Ep. 1669 - Trump and Elon Prove the Media Really Are Fake
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
163.7954
Summary
In this episode of The Michael Knowles Show, host Michael K. Knowles talks about a recent headline that sums up everything about the farce that is the Fourth Estate: Trump's foreign aid freeze throws journalism into chaos, and why that should be good for journalism.
Transcript
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I've finally found it. After years and decades even of searching, I have finally found
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the most perfect mainstream media article ever written. It comes to us thanks to President Trump
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by way of Reporters Without Borders headline. Trump's foreign aid freeze throws journalism
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around the world into chaos. Now, that headline alone is pretty funny. Why would the president's
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enacting a policy throw journalism into chaos? Shouldn't that be good for journalism? Isn't
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the president doing things the sort of thing that journalists exist to cover? Why is that throwing
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journalism into chaos? We learn the reason in the subheader right here in bold. President Donald
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Trump has frozen billions of dollars around the world in aid projects, including over $268 million
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allocated by Congress to support independent media and the free flow of information.
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I want you to hold on. Pause. Did you catch that? $268 million allocated by Congress to support
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independent media. That, I'm pretty sure, is a contradiction in terms. Because media outlets
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that depend for their very existence on hundreds of millions of dollars from the government
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are, by definition, not independent. Those outlets are extremely dependent. They are the dependent
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media. Traditionally, we call them state media, actually. But Reporters Without Borders goes on
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and doubles down. The paragraph concludes by calling, quote, on international public and private
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support to commit to the sustainability of independent media. Public support, that's government support
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for independent media. And the demands are increasingly desperate, like the Wizard of Oz when he is revealed
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as a fraud. We are the great and powerful independent media. Pay no attention to those government hacks
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behind the curtain. But the jig is up. The establishment media are cut off and in freefall. No wonder they lied
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and deceived and fought so hard against the facts and the will of the people to keep Trump out of office.
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Their very existence depended upon it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. President Trump has just signed one of my favorite executive orders
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yet. This touches on a very politically incorrect subject. And it's not transgenderism. Enough about
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transgenderism. It's an even more important subject. There's so much more to say. First,
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While we're talking about stupid headlines, there's one that I cannot let go.
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This is probably my favorite headline I've seen in the past week or two. The Reporters Without
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Borders one, that's the most perfect headline that totally sums up the farce of the fourth estate of
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the great intrepid journalists and media. But this one's my favorite headline from Vox.com,
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explanatory journalism from a liberal perspective. Vox.com headline, J.D. Vance accidentally,
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directed us to a crucial moral question. And this is in response to J.D. Vance on television
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talking about the order of charity. And some people are calling it the hierarchy of love and
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the ordo amoris in Latin. J.D. Vance getting into a big fight with all of these prominent lib
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journalists and Yale professors and Yale-affiliated people over a deeply Christian concept, but a concept
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that even just comes from our common sense, going back to Aristotle to some degree, St. Augustine,
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St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, the ordo amoris.
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The reason I love this headline so much is just this word accidentally. You know how happy I am
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that we are now living under an administration in which the vice president will be giving lectures
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on scholastic philosophy in Latin, on television, on Twitter, but this word accidentally.
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Whatever you want to say about J.D. Vance. I really like J.D. Vance. Maybe you don't like J.D. Vance.
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The libs hate J.D. Vance. Whatever you want to say about him. Does anyone seriously doubt that he is
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intelligent? He seems like a pretty intelligent guy, right? He graduated Yale Law School, came from
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nothing. Drug addicted mother, very difficult circumstances, came from nothing, rose up to graduate
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the top law school in the country, top ranked, went on, wrote a book that was so powerful it became
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a number one bestseller. Hollywood gobbled it up, made a big movie about it. He gets elected to the
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Senate. He makes a boatload of money with Peter Thiel. He's an intelligent guy, right?
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And whatever you want to say about him, the very fact that he is explicating scholastic philosophical
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concepts in Latin on Twitter would seem to suggest he's fairly well-educated, even if you don't agree
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with his conclusions. Generally speaking, when indisputably intelligent and well-educated men
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explicate philosophical concepts in Latin, in public, they are not accidentally stumbling into moral
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questions, okay? Whatever you want to say about J.D., that's not accidental, guys. Vox.com
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is accidentally stumbling into a moral question because J.D. Vance raised it for them and they
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could not ignore it because he's the vice president of the United States. And now we're having a
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national debate on the Ordo Amoris, be still my beating heart. That's the accidental part. I think
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Vox.com accidentally stumbled into the Dunning-Kruger effect. That's what I think just happened.
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Beautiful, beautiful stuff. Now, speaking of immigration, AOC, we haven't heard from her a lot
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lately. AOC just went on some random podcast to present her view of the reason we must have
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illegal aliens in the country. And I'd never heard this claim before. AOC says we need illegal aliens
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because Americans would not have survived COVID without illegal aliens.
