The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1849 - Democrats Pin Their Election-Day Hopes On Communists, Muslims, And Psychos

00:00:00.000 It's election day, and before any results are in, conservatives have achieved a monumental

00:00:04.880 victory already. After more than six decades in politics, Nancy Pelosi will reportedly retire

00:00:14.320 from Congress, presumably to run for president in 2028. I'm joking. Am I joking? Am I joking?

00:00:21.340 I don't know. She's probably one of the leading candidates right now for the Dems. 1.00

00:00:24.140 Nancy Pelosi began her career interning in Congress in the early 1960s. I am reminded of

00:00:31.720 Rose in Titanic, who famously observed that it had been 84 years since the ship sank.

00:00:40.160 Here, for those of you listening, I'll describe this photo to you. We see a 20-year-old Nancy Pelosi

00:00:45.620 posing for a picture with President John F. Kennedy at his inauguration.

00:00:51.420 It has been 64 years since one of the worst figures in modern political history

00:00:59.120 has been inflicted upon us. And as we look ahead to the election results tonight,

00:01:05.520 mirabile dictu, it seems the worst is yet to come. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:11.340 Welcome back to the show. Speaking of elderly politicians exiting the political stage,

00:01:35.460 Dick Cheney died. So we say a requiesced gotten pache for Vice President Cheney.

00:01:42.040 Complex legacy, not only on the left, which always hated him, and then started to like him a little

00:01:46.820 bit more at the end because he didn't like Trump. And then the right used to like him a lot, but then

00:01:50.520 the right doesn't like him anymore. Anyway, we'll get to the Cheney legacy because I am dead certain

00:01:56.260 of one fact about the Cheney legacy that I haven't heard anyone mention yet. We'll get to that first.

00:02:01.920 So I want to tell you about Balance of Nature. Go to balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Knowles,

00:02:07.120 K-N-O-W-L-E-S. We all know that we should be eating more fruits and vegetables, right?

00:02:12.160 But what are we actually doing? If you're like me, you're eating more cheeseburgers at the airport,

00:02:16.140 getting fat when you're hitting the road all the time, and then Elisa says that you don't look as

00:02:19.380 good in your clothes. Anyway, I'm divulging too much. One way that you can get the great benefits of

00:02:24.740 more fruits and veggies, Balance of Nature. Balance of Nature's fruits and veggies supplements

00:02:28.620 are the original way to get a balance of color, taste, and smell from Whole Foods in a convenient

00:02:34.740 form. What makes them really versatile is that you can take them however works best for you.

00:02:40.200 Swallow the capsules with water, chew them, even open them up and mix the powder into your food or

00:02:45.080 drinks. Inside EAPS capsule, you will find ingredients from 16 whole fruits and vegetables,

00:02:49.580 sorry, 16 whole fruits, 15 whole vegetables that have all been freeze-dried and lab-tested.

00:02:55.260 No binders, fillers, or flow agents. Just pure whole food ingredients ready to go

00:03:00.000 wherever you are. It's really great. Our team loves this stuff. If you want to be a giga-chad

00:03:06.420 like Mr. Davies or even me just clawing to some opportunity for some health even as I'm on the

00:03:14.280 road, go check out balanceofnature.com. Get your free fiber and spice supplement plus 35% off your

00:03:21.700 first set as a new preferred customer by using discount code NOLS.

00:03:27.440 We want to talk about vibrant bodies and health. We got to give a shout out to the heroic crew at

00:03:33.540 PragerU. I'm in town. I'm filming some episodes of my book club show here. I was giving a speech last

00:03:38.540 night at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. I think you can find that speech online.

00:03:41.900 And the heroic PragerU staff showed up at, by my, I think it's like 2.30 in the morning right now.

00:03:48.620 It's hours before work begins to produce this show. Greatly, greatly appreciate that.

00:03:53.940 You know who I don't appreciate? Nancy Pelosi. And you know who Nancy Pelosi doesn't appreciate?

00:03:58.240 Donald Trump. Pelosi, as her valedictory to the political world after over six decades in politics,

00:04:05.400 including on Capitol Hill, Nancy Pelosi has a message. Maybe this will be the epitaph on her

00:04:12.620 headstone someday. It's just a vile creature. The worst thing on the face of the earth, but anyway. 0.98

00:04:20.360 You think he's the worst thing on the face of the earth? I do. Yeah, I do. Why is that?

00:04:25.440 Because he's the president of the United States and he does not honor the constitution of the United

00:04:30.620 States. In fact, he's turned the Supreme Court into a rogue court. He's abolished the House of

00:04:37.440 Representatives. Speaker Pelosi, after your amazing six decade plus career in politics,

00:04:44.580 what would you like to say? How would you like people to remember you? He's a vile creature,

00:04:48.720 that Trump. I'll get him. I'll get him. And then Alex Michelson, excellent interview. Great to see him 0.99

00:04:58.000 on CNN. Alex says, well, he's a worse creature on earth. Why is that? He abolished the House of

00:05:07.720 Representatives. Mrs. Pelosi, have you had your medicine today? He abolished the House of... He dead.

00:05:18.480 And he shoots laser beams out of his fingers. What is she talking about? I guess she's talking about

00:05:23.560 the government shutdown, which was entirely a product of the Democrats. And the Democrats did

00:05:28.700 it because it was a Hail Mary, because they're losing on virtually every political issue. And they

00:05:32.880 thought that healthcare was the only one they might win on. And the only tactic that they

00:05:35.660 traditionally can reliably look to is government shutdown. And even that's not working. It's not

00:05:41.300 working. So she's leaving, you know, a few decades too late. But she's leaving at a real low

00:05:50.060 point for the Democrats. And that gives me satisfaction. It is nice and comforting to know

00:05:55.740 that Nancy Pelosi's political career is ending in rejection. She lost the speakership of the House

00:06:01.940 of Representatives when the Republicans took over. And the Democrats nationally have never looked worse

00:06:08.600 in our lifetimes. And the Democrats in the House of Representatives specifically

00:06:13.280 are somehow bungling the most reliable weapon that Democrats have had, namely a government shutdown.

