The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1774 - CEO Caught Cheating at Coldplay—And The Heartwarming Reason Everyone’s Obsessed

00:00:00.000 The CEO of a billion and a half dollar tech company got caught on the kiss cam cheating on

00:00:04.280 his wife with his also married head of HR at a Coldplay concert. The internet cannot get enough

00:00:10.260 of it. And the reason why is surprisingly heartwarming. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to the show. The IDF, State of Israel, has hit the only Catholic church in Gaza

00:00:41.620 yesterday. Killed three people, injured a bunch more, including the priest. And the Israelis are 1.00

00:00:48.660 saying it was a mistake. It was an accident. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is not convinced it

00:00:54.040 was an accident. And even U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is looking into some of the actions

00:01:02.840 of the Israeli government and threatening reprisals. Hold on now. I have many more pearls of wisdom. But

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00:02:16.200 order. A-R-M-R-A dot com slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S. The CEO, the Coldplay cheating CEO is everyone's

00:02:31.700 favorite story on the internet. It's dark, it's nasty, it's blown up probably two families. It

00:02:39.760 seems improbable. If you have somehow haven't seen it, here's the clip.

00:02:47.200 Oh, look at these two. All right, come on. You're okay? Uh-oh, what?

00:02:53.700 Either they're having an affair or they're just very shocked.

00:03:01.360 They bolt. If you're just listening to the show, it's the CEO and his head of HR and some other girl 0.98

00:03:08.920 who I guess works for the company. And the minute the kiss cam goes on them, they bolt. The guy goes

00:03:13.820 down like he just got hit with a cannonball. He goes down. The woman, the HR lady, flips around

00:03:19.640 then runs away. And then the other girl, who I guess is their pal from the company, just starts

00:03:24.380 laughing, this awkward, nervous, shameful laugh. And the memes have been pouring out ever since.

00:03:32.040 One is, this is just a random smattering of memes that Sweet Little Elise and I were looking at last

00:03:37.200 night. It's a CEO hates to see this man coming. It's just Coldplay. Just turn around on the piano.

00:03:49.800 Another one. Where's the next one? Give me the next meme. This is a picture of them. It says,

00:03:54.100 the chances of your marriages and careers being destroyed at a Coldplay concert are extremely low,

00:04:00.160 but never zero. Next one. Coldplay should out people at every concert and say, they've just been

00:04:09.760 Coldplayed. You shouldn't laugh. It's very sad. Multiple families being blown up here. But the

00:04:18.140 odds of it are just so low. Even one of them, they said, Coldplay hasn't made a single in years.

00:04:25.760 And now they just made two last night. So everyone is obsessed with this. It's odd too,

00:04:33.160 because yesterday on the show, we were talking about infidelity and for some reason why men who

00:04:39.300 have beautiful wives will cheat with women who often aren't even as beautiful as their own wives. 1.00

00:04:46.480 And then this happens. Why does everyone care? Is it just because some guy got caught cheating?

00:04:52.780 That happens all the time. Is it just because it was on the kiss cam? I don't know. I mean,

00:04:58.800 I think that's actually happened before. Is it? Why? Why does it? Is it because people care about this,

00:05:04.480 this company, Astronomer? It's a big company, but it's not that well known. I don't think so.

00:05:09.720 My wife, sweet little Alisa, has a theory about why the entire internet cares about Coldplay gate. 1.00

00:05:15.480 But the reason everyone cares, she believes, and I'm convinced of this, is that the affair is

00:05:24.440 nostalgic, old school degeneracy. That's why. That it's in a way, it gives us a warm and fuzzy

00:05:32.680 feeling looking at this terrible, sinful degeneracy because it's terrible and sinful within old school

00:05:39.980 bounds. It's a normal looking guy and a normal looking woman having an affair, then getting 0.91

00:05:48.460 caught and feeling shame and trying to hide it. And I know it, look, the standards of our culture

00:05:55.600 are so low that to say that that is heartwarming in any way is a little weird. But think about our

00:06:01.500 modern culture. You have some weird looking dude and a freaky looking surgically augmented eunuch

00:06:09.480 and like two billy goats and a community in a throuple, not feeling shame, not even cheating

00:06:16.140 because they have ethical non-monogamy and they don't ascribe to your bourgeois morality, man. It's

00:06:24.420 like so confusing. And in this case, this is a tale as old as time. Good looking CEO sleeps with

00:06:31.260 the secretary, in this case, not the secretary, but someone under him, a head of HR. And they're

00:06:37.380 going to a concert and they're not doing anything obscene exactly. They're just kind of hugging and

00:06:42.000 having this weird kind of oddly romantic affair and then getting caught feeling shame, trying to hide

00:06:49.480 it. It's all terrible. It's all sinful. It's all completely degenerate, but it's familiar. You

00:06:55.200 actually think, ah, remember when that, when degeneracy was like that? Now it's almost

00:07:00.760 unrecognizable. It's almost unhuman, inhuman. You look at degeneracy now and it involves like

00:07:06.580 weird orgies and Caribbean islands and internet pornography and hard drugs and absolute shamelessness.

00:07:15.640 And wow, ah, if only we could go back to the days when adultery were simpler. I think that's,

00:07:21.200 I think sweet little Elisa is a very insightful woman. And I think, I think there's a lot to that.