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Understand that America's immigration force and our community of immigrants, including and especially
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the millions of undocumented people in this country, are why America has prospered, especially
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why we survived the COVID-19 pandemic. And for all of the people who cast a vote based on grocery
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prices and inflation, if you think your groceries are expensive now, wait until the farms are empty.
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If you think houses are expensive now, wait until there's no one building them. Understand the
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consequences of what this means. Because for America to not accept immigrants is the definition
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of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Okay. Now, part of this argument, I have heard a lot
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before. Part of this argument is the argument that the left consistently makes for illegal immigration.
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Namely, if we don't allow criminal cartels to import a bunch of third world peasants into the country
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so that we can pay them slave wages, who's going to pick our grapes? Who's going to clean our houses?
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I don't think a lot of illegal aliens are plumbers, actually. That's what it's more of a skilled
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position. But in any case, that's their argument. Who's going to who's going to clean our floors and
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pick our grapes and work as our indentured servants, afraid that we could deport them at any moment so
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that we can continue to mistreat them? That's that's their argument. Seems like a really nasty
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argument to me, but that is their open defense of illegal immigration right now. But what about this?
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We would not have survived COVID without illegal aliens. Well, AOC is just pointing to a particular
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moment of national crisis to say that our economy could not survive without illegal aliens. That's
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the broader point that she's making. That we are economically dependent upon illegal aliens.
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And she's right. She's totally right about that. Got to give credit where credit's due. She's right.
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The United States is economically dependent upon mass migration, certainly, and practically speaking
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upon illegal immigration. That's that's true. That's why we need to enforce the law.
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That she thinks that's an argument for just keeping the borders open and allowing the cartels to
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shove a bunch of people into the country and the Democrats will get an electoral benefit. But even
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just from an economic standpoint, she thinks that's the argument for it. But no, this is this is the
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point that Trump is making. This is one of the reasons that people elected Trump to another term is
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it is very bad for America to be this dependent upon mass migration. It's not that's not sustainable.
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That means that we're not having kids. We're not replacing ourselves. We're not a strong country.
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It is a really bad for America to be this economically dependent upon people who are
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subverting our law, who are who exist outside of our legal system. That is not sustainable in the long
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run. It is really bad. Let's broaden it out. It's really bad. We learned this from COVID for the United
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States to be this dependent upon China for our supply chain. It's really bad because if a virus comes
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out of China and the world gets shut down, we're up the creek without a paddle. And that that was
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ostensibly just a virus that popped out of nowhere. Imagine now if we go to war with the places that
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produce all of our stuff that have stolen all of our intellectual property. Right. It's all bad.
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The liberals on the left and the right are arguing, no, we need to keep the status quo, man, because,
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you know, we're just so dependent upon it. But what we're saying is the status quo is totally
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unacceptable. It's hollowed out our manufacturing base. It's been bad for American families. It subverts
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our immigration laws. It leads to rape and murder and a ton of fentanyl poisoning our country in the
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case of illegal immigration. It makes us totally dependent on China and slave labor in China. It's
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it's just that's unacceptable. So, yeah, I would say you're right. Thank you for highlighting the
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problem. You're right. All the more reason to hurry up with the Tom Homan deportations because we need to
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We're getting some breaking news right now. This is breaking news coming to us from CNN, a major update
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from the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk's role in the Trump administration. CNN,
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please take it away. Yes, so this is a 19-year-old high school graduate who has used the unfortunate
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nickname Big Balls online, so that would be one way that we could refer to him. He is now working at
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Musk's behest inside Doge, and we looked into his background. And so we found, you know, several
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notable things, Aaron, one of which is that this individual has founded multiple companies, including
00:14:01.240
one with another unfortunate name, Tesla.Sexy LLC, which he established in 2021. He would have been
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around 16 years old. Now, this LLC controls dozens of web domains. I love 2025 so much. I love it so,
00:14:16.780
I love it so, so much. It's already so great. The vice president lecturing on St. Thomas Aquinas,
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CNN complaining that Elon Musk, who's now kind of in the government, has hired a teenager,
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genius, engineer, entrepreneur named Big Balls to cut away all of the waste. And frankly,
00:14:37.500
those are probably a prerequisite if you want to take on the Leviathan federal government and the
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liberal patronage systems that Elon and Trump and the whole Doge team are trying to root out.
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Really, really beautiful stuff. Right before that lady started talking about, how do I clean this up?
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I don't want to have to repeat that phrase on air. You know, this is not CNN, okay? We're an elevated,
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sophisticated, wholesome show. Maybe Grandi Coglioni. Does that count? Okay. Big Cajones?
