The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1427 - Putin Endorses Biden

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00:00:37.720 Vladimir Putin has just weighed in on the 2024 U.S. presidential race,

00:00:41.480 and the Russian president's endorsement has gone to, drumroll please, Joe Biden.

00:00:48.200 When asked who was better for Russia, Putin, without hesitation, replied, Biden.

00:00:53.720 He is a more experienced, predictable person.

00:00:57.820 He is a politician of the old school.

00:01:00.300 But we will work with any leader of the United States who is trusted by the American people.

00:01:05.280 Duh.

00:01:05.900 I come to suck your blood. 0.53

00:01:07.220 The libs, if they can't ignore this endorsement, will try to spin it as some sort of old KGB trick.

00:01:14.960 You know, reverse psychology.

00:01:16.560 After all, the libs have been trying in vain to prove that Trump is a Putin stooge for the better part of a decade now.

00:01:24.020 But the proof of the blini is in the tasting.

00:01:28.100 Putin has gotten more of what he wants under Joe Biden than he did under Donald Trump.

00:01:34.200 That's just a fact.

00:01:36.600 Putin invaded Ukraine under Biden.

00:01:39.300 He invaded Crimea under Obama.

00:01:41.480 He invaded Georgia under Bush.

00:01:43.060 Trump is the only president on whose watch Putin did not launch a new invasion.

00:01:47.720 The key word in the Biden endorsement is predictable.

00:01:54.060 Under Donald Trump, there was a 95% chance that Trump would do nothing in response to hypothetical Russian aggression.

00:02:01.800 And there was a 5% chance that Trump would blow up the Kremlin.

00:02:05.500 And that 5% was too risky.

00:02:08.400 So Putin kept his distance.

00:02:11.600 There was a 95% chance under Donald Trump that Trump would let Middle Eastern dictators do as they pleased.

00:02:19.080 And there was a 5% chance that Trump would blow up the top general of one of the Middle Eastern dictators.

00:02:25.120 That unpredictability drove the professional political class at home and abroad insane because it deprived them of their power.

00:02:35.880 Now we've got Mr. Predictable in office, Mr. Biden.

00:02:39.640 And the professional politicians love it.

00:02:41.920 From Washington, D.C. all the way to Moscow.

00:02:44.940 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:02:45.580 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:46.400 Welcome back to the show.

00:03:06.220 I hope you all had very amorous and lovely Valentine's Days.

00:03:10.240 There's a group of guys who did not.

00:03:12.240 These are the guys who are now, according to reports, creating AI avatars of their ex-girlfriends so that they could keep talking to simulacra of their former lovers even after those girlfriends dumped them.

00:03:28.120 Super, duper creepy and super, duper sad.

00:03:32.000 We will get to that in just a moment.

00:03:34.040 First, though, some semi-breaking news, really sad news out of Kansas City.

00:03:39.080 There was a mass shooting at a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade.

00:03:45.660 The story has not really made it very far.

00:03:48.540 In fact, I hadn't really seen much about it at all until I came in this morning.

00:03:52.880 And I thought that's kind of strange.

00:03:54.000 The media usually love to spread stories of mass shootings everywhere.

00:03:57.660 The reason, though, that they're not going to spread the story of this mass shooting is because it doesn't fit the narrative they want.

00:04:03.060 If the mass shooting were some angry white man who went into a school and shot up the school or something, that, of course, would be plastered everywhere.

00:04:11.920 Joe Biden would have already given a speech about it.

00:04:13.940 But because in this case it appears that the shooter was a black guy and it was in a crime-ridden city, the story is probably going to disappear.

00:04:23.780 But it was a major shooting.

00:04:25.000 As of now, I think 20 people injured, one person very sadly is dead, a number of others are in critical condition, really, really awful.

00:04:33.300 And the shooting appears to have been stopped not even by the police but by some fans who saw this happening.

00:04:39.960 And some courageous fans went in and tackled this guy, which is a very courageous act these days.

00:04:44.720 In part, not just because the shooter has a gun and could kill them, but because now if you stop violent attackers from committing crimes, especially if those attackers are black, especially if you're in major cities, you could find yourself in prison for life.

00:05:01.300 I mean, this is what that poor Marine discovered on the New York subway.

00:05:04.520 There was a crazy guy who was threatening women, who was really harassing people, and a Marine comes in and stops him from doing it.

00:05:12.900 And what happens?

00:05:13.960 That guy gets prosecuted for it.

00:05:16.040 The good guys so often get prosecuted.

00:05:17.720 So it appears there were some real acts of bravery here and typical cowardice from the establishment media who aren't going to tell you very much about this.

00:05:25.400 Because even beyond the racial component, which the libs are always so big on puffing up, there is the simple fact that these kinds of shootings, this kind of crime, is a choice.

00:05:39.240 We talked about this yesterday on the show.

00:05:42.360 2023 was the deadliest year in Kansas City history.

00:05:46.260 Kansas City has, depending on the rankings, the eighth to the fifth worst murder problem of any city in the United States.

00:05:54.440 And Kansas City isn't even all that big a city.

00:05:57.420 And they have one of the worst murder problems, and it's getting worse, totally predictable.

00:06:02.840 You have crime spikes all over the country.

00:06:04.760 We talked about this with regard to Ecuador and El Salvador.

00:06:08.240 How is it that in these places, in the case of El Salvador was the most dangerous country on earth, 0.89

00:06:13.600 and then within a year or two, it becomes the safest country in the Western Hemisphere?

00:06:17.280 How does that happen?

00:06:18.020 Well, because they elect a guy who enforces the law, who arrests the criminals, who puts them in prison.

00:06:22.800 And what do you know?

00:06:23.560 The crime goes down.

00:06:24.840 We don't do that in America, though.

00:06:26.180 In fact, the most entrenched liberal interests, the financiers, the political operatives,

00:06:31.540 they elect people and they install people into positions on a direct campaign,

00:06:37.680 on a blunt and explicit campaign of letting the criminals out of prison.

00:06:41.100 Even some right-wingers.

