Ep. 1649 - Liberal Californians Turn MAGA？
Episode Stats
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Summary
As the fires continue to burn in Southern California, some are turning to the political implications. Is the destruction of Los Angeles enough to turn California Republican? Plus, a bold political prediction from Adam Carolla about what will happen when the city rebuilds.
Transcript
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Reminder, all of us at The Daily Wire will be live as DW goes to D.C. for the inauguration
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of President Donald Trump. Watch live, join the fight at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
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As the horrific LA fires continue to rage, at least 2,000 buildings now destroyed,
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at least five people dead, some pundits are turning to the political implications.
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The question sounds cavalier, but people are asking it anyway.
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Is the destruction of Los Angeles enough to turn California Republican?
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I'm Michael Knowles, this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. Barack Obama has been palling around with Hitler,
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this time at Jimmy Carter's funeral. Sorry, the man that Barack Obama's political party
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has called Hitler for the last decade. That would be Donald Trump. Now, all of a sudden,
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Obama is laughing, he's smiling, back slapping. I don't know. I guess he's buddies with Hitler now.
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That's interesting. There's so much more to say, but first, go to expressvpn.com slash Knowles.
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My friend, Adam Carolla, has just come out with a bold political prediction. Adam, born and raised in
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Los Angeles, has lived there, I think, his whole life. He says that the LA fires, which were brought
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about by liberal policies in large part, will make typical LA leftists become conservative.
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You guys all voted for Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles. You all voted for Gavin Newsom.
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And now you get what you get. Oh, now that your house is on fire. Well, now you're thinking about
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something else. Now you want to know what's going on. What's going on around here? You didn't give a
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about what was going on when other people's houses were on fire, but now you care. So here's what's
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going to happen. All these people who were deep blue Democrats are now going to have to pull a
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permit to rebuild. And they're going to get the 28-year-old from the Coastal Commission telling
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them to go off. And then they're going to vote for Trump or whoever's Trumpian next. You see,
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they're going to get turned. They're going to get turned hard.
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Love Adam. I hope he's right. Would that it were so simple. I'm a little skeptical. I don't think
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that's going to happen. I think he's right. Liberal policies led to all of this awful destruction.
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He's right. When these people go to rebuild, the bureaucracy is going to be awful about it.
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He's right. The bureaucracy is awful largely because of Democrats. I just don't think that even
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the city burning to the ground is going to turn Los Angeles Republican. I don't think it's going to
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turn California Republican because it presumes too much. The Democrats are incompetent at governing,
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but they're not incompetent at electoral politics, usually, most of the time. And so I think what's
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really going to happen is the Angelenos, the really wealthy leftist zillionaire Angelenos who want
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to rebuild their homes. They are going to blame climate change. They're going to find a way to
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blame Trump for the fires. They will. They're going to find a way to blame Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't
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know, whoever the last Republican is who ever got elected to anything in California. They're going to
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find a way to blame that person. And then they are going to demand that they rebuild faster.
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They, but I think what's going to happen is these very wealthy Angelenos, maybe not even the
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millionaire class, more like the hundred millionaire or billionaire class. They're going to put pressure
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on Gavin Newsom. They're going to put pressure on whoever the mayor is. They're going to put
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pressure on whoever the members of Congress are to get federal funds. They're going to use their
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political capital to tell their employees, the politicians that they put into office, to figure it
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out and give them their homes quickly. And the politicians are probably going to acquiesce because
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the politicians know where their bread is buttered. So the Democrat party will be seen to moderate,
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at least on the issue of bureaucracy and rebuilding. The Democrat party is going to adapt to the demands
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of the market of votes. They're going to adapt to their constituents or at least to their donors.
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But I don't think that even burning the city to the ground is enough to turn leftists in Los Angeles
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Republican. I just don't think they'll do it. I wish, I wish it were that simple, but the Democrats
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are a little too clever. The leftists in Los Angeles are not nearly clever enough. It's a one party town
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and politics is dynamic. Now, some of these politicians are going to have to go. There's
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no question. Gavin Newsom's presidential career is all but over. That guy thought he was going to be
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the nominee in 2028. That desire is on life support. It's probably dead. Karen Bass, the mayor of Los
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Angeles, she is done. She should resign. This is absolutely pathetic. It's getting worse by the day
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because some sleuths on the internet have uncovered an old tweet from Karen Bass. This is February 19th,
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2021. Ted Cruz fleeing Texas in the middle of a deadly crisis is part of a larger pattern of the
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GOP abandoning folks in crisis. We need to build a movement to kick them all out. Karen Bass has been
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in Africa while her city burns to the ground. She's been pretty MIA. In fact, Gavin Newsom,
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while he was trying to save his own skin, decided to point that fact out in a press conference on the
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fires. All of the folks behind me and the outstanding leadership of all the elected officials
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as well. And forgive me one point, I'd be remiss. Thank you to Mayor Bass, who was on the phone
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immediately this morning, making sure even in absentia that she's here organizing everything
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she can to make sure we're successful as well. Absolutely brutal. Newsom there makes that point
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at the end. He probably should have just left her out of it. I can't tell. Is Newsom here trying to
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include her to give her a little political favor? Or is he tossing her under the bus saying, look,
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I'm here. Hey, don't blame me. I'm here. Put the heat on Karen Bass. I know you're going to blame
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some politician for this. Don't blame me. Karen Bass didn't even show up. She's in Africa right now,
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but she, oh, don't worry though. She picked up the phone right away.
