The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1850 - New York Elects A Muslim Communist Mayor

00:00:00.000 New York has elected a Muslim communist mayor. Virginia makes a guy who wants to kill Republicans 0.92

00:00:05.540 and our kids. It's top law enforcement official. It was a clean sweep for Democrats. But there is

00:00:14.880 a silver lining to the storm cloud of an election night. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael

00:00:19.320 Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to the show. The silver lining, of course, is that Zara Fui can wear her burqa 1.00

00:00:44.500 again. Isn't that great? You know, Zoran, he was saying that aunt of his, everyone in his family

00:00:49.720 is an aunt. All of his friends are aunts, too. And his aunt, Zara Fui, she felt uncomfortable

00:00:57.600 wearing her full burqa or whatever after 9-11. So anyway, she can wear it again and feel cozy

00:01:05.120 and comfy. Absolutely, absolutely brutal night. We will get to all of it and what we should

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00:02:38.440 helixsleep.com slash Knowles. Zoron comes out. He wins over 50% of the vote, which means that's with

00:02:47.940 90% reporting. They're still counting votes because we live in a banana republic. So somehow we've gotten

00:02:52.300 much, much worse at counting votes in elections. But with 90% of the vote in as of this morning,

00:02:57.740 Zoron won over 50%, which means that all the people calling on Curtis Sliwa, the Republican,

00:03:04.120 to drop out of the race, they were not proven right. Didn't matter. Sliwa could have dropped out. 0.94

00:03:11.040 Every single one of Sliwa's votes could have gone to Cuomo. Zoron still would have won.

00:03:15.800 Would have obviously been much tighter, but he still would have won. Made no difference.

00:03:19.600 Mamdani gets on the stage. He celebrates. He talks about all those New Yorkers he's representing.

00:03:29.980 I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas.

00:03:37.680 Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses.

00:03:43.920 Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.

00:03:46.980 Yes. Yes, aunties.

00:03:54.740 You notice who he's not talking about? You know, I can't help but notice there's one group of people

00:04:01.620 that you're not representing. Would it happen to be? I guess you look at all the races,

00:04:08.360 you could say white people or Europeans. But the other group is just like New Yorkers. 0.58

00:04:14.860 What about New Yorkers? I am a New Yorker by birth and by upbringing. I spent the first 24 years of my

00:04:24.300 life in and within a commuter rail line of New York City. And I, my family had been in New York

00:04:33.260 for a long time. There are a lot of people, Italian background, Irish background, even some English

00:04:39.460 background, a lot of Jewish background, a lot. But people who have been in New York a long time.

00:04:45.620 Zoran Mamdani personally has been in New York for about five minutes. He himself is an immigrant and

00:04:51.040 he's speaking to people who are immigrants. Not people whose parents were immigrants even. Not 0.83

00:04:57.400 people whose grandparents were immigrants even. We're like people who have been in New York for

00:05:01.100 five minutes. And the transplants from within the United States and especially from outside the

00:05:06.160 United States played a big role in his winning. And he, what he's saying is, yeah, I know that you

00:05:10.460 guys were the ones who elected me. And so we're, this is a, this is a new city now on the racial

00:05:16.280 front. Forget about white people. Don't we'll talk about every other group of people other than white

00:05:19.580 people, but it's, it's even beyond just race. It's, Hey, yeah, there was an old New York. We don't

00:05:25.520 care about that. We care about Uzbeki taxi drivers and Mexican abuelas and everyone other than 0.97

00:05:32.880 New Yorkers. So you, you, he leans very heavily into the racial ID politics and he leans very

00:05:41.200 heavily into socialism. The first line that he quotes in his speech is from one of the most

00:05:47.140 famous socialists in the history of the United States. The sun may have set over our city this

00:05:55.740 evening. But as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.

00:06:10.640 For as long as we can remember the working people of New York have been. So Eugene Debs,

00:06:17.920 for those who don't know, was a socialist presidential candidate. He was jailed for sedition. Okay. This guy

00:06:24.140 was very, very prominent, very dangerous man. He, he spoke quite eloquently actually. And he had a

00:06:32.200 real dangerous little silver tongue, didn't he? And he was ultimately, I think he had a sentence 0.99

00:06:38.660 commuted by President Harding. He, he wasn't pardoned because he was guilty of his crimes, sedition,

00:06:44.400 but, but he, he was, he was, had a sentence commuted because he was an older man, but he, he really was

00:06:49.200 a dangerous figure, the nearest that we've ever had to a socialist takeover of the United States.

00:06:54.320 He won something like 8% of the presidential vote from prison. And Mamdani comes out and that's the 0.92

00:07:00.420 guy he quotes, Eugene Debs. So he, he was very serious about his socialism. The fact that the guy,

00:07:07.080 the guy's essentially communist. And he was very serious about his, his identity politics,

00:07:13.200 the immigrant politics, the racial politics, every group other than white people.

00:07:17.340 He was very serious about that. The silver linings in Mamdani's election are one. I, I did call it,

00:07:23.980 you know, I, I, my favorite thing to do in politics is win. My second favorite thing to do is be right.

00:07:30.720 And so we couldn't get the first one, but at least we got the second one here. He was going to win.

00:07:35.520 It's why I couldn't get behind this big movement to say, we all need to go out and endorse Cuomo.

