The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1650 - Mel Gibson Preaches To Joe Rogan

00:00:00.000 Get ready. In exactly one week, we will be live on the ground in Washington, D.C. for Donald

00:00:04.860 Trump's inauguration. Watch live. Join the fight at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:00:09.820 As the Los Angeles fires continue to destroy the city,

00:00:13.720 the California governor and former future Democrat presidential nominee Gavin Newsom

00:00:18.600 is asking the White House for help. I ask you, we've got to deal with this misinformation.

00:00:24.780 There are hurricane force winds of mis- and disinformation lies. People want to divide.

00:00:30.580 This country. And we're going to have to address that as well. And it breaks my heart

00:00:35.840 as people are suffering and struggling that we're up against those hurricane force forces as well.

00:00:43.180 And and that's just a point of personal privilege that I share that with you because it infects real

00:00:48.000 people that are out there. People I meet every single day, people the mayor has been meeting with

00:00:53.480 and they're having conversations that are not the typical conversations you'd have at this time.

00:00:58.600 And you wonder where this stuff comes from. And it's very damaging as well. But but we're here

00:01:03.720 to get the job done. Did you catch that? The governor of California is not asking the White House to help

00:01:12.260 protect his constituents from the historic fire that's still raging. He is asking the White House

00:01:17.620 to protect him from his constituents criticism. A desperate and disgusting plea from a politician

00:01:25.200 whose presidential ambitions have just gone up in smoke. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:30.340 Welcome back to the show. Mel Gibson was just preaching the gospel to and on

00:01:54.140 the Joe Rogan Show. It was really beautiful. There's so much more to say. First, though,

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00:03:04.680 That is T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A.com slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Go there, write N-O-W. Collapse happens gradually,

00:03:15.620 then suddenly. I'm not the first person to observe it. An LA fire lady has gone viral over 0.58

00:03:21.240 the past few days before mocking the idea that a woman, a woman firefighter, a concept basically 0.99

00:03:29.820 unheard of until about 50 years ago, that a woman firefighter would struggle to carry a big burly 1.00

00:03:36.260 man out of a burning building. You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency,

00:03:42.280 whether it's a medical call or a fire call, that looks like you. It gives that person a little bit

00:03:47.100 more ease, knowing that somebody might understand their situation better. Is she strong enough to

00:03:51.840 do this? Or you couldn't carry my husband out of a fire, which my response is, he got himself in

00:03:56.900 the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire. You know, if I have to carry your husband

00:04:07.940 out of a fire, out of a burning building, he's in the wrong place. Yeah. Usually people in burning

00:04:14.140 buildings would describe their position as the wrong place. It's not the right place. It's not

00:04:18.600 the place they want to be. That's why we have firemen. And nobody wants that lady responding 1.00

00:04:24.820 to their burning building. She says, well, you know, when your house is on fire, you want to make sure

00:04:30.280 that the fireman who shows up looks like you. I'm sorry, the fire men or fire lady who shows up 0.97

00:04:34.440 looks like you. That is not true. I am a perfectly average-sized, not particularly athletic,

00:04:44.980 swarthy fella. I don't exactly care about the race of the man who shows up, but I definitely want it to 0.97

00:04:50.300 be a guy. I want the guy to be huge. I want him not only to be above average in size, I want him to

00:04:56.600 be very much above average in size. I want him to be very athletic so that he can carry me down

00:05:01.360 flights of stairs. I want him to be a big, brawny dude. I don't care if he's a white guy. I don't

00:05:07.360 care if he's Hispanic. I don't care if he's a black guy. In fact, black guys are pretty strong. 0.99

00:05:11.580 They're pretty athletic. Maybe I would even sort of prefer him to be a big, giant black guy, 1.00

00:05:16.460 which is not me. He wouldn't resemble me, but I would feel a lot better if that were the case, 0.91

00:05:21.560 because I would believe that he is likely to save me from the burning building.

00:05:26.400 But if a lady of any sort, straight, lesbian, white, black, if a lady shows up, 0.99

00:05:37.020 I'm going to start sweating even more than I already was with the building on fire.

00:05:42.020 It should go without saying, but I think it actually has to be said now.

00:05:45.860 Women should not be firefighters for a whole host of reasons. One, because they're physically 1.00

00:05:52.540 weaker than men. Just a fact. Two, because it is a disordered society that sends women 1.00

00:05:59.600 into burning buildings to save men. That's just wrong. It's the same kind of society that sends

00:06:06.160 women to the front lines of combat to catch bullets from jihadis. It's a bad idea because women are 1.00

00:06:12.920 physically weaker than men, but it's also just disordered. What kind of a sick society, 0.97

00:06:17.960 what kind of a perverted society sends women to go catch bullets to protect men? That's just wrong. 1.00

00:06:25.040 That's a society that doesn't know the difference between men and women. 1.00

00:06:28.440 And I'm not just talking about the people who fall in prey to the transgender ideology. I'm 0.99

00:06:32.440 talking about many people who would even call themselves conservatives, because I know what the

00:06:35.740 answer is going to be. There are going to be people who think that they are conservative,

00:06:39.280 who think that they are on the right wing, and they're going to say, well, look, sure, Michael,

00:06:44.740 well, usually women should not be firefighters. Usually women should not fight in combat in the 1.00

00:06:50.040 military. But some women can do it. Really, it should just be about whoever can pass the physical 1.00

00:06:57.280 fitness test. And if you can pass the test, then be my guest. First of all, what happens when you

00:07:04.060 subject everyone, regardless of sex, to that kind of standard is the standards just get lowered.

