Ep. 1855 - HORRIFIC： Libs Violently Attack Turning Point USA at UC Berkeley
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Summary
A leftist attack on a conservative event leaves attendees bloodied at UC Berkeley and the chaos seems absurd. After all the leftist violence that has taken place specifically at Berkeley, do you remember the so-called Battle of Berkeley? When Ben Shapiro was given $600,000 worth of security protection just two months after the founder of TPUSA was murdered by a leftist on campus? How could the police not have prepared for this?
Transcript
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A massive Antifa attack on a TPUSA event leaves attendees bloodied at UC Berkeley.
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And the chaos seems absurd. After all the leftist violence that has taken place specifically at
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Berkeley. Do you remember the so-called Battle of Berkeley? When Ben spoke there in 2017,
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$600,000 worth of security protection. Just two months after the founder of TPUSA was murdered
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by a leftist on campus. How could the police not have prepared for this? Well, one answer might be,
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I actually didn't believe this when I read it. The chief of police in Berkeley is the same woman
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who ran the Capitol Hill police on January 6th. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. Toy Story 5 coming out with a big warning. A really, really big warning
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description if you want to RSVP. I guess the most surprising thing about the violence at the TPUSA
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event at Berkeley is that it came from an organization that doesn't exist. Because I was
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reliably informed by Jimmy Kimmel and by Left Wing Cable News that Antifa does not exist. Yeah,
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sure, Antifa has regularly attacked conservatives, specifically at campus events. Yeah, Antifa threw
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an explosive at an event that I did. There's a guy who was an Antifa member who's actually in
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federal prison for it. But listen, if Jimmy Kimmel tells me that it doesn't exist, I guess it doesn't
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exist, right? Antifa is just an idea. Well, here's what that idea did at Berkeley.
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So you can see, if you're only listening, they're setting off flares, masked people screaming,
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Sounds like gunshots going off. That's actually a car backfiring multiple times. You see, they
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weren't, happily, they weren't actually shooting conservatives this time. They were just making
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conservatives think that they were shooting at them, just trying to terrorize them. You've got
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the Antifa costume, the uniform, which is black with masks, with black hats, black glasses. They've
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added a little something to their style. They're now wearing keffias as well. Makes sense. Birds of
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a feather flock together. Andy Ngo, who is probably the best reporter out there on Antifa, has been
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following this for years, has had his life threatened, has had to move all around, has
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been physically assaulted. He reports that the specific Antifa group was a group called By Any
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Means Necessary, which has meetings, has cells, has members. But don't ever conclude that Antifa is a
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real organization. It's just an idea, of course. Some more reporting out of this event is from Cam
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Higby. A Christian man was there, and he was wearing a cross, necklace. And he was attacked
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by, apparently, by a Muslim. And the Muslim rips his cross off and is assaulting the man,
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repeatedly assaulting the man. The Christian, reportedly, doesn't even fight back. He gets
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really, really bloodied. You can see he's wearing a Charlie Kirk shirt, a red freedom shirt. And so
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what happens? Well, of course, the Christian gets arrested. Of course. I think eventually he was let
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go. I think eventually they might have gotten the Muslim attacker. Pretty crazy scene. Pretty crazy
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scene because we know to expect this at Berkeley. We've been seeing this at Berkeley for eight years,
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just in the right-wing speakers, campus events, TPUSA, YAF-style events. We've been seeing that
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pretty consistently. And we've been seeing crazy leftism at Berkeley for 60 years.
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So then the question becomes, how did the authorities not prepare for this?
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Forget about Berkeley specifically. You had a radical leftist recently murder the most prominent
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promoter of civil discourse on campus, on campus two months ago. How were they not prepared for this?
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Well, here's one answer. The current UC Berkeley chief of police is the former acting chief of police
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for Capitol Hill. This woman's name is Yogananda Pittman. Yogananda Pittman was the acting chief of
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police, Capitol Hill, on January 6th, the worst day in the history of the world. And so we're seeing here
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the confluence of two related phenomena. One is the simple lack of desire on the left to police their own.
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We're seeing that conservative Christians for the crime of wearing cross necklaces are arrested
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after being bloodied up. And leftist radicals, violent people, terrorists, they generally get off
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the hook. We've been seeing that through BLM. We've been seeing that on campus. We've been seeing that
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all over the place. That's one of the phenomena. The other one is a severe lack of competence.
