The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 One day after Kamala's coronation at the DNC, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stole the spotlight back

00:00:05.680 for the good guys by dropping out of the race and endorsing President Trump in the swing states.

00:00:11.420 Three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place, primarily.

00:00:17.140 And these are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party

00:00:22.180 and run as an independent. And now, to throw my support to President Trump,

00:00:32.000 the causes were free speech, a war in Ukraine, and the war on our children.

00:00:38.440 The chronic disease crisis was one of the primary reasons for my running for president,

00:00:43.960 along with ending censorship in the Ukraine war. It's the reason I've made the heart-wrenching

00:00:49.580 decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump. This decision is agonizing

00:00:57.520 for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children and my friends.

00:01:03.860 But I have the certainty that this is what I've meant to do. And that certainty gives me internal peace.

00:01:12.860 While Biden was in the race, you know, I strongly supported RFK remaining in the race,

00:01:18.340 as I believed that he would pull more voters from Biden than from Trump.

00:01:23.260 He would win the normie Democrat, I can't vote for a dead guy vote.

00:01:27.580 Kamala's ascension to the top of the ticket changed that calculation

00:01:31.060 by injecting energy into the Democrat campaign. So now we're looking at a race separated by just

00:01:36.840 two or three points in the swing states, with the swing of a guy claiming around five points

00:01:40.900 in the swing states decidedly into Trump's camp. But there's even better news,

00:01:45.120 and very few people are talking about it. There is still a left-wing spoiler in this race,

00:01:51.540 Cornel West. And despite Democrats trying to kick him off the ballot, a Michigan judge has just ruled

00:01:57.100 that he must appear in that extremely important swing state. We will get into what all of that means

00:02:01.900 for the race. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:23.320 Welcome back to the show. There was one moment of the DNC that I've seen basically nobody talking

00:02:28.480 about. And it's making me think that the camera operator for the Democrat National Convention

00:02:32.980 is a secret Republican. We'll get to that in just a moment. First, though,

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00:03:17.300 at thecandleclub.com. I really liked RFK being in the race while it was Biden. However, as politics

00:03:29.260 changes, as circumstances change, you have to react to those things. You know, politics, I admonish the

00:03:34.760 squishes all the time. I say politics is not just eternal principles. It's certainly not static. It's

00:03:39.640 applying principles to ever-changing political circumstances. And so in this case, you had a

00:03:44.140 really tight race. It's in the swing states that will decide the election. It's two to three points

00:03:48.580 between Kamala and Trump. And then you got this guy, RFK, who's commanding about 5% of the vote

00:03:52.880 in those states. If RFK comes out, no subtlety here, just says, hey, you all who support me should

00:03:58.920 vote for Trump. Maybe they don't bring all five percentage points with them, but maybe that means

00:04:03.980 you get three. Maybe it means you get four. Well, there's the election right there. But then what about

00:04:08.960 the left-wing spoiler? Because we still want some candidate who is left-wing to pull votes from

00:04:13.940 Kamala, who can do that? The person who can do that best is still in the race, and that's

00:04:17.880 Cornel West. Cornel West is a radical leftist professor. He's taught at Princeton. He's taught

00:04:23.020 at Harvard. He's got crazy hair. He's released a rap album. He's really out there. And he's a

00:04:28.660 left-wing academic, and one of his big issues is Israel-Gaza. So this intifada within the Democrat

00:04:35.480 Party, it's one of the biggest wedge issues for the Democrats, is the handling of the Israel war.

00:04:39.960 Because on the one hand, you got the Dem base that is chanting, river to the sea,

00:04:44.140 make Palestine free. And then on the other hand, you have the Democrat donors. You have

00:04:48.000 the Democrat establishment, which is certainly more pro-Israel. And even Joe Biden, even if he's

00:04:52.960 not totally pro-Israel, he's still the one sending all the weapons to Israel. So it's created a big

00:04:57.060 problem. That's where you saw all the big protests outside of the DNC. It's where you saw that the

00:05:01.040 campus uprisings in the spring that are probably going to kick back up as school gets back in session.

00:05:05.480 And then you've got Michigan, which has a huge Muslim population. The Muslims and the Arabs in

00:05:11.600 America tend to break overwhelmingly for the Democrats. But this is our opportunity. This

00:05:16.420 is one big issue where you can really make a move to claim some of that vote. Now, are the Muslims and

00:05:23.220 the Arabs going to vote for Trump? The polling suggests they're not going to. But what if you have

00:05:27.100 a left-wing candidate who is running specifically on this issue? All of a sudden, you've got a place

00:05:35.300 to take those disaffected Arab and Muslim Democrats away from Kamala Harris, certainly away from Joe

00:05:42.800 Biden, and give it to someone else. So this is why the Democrats are so eager to kick this professor,

00:05:48.040 Cornel West, off the ballot. And yet, we got great news. A Michigan judge, James Redford, has just ruled

00:05:57.840 that Cornel West must appear on the ballot in Michigan. With Bobby Kennedy out, this is a great,

00:06:04.840 even with Bobby Kennedy in, this would be a great opportunity. Republicans, I don't want to be

00:06:10.500 subtle about this either. Republicans should pour money into boosting Cornel West in Michigan.