00:06:20.740 It just all flopped. I don't want to be too triumphant here. I wish we could be,

00:06:26.420 I wish we could sincerely be more triumphant because Nancy Pelosi and the libs have notched a bunch of 0.98

00:06:31.080 victories over her time in politics. But right now, she's losing everything. She's leaving in rejection

00:06:38.400 as is fitting, as is seemly. Now, speaking of politicians ending their public life and their life

00:06:45.480 generally, Dick Cheney died. Woke up to that news this morning. And it's a very strange political

00:06:51.920 moment. You know, we're in this seismic shift. This was largely the topic of my speech at the

00:06:56.000 Nixon Library last night. And so we're in this weird moment where the left is probably going to

00:07:01.280 be sorrier about Cheney's death than the right. I'm old enough to remember when the left thought that

00:07:07.440 Cheney was not merely Hitler, but actually the devil himself. When the left thought that Cheney was

00:07:12.860 significantly worse than George W. Bush, George W. Bush, whom they also compared to Hitler.

00:07:18.540 And I'm old enough to remember when the right loved Dick Cheney. And in fact, many liked Cheney

00:07:23.020 more than they liked Bush because Cheney was sort of cartoonishly tough. And Bush seemed like a real

00:07:29.200 nice guy. Now that's flipped because Dick Cheney's daughter was a political opponent of Trump within

00:07:36.420 the Republican Party. And Cheney, good father, stood by his daughter and that made an enemy of Trump.

00:07:41.140 And so he seemed to kind of flip sides. And also because Cheney was the representative

00:07:46.300 of an expansionist, hardline, neoconservative foreign policy, a driver of the wars in the

00:07:53.460 Middle East, which the American right loved in the 2000s. The American left hated in the 2000s.

00:07:59.000 Now they basically flipped and the American right hates them and the American left still doesn't love

00:08:04.380 them. But you'll see more defenders of the imperial wars on the American left and all political

00:08:07.700 situations topsy-turvy. I, however, believe that, well, one, because Dick Cheney is our fellow man,

00:08:16.440 but also because Dick Cheney is a fellow Republican, longtime conservative guy who came basically from

00:08:22.300 nothing and had all sorts of personal problems and then ends up at a very young age. I think he was

00:08:27.320 31 years old. He was chief of staff to Jerry Ford and worked his way up in politics, was the defense

00:08:32.100 secretary under Bush one, then was the vice president under Bush two, very powerful vice

00:08:36.280 president. I think we pray for Dick Cheney. Also, because I'm Catholic and we pray for the dead.

00:08:41.800 I think we should pray for Dick Cheney. We should say a little R.I.P.

00:08:45.700 If you say that you don't pray for the dead, by the way, and you use the initials R.I.P.,

00:08:59.900 then you are in fact praying for the dead because that stands for requiescat in pace,

00:09:03.620 which is may he rest in peace. In any case, what's the good stuff that we should focus on

00:09:08.520 about Cheney? There's one line from a book about him, The World According to Dick Cheney,

00:09:12.260 that really sticks with me. He was asked if it bothered him that for the eight years he was

00:09:17.920 vice president, he was called Darth Vader, you know, compared to the devil. And so much so that

00:09:22.980 he even put a little Darth Vader mask on the back of his truck. And he said, no. He said if he wanted

00:09:29.020 to be loved, he would have been a movie star. But sometimes it's more important to be successful

00:09:35.100 than to be loved. It is a wartime situation, and it does require tough programs and policies if

00:09:44.400 you're going to be successful. And it was more important to be successful than it was to be

00:09:48.220 loved. Are you going to trade the lives of a number of people because you want to preserve your honor?

00:09:54.940 Or are you going to do your job, do what's required, first and foremost, your responsibility

00:10:00.440 to safeguard the United States of America and the lives of its citizens? Now, given a choice

00:10:06.360 between doing what we did or backing off and say, yeah, we know you know the next attack against the

00:10:12.800 United States, but we're not going to force you to tell us what it is because it might create a bad

00:10:19.400 image for us. That's not a close call for me.

00:10:22.780 So Dick Cheney here is speaking specifically about the United States' use supposedly of torture,

00:10:32.040 or at the very least, enhanced interrogation tactics. And I just want to make a point here.

00:10:38.920 I'm not a neoconservative. I'm very, very skeptical, very opposed, actually,

00:10:44.620 to ideological wars to spread democracy around the world. That is not my flavor of conservatism.

00:10:50.160 However, everything that Cheney was just defending here is totally right. First of all,

00:10:58.980 the enhanced interrogation techniques that the United States used in the 2000s during the global

00:11:04.400 war on terror were not really torture. And one of the ways that we can know this is that we used

00:11:11.440 many of these techniques on our own troops as part of training. And unless you think that we were

00:11:16.040 just torturing thousands of American troops, there's a distinction between these two things.

00:11:20.160 However, to take it a little further, there is nothing in principle wrong with the use of torture

00:11:25.960 to get information from terrorists. There's nothing in principle wrong with that at all.

00:11:30.920 There is something wrong with using torture against enemy combatants who are wearing uniforms and who

00:11:37.260 are abiding by the Geneva Conventions, which exist to protect civilians in times of war.

00:11:41.380 But as Mark Thiessen pointed out famously, some dozen or so years ago, if you extend Geneva Convention

00:11:50.360 protections to terrorists, you entirely undermine the Geneva Convention because you are taking away

00:11:57.280 any inducement that a terrorist might have not to target civilians. There's nothing wrong with that.

00:12:02.360 And as Antonin Scalia famously pointed out with Leslie Stahl, while it might be wrong, immoral to

00:12:09.020 use torture to punish somebody, there is nothing in principle wrong with using torture against a

00:12:14.700 terrorist to extract information because that wouldn't be cruel and unusual punishment and it would

00:12:19.320 be easily defensible. Anyway, all of that to say, how should we think about Dick Cheney today? I know he's

00:12:25.660 very unpopular in the Republican Party right now after having been unpopular by the end of Bush's

00:12:32.360 second term, having been quite popular at the beginning of Bush's second term, having been one

00:12:35.940 of the most popular men in America when he was Secretary of Defense under George Bush the first.