00:06:43.120 Right-wingers have heralded wonderful new step acts that will allow criminals to get out of prison.

00:06:50.180 They've attacked Joe Biden for being tough on crime in the 1990s.

00:06:53.100 So you now have broadly a pro-crime movement in both political parties.

00:06:59.180 And guess what happens?

00:07:00.020 Crime goes up and it's totally predictable.

00:07:02.080 And the people who call for that have a little bit of blood on their hands.

00:07:05.040 So that's another reason you're not going to hear very much about that story.

00:07:09.460 Terrible news for the governing class, up to and including Joe Biden.

00:07:14.860 Now, there's even more bad news for Joe Biden, which is that the big case that everyone is focusing on in Georgia to prosecute Trump under RICO statutes,

00:07:26.060 the kind of laws that were put in place to prosecute the mob, they're going after Donald Trump in Georgia.

00:07:31.760 It's specifically a district attorney named Fannie Willis.

00:07:35.940 And Fannie Willis, this very day, might be thrown off this case because Fannie Willis, it turns out, allegedly hired her lover to be the special prosecutor in this case,

00:07:49.080 this unprecedented case of prosecuting the leader of the opposition party in the United States,

00:07:55.680 the presumptive nominee for president of one of the two major parties, and a man who already was the president himself.

00:08:00.880 We've never seen anything like this.

00:08:03.200 This is a major threat to our constitutional order.

00:08:06.180 And the woman who's pushing it is a total joker. 1.00

00:08:09.280 It's complete amateur hour.

00:08:10.820 We knew it was corrupt from the beginning.

00:08:12.360 We know that Joe Biden has been sicking his jackbooted thugs on the political opposition from the beginning.

00:08:18.100 But the corruption goes down even to this tawdry tabloid level where this woman is hiring her lover who was married to someone else.

00:08:26.020 And we know some of this, these tawdry details, in part because of divorce proceedings for that guy.

00:08:32.860 That guy then gets a sweetheart deal.

00:08:34.660 He's completely unqualified to prosecute the case.

00:08:36.980 He gets paid more than other prosecutors.

00:08:38.820 And then he takes the DA girlfriend on a ton of super fancy trips all over America, beyond America even.

00:08:46.660 Taxpayer dollars that are already being misused because they're being misused to prosecute the leader of the political opposition on bogus, trumped-up, pun-intended charges.

00:08:58.460 Those taxpayer dollars then being funneled back to the woman who picks the prosecutor so they can go have nice massages on a Caribbean island somewhere. 0.86

00:09:06.160 And she denied it.

00:09:08.660 We knew that this woman was guilty as sin because when these allegations came out, what she did was not necessarily deny that they happened.

00:09:17.660 She didn't provide some legal justification for her actions.

00:09:21.080 No, she went to a black church and played the race card. 0.99

00:09:23.460 And she said people are only going after her because she's a black woman and it's impossible for a black woman to get ahead in America. 1.00

00:09:28.140 They got this woman dead to rights. 1.00

00:09:29.760 And so then she tried to have this whole scandal dismissed out of court. 0.99

00:09:33.440 The judge would not do it.

00:09:34.620 Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is hearing these arguments today.

00:09:38.640 This woman could be disqualified from prosecuting Trump. 0.98

00:09:44.360 The whole case could be thrown out.

00:09:47.320 Nathan Wade, who's the prosecutor, he could certainly be disqualified.

00:09:50.280 The whole case, after three years of investigation and prosecution, could be dismissed.

00:09:55.820 And this tells you a lot, not just about these corrupt people, not even just about Joe Biden.

00:10:00.320 It tells you a lot about the case against Donald Trump.

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00:11:32.680 The way you know that the case against Donald Trump, what case?

00:11:37.320 The cases, the four prosecutions against Donald Trump,

00:11:39.980 the way you know that they are bogus is, one, there's four of them.

00:11:46.940 They're obviously just throwing spaghetti at the wall.

00:11:49.520 Some are at the federal level.

00:11:50.780 Some are at the state level.

00:11:51.620 Here you've got Fulton County going after him.

00:11:53.900 Some, it's an alleged sex crime that occurred in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room in the 90s or whatever.

00:11:59.980 Some, it's that he picked up a phone and called the Secretary of State of Georgia.

00:12:03.960 Some, it's that he had documents like every former president has,

00:12:06.680 and sometimes even vice presidents like Joe Biden.

00:12:08.920 You know, it's just total, they're throwing spaghetti at the wall.

00:12:11.700 That's the first way you know these things are bogus.

00:12:13.460 The second way you know that these prosecutions are bogus is the personnel.

00:12:19.200 This is amateur hour.

00:12:20.940 This woman is prosecuting certainly the most important case of her life,

00:12:24.980 one of the most significant cases in American history.

00:12:27.480 And she's so undisciplined.

00:12:29.660 She's such a clown that she decides she's going to use this as an opportunity 0.97

00:12:34.180 to funnel some money to her lover. 1.00

00:12:36.860 She can't even control her loins. 1.00

00:12:38.300 She's going to funnel the money to her lover so that he can give her a kickback 1.00

00:12:41.760 and take her on a fancy vacation.

00:12:43.440 Even beyond the immorality of it all, it's just so unprofessional.

00:12:47.760 It's just such a joke.

00:12:49.620 Okay, that's the other way you know that this is a total joke.

00:12:52.540 And finally, the way you know that these prosecutions against Trump are a total joke

00:12:59.200 is they're just, they're trying to rush them before the election.

00:13:02.540 So Trump keeps saying, okay, look, there's obvious impropriety going on here in Georgia.

00:13:07.420 There's this double standard in Washington, D.C.

00:13:11.240 Joe Biden, the special counsel discovered that Joe Biden did a more egregious version

00:13:16.020 of the thing they're accusing Trump of doing.

00:13:17.740 Hold on here.

00:13:18.460 You're not going to prosecute Biden, but you are going to prosecute me.

00:13:21.260 This is ridiculous.

00:13:21.880 We need to at least delay these things until after the election.

