The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1777 - The ＂Prince of Darkness,＂ Ozzy Osbourne, Dies at 76

00:00:00.000 The Prince of Darkness has died, Hunter Biden is extolling the virtues of crack,

00:00:04.640 and I am at the White House working on a top-secret project.

00:00:09.220 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to the show. Great news on the cultural front. You know Burning Man? You know

00:00:36.320 that thing that all your hippie friends went to like 10 years ago? Just the most insufferable

00:00:42.620 hippies that you know? Well, it's dying. It's dying. It's just embers. It's Ash Man now. 0.99

00:00:50.000 I have many more pearls of wisdom to give you, but first you need to go to puretalk.com

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00:02:10.980 company, PureTalk. Big update on a personal story that's not just a personal story. It's really a

00:02:17.120 political story, which is why I talked about it on the show yesterday, I guess, or Monday, was it?

00:02:23.320 I mentioned that I appeared to have been debanked from one of the biggest payment processors in the

00:02:29.940 country, the largest one by the number of merchants. That was Stripe because Stripe processes payments

00:02:36.840 from X. Not that I get a lot of money from X, but every tweet, I don't know, you get like two cents or

00:02:41.920 something. And so for six, seven months now, I hadn't gotten any payments and X told me to talk to

00:02:47.800 Stripe and Stripe told me to talk to X and X said it was Stripe's fault. So anyway, I couldn't get an

00:02:51.800 answer on any of it. It was insinuated to me that this might have been a debanking situation. And so I

00:02:59.480 just posted about it on Twitter. And I want to thank all of you. A lot of you called a great deal of

00:03:03.940 attention to this, came to the attention of a lot of federal regulators and a lot of people who have been

00:03:10.460 dealing with this debanking issue, not just from Stripe, but from many financial institutions

00:03:16.080 in recent years. And I'm really pleased to say that Stripe reached out to me personally.

00:03:22.200 And so I took the call. It was actually, I took the call kind of late because I was at the White 0.99

00:03:26.940 House yesterday working on that secret project I mentioned. Maybe we'll get to more of that later

00:03:30.740 on. So anyway, by the time I picked it up, they said, hey, we want to reach out to you because

00:03:35.180 we want you to know this was not intentional debanking. This was not political. This was

00:03:40.660 not anti any kind of discrimination. This began because of what seems to have been an administrative

00:03:46.000 issue from a government agency. And so we totally got our lines crossed and, you know, it's been

00:03:53.540 six, seven months, but we want to work with you to resolve this. And so I take them at their word. I

00:03:58.320 think that that's a plausible explanation. So it seems to me this very likely is not a debanking issue.

00:04:06.080 Necessarily. But I guess that really highlights the problem. I'm really pleased to say that in

00:04:11.580 talking about this personal matter that I guess they're going to resolve, we then got to the

00:04:14.980 political matter, which is really at the heart of this, which is a lack of transparency from these

00:04:20.140 financial institutions. Because I wasn't even told what the issue could be for six or seven months.

00:04:26.940 And I have a public platform with millions of followers across social media channels.

00:04:31.420 Most people don't. Most people, if they're turned off from a financial institution,

00:04:37.260 they have no recourse and they're not going to hear anything. They won't even be told why they

00:04:41.840 were turned off. And so I'm really pleased to say Stripe is interested in this. They want to work

00:04:46.540 together on some legislative fixes for the right to know, for customers to know at the very least

00:04:54.560 why their financial services are being cut off. Because I think a lot of the debanking that we

00:04:59.780 have seen, again, I'm relatively convinced this is not an example of political targeting or anything

00:05:05.100 like that. I take Stripe at its word. I think it's fair. But we know there have been a lot of examples of

00:05:10.680 that in recent years, haven't there been? And the people, this could affect millions and millions of

00:05:16.180 people. The people who are debanked very often aren't even told why they're being turned off.

00:05:22.420 These institutions have no obligation to tell them why they're being turned off. In some cases,

00:05:27.420 contracts won't even let them tell the customers why they're being turned off. So that has to be fixed

00:05:31.640 with a legislative answer. Because the lack of transparency allows legitimately bad operators

00:05:38.240 in financial services to target political opponents or religious opponents. And you can't

00:05:42.440 even challenge it because you don't even know what you're challenging. So anyway, very pleased to all

00:05:46.700 of you for calling attention to this matter. Very pleased that Stripe wants to work on it.

00:05:52.300 We're working on that now behind the scenes. My team is in touch with their team and they're

00:05:56.180 working on that. I think we need a legislative fix because we need to make sure, while I'm so happy

00:06:01.420 that the boys are back in town here in Washington and we have good government and a unified

00:06:07.040 government, we need to make sure that we protect ordinary Americans who hold ordinary political

00:06:12.860 views, who have ordinary beliefs and do ordinary things. Protect them from activists who are

00:06:19.060 legitimately targeted by all manner of financial institutions. So anyway, I'll keep you posted on

00:06:24.760 that as we continue to investigate exactly what went on and how to fix it. Then, big cultural news.