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And sometimes the incompetence is an excuse to get away with allowing the leftist violence. In any
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case, the administration needs to come down hard on this. Because here too, we're seeing the confluence
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of two major priorities of the Trump administration. One is to stop the left-wing violence.
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The entire top part of the Trump administration was present at and spoke at Charlie Kirk's memorial.
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It was a beautiful show of strength from the administration and unity. Unity is very important
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right now as there are increasing civil wars breaking out on the right. I'll be speaking on
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that tonight at Belmont Abbey in North Carolina. So the Trump administration obviously wants to put an
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end to the left-wing violence. However, the Trump administration is also going after these
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universities. Because the universities, put the violence aside, are failing at their mission.
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They're failing at their mission to educate students. They're failing at their mission to form
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good citizens. They're failing at their mission to form the proper morals and habits of students,
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which is and always has been a charge of the universities.
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And they're receiving federal funding. And you can't even say, well, it's just the bad universities.
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You know, it's not the elite prestigious ones. The elite prestigious ones in many cases are the
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worst offenders. And UC Berkeley is considered a very good school. So the one silver lining of this
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attack is it's very clear what the administration needs to do. The administration needs to come down
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with an iron fist specifically on Berkeley. They started to do it at Harvard. They need to do it at
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Berkeley. They need to go in. They need to round up all of the left-wing radicals. They need to make
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a show of them. Not out of vindictiveness, not merely out of retribution, but for the cause of
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justice. This cannot go on. We've been saying this since Charlie was assassinated. We must restore
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order. We all want a flourishing society where we can openly debate ideas and deliberate and have
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self-government. We all want that. You cannot have a marketplace of ideas or anything else when bandits
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keep shooting up the marketplace. They're doing it. They're still doing it. Organized left-wing
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terror is doing it. The universities are not doing anything about it. So to quote George W. Bush,
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fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. Hey, hey, hey. The point is you're not going to fool me again.
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Now, the DOJ says they're investigating this. We need a hard clampdown
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on left-wing violence, specifically at the universities, specifically Antifa. I was down
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testifying before the Senate just a couple of weeks ago on this very issue. I'm glad to see
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the legislators are looking into it. I know the White House is looking into it. We need action.
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We need action now. Now is the time to strike for the cause of justice. Also, as a matter of pure
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electoral politics, people care about this. People are very concerned with their safety. People are
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very concerned with the disorder. This is a winning issue for Republicans. Let's be really
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crass about it. Let's get real down into the nitty-gritty of elections. We just suffered a
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bad election for a multitude of reasons that we've covered on the show in Virginia, in New York. We
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now have a Muslim communist in New York running the city, in New Jersey. Now is the time.
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One thing that the government shut down in the elections last Tuesday were able to achieve for
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the Democrats as they shifted the conversation away from where it should be, where it had been since
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the murder of Charlie Kirk, which is on the radical left-wing violence that they are inflicting
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on us, that they are justifying, that they are dismissing, and that in many cases they're
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celebrating. Now the conversation is back there, and we need to see the legislators make moves.
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That's great. We need to see law enforcement come in, round these people up, make an example of them.
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Government is a relatively simple thing. It's not easy, but it's simple.
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When you subsidize something, you get more of it. When you punish something, you get less of it.
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It's that simple. I know some people have very abstract, theoretical ideas about politics.
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They say, well, actually, no. When you outlaw something, actually, you get more of it. This
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is kind of the squishy pothead libertarian argument on drugs. War on drugs totally failed. Man,
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war on drugs didn't fail, by the way. That's a conversation for another time. Actually,
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man, when you legalize something, maybe you'll get less of it. That's not how it works.
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When you outlaw something, and you enforce the law, you get less of it.
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And the police, I'm not saying the rank and file police, I'm saying the people who are running the
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police have failed to stop left-wing violence. They failed and failed and failed again.
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How much more of this are we going to see before we clamp down on it?
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You look at violent leftists, you see how far down the rot runs. An amazing viral clip from
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popular left-wing streamer Hassan Piker. We'll get to that in one second. First, though,
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Legacybox.com slash Knowles. Legacybox.com slash Knowles. You know Hassan Piker. Hassan Piker is a
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very popular left-wing streamer. He's the nephew of Chink Ugar at the Young Turks. He's been around for a
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long time. He and I have debated on TV and Charlie have debated. He's out there. He tortured his dog.
