The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 A Wisconsin election official was just found guilty of voter fraud after she produced ballots

00:00:04.660 for fictional military servicemen during the 2022 elections. The election official in question

00:00:10.760 is former Milwaukee Election Commission Deputy Commissioner Kimberly Zapata, who was convicted

00:00:16.900 of felony misconduct and three misdemeanor counts of making a false statement to obtain an absentee

00:00:21.880 ballot. According to Zapata's lawyer, the election official sent the fraudulent ballots to the home

00:00:28.600 of an elected official who had been calling attention to the issue of voter fraud. And she

00:00:34.360 claims she did this to prove the ease with which the lax ballot laws could be exploited to rig the

00:00:40.620 election. So it's not just that she was trying to rig it for her own nefarious purposes. She says she

00:00:47.920 was a whistleblower. But while the election official intentions might be relevant to the severity of her

00:00:55.520 crime and punishment, they don't really matter when it comes to the political point. Either way,

00:01:01.320 whether the prosecution in this case is right or whether the defense is right, the whole incident

00:01:05.300 proves the point that voter fraud can easily happen and is virtually impossible to catch,

00:01:12.100 even in swing states like Wisconsin, even very recently, like the last election cycle,

00:01:17.620 even potentially, it would seem, in 2024. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:25.520 Welcome back to the show. There is really a distressing video of illegal aliens breaking

00:01:47.160 through the Texas National Guard and them doing nothing about it. There's so much more to say.

00:01:52.400 First, though, go to puretalk.com slash Knowles. With inflation on the rise,

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00:03:07.520 Joe Biden's former White House press secretary has identified a major threat to Biden's re-election in 2024.

00:03:13.640 This is the biggest challenge. There is, unquestionably, Trump has broad support in his base,

00:03:21.620 as we've just been discussing, and we've seen that play out in the primary. That's the only piece,

00:03:25.840 though, we know at this point. He has problems among independents and problems with an expanded

00:03:30.080 electorate. But these third-party candidates are a huge, huge, huge problem, and there's a number of

00:03:34.900 them. If you look at RFK Jr., it's the name recognition issue, as Tom was just talking about.

00:03:39.600 And there are still states in this country, obviously, I mean, Georgia is one of them,

00:03:44.560 I will name, where the Kennedy name is beloved, right? Where people may just not still, where

00:03:49.340 they may just not know a lot about the fact that he is an anti-vaxxer who's a conspiracy theorist.

00:03:54.160 They don't know that yet. So this is something, there is an aggressive effort that the campaign

00:03:59.080 has been working with the Democratic National Committee on to run on this. But it needs to be broad.

00:04:03.640 People need to be shouting it from the rooftops, because this is one of the biggest threats

00:04:08.640 to Joe Biden being reelected, is these third-party candidates.

00:04:13.080 Jen Psaki is totally right. She's totally right here. I hate to say I told you so,

00:04:18.320 I've been predicting this for some time now. Early on, when RFK Jr. said he would get into the race,

00:04:23.900 some people feared that he would take more votes from Trump,

00:04:27.340 or the eventual Republican nominee, who everyone knew was going to be Trump.

00:04:30.360 I never thought that. Even now, RFK Jr. is talking about maybe running as a Libertarian

00:04:37.400 Party candidate. And you think, well, the American right is made up of traditionalists

00:04:42.300 and Libertarians and all the rest of the groups. So the Libertarian candidate might pull from the

00:04:47.500 right. No. No. Bobby Kennedy is a Kennedy. His name is Kennedy, for goodness sakes.

00:04:52.700 That is Democrat Party royalty. He's been a liberal for most of his life. He still holds

00:04:57.840 mostly liberal positions. He just happens to agree with us that Anthony Fauci is a big jerk.

00:05:02.980 That's not enough to pull votes from Trump. So this is a big problem for Biden. The other big

00:05:09.940 problem, though, for Biden is that he is declining. He's senile. So as a public relations matter,

00:05:19.820 he doesn't look up to the job. And we now have one term of his performance, and it's been terrible

00:05:24.780 on every front and people are unhappy with it. So what is he going to do? They're trying every old

00:05:33.040 line, every old excuse, spaghetti at the wall. They're now resurrecting this one. Where is it?

00:05:37.880 Yes. Washington Post, one day ago, Biden's stutter surges into the presidential campaign.

00:05:45.040 First time I ever heard about Joe Biden's stutter was during the 2020 presidential campaign.

00:05:49.900 They said, yeah, the reason that Joe Biden kind of digresses and goes off on flights of fancy and

00:05:57.160 seems to lose his place in a conversation and repeats himself and starts talking about corn

00:06:02.780 pop and mumbles. And the reason for that is since childhood, he's had a stutter. It's not his old

00:06:09.400 age. It's just how dare you make fun of a child's stutter? And I thought, you know, it's 2020.

00:06:16.540 Joe Biden has been in public life since 1972 when he got elected to the U.S. Senate.

00:06:24.140 I've seen Joe Biden on TV for my entire life, and I've never once heard him stutter.

00:06:30.320 But now the libs are telling me that he's had a stutter for his whole life and it has nothing to

00:06:35.680 do with old age. And if we make fun of it, we're just mocking the disabled. That's what I mean,

00:06:41.600 this article, I don't even think they've updated it since 2020. It was the same kind of excuse

00:06:46.440 that they had back then coming from really one of the biggest house organs of the liberal

00:06:50.920 establishment, the Washington Post. So I said, OK, maybe look, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

00:06:54.480 Maybe they're gaslighting me, but maybe I'm wrong. So let's go back. Let's roll the tape.