00:06:30.640 Ozzy Osbourne is dead. The Prince of Darkness. He's dead at 76. That used to be kind of old. Now,

00:06:38.660 that's very young. Ozzy just did his final concert days ago. I think I even covered it on the show.

00:06:46.380 He did his final, at least, I at least saw it on Twitter. He did his final concert and then he died

00:06:51.240 shortly thereafter. We don't really know the circumstances of his death. You know, he'd been

00:06:53.920 very sick. He had Parkinson's. So this causes some reflection because Ozzy Osbourne lived a pretty

00:07:00.960 colorful life. And there's a rule, nil nisi bonum. You don't say anything bad about the dead.

00:07:07.640 And I really don't mean to. Ozzy Osbourne seemed like a pretty nice guy in many ways. And he was a

00:07:14.520 colorful cultural figure. He was also the Prince of Darkness. I never was into Ozzy Osbourne's music.

00:07:21.240 I got a kick out of that reality show a little bit in the 2000s. But at the risk of sounding like

00:07:27.660 a satanic panic church lady, I think there are some problems with that kind of music. 1.00

00:07:33.180 And I'm not alone. John Cardinal O'Connor, one of the great cardinals in the history of New York,

00:07:39.380 he once alleged that Ozzy Osbourne's music led to, potentially led to demonic possession and suicide.

00:07:46.720 And Osbourne opposed this. And it was all part of the big fight over heavy metal music and

00:07:54.280 occult symbolism in the culture. And at that time, the very secular liberal culture making fun of the

00:08:01.420 uptight prudish Christians. But there's an infamous moment in Ozzy Osbourne's life in 1989 when he tried 1.00

00:08:08.200 to murder his wife, Sharon. And she writes about this in her memoir. It's a very publicized event.

00:08:12.660 And what's interesting is not even that he tried to murder his wife. It's how he did it.

00:08:19.040 The account, I want to get the words right. According to Sharon, and I think to Ozzy,

00:08:24.280 he allegedly told her, quote, we've come to a decision that you've got to die. We. 0.97

00:08:32.400 Who is we? You know, Ozzy for years did a ton of drugs. And he was infamous for this.

00:08:38.560 So even the other guys in Black Sabbath would say, you know, Ozzy, man, he could go harder than

00:08:42.460 anyone. He was just completely insane. There's a story about him in a meeting of record executives.

00:08:47.760 He said that he got up and, and, you know, made funny faces or something on the table. And I think

00:08:52.600 in Sharon's telling, he got up, goose stepped along the board table and exposed himself or something

00:08:59.100 like that. Something really a little quirky. And anyway, then it culminates in this near,

00:09:03.860 near murder of his wife. He says, we've come to a decision that you've got to die. 0.99

00:09:07.160 Then he lunged at her and tried to strangle her. And she clicked a panic button and the 0.78

00:09:11.540 cops came and arrested him. She said that it was the most frightened she's ever been.

00:09:18.120 It seems kind of like John Cardinal O'Connor was right.

00:09:21.400 And I'm really not saying any of this to knock Ozzy, because in many interviews and many parts

00:09:25.880 of his life, he seemed like a sweet guy. And he played up kind of some of the dark symbolism

00:09:30.760 as a matter of art or, or maybe even as a matter of irony. But this doesn't, this doesn't get you

00:09:37.600 around the troubling elements in, in not just his career, but in the kind of symbols he engaged in,

00:09:45.720 the kind of music that he made. He,

00:09:48.820 he proved that you can't live ironically forever. I guess this is a point I've made on the show many

00:09:57.060 times. If you're ironically satanic for your whole life, dark stuff, bad stuff is going to happen.

00:10:04.940 And so people are going to be recounting all of his crazy antics, you know, biting the head off a bat

00:10:08.500 or whatever he did, a chicken, what did he do? I think it was a bat. All these crazy things.

00:10:12.740 And, and in the final count, all of Ozzy's antics are the worst parts of his life.

00:10:20.700 They're the worst parts of his life. It reminds me, it's not just Ozzy Osborne. It's really any

00:10:23.780 young man who's ever gotten his blood up a little bit and partied a little too hard and been a little

00:10:27.860 too crazy is, you can look back and say, oh boy, I was crazy in my youth at college or in my twenties

00:10:33.820 or whatever. But when you actually get into the antics, they're usually degrading and they're the

00:10:39.020 things that you're not really proud of and they can have horrible consequences on your life.

00:10:42.740 So it's not to say that Ozzy had the worst life ever or anything like that. In many ways,

00:10:47.900 he had a kind of a nice life, but all the stuff he's most famous for was bad and embarrassing.

00:10:57.540 And in the final count, you probably want to focus on the good things. And just anyway,

00:11:04.040 recommendation, pray for Ozzy. We pray for Ozzy and take, take that as a little bit of a lesson.

00:11:09.100 Don't. All the stuff that we laugh at and we go for it, this was his real life. He really did try

00:11:14.120 to murder his wife and he really did do these degrading things that clearly shortened his life.