00:13:24.640 And the Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to get the prosecutions before the election

00:13:28.800 because I think they know that legally these things are ridiculous.

00:13:34.400 I mean, this is really, really thin stuff.

00:13:38.040 But if they can just create a little tempest in a teapot, if they can create the appearance

00:13:42.320 of criminality, even if it all turns out to be totally bogus, maybe they've got a better

00:13:48.380 chance of winning the election.

00:13:51.100 Pathetic stuff.

00:13:51.820 Just as this D.A. is going to play the race card because she has nothing else to play. 1.00

00:13:56.380 That's why the Democrats broadly are throwing spaghetti at the wall with Donald Trump.

00:14:00.780 Now, speaking of that special counsel report, the special counsel, it's very difficult to

00:14:05.340 keep track of all of these things, all the different investigations and all the impropriety

00:14:09.200 and alleged impropriety by our political class.

00:14:10.840 The special counsel that was appointed to look into Joe Biden's classified document scandal,

00:14:17.920 he came out and he said, yeah, the guy's guilty as sin.

00:14:20.260 He certainly mishandled these documents.

00:14:23.620 He didn't only keep some documents after his presidency locked in a room at Mar-a-Lago,

00:14:29.820 but he was the vice president.

00:14:31.620 He did not have ultimate declassification authority.

00:14:33.700 He had documents all over the place.

00:14:35.580 He had no idea where these documents were.

00:14:37.360 And one of them was in a garage next to an old car in a home that has a crack addict.

00:14:42.160 A crack addict who regularly sells his father's influence to make millions of dollars overseas.

00:14:49.000 It's got, that guy's just kind of traipsing around.

00:14:51.360 So a far more egregious version, and the special counsel says, the guy's guilty as sin, but he's

00:14:58.280 unfit to stand trial.

00:14:59.440 He's an amiable old man.

00:15:00.800 He doesn't know what day it is.

00:15:01.980 He doesn't know what end is up.

00:15:03.480 So we're not going to prosecute because of that.

00:15:05.540 And the libs probably should just take the win and move on, but they can't because that's 0.99

00:15:11.000 so damning.

00:15:12.580 It's so damning that this man, if he's not fit to stand trial, he's obviously not fit

00:15:15.860 to be president of the United States, and they can't let it go.

00:15:18.340 So Jen Psaki, former White House press secretary, she goes on her MSNBC show and attacks the special 1.00

00:15:25.420 counsel.

00:15:26.500 You know, one of the points that you've made and other legal minds have said about this

00:15:31.700 report is that it kind of goes, of course, outside of the scope of norms.

00:15:36.960 It goes, his reporting and who he talked to went outside of what would be normal, even

00:15:41.880 for a special counsel.

00:15:43.840 Do you think that should be investigated or looked into?

00:15:46.980 Because the judicial system, the judiciary is kind of not a positive view necessarily

00:15:52.700 by the American public at this point.

00:15:56.440 Well, in the role that I have, all I can do is point it out, which is you had an

00:16:01.680 investigation that ran for 15 months, which could have been concluded in just a few months.

00:16:08.120 There was never any question that the president had not engaged in criminal wrongdoing.

00:16:11.940 He was the self-reporting party here.

00:16:14.340 He had turned the documents over upon discovery, cooperated in every respect.

00:16:19.540 And yet somehow in this report, the special counsel felt compelled to engage in this irrelevant,

00:16:25.500 unfounded and often pejorative commentary.

00:16:27.620 And I think it's clear that that commentary is inconsistent with department norms.

00:16:33.420 Okay.

00:16:34.080 So their argument is that this extra commentary on the president's mental state is totally

00:16:43.220 improper to a special counsel report.

00:16:46.480 Okay.

00:16:47.160 The problem for them is that the extra commentary that the special counsel provided is the only

00:16:54.580 reason that they're not prosecuting him.

00:16:57.460 So what the Democrats want here is to have their cake and eat it too.

00:17:01.960 Biden committed the crime.

00:17:03.700 They've got him dead to rights.

00:17:05.200 He's much guiltier than Donald Trump on this exact same issue.

00:17:09.200 The only way that the special counsel, that the prosecutors can get out of prosecuting him

00:17:15.400 is by saying the guy's head has turned to pudding and he's not fit to stand trial.

00:17:21.640 But if they say that the guy's head has turned to pudding and he's not fit to stand trial,

00:17:25.100 then that hurts his presidential campaign because if he's not fit to stand trial,

00:17:29.540 he's not fit to be president.

00:17:31.340 So what would you rather that the feds prosecute Biden for this crime?

00:17:37.960 That'll hurt his presidential campaign too.

00:17:39.820 Or would you rather them use the only excuse available to them not to prosecute him,

00:17:44.400 which is that the guy's brain has turned to mush?

00:17:47.680 You have to pick one.

00:17:49.260 You can't.

00:17:51.420 If it's not one, it's going to be the other.

00:17:53.940 It doesn't get you on the rinse.

00:17:55.540 It's going to get you in the wash.

00:17:56.760 That's a new phrase I learned recently.

00:17:58.520 But they don't want to have either.

00:18:00.720 Well, okay.

00:18:01.460 Sorry, darling.

00:18:02.260 You got to pick one.

00:18:02.960 And Biden ended up with the conclusion that was most advantageous to him.

00:18:08.600 But he's got to deal with the consequences of that.

00:18:11.180 Psaki, his former spokesman, doesn't want to deal with it.

00:18:13.260 The Democrat establishment is still pretty miffed about this.

00:18:15.560 The establishment hacks are all trying to carry water for Joe Biden.

00:18:20.900 This includes not only the Democrats, but even the fake Republicans.

00:18:25.520 Not the real conservatives, but the MSNBC conservatives.

00:18:30.060 People like Joe Scarborough, who for five minutes was a Republican member of Congress.

00:18:34.740 And since then has been a Democrat, effectively a Democrat commentator on MSNBC.

00:18:41.980 Here is their fury over the special counsel report suggesting that, well, you know,

00:18:48.680 because Joe Biden can't remember when he was vice president,

00:18:51.700 because Joe Biden can't remember when his son died,

00:18:53.640 perhaps he shouldn't have the nuclear codes.