00:07:27.640 Okay. Speaking of untoward behavior, the Jeffrey Epstein controversy might be coming to a close,

00:07:35.060 a real close this time, not just saying, okay, and actually after years of talking about this

00:07:39.060 and campaigning on this, nothing to see here, move along, move along. Because president Trump

00:07:42.960 just released this statement. Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey

00:07:47.400 Epstein, I've asked attorney general Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony

00:07:52.440 subject to court approval. This scam perpetuated by the Democrats should end right now.

00:07:59.360 Really, really smart. Really, really smart. And the whole time, even as many Trump supporters,

00:08:05.540 erstwhile Trump supporters were attacking him and saying, this is it. I regret voting for him. And

00:08:09.920 I don't, he's terrible. And he's the swamp and he's the deep state. And all that was happening.

00:08:14.940 I said, look, I'm a plan truster. He's great. I sympathize with his frustration on this matter.

00:08:20.960 The Epstein thing long predates him. He is certainly not seriously implicated in this at all.

00:08:25.960 He kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club, but there are all sorts of reasons why the list

00:08:31.400 so-called might not be released, but the White House needs to message better on this.

00:08:36.840 And then Trump gave a defiant press conference in front of Marine One.

00:08:40.100 That was uniformly reported on as being Trump's defiance. He's not going to release the Epstein

00:08:45.400 files. He's lashing out at people who want the Epstein files. And I said, no, no, no, you're not

00:08:49.040 paying attention to the last five words of that press conference. Where at the very, he says, this is

00:08:54.820 crazy and we shouldn't be talking about it. And Epstein's irrelevant. And I want to talk about all

00:08:59.060 my big policy wins at the border on the economy and what, but at the very end, he said, and of course,

00:09:04.120 I support releasing credible information. And at the very end there, I said, that's a pivot.

00:09:12.260 That's Trump giving himself wiggle room to come out of this. Now Trump is saying, okay, I've

00:09:19.560 instructed Pam Bondi to go talk to the courts to release the grand jury testimony, because this is

00:09:24.920 some of the complication of the Epstein issue. There's no list in the sense that there's no

00:09:29.880 nice piece of parchment with one, two, three, four, five, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking,

00:09:37.220 Bill Clinton. There's none of that. There is just a lot of testimony of women who say they

00:09:45.940 were trafficked by Epstein saying, yeah, I was with this guy, I was with that guy. And some of it is

00:09:50.360 credible and some of it might not be credible. In fact, one of the accusers dropped an accusation

00:09:56.540 against Alan Dershowitz after Dershowitz pursued it. He said, I'm being falsely accused and I'm

00:10:03.320 going to prove that I'm falsely accused. And she eventually dropped the allegation. 0.97

00:10:06.600 Others will not be falsely accused. Others actually did. So there's just this massive

00:10:11.340 pile of accusations, which are not necessarily verified, which have not necessarily been

00:10:18.060 investigated, which, and so, as I said from the beginning, it's not, what we want is not a list.

00:10:25.120 Exactly. What we want, what I want, I'll speak for myself. What I want is not full transparency.

00:10:29.980 A government can't be transparent on everything. But what I want is justice. I want to know that

00:10:36.540 some justice is being done. And I think that's what most people want out of this. We want to know,

00:10:43.020 as I am quite confident that, you know, the guy we elected is the guy we elected.

00:10:45.980 And so I said, the political problem for Trump is, I think he is that guy. I think he is the guy that

00:10:51.280 we elected. But he's got this messaging issue now that has become a field day for Democrats and for

00:10:56.540 Trump's enemies in the Republican Party. And so he's got to do something to show that he's,

00:11:01.520 he's got to show that he's frustrated with the Epstein situation. And he's got to, he's got to try

00:11:06.620 to, to at least convince people that justice has been done. This is a brilliant way to do it

00:11:11.120 because this puts the onus back on the courts. The courts have sealed some of this testimony.

00:11:18.280 So by, by saying to Pam Bondi, hey, you need to go to the courts and unseal whatever grand jury

00:11:25.060 testimony you can unseal to give some transparency in the, because this is a really weird case that

00:11:29.740 implicates a lot of very powerful people with a lot of contradictions in the story over the years.

00:11:34.960 There, there is no jail cell footage. Oh, there is jail cell footage. We're going to release it,

00:11:42.680 but it's missing a minute. Actually, it's missing three minutes and he killed himself, but it seems

00:11:47.040 very difficult to kill yourself in that kind of a cell. And there's a list, but actually there's no

00:11:51.280 list and we're not going to release the list. And there's just so many questions about him that

00:11:56.200 rumors that he was connected to intelligence. You need a little bit, you need to give people a

00:12:02.280 little bit more. Uh, Trump has done it in a brilliant way, brilliant way here, put it back

00:12:06.780 on the courts, let the courts handle it. Give us, allow Republicans and reasonable Democrats to be 0.77

00:12:14.320 unified on this and then allow the issue to play out as it will. Again, I still don't, I still don't

00:12:21.020 think you're ever going to get anything even resembling full transparency on the Epstein issue,

00:12:25.020 but at least here Trump can say, look, this really has nothing to do with me. This issue long