00:06:18.900 Republicans should put their money where my mouth is and invest in making this guy a thing,

00:06:24.960 making his presence on the ballot known in Michigan. Cornel West is not going to take one

00:06:30.500 single vote from Donald Trump. Anyone who is even considering voting for Cornel West isn't simply

00:06:35.360 not going to vote for Trump. But he very plausibly could take votes away from Kamala Harris. And with

00:06:40.800 Bobby Kennedy out of the race, here's your spoiler. This is your one spoiler left. Now, Democrats are not

00:06:47.020 going down without a fight. Probably the biggest political operation to swing this election is taking

00:06:53.620 place not from the Trump camp or the Kamala camp or the Cornel West camp. It's taking place at the

00:06:58.360 Federal Reserve because Jay Powell, the head of the Fed, has just announced that the Fed is going to

00:07:06.180 lower interest rates. We have very high interest rates right now. Part of the reason we have

00:07:09.620 relatively high interest rates to what we've seen in recent years is because we've had historically low

00:07:14.500 interest rates. And this causes all sorts of economic problems. We have a massive inflation

00:07:19.120 problem right now. So that's one of the reasons that the Fed is going to raise rates. However, the economy

00:07:23.920 is stalling out. And so just in time for election season, the Fed is announcing they're going to cut

00:07:30.540 rates. They're announcing at least what the analysts are interpreting the Fed's announcement to be is

00:07:37.960 three quarter point cuts, one in September, one in November, and then one in December to look forward

00:07:44.360 to. Even steeper rate cuts are possible. This is not about sound monetary policy. This is not about

00:07:53.320 the independent Fed that is just making decisions for the good of the economy, absent political

00:07:58.580 considerations. This is about the election. This is about the head of the Fed, Jay Powell, deciding that

00:08:07.600 he's going to go out there and campaign for Kamala Harris in the best way he knows how. Because if the

00:08:12.460 economy continues to sputter, if we really look like we're headed into a recession, that's going to be

00:08:17.400 very bad for the incumbent party. Democrats have done a good job at keeping Kamala clean, separating

00:08:23.280 her from the horrible legacy of the Biden-Harris administration. But if the economy is headed into

00:08:28.120 the gutter, Harris is going to receive a lot of blame for that. So the Fed is going to try to

00:08:32.620 artificially prop up the economy just long enough to get the Democrats over the finish line. This is about

00:08:39.080 the election, and it could work. Now, I'm not sure how much the Fed actually can cut interest rates

00:08:46.100 because they've just been historically low for so long. And I was talking about this with a friend

00:08:50.860 of mine in the financial services industry over the weekend, and he pointed out, you know, at a certain

00:08:54.700 point, it's difficult to attract investment for a bankrupt country that has dozens of trillions of

00:09:02.280 dollars in debt. So we'll see how constrained the Federal Reserve is. But make no mistake,

00:09:09.360 plan A was kick Trump off the ballot. Plan B was imprison Trump. Plan C was, at the very least,

00:09:20.140 let's say, establish the justification for assassinating Trump. Someone tried to do it,

00:09:23.840 didn't work. Plan D, okay, swap out the candidate. Plan, okay, now we're plan E, F, G, H.

00:09:34.740 Wield the government, wield the Federal Reserve to cut rates. Okay, we'll see if that works.

00:09:38.760 Not all Democrats are feeling so good about Kamala's chances. The New York Times is actually

00:09:43.460 coming out with a big critique of Kamala's campaign. And I think you'll be shocked to hear

00:09:47.180 this. The New York Times is totally wrong. There's so much more to say. First, though,

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00:10:58.760 Knolls. Goodranchers.com. American meat delivered. Big op-ed went viral in the New York Times. This is

00:11:04.680 from Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy, who says, joy is not a strategy. You remember at the

00:11:12.580 DNC coronation of Kamala after the palace coup that swapped Biden for Kamala Harris, we saw two big

00:11:19.480 shifts in messaging. The first was Democrats are no longer running on saving democracy. That had been

00:11:24.220 Biden's campaign slogan. But because Kamala now has the nomination without receiving a single vote,

00:11:28.560 now they've switched from democracy to freedom. So freedom is one big word of the slogan. And then

00:11:36.000 the other one is joy. The Democrats keep, in a really on-the-nose kind of way, pushing this

00:11:43.580 contrived campaign theme of joy. We're so joyful. Kamala's witch cackle, her uncontrollable

00:11:50.320 babbling, the ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. That's actually just an expression of joy. And the Republicans hate when

00:11:56.800 the Democrats are so joyous. Okay. Well, at least the Deputy Opinion Editor at the Times says,

00:12:02.400 joy is not a strategy. Right? So don't get me wrong. There are many worse things than joy,

00:12:08.540 but I cringed a little in the conventional Tuesday night when Bill Clinton said Harris would be the

00:12:11.880 president of joy. Joy is the new fetch from mean girls. Democrats are bent on making the word happen.

00:12:17.980 But joy is not a political strategy, and God is not a political strategy. The good news for Democrats

00:12:23.100 is that Harris seems to understand this. Americans want to lower their household costs and make it

00:12:27.800 easier to find housing. Being our joyful Mamala is not going to win the election. I agree that I

00:12:34.360 cringe when I hear the Democrats use this word joy. Democrats, a party that had an infanticide van

00:12:40.920 outside of their national convention. Democrats, the party of chopping up your bodies just to feel

00:12:46.980 some kind of sexual thrill because of your confusion and depression. Democrats, not the most joyful

00:12:52.100 party as far as I'm concerned. They seem rather joyless, actually. So I agree it's contrived,

00:12:57.520 and it makes you cringe a little bit. But I totally disagree that this is not a political strategy.

00:13:02.580 This kind of platitudinous ambiguity is a very effective political strategy.

00:13:10.800 Barack Obama won the presidency on two words, hope and change. You remember that? Some of us are old

00:13:17.620 enough to remember the Obama election. I know some of you listening probably don't remember that because

00:13:21.700 you're too young. But Barack Obama ran on hope and change. This is a guy who had no discernible

00:13:27.900 accomplishments in the U.S. Senate when he was a state senator in Illinois. This is a guy about whose

00:13:33.740 platform we knew basically nothing, who even when controversial votes came up, he would vote present.

00:13:39.120 He didn't want to tip his hand one way or the other. Hope and change. That's what he ran on.