00:18:57.640 John Heilman, we've seen examples over and over again of Donald Trump just losing it on stage here.

00:19:05.000 And you had the whole political world come to a stop.

00:19:08.440 First of all, because for some reason you had the guy, the special counsel asking,

00:19:14.040 hey, what year did your son die?

00:19:19.200 And supposedly he didn't remember what year his son died.

00:19:21.680 And this was the most standing thing.

00:19:23.920 I said this yesterday and maybe, I don't know, maybe it's just older people.

00:19:28.000 We've lived a busy and active life, but nobody's closer to me.

00:19:34.460 Nobody's been closer to me in my life.

00:19:35.800 I'm not my mom.

00:19:36.460 If somebody asked me in the middle of the deposition, what year did your mom die?

00:19:39.620 I go, I don't know, 2017, 2018, 2019.

00:19:44.220 I don't know.

00:19:44.880 I can tell you everything about it.

00:19:46.260 I can tell you my final word, but, but, but again, that, and same thing with Mika and her dad.

00:19:54.340 Are you kidding me, man?

00:19:56.240 Are you kidding me?

00:19:57.940 For those of you out there in the audience who have lost a parent, do you remember when your parent died?

00:20:04.400 I do.

00:20:06.700 I'll go further than that.

00:20:08.920 Lost a few grandparents at this point.

00:20:11.360 Do you remember when your grandparents died?

00:20:13.620 I do.

00:20:15.060 In fact, I don't only remember the year, I remember the day.

00:20:19.760 And I bet you do too.

00:20:21.200 And frankly, I bet Joe Scarborough does too.

00:20:24.080 This is so weak.

00:20:25.860 Like, if Joe Scarborough wants to just spout Democrat talking points as a fake Republican and make that his career, okay, that's one way to earn money.

00:20:34.300 I'm not even going to really knock him for it.

00:20:36.140 But, man, how can you keep a straight face when you tell me that, that, when you cannot remember the death, forget the death of a loved one generally, the death of your parents, the death of, when you're talking about the death of a child, which is unnatural, which is so traumatic,

00:20:53.140 it's so much more traumatic than the death of a parent or the death of a grandparent?

00:20:57.580 And you're telling me you can't remember, even within a few years, the details of that?

00:21:01.180 And put aside the death of a family member, Joe Biden couldn't remember when he was vice president.

00:21:05.900 I think that if you serve as president or vice president of the United States and your brain is even semi-functioning, you should probably remember when that occurred.

00:21:16.820 And Joe Scarborough, with a straight face, is actually going to, he's going to look at me and he's going to tell me, oh, no, that's crazy.

00:21:22.020 Why would anyone remember when he was vice president of the United States?

00:21:24.980 What?

00:21:25.620 Why would anyone remember the details surrounding the most traumatic events in their lives?

00:21:30.540 Are you joking, bro?

00:21:32.040 This is the difference between the leftists and the honest liberals, with whom I disagree, but who, you know, are at least sincere in their beliefs, and the establishment hacks.

00:21:44.500 And I'm sorry to say Joe Scarborough is clearly revealing himself to be an establishment hack, just like those ladies on The View, just like everyone who is defending Joe Biden's vigor, virility, and intellect right now.

00:21:57.360 86% of Americans don't buy it.

00:21:59.900 But these guys' livelihoods, these guys, the job of these people is to say that the emperor is wearing a big, beautiful coat and gown and wardrobe, even though the emperor is wandering around naked because the emperor is obviously senile.

00:22:16.620 There is much more to say, but first, go to ramp.com slash Knowles.

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00:23:26.380 Speaking of Democrat, or rather Republican congressman and former Republican congressman, Mark Green, a Republican congressman whom I very much like and admire, a man who was House Homeland Security Committee chairman, he is resigning.

00:23:42.020 He's leaving Congress.

00:23:43.440 Ba-ba-dump, bump, bump. 0.95

00:23:44.660 Another one bites the dust.

00:23:46.100 Why is another Republican leaving Congress?

00:23:49.160 No, we have a razor-thin majority, and we keep losing or coming very close to losing on really tight votes.

00:23:56.040 Why are we losing a good Republican congressman?

00:23:58.180 Well, here's what Congressman Green says.

00:23:59.900 At the start of the 118th Congress, I promised my constituents to pass legislation to secure our borders and to hold Secretary Mayorkas accountable.

00:24:09.160 Today, with the House having passed H.R. 2 and Secretary Mayorkas impeached, it is time for me to return home.

00:24:14.040 In the past few months, in reading the writings of our framers, I was reminded of their intent for representatives to be citizen legislators, to serve for a season, and then return home.

00:24:23.040 Our country and our Congress is broken beyond most means of repair.

00:24:27.200 I have come to realize our fight is not here within Washington.

00:24:30.020 Our fight is with Washington.

00:24:31.460 As I've done my entire life, I will continue serving this country, but in a new capacity.

00:24:35.680 Okay, fair enough.

00:24:36.320 The one point I would dispute here is the citizen legislators are supposed to go and finish their terms and then come back.

00:24:43.560 I agree they're not necessarily intended to be in the same political office for their whole careers as many members of Congress do.

00:24:49.780 But, you know, I'm not even going to knock Congressman Green for this because he's right about Congress being totally broken and distorted.

00:25:00.140 And he's right about it being largely a pointless job.

00:25:04.480 I get it.

00:25:05.500 You could not pay me enough right now to be a member of the House of Representatives, not because I don't think that people who run for that office can have noble motivations, not because I think public service is not a worthwhile thing, but the Congress has no power.

00:25:20.400 For goodness sakes, the Senate barely has any power.

00:25:22.680 Remember Jim DeMint, great conservative congressman, or great conservative senator, rather.

00:25:29.420 Jim DeMint left the Senate not too far into his term to go run the Heritage Foundation, and he did it because he realized he'd have more power at the Heritage Foundation than he does in the United States Senate, supposedly the most important deliberative body in the world.

