The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1689 - JD Vance Becomes the Meme King

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00:00:37.700 The libs are posting memes of J.D. Vance.

00:00:40.800 Conservatives are posting memes of J.D. Vance.

00:00:43.500 J.D. Vance is posting memes of J.D. Vance.

00:00:47.240 Some make him fat.

00:00:48.760 Some make him ripped.

00:00:49.920 Some make him look dumb.

00:00:51.020 Some make him look smart.

00:00:52.120 Some normie.

00:00:52.800 Some radical.

00:00:53.520 Some commie.

00:00:54.220 Some fascist.

00:00:55.060 There is a J.D. Vance meme for every whim and preference.

00:01:00.760 Most people think the memes are funny, which they are.

00:01:03.540 But no one I've seen can quite explain why they are funny or why J.D. Vance, of all people,

00:01:11.120 is getting memed more than any figure in American history.

00:01:14.720 And I think I can.

00:01:18.140 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:01:18.920 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:25.060 Welcome back to the show.

00:01:40.580 While we're all focused on Ukraine or on Gaza, there are other conflicts in the world that

00:01:46.360 seem to be underreported and for which we can't even really get accurate or precise information.

00:01:53.020 Are Christians being massacred in Syria?

00:01:56.320 Seems like an important question.

00:01:59.240 The information is a little bit unclear.

00:02:00.940 We'll get into what we know right now.

00:02:02.600 There's so much more to say, but first, text Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, to 64000.

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00:02:23.920 Because, sure, I'm going to be public for my show and my speeches and my public life.

00:02:29.440 That doesn't mean I want my home address on the internet.

00:02:31.580 It doesn't mean I want my phone number on the internet.

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00:03:25.760 That is, Knowles to 64,000.

00:03:27.100 Message and data rates may apply.

00:03:29.660 But no one's deleting J.D. Vance off the internet.

00:03:31.900 It's not going to.

00:03:32.240 He is, even if he weren't the Vice President of the United States, at this point, he has

00:03:38.480 been memed too much ever to be deleted from the internet.

00:03:42.000 Why?

00:03:43.160 Why is J.D.?

00:03:44.020 There's one here.

00:03:45.020 I'm just going to go through the ones I see on my board.

00:03:46.780 I see the one of J.D.'s looking all goth and everything.

00:03:50.120 It's got a great caption to it.

00:03:51.680 It says, can't you just?

00:03:53.800 Why won't anybody end the G.D. war? 0.87

00:03:57.340 There's him looking kind of fat and silly, playing Halo with Mountain Dew.

00:04:00.220 There's one where his face is really, really tiny, but his head is still kind of big.

00:04:03.920 One of him is Shrek.

00:04:06.220 You can't even tell with these.

00:04:07.420 Are they pro-J? 0.83

00:04:08.140 Yeah, one of them is like an Oompa Loompa with a big lollipop.

00:04:10.980 That's not even really his face.

00:04:12.220 There we go.

00:04:12.540 We're back to emo J.D.

00:04:16.280 Who...

00:04:16.680 Born to dilly-dally, forced to lock in.

00:04:18.740 Yeah, even...

00:04:19.500 Were they made by the left or were they made by the right?

00:04:22.100 I think the first J.D. memes actually were from the left, and the left can't meme.

00:04:28.240 So this means that the J.D. meme was the first sort of funny meme that the left has made maybe in a decade.

00:04:37.400 Because the right is very good at memes, and the right kind of memed President Trump into the Oval Office in 2016.

00:04:44.200 That's our version of political cartoons.

00:04:47.580 The left has political cartoons in the New Yorker and the New York Times.

00:04:51.380 And because we've been shut out of the establishment mainstream institutions, ours are just like frog pictures on the internet, on Twitter that go viral.

00:04:59.100 So the fact that the left could meme J.D., and then the right took those memes and started using those memes, and then J.D. Vance himself posted a J.D. meme.

00:05:07.560 Why?

00:05:08.080 Why him?

00:05:10.640 To answer that question, you have to know a little bit about what a meme is.

00:05:14.520 The word meme was invented by Richard Dawkins, of all people, the biologist and new atheist.

00:05:22.200 It was coined in 1976 in a book called The Selfish Gene, I believe.

00:05:27.380 But the notion of a meme comes from the word mimesis, which is to imitate.

00:05:33.220 I've talked about mimesis a fair bit on this show, specifically with regard to a writer named Rene Girard, who has this theory, which is obviously correct, that human behavior and human desires even come from imitating others.

00:05:48.860 And this comes from even deeper classical philosophy, which shows that we're the social animals.

00:05:53.640 So we're not just islands unto ourselves, but we're social creatures naturally.

00:05:57.840 We don't just fall out of a coconut tree, to quote Kamala Harris.

00:06:00.460 And so we imitate each other.

00:06:01.920 So that's where memes come from, is the ability to imitate, for ideas to pass through culture as if they had a will of their own.

00:06:13.440 Who is responsible for Pepe the Frog being everywhere in 2016 and 2017?

00:06:19.840 Is it one person?

00:06:20.840 Is it even the cartoonist who made it?

00:06:22.060 No.

00:06:22.580 It's just an idea that kind of propelled itself.

00:06:26.820 It just was imitated throughout the culture.

00:06:29.120 And J.D. is that guy now.

00:06:30.440 Why J.D.?

00:06:31.660 J.D. has been memed more than Donald Trump.

00:06:34.280 And Donald Trump is a very famous person and a very powerful person.

00:06:38.760 And he is a singular figure in American history.

00:06:42.480 And he's the president.

00:06:43.400 He's not the vice president.

00:06:44.340 So why is J.D. getting memed more than Trump?

00:06:47.360 Because J.D. is maybe the most memetic person in the country.

00:06:53.580 That's my theory, at least.