00:12:43.600 What I'm going to tell you, and this ties in directly with my Richard Nixon library talk last night,

00:12:48.740 there will be a day to come when the right loves Dick Cheney again. There will be a day to come

00:12:54.220 when Dick Cheney's kind of, you know, grisly tough talk about defending American interests will be

00:13:00.140 really cool and it will get aura cuts on TikTok and the kids will think he's the Rizzler. That will

00:13:06.500 happen. He will come back into fashion. There will be wisdom that the American right and maybe the

00:13:12.000 American left learns from Dick Cheney. That will happen in much the same way that we have seen happen

00:13:18.220 with Richard Nixon. When I was a kid, frankly, until 10 years or so ago, Richard Nixon was a

00:13:23.960 footnote at best in the history of conservatism. He was an embarrassment at worst. He was essentially 0.92

00:13:30.480 written out of the story of conservatism. Reagan could do no wrong. Richard Nixon could do no right.

00:13:35.180 And now that situation's changed a little bit. And it's changed in part because of changing political

00:13:39.940 circumstances. It's changed because we've seen how the media and the government have worked on Trump.

00:13:43.740 It's changed because of the world order shifting. For whatever reason, Reagan's lost a little bit of

00:13:49.860 shine. Old Tricky Dick has come back up in the public imagination. The same thing's going to

00:13:54.880 happen for Dick Cheney. Take it to the bank. Mark my words. I don't care how much you inveigh against

00:13:59.920 the wars in the Middle East or the neocons or whatever. People are going to think Cheney's cool

00:14:04.940 again at some point. We can pray for him in the meantime. All right. Now, speaking of

00:14:08.380 scary figures, Zoran Mamdani might become the mayor of New York. And we got a little preview of what

00:14:16.680 New York can look forward to. First, though, I want to tell you about Birch Gold. Text Knowles,

00:14:22.520 K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to 989898. You might have been reading in the news that gold hit $4,000 an ounce

00:14:30.200 for the first time ever, and gold is currently up 50% for the year. And as I may have mentioned,

00:14:35.180 I'm a little bit of a gold bug, you know? And so I'm feeling great about that. If a portion of

00:14:39.640 your savings is not diversified into gold, you're missing the boat. Here are the facts. Inflation is

00:14:43.940 still too high. The U.S. dollar is still too weak, and the government debt is insurmountable.

00:14:47.940 This is why central banks are flocking to gold. They're the ones driving prices up to record

00:14:52.560 highs. But it's not too late to buy gold from Birch Gold Group and get in the door now. Birch

00:14:56.860 Gold will help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA in gold. You don't pay a

00:15:01.660 dime out of pocket. You just text Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to 989898. Claim your free info kit.

00:15:07.200 No obligation, just useful information. Best indicator of the future is the past, and gold has historically

00:15:12.080 been a safe haven for millennia. What else can say that? Can some random crypto thing say that? I don't

00:15:18.600 think so. Text Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to 989898 right now to claim your free info kit on gold.

00:15:23.880 That's Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to 989898. Protect your future today with Birch Gold.

00:15:31.600 As New Yorkers go out to vote, the polls are actually quite tight. There is a chance that Cuomo

00:15:37.220 pulls it off. Had the Republican Curtis Lewa dropped out, Cuomo almost certainly would have won the election.

00:15:42.700 Now, it's probably the case that Mamdani is going to win. But it's close. We don't know exactly.

00:15:48.000 Some of the betting markets have Cuomo up, rising up. If Mamdani does win,

00:15:55.240 the first thing that New Yorkers can look forward to is a lot more, you guessed it, violence.

00:16:04.100 Oftentimes, we've even found as legislators, when we go into these courts,

00:16:07.460 the term violent crime is even used when people are stealing packages. Violent crime is even used

00:16:13.160 when people are accused of burglary, and there happens to be a housing unit in that same dwelling.

00:16:18.120 So violence is an artificial construction. And we have to be very clear that what is happening here

00:16:23.940 with these district attorneys, that is violence. That is violence of the highest degree.

00:16:29.660 Two groups of people are going to elect Mamdani. Primarily, it's foreigners, non-native New Yorkers. 1.00

00:16:39.280 So they're probably used to violence in their terrible countries anyway. That will not be a

00:16:43.160 shift for them. And yuppie, wealthy, female whites. And we'll get to those crosstabs in a moment. 1.00

00:16:52.360 But those are the two. And that demographic is going to be really, really surprised to learn that

00:16:58.500 violence is not merely a social construct. Violence is a physical construct. It is actually a physical

00:17:05.620 action that hurts a lot and can really damage your life and kill you. I don't mean to laugh at it,

00:17:14.220 but that's what they're going to find out. The ethereal, abstract construction of violence,

00:17:22.020 man, when you really think about it, man, that is going to collapse into the concrete reality of

00:17:29.700 assault and murder quickly. Or Mamdani will abandon his campaign promises. But frankly,

00:17:38.040 I don't think there's any evidence that he is even competent enough to abandon his campaign

00:17:43.720 promises and keep the city safe. If this guy is elected, whether he does what he says he's going

00:17:49.020 to do or not, probably New York is going to become a lot less safe. In any case, New York's going to

00:17:55.960 put the theory to the test. Is violence a social construct? Bookmark that clip. Let's see how the

00:18:01.600 numbers bear it out. Okay, so the first thing that New Yorkers can expect if Zoran is elected is a lot

00:18:07.400 more violence. What's the second thing? They can expect a lot less money.

00:18:13.720 So when people say democratic socialist, right? And I'm curious what you think this means. I mean,

00:18:19.960 do you like capitalism? No, I have many critiques of capitalism. And I think ultimately the definition

00:18:26.340 for me of why I call myself a democratic socialist is the words of Dr. King decades ago. He said,

00:18:33.040 call it democracy or call it democratic socialism, there must be a better distribution of wealth

00:18:37.260 for all of God's children in this country. And that's what I'm focused on is dignity and taking on

00:18:42.380 income inequality. And for too long, politicians have pretended that we're spectators to that crisis

00:18:47.340 of affordability. We're actually actors. And we have the choice to exacerbate it like Mayor Adams

00:18:51.980 has done or to respond to it and resolve it like I'm planning to do.