00:11:18.840 And let's not do that. Let's try to avoid that. Okay. Hold on one second. I'm going to get to really,

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00:12:55.080 I covered that crazy Hunter Biden interview the other day, where he talked about how the Democrat

00:13:00.060 Party is just awful, and he was just going off, pure id, unvarnished, where he said, this place, 0.98

00:13:07.080 they're awful, they're all frauds leading the Democrat Party. There was one part of the interview 0.99

00:13:11.600 that I missed out on, that I forgot about. It's when he extolled the virtues of crack.

00:13:19.200 Does crack cocaine make you act any differently? No. Is it safer than alcohol? Probably. People think

00:13:26.760 of crack as being dirty. It's the exact opposite. When you make crack, what you're doing is you're

00:13:31.920 burning off all the impurities so that it combines with the sodium bicarbonate, which makes it smoke,

00:13:37.000 that's all. I'm getting the distinct impression that Hunter Biden has learned nothing. He's managed

00:13:46.620 to learn nothing from his life, his degenerate life full of horrible mistakes and terrible sins

00:13:53.980 that have disfigured him spiritually and even physically and destroyed his family and made him

00:13:59.180 a laughingstock. He was a promising guy, graduate of Yale Law School, was in the Navy, had every

00:14:04.620 advantage in the world, had the sad thing in his life, which is his mother died when he was young.

00:14:09.160 But other than that, had every advantage in the world and he squandered all of it. Now he's a

00:14:13.640 laughingstock and a punchline and he's learned nothing. He can't even come out and say crack is

00:14:18.760 bad. He says, no, actually, crack is really good. Did you know that? Crack, it's like when you talk to,

00:14:23.740 at a lower level, but just as annoying, when you talk to your super duper pothead friend,

00:14:28.900 I'm not saying someone who every once in a while takes a puff of the sin spinach. It's a popular

00:14:33.140 thing to do, even if it's not advisable. I'm talking about your wake and bake, choom gang, 0.99

00:14:40.020 just hippie, pudding-headed friend who insists not just that pot isn't that bad. They say,

00:14:48.040 no, man, it's really good for you. Did you know, man, it's actually, I'm self-medicating

00:14:56.180 and it makes me relaxed, man. It's good for your brain. And it's, no, it's not. It's horrible.

00:15:02.260 It's got more tar in it than cigarettes and it turns your brain to mush and makes you dumb 0.99

00:15:07.460 and introspective, but not even in like a good introspective way, just kind of like quiet and 0.88

00:15:12.400 shy and increases anxiety and ultimately will make you schizophrenic if you smoke enough of it. It's

00:15:16.620 not good, but you can't even say, it's one thing for someone to say, well, that's maybe not the best

00:15:20.380 thing. You know, I have a couple of drinks at night. It's probably not the best thing, but you know,

00:15:23.140 whatever. That's, I choose to, I choose my vice, but, but don't tell me it's good. Don't tell me

00:15:30.640 these, that's what Hunter's doing. And so why do I say this just to make fun of Hunter? No, I do it

00:15:34.460 because this is the Democratic Party broadly. Hunter is the avatar of the Democrats broadly.

00:15:41.180 They know they've screwed up. They know, they know, they know they're out of government. They know

00:15:46.800 the Republicans control everything. They know they've screwed up. They know something has to change.

00:15:52.480 Whenever you focus on what that thing is, they have to defend it. Yeah. Maybe you guys got a

00:15:58.120 little too woke. No, we're not. We didn't get, we didn't get woke enough. What are you talking

00:16:01.880 about? We got too woke. Well, we defend the rights of the, no, we believe in equality and the pro and

00:16:07.660 the trans and the LGBT and the individual. Okay. All right. You don't say you're too woke.

00:16:12.940 I don't know. Maybe you're too tied in with a big business. No, what are you, what are you talking?

00:16:18.300 We're much better for the economy. No, what do you, we, we support the, all these corporations

00:16:22.480 that are trying to import slave labor with mass migration and they won't, they'll admit in the

00:16:28.380 abstract something's wrong and they got to change. But when you get to the nitty gritty, they don't

00:16:33.480 know what it is that they have to change. And this, this could be a real benefit for Republicans in

00:16:39.800 November because, in next November, not this November, the midterm elections, because in the midterms,

00:16:46.960 the first midterm after a party takes the White House, that party tends to get completely destroyed

00:16:52.740 and the opposing party retakes the House. That is almost always what happens. And that's what I'm

00:16:57.760 assuming is going to happen in 2026, except that the Democrats are just so bad. They're so, so lost.

00:17:04.860 They got rocked by losing the popular vote. I think that's what did. It's not even just that Trump won,

00:17:11.080 which would have been bad enough for them because they spent 10 years calling him Hitler and they

00:17:14.640 tried to prosecute him on four different fronts and they tried to kick him off the ballot and they

00:17:17.700 set the stage for him to be murdered not once but twice. And that all failed. But the cherry on top,

00:17:24.060 the thing that was the real gut punch to the Democrats is they lost the popular vote too. 0.99

00:17:29.180 So they can't even, they can't even fall back on their stupid argument that the electoral college 0.99

00:17:33.580 is a threat to democracy and we really won. If you really change all the rules and if you really 0.99

00:17:37.340 squint and hold your head cockeyed, you know, then actually we actually won. They can't even do that.

