The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1741 - Kanye West Gives Up Antisemitism

00:00:00.000 Folks, today is a big, beautiful day. It is a day I've been waiting for for many, many months now.

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00:02:21.360 Void where prohibited conditions and exclusions apply. Thank you, Mayflower, for supporting today's

00:02:27.300 show. And thank you to all of you for supporting Mayflower. Into what's actually going on in the

00:02:32.160 non-cigar-related news. President Trump's big, beautiful bill passes the House by one vote.

00:02:38.100 The free Palestine murderer releases a manifesto. We're learning a lot more about him and about 1.00

00:02:43.820 his victims. And Kanye-related story announces that he is done with anti-Semitism. I'm Michael

00:02:49.740 Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:03:08.100 This cigar is so good. And any cigar launch date, when I get to smoke a cigar on my show,

00:03:15.040 that's a nice day. You'll get notes, by the way, of chicory. You'll get notes of cardamom. You'll

00:03:19.300 get notes of oak and a little hint of caramel, okay? Now, you're probably wondering, how is the

00:03:24.680 guy who just came out with a song called Heil Hitler, how is he now done with anti-Semitism?

00:03:29.680 It is because, and you know how much I hate to say this, I told you so. There is a great

00:03:38.360 deal more to say about this in many subjects. First, though.

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00:04:12.840 Biggest political news going on right now. The House of Representatives has just passed President

00:04:17.760 Trump's big, beautiful bill. What is the big, beautiful bill? I actually hadn't even really

00:04:22.200 talked about this bill so much when it was working its way through the House. The big, beautiful bill

00:04:26.920 is everything that Trump needs to get his second term agenda started at the legislative level. He's

00:04:33.020 passed a zillion executive orders, but at the legislative level, with a razor-thin majority in

00:04:37.440 the House, President Trump had to get this bill through. The bill extends the 2017 tax cuts,

00:04:43.480 makes those tax cuts permanent. Really, really important to extend those tax cuts because they're

00:04:48.740 about to expire, and if they expire, everyone's going to have a massive tax hike. So I sat down

00:04:53.140 with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant a few weeks ago at the White House, and I asked him how the

00:04:57.440 bill was working its way through Congress, and he said it's a pass-fail measure. The administration

00:05:03.060 needed to get this win. You know, the Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so it'll make

00:05:09.180 its way through the Senate. The bill is being passed through a process of reconciliation, so they don't

00:05:13.660 need 60 votes. They only need 51 votes. They will get 51 votes. It's not a big deal. The House was

00:05:18.520 always the sticking point because of that razor-thin majority and because getting the Republicans

00:05:22.280 together in the House is like herding cats, but they did it. So kudos to President Trump and Speaker

00:05:26.600 Johnson and all the whips. They did a great job, got that through. What else does the big, beautiful bill 0.94

00:05:30.960 do? It does all sorts of things that are nice for conservatives. Prohibits Medicaid money from going

00:05:36.780 toward trans and kids. That's a good thing. It allocates more money for border security. There's a lot in it.

00:05:42.420 It's a huge bill. One of the knocks on the bill is it spends a lot of money, but our government just

00:05:46.180 spends a lot of money, and so we can either spend the money on good things or we can throw our hands

00:05:50.760 in the air and not get anything done, wait for the Democrats to come in and spend the money on really,

00:05:54.440 really bad things. Overall, this is good. This was a pass-fail. The Trump administration needed to

00:05:58.500 get past this hurdle. They successfully got past this hurdle. The Trump agenda is no longer in

00:06:04.080 existential peril. Now we can build on what happens from here. Moving into other D.C.-related news,

00:06:10.640 we talked yesterday about this awful shooting after a Jewish event. This young Jewish couple

00:06:15.760 was murdered by a guy. The alleged shooter was screamed, free, free Palestine afterward. 0.96

00:06:21.840 We're learning more about him. He had a manifesto. I'm not going to read this guy's manifesto. It does

00:06:26.280 not deserve a public reading. However, if the manifesto is real, comes out from Ken Klippenstein,

00:06:33.800 I think. But if it's real, sometimes these published manifestos are real. Sometimes they're

00:06:38.220 hoaxes. But assuming it's real, it includes all the stuff you'd expect. Free Palestine and then 0.98

00:06:43.480 just whining about the usual leftist causes. Going all the way back to the Vietnam War. In this guy's

00:06:48.620 manifesto, he's whining about the Vietnam War and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Okay, so this is

00:06:53.160 a run-of-the-mill leftist. And to me, this is the most interesting story about this shooter's

00:06:57.580 background. Some people are claiming online that there is a photo of the shooter with the mayor

00:07:03.820 of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, along with a bunch of other leftist agitators, with the United Working

00:07:09.640 Families Group, United for All Neighborhoods, whatever. I don't know. I'm not convinced of this,

00:07:14.360 so I'm certainly not reporting this as fact. It's making the rounds. He's a guy who vaguely looks like

00:07:19.120 the shooter, but I don't know. It almost doesn't matter because we know with certainty that the alleged

00:07:24.560 shooter was from Chicago, and two, was active in leftist groups in Chicago. And not only the super

00:07:32.980 duper fringe ones, but was part of, well, the ordinary assemblage of left-wing groups that you

00:07:39.240 see in cities like Chicago, especially in Chicago. One of the groups was the Party for Socialism and

00:07:47.420 Liberation. Another one reportedly was the Answers Coalition, a left-wing group about the Middle East.