00:18:55.120 Do you like capitalism? No. As we said, no, period.

00:19:05.080 He's not even just running for mayor of Palookaville or mayor of Paris or something like that,

00:19:10.280 mayor of Moscow. He's running for mayor of New York City, the most famously capitalist city

00:19:16.940 in the world. Is there a second? What's the second most capitalist city? London, maybe? London's

00:19:26.900 kind of socialist. What's the second most? I don't know. I can't think of one. Now, to be fair

00:19:34.960 to Zoran Mamdani, there are plenty of valid critiques of capitalism. I have plenty of critiques

00:19:41.020 of capitalism. In fact, while we're saying nice things about the neoconservatives, the early

00:19:45.660 neoconservatives like Irving Kristol, Irving Kristol had a great line. He said, two cheers

00:19:49.120 for capitalism. It's not three cheers because capitalism is a modern liberal ideology that,

00:19:55.100 if taken to its logical extreme, would make an idol out of money. It would actually worship

00:20:01.240 filthy lucre and mammon. That would not be good. The Bible tells us not to do that.

00:20:04.780 But there's much to recommend capitalism and markets and the allocation of resources according

00:20:12.120 to the impulses of the market. And obviously, there's a lot to recommend private property.

00:20:17.880 But there are critiques of capitalism. The problem is Mamdani's critiques of capitalism

00:20:24.460 are all the wrong ones. The real critique of capitalism is that it can weaken social institutions

00:20:30.780 and social solidarity, and it can put the cart before the horse. And it can weaken bonds within

00:20:35.760 the community, and it can weaken bonds even within families, which is the bedrock political unit and

00:20:41.060 has to be protected. Zoran Mamdani's critique of capitalism is communist, basically. He is an avowed

00:20:51.820 socialist and maybe a communist. And he's even what we now call like a gay race communist. He's not even 0.96

00:21:00.260 like the old school Bernie Sanders kind of socialist. You know, he's not like that old school class

00:21:04.080 warfare, Karl Marx kind of socialist or communist. He's the kind of communist who tweets about queer 1.00

00:21:12.000 liberation, who tweets about the need for justice in Palestine or whatever as a matter of the economic

00:21:20.980 order. It's not, oh man, it's going to be bad. I'm all for critiquing capitalism if it means you're

00:21:27.800 going to strengthen the family, if it means you're going to maintain traditions, if it means you're going

00:21:32.440 to have a cohesive society. Yeah, get a healthy critique of capitalism. But it's like the Anakin

00:21:38.040 Skywalker meme. I'm going to critique capitalism. Oh, you're going to critique how it is acidic and

00:21:44.520 corrosive to social institutions and the family and norms and the natural law? It's just Zoran 1.00

00:21:51.140 Anakin smiling there. It doesn't destroy the family enough. It doesn't, it doesn't liberate

00:21:58.380 the queers enough. Okay. Going to be a total disaster. But there's an irony to Momdani's 1.00

00:22:04.040 critiques of capitalism. Namely, he's most popular among wealthy New Yorkers and wealthy non-New Yorkers,

00:22:13.100 I should say. We'll get to that in a second. First, I want to tell you about Leaf Filter.

00:22:16.380 Go to leaffilter.com slash Knowles. If you're like me, folks, you don't want to be pulling the

00:22:24.980 gunk out of your gutters. Okay. Ever, ever. Certainly not this holiday season. You want to do

00:22:30.340 that? Maybe you're tired of those constant clogs. Maybe you just don't clean your gutters at all.

00:22:36.900 And then therefore they keep getting stopped up and they could cause foundation issues and they go,

00:22:41.460 whatever it is for me, I don't want any of that. Leaf Filter offers a permanent solution. Do not

00:22:47.040 miss their Black Friday sales event. Save up to 35% off their most anticipated sale of the year at

00:22:51.840 leaffilter.com slash Knowles, Canada W-L-E-S. An investment in Leaf Filter is really an investment

00:22:56.520 in protecting your whole home. Clogged gutters are not just annoying. They can cause very serious water

00:23:01.440 damage from flooding, roof issues, rotting siding, foundation problems. DIY solutions might seem cheaper

00:23:07.840 up front. They can cost you a lot more down the road. Leaf Filter is the permanent solution backed

00:23:11.700 by a lifetime, no clogs guarantee. Their award-winning patented technology keeps everything

00:23:17.140 but water out. No holes, no gaps, no openings or debris to slip through. Do not miss out on your

00:23:23.380 last chance of the year to save up to 35% off when you protect your gutters with Leaf Filter,

00:23:30.320 America's number one gutter protection system. Schedule your free inspection at

00:23:35.280 leaffilter.com slash Knowles, Canada W-L-E-S. That is our lowest price of the year,

00:23:39.780 up to 35% off. L-E-A-F-filter.com slash Knowles. See representative for warranty details.

00:23:45.980 So I have here some cross tabs. Jeremiah Johnson was pushing this around Twitter. He pointed out

00:23:51.480 that Mamdani does better than Cuomo or Sliwa among transplants and the rich and people who rent

00:24:03.260 their apartments at the market rate. In New York, a ton of apartments are rent controlled or rent

00:24:07.840 stabilized. So you get an old teacher of mine lived in this apartment in New York in a beautiful area

00:24:14.220 by Carnegie Hall for decades. He lived there since the 50s, I think. And he had this beautiful,

00:24:19.740 you know, classic eight apartment. Fair market value would have been like eight grand. He was

00:24:23.920 paying $800 a month. So there are all these distortions to the market. So you would expect

00:24:29.060 the people who would support Mamdani if you just buy him at his Marxist rhetoric. You would expect

00:24:34.820 it to be the rent controlled New Yorkers, the underclass, the proletariat, right? No. 0.79

00:24:41.720 Mamdani does better with transplants, the rich and market rate renters per Jeremiah Johnson.