00:12:29.940 predates me. This is not a big part of my administration as part of my objectives, but

00:12:34.840 at the very least now this kind of a, uh, move, this kind of a chess move will not allow the Epstein

00:12:41.740 issue to derail the rest of Trump's very effective agenda. Okay. Now the downside of that is people

00:12:48.400 are going to run with all sorts of craziness and insinuations against Trump. Hold on now. One

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00:14:16.400 American meat delivered. So right on cue, and I'm sure this is part of Trump's hesitation,

00:14:21.740 right on cue, you're getting all these insinuations that Trump is seriously implicated in the Epstein

00:14:26.940 stuff, which again, I see no evidence for whatsoever. I've talked to sources, including

00:14:32.680 liberal sources, who say, nah, he's not, you know, he's mentioned in there. This is just about everyone

00:14:37.140 on earth, including, I think Fidel Castro is mentioned in there, but he's mentioned in there,

00:14:41.640 but it's not, he's not implicated really in any way. The Wall Street Journal thinks otherwise.

00:14:47.200 The Wall Street Journal prints a letter that was purportedly written by Trump to Jeffrey Epstein.

00:14:54.740 It was in some file and it was over an image, like a stick figure of a naked lady or something.

00:14:59.900 And the letter, you read it, it looks like it was written by ChatGPT or something.

00:15:04.060 And it says there, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Enigmas never age. Have you 1.00

00:15:11.820 noticed that? It's written as a kind of a dialogue. Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, was clear to me the

00:15:17.640 last time I saw you. Pal's a wonderful thing. Happy birthday and may every day be another wonderful

00:15:22.080 secret. I don't know. It's really odd. People write weird letters and even jokey letters sometimes,

00:15:29.120 but Trump has come out. He's fully denied this and promised to sue the Wall Street Journal.

00:15:34.060 He said, this is completely fake. Not, you know, this is a hoax and you're making a mountain out

00:15:40.520 of a mole hilt. No, he says, this is completely fake and I will sue you over it. Which to me is

00:15:45.880 as firm a denial, as confident a denial as there is, because in a lawsuit there will be discovery.

00:15:52.500 And so Trump has to be real certain that this is fake news. J.D. Vance, likewise, has said,

00:15:59.880 this looks like total BS. And it seems pretty fake to me. The closest thing it seems like to me

00:16:06.240 in terms of all the Trump hoaxes, the anti-Trump hoaxes over the years, was back in 2016,

00:16:12.460 the Democrats cooked up this ridiculous story. But it was between the Democrats and the Obama

00:16:17.340 government and ironically Russian intelligence, maybe not so ironically. And they said that Trump

00:16:22.540 was in Moscow and he hired a bunch of hookers to urinate on him. And there was a video of this.

00:16:29.600 And the minute I heard that story, I said, this is so bogus. Oh, and the hookers allegedly were, 1.00

00:16:36.640 I don't know, talking about Obama or something. It was just so fantastical and ridiculous.

00:16:41.540 I thought the way you know that that story is completely fake is it doesn't sound like him.

00:16:47.740 That's the issue with this letter here. It just doesn't sound like him. It's not that President

00:16:52.420 Trump hasn't lived a colorful life. It isn't that he hasn't been this billionaire, brash guy who's

00:16:58.780 dates supermodels and he's done all of that. He's totally been that guy. But I said, I remember what

00:17:04.300 the stupid Russia story is that part of the reason that doesn't sound real is that President Trump

00:17:09.660 seems like kind of a germaphobe. So I just don't, I just don't think he would do that. And then of

00:17:14.580 course, it later came out completely bogus. Same thing here. I just think it just doesn't

00:17:19.080 sound like him. It's not, I don't know, it just seems, it seems like fake news to me.

00:17:24.800 The fact that Trump would deny this and say, I'm going to sue you. I think, yeah. If this is the

00:17:29.300 best that Democrats have on this, great, great. A major win for the White House. Now, speaking of

00:17:36.420 establishment journalism, sometimes a little sus journalism, great, great news for your wallet and

00:17:43.160 for the American political order, the Senate has just, just come out and approved a $9 billion

00:17:50.540 rescission package. Resission meaning pulling back funding that had already been approved.

00:17:59.860 The Senate voted 51 to 48, according to the New York Times, to overcome the objections of two

00:18:05.760 Republicans to pull back some funds. So $9 billion total. It was supposed to be $9.4 billion,

00:18:12.500 $400 of that, $400 million was going to be for the PEPFAR, but they're going to leave PEPFAR,

00:18:19.000 which is the presidential plan for AIDS relief in Africa. And that's been an effective public

00:18:24.200 health strategy. Okay, fine. $400 million, that's okay. The $8 billion was for foreign aid programs.

00:18:32.340 We need to start pulling back foreign aid. After some of Israel's actions yesterday, I think there

00:18:37.220 are going to be a lot of calls from both sides of the aisle to take another look at Israeli foreign

00:18:40.820 aid. But there's aid to other countries as well. And then the remaining $1.1 billion

00:18:45.820 was to defund NPR and PBS. And this was the big fight. Big, big fight. You always hear from the

00:18:56.500 left that NPR and PBS, both those P's have public in them. It's a national public radio, 0.96

00:19:04.260 public broadcasting. They say, it's a misnomer. NPR and PBS don't really get much funding

00:19:10.340 from taxpayers. A lot of it's privately funded. Okay. And that's a little sleight of hand.