00:07:52.220 He seems to have graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago, typical left-wing state school

00:07:58.300 in a very left-wing place. What do we do about this? There are all sorts of these groups, these

00:08:05.640 community organizing groups, all these little cells that are inclined toward left-wing agitation

00:08:12.080 that are funded by private money. Some of them are funded by laundered public money. One example that I

00:08:17.620 give of this is that when Elon was looking at the way taxpayer money was being funded through USAID,

00:08:24.140 a lot of that money would go out of the United States and then come right back into the United

00:08:27.360 States. So USAID, for instance, was funding the Tide Center. The Tide Center was then taking that money

00:08:33.420 and spending the money on BLM activism, BLM activism in the United States, to destroy our communities and 0.56

00:08:39.680 extort companies and politicians to demand even more taxpayer money for this nonsense. And the cycle goes on

00:08:44.980 and on and on. What we have to do as conservatives here is clamp down on some of this stuff. And

00:08:51.500 that's going to run counter to the narrative that we've heard for the past five or ten years on the

00:08:55.400 right, which is that we need more free speech and we need to answer bad speech with more speech and

00:09:01.780 we shouldn't clamp down on anything. Nah, we got to ditch that kind of libertarian stuff. We got to get

00:09:07.100 back to a proper conservative like Joe McCarthy, okay? We need to have standards and norms, something I

00:09:13.140 talk about on the show a lot. We need more surveillance on these left-wing groups that are

00:09:18.580 radicals, that are contrary to the interests of the United States, that are contrary to our political 1.00

00:09:24.000 tradition. I'm not saying we need mass surveillance or Big Brother or anything like that, but we need

00:09:29.140 to recognize that certain things are really beyond the pale. And when you're calling for the destruction

00:09:32.900 of the country, the dismantling of the country, when you're calling in some cases for violence,

00:09:37.260 violence, then it is the legitimate role of the civil authority to go in and discourage those

00:09:42.420 groups, okay? We have let them run amok for far too long. We let them run amok a lot in the 60s and

00:09:47.380 70s. And there were other terrorist attacks then as a result of it. So we got to be able to flex our

00:09:52.880 muscles a little bit. This is something that Trump and the Trump movement is a little more comfortable

00:09:56.980 with than the feckless Republicans that have existed for most of the past few decades. We got to get more

00:10:02.600 comfortable with it. We have a right to feel safe on our streets. We have a right to exclude from the

00:10:10.660 public square really pernicious ideas and movements. That's not a fascist, reactionary, authoritarian

00:10:17.940 kind of program. That's the same sort of thing William F. Buckley Jr. was calling for when he founded

00:10:23.340 the modern conservative movement. That is mainstream stuff. It should almost sound milquetoast, frankly.

00:10:28.020 We need to do that. More on the victims is coming out. There's a real irony to this. These victims were

00:10:35.760 targeted ostensibly because they're Jews. Free Palestine from the river to the sea. It was after the 0.99

00:10:42.960 American Jewish Committee gala. This poor young couple in their 20s are planning on getting engaged next

00:10:48.000 week. The male victim in this case, Jeroen Lashinsky, who's a Christian. According to reporting

00:10:58.000 from the New York Times and according to this guy's friends, he grew up in a culturally mixed family

00:11:04.140 with a Jewish father and a Christian mother and was a practicing Christian. According to Ronan

00:11:10.060 Chauval, the dean of the Argaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, where Mr. Lashinsky

00:11:15.060 participated in a year-long program in classical liberal conservative thought after earning a master's

00:11:19.840 degree in government diplomacy. He was a devout Christian, Dr. Chauval said, but he had tied his fate to the

00:11:26.800 people of Israel. This guy, I think he was born in Germany and was deeply tied to Israel. He was a

00:11:34.080 Christian. It's not that that should make it really any better if you kill innocent people. That's just 0.97

00:11:39.760 wrong. That's just immoral and unjust. But there's this deep irony here that this guy who was targeted

00:11:45.900 because he's a Jew who's a Christian. He believed in Christ. Not that that would have made any

00:11:52.620 difference to the enemies of the Jews, enemies of Christians, apparently, enemies of our civilization,

00:12:00.100 and enemies of our country as well. The people who are going out there with the Kefi is shrieking 1.00

00:12:04.840 about colonization and free, free Palestine and the river to the sea and all that stuff. You think they 0.99

00:12:10.140 love America? You think they're on the side of the patriotic Americans? I don't think so. I don't

00:12:16.240 think so. And, you know, on this civilizational point, some have observed that Judaism is contrary

00:12:23.640 to Christianity, which is true. Modern rabbinic Judaism, by definition, rejects Christianity. 0.99

00:12:31.280 Now, Christians would say that Christianity is the fulfillment of the Old Testament and Judaism. 0.94

00:12:36.820 Obviously, especially in the first century, there were a lot of Jewish converts to Christianity,

00:12:39.700 and there were Jewish converts to Christianity even up until today. But it's true that Judaism 0.98

00:12:44.280 is contrary to Christianity because it rejects the resurrection.

