Ep. 1814 - The Media Are Lying About Charlie Kirk’s Killer — Here Are the Facts
Episode Stats
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Summary
A mountain of new information has come out about Charlie Kirk s alleged assassin. The new information paints a clear picture of what the suspect is and what he believes. Based on the current evidence and everything that keeps coming in, the suspect s ideology could not be clearer. And yet, this is where things get really weird. Polling shows that people are currently more inclined to believe the opposite.
Transcript
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A mountain of new information has come out about Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin.
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The new information paints a clear picture of what the suspect is and what he believes.
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Based on the current evidence and everything that keeps coming in, the suspect's ideology
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could not possibly be clearer. And yet, this is where things get really weird.
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Polling shows that people are currently more inclined to believe the opposite.
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I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. A lot, a lot to get to. A ton of information has come out over the weekend,
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and it doesn't seem to have made it to the public. And I think that might be intentional because
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the media are clearly trying to hide what he believed and who he was. We'll get to all of
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A-R-M-R-A dot com slash K-N-A-W-L-E-S. I'm walking with my kids in the park on Saturday,
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I think it was, and I've been getting a ton of text messages. Thank you to many, many of you have
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texted me and reached out about this, how you're feeling, how I'm feeling. Obviously, this is a,
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this is a national trauma far beyond someone losing his friend, far beyond someone losing
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a political figure that they admire. This is really next level for a whole host of reasons
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because of what he meant, because he didn't hold political office, because he just wanted to talk
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it out, because his assassination was captured in 4K, because of the reaction, on and on and on.
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We're going to get to all of it. But it's obviously a major, major national trauma.
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So amid all of these texts, I get a text from a liberal family member of mine, who I'm very close
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to, saying, Michael, why are you blaming this on the left when the shooter was a MAGA Republican?
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Totally sincere, totally meant, scolding me for blaming the assassination of Charlie Kirk on the
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left when, in his words, it was a MAGA Republican. And he reads the news. He's a low information voter,
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you would have to say, but he consumes plenty of popular liberal media. And he was convinced
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that the shooter was a MAGA Republican. What are the facts? What do we know now?
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What is not even contested by the liberal media before they put their spin on it?
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The shooter was not a student at the school. Charlie was assassinated at this university in Utah.
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He was not a student. He drove about three hours to get there. He was, however, apparently pretty
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good at school. He did relatively well in high school. He got a scholarship to Utah State.
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He dropped out after one semester and was in a tech apprenticeship program.
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The bullets that he fired and that he had chambered and in his magazine included multiple
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engravings. One was, hey, fascist, exclamation point, catch, all caps, exclamation point.
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Hey, fascist, catch. Seems pretty clear what his ideological motivation is. Next bullet.
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Oh, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao, which is an Italian Antifa song. Antifa,
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the far left terror organization, ostensibly anti-fascist, but goes way, way back and apparently
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has been popular online and in video game culture. But determinedly, without question,
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a song from the radical left. Third engraving, notices, bulges, O-W-O, what's this? This is
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apparently a reference to furry subculture, furry. People have probably heard about it at some point
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over the years. It's this weird sex thing. It's this freaky sex thing where people dress up as
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anthropomorphic animals and do sex stuff. And this also, I guess, comes from an internet meme.
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This also relates to the trans ideology because furries are, according to furscience.com,
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a furry institute, I guess, furries are 25 times more likely than the ordinary population to identify
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as trans. So weird sex stuff, tracks, entirely left-wing. And then, last little bit of information,
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at a recent family dinner, the shooter reportedly spoke to a family member about why he hated Charlie
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Kirk. And the conversation referenced that, quote, Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate. Ben made
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a very good point when he went on Bill Maher. He said, well, there were people who hated Charlie
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on the fringe right as well. It wasn't just people on the left. And that is true. There were people on
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the fringe right who made their entire career out of harassing Charlie Kirk in particular. A lot of us,
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but in particular, Charlie Kirk. And so, it's not totally out of the realm of possibility that a
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shooter could have been on the fringe right until you get all of this evidence. Because, and Ben made
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this point on Bill Maher's show, if it were someone on the fringe right attacking Charlie Kirk, he would
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not have been attacking him because he was, quote, full of hate and spreading hate. It would be the
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opposite. They'd say it's because he's milquetoast. It's because he's too moderate. It's because he doesn't
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go far enough. It's because the kind of attack that was being lobbed at Charlie Kirk by these family
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members, by the shooter and his family members, was one from the left. You take one or two of these
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things in isolation, much less all of this evidence together, it is not ambiguous. The shooter was very
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clearly, all of the evidence says very, very clearly on the left. And we have not yet talked
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about the shooter's tranny live-in boyfriend. The governor of Utah, this is not just some internet
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rumor, this is not just from some sleuth independent journalist, the governor of Utah went on CNN to
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confirm that the shooter has a trans-identifying live-in boyfriend.