00:13:45.560 There were big posters. Hope and change. And hope and change won. The vice presidential nominee that year,

00:13:50.340 Sarah Palin made fun of it. She goes, how's that hopey, changey stuff working out for you?

00:13:55.980 But it did work. It worked pretty well. Hope and change was a successful strategy. Joy could be a

00:14:01.540 successful strategy. And in fact, it's Kamala's best chance. Because the deputy opinion editor here for

00:14:06.840 the Times says, look, people care about their pocketbook. They care about household costs.

00:14:11.040 They care about inflation. They care about their retirement funds. They care, yeah, sure,

00:14:15.740 they do. But Kamala can't run on any of that. The Fed is going to do its best to artificially

00:14:20.120 prop up the economy to get her over the finish line. But even so, first of all, cutting rates is

00:14:26.400 not going to do any help for inflation. But second of all, there's really not all that much that can

00:14:31.600 be done now anyway. The Biden-Harris administration has failed on the economy. They can't run on the

00:14:36.520 economy. The Biden-Harris administration has failed on immigration. They can't run on immigration.

00:14:41.120 Kamala Harris right now, I kid you not, is airing commercials showing photos of Trump's border wall

00:14:47.020 and saying that Kamala Harris is tough on the border. The border wall that the Biden-Harris

00:14:52.200 administration tore down, they're running on that now. The only issues other than abortion,

00:14:58.480 other than the Democrats' bloodlust for infants, the only actual practical political issues that

00:15:04.040 Democrats can run on are Trump policies. They're running on Trump's border wall. They're running on

00:15:08.640 Trump's tax plan to end taxes on tips for service workers. They're running on Trump's

00:15:14.120 child care tax credit. Actually, they're trying to even up it. Trump runs on a $5,000 child tax credit.

00:15:21.080 The Democrats say, okay, we're going to do $6,000. Whatever the Republicans want to do,

00:15:24.780 we're going to do it even more. But in terms of their own record, Kamala Harris saying,

00:15:30.580 I'm going to change everything when I'm in office. Girl, you're in office right now,

00:15:33.080 and your record is horrible. So she can't run on any of those issues. She's got to run

00:15:37.840 on some kind of ambiguous nonsense. And joy is as persuasive, ambiguous nonsense as ever I've seen.

00:15:45.960 In any case, it's their only shot. The one issue, as I mentioned, the one practical political issue

00:15:52.480 that they are running on, and it's their own position, is abortion. And the Republicans have

00:15:57.840 taken notice. President Trump got in a lot of hot water on the right over the weekend because

00:16:03.180 President Trump posted something just a few days ago, August 23rd. He said, quote,

00:16:09.600 my administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights. A lot of pro-lifers

00:16:16.440 up in arms about this. And I understand why this raises eyebrows. So how do we interpret this?

00:16:22.160 Well, first of all, I think it's worth pointing out. I don't want to be accused of reading too

00:16:28.780 deeply into this. I'm just telling you what the word really means. That, you know, in modern American

00:16:33.900 politics, words are thrown about and they're used and abused. And very often, they're used in a way

00:16:40.440 that is the opposite of their meaning. You know, like when the Democrats say, if most people vote for

00:16:45.020 Trump, it's a threat to democracy. That's a nonsense saying, right? Because democracy is just whatever

00:16:49.420 most people vote for. Well, the same goes for reproductive rights. Properly speaking,

00:16:55.420 reproductive, the only reproductive rights are the rights of a child to be the product of the

00:17:01.320 specific conjugal act of his parents who are married and to be respected as a person from the

00:17:07.000 moment of conception. Those are the only reproductive rights. In our modern society, the liberals try to

00:17:15.240 convince people that murdering a baby is a reproductive right. This is, of course, the

00:17:19.820 opposite of a reproductive right. It is the opposite of reproduction and it's the opposite of right. It's

00:17:24.000 totally wrong. So that's not a reproductive right. The modern liberals will say that people have a right

00:17:30.140 to a child. You don't have a right to a child, just like you don't have a right to a slave because a

00:17:34.160 human being is not a commodity to be bought and sold. It's not something that you possess. Human being is a

00:17:38.800 proper subject in himself. Some people will say that two men have the right to produce a child.

00:17:45.260 That's not how it works. Two men can't make a child together. The best they can do is go rent the womb

00:17:50.900 of a poor woman and then purchase the eggs from another woman and then go to the baby store and have

00:17:55.620 some scientists in a laboratory create a human being in a way that is contrary to the rights of that human

00:18:02.500 being who's being created. It's totally denying those rights. That's not a reproductive right.

00:18:05.980 The only such thing as reproductive, the only things that can be called reproductive rights

00:18:13.560 are the rights of a child to be the product of the specific conjugal act of his parents who are

00:18:18.360 married and to be respected as a person from the moment that he's conceived. That's it. So if you read

00:18:25.460 Trump's Truth Social post, understanding what the phrase actually means, then there's really nothing

00:18:31.560 wrong with it, right? Yeah, we'll respect. It will be great for women. Obviously, nothing wrong with

00:18:36.340 that. And we'll be great for reproductive rights. Now, you might say, Michael, you're taking this too

00:18:41.080 far. You're doing your best to flack for Donald Trump. But, you know, that's not really how he meant

00:18:45.480 it. Well, how are we supposed to understand how we meant it, how he meant it? Some people are reading

00:18:50.120 the worst that they can into this and saying Trump is now radically pro-abortion. Okay, well,

00:18:54.160 how can we judge that claim? Well, we can look at how he was in office. In office, Donald Trump was

00:19:01.500 the most pro-life president we've ever had. Full stop. He's the first sitting president.

00:19:07.680 This is, of course, since abortion became a national political issue with Roe v. Wade.

00:19:11.980 He's the first sitting president to show up to the March for Life. Ronald Reagan didn't do it.