00:06:59.840 Back in, let's say, 1987, this is after Biden's first election to the Senate, right in the middle

00:07:07.720 of his political career. Did Joe Biden sound like he had a stutter then?

00:07:11.760 There will be other presidential campaigns, and I'll be there, Oliphant. I'll be there.

00:07:20.720 There will be other opportunities. There will be other battles in other places, other times.

00:07:27.400 And I'll be there. And I'll be there seeking to share with all Americans and those who will stand

00:07:35.160 with me. The promise proclaimed in the communion hymn you've heard me recite all across this country.

00:07:43.040 And he will lift you up on eagles' wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, and make the sun to shine on

00:07:49.680 you. This country is going to be lifted up, and I'm going to play a big part in doing it.

00:07:54.300 Not one um, not one uh, not one single stutter. Like he was cast in the movie role of a politician.

00:08:05.860 Listening to that clip, watching that clip, he reminds me of Gavin Newsom. You kind of forget

00:08:11.080 now because Biden's 150 years old. But in his prime, Biden was never much of a conviction

00:08:16.180 politician. I don't think there was ever a whole lot going on in between the ears. He's never really

00:08:20.120 accomplished anything in his political career. But the guy sounds like a politician. You got to

00:08:26.040 give credit where credit's due. He looks, he sounds, well, listen, I'll be there on a bright,

00:08:31.500 shiny new day for America. I promise you, America, that I'll. And he sounds and he kind of even looks

00:08:36.980 like Gavin Newsom. But he sure doesn't sound like he has a stutter. Because he didn't. I was just

00:08:41.720 totally made up. And it's just being promoted by the mainstream, supposedly credible liberal

00:08:48.780 establishment to cover up for the fact that the man is in extreme cognitive decline. I don't think

00:08:54.540 that one is going to work very well. I think people will have some memory of the, of Joe Biden's

00:09:01.680 political career since 1972. I think they'll probably remember that he didn't have that stutter

00:09:06.600 for 40 years. And then it just sort of appeared. Now, turning to people who don't stutter, people who,

00:09:12.520 who say exactly what they think rather quickly, uh, got to give a hat tip to lives of tick tock

00:09:18.560 here. There is a preschool teacher who identifies as trans, who says that her biggest allies,

00:09:26.420 it's not the Democrat politicians. It's not the liberal activists on the streets. It's three-year-olds.

00:09:34.780 I posted that video on my Instagram as well, and it got an insane amount of hate. So I'm going to

00:09:39.020 share more positive interactions with the preschool aged kids I work with. For context, I'm a trans

00:09:43.060 person who does not pass as the gender they identify with. Yesterday, one of the other staff

00:09:46.580 came up to me and she was talking to me and then started talking to the kids about me.

00:09:50.280 And she, she, her pronouns for me. And one of the kids interrupted her and went, um, he's a boy.

00:09:57.720 So you know what? Pop off. My biggest allies are three years old.

00:10:02.480 I bet that's true. So she's a girl, but she says she's a boy, even though she doesn't sound like

00:10:06.980 a boy and she doesn't really dress like a boy, but she says she's a boy. Who knows what happened

00:10:13.100 in this woman's life to make her believe that she is a boy or really wants to be a boy? Probably

00:10:19.440 nothing great, but in any case, that's where she is. And no one really believes her, including her

00:10:24.400 ostensibly liberal coworkers. The only people who believe her are three years old. That's a bad sign.

00:10:30.080 If the only people who agree with your conclusions about the world, about anthropology, about reality,

00:10:38.380 about metaphysics, about anything really, if the only people who agree with you are three years old,

00:10:43.480 100% of the time you will be wrong. Because three-year-olds by definition are totally uneducated

00:10:51.700 and they don't know anything and they can't really separate fantasy from reality. And we now live in a

00:10:59.140 country that previously used to educate three-year-olds to turn them into fully formed wise

00:11:07.040 adults. Now we uneducate adults and try to turn them into three-year-olds. This is not good. It's

00:11:15.820 good as you grow older to maintain childlike wonder. That's good. Childlike innocence, if you can.

00:11:24.260 But you don't want to be childish. Just like it's good for a woman to be womanly. It's bad for a man

00:11:31.920 to be womanish. It's just like the bad version. One is good, one is bad. You want the innocence,

00:11:38.120 you want the wonder, but you don't want to be diluted. You want to be wise as a serpent and

00:11:45.540 innocent as a dove. That's the kind of childlike innocence that we should seek after. Here though,

00:11:49.840 you have childish corruption. The opposite of innocence is what you really got here.

00:11:56.320 And it points even further to just the inversion of education broadly. We now view kids as a nice

00:12:05.100 little ornament for adults. Something I want and I have a right to. And if I can't conceive a child

00:12:11.300 because I'm a man in a relationship with another man, don't want to get married, or just because I

00:12:17.780 suffer infertility, or for whatever reason, or because I waited too long and I got married in my

00:12:22.160 40s or something, and for whatever reason, people now say, well, I have a right to a child. So I'm

00:12:25.780 going to go buy that child. I'm going to go to the baby store and order a custom order child. And

00:12:31.900 that's not how it's supposed to work. The parents are supposed to give of their love, and then that

00:12:38.940 creates a child. And then you sacrifice your own desires for your child, for the good of the other

00:12:44.380 person. Teachers would sacrifice some of their desires, and they would take on what's actually a

00:12:52.180 very difficult job, which is educating people, especially young people. Now it's the opposite.