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Some outlets are reporting that the suspect lived with a transgender partner.
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Is that accurate? And are investigators looking at this part of his life as a possible motivation?
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Yes, definitely. And yes, I can confirm that. I know that has been reported and that the FBI has
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confirmed that as well, that the roommate was a romantic partner, a male transitioning to female.
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I can say that he has been very cooperative. This partner has been incredibly cooperative,
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had no idea that this was happening, and is working with investigators right now.
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And how is that relevant to the investigation when it comes to the motive? Are you learning that?
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Sure. Well, yeah, that's what we're trying to figure out right now. Again, it's easy to draw
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conclusions from that. And so we've got the shell casings, other forensic evidence that is coming in
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and trying to piece all of those things together. The CNN lady goes on. She says, well, we don't want
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to come to conclusions. We need to be very, very careful. What relevance does that have to the
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conclusions? I don't know. We're trying to figure out if the guy who killed one of the most prominent
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political figures in America had a political motivation. And he wrote these far-left slogans
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all over the bullets. And he was a homosexual dating a man who thinks that he's a woman.
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So, gee, I don't know. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes. Pretty sure he wasn't a Berkian conservative.
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Pretty sure he wasn't a trad cat. If I had a hunch, if I had to take a guess, I would say
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he was on the political left. By the way, the governor of Utah is not even some right-wing,
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rock-ribbed, conservative Republican. He's a very, very moderate Republican. He has, in fact,
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indulged the transgender ideology and the pronoun disputes in the past. He is centrist, quite,
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quite centrist. He's actually quite liberal by Republican standards. And he goes out there and he
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says, look, this is not ambiguous at all. The shooter had a boyfriend. He had a boyfriend.
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And the boyfriend thought that he was a woman. These are people that were steeped in all of the
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most left-wing ideologies. Don't just take the governor's word for it. Here is what a neighbor
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had to say about the shooter and his boyfriend.
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Yeah, he was walking with him. Were they holding hands? Uh, yeah, they were. So, yeah, they, I mean,
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they drove off in his car, the Dodge Challenger. Um, the time you saw them or this week? Um, it was
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about the time I saw them. So, I would say about two weeks ago. And do they, so they look like they were
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couples? Yeah. Deports out there that this individual, the roommate, may have been transitioning?
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Did that correlate with what you saw? Um, yeah, definitely. It was about, about two weeks ago,
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I would say. And they were kissing? Yeah. Do you know, where, where did you see them kissing?
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Just coming out. I was riding with my bike, so I didn't see the whole thing, but, um, yeah,
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they were, I saw them. Okay. It goes on and on and on this interview, but here you have it from
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the neighbor. Yes, I saw them. Yes, they were dating. Yes, they were holding hands. Yes,
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they were kissing. Yes, the guy was a transvestite. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. All of this being confirmed
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on every single front. Furthermore, the Daily Mail confirms that the transgender partner of the
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suspect here, uh, shared a post online to show support for Joe Biden. Apparently, uh, he has an
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account on a website called furaffinity.net because they were furries, another weird deviant sexual
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subculture. Uh, and, uh, he, uh, apparently posted on an online forum and said that, that he supported
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Joe Biden. Furthermore, even beyond the trans identifying partner, we have, we have even clearer
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evidence. We'll get to that momentarily first. Uh, I know a lot of people have a lot of questions,
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a lot of thoughts about this national trauma. Uh, and some people don't know how to submit to the
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mailbag. It's very simple. Go to dailywire.com, go to, to the watch page, go to the Michael Knowles
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show, click submit a mailbag question, write your question, submit the email or record your, your
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voice message. Keep it to 30 seconds, please send it in. We can talk about it on Friday here.