00:12:49.440 Some have floated the idea of an alliance with Muslims, and I'm happy to have Muslims vote for

00:12:54.340 Republicans, and that's great stuff. And in some ways, I can talk to Muslims much more easily than to 1.00

00:12:57.800 atheist liberals because at least they understand that God exists. But while we're pointing out that Jews 1.00

00:13:02.360 reject the resurrection, we should also point out that Muslims reject the crucifixion. 0.79

00:13:10.400 Muslims, it's in the Quran, do not believe that Christ was crucified. And it reminds me of a line

00:13:16.980 from St. Paul, which is, many are walking now, and I tell you even weeping, who are enemies of the cross

00:13:22.740 of Christ. That line causes people to scratch their heads sometimes. It's unfortunate to reject the

00:13:30.400 resurrection, and everyone should recognize the resurrection because it really happened,

00:13:33.120 and there's a lot of evidence for it, and it's a great sign of our hope that we have,

00:13:36.580 that our Redeemer lives. Christ conquers death on the cross, on the crucifixion. The cross is the

00:13:43.780 axle on which the entire cosmos turns. And if you think that we can just paper over that fundamental

00:13:50.700 distinction, you have ignored at the very least 1,400 years of history in our civilization.

00:13:55.980 Now, in the midst of this awful news story out of D.C., a very surprising headline to some people,

00:14:04.540 it's actually not that surprising to me, Kanye West, the auteur behind Heil Hitler,

00:14:10.440 is rejecting anti-Semitism. We'll get to that momentarily first, though.

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00:15:24.600 Kanye West rejects anti-Semitism. I covered on the show a week or two ago this song,

00:15:31.040 Heil Hitler, taking the internet by storm before it was taken down from all the platforms other than X. 0.95

00:15:36.240 I think one of the only places on YouTube you can still hear even part of the song is on my reaction

00:15:41.160 to it. And I had a different reaction than pretty much everyone had to the song. There were a lot

00:15:48.560 of people who said, this is awful. Kanye is exalting Hitler, and he's a Nazi, and this is

00:15:54.800 terrible, and no one should listen to it. We should take it down. That wasn't my reaction.

00:15:59.060 Similarly, there was a reaction from people who like Hitler and don't like the Jews, and said,

00:16:04.000 this is awesome. Kanye is exalting Hitler, and he doesn't like the Jews, and everyone should 1.00

00:16:08.600 listen to this song. And that also was not my reaction, because I listened to the song, and

00:16:13.800 because I take Kanye West seriously as a popular artist, and I recognize that he actually does have

00:16:18.800 a talent in popular music. I said, hold on, what's he doing here? And then when you listen to the

00:16:23.420 lyrics, you realize he opens up, he says, they took my bank accounts, they took my kids, I'm hooked on

00:16:29.040 nitrous drugs, I like to watch men be intimate with my woman, and I'm all messed up, man.

00:16:35.820 I'm all, I'm just, I'm really messed up, and I can't see my kids, and I became a Nazi. I'm the 0.86

00:16:43.300 villain. Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler, all my ninjas are Nazis, Heil Hitler. That's the song. I said,

00:16:50.200 well, that's really interesting, because if you just listen to the lyrics, Kanye West is not saying

00:16:56.460 Hitler's good. If he says, I'm a bad guy now, I'm the villain, so therefore I'm a Nazi, so therefore 1.00

00:17:04.440 Heil Hitler, then he's saying the Nazis and Hitler are bad. You don't need an advanced degree in music

00:17:10.340 criticism or literary criticism to recognize that's what he's saying. It's the plain meaning of what

00:17:13.880 he's saying. So, well, that's kind of weird. What does that mean? He's a guy saying, I got all these

00:17:18.020 problems, and I'm not in my right mind. I'm full of wrath and anger, and I'm hooked on drugs, and I've

00:17:21.900 got all these perversions. I'm just in a really bad place, and I'm not thinking clearly, so now I'm a

00:17:26.300 Nazi, and I'm the villain. And I said, in my review of the song, and I said, yeah, song's kind of a bop,

00:17:32.740 really. We're just listening to it, you know? Just forget about the lyrics. You just listen to it. It's kind

00:17:37.740 of a bop. And then even the images in the song were really interesting, because it was all these black 1.00

00:17:42.560 guys wearing animal skins, as if to say we're not human beings. We're not intellectual. We're not using our

00:17:48.440 intellect and our will in a reasonable way. We've just become animals, and we're instinct and wrath, and all

00:17:52.780 things. And I said, the music is interesting, and the lyrics, if you pay attention to them,

00:17:57.540 are interesting, too. If you can get past the initial shock of the song, you say, what's he

00:18:00.900 really saying here? There's clearly a more esoteric meaning to the song. And then Kanye West posts this

00:18:07.220 yesterday. Tweets out, I'm done with anti-Semitism. Next tweet, I love all people. Next tweet, God forgive

00:18:14.040 me for the pain I've caused. Next tweet, I forgive those who've caused me pain. Next tweet, thank you, God.

00:18:20.120 Next tweet, and this is the tweet that explains a lot of it. I simply got a FaceTime from my kids,

00:18:26.760 and I want to save the world again. That last tweet is what should clear up any doubt about

00:18:33.560 whether or not the first tweets were earnest. Because you could see a world in which Kanye

00:18:37.020 were being ironic. Yeah, I'm done with anti-Semitism. Wink, wink, Heil Hitler or something.

00:18:41.040 But it's not what he, no, no, I'm done with anti-Semitism. I love all people. And then he said,

00:18:44.540 God forgive me the pain I've caused. Would he really just joke about that? It doesn't sound like a joke.

00:18:48.440 I forgive those who've caused me pain. He has been caused pain. And he said, I forgive those.

00:18:53.060 Thank you, God. I don't think he would joke with that kind of a tweet.

00:18:56.740 And then the explanatory tweet. I got, I simply got a single FaceTime call from my kids.

00:19:04.960 And I want to be a good guy again. I want to save the world again. I want to be a good guy. I asked

00:19:10.640 the question I, man, I'd love to say, I told you so on this one. I said, the whole point of Kanye's song

00:19:15.600 is, I'm the bad guy. And the question that it raises is, how can I be a good guy again?

00:19:19.820 And then he gives the answer right here. This is the answer. Wow. The whole, the, the inciting

00:19:25.440 incident of the song was, I can't see my kids. And now I'm willing to, I'm willing to become the

00:19:30.580 worst villain imaginable, which is to say a Nazi in our, in our mythos, in the, in the popular

00:19:39.220 imagination. I'm going to, but the obvious question was, how can I be a good guy again?

00:19:43.060 And he gives you the answer. Okay. You fix the inciting incident. I can see my kids again.

00:19:47.820 Well, thank God. And this, you have to remember that before Kanye did his Hitler album and before

00:19:53.820 he started wearing the KKK uniforms, before he did all that, he did put out an album a few years ago

00:19:59.440 called Jesus is King, which was by pop music standards, pretty beautiful album. And you got

00:20:05.180 to remember even now, what, 15, 20 years ago, Kanye put out one of the most popular songs of the

00:20:11.360 2000s, Jesus walks. God showed me the way because the devil's trying to keep me down.

00:20:16.440 Jesus walks with me. So there's this, this tension in Kanye's songs, which is why if you judge Kanye

00:20:24.420 based on some tweet or based on some shallow reading of his music, you're going to miss the

00:20:29.460 good stuff because Kanye West, I'm not saying Kanye West, I'm not even saying he doesn't hate the Jews 1.00

00:20:34.780 or that he doesn't have Nazi sympathies or whatever. I'm not even denying an exoteric meaning.

00:20:39.940 I'm not denying that he's hooked on nitrous oxide. I'm not denying that he likes watching men be

00:20:45.420 intimate with his women. I am not denying that he's full of wrath and all the things that he has

00:20:49.880 said, I'm not denying that those things have some kind of literal truth to it. But Kanye West is not

00:20:55.800 primarily a philosopher or a political commentator or a historian or any of that. Kanye West, if he is

00:21:03.120 anything at all, is an artist, a popular artist. And so if the value that an artist brings is in his

00:21:12.580 art. When artists start mouthing off about some stupid political campaign or something, they're

00:21:18.140 usually much less interesting. That's not just forget about Kanye. That's true of Taylor Swift or

00:21:22.600 any of these people. We always say, hey, artists, shut your mouths and do your art and stop talking

00:21:26.880 about politics where you have no expertise and where you're not particularly talented.

00:21:32.420 But the value that the artist brings is in the art and the art that Kanye has made by popular music

00:21:37.620 standards. Again, I'm not comparing it with Bach or something, but by popular standards, he's quite

00:21:42.820 interesting. And for anyone who was paying attention to him as an artist, you would have noticed that.

00:21:50.240 That was all there. And so you wouldn't be surprised when Kanye sends out a bunch of tweets

00:21:55.140 like that. Those tweets are a total vindication of the point of view that I was articulating in my

00:22:03.560 take on the song. And again, it doesn't take a genius, really. You just have to recognize who

00:22:10.660 people are and what they're doing. This was the subject of my commencement speech at Ave Maria this

00:22:15.920 year. I said, every commencement speech tells you to go change the world. Don't change the world.

00:22:19.240 That's not primarily your job. Primarily, your job is to interpret the world.

00:22:23.800 This is in the story of Christ visiting Mary and Martha. Mary symbolizes contemplation. Martha,

00:22:30.620 the act of life. Christ says to Martha, your sister Mary has the better part. It will not be taken away

00:22:37.320 from her. We don't want to change the world because the world just is as it is. You actually can't change

00:22:43.380 the world because you can't fundamentally change reality. Your job is to see the world as it is.

00:22:49.240 And do the right thing within the world. Take the next right step for you. Recognize the meaning

00:22:55.060 behind the world, the great love that moves the sun and the other stars. Allow that, the meaning behind

00:22:59.380 the creation of the world to change you. And a consequence of this is you'll have lower blood

00:23:05.800 pressure, okay? Your life will go a lot better when you're not constantly banging your head against

00:23:11.240 the wall because you can't understand the world. And indeed, that was in the Kanye song. He said,

00:23:16.320 I'm just so full or I'm so angry because he couldn't make sense of the world. He'd lost his sense.

00:23:20.340 And the tweets yesterday signify, I'm getting my sense back.

00:23:24.880 Pretty good stuff. No, no, he could completely go off the rails tomorrow. I mean, that is something that

00:23:29.080 artists sometimes fall into. But what he's saying here is an answer to the song.