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Gavin Newsom's a little slick. He's a little American psycho, isn't he? A little Patrick Bateman
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to him. And so while pretending to be lauding Karen Bass, he does so in such a brutal way.
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He does so in such an underhanded way where he really undermines her whole credibility.
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Oh no. And hold on. I bet some of you are wondering where the mayor of LA is. Well,
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don't you worry. She called me. I mean, she's on the other side of the world. She obviously doesn't
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care about any of you, but she picked up the phone. So, you know, remember that it's not really
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working though. Cause Karen Bass is catching a ton of flack, but Gavin Newsom's catching an insane
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amount of flack as well. And Karen Bass not being there still did better than Joe Biden who showed up
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A little difficult to hear with that audio. It might just be because Joe Biden mumbles around.
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He's also a little far away from the camera. You can hear that one part though.
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Joe Biden gets on an airplane, flies into Los Angeles, which is extremely irresponsible.
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He should not be there. It is bad for first responders that Joe Biden is there. You got a
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city that's already shut down. They're doing everything they can to contain these fires and
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that's not going very well. And so what do you need? You need the sitting president to come in,
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compromise the airspace, compromise the roadways. How does that help? So that he can take a photo op,
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make Gavin Newsom look a little bit better. I don't think he even really makes him look better
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because Joe Biden comes out there and he just talks about his great grandkid. Congratulations,
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Joe. It's great that you have a great grandkid. Great grandfathers should not be president.
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People who can claim to be great grandfathers, I think by definition, they've aged out of being
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president. That's all Joe wants to talk about though. I'm sure it's great. I'm sure he wants
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to talk about how great it is to be a great grandfather and how much he loves mint chocolate
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chip ice cream. And I'm sure he wants to give a hard candy to the kids when they come by the house.
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That's the sort of thing that guys in their 80s should do. They should not be the president of
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Do not wait until it's too late. Speaking of presidents, Barack Obama is hanging out with
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Hitler. Jimmy Carter died and now the former presidents are showing up to pay their respects.
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And who does Barack Obama sit right next to? By golly, it's Donald Trump. You can see Al Gore
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right behind them. Just so miserable. It's like, I was supposed to be president.
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Why is that jerk? Why is Obama and Trump, why are they both allowed up there? Anyway,
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forget about Al Gore. You see Trump, where he's relaxed. You see Obama just kind of chatting,
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just hanging out. Trump's smiling. He laughs a little bit. Obama's smiling. They're cracking jokes.
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Then even a little later on, it wasn't just pleasantries when Obama sat down.
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You got Obama there. Obama's laughing. Oh, that Trump, he's a real cutup. That Hitler,
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boy, Hitler, man. Adolf with a one-liner, nobody can beat him. His Rickles routine is top-notch.
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They're really getting into it. I don't know. I wonder if those guys text.
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But hold on. I thought, I thought that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to democracy.
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I thought that he's a neo-Nazi who launched his, who at Charlottesville called Nazis very fine people.
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And that is why Joe Biden launched his presidential campaign on that line. I thought that was the case.
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I thought that January 6th was the worst insurrection, a near coup d'etat that almost shredded
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the Constitution and installed a Hitlerian dictatorship in America. Barack Obama's
00:14:04.220
hanging with that guy? That's crazy, huh? You know why he's doing it? It's not because these
00:14:09.840
guys like each other. I don't think they like each other really at all. It's because Donald Trump
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is normal. He's normal. I think that might be the biggest defeat from a messaging standpoint that
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the Democrats have had to deal with for 10 years. Trump is normal. If you get elected
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to two terms, at least two terms, as president, you're normal. If you win the popular vote
00:14:38.380
as a Republican for the first time in 20 years, you're normal. If you win huge swaths of all sorts
00:14:44.660
of different voter demographics, you're normal. This is what you heard from the left for years,
00:14:50.960
and from the squish right. You're right. We cannot normalize Donald Trump. He's normal
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because he's normal. The former Democrat president's going to talk to him. Probably
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the former Democrat president is friendlier with him than the former Republican president
00:15:06.680
because Trump's been a little harsh on the Bush family. The Bush family has been a little harsh on
00:15:10.520
Trump, but they're all in the same club now. He's not, he's no longer an outlier. Jimmy Carter,
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when he would take pictures in the former president's club, Jimmy Carter often liked to stand
00:15:21.400
separate as though his presidency were fundamentally different from the corrupt presidencies that
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followed. Reagan and the Bushes and Clinton, he was different. He's a better man, but they're all
00:15:36.960
together now. Trump's one of the guys. In fact, he won a more impressive victory, a much more
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impressive comeback than any of those other presidents there. He's the most normal one of all.