00:07:08.920 That's what happens in police departments. That's what happens in the fire department. That's what

00:07:12.000 happens in the military. But even beyond that, do you see the logical conclusion of that thinking?

00:07:19.800 This is the thinking that gave us transing the kids. This is the thinking that gave us the 0.97

00:07:24.300 sexually confused society. This is the thinking that ripped apart any semblance of chivalry or

00:07:29.840 serious definition of family. Listen, women can be fire. Usually they won't be, but women can be 1.00

00:07:36.860 firefighters so long as they pass the test. Okay, why not? That's fine. Of course women can fight in 1.00

00:07:42.280 combat. You know, if they pass the test, if they're as physically strong as men. Of course we should

00:07:48.140 support same-sex marriage. People should have any kind of rights that they want. It doesn't bother me.

00:07:52.320 Just don't make me pay for it. Of course. And look, adults, if adults want to put on dresses,

00:07:58.520 if they want to chop up their bodies, that's their right. They're individuals. That doesn't affect me.

00:08:02.300 But transgenderism in school curricula, that's crazy. Do you see the problem with that? 1.00

00:08:10.460 Of course women should be permitted into men's typical spaces. They should be permitted into 0.99

00:08:16.240 the military academy, and the police academy, and the fire academy. But transgenderism, that's crazy. 1.00

00:08:21.700 You've already accepted. By accepting the logic of same-sex marriage, by accepting the logic of the 0.55

00:08:29.780 LGBT movement, by accepting the logic of feminism, you have accepted the premises that inevitably bring 0.86

00:08:36.760 you transgenderism. And it's all absurd. And when we see the lady fireman admitting this, 1.00

00:08:43.980 on camera saying, yeah, I probably can't pull a man out of a burning building, but it sounds like a

00:08:47.000 him problem, doesn't it? Why is he relying on me? I'm a lady. I shouldn't be pulling him out of a

00:08:51.280 building. She's even admitting that men and women are different, that this is absurd.

00:08:56.160 But when even the conservatives accept these absurd premises, well, you end up exactly where we are.

00:09:04.300 Now, there are still some amazing things happening in LA. James Woods, great actor and a conservative

00:09:11.140 actor, one of the few conservative actors. James Woods was posting on X the other day.

00:09:16.440 Well, he's always posting on X. He's a very prominent tweeter. But James Woods was posting and said,

00:09:21.060 basically, that his house was up in flames. His house was right where the fire is. And he said,

00:09:26.360 it's gone. I'm evacuated, but it's almost certainly gone. Then he posted this a couple days later.

00:09:31.760 A miracle has happened. We managed to get to our property in our home that we were told is gone

00:09:35.380 forever, is still standing. In this hellish landscape, standing is relative, but smoke and

00:09:41.060 other damage is not like the utter destruction around us, the view from our deck area. And then he

00:09:45.200 posts from his deck, posts a little video, and everything is just wiped away. It's just totally

00:09:51.420 gone. Then Woods points out, he says, one side untouched, the other utter destruction.

00:09:59.560 While we rejoice to find our house intact in the midst of a hellscape like this,

00:10:04.780 you can only think of your neighbors. I think we have the video of both sides of the street.

00:10:08.680 Somewhere we have the video. Somewhere hidden in the control room, we have the video.

00:10:11.420 I was so certain that our house was gone a day ago, but the fickle finger of fate decided

00:10:17.800 otherwise. Now, the fickle finger of fate is an interesting phrase. That's not exactly the

00:10:22.640 phrase I would use to describe what's going on, but it is crazy. You've seen a lot of videos like

00:10:26.320 this. One side of the street, totally fine. The other side, absolutely destroyed. But this is not

00:10:32.060 the only story we've seen like this. There's another group of people who had all their property

00:10:37.980 burned down. One thing remained. We have video of that too. A statue of the Virgin Mary,

00:10:43.540 specifically of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is the apparition of Mary, the mother of God,

00:10:48.900 in the Americas, converted millions and millions of people. Everything burned down. This statue of

00:10:53.220 Mary is still standing. It's enough to give you goosebumps. Even if you're the most hardened

00:10:59.880 materialist who thinks that all of these kind of numinous phenomena are pure coincidence,

00:11:05.460 it's enough to give you goosebumps. Add on top of that, in the Palisades, there was a property

00:11:12.320 that survived. It's a property owned by Rick Caruso. It's one of the most beautiful properties

00:11:15.700 in LA. It's the Palisades Shopping Mall. Now, in the case of Rick Caruso's property, he's the

00:11:21.160 Republican who ran for mayor. In the case of Rick Caruso's property, he appears to have brought in

00:11:25.260 some private firemen help to help keep the fires off of his property. So that was a little less

00:11:31.740 providential, perhaps, but Rick Caruso clearly cooperating with the resources he had.

00:11:39.940 But then I have one more story. This one was really crazy. A friend of mine, he's a conservative

00:11:43.740 guy. He's a friend and colleague of many years. He has a property in Malibu. And we were looking at

00:11:50.200 the spread of the fire. And I didn't want, I was texting him, but I didn't want to say, man, your

00:11:53.840 property is gone. And I was asking for updates every so often. And he showed on the map his

00:12:00.380 neighbor's houses, just X, property gone, X, property gone. Virtually all of his neighbors had

00:12:07.440 their houses burnt to the ground. And then a day or so later, he texts me a picture of his property,

00:12:13.940 completely untouched. Palm trees on his property, completely untouched. He had a box, a cardboard

00:12:22.160 box of wood on his deck, completely untouched, not a hint of smoke. I was seeing footage from his

00:12:29.400 neighbor's ring camera of sparks flying by the property. The fire got so close to his house that

00:12:37.180 two windows exploded the property. Otherwise, totally, his stuff is fine.