00:12:56.800 Now the teachers are demanding something of the students. The teachers are dependent upon the

00:13:02.100 little three-year-olds to affirm the teacher's delusions, which I bet even most of the three-year-olds

00:13:06.340 know are crazy. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to zapmydebt.com.

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00:14:16.720 candle. This candle, a Lenten special made for your home to smell like a 12th century monastery,

00:14:24.600 this candle is going away after Easter because it's Lenten. It's a Lenten candle. You're not going

00:14:30.800 to have a Lenten candle after you. That'd be crazy. So if you want to get yours, if you want to stock up

00:14:35.280 because it is the best-selling candle ever in the Daily Wire shop and the best-smelling one I think of

00:14:39.520 all of them, go to dailywire.com slash shop right now and we will stop selling them. So get yours before

00:14:46.540 they are gone. Speaking of social problems, there's a study out that is totally unsurprising to me but

00:14:56.740 might be surprising to some people. Loneliness is worse for health than obesity, alcoholism,

00:15:03.020 and even smoking 15 cigarettes a day. This, according to researchers from the Reagan-Strafe

00:15:10.260 Institute and the Indiana University School of Medicine. This is a major biopsychosocial stressor,

00:15:19.320 worse, especially for older people, than being a booze hound, being fat, and smoking 15 cigs a day.

00:15:26.460 This was just published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society. No surprise. Also,

00:15:34.100 53% of older adults, according to this survey, who visit primary care facilities report feeling

00:15:41.340 lonely. And this is very, very sad. Why is that? Why is loneliness worse for us than, you know,

00:15:47.560 ripping cigs and drinking too much and stuffing our faces with McDonald's? It's because, as I've said

00:15:53.880 before on the show, and I'll say it again, man is a social creature. So we are designed to be in

00:15:59.440 society. We are not designed to be alone. Modern society tells us that we are supposed to be alone.

00:16:04.780 The left and the right tell us this. The left says, we don't need society, man. We don't need our

00:16:09.640 families. Yeah, we don't need these institutions, man. We're going to drop out, you know? We're going

00:16:16.040 to go our own way, man, whatever. But then the right says similar things, which is, I don't need the

00:16:22.120 collectivist economics and social policies of the left. No, no, I'm my own individual.

00:16:29.440 I don't need anybody, and I'm not going to rely on anybody, and I'm going to go be

00:16:33.460 Henry David Thoreau or something in the woods, even though he was kind of a fake because he had

00:16:37.380 relatives bring him groceries. In any case, that's not how mankind is meant to be. We're social

00:16:44.960 creatures. So when you undermine probably the most basic aspect of human nature, you're unhappy.

00:16:54.000 Happiness, contrary to what many modern liberals will tell you, is not just something we can

00:17:01.240 prescribe for ourselves. And I'm just going to do me, and you're going to do you, and maybe that'll

00:17:05.860 make you happy, and that'll make me happy. I'm not saying there's no variety. Diversity is the

00:17:12.240 spice of life, sure. But there are broad rules that govern happiness. Happiness is rational activity

00:17:20.880 done excellently in accordance with virtue. That's what it is. When you do certain things,

00:17:27.820 you're much more likely to thrive. If you get married, have kids, participate in your community,

00:17:35.900 go to church on Sunday. Immerse yourself in culture, the culture of your civilization. If you

00:17:43.760 perform acts of charity, if you do these things, the likelihood that you are unhappy plummets to

00:17:51.200 pretty much zero over a long period of time. Obviously, everyone suffers to some degree at

00:17:55.040 different times, but over the long haul, you will be happy because you are doing things that are

00:18:00.120 rationally known and knowable to be good, and you're doing them, one hopes, with excellence,

00:18:05.760 in accordance with virtue. You'll do it. If you just live for yourself, you will be miserable.

00:18:12.420 That's going to happen. And I'm not saying that these old people who are reporting loneliness

00:18:16.700 are intentionally living for themselves. We live in a culture now that pushes old people to the

00:18:21.780 margins. We kill babies. We kill old people. We're not so nice to the people in the middle either.

00:18:26.940 It's a very cruel society that is suffering from a dearth of charity, and it's dreadful. It breaks my

00:18:35.280 heart, especially with old people. It's really not how it's supposed to be. That's what we do. So we

00:18:41.860 basically ship granny off to a home somewhere, and that's that. And we don't feel that we have

00:18:46.960 any obligations or responsibilities on the left or on the right. The left, because they hate the

00:18:51.420 older generations, and on the right, because we think that everything can be resolved with a check

00:18:56.180 and a little bit of money. And we think that selfishness is a virtue, at least since the 1980s.

00:19:01.280 And none of those things are true. And you can't really commoditize everything. You can't

00:19:06.120 commoditize human life. And you can't privatize society. We live in society. It is, by its very

00:19:13.140 nature, a public matter. We live in a republic, a race publica, you know, like public things.