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He suggested the assassination of Senator Tom Cotton. He said the streets need to run red with
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the blood of capitalists. He's out there. Well, a clip of Hassan Piker has just gone viral that is
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really illustrative, not just of his psychology and psychosis and psychopathy, but of a broader
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character defect that you hear throughout the left. Take a listen.
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I don't have any sort of patriotism in my heart for any. Yeah, for America, but just in general,
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I'm not like a very, you know, I care about people.
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Okay, this is Hassan Piker in Tiananmen Square, I guess. I guess he's in China.
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And what he's saying here, I don't want to jump down his throat too much because what he's saying
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here is really honest and actually introspective, and it's worth paying close attention to, to try
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to fix it. He says, I don't have any patriotism in my heart. And he doesn't even sound really angry.
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This doesn't even sound like invective here. This sounds more like a confession,
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an admission. Oh, you know, I actually don't have patriotism in my heart.
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And it's not just that I hate America. I don't feel any kind of patriotism whatsoever. It's just,
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that's just a feeling or a virtue that is lacking in me. This is an honest example of a phenomenon
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that we saw come out of social science. Do you remember? It became a meme, actually,
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some months ago, maybe six months ago or something. And it was this heat map of conservatives and liberals
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in-group and out-group preferences. So for conservatives, conservatives feel the strongest
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connection to, loyalty to, love for, responsibility for people who are closest to them. And it's not
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that they don't care at all about people who are distant from them, who are unrelated, who are on the
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other side of the world. It's just that that feeling of loyalty and responsibility decreases a
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little bit. For liberals, it's the opposite. For liberals, they feel the least responsibility for,
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the least connection to the people who are closest to them. And they feel the most care for people who
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are far away, distant, people that they've never met. This is a social scientific proof of a dictum we've
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long said about the left, which is that the left loves humanity in the abstract, but they don't seem to
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love actual humans very much. Because charity starts at home. The vice president talked about this,
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and it was one of the most beautiful articulations of moral philosophy that I've ever heard come out
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of an American politician. And he was kind of made fun of for it. He was pilloried for it, but it was a
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great point. He said there's something called the Ordo Amoris, a phrase from St. Augustine.
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St. Thomas Aquinas talks about it as the Ordo Caritatis, the order of love, the order of charity.
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And this is biblical. You see references to this in the New Testament, and the Old Testament for
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that matter. We have a greater responsibility for our family than we do for someone else's family
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on the other side of the world. We also are called to care for them, but we have a greater
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responsibility. A father, for instance, has a greater responsibility to protect and care for his
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family. A child has a greater responsibility to care for and protect his parents than they do for
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people on the other side of the world. This is natural. This is good. It derives from the natural
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law. We all are called to have a proper love of ourselves, not an excessive love of ourselves and
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our excellences. That would be pride, which is the queen of all vices, but a proper love of ourselves.
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It would be disordered, for instance, to commit suicide. So we have to have a proper love for
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ourselves, and this expands out first into our families. And patriotism is an extension of love
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of our families. It's an extension of filial piety. And Hassan Piker's coming out there. He says,
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I don't have that. I just don't feel that. That is a major character defect, and it's not just
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unique to him. This is something we see throughout the left, backed up even by social science.
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And the problem with this is, because, as I mentioned, it derives from the natural law,
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this is not something that you can exactly argue someone into. This is just one of those axioms.
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You know, there are axioms, there are premises that we have to start with in order to reason about
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morality, in order to figure out what conclusions we should come to, what kind of policies we should
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live by. You have to start with them. They are not the conclusion, the asymptotic conclusion of
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endless debate. They're what you have to start with. I cannot exactly argue for you. I can't prove
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to you, let's say, that good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. What's the
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proof of that? Show me the logical, definitive argument for that. You won't be able to do it.
