Ep. 1406 - Can Christians Vote For Trump？
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Summary
ABC News and WMUR cancel the next Republican primary debate because only Ron DeSantis agreed to participate. A porn actress is insulted in public, Mia Khalifa goes viral, and a woman who supports Palestine goes viral in public.
Transcript
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ABC News and WMUR have canceled the next GOP presidential primary debate
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after only Ron DeSantis agreed to show up. Four candidates, Trump, Haley, DeSantis,
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and Chris Christie, remember him, they qualified for the debate. Christie has already dropped out.
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Now, Nikki Haley is refusing to debate unless Trump shows up, which he's not going to do
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because he hasn't gone to any of them because he's leading the pack by just under 50 points
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nationally. Haley is smart not to debate, only DeSantis, because debates are always a risk
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and she has nothing to gain. Nikki Haley is currently leading DeSantis in the next state,
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New Hampshire, by almost 23 points. The numbers are 23 point, I'm sorry, 29.3 percent to six and a half
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percent for DeSantis. A debate before New Hampshire would be all downside for Haley with no upside.
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Haley also has no incentive to debate before the following state, Nevada, because she's not
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even competing there. A few years ago, Nevada legislators moved to replace the state's caucus
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system, which is similar to what we saw last night in Iowa, with a primary system, which is more in
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line with what the rest of the country does. The Nevada GOP opposed the move, so it's holding a
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caucus anyway and says that anyone who participates in the primary can't participate in the caucus.
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But while all the rest of the GOP candidates opted for the GOP-run caucus, Nikki sided with the state
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and filed for the primary, so Nevada doesn't even matter to her. And Trump is currently polling at
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69 percent there, nice, so doesn't matter anyway. Next up is South Carolina. That's obviously Haley's
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home state, where she is currently in second with double the support that DeSantis has. So no reason for
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her to debate before that one. And then finally, there's Michigan, where DeSantis has a slight lead
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over Haley, but it's doubtful that the governor will even still be in the race at that point.
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And even if he is, Trump currently has over 61 percent support in Michigan. That's all before Super
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Tuesday, when 16 states and territories will vote, most if not all of which are certain to go to Trump.
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All of which is to say, we're not getting an ABC News debate before New Hampshire. And we're probably
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not getting a CNN debate either. And we're probably just not getting any more debates at all because
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the 2024 GOP primary is, for all intents and purposes, over. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. Breaking news. A porn actress, Mia Khalifa, was insulted in public.
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She's gone viral for this. She usually goes viral for promoting the Palestine liberation movement
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and supporting terrorists and things like that. But she's gone viral here for a different reason.
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Shockingly, she was insulted in public. We'll get to that very important story in just a moment.
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First, though, the fact that the political media are still reporting on the primary as though it were
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some hot, contentious thing is crazy. I'm happy to talk about the primary a little bit because it
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does matter who the nominee is and who's going to be the next president and whether or not we're going
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to send the next nominee of the Republican Party to prison and whether we're going to fall into civil
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war and whether the American republic is going to cease to exist. All of that stuff matters.
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But most of the political media are still reporting on this GOP primary as though it could go another
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way. It can't. Unless a bolt of lightning comes out of the sky or out of the hands of a Democrat,
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it's over. It's Trump. But here's how they're reporting on it. The libs and some places on the
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right even are trying to suggest that Trump's win in Iowa doesn't mean all that much. And what they
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point to is they say there was low turnout in Iowa. Only something like 110,000 people caucused.
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That was down from an all-time high back in 2016 that I think was around 170,000 or 180,000 people
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caucusing. So they're saying only 14% of the Iowans came out and only half of them voted for Trump. So
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it's not really a big victory. And 14% is a pretty low number, sure. But I don't think it's really a
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knock on Trump. I think it's probably more a knock on the other campaigns. Trump already seemed to have
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the state locked up. Also, it was negative nine degrees outside. So the fact that anyone showed
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up at all is pretty impressive. Negative nine degrees is bad. It's currently 10 degrees here
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in Nashville. And we're still not allowed to go back to work at Daily Wire because there's a little
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bit of snow on the ground and the whole city is shut down. So negative nine degrees, that's pretty
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intense. And more to the point, people are not really that incentivized to vote if they think
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that the thing is already done. Trump was polling at 52% in Iowa before the caucuses. So the incentive
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for anyone to show up, for a Trump voter certainly, or even some of the supporters of the other campaigns,
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is going to be greatly diminished. This was the story in 2016. Do you remember? The Democrats said,
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well, the reason Trump won in 2016 is because everyone thought Hillary was going to win.
