Ep. 1478 - Wars Rage, And One Dead Dog Dominates The News
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
169.10043
Summary
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was on the brink of becoming the running mate for Donald Trump s presidential campaign when she shot a dog on her farm 20 years ago. And then she had to go on the record about it in her memoir.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
America is involved in two major wars. We're being invaded from the South,
00:00:04.240
and we are in the midst of a dramatic presidential race. And no one cares right now,
00:00:09.580
because everyone is talking about the revelation that South Dakota Governor
00:00:13.540
Kristi Noem shot a dog on her farm 20 years ago. The main thing about this story
00:00:20.640
is that it's extremely stupid and insignificant. She is the governor of a sparsely populated state.
00:00:26.920
She's not even close to the leading contender for Trump's running mate,
00:00:30.460
and people put down farm dogs all the time. But that is what paradoxically makes this story
00:00:37.200
extremely significant, because it reveals a lot about how radically American politics
00:00:41.700
has changed. We'll get into it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:56.920
Welcome back to the show. There is a new app out that can apparently predict with
00:01:10.180
shocking accuracy when you will die and how rich you will be. We will get into why you should not
00:01:18.560
download the app. Did you know that over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. grocery stores is
00:01:23.660
imported? That's why I buy all my meat from GoodRanchers.com instead. Good Ranchers products
00:01:29.160
are 100% born, raised, and harvested right here in the U.S.A. from local family farms.
00:01:34.100
Plus, there's no antibiotics ever, no added hormones, and no seed oils. Just one simple
00:01:39.140
ingredient. That's meat. Best of all, Good Ranchers delivers straight to your door for added
00:01:43.340
convenience. So lock in a secure supply of American meat today. Subscribe now at GoodRanchers.com
00:01:48.520
and get free meat for life and $40 off with code DAILYWIRE. That's $40 off and free meat for life
00:01:53.760
with code DAILYWIRE. Good Ranchers, American meat delivered. Christy Noem, the rise and fall of
00:01:59.740
Christy Noem. The South Carolina, South Dakota governor came out of obscurity in a relatively
00:02:07.580
sparsely populated state, rose to the heights of GOP power on the brink of becoming the running
00:02:14.380
mate for President Covfefe. And then she had to go bragging about shooting her family dog
00:02:20.480
20 years ago in her memoir. And I don't know, I don't know who made, who could have possibly made
00:02:26.760
that book cover. If you're only listening to the show, it's a, it's a, it looks a little bit AI
00:02:31.180
generated picture of Christy Noem walking her dog. Stick to your guns, my life in politics. That's not
00:02:35.400
nice. That's not, I don't, I actually don't even know the real title of the book. I've only seen
00:02:39.360
the experts of it. And here is what she said. I'm just going to read it before you form your
00:02:46.560
opinion. This is what went viral and it probably is going to take out Christy Noem. I hated that
00:02:53.060
dog, Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself untrainable, dangerous to anyone she came
00:02:57.420
in contact with and less than worthless as a hunting dog. At that moment, Noem says, I realized I had to
00:03:01.700
put her down. Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun,
00:03:05.440
then led Cricket to a gravel pit. It was not a pleasant job, she writes, but it had to be done.
00:03:11.000
And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done. Incredibly,
00:03:15.160
Noem's tale of slaughter is not finished. Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that
00:03:20.840
was nasty and mean because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled disgusting,
00:03:25.240
musky, rancid, and loved to chase Noem's children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.
00:03:29.920
Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog.
00:03:34.460
But though she dragged him to a gravel pit, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived
00:03:39.520
the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then hurried back to the
00:03:45.200
gravel pit and put him down. At that point, Noem writes, she realized a construction crew had watched
00:03:50.320
her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus
00:03:56.700
to arrive and drop off Noem's children. Kennedy looked around, confused. Noem writes of her daughter,
00:04:01.120
who asked, hey, where's Cricket? Cricket, I assume, was the dog, not the goat.
00:04:07.180
In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year,
00:04:10.980
Noem adds, I guess if I were a better politician, I wouldn't tell the story here.
00:04:15.880
Okay. Okay. Three observations here. First one is, this probably was bad politics.
00:04:29.700
Generally speaking, if you are a governor, even if you're a member of Congress, if you have national
00:04:35.580
political aspirations, you should not brag about killing your dog and give all the gory details of
00:04:42.960
killing your dog and then killing that other goat that you don't like. And then your kids show up
00:04:47.580
later and ask, hey, where'd the dog go? Probably not a good idea. So my second observation, which is
00:04:54.380
related, is this was a political miscalculation. But it was a political calculation. It was a
00:04:59.560
miscalculation, but this was a calculated revelation. Kristi Noem did not accidentally put
00:05:05.020
this in her memoir. A lot of people are saying, what a crazy oversight. Why would she leave that
00:05:10.160
detail in? She chose to include this detail because she felt that it would make her look tough
00:05:16.220
because she's a woman politician. And being a woman politician means you have a vulnerability
00:05:21.320
because you're a member of the weaker sex. So in order to bolster your political bona fides,
00:05:27.080
you have to make yourself seem tough. Margaret Thatcher did this very well as the iron lady. That's
00:05:33.180
what we called her. She was so tough. She's tougher than most of the men, right? She had to overcompensate.
00:05:38.020
Same thing here with Kristi Noem. The miscalculation is she thought that the toughness that would
00:05:46.260
come through the pages of her description of killing these animals would benefit her politically.
00:05:54.080
It probably won't because people really like their dogs. And so it makes her seem like a psycho killer.
