The Michael Knowles Show


Ep. 1433 - Did Trump Just Win The Presidency？


Summary

Trump wins the South Carolina primary by a 20 point margin, surprising no one. What does that mean for the rest of the country? Is this the beginning of the end of Joe Biden's chances of becoming the next president?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Did you know that over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. grocery stores is imported?
00:00:05.240 That's why I buy all my meat from GoodRanchers.com instead.
00:00:08.900 Good Ranchers products are 100% born, raised, and harvested right here in the USA from local family farms.
00:00:14.600 Plus, there's no antibiotics ever, no added hormones, and no seed oils.
00:00:18.820 Just one simple ingredient.
00:00:20.360 That's meat.
00:00:21.280 Best of all, Good Ranchers delivers straight to your door for added convenience.
00:00:24.760 So lock in a secure supply of American meat today.
00:00:26.980 Subscribe now at GoodRanchers.com and get free meat for life and $40 off with code DAILYWIRE.
00:00:32.420 That's $40 off and free meat for life with code DAILYWIRE.
00:00:35.700 Good Ranchers, American meat delivered.
00:00:37.700 South Carolinians went to the polls on Saturday to pick the Republican nominee for president, and they picked Trump, surprising precisely no one.
00:00:47.620 Trump beat Haley by a roughly 20-point margin, 60-40, also surprising no one.
00:00:52.960 So, if the story surprises no one, why would I even mention it?
00:00:57.660 Because buried inside this not-very-newsworthy outcome is something that does matter.
00:01:04.420 The result in South Carolina was within three points of the polling average leading up to it.
00:01:10.580 That, after the Iowa caucuses turned out to be within four points of the polling average, even the New Hampshire primary, which came just after DeSantis shook up the whole race by dropping out, even New Hampshire came in pretty close to the polling average.
00:01:25.820 Which means, this year, in this race, the polls seem to be accurate.
00:01:33.580 And the polls currently have Trump beating Biden in seven swing states.
00:01:38.040 Which means, much as conservatives love to despair, we're always trying to explain how the whole West is lost.
00:01:46.420 Despite all the unfair advantages that the Democrats have in the electoral process, it is simply a fact, right now, that Donald Trump could very well be the next president of the United States.
00:01:58.660 I'm Michael Nols, this is The Michael Nols Show.
00:02:08.040 Shane Gillis, who got fired from SNL before he could ever even really appear on it, just hosted SNL.
00:02:27.960 Now, he got fired because he made a sort of slightly politically incorrect joke.
00:02:33.240 Shane Gillis is probably a big lib, but he got fired for not quite being woke enough.
00:02:38.780 And not since Norm MacDonald, coming back to host after he got fired, has so triumphant a return ever happened.
00:02:44.400 What does it mean for comedy?
00:02:45.640 What does it mean for the culture?
00:02:47.020 What does it mean for the ratings on network TV?
00:02:48.660 We'll get to that in one second.
00:02:49.580 First, though, text NOLS to 989898.
00:02:52.880 As we plunge into the 2024 election, what are you doing to protect your family in the midst of the chaos?
00:02:58.980 A great place to start is by protecting your savings.
00:03:01.860 It is not too late to invest in gold with Birch Gold Group today.
00:03:06.120 Unlike many other investments, gold is often viewed as a safe haven investment during turbulent times because it provides a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty.
00:03:14.340 Birch Gold will help you convert your existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA.
00:03:18.640 In gold, it won't cost you a penny out of pocket.
00:03:20.960 While diversification does not eliminate risk entirely, Birch Gold's experts can help you manage and reduce, providing a more resilient foundation for your financial well-being.
00:03:29.380 I encourage you to talk to one of their trusted experts today.
00:03:33.380 Just text NOLS, K-N-W-L-E-S, to 989898 for a free info kit.
00:03:37.980 With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, countless five-star reviews, and thousands of happy customers, check out Birch Gold today.
00:03:43.720 Text NOLS, K-N-W-L-E-S.
00:03:45.780 Claim your free info kit and protect your savings with gold.
00:03:49.540 That is NOLS.
00:03:50.620 Text it, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to 989898.
00:03:54.380 Pretty good news.
00:03:57.040 There's actually pretty good stuff in the news.
00:03:59.280 The people who run the network TV and Saturday Night Live and the culture and the comedy, they're realizing that they got nothing.
00:04:08.960 So they're bringing back people who they previously fired.
00:04:11.540 The polls seem pretty reliable.
00:04:13.220 And right now, the polls have Donald Trump up by a fair bit.
00:04:15.600 It just seems like people are more in touch with reality, and our political order is even more in touch with reality than it has been in a long time.
00:04:25.440 Why?
00:04:25.840 Why are voters turning on Biden?
00:04:27.880 They're turning on Biden for a number of reasons.
00:04:30.280 The economy is terrible.
00:04:32.540 Our dollars are worth a lot less than they were four years ago.
00:04:35.580 We've got this invasion at the southern border where Joe Biden's compromise was going to be letting 8,500 people a day come in, foreigners, which is completely insane.
00:04:45.320 Joe Biden has already let in over 6 million foreigners over just three years.
00:04:50.000 No one likes that, including Democrats, including immigrants themselves, and nobody likes a totally open border.
00:04:56.220 The prospect of World War III in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and all over the place, that doesn't look really, really good.
00:05:01.540 But mostly, I think more important maybe than any of those things, even including the economy, is how much the liberals have lost the common sense, how far out there the liberals currently seem.
00:05:17.160 They seem totally out of touch with biology.
00:05:20.360 They think men can be women.
00:05:21.400 They seem totally out of touch with ordinary voters who they call insurrectionists and terrorists and whatever.
00:05:26.140 They seem totally out of touch with the American tradition.
00:05:28.240 They now claim that if you believe that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, that you are a radical, fringe, anti-American extremist.
00:05:40.540 The one thing that unites all of them, because there's many different groups orbiting Trump, but the thing that unites them as Christian nationalists, not Christians, by the way, because Christian nationalists is very different,
00:05:51.360 is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don't come from any earthly authority.
00:05:58.520 They don't come from Congress.
00:05:59.400 They don't come from the Supreme Court.
00:06:00.640 They come from God.
00:06:02.480 Can you imagine these Christian nationalists?
00:06:05.520 That lady is the national investigative reporter for Politico.
00:06:11.580 So not a lot of people read Politico, but that is one of the establishment organs of Washington, D.C.
00:06:18.260 She's there speaking on MSNBC, and I'm not quite sure how this casting session went.
00:06:23.700 I assume it was that the executives at NBC, they said, okay, we need someone to come on and do a segment on Christianity, religion, natural law, political philosophy, and American history.
00:06:36.240 And then this lady raised her hand, and she said, well, I don't know anything at all about any of those things.
00:06:42.820 And the NBC producer said, oh, you're perfect.
00:06:44.940 All right, well, let's get you on.
00:06:46.340 I guess Politico would have had to make that decision first.