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Once again, once again is governor Cox, NBC news, meet the press asked about the ideology.
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See, is there any ambiguity in this answer? Well, look, I I've, I've talked to president
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Trump, but president Trump is angry and he has every right to be angry. A lot of Americans are
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very angry right now. And there clearly was a leftist ideology with, uh, with, with this,
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uh, this assassin. And so I, I, I totally understand that anger. Furthermore, he goes on to tell the
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wall street journal. It's very clear to us and to the investigators that this was a person who
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was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology. Okay. I could go on and on and on. We don't have
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time. I want to get to the bigger point. How is it the case that my relative could write to me and
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say, Michael, stop blaming the left. This, this shooter was a MAGA Republican. Cause I know he's
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not the only one because I've seen the data on this. We'll get to that momentarily. I've heard
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from you. I've seen the posts on social media. How is it given all of that evidence, all of the
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evidence points to the clear, if he had held a giant billboard saying, I am an ideologically
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consistent leftist while he committed his crime, it could not be clearer. How is it that people could
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be confused because the liberal media are lying about it? Here's what CNN had to say. CNN,
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the messages on the bullet casings also included a mix of memes and allusions to video games,
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suggesting a deep immersion in an irony soaked online world where meanings can be difficult to
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precisely decipher. Catch this fascist. Is that difficult to decipher? You sing an Antifa song,
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Antifa, the most prominent left-wing terror organization in the country. Is that difficult
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to decipher? He's dating a tranny. Is that difficult to decipher? Is any of this difficult
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to decipher? The person that he's dating posts that he supports the left-wing presidential candidate.
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Is that difficult to decipher? He had a conversation with his family shortly before the shooting in which
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he talked about how much he hated Charlie Kirk from, from a left-wing perspective. Is that difficult?
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I don't find any of that difficult to decipher. I do the, it's not just this. It's not just CNN,
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the Guardian. The Guardian interviews the shooter's grandmother and uses this as evidence
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that the shooter not only was not on the left, but might in fact even be on the right.
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The grandmother's name, Debbie. My son, his dad is a Republican for Trump, Debbie told the outlet.
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Most of my family members are Republican. I don't know any single one who's a Democrat. I'm just so
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confused. Still, the Guardian goes on. She firmly rejects the idea that her grandson could be involved,
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claiming she has never seen him handle a gun, let alone possess one. I don't think he ever shot a gun
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to tell you the truth, she said. He doesn't hunt. He's never liked anything like that. I know he
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doesn't own any guns. There you go. There's proof positive. Not only was the shooter not a Democrat,
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not only was he not on the left, he was a Republican. Not only was he a Republican, he didn't even commit
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the crime. Never mind all of the evidence. Never mind the fact that his father reportedly turned him
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in after his father discovered that he had committed the crime, allegedly. Never mind any of that.
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No, no, no. The Guardian says, no, no, no. He was on the right, and he didn't do it anyway.
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And what's the evidence? The evidence, I kid you not, is Granny can't believe her precious little
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grandson would do something like that. Nobody's grandmother. No criminal who's ever lived has a
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grandmother who thinks that he could have done that. The evidence is Granny really loves her grandson.
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son. But that's the sort of thing people are reading. Finally, New York Times. This one to me
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is the piece de resistance. The police found messages after Kirk's killing. What they mean is
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unclear. The messages relied on an enigmatic coded communication style used by the habitually
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online. It's just so unclear. Catch this fascist, Italian Antifa song, weird sex stuff. It's totally
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unclear. It's totally unclear. It's totally unclear. Is it unclear? Three professional writers
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contributed to this article. Not one of them apparently is literate. I think it would be a
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good idea for the New York Times, the gray lady, the paper of record to consider hiring writers who
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are literate. Because listen, I don't know. I'm not some expert. I don't regularly write for fancy
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prestige publications, but I can read catch this fascist. I can read the online postings of this
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guy or of his transgender identifying partner. I can, are you confused? Is this unclear to you?