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So the Democrats thought that they didn't have to go vote. And Democrats who would have supported
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Hillary stayed home because they thought there was no reason to do it. And then the Republicans
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were more motivated and the Republicans won. So using that logic, then what that would suggest is
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the other candidates would have had much more of an incentive to show up. The fact that the turnout
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was low is actually a knock on the other campaigns for not getting out the vote. Because the Trump
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supporters would have already thought that they had it in the bag, if you're going to compare it to
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something like 2016. But I think probably what happened is that a lot of GOP voters, one, didn't want to
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go out and freeze, but a lot of GOP voters are treating this as though the primary is just fake, that
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it's a fait accompli. It's been done from the beginning. As some of us perhaps predicted early on,
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I hate to say I told you so, I think a lot of GOP voters are just treating Trump as the incumbent in
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this primary. And that's how it turned out last night in Iowa. All of the other candidates could
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have consolidated around one, one anti-Trump candidate. Every single campaign just put all
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their resources, all their voters, all their money, put it together, gone up against Trump. Trump still
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would have won Iowa last night. And I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm not saying
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anything about who should win. I'm just saying the guy is basically an incumbent. And the polls were
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proven correct in Iowa, which to me implies that the polls are likely to be about right in the other
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states, which implies that the primary is over. So now we turn our attention away from the GOP
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infighting and we focus our attention on beating the left. And there's a clip of a very prominent
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left winger that is going around now. Bernie Sanders, Bernie, the leader of the socialist wing
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of the Democrat party, at least for decades now, maybe some of the young guns and the squad are
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taking that position from him, but still he's probably the most prominent socialist on the left.
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And the clip is going viral because Bill Maher tricked him in a debate over equality versus equity.
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You've got that equality, which a lot of people agree with versus this new leftist socialist view
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of equity, you know, which is, which is everyone having the same outcomes, not just the same
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opportunity. And even that socialist Bernie Sanders said that he supports equality.
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DEI, are we confusing equality of opportunity with trying to guarantee equity and outcomes? Okay.
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That's interesting because I think this word equity has come into the language in the last few years.
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And before that, we didn't hear it a lot. And I think a lot of people hear equity and they hear
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equality that it's the same word and it's not the same word in the same concept. So how would you
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differentiate between equity and equality? Well, equality, we talk about, uh, I don't know what the
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answer to that is. Come to think of it, you know, uh, equality is equality of opportunity. All right.
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We live in a society. We want all people to have whatever color your skin is. Equity, I think, is more
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guarantee of outcome. Is it not? Yeah, I think so. I think that's okay. So which do you come, which side do you
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come down on? Uh, equality. Equality. Yeah. Okay. Ha ha. They got him. That liberal is a classical
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liberal though, Bill Maher. You know, he's the good kind of liberal, Bill Maher. He supports equality.
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A lot of people support equality of opportunity. But Bernie is a socialist. He's supposed to support
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equity, equality of outcome. But, but even Bernie, even a radical like Bernie says, that's too much.
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And so those DEI people, those woke people, the squad, the ones arguing for equity, therefore
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meaning equality of opera, of, of outcome rather, they're, they're crazy. And you know what I say?
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I actually don't think there's much difference between the two, which we'll get to in one second.
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Celtic Bank members, FDIC, terms and conditions apply. The conservatives, we support equality of
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opportunity. It's those crazy leftists. They support equity, by which they mean equality of outcome.
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I don't think those are actually opposites. I don't think that's much of a debate at all.
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I actually think they're kind of the same thing, ultimately. It's a battle between liberalism
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and communism. And in recent decades, the conservatives have made common cause with the liberals.
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Some have gone so far as to say that we conservatives were the true liberals or were the classical liberals
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or whatever. I'm not a liberal. I'm not a modern liberal. I'm not an old liberal. I'm not a middle
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ground liberal. I'm not a liberal. I don't, I don't believe in liberalism. So I don't, I'm certainly not
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a communist. So I actually think they're both kind of wrong. I think equality of opportunity and equality
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of outcome. They're both just fantasies and they're both ultimately wrong. I want people to
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have their just do. I want people to have every good opportunity they possibly can have. But there's
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no such thing as equality of opportunity. Some people are born a little smarter than others.
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And it's, and there are people who are born with a high IQ who squander their natural advantages
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and totally neglect their education. And they might end up worse off than someone who's maybe born with
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a little bit of a lower IQ, but they work really hard and they're really diligent. They cultivate good
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habits. That, that's certainly true. But they still started from a different place. There is no actual
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equality of opportunity. Let's talk about something that might be more important than IQ.
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Having two parents who are married to one another in a loving, stable household. Not everyone gets that
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equality of opportunity. What are we going to do? How are we going to level out that playing field?
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There are a lot of people who are born at a wedlock, who are born with absent fathers, who are born in bad
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family circumstances, who are born without a mother or father. Maybe that's two fathers, three fathers
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now, five fathers and a billy goat, whatever. They're suffering from a natural disadvantage
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compared to someone who's born to a loving mother and father, married in a stable household. What are
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we going to do? Are we going to, in order to level that playing field so everyone has the same equality
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of opportunity? Are we going to break up the stable marriage? Probably the left would like to do that
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now. No, that doesn't seem like a good idea. Are we going to force the, the couple that had the kid
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out of wedlock to get married? I would be fine with that, but the liberals, the classical and otherwise
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who push for equality of opportunity, they're not going to do that. There's no one's calling for that.
