The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1368 - 3rd Republican Debate Summarized In 60 Seconds

00:00:00.000 Last night, the Republican candidates, who are respectively 44, 49, 54, and 56 points below the

00:00:07.100 current GOP frontrunner, met in Miami to debate for some reason. The guy who's 49 points behind

00:00:13.560 the frontrunner had the most brilliant performance in that he gave the most thought-provoking and

00:00:18.720 exciting answers. He had the highest highs. Maybe he had the lowest lows, too. The guy who was only

00:00:24.320 44 points behind the frontrunner, I think, had the best performance overall. He answered in a way

00:00:29.940 that was impressive, yet still entirely mainstream. And nothing that anyone said will in any way affect

00:00:37.900 the polls or change the race at all. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:59.940 Welcome back to the show. The big story that we'll get to in a little bit happens to be that

00:01:07.060 personal story that I talked about yesterday. Mayflower cigars. I'm not saying that yesterday

00:01:12.820 was the greatest day of my life. It wasn't. Might have been top five. It was almost certainly top

00:01:18.860 ten. I had very high expectations for this cigar company that I'd been plotting out for about 15

00:01:25.500 years now. And you all, the customers who bought all those cigars totally blew my expectations and

00:01:34.680 the expectations of the cigar industry completely out of the water. So I know some of you are trying

00:01:38.580 to get some now and are having trouble. We'll get to that in just a moment. First, though, we turn our

00:01:43.280 attention to the GOP debate that I think very few people would have watched to begin with because

00:01:48.980 these things haven't seemed to be all that consequential. Even if you like the candidates,

00:01:54.100 even if you're endorsing one of the candidates in the race who shows up to the debates,

00:01:58.300 they haven't really moved the needle. And this debate was even worse in some ways because the

00:02:06.620 debate was hosted by NBC News, which is a liberal outlet. So you think, okay, why am I? It's

00:02:11.560 inconsequential and it's being hosted by a liberal network. Okay, why? The debate started out fairly

00:02:16.920 strong. Vivek Ramaswamy comes out swinging, as he often does, and he called on the chairman of the

00:02:23.120 RNC to resign. We've become a party of losers at the end of the day. It was a cancer of the 0.97

00:02:29.040 Republican establishment. Let's speak the truth. I mean, since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman

00:02:34.260 to the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018, 2020, 2022, no red wave that never came. We got trounced

00:02:41.600 last night in 2023. And I think that we have to have accountability in our party. For that matter,

00:02:48.140 Ron, if you want to come on stage tonight, you want to look the GOP voters in the eye and tell

00:02:52.200 them you resign, I will turn over my, yield my time to you. And frankly, look, the people there

00:02:57.260 cheering for losing in the Republican Party. Think about who's moderating this debate. This should be

00:03:02.000 Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. We'd have 10 times the viewership asking questions

00:03:07.360 that GOP primary voters actually care about and bringing more people into our party.

00:03:11.960 You think the Democrats, and we've got Kristen Welker here, you think the Democrats would

00:03:15.820 actually hire Greg Gutfeld to host a Democratic debate? They wouldn't do it. And so the fact

00:03:21.600 of the matter is, I mean, Kristen, I'm going to use this time because this is actually about

00:03:24.040 you in the media and the corrupt media establishment. Ask you the Trump-Russia collusion hoax that you

00:03:29.480 pushed on this network for years. Was that real or was that Hillary Clinton made up disinformation? 1.00

00:03:36.320 Answer the question. Go.

00:03:38.200 Oh, man. Vivek is pretty good at this. When I say he had the highest highs and potentially the lowest

00:03:46.940 lows, I mean, he's the only one on stage who's really taking risks. So that was a big high. That

00:03:51.800 one totally landed. He had a jibe at Nikki Haley that did not land. It was one of the lows of the debate.

00:03:56.200 But at least the guy's taking risks. I think the points he was making in that opening are totally

00:04:01.100 fair. He's making points about the Republican National Committee, how it's run. He's making

00:04:07.720 points about how the debates are run. Why on earth are we hiring NBC to do the Republican debate?

00:04:12.240 Totally crazy. And then he holds the NBC people accountable for the lies that they pushed for years.

00:04:18.620 So starts out strong in that way. Then we go on to Tim Scott. Tim Scott, I thought,

00:04:26.520 again, gave a safe performance. He's a nice guy. It probably won't move the polls. But he gave an

00:04:32.860 answer that was really important that I haven't heard from other Republican candidates. And I'd like

00:04:37.200 to hear more of it. He pointed out that the country is not just some liberal, vague, abstract,

00:04:43.900 hodgepodge of multiculturalism and freedom to have freedom and be free. But he said, no,

00:04:50.020 actually, it's a Christian country. The truth of my life destroys the lies of the radical left.

00:04:56.760 We need a president and a candidate who will actually help our base solidify and attract

00:05:03.720 independent voters into our party. The Great Opportunity Party is now winning back African-American

00:05:11.460 voters and Hispanic voters because we are working on a foundation based on faith. Our nation is facing

00:05:18.560 some deep challenges. It is a loss of faith in this nation that is a part of the erosion that we're

00:05:25.260 seeing every single day. It's restoring faith, restoring our Christian values that will help this

00:05:31.980 nation once again become the city on the hill. When Ronald Reagan talked about the city on the hill,

00:05:38.440 he was coming from Matthew 5. When President Lincoln talked about a house divided, that was Mark.