00:17:41.400 They lost everything. And so they, they don't know what to make of it. They know something has

00:17:45.960 to change. Now they might not win back the house. And according to Mark Halperin, who is a plugged in

00:17:52.060 political journalist, according to Mark Halperin, the Democrat leader in the house, Hakeem Jeffries,

00:17:57.980 thinks that the socialist Muslim in New York, Zoran Mamdani, who is likely to be the next mayor of New York,

00:18:03.840 is going to single-handedly destroy Democrat chances to win back the house.

00:18:10.780 And Hakeem Jeffries' office is denying it. But Mark Halperin is a good journalist. In fact,

00:18:16.020 I just recently was on Mark Halperin's show. Mark Halperin told me things about my political

00:18:22.400 relationships, about things I, things I do in politics behind the scenes that were not public.

00:18:28.840 I said, how do you know that? Hold on. How do you know that I, he's a very serious political

00:18:35.080 journalist. He is really plugged in. I believe him. I certainly believe him over the office of

00:18:39.200 Hakeem Jeffries. What is he saying that Jeffries is saying? He is, he is saying that Hakeem Jeffries

00:18:46.380 strongly believes that if Mandani wins, Jeffries cannot win the majority. People who have spoken

00:18:52.900 directly with the leader, Jeffries, believe this, and they think that it's going to be too far.

00:19:00.920 Now, Mark Halperin's mouth to God's ears, that could be great.

00:19:07.320 Because there's no clear direction for the Democrats, are they going to go more in the

00:19:10.880 Rahm Emanuel direction, more in the Andy Cuomo direction? We got to ditch this woke stuff. We

00:19:15.440 got to ditch the trans issue or whatever. We got to ditch the total mass migration, open borders 1.00

00:19:20.120 issue. We need to get back to the center. Or are they going to go to their rising stars? AOC.

00:19:25.200 And who's that chick? The new AOC, whatever that girl, the black lady, not that she's the black AOC, 1.00

00:19:30.280 whatever her name is. That one or Zoran Mamdani or all the rest. Queer liberation, globalize the 0.86

00:19:36.320 intifada, eat the rich, whatever, open the borders. They don't know. They don't even know which one is

00:19:42.700 cynically going to help them right now. A very, very good sign for Republicans. And if the Dems

00:19:48.760 can't come up with an answer soon, you know, the clock is ticking on the midterms. So there's one

00:19:53.540 issue that is bedeviling Trump right now. It is the issue that has been eating at him and there's

00:19:58.560 not that much that he can do about it. It's the Jeffrey Epstein issue. Alan Dershowitz, who was the

00:20:02.960 lawyer for Jeffrey Epstein and the lawyer for Donald Trump in his impeachment hearings, and just a very

00:20:07.760 famous lawyer who's been in American politics for decades. Alan Dershowitz thinks he has the answer

00:20:13.880 to the Jeffrey Epstein political quagmire. He says the thing to do is to get Epstein's partner

00:20:21.200 and madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, to testify before Congress.

00:20:26.100 She knows everything. She is the Rosetta Stone. She knows everything. She arranged every single trip

00:20:32.820 with everybody. She knows everything. And if she were just given use immunity, she could be compelled

00:20:39.160 to testify. I'm told that she actually would be willing to testify. And there'd be no reason for

00:20:45.220 her to withhold any information. So I don't see any negative in giving her the kind of use immunity

00:20:52.240 that would compel her to testify. So she ought to be summoned in front of a congressional committee.

00:21:00.500 So that's Alan Dershowitz's call. It's surprising a lot of people because a lot of people think Dershowitz

00:21:04.620 is seriously implicated in the Epstein files. I don't think he is. I know it's not popular to

00:21:11.000 say that. They all think, oh, Dershowitz, he was on the island and he was doing all sorts of creepy

00:21:14.820 stuff with all these girls. I don't think he's seriously implicated in this at all. He was Epstein's

00:21:19.560 lawyer. But he was O.J. Simpson's lawyer too. His job was to defend bad guys. I don't think he's

00:21:25.760 seriously implicated. And notice how confident he says, release the files. Hollywood celebrities who

00:21:31.140 might be implicated. Kevin Spacey, I think it was, said, release the files. This would suggest,

00:21:37.160 even now, Dershowitz's saying, let Ghislaine talk. Why? Because he's not afraid that bad

00:21:45.040 information is going to come out about him. In fact, I think this is the strongest argument yet,

00:21:49.160 and you know I hate to say I told you so, that you're never going to get seriously new information

00:21:54.560 about Jeffrey Epstein. You think you will? Release the files. Release the list. Release Ghislaine

00:21:59.660 Maxwell. Dig up Jeffrey Epstein. If he's dead. If he killed himself. If he didn't kill himself.