00:24:48.420 If you look at Sliwa, the Republican and Cuomo, the, I guess, more moderate Democrat,

00:24:54.360 it's the guy who lit up Freedom Tower pink to celebrate infanticide. We have to call him the 0.98

00:24:57.540 moderate in this race. Disgusting. You see, they both do better with people who were born in New 1.00

00:25:04.240 York than people who were born outside New York. Only Mamdani does worse with actual New Yorkers 0.84

00:25:10.820 compared to people born outside New York City. You look at all of the cross tabs, it shows you that.

00:25:17.820 And I'm not surprised by this. Some people will be surprised because they think of New York as

00:25:21.980 monolithic and liberal and awful. Having spent the first 24 years of my life in and around New York

00:25:29.820 within, within a commuter rail line of Grand Central, I tell you, there is a deep conservatism

00:25:36.580 to New York. Not enough to beat the Democrats in elections generally, but there's a deep kind

00:25:41.920 of conservatism. And actual New Yorkers are, are not voting for Mamdani. In fact, I don't want to 0.66

00:25:48.620 tell tales out of school. I still have, you know, many liberal friends and family members in, in New

00:25:52.520 York. Some very liberal friends of mine will not vote for Mamdani. New Yorkers. However, rich transplants 1.00

00:26:03.340 are going to vote for him. And foreigners, foreigners and rich transplants. That's, that's very sad.

00:26:08.340 But you know what this means is that even New Yorkers now have to feel the hideous effects of

00:26:15.360 mass migration. Because New York, New Yorkers, they didn't really care that much about mass

00:26:19.700 migration. Yeah. Okay. Maybe, uh, Minneapolis is going to be overrun by Somalis and that's going 1.00

00:26:25.280 to create problems and a lot of crime and social discord, but whatever, you know, they got to deal

00:26:29.720 with it too bad. Okay. Maybe mass migration is going to turn California blue. Yeah, good. All the 0.98

00:26:35.100 better. New Yorkers are basically fine with that. Yeah. Maybe, look, okay. Maybe, all right. Some

00:26:40.020 migrants are coming to New York now. That's a little annoying. Even Eric Adams, Democrat mayor, 1.00

00:26:43.560 he said mass migration is going to ruin the city. Okay. But whatever, you know, New York's generally

00:26:48.180 always kind of Democrats. No big deal. Well now mass migration, not just illegal immigration,

00:26:54.100 but legal immigration too, is going to tell New Yorkers, you don't get to pick your own mayor.

00:26:59.520 Mayor. Actual New Yorkers, you don't get to pick your own mayor. You want Andy Cuomo for whatever

00:27:05.440 reason? You want maybe Curtis Sliwa? Too bad. Even, even Andy Cuomo though, you regular Democrat

00:27:10.360 New York, you don't get him. You have to get a Muslim communist who's going to raise your effective 1.00

00:27:15.060 tax rate to 52%, who's going to take over your grocery stores and who's going to buy up private

00:27:21.380 apartment buildings and create a bunch of communes that are going to decay into even more projects,

00:27:25.260 where there's going to be even more crime and even more drugs, and it's going to be unlivable.

00:27:30.380 You said diversity is our strength. So that's what you get. You said we needed to have lots of legal

00:27:37.020 immigration. Even if it's not illegal immigration, we need endless legal immigration. Okay. That's

00:27:40.760 what you get. You get Zoran Mamdani. The conservatives have seen that happening for a while now.

00:27:47.640 When I was a kid, there were two views you could have on immigration. You could have total open borders,

00:27:53.300 legal's good, illegal's good, bring it on. Or you could have mostly open borders. And you say,

00:27:58.840 illegal's bad, but legal immigration's really good. We all want more migrants, just got to do it 0.98

00:28:04.200 legally. Some of us, for many years now, have been calling to drastically reduce all migration

00:28:09.580 for purposes of social solidarity. It's only been the right that's called for that. The right and

00:28:15.440 Bernie Sanders, in his defense, because he's an old school socialist and he recognizes that mass

00:28:19.860 migration is bad for the working class. Other than that, though, no one seems to have noticed. 1.00

00:28:25.660 Now they're going to notice. It's too bad. I love New York. It's too bad to see it happen.

00:28:29.800 There is only one dem in the country who seems inclined to moderate. And that would be the

00:28:35.980 Democrat who has recovered from a brain injury. That would be John Fetterman. Here he is on CNN,

00:28:42.360 not merely invading against the far left wings of his party, but admitting what every reasonable

00:28:47.820 person knows. Namely, the Democrats are responsible for the government shutdown.

00:28:53.120 I'm deeply, deeply distressing to know that 42 million Americans are going to lose their SNAP

00:28:58.100 benefits. And now that's one of the big reasons why I refuse to shutting our government down.

00:29:03.540 And again, I feel like the Democrats really need to own the shutdown.

00:29:10.320 I love it. I've gotten more of a kick out of John Fetterman every single day. I pointed out,

00:29:15.780 though, at the Nixon Library last night, you know, there's a civil war on the American right.

00:29:20.740 Everyone talks about it, especially online and in very politically nerdy circles. Always just say,

00:29:26.080 are you in this faction or that faction? Are you with this guy or that guy? And the thing is,

00:29:30.760 there's always kind of a civil war on the American right because the American right is divided into

00:29:34.500 lots of different camps. The neocons and the paleocons and the libertarians and the traditionalists

00:29:39.320 and the religious right and the country club Republicans and the new right and the new new

00:29:42.480 right and me. I was on the new right, but now I'm older, so I'm on the paleo new right, I guess.

00:29:46.580 I don't, that's the right. The left used to be divided between progressives and blue dog

00:29:55.380 Democrats. And the blue dog Democrats were people like Daniel Patrick Moynihan years ago.