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And here's the evidence, by the way, here's the evidence from the New York Times.
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This is the best they could come up with. He was registered to vote, but was not affiliated with a
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political party and appeared to have never voted in an election. His parents are both registered
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Republicans. And I think that's where it comes from. That's the closest thing that these guys can
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arrive at is they'll say, well, his family was Republican. Oh yeah. Yeah. Radical leftists have
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never come from Republican families, right? They basically always come from Republican families
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because leftism is just another way to say, screw you, dad. I'm not even just making that as a joke.
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That is a fact. Think about the most radical left-wing people you've ever met. I bet more
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times than not, those people come from relatively conservative families, at least in my experience,
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they do. Because that kind of politics in itself is an act of rebellion. But even put that aside for
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a second, just read what the suspect wrote in his own words on the bullets everywhere else.
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Can the New York Times be this stupid? I refuse to believe that. I refuse to believe that.
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The purpose here is to obscure. And this is ironic because the ostensible purpose of, excuse me,
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I don't know why I'm losing my voice. I don't know. It's been a long week, folks. I don't know.
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Maybe other people are losing their voices too. But the ostensible purpose of the news media
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is to inform people. It's to tell people the truth, to make clear what is happening in our world.
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And the irony is the obvious purpose of the New York Times in this article and of CNN and of the
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Guardian and of all the rest of these outlets is to obscure. What they are obviously trying to do
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is exactly the opposite of what journalism is for. They are trying to make sure you don't get to the
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truth, to make sure you don't have a clear picture of what's happened. They're trying to obscure
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everything because all of the evidence shows he was on the extreme left. And the misinformation is
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working. It's not just my family member. It's not just some of your family members or some of your
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friends who think that this person, the shooter, was on the right or was a MAGA Republican or something.
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There was a survey just came out from YouGov, just conducted yesterday, I think it was,
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2,355 U.S. adults. A plurality. When they had to choose one political party or the other,
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the plurality think he's a Republican. 21% say that the shooter was a Democrat. 24% say that the
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shooter was a Republican. And then further, 15% say that he was neither, which is technically,
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though not really the correct answer. But he wasn't technically affiliated with any political
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party. But if we're speaking of the political parties as broad political coalitions, the Democrat
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being the left coalition, the Republican being the right coalition, even if this guy wasn't actually
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showing up to vote as half of Americans don't show up to vote, he clearly aligned entirely with
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the Democrats, not at all with the Republicans. 40% are unsure. The misinformation works.
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People are more likely to believe that the shooter was a Republican than that he was a Democrat.
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And what YouGov has also shown is that the left is much more likely to support political violence.
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The left is two and a half times as likely to defend political violence as the right is.
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So now you've got this bizarre reaction from the left. And this, I think, is a big reason why
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Charlie's assassination has become such a national trauma for people. It's not even just the
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assassination itself, though that was bad enough. That's traumatic enough. It's the realization that
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people seem impervious to the truth. Many people refuse to see the truth as it is. And people have
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this gut reaction. A lot of the country has this gut reaction to justify it, to say this kind of
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political violence is justified, that a guy who only ever wanted to talk it out could be murdered
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for expressing milquetoast opinions, centrist opinions, totally normal, common sense opinions.
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And half the country would defend it. They would say, no, they would say, we, our side would not
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have committed that political violence, but we would be justified to do so. That's what you're seeing
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from the polls. That's what you're seeing play out on social media. That's what you're seeing even
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from not just the fringes, but the elite people on the left. We'll get to that in one second.
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First, though, my favorite comment last week is from Emiliam, 7898. Turning point, never a more
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prophetic name of an organization by such a fearless leader. May his memory always be a blessing.
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Turning point, absolutely. There's an expression, nomen est omen. The name, the name is an omen and a
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harbinger of things to come. Turning point very much seems to be that way. The evidence that the
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shooter is on the left is overwhelming and dispositive. Full stop, that's done. So now, the left, unable to
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disprove it, struggling to obscure it, though having a reasonable degree of success, is going to move on
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to its next objective, which is to say that it doesn't matter. The left may have succeeded thus far at
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confusing people about what the shooter really believed, but the truth is going to come out.