00:23:34.560 I'm the bad guy now. How do I become a good guy again? There's a little bit that you see the

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00:25:13.940 My favorite comment yesterday is from Stray1239 who says, reporter, what would it take for you to

00:25:22.740 believe that there is not a genocide in South Africa? Me, if they stopped doing a genocide in

00:25:27.220 South Africa? Yeah, I guess if like major politicians in South Africa stopped chanting,

00:25:31.660 kill the boy, shoot to kill, kill the farmer. I guess if they stopped saying that, for instance,

00:25:37.100 that would be one step in the right direction. Or if the sitting president of South Africa,

00:25:40.880 Cyril Ramaphosa doesn't start laughing when President Trump plays that clip in the Oval

00:25:45.080 Office, that would be like one of the first things that would tune me in to that. Speaking of art,

00:25:51.280 we turn to artificial intelligence. Speaking of art and the absolute self-destruction of the

00:25:57.740 establishment media, the Chicago Sun-Times just published a summer reading list for 2025.

00:26:04.940 There's got all sorts of books on there by authors you probably have heard of, some of them at least.

00:26:11.660 There's one problem with the summer reading list. Many of the books don't exist.

00:26:18.880 Was this a big gag? Is this some kind of modern art? Is it? No, no, no. They just,

00:26:23.500 they meant to publish a summer reading list. It's just that no one wrote it. The guy who was supposed

00:26:30.420 to write it plugged it into artificial intelligence, one of the AI platforms. And the AI platform sped out

00:26:38.100 an article with a bunch of books that don't exist. And this guy sent it to his editor, and then his

00:26:44.060 editor published it. This is not just, you know, a student turning in a bad assignment generated by AI.

00:26:52.280 This is not even just an employee turning in some bad work to his boss with AI.

00:26:56.740 The assignment that the writer turned in was about reading. It was about writing. It was about

00:27:07.620 literature. And no one involved, all the way up to publication, seems to have read much of anything

00:27:15.220 at all. Absolutely pathetic. I've used AI a little bit. I use it now sometimes more than I use Google.

00:27:23.360 I never use it for writing because it's not good at writing. And I don't, I won't use a ghost writer.

00:27:28.860 I'm very precious about my writing because writing is a reflection of thought. So if I give away my

00:27:33.680 writing, I'm really giving away my thought. But I will use it sometimes for research. Hey, spit me out

00:27:39.840 20 studies on this subject. Hey, spit me out 10 books that could help point me in the right direction

00:27:44.380 on a subject. And I have to triple check it every time because the AI is not reliable. And sometimes

00:27:50.240 the AI will spit out books that don't exist, citations that are totally false. It's a little

00:27:56.000 better on scientific studies, but maybe a scientific study that doesn't exist.

00:28:01.440 AI can be a great tool to aid in your research. I don't encourage you to use it for your writing

00:28:06.240 because it's bad writing. And more to the point, it will make your writing worse when you actually

00:28:11.060 do have to write. The way that people currently use AI is going to make them very, very dumb.

00:28:17.360 If you use AI in order to augment your own learning and your own thought and your own

00:28:23.780 writing, it could be helpful. If you're going to use it as the vast majority of people appear

00:28:28.620 to be using it, which is to substitute in for your own reading and substitute in for your

00:28:33.220 own writing, you're going to become a grunting baboon, indistinguishable from the dumb idol 0.98

00:28:37.220 that you worship. That's what's really happening. I just thought, I was talking about this the

00:28:40.640 other day, sweet little Lisa. The way people correspond now, they get an email, you get some

00:28:45.300 long document. They have AI read the document for them. Then they have AI respond to the document

00:28:48.740 for them. Then they send it to someone else. And then the person they're sending it to has AI read

00:28:53.080 it and has AI write it. It's just computers talking to each other. And we lose our ability to speak.

00:28:57.600 We certainly lose our ability to write. I've noticed this now for 15, 20 years, just working

00:29:03.540 both as a student and then into the professional world and in politics. People are terrible at writing.

00:29:11.120 People are terrible at spelling these days. And people don't know the fundamentals, the basics

00:29:15.120 of composition. That was before AI hit. You have to be very, very careful. My friend Spencer

00:29:22.280 Klavan made a good point. When the Bible tells us not to worship dumb idols, lest we become like them,

00:29:29.720 this is what he's talking about. When we worship the dumb idol, the box of rocks that is AI,

00:29:36.060 we will become like that dumb idol. We'll think we're getting smarter. We will lose our ability

00:29:40.620 to speak the distinguishing feature of human beings. Speaking of embarrassing moments,

00:29:46.540 Caroline Leavitt, press secretary over at the White House, just completely destroyed

00:29:50.860 a CNN, I'm sorry, an NBC lady, Yamiche, Yamiche something or other,

00:29:58.220 over President Trump's South Africa meeting. Listen to the exchange.

00:30:02.360 The president showed a video that he said showed more than a thousand burial sites of white South

00:30:08.700 Africans and he said were murdered. We know that that was not true and that the video wasn't

00:30:12.460 showing that. So I wonder, why did the president choose to show that it's not true that the video

00:30:17.000 was showing a burial site? It is unsubstantiated that that's the case.

00:30:20.860 No, it's it is true that that video showed the crosses that represent the video showed images of

00:30:29.940 crosses in South Africa about white farmers who have been killed and politically persecuted because

00:30:37.520 of the color of their skin. And those crosses are representing their lives. Those crosses are

00:30:43.320 representing their lives in the fact that they are now dead and their government did nothing about it.

00:30:48.540 Are you disputing that there is no...

00:30:50.640 I'm disputing the fact that the video showed what the president claimed it showed because it did not show

00:30:54.180 that. But even more, what I'm asking you is who at the White House...

00:30:56.380 It did show that. It showed white crosses representing people who have perished because

00:30:59.980 of racial persecution.

