The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1347 - My Reaction To The War In Israel

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00:00:37.700 I almost never take vacation, but I decided this weekend I would get out of town with sweet little Alisa

00:00:43.080 and disconnect from the news for a few days and even miss a show, something I almost never do, on Columbus Day.

00:00:51.760 And during that brief little time away, the world blew up.

00:00:55.360 Hamas terrorists launched the worst attack on the state of Israel in 50 years, committed all sorts of crimes against civilians,

00:01:04.540 killing more than 700 Israelis, and injuring at least 2,500 people.

00:01:08.920 I'm sure the numbers are higher.

00:01:10.020 That was as of yesterday evening.

00:01:12.440 Now, the Israeli government is, understandably, retaliating against Hamas in Gaza.

00:01:17.780 The conflict will almost certainly draw in more combatants.

00:01:21.940 Iran, which funded the attack, the U.S. as the global hegemon, at least for now, and who knows how many other countries. 0.65

00:01:29.200 Thousands of civilians will be killed.

00:01:31.580 With a global order already threatened by a rising China, rising bipolarity, the first major war in Europe since the 1940s,

00:01:39.980 we could be on the brink of world war and even a restructuring of the international order.

00:01:46.560 The most gut-wrenching part of the whole thing is the attack, the initial attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas.

00:01:55.280 The second most gut-wrenching part is the destruction, particularly of civilians, in the war that will now inevitably follow.

00:02:03.400 But only slightly less gut-wrenching is the knowledge that we had peace in the Middle East just three years ago. 0.99

00:02:13.180 Three years ago, historic peace in the Middle East.

00:02:17.460 Throughout the world, really, but especially, and most implausibly, in the most fraught region on Earth.

00:02:24.560 And then, we just gave it up.

00:02:29.040 We just gave it away.

00:02:31.140 We got a new leader of the world.

00:02:34.220 Supposedly, for the purpose of restoring normalcy.

00:02:38.140 Because three years ago, politics, it was so abnormal.

00:02:41.320 Yeah, it was abnormal.

00:02:42.600 And we did get that return to normalcy.

00:02:46.680 That campaign promise, I'm sorry to say, is exactly what we got.

00:02:51.220 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:02:51.820 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:03:03.400 While the world burns, the United Nations is concerned about trans lesbians, the plight that they face.

00:03:17.480 We'll get to that in just a moment.

00:03:18.600 First, though, you remember when Joe Biden gave Iran billions of dollars not that long ago?

00:03:23.380 This would have been in July, Joe Biden gave $10 billion to Iran from Iraq.

00:03:31.520 And then, a month after that, he approved the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues.

00:03:39.900 And then, Iran funded the largest terror attack, perhaps ever, in the state of Israel.

00:03:50.620 Certainly, the largest act of war in 50 years that threatens to plunge the entire world into a conflict.

00:03:58.140 Here is the U.S. Secretary of State explaining himself.

00:04:00.720 With regard to the funds that you mentioned, that were released to or were made available to Iran for humanitarian purposes,

00:04:10.740 as part of getting Americans back or being held and detained in Iran, let's be very clear about this.

00:04:16.580 And it's deeply unfortunate that some are playing politics when so many lives have been lost and Israel remains under attack.

00:04:23.120 The facts are these.

00:04:24.380 No U.S. taxpayer dollars were involved.

00:04:26.960 These were Iranian resources that Iran had accumulated from the sale of its oil that were stuck in a bank in South Korea.

00:04:35.100 They have had from day one, under our law, under our sanctions, the right to use these monies for humanitarian purposes.

00:04:40.800 They were moved from one account to another in another country to facilitate that use.

00:04:45.360 As of now, not a single dollar has been spent from that account.

00:04:50.880 And again, the account is closely regulated by the U.S. Treasury Department.

00:04:54.600 So it can only be used for things like food, medicine, medical equipment.

00:04:59.560 That's what this is about.

00:05:01.440 Everything is wrong about his statement. 1.00

00:05:03.260 And I don't think he's a stupid man. 1.00

00:05:05.160 The charitable read on what he's saying is that he's just really, really stupid. 1.00

00:05:09.780 But I don't think he's really stupid. 1.00

00:05:11.540 So I think he's being deceitful here. 0.99

00:05:14.020 He's saying, on the one hand, look, this isn't American money.

00:05:16.860 We got nothing to do with this, okay?

00:05:18.460 This ain't U.S. taxpayer dollars.

00:05:19.960 This is Iran's money that we've been controlling and that is highly regulated by the U.S. government.

00:05:27.300 But it's not us.

00:05:28.060 We're not involved at all, but we actually control the whole thing.

00:05:30.660 So we didn't really do anything.

00:05:32.360 We bear no culpability, but we're the ones who unfroze it.

00:05:35.060 But we told them, that's the first part. 0.98

00:05:36.920 It's so ridiculous.

00:05:37.660 If you are the possessor, if you are the controller of funds, and then you open those funds up for use by Iran, you bear some culpability for what happens with those funds. 0.77

00:05:52.400 And he anticipates this.

00:05:54.400 So he then pivots and he says, but we told them this money that was already theirs that we had no control over.

00:06:01.380 We told them you can only use this for humanitarian purposes.

00:06:03.980 Does the U.S. Secretary of State not understand that money is fungible?

00:06:10.260 Does the U.S. Secretary of State not understand that if you've got a derelict brother, let's say. 0.94

00:06:17.740 Your derelict brother is a drug addict.