00:06:54.840 I think the reason that it's J.D., the libs are going to say, because he looks funny or whatever.

00:06:59.340 You know, he's got mutton chops.

00:07:01.300 He doesn't really have mutton chops.

00:07:02.200 He's got like a big beard, you know.

00:07:03.500 No, that's not why.

00:07:04.460 It has nothing to do with how he looks.

00:07:07.000 J.D. looks relatively unremarkable.

00:07:09.080 Pretty good looking guy, certainly by politician standards.

00:07:11.480 That's not it.

00:07:12.980 It's because people see themselves in J.D. Vance.

00:07:17.500 J.D. Vance grew up hillbilly, graduated from Yale Law School.

00:07:29.940 He was a Silicon Valley venture capitalist.

00:07:33.360 He became a super socially conservative politician.

00:07:37.600 J.D. Vance was the toast of the liberal intelligentsia.

00:07:40.280 He had that book, Hillbilly Elegy, which became a big Hollywood movie.

00:07:43.360 He was the toast.

00:07:44.080 The liberals liked that book.

00:07:45.960 It wasn't so much the conservatives who liked that book.

00:07:47.960 It was liberals trying to understand how Trump came to power and who all these deplorable,

00:07:52.780 irredeemable hillbillies were who voted for him.

00:07:54.660 So he was the toast of the liberal intelligentsia.

00:07:56.980 Now he's the vanguard of the new right.

00:07:58.700 He's frankly more ahead of normie political watchers than just about anyone in the upper echelon of politics.

00:08:07.280 He was raised an evangelical.

00:08:10.900 He became a Catholic.

00:08:13.060 He was raised in a broken family.

00:08:15.300 He now leads a very strong traditional family.

00:08:18.480 J.D. Vance is the everyman.

00:08:22.460 That's why he's being memed.

00:08:24.900 Donald Trump is not exactly the everyman.

00:08:26.840 Donald Trump comes from a very specific background, and he's got a very specific character.

00:08:32.520 And people love that character.

00:08:33.700 They loved that character in tabloids in the 90s.

00:08:36.740 They love that character on The Apprentice.

00:08:38.760 They love that character at the height of national politics.

00:08:44.040 But he's not everything to everyone.

00:08:46.640 Trump is Trump, okay?

00:08:47.980 He wears the same suit and the same tie and does the same stuff and talks the same way for his whole life.

00:08:52.920 J.D. Vance, not so much.

00:08:54.520 J.D. Vance is the everyman.

00:08:57.780 Everyone can see something of themselves in J.D. Vance because he has grown and developed over time.

00:09:03.460 He's changed his views.

00:09:05.540 I think it's good to change your views.

00:09:07.000 If your views were wrong and then they become more correct, that's good.

00:09:10.420 Some people point to that.

00:09:11.340 They say, ha-ha, he's a hypocrite.

00:09:12.720 He's flip-floppy.

00:09:13.700 No, no, no.

00:09:13.980 If you go from being wrong to being right, that's good, actually.

00:09:16.960 That's natural.

00:09:17.520 If you never change your mind on anything, you're probably not a serious or reflective or intellectual person.

00:09:23.400 So he's grown and he's developed, and this is what's crucial, he's grown and developed with the culture, okay?

00:09:33.180 His journey has been a journey of the American electorate.

00:09:39.080 Started out, you know, kind of, like even just to take Silicon Valley to the social conservatism.

00:09:45.600 Started out kind of, you know, live and let live.

00:09:48.160 Let's just be really gung-ho about the future.

00:09:50.040 Do whatever you want, man.

00:09:51.300 Oh, actually, hold on.

00:09:53.060 The erosion of these values that formed our culture has actually really injured society.

00:09:58.660 And maybe it wasn't such a good idea to outsource all of our jobs.

00:10:01.300 And maybe total free trade without any care for American manufacturing and American—

00:10:06.860 Maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

00:10:08.620 J.D. has come to these conclusions just a little bit ahead of where the American people have.

00:10:15.100 And so I don't think it's an exaggeration to say, as goes J.D. Vance, so goes the nation.

00:10:20.860 And a lot of people—people aren't going to blame him for changing his views on this because the American people have changed their views in line with J.D. Vance.

00:10:28.760 The same American people who voted for Barack Obama voted for Donald Trump.

00:10:34.220 The majority of voters voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

00:10:39.240 That's why.

00:10:39.900 And that is a great political strength.

00:10:44.320 It shows that he's really got his finger on the pulse.

00:10:47.120 It shows—because I think he's sincere in his beliefs—it shows that he is developing with the American people.

00:10:54.680 So it's not even just cynically putting your finger on the pulse.

00:10:56.960 It's actually growing with the American people.

00:10:59.860 It makes him a very, very strong politician.

00:11:03.380 There's so much more to say.

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00:12:14.300 All right.

00:12:14.940 Now we're entering into the first full week of Lent.

00:12:17.920 Very exciting.

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00:12:50.180 Speaking of the times, there's a new report out.

00:12:53.380 Gen Z and millennials are drinking much less alcohol than Gen X and boomers.

00:13:01.380 They're boozing less.

00:13:03.680 My generation, the millennials, and especially the Zoomers. 1.00

00:13:07.020 And I've noticed this.

00:13:08.500 Because, you know, I'm a real hip, cool guy.

00:13:10.300 So I'm friends with some Zoomers and everything. 0.99

00:13:12.600 And when I hang out with the Zoomers, they are much less interested in boozing, throwing back a couple of Coca-Colas, than even my generation has been. 0.94

00:13:22.200 And my generation is much less interested in it than Gen X and the boomers.

00:13:27.340 And even though the plural of anecdote is data, we have real data on this.

00:13:31.220 Business Insider has the report.