00:06:49.020 This woman speaking, she says there's a big difference between Christianity and Christian nationalism.
00:06:56.020 She never explains what that difference is because these people just hate Christianity, and they hate any expression of Christianity in public life.
00:07:02.640 Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, if you never let on to anyone that you're a Christian and you just keep it as a big little secret in your head, maybe they won't totally hate you for that, but they probably will too.
00:07:14.080 They'll think that because they find Christianity to be synonymous with bigotry, backwardsness, a lack of progressive revolutionary fervor.
00:07:27.220 So they hate it, they hate Christianity, and they even hate the most basic kind of watered-down view that God gave us rights, which happens to be a view shared by our founding fathers, including the most liberal among them, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence.
00:07:47.660 Our country is grounded on the idea that our creator endowed us with certain unalienable rights.
00:07:52.860 Even that, we're talking about guys who were deists and Freemasons in the 18th century, even that is too radically Christian for the National Investigative Reporter Politico and for MSNBC.
00:08:03.800 But this is awkward for them right now, because they are clearly on the cutting edge of wokeness.
00:08:11.800 The Politico people and the MSNBC people, they are where the young Democrat base is, which is extremely anti-Christian, extremely anti-American, extremely woke.
00:08:23.020 The problem for them is that their president and their nominee for 2024 is Father Time, who knew Thomas Jefferson personally.
00:08:30.460 And because of that, because Joe Biden, whatever you want to say about him, is not woke, he's cynical, he doesn't believe anything, he goes which way the wind blows, but he's not woke.
00:08:39.540 Because of that, any time these woke people try to malign ordinary views that everyone held until five or ten years ago, there's a clip of Joe Biden articulating precisely those views.
00:08:51.460 I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights.
00:08:57.100 As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the Constitution.
00:09:01.800 My rights are not derived from any government.
00:09:04.460 My rights are not derived from any majority.
00:09:07.140 My rights are because I exist.
00:09:09.760 I have certain rights.
00:09:12.100 That they're given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator.
00:09:15.800 And they represent the essence of human dignity.
00:09:18.500 Totally on objection.
00:09:20.700 Well, you can see all the other members of the Senate who are listening to Joe blather on.
00:09:24.840 They're not even paying attention to him.
00:09:27.000 Their heads are down at their paper.
00:09:28.680 They're writing.
00:09:29.360 No one's even listening to him.
00:09:30.920 It was so obvious.
00:09:31.780 Now, though, that's considered the radical, extreme, Christian nationalist position.
00:09:36.240 I guess the most troubling part of the MSNBC lady and the Politico story, it's not so much the radicalism.
00:09:45.740 I can deal with political radicals.
00:09:47.680 Sometimes political radicals make the easiest converts.
00:09:51.680 Often it is the case that the extreme atheist is the one who's going to convert with true zeal and become a Christian.
00:10:00.260 Sometimes it's the most ardent, crazy, color-haired leftist who's a lesbian Marxist who's going to become the most trad conservative.
00:10:10.500 Because they're taking ideas seriously, and they're reading, and they're engaging, and they're having conversations.
00:10:16.460 And so while their minds are moving, their minds might move in the right direction.
00:10:20.340 That happens.
00:10:21.520 Look, I'm a convert from atheism to—or a revert, rather, from atheism to Christianity.
00:10:26.120 It happens.
00:10:26.900 What's really troubling here is the ignorance that this woman, who has a position of authority within our political establishment—she's a top reporter at what's considered to be a top outlet who's on a relatively mainstream cable news channel.
00:10:41.640 She's out there—this woman has clearly never read the Declaration of Independence.
00:10:47.720 If she has, she doesn't remember a word of it.
00:10:50.820 We're talking about the most famous line of the Declaration.
00:10:53.020 This woman doesn't know anything about American history, to say nothing of political philosophy, to say nothing of religion.
00:11:01.620 She doesn't know anything about anything, and she's theoretically one of the best-educated people on these subjects.
00:11:08.460 That is a problem that the United States is going to really struggle to get over.
00:11:13.880 We can get over political radicalism because it tends to come in spurts, and then it can be pushed away as the American people realize that these guys have lost the common sense.
00:11:22.080 But a blithe ignorance forced upon us by public schooling, by Hollywood, by the news media, by this news media, this kind of ignorance that they're pushing on us, that sort of thing, much more difficult to recover from.
00:11:40.060 Now, speaking of our constitutional order, I have got the chef's kiss greatest political article to come out all year.
00:11:49.400 Nothing will ever top this.
00:11:51.860 We're in February, and it's already the best of the year, from The Atlantic.
00:11:56.260 How Democrats could disqualify Trump if the Supreme Court doesn't.
00:12:00.680 Without clear guidance from the court, House Democrats suggest that they might not certify a Trump win on January 6th.
00:12:11.960 I kid you not.
00:12:14.720 I'm waiting for the irony.
00:12:16.740 I'm looking at the article.
00:12:18.040 I'm not seeing a ton of irony.
00:12:20.980 The Atlantic isn't even suggesting it out of the fevered imaginations of its editors.
00:12:26.580 They're saying, House Democrats are suggesting that they might not certify a Trump win on January 6th.
00:12:32.860 We were told, we are still being told and have been told for years, that the House has no right not to certify a presidential election.
00:12:42.160 That the vice president has no right not to certify a presidential election.
00:12:45.960 That no one has a right to challenge slates of electors, even if the election has all the rules changed, in some cases illegally, in some cases constitutionally.
00:12:57.120 Even then, there is no right whatsoever.
00:13:00.020 If you even suggest such a thing, you're a traitor, an insurrectionist.
00:13:03.600 You should be thrown into solitary confinement with all of the other Midwestern grannies and Florida selfie takers from the Capitol.
00:13:11.360 Unless you're a Democrat.
00:13:12.920 And they mean it.
00:13:13.800 They really mean this sincerely.
00:13:16.620 It was all crocodile tears.
00:13:18.980 All the talk of January 6th, the worst day in the history of this or any republic.
00:13:26.360 It was all fake.
00:13:28.780 It was all crocodile tears.
00:13:30.380 Of course it was.
00:13:31.140 You know how we know that?
00:13:32.940 Because the premise of all the January 6th crocodile tears was that no one would ever question the results of a presidential election.
00:13:40.940 Which is something the Democrats do every single time they lose.
00:13:43.800 For almost my entire life, every time the Democrats lose, they whine and they cry and they say it's illegitimate.
00:13:49.660 They did it to George W. Bush.
00:13:51.320 There were members of the House of Representatives who took to the floor and said this is an illegitimate election.
00:13:55.460 They challenged it in the courts.
00:13:56.620 They took it up to the Supreme Court.
00:13:58.080 The Supreme Court finally decided the election.
00:13:59.820 There was nowhere else to go.
00:14:00.580 They would have dragged that thing out forever.
00:14:02.800 While the Democrats were shedding their crocodile tears over January 6th, Stacey Abrams was still pretending to have been elected governor of Georgia.