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There's going to be a trial. The evidence will be presented. They're not going to be able to keep
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a lid on the truth forever. So, they have to move on to their next strategy, which is to say, well,
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look, his political ideology does not really matter. Here, you have some left-wing analysts speaking to
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There's no problem. I don't know who did this, and I sure hope that it was not from the left. That would
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be better. But it doesn't matter, because the first Trump assassination also was not from the left.
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It was just a guy who was going to also had Biden on his target list.
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And it's been made in the ideology of this far right that you're seeing online.
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It's part of a line, you know, Brett Kavanaugh, Trump assassination, now Charlie Kirk.
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It doesn't matter that it wasn't from the left because that part has been erased in
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And so, you know, I hope this wasn't from the left for all sorts of good reasons, but
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I'm not sure it'll make that much of a difference.
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Is it because you say that not as a I think I'm hearing you right that you say that not
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as a person who is, oh, well, I'm from the left and I don't want it to be one of my people.
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You're saying it as it's better to contain it on one side.
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Like if it exists on one side, it's easier to contain than if you do actually have now
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a burgeoning problem on the left where you're getting into a Hatfields versus McCoy.
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I mean, it's just it's just about the momentum of violence, right?
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She says, well, look, actually, that the man who nearly murdered Donald Trump and only
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did not succeed, only blew off part of his ear because at the very last second, improbably,
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Well, that guy actually, he wasn't on the left.
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Mind you, his only political donation he ever made was to act blue, was to the left, was to
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Mind you, he tried to blow the head off the president.
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All the political violence comes from the right.
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And this this shooter, he, you know, I really hope he wasn't from the left, but, you know,
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You're saying it'd be better if it's not on the left, not just because you don't want
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blood on your hands, but no, because you think it's better to contain it to one side and
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all of the violence is on the right as it is now.
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Forget about Antifa, the most prominent and active domestic terrorist organization in the country,
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And forget about the BLM, which committed political violence against the right for for
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eight months, burned cities down, killed dozens of people.
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Where the left has not only shouted down right wing speakers, but attacked them not only in
00:25:48.140
America, though largely in America, but even overseas.
00:25:55.800
Despite all, or rather, the violence has to come from the right.
00:26:03.700
Then, because the evidence obviously points to the political violence being a left wing
00:26:10.380
The way that they get out of that is they cook the books.
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Seth Moulton, the Democrat congressman, was saying that the violence comes from the right.
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75% of it comes from the right, not from the left.
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And then I just went back through the most prominent examples of left wing political
00:26:26.020
violence, including one that was against me from Antifa just a couple of years ago.
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And I realized that the authorities just didn't classify it as left wing political violence.
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So the way that they can even come to those statistics is by just lying and by covering up
00:26:54.420
And this is the part that is really weighing heavily on a lot of people right now, which
00:27:02.880
It doesn't really matter what the ideological motivations are.
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And that's true, but it's true in a way that she doesn't realize.
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Even if it came out that this shooter were on the right, which at this point, given this
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evidence, it cannot, it is proven he is of the left in like every way that you can possibly
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But even if it were the case that it were somehow all irony, it were all just a big ruse and
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he's actually a bow tie, Tweety, Mitt Romney voting Republican or something, even if that
00:27:41.840
However, because of the reaction from the left, because the left, because the normie left has
00:27:51.040
shrugged its shoulders at or attempted to justify or outright celebrated Charlie Kirk's assassination.
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The New York Times, no less prestigious a platform than the New York Times,
00:29:24.240
but as a fellow star of a new political media class,
00:29:32.100
I don't see any reason to read the New York Times these days.
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To put the fact that the New York Times would interview Hassan Piker
00:29:41.620
here's Hassan Piker talking about political violence.
00:29:49.140
Let the streets soak in their red capitalist bloods.
00:29:56.680
So, it's easy enough to listen to that guy and say,
00:30:10.480
Second of all, he's being lifted up in the New York Times
00:30:14.580
as one of the voices to listen to in the wake of this assassination.
00:30:18.420
I could have said a couple of years ago that this guy was fringe.
00:30:34.840
Let the streets soak in their red capitalist bloods, dude.