00:22:04.160 Just get him. Anybody. We want more information. I don't know that you're going to get it. But 1.00

00:22:10.080 that does not mean that Madame Ghislaine is not going to testify because the House

00:22:14.540 looks like it's going to subpoena her. Hold on one second. We will get to more beautiful, 1.00

00:22:20.120 important stuff in my mellifluous tones. But before we do any of that, you must text Knowles,

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00:23:37.580 The House is going to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell. Tim Burchett, Republican from Tennessee,

00:23:42.680 has requested that Chairman James Comer summon Ghislaine for testimony. So now Comer said that

00:23:51.600 Birchett needs to introduce a formal motion, which was approved by voice vote. Since she's in federal

00:23:57.340 prison, the committee will work with the DOJ and Bureau of Prisons to find a date when this

00:24:02.460 congressional committee can depose her. Okay, that's fine. It's interesting. It's kind of an

00:24:06.560 off-ramp for everybody here. And you'll get answers, whatever answers there are. You're not going to

00:24:11.480 find anything new. I've said it from the beginning. I will say it again. If Jeffrey Epstein is who the

00:24:17.440 government says he is, he's just a weird sex freak who was friends with all the most rich and

00:24:22.600 powerful people, but those two facts have nothing to do with each other. If that's all he was, you 0.95

00:24:27.020 already know everything you're going to know. And if he was something else, if he were an asset of

00:24:32.600 intelligence, as was suggested in reporting, allegedly from Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney who

00:24:40.040 prosecuted him, who then was up for labor secretary under Trump, Trump won, then that's one thing.

00:24:46.060 If he was a super duper spy for the CIA and Mossad and MI6 and the KGB and whatever, okay,

00:24:52.960 if he was anything in between, if he's not what the government says he is, if he's what some of you

00:25:00.200 think that he is, you've also heard everything about him you're ever going to hear. Simple as,

00:25:05.180 simple as. Don't shoot the messenger. I'm just telling you how it works. Now, speaking of the

00:25:10.900 White House, you know, I'm at the White House. I'm, well, right now I'm at a hotel. I'm at a fancy

00:25:15.620 hotel around the White House because right near the White House, they mostly have fancy hotels.

00:25:19.940 And you can tell I'm at a fancy hotel if you're watching the show because I have fancy blue glass

00:25:24.900 water. I would be perfectly fine having normal plastic bottle water, but the fancy hotels, they have

00:25:30.360 blue glass water. That's how you know. DC is a very wealthy area these days. And I'm very excited

00:25:37.260 to be working on a project at the White House. And I'm not going to tell you all that. I said it's

00:25:41.520 super duper top secret. It's only top secret because I'm not going to tell you about it yet.

00:25:45.100 But it's very exciting. It has to do with American history and it'll be coming out in a little bit.

00:25:48.620 So I'll keep you posted about all of that. But it's going to be, it's going to be a lot of fun. And it's,

00:25:53.040 I think it's going to have some important cultural import, which is what we got to do.

00:25:56.540 We have to, the Trump administration has a great opportunity now, especially because we have

00:26:01.040 unified government. So we have to right certain wrongs, immediate wrongs. Things like the pro-lifers

00:26:07.320 who were political prisoners under Joe Biden, who demonstrated against wholesale infanticide and

00:26:12.340 they were locked up for it. In some cases, elderly, elderly women. They had to be pardoned. They had to 0.99

00:26:17.160 be released. The political prosecutions of the January 6th, they had to be released. Those are

00:26:22.460 immediate issues. Then there are less immediate, but still urgent issues like political targeting,

00:26:31.200 potential debanking issues. We were talking about earlier in the show. Real threats to people that

00:26:36.940 even if they're not being pursued right now, could be pursued the minute Democrats get power again.

00:26:40.440 We need fixes to those kinds of things. But then, then we need long-term policies for the United

00:26:46.700 States to make us fiscally solvent, to stop the flow of mass migrants, all the rest of them. Then we need 1.00

00:26:52.080 cultural stuff. And I'm just telling you, having, now that the boys are back in town, I've spent a lot of

00:26:58.380 time in DC since January, on the Hill, at the White House, everywhere in between. And this government is

00:27:06.520 moving very efficiently. This is, this is the A-team. They're doing a very, very good job. And they are not

00:27:12.020 disregarding the cultural level. Because I think about that executive order at the end of Trump 1, make

00:27:17.680 federal buildings beautiful again. That was really important. A lot of people are going to say, oh, you

00:27:23.000 know, who cares? It's not a big deal. Just buildings. Just buildings. What are you talking about? That's the,

00:27:28.420 that's, this is the nation's capital. What it looks like tells you about the country. What it looks like will

00:27:35.760 affect the way that the government is run by the people who are living and working in it. If you, the, the

00:27:41.840 great example of this is in New York. When we had old Penn Station, the old, grand, beautiful Beaux-Arts

00:27:47.660 Penn Station. When you walked in, you felt like a king. You felt like a dignified person. And we had

00:27:53.040 dignified work and we had a dignified city. Then they leveled it and they turned it into a rat maze

00:27:57.580 called the New Penn Station in Madison Square Garden. And there you feel like a rat and you act like a rat. 0.93

00:28:02.000 It's filthy. It's dirty. People behave in rodent-like ways. We don't, we want, you think about a 0.99

00:28:08.820 courtroom. When you have a courtroom that looks like just some tiny, brutalist little room, you think you're at

00:28:13.480 the communist commissar's office. You doubt justice. When you're in a big temple of justice, you feel the weight 0.95

00:28:20.020 of justice. You feel like you're, you're, have to live up to something that is much bigger than you. You're going

00:28:25.640 to get a more just government. The good, the true, and the beautiful are transcendentals and they're all related

00:28:30.760 to each other. So anyway, pardon that digression. The Trump administration is working on that kind of thing too.