00:19:16.940 Jerry Ford didn't do it. Richard Nixon didn't do it. Was Nixon, I guess Nixon,

00:19:21.780 he could have done it and he didn't do it. Bush didn't do it. Bush too didn't do it. Only Trump.

00:19:30.340 He is the president who appointed the judges that overruled Roe v. Wade. All those other

00:19:34.800 Republican presidents didn't get it done. So I'm willing to extend a little grace here,

00:19:41.160 especially as President Trump has said, we need to talk about abortion in such a way that we get

00:19:44.400 elected, especially as Democrats are campaigning on this issue and this issue alone. Because in recent

00:19:49.640 years, when abortion has come up as a ballot initiative, it has lost. Trump says we got to

00:19:56.460 get elected. So does this mean Trump is going to be pro-abortion? I certainly hope not. But I think

00:20:01.680 there's good reason to believe he won't be pro-abortion in office because when he was in office,

00:20:06.280 he was the most pro-life president we've ever had. So what does this mean?

00:20:12.100 It means that Trump is going to speak in a vague way that's going to hopefully assuage some moderate

00:20:20.460 voters. I'm extremely pro-life. Very few Americans are extremely pro-life. If Trump had come out and

00:20:26.700 said, I'm going to support abortion in the first trimester, I would say that's really awful. That's

00:20:31.360 indefensible. If Trump had come out and said, I'm going to support abortion, I think there needs to be

00:20:35.460 a right to abortion up until 20 weeks or something or 15 weeks or whatever, even six weeks. That would

00:20:41.760 be awful. That would be a terrible thing. But that's not what he's doing here. He's speaking

00:20:45.440 in really vague terms. And I think the ambiguity here is helpful and should assuage some of the

00:20:50.500 fears of right-wingers. He did the same thing with Project 2025. I think Project 2025 is great.

00:20:55.080 The Democrats have no idea what it is, or they're just totally lying about it. The Project 2025 is

00:20:59.540 essentially a personnel list from the Heritage Foundation, which is the most established

00:21:03.140 conservative think tank out there. It's a great thing. But the left has lied and said Project

00:21:08.180 2025 is, I don't know, it's going to ban tacos from America. Project 2025 is going to get rid of

00:21:15.400 the designated hitter from the American League. Project 2025 does all these crazy things that it

00:21:19.140 doesn't really do. And what did Trump say? He says, oh, I'm opposed to Project 2025. I have nothing

00:21:23.320 to do with that. Some of Project 2025 is good, but some of it's terrible. But notice he's not getting

00:21:29.080 specific. And so it seems to me when Trump is not getting specific and he's just being a little bit

00:21:33.800 vague in his language, he's doing that intentionally. He's doing that intentionally

00:21:38.260 because at this point in the campaign, he's trying to win moderate voters. And final point on Trump's

00:21:44.220 comments on abortion. Even if Trump were now making this huge total pivot and he went from being the

00:21:52.800 most pro-life president ever to supporting abortion in some way, you're running against the most radically

00:21:57.940 pro-abortion candidate in the country. And so even then the decision wouldn't be difficult.

00:22:03.620 However, it just seems to me that basically all of the evidence, how Trump has approached the

00:22:09.120 abortion issue, how Trump approaches language, how Trump is speaking about instrumentality in

00:22:14.620 politics, it just seems to me this is not the sort of thing to pull our hair out over, at least not

00:22:20.720 yet. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. History,

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00:23:31.980 get started. Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. Like President Trump, J.D. Vance is now

00:23:39.720 getting in hot water on the right because of an answer that he gave on abortion. Let's talk about

00:23:46.040 another big issue that was talked about at the Democratic National Convention. It's being talked

00:23:51.020 about on the campaign trail. Abortion. Democrats made the case this week and beyond this week that

00:23:57.480 Donald Trump, if elected, will impose a federal ban on abortion if he wins. Now, Donald Trump says he

00:24:03.640 won't. But can you commit, Senator, sitting right here with me today, that if you and Donald Trump are

00:24:10.280 elected, that you will not impose a federal ban on abortion? I can absolutely commit that, Kristen.

00:24:15.740 Donald Trump has been as clear about that as possible. Okay. Well, there are going to be pro-lifers who say

00:24:20.600 that's terrible, J.D. We want a national ban on abortion. Sure. However, what J.D. Vance just said

00:24:27.460 should be relatively uncontroversial because the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision over ruling

00:24:33.320 Roe v. Wade said that the president can't institute a national ban on abortion because

00:24:37.820 in Dobbs, the Supreme Court said the issue is going to go back to the states. Now, you might say it

00:24:42.520 shouldn't go back to the states. As a matter of the 14th Amendment, all people are entitled to equal

00:24:46.200 protection and due process. And so abortion should be outlawed across the country. This is an argument

00:24:51.040 argued well by Robbie George and John Finnis and other conservative legal scholars. Sure. Okay.

00:24:58.080 Let's go. Let's get that court decision. But as a practical matter, the Supreme Court has said,

00:25:01.960 if you try to do this, we're going to shoot it down. So J.D. Vance says, okay, we're not going to

00:25:07.480 do it. Does anyone think that J.D. Vance is pro-abortion? No. I understand the unease that

00:25:15.800 conservatives feel and especially pro-lifers feel with some of this language that Trump and J.D. Vance

00:25:21.720 are using. However, I'll point out the left outright lies all the time about their views. Kamala

00:25:29.920 Harris is running on closing the border. Kamala Harris is the border's are today. Kamala Harris

00:25:35.320 does not want to close the border for five minutes. Kamala Harris wants mass migration and

00:25:41.000 a totally open border. And that is, in fact, the policy that she has affected, imbued with

00:25:44.420 the power of the president that Biden gave to her as the border's are. And she's just lying to get

00:25:49.040 elected. I don't think Republicans should lie to get elected. But if we need to dance around certain

00:25:54.700 issues, if we need to use words in a precise and careful way, I'm not opposed to that.