00:14:10.560 Hillary Clinton insinuated that the 2016 election was not legitimate.
00:14:14.660 It just on and on and on.
00:14:17.100 And so you knew it was fake.
00:14:18.720 But there were squishes who said, no, we must recognize that the Democrats, they have a point here.
00:14:24.360 I stand on principles.
00:14:26.340 It's unacceptable to suggest that we slow the certification of the vote to establish an electoral commission just like they did in 1876.
00:14:33.860 Wait, never mind.
00:14:34.440 I mean, it's totally unprecedented and it's never happened before.
00:14:37.340 No, guys, guys, it was always fake.
00:14:41.540 So what do we do about this?
00:14:42.840 What do we do when we know that the Democrats whine and cry and complain and accuse us of doing the exact same thing that they regularly do and that they plan to do in 2024?
00:14:52.940 It's a reminder that we need to, one, stop falling for their cynical tricks.
00:14:57.180 And two, we need to get a little bit more comfortable wielding power in a way that's legal and constitutional and keeping with historical precedent, but that is robust, that's a little bit aggressive.
00:15:06.140 It gets down to a principle that you sometimes hear colloquially.
00:15:12.800 And the principle is, it is better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
00:15:17.900 You ever hear that expression?
00:15:19.600 It's better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
00:15:21.700 If you're in a situation where your life is endangered and you've got to fight back, either you're going to allow yourself to become a victim and possibly be killed by the aggressor,
00:15:32.140 or you're going to defend yourself and possibly, we hope not, but possibly you would kill the aggressor.
00:15:40.100 What are you supposed to do?
00:15:41.420 Lay down and risk your life or defend yourself?
00:15:45.200 You have a right to defend yourself.
00:15:47.140 And just as a matter of prudence, it is better to be judged for your actions in defending yourself than to be killed and then carried by pallbearers to your grave.
00:15:59.540 Okay, so taking this out of the realm of the literal and bringing it back into the realm of the political and the figurative.
00:16:05.800 We always seem to worry that any Democrat action that in any way could imperil any legal precedent, if we do that, we'll be blamed, you know?
00:16:15.720 And so what we're going to do is we're going to lose, but we're going to lose with dignity.
00:16:18.420 So we can say, oh, it wasn't us who upset political precedent.
00:16:21.400 It was those nasty, dastardly Democrats.
00:16:24.060 And that's a great way to get carried by 6 politically.
00:16:27.200 Okay, far, far better to take matters into your own hands, political matters into your own hands, and to defend your political interests, and to defend your whole political order, okay?
00:16:38.780 And if that means that you've got to question certain elections, and if that means that you've got to raise objections to, say, the unconstitutional voting procedures in places like Pennsylvania, and if that means that you've got to actually fight politically, we should do that.
00:16:56.240 Much more to say.
00:16:57.820 First, though, go to puretalk.com slash Knowles.
00:17:01.720 Free should mean exactly that, free.
00:17:05.160 When you switch to Pure Talk today, you will get a free Samsung 5G smartphone.
00:17:08.780 There is no four-line requirement.
00:17:10.020 There's no activation fee qualifying plans for just $35 a month for unlimited talk, text, 15 gigs of data, and a mobile hotspot.
00:17:16.600 Pure Talk gives you phenomenal coverage on America's most dependable 5G network.
00:17:19.840 It is the same coverage you know and love, but for half the price of the other guys.
00:17:23.060 The average family saves almost $1,000 a year.
00:17:25.800 Plus, with Pure Talk, you know you're spending your hard-earned money with a company that aligns with your beliefs.
00:17:31.460 Let Pure Talk's expert U.S. customer service team help you make the switch today.
00:17:35.140 Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to claim eligibility for your free, brand-new Samsung 5G smartphone, and start saving on wireless today.
00:17:45.960 Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to switch to my cell phone company.
00:17:52.360 These guys are great.
00:17:53.320 They provide the best service in America.
00:17:55.020 They provide the best service outside of America, frankly, because they now have international on their plans as well.
00:18:00.760 And they share your beliefs.
00:18:02.020 Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles.
00:18:04.200 Now, speaking of President Trump, Trump was just in South Carolina campaigning before Saturday's primary election, where he won by 20 points.
00:18:14.280 And he went off, man.
00:18:16.720 He was campaigning on all sorts of issues.
00:18:18.800 Then at one point, he just starts impersonating Joe Biden.
00:18:22.840 You know, when I imitate Biden, because he can't find his way off the stage, as you all know, he makes a speech that lasts usually about a minute and a half because the octane starts to wear off.
00:18:34.120 You ever notice he starts off strong?
00:18:36.100 Within about two minutes, he can't talk anymore.
00:18:38.000 And then he walks off.
00:18:40.180 You ever notice he always goes like this?
00:18:43.600 So Trump turns.
00:18:45.080 You just listen to Trump turns when he kind of does this thing in his body and it turns and he leaves.
00:18:49.840 Then he comes back up to the mic and he's looking.
00:18:56.200 He's totally lost.
00:18:57.580 There's stairs all over the place.
00:18:59.000 He can go there, there, here.
00:19:00.840 He could jump off the front of the damn block.
00:19:03.200 But he always goes like this.
00:19:07.940 This is going to be a weird lean point, which Biden does too.
00:19:10.820 There's a stair right there, right?
00:19:12.380 Then he starts.
00:19:15.960 Now Trump is just wandering.
00:19:17.940 He's just wandering around the stage.
00:19:19.840 He sees allies in his aides way and he's kind of laughing.
00:19:25.500 He's turned around.
00:19:27.040 Trump's facing the wrong direction.
00:19:31.340 I play all of that not to make some point about the economy or migration or whatever.
00:19:36.580 To point out, that is a political skill.
00:19:40.240 Donald Trump has a political skill that no other politician has had in my lifetime,
00:19:44.720 which is that he is very, very funny.
00:19:48.160 He is the funniest stand-up comedian in the United States.
00:19:51.980 This was the South Park take, actually, on Trump's first run for president in 2016,
00:19:57.880 was that he turns into like a stand-up comedy routine when he's up there doing a rally.
00:20:05.500 The spotlight comes on.
00:20:06.460 He might as well light a cigarette, put his drink on his stool, and start doing a bit.
00:20:09.860 That's what he's doing here.
00:20:11.460 And that's very valuable.
00:20:12.780 And you're going to hear people, even in the Republican Party, they're going to say,
00:20:15.540 well, but what about policy?
00:20:16.700 What about seriousness?
00:20:17.360 Yeah, it's good.
00:20:18.020 Look, the guy had better policy during his term as president than any president in my lifetime.
00:20:22.340 So actually, I think his policy was pretty good.
00:20:24.020 But I'm not saying it was perfect.
00:20:25.300 I'm just saying it was quite good.
00:20:26.880 It was really quite good.
00:20:28.380 But beyond that, this is a political skill, and this allows you to connect to people,
00:20:32.280 which in a democracy is the most important thing you can do politically.