00:12:45.740 I am not saying we have to read into this all that much. You know, it's a wicked generation that

00:12:52.000 seeks after signs and wonders and the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. However, as a

00:12:57.680 priest friend of mine observes, it's a stupid generation that ignores signs and wonders. And one 1.00

00:13:03.480 sees significance in a lot of things like a statue of the mother of God standing amid

00:13:07.160 all the ruins or certain houses survive, certain houses don't. It's providence is tightly knit and

00:13:16.860 imbued with meaning. It's just eerie, I guess is all I'm saying. There's so much more to say.

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00:14:26.880 Go to donewithdebt.com. Now, someone whose house did burn down, who is a good right-winger,

00:14:33.520 is Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson, while his house was burning down, was not crying over it. He wasn't

00:14:39.060 weeping. He wasn't pulling his hair out in Hollywood. He was doing the Joe Rogan show while

00:14:44.680 this was happening. He was laughing with Joe Rogan, and he was dropping a lot of truth bombs. He was saying

00:14:51.420 some things that were a little eccentric, but he was dropping a lot of truth bombs. For instance,

00:14:54.840 he was on the biggest show on the internet, drawing a direct link between what the Libs

00:15:03.660 call reproductive rights, reproductive freedom, and pagan infant sacrifice.

00:15:08.160 How close are we to collapse? And what are the things that lead to collapse? You know,

00:15:13.640 it's environmental stuff. It's human sacrifice. 0.95

00:15:18.720 Yeah.

00:15:19.260 I mean, we do that.

00:15:20.740 Kinda.

00:15:21.300 We do.

00:15:22.100 Yeah.

00:15:22.580 Yeah, we do.

00:15:23.940 We just dress it up.

00:15:25.340 Yep.

00:15:25.920 When you find out medications are killing people, and they keep prescribing them.

00:15:29.120 Yeah, and Gibson's going on. He talks about abortion. It's abortion. That's what we do.

00:15:34.180 When he's got that Mel Gibson look in his eyes, he says, we do it. And we do it to the tune

00:15:37.980 of 1.2 million babies per year. We do it. We do it on a scale that the Aztecs or the Hittites 0.97

00:15:43.440 or the Canaanites couldn't possibly have imagined. We sacrifice many, many, many more babies to Moloch 0.96

00:15:51.120 than any ancient, devilish, pagan tribe ever. And that's in the strongest country in the history of the 0.73

00:15:58.160 world. Gibson then doesn't just leave it there talking about natural law and, you know, the rights of

00:16:03.820 babies or anything. He speaks directly about Christianity. He answers some criticisms of

00:16:10.740 Christianity that, you know, it's too rigid or it's too judgmental or something like that. Mel Gibson

00:16:16.000 says, on the Rogan show. This isn't EWTN. Okay, this isn't the 700 Club. He's on the Joe Rogan

00:16:22.840 experience. And he says, hey, do you know who the first saint was? The first canonized saint.

00:16:30.920 You know who it was? No. The first ever confirmed canonization as a saint was Dismas. You know who

00:16:39.000 Dismas was? No. He was the thief on the cross next to Jesus. Oh. And he says to him,

00:16:46.000 you're going to be okay this day. You'll be with me. Unbaptized, criminal, all that stuff. So.

00:16:54.640 Wow.

00:16:55.300 The lawmaker is above the law. So there's a lot of mercy.

00:17:00.900 So he's mentioning this. I think a lot of people have an idea of Mel Gibson or some arch right-wing

00:17:06.040 traditionalist type of Catholic person or even Protestant Christian as being really judgmental

00:17:13.100 and exclusive and overly legalistic. And here's Mel Gibson. What does he say to Joe Rogan's audience?

00:17:20.840 He says, you know, the first saint was the criminal on the cross, the good thief. He was probably a

00:17:27.500 murderer, unbaptized. He had baptism of desire, clearly, but unbaptized. Did all sorts of awful 0.81

00:17:35.640 things, but he was given a grace by Christ. He accepted Christ's grace. And he's the first

00:17:41.240 canonized saint. It's a message that Mel Gibson is bringing to Joe Rogan's audience of mercy.

00:17:47.080 An audience that, well, like all of us to some degree, but maybe especially needs mercy,

00:17:51.920 is maybe not aware of this notion of mercy and grace. And then Gibson had the line,

00:17:57.320 I think this was the grand slam of the whole. The whole interview is worth watching,

00:18:00.660 but this to me was the best bit that Gibson had to speak directly to Joe Rogan's audience about

00:18:09.000 the truth of Christianity. Well, I regard the Gospels as history. It's a verifiable history.

00:18:15.340 Some people say, oh, it's a fairy tale. He never existed, but he did. And there are other accounts,

00:18:21.080 verifiable historical accounts outside the biblical ones that also bear this up that, yes, he did exist.

00:18:27.400 And, and, and, and the other aspect of that is that the, all the evangelists, the apostles who went out

00:18:35.100 there, every single one of those guys died rather than deny their belief. And nobody dies for a lie.