00:19:19.860 And we need to start acting like it. Speaking of society and social breakdown, migrants have just

00:19:26.480 broken through a barrier of the Texas National Guard. It was caught on video, and no one really

00:19:33.140 did anything. You can see, this is in El Paso, just a ton of people. Doesn't look like a lot of

00:19:39.660 women. Doesn't look like a lot of kids. It's mostly fighting age men. Just busting through. And there

00:19:45.440 are these armed National Guard troops, and they're doing pretty much nothing. They're trying to stop the

00:19:51.380 migrant, the young men. But the young men are not afraid of the National Guard. They're busting

00:19:55.500 through. They're running. And they make it to a fence. They try to get through that. There's

00:20:03.120 another barrier. But they will be allowed through. They'll probably just cue, you know, and they'll

00:20:07.080 get in line. And then, and they can scream and yell, and they can throw punches at the National

00:20:12.040 Guard. It won't matter. They'll probably just be allowed in, because that's what Joe Biden

00:20:14.960 wants. So you look at this video, and the gut reaction of a lot of people is, don't those guys

00:20:23.640 have guns? You know, don't they? And the thing is, I don't want the National Guard to shoot these

00:20:30.960 people. I don't. I would actually feel bad if the National Guard were shooting these, these migrants,

00:20:36.920 even though they're not asylum seekers, even though they're not little beautiful 10-year-old

00:20:41.800 dreamers. They're, you know, they're fighting age men who were just coming over here to make some

00:20:46.400 money. But even so, I don't want the National Guard to shoot them. The problem is, if these guys feared

00:20:51.760 getting shot by the National Guard, which is carrying guns, if the National Guard were not carrying their

00:20:56.920 guns in vain, then these guys would be much less likely to run to the border. And they're therefore

00:21:04.100 much less likely to put themselves in a dangerous situation where they could get shot.

00:21:07.240 So what do we do about that? I don't know. I guess the National Guard could start beating

00:21:12.080 them with clubs or something. You know, some sort of, some middle ground between shoot them

00:21:16.780 and just roll out the red carpet and let them break our basic laws and enter into the country

00:21:22.100 and compromise our whole political system. But there has to be something. The reason that we feel

00:21:27.240 it would be unjust to just start shooting these people, even though they're coming over with the

00:21:30.520 help of some of the worst criminal cartels in the world, the reason we feel that way is because

00:21:34.720 we have had a de facto policy of open borders for so long, it seems unfair. So like these, hold on,

00:21:40.200 these are the poor schlubs who get caught. We've had a decades-long policy of just letting these guys

00:21:46.760 in. And so that seems kind of unfair. But right now, there's absolutely no disincentive

00:21:52.920 to come across the border. So it's even more humiliating than if we just tore down the wall

00:22:00.360 and actually rolled out a red carpet. Because we send our tough-looking National Guard guys down

00:22:05.440 there in armor, in camo, with weapons, and they can't do anything. You present an image of the

00:22:15.800 United States military, but then what unfolds from that image is a totally impotent military,

00:22:23.840 totally impotent law enforcement, a totally impotent American political order. It gets rolled

00:22:30.280 by criminal cartels every single day. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to PragerU.com.

00:22:39.720 Is the future of America doomed? A majority of Gen Z supports left-wing policies such as open borders

00:22:46.060 and socialism. If we don't reach them and change their minds, the country we know and love will be

00:22:50.360 lost forever. PragerU is the leading non-profit when it comes to influencing young people. Their

00:22:55.700 educational, entertaining, pro-American videos meet young people where they are and open their minds

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00:23:19.800 or subscriptions. They don't rely on ads or clickbait headlines. Contrary to what the left

00:23:24.340 says, PragerU is not funded by a handful of billionaires. It's funded by people just like

00:23:28.760 you. To keep making great content, reaching millions, and changing minds, PragerU needs

00:23:33.440 our help. Go to PragerU.com to donate today. PragerU.com. While you're over there, check out

00:23:39.880 my five-minute videos and the book club with Michael Knowles. PragerU.com today. My favorite comment

00:23:45.900 yesterday is from Hard Boiled Entertainment. This question, what is a crime? Answer, I don't know.

00:23:54.120 I'm not law enforcement. I don't even know where that comes from. Is that a reference to AOC?

00:23:59.600 AOC, who's a legislator, who doesn't know about laws and crimes? Might be. Or is that a reference

00:24:04.420 to just the liberal mode of argument? You've probably heard it, which is they'll say, well, look,

00:24:10.180 I, having not experienced what it's like to be an illegal alien. They don't say that. They say

00:24:16.420 an undocumented, future-dreaming American. Or having not lived, I don't know, to be a black

00:24:23.500 person, I can't possibly weigh in on the struggle. And you think, no, you do have reason, right? You do

00:24:29.340 have a couple of brain cells to rub together. You don't, a doctor doesn't need to have cancer to

00:24:33.240 know something about oncology. I think we have some objectivity. Maybe. Maybe we once did.

00:24:38.080 I don't know that we do anymore. Speaking of our government, speaking of really obtuse and

00:24:47.480 contrary political takes, the New York Times has just run a big headline and a big special.

00:24:55.000 The headline, it turns out the deep state is actually kind of awesome. Take it away.

00:25:03.880 Donald Trump is obsessed with the deep state. The deep state, deep state, the deep state is

00:25:11.240 destroying our nation. Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.

00:25:18.520 And many Republicans are widening his paranoia. These unelected bureaucrats ruining this country.

00:25:24.880 From a cabal of security agents to the sick political class that hates our country. If elected,

00:25:30.520 Trump's vowed to gut the federal government. Reinstate the Schedule F executive order and

00:25:35.760 quote, fire rogue bureaucrats. But who are these bureaucrats and what makes them so dangerous?

00:25:42.860 Meet Scott Bellamy. And he may have quite literally saved the planet from annihilation.

00:25:47.880 Potentially. This is Radhika Fox. I am the assistant administrator for water at the Environmental

00:25:53.920 Protection Agency. Meet Nancy Alcantara. I am the acting director of enforcement for the wage and

00:26:00.580 hour division for the Midwest Regional Office for the U.S. Department of Labor. I had to take a breath.

