Ep. 1774 - CEO Caught Cheating at Coldplay—And The Heartwarming Reason Everyone’s Obsessed
Summary
The CEO of a billion-dollar tech company gets caught cheating on his wife with his also married head of HR at a Coldplay concert, and the internet cannot get enough of it. And the reason why is surprisingly heartwarming.
Transcript
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The CEO of a billion and a half dollar tech company got caught on the kiss cam cheating on
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his wife with his also married head of HR at a Coldplay concert. The internet cannot get enough
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of it. And the reason why is surprisingly heartwarming. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. The IDF, State of Israel, has hit the only Catholic church in Gaza
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yesterday. Killed three people, injured a bunch more, including the priest. And the Israelis are
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was an accident. And even U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is looking into some of the actions
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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
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favorite story on the internet. It's dark, it's nasty, it's blown up probably two families. It
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seems improbable. If you have somehow haven't seen it, here's the clip.
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Oh, look at these two. All right, come on. You're okay? Uh-oh, what?
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Either they're having an affair or they're just very shocked.
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They bolt. If you're just listening to the show, it's the CEO and his head of HR and some other girl
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who I guess works for the company. And the minute the kiss cam goes on them, they bolt. The guy goes
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down like he just got hit with a cannonball. He goes down. The woman, the HR lady, flips around
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then runs away. And then the other girl, who I guess is their pal from the company, just starts
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laughing, this awkward, nervous, shameful laugh. And the memes have been pouring out ever since.
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One is, this is just a random smattering of memes that Sweet Little Elise and I were looking at last
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night. It's a CEO hates to see this man coming. It's just Coldplay. Just turn around on the piano.
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Another one. Where's the next one? Give me the next meme. This is a picture of them. It says,
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the chances of your marriages and careers being destroyed at a Coldplay concert are extremely low,
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but never zero. Next one. Coldplay should out people at every concert and say, they've just been
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Coldplayed. You shouldn't laugh. It's very sad. Multiple families being blown up here. But the
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odds of it are just so low. Even one of them, they said, Coldplay hasn't made a single in years.
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And now they just made two last night. So everyone is obsessed with this. It's odd too,
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because yesterday on the show, we were talking about infidelity and for some reason why men who
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have beautiful wives will cheat with women who often aren't even as beautiful as their own wives.
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And then this happens. Why does everyone care? Is it just because some guy got caught cheating?
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That happens all the time. Is it just because it was on the kiss cam? I don't know. I mean,
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I think that's actually happened before. Is it? Why? Why does it? Is it because people care about this,
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this company, Astronomer? It's a big company, but it's not that well known. I don't think so.
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My wife, sweet little Alisa, has a theory about why the entire internet cares about Coldplay gate.
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But the reason everyone cares, she believes, and I'm convinced of this, is that the affair is
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nostalgic, old school degeneracy. That's why. That it's in a way, it gives us a warm and fuzzy
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feeling looking at this terrible, sinful degeneracy because it's terrible and sinful within old school
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bounds. It's a normal looking guy and a normal looking woman having an affair, then getting
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caught and feeling shame and trying to hide it. And I know it, look, the standards of our culture
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are so low that to say that that is heartwarming in any way is a little weird. But think about our
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modern culture. You have some weird looking dude and a freaky looking surgically augmented eunuch
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and like two billy goats and a community in a throuple, not feeling shame, not even cheating
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because they have ethical non-monogamy and they don't ascribe to your bourgeois morality, man. It's
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like so confusing. And in this case, this is a tale as old as time. Good looking CEO sleeps with
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the secretary, in this case, not the secretary, but someone under him, a head of HR. And they're
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going to a concert and they're not doing anything obscene exactly. They're just kind of hugging and
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having this weird kind of oddly romantic affair and then getting caught feeling shame, trying to hide
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it. It's all terrible. It's all sinful. It's all completely degenerate, but it's familiar. You
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actually think, ah, remember when that, when degeneracy was like that? Now it's almost
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unrecognizable. It's almost unhuman, inhuman. You look at degeneracy now and it involves like
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weird orgies and Caribbean islands and internet pornography and hard drugs and absolute shamelessness.
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And wow, ah, if only we could go back to the days when adultery were simpler. I think that's,
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I think sweet little Elisa is a very insightful woman. And I think, I think there's a lot to that.
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Okay. Speaking of untoward behavior, the Jeffrey Epstein controversy might be coming to a close,
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a real close this time, not just saying, okay, and actually after years of talking about this
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and campaigning on this, nothing to see here, move along, move along. Because president Trump
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just released this statement. Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey
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Epstein, I've asked attorney general Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony
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subject to court approval. This scam perpetuated by the Democrats should end right now.
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Really, really smart. Really, really smart. And the whole time, even as many Trump supporters,
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erstwhile Trump supporters were attacking him and saying, this is it. I regret voting for him. And
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I don't, he's terrible. And he's the swamp and he's the deep state. And all that was happening.
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I said, look, I'm a plan truster. He's great. I sympathize with his frustration on this matter.
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The Epstein thing long predates him. He is certainly not seriously implicated in this at all.
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He kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club, but there are all sorts of reasons why the list
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so-called might not be released, but the White House needs to message better on this.
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And then Trump gave a defiant press conference in front of Marine One.