00:06:20.440 And you've got, he says, hey man, can you spot me a hundred bucks? 0.98

00:06:25.260 And your derelict brother, he's got a hundred bucks.

00:06:29.600 And you say, okay, I'll give you a hundred bucks, but you can only use this for food.

00:06:33.500 You can only use this for shelter.

00:06:35.120 You can't use this for drugs.

00:06:36.980 And you give him the money, what's he going to do?

00:06:38.280 He's obviously going to go out and buy drugs.

00:06:39.580 But he can come back to you and tell you with a straight face, no, I didn't use your hundred bucks for the drugs.

00:06:44.220 I used my hundred bucks for the drugs.

00:06:46.800 And then I used your hundred bucks for the food and the shelter that I otherwise would have used my hundred bucks for.

00:06:52.360 So it's not really, I didn't, I separated all the dollars out.

00:06:56.420 So don't worry, your dollars didn't go for the bad thing.

00:06:58.940 Only my dollars did.

00:07:00.440 And my dollars were able to go for the bad thing because I had your dollars to spend on the good thing.

00:07:04.380 So you bear no responsibility.

00:07:06.360 It wasn't your money.

00:07:08.120 Money is fungible.

00:07:11.180 Just all gets kind of mixed together.

00:07:13.560 And so obviously if you're giving Iran $10 billion, $6 billion, $16 billion,

00:07:18.160 obviously that's just going to free up other resources to fund this kind of stuff.

00:07:24.680 By the way, at the time when the U.S. said, don't do terrorism with this,

00:07:29.120 the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, said that Iran was going to use the money however it wanted to.

00:07:35.780 So it's not even as though the U.S. could say, oh, drats, they got us again.

00:07:40.080 They promised us, they did a pinky promise that they wouldn't use it on terrorism.

00:07:45.300 And then they did, but we believed them.

00:07:47.160 No, they told you.

00:07:48.060 They said, we're going to use this exactly how we want to, which is going to be terrorism, by the way.

00:07:54.300 Now, how are we all to think about this in the West?

00:07:58.740 A lot of people are deeply invested in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

00:08:01.920 A lot of people are not.

00:08:02.720 A lot of people don't particularly care.

00:08:04.240 They don't want civilians to be killed, and they don't want our country and other countries to be brought into a global conflict.

00:08:11.160 So how do those kinds of people think about this attack and this war that's about to happen?

00:08:17.860 A good lens through which to view this war is the lens of Karen Atiyah, who is a Washington Post columnist.

00:08:27.460 She once led the paper's international opinion section.

00:08:33.340 She retweeted two takes on Israel-Palestine.

00:08:36.580 The first one is, what did you all think decolonization meant? 0.97

00:08:40.800 Vibes, papers, essays, losers. 0.86

00:08:43.080 So she's, this WAPO columnist, former head of an opinion section, is cheering on Hamas and the rape of civilian women and the execution of civilian elderly and babies and just all sorts of war crimes, cheering it on. 0.98

00:09:02.800 And everyone's attacking her for this, rightly so.

00:09:05.760 But at the very least, I give her points for honesty, because the tweet that she retweeted is exactly right.

00:09:14.500 All this talk about decolonization, which is a clinical, abstract, euphemistic term, that's always what this meant.

00:09:22.700 Decolonization always meant kill civilians. 0.93

00:09:25.800 Decolonization always meant attack, torture, murder civilians, and take things by force, not by law. 0.98

00:09:33.660 That's always what it was.

00:09:34.880 And a bunch of liberal white people convinced themselves, you know, establishment center leftists convinced themselves that, no, this would be a kind of a peaceful thing, man.

00:09:45.120 We're just, look, this is a really sophisticated, nuanced view of world affairs.

00:09:49.280 That's not it.

00:09:49.900 It was always going to be civilian bloodshed.

00:09:52.140 Then the other tweet that she retweeted was Karen Attia.

00:09:57.180 She retweeted Amy Saul, who says, liberation, self-determination, and peace for all oppressed plus colonized people.

00:10:03.980 Well, that's my politics.

00:10:05.420 Even if you do not care about the Israel-Palestine conflict, there are many people who say, look, I have very little connection to this region.

00:10:17.600 Maybe I like the Holy Land, but I have never visited the Holy Land.

00:10:21.480 I don't have friends who live in this place.

00:10:24.240 I don't really, it doesn't interest me.

00:10:25.780 It's very difficult not to see how the pro-Palestinian argument applies to every Western person as well as to the Jews. 0.67

00:10:38.020 Because the pro-Palestinian argument is liberation, self-determination, peace for the oppressed and the colonized.

00:10:45.000 We need decolonization. 0.96

00:10:46.520 It's exactly the same language that AOC uses to talk about us.

00:10:49.500 It's exactly the same language that BLM uses.

00:10:52.020 It's exactly the same language that Antifa uses.

00:10:55.180 So you might say, I don't have anything to do with Israel.

00:10:57.260 I don't care about Israel. 0.98

00:10:58.300 I don't care about Palestine or Gaza or any of these people. 1.00

00:11:01.620 I don't want any of us to go over to war there.

00:11:04.580 Of course, none of us do.

00:11:05.780 None of us want any of that.

00:11:07.900 But if you're trying to figure out which side you're on, which side you're generally more supportive of in this war,

00:11:12.980 To me, it is quite striking that all of the arguments for the pro-Hamas, pro-Palestine side are the exact arguments that BLM and Antifa and the squad and all the rest of them make against ordinary, normal, conservative, traditional Americans.