00:26:07.700 Yes. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. That first guy they referenced, he works at in Huntsville on one of

00:26:14.040 the space programs. They say, oh, this is the deep state that Trump's so afraid of. He's just building

00:26:18.720 rockets and rockets. And oh, this lady, she's just an EPA administrator. Deep state. Come on,

00:26:23.540 Trump. You're so paranoid. So worth pointing out, the libs did the meme here. The meme conservatives

00:26:31.040 sometimes state is that the libs claim XYZ is not happening and it's good that it is. This,

00:26:40.940 you guys are so paranoid about XYZ. XYZ is not real. And I love it. And it's terrific.

00:26:46.660 And so they'll contradict themselves. Well, they've done that here. They open up the video.

00:26:51.880 They say, Donald Trump is so paranoid about the deep state. They've spent years and years telling

00:26:55.640 us the deep state doesn't exist. And now they say, and actually, it's kind of awesome. That's

00:27:00.380 the headline. So they open up with the least objectionable aspect of the deep state, of the

00:27:06.080 federal bureaucracy, which is this scientific space research that might have some kind of public

00:27:11.020 policy implication. When we talk about the deep state, though, that's not really what we're

00:27:15.380 concerned with. When we're talking about the deep state, we're concerned with the agencies

00:27:20.380 that interfere with our lives without accountability, that in effect, write most of our laws that tend to

00:27:29.780 be capricious and tend to exert a left-wing political pressure on the country, regardless of

00:27:36.540 who wins elections. And that's the problem. And so the EPA actually manages to do that. Some of those

00:27:42.840 other regulatory agencies do that. The intelligence agencies really do that. I mean, we've seen

00:27:48.600 so many memoranda and text messages and exchanges between members of the intelligence community going

00:27:56.200 back now eight years trying to undermine Donald Trump illegally to spy on his campaign, to cook up a plan

00:28:05.700 with Hillary and the Democrats and Russian intelligence, ironically, to try to either prevent him from

00:28:10.740 getting elected or throw him out once he is elected, to spy on him, to throw a wrench in the years of

00:28:17.460 his administration. Those are all from unelected guys who are undermining what the American people want

00:28:23.380 in what is putatively self-government. And that's what we're talking about with the deep state.

00:28:27.460 But even so, even though the New York Times, I think, is being rather obtuse with this article,

00:28:33.420 I'm glad first they're admitting that the deep state, the federal bureaucracy exists,

00:28:36.440 that it wields some power. But also, I agree with the point that they say it's actually kind of

00:28:42.520 awesome. It isn't presently kind of awesome, but it could be. There are a lot of Republicans

00:28:47.900 and conservatives who rightly observe that the development of this massive federal bureaucracy

00:28:54.520 was unfortunate. And it was brought about largely by liberal presidents, notably FDR and LBJ.

00:29:03.220 and that it advances really left-wing policy priorities. And this is really bad. That's true.

00:29:10.000 And it's a little different from the constitutional structure and I'm a bill up on Capitol Hill that

00:29:14.360 you learned about in school. That's all true. But I think those conservatives go too far.

00:29:19.840 They get a little utopian when they say, and that's why we're going to tear down the federal

00:29:22.860 bureaucracy. That's what gives the New York Times the opportunity to mock them. Say, oh, you're going to

00:29:27.180 fire this random rocket engineer in Huntsville. You're going to fire, what, the two million people,

00:29:32.620 by some counts that work for the federal bureaucracy? I don't think so. It won't happen.

00:29:37.240 To give the devils their due, part of the reason that the federal bureaucracy developed in the first

00:29:41.020 place was, well, because the American people elected very liberal presidents, beginning with

00:29:47.260 Woodrow Wilson, who designed it, FDR, who first implemented it, LBJ, who perfected it. But also because

00:29:53.560 we became a global empire and it just happened. And you can complain about that and you can say,

00:29:58.580 well, we shouldn't have any entangling alliances and we shouldn't have military presence everywhere

00:30:03.340 in the world. And we shouldn't be the leader of the free world. And we shouldn't have waged the

00:30:07.700 Cold War. And we should, you can say whatever you want. We're a global empire. The U.S. military

00:30:12.860 has something called AFRICOM. Okay. The command of Africa. All right. And that's kind of far away

00:30:19.980 from Palookaville, isn't it? Yeah. Because we're a global empire and global empires require bureaucracies.

00:30:25.660 This has been true for all of history. It's been true in every major empire going back to Rome and

00:30:30.600 before Rome. And it will be true in every major political entity. It just happens. It wasn't

00:30:36.760 foisted on us from outer space. It wasn't some alien or some demon who came down. I mean, I don't know,

00:30:41.340 maybe the demons influenced people, but it was men who did this. It was members of Congress who

00:30:46.820 outsourced their responsibilities, their power to the executive agencies. And they did it legally.

00:30:52.880 You know, the conservatives will sometimes beg for the overturn of Chevron deference. Chevron being

00:31:01.440 a Supreme Court decision that a lot of libertarians especially really hate because it empowered the

00:31:09.700 executive agencies and gave them the ability basically to interpret their own statutes.