00:07:39.580 We need to vote for Cuomo. You know, I played, President Trump basically leaned into that.

00:07:43.620 And I just didn't, didn't think it was really going to do it. I could, I even tweeted last

00:07:47.580 night before the election results were in. I said, even at this late stage, we have a,

00:07:51.320 we're on the brink of having a Muslim communist mayor in New York. And I still can't bring myself 0.98

00:07:54.960 to say I'm rooting for Cuomo. I just don't, this guy's, look, I know we were all supposed to say

00:07:59.140 that Cuomo was the moderate in this race relative to the Muslim communist, but you know, the guy lit up 0.98

00:08:04.060 Freedom Tower with a light show to celebrate killing babies. You know, Cuomo's a psycho. I mean,

00:08:09.260 he was a terrible governor and he would have been a terrible mayor too. So, you know, it's,

00:08:13.300 you're choosing arsenic or cyanide basically looking between Momdani and, and Andy Cuomo.

00:08:18.800 The other thing I was right about though, and you know how much I hate to say I told you so.

00:08:22.380 Everyone was freaking out when Momdani was running. They said this, this, the scariest thing about

00:08:27.060 this guy is that he's a Muslim. The scare is, I can't believe a Muslim is taking over New York. 1.00

00:08:31.600 And I think it is a shame that a Muslim would be mayor of New York, especially for the 25th 1.00

00:08:35.580 anniversary of 9-11. But I said, what are you talking about? The fact that he's Muslim is like 1.00

00:08:39.180 the best thing about this guy. What are you talking about? I said, oh, you think that he's

00:08:43.700 like some jihadi or something. No, no, it's worse than that. He's a cringe millennial socialist. 0.74

00:08:49.300 That's what's, that's the worst part. In some ways, if he took Islam seriously,

00:08:53.540 I could deal with him more easily. Islam and Christendom have a very serious 1400 year conflict 1.00

00:09:00.220 and Islam engages in many theological errors. But at least these people believe in God. At least 1.00

00:09:05.480 these people grant the existence of a kind of moral order. At least I can speak to these

00:09:09.100 people. I can speak to Muslims in many ways more easily than I can speak to the purple haired, 0.98

00:09:16.280 you know, crazy tatted up, weird piercings, dubious sexuality, millennial or zoomer of the,

00:09:24.880 of the kind of atheist Western secularism. So it's not that, and I'll just point out,

00:09:29.620 yeah, he leans into the crazy racial stuff. He leans into the ID politics. He leans into Eugene

00:09:34.940 Debs and socialism. I don't hear him up there quoting Saeed Qutb, you know, I don't hear him

00:09:40.540 up there quoting Osama bin Laden. I think that's probably one of the least significant aspects

00:09:45.180 of his, of his identity. He is a regular run of the mill millennial socialist, which involves,

00:09:53.160 which therefore involves some race politics and some religion politics. But he's, it's almost the

00:09:59.500 worst kind of outcome. Now, the way that the left has reacted to his victory tells you a lot about

00:10:07.480 our political moment. And it doesn't only tell you about the left. It tells you about the right

00:10:11.100 because Republicans and conservatives have been flailing. They've fecklessly tried to counter the

00:10:17.640 rise of a kind of meme-y, semi-ironic streamer, zoomer politics that is typified in people like

00:10:26.360 Nick Fuentes. They've been flailing. I mean, they've just been completely feckless at it.

00:10:30.920 And there's a similar phenomenon going on on the left. We will get to that because

00:10:35.040 I've finally encountered an analysis of it for the first time in years that is actually

00:10:42.180 insightful and tells you about our political moment. We'll get to that in a moment. First,

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00:12:13.800 Hasan Piker being interviewed by BT News. This is being aired on PBS. Hasan Piker is a prominent

00:12:21.060 left-wing streamer. He's the one who tortured his dog on camera and who has suggested the

00:12:25.620 assassination of Senator Tom Cotton and who has called for the streets to run red in the blood of

00:12:31.240 capitalists. And so he, the New York Times actually published his assassination-related musings after

00:12:38.160 the killing of Charlie Kirk. That's pretty shocking in itself. Here is what Hasan Piker had to say

00:12:42.960 about the election of Momdani.

00:12:45.520 Done. What do you think it means that this guy ran as a socialist and anti-communism didn't work to

00:12:51.480 stop him? That's big. Yeah, I think we are in the heart of the imperial core. This is the country that

00:13:00.280 defeated the USSR, unfortunately. And the reality of the matter is there's a lot of antagonism. There's

00:13:07.320 no class consciousness in the United States of America. It's one of the things I try to address 0.91

00:13:11.040 every day with my commentary. And I will say this, the conditions have deteriorated so much

00:13:18.340 that everyday Americans, in spite of their lack of class consciousness, are finally arriving at

00:13:25.300 the conclusion that perhaps there is an alternative out there. There is an alternative that focuses on

00:13:30.400 them as opposed to the interests of the billionaire. Okay. Even just that last line. Finally,

00:13:37.760 people are going to focus on the working class interest. They're going to rise up against the 0.56

00:13:44.700 interests of the millionaires. That guy is a millionaire. I suspect he's a millionaire many

00:13:50.940 times over. He opens up, he says, you know, this is the country that beat the Soviet Union,

00:13:58.740 unfortunately. And then that girl is interviewing him. She's like, oh, you're bad.