00:26:03.080 There's no substitute for winning. You don't want to compromise your integrity. You don't want to do

00:26:08.660 something immoral in order to win. But if you can speak in a way that is somewhat ambiguous,

00:26:14.520 I'm not opposed to that. Not opposed to that in the least. We all want to stop abortion.

00:26:22.440 Okay, we all want to save babies. We're not going to save babies by letting the most radically pro-abortion

00:26:29.920 candidate win. Now, on this point, on this most radically pro-abortion candidate, here's something

00:26:34.540 that I missed at the DNC. I think a lot of people missed. Kamala was talking about the one issue that

00:26:41.080 she can really talk about, how much she wants to kill babies. And as she's talking about abortion,

00:26:46.080 the camera at the DNC cut to a little baby. And when Congress passes a bill to restore

00:26:55.820 reproductive freedom as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.

00:27:02.280 I will proudly sign it. And here we have a camera cut to a lady, some Harris sign, and then a guy

00:27:10.200 holding a tiny little baby, just rocking a little baby. She goes, when I'm president,

00:27:15.180 I am going to slaughter beautiful little innocent babies. I am going to slaughter them. And then the

00:27:21.280 camera, because she doesn't really say that, right? That's the meaning that she's conveying.

00:27:27.240 But she uses all these euphemisms. We're going to restore reproductive freedoms and rights

00:27:32.320 and women's health and all these ways that the left has to dance around the reality of abortion,

00:27:38.960 which is poisoning and chopping up a little baby as he screams. And then vacuuming him out of his

00:27:45.840 mother's womb. I mean, the most horrifying, ghastly thing you can possibly imagine. They have to dance

00:27:51.300 around that reality. And then the DNC cameraman or the director of the show who was switching the

00:27:56.580 cameras cuts to the reality, a little baby. And of course, we all recall, I'm still actually

00:28:05.480 giggling over this cameraman's choice from the night before when Oprah was talking about childless

00:28:10.940 cat ladies. And then the camera just switched to some poor woman. We mentioned it on the show last

00:28:14.840 week in case you forgot. We just try to do the best we can to save them. And if the place happens

00:28:22.340 to belong to a childless cat lady, it's just cuts to some poor woman looking down. She looks up,

00:28:34.840 wait, what are you talking about me? And then after Kamala says, we're going to support reproductive

00:28:40.140 freedom. And then just it cuts right to a cute little baby, shows you the reality. I don't know,

00:28:44.400 man. Did a Republican sneak in there and he ended up getting the job switching the cameras at the DNC?

00:28:50.000 I don't know. But whoever did it, hats off to the camera guys. Hats off to the director in the

00:28:55.840 control room at the DNC. Because in the Oprah clip, you see that Democrats are trying to embrace

00:29:04.760 this, that the childless cat lady. How dare you suggest that people don't want to be a childless

00:29:09.000 cat lady. But then when it cuts to the woman that they're calling a childless cat lady, she looks up,

00:29:12.860 wait, what? I don't want to be a childless cat lady. Wait, hold on. No, go on. She's kind of

00:29:16.260 admitting that J.D. Vance's criticism of not individuals, not people who through circumstances

00:29:21.200 have ended up in a certain place, but the exaltation of a caricature, of a way of life.

00:29:30.080 The Democrats are admitting, oh yeah, we actually don't want that.

00:29:34.220 Kamala says, yeah, we need reproductive freedom. But no one ever wants to talk about what that really

00:29:38.460 means. Because if you know what it really means, you don't really want that. And no one who isn't a

00:29:44.340 total psycho or possessed by demons actually wants that. Good stuff. Good stuff from the DNC

00:29:49.280 technical team. Now, speaking of women's issues, there was an excellent, excellent article

00:29:53.420 in the Free Press by my friend, Maddie Kearns. Maddie Kearns has been on the show a number of

00:29:59.680 times, formerly of National Review, now at Barry Weiss's outlet, the Free Press. This article I ended

00:30:07.860 up seeing right at the top of the Drudge Report. Okay, this article has gone viral. And what's it

00:30:13.600 about? It's about women wearing veils at church. You think that's such a niche issue. Why on earth

00:30:21.520 would this make it to the top of the Drudge Report? Why would it go viral? Because it speaks to

00:30:26.040 something really profound happening in religion and in politics. Maddie's article, highly recommend

00:30:33.200 you read the whole thing, is The Young Catholic Women Bringing Back Veils. A New Generation of

00:30:39.040 Worshippers is Longing for a Lost Type of Catholicism. This is not just Catholics who can

00:30:47.120 wear veils or cover their heads at church, though it's mostly Catholics, I suppose, or you specifically

00:30:53.100 think of Catholics. But it comes from 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 11, verse 4,

00:30:59.600 every man praying or prophesying with his head covered disgraceth his head. But every woman praying

00:31:04.320 or prophesying with her head not covered disgraceth her head, for it is all one as if she were

00:31:10.480 shaven. This notion that, and I encourage you to read the first letter to the Corinthians broadly,

00:31:16.860 but the relation of man to woman and man to God, and it sort of explains how we can symbolize this in

00:31:24.400 our lives. But in the 1960s, there was this radical shift. In the 1960s, in the Catholic Church,

00:31:35.740 outside the Catholic Church, in the secular society, everywhere, radicals thought that it would be a

00:31:40.980 good idea to sever our connection to the past. You know, we were going to enter a new age of Aquarius,

00:31:45.940 man. We were going to have a cultural revolution, man. You know, here's the moment, man. And so they

00:31:52.320 thought this was a good thing, and it wasn't just the hippies in the drum circles with flowers in