00:28:36.000 On the cultural front, this little project we're working on together. And then also,

00:28:40.940 I got a little update here on the Make Federal Building's Beautiful Again Act. It's going into

00:28:45.340 effect. It's happening. There are these longer term issues, which I think is terrific. And, and all of

00:28:50.020 that is tied in with a truth social post that Trump made the other day. I meant to get to it yesterday,

00:28:54.220 but we have time today. Trump is called on the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians.

00:29:01.220 That's the old names. Then they changed their names to what? The Washington, what is it called

00:29:05.220 now? I have Professor Jacob sitting in the corner here. The commanders, I think, commanders and the

00:29:10.900 Cleveland Guardians. That's the baseball team. He has demanded that they change their names back.

00:29:17.120 He said, the Washington whatevers, he had the same reaction as me. I don't even remember. Guardians,

00:29:23.060 I kind of remember, the Washington whatevers should immediately change their name back to the

00:29:26.720 Washington Redskins football team. There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians,

00:29:30.840 one of the six original baseball teams with a storied past, are great Indian people in massive

00:29:34.740 numbers want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from

00:29:39.080 them. Times are different now than they were three, four years ago. We are a country of passion and

00:29:44.060 common sense. Owners get it done. This matters. This really matters. And he actually, Trump had a

00:29:51.820 follow-up. He goes, my statement on the Washington Redskins is totally blown up, but only in a very

00:29:58.580 positive way. I may put a restriction on them that if they don't change the name back to the original

00:30:04.680 Washington Redskins and get rid of the ridiculous moniker Washington Commanders, I won't make a deal

00:30:08.860 for them to build a stadium in Washington. Love this. Love this. The Libs are going to say,

00:30:14.100 that's authoritarian. You can't. And the Libertarians too. And the squishy Republicans. That's

00:30:17.720 authoritarian. You're not allowed to interfere in the football team. Why would you do it?

00:30:22.360 Yeah, you can. Yeah, you know why? Because he's the president. And the president's got a lot of

00:30:27.620 power. And that's just the way it is. I think it's a fine thing. But even if you think that's a bad

00:30:32.620 thing, it's a true thing. He's got a lot of power. And he should use that power for good stuff.

00:30:38.440 Because the Libs use the power when they get it for bad stuff. We should use it for good stuff.

00:30:42.020 After they say that the president shouldn't put this pressure on the NFL and the MLB, 0.55

00:30:47.720 then they're going to say, well, it's just silly. It's a distraction.

00:30:52.320 Who cares? It's just words. And I think to myself, have you people learned nothing? Have

00:30:58.180 you learned nothing over the last 60 years? It's just words. The Libs changed all the words. You

00:31:07.680 remember that? The Libs changed all the words. And then they changed our whole culture because of 0.86

00:31:10.900 that. Oh, it's just a word. Okay. So then you don't mind if you're forced to call a man she. 0.97

00:31:18.620 Call a guy named Billy Sally. You don't mind. It's just words, right? Who cares? It's just,

00:31:23.200 you don't mind that now in reporting or in even government documents, you're not allowed to

00:31:28.960 refer to illegal aliens. You have to refer to future undocumented, super duper beautiful, 1.00

00:31:32.480 dreaming Americans, right? You don't mind because it's just words. Oh, or do words matter?

00:31:37.100 Words do matter. Does culture matter? Do sports matter? Do festivals matter? Do games matter?

00:31:44.200 Does popular culture matter? Of course it does. Of course it does.

00:31:49.000 Trump goes way into it. He goes, the owner of the Cleveland baseball team, Matt Dolan,

00:31:53.600 who is very political, has lost three elections in a row because of that ridiculous name change.

00:31:58.760 What he doesn't understand is that if he changed the name back to Cleveland Indians,

00:32:01.560 he might actually win an election. Indians are being treated very unfairly.

00:32:05.260 Look, he says it's the Indian. I'm just on behalf of the Indians here. He's flipping what the Democrats

00:32:08.980 do. They say, it's all these like white Democrats. They say, we have to change the name of the

00:32:13.300 Cleveland Indians because it's offensive to Indians. And they say, hey, Indians, is this

00:32:19.460 offensive to you? And the Indians say, how? How? How would this be offensive? We're not offended at

00:32:24.920 all. We like the name, whatever. Hello, the great spirit loves the name or whatever. So they like it

00:32:31.080 and people pretend to be offended on their behalf. Trump's flipping it. He's saying, no,

00:32:35.060 you changing the name, that's very unfair to the Indians. I love it. This is really good stuff. 0.93

00:32:38.980 Words matter. Culture matters. In some ways, if we get the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland

00:32:48.240 Indians back and we build some nice buildings here in Washington, D.C., and we tell as we head into

00:32:53.480 the bicesquicentennial, the 250th anniversary of America, we tell the real story of America, 0.98

00:32:57.820 not the stupid nonsense that the Marxists and the radical left want to tell us and the multiculturalists 0.96

00:33:02.540 and all the rest of it. And we tell that story and we teach that story to our kids. We indoctrinate 1.00

00:33:07.100 them with that true story that leads to a civic mythology, which every state has to have. If we

00:33:13.520 do that, the effect of that could be much grander even than these nuts and bolts policies, which we're

00:33:19.880 also getting out of the Trump administration. Now, speaking of incentives, PBS and other public

00:33:27.880 broadcasting are all whining because Trump is defunding them. We'll get to that momentarily.