00:18:45.560 Nobody. Right. So that's part of what I'm doing. It's like showing nobody dies for a lie.

00:18:51.800 Yeah. Well, the resurrection is the one that is the most difficult for people to swallow. Yes.

00:18:59.340 That is the one that requires the most faith, the most faith and the most belief. Yeah. Resurrection. Yeah.

00:19:05.120 Who, who, who gets back up three days later after he gets murdered in public,

00:19:09.460 um, who gets back up under his own power? Buddha didn't do that.

00:19:15.600 Right. So you believe that was a real event?

00:19:20.000 Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. I definitely do. For all the reasons I just mentioned, you know,

00:19:27.600 the 11 guys going willingly to their deaths for something that they, uh, either saw or, you know,

00:19:35.120 uh, saw at least this just before and just after effects. And St. John is the only one who,

00:19:40.660 who actually isn't martyred, uh, but he saw it firsthand. And, uh, then the, the apostles who saw

00:19:46.280 the resurrected Christ with their eyes, Thomas actually touching his wounds. Uh, yeah. I said

00:19:50.920 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection. And yeah, I believe it. And guess what? Buddha didn't do that.

00:19:57.000 S-H-I-T. Not to be nitpicky. It's a venial sin to, to use naughty language. Uh, but it was used

00:20:06.640 for clear rhetorical effect here. Had Gibson chose his target really well here to speaking to the Joe

00:20:14.500 Rogan audience because the Joe Rogan audience is normal people, normal people who live in our normal

00:20:21.920 culture or normal culture, which has been influenced by all sorts of kind of wacky religion, 1.00

00:20:27.700 especially by Buddhism or a kind of Western conception of Buddhism. There's even a term in

00:20:33.860 New York in suburban New York, where I grew up, which is the Jew boo people who are raised reformed 1.00

00:20:38.920 Jews, kind of like secular Jews who become vaguely Buddhist in their spirituality, man, you know, 0.67

00:20:43.920 and it's not just reformed Jews who were subject to this. It's a, it's a ton of people, you know,

00:20:48.520 they're spiritual, but not religious, man. They don't like that organized religion. You know,

00:20:51.900 they just kind of want, they just want to be in touch with the vibes, you know, in the universe,

00:20:57.400 man. And they're all kind of vaguely Buddhist. And Gibson goes right to the heart of that. And he

00:21:02.060 says, yeah, Buddha didn't do that. Buddha didn't, Buddha wasn't executed publicly and he didn't

00:21:08.040 rise from the dead three days later of his own power. Only one person has ever done that. And that

00:21:13.520 is our Lord Jesus Christ. That, that is evangelism. Okay. That is preaching the gospel. It's not

00:21:20.940 the neatest, uh, most formal kind of rhetoric. Mel Gibson, even he's speaking a little loosely,

00:21:29.040 like when he says all the apostles died. Well, they all died eventually, but you know,

00:21:32.400 they weren't all martyred St. John was, but it sort of doesn't matter to me, what Mel was doing here.

00:21:39.100 Now Mel Gibson has a few theological problems, which is why I won't call him St. Mel. I'll just

00:21:43.280 call him the venerable Mel Gibson. But what he does here is exactly what St. Paul tells us to do when

00:21:48.580 he says to be all things to all people. In 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 9, St. Paul says,

00:21:54.360 for whereas I was free as to all, I made myself the servant of all that I might gain the more.

00:21:59.520 And I became to the Jews, a Jew that I might gain the Jews to them that are under the law,

00:22:03.540 as if I were under the law, whereas myself was not under the law, that I might gain them that

00:22:07.680 were under the law to them that were without the law as, as if I were without the law, whereas I was

00:22:12.440 not without the law of God, but was in the law of Christ that I might gain them that were without the

00:22:17.140 law. To the weak I became weak that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men that I

00:22:23.300 might save all. And I do all things for the gospel's sake that I may be made partaker thereof. This is,

00:22:30.920 I think, a brilliant strategy of evangelism. I think Mel Gibson has done more for evangelism

00:22:36.920 than basically anyone walking around today. Not, maybe not, he's definitely in the top 10, okay?

00:22:41.680 And this strategy, I think, is a great strategy. This is meeting people where they are.

00:22:47.140 This is being all things to all men. This is finding the way in, keeping the end goal in mind, 0.97

00:22:52.700 which is conversion, bringing people to Christ, bringing people within the mystical body of Christ.

00:22:58.280 What Mel Gibson did on the Joe Rogan show, especially that clip at the end, that is a masterclass.

00:23:05.540 When The Daily Wire released What is a Woman? It ignited a national conversation, really an

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00:23:45.860 Now we turn from some good preaching to some bad preaching. Jimmy Carter is dead. He's still dead.

00:23:53.220 Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. So is Jimmy Carter. However, there's one bit from his

00:23:59.500 funeral that is making the rounds on the internet. And it's cringy, but it's important to take note of

00:24:06.600 it. At Jimmy Carter's funeral, this was the music that was played.

00:24:10.840 Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. They're in a big church.

00:24:34.940 No heaven below us. There's a choir right next to this guy in a liturgical bar.

00:24:43.080 Above us only sky. Imagine all the people.

00:24:52.700 The former and current presidents.

00:24:54.620 Oh man, that was my reaction. Why are you playing this atheist communist gobbledygook 1.00

00:25:09.360 in a cathedral at the funeral of a supposed Christian? Many people say that Jimmy Carter,

00:25:19.120 whether you liked him as a president or not, no one can doubt his deep Christian faith.