00:06:00.120
Now, I only somewhat jokingly tweeted. I said, unpopular take here. I know everyone's raking
00:06:05.520
Kristi Noem over the coals, but this actually makes me like and respect her more. And I'm a little bit
00:06:10.720
joking here, obviously, because it's totally politically backfired for her. But what I'm
00:06:15.320
getting at there is I want my politicians to be just tough as nails, cold-blooded killers. Okay,
00:06:21.840
we are going up against a political establishment right now that is throwing us in jail for disagreeing
00:06:27.860
with them. We're going up against a political establishment that is prosecuting for the first
00:06:31.680
time ever. Former presidents, leaders of the opposition that's throwing Midwestern grannies
00:06:36.220
into isolation and solitary confinement because they had the audacity to show up and take selfies
00:06:42.420
in the Capitol Rotunda on January 6th, the worst day in history. The worst insurrection ever in America,
00:06:49.300
even though it was only months after an eight-month insurrection that the Democrats led called BLM.
00:06:53.840
I'm getting so feisty here. I'm smacking my own lamp, but I'm not shooting any dogs.
00:06:57.920
So I somewhat jokingly, but somewhat sincerely like it when our politicians are tough, when
00:07:03.940
they're killers, and obviously that's Kristi Noem. Now, there was context that was missing
00:07:09.560
out of this tale of gore and blood and horror from Kristi Noem, and that's what brings me to my
00:07:16.660
third point. This is the context that was missing right before this account. You hear Cricket,
00:07:23.820
the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like a trained assassin. When Noem finally grabbed Cricket,
00:07:29.560
she says, the dog whipped around to bite me. Then, as the chicken's owner wept, because,
00:07:34.720
more context, Cricket had just massacred a bunch of chickens, had just eaten some guy's property,
00:07:41.000
okay, and then was trying to bite Kristi Noem. As the chicken's owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologized,
00:07:47.500
wrote the shocked family a check for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses
00:07:51.340
littering the scene of the crime. Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was the picture of pure joy.
00:07:56.960
I hated that dog, Noem writes, adding that Cricket was untrainable, blah, blah, blah.
00:08:00.560
Okay, my third point here is, yes, it was politically dumb for Noem to admit this.
00:08:06.220
Yes, her political calculation misfired. I'm mixing metaphors, you get the point.
00:08:10.960
But the third point is, Noem didn't do anything wrong. You might say it wasn't advisable. You
00:08:19.700
might say there were better things she could have done. She could have given the dog up for
00:08:22.620
adoption. She could have tried to train the dog. There is nothing wrong with a human being
00:08:28.700
humanely killing an animal. There's nothing wrong. You're all, not all of you, but many of you are
00:08:34.060
eating meat right now. Very few people live on farms anymore, I guess. It's a little bit different.
00:08:40.040
Maybe if you live in the city, you take your puppy, you take your little cat in a stroller down the
00:08:46.140
sidewalk. I'm not joking. I have friends who have done this in the city. They'll put their animal in
00:08:50.840
a stroller so that the poor little paws of the animal don't touch the dirty sidewalk. And then you'll
00:08:56.460
go and you'll take them to a doctor and you'll pay thousands of dollars to treat the animal for
00:09:00.320
whatever ailment or to try to train the animal psychologically. And sometimes that doesn't work.
00:09:05.380
And then you'll pay even more money to euthanize it. That doesn't happen in the country, okay? That
00:09:09.900
doesn't happen on farms. And sometimes if a dog is threatening people, and if a dog is destroying
00:09:17.380
other people's property, sometimes you got to put the dog down like old yeller. It would be one thing
00:09:22.640
if Christine were torturing this dog like a serial killer or something. That would be wrong. And it
00:09:27.300
would be wrong. It's wrong to mistreat animals, not because the animals have any rights. Animals
00:09:31.840
don't have a rational soul. The reason it's wrong, nevertheless, to mistreat animals is because it
00:09:36.560
deadens our own humanity. C.S. Lewis writes about this extensively. If you are needlessly inflicting
00:09:43.040
pain and suffering to the degree that an animal can suffer on some poor creature, that's deadening
00:09:49.980
your humanity. That's what makes it wrong because you are a rational creature and that's harmful to
00:09:56.100
your soul and it's harmful to society. But there's nothing wrong intrinsically with humanely putting
00:10:02.960
down a farm dog. A bullet to the head is about as humane a way as you can put down any animal.
00:10:09.540
You say, well, Christine Ohm should have given it up for adoption. Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
00:10:12.500
Maybe she should have tried to train it harder. Okay, I guess. What about the chickens though, man?
00:10:16.500
We've got all this sympathy for Cricket, the assassin dog. We've got all this sympathy for this old
00:10:21.880
nasty goat. What about the chickens? Won't somebody please think about the chickens? And
00:10:27.600
more importantly, because I don't really care about the chickens or the goat or like any of these
00:10:30.980
things. Well, I don't wish harm on these animals. I just don't. They're animals though, guys. And I
00:10:37.260
care a lot more about the owner of the chickens. And I care more about the people that the animals
00:10:42.620
can threaten sometimes. We used to think that way. 50 years ago, this political story would not have
00:10:50.440
made anyone in most of America bat an eyelash. And the fact that it does today tells you something,
00:10:57.920
not about the changing morality of putting down a farm animal, but about the changing politics of
00:11:02.960
America. And you saw this reach a fever pitch with the most histrionic reaction that I got to my
00:11:09.380
mild little joke about Kristi Noem's dog. There's so much more to say. First though,
00:11:14.840
go to CozyEarth.com and use promo code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. As Mother's Day approaches,
00:11:19.700
there's no better time to celebrate the special women in your life. This Mother's Day, consider
00:11:24.400
giving her the gift of Cozy Earth, a luxurious sleep experience she truly deserves. Crafted from
00:11:29.660
viscose bamboo, they are temperature regulating, ensuring a restful night's sleep for both hot and
00:11:34.540
cold sleepers. I absolutely love these sheets. But you might say, Michael, I don't know if I trust
00:11:40.300
your taste. Well, you probably trust my wife who has far superior taste. Sweet little Elisa says to
00:11:45.720
me the other day, she goes, Mac, what's your code for Cozy Earth? I said, huh? What do you mean?