00:14:02.960 Ooh, yeah. We wish the Soviet Union won the Cold War. Yeah. And it's just so fake and stupid. 0.76

00:14:12.080 It's so lame and fake. And it's total nonsense. This guy would not have lasted five minutes in the

00:14:20.560 Soviet Union. And everyone knows it. You think Hassan Piker is going to last very long under Stalin?

00:14:27.900 He does look a little weirdly like Stalin. But no, not for five seconds. That guy would have been

00:14:32.540 liquidated in five seconds. Say what you will about the Soviets. Soviets were made of tough stuff. 0.96

00:14:39.000 Okay. The Soviets weren't like giggling on live streams, you know, crying about their dog moving.

00:14:44.520 Okay. This is so artificial. It's totally fake. The Zoran victory. The Zoran victory in New York 0.98

00:14:54.760 is not distinguished by class. He did very, very well. He won over 50% of the vote.

00:14:59.900 But the features that distinguished his voters from Cuomo or Sliwa's voters, it's not economic class.

00:15:06.440 It's like everything else, but it's not economic class. It's race. It's nationality. It's

00:15:15.700 neighborhood. But weirdly enough, you can't map it onto, you know, the poor beleaguered working class 1.00

00:15:22.380 voted for this guy. And, you know, the plutocrats voted for the other. That really wasn't it. 0.82

00:15:29.680 This all brings me to an excellent article by Chris Ruffo. I read it yesterday. You know,

00:15:34.720 I've been on the road constantly. I gave a speech at the Nixon Library a couple of days ago.

00:15:37.520 I was filming in LA yesterday for my PragerU book club show.

00:15:40.840 Flying back, covering the election returns. I needed something to buoy my spirits.

00:15:46.760 And I read an excellent article by Chris Ruffo on this kind of politics. And he was writing about it

00:15:54.020 from the perspective of the right. And he was analyzing the rise to prominence of people like

00:16:00.040 Nick Fuentes, who the liberal media love to chatter about, and who even figures on the right are taking

00:16:06.120 the bait about. And, you know, I think dissipating their energies, especially before election day and

00:16:13.080 spending a lot of time obsessing over. And every analysis, everything, every drop of ink spilled

00:16:21.420 on this phenomenon has been wasted for about 10 years. I found the whole thing to be completely

00:16:28.640 tedious and totally missing the point. Until I read Chris Ruffo's article, which was excellent.

00:16:33.480 It's in City Journal. Highly recommend you check it out. Ruffo's article observes that the reason that

00:16:41.780 the Republicans and the conservatives have been completely feckless about stopping the rise to

00:16:48.540 prominence of people like Nick Fuentes on the right, or I think you could extend this to the kind of

00:16:53.860 politics we're seeing here on the left, Hassan Piker and the rest of it, is because they don't even

00:16:59.240 understand what the phenomenon is. They think that the phenomenon is just politics, you know,

00:17:05.540 and sometimes the neocons rise up, and sometimes the paleocons rise up, and sometimes the libertarians

00:17:10.220 rise up. And it's, they're on, this candidate is going to lead the pack. No, maybe this candidate

00:17:15.320 will lead the pack, and that's why we need to win. No, it's not. It isn't that. It is a kind of

00:17:21.720 hyper-real politics. It's a kind of a meta-politics. It's a politics about politics.

00:17:27.720 And curiously enough, coincidentally enough, I alluded to this. I touched on this a little bit

00:17:32.340 in an answer to a question at the Nixon Library two nights ago. And then Chris put that observation

00:17:37.600 in much more articulately and in a far more comprehensive way in this article.

00:17:42.720 A hyper-real politics is based on some of the thinking of a guy named Baudrillard. We've talked

00:17:50.860 about Baudrillard on this show when we interviewed Vocal Distance, who had this concept of hyper-reality.

00:17:55.700 And hyper-reality would be like, you know, in Vocal Distance's example that he used on our show,

00:18:02.320 said, you know, you start out with a strawberry, and then you want like more of the strawberry.

00:18:05.900 So you make a strawberry jam, but you want it to be even more strawberry. So then you make a

00:18:10.700 strawberry candy, a hard candy. And then you make that, but then you want it to be even more

00:18:15.500 concentrated. So, you know, you've got the strawberry Jolly Rancher. Now you make a strawberry

00:18:19.260 Jolly Rancher slushy. And then you make a strawberry Jolly Rancher slushy ice cream or something.

00:18:25.200 And by the end, people really like the strawberry Jolly Rancher slushy ice cream, but it actually

00:18:30.040 doesn't really taste like the strawberry. And if those same people went back and tasted the strawberry,

00:18:34.360 they wouldn't like it. They wouldn't even recognize it, perhaps. That's the process of hyper-reality.

00:18:40.700 Baudrillard, very interesting thinker. He wrote a book called The Iraq War Didn't Happen.

00:18:44.520 Anyway, he's great. So anyway, on this phenomenon that you're seeing here on the left with the

00:18:52.240 commentary of Pike, or you're seeing on the right as well, the hyper-real politics, per Chris Ruffo,

00:19:00.800 seeks out taboo, seeks out transgressing all of these standards and norms and taboos

00:19:07.340 in order to elicit a reaction. It's not that Hassan Piker is seriously a Stalinist. He doesn't even

00:19:16.580 really know what that means. He's not seriously a communist. When he talks about how we need to go,

00:19:20.720 you know, destroy the millionaires, he would be destroying himself. He doesn't, it's not serious.