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It's a precept. However, the one thing I can promise you is, if you don't accept as a moral
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premise that good is to be done and evil is to be avoided, then you can't reason about anything
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else. I can't really convince you in a definitive way as a proof that you should honor your father
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and mother. I cannot really convince you. I cannot argue to you from purely natural reason that it's
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wrong to commit murder, to murder innocent people. However, if you don't just accept these sorts of
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things, you can't reason about anything else. It's just like in mathematics, which is, I can't prove that
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A equals A. I can't prove that if A plus B, that A plus B rather equals B plus A. I can't really prove,
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you just have to accept that. There are certain axioms to algebra, and there are axioms to morality
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and to politics too. And so this gets down to what we were just talking about the universities.
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A major point of education is to form these characters, to reinforce these axioms,
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which we all just kind of intuit because the natural law is written on every human heart.
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But it's to really cultivate those loves, to form the habits that derive from those axioms,
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such that they become second nature, such that we just feel patriotism. When I was a kid,
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my mother told me, never let an American flag touch the ground. And now when I see a flag touch
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the ground, I get, feel uneasy. I don't, I feel an anxiety. I have to pick it up. Why? Because I
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care about some piece of cloth. No, it's because I care about what the piece of cloth represents,
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because I recognize that signs signify something, that symbols have meaning.
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And I guess there are plenty of modern materialists who deny meaning altogether.
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They say it's all just words, words, words. That's the line that Hamlet uses when he's
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feigning madness. But if we're going to live together in society, if we're going to do
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anything, if we believe that anything is better than any other thing, then we recognize there is
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meaning. We have to, we have to cultivate these things. Unfortunately, modern education
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tells you that that's all bunk. That's not true. We're not teaching students what to think,
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only how to think. But it is, of course, not possible to teach a student how to think if you
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don't first begin with at least the basic premises of what to think. You have to begin there. You
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have to begin with a basic moral education. You have to begin by cultivating certain loves,
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certain desires, such that you will pursue them. You'll pursue what is true, what is good,
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and what is beautiful. And you will do that long after you've graduated from school. If you go to
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college, if you go to a college like UC Berkeley, you're there for four years. If that's your whole
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education, you're going to have a very weak, paltry life. So I feel for Hassan Piker.
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He's admitting a kind of a psychopathy, a kind of a moral dullness, an emotional dullness even.
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And so he deserves our pity, but he should recognize that he's got a kind of a bad life.
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You know, he's sitting there on camera torturing his dog. He's angry all the time. He talks about it.
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He talks about how he wants to murder his countrymen. That's not good. That's not conducive
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to flourishing, neither to his personal flourishing, nor certainly to the flourishing
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of the country. That's what we have to get back to. And so part of bringing the hammer down
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on the universities is also bringing the hammer down on K-12 education, is also bringing the
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hammer down on the way that we speak in public life, the way that the law and the culture,
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which are very difficult to separate because the law is a teacher, the way that they cultivate
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certain habits. This brings us all the way back to that famous John Adams line,
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the constitutions built for moral and religious people. The inescapable conclusion of that is
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that the political order has to cultivate morality. It has to cultivate religion and a specific kind
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of religion, by the way. Not all religions are the same. We also fall into a kind of religious
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indifferentism that is part of the subjectivism, the relativism of our age that is supposedly value
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neutral. Can't have that. It's not going to work. We're in the midst of the latest instantiation of
00:22:15.660
the conservative civil war. What is it that we believe? What is it? Who's in the team? Who's not
00:22:20.580
on the team? Who's? Basic parts of this involve the foundations of society. If you don't have the
00:22:30.340
basic stuff, if you don't know how to behave, if you don't have the society teaching you the
00:22:34.600
difference between good and bad and telling you that you should pursue the good and avoid the bad,
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if you don't have that, then none of that higher order freedom is possible, whether it's a matter
00:22:45.000
of individual liberty or as political liberty. Okay. Speaking of moral education and how to cultivate
00:22:52.260
loves and habits of virtue, Toy Story 5 looks like they're totally killing it. We'll get to that in
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switch to America's wireless company. Pure Talk. You know, I love Toy Story. I remember when it
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came out. In fact, I was playing Randy Newman the other day on the piano and the ukulele.
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You got a friend in me. Another great Randy Newman song is Short People, which is not,
00:24:14.600
it's not quite as like happy-go-lucky, is it? But it was a great movie. One of the last really great
00:24:20.420
kids movies that was ever made. And the franchise generally has been pretty, I haven't watched all of
00:24:24.440
them. But it seemed to stay relatively true to itself. It hasn't been completely
00:24:28.100
gutted and wiped out, as Hollywood has done to most beloved franchises.