00:15:10.240
Let's call it Big Cajones. Right before she starts talking about him, CNN, Giddily was reporting on a
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story of some guy who was working for Doge who just got fired because he had some racist social
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media posts or something. And so he has to leave Doge. It's so troubling that this guy had racist
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social media posts, to which I would say, look, I don't know, maybe that guy had racist social media
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posts. Not Big Cajones, but some other guy who was a little bit older. Maybe he had some racist
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social media posts. But here's what I know for sure. The people who worked for the Biden administration
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in the government, the people who worked for the Obama administration, the people who work in
00:15:47.960
democratic politics broadly, they don't just have some racist social media posts. They have
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a racist public philosophy and ideology. They don't just post about their racial preferences on
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some message board on social media. They speak about it openly and they enshrine their racist views
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into law. They say that we need to punish white people in college admissions and in hiring. They say
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we need to promote our favored races in college admissions and in hiring. They say things often
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openly like we need to abolish whiteness. Like white whiteness is a problem. Okay. So I don't know.
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You're telling me, let's just take CNN at its word that some random guy who worked for Elon had some
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racist social media posts. Okay. Pretty much everyone who works for the Democrats espouses open racism.
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And they're not even good engineers. So I don't know, man, I'm not really going to sweat it. Okay.
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If we got some guy who's a really good engineer, who is certainly no worse in his political ideology
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than the mainstream American left, and he can actually like get things done in the government.
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I don't know. I'm not, I'm not sweating that. I guess he's been fired. I guess he's out,
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but I'm not sweating that. Wait, you know what, you know what we need in the government? We need
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big cojones. That's what, that's what we need in the government right now to, to root out the deeply
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entrenched patronage system that, that has apparently been creating a feedback loop. I mean,
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all the way down to my favorite headline, the most perfect mainstream media headline I've ever read.
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Namely, oh no, Trump is cutting off all this government funding. What will happen to the
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independent media? I guess there just is no independent media. I guess sweet little Elisa told me that she's
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been telling me this for months, maybe over a year at this point. She goes, Mag,
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I don't think there are any actual liberals. She's been saying, I've told you this. And I said,
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what do you mean? She goes, I just, everyone, every like real person I talk to is not a liberal.
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Is it just all fake? And I said, I don't know. It's kind of interesting. And the more that we learn
00:17:54.380
about federal spending at USAID, the more that we learn about the federal government just subsidizing
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all of these supposedly independent media outlets, the more, yeah, it might just all be fake.
00:18:06.720
It might all be a total psyop. Now, speaking of the economy and President Trump's tax and spending
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priorities, Caroline Leavitt, White House press secretary, just answered questions,
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not on the spending side, but on the tax side. Are we going to get, come on,
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this is a Republican administration. When are we getting a tax cut?
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The House Republicans are fooling the idea of a five-year extension of the Trump tax cut.
00:18:29.480
Trump, President Trump wants it permanent. Would he sign a bill that has just a five-year
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extension? So I'm glad you brought up taxes. Do you mind holding this so I can bring my receipts?
00:18:38.620
I like to bring the receipts. So these are the tax priorities of the Trump administration
00:18:43.500
that the president has laid out for members in that meeting today. No tax on tips, which is
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obviously a very public campaign promise that the president made. No tax on seniors' social security.
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No tax on overtime pay. Renewing President Trump's 2017 middle-class tax cuts. Again,
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these are the president's priorities. Adjusting the salt cap. Eliminate all the special tax breaks
00:19:06.860
for billionaire sports team owners. Close the carried interest tax deduction loophole. Tax cuts
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for made-in-America products. This will be the largest tax cut in history for middle-class
00:19:17.360
working Americans. The president is committed to working with Congress to get this done.
00:19:21.040
Okay. Not surprising at all. This is not man by its dog. Republican administration plans to cut
00:19:27.860
taxes. Trump cut taxes the first time, and now he's going to cut taxes even more.
00:19:33.400
This is a notable political story because it undercuts what some in the ideological avant-garde
00:19:42.760
of the American right seem to have been promoting, namely that Trump is this revolutionary figure who's
00:19:50.000
going to totally upend the traditional conservative views on anything, on taxing, on foreign policy,
00:19:58.040
on this, on that. And I don't think that's what Trump is. I said, I don't think it's so much that
00:20:04.360
he's changing GOP orthodoxy. In practice, he is changing how the GOP operates, but it's not so much
00:20:10.500
that he's revolutionizing GOP orthodoxy as he's just doing what other Republican presidents promised to do.
00:20:16.940
Just a great example on Israel. Some of the right-wing, avant-garde, extreme fringe really
00:20:23.860
doesn't like Israel and wants to change America's relationship with Israel, and they think that
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Trump is going to do that. Trump is not going to do that. I promise you, Trump is not going to do
00:20:33.820
that. How did Trump change the GOP in his first term? He supported Israel even more. That's what he
00:20:42.780
did. The official American policy for decades has been that they're going to move the embassy
00:20:47.260
in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He did that. That's what he did. It's not that he was
00:20:54.600
revolutionary. It's not that he was innovative. It's that he just followed through on promises.
00:20:59.620
If anything, he was extra traditional. Now, one can debate the matter of Israel and how America
00:21:05.360
should relate to Israel or whatever. I'm just pointing out, what a lot of people think they're
00:21:10.080
going to get from Trump is not really what they're going to get from Trump. He's not a revolutionary.
