I don't think the media consciously want Trump to be the nominee. I don't think it's that

00:37:32.000 they're all in a room, and they're sitting there smoking, you know, smoke-filled room, probably vape-smilled

00:37:37.300 room if it's the liberal media, and they're saying, okay, what we're all going to do, guys, is we're going to

00:37:41.840 pretend that we hate Trump. But secretly, we love Trump because he gets us ratings. So what we're

00:37:47.540 going to do is give him the nomination. Okay, you all got your marching orders? Let's go out there and

00:37:51.980 pretend to hate Trump. They sincerely hate him. They really hate him more than they hate other

00:37:56.420 Republicans. But like someone in a perverse romantic relationship, they also love him because he does

00:38:05.440 give them ratings. That's true. He's ratings gold. Nobody comes close. So if it were merely that,

00:38:12.640 if it were merely media coverage, I would say, okay, maybe this is being trumped up, pun intended,

00:38:18.060 to get them more ratings. And if it were merely the ABC Washington Post poll, I would say, yeah,

00:38:22.960 maybe it's a cooked poll. I'm not sure I believe it. The reason I suspect that Trump really is far and

00:38:29.640 away the leader in the race right now is that every single piece of evidence points to that.

00:38:36.580 Every single one. It's not just one poll or two polls. It's not just the Democrat polls. It's not

00:38:40.480 just the Republican polls. It's not just the, it's every poll says essentially the same thing.

00:38:46.840 They all have Trump winning, not by a little bit, but by a ton. The gap is huge. The polls are not in

00:38:54.560 any way dynamic. Polls have remained the same basically from the beginning. In terms of, I mean,

00:39:00.480 it's still very early on in Iowa, but in terms of committed delegates, I think Trump has something

00:39:03.760 like a two to one lead on committed delegates in Iowa. It just, the way that the race is structured,

00:39:11.480 there are so many candidates, none of whom seem ready to drop out. This is why everyone knocked

00:39:15.680 Dana Perino for her question the other night about the game show and survivor, who do you vote off?

00:39:19.700 And it was perhaps phrased in a silly way, but the impetus for the question is a pretty serious one,

00:39:25.300 which is, hey, if you all stay in the race, nothing's going to change and Trump is the

00:39:29.300 nominee. So one of you has to get at, multiple of you have to get out. If you even, if any of you

00:39:33.440 even want to have a chance of beating Donald Trump, but none of them have any incentive to get out right

00:39:37.120 now. So because that's not changing, I just, and because Trump is running effectively as an

00:39:41.400 incumbent, which is something we haven't seen in our lifetimes for a president seeking a

00:39:45.520 non-consecutive second term. I'm inclined to believe that it's not just all completely fake.

00:39:51.440 If it's all, if every single piece of evidence is just completely fake, then I guess the conspiracy

00:39:56.660 runs deeper even than I had suspected. Next question. Hey, Michael, I think it was around a

00:40:04.020 year ago this time that you had really first put the thought in my mind that I needed to look into

00:40:10.120 Catholicism. I grew up in a really lukewarm Protestant household, but it's taken me this

00:40:18.680 long and I think I'm ready to take the plunge. I believe the church is who she says she is

00:40:24.240 and I want to become a Catholic. And I'm just wondering, where do I go from here? What are the

00:40:31.320 steps I take? Any advice would be great. Thanks, Michael.

00:40:35.260 Well, great news. I'm so pleased to hear that. That's wonderful. It's probably not too late to

00:40:39.800 start RCIA, which is the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. So just contact your

00:40:44.480 local parish or, you know, or maybe if you prefer going to mass at a different parish, you know,

00:40:50.260 if maybe your local parish is a little bit on the lib side and there's a more reverent mass somewhere

00:40:55.440 else, just contact them. Say, I want to start RCIA. Email the parish secretary or the priest and

00:41:02.380 they'll get you started. And then you could be, receive the sacraments by Easter. And that's great

00:41:06.560 news. Really, really glad to hear it. Okay. Next question. Hi, Michael. So there is one thing that I

00:41:12.100 think your audience can wholeheartedly agree on, and that is how much we love hearing you talk about

00:41:16.680 sweet little Elisa. You talk about her in such a kind and loving way. And I think we would all love

00:41:22.000 to hear the story of how you proposed. Thanks again. Love the show.