00:20:36.760 He can do it better than anyone I know and have seen in my lifetime.
00:20:43.420 Don't underestimate that.
00:20:44.860 Because what he's showing here, too, is that he's energetic and quick on his feet.
00:20:47.880 These are the two things Biden is not.
00:20:49.320 And that fact about Biden is the actual object of the comedy routine that he's doing.
00:20:54.780 And then he doesn't just reserve the comedy for Biden.
00:20:58.180 He goes out, and right when he takes the stage, he starts doing a bit on white voters and black voters.
00:21:05.200 These lights are so bright in my eyes that I can't see too many people out there.
00:21:10.700 But I can only see the black ones.
00:21:14.260 I can't see any white ones.
00:21:15.980 That's how far I've come.
00:21:17.540 That's how far I've come.
00:21:20.900 That's a long way, isn't it?
00:21:25.200 We've come a long way together.
00:21:31.140 Now, of course, you know that the libs and the squishes in the Republican Party,
00:21:35.440 they immediately said, this is so embarrassing.
00:21:38.760 It's so racist and offensive.
00:21:40.880 First of all, what's racist about it?
00:21:42.160 I don't know that that word means anything anymore, but I certainly don't know how that would be racist.
00:21:48.040 He walks in and goes, the lights are really, really bright.
00:21:49.980 I can't really see anything.
00:21:51.240 The nearest thing I can see is the black people.
00:21:53.460 Look at all these black people here.
00:21:54.700 This is great.
00:21:55.260 We've come a long way, haven't we?
00:21:56.640 What do you mean we've come a long way?
00:21:57.620 Because we were told when Trump started running, he's a racist, he's terrible.
00:22:02.160 And don't forget, black voters vote 90% for the Democrat Party.
00:22:06.660 So in as much as Donald Trump can pull away any black voters or any prominent black endorsements,
00:22:12.960 that's a big win for the Republican Party.
00:22:14.760 And Trump has done that to varying degrees.
00:22:17.660 And the current polling in 2024 shows numbers that I frankly just cannot believe in terms of how he's doing among the black male vote.
00:22:25.480 I just, we've never seen it actually reflected at the polls.
00:22:27.920 If Trump is able to pull off even half of it, it would be extraordinarily impressive.
00:22:32.840 But this is funny stuff.
00:22:34.800 The median black voter would not find that offensive.
00:22:38.720 Maybe some crazy gender studies graduate from Harvard black voter would say this is very offensive for Donald Trump to say he can only see the black voters.
00:22:47.760 But an ordinary black voter, an ordinary person, period, will find that very funny.
00:22:52.740 That's a good bit.
00:22:54.180 And it gets to something that Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist and very successful left-wing political theorist and organizer,
00:23:03.460 he pointed out, which is you win when you have the common sense.
00:23:07.560 And you lose when you don't have the common sense.
00:23:10.580 And what leftist radicals, what he was lamenting at the time was leftist radicals had lost the common sense.
00:23:15.680 Ordinary people didn't care for the leftists' theories of revolution.
00:23:18.800 They didn't want to give up their way of life.
00:23:20.260 They didn't want to give up their families and their communities.
00:23:23.200 And the leftists were frustrated by that.
00:23:25.260 And so the left, paying attention to Antonio Gramsci, tried to gather the common sense.
00:23:30.280 In many ways, the election is going to come down to who can seem less weird, less extreme, less fringy, and who can seem more normal.
00:23:40.340 Joe Biden's whole campaign in 2020 was, I'm the normal guy.
00:23:43.780 I'm a return to normalcy.
00:23:46.040 Well, it doesn't seem very normal under Biden, and Biden can't say his own name anymore.
00:23:50.640 So Donald Trump has a real opportunity if he can capitalize on his political gifts and seem just like an ordinary normal guy.
00:23:58.620 There's much more to say.
00:24:00.400 First, though, go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles.
00:24:03.060 St. Paddy's Day is almost here.
00:24:05.060 Hidey-didey day.
00:24:06.480 Fortunately, if you're a business owner or hiring manager, you don't need luck to find top talent for your team.
00:24:12.420 You need ZipRecruiter.
00:24:14.080 And right now, you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles.
00:24:17.520 ZipRecruiter's brilliant technology leads you to that pot of gold for top talent.
00:24:22.100 Do you like this metaphor?
00:24:22.900 I do, too.
00:24:23.560 Immediately after you post your job, ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology shows you
00:24:28.160 qualified candidates.
00:24:29.760 Once you review your list of qualified candidates, you can easily invite your top choices to apply,
00:24:34.460 so they will likely apply sooner, and you will fill that role faster.
00:24:39.760 Aren't you just a wee bit curious to see how ZipRecruiter can help you?
00:24:45.160 Today's your lucky day, because you can try ZipRecruiter for free.
00:24:49.040 Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles.
00:24:51.240 I don't know why that was in the Irish accent.
00:24:53.020 Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
00:24:57.100 Once again, go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free.
00:25:00.640 That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles.
00:25:03.020 ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.
00:25:06.800 People have written into me in frustration because they want to submit questions to the
00:25:13.420 mailbag and to the voicemail bag, but they don't know how to do it.
00:25:16.080 So I'm going to tell you.
00:25:16.780 Here it is.
00:25:17.360 Write it down.
00:25:18.080 If you're driving, pull over.
00:25:20.320 Go to dailywire.com.
00:25:21.800 Log in.
00:25:22.760 Then go to the Michael Knowles show page.
00:25:26.100 Then all you have to do, you click on the mailbag icon on the left side.
00:25:30.500 And then, boom, an email box is going to pop up.
00:25:33.260 There you can write your written question.
00:25:35.800 Or what I prefer, I like the voice mailbag.
00:25:38.500 So you just attach your audio file to your question.
00:25:40.700 Keep it to 60 seconds so we can actually put it on the air.
00:25:42.820 How are you going to record your audio file?
00:25:44.560 However you want.
00:25:45.460 On your phone, on your computer.
00:25:47.040 I don't care.
00:25:47.480 You do it.
00:25:47.760 Make it a video.
00:25:48.340 Whatever it is.
00:25:49.100 You just attach that file right there in the email.
00:25:51.800 Boom, send it in, and we can put you in the show on Friday.
00:25:56.380 Speaking of comedy, Shane Gillis made his triumphant return to Saturday Night Live.
00:26:01.340 Shane Gillis was fired from Saturday Night Live before he even got to start because some vaguely politically incorrect clip of him came out.
00:26:08.440 And because he's a white guy and you're not allowed.
00:26:10.420 And he's relatively normal and you're not allowed to be any of those things anymore.
00:26:13.560 So they booted him off the show, but then the show's not doing that well, and Shane Gillis has done very well, so they invited him back to host.
00:26:21.960 Reminds me a lot of when they fired Norm MacDonald because he kept making politically incorrect jokes about how OJ was obviously guilty.
00:26:28.880 So they fired him from Weekend Update.
00:26:30.400 He leaves the show, and then they invite him back to guest host just a season later.