00:21:15.240
He's just traditional. He's playing the hits. Okay, he's the Rolling Stones,
00:21:22.020
but he's really playing the hits. He's really doing it. When it comes to taxes, there are many
00:21:26.900
in the right-wing, avant-garde, who I think don't want us to cut taxes a lot. I think some of them
00:21:32.340
want us to raise taxes. Some of them want us to become more economically left-wing. I traditionally
00:21:38.740
understood his left wing. That ain't Trump. You can debate that. There's plenty of room for
00:21:45.540
argumentation about that, but that ain't Trump. Trump is going to cut your taxes.
00:21:50.700
Now, how about on tariffs? You say, well, Trump is really upending the GOP on tariff policy.
00:21:55.260
Not really. The GOP was founded on tariffs. Abraham Lincoln said, give me a tariff. I'll give you the
00:21:59.700
greatest country in the world. He's just giving you a fuller version of the hits, of what the GOP is.
00:22:11.100
One can debate that all one wants, but I'm just saying, if you go into the Trump administration
00:22:16.800
thinking that he's some revolutionary who's going to upend everything, you are going to be
00:22:22.280
disappointed. That's not what he's doing. He's doing something even more complex, even more nuanced,
00:22:29.220
even in a sense, even more revolutionary. Namely, he's a Republican who keeps his promises.
00:22:33.440
He's a Republican who does what everyone else said they were going to do for decades.
00:22:37.000
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Jay Toro, who says,
00:24:08.260
Dude can't be saying the word dastardly while looking like a Hanna-Barbera villain. So true.
00:24:13.580
This is Al Green, the Democrat congressman. I will impeach Donald Trump for dastardly deeds done.
00:24:20.220
And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling kids and your dog too.
00:24:26.860
Okay. Speaking of Trump cutting things, and speaking of a really rough couple weeks for journalists,
00:24:34.880
Representative Brian Mast just went on CBS News, Face the Nation. It's that actually that same woman
00:24:42.340
who was interviewing J.D. Vance when he was lecturing her on two mystic philosophy.
00:24:47.540
She was pressing him on how Trump is cutting the government. Here's his beautiful response.
00:24:54.200
...purging of State Department personnel. What does that mean exactly?
00:24:57.900
Well, if you want to take a look at the State Department, where DEI has been a priority over,
00:25:03.280
let's say, diplomacy in many accounts, I could give you hundreds of examples of where they were authorizing.
00:25:08.780
Sure. Let's list them off. Half a million dollars to expand atheism in Nepal.
00:25:13.220
$50,000 to do, let's see, a transgender opera in Colombia.
00:25:17.420
$47,000 to do an LGBTQ trans comic book in Peru. $20,000 a pop to do drag shows in Ecuador.
00:25:26.020
Shall I continue with more examples of where DEI was the priority?
00:25:28.300
It certainly seems like there could be a review of things. Foreign aid, as you know,
00:25:32.560
is less than 1% of the entire federal budget. So we're talking small amounts of money by comparison.
00:25:39.440
We're still talking about tens and tens of billions of dollars. And if you want to go to
00:25:43.760
somebody else on the other side of the aisle, Samantha Powers, she had a worthy goal, although
00:25:47.980
it was a stupid goal. She said she was hoping to get the amount of foreign aid, U.S. aid dollars
00:25:52.920
that go to actual aid, up to 30 cents on the dollar from 10 cents on the dollar.
00:25:58.720
Beautiful, beautiful. First of all, big lesson here, make sure you know your stuff. Make sure you've
00:26:03.220
got evocative examples whenever you are engaging in a political debate. It's not just about abstract
00:26:10.860
principles and upper level. You've got to paint a picture for people and whatever he's talking about
00:26:15.480
there, you know, transgender painting in Peru or something. It's just really evocative. Now,
00:26:19.960
her response when she's been defeated in this exchange, she says, well, whatever, it's not that
00:26:24.940
much money. It's not that much money. Which brings me back, I think it was Isaiah Berlin,
00:26:29.480
who I was recently reading, writing about this in Two Conceptions of Liberty,
00:26:35.480
where he discusses the distinction between the political and the technological.
00:26:43.140
And this is really important because this is a shift that we're living through right now.
00:26:46.240
For much of my life, the political debate between the Republicans and the Democrats
00:26:51.800
consisted of people saying, look, at least the Republicans would say, look,
00:26:57.360
we agree on the ends that we desire. We agree on where we want to go. We all want the same stuff.
00:27:05.240
We just disagree about how to get there. You know, so we all want all XYZ policy. I don't even want
00:27:12.460
to list them. We all want, you know, equality and fraternity and liberty and whatever. You know,
00:27:19.000
we all agree on the political ends, but we just disagree on the most efficient way to get there.
