The Michael Knowles Show - January 17, 2024


Ep. 1406 - Can Christians Vote For Trump？

Topics
primary turnout and incentives equality of opportunity equality before God
Hosted by
Michael Knowles
Mentioned
Donald Trump Rob Reiner Ron Paul Bernie Sanders Mia Khalifa Vladimir Putin Ron DeSantis Bill Maher Ramp Vivek Ramaswamy Ronald Reagan Mike Lee Meathead Hillary Davies Haley Abraham Lincoln Chris Christie Graham Allison Bobby Kennedy and 12 more
Ep. 1405 - Wild Iowa Caucus Summarized In 2 Min Ep. 1407 - A Witch Headlines World Economic Forum

Episode Stats


Length

48 minutes

Words per minute

169.15

Word count

8,215

Sentence count

679

Harmful content

Misogyny

18

sentences flagged

Toxicity

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

18

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 ABC News and WMUR have canceled the next GOP presidential primary debate
00:00:04.960 after only Ron DeSantis agreed to show up. Four candidates, Trump, Haley, DeSantis,
00:00:12.200 and Chris Christie, remember him, they qualified for the debate. Christie has already dropped out.
00:00:17.840 Now, Nikki Haley is refusing to debate unless Trump shows up, which he's not going to do
00:00:23.020 because he hasn't gone to any of them because he's leading the pack by just under 50 points
00:00:28.080 nationally. Haley is smart not to debate, only DeSantis, because debates are always a risk 0.99
00:00:34.400 and she has nothing to gain. Nikki Haley is currently leading DeSantis in the next state, 1.00
00:00:39.640 New Hampshire, by almost 23 points. The numbers are 23 point, I'm sorry, 29.3 percent to six and a half
00:00:48.260 percent for DeSantis. A debate before New Hampshire would be all downside for Haley with no upside. 1.00
00:00:53.980 Haley also has no incentive to debate before the following state, Nevada, because she's not 0.94
00:01:00.240 even competing there. A few years ago, Nevada legislators moved to replace the state's caucus
00:01:05.260 system, which is similar to what we saw last night in Iowa, with a primary system, which is more in
00:01:10.960 line with what the rest of the country does. The Nevada GOP opposed the move, so it's holding a
00:01:16.380 caucus anyway and says that anyone who participates in the primary can't participate in the caucus.
00:01:21.400 But while all the rest of the GOP candidates opted for the GOP-run caucus, Nikki sided with the state
00:01:27.660 and filed for the primary, so Nevada doesn't even matter to her. And Trump is currently polling at 0.98
00:01:33.160 69 percent there, nice, so doesn't matter anyway. Next up is South Carolina. That's obviously Haley's 1.00
00:01:40.180 home state, where she is currently in second with double the support that DeSantis has. So no reason for
00:01:47.040 her to debate before that one. And then finally, there's Michigan, where DeSantis has a slight lead
00:01:51.820 over Haley, but it's doubtful that the governor will even still be in the race at that point.
00:01:56.560 And even if he is, Trump currently has over 61 percent support in Michigan. That's all before Super
00:02:02.140 Tuesday, when 16 states and territories will vote, most if not all of which are certain to go to Trump.
00:02:07.980 All of which is to say, we're not getting an ABC News debate before New Hampshire. And we're probably
00:02:13.840 not getting a CNN debate either. And we're probably just not getting any more debates at all because
00:02:20.900 the 2024 GOP primary is, for all intents and purposes, over. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:02:43.840 Welcome back to the show. Breaking news. A porn actress, Mia Khalifa, was insulted in public. 1.00
00:02:56.140 She's gone viral for this. She usually goes viral for promoting the Palestine liberation movement
00:03:02.700 and supporting terrorists and things like that. But she's gone viral here for a different reason.
00:03:08.380 Shockingly, she was insulted in public. We'll get to that very important story in just a moment.
00:03:13.120 First, though, the fact that the political media are still reporting on the primary as though it were
00:03:22.940 some hot, contentious thing is crazy. I'm happy to talk about the primary a little bit because it
00:03:29.400 does matter who the nominee is and who's going to be the next president and whether or not we're going
00:03:33.940 to send the next nominee of the Republican Party to prison and whether we're going to fall into civil
00:03:39.700 war and whether the American republic is going to cease to exist. All of that stuff matters.
00:03:44.080 But most of the political media are still reporting on this GOP primary as though it could go another
00:03:53.140 way. It can't. Unless a bolt of lightning comes out of the sky or out of the hands of a Democrat, 0.60
00:04:01.740 it's over. It's Trump. But here's how they're reporting on it. The libs and some places on the
00:04:09.220 right even are trying to suggest that Trump's win in Iowa doesn't mean all that much. And what they