00:25:42.560 And how did that come to be?

00:25:45.460 That came to be because the power of the Congress, of the House, and of the Senate has been diminished greatly in recent decades.

00:25:54.100 Part of that is because they gave their power away to the administrative state.

00:25:57.320 Part of that is because the government just kind of runs on its own.

00:26:01.480 Part of that is because the two parties are in constant gridlock, so even if the Congress were inclined to exercise power, they're just not institutionally capable anymore of doing so, so the power is naturally going to flow to other agencies.

00:26:17.800 But I get it.

00:26:19.660 Why would an ambitious, talented conservative run for Congress now?

00:26:27.540 Some do it.

00:26:28.640 It's a great sacrifice.

00:26:29.640 I'm very grateful to the ones who do.

00:26:32.920 But it's a brutal job.

00:26:34.960 You don't really do it for money.

00:26:37.320 You make a little bit of money, but there's so many rules on all your money, and you can't.

00:26:41.420 There's easier ways to make a buck, that's for sure.

00:26:43.460 You don't get to see your family for something like five days a week.

00:26:46.300 You've got to go and deal with those people.

00:26:48.640 You've got to be around Washington, D.C. with many of the worst people on Earth.

00:26:52.980 You accomplish nothing.

00:26:55.300 You almost can't accomplish anything.

00:26:57.080 And then people hate you for it.

00:27:00.840 I don't know.

00:27:01.320 What's the point for that?

00:27:02.960 And if there is going to be a conservative revival, is it going to happen in Washington, D.C.?

00:27:06.280 Or is it going to happen in the states?

00:27:07.680 I hope it's in both.

00:27:09.700 I hope conservatives in Washington, D.C. can retake some power and then actually wield that power.

00:27:13.740 I hope so.

00:27:14.200 But right now, if I were a gambling man, I would say you probably have a better shot in the states.

00:27:18.980 And the other reason that I guess it's okay that Congressman Green is retiring is it's Tennessee.

00:27:24.940 So they'll replace him with another Republican.

00:27:27.740 But it's a bad sign.

00:27:28.820 It's a bad sign right now that even strong, serious, conservative politicians are saying, yeah, there's really no place for me in the House of Representatives.

00:27:40.620 There's really no purpose to being here.

00:27:43.000 Speaking of leaving jobs, Rachel Dolezal, the most famous transracial woman in America, has lost her job.

00:27:51.660 She obviously previously lost her job as a major black rights activist because she lied about being black and she's actually white as the freshly driven snow. 0.83

00:28:00.860 So she lost that job and then she fell into some financial hard times.

00:28:04.740 And then she got a new job working at an elementary school and she's lost that job.

00:28:08.900 And I feel a great deal of pity for Rachel Dolezal in part because she's got to screw loose, in part because whatever the cause of her madness, certainly part of that cause was our society, our social madness that says that white people are evil and black people are angelic.

00:28:27.580 And therefore, if you're a white person, you might want to just try to pretend to be black because it's the only way to have any virtue whatsoever. 0.85

00:28:35.200 And she really took that lesson quite to heart.

00:28:37.440 I have a great deal of pity for her, but she should have been fired, obviously. 0.99

00:28:46.800 The story here with Rachel Dolezal is that she lost her job at Catalina Foothills School District.

00:28:54.180 She was an after-school instructor and she lost that job because she has an OnlyFans account.

00:28:59.600 Yeah, schools should have the right to fire you from working with little kids if you are a prostitute or a pornographer or otherwise doing creepy, immoral things.

00:29:17.140 Yeah, that's true.

00:29:19.340 The libs who encourage, they actually probably think we should prioritize hiring pornographers in elementary schools. 1.00

00:29:26.440 And we know that they want gay porn in elementary schools.

00:29:29.400 We know that they're fighting tooth and nail to keep bizarre books like Gender Queer in elementary schools so they can trans little kids. 0.91

00:29:35.340 But they also want to get weirdo adults in there.

00:29:40.120 They promote after-school Satan clubs.

00:29:43.320 It's a real thing.

00:29:44.200 That's not—Google it.

00:29:44.980 It's a real news story.

00:29:46.960 They encourage weird adults to talk about sex to little kids, including here.

00:29:53.160 I guess Rachel Dolezal did not—she went a bridge too far and so she lost her job. 0.99

00:29:56.680 There will be the argument that, well, Rachel Dolezal, look, she keeps that part of her life private and that when she's not doing porn when she's at the elementary school, that's one kind of life. 0.98

00:30:07.740 And then she has her other—her side hustle and those things are totally separate.

00:30:14.700 The story with regard to Rachel Dolezal is really apt because it's indicative of our broadly schizophrenic culture.

00:30:21.240 We all believe that we can just neatly compartmentalize all these different aspects of our lives.

00:30:27.680 We think that we can divide everything from everything else.

00:30:30.580 We can divide the individual from the family. 0.50

00:30:33.260 We can even divide the body from the soul.

00:30:35.200 My true self can be different than my physical self.

00:30:37.500 We can divide what I do at work from what I do at home.

00:30:39.860 We can divide my marriage from my, I don't know, affairs or something.

00:30:45.560 We can divide—but you can't divide those things.

00:30:49.360 We can divide my religious life, that's what I do for an hour on Sundays, from the rest of my life.

00:30:54.700 We can just privatize and compartmentalize everything.

00:30:57.720 You can.

00:30:58.880 You're a person.

00:31:00.460 You're one person.

00:31:01.960 Your body and soul, those things are going to have something to do with each other.

00:31:04.760 You're a member of a family.

00:31:05.940 Those things, that's where you're going to find your identity.

00:31:07.980 Your family's part of a community.

00:31:09.200 You're going to find your identity in there.

00:31:10.640 Your community's part of a state.

00:31:11.740 You're going to find some identity in there.

00:31:12.880 Your state is part of a country.

00:31:14.360 You're going to find some identity in there.

00:31:15.980 You are not merely an autonomous individual.

00:31:20.460 This is a corrective.