00:24:51.740
We're only listening. All the toys are terrified. They see a package has come. They say it's over.
00:25:22.420
What is the horror that has destroyed The Age of Toys? It is an iPad.
00:25:29.500
So true. I'm really encouraged by this. I don't know anything else about this movie
00:25:38.260
And what's so amazing about it is that it gives a thesis.
00:25:44.280
It kind of completes the setup that you had in Toy Story 1 of what toys are for.
00:25:56.800
Cultivating delight. Cultivating what you do in your leisure time.
00:26:04.160
From the time that you're two years old or younger.
00:26:09.860
I just mentioned, coincidentally as it is, that I love playing the piano and playing the ukulele.
00:26:15.160
I don't do that for work. I'd love to, you know, it'd be amazing.
00:26:17.200
Someday maybe I'll retire from politics and media.
00:26:20.740
I'll retire from the cigar business. I'll retire from all my jobs.
00:26:26.680
But I don't think that day is happening anytime soon.
00:26:34.180
Winston Churchill wrote about this in Painting His Pastime.
00:26:36.960
He said, if you're reading this essay to learn how to paint,
00:26:40.980
But it's okay. It doesn't matter. That's not what it's for.
00:26:44.160
It's for giving you something to do in your leisure time.
00:26:47.260
To help you think, to help you see the world, to help you relax, to help you delight.
00:26:59.280
Go to a restaurant and look around at the kids at the restaurant.
00:27:02.540
I bet you a lot of them are going to be sitting there on their stupid idiot machines.
00:27:10.980
There are going to be parents listening to this show right now who say,
00:27:16.660
I get all the reasons because kids at restaurants are super annoying and they start swinging knives in the air and they knock over glasses of water and they yell and they cry.
00:27:27.800
And when you put the idiot machine in front of them, they shut up.
00:27:33.480
And then you can have a nice dinner with your wife or whatever.
00:27:40.540
Because when you just stick a kid in front of a screen, it used to be when you stick a kid just in front of a TV all the time.
00:27:46.900
Because it's an iPad that's all on demand, that never runs out, that's never boring, that's always glittering.
00:27:53.060
When you stick a kid in front of that, you mollify them, but you halt their education.
00:28:00.560
In some ways, you open them up to learning all sorts of bad lessons.
00:28:07.760
So in that way, their education continues, often in a bad way.
00:28:11.620
But in the sense of education as cultivating delight and loves and joys, that's over.
00:28:19.280
You just stick them there and you lobotomize them.
00:28:23.480
And if you do it long enough, you legitimately lobotomize them for the rest of their lives.
00:28:31.620
This is the first Hollywood movie I've been excited for in years.
00:28:45.220
I don't, I know it's bad for conservatives to really have any hope.
00:28:50.780
I know it's bad to have any optimism, especially when it comes to Hollywood.
00:28:56.100
It's another point that we talked about the other day, which is a lot of our political
00:28:58.600
problems, we think of them as abstract ideology or just merely the violence of the left.
00:29:13.820
In part, that's probably the technological change of global interconnectedness.
00:29:20.540
Of the fact that you can feel a greater affinity for someone on the other side of the world
00:29:31.220
Because when you go and you just stream all day, you're beaming yourself out of your community.
00:29:37.540
Sometimes that can be fine in its proper place.
00:29:40.120
Other times, it can really, really screw things up.
00:29:43.380
Speaking of entertainment, Charlotte Jones, who is a co-owner of the Dallas Cowboys and,
00:29:49.720
implausibly, the chief brand officer, just came out to defend Bad Bunny's halftime show performance.
00:29:57.060
Bad Bunny, the radical Puerto Rican leftist occasional transvestite who apparently hates America,
00:30:07.180
Here's why she thinks that's a really good thing.
00:30:10.820
What are your thoughts on Bad Bunny performing at this year's Super Bowl?
00:30:18.980
And I think when you think about the Super Bowl, you want the number one performer in the world to be there.
00:30:24.860
We're on a global stage, and we can't ever forget that.
00:30:28.780
Our game goes out to everybody around the world.
