The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1818 - The Whole Jimmy Kimmel Firing Saga Is A Lie

00:00:00.000 The left is rallying around Jimmy Kimmel, who was taken off air for telling an egregious and

00:00:05.300 malicious lie about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They're rallying around him as some kind

00:00:11.040 of free speech martyr. Not Charlie. Not Charlie, who is a free speech martyr. No, no, no. Jimmy

00:00:17.280 Kimmel, who was suspended for lying. But not only was Jimmy Kimmel suspended over a lie,

00:00:23.880 it turns out the whole story about his suspension is a lie, too. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the

00:00:30.600 Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. The mayor of Chicago

00:00:52.840 has a plan to tamp down violence, to reform criminal justice. His plan is to try to get

00:01:01.360 rid of the jails. Jails are a sickness, he says, that don't make anyone safer. We'll get to that.

00:01:07.700 We'll examine that in light of modern evidence, all the way back to ancient evidence. First,

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00:01:43.800 Jimmy Kimmel lost his job because Trump's FCC wielded authoritarian power to pressure the company

00:01:57.200 to fire him. That's the official story from the establishment media, which lies.

00:02:03.540 What actually happened? We got the inside scoop, not even from a right-wing outlet. It's from

00:02:09.700 The Hollywood Reporter, okay? It's a trade publication for left-wing Hollywood.

00:02:14.180 How Jimmy Kimmel's suspension went down. Sponsor panic, a defiant host, and a painful call.

00:02:22.880 Subheader, Disney's Bob Iger and Dana Walden wanted to know how Kimmel was going to address

00:02:27.280 the situation. What's the situation? That Jimmy Kimmel went on air right after Charlie Kirk was

00:02:31.380 murdered by a radical leftist dating a trans furry who wrote Antifa slogans on his bullets.

00:02:40.120 He went on air right after that and said that the murderer was actually on the same side

00:02:45.860 ideologically as Charlie, that the murderer was a MAGA supporter.

00:02:51.860 Malicious, egregious, preposterous lie. So how was Kimmel going to handle the situation? According

00:02:57.800 to The Hollywood Reporter, sources say he planned to defend what he said rather than kowtowing to the

00:03:03.940 outrage. Disney thought that would fan the flames. There was much more pressure, according to Hollywood

00:03:11.920 Reporter, leading up to the suspension than was previously reported. It's a good report. You should

00:03:18.020 all read it. Points to the social media SHIT storm that followed Jimmy Kimmel's lie. But 0.99

00:03:27.840 one thing it also points out is that this suspension did not come primarily from the FCC.

00:03:37.600 The FCC, Brendan Carr, chairman of the FCC, came out and he said, look, we need to make sure that the

00:03:44.460 networks are abiding by their responsibilities and their obligations because the news networks

00:03:48.920 are licensed by the government. They don't have some kind of right to public airwaves. They don't

00:03:53.700 have private ownership of public airwaves. They're public. These are public airwaves. And so

00:03:57.560 they can say what they want broadly, but they can't tell malicious lies. That then triggers the

00:04:07.260 government's legitimate oversight responsibility, as we saw in the case of Jimmy Kimmel.

00:04:13.240 Disney was already freaking out. Trump has pointed out that Kimmel's ratings could be a little spotty

00:04:19.040 too, and that he's not been as talented as he used to be, and he's kind of weak in recent years.

00:04:23.540 But that's all beside the point. It's not about the joke, if there was a joke in that monologue.

00:04:28.480 It's about the lie. That's what triggers it. The sponsors, the corporation, Bob Iger, the audience,

00:04:38.580 social media, all had turned on Kimmel. The FCC signaled that it might engage in its legally required

00:04:47.840 oversight of the news networks. That's why the FCC exists. But Kimmel's suspension had relatively

00:04:55.680 little to do with that. Kimmel's suspension came because of what he did and the natural consequences

00:05:02.560 that come from companies and audiences and advertisers, all those normal things.

00:05:08.380 Kimmel has no one to blame but himself. Nevertheless, nevertheless, the left has kept up this kind of

00:05:16.540 rhetoric referring to the Trump administration even in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder as

00:05:21.940 constituting a fascist takeover. Here's Rashida Tlaib, one of the squad in Congress.

00:05:28.140 And I think it's really important we need to stand up against this.

00:05:32.340 Fascist takeover, that's not a bad word. It's a fact. And here in D.C. and across the country, 0.69

00:05:38.660 it is so incredibly important, Mr. Chair, that this committee does not allow rhetoric

00:05:44.360 that defames or paints Washington, D.C. in a way that you all haven't really truly seen.

00:05:52.960 You're just reading it. No, you're just reading it or something off of some.

00:05:56.260 Well, the gentleman.

00:05:58.160 She said that eight days after Charlie Kirk's assassination.

00:06:01.880 Eight days. And she said, it's unbelievable how little function there is in between her ears,

00:06:09.680 because she says on the one hand that the Trump administration constitutes a fascist takeover.

00:06:16.820 And then in the very same breath, she says, and this committee will not allow for defamation.

00:06:21.180 We will not allow. And she kind of catches herself. She goes, I mean, well,

00:06:25.380 it won't allow the Trump to defame. Anyway, moving on. I'm glad she said this because it shows you

00:06:34.120 something that I think a lot of us have inferred since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which is

00:06:39.700 that the left wants to murder us broadly. The left would be fine with our murder. In some cases,

00:06:46.760 they would celebrate it. What's my evidence of that? The widespread minimization and mockery

00:06:54.720 and outright celebration of Charlie Kirk's assassination from cable news, from MSNBC,

00:07:01.300 from the kinds of left-wing streamers that have been platformed, popular left-wing streamers that

00:07:06.820 have been platformed in establishment outlets, people like Stephen Bonnell, who called for Republicans

00:07:10.780 to fear for their lives when they got to public events, a man who should be prosecuted for that,

00:07:15.740 Hassan Piker, very popular left-wing streamer who has called for the streets to soak in the blood

00:07:20.760 of capitalists, who has suggested the assassination of a Republican senator, Tom Cotton.

00:07:27.900 These guys are the faces of it. But all the way down to your co-workers that you see on Facebook,

00:07:34.340 the people you went to school with who are posting on Facebook that it's fine that Charlie Kirk was

00:07:38.640 murdered, or further, that it's actually a good thing. And now we have Rashida Tlaib. Eight days later,

00:07:43.880 what does she say? She says that Trump is a fascist. What is the import of that statement? 0.99

00:07:53.740 What does it mean when the left calls right-wingers fascists or Nazis? For a long time,

00:08:00.680 conservatives thought that what that meant was these people are hysterical. These people are

00:08:06.340 hyperbolic. These people are so silly, they don't even know what fascism and Nazism really mean. 1.00

00:08:12.020 Oh, those silly, crazy leftists. That's not the import of that kind of statement. 1.00

00:08:19.040 We now can see in the wake of the assassination of Charlie and in the wake of the reaction to the

00:08:26.260 assassination of Charlie, that the political significance of the left calling the right

00:08:30.560 fascist or Nazi is to justify our murder. Because in our culture now, if you walked up to someone and

00:08:39.140 said, hey, Hitler is on the rise, the implication is you should go kill that person. To compare someone 0.99

00:08:48.260 to Hitler is to say that any means it would be acceptable to take that person out of society, 1.00

00:08:53.640 go kill that person. And in the case of the events of last week, that's exactly what happened.

00:09:01.360 One of the bullets said, hey, fascist catch. So when Rashida Tlaib says the Trump administration,

00:09:09.560 they are fascists and they constitute a takeover of our government, what she is saying, 0.89

00:09:15.380 especially in the context of last week's assassination, is murder President Trump. 0.95

00:09:20.260 Now, of course, the left had already been doing that at the highest levels. Joe Biden launched his

00:09:24.160 own presidential campaign on the lie, also egregious lie, that Trump had called neo-Nazis

00:09:29.820 fine people at Charlottesville, and that Trump posed an existential threat to democracy. If you say

00:09:34.760 that someone poses an existential threat to you, you are justifying the killing of that person.

00:09:41.220 And of course, we saw in the wake of President Trump's near assassination, many people, including

00:09:45.700 that streamer that I just mentioned, Stephen Bunnell, excusing it or encouraging it.

00:09:50.720 Eight days after Kirk's murder, a Democrat member of Congress comes out and effectively says,

00:09:56.900 you should murder the whole Trump government. And so we can't tolerate this. The firings need to

00:10:02.420 continue. The social stigma and ostracism needs to continue. Rashida Tlaib, if she could be thrown out 1.00

00:10:08.360 of Congress, if the Republicans could muster the votes, they should do that. If they could deport her,

00:10:12.540 they should do that too. We cannot tolerate this kind of behavior in society. And that's not from a

00:10:20.180 place of vengeance. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, and I will repay. That's not even merely from

00:10:25.080 a place of retribution, though retribution is important, and it's the primary object of the

00:10:29.940 justice system. That comes from even a defense of the free marketplace of ideas in the broader public

00:10:38.320 square, and stable government, and government by the people, and a constitutional system. You cannot

00:10:44.580 have any of those things if people are threatening violence when you engage with them. You can't have

00:10:52.540 it. You cannot have a market, as I've been saying now for almost a week, you cannot have a marketplace

00:10:58.580 of ideas or anything else if certain actors keep coming in and shooting up the marketplace.

00:11:04.000 In order to defend and even expand the marketplace, you have to exclude those actors,

00:11:09.500 and you have to exclude those suicidal ideas. So the consequences need to keep up. The firings need

00:11:16.520 to keep up. There's some good news on that front. We'll get to that in one second. First, I want to

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00:12:44.340 at goodranchers.com. Welcome to the table. Final point on this, one of these left-wing streamers.

00:12:51.360 I talked about Hassan Piker earlier. This one, Stephen Bonnell, relatively popular, went on Piers

00:12:57.500 Morgan's show, not only to call for the existential fear of conservatives in the public square, to say

00:13:05.360 that they need to fear for their lives so that they shut up, so that if they didn't want to be murdered,

00:13:10.540 then they shouldn't have elected Donald Trump, as he has previously said. But also now, just when you

00:13:16.300 think this person has reached the depths of degradation in his extraordinarily deviant and

00:13:22.140 degenerate life, he goes on to mock Charlie Kirk's widow for crying over her husband.

00:13:31.320 I don't understand you, Destiny. You have so much hatred in your heart.

00:13:35.280 It's such a simple thing. If you're going to weaponize somebody's grief against the other party,

00:13:40.520 then of course people have a right to fight back against it. I think that she has every right to

00:13:44.060 grieve in whatever way she wants. But when that grief is going to be weaponized to do recruitment,

00:13:48.640 political recruitment, and further radicalization of the other side, then of course you not only have

00:13:53.000 the ability to mock it, I think you have the obligation to mock it. It's insane.

00:13:58.200 Stephen Bonnell, a very prominent young left-wing broadcaster, says you have not only the right,

00:14:04.320 but the responsibility to mock Charlie Kirk's widow. Why? Because she spoke in public. 0.98

00:14:12.580 The same reason that they're excusing or celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk.

00:14:18.660 He says, oh, she has every right to be sad, but the moment she is sad in public,

00:14:22.460 then we have to mock her. Oh, Charlie Kirk and the other conservatives,

00:14:26.580 they have every right to their opinions, but the moment that they state their opinions in public, 0.99

00:14:29.920 we have to murder them.

00:14:33.700 It's perfectly fine for them to feel things, but if that leads to any effect in public whatsoever, 0.98

00:14:38.760 as he says, her speaking will lead to recruitment because it will generate sympathy and empathy,

00:14:45.220 and it will be logical, and it will attract people. And we can't have that.

00:14:52.280 Which is also part of the reason they murdered Charlie Kirk. It's not just that they murdered

00:14:56.040 Charlie Kirk because they didn't like the way he phrased something. It's that he was extremely

00:14:59.460 politically effective, more politically effective than anyone else of his generation. 0.98

00:15:02.600 You got to murder the conservatives who speak up. You got to mock the conservatives who speak up 0.78

00:15:09.520 when their husbands are murdered. You have to stop any of them from being effective.

00:15:15.180 This person is not fit for polite society, and he should be excluded from it. He should not be

00:15:23.440 welcome into places of employment. He should not be welcome into clubs and associations. If he wants to

00:15:29.240 go have his horrible ideas somewhere in a cabin in the woods, I suppose he can do that. None of us

00:15:34.340 will stop him. But in terms of society, he cannot be welcomed into that. He should not be welcomed

00:15:40.020 into the marketplace of ideas. What he advocates is the abolition of the marketplace of ideas. And so

00:15:45.900 that's the kind of thought that stops thought and the sort of thought that ought to be stopped.

00:15:49.940 Happily, he has been demonetized on YouTube. So he makes his money by doing this.

00:15:54.920 He's been demonetized on YouTube. That's good. Years ago, he was already banned from

00:15:59.600 a social media platform, Twitch. That's all good. It should go further. He should be

00:16:06.560 deplatformed from all of these places. He has no right to be in the public square. He damages the

00:16:12.320 public square by his very presence in it. He should go away from public life. He should retreat to a

00:16:19.100 much more private life. And he should not be welcomed in public life. Elon Musk has called

00:16:25.340 for him to be prosecuted. I also have called for him to be prosecuted. He is at this moment

00:16:30.460 calling for violence against conservatives who speak on campus, who speak at public events.

00:16:36.920 There is a kind of a specificity. There is a kind of urgency. There is a kind of immediacy

00:16:41.020 to his incitement of violence here. And this is not just a generic abstract opinion. This is

00:16:47.680 immediately in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination. When more events like the one

00:16:53.140 at which Charlie Kirk was assassinated will be occurring quickly. And this guy is calling for

00:16:58.020 our murder at those events. That guy needs to be in jail and he needs to be in jail for a long time.

00:17:04.460 And there is nothing hypocritical about this. There is nothing authoritarian about this.

00:17:10.100 This is the basic enforcement of the law. This is the basic enforcement of the norms and standards

00:17:15.560 that must exist for any kind of free society to continue. Now, not everyone agrees. I think most

00:17:23.520 people agree with that at this point, but not everyone does, including Barry Weiss. You know,

00:17:28.180 Barry Weiss, she's a perfectly, perfectly nice lady. She runs the Free Press. She is a former 0.73

00:17:34.080 left-wing liberal who is now a slightly more centrist liberal. And therefore, in our kind of crazy

00:17:41.160 society, she seems almost like she's on the right. But she's not really on the right.

00:17:45.020 She's basically a left libertarian. And she runs an outlet called the Free Press,

00:17:50.760 which publishes some good work. But this was not good work that she just published.

00:17:54.880 She just published an argument against the right basically doing anything right now. 0.87

00:18:01.900 With regard to Jimmy Kimmel and with regard to the broader de-platforming and

00:18:07.940 discouragement of some of these kinds of ideas, Barry said, for those on the right who might like

00:18:16.480 what they're seeing from this FCC, remember the Democrats will wield this power again.

00:18:22.600 Now, I have a lot of grace for Barry Weiss here. She is new to the right. She's not really on the

00:18:28.340 right. But she's new. She used to be on the left. She used to be at left-wing outlets. And so she's 1.00

00:18:32.280 new. And I'm not surprised that she's making these kinds of arguments. But it's not correct.

00:18:36.980 The argument that she is making is, it basically boils down to the right at this moment should not

00:18:45.800 wield the power that we have for justice and the common good. In other words, we should not govern

00:18:50.340 now. I'm not persuaded. I'm not fearful of using the power that we legitimately have in ways that

00:19:17.200 are just today, after the people gave us that power, because the left might in the future

00:19:22.220 hypothetically do the thing that they always do, that they've been doing for many decades. I guess

00:19:25.920 I'm not afraid of that hypothetical, which already exists. And furthermore, I don't think there's

00:19:33.300 anything unprincipled about wielding that power today. If you're an anarchist or an extreme libertarian,

00:19:39.380 then I guess, yes, it would run contrary to your principles to govern. But I'm not any of those

00:19:44.840 things. I'm a conservative. And I recognize that the FCC exists for a reason. The FCC exists

00:19:53.580 to regulate these kinds of things, to regulate broadcast news, the broadcast stations. In the

00:20:01.160 article itself, not just the tweet, the article itself, have it right here, the jaw boning in

00:20:06.280 Jimmy Kimmel. The editors, the editorial board writes, the suspension of his late night show isn't

00:20:12.000 a great loss to the culture, but the FCC's coercion undermines our most fundamental values.

00:20:16.620 Our most fundamental values? What's our most fundamental value?

00:20:22.000 Lying about the assassination of a civil debater is our most fundamental. Letting a hack comedian

00:20:30.740 tell an egregious and malicious lie on public airwaves is one of our most fundamental values?

00:20:37.060 I don't know. I guess we have different political philosophies. I don't think that's what James

00:20:42.880 Madison and Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton considered to be one of the most fundamental

00:20:49.140 values of America. At no point in our history have we believed that letting people, much less a hack

00:20:57.200 comedian, egregiously lie about important national events on public airwaves is a value. My question to

00:21:05.360 them is, what's the point of the FCC? If the point of the FCC is not to regulate what happens on public

00:21:12.080 airwaves, what is the point of the FCC? There isn't one. I guess the argument you hear from some of these

00:21:18.040 guys is just, well, maybe we shouldn't have an FCC. Maybe we should just let the invisible hand of the

00:21:21.240 free market. Okay, whatever. All right. You have a different conception of government. I'm talking about

00:21:24.960 our government, though. I'm talking about our system. I'm talking about our fundamental values.

00:21:28.420 Not only does it not run contrary to the purpose of the FCC to call this stuff out,

00:21:36.140 that's the whole point of it. And I am afraid that the laissez-faire liberalism that allows the

00:21:45.020 left to get away with its increasingly murderous designs, overtly murderous designs, not just the

00:21:51.820 wacko who shot Charlie, but all of the many people throughout all of the strata of the left who

00:22:00.800 celebrated it. I'm not letting that go. I think we've all had enough. And I think we're going to do

00:22:10.200 something. We've tried not doing something about it. That led to the destruction of our public square and

00:22:14.860 the assassination of the most civil, generous, prominent public debater we have. So we tried that.

00:22:21.540 That didn't work. Now I think we're going to do our jobs and accept our responsibility in society.

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00:23:44.080 Speaking of strange theories of criminal justice, here we have Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson

00:23:48.120 arguing that if you want to stop crime, you have to let people out of jail.

00:23:55.300 The fact of the matter is we are driving violence down in this city and we're using every single

00:24:00.360 resource that's available to us. Jails and incarceration and law enforcement is a sickness

00:24:06.520 that has not led to safe communities. Jails are a sickness that do not lead to safe communities.

00:24:13.380 You hear this sometimes, not just from the libs on the left, but even from the libertarians.

00:24:19.800 So we have an over-incarceration problem. Here was Brandon Johnson saying, he says, oh,

00:24:23.740 a crime, it's going down in Chicago. It's great. Really, you think that? Does anyone really think that?

00:24:28.100 Hey, hey, if you think that, then go out to the south side at about 11 p.m., maybe around midnight,

00:24:36.640 just walk around in a nice polo shirt and chinos. Tell me how you do. Oh, you don't want to do that?

00:24:43.540 No, you don't want to leave your car unlocked? You don't want to come to a complete stop at a

00:24:49.300 traffic light in a certain place? Come on. No one thinks Chicago is safe. Crime is out of control in

00:24:54.760 Chicago. Many people are murdered every weekend. But we're not putting people in jail, right? Maybe

00:25:00.720 that's the problem. It actually relates to the same error that is being made here by the people

00:25:09.360 complaining about the FCC or the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel or any of it. They say, if we ever

00:25:13.900 do anything to try to address a problem, it's only going to make the problem worse. And it's the same

00:25:19.160 kind of glib libertarianism that says that, you know, the government never does anything right.

00:25:23.680 And really, the ideal form of government is to get rid of the government altogether. And then the

00:25:27.200 magical, invisible hand, which is providence for atheists, that will fix everything. 1.00

00:25:34.740 If only we stop incarcerating criminals, then we'll have less crime. That is defied by

00:25:42.600 all of the crime statistics we ever have had. But furthermore, it gets to a deeper question

00:25:50.020 that is philosophical. And it's, how do you help criminals? How do you help criminals?

00:25:56.900 People are committing crimes for all sorts of reasons, because of defects of their will,

00:26:00.960 because of bad circumstances in which they grew up, because of the ignorance in which they're mired.

00:26:04.700 And so they commit crimes. And we have to protect society from those people. And we have to give

00:26:09.400 those people retribution because of the crimes that they committed. But we also want to rehabilitate

00:26:13.800 those people. So the question becomes, how do you help the criminals? Do you help the criminal

00:26:18.260 by letting them get out of jail? That's the argument made by Brandon Johnson. That's the

00:26:22.820 argument made by the left. That's the argument made by Rashida Tlaib, who wants to abolish prisons. 1.00

00:26:28.400 That's the argument made even by some on the right who were pushing President Trump in the first

00:26:32.320 term to let criminals out of jail. The Kim Kardashians of the coalition. Is that the way you help

00:26:38.320 them? Or do you help them by punishing them? And on this point, I think I'm going to turn away from

00:26:45.600 the mayor of Chicago. I'm going to go back to Plato, who wrote a whole book about this called

00:26:49.200 Gorgias in Antiquity, in which he argues in the voice of Socrates that the way to help someone who's

00:26:58.320 doing injustice is not to let them off the hook, but actually to punish them as a kind of medicine.

00:27:04.500 Because, Socrates argues, it is worse to do injustice than to suffer injustice. To suffer

00:27:11.440 injustice might damage your body. To do injustice damages your soul. For those of us who have a

00:27:19.540 sense of the eternal destiny of man, we would say that to suffer injustice might have temporal effects,

00:27:26.380 but to commit injustice has eternal effects. It could affect our lives in the hereafter. But it even

00:27:33.260 affects our lives now. If you allow someone to persist in vice and ignorance all the time,

00:27:38.460 their lives are going to get worse. And so it's actually an act of mercy to punish the guilty.

00:27:44.400 It will help them to reform. You might not always like the medicine that the doctor assigns you,

00:27:49.980 but if you don't take the medicine, you're going to die. And if you allow criminals to persist in

00:27:55.360 their crime and to keep getting away with it, they're going to suffer a kind of a spiritual death.

00:27:59.480 It's just like when you're raising kids. If you, if you, you don't want to punish your toddler

00:28:04.700 because, you know, it feels bad and you want your toddler to like you or something. And you,

00:28:09.700 so you let him get away with it, let him get away with it, let him get away with it. You're not doing

00:28:12.620 him any favors. You're damaging him and he's going to get worse and worse and worse. It's going to have

00:28:17.280 bad effects. It's the same thing in society. It's the same thing when we think about the relation of

00:28:23.880 the government to criminals. And it's, it's no surprise that Chicago is a third world country

00:28:28.700 under that kind of idea. Well, that idea hasn't worked. Maybe we need to try something else.

00:28:34.580 Laissez-faire, hands-off, let the left threaten to murder us hasn't worked. Maybe we need to try

00:28:38.940 something else. Maybe this really is an inflection point. He's not the only one who says it,

00:28:45.040 the mayor of Chicago, a Jasmine Crockett, the new AOC in Congress. She, she goes even further. 0.99

00:28:53.920 She, she says that committing a crime does not make you a criminal.

00:28:58.800 I understood what was kind of pushing them there. And so I do want people to know that just because

00:29:06.360 someone has committed a crime, it doesn't make them a criminal. That, that is completely different.

00:29:12.280 Being a criminal is more so about your mindset. Committing a crime can come for a lot of different

00:29:18.660 reasons. Said Contra, committing a crime does in fact make you a criminal. And the ideology that

00:29:29.160 she's advancing here is so pernicious. It's so subtle, but it's, you see it throughout liberalism.

00:29:34.840 It says, no, no, no, what you do has no connection to who you are.

00:29:38.960 Yeah, you might do crimes all the time, but on the inside, if you don't think of yourself as a

00:29:45.940 criminal, if you don't identify as a criminal, you're not a criminal. What makes you a criminal

00:29:50.560 is when you identify as a criminal. It's a mindset. Well, this is what the left says about identity

00:29:56.360 broadly. Your, your physical conditions, your actions, your social relations have nothing to do

00:30:03.800 with who you really are. It's just all in the imagination. That's all the imagination is all

00:30:08.640 that matters. Of course, that is not true. We are what we habitually do. We are creatures of habit,

00:30:17.480 virtue and vice or habits. Virtuous people do a lot of virtuous things. Vicious people do a lot of

00:30:26.700 vicious things. None of us is good. None of us can be holy on our own. We are born with a fallen

00:30:34.920 nature and the law exists to show us our sin and to direct us to the need for a savior and to

00:30:43.520 direct us to, to pray for grace. And then we can cooperate with grace and cultivate habits of virtue.

00:30:50.580 And then we can be, we're not still not like good people, but we can be better. We can be more fully

00:30:56.820 human. We can be more fully what we are supposed to be. Or we can persist in our, in our vices and

00:31:04.280 pretend that what we do has nothing to do with who we really are. And then we can live in imagination

00:31:09.900 land, but the reality around us is going to fall into crime and decay and destruction. And this ties in

00:31:16.860 with the latest update about the alleged shooter, the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk.

00:31:23.380 There's a report from the New York Post that says that the alleged shooter was a big fan of playing

00:31:31.240 a video game. He was a big video gamer and he was apparently quite addicted to pornography and so much

00:31:37.760 so that he actually played video games that are pornographic. Apparently there are porn video games

00:31:44.080 now. We will live to see horrors beyond our imagination, as I think Nikola Tesla told us.

00:31:50.860 He was a big fan of this porn video game. He played it quite recently. And not only was he gay,

00:31:57.060 and not only was he dating a self-identified trans, but he was also something called a furry. 0.93

00:32:02.980 A furry is someone who is sexually attracted to human beings in anthropomorphic animal costumes. 0.96

00:32:10.300 And so I guess the video game was a gay, furry video game. According to the Post last week, 0.93

00:32:18.240 this account associated with the shooter on the site had recently watched content,

00:32:23.140 not only depicting this kind of stuff, but also created by a user named Red Rusker,

00:32:28.900 who is an artist known for furry pornography, who has admitted to drawing images showing underage

00:32:33.920 characters having sex. So cover your ears if young people are listening to this. We now find out 0.78

00:32:41.660 that the shooter was addicted to pornographic video games depicting a kind of sex with animals that was 0.95

00:32:52.780 also pedophilic. How did we get there? How did we get there? How did we get to that point? 0.64

00:33:04.980 When I was a kid, I remember when I got my first computer, and I certainly remember before we had

00:33:09.600 the internet in our house. In part, that was because we didn't have a lot of money. But there was a time,

00:33:15.920 I'm not even all that old. I feel like an old man sometimes, but I'm not that old. But there was a

00:33:21.140 time within living memory when people didn't have computers in their house. And they certainly didn't

00:33:27.320 have the internet. And let's just say they certainly didn't have furry shades of gay three on their 1.00

00:33:33.440 computers. There was a time when pornography existed as it's existed since antiquity. But when to purchase it, 0.88

00:33:40.620 you had to go into a seedy store in a trench coat trying to hide your identity and ask for the

00:33:47.160 magazine that was covered up in foil. There was not assumed to be some constitutional right to

00:33:51.940 pornography in magazines. It was in a packaging where you couldn't see it because kids would go

00:33:56.840 into magazine stores. And you would have to talk to a human being and hand him some money and buy

00:34:02.080 the magazine that showed naked ladies. It didn't show furry shades of gay three. It showed 0.99

00:34:07.040 like naked ladies. And that was considered obscene enough. 1.00

00:34:13.980 Now, we've let this problem fester. In the 90s, when computers and the internet became popular,

00:34:20.800 there were two laws that were passed. The Communications Decency Act, from which we get

00:34:26.200 the now famous Section 230, which is supposed to regulate the big tech companies, but actually gave

00:34:33.060 them kind of a carve out. It was very important to political debates over speech on the internet a few

00:34:36.400 years ago. The Communications Decency Act primarily was about decency in communications. And the Child

00:34:42.000 Online Protection Act. Both of these had broad bipartisan support, were signed into law, liberal

00:34:48.180 judges gutted them. Everyone at that time agreed, we need restrictions on obscenity, because it can

00:34:57.660 really pervert people's minds, especially the minds of children. That's why we call it the Child

00:35:01.220 Online Protection Act. And then we just kind of looked away, because of liberal judges and because

00:35:08.020 of a laissez-faire ideology. I said, what's the big deal? All right, it's some naked ladies on the 1.00

00:35:13.720 internet. Okay, it's some naked men and ladies on the internet. Okay, now it's some naked, now it's like 0.97

00:35:20.840 animals that look like, okay, now it's underage. Okay, now it's in video games. Now, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:35:27.440 You very quickly get to a degree of degeneracy that previously was more or less unimaginable.

00:35:36.760 The laissez-faire, hand of the free market, hasn't corrected that. The government exists in part to

00:35:42.840 correct these things. And so while everyone's focusing on the ideology of the shooter, on the

00:35:48.320 defenses of political violence that have come from the left, let's not lose sight also of the obscenity, 0.99

00:35:54.360 because the guy was a complete sex freak. Our culture broadly said you're not even allowed 0.97

00:35:59.460 to use phrases like perversion anymore. But he was a profoundly sexually perverted person. 0.77

00:36:06.300 I think we all have to admit that candidly. And he was encouraged in his perversions by 0.89

00:36:12.140 public resources like the internet. And one of the things that is supposed to be kept out of the

00:36:20.260 public square that is not protected by the First Amendment is obscenity. Why? That's for the same

00:36:27.500 reason that we don't allow direct threats in the public square, why we need to de-platform people

00:36:31.480 like the streamer Stephen Bunnell. Because if you allow direct threats in the public square, if you

00:36:36.340 protect those, it undermines the public square. It undermines discourse. It shuts people up. It

00:36:41.460 doesn't encourage people to speak more freely. If you permit fraud, lies, the sorts of lies that

00:36:47.760 that Jimmy Kimmel said on public airwaves. If you allow fraud in the public square, that doesn't

00:36:52.840 expand the public square. It doesn't add another voice. It undermines. It shrinks the public square

00:36:57.180 because it undermines market integrity. It tells people that you can't trust what is being said.

00:37:03.460 If you allow obscenity and appeals to the prurient interest into the public square, that doesn't expand

00:37:10.780 the public square. It is not, as some perverts in judicial outfits in the 20th century said,

00:37:16.800 it does not constitute protected speech because it undermines speech.

00:37:22.920 Speech is rational. Speech makes use of our reason and allows us to arrive at the truth and to live

00:37:29.960 in accordance with the truth. That's what it's for. Obscenity appeals to the prurient interest.

00:37:36.220 When you're looking at pornography, don't even think about furry shades of gay. Talk about like regular, 0.99

00:37:42.100 normal pornography that you'd buy in the magazines in the 1990s before all of this internet.

00:37:46.680 Even that, any kind of pornographic material. When you see that, does it make you more rational or

00:37:53.640 less rational? We all know it makes you less rational. This is why advertising tries to get

00:37:59.180 up to the line of obscenity because they know that sex sells because it prevents you from thinking in a

00:38:04.040 rational way and it gets you to be more emotional and ginned up and lustful and irrational so that you

00:38:09.620 can be more easily manipulated. It is an open question. Had we properly regulated pornography

00:38:17.380 as both parties tried to do in the 90s, would that assassin have picked up that gun?

00:38:25.740 He says he was driven by a sexual ideology to protect his trans furry boyfriend. Would he have

00:38:33.160 become so hardened in those deviant desires and in that deviant identity? Would he have been exposed

00:38:40.360 to it in the first place? Would that have happened? You know, we sometimes draw a distinction between

00:38:46.540 public and private sins. There's really no such thing because society is made up of people and people

00:38:51.640 are the same people in private and in public. Are we going to take that seriously too? It seems to me

00:38:58.560 the obvious reform that has to come after the assassination of Charlie is a reform to the free marketplace

00:39:06.600 of ideas to protect it, to prop it up again. Not to abolish it or something, but to re-fortify it such that

00:39:16.020 we can have a healthy conversation and a self-government. A big part of that is going to be

00:39:22.420 obscenity too. It's not just a weird, creepy fact that the alleged shooter was a gay furry attracted to 0.98

00:39:31.620 transgenders who played porn video games and liked the work of artists who depicted minors. 0.97

00:39:37.780 That's not just a coincidence. That's part of the whole degeneration of this person's mind and the 0.98

00:39:47.860 degeneration of our public square. For over a week, we paused advertisements and any appeals to Daily

00:39:53.240 Wire memberships to focus on the only thing that really matters in this moment, which is remembering

00:39:57.680 and honoring the legacy of Charlie Kirk. Without even being asked, you still showed up. You watched,

00:40:04.820 you commented, you shared, you supported us by becoming Daily Wire members. You reminded us once

00:40:09.180 again that we are not alone in this fight and that we will not be silenced and that together we will

00:40:14.900 keep building the future. Thank you for standing with us. You are what makes America great and

00:40:19.180 inspire all of us here to continue the work we do every day. My favorite comment yesterday is from

00:40:25.520 SBrowny130 who says, what is sad? The left is more upset about someone losing their show than someone

00:40:30.000 losing their life. Yep. Yeah, that's not true for all liberals, but it's uncomfortably true for a

00:40:37.500 broad swath of them. Finally, we arrive at the mailbag. Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk at

00:40:42.480 puretalk.com slash Noel's Relish. Your free one-year membership to Daily Wire Plus. Take it away.

00:40:47.760 Hi, Michael. I have a bit of a mixed message today. I am saddened by the news of Charlie Kirk,

00:40:55.640 but at the same time, on the same day, nearly the same time as the announcement of his death,

00:41:03.820 my brother is having a baby. I don't know how to feel about this. I'm saddened by the news of Charlie

00:41:13.120 Kirk, and I need some guidance here. I don't know how to feel. I don't know how to act, and I think your

00:41:22.540 words of wisdom might be able to help. Please help me. Thank you for all you do, and God bless. God

00:41:32.920 speed. Okay, good question, and congratulations on your brother's kid. You're saying, is it all right

00:41:41.300 to be happy about good things, even when really bad things happen?

00:41:46.000 Yes, of course. If that were not the case, you could never be happy.

00:41:54.520 I don't mean to make light of anything. I don't mean to be overly reductive, but yes, of course,

00:42:02.720 very horrible things happen all the time. The assassination of Charlie was a particular

00:42:08.680 national trauma, and the reaction to it was a secondary trauma, but very, very horrible things

00:42:15.420 happen every day in the fallen world, and good things happen too. And what likely will happen

00:42:20.640 is that the bad thing will depress your spirit just a little bit. You're going to walk around,

00:42:25.680 and you're going to be a little bit glum, certainly in the immediacy after, in the immediate days after

00:42:31.200 the tragedy. It would be good, I think, especially that you're a man, not to dwell on it too much,

00:42:37.800 not to sob and sit around and cry all the time, have a little bit of a stiff upper lip, you know?

00:42:42.040 I was saying this after Charlie's assassination. A few days later, I really let it wash over me,

00:42:49.640 and I let the tears come right up to my eye. I let them come right up, and then I pushed it all

00:42:58.340 right back down. I let it come up. I let it wash over me, sitting alone in my office at night. But,

00:43:03.140 you know, you're a guy. You got to be tough. You got to be tough. You're not allowed to say that

00:43:06.300 anymore, but it's true. So, yes, let it affect you. Mourn, grieve, that's all real. But recognize

00:43:14.920 that the world is not totally lost. And there are, in fact, glimpses of good things in the world,

00:43:23.220 and they point to the ultimate good that we can find. Because there's darkness all over,

00:43:31.960 but light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not comprehend it. Okay. Next question.

00:43:38.700 Who can be compared like unto God? My brother Michael. Hail Mary. You have been critical of

00:43:45.320 dual citizenship, but you've also stated in the past that patriotism is a duty to one's country,

00:43:52.000 not a conformity of intellect and will to the ideals of that country. But if one is raised in two

00:43:59.700 countries and two cultures with two family ties, then does not one also have a duty to honor both

00:44:05.640 so long as they cohere to the higher principle of the faith? Second, isn't it interesting how

00:44:14.020 Libs will use the violinist argument to justify abortion because the violinist has no right to

00:44:20.640 your body? But if you are near death, then the violinist has a claim to your organs before you're

00:44:28.000 even dead. Since all arguments are about utility and not principle for them. Your thoughts?

00:44:34.540 Great observation. I love that observation at the end. The violinist argument, I won't recite it now.

00:44:41.760 It's one of these stupid arguments from the 70s or something about abortion. And it defends a mother's 1.00

00:44:47.500 supposed right to murder her kid. In the vein that the child has no right to the body of the mother,

00:44:54.500 just as if you woke up in a hospital strapped to a violinist who was living off of your body,

00:45:00.760 that he would have no right to do that and you would have every right to cut him loose.

00:45:06.160 So they make that argument about abortion, but then the moment anyone's in a car wreck or something,

00:45:11.040 they all claim that they have a right to every single one of your organs, even though the

00:45:13.760 harvesting of those organs very likely would be the thing that kills you. That's a good observation.

00:45:16.700 I like that. I don't like that that happens, but I like that observation. To your first point,

00:45:20.300 though, on dual citizenship, what about people who are raised in two countries with two cultures?

00:45:25.280 Yes, they will feel a kind of a familial draw and reverence and filial piety to those cultures,

00:45:32.880 and it's just not ideal. It's like children of divorce. You might grow up, I mean, divorce is a

00:45:38.720 horrible, horrible evil. And so if parents are divorced, you could have a kid who spends one week

00:45:47.180 at one parent's house and then the next week at the next parent's house. And in principle,

00:45:51.200 they have two homes, right? But really, no, because you can't have two homes. So that will

00:45:57.560 result in competing loyalties and a kind of a, I don't know, a kind of a schizophrenia, I guess.

00:46:05.880 So it's just not good. You should not be raised in two countries. It's fine to travel. It's good to 1.00

00:46:10.300 have affinity for other cultures. Some of my ancestors come from Italy. I have a great deal of

00:46:14.340 affection for Italy, and I like to go visit, but you really should have one home and one culture.

00:46:20.060 To raise someone with two homes is really to deprive them of a home. Okay, the rest of the

00:46:26.220 show continues now. We have the iPad. I will be talking to you. You do not want to miss it. We

00:46:30.600 have more voice mailbag. We have more written mailbag. We have a lot. See you over there.

00:46:44.340 the iPad.

The Michael Knowles Show - September 19, 2025

Ep. 1818 - The Whole Jimmy Kimmel Firing Saga Is A Lie

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