00:25:22.800 I don't know. I'm not here to judge Jimmy Carter's supposed faith.

00:25:29.360 But that is not the song that is played at the funeral of a Christian.

00:25:33.740 Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. John Lennon writing about how wonderful it would be

00:25:37.680 if there were no heaven and we could all just live for today like pagans and communists. 0.96

00:25:42.980 If we could just get rid of all this Christianity, you know, and just live like animals, 1.00

00:25:48.500 like materialist, communist, pagan animals. Wouldn't that be so great? And this is the song. 0.99

00:25:55.440 Who selected this? Did Jimmy Carter select this in his preparations for his funeral? I certainly hope

00:26:00.560 not. His family did. I don't know. People say, you know, Jimmy Carter's a Southern Baptist. I believe

00:26:05.880 he left the Southern Baptist Convention. He joined some squishy, squishier version of Baptist 0.99

00:26:11.680 Protestant Christianity. I don't know. Whatever that funeral was, that was not a Christian funeral. 0.85

00:26:18.020 Though a lot of people don't really have Christian funerals these days.

00:26:21.420 Even down to the eulogy. I've given a couple eulogies, so it happens. I know it's popular.

00:26:27.800 But a eulogy is not a traditionally Christian practice. A eulogy is a pagan practice. A eulogy to

00:26:36.480 sing a song of praise to the dead. That's ancient Greece. That's paganism. The traditional Christian 1.00

00:26:44.700 idea is not that the funeral is a song of praise to the dead. The idea is that the funeral mass

00:26:53.300 is a mass of prayer for the dead. It's a praise of Christ. It's a praise of God for the dead,

00:27:02.060 for their soul, for the repose of their soul. When we say requiescat in pace, that is a prayer for

00:27:07.680 the dead. We say, may he rest in peace. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, requiem eternam dona

00:27:14.120 ei, dominat lux perpetuolo cetae, requiescat in pace. It's a prayer to God for the dead. Now we get

00:27:20.480 everything all jumbled. So I hope Jimmy Carter had a sincere Christian faith. I hope he lived it out.

00:27:26.960 But whatever that funeral was, it was not Christian. Turning from a former president to the next 0.95

00:27:32.000 president. President Trump was sentenced. Did you know that? Did you catch that little news story?

00:27:37.860 Everyone's preparing for him to reenter the White House. And yet the libs are still trying to pretend 0.74

00:27:43.200 that he's a criminal who could go to prison. Now, even the judge in this case, this is the New York

00:27:51.180 case over falsifying business records for supposed hush money that he supposedly paid to a porn star, 0.90

00:27:58.080 even though the whole case was ridiculous from the outset. Because if President Trump committed

00:28:03.520 this crime of falsifying business records, it would have been a misdemeanor that was

00:28:09.060 past the statute of limitations years ago. So the only way that they could raise it to a felony in

00:28:15.040 New York was to say that he falsified business records in furtherance of some underlying crime.

00:28:19.640 But the prosecution never even proved what the underlying crime was. In fact, they told the jury,

00:28:24.180 don't worry about identifying the underlying crime. As long as you think there might have been some

00:28:27.520 crime there at all, then that suffices. The whole thing was just totally preposterous.

00:28:32.460 And yet, Trump was found guilty in that kangaroo court, and then he was sentenced.

00:28:38.920 Now, with the sentencing, the judge realized he's not going to put the president of the United States

00:28:43.500 in jail. So he said, okay, Trump has an unconditional discharge. It means he will not be punished with

00:28:49.160 prison time or fines or community service. Trump is going to be engaging in community service for

00:28:55.480 the next four years when he's president of the United States. So he has no jail time. He can still

00:28:59.680 vote because the states in which President Trump resides permit felons who have paid their debt to

00:29:05.720 society to vote. However, because of the sentencing, Trump will need to give New York a DNA sample,

00:29:13.420 and President Trump cannot own a gun. This to me is the most absurd part. The man who in seven days

00:29:22.740 will have the sole authority in the country to authorize a nuclear strike, that man can fire a

00:29:31.360 nuclear weapon, but he can't fire a pistol. Does that make sense to you? It does not. And what the

00:29:37.980 Libs will say is, yeah, and that's why he shouldn't be president. Hold on. Our constitution is very clear.

00:29:42.480 We have a mechanism for choosing a president. Trump satisfied all of those conditions. The

00:29:49.300 American people voted for him, not just through their representatives in the electoral college,

00:29:53.580 but actually the majority of Americans voted for him. And then he won in an electoral college

00:29:58.320 landslide, and he is the president. There's no provision of the constitution that says that a man

00:30:03.720 has to win the majority of the electoral college, and then he can be president unless some judge in New

00:30:08.600 York doesn't like him, unless some crooked politicians in New York decided to trump up

00:30:13.760 charges and illegally prosecute him. That's not what the constitution says. He's the president.