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Some of these are, are more socially constructed. Some of these are just natural, like IQ.
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Two. So what are we going to do then? Well, what's going to happen is because equality of
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opportunity is a fantasy that can never exist in real life, then there are going to be inequalities
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that persist. Equality of opportunity is going to be shown to be a failure. And then guess what's
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going to happen? People are going to demand equity. They're going to demand equality of outcome because
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equality of opportunity is an impossibility. And they're going to be right when they, when they point
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to that. But equality of outcome, well, that's just communism. That's not going to work either.
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That's going to be a monstrosity. That's going to be a terrible injustice. So then what do we
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really want? We don't want equality or equity in the liberal sense of the term. I mean, for goodness
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sakes, equality is part of the motto of the French Revolution. Liberté, égalité, fraternité,
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fraternité, au mort, you know, liberty, equality, and fraternity or death. And then they lop off
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everybody's heads. That's, that's extreme liberalism. That's, that's not, we don't want
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either of those things. The, the true equality that exists is a spiritual equality before God
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because there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free nor male nor female, but all are one in
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Christ Jesus. That's a true equality and equality before God because there is human solidarity.
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We all descend from a common ancestor. We are all made in the image and likeness of God and we are
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redeemed by the very same God, the only begotten son of God who comes down to earth. God sends his
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son to die so that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life. That's true equality.
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It's an equality of opportunity for everlasting life. It is not an equality of opportunity for everyone
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to go become a CEO someday. Anyone can be president. Anyone can be an astronaut. That's not true. I'm not
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going to be a basketball player. I never really wanted to be a basketball player and I won't be one.
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And I never had a chance to be one. And it drives me crazy. No, it doesn't drive me crazy, but that's
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just my, my state in life. The conservative view is not the liberal view and it's not the communist view.
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It's a view that respects natural limits and is diligent and pursues good and wants all sorts of
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good stuff, but recognizes that there are natural limits and there are natural inequalities in the
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world. And we can either bury our heads in the sand, we can deny that. But when you deny truth,
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when you deny reality, it just leads to more radicalization. The liberal law, liberalism is
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going to lead to communism. In fact, that's exactly what happened in the history of ideology and the
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history of politics. So if you, if you want to avoid that, it's much better to ally yourself with
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reality and with the truth. Quality before God is a good thing. It's much more important. Now,
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speaking of God, Mr. Meathead, Rob Reiner, most famous for one, having a very famous and talented
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father in Hollywood and two, playing a guy named Meathead on All in the Family, one of the great
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sitcoms of all time. Rob Reiner, who's a big lib, has just come out and he's asked how a Christian
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could possibly vote for Trump. Reiner says, Jesus told us to do unto others as you would have them
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do unto you. How in God's name can anyone who believes in the teachings of Jesus support Donald
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Trump? We hear this line all the time. Rob Reiner is not the first guy to bring it up. You hear it all
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the time. But what is he really asking? Is, is Rob Reiner and all these libs, are they asking
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how a Christian can vote for a sinner? Are they saying that Donald Trump fails to live up
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to the Christian ideal of life? He's a sinner. And so therefore you can't vote for him? Well,
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that doesn't make a lot of sense. The, the central insight of the Christian is that we're all sinners,
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all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And therefore we're not going to save
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ourselves and we're in need of a savior, not a political savior either. It's kind of nice to
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have good politicians every now and again, but we need a savior who is not just king of a country,
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but king of the whole universe. That doesn't make sense. If we can't vote for sinners,
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we can't vote for anybody. But does Rob Reiner mean how can a Christian vote for a non-Christian?
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Is he not just saying that Trump is a Christian, but he's a sinner, but he's saying Trump isn't a
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real Christian. He's not a Christian at all. So how can a Christian vote for a non-Christian?
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I don't know. Rob Reiner is not a Christian. That mean we can't vote for him? Vivek Ramaswamy
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is not a Christian. That means we can't vote for him. We, we, in our very constitution
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learn that there is no religious test for public office. Is he going to throw that out the window?
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I don't know. That's pretty extreme. Rob Reiner is saying he should only vote for Christians. I mean,
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it'd be not, be good to have a, a more, uh, Christian informed government. I'm all for that,
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but that, that seems pretty extreme. Is Rob Reiner a Christian nationalist now? I don't think so.
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Now, you know what I think he is? I think he's engaging in a typical leftist tactic from Saul
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Alinsky. He probably doesn't even know he's doing this, but it just comes as second nature to the
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libs. He is forcing his opponent to live according to their own principles and their own ideals,
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principles and ideals that they would never cause themselves to live up to.
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And that's a very effective tactic. But in this case, it's totally incoherent because he is
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insinuating that Christians should live up to ideals and principles that are not intrinsically
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Christian. It's just totally bogus in this case. It can be very, very effective when the libs and the
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Alinskyites do this, but it's just not effective in this case. There is no Christian principle that says
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you can't vote for a sinner. We wouldn't have a government anymore.