00:05:45.940 Our founding documents speak to the importance of a faith foundation. You don't have to be a Christian

00:05:52.380 for America to work for you. But America does not work without a faith-filled Judeo-Christian 0.61

00:05:59.040 foundation. It's a Christian country. When he's saying, look, Lincoln, he's quoting

00:06:04.580 the Gospels. Ronald Reagan, he's quoting Christian preachers, quoting the Gospels,

00:06:11.740 going back all the way through the American tradition, invoking John Winthrop,

00:06:16.560 governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. This is a Christian country. And so the country is going to 0.98

00:06:21.660 be Christian and survive and flourish. Or we're going to stop being Christian and we'll just be a

00:06:28.640 different country. And we're probably going to fail. But even if we succeeded by some measure,

00:06:32.040 we would be a totally different country. The country only makes sense if you recognize that

00:06:36.900 it has been from the very beginning and through all of our success, an explicitly Christian country.

00:06:43.700 I love that. Thank you, Tim Scott. Thank you for saying what would have been considered obvious

00:06:49.300 20 years ago that now nobody wants to say, including the so-called conservatives.

00:06:53.780 For a candidate who's playing it super safe, Tim Scott actually wittingly or unwittingly went out

00:07:02.700 on a little bit of a limb here. Shouldn't be, that shouldn't be edgy at all. But even many

00:07:07.760 conservatives, they say, well, no, we're not a Christian country. We have a firm separation of

00:07:10.460 church and state. Actually, we're a secular liberal democracy. And no, no, man, we're just,

00:07:14.320 that's where the progressives want to take us. That's where the leftists want to take us.

00:07:17.780 But that just isn't true. We have, in God, we trust on our currency. Okay. Our greatest statesmen

00:07:23.940 have quoted the gospel frequently. Our country was founded by extremely zealous Christians

00:07:32.660 who came over here on the Mayflower and gave thanks to God and instituted Thanksgiving,

00:07:39.240 our national holiday. Thanksgiving. Who are we giving thanks to, guys? Are we giving thanks to Ahura

00:07:43.720 Mazda, the deity of Zoroastrianism? Are we giving thanks to the cycle of dharma and karma and nirvana

00:07:52.580 and Buddhism or Hinduism? No, I don't mean any disrespect to whatever people believe in,

00:07:57.160 but it's a Christian country, okay? We're Christian people and Christianity happens to be true,

00:08:01.880 if you ask me. And Tim Scott has the guts to say it. Love it. Then Vivek comes back. Vivek had a really

00:08:10.100 good rejoinder, I felt, to the whole tenor of the debate. And the tenor of the debate was that for

00:08:16.060 the first, I don't know, hour, virtually the whole conversation, every question was focused on

00:08:23.000 how we are going to fund foreign governments. It was amazing. I couldn't get over, well,

00:08:29.000 we're going to, how much money are you going to give to Ukraine? How much money are you going to

00:08:31.980 give to Israel? How many American troops are you going to commit to this region? How many American

00:08:35.120 troops are you going to go send a fight in that region? This, that, or the other thing.

00:08:37.860 And every candidate seemed to be going along with it to some degree or another

00:08:42.040 until Vivek comes out and said, hey, look, I love the state of Israel.

00:08:48.200 I strongly support the right of the state of Israel to defend itself. We're a different country. 0.98

00:08:54.300 The founding vision of Israel was based on the idea that they don't want to depend on anybody else's

00:08:59.640 sympathy or direction in defending themselves. So what I would tell Bibi is that Israel has the right 0.83

00:09:05.420 and the responsibility to defend itself. I would tell him to smoke those terrorists on his southern 0.98

00:09:11.840 border, and then I'll tell him as president of the United States, I'll be smoking the terrorists 0.99

00:09:15.460 on our southern border. That's his responsibility. This is our responsibility. That's how we move forward.

00:09:21.020 But I want to be careful to avoid making the mistakes from the neocon establishment of the past.

00:09:26.820 Corrupt politicians in both parties spent trillions, killed millions, made billions for themselves

00:09:31.940 in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting wars that sent thousands of our sons and daughters,

00:09:37.560 people my age, to die in wars that did not advance anyone's interests, adding $7 trillion to our

00:09:43.740 national debt. You have the likes of Nikki Haley, who stepped down from her time at the UN.

00:09:48.420 Bankrupt or in debt was her family. Then she becomes a military contractor.

00:09:52.840 She joins the board of Boeing and otherwise, and is now a multimillionaire.

00:09:56.300 So I think that that's wrong when Republicans do it or Democrats do it. That's the choice we face.

00:10:01.140 Do you want a leader from a different generation who's going to put this country first, 0.98

00:10:04.700 or do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels? 1.00

00:10:08.660 Oh, man, the vague just throwing haymakers left and right. And this point that he's making here

00:10:15.920 is an important one. It's not just knee-jerk isolationism. It's not just Reddit-tier foreign

00:10:23.780 policy, you know, just only focus on domestic issues. Obviously, a global superpower needs to 0.99

00:10:29.720 look at things going on all over the world. But he's absolutely right about the founding of the

00:10:35.800 state of Israel. The justification, the geopolitical justification for the founding of the state of

00:10:39.880 Israel is that Jews have been persecuted when they have been in countries that are not Jewish

00:10:46.460 for all of history. And so they need their own country, so they don't need to depend upon the 0.90

00:10:52.680 benevolence and the magnanimity of host countries. That's the whole argument. Without that argument,