00:30:21.600 So where did the error occur? Obviously, it makes no sense that a guy can fire nuclear weapons,

00:30:26.920 but not a pistol, not a Glock 19. So where did the error occur? Was it in making him president,

00:30:33.300 or was it in prosecuting him? It's clear as day. The error, the threat to our political system,

00:30:40.440 the absurdity lies in prosecuting Trump. That was the problem. So, okay, he's got to give a DNA sample

00:30:48.100 to New York. The embarrassment continues. I hope there are consequences. Once the Republicans have

00:30:53.520 unified government, I hope there are consequences for these dastardly liberal politicians in New York

00:30:59.140 who would make such a mockery of our political order. Now, how did Trump get sentenced in the

00:31:03.900 first place? It only happened because the Supreme Court allowed the sentencing to go on. President

00:31:08.600 Trump's team requested an emergency stay to block the sentencing in New York. And the good judges on

00:31:18.180 the Supreme Court, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh even, they said, yeah, okay, we should block the

00:31:26.380 sentencing. This is absurd that we're going to sentence a president of the United States for

00:31:30.400 this nonsense in New York. However, Chief Justice Roberts, a little bit of a squish, and Amy Barrett 0.98

00:31:37.020 both sided with the court's liberals to let the sentencing go on. Now, President Trump's response

00:31:43.060 was surprising. He didn't just invade against Roberts and Barrett. He said, I respect the court's

00:31:47.300 opinion. I think it was actually a very good opinion for us because you saw what they said.

00:31:50.740 And they invited the appeal, the appeal of the whole case, the appeal of the whole conviction

00:31:55.800 in this nonsense case in New York. And the appeal is on the bigger issue. So we'll see how it works

00:32:01.640 out. Okay. Trump might have the last laugh, but also we need to rethink what kind of judges we're

00:32:08.060 putting on the court. Okay. Maybe Roberts and Barrett are playing interdimensional 7D chess here,

00:32:14.520 and it's actually going to give Trump a bigger victory. And they were all being very

00:32:17.700 strategery, strategeric, you know, or something like that. But this happens too often with conservatives

00:32:25.980 that we appoint judges and they disappoint us. They act in ways, they rule in ways that contradict

00:32:35.280 how we understand their judicial philosophy. That never happens for the left. The left judges

00:32:42.600 basically never disappoint their presidents and the people who voted for their presidents,

00:32:49.100 the presidents who would go on to appoint them. That never happens. It does happen for us.

00:32:53.880 Maybe we need new metrics by which to judge potential judicial candidates. Right now we have textualism,

00:33:02.620 we have originalism in its older form and in its Scalia form. Okay. Maybe we need, I don't know,

00:33:09.960 a little, a little bit of a sturdier rule of thumb by which to measure these judges so they don't disappoint

00:33:16.320 us and side with the libs too often. Meanwhile, turning to our current president, Joe Biden is leaving

00:33:24.100 office with the claim that he is leaving America. This is, I'll use his exact words. I don't want to misquote

00:33:29.040 him. The economy I'm leaving America is the best in the world and stronger than ever for all Americans.

00:33:36.460 Fact check. Is that true? A lot of conservatives are saying this is totally preposterous. This is

00:33:42.680 insane. The economy's in the gutter. That's not exactly true either. And Biden's using clever

00:33:48.880 language here. He says stronger than ever for all Americans. So what he could say is when you point

00:33:53.300 to other periods of a much stronger economy, say the 1990s clearly, or just after the second world war

00:33:59.840 when America was the last superpower in the world, matched a little bit by the Soviet Union,

00:34:05.200 but we were still stronger. Joe Biden could say, yeah, but back then, you know, there was racism

00:34:10.180 or something, or there was sexism. So it wasn't stronger for all Americans. But again, to be

00:34:15.240 stronger for all Americans, I don't know, you can't point to our present economy, I think, and say,

00:34:22.680 well, maybe it's more equal in some measure. It's actually not. Actually, the wealth disparities are

00:34:27.820 greater than ever. And COVID-19, the lockdowns, gave us the biggest transfer of wealth from the lower

00:34:32.840 classes to the upper classes in history. So actually, you couldn't even say it's more equal.

00:34:36.940 But even if it were just all equal, Harrison Bergeron style, handicapping, you know, leveling

00:34:41.680 to the bottom, you still wouldn't say that that's better for all Americans. So how does the economy

00:34:45.880 look? I think a fair view of it, an objective view of it, is the economy is not terrible, but it's

00:34:51.760 certainly been better. GDP is relatively high, but GDP growth is relatively weak compared to other

00:34:59.420 periods. Unemployment is fine, but it's not the best we've ever had it. Manufacturing is weak.

00:35:06.160 It's not the worst it's ever been, but it's pretty weak. You know, America had a much stronger

00:35:09.460 manufacturing base earlier, and that was probably better for our national security and for the

00:35:13.960 health of our whole society. The economy has been really financialized, so it's, I think, overly

00:35:19.200 reliant on financial markets. We don't actually produce physical goods and stuff, and that really

00:35:24.300 harmed us, mentioning COVID-19. That harmed us when our supply chains were all interrupted. So I don't

00:35:28.680 know the economy, it's kind of a mixed bag, but it's looking pretty weak. And in some ways,

00:35:32.600 the economy is absolutely terrible. By the end of the Biden administration, our national

00:35:37.320 debt will be $34.7 trillion. That's about 125% of GDP. That is egregious. That's really

00:35:43.880 bad. Empires fall for that kind of thing. So it's not that we have the worst economy imaginable

00:35:50.480 and there's nothing to recommend it. That would be false. That statement would be false, and it

00:35:55.560 would give liberals an opening to call us kooks and hacks. But I think any fair assessment

00:36:02.300 of the economy is, it's pretty weak. It's looking pretty bad, and it's looking pretty

00:36:08.120 bad in no small part because of the disastrous policies of Joe Biden, though the policies that