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Now, some Democrats are less inclined to reach across the aisle right now.
00:15:51.200
Notably, Elizabeth Warren. Senator Laiwatha is screeching at Pete Hegseth, President Trump's
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defense department or defense secretary nominee, over the importance of diversity in the military.
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DOD officials have been clear that, quote, diversity, equity, and inclusion in the military are
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necessities for the United States, and that the military must be able to attract, train, and
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retain them for the services, to retain competitive edges. You, Pete Hegseth, have claimed that the
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dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is, diversity is our strength. As noted above,
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you also called for firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and any general that was involved,
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any general admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI woke SHIT. Additionally,
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you complained in the War on Warriors that a woke military emphasizes the made-up military values
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of diversity and inclusion and fails to recruit masculine men who make up a warrior class. She
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goes on, but I don't have enough. I don't have enough patience to get through it. This is her thesis.
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Diversity is an absolute necessity for our military. Diversity is the military's strength.
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But I have one question. Why does the military wear uniforms? If diversity is the military's
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strength, why do they wear uniforms? Shouldn't they wear diversiforms? Shouldn't they wear
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individualistic, eclectic, expressive outfits? Shouldn't they wear, I don't know, leather and feather
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boas? And why is it that they wear uniforms? Well, this question is answered on a Defense Department
00:17:43.160
website. You can type it right in. Why does the military wear uniforms? DOD says the military wears
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uniforms to create consistency and a sense of camaraderie. The military wears uniforms because
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uniformity is our strength in the military. Uniformity, cohesion, consistency, being all together, having
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a common purpose, understanding each other, being the same. What do they say about the Marines? When you go
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in for training in the Marines, they tear you down so they can build you back up and you're all going to be
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the same and you're going to be a unified fighting force. That's why the military wears uniforms, also
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because of international law, and that's why diversity is manifestly not our strength. I love
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Elizabeth Warren here. You can hear the desperation as she just reaches for that tomahawk. She writes,
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the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you know, all the generals, the admirals who are involved in
00:18:49.840
this. Our military, our DOD officials have been clear that diversity is our strength. Yeah, but Pete's
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about to be their boss. No, but the authorities, claims Elizabeth Warren, all of the authorities at the
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Pentagon claim that diversity is the military strength. Well, no, actually, the top authority at the Pentagon,
00:19:12.840
the man who's about to become the top authority at the Pentagon, he says you're wrong. So if you're going to
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appeal to authority at the Pentagon, well, you're going to be appealing to Pete Hegseth, and Pete Hegseth is going
00:19:24.540
to say you're wrong, and Pete Hegseth is right. This is what they're really screeching over. They're really gnashing
00:19:31.140
their teeth over, is we are seeing a true changing of the guard. It's not just that the Republicans won
00:19:38.760
the presidency, but they lost the House and the Senate. It's not just that the Republicans won the
00:19:44.240
presidency and the House and the Senate, but they don't have the Supreme Court. The Republicans now
00:19:49.240
have unified government, and they can wield the power of the state to undo the terrible policies of
00:19:59.120
the last four years. Many policies that go back much further than the last four years.
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That's what they're really screeching about. No, but all the experts. Yeah, well, now we're the
00:20:09.540
experts. No, but all the authorities. Yeah, now we're the authorities. But no, but the establishment.
00:20:16.080
Hey, you know what, lady? We're about to be the establishment. Hey, you like that? And you're about to
00:20:22.860
be fringe. You are on the outside. You are banished from the longhouse and from the teepee. Speaking of
00:20:30.940
members of Congress, Unusual Wales has a great little study out on our Congress. I sometimes think
00:20:39.080
that members of Congress are not always the most intelligent people in the world. There's some
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real bright spots, but I would say the median IQ in Congress is probably lower than other institutions
00:20:51.540
in our country. However, members of Congress have a real genius for one thing. It's not passing good
00:20:58.040
laws. It's not really getting anything good to advance the common good. But they do have an amazing
00:21:03.920
genius for investing. These guys know how to pick a stock, man. This study shows, if you just look at
00:21:11.420
Congressional Democrats, Congressional Democrats' stock portfolios jumped 31% in 2024. 31%. Now, I don't know
00:21:20.500
anything about investing. I just have a guy who does it for me. But man, I ain't getting 31%. I'm not
00:21:26.420
getting a fraction of a fraction of that. 31%. That far beats the S&P 500. Then let's be bipartisan
00:21:34.340
about it because there are plenty of Republicans who do this too. If you look at the hundred or so
00:21:38.780
members of Congress who actively trade, only half of them beat the S&P 500. Most members of Congress
00:21:47.720
tracked with less active trading than previous years. And Nancy Pelosi, you know, top of the walk,
00:21:59.640
she's really, really impressive at her trading. There are a lot of Republicans in there too.
00:22:03.160
It seems a little corrupt, doesn't it? It's not illegal. Members of Congress are allowed to
00:22:10.760
trade stocks. And members of Congress are privy to a lot of information that the general public is
00:22:17.960
not privy to. They're allowed, in a sense, to insider trade. That's a great deal of corruption,
00:22:25.940
isn't it? How do you remedy that corruption? Do you prohibit members of Congress from trading stocks?