00:04:15.540 point to is they say there was low turnout in Iowa. Only something like 110,000 people caucused.
00:04:22.460 That was down from an all-time high back in 2016 that I think was around 170,000 or 180,000 people
00:04:31.020 caucusing. So they're saying only 14% of the Iowans came out and only half of them voted for Trump. So
00:04:39.120 it's not really a big victory. And 14% is a pretty low number, sure. But I don't think it's really a
00:04:48.080 knock on Trump. I think it's probably more a knock on the other campaigns. Trump already seemed to have
00:04:55.500 the state locked up. Also, it was negative nine degrees outside. So the fact that anyone showed
00:05:00.800 up at all is pretty impressive. Negative nine degrees is bad. It's currently 10 degrees here
00:05:04.960 in Nashville. And we're still not allowed to go back to work at Daily Wire because there's a little
00:05:10.020 bit of snow on the ground and the whole city is shut down. So negative nine degrees, that's pretty
00:05:15.420 intense. And more to the point, people are not really that incentivized to vote if they think
00:05:22.080 that the thing is already done. Trump was polling at 52% in Iowa before the caucuses. So the incentive
00:05:29.300 for anyone to show up, for a Trump voter certainly, or even some of the supporters of the other campaigns,
00:05:35.220 is going to be greatly diminished. This was the story in 2016. Do you remember? The Democrats said,
00:05:39.500 well, the reason Trump won in 2016 is because everyone thought Hillary was going to win. 0.99
00:05:44.760 So the Democrats thought that they didn't have to go vote. And Democrats who would have supported
00:05:48.860 Hillary stayed home because they thought there was no reason to do it. And then the Republicans
00:05:53.960 were more motivated and the Republicans won. So using that logic, then what that would suggest is
00:05:59.460 the other candidates would have had much more of an incentive to show up. The fact that the turnout
00:06:07.420 was low is actually a knock on the other campaigns for not getting out the vote. Because the Trump
00:06:13.980 supporters would have already thought that they had it in the bag, if you're going to compare it to
00:06:17.580 something like 2016. But I think probably what happened is that a lot of GOP voters, one, didn't want to
00:06:26.700 go out and freeze, but a lot of GOP voters are treating this as though the primary is just fake, that
00:06:34.260 it's a fait accompli. It's been done from the beginning. As some of us perhaps predicted early on,
00:06:40.420 I hate to say I told you so, I think a lot of GOP voters are just treating Trump as the incumbent in
00:06:47.920 this primary. And that's how it turned out last night in Iowa. All of the other candidates could
00:06:53.740 have consolidated around one, one anti-Trump candidate. Every single campaign just put all
00:06:58.920 their resources, all their voters, all their money, put it together, gone up against Trump. Trump still
00:07:02.600 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
00:07:08.280 anything about who should win. I'm just saying the guy is basically an incumbent. And the polls were
00:07:16.160 proven correct in Iowa, which to me implies that the polls are likely to be about right in the other
00:07:21.680 states, which implies that the primary is over. So now we turn our attention away from the GOP
00:07:28.140 infighting and we focus our attention on beating the left. And there's a clip of a very prominent
00:07:33.880 left winger that is going around now. Bernie Sanders, Bernie, the leader of the socialist wing
00:07:40.680 of the Democrat party, at least for decades now, maybe some of the young guns and the squad are
00:07:46.320 taking that position from him, but still he's probably the most prominent socialist on the left.
00:07:51.760 And the clip is going viral because Bill Maher tricked him in a debate over equality versus equity.
00:07:59.560 You've got that equality, which a lot of people agree with versus this new leftist socialist view
00:08:06.660 of equity, you know, which is, which is everyone having the same outcomes, not just the same
00:08:11.860 opportunity. And even that socialist Bernie Sanders said that he supports equality.
00:08:18.580 DEI, are we confusing equality of opportunity with trying to guarantee equity and outcomes? Okay.
00:08:24.660 That's interesting because I think this word equity has come into the language in the last few years.
00:08:29.520 And before that, we didn't hear it a lot. And I think a lot of people hear equity and they hear
00:08:34.460 equality that it's the same word and it's not the same word in the same concept. So how would you
00:08:40.780 differentiate between equity and equality? Well, equality, we talk about, uh, I don't know what the
00:08:49.740 answer to that is. Come to think of it, you know, uh, equality is equality of opportunity. All right.