00:27:25.920
Okay. Well, that's not actually a political debate. That's why we refer to the politics of
00:27:32.460
the last 20 or so years as the uniparty. Because there wasn't really, that's why we don't really
00:27:39.140
even view the shifting of many of these administrations as being a transfer of power so
00:27:43.960
much as a changing of shifts, to quote Walter Kern. It was just a technological debate. What's most
00:27:51.400
efficient? A political debate involves debate over ends. What do we want? Is it good to have a more
00:28:01.500
egalitarian society? I don't know. Or do we actually want a little bit more order? And do we want to
00:28:08.100
preserve more natural distinctions? And do we want to give people a greater opportunity without
00:28:15.080
handicapping them? Do we really want a more open society? Or do we want a society that's actually a
00:28:20.100
little bit more closed off to certain peoples? You know, face tattooed gangsters from Mexico, for
00:28:25.860
instance. And that's more closed off to certain ideas like communism or Nazism. Do we want, I don't
00:28:30.540
know. I don't want a more open society. I want a more closed society in certain respects. What do we
00:28:35.880
want? Do we, do we, I don't actually don't know that we really want to go to the same. Do we really
00:28:39.420
want a society that doesn't recognize the distinction between men and women? That's what
00:28:42.900
the left wants. I don't want that. We have different political ends. That's a real political debate.
00:28:47.940
Okay. And so the rejoinder from the left, which is, oh, it's just 1% of the federal budget. First of all,
00:28:53.580
1% of the federal budget, as Brian Mass points out, is a huge amount of money. Federal budget of
00:28:57.520
trillions and trillions of dollars. But even beyond that, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if
00:29:01.900
it's 0.1% of the federal, it doesn't matter if it's 0.001% of the federal budget. If it's bad stuff
00:29:08.060
that is advancing a bad agenda and taking our country to a bad place, I don't want it.
00:29:14.680
Because we do differ in the political ends that we want. I want a society that is more,
00:29:21.780
better ordered toward the good, the true, and the beautiful, to take it up to the 30,000 foot view.
00:29:26.340
And the left seems to want a society that is ordered toward the bad or that denies the moral
00:29:33.100
order altogether, that is ugly, that doesn't pursue standards of beauty, and that doesn't
00:29:41.000
even acknowledge the reality of truth. It says, what truth? Your truth or my truth? Okay. Those are
00:29:46.300
totally different ends. So I don't want one red cent of my government's money. I can't even say my
00:29:54.200
taxpayer dollars because we're a debtor nation at this point. So I don't want any single penny
00:29:59.060
that the United States is spending to go toward that nonsense around the world. That's what Trump
00:30:04.100
is saying. That's why it feels like a sea change. We're finally saying, no, I think we want different
00:30:09.440
things. And we have the power now, and we're going to pursue the things that we want, which happen to
00:30:13.820
be good. One of which is killing the Department of Education. There was some confusion over this
00:30:21.140
because Trump campaigned on ending the Department of Education. Then he picked Linda McMahon to run
00:30:25.900
the Department of Education. It became unclear. Are we really going to end this thing? Are we just
00:30:30.880
going to reform it? Trump being a polarizing figure, again, not anymore. Now most Americans voted for him,
00:30:39.120
but it was unclear. Are even the squish Republicans going to go for this? Are there? Well, we've got some
00:30:45.440
really strong backing now for ending the Department of Education from one of the great leading lights of
00:30:51.940
education reform in America, Betsy DeVos. Okay, and Betsy DeVos is a really important figure in
00:30:57.280
education reform, one, because she's been very successful at it, but two, because she can speak
00:31:02.860
to the whole GOP. She was Trump's education secretary in the first term, but she also worked
00:31:09.600
with Jeb Bush when Jeb Bush was governor of Florida. Jeb Bush, who's definitely a representative
00:31:13.320
of the more established wing of the GOP. And Jeb Bush, whose greatest achievement in Florida was
00:31:18.360
in education, in large part thanks to Betsy DeVos. This woman has credibility on this issue,
00:31:24.440
on the substance of the issue, and with the whole GOP. And Betsy DeVos just came out,
00:31:30.440
great column in the Free Press, shut down the Department of Education. I served as the 11th
00:31:38.740
U.S. Secretary of Education. That's how I know it's beyond repair. Clear a sign yet. Department
00:31:44.120
of Education is over. This is happening. Now, one really great Trump executive action that's coming
00:31:50.960
out. This was announced at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday. Trump is finally going to
00:31:57.060
take on anti-Christian bias in our government. To confront such weaponization and religious
00:32:05.220
persecution today, I'm signing an executive order to make our attorney general, who's a great person,
00:32:11.680
she's going to be a great attorney general, Pam Bondi, the head of a task force, brand new,
00:32:20.360
to eradicate anti-Christian bias. About time, right? Anti-Christian bias.
00:32:27.800
I love this. And we'll get into the details of this. The executive order, it says that in this
00:32:33.900
atmosphere of anti-Christian government, hostility, and vandalism against Christian churches and places
00:32:38.960
of worship surged, with the number of such identified acts in 2023, exceeding by more than
00:32:43.960
three times the number from 2018. Catholic churches and institutions have been aggressively targeted
00:32:48.500
with hundreds of acts of hostility, violence, and vandalism. So there are a lot of particulars here.