00:22:32.280
I guess you could do that. Do you give them a raise? You could just give them a raise.
00:22:35.820
Members of Congress could make a lot more money, most of them, in the private sector than
00:22:39.060
in government. Do you just raise their wages to make them competitive? Possibly.
00:22:43.900
Do you, I don't know, do you restore virtue? Do you restore civics classes? Do you restore
00:22:47.960
religion? Do you restore, I don't know, what do you do? That's not, I would be so happy if I could
00:22:53.600
just blame it on the Democrats. But I can't just blame it on the Democrats. It's a systemic problem.
00:22:58.260
I would be so happy if I could just blame it on California or New York or Illinois or some left
00:23:02.920
wing state. But it's not just a left wing state problem. This is a federal problem. The rot runs
00:23:08.360
deep. There's so much more to say first, though. Go to netsuite.com slash Knowles. What does the
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K-N-A-W-L-E-S, netsuite.com slash Knowles. My favorite comment yesterday is from William
00:24:23.980
Elliott, who says, don't forget that Karen Bass donated millions of dollars worth of firefighting
00:24:27.900
equipment to Ukraine and cut millions from the fire departments. I don't think she donated millions of
00:24:34.480
dollars of fire equipment to Ukraine. I haven't seen a number on how much fire equipment she donated
00:24:40.420
to Ukraine. I do know that LA, under her leadership, did donate excess, and now it doesn't seem to be
00:24:47.700
excess or surplus fire equipment, to Ukraine. But I don't know if it was millions. Surely, though,
00:24:53.660
they did cut the fire budgets by millions of dollars. And in any case, if they even sent one
00:25:01.800
hat over to Ukraine, one fire hose over to Ukraine, it's a fire hose that really could be used right now.
00:25:06.300
But this is indicative of a broader problem for the liberals, which is that they prioritize
00:25:12.040
everyone else over Americans, which is why President Trump's slogan, America First,
00:25:16.180
has resonated among most Americans, among the majority of American voters.
00:25:22.480
Now, speaking of investments, there's a little bit of good news. College tuition is decreasing
00:25:27.560
at state schools, and it's increasing at a slower rate at private schools.
00:25:32.780
This is according to the college board, which is hugely influential in college admissions,
00:25:39.520
shows that the average student attending an in-state public university this year will pay
00:25:45.080
tuition to the order of $11,610. That is down 4% from 10 years ago when you take inflation into account.
00:25:54.160
Now, when you factor in grants and financial aid, the savings are way bigger than 4%.
00:26:01.160
The savings are actually 40% over the course of a decade, from $4,140 to $2,480 annually,
00:26:10.760
according to those data. Now, at private colleges, the cost is still going up,
00:26:14.320
but the rate of increase is diminishing. So the cost has increased 4% over the last decade
00:26:20.300
when you take inflation into account. That's a big change if you look at two decades prior
00:26:25.840
when the tuition increase was 68%. What does this tell us? This tells us that the market still
00:26:32.100
functions. This tells us that there is a market correction going on. This tells us that college
00:26:38.460
is overvalued. The year after I went to college, so I guess my sophomore year of college,
00:26:44.060
college was the high watermark for college attendance in America. It was 2009. Something
00:26:51.700
like 70% of high school graduates went on to college, all-time high, and it has declined since
00:26:59.640
then, and it's really dropped off in recent years. Meanwhile, the price of college was going up and up
00:27:06.620
up. The conservative consolation, Russell Kirk tells us this, a lot of conservatives have told
00:27:13.620
us this, is that in the long run, reality reasserts itself. And it can take a while, and it can be
00:27:18.860
hideous, and it can be tragic, and it can cause an entire city to burn to the ground. But reality
00:27:23.540
will reassert itself in the end. You can't escape reality. Reality is undefeated. And here, college is
00:27:30.860
just not worth what people have been paying for it. So I was recently doing a panel with my friend
00:27:38.880
Charlie Kirk, and someone asked us about what she should major in in college to have a job in
00:27:45.220
journalism. And Charlie's answer was, don't go to college. And I kind of get it. If you're a Charlie
00:27:48.580
Kirk, don't go to college. You can launch a major political organization at the age of 18. Okay,
00:27:54.120
I don't think there are that many Charlie Kirks in the world. I'm pro-college, but not for the reason
00:27:58.440
that many conservatives are. Some conservatives will say just major in engineering or something,
00:28:03.040
just major in STEM or something practical. I don't think you should do that. You can go to
00:28:08.380
trade school for that. You can learn that on the job. That's not what university is for.
00:28:12.140
University is not to learn something useful, but to learn something useless, which has real value to
00:28:17.680
it. But the problem these days is even the really fancy schools, even the private schools, even the
00:28:22.680
expensive schools, often don't teach you philosophy, literature, history, almost never theology.
00:28:30.340
They don't really make you a cultured person. They don't really help you make sense of your freedom.