00:11:51.360
What's your code? I want more Cozy Earth. I want them for the other beds. I said, well, okay,
00:11:56.360
I can ask if maybe they can send some. She goes, I don't care. Just give me the code and I'll order it
00:12:00.820
now. I want them, Mac. So, and she's right. She's right. I want to get them for all of my beds.
00:12:06.460
This Mother's Day tree is a special woman in your life to the luxury she deserves with Cozy Earth
00:12:09.780
bedding and sleepwear. She deserves it. Use promo code Knowles at checkout for 35% off.
00:12:14.040
CozyEarth.com. After you place your order, select podcast in the survey, then select my show in the
00:12:19.220
dropdown menu that follows CozyEarth.com promo code Knowles. The most histrionic, hysterical reaction
00:12:26.160
that I got to my joke about Christy Gnome's poor little pooch comes from Glenn Greenwald,
00:12:31.900
the liberal left-wing journalist who writes, he took a picture of my little joke and he says,
00:12:38.420
now you have the pathetic attention whores who have never once shown bravery or moral courage,
00:12:46.020
thinking it finally makes them tough to say how aroused they are by the shooting of puppies.
00:12:51.540
When did I do that? Gnome herself boasts, am I being too politically incorrect for you?
00:12:56.720
Weak, broken people. Okay. This guy, first of all, seems really fun at parties. I'm sure he's a
00:13:01.860
delight to be around. But second of all, this actually shows you a problem with our politics.
00:13:11.620
Our culture, we don't have children anymore. Our culture, we don't make families anymore.
00:13:18.320
Our culture, we don't pass down our cultural inheritance anymore. We are increasingly a sterile
00:13:27.880
culture. And I don't mean this, I don't mean we're an infertile culture. Some people suffer
00:13:33.480
from that. It's a fallen world. It's a tough life. I mean, we're choosing not to propagate our
00:13:39.240
civilization. We're choosing not to get married. We're choosing not to have children. We're choosing
00:13:44.120
not to educate the children we do have in the great cultural inheritance that we've been so
00:13:48.820
fortunate and blessed to receive. We are a sterile culture increasingly. And sterile people
00:13:55.140
and sterile cultures confuse dogs for children. Look around you. There are many people who are choosing
00:14:05.540
not to have children, not to get married and start families, who are, as they do that, they are
00:14:13.060
much more inclined to treat their little pooch like a baby. And it's very, very disordered.
00:14:20.880
Okay, this point of view, you see reach its apotheosis in the CNN interview of Philip Rines,
00:14:30.320
who was a Hillary Clinton spokesman, a top aide to Hillary for many years. He perfectly articulates
00:14:37.840
this disordered view of the relation of man to the rest of the created world.
00:14:43.920
Everyone's blood is boiling. I am one of these people that not only loves animals and has always
00:14:49.160
had pets, but just prefers them to people. We don't deserve them. That she thought that that was a good
00:14:56.360
idea. I mean, there's a special circle of hell that's reserved for people who mistreat animals.
00:15:01.620
It's a real window into it. I was, as I was leaving, I bumped into my neighbor and his dog,
00:15:07.540
Georgie. Georgie doesn't really like me because he associates me with my two cats. But I jokingly said,
00:15:13.480
Georgie, I'm going to go on TV and I'm going to defend your honor.
00:15:17.520
Yeah, this is how they think. This is how these people think. When it gets down to it,
00:15:23.960
it's not even just about, I have my two cats and I think there's a special circle of hell
00:15:28.040
for people who shoot farm dogs when they're threatening people and property.
00:15:35.460
Don't forget, by the way, this is Philip Rines. This is the guy who supports killing human babies.
00:15:40.600
This is the Democratic Party, which supports killing human babies up until the moment of birth
00:15:44.440
and maybe after birth. No problem. That's a right. We need to celebrate that.
00:15:48.660
But if you humanely put down a farm animal, all of a sudden you're super duper mega Hitler and you
00:15:54.840
deserve to be in the lowest circle of hell. It's that line he says there, I prefer animals to people.
00:16:03.460
I think that's true. I think the libs do prefer animals to people. I think they prefer the delta
00:16:08.240
smelt to people. I think they prefer the rocks and the trees and the oceans to people. And I think
00:16:13.960
they would inflict suffering on people to protect the ants and the polar bears. And because I think
00:16:24.120
they would upend our entire political order to stop the sun monster from threatening the rest of
00:16:29.920
the lower beasts. Very disordered. I like animals well enough. I like looking at them. I think they're
00:16:36.820
pretty. They're great. They're here for our enjoyment. Okay. We're not here to serve the animals.
00:16:43.040
The animals are here for our enjoyment. We ought to be good stewards of our environment. I'm all for
00:16:49.440
that. But the I prefer animals to people. Yes, you do. Because you're histrionic on television
00:16:54.360
about a woman putting down her untrainable farm dog. But you're gleeful about women killing little
00:17:01.060
children, killing human children. You obviously do prefer animals to people. All of the people who
00:17:07.040
choose not to have children, who choose to treat their little pooch like it's a child.
00:17:13.040
They obviously prefer animals to people. And that's very, very disordered. Because as cute
00:17:19.440
and fun as animals are and as pets can be, they're not human beings. They're not made in the image and
00:17:28.520
likeness of God. They don't have rational souls. They don't have abstract conceptions of justice.
00:17:32.760
They can't reason. They can't love because love is reasonable. Because love has to do with desire
00:17:41.760
and intellect. It's not... You can't have a civilization of puppies, guys. Okay? And the
00:17:48.080
left wants to get... Philip Raines... I keep mispronouncing his name. I keep pronouncing it
00:17:51.940
differently every time. Hillary Clinton, the left broadly, and the sentimentalists and the
00:17:58.120
secularists on the so-called right, they seem to think we can have a civilization of puppies.