00:31:56.500 their hair. This happened in every institution throughout the West, even in the most enduring

00:32:02.860 and ancient institution in the world, the Catholic Church. There was a major liturgical reform. They

00:32:09.600 upended the mass of the ages, the way that the mass had been celebrated for at least 1,400 years,

00:32:16.980 and really even earlier than that. They just kind of upended all that stuff, man, and really

00:32:22.020 radically changed things, including they encouraged women to stop wearing the veils. Now, people are

00:32:27.640 realizing that there's usually a reason that things that endure for millennia endure, that actually

00:32:37.360 maybe when a tradition persists for many centuries or more millennia, that maybe there's a reason for

00:32:48.340 that. Maybe we do not have a sufficient stock of reason that we can just reinvent the world anew,

00:32:56.260 and it'll be much better, that that would be an advisable thing to do. Maybe those older generations

00:33:01.680 knew something that we don't. Maybe we're not perfectly intelligent. Maybe we're not even as

00:33:08.240 intelligent as our grandparents were. And maybe we need to return to tradition. Maybe that would benefit

00:33:15.380 us. Maybe that's actually the way forward. It's not the way back. It's not regression. Maybe that's

00:33:20.180 actually the way forward, because tradition is not some dusty old thing. There are plenty of dusty old

00:33:26.000 things that have popped up in history, and then they fell away because they just didn't have staying

00:33:31.780 power. That's not what tradition is. In fact, that's what fads are. That's what radical innovation is.

00:33:39.200 All those dusty old things that have been left in the dustbin of history all the way in the past,

00:33:45.040 those were fads. Those were fashions. There was some genius, supposedly genius idea from some radical

00:33:50.220 who wanted to upend everything, and then it didn't work. Tradition is not the oldest thing. Tradition is

00:33:55.800 in some ways the newest thing, or at least we would say the most enduring. It's the kind of thing

00:34:00.660 that can link the past and the present and the future. Maybe there's a reason that Christians

00:34:06.820 have acted as they've acted and believed as they've believed and lived as they've lived

00:34:12.940 for millennia. Maybe there's some connection between those things. There's a saying,

00:34:16.940 lex orandi, lex credendi. Sometimes you could even add lex vivendi, which is Latin. It means the way

00:34:23.500 that we worship influences the way that we believe. It's not just that religion is not just a thing you do

00:34:30.640 in your head, and you ignore that you have a body at all and that you're in time and space at all.

00:34:34.760 Religion is a thing that you do. You worship God. There's a difference between praying on your knees

00:34:39.480 and praying sitting down and praying while you're driving. There's a difference between saying some

00:34:43.720 prayer that you just invented yesterday or saying the Lord's Prayer. Don't forget, our Lord tells us

00:34:48.420 in the Gospels how to pray. He gives us the Our Father prayer, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be

00:34:52.500 thy name, and so on. He tells you how to do it. Then the church, in her wisdom, going all the way

00:35:01.420 back to the apostolic age, has established ways in which we can pray. That's going to affect the

00:35:06.460 way that we believe. If you receive the Eucharist on the tongue, kneeling, you're going to believe

00:35:11.640 something about what the Eucharist is, what the Holy Communion is. If you're driving in your car and

00:35:18.660 you stick your hand out like you're going through the McDonald's drive-thru, that's also going to

00:35:22.620 affect the way that you believe because we're incarnate creatures. That's going to affect the way that you

00:35:25.700 live, too. And maybe these young women, it's not the old women who want to go back to the veils,

00:35:31.740 it's the young women who want to go back to the veils. Maybe it's because they realize something

00:35:34.760 has been lost. Maybe they realize that all that innovation that was supposed to free us and make

00:35:38.920 everything better has maybe made things worse. And maybe the real update that we need right now,

00:35:45.000 this is a popular term at the time of these breaks, it's called aggiornamento, an update.

00:35:49.900 Maybe the real update is to return to the faith as it was practiced for, I don't know,

00:36:00.040 1,800, 1,900 years. Probably a good idea. The Daily Wire's first ever theatrical release,

00:36:05.400 Am I Racist? Hitting theaters on September 13th has already more than doubled the number of theaters

00:36:10.020 nationwide since it was first announced. Every ticket sold pushes the film into more theaters

00:36:14.520 across the country. Matt Walsh, the same man who eviscerated gender theory in What is a Woman,

00:36:19.040 is back this time. He's taking on the world of DEI. What he exposes in this film is both

00:36:23.660 hilarious and infuriating. Check out this teaser.

00:36:28.100 Decolonize yourself. Do your own white supremacy dismantling. And then you can start to bring in

00:36:38.400 other people. Can I just say one last thing? Can I just propose a toast? I mean, just raise a glass

00:36:44.720 if you're racist. And that's the thing. Cheers. Oh, I'm not racist. Let me do that.

00:36:50.960 To racist. Well, all the rest of it. To racist.

00:36:59.180 Am I Racist? Rated PG-13. Buy tickets now.

00:37:02.340 I've not seen the cut yet. And I'm sort of intentionally not watching the movie until I

00:37:09.720 see it in a theater. So every one of these new trailers, I'm kind of just seeing for the first

00:37:15.520 time. And Matt is just a total sociopath. He's just a complete cold-blooded killer. And I cannot

00:37:25.120 wait to watch this movie. If Am I Racist is playing in a theater near you, head on over to

00:37:29.780 amiracist.com and grab your advance tickets today. Let's make sure this movie reaches as many theaters

00:37:35.540 and minds as possible across America. My favorite comment on Friday is from

00:37:41.860 Razzle07, who says, look at how angry Tim Walls is when he speaks. It's a window into his soul. He's

00:37:48.260 as unhinged as Joe Biden. The only difference is Walls can actually finish a sentence. Yeah,

00:37:53.080 Walls does, he seems odd. He seems to use Freudian language. He seems a little repressed or something.