00:11:33.500 There's a reason for that.

00:11:34.700 And what decolonization has meant to Hamas in Israel is exactly what decolonization means to AOC and the squad and BLM and Antifa right here in the US of A.

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00:12:52.760 There are a lot of rumors flying around in this war, and no one really knows what is true.

00:12:57.360 One of them, and this was really sad, I saw this pop up on Twitter, and I'm ranking things by tragedy here.

00:13:05.380 Obviously, the number one tragedy is that attack.

00:13:08.820 The number two tragedy is the civilian deaths in the war that will follow.

00:13:12.660 The number three tragedy is the loss of the world order and potential restructuring of the international order.

00:13:19.680 Under that is the potential destruction of works of art, works of culture, sacred places.

00:13:29.360 We're talking about the Holy Land.

00:13:31.800 And obviously, we value human life above all of these things.

00:13:36.300 But some of these artifacts, some of the relics, some of the institutions in the Holy Land date back a long time.

00:13:45.780 One of which is St. Porphyrios Church in Gaza.

00:13:49.800 This is a church that dates back to the early 5th century.

00:13:53.520 It was then rebuilt by crusaders in the 12th century.

00:13:56.200 And there were reports going around all day yesterday that the Israelis bombed Gaza and destroyed the church.

00:14:04.560 Where people were posting this left and right, and it was genuinely tragic.

00:14:11.280 You think, no, this church stood for 1,600 years.

00:14:13.880 It was one of the oldest churches in the world, and it just was destroyed in this violence.

00:14:18.360 Oh, on top of everything else, that's so awful.

00:14:20.680 And then the church responded and said, no, we're fine.

00:14:25.580 The church, it's a Greek Orthodox church.

00:14:29.120 They were posting on Facebook.

00:14:30.780 They said, no, this news is wrong.

00:14:32.300 The church is currently opening its doors to receive refugees inside.

00:14:36.160 Who knows?

00:14:36.660 I hope, I pray it's not destroyed in any of the coming violence.

00:14:40.500 I was skeptical of the news story when I saw it.

00:14:43.260 But the news was coming out so, so fast.

00:14:45.000 And it occurred to me, oh, right, that is very good Hamas propaganda, that the church was destroyed.

00:14:51.860 Because it gets Westerners and it gets Christians to, if not turn against the Israelis, at least to back off from the condemnation of Hamas and the calls for destruction in Gaza.

00:15:05.320 Oh, that's really good war propaganda.

00:15:07.080 And who knows?

00:15:07.600 Maybe it came out of Iran. 0.66

00:15:08.480 Maybe it came out of Hamas. 0.92

00:15:09.600 Maybe it was just some grassroots kind of effort.

00:15:11.680 But that is one example out of a billion of propaganda, fake news stories that are going to fly around.

00:15:20.220 My chief recommendation when it comes to analyzing these events is to be extremely skeptical of any information that you see swirling coming out of any side about any aspect of this war.

00:15:34.200 Double check, triple check, everything.

00:15:37.380 Propaganda flies a lot faster in times of war.

00:15:40.180 Wars in the Middle East, wars around the Holy Land are particularly tense.

00:15:46.300 They involve basically every single player on Earth.

00:15:50.080 We were already on the brink of World War III because of the first major war in Europe breaking out since World War II.

00:15:58.100 The global order can collapse very, very quickly.

00:16:01.720 World wars have started for a lot less than this.

00:16:05.100 Be very careful of the information you're seeing.

00:16:07.240 Meanwhile, as the world order crumbles, the United Nations is focused on what they believe really matters, which is the plight of trans lesbians.

00:16:15.580 The United Nations Women Account on October 9th tweets out, quote,

00:16:19.380 Remember, trans lesbians are lesbians, too. 1.00

00:16:25.200 Let's uplift and honor every expression of love and identity.

00:16:28.880 Happy International Lesbian Day.

00:16:30.940 And I'm really glad that the UN tweeted this out as war was breaking out in the Holy Land, as the world order was fraying.

00:16:38.640 Because this tells you everything you need to know about the UN, which is that not only is it useless, but it's actually extremely counterproductive.

00:16:48.660 It distracts from things that really matter.

00:16:51.440 It substitutes the UN being a creation of the Western world, the UN being led by the United States.

00:16:57.320 It substitutes good, sturdy, proper virtues and a moral order for a bunch of nonsense that is frivolous at best and wicked and disordered at worst. 0.96

00:17:11.440 And it's complete nonsense. 0.99

00:17:13.020 My response to the UN, let's remember trans lesbians are lesbians, too. 1.00

00:17:17.880 Let's uplift and honor every expression of love and identity.

00:17:20.620 No, let's not.

00:17:21.600 Let's not.

00:17:22.900 Let's not.

00:17:23.360 Because as we're seeing all around us, some identities are in conflict with other identities.

00:17:30.180 If your identity is that you're a man, but you're really a woman, that conflicts with the identity that you're a man and you can't become a woman.

00:17:37.820 That conflicts with the identity that you're a woman and you can't become a man.

00:17:43.280 If you have one religious view, that will very likely conflict with another religious view.

00:17:49.520 And some are going to be more or less correct than others.

00:17:52.600 If you have one political view, it's going to conflict with another political.

00:17:56.220 Some are going to be more or less reasonable than others.

00:18:01.500 And we need to establish those parameters in order to have order.