00:18:05.100
We can't. If we don't have kids and if we make an idol out of animals and we take them out of their
00:18:11.340
proper place, we're not going to have much of a civilization at all. I'll put a final point on
00:18:17.260
this here. Even Pope Francis agrees that the idolatry of puppies has gone way too far. Pope Francis often
00:18:26.860
considered a liberal pope. And yet he comes out and said, today we see a form of selfishness. We see
00:18:34.760
that some people do not want to have a child. He's not criticizing people who can't have a child. Many
00:18:39.080
people can't have a child. And that's very sad. And they suffer and they bear their cross. Saying,
00:18:43.640
we see that some people do not want to have a child. Sometimes they have one and that's it. But
00:18:47.560
they have dogs and cats that take the place of children. This may make people laugh, but it is a
00:18:51.680
reality. The practice, quote, is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us,
00:18:57.340
takes away our humanity. It absolutely does. Now, moving on from the pooches,
00:19:03.100
but sticking with Pope Francis. Pope Francis has just come out. He has weighed in on the Israel-Gaza
00:19:10.560
war and the Ukraine-Russia war and has said, a negotiated peace is better than a war without end.
00:19:16.960
And I've got to say, I think the Holy Father is absolutely right in the case of these wars in
00:19:22.900
particular. And the reason I say that is not because I don't think that it's good sometimes
00:19:28.040
in war to have a clear victory. If you can have a clear victory, then sometimes that can secure the
00:19:33.960
peace for a much longer period of time after that. Sometimes that can save more lives. It can do more
00:19:38.780
good. So I'm not saying we just need to end all war immediately. All we are saying is give peace a
00:19:43.740
chance, kumbaya kind of stuff. But in the case of the Israel-Gaza war, what is the end of the Israel-Gaza
00:19:51.080
war? The end of the Israel-Gaza war happens one of two ways. The true end without a negotiated peace,
00:19:57.740
it ends one of two ways. Israel gets rid of all the Palestinians, all the Gazans at least,
00:20:03.300
half of the Palestinians, or the Palestinians get rid of all the Israelis. That's pretty much it.
00:20:08.640
The state of Israel has said Gaza run by Hamas is an unacceptable security risk. So the rational
00:20:17.660
political desire there is ethnic cleansing in Gaza. And the Gazans, for their part,
00:20:24.260
they're not even implicit about it. They write in Hamas's charter that their explicit goal is the
00:20:29.780
abolition of the state of Israel. So the rational, and at least in the case of the Palestinians,
00:20:35.600
the stated explicit political goal is the ethnic cleansing of the other. So the only way that you
00:20:41.360
can avoid either of those things, which I think most people would find morally unacceptable,
00:20:44.500
is a negotiated peace. Same thing with Ukraine and Russia. Do you think Ukraine is going to beat
00:20:49.600
Russia? Do you think it's desirable for America and the West to get into a hot war with Russia,
00:20:57.520
a former superpower, a nuclear power that's got missiles aimed at us? We avoided it for 70 years
00:21:03.380
during the Cold War. Well, I guess 50 years during the Cold War. Since then, some decades have elapsed
00:21:08.280
of a slightly kinder, gentler relationship with Russia, but descending once again back into Cold
00:21:16.480
War. You think that's in our interest? No. You think that Ukraine is actually going to defeat Russia
00:21:22.260
militarily, reclaim all of its conquered territory? No, nobody seriously thinks that's going to happen.
00:21:27.300
So all we're doing, the U.S. grand strategy is just dragging this out to kill more Russians.
00:21:31.420
Okay. And more Ukrainians as a result. Wouldn't we say that ultimately a negotiated peace would be
00:21:40.760
better here? I'm not saying in all conflicts, but in these conflicts, it seems that the Holy
00:21:45.720
Father is totally right. There is so much more to say. First though, go to jpcatholic.edu
00:21:52.260
slash Knowles. Liberal controlled universities and entertainment establishments are two of the
00:21:58.680
biggest battlegrounds for the health and sanity of our culture. John Paul, the great Catholic
00:22:02.680
university in Escondido, California gives creative hands-on training in their craft alongside a robust
00:22:08.920
liberal arts education. JP Catholic offers programs in film production, animation, screenwriting,
00:22:13.740
music design, and even video games, forming the next generation of creative professionals who will
00:22:18.200
bring truth, beauty, and goodness to the entertainment industry. If you are not looking
00:22:22.260
for a degree, but want to sharpen your skills, JP Catholic also offers free online courses. Right
00:22:27.340
now, JP Catholic is offering our listeners a full application fee waiver at jpcatholic.edu
00:22:32.480
slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Applications are still open for this fall with generous scholarships
00:22:37.840
available. Pursue excellence in your creative craft without sacrificing your values. Visit jpcatholic.edu
00:22:44.640
slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, that is jpcatholic.edu slash Knowles. Speaking of religion, big news,
00:22:57.220
Russell Brand, the comedian, actor, guru, podcaster, celebrity, has just announced that he
00:23:07.500
Die and be reborn. This Sunday, I'm taking the plunge. I'm getting baptized. At the moment,
00:23:16.880
I'm very curious as to what you who have been baptized feel about it, what your expectations
00:23:24.020
are of the event prior and what it's actually like. What's been explained to me is it's an
00:23:29.580
opportunity to die and be reborn, an opportunity to leave the past behind and be reborn in Christ's
00:23:37.340
name, like it says in Galatians, that you can live as an enlightened and awakened person.
00:23:43.960
Sometimes I think of non-Christian perspectives on it, like Marcus Aurelius saying, you are already
00:23:48.840
dead, now live the rest of your life properly. Or the Buddhist saying, put down the corpse.