00:19:25.380 Same too on the right. The figures on the right who would call themselves Nazis are not Nazis in any

00:19:31.740 meaningful sense of the word. And Nazism as an ideology is dead and has been dead for 80 years.

00:19:37.580 The very purpose of wielding these symbols is to take something that does have symbolic value

00:19:45.180 and charge and energy, and to use that to bait other people to get attention.

00:19:52.060 But as I pointed out in my answer at the Nixon Library the other night, well, everyone all over

00:19:56.020 the right is having arguments about this influencer and this podcaster and this streamer and how this

00:20:02.240 streamer can't talk to this influencer and this podcaster can't. It's all so disconnected from

00:20:07.640 actual practical politics. The fact that a lot of this fight was breaking out two days or one day

00:20:14.180 before election day is kind of hilarious. You see, when I'm asked to weigh in on this, I,

00:20:21.260 really intuiting Rufo's thought here, say like, well, hold on. I just don't even see why I would

00:20:27.640 weigh in on this. This seems kind of frivolous. It seems sort of gossipy even, and it just seems

00:20:32.800 disconnected from actual politics. I said, if this actually played a role in the political order,

00:20:38.940 if these people actually could move, you know, 10,000 votes in Michigan or something,

00:20:43.300 if this really weighed in on practical political concerns, I would concern myself with it more.

00:20:49.280 But if it's just this kind of entertaining meta politics, hyper real politics, I might enjoy it

00:20:55.700 as entertainment. I might engage with it that way, but I'm just not going to treat it the same way

00:21:01.480 as I would if this were actually pertaining to real elections. Really, really brilliant observation

00:21:07.920 from Rufo. Highly recommend you go read the article, which he says, you know, the way to respond to this

00:21:14.740 is to treat it as, quote, an essentially fraudulent phenomenon and to focus on actions and outcomes,

00:21:20.280 which is my view as well. It doesn't mean that that can't affect the way that we all interact

00:21:26.360 with each other. Obviously, it does. But it shows you that this political moment is quite different

00:21:32.620 than political moments of the past. And even the relationship between politics and political

00:21:40.220 analysts is fundamentally different. This isn't Charles Krauthammer going on the news show talking

00:21:46.740 about, you know, votes and demographics. There's something different that's changed here.

00:21:52.940 And it's not just on the right. You know, it's on the left as well. And it can be kind of

00:21:58.640 entertaining. It can be, you know, but it's different. You got to know that it's different.

00:22:02.600 Otherwise, the people who are really disturbed by this or who want to counter it, they're just

00:22:09.260 going to keep spinning their wheels like they continue to do and have been doing for a very

00:22:14.280 long time. So beyond New York, beyond the left and the right kind of meta-politics, what happened

00:22:20.160 on election day? We got blown out of the water. More disturbing, perhaps, than what happened in

00:22:24.580 New York is what happened in Virginia. We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, I want to tell

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00:23:35.800 All right, let's just get through it. Governor Race is Abigail Spanberger versus Winsome Sears, 1.00

00:23:41.720 the Republican. Spanberger ran away with it. Last, I didn't even check the numbers this morning.

00:23:47.180 As of last night, I was following it. They called the race at 42% of votes counted.

00:23:51.780 55 to 45 wasn't closed last night. Maybe it tightened up over the course of the night, but

00:23:55.940 she won. She was always going to win. Spanberger

00:23:58.740 infamously refused to withdraw her endorsement from Jay Jones. Jay Jones was that attorney general

00:24:06.240 candidate in Virginia who had text messages come out about him in which he was calling for the

00:24:11.180 murder of a Republican opponent. The opponent's kids said that the Republican opponent was breeding

00:24:15.920 little fascist, said the kids should die in their mother's arms in order to change the father's

00:24:20.500 view on policy, said that he would urinate on the graves of Republicans, said that more cops should

00:24:26.320 die to convince politicians to change cop policy. The guy is just a sick, sick animal.

00:24:35.700 And worse than Spanberger winning while endorsing him is the fact that he won too. He won too.

00:24:44.080 When I was at the Senate, I was testifying before the Senate about a week ago.

00:24:48.540 The most viral exchange from that testimony was sitting there. I was asking Cory Booker,

00:24:56.140 following his commentary, if he would withdraw his endorsement of Jay Jones because he said,

00:24:59.760 we have to be introspective. We need to admit when we're wrong. I turned to where Cory was sitting

00:25:03.160 and he was gone. He ran away. He didn't want to face any questions. Didn't want to engage in anything.

00:25:08.620 He stood by that endorsement and got to hand it to him. It paid off. Not morally. It was deeply

00:25:15.780 immoral. It's very deleterious for the health of our Republic. But Jay Jones won. Jay Jones went out

00:25:26.320 and he proved the phenomenon that we all saw after Charlie was murdered. Just Charlie was murdered and

00:25:34.400 normie Democrats from across the prominence spectrum from elected officials and people on TV all the

00:25:44.840 way down to that girl you went to third grade with. All of them justified, excused, minimized,

00:25:52.340 or even celebrated Charlie's murder. And we said that this was the second national trauma. The first

00:25:56.760 national trauma was seeing a prominent promoter of civil debate murdered on stage just for engaging

00:26:03.680 graciously. The second national trauma was watching all the Democrats celebrate it.