00:30:31.960
And to get the premier entertainer to want to be a part of our game, I think, is amazing.
00:30:37.560
And I think that, you know, we have a mixed culture.
00:30:41.100
I mean, our whole society is based on immigrants that have come here and founded our country.
00:30:53.220
You don't think at a time when his comments were divisive as it relates to President Trump,
00:30:57.320
when everyone is just seeking this political unification,
00:31:00.640
that you'd want somebody who maybe didn't touch politics to be on that stage?
00:31:06.680
I don't think people tune in to look at politics.
00:31:11.960
And I think in that moment that people will be watching the game,
00:31:15.800
they'll be celebrating music, and nobody will be thinking about
00:31:19.060
what's comments on the left side, what comments on the right side,
00:31:28.960
I don't think our game is about politics, you know?
00:31:35.180
which is why we hired for the performer, the halftime show performer.
00:31:39.700
That's why we hired someone who overtly and explicitly,
00:31:44.020
constantly attacks the president who won with the popular vote,
00:31:49.500
whose every waking move is motivated by a radical leftist political agenda.
00:31:56.700
That's why we picked him, because it's so unifying.
00:31:58.760
So she overlooks all the things he actually says,
00:32:02.540
probably because she doesn't speak Puerto Rican or whatever.
00:32:16.800
It's all about immigrants who founded this country.
00:32:23.480
Okay, we got too many of them, a lot, way too many of them.
00:32:29.960
You're telling me that the Nicaraguan day laborer who showed up under Biden,
00:32:35.080
that he founded our country, you really believe that?
00:32:39.920
Maybe you mean older immigrants, though you wouldn't say it.
00:32:46.680
Italian immigrants have contributed a lot to the country.
00:32:49.280
Antonin Scalia, for instance, they've done a lot of bad things too.
00:32:52.360
Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, you know, the mafia.
00:33:00.900
Christopher Columbus might have discovered America,
00:33:08.660
How about the settlers who came here on the Mayflower,
00:33:12.960
How about the people who were here for generation after generation?
00:33:16.000
How about the whole swaths of American history?
00:33:28.900
It's insane that she's the chief brand officer.
00:33:35.780
This is an example of the left not knowing what it doesn't know.
00:33:41.740
You know, the old Don Rumsfeld line about known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.
00:33:53.140
These are the things that everybody else knows that she doesn't know.
00:34:01.620
When the left comes out, you know, and they try to cram some, like, fat, hairy man into the girl's locker room.
00:34:07.660
And they say, why are you making this political?
00:34:15.180
Of course, big, fat, hairy sexual deviants need to change in front of your daughter.
00:34:27.360
So it's a mistake about even the axioms that we have to start with.
00:34:32.820
And what's so crazy about this is we're talking about the Dallas Cowboys.
00:34:36.560
We're not talking about some radical extreme left-wing organization.
00:34:40.420
We're not talking about Antifa's group by any means necessary.
00:34:53.200
I guess this woman won't be fired because she owns the team.
00:34:56.380
But in one sense, it would be much better if they knew how terribly offensive and destructive
00:35:03.000
it was to have some Puerto Rican transvestite who hates the president, hates America, come
00:35:07.000
out and babble in Spanish during the halftime show.
00:35:09.500
If they knew what they were doing politically, you'd say, well, that's bad, but they have an agenda.
00:35:17.860
Now, the task of conservatives is that much deeper.
00:35:21.280
And we have to teach them in schools, in universities, in kindergarten.
00:35:27.140
And the longer you let this go on and the longer you take a feckless laissez-faire approach
00:35:31.060
to this, the worse the problem is going to get.
00:35:32.840
Okay, speaking of bringing people together, really insightful observation by a longtime
00:35:38.340
liberal, Cheryl Hines, whose longtime Democrat, Democrat scion husband, Bobby Kennedy, is now
00:35:45.120
She makes a very interesting observation about the Republicans and the Democrats.
00:35:49.020
First, I want to tell you about St. Paul Center.
00:35:55.020
I had a marvelous time last Friday night at the St. Paul Center Gala listening to marvelous
00:36:01.960
lectures by Scott Hahn, probably the best theologian in America, by Bishop Robert Barron, who you
00:36:14.420
America has reached a cultural and spiritual crossroads.
00:36:17.160
People are looking for the truth in their search.