00:30:00.760 Or people like Joe Manchin more recently or Kishton Sinema. Or there were, there were these

00:30:05.860 kind of moderate Dems. Now the Democrat party is divided between progressives and super progressives

00:30:13.020 and John Fetterman. John Fetterman is the only, only one, a dying breed. So who do the Democrats have?

00:30:23.400 Mentioned yesterday this strange situation, even CNN had to admit it,

00:30:26.940 which is that in 2000, 2004, Democrats had a front runner. Al Gore was polling above 25%

00:30:33.180 at this time in the presidential cycle. So they, they knew and Al Gore got it in 2000,

00:30:38.420 he didn't get it in 2004, but they still had a clear sense of what kind of candidate they were

00:30:41.480 going to have. Same thing with Hillary in 2008, 2016. Same thing with Joe Biden in 2020.

00:30:45.840 Now there is no candidate polling above 25%. Nevertheless, Kamala Harris insists that the

00:30:55.820 Democrats have a really deep bench. So many stars in their party.

00:30:59.100 We have so many stars in our party. There are so many stars and, and let's not be afraid of them.

00:31:10.420 You know, you talk about Momdani. I mean, he's exciting this group of people who otherwise don't

00:31:18.500 think of themselves as being aligned or apart or even seen by the system. You just look at the range

00:31:25.400 of what we have so many, Jasmine Crockett, who I just talked to recently. I mean, we have so many stars.

00:31:36.160 So that's it. They have so many stars. Who are they? Zoran Momdani and Jasmine Crockett.

00:31:46.580 This woman was the vice president of the United States. She was the presidential nominee 10 months ago. 1.00

00:31:53.120 She says that the future of the Democrat party, the most exciting people they have right now,

00:32:00.660 a Muslim communist and a woman who is politically schizophrenic, a woman who one day she goes, 0.76

00:32:09.400 she gives an interview and she just sounds like a totally normal person. She says, oh yeah, well,

00:32:12.940 here's the tax policy in this area and this is why. But then she goes in front of another audience 0.92

00:32:17.140 where she wants to pander to black people and she sounds like she's in a WB sitcom. She's like, 0.63

00:32:21.600 mm-hmm, all right, now listen here, man. You know what I'm talking about, honey?

00:32:26.500 You know, mm-hmm. And you think, all that, wait, you were just talking normal like five minutes ago.

00:32:31.400 You, forget about the ideas. What's the idea, what idea has she offered? All she has tried to do

00:32:38.880 is emulate some of AOC's provocations. That's it. All she's tried to do is just like really hit

00:32:45.560 Trump. All she's tried to do is get nice viral clips on the internet. That's the best. Say what 0.96

00:32:51.520 you will about Mamdani. At least he's a communist. Say what you will about Mamdani. At least he has 0.89

00:32:56.380 an idea, kind of. At least he might be a jihadi. Great. Okay, I can work with that. 1.00

00:33:03.660 There's something to engage with there. What about the rest of the day? And those are the best.

00:33:08.220 And it, it is amazing to think as, as some of these elder statesmen pass away or retire from

00:33:17.120 politics, Cheney exits stage. Nancy Pelosi prepares to leave politics. You think, wow,

00:33:26.440 will there, will there be a day to come that we miss Nancy Pelosi? Are things just getting worse?

00:33:32.500 You know, I'm not a pessimist exactly. Many of my colleagues are pessimists. I'm not an optimist

00:33:38.320 either because pessimism and optimism are just feelings. You know, they're, they're cheap little

00:33:42.460 sentiments. They're two sides of the same coin. I have hope, which is a theological virtue. I have

00:33:47.760 hope, which I'm commanded to have, and which I have based on the fact of the resurrection.

00:33:52.640 But if you ask me to put money down, will the political situation in America over the next five

00:33:58.860 years get better or worse? I would say long-term, we're poised potentially to have a renewal.

00:34:05.500 You see this in the Trump revolution. You see this in the, the very likely J.D. Vance,

00:34:10.340 Marco Rubio ticket. You see this in a return to religion among young people, especially. You see,

00:34:14.480 there are really good signs, Gen Z becoming substantially more conservative. Okay. They're 1.00

00:34:18.920 good signs in the short term. There's going to be a lot of Jasmine and Zoron, and it's going to be

00:34:26.280 ugly. It's going to be ugly. Okay. Speaking of President Trump, he's, he's fielding all sorts

00:34:32.700 of criticism from people who saying, who are saying he's going too far. His response, I think

00:34:38.380 we should all emulate. We have less than 2000 Daily Wire lifetime memberships remaining. I met

00:34:43.840 actually a number of lifetime members over the past few days, including out here in Southern

00:34:47.860 California at the Nixon presidential library. Turns out having all access benefits for life

00:34:52.200 with no renewals is something everyone wants. So here are your options. You could buy one while

00:34:57.020 they're still available, or you could win mine. That's right. I have my very own lifetime membership

00:35:03.040 to give away. I made it very easy to enter. You download the free Daily Wire Plus app in the app

00:35:07.300 store. You open it. You tap follow under my beautiful picture, and that's it. You've entered.

00:35:13.040 Who knows? I could be calling you to give you my personal lifetime membership. I could say,

00:35:18.440 hey, hey, you up? Hey, what's going on? Hey. But before any of that happens, you need to download

00:35:26.140 the Daily Wire Plus app and follow me in the app to enter to win. My favorite comment yesterday is

00:35:32.220 from Adichius. New Yorkers. Never forget. Also New Yorkers. We forgot. I know. It's really not just,

00:35:42.780 I don't, I would hate to sound like an Islamophobe. You know me. I would hate to sound like that.