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Can't vote for a sinner. You can't vote for a non-Christian. All right, who are we going to vote
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for? I don't know. Some Republicans are still not sold on Trump. And I understand why. A lot of,
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a lot of Republicans don't like him. I like the guy a lot, but some, some Republicans don't like him.
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Even the Republicans though, who are not sold on Trump seem to be sold on who they will not vote for.
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Enter Rand Paul, who, who says he has a major political announcement to make with regard to
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2024. It's not who he's going to endorse, but who he anti-endorses, who he condemns.
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I've had a long relationship with Donald Trump and there's a lot to like there. I'm also a big fan
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of a lot of the fiscal conservatism of Ron DeSantis. I think Vivek Ramaswamy has been an important voice.
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I also have listened to and met with the independent Bobby Kennedy. I'm not yet ready to make a decision,
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but I am ready to make a decision on someone who I cannot support. So I'm announcing this
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morning that I'm never Nikki. And if you go to never Nikki.net, you can let her know that you're
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not a supporter either. I don't think any informed or knowledgeable libertarian or conservative
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should support Nikki Haley. I've seen her attitude towards our invent our interventions overseas.
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I've seen her involvement in the military industrial complex, $8 million being paid to become part of
00:21:46.880
the team. But I've also seen her indicate that she thinks you should be registered to use the internet,
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that people posting ideas anonymously. I think she fails to understand that our republic was founded upon
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people like Ben Franklin, Sam Adams, Madison, John Jay and others who posted routinely for fear of the
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government. They posted routinely anonymously. Rand Paul's anti endorsement of Nikki Haley tells us two
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things about the state of the GOP right now in the 2024 race. The first one is Nikki Haley has to be
00:22:27.680
the establishment candidate. She has to be the neocon candidate. She has to be the never Trump candidate.
00:22:34.800
Even if she were not so inclined, she would have to be that candidate because that is her role in the race.
00:22:41.600
That's the only avenue available to her. But the second thing it teaches us, and this is something
00:22:47.040
that is a little bit weird and surprising. Donald Trump is a strangely unifying figure on the right.
00:22:58.080
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trial today. Rand Paul's anti-endorsement of Nikki Haley shows that Trump is a weirdly unifying figure on
00:24:04.480
the right. Rand Paul is probably the most prominent libertarian in national politics. Mike Lee has a
00:24:13.680
chance at that title too. Mike Lee has already endorsed Trump. Rand Paul is effectively endorsing
00:24:21.040
Trump because he's saying he's not going to vote for Nikki. He's never Nikki. And Governor DeSantis right
00:24:28.700
now has no path to the nomination. And Christie's out of the race. I don't think Rand Paul would like
00:24:33.560
Christie very much and Vivek's out of the race. So by default, that leaves, that leaves this, Rand Paul
00:24:42.140
is Trump's guy. But, but Trump is also popular among the not libertarian parts of the right.
00:24:50.500
Trump is also pretty popular among the traditionalists. He's, he's popular among the
00:24:56.940
post-liberals. He's, you know, it's been said that obscure political monikers are the right-wing
00:25:02.100
version of gender pronouns. You know, everybody's got their own kind of weird version. But the, the,
00:25:07.080
the part of the right that is, I think, unfairly maligned as authoritarian or more will, let's put
00:25:12.660
it in a nicer way, more willing to use state power, I think, in line with the American tradition. Those
00:25:18.080
guys like Trump too. Compact Magazine, founded by So Rabah Mari, post-liberal outlet, says that
00:25:26.160
Trump's the man. Trump's still the guy for 2024. The American post-liberal, another
00:25:33.000
post-liberal and more traditionalist type outlet. They came out and endorsed Trump the other day.
00:25:39.380
And Trump gets the libertarians here. The people that he doesn't get are the establishment. He
00:25:45.760
doesn't get the Chamber of Commerce. He doesn't get the interventionists who want to bomb every country
00:25:52.000
on earth. Or to put it in a nicer way, the foreign policy hawks. He doesn't get them. He actually gets
00:25:58.360
some of them because of his tough talk and good track record on ISIS. We're going to go kill ISIS.
00:26:03.620
And he did. He destroyed ISIS. Or the fact that he took out Iran's top general. But, but in other
00:26:09.400
ways, he's kind of a dove. So the, the people who are more skeptical of intervention, they can like
00:26:14.740
him too. You know, he, he goes and says nice things about Kim Jong-un. Or he says that we need to stop
00:26:22.140
intervening everywhere overseas all the time and focus on the American homeland. He, he's a, he's a
00:26:27.240
weirdly unifying candidate. I don't know. Again, you might hate him, but we haven't seen a candidate
00:26:33.400
able to unify the GOP despite his mean tweets, despite the, the agita that he inspires in people.