00:28:34.400
So the market's going to correct. And you're seeing that. Now you have data for that. It's no longer
00:28:38.780
just taking it on the words of conservatives who say, you know, this college isn't worth it these
00:28:42.620
days. Now, actually, most Americans think that now because the market is moving. You don't need to
00:28:48.500
just take conservatives' word for it that Trump is normal and he's a good president,
00:28:51.280
people like him. Most Americans think that. Reality is catching up. And the liberal politicians
00:28:59.200
are trying to catch up to reality. Just look at Barack Obama palling around with Hitler. Now,
00:29:03.280
speaking of advances in knowledge, there is something really creepy coming out of Timeshift.
00:29:13.120
Timeshift is a new facility billing itself as the world's first cryopreservation facility
00:29:21.100
based on cutting edge AI and cryptopreservation. So to simplify that, it's where you go freeze
00:29:28.580
yourself until they cure whatever disease you have. And you've heard about this in the past.
00:29:34.380
There have been eccentrics who have frozen themselves and it doesn't work. But the idea is, okay, if I'm
00:29:39.720
going to die soon, if I just freeze myself, then maybe I can remain an icicle until the scientists
00:29:47.300
figure out the cure to whatever I have. And then they can thaw me out, give me the cure and I can
00:29:52.460
live longer. And then, I don't know, if I get something else that they don't have the cure for,
00:29:56.060
maybe they put me back in the freezer and they put me next to the hamburgers and the ice cream and
00:30:01.420
then they thaw me out 100 years later and they cure whatever other disease I got. Okay, we've heard
00:30:07.200
about that before. Now, it's never worked, but this new organization says, no, we figured out how to
00:30:12.780
make it work. We're going to prevent cellular death. Okay. But what makes it even creepier is
00:30:18.140
they say that they have a solution to the big problem that this causes for the people around
00:30:24.540
the person who freezes himself. Namely, if you go and freeze yourself, well, all these people,
00:30:29.160
your daughter, your brother, your community, they lose you. You're in a freezer somewhere,
00:30:35.080
but their lives go on. And the solution, they say, is to use AI to create an avatar of the frozen
00:30:43.600
person's likeness to speak with family and friends in real time while their body is frozen. I've talked
00:30:49.560
to people who say that soon we'll upload our consciousness to a computer. And so even after we
00:30:55.920
die in the physical world, after our bodies decay, there will be a robot that is virtually
00:31:01.800
indistinguishable from us. And then our loved ones who are grieving our death won't really need to
00:31:06.740
grieve because they can just talk to the robot. And it'll seem just like the real person. It's almost
00:31:12.400
like you never have to die. Except, do you see the problem here? Do you see the fundamental problem?
00:31:21.180
C.S. Lewis talks about it in Abolition of Man. With every advance, there's also a retreat.
00:31:27.520
You say, okay, I want to live forever. I feel that I'm not going to live long enough.
00:31:33.460
So I want to live forever. But in order to live forever, I'm going to stop living right now
00:31:37.540
because I'm going to put myself in a freezer. But it'll be good because in the aggregate,
00:31:43.340
in the long run, I'm going to live forever. But actually, I'm going to cut my life off right now.
00:31:48.940
We think that we can conquer death, even putting aside the cryogenic freezing,
00:31:55.240
by creating an AI avatar. And then we'll be able to live forever in a certain way. The robot will
00:32:01.660
be indistinguishable from the human being. But in order to live forever, I cease to be me.
00:32:09.060
I cease to exist. In other words, there are a lot of dubious assumptions about anthropology and
00:32:16.560
philosophy that are at the heart of these scientific explorations. That's the problem with it. It's not
00:32:23.700
that it's not cool to freeze a person. I guess that's kind of cool that you could do that.
00:32:27.480
It's not that it's not cool that you can make a robot that seems a lot like
00:32:29.940
a person that you know. There's something interesting about that.
00:32:35.060
But you're assuming a lot of things about human nature. You're assuming, for instance,
00:32:40.000
that a human person is just the summation of our
00:32:45.120
synapses firing. You're assuming that the person is just the body, that there's no such thing as an
00:32:52.300
immaterial soul, a spirit. So if that's true, if we really are just a bunch of matter, then if you
00:33:00.180
can replicate the matter, you've replicated the person. The problem is that your premise is false.
00:33:04.760
At least I think your premise is false. I don't think that the only thing that matters is matter.