00:19:17.060 Because it's true, NPR and PBS don't get a huge amount of money directly from taxpayers. But

00:19:23.080 they get a lot of money indirectly from taxpayers through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

00:19:28.300 So your tax dollars go to the government. The government funds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

00:19:32.360 The Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds a lot of these local stations. And the local stations

00:19:36.700 pay station fees to NPR and PBS. And those station fees largely fund the networks. And NPR and PBS

00:19:42.840 are liberal networks, left-wing networks. I was on PBS not that long ago. They do sometimes have

00:19:48.620 conservatives on, usually not the friendliest interviews, but they will occasionally have

00:19:52.580 conservatives on. But the whole slant of the networks is left-wing. So I guess they can have

00:19:58.860 their left-wing networks. Fine. Maybe for now. But why are we all forced to fund it?

00:20:04.960 You're not all forced to fund the Daily Wire. Taxpayers don't, we don't get taxpayer funding here

00:20:10.300 at Daily Wire. Fox News doesn't get taxpayer funding. So why do we all have to fund NPR and PBS? This is

00:20:16.780 completely insane. And for a Republican to allow that to go on would be suicidal. So Trump comes in and he

00:20:21.800 says, now it's difficult to defund them. But Trump comes in, he manages to do it. J.D. Vance celebrates

00:20:27.240 it. He says, border crossings at their lowest levels in history last week and NPR defunded two

00:20:31.660 big wins. And I think this is the coda to the Epstein story. The reason some people cared about

00:20:38.380 the Epstein story is because it's an interesting story. That's, I think, why a lot of people cared

00:20:41.840 about it. The reason that others cared about the Epstein story was they thought it could be used as a

00:20:46.520 cudgel against Trump. That's Democrats and some Republicans who are enemies of Trump

00:20:51.400 in Congress and elsewhere. The reason that I care about the Epstein story is primarily as a matter

00:20:58.400 of justice. You want to make sure justice is done. But it's a secondary matter because I do trust Trump

00:21:02.920 on it and I don't want the Epstein story to derail the agenda. Because I want the White House to be

00:21:08.020 able to talk about the lowest border crossings in history and defunding NPR and PBS and winning trade

00:21:14.700 wars and all the rest of it. So this is a big win. And long overdue, the fact that other Republican

00:21:22.420 presidents allowed NPR and PBS to continue to operate against their interest, against all of

00:21:27.720 our interests, with our money, is pretty outrageous. Now, speaking of canceling broadcasts,

00:21:33.580 bad news for Stephen Colbert over at CBS. We are celebrating a decade of the Daily Wire. That's 10

00:21:39.900 years of saying the quiet part out loud. Building something that actually matters, something that

00:21:43.900 libs can't cancel or burn down, and we're not slowing down. We are scaling up. With new talent

00:21:48.080 like Isabel Brown, her new show premiering this fall, new docs like Journey to the UFC,

00:21:52.340 the Joe Pfeiffer story premiering Friday, July 25th. Here's the thing. Members get all of it.

00:21:57.520 They get all of it first. The drops, the trailers, the truth, uncensored. Plus, you get to connect with

00:22:02.640 a community that does not think biology is optional, that does not think a bunch of nonsense that

00:22:08.560 modern people do. Celebrate 10 years with us. Join now at dailywireplus.com.

00:22:14.240 My favorite comment yesterday is from Raith Sinar, 1337, who says, this is in response,

00:22:20.420 I suspect, to the story that babies have been born in the UK, genetically created in laboratories with

00:22:27.520 DNA from three parents. So they don't just have two parents, they have three parents.

00:22:31.760 And comment says, libs going to be like, whoa, now my wife's boyfriend and me can both be the father. 1.00

00:22:43.940 That is what libs are going to be like. There's no doubt about that. Okay. 0.61

00:22:49.340 Stephen Colbert, CBS Late Show, had this announcement last night.

00:22:52.220 Oh, hey, everybody. We got a great show for you tonight. Senator Adam Schiff was my guest.

00:23:00.500 We harmonized on Seven Bridges Road. What a voice. I cried. But before we start the show,

00:23:06.740 I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season.

00:23:12.580 The network will be ending The Late Show in May.

00:23:15.480 Yeah, I share your feelings. It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of The Late Show on CBS.

00:23:31.340 I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away.

00:23:35.800 So the good news is I'm not being replaced. The bad news is I've been so insufferable on this show,

00:23:41.260 I destroyed the whole franchise.

00:23:42.440 Oh, that's bad for him, but it's good for all of us.

00:23:49.940 Colbert is not the most offensive of the left-wing comedian late-night people.

00:23:55.420 I like that he's Catholic, even though he's like a huge lib cat and he's friends with all sorts of

00:24:01.180 unfortunate figures in the church. But this show was bad. His old show on Comedy Central was pretty funny

00:24:07.840 because it was him, a liberal, playing a conservative, making fun of conservatives,

00:24:13.360 but sometimes making fun of liberals. It was a clever show. He was basically doing Bill O'Reilly,

00:24:16.860 but it was a clever show. When he came over to CBS and had to just do Stephen Colbert and be this

00:24:23.420 mainstream milquetoast kind of figure, that show was awful. That show has always been awful. It's just,

00:24:28.260 it's not good. Most of the late-night shows are not good, but his was pretty bad. It wasn't the lowest

00:24:33.340 rated of the late-night shows, but there was one show that was beating him by a lot.