00:26:08.520 Well, this is the apotheosis of that celebration. Jay Jones comes out, says, I want to murder

00:26:14.360 Republicans and their kids. And Democrats in Virginia overwhelmingly elected him to be the top

00:26:19.100 law enforcement official in Virginia. Deeply, deeply distressing. Mom Donnie in New York, obviously,

00:26:27.400 there was a hope that the Republican gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey would win.

00:26:31.160 Didn't happen. Mikey Sherrill ran away with the race, really, in New Jersey. It was a clean sweep.

00:26:37.200 Virginia was the biggest bloodbath. It would just, the Democrats in Virginia did a great,

00:26:42.420 great job. Now, what conclusions do we draw from this? We've got to be careful about the conclusions

00:26:49.760 we draw. Because we don't want to just make excuses and say Republicans didn't do anything wrong here.

00:26:55.000 But we also don't want to draw too many conclusions or the wrong conclusions.

00:27:02.140 It was an off-year election. Democrats tend to do better. They tend to do better because they have

00:27:07.420 more effective machines to get people to the polls and have for many, many years. It's just a fact.

00:27:13.840 It's an off-year election after the Republicans had won the White House. That is maybe going to

00:27:22.180 manage our expectations for the midterms. We were looking historically like we might be doing a little

00:27:26.960 bit better in the midterms. Maybe not now. Maybe this will be a jolt and this will spur Republicans

00:27:31.440 into action to invest more money and time and resources into the midterm elections. We don't know.

00:27:36.020 But it should temper Republicans' expectations for the midterms. And it should inspire us to get out

00:27:41.160 there and actually go get out the vote. Third thing it could be, maybe people are concerned about

00:27:47.940 rising prices. Maybe people are concerned of grocery prices in particular. Maybe people are

00:27:53.840 concerned about the fundamentals of the economy and the political order. President Trump inherited a

00:28:00.380 very, very bad political situation from Biden. And maybe people need more. We've long said if the

00:28:10.800 economy falters at all, that's going to really mess up the Republicans in the midterms and potentially

00:28:15.140 in 2028. Maybe it says, yikes, we got to really put the focus on delivering more material improvement

00:28:25.000 for Americans. Could be. That would be one introspective aspect.

00:28:28.360 And then there's one conclusion that we have to draw, especially from the Jay Jones victory.

00:28:38.820 Democrats, huge numbers of Democrats who are normal Democrats, want Republicans dead. They don't just,

00:28:49.200 you know, disagree with them on certain matters. And they just, they want us dead. And if we died,

00:28:54.700 they would celebrate. And they want our kids dead. And they want us dead. And I don't know how you can

00:29:02.060 pay attention to, to the Democrats since the assassination of Charlie Kirk up to the election

00:29:08.000 of Jay Jones last night and not come to that conclusion. I'm open to it. You know me, man,

00:29:13.460 I'm, I'm like pretty open. And I try to be charitable to my opponents as best I can.

00:29:17.960 And give me an alternative explanation. I don't see one.

00:29:23.960 And that's a fact we have to deal with. And the way to deal with that is yes, in our personal lives,

00:29:29.160 to try to change hearts and minds of the people around us. Absolutely. To work on ourselves,

00:29:32.580 you know, to, to start with the man in the mirror, but there has to be a political solution,

00:29:35.420 which is there have to be political consequences for publicly calling for the death of your opponents.

00:29:42.220 People need to lose their jobs. People need to be socially ostracized. People need to be prosecuted

00:29:49.500 where it's appropriate because the law is a teacher. And so if you enforce the correct standards,

00:29:54.800 you're going to get better behavior. And then you're not going to get people like Jay Jones elected

00:29:57.760 because no one would dare elect him. Silver lining. I told you there'd be a silver lining. And the

00:30:02.640 silver lining is not just that Zara Fui can, you know, wear her burlap sack in New York again. 0.99

00:30:07.800 The silver lining is not, I don't know. There's some people trying to offer. So there, here's one

00:30:13.800 good one. An analysis just came out from the public polling project conducted by Big Data Poll,

00:30:22.120 interviewed a bunch of people, October 26th to October 28th, this year, analyzing Trump 2024 voters.

00:30:30.220 And the distinction it has here is America first in the, in the Trump sense of that phrase,

00:30:35.120 you know, MAGA Republican or traditional Republican. Again, these, these phrases are

00:30:40.520 really slippery because they've meant a lot of different things over a really long period of

00:30:43.860 time. But I, I understand traditional Republican here to, to be something akin to Mitt Romneyism

00:30:49.280 or George Bushism. America first being a little more MAGA, a little more Trumpy, a little more,

00:30:55.860 you know, what Reagan was in the eighties, not what Reaganism means today, but what it was in the

00:30:59.380 eighties, you know, the more hardcore stuff. And it looks at all Trump 2024 voters.

00:31:05.120 And says, okay, well, obviously much more America first MAGA than Bushy Romney, traditional,

00:31:14.640 traditional Republican, 51.9% versus something like 35%. All among all Republican voters,

00:31:23.640 it narrows a little bit. You have more traditional Republicans, fewer America first. That makes sense.