00:32:54.420
We'll see how it's all implemented by the DOJ. But just even from Trump's announcement,
00:33:00.200
I love that he's saying anti-Christian hostility, anti-Christian bias in the government. Because a lot
00:33:08.420
of squish Republicans would say, we want to just generally and universally speaking, protect all
00:33:14.220
religions of all. It's all kind of whatever, man. No, there aren't really threats against all general
00:33:20.220
religions kind of broadly, man. That's not the problem. America wasn't founded on the principles
00:33:25.240
of just kind of, oh, the religions generally universally, man. The specific problem that
00:33:30.420
we saw explode during the Biden administration was bias against Christians. The DOJ wasn't spying
00:33:39.760
on Zoroastrians, all right? The DOJ was spying on Catholics, on the Latin mass, actually, the mass of
00:33:46.620
the ages. The problems that we saw, the attacks, the overt hostility, the discrimination, was against
00:33:54.700
Christians, okay? So we need to be particular. When you want to enforce universal conceptions of
00:34:03.400
justice, you have to do it in the particular. Life exists within particulars, particular times,
00:34:09.100
particular places, particular people. And in this case, the problem to be addressed is anti-Christian
00:34:14.020
bias. And you're not allowed to talk about it. Just as you're allowed to talk about discrimination
00:34:20.080
against any race except for white people, so too, you're allowed to talk about discrimination against
00:34:24.780
any religion except for Christians. But Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world, and
00:34:29.180
it's not even close. And Christianity has been seriously persecuted in America recently by our
00:34:36.160
purportedly Catholic president, Joe Biden. And that's the problem that has to be addressed, and that's the
00:34:41.680
specific problem Trump is addressing, and I love it. You know, at The Daily Wire, we don't just watch
00:34:46.160
culture, we build it. Now we're building the future with AI. Yesterday, Jeremy Boring dropped the first
00:34:54.040
ever fully AI-produced Jeremy's Razors commercial. If you've not seen it yet, good news. We're showing it
00:35:01.760
A tale is told of a star that fell in the days when men were hair-covered brutes roaming the earth.
00:35:08.620
This shard of celestial steel was unlike anything early man had ever encountered. And from those
00:35:14.100
five fortuitous stainless steel blades came the world's first smooth silky shave. And it was in
00:35:20.180
that moment manliness burst into existence. This blade charged forward through the ages of steel and
00:35:26.840
dragon fire. Great conquerors slew tyrants. Founding fathers revolted. And as men's manes were tamed, so they
00:35:34.840
tamed the wild frontier. Also, Steve used it to get a good shave. And he's a pretty solid guy. But as power
00:35:43.880
often breeds enemies, so a wild bearded philosopher despised the blade for its glorious manly freedom. This
00:35:51.800
enemy of clean shaves bore the razor to a fiery peak and cast it in. The blade was gone.
00:35:59.800
A dark age of unmanliness ensued. An age of men wearing buns, drinking vegan milkshakes, and wearing
00:36:07.640
really tight pants and acting like a bunch of crybaby commies. Until one day, the great archaeologist and
00:36:15.000
CEO Jeremy Boring went on a dangerous quest on which many before had perished. Through seas,
00:36:21.080
mountains, and deepest catacombs, he found the blade still sharp as starlight. His mission was
00:36:26.600
to restore the blade to mankind and thereby restore manliness. Will my razor make you as manly as the
00:36:33.240
actual greatest man in all of human history? I guarantee it will. In the most emphatic way that
00:36:39.000
isn't legally binding. Hey, at least you'll be as manly as Steve. Jeremy's Razors, carve out your legacy.
00:36:49.000
That is crazy. Oh, I kicked a little bear there. That is crazy. I know some people have gotten
00:36:55.280
accustomed to AI now. But I remember, it was probably five years ago, more at this point, I was at a
00:37:02.040
college reunion. I was talking to a buddy of mine who's working. He was working on AI, pretty sophisticated
00:37:06.340
stuff before anyone really knew about it. And he said, hey, AI can make a poem and make pictures
00:37:11.160
now. And I know we all know this now, but at the time it was completely mind-blowing. And it's still
00:37:17.200
pretty mind-blowing to me that that can happen. You know, the Daily Wire believes AI is not here to
00:37:25.560
replace us. It's here to create epic things like wrestling a bear, launching razors into a volcano,
00:37:30.040
and of course, riding a lion. But you still have to shave the old-fashioned way. So do it with
00:37:34.320
Jeremy's Razors. Go to jeremysrazors.com right now. Get the second-gen razor and embrace the future.
00:37:41.280
Finally, finally, I've arrived at my favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you
00:37:45.700
in the mailbag. Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles.
00:37:51.220
Claim your new iPhone or Galaxy phone with a qualifying purchase. Take it away.