00:18:06.220 When you don't have those parameters, when you engage in a radical kind of skepticism, when you engage in a radical kind of cultural relativism,

00:18:13.460 when you just try to promote pluralism for pluralism's sake, you end up with disorder and chaos.

00:18:21.620 And inevitably, those tensions are going to flare up in violence.

00:18:25.480 And that violence is going to threaten the stability of the entire world.

00:18:30.140 Turning back to domestic politics.

00:18:32.820 RFK Jr., as predicted over the past couple of days, announces he is running not as a Democrat for president anymore, but as an independent.

00:18:40.060 We have to acknowledge the truth.

00:18:43.100 We do face a decaying infrastructure and record levels of suicide, depression, addiction, chronic disease.

00:18:51.980 We do face an entrenched political corruption and an inequality of wealth not seen in a century.

00:18:58.960 But the good news is that people like yourselves are finally fed up.

00:19:04.800 Something, something, something is stirring in us that says it doesn't have to be this way.

00:19:15.920 And that's why I'm here today.

00:19:18.260 I'm here to declare myself an independent candidate.

00:19:23.700 He is an independent candidate for president.

00:19:26.440 And he's got, doesn't seem like a huge crowd there, but a crowd enough, at least for the announcement.

00:19:31.500 This is a smart move for Bobby Kennedy Jr.

00:19:35.120 He was obviously not going to win the Democrat nomination.

00:19:37.940 He's polling at 15% among Democrats.

00:19:39.760 That's not enough to get you there.

00:19:40.800 Even if it were enough, the Democrat Party still has enough control over its process that it can, at least to some degree, overrule the voters.

00:19:49.860 It wasn't going to happen.

00:19:51.440 So now he runs as an independent.

00:19:53.280 Some conservatives are worried.

00:19:54.620 I'm not worried.

00:19:55.280 Bobby Kennedy, I think, takes more votes, many more votes, away from Joe Biden than he does from Donald Trump.

00:20:02.240 Some right-wingers kind of like Bobby Kennedy because he was against the COVID vaccine.

00:20:06.340 That's pretty much the only reason for conservatives to support Bobby Kennedy.

00:20:10.420 He's pro-abortion. 0.57

00:20:11.500 He's anti-gun.

00:20:12.620 He's pro-immigration.

00:20:14.040 He's a liberal.

00:20:14.840 He's a liberal Democrat on basically every single issue except for COVID vaccines.

00:20:21.340 He's fanatic about global warming.

00:20:23.780 I don't think he's a terrible guy.

00:20:25.980 He's a much better Democrat than most Democrats out there, but he's going to appeal to moderate Democrats.

00:20:31.680 He's not going to appeal mostly to conservatives, center-right, MAGA Republicans, any of that.

00:20:38.780 I am all for the Bobby Kennedy independent run.

00:20:41.680 I do not think he is going to be Ross Perot.

00:20:43.940 I think he is going to be Ralph Nader, and I am here for it.

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00:22:41.460 Is Trump the inevitable GOP nominee?

00:22:44.180 That's the question that Bobby Kennedy is wondering.

00:22:46.200 That's the question that Republicans are wondering right now.

00:22:48.840 Ron DeSantis is making a bold move, one of the first really bold moves to come out of

00:22:54.540 his campaign, and that is to move a third of his campaign staff to Iowa.

00:22:59.220 DeSantis is essentially gambling his campaign now on Iowa.

00:23:03.840 A third of the campaign staff goes there.

00:23:06.080 He's got around $5 million in available primary funds in the war chest.

00:23:10.080 That's according to the New York Times report.

00:23:12.440 So Iowa is going to be that first-in-the-nation contest that sets the tone for the rest of the race.

00:23:18.840 Still, even there, Trump is above 49% in support, according to regular politics, in Iowa.

00:23:27.640 He's 51% support in the GOP primary, according to CBS News.

00:23:32.500 So he's way, way up, not just nationally.

00:23:34.940 He's way, way up in Iowa, too. 1.00

00:23:37.980 Is this stupid for DeSantis, then? 1.00

00:23:39.620 No, I don't think it's stupid for DeSantis. 1.00

00:23:42.080 I think this is probably DeSantis' best bet. 0.89

00:23:46.120 But that tells you more about how the campaign is doing than about DeSantis' likelihood of beating Donald Trump.

00:23:53.240 Because Iowa does not predict the Republican nominee.

00:23:56.760 Iowa has not predicted the Republican nominee for president in more than 20 years.

00:24:00.800 The last time it happened was George W. Bush.

00:24:03.080 Furthermore, even if it did predict the Republican nominee, he's not polling all that well to begin with.

00:24:13.240 Furthermore, when candidates who get a big hype start pulling resources out of later states and focusing them all on one or two early primary states,

00:24:22.920 that's usually a sign that the campaign is floundering and it's not going to go very far.

00:24:26.480 Giuliani did that after Giuliani was viewed as potentially a frontrunner in 2008.

00:24:32.300 Right. And then he put it all on Florida and it collapsed.

00:24:36.220 John Huntsman, who I personally love John Huntsman, he focused a lot of his efforts on New Hampshire.

00:24:42.300 It didn't help the campaign whatsoever.

00:24:44.080 This happens time and time and time again.

00:24:46.460 But what does DeSantis do?

00:24:48.340 His options are either pull resources out of all of these states, try to get a good showing in at least one of them.

00:24:54.480 And even if that doesn't make him the nominee, at least he'll have had one state where he performed pretty well in.

