Ep. 1897 - JD Vance DEBUNKS Lie That ICE Arrested 5-Year-Old
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
171.55116
Summary
Did ICE arrest a 5-year-old boy? Does the government fund health care for illegals? Are they felonies or misdemeanors? The truth emerges from Davos to Minneapolis. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Transcript
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From Amazon MGM Studios comes Melania. Every protocol, every precaution, every move coordinated.
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This new film takes you inside the 20 days leading up to the 2025 presidential election
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through the eyes of the first lady herself. The briefings, the planning, the private conversations,
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witness what it takes to secure her return to one of the world's most powerful roles. Melania,
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only in theaters, January 30th. The last 24 hours have been revelatory. Republicans have debunked
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some of the most viral left-wing narratives of the last several months. Did ICE arrest a five-year-old
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boy? Does the government fund health care for illegals? Are misdemeanors crimes? That one
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should be easier, but I guess it's confusing. The truth emerges from Davos to Minneapolis.
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I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. Dylan Mulvaney is back. Remember Dylan Mulvaney, the guy who
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pretends he's a woman and he makes a big show of it. He had the 100 Days of Girlhood
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TikTok sketch. Anyway, he's back. He's hitting Broadway. He's going to be playing Anne Boleyn.
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Hasn't Anne Boleyn suffered enough? Don't you? This is just insult to injury. We'll get to all
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supplements as a preferred customer. I love it. Mr. Davey loves it. Go be a giga, Chad,
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like Mr. Davey. Go to balanceofnature.com. Just before the show, I'm on my Instagram. I'm not
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on Instagram that much, but I'm on, I'm looking at stories, and what do I see? One of the people I
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follow posts this story about how ICE, the evil ICE agents, have arrested a five-year-old child.
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This has been going viral all over social media. Can you imagine? We were told that ICE was just
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going to arrest these criminals, the adults, at least, and the murderers and the rapists and
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the drug dealers. And now they're arresting five-year-old children. How on earth could
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the administration defend this? Mr. Vice President?
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The fact that we're standing behind law enforcement, and I'm proud of the fact that
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we're enforcing the country's laws. But, you know, you asked a question about this five-year-old
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kid. I actually saw this terrible story while I was coming to Minneapolis. We just left Toledo,
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Ohio, this morning for an economic messaging event. And I see this story, and I'm a father
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of a five-year-old, actually, a five-year-old little boy. And I think to myself, oh my God,
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this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old? Well, I do a little bit more follow-up research.
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And what I find is that the five-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien.
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And then when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran. So the story is that ICE
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detained a five-year-old, well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a
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five-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the
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United States of America? If the argument is that you can't arrest people who have violated our laws
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because they have children, then every single parent is gonna be completely given immunity
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from ever being the subject of law enforcement. That doesn't make any sense. No one thinks that
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makes any sense. Beautifully articulated yet again, J.D. Vance showing his skill at just explaining
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what's going on in the administration. The administration is very good all around. They're
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doing a great job. I give them a 99.78% in terms of getting stuff done. They've done a very, very good
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job. However, they're not always the best at explaining what they're doing. Some of the departments
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are a little weaker than others. Vance is just a pro at it. And so he comes in and he points out,
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hold on, the story you're being told is that ICE arrested a five-year-old. Did that really happen?
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No. ICE arrested an illegal alien who happened to have a kid. And because the illegal alien abandoned
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his kid in the freezing cold on the street, ICE also took care of the kid. Because this dirtbag dad
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left his kid to freeze, his five-year-old kid, ICE detained the kid and took care of the kid.
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So a complete inversion of the story. Or I shouldn't say that. Because the left is cleverer than that.
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What the left has done is report a partial truth that tells a total lie. It is true. ICE detained a child.
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And to arrest, the word arrest just means to stop. So they arrested the child. That's a partial truth
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that makes you think they're putting the kid in cuffs or something, going to put him on trial.
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The rest of the story is they took care of the child because his dirtbag father abandoned him
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in the freezing cold. So you see how a partial truth can tell a whole big lie. This is what heresy is,
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actually. This is what heresy, and when it comes to religion, heresy is just, it means choice. It
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comes from heresis. So you choose one partial truth. But if you make the partial truth the
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whole truth, you tell a total lie. So that's what's happened here. But then the vice president
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goes further. The vice president says, okay, so they take care of this kid as the dirtbag father's
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running away. What would you have them do? Would you have them leave the kid to freeze on the street?
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No. What would you really have them do? What you would really have them do is not arrest the father.
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No one thinks the kid should freeze on the street. Even the awful leftists don't think that the kid
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should freeze on the street. But what they do think, and what a lot of them don't want to admit to you
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is they think that you should not arrest the father. If you really push them on it, what they
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would say is, well, we need some carve out where if you have a kid, you don't get deported. If you have
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a kid, you don't get deported. First of all, you've now created a perverse incentive to have a ton of
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anchor babies. But two, that means you're just not going to deport basically any of these guys.
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It's just a workaround to say, yeah, don't enforce immigration law. Have a wide open border.
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Don't have sovereignty. Don't have citizenship. Let the cartels rape the country.
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Why? Because why? Well, because when we go to arrest some of these guys, they'll probably
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abandon their five-year-olds in the cold. And then ICE will have to take care of them while they go
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get the dad. And we can't have that. When you think about it, when you really think about it,
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when you look at what the picture really looks like, you realize the left doesn't have a leg to
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stand on. Once again, ICE acted perfectly correctly. This is the follow-up to the Renee
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Good story. How could ICE? Why would ICE shoot this woman? Why? It's very sad the woman died.
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It's very sad that this five-year-old's dad abandoned him in the cold. It's very sad that
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illegal aliens are imperiling their families like this. It's very sad. The cop was entirely in the
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right, in both cases, with regard to Renee Good and with regard to the five-year-old. The cop was
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entirely in the right. The woman, in the case of Renee Good and the illegal alien, in the case of
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this father and five-year-old, they were both entirely wrong. And yet it's a sad story. And what
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would you have us do? The only way to prevent these sad stories in the future is to enforce the law.