00:37:56.700
Hi, Michael. First, I just wanted to say I love your show. My name is Kendra. I'm a 20-year-old.
00:38:03.080
I'm a senior in college. My question regards a class I'm taking, which is a requirement for part
00:38:08.940
of my degree. The professor is very liberal and makes sure her political stances are known in class.
00:38:19.980
to the white Judeo-Christian cisgender straight males prepared to be made uncomfortable.
00:38:23.960
And that made me uncomfortable. The content in her class is highly affected by her views and
00:38:32.840
differs from the textbook. So my question is, do I drop the class? Do I report to her professor? Or do
00:38:39.700
I grin and bear it and try really hard not to tear my hair out? Anyways, thank you.
00:38:44.580
Well, good question. I would say if you can withdraw from the class right now without getting a W on
00:38:52.260
the transcript, it might still be early enough. I don't know. So if you can withdraw from the class
00:38:56.140
and not have it affect your graduation or show up with a W on the transcript, I would do it.
00:39:04.560
That would be my prudential advice. Because this woman sounds like a complete lunatic,
00:39:10.240
so you're not actually going to learn anything in her class. It's good to take classes that
00:39:14.080
challenge your thinking. I'm all for studying wacky stuff, you know, and taking Karl Marx
00:39:19.200
seriously and all the rest. But it sounds like this woman is just not, you're not going to learn
00:39:24.340
very much from her. So I would withdraw if you can do it in a way that won't affect your graduation
00:39:31.220
and your transcript. And then I would report her. I wouldn't report her before you withdraw,
00:39:37.880
because then you might get blowback. She sounds like a vindictive, crazy woman.
00:39:41.840
So that's what I would do. And if you can't withdraw without getting a dub on the transcript,
00:39:46.780
then I would probably grit your teeth and bear it and remember for next time not to put yourself in
00:39:51.380
that position. But you got no one to hold them, no one to fold them, no one to walk away,
00:39:57.780
no one to run. This would seem like a run situation. Next question.
00:40:02.940
Smokey Mike, I love your show. I really just wanted to weigh in on women in combat.
00:40:09.020
It seems clear to me that women already serve a sacrificial role in an ordered society,
00:40:14.240
biologically just existing as a woman. It seems they're forced to be made vulnerable just through
00:40:19.820
their biological processes once a month and especially so during pregnancy. From my experience,
00:40:25.760
service in the military is sacrifice. We don't ask troops with missing limbs that have already lost
00:40:31.400
them in war to serve again. They would be at the bottom of the list to be drafted. If ever,
00:40:36.640
it's disordered to ask women to serve on the battlefield. Even losing their war, the Japanese
00:40:41.640
during World War II didn't train their 18-year-old girls to be kamikaze pilots. I just can't imagine
00:40:47.600
storming the beaches of Normandy and seeing these women getting shredded by Nazi machine guns.
00:40:53.960
I was a medic in the army and I promise you, I couldn't have done my mission seeing that.
00:41:02.560
My pleasure and well said. I totally agree with you on that take. It's women already
00:41:09.420
are called to certain sacrifices. That's not to say that men aren't called to sacrifice. Men are
00:41:14.060
called to physical sacrifice too, like combat in some cases. But we're called to different things.
00:41:19.440
And so I suppose part of this debate hinges on what you think the military is about.
00:41:26.580
If you think the military is about you, the individual, pursuing your desires and your
00:41:34.520
ambitions and having every right to do what everyone else gets to do and you want to do it,
00:41:39.240
then you can see an argument for women in combat. Namely, well, why should the fellas get to have
00:41:45.900
all the fun? But if you view military service as what it ought to be understood as, namely a sacrifice,
00:41:52.680
then it's harder to see that. Because telling women who want to serve on the front lines and catch
00:42:00.500
bullets from jihadis, telling those women, hey, sorry, you don't get to. It's bad for military
00:42:05.960
fitness. You are not as physically strong as the men. It's disordered for a nation to send its women
00:42:12.220
out to catch bullets for it. And it's going to compromise men on the battlefield who are going to
00:42:17.920
have a natural and good and virtuous response to go try to save you in particular rather than the
00:42:23.640
other guys. So you have to make yet one more sacrifice. The whole thing is about sacrifice.
00:42:29.540
Well, here's one more sacrifice. You have to sacrifice that particular ambition of yours to
00:42:32.920
do something else. I think that really reveals the debate for what it is, which is premised on a
00:42:40.740
misunderstanding of what the military is even about. Okay? If it's about sacrifice, let it be about
00:42:46.140
sacrifice. Totally agree. Next question. Greetings, Michael. You recently spoke about
00:42:51.660
psychedelics, and I'd like to offer a perspective grounded in virtue ethics. In Aristotle's framework,
00:42:57.020
virtue lies in the mean between excess and deficiency. In excess, psychedelics are used
00:43:02.040
irresponsibly, say at parties or among pagan priests inside of yurts. In deficiency, they are entirely
00:43:08.220
prohibited, as you might suggest. But could the virtuous mean be careful, intentional use in a sacred and
00:43:14.120
prayerful setting? Research has shown that a single use of psilocybin in a controlled environment
00:43:19.160
has been remarkably effective in helping individuals overcome addiction to alcohol and smoking.