00:30:43.900
He's not talking about geopolitical adversaries.
00:30:55.960
He's saying that the streets should be soaked red in your blood.
00:31:03.240
In the blood of people who support relatively open markets and private property.
00:31:11.580
And that guy, I would have called him fringe, of course.
00:31:15.740
But now you can't really call him fringe left because he's being exalted by the New York
00:31:20.100
Times, which is the most prestigious outlet on the entire left.
00:31:28.100
Let's turn to another longstanding left-wing publication, The Nation.
00:31:37.600
The white Christian nationalist provocateur wasn't a promoter of civil discourse.
00:31:43.080
He preached hate, bigotry, and division, just dancing on Charlie's grave.
00:31:46.440
A man who was murdered for politely advancing, centrist, moderate Republican ideas.
00:31:54.200
And speaking in a genteel and generous way with his opponents on college campuses.
00:32:00.160
The justifications for Charlie's assassination, the celebrations in some cases, are not just coming
00:32:09.860
I'm sure there would be some weirdo on the right if a left-winger got killed.
00:32:12.680
There would be some fringe weirdo who would be shunned and condemned by everyone else on the right.
00:32:19.180
In this case, though, it's coming from the elite.
00:32:26.740
The president of the Oxford Union, Charlie, was invited to speak at the Oxford Union.
00:32:32.520
I got an invite to speak at the Oxford Union, not that long ago.
00:32:40.600
It's a formal debate society where you're supposed to have civilized people following Robert's
00:32:46.320
Charlie did a great, great job at the Oxford Union.
00:32:49.140
Here is what the president of the Oxford Union had to say.
00:33:03.980
Not to help him and protect him as he was shot, but celebrating the fact.
00:33:14.440
Lest there be any confusion, here is George Abarananyi describing his views of political
00:33:22.180
violence in extreme detail at the Oxford Union.
00:33:25.720
To effectively create change in the world we desire.
00:33:30.160
And Sideprop will argue that at times there is simply nothing else that can be required
00:33:35.900
And this is a view I wholeheartedly agree with.
00:33:38.340
The view that some institutions are too broken, too regressive, too oppressive to be reformed.
00:33:47.220
They must and they should be taken down by any means necessary.
00:33:54.060
That's just, I just, his message is so unclear.
00:33:56.420
The president of the Oxford Union, he, when he said that he wholeheartedly supports political
00:34:02.740
violence against people on the right, I just don't know what he could possibly mean.
00:34:09.180
This is jarring for a lot of people because of two things.
00:34:17.780
I know it's absurd that he walks into the Oxford Union wearing a do-rag.
00:34:24.020
It's absurd that he is tolerated in polite society.
00:34:29.060
He's in there wearing something vaguely resembling a tuxedo.
00:34:34.700
And he's defending calls for violence against ordinary right-wingers.
00:34:41.740
And then he's celebrating when Charlie Kirk, the most mainstream right-wing talker and debater
00:34:54.080
The second thing that is really jarring for a lot of people is this guy knew Charlie Kirk
00:34:59.740
because this guy showed up to debate Charlie wearing a sweatsuit or something.
00:35:06.580
Again, just tells you a lot about our institutions.
00:35:10.500
Now, this was, I don't think, at the Oxford, maybe this was at the Cambridge Union.
00:35:19.220
And this is what's really striking a lot of people.
00:35:23.520
Charlie, look, obviously a lot of us knew Charlie and a lot of us were friends with Charlie.
00:35:29.920
But some of us have known him for many, many years.
00:35:32.120
And so you think, all right, man, this has been really tough on people because,
00:35:49.200
The fact that people we know, family members, friends, people we grew up with, people we work with,
00:36:03.560
Do not merely even call us hyperbolic terms like Nazis and Hitler or whatever.
00:36:31.420
And I don't even think that they realize what they've done.
00:36:44.060
I remember years and years ago, Ann Coulter came to campus.
00:36:49.660
And my friends were going off, some of my friends were going off about how much they hated Ann Coulter
00:36:53.000
and how she was evil and calling her all sorts of terrible names.
00:36:54.900
And I said, you know, there's really not much difference between me and Ann Coulter.
00:36:57.880
They said, no, no, Michael, that's not, it's totally ridiculous.