00:31:29.800 Obviously because Trump is bringing in people who are outside of the ordinary traditional Republican

00:31:34.660 framework. So that makes sense. But then something very interesting. We've been told,

00:31:39.160 and I have even believed that zoomers are the most right-wing cohort. They're the most hardcore, 1.00

00:31:45.240 most likely to be MAGA, most likely to upend the tables of Bushism or Romneyism.

00:31:51.320 Oh yeah, they're pretty hardcore, 55.3% versus, you know, 26% traditional Republican.

00:32:01.000 But you know, the most hardcore right-wing generation, stop the, if you're driving right now,

00:32:08.220 stop, pull over, take a deep breath. It's the millennials. It's the millennials. How weird is

00:32:16.160 that? It's my generation, my generation, which gets beat up all the time, which I beat up all the time

00:32:22.880 because I've always thought of the millennials as being just kind of cringe, disproportionately like 1.00

00:32:29.280 gay, LGBT-ish, Obama, bland, progressive. What? No, baby. We're like, we're to the right of Franco. 0.87

00:32:38.680 Apparently, look at this. 30 to 44-year-old voters, 63.6% to be America first, MAGA, Trumpy,

00:32:50.440 right-wing versus fewer than the zoomers, fewer to be traditional, you know, whatever, Bush, Romney.

00:32:57.820 Okay. Then it tightens way up among Gen X and tightens up even more among boomers. Let's go, baby. 0.97

00:33:05.700 This is good stuff. I'll take that. You know, because the zoomers, the zoomers have youth on us.

00:33:13.420 You know, the zoomers, they've got, in many ways, they seem a little bit more, 1.00

00:33:17.380 a little more grounded. But no, millennials are leading the right-wing lurch. I'll take it.

00:33:23.240 I'll take it. It's a nice little, it's a nice little white pill. Is that zoomer lingo or millennial 1.00

00:33:27.500 lingo? I don't know. I don't care. Millennials in charge. Millennial patriots are in charge 0.87

00:33:31.840 of this country. And I guess that's a good thing. I guess. Okay. Now, what do you know?

00:33:38.680 What do you know? Minutes after the election, that's not even fair. Just before the election

00:33:45.580 results were in, Democrats all of a sudden are changing their tune on the shutdown. This may be

00:33:53.160 shocking to some people, but at the Daily Wire, we do not always agree. Friendly Fire is the show

00:33:57.340 where Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and I get together to disagree live for the entire

00:34:02.480 internet to see and comment on. What could go wrong? A new episode of Friendly Fire premieres in two

00:34:08.100 weeks on Daily Wire+. This time, we will also world premiere the official trailer for the Pendragon

00:34:11.960 cycle, The Rise of Merlin, only on Friendly Fire, November 19th, 7 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire+.

00:34:17.420 I want to tell you about my favorite comment yesterday from PNW Vibes underscore, who says,

00:34:24.460 the timing and irony of Dick Cheney dying the same day as a Muslim communist becomes mayor of New York 0.98

00:34:29.240 City is not lost on me. You know, that was lost on me. I didn't notice it until you, until I read your

00:34:33.520 comment. That's a great point. History does have these weird coincidences, doesn't it? The fact that

00:34:40.980 Adams and Jefferson died on the same day, and it was the 4th of July. And the fact that, well, it was

00:34:49.820 50 years, right, after 1776. It's amazing. These little winks. And that should be a consolation,

00:34:57.940 because people are legitimately upset about these, as they should be. This is not good. This is very

00:35:03.280 bad for the country. It's very, very bad for New York. Very bad for New York. And so, we try to lighten

00:35:09.360 the mood a little bit. I posted yesterday. I said, look, okay, unpopular opinion here, but

00:35:12.900 can I say it? Hijabs, they can be tasteful. They can actually be more tasteful than a lot of modern

00:35:19.880 Western clothing. And it's a little bit of a joke. Not totally a joke, though. I like a good mantilla

00:35:24.340 at church. You know, I like, if you took out the specific cultural context of how Muslim the hijabs are,

00:35:31.880 I don't know, they can be very tasteful. Modesty is nice. Anyway, I was, you know, lightening the mood a

00:35:35.680 little bit. But people are down, and they should be down. This is a big disappointment. However,

00:35:44.180 there are these little winks of history. You're using the example of, you know, Dick Cheney dying

00:35:49.120 the day a Muslim becomes mayor of New York. That is kind of a weird wink of history. The winks of 1.00

00:35:52.980 history, though, even when they occur during bad things, especially when they occur during bad things,

00:35:57.680 are a kind of a consolation. Because it does remind you that there is an author of history, and there

00:36:02.540 actually is providence, and there actually is meaning to history. And things do happen for a

00:36:07.500 reason. And I know this is going to be particularly offensive to modern, liberal, post-Enlightenment

00:36:14.820 sensibilities. But the traditional Christian understanding of the political order is that

00:36:20.440 we're grateful when God sends us good leaders. Political leadership is appointed by God. Civil

00:36:25.600 authority is there for our good and does not bear the sword in vain, as Scripture tells us. And so,

00:36:30.320 we're very grateful when the Lord gives us good political leaders. And we're grateful when the

00:36:36.260 Lord gives us bad political leaders, because he gives us bad political leaders to chastise us.