00:31:14.880 It did empower the executive agencies. I believe Antonin Scalia actually was in favor of it at the time,

00:31:19.780 though later in his life he turned against it. But he might have been right the first time in the sense

00:31:26.160 that it's not going away. It's just not going to go away. You can cry and scream and yell, but it's

00:31:32.280 not going away. So the question for the conservatives is, are we going to try to make the best of what

00:31:37.180 we've got? Are we going to try to turn this thing to our advantage? Or are we going to just surrender

00:31:42.180 it to the left? Because there are some purists out there who say, surrender it to the left,

00:31:46.680 surrender the schools to the left, surrender the media to the left, surrender the bureaucracy to

00:31:50.440 the left. Just forget about it. We don't want any part of this. Okay, well, that's a great way to lose

00:31:54.860 forever and become a permanent minority. But what we could do is if we get Trump elected, he could go in

00:32:02.780 there. He could reinstitute the president's ability to fire these guys. A lot of these bureaucrats can't

00:32:10.340 even be fired by the president right now. So you reassert the presidential power to fire a lot of

00:32:16.980 these guys. And then you fire, not all of them, you fire about 40,000 to 50,000 of them. By some

00:32:23.060 counts, there are 2 million people in the federal bureaucracy. Most presidents turn over 4,000 to 5,000

00:32:27.920 of them. You would really have to do about 10x. So fire 40,000 to 50,000 of them, put in really solid

00:32:34.580 guys there who are really, really hard to fire, and then have them wield what we all acknowledge is

00:32:40.920 the actual lawmaking power of the United States. Wield that to conservative ends. Because if all we

00:32:47.320 do is just keep electing some charming, loudmouth members of Congress who aren't going to get anything

00:32:52.400 done, then it's all for show. But we're not actually going to accomplish conservative policy

00:32:57.800 goals. The deep state is actually kind of awesome. You know, New York Times, I think you're

00:33:01.740 right. Certainly could be. Let's put that theory to the test. Now, speaking of the deep state,

00:33:08.800 you know, the bureaucrats and some of the elected officials at the state level, and just everyone

00:33:15.180 is coming out against Trump. So they're prosecuting him in D.C., prosecuting him in Georgia, going

00:33:20.820 after him all over the place, and they are trying to take his properties in New York. So there's a

00:33:25.220 civil fraud judgment. We've been talking about it for a couple of days. It is almost half a billion

00:33:29.420 dollars. The attorney general of New York who campaigned for her office by saying she would

00:33:34.440 destroy Trump. She's trying to seize his properties. Now, Kevin O'Leary, very famous entrepreneur,

00:33:43.400 Kevin O'Leary comes out and he says, this is a major threat, not just to Trump, not even just to

00:33:48.980 the Democrat Party. This is a threat to the American brand. But more importantly, the message

00:33:56.700 about the American brand, you think about America, the reason this is number one economy on earth is

00:34:02.340 that we have laws and we have due process and we have property rights. It attracts foreign capital

00:34:07.860 from all around the world. All of that is being shaken to the core here. The concept of seizing assets

00:34:15.740 in 30 days on a bond number that's never been issued. No insurance bond companies ever issued

00:34:20.840 anything near this. So there was no chance it was going to happen. And only giving 30 days notice in

00:34:27.540 time, that's a really bad message. And I think New Yorkers should think well past Trump, whether he's

00:34:36.080 president or not, or whether this attorney general is gone in four years or not, it's irrelevant.

00:34:40.520 This is case setting against the American brand. The most stable country on earth anywhere to put

00:34:49.000 capital to work over a long period of time, particularly in real estate, is the United

00:34:53.200 States of America. This is an assault on what we believe to be core.

00:35:00.400 Spot on. The American brand. It is an attack on the American brand. It makes us look as unstable as

00:35:05.760 any banana republic or tin pot dictatorship, which is not only undignified, it's not only disturbing

00:35:13.020 as a reputational matter, but it could be an existential threat to the country because the

00:35:18.620 American brand is pretty much all we've got. The brand is the reason that we are the global hegemon.

00:35:25.680 The brand is the reason that an American can go pretty much anywhere on earth and not worry about

00:35:29.900 being accosted or hassled all that much. The American brand is the reason why we're so rich.

00:35:35.020 The American brand is the reason why we still have so much relative prosperity and social success.

00:35:43.560 America's position as the global hegemon is predicated largely on dollar supremacy, on the fact

00:35:50.440 that people view the United States as a stable place to put their money. They're going to invest

00:35:55.580 in America. They're going to use the American currency. If we start teetering, if we, at the behest

00:36:02.700 of Democrats, start becoming like some Latin American dictatorship, we start imprisoning our

00:36:08.800 political opponents, that all goes away and we all get broke and our enemies start moving around and

00:36:14.020 the American empire falls very, very quickly. America has more resources theoretically than just

00:36:20.720 our brand. We've got great natural resources. The Democrats won't let us use that. We've got,

00:36:25.820 we had for a long time, very strong social cohesion. The Democrats won't let us have that anymore.

00:36:30.980 That's why they're flooding the country with foreigners. We have had strong religiosity,

00:36:37.020 which has all sorts of great terrestrial effects as well. Good work ethic, productivity,

00:36:43.260 neighborhoods, strong law and order. Again, that also in decline. So all of the other resources that

00:36:49.400 America has have been diminished intentionally. The brand is what we've got left. Lose the brand,

00:36:55.980 you lose everything. And O'Leary's observation here that the prosecution of the former president

00:37:01.860 and current leader of the opposition, that is a major threat to the brand for everyone.

00:37:09.560 You know, spring break is here and Jeremy's Razors is all set for the journey with the Precision 5

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00:37:23.940 These products altogether would normally cost almost 37 bucks, but right now you can get the

00:37:28.880 Precision 5 Go Bag for $19.99. Leave the woke behind. Join the alternative economy with a company

00:37:34.660 that aligns with your values. Jeremy's Razors. Head on over to jeremysrazors.com to get your

00:37:40.140 Precision 5 Go Bag today. Finally, finally, we've arrived at my favorite time of the week

00:37:46.020 when I get to hear from you in the mailbag. Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to

00:37:50.780 puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S to get an additional 50% off your first month. Take it away.