00:33:10.520
I think there's more to the world. These days, it's very popular to say that all that exists is
00:33:15.740
stuff. But I think that's ridiculous. I think dreams and love and mathematics and all sorts of
00:33:22.800
things exist that are not material. I think, for instance, that the soul is the form of the body,
00:33:29.160
the substantial form of the body. I think this is increasingly backed up by scientific discoveries,
00:33:35.620
particularly in the quantum field. But putting that aside, I'm no expert on it. It just seems to me
00:33:41.040
that actually all the old wisdom is being vindicated. I think that Aristotle's right and
00:33:45.540
these futurist weirdo atheists are wrong. But at the very least, we have to acknowledge that is
00:33:50.620
what's being smuggled in here. And we're not the first to predict it. C.S. Lewis predicted this
00:33:58.100
in the abolition of man. Many people saw that the more we advance, the more we seem to retreat. I got
00:34:04.140
in trouble because I made this point on the show that the dark ages were actually relatively weren't so
00:34:09.120
dark. And actually, when you compare, look, there are plenty of advantages to modernity. Okay, I like
00:34:14.680
modern dentistry a lot more than medieval dentistry, probably. But there are many ways in which the
00:34:19.700
modern era is much more barbaric, much more violent, much less civilized, conducive, much less
00:34:25.100
conducive to flourishing than the Middle Ages. Okay, speaking of the abolition of man,
00:34:32.620
here's just a quick story, really sad. A young female firefighter has sustained serious head
00:34:38.200
injuries while fighting the fire in LA. A 25-year-old woman sustained a major head injury.
00:34:43.920
She's being treated right now so we can pray for her. I hope she does well.
00:34:49.420
But this gets to the kind of dubious assumptions we're making about human nature. In this case,
00:34:55.180
the one that men and women are exactly the same. It's wrong for women to be firemen. It's wrong.
00:35:00.860
I'm not saying she doesn't have good intentions. I'm not saying she's not demonstrating
00:35:04.860
heroism and a kind of a virtue. But it's just wrong. I don't want to read that story. I don't
00:35:10.540
want to read that a woman gets her head knocked in fighting a fire. I don't want to read that a
00:35:15.820
woman catches a bullet from a jihadi fighting in Iraq. I don't want to read that. I think it's a
00:35:20.180
barbaric society that permits our women, much less now encourages our women to do this. I think men
00:35:26.520
and women are different. I think actually firemen need to be big and strong and burly. I think they
00:35:31.480
need to be big, strong, burly guys who can carry big, heavy hoses and equipment and carry people
00:35:38.340
out on their shoulders. And I think they need to be men who are more inclined toward physical
00:35:46.140
violence. Men who, when physical violence occurs to them, it's not quite so ghastly and horrifying as
00:35:55.660
when it happens to a woman. I think men and women are different. And I think the prioritizing of DEI
00:36:03.380
in first responders in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the country is just one more aspect of that,
00:36:11.120
of the political rot that's been allowed to set in. Nothing against the individual women who want
00:36:18.480
to do these things. It's very noble in some, in a way that they want to help, but it's disordered
00:36:24.860
the way that our society is now expecting them to contribute. It's disordered. It's contrary to
00:36:31.520
nature. And we shouldn't have to, we shouldn't have to tolerate it. What is a woman? The question
00:36:38.800
we've just been discussing sparked a cultural conversation. Now, Identity Crisis, a powerful
00:36:43.180
new film from the Daily Wire and Turning Point USA goes even deeper, exposing the heartbreaking
00:36:47.180
consequences of radical gender ideology while highlighting stories of resilience and courage
00:36:50.860
in the pursuit of truth. Starting now and for the next 72 hours, Identity Crisis is streaming for
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free on X. We chose to make it free for 72 hours because this is a story everyone needs to see.
00:37:02.820
The raw, unflinching truth about how this dangerous ideology is affecting children and families.
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Creating bold premium content like this is not easy. It's costly. It's bold. It's essential. That is
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00:37:23.120
Finally, finally, we've reached my favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag.
00:37:27.160
Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S,
00:37:31.020
to save an additional 50% off your first month. Take it away.
00:37:34.440
Hello, Michael. My name is Drew. I'm 13 years old. I've been listening to the show daily for three
00:37:40.880
years. I'm calling from Tampon Tim State of Minnesota, and my question for you is, how come
00:37:47.280
conservatives have fought for women's sports and defended them relentlessly from giant men
00:37:52.220
pretending to be women? Yet, we also make fun of women's sports constantly. I mean, even my mom
00:37:58.340
says we can't have women's basketball on, even if it's to make fun of it. We think it's dumb,
00:38:04.240
but also speak of it as if it's an incredibly important thing. We say that nobody watches
00:38:09.700
them, which they don't. But we also say how this is an invasion of an institution. But it's an
00:38:15.740
institution that nobody cares about to begin with. Well, I do agree with both of these points.
00:38:22.160
I could not defend them simultaneously in an argument. Love the show. Thank you for answering
00:38:27.220
my question. Really great question and really well stated. Both of those things are true.
00:38:34.240
We fight the imposition of men and women's sports, and we don't really care about women's sports.
00:38:40.280
That's true. Because what we care about is justice, and it is unjust for men to enter into women's
00:38:50.940
private spaces and associations and take their trophies and scholarships away from them. It's
00:38:54.920
unjust. It's disordered. It is grounded on falsehoods. It is harmful, often physically harmful,
00:39:03.040
to the women involved. It's harmful to the men who think that they're women as well because it leads
00:39:07.980
them and affirms them in delusion. That's why. It's just a matter of justice. I make fun of Canada
00:39:14.640
a lot. But if the Chinese dropped a nuclear bomb on Toronto because they don't like Tim Hortons,
00:39:22.660
I would come to Canada's defense. Not because I think Canada has its act together, not because I
00:39:29.980
think Canada is the most important nation in the history of the world, but because it would be rather
00:39:33.620
unjust for China to do such a thing. How that analogy came up, I'm not quite sure. But that's why.