00:41:25.760 Oh, well, let's see. The story of how we proposed was we were down at Beachcomber Restaurant,

00:41:33.540 a great little restaurant for breakfast in Orange County, California. And I had purchased the ring

00:41:40.200 already, obviously. And, you know, I had known Elisa since we were 10 or 11 years old. So what's

00:41:46.360 amazing about it is you still get extremely nervous. And so we go down for breakfast. I said,

00:41:51.480 I can't make it through breakfast if I don't pop this question now. So Elisa goes, she's like,

00:41:55.660 I'm going to go use the restroom. You know, where we had just gotten down there. And I said,

00:41:59.480 not the most romantic way to set it up, I guess. And I said, okay. And I walked a little further

00:42:03.520 down the beach while we were waiting for our table. And Elisa only began to expect it

00:42:08.820 when she saw how far down the beach I was, because I didn't want to be around a bunch of people.

00:42:13.680 And, you know, and then just got down on one knee, popped the question, and it was lovely.

00:42:17.260 It was really great. And then we had breakfast. Then it was just a great,

00:42:21.160 marvelous. That's all I have to say about that. I don't know. I didn't do one of these things that

00:42:25.860 modern people do, which is, you know, they hire a band and like, you know, a mariachi band and

00:42:30.280 acrobats and a full film crew to film it and post it on TikTok or whatever. It's just this lovely

00:42:35.380 little private moment on a beach before we had pancakes and beignets and coffee and mimosas.

00:42:41.800 It was great. Next question.

00:42:44.160 Michael, you have to understand how Democrats election rigging works. In 2020,

00:42:48.400 Trump pulled 10 million independents away from Democrats. No one believes that 20 million new

00:42:53.520 voters mailed in ballots for Democrats because Trump made mean tweets. A cursory examination of

00:42:59.180 those ballots found that they were anonymously cast. No court was allowed to hear the evidence

00:43:04.000 so Democrats could deny there is proof. They know they can't get away with that again.

00:43:09.320 So Pennsylvania is preemptively registering everyone to vote. So now they can mail out ballots to their

00:43:15.060 headquarters and send them back with the names of registered voters on them, whether those people

00:43:19.340 cast a ballot or not. They'll also allow illegal aliens to vote using the names of citizens who

00:43:25.180 never vote. Who's going to check their IDs? Democrats know they are a minority now and must conduct extreme

00:43:31.220 ballot box stuffing to win. They will make shams of all our future elections. The fix is already in to

00:43:36.920 make 2024 a repeat of 2020. This is why Republicans must repair the election system to a traditional state.

00:43:43.740 One election day, in person with citizenship ID only. No mail or provisional ballots and only paper

00:43:51.500 ballots, not computerized ballots. This would just be the beginning of repairing our system that

00:43:56.780 Democrats have broken.

00:43:59.160 I agree. Is there any question? I broadly agree. I mean, I guess the one place I disagree is I think

00:44:04.940 sometimes the Democrats are a little subtler and more sophisticated about how they stuff the ballot box.

00:44:09.780 I think that the way that they harvest ballots, the way that they target places like nursing homes,

00:44:15.620 the way that they, you know, stuff ballots in lockers, and the way that they position the drop

00:44:20.160 boxes is a little bit more clever than the blunt thing that you've described. But the end result is

00:44:27.800 substantially the same. And that's certainly the purpose of it. I mean, just as the purpose of

00:44:31.860 Democrats flooding the country with illegal aliens is to give them new voters down the line,

00:44:35.580 the purpose of the widespread mail-ins is for them to steal elections. That's the only reason.

00:44:40.480 Ten years ago, Barack Obama was admitting that widespread mail-in ballots are open to fraud.

00:44:47.040 But then they realized it would benefit them during COVID. So now they're the big supporters of it.