00:10:59.820 you could say, well, all the Jews should move to New York. New York is essentially the second Jewish 1.00

00:11:04.860 state in the world. I think there are the same number of Jews living in New York as

00:11:09.740 there are in Israel or thereabouts. But the argument is, well, yeah, America's nice to the

00:11:16.360 Jews for now, except on university campuses, except in the halls of Congress, maybe. But America's 0.96

00:11:23.140 really nice to Jews for now, but things could change. That's the argument. That's the argument

00:11:26.840 for the founding of the state of Israel. So if that's the argument, then the state of Israel must

00:11:30.460 be able to defend itself. Because if the state of Israel is entirely dependent on a foreign

00:11:36.740 government to give them armaments, be the military might, be the backstop that stops the destruction

00:11:45.260 of the state, then there's essentially no difference between the Jews having their own explicitly Jewish

00:11:50.400 nation state and just living in another host country. So he's making a point that probably

00:11:56.580 Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, would have strongly agreed with, that many Jewish leaders and

00:12:02.380 Israeli leaders over history would have agreed with. And then he pivots from that and just starts

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00:13:28.860 for free. I promise I'll move on from this agonizing debate in just a moment. First, though,

00:13:35.020 Ron DeSantis. So, I told you, Vivek, he shined. He had these highs. He had this low where he went after

00:13:41.200 Nikki Haley's 25-year-old daughter. Nikki had gone after Vivek for being on TikTok, and he said,

00:13:47.800 well, your daughter, your 25-year-old daughter's on TikTok, too. And then she really went after him

00:13:51.360 for that and said, don't talk about my daughter. And, you know, the daughter's not little, but still,

00:13:55.820 I said, you don't want to talk about the family. And unless it's Hunter Biden, where he's just such

00:13:59.140 a criminal, it's a totally different matter. And anyway, again, that was the low because

00:14:04.200 Vivek is the one taking chances. So, overall, probably people noticed Vivek's debate performance

00:14:10.680 the most. But I think the winner of the undercard, you know, the winner of the debate that probably

00:14:16.980 won't move the needle on polls. But I think the clear winner was Ron DeSantis, who gave impressive

00:14:22.380 answers. He's very, very much in command of the stage. He composed himself. But his answers were

00:14:29.000 still broadly safe, unobjectionable, and mainstream. Now, he gave one answer. And I don't mean that as

00:14:37.500 a criticism. I think that's probably what you need to do in a debate. That's how Joe Biden was able to

00:14:41.140 secure the nomination in large part in 2020 for the Democrats. DeSantis gave one answer on Social

00:14:46.180 Security that I had not heard before from a GOP politician. And it's on a question that Republicans

00:14:51.020 get clobbered with a lot. The question is, are you going to cut Medicare? Are you going to throw

00:14:56.080 granny off a cliff? Are you going to slash Social Security? How are you going to do it? And it's 0.89

00:15:00.640 always a gotcha question. Because if you say that you want to raise the age at which people get these

00:15:04.760 entitlements, then the Democrats say you're throwing granny off a cliff. You have no compassion.

00:15:08.980 You're just, you know, counting your pennies. If you say you want to cut benefits, that's going to be a

00:15:14.760 total loser, too. If you really anything, that's why entitlements have been the third rail in American

00:15:19.580 politics. Ron had a really, really good answer here on why he would not raise the age at which

00:15:27.720 one is eligible for these programs. What can you do to help shore up Social Security? One of the

00:15:32.380 things that's causing problems is the inflation. We have to reduce inflation. When you have higher

00:15:38.360 inflation, the seniors get a cost of living adjustment, which means the program's spending

00:15:42.600 more. But it doesn't cover the increase in the actual inflation rate. We also do need to get to

00:15:48.920 at least 3% growth. You're never going to be able to have issues, be able to solve the budget without

00:15:54.400 that. But I would note this. Congress for decades took money from Social Security. Social Security

00:16:00.440 would have more tax revenue than it put out. They would take it and then they'd write an IOU to Social

00:16:05.680 Security. Congress has a lot of dirty hands on this. I'm going to force Congress to stop spending so much

00:16:12.180 money. And one thing we have to do when we talk about the retirement age is just something that's

00:16:16.200 changed in the last four or five years. Life expectancy in the United States is declining.

00:16:21.020 So, Governor, yes or no? Would you raise it? Would you raise the retirement age?

00:16:24.040 When life expectancy is declining, I don't see how you could raise it the other direction. So it's one

00:16:29.280 thing to peg it on life expectancy. But we have had a significant decline in life expectancy in this

00:16:34.500 country. And that's just a fact. Brilliant point. And you notice the NBC lady, the moment he raises 0.69

00:16:40.620 this new objection to entitlement reform, she jumps in. She goes, oh, hold on. Are you going to raise it?

00:16:49.360 Are you going to raise the retirement age? Because we've been trapped in this rhetorical box for 10

00:16:57.040 years now, 15, 20 years, where any question the Democrats ask about entitlements hurts Republicans.

00:17:05.120 Because it shows that we're either fiscally irresponsible or we're going to throw granny 1.00

00:17:08.640 off a cliff, that we're totally heartless. But Ron here raises a question that I hadn't heard yet,

00:17:15.300 which is, hold on. How are you going to raise the retirement age when life expectancy is declining?

00:17:22.820 The whole idea of raising the retirement age is that life expectancy keeps getting higher and higher

00:17:28.300 higher. Well, when social security was founded in the early 20th century, the life expectancy was

00:17:34.840 significantly lower than it is today. So we've got to catch up with the times and raise life expectancy

00:17:39.640 because of how great things have been. No, actually, that was true for much of the 20th century.