00:31:21.340 I've said it many times.

00:31:22.280 I'll say it again.

00:31:23.560 This is a corrective for the right as much as it is for the left.

00:31:27.120 Because both the right and the left in America have bought into a utopian vision of exalted autonomy, of self-sovereignty.

00:31:39.400 They've both bought into liberalism.

00:31:41.460 This is one of the biggest problems in American politics.

00:31:45.180 If you asked me, why is it that the conservatives keep losing on everything?

00:31:52.120 We win a little bit here and there, but we just get washed away with the tide.

00:31:55.460 We can't even conserve the women's bathroom. 1.00

00:31:57.340 Why is that?

00:31:58.300 The reason for that is that the liberals in America are Marxists and the conservatives in America are liberals.

00:32:04.480 And so your real battle is between liberals and Marxists and that fight is going to pull you to the left.

00:32:12.340 There's no one who's really all that conservative.

00:32:17.220 There are a handful of people in public life, and that is increasing to some degree.

00:32:21.360 But broadly, if you want to know why we lose, that's why we lose.

00:32:26.500 And even here, when you're arguing about something like why shouldn't we have weird sex stuff in schools for kids, even the way that conservatives argue is so liberal.

00:32:35.700 It's so leftist.

00:32:36.700 They'll say, well, because this bad consequence could occur.

00:32:40.240 We shouldn't let men into the women's bathroom because a woman might be raped. 1.00

00:32:42.900 We shouldn't let men compete against women in sports because the girls might lose their trophies. 1.00

00:32:48.460 We shouldn't let – we shouldn't – I don't know.

00:32:52.940 We shouldn't even raise taxes because it could lead to this bad economic consequence.

00:32:57.200 We shouldn't open up our borders and not enforce our immigration laws because it leads to more crime and it leads to more drugs and it leads to more – but it's – all of that reasoning is consequentialist reasoning, which is fundamentally a left-wing kind of ethical view.

00:33:11.040 The real answer to all these things, why shouldn't we have pornographers in our elementary schools, why shouldn't dudes use the women's bathroom, why should we enforce our immigration laws, is because allowing pornographers in schools is intrinsically wrong.

00:33:28.180 It's intrinsically disordered.

00:33:30.400 There's no right to pornography in elementary schools.

00:33:32.920 The reason we should enforce our immigration law is because that is the law, and that civil law derives from natural law, and the natural law is correct because the actions in themselves are good or bad. 0.56

00:33:44.640 That's conservative reasoning, but no side even talks about that.

00:33:49.300 Big wonder that conservatives continue to lose the culture, and the Republicans who do take the plunge to try to work things out in politics often get so discouraged that they say, I'm going to come home, I can do more good from my own home.

00:34:03.280 Now, speaking of weird sex stuff, really creepy story.

00:34:07.580 Dudes have made AI avatars of their ex-girlfriends to get them through lonely nights.

00:34:15.840 There's a new app.

00:34:16.940 It's called Talk to Your Ex.

00:34:18.980 The app is currently on waitlist.

00:34:21.140 So many people are eager to use this.

00:34:23.520 On the app Talk to Your Ex, you can create an avatar that looks kind of like your ex-girlfriend,

00:34:29.320 and then you upload chat logs to the app.

00:34:33.560 It's a language learning model, and then the app learns to talk like your ex-girlfriend.

00:34:40.080 And the more chat logs you upload, and look, everybody now has every word you ever utter to another person on permanent record on their phone.

00:34:46.640 You just upload that, and then you get to talk to your ex-girlfriend who dumped you again.

00:34:50.800 Really sad, really pathetic, obviously super creepy.

00:34:57.440 Can you imagine even these poor women who dump these creepy dudes, and then they've got a fake version of themselves? 0.98

00:35:04.000 Like, the guys just say, no, you can't dump me.

00:35:06.640 No, you can't.

00:35:07.520 Well, maybe you can dump me.

00:35:08.300 You can go anywhere you want, but I'm going to create a robot version of you, and we're going to be together forever.

00:35:12.600 I love you.

00:35:14.180 Super, super.

00:35:15.020 I feel terrible for these women. 0.99

00:35:17.400 And I feel bad for the guys, too, because I could see how this could be tempting.

00:35:25.240 You'd have to get through a lot of stages first.

00:35:29.020 You'd have to be really alienated from your community.

00:35:33.020 You'd have to be super addicted to pornography.

00:35:35.880 You would have to be really bad at talking to people and going out and meeting a new girl.

00:35:44.140 And you'd have to be pretty divorced from reality in order to get into something like this.

00:35:51.280 But that describes a lot of people today.

00:35:54.120 So many of these supposedly disconnected social pathologies, I think, owe to this basic fact

00:35:59.860 that we live our lives now mostly in the virtual realm.

00:36:05.600 We don't live our lives mostly in the real world.

00:36:09.340 I mean, literally we do because time goes on and we move and our hearts continue to beat

00:36:13.260 and we continue to be both body and soul and, you know, flesh and stuff.

00:36:17.240 But in our own perception of it, no, we're spending most of our day on screens.

00:36:22.100 When we talk to people, we're having most of our social interaction mediated by a screen,

00:36:26.520 mediated by a keyboard, mediated at the very, very least by a Zoom camera.

00:36:30.540 So for those guys, if your relationship with your ex-girlfriend was, let's call it 60% on your phone

00:36:41.080 anyway, then what's the difference?

00:36:46.000 Just from the matter of perception, obviously there's a difference because in one you're talking

00:36:50.880 to a disembodied robot demon kind of thing.

00:36:53.300 And in the other one, you're talking to a real flesh and blood human being.

00:36:55.860 But if most of your relationship is virtual, then what's the difference between your real

00:37:02.040 ex-girlfriend and this weirdo robot?

00:37:05.240 It's part of a much broader social problem that has also come to the attention of social

00:37:10.740 scientists, which we'll get to in one second.

00:37:12.040 First though, right now is your chance to get 30% off Daily Wire Plus annual memberships

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00:37:49.640 And while we're talking about all the great stuff you get in the Daily Wire universe,

00:37:53.780 you know, we're talking about the real physical world.