00:23:53.540
All of these things seem so inviting and beautiful. I know a lot of people are cynical about the
00:24:01.460
increasing interest in Christianity and the return to God. But to me, it's obvious as meaning
00:24:07.500
deteriorates in the modern world, as our value systems and institutions crumble, all of us become
00:24:12.920
increasingly aware that there is this eerily familiar awakening and beckoning figure that we've
00:24:19.700
all known all of our lives. And then he did it. Russell Brand just put out a video just a few
00:24:26.720
hours ago, I think, where he says he was baptized. And he goes on about how he's done all these drugs in
00:24:33.160
his life, but he was always disappointed because they didn't deliver the spiritual transcendence that
00:24:39.220
they had promised. But with baptism, he said, he goes, it's only been a few hours, but I felt
00:24:44.880
something turn on in me. I just felt something change in me. And he did a full immersion baptism
00:24:52.340
in the River Thames. So I don't know. I would imagine Russell Brand was not baptized in a Catholic
00:24:57.980
church. Although the other day, Russell Brand prayed the rosary on air. So I don't know, really.
00:25:05.880
And then more broadly, we are seeing a major series of conversions to Christianity, specifically,
00:25:15.360
disproportionately among them to the Catholic church. Candace, for sure, but many other people
00:25:20.680
too. Now Russell Brand. And what is this about? What is going on? I'll tell you exactly what this
00:25:26.240
is about. Past all of the political analysis and sociological analysis, what this is about is that
00:25:35.760
the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. That's what it's really about. If you
00:25:40.160
want the macro historical view, that's what it's about. Thads come and go. Ideologies come and go.
00:25:46.460
Heresies come and go. But for 2,000 years, the church stands strong. And since the beginning,
00:25:53.500
the experts and the geniuses and the elite classes have been predicting the imminent demise of the church.
00:26:00.700
And then we see their demise. Their individual demise, because we're all mortals and we all die
00:26:09.120
eventually. We see the demise of their institutions, their silly little heresies, their fads, their all
00:26:16.080
of it. That all goes away and the church remains. It is the enduring institution in our civilization and
00:26:24.980
in all civilizations. It is the turning point of history. I believe that as a matter of faith.
00:26:32.420
But if you don't believe that as a matter of faith, if you're not a Christian, if you.
00:26:38.360
Just the historical fact that the church remains and continues, even when it looks like all hope is
00:26:43.840
lost. You know, 20 years ago, the new atheists are on the rise. Religion is a punchline. No one wants
00:26:48.760
to. There are scandals. There's knavish imbecility in the conduct of the church. And then what happens?
00:26:56.200
Everyone just starts converting again because the Holy Spirit is real and God is real and the
00:27:03.140
Trinity is real. You know, God, the Father, God, the Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit,
00:27:07.160
the whole and the church, the visible expression of God's people. It's real. That's my take on it,
00:27:14.480
at least. And if you don't agree with me, okay, how do you explain it? How do you explain it? At this
00:27:19.620
moment, Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson's wife, Tammy, just converted weeks ago to the faith.
00:27:28.180
Many, many people. Jordan, if you had asked Jordan five, 10 years ago, Jordan, do you believe in God?
00:27:35.120
He would have said, well, you know, it depends on what you mean by the definition of God and
00:27:38.420
believe and all. And, and, but now I think he's clearly on a journey to all is the biggest public
00:27:46.260
intellectual in the world. Probably all it just, how do you explain it? How on earth do you explain
00:27:54.020
it to me? It's very, very clear. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Now there is
00:28:01.520
a political analysis to be made here and it comes from Alexei de Tocqueville. Alexei de Tocqueville
00:28:06.080
wrote Democracy in America. It's probably the most famous and most important critique and observation
00:28:12.840
of America, certainly of early America. Tocqueville travels all around America, all those little
00:28:18.080
towns in New England. And he, he writes his observations as a European, as a Frenchman.
00:28:24.180
And those, they're enduring observations. They've been proven true in so many ways.
00:28:29.600
One lesser discussed aspect of his book, Democracy in America, talks about America's religion.
00:28:34.300
And he says, America, it's kind of weird, you know, because it's a ostensibly Protestant country,
00:28:39.960
but Catholicism seems to grow here in a weird way, even though there's kind of overt top level
00:28:48.180
hostility to it, it grows. There's fertile ground for that. And Alexei de Tocqueville makes a prediction.
00:28:54.060
He says, over time, Americans are going to become more Catholic or they're going to leave Christianity
00:29:00.980
entirely. Now, many wonderful Protestants out there in the audience, some wonderful Protestants
00:29:05.620
in my family. So, you know, I'm not saying this has all happened overnight, but it is simply an
00:29:10.940
historical fact. America has become much more Catholic over the years and America has become
00:29:16.500
much more atheist. And the people who are converting that, they're not all converting to Catholicism,
00:29:20.440
but a lot of them are. Maybe most of them are. And there's a lot of growth of atheism. And maybe,
00:29:28.080
maybe Tocqueville was right. And maybe that old ancient institution, ever ancient, ever new,
00:29:36.920
maybe we're seeing the continuation of what has been 2,000 years of history so far continue to play
00:29:44.780
out, even here in America. And even, even over there in England with Russell Brand and the other
00:29:49.700
people who are finding faith. You know, folks, you can subscribe to the Michael Knowles YouTube
00:29:54.320
channel right now. You can smash that subscribe button, ring the bell so you never miss an episode.
00:30:01.420
Speaking of the state of America, we just had the White House Correspondents Association dinner.
00:30:05.800
This, this dinner's existed for many, many years. It got a lot of play during the Obama years.
00:30:11.420
And I don't think it's even so much because of Obama as it's, it's because the political
00:30:16.440
journalists had decided to really make celebrities of themselves because those were the early days of
00:30:21.240
social media. And one thing I'm happy about, I don't want to just complain about Washington.