00:17:47.100 Now it's reversed. What a condemnation of the policies that have governed our country for the

00:17:56.700 last century. That our life expectancy is declining. Even an answer like that cuts way beyond the

00:18:04.640 entitlement question. It really shakes people, I think. It shook me, which is, wait, we're dying?

00:18:09.760 Oh, man. What are we talking about? We're going to cut around the edges of economic policy or cut

00:18:17.260 around the edges of this policy or that? We're supposed to be healthier. We're supposed to be

00:18:22.700 growing. But we're a dying population. We don't have kids. We don't get married. And we're dying

00:18:27.100 younger because of suicide and drug overdoses. Whoa, man, things are sick. And whatever policies

00:18:33.980 have led us to that point, we got to reverse them ASAP. Very good answer from Governor DeSantis.

00:18:41.720 Now, speaking of elections, there was this vote in Ohio a couple nights ago. I didn't get to it

00:18:48.880 yesterday. We'll get to it today. Very sad because abortion was on the ballot. This was a referendum.

00:18:55.640 And the people voted to enshrine the license to murder children at essentially any point in

00:19:02.840 pregnancy in the Ohio state constitution. It's called issue one. It changes the state constitution 0.97

00:19:09.380 and takes precedence over laws passed by the state legislature. So it might well be irreversible. The

00:19:15.260 only way that it could be reversed is by a ballot measure, another ballot measure to reverse it.

00:19:20.760 Pro-abortion groups did a great job on this ballot measure because they framed the vote as a matter of

00:19:29.260 freedom, as a matter of shrinking the regulations of the government. The liberals framed it in a

00:19:41.100 conservative kind of way. So it tricked a bunch of conservatives into voting to enshrine infanticide

00:19:45.940 at any point in pregnancy in the state constitution. You've seen similar ballot initiatives here as well.

00:19:51.600 And so the squishes in the Republican Party are going to say, well, this is proof that abortion is a 0.58

00:19:56.600 losing issue for conservatives. And the real squishes are going to say, that's why we should kill the 0.99

00:20:00.660 babies so we can win more elections and cut taxes. The less squishy people are going to say, well, 0.97

00:20:04.600 even if it is a losing issue, obviously if a country cares about anything at all, it should care about

00:20:10.940 not sacrificing its babies to Moloch. This is a non-negotiable issue. It's human life. You're

00:20:15.940 slaughtering the most innocent people in our country. I don't care how it polls on any given day.

00:20:19.760 We're going to stand up for life and we're going to stand up for the defenseless. But the more clever

00:20:23.600 people in the Republican Party are saying, yeah, that's true. It's a very important issue. No, we're not

00:20:27.680 going to squish on human life just because some ballot initiative passed. But people like DeSantis,

00:20:32.660 people like Vivek actually both pointed this out last night. Where was the pro-life

00:20:39.400 referendum? Where were the conservative groups, the Republican groups out there who were putting

00:20:46.340 their own ballot initiative out to say we're going to enshrine life in the state, Ohio state

00:20:51.760 constitution or in any other state? Where were the conservative groups changing the language of

00:20:56.980 how these ballot propositions go up so that they aren't deceptive? So they don't trick

00:21:00.960 conservatives into voting for infanticide, which they don't intend to do. Is it possible that

00:21:06.280 pro-life, pro-abortion, it's a contentious issue, but is it possible that people do in fact support life

00:21:14.060 broadly, but that Democrats are just much better at the operations and inner workings of politics and

00:21:20.580 conservatives need to get better at that as well. I just looking at the language of these

00:21:25.340 ballot measures, just looking at the way they came to be, just looking at how Democrats are much

00:21:29.220 better at rigging elections than Republicans are and have been for well over a hundred years.

00:21:34.320 It would seem to me our issue here, getting right back to what Vivek talked about at the top of that

00:21:39.120 debate, is our political organization, which right now tactically compared to the Democrats is very,

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00:23:08.880 today. My friend, Faith Moore, whose maiden name is Clavin, though of course she has no relation to

00:23:17.420 her father, Andrew Clavin, or her brother, Spencer Clavin. She has written a new rendition of the age-old

00:23:22.280 Christmas classic, Christmas Carol, except this time, it's with a K. Hmm? It's a modern twist on

00:23:28.420 the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, except with a female protagonist. In a world where boss babes are 0.99

00:23:33.020 championed at the expense of family, Faith is making the case that having what matters is far

00:23:37.060 better than having it all. Christmas Carol, now available to order. It's just a perfect story.

00:23:42.640 Perfect story for our time. Give it to any conservative woman in your life. Give it to 1.00

00:23:47.420 especially any liberal woman in your life. And the fellows are going to like it too.

00:23:52.100 Order yours on Amazon or wherever you get your books today.

00:23:54.980 James Carville, who is the funny sound and funny looking Democrat strategist of many decades now.

00:24:05.320 James Carville's take on why Republicans keep losing these abortion propositions on the ballots

00:24:10.900 is because we're lying.

00:24:12.640 Well, I think voters said that they don't like being lied to. They did it in Kansas. They tried

00:24:17.860 to change the wording. They tried to confuse people. They tried to rig the election day. Frank LaRoe,

00:24:23.820 the Secretary of State in Ohio, is one of the great liars that ever lived. And people were 0.79

00:24:29.720 fundamentally didn't want a 50-year right taken away from them. They particularly didn't want

00:24:35.260 to have a rigged system against it. And it backfired and it blew up in their face.