00:35:46.740 But this is, to borrow a word from our Yiddish friends, as there are many of them in New York,

00:35:53.080 this is a Shonda. This is a Shonda. This should not be in the conversation. I don't even think

00:35:59.080 Mamdani, I don't think there's a lot of evidence that he's even particularly Muslim. I think it's 1.00

00:36:03.460 worse. I think he's just like a cringe millennial, a liberal Obama era cringe millennial, but

00:36:09.240 should not happen. I remember they were going to try to build a mosque at Ground Zero. 1.00

00:36:14.220 This was about 15 years ago. And at the time, the Republican Party, the conservative movement,

00:36:20.820 was really enthralled to libertarian-ish principles. You know, totally small government,

00:36:27.880 you can do whatever you want. We're going to have neutrality in religion. It was quite secular at the

00:36:32.840 time. And it was very difficult to explain why there shouldn't be a mosque at Ground Zero. 0.97

00:36:38.220 Everyone knows there should not be a mosque at Ground Zero. There should be city, state, 1.00

00:36:44.400 and federal statutes prohibiting mosques at Ground Zero. And you should be deported if you suggest 0.99

00:36:49.440 that there should be a mosque at Ground Zero. We all know that in our guts, but no one knew how to say 0.98

00:36:55.240 it. I remember Charles Krauthammer had a great column on it. He was a very moderate, respected figure.

00:37:00.140 And he said, it's not that you can't build a mosque anywhere, but just not here. That's not right.

00:37:07.140 He basically said, trust your gut, guys. We all know, and there's some wisdom to our guts.

00:37:12.620 And it's not right. It's not right to have a guy named Zoram Amdani be the mayor of New York. It's

00:37:19.000 just, he can be the mayor of some other place. It's not right to have him be the mayor in New York.

00:37:21.960 Okay. Speaking of immigration and assimilation, President Trump doing a very good job on the

00:37:30.820 deportations, on ending illegal immigration. He's doing a much better job than he's getting

00:37:35.560 credit for, not only from the left, but also even from the right. You know, not only the deportations

00:37:41.720 by ICE, Tom Holman, Kristi Noem, but also the self-deportations, also the inducements to get out

00:37:47.660 of the country on their own. So it saves taxpayer money and resources. Anyway, some have taken notice

00:37:53.900 in the media. Trump was doing an interview on 60 Minutes. He was called all sorts of terrible

00:37:57.760 things. He was asked if his policy was going too far. More recently, Americans have been watching

00:38:04.300 videos of ICE, tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood,

00:38:11.080 and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?

00:38:15.380 No, I think they haven't gone far enough because we've been held back by the, by the judges,

00:38:21.120 by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama.

00:38:27.360 This is the answer. When they ask you, well, don't you think Trump's going a little too far?

00:38:34.060 Oh, you, you just don't understand the political situation at all.

00:38:37.880 Don't you think Trump, this is, this is the stage in the presidency, almost done with the first year

00:38:44.300 when the enthusiasm of the election is supposed to wear off. People are starting to swing back a

00:38:50.160 little bit in the other direction. We're looking ahead to the midterms, which the other party is

00:38:53.980 supposed to win. And, you know, the, the president is supposed to be losing popularity.

00:38:59.700 And this is the point at which you say, you know, maybe he's gone a little too far.

00:39:02.400 That's not where the country's at.

00:39:07.080 The Democrats are not looking, we'll see what happens in New York and Virginia, not obviously,

00:39:11.220 but, and New Jersey, but the Democrats are not nearly as strong as they should be in this stage

00:39:16.320 of the cycle. They're not looking as strong for the midterms. The Democrats are losing the

00:39:21.100 shutdown battle. First time in my lifetime. The, the only complaint the American people have about

00:39:27.280 the Trump administration on immigration is exactly the complaint Trump himself just voiced. Namely,

00:39:32.080 it's not going far enough. We have not nearly exhausted the enthusiasm for the Trump campaign

00:39:38.700 promises. We, we are not nearly through with the excitement for what the guy who won the popular

00:39:46.060 vote as a Republican for the first time in 20 years was promising. This has got to be your response.

00:39:50.940 No going soft, no weak at the knees. I want to minimize the infighting on the right,

00:39:57.580 which is a perennial feature. And even when we're talking about right-wing coalitions,

00:40:02.960 when, when there's a reason to exclude somebody or to sideline somebody, whether for moral or purely

00:40:08.240 electoral reasons, we need to act like grown men and do it behind the scenes. Okay. We got to do it.

00:40:14.180 I'm really inspired by Richard Nixon, having been at the Nixon library last night.

00:40:17.480 Sort your problems out behind the scenes. None of this whining and fighting inside baseballs. None

00:40:22.900 of that. Eyes on the prize. There is still so much energy for what we were told was the radical

00:40:30.240 Trump promises. And the hour is so late and the problems are so dire. And the Democrats are poised to

00:40:36.340 elect a Muslim communist in New York and a man who wants to murder Republicans and our kids in 0.97

00:40:40.560 Virginia. And we got to stay focused folks, because we're, we're only guaranteed another what? 0.95

00:40:45.700 Another year before the midterms. So we get another 14, 15 months. The Republicans can,

00:40:54.340 are guaranteed to be able to do stuff in the legislature. Even that's hard because it's a

00:40:57.340 razor thin majority. Then we only get another three years guaranteed as Trump, Trump is president.

00:41:03.820 I hope we get, you know, two terms of J.D. Vance. And then obviously Barron Trump can just become

00:41:10.140 the first citizen, abolish elections, inaugurate the Augustan Trumpian age. And, but that's down

00:41:15.920 the line. All we have is this. Got to, got to focus. Got to focus. Got to keep moving forward.

00:41:22.520 Only problem is it doesn't go far enough. Now, speaking of families, there's a video going viral.

00:41:29.660 Actually, a number of videos gone viral. As the government shutdown continues on,

00:41:35.320 there are finally some cuts to food stamps, CBT, the SNAP program. And you're seeing people,

00:41:41.840 I mean, there, there was one woman, I think she was 65. She said, she's been on food stamps for 30

00:41:46.840 years and she looked fine. She looked able-bodied. She'd, you know, these are not programs that

00:41:53.060 generally speaking, you're supposed to be on for decades at a time. They're supposed to get you

00:41:56.820 through tough spots. For some people who are severely disabled, it might be a longer term deal for them.

00:42:03.680 But there's clearly a ton of fraud and abuse in the food stamp program. And it's clearly driving up

00:42:10.180 the cost of groceries for everybody else. Some people can't even imagine life without food stamps

00:42:16.420 as these who have gone viral. Ever been to the food bank before?