00:37:58.180 Hey, Michael, I know that you are a big fan of the conservative populist movement and that you've

00:38:02.920 presented it as this movement that has done nothing but good for conservatives and Republican

00:38:10.040 here lately. But I honestly have to disagree. I think conservative populism has its place and

00:38:16.920 populist movements are always useful for when you need to shake things up and deal with an elitist

00:38:22.280 class. My problem is I feel we are getting to the part where we are going too far because right now

00:38:28.180 I'm seeing a lot of prominent people in the party who are less concerned with principle and less

00:38:34.540 concerned with sticking by what we actually have believed in for the longest time and instead are

00:38:40.160 just about beating the Democrats, saying that anybody who disagrees with them is a traitor or

00:38:46.560 a Democrat and pushing for everybody to conform to their specific idea of what it means to be

00:38:54.080 conservative. And I don't feel that that is conducive for us going forward in a party. I look at the

00:39:00.360 conservative populist movement and I see that we've gone from being a party that always talked

00:39:05.200 about fiscal discipline but never did anything to being a party that never does anything for fiscal

00:39:10.000 discipline and now doesn't even act like it's important. I've seen this go from a party that

00:39:15.780 says the best way to prevent government overreach and attacking of political dissidents is by denying

00:39:23.440 government power to saying the government can do whatever it wants as long as we are the ones in

00:39:27.700 control. And I see many more people who are demagogues and showboarders rather than people

00:39:33.500 who are actually there to get things done. So I'm having a little trouble seeing the bright side of the

00:39:39.560 current conservative populist movement. And I don't like that anybody who is not all for the populist

00:39:46.360 movement is suddenly labeled as establishment, squish, or elitist.

00:39:51.820 A really good question though. I think ironically you've undercut your own point. So just a slight

00:40:00.200 correction. I've never said that the populist movement on the right is entirely good and there's

00:40:04.700 nothing bad about it and it's wonderful. I think it's broadly a good thing but I've never suggested

00:40:09.800 that there are no downsides to it at all. What you're saying here though is that you like

00:40:16.460 the excitement of conservative populism. You like that it brings more people in to vote for the

00:40:21.740 Republicans against the Democrats. But you don't like the thing, you don't like the populists actually

00:40:28.360 getting what they want. So ironically you're accusing the populists of forfeiting principle

00:40:34.780 in favor of just racking up political electoral wins. But that seems to be exactly what you want.

00:40:41.520 You say, no, no, I don't want these populists to actually have their principles. I don't want them

00:40:46.420 to follow their principles. I just want them to come into the party and keep voting for the same old

00:40:52.020 things that the pre-populist Republican Party was voting for. But I want them to wear crazier hats or

00:40:58.600 something. But you don't actually, you don't want the populism. A populist movement is not just

00:41:04.120 aesthetic. A populist movement is political. It has goals that are at odds with whatever the

00:41:12.640 prevailing status quo was before. That's what makes it populist. That's what makes it insurgent.

00:41:18.400 That's what makes it novel. So ironically you're saying, but I don't, these people don't have

00:41:24.460 principles. They just want to win elections. No, it sounds like you just want to win the elections

00:41:28.200 and you, you want to kind of just use them as instruments to do it, but without allowing them

00:41:34.860 to actually achieve their goals. Now I might be being a little harsh on you right now, but I think

00:41:40.400 this is, there are a lot of Republicans who think this way and they'll use the same kind of language.

00:41:45.340 They'll say, look, I, a free trade purist, small government libertarian with some neoconservative

00:41:54.380 leanings. I am the principled conservative, but you people, you have no principles. When you say

00:42:01.480 that you want tariffs, you have no principles. When you say you want to restrict all immigration,

00:42:05.740 you have no principles. No, they have a different principle. There are some principles held by some

00:42:11.940 Republicans, which is that we ought to not wield government power, even in a just way. We ought to

00:42:17.620 just totally diminish our use, our wielding of government power, that we ought to cut government

00:42:24.280 spending dramatically, that we ought to reform or outright obliterate the entitlement programs,

00:42:34.060 social security, Medicare, Medicaid, that we ought to permit legal immigration, but not illegal

00:42:39.100 immigration, that we ought to have total free trade, right? Let's just that handful of things.

00:42:43.800 Those are principles. It's also principled to say we should have tariffs. It's also principled to say

00:42:49.760 we should restrict all migration because we just have too much and most people want to do that.

00:42:53.840 It's also principled to say that you're never going to get lasting fiscal reform until you get

00:42:58.620 social reform, that the Tea Party was wrong, that Paul Ryan was wrong. He might have had good

00:43:03.660 intentions, but he just didn't understand how politics actually works. And so you got to get the

00:43:08.140 social reform first. That's principled too. It's just a different principle.