00:30:26.160
One thing I'm happy about is they've stopped calling this dinner nerd prom. That's what they
00:30:30.360
used to call it, nerd prom for a period in the early 20 teens, which I always found so offensive
00:30:35.680
to nerds because these political journalists aren't nerds. They're not particularly
00:30:41.300
intelligent. They're not particularly educated. They're not particularly studious. They're not,
00:30:46.160
they're flattering themselves. They're not nerds. They're generally political sycophants. And they
00:30:51.460
go there and then the Democrat president comes out and torches his, his enemies and they give him
00:30:58.020
more glowing coverage, which is all they do. They just exist to be the propaganda arm for the liberal
00:31:03.300
establishment. So this year was no different. Well, it was no different in the room, but it was a
00:31:07.980
little different outside the room. In the room, presidents, even when they don't know their own
00:31:12.140
name, generally do pretty well because other people write their jokes. So they hire top
00:31:16.480
comedians to write their jokes. I felt Joe Biden's set played pretty well.
00:31:20.980
Well, Donald's had a few tough days lately. You might call it stormy weather.
00:31:25.880
What the hell? Trump's so desperate. He started reading those Bibles. He's selling.
00:31:38.940
Then he got to the first commandment. You shall have no other gods before me.
00:31:45.520
That's when he put it down and said, this book's not for me.
00:31:48.780
Okay. Ha ha ha. It's fun. These jokes are fine. They're fine, acceptable, generally inoffensive
00:31:54.840
political jokes. It's certainly less offensive than when Barack Obama came out at the White
00:31:59.640
House Correspondents' Dinner and talked about how he was going to start droning Justin Bieber or
00:32:03.060
whatever, the Jonas Brothers or something. That was a little much, a little too real, pal.
00:32:08.660
But these jokes, they're fine. And the jokes don't even really land a punch on Trump because what
00:32:13.580
is the upshot of the jokes? The upshot of the jokes is Trump is extremely confident,
00:32:18.600
very sure of himself, and he is famously a playboy. Yeah, that's true. I mean, Trump would
00:32:25.780
have bragged about that himself for most of his life. So yeah, okay, that's fine. Whatever. No big
00:32:31.180
deal. And then all the fancy political journalists in the room, they're all laughing and it's all just
00:32:36.080
a lovely night. But outside, outside, it was a different story. Outside, there was a protest and
00:32:42.420
not just a small protest. There was a huge protest from the Palestine Liberation Movement.
00:32:52.760
Free Palestine, Biden's legacy is genocide. Free Palestine. And it's not, this isn't just a
00:33:01.020
handful of people. This is a long ceasefire now. This is a long, huge group of people. Lots of cops,
00:33:10.000
lots of signs. Seems to go pretty deep. I can't even see the end of the protest. This thing is
00:33:15.240
going on and on for streets and streets and streets. And what are they protesting? Well,
00:33:20.500
if they're protesting the White House Correspondents Association dinner, that means
00:33:23.580
they're not just protesting Biden. They're not just protesting the president. They're protesting
00:33:28.260
the journalists, the journalists who they accuse of covering up a genocide. Again, I'm not saying I
00:33:34.980
agree with these guys. Obviously not. You look at them out there waving the Palestine flag and
00:33:40.040
all this talk, you know, all this kind of left-wing language. And you realize if you're an American
00:33:46.060
conservative, you say, that ain't our people. That's not the right-wingers. Right-wingers generally
00:33:53.240
don't wave the flags of Palestine. Okay. Right-wingers generally don't wave non-American flags
00:33:58.940
at rallies. Maybe we'll wave like a Trump flag or something, but that'll also be in red,
00:34:03.160
white, and blue, and it'll just be a riff on the American flag. We ain't waving Palestine flags.
00:34:06.880
Those ain't our guys. Those are leftists protesting the left-wing president and the left-wing journalists.
00:34:15.420
That's a big problem for Joe Biden. And it's a problem for the credibility of the establishment,
00:34:19.840
the so-called journalists who are the propagandists for the White House.
00:34:23.240
That's a big problem because it means they've lost the people. Joe Biden has won over the ruling
00:34:30.460
political class. He's got them. He's had them in his pocket for many decades now.
00:34:35.720
That's not a problem. And the journalists in that room, they've won over the bureaucracy. They've won
00:34:41.460
over the deep state. You know, they've won over the lobbyists and the corporations. But the thing that
00:34:47.280
neither of them have is the people, and not just our people, not just the conservatives obviously don't
00:34:52.440
like Joe Biden or the journalists at all. Their own people, they have increasingly lost their own
00:34:57.900
people. And this is why a third-party candidate like a Bobby Kennedy, who's a protest vote for
00:35:01.520
leftists, that's a big problem for them. This is why a Marianne Williamson, for goodness sakes,
00:35:07.140
would probably be something of a problem for them. This is the big political weakness.
00:35:13.480
They've got all their entrenched political power, but they don't have the people. And the people
00:35:17.980
increasingly are inclined to support conservatives, not because they're flag-waving right-wingers,
00:35:24.360
far from it, because they view themselves as having a common enemy. Which is why, you know,
00:35:30.620
I hate to say I told you so, but this is why I predicted from day one that Bobby Kennedy would
00:35:35.240
prove a bigger threat to Joe Biden than to Donald Trump. Because the left is in a period of major
00:35:43.360
division right now. And for all the talk we hear about, the insurrection is January 6th,
00:35:47.700
Donald Trump, the greatest threat to democracy. Many discontented left-wingers who ordinarily would
00:35:54.780
vote for Democrats who are liberal people, they are far angrier at Joe Biden, far more fearful of
00:36:02.400
what Joe Biden can do to the country than they are of Donald Trump. The Daily Wire is launching its
00:36:07.440
first animated series, Mr. Burcham, premiering for free on May 12th, exclusively on Daily Wire+.