00:36:42.300 And we're grateful for that chastisement, because we trust in the Lord. I know, it's very difficult

00:36:47.160 for a post-revolutionary kind of modern politics to hear that. But it's Christian, and it's true. So, 0.98

00:36:55.980 there's that. Okay. Just as the election is wrapping up, what do you know? What do you know?

00:37:04.960 Democrats changed their tone on the government shutdown. It remains a little unclear if the

00:37:09.360 government will reopen. But already, yesterday evening, you had the headlines, a group of

00:37:13.780 Democrats would like to reopen the government. Chuck Schumer, who had previously been saying,

00:37:17.300 no, no, we're holding the line. We're keeping the government shut down. It's all Republicans' fault.

00:37:20.140 They need to come to the table on health care. Chuck Schumer then gives an answer to,

00:37:24.040 I think it was the Hill. He says, oh, we're weighing our options. Yeah, we're weighing,

00:37:27.580 there's a tone shift. Which means, again, I hate to say I told you so, but the shutdown was a hail

00:37:33.900 Mary for Dems. The Democrats knew they were on the wrong side of virtually every 80-20 issue. 0.97

00:37:40.700 Certainly, almost all the ones that mattered. They own the shutdown. Republicans own the federal

00:37:47.000 government, unified government in all three branches. This was a hail Mary to say, look,

00:37:52.560 health care is our best shot at pushing an issue. And government shutdowns are our best tactic.

00:37:58.280 They haven't really worked, according to the opinion polls. However, they say, okay,

00:38:04.220 it's before the election. We need to juice our numbers with something. Now the election's over.

00:38:09.400 Probably the government reopens relatively quickly. Unless Democrats take from the election night

00:38:17.720 the idea that the shutdown has really worked to juice their numbers. And they say, okay, well,

00:38:23.360 the strategy hadn't seemed to be working so far. Now perhaps it will. And if Republicans hold on

00:38:29.540 because they say, no, actually, it is more likely being blamed on Dems than on Republicans. There's a

00:38:35.360 way in which I guess this goes on for a little while. But there is no question that the purpose of the

00:38:40.500 shutdown was to juice the Dems numbers before the midterms. And perhaps it worked. Okay. I want to

00:38:46.980 turn to an issue, a more tragic matter. I talked about it a little bit at the end of the show

00:38:50.000 yesterday. But beyond domestic politics, Christians are being very, very seriously persecuted in Nigeria.

00:38:57.840 We've talked about this on the show a number of times. I've posted about it to social media a number of

00:39:02.220 times. Trump is talking about it. Trump posts, quote,

00:39:06.540 Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being 1.00

00:39:11.240 killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria 1.00

00:39:16.100 a country of particular concern. This designation, you know, with the State Department. But that is

00:39:22.720 the least of it. When Christians or any such group is slaughtered, like is happening in Nigeria, 0.75

00:39:27.960 31,000 versus 44,76 worldwide, something must be done. I'm asking Congressman Riley Moore,

00:39:34.200 Riley Moore is great, together with Chairman Cole, love Tom Cole and the House Appropriations

00:39:39.160 Committee, to immediately look into this matter and report back to me. The United States cannot

00:39:43.700 stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria and numerous other countries. We stand ready,

00:39:49.460 willing, and able to save our great Christian population around the world. Donald J. Trump,

00:39:53.760 President of the United States of America. I love this. I love this for a number of reasons.

00:39:59.380 Not the least of which is it does vindicate my view of Donald Trump. When Donald Trump says he's

00:40:04.240 America first, some people hear that and they say that means he's an isolationist, that means he's

00:40:08.540 an ardent nationalist. No, I've long said Trump is an imperialist. He recognizes America's role

00:40:15.060 throughout the world, and he wants to, in his good judgment, in his practical prudential judgment,

00:40:20.340 he wants to preserve America's capital. He wants to maintain the world order. He wants to establish

00:40:26.760 peace. He wants to prioritize American citizens over everyone else, but he does care about everyone

00:40:30.320 else, and he wants to expand America's reach, which is why he wants to buy Greenland, and it's

00:40:33.700 why he wants to invade Canada. And here he says, look, we want to defend our Christians around the

00:40:38.840 world. Our in two senses of the word. Our meaning we, America, are the global hegemon. We're the empire

00:40:46.040 of the world, and so they are, in a certain sense, our constituents. That's Trump's implication.

00:40:51.480 It's not even just my statement. Two, our, we're a Christian country, and they're Christians,

00:40:56.180 and have a solidarity with them because of that. Also, beautifully accurate.

00:41:01.280 So, this got a lot of plaudits, including from Nicki Minaj. Barbs, totally vindicated.

00:41:06.460 Nicki Minaj writes, reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country

00:41:10.800 where we can freely worship God. No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion.

00:41:14.880 We don't have to share the same beliefs in order for us to respect each other.

00:41:18.020 Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror,

00:41:20.800 and it's dangerous to pretend we don't notice. Thank you to the president and his team

00:41:24.600 for taking this seriously. God bless every persecuted Christian. Let's remember to lift

00:41:27.960 them up in prayer. Love it. It takes courage to come out, if you're Nicki Minaj, and endorse Trump

00:41:33.620 in this way. And it's so beautiful to see her care about this issue and really promote this issue.