00:37:55.540 It's not just all virtual.

00:37:56.820 I've got two products on my desk here that will help bring that Daily Wire ambiance into your home.

00:38:04.260 Of course, the Smells and Bells candle launched just in time for Lent.

00:38:07.780 I love the smell of old churches and monasteries.

00:38:10.320 You can have that to suggest the wonderful aspects of the Lenten season.

00:38:15.560 And also, speaking of smells, Mayflower Cigars, baby.

00:38:20.020 We have them.

00:38:21.180 There are still some available for pre-order at the rate that they are selling.

00:38:25.680 This is a massive, massive order of Mayflower Cigars.

00:38:28.200 After months and months of them aging and a lot of people sending me angry emails about how they want more Mayflowers,

00:38:33.660 they are available for pre-order.

00:38:36.460 I think we will sell out before we get stock in.

00:38:39.920 So even though we massively increased the order, at just the rate that they're selling, I think they're going to be gone.

00:38:46.240 So if you want any Mayflower Cigars, Mayflower Dawn is the perfect morning cigar.

00:38:51.440 It is the perfect cigar for those who are not daily cigar smokers.

00:38:56.300 You know, they're people who dabble now and then.

00:38:58.080 Mayflower Dawn, available in three sizes.

00:38:59.900 Mayflower Dusk is my preferred blend.

00:39:03.100 A little more full-bodied.

00:39:04.300 Just both of these absolutely magnificent blends.

00:39:06.580 And the sampler packs and all the, sampler pack might be sold out already.

00:39:10.400 But all sorts of little bags and things.

00:39:12.080 Go to mayflowerscigars.com.

00:39:13.080 You have to be 21 years old or older to order.

00:39:14.640 Some exclusions apply.

00:39:17.160 My favorite coming yesterday is from Frank S111.

00:39:20.080 Democrats, you mean that we make others give us free labor in exchange for some housing?

00:39:26.620 Why didn't we think of this before?

00:39:28.160 I know, I think they did think of that before.

00:39:30.560 This in response, I imagine, to the refugee story yesterday.

00:39:34.620 Oh, yes, this illegal immigration is wonderful because I can invite some of these illegal immigrants into my home. 0.94

00:39:40.560 And they'll cook for me and mow my lawn and raise my kids.

00:39:43.120 And I don't have to pay them anything.

00:39:44.800 Wow.

00:39:45.720 Why didn't someone think of this?

00:39:46.920 This is amazing.

00:39:47.520 From 2003 to 2022, Americans reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing, of hanging out, dramatically.

00:40:02.020 Just men in that slightly under 20-year time span. 0.65

00:40:05.780 Men reduced their face-to-face socializing by 30%.

00:40:10.200 Unmarried Americans, who you would expect would continue to socialize. 1.00

00:40:15.660 You know, married guys, sometimes we have, you know, the wife doesn't want us to go out to that cigar night.

00:40:21.240 And, you know, that's usual.

00:40:23.360 But the unmarried guys, you figure they can go out and socialize whenever they want, right? 1.00

00:40:26.300 Well, it turns out the unmarried Americans are socializing at an even lower rate.

00:40:32.160 Or rather, I should say, the rate of decline is even higher for the unmarried Americans than it is for the married Americans.

00:40:39.000 That dropped by 35% for them.

00:40:41.140 Teenagers, well, at least teenagers are still hanging out, right?

00:40:43.520 Teenagers are young and vibrant.

00:40:44.720 They don't really have that many responsibilities.

00:40:46.320 Their drop was 45%.

00:40:48.300 Boys and girls, ages 15 to 19, reduce their weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week.

00:40:56.680 So, in the words of The Atlantic, this is a liberal magazine.

00:41:00.780 It's not even one of these typical right-wing, you know, the decline of the West, the world is over.

00:41:05.520 It's all done.

00:41:07.520 Catastrophic articles.

00:41:09.360 It's from The Atlantic.

00:41:10.340 This is a center-left magazine.

00:41:12.580 They say, in short, there is no statistical record of any other period in U.S. history

00:41:17.320 when people have spent more time on their own.

00:41:20.440 We've heard about this for many, many years.

00:41:22.620 Robert Putnam wrote the famous book, Bolding Alone, about the decline of civic associations,

00:41:27.700 of people just spending more and more time alone.

00:41:30.660 You've seen a lot of social scientists talk about this in recent years.

00:41:34.500 Why is that?

00:41:35.840 Well, it's not just that they're sitting alone twiddling their thumbs.

00:41:39.480 They're sitting alone, and sometimes they're doing activities that are totally alone.

00:41:45.100 Sometimes they're just watching TV.

00:41:48.640 But it scratches the itch a little bit of socializing when you watch TV because there are people on screen.

00:41:54.240 They're not really there with you.

00:41:55.220 They're not really talking to you.

00:41:56.300 But there are these glittering images of people.

00:41:59.160 So, you can kind of almost convince yourself that you're socializing.

00:42:03.620 You're not, and it's not really going to satisfy you, and it is going to make you more lonely and alienated.

00:42:07.440 But you can say, okay.

00:42:08.500 Or the worst version of that, you're looking at pornography.

00:42:11.220 It sort of feels, scratches an itch, so to speak, I guess.

00:42:14.980 You know, you sort of feel like you're with people and intimate acts, but you're not.

00:42:18.100 It's just glittering images on a screen.

00:42:20.160 Or, let's say, video games.

00:42:21.440 Now, video games, you might say, well, it's a little more social because there might be people who are playing live with you.

00:42:25.840 You might hear someone in your earpiece.

00:42:27.340 You might see someone in a chat log.

00:42:30.240 Or you go on a social media app, and you read some tweets, and you kind of feel like, but it's not, people are really alienated.

00:42:38.560 And not merely coincidentally, when people are alienated in this way from the physical world, they start to get all sorts of ideas about how their bodies really don't have anything to do with who they are.

00:42:50.160 They start to get all sorts of ideas about how their families and communities don't have anything to do with who they are.