00:13:33.000 While the media, including this publication, has been chattering about Gen Z and millennials scaling back on alcohol, many of us have missed that older generations are bucking the trend.

00:13:42.500 Many baby boomers are turning into baby boozers. 1.00

00:13:45.580 I like that line.

00:13:46.880 They're hitting retirement, have savings to spend, and they're enjoying a little victory lap accompanied by a glass of wine or three.

00:13:53.020 So the way that they came to these numbers is based on an analysis of credit card spending by Bank of America.

00:13:59.580 Now, some people will say that the Zoomers and the millennials are boozing less because they're doing other things like smoking pot and whatever, vaping. 0.95

00:14:06.440 And I guess that's true, though.

00:14:07.700 The boomers have definitely smoked their share of the sin spinach over the years. 0.55

00:14:10.500 So I don't know that that totally explains it.

00:14:12.360 I have an explanation.

00:14:13.440 Just like I have an explanation for why JD is being memed more than anyone else in American history, the reason that the Zoomers and the millennials are boozing less than the boomers and Gen X, 0.93

00:14:27.320 the reason that they're going on sober dates, for instance, the reason this isn't included in the Business Insider report,

00:14:32.820 but it ties into a report that we talked about last week, that Zoomers are much less likely to engage in one-night stands.

00:14:39.720 Something like a quarter of Zoomers have friends who regularly engage in one-night stands compared to 75% of millennials. 0.95

00:14:46.660 So you're seeing this drop within one generation.

00:14:49.180 The reason for that is everything old is new again.

00:14:53.300 It's the 80s with a twist, and it's hip to be square.

00:14:55.820 That's why.

00:14:57.580 But because fashion comes in cycles, politics comes in cycles, it's not exactly a repeat.

00:15:03.260 History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

00:15:05.780 We are in the new version of the 80s.

00:15:07.980 It is hip to be square.

00:15:09.580 Zen, those little nicotine pouches, that's the new Coke.

00:15:12.600 Trump is the new Reagan.

00:15:14.040 We're back.

00:15:14.640 That's why.

00:15:15.760 If you want to understand it, just recognize we're living in kind of the 80s.

00:15:20.320 It's not exactly the same.

00:15:22.620 It's a little bit weirder.

00:15:24.100 It's a little bit crazier.

00:15:24.960 You can't predict everything, but that's it.

00:15:28.340 Hippie-dippie, loosey-goosey.

00:15:31.340 If it feels good, do it.

00:15:33.780 Obama era, over.

00:15:35.820 When the millennials came of age, over.

00:15:39.060 Flower child, boomer, you know, let's just put little daffodils in the rifles, and it's the age of Aquarius.

00:15:47.240 Boomer era, over. 0.83

00:15:49.200 We are fully back in dialing in, dressing normal, not being a total degenerate hedonist.

00:15:58.040 We're going to make America great again.

00:16:00.260 We're going to have priorities.

00:16:01.680 We're going to form families.

00:16:03.020 Trad wives are in. 1.00

00:16:05.020 Promiscuity is out.

00:16:06.160 Trad wives are in. 1.00

00:16:07.260 It's hip to be square.

00:16:09.240 That's what's going on.

00:16:11.480 It really is that simple, okay?

00:16:13.500 Because we've gone so far in the other direction, everyone realized it was making them miserable.

00:16:18.000 One in five women was hooked on anti-depression pills.

00:16:20.860 Children, teenagers were getting hooked on these depression drugs.

00:16:24.680 People are trying to deal with their unhappiness by going so far as to mutilate their bodies and sterilize themselves and chop their gonads off.

00:16:33.080 And it's just, it got really, really crazy, and the poison of subjectivism had just reached levels of toxicity that we could no longer tolerate.

00:16:41.100 So we're giving up the drugs that alter our state of mind toward fantasy and laziness, and now the drug of choice is nicotine.

00:16:50.560 It's back.

00:16:51.900 And our politicians of choice are not the weird hippy-dippy people who want to dismantle the country and deconstruct everything.

00:16:57.680 It's Trump.

00:16:59.860 It's cool, man.

00:17:02.200 It's cool.

00:17:02.580 I like that.

00:17:03.060 That's good news.

00:17:03.580 Now, speaking of the Trumps, Donald Trump Jr. has just distinguished himself even further.

00:17:09.620 The guy's got a lot of feathers in his cap throughout his career, and he's been an important political figure in the Donald Trump senior political ascendancy.

00:17:18.860 But he gets a new feather in his cap for the funniest answer to a liberal media request that has ever been given.

00:17:27.300 Mediaite, liberal media outlet, asked Trump.

00:17:32.180 Trump Jr. if he was going to run for president in 2028.

00:17:35.460 They had this report based on all sorts of sources from around the Trump family that Don Jr. was planning a 2028 presidential run.

00:17:42.680 In fact, this is the preface.

00:17:46.440 Three high-level sources told mediaite that Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son and an omnipresent MAGA evangelist across the internet is seriously considering a run for president in 2028.

00:17:57.180 Trump Jr. denied he's considering a run for 2028.

00:18:00.640 In a statement to mediaite, I would now like to read you this statement verbatim.

00:18:05.360 I accurately predicted that my buddy JD would be an instant power player in national GOP politics.

00:18:12.640 So your theory is that I worked my ASS off to help him get the VP nomination because I want to run for president in 2028?

00:18:20.980 Are you effing retarded? 1.00

00:18:23.460 I'm actually glad you're printing this BS, he says the whole word, because at least now the rest of the press corps will see how S-H-I-T-T-Y your sources are and how easily you were played by them.

00:18:36.960 Congrats, moron.

00:18:37.900 Are you effing retarded? 1.00

00:18:44.220 That response to a liberal media request will never be topped.

00:18:49.620 It is not possible.

00:18:51.060 We all, all of us in conservative politics, we get requests from liberal media outlets for comment on occasion, more than on occasion.