00:24:40.040 Do you know what show it was? It was Greg Gutfeld on Fox. And that just shows you where it is.

00:24:44.420 Now, CBS is denying that this was because of his ratings or his talent or whatever it says.

00:24:49.280 This is a purely financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late-night. It is not

00:24:52.980 related in any way to the show's performance content or other matters happening at Paramount.

00:24:56.240 What does that mean? What do you mean? It's a purely financial decision,

00:24:59.320 but it has nothing to do with how the show is performing. Well, if the show were performing

00:25:04.040 really, really well, then the finances would be great. And if it were a purely financial decision,

00:25:10.180 you keep the show on. So that's a contradiction. You can't say it's a purely financial decision,

00:25:13.980 but it has nothing to do with the show's performance. The show did fine. I mean,

00:25:18.140 the show was getting 2.4 million average viewers and was doing pretty well in the key demo of people who

00:25:24.900 buy stuff. But 2.4 million average viewers for Colbert, 3.3 million average viewers in the second

00:25:32.280 quarter for Greg Gutfeld. Greg Gutfeld, who's on cable. Cable, much less accessible to most people

00:25:37.340 than network TV. The late show has been on for 32 years. It started with Letterman because Letterman

00:25:42.580 was not the successor to Johnny Carson. I look around, other late-night shows are not being

00:25:48.000 canceled. Kimmel's not being canceled, all the rest of them on network TV.

00:25:50.940 I think the reason that Colbert's show was particularly bad is it was supposed to be

00:25:58.260 this comedian, a real serious comedian at the top of his game who appealed to a lot of different people

00:26:03.940 on CBS of all places. And it just boiled down to lib-hectoring. It just became lib-hectoring.

00:26:13.140 And it shrunk that franchise. And it might have played last September. But after the election,

00:26:20.740 lib-hectoring is not the future. That's what the CBS executives saw. Lib-hectoring is not the

00:26:27.960 future. You're seeing that already in the ratings a little bit, but I think they're looking down the

00:26:32.000 pike. Oh, wow. Trump won the popular vote. Lib-hectoring is not the future. Coastal elite 0.94

00:26:39.120 lib-hectoring, not the future. Okay. Speaking of libs on the coasts in New York, Soran Mamdani has a

00:26:46.360 little video. He's the guy who's probably going to be the next mayor of New York, Democrat nominee for

00:26:49.880 mayor of New York. Soran Mamdani has this little video about his ideology going viral.

00:26:57.160 My platform is that every single person should have housing. And I think faced with these two

00:27:02.480 options, the system has hundreds of thousands of people unhoused, right? For what? And if there was

00:27:12.140 any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private

00:27:17.680 property or you call it just a statewide housing guarantee, it is preferable to what is going on

00:27:23.280 right now. And I think that people try and play like gotcha games about these kinds of things. And

00:27:29.520 it's like, look, I care more about whether somebody has a home. So surface level of this clip,

00:27:37.000 the guy is a communist, which he is. So that is what he's saying. Abolish private property.

00:27:45.900 He's a communist. I don't think he's a Muslim radical as some conservatives are mistakenly

00:27:51.740 accusing him of being. I don't think he's that. I don't think he's Saeed Qutb. I don't think he's

00:27:54.960 Osama bin Laden. I think he's a leftist punk who lives in New York, who's insufferable and is a 0.95

00:28:02.100 communist apparently. But even that doesn't tell you the whole story because he doesn't sound quite

00:28:08.080 as sophisticated as Marx or Engels, does he? Does he sound like someone who has taken these ideas

00:28:14.540 seriously? No, he sounds like a punk millennial who has followed incentives and just said the

00:28:21.420 fashionable things to get ahead. That's really what I think he is. It's like the, it's the galaxy

00:28:27.760 brain meme. You know, the kind of dull one is the dull, the dullest one is he'll be a good mayor.

00:28:34.020 He's not going to be a good mayor. Then the next one is he's a Muslim radical. 1.00

00:28:39.120 Then the next one is he's not a Muslim radical. He's a communist. Then the next one is he's actually 0.67

00:28:43.660 not chiefly any of those things. He's an opportunist. This is the kind of thing that kids

00:28:52.280 who go to fancy colleges, remember Zoran lied about being a black guy or kind of lied about

00:28:58.200 being a black guy to try to get into Columbia. These are the things that guys in fancy colleges

00:29:02.800 say in their dorm rooms at night. And they say it just like this. They don't say it like Karl Marx,

00:29:07.900 the workers of the world unite. We will have a revolution. No, no, no. That's not what he's saying.