00:24:41.580 They keep lying. All right. And they say, well, gee, Glenn Youngkin says, oh my, it's a 15-week ban.

00:24:47.040 That's not what we're talking about. No one trusts them on this issue.

00:24:51.080 Okay. So Carville, look, he's a Democrat talking point machine. And much of what he's saying is

00:24:58.160 dishonest and hyperbolic and all the rest. But there is a kernel of truth here. The kernel of truth is

00:25:05.320 that the conservative argument on abortion, the conservative desire, the conservative goal

00:25:12.800 is not merely to leave the issue to the states. A lot of conservatives said it for many, many years.

00:25:19.360 We just want to overrule Roe v. Wade so that we can restore our democracy and return the matter of

00:25:24.440 whether or not we should sacrifice our children to Moloch to the states where the matter belongs.

00:25:30.780 Yes, that's right. Look, some states are going to protect their innocent little babies. 1.00

00:25:35.800 And some states are going to sacrifice them to Moloch in the most gruesome and painful ways.

00:25:41.080 And look, whatever you choose is totally fine. We just support choice and freedom and freedom of

00:25:46.340 choice and choice of freedom and states and democracy and procedure. All we really care

00:25:53.800 about is procedure. We don't care about the substance at all. Keep your baby, kill your baby. 1.00

00:25:57.480 We don't care. We just want you to have the choice. No. No, that is not my understanding of what a 1.00

00:26:05.560 conservative believes about the protection of innocent life. We had to get Roe v. Wade overruled

00:26:12.960 because it created a ridiculous, unconstitutional license to abortion. 0.93

00:26:19.560 But now we need to ban it. We just got to ban it, man. It's really bad. It's bad to kill 0.92

00:26:25.380 kids. And it doesn't help anybody. And it hurts a lot of people. It doesn't help the mothers who 0.98

00:26:31.120 are exploited by the abortion industry. It leaves them with trauma for the rest of their lives,

00:26:35.700 rightly so, because they killed their kids. And you can move past trauma and you can be forgiven

00:26:40.240 and receive absolution. But the psychological effect of that sticks with people for a long time.

00:26:46.360 It doesn't help even the abortionists who enrich themselves by slaughtering babies. 1.00

00:26:51.340 Maybe it pads their bank accounts with blood money, but it doesn't help their souls. And it

00:26:55.520 leads them on the path to hell. And it leads our country on the path to hell, terrestrial and

00:26:59.500 even after we all shake off this mortal coil. It doesn't help our nation, even just as a matter of

00:27:07.260 national strength. Even if all you care about is GDP, slaughtering a generation of people is not

00:27:12.460 going to help you grow GDP. It's not going to help you grow social solidarity. It's not going to help

00:27:16.860 you love your neighbor and come together and be united. It's just awful everywhere. It's just

00:27:22.620 intrinsically extremely evil. And so that's the argument. The argument is stop killing innocent

00:27:29.660 babies. That's the whole argument. It's not, you don't need to wrap yourself into logical pretzels

00:27:36.200 and misread all sorts of enlightenment philosophers. And no, don't kill kids. It's just

00:27:41.720 amazing how you ask an ordinary Joe on the street, hey, you think it's cool to kill a kid? You think 0.98

00:27:47.000 that's all right? No, I think that's immoral. Yeah, okay. I think you're probably right. But you ask

00:27:51.240 some PhD egghead Looney Tune with five Ivy League degrees who's worked in fancy offices all their lives, 0.99

00:27:59.600 and they'll explain to you in a 20-minute lecture how it's actually a really good thing to kill children. 0.99

00:28:04.680 Nah. So in a way, Carville has a point. You're right. We got to be honest. And the honesty is, 0.97

00:28:11.960 yes, we want to protect babies all the time because human life matters and people have a right to life.

00:28:20.200 And they, at the very least, have a right to due process if they're going to be deprived of their

00:28:24.200 right to life, which innocent little babies are not currently afforded. Speaking of persuading people,

00:28:28.840 I spoke at the University of Buffalo in the spring of this year. And I speak at a lot of

00:28:37.080 campuses around the country every single year, even as the administrations try to shut down a lot of

00:28:41.620 those. And that's been happening this semester as well. Still, I go there and we face protests from

00:28:48.760 students sometimes. I was just at Cornell. There was a small protest. We face protests from outside

00:28:56.780 activists, anarchists, Antifa. Sometimes there's more of them. In Pittsburgh, they burned me in

00:29:01.340 effigy and threw an explosive at the building when I walked on stage. But the craziest part is we face

00:29:06.600 protests from the administrations of these universities, even public universities. We face

00:29:10.940 protests from the politicians. And when I spoke at University of Buffalo, you had not only the U Buffalo

00:29:16.900 administration, you had the SUNY, State University of New York administration. You had the governor of New

00:29:21.780 York, Kathy Hochul, come out against me, attack me before I ever spoke. And I was speaking on the

00:29:28.160 subject of men and women being different. I was giving a lecture on a subject that everyone should

00:29:34.680 have been taught in kindergarten at the absolute latest and should be uncontroversial after that

00:29:39.000 point. These days we're very confused. So I gave a speech on that very basic, I think broadly ought to

00:29:43.940 be an offensive point. And we had protests from everybody. And then the school chapter of the Young

00:29:50.340 America's Foundation was canceled afterward. The Young America's Foundation chapter was threatened

00:29:56.460 with removal. They had to sue. YAF had to sue. The Alliance Defending Freedom had to sue. And now

00:30:01.760 the student who brought me, Conor Ogrijok, testified before the House Judiciary Committee

00:30:08.800 in front of Jim Jordan and other members of Congress. Imagine how far our country's fallen that this young

00:30:15.240 man had to testify before the United States Congress on why conservatives ought to be allowed to speak

00:30:21.640 and learn at a public university in 2023.