00:18:59.580 These days we get them frequently.

00:19:01.560 And, you know, you sometimes say, are you kidding me?

00:19:03.300 That's crazy.

00:19:04.260 You're totally off base here.

00:19:05.740 You don't understand.

00:19:06.360 But are you effing retarded? 1.00

00:19:08.100 I don't, I don't know how to be that.

00:19:09.140 That's from the president's son.

00:19:10.940 It's evidence that he probably would be a quite good presidential candidate, but I, I, I, I take him at his word.

00:19:17.540 He says he's not going to run in 2028.

00:19:19.140 I have no reason to believe I, you know, had I not seen this media, I report, I wouldn't have bet on Trump Jr. running in 2028.

00:19:26.560 Though the fact that they raise it does point out to me, he probably could do pretty well.

00:19:31.160 You know, he might get the nomination.

00:19:32.800 I don't know.

00:19:33.300 He's a very popular figure.

00:19:34.840 He's very politically plugged in.

00:19:37.500 He has been influential in the Trump administration.

00:19:40.380 To his point, he was instrumental in securing the VP nomination for J.D. Vance, which also, to his point, goes to show he's probably not looking at the job for himself.

00:19:52.080 If he picks a guy as strong as J.D. Vance to be the VP, he recognizes he's setting that guy up to be the president next time.

00:19:58.800 And Don Jr. is doing all sorts of stuff in the private sector and, you know, having a, having a good time of it.

00:20:04.660 However, I don't know.

00:20:07.220 He could do pretty well.

00:20:08.080 You know, he knows how to handle the press.

00:20:09.800 Are you effing retarded? 1.00

00:20:11.580 I don't know.

00:20:12.140 That's, that, that's a, that's a new level.

00:20:17.040 Good luck beating that.

00:20:17.980 Now, speaking of things that are not the wisest, I'll, I'll clean up that word.

00:20:23.100 You know this, we try to be a little more delicate and diplomatic on this show.

00:20:26.440 Speaking of things that are not the wisest, Stacey Abrams has just explained a $2 million, sorry, $2 billion climate change graft that she was involved in.

00:20:40.600 She went on, also speaking of the liberal media, she goes on, MSNBC is asked a softball question by Chris Hayes about this $2 billion climate change graft that President Trump alleged during his joint session address that she was involved in.

00:20:59.780 She knows this question's coming.

00:21:01.520 She's got to be prepared to answer this question.

00:21:03.220 She's got to be prepared to defend the program, right?

00:21:06.260 Here's her defense.

00:21:07.200 $1.9 billion to recently created decarbonization of Homes Committee, headed up, and we know she's involved.

00:21:20.620 Just at the last moment, the money was passed over by a woman named Stacey Abrams.

00:21:26.580 Have you ever heard of her?

00:21:28.340 I led a program called Vitalizing DeSoto.

00:21:32.220 We worked in a tiny town in South Georgia to demonstrate that by replacing energy inefficient appliances with efficient appliances, you can lower your costs.

00:21:43.460 And in fact, we accomplished that.

00:21:45.240 For 75% of the community, they got appliances that are lowering their bills.

00:21:50.260 A coalition of organizations, famous organizations, came together and said to the EPA, if we can do this here, we can do this for millions more Americans.

00:22:03.040 Let us invest the money of America in lowering the cost for Americans.

00:22:07.700 And the EPA said, okay, great, go for it.

00:22:10.300 Okay, so you see Chris Hayes there.

00:22:12.180 He had a couple interjections, but I cut it out for time.

00:22:14.320 You see, he's just nodding along.

00:22:17.420 You can almost read his mind.

00:22:19.080 He's saying, this is the best you can do.

00:22:21.460 According to her own explanation, this program that Trump called out in front of Congress is Dems in government giving Dems in the political operative sphere $2 billion to dole out on household appliances for whomever they see fit.

00:22:42.700 The Democrats in government give $2 billion of your taxpayer money to extreme left-wing operatives to just dole out buying goodies, household goodies, for anyone they want to buy votes.

00:23:01.300 Notably in Georgia, where the program began.

00:23:03.980 Georgia, an important swing state.

00:23:05.580 That's the best defense of the program that Stacey Abrams, intimately involved in the program, can come up with. 1.00

00:23:13.960 You remember during the Obama administration, people pointed to a government program where Democrats would just buy cell phones for people to buy their votes, and they called them Obama phones.

00:23:25.560 Now we've got Obama toasters.

00:23:27.860 Now we've got Abrams toasters.

00:23:29.120 I don't know, Democrats are buying toasters and refrigerators and, I don't know, new blenders for people to buy their votes.

00:23:39.640 The issue is not the waste, though there's obviously a lot of waste there.

00:23:44.080 The issue is the corruption.

00:23:46.480 That's the issue.

00:23:48.080 Okay, I'm not, there are libertarians and conservatives in the right-wing tent, and we oppose the same things for different reasons.

00:23:56.660 The libertarians oppose these kind of programs because they're so wasteful and inefficient, and that money would be better spent in the private sector or the free market.

00:24:03.240 And my problem with it is not so much the spending.

00:24:07.100 Big nations have robust governments, and robust governments spend some money.

00:24:11.160 My issue isn't that the government is spending money.

00:24:13.540 It's the graft.

00:24:15.500 It's the corruption.

00:24:16.580 If you've got to spend the money, spend it on something good and useful and not obviously in furtherance of the self-interest of the Democrat Party, which is exactly what it is.

00:24:24.980 There's so much more to say.