00:26:41.320
We haven't seen that in a very long time. Now the establishment still does hate him. The head of
00:26:46.780
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Suzanne Clark has just come out and implicitly, but I think not so
00:26:52.820
subtly attacked Trump for his economic proposals heading into 2024. Let's be very clear in a global
00:27:03.100
economy and in fragile geopolitical times, it is in America's best interest for other economies to grow
00:27:10.940
and succeed through free markets. Prosperous nations are stable nations. They become partners,
00:27:18.340
allies, and ballasts against authoritarianism. Like the free markets, the global economy is not a zero
00:27:25.300
sum game. Someone else does not have to lose for us to win. On the contrary, the rise of the rest means
00:27:33.200
new customers, new markets, and new allies for us. Okay. What about China? Is it true? If, if you're
00:27:45.000
telling me that it's always in our best interests to open up new markets and tear down barriers to trade
00:27:52.100
and build up other countries, what about China? We're on the brink of World War III. Xi Jinping,
00:27:59.660
who I think has actually been fairly responsible in his more aggressive stance toward the U.S., he said
00:28:06.440
as much just a month or two ago. He said, look, we don't want war, but you got to recognize this is
00:28:11.840
about to be a bipolar world. China is on the rise. Our economy is on the rise. Our national strength is
00:28:18.500
on the rise. He's insinuating we are going to take Taiwan. We are going to exert more influence
00:28:25.220
around our country. And if you try to impede that, we're headed for war. This is what the
00:28:32.280
Harvard political scientist, Graham Allison refers to as the Thucydides trap, that when a rising power
00:28:37.500
challenges a hegemon, three quarters of the time, major conflict ensues.
00:28:44.500
What does the head of the chamber of commerce have to say to that? Well, yeah, sure. We might go to
00:28:49.020
World War III, but we get a bunch of cheap electronics from China at the cost, by the way,
00:28:55.020
of losing our intellectual property because they steal our IP and then rip off the products.
00:28:59.660
And then when they have all of our manufacturing, it weakens us as a matter of national security and
00:29:04.020
we become very vulnerable. And oh, by the way, when China becomes really rich and buys up all of our
00:29:08.680
debt, it's much harder for us to maintain our status as a global hegemon. We lose a lot of leverage
00:29:15.900
to China. What do you mean? You really think a rising tide lifts all ships all the time? We
00:29:20.640
always need to reduce tariffs? And Trump is the big threat. She's obviously talking about Trump here
00:29:25.200
because Trump broke with what many people consider to be GOP orthodoxy, which is that free trade is
00:29:31.020
always great. Trump said, no, I want some more tariffs. Trump has gone much further in this campaign
00:29:36.040
and said he actually wants mercantilism in the 21st century. And Trump's been inconsistent on this.
00:29:42.780
Back in the 80s, he's got a longstanding track record of being in favor of tariffs. But then
00:29:49.500
within the last 10 years, he was publishing op-eds. I don't know if he actually wrote them,
00:29:53.780
but they were published under his name, calling for more globalization. But then he'd also say,
00:29:58.320
we need more tariffs again and we need more protectionism. But then he would sometimes say
00:30:01.400
as president, well, we want to use tariffs as a negotiating chip so that ultimately we can get
00:30:07.260
more free trade so that the tariffs are really just a means to an end and the end is more free trade.
00:30:11.740
But then in 2024, he's come out and said, no, actually the tariffs are good in and of themselves.
00:30:15.680
So look, the guy, like all major politicians, doesn't have perfect philosophical consistency
00:30:22.940
here. And people can try to read the tea leaves of what he really believes. I think the track record
00:30:27.700
is clear. He is much more favorable to tariffs and protectionism. He's much more skeptical of free
00:30:33.040
trade than any Republican in my lifetime. But that's not throwing out our principles as some
00:30:41.860
of the modern Republicans would have you believe. Ironically, Trump's position is much more in line
00:30:47.900
with the historical position of the Republican Party. The Republican Party was founded on tariffs.
00:30:53.020
Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president said, give me a protective tariff. I'll give you the
00:30:56.560
greatest nation on earth. It's not only, economic nationalism and protectionism is not only more
00:31:04.240
in line with the historical GOP, which only adopted free trade in the middle of the 20th century. And
00:31:08.860
it really only rose to the fore with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who I will mention instituted
00:31:14.720
major steel tariffs. So even Reagan, even St. Reagan of free trade also was a protectionist when it suited
00:31:22.320
him. But it's also in line with the American tradition. America was founded on protective
00:31:28.380
tariffs. Our founding fathers were economic nationalists. Some of our most right-wing
00:31:34.620
founding fathers, I'm thinking especially of Hamilton, were very pro-tariff. Probably
00:31:41.760
the GOP should take note. I guess the GOP voters have taken note. Some of the interests of the GOP,
00:31:48.640
Chamber of Commerce used to be allied with the GOP. They haven't taken note yet. Maybe
00:31:51.980
they should, because the happy platitudes of the last 30 years don't really hold up to the exigencies
00:31:59.800
of 2024. And they don't really hold up to historical scrutiny either. I'm not saying that free markets
00:32:05.640
are always bad. Far from it. I think free markets can be a wonderful instrument for economic growth.