00:30:26.360 If those who were involved in this mob were able to result to fear tactics and violence without

00:30:31.340 consequence, what is keeping a pattern of this despicable behavior from being set and executed

00:30:36.180 repeatedly? This thought remained on my mind throughout the planning of a March 2023 event that I hosted as

00:30:42.080 Chairman, featuring Michael Knowles. This event would grow to gain more pushback than any event

00:30:46.760 on campus in the previous four years and provide the most clear-cut examples of freedom of speech

00:30:52.340 violations. This pushback included delays in contract signing from UB's Student Association

00:30:57.600 that deviated far from their outlined standard course of action, condemnation of the event by a local

00:31:02.980 New York State senator and multiple Western New York-based organizations, a circulated petition

00:31:08.420 constructed by three university professors calling for the cancellation of the lecture,

00:31:13.100 which gained thousands of student signatures, a forced venue change orchestrated not only by

00:31:18.180 university administration this time, but voted on by a SUNY council, a multitude of threats and torn

00:31:23.480 literature, and even a tweet from Governor Kathy Hochul on the day of the event calling comments from

00:31:28.360 Michael dehumanizing. The decry of this event garnered a responding statement from university

00:31:33.340 president Satish Trapathy explaining that the constitution protects speech on campus, quote,

00:31:38.240 no matter how noxious the content, end quote. It goes on. The rest of the testimony is worth

00:31:44.440 listening to. It would be hilarious if it weren't actually happening. This would be a Monty Python sketch.

00:31:51.420 This would be Saturday Night Live bit decades ago. Conservative wants to come to campus

00:31:58.340 to explain that boys and girls are different. And every elected politician, they lose their minds,

00:32:05.880 they call it egregious, and then the students who had the audacity to bring the conservative speaker

00:32:09.860 are basically tarred and feathered and run out of town by those very same authorities.

00:32:15.420 This is a scandal. This is a national scandal. What do we do about it? Well, obviously, we should defund,

00:32:23.140 we should vote these people out of office if possible. We should defund the universities that do this

00:32:27.540 kind of stuff, if possible. But I don't want to sound like I'm a utopian or I'm some idealist here.

00:32:33.680 I know that Kathy Hochul's not going to do that. I know that the New York state government,

00:32:37.680 even though there is a decent Republican representation there, it's not going to do that.

00:32:42.660 We're not going to have a Republican governor there, certainly not with a unified government,

00:32:47.800 anytime soon. So what conservatives have to do is to seek to establish and fund our own schools. 0.82

00:32:55.340 I was talking about the Trump proposal for the American Academy the other day. A lot of people

00:33:02.860 didn't like it. They said, we don't want government funding for our schools. We don't want an explicitly

00:33:07.040 pro-conservative school. No, we do, actually. We do. That's how the libs have managed to attain

00:33:12.040 a reasonable degree of cultural hegemony in recent years, is they took over the existing institutions,

00:33:17.580 and then they fired all their enemies, and then they routed all of their student enemies,

00:33:22.060 and then they hired all of their friends, and then they got a ton of government funding,

00:33:26.520 and then they changed the rules such that they could basically never lose power because they

00:33:30.800 were in charge of hiring, and they were in charge of firing, and they were in charge of the kangaroo

00:33:34.700 courts that kick out conservatives for bogus reasons. And we need to do that. We shouldn't do

00:33:41.460 anything unjust. We shouldn't do anything immoral. But playing within the extant rules of politics is

00:33:48.100 not necessarily unjust. Being clever is not necessarily unjust. We are told to be wise as

00:33:56.000 serpents and innocent as doves. And very often conservatives are wise as doves and innocent as

00:34:01.200 serpents. That was Vivek's big complaint at the top of the debate yesterday, and he was absolutely right.

00:34:05.920 That's what we have to do. We're not going to be able to defund you, Buffalo, for the madness,

00:34:12.700 the persecution they put Connor and the other students through. Okay, well then we need to,

00:34:18.440 when we have any modicum of political power, we need to establish, fund, and protect our own

00:34:23.520 institutions to compete against them and rout those maniacs out of power. Now, speaking of building our

00:34:30.120 own institutions, I mentioned earlier at the top of the show, yesterday was pretty great, guys,

00:34:35.620 because we launched a company that I first conceived of about 15 years ago, and it's called

00:34:42.840 Mayflower Cigars. I've smoked cigars most of my life. They're very important to me. I wrote my

00:34:50.640 college admissions essay about how much I love cigars. One of my most cherished possessions is a

00:34:55.660 box of cigars that my mother gave me, made by the factory, coincidentally, that all these years later

00:34:59.140 is making the Mayflower Cigars. I got my job. I got my Daily Wire show because I wrote a cigar column

00:35:06.300 that impressed Jeremy and Caleb. So anyway, after pitching the guys for years on starting a cigar

00:35:10.680 company, probably mostly to shut me up, they said, okay, Michael, Daily Wire, we'll start a cigar