00:24:59.200 Or drop out.

00:25:00.140 But he can't drop out.

00:25:00.960 He's pot committed at this point.

00:25:02.100 It's not like he can just drop out and make nice with Donald Trump, become the vice presidential nominee or kind of go his own way and then come back four years later.

00:25:09.560 He's in it.

00:25:10.580 So he does appear to be largely backed into a corner.

00:25:13.320 If I were on his campaign, I'd probably have made this bet.

00:25:16.600 But it's not the kind of bet you want to have to make.

00:25:18.620 Speaking of the presidency, this is a really, this is a really unfortunate story. 0.99

00:25:24.300 Joe Biden's younger brother, Frank, has just shown up naked on a gay porn app. 0.99

00:25:32.060 Good night, everybody. 0.98

00:25:34.820 I think, you know, on that kind of a story, I don't even want to go any further.

00:25:37.840 Frank Biden, now the second Biden to show up naked on the Internet. 0.99

00:25:44.940 He's on this gay porn app. 1.00

00:25:46.320 I don't even know which one it's called. 0.99

00:25:49.240 Guyswithiphones.com.

00:25:51.120 Not a very creative title, is it?

00:25:53.600 This is according to DailyMail.com.

00:25:55.660 They've got the naked selfie.

00:25:57.000 So this wasn't a candid shot.

00:25:58.840 He was taking it of himself.

00:26:01.640 Frank Biden says, I have absolutely no comment.

00:26:04.380 I could care less.

00:26:05.540 First of all, just to pause there.

00:26:07.200 The phrase is, I could not care less.

00:26:10.220 If you say, I could care less, that means that you care, somewhat, at least.

00:26:14.760 So I don't mean to nitpick the grammar.

00:26:17.660 That one drives me crazy, though.

00:26:18.880 And it actually might tell you a little something about Biden's role in all of this.

00:26:22.300 He says, I could care less.

00:26:23.460 I haven't even looked at it.

00:26:24.560 They must have hacked my phone.

00:26:26.160 Anything that is a revealing picture of some kind is between Mindy and me.

00:26:29.220 I guess his wife.

00:26:30.100 I really don't want to start off my day this way.

00:26:32.220 Definitely didn't post it anywhere.

00:26:34.880 Maybe he was hacked.

00:26:36.260 People try to hack our phones all the time.

00:26:38.340 Even just among conservative commentators and activists and anyone with any public profile.

00:26:45.760 So I wouldn't be surprised at all if they're trying to hack the phone of the brother of the president of the United States.

00:26:50.980 The reason, though, that I'm a little skeptical of the they hacked my phone excuse is that this photo apparently didn't just appear on guyswithiphones.com.

00:27:01.220 It showed up in 2018.

00:27:03.560 So it showed up before Joe was president.

00:27:08.220 It showed up after Joe was in the Senate for almost 50 years.

00:27:12.300 It showed up after Joe was the vice president.

00:27:14.740 It showed up at the one period of Joe's life when he was in private life and before he was president.

00:27:20.800 And then it's just kind of surfacing now, regardless of whether Frank Biden is a deeply, deeply closeted homosexual or if he's just a victim of a hacking or something. 0.70

00:27:32.320 My takeaway, my advice to everybody, stop taking naked pictures of yourself. 0.98

00:27:41.960 Stop it.

00:27:43.000 Stop it.

00:27:43.660 Whether it's for your wife or your husband or your boyfriend or your girlfriend.

00:27:48.460 Whether it's for some app like this one, a gay app or a straight app or some kind of polyamorous, pan-gender, otherwise imaginative kind of whatever.

00:28:03.640 Stop it. 0.99

00:28:05.060 Nothing good will ever come from you taking naked pictures of yourself. 0.99

00:28:11.160 Be normal. 0.99

00:28:12.860 Stop being weird. 0.97

00:28:14.720 Stop being a weirdo. 1.00

00:28:16.100 Weirdos take naked pictures of themselves. 1.00

00:28:18.460 You should not endeavor to be like that. 0.98

00:28:21.400 You should endeavor to be normal.

00:28:23.920 Good grief, these people.

00:28:26.960 Speaking of responsible behavior, there's a report that I teased it on Friday.

00:28:31.540 We'll get to it now.

00:28:33.340 Gen Z is drinking a lot less than other generations.

00:28:38.680 I was just on vacation, sipping a few salty dogs by the pool, you know, not being very much like a Zoomer. 0.96

00:28:44.900 According to this report from the Journal, nearly a quarter of 18 to 29-year-olds are more likely to smoke cannabis compared to older generations.

00:28:54.300 That, to me, should be the headline of this article because the headline of the article and the whole thrust of it is Gen Z, they're sober, they're not drinking.

00:29:03.940 The millennials and the Gen Xers and the boomers, they're alcoholics. 0.91

00:29:07.900 But the younger generation is getting sober.

00:29:09.780 They're not getting sober.

00:29:10.920 They're just getting intoxicated on other substances.

00:29:13.940 And the substance they're getting intoxicated on is marijuana, which older generations are much less likely to use.

00:29:20.220 And booze is better than pot is what I'm saying.

00:29:22.800 I know this is going to be controversial.

00:29:24.100 I know my chat is going to explode with a bunch of people who have The Grateful Dead playing in the background who are, you know, just kind of vibing out to the show.

00:29:32.640 And they're going to say, Michael, how dare you say that?

00:29:36.060 Marijuana is a miracle drug.

00:29:37.700 It cures everything.