00:38:00.680 I don't know. He's got this real, people are trying to suggest that he's just like your dad

00:38:05.580 or something. Oh, there's Tim Walls. He reminds me of my dad. You know, my dad who's fanatically

00:38:12.660 obsessed with LGBT issues for decades and who really wants to talk to little kids about those issues

00:38:20.820 and loves communist China and has visited dozens of times. You know that, just like your dad.

00:38:26.960 Doesn't it just remind you of your dad? You know how your dad turned Minnesota into the windowless

00:38:33.300 white van of the Midwest? Yeah, you know that. Doesn't it just remind you of your dad? I don't

00:38:37.180 know. Doesn't remind me of me dad, my dad rather. I don't, you know. I said that like I was Irish.

00:38:42.320 Doesn't remind me of me dad. It certainly doesn't. I imagine it doesn't remind you of your dad either.

00:38:47.820 Now, speaking of religion, there is a rather good pop science article going around from the

00:38:56.880 conversation about the relation between food and depression. That doesn't seem to have anything

00:39:00.700 to do with religion, but we'll get to that in one moment. This is based on some new studies,

00:39:05.160 shows blood sugar fluctuations after eating play an important role in anxiety and depression.

00:39:12.980 So are you feeling depressed? Maybe it's what you're eating. Feeling anxious? Maybe it's what

00:39:17.660 you're eating. Now, maybe it's something else. Maybe there are a lot of things that can make one

00:39:21.700 depressed and anxious today, as there are in all eras. But maybe it really does have something to

00:39:27.860 do with your food. You know, increasingly conservatives are concerned about our food.

00:39:32.700 You heard RFK Jr. RFK Jr. says, really, my big issue is the poisoning of America's children

00:39:37.660 through big farm and big agriculture and all this crap that they're putting into our foods.

00:39:42.740 That used to be a left-wing position. The fact that RFK is endorsing the Republican in this election

00:39:48.240 and not the Democrat actually shows you an important way in which the two sides have flipped.

00:39:53.840 When I was growing up, all the crunchy people who wanted to eat the organic granola with the grass-fed

00:39:58.780 educated cows were on the left. And the conservatives were the ones pushing Twinkies and McDonald's.

00:40:04.360 And now it's flipped. Now it's the conservatives who don't want seed oils in their food. It's all

00:40:09.940 the crunchy trads, the real kind of homesteading traditionalist right-wingers, many of whom

00:40:16.060 veil at Latin mass, who are looking for raw milk and fresh eggs and all that kind of organic stuff.

00:40:23.400 So that's all real. I think those concerns are real. But also, there's a really basic

00:40:33.420 bit of religious and practical spiritual wisdom here in that your food can affect your mood. And

00:40:41.180 it comes from the first epistle of St. John. In the first epistle, St. John identifies three

00:40:47.960 temptations, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

00:40:53.600 And the lust of the eyes is when you covet things, your buddy's new Rolex or his Corvette or something

00:40:58.740 like that. And then lust of the flesh is when you see a nice lady walking across the street and you're

00:41:03.860 like Wile E. Coyote, a Wooga, your tongue unfurls and steam comes out of your ears. And then the pride

00:41:10.020 of life is when you get too attached to this world. And you don't want to die because you like this stuff

00:41:16.300 too much and you can't figure out how to take it with you. Those are three big temptations.

00:41:21.140 And the traditional Christian advice on how to deal with these temptations that we all deal with

00:41:29.420 fairly regularly is when you're tempted by the lust of the eyes, when you want, when you're

00:41:36.620 coveting other people's stuff, give alms. Give stuff away. Give to charity.

00:41:42.920 When you're tempted by the lust of the flesh, fast. Just eat less food.

00:41:51.100 And it seems so practical. It's like you're going into a doctor or something. He says,

00:41:53.840 okay, I prescribe you. Okay, you're dealing with this lust. Okay, well, eat 20% less food or something

00:42:00.120 like that. But it works. And when you're dealing with the pride of life, when you're tempted by

00:42:05.440 your attachment to this world, the advice is to pray. Pray and put yourself into eternity. Remind

00:42:12.720 yourself of eternity. Those are real bits of practical wisdom. And we deny that stuff today

00:42:18.300 because in liberalism and modernity, we make everything out to be totally abstract and

00:42:22.180 free-floating and distinct from the body. I mean, the reason the gender ideology has so taken off

00:42:29.580 and been able to take off is because we have already in liberal modernity accepted the premise

00:42:34.880 that our bodies don't really have anything to do with who we really are. This premise that the body

00:42:40.600 doesn't really matter. And that goes way back. I mean, that goes back to feminism. Feminists saying,

00:42:45.340 it doesn't matter that I have the body of a woman. That doesn't mean anything. I can be just like

00:42:51.760 a man. And so it's not a far leap to go from that idea to, I really can be a man. And maybe I'll

00:42:57.200 mutilate my body. Maybe I won't mutilate my body. I'll just identify as a man. And that can be who I

00:43:01.240 really am. But no, the body really matters. And sometimes if you're feeling really angry,

00:43:07.100 and you might actually just be a little hangry and you should have a piece of beef jerky or something.

00:43:11.340 Or if you're really tempted by the lust of the flesh, maybe just put down the cupcake a little bit.

00:43:16.640 That will go away. There is a very close relation between your body and your mind and your soul.

00:43:24.180 Because we are, contrary to what the libs would have us believe, we are hylomorphic beings.

00:43:28.800 Turning now to international politics. This is a huge news story, and we have to get to it today.