00:29:12.620 You know, it's like, guys, come on. I just want everyone to have a house. Okay. And if that means

00:29:17.780 that I'm a communist, then I guess I am. You know, it's like, uh, like I just want to like

00:29:21.880 have people have houses. Okay. It's like crazy. Like, right. It's him. This is probably him

00:29:26.440 flirting with a girl in his dorm room. He's an opportunist. He's a product of the spirit of his

00:29:32.640 age. He's following sticks and carrots and incentives to get ahead. He's a striver. And the

00:29:38.520 system was set up especially for him. Zoran Mamdani and I are almost exactly the same age. The system

00:29:44.400 was set up for him such that if you wanted to get ahead, some of us are, we're contrarian,

00:29:49.580 but for most people, if you wanted to get ahead, you had to say the fashionable liberal things

00:29:53.740 at the fashionable liberal schools and just go along to get along. And then one day you can be

00:29:58.680 mayor of New York. That's what he did. And so the political issue for us is not to eradicate Islam.

00:30:04.980 We have been fighting Islam for 1400 years, but it's a side issue. It's not even to root out the 1.00

00:30:09.220 ideology of communism, though that would be good to do too. It's to restructure things so that if you

00:30:16.720 want to get into the good colleges and get the good jobs and succeed socially and be accepted and

00:30:20.560 all that, you're not incentivized to say this stupid nonsense. You're discouraged. You're

00:30:26.620 disincentivized to do that. You are more incentivized to be a normal person, get married,

00:30:32.640 be virtuous, support America, not be communist, go to church. That's the issue. Okay.

00:30:39.220 Speaking of church, we turn now from Muslims to Christians. Horrible story out of Gaza. Horrible 1.00

00:30:44.020 story. The IDF has struck the only Catholic church in Gaza. According to the reporting,

00:30:52.500 1020 a.m. yesterday, the compound of the Holy Family in Gaza, which belongs to the Latin Patriarch,

00:30:57.920 was struck by the Israeli army. Three people died from their injuries. Nine others were wounded,

00:31:04.620 including one in critical condition. And the priest, the parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli,

00:31:11.300 was also injured. This is the line from the Latin Patriarch. The Latin Patriarchate,

00:31:16.940 which is the Catholic church in Gaza, the Latin Patriarchate strongly condemns this tragedy and

00:31:22.080 this targeting of innocent civilians and of a sacred place. So Israel came out later on after

00:31:30.040 international outcry, including from the White House. Israel came out and said, oh, it was a

00:31:34.100 mistake. It was an accident. Was it an accident? I don't see any evidence that it was an accident.

00:31:37.920 Can you provide me some proof that it was an accident? You struck the church. Churches are 0.98

00:31:42.420 pretty obvious targets. They're pretty, pretty obvious sites. You know, there's certain features,

00:31:46.580 the cross, steeple, are pretty obvious. Can you explain to me how this was an accident?

00:31:51.520 Haven't heard that. The Latin Patriarch seems to think it was intentional. The targeting of innocent

00:31:58.560 civilians, not just a stray bullet, the targeting. And he goes on, he says, however, this tragedy

00:32:03.420 is not greater or more terrible than the many others that have befallen Gaza. Many other innocent

00:32:08.180 civilians have also been harmed, displaced, and killed. Death, suffering, and destruction are

00:32:11.480 everywhere. This horrific war must come to a complete end so that we may commence the long work

00:32:15.560 of restoring human dignity. Diane Montagna, who's a great reporter on the Vatican and Rome and the

00:32:20.700 Pope, says his holiness renews his call for an immediate ceasefire. So he's talking about Pope

00:32:24.780 Leo. He expresses his profound hope for dialogue, reconciliation, and enduring peace in the region.

00:32:29.380 And then the Pillar, which is a Catholic outlet, says, sources close to the Patriarchist chancery

00:32:33.580 told the Pillar Thursday that some officials believe the strike could have been a deliberate act of

00:32:37.260 retaliation after Christian leaders recently condemned Israeli settler attacks on a West Bank

00:32:41.720 Christian town. Now, I want you to put a bar. First of all, we pray for the dead and for this 1.00

00:32:47.220 Christian community. But put a bar there for a second. There's another story coming out,

00:32:51.340 which is that Mike Huckabee, Mike Huckabee, as strong a supporter as the state of Israel as there

00:32:58.060 is, U.S. ambassador to the state of Israel. According to the Times of Israel, Mike Huckabee

00:33:04.060 is threatening to declare Israel not welcoming to Christians as a visa fight blows open,

00:33:11.440 penned a scathing letter to the interior minister accusing Israel of blocking Christian groups from

00:33:15.620 entering Israel and threatening reciprocal steps against Israeli visa seekers.

00:33:23.300 As I've mentioned before, everyone seems to hate the state of Israel these days, mostly coming from 1.00

00:33:27.200 the left, but some people on the right have joined. And I've been broadly supportive of the state of

00:33:30.820 Israel, not really as an ideological matter, but as a matter of prudence. And you're losing me. 0.57

00:33:36.380 When you strike churches, the only church in Gaza, even if accidentally, but especially if not

00:33:46.820 accidentally, you're losing me. If you're losing Mike Huckabee, the Israeli government is really

00:33:57.160 screwing up, is really not playing its cards right. If Trump, I think the press secretary yesterday said

00:34:03.580 Trump was furious, Trump was angry, not the exact word, but he was quite dismayed to hear about this

00:34:09.140 attack on the church. I agree with the Holy Father. I agree with the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, 0.98

00:34:15.220 and I agree especially with the Holy Father on most matters. The war needs to come to an end.