00:08:56.700 We live in a society. We want all people to have whatever color your skin is. Equity, I think, is more
00:09:02.840 guarantee of outcome. Is it not? Yeah, I think so. I think that's okay. So which do you come, which side do you
00:09:09.200 come down on? Uh, equality. Equality. Yeah. Okay. Ha ha. They got him. That liberal is a classical
00:09:20.140 liberal though, Bill Maher. You know, he's the good kind of liberal, Bill Maher. He supports equality.
00:09:25.220 A lot of people support equality of opportunity. But Bernie is a socialist. He's supposed to support
00:09:30.260 equity, equality of outcome. But, but even Bernie, even a radical like Bernie says, that's too much.
00:09:37.120 And so those DEI people, those woke people, the squad, the ones arguing for equity, therefore 0.95
00:09:42.700 meaning equality of opera, of, of outcome rather, they're, they're crazy. And you know what I say? 0.97
00:09:49.960 I actually don't think there's much difference between the two, which we'll get to in one second.
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00:11:05.820 Celtic Bank members, FDIC, terms and conditions apply. The conservatives, we support equality of
00:11:14.420 opportunity. It's those crazy leftists. They support equity, by which they mean equality of outcome. 0.99
00:11:23.000 I don't think those are actually opposites. I don't think that's much of a debate at all.
00:11:30.080 I actually think they're kind of the same thing, ultimately. It's a battle between liberalism
00:11:37.280 and communism. And in recent decades, the conservatives have made common cause with the liberals.
00:11:46.500 Some have gone so far as to say that we conservatives were the true liberals or were the classical liberals
00:11:50.900 or whatever. I'm not a liberal. I'm not a modern liberal. I'm not an old liberal. I'm not a middle
00:11:58.120 ground liberal. I'm not a liberal. I don't, I don't believe in liberalism. So I don't, I'm certainly not
00:12:04.020 a communist. So I actually think they're both kind of wrong. I think equality of opportunity and equality
00:12:11.580 of outcome. They're both just fantasies and they're both ultimately wrong. I want people to
00:12:18.040 have their just do. I want people to have every good opportunity they possibly can have. But there's
00:12:26.240 no such thing as equality of opportunity. Some people are born a little smarter than others.
00:12:33.600 And it's, and there are people who are born with a high IQ who squander their natural advantages
00:12:39.220 and totally neglect their education. And they might end up worse off than someone who's maybe born with 0.54
00:12:46.160 a little bit of a lower IQ, but they work really hard and they're really diligent. They cultivate good
00:12:50.240 habits. That, that's certainly true. But they still started from a different place. There is no actual
00:12:57.560 equality of opportunity. Let's talk about something that might be more important than IQ.
00:13:05.040 Having two parents who are married to one another in a loving, stable household. Not everyone gets that
00:13:12.380 equality of opportunity. What are we going to do? How are we going to level out that playing field?
00:13:18.140 There are a lot of people who are born at a wedlock, who are born with absent fathers, who are born in bad
00:13:23.780 family circumstances, who are born without a mother or father. Maybe that's two fathers, three fathers
00:13:30.240 now, five fathers and a billy goat, whatever. They're suffering from a natural disadvantage
00:13:37.160 compared to someone who's born to a loving mother and father, married in a stable household. What are
00:13:43.980 we going to do? Are we going to, in order to level that playing field so everyone has the same equality
00:13:48.960 of opportunity? Are we going to break up the stable marriage? Probably the left would like to do that 0.98
00:13:52.740 now. No, that doesn't seem like a good idea. Are we going to force the, the couple that had the kid
00:13:58.040 out of wedlock to get married? I would be fine with that, but the liberals, the classical and otherwise
00:14:02.820 who push for equality of opportunity, they're not going to do that. There's no one's calling for that.
00:14:06.900 It's just a natural disadvantage.
00:14:11.360 Some of these are, are more socially constructed. Some of these are just natural, like IQ.
00:14:15.580 Two. So what are we going to do then? Well, what's going to happen is because equality of
00:14:20.720 opportunity is a fantasy that can never exist in real life, then there are going to be inequalities
00:14:27.880 that persist. Equality of opportunity is going to be shown to be a failure. And then guess what's
00:14:32.620 going to happen? People are going to demand equity. They're going to demand equality of outcome because
00:14:38.700 equality of opportunity is an impossibility. And they're going to be right when they, when they point
00:14:43.160 to that. But equality of outcome, well, that's just communism. That's not going to work either.