00:43:33.560 The founder of Telegram. Telegram is a, I guess you'd call it a social media platform,

00:43:39.500 but it's also kind of like a private messaging service. It's encrypted. I don't really use it. I think

00:43:44.320 I have one, but I don't really know how to use it because I'm spiritually a boomer. So I don't,

00:43:49.640 you know, I'm not hip and young and zoomer and cool. But it's a very prominent app. It's got a ton

00:43:55.780 of users. And it was founded by a Russian-born billionaire, this guy Pavel Durov. He was just

00:44:01.580 arrested in France. Durov has French citizenship and UAE, United Arab Emirates citizenship. This is part

00:44:11.660 of a preliminary police investigation into alleged crimes, such as owing to a lack of moderators on

00:44:19.780 Telegram. And these crimes include, you know, drugs and everything, you know, violence, all sorts of,

00:44:26.000 all sorts of crimes that they're saying because Telegram has a lack of moderators and is not

00:44:29.900 cooperating with investigations, they're going to arrest this guy. He's extremely wealthy. This guy

00:44:34.920 has a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at about $15.5 billion. He's also pretty weird. He has

00:44:43.000 100 biological children. He's really into sperm donation and IVF. And I don't know, he's clearly

00:44:51.540 an odd duck. But the application, Telegram, has nearly a billion users according to their own numbers.

00:44:59.020 And it's especially influential. The way that I hear about Telegram a lot is that it has a lot of

00:45:06.020 information on the platform about the Russia-Ukraine war. It has a lot of information about the old

00:45:11.040 Eastern bloc. What do we make of this? There are some people coming out saying this is an assault on

00:45:16.920 free speech. This is an assault on an open public square. This is, I don't know, you know, where they're

00:45:23.420 blaming the West or they're blaming Russia. Medvedev, who is Vladimir Putin's right-hand man in Russia

00:45:30.500 and who uses Telegram to attack the West, said that Durov, this billionaire, wanted to be a brilliant

00:45:38.920 man of the world who lives wonderfully without a motherland. He's miscalculated. For all our common

00:45:45.760 enemies now, he is Russian and therefore unpredictable and dangerous. I think Medvedev actually has the most

00:45:51.780 insightful take on what the arrest of this Telegram founder means. I don't, I don't think it's really

00:45:57.600 about drugs or whatever supposedly was going on on the app in terms of petty crime. I don't think it's

00:46:06.100 necessarily about even, even the free speech or, you know, whatever Elon's making it out to be.

00:46:15.660 I think it is largely about the Russia-Ukraine war. What's funny is this guy, this guy was a dissident

00:46:20.620 within Russia. So it's not as though he's being propped up by the Russians. The West might be

00:46:24.700 arresting him now, but he was not exactly friendly with the Putin regime. He doesn't seem to have

00:46:28.940 friends anywhere. The most significant meaning of the arrest of the Telegram founder is that

00:46:37.660 globalism is fake news, that cosmopolitanism is fake news, that it is not possible to be a citizen of

00:46:44.360 the world. Even in our enlightened liberal age, where we're all just, we're everywhere, man.

00:46:52.740 People remain citizens of nations. And ultimately, you're going to need to turn to that nation to

00:46:58.860 protect you from hostile nations. And if you want to, as Medvedev says, if you want to be a brilliant

00:47:03.700 man of the world, okay. Well, then you're going to get arrested at the French airport the minute

00:47:07.640 that you start to have any effect that will threaten national interests. That's, sure, you want, this

00:47:15.480 probably is all about the Russia-Ukraine war and the kind of information that's, that is contrary to

00:47:20.240 the interests of nation states that comes out on Telegram. Okay, well, this man has no one to defend him

00:47:24.840 because national identity still matters. And there are globalists on the left, there are globalists on

00:47:33.520 the right. There are people who want to put themselves in total opposition to their own country, even in

00:47:41.760 America, even people on the right. Okay. But ultimately, that's where identity still lies. You even see this

00:47:49.960 a little bit in the crypto and Bitcoin world, this notion that we're no longer going to have to rely on

00:47:54.960 national currencies. Maybe, I don't know, you know what really backs up the national currency of the United

00:47:59.780 States. What really backs it up, it's not gold anymore. Obviously, we're taking off the gold

00:48:05.620 standard many decades ago. It's lots of guns and missiles and nuclear warheads. That's what backs it

00:48:11.740 up. National state political power. That's what backs it up. And that's still what, what describes the

00:48:19.980 world order. And if you put yourself outside of that, you're going to wind up in trouble. The rest of

00:48:25.520 the show continues now. It's Music Monday. You don't want to miss it. Become a member and use code

00:48:28.780 Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:48:44.120 Republicans are Nazis. You cannot separate yourselves from the bad white people. Growing up, I never

00:48:49.440 thought much about race. Never really seemed to matter that much, at least not to me. Am I racist? I would

00:48:54.780 really appreciate it if you love. I'm trying to learn. I'm on this journey. I'm going to sort

00:48:58.380 this out. I need to go deeper undercover. Joining us now is Matt, certified DEI expert. Here's my

00:49:07.380 certifications. What you're doing is you're stretching out of your whiteness. This is more

00:49:11.240 for you in this field. Is America inherently racist? The word inherent is challenging there.

00:49:15.420 You want to rename the George Washington Monument to the George Floyd Monument? America is racist

00:49:19.420 to its bones. So inherently. Yeah, this country is a piece of...

00:49:22.800 White folks. White supremacy. White supremacy. White woman. White boy. Is there a black person

00:49:28.860 around here? What's a black person right here? Does he not exist? Hi, Robin. Hi. What's your name?

00:49:35.120 I'm Matt. I just had to ask who you are because you have to be careful. Never be too careful.

00:49:39.060 They gonna say you racist. Buy your tickets now. In theaters September 13th. Rated PG-13.

Ep. 1560 - RFK Jr. & Trump Join Forces Against the Woke Left

Summary

Transcript