00:31:01.080 White House verifies the videos that the president shows and what protocols are in place when there's

00:31:05.380 unsubstantiated information being put out for the world and world leaders to show.

00:31:09.200 Yamiche, what's unsubstantiated about the video? The video shows crosses that represent the dead

00:31:14.560 bodies of people who were racially persecuted by their government.

00:31:18.180 Listen to this exchange. Listen to this obtuse woman from NBC. She's referring to the conversation 1.00

00:31:23.960 in the Oval Office. And Trump said, he says, listen, here's a big South African politician

00:31:28.600 chanting, kill the boy, kill the farmer, shoot the kill. And the South African presidents are

00:31:35.060 laughing, chuckling about it. And then everyone's all the liberal reporters trying to get him off

00:31:39.340 the subject. And he says, no, look, look at all these reports of all the dead South African

00:31:44.060 white farmers being murdered by their neighbors and being persecuted by the government.

00:31:49.780 He says, look, look at this, a thousand crosses laid out for the dead white, white farmers.

00:31:55.600 And then as a stray remark, he says, it's a burial site. That's a stray remark.

00:32:01.780 And he says, you know, but these are here to mark the dead farmers. And that's what this obtuse

00:32:07.360 reporter gloms onto. Says, oh, actually fact check the dead, the murdered white farmers weren't

00:32:14.880 actually buried exactly immediately underneath the white crosses. Fact check, 10,000 Pinocchios. I mean,

00:32:20.500 yeah, they were all murdered and that is all real, but they were buried in a slightly different

00:32:24.320 place. So fact check, how are we going to correctify this misinformation?

00:32:30.380 You want to talk about missing the point? Now, of course, this woman at NBC, she's not missing the 0.73

00:32:34.220 point. She's trying to evade the point. White farmers are being slaughtered in South Africa 0.74

00:32:39.860 because they're white farmers. They're being killed by their countrymen and it's being encouraged by 0.99

00:32:44.660 their government, which is why a small number of them are asking to be led into the United States

00:32:49.480 as refugees. And the libs have finally found the one group of refugees they don't like, 1.00

00:32:54.360 actual refugees, not just economic migrants. And they don't like them because they're white. 0.89

00:32:58.920 Talk about obtuse. And I listened to this exchange. I wanted to bang my head against a wall.

00:33:02.700 Oh, actually fact check, they were, the South African farmers were buried a quarter mile down

00:33:07.120 the road, not directly underneath the crosses, 10,000 Pinocchios. Keep it up, lady. Keep it up.

00:33:13.480 Oh, I hope this is the line. I hope this is the line from the libs and the media going into

00:33:19.460 the midterm elections in 2028. Yeah. White people are being murdered because of their skin color 0.90

00:33:27.280 and terrorists in America are murdering Jews, a Christian Jew actually, because they're Jews and

00:33:34.260 they don't like Israel or whatever. And MS-13 gangsters are raping and killing university students,

00:33:41.020 young girls in America. But you know, actually technically here's why that's all fine. Please,

00:33:46.400 please let that be your headlines. We're not going to have to deal with a one vote majority anymore

00:33:51.960 in the US house. If that's the case, we're going to run these, these lunatics right out of town.

00:33:56.860 If that, if that is your line, I have much more to say and do. However, first you got to go to

00:34:02.340 preborn.com slash Knowles. When a woman faces an unplanned pregnancy, it can feel overwhelming.

00:34:08.040 She wants to make the right choice, but may feel pressure from society or those around her

00:34:11.940 suggesting her preborn child is not yet a life. That is where preborn steps in. Their mission

00:34:16.840 is simply to love these women and help them see that choosing life is possible, creating what can

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00:34:27.360 After receiving compassion and care at one of preborn's partner clinics, everything changed.

00:34:33.040 She saw her baby on ultrasound. That moment transformed her outlook completely. Today,

00:34:36.920 she'll tell you her five-year-old son is her greatest blessing. By supporting preborn,

00:34:41.260 you are helping fund free ultrasounds at pro-life clinics across the country,

00:34:44.940 empowering more mothers to choose life. A monthly donation of 28 bucks can make

00:34:48.720 an eternal difference. You want to get involved? It's easy.

00:34:51.360 Dial pound 250, say baby, or visit preborn.com slash Knowles. Your gift is tax-deductible,

00:34:56.460 truly life-changing. I personally support this group. I encourage you to give whatever you can.

00:35:00.660 Preborn.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to donate today. Before you head into Memorial Day weekend,

00:35:07.640 do not miss this. It's our Daily Wire Plus Memorial Day sale. Get 40% off an annual membership with code

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00:35:37.620 dailywireplus.com, code DW40. Finally, finally, we've arrived at my favorite time of the week,

00:35:43.380 the mailbag. When I get to hear from you, this is sponsored by Pure Talk.

00:35:46.420 Switch to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, get a year of Daily Wire Plus

00:35:50.540 for free with a qualifying plan. Take it away.

00:35:54.320 Hi, Michael. I hope all is well. I know my fiance loves me, but I'm scared he is starting to think

00:35:58.740 of me as a sugar mama. He's always paid for everything, even though I make more money than

00:36:02.620 him. However, we have been discussing weddings, and he seems upset about the amount he spent on

00:36:06.920 the engagement ring that he bought for me. He expects me to pay for the entire wedding.