00:29:39.020 Every problem I ever had was cured by marijuana.

00:29:41.160 I love it.

00:29:41.580 It's great.

00:29:42.100 Booze is terrible. 0.99

00:29:43.040 The minute you take one smell of a glass of wine, you're going to just start going out and beating your wife and neighbors and dogs and shooting people.

00:29:50.860 And you're going to hear all of this, but it's simply not the case.

00:29:56.000 Tucker Carlson had a good argument on this not that long ago.

00:29:59.540 Tucker said that, this is back when he was still on Fox, the ruling class, they want us to put down tobacco and pick up marijuana.

00:30:11.500 So it's not about lung health.

00:30:12.980 It's not about our alveoli.

00:30:15.800 It's not about cancer risk or anything like that.

00:30:17.720 It's simply about one smoking substance over another.

00:30:23.440 Tobacco, for all its negative side effects, makes you sharper, makes you faster, makes you more focused.

00:30:31.760 It's the sort of thing you do while you're working so you can work faster and harder.

00:30:36.240 It's the sort of thing that the manly men in Mad Men were doing. 0.99

00:30:40.820 Marijuana makes you duller, makes you stupider, makes you slower, makes you less funny, makes you less ambitious, makes you want to eat more potato chips. 0.97

00:30:51.680 Okay, so the regime, they don't care about your lungs, they don't care about your health. 1.00

00:30:55.400 They just want you complacent and stupid. 1.00

00:30:58.600 I think the same thing applies here. 1.00

00:31:00.040 I'm not recommending that anyone drink to excess ever, but alcohol makes you a little more sociable.

00:31:08.700 Alcohol makes you a little more chatty at parties.

00:31:13.800 Alcohol livens you up.

00:31:14.920 It's a social lubricant.

00:31:16.040 Marijuana does the opposite.

00:31:17.540 Marijuana makes you more introverted, makes you kind of sit around, pull back into yourself, makes you slower.

00:31:24.120 So if you've got to pick one, don't do anything to excess.

00:31:28.460 But I know all the Gen Zers, all the establishment outlets, they're probably going to view this as a good thing. 0.57

00:31:35.280 I don't view it as a good thing.

00:31:37.100 You have a choice between a nice glass of red wine and a bong. 0.99

00:31:43.940 Civilization chooses the red wine.

00:31:46.360 Now we're going to turn away from the youths for a second toward the older generation.

00:31:50.820 I mentioned Rudy Giuliani earlier.

00:31:52.400 Rudy Giuliani is suing Joe Biden for defamation.

00:31:56.440 Here's why.

00:31:57.880 It's a typical New York Times malicious lie.

00:32:02.260 I do not have an alcohol problem.

00:32:04.540 I have never had an alcohol problem.

00:32:06.700 And the reason I told you what I achieved is nobody could have achieved that if they did.

00:32:11.880 When the hell was I drinking?

00:32:13.140 I was working 24 hours a day. 1.00

00:32:15.220 It's a big damn lie by a newspaper that's a disgrace. 0.97

00:32:19.060 And by a reporter who covered me, used to cover me very, very, in a very glowing way. 0.99

00:32:28.360 And now it's vicious and mean in what she does. 1.00

00:32:32.020 Thank you.

00:32:32.520 And it's my press conference.

00:32:35.380 Vicious and mean.

00:32:38.360 And if it weren't for the protections that the press gets with Times against Sullivan, I mean, she should be sued for libel. 1.00

00:32:45.560 She should also be thrown out of the profession for being a damn liar. 0.99

00:32:48.600 But that's okay. 1.00

00:32:49.440 So Rudy, while explaining his defamation suit against Biden, talking about how all these other people are defaming him, too.

00:32:56.860 The latest attack is that Rudy's an alcoholic.

00:32:59.940 And Rudy has a good counterargument to this, which is I'm extremely productive.

00:33:04.540 Okay.

00:33:05.100 I was the most successful mayor in the history of New York.

00:33:07.920 I had a very successful legal consulting business after that.

00:33:11.240 I'm on TV 24-7.

00:33:13.280 I was the lawyer to the sitting president of the United States.

00:33:16.120 Give me a break.

00:33:17.100 When would I have been drunk?

00:33:18.120 Look, I was on camera most of the time.

00:33:20.880 And even if you think I'm eccentric, I probably wasn't drunk.

00:33:24.120 So he's saying this is a specific defamatory claim, and I'm going to sue.

00:33:28.220 And I'm going to go sue all the way up to Joe Biden.

00:33:31.300 Does Giuliani have a case, a defamation case, against Joe or any of the Bidens?

00:33:37.880 Yes, he does.

00:33:38.700 And not just on something like a claim of being an alcoholic.

00:33:43.800 Hunter Biden, during one of his most infamous interviews during the 2020 race, claimed that Rudy Giuliani was a wacko conspiracy theorist peddling a pack of lies that Hunter Biden had taken money on behalf of the Biden family from crooked people around the world.

00:34:05.500 Do you regret being on the board to begin with?

00:34:08.460 No, I don't regret being on the board.

00:34:10.660 What I regret is not taking into account that there would be a Rudy Giuliani and a president of the United States that would be listening to this ridiculous conspiracy idea, which has, again, been completely debunked by everyone.

00:34:28.460 It's been completely debunked.

00:34:30.760 I wasn't getting money from Ukraine and China and shaking down people on behalf of my father, the big guy who Rudy found the laptop.

00:34:38.940 He found my laptop.