00:39:39.240
It's about justice. You don't need to defend women's sports because you like the sports. You should defend
00:39:46.400
women's sports because you like the women. You want women to receive their due, to be treated in a just
00:39:53.240
way. Next question. Hi, Michael. Thanks for the show. I'm excited to hear your thoughts on this.
00:39:59.180
What would you do if you were in my situation? Or better, what should my husband do if this
00:40:04.480
situation ever comes up again? Today, we went out to eat with our nine-month-old baby, having a great
00:40:10.280
time, family-friendly experience, when two very inappropriately dressed people came in to eat.
00:40:17.340
They were wearing tight leather, bondage clothes, freaky face tattoos, piercings, collars, the whole
00:40:25.520
kit and caboodle. Now, we finished our meal quickly and left, but this is the kind of thing we don't want
00:40:32.780
our son to be exposed to. Thankfully, at this point in his life, he's too young to remember it, but
00:40:37.780
in the future, what would you have done? Thank you. What would I have done in that situation?
00:40:43.800
I would have requested of the waiter, or better, the manager, that the restaurant kick those people
00:40:51.120
out because it is inappropriate to wear leather sex gear into a restaurant. You wouldn't be asking
00:41:02.160
the restaurant to kick these people out because of their true identity, or even because of their
00:41:09.100
deviant desires or private behaviors. You would be asking to kick them out because they are not
00:41:15.800
comporting themselves in accord with the standards of the restaurant or public decency. So that's what
00:41:21.700
I'd say. I'd call them over and say, hey, you need to ask those people to leave, please. And if they gave
00:41:27.920
me pushback, I would explain it as I just did. And in fact, I was present when such a thing happened
00:41:35.560
in New York while protecting the establishment in question. I was with a coworker of mine in a coffee
00:41:44.180
shop in New York in a very Italian neighborhood. And I actually didn't see this episode happen.
00:41:50.140
I was in the bathroom when this happened. And when I came out, my coworker was laughing. And he said,
00:41:55.600
I got, you're not going to believe what just happened. In this coffee shop in an Italian
00:41:59.700
part of New York, they had, it's a pretty traditional area, but they had a gay flag
00:42:06.160
right behind the counter. And I go, I hit the bathroom. I was just getting a cup of coffee.
00:42:10.380
I go into the bathroom. While I'm in there, some big goomba just walks up to the counter and goes,
00:42:16.760
what's with the flag? And the guy behind the counter says, huh? What's with the flag? The guy behind
00:42:22.660
the counter says, what? Oh, you know, it's inclusion. You know, it's nice. We're welcoming
00:42:26.880
everybody. And the guy, the goomba says, get rid of the flag. There are children in here.
00:42:34.200
Nobody needs to see that. Get rid of that rainbow flag. I don't want to see that. And so the guy
00:42:39.700
behind the counter, I guess, was pushing back a little bit. Eventually the guy behind the counter
00:42:42.200
says, hey, you know, this is my shop. You can't tell me what to do with my flag. And the goomba says,
00:42:47.680
yeah, it's your shop, but it's my neighborhood. Get rid of that flag. And then I don't know. I
00:42:52.440
don't know what happened. We didn't, we left the coffee shop later. I just hit the head,
00:42:55.400
had my coffee. I left. I like that. I like that kind of thing. Yeah, sure. It's your shop. It's
00:43:02.580
my neighborhood. It's my country. It's my society. And it's your society and it's his society and his
00:43:07.780
society. And we are entitled to live according to standards. So that's what I would say. You don't
00:43:14.620
need to be mean about it. You don't need to be nasty, but you can be firm and reasonable.
00:43:22.080
Yeah, sorry. No sex gear in the Chuck E. Cheese. Take that elsewhere. Take that to some other
00:43:27.860
restaurant. Next question. Hey, Michael. Love the show. Just had a quick question about taking the
00:43:35.280
Lord's name in vain. A lot of people say, saying things like, well, Jesus Christ or, oh my God,
00:43:41.820
are taking his name in vain. But I don't necessarily believe that because when I was 16, I would tell
00:43:51.740
everybody I was God and then he almost killed me and it took repenting midair. I had a collapsed
00:43:57.680
lung from that. Then at 18, I was acting like a jerk with God and he set me on fire on Easter
00:44:04.960
Sunday. And then when I was 20, I was going around slightly mocking God and I almost lost my
00:44:11.020
hand. Ever since then, I have been very careful with my speech. I do say things like, oh my
00:44:17.520
God, G-A-H. Sometimes I do say, you know, well, Jesus Christ, but it's always in a respectful
00:44:22.700
way because I've almost died. Just want to know what you thought about that.