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These guys are doing exactly the right thing. That's the first left-wing lie debunked. Second one
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that's been going around, this one's been going around for a while. This one's been going around
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since at least the government shutdown. Remember, you heard ad nauseum that illegal aliens do not
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receive government health care. The Democrats shut the government down. Then the Republicans say
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they're shutting the government down to give illegals health care. And then the Democrats say
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they are not getting health care. These illegals do not get one penny of government health care.
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Yesterday at the World Economic Forum, here is what Gavin Newsom had to say
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Do you think that your party went too far or that you went too far? And I think, for instance,
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you know, in extending Medi-Cal to the California health care program to undocumented immigrants,
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like, do you? Well, two different questions. I guess on the big picture and the small picture,
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do you feel like you went too far? Two different questions. Do I believe in universal health care?
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Yes. Regardless of pre-existing conditions, ability to pay, and your status. I campaigned on that. We
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delivered on that. And I'm proud of that. We're one of 16 states to provide care to people regardless
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of their immigration status. Okay, I believe in that. I believe in that. I believe in giving
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health care to illegal aliens. First of all, he says, regardless of your ability to pay,
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regardless of your insurance, regardless of your status, meaning whether you're an American
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citizen or not an American citizen. Does he really believe this? Because if that were the case,
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wouldn't that mean that he would have to have California taxpayers, and actually federal
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taxpayers, which we'll get to in a second, pay for the health care of the entire world?
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A guy living in Varanasi, India right now is not an American citizen. His status is as an Indian
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citizen, not as an American citizen. If what Gavin Newsom is saying here is literally true,
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then California should be paying for his health care. It sounds absurd. It sounds hyperbolic.
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That is literally what Gavin Newsom is saying. Regardless of your status as a California resident,
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as an American citizen, we should pay for your health care. Okay, so then why don't we pay for
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7 billion people around the world, if that were literally true? Now, if you tried to pin him down
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on this, he's, wow, that's ridiculous. I don't really mean that. Then what do you mean? Then what do you
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mean? You mean regardless of your status as long as you're from California or you live in California?
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Well, that's not true. If some Guatemalan illegal alien came from Nevada into California
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and broke his leg, Gavin Newsom would say we have to pay for that. So what's the limiting principle?
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He wouldn't give you one. The limiting principle that most Americans believe in is whether or not
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you're an American citizen, which is why even the Democrats had to pretend during that whole
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government shutdown, which occurred for this very reason, they had to pretend that that was,
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in fact, the limiting principle. Here is, do we have Hakeem Jeffries?
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Federal law prohibits the use of Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program,
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and the Affordable Care Act to provide health insurance in any way, shape, or form
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to undocumented immigrants, period, full stop. That's the law. And Democrats aren't trying to
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change that. Not one penny of federal taxpayer dollars goes to the health care of illegal aliens.
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Mark Kelly said the same thing. All these Democrats said the same thing. And yet,
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Gavin Newsom admits it right there. And in fact, at the World Economic Forum,
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they admit it specifically because, he says, look, 14 states give health care to illegal aliens.
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And how does California do it? Through Medi-Cal. What is Medi-Cal? Medi-Cal
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is the California health care system. So this is where the Democrats are going to try to say,
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well, no, we said that no federal taxpayer money went to illegal aliens' health care.
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The state taxpayer money might. But that's a lie. Because Medi-Cal is half funded by the federal
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government, which means it's half funded by the regular American taxpayer. Because money is fungible.
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So the argument that they have to make is, no, no, no. Illegal aliens don't receive federal
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taxpayer dollars for their health care. Because even though they go to a fund, which is half paid for
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by federal tax dollars, we just make sure that we take their dollars from over here.
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You know what we do? We keep all the federal tax dollars on the right-hand side of the fund.
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And then we keep all the state taxpayer dollars on the left-hand side of the fund.
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And we make sure when the illegal alien breaks its leg, when we reach into the fund,
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we only grab the dollars from the left side. That's not how money works.
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That's totally ridiculous. This is why this argument that federal taxpayer dollars don't
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pay for abortions is so ridiculous. As long as the federal government funds Planned Parenthood
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in any way, $1, one penny, federal tax dollars are going to pay for abortions.
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Because Planned Parenthood would say, well, no, we're just using those dollars to keep the lights
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on. Yeah, and because you get those dollars to keep the lights on, you can use your other dollars to
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pay for abortions. If you didn't get those dollars to keep the lights on, you'd have fewer dollars to pay
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for abortions because money's fungible. It's amazing. I mean, Newsom, this is making me second
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guess his skills because it's the problem for Newsom. He wants to be all things to all people.
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And the aperture is just too open wide right now on the Democrat side. You have communists and you
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have John Fetterman and that's the range. It's becoming a little bit too polarized.
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They're not as in lockstep as they used to be. And the left is much further left there.
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So he's trying to swing back and forth. We don't pay for healthcare for illegals. Of course,
00:14:38.980
we pay for healthcare for illegals. Do, do, do, do, back and forth. But he's just admitted
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something that's really embarrassing. Republicans should run that in basically every midterm
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campaign. Yeah, of course, 14 states. 14 states pay for healthcare for illegals.
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Doesn't look good. They're not sending their best. And his sugar daddy, Alex Soros,
00:14:59.900
made even more of an embarrassment of himself at the World Economic Forum. We'll get to that in a
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slash Knolls, code Knolls. Unlock 15% exclusion supply. Alex Soros, scion to George Soros. George
00:16:20.180
Soros, the supervillain, the James Bond villain of the global left, funds all the worst stuff. All the
00:16:26.980
prosecutors who let the criminals off the hook. All the furthest left awful candidates. Alex Soros
00:16:33.500
is now taken over for the old man because the old man is like 93 or something. He shows up at the
00:16:39.040
World Economic Forum. This is really his debut on the world stage, taking over his father's
00:16:44.480
enterprise, the most important left-wing funding in the world. How'd he do?
00:16:50.200
Democracy is messy. Democracy is about contestation of ideas. It's about plurality. It's about people
00:17:00.660
having different truths actually. Now, fundamentally, how society lives together civically in those
00:17:10.720
contestations is obviously quite tricky. But I think that if we play too much on this
00:17:21.320
disinformation card, we're taking responsibility away from ourselves to actually create a narrative
00:17:25.880
that inspires people to vote and to believe in democracy and democratic institutions. On the
00:17:36.720
institutional part, I think that we can talk about institutions as these abstract things,
00:17:42.600
but institutions are also about people. And, you know, we just heard this point about untrustworthy
00:17:49.800
people and we talked about things in the United States like, you know, like checks and balances,
00:17:54.160
which aren't written anywhere, but are customs. And one man, Donald Trump, literally came in
00:17:59.440
and just took that, you know, took that all away. You know, so, you know, so, you know, but when I see
00:18:08.060
this, you know, when I look at this, you know. I can't decide if this is Bart Simpson doing his book
00:18:18.140
report on Libya or if this is Charlie Day arguing with the Harvard lawyer about Byrd Law. I don't,
00:18:25.320
I don't know. It's both actually. I love this so much. This may, this is the biggest white pill.
00:18:35.380
I think the global right has had in a long time since the second election of Trump, probably.
00:18:43.520
Um, uh, um, uh, uh, uh, so, um, like this is the elite, the elite forum for liberal globalist politics.
00:18:53.160
This is supposed to be the guy, the Mac daddy funder of it all. Um, yeah. So like, so what do
00:18:59.560
you think, Mr. Soros? What do you, you, what's, what's your take on it? Uh, bah, duh, uh, la, uh, duh,
00:19:06.480
uh, democracy is like, uh, uh, duh, uh, uh, okay. Go on, Mr. Soros. It's like, uh, we,
00:19:19.160
it's like you all make up your own truth. Okay. Anything else? Yeah. Duh. It's like,
00:19:26.120
there is no, it's like checks and balances, which aren't even written anywhere. Uh, just
00:19:32.280
quick little fact check. They, they are written somewhere. Um, for instance, the, the constitution
00:19:38.420
of the United States, um, they're explicitly referred to in the federalist papers explaining
00:19:43.200
the constitution, but anyway, it would go on. Um, um, um, um, um, I need to stop. I need
00:19:52.200
to stop. This is becoming cruel. It's cruel to think about what he did at the world economic
00:19:58.880
forum. It's humiliating. Say what you will about George Soros. George Soros is a very smart
00:20:05.860
guy. He's a very, very intelligent guy. He broke the bank of England. Okay. He's clever
00:20:11.460
and he's been very politically effective, but you know, the apple, the apple fell very
00:20:18.580
far. A strong wind blew that apple far away from the tree. He ha he shares his father's
00:20:25.500
ideological principles, I guess, if he can even articulate them, his ideological inclinations
00:20:31.860
or passions, but he doesn't seem to share the intellect or the competence. This is something
00:20:36.800
I've talked about in, in politics. This is something I'm really pleased about with the second
00:20:40.960
Trump administration is we tend to focus so much on ideology. Does this person agree with
00:20:48.040
me? We do this when we pick candidates and sometimes we pick bad candidates because they
00:20:51.280
seem like they agree with us, but they're totally incompetent. And the great thing about this
00:20:55.200
Trump administration in particular is they've got the right ideas. They're on the, they're
00:20:59.300
on the right page. They know what time it is and they're very competent so they can actually
00:21:03.780
implement it. This is a good sign, best sign for the right wingers out of, out of Davos.
00:21:08.380
Things are looking up for us, man. This guy is not his dad. Okay. Final little bit to debunk
00:21:14.120
here. Speaking of incompetent leftists, Don Lemon, since he got canned from CNN has decided
00:21:20.420
to become like a YouTuber, I guess. I don't know. He's decided to become a man on the street
00:21:24.980
troll. And so he's out now after he conspired with a left wing mob to violate the face act
00:21:31.500
and interrupted church service in Minneapolis. Don Lemon now has shown up to, I guess, is that
00:21:37.620
Minneapolis? I don't know where that is. Is that New York? I don't know. Wherever he is. He shows up
00:21:41.080
and he starts interviewing people on the street about illegal immigration using the most childish
00:21:46.700
left wing talking points. You've probably heard these before, even in your own conversations with
00:21:50.760
people, with your lesbian cousin or with your, I don't know, your purple haired roommate or your
00:21:57.800
whatever. You're the liberals who you love, who are in your life. They've probably said something
00:22:01.640
like Don Lemon is about to say, listen to how to shut it down.
00:22:05.620
Okay. Crossing the border illegally is not a crime. No, it's not a criminal act. It's a
00:22:11.740
misdemeanor. So why are they being sent back and saying that they're breaking the law? That's the
00:22:16.000
point. Okay. As somebody that, we don't know if they're breaking the law because they won't tell
00:22:20.400
there's no due process. Where's the evidence? That's the whole point. And if they are breaking
00:22:24.080
the law, most people will say, okay, then they need to go if they're criminals. But if they're not,
00:22:28.940
why are they being rounded up and sent out? Especially when he promised to, to deport the criminals.
00:22:34.400
And now he's not doing that. Yeah. I don't think we're going.
00:22:39.700
So misdemeanor is not a criminal act. No, if you get charged with a misdemeanor,
00:22:43.680
that's not a criminal act. So why are you in charge at all then?
00:22:45.740
If it's not a criminal act? Because we have different levels of crime. Everything is not
00:22:50.160
the same. So it is crime. No, we have different levels of, I shouldn't say crime, but it's not,
00:22:55.760
it's not, you're not, it's not a crime. You're not breaking the law. I mean,
00:22:58.620
you are breaking the law, but it's not a criminal act.
00:23:03.100
I love it. I love this woman. She's got a little bit of an accent. You know, she's clearly not from
00:23:08.140
here originally. And then there's this guy off camera because she's just believing Don Lemon.
00:23:12.060
He says, a misdemeanor is not a crime. She said, really? And, and the guy off camera goes,
00:23:18.600
yes, it is. Ask him if a misdemeanor is a crime. She goes, a misdemeanor or a crime? He's like,
00:23:22.720
no, no, it's not. It's not a criminal act, but you're not charged for the criminal act.
00:23:27.140
And then she goes, well, hold on. If, if it's not a crime, why are you being charged?
00:23:32.060
And he goes, I mean, look, no, it's because there are different levels of crime.
00:23:37.360
And then she astutely observes, he goes, well, so it is a crime.
00:23:41.540
If there are different levels of crime, and this just happens to be at a different level of crime
00:23:45.400
than a felony, then you're admitting it is a crime, albeit a lesser crime than a felony.
00:23:50.480
Well, no, I mean, it's not, huh, huh, huh. And she just humiliates him. I mean,
00:23:56.920
it's just so embarrassing. The libs will say this. They will say, illegal immigration is not,
00:24:03.120
it's not a felony, which is also not true much of the time. Depending on if you're a repeat offender,
00:24:12.060
it can be a felony. But let's say it's not a felony. Let's say in the cases where it's not a felony,
00:24:16.340
they say it's a misdemeanor. The obvious rejoinder is what this woman said, which is
00:24:21.620
misdemeanors are crimes. And then they'll say, well, you know, there are plenty of other crimes
00:24:27.480
that are misdemeanors that aren't as big a deal. I don't know. What's a, what's a version of a,
00:24:32.020
speeding really, really fast. Speeding could be a, that could be a misdemeanor. Okay.
00:24:36.360
So then the next follow-up question is not to try to equate illegal immigration with
00:24:41.620
speeding because they're both, they can both be misdemeanors or certain, certain drug crimes or
00:24:47.060
what have you. Just, just ask, okay, well, what's the punishment for that? What's the punishment for
00:24:53.400
the drug crime or for the property crime or for the vehicle crime or whatever? The misdemeanors,
00:24:59.460
what is the punishment? They're going to be different punishments. You say, okay,
00:25:02.580
what's the punishment for the misdemeanor of illegal immigration?
00:25:09.480
It's deportation. And that's it. It's what we're doing. That is, but these illegals aren't
00:25:15.820
getting due process. They are, you know, you know, the first step in due process, getting arrested.
00:25:20.540
That's the first step. And then being processed differently, depending on the crime and then being
00:25:27.360
found guilty, found innocent, and then you're out. Well done. Well done, lady. I don't know her name,
00:25:35.060
but she did a great job. Okay. Beyond all the debunking, big news. Marco Rubio has another job.
00:25:42.200
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Here we go again, baby. Poor Marco. President Trump posts to Truth Social,
00:27:15.400
today I am announcing the United States' intention to bid for the World Expo 2035.
00:27:20.780
The great state of Florida has expressed strong interest in hosting the Expo in Miami,
00:27:24.460
which I fully support. Miami Expo 2035 can be the next big milestone in our new golden age of
00:27:31.980
America. Now, hold on, you're already hearing this. Miami, hold on, there's a new opportunity
00:27:37.960
for America as a whole regarding the world stage, specifically one that will take place in Miami.
00:27:46.880
Oh, no. You see, Rubio's reading this. He's just, oh, no, my phone's going to ring.
00:27:52.200
It's about to ring. No, don't say the next sentence. No, no. I am appointing Miami Native
00:27:58.420
Secretary of State Marco Rubio to chair the efforts of coordinating and advancing this exciting
00:28:03.660
opportunity to convene the world. We will create thousands of jobs and add billions of dollars
00:28:07.880
of growth to our economy. In my first term as president, I fought hard to bring the 2026 FIFA
00:28:13.420
World Cup. We'll forgive him for that, though. And 2028 LA Summer Olympics to the USA. I now have
00:28:18.560
the honor of hosting as 47th president, plus America 250, G20 Doral, and the G7. I look forward
00:28:25.660
to the Miami Expo. Okay, so Rubio's got another job. This is great. I think two things are going on
00:28:31.280
here that I haven't heard other people observe. The basic thing that everyone's observing is,
00:28:37.660
Marco Rubio's really competent. And this involves the world stage. He's the Secretary of State,
00:28:42.480
so it kind of makes sense. He's already, what? He's already the administrator of USAID. He's also
00:28:48.500
the acting archivist of the National Archives and Records Administration. He's already, I think,
00:28:52.640
the dictator of Venezuela. He's about to become El Comandante of Cuba. He's doing all these jobs.
00:28:57.920
Trump is leaning into the meme. That's what's going on here. I promise you, President Trump
00:29:06.480
knows about the meme of Marco Rubio sitting in the Oval Office getting all these new jobs.
00:29:10.480
Oh, no, he's going to have to be the new Ayatollah of Iran. Oh, no, he's going to have to be the no
00:29:14.620
this and that. He's leaning into the meme. Trump is very meme-y. He's very into pop culture. He's the
00:29:18.780
biggest pop culture star we've ever had as president. The second observation, though, is
00:29:24.080
Marco Rubio's already endorsed J.D. Vance for president. So there's no evidence whatsoever
00:29:30.380
that there's any tension between the two. But some of the markets are betting,
00:29:35.180
is the nomination going to be J.D., as it seems it is? Or is it maybe going to be Marco?
00:29:39.260
Is Marco going to enter into the primary against J.D.? Is Trump going to pull his support from J.D.
00:29:44.780
and put it to Rubio? You know, the left and the opportunist cynics on the right
00:29:49.260
are always trying to look to sow dissension. By Trump leaning into this meme and appointing
00:29:56.660
Marco to all these jobs, it seems to me what he is saying is, Marco, I'm going to keep you
00:30:02.800
really, really busy doing lots of stuff, specifically with regard to the world stage
00:30:08.060
over the next two years, three years. Because when you're doing all of that, the one thing you're
00:30:13.600
not going to be doing is running for president. I don't think this, he's not dissing Rubio in any
00:30:17.820
way. I think he clearly loves Rubio, thinks Rubio is very competent, and he's obviously right about
00:30:22.420
that. But some people from the left and the opportunists on the right who, for whatever
00:30:28.300
reason, maybe they don't like Trump, maybe they don't like J.D. Vance, maybe they're more
00:30:31.840
establishment or whatever, they really want Rubio to be the guy. You know, they're trying to suggest,
00:30:37.960
well, by President Trump giving Rubio all of these roles, he's maybe appointing him to be the next
00:30:42.700
guy. I would say it's the opposite. Obviously, it's the opposite. He keeps focusing on all of
00:30:48.160
these world stage roles, which backs up what he previously said, which is, I was actually in the
00:30:53.740
cabinet meeting when Trump said this. He said, you know, Rubio is so good at Secretary of State,
00:30:56.980
I want him to do this job forever. I don't want him ever to run for another political office,
00:31:01.440
which is a little blunt. But furthermore, it keeps him really occupied. Well, if you're doing all
00:31:07.280
these jobs, the one thing you can't do is run a presidential campaign, which is fine. I don't think
00:31:11.180
Rubio's angling for that. Rubio's already endorsed J.D. Vance. The thing that's so beautiful,
00:31:15.820
getting back to the competence point of the administration is, it works together very well.
00:31:20.380
No one's gone down yet. No one really seems to be stabbing each other in the back. It's beautiful.
00:31:24.840
It's harmonious. From the outside looking in, it looks harmonious, which you never get
00:31:29.360
in presidential administrations. That's good stuff all around. Okay, speaking of new gigs,
00:31:34.720
I have to get to this, don't I? I have to. Dylan Mulvaney. You remember Dylan Mulvaney?
00:31:42.300
He is the guy who, he's a guy who pretends to be a girl, but he's really flamboyant about it. And
00:31:48.620
he pretends that being a girl is just about being frivolous and shrieking and screaming and falling
00:31:52.380
all over yourself. He had this TikTok series, 120 Days of Girlhood. He was a Broadway star and he just
00:31:59.240
loves getting attention. He also took down Bud Light by taking an endorsement deal with them.
00:32:05.320
He gets a lot of attention. Anyway, he's back in the news because he has been cast in a Broadway
00:32:10.740
play called Six about the wives of Henry VIII. And he's going to play Anne Boleyn.
00:32:20.860
Hasn't Anne Boleyn suffered enough, don't you think? Seems to me the wives of Henry VIII,
00:32:27.460
a lot of indignities, a lot of lopping their heads off, a lot of, and this is a bridge too far.
00:32:33.280
However, if a misogynist and a sexual deviant such as Dylan Mulvaney were going to appear in this play
00:32:42.980
about Henry VIII, obviously he should play Henry. Why would he play Anne Boleyn? It would make much
00:32:48.000
more sense for him to play Henry. The play, the producers are now saying this is awful. We're
00:32:54.420
getting all of this bullying. This is so transphobia. It's so awful. As if they didn't know
00:32:59.620
about the controversy when they cast this guy as Anne Boleyn, as if that's not what they were after.
00:33:06.580
As if that's not what Dylan Mulvaney were after. This is why he's doing all of this is to get a lot
00:33:10.900
of attention. And it's kind of sad because, you know, in a certain sense, his whole life is just
00:33:19.300
acting, right? He's pretending to be something he's not. But in another sense, he's really not
00:33:23.840
an actor. He's closer to a reality TV star than he is to an actor. And there are lessons here for
00:33:30.860
all of us, actually, whether you're in the theater or not, which is what distinguishes good acting from
00:33:36.640
bad acting. What distinguishes a real actor from, say, a reality TV star? It's the orientation of
00:33:42.980
the performance. For a good actor, think of someone like Philip Seymour Hoffman, probably the greatest
00:33:47.880
actor of the last 30 years. Philip Seymour Hoffman, if he would give an interview, they'd ask about his
00:33:53.340
personal life or his political beliefs or whatever. And he would say, I don't want to say. Because
00:34:00.160
the less you know about me, the better. The less you know about me, the easier it is for me to become
00:34:08.880
another character in your mind. And what is it to become another character? What is it to act on the
00:34:13.800
screen or on the stage? It's to live truthfully in imaginary circumstances. What Dylan Mulvaney is doing
00:34:22.160
is the opposite of acting. He is living falsely in real circumstances. It's an inversion. It's not that a
00:34:28.780
man can't play a woman. Boys played women in Shakespeare's plays. But they're mistaking the
00:34:36.300
circumstances. They're mistaking the stage for reality and vice versa. And then furthermore,
00:34:42.580
Dylan Mulvaney is making everything about himself. It's all about his journey, his transgenderism,
00:34:49.660
his misconceptions of what a woman is. So at a really basic level, it's not about Anne Boleyn.
00:34:55.740
It's not about the play. It's not about telling the story. This is true whatever you do in life.
00:35:02.420
If you're a lawyer, if you're a carpenter, if you're a cashier, if you're whatever,
00:35:07.500
there's a good way to do it and a bad way to do it.
00:35:10.780
For any job, whether you're a student, whatever. The good way to do it is to make your job about the
00:35:18.140
goal of the job. You can seek fame and money and power along the way. But the good way to do that
00:35:26.000
is if all of those things are in service of the goal of the job, be it to write the law or,
00:35:33.060
I don't know, run the store or to learn the book or whatever. If you make it about the thing,
00:35:42.080
the objective truth, the thing outside of you, the greater good, you'll be doing your job well.
00:35:47.060
If you make it all about you, if you say, I'm going to run for Congress so that I can get really
00:35:52.400
rich and famous. Nancy Pelosi's portfolio is looking pretty good. I'm going to get rich and
00:35:55.920
famous. Now you're a bad politician. If you say, I'm going to be in public life and maybe I'll get
00:36:01.780
some fame and maybe I'll get some money, but it will be for writing good laws and advancing the
00:36:05.620
common good. That's the right way to do it. You could do it in any field. And there's a good version
00:36:09.980
and a bad version. That's true even in acting. And Dylan Mulvaney, he's making a lot of mistakes.
00:36:15.060
No surprise. Okay. Much more I want to get to, but I don't have time because I got to get to the
00:36:21.240
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Get to what? Potentially the most viewed drag show in world history in three weeks.
00:38:05.020
Dylan Mulvaney? No, Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl.
00:38:09.520
So I saw this. You sent this to me. You sent me the article. Bad Bunny, with whom I am not terribly
00:38:17.060
familiar. Bad Bunny. Breaking news. Bad Bunny, who is best known as being a radical leftist
00:38:23.820
transvestite, is going to wear a dress to the Super Bowl in furtherance of leftist politics.
00:38:32.580
And you sent this to me, and I was like, oh, yeah, well, hey, breaking news. Dogs bark. Birds chirp.
00:38:38.620
Sun shines. I thought, why would I cover this? Breaking. Transvestite wears a dress. Stop the
00:38:46.300
Because it's not just on TLC at 10 p.m. This is the Super Bowl,
00:38:49.860
like one of the most viewed things in the world happening. And the dude's just going to wear a
00:38:53.740
dress. He says he's going to honor queers. That's the reason why he's doing it.
00:38:56.560
Yeah, but that's what they all do. Barack Obama lit the White House up in rainbows.
00:39:01.160
What's his face? Joe Biden. I forgot his name. Joe Biden invited some transvestite,
00:39:07.520
I don't know, transgender, some version of tranny to the White House lawn, and he lifts up his
00:39:12.400
shirt and shows his fake breasts. I don't, to me, look, am I, maybe I'm just too
00:39:17.020
jaded by our popular culture. I don't, to me, this is not exactly a man bites dog story.
00:39:22.660
I'm just saying, like, would you rather have your, if you are, which I know you're not watching the
00:39:25.800
Super Bowl, would you rather have your son see that or like what happened with Janet Jackson on
00:39:29.820
stage in like 2001? That's fair. You know, both degenerate, but at least one is not contrary to
00:39:36.720
nature. That's a, you know, that's actually a very sophisticated point. What I want to have my kids
00:39:41.340
watch is the TPUSA Super Bowl halftime show, except I'm in a little bit of a fight right now.
00:39:47.380
With my friends at TPUSA, I'm in a little bit of a, they don't even know it's a one-sided fight,
00:39:51.220
but I'm in a fight because they announced the Super Bowl halftime show. They're going to get
00:39:55.960
all these musicians. And yet, what do the people want? The people want ukulele. The people want,
00:40:03.640
I think, I think what the people want at the TPUSA halftime show is your boy, Michael playing the
00:40:09.500
ukulele. Does my phone ring? Let me, oh, hold on. Let me check my, hmm, no missed calls.
00:40:17.020
So anyway, enough about the Super Bowl. Huge news at the Daily Wire yesterday. Huge news for
00:40:24.880
popular culture. We launched the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin. This was a multi-year project,
00:40:31.080
multiple continents, and it's the kind of story that I love. Wasn't some stupid ideological story,
00:40:36.720
which we usually get from the left, but even from the right. I hate that we do it on the right
00:40:40.120
sometimes, and I hate it. This is so much deeper. A deeply Christian story steeped in one of the
00:40:45.900
great legends of our entire civilization. Before Camelot, before King Arthur, before the Round
00:40:51.820
Table. An amazing project. It came out beautifully. And with the Pendragon cycle, we launched a new
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00:41:12.440
Go to dailywireplus.com. Start streaming the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin, today.
00:41:17.740
My favorite comment yesterday is from Raith Sinar, 1337, who says, if he doesn't name it Orange Land,
00:41:23.000
I will be disappointed. Beautiful. Love it. Because, by the way, Greenland is not green. I've been to
00:41:30.520
Iceland. I've never been to Greenland. But the irony is, Iceland is green and Greenland is ice.
00:41:36.340
And it's about to be orange. Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash
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00:41:46.720
Hi, Michael. Love your commentary, especially your religious commentary. But I've got a bone to pick
00:41:51.640
with you about Henry VIII. What he wanted was an annulment, not a divorce, which, of course,
00:41:56.200
the Roman Catholic Church recognizes in principle. And so, the dispute was whether or not the Pope
00:42:01.200
has universal jurisdiction, not whether or not divorce is okay. Now, if the claims of Rome can
00:42:08.200
stand, they can stand against the real arguments that the Reformers were making. And I think that
00:42:13.900
as we try to work forward towards unity in the body of Christ, we should engage charitably with
00:42:20.020
one another's arguments. I think that's especially true since Roman Catholics have been so routinely
00:42:25.900
mischaracterized by Protestants. And so, I'm curious about your thoughts about that. Once again,
00:42:31.480
love the show. Love what you do. Please keep on it. God bless.
00:42:35.260
It's a very good observation about the distinction between divorce and annulment. Yes. He did end up
00:42:41.260
getting a divorce, but what he sought was an annulment from the Pope. And what is an annulment?
00:42:45.780
An annulment is when an ecclesiastical body declares that the marriage was never valid in
00:42:52.940
the first place. So, you don't get an annulment because your husband cheated on you. That's very
00:42:57.900
painful. That's really terrible. You don't get an annulment because your wife went crazy. That's
00:43:01.860
very painful and terrible too. You would get an annulment only if the marriage were never valid
00:43:06.540
in the first place. And Henry VIII was a serious theological thinker. So, it's all the more painful
00:43:14.140
that he, because of his error and his malign will, destroyed Western Christendom. But he sought an
00:43:21.920
annulment. Why? Because if I'm remembering it correctly, Catherine of Aragon had been married
00:43:29.980
to his older brother. So, in order to be married in the first place, Henry VIII had to get a dispensation
00:43:37.220
from the Pope, which he did, Pope Julius, right? And so, he argues, well, because of consanguinity,
00:43:45.700
because of, what is it, Leviticus? Because of Leviticus saying, you can't marry your brother's
00:43:52.460
wife. This is not a valid marriage. Give me my annulment. But then the Pope comes back and says,
00:43:58.160
well, hold on. You got a dispensation for this. The question was answered. It's a little confusing
00:44:05.280
is Deuteronomy says you should marry your brother's wife if your brother dies. So, even the scripture
00:44:11.500
here is quite nuanced. But after that, Catherine makes the argument, she never consummated the
00:44:19.060
marriage with the older brother. So, it was not a valid marriage. A marriage is not valid until it
00:44:25.000
is consummated. So, you're right. It's a more nuanced question just than like big fat guy wanted
00:44:31.000
a divorce. But I think when you get into the details of it, Henry doesn't have a leg to stand
00:44:36.320
on. And so, then it does become, okay, well, who has the authority here? Does the Pope really have
00:44:41.680
this universal jurisdiction? And I would say Henry would argue he did. Henry would have argued he did
00:44:46.560
before he argued that he didn't. That's why Henry appealed to him in the first place. Yes, the real
00:44:53.100
story is always more interesting than the slogans. But the real story here, I think, makes Henry even
00:44:57.660
look worse. Okay, next question. Okay, Michael. So, you just offhandedly said, you know, and sometimes
00:45:05.880
I watch trash TV, you know, and you didn't say it in the past tense. You said it in the present tense.
00:45:10.900
So, now we must know, what is the trash TV that you indulged in? What are your guilty pleasures?
00:45:17.620
I will, to make you feel more comfortable in opening up, I will admit that my husband and I,
00:45:24.880
and for reference, we're very similar to you and Melissa, it sounds like. We go to a Latin
00:45:29.620
Novus Ordo, our Christmas decorations are still up, and yeah, blah, blah, blah. We're very traditional
00:45:36.100
Catholics, but sometimes we indulge in watching a little bit of Emily in Paris. Not a little bit.
00:45:42.280
We're pretty much up to date with all the seasons, but we enjoy Emily in Paris. It's so
00:45:47.420
decrepit and predictable that it somehow is hilarious and entertaining. So, anywho,
00:45:54.880
that's our guilty pleasure. I need to know what yours is. Ideally, actually, I would like to know
00:46:00.220
what you and Elisa enjoy to watch together. Thanks. Good question. I watch very little TV.
00:46:07.120
Not because I'm better than that or whatever. Not because I don't look at screens. I just doom
00:46:10.140
scroll. That's my version of trash TV most of the time. However, when I watch real TV with Elisa,
00:46:18.440
because Elisa and I have very different tastes in movies, TV were closer. But I did recently.
00:46:23.340
I watch one or two shows a year, but we just finished watching one and enjoyed it very much.
00:46:30.580
The Beast in Me. The Beast in Me on Netflix with that famous actress. I forget her name.
00:46:37.700
The Beast in Me. It is pure garbage. It is such trash. But it's high-class trash.
00:46:46.760
It looks good. It's engaging. It's a thriller. Some of it's so clunky and just ham-fisted. It's just
00:46:58.280
garbage. It's just garbage that I love. I was listening to an Elmo album with my middle son,
00:47:06.940
just loves Elmo, all these Elmo songs. And there's this song. I forget how it goes. It's like a Broadway
00:47:12.600
rendition from the trash Sesame Street character. What's his name? Whatever his name is. Oscar.
00:47:20.280
Oscar the Grouch. Yeah. Is it Oscar? I don't know. Whatever it is. And it's just about how much he
00:47:24.380
loves trash, like delicious trash. That's how I feel about this show. It's just delicious garbage.
00:47:33.120
Hey, Michael. I've been very historically confused for some time now. And some comments you made on
00:47:38.920
your show kind of hit at it. You mentioned how conservatives are very, some conservatives are
00:47:46.420
very cautious around MLK because what he stood for in the abstract was great. The political
00:47:52.440
implementation was not. And that, I think, puts many of us in a very confused place when we observe that
00:48:01.460
we agree with those historical facts. But then we have to reconcile them.
00:48:06.140
Our Lord says we don't pull bad fruit from good bushes. Why did such a seemingly just cause
00:48:15.420
produce so much problems? And how do we discuss this with those conservatives who are making the
00:48:26.060
case that what was stood for in the abstract with MLK wasn't good? How do we make that case to them
00:48:36.340
Well, you got to examine the premises a little. You know, I'm not an MLK hater, as some people on
00:48:40.920
the right and the left are. But I think I look at him realistically, not through the lens of mythology,
00:48:47.800
which is what we've made of him because we've made him a secular saint. He has his own feast day
00:48:51.460
on the liberal liturgical calendar. So when you say what he stood for in the abstract was great,
00:48:56.320
hold on. He was a racial identitarian and a socialist, is what he was. We kind of forget
00:49:05.280
that because he's most famous for one speech that he didn't write, the I Have a Dream speech.
00:49:10.840
And the I Have a Dream speech comes down and says, hey, let's not be mean to each other on the basis
00:49:16.340
of race, right? Let's treat each other fairly and justly, regardless of race, which we all agree,
00:49:20.720
all decent people, I think, agree with. But the rest of the stuff, he was a socialist and he was
00:49:28.500
a racial identitarian. And so even that stuff in the abstract was not great. But why did he
00:49:33.600
come to symbolize good things, namely racial harmony? He did so because we have imposed a
00:49:41.260
mythology on him that was not totally separated from his real self. I mean, some of his writing
00:49:45.340
was quite good. He plagiarized his PhD thesis, his doctoral dissertation. But a letter from Birmingham
00:49:51.480
jail is a very impressive piece of writing. And he's a very impressive figure, regardless of any
00:49:56.060
personal failings. But the problem with him is the stuff that he got right, he got right incidentally
00:50:06.720
because liberalism incidentally gets stuff right. In other words, we think of him as this Christian
00:50:12.960
leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, he wasn't really Christian in any meaningful sense. He
00:50:18.780
didn't believe in the Trinity. He didn't believe in the divinity of Christ. He was a liberal.
00:50:26.160
Now, look, there have been plenty of great men throughout history who were heterodox or heretics
00:50:31.160
or John Adams had a similar religious view to Martin Luther King. But Martin Luther King's real
00:50:38.200
religion wasn't Christianity. It was liberalism. And liberalism is bad because it gets certain
00:50:43.620
fundamental premises wrong. But because liberalism comes out of Christianity and is really a perversion
00:50:48.560
of Christianity, it does incidentally get some stuff right. John Locke, who's the father of classical
00:50:53.320
liberalism, he does get some stuff right. He gets a lot of stuff wrong, but he does get some stuff right.
00:50:58.900
And so that's why Martin Luther King incidentally gets some stuff right as liberalism incidentally gets
00:51:05.600
some stuff right. But because the premises are wrong, and because the political ideology that
00:51:12.720
is motivating him is wrong and therefore becomes wrong in implementation, it all kind of goes off
00:51:17.180
the rails. That's why. If you want a real technical explanation, that's why. It's not to totally
00:51:22.800
diss Martin Luther King, certainly not to diss the mythology of Martin Luther King, which as with most
00:51:28.620
mythologies is better than the real thing. But it's because it's a liberal. And so our ambivalent views,
00:51:37.960
our mixed views on Martin Luther King is reflective of our mixed views on liberalism. It gets some stuff
00:51:43.980
right, and we're familiar with it. And what if it were so simple? But in principle, it starts out in
00:51:50.360
the wrong place. Okay. I know I'm running late. I don't care. Give me one more voicemail bag.
00:51:54.320
Hi, Michael. This is in regards to the penny I own. One of those smash pennies you get at the fair
00:52:00.040
or the attraction. And mine has the Lord's Prayer stamped on it. And it comes and goes from my
00:52:06.000
possession. I will lose it at times in a pocket or in a laundry cycle, and then eventually it will
00:52:10.660
pop back up again. Well, it just popped back up again. And I find it curious because I've been
00:52:15.200
wanting to see a psychic lately to try to find some reason or rhyme to the chaos that has been in my life.
00:52:23.500
And I haven't gone to the psychic yet because of things that you've said, honestly.
00:52:29.320
But I'm wondering, what is it that's so hard about accepting Jesus?
00:52:36.820
Ooh, really good question. First of all, I'm glad you haven't gone to the psychic. Don't go to the
00:52:41.600
psychic. In part because you should save your pennies. You shouldn't waste your money. And in part because
00:52:46.700
it's deeply sinful. And the best thing that could happen at the psychic is that you are taken in by
00:52:53.860
a charlatan. And the worst thing is you commune with a demon and let him into your life. So don't
00:52:58.340
do that. What are you looking for from the psychic? You just told me, you said, you want to make sense
00:53:02.840
of the world. You think a psychic is going to do that for you? How would a psychic do that for you?
00:53:07.840
Well, by talking to spirits or seeing the future or, right, that's the only thing the psychic could
00:53:17.420
do. Talking to the dead maybe, right? That's what the psychics promise. Reading your mind. Well,
00:53:23.200
you already have your mind. You don't need someone to read it. All those things, even if the psychic
00:53:29.520
can do them, are much less satisfactory, much less powerful than speaking to God, right? Surely if a
00:53:39.420
psychic communing with your dead grandma is going to tell you less about the world than God who created
00:53:46.220
and sustains the world, right? I'm sure your grandma's great, but your grandma knows less about
00:53:51.420
things than God. If the psychic is communing with a spirit, demon, by the way, but even in just any kind
00:53:58.640
of spirit, surely a created spirit is less powerful and less knowledgeable than the God who made the
00:54:04.800
spirits, right? So you should talk to God and you can do that, but that gets to the last part of your
00:54:12.380
question. How do we pray to God? Well, or how do we talk to God? We pray. How else do we talk to God?
00:54:17.940
We avail ourselves of the sacraments where we believe, Christians believe that God is really present,
00:54:23.480
really truly present in the sacraments. But then you say, why is it so hard to believe in Jesus?
00:54:30.940
Because Jesus tells you, you can talk to God and see God, know God, and eat God.
00:54:41.720
That you can really tangibly encounter God, have a real personal relationship with him,
00:54:49.780
so personal that you can eat him. And that food, which is figured in the manna from heaven,
00:54:58.640
is like food in all appearances. It is different in that when you eat most food,
00:55:06.740
you break it down and the food becomes you. When you eat the flesh of the son of man,
00:55:12.900
when you eat that, you become like him. You become like God. It's a scandal. It's a scandal that God,
00:55:21.900
who we feel more comfortable with at a distance. God's kind of scary, isn't he? You know, awe and
00:55:27.160
wonder and sublimity. It's a scandal that he's really close to us, that we can actually talk to
00:55:33.300
him, that we can see him, that we know what he looks like. That's scandalous to people.
00:55:39.600
It's hard to pray to a man, who is God. It's hard to do that. I think you would much rather,
00:55:49.460
you know, pay the psychic, whatever, 20 bucks and say, ooh, I'm getting a message now from beyond,
00:55:58.900
and ooh, you know, and put on a kind of big show. But the paradoxically prosaic nature of the ultimate
00:56:08.600
glory that we have in the God-man, where we see his glory in the transfiguration.
00:56:16.760
You know, the apostles, the three apostles see the transfiguration of our Lord with Moses and
00:56:23.760
Elijah, and we see that. And also, he's a guy. He's, wait, you're talking about Jesus of Nazareth?
00:56:29.640
Wait, the guy, the son of Mary and Joseph? The carpenter, that guy? That's what's jarring for us.
00:56:36.920
And it tells us something about our dignity as human beings. That's why it's so hard to believe.
00:56:43.720
But it's much more real. It's much more tangible. It's much more logical than paying some charlatan
00:56:51.460
or demon worshiper to go screw up your soul. Don't do that. Okay. On that cheerful note,
00:56:57.280
it's a fake headline Friday. The rest of the show continues now. You don't want to miss it.
00:57:00.140
Become a member. Use code Knowles Canada WLS at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
00:57:03.200
What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God?
00:57:26.820
Merlin, I knew your father. I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.
00:57:57.880
There is a new power at work in the world. I've seen it.
00:58:24.480
Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the great light.
00:58:45.100
How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?
00:58:52.820
So clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.
00:59:19.280
Let him use the tears of stone, extinction, confiance,vana, and life.