00:42:54.080 You see community breakdown.

00:42:56.240 You see even the breakdown of the family, of course, and then even the breakdown of the human person, a division between body and soul, if that were possible, at least an imagined division of those things.

00:43:06.000 Why?

00:43:06.640 Why all of this coming apart?

00:43:11.080 Because no matter how hard we try, no matter how advanced the glittering screens get and the technology and the chatbots and everything else, we are incarnate beings.

00:43:24.640 We are flesh and blood and soul and spirit, but flesh and blood too in time and space and history.

00:43:32.920 We're human beings.

00:43:34.040 This is why COVID made everyone really depressed and rates of suicide skyrocketed and rates of drug use skyrocketed because Zoom calls are not enough.

00:43:44.200 That's not real life.

00:43:47.120 Your computer is not real life.

00:43:48.520 We are human beings.

00:43:50.380 And so long as we remain human beings, as long as we don't have the chip fully in our brain stems and we're not totally plugged into the matrix, and frankly, even once we are, we're still going to be bodies.

00:43:59.620 And you can't have a virtual wife, and you can't even really have a virtual friend.

00:44:09.260 That's a fine beginning.

00:44:10.380 Maybe you meet your wife on some dating app.

00:44:12.620 Maybe you make a friendship over the internet, but unless that relationship ceases to be mediated by technology and screens and develops into a fully human relationship that involves body and flesh and blood, and you can hug your friend and give him a high five and sit together and spend time in a real physical space.

00:44:33.380 You are going to feel less and less human, no coincidence, another related story, less than half of Americans today feel very satisfied with their own lives.

00:44:50.220 You might say, well, isn't that just always the case?

00:44:52.260 You know, life is suffering.

00:44:54.340 Life is a tough life, kid.

00:44:56.300 No, actually, this is just the third time in more than two decades that less than half of Americans say they are very satisfied with the way things are.

00:45:06.860 47% of U.S. adults express high satisfaction with their lives.

00:45:11.520 That's dropped three points over the past year, and it's only one point higher than the 2011 record low for that trend.

00:45:19.500 So what does that tell us?

00:45:20.580 Is it just that these snowflakes, the typical right-wing, cheap, kind of boomery right-wing responses, these snowflakes don't know how good they've got it.

00:45:32.220 You know, they've got iPads, for goodness sakes.

00:45:34.380 We didn't have iPads when I was a kid.

00:45:35.540 We had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to go to school.

00:45:38.020 These people are so depressed.

00:45:39.940 They shouldn't be.

00:45:40.560 Snap out of it, cupcake.

00:45:41.820 Okay, the liberal view, not totally unrelated, is no, guys, you don't understand.

00:45:49.400 GDP is really high.

00:45:51.560 No, guys, you just don't get it.

00:45:53.600 You don't understand.

00:45:54.460 It's actually really—I know you're miserable, and your, like, relatives are killing themselves on fentanyl, and your wife left you, and your kid thinks that she's a dude, and the country's been flooded by people who don't speak your language, and you've got to press 4 for English when you call the bank.

00:46:08.080 No, but actually, you're really happy.

00:46:11.760 You just don't know it.

00:46:12.860 Here, take some more psychiatric drugs.

00:46:15.280 That'll remind you how happy you are.

00:46:17.840 That's another take on it, too.

00:46:20.580 The leftists are going to say, well, you know, the total tanky communists are going to say people are unhappy because of capitalism, and there's a little truth to that, but these guys are total left-wing lunatics, and they're unhappy because of the bourgeois values, and we need revolution and blood in the streets for them to be happy.

00:46:35.300 None of that is quite accurate, I think.

00:46:40.420 People are less satisfied with their lives because they are living less human lives.

00:46:47.600 The issue isn't that people need more psychiatric drugs.

00:46:51.220 The issue isn't that people need more money.

00:46:53.200 You know, Barack Obama saying if we just give iPhones to everyone in Syria, that's going to have them—convince them to stop being jihadis. 0.96

00:46:58.940 Frankly, you give iPhones to everyone in Syria, they're going to be less happy if you ask me to make a bet about it. 1.00

00:47:03.240 It's not because we need to overthrow the bourgeoisie and have blood in the streets and have a communist revolution.

00:47:08.240 It's not because we need to just buck up and have a stiff upper lip entirely.

00:47:11.560 It's because your satisfaction is going to come from your happiness, from your happiness in the ancient Aristotelian sense of that term, eudaimonia, flourishing, from doing excellent activity in virtue over an extended period of time.

00:47:30.800 That's what's going to make you happy.

00:47:33.560 And this is ultimately the measure of the political health of a society.

00:47:37.840 The ultimate measure of the health of a society is not GDP, it's not freedom, you know, it's not—hey, I have the right to have orgies every Thursday night, and I can chop off my appendages.

00:47:47.980 Isn't this the greatest society?

00:47:48.980 No, that's not the measure of it.

00:47:50.360 The measure of it is not total autonomy.

00:47:54.240 The measure of the political health of a society is satisfaction, happiness, eudaimonia, really basic stuff, folks, because the major charges of a society are do good and avoid evil, just as those are the major charges of individuals as well.

00:48:09.420 And when you see numbers like this, that should give everyone pause, and that should—your first reaction should not be denial, and your first reaction should not be to just continue pushing the same old nonsense you've been pushing forever that has led us nowhere.

00:48:22.840 If you want to be happy, then you've got to take happiness seriously.

00:48:27.140 My friend Dennis Prager has said, happiness is a serious business, and the people who took happiness seriously were the ancients.

00:48:35.860 The people who took happiness seriously were great men like Aristotle, okay?

00:48:40.680 And then you baptize that kind of pagan concept of happiness in the church through St. Thomas Aquinas.

00:48:46.860 Something very important to think about as this Lenten season has us giving up all the glittering material things to more or less degree and focusing on what really counts.

00:48:59.400 The rest of the show continues.

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The Michael Knowles Show - February 15, 2024

Ep. 1427 - Putin Endorses Biden

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