00:36:11.520
Our friend Adam Carolla is the creator of the series and the voice of Mr. Burcham, a traditional,
00:36:15.320
straight-talking junior high teacher facing down the absurdities of the education system
00:36:19.100
and the culture wars. Alongside his friend Gage, Mr. Burcham is a true old-school hero in a new
00:36:24.620
school world. We rallied an unparalleled lineup of talent for the series, including Megyn Kelly,
00:36:30.520
Roseanne Barr, Sage Steele, Danny Trejo, Kyle Dunnigan, Patrick Warburton, Tyler Fisher,
00:36:37.040
and our very own Brett Cooper, and a whole lot more. Take a look at the official trailer.
00:36:40.380
Just tell me what you need. Jumping in the first one. Rolling. Speed. Action. Sawbuck's looking a
00:36:47.720
little chubby-wubby. So I bought him some new food. It's organic and vegan. Dogs are supposed to eat
00:36:54.180
meat. They're descendants of wolves. You ever see a vegan wolf on the Nature Channel? I'm a vegan.
00:37:02.460
Coffee is for closers, ladies. Listen up! Hey, don't make this a prison hug. I'm a heteronormative,
00:37:08.500
cisgendered, white male. For which I apologize. I'm black, and that used to be enough, but I'm
00:37:14.980
also bilingual, and I'm non-binary. We're the army! We drink more before 9 a.m. than you Navy
00:37:20.980
pukes do all day. He rubbed all the fur off his emotional support ferry. The damn thing looked like
00:37:32.640
Charity and work. Two words that should never go together. Like women and opinions.
00:37:38.640
I want a burly man. They're salty and make me dizzy.
00:37:41.280
Sorry, just need to find a thingy to fix my gaming chair.
00:37:44.480
When I was on the construction site, my chair was a five-gallon bucket. It was also my toilet.
00:37:50.640
Hey, I'm done. I'm going back to bed. Thanks a lot.
00:37:58.080
Prepare for the razor-sharp comedy that only Adam Carolla and The Daily Wire can deliver.
00:38:06.720
Do not miss out on the series premiere streaming free exclusively on Daily Wire Plus on Sunday,
00:38:11.840
May 12th. My favorite comment on Friday is from Diego Calva for 14, who says,
00:38:18.560
Joe has worked more jobs than Homer Simpson by this point. It's amazing. Just like any group that Joe
00:38:24.240
Joe Biden's talking to, he shares their experiences and knows their struggle and feels their pain.
00:38:30.880
It's so weird. It's almost like the man is a totally empty suit and just shapeshifts to
00:38:38.720
fit whatever group he's talking to. Really, really weird. You bet I was driving an 18-wheeler, Jack.
00:38:44.320
Me and Corn Pop. All those little kids with my hairy legs. Okay. Now, what do the people think?
00:38:52.480
Biden's lost the people. The liberal journalists have lost the people. What do the people think?
00:38:57.600
The people believe, they were just asked by The Economist and YouGov, so it's kind of a left-wing
00:39:01.600
poll, what the top issues are. The top issues in this election, inflation and immigration.
00:39:10.320
Inflation or prices, 24%. The second most popular choice was immigration at 14%.
00:39:17.440
97% of respondents tabbed inflation as important. So statistically, everybody says inflation is
00:39:25.680
important. 77% said very important, more than three-quarters of respondents. 85% consider
00:39:31.920
immigration important. 56% say very important. And Biden is more than 30 points underwater on both of
00:39:39.760
these issues. 29% of people approve Biden's handling of inflation and prices. 62% disapprove.
00:39:48.640
Biden on independence, 17% approve of how he's handled inflation. 29% of people approve his handling of
00:39:57.120
immigration. 61% disapprove his handling of immigration. Biden is in big trouble. Big, big trouble. So the
00:40:06.320
only thing he can do, if the two most important issues, he is that far underwater, there's no way
00:40:11.600
to make up that ground. There's no way to, I mean, I guess he could fix the problem in that he could lock
00:40:15.600
up the border. It's only April, so there's still a little bit of time before the election. Maybe he could
00:40:19.980
start to turn that around, but then he would alienate his base, his base, which wants open borders. His
00:40:25.460
establishment doesn't totally want open borders, or they at least don't want to deal with the social
00:40:29.400
consequences of it. But his base does want open borders. Most of the American people don't want
00:40:33.720
open borders. His base wants free money and student loan forgiveness and all the rest of the Democrat
00:40:40.140
giveaways. Most people, virtually everyone, doesn't want to deal with the consequences of that.
00:40:46.560
So what does he do? He's stuck. The only political strategy available to him is to distract. The only
00:40:53.860
political strategy available to him is to say, Donald Trump wants to ban all abortions and punish
00:40:59.720
women. Donald Trump, his ally killed her puppy once. We like puppies, don't we? Even though, actually,
00:41:07.580
Joe Biden's dog keeps biting Secret Service agents. That's another one. Maybe we need to get
00:41:12.280
Kristi Noem in there. Take Joe Biden's old pooch out to the gravel pit and deal with him the way
00:41:19.540
that we would deal with someone who bites the Secret Service. Anyway, I'm not calling for that.
00:41:24.300
Just saying if Kristi Noem does visit the White House, maybe worth, you know,
00:41:28.320
yoink an old yeller Biden there. The dog, not the president. I'm digging myself a deeper and deeper
00:41:34.980
gravel pit the more I even talk about this. But that's all Biden can do. That's all he can do
00:41:40.960
is distract. Oh, look over there. Look at that butterfly. Republicans are so racist. It's an
00:41:47.220
insurrection. They have to even speak in these really nebulous kinds of terms, these metapolitical
00:41:53.140
terms. Oh, the Republicans are a threat to democracy. Why do they have to talk in this metapolitical way?