00:36:18.880
More and more people are turning to the Bible for answers.
00:36:20.800
Bible Across America is a nationwide Bible study, the biggest Bible study in the country,
00:36:25.080
hosted by the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
00:36:27.720
Seven-week Bible study exploring the personal challenge of affirming Jesus as teacher and
00:36:33.460
Learn to share your faith confidently starting November 5th.
00:36:37.700
Right now, you go to stpaulcenter.com slash America.
00:36:44.040
One is the St. Ignatius Study Bible, edited by Scott Hahn.
00:36:48.780
And in fact, I was opening it up just yesterday morning, looking up part of Zechariah, believe
00:36:53.460
So head on over right now to stpaulcenter.com slash America.
00:37:00.960
Join Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and your favorite, Wednesday night at 7 p.m.
00:37:06.020
Eastern on Daily Wire Plus, as we do what we do best, look good.
00:37:10.460
Also debate, discuss, disagree on the biggest stories in politics and culture.
00:37:13.900
Plus, we are world premiering the first official trailer for the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the
00:37:24.280
My favorite comment yesterday is from hard-boiled entertainment.
00:37:37.700
Now, frankly, I don't even know that Democrats are going to buy Nikes.
00:37:41.500
Even the kind of moderate liberals who just want to play sports, you know, not even the
00:37:46.140
total gigachads, just like the regular kind of centrist, center-left person who likes to
00:37:51.340
Are they now going to want to wear Nike when Nike is associated with non-binary, furry video
00:38:02.160
Cheryl Hines, co-star to Larry David, one of the funnier but more insufferable leftists
00:38:09.080
in the country, and wife to Bobby Kennedy, longtime Democrat, now works for Trump.
00:38:14.960
Here's what she tells Bill Maher, longtime Democrat, who is somewhat heterodox on the
00:38:19.920
left, about the difference between the two parties.
00:38:23.720
The Republicans have been very kind to me from the beginning.
00:38:28.040
Even from the beginning, when Bobby was running as a Democrat, they weren't mean.
00:38:44.480
It's sad, because it's not the Democrats we grew up with.
00:38:48.440
And that's the difference that people don't, I think, see.
00:38:51.760
They're like, why did you turn on the Democrats?
00:38:58.660
But I'm not going to pretend I don't notice how different they are.
00:39:07.740
This is not some right-wing echo chamber, obviously.
00:39:09.980
These are two Democrats, longtime Democrats, longtime liberals, just observing.
00:39:16.920
The Republicans are nice, and the Democrats are mean.
00:39:24.980
Do not underestimate how behavior, comportment, style, care, charity can affect a political order.
00:39:36.140
It can have amazing effects on a political order.
00:39:44.840
And one of the pitfalls of our age, of our age of iPads and streamers and abstraction and disconnection, is that we forget that we're social creatures and we're loyal.
00:39:58.920
This is part of the Republican Civil War that people don't seem to understand, is there are friendships and alliances and loyalties that do matter.
00:40:08.360
Because we're not just ideas floating in outer space.
00:40:16.040
Then you have to ask, or maybe you have to explain it to Bill Maher and Sheryl Hines.
00:40:29.040
Because the Republicans know to love our enemies.
00:40:34.180
Because the Republicans know to pray for those who persecute us.
00:40:37.400
Because the Republicans know that there is a transcendent moral order.
00:40:41.060
And I'm not even just talking about the real, devout, practicing, religious people on the right.
00:40:50.480
Because we imitate the people that we are closest to.
00:40:52.740
Because we're the average of the five people we spend the most time with.
00:40:59.640
I don't go in for organized religion, whatever.
00:41:01.340
Even they are much more likely to behave in an appropriate manner than the Democrats are.
00:41:06.660
Frankly, even than the Democrats who pretend to be religious.
00:41:10.860
Because it just, these kinds of behaviors are just, they get into our bones.
00:41:22.020
We've talked a lot about Rene Girard on this show.
00:41:24.340
You know, the French writer, Catholic writer, who talked about the theory of mimetic desire.
00:41:29.040
That you, you want the fancy wristwatch, not because you know anything about watches, but because the other guy wants it.
00:41:33.400
And you admire that person and you, you desire the things he desires.
00:41:38.640
And it's a, they're very complex things that come out of that.