00:32:11.160
But we don't want to let the tail wag the dog here, okay? We're not an economy with a nation attached.
00:32:15.920
We're a nation that needs to have a thriving economy in order to remain strong and vibrant.
00:32:20.600
But the economy is there to serve the political community, not the other way around.
00:32:27.560
Speaking of trade wars in China, China seems to be pretty bullish on Trump's chances in 2024.
00:32:36.060
The Chinese state-run newspaper, the Global Times, just came out and told the world,
00:32:42.500
this was before the Iowa caucuses actually, to quote,
00:32:45.300
prepare for the possibility of Donald Trump being re-elected as president.
00:32:49.900
And you might say, well, this is propaganda. If you don't like Trump, you'd probably say,
00:32:53.340
see, China is pulling for Trump. Though they're not really pulling for him. They're just saying,
00:32:56.700
there's a real chance the guy's going to be re-elected. And that might be the case.
00:33:03.380
Foreigners sometimes have a better sense of our politics than we do.
00:33:07.680
I remember back in 2016, Vladimir Putin, America's foe, Vladimir Putin came out and he said,
00:33:14.400
in the early days of the primary, he said, there's no question Donald Trump is the leader in the
00:33:18.860
Republican race. And I thought, oh, that's crazy propaganda, or he's just trying to get in our
00:33:22.660
heads, or he's completely misreading the situation. This was back when all the really smart people
00:33:27.320
thought Trump didn't have a chance. But Putin was right. Which makes sense. I mean, you'd think that
00:33:33.540
the dictator of a nuclear reformer superpower might have a little bit of insight into politics.
00:33:38.980
A guy who came up as a KGB communist in the Soviet Union, he probably understands a little
00:33:45.540
bit about politics, probably more than your average keyboard warrior pundit. He was right. And China
00:33:52.240
might be right here too. The reason that foreigners sometimes have better insight into our politics than
00:33:56.620
we do is the same reason that you have great insight into all of your friends' problems. Don't you?
00:34:03.980
You have really, really good insight. Me too. We all. We have really good insight into all of our
00:34:09.380
friends' problems and everything that they're doing wrong and everything that they're missing.
00:34:13.500
But we don't have quite as much insight into our own problems, do we? No, that's a mystery.
00:34:18.900
We're befuddled by that. Put in a pithier way and a more profound way, we're really good at seeing
00:34:26.720
the speck in our neighbor's eye. We're not so good at seeing the plank in our own eye. And I think
00:34:32.140
that's what's going on here. I don't think China is running this headline because they're really
00:34:37.400
eager for Trump to get back in the driver's seat. Don't forget, before COVID, we were in the midst
00:34:41.400
of a trade war with China and we were winning, contrary to what the smart set said would happen.
00:34:45.700
Speaking of problems happening in our families and our communities, Jelly Roll, who I don't really
00:34:52.380
know anything about. I take it that he is a musician. He has a lot of face tattoos. He's a really
00:34:56.380
interesting looking guy and he's an interesting sounding guy. Jelly Roll just testified before
00:35:01.220
Congress about the drug crisis overtaking the country. He's a former drug dealer himself.
00:35:08.580
And the way that we talk about that crisis and the way that we talk about crime broadly.
00:35:13.860
I also understand the paradox of my history as a drug dealer standing in front of this committee.
00:35:19.080
But equally, I think that's what makes me perfect to talk about this. I was a part of the problem.
00:35:25.800
I am here now standing as a man that wants to be a part of the solution. I brought my community down.
00:35:31.780
I hurt people. I was the uneducated man in the kitchen playing chemists with drugs I knew absolutely
00:35:37.220
nothing about. Just like these drug dealers are doing right now when they're mixing every drug on
00:35:41.940
the market with fentanyl and they're killing the people we love. I'll be honest with y'all. My desire
00:35:50.920
is to only get older and only do better and be better. I believed when I sold drugs genuinely that
00:35:56.860
selling drugs was a victimless crime. I truly believe that y'all. My father always told me what
00:36:03.140
doesn't get you in the wash will get you in the rinse. Now I have a 15 year old daughter whose mother
00:36:07.420
is a drug addict. Every day I get to look in the eyes of a victim in my household of the effects
00:36:12.960
of drugs. Every single day. And every single day I have to wonder if me and my wife, if today will
00:36:19.000
be the day that I have to tell my daughter that her mother became a part of the national statistic.