00:41:59.020
The threat to democracy and freedom and equality. Because if you get to the nitty gritty of any particular
00:42:04.080
aspect of our actual way of life, Biden has really, really messed up the country.
00:42:10.160
So he can't point to those. He's got to speak in the abstract. Liberalism does really, really well
00:42:14.220
in the abstract. Freedom, equality, liberation. It does really poorly in the concrete reality
00:42:20.560
because it's disconnected from reality. It assumes a false anthropology, a false understanding of human
00:42:27.160
nature, a false relation of man to the rest of the creatures and to our creator. Liberalism denies a
00:42:34.020
original sin in a way, intimating the perfectibility of man on earth. It's just wrong. It's just got a
00:42:44.060
whole host of problems. So they got to speak in the abstract, concrete reality. No bueno for them.
00:42:50.500
So speaking of our national future, economic and otherwise, how will you die? When will you die? And
00:42:57.720
how rich will you be? There is a new app that can apparently predict that. This new app, I'm not
00:43:04.000
even going to name it because it's bad for you. And there are some warnings about it. It was created
00:43:10.660
by scientists in Denmark and the US. The people who created this fed the app data from Danish health and
00:43:19.460
demographic records for 6 million people who were between the ages of 35 and 65. Half of the
00:43:25.840
participants died between 2016 and 2020. It's pretty bad. Between 35 and 65, half of these guys died.
00:43:32.400
What's going on in Denmark? I don't know. Researchers found that this app predicted who would die and who
00:43:38.300
would live with an accuracy of 78%. 78%. It's pretty good. Now, what data did the AI just use data pertaining
00:43:49.460
to your health? No. They used information such as income, profession, and medical history to determine
00:43:54.800
how long people would live. They used information pertaining to social life events. And they predicted
00:44:00.880
social life events that they might experience in years to come. And according to a professor at the
00:44:05.020
Technical University of Denmark, lead author of the study, it could predict health outcomes. It
00:44:10.620
could predict fertility or obesity, or you could maybe predict who will get cancer, who doesn't
00:44:14.900
get cancer. But it could also predict if you're going to make a lot of money. People are warning now,
00:44:20.920
don't try this app out because there are a lot of copycat apps and they might hack your information
00:44:24.380
and it's just not a good road to go down. But even if there weren't copycat apps that were trying to
00:44:29.300
steal your financial information, you still shouldn't use this app. And the reason you shouldn't use
00:44:33.140
this app is the same reason that the Bible tells you not to consult astrologers. A lot of people
00:44:41.160
misunderstand why the Bible says don't consult astrologers. They think in our modern scientific
00:44:45.640
age that it's because astrology is silly and it's not real. That's not why there's a commandment.
00:44:52.500
Hey, don't do this thing that's really silly and pointless. The reason behind not consulting
00:44:57.800
astrologers is because we don't want to compromise our free will. And that's exactly what's going on
00:45:03.880
here. It's not because it doesn't work. It's because it kind of works, or at least it works
00:45:08.380
on the individual person and warps our perception of ourselves and compromises our free will.
00:45:12.880
I will quote on this, not some modern egghead scientist guy. I will quote an older,
00:45:19.500
wiser person, Tatian the Syrian, who says, such are the demons. These are they who laid down the
00:45:26.460
doctrine of fate. Their fundamental principle was the placing of animals in the heavens as
00:45:31.480
constellations. These dignified with celestial honor in order that they might themselves be
00:45:39.680
thought to remain in heaven and by placing the constellations there might make to appear rational
00:45:44.800
the irrational course of life on earth. Thus the high spirited and he who is crushed with toil,
00:45:49.840
the temperate and the intemperate, the indigent and the wealthy are what they are simply from the
00:45:54.440
controllers of their nativity. It has nothing to do with their free will. It has nothing to do with
00:45:58.520
how they behave. It has nothing to do with moral responsibility. They don't have any of that. It's
00:46:01.520
just in the stars. He goes on for the delineation of the zodiacal cycle is the work of the gods,
00:46:07.480
but we are superior to fate. And instead of wandering demons, we have learned to know one Lord who
00:46:13.960
wanders not. This is in Tatian the Syrian's address to the Greeks. And it's really, really important
00:46:18.460
here. In our culture, when we buy into the new age astrology, and when we buy into the scientific
00:46:27.640
determinism, and when we buy into everything in between, we diminish human beings. We deny our reason.
00:46:37.400
We deny our ability to have any effect on our surroundings. We deny our moral responsibility.
00:46:42.700
We deny our difference and distinction from the lower beasts. We become no different from a dog
00:46:49.320
or a goat or a rock or a tree. We're just moving along, bobbing along on fate. Christians believe
00:46:58.840
something different. We believe that there is a providence, that God's all-ordaining providence
00:47:03.420
that controls the flow of history, and that we also have free will, and we can make moral choices
00:47:08.980
because we have a rational soul. We are made in the image and likeness of God. We have intellect,
00:47:13.640
and we have will. And we can use that for good and conform it to God's plan for history and for our
00:47:19.080
own lives. Or we can abuse it. But we have the ability to abuse it. We have the ability to turn
00:47:23.640
away from God's grace. We have the ability to do very evil things. And that is an awesome power.
00:47:29.640
And we can't just blame everything on the stars. And we can't just shirk moral responsibility.
00:47:36.080
We are human beings. That can be a very, very dignified thing, or that can be a very,
00:47:41.040
very degraded thing. And it depends on which way we individually and civilizationally look
00:47:47.660
where we are ordered toward. The rest of the show continues now. It's Music Monday.
00:47:53.700
Today, we have a song. I'm very excited because I just interviewed for King and Country. And now
00:47:59.900
we have a song from for King and Country. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss
00:48:03.660
it. Become a member. Use code NOLSKNWLS. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.