00:14:47.100 That's going to be a monstrosity. That's going to be a terrible injustice. So then what do we
00:14:52.280 really want? We don't want equality or equity in the liberal sense of the term. I mean, for goodness
00:14:58.720 sakes, equality is part of the motto of the French Revolution. Liberté, égalité, fraternité,
00:15:07.160 fraternité, au mort, you know, liberty, equality, and fraternity or death. And then they lop off
00:15:14.460 everybody's heads. That's, that's extreme liberalism. That's, that's not, we don't want
00:15:19.920 either of those things. The, the true equality that exists is a spiritual equality before God
00:15:26.980 because there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free nor male nor female, but all are one in
00:15:32.840 Christ Jesus. That's a true equality and equality before God because there is human solidarity.
00:15:38.220 We all descend from a common ancestor. We are all made in the image and likeness of God and we are
00:15:41.940 redeemed by the very same God, the only begotten son of God who comes down to earth. God sends his
00:15:48.200 son to die so that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life. That's true equality.
00:15:55.500 It's an equality of opportunity for everlasting life. It is not an equality of opportunity for everyone
00:16:01.060 to go become a CEO someday. Anyone can be president. Anyone can be an astronaut. That's not true. I'm not
00:16:05.920 going to be a basketball player. I never really wanted to be a basketball player and I won't be one.
00:16:10.240 And I never had a chance to be one. And it drives me crazy. No, it doesn't drive me crazy, but that's
00:16:14.720 just my, my state in life. The conservative view is not the liberal view and it's not the communist view.
00:16:21.480 It's a view that respects natural limits and is diligent and pursues good and wants all sorts of
00:16:30.180 good stuff, but recognizes that there are natural limits and there are natural inequalities in the
00:16:35.420 world. And we can either bury our heads in the sand, we can deny that. But when you deny truth,
00:16:40.620 when you deny reality, it just leads to more radicalization. The liberal law, liberalism is
00:16:46.760 going to lead to communism. In fact, that's exactly what happened in the history of ideology and the
00:16:50.380 history of politics. So if you, if you want to avoid that, it's much better to ally yourself with
00:16:56.580 reality and with the truth. Quality before God is a good thing. It's much more important. Now,
00:17:02.340 speaking of God, Mr. Meathead, Rob Reiner, most famous for one, having a very famous and talented
00:17:09.420 father in Hollywood and two, playing a guy named Meathead on All in the Family, one of the great
00:17:13.860 sitcoms of all time. Rob Reiner, who's a big lib, has just come out and he's asked how a Christian
00:17:19.320 could possibly vote for Trump. Reiner says, Jesus told us to do unto others as you would have them
00:17:28.320 do unto you. How in God's name can anyone who believes in the teachings of Jesus support Donald
00:17:33.120 Trump? We hear this line all the time. Rob Reiner is not the first guy to bring it up. You hear it all
00:17:40.280 the time. But what is he really asking? Is, is Rob Reiner and all these libs, are they asking
00:17:49.340 how a Christian can vote for a sinner? Are they saying that Donald Trump fails to live up
00:17:56.720 to the Christian ideal of life? He's a sinner. And so therefore you can't vote for him? Well, 0.99
00:18:04.240 that doesn't make a lot of sense. The, the central insight of the Christian is that we're all sinners,
00:18:11.280 all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And therefore we're not going to save
00:18:14.660 ourselves and we're in need of a savior, not a political savior either. It's kind of nice to
00:18:19.800 have good politicians every now and again, but we need a savior who is not just king of a country,
00:18:24.240 but king of the whole universe. That doesn't make sense. If we can't vote for sinners,
00:18:29.160 we can't vote for anybody. But does Rob Reiner mean how can a Christian vote for a non-Christian? 0.80
00:18:38.100 Is he not just saying that Trump is a Christian, but he's a sinner, but he's saying Trump isn't a
00:18:43.020 real Christian. He's not a Christian at all. So how can a Christian vote for a non-Christian? 0.95
00:18:49.220 I don't know. Rob Reiner is not a Christian. That mean we can't vote for him? Vivek Ramaswamy 0.90
00:18:55.160 is not a Christian. That means we can't vote for him. We, we, in our very constitution 1.00
00:19:01.100 learn that there is no religious test for public office. Is he going to throw that out the window?
00:19:09.360 I don't know. That's pretty extreme. Rob Reiner is saying he should only vote for Christians. I mean,
00:19:15.100 it'd be not, be good to have a, a more, uh, Christian informed government. I'm all for that, 0.93