00:36:24.160
What doesn't get you in the wash will get you in the rinse. I really like that line. I'm going to
00:36:29.940
have to use that line I think. That's a great insight. But the best insight that Jelly Roll has
00:36:37.100
there is this term victimless crime. Because first he says, you know, actions have consequences. What
00:36:45.680
doesn't get you in the wash will get you in the rinse. Today we think that actions don't have
00:36:49.180
consequences. We think that we will totally be immune to the logical and natural consequences of
00:36:58.080
our actions. There's a great meme that was going around for a while. The meme was me sowing. Yeah,
00:37:07.180
yeah, this is awesome. I love sowing. Yeah, yeah, this is, I love just sowing and planting all these
00:37:12.380
little things and then me reaping. Ooh, yikes. How did this happen? Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want
00:37:18.180
to reap what I sow. I just want to keep doing all the sowing. That's really fun. We know it. We know
00:37:22.200
this about ourselves that we try to, we try to divorce. I mean, the clearest example is in sex
00:37:28.420
stuff. We divorce the end of sex from the, from sex itself. But we do it in everything, man. We do
00:37:35.180
it in everything now. We just, I don't know if it's because of a failure of long-term planning
00:37:41.300
or because of a denial of logic. I guess that's probably what it is. Because in logic,
00:37:47.120
things have consequences. We deny logic these days. And so we end up with phrases, and this is
00:37:53.440
the key phrase that Jelly Roll used. We end up with phrases like victimless crime. We, people on the
00:38:00.340
right use that phrase, especially the segments of the right that, that want to go squishy on the
00:38:05.220
social issues. They say, oh, who cares about a victimless crime? Do you hear yourself? Do you hear
00:38:10.100
that phrase? That's a, that's a meaningless phrase because by definition there can be no such thing
00:38:17.060
as a victimless crime. We'll get to why in a second. First of all, my favorite comment yesterday
00:38:22.040
is from Bo E. Lute, who says, how is it summarized in two minutes if this is a 49-minute video?
00:38:30.420
Mr. Davies, they're onto us. They're onto all those videos that we titled such and such summed up
00:38:37.800
in two minutes, and it's about 50 minutes, isn't it? I'm not, I'm not talking to Mr. Davies. I don't
00:38:41.360
even have a earpiece in right now. But you're onto us. That's true. Maybe, look, the summary is two
00:38:46.880
minutes, and then you get a little extra. You get 47, 48 minutes of extra.
00:38:56.060
I hate the phrase victimless crime. The libs use it. The libs coined it. The libs popularized it,
00:39:02.900
of course. But now everyone uses it. People on the right use it. Libertarians who argue for
00:39:10.360
the decriminalization of drugs or prostitution or all sorts of weird social stuff. They
00:39:16.820
say, oh, it's a victimless crime. We should stop prostitution. There can't, there's no such
00:39:21.060
thing as a victimless crime. Do you know where that phrase comes from? The phrase comes from
00:39:24.740
1965. The 1960s, when many, many bad things were coined and popularized. This is one of them.
00:39:32.760
It was coined in an academic paper by a guy named Edwin Schur, and the title of the paper was
00:39:38.260
Crimes Without Victims, Deviant Behavior and Public Policy. And you know what his examples are? This is what
00:39:43.680
comes after the colon. Abortion, homosexuality, drug addictions. Specifically drug addictions.
00:39:49.480
Exactly what Jelly Roll's talking about. It says it's a victimless crime. Oh yeah? Tell that to the
00:39:54.120
parent who lost a kid to drugs. Tell that to the many, many mothers and fathers in America right now
00:40:00.200
whose kids are dead because of fentanyl and drugs. Victimless crime. Not only are the kids victims,
00:40:05.940
the parents are victims. The brothers, the sisters, the whole political community.
00:40:11.040
Are you kidding me? Drugs are a victimless crime? It's one of the greatest examples of victimization
00:40:18.280
going on in our whole country right now. We have an overdose epidemic that is so colossal that
00:40:25.460
basically everyone, I think everyone that I know, knows someone or knows someone who knows someone
00:40:32.180
who has died because of this. What about the other ones? Forget homosexuality.
00:40:39.500
We talked about that enough on the show yesterday, two days ago. Abortion is a victimless crime?
00:40:46.520
You murder a little innocent baby, that's a victimless crime? I don't think so.
00:40:50.300
And those are the best examples they could come up with, by the way. Crazy. Because there's no such
00:40:55.060
thing as a victimless crime. Because crime is by definition an injustice. It's an act of violence
00:41:02.760
against someone. It can be an act of violence against your neighbor. It can be an act of violence
00:41:08.180
against the self. It can be an act of violence against our nature and God. But there's an injustice
00:41:14.300
there. There is a victim there. You can't, unless you just deny sin, unless you deny that anything is
00:41:24.580
better than anything else, you know, which I guess some people do. They don't really mean it because
00:41:29.060
it's obviously nonsensical. The moment someone says, there's no such thing as sin. There's no
00:41:34.480
such thing as morality, man. The question I always ask is, oh yeah, would you say it's better to bake
00:41:40.660
a pie for a widow than it is to kick an orphan in the head? And they look at me and say, oh, that's a
00:41:47.760
stupid question. Now why is it a stupid question? Do you have an answer for it? The smart ones among them,
00:41:52.040
they don't want to answer. But the answer, yeah, of course it's better to bake a pie for a widow than it
00:41:55.400
is to kick an orphan in the head. Okay, so if some things are better than other things,
00:42:01.340
then there is a moral order, and there's good, and there's bad.