00:43:12.700 And the fear for people who like the status quo in the Republican Party is that the populists who

00:43:21.420 are the reason that all of a sudden you're winning elections, who are the reason that all of a sudden

00:43:25.300 you're getting new demographics to enter the party, well, those guys might have some ideas of their own

00:43:29.500 too. They're not going to just bring you their votes and then not get anything in exchange. So

00:43:33.920 there's always a hazard to those kinds of movements. But broadly speaking, I think that the

00:43:38.840 populists so-called, even the term is a term of derision, but the populists are, were much needed

00:43:47.960 and many of their, not all, not all, but many of their policy prescriptions are superior to those

00:43:53.980 that we had heard from the Republican Party of the Mitt Romney era. We're going to get to some more

00:43:58.560 voicemail back in just a second. First though, go to hallo.com slash Knowles. We are in the midst

00:44:03.200 of Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter. Many Christians are choosing to give up alcohol,

00:44:08.420 social media, and other distractions to focus more on prayer, fasting, and giving. Hallow's annual

00:44:13.680 Pray 40 Challenge is one of their most popular. This year, there are over 1 million people praying

00:44:19.100 as a part of the challenge. The Pray 40 Challenge focuses on surrender and includes meditations on the

00:44:25.100 powerful book, He Leadeth Me, by Father Walter Chizik. The series follows Father Chizik, an American

00:44:31.460 priest, and missionary, through his imprisonment and subsequent enslavement in the Soviet Union

00:44:35.920 during World War II and the Cold War. His story is one of ultimate surrender, and participants in

00:44:40.800 the challenge are called to surrender their worries, anxieties, problems, and lives to God. Our very own

00:44:46.460 Dr. Jordan Peterson's wife, Tammy, was recently featured in Pray 40, where she shares her story about

00:44:51.240 being diagnosed with terminal cancer and how she surrendered her fears to God. The Hallow app is truly

00:44:55.980 transformative and will help you connect with your faith on a deeper level. What are you waiting for?

00:44:59.980 Join Hallow's Pray 40 Challenge today. Hallow.com slash Knowles. You'll receive an extra three-month

00:45:05.160 free trial and hear Tammy Peterson's story of faith. Hallow.com slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Next question.

00:45:16.480 Hey, Michael. I had two questions. The third question, when Democrats talk about abortion and

00:45:21.580 trans-right and the LGBT movement, and even basic things like the border crisis and inflation,

00:45:29.060 do you think their viewpoint they actually believe a man is a woman, or you could cut a baby up to birth?

00:45:37.420 Or would it just, they're just saying it because it's part of the, like, social-led agenda and they

00:45:43.380 want to reform, and they want to tear down society, uh, like Martin Lennon want to do?

00:45:49.820 And second thing, I was watching your debate with Perth, and I agree with you a lot more than Perth,

00:45:57.380 uh, but from, for me, as a conservative and as a, and more importantly, as a follower of our law and

00:46:05.220 saver of Jesus Christ, they're incented to get married. But I look at sort of my liberal friend,

00:46:11.740 there are no incentives. So what are the incentives to get married we can do from a government level?

00:46:20.420 Oh, really good questions. A little, uh, so, uh, you, you're right. Right now, the, the way the,

00:46:26.020 I'll take the second question first, I guess. The way that the marriage laws work, all the incentives

00:46:31.820 are against marriage. Not all, but, but many of them are now against marriage and against a lifelong

00:46:37.780 marriage and against having children and all the rest of it. So what we could do is just copy the

00:46:42.700 family policy from Hungary. If you have more than three kids, you don't pay taxes. I would love to,

00:46:47.320 that's perfect. What we could do is define marriage accurately in our law and say, look,

00:46:54.980 nothing against guys who are a little light in the loafers, you know, do what you got to do. We're not

00:46:58.960 going to send the purity police around, but marriage is a real thing. It's different from any other

00:47:03.860 union. And it's, you know, the, the point of it is the, uh, begetting and educating of children and

00:47:08.680 the mutual support of the spouses. So we're going to define that the thing that's always been

00:47:12.700 everywhere and is by nature. That's what marriage is. And we're going to encourage it because it's

00:47:16.900 good for society because it's the fundamental building block and other people can have their

00:47:20.540 own arrangements and no one's going to stop you from doing it. But, uh, marriage is a, is a good

00:47:26.400 thing. And then you would discourage divorce, outlaw, uh, no fault divorce, reform the family

00:47:30.080 courts. You know, you could, you could do all of that as well as to the motivations of the

00:47:33.500 left. Uh, you're asking, do they really not know that a man can't be a woman or are they just being

00:47:40.260 cynical to tear things down? I think they're probably largely deluded. I think people can

00:47:47.020 very easily be deceived. And this is especially true when they are led into vicious actions. So if

00:47:56.620 the thing that happens when you sin, the first thing that happens is you just go kind of crazy.

00:48:03.500 There's some poem, I forget who wrote the poetry, but that sin was so stupid because it was such a

00:48:08.560 waste of time. You know, it's so contrary to reason. And, uh, so virtue is in accordance with

00:48:15.480 reason. And, uh, it just, people who kind of have their lives together and are kind of doing the right

00:48:20.780 thing, talking to them, they tend to be more sane. Whereas if you talk to some drug addict, you know,

00:48:25.440 who's going to orgies, who's just a complete maniac, serial killer, those guys are not going to sound

00:48:30.860 insane. They're going to seem kind of off the wall. And, and because their, their reason will

00:48:34.800 be skewed in no small part because of just the way that they live, they're going to have greater

00:48:39.940 trouble discerning truth from falsehood or, or, uh, convincing themselves to even care about that.

00:48:46.240 We got through what two voice mailbag questions today. We have more voice mailbag questions to get

00:48:51.540 to. We have written mailbag questions to get to. We have the iPad to get to, and we have fake headline

00:48:56.420 Friday. The rest of the show continues. Now you do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code

00:48:59.920 Knollskin at WLAS at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

Ep. 1452 - Massive Arrest For Absentee Ballots Voter Fraud In Wisconsin

Summary

Transcript