00:36:11.260 I have more money than him, so I don't mind, but I don't want him to think of me as a

00:36:14.860 sugar mama. I also never wanted a big wedding, but he's a bridezilla. The band that he wants is 0.61

00:36:20.020 almost $15,000 alone. He's also been hinting that he wants me to buy him a side-by-side that

00:36:24.860 costs $25,000 on top of the elaborate wedding for which he expects for me to pay. It scares me

00:36:30.720 because a friend that introduced me to him said he always wanted to meet a rich girl.

00:36:33.620 I'm by no means rich, but I have significantly more than him. I worked so hard to get to a seven-figure

00:36:39.860 net worth, and I don't want to lose it. I would prefer to save my money and buy a house for the two

00:36:46.000 of us. Another short subject is that he wants to move in now, that we're engaged. I've always said

00:36:50.720 I wanted to wait until marriage. I plan to have a prenup drawn, even though I don't believe in

00:36:54.560 divorce. Another issue is that my dad won't attend my wedding because my fiance is a holiday

00:36:59.580 Catholic, whereby he only attends church on Christmas Eve, and I'm Christian. My fiance and

00:37:05.620 I are both upset that my dad refuses to attend. I need advice. Sounds to me like you don't want to

00:37:13.640 marry this guy. That might be hard for you to hear, but I think you actually asked me the question

00:37:19.260 so that I could tell you that. Sounds to me like you see a lot of red flags, and I see a lot of red

00:37:24.960 flags too, and you want permission not to marry this guy. That's very impressive. You've amassed

00:37:30.500 a seven-figure net worth. That's pretty, as a single woman, you've got over a million dollars. 1.00

00:37:35.180 That's pretty impressive. But you say, okay, well, hold on. He wants me to pay for something.

00:37:40.880 He paid for this, and he wants me to pay for that. I thought you were getting married.

00:37:45.700 If you're getting married, it's all going to be the same money. Your money is going to be his money.

00:37:50.640 His money is going to be your money. It's all the same. Now, you say that you view marriage this 0.88

00:37:56.820 way because you say you refuse to accept divorce, but then you say you want a prenup, which is to

00:38:01.840 say you do accept divorce in principle. You're torn on these things. You say he wants the big

00:38:07.640 band for the wedding. I'm kind of a cheapskate. Elisa is like that too. We're similar in our view

00:38:12.720 of money. So we did not have a band at the wedding. I prefer bands to DJs, but it was too expensive.

00:38:17.640 And the band that we were looking at was only like 10 grand. Then he says he wants a side-by-side.

00:38:22.700 I don't even know what that is. But all this stuff, please buy me this, buy me that. I want to move

00:38:26.680 in. That's a big red flag. You want to move in before you're married. Why? Hold on. Oh, because

00:38:30.480 you don't have a strong Christian foundation because, as you say, he just wants to go to mass

00:38:34.620 on Christmas Eve for some reason, whatever. Why? Why? But you're Christian. So now you've got big 0.99

00:38:39.840 problems in this engagement. You don't seem to view the world the same way. You're not on the same

00:38:46.080 page, but you're about to become one flesh. And you say you don't want to get divorced,

00:38:50.820 but you're already preparing yourself to get divorced. You want to buy a house for the two 1.00

00:38:55.840 of you. No, you both want to buy a house together. You're in a tight position. So I would figure that

00:39:01.380 out first. I would figure out, what's your view on religion going to be? You have an obligation to

00:39:07.760 go to church every Sunday. Are you going to do that? But he's not going to do that? What about when

00:39:12.040 you have kids? Are you just going to take the kids? Your husband's not going to go?

00:39:16.760 Then the kids are going to see daddy doesn't have to go to church. They're going to fall away from

00:39:19.300 the faith. I promise you that. Then what about money? What happens when he wants to spend all

00:39:25.400 your money and you don't want to spend money? He's the head of your household. No, you're going to

00:39:29.060 have separate bank accounts. You're going to have separate bank accounts. You have separate

00:39:32.940 properties. You're going to have set. Why are you getting married in the first place?

00:39:36.160 Your family already doesn't like the wedding. You have, it's a little tough love, but you need

00:39:43.580 to hear it. And you're asking me to tell it to you. You have set yourself up for a divorce.

00:39:49.800 I'm not saying you and he can't get married. You have to get on the same page on very basic

00:39:54.580 questions. Finances are why people get divorced. A deeper issue is religion, but finances are the

00:40:00.180 proximate reason why people get divorced. And you're going into this thing on totally different

00:40:05.020 pages when it comes to finances. You need to be on the same page when it comes to finances,

00:40:08.860 such that you trust him to lead the household, such that you trust him to be in possession of

00:40:13.180 your money and never split it up because you're never going to get divorced. If you can't get on

00:40:18.240 the same page, dump him and don't get married to him. Go find another guy. Next one. 1.00

00:40:24.040 Hi, Michael. Brandy here. First, thank you so much for your contribution to truth and the

00:40:29.340 dissemination of conservative information. Recently, my father and I have had many conversations

00:40:34.600 about the future of the family unit. My children are all in their twenties and thirties and they're

00:40:40.240 part of a generation who are considering whether or not to have children. My father is a hardcore

00:40:45.500 atheist. And until 10 years ago, I was too. Praise God. I am now saved. Worth noting is that my father

00:40:53.080 disowned me for seven years after accepting Christ as my savior. My heavenly father was a boundary I stuck

00:40:59.280 to, and we have now reconciled agreeing to disagree. Being saved has contributed to a

00:41:04.600 significant amount of hope and resilience in every facet of my life. His focus on science,

00:41:10.180 innovation, AI, and liberal doom and gloom leaves him hopeless for a future generation. He is a major

00:41:16.840 influence in the lives of my children, and I fear they're falling into the same hopelessness and will

00:41:21.720 buy into not wanting to bring children into the world. Do you have any advice as to how I can

00:41:27.300 positively interact with my father and children, which may encourage all to look at the value of

00:41:32.720 the family in a more positive light? Thanks much and have a great day.