00:42:21.460 No, we never have. This is your first time here.

00:42:24.080 Correct. Are you scared? Well, highly afraid because I mean, we didn't ask for these kids to come

00:42:29.920 and what are we going to do at the night? Then we have them. We have to take care of them.

00:42:33.680 We have to find a way. And it's hard right now with everything that's going on. People are even

00:42:37.720 afraid to come out of their houses to work. It's really bad. And especially with everything

00:42:43.180 going on with the new, with the president saying that we have to hang in there. How are we going

00:42:47.100 to hang in there with the kids? Like, there's no way at all.

00:42:51.280 Thanksgiving coming up?

00:42:52.720 Especially, imagine the people. It's not fair for anybody.

00:42:55.840 What is your message right now to the federal government?

00:43:02.000 I mean, what can we say?

00:43:05.080 Did you catch the line?

00:43:11.520 I feel, I actually do feel for this woman. I know most conservatives are not going to,

00:43:15.220 they're going to say, are you kidding me? But I feel for her. I feel for her. She's

00:43:18.520 clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, is confused about a lot of things, but there's

00:43:25.880 one line in particular that really gets her. She said, we didn't ask for these kids.

00:43:30.240 Do we, do we need to go back to seventh grade biology class? You didn't ask for these kids?

00:43:38.680 We didn't ask for these kids. Not only did you ask for these kids through a specific action that

00:43:46.400 you undertook, but living in our contraceptive culture, the fact that you didn't use artificial

00:43:52.640 contraception, which I'm not recommending, by the way, I'm not in any way encouraging artificial

00:43:56.720 contraception. But the fact that you presumably did not use that means that you asked for the

00:44:02.940 kids twice. You did the thing and then you didn't use the thing that sometimes goes with the thing

00:44:09.280 that can stop the consequence of the thing. There was one person at the beginning of that video

00:44:15.480 said he'd never been to a food bank. He just was on the government cheese, didn't even think of

00:44:19.080 availing himself of other charitable resources. So one, this is evidence that even in charity,

00:44:26.720 to these people who, you know, maybe aren't totally with it and aren't the most resourceful

00:44:32.440 and, you know, that exists in society, the poor will always be with you. And so you have to take

00:44:35.940 care of them. But if you do it legitimately have charity for them, it's not always good to just stick

00:44:42.340 them on EBT because that can crowd out other resources like the church, like private charities.

00:44:49.000 It can get them hooked on these programs to the point that they don't even know how to go to a food

00:44:52.740 bank, much less go out and find gainful employment. And also though, and this is going to be the

00:45:00.860 controversial part, this is the consequence of contraception. This is the consequence of a

00:45:07.160 contraceptive culture. You will say, well, Michael, it sure seems like she wasn't using contraception. 0.90

00:45:12.200 No, no, no. This is the consequence of a contraceptive culture, a culture in which condoms and the birth 0.99

00:45:17.380 control pill are normalized and even encouraged in our schools going all the way down to sixth grade,

00:45:22.400 fifth grade in some cases. Because just the introduction of that and the normalization of

00:45:29.120 contraception in our culture, divorces in the public imagination, sex from procreation.

00:45:36.920 It says that there's not necessarily a link between those things. In the old way of thinking,

00:45:42.340 we used to say, love and marriage, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.

00:45:49.200 And what happens after the horse and carriage? The baby carriage. That's in the second verse of 0.93

00:45:55.300 the song. There's a connection between love, marriage, and the baby carriage. Now we divorce all

00:46:03.680 three of those things. And our birth rate problem comes from contraception. Our mass migration problem 0.93

00:46:11.460 in many ways comes from contraception because we don't have an above replacement birth rate. And so

00:46:15.000 we're told that we have to import the third world because it's the only way to keep our population up

00:46:19.080 and our GDP up. A lot of problems come from this. And I know the right is going to be largely unified

00:46:25.460 when I say abortion is bad. I know the right is going to be a little more fractious when I say 0.98

00:46:32.820 that, you know, IVF is bad because it practically speaking entails abortion and for other reasons too.

00:46:38.260 But when I say contraception is bad and we should discourage it, and it actually was illegal or at

00:46:45.520 least heavily limited until Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s and 70s invented some constitutional right

00:46:50.860 to condoms. And when I say that, that's when I'm going too far. That's when I'm a knuckle-dragging

00:46:56.600 theocratic troglodyte. That's where, hey, Mike, you got to cool it. I'm just telling you facts.

00:47:01.860 When a woman says, hey, we didn't ask for these kids, she is expressing an intuition that we're

00:47:11.280 all at least pretending, which is that sex does not necessarily entail procreation. Okay.

00:47:18.860 Really important, there is something very positive in the culture. Well, it's a positive sign from a

00:47:23.800 really negative thing in a foreign culture. We don't have time to get to it. I'll give you a little 1.00

00:47:28.500 tease. Nicki Minaj. Nicki Minaj is sounding the alarm on Christian persecution in Nigeria and is

00:47:39.940 thanking, actually, the Trump administration. And she's just, she's great. And Trump is now using

00:47:46.720 some of her songs and it's awesome. I don't have time to get into the story today. However,

00:47:51.080 it is perhaps providential. I'm sitting here at the PragerU Studios. My friend, Xavier DeRousseau,

00:47:57.100 was, was the first one to Minaj pill me. He turned me into a barb and the barbs are completely

00:48:02.620 vindicated. She's standing up for the hideous persecution of Christians that is happening in

00:48:07.720 Nigeria. We've talked about that on the show before. We'll get to it a little bit more because

00:48:11.060 the United States might get involved. We'll get to that. We will not get to the member of segmentum

00:48:14.480 today because I got to film two things and then I got to fly back to Nashville. So I will see you

00:48:19.080 tomorrow back in Nashville. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you then.

00:48:27.100 Bye.

The Michael Knowles Show - November 04, 2025

Ep. 1849 - Democrats Pin Their Election-Day Hopes On Communists, Muslims, And Psychos

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript