The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1879 - The Right-Wing Civil War ERUPTS At Americafest 2025

00:00:00.000 We're here at AmericaFest. This is the largest, most energetic gathering of young conservatives

00:00:05.180 in the country. This is the biggest one yet. It is completely sold out at capacity. Tens and

00:00:10.280 tens of thousands of people, they would have sold at a stadium had they been able to do it in one.

00:00:15.740 You can't get a hotel room in Phoenix. The conservatives are here amid a right-wing

00:00:20.640 civil war to pay tribute to the past, to look to the future. The title of my speech was Blessed

00:00:26.600 are the Peacemakers. My friends and colleagues who took the stage around me tonight

00:00:32.060 had a little bit of a different thesis. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:56.600 Thank you very much. This is great. I want to do the show at AmericaFest in front of a live audience

00:01:05.040 every single episode. We need to make that change, Mr. Davies. It's much better here.

00:01:10.640 We have got a lot coming up. We're going to do a live Q&A with everybody around here. First,

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00:02:31.180 AveMaria Funds are distributed by Ultimus Fund Distributors, LLC. Ah, wow. It's very energetic here

00:02:39.640 at TPUSA because it always is. AmericaFest, it's the end of the year. It's right before Christmas.

00:02:46.540 Only Charlie Kirk could have gotten everyone to give up their weekend before Christmas and show up

00:02:50.440 year after year, bigger and bigger, bigger by the multiples. I remember showing up years ago.

00:02:55.140 What was it? A thousand people maybe, 1,500, 2,000 people, more and more and more. Now it's

00:03:00.420 completely a capacity. I would estimate 30,000 people here that would have sold 100,000. I think it

00:03:05.380 was sold out months and months ago. So this is it. It's here to pay tribute to Charlie.

00:03:11.280 It occurred to me today when I was driving to the show, this is the last Charlie event.

00:03:19.360 Charlie, because he did the work of 10 men, would have events planned out months into the future.

00:03:25.200 He and I were supposed to do an event 12 days after he was killed, which I then did alone with

00:03:29.600 an empty chair. A number of Charlie's other friends hopped in for the rest of that tour. He then had a

00:03:34.220 book come out posthumously. His wife, Erica, heroically went on and did the book tour.

00:03:38.800 And then there was America Fest. But this is it. It hit me walking in. This is the last event that

00:03:43.940 Charlie directly had his hands in. The stakes feel so high. The stakes feel so high because

00:03:48.500 there is a civil war brewing right now on the American right. There was always going to be a

00:03:53.000 civil war because we're coming to the end of the Trump era. We don't know what's going to come next.

00:03:56.620 It's been a decade where Trump has dominated the coalition. And it was always going to happen

00:04:02.200 because Charlie Kirk was the man, probably more than anyone, who held that coalition together,

00:04:08.380 who did the work of keeping people who disagreed with one another, some of whom didn't like one

00:04:12.280 another within that coalition, excluding the people you should exclude, keeping everyone happy and

00:04:17.880 moving in the right direction. With his loss, it was always going to be fractious. So my speech,

00:04:24.980 which you can find, I'm sure it's on the TPUSA channels. I think you can find it on my YouTube page,

00:04:29.100 too. It was called Blessed are the Peacemakers. I outlined my vision as to why we should try to

00:04:35.080 figure out a way to get along, move forward, keep our eyes on the prize. I think I was the only person

00:04:40.600 who is speaking in America best who had this point of view. My friend and colleague Ben Shapiro comes

00:04:46.420 out, opens up after Erica Kirk's beautiful speech. Erica, actually, who also touched quite

00:04:51.540 beautifully on Charlie as Peacemaker. Ben comes out and Ben, with that Shapiro-esque clarity,

00:04:59.740 starts throwing haymakers.

00:05:01.840 So no, Tucker Carlson, it is not an excuse to go silent on Candace's targeting of TPUSA. 0.98

00:05:07.800 Or to mirror her bullshit lines of questioning because you love Candace personally. The same 0.95

00:05:19.860 holds true of Megan Kelly, a person I consider a friend, characterizing Candace as a young mother

00:05:25.700 and thus shying away from condemning her actions or fibbing about them. That is a non-starter.

00:05:31.540 Megan Markle is a young mother. Ilhan Omar is a young mother. That doesn't matter.

00:05:36.240 And when Megan said this week, quote, my goal and my job here is to try to understand, yes,

00:05:42.000 where Candace is coming from on this, and says she sees no purpose in inserting herself,

00:05:46.700 quote, into this on one side, that is a moral and logical absurdity. There is only one moral

00:05:53.160 side here, Erica Kirk's side. Ben coming out, one elbow to Tucker, one elbow to Candace,

00:06:00.600 one elbow to Megan. He was taking no prisoners. He was going directly

00:06:04.860 at a lot of other people in this space. And the crowd responded. The crowd responded actually quite

00:06:11.920 favorably. Obviously, it's not exactly my tactic. And so I go on between Ben and Tucker. I considered

00:06:20.240 my speaking slot to be something like being right in between India and Pakistan. I think it was

00:06:24.660 somewhere between Iran and Iraq. But Ben comes out and he makes the argument, which was well-received,

00:06:31.060 that we need the truth above all things, which, of course, I think everybody agrees with. And we

00:06:37.880 need to clearly define the boundaries of conservatism. And we need to stand up for the

00:06:43.460 vision of conservatism that is about free markets and limited government and what have you, and

00:06:49.800 everything else is verboten, in addition to condemning conspiracism and bigotry and all the rest of that.

00:06:56.500 So then Tucker takes the stage. And what was so curious about Tucker's point was that Tucker came

00:07:04.980 at it from a largely classically liberal perspective. If you're telling the truth, you ought to be able

00:07:12.140 to explain it calmly and in detail to people who don't agree with you and that you shouldn't

00:07:17.400 immediately resort to shut up racist. You shouldn't immediately go to motive. I mean, first of all,

00:07:23.400 if I was a racist, if I was a bigot, I would just say so. Okay, it's America. You're allowed to be

00:07:27.320 whatever kind of person you want. I'm not. I'm sincerely opposed, have always been, and will

00:07:31.900 always be. But the style of debate where you prevent the other side from talking or being heard

00:07:39.000 because you immediately go to motive. Well, I wonder why you're asking that question.

00:07:43.760 I wonder why. Why are you asking that question? I detect in the question a certain evil in your soul.

00:07:49.060 And everyone listening should know that listening to you implicates them and that they someday may

00:07:56.580 be asked to denounce you and that friendship is not a reason to defend someone. I kind of thought

00:08:03.760 we'd reach the end of that. And as far as I'm concerned, we have, and I'm not going to play by

00:08:07.420 those rules. So you hear Tucker come out. He says, look, I think we should judge people as individuals.

00:08:13.000 You know, he's speaking in this classically liberal way, condemning racism in many ways on the defense

00:08:20.280 saying, I'm not an anti-Semite. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not racist. I'm not bigoted. So you had Ben in

00:08:27.540 other parts of his speech anticipating things that Tucker was going to say. You had Tucker in his speech

00:08:34.160 anticipating things that Ben was going to say. Obviously the other guy was in the other's mind

00:08:39.320 when they were writing their speech. And it led me to the conclusion that, uh, they should speak.

00:08:45.640 I'm, I'm, I'm sure invitations have gone around at various points, but they should speak. They

00:08:50.180 should hash it out in many ways. I think they would agree on a lot of things. It's probably the

00:08:54.700 two of them would agree on things that I would disagree with them on, uh, because what, what, uh,

00:08:59.420 my contribution to all of this fighting and hopefully working it out was, is that first of all,

00:09:04.860 we must unite because we must win. We must win because we have to get along as a country

00:09:11.180 because politics is the art of getting along. Politics is not some foreign thing. It's not

00:09:17.140 extrinsic to human nature. Man is a political creature. Man is a social animal. We have to

00:09:22.100 live together. Our nature inclines us to live in ordered societies. We can't get along with the left

00:09:27.940 right now because the left wants to murder us. They're perpetrating murders against us. They're

00:09:32.100 minimizing them, excusing them, even celebrating them. The justification for political violence

00:09:37.020 on the left is only going up. Survey after survey shows that even liberal, liberal magazines show it.

00:09:41.680 So we cannot get along as a country right now. The only way that we can get along as a country

00:09:47.040 is if we keep winning and restore, uh, some order and we de-radicalize the left. That means that we

00:09:53.620 need to not just have the wins from 2024 and previously, we need to keep winning. We need to hold

00:09:58.720 power for an extended period of time. The only way that we can do that is if we have a coalition

00:10:03.800 that works. Obviously we have to exclude people. Uh, all coalitions have borders. We have to exclude

00:10:09.300 the unjust, the cruel, vulgar hatreds based on race or sex or what, what have you. But I don't believe

00:10:16.520 that you need to hold to some particular view of economics to be on the right. I don't believe

00:10:21.560 that you have to adopt the slogans of 1983 or 2003 for that matter on foreign policy or economics or

00:10:29.920 the size of government in order to be on the right. My view is a little bit more expansive than that.

00:10:35.080 And the proof of this, I think is that the Republican party was founded promoting tariffs and then we

00:10:42.100 hated tariffs. And now we like tariffs again. The GOP was opposed to immigration. Then it liked

00:10:48.200 immigration. Now it hates immigration. Again, we were the party of isolation. Then we're the party

00:10:52.840 of bombing the whole middle East. And then we're the kind of the party of restraint again. And 0.90

00:10:56.620 these changes are not evidence of hypocrisy. It's not evidence that we're rudderless. It's evidence

00:11:02.320 that we understand what politics is, which is a practical science. It's not up in the ether.

00:11:07.000 It's applying eternal principles to constantly changing circumstances, to being responsive.

00:11:12.800 The left was not responsive. The left got caught in its own disconnected ideologies.

00:11:16.820 That's why they're getting blown out of the water at the ballot box. We need to continue to be

00:11:20.520 responsive, especially as we're seeing a generational change. When President Trump leaves,

00:11:25.100 assuming we don't change the Constitution and he doesn't get his third, fourth, fifth, and sixth terms,

00:11:29.400 when he leaves, the boomers exit the political stage. You're going to have potentially a millennial 0.99

00:11:33.940 president. You got Zoomers coming up. Gen X is going to be the oldest guys in the game now. 0.97

00:11:39.340 And so these shifts have to happen naturally. What is it that distinguishes us? We have to love

00:11:44.260 our country. We have to recognize that there is an American people worth preserving. We have to be

00:11:48.460 willing to contribute and sacrifice and even sacrifice within our own coalition. I've never

00:11:53.920 gotten applause on a live show before because Mr. Davies never applauds me, but that was very cool.

00:11:58.820 He never applauds me, but that was cool. That's why we got to get a live audience in on the show

00:12:03.180 all the time, Ben. You need all of those things. That's what makes up the right. And so I like having

00:12:11.560 these fights here. There are going to be more fights over the coming days. Then we need to

00:12:16.340 unify. I don't want to see people taking their balls and going home. I don't want to see them 0.98

00:12:20.060 retreating into their own factional corners, mumbling the same old shibboleths that have not

00:12:24.520 been relevant in 15 years. I want to see people getting in, working together, keeping their eyes

00:12:30.360 on the prize. That is a lasting and enduring legacy of Charlie Kirk because a lot of people have

00:12:34.680 opinions. It's easy to have an opinion. It's easy to mouth off. It's easy to fight with people.

00:12:39.800 It's easy to defame or detract or anything in the middle. But what's very hard is to build,

00:12:46.320 to assuage, to refine, to have the patience, to suffer setbacks, to work toward a goal and to win,

00:12:52.540 to have the courage to actually win, to stake something morally and go out there, take the

00:12:57.560 victories, build on the victories and build a better country. A very, very hopeful at the end of

00:13:02.500 the first day of America Fest, especially because of all these beautiful, smart, serious

00:13:07.160 conservatives. I was just jonesing for more applause. I want to get to much, much more

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00:13:50.940 diet of misinformation, taught to believe that this country is racist, sexist, bigoted.

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00:14:58.200 at AmericaFest, a live show in front of a beautiful audience. Wow. This is good stuff.

00:15:05.380 This is exactly the opposite of the scene that you're seeing in a video that's gone viral.

00:15:12.140 This is a woman who is on food stamps, EBT, SNAP. This is a woman who asks the question for our age. 0.80

00:15:20.440 Matt Walsh asked, what is a woman? These days we're all asking, what is an American?

00:15:24.300 This woman asked, what is the point of food stamps if it's just used for food?

00:15:31.200 It's not even cool. Like, why do they do that? What's the point of food stamps if it's just for

00:15:35.720 real food? Hannah Moore believes she and other SNAP recipients should be able to go into the 0.88

00:15:40.420 grocery store and buy whatever they like. Dota, candy, pre-packaged sweets, prepared desserts,

00:15:45.340 and juice with less than half of natural fruit or vegetable juice in it will not be allowed to be

00:15:50.660 purchased on SNAP cards. I don't know what Trump is doing. I don't know what's going on.

00:15:55.680 What is the point of food stamps if it is just used for food? I feel like Shapiro in that clip

00:16:03.100 from when was it six, seven years ago? You know, he said the Boy Scouts are for boys. And then the

00:16:07.600 in the school said, well, where does it say that? And he says, actually, gang, it's in the name Boy

00:16:12.340 Scouts. That's how I feel about the food stamps. Where does it say that food stamps are for food?

00:16:17.240 It's in the phrase food stamps. That's where it's from. I think people are beginning to notice

00:16:22.340 after the massive fraud among the Somalis in Minnesota, after the new fraud they've uncovered 0.96

00:16:28.180 among the Haitians in Massachusetts, during the government shutdown, when we found out what

00:16:33.560 something like 10% of the population of some states are on food stamps, we realize it's not just

00:16:38.820 people who really need it, who are getting this, feed their kids, get them Cheerios. There's a ton of

00:16:43.840 fraud. And you're beginning to wonder, is the reason that everything is so expensive just welfare

00:16:50.720 fraud, generally among immigrants, but even among native-born Americans? Is that how corrupt is the 0.92

00:16:57.680 country? How deep does the corruption go? And how fundamental do we have to get in our re-education

00:17:05.140 of who we are? You know, the big question I just alluded to it a couple years ago was, what is a

00:17:10.780 woman? You actually have to teach people the difference between a man and a woman. Now we 1.00

00:17:13.880 have to remind ourselves, what's it mean to be an American? And you have to get down to basics.

00:17:17.860 What is the point of entitlement programs? What is the point of food stamps? Does it have something

00:17:22.060 to do with food? Do we need to finally clamp up, set some new standards? I think that's probably true.

00:17:27.940 And you're seeing this in a beautiful way, controversial though it shouldn't be,

00:17:32.600 out of the Trump administration. The head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

00:17:38.720 has just come out. Her name's Andrea Lucas, and she is making a pitch to aggrieved minorities who

00:17:46.560 might have been discriminated against. And the pitch is directly to white men.

00:17:50.980 I'm Andrea Lucas, chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

00:17:55.980 Are you a white male who's experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a

00:18:02.140 claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the EEOC as soon as possible. Time

00:18:08.740 limits are typically strict for filing a claim. The EEOC is the federal agency charged with enforcing

00:18:15.700 federal anti-discrimination law against businesses and other private sector employers.

00:18:20.620 The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating all forms of race and sex

00:18:26.540 discrimination, including against white male applicants and employees. Check out EEOC.gov to

00:18:33.040 learn more and read our one-page explainer about DEI-related discrimination.

00:18:38.620 By the way, if you're listening to this, you think you've been discriminated against because you're a

00:18:43.020 white guy, you should file a claim. I go further. I think you have a responsibility to file a claim.

00:18:49.180 This is going to be a big divide on the right. In fact, I think a lot of what this year's AmericaFest

00:18:54.620 is about is about settling the latest right-wing civil war. There's always some right-wing civil war

00:19:00.860 because the right is just too independent-minded to ever get along on anything. We're in the period

00:19:06.340 of generational flux. We're beginning to rethink certain things. One of those is how we deal with

00:19:14.040 the civil rights offices, how we deal with some of the anti-discrimination programs because for a long

00:19:21.040 time what the right said was, we shouldn't have these civil rights bureaucracies that are going in 0.95

00:19:27.680 and adjudicating every identity issue. We need to eschew identity politics. What did that get us?

00:19:34.520 That got us nothing because the left has sufficiently ginned up identity politics that all that that has

00:19:41.480 really led to is people on the right not using the tools of government that are made available to them.

00:19:47.120 In principle, the whole point of the EEOC of all these civil rights offices is to stop discrimination

00:19:52.520 on the base of race or sex, but we all know that isn't true. The purpose of the EEOC and these civil rights

00:19:58.020 offices has been to stop discrimination except for white people and men and straight people and

00:20:05.220 Christians and God help you if you're a white straight male who's a Christian. Then you have

00:20:10.100 no recourse whatsoever. Then it's actively good for you to be discriminated against. In fact, the entire

00:20:15.900 significance of a phrase like diversity is to say that there should be fewer of you in the schools,

00:20:21.400 fewer of you in the jobs, and we got to get other people to replace you on the basis of those

00:20:27.560 characteristics. So what the right said for a long time was, you know what, we're not going to engage

00:20:31.520 in this and we're just, we're going to try to abolish it altogether. In fact, you know what,

00:20:35.640 forget about these offices. I want to abolish the whole bureaucracy, get rid of the whole

00:20:39.640 administrative state. By golly, wouldn't that be great? We'll go back to 1789 and we'll be governed

00:20:45.380 by that beautiful piece of parchment, the constitution, and we'll erase 200 years of history.

00:20:51.280 It's not going to happen. That's not real politics. That might be entertaining. That might be amusing

00:20:56.700 for essays, for white papers, for think tanks and podcasters. That's not how politics works.

00:21:03.260 Politics is a practical art more than it is an abstract science, okay? A pure science. You got

00:21:10.240 to play the hand that you're dealt. You don't want to be unjust. You don't want to do things that are

00:21:14.860 immoral, but you have to work within the given circumstances of the polity that you have. So if

00:21:20.200 we're going to be governed by some massive bureaucracy that is largely unaccountable to the legislature,

00:21:24.920 in some cases, even the presidency, if we're going to be governed by the Civil Rights Act as a new kind

00:21:30.460 of constitution, then we damn sure shouldn't let it discriminate against a significant portion of

00:21:35.700 our population. You have to work within the system in order to overcome the system. I think this is

00:21:41.980 beautiful. This is the way. Good on Trump for doing it. Good on Andrea Lucas for doing it.

00:21:47.540 All you white guys out there, if you've been discriminated against, file your claim. This

00:21:54.240 requires a political solution. Now, speaking of important uses of government, the House has just

00:22:00.300 passed a very important bill. It should be the most basic thing ever. It says that you can't castrate

00:22:05.920 little kids. It was a big issue. The left had been castrating little kids for a while. The right

00:22:11.280 called attention to this, campaigned on it. We won every single seat in the whole government,

00:22:14.840 the whole country. And so then the House goes and says, we're going to pass a bill that says you

00:22:19.700 can't mutilate little kids because of the weird sex ideology. And the Republicans vote for it. 1.00

00:22:25.060 The Democrats vote against it. And four Republicans vote against it. This party, I mean, this is the

00:22:32.040 theme of AmericaFest is the right-wing civil war. This party, the conservative movement is so fractious

00:22:37.800 that there are sitting Republican members of Congress who cannot even agree that we shouldn't turn

00:22:44.120 five-year-olds into Unix for our freaky sex experiments. We'll get to more of that momentarily.

00:22:49.100 First, though, I want to tell you about Pure Talk. Folks, this episode is sponsored by Pure Talk.

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00:22:58.740 Their success depends on your decision to spend money with them or with their competitor. Well,

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00:23:45.740 in an excellent cell phone company and God bless America. Folks, here, I'll just wrap this. I'll wrap

00:23:53.040 up this little segment on transing the kids. The conservatives are not going to make it if we

00:24:00.020 are so divided that we can't even agree on not castrating the kids as a matter of justice,

00:24:04.980 as a matter of common sense, even as a matter of electoral politics after the 2024 election.

00:24:10.840 Got to unify. Got to make peace. Got to have a clear vision. Got to move forward. That's a lot

00:24:15.720 of what's happening here at AmericaFest. And so, happily, since we have all these excellent,

00:24:21.040 beautiful, smart, well-dressed young conservatives and old conservatives all around AmericaFest,

00:24:27.300 we have a live Q&A sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles and switch today.

00:24:34.320 I love the mailbag. You know, you send me your mellifluous words in the voicemail bag. You write

00:24:39.800 into me. I often don't even get to the written ones. Now I get to see you all in person, beginning

00:24:44.440 with a young man who is wearing the appropriate right-wing uniform, the suit with the red power

00:24:50.840 tie. How are you? Great. Thank you, Michael. I want to say first and foremost, thank you because

00:24:56.420 you have inspired me to stand up for freedom. I want to say thank you because I love your show

00:25:00.300 and your books. I am a proud Turning Point USA chapter president and a 15-year-old youth

00:25:06.100 liberty advocate. And my question is, in a world that is saturated today, I see my generation

00:25:11.600 saturated in Islamic ideals and democratic socialism. How can young people really shift and turn the 0.94

00:25:18.040 tides to where we're focusing on preserving freedom for the next generation? Excellent question.

00:25:22.520 And you bring up two ideologies, a religion and a political ideology, that seem like they

00:25:28.920 would be opposed. Islam and the left. You know, Islam, for instance, doesn't take kindly 1.00

00:25:35.540 to homosexuals, is a little tough on ladies, not the most liberal religion out there, and 0.97

00:25:41.460 the left, which doesn't believe in God and inasmuch as it does believe in God, hates God.

00:25:46.300 So you say, well, why do these two things get along? Because they do. You know, they come

00:25:50.760 into the synthesis with Greta Thunberg, who is a leftist, who's wearing the keffiyeh and

00:25:55.000 marching for Palestine or whatever. And it actually makes sense that they get along because they

00:26:00.060 have a common enemy. And the common enemy is America, Western civilization, Christianity, 1.00

00:26:06.880 order, God, the true religion. And so how do we combat these things as Americans? I would

00:26:15.840 go back to what John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1813. He was writing to Jefferson

00:26:21.980 and he said, you know, there were principles on which independence was one. They too had

00:26:30.080 a fractious society, but they said, you know, look, the general principles of Christianity,

00:26:35.220 the principles which united all of the sects, including a lot of very heretical people like 1.00

00:26:40.080 John Adams, actually. Those principles were the ones that inspired them to independence,

00:26:44.920 as well as the principles of American and English liberty. I think both of those ideals are very,

00:26:51.400 very important. Sometimes people ask whether America is a nation with people and a history

00:26:56.840 like normal nations, or whether it's a creedal country, you know, just an idea of floating in

00:27:01.600 outer space. I say, well, it's not an idea. Look, it's a country, but there's a creedal aspect to

00:27:06.100 any country. And so when you're trying to defend your American way of life, you have to dig into

00:27:13.620 the American tradition. And that's where it is. In as much as there is a creed to America,

00:27:18.160 it is Christianity, broadly speaking, and the civic religion, which is the ideas and the practices of

00:27:26.160 liberty from America and from England. That's what you've got to practice. And you've got to recognize

00:27:31.560 that the left has been threatening our civilization since the French Revolution, and Islam has been 1.00

00:27:36.920 threatening our civilization since about 620 AD, and has been invading about 100 years after that. 0.67

00:27:45.360 And so these are not problems that are going to go away. And there probably will not be any final

00:27:50.180 victory this side of the second coming. But all we have is our time, you know, and all that we have

00:27:56.280 is our ability to rebuff these bad ideas, these bad movements. We have a responsibility to do that.

00:28:01.220 And then we pass the buck to the next generation, which is you. Thanks. Hello.

00:28:06.980 Go ahead. Hi. Hi. We absolutely love you. You eat dinner with us every night.

00:28:14.360 I'm so honored to be invited. What have we been eating?

00:28:18.500 Whatever he cooks. I'm marrying an amazing cook. I'm very blessed. Yeah. So, but no, I was raised very

00:28:27.120 liberal, uh, kind of, you know, I know you went through that little phase. Um, but yeah, raised

00:28:31.920 very liberal, uh, woke up thankfully. And, um, yeah, you've been a huge part of that journey.

00:28:38.160 I do have a question about religion. Um, I, my family, we are Irish Catholic, like heritage wise.

00:28:44.260 My fiance is, uh, United Methodist. Um, so I was just curious when we get married, cause I've been

00:28:51.300 really wanting to get baptized. I know it's a little easier to do the Methodist baptism than

00:28:56.760 Catholicism, but I really love like the, I mean the tradition, the everything that you've taught me

00:29:02.860 about Catholicism pretty much. So I was just wondering your thoughts on that because I know

00:29:07.240 also like I've read that usually you convert to what the man is traditionally. So I just was

00:29:12.780 curious your thoughts on that. So you're asking me whether you and your family should be Catholic

00:29:19.000 or Methodist. Well, I love your idea. I mean, obviously, yes, you're, you're right. The husband

00:29:23.640 has a spiritual leadership of the household. So I think your dilemma is a false dichotomy.

00:29:29.440 Do you follow your, uh, ancestral religion of Catholicism or do you convert to the husband's

00:29:35.460 religion of Methodism? Yeah. That there's a synthesis of these ideas, which is that we

00:29:39.900 convert your husband to Catholicism and then there's no problem at all. That's a wonderful 0.53

00:29:44.400 thing. You know, when you mentioned the baptism, uh, you know, the, the Catholic church recognizes

00:29:49.860 valid baptisms based on the matter, you know, like the water, uh, and, uh, the form, the Trinitarian

00:29:56.340 formula, baptizing in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy spirit. So, uh, I, you know,

00:30:01.040 I'm pleased, I'm in a way I'm pleased to hear that there are still Methodists around cause you

00:30:04.560 know, uh, the mainline Protestant churches have had some problems recently. He says Methodists

00:30:08.340 is like Catholic light. He says the, the Episcopalians are usually called twice the

00:30:13.340 liturgy, half the guilt. And, uh, now they have bishopresses and things, but, uh, you know,

00:30:18.620 if you, if you want to be baptized, I would of course recommend a Catholic baptism. And it's

00:30:23.060 the journey, that year long journey. And yes, I would, you know, I would of course recommend

00:30:27.060 that, but I would say, you know, really, uh, dig in with this with your husband and grapple

00:30:32.400 with this and think about those distinctions, uh, maybe explore the questions because I think

00:30:37.180 it was, uh, John Henry Newman, though it might've been Fulton Sheen who said, you know, there,

00:30:42.500 there are a million people who oppose what they think the Catholic religion is, but there

00:30:47.620 aren't a hundred people who oppose what the Catholic religion really is. And so I would

00:30:51.640 dig into that. And you might find that you're persuaded by Methodist theology, or you might

00:30:56.640 find, especially as I sit at your dinner table every night, that your husband and the rest

00:31:01.020 of your family, maybe come on over and swim the Tiber and then, uh, and then we can all

00:31:05.880 be together in heaven. Absolutely. Sounds great. God bless you. Thank you. You as well. Thanks.

00:31:11.880 Thank you. Uh, thank you. Me and my brother love watching your show every morning. Oh, thank

00:31:17.580 you so much. My question is knowing that men and women were created equal in the image of

00:31:22.920 God, but we have different roles. What, how do you think voting would be? Do you think women 1.00

00:31:27.880 should be voting or just households? Well, the really conservative position, I guess,

00:31:32.400 is that nobody should be voting. You know, we should just have divine right Kings or something

00:31:36.340 like that. But, uh, we live in the system that we live in. Uh, sometimes people raise this to be

00:31:41.300 somewhat provocative to say, uh, should we repeal the 19th amendment? And it is worth pointing out

00:31:46.400 as an historical matter that at the time the 19th amendment was proposed, there were many,

00:31:50.920 many women who opposed it and they didn't oppose it as the left suggests, because they're just a bunch 1.00

00:31:55.920 of idiots or they hate themselves or they're sexist or something. Uh, they opposed it because 1.00

00:31:59.800 that represents a shift in the political economy. Previously, the basic unit of politics was the

00:32:04.840 family. Uh, when, when you move to something more like a universal suffrage, the basic, uh, unit of

00:32:11.000 politics becomes the individual. And so there's some advantages to that, but there are a lot of

00:32:14.560 disadvantages to that. What I would say though, to the people now who say we should repeal the 19th

00:32:19.500 is, uh, you know, you have to dig in a little bit more specifically. The problem, uh, for the

00:32:26.640 electing Democrats is not women voting exactly. It's single women voting, specifically single 1.00

00:32:33.060 women in cities. So my way, my moderate view between the people who say we, we, the 19th

00:32:39.520 amendment's the greatest amendment ever. All the women need to vote starting at the age of six. 1.00

00:32:42.460 And we need to take away the right to vote from women is we should say only married women living 1.00

00:32:49.740 in rural and maybe suburban areas get to vote. And they actually get two votes. They get the

00:32:55.600 right to vote of the women who were single and in the urban areas. Uh, one thing I would say that 0.96

00:33:01.440 you could do given our political circumstances is I like the idea that the husband and wife vote

00:33:06.540 together. I don't like the idea that the vote of a husband and a wife cancels each other out. 0.50

00:33:11.300 Uh, and so it is notable that the married women tend to vote more conservative. So that's all a 1.00

00:33:17.900 recommendation to get married, talk about politics together, come to the right conclusions, right,

00:33:24.260 capital R and, uh, and, and then we can worry about the amendments down the line.

00:33:29.040 Okay. Thank you.

00:33:30.340 Thanks.

00:33:32.360 Thank you.

00:33:34.400 Hi, Mr. Knowles. Um, I am from California, which is obviously a very blue state. What can I do?

00:33:41.300 I was a high schooler to help California become Movid.

00:33:44.640 What can you do? Gosh, uh, you know, if you were a little bit older, uh, I would say you might want

00:33:51.860 to flee. No, no, not as a way to escape problems because you don't want to be a coward, but sometimes

00:33:57.900 you need a tactical retreat in order to mount a greater victory. So, you know, the, the conservatives

00:34:04.480 retreat to these swing States and more red States, they get a big majority. They bring Trump into 0.86

00:34:10.260 office. Then we shape national policy. National policy has an effect, even in the blue States,

00:34:15.280 especially as Trump is threatening to withhold federal funds, sending in federal troops, uh,

00:34:19.900 deporting a lot of the illegals who give disproportionate power to the blue States.

00:34:23.120 So there, there's some good cause for that. Now I'm not suggesting you hop on a box car and run

00:34:27.240 away from home as a teenager. So what can you do? Uh, you know, the best you can do is, is focus on

00:34:33.620 your local area. So where in California do you live? So I'm on the central coast. So right by all

00:34:38.920 the beaches. Okay. So, you know, you're not living in the heart of the tenderloin or something,

00:34:43.660 you know, you're not on skid row. There's a chance that you actually could affect, uh, local areas,

00:34:48.820 maybe state legislature, maybe even Congress. Uh, that's where I would focus your efforts also

00:34:54.160 because if you, especially if you volunteer on a congressional campaign, it's very good political

00:34:58.520 training. You you're exposed to national issues, but it's got all the pettiness and backstabbing

00:35:03.860 of local politics. So you really get a good sense of what politics is about. And I would train there.

00:35:08.940 The other advice I would give you though, I suppose I'm undercutting it by having you on my show

00:35:13.180 is I would not try to get famous too young. A lot of people in politics, they all want to be,

00:35:18.820 famous live streamers when they're six years old. And that's not a good idea because you don't,

00:35:23.740 you just haven't fully formed what you think you haven't had the experience of working in politics

00:35:27.560 and you're going to regret it if you do. So that's what I would do. I would dig in at that level.

00:35:31.480 And if you have any practical political experience at all, you will be much better positioned and more

00:35:36.600 knowledgeable than like 99% of broadcasters. Good luck. Thank you. Okay. Before we get to this

00:35:44.680 excellent question, I want to talk about guns. I want you to go to stopboxusa.com and use code

00:35:52.020 Michael Knowles, all one word folks. I love my guns. I was just walking through here and I saw Nick

00:35:59.580 Freitas and Nick Freitas. He was doing some stream and Nick Freitas recently gave me a gun, a beautiful

00:36:04.980 desert Eagle that is the size of like half my body. And if I ever shot an intruder with it, it would blow

00:36:10.480 off my front door. So where am I going to store my cool desert Eagle? I have the answer. It is

00:36:15.480 stopbox pro. The stopbox pro is great because there are two kinds of gun holders. You got the digital

00:36:23.040 ones that need the retina scan that are super duper secure, but then when you need it, you can't get

00:36:27.440 into it. And then you got some that are a little bit weaker and they, you know, they're a little easier

00:36:32.480 to get into, but then you worry when you have guests over, when you have kids, stopbox pro figures it all

00:36:36.700 out. It's analog. It's old school. Use your fingers, no electronics to fail. And it's very,

00:36:42.520 very safe. A hundred percent mechanical, no batteries, just terrific right now. Go to

00:36:47.760 stopboxusa.com. Use code Michael Knowles, M I C H A E L. Give the gift of the stopbox pro. You get

00:36:57.460 10% off and now you will get a buy one, get one free deal on the stopbox pro 10% off and a free

00:37:02.860 stopbox pro. When you use code Michael Knowles, M I C H A E L at stopboxusa.com. It is officially

00:37:09.840 Christmas gift crunch time. Skip the crowded stores. The last minute panic. You can check

00:37:13.800 everyone off your list with the Daily Wire Plus annual gift membership. Now 50% off. It's a gift

00:37:18.100 that lasts all year with ad-free uncensored daily shows, breaking news, investigative reporting,

00:37:22.880 premium entertainment, all in one place. You even choose exactly when they get the message.

00:37:28.500 Pick the delivery date and time. We handle the rest. Daily Wire Plus membership includes

00:37:32.560 access to our highly anticipated seven part series, The Pendragon Cycle, Rise of the Merlin.

00:37:37.420 You will get to see all of the most trusted and handsome hosts and conservatism. Give Daily

00:37:42.420 Wire Plus today, dailywire.com slash gift. I'm so happy I was going to wear that same jacket and I

00:37:49.540 would have looked so silly if we were wearing this. Nice to see you. It's so nice to meet you,

00:37:53.800 Michael. I'm 100% your biggest fan, whether you believe it or not. I believe it. Thank you.

00:37:59.400 I had the opportunity to talk to your boy, Mr. Davies. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that.

00:38:03.900 He told me Professor Jacob was doing his job today. He's back home doing his job. Doing his job. He's

00:38:08.700 probably asleep. I said I thought he was on sick leave or on a trip with destiny. Yeah, he's always

00:38:15.560 on medical leave because of his latest car accident. Yes, I was about to say, he's probably fixing his car.

00:38:21.740 Yeah. But I wanted to, my real question is to ask you, I have a teen podcast. It's called American

00:38:27.880 Honey. Nice. And I wanted to ask you, what do you think the biggest problem facing teenagers is

00:38:34.200 today and how do we fix it? The biggest problem facing teenagers is that they live their entire

00:38:39.240 lives on the internet. And, you know, I saw this a little bit because though I look very aged because

00:38:45.200 of all of my wisdom and the cigars I've smoked, I'm actually not that old. And so, you know, when I

00:38:51.040 did grow up substantially online too, and it's very, very dangerous. But when I grew up, we didn't have

00:38:58.280 smartphones. We weren't, we didn't live our lives through avatars of social media. Online dating was

00:39:03.980 not really a thing yet. So I kind of feel like I got the last chopper out of Nam. And for young people 0.99

00:39:10.820 today, the problems posed by growing up online are, are manifest. Obviously the big one is

00:39:17.640 pornography. The exposure to pornography happens on average at like age 10 and it can seriously warp

00:39:23.340 your mind, affect your relationships, damage your physical health. It's just horrifying and it's

00:39:27.780 almost inescapable. That's just one of the problems though. The other problem is that as you live your

00:39:33.440 life online, you forget that we're incarnate creatures in the real world. The fact of the incarnation

00:39:38.560 is the central fact of history. It's, it's so important that God becomes incarnate and like takes

00:39:44.420 on flesh and is crucified for us in time and space. Uh, the, the more that you live your life

00:39:49.480 virtually, uh, the, the less that matters, the more you're inclined to live a double life, which is

00:39:54.700 very damaging for your psyche. It's very damaging for your soul. Uh, the, the more easily you are

00:39:59.880 preyed upon by people who are gaming the algorithm of your brain. Uh, so it would seem to me that the best

00:40:07.060 advice I would have for teenagers is put down, uh, open up the smartphone, watch the Michael Knowles

00:40:13.580 show. First off, then the moment the show ends, go to Mayflower cigars or go to dailywire.com slash

00:40:21.580 shop and get the Michael Knowles candles. And, but the moment you order those products, put the phone

00:40:26.660 down and go outside and don't, don't have your first experiences of dating being online. Don't,

00:40:32.040 uh, don't use online tools to cheat and rob yourself of an education. Don't, uh, don't believe

00:40:38.620 that your virtual persona is your, is your real life. You'll miss out on your whole life. It'll

00:40:43.340 seriously damage you. And when you put it down by speechless and by speeches, which is a physical

00:40:48.340 book. Well, my last thing would be me and my mom always joke anytime my dog was born on January 6th,

00:40:55.200 but you have a very special way of saying January 6th. I do. I don't, I barely even recognize

00:41:00.460 the, the date, the way that you've pronounced it. Are you all familiar with that date? Do you know,

00:41:06.040 you've heard of it because it's the worst day in the history of this or any Republic, you know,

00:41:12.100 it's the most horrifying, tragic day in the history of the world known as January 6th, the day that

00:41:21.420 makes Adam Schiff cry. Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, they haven't stopped sobbing in five years and we

00:41:30.080 need to hold memorials for all of the terrible horn hats that were damaged that day. Thank you for

00:41:38.980 bringing up that emotional. I don't know that I can go on and give my speech later after thinking

00:41:44.820 about that awful day. Wonderful to meet you. So nice to meet you. Can I give you my card for my

00:41:49.820 podcast and how do I work for you, work for daily wire, get on the podcast. This is great. I've been

00:41:55.600 trying to replace my associate producer, professor Jacob for five years. This is great.

00:42:01.060 One tee hee hee Tuesday the other day. So yeah, that's too little too late. Uh, please give me

00:42:05.700 your card. I appreciate that. That's great. Uh, look at that's a, I gotta get cool cards like that.

00:42:13.340 Bell, lovely to see you. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you to all of you. Wonderful to

00:42:17.360 meet all of you. Great to see all of you as well. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael

00:42:22.000 Knowles Show. See you Monday.

00:42:36.400 What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God?

00:42:40.620 Is that who you think I was alone with?

00:42:51.420 Merlin, I knew your father. I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.

00:42:59.000 All men know of the great Taliesin. You are my father. That the gods should war for my soul.

00:43:06.660 Princess Garrus, savior of our people.

00:43:10.620 I know what the Bull God offered you. I was offered the same.

00:43:16.760 And?

00:43:18.260 There is a new power at work in the world. I've seen it.

00:43:22.400 A God who sacrifices what he loves for us.

00:43:25.140 We are each given only one life, Singer.

00:43:27.880 No.

00:43:29.000 We're given another.

00:43:32.820 I learnt of Yazoo the Christ. 1.00

00:43:35.140 And I have become his follower.

00:43:37.020 He's waiting on a miracle.

00:43:38.540 And I think you can give him one.

00:43:40.620 Trust in Yazoo.

00:43:41.940 He is the only hope for men like us.

00:43:44.840 Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the great light.

00:43:47.880 Great light.

00:43:49.040 Great darkness.

00:43:50.480 Such things mattered to me then. 0.70

00:43:53.040 What matters to you now, mistress of lies? 0.94

00:43:56.580 You. 0.99

00:43:58.100 Nephew.

00:43:58.620 The sword of the high king.

00:44:05.480 How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?

00:44:13.220 So clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.

00:44:16.420 I cannot take up that sword again.

00:44:19.260 You know what you must do.

00:44:22.900 Great light, forgive me.

00:44:24.000 The time has come to be reborn.

00:44:34.660 The time has come to be reborn.

The Michael Knowles Show - December 19, 2025

Ep. 1879 - The Right-Wing Civil War ERUPTS At Americafest 2025

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