00:19:23.040 but that, that seems pretty extreme. Is Rob Reiner a Christian nationalist now? I don't think so.
00:19:27.480 Now, you know what I think he is? I think he's engaging in a typical leftist tactic from Saul
00:19:34.320 Alinsky. He probably doesn't even know he's doing this, but it just comes as second nature to the
00:19:38.880 libs. He is forcing his opponent to live according to their own principles and their own ideals,
00:19:47.000 principles and ideals that they would never cause themselves to live up to.
00:19:53.740 And that's a very effective tactic. But in this case, it's totally incoherent because he is
00:19:59.080 insinuating that Christians should live up to ideals and principles that are not intrinsically 0.86
00:20:04.540 Christian. It's just totally bogus in this case. It can be very, very effective when the libs and the 0.99
00:20:11.700 Alinskyites do this, but it's just not effective in this case. There is no Christian principle that says
00:20:16.620 you can't vote for a sinner. We wouldn't have a government anymore. 1.00
00:20:22.200 Can't vote for a sinner. You can't vote for a non-Christian. All right, who are we going to vote 1.00
00:20:25.860 for? I don't know. Some Republicans are still not sold on Trump. And I understand why. A lot of,
00:20:32.440 a lot of Republicans don't like him. I like the guy a lot, but some, some Republicans don't like him.
00:20:37.920 Even the Republicans though, who are not sold on Trump seem to be sold on who they will not vote for.
00:20:44.880 Enter Rand Paul, who, who says he has a major political announcement to make with regard to
00:20:51.280 2024. It's not who he's going to endorse, but who he anti-endorses, who he condemns.
00:20:58.360 I've had a long relationship with Donald Trump and there's a lot to like there. I'm also a big fan
00:21:04.240 of a lot of the fiscal conservatism of Ron DeSantis. I think Vivek Ramaswamy has been an important voice.
00:21:11.760 I also have listened to and met with the independent Bobby Kennedy. I'm not yet ready to make a decision,
00:21:18.320 but I am ready to make a decision on someone who I cannot support. So I'm announcing this
00:21:22.800 morning that I'm never Nikki. And if you go to never Nikki.net, you can let her know that you're
00:21:27.920 not a supporter either. I don't think any informed or knowledgeable libertarian or conservative
00:21:34.240 should support Nikki Haley. I've seen her attitude towards our invent our interventions overseas.
00:21:40.640 I've seen her involvement in the military industrial complex, $8 million being paid to become part of 0.99
00:21:46.880 the team. But I've also seen her indicate that she thinks you should be registered to use the internet,
00:21:53.280 that people posting ideas anonymously. I think she fails to understand that our republic was founded upon
00:22:00.080 people like Ben Franklin, Sam Adams, Madison, John Jay and others who posted routinely for fear of the
00:22:08.640 government. They posted routinely anonymously. Rand Paul's anti endorsement of Nikki Haley tells us two
00:22:18.400 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 We'll get to why in a second. First though, fellas, this is a no-brainer. If you want to protect your
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00:23:55.600 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. 1.00
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 1.00
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 0.90
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. 0.99
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 1.00
00:33:52.240 might be right here too. The reason that foreigners sometimes have better insight into our politics than 1.00
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 1.00
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. 1.00
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 0.94
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, 1.00
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 0.98
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. 0.67
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 1.00
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.
00:44:11.940 That must have been really...
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 1.00
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 0.76
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. 0.79
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. 1.00
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. 1.00
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 0.68
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.
00:48:06.520 Done.
00:48:08.280 I'm Michael Knowles, actually.
00:48:09.020 I'm Michael Knowles, actually. I'm Michael Knowles. I'm Michael Knowles, and
00:48:20.780 I'm Michael Knowles. I'm Michael Knowles.
00:48:25.780 He's the tough one.
00:48:27.940 He's a tough one.
00:48:31.920 Listen to that about relief.