00:26:35.900 And he pointed out, he said, yeah, that's kind of funny.
00:26:37.900 Last season I wasn't funny enough to even be a member of the show.
00:26:41.020 And this season I'm funny enough to host the show.
00:26:43.340 So it either means one of two things.
00:26:45.260 Either I've gotten a lot funnier, which I haven't, or the show blows.
00:26:49.480 And it was clearly the latter.
00:26:51.800 So Shane Gillis, he was a little nicer about it.
00:26:54.000 Here is just a little snippet of his opening monologue.
00:26:57.560 I'll tell you this.
00:26:58.200 I don't know if you guys, if you can tell by looking at me, but I do have family members with Down syndrome.
00:27:05.760 It almost got me.
00:27:08.560 I dodged it, but it nicked me.
00:27:10.660 It nicked me.
00:27:11.540 No, I brought up Down syndrome.
00:27:14.400 You can always tell who's never been around Down syndrome when you bring it up.
00:27:17.120 Like if I tell people, if I'm like, yeah, I have family members with Down syndrome.
00:27:20.480 People that have never been around it are always like, oh.
00:27:24.060 Like it's the end of the world.
00:27:25.600 Like, oh, are they okay?
00:27:26.780 Are they doing it?
00:27:27.500 It's like, they're doing better than everybody I know.
00:27:30.740 They're the only ones having a good time pretty consistently.
00:27:34.260 They're not worried about the election.
00:27:35.560 They're having a good time.
00:27:38.120 This made me think of a strange phenomenon in politics.
00:27:42.720 I'm not saying Shane Gillis is a conservative.
00:27:44.760 He's probably a big lib.
00:27:45.760 He's just, he's relatively normal.
00:27:47.520 This is what even made me think of it.
00:27:49.200 But take Shane Gillis out of it for a second.
00:27:51.300 I thought that's a funny joke.
00:27:54.300 Conservatives will sometimes make jokes about mentally retarded people.
00:27:58.800 We will, conservatives will sometimes make jokes about the phenomenon of mental retardation.
00:28:03.040 We might even use the word retard or retarded.
00:28:07.120 And we will also celebrate mentally retarded people, and we will vigorously defend the right
00:28:13.140 to life of mentally retarded people.
00:28:15.560 We'll do all those things.
00:28:17.640 The liberals will recoil at the mere utterance of the word retarded or retard.
00:28:25.920 They will yell at you if you use the word.
00:28:29.020 They will be shocked and appalled.
00:28:30.700 They'll clutch their pearls, and simultaneously, they will openly advocate for the total extermination
00:28:38.080 of all mentally retarded people in the womb because they are mentally retarded.
00:28:42.000 Isn't that a little weird?
00:28:44.440 It seems to me it is a more moral and justifiable thing to make jokes about mental retardation and
00:28:54.200 to defend the right to life of mentally retarded people than it is to not use that naughty word
00:29:01.120 that starts with an R and then openly call for the mass killing of anyone who might be
00:29:06.280 even slightly mentally retarded, which is what the liberals do.
00:29:09.460 In Iceland, when they now have a truly genocidal program, if you are diagnosed with Down syndrome
00:29:15.420 in the womb, which, by the way, is very, very often inaccurate, a lot of those in the womb
00:29:22.480 diagnoses, oh, there's going to be a problem with your baby, better kill it, a lot of those,
00:29:27.440 most of those turn out to be false.
00:29:29.760 Though we actually don't know the outcomes because very often parents will just kill their
00:29:33.960 babies on the bad advice of their doctors.
00:29:36.580 But I remember a few years ago, Iceland announced, we've eradicated Down syndrome from our country.
00:29:44.260 Say, oh, wow, they cured Down syndrome?
00:29:46.060 You realize, wait a second, there's no cure for Down syndrome.
00:29:48.980 Oh, you're just killing all of them.
00:29:50.160 You're killing all the Down syndrome people.
00:29:51.620 Okay.
00:29:51.900 I wouldn't brag about that.
00:29:53.620 That seems, I wouldn't do it.
00:29:56.140 And if you're going to do it, I definitely wouldn't tell people you do it because it's
00:29:58.540 very, very evil.
00:29:59.960 But they probably don't use the word retarded.
00:30:02.120 They would never make a joke about Down syndrome like Shane Gillis did.
00:30:05.540 They would never, that's very, they would just murder all of them.
00:30:09.080 Like, that seems kind of wrong.
00:30:10.920 I bet, I would be willing to bet a small amount of money that Media Matters breaks out this
00:30:16.100 clip today because I said the word retarded.
00:30:17.580 You're right.
00:30:17.860 I will say the word retarded.
00:30:19.300 And I might even, if I were hosting SNL, I might even make a joke about mental retardation.
00:30:23.900 But you know what I wouldn't do?
00:30:25.600 I wouldn't kill retarded people.
00:30:27.780 In fact, I would celebrate them.
00:30:28.920 Because to Shane Gillis' point, specifically people with Down syndrome are just consistently
00:30:34.720 self-reporting, very high levels of happiness.
00:30:38.780 So his joke there, they say, how's your cousin who has Down syndrome doing?
00:30:42.400 I don't know, better than all of you.
00:30:43.940 That's real.
00:30:44.800 That's true.
00:30:45.460 That's why that joke is funny is because it's true.
00:30:48.720 The libs, though, they won't laugh at that.
00:30:50.760 They won't laugh and then they'll try to exterminate a whole group of people.
00:30:54.740 That's not very funny either.
00:30:56.380 I agree.
00:30:56.760 Speaking of the right to life, there is a slightly unfortunate political turn of events on the
00:31:04.540 Republican side as a result of the Alabama Supreme Court rightly concluding that the Alabama
00:31:11.560 state constitution prohibits not only abortion, but the buying and selling of human babies in
00:31:21.840 the form of embryos, in the form of the surrogacy industry and IVF.
00:31:25.760 As a result of that, some Republicans are coming out to defend IVF, probably because they think
00:31:30.720 that being opposed to IVF will hurt them in the 2024 election.
00:31:34.220 So Carrie Lake did this and President Trump did this as well.
00:31:37.780 President Trump came out, he tweeted or posted on Truth Social.
00:31:40.700 Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong,
00:31:43.700 thriving, healthy American families.
00:31:45.000 That's great.
00:31:45.520 We love that.
00:31:46.600 We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder.
00:31:49.120 Totally agree.
00:31:49.680 That's great.
00:31:50.640 That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state
00:31:54.320 in America.
00:31:55.840 I don't know about that one.
00:31:57.540 Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, including the vast majority of Republicans,
00:32:00.880 conservative Christians, and pro-life Americans, I strongly support the availability for couples
00:32:04.920 who are trying to have a precious baby.
00:32:06.520 IVF, I think actually when you get into the nitty gritty, is a little more controversial
00:32:09.220 than that.
00:32:10.000 Today, I'm calling on the Alabama legislature to act quickly to find an immediate solution
00:32:13.240 to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama.
00:32:15.980 Yeah, I don't know about that.
00:32:17.000 I mean, state constitution is pretty clear.
00:32:18.260 The Republican Party should always be on the side of the miracle of life and the side
00:32:22.200 of mothers, fathers, and their beautiful babies.
00:32:24.380 That's certainly true.
00:32:25.460 IVF is an important part of that.
00:32:26.720 Not so sure.
00:32:27.640 And our great Republican Party will always be with you in your quest for the ultimate
00:32:31.660 joy in life.
00:32:32.220 Okay.
00:32:32.700 I get it.
00:32:33.900 I get why people support IVF.
00:32:37.660 I also get why people would subscribe to this YouTube channel.
00:32:40.620 What you have to do is ring that bell, subscribe to the Michael Nils YouTube channel, subscribe,
00:32:43.820 ring it, smash, ding dong, whatever you got to do.
00:32:46.060 Thank you.
00:32:46.400 Appreciate that.
00:32:46.900 I understand why people support IVF because infertility is very, very painful.
00:32:54.020 For two years, sweet little Elise and I actually struggled to conceive our first child.
00:33:00.180 And I speak with a little bit of experience.
00:33:02.160 I understand just a little bit how extremely painful that is.
00:33:08.160 I get it.
00:33:08.780 And we went to a fertility specialist finally.
00:33:10.980 And you know what they do, the fertility specialists?
00:33:12.980 They sell you IVF.
00:33:14.140 They are salesmen for IVF.
00:33:16.380 And IVF and surrogacy is, I guess it's a market for babies.
00:33:20.740 You know, what you're selling is a human being, which is morally questionable in itself to say
00:33:26.080 nothing about the ways in which IVF actually is practiced with the creation of multiple
00:33:30.900 human beings who are then left to just be put in a freezer indefinitely and then maybe
00:33:36.280 destroyed, killed if you don't use them.
00:33:38.920 And it's very morally dubious.
00:33:41.760 But people don't pay attention to that.
00:33:43.840 They don't pay attention to it because they're offered this extreme temptation for a very
00:33:48.100 deep desire of their heart during an extremely painful period of their lives.
00:33:50.540 I get it.
00:33:51.300 I get why people have done it, okay?
00:33:52.720 I don't think it would be advisable for the Republican Party to come out as the party
00:34:01.920 of IVF right now.
00:34:03.040 And I'm not even saying that the Republican Party should be running against IVF.
00:34:06.620 I totally sympathize with Donald Trump's political instincts that this would be an unpopular
00:34:13.680 campaign theme.
00:34:14.680 Yeah, I'm not saying, you know, you run on immigration, the economy, and banning IVF everywhere.
00:34:20.120 I'm not saying that that would be a politically wise idea.
00:34:22.720 I guess if I were advising President Trump, what I would urge here is just caution.
00:34:30.300 This is a novel bioethical debate because this is a very new technology for virtually
00:34:38.120 all of human history.
00:34:38.880 We had no ability to do this kind of thing, to create human beings in petri dishes in
00:34:43.360 labs and then freeze them and then implant them and then sell them.
00:34:46.920 This has happened even last year.
00:34:49.300 There's a big lawsuit about this.
00:34:50.220 You mix the wrong sperm with the wrong egg and oopsie-daisy, you just made a human being
00:34:54.640 who has a mother and a father who've never met each other.
00:34:56.960 And whatever happens to that human being, it's not going to be ideal because if you allow
00:35:01.280 the human being to live, the human being is not going to know one of his parents or it's
00:35:04.360 going to split up multiple marriages or it's who knows.
00:35:06.780 Or you're just going to destroy that human being.
00:35:08.740 You're going to kill him because you're treating that human being like an object rather than a
00:35:12.120 proper subject with rights is the things a lot of people don't think about, but it's
00:35:16.380 a novel idea.
00:35:17.540 And so I would just urge caution.
00:35:21.200 That would be my advice here.
00:35:23.800 We all want strong families.
00:35:25.980 We all want, you know, we hear that, you know, the vast majority of people support IVF.
00:35:31.900 That's not exactly true.
00:35:32.780 I mean, the Catholic Church utterly prohibits it.
00:35:35.180 And lots of other Christians have all sorts of moral questions about it.
00:35:39.580 And Jews have moral questions about it.
00:35:41.360 And everybody has some moral questions.
00:35:43.280 It's such a novel idea.
00:35:45.300 I would just urge, I'm not really knocking Trump here.
00:35:48.860 I get it politically.
00:35:49.900 Even Viktor Orban in Hungary, who is the best on family policy of anyone in the West, even
00:35:55.320 he has supported IVF.
00:35:56.680 And so I understand it's kind of a new thing and people haven't thought about it all the
00:36:00.840 way through.
00:36:01.240 So I'm totally sympathetic to President Trump's gut feeling here.
00:36:05.060 If I were advising the president, I would just urge a little bit of caution on this
00:36:10.880 matter.
00:36:11.820 Maybe just don't make it a top political issue one way or the other.
00:36:15.100 I think Alabama is following their state Supreme Court.
00:36:19.780 Alabama is following the state constitution.
00:36:21.920 Alabama, I think, is following a bioethically wise course here.
00:36:25.680 But we have laboratories of democracy.
00:36:27.760 This debate will play out over some time.
00:36:30.000 And one can hope and pray that the correct conclusion will be reached.
00:36:32.680 Republicans, we don't need to shoot ourselves in the foot on this issue, would be my humble
00:36:38.240 suggestion.
00:36:39.020 Now, speaking of life and death and really disturbing stories, there's a guy, I think,
00:36:45.760 a current member of the United States Air Force, who just showed up to the Israeli embassy
00:36:52.220 in Washington, D.C., and lit himself on fire to protest the war in the Middle East.
00:36:58.780 Here is, I'm not going to show the clip of him actually burning and screaming.
00:37:02.400 Here is what he has to say just before he goes and does it.
00:37:04.720 I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit
00:37:12.520 in genocide.
00:37:16.620 I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing
00:37:22.660 in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all.
00:37:26.980 Well, this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
00:37:32.080 Okay, so this guy obviously has a big screw loose, and then he poured gasoline over himself
00:37:36.940 and killed himself.
00:37:37.660 What interests me about this story is not so much the Middle East conflict.
00:37:43.500 As I've said before, the Middle East conflict, I think, is basically intractable.
00:37:48.080 I totally understand, or I totally sympathize with both sides of the conflict, meaning I
00:37:54.680 can, I'm not saying I empathize with it, but I sympathize.
00:37:58.140 I understand how, being on either side, you could arrive at the conclusions you've arrived
00:38:02.020 at, and I don't really see any reconciliation.
00:38:05.740 It's just a, it's a very longstanding land battle, and it's going to continue.
00:38:13.300 To me, it seems, amid all the human tragedy, the best thing to do would be to just kind
00:38:18.080 of wind it down, and satisfying no one, to try to maintain something like the status quo.