00:41:39.760 What is very interesting about this, from the analysis of the left and the right and the changing

00:41:46.240 scope of the right, you know, the right loves to be navel-gazing and introspective and

00:41:50.400 always trying to figure out exactly where we are, is we've heard for many years now that America is

00:41:57.720 sick of forever wars, fighting wars on behalf of other populations in other countries on the other

00:42:03.020 side of the world. Don't affect us. We want to focus on the American homeland, isolation, America first. 0.96

00:42:08.720 And yet, I think many of those people will cheer this on. President Trump is threatening to intervene,

00:42:14.620 even militarily, in Nigeria. And I wonder, will people cheer that on? Will the same people who

00:42:23.300 don't want forever wars in the Middle East cheer on a military intervention in Nigeria? Because I think

00:42:29.640 they are more likely to do so. And I don't think they're hypocrites for it. What you're going to hear

00:42:34.620 from the neocons and the squishes is you're going to say, well, you're hypocrites. You care about Nigeria, 0.95

00:42:38.100 but you don't care about Syria or whatever. But I don't think they're hypocrites exactly. I'll double down

00:42:44.640 on this with another observation. I've been meaning to talk about this for weeks, and I've mentioned it one

00:42:51.040 or two times. But it looks like we're going to go to war in Venezuela. Looks like there's been a lot of CIA

00:42:55.540 activity in Venezuela. We're blowing up a bunch of drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, and only Venezuela.

00:43:01.280 You know, there are drug boats coming from elsewhere, but we're really focused on Venezuela. Regime change in

00:43:05.440 Venezuela has been a priority of the State Department for a long time. And we tried to get

00:43:10.520 rid of Maduro, and then he held on to power after that election. And it just looks like we're sick

00:43:16.420 of this Venezuelan regime, which is anti-American. There are a lot of good resources in Venezuela.

00:43:20.080 They're doing a lot of things to screw up our country. And so it looks like we might intervene

00:43:25.000 in Venezuela to some degree or the other. And the same question holds. All those people who were

00:43:29.160 decrying wars overseas and regime change and all this, will they support this or oppose this?

00:43:36.780 I think even the anti-war people are more likely to support a war in Venezuela than they would in the

00:43:43.600 Middle East. I think nature is healing. I think we're basically in the 70s again. We're getting back.

00:43:49.800 We've got socialists running our cities. We have political violence in the streets.

00:43:53.880 We have radical ideologies. We have economic crises. It's the 70s. We're living in the 70s.

00:44:01.100 And we got economic interventions. We got the rehabilitation of Richard Nixon's reputation.

00:44:07.700 We have freezing federal spending. We have, anyway, a lot of things. Everyone's on drugs.

00:44:13.220 There's institutional distrust, left-wing terrorism. It's the 70s.

00:44:16.720 And I think Americans are going to be more comfortable

00:44:19.560 with military intervention in our own hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine has been a policy of the

00:44:25.420 United States for a very long time. I think even intervention in Nigeria, I think even the anti-war

00:44:33.300 folks will be more likely to do it. One, because it's on behalf of Christians who are a Christian

00:44:36.380 country. Two, it's to stop a very serious atrocity. Call it a human rights abuse.

00:44:46.720 But in ways that are a little clearer cut. Now, again, I don't know. Some people are going to say,

00:44:51.660 no, keep your, you know, Friday, use soft power. Don't intervene in really hard ways. But

00:44:55.560 to say we should protect Christians from being wiped out by Muslims is different to saying that

00:45:05.440 we need to topple regimes in the Middle East to install Madisonian democracy.

00:45:09.180 Those are different. A prudent and restrained intervention to protect Christians is different 1.00

00:45:18.600 from some kind of liberal crusade to spread the end of history ideology of liberalism.

00:45:23.460 Those are different things. And those substantive differences make a difference. Military intervention

00:45:27.800 within our hemisphere in Venezuela is different from military intervention in Iraq or Syria.

00:45:34.040 They're different. But it reminds us that the politics of intervention or isolation or whatever,

00:45:40.520 that is simply too simplistic. Even the politics of prioritizing American citizens and being the

00:45:46.300 global hegemon, that's too simplistic. Politics is a practical science that requires nuance,

00:45:55.760 subtlety of thought, art. This was the subject of my speech at the Nixon Library,

00:46:00.260 which I think you can get online. I think you can get on YouTube. This is something that Trump is

00:46:04.780 really, really good at. Every time you try to pin Trump down into some stupid faction or camp or

00:46:09.220 ideology, he slips away from you. And Trump's enemies on the right, and they've been doing this

00:46:14.180 since the Never Trumpers in 2016, his enemies say, that means he's unprincipled. That means he's

00:46:18.520 unsophisticated. That means he doesn't have a finely crafted ideology. No, it means he's a good

00:46:23.100 politician and a good statesman. That's what it means. And conservatives would do well

00:46:26.800 to learn from his prudential, dare I say, classical and Aristotelian understanding of politics

00:46:33.180 beyond all the factional infighting and the ideologues. Okay, now I want to talk about

00:46:38.100 autism. And I want to do it with my friend Leland Vitter. The rest of the show continues now. You

00:46:41.760 do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. Check out for two months

00:46:45.240 free on all annual plans.

00:46:56.800 In this moment, one way.

00:47:03.800 You very much. You are addicted to something. You and someone?

The Michael Knowles Show - November 05, 2025

Ep. 1850 - New York Elects A Muslim Communist Mayor

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