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00:26:55.380 Speaking of these stupid government programs and the different reasons that the libertarians and the conservatives oppose them,

00:27:05.260 Doge, run by a very famous libertarian, Elon Musk, has just canceled a government program to trans animals. 0.99

00:27:16.700 Doge has announced that the NIH canceled seven grants for transgender experiments on animals,

00:27:25.560 including over half a million dollars to, quote,

00:27:28.560 Use a mouse model to investigate the effects of cross-sex testosterone treatment,

00:27:34.800 and $33,000 to test feminizing hormone therapy in the male rat.

00:27:39.280 You could look at that and say,

00:27:40.840 That's not a lot of money.

00:27:43.260 All in, just a little over half a million dollars.

00:27:45.880 And off the federal budget, that's just a drop of a drop of a fraction of an iota of a drop of the bucket.

00:27:50.640 Yeah, sure.

00:27:51.900 But first of all, you've got to start somewhere.

00:27:53.420 And two, to me, it's not really about the amount of money.

00:27:58.620 It's what they're doing.

00:28:00.640 So you see this sometimes.

00:28:02.260 Conservatives and libertarians will publish these lists of the dumbest government spending.

00:28:07.240 You know, they put shrimp on treadmills and measured how fast they could run.

00:28:11.500 What a waste of your taxpayer dollars.

00:28:13.320 And yes, this seems wasteful, I guess, to it.

00:28:17.780 Except, not really, in the sense that the purpose of testing drugs and medical treatments on animals

00:28:26.140 is to see how they would work in humans.

00:28:29.240 That's what it's for.

00:28:30.520 So I'm in favor of testing things on animals in as much as I want to make sure that these sorts of treatments are safe for human beings.

00:28:38.480 And human beings are rational souls, are rational creatures with souls proper to human beings, and animals are not.

00:28:50.040 Animals have souls proper to their own nature, but they're not rational.

00:28:52.520 They don't possess rights in the sense that we think of human rights.

00:28:55.560 And so I actually think it's fine to do experiments circumscribed by notions of justice on animals.

00:29:02.580 And so if they were testing cancer drugs on these animals, I'd say, well, that's good.

00:29:09.000 Even if it's not so nice to the animals, I'd say, it's good.

00:29:11.320 You got to test the cancer drugs so that we can treat human beings who have greater dignity.

00:29:17.060 The issue here is that we should not be attempting these trans procedures even on humans. 1.00

00:29:23.840 That's the issue.

00:29:25.240 Why are we transing mice?

00:29:26.480 Well, the real answer, what the liberals would tell you is we're transing mice to see that it's safe to trans human beings.

00:29:32.680 Or that we can continue to monitor the health effects of transing human beings and try to adapt to the ways in which transing human beings is not good for their health and so on and so forth. 1.00

00:29:44.840 The problem is we shouldn't be transing human beings. 1.00

00:29:47.320 The issue is not quantitative but qualitative.

00:29:51.120 The issue is not the amount of money we're spending.

00:29:54.540 The issue is we should be able to make value judgments about the substantive good of these kinds of policies and say, no, we're not going to trans human beings. 0.99

00:30:06.140 So then there should be no need to trans the little mice. 0.99

00:30:09.160 So there should be no need to spend the half million dollars.

00:30:11.620 And that kind of decision can't be made purely on the basis of efficiency, which is the charge of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency.

00:30:21.120 We also need a Department of Substantive Goods, which I guess is just the president and the legislators and the way that we arrive at who is in charge of that, which is always the next question.

00:30:33.740 Who decides what's good is, well, you know, we have elections in this country and the power of the voting public is circumscribed by the Constitution, circumscribed by certain rights.

00:30:44.500 But broadly speaking, we get to decide what is good at the federal level and at the state level and at the local level.

00:30:50.660 And we have principles of subsidiarity that also govern which decisions are made where.

00:30:54.880 But that's what we need to have.

00:30:56.300 Department of Government Efficiency, great, love that.

00:30:59.200 We also need to recognize a Department of Substantive Goods.

00:31:03.160 Should we trans people in the first place?

00:31:05.780 I don't think we should.

00:31:07.120 Should we kill babies in the womb? 1.00

00:31:09.300 Should we sell babies on an open market through the fertility industry, through specifically IVF and surrogacy? 0.58

00:31:16.780 Should we, should we, should we?

00:31:18.160 You know, those are questions that have to be answered, not according to the sophistry of economists and calculators, but according to serious moral philosophy.

00:31:28.680 And so we didn't, we didn't actually need to take these particular questions all that seriously, even 25 years ago, because everyone knew we shouldn't like chop up people and, you know, pretend that they're the opposite sex. 0.78

00:31:39.480 But now we're morally confused and we're living in a world after virtue.

00:31:41.980 So we need to invest some resources in those calculations as well.

00:31:48.560 Okay.

00:31:48.940 Now, speaking of the trans stuff, which dominates the news every single day, even though, even though I'm so sick of talking about it, the libs are not sick of pushing it.

00:31:57.360 So we conservatives need to respond to it to make sure that, that the cancer of, of their preposterous anti-human ideologies don't spread too much.

00:32:05.520 Democrat representative Jennifer McClellan has just come out.

00:32:10.200 She was on Leland Vittert's show on News Nation.

00:32:12.420 And she made the claim that the only way to put into effect President Trump's plan to get men out of women's sports, the only way that we could possibly do that is to pull down the pants of the athletes and check for ourselves. 0.98

00:32:28.840 I don't think that the American people want school professionals pulling their children's pants down to determine what sports team they should plan.

00:32:38.520 No, how do you, how do you enforce that bill?

00:32:40.440 No, come on. 0.85

00:32:41.000 If you, if you read the bill, if you read the bill, if you read the bill, how do you enforce it?

00:32:48.320 How do you enforce it?

00:32:49.880 Come on.

00:32:50.380 You know what people, you know what sex is on someone's birth certificate and you say if it's on your birth certificate, if you're a boy, you can't play in girls' sports. 0.90

00:32:57.600 It's pretty simple.