00:34:39.880 He found my messages.

00:34:40.980 I know it says I gave a bunch of money to my dad, and I shook down foreigners, including the Chinese Communist Party, for tens of millions of dollars.

00:34:48.040 But no, I don't.

00:34:48.820 That's all fake.

00:34:49.680 It's all been debunked.

00:34:51.620 And then it was rebunked.

00:34:53.240 And then it was just proven to be true.

00:34:54.860 And, you know, when you look at a claim like, hey, you drink too much, that's probably not going to hold up in a defamation lawsuit.

00:35:05.720 But if Rudy is suing Joe Biden for saying, you know, you're a Putin stooge, you're a Russian propagandist, that really might.

00:35:14.960 And I encourage this lawsuit, one, because I have a real soft spot for Rudy Giuliani because he's the greatest mayor in the history of New York.

00:35:20.500 But two, because Joe Biden needs to be held to account for his career, for his half century of defamatory lies.

00:35:30.800 This is a guy who lies with such ease that I don't think he even understands what the truth is anymore.

00:35:37.000 This is a guy who lied about the man who accidentally, in this horrible accidental car accident, killed his wife, killed Joe Biden's wife.

00:35:48.920 And Biden had acknowledged the man, he wasn't drunk, he wasn't, it was just a horrible, horrible accident.

00:35:53.780 And the man, I mean, he just was wracked with guilt for the rest of his life.

00:35:56.380 And then Biden, on the campaign trail, decides he's going to start claiming that the man was a drunk driver.

00:36:00.760 This is Joe Biden, a man who, speaking to audiences, will just make up facts about his son, about his career, about things he said, about things he's voted on, beliefs he's held.

00:36:12.600 He just lies with impunity.

00:36:14.820 And so I'm all for it.

00:36:15.960 Rudy, baby, take this guy to the cleaners, please.

00:36:20.400 My favorite comment on Friday is from user SR8DL5WL1Z.

00:36:26.360 That sounds like an Elon Musk child.

00:36:28.360 That is a very long and intricate name.

00:36:31.960 Michael's transitions, he says, from serious topics to selling pumpkin spice ingenious sell is freaking hilarious.

00:36:37.560 Never a dull moment in Knowles Nation, lol.

00:36:39.460 Thank you very much.

00:36:40.640 I'm glad to hear that.

00:36:41.400 Because you know what?

00:36:42.160 Life goes on.

00:36:43.560 Life goes on.

00:36:44.380 It must, even amid tragedy, even amid fear, even, you know, life just goes on.

00:36:50.540 And we got to keep on lighting those pumpkin spice candles, find little bits of humor in there while we can.

00:36:58.360 And sufficient to today is the misery and apprehension and anxiety thereof.

00:37:06.140 Speaking of crime and punishment, there was a transgender activist who was really, really nervous about a Florida law that would give the death penalty to child abusers.

00:37:17.840 Take it away, ma'am. 0.99

00:37:19.960 So there have been some interesting bills coming out of Florida this week, such as the multiple proposals that would allow the death penalty for anyone who sexually batters a child under the age of 12, which was approved unanimously, or the vote to allow the death penalty on a split jury.

00:37:35.620 Out of the 27 states that allow the death penalty, Florida is now one of four that allows it based on a split jury.

00:37:41.740 Now, you might be thinking, you know, people who harm children deserve the worst penalties in the world.

00:37:47.560 And sure.

00:37:48.640 But I want us to think about how we keep having these scares focused around minorities, about how we are going to harm the children. 0.78

00:37:57.440 We are going to be predators.

00:37:58.960 We are going to be, et cetera.

00:38:00.960 Giving the government the right to murder just means they have to redefine who deserves murder before you are on that list, before we are on that list.

00:38:14.420 I don't want to accuse this guy of anything.

00:38:16.300 Is it a guy or a gal?

00:38:17.580 No one knows.

00:38:18.300 No one really knows.

00:38:21.460 Aren't you kind of telling on yourself a little bit?

00:38:23.560 If there's a law that says we're going to kill child rapists, and then you, you say, this is endangering all of us.

00:38:32.960 Aren't you kind of telling on yourself a little bit?

00:38:35.040 Probably you are.

00:38:36.820 And what's the argument?

00:38:37.800 The argument is, well, no, look, it's fine to punish child rapists.

00:38:41.940 But there are these scares about minorities. 0.98

00:38:46.780 Minorities like pedophiles. 1.00

00:38:48.560 Minorities like child abusers. 1.00

00:38:50.080 And the scares will, especially if you can convict someone and sentence them to death on a split jury, the scares mean that some of us will be killed.

00:39:01.020 That would be a good encouragement to not be part of one of the groups that gets lumped in with the child rapists.

00:39:13.200 That would be a good encouragement for that.

00:39:15.180 He says, well, if or she, again, I really don't know.

00:39:19.680 I'm going to say that person.

00:39:20.720 That person says that, you know, if you give the government the power to commit murder, which we've got to stop there, the death penalty is not murder.

00:39:31.020 The death penalty is the just and legal killing by the civil authority of people who have been found guilty of crimes.

00:39:39.040 And the civil authority does not bear the sword in vain.

00:39:42.040 So by giving the government the power to kill people, the government already has that power.

00:39:46.560 The government has always had that power.

00:39:48.060 The government has had that power back through antiquity, up through the present, and at every point in between.

00:39:53.640 By giving the government that power, no, by deciding not whether or not the government can execute justice.