00:41:43.740
And if I'm looking at the two political parties today, I have two temptations.
00:41:50.380
One is from the left, which, which gives me a dubious justification to vent all my worst impulses.
00:42:01.100
They have a whole month dedicated to pride, really more than a month at this point.
00:42:04.660
All the worst, gluttony, the body positivity, really all of the deadly sins.
00:42:14.460
That's tempting to the Hassan Pikers of the world.
00:42:17.160
But then I look to the right and I see that they have relatively good lives.
00:42:22.980
And they tend to have families and they tend to not be angry all the time.
00:42:29.620
And they tend to be relatively balanced and happy and they smile more.
00:42:37.100
And the question now is, which temptation are people going to follow?
00:42:43.420
You can be tempted to virtue just as you can be tempted to vice.
00:42:46.040
And so part of our job politically at a higher level is to cultivate the desires
00:42:54.140
that we'll give in to the good temptations, which is what, which is, that's kind of what grace is.
00:43:01.780
Just as evil, you know, tempts us to all sorts of vices.
00:43:06.560
Now, speaking of big Democrat flip-flops, Jasmine Crockett has come out.
00:43:10.660
This is maybe my favorite, favorite story of the whole day.
00:43:14.860
Jasmine Crockett, the new AOC, she comes out, out of the blue, and she says,
00:43:21.400
hey, looking ahead to 2026, 2028, you need to stop trusting those Dominion voting machines.
00:43:30.560
We do know that one of his friends has purchased Dominion.
00:43:34.240
So it's going to be really important for us to educate all states that we can
00:43:38.680
to make sure that their Secretary of State are like,
00:43:43.100
Because I personally believe that that ally purchased Dominion so that he could potentially
00:43:49.700
Because we know that they're trying to cheat by changing the lines for the midterms.
00:43:55.080
And I think that they're trying to solidify their cheat potentially with the voting machines.
00:44:02.480
Man, this Republican Civil War is really weird.
00:44:04.820
And now we got Jasmine Crockett joining the ranks.
00:44:07.280
You know, maybe we do need to gatekeep a little bit.
00:44:09.120
Maybe, whoa, we do need to delineate the boundaries of this coalition.
00:44:13.220
Because I recall, I'm old enough to remember, when Fox News got sued for zillions of dollars,
00:44:19.120
had to settle for $800 million over those exact claims.
00:44:25.960
Almost precisely what Jasmine Crockett's saying.
00:44:30.300
They said, these Dominion voting machines are corrupt.
00:44:47.280
I guess a Republican owns Dominion now or something.
00:44:55.260
What the Democrats are going to say is there's no hypocrisy here.
00:45:00.500
You used to be able to trust the voting machines.
00:45:02.140
But now that someone else owns it, you can't trust them.
00:45:07.700
They don't seem to understand that by making that argument, they are implicitly accepting
00:45:14.000
what the Republicans were saying during the 2020 election.
00:45:18.020
Because if the integrity of the voting machines depends upon which guy happens to be the CEO
00:45:26.300
or whatever at the time, then the voting machines are insecure.
00:45:30.680
Then the voting machines themselves are vulnerable to fraud.
00:45:38.100
That's what this very prominent Democrat Congress lady is saying.
00:45:45.100
I want, I really hope that the administration, the government pushes this one out.
00:45:53.100
I want right-wing media to blast this everywhere.
00:45:55.040
And I want Dominion, if Dominion's owned by a Republican now, I want them to sue this woman
00:46:05.340
At the very least, the conclusion could be that maybe these voting machines are just
00:46:11.220
by their nature, not because of any nefarious activities of the companies, but by their very
00:46:16.260
nature, by their digital nature for that matter.
00:46:19.800
Getting back to a broader theme in the show, more vulnerable to fraud and abuse than the
00:46:26.240
old-fashioned way that we used to do it, where you'd put your vote on a piece of paper
00:46:30.760
and you would count them and there would be ballot watchers who were looking at the counting.
00:46:40.640
Okay, there's much more to say, especially on technology.
00:46:42.660
The AI boom, the economic turmoil that we could be facing could really screw up Republicans
00:46:52.440
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We can send two choices up on all occasions open-offaxes.
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Let's make sure you're masuked and you could druid off the table.