00:32:59.180 It's a completely false talking point.

00:33:01.480 Come on.

00:33:03.580 It is not a false talking point.

00:33:05.280 You don't want to accept it.

00:33:06.880 We can move on to something else.

00:33:08.520 But the only way to enforce that bill, in many cases, it allowed people in schools to pull children's pants down to determine what sex they are. 1.00

00:33:17.980 Okay.

00:33:18.480 Great response here from Leland, who, by the way, is not like the most red meat bomb throwing right wing Republican or anything like that.

00:33:25.580 He's a pretty fair news guy.

00:33:26.780 And he comes out and this Democrat rep says, what these Republicans want to do is pull down kids' pants.

00:33:33.520 And that's the only way.

00:33:34.760 And he just goes, give me a break, lady.

00:33:36.560 You pass a law that says that men can't play in women's sports, women's sports, which, by definition, exclude men.

00:33:45.360 Until the social engineers now want to blur the distinction between men and women.

00:33:51.540 So there was already a legal right for women to have their own sports leagues. 1.00

00:33:55.120 There was already some way that we were able to tell the difference between men and women so that the men wouldn't play in the women's sports league.

00:34:03.960 That was true until five minutes ago.

00:34:05.720 So what, were we pulling everyone's pants down in schools before?

00:34:08.240 I don't think so.

00:34:08.980 We were obviously able to tell somehow.

00:34:10.880 Now this woman is being obtuse and she's saying there's no way to tell.

00:34:13.980 And Leland points out, he says, you know, we have birth certificates.

00:34:17.540 But, in fairness, the Democrats have also tried to compromise birth certificates.

00:34:24.260 They've tried to allow people to change their birth certificate to pretend that they're the opposite sex.

00:34:29.000 So, in fairness, birth certificates are not totally reliable these days.

00:34:34.260 But, we also have genetic testing.

00:34:36.760 If it really comes down to it, you can just, you know, you have to take all sorts of medical tests to go to public school in this country anyway.

00:34:41.620 You have to take all sorts of vaccinations, undergo all sorts of medical exams.

00:34:45.380 So I don't think it would be that hard to just check someone's blood and say, oh, no, yeah, it's a dude.

00:34:50.720 Right, it's a check.

00:34:51.800 In a real margin case.

00:34:53.360 But, also, it's not going to really take it that far because, one, we live in a society where people are not lying all the time.

00:35:02.860 So, you know, probably, like, the parents will fess up.

00:35:06.160 Probably people live in communities, so they remember.

00:35:08.500 They say, like, hey, you know Jane over there?

00:35:10.060 She was Jack until, like, a week ago.

00:35:12.160 So I can remember that.

00:35:13.520 But, also, you can usually tell.

00:35:18.880 You can usually tell, right?

00:35:20.380 I'm not saying that there has never been a transvestite that's a little bit confusing.

00:35:25.180 It's a confusing culture.

00:35:26.920 But 99 times out of 100, you can tell.

00:35:31.080 They're not fooling anybody.

00:35:32.780 Actually, it's ma'am.

00:35:34.060 No, yeah.

00:35:35.440 I don't think it is.

00:35:36.980 And you don't need to pull someone's pants down to know that either.

00:35:40.080 You can tell.

00:35:40.960 Now, if we have so lost our prudence that we need to pretend now that you have to examine someone's genitals to know if they're a man or a woman, then I guess we're not capable of self-government, right?

00:35:55.840 But I think we can.

00:35:58.120 I think we can tell.

00:35:59.220 And this woman's point is well taken.

00:36:03.520 The one good point that she's making is we live in a culture right now that is so intentionally confusing that we can't trust typical longstanding markers of truth like birth certificates.

00:36:17.480 That's not an argument to further the confusion.

00:36:21.860 That's an argument to clear up the confusion that the libs have recently put into place. 1.00

00:36:25.220 That's an argument to not let people change the sex on their birth certificates.

00:36:29.220 To align with fantasy rather than reality.

00:36:32.700 This is the same argument people make about marriage.

00:36:34.940 When I say, you know, marriage is good and it's meant the same thing everywhere for all of human history until about five minutes ago.

00:36:42.200 So we don't hate anybody.

00:36:44.480 We're not phobic.

00:36:45.540 When we say that two fellas can't marry each other, we're just saying that that is not within the definition of marriage.

00:36:51.040 Like, it's not phobic or irrationally hostile and antagonistic to say that a circle can't be a square.

00:37:00.040 It just isn't that.

00:37:01.040 It's not square-a-phobic.

00:37:02.180 It's just that's not what it is.

00:37:03.420 The left will respond to that and they'll say, well, you know, even the squishy right, they'll say, you know, marriage has been so degraded in recent years through things like no-fault divorce and through things like radical feminism that diminishes the role of the husband and the wife. 0.81

00:37:23.040 And it's been so degraded over the years that really, what's the difference?

00:37:27.600 Why wouldn't we redefine it to include two fellas? 1.00

00:37:29.580 And I say, you're right.

00:37:30.360 Marriage has been degraded, especially by the liberalization of divorce.

00:37:35.740 That's not an argument for further weakening or even abolishing marriage in our law. 0.89

00:37:40.700 That's an argument for strengthening marriage. 0.99

00:37:42.320 If you're telling me that an institution has been greatly degraded previously, then we should strengthen that institution.

00:37:50.320 We shouldn't totally abolish it.

00:37:52.640 Well, you know, we can't even really trust the birth certificates anymore to tell us who's a boy and a girl.

00:37:55.920 Okay, let's fix the birth certificates then, shall we?

00:37:59.700 Let's not further confuse people.

00:38:02.240 That's crazy.

00:38:03.560 But the media, they're crazy.

00:38:04.960 The media wants you to believe that President Trump is a criminal, that Elon Musk is unhinged, and the world is spiraling into chaos.