00:36:14.180 led us to this point have gone back decades. Okay, speaking of fairness, my favorite comment

00:36:18.820 on Friday is from Tofu9107, who says, in fairness, it is possible to be a parent to a 20-year-old

00:36:26.880 and a grandparent, to be a parent at 20, and then a grandparent at 40, and then a great-grandparent

00:36:33.520 at 60. You're right. This is a point that sweet little Elisa made with me last night. She said,

00:36:39.260 Mac, I'm listening to your show, and you said something wrong. You said that great-grandparents

00:36:44.760 should not be president, and that's not true. I said, how do you figure? She said, well, back when

00:36:49.580 we had a good society, people would have kids younger, and then you could be a great-grandparent

00:36:55.320 by 60. If you keep having kids at 20, and even you have a little leeway. Maybe one a year down the

00:37:01.140 line has a kid at 25. All right, 65, that's pretty good. Even two down the line have kids at 25,

00:37:07.740 and then you're president at 70. You could be president at 70. And she's right. She's right.

00:37:12.320 Because I was saying, in our decadent society, where people don't have kids until they're 30,

00:37:20.040 35, 40, 45, I don't know, if they have kids at all, then to be a great-grandparent probably puts

00:37:26.000 you in your 80s or 90s. But you're right. If we lived in a good society, great-grandparents can

00:37:31.620 and probably should be president because they could be 60-year-olds. Good point. Good point,

00:37:35.960 Alisa, and good point, Mr. Tofu. Speaking of dubious political analysis coming from Joe Biden,

00:37:43.740 we now turn to dubious political analysis coming from the supposed far right-wing leader in Germany.

00:37:48.860 This is the leader of the Alternative für Deutschland, the alternative for Germany,

00:37:54.780 Alice Weidel, who had an interview with Elon Musk and made the claim that Adolf Hitler was a communist.

00:38:02.040 Since I'm an economist, I would like to shed some light on the idea, when we talk about Hitler, 0.87

00:38:14.560 on the idea of the national socialists. Back then, during the Third Reich, the national socialists,

00:38:23.500 as the word says, they were socialists. Yeah, very much so.

00:38:27.580 They nationalized industries like crazy. Yes, absolutely. He was a communist and he considered

00:38:35.520 himself as a socialist. And the biggest success, the biggest success after that terrible era

00:38:44.380 in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right and conservative. He was exactly the opposite. 0.64

00:38:54.880 He wasn't a conservative. He wasn't a libertarian. He was a communist, socialist guy. So, full stop,

00:39:05.380 no more comment on that. And we are exactly the opposite. We are a libertarian, conservative party.

00:39:12.200 Okay. So, what this woman has said is literally not true, but there might be a reason why she said it. 0.97

00:39:22.900 But on the surface, what she said is extremely dumb. Not true. Hitler, we have Hitler's words. He 0.96

00:39:28.860 actually wrote a lot. Hitler said, communism is not socialism. Marxism is not socialism. The Marxians 0.68

00:39:35.040 have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take socialism away from the socialists.

00:39:38.880 So, he did call his party a socialist party. This was at a time when every intelligent person

00:39:44.280 seemed to be a socialist. Socialism is always unintelligent and evil and terrible and stupid, 1.00

00:39:48.940 but it was a very popular term. And so, he says, well, I'm a real kind of socialist. Not you Marx 1.00

00:39:54.580 influenced socialists. I'm a different kind of socialist. And so, he certainly was not a communist.

00:40:00.600 He was not a socialist in the sense that we understand socialism. He also, as she says,

00:40:04.780 was not a libertarian. That's certainly, Hitler was not a libertarian. And it's difficult to place 0.78

00:40:10.880 Hitler on the left-right spectrum because the terms left and right come from the French Revolution,

00:40:15.820 from the National Assembly, when the Catholic monarchist traditionalists were on the right

00:40:20.840 side of the assembly hall and the atheist liberals, Republicans, were on the left side of the hall.

00:40:28.000 So, was Hitler on the right or on the left? In some ways, he hearkened back to tradition. 0.89

00:40:35.260 In some ways, he was quite modern and modernist. And he was certainly a statist and practically an

00:40:40.120 atheist. So, you know, I don't know. Where does he fall? Probably that spectrum does not fit all of

00:40:49.980 our modern political ideas. In large part because, practically speaking, everyone in politics today

00:40:55.780 is, would have been on the left of the National Assembly. They are practically atheists or secularists.

00:41:03.940 They are liberals. They embrace the views that come with the so-called enlightenment. They're either

00:41:09.660 liberals of the left or liberals of the right. They're either progressive liberals or libertarian

00:41:15.320 liberals or classical liberals, but they're all kind of liberals. And they're all basically

00:41:18.760 Republicans, lowercase r, either advocating democracy or a more representative form of democracy

00:41:27.140 or power to the people or whatever. They're all basically that. You will be hard-pressed to find

00:41:32.940 traditional Catholic monarchists in mainstream politics today, you know, shouting their views

00:41:38.620 from the rooftop. So, this is in part why the left-right paradigm doesn't quite work. Then you think

00:41:44.660 about this woman, the leader of the far right, we are told by the media party in Germany, they keep

00:41:52.920 comparing this woman to a Nazi. She is a lesbian libertarian. That's the furthest right you've got 1.00

00:42:00.940 in Germany right now, is a lesbian libertarian who thinks that Hitler was a communist. 0.92

00:42:05.900 If that's the far right, I think that the terms left and right have lost basically all of their

00:42:14.320 meaning. Now, I want to be fair to this woman because I'm not totally opposed to AFD or these

00:42:20.580 sort of right-wing movements coming up in Europe. What she said is literally false and at first glance,

00:42:31.020 quite stupid. But at a deeper level, there's probably a great deal of wisdom here because 1.00

00:42:36.120 in our modern political order, Hitler just means the devil. Hitler just means evil, just means bad.