00:35:15.540 company with you, and it will be Mayflower Cigars, and you can do whatever you want with it,

00:35:19.540 and we did. And so the product is absolutely magnificent. I was very confident. I had very

00:35:24.560 rosy expectations because, you know, all of the Daily Wire products are terrific, if I do say so

00:35:32.380 myself. You know, the entertainment products, the political products, the consumer products,

00:35:36.380 but often we're reacting against somebody. So we'll just be punching, you know, some lib company or some

00:35:43.320 lib politician or whatever. When it comes to cigars, this is purely a labor of love. You know,

00:35:49.440 there's no woke tobacco out there. This is just purely a labor of love. And I said, all right,

00:35:55.380 we're just going to make a very, very, very high-quality product at what I consider to be

00:36:00.480 the best factory in Nicaragua, in Esteli, Nicaragua, what I consider to be the cigar capital

00:36:03.720 of the world right now. It's going to be an excellent product with an excellent brand at a

00:36:07.340 very competitive price. We could have sold this for much more money, but I said, no, I want this to be

00:36:11.140 really accessible to cigar smokers, people like me who are not going to shell out 30, 40 bucks a cigar

00:36:16.800 every single day, but who can get a very high-quality product. So anyway, I had high expectations.

00:36:23.200 You all completely blew my expectations out of the water. This cigar essentially sold out. It

00:36:29.420 mostly sold out within something like eight hours. It is almost certainly going to be completely sold

00:36:36.140 out by the end of this show today. I'm talking about the handful of little extra five packs we

00:36:40.100 had lying around. When I say sold out, I mean we sold four months of inventory in less than 24 hours.

00:36:45.300 Our partners, who are, to my mind, the best in the business, told us they're astonished they've

00:36:50.360 never seen anything like this. Our distributor told us this was the best first-day cigar launch

00:36:53.800 they've ever had. We are ramping up shipments from Nicaragua to meet this unprecedented demand.

00:36:59.500 This is an aged product, so I am not going to rush production. Premium cigars, especially these cigars,

00:37:05.580 require aging. So I'm not going to rush a product and have it not be at the absolute top of quality

00:37:11.060 standards. We do have some product that is properly aged that we're now trying to get out

00:37:14.640 of Nicaragua, get up here as quickly as possible. So it's going to come back online. Some of them 0.88

00:37:18.880 have already, and you can, I think, pre-order again now at mayflowercigars.com. If you want to

00:37:24.560 try the cigars, if you want them for Thanksgiving, if you want them for Christmas, obviously great for

00:37:27.540 Thanksgiving. Order them now. Whatever comes available, just order it. Even if it's not exactly

00:37:33.220 the box you wanted, even if it's not exactly the pack you wanted. Once the next supply is gone,

00:37:39.160 I don't know when we're going to be able to restock. So whatever comes online, if you want

00:37:43.760 to try the cigar, which I highly recommend you do, just get it, pre-order it, and also sign up for

00:37:48.860 updates so that you can be the first to know when products are back in stock. My favorite comment

00:37:55.260 yesterday is from Rohi Clem. Oh, you know what? I should point out, I should point out. When you go

00:38:02.560 to mayflowercigars.com, do not forget that you have to be 21 years old or older, and some exclusions

00:38:08.600 apply. My favorite comment yesterday is from Rohi Clem, 871. I can't believe that you guys spent

00:38:14.880 a decade building a media conglomerate just as a front for your cigar company. Clever.

00:38:20.140 That's what it's all about, man. You know, that's what we do at Daily Wire. We kind of,

00:38:25.700 when other people are zigging, we zag. Subvert expectations. Yes, it's about restoring our

00:38:31.940 republic. Yes, it's about transforming the conservative movement from squishes to solid,

00:38:36.480 solid, rock-ribbed people. Also, it's about making really excellent cigars. That's true.

00:38:44.300 Speaking of establishing institutional control, really sad story coming out of the UK.

00:38:50.240 It seems these stories come out of the UK every six months now. There's a baby who is very, very ill,

00:38:56.860 who is an eight-month-old little baby who has been granted Italian citizenship and admission to a

00:39:07.060 Vatican hospital because the parents don't want to kill the baby. They want to continue treatment for

00:39:12.700 their precious, beloved child. And the UK government says, no, we're going to kill that baby. 1.00

00:39:18.800 No, it's pointless. It's expensive to keep the baby alive. It's pointless. You know, 0.99

00:39:24.280 it's just going to, the baby's just going to die at some point. So let's just kill the baby now. 1.00

00:39:30.020 And this is the baby Indy Gregory. The parents say, no, no, that's awful. 1.00

00:39:36.620 And Prime Minister Giorgio Maloney in Italy says, okay, we're going to grant the baby Italian

00:39:41.960 citizenship so that the baby has a right to come to Italy. The Vatican, the Holy See says,

00:39:47.700 we are going to grant the baby admission to a Bambino Gesù hospital so that we can treat the baby.

00:39:53.460 You in the UK don't want to treat the baby. We will treat the baby. Just bring the baby over here.

00:39:57.240 The UK judge says, nope, kill the kid. It means the UK is now essentially executing an Italian citizen 0.99

00:40:06.180 against the wishes of Italy, up to and including the Prime Minister.