00:38:10.360 Here's the truth, though.

00:38:11.920 We're winning.

00:38:13.380 The libs' lies are unraveling.

00:38:14.900 The narrative is crumbling.

00:38:15.760 Their tears are falling.

00:38:17.920 That is why The Daily Wire is here, to cut through the noise and bring you the facts.

00:38:21.460 That's what others won't.

00:38:22.640 Uncensored, ad-free daily shows, investigative journalism, live chats, breaking news first, no filter, no corporate leash, no nonsense.

00:38:30.080 The Daily Wire is where the real story lives.

00:38:32.960 Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join the fight today.

00:38:36.560 My favorite comment on Friday is from Ric Flair of Astra, who says, why the heck does a governor have a podcast?

00:38:45.560 He should be working.

00:38:46.260 This is in reference to Gavin Newsom, the Patrick Bateman of politicians.

00:38:49.460 I actually don't think it's a bad thing to get a podcast.

00:38:52.960 As someone who hosted a podcast for two or three years with a sitting politician, I don't think that's necessarily bad.

00:38:58.320 FDR had his fireside chats.

00:39:00.240 Politicians spend most of their time giving speeches and sitting on the phone raising money.

00:39:05.540 So they talk.

00:39:06.380 That's the job of a politician, 97% of the time, is just to talk and communicate.

00:39:11.300 So I'm not opposed to that.

00:39:13.940 That's a part of public service.

00:39:17.240 The better question to me is, why specifically does Gavin Newsom specifically have a podcast specifically right now?

00:39:26.380 And the obvious answer, why was his first guest Charlie Kirk?

00:39:30.100 The obvious answer is he recognizes there's a big problem with the Democrat Party.

00:39:33.880 If they keep going down the open borders, trans the kids kind of madness, they're going to never win an election again. 1.00

00:39:40.300 Newsom wants to be the nominee in 2028.

00:39:42.280 He wants to be the president in 2029.

00:39:44.180 And so he's going to tack to the center.

00:39:46.500 That was a very calculated move.

00:39:48.220 I don't really trust him.

00:39:49.540 Even on issues of weird sex stuff, he was one of the most left-wing politicians in America in 2004 when he was mayor of San Francisco.

00:39:56.400 So I don't trust a word that the guy says.

00:39:59.040 He's a noted liar who tried to make himself the face of COVID and the lockdowns and sacrifice, and then they caught him breaking his own COVID rules at the French Laundry.

00:40:08.940 I think he is dishonest as the day is long.

00:40:11.640 But I think he's a clever politician, and he recognizes that's the only hope that Democrats have in 2028.

00:40:17.720 And why podcasts?

00:40:18.860 Because that's the way that people communicate now.

00:40:20.700 Trust the New York Times.

00:40:21.500 Trust the Washington Post.

00:40:22.360 It was the podcast election.

00:40:23.480 Now, speaking of, turning from Congress Lady Jennifer McClellan, but also still speaking of sad and bizarre medical stories.

00:40:32.080 Did you read about the death of Gene Hackman, the great actor Gene Hackman?

00:40:36.080 This was spooky, man.

00:40:40.660 The story, for those of you who have not followed it all that closely, Gene Hackman was found dead in his home.

00:40:45.980 Now, he was quite old, and he had been suffering from Alzheimer's, so it's not all that surprising.

00:40:51.160 What was weird was Gene Hackman and his much younger wife were both found dead in their home at the same time.

00:40:58.080 To add further to the oddity of the story, their dog was also found dead at the same time.

00:41:04.540 So people had two theories that were floated right away.

00:41:06.920 They said either it was carbon monoxide, the silent killer, just kills people.

00:41:10.780 You don't even know what's happening.

00:41:11.920 We've heard those stories before.

00:41:12.960 Or was it some kind of suicide or something?

00:41:15.300 People were just wildly speculating without any basis.

00:41:19.960 Now, we found out what happened.

00:41:22.140 According to Heather Gerald, New Mexico's chief medical examiner,

00:41:26.940 apparently, Gene Hackman's much younger wife died from Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.

00:41:34.180 It's this respiratory virus illness caused by a virus transmitted by rodents.

00:41:39.240 So who knows?

00:41:39.800 Maybe she was bit by a mouse in her garden.

00:41:41.220 We don't know.

00:41:41.680 But she was infected by a rodent.

00:41:44.660 Her exact time of death is unknown.

00:41:46.180 She was last seen on February 11th.

00:41:49.460 Gene Hackman died of hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

00:41:56.320 According to information from his pacemaker, he likely died seven days after his wife was last seen.

00:42:03.540 So that means that Gene Hackman's wife died and he lived in the home with her body in it for up to a week.

00:42:17.820 Now, why did their dog die?

00:42:19.000 Their dog had been in a crate because he was recovering from some veterinary procedure a day before the wife was last seen.

00:42:25.460 So the dog was locked up in a crate.

00:42:26.980 It's just really gruesome.

00:42:28.220 The fact that Gene Hackman had advanced Alzheimer's means he might not have even known that his wife was dead.

00:42:39.400 She was taking care of him.

00:42:40.860 So he might have just not.

00:42:42.540 He wasn't given his medicine.

00:42:44.140 Probably wasn't given food.

00:42:45.000 Probably wasn't given water.

00:42:45.920 Now, he might not have even been out of bed.

00:42:50.360 We don't know.

00:42:52.280 But if you have ever had a loved one suffer Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia, this story is pretty believable.

00:42:58.640 I was talking to a buddy of mine and he said, I just don't believe the story.

00:43:00.820 Something doesn't seem right.

00:43:02.660 I said, I don't know.

00:43:03.320 Having had a loved one who died of dementia and possibly Alzheimer's, I actually don't know what the specific dementia was.