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That was uniformly reported on as being Trump's defiance. He's not going to release the Epstein
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files. He's lashing out at people who want the Epstein files. And I said, no, no, no, you're not
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paying attention to the last five words of that press conference. Where at the very, he says, this is
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crazy and we shouldn't be talking about it. And Epstein's irrelevant. And I want to talk about all
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my big policy wins at the border on the economy and what, but at the very end, he said, and of course,
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I support releasing credible information. And at the very end there, I said, that's a pivot.
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That's Trump giving himself wiggle room to come out of this. Now Trump is saying, okay, I've
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instructed Pam Bondi to go talk to the courts to release the grand jury testimony, because this is
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some of the complication of the Epstein issue. There's no list in the sense that there's no
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nice piece of parchment with one, two, three, four, five, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking,
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Bill Clinton. There's none of that. There is just a lot of testimony of women who say they
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were trafficked by Epstein saying, yeah, I was with this guy, I was with that guy. And some of it is
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credible and some of it might not be credible. In fact, one of the accusers dropped an accusation
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against Alan Dershowitz after Dershowitz pursued it. He said, I'm being falsely accused and I'm
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going to prove that I'm falsely accused. And she eventually dropped the allegation.
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Others will not be falsely accused. Others actually did. So there's just this massive
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pile of accusations, which are not necessarily verified, which have not necessarily been
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investigated, which, and so, as I said from the beginning, it's not, what we want is not a list.
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Exactly. What we want, what I want, I'll speak for myself. What I want is not full transparency.
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A government can't be transparent on everything. But what I want is justice. I want to know that
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some justice is being done. And I think that's what most people want out of this. We want to know,
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as I am quite confident that, you know, the guy we elected is the guy we elected.
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And so I said, the political problem for Trump is, I think he is that guy. I think he is the guy that
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we elected. But he's got this messaging issue now that has become a field day for Democrats and for
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Trump's enemies in the Republican Party. And so he's got to do something to show that he's,
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he's got to show that he's frustrated with the Epstein situation. And he's got to, he's got to try
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to, to at least convince people that justice has been done. This is a brilliant way to do it
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because this puts the onus back on the courts. The courts have sealed some of this testimony.
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So by, by saying to Pam Bondi, hey, you need to go to the courts and unseal whatever grand jury
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testimony you can unseal to give some transparency in the, because this is a really weird case that
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implicates a lot of very powerful people with a lot of contradictions in the story over the years.
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There, there is no jail cell footage. Oh, there is jail cell footage. We're going to release it,
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but it's missing a minute. Actually, it's missing three minutes and he killed himself, but it seems
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very difficult to kill yourself in that kind of a cell. And there's a list, but actually there's no
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list and we're not going to release the list. And there's just so many questions about him that
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rumors that he was connected to intelligence. You need a little bit, you need to give people a
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little bit more. Uh, Trump has done it in a brilliant way, brilliant way here, put it back
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on the courts, let the courts handle it. Give us, allow Republicans and reasonable Democrats to be
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unified on this and then allow the issue to play out as it will. Again, I still don't, I still don't
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think you're ever going to get anything even resembling full transparency on the Epstein issue,
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but at least here Trump can say, look, this really has nothing to do with me. This issue long
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predates me. This is not a big part of my administration as part of my objectives, but
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at the very least now this kind of a, uh, move, this kind of a chess move will not allow the Epstein
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issue to derail the rest of Trump's very effective agenda. Okay. Now the downside of that is people
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are going to run with all sorts of craziness and insinuations against Trump. Hold on now. One
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American meat delivered. So right on cue, and I'm sure this is part of Trump's hesitation,
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right on cue, you're getting all these insinuations that Trump is seriously implicated in the Epstein
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stuff, which again, I see no evidence for whatsoever. I've talked to sources, including
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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.
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The Wall Street Journal prints a letter that was purportedly written by Trump to Jeffrey Epstein.
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It was in some file and it was over an image, like a stick figure of a naked lady or something.
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And the letter, you read it, it looks like it was written by ChatGPT or something.
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And it says there, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Enigmas never age. Have you
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
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secret. I don't know. It's really odd. People write weird letters and even jokey letters sometimes,
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but Trump has come out. He's fully denied this and promised to sue the Wall Street Journal.
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He said, this is completely fake. Not, you know, this is a hoax and you're making a mountain out
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of a mole hilt. No, he says, this is completely fake and I will sue you over it. Which to me is
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as firm a denial, as confident a denial as there is, because in a lawsuit there will be discovery.
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And so Trump has to be real certain that this is fake news. J.D. Vance, likewise, has said,
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this looks like total BS. And it seems pretty fake to me. The closest thing it seems like to me
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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,
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.
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That's the issue with this letter here. It just doesn't sound like him. It's not that President
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Trump hasn't lived a colorful life. It isn't that he hasn't been this billionaire, brash guy who's
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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
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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
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sound like him. It's not, I don't know, it just seems, it seems like fake news to me.
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The fact that Trump would deny this and say, I'm going to sue you. I think, yeah. If this is the
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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
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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,
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,
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bad news for Stephen Colbert over at CBS. We are celebrating a decade of the Daily Wire. That's 10
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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.
00:22:43.940
That is what libs are going to be like. There's no doubt about that. Okay.
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,
00:23:42.440
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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,
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?
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
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
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.
00:44:08.660
I fear you need to reset your expectations. That's kind of best case scenario if the American
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
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