00:40:12.560 More to the point, the UK government is executing a baby against the wishes of the Pope and the baby's

00:40:25.320 parents. It's just awful. It's just absolutely evil. And the hardest part here, other than the death and

00:40:35.640 sadness and grief, the hardest part politically is that the judge probably doesn't know. The judge

00:40:41.740 probably doesn't realize how bad this is. There are a lot of liberals who probably don't realize

00:40:45.880 how bad this is. Because in their mind, what they're saying is, look, this eight-month-old baby,

00:40:50.820 terminally ill baby. The baby's not going to survive very long anyway. So like, what's the point?

00:40:55.620 You're just wasting money and the baby might feel some pain. Maybe. And pain is the worst thing in the

00:41:00.880 world. And suffering is the greatest evil ever. And the whole point of life is to just feel pleasure.

00:41:06.280 And if you can't just live forever, then you might as well just die and be killed.

00:41:11.960 There are a lot of people who think that, consciously or unconsciously. And there are so many 0.99

00:41:16.920 false philosophical, anthropological, and theological premises just wrapped up in those

00:41:24.420 flippant statements and those glib intuitions. But people are not conscious of that. That is the

00:41:30.380 consequence of a liberal culture. I totally understand how the UK judge came to that

00:41:37.120 conclusion. Well, he's going to die anyway. Might as well be now. Yeah, well, you're going to die 0.96

00:41:40.840 anyway, judge. Should we kill you now? I'm going to die someday. Should we just kill me now? 1.00

00:41:47.840 Well, the boy's going to feel pain. Yeah, you feel pain, don't you? Well, should we kill you the next 1.00

00:41:51.440 time you feel pain so you don't feel pain anymore? Well, no, come on. You know, it's just the, 1.00

00:41:55.560 it's just the what? Well, you know, the baby's going to die soon. Yeah, maybe. You might die

00:42:00.820 soon. You might walk across the street, get hit by a bus. Well, you know, it's just, it's very 0.99

00:42:06.140 expensive. Okay. Well, when I think about all the money that we waste, that we waste in our country,

00:42:11.160 in the UK, everywhere, money that we waste on stupid consumer goods or misguided social services, 0.96

00:42:22.180 quote unquote, that actually end up hurting people. When I think about the money that we waste on just 0.98

00:42:25.900 on the, on the gender transition surgeries, gender transition, which is completely preposterous,

00:42:31.640 doesn't achieve a thing, doesn't help these people feel better, is not in alignment with reality,

00:42:37.880 only harms people, violates the Hippocratic Oath, but it's extremely expensive. We waste a ton of money

00:42:42.460 on that so-called medical intervention, but we can't spend a little extra money to keep this baby

00:42:47.580 alive a few more days. You won't even let the baby go seek treatment elsewhere.

00:42:52.180 That's the consequence of a liberal religion, of a liberal, it's not a religion. A religion is a

00:43:01.480 habit of virtue that inclines the will to give to God what he deserves. It's, it's, it's a false

00:43:05.880 imitation of a religion. It's an ideology. And in as much as a country loses its religion,

00:43:13.360 it's going to fall into this stuff because people act with prejudice necessarily. People don't just

00:43:20.720 consciously think about every single thing they're going to do. Should I have pancakes or waffles

00:43:25.060 this morning? Well, let me examine the benefits and costs of each. Let me write a long essay

00:43:30.480 comparing the pros and cons. Let me consider the ingredients and what that will mean. No,

00:43:34.740 no one, you just, I don't know, you say, I don't know, I guess we'll eat pancakes today.

00:43:37.700 We eat pancakes on Tuesdays. That's what we're going to do. Well, people have the same habitual

00:43:41.880 behaviors and prejudices when it comes to moral calculation. So you never, you could pass a law,

00:43:49.860 that would be a good start to say, no, don't kill babies in the UK or elsewhere. But ultimately,

00:43:55.640 Tim Scott is right. It's the moment of the debate that went totally, almost totally unnoticed,

00:44:01.060 but it's probably the best part of that debate last night when Tim Scott said, look, our country

00:44:05.920 just is Christian. Our country is Christian or it's not our country. It'll be a different country. 0.97

00:44:11.160 There are plenty of countries that are not Christian and it'll just be like one of those. 1.00

00:44:15.020 But if we want our country, even if you're not Christian, even if you don't think you're Christian

00:44:19.780 or you don't consciously believe in this stuff, if you like the way our country has been in the past

00:44:26.220 up until the present, you can't throw out the animating spirit that animates the country as the

00:44:35.140 soul animates the body. Speaking of, it's Theology Thursday. So the rest of the show continues now.

00:44:40.280 You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code KnollSkin at WLAS to check out for two months

00:44:43.140 free on all annual plans.

00:44:45.540 Yeah.

00:44:49.640 Yeah.

00:44:49.960 Yeah.

00:44:51.120 Yeah.

00:44:51.220 Yeah.

00:44:51.700 Yeah.

00:44:52.020 Yeah.

00:44:52.520 Yeah.

00:44:52.820 Yeah.

00:44:53.500 Yeah.

00:44:53.580 Yeah.

00:44:57.240 Yeah.

00:45:01.300 Yeah.

00:45:02.240 Yeah.

00:45:06.260 Yeah.

00:45:06.840 Yeah.

00:45:08.120 Yeah.

00:45:08.600 Yeah.

00:45:09.300 Yeah.

00:45:10.720 Yeah.

00:45:11.580 Yeah.

00:45:12.500 Yeah.

00:45:12.640 Yeah.

00:45:13.800 Yeah.

The Michael Knowles Show - November 09, 2023

Ep. 1368 - 3rd Republican Debate Summarized In 60 Seconds

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