00:43:09.780 We never had it checked.

00:43:11.680 I believe it.

00:43:12.500 If our loved one had been left in the home like this, I could totally have seen this happening.

00:43:21.500 And so then the question was, well, why were they in the home together?

00:43:23.960 Why wasn't someone checking in for a week?

00:43:25.920 Gene Hackman had three kids.

00:43:28.460 I don't know.

00:43:29.320 I don't know the relationship of the kids to Gene Hackman.

00:43:32.320 I don't know why someone didn't check on him.

00:43:34.280 I don't know.

00:43:34.460 Sometimes people in advanced illness like that, they kind of pull away from people.

00:43:37.520 They don't want to talk on the phone.

00:43:38.500 They don't want people to come over.

00:43:39.720 I don't know.

00:43:40.420 What I do know, zooming out from the story, is this kind of story is the consequence of a society that increasingly refuses to confront death.

00:43:52.960 We do not want to think about death.

00:43:56.200 Say what you will about ancient and medieval society.

00:44:00.220 It took death pretty seriously.

00:44:02.020 It looked at death head on.

00:44:03.060 Maybe because it was more accustomed to seeing death.

00:44:06.780 Now, everyone still dies.

00:44:09.000 The death rate is exactly the same today as it was in the Middle Ages.

00:44:14.400 And it's actually just slightly higher than it was in antiquity.

00:44:19.280 Because we have one case of someone surviving death from antiquity.

00:44:24.920 None recently.

00:44:25.920 So, why can't we confront death?

00:44:30.580 Well, because we have no—it's not a medical issue.

00:44:34.000 Medically, we're better at dealing with death than we ever have been.

00:44:36.680 But ethically, philosophically, theologically, we have no idea how to confront death.

00:44:41.740 Even anthropologically.

00:44:42.740 You've got people now, all these futurists, talking about how they're going to conquer death.

00:44:46.600 How they're going to end death.

00:44:48.160 Death is over.

00:44:48.720 So, we don't know how to deal with it.

00:44:52.040 We try to—when people are really close to death, we just try to shove people off into homes and hospices and just ignore them.

00:44:58.500 People—older people live alone much longer than they should because they don't want to confront the reality of death.

00:45:04.660 Their kids don't want to confront the—we just don't—we've lost—we don't have intergenerational living anymore.

00:45:09.020 We have a highly individualist society that refuses to acknowledge that we have obligations between the generations to our loved ones.

00:45:17.920 And even our aging loved ones have obligations to the rest of their family to accept their help.

00:45:22.280 That's been shattered.

00:45:24.380 And it's been shattered by the individual—the hyper-individualism of the left and the right.

00:45:28.620 But that's what's going on here.

00:45:29.820 Now, speaking of death, a story I talked about at the top.

00:45:33.800 There are these reports that Christians and other religious minorities are being slaughtered in Syria.

00:45:41.460 There's a report here from—this is from the Associated Press.

00:45:44.840 Take it for what it's worth.

00:45:45.900 Two days of clashes and revenge killings in Syria leave more than 1,000 people dead.

00:45:50.660 There were initially reports that Christians were among those who were being targeted, along with Alawites and Druze, other religious minorities.

00:45:56.920 Then there were reports coming out that Christians aren't really being targeted.

00:46:01.500 And it's rather unclear, actually, because there's a lot of propaganda around that region from all of those sides.

00:46:08.420 On the one side, you have Turkey, Israel, the al-Qaeda slash ISIS slash general Islamist terrorists who took over Syria.

00:46:18.980 On the other side, you have Iran and Russia, which had been backing Bashar Assad, who was the erstwhile leader of Syria.

00:46:26.960 And then when he fell, all hell broke loose.

00:46:31.100 Conflicting reports.

00:46:32.400 Conclusions, however, though, as I predicted at the time, though it was not popular, ousting Bashar Assad was probably a terrible thing.

00:46:40.260 Because Bashar Assad, for all his sins, generally took care of religious minorities. 0.78

00:46:44.440 Okay, my other take on this story, well, obviously, pray for these people, the Alawites and the Druze and the Christians, even though it's disputed if the Christians are being, Christians have been persecuted in Syria for a long time.

00:46:56.860 I'm sure they're still being persecuted now.

00:46:59.000 Also, when there is a tectonic political shift going on, as there is now, some eras, there aren't huge shifts going on.

00:47:07.040 The mid-90s, there weren't huge political shifts.

00:47:09.900 The big political shift had occurred in the early 90s with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

00:47:14.440 Then things were kind of the same until 9-11.

00:47:17.780 Right now, there are tectonic political shifts going on.

00:47:20.320 You see this especially in the conflict in Ukraine, also in the conflict in Gaza, also in President Trump talking about acquiring Greenland and adding Canada to the country, retaking the Panama Canal.

00:47:32.660 There is a tectonic shift that is even reflected in the election of President Trump.

00:47:37.420 We talked earlier about mimesis and our leaders reflecting the body politic.

00:47:43.340 And something has changed.

00:47:44.880 We came to the end of something with the first election of Trump, and now we're really seeing that come to fruition.

00:47:49.420 And when those shifts take place, the propaganda backed by organizations, backed by states, gets very, very intense.

00:47:57.800 So it's another reason not to believe everything that you read on the internet and to try to do some of that research for yourself.

00:48:06.280 And, of course, to pray for these people because there are – there's no doubt in my mind that Alawites, Druze, and even Christians are being seriously persecuted there.

00:48:14.840 And there's no doubt in my mind that greater changes are even to come.

00:48:18.280 Okay, it's Music Monday.

00:48:19.180 The rest of the show continues now.

00:48:20.580 You do not want to miss it.

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00:48:25.860 You do not want to miss it.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 10, 2025

Ep. 1689 - JD Vance Becomes the Meme King

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