00:41:37.460 Sorry to hear you going through that. Your father sounds like a

00:41:41.160 That's a nice little euphemism. I barely even know what that means because I barely speak French.

00:41:47.880 You, I'm glad you've reconciled with your father. You owe your father some respect. You have to honor

00:41:53.280 your father. It's a commandment, but you don't owe him your kids. You don't owe him your life. You're

00:42:00.160 grateful to him for helping to bring you your life, but you owe him honor and respect. If your father,

00:42:06.580 you need to pray for your father. You need to try to bring him to Christ. If your father is going to

00:42:12.000 lead your kids down a bad path, you need to seriously circumscribe his relationship with

00:42:19.300 them. Not saying cut him off or anything necessarily, but you got to, you got to tell him,

00:42:23.360 Hey dad, enough with the atheist stuff to the kids. We're raising the kids Christian. And you,

00:42:29.760 I'm not saying you have to go to church though. You should not saying you have to go to confession

00:42:33.360 though. You should, but you're not going to spread the atheist stuff to my kids. I have to protect my

00:42:39.800 kids. It's better for someone who would, who would cause the little ones to stumble to have a 0.99

00:42:45.760 millstone tied around his neck. Okay. It's my responsibility. It's my responsibility as a

00:42:48.960 daughter to give you honor and respect, but it's my responsibility to protect my kids from scandal

00:42:53.120 that you're causing them. So cut it out or we're going to have to rethink things. That's what you got

00:42:57.500 to say to him. And it's out of love. It's the love for your father. It's love for your kids. And out of

00:43:01.640 the responsibility that you have in your position as a daughter and a mother. Next one.

00:43:06.760 Hey, Michael, when you were discussing organ donation and brain death, you mentioned that

00:43:11.360 the organ recovery process is what essentially kills the patient, um, taking the organs. But

00:43:17.700 I want to make you think a little bit deeper because if you are a full organ donor, you donate

00:43:25.400 your heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, all of it, those organs. And let's say every,

00:43:31.420 all the recipients don't go into rejection and all of those organs are functioning sometimes for

00:43:38.400 many decades in another human body. Are you really dead? Are you, are you alive until all of your

00:43:47.380 organs are truly dead? Where is your soul in that instance? Are you stuck in some type of limbo?

00:43:55.600 Well, love to hear your thoughts.

00:43:57.940 Yeah, you're really dead in that instance. When you ask, where is your soul? Uh, this is a basic

00:44:04.480 question that has confused people in modernity, though it did not confuse the ancients and the

00:44:10.640 scholastics because it's just a misunderstanding. It's a category of what the soul is. The soul is not

00:44:15.300 just some part of my body. It's not just in my brain or something. The soul is the substantial form

00:44:22.460 of your body. Human beings are composite substances. We're not just body and we're not just soul. We're

00:44:29.000 not just body like, uh, you know, the, like a brute animal, but we're not just soul. Like, uh, you're not

00:44:36.120 just pure intellect, say like, uh, like an angel. Actually, I'm, I'm, I'm explaining this in a, in a

00:44:41.460 crude and imprecise way because animals have, have a soul in a certain sense, a soul that is proper to

00:44:47.520 them. Uh, the soul, which is what gives them unity as a being, which is why pigs are not just a random

00:44:53.280 assemblage of bacon, but they're an actual creature that is, that has integrity and that can distinguish

00:44:59.420 itself one pig from another. The, the soul is what gives you shape as a human. You're not merely the

00:45:08.320 sum of your organs. So when you cease to exist as an individual, then there's still, you're going to

00:45:15.280 have organs all over the place and bones and muck and guck and stuff, but that's not you.

00:45:19.620 Your soul is the substantial form of your body, of you. It's not reducible just to one part of you.

00:45:29.600 Uh, there's an interesting discussion to be had on even what the intellect is, which is why I was

00:45:33.740 talking about the intellect, which is a different but related matter because a lot of people think

00:45:37.120 that the intellect is reducible also to the body and it's not. And, uh, St. Thomas Aquinas drawing on

00:45:42.380 Aristotle has lots of good arguments as to why that is the case, but it's not. The, the, the intellect

00:45:47.000 is not just a functioning of the brain. Intellect uses the brain, but the intellect is not corporeal,

00:45:51.860 uh, for all sorts of reasons that we don't have time to get to now, but maybe we'll get to it in a

00:45:55.220 future episode because now it is time for the Membrum Segmentum. For all of you who are out there,

00:46:00.020 uh, you got to go on over to Daily Wire Plus. Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months

00:46:05.100 free on all annual plans. Help join me for Fake Headline Friday.

00:46:12.380 and delete me for daily dólar.

00:46:16.740 now move join me for daily

00:46:18.000 •

The Michael Knowles Show - May 23, 2025

Ep. 1741 - Kanye West Gives Up Antisemitism

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