00:38:25.460 Neither side is going to be amenable to that, so I get it.
00:38:30.380 This guy seems to be strongly pro-Palestine, anti-Israel.
00:38:37.960 He's using the language of the radical left, you know, attacking colonizers, which is kind
00:38:43.040 of ironic coming from a member of the United States military.
00:38:45.420 You know, the United States is the global empire, so we began as a colonial project.
00:38:50.160 We've engaged in many colonial projects over the years, but this is the language of the
00:38:53.520 extreme left now that divides the world into colonizers and colonized and all the rest
00:38:58.160 of it.
00:38:58.480 So, the reason that the story interests me, other than we should pray for the repose of
00:39:03.560 this man's soul and his poor family and whatever craziness was going on in his head, is not
00:39:08.500 the stuff he was talking about in the Middle East.
00:39:11.660 It's the question of whether or not it is ever justified to kill yourself at a personal
00:39:18.180 level or at the stage of some grand political protest.
00:39:21.300 Because coincidentally, providentially, I was just reading some St. Augustine today on this
00:39:26.200 very subject, which we'll get to in one second.
00:39:28.460 First, though, protect your kids from the leftist indoctrination in the media by starting
00:39:32.940 a 14-day free trial to Bent Key, the Daily Wire's new kids' entertainment app.
00:39:38.000 Bent Key offers high-quality, family-friendly shows that reflect your values.
00:39:41.240 Bent Key features amazing characters and timeless stories that will spark your kid's
00:39:44.280 imagination with hundreds of episodes.
00:39:46.980 Plus, new episodes stream every Saturday.
00:39:49.320 That's right.
00:39:50.360 We brought back Saturday morning cartoons.
00:39:52.060 You can try Bent Key for free for 14 days.
00:39:54.040 Just use the code UNLOCK at bentkey.com and you will get 14 days of unlimited access to
00:39:58.020 Bent Key's world of adventure.
00:39:59.600 Go to bentkey.com.
00:40:00.460 Use code UNLOCK at signup to start your trial today.
00:40:04.520 My favorite comment comes from Cyber Girl, who says,
00:40:07.960 Michael, I love your quote, there's nothing hateful about reality.
00:40:10.160 You are correct, there is not, yet I find it so strange that the left finds reality really
00:40:14.360 hateful.
00:40:15.000 That's true.
00:40:15.560 It's from the very beginning.
00:40:18.260 You know, it goes back to the devil in the Garden of Eden, who tempts mankind by saying,
00:40:23.000 ye shall be as gods.
00:40:24.160 Surely you will not die if you eat the apple, ye shall be as gods.
00:40:26.580 It's that temptation.
00:40:28.500 We're in the season of Lent right now, the temptation of the Antichrist, when he tempts
00:40:32.840 Christ in the wilderness and he says, turn these stones into bread.
00:40:38.040 And he says, cast yourself down from this height and, you know, you won't splatter on the ground.
00:40:45.400 Control the whole world.
00:40:46.560 All of these kingdoms can be yours if you just bow down to me, the Antichrist.
00:40:51.460 All of that is the temptation to unreality, okay?
00:40:56.060 It's the temptation ultimately to reject the reality of the created world.
00:41:00.800 And so why do the libs fall into that?
00:41:04.380 And that's why they often seem demonic in their political activity.
00:41:08.080 And why now they even use multiple pronouns to refer to themselves.
00:41:12.600 You know, my name is Legion for we are many.
00:41:14.340 It's, yeah, not good.
00:41:15.680 Reality is good.
00:41:16.940 I would strongly recommend you accept reality.
00:41:20.540 Okay.
00:41:21.880 Back to this Air Force guy who did not accept reality.
00:41:24.340 This American service member lights himself on fire and kills himself because he really loves
00:41:34.780 the Palestine liberation movement, I guess.
00:41:37.360 And he really hates the Israeli state.
00:41:39.120 Okay.
00:41:40.340 Is it ever justified to kill yourself for a personal matter or a political matter?
00:41:47.360 The Christian answer simply is no.
00:41:51.180 St. Augustine writes about this in The City of God.
00:41:53.500 Lucretia, who was a Roman noblewoman who was raped.
00:42:00.780 She kills herself.
00:42:02.360 And her suicide is seen as inaugurating the shift from the Roman kingdom into the Roman
00:42:10.500 republic.
00:42:11.360 And then on the flip side of that, you see Cato.
00:42:13.780 Cato is probably one of, if not the most famous suicides in all of history.
00:42:18.940 Cato kills himself because he doesn't want to submit to Caesar.
00:42:23.500 And so St. Augustine takes this up because the example of Cato has been probably the biggest
00:42:31.780 pro-suicide example in all of history.
00:42:34.740 Dante does not put Cato into hell.
00:42:37.040 Even though Cato is a suicide, he doesn't because he sees Cato as an emblem of liberty
00:42:40.900 that he resists Caesar taking over and ending the Roman Republic.
00:42:44.740 And that there might be even something admirable about Cato killing himself.
00:42:48.320 St. Augustine says that's all bunk, though.
00:42:50.580 He says, no, if Cato really thought this were admirable, why would he have counseled his son
00:42:54.920 not to kill himself?
00:42:56.300 If this were something really good, wouldn't he have said, hey, son, I want good for you, too.
00:42:59.720 Son, you should kill yourself, too.
00:43:01.040 He doesn't say that to his son, though.
00:43:03.180 His son goes and he can get a pardon from Caesar.
00:43:06.140 Cato just does it.
00:43:06.980 Because true liberty exists not in just the ability to do whatever we wish, whenever we
00:43:14.240 want to do it, as I've said frequently on this show, but it's the right to do what we
00:43:17.280 ought to do.
00:43:18.000 And so a man can be free in prison.
00:43:19.780 A man can be free and is sometimes at his most free, actually, when he is in experiencing
00:43:26.020 the outward signs of bondage.
00:43:28.100 Because we're not just bodies, we're also souls.
00:43:30.600 And true freedom is living in the right way in accordance with God's will for us.
00:43:36.980 It's not just, you know, not doing what other people tell you to do.
00:43:43.640 That's, you know, the true freedom is following the truth.
00:43:48.380 And true slavery is when you reject the truth and you cultivate all sorts of nasty sins and
00:43:53.720 vices and you become a slave to your own appetites.
00:43:55.900 That's a true kind of slavery.
00:43:59.480 So it's simply contrary to the natural law to kill yourself.
00:44:04.880 Certainly contrary to charity and to the will of God.
00:44:08.860 And there's no excuse for it ever under any circumstances.
00:44:12.740 Getting back to the favorite comment of the week.
00:44:15.120 This was the point of my CPAC speech.
00:44:16.800 I said, you know, there are just, there's such a thing as the natural law.
00:44:19.860 There are natural institutions.
00:44:21.520 Marriage is one such institution.
00:44:23.180 And if you don't like what marriage has always meant everywhere in the history of the world,
00:44:26.820 don't blame me.