00:33:32.780 We are celebrating a decade of the Daily Wire. That's 10 years of saying the quiet part out loud

00:33:39.020 and building something that actually matters. Something that the libs can't cancel or burn down

00:33:43.540 or we're not slowing down. We are scaling up with new talent, such as Isabel Brown and her new show

00:33:48.860 premiering this fall. New docs like Journey to the UFC, the Joe Pfeiffer story premiering Friday on

00:33:53.380 Daily Wire Plus. Here's the thing. Members get it all first. The drops, the trailers, the truth,

00:33:57.760 uncensored. Plus you get to connect with a community that doesn't think biology is optional. What do you

00:34:03.080 think about that? Celebrate 10 years with us. Go to dailywireplus.com. I want to tell you my favorite

00:34:09.860 comment from yesterday. It's from Lewis Fishman124. It says, husband gets caught looking at this new

00:34:16.480 website, Only Philanthropy. Do you see that? It's the porn website run by the girl from the ATT 0.55

00:34:21.600 commercials. It says, husband gets caught, but honey, she means nothing to me. I'm doing this for

00:34:28.360 philanthropy. That's a good, that's a good excuse. Should we try that excuse out? I don't know.

00:34:35.080 I don't know. Maybe. Now, before I get to public broadcasting, a really important cultural shift.

00:34:42.500 Burning Man. Burning Man is burning through money. Burning Man is this festival in the desert where hippies 1.00

00:34:48.620 go and they all have sex with each other and do a bunch of drugs and worship a burning effigy of a 0.99

00:34:53.140 demon. They've been doing this for 10 years now, more than that. It's all the hippies go. Well, 0.99

00:34:59.520 it's dying. According to a report from Bloomberg, though Burning Man eschews money during the festival,

00:35:06.960 you're not allowed to sell and buy stuff. You just got to all give it to each other, man. You know,

00:35:10.540 like, cool. We're all getting together, man. Despite that, it costs money to put on.

00:35:15.640 And Bloomberg writes, money is something Burning Man Project, the non-profit that runs the event,

00:35:20.520 can't do without. Lately, it's been an increasingly urgent concern. Last year,

00:35:25.920 after Burning Man Project spent about $59 million throwing the Bacchanal, tickets failed to sell out,

00:35:31.200 putting the year's revenue on track to fall $20 million short of expenses. That's about half as

00:35:38.220 short as the budget deficit for the Stephen Colbert show, which just got canceled.

00:35:43.580 Stephen Colbert was losing $40 million a year, but Burning Man, not far behind, $20 million.

00:35:50.020 Its leaders stumbled out of the desert and found themselves staring down a financial cliff.

00:35:54.640 Everything is now at risk. Chief Executive Officer Marion Goodell wrote in a series of online

00:35:58.800 missives sharing the news last fall. Okay. So you have this story. Burning Man, the hippie Bacchanal,

00:36:04.420 good word to use for it, is dying. You're hearing some other news stories. Young people are returning to 1.00

00:36:11.460 church. The national decline in Christian identity has finally leveled off after decades.

00:36:16.380 Mass number of conversions and baptisms, not only in America, but in France and elsewhere.

00:36:22.840 Those two stories are not disconnected. They're actually the same story. Burning Man came up

00:36:30.720 in the age of the new atheists. Burning Man came up in the age when stupid people were religious and 1.00

00:36:39.060 smart people were irreligious. But when you're irreligious, supposedly, you still search for 1.00

00:36:46.220 meaning. You have to find meaning in your life. No one actually wants to just be a bag of flesh.

00:36:51.620 Even if you pretend that you're a bag of flesh, you still think. And you still think about yourself,

00:36:55.720 and you still worry about the eternal problems, and you still dread death, and you still desire love,

00:37:01.000 and you're still left with yourself. It's a line that an alcoholic buddy of mine told me that he

00:37:05.460 learned in AA. Wherever you go, there you are. There you are. So they search for meaning and they

00:37:12.080 have to find it somewhere. So where do they find it? They've rejected Christianity. So what do they do? 0.67

00:37:15.600 They just go to paganism. And the Burning Man Festival is just purely pagan. It would have fit in 0.98

00:37:20.240 perfectly in ancient Rome, or ancient Greece, or ancient Carthage. Carthage was actually more

00:37:25.880 commercial, so that's maybe a little bit of a bad comparison. Or the ancient Near East, or anywhere.