00:34:20.880 There need to be political consequences for this action. And the war needs to come to an end.

00:34:26.720 How long is the war going to go on? I know what the answer is. The answer is, well, until the

00:34:33.220 hostages come home. Okay, well, how about we redouble our efforts to get the hostages home,

00:34:38.780 if that's the impediment to peace? Because it seems like there have been a lot of side quests and side

00:34:42.940 missions. Going in, the Iran nuclear facilities, maybe potentially regime change in Iran, occupying

00:34:49.240 southern Syria. It seems like there have been a lot of distractions. The war has been going on for

00:34:52.860 almost two years. When's it going to end? Just what's the end of it? Can anyone tell me that?

00:35:00.700 When the hostages are released? Well, then focus on getting the hostages released. Well, no, when

00:35:04.580 Hamas is totally destroyed. Okay, well, when's that going to be? When Iran is no longer funding

00:35:09.500 terrorism? When's that going to be? When Syria is made safe for democracy? When? Give me an answer.

00:35:15.460 Because the war can not just go on indefinitely. A just war can not just go on indefinitely.

00:35:21.840 And when you start striking churches, accidentally or otherwise, when you start

00:35:31.400 interfering with American interests, not allowing in the reporting about Ambassador Huckabee,

00:35:39.320 when you start interfering with American groups going to the state of Israel, now we got a problem.

00:35:45.380 And America is the only friend that Israel has on planet Earth. So, I don't know. I do not get what

00:35:52.220 the Israeli government is doing here, but I suspect there will be political consequences for it,

00:35:56.440 as there should be. Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles,

00:36:01.360 K-N-A-W-L-E-S. You will save an additional 50% off your first month. Take it away.

00:36:05.020 Hey, Michael. Been a while since I have submitted one of these, so I figured I was due. I hear you

00:36:10.180 talk about the importance of getting married and having children on the show, but one thing I have

00:36:14.440 not really heard you cover is how do we get people willing to date? From my experience, I have not

00:36:19.740 dated for years due to constant rejection, which led to low self-esteem and trying to fill the void

00:36:24.900 with work and knowledge. As I am approaching middle age with no children of my own and my friends

00:36:29.960 and cousins all getting married and having children. Now more than ever do I want to find a wife and have

00:36:35.020 children of my own, but my generation is more into promiscuity and thinks children are a burden.

00:36:40.380 I'm going to the places you have suggested to meet people, but the willingness of others to date just

00:36:45.260 does not seem to be there. So, to sum up the original question, how would you encourage people to want

00:36:51.280 to date, get married, and have children? It doesn't seem like population replacement is convincing many.

00:36:56.720 Any help would be appreciated as I really don't want to die alone.

00:37:01.140 Okay, good question. Sorry for the difficulties you're experiencing here.

00:37:05.200 I think you're thinking about it backwards. Because you're thinking about it in the abstract.

00:37:10.220 How do I convince people that they should date? How do I convince women that they should date? 1.00

00:37:15.240 How do I, you know, should my pickup line be that we've had a below replacement birth rate for the

00:37:21.380 past 50 years? That's not a good pickup line. Don't think about it in the abstract.

00:37:24.920 You don't need to convince women or millennials to date. You need to get a date. That's your 0.98

00:37:32.520 problem. You need to get a date. Forget about the abstraction. Make it very, very practical.

00:37:36.900 And you're saying you go to the places where I've suggested you could date. So, maybe that,

00:37:43.180 I've suggested the Latin mass, you know, the odds are good, but the goods are odd. I've suggested bars.

00:37:48.980 I've suggested all sorts of places. You say, and I put myself in these places, but I'm still not

00:37:54.960 dating. Okay. I think you need to get a little more personal about it. Just from your brief

00:38:01.920 question, it seems like the issue is one of a depersonalized abstraction versus a personal

00:38:08.440 thing. And dating is personal. So, what I would do is I would ask people around you,

00:38:14.040 your family, your friends, maybe even your colleagues. Hey, I want a girlfriend. You know

00:38:22.020 anybody? Maybe you get on the apps. I'm not totally opposed to the apps. You know, you have to live in

00:38:27.240 the circumstances that you got. As long as it's not intrinsically immoral, you know, we avail

00:38:32.880 ourselves of the resources that we have. But I would ask these people and say, hey, can you set me up?

00:38:39.080 Because I think about it with work. No one ever got a job out of networking. Pretty much ever.

00:38:48.220 You get jobs from relationships. You get jobs from friendships. You get jobs from real connections.

00:38:56.660 You don't get jobs from passing out business cards. People pass out business cards all the time. I can't

00:39:00.360 believe they still do it in 2025. Business cards immediately go to the trash. Immediately. They barely

00:39:06.420 touch your hand. They go to the trash. You need that personal connection. So, that's what I would

00:39:11.140 do. I would rely on personal connections and say, hey, hey, cousin Beth, whatever. You have any

00:39:18.600 friends? I want to go on a date. I want to get married. Let's go. It's not in the abstract. I want

00:39:21.880 love. I don't want to just do my patriotic duty and raise the birth rate. I want love. It's not

00:39:28.560 let's do it. Let's raise the birth rate. No. Let's do it. Let's fall in love. Okay. Next one.