00:44:29.060
I'm a little bewildered, I suppose, by your account. Sorry to hear of your troubles, but
00:44:33.640
glad you've come out in the end. I suppose I would recommend that you not test the Lord your
00:44:39.780
God. So I'm not denying necessarily that these misfortunes that have befallen you have some
00:44:48.280
relation to the way you've behaved or spoken. I don't know that there's a connection, but I
00:44:53.860
wouldn't take the absence of some calamity when you take the name of the Lord in vain as evidence
00:45:00.080
that you are not therefore taking the name of the Lord in vain. You are. When you use God's name in a
00:45:05.860
trivial way or in a flippant way or certainly in a profane way, that just is by definition taking
00:45:12.420
the Lord's name in vain. You're using his name in a vain way. So God tells you not to do that.
00:45:18.580
And at a deeper point about religion, religion is not purely a subjective experience. Religion is an
00:45:26.160
objective thing. Religion is a habit of virtue that inclines the will to give to God what he deserves.
00:45:30.060
It's something that we can know something about. Religion is not, as many modern people believe,
00:45:34.360
just a preference. You know, you like chocolate, I like vanilla. It's not just an opinion that's not
00:45:40.280
grounded in truth. It's a legitimate subject of inquiry that is grounded in reason and reality.
00:45:51.960
We can know something about it with certainty. So all of that to say, don't take the name of the
00:45:59.900
Lord in vain and don't wait to have another piano fall on your head to follow that advice. Next
00:46:06.580
question. Hello, Michael. I would like to say thank you for your previous advice back in November.
00:46:12.000
I asked you if I should wait until my girlfriend and I were more financially stable to propose to her
00:46:16.660
or go ahead and propose now and just be engaged for a little while. Well, I took your advice. I was
00:46:22.120
able to buy a ring and proposed and happily she said yes. My question for you now is, do you have any
00:46:28.040
advice on things we should know or do before getting married? Thank you and God bless.
00:46:33.320
That's great. I'm really glad to hear that things have worked out for you. Yes, I do have advice.
00:46:40.600
You both should know what you are signing up for. You need to agree on what it is you are doing.
00:46:47.540
That's the most important thing to begin. Then you actually have to cultivate the habits that allow
00:46:52.000
you to do that thing. But these days, we don't know what marriage is. The Supreme Court doesn't
00:46:55.760
know what marriage is. People are real confused about marriage. Even more traditional people or
00:47:00.820
religious people, sometimes they're a little confused. You need to know what this is.
00:47:05.260
Are you equal partners who decide that you're going to help each other out and you're going to go,
00:47:12.880
I'm going to make the special vanilla cake for you on Sunday and you're going to always warm the
00:47:18.040
towel for me? Is it that kind of thing? Are you engaged in a relationship for mutual amusement?
00:47:25.180
Or are you a man who finds a wife and you come together and become one flesh and you're doing
00:47:32.620
something that has a head to it, the husband and a wife, and you come together for the begetting
00:47:40.920
and education of children and as a secondary matter for the mutual support of the spouses?
00:47:44.740
Just off the top of my head. What are you doing? Figure that out. The most successful marriages
00:47:50.780
I've ever seen involve two people who agree on what they're doing, where there's really little
00:47:59.220
ambiguity. Because when you get the basic stuff settled, then you can have real brilliance and
00:48:05.460
real creativity. It's like a poem. When you have meter to a poem, when you perhaps have a rhyme scheme
00:48:10.900
to a poem, when you know the form of the poem, it's within those limits. It's from those limits that
00:48:16.920
the real brilliance and creativity can exist. When it's just a kind of free verse, slam poetry nonsense,
00:48:23.600
the whole thing's incoherent and it will probably have you running for the doors. It's Fake Headline
00:48:28.820
Friday and I have more written mailbag to get to. The rest of the show continues. Now you do not want
00:48:33.800
to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knolls at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
00:48:38.860
I've often said that gender affirming care is health care. It is mental health care and it can
00:49:00.920
actually be suicide prevention care. I think I'm gonna take some medicine so I can kind of like
00:49:08.600
transform into a boy, get surgery. After the surgery, I didn't really feel any better. When it stopped
00:49:16.220
being a thing for adults and it started to be a let's teach this to kids. Total lie. Manipulation. It's
00:49:22.380
gaslighting. Please stop. He's a boy, not a girl. How could she do this to my son? What they're talking about
00:49:28.780
is hormonal therapy or sex reassignment surgery on children. I thought fixing me externally would
00:49:35.880
fix me internally. But of course I was wrong. The fact that the state thinks that they're
00:49:40.700
more important and have a better say in what happens to your child over the actual parent's
00:49:45.220
opinion is egregious. Puberty blockers, surgeries, big money makers for hospitals, for physicians.
00:49:51.160
All I want to do is hold my son. Are you asking me to lie to parents? And he said yes.
00:49:58.780
This is an weaponized use of a parent's sympathy and caring and concern by the left to destroy
00:50:05.880
your child. Let's tell kids that maybe they can be the opposite sex. Maybe they actually are the
00:50:11.880
opposite sex. It is an evil thing to tell children that happiness lies on the other side of puberty
00:50:18.880
blockers or double mastectomies. The left so badly wants to blur these lines. That's a five alarm fire.