00:36:59.800
I said, no, we kind of basically believe the same things.
00:37:02.660
The only difference is she's famous and I'm not famous.
00:37:10.400
And that's really, especially when you're talking about Charlie Kirk, who was much more moderate than Ann,
00:37:15.360
who was much more measured and centrist than Ann, or than really anybody on the right.
00:37:20.240
Because, because then the only answer that the left can have, your friends, your family, and your coworkers is,
00:37:28.260
no, no, no, we're happy that this guy got murdered, but we, we wouldn't want you to be murdered.
00:37:35.340
I mean, yeah, we're happy he got murdered because of his beliefs, but no, there's a big difference between you and him.
00:37:46.780
The only difference between Charlie Kirk and half this country is he had the guts to say it out loud.
00:37:54.660
To state his moderate, normal, common sense views out loud.
00:38:02.740
And implicit in the broad, public, elite attempt to justify and explain away and shrug off and even celebrate his murder.
00:38:22.440
And that is 60% of the national trauma around Charlie Kirk's death.
00:38:28.800
The realization, the undeniable, I'm sorry to say, realization.
00:38:32.700
I try to give every grace I possibly can to the other side.
00:38:35.580
I try to see things from the other side's point of view.
00:38:47.360
It's just the New York times and it's CNN and it's the nation and it's the Reuters.
00:39:21.440
And it's, and it is what's happening right now.
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It is not possible to have an open marketplace of ideas when people shoot up the marketplace.
00:40:59.660
I made this point on the show on Thursday or Friday.
00:41:03.540
I posted a column to X about this that went pretty viral.
00:41:11.620
This is a pretty moderate opinion that has been the standard understanding of politics for a very, very long time.
00:41:22.100
Maybe people are too ideological in their thinking.
00:41:31.420
America has a great, wonderful tradition of that.
00:41:34.820
And we sometimes use this phrase, the marketplace of ideas, to describe it.
00:41:42.540
Because marketplaces are great, and there's wonderful exchange, and it can lead to flourishing and mutual enrichment.
00:41:58.140
You need to have some security in the marketplace.
00:42:00.100
You need to have rules that regulate the commerce in the marketplace.
00:42:02.940
When people undermine all of that, you cannot have a marketplace.
00:42:10.240
You cannot have, to use a phrase from G.K. Chesterton, the thought that stops thought.
00:42:16.240
We have a wonderfully open and healthy society in America, at least in principle.
00:42:23.500
But society is circumscribed by things like the Constitution, by the ideas articulated in the Declaration of Independence, by morality and religion, as the framers told us explicitly and repeatedly.
00:42:35.800
That the Constitution does not work to govern an immoral and many other such statements.
00:42:43.240
So, yes, we have a relatively open society, but it can only remain relatively open within certain constraints.
00:42:53.340
If you undermine those constraints, your society commits suicide.
00:42:57.220
That's what we're seeing here in the marketplace of ideas.
00:43:00.400
If you enter into the marketplace of ideas and say, we're going to shoot all of you if you disagree with me, you have not expanded the marketplace of ideas.
00:43:08.500
You have not contributed to the marketplace of ideas.
00:43:12.280
So, even if you are a defender of the free marketplace of ideas, it is a fundamentally incoherent view to say that we should tolerate this kind of stuff.
00:43:22.520
And just as a purely practical political matter, we cannot continue as a country if half the country openly wants to murder the other half and openly celebrates the murder of the other half merely for expressing opinions, especially for expressing very moderate and centrist opinions.
00:43:43.640
You will not have the social trust that is requisite to have a country.
00:43:54.800
I cannot go into a restaurant if I believe that the kitchen staff with the crazy colored hair and all the weird stuff and the crazy flags and everything.
00:44:05.660
If I believe that that person in the kitchen is going to poison my food because half the country wants to murder me for holding normal ideas, we can't have restaurants.
00:44:18.460
If I believe that if I believe that I go into a workplace and my coworker is salivating at the prospect of murdering everyone to the right of Hillary Clinton and celebrating that and calling for that and threatening that, then we can't have workplaces.
00:44:37.600
We can't have a country under those conditions, much less a free marketplace of ideas.