00:37:30.660 You just go, you worship burning effigies, you do a bunch of drugs, and you have sex with a bunch of 0.97

00:37:35.380 people, and you cheat on your wife. That's if you have a wife. Or you cheat on your girlfriend, 0.99

00:37:38.620 and you dress up like a weirdo. And that's all it is. And now that paganism, which filled the whole 0.93

00:37:45.100 of the atheism, is giving way to Christianity. Ever ancient, ever new. It's a good sign. And it's 0.97

00:37:53.020 a sign of the times. Bye-bye Burning Man. All the cool guys. You know where the cool guys are going

00:37:58.280 now? They're not going to the desert to have weird drug-fueled orgies. They're going to church,

00:38:03.200 and probably they're going to Latin Mass. Now, the culture shift is really big. Why is this all

00:38:09.560 happening? David Brooks, who is a kind of conservative, but even more of a centrist

00:38:14.920 columnist at the New York Times. David Brooks has a theory that part of the reason the culture is

00:38:20.220 shifting is not just this organic movement, but because the conservatives are finally doing what

00:38:25.240 they've said they're going to do for decades, and they're defunding the left. When I was a baby

00:38:30.480 pundit in my 20s, working at places like National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page,

00:38:34.860 I recall writing pieces that said defund the left. And in those days, we conservatives were upset

00:38:40.880 about something called the Legal Services Corporation, which we thought was skewed left.

00:38:45.440 And since then, to be fair, the government has contracted with, I think, two-thirds of the

00:38:51.020 nonprofits in this country to provide services. And a lot of those money goes to pretty left-wing

00:38:55.420 organizations. So conservatives had some basis in thinking that a lot of federal spending was going

00:39:00.740 toward one ideological side more than the other. And so that defund the left, which conservatives

00:39:04.840 have talked about since I was a baby pundit many centuries ago, now they're actually doing it.

00:39:12.920 Now they're actually doing it. So it's a little bit of the chicken and the egg. The culture changed

00:39:17.860 enough that we got political power, but the political power then allowed us to change the

00:39:22.360 culture. And so it's a little bit of a chicken and the egg. But one notable change, one big shift is,

00:39:28.280 we used to say we're going to defund the left, and then we didn't do it. And now we're doing it.

00:39:32.640 Now Trump is doing it. Now congressional Republicans are doing it. Why? What changed?

00:39:39.380 Two things happened that allowed that shift. One, national issues overtook local issues.

00:39:46.080 People now focus on national issues. And part of that is driven by economics, by the way. You don't

00:39:52.240 really have local newspapers anymore. The reason you don't have local newspapers is that local mom and

00:39:56.760 pop shops are the ones that advertise in the local newspapers. And local mom and pop shops are being

00:40:01.220 driven out of business by Amazon and Walmart. And so when you can't fund the local newspapers,

00:40:06.120 then everyone just focuses on national political issues. And whereas 50 years ago, your identity as

00:40:10.920 a New Yorker or an Oklahoman, or even forget about that, down to the county level or the town level

00:40:17.240 might have mattered more to you. Today, we're all just kind of, well, either American or we're part of

00:40:23.760 our ideological tribe. So rather than looking for the local news, as opposed to the news from some other

00:40:28.600 county, you're looking for the right-wing news instead of the left-wing news or the left-wing

00:40:32.540 news instead of the right-wing news. But in any case, you're talking about national issues

00:40:35.360 because that's what has a major audience. That's the first part, driven in part by economics.

00:40:41.040 And then the other shift is we stopped being libertarian. We were much more libertarian,

00:40:46.600 especially during the Tea Party era 13 years ago, 15 years ago. We talked like libertarians,

00:40:52.300 even if we didn't always act that way in the 90s and the 80s. And now we're not really libertarian.

00:40:56.960 And libertarianism is broadly considered kind of cringe. No offense to my libertarian friends

00:41:01.220 out there. But classical political philosophy is back. Religion is back. Traditionalism is back.

00:41:11.280 We're back. And so we're going to wield political power. This is really, really good stuff. And it's

00:41:17.580 actually happening. And it's hilarious because the people who are running PBS and NPR and all these

00:41:22.440 liberal stations, they're pleading. They're saying, no, no, we're not biased. What are you talking?

00:41:26.700 You're not biased. No, please give us our money. We don't even need federal money. But please don't

00:41:31.700 take it away from us. But we don't need it. We don't even take federal money, really. But please

00:41:36.540 keep giving it to us. Anyway, I want to tell you more about that because it's very hilarious the way

00:41:41.860 they flail about. But we don't have time. We don't have time. We have to do it tomorrow.

00:41:46.620 In the meantime, I mentioned to you that I'm on the road. There will be no Membrum Segmentum today.

00:41:51.720 I'm sorry. I have to travel because I'm going to the Napa conference in California to speak. It's

00:41:57.980 one of the biggest Catholic conferences anywhere, I think, basically in the world. And I'm going to

00:42:02.100 be giving a speech there and having some cigars. So in any case, I hope to see you out there if

00:42:05.960 you're going to Napa. If not, I'll see you tomorrow. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:42:16.620 Bye.

The Michael Knowles Show - July 23, 2025

Ep. 1777 - The ＂Prince of Darkness,＂ Ozzy Osbourne, Dies at 76

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