00:39:35.780 Hey, Michael. So, I got a question for you. So, I myself, a Catholic who loves philosophy, theology,

00:39:42.920 life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. But most of all, I love my wife. Now, the issue that I have

00:39:50.660 and the question I've got for you is I really like cigars as well. Recently, my wife and I had our

00:39:56.180 first child, a baby girl. And my wife is very concerned during pregnancy and even now

00:40:02.660 that secondhand and thirdhand smoke are bad for the kid. I agree with her and I want to respect my

00:40:10.420 wife. But I really want to enjoy a cigar as well every once in a while. How do you do it? That's

00:40:16.460 my question. Is Elisa concerned about that? Are the kids around you when you smoke? I'd love to hear

00:40:25.600 your thoughts. Love the show. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. Let me show you how

00:40:30.680 you do it. I'm going to show you how you do it. You take the cigar out. You get a cutter. You cut

00:40:36.740 the cigar like that. There you go. Then you, I only have a very silly lighter on me, but that's okay.

00:40:42.680 Then, here's how else you do it. Then you do the lighter, right, like that. And then you smoke it.

00:40:47.140 And then you might, you might hear, and then the thing you do is you make sure that your

00:41:03.240 light is perfect. There we go. That's how you do it. I don't mean to be glib or disrespectful to

00:41:11.140 your wife. Your wife can make certain requests that are reasonable and you should take those into

00:41:16.120 account. But what you should say to her is you say, we have this disagreement over smoking.

00:41:23.420 And if your wife is using terms like third-hand smoke, she's not thinking about this in a

00:41:28.880 reasonable way. And you should say, well, I've weighed, I've used my reason as the head of the

00:41:33.140 household, taking your concerns into line. And I've weighed the risks of smoking cigars, not even

00:41:39.140 cigarettes. And I think a cigar a day is just fine. And so I'm going to smoke. And maybe you say,

00:41:45.460 look, you don't want me to smoke in the house. You don't like the smell of smoke. Okay. Okay. Maybe

00:41:49.560 I won't. I'll smoke on the deck or I'll smoke in the yard or I'll smoke outside or I'll smoke at a

00:41:53.840 cigar lounge or something, but it's okay. And if I'm going on a walk and I'm having a cigar and my

00:41:58.420 kid is in the stroller, I think my kid is going to be just fine. She said, no, but it's terrible.

00:42:04.340 The kid's going to get fifth-hand smoke. There's no such thing as fifth-hand smoke.

00:42:08.280 It's okay. Don't worry. I've used my reason. I've taken your concerns into account.

00:42:12.560 I've weighed the costs and benefits and it's fine. And that's how it goes. That's the final

00:42:21.040 word on this matter, honey. That's what I would say. And then the way you do it is you cut it,

00:42:26.480 you cut the cigar and then you light the bottom one and then you enjoy. Next. Thank you, by the way,

00:42:31.440 for giving me an opportunity to smoke on this episode today. Smoke a delicious Mayflower. Next

00:42:35.940 question. Hello, Mr. Knowles. This is Emi from Norway. I heard recently that the fall of the

00:42:44.740 Roman Empire led to the Dark Ages. Now, do you believe that if America falls, we will be plunged 0.68

00:42:53.740 into a new Dark Age? And what do you speculate that might look like? Thanks for all you do.

00:43:01.240 If only. If only. If only that's what the fall of America would do. Because the Dark Ages is an

00:43:08.320 abused term. And it's really a term that is used as an unfair insult from Enlightenment modern lunatics

00:43:17.440 who wanted to insult the height of Christian civilization. There was a period after the fall

00:43:21.860 of the Roman Empire when things were a little bit rough. No question about that. Though it was during

00:43:26.440 that period that you see the development of Western monasticism, that you see the development,

00:43:31.800 the preservation and cultivation of the very heights of our culture, intellectual and artistic

00:43:36.880 and religious. Where you then see, as you move into the Middle Ages, the building of the greatest

00:43:44.120 edifices ever in our history, the cathedrals, where you see the creation of the greatest art, poetry,

00:43:48.960 literature, ever in the high Middle Ages. And people, they say it was just dark ages until the

00:43:56.280 Renaissance. Renaissance is really overrated. And the Enlightenment is extremely overrated.

00:44:00.660 So if only we could get into a dark and then middle and high Middle Ages after America. I fear we won't. 0.93

00:44:08.660 I fear you need to reset your expectations. That's kind of best case scenario if the American 1.00

00:44:15.520 Empire falls. Okay, we have more to get to. More voice mailbag. We have more fake headlines.

00:44:19.580 We have more written mailbag. We have a lot. But you got to go to dailywire.com.

00:44:24.100 Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, for two months free on all annual plans.

00:44:27.140 does아 well

00:44:40.300 do

00:44:42.980 Yeah, oh.

00:44:43.720 Yeah, oh.

00:44:48.440 Yeah, oh.

00:44:49.100 Yeah, oh.

00:44:50.560 Yeah, oh, yeah.

00:44:53.000 I know.

The Michael Knowles Show - July 18, 2025

Ep. 1774 - CEO Caught Cheating at Coldplay—And The Heartwarming Reason Everyone’s Obsessed

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