00:42:44.280 In our modern political mythos, even Hitler wasn't Hitler. In the traditional understanding of

00:42:49.940 politics, you have the incarnation of absolute good in Christ. And in our traditional understanding

00:42:56.040 of politics and theology and philosophy, evil does not have an existence of its own. We get this from

00:43:03.220 Plotinus and the Neoplatonists and up through the Christian tradition. Evil does not have an existence 0.91

00:43:07.560 of its own. Evil is merely the privation of good. Okay? So we don't live in a dualistic Manichaean

00:43:14.540 society where there's the good force and the evil force and they're just always fighting. No, no.

00:43:18.440 There is God. God is sovereign. God creates everything. God is good. God does not create evil.

00:43:24.480 So evil is merely the privation of the good. And we have the incarnation of absolute good in the

00:43:28.400 person of Christ. That's the, even if you're not Christian, that's just, that's how our society has

00:43:32.520 understood good, evil, justice, politics for a couple thousand years now. In liberalism, as

00:43:42.200 Christianity has waned in public, it's been replaced by this new kind of mythos that you have the

00:43:46.800 incarnation of absolute evil. There's no such thing as good, man. The incarnation, that can't be real.

00:43:52.000 And God probably doesn't exist. Well, I don't know if there's any such thing as good, but there's

00:43:55.700 definitely evil. We all know evil. We all know sin. And so in recent historical events, the incarnation

00:44:01.180 of absolute evil is the person of Hitler. The literal Hitler, quite a bad fellow, but the mythical 0.90

00:44:09.780 representation of Hitler, it takes on this religious significance. He is the kind of response to 0.87

00:44:14.560 Christianity. He's the absolute incarnation of evil, which is why in politics, whenever you want to 1.00

00:44:20.020 attack somebody, you just compare them to Hitler. It's why when you want to say the opponents are

00:44:24.900 bad, you say they're like the Nazis. People on the left call the right-wingers Nazis. People on the

00:44:30.100 right call the left-wingers Nazis, just like the leader of AFD is doing in Germany here. But American

00:44:35.220 Republican conservatives do that too. When Joe Biden launches his presidential campaign, he compares

00:44:39.600 Trump to Hitler. That's how you do it. We don't talk about Satan anymore. We don't, we certainly don't

00:44:43.940 talk about God all that much, as much as we should, but we talk about Hitler. So at a deeper level, 0.53

00:44:48.980 what the leader of AFD, I think, is doing is basically just playing the hand she's dealt.

00:44:54.500 She's playing within the circumstances that currently dictate how politics is conducted. 1.00

00:45:00.920 She's saying, okay, well, we can't really have recourse to discussion of absolute good,

00:45:04.520 and we can't really use the language of traditional morality because people don't understand it anymore.

00:45:08.820 But you know what they do understand? Hitler, especially in Germany. So if you want to win an 0.79

00:45:12.700 election, you just got to say that the other guy is more like Hitler than you are.

00:45:16.400 And so that's what she's doing. Is it, it's shallow. It's, I think, ridiculous. I think it's a false

00:45:22.780 way of viewing the world. But from a practical politics standpoint, it's probably, people are

00:45:29.940 making fun of her for being stupid. It's probably a little smarter than people are giving her credit 1.00

00:45:33.320 for. Today is Music Monday. The rest of the show continues. Now, you do not want to miss it.

00:45:37.000 Become a member. Use code Knowleskin at WLES at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:45:42.700 I've often said that gender-affirming care is health care. It is mental health care and it can

00:46:03.860 actually be suicide prevention care. I think I'm gonna take some medicine so I can kind of like

00:46:11.520 transform into a boy, get surgery. After the surgery, I didn't really feel any better.

00:46:18.320 When it stopped being a thing for adults and it started to be a, let's teach this to kids.

00:46:23.400 Total lie. Manipulation. It's gaslighting.

00:46:26.040 Please stop. He's a boy, not a girl. How could she do this to my son?

00:46:30.000 What they're talking about is hormonal therapy or sex reassignment surgery on children.

00:46:36.260 I thought fixing me externally would fix me internally. But of course I was wrong.

00:46:42.000 The fact that the state thinks that they're more important and have a better say in what

00:46:45.720 happens to your child over the actual parent's opinion is egregious.

00:46:49.540 Puberty blockers, surgeries, big money makers for hospitals, for physicians.

00:46:53.580 All I want to do is hold my son. Are you asking me to lie to parents? And he said, yes.

00:47:01.940 This is an weaponized use of a parent's sympathy and caring and concern by the left to destroy your

00:47:09.420 child. Let's tell kids that maybe they can be the opposite sex. Maybe they actually are the opposite 1.00

00:47:15.360 sex. It is an evil thing to tell children that happiness lies on the other side of puberty blockers 0.96

00:47:22.660 or double mastectomies. The left so badly wants to blur these lines.

00:47:26.620 That's a five alarm fire. It's criminal.

The Michael Knowles Show - January 13, 2025

Ep. 1650 - Mel Gibson Preaches To Joe Rogan

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