00:44:44.560
So, what must be done first is not, as some people are calling, merely to redouble our devotion to the free marketplace of ideas.
00:44:55.300
Maybe you can get to that eventually if you really want to.
00:44:57.840
But what must be done now is to reassert order.
00:45:13.320
You cannot simultaneously be free and ignorant.
00:45:16.640
You cannot simultaneously be free and undisciplined.
00:45:26.040
Not only the founders and the framers, but every even semi-reasonable person.
00:45:38.620
There need to be consequences for undermining the whole system.
00:45:45.880
People who go out and say that ordinary, normal conservatives should be murdered wholesale and the streets should soak in their blood.
00:45:54.980
Those people need to be ostracized from society.
00:45:58.440
They should be corrected first in charity and graciousness.
00:46:02.540
If they refuse to behave as they ought in the most basic ways that civilized people have to behave.
00:46:11.140
If they persist in particularly antisocial behaviors.
00:46:14.700
If they persist in particularly suicidal ideologies.
00:46:24.780
They should not be welcome into polite society.
00:46:27.140
And in some cases, they should lose their jobs.
00:46:30.380
We didn't even get to all of the consequences that we're already beginning to see.
00:46:38.780
There are companies who are firing people for this.
00:46:44.540
And with any political reform, I think one should always err on the side of caution.
00:46:51.540
But I think a good place to start would be with people who are openly celebrating the murder of an innocent man whose only offense was expressing his opinion.
00:47:03.880
Microsoft has said comments celebrating violence against anyone are unacceptable and do not align with our values.
00:47:16.160
We've separated from the individual who was celebrating the murder.
00:47:22.700
Delta Airlines has suspended employees over these kinds of social media posts.
00:47:29.180
And I don't want people to be confused by this.
00:47:33.240
And I don't want them to be led astray by liberal ideologues, by the squishes.
00:47:41.440
Ask yourself, what is the purpose of the open marketplace of ideas?
00:47:47.640
The people who promoted this very idea going back to the Enlightenment, going back to the early days of liberalism, going back to writers like John Milton and John Locke.
00:47:57.200
They tell you the purpose of the open marketplace of ideas is to arrive at the truth.
00:48:04.980
The argument for the open marketplace of ideas is not just to amuse ourselves.
00:48:13.640
The argument, and I'm not weighing in at all on whether this argument is convincing.
00:48:17.900
I'm just saying the argument is that by having more and more voices in the public square, eventually the good ideas are going to win out over the bad ideas.
00:48:24.700
And so then we're going to arrive at the truth.
00:48:28.020
The means by which this occurs in the open marketplace of ideas is through debate.
00:48:36.480
If you tolerate or even celebrate murder for debate, then you have fundamentally undermined the entire open marketplace of ideas.
00:48:51.120
This is what Chesterton means by the thought that stops thought.
00:48:54.140
This is what the squishes and the very shallow people, even on the putative right, just don't seem to understand.
00:49:02.060
The whole idea of the open marketplace of ideas is that we arrive at the truth through debate.
00:49:08.940
If you tolerate celebrating murder for debate, you've undermined the whole thing.
00:49:13.620
You haven't expanded the, you've committed ideological suicide.
00:49:21.120
But we need, these companies are doing a very good job by firing these people.
00:49:26.780
In certain cases, in teachers, for instance, there was a teacher in Canada who showed the assassination video in 4K to a classroom of 10 and 11 year olds.
00:49:41.260
Law enforcement, President Trump, through Stephen Miller, very ably saying that the government will go after left-wing terror organizations.
00:50:05.980
They need to be vigorously suppressed and run out of society.
00:50:09.400
Not to undermine our liberty, as some ridiculous people are suggesting.
00:50:14.360
But in order to preserve our liberty, the only way that you can possibly preserve liberty, the only way that you can possibly preserve a healthy exchange of ideas, the only way that you can possibly preserve a flourishing society.
00:50:26.060
is by suppressing the elements that undermine anti-social, suicidal.
00:50:36.560
We just don't have time, so we'll have to get to more tomorrow.
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Today is Music Monday, and very fittingly, Tom McDonald has a song dedicated to Charlie.
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