00:39:59.280 That's the primary purpose of the government.

00:40:02.020 You're saying, who will the government punish?

00:40:05.620 Will the government punish mothers and fathers for trying to educate their kids?

00:40:09.860 That's what Biden wants.

00:40:11.200 Will the government punish and pressure Catholics for going to mass on Sunday?

00:40:15.700 That's what Joe Biden wants.

00:40:16.800 That's what this government wants.

00:40:18.480 Will the government punish you for not taking an experimental drug that was produced and at least developed using aborted fetal cells?

00:40:26.320 That's what this government wants.

00:40:27.420 Will the government punish you with 11 years in prison for protesting infanticide?

00:40:30.560 Well, that's what this government wants.

00:40:32.640 Or will the government punish infanticide?

00:40:37.520 Or will the government punish child abuse?

00:40:40.220 Or will the government punish obscenity?

00:40:43.280 It's going to punish something.

00:40:44.620 What is it going to punish?

00:40:45.880 Which side are we on? 0.85

00:40:48.120 Speaking of woke activists, someone even woker than that transsexual complaining about laws against pedophiles, 1.00

00:40:55.240 Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

00:40:59.020 He is retired and he's retired with a parting shot at Donald Trump.

00:41:03.900 What Milley has said is, quote,

00:41:06.340 You say we in uniform are unique.

00:41:08.960 We are unique among the world's armies.

00:41:10.620 We are unique among the world's militaries.

00:41:12.720 We don't take an oath to a country.

00:41:14.300 We don't take an oath to a tribe.

00:41:16.160 We don't take an oath to a religion.

00:41:18.500 We don't take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator.

00:41:23.580 And we don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator.

00:41:27.620 And the wannabe dictator presumably is Donald Trump. 0.79

00:41:31.780 This guy goes on and he preens and he whines just like he was preening and whining about white rage. 0.87

00:41:36.960 And while he was defending his view that the U.S. military, that our troops, should not spend all of their time training to kill the enemy,

00:41:46.640 but they should spend their time studying critical race theory,

00:41:48.720 that they should spend their time studying radical leftist ideology to understand the roots of so-called white rage.

00:41:54.020 This guy is a joke.

00:41:55.500 I'm glad he's out of the military.

00:41:57.280 And there are a lot more Mark Milley's out there that need to go.

00:42:00.060 My takeaway from Milley's parting shot is that Senator Tommy Tuberville is a hero because Senator Tommy Tuberville alone is holding up promotions in the U.S. military

00:42:12.180 because the U.S. military, the Pentagon, has insisted on a new policy through which they're going to pay for service members to kill their children.

00:42:21.600 After Roe v. Wade was overruled, after certain states reverted to laws protecting babies, 0.96

00:42:26.160 the Pentagon decided, okay, if you are stationed in a state that won't let you kill your babies, 1.00

00:42:31.960 we're going to pay you to go out of state to go kill your babies. 1.00

00:42:34.900 And Tommy Tuberville said, whoa, what? 1.00

00:42:36.720 Where did this come from?

00:42:37.500 No way.

00:42:38.040 Get rid of this policy, Pentagon. 0.96

00:42:39.420 And the Pentagon said, who the hell do you think you are? 0.79

00:42:41.200 You're just a U.S. senator.

00:42:42.960 You're just a member of one of the three branches of government.

00:42:45.400 You're just a civilian elected to oversee and run the government by the people of this country.

00:42:50.740 And we're not going to let you tell us what to do.

00:42:52.560 So there's been a holdup here.

00:42:53.640 And Tommy Tuberville says, okay, well, if you're not going to play ball, then I'm not going to give you your promotions.

00:42:59.660 I'm not going to allow you to keep bumping up all your generals.

00:43:02.800 And he has been under so much pressure by Democrats and some Republicans who say, we need military fitness.

00:43:10.220 We need a fighting force.

00:43:11.320 You've got the first major war in Europe since World War II.

00:43:13.820 You've got now war breaking out in the Middle East.

00:43:15.900 We need those generals.

00:43:16.940 Yeah, I agree.

00:43:18.120 But it's not Tommy Tuberville that is preventing the military from having its generals.

00:43:23.640 It's the Pentagon.

00:43:25.780 If the Pentagon top brass believes that killing American infants is more important than being able to have generals to go kill our enemies, that's the Pentagon's problem.

00:43:36.680 We've got a very simple trade here.

00:43:39.000 You're so afraid about national security.

00:43:40.740 You're so afraid about the wars breaking out around the world.

00:43:42.680 Okay, yeah, I have some fear about that, too.

00:43:45.460 I want some caution there, too.

00:43:47.200 So stop killing little American children, and you get your generals.

00:43:50.760 Oh, that deal's too harsh for you?

00:43:52.980 Okay, then here we are.

00:43:54.340 I guess we're not going to be a very fit fighting force in that case anyway.

00:43:58.120 Clear up.

00:43:58.580 Mark Milley's gone.

00:43:59.580 Good.

00:44:00.280 You know what I call that?

00:44:01.160 I call that a good start.

00:44:02.900 Now, today, even though it's my first day back, I didn't have Monday on, so it's Trans Tuesday.

00:44:07.460 The rest of the show continues.

00:44:08.500 Now, you don't want to miss it.

00:44:09.180 Become a member.

00:44:09.600 Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. 1.00

00:44:10.680 So check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Michael Knowles Show - October 10, 2023

Ep. 1347 - My Reaction To The War In Israel

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