00:44:52.880 That's all true. I agree. I mentioned that earlier in the show, actually, that

00:44:55.660 we're not focused nearly enough on whoever the nominee is, Trump, DeSantis, Vivek, I don't know,

00:45:02.740 Doug Burgum, how the Democrats aren't just going to steal it again in precisely the same way.

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00:45:46.540 From Alex. Hey, Michael. I've noticed as of late the term,

00:45:51.340 the original sin being used by leftists to say American slavery. Obviously, original sin is Adam and Eve

00:45:59.660 partaking of the forbidden fruit. Why are they trying to rebrand the original sin? My initial thought

00:46:05.500 is to introduce the idea of baptism into the worldly church versus the church of God. Would love to hear

00:46:09.800 your thoughts. Yeah, that's why I always hate that stupid phrase when they say, America's original sin is

00:46:14.420 slavery. It's not. America's original sin is original sin. That would be the original sin of

00:46:20.000 every nation on earth and of all men tracing back to Adam. That's true. But yeah, the reason they do

00:46:27.000 that is because they center their political vision around man rather than around God. So the original

00:46:35.960 sin in the Garden of Eden is a transgression of man against God, whereas the original sin of slavery

00:46:41.300 is a transgression is a transgression. They view it, I think, as a transgression of man against man

00:46:46.580 himself. So it just becomes totally anthropocentric. And it's very shallow and silly, obviously, but it's

00:46:55.840 just a way for them to channel their natural religious longings toward an end that they can

00:47:02.520 acknowledge exists, which is human beings on this earth. And they don't allow their natural religious

00:47:08.500 longings to point them up in their intellect and their desire toward God, who is the source and

00:47:13.660 summit of those desires. From Julie, do you believe in staying married forever if you're not valued,

00:47:19.540 even if after 38 years of marriage and three highly successful kids all grown and on their own and a

00:47:23.620 very full life, you know that there are deep problems that will most likely never change?

00:47:28.700 Or with 20 plus years left on earth, would you be better to look for happiness and compatibility

00:47:32.560 elsewhere? I am opposed to divorce in all cases. So yes, what you're describing here, let me find your

00:47:40.520 exact wording. What you're describing here is there are deep problems and you aren't valued. And I don't

00:47:49.220 want to minimize that because that can be extremely painful. It's especially painful when it's someone who

00:47:56.500 is supposed to love you the most, who behaves that way with you. That's true of a lot of marriages,

00:48:02.140 a lot of marriages have problems. What I would recommend is working on the marriage constantly,

00:48:06.340 every single day. And being blunt and honest about it, I wouldn't just try to paper over everything.

00:48:13.220 But I would work on the marriage from the premise that under no circumstances can the marriage break.

00:48:20.520 Because you have three highly successful kids, even for your adult children, the divorce would be a

00:48:28.840 massive scandal. It's not just for little kids, but for adult children to crack up the foundation of

00:48:36.720 their world, to crack up the symbol of the love of Christ and his church. Even if you didn't raise

00:48:44.180 them in a particularly religious way, it just completely cracks their sense of the world.

00:48:51.760 And it's a scandal for society. And it's a scandal that leads other people down this path. And it's

00:48:56.520 a reason that people don't get married now because they say, well, 50% of marriages end in divorce or

00:49:00.020 whatever the statistic is. It's bad. And do you really think you're going to be so happy living alone

00:49:05.100 just because your husband's sort of a jerk sometimes? Okay, now I'm going to be better off

00:49:09.240 on my own or you're going to start dating at age 60 or something? I just think it's crazy. I think the

00:49:13.080 grass is always greener. And it's not to minimize people in an unpleasant marriage. But the only

00:49:20.580 thing to do, and the only reasonable thing to do, it seems to me, is to work on the marriage. I don't

00:49:25.540 think your husband wants to be miserable either. You've got to work on it. And don't just suspect

00:49:32.460 that liberating yourself and emancipating yourself from your family is going to make you happier. I

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Ep. 1341 - AI Generated Woman Destroy These Young Men

Summary

Transcript