00:42:06.840
If you would go so far as to say it's a crime to kick an orphan in the head,
00:42:12.420
you are describing that kind of injustice in political terms. You're describing victimhood.
00:42:22.640
Of course. Now, this phrase, what doesn't get you in the rinse will get you,
00:42:31.940
what doesn't get you in the wash will get you in the rinse. This applies to a video that's just
00:42:35.740
gone viral from the porn actress Mia Khalifa. Don't worry, you don't necessarily need to
00:42:42.460
take your children out of the room if they're watching this right now. It's not one of those
00:42:45.900
videos. This woman goes viral all the time for political reasons, which I guess is better than
00:42:54.620
presumably her other videos on the internet. I don't know though, actually, because the content
00:43:00.560
of her political activism is so awful that I can only imagine what her actual obscene content looks
00:43:05.960
like. Mia Khalifa has gone viral in this case, not for her pro-terrorism activism, but because she was
00:43:14.580
recounting a very ugly incident that happened to her at a restaurant, here in her own words.
00:43:21.380
And I get come up to by this guy and his girlfriend, and we were interrupted in the
00:43:25.960
middle of talking and eating. And he said, hey, Mia Khalifa, can I get a picture with you? And
00:43:29.940
I looked up at him and I'm like, no, we're eating. And I said it just like that. It was a rude way,
00:43:34.940
but it was also very rude for him to come up while someone was actively in the middle of a
00:43:38.860
conversation. And after I said that, his girlfriend, who was standing next to him,
00:43:42.620
grabbed him by the arm and said, I told you that wasn't her. There's not enough on her face. Let's
00:43:47.260
go, babe. And I went into the bathroom and cried. And I didn't really know how to handle it,
00:43:55.580
especially because it came from a woman. And especially because I was, like, I was there for
00:44:01.120
business. And it was something that had nothing to do with the adult industry. And I was just very
00:44:07.720
dejected and embarrassed and felt like they would never want to work with me again.
00:44:13.360
I kind of feel bad for Mia Khalifa here. Now, obviously, every single person involved in this
00:44:20.120
story is just terrible. It's just everyone involved here is doing something wrong and
00:44:27.740
disreputable. But I feel bad for her. That's a really nasty thing. I mean, first of all, as she
00:44:33.700
says, it was the woman. So think about how many things had to go wrong for this situation to take
00:44:38.820
place. A guy would walk up to a porn performer in public and admit that he watches pornography.
00:44:51.700
So degrading, so creepy, so weird. The guy would do it in front of his girlfriend.
00:44:59.720
And she's apparently okay with it. So weird, so depraved, so creepy. And then the girlfriend is
00:45:07.180
the one who makes the obscene comment at the porn lady. Now, Mia Khalifa admits, she says,
00:45:16.320
I was very rude to them. They come up to me, they ask for a picture, they're fans, I guess,
00:45:20.860
and they're willing to admit that. Then I was rude to them. That was wrong. She shouldn't do that.
00:45:25.980
If anyone is going to come up to you and be nice to you and compliment you in public,
00:45:28.900
you ought to be gracious about that. That's a good thing to do. And then what? They were
00:45:34.280
rude back to her. And she was upset by this because she felt shame because they pointed out
00:45:41.860
that she's a hooker. And they described the shameful actions that she boasts about and publicizes.
00:45:54.300
And that they are so encouraging of that they would actually approach this woman in public and talk
00:46:02.440
about how great it is. But the moment that they became hostile toward one another, the gal
00:46:09.760
pointed out the shameful acts that this girl does. And the girl felt shame for those shameful acts.
00:46:15.820
What doesn't get you in the wash will get you in the rinse.
00:46:24.820
Believe it or not, even in the year of our Lord, 2024, even in modern society, actions still have
00:46:32.980
consequences. What she's really upset about, she says she's upset that a woman would say this to her
00:46:39.080
in public. What she's really upset about is the shame of prostituting herself and degrading herself
00:46:45.640
and treating herself, she's a human being with a soul made in the image and likeness of God,
00:46:51.540
treating herself as nothing but flesh to be transformed into glittering pixels on a screen
00:46:58.480
that can then incite the lusts of men and women, apparently, and become fodder for other shameful
00:47:07.920
sexual acts. That's what really bothers her. But she can't admit that. Even as she's speaking openly
00:47:17.120
and vulnerably about this, she can't admit that. We can't admit in our culture that actions have
00:47:24.660
consequences. And so we're always surprised. We're always surprised when we reap what we sow.
00:47:32.060
And when we're talking about politics, there's that great line from H.L. Mencken, which is that
00:47:38.000
democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
00:47:44.640
And we're shocked. We're shocked when the totally predictable results of our actions
00:47:51.480
turn out to be true. Wow. Shocking. Totally. What else did we expect? You know what I expect? I expect
00:48:03.980
to see you tomorrow. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. See you then.
00:48:09.020
I'm Michael Knowles, actually. I'm Michael Knowles. I'm Michael Knowles, and