00:44:27.680 I didn't invent it.
00:44:28.920 It wasn't conservatives who invented it.
00:44:30.420 It's not a mere social construction.
00:44:34.160 It's something that is knowable by our reason.
00:44:38.620 You don't need the Bible necessarily.
00:44:40.880 You don't need the wisdom of the prophets necessarily.
00:44:43.360 You can just know through your human reason, perceiving reality, certain things.
00:44:48.180 Do good and avoid evil.
00:44:49.400 That would be the foundation of the natural law.
00:44:51.720 But all of this thinking has gone away.
00:44:53.800 And so people who have a little bit of a screw loose and they get very obsessed with a foreign
00:44:57.560 war in the Middle East, they'll go and light themselves on fire and say that it's some
00:45:02.360 great act of virtue.
00:45:03.340 It's not.
00:45:03.940 It's a terrible, terrible sin.
00:45:06.220 So we should pray for that guy and make sure that we don't all drive ourselves equally crazy.
00:45:10.580 Now, speaking of supporting families, as President Trump wants to do, there is a par for the
00:45:18.280 core sort of story in our modern welfare state.
00:45:20.600 A mother just blew $6,000 in public money on a vacation for herself.
00:45:30.360 And I guess she took the kids on the vacation too.
00:45:32.220 But something tells me she was indulging herself a lot on this vacation.
00:45:36.000 The D.C. government has a pilot program launched a couple years ago to offer more than 100 low
00:45:41.280 income mothers almost $1,100 in cash payments, no strings attached.
00:45:48.000 So it's not food stamps, it's not home heating subsidies, it's just $10,800 cash.
00:45:56.740 Do with it what you want.
00:45:59.100 And what did this woman do with it?
00:46:01.280 She blew it on a Miami vacation.
00:46:04.220 She's a mother of three, 27-year-old Kenecia Miller.
00:46:07.500 She took the lump sum of almost 11 grand.
00:46:10.480 She's a stay-at-home mother who lives on welfare.
00:46:12.700 So the notion of the welfare queen that you've heard about since at least the Reagan administration,
00:46:18.800 liberals say that woman doesn't exist.
00:46:20.400 She does exist.
00:46:21.240 It's this woman.
00:46:21.880 This is the welfare queen.
00:46:23.180 And she said she spent some of the money on essentials, not a ton, but she spent most of
00:46:29.480 the money taking herself and her baby daddy and the children, at least she brought the
00:46:34.600 children, on this Miami vacation.
00:46:37.360 She said, these are her exact words.
00:46:39.580 The other side is, I wanted to blow it.
00:46:41.960 I wanted to have some fun.
00:46:43.760 She said she wanted her children to experience something she would not have been able to provide
00:46:47.620 without the money.
00:46:48.260 And now they won't experience food because she blew all the money on Miami.
00:46:52.940 The libs love to talk about root causes.
00:46:56.040 They say, we can't just arrest the illegal aliens at our border.
00:46:59.680 We need to get to the root causes of migration.
00:47:02.220 We can't just prosecute violent criminals on the streets of New York.
00:47:05.260 No, no, no, we've got to get at the root problems of crime.
00:47:09.760 And they're half right.
00:47:12.160 I mean, it's not an either or, okay?
00:47:14.280 You can do both.
00:47:15.260 You can arrest the criminals who are breaking the law, and you actually have to.
00:47:18.020 It's an obligation of justice.
00:47:19.480 But yeah, we also should address root problems.
00:47:22.600 And what are these root causes?
00:47:25.220 Well, the root causes of crime in the streets, yeah, fatherlessness is a big problem.
00:47:30.580 And some of the root causes, the fact that we now actively discourage marriage as a
00:47:34.140 matter of public policy.
00:47:34.900 That's bad.
00:47:35.500 We should encourage marriage.
00:47:36.400 We should stop pretending that marriage is something other than what it is.
00:47:39.200 We should stop pretending that marriage is just the sort of thing that one can undertake
00:47:43.500 on a whim and encourage no-fault divorce.
00:47:45.280 We should, yeah, we should stop all that stuff.
00:47:47.020 I agree.
00:47:47.720 And we should encourage marriage in public life.
00:47:49.480 But what's the root cause of this woman's poverty?
00:47:51.840 The root cause of this woman's poverty is she can't be trusted with money.
00:47:54.880 She doesn't know how to use it.
00:47:57.140 Okay, you want to get to root causes.
00:47:59.060 These are her exact words.
00:48:00.920 I wanted to blow it.
00:48:02.500 She said, now I'm thinking about, now that I have some of this money, I'm thinking about
00:48:05.140 getting a savings account.
00:48:06.440 I'm going to try to keep 50 bucks in it, at least.
00:48:09.940 Good.
00:48:10.480 Yeah, you should keep 50 bucks in your savings, at least in your savings account.
00:48:15.220 But if you just got 11 grand, you should keep a lot more than 50 bucks in your savings
00:48:18.680 account.
00:48:20.280 The root cause here of this woman's poverty is the fact that she's not married.
00:48:25.640 She should be encouraged to get married, and she should be, if she's going to have a lot
00:48:29.800 of children out of wedlock, there should be a social pressure for her to get married and
00:48:34.680 to stay married.
00:48:35.500 There should be a social pressure for the men who get her pregnant to marry her, a strong
00:48:41.000 social pressure.
00:48:42.500 It should not be encouraged or tolerated.
00:48:44.800 There should be a legal pressure for this stuff to happen.
00:48:47.920 And then if she is going to receive public assistance, which I guess she should, because
00:48:51.560 we don't want the kids to go hungry, this should not be no strings attached.
00:48:54.920 She proved it.
00:48:56.300 She proved the conservative point here.
00:48:57.900 That woman cannot be trusted with free money.
00:49:00.640 Very few people can be trusted with free money.
00:49:04.000 This is like why when people win the lottery, they just go bankrupt a lot of them.
00:49:07.240 It ruins a lot of their lives in many cases because they don't know how to handle it.
00:49:11.340 Because you think you want money, but you don't really want money.
00:49:14.560 What you want is the kind of lifestyle that leads you to get money in the first place.
00:49:19.220 If you just received Jeff Bezos' bank account, it would probably last you for a while because
00:49:25.540 it's a big bank account, but you'd probably just ruin yourself if you didn't know how to
00:49:28.660 handle that kind of money.
00:49:29.480 If you hadn't cultivated the habits of virtue that allow you to live a good life that coincidentally,
00:49:36.320 in some cases, in many cases, will lead you to amass some material wealth as well.
00:49:42.260 Not going to work, man.
00:49:43.420 You got to address the whole human person.
00:49:45.260 We are not merely economic agents.
00:49:48.160 We're not merely material.
00:49:49.920 It's Music Monday.
00:49:50.900 The rest of the show continues now.
00:49:51.980 You don't want to miss it.
00:49:52.620 Become a member.
00:49:53.220 Use code NOLS, K-N-W-L-E-S.
00:49:54.460 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.