00:43:24.840
Could this not extend to those burdened by other vicens, like pornography, addiction, or self-hatred?
00:43:29.760
If used in the proper preparation, such as confession in the holy space or before the blessed sacrament.
00:43:36.440
That doesn't dismiss risks, but asks whether psychedelics,
00:43:39.960
used reverently, could become a tool for grace and transformation. Thank you for reflecting on this.
00:43:45.720
I hope you enjoy these thoughts from the Lyceum of Minnesota.
00:43:49.000
Yes, it's a very good question. I have considered that before, but you've articulated it very well.
00:43:55.680
I'm skeptical. Because Aristotle recognizing that we want means between excesses does not mean that we'll,
00:44:04.960
taken to its extreme, that kind of logic could justify anything if you exceed the reasonable bounds
00:44:14.400
placed upon it by Aristotle and by his followers. So the question is, all right, is using psilocybin
00:44:21.360
one or two times, is that the virtuous mean between the excess or deficiency, the excess of doing a bunch
00:44:27.660
of like bathtub acid with your college friends every week, or the deficiency of not doing acid at all?
00:44:33.920
Or is the virtuous mean among substances to, you know, maybe smoke a cigar every now and again,
00:44:43.100
but not go all the way to actually doing acid or psilocybin? I don't know. The question you have to ask
00:44:48.520
yourself is, how does psilocybin work? How does, even accepting your anecdote, how does psilocybin work
00:44:54.880
at stopping people from want to be booze hounds or from smoking or getting over PTSD or something?
00:45:01.260
Well, the layman explanation is it rewires your brain. Okay, is that a good thing? I mean, we can rewire
00:45:10.300
our brain all the time by practicing virtuous habits. Is it good to just take that shortcut? Can we really
00:45:16.240
control the way that psychedelics rewire our brain? Is there a possibility that the costs of rewiring
00:45:23.040
our brain in that way will outweigh the benefits? Is it possible that the costs of rewiring our brain
00:45:28.860
in that way are intrinsically bad to do? Just as it's not wrong to have a drink socially, but it is
00:45:37.180
wrong to get blackout drunk because you lose control of your rational will. Well, isn't that what happens
00:45:45.260
with psychedelics? I don't know. If your argument says, look, we need to research this a little bit
00:45:51.280
more. We need to give more attention to this issue. Okay, fine. Research it all you like.
00:45:56.500
But I would not take that argument as, or a few anecdotes of guys quitting booze because they
00:46:03.200
tripped on mushrooms a few times. I would not take that as a license to do it myself or even an
00:46:09.200
encouragement. I'm skeptical. It seems dubious to me. Next question.
00:46:15.100
Hello, Mr. Knowles. My name is Charles. I recently finished reading The Divine Comedy and found the last
00:46:20.140
half of the Paradiso Enlightening, particularly St. Peter's examination of Dante's faith in
00:46:25.200
Canto 17. During this episode, Dante provides what can be assumed as his best argument for believing
00:46:30.880
in the resurrection. That is, for Christianity to have spread throughout the world without the
00:46:35.940
assistance of the divine, a miracle far greater would have occurred. Do you believe this to be the
00:46:40.740
best argument for the resurrection? If not, what argument would seed even the most incredulous to
00:46:45.860
believe in the resurrection? And why did Dante not use it? Thank you, Mr. Knowles. Godspeed.
00:46:51.240
Okay, really good question. I'm glad you're reading Dante. Yeah, that's a good argument.
00:46:55.280
There are other good arguments, though, namely that you have 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection,
00:47:01.560
that all but one of the apostles went to their death to attest to the resurrection. So,
00:47:10.100
people generally don't take ships over to India to be ripped apart by tribals for a lie as St. Thomas
00:47:18.620
went over there. You could also point to contemporary historical accounts of people like Josephus or
00:47:28.100
Tacitus or Suetonius or so. I think those are all good arguments, too. So, why wouldn't Dante feature
00:47:35.940
that in the final cantos of the Paradiso? Well, because he's making a work of art. So, I think
00:47:40.900
that the arguments he makes, the pictures that he paints are fitting. I think it's the greatest work
00:47:47.640
of art basically ever made. But if Dante, instead of writing a big, beautiful epic poem, were instead
00:47:54.040
writing some rigorous logical syllogism or treatise, as he's done before, you know, that monarchy is a
00:48:01.360
logical syllogism. He might have relied on some of those other arguments, too. Okay. It's Friday,
00:48:07.140
which means it's Fake Headline Friday, which means I need your help to help me figure out what the
00:48:10.380
fake headline is. The rest of the show continues. Now, you do not want to miss it. Become a member.
00:48:13.720
Use code Knowles, Canada Be Really. That's a checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
00:48:31.360
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